Jun 21

Today’s News 21st June 2022

  • UK Drivers Brace For "Big Traffic Increases" Amid "Largest Rail Strike In Modern History" 
    UK Drivers Brace For “Big Traffic Increases” Amid “Largest Rail Strike In Modern History” 

    Britain is on the cusp of a massive strike that begins Tuesday and will paralyze at least half of the country’s railway network, resulting in what could be a surge in traffic as train passengers switch to road transportation.

    The Rail, Maritime, and Transport Workers union (RMT) will strike tomorrow, Thursday, and Sunday in what union bosses call the “biggest rail strike in modern history.” The Independent reports last-ditch talks between the rail union and Network Rail, and 13 train operators failed to resolve pay, jobs, and conditions disputes. As many as 40,000 unionized rail workers will participate in the walkout. 

    Chief Treasury Secretary Simon Clarke told Sky News on Monday that travelers will suffer “misery” this week: 

    “I think the public do this week need to be aware there will be very substantial disruption and it is therefore sensible to make preparations for that,” Clarke said.

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    Motoring group AA forecasted increased highway traffic as passengers switched to road transportation. AA said Scotland, Wales, and major roadways across the UK will see “a big increase in traffic.” 

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    RAC, another motoring group, said the strike would result in more road usage: 

    “Major city routes as well as those serving the home counties are likely to see some of the biggest increases in traffic volumes as, even if rail lines are still open, there will be significantly fewer trains running.

    “With strikes like these planned it’s perhaps little wonder that so many drivers across the country are dependent on their vehicles. Traffic jams aside, using a car often turns out to be the most practical and reliable way of getting around,” RAC spokesman Rod Dennis said. 

    Network Rail posted a map of the affected service areas that span the country. 

    “Ultimately, this is a matter between the employers—the train operating companies and Network Rail—and the trade unions, and the government doesn’t sit directly as a part of those talks for a very good reason—that we don’t intervene in a specific process between an employer and the unions representing employees, but we are there to provide the support and enabling framework for those talks to succeed,” the treasury minister said. 

    Clarke said the rail union had requested a 7% pay boost to keep up with the highest inflation in four decades. All of which probably helps explain why the UK’s Misery Index is at its highest since 1992…

    Transport Secretary Grant Shapps warned the strike would “punish” millions of “innocent people” and is “a huge act of self-harm” that will “jeopardize the future of the railway itself.” 

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/21/2022 – 02:45

  • Escobar: St. Petersburg Sets The Stage For The War Of Economic Corridors
    Escobar: St. Petersburg Sets The Stage For The War Of Economic Corridors

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

    In St. Petersburg, the world’s new powers gather to upend the US-concocted “rules-based order” and reconnect the globe their way…

    The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum  has been configured for years now as absolutely essential to understand the evolving dynamics and the trials and tribulations of Eurasia integration.

    St. Petersburg in 2022 is even more crucial as it directly connects to three simultaneous developments I had previously outlined, in no particular order:

    • First, the coming of the “new G8” – four BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China), plus Iran, Indonesia, Turkey and Mexico, whose GDP per purchasing parity power (PPP) already dwarfs the old, western-dominated G8.

    • Second, the Chinese “Three Rings” strategy of developing geoeconomic relations with its neighbors and partners.

    • Third, the development of BRICS+, or extended BRICS, including some members of the “new G8,” to be discussed at the upcoming summit in China.

    There was hardly any doubt President Putin would be the star of St. Petersburg 2022, delivering a sharp, detailed speech to the plenary session.

    Among the highlights, Putin smashed the illusions of the so-called ‘golden billion’ who live in the industrialized west (only 12 percent of the global population) and the “irresponsible macroeconomic policies of the G7 countries.”

    The Russian president noted how “EU losses due to sanctions against Russia” could exceed $400 billion per year, and that Europe’s high energy prices – something that actually started “in the third quarter of last year” – are due to “blindly believing in renewable sources.”

    He also duly dismissed the west’s ‘Putin price hike’ propaganda, saying the food and energy crisis is linked to misguided western economic policies, i.e., “Russian grain and fertilizers are being sanctioned” to the detriment of the west.

    In a nutshell: the west misjudged Russia’s sovereignty when sanctioning it, and now is paying a very heavy price.

    Chinese President Xi Jinping, addressing the forum by video, sent a message to the whole Global South. He evoked “true multilateralism,” insisting that emerging markets must have “a say in global economic management,” and called for “improved North-South and South-South dialogue.”

    It was up to Kazakh President Tokayev, the ruler of a deeply strategic partner of both Russia and China, to deliver the punch line in person: Eurasia integration should progress hand in hand with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Here it is, full circle.

    Building a long-term strategy “in weeks”

    St. Petersburg offered several engrossing discussions on key themes and sub-themes of Eurasia integration, such as business within the scope of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO); aspects of the Russia-China strategic partnership; what’s ahead for the BRICS; and prospects for the Russian financial sector.

    One of the most important discussions was focused on the increasing interaction between the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and ASEAN, a key example of what the Chinese would define as ‘South-South cooperation.’

    And that connected to the still long and winding road leading to deeper integration of the EAEU itself.

    This implies steps towards more self-sufficient economic development for members; establishing the priorities for import substitution; harnessing all the transport and logistical potential; developing trans-Eurasian corporations; and imprinting the EAEU ‘brand’ in a new system of global economic relations.

    Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexey Overchuk was particularly sharp on the pressing matters at hand: implementing a full free trade customs and economic union – plus a unified payment system – with simplified direct settlements using the Mir payment card to reach new markets in Southeast Asia, Africa and the Persian Gulf.

    In a new era defined by Russian business circles as “the game with no rules” – debunking the US-coined “rules-based international order” – another relevant discussion, featuring key Putin adviser Maxim Oreshkin, focused on what should be the priorities for big business and the financial sector in connection to the state’s economic and foreign policy.

    The consensus is that the current ‘rules’ have been written by the west. Russia could only connect to existing mechanisms, underpinned by international law and institutions. But then the west tried to  “squeeze us out” and even “to cancel Russia.” So it’s time to “replace the no-rules rules.” That’s a key theme underlying the concept of ‘sovereignty’ developed by Putin in his plenary address.

    In another important discussion chaired by the CEO of western-sanctioned Sberbank Herman Gref, there was much hand-wringing about the fact that the Russian “evolutionary leap forward towards 2030” should have happened sooner. Now a “long-term strategy has to be built in weeks,” with supply chains breaking down all across the spectrum.

    A question was posed to the audience – the crème de la crème of Russia’s business community: what would you recommend, increased trade with the east, or redirecting the structure of the Russian economy? A whopping 72 percent voted for the latter.

    So now we come to the crunch, as all these themes interact when we look at what happened only a few days before St. Petersburg.

    The Russia-Iran-India corridor

    A key node of the International North South Transportation Corridor (INTSC) is now in play, linking northwest Russia to the Persian Gulf via the Caspian Sea and Iran. The transportation time between St. Petersburg and Indian ports is 25 days.

    This logistical corridor with multimodal transportation carries an enormous geopolitical significance for two BRICs members and a prospective member of the “new G8” because it opens a key alternative route to the usual cargo trail from Asia to Europe via the Suez canal.

    The International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC)

    The INSTC corridor is a classic South-South integration project: a 7,200-km-long multimodal network of ship, rail, and road routes interlinking India, Afghanistan, Central Asia, Iran, Azerbaijan and Russia all the way to Finland in the Baltic Sea.

    Technically, picture a set of containers going overland from St. Petersburg to Astrakhan. Then the cargo sails via the Caspian to the Iranian port of Bandar Anzeli. Then it’s transported overland to the port of Bandar Abbas. And then overseas to Nava Sheva, the largest seaport in India. The key operator is Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (the IRISL group), which has branches in both Russia and India.

    And that brings us to what wars from now will be fought about: transportation corridors – and not territorial conquest.

    Beijing’s fast-paced BRI is seen as an existential threat to the ‘rules-based international order.’ It develops along six overland corridors across Eurasia, plus the Maritime Silk Road from the South China Sea, and the Indian Ocean, all the way to Europe.

    One of the key targets of NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine is to interrupt BRI corridors across Russia. The Empire will go all out to interrupt not only BRI but also INSTC nodes. Afghanistan under US occupation was prevented from become a node for either BRI or INSTC.

