- The "Global Reset" Scam
The “Global Reset” Scam
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/20/2020 – 23:40Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,
This article takes a tilt at increasing speculation about statist global resets, and why plans such as those promoted by the World Economic Forum will fail. Central bank digital currencies will simply run out of time.
Instead, the collapse of unbacked fiat currencies will end all supra-national government solutions to their policy failures. Already, there is mounting evidence of money beginning to flee bank accounts into stocks, commodities and even bitcoin. This is an early warning of a rapidly developing monetary collapse.
Moreover, nothing can now stop the collapse of fiat currencies, and with it schemes to control humanity for the convenience and ambitions of government planners. There can only be one statist solution and that is to mobilise gold reserves to back and save their currencies, which in order to succeed will have to be fully convertible into circulating gold coinage. It will also require the role of governments to be reset into a non-welfare, non-interventionist minimalist role, which can only be achieved after a complete collapse of the current fiat-financed system.
Anything less will fail.
The Deep State and The Blob fuel conspiracy theories
Increasingly, people are beginning to realise that their world is undergoing a period of rapid change, with the future of fiat money now uncertain. For most, it is too difficult to even contemplate. But growing uncertainties are driving wild speculation about what those in authority now have in store for the human race in the form of a global reset. It is a time for conspiracy theorists, aided and abetted by our politicians and central bankers who are being increasingly evasive, because events are spiralling out of their control.
Then there is America’s Deep State, or the British equivalent, the more recently christened Blob; an amorphous entity comprised of the permanent bureaucracy with its own agenda. These faceless planners have moved on from merely making ministers’ lives difficult if they deviate from the blob’s predetermined course — immortalised in “Yes Minister” and its sequel series “Yes Prime Minister”.
As we saw with Brexit, The Blob has been rigging political outcomes, even conniving in elections. Christopher Steele, an ex-MI6 officer produced a dodgy dossier on Trump to influence the American presidential election in 2016. But there is no such thing as an ex-MI6 Agent because of the Official Secrets Act, so we can only conclude that the intelligence arm of The Blob sanctioned it on a distanced basis. MI6 works with other intelligence agencies under the five-eyes agreement and is close to the CIA. Though they do not necessarily share intelligence, it is impossible to conceive of Steele’s role in influencing the outcome of a US presidential election without the CIA’s knowledge. Almost certainly, the fact that it was commissioned must have been with the CIA’s blessing.
At the time of writing, we do not know the outcome of the current presidential election, but enough doubt has been thrown on the validity of the voting process to implicate unknown parties in managing the outcome. It can never be proved, but for increasing numbers of sceptics it looks like a Deep State operation. It is therefore hardly surprising that conspiracies abound.
The World Economic Forum
The most prominent of these conspiracies has hit the headlines in recent weeks. Its ambition is to take the lead in resetting the world by dismantling the capitalist system in favour of a greater technocratic rule — a fourth industrial revolution no less, even planting microchips in humans to read their brains and control them. The leader is one Klaus Schwab, whose World Economic Forum runs the annual Davos bunfight.
As leader of the Davos forum, Schwab probably sees himself as the coordinator of world government. If so, at 82 years old he is probably getting impatient about the progress towards his personal vision of ultimate power. The covid chaos and the success of his climate change agenda must be encouraging him to think he is very close to a breakthrough. Alternatively, we might consider Schwab as a latter-day Charles Fourier (1772—1837), the utopian socialist philosopher, whose forgotten ideals were only marginally more narcissistic and bizarre than Schwab’s.
While the great and the not so good love the annual Davos party as a networking venue for the politics industry, when it comes to transferring real power to Schwab, it’s a no-no. The only time a politician transfers power is when he is deposed by his or her electorate, colleagues, or the military. And history is littered with utopians, like Schwab, grasping for power over their fellow men. In addition to Charles Fourier, we can include Georg Hegel (1770—1831) and Auguste Comte (1798—1857), as well, of course, as Karl Marx. As thinkers or philosophers, they were all influential in their day and some of their ideas persist in the naïve.
So, while increasing numbers of well-informed people are beginning to sense the end of the current world order, to assume that this will hasten the WEF’s grab for world domination by influencing events is a mistake. All our deep states, blobs and their branches, particularly central banks, will want to hold onto and enhance their executive power with the political class increasingly cast as cover. The planners at national level are not going to submit to Mr Schwab’s plans for world domination. Instead, international relations involve mutual cooperation to secure purely domestic objectives, something President Trump was in the process of destroying. From the Deep State’s point of view, perhaps that’s why he had to be deposed in favour of Biden, who is a long-serving compliant figure.
Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)
There can be little doubt that central banks wish to increase their control over money and how it is used, cutting out the obstacle of commercial banks who produce most of the money in circulation through the expansion of bank credit. From a statist point of view, commercial banking is a dinosaur, an outdated remnant of free markets, perpetuating needless systemic risk and superseded by technology. Branch networks will disappear with cash, changing relationships between banks and the general public for ever.
By introducing direct central bank accounts for members of the public and every business, commercial banks become superfluous and can be allowed to die. And if one goes bust before commercial banking has ended, the facility to transfer all its loans and deposits onto a central bank’s books will then exist. The removal of systemic risk by the abolition of commercial banks is one of several likely long-term objectives of CBDCs. Commercial banks can be left with the role of investment banking activities in capital markets.
We can imagine the development of CBDCs going even further than just replacing cash. Stimulation by dropping money into personal accounts can be used to target increased spending by consumers, or even groups of consumers, sorted by wealth, location or other factors. Some consumers can be favoured relative to others, so in a swing state, for example, an incumbent administration might buy votes. While this would be strongly denied, as we have seen with unfettered fiat currency the state creeps incrementally towards unstated objectives, using every tool at its disposal. The election of Deep State-approved politicians then becomes possible.
Eventually, funding of all capital projects will come under the direct control of the central bank. And savings deposits, always seen to be a brake on consumption, can be banished. Capital can be made available for government schemes and favoured businesses on the say so of the central bank.
A future government statement might be issued on the following lines:
“Your Government is pleased to announce that the National Audit Office has approved a number of infrastructure projects targeted at improving communications between administrative centres. This investment over ten years will secure an estimated 500,000 jobs. The cost over the life of the project is XXX billion monetary units. The Central Bank has confirmed it will make funding for these projects available, both to your Government and approved private sector contractors.”
This would be a planners’ heaven. Furthermore, CBDC money can be withheld or frozen for anyone suspected of crimes and tax evasion, starving them into confessions of guilt. The justification is always that it is in the national interest to ensure that financial and tax crimes are eliminated — something commercial banks have singularly failed to do. Overseas payments can be routed through other CBDCs, giving the central banking network control over world trade. Just imagine foreign trade being conducted through a grander version of the Eurozone’s TARGET2 settlement system!
Worried yet? In the advanced economies Covid-19 has nearly eliminated cash, which doubtless is intended to be replaced entirely by CBDCs. The end of cash and bank deposits will allow the central bank to cap the amount of cash anyone can hold, and also ensure that everyone is paid a “living wage”. Already flagged, another intention is to eliminate the burden of interest rates and by controlling where money supply is expanded, manage the economy.
It is commonly assumed that those in charge of us know what they are doing — they don’t. They have become trapped at a socialist endpoint and are doubling down in their efforts towards greater socialism. But their dreams of future control are mere escapism. Individuals will lose yet more personal freedom, but ultimately the state cannot conquer human nature and the will of individuals to do what they want. The Soviets attempted it and failed, despite killing and starving many millions.
Central to the collapse of any state-directed reset will be the loss of faith in fiat currencies, and particularly that of the world’s reserve currency, the US dollar. This remains the case irrespective of whether circulating currency is in cash, bank deposits, or CBDCs. Indeed, the collapse could be hastened by CBDCs, because the intention is to increase the pace of injection of new money into the economy if it is required (it always is), and to impose deeper negative interest rates, which cannot be easily achieved under the current monetary system.
If these statist intentions are allowed to prevail, along with other agendas such as the elimination of cheap and effective fossil-based energy, the outlook for humanity is exceedingly grim. Like communism, the global reset into which the western world is drifting will destroy society. Those who believe in liberal values in the original sense of the term — not the modern socialist connotation — will find themselves welcoming the destruction of the current system before it is evolved any further.
The course of a currency collapse
The end of fiat currencies is likely to come sooner than later, from the consequences of today’s massive money-printing, particularly of dollars. Already, US government spending is financed substantially more by currency debasement than taxes, a condition that will almost certainly continue to deteriorate rapidly in the coming months. Furthermore, the global banking system, which is extremely thinly capitalised, faces a tsunami of bad debts which can only lead to a systemic failure — most likely in the Eurozone initially, but threatening all other jurisdictions through counterparty risks. It is coming to a head and is likely to happen soon, possibly triggered by the second covid wave.
Long before the two or three years required for any CBDC to be operational, the world’s reserve fiat currency, the US dollar, is already hyper-inflating. There are signs the markets are beginning to understand this. Bitcoin’s price has risen sharply, sending signals to everyone that the differential between its ultimately fixed quantity and the accelerating rates of fiat currency debasement is feeding dramatically into the price.
Despite the economic slump, equity markets are being driven to new highs as non-financial customers deem stocks to be preferable to bank deposits. It has not helped that the Fed reduced deposit rates to zero last March, well below everyone’s time preference. The Fed has also promised infinite QE in order to fund the fiscal deficit. Therefore, it is not surprising that individuals and corporations are shifting out of cash balances into financial and other assets, with the notable exception of fixed-interest bonds. Rising commodity and raw material prices are also telling us that dollars are been sold in those markets.
This is the point being missed in all commentaries: the mounting evidence that markets, being forward-looking, are beginning to abandon the dollar. And once it goes beyond a certain point, nothing will reverse a rapid loss of purchasing power to the point of worthlessness. To avoid this outcome central banks led by the Fed must immediately abandon inflationary financing of budget deficits.
That is not going to happen. In addition to the current hyperinflation must be added the inflationary cover for the costs and consequences of rescuing a failing global banking system. The costs are immediate, in that governments will take on their books everyone’s bad debts. The consequences are that through their central banks they will have no political alternative other than to counter the economic slump through yet more money printing.
US Treasury bond yields are already beginning to rise, perhaps reflecting this developing outcome as Figure 1 shows.
