Oct 22

Today’s News 22nd October 2023

  • Escobar: Russia's Neutrality Ballet On Israel-Palestine
    Escobar: Russia’s Neutrality Ballet On Israel-Palestine

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

    Photo Credit: The Cradle

    Is it possible that the philo-Semitic Russian President Vladimir Putin is slowly but surely re-evaluating his geopolitical assessment of Israel? To call this the key riddle in Moscow’s corridors of power is actually an understatement. 

    There are no outward signs of such a seismic shift – at least when it comes to the officially “neutral” Russian position on the intractable Israel-Palestine drama.

    Except for one stunning statement last Friday at the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Summit in Bishkek, when Putin blasted Israel’s “cruel methods” employed to blockade Gaza, and compared it with “the siege of Leningrad during World War Two.”

    “That’s unacceptable,” declared the Russian president, and warned that when all of Gaza’s 2.2 million civilians “have to suffer, including women and children, it’s hard for anyone to agree with this.”

    Putin’s comments may have been one hint at the changes underway in the frustratingly opaque Russia-Israel relationship. A close second is this very important article published last Friday on Vzglyad, a security strategy website close to the Kremlin, diplomatically titled “Why Russia remains neutral in the conflict in the Middle East.”   

    It’s crucial to note that only six months ago and mirroring a near consensus among Russia’s intelligence community, Vzglyad editors were calling for Moscow to shift its considerable political weight toward supporting the number one issue for the Arab and Islamic worlds.  

    The article noted the key points Putin voiced in Bishkek: there’s no alternative to negotiations; Tel Aviv was subjected to a brutal attack and has the right to defend itself; a real settlement is possible only via an independent Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem.  

    The Russian president favors the UN’s original “two states” solution and believes that a Palestinian state should be established “by peaceful means.” But, as much as the conflict was “a direct result of the failed policy of the United States in the Middle East,” Putin rejects Tel Aviv’s plans to launch a ground operation in Gaza. 

    This qualified hedging is certainly not evidence of Putin swinging to what is a near consensus among the General Staff, the siloviki in several intel agencies, and his ministry of defense: They consider that Israel may be a de facto enemy of the Russian Federation, allied with Ukraine, the US and NATO.

    Follow the money

    Tel Aviv has been extremely cautious not to frontally antagonize Russia in Ukraine, and this may be a direct consequence of the notoriously cordial relations between Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  

    Yet way more consequential than Israel on the geopolitical chessboard are Moscow’s evolving relations with Arab states today, especially OPEC+ partner Saudi Arabia which has helped thwart western efforts to control oil prices.

    Also highly central to Russia’s regional policymaking is its strategic partnership with Iran, which has reaped dividends in Syria and the Caucasus, and which helps contain US expansionism. Finally, Moscow’s complex, multi-layered, back-and-forth with Ankara is crucial to Russian economic and geopolitical ambitions in Eurasia.  

    All three West Asian powers are Muslim-majority states, important affiliations for a multipolar Russia that hosts its own sizable Muslim population.

    And for these three regional actors, without distinction, the current collective punishment of Gaza transgresses any possible red line.     

    Israel is also not that significant anymore in Moscow’s financial considerations. Since the 1990s, immense quantities of Russian funds have been transiting to Israel, but now, a substantial portion is returning right back to Russia. 

    The notorious case of billionaire Mikhail Friedman illustrates this new reality well. The oligarch quit his home in the UK and moved to Israel a week before the launch of Al-Aqsa Flood – which in turn had him hastily grab his Russian passport and head to Moscow for safety. 

    Friedman, who leads the Alfa Group with major interests in telecom, banking, retail, and insurance, and is a wealthy survivor of the 1998 financial crisis, is suspected by the Russians of “contributing” as much as $150 million to the enemy regime in Kiev.

    The reaction by Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin could not have been sharper – or less concerned about Israel’s sentiments on the matter: 

    “Anyone who left the country and engaged in reprehensible acts, celebrating gunfire on Russian territory and wishing victory to the Nazi Kiev regime, should realize they are not only unwelcome here, but if they do return, Magadan (a notorious transit port to the gulag in the Stalin era) is waiting for them.”   

    Russophobia meets collective punishment

    As the collective west resorted to a monomaniacal “We are all Israelis now,” the Kremlin’s strategy is to visibly position itself as the mediator of choice in this conflict – not only for the Arab and Muslim worlds but also for the Global South/Global Majority.

    That was the purpose of this week’s Russian draft resolution at the UN Security Council calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, which was predictably shot down by the usual suspects. 

    Three permanent Security Council members – US, UK and France, plus their neo-colony Japan – voted against it. To the rest of the world, this looked like exactly what it was: irrational western Russophobia and US puppet states validating Israel’s genocidal bombardment of civilian-dense Gaza.  

    Off the record, intelligence analysts point to how the Russian General Staff, the intel apparatus, and the ministry of defense seem to be organically aligning with global sentiments on Israel’s excessive aggressions.  

    The problem is that official and public Russian criticism of Netanyahu’s serial, psychotic incitation to violence, alongside his rightwing National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, has been non-existent. 

    Moscow insiders insist that the Kremlin’s official “neutral” position is frontally clashing with its defense and security agencies – especially GRU and SVR – which will never forget that Israel was directly involved in the killing of Russians in Syria. 

    That view has strengthened since September 2018 when Israel’s Air Force used an Ilyushin-20M electronic reconnaissance plane as cover against Syrian missiles, causing it to be shot down and killing all 15 Russians on board.    

    This silence in the corridors of power is mirrored by silence in the public sphere. There has been no debate in the Duma about the Russian position on Israel-Palestine. And no debate at the Security Council since early October.

    Yet a subtle hint was offered by Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, who stressed that “peaceful coexistence” has a “religious dimension” and requires “just peace.” This does not exactly align with the announced ethnic cleansing of “human animals” (copyright Israeli Defense Ministry) in Gaza.  

    Along some corridors close to power, there’s an alarming rumor of an intricate shadow play between Moscow and Washington, wherein the Americans will deal with Israel in exchange for the Russians dealing with Ukraine. 

    While this would seal the west’s already ongoing process of throwing the sweaty sweatshirt actor in Kiev under the bus, the Kremlin is highly unlikely to trust any American deal, and certainly not one that would marginalize Russian influence in strategic West Asia.

    This two-state solution is dead 

    Russia’s “neutrality” ballet will continue. Moscow is impressing on Tel Aviv the notion that even within the framework of its strategic partnership with Iran, weapons that could threaten Israel – as in, ending up with Hezbollah and Hamas – will not be exported. The quid pro quo of this arrangement would be that Israel also not sell anything Russian-threatening to Kiev either. 

    But unlike the US and the UK, Russia will not designate Hamas as a terrorist organization. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov has been very forthright on this issue: Moscow keeps its contacts with both sides; its “number one priority” is “the interest of the country’s (Russian) citizens who live both in Palestine and Israel”; and Russia will remain “a party that has the potential to participate in the settlement processes.”  

    Neutrality, of course, may reach a dead end. Overwhelmingly, for the Arab and Muslim states actively courted by the Kremlin, the dismantlement of Zionist-led settler-colonialism should be the “number one priority.”

    This implies that the two-state solution, for all practical purposes, is fully dead and buried. Yet there’s no evidence anyone, not least Moscow, is ready to admit it. 

    The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle or ZeroHedge

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/21/2023 – 23:20

  • Intelligence Failures – Again
    Intelligence Failures – Again

    Authored by Pete Hoekstra via the Gatestone Institute,

    (Image source: iStock)

    In light of the devastating and deadly terrorist attack executed by Hamas against Israel on October 7, many are correctly calling the failure to intercept and prevent the assault an “intelligence failure.” Many are especially surprised given the vaunted, basically legendary, status almost universally accorded Israel’s national security apparatus.

    This, however, is not the only recent intelligence failure, or failure by political leaders to anticipate emerging threats. According to a Brookings report examining the U.S. intelligence failure and reorganization following the 9/11 terrorist attacks against America:

    “In the aftermath of 9/11 everyone, from elected officials and national security experts to ordinary citizens had one question: how could this happen to a nation with such an enormous and expensive military and intelligence architecture?”

    Despite warnings from the U.S. Intelligence Community, the Biden administration failed to anticipate or plan for the dramatic and quick collapse of Afghanistan’s government when U.S. troops were withdrawn. And while the Intelligence Community correctly and publicly warned of Russia’s impending invasion of Ukraine, it failed to predict the tenacity of Ukrainian fighters defending their homeland and instead forecast an almost Afghanistan-style collapse in a matter of days. General Mark Milley, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, even warned lawmakers that “a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine could result in the fall of Kyiv within 72-hours and could come at a cost of 15,000 Ukrainian troop deaths and 4,000 Russian troop deaths,” according to lawmakers he briefed behind closed-doors.

    These misses once again have citizens asking if our intelligence agencies and political leaders are capable of keeping them safe. The short answer, unfortunately, is no. Terrorists and our enemies only have to be right once, while our intelligence services need to be correct 100% of the time. Just look at Pearl Harbor.

    It is not unreasonable to expect that Israeli or US intelligence should have been able to detect the 10/7 attacks on Israel ahead of time, especially so close to the 50th anniversary of the surprise Yom Kippur War in 1973. What, then, led to the failure? While Israel will certainly review its intelligence posture to determine its shortcomings, we already know some of the challenges the Intelligence Community faces on the U.S. side.

    The Middle East, Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah are all high on the Intelligence Community’s radar, given the volatility of the restive region. All the same, Washington’s leadership also was not expecting the 10/7 attacks. A little more than a week prior, Biden’s National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, was talking-up successes in the Middle East, allowing the U.S. to focus on other areas regions of the world. The bold conclusion made by Sullivan at the time was that “the Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.”