    With full access to the Sea of Azov – now a “Russian lake” – and arguably the whole Black Sea coastline further on down the road, Moscow will hugely increase its sea trading prospects (Putin: “The Black Sea was historically Russian territory”).

    For the past two decades, energy corridors have been heavily politicized and are at the center of unforgiving global pipeline competitions – from BTC and South Stream to Nord Stream 1 and 2, and the never-ending soap operas, the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) and Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipelines.

    Then there’s the Northern Sea Route alongside the Russian coastline all the way to the Barents Sea. China and India are very much focused on the Northern Sea Route, not by accident also  discussed in detail in St. Petersburg.

    The contrast between the St. Petersburg debates on a possible re-wiring of our world – and the Three Stooges Taking a Train to Nowhere to tell a mediocre Ukrainian comedian to calm down and negotiate his surrender (as confirmed by German intelligence) – could not be starker.

    Almost imperceptibly – just as it re-incorporated Crimea and entered the Syrian theater – Russia as a military-energy superpower now shows it is potentially capable of driving a great deal of the industrialized west back into the Stone Age. The western elites are just helpless. If only they could ride a corridor on the Eurasian high-speed train, they might learn something.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/21/2022 – 02:00

  • A Permanent Shortage Of Everything
    A Permanent Shortage Of Everything

    Authored by Daniel Greenfield via The Gatestone Institute,

    • The world isn’t flat, it’s all too round… That’s why Islam is once again at war with Europe, Russia is invading Ukraine, China is relaunching its empire, and the ‘flatland’ is experiencing a dimensional shift.

    • Globalization advocates had just recreated Marxist central planning with a somewhat more flexible global model in which massive corporations bridged global barriers to create the most efficient possible means of moving goods and services around the planet. Borders would come down and cultural exchanges would make us all one ushering in the great union of humanity.

    • Market consolidation due to government regulations has left a handful of companies sitting atop the market. When one of them, like Abbott for baby formula, has a hiccup, the results are catastrophic; others like Procter & Gamble, which controls about half the menstrual products market, don’t have to worry about losing market share to competition. Similar consolidation in food, paper products and supermarkets have replaced a dynamic economy with cartels.

    • Behind all the brands on the product shelves is a creaky Soviet system in which a handful of massive enterprises interconnected with the state lazily crank out low-quality products from vast supply chains that they no longer control and feel little competitive pressure to perform better. The only thing that is still American about the supermarket experience is the advertising.

    • Interdependence hasn’t even led to the world government that globalists wanted, but global chaos in which impotent western powers try to talk the rest of the world out of fighting to avoid being swamped by refugees, high energy bills and empty shelves in supermarkets.

    • After selling off American economic sovereignty, globalists proved unable to maintain global stability. Lacking the will to actually stand up to China, Iran or Russia, all they can do is hold more international conferences and build up a useless multinational bureaucracy.

    • Say what you will about the League of Nations, but it only had 700 employees in Geneva. The UN’s 44,000 employees are just the tip of the iceberg in the huge ranks of multinational organizations who all claim to be upholding the international order while running up the tab.

    First it was baby formula, now there’s a tampon shortage. Tampon prices are up 10% due to the rising price of oil affecting the cost of plastic and higher cotton prices due to mask manufacturing and the war in Ukraine. A whole lot of fertilizer comes out of Ukraine and Russia. So does neon, which is used to make semiconductor chips. The chip shortage is shutting down car plants.

    Pictured: A shopper looks at the bare shelves of the baby formula section of a supermarket in Chelsea, Massachusetts on May 20, 2022. (Photo by Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)

    This is the thoroughly interconnected world celebrated in prose by journalists like Thomas Friedman, who marveled at how Big Data and globalization brought everything together.

    “No two countries that both have a McDonald’s have ever fought a war against each other,” Friedman once claimed. In his greatest paean to globalization, The World Is Flat, he argued that, “No two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain, like Dell’s, will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply chain.”

    McDonald’s in Russia has closed and the ones in Ukraine might be blown up any time. Russia restricted its neon exports while Ukraine’s neon exports have fallen sharply. Dell’s CEO Michael Dell has warned that the global chip shortage could last for years.

    So much for the Golden Arches and Dell theory of globalist conflict prevention.

    The world isn’t flat, it’s all too round. Much like history isn’t an ascending trend line to the right side, it’s also a circle. That’s why Islam is once again at war with Europe, Russia is invading Ukraine, China is relaunching its empire, and the ‘flatland’ is experiencing a dimensional shift.

    Globalization advocates had just recreated Marxist central planning with a somewhat more flexible global model in which massive corporations bridged global barriers to create the most efficient possible means of moving goods and services around the planet. Borders would come down and cultural exchanges would make us all one, ushering in the great union of humanity.

    What an interdependent world really means is Algerian Jihadists shooting up Paris, gang members from El Salvador beheading Americans within sight of Washington D.C., tampon and car shortages caused by a war in Ukraine, and more radicalism and extremism than ever.

    Trying to “flatten” the world just makes it pop up again.

    The technocratic new world order of megacorporations consolidating markets and then doling out products with just-in-time inventory systems now flows through a broken supply chain. Rising inflation and international disruptions makes it all but impossible for even the big companies to plan ahead, and so they produce less and shrug at the shortages.

    We’re in a wartime economy because our system has become too vast and too inflexible to adjust to chaos. Biden keeps trotting out the Defense Production Act for everything until, given time, the entire economy has been Sovietized. The more that the government tries to impose stability on the chaos, the less responsive and productive the dominant players become.

    Market consolidation due to government regulations has left a handful of companies sitting atop the market. When one of them, like Abbott for baby formula, has a hiccup, the results are catastrophic; others like Procter & Gamble, which controls about half the menstrual products market, don’t have to worry about losing market share to competition. Similar consolidation in food, paper products and supermarkets have replaced a dynamic economy with cartels.

    Behind all the brands on the product shelves is a creaky Soviet system in which a handful of massive enterprises interconnected with the state lazily crank out low-quality products from vast supply chains that they no longer control and feel little competitive pressure to perform better. The only thing that is still American about the supermarket experience is the advertising.

    The problems with the system were less noticeable when its predictive mechanisms worked and its foreign suppliers were eager for American dollars. Under stress, the failure points are all too obvious, and what is less obvious is that the system has no intention of repairing any of them.

    It doesn’t need to.

    An out-of-touch elite responds to problems with meaningless reassurances, glib jokes and wokeness. Like Soviet propaganda, the only thing corporate statements communicate is the vast distance between the lives of those running the system and those caught inside its gears.

    But despite their complicity, the massive monopolistic enterprises didn’t make this world.

    Biden and the Democrats have been eager to blame companies for “profiteering” from the inflation created by federal spending. Few companies prefer the current crisis to 2019. Hardly anyone except bottom-feeders enjoys not being unable to rationally plan for the future. Major corporations and their investors care more about a growth plan than quarterly profits.

    The Democrats were the biggest champions of globalization. Their regulations led to record market consolidation and domestic job cuts. Corporations were pressured to export dirty Republican jobs to China and keep the ‘clean’ Democrat office jobs at home. The devastation wreaked havoc on the working class and the middle class, and rebuilt our entire economy to be dependent on China and a worldwide supply chain only globalists could believe was bulletproof.

    OPEC’s impact on fuel prices under Carter became the model for the entire economy. A war anywhere impacts Americans. Dozens of countries have the power to wreck our economy, intentionally or even unintentionally. Even the environmental promises of energy independence have become a farce in which our government pleads with China for more solar panels.

    Interdependence hasn’t even led to the world government that globalists wanted, but global chaos in which impotent western powers try to talk the rest of the world out of fighting to avoid being swamped by refugees, high energy bills and empty shelves in supermarkets.

    After selling off American economic sovereignty, globalists proved unable to maintain global stability. Lacking the will to actually stand up to China, Iran or Russia, all they can do is hold more international conferences and build up a useless multinational bureaucracy.

    Say what you will about the League of Nations, but it only had 700 employees in Geneva. The UN’s 44,000 employees are just the tip of the iceberg in the huge ranks of multinational organizations who all claim to be upholding the international order while running up the tab.

    Globalization globalizes the ineptitude of the global order. Its grand plans, like those of the Soviet Union, are never a match for the chaos of human nature and its ambitions. Politicians, philanthropists and philosophers had labored to replace American dynamism with a clockwork machine. The old Babbage clockworks became servers upholding a cloud that proved to be very handy for instant communications, but ran up against the same ‘flattening’ limitations.