The up-arrow at the bottom-right of the chart shows that the downward momentum for the bond yield has reversed, forming a golden cross; that is to say the yield is above its two commonly followed moving averages which in turn are forming a cross with the 55–day moving average rising above the 200-day moving average, a strong indicator of a major turning point and of higher bond yields to come. The upward turn of bond yields is to be viewed in the context of the dollar’s trade weighted index, which is shown in Figure 2.
Currently standing at 92.40, if the dollar’s TWI breaks below 91.75 (the low on 1 September) it is likely to head significantly lower. With foreign holdings of dollars and dollar denominated financial securities totalling almost $27 trillion, the chances are that dumping of the dollar on the foreign exchanges will increase rapidly. That being the case, the Fed will not only be funding the unprecedentedly high (for peacetime) budget deficit but will have to absorb foreign sales of US Treasuries and dollars in order to keep the cost of government funding suppressed.
Evidence is mounting that it cannot be done. And with the end of the suppression of interest rates comes the collapse of accumulated malinvestments, of government finances, and of the currency itself.
First the ashes, then, hopefully the phoenix
Elected in 1929, Hoover was the first US President who thought he could improve on the capitalist system of markets reforming themselves, and the results were a disaster. He was thrown out of office and replaced with another interventionist, Roosevelt, and the supremacy of the US Government over markets reforming themselves became established. The situation today is the logical destination of the fallacy that governments can run the economy.
It will end with the collapse and replacement of today’s unbacked fiat currencies — the ashes and then the phoenix. There is every indication that the time when all is rendered into ashes is rapidly approaching. People with fiat, earning fiat, relying on fiat will be impoverished. A currency collapse with no foreign currency to escape into is a cataclysmic event, the like of which we haven’t seen before, not even in Roman times. If it doesn’t buy you food and warmth a million bucks is worthless.
Governments will also have no means of collecting taxes, other than in their worthless currencies. They will be unable to pay their administrators, who cannot even afford to attend their offices. Their pensions and everybody else’s will be worthless. There will be no incentive for anyone in government without money. And without money there is no political power.
There can only be one solution, and that is a reset with gold. The slide in currencies can be stopped by making them exchangeable into gold. The reason for a gold-backed reset is not so much to stop a fiat currency from further collapse but to use it to ensure the widest distribution of the national gold reserves through a reformed gold-backed currency. The US Treasury claims it still has over 8,000 tonnes of gold, which assuming the Deep State hasn’t raided it, can ensure that a new dollar, convertible by everyone into gold, can circulate as money.
The same is true for other currencies, to greater or lesser degrees depending on their national gold reserves. But to be credible, gold coins must also circulate freely alongside readily convertible paper and digital substitutes. The banking system must also be reformed to do away with bank credit expansion, which creates deposits unbacked by gold. By then most of them may be in public ownership or protection, so a reform to abolish bank credit expansion should not be too difficult.
The mobilisation of central bank gold is the best outcome by far. It returns the choice of money to the people who use it for the intermediation between their production and consumption. But very few in government, their Deep States or The Blobs, have the intellectual capacity to understand what needs to be done. Their advisors are inflationists to a man or woman. Furthermore, the US’s Deep State is obsessed with the threat from China and Russia, which between them control international bullion markets (London and Comex are just paper), and have substantial declared and undeclared reserves. Legitimising gold will transfer enormous monetary and geopolitical power from America to the Asian hegemons, which is likely to be strongly resisted.
Furthermore, it will require governments to backtrack on the socialising process, whereby by providing welfare and regulating everything their budgets got out of hand. They must aim to reduce the full burden of their activities on the economy to under 20%.
Following a currency collapse, any central bank that thinks it can use a CBDC to manage market outcomes will undermine its own credibility. Other than issuers of gold-backed notes, they will have no role. In order for the necessary reforms to stick, flights of fancy such as the statist ambitions of planners and of the Klaus Schwabs of this world must be abandoned, along with all the false sciences adopted by statists. But on the positive side, a collapse of fiat currencies is required to sweep away the current failing system, and sooner or later that is what we are going to get.
- Pilots Draw Giant "Sky Penis" In Support For Russian Footballer After Masturbation Scandal
Pilots Draw Giant “Sky Penis” In Support For Russian Footballer After Masturbation Scandal
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/20/2020 – 23:20Two Russian Pobeda Airlines pilots are under investigation after they “chose a ballsy flight path” to show their support for Russian footballer team captain Artem Dzyuba, by drawing a giant c*** and balls in the sky, reported RT News.
Flightradar24 footage shows the Boeing 737-800 taking a quick detour from Moscow to Ekaterinburg on Nov. 11 to create a giant sky penis on flight radar maps.
“We don’t know what you might see in our aircraft’s flightpath, but probably Pobeda captains decided to express their support for Artem Dzyuba, condemning the madness around him,” a Pobeda spokesperson said.
Dzyuba made headlines after a video of him pleasuring himself leaked online. The scandal has resulted in the footballer being suspended for three games.
The Federal Air Transport Agency said it is investigating the incident to determine whether the pilots had clearance to conduct such maneuvers.
While the pilot’s support for Dzyuba is rather strange, readers may recall US military pilots went on a sky penis drawing spree in the last couple of years. We’re not entirely sure why US pilots were drawing the penises (see: here & here & here), but it sure seemed as there was a competition of who could draw the biggest one.
- Biden's Student Loan Forgiveness Plan Is Idiotic And Immoral
Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Plan Is Idiotic And Immoral
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/20/2020 – 23:00Authored by Josh Hammer via The Epoch Times,
Higher education might be the most pressing domestic issue confronting America today. As currently structured and carried out, higher education is a blight upon the nation—an affirmative hindrance to our efforts in aiding human flourishing and securing the common good. It is possible that no propagated belief in modern American history has been more intellectually, experientially and fiscally ruinous than the notion that a four-year bachelor’s degree-bestowing bender is a necessary rite of passage for entering adulthood.
Caviling about the systemic corruption of the academy is perhaps old hat. By the time William F. Buckley Jr. wrote “God and Man at Yale” in 1951, the metamorphosis of America’s ivory tower into something closely approximating a fifth column was well underway. But the situation has, in recent decades, worsened; it has metastasized into a cancer whose tendrils spread the latest faddish developments in intersectional, anti-American, anti-Western “woke-ism” all throughout the land.
It is both terrifying and perverse that America’s intellectual gatekeepers—the “elite”-forming, credentialing institutions that separate the “deplorables” from the ruling class—impress self-loathing pablum upon impressionable young minds. With some notable exceptions, American higher education today comprises madrasas of wokeness fundamentally hostile to the American regime and the American way of life. Many of the far left’s most toxic ideas, whether moral relativism, socialism, “anti-racism” or multiculturalism, either begin on campus or gain steam there. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that one of the more popular policies in conservative egghead circles today is to expand loan access to, and accreditation support for, trade school alternatives to traditional four-year bachelor’s degree-granting programs.
Intellectual bankruptcy notwithstanding, there are manifold more tangible problems associated with the failed higher education status quo. Four years spent on campus between the ages of 18 and 22 means four prime years forgone from acquiring vocational skills, advancing a career, and mating and forming families. It also often means, due in part to the federal government’s effective monopoly over the student loan industry, four years of willful indebtedness to major in such patently silly “subjects” as “gender studies.” Student loans are now the second-largest source of collective American debt, behind only mortgage debt. By some staggering estimates, Americans have over $1.5 trillion in student loan debt.
The modern Democratic Party is heavily reliant on woke college graduates for political support, and many on the left have warmed in recent years to large-scale student loan “forgiveness” (at least as a halfway measure, compared to the far left’s support for universal free college). Most recently, the likely incoming president, Democrat Joe Biden, has called for “immediate” forgiveness of $10,000 of student loan debt for borrowers.
This policy is idiotic in the extreme and brazenly immoral. Republicans and sensible Democrats must unite to defeat it.
The higher education-student loan complex is in desperate need of more transparency and accountability—not more bailouts. A prudent first step would be for creditors, whether public or (ideally) private, to present clear information about salaries and career paths for graduating high school seniors to consider before they commit to taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans to major in “ethnic studies.” The worst possible thing we could do would be a mass bailout of this nature, which would initiate a vicious, never-ending cycle of tuition spikes, more indebtedness and more bailouts. It is a quintessential exercise in trying to apply a Band-Aid to a grievously slit artery.
Think the moral hazard problems associated with the 2008 bank bailouts were bad? Wait until you see where this irresponsible experiment could end.
Numerous other problems abound. Such a bailout is inherently regressive, as it would disproportionately benefit woke children who decided they could afford four years of the decadent ivory tower wasteland, and disproportionately harm taxpayers who themselves did not go to college. Such a bailout would also be manifestly unfair to those graduates who have diligently worked to pay off their loans in earnest—even if it meant forsaking jobs they otherwise would have preferred to take in favor of jobs that pay more. In other words, such a bailout would inculcate the worst lessons in fiscal imprudence and recklessness—all while letting the universities off the hook for their running what amounts to one sustained racket.
American higher education needs a wrecking ball—not a bailout.
- Boston Dynamics' Robot Dog Starts New Work On BP Oil Rig
Boston Dynamics’ Robot Dog Starts New Work On BP Oil Rig
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/20/2020 – 22:40The virus pandemic is accelerating the trend of robots replacing humans in the workplace. One robot that is quickly being adopted by mega-corporations is Boston Dynamics’ compact four-legged robot, called Spot.
June was the month when Boston Dynamics began selling Spot. By July, Ford Motor Company received the robot dog, equipped with five cameras to survey its Van Dyke Transmission Plant in Michigan.
Ford employed the four-legged robot over human surveyors to save money and time. The Michigan-based automobile manufacture isn’t the only company embracing robot dogs to complete mundane tasks generally performed by humans. Reuters notes BP Plc has programed Spot to “read gauges, look for corrosion, map out the facility, and even sniff out methane on its Mad Dog rig.”
Adam Ballard, BP’s facilities technology manager, said the robot dog would make working on an offshore oil rig safer by reducing the number of people. He said the tasks Spot would be assigned will free up personnel to focus on other mission-critical assignments.
“Several hours a day, several operators will walk the facility; read gauges; listen for noise that doesn’t sound right; look out at the horizon for anomalies, boats that may not be caught on radar; look for sheens.
“What we’re doing with Spot is really trying to replicate that observation piece,” Ballard said, adding that an operator could then review the information from a central location.