    He could not have been more wrong. Boiling just under the surface was a terrorist attack that would result in more than 1,400 Israelis killed, at least 31 Americans killed, atrocities against Israeli civilians that include beheaded babies and babies burned alive, as well as scores of Israeli and international hostages whom Hamas terrorists forcibly abducted from Israel to Gaza, presumably being held in tunnels.

    The failure of the U.S. intelligence community has three components:

    1. It has become politically charged and lost focus on its mission protecting Americans, instead engaging in partisan politics.
    2. It continues to focus on technological intelligence collection rather than the difficult and risky world of human intelligence collection.
    3. It continues to suffer from a lack of creativity in anticipating and understanding the new threats being developed by our enemies.

    There is little doubt that the Intelligence Community has become seriously politicized. In 2016-2017, its leaders and the FBI undermined the incoming President Donald Trump by raising the specter of Russian influence over Trump. The disproven Russia hoax would go on to shadow and undermine Trump’s entire time in office.

    When Hunter Biden’s now infamous laptop was revealed, it was the FBI and former Intelligence Community leaders who actively tried to cover it up and pass it off as a Russian disinformation campaign.

    The Intelligence Community also shifted some of its focus from international threats to domestic threats — often spurious — while ignoring the real ticking time bomb of 5.6 million migrants flooding onto the United States through the southern border, in addition to at least 1.5 million known “gotaways” and an unknown number of unknown “gotaways.”

    We have also witnessed information that was accurate but which the FBI worked with social media companies to suppress, and even outright fabrications about what they claimed was disinformation, such as the Russia hoax or the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop; that Catholics who attend mass in Latin are “extremists,” and that parents questioning what their children learn in public schools are “domestic terrorists.” What really happened on January 6, 2021 is still unknown.

    These efforts by the Intelligence Community all seem to target Republicans or to benefit Democrats politically — a situation that has left many conservatives rightly worried about the political weaponization of the government.

    Unfortunately, this political corruption shows no signs of abating, with the entire deep state apparently still determined to turn the Constitution on its head to “get Trump,” and with former officials such as Michael Hayden, who was head of the National Security Agency and the CIA, suggesting that Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville should be removed from the human race.

    A second major shortcoming, that was identified after 9/11 was, as mentioned, a U.S. over-reliance on the technological collection of information, such as satellites, cyber, and wiretapping. The Intelligence Community knew how to do these things and knew how to do them well. It was difficult and sophisticated work but carried far fewer risks than human espionage or developing spy networks.

    While the intelligence may have been there, our ability to fully understand it, and our analyses, missed having insights into the humans, and their way of thinking, who were behind those “zeros and ones.”

    Hamas may have exploited the reliance Western security services have on technological collection. We already know that Osama bin Laden refused to use electronic communications and relied on human couriers to convey messages. It is not unreasonable to expect that Israeli or US intelligence should have been able to detect the 10/7 attacks on Israel ahead of time The after-action intelligence review to determine how Hamas hid its operation will undoubtedly look into this, but it appears that electronic communication on the plot was limited and coded, with the few people actually knowing the full details kept to a handful to further limit communications.

    Just as the U.S. Intelligence Community did not imagine terrorists hijacking airplanes to use as missiles, it is likely the Israelis never contemplated Hamas pulling off a multipronged attack by sea, land, and air — including the use of paragliders. But that is exactly what they did. They used low-tech bulldozers and explosives to breach Israel’s border fence and then drive through the openings with trucks, motorcycles, and other equipment loaded with terrorists and weapons. Hamas fired thousands of rockets, in barrages of hundreds at a time, to overwhelm Israel’s highly touted Iron Dome counter-rocket system and, having learned lessons about the effective use of drones from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, used drone-dropped munitions to take out guard towers and surveillance cameras.

    While many of these tactics are not new — Hamas had fired tens of thousands of missiles into Israel before, attacked civilians and soldiers on the streets, and crossed the border in multiple ways — the novelty of this approach was to do all of these things at once and on a massive scale.

    The biggest U.S. intelligence failure of all so far, unfortunately, has been strenuously pretending not to know that Iran, Qatar and Turkey are the kingpins behind the current attacks by Hamas on Israel. If Iran, Qatar and Turkey are to be discouraged from continuing their malign actions destabilizing the region, the price they pay needs to be steep. Hamas. Iran, Qatar and Turkey must not be let off the hook. In addition, the US must move its military assets from Al Udeid Airbase in Qatar to the United Arab Emirates as soon as it can.

    The Qataris, instead of being grateful that a state-of-the-art airbase is on its soil protecting it, instead might think that they are doing the US a favor letting the airbase be there.

    To go just after Hamas is like targeting crime syndicate, but ignoring Al Capone. Hamas needs to be dealt with first – along with the realization that any humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza supplies Hamas, not the people for whom it was well-meaningly intended. As the journalist Caroline Glick points out, the trucks are not inspected. They might be bringing in food and water – or weapons. Sadly, even if the contents are food and water, Hamas keeps them, then sparingly doles them out to whomever they want.

    Moving forward, we once again need to examine how we do intelligence across the West. Perhaps Congress or a special commission can be established to identify the exact strengths and weaknesses of our intelligence community. It will have the old rallying cry of “never again,” just as after Pearl Harbor, the 1973 Yom Kippur War, 9/11, and now the attacks of 10/7. The Intelligence Community needs to keep its eye on actual foreign threats, develop and use all forms of intelligence collection to build a robust intelligence capability, respect the ability and creativity of our adversaries, and to discard the biased and flawed analytical tradecraft standards that have led us to where we are today. Unless these changes take place, we will remain vulnerable, uncertain of our safety and security, and stuck with the knowledge the world is a much more dangerous place than we had thought.

    Peter Hoekstra is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute. He was US Ambassador to the Netherlands during the Trump administration. He also served 18 years in the U.S. House of Representatives representing the Second District of Michigan and served as Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/21/2023 – 22:45

  • University Of California Professor Threatens Pro-Israel Journalists And Their Families
    University Of California Professor Threatens Pro-Israel Journalists And Their Families

    Authored by Jonathan Turley via jonathanturley.org,

    The University of California at Davis is embroiled in a controversy involving one of its faculty threatening “zionist journalists” in a violent tirade on X. UC Davis Professor (and undergraduate adviser) Jemma Decristo posted the screed on October 10th referencing the homes and family of those who support Israel as possible targets. The university is investigating the matter, but Decristo’s embrace of violence is nothing new for faculty around the country. For years, faculty members have engaged in violent rhetoric directed toward conservatives and Republicans with little response from universities.

    Decristo wrote:

    “one group of ppl we have easy access to in the US is all these zionist journalists who spread propaganda and misinformation … they have houses w addresses, kids in school, they can fear their bosses, but they should fear us more.”

    At the bottom, you can see a knife emoji, an ax emoji, and three red drops of blood after saying “they should fear us more.”

    That strikes me as a rather direct and obvious threat.

    Decristo is an assistant professor of American Studies at the public school with a “focus … on the interplay between sound, race, gender and embodiment.”

    In a statement, a UC Davis spokesperson said campus leaders “reject all forms of violence and discrimination, as they are antithetical to the values of our university. We strive to foster a climate of equity and justice built on mutual understanding and respect for all members of the community.”

    The University of California system has a long history of violence and violent rhetoric from the left.

    At the University of California, Santa Barbara, feminist studies associate professor Mireille Miller-Young physically assaulted pro-life advocates and tore down their display. 

    She pleaded guilty to criminal assault, but the university refused to fire her. Instead, some faculty and students defended her, including claiming that pro-life displays constitute terrorism. The University of Oregon later honored Miller-Young as a model for women advocates.

    Around the country, faculty routinely use violent rhetoric with little push back in the media or on campus.

    We have discussed professors advocating “detonating white people,” denouncing police, calling for Republicans to suffer, strangling police officers, celebrating the death of conservatives, calling for the killing of Trump supporters, supporting the murder of conservative protesters, and other outrageous statements.

    University of Rhode Island professor Erik Loomis defended the murder of a conservative protester and said he saw “nothing wrong” with such acts of violence.

    One of the most recent violent professors was Hunter College Professor Shellyne Rodríguez who was only fired after being arrested for holding a machete to the neck of a New York Post reporter and threatened to “chop you up.”

    Yet, she was not fired after she destroyed the pro-life display of a group of students.

    Since her machete attack, Rodríguez has now been hired by Cooper Union to teach its students.

    These faculty members have long been part of the radical chic of academia, including a professor recently at Cornell expressing his “exhilaration” after watching the Hamas attack on Israel.

    The response to conservatives accused of racist or insensitive comments has been quite different. We discussed how St. Joseph’s University refused to renew a contract for a professor who actually prevailed in such a free speech fight. A conservative North Carolina professor  faced calls for termination over controversial tweets and was pushed to retire. Dr. Mike Adams, a professor of sociology and criminology, had long been a lightning rod of controversy. In 2014, we discussed his prevailing in a lawsuit that alleged discrimination due to his conservative views.  He was then targeted again after an inflammatory tweet calling North Carolina a “slave state.”  That led to his being pressured to resign with a settlement. He then committed suicide  just days before his last day as a professor.

    For years, conservative and Republican faculty and students have been subjected to such violent acts or rhetoric with little support from most faculty or the media. Indeed, figures like Jennifer Rubin and Laurence Tribe recently came under fire for their comments after the massacre despite years of such attacks and false claims directed at the right.

    Universities are now facing pressure from donors to address such violent rhetoric. I continue to oppose any form of censorship for faculty or students. However, the real problem is the academic echo chamber created from decades of bias in hiring and promotion. That is unlikely to change the lack of viewpoint diversity on faculties or the purging of conservative or libertarian professors. There is no evidence that universities are prepared to take real action to address the hostile environment for many on our campuses in espousing dissenting views or values.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/21/2023 – 22:10

  • Why US Businesses Can't Wait To Get Out Of China
    Why US Businesses Can’t Wait To Get Out Of China

    Authored by Terri Wu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Foreign investments are leaving China.