    America was never meant to be flat. It was a land discovered by those who understood that the world was round. Flattening America has depressed its economy and its spirit. A flat world with no room for American exceptionalism is instead becoming a playground for Chinese and Russian exceptionalism. And America’s economy is becoming one big permanent shortage.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/20/2022 – 23:25

  • WHO's Tedros Privately Admits Lab Leak 'Most Likely Explanation' For COVID-19
    WHO’s Tedros Privately Admits Lab Leak ‘Most Likely Explanation’ For COVID-19

    The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who spent the early months of the pandemic publicly kowtowing to China, has privately admitted that he thinks Covid-19 escaped from a Chinese laboratory in a “catastrophic accident,” according to the Daily Mail, citing a senior Government source.

    Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organisation (WHO), had recently confided to a senior European politician that the most likely explanation was a catastrophic accident at a laboratory in Wuhan, where infections first spread during late 2019.

    The Mail on Sunday first revealed concerns within Western intelligence services about the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where scientists were manipulating coronaviruses sampled from bats in caves nearly 1,000 miles away – the same caves where Covid-19 is suspected to have originated – in April 2020. The worldwide death toll from the Covid pandemic is now estimated to have hit more than 18 million. -Daily Mail

    The WHO came under heavy fire early into the pandemic for praising China’s “transparent” response to the pandemic, repeating misinformation from Beijing about human-to-human transmission, and bowing to pressure from Chinese President Xi Jinping not to declare the Covid-19 outbreak an emergency.

    Yet, while initially promoting the natural origin theory, Tedros and the WHO have become far more ‘open’ to the lab leak theory – despite officially being on the fence, unlike Tedros.

    “We do not yet have the answers as to where it came from or how it entered the human population,” Tedros told EU member states this month, adding “Understanding the origins of the virus is very important scientifically to prevent future epidemics and pandemics.”

    “But morally, we also owe it to all those who have suffered and died and their families. The longer it takes, the harder it becomes. We need to speed up and act with a sense of urgency.”

    “All hypotheses must remain on the table until we have evidence that enables us to rule certain hypotheses in or out. This makes it all the more urgent that this scientific work be kept separate from politics. The way to prevent politicisation is for countries to share data and samples with transparency and without interference from any government. The only way this scientific work can progress successfully is with full collaboration from all countries, including China, where the first cases of SARS-CoV-2 were reported.” -Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

    Notably, China initially resisted a WHO probe into the origins of SARS-CoV-2 – however highly conflicted point-man and Wuhan collaborator Peter Daszak spearheaded a Beijing-friendly report that concluded the virus was likely passed to humans through animal intermediaries.

    Yet, after 14 nations criticized the report, including the UK, US, and Australia, Tedros admitted the report was flawed and ordered another investigation, sans Daszak, which the NIH funded to literally enhance bat covid to be more transmissible to humans, in the town where Covid first appeared, working with China’s “bat lady” who was doing the same types of risky experiments.

     

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/20/2022 – 22:50

  • Police Report Proves Plainclothes Electronic Surveillance Unit Members Were Embedded Among Jan. 6 Protesters
    Police Report Proves Plainclothes Electronic Surveillance Unit Members Were Embedded Among Jan. 6 Protesters

    Authored by Patricia Tolson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    While there is growing speculation that federal agents and Capitol Police were involved in instigating acts of violence during the Jan. 6, 2021 protests and recording responses for the purposes of entrapment, evidence now proves that “plainclothes” members of a special Electronic Surveillance Unit (ESU) were embedded among the protesters for the purposes of conducting video surveillance. Evidence also points to a day of security deficiencies and police provocation for the purpose of entrapment.

    The U.S. Capitol building in Washington is seen on May 28, 2021, behind security fencing that was put up after the Jan. 6, 2021 breach. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)

    According to a report—First Amendment Demonstrations, issued Jan. 3, 2021, by Chief of Police Robert Contee of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), Homeland Security Bureau, Special Operations Division, obtained exclusively by The Epoch Times—the MPD began to activate Civil Disturbance Unit (CDU) platoons on Jan. 4, 2021. Full activation of 28 platoons was scheduled to occur on the following two days.

    Cover page for the First Amendment Demonstrations report, issued January 3, 2021, by the Metropolitan Police Department, Homeland Security Bureau, Special Operations Division. (Obtained by The Epoch Times)

    According to the Department of Justice website, “A CDU is composed of law enforcement officers who are trained to respond to protests, demonstrations, and civil disturbances for the purpose of preventing violence, destruction of property, and unlawful interference with persons exercising their rights under law.”

    The objective of MPD was “to assist with the safe execution of any First Amendment demonstration and ensure the safety of the participants, public, and the officers.” CDU personnel and Special Operations Division  (SOD) members were to “monitor for any demonstration and/or violent activity and respond accordingly,” according to the report.

    There has been speculation that federal agents and Capitol Police were involved in instigating acts of violence during the protests for the purposes of entrapment. As Red State reported in October 2021, “multiple surveillance videos show masked men opening up the doors to the U.S. Capitol Building to allow protesters to enter. In fact, one video shows them entering while Capitol Police officers simply stand around. Yet, we have no idea who those men are.”

    The ‘Covert Cadre’ of ‘Provocateurs’

    On a Dec.  7, 2021, episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight, the attorney for several Jan. 6 prisoners, Joseph McBride, identified a man tagged on the internet by so-called “Sedition Hunters” as “Red-Faced 45.” The man, dressed in red from head to toe—with even his face painted red—appears in a video engaging in continuous dialogue with uniformed personnel and others whom McBride insists are agents embedded in the crowd. McBride said the man is “clearly a law enforcement officer.”

    “He passes out weapons, sledgehammers, poles, mace. Some of those things come in contact with some of the other protesters who have subsequently been charged with possessing dangerous weapons and are using dangerous weapons at the Capitol. That is clearly entrapment.

    That is clearly the government creating conditions of dangerousness and entrapping members of the crowd to possess weapons and possibly use them for reasons that we cannot comprehend.”

    On Jan. 13, 2021, J. Michael Waller, senior analyst for Strategy at the Center for Security Policy, published a first-hand account of his observations. Waller is also President of Georgetown Research, a political risk and private intelligence company in Washington, D.C.; and was founding editorial board member of NATO’s peer-reviewed Defence Strategic Communications journal (2015–2018), and a senior analyst with Wikistrat. He is convinced people were embedded in the crowd to execute “an organized operation planned well in advance of the January 6 joint session of Congress.”

    According to Waller, a “covert cadre” of people were scattered throughout the crowd to encourage people toward the Capitol, including “fake Trump protesters” he suspected were ANTIFA “wearing Trump or MAGA hats backwards.”

    The Epoch Times reported on Jan. 1 that senior federal law enforcement officials refused to answer questions about an Arizona man named Ray Epps, captured on video the day before the rally wearing a Trump hat repeatedly encouraging protesters to “go into the Capitol” the next day. Many were suspicious of him. Chants of “fed, fed, fed” drown him out. On Jan. 6, he is seen telling the crowd “we are going to the Capitol, where all of our problems are.”

    Ray Epps encourages protesters to go into the Capitol the night before the breach on Jan. 6, 2021. (Villain Report/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

    Epps is also seen standing before a bike rack barricade, whispering into the ear of a protester wearing his Trump hat backwards. Moments later, that man is joined by others in tearing down the barricade. Epps is then seen running with the crowd toward the Capitol Building. Despite the evidence, Epps has not had any charges filed against him and his photo has been removed from the government’s list of most-wanted people from the event.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/20/2022 – 22:15

  • Bank of Japan Spends A Record $81 Billion To Avert Collapse, But $10 Trillion JGB Market Is Now Completely Broken
    Bank of Japan Spends A Record $81 Billion To Avert Collapse, But $10 Trillion JGB Market Is Now Completely Broken

    Exactly one week ago, when quantifying the dizzying cost of the BOJ’s defense of its Yield Curve Control policy (at the expense of the collapsing yen), Deutsche Bank’s George Saravelos calculated that the “the BOJ printer is on overdrive”, and if the current pace of buying persists, the bank will have bought approximately 10 trillion yen in June. To put that number in context, it is roughly equivalent to the Fed doing more than $300bn of QE per month when adjusting for GDP.

    Somewhat redundantly, the DB strategist said that this is a “truly extreme” level of money printing given that every other central bank in the world is tightening policy and is one of the reasons why he has been bearish on the yen. And as so many have argued, “currency intervention in this environment is simply not credible given it is the BoJ itself that is the cause of yen weakness.”

