Today’s News 23rd November 2023

• Ordinary Americans Are The Nation's Unshakeable Greatness
  Ordinary Americans Are The Nation’s Unshakeable Greatness

  Authored by Armstrong Williams via The Epoch Times,

  Thanksgiving is a time for both festivities and reflection.

  The United States has had the best of times and the worst of times, prosperity and depressions, the joys of peace and the privations and cruelties of war. But throughout these vicissitudes, there has been one bright constant: the decency of ordinary Americans unhesitating in risking that last full measure of devotion under the banner of liberty and justice for all.

  

  That has been our inspiration and our deliverance from despair over our chronically flawed leaders earmarked by avarice, narcissism, megalomania, and duplicity.

  The history of America is largely a history of the courage, industry, ambition, thriftiness, and selflessness of ordinary Americans.

  The roots trace back to immigrants fleeing Europe at great risk in the quest for religious liberty and economic opportunity. They didn’t confront death for money. They sought to create a “city on a hill” as a beacon to all peoples seeking government by the consent of the governed.

  Who started the American Revolution?

  Ordinary farmers!

  Remember the opening stanza of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Concord Hymn:

  “By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flags to April’s breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood And fired the shot heard round the world.”

  Ordinary soldiers suffered most at Valley Forge.

  The American Declaration of Independence underscored the equal dignity of everyone from the highest to the lowest:

  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

  The U.S. Constitution was established and ordained by “We the people of the United States.” Among other things, it expressly prohibits titles of nobility.

  In other words, every man or woman is a king or queen, but no one wears a crown.

  Alexis de Tocqueville in “Democracy in America” underscored that voluntary associations established by ordinary Americans were the nation’s most distinctive and vital sources of strength.

  President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address celebrated the sacrifices of ordinary soldiers who died that this nation might live, who risked that last full measure of devotion so that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

  Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan preached, “[I]n view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.”

  The Statue of Liberty blazes forth with, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”

  Stand in awe at the Meuse-Argonne Cemetery and Memorial in France where lie the remains of more than 14,200 Americans who died in a war to end war.

  Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner gave their lives to secure civil rights for black people in Mississippi. Detroit housewife Viola Liuzzo was assassinated by the Klan in retaliation for advocating universal civil rights on the last night of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March.

  Not enough can be said about Jackie Robinson’s courage in confronting racism and shortstop Pee Wee Reese’s conspicuous friendship amid a howling assembly of bigots in the grandstands.

  And who can forget 9/11 hero Todd Beamer on United Airlines flight 93 over Pennsylvania shouting “Let’s roll” on a suicide mission to prevent Al Qaeda terrorists from reaching their target?

  The fundamental decency of the American people is demonstrated daily by the flood of immigrants seeking refuge and opportunity here. In contrast, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Burma, and sister tyrannies have few takers, a vote of no confidence.

  America is an idea, not a race, religion, ethnicity, gender, or nationality. President Lincoln, in a message to Congress on July 4, 1861, taught that the leading object of government was “to elevate the condition of men—to lift artificial weights from all shoulders—to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all—to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life.”

  But complacency we can’t afford. We must resist the temptation to strike Faustian bargains exchanging decency for self-aggrandizement or selfishness.

  Never miss an opportunity for kindness, benevolence, or expressions of gratitude. It costs nothing. And you will make the world a better place.

  Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/22/2023 – 23:20

• 9 Problems With Generative AI, In One Chart
  9 Problems With Generative AI, In One Chart

  In the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence, generative AI tools are demonstrating incredible potential. However, their potential for harm is also becoming more and more apparent.

  Together with their partner VERSES, Visual Capitalist’s Katie Jones and Sabrina Fortin have visualized some concerns regarding generative AI tools using data from a variety of different sources. Many of them fall into one of the following categories: quality control & data accuracy, ethical considerations, or technical challenges—with, of course, a certain degree of overlap.

  

  Let’s dive into it.

  PROBLEM 1:

  Bias In, Bias Out

  Theme: Quality Control & Accuracy

  One of the critical issues with generative AI lies in its tendency to reproduce biases present in the data it has been trained on. Rather than mitigating biases, these tools often magnify or perpetuate them, raising questions about the accuracy of their applications—which could lead to much bigger problems around ethics.

  PROBLEM 2:

  The Black Box Problem

  Theme: Ethical & Legal Considerations

  Another significant hurdle in embracing generative AI is the lack of transparency in its decision-making processes. With thought processes that are often uninterpretable, these AI systems face challenges in explaining their decisions, especially when errors occur on critical matters.

  It’s worth noting that this is a broader problem with AI systems and not just generative tools.

  PROBLEM 3:

  High Cost to Train and Maintain

  Theme: Complexity & Technical Challenges

  Training generative AI models like large language model (LLM) ChatGPT is extremely expensive, with costs often reaching millions of dollars due to the computational power and infrastructure required. For instance, now Ex-CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman confirmed that ChatGPT-4 cost a whopping $100 million to train.

  PROBLEM 4:

  Mindless Parroting

  Theme: Quality Control & Accuracy

  Despite their advanced capabilities, generative AIs are constrained by the data and patterns they were trained on. This limitation results in outputs that may not encompass the breadth of human knowledge or address diverse scenarios.

  PROBLEM 5:

  Alignment with Human Values

  Theme: Ethical & Legal Considerations

  Unlike humans, generative AIs lack the capacity to consider the consequences of their actions in alignment with human values.

  While instances like the AI-generated “Balenciaga Pope” may appear to be harmless, it’s important to recognize that deepfakes could be employed for more harmful purposes, such as spreading false information in the face of a public health crises.

  This highlights the need for more frameworks that ensure these systems operate within ethical boundaries.

  PROBLEM 6:

  Power Hungry

  Theme: Complexity & Technical Challenges

  The environmental impact of generative AI cannot be overlooked. With processing units consuming substantial power, models like ChatGPT cost as much as powering 33,000 U.S. households, with just one inquiry being 10 to 100 times more power hungry than one email.

  PROBLEM 7:

  Hallucinations

  Theme: Quality Control & Accuracy

  Generative AI models have been known to create fabricated statements or images when faced with data gaps, raising concerns about the reliability of their output and potential consequences.

  For example, in a Google Bard promotional video, the chatbot incorrectly asserted that the James Webb Space Telescope captured the first images of a planet beyond Earth’s solar system.

  PROBLEM 8:

  Copyright & IP infringement

  Theme: Ethical & Legal Considerations

  The ethical use of data becomes paramount when considering that several generative AI tools appropriate copyrighted work without consent, credit, or compensation, infringing upon the rights of artists and creators.

  OpenAI recently introduced a compensation program called Copyright Shield that covers legal costs for copyright infringement suits for certain customer tiers, rather than removing copyrighted material from ChatGPT’s training dataset.

  PROBLEM 9:

  Static Information

  Theme: Complexity & Technical Challenges

  Keeping generative AI models up to date requires substantial computational resources and time, presenting a formidable technical challenge. Some models, however, are designed for incremental updates, offering a potential solution to this complex issue.

  Meet VERSES

  In the pursuit of harnessing the power of AI, a careful balance must be struck to ensure ethical, transparent, and impactful advancements in this transformative field.

  VERSES is committed to creating intelligent software that wields transparent decision-making.

  Learn more about how VERSES is building a smarter world.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/22/2023 – 22:45

• Corporate Media Publishes Graphic Images Of Mass Shootings In Campaign For Gun Control 
  Corporate Media Publishes Graphic Images Of Mass Shootings In Campaign For Gun Control 

  Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

  The Billionaire-owned Washington Post and New York Times continue to push for gun control by any means necessary.

  On November 16, The Washington Post published “Terror on Repeat.” The report contains graphic images of the aftermath of highly publicized mass shootings in the United States.

  The full effects of the AR-15’s catastrophic force in mass killings are rarely seen in public.

  To assess the extent of the destruction, The Post examined thousands of photos and videos and identified parallels across 11 mass shootings between 2012 and 2023. The graphic pictures… pic.twitter.com/HXH5lFX6BR

  — The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) November 16, 2023

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

  In a note linked in the article, The Post’s executive editor wrote that they decided to publish the story to “enhance the public’s understanding of mass killers’ use of the readily available weapon, which was originally designed for war.”

  But really, the Post’s use of the most graphic images they could get ahold of is the lowest form of attack. The Washington Post is dancing on the graves of victims whose lives were savagely cut short by the actions of murderers.

  We should blame the actions of evil people on evil people. How would The Washington Post be judged if they did the same to Ford, GM, or Toyota every time a drunk driver killed someone? Their actions are the moral equivalent of not blaming the drunk driver for being a drunk driver and instead blaming the car.

  Why isn’t The Washington Post going after Ford for the 2021 Waukesha Christmas parade attack or the 2017 New York City truck attack?

  The Waukesha killer used a Ford Escape SUV to murder six people and injure another 62.

  In New York City, the killer used a Ford Super-Duty pickup truck to kill eight people and injure 11.

  Or how about going after Dodge when a murderer killed one person and injured 35 others in Charlottesville, VA, in 2017?

  The AR-15 is in common use and is owned by millions of law-abiding Americans, just like millions of cars are in use. But you don’t see the mainstream media blaming manufacturers for traffic deaths.

  Instead of articles about beefing up school security or allowing teachers who demonstrate proficiency with firearms to carry for protection, The Washington Post is targeting the rifles used in the shootings instead.

  By showing graphic images of the aftermath of shootings, this article is bound only to inspire copycat shooters in the future through media contagion.

  Meanwhile, the New York Times published an article attempting to tie the Lake City Ammo plant to mass shootings. For those unaware, the government owns the Lake City Ammunition plant and can sell its excess ammunition to the civilian market.

  The New York Times claims that, somehow, this ammo is responsible for mass shootings.

