- James Wesley Rawles: Ready Yourself For A Turbulent 2021 And Beyond
James Wesley Rawles: Ready Yourself For A Turbulent 2021 And Beyond
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/23/2020 – 00:00Authored by James Wesley Rawles via Survivalblog.com,
The year 2020 will be remembered as an exceptionally turbulent year, marked by multiple worldwide crises and massive urban protests and riots. It has been a year of significant drama and trauma. I do not expect that 2021 will mark a “return to normality.” If anything, 2021 will be just as jarring to our collective psyche. Parenthetically, I should mention that I created a meme for that.
In this essay, I’m posting my recommendations for SurvivalBlog readers on how to ready yourself and your family for any of the following in 2021:
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Economic Turmoil
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Sociopolitical Upheaval
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Global Military and Terrorism Threats
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Supply Chain Disruptions
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Renewed Pandemic Lockdowns
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Anti-Second Amendment Legislation
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Urban Outmigration
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A Resurgence of Inflation
I don’t claim to be any sort of prophet. I simply extrapolate from current events, trends, and my study of history.
ECONOMIC TURMOIL
The massive debts that many governments have racked up since the outbreak of COVID-19 are staggering. In just the past 11 months nearly $2 Trillion Dollars has been added to our national debt. Federal debt, as a share of the economy, hit 98 percent in the 2020 fiscal year. To put the mountain of new debt in perspective: It took about 200 years for the Federal Government to build up its first $1 trillion in debt. (That threshold was reached circa 1976.) The debt is now north of $28 trillion, and climbing. And that figure does not include out-year obligations such as Federal pensions. So, I realistically, think of it as a $50+ trillion debt!
Specific Recommendations:
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Because we can expect layoffs, develop a second income stream from a home-based business.
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Reduce your consumer debt as much as possible.
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Invest in anticipation of both a weaker U.S. Dollar on the Forexand much higher currency inflation. (More on that, later in this article.)
SOCIOPOLITICAL UPHEAVAL
The Antifa and BLM rioting of 2020 may carry over into 2021, even if Sleepy-Creepy Joe Biden is sworn in as President. And if the Federal courts intervene to throw out any tainted (late-arriving and back-dated) ballots and hence DJT gets a second term, then we can expect the leftist rioters to come absolutely unglued. The riots will be even more severe and protracted. Plan accordingly.
Specific Recommendations:
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The late Ol’ Remus said it best: Avoid crowds.
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Avoid visiting urban areas unless absolutely necessary. If you must, then carry body armor and full battle rattle in the trunk of your car.
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Never travel unarmed!
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Avoid targeting yourself. If you live in a liberal city or suburb then go “Gray Man”. Part of that is displaying no political or firearms-related bumper stickers or yard signs.
GLOBAL MILITARY AND TERRORISM THREATS
Or planet is not a very safe place. The state of “Peace” is the exception, and peaceful locales are also exceptions. Warfare, tyranny, brutal policing, and coercive taxation are the norm.
Some hotspots and issues to watch:
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South China Sea
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Taiwan Straits (Invasion of Taiwan unlikely in the Trump era, but more likely, with Biden in charge)
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China/India Border
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Continuation or expansion of the Nagorno-Karabakh war
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Expansion of the Syrian Civil War into a regional war or world war.
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A new wave of Islamic terrorism
Specific Recommendations:
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Avoid international travel in contested regions.
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Mitigate the risks of interruption of commerce with contested regions. Try to minimize your purchases of goods that are made in mainland China. Stock up on items that would be in short supply if any of these conflicts “go hot” in 2021.
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Don’t live in a locale that is a likely terrorist target.
SUPPLY CHAIN DISRUPTIONS
The shortages that we witnessed in the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic (February though May, 2020) illustrated how vulnerable the nation’s supply chains are. This includes not just the import and manufacturing supply chains but also the consumer level supply chain. Even local Farmers’ Markets were shut down by the Wuhan Flu pandemic.
Specific Recommendations:
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Stock up early on items that are likely to be in short supply, such as gardening seeds, canning jars, plenty of canning jar lids, cleaning supplies, bleach, and paper products.
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Finding replacement car parts may become problematic. If you drive a foreign-made car, then consider selling it and replacing it with an American-made car. One exception would be a pre-2018 Toyota Camry. It is a best-selling import car, so the car dismantling yards are full of parts for those.
RENEWED PANDEMIC LOCKDOWNS
Assuming that the COVID-19 pandemic continues, we can expect to see State-level lockdowns reinstated. And if Biden takes office, then there might be a Federal (nationwide) lockdown, as well. There also might be Federally-mandated coronavirus vaccinations and/or travel restrictions.
Further lockdowns will undoubtedly hamstring the U.S. economy. That could very well tip us over into another recession.
Specific Recommendations:
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Be prepared to telecommute for an extended period of time.
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If you have a job that would require “getting the jab” and you refuse to do so, then prepare to be fired from your job, or laid off under some other pretense. You might consider proactively taking a different job from a small, private employer where you are less likely to be required to be vaccinated.
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Try to transition your work situation to be as “recession-proof” as possible.
ANTI-SECOND AMENDMENT LEGISLATION
If Joe Biden takes office but yet a republican majority is maintained in the U.S. Senates, then chances are that not much gun legislation will be enacted at the Federal level. In that sense, legislative gridlock is a good thing. But regardless, the Biden/Harris administration is likely to attempt to legislate on its own via Executive Orders. For firearms, that will very likely be restrictions on the importation of guns, ammunition, gun parts, and magazines. For that reason, buying extra magazines for all of the imported guns that you own should be your top priority. Joe Biden is also likely to direct the ATF to reclassify various guns and gun parts–most notably shotguns with detachable magazines, pistol arm braces, and binary triggers.
While we can’t escape Federal legislation, we can avoid bad state-level legislation by living in the right state. I’ve long been a proponent of voting with your feet. Here are 20 states that in my estimation are the least likely to enact any new anti-gun laws:
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Wyoming
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Idaho
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Montana
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Utah
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North Dakota
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South Dakota
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Missouri
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Alaska
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Arkansas
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South Carolina
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Kentucky
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Tennessee
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Mississippi
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Kansas
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Alabama
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Oklahoma
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West Virginia
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Indiana
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Louisiana
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Ohio
Specific Recommendations:
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Remain active in gun politics. We need to hound our elected representatives at all levels of government. Tell them bluntly: No more gun laws!
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Seriously consider moving to a low-tax, low-population density, and gun-friendly state. Be wary of Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, and Texas. Those are all “destination states” for liberal California refugees. They are bringing their leftist politics with them.
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Round out your gun collection soon, preferably via private party purchases of used guns. That is legal in +/- 37 of the 50 States.
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Stock up on 11+ round magazines
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Stock up on ammunition and reloading components
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Hedge into a few pre-1899 cartridge guns. (Because you may have to make the rest of our collection disappear!)
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There might also be new restrictions on the civilian ownership of night vision gear and body armor. (Most likely with Grandfather Clauses.) So stock up!
URBAN OUTMIGRATION
The current trend toward migration from cities to the hinterlands will accelerate, especially in the spring and summer of 2021.
Specific Recommendations:
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Again: Seriously consider moving to a low-tax, low-population density, and gun-friendly state.
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If you live in a rural region, then anticipate that everyone in the building trades will be fully booked for several years. One consequence of a shortage of contractors that is that manufactured houses (read: double-wides) will soon be sold out, whether they are new or used.
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With so many people relocating to the hinterboonies there will be shortages of major appliances — especially chest freezers.
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And with umpteen newbies wanting to become self-sufficient there will probably be shortages of prefabricated greenhouses, small tractors, and power equipment such as chainsaws, rototillers, and utility ATVs. So If you have been needing any of those and delaying making such a purchase, then stop delaying. Buy it ASAP!
A RESURGENCE OF INFLATION
The inflation of the U.S. Dollar has been low for more than a decade. This has been attributed to artificially depressed interest rates, orchestrated by the Federal reserve banking cartel. But given the gross overspending by the Federal government, we can expect inflation to re-emerge in the 2020s.
Specific Recommendations:
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Keep a close eye on both the prime interest rate and the US Dollar Index (USDI). If interest rates spike by 1 percent of more, or the USDI dips below 90, then watch out! General price inflation will follow, soon after.
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As I’ve already mentioned: Invest in anticipation of both a weaker U.S. Dollar and much higher currency inflation.
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Avoid making any new investments that are U.S. Dollar denominated.
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Become more self-sufficient with vegetable gardening and small livestock, so that you won’t face as much “Sticker Shock”, when buying groceries.
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Reduce your U.S. Dollar exposure, by:
A.) Hedging into practical, barterable tangible items. (Guns, tools, et cetera.)
B.) Hedging into silver, platinum, and gold.
C.) Hedging into Swiss Franc currency.
D.) If you are age 50, buying a Swiss Franc-denominated annuity.
CONCLUSION
In summary, we need to be prepared for a turbulent or downright tumultuous 2021. The Drama Quotient for the remainder of the 2020s may resemble the 1930s more than the 2010s.
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- FBI Investigating "Orgasmic Meditation" Company For Sex Trafficking, Prostitution, & Violation Of Labor Laws
FBI Investigating “Orgasmic Meditation” Company For Sex Trafficking, Prostitution, & Violation Of Labor Laws
Tyler Durden
Sun, 11/22/2020 – 23:30Because here at ZeroHedge, we always like to ask the hard hitting questions, back in 2019 we wrote about whether or not a company in the business of “orgasmic meditation” was really just a prostitution sex cult. Apparently the FBI is now asking that same question.
In our 2019 article, we focused on OneTaste – a controversial “business” that focused on a practice that the company calls “orgasmic meditation” (OM). The company called OM “a unique wellness practice that combines mindfulness with the power of the deeply human, deeply felt experience of Orgasm” on its website.
Bloomberg revealed the practice to be “a trademarked procedure that typically involves a man using a gloved, lubricated fingertip to stroke a woman’s clitoris for 15 minutes”.
Well it turns out the FBI wasn’t as “stimulated” by the company’s business plan as many of the group’s members, and is investigating the company over allegations of sex trafficking, prostitution and violations of labor laws, according to the Daily Mail.
OneTaste founder Nicole Daedone The company is not being allowed to offer classes while the FBI is conducting its investigation.
BBC journalist Nastaran Tavakoli-Far, who did an expose podcast on the issue called The Orgasm Cult, spoke to dozens of people associated with the company prior to the FBI investigation.
She said: “For years there have been rumors that OneTaste is basically a sex cult, complete with a messianic leader who everyone adored and worshiped and who expected full allegiance.”
One ex-employee told her she left the company with “full blown PTSD”. “I was very, very scarred and very afraid. I was, for about two years, suffering from nightmares, a deep sense of depression, and loneliness and low self-esteem,” the employee said.
Founded in San Francisco (of course), the company was focusing mostly on emotionally walled-off women, while allowing nerdy men to finger them (in exchange for a price) in “interactive classes”, where participants are encouraged to learn by doing. Or, as we noted in 2019, it appeared to us that the company was simply selling sex.
We pointed out last year that some of the company’s former members, including 16 of them profiled by Bloomberg, were eager to point out the dark side of OneTaste: expensive classes, preying on emotionally vulnerable people and being shunned by group members after leaving.
Former members spoke anonymously for fear of retribution from the company. Some called the company a “kind of prostitution ring” that would exploit trauma victims and others searching for healing. Some members believed that the company used flirtation and sex to lure in targets that were emotionally vulnerable. It is also accused of having employees be conditioned to work for free and “ordering staffers to have sex or OM with each other”, or customers.