    More broadly, Saravelos echoes what we said in our preview of the end of MMT, writing that he worries that “the currency and Japanese financial markets are in the process of losing any sort of fundamental-based valuation anchor” and, as a result, “we will soon enter a phase where dramatic and unpredictable non-linearities in Japanese financial markets would kick in.”

    He was proven right the very next day, when not an insigificant part of Japan’s bond market imploded as the central bank battles to keep control of its policy goals as some of the largest hedge funds in the world pile on billions in bets that the BOJ is about to lose control, in a repeat of Soros’ dramatic crusade against the BOE (which the billionaire democrat ended up winning, and affording him the wealth to be the US government’s shadow puppetmaster to this day).

    As Bloomberg explained, a small tweak to the Bank of Japan’s bond purchase plan this week blew up an arbitrage strategy popular with overseas investors known as the basis trade (the same basis trade which blew up in 2019 in the US cash/futures market sparking the historic repo crash and the Fed’s return to QE). It also exacerbated a supply shortage of government bonds that has ramped up pressure on domestic financial institutions, leading them to turn to the BOJ for help to relieve the strain.

    One week ago we described how after four straight days of declines in Japanese bond futures, the central bank announced unlimited purchases of so-called cheapest-to-deliver 10-year notes for Thursday and Friday – securities closest linked to the contracts. That sent the spread between the futures and the bonds underlying them soaring to the widest since 2014 – a massive shock for traders with positions between the two.

    As a result, 10Y JGB futs crashed by the most since 2013 as traders bet that the BOJ will be forced to abandon its pledge to cap yields at 0.25%…

    … while the gap between JGB futs and underlying cash bonds soared the most on record.

    The chart below is another way of visualizing this historic divergence between futs and cash JGBs, clearly signaling the market’s belief that the BoJ will fold on its unlimited bond buying curve control program.

    Needless to say, arbs who were short the cheapest-to-deliver bonds and long the futures contracts suddenly faced steep losses and found it impossible to close their positions (remarkably all this was happening in the world’s 2nd largest bond markets, amounting to some 1.24 quadrillion yen or about $10 trillion, yet all everyone can talk about is crypto). As Bloomberg notes, the BOJ had effectively cornered the market in the cheapest-to-deliver bonds making it almost impossible for others to purchase them, while the futures price slumped to the brink of a trading halt as those caught out rushed to close.

    By late day Wednesday, a Bloomberg estimate of the cost to close this so-called short basis trade widened to about minus 7% from minus 0.4% the day before. It remained at distressed levels Friday — around minus 2% — suggesting some investors were still stuck on the wrong side of the trade.

    “The selloff in futures has killed arbitrage opportunities,” said Mari Iwashita, chief market economist at Daiwa Securities. “This situation will eventually end up in a total stalemate in markets.”

    By stalemate, he means “crash.”

    Speculative attacks on Japanese bonds have mounted as a growing number of funds – most notably the giant, $127 billion BlueBay – bet the BOJ will cave in to pressure and change its increasingly isolated super-easy monetary policy. The central bank confounded its critics Friday, holding firm with its rock-bottom interest rates and continuing with its fixed-rate bond purchase plan.

    Benchmark bond yields fell further below the 0.25% ceiling, after the central bank announced a fixed-rate purchase operation for the afternoon.

    But the bigger problem for the BOJ is that those purchases, which preserving the BOJ’s YCC “credibility” (for now) are also sucking up what little liquidity is available in the JGB market, piling pressure on local institutions, something which can be seen in the usage of the BOJ’s lending program — another gauge of stress in the market.

    Yes: on one hand the BOJ continues to buy billions in JGBs via QE, but on the other it is forced to lend what it has bought back into the market to avoid a terminal paralysis of what was once the second deepest bond market.

    The amount of bonds the central bank has lent “temporarily” to financial institutions to relieve supply tightness has hit a record, Bloomberg data show. The BOJ lent 3.2 trillion yen ($23.9 billion) of JGBs through its Securities Lending Facility on Thursday, well above the 2.3 trillion yen lent at the peak of coronavirus fears in March 2020.

    BOJ Governor Kuroda told reporters on Friday that the BOJ will take appropriate measures to address any decline in bond market liquidity. But he also said he isn’t thinking about raising the 10-year yield ceiling from 0.25%, which means that the liquidity situation will only get worse in the coming days.

    “Market functioning and liquidity have deteriorated sharply with the BOJ’s massive JGB purchases,” Barclays strategist Shinji Ebihara wrote in a note.

    Meanwhile, and going back to the original point brought up by DB’s Saravelos above that the BOJ is spending monstrous amounts of yen just to keep the JGB market from crashing, as traders countdown to the complete Ice-9ing of the Japanese bond market (which in recent months has seen its share of days without a single trade crossing) Bloomberg has calculated how much it cost the BOJ to preserve calm after last week’s catastrophic slide in futures, and the answer is some 10.9 trillion yen ($81 billion) of government bond purchases last week, the most on record. By way of comparison, European Central Bank asset purchases under its so-called APP program averaged about $27 billion – per month – this year through May. But fear not, once Europe’s dominoes start falling and peripheral yields explode to all time highs, Lagarde’s hedge fund will make BOJ’s purchases seems like a walk in the park by comparison.

    And while every day could be the BOJ’s last, market watchers see the temporary calm as an eye in the proverbial hurricane, as the BOJ continues to defy an intensifying global wave of central bank tightening and concentrated market pressure on the yen and government bonds. Treasuries remain a key driver as does the direction of the dollar-yen, hovering around a 24-year low.

    “If the yen weakens further as a sell-off in foreign bonds resumes, it would not be surprising were the yen rates market to start testing the BOJ again,” wrote Citigroup Inc. strategist Tomohisa Fujiki in a note.

    One place where the pressure is building up, is in implied volatility for 10-year JGBs, which however eased modestly after rising to the highest since the global financial crisis in 2008 on Friday. The BOJ said Friday its bond buying will continue for an extended period of time.

    “Since the JGB market volatility has been initiated by the global reaction to US CPI and the Federal Reserve’s tightening, the structure keeping it unstable remains quite intact,” said Mari Iwashita, chief market economist at Daiwa Securities. “Even as the BOJ steps up efforts to defend its turf, the structure behind the challenges remain the same.”

    Speculative attacks on Japan’s bond market have mounted amid bets the BOJ will cave in to pressure and tweak its increasingly isolated easy monetary policy — something it reconfirmed at its policy decision Friday. But the impact of the central bank’s bond purchases have squeezed some corners of the futures markets, putting at least some arbitrage traders under pressure.

    And yet, the most ominous sign yet for the BOJ is the recent quiet appointment of a Japanese government bond expert with experience of the market turmoil of the late 1990s to a key role in the Finance Ministry, which caught the attention of market watchers in Tokyo. Michio Saito — dubbed “Mr. JGB” — will head up a division that covers the bond market and may strengthen lines of communication with the central bank, according to some strategists.

    For the BOJ to seek a smooth exit from massive bond purchases, close cooperation with the finance ministry is essential, so the appointment of an experienced person in charge is very significant, Iwashita said. This “is positive news for the market,” she said.

    Most disagree, however, although they know better than to take the BOJ head on: after all, shorting JGBs has been a widowmaker trade for decades. Still, there is a sense of ominous capitulation vis-a-vis the Japanese bond market in recent days, almost as if we are now well past the point of no return and the final collapse of not just the JGB market, but the entire fraudulent MMT paradig, is just days if not hours away. Indeed, as Rabobank’s Michael Every put it, with every attempt to preserve the status quo, the BOJ is pulling even further on a monetary elastic band that will hurt far more when it does inevitably come snapping back the other way, and concludes that when the BOJ’s YCC peg eventually breaks, markets are going to get hit hard: “Japan is currently a source of ultra-cheap financing in a world of rising rates, and with a currency that is only going one way – down. If both reverse at once,… ouch!”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/20/2022 – 22:03

  • The Impact Of Soros-Funded District Attorneys
    The Impact Of Soros-Funded District Attorneys

    Over the past few years we’ve noted with increasing frequency that billionaire George Soros has funded or supported far-left political candidates for office around the United States, particularly District Attorneys whose soft-on-crime policies have led to historic crime waves in major cities across the country.

    Illustration via @crabcrawler1

    It goes far beyond what we’ve reported, however.

