Dec 22

Today’s News 22nd December 2022

  • Caroline Ellison Throws SBF Under The Bus: Pleads Guilty To Fraud, Agrees To Cooperate With The DOJ
    Caroline Ellison Throws SBF Under The Bus: Pleads Guilty To Fraud, Agrees To Cooperate With The DOJ

    Two weeks ago, when amid reports that the former CEO of Alameda Capital (which as a reminder was ground zero of the FTX implosion after it blew up $8 billion in FTX client funds on trades gone horribly wrong), Caroline Ellison, was spotted in New York just after retaining Clinton superlawyer, Jamie Gorelick of Wilmer Hale, which as readers may recall was the former No. 2 ranking member in the Clinton Justice Department, and in a recent interview, she referred to current AG Merrick Garland as her “wingman”, we asked if Caroline had rolled on Sam Bankman-Fried, who was also her former lover.

    Fast forward to today when we just got confirmation that Caroline Ellison has fucked Bankman-Fried one final time by indeed rolling on him, and “turning states” in the criminal prosecution of the corpulent “Hairy Plotter“, who commingled and stole the client money in his FTX exchange to fund a series of terrible crypto bets at his personal hedge fund Alameda, fund tens of millions in donations to democrats and buy up prestigious real estate for himself and his “altruistic” progressive lawyer parents.

    According to a Manhattan Federal prosecutor, two of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s closest associates have pleaded guilty to fraud and agreed to co-operate with US authorities investigating the collapse of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange. In other words, they took a plea deal to avoid even more prison time in exchange for serving SBF on a silver platter to the Feds.

    Damian Williams, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced the guilty pleas and criminal charges against Caroline Ellison and Zixiao “Gary” Wang, the low profile co-founder of FTX, in a short video statement. His office had brought eight charges against Bankman-Fried last week.

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    Ellison pleaded guilty to seven counts, including wire and securities fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering, which carry a maximum sentence of 110 years in prison, while Wang pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud, with a maximum 50-year sentence.

    The documents said prosecutors would not oppose bail requests from both defendants under certain conditions, including posting a bond and handing in their travel documents, as they awaited formal sentencing.

    Concurrently, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission also filed civil lawsuits against the 28-year-old Ellison and 29-year-old Wang, accusing them of fraud.

    “As part of their deception, we allege that Caroline Ellison and Sam Bankman-Fried schemed to manipulate the price of FTT, an exchange crypto security token that was integral to FTX, to prop up the value of their house of cards,” said SEC chair Gary Gensler. Furthermore, as CEO of the FTX trading affiliate, Ellison “used FTX’s customer assets to pay Alameda’s debts” and diverted billions of dollars of depositors’ money to the company to fill a hole caused by a crypto market crash in May, the SEC’s complaint alleges.

    The CFTC said Wang had a hand in creating some of the algorithms that underpinned FTX, which allowed Alameda “to maintain an essentially unlimited line of credit” on the exchange, giving it an “unfair advantage” over regular depositors. “These critical code features and structural exceptions allowed Alameda to secretly and recklessly siphon FTX customer assets from the FTX platform.”

    Both defendants are co-operating with the SEC, the agency said. The CFTC said they were not contesting their liability. Which means that SBF is looking at a lot of prison time, unless he too can throw someone even more important and powerful under the bus…

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    … although if that is the case, he probably will be Epsteined within hours of arriving at MDC Brooklyn, singe MCC New York where Epstein “killed himself”, has been closed since August 2021 due to deteriorating conditions.

    While Ellison’s superlawyers have yet to make a statement, a lawyer for Wang, Ilan Graff, said: “Gary has accepted responsibility for his actions and takes seriously his obligations as a co-operating witness.”

    Last week, the DOJ filed charges against Bankman-Fried and accused him of orchestrating “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history” by misappropriating customer assets from FTX to Alameda Research. He was arrested in the Bahamas, where he lives. He is also facing parallel civil cases from the SEC and CFTC.

    Williams reiterated his call for others who worked with Bankman-Fried to come forward. “If you participated in misconduct at FTX or Alameda, now is the time to get ahead of it,” he said. “We are moving quickly and our patience is not eternal.” One of them is former Alameda CEO Sam Trabucco, best known for quietly bailing on Sam just as everyone was about to blow up and fleeing on his multi-million dollar new yacht.

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    The announcement from Williams comes just after a plane carrying Bankman-Fried took off from the Bahamas, where he waived his right to challenge extradition to the US. He is due to appear in a Manhattan court as soon as Thursday, where his bail request will be considered, although in light of Caroline’s plea, it is safe to say it won’t be granted.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/22/2022 – 01:13

  • It Was Always About Control
    It Was Always About Control

    Authored by Richard Kelly via The Brownstone Institute,

    Early on in March 2020 I was leery of the hysteria surrounding Covid and decided my course of action was to be wait and see. At the time I was under the impression that I was a freeborn citizen with a number of unalienable rights, including sovereignty over my bodily choices.

    So when the talk started about new vaccines being imminent, I again decided I would wait and see whether the vaccines were all they were cracked up to be. This was then, and is now, an entirely reasonable position to take, screeching from media and Twitter hounds notwithstanding. I didn’t expect it would turn out to be more like “wait and see how totally out of hand this will get.”

    • Wait and see how the government will forcibly close businesses

    • Wait and see how treatments will be suppressed

    • Wait and see how hysteria captured the media

    • Wait and see how healthy populations will be subject to house arrest

    • Wait and see how police will shoot protesters

    • Wait and see how a pregnant mother will be arrested for a Facebook post

    • Wait and see how medical services across state borders will be denied

    • Wait and see how ‘wait and see-ers’ will be demonized

    • Wait and see how family and friends will betray their loved ones

    Well, I’ve waited long enough and I’ve seen more than enough. Thankfully the worst, most violent excesses have abated for now, if you exclude the ongoing carnage of short and long-term vaccine injury. There are lingering abominations from the blitzkrieg of lockdowns and vaccine mandates, but generally there is a sense that an uneasy peace, or maybe a phoney war, has descended on us.

    Of course, there is still a serious amount of Covid pantomime going on.

    Exhibit A: a TV news report recently showed a road accident victim doing rehab with a mask on, then happily chatting without a mask to the reporter, also without a mask. If he was worried about Covid he’d leave it on for the interview, or if he wasn’t worried he wouldn’t wear it while doing rehab. Seems you can have it both ways these days provided you don’t think about it too much.

    Exhibit B: Last year cricket teams in the BBL were decimated if one of the players had a positive test, and others were ‘close contacts.’ Umpires refused to hold a bowler’s cap or sunglasses for fear of the spicy cough. Last night, two players on one team played despite not only testing positive, but also feeling unwell. If there is no practical change when a player has Covid, why do we need to know about it?

    Answer: we don’t, but it has become normalised to disclose players’ private health statuses, just as it is normalised now to ask anyone any kind of detailed personal health question that satiates the questioner’s ghoulish fetishes. While player fitness has always been a matter of interest to sports fans, especially those who like a bet, illness used to be dealt with in a formulaic way, such as “Player X is not playing tonight due to illness.” There’s no need to know any further details.

    Exhibit C: The memorial concert for aboriginal singer Archie Roach included a pre-concert ‘smoking ceremony’ in which footage aired for a news report showed a woman dancing through the ceremonial smoke – while wearing a mask. This example is probably less deliberate pantomime and more genuine irrationality. Anyone donning a mask and expecting to keep a virus out but let smoke in has taken leave of their rationality. Ironically, in this case the mask may actually do some good in preventing larger smoke particles entering the lungs – what firefighters call ‘smoke inhalation.’

    It is counterproductive to scoff at these insanities – those who have not yet come in their own time to see the inconsistencies are not suddenly going to see the light because of a witty remark. The most likely reaction is an equally irrational, and possibly heated defence of the person or the rule. In valued relationships, the only sensible course is studied silence. Even a raised eyebrow in front of the TV can crank the tension in the room up a notch or two.

    But these annoyances over masks and ‘Covid protocols,’ that overused euphemism for voodoo superstitions, are yesterday’s skirmishes in a war that has moved on to other theatres. The central battle is about freedom and autonomy. To the extent that the spoils of the ‘mask and protocol’ incursions can be re-weaponised against us, winning the freedom and autonomy battle will be that much harder.

    How can we resist curbs on movement having once complied with QR scanning for going to the shops? Think it couldn’t happen?

    Oxford city council in the UK is moving ahead with a scheme to confine residents to one of 6 zones using electronic gates on roads and limited number of trips across zones.

    How could we resist a forced medical treatment having once rolled over to experimental gene therapy?

    How can we fight against programmable digital currency when once we have accepted ‘card only’ cashiers and accommodated the idea of shopping for ‘essential items’ only and allowing a cop to rummage around in our shopping trolley?

    The legislative bricks in the wall continue to be put into place with little if any scrutiny. Doctors are now unable to give opinions that depart from government health advice without risking de-registration. Pandemic laws born as bastard sons of parliaments suspended under state of emergency powers are now legitimised as permanent statutes, requiring only a declaration to bring them all into force once again. Digital ID’s are now compulsory for all company directors, including Mums and Dads who happen to be directors of their own superannuation funds. Ordinary citizens are surely next.

    How is it that our lawmakers feel it appropriate to make these kinds of changes? No one asked for them. How is it they can ignore letters and petitions? Why do they partner with unelected globalists and make treaties we won’t be allowed to vote on? How is it that our civil rights institutions were so toothless? They didn’t even utter a whimper, let alone a growl. How is it that our professional bodies and business associations were silent?

    Only a few brave souls protested. How is it that our police forces humiliated themselves to the point where they were taping off children’s playgrounds and fining elderly women for sitting on a park bench? We long ago gave up on the idea that the mainstream media would hold authorities to account.

    In the end the explanations, whether we get them or not, whether they make sense or not, are beside the point. Nothing can change what happened. By some miracle we might avert what they have planned, but it’s going to be a hell of a fight.

    Once upon a time, we sweated on daily case numbers when the new cases per day were less than 10; now we barely think of them, and they are in the thousands, if not the tens of thousands. There’s only one conclusion to be drawn – it was never about public health, and it still isn’t. It was always about control.