    Half of the $250 billion to $300 billion foreign bond investments since 2019 have exited, and U.S. private equity and venture capital investments in China have fallen by more than 50 percent, according to a JP Morgan report last month.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)

    Foreign direct investment into China in the second quarter of this year reached a 25-year low at $4.9 billion, with a year-on-year decline of 87 percent, according to Chinese official data.

    Bloomberg and fDi Markets data on new investment projects—a more telling indicator of whether foreign firms are still investing in the country—show a 40 percent drop, to $74 billion in 2020 from $120 billion in 2019, and an additional 45 percent decline to $41 billion in 2022—the lowest since 2010.

    Although financial transactions are easy to track without much lag, it may take years for foreign direct investment data to reflect Western firms’ diversifying away from China.

    For this reason, Beijing might be unaware of how bad things really are as far as foreign direct investment, analysts of the Rhodium Group, a leading research firm on the Chinese economy, warned in a recent report.

    “Amidst a broader structural slowdown in China’s economy, the delayed reactions could contribute to further losses in productivity and economic growth,” the report stated.

    The implied assumption here is that preventing economic losses is a priority for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). However, some China experts challenge this.

    “It’s not that Xi Jinping and the CCP leadership hate economic growth—it’s just not a priority,” Derek Scissors, chief economist of research firm China Beige Book and a senior fellow at the Washington-based think tank American Enterprise Institute, told The Epoch Times.

    “The priority is control over the society, including the economy. So whenever there’s a trade-off between economic control and growth, they choose control,” he said.

    “And when we say, ‘Oh, you know, you could be growing faster. Why are you doing these things?’ The answer is obvious: It’s because that’s not their priority.”

    Mr. Scissors and other experts told The Epoch Times that overall economic growth isn’t at the top of the agenda for Chinese regime leader Xi Jinping. Instead, China is, by design, going through a paradigm shift in how it interacts with the global economy and is screening and filtering for foreign investors loyal to Mr. Xi.

    As a result, China’s overall political and business landscape defies past experience, they said, and Western interpretations will make the wrong assumptions on China—even more so than before.

    Communist Party leader Xi Jinping has reversed China’s integration into the rest of the world, a trend that had defined the previous two decades, according to businessman Mike Sun. (Marco Di Lauro/Getty Images)

    3 Phases of Foreign Direct Investment

    When U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo visited China in August, she warned that the country could become “uninvestable” if the unpredictable official behavior, such as raids on U.S. firms, don’t cease. This year, Mintz Group’s Beijing office was raided in March, Bain & Co.’s Shanghai office in April, and Capvision Partners’s offices in multiple cities in May.

    The Chinese business environment for U.S. companies wasn’t always like this.

    Mike Sun, a U.S.-based businessman with decades of experience advising foreign investors and traders doing business in China, recalled that the first generation of U.S. investors visited mainland China with a pioneering spirit. He spoke to The Epoch Times using an alias to protect his business in China.

    In the early 1990s, he said a Jewish American businessman told him, “I want to be America’s Marco Polo,” referring to the Italian explorer who introduced Europeans to China. The businessman spoke fluent Mandarin and was married to a Chinese woman.

    People walk by a McDonald’s restaurant in Beijing in 1994. In the early 1990s, McDonald’s Corporation was among the pioneering U.S. businesses in China. (AFP via Getty Images)

    Back then, China was full of opportunities.

    If investing in China in those years felt like an adventure, it became a no-brainer the next decade, from 2000 to 2012. One would have been foolish not to invest in China, Mr. Sun recalled.

    The crowning glory for the communist regime was the 2008 Beijing Olympics, he said. When U.S. President George W. Bush and his family sat next to Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi at the China–United States basketball game, it became a symbol of the international community’s acceptance of the CCP.

    (Left) Then-Foreign Minister of the People’s Republic of China Yang Jiechi (L), then-U.S. President George W. Bush, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (2nd R), and then-First Lady Laura Bush attend a U.S.–China basketball game at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. (Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images) (Right) China’s global share in manufacturing value added. (The Epoch Times)

    China had become the “world’s factory” after it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. According to World Bank data, its share of global manufacturing value-add rose from 9 percent in 2004 to 22 percent in 2012 and 30 percent in 2022.

    But Mr. Xi’s ascension in March 2013 heralded a different decade. In 2015, the leader started his industrial “Made in China 2025” plan, aiming for global dominance in advanced manufacturing sectors such as semiconductors and new energy.

    To achieve this goal, the regime encouraged large-scale technology theft from Western countries.

    In Mr. Sun’s view, Mr. Xi has reversed China’s integration into the rest of the world, a trend that had defined the previous two decades.

    “Xi doesn’t want China to be a second Russia,” Mr. Sun said.

    Between 2014 and 2016, Russia suffered a financial crisis because of the sharp price decline of crude oil, a major export, and international sanctions as a result of its annexation of Crimea. Since then, Russia’s growth prospects have remained bleak because of challenges in diversifying its main industries and ongoing Western sanctions, according to European think tank Bruegel.

    After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, it was hit with more than 13,000 restrictions. The sanctions have severed Russia from advanced technology sectors abroad and forced the nation to resort again to energy commodities trading to sustain its economy growth, according to findings by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington-based think tank.

    Mr. Sun said China’s changes have become more apparent in the past two to three years, coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic, during which Mr. Xi largely completed his consolidation of power.

    That’s what Meng Jun, a Chinese entrepreneur, said he experienced.

    Mr. Meng had a rubber product business with an annual revenue of $15 million. In 2021, when the rest of the world reopened, his factory in Nanning, the capital of southern China’s Guangxi Province, began to receive orders again. However, he couldn’t resume production because of the regime’s COVID-19 lockdowns.

    Initially, he was able to bribe local officials so his factory could run at night while other factories had to remain shut. But later, no one would bend the rules because the officials didn’t want to lose their jobs over the possibility that a COVID-19 case would be traced back to an unauthorized factory operating under China’s zero-COVID policy. He lost millions.

    He closed the business last year and left for the United States.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/21/2023 – 21:00

  • Bidenomics Rejected: Trump Ahead In Swing States, Leads Among Young Voters
    Bidenomics Rejected: Trump Ahead In Swing States, Leads Among Young Voters

    Less than 13 months from the 2024 election, a new set of polls has delivered alarming news for backers of incumbent President Joe Biden, with voters in swing states and even younger voters giving the edge to former President Donald Trump. The key driver: voter rejection of Bidenomics. 

    According to a Morning Consult/Bloomberg poll, Trump is up four points among voters in seven swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. On a state-by-state breakdown, Trump has the upper hand in five of them. He’s tied with Biden in Michigan, while Biden leads in Nevada by 3.  

    via Bloomberg/Morning Consult; poll taken Oct 5 to Oct 10

    In 2020, Biden received the electoral votes of all of those states except for North Carolina, which Trump won by 1.3%. If all other states stayed in their 2020 columns, Trump would need to take four of the seven swing states to return to the White House.  

    Swing-state voters say the economy outweighs any other factor in their voting decisions, and they’re hugely disappointed in the Biden-era economy. 49% say Biden policies have been bad for the economy, compared to 26% who see them as a positive.  

    “Almost twice as many voters in the swing states are saying that Bidenomics is bad for the economy, as opposed to good for the economy, which is a really startling fact if you’re the Biden campaign,” said Morning Consult pollster and vice president Caroline Bye. Bye couldn’t help but reveal her own bias, declaring, “Biden is not getting any credit for work he’s done on the economy.” 

    It’s not just the economy that’s dragging Biden down; swing-state voters have higher confidence in Trump in 10 out of 16 policy areas. Only where “climate change” is concerned does Biden outperform Trump by more than 10 points. Interestingly, they give a solid edge to Trump on “guns.” 

    Via Bloomberg/Morning Consult

    The independent campaign of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr is a wild card. The Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll found Biden leads Nevada by three points in a head-to-head matchup with Trump, but loses by three when other parties are included. On the other hand, Trump’s supporters are much more likely than Biden backers to view Kennedy favorably — by a whopping 46% to 29% margin.  

    Two other polls yielded more bad omens for Biden, particularly in regard to key Democratic constituencies. An Emerson College poll found voters between 18 and 29 favor Trump by 2.3%, while CNBC‘s All-America Economic Survey found sagging support for Biden among young people, blacks and Latinos. 

    Democratic pollster Jay Campbell called those results “very troubling” for Biden. Noting that those three constituencies are among the hardest hit by economic conditions, he said, “You start to think that maybe they’ve run out of patience, and it’s starting to show through in their decreasing regard for the president.”

    The CNBC survey found Biden’s disapproval rating at a personal-worst 58%, driven by a 63% disapproval rating on his handling of the economy — another low for this presidency. Respondents favored Trump in the 2024 contest by a 43% to 38% margin. 

    At PredictIt, the online, real-money prediction market where shares betting on the right outcome pay $1, speculators are still favoring Biden. However, the gap between the Biden and Trump contracts has narrowed from 18 cents on Aug 18 — in the wake of Trump’s indictment in Georgia — to just 3 cents on Thursday. 

     

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/21/2023 – 20:25

  • China Has Up To 6 Warships In Mideast Waters As US Carrier Group Moves Closer To Israel
    China Has Up To 6 Warships In Mideast Waters As US Carrier Group Moves Closer To Israel

    Israel’s military has announced Saturday that it drastically stepped up airstrikes in preparation for its “next stage” of the operation against Gaza, in a statement many see as portending an imminent ground invasion.

    “We need to enter under the best possible conditions and this is what we are doing now, as the next stage of war approaches,” IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari explained after confirming, “from today, we are increasing the strikes and minimizing the danger.”