    Twitter researcher ‘crabcrawler’ (@crabcrawler1) has assembled perhaps the most comprehensive look at Soros-funded DAs, and how their absolute miscarriages of justice led to a crisis of confidence in the US legal system.

    In an impressive Twitter thread that’s too lengthy to feature in its entirety (one can click on any of the tweets to dive in), crabcrawler illustrates how Soros DAs were supremely incompetent while operating under the guise of providing “reforms” that did nothing but create chaos.

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/20/2022 – 21:40

  • Florida To Go After Parents Who Pay Cartels To Smuggle Their Children Into the US
    Florida To Go After Parents Who Pay Cartels To Smuggle Their Children Into the US

    Authored by Charlotte Cuthbertson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is looking to investigate and prosecute parents who pay transnational criminal organizations to smuggle their children illegally across the U.S. southern border.

    Unaccompanied minors hold hands as they await transport after crossing the Rio Grande river into the United States from Mexico on a raft in Penitas, Texas, on March 12, 2021. (Adrees Latif/Reuters)

    DeSantis filed a petition with the Florida Supreme Court on June 17 requesting a statewide grand jury be impaneled for the initial duration of a year.

    “The purpose of the grand jury will be to investigate individuals and organizations that are actively working with foreign nationals, drug cartels, coyotes, to illegally smuggle minors—some as young as 2 years old—across the border and into Florida,” De Santis said during a press briefing on June 17.

    “This is just wrong what they’re doing and we are going to go after it.”

    The grand jury will also investigate the methods smugglers use to transport unaccompanied minors across the southern border and the smuggling or trafficking of other illegal aliens.

    Border Patrol agents apprehend and transport illegal immigrants who have just crossed the river into La Joya, Texas, on Nov. 17, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

    DeSantis also announced that the Florida Highway Patrol is expanding its enforcement on smuggling and trafficking corridors into the state.

    Since January 2021, the state’s Highway Patrol officers have made over 40 cases of human smuggling involving 150 illegal alien passengers, as well as seized 115 pounds of cocaine, 20 pounds of heroin, 250 pounds of meth, and 272 weapons, according to Florida Highway Patrol Director Col. Gene Spaulding.

    “And I can’t emphasize enough that it is just scratching the surface,” Spaulding said.

    The grand jury will also investigate local governments that are “aiding this smuggling scheme by intentionally violating our state law against sanctuary jurisdictions,” DeSantis said, referring to cities and counties, such as Miami-Dade, that fail to turn over criminal illegal aliens to federal immigration authorities.

    “According to reports from federal law enforcement, however, Miami-Dade County is refusing to honor federal requests to take custody of criminal aliens in Miami-Dade’s detention facilities, including aliens arrested for attempted murder, domestic violence by strangulation, assault with a deadly weapon, and lewd and lascivious behavior on a minor,” the petition states.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/20/2022 – 21:05

  • World's Largest Cruise Ship Set For Scrapyard Without A Single Sail
    World’s Largest Cruise Ship Set For Scrapyard Without A Single Sail

    The hard-hit cruise industry has yet to recover as many cruise ship stocks tumble to their lowest levels since the early days of the virus pandemic. One sign the industry remains in deep turmoil is the potential scrapping of an unfinished cruise ship set to be the largest in the world. 

    German cruise-industry magazine An Bord reports the 9,000-passenger Global Dream II is about 80% finished. Its shipbuilder MV Werften filed for bankruptcy in January 2022, and bankruptcy administrators can’t find a buyer. 

    Christoph Morgen, an insolvency administrator at Brinkmann & Partner, said attempts are being made to sell parts of the vessel, including engines and propulsion systems. The cruise ship is located at a shipyard on Germany’s Baltic coast.

    Multiple parties expressed interest in purchasing the cruise ship. The vessel is buoyant and can be towed to another location. It was initially designed for service in Asia. Since no serious buyers have come to the table, the 1,122-foot ship could be liquidated for scrap.

    “If no buyer with a serious offer can be found in the coming weeks, the insolvency administrator will have to opt for a sale in a bidding process. Then shipbrokers with contact to shipbreaking yards can also submit their bids. The ship’s scrap value has risen due to the rise in scrap prices,” An Bord said. 

    Shipbuilding began in early 2018 and was expected to be completed in the first half of 2021. The virus pandemic sent demand for cruise ships into collapse and has been a troubled industry ever since. 

    Morgen said the cruise ship would need to be moved from the German shipyard by the end of the year because the commercial zone was sold to Thyssenkrupp’s naval unit, which will begin building submarines, corvettes, and frigates in 2024. 

    Perhaps the unfinished and unwanted 9,000-passenger cruise ship is an ominous sign of where the industry is headed… 

    The economics of operating the most massive cruise ship appears not to be there as stagflation grips the global economy, and COVID still runs wild in some countries. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/20/2022 – 20:30

  • Facebook Removes Greitens "RINO Hunter" Campaign Ad
    Facebook Removes Greitens “RINO Hunter” Campaign Ad

    Update (1333ET): Facebook on Monday removed Greitens’ video, saying that it violated “our policies prohibiting violence and incitement.”

    In response, Greitens accused the tech giant of censorship

    “Facebook CENSORED our new ad calling out the weak RINOs. When I get to the US Senate, we are taking on Big Tech,” he wrote in a Facebook post.

    Twitter, meanwhile, has not removed the video – but has instead added a notice that reads: “This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about abusive behavior. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.”

    The social media giant will also limit engagement with the post, preventing users from giving it a “like” , “reply” , or retweeting it.

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    Missouri Republican Senate candidate and former Navy SEAL Eric Greitens has come under fire from both sides of the aisle over a campaign ad that paints Trump supporters as murderous “RINO” hunters.

    “I’m Eric Greitens Navy Seal, and today, we’re going RINO hunting,” he says, referring to so-called ‘Republicans in Name Only’ such as Mitt Romney and Evan McMullin.

    “The RINO feeds on corruption and is marked by the stripes of cowardice,” he continues, before a team of militarized police breach an empty room. Greitens then tells people to “join the MAGA crew” and “get a RINO permit.”

    “There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.”

    In other words, “Hello fellow violent MAGAs!”

    The ad comes as Congressional Democrats are pushing for more gun control – particularly “red flag” laws to take weapons away from anyone deemed to be an ‘unhinged gun nut,’ and one day after Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a RINO, claimed that he received a letter threatening to “execute” his family, including his 5-month-old baby.

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    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsIt didn’t take long for left-leaning websites such as the Drudge Report to jump on it:

    Meanwhile, many on the right were appalled at the ad.

    “Why then did you make the MO Capitol a gun free zone, bash the Second Amendment Preservation Act using verbatim Mom’s Demand language, and refuse to support Constitutional Carry?” tweeted former NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch.

    Others followed suit on both sides of the aisle:

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    Talk about handing out free gun control talking points.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/20/2022 – 20:20

  • "We Now See The Fed Moving Toward An Attempted Controlled Unwind Position"
    “We Now See The Fed Moving Toward An Attempted Controlled Unwind Position”

    By Larry McDonald, author of the Bear Traps Report

    Never forget – NOT allowing price discovery for a long period of time – then forcing the process onto markets with a “bayonet in the back” – at an ever-accelerating rate – is a virgin-central bank experiment. It comes at a high price. Never happened before.

    Inflation is forcing central bankers to allow price discovery. There was always price discovery before Lehman – but for much of the last 12 years markets have been in a Fed zombie trance. We mean a real – free market – “cost of capital.”

    Light on this process is emerging through the cobwebs of “Pandora’s Box.” After leaving it closed for far too long. Indeed, the Fed ripped open the box with panicked shaking fingers. As academics – they cannot possibly measure the risk in what they are doing. They are focused on backward-looking economic data – NOT the thousands of NEW risk metrics flying out of the crypt.

    Financial conditions are tightening, at the fastest since Lehman. And even when central bankers do see the new emerging risk – they certainly will NOT tell us until the beast inside the market forces them to.

    That said, much like our weekend notes delivered near March 14 (QQQ counter trend rally +17%) and May 20 (QQQ counter-trend rally +12%), buy signals are mounting yet again.

    Central bankers are NOT idiots – they clearly see the emerging risks we see but have to stick to the stale script and bleed out the truth — one drop at a time. BUT colossal market pressures and fast economic deterioration will force them to acknowledge the new risk landscape. The greater the systemic risk pressure, the faster the clowns will react.