“We believe a lot of that up-front, remote work preparation can be done with a remotely-controlled robot… being able to pan, tilt, zoom and really understand the entire area in real conditions, real-time,” he said.
Watch: Spot Learns New Tricks On Oil Rig
BP hopes Spot’s ability to gather data on oil rigs will cut down human personnel throughout rigs located in the Gulf of Mexico.
We’re sure other companies will follow Ford or BP in the rush to automate their workforce under the cover of the virus pandemic.
This comes as SoftBank Group Corp., the owner of Boston Dynamics, is exploring a sale of the company to Hyundai Motor Co., according to Bloomberg, suggesting upon the sale, Spot could be slated for mass production.
- GOP Girds For "Election Fraud" Fights In Georgia Runoffs
GOP Girds For “Election Fraud” Fights In Georgia Runoffs
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/20/2020 – 22:20Authored by Susan Crabtree via RealClearPolitics.com,
Amid the fire and fury of Rudy Giuliani’s raucous, 90-minute press conference Thursday laying out President Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud, the former New York City mayor and federal prosecutor famous for busting the mob in the 1980s, declined to offer an opinion on one very substantive question: Does he think the American election system is so rigged and Trump supporters are so mistrustful of the election process that federal authorities should monitor the two Georgia Senate runoffs set for Jan. 5?
“I can’t say what’s going to be done about it. … I really can’t give you an opinion on that,” Giuliani told a reporter when the freewheeling, opinion-filled presser shifted to questions from the media.
“I think every election should learn something from this and be very, very careful with the next election.”
The reporter who shot the first question at Giuliani brought up Operation Greylord, an investigation conducted by the FBI, the IRS’ criminal division, the U.S. Postal Service and the Chicago police that rooted out court corruption in Cook County, Ill., in the 1980s.
The three-year undercover operation resulted in the indictments of 92 judges and other officials, most of whom were convicted. The trials extended over 10 years.
Even though it was a friendly question, Giuliani didn’t want to go there.
“I have no idea where the FBI had been for the last four years,” he remarked.
“…I don’t know what we have to do to get the FBI to wake up. Maybe we need a new agency to protect us. I have no idea.”
No matter what you think of Giuliani’s defiant press conference and Donald Trump’s refusal to concede, trust in the U.S. election system among nearly half of the nation who voted for the president is hitting new lows.
A Morning Consult survey released this week found the share of Republicans who trust official election results has dropped by 43 percentage points. In a poll conducted in late October, 70% of Republicans said official election results will be either “very” or “most likely” reliable. In the post-Nov. 3 survey, just 27% say the same, with two-thirds of Republicans saying the 2020 election was not free and fair.
Giuliani and others assert that widespread fraud is what shifted Georgia to the Democrats in the presidential race, not the changing demographics of the state and Stacey Abrams’ much-touted voter-registration and turnout drives. Fueled by an army of well-founded liberal groups, Abrams groups registered 800,000 Georgians to vote this year.
Georgia completed its by-hand recount of 5 million ballots Thursday, and — despite uncovering 6,000 ballots overlooked in the initial process — it validated the initial outcome: Joe Biden won the state by more than 10,000 votes. Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (pictured) plans to certify the results later Friday.
With Senate control hanging in the balance, cash from deep-pocketed special interest groups is flooding into the Peach State – some $125 million over the last two weeks — and an army of activists from across the political spectrum have arrived to organize and orchestrate highly targeted turnout efforts. The race is now on to get 23,000 of the state’s 17-year-olds — those who will turn 18 before Jan. 5 — to register to vote by the Dec. 7 deadline, using Twitch streams, mobile gaming spots and online algorithm-targeted ads.
So much is riding on the two runoffs pitting GOP Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler against, respectively, Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, that failed Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang and columnist Tom Friedman encouraged Democrats to move to the state temporarily and register to vote.
The pair have since backtracked, arguing their remarks were flippant and meant to underscore the contest’s high stakes. Still, some wealthy California Democrats are reportedly traveling to Georgia to boost turnout operations and do whatever is necessary to help Democrats win the seats.
Whether outside parties flocking there could backfire on Democrats by fueling parochial pride is an open question, but Republicans are on high alert. Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr last week warned that moving to the state temporarily to vote is a felony offense that carries a 10-year prison sentence and a maximum $100,000 fine.
“You can’t be a canvasser for [Michael] Bloomberg – you can’t be a canvasser for the Koch brothers and decide, ‘Hey, I’m going to vote while I’m here,’” Gabriel Sterling, a Georgia election official, said last week.
Though Yang insists it was obvious he was joking, conservatives deeply concerned about election fraud aren’t laughing.
Hans von Spakovsky, an election law expert at the Heritage Foundation who has advocated for stricter voting laws, is urging Georgia Republicans to implement a detailed plan before the runoff to combat several types of potential voter fraud.
Republican officials should comb through voter registration lists and divide them up by voters in each precinct, he told RealClearPolitics. Every polling location has a local monitoring committee, he explained, and each chairman should get the list of voters for that precinct. Voter registration lists can then be checked against the DMV’s list of residents and other state record databases.
“I would distribute the list and say, ‘Look at everybody in your neighborhood who goes to that polling place — are there people on it that are not part of your community?’ Go over the list and check addresses” and ask neighbors if people recently moved there, he said.
“If there’s a single family home in your neighborhood, and there’s 20 people registered there, okay, that’s a problem,” he said.
“They should immediately bring that to the attention of local officials. That’s what they ought to be doing now.”
But the No. 1 priority for combating voting fraud — or even the perception of it — should be to have poll workers, not just poll watchers, actually opening and counting mail-in ballots, providing eyes and ears on the ground, he argued.
Von Spakovsky, who worked on behalf of Republicans in the 2000 Florida Bush-Gore recount, said Republicans must demand more transparency. He cited media reports that only one observer per 10 tables of vote counting was allowed during the Georgia recount because of COVID-19 social distancing rules.
“Whoa, what is going on with that?” he asked. “There ought to be an observer at every single table where the recount is occurring. That’s what they did in Florida. I know. I was there.”
Heritage Action, the Heritage Foundation’s political arm, says it’s mobilizing 20,000 of its local members in Georgia for door-knocking, phone calls and texts. It’s also recruiting a team of at least 100 poll workers to watch for any attempts to manipulate election results. Jenny Beth Martin, president of the Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund, said her group plans to train poll workers and poll watchers on what to look for. “We will be engaging in precinct operations,” she told RCP.
All of these efforts take manpower, and Republicans are privately fretting that the GOP didn’t do enough to prevent the runoff by countering Abrams’ extensive grassroots activities. As Giuliani signaled, they also don’t trust the FBI or other federal authorities to do anything to guard against or investigate fraud if there’s evidence of it occurring.
John Yoo, a conservative lawyer who worked in the George W. Bush Justice administration, says Trump’s concerns about expanded mail-in voting leading to more opportunities for voter fraud are well-founded. President Jimmy Carter and James A. Baker III, secretary of state under George H.W. Bush, came to the same conclusion in 2005 after heading the Commission on Federal Election Reform, which concluded that “absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.”
The practice of targeting senior citizen nursing homes and hospitals and helping elderly voters fill out their ballots is such a common practice that there’s a name for it among political operatives – “granny farming.” During the pandemic, there has been new concern about disenfranchising elderly people’s right to vote because of older Americans’ reluctance to go to the polls. But that fear has been abused, Yoo asserted.
Critics of ballot harvesting, or the third-party collection of mail-in ballots, often refer to an incident uncovered by the Miami Herald in 1998 in which a 70-year-old woman recovering from a stroke complained about being badgered for her absentee ballot by a political operative who then filled it out and took it from her.
“What everyone should be concerned about is if we see suspicious levels of voting – more votes than residents – at nursing homes or group homes,” Yoo said. He skeptical, however, that a significant number of people have moved illegally to vote.
Instead, he says the two areas of greatest concern are ballot harvesting and the tabulation or accounting process of all ballots.
Trump’s legal team has taken aim at the electronic voting tabulation process and the Dominion Voting System machines involved. Sidney Powell, one of Trump’s lawyers, insists that the president won by “millions of votes” and that the Dominion software altered the tallies. She has cited an affidavit signed by a former military official from Venezuela that the system was used to electronically flip votes for strongmen Hugo Chavez and his successor, Nicolas Maduro.
The state of Georgia uses Dominion machines and software, but Raffensberger, the secretary of state, said an audit of those machines found no signs of foul play.
And Jason Snead, the executive director of the conservative Honest Elections Project, says that Trump’s legal team has yet to provide enough evidence of widespread fraud for him to believe Dominion altered or tampered with “millions of votes or anything along those lines.”
“There are clearly issues that happened on Election Day, and some of them have been well documented,” he said. “Some counties in a few states had problems with some equipment, but nothing that was really outside the norm for these sorts of systems.”
Snead said those making election laws have the responsibility to ensure that they’re managing the demand for increased mail-in voting options during COVID in a way “that will ensure that those ballots are properly protected and that the election system as whole runs smoothly, efficiently and securely.”
One of the problems is that election fraud is hard to prove, and local district attorneys have shown little appetite for prosecuting it. Such cases take a lot of time to investigate, and state legislatures haven’t made the issue a funding priority, von Spakovsky and others say.
In 2018 Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich launched an election integrity unit to “preserve public confidence in the integrity of our elections by vigilantly defending ballot safeguards and common-sense voting laws.”
On Tuesday Brnovich publicly called on critics of the election process to come forward with “facts and evidence” so his office can investigate.
After an election that has fueled so much distrust in the system, von Spakosvksy is urging all states to create similar election integrity units in their attorney general offices and for legislatures to provide enough resources for those units to do a thorough job.
Snead said Brnovich is pursuing a “blockbuster” ballot harvesting case dealing with two provisions of Arizona law that the Supreme Court has said it would review this fall. One aspect deals with state laws requiring people to vote at their specific precinct and another to restrict ballot harvesting, limiting who can collect and deliver a person’s ballot to a family member, household member or caregiver.
Depending on how the high court rules, more restrictive voting laws in several states could be on the chopping block — or enshrined as needed safeguards.
“So this is going to be a big, big case,” he said. “It has the potential to help define and shape election law going forward.”
- "Panic Attack" And "Night Terror" Searches Erupt Across US Amid Second Virus Wave
“Panic Attack” And “Night Terror” Searches Erupt Across US Amid Second Virus Wave
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/20/2020 – 22:00Public health experts have repeatedly warned that COVID-19 conditions are set to worsen across the country before they get better.