The company’s classes ranged from $199 for an introduction to $4,000 for a retreat, to $16,000 for an “intensive”. The company also started charging $60,000 for an annual membership in 2014. According to the company, about 1,400 people have taken its coaching program, 6,500 have come to an intro class, and more than 14,000 have signed up for online courses and its app.
One former sales person said: “You fluff someone to get them energetically and emotionally hard. You were the dangled bait, like ‘You can have more of this if you buy this $10,000 course.’ ”
At the time, the company denied this characterization, calling it “outrageous”. Chief Executive Officer Joanna Van Vleck said in 2019: “OneTaste is the Whole Foods of sexuality—the organic, good-for-you version. The overarching thing is, orgasm is part of wellness.”
The company has said “any allegations of abusive practices are completely false”.
- "Pandemic is Over" – Former Pfizer Chief Science Officer Says "Second Wave" Faked On False-Positive COVID Tests
“Pandemic is Over” – Former Pfizer Chief Science Officer Says “Second Wave” Faked On False-Positive COVID Tests
Tyler Durden
Sun, 11/22/2020 – 23:00This video provides one of the most erudite and informative looks at Covid-19 and the consequences of lockdowns. As AIER notes, it was remarkable this week to watch as it appeared on YouTube and was forcibly taken down only 2 hours after posting.
The copy below is hosted on LBRY, a blockchain video application. In a year of fantastic educational content, this is one of the best we’ve seen.
Consider the presenter’s bio:
Dr. Michael Yeadon is an Allergy & Respiratory Therapeutic Area expert with 23 years in the pharmaceutical industry. He trained as a biochemist and pharmacologist, obtaining his PhD from the University of Surrey (UK) in 1988.
Dr. Yeadon then worked at the Wellcome Research Labs with Salvador Moncada with a research focus on airway hyper-responsiveness and effects of pollutants including ozone and working in drug discovery of 5-LO, COX, PAF, NO and lung inflammation. With colleagues, he was the first to detect exhaled NO in animals and later to induce NOS in lung via allergic triggers.
Joining Pfizer in 1995, he was responsible for the growth and portfolio delivery of the Allergy & Respiratory pipeline within the company. He was responsible for target selection and the progress into humans of new molecules, leading teams of up to 200 staff across all disciplines and won an Achievement Award for productivity in 2008.
Under his leadership the research unit invented oral and inhaled NCEs which delivered multiple positive clinical proofs of concept in asthma, allergic rhinitis and COPD. He led productive collaborations such as with Rigel Pharmaceuticals (SYK inhibitors) and was involved in the licensing of Spiriva and acquisition of the Meridica (inhaler device) company.
Dr. Yeadon has published over 40 original research articles and now consults and partners with a number of biotechnology companies. Before working with Apellis, Dr. Yeadon was VP and Chief Scientific Officer (Allergy & Respiratory Research) with Pfizer.
What likely triggered the Silicon Valley censor-mongers is the fact that a former Chief Science Officer for the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer says “there is no science to suggest a second wave should happen.” The “Big Pharma” insider asserts that false positive results from inherently unreliable COVID tests are being used to manufacture a “second wave” based on “new cases.”
As Ralph Lopez write at HubPages, Yeadon warns that half or even “almost all” of tests for COVID are false positives. Dr. Yeadon also argues that the threshold for herd immunity may be much lower than previously thought, and may have been reached in many countries already.
In an interview last week (see below) Dr. Yeadon was asked:
“we are basing a government policy, an economic policy, a civil liberties policy, in terms of limiting people to six people in a meeting…all based on, what may well be, completely fake data on this coronavirus?”
Dr. Yeadon answered with a simple “yes.”
Even more significantly, even if all positives were to be correct, Dr. Yeadon said that given the “shape” of all important indicators in a worldwide pandemic, such as hospitalizations, ICU utilization, and deaths, “the pandemic is fundamentally over.”
Yeadon said in the interview:
“Were it not for the test data that you get from the TV all the time, you would rightly conclude that the pandemic was over, as nothing much has happened. Of course people go to the hospital, moving into the autumn flu season…but there is no science to suggest a second wave should happen.”
In a paper published this month, which was co-authored by Yeadon and two of his colleagues, “How Likely is a Second Wave?”, the scientists write:
“It has widely been observed that in all heavily infected countries in Europe and several of the US states likewise, that the shape of the daily deaths vs. time curves is similar to ours in the UK. Many of these curves are not just similar, but almost super imposable.“
In the data for UK, Sweden, the US, and the world, it can be seen that in all cases, deaths were on the rise in March through mid or late April, then began tapering off in a smooth slope which flattened around the end of June and continues to today. The case rates however, based on testing, rise and swing upwards and downwards wildly.
Media messaging in the US is already ramping up expectations of a “second wave.”
The survival rate of COVID-19 has been upgraded since May to 99.8% of infections. This comes close to ordinary flu, the survival rate of which is 99.9%. Although COVID can have serious after-effects, so can flu or any respiratory illness. The present survival rate is far higher than initial grim guesses in March and April, cited by Dr. Anthony Fauci, of 94%, or 20 to 30 times deadlier. The Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) value accepted by Yeadon et al in the paper is .26%. The survival rate of a disease is 100% minus the IFR.
Dr. Yeadon pointed out that the “novel” COVID-19 contagion is novel only in the sense that it is a new type of coronavirus. But, he said, there are presently four strains which circulate freely throughout the population, most often linked to the common cold.
In the scientific paper, Yeadon et al write:
“There are at least four well characterised family members (229E, NL63, OC43 and HKU1) which are endemic and cause some of the common colds we experience, especially in winter. They all have striking sequence similarity to the new coronavirus.”
The scientists argue that much of the population already has, if not antibodies to COVID, some level of “T-cell” immunity from exposure to other related coronaviruses, which have been circulating long before COVID-19.
The scientists write:
“A major component our immune systems is the group of white blood cells called T-cells whose job it is to memorise a short piece of whatever virus we were infected with so the right cell types can multiply rapidly and protect us if we get a related infection. Responses to COVID-19 have been shown in dozens of blood samples taken from donors before the new virus arrived.”
Introducing the idea that some prior immunity to COVID-19 already existed, the authors of “How Likely is a Second Wave?” write:
“It is now established that at least 30% of our population already had immunological recognition of this new virus, before it even arrived…COVID-19 is new, but coronaviruses are not.”
They go on to say that, because of this prior resistance, only 15-25% of a population being infected may be sufficient to reach herd immunity:
“…epidemiological studies show that, with the extent of prior immunity that we can now reasonably assume to be the case, only 15-25% of the population being infected is sufficient to bring the spread of the virus to a halt…”
In the US, accepting a death toll of 200,000, and a survival rate of 99.8%, this would mean for every person who has died, there would be about 400 people who had been infected, and lived. This would translate to around 80 million Americans, or 27% of the population. This touches Yeadon’s and his colleagues’ threshold for herd immunity.
Finally, the former Pfizer executive and scientist singles out one former colleague for withering rebuke for his role in the pandemic, Professor Neil Ferguson. Ferguson taught at Imperial College while Yeadon was affiliated. Ferguson’s computer model provided the rationale for governments to launch draconian orders which turned free societies into virtual prisons overnight. Over what is now estimated by the CDC to be a 99.8% survival rate virus.
Dr. Yeadon said in the interview that “no serious scientist gives any validity” to Ferguson’s model.
Speaking with thinly-veiled contempt for Ferguson, Dr. Yeadon took special pains to point out to his interviewer:
“It’s important that you know most scientists don’t accept that it [Ferguson’s model] was even faintly right…but the government is still wedded to the model.”
Yeadon joins other scientists in castigating governments for following Ferguson’s model, the assumptions of which all worldwide lockdowns are based on. One of these scientists is Dr. Johan Giesecke, former chief scientist for the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention, who called Ferguson’s model “the most influential scientific paper” in memory, and also “one of the most wrong.”
It was Ferguson’s model which held that “mitigation” measures were necessary, i.e. social distancing and business closures, in order to prevent, for example, over 2.2 million people dying from COVID in the US.
Ferguson predicted that Sweden would pay a terrible price for no lockdown, with 40,000 COVID deaths by May 1, and 100,000 by June. Sweden’s death count is under 6,000. The Swedish government says this coincides to a mild flu season. Although initially higher, Sweden now has a lower death rate per-capita than the US, which it achieved without the terrific economic damage still ongoing in the US. Sweden never closed restaurants, bars, sports, most schools, or movie theaters. The government never ordered people to wear masks.
Dr. Yeadon speaks bitterly of the lives lost as a result of lockdown policies, and of the “savable” countless lives which will be further lost, from important surgeries and other healthcare deferred, should lockdowns be reimposed.
Watch the full discussion below:
Yeadon’s warnings are confirmed by a new study from the Infectious Diseases Society of America., summarized succinctly in the following twitter thread from al gato malo (@boriquagato)
Anyone still presuming that a Positive PCR test is showing a COVID case needs to read this very carefully:
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even 25 cycles of amplification, 70% of “positives” are not “cases.” virus cannot be cultured. it’s dead.
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by 35: 97% non-clinical.
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the US runs at 40, 32X the amplification of 35.
a lot of people still seem to not understand what this means, so let’s lay that out for a minute.
PCR tests look for RNA. there is too little in your swab. so they amplify it using a primer based heating and annealing process.
Each cycle of this process doubles the material
the US (and much of the world) is using a 40 Ct (cycle threshold). so, 40 doublings, 1 trillion X amplification.
This is absurdly high.
The way that we know this is by running this test, seeing the Ct to find the RNA, and then using the same sample to try to culture virus.
If you cannot culture the virus, then the virus is “dead.” it’s inert. if it cannot replicate, it cannot infect you or others. it’s just traces of virus, remnants, fragments etc
PCR is not testing for disease, it’s testing for a specific RNA pattern and this is the key pivot
When you crank it up to 25, 70% of the positive results are not really “positives” in any clinical sense.
i hesitate to call it a “false positive” because it’s really not. it did find RNA.
but that RNA is not clinically relevant.
It cannot make you or anyone else sick
so let’s call this a non-clinical positive (NCP).
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if 70% of positives are NCP’s at 25, imagine what 40 looks like. 35 is 1000X as sensitive.
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this study found only 3% live at 35
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40 Ct is 32X 35, 32,000X 25
no one can culture live virus past about 34 and we have known this since march. yet no one has adjusted these tests.
presuming it bears out, this is a key finding.
it shows that many patients that are PCR+ for COV-19 are not shedding infectious virus.
this would imply shorter quarantine needed and provide a testable basis for discharge of isolated patients. pic.twitter.com/UvumjkxVxv
— el gato malo (@boriquagato) March 27, 2020
This is more very strong data refuting the idea that you can trust a PCR+ as a clinical indicator.
That is NOT what it’s meant for. at all.
Using them to do real time epidemiology is absurd.
The FDA would never do it, the drug companies doing vaccine trials would never do it… it’s because it’s nonsense.
And this same test is used for “hospitalizations” and “death with covid” (itself a weirdly over inclusive metric)
PCR testing is not the answer, it’s the problem.
It’s not how to get control of an epidemic, it’s how to completely lose control of your data picture and wind up with gibberish and we have done this to ourselves before.
The last major false positive pseudo-epidemic was Swine Flu in 2009. Everyone said we would never let it happen again. pic.twitter.com/Hdif5l5Gam
— Dr Clare Craig (@ClareCraigPath) November 16, 2020
A quick word what this data does and does not mean.
Saying “a sample requiring 35 Ct to test + has a 3% real clinical positive rate” does not mean “97% of + tests run at 35 Ct are NCP’s”
People seem to get confused on this, so lets explain:
Most tests are just amplified and run. they don’t test every cycle as these academics do. that would make the test slow and expensive, so you just run 40 cycles then test.