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    Reprinted from the author’s Substack

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/21/2022 – 23:40

  • These Are The Most Valuable NFL Teams In 2022
    These Are The Most Valuable NFL Teams In 2022

    The world’s most valuable sports teams include internationally beloved soccer clubs, massive NBA franchises, and renowned MLB teams. But, it’s the National Football League (NFL) that arguably tops them all.

    In June 2022, the Denver Broncos sold for $4.65 billion, a record for the most expensive team purchase. But if other teams were to sell, they’d potentially command an even greater price tag.

    Which teams, and conferences, reign supreme in value? This graphic by Truman Du uses data from Forbes last calculated in August 2022 to show the most valuable NFL teams.

    NFL Teams by Value

    To calculate team values, Forbes used enterprise values (total team equity plus net debt) and factored in each team’s stadium-related revenue. This includes non-NFL revenue that accrues to each team’s owner, but doesn’t account for the stadium’s real estate value.

    The findings? NFL teams continue to become more valuable, rising in 2022 to an average of $4.47 billion, an increase of 28% year-over-year.

    At the top of the rankings, the Dallas Cowboys sit at an estimated valuation of $8 billion, making them the most valuable sports team in the world.

    They were the first team to generate over $1 billion in annual revenue thanks to massive sponsorship deals, including an estimated $220 million in stadium advertising and sponsorship revenue.

    This is especially impressive, since NFL teams actually share just over 70% of football-related revenue. As Forbes points out, the Cowboys have been the most successful at capitalizing on stadium and branding in order to boost external revenues.

    Most Valuable NFL Teams by Conference

    Truman also broke down NFL team valuations by conference, highlighting the extra monetary weight one has over the other.

    The National Football Conference (NFC) and the American Football Conference (AFC) were formed in 1970 after the NFL merged with the rival American Football League. Over time and as the league has expanded, the conferences have shifted and realigned to end up at 4 divisions of 4 teams for 16 teams each as of 2022.

    Impressively, NFC teams had an average valuation about $500 million higher than the AFC. It also had five of the six most valuable teams, with just the #2 New England Patriots representing the AFC at the top.

    But with the most recent record sale taking place in the AFC (Denver Broncos), and more potential high-profile relocations and sales in the wings, the landscape of NFL team values might shift yet again in the near future.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/21/2022 – 23:20

  • FBI Says Twitter Infiltration Business As Usual , Slams 'Conspiracy Theorists'
    FBI Says Twitter Infiltration Business As Usual , Slams ‘Conspiracy Theorists’

    The FBI has issued a statement in response to the Elon Musk’s release of THE TWITTER FILES, which boils down to ‘Of course we’ve embedded ourselves in social media companies, and anyone who has a problem with it is a conspiracy theorist trying to tarnish our stellar reputation.’

    “The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our tradition, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries.

    As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers.

    The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public.

    It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.”

    Aside from the obvious absurdity of the organization which participated in the Russia hoax and told Martin Luther King Jr. to kill himself suggesting they’ve got a modicum of credibility – did the FBI just assume there are only two genders when there are in fact 58, according to Facebook? Terribly bigoted of them.

    The FBI also claims they did not provide Twitter with any “specific instructions or details regarding the Hunter Biden laptop story,” adding “We did not request anything of the sort..”

    Ah – so it was only the ex-FBI guy at Twitter, not the FBI, suggesting it. 

    At the end of the day;

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    Whatever it took, right?

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/21/2022 – 23:07

  • China's Deal With Saudi Arabia Is A Disaster For Biden
    China’s Deal With Saudi Arabia Is A Disaster For Biden

    Authored by Con Coughlin via The Gatestone Institute,

    Nothing better illustrates the utter ineptitude of the Biden administration’s dealings with the Middle East than Saudi Arabia’s decision to forge a strategic alliance with China.

    This is a time when Washington should be working overtime to strengthen its ties with long-standing allies like the Saudis to combat the mounting threat Iran poses to the region’s security.

    Apart from the deeply alarming progress the ayatollahs are said to be making with their efforts to produce nuclear weapons,

    The new “axis of evil” that has been formed between Moscow and Tehran in recent months means Iran will soon be taking delivery of state-of-the-art Russian warplanes to add to its military arsenal.

    In what both the White House and Downing Street described as “sordid deals” between the two countries, Iran is due to take delivery of Russian Su-35 fighter jets next year as well as other advanced military equipment and components, including helicopters and air defence systems. In return Iran is providing Russia with hundreds of its Shahed-131 and Shahed-136 so-called kamikaze drones, which self-destruct on hitting their target.

    As US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby explained at a briefing in Washington, Moscow has “offered Iran an unprecedented level of military and technical support”, which “transforms their relationship into a full defense partnership”.

    Biden administration officials added that Iranian pilots were already being trained in Russia on how to fly the Su-35 fighter.

    By any standard, the deepening military cooperation between Russia and Iran should serve as a wake-up call to the Biden administration to redouble its efforts to reaffirm its commitment to key allies in the region such as the Saudis, who are committed to resisting any attempt by Tehran to expand its malign influence in the region.

    Riyadh’s determination to resist Iran’s aggressive conduct was reflected in recent comments made by Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud who warned that “all bets are off” if Iran succeeds in its goal of acquiring an operational nuclear weapon.

    “We are in a very dangerous space in the region… you can expect that regional states will certainly look towards how they can ensure their own security,” he said.

    Riyadh’s robust approach to Iran’s bellicose conduct is exactly the sort of response Washington needs to see from its allies as it faces up to the Iranian threat. Yet, thanks to the Biden administration’s wilful neglect of its relations with the Saudis, Riyadh is instead looking to build a partnership with Beijing, as was evident from the lavish reception given to Chinese President Xi Jinping during his state visit to the kingdom this month.

    Rarely has a visiting leader been the recipient of such lavish state pageantry as Xi after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman spared no effort to afford the Chinese leader a warm welcome, which included a jet escort on his arrival.

    During his three-day visit, Xi held extensive talks with the Crown Prince, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, as well as other senior Saudi officials and signed a strategic partnership agreement that will deepen ties between Riyadh and Beijing on a range of issues, from defence to technology.

    One particularly eye-catching aspect of the agreement was a deal with the Chinese tech giant Huawei to supply the Saudis with cloud computing services and allow “high-tech” complexes to be built in Saudi cities, according to Saudi officials.

    Huawei has been designated a potential security threat by the US, with intelligence officials claiming that the company has close links to China’s ruling Communist Party and could be used to conduct spying operations.

    That Riyadh is now moving away from its traditional alliance with the US and strengthening its ties with Beijing is a strategic disaster of epic proportions, and serves as a damning indictment of the Biden administration’s careless treatment of the Saudis, for which the president is personally to blame.

    Biden set the tone for his strained relationship with the Saudi royal family during the 2020 presidential election contest when he denounced the kingdom as a “pariah” state over its involvement in the murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018, although there has never any audible distress from the Biden administration over Iran’s 2007 abduction and presumed death of ex-FBI agent Robert Levinson.

    Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, though, forced Biden to rethink his attitude towards the Saudis when it suddenly dawned on him that he needed the Saudis to increase oil supplies to ease the pressure on global prices.

    His efforts achieved little: the Saudis were apparently unimpressed with Biden greeting the Crown Prince with a fist-bump when he visited the kingdom in the summer, and he came away empty-handed, with the Saudis and other Gulf states ignoring his plea to increase oil production.

    Apart from being dismayed about Biden’s obsession with reviving the controversial nuclear deal with Tehran, which they regard as a flawed agreement — it allows the Iranian regime soon to build as many nuclear weapons as it likes as well, as the ballistic missiles to deliver them — the Saudis and other Gulf leaders are unhappy with the lack of support they have received from Washington over the constant threat they face from Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, whom Secretary of State Antony Blinken removed from the US list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations just a few weeks into Biden’s term, and who since then regularly fired Iranian-made missiles and drones into Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

    Now, thanks to Biden’s incompetent management of the US-Saudi relationship, Riyadh is looking to China to protect its interests, a move that confirms the alarming decline in US influence in the region that has taken place under the vacuum in Biden’s leadership.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/21/2022 – 23:00

  • Child Homicide Rates Soar In The US
    Child Homicide Rates Soar In The US

    Black children in the U.S. as well as those between the ages of 16 and 17 were about 50 percent more likely to become the victim of a homicide in 2020 than just two years earlier.

    In a study published yesterday in the scientific journal Jama Pediatrics, researchers affiliated with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Department of Defense and Georgia State University analyzed data both from the CDC as well as the National Violent Death Reporting System.

    Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes that other groups of children for whom the chance of becoming a homicide victim rose were boys and 11- to 15-year-olds. The rates of homicides in Hispanic children and those between the ages of 6 and 10 also increased, albeit somewhat slower. Generally, black and brown children as well as older children were most at risk of homicide according to the findings. Rates were also up among children in the Southern United States and those living in rural and urban areas.

    According to the New York Times, the prevalence of child homicide was much higher in the U.S. than in other developed countries.

    Infographic: Child Homicide Rates Rise in the U.S. | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    The authors of the paper said that geographic and racial differences in child homicide rates needed to be addressed and called for tailored approaches according to age group, as younger children are most often killed by caregivers while older ones are more likely to fall victim to homicides in connection to criminal activity or arguments outside of their homes.

    While around 80 percent of homicides in the U.S. are gun deaths, this number stood at 50 percent for children most recently as especially younger children were more likely to die by physical assault.

    According to the study, homicides rates had declined for girls, children under the age of 6, white children, Asian/Pacific Islander children and children in the Northeastern United States.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/21/2022 – 22:40

  • Peter Schiff: The Private Sector Can Lead Us Back To A Gold Standard
    Peter Schiff: The Private Sector Can Lead Us Back To A Gold Standard

    Via SchiffGold.com,

    Peter Schiff recently appeared on the Jay Martin Show. During the interview, explains how the private sector can ultimately lead the world back to a gold standard.

    Early in the discussion, Peter talks about investing, saying people need to be in something besides cash.

    People have to go somewhere. I think you just can’t be in cash because all of these governments are just printing too much money. The inflation problem is worldwide. And it’s because all of these central banks made the same mistake.”

    The world’s central banks basically followed the lead of the Federal Reserve.

    We kind of corrupted the monetary policy of the whole world.”

    As the US cut rates to zero, other major central banks did the same. In fact, some implemented negative interest rate policies to get their rates below America’s.