    “We will narrow the risks to our forces over the next stages. This is why we have once again urged residents of Gaza to keep moving south,” he added, in words that Israeli media also took to mean a ground assault is about to happen.

    Xinhua via AP

    One big development from earlier in day was that 20 large trucks loaded with humanitarian aid were for the first time allowed to pass into Gaza through the Rafah crossing from Egypt. 

    Controversy was then sparked by a New York Times report which claimed the aid convoy was not checked by inspectors before it went into the strip, amid allegations that weapons or ammo could be hidden in the convoy. Israel has denied the report, however: 

    The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories denies that aid entering the Gaza Strip was not checked before going in.

    “All of the equipment was checked before going into Gaza,” it says in a statement, noting that the shipment included “only water, food and medical equipment.”

    “We emphasize that Israel is able to make sure that nothing goes in or out except the aforementioned,” it adds.

    Fears are now growing that Hezbollah could fully enter the conflict, with widespread speculation that the well-armed Shia paramilitary group backed by Iran is ready to mount a full attack on northern Israel if the IDF launches a ground assault on the Gaza Strip. So far there has only been sporadic by intensifying rocket and mortar fire from south Lebanon.

    US warships and at least one carrier are in the region (with a second carrier headed that way), as part of “support” operations – but the whole region is on edge given the possibility of a Middle East-wide bigger conflagration. 

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    Worrisomely other major global powers are bolstering their presence, particularly ones which have of late issued severe criticisms of Israel’s largescale aerial assault on Gaza (namely Russia and China), which has killed thousands of civilians – many women and children among them. Russia has been operating jet patrols over Syria, and importantly China now has additional warships in the Mideast region.

    Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post has confirmed that up to six Chinese warships have been in Middle East waters over the last week.

    “The 44th naval escort task force has been involved in routine operations in the area since May and last week spent several days on a visit to Oman, including a joint exercise with the country’s navy, according to the Chinese defense ministry website,” the report says.

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    While the warships’ presence off Oman is being presented as “routine” – it seems clear the Chinese PLA Navy is going to stick around, given fast-moving events in Israel-Gaza. Days ago, Beijing’s foreign ministry urged all Chinese citizens to make plans to depart Israel while international flights are still available. Are Chinese warships now headed to the Mediterranean?

    The Biden White House has reportedly been urging Netanyahu to hold off on the invasion to give more time to negotiate for hostages, after two Americans were released Friday…

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    This weekend, all eyes will remain on both Gaza and south Lebanon, as the major powers of the US, Russia, and China keep their military assets on the ready. Iran is also no doubt watching events closely, with Iranian officials having in the last days made key visits to regional capitals Baghdad, Damascus, and Beirut. There’s also fear in Tehran of the potential for an Israeli preemptive attack on Iranian nuclear and military facilities, which Israeli leaders have threatened before.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/21/2023 – 19:15

  • Gaza's Ancient Christian Population Between A Rock & A Hard Place
    Gaza’s Ancient Christian Population Between A Rock & A Hard Place

    Via Middle East Eye,

    Israel’s attack on the fifth-century Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza has turned the spotlight on the besieged Palestinian enclave’s Christian population.

    At least 18 people were killed in the bombing on a social services annex in the church’s complex of buildings. Both Muslims and Christians took shelter within its walls hoping that its historical and religious importance would spare it the carnage that has affected other areas of Gaza.

    Saint Porphyrius Orthodox Church, Anadolu via Getty Images

    As part of historic Palestine it is impossible to disconnect the history of Palestinian Christians in Gaza from those who share their faith in the occupied West Bank, Jerusalem and within the Palestinian community in Israel. The region is the birthplace of Christianity and the location of many of the events of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.

    Palestinian Christians in Gaza, like other Palestinians there, do not see themselves as detached from the wider Palestinian nation. Nevertheless, there is a unique Christian history specific to Gaza. While just over a thousand Christians remain in Gaza, the territory holds a special significance in the development of the faith.

    The region is referred to by name in the New Testament in Acts 8, which refers to Philip the Evangelist baptizing a man from Ethiopia on the road between Jerusalem and Gaza. “Now an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, ‘Arise and go toward the south along the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’ This is a desert,” the verse reads.

    There are also several historic Christian sites that are not only important locally but carry importance for Christians generally. The site of the Israeli attack on Thursday evening, the Saint Porphyrius Church, is one of the most important religious sites in Palestine.

    Named after a fifth-century bishop, the site is one of the oldest surviving places of worship in the region and one of the oldest churches in the world.

    Saint Porphyrios Orthodox Church – Gaza, Facebook page

    The church was initially built in 425A.D. and then later reconstructed by Crusaders in the 12th century, with much of the present structure dating back to that period. Another major Christian site in Gaza is the nearby and even older Tell Umm Amer monastery.

    The fourth-century structure, which now lies mainly in ruins, once included churches, a baptism hall, a cemetery and crypt. It served as a place of worship for those travelling between Egypt and the lands of the Levant, including Palestine and Syria.

    The site is notable for being the birthplace of Saint Hilarion, a fourth-century Palestinian monk, who helped pioneer monasticism. The presence of these early churches and monasteries, as well as the Biblical reference, indicate that Christianity in Gaza took root in tandem with the development of the faith in the region. But widespread adoption of the faith did not take place until the fifth century.

    According to the scholar Nicole Belayche, the strength of pagan cults in Gaza before the fifth century is “indisputable”. In her essay in the book Christian Gaza in Late Antiquity, she writes that when Porphyrius was ordained bishop of Gaza, the Christian population stood at “less than three hundred in a population estimated at between 20,000 and 25,000”.

    Gaza’s mass conversion to Christianity started in the fifth century under the auspices of the Byzantine Empire, the successor to the Eastern Roman Empire. “It was a hard process, one requiring recourse to imperial intervention,” she writes.

    Image source: Simply Human

    Initial reluctance was overcome by the efforts of holy men, such as Porphyrius, and incorporation of indigenous ritual into church rites, Belayche explains. While Christianity was widely adopted by the end of the sixth century, it was not long before there was a new dominant religion.

    In his book History of the City of Gaza, the late 19th century Jewish-American scholar Martin A Meyer writes: “The new faith had barely sufficient time to establish itself before Islam swept it away from this part of the world forever.”

    Meyer’s statement is hyperbolic but touches on the truth that over the centuries that followed the Arab conquest, much of the region’s population converted to Islam.

    There still remained a small Christian minority in the area of Gaza, which survived for centuries and enjoyed a brief flourishing under Crusader rule in the 12th century. Like their fellow Palestinians, many of the region’s Christians were forced from their homes during the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.

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    As a result, the Christian population of Gaza has dwindled further over the decades, a trend that has continued after the Nakba. According to the Guardian, there were 6,000 Palestinian Christians in Gaza in the mid-1960s and that number has fallen to 1,100 today.

    Most Christians in the besieged region today follow the Greek Orthodox Church, while minorities follow the Baptist and Catholic churches. Since the Israeli siege of Gaza began in 2007, Christians have faced similar restrictions on movement as their Muslim neighbors have to live under.

    Cut off from larger Christian communities in the West Bank and Jerusalem, members of the faith require Israeli permits to travel to those areas for religious occasions. In 2021, Israel issued permits for around half of the Palestinian Christian population in Gaza to attend Christmas services.

    Such rights to attend rituals are by no means guaranteed, as evidenced by Israel’s decision to cancel 700 permits for Christians in Gaza to attend Easter services in Jerusalem. Israel similarly rejected permit applications for 260 Palestinians in Gaza wanting to spend Christmas outside of the territory, either in the occupied West Bank or elsewhere.

    Despite their small number, Churches in Gaza have regularly opened their doors to adherents of any faith to seek shelter during times of conflict, in the hope that houses of worship will not be attacked by Israel. Such hopes may fade fast after the most recent Israeli attack on the Church of Saint Porphyrius.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/21/2023 – 18:40

  • Bloomberg Terrified At The Prospect Of America Exporting Its Gun Culture
    Bloomberg Terrified At The Prospect Of America Exporting Its Gun Culture

    Submitted by Gun Owners Of America.,

    Bloomberg, the news media company named after and owned by prominent anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg, is terrified of a worldwide gun culture.

    In a recent series of articles, Bloomberg journalists detail how firearms companies are “fueling violence across the world” through sales to other countries. While the articles certainly attempt to frame gun ownership in other countries as the cause of violence, two key points are left out.

    First, many firearms exports worldwide are specifically for law enforcement and military contracts, not civilian sales. So, while Sig Sauer (the target of a Bloomberg hit piece on firearms exports) does export firearms overseas, many of these are for arming police officers and soldiers in foreign militaries.

    Second is that violence isn’t caused by firearms. Violence is a human problem. An article in the series asserts that Sig Sauer is somehow responsible for the black-market firearms trade in Thailand and violent acts committed by those who used Sig products. It’s very likely that if Sig Sauer was not able to sell their firearms in Thailand, the purported acts of violence would still have occurred with a different brand that Bloomberg journalists may not have been as interested in.

    A newer article in the series highlighted Brazil as being a major importer of US-made firearms, but failed to mention the fact that after former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro made firearms permits easier and cheaper for law-abiding citizens to acquire, homicides fell 34%, according to the Wall Street Journal.

    Brazil, one of the most violent nations on earth (with cities like Salvador and Fortaleza having homicide numbers in the thousands), is plagued by crime and gang violence. Firearms are routinely stolen from police armories and sometimes even manufactured right in the favela. Why not mention that American-style civilian firearm ownership helped to decrease homicides?

    Interestingly, this detail is left out of the Bloomberg reporting, and maybe it doesn’t fit the anti-gun progressive narrative by corporate media. 