Obviously, a real clinical positive (RCP) that would have been + at 20 is still + at 40.
but when you run the tests each cycle as the academics do, that test would already have dropped out.
so saying that only 3% at 35 are RCP really means that 3% of those samples not PCR + at 34 were PCR and RCP + at 35.
this lets us infer little about overall NCP/RCP rate.
so we cannot say “at 25 Ct, we have a 70 NCP rate.” in fact, it’s hard to say much of anything. it depends entirely on what the source material coming in looks like.
you cannot even compare like to like.
This is what i mean by “the data is gibberish”
Today at 40 Ct, 7% PCR positive rate could be 1% RCP prevalence when that same thing meant 6% RCP prev in april.
If there is lots more trace virus around, more people who have recovered and have fragments left over, etc this test could be finding virus you killed 4 months ago.
So if we consider RCP rate/PCR+ rate, we would expect that number to drop sharply late in an epidemic because there is more dead virus around for PCR to find, but we have no idea what that ratio is or how it changes.
This spills over in to deaths, reported hospitalization etc.
Testing is being made out to be like the high beams on a car, but when it’s snowing like hell at night, that is the LAST thing you want. It is not illuminating our way, it’s blinding us.
A bad inaccurate map is much worse than no map at all, and this is a world class bad map…
We’re basing policy that is affecting billions of humans on data that is uninterpretable gibberish.
It’s a deranged technocrat’s wet dream, but for those of us along for the ride, it’s a nightmare.
Testing is not the solution, it’s the problem.
Any technocrat or scientist that does not know this by now is either unfit for their job or has decided that they just don’t care and prefer power to morality.
This is, of curse, precisely the kind of person who winds up running a gov’t agency… oopsie.
The head of the NIH is not the best scientist, it’s the best politician.
All this wild and reckless government policy has never been about the science.
It’s politics and panic.
You can read the whole paper here:
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- KFC Launches Autonomous 5G Food Trucks In China
KFC Launches Autonomous 5G Food Trucks In China
Tyler Durden
Sun, 11/22/2020 – 22:30In China, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) has launched a new food truck program, using 5G autonomous vehicles that allow hungry customers to purchase finger-licking good chicken without human interaction.
Twitter handle “shanghaineko” snapped a couple of pictures of the unmanned vehicles with KFC chicken for sale outside a metro station in the city of Shanghai.
h/t shanghaineko In another tweet, shanghaineko shows there is more than one autonomous KFC food truck.
According to Malaysian media outlet SoyaCincau, customers can “place an order on the screen, and it accepts payment via QR-code. After payment is made, the door will open for you to collect your order.”
SoyaCincau states the food trucks are manufactured by Neolix, a self-driving logistics startup based in Beijing.
The startup offers autonomous delivery vehicles that are level 4 as defined by the Society of Automotive Engineers.
Neolix’s autonomous delivery vehicles have a range of up to 62 miles on a single battery charge.
And it’s not autonomous delivery that is revolutionizing the food industry via the adaption of automation and artificial intelligence, White Castle has recently announced it will begin automating its US kitchens.
The virus pandemic is being used as an excuse to automate millions of jobs worldwide.
- Shrem: Bretton Woods 2.0 Is Knocking At The Door, And It's Not Here To Help
Shrem: Bretton Woods 2.0 Is Knocking At The Door, And It’s Not Here To Help
Tyler Durden
Sun, 11/22/2020 – 22:00Authored by Charlie Shrem via CoinTelegraph.com,
A second Bretton Woods era will be even more centralized and even further from a true democracy…
image courtesy of CoinTelegraph
Barely 100 years ago at the start of the 20th century, people were able to exchange dollars for gold at their local bank. While gold was too hard to trade between people, banking institutions held gold and gave people cash for it. This was during what was known as the gold standard. Each sovereign currency’s value was determined relative to a fixed amount of gold. However, in the decades ahead, that standard quickly changed.
Toward the end of World War II, dozens of powerful people organized a meeting to discuss a new monetary agreement designed to minimize the economic damage done by the war. This meeting was named after the location where it took place: Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in the United States.
It was a long-term plan with several parts that spanned over decades. And the Bretton Woods delegates decided that multiple fiat currencies would now be backed by the U.S. dollar as opposed to gold itself. At first, the dollar proved to be stable enough to support the Bretton Woods agreement in 1944 — until it wasn’t in the decades ahead. During the Vietnam War, President Richard Nixon called for more money. There wasn’t any more money in circulation. So, he started printing.
In 1971, President Nixon ended the dollar’s convertibility to gold, which effectively ended the Bretton Woods agreement after nearly 30 years.
The removal of the gold standard turned each country’s fiat currency into a floating exchange rate that was no longer fixed. Money was not measured by the dollar anymore; now, each currency was measured in relation to every other currency, with prices that constantly changed, creating foreign exchange market volatility.
Bitcoin as an opposition
Today, one asset that fiat currencies are measured against is Bitcoin (BTC). As I mentioned in 2019, I think Bitcoin is the best investment when it comes to currencies in the sense of sound money.
In certain countries — such as Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela, to name a few — Bitcoin’s price is currently at an all-time high compared with their national fiat. Relatively speaking, that’d be equivalent to Bitcoin price already being around $20,000.
The problem is that Bitcoin is not ready to be a monetary system in and of itself. Most people who have Bitcoin are just holding it — they’re not selling it or using it as currency due to its potential to rapidly appreciate, despite the downside risks.
Bretton Woods 2.0
Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund is now calling for a second Bretton Woods era to be announced in 2020. This would establish the Special Drawing Right, or SDR, as the new reserve currency as opposed to the U.S. dollar. The SDR serves as the most stable investment option for the IMF. Its value consists of the top five global fiat currencies as a protection against volatile movements in forex markets. The problem with the SDR approach is that it could make the economic situation even worse than it is today.
History has shown that when people have an inflated amount of power with regard to money, they will use it. Just look at President Nixon during the Vietnam War and the original Bretton Woods agreement in the mid-20th century. Even worse is that now, nearly all central banks are printing more money, which in turn leads to inflation as fiat currencies lose their purchasing power.
We can’t have a single powerful entity with the power to print itself out of temporary trouble, especially while it would be putting us in future debt that would be impossible to manage. This is the opposite of democracy, where only a few people control big monetary decisions that affect everyone. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin aim to solve this dilemma, thanks to their limited supply, among other favorable qualities inherent in blockchain technology.
Blockchain tech has a solution
Blockchain has raised our standards to expect decentralization in the institutions that are meant to serve us. True decentralization is reached when the hierarchy is broken. Everything becomes transparent, and incentives are offered to push the system forward in the right direction.
Sogur, for example, is a startup tackling the ambitious challenge of creating a new monetary system based on its cryptocurrency SGR that models the SDR while leveraging blockchain and an intelligent economic design advised by world-renowned economists.
I like the idea of currency baskets that serve as a much more reliable, stable means of exchange. I don’t like that the IMF gets endless decision-making power over our global monetary system. Blockchain-based solutions are different — they have a foundation that’s governed by an assembly and, for example, can give SGR holders veto power over every decision at any given time.
Blockchain technology can combine the elements of decentralized governance into a classical corporate structure, in order to comply with international laws and Anti-Money Laundering requirements, while using a smart-contract-based bonding curve to tame inflation and volatility, which remain two of the biggest problems with traditional fiat currencies that can be solved.
- Former Harvard Fencing Coach Accused Of Taking $1.5 Million To Secure Admission For Students
Former Harvard Fencing Coach Accused Of Taking $1.5 Million To Secure Admission For Students
Tyler Durden
Sun, 11/22/2020 – 21:30In the latest chapter of high profile college admission scandals across the U.S., former Harvard fencing coach Peter Brand was arrested last week for taking more than $1.5 million from Maryland-based businessman Jie “Jack” Zhao to secure spots at the school for Zhao’s two sons.
Harvard began investigating the issue in May 2019 and, shortly thereafter, Brand was dismissed from his job, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Andrew E. Lelling, U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, said: “This case is part of our longstanding effort to expose and deter corruption in college admissions. Millions of teenagers strive for college admission every year. We will do our part to make that playing field as level as we possibly can.”
The complaint alleges that Brand recruited Zhao’s sons in exchange for money and allegedly said in 2012 that the boys “don’t have to be great fencers.”
In 2013, Zhao donated $1 million to a fencing charity run by a co-conspirator of Brand. Zhao’s son was admitted into Harvard, as a fencing recruit, in December. He enrolled the following fall. The charity then sent $100,000 to the Peter Brand foundation, a second charity set up by Brand and his spouse.
Zhao also allegedly “paid for Mr. Brand’s car, covered college tuition payments for the coach’s son, paid the mortgage on his house in Needham, Mass., and later bought the house for more than its market value.”
Both Zhao and Brand deny the allegations.
William D. Weinreb, a partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP said: “Jack Zhao’s children were academic stars in high school and internationally competitive fencers who obtained admission to Harvard on their own merit. Both of them fenced for Harvard at the Division One level throughout their college careers.”
Douglas Brooks, partner at Libby Hoopes Brooks PC, said: “The students were academic and fencing stars. Coach Brand did nothing wrong in connection with their admission to Harvard. He looks forward to the truth coming out in court.”
The Harvard case is unrelated to the college admissions scandal called “Operation Varsity Blues” that has been playing out over the last 24 months in the U.S. and was masterminded by William “Rick” Singer.
- John Williams Warns Hyperinflationary Great Depression Coming
John Williams Warns Hyperinflationary Great Depression Coming
Tyler Durden
Sun, 11/22/2020 – 21:00Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,
Economist John Williams says don’t think the happy news on CV19 vaccines is going to get the economy back to normal anytime soon.
Williams explains, “Put all the political turmoil aside for the moment. The markets respond that this (CV19 vaccines) is going to turn the economy. My point is it is not going to turn the economy…”
“…at least not soon because of what has happened to the economy and the severe structural damage. We have had a lot of companies go out of business, in particular, small companies. A lot of people have suffered, and we are going to have more of that going ahead.”
Because they has been so much damage done to the economy, Williams says there will have to be stimulus no matter who eventually makes it into the White House. Williams contends,
“Let’s say Trump gets re-elected. He’s not going to have any choice but to increase stimulus to try to help the economy and help people. If Biden takes over, he’s going to have to do the same. He is already promising massive stimulus. Where it gets really scary is if the Democrats can take control of the House, the Senate as well as the White House… The stimulus there is going to be unbelievable…
The more radical Democrats will just print the money you need and spend whatever you need to spend it on, and don’t worry about it… Whoever gets into power, there is going to be more deficit spending. It’s just a matter of how radical it will be… There is no way we are escaping massive stimulus for at least the next year and into 2022.”
Williams expects to see some very large inflation because of all the stimulus coming and predicts,
“The more left we go, the more rapid will be the demise of the dollar. Eventually, it will be a hyperinflation in the United States.
What I am looking at here is this evolving into a hyperinflationary Great Depression.
To save yourself, you have to preserve your wealth, your dollar assets. To do that, you have to convert your dollars into physical gold and silver, precious metals and just hold them. They will retain value over time as opposed to paper dollars that will effectively become worthless. You’ll be getting a lot of money from the government, and they will keep giving you more and more and more, but that’s going to be an environment of rising and rising inflation. It’s not necessarily going to buy you more…
Hyperinflation will bring political disruption. . . . Hyperinflation is a form of default. Gold is telling us hyperinflation is straight ahead of us.”