    It ́s all about the rate of change of information. In a bull market, under normal conditions – central bankers do NOT have to get out of their cozy recliner – for years they are conditioned to sit back and relax.

    As the bear ́s claws arrive – fresh tracks can be seen on the trail staking Powell and Co. The fierce shift in the rate of change of both economic and systemic risk data presents fresh wounds to the reputations of our brain trusts.

    For months – their pawns (sell side banks and journalists) have been talking up a 4-5% Fed funds rate – pure lunacy on today ́s stage. The beast will NOT have it.

    We love the gold and silver miners here – and see the Fed moving toward an “attempted” controlled unwind position. They have acknowledged their inflation fight, now they must come clean on the financial stability – recession front.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/20/2022 – 19:55

  • Watch: Louisville Slugger Sucker-Punches Mayor
    Watch: Louisville Slugger Sucker-Punches Mayor

    One moment, Louisville mayor Greg Fischer is hugging someone. In the next, he’s on the receiving end of a vicious sucker punch that sends him straight to the ground.  

    That’s the scene captured on surveillance video Saturday night, as Fischer mingled at “Fourth Street Live,” an entertainment and retail complex in downtown Louisville. 

    In the video, the attacker casually strolls up to Fischer before unleashing a forceful punch on the unsuspecting third-term Democrat.

    As is increasingly the case with urban violence, the perpetrator hasn’t been identified and has thus far escaped any consequences. Video shows a man briefly confronted the attacker, but nobody made any effort to detain him—despite the fact that the mayor was accompanied by a protective detail.  

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    “The mayor does utilize a security detail, and that detail was with him at Fourth Street Live. While it’s not appropriate to comment on specifics of that detail, it is always being evaluated and adjusted as needed,” mayor spokeswoman Jessica Wethington told the Louisville Courier-Journal. 

    “We are living in strange times all across America right now…and I have the honor of being right in the middle of all of it,” a straight-faced Fischer told WLKY on Sunday when asked about the incident.  

    Louisville police released this image of the mayor’s assailant

    The security detail’s failure comes four months after Louisville Democratic mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg and his staffers came under gunfire at his campaign headquarters. No one was injured but a bullet grazed Greenberg’s clothing. Police arrested Quintez Brown, a 21-year-old Black Lives Matter activist who once appeared on MSNBC to advocate…gun control.  

    Fischer was evaluated by paramedics without need for further treatment. “The mayor says he is glad he can still take a punch,” his spokeswoman said. Earlier in the day, Fischer walked in an LGBTQ+ Pride parade. 

    Fischer is white, his assailant is black. The brazen assault has received little national media attention. 

    In 2020, Fischer said “for too many Louisvillians, racism is a fact of daily life,” as he officially proclaimed racism a “public health crisis” in Louisville. 

    On Thursday, Fischer formally apologized to Louisville’s black residents for the city’s role in fostering and perpetuating racism from the time of “the first slave ships until today.”

    Mayor Fischer walking in the Kentuckiana Pride Parade on Saturday (Scott Utterback, Louisville Courier Journal) 

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/20/2022 – 19:20

  • Study CDC Cited In Arguing For COVID-19 Vaccines For Babies Being Updated
    Study CDC Cited In Arguing For COVID-19 Vaccines For Babies Being Updated

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A non-peer-reviewed study that U.S. government scientists cited in asserting COVID-19 is a leading cause of death for children is being updated after inaccuracies were detected.

    A general view of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Ga., on Sept. 30, 2014. (Tami Chappell/Reuters)

    The preprint paper, published in May, says that COVID-19 has been the fifth-leading cause of death during the pandemic for children aged 1 to 5. The authors, primarily British scientists, also concluded that COVID-19 has been a top cause of death for all children.

    “Our findings underscore the importance of continued vaccination campaigns for [children ≥5 years] in the US and for effective Covid-19 vaccines for under 5 year olds,” they wrote.

    But the paper has flaws, Seth Flaxman, a professor in Oxford University’s Department of Computer Science, and one of the authors, acknowledged on Twitter on June 19.

    “We have received some feedback and criticism along several dimensions. We are planning to update the preprint to take into account some of this feedback,” he said.

    The study was cited in three separate presentations across two meetings during the week of June 12 as government officials and expert advisers weighed whether to authorize and recommend vaccines for young children.

    Dr. Katherine Fleming-Dutra, a CDC official, twice cited the study while presenting data on how COVID-19 has affected children while speaking to government advisory panels.

    “COVID-19 was a leading cause of death among children and adolescents during the pandemic. Previously, we showed data to ACIP that during 2020 COVID-19 was the 11th cause of death among children ages five through 11 years. But this has changed over the course of the pandemic. And looking at data through April 2022, COVID-19 now ranks as the fourth and fifth causes of death among children zero through 19 years of age,” Fleming-Dutra said on June 17 while speaking to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which advises the CDC.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/20/2022 – 18:45

  • Distressed Crypto Lender Gets Debt Repayment Reprieve As It Battles For Survival
    Distressed Crypto Lender Gets Debt Repayment Reprieve As It Battles For Survival

    After coming perilously close to getting margin called into oblivion on Saturday, when liquidations sparked daisy-chained liquidations leading to collateral call cascades across the entire crypto sector, bitcoin and its digital token peers have staged a solid comeback in the past two days, with bitcoin bouncing back over $20K and ether rising as much as $1100, up almost 30% in 48 hours.

    There was more good news on Monday, when Bloomberg reported that the Sequoia Capital China-backed Babel Finance – the distressed crypto lender which we previously reported had frozen withdrawals on Friday amid the relentless cascade in selling – said it won a reprieve on debt repayments.

    In a statement the company posted on its website, the Hong Kong-based Babel said it had “reached preliminary agreements on the repayment period of some debts, which has eased the company’s short-term liquidity pressure.” Co-founder Flex Yang told Bloomberg the company “will disclose to the public” once they’ve made progress.

    “Given the current context of severe market volatility, Babel Finance’s management will continue to communicate closely with customers, counterparties, and other partners, and provide updates in a timely and transparent manner,” the company said in the statement.  

    Separately, Bloomberg reported that Babel is in talks with large institutions about potential solutions that include setting up a new entity to take over some of the debt. It wasn’t clear who that entity may be.

    As discussed on Saturday, Babel’s difficulties – along with those of Celsius, a massive crypto shadowbank which similarly halted withdrawals a few days earlier – highlight the turmoil sweeping the crypto industry. Babel cited “unusual liquidity pressures” for its decision to halt withdrawals. It wasn’t clear when the company might open its platform for withdrawals or name the lenders it’s in discussions with, although it is likely that the price of biitcoin and ether will have to be notably above current prices.

    The halt on withdrawals marked a sudden reversal of fortunes for Babel, which less than a month ago announced an $80 million funding round that put its valuation at $2 billion. The company had an outstanding loan balance of more than $3 billion at the end of last year.

    And while Babel may have kicked the can briefly, attention now turns to one of the biggest crypto hedge funds Three Arrows Capital, which we learned last week has hired legal and financial advisers after the ongoing liquidation in crypto left it with massive margin calls.

    Meanwhile, as of Monday afternoon in New York, Bitcoin was holding above $20,000, a level that Bloomberg Intelligence strategist Mike McGlone described in a recent note as “akin to about $5,000 in 2018-20 as part of what we see as the great reversion of 2022.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/20/2022 – 18:10

  • Morgan Stanley: So What Does The ECB Do Next?
    Morgan Stanley: So What Does The ECB Do Next?

    By Seth Carpenter, Chief US Economist at Morgan Stanley

    It’s tough all over. Central banks face difficult decisions as inflation keeps surprising to the upside. But as Yogi Berra’s advice suggests, they may not know where the road is taking them. The Federal Reserve hiked 75bp, 25bp more than was priced in just a week earlier. So much for forward guidance as a policy tool. At the June ECB policy meeting, President Lagarde also weighed in. She was clear that following a 25bp rate hike in July, the rate hike in September would be larger – presumably 50bp if the outlook for medium-term inflation was still above target. Put differently, if the ECB does not lower the 2024 forecast for inflation, we should expect 50bp.