    Lastly, a question that must be posed in the face of this reporting is why Bloomberg fears an American-style gun culture in other countries.

    An American style of gun ownership allows citizens to defend themselves without reliance on government entities like the police or military. It will enable citizens to be truly independent. For a billionaire like Michael Bloomberg, who can afford private security 24/7, this can be hard to understand. Still, for someone living in a Brazilian favela or a cartel-controlled territory in Mexico, firearm ownership could be the determining factor between life and death.

    It’s very telling that at the end of the Bloomberg article, a disclaimer reads: Everytown for Gun Safety, which advocates gun-safety measures, is backed by Michael Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.

    *    *    *

    We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/21/2023 – 18:05

  • APEC Leaders Can’t Ignore Xi’s Widening Uyghur Genocide
    APEC Leaders Can’t Ignore Xi’s Widening Uyghur Genocide

    Authored by Omar Kanat via RealClear Wire,

    Xi Jinping’s visit to Ürümchi, the capital of the Uyghur region, in August has sent a chill through the human rights and Uyghur diaspora communities. During his trip, Xi called on local officials to preserve “hard won social stability” and enhance measures to manage “illegal religious activities.” Xi personally put in place the policies for ongoing crimes against humanity and genocide in East Turkistan, premised on combatting “religious extremism.” And now he is saying that the ongoing repression targeting Uyghurs isn’t harsh enough. This ominous declaration should be seen as a dire warning, signaling darker days ahead for the Uyghur population.

    Xi is slated to visit San Francisco in November for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum Leaders Summit. When he meets with the leaders of the 21 APEC economies, which account for nearly 40% of the global population and nearly 50% of global trade, his public declaration that China will deepen its current Xinjiang policies cannot go unchallenged.

    Since 2016, the world has witnessed the systematic persecution of Uyghurs in East Turkistan. Reports of mass detentions, forced labor, cultural suppression, and genocidal birth control policies have cast an even longer shadow over China’s human rights record. Despite mounting evidence, the international response has been disturbingly inadequate.

    Xi Jinping’s remarks in Ürümchi should serve as a wake-up call: The policies of total surveillance, total assimilation, and universal placement in government jobs are ongoing. Nobody should be taken in by external propaganda purporting to show that everything is normal, saying journalists and tourists are welcome in “Beautiful Xinjiang.” The happy, dancing Uyghurs in the “I’m from Xinjiang” videos in 2023 were preceded by the “new Uyghurs” in the 2021 “Amazing Xinjiang” campaign. But when AFP News tried to inquire about the families of overseas Uyghurs during a recent reporting trip, they were warned away by dozens of plainclothes security officers, toting shovels and hoes.

    Visits to the Uyghur region by genocide enablers, such as the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the Arab League, should not surprise anyone. However, it is the turn toward engagement with China from staunch supporters of Uyghur rights like the United States and the United Kingdom that is alarming. As the shock of revelations about internment camps and forced labor has waned, sanctions and condemnations have petered out. Bilateral diplomacy has shifted towards improving “lines of communication” with China.

    The shift toward engagement plays right into the hands of the Chinese government, which prefers to operate with its dialogue partners turning a blind eye to its human rights abuses. Even more effective is China’s leveraging of its economic largesse and political power to divide any unified response that would exert meaningful pressure on Beijing.

    Moreover, the United Nations, including the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, have been glacially slow to take meaningful action. Despite mounting evidence and OHCHR’s own findings of China’s human rights crimes in the Uyghur region, these bodies have been unable to enact diplomatic protest, let alone bring those responsible to justice.

    Indeed, I argue that inaction is normalizing genocide. To address this retrenchment in world attention, the international community must take immediate and coordinated action. This includes:

    1. Increased sanctions: Countries should expand and strengthen sanctions against Chinese officials and entities involved in the Uyghur genocide. This not only holds individuals accountable but also sends a clear message to Beijing.
    2. Mobilization of international human rights mechanisms: UN High Commissioner’s Office needs to act on its 2022 report on “interlocking patterns of severe and undue restrictions on a wide range of human rights.” For Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples, a critical window is closing on turning the findings into multilateral pressure on China.
    3. Pressure on corporations: Companies that benefit from forced Uyghur labor or operate in East Turkistan should face scrutiny and pressure to ensure they are not complicit in crimes against humanity.
    4. Cessation of trade in Uyghur forced labor goods: China’s massive program of state-imposed forced labor for Uyghurs, an integral component of the ongoing genocide, must be addressed in every trade forum, including the APEC Leaders’ Summit in San Francisco in November.

    Xi Jinping’s ominous words in Ürümchi serve as a stark reminder that the Uyghur crisis is far from over. When Xi travels to San Francisco on November 12 for the APEC Summit, APEC leaders must address the elephant in the room. Economic “cooperation” is morally bankrupt if it does nothing to stop genocidal forced labor products in global trade.

    The international community must rise to the occasion and act to end economic complicity and moral complacency. Failure to do so will only embolden the Chinese government and ensure that the Uyghur people continue to suffer in silence. The time for action on genocide is always now.

    Omer Kanat is executive director of the Uyghur Human Rights Project.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/21/2023 – 17:30

  • "Cardboard Box Recession" An Ominous Sign Of Faltering Consumer, Schwab Warns
    “Cardboard Box Recession” An Ominous Sign Of Faltering Consumer, Schwab Warns

    Earlier this year, Charles Schwab analyst Jeffrey Kleintop said the US was sliding into a “cardboard box” recession as consumers and small businesses were pressured by soaring interest rates and elevated inflation.

    On Tuesday, Kleintop joined Morningstar’s The Long View podcast to warn, yet again, that slowing demand for cardboard boxes is an ominous sign of a coming recession. The reason behind this view is that cardboard boxes are used to transport nearly every good in modern society. So when box demand falls, it’s reflective of slowing purchases by consumers and businesses. 

    “Often, I find, in maybe nontraditional measures, I find more comfort in things that just make sense to me. Like the downturn that’s currently indicated in official manufacturing and trade data. Some of that’s kind of abstract. I find comfort looking at the plunging demand for cardboard boxes,” Kleintop told the podcast hosts. 

    The analyst said, “I’ve been referring to this as a cardboard box recession because things that are manufactured and shipped tend to go in a box and because demand for corrugated fiberboard, which is what most cardboard boxes are made from, has fallen just like it did in past recession. So, literally, cardboard boxes are in a recession.” 

    Last week, former Walmart CEO Bill Simon, who now serves on the Board of Directors for Darden Restaurants and Hanesbrands Inc., told CNBC that headwinds are mounting for consumers as inflation, high interest rates, and global tensions make consumers wary. He said, “For the first time in a long time, there’s a reason for the consumer to pause.” 

    If Simon is correct, this could spell disaster for Biden’s economy. Consumers are a significant driver in the US economy, accounting for about two-thirds of US GDP. 

    It appears the music has already stopped, and the party for consumers is grinding to a halt. 

    Last month, we laid out the various reasons why – according to JPMorgan and Goldman – sentiment on US consumer stocks had cratered and would continue to worsen in the months ahead. 

    A recent Citi note (full report available to pro subs) revealed consumer card spending is downright recessionary. 

    Also, a recent Barclay’s Global Rates Weekly note showed card spending has taken another leg lower as consumers falter. 

    And back to the cardboard boxes, FreightWaves has been warning all year about this alarming development:

    Ending it with Kleintop, he told The Long View podcast: “So, I think all these signs are indicating that we’re seeing a bit of a slowdown in the services sector. And that’s important because there are 10 times as many services jobs as manufacturing jobs in the US So, if we start to see the service sector reflect more signs of this slowdown in demand, well, we might see a weakening labor market and then that could feed into the retail space and construction and so many other areas.” 

    … and then there is this: “Trucking Recession Deepens As Bezos, Gates-Backed Convoy Cancels All Shipments, Load Board Is Empty.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/21/2023 – 16:55

  • House Investigators Reveal $200,000 "Direct Payment To Joe Biden"
    House Investigators Reveal $200,000 “Direct Payment To Joe Biden”

    The House Oversight Committee on Friday revealed a direct payment to President Joe Biden which appears to have been laundered through his brother James.

    As the oversight Committee notes in a release;

    In 2018, James Biden received $600,000 in loans from, Americore—a financially distressed and failing rural hospital operator. According to bankruptcy court documents, James Biden received these loans “based upon representations that his last name, ‘Biden,’ could ‘open doors’ and that he could obtain a large investment from the Middle East based on his political connections.”

    On March 1, 2018, Americore wired a $200,000 loan into James and Sara Biden’s personal bank account – not their business bank account. On the same day, James Biden wrote a $200,000 check from this same personal bank account to Joe Biden. 

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    Chairman James Comer (R-KY) said in a statement (emphasis ours);

    This summer, Joe Biden said: “Where’s the money?”

    Well, we found some.

    We’re still digging into evidence subpoenaed from bank accounts belonging to Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, and James and Sara Biden – the brother and sister-in-law of the President.

    A document that we’re releasing today raises new questions about how President Biden personally benefited from his family’s shady influence peddling of his name and their access to him.

    Bank records obtained by the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability have revealed a $200,000 direct payment from James and Sara Biden to Joe Biden in the form of a personal check.

    Here is some important context about this check we’ve obtained in our investigation:

    In 2018, James Biden received $600,000 in loans from, Americore—a financially distressed and failing rural hospital operator.

    According to bankruptcy court documents, James Biden received these loans “based upon representations that his last name, ‘Biden,’ could ‘open doors’ and that he could obtain a large investment from the Middle East based on his political connections.”

    On March 1, 2018, Americore wired a $200,000 loan into James and Sara Biden’s personal bank account – not their business bank account. 

    And then on the very same day, James Biden wrote a $200,000 check from this same personal bank account to Joe Biden. 