    But Peter said the dollar’s status as the world reserve currency won’t last forever.

    I think the world is going to reject the dollar. It’s already happening.”

    Peter noted the de-dollarization efforts in many countries due to the fact that the US has weaponized the dollar and used it as a foreign policy tool.

    Peter said when the dollar falls from its peak, Americans will face a rapidly declining standard of living.

    America’s ability to live beyond its means is a function of the dollar’s reserve status. Because we can print dollars and use those dollars that we print to buy goods and services — mainly goods that we didn’t produce.”

    So, what will replace the dollar?

    There is no question that gold is going to re-emerge as the monetary unit of choice for the world. It’s not an accident that gold was money for 5,000 years. It’s been money for so long because it works.”

    But Peter said he doesn’t think a new gold standard will be imposed by governments.

    I think that the free market is going to reject the dollar and other currencies because they’re a flawed form of money because they are no longer a store of value.”

    Peter pointed out that other private entities have undercut government monopolies in the past. For instance, FedEx and UPS managed to crack the US Post Office monopoly on parcel delivery.

    And with the advancement of technology, it’s now possible to easily transact business in gold. Blockchain technology makes it possible to tokenize gold and easily transfer it from one party to another.

    Bitcoin guys are like, ‘Oh, see, blockchain is the death of gold.’ No, it’s going to lead to the rebirth of gold. Because bitcoin is what we don’t need. Gold is what gives the digital currency its value.”

    Jay brought up the point that a gold standard facilitated through the blockchain would still depend on third parties for payment processing and gold storage. But Peter argued that we’ve always depended on third parties. That’s not a problem in a competitive free market. The problems arise when that third party is a government.

    We’ve always been trusting third parties and it’s worked. The only time it doesn’t work is when the third party is a government. That’s when they screwed us.”

    Peter said he thinks the private sector will lead the world back to a gold standard because there ultimately is a demand for sound money.

    The government has a monopoly on money and we’re being overcharged through inflation to use government money. So, the private sector comes up with an alternative.”

    During this interview, Peter and Jay also talk about inflation, jobs, the FTX collapse, stocks, investing, and more.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/21/2022 – 22:20

  • Americans Anticipate Economic & Environmental Trouble In 2023
    Americans Anticipate Economic & Environmental Trouble In 2023

    Americans aren’t feeling great about the economy and the environment in the coming year, according to the latest poll by Ipsos.

    As Statista’s Anna Fleck details below, out of approximately 1,000 surveyed U.S. adults, more than three quarters said that prices in their country will increase faster than people’s wages, while around two thirds said unemployment will be higher than in 2022.

    Infographic: Americans Anticipate Economic & Environmental Trouble | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    At the same time, 65 percent of respondents think it’s likely that a natural disaster will hit a city in the United States in the coming year, marking a slight uptick of 2 percent since the end of 2021. This last concern is more widespread in the U.S. than most of the other 31 countries surveyed by Ipsos on the topic, with only a higher share of respondents saying it was likely a natural disaster will occur in their countries in Indonesia (78 percent) and Turkey (66 percent).

    When it comes to the climate, roughly half of U.S. respondents (52 percent) believe that the coming year will bring some of the hottest weather on record, with a third (36 percent) even saying that parts of the country will become unlivable due to an extreme weather event. This year alone, the world has seen multiple records broken in terms of peak temperatures, with widespread droughts, as well as devastating wildfires. At the same time, most respondents were doubtful of whether there will be a breakthrough in technology developed which will halt climate change next year, with only 23 percent agreeing it was likely, falling short of the slightly more optimistic global average of 32 percent.

    In spite of all this however, respondents have not all lost hope. Around two thirds of U.S. adults still said that they thought next year would be better than 2022.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/21/2022 – 22:00

  • CDC Funding Decisions Based Largely On Politics, Not Science
    CDC Funding Decisions Based Largely On Politics, Not Science

    Authored by John Lott Jr via RealClearPolitics.com,

    For the second year in a row, the Centers for Disease Control has been caught ignoring science and letting liberal interest groups set its policies…

    In 2021, the American Pediatric Academy and the Children’s Hospital Association tracked COVID-19 statistics in children and the data show no relationship between mask mandates and the rate at which children caught the disease. In the face of this evidence – and other data showing that masks harm children’s development, the CDC supported masking students after being pressured by the National Education Association (the nation’s largest teachers’ union).

    Now comes word that CDC is again allowing partisan politics to influence its policies. This time, gun control activists got the CDC to remove research from its website. Yet, the CDC is trusted to impartially dole out millions of dollars for public health research on firearms: From 2020 to 2022, the CDC and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) each spent about $50 million on such research.

    Until May of this year, the CDC cited a 2013 National Academies of Sciences (NAS) report showing that the annual number of defensive gun uses ranged from about 64,000 to 3 million. The CDC website listed the upper figure at 2.5 million. But now, the CDC has removed from its website all of those numbers and even the link to the NAS report.

    Following introductions from the White House and Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, gun control advocates linked up with the CDC. They had a private meeting and numerous email exchanges, in which they lobbied hard to have the CDC remove the information.

    “[T]hat 2.5 Million number needs to be killed, buried, dug up, killed again and buried again,” Mark Bryant, who runs the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), wrote to CDC officials after their meeting.

    “It is highly misleading, is used out of context and I honestly believe it has zero value – even as an outlier point in honest DGU [Defensive Gun Use] discussions.” He was upset that the 2.5 million number “has been used so often to stop [gun control] legislation.”

    The Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey estimates that there are between 64,000 and 120,000 instances each year in which a firearm is used defensively. This is on the low end of all the other social science on this subject. Some 20 such surveys have been conducted. Three of them show about 800,000 defensive gun uses a year. All the other estimates are over 1 million, with one as high as 3.5 million. The average estimate is about 2 million. William English of Georgetown University surveyed 16,708 gun owners just last year, and estimated that there are 1.67 million such uses annually.

    The National Crime Victimization Survey’s low numbers result from its choice of a screening question. It first asks a person if they have been a victim of a crime. Only respondents who answer “yes” are then asked if they have used a gun defensively. Yet, people who successfully brandish a gun generally do not view themselves as having been victimized.

    Devin Hughes, who runs another gun control group, GVPedia, argued in a July 6, 2021 email to the CDC that it should use the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) estimate of defensive gun uses. Hughes claimed that the GVA is “the most widely accepted compendium of gun violence data.” Between January and mid-December this year, the GVA claims that there were only 1,112 defensive gun uses in the United States.

    Last year, RealClearInvestigations examined Gun Violence Archive’s data from Jan. 1 to Aug. 10 and found 774 defensive gun uses. Ninety-five percent of these self-defense cases were from initial news reports. I checked those cases against other lists compiled by the Heritage Foundation and the Crime Prevention Research Center, and found that the GVA had missed an additional 30 cases. But that wasn’t the important problem.

    What makes defensive gun uses newsworthy doesn’t accurately reflect the real world. In GVA’s statistics, 43% of the GVA’s gun violence cases involve fatalities, 42% involve woundings, and 10% are cases in which shots were fired defensively that don’t hit anyone. Less than 4% of cases involved no shots fired, and more than half of those involve the criminal being held at gunpoint until the police arrive. But as gun control experts know, these kinds of cases represent a tiny fraction of the instances in which firearms are used defensively for self-protection.

    First of all, relying on the news media is not an accurate way to gather crime data. Criminologists know that less than one-quarter of violent crimes are reported to police. Nor does the news media even cover most violent crimes reported to police. Second, and much more significantly, about 95% of defensive gun uses involve brandishing a weapon.

    Bryant defends the reliance on media accounts, and discounts the argument that the media disproportionately covers the most violent cases. “I don’t think it is a newsworthy issue … too many media really like the feel-good stories of homeowner standing up to home invader,” Bryant wrote me last year. “Even better if it was a granny doing it. They don’t just go with the ‘if it bleeds …’ newsworthiness.”

    This is a naïve view of how newsrooms operate. Suppose an editor is presented with two stories, one with a dead body on the ground and another where no one was hurt because the would-be victim brandished a gun and the criminal ran away. And in the later story you can’t even be sure what crime would have been committed. Which story would you run in your hometown newspaper paper?

    But even that isn’t really the point. When a law-abiding citizen scares off a would-be criminal by brandishing a legal firearm, journalists don’t typically wrestle with its newsworthiness for the simple reason that such cases are reported to neither the police nor the press. That’s why rigorous social science studies are necessary – the precise kind the CDC is censoring to benefit special interests.

    Unfortunately, Democrats in Congress have earmarked the $100 million in research funding for public health researchers who are far to the left on gun control compared to criminologists or economists.

    The CDC keeps making decisions based on politics, not science. It has shown that it is not able to divorce political views from decisions about who to fund. But, as researchers know all too well, the CDC isn’t unique. The government just can’t keep politics out of funding decisions.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/21/2022 – 21:40

  • Chinese Stocks Decouple From World Most Since 2001
    Chinese Stocks Decouple From World Most Since 2001

    By Ye Xie, Bloomberg markets live reporter and strategist

    This year marks another turbulent period for Chinese markets. It also highlights a striking feature: Chinese stocks are more isolated from the rest of the world than they’ve been for more than two decades.

    For some investors, that underscores the diversification benefit of investing in China. For others, the unique risks strengthen the argument for carving out China from the rest of emerging markets.

    Even with a rally over the past month, Chinese stocks remain among global underperformers this year. The MSCI China Index has lost 26%, compared with a decline of 19% of the MSCI all-country index.

    Plus, volatility has been high throughout the year, punctuated by the Shanghai lockdown, tension around Taiwan and skepticism toward China’s new leadership following the Party Congress. Adding to these local market drivers, China is the only major economy that lowered borrowing costs.

    With these idiosyncratic risks, it’s not surprising that the Chinese markets are increasingly out of sync with the rest of the world. The annual correlation between the MSCI China Index and MSCI’s global benchmark has dropped to 0.22, a level last seen in 2001 when China joined the World Trade Organization. In the bond market, 10-year bond government yields rose only 12 basis points, while US Treasury notes with same maturity jumped more than 200 basis points.

    The low correlation has long been seen as one of the attractiveness for investing in China. On the flip side, it also strengthens the case to treat China as a standalone asset class.