  In reality, it’s very likely that had Lake City not sold ammo, the shooters would have bought a different brand and still committed their evil acts. What anti-gun corporate media outlets like the New York Times realize, though, is that a massive amount of civilian ammunition is subsidized by Lake City, making prices cheaper for the civilian market.

  Similarly, when Biden banned all Russian ammunition imports in 2021, this was another attack on gun owners’ ability to have affordable ammo.

  Because gun control has been (and continues to be) such a massive failure, and the prospect of passing new laws is slim, gun control groups must resort to pushing their unpopular ideology through underhanded means.

  Regardless of the avenue of attack, Gun Owners of America stands ready to defend your Second Amendment rights.

  *   *   * 

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

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/22/2023 – 22:10

• These Are The World's Largest Semiconductor Foundry Companies By Revenue
  These Are The World’s Largest Semiconductor Foundry Companies By Revenue

  They’re in our phones, cars, planes, and even fridges.

  Semiconductor chips have become critical for the modern way of life, and the biggest semiconductor foundry companies rake in billions of dollars from widespread demand.

  Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu and Pallavi Rao show in the following chart, the largest semiconductor foundry companies by their percentage of global revenues in Q1 2023, using data sourced from Trendforce.

  

  ℹ️ We highlight data for companies that only operate foundries (fabrication plants) that manufacture chips for clients, also known as a “pure-play” foundries, as well as companies that design and manufacture their own chips, known as integrated device manufacturers. “Fabless” manufacturers that only design and don’t manufacture their own chips are not included.

  Semiconductor Foundry Companies by Revenue

  At the top of the list and dwarfing every other company by revenue share is TSMC which earned 60% (or nearly $17 billion) of the entire industry’s revenue in Q1 2023.

  Founded in 1987, TSMC is a pure-play foundry that has become Taiwan’s largest company and manufactures products for a host of clients including Apple, NVIDIA, and AMD.

  

  Note: Revenue based on the following conversion rates: USD 1 = WON 1,276; USD 1 = NTD 30.4.

  Well behind TSMC in foundry revenues is integrated device manufacturer Samsung, the biggest company in South Korea, which made $3.4 billion (12.4% of the industry’s revenue) from its semiconductor manufacturing business.

  GlobalFoundries from the U.S., UMC from Taiwan and SMIC from China round out the top five, with each taking home around 6% of industry’s revenue share in Q1 2023. The former spun out from AMD’s manufacturing arm when the company went fabless in 2009.

  Industry concentration is apparent in semiconductors. For example, the top 10 semiconductor foundry companies account for 98% of the entire industry’s revenue. Furthermore, 90% of the market is dominated by companies in just three Asian countries: Taiwan, South Korea, and China.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/22/2023 – 21:35

• Consumer Watchdog Lists 5 'Woke' Companies To Avoid During Holiday Buying
  Consumer Watchdog Lists 5 ‘Woke’ Companies To Avoid During Holiday Buying

  Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Consumers’ Research issued a “Woke Alert” on Tuesday warning Americans not to buy from five prominent businesses in the country this holiday season.

  

  The consumer watchdog listed Best Buy, Activision, Target, Nordstrom, and Home Depot as the firms to avoid while shopping. “These five companies went Woke, and now they’re vying for your business on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Keep these companies’ woke antics in mind when you’re shopping for deals,” Consumers’ Research said. It advised people to “tell these companies to stop their woke ways.”

  Best Buy

  Electronics retailer Best Buy committed to fill one out of three new non-hourly corporate positions with black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) employees by 2025. The company also intends to fill one out of three new, non-hourly field roles with women by this time and provide $44 million in college preparation and career opportunities to BIPOC students.

  In August, O’Keefe Media Group revealed that one of Best Buy’s management training programs was discriminating against white applicants. A qualification criteria for joining the program was that the candidate should identify as black, Latino, Hispanic, Asian, or Pacific Islander.

  The revelation was met with calls to boycott the company. “It’s time to Bud Light Best Buy,” Kingsley Wilson, of Washington, D.C. Young Republicans, said in an Aug. 9 X post. The public backlash prompted Best Buy to temporarily move its profile on X to “private,” per Consumers’ Research.

  Activision

  Video game publisher Activision faced a federal civil rights complaint from America First Legal (AFL) for its “illegal, racist, sexist, and discriminatory hiring practices,” according to an Aug. 15 post by the advocacy group.

  In 2021, Activision mandated that the company raise the number of women and “non-binary” employees in the firm by 50 percent in five years, said the watchdog. To achieve this, Activision created scholarships only for women, non-binary, and “gender fluid” individuals.

  The company’s network groups aimed at helping employees advance in their careers are only open to “Asian and Pacific Islanders, Black, ‘Latinx,’ LGBT+, ‘SWANA’ (Southwest Asian and North African), and women,” AFL stated. “Those who are white, straight, or men are not given the same opportunities as their peers to network and advance their careers at Activision.”

  The company embedded “DE&I (Diversity, equity, and inclusion) leaders” within their business and also into their games, according to AFL. Activision developed a tool called “Diversity Space Tool” which measured video game characters based on their culture, sexual orientation, gender identity, body type, ability, age, and ethnicity.

  “It’s unbelievable that in 2023—some sixty or so years after the civil rights movement—major corporations would obsess over the race and sex of the employees in their workforces,” Gene Hamilton, AFL vice president, said at the time.

  Target

  Target faced backlash after promoting LGBT Pride products in May—some of them targeting children. Consumers immediately called for a brand boycott, prompting the company to withdraw the LGBT-themed children’s products from all U.S. stores and websites or in some instances, to reposition the products in its retail outlets.

  A video of a Target customer in a store’s kids’ section showed LGBT clothing and books for sale. A tag on a kids’ dress read—“Thoughtfully fit on multiple body types and gender expressions.’ Another clothing tag said—“pride toddler legging.” One piece of clothing had a tag saying “tuck-friendly construction.”

  Two books being sold in the kids section were titled “Glad You Came Out!” and “I’m So Happy That You’re Queer!”

  Some of the items in Target’s Pride collection were designed by UK-based designer Abprallen, who identifies as a transgender gay man and is a proclaimed Satanist.

  “To make matters worse, when recently confronted on national TV about these products, Target CEO Brian Cornell tried to sweep the controversy under the rug by flat-out lying, stating ‘Well, I think you and I both know those weren’t true,’ Consumers’ Research stated.

  Nordstrom

  Luxury store chain Nordstrom is affiliated with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), which runs the “Welcoming School Program.”

  The program aims to “create LGBTQ+ and gender inclusive schools, prevent bias-based bullying, and support transgender and non-binary students.” HRC gives Nordstrom a 100/100 score for its promotion of LGBT policies at the workplace.

  Over the past years, Nordstrom has donated almost $1 million to support LGBT activities. It has taken part in over 35 Pride festivals and parades across the nation.

  Home Depot

  Home Depot has also teamed up with HRC for the Welcoming Schools Program, which Consumers’ Research says is “specifically geared towards indoctrinating schools on how to promote LGBT ideology among vulnerable students under the guise of ‘inclusivity.’”

  The Epoch Times reached out to the five companies for comment.

  Corporate Discrimination

  Many states are taking action against companies engaging in discriminatory employment policies.

  In a July 13 letter to CEOs of Fortune 100 companies, attorneys general from 13 states pointed out that the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling against race-based admissions in colleges “should place every employer and contractor on notice of the illegality of racial quotas and race-based preferences in employment and contracting practices.”

  “If your company previously resorted to racial preferences or naked quotas to offset its bigotry, that discriminatory path is now definitively closed,” the letter said. “Your company must overcome its underlying bias and treat all employees, all applicants, and all contractors equally, without regard for race.”

  In June, a jury in New Jersey directed Starbucks to pay over $25 million in compensation to a white former employee who accused the company of firing her because of her race.

  Speaking to The Epoch Times, Dan Morenoff, executive director of the American Civil Rights Project, suggested that more such cases could soon come to court. “When the plaintiffs’ bar sees that these are real sources of recovery, I would be surprised if you didn’t see a lot more of these cases being brought.”

  States like New Jersey, New York, and California have laws against discrimination, with most of these statutes having “provisions for uncapped punitive damages,” he said.

  “When you’re talking about uncapped punitive damages and entities that are among the largest in the world, it’s difficult to even put into words the scale of that Pandora’s box of liability that corporate directors have chosen to open.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/22/2023 – 21:00

• Visualizing EV Market Share In The US
  Visualizing EV Market Share In The US

  Electric vehicles are a fast growing segment in the U.S., but how much market share have they taken from traditional gasoline cars?

  According to recent data from the U.S. Department of Energy, not much.

  In this graphic, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu and Sabrina Lam visualize light-duty vehicle registrations in 2022, broken out by fuel type. It shows that out of the 281 million cars registered nationally, electric (EV) and plug-in hybrid (PHEV) vehicles represented only 1.2%.

  

  Breaking Down the Data

  An important distinction to make is that registrations are not the same as sales.

  While sales represent the number of new cars sold within a timeframe, registrations reflect the number of cars that are registered with a state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).

  As a result, registrations include both new cars and used cars that have changed ownership. This provides a more comprehensive measure of what cars are on the road.

  The following table shows the data we used to create this graphic.

  

  It’s worth noting that the gasoline category also includes diesel, E85 flex fuel, and traditional hybrid vehicles, while alternative fuels includes biodiesel, natural gas, propane, and hydrogen.

  Vehicles that the Department of Energy categorized as “unknown fuel type” were excluded.

  EV Market Share on the Rise

  EV adoption in the U.S. has been relatively sluggish compared to the EU and China, though this is beginning to change as automakers roll out more electric SUVs and trucks.

  According to Cox Automotive, U.S. EV sales (full battery electric) in Q2 2023 set a new record of 300,000 units, marking a 48% increase from Q2 2022.