States and cities are reimposing strict social distancing measures, along with the increasing threat of lockdowns early next year if a Biden presidency is seen.
The virus pandemic and strict social distancing rules have already fueled a mental health crisis among Americans.
Months ago, we explained restrictions resulted in a dangerously sharp rise in mental illness. The CDC recently said disruptions to daily life during the pandemic lockdowns, anxiety about contracting the virus, and isolation at home have taken a deep toll on Americans’ mental health.
As the second wave of the virus ravages nearly every state, real-time data of Americans’ mental health via Google Search trends of more than 400 health symptoms, signs, and conditions suggest that the mental health crisis continues to silently rage.
Examining Google’s COVID-19 Search Trends symptoms dataset, we found recent searches for “anxiety,” “panic attack,” and “night terror” are on the rise in recent months, coinciding with the reemergence of the second coronavirus wave.
Internet searches for “anxiety” have erupted across the country in recent months, breaching March’s highs in the summer period. As virus cases continue to hit records this fall, anxiety levels will also rise.
Searches for “panic attacks” have also surged.
Even “night terror” has risen above the levels from the beginning of the pandemic.
The unintended consequences of the virus pandemic and socio-economic implosion of the country appear to be a public health crisis.
- America's Elites – Not Trump – Are Responsible For Undermining American Democracy
America’s Elites – Not Trump – Are Responsible For Undermining American Democracy
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/20/2020 – 21:40Authored by Tho Bishop via The Mises Institute,
It is an overplayed cliché to refer to the insanity of the current year. Still, 2020 manages to surprise. It is increasingly looking like 2020 has created the greatest challenge to democratic legitimacy in the past century.
Yesterday was a truly remarkable day in American history.
The official legal team for President Donald Trump—led by Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis—outlined an argument that America’s elections were hijacked by a conspiracy involving Dominion voting systems, the Smartmatic corporation, and elected officials of both parties. The team claimed that these actors collaborated with foreign enemies of the president to ensure he lost the 2020 election, actively inflating the vote totals for Joe Biden. The evidence, they say, will include hundreds of sworn affidavits and other documents that will validate their accusations. They also implied that the Department of Justice is either actively involved in this plot or serving to protect those involved.
The press conference was heavy in bold and striking claims, but so far the legal team has not provided enough documentation to adequately vet the claims made. It is certainly true that questions existed about some of these voting systems prior to the election and that the official results include all sorts of unprecedented voting trends that have sparked questions about their statistical likelihood. Unlikely outcomes are not, however, impossible outcomes, and there are no accusations that any voting machines were illegally used without going through the legally required certification processes.
Any serious legal challenge by Trump’s campaign team will require significant evidence that they have yet to make available. Of course, if the claims are accurate, the case involves a crime that may be beyond the capabilities of America’s judicial system.
What the Trump campaign can legally prove, however, is almost a secondary issue at this point.
Yesterday’s press conference has entrenched the current American president in the position that his anointed successor is illegitimate and that he is the one who holds a democratic mandate to govern.
America has had controversial electoral outcomes before, such as the elections of 2000 and 1876, which ended up being decided by party leaders in a smoke-filled backroom (Republican Rutherford Hayes was given the presidency over Samuel Tilden in exchange for the repeal of Reconstructionist-era laws in the Southern states).
There are several key differences between these instances and the current political turmoil: you now have a populist sitting president, actively despised by the corporate press, who is simultaneously disliked by the establishment of his own party and passionately beloved by his base.
As I noted in an article a few days after the election:
regardless of the legal outcome, America is about to find itself with a president that will be viewed as illegitimate by a large portion of the population—and perhaps even the majority of some states. There is no institution left that has the credibility to push back against the gut feeling of millions of people who have spent the last few months organizing car parades and Trumptillas that their democracy has been hijacked by a political party that despises them.
The response we will receive from the corporate press, Very Serious pundits, and the various talking heads representing all the institutions that Trump has repeatedly mocked and belittled is obvious. Trump’s legal team is being dismissed as a bunch of partisan, sycophantic cranks spinning baseless conspiracy theories. Donald Trump is being portrayed as a spoiled, entitled man-child who would rather take down American democracy than admit he lost. His supporters will be dismissed and mocked as, at best, dumb suckers or, at worst, potentially violent right-wing extremists.
The problem is that, regardless of one’s opinion of Donald Trump or the specific claims made by his legal team, America’s elite and those in power have no credibility of their own.
For almost four years, the corporate press has propped up various false stories about the president while simultaneously propping up his political enemies and actively ignoring stories about the misconduct of Joe Biden’s son and potential conflicts of interest regarding the former vice president. The concerted effort to ask serious questions even forced journalists like Glenn Greenwald to ditch a media company he helped found.
At the same time, progressively-aligned Big Tech companies (many of which are staffed by former members of Kamala Harris’s political offices) have been taking an increasingly aggressive role in censoring and editorializing President Trump and his supporters.
Their claims that they have an ethical obligation to combat “misinformation” in the name of “democracy” are undermined by their willingness to actively assist the Chinese Communist Party in censoring dissidents.
Meanwhile, the professional political class in this country, lauded as “experts” by the bad actors mentioned above, has long mocked the notion of democratic oversight. An explicit example was offered just recently when Jim Jeffrey, a US envoy to Syria, gleefully disclosed to DefenseOne that American military leaders successfully maintained a larger military presence in the country than President Trump had ordered. The power of America’s professional bureaucracy goes beyond military matters, however, and the hope of much of America’s elite is that US policy will be increasingly influenced by their colleagues at the UN and other globalist institutions. Be it the Paris Accord or the Great Reset, many American progressives increasingly view very serious policy matters as issues too important to be entrusted to American voters.
Further still, America’s political environment has become so polarized and hostile that you have many elected officials in positions of influence who openly despise large swaths of the American population. For example, Arizona’s secretary of state—the woman in charge of election integrity in the state—described Trump’s base as “neo-Nazis” in 2017. Given her public statements, why would any Trump supporters have any faith in a governing body she influences to count votes? Meanwhile, the secretary of state in Michigan was a former employee of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a left-wing hate group.
It would, of course, be wrong to suggest that the elites of the American left are alone in their hatred of their political enemies. While the Left has tended to be more violent in recent years, there are many Republican voters who consider the political left immoral, un-American, and a threat to their families. The difference is that, outside of a few levers of federal power held by the Republican Party, the American right does not have nearly the same institutional support that the Left does currently.
It appears that 2020 may be the year that finally proves that the façade of democracy is not enough to maintain a unified political body. The election process does not inevitably lead to compromise and tolerance, but rather ends in those in power and those who are politically vanquished. When the losers of elections do not view their loss as a genuine reflection of democratic will, but rather an illegitimate coup, it is difficult to maintain governance over a population. Joe Biden appointing John Kasich–type Republicans will do little to soothe and reassure those who view a Biden presidency as little different than an occupational force.
This is why Ludwig von Mises viewed political decentralization and secession as a necessary component of liberal democracy. The proper objective of the democratic process was the peaceful transfer of power reflecting changes in the political will—political self-determination—rather than some form of civil worship of the will of the majority. When political differences become irreconcilable, true political decentralization allows for the breaking of political unions.
Will that end up being the ultimate result of the position of Trump’s legal team? Who knows. Trump and a few lawyers will certainly not be enough to overturn the official results or to successfully spur a Trump secession movement. What will be interesting is how the institution of the Republican Party will respond to the escalating rhetoric of the president.
Under President Obama, the Republican Party remained civil and submissive while its Tea Party base discussed ideas like nullification and a convention of states. The sterility of the traditional GOP is likely a major reason why Donald Trump was able to take over the party. How much of the modern GOP will continue to follow the forty-fifth president, and how many will end up being perfectly content with being partners with Joe Biden?
What we can be sure of is that it will be much harder for Biden to win over many of the 70+ million Americans who voted for Donald Trump earlier this month.
- One In Five US Hospitals Are On The Verge Of A Staffing Crisis
One In Five US Hospitals Are On The Verge Of A Staffing Crisis
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/20/2020 – 21:20As COVID-19 cases surge pushing hospitalizations to levels unseen since the start of the pandemic, hospitals around the country are facing a staffing crisis. According to Bloomberg, 1 in 5 American hospitals anticipates a “critical staffing shortage” within a week’s time, according to DHHS.
Midwestern states like Missouri, Wisconsin and North Dakota have reported the highest share of hospitals worried about staffing shortages as deaths and hospitalizations soar.
In a phrase that’s reminiscent of coverage from back in the spring, when hospital workers in some of NYC’s most unloved neighborhoods were wearing trash bags instead of PPE, Bloomberg warned that a dearth of doctors and nurses could risk pushing the mortality rate even higher. Frontline workers are “vulnerable to the consequences of overwork”, Bloomberg reported. In an example of just how bad it can get, readers might remember a rash of doctor suicides in NYC, and in other places as well.
Source: Bloomberg
What’s more, given the staffing issues, hospitals around the country are bracing for a “holiday spike”, forcing health care workers to spend yet another holiday away from their families.
The biggest problem this time around is that rural areas in the Midwest and elsewhere that were largely spared earlier in the year are now seeing outbreaks in their communities, which have in some cases badly strained the more threadbare facilities available in these areas.
Here’s an example: Sprawling, sparsely populated Siskiyou County along California’s northern border hit a milestone this week. After months of dodging a major COVID-19 outbreak, seven people were hospitalized with coronavirus infections and the number of available ICU beds in the county briefly dropped to zero, which sent local public health officials into a full-blown panic.
Management at the hospital pleaded with the townspeople to wear their masks and wash their hands, advising that more infections would inevitably lead to a surge in deaths.
Another major difference this time around: During the spring and summer, the outbreaks were largely confined to a specific region of the country, allowing resources and staff to be ‘spread around’ from states with low numbers to states with high numbers. The problem is that right now, all 50 states are seeing their outbreaks accelerate. While the Midwest has been battered, Chicago hasn’t benefited from the federal resources or the help from nearby states that New York did back in the spring.
That’s one reason that makes the recent increase in deaths more concerning, since if the numbers continue to rise, there won’t be any ‘cavalry’ for struggling states to call.