    Since the US-China trade war in 2018, the chorus for separating China from the rest emerging markets has grown louder. For starters, China, was simply too big. Even with the decline in recent years, China still accounts for about 30% of the MSCI emerging markets index. Secondly, some investors already have exposure through dedicated China funds. With China as a big chunk of the emerging market index, investors may have exposed to the country more than they want.

    More importantly, Beijing is seeking to reduce its reliance on foreign countries in strategic industries, such as semiconductors, and in capital markets amid the tension with the West. That means China’s industrial, monetary and fiscal policy cycles may be different from the others.

    That separation trend is already clear. The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ex China ETF attracted a record $577 million in November, one month after President Xi Jinping installed his allies in the leadership at the Party Congress. Until 2021, the fund was struggling attracting investors.

    Next year, China is expected to be the only major economy to see its growth pick up. If materialized, it will again showcase the need to invest China differently.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/21/2022 – 21:00

  • Facing Demographic Doom, China's Army Of Retirees Returns To Work In Post "Zero-Covid" Economic Wasteland
    Facing Demographic Doom, China’s Army Of Retirees Returns To Work In Post “Zero-Covid” Economic Wasteland

    The myth of the US labor shortage is about to come crashing down courtesy of the Philadelphia Fed (just as we have been warning for months), but it is about to be replaced with the stark reality of China’s all too real lack of workers.

    Consider the following story from the SCMP: two years after Zhao Yanfang’s mandatory retirement from her blue-collar job in the canteen of a state-owned enterprise, the 52-year-old is back to work – this time at a noodle restaurant in Beijing. On a recent slow day, she taps buttons on a mobile device, inputting orders for patrons who present various coupons acquired through different channels – including the company’s own app, and food-delivery platforms – while reading off the day’s specials for dine-in customers.

    “It’s all for the sake of my son,” she says, explaining how the father of her twin grandchildren lost his job during the pandemic. “Were it not for supporting his family, I would never have bothered working after retirement, trying to learn this complicated ordering system.

    “I thought my three decades of work experience would be enough for waitressing. I didn’t expect it would be so challenging.”

    Zhao is among the millions of China’s retirees who have re-entered the job market or are looking to do so as the financial burden on Chinese families mounts from the government’s disruptive zero-Covid strategy that has crippled business and hammered the economy. Beijing has also been encouraging retirees to return to work as the rapidly aging country faces a long-term decline in its workforce.

    China’s working-age population, aged 16-64, is forecast to drop by 35 million over the next five years and to plunge by more than 60% over the next eight decades, according to a report released by the United Nations in July. At the end of 2020, there were 264 million people over the age of 60 in mainland China, and that total is projected to surge to 400 million and account for more than 30% of China’s population by 2035, according to the National Health Commission.

    With fewer workers contributing to the public pension system, and with a growing number of seniors to be supported, China’s urban state pension fund – similar to the US social security fund – could be out of money by 2035, according to a 2019 projection by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (also similar to the social security).

    One problem that looks to finally be addressed is China’s decades-long adherence to mandatory retirement ages: 60 for men, 55 for female office workers and 50 for female blue-collar workers. The ages date back to a time when life expectancy at birth in China was nearly half of what it is today, and demographic and labor experts have long argued that they need to be raised, especially for women.

    In February, China’s State Council confirmed that it would gradually start pushing back its long-mandated retirement ages in the coming years, in line with Beijing’s plans to better accommodate the needs of the elderly and adjust to new realities stemming from the nation’s rapidly ageing population.

    President Xi Jinping reiterated that sentiment in his report delivered during the 20th party congress in October, when he said China would “gradually push back the legal retirement age”. Though few details of the plan have been released, the State Council said changes would “gradually” be made during the country’s current 14th five-year plan (2021-25).

    Meanwhile, China’s state media campaign has been promoting the value of working longer to achieve one’s career ambitions. And the government launched a special website in August to match elderly jobseekers with potential employers, with McDonald’s being among the first to recruit retirement-aged waitstaff in Beijing, with a posted salary of up to 3,500 yuan (US$488) per month for a full-time job with 40 hours a week.

    “Longer life expectancies, as well as fewer workers per older person, are increasing the financial burden of pension payments,” said Joseph Chamie, an international demographer and former director of the UN’s Population Division. “To offset those rising costs, as well as the declining labor forces, governments worldwide are considering raising their official age of retirement.”

    It’s not just China that is stealthily seeking to devalue retirement age: last year, Japan approved bills requiring companies to retain their workers until they are 70 years old, effectively raising the retirement age from 65 to 70. Germany plans to increase its state pension age from 65 to 67, but not until 2031. And in France, the official age of retirement is 62 – low among the 38 member countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. This year, the government attempted to incentivise people to continue working until 65, but the proposal naturally set off strikes.

    “China’s retirement ages for men and women are relatively low compared with many other countries,” Chamie said. “Delaying retirement encourages workers to remain in the labor force. I expect that more of China’s older population will be working in the next one or two decades. Due to age-related differences in education and skills across the Chinese population, I suspect that the majority of China’s elderly in the labor force will be working in low-level manufacturing and services sectors.”

    What a prospect: a generation of geriatric McDonalds line cooks and waiters.

    Remarkably, more than two-thirds of Chinese at retirement age are keen to re-enter the workforce, according to a report last month by Chinese recruitment platform 51jobs.com. It did not provide the survey size perhaps because it is as “real” as any “data” out of China.

    A total of 68% of older people said they had a strong desire to be employed after reaching retirement age, whether out of financial necessity or a desire to stay busy. The service and labor-intensive manufacturing sectors were the most popular areas for them to seek employment, especially among those lacking qualifications, the survey showed.

    Meanwhile, China’s reputation as the “factory of the world” was built largely on the backs of young migrant workers who left their rural hometowns for opportunities in bustling export hubs. However, over the last decade, the average age of migrant workers in China has increased steadily, as fewer young people enter the workforce and older workers with no pension protection are forced to continue working.

    China had 292 million migrant workers as of last year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. The average age was 41.7 years, compared with 34 years in 2008. More than a quarter of all migrant workers are now over the age of 50. And more than half are over 40, compared with just over a third in 2010.

    Kent Huang, a second-generation businessman in Guangdong province who produces hardware and furniture for export, said there are many workers aged over 40 in factories in southern China’s Pearl River Delta.

    “There are about 200 workers in my factory, and 80 per cent of them are in their mid-forties or early fifties, and it’s rare to see young manufacturing workers in their twenties,” Huang said.

    The older workers get paid about the same as their younger peers. All are hired for piecework, not on a monthly wage, he said. When the pandemic and China’s stringent curbs have crippled global demand, they have borne the brunt.

    “Due to the epidemic and globally sluggish demand, workers’ income is actually much lower than last year. Many factories nearby have had to lay off workers,” Huang said. “Order volume has plummeted to less than 40 per cent of last year. Those female workers in their late 40s will be among the first required to take compulsory leave with minimum wage, which is far from enough to cover their living cost in urban areas, let alone support their families in their hometowns.”

    Lu Zhou, an operations director at an original equipment manufacturer in Taicang in the eastern province of Jiangsu, said that for traditional manufacturing, such as shoes and garments, there can be an advantage in hiring older workers who are more likely to “cherish the job, unlike young people who jump ship very easily”.

    “But, of course, in those industries that are accelerating technological upgrades, older workers struggle to find a place. They generally flow into the service industry that does not require new skills, or into the low-end traditional manufacturing industry,” he said.

    Helen Wu, a founding partner of the Sunshine Immensity headhunting service in Beijing, said that it is rare to see people older than 50 selected for high-end positions: “In my 14-year career as a headhunter, chances of high-end positions have been few and far between for the elderly, unless they are well-connected or former senior executives,” Wu said.

    “While China is emphasizing ‘high-quality’ development and has reduced the importance attached to GDP growth, the job prospects for most elderly will not be very rosy in the next decade, given that competition in China’s job market is already so intense,” she said.

    Huang Wenzheng, a demographer who has written extensively on China’s birth rate and labour issues, said it was a harsh reality that many retirees must continue working to support their families.

    “However, the elderly shouldn’t be pushed to work just to increase the labour force. People live to enjoy their life, not to work for the sake of work,” Huang said and stressed the importance of boosting China’s falling fertility rate, which fell to just 1.15 last year from 2.6 in the late 1980s and remains well below the replacement level of 2.1 needed for a stable population.

    By comparison, the fertility rate in the United States is 1.6 births per woman, while in ageing Japan it is 1.3.

    “The government should increase welfare for workers and couples with children,” Huang said of Beijing. “The ageing problem can only be eased by improving couples’ willingness to give birth.”

    Of course, such willingness will only come if future parents are optimistic about the economic prospects both for them and their children. And that, unlike everything else in China, can not be faked which is why China is about to slip into the demographic spiral of doom.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/21/2022 – 20:40

  • Zelensky Appeals For Tanks & Warplanes, Invokes FDR's "Absolute Victory", Before Enthusiastic Congress
    Zelensky Appeals For Tanks & Warplanes, Invokes FDR’s “Absolute Victory”, Before Enthusiastic Congress

    Summary: Zelensky spoke for a little over 30 minutes and in English, at times invoking key US historical moments from the Battle of Saratoga to the Battle of the Bulge (and comparing the courage of Ukrainian soldiers), after he was greeted as a ‘hero’ in a minutes-long standing ovation. He asserted that Ukraine is winning “against all odds”. He was throughout frequently interrupted by standing ovations from a partially filled Congress, which was missing a lot of Republicans, in part given a number of lawmakers had already traveled home for the holidays ahead of the unexpected in-person visit, and facing incoming severe weather.

    Zelensky peppered the speech with positive and optimistic statements like “Ukraine holds its lines and will never surrender,” and “but our defense forces stand” – especially offering the latest example of Bakhmut, in the Donbas. As expected, a major theme was the need for continued US support, for which he thanked the Biden administration, Congress, and the American people.

    “The occupiers have an advantage in artillery and much more heavy equipment like tanks and airplanes,” he began a section of the address in which he appealed for continued aid. “Your support is crucial… to get to the turning point on the battlefield.”