    A lower inflation forecast faces long odds as commodities prices matter a lot for the euro area inflation outlook. Euro area headline inflation is 8.1%Y, with core at 3.8%Y. Compared to the US, where headline is almost the same at 8.3%Y but core is 5.9%Y, European inflation is much more noncore than core. Given the likely path for energy and food prices, a lower forecast for 2024 headline inflation does not seem to be in the cards. For core inflation, the ECB views economic growth a year earlier as the key driver. It is very hard to see what data we will get by September that will affect 2023 growth expectations to push the 2024 core forecast below 2.3%Y and back to target.

    So, the ECB has joined the ranks of central banks that are hiking more and more with the common goal of slowing inflation. The ECB’s aggressive reaction to headline inflation harkens back to the difficult arithmetic for the Fed that I discussed here in January.

    The choice is stark:

    i) either cause a recession and bring down inflation in the near term or

    ii) engineer a substantial slowdown, but one that is shy of a recession, and accept elevated inflation for years.

    Judging from the latest projections where core inflation stays above target for the entire forecast period, the ECB has chosen the latter route. Despite the lags of policy, if the ECB chose to engineer a recession now, the effects would almost surely show through before 2024.

    One way to understand the ECB’s choice is its history with inflation undershooting the target. Decisively breaking that pattern might be attractive. This more cautious approach might also reflect the overweight of noncore items in euro area inflation – noncore prices are mostly exogenous to euro area activity. The recession required to drive down noncore prices would have to be severe. And while euro area unemployment is at its lowest level since the single currency’s inception, wage inflation has not surged (as it did in the US), so the economy is not obviously red hot. Finally, reports are swirling of a new tool to ward off fragmentation in European markets. A hard landing would very likely precipitate that outcome.

    So what happens next?

    Clearly, the Governing Council is set on a hiking cycle. The path for inflation depends on commodity prices and economic growth in the euro area.

    We are more pessimistic about euro area growth, starting with the second half of this year, but with the lags in data reporting and the ECB’s focus on headline inflation, clear signs of slowing in the economy may not be evident in time to stay its hand. Although the ECB’s forecasts imply that it is choosing the more benign path, if our forecast is right, the risk of the ECB hiking into a recession – albeit inadvertently – is clearly rising.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/20/2022 – 17:35

  • China, US Escalate Over Legal Status Of Taiwan Strait After Beijing Rejects It As "International Waters"
    China, US Escalate Over Legal Status Of Taiwan Strait After Beijing Rejects It As “International Waters”

    The White House earlier this month reaffirmed its stance that the Taiwan Strait constitutes “international waters” following the latest US warship sail-through, which had put China’s PLA Eastern Theatre Command on high alert. As Reuters reported last Tuesday, “The United States on Tuesday backed Taiwan’s assertion that the strait separating the island from China is an international waterway, a further rebuff to Beijing’s claim to exercise sovereignty over the strategic passage.”

    This prompted Beijing to issue its own statement and definition, hitting back that the strait is not “international waters” – thus placing limits on the movements of foreign military vessels in the waters – and further reasserting that it constitutes the mainland’s exclusive economic zone.

    The Strait of Taiwan, Gallo Images via Getty

    Bloomberg reports Monday that Biden administration officials are “increasingly concerned the stance could result in more frequent challenges at sea for the democratically governed island, according to people familiar with the matter.”

    And further, “Chinese officials have made such remarks repeatedly in meetings with US counterparts in recent months, Bloomberg reported last week.” The report underscores that this marks an escalation, given the international legal status of the passageway wasn’t previously center of debate as it is now:

    While China regularly protests US military moves in the Taiwan Strait, the legal status of the waters previously wasn’t a regular talking point in meetings with American officials.

    Washington is alarmed over the timing, not only given the ongoing fallout from the Russian war in Ukraine, which Beijing has refused to outright condemn, but especially because a week ago China’s President Xi Jinping has signed an order which fundamentally expands the conditions under which People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops can be deployed.

    The order introduced legal framework to deploy troops in “non-war military actions” which took effect Wednesday, according to state media. It could have significant repercussions for tensions with the US and Washington allies like Australia or Japan in places like the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, given the order loosens the conditions under which it’s possible to initiate “military operations other than war” which involves operations that do not explicitly involve direct conflict or combat.

    Depending on how far China wants to press its definition, the most extreme scenario could involve the PLA military moving to close the strait…

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    This further means that Xi is hinting he could use the PLA military to begin enforcing the newly articulated position that the Taiwan Strait is not “international waters” – however vague the Chinese position may remain.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/20/2022 – 17:00

  • COVID Exposed The Medical-Pharmaceutical-Government Complex
    COVID Exposed The Medical-Pharmaceutical-Government Complex

    Authored by Mark Oshinskie via The Brownstone Institute,

    In college, I took a Latin American Politics and Development class. When discussing Latin American medical care, Professor Eldon Kenworthy presented a deeply countercultural idea. Echoing a journal article by the scholar, Robert Ayres, Kenworthy maintained that building hospitals there costs lives. If, instead of erecting, equipping and staffing gleaming medical centers, this same money and human effort were devoted to providing clean water, good food and sanitation, the public health yield would be much greater. 

    United States medical history bears out Ayres’s paradox. The biggest increases in US life expectancy occurred early in the Twentieth Century, when people had increasing access to calories and protein, better water and sanitation. Lives lengthened sharply decades before vaccines, antibiotics or nearly any drugs were available, and a century before hospitals merged into corporate Systems.

    Incremental American life span increases during the past fifty years reflect far less smoking, safer cars and jobs, cleaner air and less lethal wars more than they reflect medical advances. Books like Ivan Illich’s Medical Nemesis and Daniel Callahan’s Taming the Beloved Beast echo Ayres’s critique. But PBS, CNN, B & N, the NYT, et al. censor such views.

    The American medical landscape has changed radically in the forty years since I learned of Ayres’ observation.

    America spends three times as much, as a percentage of GDP, on medical treatments as it did in the 1960s. 

    By 2020, America devoted 18% of its GDP to medicine. (By comparison, about 5% goes to the military). Adding the mega-costs of mass testing and vaccines etc., medical expenditures might now approach 20%. Although the US spends more than twice per capita what any other nation spends on medical care, American ranks 46th in life expectancy. US life expectancy has flatlined, despite growing medical spending and broadened medical access via the vaunted Affordable Care Act. 

    Though medicine’s high-cost and relatively low yield are right in front of anyone who thinks about their medical experiences and those of people they know, most never connect the dots; more medical treatments and spending are continually advocated and applauded. There’s a regressive “if it saves—or even slightly extends—one life” medical zeitgeist/ethic.

    As most medical insurance is employer-based, most people don’t notice annual premium increases. Nor do they see the growing slice of tax revenues used to subsidize Med/Pharma. Thus, they continually demand more stuff, like IVF, extremely high-cost drugs, sex changes or psychotherapy, as if these were their right, and free. To say nothing of these treatments’ limited effectiveness. 

    As all are required to medically insure and to pay taxes, one can’t simply opt out or buy only those medical services that one thinks justify their costs. With massive, guaranteed funding sources, aggregate medical revenues will continue to climb. 

    Thus, Medical-Industrial-Government Complex has become a Black Hole for today’s wealth. With great money comes great power. The Med/Pharma juggernaut rules the airwaves. Nonexistent until the 1990s, hospital System and drug ads now dominate advertising. By being such big advertisers, Med/Pharma dictates news content. Analysts who point out that lavish medical expenditures don’t yield commensurate public health benefit have small audiences. Med/Pharma critics can’t afford ads. 

    Medicine has fed Coronamania. The TV news I’ve seen during the past 27 months painted a very skewed picture of reality. The virus has been misrepresented—by the media and government, and by MDs, like Fauci, often posing in white jackets— as a runaway train that’s indiscriminately decimating the American populace. Instead of putting into perspective the virus’s clear demographic risk profile and the very favorable survival odds—even without treatment, at all ages, or promoting various forms of contra-Covid self-care, including weight loss—the media and medical establishment incited universal panic, and promoted counterproductive mass isolation, mass masking, mass testing, and treatment with ventilators and expensive, often harmful anti-virals. 

    Later, mass injections were added to the “Covid-crushing” armamentarium. While the shots created many billionaires, and greatly enriched other Pfizer and Moderna stockholders, they failed, as Biden and many others had promised, to stop either infection or the spread. All of the many whom I know who have been infected in the past six months were vaxxed. 

    Many—whose voices are suppressed by mainstream media—observe that the shots have worsened outcomes, by driving the development of variants, weakening or confusing immune systems, and causing serious near-term injuries. 