  For additional context, a total of 800,000 EVs were sold in the U.S. throughout the entire year of 2022, in addition to 190,000 PHEVs.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/22/2023 – 20:30

• 9 Things The Australian Government Can Do To Reduce Living Costs
  9 Things The Australian Government Can Do To Reduce Living Costs

  Authored by Graham Young via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The federal government is belatedly recognising that some of its economic policies are contributing to the inflation that the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is trying to stamp out by raising interest rates.

  

  Since April 2022 when rates first started to increase, it’s as though we’ve been in a car with two drivers—one with its foot on the brake, the other with its foot on the accelerator.

  Now, at last, the driver with his foot on the accelerator is showing signs of understanding that they’re going to damage the engine of growth if they keep pulling it in two directions.

  So they’ve determined to cut spending on road and rail projects after a blowout in costs on the $120 billion (US$78 billion) portfolio of current and proposed projects of $38 billion—more than 25 percent.

  Cutting road and rail projects is not where I would necessarily start. Good road and rail projects actually add to the productivity of the country.

  Think of all the trucks that go between Brisbane and Sydney. The upgrades of the Pacific Highway have so far cut the time to travel between the two major east coast cities by 2.5 hours, or somewhere around 20 percent.

  That’s a huge lift in productivity, and as logistics are a significant proportion of retail prices, a huge decrease in prices. It is therefore anti-inflationary, as well as helping truckies maintain their real earnings.

  Not that all transport projects are that productive.

  Former Victorian Premier Daniel Andrew’s Melbourne Suburban Rail Loop and Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s Cross River Rail are both products that provide negative benefits. They therefore increase costs and are pro-inflationary.

  The federal government should step away from funding projects like these.

  What else should it do?

  Here’s a short list.

  1. Reduce Immigration Immediately

  Australia has apparently taken in 630,000 new immigrants this year—that’s eight regional Toowoombas.

  In a population of 26 million, this puts too much pressure on infrastructure and is substantially responsible for the current housing crisis.

  While immigration could help with various skills shortages, there is no evidence that is what the current surge in migration is actually doing.

  And anyway, a skill shortage is a signal that either the education and training system needs to adapt, or the economy is exhausting its ability to fulfil all wishes with current resources.

  

  2. Produce Budget Surpluses Going Forward, Not Just This Year

  The government is less efficient at spending money than the private sector, partly because large bureaucracies, whether public or private, are inefficient, and partly because when it’s not your money, you tend to be less careful.

  Producing surpluses, without increasing taxation, means a decrease in the size of government and an increase in productivity.

  Surpluses would mean they would need to control rapidly increasing costs in health, aged care, and the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). That should be relatively simple.

  The NDIS should have always been means-tested, and restricted in what it was available for.

  Aged care is a centrally micro-managed mess where most of the problems could be fixed by the government stepping away, and also requiring better-off retirees to meet more of their own costs.

  In health, we spend proportionately around 50 percent more than countries with similar health outcomes like Israel and Singapore. We’ve got a generally good health system, but it could be better and cheaper.

  Taking these steps would also increase productivity, and therefore reduce upward price pressure.

  3. Reform Taxation

  Delivering the Stage 3 tax cuts should absolutely happen. This is part of downsizing the government and putting resources in the hands of those who will use them most efficiently.

  There is also a list of more radical reforms that should be implemented to raise the productivity of business.

  Australia’s productivity has been dropping partly because business has not been investing in productive capacity, and most investment in the economy actually comes from companies.

  One easy way to boost investment is to allow businesses to accelerate the rate at which they write off assets.

  Fast-growing companies are always chronically short of capital, and we exacerbate this by taxing them even when they are not cashflow positive.

  Accelerated depreciation helps with this, and while it temporarily decreases government tax revenue, over the long run it should increase it as greater wealth is generated.

  

  They could also look at abolishing company tax altogether and taxing profits entirely in the hands of shareholders.

  They should also look at abolishing Capital Gains Tax (a tax that only came into being in 1985).

  It is part of the reason there is a shortage of rental properties at the moment, which is increasing living costs for the 31 percent of Australians who rent. Once a homeowner doesn’t pay capital gains tax, they have a big advantage over investors when it comes to purchasing a house.

  4. Withdraw the ‘Closing the Loopholes’ Bill

  This is a brutally misnamed bill that will make casual and self-employed work marginal.

  It strikes at the heart of ambitious Australians who want to do things for themselves and will make our workforce significantly less flexible, increasing costs all around.

  In fact, this bill ought to be known as the “Enabling Greater Union Power and Screwing the Small Business Sector” Bill.

  The “loopholes” that it claims to close are in fact, not bugs, but features in what has been a remarkably flexible and productive workforce.

  

  5. Reform Environmental Protection Laws

  The Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act is strangling the growth of projects in Australia and urgently needs review.

  It gives too much power to objectors, who in many cases are environmental groups (not conservation groups) set on sabotaging wealth creation rather than protecting the environment.

  There is enough sovereign risk in Australia these days without amplifying it.

  6. Stop Capping Prices

  When prices go up the government’s first impulse appears to be to control the price.

  They’ve certainly done this with gas which, in the long-term, actually sends prices up.

  High prices are a signal to businesses of where to invest, and price caps are a signal of where not to invest.

  7. Moderate the Energy Transition

  The inflation in rail and road infrastructure projects is nothing compared to what is about to happen in the area of power generation.

  It is already diverting labour and resources from everyday necessities like housing, but there is a looming shortage of the components that make up renewable energy and power networks.

  In addition, proceeding without adequate storage is going to increase the need for gas-fired power generation, which is only going to get more expensive because of government policies making it difficult to start new gas projects.

  

  8. Reform Federal-State Relations

  Not all the fault for inflation lies with the federal government, a lot of it lies with the states who have borrowed profligately.

  The Commonwealth either needs to reintroduce borrowing limits, as used to be the case under the Loans Council, or make it clear to lenders (and voters and governments) that they will not bail out state governments that can’t repay their borrowings.

  9. Nominate a Minimum Range for Interest Rates

  A large slab of our problem is that the RBA pushed interest rates too low—to a historically unparalleled rate.

  It should be clear to the RBA, and to voters, that official interest rates should never fall below, say 3.5 percent.

  The record-low rate of 0.1 percent was absurd for a number of reasons.

  Risk-averse investors, such as pensioners, need to have an asset class that gives them a reasonable return, and which is liquid. That is cash or bonds.

  While an asset could wear a return of 0.1 percent if there was a reasonable chance of capital gains, at that rate there is a more than reasonable chance of a capital loss.

  In fact, the RBA is apparently sitting on around $45 billion of unrealised losses because it invested in its own paper at this absurdly low rate.

  

  The rate is also important because the government bond rate tends to be priced off it, and the return on government bonds is used as a hurdle rate by investors to gauge the return they need from an investment to make it viable.

  When the official cash rate is too low people, businesses and governments invest in too many marginal projects which add nothing to national productivity and income, and often freeze out riskier, but ultimately more profitable, ones.

  I wish I could say it is likely the government will pick up even one of these ideas, but it isn’t.

  Just a few days ago Treasurer Jim Chalmers boasted, “We’ve seen the highest quarterly wages growth in 26 years under an Australian Labor government. Real wages started falling under the Coalition due to a decade of deliberate wage stagnation and high inflation. We’re turning it around.”

  Except they’re not turning it around at all.

  He’s quoting nominal wages against real wages, and ignoring the fact that labour productivity has just suffered a record fall.

  Those wage hikes aren’t good for the economy, they are inflation in action.

  If you can’t see it when you stub your toe on it, in the end, you’re unlikely to be able to do anything about it.

  Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/22/2023 – 20:00

• In "Significant Shift" To Bailing Out Its Sinking Property Sector, China Puts Largest Developer On Rescue "White List"
  In “Significant Shift” To Bailing Out Its Sinking Property Sector, China Puts Largest Developer On Rescue “White List”

  In a move which analysts say marks a “significant shift” in Beijing’s strategy to assist distressed builders and boost confidence in China’s sinking housing sector amid the deepening property crisis, overnight Beijing included property giants Country Garden Holdings (whose collapse would be orders of magnitude worse than that of Evergrande) and Sino-Ocean Group to China’s draft list of 50 developers eligible for a range of financing support which we profiled earlier this week. 

  As Bloomberg anchor Sofia Horta e Costa notes, “Country Garden was previously the leading developer by sales with numerous ongoing construction projects. If China aims to bolster confidence among homeowners and buyers, ensuring that projects will be completed and delivered seamlessly even in the event of a developer default, then this is the way to go.”

  CIFI Holdings Group, another builder that has missed debt payments, was also included on the white list according to Bloomberg, which adds that regulators are set to finalize the roster and distribute it to banks and other financial institutions within days.

  The inclusion of distressed builders such as Country Garden, which missed payments on a dollar bond for the first time last month, underscores regulators’ shifting stance toward some of the nation’s biggest private developers as the refusal of the relentless property crisis to ease. Chinese President Xi Jinping has also stepped up support for the broader economy, issuing more sovereign debt for infrastructure spending, raising the budget deficit ratio and even making an unprecedented visit to the central bank.

  Then again, not a day goes by this year when we are not inundated with the latest Chinese “news” and “plans” of a moderate stimulus, one which never actually materializes, however, and which is just recycled into the next newscycle where readers completely forget that they are just reading recycled news over and over.

  And this time was no different because a Bloomberg index of Chinese developer stocks rallied this week on expectations that the financing help may alleviate fears of further contagion in China’s property sector. Still, some investors were concerned the list would mainly comprise state-owned firms and leave out distressed builders most in need of the support. Gemdale, which hasn’t missed any debt payments, is also on the draft list along with China Vanke, Seazen and Longfor Group.

  

  Even if Beijing has finally decided to step in and bail out its long-suffering housing sector, there is no guarantee that the aid isn’t a case of too little, too late. Country Garden, which is bigger than Evergrande was at its peak, has property developments in almost every province in China, and in October posted its biggest sales drop in at least six years. Growing concerns among potential buyers of its ability to complete projects threaten to exacerbate a cash crunch.