    “We have artillery, is it enough? Not really.” He explained that Ukraine needs enough ammo and weapons to be able to completely expel Russian forces from Ukrainian territory. He also spoke of the misery that Russian-operated Iranian drones are unleashing on the civilian population in attacking energy infrastructure. “I would like to thank you for the financial packages,” he said, and followed with: “Your money is not charity” but an investment in “global security” that Ukraine will “handle in the most responsible way.”

    Among the more interesting statements was the moment he indirectly pressed for the US to provide tanks and warplanes. While he stressed that Ukraine has never asked American troops to fight on Ukraine’s behalf on its soil, he asserted: “I can assure you that Ukrainian soldiers can perfectly operate American tanks and planes themselves.” 

    On the potential for a negotiated peace, he called attention of his prior “10-point plan” which he said should be implemented (and which Russia previously firmly rejected), and which he said Biden approved of during the Wednesday meeting at the White House.

    Zelensky additionally called on Congress to join Ukraine in bringing every Russian “criminal” to justice. “Let the terrorist state” be held accountable, he said. He emphasized millions of Ukrainians will have no heating or water as they celebrate Christmas. 

    “Only victory!” he stressed near the end of the speech, and also quoted from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous “Day of Infamy” speech. “The American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory,” Zelensky said, and followed by pledging that Ukraine too will achieve “absolute victory.” 

    Meanwhile in Moscow…

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    * * *

    Update (1920): Zelensky is expected to make an “appeal to the American people” – as he previewed earlier – at 1940ET. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in welcoming him about an hour ago to the Capitol building compared the Ukrainian leader to Winston Churchill. Watch live:

    Throughout the afternoon, CNN’s live coverage has been talking a lot about the below tweet by Donald Trump Jr…

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    * * *

    Summary: President Biden in his written remarks read aloud turned to Zelensky to assure “you haven’t stood alone” and that the United States “will stand with you”. He said Putin is escalating by targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure, including “targeting orphanages and schools.” A key theme throughout the remarks is the US belief that Putin will “fail” and that Ukraine will have continued “success” on the battlefield with US help.

    Biden further pointed out it’s been 300 days since Putin launched an “unprovoked, unjustified all-out assault” on Ukraine, part of the “imperial appetites of autocrats”. Interestingly, Biden affirmed that even before the invasion the US was helping Ukraine to prepare to defend itself. 

    Biden hailed that the Ukrainian military has “won” in the battles for Kyiv, Kherson and Kharkiv. Biden additionally claimed Zelensky is “open” to pursuing a just peace while Putin is not. Further, continued unreserved support was pledged, with no hint of peace talks or a ceasefire…

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    “I look forward to signing the omnibus bill soon which includes $45 billion for Ukraine,” Biden said, while also unveiling 1.8 billion of security assistance that includes both direct transfers as well as contracts for future ammo supplies. In total, it will constitute “$2.2 billion in new support,” Biden said. The package will include a patriot missile battery, Biden said, as previewed. While emphasizing that Patriot systems will be a “critical asset” for Ukraine, he admitted that training “may take some time”. Biden as expected also stressed the “defensive” nature of the Patriot system.

    Biden further in the Q&A said that Putin had “strengthened NATO” with the decision to invade.

    AFP

    Zelensky for his part, said he’s “thankful” for all that the American people have done, and that this is currently a “historic” visit. He said he’s especially “grateful” to President Biden for his strong stance in support of Ukraine. Every dollar of this investment is toward “strengthening global security,” Zelensky said. He repeatedly referred to “terrorist” Russia and its decision to invade, based on “tyranny”. He pledged that ultimately Ukraine will “win” – and that “we will win together”. 

    Biden pledged during the press conference that US support will remain “for as long as it takes”. 

    * * *

    Update (1425ET): Watch live as President Biden kicks off a joint press conference with Zelensky.

    * * *

    Update(1340ET): Zelensky has arrived on a large Air Force jet. He’s expected to soon meet Biden at the White House, after which there will be a joint presser at 1630ET.

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    * * *

    Update(10:45ET): Zelensky is reportedly arriving to Washington D.C. aboard a US Air Force plane, according to US officials cited in CNN, after taking a high risk train ride into Poland. White House national security communications coordinator John Kirby said of the impending visit with President Biden, “The President really believes that as we approach winter, as we enter … a new phase in this war, of Mr. Putin’s aggression, that this is a good time for the two leaders to sit down face to face and talk.” But this is how Reuters somewhat cynically previewed the visit: 

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy headed to Washington on Wednesday to meet President Joe Biden, address Congress and seek “weapons, weapons and more weapons” in his first overseas trip since Russia invaded Ukraine 300 days ago.

    Surprisingly, the Associated Press additionally highlighted the latest video address by Zelensky, who yesterday while visiting a frontline fighting area in Bakhmut, said the following at a moment Congress is set to to approve $45 billion more in aid for Ukraine in the proposed massive omnibus package:

    “We will pass it on from the boys to the Congress, to the president of the United States. We are grateful for their support, but it is not enough. It is a hint — it is not enough,” Zelensky said.

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    The US is about to reach $100 billion in total aid committed to Ukraine, and as Glenn Greenwald points out, this far surpasses the total current Russian military budget…

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    And yet Zelensky and the constant refrain of top Ukrainian officials has been essentially that despite the blank check approach of the Biden administration, it is never enough. Apparently even the mainstream media is beginning to recognize this.

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    However, over at CNN Zelensky is being compared to Winston Churchill…

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    * * *

    With Ukraine’s Zelensky reportedly in the air en route to Washington where he’s is to deliver a “very special” in-person speech to US lawmakers, it’s being widely reported Wednesday morning that President Biden is expected to announce the US will deliver the Patriot missile defense system, along with another $2 billion in defense aid.

    An admin official quoted in Axios said Zelensky’s visit to Washington is expected to last just “a few short hours,” and marks the first known trip the Ukrainian leader has taken outside the country since the war began. He’s expected to hold an “in-depth, strategic discussion” with Biden, and the Congressional address is set for 7:30pm EST.

    During Zelensky’s March virtual address to Congress, via CNN.

    The unnamed official further said the White House wants to put on a “big show of bipartisan support for Zelensky” in hopes of shoring up political “momentum” for continued assistance to Kiev, which is also coming in the form of the enormous omnibus spending package which includes $45 billion in military, economic, and other foreign aid to Ukraine.

    White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement that the Ukrainian president’s visit will be received with “strong, bipartisan support for Ukraine.”

    She said “The visit will underscore the United States’ steadfast commitment to supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes, including through the provision of economic, humanitarian, and military assistance.”

    Zelensky in the meantime tweeted confirmation while en route…

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    Meanwhile, some initial reaction coming out of Moscow…

    • PUTIN: INTERBALLISTIC MISSILES SARMAT WILL BE DEPLOYED FOR COMBAT DUTY IN NEAREST FUTURE
    • RUSSIAN DEFENCE MINISTER SHOIGU: WE ARE READY FOR TALKS
    • RUSSIAN DEFENCE MINISTER SHOIGU: JOINT FORCES OF WEST ARE FIGHTING RUSSIA IN UKRAINE
    • WEST TRIES TO OVERLOOK NUCLEAR BLACKMAIL, INCLUDING OVER ZAPORIZHZHIA NUCLEAR POWER STATION
    • WEST TRIES TO DRAG ON THE FIGHTING IN UKRAINE
    • RUSSIAN DEFENCE MINISTER SHOIGU: WE ARE FIGHTING TO SAVE PEOPLE IN UKRAINE FROM GENOCIDE AND TERROR
    • MILITARY POTENTIAL OF UKRAINE IS BEING DESTROYED

    It will be interesting to see whether Zelensky’s appearance before Congress is greeted with the same level of enthusiasm from all corners of the GOP.

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    developing…

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/21/2022 – 20:40

  • ABC's Martha Raddatz Under Fire Over Abbott Interview
    ABC’s Martha Raddatz Under Fire Over Abbott Interview

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    There is an interesting controversy this week after ABC’s Martha Raddatz took Texas GOP Governor Greg Abbott to task for public comments about the open Southern border as fueling the crisis. Raddatz is being criticized for her claim that President Joe Biden has never encouraged migrants to come over the border — a statement that many objected to as demonstrably false. However, I am more interested in a different aspect of her remarks: the objection to Abbott’s language. It is the type of objection that one finds from a system of state media where the narrative is supposed to be replicated and uniform.

    Abbott has criticized the Biden administration’s “open-border policies” and Raddatz immediately objected to that language in her interview:

    You talk about the border wall, you talk about open borders, I don’t think I’ve ever heard President Biden say, ‘We have an open border, come on over.” But people I have heard say it are you, are former President Trump, Ron DeSantis. That message reverberates in Mexico and beyond. So, they do get the message that it is an open border.”

    Critics immediately pointed out past Biden comments criticized as seemingly encouraging such border crossers: 

    “They deserve to be heard. That’s who we are. We’re a nation that says, ‘If you want to flee, and you’re fleeing oppression, you should come.’”

    They also point out that Raddatz herself was told by one border crosser that he “basically” made the trip because Biden was elected.

    However, it was the objection to the use of divergent language that was equally striking. ABC and other mainstream media sites have been accused of echoing the narrative of the Biden Administration and largely ignoring (until recently) the crisis at the southern border. Those who raise the issue have been denounced as exaggerating or inventing a crisis.

    Raddatz’s interview is reminiscent of the interview by Leslie Stahl on CBS with former President Donald Trump where she shutdown Trump referring to the spying on this campaign by declaring that there is no evidence of such spying. There was already ample evidence of such spying, but Stahl simply told viewers that it was untrue.

    The Raddatz interview raises again the danger of a de facto state media where media echoes the position of the government by choice rather than coercion. Her objection was that Abbott and others keep referring to a crisis when the Administration and mainstream media do not use such terms. As a journalist, she is objecting to a public official in a border state calling out a crisis as thousands pour over his border on a daily basis.

    Raddatz’s objection was notably virtually identical to the talking point put out by the White House.

    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has declared “It would be wrong to think the border is open. It is not open.” She added “anyone who suggests otherwise is simply doing the work of these smugglers who, again, are spreading misinformation which is very dangerous.”

    It is unclear what Raddatz is suggesting. Was the governor of Texas supposed to stop responding to the outcry of border cities to the massive influx? Was he supposed to insist that the border is not open as videos show hundreds just walking over the border?