Williams says,
“When the Fed finally gets the more than 2% inflation it wants, the real inflation will be 12% to 15%. . . . Hyperinflations happen quickly.”
Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with John Williams, founder of ShadowStats.com.
- The Collapse In Luxury Sales This Year "Wiped-Out More Than Six Years Of Growth"
The Collapse In Luxury Sales This Year “Wiped-Out More Than Six Years Of Growth”
Tyler Durden
Sun, 11/22/2020 – 20:30Luxury retail sales for 2020 are forecasted to crash globally as a result of the pandemic, with estimates that luxury apparel, jewelry and beauty products could fall by 23% for the year.
The plunge “wipes out more than six years of growth,” according to AP. The silver lining, if there is one, is that the crash is actually lower than the 35% plunge that was predicted at the beginning of the pandemic. That has mostly been due to a recovery in China, which generates about 33% of all luxury goods sales.
The sector is expected to generate $256 billion in sales for 2020, which is lower than 2014 levels and is down nearly $80 billion from 2019. It’s the first decrease in the sector, which has been buoyed just like all senselessly expensive assets have by Central Bank policies globally, since 2009.
A further bounce back is uncertain, especially as global governments brace for a second set of shutdowns heading into the winter.
Bain partner Claudia D’Arpizio, who helped write the report on the sector, said: “I see a lot of uncertainty for next year, with less uncertainty for the longer term.”
Additionally, forecasts for 2021 have been unclear. While they fall in a growth range of 10% to 19%, it’s a small respite after profits have dropped an estimated 60% this year. They are only expected to recover half of that in 2021.
In China, Bain sees a “full global recovery” heading from 2022 into 2023. They expect Chinese consumers will make up almost half of all sales by 2025.
Apparel sales plunged 30% and footwear sales fell 12% due to the pandemic and its ensuing lockdowns. Jewelry sales fell 15%, even after being “cushioned” by a recovery in Asia.
D’Arpizio warned some brands could wind up “running out of cash” and being forced to restructure. She concluded: “The pandemic has eliminated the excuses for brands that didn’t understand the trends, to give a sense of urgency to the right investments. The more the situation is sustained, the more we risk the crisis will be permanent.”
We wonder: are politicians advocating for more draconian lockdowns capable of understanding this?
- Orwell's 1984 Is Prophetic: How Leftists Are Already Trying To Erase President Trump & Change History
Orwell’s 1984 Is Prophetic: How Leftists Are Already Trying To Erase President Trump & Change History
Tyler Durden
Sun, 11/22/2020 – 20:00I’m literally sickened by the actions of some in the main stream media, leftists and their minions in the education system that are seeking to rewrite history and ostracize anyone that supported President Donald Trump. Regardless of where anyone stands politically, everyone should oppose these un-American tactics and disinformation war against the Commander-in- Chief.
The media, however, along with the help of powerful tech giants, are doing everything in their power to control the narrative of the Trump administration and by doing so change the history of our nation.
Sharyl Attkinson’s book Slanted: How the media taught us to love censorship and hate journalism, lays it out perfectly. She, like others who are concerned about censorship and the media’s devolving role in our Republic, compared the situation to George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984. She describes the protagonist in Orwell’s book, Winston Smith, whose job is to edit history for the Ministry of Truth. Of course, Orwell naturally was describing a society that was rewriting history with lies and a world where Big Brother was watching everyone.
It is essentially happening to our country now, but not by the dystopian government described by Orwell but by a complex network of ideologists that are now in control of some of the most essential industries to America’s freedom.
Look at this headline from Yahoo. It is the first headline from the publication’s Friday story revealing Donald Trump Jr’s diagnosis with COVID-19: Former reality TV show host’s son tests positive for COVID-19, by Patrick Gomez.
What an insult to the American people and to President Trump. Yes, he is still the president of the United States. What was the point of this headline and others like this but to slowly rewrite history and to erase this President and the administration’s achievements.
Benny Johnson is right “the media is already trying to erase the fact that he is President.”
This is a REAL HEADLINE from @Yahoo about @DonaldJTrumpJr testing positive for Coronavirus.
They refer to @realDonaldTrump, the sitting President of the United States as “Former reality TV show host”
The Media is already trying to erase the fact that he is President. pic.twitter.com/IQZewLsd5d
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) November 21, 2020
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This didn’t just start after the 2020 election.
This has been happening since Trump became the Republican candidate nominee in 2016.
Think about the last four years of Trump’s presidency. Think about the onslaught of lies against him in the media. In fact, the outrageous lies that were perpetrated against Trump, his campaign and the White House before, during and after his 2016 election. The Russia Hoax was truly a conspiracy against the President by former senior Obama Administration officials who didn’t want him in office. They weaponized both federal law enforcement and the intelligence community against him and then used the media to spread the lies that were later proven to be false by investigations conducted by those of us who believed in seeking the truth.
This is the truth about the 2020 election: 73 million Americans voted for Trump, the most of any Republican President in history. Moreover, if you, like me, believe that there may be a significant chance that this election was plagued with enough fraudulent behavior that only a thorough investigation could ever uncover, then he may have garnered the most votes of any American President.
If Americans don’t start demanding better we will only have ourselves to blame for what will come in our future.
It’s not going to end with President Trump. Others will be the target of these actions in what is truly becoming a new dystopian world. Republicans and Democrats alike that don’t fit the mold of this new shadow government will meet a similar fate.
The actions of these leftists Marxist ideologues embedded in our nation’s schools, combined with left leaning social media platforms and their virulent spread of these unAmerican ideas is what we have been witnessing.
I certainly hope we wake up, expose it and stop the infection before it kills our liberty and shreds our Constitution.
- Bacon (Oh, And Toilet Paper) Shortages Erupt As Americans 'Panic Hoard' Ahead Of COVID Winter
Bacon (Oh, And Toilet Paper) Shortages Erupt As Americans ‘Panic Hoard’ Ahead Of COVID Winter
Tyler Durden
Sun, 11/22/2020 – 19:30America is transforming into a nation of preppers as COVID winter sets in. We outlined weeks ago (see: here & here), round two of panic hoarding was well underway if that was for toilet paper, non-perishable food, and or ammunition.
Bloomberg is only now reporting, “households across the US are once again filling grocery carts brimful in the second round of panic buying as the virus surges and states clamp down on economic activity. Defensive purchasing is affecting everything from paper towels to bacon. Even the world’s biggest retailer is reporting shortages of high-demand items, including cleaning supplies, breakfast foods — and the most important commodity in any bathroom.”
Several executives from major corporations are warning about supply chain stress as consumers gobble up high-demand items as the second virus wave spirals out of control.
h/t Reuters “It really does have everything to do with what’s happening with Covid cases in any particular community,” Walmart’s chief executive officer, Doug McMillon, said on an earnings call last week.
“We’re going to be able to respond in this instance better than we did in the first half of the year, although we’re still — as a total supply chain — stressed in some places,” McMillon said.
According to Centricity Inc., a firm that tracks online search activity, demand for non-perishable items has skyrocketed 60-70% in the last several weeks.
Mike Brackett, Centricity’s chief executive officer, said the recent surge in panic hoarding trends is on top of the “meteoric” year-over-year increases for pantry staples.
Jim Dudlicek, a spokesman for the National Grocers Association, said consumers would start to see purchase limits again as the COVID winter has led to another surge in high-demand items at supermarkets nationwide.
Kraft Heinz Co. chief executive officer Miguel Patricio said investing in product lines comes as high-demand items fly off the shelves.
“New machinery, or even bringing back to lifelines that we considered in the past as obsolete,” Patricio said, adding that the company is “increasing capacity of products like Philadelphia Cream Cheese or macaroni and cheese.”
Mark Schiller, chief executive officer of Hain Celestial Group Inc., said his company has been ready for the next round of buying panic – during the pandemic, he said his Terra vegetable chips and plant-based Dream milk were hot items among consumers.
“We are far better prepared,” Schiller said. “We have about 50 million more dollars of inventory on hand, of all the things that have the longest supply chain and the least amount of backups.”
And now for the toilet paper shortage, we alerted readers as supermarkets were placing limits on rolls, outlining weeks ago how internet searches for “where can I buy toilet paper online” and “toilet paper shortage” were beginning to rise.
Kimberly-Clark Corp., Scott and Cottonelle toilet paper makers, told Bloomberg that production has been “accelerated” since March.
Procter & Gamble Co. spokeswoman Jennifer Corso said the maker of Charmin continues “to work around the clock to produce the product as quickly as possible.”
“Paper towel consumption is related to increased cleaning situations, as consumers are cleaning more frequently,” Corso said. “Toilet paper consumption is tied to the increased amount of time consumers are spending at home. For both, people are consuming more and stocking their pantries at a higher level than before the pandemic.”
We also pointed out the toilet paper shortage, and resulting purchase limits at supermarkets have led to the increased search activity of “best bidet.”
Panic hoarding 2.0 comes as searches across the country for “panic attacks” and “night terror” have soared, coinciding with the rise of virus cases across the US.
A nation of panic hoarders is indicative of an uncertain future as cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are climbing into the holiday season as the economy risks a double-dip recession. Somehow the stock market, at all-time highs, misses the fact the nation is still in an economic and health crisis.
- Guitar Center, Largest US Retailer Of Music Instruments, Files For Bankruptcy
Guitar Center, Largest US Retailer Of Music Instruments, Files For Bankruptcy
Tyler Durden
Sun, 11/22/2020 – 19:25Back in May, Guitar Center – the largest U.S. retailer of music instruments and equipment – dodged bankruptcy after missing interest payments on a group of bonds. At the time, the retailer was able to work out a deal with bondholders that allowed it to preserve its cash while it tried to survive the disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic. But analysts expected more restructuring down the road, and in recent weeks media reports had pointed to an inevitable bankruptcy filing.
On Saturday, the clock for Guitar Center, which began in 1959 as a store selling home organs in Hollywood, finally ran out when the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as music lovers moved their shopping online during the coronavirus pandemic.
As part of a pre-packaged bankruptcy filing the retailer negotiated to have a total of $375 million in debtor-in-possession financing from its existing lenders and announced its intention to raise $335 million in new senior secured notes, the company said in a statement.
The Plan is intended to allow Guitar Center and its related brands (including Music & Arts, Musician’s Friend, Woodwind Brasswind and AVDG) to continue to operate in the normal course while the transaction is implemented. As a result of the Plan, Guitar Center will continue to meet its financial obligations to vendors, suppliers, and employees, and intends to make payments in full to these parties without interruption in the ordinary course of business.
Ron Japinga, CEO of Guitar Center, said: “This is an important and positive step in our process to significantly reduce our debt and enhance our ability to reinvest in our business to support long-term growth. Throughout this process, we will continue to serve our customers and deliver on our mission of putting more music in the world. Given the strong level of support from our lenders and creditors, we expect to complete the process before the end of this year.”
The filing followed an agreement with key stakeholders reached earlier this month according to which the company would see its debt cut by nearly $800 million alongside new equity investments of up to $165 million from its equity sponsor, a fund managed by the Private Equity Group of Ares Management Corporation, and new equity investors, which include a fund managed by The Carlyle Group and funds managed by Brigade Capital Management.
In its filing in the US Bankruptcy Court of the Eastern District of Virginia, the company said it has between $1 billion and $10 billion of both assets and liabilities. The company, which owns nearly 300 stores across the country, also said business operations will continue without any interruption.
Milbank LLP served as legal counsel, BRG served as restructuring advisor, and Houlihan Lokey was financial advisor to the company.