  Speculation over Country Garden’s fate flared anew earlier this month after Reuters reported that China’s State Council instructed the government of Guangdong province to ask Ping An Insurance (Group) Co. to take a controlling stake. Ping An said it doesn’t hold any shares in Country Garden and has no plans to acquire it.

  China’s property crisis has engulfed almost all of the largest developers, which have been struggling to repay debts and complete projects since the credit crunch emerged three years ago. Vanke, one of the country’s few remaining investment-grade builders, saw its dollar bonds plunge in recent weeks on the heels of Country Garden’s default. Vanke later received an unusually strong show of support from the local government.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/22/2023 – 19:30

• "You've Tarnished The Face Of Human Civilization" – Head Of Bombed Gaza Hospital Blasts Biden
  “You’ve Tarnished The Face Of Human Civilization” – Head Of Bombed Gaza Hospital Blasts Biden

  Authored by Brett Wilkins via Common Dreams,

  The director of the aid group that runs the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza – where Israeli attacks killed at least a dozen people on Monday – appealed directly to US President Joe Biden, imploring him to push Israel to accept permanent ceasefire in a war that’s killed or maimed more than 40,000 Palestinians [a four-day truce is set to begin Thurs].

  “Gazans are facing death every day. Every five minutes, a Palestinian child is killed,” Sarbini Abdul Murad, head of Medical Emergency Rescue Committee (MER-C) Indonesia, wrote in a letter to Biden.

  Noting that Israeli forces have attacked “babies, children, women, the elderly, the disabled, hospitals, ambulances, medics, schools, teachers, residential complexes, worship places, and much more,” Murad asserted that “this is completely genocide and ethnic cleansing.”

  “It is very unfortunate that your siding with Israel by facilitating weapons of mass destruction has actually made the conflict even wider,” Murad continued.

  “Your action clearly contradicts various international treaties and agreements that apply to the existence of Palestine. You have destroyed the international rules of the game, insulted the authority of the [United Nations], torn apart the sense of justice, hurt human values, and tarnished the face of human civilization.”

  

  “Mr. President, we believe you still have a conscience,” Murad wrote. “Your great country certainly wants to be seen as honorable for its humanitarian defenses. Moreover, your administration has determined to make the principles of multilateralism, justice, and human rights the foundation of United States foreign policy. So, actually, this is the right to prove it.”

  Urging Biden to “avoid double standards in dealing with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” Murad added: “For the sake of peace and humanity, we demand that you immediately do [a] cease-fire. Restore the dignity of the United States as a country that upholds human rights. The cease-fire must be implemented now, so as not to increase the loss of life on both sides.”

  Murad’s letter came as Israel Defense Forces tanks surrounded the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza after IDF artillery shelling killed 12 people in the facility’s compound, including patients and their companions, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry also said many people were wounded in the attack, including patients in critical condition.

  “The attack is a clear violation of international humanitarian laws. All countries, especially those that have close relations with Israel, must use all their influence and capabilities to urge Israel to stop its atrocities,” Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said Monday.

  According to Gaza officials, there are about 700 patients, staff, and other Palestinians trapped in the Indonesian Hospital. People trying to flee the compound have reportedly come under Israeli fire. Marwan Abdallah, a medical worker at hospital, told Al Jazeera that Israeli tanks could be seen maneuvering around the compound.

  “You can see them moving around and firing,” Abdallah said. “Women and children are terrified. There are constant sounds of explosions and gunfire.” The World Health Organization (WHO) said it is “appalled” by the attacks on Indonesian Hospital.

  “Health workers and civilians should never have to be exposed to such horror, and especially while inside a hospital,” the agency said in a statement. “There have been multiple and ongoing attacks on health facilities in the last six weeks, that have resulted in forced mass evacuations from hospitals, and multiple fatalities and casualties among patients, their companions, and those who had sought refuge in hospitals,” WHO continued.

  “The Indonesian Hospital had already reportedly sustained damages due to at least five attacks since October 7,” the organization added, referring to the date when Israel began bombarding Gaza by air, land, and sea following the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel that killed around 1,200 people, with another 240 or so taken hostage.

  “WHO has recorded 335 attacks on healthcare in the occupied Palestinian territory since October 7, including 164 attacks in the Gaza Strip and 171 attacks in the West Bank,” WHO noted. “There were also 33 attacks on healthcare in Israel during the violent events of October 7.”

  “The world cannot stand silent while these hospitals, which should be safe havens, are transformed into scenes of death, devastation, and despair,” the agency added.

  Northern Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital is being targeted by Israeli forces. With hundreds of people trapped, we take a look at the current conditions inside the facility. pic.twitter.com/xhrGPGGCvH

  — Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) November 21, 2023

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  On Tuesday, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), or Doctors Without Borders, said two of its physicians—Drs. Mahmoud Abu Nujaila and Ahmad Al Sahar—were killed along with another doctor, Ziad Al-Tatari, in a strike on al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza.

  “We condemn this strike in the strongest terms, and call yet again for the respect and protection of medical facilities, staff, and patients,” MSF said in a statement.

  Israeli officials claim Hamas and other Palestinian militants are using hospitals as headquarters. However, Israel has provided no proof to support its allegations, which Palestinian and international medical professionals working in the facilities resoundingly refute. According to Palestine’s WAFANews Agency, at least 205 Palestinian medical workers have been killed by Israeli bombs and bullets during the war.

  The WHO said Tuesday that one of its employees, Dima Alhaj, was killed in an Israeli attack on Gaza alongside her husband, their 6-month-old baby, and two of the woman’s brothers.

  Gaza officials said Tuesday that the death toll from Israel’s 46-day onslaught rose to at least 14,128, including over 3,900 women and 5,800 children. Tens of thousands more Palestinians have been wounded, nearly 1.7 million others have been forcibly displaced, and around half of all homes in the embattled strip have been damaged or destroyed.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/22/2023 – 19:00

• It's Official: Geert Wilders And Conservative Freedom Party Win Dutch Election
  It’s Official: Geert Wilders And Conservative Freedom Party Win Dutch Election

  Update (1841ET): It’s official – Geert Wilders has won the Dutch elections and says he will lead the country’s next government.

  

  “The hope of the Dutch people is that they will get their country back,” Wilders said following an exit poll published by state broadcaster NOS.

  In his post-election speech, Wilders called for a coalition which would include the liberal VVD, which was until recently led by outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

  Meanwhile, liberals are in fits over Wilders’ win – and in general, the shift towards populism across Europe. Here’s how Bloomberg framed it:

  A surge in the number of refugees since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as well as the spiraling cost of food and energy, has fueled support for far-right groups across the European continent. Germany’s Alternative for Deutschland now has more support than any of the parties in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition, while Giorgia Meloni came from nowhere to take power last year in Italy.

  The Dutch election campaign highlighted how immigration has polarized voter opinion and driven support toward Wilders, for whom the topic has been a core issue for decades. The 60-year-old is known for his anti-Islamic views and has lived under police protection since 2004 on account of death threats.

  Of course, the outlet also notes that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was “quick to congratulate him on his victory.”

  Just remember folks, it’s not the will of the people reflected at the ballot box, it’s the “far right” winning a “shock victory.”

  

  It might be time to connect the dots…

  Italy Meloni win
  Germany AfD win
  Spain Vox win
  Argentina Milei win
  Netherlands PVV win

  *socialism rain check.

  — Lawrence McDonald (@Convertbond) November 22, 2023

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  If only Argentina and Netherlands had perfected mail in ballots, none of this would have happened. https://t.co/A6a9wHZ8pY

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 22, 2023

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  *  *  *

  The polls were right! Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders’ and his Freedom Party scored a marked victory in today’s Dutch elections, in which they are projected to win 35 seats, making them the largest group in parliament, Bloomberg reports (only with the ‘FaR RiGhT HiTleRy EviLdOeRz’ branding the MSM ascribes to anyone right of Mao).

   

  35!!!!!!

  PVV GROOTSTE PARTIJ ❤️ pic.twitter.com/oMANVYvGjy

  — Geert Wilders (@geertwilderspvv) November 22, 2023

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  And assuming the exit-polls hold up, Wilders’ prospects for forging a coalition government will hinge on his ability to reach across the aisle to parties which have already signaled maximum virtue and vowed never to work with him.

  Wilders and his team hugged and cheered as the result was announced and sang along to the Rocky theme tune ‘Eye of the Tiger.’ Reporters who watched his campaign team celebrate at a crowded bar in Scheveningen near The Hague did so from behind glass.

  The controversial politician benefited from the vacuum created by outgoing premier Mark Rutte’s decision to quit politics after 13 years in office — and from the refusal of Rutte’s successor as party leader, Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius, to rule out working with his party. Anti-migration sentiment of the kind Wilders has long-championed was a prominent issue on the campaign trail. -Bloomberg

  In second place was the Left Alliance, headed by Franz Timmermans, who will likely score 26 seats, followed by VVC, which will likely receive 23 seats.

  

  Wilders has served in parliament for 25 years.

  *  *  *

  Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

  A shock new poll saw Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV) enjoy a dramatic rise in support to put it on equal footing with the governing VVD…

  

  Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV) has experienced a dramatic rise in popularity among Dutch voters in a matter of days, rising from fourth place to now polling joint top with the governing VVD after an impressive performance in the latest television debate.

  In the most recent survey conducted by pollster MDH, the right-wing populist party strengthened its electoral position by five percentage points to reach 26 percent, on par with the party of outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte, now led by Turkish-born Justice Minister Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius.

  The increase in support appears to be at the expense of Pieter Omtzigt’s New Social Contract, the centrist party fighting its first national election, whose party’s popularity dropped by the same margin.