“Earlier in the year, we were able to redeploy staff and resources to these hot spots,” one official said. “We really were talking about hot spots. The problem now is when every place is a hot spot, you lose the ability to redeploy. And that’s as simple as that.”
Fortunately, Pfizer confirmed on Friday that it has submitted its paperwork for an emergency-use authorization for its vaccine, which should be administered to the first non-trial patients by mid-December, the company said.
- The US Government Will Inflate To The Bitter End
The US Government Will Inflate To The Bitter End
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/20/2020 – 21:00Authored by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com,
The big news organizations say Joe Biden’s the next president of the USA. That claims of election fraud and fixing are baseless. Do you believe them? Do you trust them?
Regardless, Biden’s acting as if. He’s talking to foreign leaders. He’s meeting with vaccine makers. He’s making big plans. He’s planning big things. But, apparently, he’s not progressive enough.
This week, for example, an organization called Justice Democrats accused Biden of appointing corporate-friendly insiders. They say these “corporate-friendly insiders […] will not help usher in the most progressive Democratic administration in generations.”
Certainly, Biden’s getting plenty of advice. The political puppet has left many strings to be pulled. Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer want Biden to erase the first $50,000 of a person’s student loan debt. According to Schumer, “Joe Biden can do that with the pen as opposed to legislation.”
Will Biden listen to them? Will he listen to progressive superstar Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? On Monday, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, tweeted:
“Student loan forgiveness is good, actually.
“We should also push for tuition-free public colleges to avoid this huge debt bubble from financially decimating ppl every generation. It’s one of the easiest progressive policies to ‘pay for,’ w/ multiple avenues from a Wall St transaction tax to an ultra-wealth tax to cover it.”
Wow! Biden hasn’t even moved into the White House and things have gone stoopid silly. Where to begin?
Cut It Off
Without question, the student debt crisis is a disgrace. There are roughly 45 million student loan borrowers who owe on the order of $1.6 trillion. Most of this debt is from federal student loans.
The federal government is responsible for this mess. It supplied the credit that distorted the world in this way that would have otherwise been impossible. The gas of massive amounts of federal student loans inflated a higher education bubble…and an industry of entitled, fake intellectuals.
The business model generally requires signing credulous 18-year-olds up for massive amounts of government backed student loans. These young adults have been told since before they could count that college was the magical path to a bright future. But as tuition costs ran higher, propelled by more and more student loans, the value proposition no longer penciled out.
Yet forgiving student loans rewards a corrupted education industry. It allows colleges and universities to perpetuate in inflated product. Hence, rather than forgiving student debt, as the progressives desire, we offer another novel approach. That is, cut off government sponsored student loans. Scuttle the gravy train that supplies universities with undeserved wealth.
Now what would happen to all these high paid professors and fancy country club style college campuses without all this government sponsored debt? For starters, tuition prices would fall. Professor salaries would also fall. And college campuses would adjust to their more modest means.
Would the product – the education – be inferior? Not for the technical disciplines that matter. Smaller budgets, however, would help trim the fat, and eliminate many of the nonsense quack ‘studies’ courses. These courses have little redeeming value and only exist because they’re funded by an abundance of federal student loans.
Tuition-free public colleges at the expense of the rich, on the other hand, would certainly result in an inferior education. They would turn college into an extension of high school. Grades 13 through 16 would become daycare for young adults. Students would graduate as unprepared as today’s 12th graders. What a ridiculous waste of time and money.
The U.S. Government Will Inflate To The Bitter End
The point is, $1.6 trillion in government sponsored student loan debt has piled up like a rush-hour wreck on the 405 Freeway through west Los Angeles. This is a problem of the governments making. And government solutions will only make things worse. Here’s why?
Forgiving student loan debt with the stroke of a pen does not make it go away. Debt, remember, is unearned money that’s borrowed from the future. It must either be repaid or defaulted on. Given that this is government sponsored debt, the act of erasing it merely transfers it from student borrowers to the American public – that’s you.
And how will the American public pay for it? U.S. government revenue for fiscal year 2020 was $3.42 trillion. Yet spending was $6.55 trillion. The difference – a $3.13 trillion deficit – was made up with debt.
Nancy Pelosi is currently pushing for Congress to adopt her $3.4 trillion coronavirus bailout package. Tack on $1.6 trillion for student loan forgiveness and we’re up to $5 trillion. And that’s before accounting for Medicare, agriculture, defense, social security, transportation, veterans affairs, and the many other federal programs. And what about all the other demands Biden somehow owes?
The Justice Democrats are calling “for Biden to create an Office of Climate Mobilization on Day 1.” What an Office of Climate Mobilization is, exactly, is unclear. But it sounds expensive. And guess who will get to pay for it? You will.
You see where all roads lead back to, right?
The dead end of dollar debasement. The U.S. government will inflate to the bitter end. And Creepy Joe – with the progressives egging him on – is just the man for the job.
- A Bad Winter For The Global Economy (LIVE)
A Bad Winter For The Global Economy (LIVE)
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/20/2020 – 20:55Tune in for this special edition of the Daily Briefing to hear from Ed and Raoul live at 4:30 PM ET. Raoul will provide an update on his macro thesis, trades he’s bullish on, and answer questions from the audience. - "Super Emitters": 1% Of People Cause Half Of Global Aviation Emissions
“Super Emitters”: 1% Of People Cause Half Of Global Aviation Emissions
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/20/2020 – 20:40You’ve heard of “super spreaders” but what about “super emitters”?
According to the woke vernacular, that a term reserved for those frequent-flyers who a recent study found represent just 1% of the world’s population yet who have caused half of aviation’s carbon emissions in 2018. This excludes the “wokest” of virtue-signalling super emitters – those who fly around the globe in ultra-emitting private jets, lecturing the rest of the world about the dangers of global warming. We can only imagine that if those were also included, then the number would be revised from 1% to 0.01%.
According to a study by Stefan Gössling at Linnaeus University in Sweden, only 11% of the world’s population took a flight in 2018 and 4% flew abroad, and predictably US air passengers have by far the biggest carbon footprint among rich countries. Its aviation emissions are bigger than the next 10 countries combined, including the UK, Japan, Germany and Australia, the study reports (it wasn’t clear if China was excluded because of a far backroom exchanges of yuan/bitcoin).
The research, published in the journal Global Environmental Change, collated a range of data and found large proportions of people in every country did not fly at all each year – 53% in the US, 65% in Germany and 66% in Taiwan. In the UK, separate data shows 48% of people did not fly abroad in 2018. Yet it is these people who will be hit just as hard by whatever “green” tax is coming by our new socialist overlords.
On average, North Americans flew 50 times more than Africans in 2018, 10 times more than those in the Asia-Pacific region and 7.5 times more than Latin Americans. Europeans and those in the Middle East flew 25 times further than Africans and five times more than Asians.
Of course, the real culprit is not the US but China, although this woke study conveniently ignored the footprint of Beijing (which may or may not have funded the study): while the analysis showed the US produced the most emissions among rich nations, China does not make data available.
What was most interesting, however, is that the study showed that an elite group enjoying frequent flights had a big impact on CO2 emissions, and yet according to conventional wisdom everyone should be punished in the form of higher taxes, prices, etc when the transgressions of a handful of woke virtue-signalers are most responsible for rise in airplane-linked emissions.
Naturally, since this was a study on climate change, socialism wasn’t far behind: Dan Rutherford, at the International Council on Clean Transportation and not part of the research team, said the analysis raised the question of “equality.”
“The benefits of aviation are more inequitably shared across the world than probably any other major emission source,” he said. “So there’s a clear risk that the special treatment enjoyed by airlines just protects the economic interests of the globally wealthy.”
The frequent flyers identified in the study travelled about 35,000 miles (56,000km) a year, Gössling said, equivalent to three long-haul flights a year, one short-haul flight per month, or some combination of the two.
Things got really silly when the researchers somehow estimated the “cost of the climate damage” whatever that means, caused by aviation’s emissions at $100BN in 2018. The absence of payments to cover this damage “represents a major subsidy to the most affluent”, the researchers said. “This highlights the need to scrutinise the sector, and in particular the super emitters.”
So what do the socialists researchers suggest? Why taxes of course.
A levy on frequent fliers is one proposal to discourage flights. “Somebody will need to pay to decarbonise flight – why shouldn’t it be frequent flyers?” Rutherford said. But Gössling was less enthusiastic, pointing out that frequent flyers were usually very wealthy, meaning higher ticket prices may not deter them.
“Perhaps a more productive way is to ask airlines to increase the share of [low carbon] synthetic fuels mix every year up to 100% by 2050,” Gössling said. A mandate for sustainable aviation fuel starting in 2025 is backed by some in the industry.
Yup: at this point the “scientists” were reduced to bickering over who should be taxed more to solve the world’s problems. What neither of them appears to realize is that whatever the so-called “cost of climate change”, the Fed will meet all of it by printing an even greater amount and then depositing it into the digital dollar accounts of those deemed “virtuous” enough by the world’s socialist overlords.
Finally, do the wealth-redistributionist “researchers” do as they preach and stop flying themselves? Apparently not: “I’m not saying I’ll never fly again. But if I can avoid it, I really, really try,” Gössling said whimsically.
- Trump Confirms The Pentagon & The CIA Are In Charge Of Foreign Policy
Trump Confirms The Pentagon & The CIA Are In Charge Of Foreign Policy
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/20/2020 – 20:20Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,
President Trump has announced that he is ordering a partial withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Iraq during the waning days of his administration.
Why only partial? And why now in the waning days of his presidency? After all, when Trump campaigned in 2016. his expressed aim was to bring all the troops home from those two countries. He repeatedly vowed to bring an end to America’s “forever wars.”
There is a simple explanation for Trump’s failure, one that unfortunately so many Americans are loathe to consider: It’s not the president who is in charge of foreign policy. Instead it is the Pentagon and the CIA that are in charge.
Trump had four years to bring home those troops. Clearly he wanted to. The reason he didn’t – the reason he still can’t – is because the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA won’t let him.
Longtime readers of my blog know that I have periodically referenced a book titled National Security and Double Government by Michael J. Glennon, who is a professor of law at Tufts University and served as counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He knows what he is talking about. I highly recommend his book.
Glennon’s thesis is a simple one:
The real power of the federal government lies with the national-security establishment – namely the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA.
They permit the president, the Congress, and the Supreme Court to maintain the veneer of power.
That veneer is unimportant to the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA.