- LA County Orders Bars, Restaurants To Close As California Sees Record COVID Cases: Live Updates
LA County Orders Bars, Restaurants To Close As California Sees Record COVID Cases: Live Updates
Tyler Durden
Sun, 11/22/2020 – 19:05Summary:
- LA County orders bars, restaurants to close
- UK to suspend quarantine for holidays
- Dr. Fauci says most Americans need to be vaccinated
- Sen Loeffler receives conflicting test results
- NY reports another 5,391 cases
- More than 1 million ppl traveled through US airports Friday
- US cases top 12 million
- WH vaccine czar targets Dec. 11 for first shots
- OWS head lays out vaccination timeline
- US cases near records
- Portugal imposes travel freeze
- France outbreak slows
- Greece sees back-to-back days of record deaths
* * *
Update (1900ET): One day after California reported the most new cases in a 24 hour period of any state in the union, LA County has just announced that, starting Wednesday at 2200PT, restaurants, bars, breweries and wineries and other establishments won’t be allowed to serve food indoors or outdoors at their establishments. Starting Wednesday, restaurants will only be allowed to offer takeout, delivery and drive-thru.
These restrictions come on top of the curfew and other restrictions imposed by Gov Newsom last week. Wineries and breweries can also continue their retail operations.
Public Health to Modify Health Officer Order to Restrict Dining at Restaurants, Breweries, Wineries and Bars Amid Surge in Cases. 5-Day Average of New Cases is 4,097. View https://t.co/SBU9B0eAy1 for more. pic.twitter.com/JqGl6h1kwn
— LA Public Health (@lapublichealth) November 22, 2020
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“Wineries and breweries may continue their retail operations adhering to current protocols. In person dining will not be allowed, at minimum, for the next 3 weeks,” the county’s Department of Public Health said in a news release.
Although restaurants in NYC can still have a small number of customers in their dining rooms, LA County has become the biggest county in the country to order restaurants and bars to close completely with no on-site dining allowed. Officials warned earlier in the week that mroe restrictions would be enacted if the county’s five-day average of new cases moved above 4,000. Sunday’s five-day average was 4,097 cases.
The market reaction so far has been muted, but with NYC also on the verge of imposing similar restrictions after closing schools, investors likely won’t be able to ignore it forever.
* * *
Update (1645ET): After facing considerable public pressure, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the leaders of the UK’s constituent nations have decided to lift quarantine restrictions so families can travel to “red list” countries at Christmas. Restrictions will be slashed if holidaymakers test negative five days after returning, according to the Telegraph.
Additionally, the leaders of all four constituent nations have agreed to allow members of up to 4 households to mix for five days corresponding with the holidays between Christmas Eve and New Years.
The plan must be approved by Parliament; if so, Britons will be able to travel and visit relatives anywhere else in the country.
* * *
Update (1600ET): Following comments from OWS head on CNN’s “State of the Union” earlier, Dr. Fauci said Sunday that he wouldn’t hesitate to take an FDA-approved vaccine, and that herd immunity won’t be possible unless enough people take the vaccine.
“They’ll be able to say okay, on the basis of our determination and our advisory committee, this is the prioritization of people who will get it,” he said, adding that if things go well, “and I think that they will,” and the vaccines get the EUA which is expected, “we will have maybe 20 million people will be able to get vaccinated by the middle to the end of December and then as we get into January, February, even more,” though Dr. Fauci said he didn’t think life would go “back to normal” by May, pushing back against the optimism of Slaoui.
Dr. Fauci then said the government wants to be “very transparent” about the vaccine approval process to give people confidence because “we need to get as many people as possible vaccinated.”
“If you have a highly efficacious vaccine, and only a relatively small 40, 50% of the people get vaccinated, you’re not going to get the herd immunity you need,” Fauci said. “What we do need is we need to get as many people as possible vaccinated.”
Sen. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia said Sunday that she would be quarantining after receiving conflicting COVID test results. After initially testing negative, the Senator’s office said her re-test was negative. She is one of two senators from Georgia who are running for re-election in a special election in January.
Her situation is reminiscent of a similar conflict reported by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
* * *
Update (1420ET): NY reported another 5k+ new cases on Sunday, along with another 30 deaths.
Today’s update on the numbers:
Of the 196,608 tests reported yesterday, 5,391 were positive (2.74% of total).
Total hospitalizations are at 2,562.
Sadly, there were 30 COVID fatalities yesterday. pic.twitter.com/eAMWvxYJwG
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) November 22, 2020
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The test positivity rate in the focus areas under NY’s Micro-Cluster strategy is 4.39%.
The statewide positivity rate excluding these focus areas is 2.29%.
We continue to take strong action to respond to outbreaks and to stop the spread.
Mask Up.
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) November 22, 2020
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In NYC, the 7-day positivity rate remained above the 3% threshold.
* * *
As we reported last night, COVID-19 cases in the US surpassed 12 million, adding a million new cases in under a week, the fastest rate yet. Meanwhile, the pace of deaths has accelerated globally; on Friday, the world reported more than 11k new deaths in a single day, the highest daily number yet. In the US and Europe, deaths are finally creeping higher alongside hospitalizations as rising case numbers finally start to translate to more serious cases as well.
California set a new record yesterday by reporting more than 15k cases in a single day, the highest daily tally for any state in the US.
With US cases at record highs, the CDC on Sunday elevated its travel warnings about traveling on cruise ships and venturing across state lines to see relatives. The agency raised its cruise ship travel warning level to ‘Level 4’ from ‘Level 3’, while Reuters reported that millions of Americans were set to flout the agency’s warnings about travel. More than 1 million people traveled through American airports on Friday, according to data from the Transportation Security Administration, fueling fears of even greater spread of the virus. It was the second-heaviest domestic air traffic day since the start of the pandemic.
“This is the 2nd time since the pandemic passenger volume has surpassed 1 million,” TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein wrote on Twitter on Saturday.
On Sunday morning, White House vaccine czar Dr. Moncef Slaoui told CNN’s Jake Tapper that a coronavirus vaccine could be available by Dec. 11. The doctor also talked up the potential of the vaccine, saying data showing the vaccine to be “95% effective” surpassed expectations, and offers almost a “full insurance policy” against the virus.
Slaoui also laid out another expected milestone: a 70% immunization rate across the US which “would allow for true herd immunity to take place,” some time around May.
In Europe, Portugal will freeze movement between towns between Nov. 28-Dec. 1 and Dec. 5-8, two periods that include weekends and national holidays on each following Tuesday. The number of daily new infections continues to be “worrying,” even if the pace of growth has decelerated, Prime Minister Antonio Costa said.
Here’s some more COVID-19 news from Sunday morning and overnight:
France’s virus cases rose by 17,881 to 2.13 million on Saturday, with the pace of new infections continuing the slowdown of the past two weeks. The seven-day average of new cases fell to 24,636 cases, the lowest in a month and less than half the pace two weeks ago (Source: Bloomberg).
New Jersey reported a record 4,679 new coronavirus cases, bringing its total to more than 300,000 since the start of the outbreak in March. The state has reported more than 60,000 cases this month amid a resurgence. Hospitalizations have more than doubled since Nov. 1, to 2,552 as of Nov. 20. New Jersey has 486 patients in intensive care, up from 212 on Nov. 1 (Source: Bloomberg).
Greece reported 108 more deaths, a second straight record increase, and intensive-care units in Greek hospitals are 82% occupied. Plans to begin a gradual lifting of nation-wide lockdown restrictions on Dec. 1 are no longer realistic, government spokesman Stelios Petsas said Friday (Source: Bloomberg).
- Top Biden Advisors Flournoy & Blinken Promise More Secretive 'Permanent War' Policy
Top Biden Advisors Flournoy & Blinken Promise More Secretive ‘Permanent War’ Policy
Tyler Durden
Sun, 11/22/2020 – 19:05Authored by Dan Cohen via TheGrayZone.com,
Throughout his campaign, Joe Biden railed against Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ foreign policy, claiming it weakened the United States and left the world in disarray. “Donald Trump’s brand of America First has too often led to America alone,” Biden proclaimed.
He pledged to reverse this decline and recover the damage Trump did to America’s reputation. While Donald Trump called for making America Great Again, Biden seeks to Make the American Empire Great Again.
Joe Biden: “Tonight, the whole world is watching America. And I believe at our best, America is a beacon for the globe. We will lead not only by the example of our power, but by the power of our example.”
Among the president-elect’s pledges is to end the so-called forever wars – the decades-long imperial projects in Afghanistan and Iraq that began under the Bush administration.
“It’s long past time we end the forever wars which have cost us untold blood and treasure,” Biden has said.
Yet Biden – a fervent supporter of those wars – will delegate that duty to the most neoconservative elements of the Democratic Party and ideologues of permanent war.
Michele Flournoy and Tony Blinken sit atop Biden’s thousands-strong foreign policy brain trust and have played central roles in every U.S. war dating back to the Bill Clinton administration.
During the Trump era, they’ve cashed in through WestExec Advisors – a corporate consulting firm that has become home for Obama administration officials awaiting a return to government.
Flournoy is Biden’s leading pick for Secretary of Defense and Blinken is expected to be the president’s National Security Advisor.
Biden’s foxes guard the henhouse
Since the 1990s, Flournoy and Blinken have steadily risen through the ranks of the military-industrial complex, shuffling back and forth between the Pentagon and hawkish think-tanks funded by the U.S. government, weapons companies, and oil giants.
Under Bill Clinton, Flournoy was the principal author of the 1996 Quadrinellial Defense Review, the document that outlined the U.S. military’s doctrine of permanent war – what it called “full spectrum dominance.”
Flournoy called for “unilateral use of military power” to ensure “uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources.”
This video report was originally published at Behind The Headlines. Support the independent journalism initiative here.
As Bush administration officials lied to the world about Saddam Hussein’s supposed WMD’s, Flournoy remarked that “In some cases, preemptive strikes against an adversary’s [weapons of mass destruction] capabilities may be the best or only option we have to avert a catastrophic attack against the United States.”
Tony Blinken was a top advisor to then-Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Joe Biden, who played a key role in shoring up support among the Democrat-controlled Senate for Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq.
During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Biden declared, “In my judgment, President Bush is right to be concerned about Saddam Hussein’s relentless pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.”
As Iraq was plunged into chaos and bloodshed, Flournoy was among the authors of a paper titled “Progressive Internationalism” that called for a “smarter and better” style of permanent war. The paper chastised the anti-war left and stated that “Democrats will maintain the world’s most capable and technologically advanced military, and we will not flinch from using it to defend our interests anywhere in the world.”
With Bush winning a second term, Flournoy advocated for more troop deployments from the sidelines.
In 2005, Flournoy signed onto a letter from the neoconservative think tank Project for a New American Century, asking Congress to “increase substantially the size of the active duty Army and Marine Corps (by) at least 25,000 troops each year over the next several years.”
In 2007, she leveraged her Pentagon experience and contacts to found what would become one of the premier Washington think tanks advocating endless war across the globe: the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). CNAS is funded by the U.S. government, arms manufacturers, oil giants, Silicon Valley tech giants, billionaire-funded foundations, and big banks.
Flournoy joined the Obama administration and was appointed as under secretary of defense for policy, the position considered the “brains” of the Pentagon. She was keenly aware that the public was wary of more quagmires. In the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, she crafted a new concept of warfare that would expand the permanent war state while giving the appearance of a drawdown.
Flournoy wrote that “unmanned systems hold great promise” – a reference to the CIA’s drone assassination program. This was the Obama-era military doctrine of hybrid war. It called for the U.S. to be able to simultaneously wage war on numerous fronts through secret warfare, clandestine weapons transfers to proxies, drone strikes, and cyber-attacks – all buttressed with propaganda campaigns targeting the American public through the internet and corporate news media.