    Raddatz is an accomplished journalist and I have great respect for her career. We can all craft questions or comments poorly. However, the concern is that this interview occurred in the context of ABC and other networks steadfastly ignoring the growing crisis at the border.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/21/2022 – 20:20

  • Florida's Citrus Crop In Danger As "Arctic Front Screams" Across Deep South
    Florida’s Citrus Crop In Danger As “Arctic Front Screams” Across Deep South

    Widespread cold air is already pouring into the Plains and Deep South. This cold will last through Christmas weekend into early next week and could threaten citrus groves across Florida. 

    America’s top orange juice maker is already battling a record decline in crop this season because of citrus greening, a devastating crop disease, and damage sustained by Hurricane Ian and Tropical Storm Nicole earlier this year. Now a cold blast could damage crops even more. 

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    Bloomberg quoted Paul Markert, a meteorologist with Maxar Technologies Inc., who said South Florida could see temperatures as low as 31 degrees Fahrenheit on Friday.

    World Weather Inc.’s Drew Lerner said computer models are evolving, and temperatures could dip even lower. He said four hours or more of sub-28 degrees could damage citrus crops. He added the cold shot could cause irreversible damage to the state’s cane harvest, much of which still needs to be harvested. 

    Weather Channel meteorologist Jim Cantore tweeted, “You can see the Arctic front scream through the southeast on the 23rd and the COLD just lock in for days afterward. Protect your pipes even into Florida. Yes those are teens in the panhandle!”

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    The decimation of Florida’s citrus crop has caused shortages for beverage makers, including Minute Maid owner Coca-Cola Co. and PAI Partners, which owns Tropicana. This means orange prices at the supermarket will continue to rise. Orange juice futures are near record highs. 

    With Disease, hurricanes, and now cold, Florida’s citrus industry is going through a historic beatdown by Mother Nature. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/21/2022 – 20:00

  • "I Was Shocked": Reno Mayor Sues Private Investigator After Discovering Tracking Device Installed On Vehicle
    “I Was Shocked”: Reno Mayor Sues Private Investigator After Discovering Tracking Device Installed On Vehicle

    Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The mayor of Reno, Nevada, has filed a lawsuit against a private investigator and his company, alleging that he installed a tracking device on her car without her knowledge or consent, leaving her in constant fear.

    Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve speaks during the U.S. Conference of Mayors 90th Annual Meeting at the Peppermill Resort Hotel in Reno, Nev. on June 3, 2022. (Tom R. Smedes/AP Photo/)

    Hillary Schieve, an independent, filed the lawsuit (pdf) against private investigator David McNeely and 5 Alpha Industries in Washoe County’s Second Judicial District Court on Dec. 15.

    The complaint alleges that McNeely, at the request of an “unidentified third party,” trespassed upon Schieve’s private property and “surreptitiously installed a sophisticated GPS tracking device on the personal vehicle of Schieve, monitoring her every movement.”

    According to the complaint, the tracking device received minute-by-minute updates of her location, which lawyers for Schieve say was allegedly used to photograph and surveil Schieve, in violation of her privacy.

    This, her lawyers say, caused her significant fear and distress.

    “By tracking her, Defendants exposed Schieve to an unjustified and unwarranted risk of harassment, stalking, and bodily harm,” the lawsuit states.

    Lawyers for Schieve, who was re-elected to a third term as Reno’s mayor last month, said she discovered the device by chance after a mechanic noticed it while he was working on her car.

    “Upon information and belief, Defendants not only installed GPS tracking devices on Schieve’s vehicle but also installed similar tracking devices on the vehicles of multiple other prominent community members,” the lawsuit states, without providing further evidence.

    The lawsuit is seeking at least $15,000 in damages.

    “Defendants intended to cause harm to Plaintiff and knew or recklessly disregarded the reasonable likelihood that the dissemination of Plaintiff’s location could lead to death, bodily injury, harassment, stalking, financial loss, or a substantial life disruption,” the lawsuit states.

    Apple’s AirTag. (Stock photo/Onur Binary/Unsplash)

    ‘I Honestly Felt Sick to My Stomach’

    Schieve, via her mechanic, discovered the device on her vehicle two weeks before the latest election was held, according to The Nevada Independent.

    She then took the device to local police, who identified McNeely as the individual who had purchased the tracker.

    “I was shocked. I honestly felt sick to my stomach,” Schieve, who filed the lawsuit as a private citizen, told the publication. “I would never want this to happen to a family member, a young girl. It’s an invasion of privacy. It’s stalking. It’s just super alarming.”

    In a statement released after the complaint was filed on Thursday, lead attorney Adam Hosmer-Henner with McDonald Carano told the publication that his office would continue to aggressively search for the individual or individuals who hired the private investigator.

    He added that the lawsuit is based on what he called an “outrageous” invasion of privacy.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/21/2022 – 19:40

  • Media Downplays Gun-Carrying "Good Samaritan" Who Stopped Mass Shooting At Amazon Facility
    Media Downplays Gun-Carrying “Good Samaritan” Who Stopped Mass Shooting At Amazon Facility

    Liberal mainstream media outlets have downplayed, yet again, another story about a good guy with a gun preventing a mass shooting. 

    That’s precisely what happened last Wednesday when a man was hailed as a “good Samaritan” by police after he stopped an active shooter at an Amazon Flex Warehouse in Chandler, Arizona, according to FOX 10 Phoenix. 

    Bryton Bobbitt, a contracted Amazon worker, told reporters he was preparing for his delivery route when he heard gunfire: 

    “All of a sudden, just hear pop, pop, pop. [I] start looking around, like where did that come from? A few of our other workers started running.

    “I was already in my work van, I put it in gear and tried to find a safe place and got out of here.”

    Meanwhile, a second Amazon worker, who was armed, saw the shooter, 29-year-old Jacob Murphy, attempt to enter the building before shooting an employee. The shooter was a non-employee searching for a person at the facility over “jealousy issues” regarding his girlfriend. 

    That’s when the armed Amazon worker went into action and fired at Murphy, wounding him. The shooter instantly dropped to the ground, likely preventing further bloodshed. Then the armed Amazon worker rushed over to the individual who the suspect shot until first responders arrived on the scene. 

    “Murphy was pronounced deceased due to a self-inflicted gunshot wound and gunfire,” Sgt. Jason McClimans told reporters. 

    Police said the victim who Murphy first shot “is still recovering and will survive.” Officials also noted that the employee who shot the suspect cooperated with the investigation and was not considered an additional suspect, adding that the person was a “good Samaritan.” 

    Gun Owners of America commented on the story:

    “Thankfully, Arizona is a Constitutional Carry state, and as a result, this Good Samaritan was ready and able to defend himself and others at a moment’s notice in a dangerous situation. GOA will continuously work to ensure that everyone is fully able to exercise their God-given right to self-defense.”  

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

    The left-leaning media has repeatedly emphasized good guys with guns won’t make society safer. Well, that’s not the case here. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/21/2022 – 19:20

  • The Global Economy Is Finally Realizing That Fossil Fuels Are Finite
    The Global Economy Is Finally Realizing That Fossil Fuels Are Finite

    Authored by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World blog,

    The problem is hitting limits in the extraction of fossil fuels

    We know that historically, many economies around the world have collapsed. We also know that there is a physics reason why this happens. Growing economies require a growing supply of energy to keep up with a growing population. At some point, the energy supply and other resource needs cannot grow rapidly enough to keep up with population growth. When this happens, economies tend to collapse.

    In their book Secular Cycles, researchers Peter Turchin and Sergey Nefedov found that economies tend go through four distinct phases in each cycle, with each stage lasting for quite a few years:

    1. Growth

    2. Stagflation

    3. Crisis

    4. Inter-cycle

    Based on my own analysis, the world economy was in the Growth Stage for much of the time between the Industrial Revolution and 1973. In late 1973, oil prices spiked, and the world was put on notice that the energy supply could not continue rising as rapidly as in the past. Between 1973 and 2018, the world economy was in the Stagflation Stage. Based on current data, the world economy seems to have entered the Crisis Stage about 2018. This is the reason for saying that headwinds are beginning to hold the economy back in the title of this article .

    When the Crisis Stage occurs, there are fewer goods and services per capita to go around, so some participants in the world economy must come out behind. Conflict of all kinds becomes more likely. Political leaders, if they happen to discover the predicament the world economy is in, have little interest in making the predicament known to voters, since doing so would likely lead them to lose the next election.

    Instead, the way the physics-based self-organizing economic system works is that alternative narratives that frame the situation in a less frightening way gain popularity. Political leaders may not even be aware of how dependent today’s economy is on fossil fuels. Researchers may not be aware that their “scientific” models are misleading because they look at too small a portion of the overall system and make unwarranted assumptions.

    In this post, I show evidence that the economy is reaching energy limits. In the last section, I explain how my view differs from the standard narrative, which says that there is almost an unlimited amount of fossil fuels available to burn, if we choose to utilize these fossil fuels. According to this view, humans can prevent climate change by voluntarily moving away from fossil fuels.

    The standard narrative proposes a reasonable plan for citizens of parts of the world without adequate fossil fuels (cut back on buying fossil fuels), but without telling citizens what the real problem is. The standard narrative also gives the impression that there is a near-term clean energy alternative. In my opinion, this is wishful thinking for the reasons I describe in Sections [6] and [7]. Section [2] also sheds light on the reasonableness of moving to renewable energy.

    [1] The world has been warned, at least twice, that collapse might occur about now.

    Back in the 1950s, several physicists, including M. King Hubbert, became interested in the limits that the world was up against. The military became interested in the problem, as well. In 1957, Admiral Hyman Rickover of the US Navy gave a very insightful speech. One thing Admiral Rickover said was, “With high energy consumption goes a high standard of living.” Another thing he said was, “A reduction of per capita energy consumption has always in the past led to a decline in civilization and a reversion to a more primitive way of life.”

    Regarding the future, he said,

    For it is an unpleasant fact that according to our best estimates, total fossil fuel reserves recoverable at not over twice today’s unit cost are likely to run out at some time between the years 2000 and 2050, if present standards of living and population growth rates are taken into account. 

    The issue Admiral Rickover is pointing out is that as extraction costs rise, fossil fuels become increasingly unaffordable. If citizens cannot afford food, housing, and other basic goods made with high-cost fossil fuels, those fossil fuels will be left in the ground. If politicians try to pass the high cost of extraction on to consumers, it will cause inflation. Citizens will become unhappy with politicians and will vote them out of office. This is basically our problem today.