What’s important to them is who holds the power, not who appears to hold the power.
Trump’s inability to bring the troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq provides confirmation of Glennon’s thesis. Trump wanted to bring them home. He vowed to bring them home. He had four years to bring them home. He was unable to do so. The Pentagon and the CIA simply would not permit it.
In his Farewell Address in 1961, President Eisenhower warned about the danger to America’s democratic processes from what he called the “military-industrial complex.”
That was almost 60 years ago. As we have seen with President Trump, the national-security state has grown ever more powerful since then.
- Iran Unveils Unorthodox 'Aircraft Carrier Warship' To Challenge US In Indian Ocean
Iran Unveils Unorthodox ‘Aircraft Carrier Warship’ To Challenge US In Indian Ocean
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/20/2020 – 20:00It’s not quite an aircraft carrier though the AP has awkwardly dubbed it an ‘aircraft-carrying ship’ but it’s not a conventional warship either.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has unveiled a new domestic produced multirole warship capable of carrying up to dozens of aircraft, drones, helicopters and missiles with rapid roll-on/roll-off capability.
Named the Shahid Roudaki after a ‘martyred’ IRGC Navy commander, state media described it as an “oceangoing warship capable of carrying aircraft” and is the latest in a rollout of major weapons systems built inside Iran while the country is under biting US-led sanctions.
The Drive described it as a new “unorthodox” warship in Iran’s arsenal that will engage in long-range operations:
The various weapons and other systems that are seen on the deck in pictures from the ceremony at least visually reflects the warship’s purported mission spectrum, as a multipurpose vessel for long-range operations. From bow to stern, the weapons visible on deck comprise eight anti-ship cruise missiles in four twin container launchers, six Ababil-2 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), a single Bell 412 helicopter, four speedboats, and a 3rd Khordad surface-to-air missile system on a road-mobile transport-erector-launcher plus what appears to be an associated command vehicle. Iranian media reports that the vessel is also equipped with a three-dimensional phased-array radar, plus “advanced communication systems for electronic warfare.”
New “multirole” vessel was adopted in service of the of IRGC Navy. Looks like there the idea is that it’s the floating platform for various weapons, reconnaissance assets, etc., depending on the need. On photos there on deck – 3rd Khordad SAM, Ghadir\Ghader ASM, Ababil-2 UAV etc pic.twitter.com/FMvbfCbZiN
— Yuri Lyamin (@imp_navigator) November 19, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
It measures 150 meters long at a displacement of 4,000 tons, and according to the IRGC is currently “ready to carry out missions”.
According to statements cited in the Associated Press, it shows Iran is preparing to beef up its presence in in Indian Ocean, where the US and its global allies currently have dominance:
The commander of the Guard’s navy, Adm. Ali Reza Tangsiri, suggested his forces wanted to move beyond the waters of the Gulf into deep-water patrolling. Typically, the Guard covers the waters of the Persian Gulf, while Iran’s navy patrols the Gulf of Oman and beyond.
“Presence and assignments in the Indian Ocean is our right,” Tangsiri said.
The ship appears to be an answer to U.S. Navy patrols in the region by its Bahrain-based 5th Fleet. U.S. aircraft carriers routinely travel through Mideast waters. Iran sees those missions, as well as Israel’s expanding presence in the region, as a threat.
The new ship does not specifically belong to the Iranian Navy but to the IRGC Navy, though the two often coordinate action and operate side-by-side.
IRGC released photo of the new ‘Shahid Roudaki’ warship. It’s also believed the ship could enable more rapid IRGC deployment deeper in Persian Gulf waters, given it carries the type of fast boats typically used by the elite force anytime it intercepts or encircles US ships, as has happened in the recent past.
While Iran possesses small submarines and domestic-made mid-sized battleships, it has nothing even close to a large aircraft carrier such as is possessed by major powers like the US, China, Britain, and Russia.
- New Strains Of COVID Could Render Vaccines Completely Useless, And 2 Dangerous Mutations Are Already Spreading
New Strains Of COVID Could Render Vaccines Completely Useless, And 2 Dangerous Mutations Are Already Spreading
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/20/2020 – 19:40Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,
What if all of the assumptions that people are making about this COVID pandemic are completely wrong? When Pfizer announced that they had developed a successful vaccine for COVID, the world cheered. And then when Moderna announced that they had developed a successful vaccine for COVID, the world cheered even more. But COVID has been mutating, and scientists assure us that it will keep mutating. So what happens if the vaccines that are being developed end up being completely useless against new mutant strains of the virus? Would that put us all the way back to square one (or even worse)?
To put this problem into perspective, let’s talk about the flu for a moment. Every year, health authorities come up with a flu vaccine that they think will be effective against the variation or variations of the flu that they believe will be dominant in that particular year. Most people simply assume that a “flu shot” will provide them with complete protection against “the flu”, but that is actually not true at all. In some years the match between the flu vaccine and the variations of the flu that are running around is pretty good, and some years that is definitely not the case. The following comes from the official CDC website…
During years when the flu vaccine is not well matched to circulating influenza viruses, it is possible that little or no benefit from flu vaccination may be observed. During years when there is a good match between the flu vaccine and circulating viruses, it is possible to measure substantial benefits from flu vaccination in terms of preventing flu illness and complications. However, even during years when the flu vaccine match is good, the benefits of flu vaccination will vary, depending on various factors like the characteristics of the person being vaccinated, what influenza viruses are circulating that season and even, potentially, which type of flu vaccine was used.
At this point, Pfizer and Moderna both seem convinced that their vaccines will be effective against the dominant strain of COVID that is currently sweeping across the globe.
But what if a new strain becomes dominant?
In Denmark, a new strain of COVID that is being passed to humans from minks was considered to be so dangerous that the government actually announced that they would kill all 17 million minks in the entire nation…
The government of Denmark shocked the world a few days ago when it announced it would slaughter as many as 17 million minks in the country, effectively destroying the entire mink fur industry in the country. The officials opted for this radical option because of the novel coronavirus, as the pathogen developed a potentially dangerous mutation inside the captive mink population. Reports from the country said that the mutated coronavirus has already infected at least 12 people. Researchers are worried that the new strain might be so dangerous that it could effectively render the current COVID-19 vaccine candidates useless. A new report now delivers more troublesome news, as some researchers think that the mutated coronavirus strain has pandemic potential. Others, meanwhile, are calling for calm.
Thankfully, after a tremendous uproar the Danish government decided not to kill all the minks.
But this strain is still spreading, and as the quote above noted, this new strain “could effectively render the current COVID-19 vaccine candidates useless”.
In other words, if this Denmark strain becomes dominant it may force the vaccine companies to go back to the drawing board.
Meanwhile, we just learned that “a fast-spreading new strain of COVID-19” has popped up in Australia…
South Australia is battling a fast-spreading new strain of COVID-19 as it prepares for a six-day lockdown to attempt to contain the virus.
A COVID-19 cluster in Adelaide’s north grew to 22 on Wednesday as thousands of people continued to flock to testing stations.
The reason why authorities decided to lock down all of South Australia for six days is because this new strain appears to be far more contagious than previous strains…
A strain of Covid-19 behind an outbreak in South Australia may be spreading up to five times quicker than normal, officials fear.
Concerned health bosses say the incubation period — how long it takes for someone to show symptoms after getting infected — was ‘very very short’.
Professor Nicola Spurrier, chief health officer for South Australia, claimed people are becoming contagious within 24 hours of catching the virus. She said the particular strain behind the outbreak had ‘certain characteristics’.
If it is true that this new strain spreads five times more rapidly than older strains, it could easily become dominant.
And if that happens, the vaccines that have been developed may not be of any use at all.
We just don’t know at this point.
But what we do know is that COVID will continue to mutate in the months and years ahead, and that could potentially create massive headaches for vaccine developers.
As for the vaccines that have already been created, some experts are pointing out that there is so much that is unknown about them.
Most people assume that these new vaccines are similar to other vaccines that they have previously taken, but that is definitely not true.
These new vaccines are in an entirely new class all by themselves. They are known as “messenger RNA” (mRNA) vaccines, and they work by hijacking the protein-making machinery in your cells…
When Moderna was just finishing its Phase I trial, The Independent wrote about the vaccine and described it this way: “It uses a sequence of genetic RNA material produced in a lab that, when injected into your body, must invade your cells and hijack your cells’ protein-making machinery called ribosomes to produce the viral components that subsequently train your immune system to fight the virus.”
“In this case, Moderna’s mRNA-1273 is programmed to make your cells produce the coronavirus’ infamous coronavirus spike protein that gives the virus its crown-like appearance (corona is crown in Latin) for which it is named,” wrote The Independent.
I certainly do not want my cells “hijacked”, and nobody has any idea what the long-term effects will look like.
And even if you take one of these new vaccines, it could end up doing no good for you at all if a different strain emerges and becomes dominant.
Unfortunately, I believe that we have entered an era of global pandemics, and I am convinced that all of this enthusiasm about the vaccines that have been developed is completely misguided.
We know that COVID will continue to mutate, but we have no idea at all if the current vaccines will be effective against those future strains or not.
If fighting diseases was easy, we would have eradicated the common cold and the flu long ago.
But we haven’t, and we won’t be eradicating COVID either.
Even now, dangerous new strains of COVID are emerging, and I have a feeling that it is going to be COVID that is going to have the last laugh.
* * *
Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.
- Lamborghini And Porsche Vehicles Seized In $16M PPP Scam In Texas
Lamborghini And Porsche Vehicles Seized In $16M PPP Scam In Texas
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/20/2020 – 19:20While millions of Americans are unemployed, also have food and housing insecurities, Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) fraud exploded across the country this summer because there were virtually no checks and balances, allowing criminals to file fraudulent loans.
It comes hardly any surprise that the latest PPP fraud scheme involves seven individuals across two states who were charged in a Houston federal indictment unsealed Tuesday for their involvement in a scheme to obtained upwards of $16 million in PPP loans, according to ABC13 Houston.
The federal indictment, unsealed Tuesday, accused the group of using PPP loans to buy luxury goods and exotic cars such as Porsches and Lamborghinis.
“These defendants allegedly participated in a scheme to capitalize on the pandemic by filing at least 80 fraudulent PPP applications and enriching themselves by $16 million, spending it on luxury items such as a Porsche and Lamborghini automobiles,” Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian Rabbitt said in a press release. “The department and our law enforcement partners will continue to aggressively pursue those who would seek to illegally exploit the ongoing national emergency for their own benefit.”