    Further, people blindly, ardently believed in the shots simply because they were marketed as “vaccines” by bureaucrats wearing medical garb. Despite the shots’ failure and the failure of other “mitigation” measures like lockdowns, masking and testing, many refuse to concede that Med/Pharma has had much—overwhelmingly negative— influence over the society and economy and public health during Coronamania. Nonetheless, many billions of dollars have been—and are still being—spent to advertise shots that most people don’t want. 

    The Covid overreaction has to some extent also piggy-backed on TV programs that have, for decades, glorified medicine in TV shows like Dr. Kildare, Marcus Welby, M.D., Medical Center, MASH, Gray’s Anatomy and House. Wearing white coats connotes virtue, just as did wearing white hats in Western movies. 

    Given the cumulative PR onslaught of the ads and shows, medicine is widely seen as more effective than it is in real life. A few years ago, I heard some woman-in-the-street say, during a TV news clip, “If they make me change my doctor, it will be like losing my right arm.” 

    Many hold such polar views. Medicine is the new American religion. Given such fervent belief in medicine’s importance and the sense of entitlement regarding expanding medical treatments, government and insurance money is relentlessly overallocated to medicine. 

    Do these expenditures improve human outcomes? During the first Scrubs episode, resident J.D. complains to his mentor that being a doctor was different than he had envisioned; most of his patients were “old and kind of checked out.” His mentor responds, “That’s Modern Medicine: advances that keep people alive who should have died a long time ago, back when they lost what made them human.”

    This largely describes those said to have died with Covid. Most people have disregarded that nearly all who died during the pandemic were old and/or in poor health. Most deaths have always occurred among the old and ill. Occasionally, sitcoms keep it realer than real people do.

    Aside from not helping much and misspending resources, and extending misery, medicine can be iatrogenic, i.e., it can cause illness or death. Hospital errors are said to cause from 250,000 to 400,000 American deaths annually. Perhaps medical personnel try to do a good job. but when the bodies of old, sick people are cut open or dosed with strong medicine, stuff happens. Even well-executed surgeries and many medications can worsen health. 

    Further, though few know it, a brew of excreted medications and diagnostic radionuclides daily pours down drains across the US and world and ends up in streams and rivers. For example, the hormones in widely-prescribed birth control pills feminize and disrupt aquatic creatures’ reproduction. There are books about all of this, too, though such authors never appear on Good Morning America. 

    Faith in medical interventions also lessens individual and institutional efforts to maintain or improve health. If people didn’t abuse substances, ate better and moved their bodies more, there would be much less demand for medical interventions. And if people spent less time working to pay for medical insurance, they could spend more time taking care of themselves and others. Overall, America could spend a fraction of what it spends on allopathic medicine and yet, be much healthier. There are also plenty of books about this. 

    Given its place at the center of American life for 27 months, and counting, Covid has been—and will be—used to further intensify the medicalization of individual lives, the economy, and society. By exploiting and building an irrational fear of death, the Medical Industrial Complex will promote the notion that we should double—or triple—down on medical and social interventions and investments that might marginally extend the lives of a small slice of the population. Or, in many instances, shorten lives. 

    But most people who live sensibly are intrinsically healthy for many years. Given enough nutritious food, clean water and a decent place to sleep, most people will live a long time, with little or no medical treatment. While intensive medical interventions can marginally extend the lives of some old, sick people, medicine can’t reverse aging and it seldom restores vitality. 

    If the media were honest brokers, the Covid mania would never have taken hold. The media should have repeatedly pointed out that the virus only threatened a small, identifiable segment of a very large population. Instead, captive to its Med/Pharma sponsors, the media went full-frontal fearmonger and promoted intensive, society-wide intervention. Social, psychological and economic catastrophe ensued.

    Additionally, many doctors who could have spoken against the Covid craziness stayed silent so as not to jeopardize their licenses, hospital privileges or favored status with Pharma, or just because they were schooled in allopathic orthodoxy and hold fast to that faith. Props to those courageous few who broke ranks. 

    The Med/Pharma/Gov establishment, including the NIH and CDC, hasn’t saved America during 2020-22. To the contrary, Covid interventions have worsened overall societal outcomes. These net harms should have inflicted—and, depending on longer-term vaxx effects, may yet inflict—a big black eye on the Medical Industrial Complex. 

    If so, Med/Pharma will spend tens of billions of PR money to distort what’s happened for the past 27 months, and to portray well-paid medical personnel, administrators and bureaucrats as selfless heroes. Many gullible Americans will buy this slick revisionism, including its portrayals of healthy-looking people walking in slow motion on beaches or across meadows in golden light, accompanied by a contemplative solo piano soundtrack.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/20/2022 – 16:25

  • 10,000 Flights Delayed Over Holiday Weekend As Aviation Chaos Concerns White House 
    10,000 Flights Delayed Over Holiday Weekend As Aviation Chaos Concerns White House 

    Travel chaos impacted thousands of Americans trying to catch a flight during the Father’s Day and Juneteenth holiday weekend.

    Flight tracking website FlightAware shows more than 10,000 flights were delayed or canceled nationwide between Friday and Sunday due to pilot shortages and bad weather, which comes days after top airline executives spoke with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg about how to resolve flight disruptions. 

    “That is happening to a lot of people, and that is exactly why we are paying close attention here to what can be done and how to make sure that the airlines are delivering,” Buttigieg told The Associated Press in an interview Saturday. 

    Buttigieg said he could penalize airlines that fail to meet consumer-protection standards.

    According to data from the Transport Security Administration, passenger throughput at U.S. security checkpoints at airports topped nearly 2.4 million on Friday, the highest checkpoint volume since the Sunday after Thanksgiving and 100,000 more travelers than the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. 

    Constant flight disruptions are caused by staffing shortages, bad weather, and reduced flights and come at a time when airlines can barely keep up with demand.

    The origins of the shortage began in the early days of the virus pandemic when pilot hiring, training, and licensing came to a standstill. Then airlines forced thousands of pilots into early retirement to reduce labor costs as travel demand cratered. 

    Recently, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby told investors that the shortage could last for years. 

    “The pilot shortage for the industry is real, and most airlines are simply not going to be able to realize their capacity plans because there simply aren’t enough pilots, at least not for the next five-plus years,” Kirby said.

    Kit Darby, a pilot pay consultant and a retired United captain, warned that “there is no quick fix” for the pilot shortage. 

    This weekend, videos posted on social media show long lines and frustrated passengers. 

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    The combination of reduced flights, pilot shortage, soaring jet fuel costs, and robust flying demand have sent ticket prices sky-high. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/20/2022 – 15:50

  • Russian Central Bank: Bitcoin Payments For International Settlements Is "Possible"
    Russian Central Bank: Bitcoin Payments For International Settlements Is “Possible”

    Authored by Shawn Amick via BitcoinMagazine.com,

    • The Central Bank of Russian Federation recently discussed using bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for international settlement.

    • Currently, the central bank holds that Russia should only use the assets for international settlement, not within Russia.

    • The comments were made by the head of the central bank and oppose previous positions held by the monetary authority.

    Elvira Nabiullina, head of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, recently attended the St. Petersburg Economic Forum (SPIEF) where she commented on Russia’s use of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for international trade, per a report from state-media outlet Kommersant.

    “Our position is that cryptocurrency should not be used as a means of calculation within the country…

    …As for use in international settlements, if it does not penetrate the Russian financial system, it is possible,” Nabiullina told reporters during the event.

    Earlier in the event, before the remarks made by Nabiullina, First Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank Ksenia Yudaeva also stated that Russia did not object to the use of payments like bitcoin “in international transactions and international financial infrastructure.”

    Previously, the central bank proposed a ban on the mining and trading of cryptocurrencies this past January.

    Following this announcement, Russian President Vladimir Putin openly challenged the central bank’s opinion stating the country had a “competitive advantage” in the mining sector and asked them to reconsider.

    In response to Putin’s request for reconsideration, a bill was submitted to regulate bitcoin and the broader cryptocurrency ecosystem by the Russian government.

    Within the same month, the Ministry of Finance released its amended version of the bill seeking to properly regulate the ecosystem.

    Consequently, as the Russian government and monetary authorities have been divided on the matter, so too have individuals stationed within those authoritative positions. In fact, Denis Manturov, Minister of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation recently stated “The question is when it will happen, how it will happen and how it will be regulated [cryptocurrencies]. Now both the Central Bank and the government are actively engaged in this.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/20/2022 – 15:15

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