  “The past week has seen the biggest changes in polling of this campaign. This directly relates to the fact that Geert Wilders was only involved in a debate on television for the first time on Nov. 12,” pollster Maurice de Hond explained.

  The Dutch mainstream media has been accused of bias concerning the exposure it gives the more establishment parties in the country in comparison to those advocating a conservative, nationalist approach, particularly regarding immigration.

  SBS debat werd de gamechanger. PVV+5 en NSC -5. VVD en PVV nu samen aan kop.
  Toch nog veel kiezers die kunnen verschuiven. Lees de analyse.https://t.co/TLfma5K7P5 pic.twitter.com/SQVo1ptW9K

  — Maurice de Hond (@mauricedehond) November 18, 2023

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  Earlier this week, data published by a diversity watchdog revealed that no politician from Wilders’ PVV or Thierry Baudet’s Forum for Democracy (FvD) has featured on the leading late-night talk show, Op1, since the fall of the Dutch government back in July, while mainstream parties seemingly deemed to be more palatable by producers, have been invited on dozens of times during the election period.

  The SBS debate this week, of which de Hond says “Wilders clearly appeared to be the winner,” seems to have drastically shifted the odds in favor of Wilders’ party being a part of the next Dutch government, or at the very least having a considerable influence on the composition of any coalition government.

  “In the penultimate poll, conducted five days before the elections among almost 7,000 respondents, we see this drastic shift: PVV increases by five seats and NSC decreases by five seats. That is a reinforcement of last week’s trend,” the pollster added.

  In the last two weeks, the PVV has increased its estimated vote share by seven percentage points, while NSC has seen its support plummet by the same figure to its lowest recorded level since its recent formation. Support for the governing VVD has remained broadly consistent.

  Dutch voters head to the polls on Nov. 22 to elect a new government after Mark Rutte’s coalition government collapsed primarily over disagreements relating to asylum and immigration policy.

  The election falls under a backdrop of an asylum crisis that is rapidly getting out of control, evidenced by new figures from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND) this week which revealed that over 42,000 asylum seekers resident in the Netherlands are awaiting a decision on their asylum application, and the average waiting time for applications to be processed has exceeded a year.

  …

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/22/2023 – 18:43

• Beijing's Coal Boom Is Here To Stay
  Beijing’s Coal Boom Is Here To Stay

  Authored by Vijay Jayaraj via RealClear Wire,

  News of record installations of so-called renewable energy electric generation in China may have kindled the hopes of those supporting the “green” agenda and hostile to fossil fuels. However, China is in no position to give up hydrocarbons, particularly coal.

  

  During the first half of 2023, China approved 52 gigawatts (GW) of new coal power, which was more than all the approvals issued in 2021. These new approvals are in addition to the 136 GW of coal capacity that are already under construction. Together, these new plants represent more than 67% of all new approvals in the world. 

  Why is China doing this despite climate pledges? And what does the future hold?

  Turning Away from Paris One-Step at a Time

  Nearly all countries signed the historic Paris Agreement in 2015, which set aggressive goals to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels. The assumption was that reducing carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels would halt future warming deemed as catastrophic.

  As part of this accord, China, the largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world, agreed to reach carbon neutrality by 2060 and peak its emissions of carbon dioxide by 2030. Many praised these promises, celebrating China’s apparent acceptance of its supposed responsibility to address the climate issue.

  But these promises are at odds with reality. China’s economy is mostly based on fossil fuels, which are the most affordable, abundant and dependable energy source. At 159 exajoules, China’s primary energy consumption in 2022 was the highest in the world and 40% more than that consumed the U.S. — the second largest user. 

  Last year, 82% of the total energy consumed by China came from coal, oil and natural gas. Wind and solar, despite significant investments by Beijing, represented just 7% of all energy consumed in 2022.

  Coal remains the linchpin of China’s energy infrastructure and economic vitality. According to the National Bureau of Statistics of China, coal consumption increased by more than 4% in 2022. Coal imports in August 2023 were the highest since 2015. China is ramping up its import from Russia and Australia and continues to increase imports from Indonesia, which is its main supplier. 

  Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com writes, “China is mining record amounts of coal and also importing record volumes of coal as it looks to boost its energy security.” This growing appetite for coal is inevitable given the huge demand from the power sector and industry in general. 

  Demand from Industries to Increase Coal Demand

  Over 1 billion tons of crude steel are produced in China each year, accounting for over half of global steel output. The Chinese steel industries—over 90% of them—use coal-based processes. 

  Despite introducing in 2021 a policy to curb emissions of carbon dioxide, Beijing has yet to announce any cap for steel production. S&P Global believes that there will “be no mandatory steel output cuts this year.” The crude steel output in 2023 is to exceed 2022 levels.

  According to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, “Chinese steel firms are making significant investments in new, coal-based steelmaking capacity.” To put this in context, China’s approval of new steel capacity per year is twice that of the entire capacity of the German steel industry.

  Like steelmaking, the manufacturing of cement is energy intensive, with coal accounting for up to 85% of the energy used in the process. China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of cement. 

  According to analysts, “China consumes as much cement every two years as the U.S. did over the entire 20th century.” Cement production is projected to increase further in coming years, and high demand will possibly last for decades.

  In short, China’s security and economic growth depend on satiating the country’s colossal appetite for fossil fuels. Western politics around a non-existent climate crisis won’t change that.  

  Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, U.K.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/22/2023 – 18:05

• Spoiler Alert? Cornel West Plans Major 2024 Push In Swing State Michigan
  Spoiler Alert? Cornel West Plans Major 2024 Push In Swing State Michigan

  While he has little chance of winning the 2024 election, independent presidential candidate Cornel West has the potential to affect the outcome of what’s expected to be a close contest between President Biden and former President Donald Trump.

  That reality is underscored by a new report indicating West plans to make a major push in the state of Michigan, which played a pivotal role in 2016 and 2020. Trump officially lost Michigan by 154,000 votes in 2020, after winning it by 10,700 votes in 2016.

  West plans to target key Michigan constituencies that are growing increasingly dissatisfied with Biden, including blacks, Arab-Americans, college students, according to plans shared with Politico. 

  

  An NBC News poll released over the weekend found that support for support for Biden among 18- to 34-year-old voters cratered by 15% just since September, as that cohort seethes over the administration’s unwavering support for Israel in its war on Gaza. Seeing an opening, West will visit colleges including the University of Michigan and Michigan State as part of a swing through the state early next year. 

  Biden’s Israel policy is even more toxic for Arab-Americans and Muslims, a major minority in Michigan. Dearborn, for example, has America’s largest Muslim population per capita. A 2020 exit poll sponsored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) found Muslims turned out at a remarkable 84% clip, with 69% voting for Biden against just 17% for Trump.

  People are hungry for change. They want good policies over partisan politics. We need to break the grip of the duopoly and give power to the people. I’m running as an Independent candidate for President of the United States to end the iron grip of the ruling class and ensure true… pic.twitter.com/34FFQARTEe

  — Cornel West (@CornelWest) October 5, 2023

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  Expect something different in 2024: 

  “President Joe Biden’s support among Arab Americans, who are crucial voters in battleground election states, has plunged from a comfortable majority in 2020 to just 17%, a new poll shows, amid growing anger over the Democratic president’s support for Israel’s attacks on Gaza” – Reuters

  West has already joined several pro-Palestinian protests and plans to visit Dearborn early next year in coordination with Jewish Voice for Peace. West is well-positioned to be an attractive “protest vote” option for those who are angry with Biden but not persuaded to vote for Trump. 

  

  There will be plenty of voters receptive to West’s anti-war, pro-Palestinian message. “Joe Biden has single-handedly alienated almost every Arab-American and Muslim American voter in Michigan,” Democratic state Rep. Alabas Farhat said last month. “I think there’s going to be a lot of people that remember when you won Michigan years ago by a razor-thin margin, when you won Georgia with a razor-thin margin, when you won Arizona by a razor-thin margin — do not be surprised if there are consequences for your actions.”

  Blacks are another group turning against Biden: The national NBC poll found 20% percent of blacks now support Trump, compared to 69% for Biden. That a big shift: A Pew Research survey found Biden won the 2020 black vote by an overwhelming 92-to-8 margin.    

  West isn’t the only wild card in the 2024 race. Independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr‘s impact is uncertain, while Jill Stein’s November announcement of a Green Party bid caused flashbacks among Democrats who blame her for supposedly diverting enough 2016 votes from Hillary Clinton to allow Trump to win the presidency.  

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/22/2023 – 17:40

• What Is Anarcho-Capitalism?
  What Is Anarcho-Capitalism?

  Commentary by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The presidential victory of Javier Milei in Argentina puts at the head of state the first self-proclaimed “anarcho-capitalist” in modern history—or probably the first person ever to win an election at this level to identify with that term.

  

  In the meantime, I’ve had many people ask me precisely what this is. So here is the explanation as I understand it.

  Central to the idea is that society does not require an entrenched entity of legalized compulsion and coercion called the state in order to enjoy the enforcement of property rights, contracts, defense, and commercial society generally. The fusing of the terms anarchism and capitalism is not a plan for the social order but rather a prediction of what would happen in a civilized community in the absence of the state.

  Myth one: it is not “right-wing,” contrary to the New York Times, the Guardian, and a thousand other venues. The “right” in Prussia was for the unity of church, state, and business. The “right” in France was for the divine right of the monarchy to rule. The “right” in America is all over the place in U.S. history but hardly consistent for liberty as a first principle of socio-political life. The notion of “anarcho-capitalism” is outside the left-right binary.

  Myth two: the “anarcho” part has nothing to do with Antifa or chaos. The use of the term anarchism here means only the abolition of the state and its replacement with property relationships, voluntary action, private law, and contract enforcement as provided by free enterprise. It does not mean lawless; it means law as an extension of human volition and social evolution rather than imposition from above. Order is the daughter of liberty, not the mother, said Proudhon, and anarcho-capitalists would agree.