Architects of America’s Hybrid wars
Flournoy continued to champion the endless wars that began in the Bush-era and was a key architect of Obama’s disastrous troop surge in Afghanistan. As U.S. soldiers returned in body bags and insurgent attacks and suicide bombings increased some 65% from 2009 and 2010, she deceived the Senate Armed Services Committee, claiming that the U.S. was beginning to turn the tide against the Taliban: “We are beginning to regain the initiative and the insurgency is beginning to lose momentum.”
Even with her lie that the U.S. and Afghan government were starting to beat the Taliban back, Flournoy assured the senate that the U.S. would have to remain in Afghanistan long into the future: “We are not leaving any time soon even though the nature and the complexion of the commitment may change over time.”
Ten years later – as the Afghan death toll passed 150,000 – Flournoy continued to argue against a U.S. withdrawal: “I would certainly not advocate a US or NATO departure short of a political settlement being in place.”
That’s the person Joe Biden has tasked with ending the forever war in Afghanistan. But in Biden’s own words, he’ll “bring the vast majority of our troops home from Afghanistan” implying some number of American troops will remain, and the forever war will be just that. Michele Flournoy explained that even if a political settlement were reached, the U.S. would maintain a presence.
Michele Flournoy: “If we are fortunate enough to see a political settlement reached, it doesn’t mean that the US role or the international community is over. Afghanistan without outside investment is not a society that is going to survive and thrive. In no case are we going to be able to wash our hands of Afghanistan and walk away nor should we want to. This is something where we’re going to have to continue to be engaged, just the form of engagement may change.”
In 2011, the Obama-era doctrine of smart and sophisticated warfare was unveiled in the NATO regime-change war on Libya.
Moammar Gaddafi – the former adversary who sought warm relations with the U.S. and had given up his nuclear weapons program – was deposed and sodomized with a bayonet.
Flournoy, Hillary Clinton’s State Department, and corporate media were in lockstep as they waged an elaborate propaganda campaign to deceive the U.S. public that Gadaffi’s soldiers were on a Viagra-fueled rape and murder spree that demanded a U.S. intervention.
Fox News: “Susan Rice reportedly told a security council meeting that Libyan troops are being given viagra and are engaging in sexual violence.”
MSNBC jumped on the propaganda bandwagon, claiming: “New reports emerge that the LIbyan dictator gave soldiers viagra-type pills to rape women who are opposed to the government.”
So did CNN.
As the Libyan ambassador to the US alleged “raping, killing, mass graves,” ICC Chief Prosecutor Manuel Ocampo claimed: “It’s like a machete. Viagra is a tool of massive rapes.”
All of this was based on a report from Al Jazeera – the media outlet owned by the Qatari monarchy that was arming extremist militias in Libya to overthrow the government.
Yet an investigation by the United Nations called the rape claims “hysteria.” Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch found no credible evidence of even a single rape.
Even after Libya was descended into strife and the deception of Gadaffi’s forces committing rape was debunked, Michele Flournoy stood by her support for the war: “I supported the intervention in Libya on humanitarian grounds. I think we were right to do it.”
Tony Blinken, then Obama’s deputy national security advisor, also pushed for regime change in Libya. He became Obama’s point man on Syria, pushed to arm the so-called “moderate rebels” that fought alongside al-Qaeda and ISIS, and designed the red line strategy to trigger a full-on U.S. intervention. Syria, he told the public, wasn’t anything like the other wars the U.S. had waging for more than a decade.
Tony Blinken: “We are doing this in a very different way than in the past. We’re not sending in hundreds of thousands of American troops. We’re not spending trillions of American dollars. We’re being smart about this. This is a sustainable way to get at the terrorists and it’s also a more effective way.”
Blinken added: “This is not open-ended, this is not boots on the ground, this is not Iraq, it’s not Afghanistan, it’s not even Libya. The more people understand that, the more they’ll understand the need for us to take this limited but effective action.”
Despite Blinken’s promises that it would be a short affair, the war on Syria is now in its ninth year. An estimated half a million people have been killed as a result and the country is facing famine.
Largely thanks to the policy of using “wheat to apply pressure” – a recommendation of Flournoy and Blinken’s CNAS think tank.
‘Wheat is a weapon’: US government-backed, Democrat-linked think tank @CNASdc proposes starving Syrian civilians to weaken Assadhttps://t.co/d16sHkBR8p via @BenjaminNorton
— The Grayzone (@TheGrayzoneNews) June 19, 2019
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When the Trump administration launched airstrikes on Syria based on mere accusations of a chemical attack, Tony Blinken praised the bombing, claiming Assad had used the weapon of mass destruction sarin. Yet there was no evidence for this claim, something even then-secretary of Defense James Mattis admitted: “So I can not tell you that we had evidence even though we had a lot of media and social media indicators that either chlorine or sarin were used.”
While jihadist mercenaries armed with U..S-supplied weapons took over large swaths of Syria, Tony Blinken played a central role in a coup d’etat in Ukraine that saw a pro-Russia government overthrown in a U.S.-orchestrated color revolution with neo-fascist elements agitating on the ground.
At the time, he was ambivalent about sending lethal weapons to Ukraine, instead opting for economic pressure.
Tony Blinken: “We’re working, as I said, to make sure that there’s a cost exacted of Russia and indeed that it feels the pressure. That’s what we’re working on. And when it comes to military assistance, we’re looking at it. The facts are these: Even if assistance were to go to Ukraine that would be very unlikely to change Russia’s calculus or prevent an invasion.”
Since then, fascist militias have been incorporated into Ukraine’s armed forces. And Tony Blinken urged Trump to send them deadly weapons – something Obama had declined to do.
But Trump obliged.
The Third Offset
While the U.S. fueled wars in Syria and Ukraine, the Pentagon announced a major shift called the Third Offset strategy – a reference to the cold war era strategies the U.S. used to maintain its military supremacy over the Soviet Union.
The Third Offset strategy shifted the focus from counterinsurgency and the war on terror to great power competition against China and Russia. It called for a technological revolution in warfighting capabilities, development of futuristic and autonomous weapons, swarms of undersea and airborne drones, hypersonic weapons, cyber warfare, machine-enhanced soldiers, and artificial intelligence making unimaginably complex battlefield decisions at speeds incomprehensible to the human mind. All of this would be predicated on the Pentagon deepening its relationship with Silicon Valley giants that it birthed decades before: Google and Facebook.
The author of the Third Offset, former undersecretary of defense Robert Work, is a partner of Flournoy and Blinken’s at WestExec Advisors. And Flournoy has been a leading proponent of this dangerous new escalation.
In June, Flournoy published a lengthy commentary laying out her strategy called “Sharpening the U.S. Military’s Edge: Critical Steps for the Next Administration.”
She warned that the United States is losing its military technological advantage and reversing that must be the Pentagon’s priority. Without it, Flournoy warned that the U.S. might not be able to defeat China in Asia: “That technological investment is still very important for the United States to be able to offset what will be quantitative advantages and home theater advantages for a country like China if we ever had to deal with a conflict in Asia, in their backyard.”
While Flournoy has called for ramping up U.S. military presence and exercises with allied forces in the region, she went so far as to call for the U.S. to increase its destructive capabilities so much that it could launch a blitzkrieg style-attack that would wipe out the entire Chinese navy and all civilian merchant ships in the South China Sea. Not only a blatant war crime but a direct attack on a nuclear power that would spell the third world war.
At the same time, Biden has announced he’ll take an even more aggressive and confrontational stance against Russia, a position Flournoy shares: “We need to invest to ensure that we maintain the military edge that we will need in certain critical areas like cyber and electronic warfare and precision strike, to again underwrite deterrence, to make sure Vladimir Putin does not miscalculate and think that he can cross a border into Europe or cross a border and threaten us militarily.”
As for ending the forever wars, Tony Blinken says not so fast: “Large scale, open-ended deployment of large standing US forces in conflict zones with no clear strategy should end and will end under his watch…. But we also need to distinguish between, for example, these endless wars with the large scale open ended deployment of US forces with, for example, discreet, small-scale sustainable operations, maybe led by special forces, to support local actors… In ending the endless wars I think we have to be careful to not paint with too broad a brush stroke.”
The end of forever wars?
So Biden will end the forever wars, but not really end them. Secret wars that the public doesn’t even know the U.S. is involved in – those are here to stay.
In fact, leaving teams of special forces in place throughout the Middle East is part and parcel of the Pentagon’s shift away from counterinsurgency and towards great power competition.
The 2018 National Defense Strategy explains that, “Long-term strategic competitions with China and Russia are the principal priorities” and the U.S. will “consolidate gains in Iraq and Afghanistan while moving to a more resource-sustainable approach.”
As for the catastrophic war on Yemen, Biden has said he’ll end U.S. support; but in 2019, Michele Flournoy argued against ending arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
Biden pledged he will rejoin the Iran deal as a starting point for new negotiations. However, Trump’s withdrawal from the deal discredited the Iranian reformists who seek engagement with the west and empowered the principlists who see the JCPOA as a deal with the devil.
In Latin America, Biden will revive the so-called anti-corruption campaigns that were used as a cover to oust the popular social democrat Brazilian president Lula da Silva.
His Venezuela policy appears little different from Trump’s – sanctions and regime change.
In Central America, Biden has presided over a four billion dollar package to support corrupt right-wing governments and neoliberal privatization projects, fueling destabilization and sending vulnerable masses fleeing north to the United States.
Behind their rhetoric, Biden, Flournoy, and Blinken will seek nothing less than global supremacy, escalating a new and even more dangerous arms race that risks the destruction of humanity. That’s what Joe Biden calls “decency” and “normalcy.”
- Trump Appeals PA Suit Dismissal As Dershowitz Outlines Narrow Path To Victory
Trump Appeals PA Suit Dismissal As Dershowitz Outlines Narrow Path To Victory
Tyler Durden
Sun, 11/22/2020 – 18:45President Trump’s campaign filed a notice of appeal after a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit aimed at blocking Pennsylvania from certifying the results of the election until tens of thousands of mail-in ballots are invalidated.
The late-Sunday filing with the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia was an expected development, with Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani declaring in a Saturday statement: “We hope that the Third Circuit will be as gracious as Judge Brann in deciding our appeal one way or the other as expeditiously as possible,” adding “This is another case that appears to be moving quickly to the United States Supreme Court.”
US District Judge Matthew Brann, an Obama appointee, issued scathing commentary in his dismissal of the case – comparing the lawsuit to “Frankenstein’s monster” which had been “haphazardly stitched together” without evidence.
“In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state,” he continued.
Meanwhile, Harvard Law professor emeritus (and former Jeffrey Epstein associate), Alan Dershowitz, has outlined several legal paths to a 2020 victory for Trump.
As Jack Phillips of the Epoch Times writes (emphasis ours):
Dershowitz said there are a few “constitutional paths to victory” for the president’s legal team, but he stipulated that Trump will face legal hurdles in all of them.
“For example, in Pennsylvania, they have two very strong legal arguments. One, that the courts changed what the legislature did about counting ballots after the end of Election Day. That’s a winning issue in the Supreme Court. I don’t necessarily support it, but it’s a winning issue in the Supreme Court,” Dershowitz told Fox Business on Sunday. The team, meanwhile, has “a winning issue in the Supreme Court on equal protection, that some counties flawed ballots to be cured while others didn’t. Bush v. Gore suggests that an Equal Protection argument can prevail.”
Dershowitz, who helped defend Trump during the Senate impeachment trial earlier this year, said that due to Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s lead over the president, Trump’s team may not be able to contest enough ballots in Pennsylvania.