The indictment named seven defendants who appeared in front of U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew M. Edison on Tuesday.
“Amir Aqeel, 52, and Pardeep Basra, 51, both of Houston, Texas; Rifat Bajwa, 51, of Richmond, Texas; Mayer Misak, 40, of Cypress, Texas; Mauricio Navia, 41, of Katy, Texas; and Richard Reuth, 57, of Spring, Texas.”
Prosecutors said the defendants had submitted fraudulent PPP loan applications by inflating the number of employees and average monthly payroll expenses. To do this, they also submit fraudulent bank records and federal tax forms. PPP loan applications were also submitted on behalf of companies the defendants controlled. Other loan applications were submitted via third party entities.
“The indictment further alleges the defendants laundered a portion of the fraudulent proceeds by writing checks from companies that received PPP loans to fake employees. Those that received checks included some of the defendants and their relatives, according to the charges. The fake paychecks were then allegedly cashed at Fascare International Inc. dba Almeda Discount Store – a cash checking company Azeemuddin owned.”
In total, the defendants wrote more than 1,100 fake paychecks, collecting around $3 million in PPP loans that were deposited at Azeemuddin’s business.
“Today’s indictment describes significant abuse of public funds meant for struggling American businesses and families,” said Special Agent in Charge Laurie L. Younger of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation OIG.
The problem with the PPP program is that with little checks and balances, it fueled an unprecedented explosion of fraud.
We noted in July that a Flordia man used PPP loans to purchase a 2020 Lamborghini Huracan.
A California man fraudulently obtained $860,000 in PPP loans and fled the country.
Another man used PPP loans to buy Bitcoin.
Even JPMorgan employees were accused of pocketing U.S. coronavirus relief funds.
All of this happened despite the DOJ warning about early signs of PPP fraud in April, around the time the program began to disperse the loans.
- The ACLU And College Professors Are Encouraging Book-Burnings
The ACLU And College Professors Are Encouraging Book-Burnings
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/20/2020 – 19:00Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,
Are you ready for this week’s absurdity? Here’s our Friday roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, risks to your prosperity… and on occasion, inspiring poetic justice.
ACLU and Professor Team Up to Encourage Book Burnings
Abigail Shrier has committed the ultimate sin: she has a different opinion than the woke mob. And that is an unforgivable transgression.
Shrier’s new book is called Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, and she discusses some very strong views, such as that children shouldn’t be coaxed into taking life-altering hormones.
This is a controversial topic for many people, and they can choose to support or argue against Shrier’s opinions.
But that’s not how the woke mob works. They don’t use logic and debate to engage in intellectual discourse.
Instead, they simply rage– what Isaac Asimov described as “the last resource of fools.”
So naturally Twitter is jumping all over this book and trying to cancel it.
Target– the mega retail chain with stores all over the Land of the Free, already buckled, and decided to pull the book because apparently it’s full of hate speech.
(Never mind that Target continues to sell White Fragility, which is also full of hate speech that accuses roughly half the country of being White Supremacists…)
But more surprising is that Chase Strangio, a deputy director with the ACLU, is one of the Twitter mobsters.
Strangio recently Tweeted, “We have to fight these ideas… Stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on.”
Remember, Strangio is with the ACLU, where the ‘C’ and ‘L’ stand for ‘Civil Liberties’. And last time I checked, civil liberties include freedom of speech. How quaint.
Also joining the mob is a Professor of English from the University of California’s Berkely campus, who encourages people to steal and burn the book.
That’s right, our cultural overseers are now advocating literal book burnings in the Land of the Free.
Click here to read the full story.
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How to Be a Hero in Germany: Do Nothing
A new ad from the German government opens with an old man telling his story about how he survived the winter of 2020… back when he was 22.
The commercial is meant to be a comical way to encourage people to stay home to contain COVID-19.
The producers filmed the spot to make it look as if a Veteran of World War Two was being interviewed about doing something actually heroic– for instance, risking his life to save a village of defenseless civilians.
But the ad says that all it takes to be a hero in the winter of 2020 is to do nothing: “Absolutely nothing. Being as lazy as raccoons.”
Sure it’s a joke… but it’s also not.
People actually think they are heroes for being lazy, while shaming anyone who dares to live their lives without fear.
Click here to read the full story.
* * *
State Universities of New York Threaten to Hold Students Hostage Over COVID
The system of New York State Universities announced a policy that all students on all campuses must test negative for COVID-19 before LEAVING campus to go home for the holidays.
If students test positive, they will be FORCED to quarantine on campus for 14 days, at the responsibility of the University.
And since campuses close just prior to Thanksgiving, that means students who test positive could be held hostage in isolation on the holiday, prevented from going home to see their families.
One question: HOW IS THIS NOT KIDNAPPING????
Click here to read the full story.
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Great idea #593,291: Let’s Tax the Wind
Argentina’s government has been an endless supply of terrible ideas, from wealth taxes to full-blow asset confiscation. Their latest idea? Taxing the air– more specifically the wind.
Companies which sell wind power will have to pay 4.5% REVENUE (not profit) tax to the municipality for the privilege of using the air.
Remember when governments were talking about fossil fuel taxes to encourage energy companies to stop drilling and start investing in renewable energy?
Gee I wonder what’s going to happen with this one…
Click here to read the full story.
* * *
“Defund Police” politician calls police over dispute with Lyft driver
The City Commissioner in Portland, Oregon, Comrade Jo Ann Hardesty, has strongly voiced her support for defunding the police.
So you’d think she’d be the last person to ever call the cops.
But Hardesty was recently in a Lyft and got into an argument with her driver over some petty issue over the windows being up or down.
Apparently the argument escalated, and the driver pulled into a gas station and asked Hardesty to exit the vehicle.
Now, instead of resolving the matter like a grown adult, Hardesty– an elected official– decided to call 911 (i.e. a number reserved for EMERGENCIES).
The 911 dispatcher explained to Hardesty that no crime had been committed; if the Lyft driver wanted to cancel the ride, that was his right.
But Hardesty insisted that the dispatcher send the police, i.e. the very people she wants to defund… because apparently this petty dispute constituted an emergency.
Of course there is room for police reform. But Hardesty is absurdly hypocritical to call the police for such a trivial reason… and then demand that they be defunded.
Click here to read the full story.
* * *
On another note… We think gold could DOUBLE and silver could increase by up to 5 TIMES in the next few years.
That’s why we published a new, 50-page long Ultimate Guide on Gold & Silver that you can download here.
- Gov Cuomo Wins Emmy For "Masterful" COVID Press Conferences
Gov Cuomo Wins Emmy For “Masterful” COVID Press Conferences
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/20/2020 – 18:40Hollywood has never been afraid to shamelessly flaunt its allegiance to the Democratic Party, but handing New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo an Emmy for his “masterful” COVID-19 press conferences seems like they’re going too far.
Cuomo was awarded the International Emmy Founders Award, which has previously been given to a diverse group of characters, including both Steven Spielberg and Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes.
The Emmy’s announcement was accompanied by a Hollywood headshot of Cuomo with his 100-watt smile, a sign of a healthy and guilt-free conscience.
Gov Andrew M Cuomo of NY will receive the International Emmy Founders Award in recognition of his leadership during the Covid19 pandemic & his masterful use of TV to inform & calm people around the world. The Emmy will be presented to @NYGovCuomo on Nov 23 https://t.co/dwKIImwYNV pic.twitter.com/1mKkmg6FKW
— International Emmy Awards (@iemmys) November 20, 2020
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Cuomo’s daily press briefings, which ended back in the summer (though he has been holding briefings again with increasing frequency lately) were broadcast by the MSM – CNN, MSNBC, CBS News, NBC News – into the homes of millions of terrified Americans. Unsurprisingly, Cuomo spent most of the summertime lull polishing off a book called “American Crisis: Lessons in Leadership”.
Accepting the award might rub millions of New Yorkers struggling with mounting debts and dwindling savings, as the governor imposes new restrictions on non-essential business hours and public gatherings, while the city shutters schools for the more than 300k kids who were receiving in-person education.
Of course, Cuomo’s press conferences haven’t always gone smoothly for the governor. At one point, the New York Times was more focused on his “right-hand woman” Melissa DeRosa. And the other day, the governor got into it with a couple of reporters after trying to defend the clarity of the state’s new measures, only to be contradicted by NYC when school closures were announced minutes later.
Cuomo’s critics on the left and right knocked him over his shameless book-slinging, and now his Emmy win.
I’m old enough to remember when you published a book just last month with this title:
“American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic” https://t.co/nEiyGBeQke
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) November 11, 2020
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It’s wild Andrew Cuomo wrote a book about conquering COVID-19 and the virus is raging unchecked through large swaths of New York State
— Ross Barkan (@RossBarkan) November 18, 2020
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Bravo to whoever changed Cuomo‘s book cover 👏 😂 😳 @sidrosenberg @JaniceDean @bernieandsid pic.twitter.com/zfCS1fHHDd
— John (@REDGLARE21) November 19, 2020
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Will the Pulitzer people award Cuomo with an honorary Pulitzer as well?
- Luongo: Bitcoin & The Apotheosis Of Gold Bugs
Luongo: Bitcoin & The Apotheosis Of Gold Bugs
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/20/2020 – 18:20Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,
Bitcoin’s rally is all the news. It’s got the gold bugs all aTwitter as they watch their preferred safe haven asset of choice get upstaged again and again by the upstart, Bitcoin.
Every day it seems like another establishment media organization goes out of its way to give Bitcoin haters like one-note Peter Schiff an audience. The latest is Fox Business.
I can’t tell anymore if they’re doing this to discredit Bitcoin, gold, Schiff or all three consecutively and concurrently….
… and from a great height (apologies to Tom Stoppard).
Here’s your latest howler from Schiff courtesy of a tweet from the irrepressible James Woods obviously looking for a good conversation:
“There’s no real use for bitcoin. All you can do with Bitcoin once you buy it is sell it, but you need somebody else to buy it from you. It’s a massive pump-and-dump.” https://t.co/FpNtFxcCsD
— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) November 19, 2020
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What’s funny about that statement is that it can be applied to gold just as easily as it can be for bitcoin. Let’s try it and see what happens.
“There’s no real use for gold,” Schiff would never say. “All you can do with gold once you buy it is sell it, but you need somebody else to buy it from you. It’s a massive pump-and-dump.”