    James Biden wrote this check to Joe Biden as a “loan repayment.”  Americore—a distressed company—loaned money to James Biden who then sent it to Joe Biden.

    Even if this was a personal loan repayment, it’s still troubling that Joe Biden’s ability to be paid back by his brother depended on the success of his family’s shady financial dealings.

    Some immediate questions President Biden must answer for the American people:

    Does he have documents proving he lent such a large sum of money to his brother and what were the terms of such financial arrangement?

    Did he have similar financial arrangements with other family members that led them to make similar large payments to him?

    Did he know that the same day James Biden wrote him a check for $200,000, James Biden had just received a loan for the exact same amount from business dealings with a company that was in financial distress and failing?

    The House Oversight Committee will soon announce our next investigative actions and continue to follow the money.

    The bank records don’t end here.There is more to come.

    Watch:

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    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/21/2023 – 16:40

  • Census Data Shows 871,000 Californians Left The Imploding State In 2022
    Census Data Shows 871,000 Californians Left The Imploding State In 2022

    California has sustained massive population declines since the Covid pandemic. Residents have been fed up with radical authoritarian progressive politicians, as well as shit-covered streets, imploding metro areas, out-of-control homelessness, open-air drug markets, soaring violent crime and thefts, high inflation, out-of-reach home prices, and much much more.

    AP News, citing new Census figures, highlighted that a staggering 817,000 individuals left the Golden State in 2022. However, with the addition of 475,000 people moving into California that year, the state saw a net loss of approximately 342,000 residents. 

    Texas continues to be the biggest beneficiary of the California exodus. About 102,000 ex-Californians moved to the Lone Star State last year for cheaper cost of living, lower crime, and a friendlier tax environment. 

    “We are losing younger folks, and I think we will see people continuing to migrate where housing costs are lower,” Manuel Pastor, a professor of sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, said in an interview with AP. 

    Pastor said, “There are good jobs in California, but housing is incredibly expensive. It hurts young families, and it hurts immigrant families.”

    Besides seeking cheaper shelter elsewhere, many folks are leaving the state because of violent crime. The latest FBI data shows Gov. Gavin Newsom’s progressive playground is erupting in violent crime following disastrous ‘defund the police’ policies. Meanwhile, crime is sharply falling in Florida, where ‘law and order’ is embraced. 

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    Democrats have transformed California into a third-world-like state in a matter of years. 

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    Wait until the exodus of people and businesses starts crushing tax revenue for cities… 

    As for 2023 trends, John Burns Real Estate Consulting recently shared a new report that showed the exodus contined this year. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/21/2023 – 15:45

  • Behind A Secret Chinese Biolab In California, A Global Web Of Connections
    Behind A Secret Chinese Biolab In California, A Global Web Of Connections

    Authored by Steve Ispas and Lear Zhou via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The discovery of a black market Chinese biolab operating in California, and the subsequent investigation into it, has exposed a tangled web of shell companies obscuring ownership and loopholes that caused delays in cleanup and informing the public.

    A collage of the biolab in Reedley, Calif., on July 31, 2023. (Fresno County Public Health Department/Judicial Watch, Nathan Su/The Epoch Times, Courtesy of City of Reedley)

    The public found out in March about a secret biolab operating in a warehouse in Reedley, California, about 25 miles southeast of Fresno.

    But the warehouse and its biological hazards were discovered months earlier, on Dec. 19, 2022, by Jesalyn Harper, a code enforcement officer with the City of Reedley Fire Department.

    Responding to an anonymous tip about the supposedly vacant warehouse, Ms. Harper discovered thousands of vials of bacterial and viral agents, including coronavirus, chlamydia, E. coli, streptococcus pneumonia, HIV, hepatitis, herpes, rubella, and malaria.

    The business, operated by Prestige Biotech Inc., was also packaging and mailing out COVID-19 and pregnancy test kits, as well as housing nearly 1,000 lab mice.

    A map illustration shows the location of the biolab in Reedley, Calif. (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Nathan Su/The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)

    Ms. Harper reported her findings to the City of Reedley, which contacted the FBI on the same day. But there was no single authority that could deal with all of the pathogens, chemicals, and biological hazards.

    Eventually, a maze of agencies got involved in the investigation and cleanup, including city, county, and state authorities, as well as federal agencies such as the FBI, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

    The Biolab Discovery

    The warehouse, located at 850 I Street in Reedley, was built in the 1950s mainly as a food packing plant. Trucks would drive up to the alcove area in front of the roll-up doors to load up.

    After Ms. Harper received the anonymous complaint about vehicles parked in the alcove, she went to investigate and also noticed a garden hose going into the building via a door being propped open—a potential plumbing violation.

    Ms. Harper told The Epoch Times that she knocked at the door and saw three people boxing up pregnancy tests. One of them spoke no English, while the other two spoke very broken English.

    At the beginning, Ms. Harper said the trio were very cooperative, but as she walked to the southern part of the building they became deflective.

    “What do you do with the mice?” she recalled asking.

    “We use the mice for experiments,” they replied.

    “What kind of experiments?”

    “Oh, I don’t know, we just give them water.”

    “What’s in the refrigerators?”

    “Just stuff for making the tests.“

    As Ms. Harper asked more specific questions, she said the staff answered less and less, pushing for her to leave. Once she saw labels on the fridges such as “blood,” “HIV,” she realized it was a potentially hazardous environment and left the building.

    Jesalyn Harper, a code enforcement officer with the City of Reedley Fire Department. (Courtesy of Jesalyn Harper)

    She reported her discovery to City of Reedley officials, who contacted the FBI immediately and met with them two days later, on Dec. 21, 2022.

    The FBI took all of January 2023 to investigate and finally deemed the warehouse safe for city employees in early February.

    When Reedley city officials returned to the warehouse on March 3 with an inspection warrant, they reported that no items had been removed from the lab, although some additional items had been stored since December.

    Who’s in Charge?

    For Ms. Harper, the process was just beginning. She began to work with the state and county to determine which organizations needed to be involved.

    “We had to look at these labs and break them down component by component and see who had the authority for each component,” Ms. Harper told The Epoch Times.

    “For example, the California Department of Public Health would have authority over medical devices like pregnancy tests; DTSC [the Department of Toxic Substance Control] would have oversight over some of the chemicals, possibly how they were being used.”

    Experts in medical waste and environmental health were brought in to address the items in the refrigerators, medical waste, human waste, blood, and used pregnancy tests.

    The EPA and FDA were also involved, and both agencies retained some of the documentation and paperwork found in the lab.

    Each item had to be dealt with separately—each drawer, each box, each container, each refrigerator, and each pallet had to be looked at by various departments depending on what was found.

    Meanwhile, Ms. Harper had been feeding and watering the lab mice found onsite while she and other city officials were figuring out who had authority.

    They discovered on March 16 that no one in the U.S. government clearly has regulatory authority over lab mice, so Ms. Harper used the California Health and Safety Code that references animal cruelty to obtain a warrant. A veterinarian then recommended to have the mice humanely euthanized, which took place after obtaining the requisite permit on April 12.

    All other biologicals were removed by July 8, after an abatement warrant was authorized by the Superior Court of California–Fresno County. All other assets were moved during the first two weeks of August.

    An emergency ordinance, No. 2023-008, passed at the Reedley City Council meeting on Sept. 12 temporarily placed a ban on the establishment of warehousing and laboratories with biosafety levels 2 through 4 within the city limits. The City of San Carlos in the Bay Area has a similar ban.

    “I’ve had a lot of sleepless nights knowing there is no one out there looking for these labs. This could be happening all over the United States,” Ms. Harper said.

    “It’s been an eye-opening experience, realizing the many cracks in our government for these types of organizations to fall through, and also realizing that the government is not our first line of defense.”

    Ms. Harper said these types of under-the-radar entities can purchase “a lot of chemicals and a lot of biologicals easily and no one is watching over them to make sure they know what they are doing.”

    “We have to make sure these labs are not able to come here until there is oversight,” she said.

    Who Owns the Secret Lab?

    The biolab in Reedley is owned by Prestige Biotech Inc., but a closer look into a complex network of companies and employees, including Prestige, all ultimately lead back to Jia Bei “Jesse” Zhu, a Chinese national with a Canadian passport.

    Just hours after this article was published on Oct. 19, Mr. Zhu was arrested in California and charged with manufacturing and distributing misbranded medical devices and for making false statements to the FDA. A sealed indictment had been filed on Oct. 18.

    Mr. Zhu faces a maximum of three years in prison for the misbranding charge and five years for the false statements charge according to the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of California.

    According to court documents, between December 2020 and March 2023, Mr. Zhu and others allegedly manufactured, imported, sold, and distributed hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 and other test kits in the United States and China. They did so through the companies Universal Meditech Inc. and Prestige Biotech Inc. without proper authorization.

    “As part of his scheme, the defendant changed his name, the names of his companies, and their locations,” said U.S. Attorney Philip A. Talbert.

    The criminal complaint alleges that during the investigation, Mr. Zhu made several false statements to FDA officials, including using a false name and falsely representing his knowledge about the company’s activities.

    City of Reedley staff were told by Prestige Biotech president Yao Xiuqin that his company had taken over the warehouse—including the biological materials, samples, and lab mice—from Universal Meditech Inc. after the latter claimed bankruptcy, according to a court document filed on June 15.

    Prestige Biotech is the main creditor of Universal Meditech.

    Public records show that Prestige Biotech was first registered in Nevada to Wang Zhaolin (also known as Lynn Warner) on April 3, 2019, before current company president Mr. Yao, who’s based in China, took over on May 28, 2021.

    Universal Meditech was established in Tulare, California, on Nov. 25, 2015, naming Mr. Zhu as CEO. The company obtained a California business license on March 20, 2019.