  Myth three: not everyone who proclaims himself to be an “anarcho-capitalist” speaks for the school of thought, not by a long shot. The designation represents a broad ideal with thousands of iterative applications and a huge diversity of views within, same as any other ideological camp. I’m aware of some who favored COVID lockdowns and shot mandates, and others who keep finding ways to justify war and mass redistribution schemes, for example. Thus should Milei not be held responsible for every cockamamie thing ever said or written by a self-described adherent.

  The term originates in the work of American economist (and my beloved mentor) Murray Rothbard, who was strongly influenced in his libertarianism by novelist Ayn Rand in the 1950s. (One of Milei’s dogs is named Murray.) But as Rothbard examined Rand’s work closely, he began to develop doubts about the institution Rand insisted was necessary and essential, namely the state itself. If we are to have property rights, why is the state alone permitted to violate them? If we are to have self-ownership, why is the state the only institution allowed to trample on people via conscription, segregation, and otherwise? If we seek peace, why do we want a state to wage war? And so on.

  In Rothbard’s view, a consistent rule in society prohibiting aggression against person and property would have to apply also to the state itself, which has been historically the most socially damaging violator of human rights that there is. We tolerate states to defend our rights only to find out that the state is the main threat to our rights. This way of thinking also observes that no one has ever come up with a technology or system that has successfully restrained the state once it is created. (Highly recommended for deeper understanding: Rothbard’s “Anatomy of the State,” a free download.)

  Many anarchists of the socialist left have made similar observations but Rothbard’s spin was one of an analytical prediction concerning what would take the place of the state in its absence. Rothbard said that a society without a state would not be a community governed by perfect sharing of resources and egalitarian sameness, much less some magical elevation beyond human nature, as the left-utopians said. Rather, it would be one of ownership, commerce, the division of labor, investment, private courts, stock markets, private ownership of capital, and all the rest. In other words, a free economy would thrive more than ever without the state, and we would see an ordered liberty brought to its highest possible level of realization.

  Keep in mind that pushing forward this idea put Rothbard at odds with practically everyone from the Marxists to the Trotskyites to the Randians to the conservatives and old-style classical liberals who believed that states are necessary for courts, law, and security. It even put him at odds with another one of his mentors, Ludwig von Mises himself, whose only conception of anarchism came from European intellectual circles: they were surely among the least responsible minds on the Continent.

  Rothbard’s anarchism was American to the core: more influenced by Colonial times than the Spanish Civil War. He believed that communities could manage themselves without an overlord with the power to tax, inflate the currency, conscript, and murder. He believed that markets and the creativity of peaceful human cooperation would always produce better results than institutions cobbled together by elites and enforced by compulsion. That applies even to courts, security, and law, all of which he believed to be better provided via market forces within the framework of universal norms governing ownership and human action.

  In this Rothbard was revisiting a debate from 19th-century France. Frédéric Bastiat (1801–1850) was a great economist and classical liberal who wrote some of the most compelling writings for freedom of his generation or even ever. But he always held out in his mind the belief in the necessity of some state to keep the system functioning lest society descend into chaos. Opposing him in this was the lesser-known intellectual Gustav de Molinari (1819–1912) who wrote that all functions necessary for social operations under freedom can be provided via market forces. In many ways, Molinari was the actual first “anarcho-capitalist,” though he never used that term.

  To be sure, high-level theory originating in Paris salons during the Belle Epoque or New York City intellectual circles in the 1950s are one thing. But putting all this into practice is another. Here is where the test for Milei really is. At this point, his theory is just that, perhaps an inspiration to give courage of conviction but it is hardly a blueprint. He faces a massive administrative state that is deeply entrenched, a collapsed currency, a corrupted court system, a hostile legislature, an enemy media, and 100 years of egregious pension liabilities.

  How does one man take all this on? We don’t really know the answer to this question. No leader of a Western democratic developed nation has ever attempted a full-scale routing of a corrupted establishment on this level. Neither Reagan nor Thatcher, as far-reaching as their reforms were, ever cut the budget overall much less really abolished whole agencies. They were reformers within the framework. Milei is being called to do something never done before, in the midst of a grave crisis for the nation.

  You don’t have to accept anarcho-capitalism fully to appreciate the drive and hope here. Who would you trust most to beat back the state, someone who strongly believes in some features of it or someone who opposes the whole structure root and branch? This much is clear: this ideological orientation is going to infuse any statesman with a fiery opposition to every corruption, every compulsion, every racket, every scam pushed by the administrative elite. The anarcho-capitalist orientation at least provides a guiding light that could end in more liberty for everyone.

  The internal and external forces allied against his success are unthinkably vast. And he is racing against the clock. In a year, the whole of elite media is going to be yelling that “anarcho-capitalism” in Argentina has failed. Promise. That’s how absurd things have become.

  Let’s say that Milei gets diverted by neoliberal globalists and pursues reforms that only follow the neo-liberal playbook of the late 20th century and following 2008. Can that be blamed on anarcho-capitalism? Absolutely not.

  Anarcho-capitalism is not granting freedom to the largest corporations under oligarchic control to pillage and profit at the people’s expense. It is not “privatizing” functions of the state that should not exist in the first place. It is not selling off state resources to cronies and bandits. It is not contracting out lame public services to the highest bidder. It doesn’t mean allowing tech companies to become state partners in citizen surveillance and control. These are all corruptions of a more pure idea of capitalism. And it certainly is not complying with the dictates of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the Word Economic Forum (WEF), much less the U.S. State Department.

  There is every reason to be encouraged by Milei’s victory if only because it shows there is a populist demand out there for radical reform and this can in fact win elections. We should hope that GOP candidates in the United States are watching and listening. They seem to have defaulted back to canned speeches and scripted answers, which only bore a public that is fed up with the status quo and ready for someone with the vision and energy of a Milei to get serious.

  This might only be round one of many more to come. He might fail. But the desperate need for fundamental and far-reaching reform and revolution in all industrialized democracies to put the people back in charge can hardly be doubted anymore. And if he fails, after a valiant effort, at least we will have had, as Rothbard once said, a temporary but “glorious holiday” from the political and administrative status quo we live with every day.

  There is every reason to believe that Milei is just the beginning of a new trend that could spread all over the world. People are fed up and are ready for a radical new direction. Something has to be done to stop the relentless march of the forces of tyranny in Western nations.

  Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/22/2023 – 17:15

• "Dangerous & Misguided Decision": Maryland Democrats Angered By Federal Court Overturning Handgun Licensing Law
  “Dangerous & Misguided Decision”: Maryland Democrats Angered By Federal Court Overturning Handgun Licensing Law

  Democratic lawmakers in Maryland expressed discontent following a decision by a federal appeals court to overturn a firearm regulation in the progressive state, which mandated that residents must acquire a license before purchasing a handgun.

  In a 2-1 ruling, a panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Maryland lawmakers can no longer pile on additional regulations for purchasing handguns. The court said the law was unenforceable following the pro-2A ruling in the Supreme Court last year. 

  Circuit Judge Julius N. Richardson wrote in an opinion with Judge G. Steven Agee, “The challenged law restricts the ability of law-abiding adult citizens to possess handguns, and the state has not presented a historical analogue that justifies its restriction; indeed, it has seemingly admitted that it couldn’t find one.” 

  The judges continued, “Under the Supreme Court’s new burden-shifting test for these claims, Maryland’s law thus fails, and we must enjoin its enforcement.”

  They said the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in the case New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen has led to a “sea change in Second Amendment law.”

  

  Firearms blog website Bearing Arms provided a summary of just how complex Maryland Democrats have made it for law-abiding taxpayers to purchase a pistol for self-defense: 

  A decade ago, Maryland lawmakers imposed a new burden on residents hoping to exercise their Second Amendment right to keep and bear a handgun by creating a “Handgun Qualification License.” Before any would-be gun owner can take possession of a pistol, they must first jump through several state-mandated hoops, from submitting fingerprints as part of a background check investigation to taking a four-hour-long “firearms safety training course” that includes the firing of at least one live round of ammunition. After waiting 30 days or more for approval, the would-be gun owner then has to go through another background check and an arbitrary seven-day waiting period before they can take possession of their pistol, though they must run another bureaucratic gauntlet before they’re actually allowed to carry the sidearm in self-defense.

  How absurd? Democrats have imposed some of the strictest gun restrictions in the country while failing to enforce ‘common sense’ law and order in metro areas like Baltimore City as violent crime spreads to surrounding counties. 

  Meanwhile, local media outlet The Baltimore Banner received a statement from Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, who was truly disappointed in the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision: 

  “This law is not about stripping away rights from responsible gun owners — it’s about every Marylander having the right to live free from fear.”

  Moore said his team would “continue to fight for this law.” The state could appeal the case to the Supreme Court. 

  The media outlet, of course, reached out for comment to anti-gunner Everytown for Gun Safety, who called the ruling a “dangerous and misguided decision.” 

  “Requiring handgun purchasers to pass a background check and undergo gun safety training prior to purchasing a gun is not only common sense, it is entirely consistent with the Second Amendment and the new test established by the Bruen decision,” William Taylor, a deputy director with Everytown Law, said in a statement.

  It should also be noted that billionaire Michael Bloomberg funds Everytown with the goal of disarming America. 

  “Today’s decision is crazy,” Senate President Bill Ferguson, a Baltimore Democrat, said in a statement.

  Crazy, how? Throwing up barriers to deter law-abiding folks from owning guns while Democrats fail to enforce law and order is crazy. People want to defend themselves from the chaos in Democrat cities. 