    A second analysis that pointed to the current time frame for the world hitting fossil fuel limits is given in the 1972 book, The Limits To Growth by Donella Meadows and others. This analysis used computer modeling to look at several alternative future scenarios, considering resources available and population trends. The base scenario showed resource limits in general hitting sometime around 2020. The economy would collapse over a period of years after resource limits were hit.

    [2] The Industrial Revolution in England is an example of how an economy changes for the better when fossil fuel energy is added.

    Figure 1 shows a chart E. A. Wrigley shows in his book, Energy and the English Industrial Revolution:

    Figure 1. Annual energy consumption per head (megajoules) in England and Wales 1561-70 to 1850-9 and in Italy 1861-70. Figure by Wrigley

    Wrigley observes that when coal was added to the economy, it was possible to make far more metal tools than had been made in the past. With the use of metal tools instead of wood tools, farmers could be three times as productive. Thus, there didn’t need to be as many farmers, freeing some farmers for other occupations. Also, roads to coal mines were paved, in an era when few roads were paved. These paved roads were beneficial to other businesses and to the economy as a whole.

    Another reason for coal to be of interest was because of increased deforestation near cities, as the population grew. This deforestation led to a need to transport firewood over long distances. Coal was more compact, and so easier to transport. Furthermore, the use of coal prevented having to cut down as many trees, helping the environment.

    Figure 1 shows that energy from wind and water were only a tiny part of the economy, both before and after coal was added. They did not directly provide heat energy, which was a significant share of what the economy needed at that time.

    [3] The period between the end of World War II and 1973 was another period when energy consumption per capita was rising rapidly. We might say the economy then had an “energy tailwind.”

    Figure 2 shows that US energy consumption per capita was rising rapidly in the 1949 to 1973 period. Growing oil, coal and natural gas consumption all contributed to the overall rise in fossil fuel use.

    Figure 2. Energy consumption by type of energy, on a per capita basis. Energy amounts as provided by US EIA data. Population based on 2022 United Nations population estimates by country.

    In fact, BP data (only available from 1965 onward) shows energy consumption per capita rising for most parts of the world between 1965 and 1973. During this period, oil, coal and natural gas consumption per capita were all rising.

    Figure 3. Energy consumption per capita from 1965 to 1973 for selected parts of the world based on BP’s 2022 Statistical Review of World Energy.

    A major thing that pushed oil consumption along was its low price (Figure 4). According to BP data, the inflation-adjusted price was only $11.99 per barrel in 1970. In 1971, it averaged $14.30 per barrel. The comparable price today is about $79 per barrel.

    Figure 4. World oil production and Brent equivalent price, adjusted for inflation to 2021, based on BP’s 2022 Statistical Review of World Energy.

    The average price for 1973 rose to the equivalent of $19.73 per barrel, which is still incredibly low relative to today’s prices. It is an annual average price, reflecting a low price at the beginning of the year and a much higher price toward the end of the year.

    There were multiple issues behind the rise in oil prices, starting at the end of 1973. Part of the problem was the fact that US oil production began to fall in 1971, necessitating the use of more imported oil, year after year. Another issue was that world oil production could not keep up with the high demand, given the low price that oil was selling for. The Office of the Historian of the US writes the following:

    By 1973, OPEC had demanded that foreign oil corporations increase prices and cede greater shares of revenue to their local subsidiaries. In April, the Nixon administration announced a new energy strategy to boost domestic production to reduce U.S. vulnerability to oil imports and ease the strain of nationwide fuel shortages. That vulnerability would become overtly clear in the fall of that year.

    Without higher oil prices, it would be hard for local producers to make the investments needed to ramp up production. Also, taxes for governments in the areas where the oil was produced were falling too low, given the low prices that oil was selling for on the international market. Indirectly because of these problems, but supposedly also because of support for Israel by certain countries in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the Arab members of OPEC initiated an oil embargo. This embargo cut off exports to the US, Netherlands, Portugal, and South Africa from November 1973 until March 1974. It was at that time that world oil prices rose to a much higher level, and oil consumption per capita began to fall.

    One thing that is striking about the period between World War II and 1973 is the huge advances in wages made by both the bottom 90% and the top 10% (Figure 5).

    Figure 5. Chart comparing income gains by the top 10% to income gains by the bottom 90% by economist Emmanuel Saez. Based on an analysis of IRS data, published in Forbes.

    Between 1948 and 1968, inflation-adjusted income of both the bottom 90% and the top 10% increased by roughly 80%. This meant that many people in the bottom 90% could afford to buy cars and their own homes for the first time. Even in the period between 1968 and 1982, inflation-adjusted incomes kept up with inflation, something that low-income earners today have difficulty with. It was not until after about 1982 that wage disparity started to increase.

    Most people remember the 1950s and 1960s as a favorable period for ordinary workers. Because of the higher wages of ordinary citizens and growing US manufacturing capabilities, the number of cars registered in the US rose from 25.8 million in 1945 to 75.3 million in 1965. The US initiated the 41,000 mile Interstate Highway System in 1956, so that auto owners would have multilane, limited access roads to travel on.

    Electricity was sold in a conservative way, called the Utility Pricing System, which would hopefully assure that the whole system would be properly maintained. Utilities were typically owners of electricity generation units, plus all other local infrastructure, including transmission lines. Each utility would compute a total required rate for all its needs, including enough funds to install new generating capacity, provide fuel, and install and maintain transmission lines. A government regulator would approve the rates, but there was no real competition.

    [4] In the period between 1973 and 2018, many changes were to increase energy efficiency and to lower the perceived cost to users. Unfortunately, some of these changes, when taken to the extremes they were taken to later in the period, tended to make the economy brittle and thus more subject to collapse.

    Up until 1973, oil was being put to uses for which substitution could easily be made. One of these was electricity generation; another was home heating. An easy change in electricity generation was to build new generating facilities using an alternate fuel (coal, natural gas, or nuclear). Home heating could often be changed to natural gas or electricity.

    Also, Japan already had automobiles that were smaller and more fuel efficient than American automobiles. These could be substituted for some of the large cars produced in the US.

    Especially with the Reagan and Thatcher administrations starting shortly after 1980, there was more interest in cutting costs in electricity generation. “Competitive rating” instead of utility rating became popular in places where electricity prices were high. Utilities were broken up, and the various parts were encouraged to compete.

    Of course, competitive rating, when taken to its extreme, can lead to the neglect of infrastructure. It was recently reported that California’s utility company, Pacific Gas and Electric, now finds that it must raise $50 billion for wildfire prevention, after years of neglecting maintenance on the long distance transmission lines used for hydroelectric generation and other long distance transmission. Now it needs to raise money to bury many of these lines underground.

    It has long been known that added complexity can be helpful in working around problems of inadequate energy supply. Complexity involves many things including using more advanced technology and international trade. It involves bigger organizations to take advantage of economies of scale. It tends to require higher education for at least some of its workers.

    One major disadvantage of growing complexity is the increasing wage disparity it tends to produce. Wages for less educated workers often fall quite low. Work in whole industries may disappear overseas, leaving workers to start over, in new lines of work, at lower pay scales.

    Unfortunately, having many workers at low wages tends to push an economy toward collapse. The big issue is that these workers cannot afford goods like cars and new homes. Their lack of purchasing power tends to hold down commodity prices, such as the price of fossil fuels. Prices don’t rise high enough to justify new investment to raise production, so production slows down and eventually stops.

    Another approach that gained popularity starting about 1981 was the increased use of debt and more exotic financial approaches. Interest rates were very high in 1981. Central banks could make monthly payments for goods such as homes and cars more affordable by lowering interest rates. This approach works for a while, but it reaches limits when interest rates fall too low relative to inflation rates. Furthermore, if an economy slows down, a major increase in debt defaults becomes likely, as became clear in 2008. With the high level of debt in the world economy today, the default problem could become even worse in 2023 or 2024 than it was in 2008, if the economy slows again.

    [5] Since 2015, oil and natural gas investments have remained at low levels because oil prices have not been high enough to justify drilling in the remaining places.

    Figure 6. US world oil prices, adjusted to 2021 US$, based on data from BP’s 2022 Statistical Review of World Energy.

    In my opinion, oil companies really need quite high oil prices, probably $120 per barrel or higher, on a consistent basis, to justify drilling in sufficient new locations to ramp up oil production. Since 2014, prices have generally remained far below that level. There was a major drop in oil prices in 2014 and 2015. In response to the lower oil prices, oil and gas companies cut back on investment in “Exploration and Production” (E&P). (Figure 7)

    Figure 7. Global Oil and Gas Exploration and Production Investments in chart by Rystad Energy.

    After a drop in E&P investments, oil production does not drop immediately. Instead, 2018 was the single highest year of oil production. Production looks likely to drop further because of the continued lack of investment (Figure 8).

    Figure 8. Figure 1 from my most recent post. It shows world primary energy consumption per capita based on BP’s 2022 Statistical Review of World Energy.

    [6] If we look across the major types of energy supply, we discover that “Wind and Solar” is the only category rising significantly faster than world population. Others tend to be flat or falling, on a per capita basis.

    Figure 9. Energy per capita worldwide, for selected types of energy, based on data from BP’s 2022 Statistical Review of World Energy.

    In Figure 9, the star performer is the category “Wind + Solar.” The main attraction of wind and solar today is the subsidies they get, and the mandates that require utilities to move away from fossil fuels. Unfortunately, wind and solar really aren’t terribly helpful as far as I can see, except from the point of view of the benefit of the subsidies they provide.

    One of the problems with intermittent wind and solar is that they tend to drive nuclear electricity providers out of business because of the favorable rates they receive when wind and solar are allowed to go first, in competitive rating schemes. With this arrangement, the wholesale rates that nuclear providers receive often fall to negative amounts. Nuclear providers cannot close down for short periods with negative rates, so they tend to need subsidies to remain open. Figure 9 shows that the supply of nuclear electricity has been dropping since at least 2001. In fact, of all the energy types shown on Figure 9, nuclear’s production (relative to population) is dropping fastest.