    “Universal Meditech was started by a group of Canadian and Chinese investors and specializes in research, development and assembly of diagnostic test kits used in dairy cattle reproduction,” said Paul Saldana, who was president and CEO of the Tulare County Economic and Development Center in 2015, according to Visalia Times Delta.

    Shortly after the pandemic started in March 2020, Universal Meditech switched from a cattle reproduction-related business to producing pregnancy test kits and COVID-19 test kits.

    In August 2020, a fire broke out at the company’s Fresno location and a subsequent environmental health inspector’s visit found that Universal Meditech didn’t have a hazardous materials plan for storing ethanol in the warehouse.

    Current documents filed with the California secretary of state don’t show Mr. Zhu as CEO of Universal Meditech anymore, instead naming Wang Xiaoxiao as CEO, chief financial officer, and secretary, with an address in south central Fresno.

    Another name connected to Universal Meditech and many other similar companies is Wang Zhaoyan, who’s also known as Wang Yan.

    Ms. Wang is listed as president of Universal Meditech in an online business directory, and The Epoch Times obtained a plumbing permit issued to Ms. Wang of Universal Meditech from the City of Tulare in 2016. An FDA filings report for Universal Meditech also lists Ms. Wang as the “official correspondent.”

    Ms. Wang is also a principal in another California-based company, Superior Meditech Investments LLC, and an officer or managing member for three other related companies based in Nevada—PBI Diagnostic Laboratory LLC, Medi-Source LLC, and David Destiny Discovery LLC.

    She’s also listed as executive director and general manager for a company in Qingdao, China, called Ai De Biopharmaceutical Industry (Qingdao) Co. Ltd.

    The general manager for Ai De Biopharmaceutical is also the president for Prestige Biotech (the secret biolab in Reedley that bailed out Universal Meditech), according to California and Nevada business filings and a Chinese company directory.

    All of the executives and all the companies eventually lead back to Mr. Zhu, the Chinese man with a Canadian passport.

    Mr. Zhu and several of his companies have been mired in legal battles stretching from Canada to Hong Kong to the United States since 2008.

    In September 2010, Mr. Zhu filed a proof of claim as “the owner” of Ai De Biopharmaceutical in a bankruptcy proceeding for yet another of his companies, JingJing Genetics Inc.

    “The sole shareholder of Ai De is a British Virgin Island company (Unique Way Technology Limited) which, in turn, is owned by IND, which is owned by Zhu,” according to a 2016 ruling by the Supreme Court of British Columbia in Canada.

    Ai De Biopharmaceutical’s street address in Qingdao is the same as other Chinese medical firms such as Qingdao Guangdi Packaging Material and Ai De Diagnostic. According to import records, most of these firms have shipped medical supplies to Universal Meditech and Prestige Biotech.

    Mr. Zhu resigned from his positions of chairman of the board and general manager at Ai De Biopharmaceutical in November 2018, according to Chinese documents.

    The Epoch Times called several numbers for Ai De Biopharmaceutical’s headquarters in China, but the numbers have been disconnected or are no longer in service.

    Jessie Zhu’s Operations

    Mr. Zhu was born in China in 1961 and obtained a Bachelor of Science degree from the Beijing University Medical Department in 1984 and a master’s degree from the Peking Union Medical College Hospital in 1988. He went on to conduct bio research at the University of British Columbia in Canada, according to Sina Finance.

    In 1991, Mr. Zhu established IND Dairytech Ltd in Vancouver and became chairman of the board.

    In the late 1990s, Mr. Zhu flew a dozen Holstein cattle (a breed known for high milk production) from Quebec to Beijing to enhance milk production in China, where it was in great need.

    A decade later, Mr. Zhu’s focus switched to breeding technologies. Rather than transporting cattle to China, IND Dairytech began sending Holstein semen and embryos in an effort to develop cattle herds.

    Primarily serving customers in Canada, IND Dairytech was listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange in 2008, delisted in 2011, and acquired shortly afterward by IND Lifetech, another company controlled by Mr. Zhu.

    The Chinese characters of “Ai De” are also in the upper left corner of IND Lifetech’s logo.

    Not long after IND Lifetech acquired IND Dairytech, it changed its name to JingJing Genetics, still based in Canada and controlled by Mr. Zhu.

    In 2008, JingJing Genetics was sued by XY LLC, a Colorado-based company that claimed damages for “conspiracy, deceit, breach of confidence, breach of contract, and inducing breach of contract.”

    XY had developed the technology to “choose the sex of the offspring using sexed semen or sexed embryos” for “non-human mammals, including cattle, horses, pigs, and endangered species,” according to an online statement.

    The company was “the master licensee in control of all sperm sorting in non-human mammals worldwide.”

    JingJing Genetics was allegedly stealing XY’s technology to manufacture and sell bovine sexed semen, but without the strict controls required from a licensee.

    The case was decided in 2012, with the judge ruling against JingJing Genetics for violating intellectual property agreements.

    Nearly 1,000 mice were kept for experimentation, 178 of which were already dead due to the rancid conditions. The mice had resorted to “cannibalism,” in which the more dominant rodents ripped the hair and skin of inferior ones. (Fresno County Public Health Department/Judicial Watch)

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/21/2023 – 15:10

  • Poll Finds Lackluster Desire To Arm, Supply Israel – Even Among GOP
    Poll Finds Lackluster Desire To Arm, Supply Israel – Even Among GOP

    Bad news for the Israel lobby and the warfare state: On the same evening that President Biden delivered an address from the Oval Office to build support for sending $100 billion in weapons and other aid to Israel and Ukraine, CBS News published a poll showing surprisingly lackluster American support for arming and supplying Israel — even among Republicans. 

    By a spread of 52% to 48%, a majority of all Americans oppose giving weapons and supplies to Israel. While that’s close to an even split, Americans are very much united in seeing the latest developments as a cause for concern: 85% are concerned about a wider war in the Middle East, while 79% are concerned that the Hamas-Israel conflict could lead to terrorism in the United States, according to the CBS News/YouGov poll, which was conducted before, during and after Biden’s Wednesday visit to Israel. 

    When it comes to the Biden’s response to the Israel-Hamas war, Americans are split. 44% say Biden has shown the right amount of support for Israel, while 32% say he hasn’t shown enough support and 24% say he’s given too much support. 

    In recent years, the long-standing bipartisan backing of Israel has been cracking, creating a dynamic where Republicans reliably back the Israel government while Democrats increasingly empathize with the Palestinians. However, in the most striking finding of the new poll, a hefty 43% of Republicans say the United States should NOT send weapons and supplies to Israel.  

    Among all Americans, the poll found opposition to arming Israel is strongest in the 30- to 44-year-old cohort, with 64% opposing it. Among those under 30, 59% are against it. At the other end of the age spectrum, 64% of those 65 and older want more weapons shipped to the Zionist state.

    There isn’t much difference among races: 54% of Hispanics oppose sending weapons and supplies to Israel, compared to 52% of blacks and 51% of whites.

    When it comes to humanitarian aid, 76% of Americans say the US government should send it to Israel and 57% say aid should be sent to Palestinians in Gaza. There’s a notable difference across party affiliations, but note even 41% of Republicans support sending humanitarian aid to Gaza:

    Looks like the Israeli propaganda machine will be putting in some overtime. Tie yourselves to the masts, lads — Israel’s hasbara machine has already unleashed the IDF sirens: 

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    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/21/2023 – 14:35

  • Former US Rep. Justin Amash's Relatives Killed In Israeli Bombing
    Former US Rep. Justin Amash’s Relatives Killed In Israeli Bombing

    Via The Ron Paul Institute,

    Former US Rep. Justin Amash (L-MI), who was the only US House Member representing the Libertarian Party, announced Friday on Twitter/X that several of his relatives were killed when Israel bombed Saint Porphyrius Orthodox Church in Gaza. Amash’s relatives, along with many others, were seeking shelter in the Church as Israel continues to flatten Gaza.

    According to The Wall Street Journal, “The Israeli military said that a blast Thursday night on the St. Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church campus in Gaza City was the result of its airstrike.” The Israeli military said, “The incident is under review.”

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    As one commenter on Amash’s thread pointed out, Saint Porphyrius Church “symbolized coexistence. It’s worth noting that this church is located near the Jewish Quarter in Gaza as well.” Saint Porphyrius Orthodox Church is the third oldest existing Christian church in the world, standing very nearly since the time of Christ.

    Another commenter on Twitter added that “Gaza’s oldest church the Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius”…was a refuge for at least 380 civilians. At least 40 have been reported dead and more searches continue among the rubble.” [Officials sources later revised the death toll to 18 people killed and at least 20 injured.]

    Earlier this week Israel is accused of bombing al-Shifa hospital in Gaza – the only Christian hospital in the Palestinian enclave – and hundreds have been reported killed in that attack.

    While Israel has denied responsibility for that bombing, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak told the BBC that Israel was “determined” to destroy the hospital.

    Additionally, Israel today demanded the evacuation of yet another hospital in Gaza, the Al-Quds Hospital, claiming that it was also on the bombing list. As The Cradle reports, an evacuation is nearly impossible as “the hospital is treating over 400 patients and sheltering 12,000 displaced civilians.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/21/2023 – 14:00

  • "First In The Nation": Arkansas Forces Chinese Company To Sell Its Farmland
    “First In The Nation”: Arkansas Forces Chinese Company To Sell Its Farmland

    Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced that Arkansas will require a Chinese-owned company to sell its farmland in Arkansas, saying it will be a first in the nation move that bans foreign parties from “owning agricultural land” in the state, THV11 reported.

    Sanders, along with Attorney General Tim Griffin and other Republican leaders, said that the company Syngenta will have to sell around 160 acres of land in Craighead County, Arkansas. The company has headquarters based in Switzerland and owned by ChemChina, which is a Chinese state-owned business that primarily deals with seeds and pesticides.