“The other legal theory they have, which is a potentially strong one, is that the computers, either fraudulently or by glitches, changed hundreds of thousands of votes. There, there are enough votes to make a difference, but I haven’t seen the evidence to support that,” he elaborated. “So, in one case, they don’t have the numbers. In another case, they don’t seem yet to have the evidence, maybe they do. I haven’t seen it. But the legal theory is there to support them if they have the numbers and they have the evidence.”
And he said that for Trump’s legal team, time is running out.
“You need to have witnesses, experts subject to cross-examination, and findings by a court,” he said, adding that there is no “legal route to undoing that” after the election is certified. “Their strongest case, if they have the evidence, is that computers may have turned hundreds of thousands of votes,” Dershowitz said.
Last week, Dershowitz noted that if Trump can “keep the Biden count below 270, then the matter goes to the House of Representatives, where, of course, there is a Republican majority among the delegations of states, and you vote by state if it goes to the House.
“You need a perfect storm for it to work,” he said. “You need to get enough states, enough state attorneys general, or state departments, or whoever, secretaries of state or governors that are Republican that legitimately refuse to certify the results because they’re under challenge on the day the Electoral College meets by statute.”
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), a former prosecutor, told The Epoch Times last week that Congress has the “ultimate say over whether to accept or reject” Electoral College votes.
“Congress has the absolute right to reject the submitted Electoral College votes of any state, which we believe has such a shoddy election system that you can’t trust the election results that those states are submitting to us, that they’re suspect,” Brooks said. “And I’m not going to put my name in support of any state that employs an election system that I don’t have confidence in.”
Brooks noted that “on January 6th at 1 p.m. Eastern time, the 50 states will report to Congress, the president [of the] Senate will preside over this meeting” and “will report to Congress what they contend are their Electoral College results in their state.” The president of the Senate is Vice President Mike Pence under the U.S. Constitution.
- "The Chips Will Fall Where They May": Sidney Powell Responds To Trump Distancing, Will Forge Ahead With Dominion Lawsuit
“The Chips Will Fall Where They May”: Sidney Powell Responds To Trump Distancing, Will Forge Ahead With Dominion Lawsuit
Tyler Durden
Sun, 11/22/2020 – 18:40Update (1955ET): Sidney Powell has responded to the Trump Campaign’s Sunday night announcement that she was not part of their legal team, telling CBS News “I understand today’s press release. I will continue to represent #WeThePeople who had their votes for Trump and other Republicans stolen by massive fraud through Dominion and Smarmatic, and we will be filing suit soon.
Powell continues, “The chips will fall where they may, and we will defend the foundations of this great Republic,” and ends with the hashtag #KrakenOnSteroids.
— FXHedge (@Fxhedgers) November 23, 2020
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The Trump Campaign issued a Sunday evening statement to clarify that attorney Sidney Powell, who has promised to unleash a ‘biblical’ election lawsuit in Georgia, is not part of the campaign’s legal team.
Trump Campaign general counsel Jenna Ellis tweeted a joint statement with Rudy Giuliani which reads: “Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own. She is not a member of the Trump Legal team. She is also not a lawyer for the President in his personal capacity.”
— Jenna Ellis (@JennaEllisEsq) November 22, 2020
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The announcement comes on the heels of a Saturday interview Powell gave to Newsmax, during which she said an upcoming election lawsuit in Georgia “will be biblical.”
“Georgia’s probably going to be the first state I’m gonna blow up,” she told the conservative news network, adding “We’ve got tons of evidence. It’s so much, it’s hard to pull it all together.”
“Hopefully, this week we will get it ready to file, and it will be biblical.”
Powell then claimed that Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger were being paid as part of a conspiracy with Dominion Voting Systems.
“And Mr. Kemp and the secretary of state need to go with it because they’re in on the Dominion scam with their last-minute purchase or reward of a contract to Dominion of $100 million,” Powell alleged, while encouraging Georgia law enforcement officials to investigate.
Powell claimed at a press conference last week, standing next to Giuliani and Ellis, that Dominion Voting Systems machines had flipped millions of votes in favor of former Vice President Joe Biden – a claim she presented no evidence for, which has divided the MAGA camp between those demanding receipts (she notably bailed on an appearance with Tucker Carlson), and those who say she should be given time to assemble her case and present it in court.
Oddly, Trump seemed to consider Powell a member of his legal team last week.
Earlier Saturday, Trump attorney Jordan Sekulow hinted on Newsmax that there would be a “shocking” lawsuit filed in Georgia.
“I can’t tell you right now what is coming in Georgia, but what is coming in Georgia will be shocking,” he said.
.@JordanSekulow tells @Tom_Basile “I can’t tell you right now what is coming in Georgia, but what is coming in Georgia will be shocking!” https://t.co/VlT7z8drtO pic.twitter.com/LIiw7ltRPz
— Newsmax (@newsmax) November 22, 2020
Some on team MAGA did not respond kindly to the Trump Campaign’s statement.
This is probably the most unprofessional thing I’ve ever seen. Wow.
— Tracy Beanz (@tracybeanz) November 22, 2020
Others have noted that Ellis herself tagged Powell as a member of the team:
More, why did Jenna, just a few days ago, state that she was part of the team? pic.twitter.com/yf8AoZtlKt
— Dan Dwiggins (@DanDwig79) November 22, 2020
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The Washington Post, meanwhile (so take with appropriate grains of salt) is reporting that Trump told his advisers Powell was ‘too much’ for him, and doesn’t view her as helpful anymore.
- Pandemics Are Over When The Public Decides They're Over
Pandemics Are Over When The Public Decides They’re Over
Tyler Durden
Sun, 11/22/2020 – 18:15Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
In Colorado, reported cases and hospitalizations of Covid-19 patients are at higher levels than ever before. And yet politicians are worried that if they issue new stay-at-home orders, the public won’t obey them. For instance the Denver Post last week reported Colorado Democrats admitted the public isn’t listening very closely anymore:
[State Senator Steve] Fenberg and many other state leaders are worried … about whether a stay-at-home order would even work this time around. People have grown accustomed to certain freedoms since the spring, and already there are some in the population resistant even to the least oppressive rules, such as wearing masks.
“They don’t want to have restrictive orders that people just entirely ignore,” Fenberg said. “Once you cross that line, that seriously, then it really starts to unravel, when people completely check out from following the orders.”
We’ll ignore the creepy framing of the issue around how citizens have lamentably “grown accustomed to certain freedoms” like being able to leave one’s home. But Fenberg is right to think the public is unlikely to be nearly as compliant this time around.
And what happens if Americans start acting as if there is no pandemic? Then, the pandemic is at a de facto end, even if “experts” insist that it is still a de jure reality.
Medical Pandemics vs. Social Pandemics
In other words, government agencies may issue declarations of when Pandemics end, but as noted in The New York Times last May,
pandemics typically have two types of endings: the medical, which occurs when the incidence and death rates plummet, and the social, when the epidemic of fear about the disease wanes.
“When people ask, ‘When will this end?,’ they are asking about the social ending,” said Dr Jeremy Greene, a historian of medicine at Johns Hopkins. In other words, an end can occur not because a disease has been vanquished but because people grow tired of panic mode and learn to live with a disease
This has happened before. During the 1957-1958 Asian flu pandemic, for example, the public took little notice of the fact the flu was especially virulent that year. It is now estimated that more than 100,000 died from the flu in the period, which would be the equivalent of 220,000 Americans today. Indeed, American continued to die from the Asian flu into the 1960 flu season and beyond. But as far as the public was concerned, there had been no pandemic that required staying home or closing schools.
Many Americans are apparently already moving in that direction now. According to a new report this month from Gallup, the percentage of Americans saying they are “very likely” to shelter in place has fallen from 67 percent in late March to 49 percent as of November 1. The percentage of respondents saying they are “very likely” or “somewhat unlikely” to adhere to stay-at-home orders has doubled from 15 percent to 33 percent. Notably, this trend has occurred in spite of more Americans in the survey also saying they think the virus situation is “getting worse.”
In other words, Americans don’t think the disease is about to go away, but less than half say it’s very likely they’ll be sitting at home.
At this point, it’s a fairly safe bet that even as more and more Americans conclude they can’t put their lives on hold indefinitely, government bureaucrats will continue to insist that the pandemic puts everyone at grave risk.
But the public and the technocrats often function on different schedules. After all, sitting at home for months or even years may work for childless, white-collar intellectuals and bureaucrats who can easily work from home and need not worry about the social and emotional development of children and others in their care. But many others are likely to view that model of daily life as thoroughly untenable.
Moreover, many currently unemployed Americans—who number in the millions—may conclude collecting unemployment checks indefinitely is not a satisfactory substitute for making a living the ordinary way.
Making Risk Assessments
All of this will go into calculating risk, and this is why the public’s recognized end to pandemics is often different than the “official” end. The public is made up of countless individuals who make their own risk assessments based on the available facts.
This also is why it’s impossible to declare with finality when “herd immunity” has been reached. As Michel Accad explained last month at mises.org:
while herd immunity may indeed be a real phenomenon that can take place under certain circumstances when populations are subjected to a contagious disease, it is important to recognize that herd immunity is not a concept that has any practical value for setting public health policy.
For one thing, there is no objective way to establish that herd immunity has been achieved, since a “stable” rate of new infection is a subjective notion. What is a stable or tolerable rate of infection for me may not be so for you.
Whether or not the presence of a disease presents an acceptable risk to “the public” depends on countless individual risk assessments.
With stay-at-home orders, on the other hand, government officials have taken it upon themselves to apply an arbitrary bureaucrat-enforced definition of acceptable risk. These officials insist they must have the power to force the public to retreat to their home until some central political authority has determined that the risk level has dropped to an acceptable level.
How Much Risk Are We Willing to Accept When Driving?
Governments have tried this in other contexts as well.
When it comes to highway safety, for instance, federal and state government agencies spent years trying to convince Americans that “55 saves lives” and that driving at slower speeds would save thousands of American lives per year.
This in itself was not an unreasonable goal, of course. Nowadays, more than 38,000 people die every year in crashes on US roadways. An additional 4.4 million are injured seriously enough to require medical attention, and auto accidents are the leading cause of death in the US for people aged 1–54.
A concerted effort to bring down highway deaths could save hundreds of thousands of lives over a single decade. Moreover, the act of driving on the highway—especially at high speeds—heightens the risk not only for one’s self but for other motorists as well. This means if Americans would consent to drive at slow speeds, wear helmets when driving, and refrain from driving for “non-essential” reasons, countless lives could be saved.
Yet, clearly, most Americans have long since concluded that maximizing safety on the highway isn’t worth the trouble, either to increase their own safety or the safety of others. Countless American drivers routinely drive at high speed. Some don’t even wear seat belts. Many people drive to the store or the movies when they could “be safe” by just staying at home. Yet these non-essential motorists continue to put others at risk in this manner.
Few Americans seem to regard this as a serious problem. Most everyone just accepts the risk of highway accidents as another part of life.
The same thing, of course, has always occurred in the context of disease, and it is likely to occur in the context of Covid-19. As time goes on, more and more Americans will simply accept that the risk of catching various diseases as a part of life. This long ago occurred with the flu which still kills tens of thousands of Americans per year.
When this does finally happen with most of the public in regards to Covid-19, the pandemic will be de facto over, although may politicians and bureaucrats will no doubt disagree.
- China's Financial Distress Floods Shadow Banks As Trust Giant Scrambles For Liquidity
China’s Financial Distress Floods Shadow Banks As Trust Giant Scrambles For Liquidity
Tyler Durden
Sun, 11/22/2020 – 17:50The wave of financial distress flooding China’s corporate sector, which has seen a furious selloff in bonds following the unexpected default of several state-owned enterprises, is spilling over into a key financing conduit used by China’s giant shadow banking sector — the trust industry.