  “Even the liberal Fourth Circuit must recognize the broad popularity of the Bruen decision to maintain its legitimacy,” Cody Wilson of Defense Distributed stated. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/22/2023 – 16:50

• JFK Assassination Doctors Break Silence, Dispute Key Government Claim
  JFK Assassination Doctors Break Silence, Dispute Key Government Claim

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Several doctors who were in the emergency room when former President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 raised serious doubts about the official narrative that says a lone gunman was responsible, according to a new documentary featuring interviews conducted in 2013.

  

  The federal Warren Commission established that two shots fired by lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald, who was located in the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, struck President Kennedy from behind as he was traveling in a motorcade in Dallas. One of the bullets entered his upper back and exited near his larynx, while the second bullet entered the right side of his head and exited via his forehead.

  The former president was breathing when he entered Parkland Hospital before he was pronounced dead about a half an hour later. However, what seven doctors said in the recent footage disputes the commission’s claims about the event.

  Jacquelynn Lueth, executive producer of “JFK: What the Doctors Saw,” interviewed the seven Parkland doctors for the documentary. She wrote for CBS News last week that the doctors’ “recollections were precise and clear, as if the intervening decades had melted away.“

  “Each of them reacted strongly when the autopsy pictures were projected on a screen,” Ms. Lueth wrote. “They didn’t agree on everything, but it became obvious that the way the president looked at Parkland did not match the autopsy photos taken at Bethesda even before the official autopsy began.”

  She added that the Parkland doctors “had no agenda other than trying to save the president’s life” but stipulated that those who witnessed the wound to the president’s neck “believed it was an entrance wound,” which would dispute the Warren Commission’s findings. “Several of them saw a gaping hole in the back of JFK’s head,” she said.

  Warning to Keep Silent

  In one of the clips from the documentary, several of the doctors recalled what was said by Dr. Malcolm Perry, the surgeon who attended to President Kennedy. He also attended to Mr. Oswald.

  “So, at the press conference, Dr. Perry, in describing the [throat] wound here, said that he thought it looked like an entrance wound,” said Dr. Robert McClelland in the video taken from the documentary, released this month.

  “So, we were thinking there were two wounds. Had to be an entrance wound and an exit wound. That was the only way we could put it together. And so, I thought it was an entrance wound,” said Dr. Ronald Jones, another Parkland doctor.

  Later, Dr. McClelland recalled that he noticed something unusual after the press conference with Dr. Perry about the JFK assassination.

  “When [Dr. Perry] left the room, someone came up to him who Dr. Perry thought maybe was a Secret Service man, and he told Dr. Perry, ‘You must never, ever say that was an entrance wound again if you know what’s good for you,’” he said.

  Dr. McClelland, who died aged 89 in 2019, said that he believed that “in all probability there was a conspiracy, i.e. there was more than one shooter,” according to footage of the documentary released by the Daily Mail.

  And Dr. Jones said that “in retrospect,” if Mr. Oswald “was in the sixth floor depository, how could he have been shot from the front then? And so was there more than one assailant?”

  Another doctor, Joe Goldstrich, who was a medical student at the time of the assassination, asked: “How could a gunshot from the rear peel the scalp from the front back?

  Other than the Warren Commission, established by former President Lyndon B. Johnson, the CIA also has long maintained that Mr. Oswald, who was shot and killed just days later, was the sole perpetrator.

  Other Claims

  The revelations come as a former U.S. Secret Service agent went public for the first time in 60 years and appeared to refute the “magic bullet” theory.

  Paul Landis, an 88-year-old former agent, was only a few feet away from President Kennedy when he was shot and killed. He had been assigned to protect Jackie Kennedy, the former first lady.

  In an interview with The New York Times, published on Sept. 9, Mr. Landis recalled hearing multiple gunshots at Dealy Plaza in Dallas as he went behind President Kennedy’s limousine, seeing the president moving forward after being shot in the head. After the assassination, Mr. Landis recalled picking up what he called a near-perfect-condition bullet from the back seat of President Kennedy’s limousine, near where the president had been sitting.

  The former agent then transported the bullet to the hospital where President Kennedy was taken and put on a stretcher to be examined. He said he believed someone might pocket the bullet—which he did not describe in detail—as a keepsake.

  Mr. Landis suggested that the reason investigators suspected that a “magic bullet” struck the former president is because the bullet that Mr. Landis discovered was later found on a stretcher belonging to President Kennedy. It wasn’t until the New York Times interview that Mr. Landis confirmed that it was he who found the bullet and placed it there.

  It wasn’t until 2014 that he realized that the location of the bullet’s recovery that was cited by him was different than what was mentioned in the Warren Commission, he told the outlet. He then checked with several U.S. officials but was met with skepticism.

  That same year, a former Secret Service colleague, Clint Hill, warned Mr. Landis that he shouldn’t speak out about what he saw on that day. If he did, there might be “many ramifications” for Mr. Landis, he recalled Mr. Hill as saying.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/22/2023 – 16:25

• Bond Yields & Bitcoin Jump As Black Gold Dumps'n'Pumps
  Bond Yields & Bitcoin Jump As Black Gold Dumps’n’Pumps

  Jobless claims surged on an un-adjusted basis, durable goods orders dumped, consumer sentiment slumped, and inflation expectations jumped… US macro data is not signaling a ‘soft landing…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  …but apart from that “the consumer is resilient and look over there at NVDA’s earnings”. But, despite smashing it on earnings, NVDA actually traded lower (as anxiety over Biden’s China crackdown weigh a smidge)…

  

  Stocks took a spill around 1200ET, with some suggesting it was due to the explosion on the US, but managed to maintain some gains ahead of Turkey day. Small Caps outperformed modestly but all the majors traded pretty much in sync amid low liquidity…

  

  Energy stocks are the only sector red on the week, despite the big rebound today as Healthcare and Tech (an unusual pair) lead on the week…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Apple topped the $3 trillion market cap level intraday …

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  VIX tumbled to a 12 handle close (the lowest for the day before Thanksgiving since 2019)…

  

  Treasury yields were up across the curve today with the short-end underperforming (2Y +3bps, 10Y +1bp)…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  The dollar rallied into the green for the week briefly and then faded back…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Bitcoin was bid back above $37,000…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Spot Gold prices fell back below $2,000…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Oil prices dumped on headlines that OPEC+ was delaying its meeting, then pumped back as analysts suggested that the meeting delay is “counter-intuitively reassuring” as it will help create “cohesion around collective cuts”…

  

  Finally, stocks are playing catch-up to seasonals…

  

  …to the moon!

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/22/2023 – 16:00

• Quinn: The Crash Will Be Spectacular
  Quinn: The Crash Will Be Spectacular

  Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

  “Interest on the federal debt is now so immense that it’s consuming 40% of all personal income taxes… If federal finances continue on their current path, we are only a few years from the entirety of income taxes being needed to finance the debt…”

  The government collects $2.6 trillion of individual taxes at the point of a gun and threat of prison. Meanwhile they still operate at an annual deficit of $2 trillion. And this is before interest on the national debt starts to really skyrocket. Our Troll Secretary of the Treasury Yellen had the opportunity to lock in trillions of our national debt for 30 years at 2% rates, but purposely kept rolling it on a short-term basis.

  

  Interest on the debt will surpass $1 trillion annually within the next year, and, as you can see, will be approaching $2 trillion per year in a few more years.

  The government already spends every dime of the taxes they collect. That means they are already printing more fiat and borrowing from the rest of the world in order to pay the interest on the debt they already have.

  Foreign countries, in particular China and India, are not only not buying any new US Treasuries, but unloading the Treasuries they already have.

  With the BRICS purposefully moving away from the USD for their trade, it’s only a matter of time until our mountain of debt crashes down in an epic avalanche upon the unsuspecting American public.

  The writing is on the wall, and if you refuse to read it, you will be shocked and devastated when you see your supposed paper wealth evaporate.

  Now you know why Biden and his handlers are attempting to provoke wars across the globe against those countries who they realize are engineering the demise of the USD as the basis for world domination and control.

  

  We have evil men ruling our nation and they would rather burn it all to the ground than lose their wealth, power and control.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/22/2023 – 15:45

• "Japs, Jewry And Trannies": Media Matters President's Bigoted Blogs Resurface Amid Spat With Musk
  “Japs, Jewry And Trannies”: Media Matters President’s Bigoted Blogs Resurface Amid Spat With Musk

  On Monday, Elon Musk’s X sued Media Matters, claiming that the David Brock-founded leftist ‘watchdog’ group manipulated the platform to show major ads next to Nazi imagery, causing a flood of advertisers to leave the platform.

  

  “The end result was a feed precision-designed by Media Matters for a single purpose: to produce side-by-side ad/content placements that it could screenshot in an effort to alienate advertisers,” causing “all but one of the companies featured in the Media Matters piece withdrawing all ads from X, including Apple, Comcast, NBCUniversal, and IBM—some of X’s largest advertisers.”

  The move by Media Matters was a successful attempt to brand Elon Musk and his platform as antisemitic, after Musk took fire for agreeing with a post suggesting that liberal Jews – who “have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them,” are now on the receiving end of things.

  Japs, Jewry And Trannies

  What happened next couldn’t have been better scripted in pre-woke Hollywood. It turns out that Media Matters President Angelo Carusone wrote super antisemitic blog posts in the early 2000s, which were uncovered by the Daily Caller‘s Peter Hasson in 2019, and have been making the rounds of late given the Musk controversy.

  

  In one blog post titled “Tranny Paradise,” the future Media Matters president went on a lengthy diatribe against a ‘tranny-loving author.’

  In another post that same month, Carusone suggested in response to a male basketball coach’s alleged sexual and physical abuse of female players; “lighten up Japs.”

  

  In an October 2005 post, Carusone said of his boyfriend, “despite his jewry, you KNOW he’s adorable.”

  

  In another post, he suggested that his Jewish boyfriend only leaned conservative “as a result of his possession of several bags of Jewish gold.”

  

  We know, we know – who cares, right?