    ChemChina is listed by the U.S. Department of Defense as one of many “Chinese military companies” that operate directly or indirectly in the country.

    The announcement comes after the legislature passed a law earlier in 2023 that bans a foreign party controlled business from owning land in Arkansas.

    Sanders claimed Chinese companies operating in the U.S. send back information and technology, “stealing American research and telling our enemies how to target American farms.”

    “That is a clear threat to our national security and to our great farmers, especially since the Chinese government enacted a law in 2017, requiring Chinese citizens abroad to collaborate with their country’s security officials on intelligence work with no questions asked,” the governor said.

    That law states “any organization” must assist or cooperate with state intelligence work. Another Chinese law said “relevant organizations” can’t refuse to collect evidence for an investigation.

    “We will make sure that every company operating in Arkansas is a friend to Arkansas and good to hardworking Arkansans,” Sanders said.

    Syngenta has been notified of the decision and if they refuse, AG Griffin will move forward with legal proceedings to “force” them out of Arkansas.

    “There is nothing that is off limits for [China] if they think that it will strengthen them strategically,” Griffin explained at the press conference. “Whether it be related to engineering or the ability to feed their people, which is a challenge for them.”

    Griffin said Northrup King Seed Co., a subsidiary of Syngenta, will have to divest itself of the land in Craighead County within in two years. If the company fails to do that, Arkansas can have a civil penalty fine of up to 25% of the value of the property.

    The attorney general said the property is worth around $1.12 million, so the fine would be a maximum of $280,000.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/21/2023 – 13:25

  • Gasoline Prices Have Been Insulated From Oil's Surge Until Now
    Gasoline Prices Have Been Insulated From Oil’s Surge Until Now

    By Chunzi Xu, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategist

    US gasoline prices have been insulated from oil’s surge so far amid soft demand and relatively high inventories. But if oil persists at $90/barrel, pump prices are poised to climb.

    WTI has rallied about 8% in the past two weeks, with gasoline futures not far behind. Yet pump prices have declined more than 4% in the same period. The physical spot market has been stable or lower in New York and Houston.

    This is because implied gasoline demand in the US is about 3% below what it was this time last year and 6% below the five-year average. Meanwhile, inventories have accumulated above seasonal norms. This trend of weak consumption and growing supply is likely to persist into the winter as US refiners emerge from maintenance next month.

    But gasoline prices will eventually catch up to the futures market, which is sensitive to oil’s volatility, especially given escalating tensions in the Middle East. And it doesn’t take much for any impact at the pump to reach consumers — average gasoline prices currently stand at $3.558 a gallon, that’s below this time last year but far above than any other year in the last decade.

     

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/21/2023 – 12:50

  • You Must Be In 'The Six-Figure Club' To Afford A House
    You Must Be In ‘The Six-Figure Club’ To Afford A House

    The latest housing data shows soaring mortgage rates, elevated prices, and limited inventory continue to worsen the affordability crisis. 

    New data from real estate brokerage Redfin Corp. indicates homebuyers now need a whopping $114,000 salary to afford a median-priced home of $412,000 in September – assuming a 30-year fixed mortgage rate of 7.2% with 20% down. This is a near doubling in salary needed to afford a home since Covid, and since inflation wiped out real wages for two years, more Americans than ever can no longer afford the ‘American Dream’ of a single-family house with a white picket fence, instead, trapped in a cycle of renting. 

    Redfin’s next report, for this month, will likely show another jump in the salary needed to afford an average home because the 30-year fixed mortgage rate has risen 80 percentage points to 8%. 

    In 2012, the salary Americans needed to afford the average home was about $38,000. As a rule of thumb, buyers should never exceed 30% of their income on shelter costs. 

    “US homeownership first became a six-figure club in 2022, thanks to borrowing costs rising at the fastest clip in decades while home prices remained high,” Bloomberg said, adding, “It’s only gotten more expensive with mortgage rates hurdling towards 8%. Existing homeowners are reluctant to move because they’re locked in at lower rates, and new buyers are struggling to find properties they can afford, pushing mortgage applications to a multi-decade low.”

    The NAR Housing Affordability Index clocked in at 91.7 in August, down from 93.9 in July – anything below 100 indicates a household with a median income does not earn enough to be approved for a mortgage on a median-priced home. This was the lowest reading since at least the early 1980s.

    Mortgage rates are likely to stay high over the next few months. 

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    For all those millennials and GenZ-ers who are trapped in a cycle of renting with no personal savings and insurmountable credit card and student loan debt, have you ever thought about moving back home to survive the inflation storm? 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/21/2023 – 12:15

  • Is A Financial Crisis Already Here? US Banks Are Closing 100s Of Branches And Laying Off 1000s Of Workers
    Is A Financial Crisis Already Here? US Banks Are Closing 100s Of Branches And Laying Off 1000s Of Workers

    Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

    I know that there is a lot going on in the world right now, but I just had to write about what is happening to our banks. 

    High interest rates and chaos in the real estate industry are combining to put an enormous amount of pressure on our largest financial institutions.  As a result, banks are getting very tight with their money, they are closing down hundreds of branches, and they are laying off thousands of workers.  We are in the early stages of the worst financial crisis since 2008 and 2009, and I fully expect conditions to get even worse in the months ahead.

    During the first week of October alone, U.S. banks closed a whopping 54 local branches…

    Major US banks are continuing to close branches across the US, leaving an increasing number of Americans without access to basic financial services.

    Bank of America axed 21 branches in the first week of October, according to a bulletin published by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) on Friday.

    Wells Fargo shuttered 15, while US Bank and Chase reported closing nine and three respectively.

    In total, some 54 locations had either closed or were scheduled to close between October 1 and October 7.

    That is just one week!

    Of course bank branches have been closing at a frightening pace for quite some time now.

    Last year, U.S. banks shut down about 2,000 more branches than they opened…

    Banks are closing branches faster than they’re opening new ones. U.S. banks closed over 3,000 branches last year while opening just 1,000. JPMorgan Chase led in branch closures last year, shuttering 144 branches, while opening 133. The trend will likely continue as banks face staunch competition for deposits and younger customers from online banks, fintech firms and Big Tech.

    Unless you live under a rock, I am sure that you have noticed this happening in your own local area.

    For many Americans, a “trip to the bank” is no longer just a few minutes away.

    And our banks are also laying off staggering numbers of workers here in 2023…

    The largest American banks have been quietly laying off workers all year — and some of the deepest cuts are yet to come.

    Even as the economy has surprised forecasters with its resilience, lenders have cut headcount or announced plans to do so, with the key exception being JPMorgan Chase, the biggest and most profitable U.S. bank.

    Pressured by the impact of higher interest rates on the mortgage business, Wall Street deal-making and funding costs, the next five largest U.S. banks have cut a combined 20,000 positions so far this year, according to company filings.

    The banking industry is in trouble.

    Big trouble.

    And this is happening at a time when economic conditions are steadily deteriorating.

    In fact, we just learned that the Conference Board’s index of leading economic indicators has now fallen for 18 months in a row…

    The Conference Board Leading Economic Index® (LEI) for the U.S. declined by 0.7 percent in September 2023 to 104.6 (2016=100), following a decline of 0.5 percent in August. The LEI is down 3.4 percent over the six-month period between March and September 2023, an improvement from its 4.6 percent contraction over the previous six months (September 2022 to March 2023).

    “The LEI for the US fell again in September, marking a year and a half of consecutive monthly declines since April 2022,” said Justyna Zabinska-La Monica, Senior Manager, Business Cycle Indicators, at The Conference Board. “In September, negative or flat contributions from nine of the index’s ten components more than offset fewer initial claims for unemployment insurance. Although the six-month growth rate in the LEI is somewhat less negative, and the recession signal did not sound, it still signals risk of economic weakness ahead. So far, the US economy has shown considerable resilience despite pressures from rising interest rates and high inflation. Nonetheless, The Conference Board forecasts that this trend will not be sustained for much longer, and a shallow recession is likely in the first half of 2024.”

    If things are this bad now, what is going to happen if the hot phase of World War III suddenly erupts in the Middle East?

    At this point, nobody can claim that the economy is headed in the right direction.

    During the first nine months of this year, the number of commercial Chapter 11 bankruptcies was 61 percent higher than it was during the same period a year ago…

    A wide array of U.S. businesses have struggled this year. In the first nine months of 2023, commercial Chapter 11 bankruptcies have soared 61% year over year to 4,553, according to Epiq Bankruptcy, which provides U.S. bankruptcy filing data.

    61 percent!

    Let that number sink in for a moment.

    And we have just learned that sales of previously owned homes have dropped to a level not seen since 2010 when the U.S. “was in the midst of a foreclosure crisis”…

    Sales of previously owned homes dropped 2% in September from August to a seasonally adjusted, annualized rate of 3.96 million units, according to the National Association of Realtors. Sales were 15.4% lower compared with September 2022.

    This is the slowest sales pace since October 2010, during the Great Recession, when the market was in the midst of a foreclosure crisis. As a comparison, just two years ago, when mortgage rates hovered around 3%, home sales were running at a 6.6 million pace. The average rate on the 30-year fixed today is right around 8%, according to Mortgage News Daily.

    Speaking of home foreclosures, they are up 34 percent compared to the same time in 2022…

    Home foreclosures are on the rise as Americans continue to grapple with the ongoing cost-of-living crisis.

    That is according to a new report published by real estate data provider ATTOM, which found that foreclosure filings – which includes default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions – surged 28% in the third quarter to 124,539.

    Foreclosures are up 34% from the same time one year ago.

    A new economic crisis is here.

    And the truth is that it is going to get a whole lot worse.

    So even though things are not great now, enjoy these last few days of relative stability while you still can, because war in the Middle East will soon plunge the entire global economy into a state of great turmoil.

    *  *  *

    Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/21/2023 – 11:40

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