As Caixin reports, Huaxin Trust Co. one of 68 companies licensed to conduct trust business in China and one of the largest “shadow banks” in the mainland , is trying to raise as much as 6.8 billion yuan ($1 billion) from strategic investors as it faces a growing liquidity squeeze that’s already forced it to skip repayments on dozens of investment products over the past few months.
The Dalian, Liaoning province-based institution announced last Tuesday that it is seeking one or more strategic investors to inject 3.4 billion yuan to 6.8 billion yuan into the firm, which would increase its registered capital to 10 billion yuan to 13.4 billion yuan.
But, as Caixin’s Timmy Shen writes, what drew the market’s attention was a condition stipulated by Huaxin that any investor would need to agree to “support the company’s liquidity before the completion of their investment to allow the firm to protect the interests of investors in its trust products.” And while this is tantamount to a pledge to backstop a bailout of the core shadow banking pillar, one veteran trust-industry source told Caixin that it can be difficult to persuade strategic investors to provide liquidity support before even making their investment, although investors can use this as leverage to get better terms.
Even before the current episode of corporate bond turmoil triggered by the sudden defaults of state owned Yongcheng Coal and Brilliance Auto, China’s regulators had already become increasingly concerned about the hidden risks in the trust sector which plays an key role in the shadow banking sector by providing loans to higher-risk companies and those who have difficulty getting credit from traditional banks. The loans are packaged into high-yielding products which are then sold to retail investors and institutions.
For half a year, China’s Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) has been preparing regulations to put the country’s $3.1 trillion trust industry under closer oversight. The draft rules, which were put out for public comment in May, will govern how trust companies manage client funds, clarify requirements on trust products and toughen regulation of their loan-related investments.
Then in June, as part of a wave of wholesale systemic deleveraging which hammered such real-estate development firms as China Evergrande and nearly brought it to the edge of insolvency, the CBIRC told some trust firms to downsize their trust financing business according to tailored specifications provided by the regulator. The unofficial orders from the regulator followed a surge in demand for loans as companies scrambled for cash to help them weather the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak or to repay maturing loans. We detailed China’s regulatory push to limit debt in October in “China Crackdown On Property Developer Debt Sparks Fears About Systemic Crisis” when we laid out the new “Three red lines” policy espoused by Beijing limiting the amount of new debt issuance.
Enter Huaxin Trust, which has around 20 shareholders, and is controlled by a Beijing-registered privately owned company called Huaxin Huitong Group Co. Ltd. whose low-profile chairman, Dong Yongcheng, holds a 9.1% stake in the trust firm, according to corporate data provider Qichaha. Huaxin Trust’s second- and third-largest shareholders are both linked to Dong’s company. Huaxin Huitong held a 60% stake in Huaxin Trust in 2015, according to a Hong Kong stock exchange filing by Shengjing Bank Co. which is based in the northeastern province of Liaoning and which was negotiating to buy a 20% stake in the trust firm for 3.2 billion yuan. The deal subsequently fell through.
Fast forward to today, when Huaxin’s hunt for investors comes as it has struggled to pay out on maturing trust products amid growing stress on its corporate borrowers. As of Thursday, the trust firm had only repaid four products that matured recently, and extended repayment on 23 products, with the earliest coming due in September, according to its website. Huaxin Trust said in announcements on its website that enterprises had failed to repay the principal and interest on the products forcing the company to extend the repayment dates as allowed in the terms and conditions of the trust products sold to investors.
In essence, the repackager of high-yielding debt was pushing off blame on what may soon be a cascade of falling dominoes on companies it had lent money to.
The company also said that in addition to looking for strategic investors it is speeding up efforts to offload some of its underlying trust assets and its own assets, adding that any money raised through these liquidations would be used to repay investors in its trust products.
Meanwhile, there has been growing speculation that Huaxin Trust may have had funds embezzled by its largest shareholder, but the company put out a statement on Nov. 10 denying that its largest shareholder had used or embezzled funds from the firm and saying that Huaxin Huitong “continued to give liquidity support to aid the company.”
At the end of last year, Huaxin Trust had about 61.6 billion yuan of trust assets under management, according to its 2019 annual report but that had fallen to about 49.2 billion yuan by the end of June, according to Tuesday’s strategic investment statement.
In short, Huaxin Trust is the latest trust firm and “shadow bank” to run into trouble in a sector already reeling from the effects of a crackdown on shadow banking and an economic slowdown exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. Among them are Sichuan Trust Co. which has failed to repay investors more than 20 billion yuan, and Shanghai-listed Anxin Trust Co. once the darling of the trust sector, which collapsed last year and was found to have a “modest” 50 billion yuan black hole on its books.
The total assets in China’s shadow bank sector have shrunk consistently since peaking in early 2018 as Beijing focused on aggressively limiting the amount of high-yielding debt issued by the sector.
However, with tens of trillions in yuan-denominated debt still outstanding within this loosely regulated offshoot of China’s financial system, which still represents a last-ditch option for liquidity-challenged companies, as China’s economy continues to shrink from the consequences of the pandemic regardless of the rosy and goalseeked data that Beijing is publishing on a monthly basis to convince the world – and China’s massive depositor base – that all is well, we expect after the initial round of early tremors to hit China’s trust companies such as Huaxin, the real shock to China’s financial system is yet to come.
- Border Patrol Reports Surge In Illegal Immigration Since Election
Border Patrol Reports Surge In Illegal Immigration Since Election
Tyler Durden
Sun, 11/22/2020 – 17:25Authored by Monica Showalter via AmericanThinker.com,
Migrants, and more important, the people who traffic and profit from migrants, are like the stock market: They’re forward-looking. They make decisions now based on what they see coming down the pike.
So surprise, surprise, the media’s crowning of Joe Biden president, along with many world leaders congratulating him and conducting their affairs of state with him, even as legal challenges are going on, has sent a message to Central America’s gangs and Mexico’s cartels, who control migrant smuggling routes to the U.S. It’s time to profit. It’s time to go. A new border surge has begun, in anticipation of a Biden open-borders presidency, which comes just as Democrat-run states and Biden himself are prescribing new COVID lockdowns.
According to the Washington Times’s Stephen Dinan:
Border Patrol agents are already seeing a Biden surge in illegal immigration at the southwest border, officials said Thursday, with the numbers surging 21% over the last month alone.
Acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan said worsening economic conditions south of the border are largely responsible for the uptick, but he also blamed “perceived and or anticipated shifts in policies” here in the U.S.
He said it’s particularly dangerous at a time when the coronavirus pandemic is taking a toll on CBP personnel. At least 1,300 CBP staffers are currently quarantined, 700 are currently COVID-positive and 15 have died of the virus.
“I’ve attended way too many funerals,” Mr. Morgan said.
Border Patrol agents and CBP officers snared about 69,000 unauthorized border crossers in October, up from about 58,000 in September.
Based on the number of COVID cases the Border Patrol is suffering, the unvetted migrants are bringing it in.
Which pretty well negates the Biden/Democrat effort to enforce more lockdowns — the closed schools, the targeted bars, gyms and restaurants, the limited travel, the cancelled Thanksgiving, and more.
So long as there is no lockdown at the border, and COVID is rolling in from unvetted migrants with enough money to pay smuggling syndicates, any efforts to contain COVID from the stateside is nonsense. Too bad about all the boarded-up businesses.
It highlights the fundamental contradition of Biden’s love for lockdowns, and support for open borders. You can have one or the other, but you can’t have both. Biden’s policy of open borders stands in stark contradiction to his vow to contain COVID. Which one do you think he’s more serious about?
Issues & Insights had an excellent item the other day on just what he says he intends:
Instead of expelling illegals to protect U.S. neighbors and families, the Biden-Sanders priority is to make sure that “health coverage is available to everyone for testing, treatment, medical services, rehabilitation, and that vaccines are available free of charge, regardless of immigration or economic status.”
Beyond this, Biden has promised to dismantle Trump policies that had been working to restrain the flow of illegals – sorry, “undocumented people” – across the border.
Wall construction will stop. Biden promises to implement a 100-day freeze on deportations “while his administration issues guidance narrowing who can be arrested by immigration agents,” according to one news account.
He plans to reinstate catch-and-release, which created a massive loophole for illegals who are set free into the country while their asylum claim is adjudicated, never to return for their final hearing.
Up until now, President Trump has used Title 42 of the U.S. Code to expel illegal border crossers because of COVID.
That’s one of the very regulations that a President Biden can end instantly with the stroke of a pen, according to this Time magazine analysis:
Biden could also end Trump’s “expulsions” that have taken place since March 2020 as COVID-19 has spread across the U.S. and most of the world.
DHS’s expulsion rule allows U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to immediately remove anyone who crosses the border without authorization to their last country of transit without traditional processing or a chance to have their claims heard in court because of the risks posed by COVID-19. Since the rule was adopted in March, U.S. Border Patrol has conducted more than 197,000 expulsions, according to CBP data.
And yes, these places the illegal migrants are coming from are seeing big surges in COVID as well as the terrible economic effects of local lost tourism, lost trade, lockdowns, and shutdowns, as noted in this Focus Economics report here. The migrants looking for economic opportunity in the U.S. will find the same lockdowns here, but with generous welfare and free medical care.
For Americans, there will just be more imported COVID.
Which, to get cynical, might just be what Democrats want — a permanent COVID that keeps the country locked down and themselves powerful, and millions and millions of COVID-filled migrants coming in to ensure that the lockdowns extend, ensuring that COVID is never contained.
You can bet Joe Biden won’t be addressing this fundamental contradiction of policy. He’s not serious about ending COVID. And in any case, he never answers questions. Not beyond what kind of ice cream he ordered. As long as migrants are surging the border, there will always be more waves of imported COVID.
- Hedge Fund CIO: "There Is A Vague Sense That Something Powerful, Apolitical, Transnational, Is Emerging"
Hedge Fund CIO: “There Is A Vague Sense That Something Powerful, Apolitical, Transnational, Is Emerging”
Tyler Durden
Sun, 11/22/2020 – 16:35By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management
“I am requesting that the Federal Reserve return the unused funds to the Treasury,” wrote Steve Mnuchin, in a letter addressed to Fed Chairman Powell, shutting the lights off on his way out.
“In the unlikely event that it becomes necessary in the future to reestablish any of these facilities, the Federal Reserve can request approval from the Secretary of the Treasury,” continued Mnuchin.
Days earlier, Chairman Powell had stated, “The Fed will be strongly committed to using all of our tools to support the economy for as long as it takes until the job is well and truly done. When the right time comes, and I don’t think that time is yet or very soon, we will put those tools away.”
So apparently, the time has come. In any other period, such a public disagreement between the Treasury Secretary and Fed Chairman would have sparked an abrupt 10% decline in the S&P 500, particularly when the Fed has so few tools at its disposal and fiscal policy is the only true lever capable of lifting the real economy.
But not now. Equity markets barely budged, the S&P 500 finishing the week -0.8%. Bond markets rallied, 10yr Treasury yields falling 7bps to 0.83%.
In fact, the only thing that really moved was Bitcoin and its brethren, which staged a stunning rally on the accelerating loss of faith in fiat along with a vague sense that something powerful, apolitical, transnational, is emerging in the cloud.
You see, the market seems to have so little confidence in our politicians that they no longer even trust them to engage in a proper fiscal fight. Instead, markets increasingly believe that no matter how dysfunctional our political parties, how damaged our democratic institutions, how deep our self-inflicted wounds, in the end, all paths lead to an increasingly abundant supply of debt and dollars.
And the market is not wrong.
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