  The point is that Carusone is a massive, virtue-signaling hypocrite for suggesting that Musk was antisemitic for agreeing with a defensible observation, while he himself broke several ‘cardinal rules’ of being a liberal wokescold.

  As even the Washington Post noted at the time of the Caller article, “Carusone’s postings are indeed offensive, and if he’s going to serve as president of an organization renowned for unearthing overlooked and objectionable comments from people’s past, he deserves to be called out on his own transgressions.”

  Carusone said in reply, “It’s true: I wrote some gross things on my blog while I was in college. A few posts parodying living my life as if I were a self-loathing, bigoted Limbaugh right-winger.”

  Ah yes, just parody.

  But wait, there’s more!

  Apparently a bunch of Media Matters employees hate Israel. The thing Media Matters is accusing Musk of. And hey, it’s a free country – but the hypocrisy is just too thick to ignore.

  They are pure evil.

  How utterly absurd that this organization got major advertisers to boycott our platform for bogus allegations of antisemitism!

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 22, 2023

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

  While Media Matters was busy accusing anyone right of Che Guevara of antisemitism, they conveniently overlooked the questionable words of their own employees.

  Eagerly anticipating Media Matters’ report on this glaring issue of racism and bigotry…

  — KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) November 22, 2023

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

  Amazing!

  LMAOOOO

  — The Redheaded libertarian (@TRHLofficial) November 18, 2023

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

  https://t.co/nOL8ZHBbpC pic.twitter.com/6fpEYNQO5e

  — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 21, 2023

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

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/22/2023 – 15:45

• For The First Time Since The Covid Crisis, There Are More Global Rate Cuts Than Hikes
  For The First Time Since The Covid Crisis, There Are More Global Rate Cuts Than Hikes

  Two weeks ago, after Powell essentially admitted the Fed would not hike any more and that the July rate hike was the last one, we reminded readers that it takes on average 8 months between the last Fed hike and the first rate cut, suggesting that the Fed would begin cutting rates in March, something the market quickly started pricing in and to which it currently assigns about a 30% probability (and, as recently as a few days ago, 87% odds of a May rate cut).

  It takes 8 months on average from the last rate hike to the first rate cut. So March https://t.co/J9IULydqcA pic.twitter.com/SXFwn95DEA

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 14, 2023

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

  To be sure, this wouldn’t be the first time the market has gotten ahead of itself in pricing in Fed rate cuts, and as DB’s Jim Reid calculated last week, this would be at least the 7th time in this cycle that markets have seen a clear reaction to a potential dovish pivot.

  On the previous 6 occasions, those hopes were dashed since inflation remained too high for the Fed to be comfortable cutting rates (assuming, of course, that the Fed hasn’t quietly agreed to raise its inflation target to 3% or more). Indeed, core CPI has been above their 2% target since early 2021, and the Fed’s dot plot is still pointing to a more hawkish stance for policy relative to market pricing. Moreover, a consistent story of this cycle so far has been that markets have pushed out the timing of future rate cuts.

  

  Clearly all that could change quickly if unemployment spiked or inflation fell further. But in light of this repeated pattern, DB ran through the 7 times that speculation has previously risen about a dovish pivot from the Fed. Here is the snapshot (full report available to pro subscribers in the usual place):

  7 times this cycle that markets have priced in a more dovish path for the Fed

  • 1. November 2023: Weak data releases and a downside surprise in the CPI lead markets to bring forward the pricing of Fed cuts.

  Reaction: The S&P 500 has seen a sustained rally, including its best 2-week performance of 2023.
  November so far has seen a succession of news that’s led investors to price in a growing likelihood of rate cuts. At the start of the month, the ISM manufacturing release came in beneath expectations at 46.7, and Fed Chair Powell said after the FOMC meeting that the Committee was “proceeding carefully”. Then on November 3, the jobs report showed that the unemployment rate had risen to 3.9%, the highest since January 2022. And only yesterday on November 14, the CPI release surprised to the downside, with year-on-year core CPI falling to a two-year low of 4.0%. In light of this, investors have brought forward their expectations of the first cut. For instance, the chances of a 25bp cut from current levels by the May meeting have gone up from 8% at the start of the month to 87% now.

  • 2. March 2023: The banking turmoil following SVB’s collapse led to growing anticipation that central banks had finished hiking rates altogether.

  Reaction: Yields on 2yr Treasuries fell back significantly from a peak of 5.07% on March 8 to 3.77% by March 24.
  At the height of the banking turmoil in March, there was a strong sense after the Fed’s March hike that this could well be the last move. In fact, right after the March meeting, futures were pricing in that the Fed would have cut rates by 49bps by the November meeting. But in reality, they actually hiked by 50bps by November, with further hikes in both May and July.

  • 3. Late September/Early October 2022: Major market turmoil centred on the UK leads markets to price in more rate cuts for 2023.

  Reaction: S&P 500 up +5.7% in 2 days over October 3rd and 4th, marking the biggest 2-day rally since April 2020.
  The significant cross-asset selloff in September 2022 led to growing chatter that something might be about to break in financial markets, particularly given the turmoil centred on the UK after the mini-budget. In turn, these fears led markets to price in more rate cuts for 2023, thus supporting a brief equity surge. By October 3rd 2022, markets were pricing in that the Fed would only pursue 137bps more rate hikes. But that swiftly unwound, and by October 20th, they were pricing in 194bps of further rate hikes. In reality, they have since delivered 225bps of rate hikes to date.

  • 4. July 2022: Global recession fears and a weak inflation print sees talk of slower rate hikes resurface.

  Reaction: S&P 500 advances +9.1% over July 2022, its largest monthly advance since vaccine news in November 2020
  As Summer 2022 began, there was increased chatter about an imminent global recession. Oil prices had fallen noticeably, and the tailwind from falling gasoline prices meant the July CPI reading showed an outright fall in prices for the first time since May 2020. All this led to speculation about a dovish pivot, which was fuelled by comments from Chair Powell himself, who said that as “monetary policy tightens further, it likely will become appropriate to slow the pace of increases”. As a result, the S&P 500 rallied over +13% between mid-July and mid-August. However, Chair Powell then delivered a very hawkish speech at Jackson Hole, which put to bed any remaining hopes that they might be about to shift their policy stance.

  • 5.May 2022: Rising risks to global growth see investors take out expected tightening.

  Reaction: S&P 500 experienced its strongest weekly performance of 2022, gaining +6.6% in the week ending May 27. To date, that is still the best weekly performance since 2020.
  Back in spring 2022, there was another shift in the market narrative. Investors were becoming concerned about multiple growth risks, including the rate hikes that had started, China’s continued zero-Covid strategy and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As a result, futures began to price in less Fed tightening, and May marked the first time in 10 months that futures lowered the expected amount of tightening by end-2022. But ultimately, the May CPI release in early June surpassed all estimates, paving the way for the Fed to start hiking by 75bps for the first time since the 1990s.

  • 6. Late February/Early March 2022: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sees the Fed commence hikes with 25bps rather than 50bps.

  Reaction: 10yr bund yields move back into negative territory, 10yr Treasury yields also fall back to 2-month low, S&P 500 advances +3.6% over March
  After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the initial concern from a market perspective was more focused on the growth risks rather than the inflation risks. At one point there were even questions about whether the ECB would be able to hike at all, sending yields on 10yr bunds back into negative territory. For a sense of what was being said at the time, Olli Rehn of Finland’s central bank said that “given the new situation, we need to take a moment of reflection as regards the speed and way of a gradual normalization of monetary policy”. And at the Fed, the invasion meant that they started off their hiking cycle with just a 25bps move, rather than the 50bps hike that had been widely anticipated beforehand. In the end however, as the worst fears about a broader escalation involving more countries didn’t materialise and the spike in commodities boosted inflation, central banks grew more concerned about inflation persistence and second-round effects, putting any slow-down in rate hikes off the agenda.

  • 7. November 2021: Investors doubt how fast central banks can hike after the Omicron variant appears.

  Reaction: After an initial selloff after Omicron was discovered, the S&P 500 rebounds to hit all-time highs again by late-December 2021.
  When the Omicron variant first appeared, there were serious concerns that it could overwhelm health services again or even evade vaccines, bringing into prospect that the pandemic could still be a substantial issue for policymakers in 2022. In the end, it proved to have a lower mortality rate than previous variants, but the initial reaction in markets was swift. Although the major central banks hadn’t started tightening yet, futures immediately reacted and the subsequent trading sessions saw them push back the timing of when the first Fed rate hike was fully priced from June 2022 to September 2022.

  * * *

  And yet, as Reid expands in his latest chart of the day, even though the other six attempts to price in a dovish central bank eventually reversed, it doesn’t mean this one will, especially since now something has clearly changed: according to Deutsche Bank, there are more global cuts coming through than hikes, which is the first time that’s been the case since January 2021.

  

  As shown above, at the moment the number of hikes are a fraction of where they were at their peak in summer 2022 as the global economy has slowed to a crawl (and even Biden’s massive deficit-spending, stimulus-funded fake growth is fading fast). At the same time, cuts have very slowly been building up, but the general theme has been a much lower level of global central bank activity. Of course, that will change as the global slowdown gets even worse and as we enter the election-heavy 2024.

  The second chart looks at it on a rolling 12 month basis but goes back further, albeit with less country data available in the early stages.

  

  So, for Jim Reid, the big question is “whether we’re “higher for longer” now or whether we will soon see a big global easing cycle.” Reid’s view is that unless the US sees a recession, it will be tough to see a big imminent global easing cycle. After all, inflation is still above target levels across the major economies. However, if we do get the recession that the inverted yield curve has been pricing for almost two years, then expect a huge flip in the first graph and many more cuts than the market is pricing.

  One final interesting point from Reis is that at the moment is that cuts are priced in on a soft landing scenario, “so I think they might be right for the wrong reasons, and eventually you’ll see more cuts than are priced in due to a harder landing than is priced.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/22/2023 – 15:25

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