– SAID NOBODY CREDIBLE…. EVER.
The Golden Rule of Gresham’s Law
Today no one settles anything of note in gold. The places that allowed it recently, like Vietnam, demonetized gold and drove it underground by the State Bank of Vietnam in 2012.
When’s the last time Peter or anyone else did anything with gold other than exchange it for dollars?
The answer is never.
And don’t talk to me about any VISA debit card scheme he may have for his clients. Any gold payment system like that has a dollar-translation layer.
There’s no one on the other side of even that trade accepting digital grams of gold. It’s all nonsense in an economy like today’s. Sure there are a few systems like e-gold and the like out there with people doing their best John Galt impression, but talk to me about liquidity.
It’s lower than it is on a lot of these sketchy crypto-exchanges out there.
Moreover, anyone trading gold for dollars to buy candy bars or shoes with a VISA card is a patent moron. Because you then create a taxable event to have the privilege of paying capital gains tax on that transaction.
I guess it’s a good idea if you buy high and sell low.. you get a discount on your sugar high. Talk about a metaphor for the modern age.
Why would you do that when gold is supposed to be the ultimate store of value? Wouldn’t you buy that same candy bar with dollars and not incur the tax and the hassle? Pride?
No. Idiocy.
That is what has driven gold underground, that and it’s lack of fungibility.
If you dig deep enough this is why the gold standard eventually failed. Lacked of divisibility is a real issue in an ever-expanding division of labor which the gold standard of the 19th and 20th centuries help develop.
It’s ironic but true. Gold created the conditions for its obsolescence as a medium of exchange.
Coupled with central bank malfeasance this is just good ol’ Gresham’s Law. Over-valued currency circulates (dollars) and under-valued currency is hoarded (gold). Nothing new, just the Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility getting a workout in real time by mostly rational actors in a somewhat free market economy.
And that same dynamic is in place with Bitcoin. It’s taxed in such a way that it precludes you doing anything with it because of the danger it actually represents to the ‘real economy’ backed by digital fiat debt-based dollars.
“What do you want?” – Information.
I honestly don’t know what’s up with people like Schiff and his disciples at this point. We all accept the fact that dollars today are 95% digital. We may not like it but we have to accept it, especially if you accept the very real argument about liquidity and fungibility.
They are just ledger entries in encrypted databases around the world.
The main difference between them and Bitcoin is that an algorithm decides how many are produced over a certain period of time (6.25BTC every ~10 minutes) versus dollars which, Peter rightly points out, is the plaything of the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Treasury Dept. and the offshore Eurodollar markets.
But digital money is here to stay. In fact, digital money is the future. The only question is whether you want a digital currency that you know the supply of which allows for the rational calculation of demand or one that can be counterfeited at a moment’s notice by some guy with his hand in the cookie jar?
But let’s dig deeper into this utterly facile and febrile statement of Schiff’s. Let’s go one step further. In fact we can adapt his statement to the dollar itself.
“There’s no real use for the dollar,” Schiff also never said, though he should have. “All you can do with the dollar once you buy it is sell it, but you need somebody else to buy it from you. It’s a massive pump-and-dump.”
Because when you use dollars you sell them to acquire the things you need. You exchange one thing for another. In this case goods.
All Peter did with his dumb quote is validate the very thing that he decries about Bitcoin, that it is, in fact a potential store of value and medium of exchange because you can, in fact, get things you need with it. That you have to get dollars before you get the things you want is immaterial.
In fact, is holding Bitcoin any different than buying a stock or a bond? A stock or corporate bond is a claim against the tangible assets and future revenue stream of a particular company, but is it a ‘pump and dump’ simply because in order to realize that value you first have to exchange it for dollars?
No, of course not. Well, except for Tesla, but that’s a different rant.
The reality is that bitcoin, just like a stock, a bond or gold is a store of value because it represents the past work of the people who validated the information encoded on the block chain.
And with every block so encoded value accretes to the block chain and the ‘coins’ by which it is represented. That traditional valuation models have no way to directly measure that value is irrelevant.
To deny that Bitcoin has any value is to deny the fact that information is a commodity. And that’s truly facile when, at its essence, that’s all an economy actually is, information. The goods that move can only do so efficiently with good information about their production and distribution.
Price is the value of the information being transacted.
Peter Schiff makes his living getting paid to dispense opinions on markets. His entire life is built on the idea that information concentrated in one man’s mind is worth something to someone else who is ignorant of that information.
That people like Peter Schiff deny this simple process by which something acquires and builds commodity value through time is also irrelevant.
It means that while Peter studied Austrian economics he just didn’t understand it.
And so did every other gold bug who continues to stack to the exclusion of HODLing.
The Critical Shift
It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Bitcoin. It’s also no secret that I’m a fan of gold. I love gold. I own it and advocate for it. I even advocate for it to have a place in any theoretical private cryptocurrency based monetary system.
But what I won’t do is short change the value of one of them at the expense of the other simply because my ego is too fragile to handle the idea that I may have been wrong.
Honestly, the biggest regret of my life (other than not having more children) is not seeing Bitcoin’s strategic value earlier or I would have so many of them I wouldn’t have to spend my days writing articles defending it from punters like Schiff who are just bitter because they’ve been wrong.
That said, the current rally is based on a fundamental shift in preference for those who rightly are scared of what a Harris administration will do to the dollar post-Great Reset.
In a nakedly tyrannical world like we live in today where states clamp down on the free flow of capital outside of its control, Bitcoin is simply better technology than gold is today.
And this is not to say there aren’t any good arguments against Bitcoin. There are, but Peter Schiff and the gold bugs never make them. I wish they would. It would actually make writing articles like this almost a challenge.
The current rally in bitcoin is telling us clearly that there is a new premier store of value asset because of the current state of the world. Maybe that’s really what Schiff is decrying, a world that has passed him by.
What’s becoming clear even to me is that gold will only be valued in relation to bitcoin going forward, not the other way around.
It’s sad but true. In my heart of hearts I wish it were different and not because of the structure of my portfolio or the name of my business.
It’s sad because it proves that we are moving into a different age where technology is depreciating the value of an asset which materially improved the life of billions for millennia towards its commodity extraction value limit.
And while many gold advocates don’t want to admit that they have stood by while the fortune of two lifetimes has passed them by. That’s the bad news.
The good news is, given the chaos around the corner, there’s still plenty of upside left. Except for Peter Schiff, he’ll die on this hill unfortunately, just like his dad died in jail over denying the validity of the income tax.
At least his dad’s was a noble goal.
Denial is the surest path to getting your ass kicked by reality.
* * *
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Dominion Voting ‘Lawyers Up’ Before Abruptly Backing Out Of Pennsylvania Fact-Finding Hearing
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/20/2020 – 18:15Authored by Debra Heine via American Greatness (emphasis ours),
Dominion Voting Systems Thursday night abruptly backed out of attending a fact-finding hearing that was set for Friday morning with the Pennsylvania House State Government Committee.
At a press conference Friday morning, State Govt Committee Chair Seth Grove said the 1.3. million Pennsylvanians who used Dominion’s voting machines have been “hung out to dry and slapped in their faces.”
Pennsylvania lawmakers had scheduled the hearing with the voting machine manufacturer “to help identify and correct any irregularities in the election process,” according to the House Republican Caucus.
“It is vitally important voters have faith in the machines they use to cast their ballots. On the heels of Gov. Tom Wolf unilaterally decertifying every voting machine in the Commonwealth, we need to know whether these new machines met expectations, whether they are reliable and whether they are not subject to interference,” said Rep. Grove (R-York).
Dominion had initially agreed to attend the hearing, before it “abruptly canceled,” Grove said.
“I was impressed at what appeared to be the willingness that Dominion Voting Systems to address accusations and it would have put 1.3. million Pennsylvanians who used their machines at ease—including myself, thinking that Dominion was willing to publicly back up their product which PA taxpayers invested millions to purchase” he noted during the presser.
“Unfortunately, last evening, Dominion Voting Systems lawyered up, and backed out of their commitment to the people of Pennsylvania to provide their input in a public format.”
Grove blasted the company for “retreating into the darkness,” rather than appearing at the hearing with “honesty and integrity.”
The committee chair said he wanted to know why a company with nothing to hide would back out.
“Why would a vender of public goods fear discussing their product sold to the public for the public good? If Dominion’s products were successful and operated as they were supposed to, why wouldn’t Dominion take the opportunity to publicly review its success?” Grove demanded. “How hard is it to say, ‘our ballot machines worked exactly as promised and they’re 100 percent accurate’?”
“After weeks of accusations, why has Dominion Voting Systems not released any analysis of the success of its voting machines to the public in order to stop their accusers in their tracks? If they have nothing to hide, why are they hiding from us?” he asked.
“Today I am saddened to report to the taxpayers of Pennsylvania and the 1.3 million voters who trusted Dominion Voting Systems with their ballots, that Dominion Voting Systems has hung you out to dry and slapped you in your faces.” the committee chair declared.
Grove stated that Dominion’s behavior lent credibility to their accusers’ accusations.
#PAHouse State Govt Cmte Chair Seth Grove details how Dominion Voting Systems were used by 1.3 million PA’ns in 2020 General Election. 19% of the total votes cast in PA’s 2020 General Election were cast on Dominion’s systems. Dominion abruptly canceled today’s hearing. pic.twitter.com/Qt4DAyYDzE
— PA House Republicans (@PAHouseGOP) November 20, 2020
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Rep. Dawn Keefer noted that fourteen counties used the Dominion Voting Systems software, so they owe it to Pennsylvania voters to show up and answer some questions.
“We trust the workers in our polling places and in our counties,” Keefer said. “But what we don’t know is the role of 3rd party companies. And when they rescind their participation in our hearing, we’re left wondering why.”
Keefer added: “Transparency is key for our election security. Dominion Voting Software is asking us to give them only blind trust. We’re very disappointed in Dominion’s last minute cancellation in today’s hearing.
Transparency is key for our election security. Dominion Voting Software is asking us to give them only blind trust. We’re very disappointed in Dominion’s last minute cancelation in today’s hearing.”Rep. Dawn Keefer details questions #PAHouse is left with after Dominion Voting Systems abruptly canceled their participation in this morning’s hearing. pic.twitter.com/dWRPpDnPxq
— PA House Republicans (@PAHouseGOP) November 20, 2020
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