    In my opinion, our primary energy concern should be food production and transport. Diesel, made from oil, is the major fuel for agriculture. It will be decades before farming machinery and transport of food can be changed over to electricity, assuming this can be done at all. Until this happens, electricity’s role in getting food to the shelves of grocery stores will be limited.

    Solar energy comes primarily in the summer but, unfortunately, in many places, the big need for heat energy is in the winter. People in Europe, with their many wind turbines and solar panels, are worried about possibly freezing in the dark this winter if natural gas supplies prove inadequate. We don’t have batteries for storing solar or wind energy for months on end, so they cannot be counted on for winter heat.

    When homeowners put solar panels on their roofs, the electricity they sell to the utility is often “net metered” (credited with the full retail value of electricity that this home would pay). This is a huge subsidy to the owners of the solar panels because the value of the intermittent electricity to the utility is far less than this, probably closer to the cost of the natural gas or other fuel saved.

    To make up for the loss of revenue caused by the overly generous compensation to solar panel owners, the utility is forced to raise rates for those without solar panels. Studies show that homeowners with solar panels tend to be wealthier than the renters and others who do not have the opportunity to add these subsidized solar panels. Thus, this is an example of a benefit for rich homeowners being paid for by less wealthy buyers of electricity.

    I would also argue that the BP data I used to produce Figure 9 tends to give an overly optimistic view of the value of wind and solar. The approach used indirectly assumes that they fully replace the entire system of dispatchable electricity used today, rather than providing only intermittent electricity. The less generous approach (giving a little less than half as much credit) is used by the International Energy Association and by many researchers.

    Furthermore, solar panels tend to pollute ground water when they are disposed of, so they are not very clean. Wind turbines are noisy, take up farmland, and kill bats and birds, so they have serious drawbacks as well.

    Wind and solar are made and transported using fossil fuels. They cannot last any longer than today’s fossil fuel industry. In fact, roads and transmission lines require fossil fuels to continue. The whole system is likely to go down at approximately the same time.

    It seems to me that the main reason why we hear so much about intermittent wind and solar is because there needs to be a hopeful narrative for politicians to provide to voters, and for educators to provide to students. Otherwise, the situation shown on Figure 9 looks grim. The fact that fossil fuel prices have been spiking in 2022 and regulators are trying to get these prices back down again is testimony to the fact that we are running short of cheap-to-produce fossil fuel energy.

    [7] The incorrect narrative provided by mainstream media (MSM) is that climate change is our worst problem. To lessen this problem, citizens need to move quickly away from fossil fuels and transition to renewables. The real narrative is that we are running short of fossil fuels that can be profitably extracted, and renewables are not adequate substitutes. However, this narrative is too worrisome for most people to handle.

    I expect most readers will say, your view can’t be right. We don’t read this story in the news. All we hear about is climate change and the need to reduce fossil fuel usage to prevent climate change.

    In many ways, the narrative presented by MSM is less frightening to the public than a narrative in which fuels are already being stretched too thin. The MSM narrative sounds like a situation that we can perhaps live with and work around. It sounds like careers that people study for today will be useful in the future. It also sounds like homes, cars and factories built today will be useful in the future.

    One major difference in the MSM view, relative to my view, is with respect to the amounts of fossil fuels that can be extracted. The standard narrative says we will extract all the fossil fuels that we have the technology to extract unless we make a concerted effort not to extract these fuels. For this to happen, demand (a favorite word of economists) must keep rising to keep prices high enough for businesses to want to continue extraction from fields plagued by depletion.

    History shows that when an economy approaches limits, what tends to happen is that demand tends to fall too low. This happens because the physics of the way the economy works: Wage and wealth disparities tend to spike as energy resources are increasingly stretched thin. In fact, the great wealth of the top 1%, relative to that of the remaining 99%, is a major problem in the world today. When increasing wage and wealth disparity occurs, a growing number of poor workers find themselves with inadequate wages to buy food, homes, cars and other goods made with commodities, including oil.

    There are so many of these poor workers that their lack of demand tends to bring down commodity prices without government intervention. If these low wages are not sufficient to hold down commodity prices, politicians will raise interest rates to try to get commodity prices down, so they can be re-elected. It is low fossil fuel prices that will drive fossil fuel providers out of business.

    Of course, another part of the MSM narrative is the view that renewables can save the system. I explained in Section [6] why this cannot be the case for wind and solar. I didn’t say much about hydroelectricity, but it is already built out in most of the developed world. Electricity from hydroelectric plants tends to be intermittent, with the greatest supply coming in the spring, when snow melts. Like wind and solar, hydroelectric generation plants are built and repaired using fossil fuels. These facilities, and their transmission lines, will last only until parts break that cannot be repaired.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/21/2022 – 19:00

  • After Loosening COVID Restrictions, China Mandates Hospitals To Take Regular Virus Samples To Monitor Mutations
    After Loosening COVID Restrictions, China Mandates Hospitals To Take Regular Virus Samples To Monitor Mutations

    All of a sudden China seems content in trying to live with Covid and re-opening the country…it’s funny what happens when your citizens have had enough and decide they are no longer going to put up with it. The softer stance on the virus is coming just weeks after protests rocked major cities in China. 

    As part of China’s “new” policy on how it is dealing with the virus, it is setting up “a nationwide network of hospitals to monitor mutations of the virus”, according to a new report from the South China Morning Post. 

    As the SCMP notes: “Mass PCR testing was cancelled in early December and negative test results are no longer required to return to work or enter public places, including hospitals. There is no encouragement for people to get tested.”

    Now, the country is bracing for new variants of the virus as a result of “waves” of the infection hitting the country in a short period of time, the report says. 

    The Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has now assigned one hospital in each city (with three cities in each province) responsible for collecting “samples from 15 patients in the outpatients and emergency room, 10 from patients with severe illnesses, and all fatalities.”

    Xu Wenbo, director of the China CDC’s National Institute for Viral Disease Control said this week: “This will allow us to monitor in real time the dynamics of the transmission of Omicron in China and the proportion of its various sub-lineages and new strains with potentially altered biological characteristics, including their clinical manifestations, transmissibility and pathogenicity.”

    “This will provide a scientific basis for the development of vaccines and the evaluation of diagnostic tools, including PCR and antigen tests,” he continued. More than 130 Omicron sub-lineages had been detected in China in the past three months, he said. He also predicts that new subvariants will continue to spread and mutations will continue. 

    “As long as it circulates in the crowd, when it replicates, it will mutate,” he concluded.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/21/2022 – 18:40

  • The Sam Bankman-Fried Collapse Is A Paradoxical Sign Of Progress
    The Sam Bankman-Fried Collapse Is A Paradoxical Sign Of Progress

    Authored by John Tammy via RealClear Wire,

    On June 6, 2021 I published a column titled “We’ll Know Crypto Is For Real When Its Coins Start Collapsing.” More than most want to admit or realize, failure is growth. A “market” for crypto money defined by the various “currencies” going up, up, and up is less information pregnant. It’s real, but upward speculation is a signal of many unknowns. A market defined by collapse signals reason and realization entering prices. Information is progress.

    As I point out at the beginning and end of my new book, The Money Confusion, what was true in June of 2021 is true today. Carnage is the life of the crypto industry. It signals long-term staying power as investors get serious about putting the bad out to pasture in favor of the good. History supports this truth, at which point it’s useful to digress, or move sideways.

    In particular, it’s useful to address what has so many up in arms: the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s former blue chip crypto concept, FTX. There’s a view that the latter is a signal of something amiss, and worse, artificial about the whole private money concept. FTX’s decline has birthed endless skepticism.

    Take the Wall Street Journal’s Joseph Sternberg. Sternberg writes that “Easy money fuels speculative manias as surely as night follows day.” But that’s not true. If true, then it would certainly be true that Japan’s economy would have been the face of by endless speculation beginning over 30 years ago as the Bank of Japan went to “zero.” In reality, the Nikkei is still well below highs reached back in 1989.

    From there, Sternberg tacks to the popular notion about a search for yield as “individual savers desperate to find returns poured billions of dollars into cryptocurrency ‘investments’.” See above to understand the limits of such a belief, and then imagine retail investors calling their brokers with “I can’t get enough yield now, so please buy BitcoinBTC for me.” It’s not realistic to believe that retail buyers can move markets in this way. If in possession of such power, then it stands to reason that hedge funds working in concert with one another could forever move markets in any direction desired….Except that they couldn’t. 

    After which, there’s just no evidence of central banks being able to stimulate soaring markets. If they could, the markets and the underlying economy would be so destroyed as to not rate discussion. If anyone doubts the previous truth, just look up the most valuable companies in the year 2000 to see just how awful the U.S. economy would presently be if central bankers could prop up prices artificially in the way that Sternberg seems to suggest.

    The columnist believes that “The greatest financial fiasco so far this business cycle couldn’t have happened without the Fed,” which is Sternberg arguably getting what happened in recent years backwards. More realistically, it’s the happy truth that equity markets routinely reshuffle the flow of capital that speaks to why cryptocurrencies became a thing. Put bluntly, investors would never have found cryptocurrencies if the Fed’s zero rates had pushed “individual investors desperate to find returns” into higher-yielding assets simply because they wouldn’t have needed to. 

    All of which brings us back to Bankman-Fried. While the guess here is that the commentary meant to vilify him today will age as well as that which lionized him not too long ago, and while this column would never condone lying, fraud or theft assuming any of three reveal themselves, the whole FTX saga will ultimately be viewed by sober minds as progress. George Gilder has long referred to what the lazy and simplistic in thought refer to as “bubbles” as “growth spasms.” Exactly. It’s through the production of information that we progress.

    Looking back in time, in the early parts of the 20th century thousands of carmakers or would-be carmakers were matched with capital. Just about every single company created failed. Fast forward to the end of the 20th century, something similar happened with the internet. One supposes Sternberg would find the fingerprints of “the Fed” on both growth spasms, but the happier reality is that copious investment in world-changing technology of the automobile and internet variety thoroughly transformed how we lived and live. Put another way, what Sternberg contends is a Fed creation is actually history repeating itself as investors with serious skin in the game search for the future.

    As The Money Confusion asserts, something similar is afoot now. Just don’t give the Fed credit for this surge of investment. The simple truth is that if the Fed had control of credit and its cost as the pundit class imagines, there wouldn’t exist enough credit for intrepid investing of this kind to begin with.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/21/2022 – 18:20

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