Today’s News 24th July 2023

• "The Race In This Cold Is Not About FX Devaluation; It's Technological – Like The Ones Before"
  “The Race In This Cold Is Not About FX Devaluation; It’s Technological – Like The Ones Before”

  By Marcel Kasumovich of One River Asset Management

  “Membership in the WTO, of course, will not create a free society in China overnight or guarantee that China will play by global rules,” President Bill Clinton said in pitch-mode. “But over time, I believe it will move China faster and further in the right direction.” Leadership requires risk. Being in a position of command demands that you adjust to the new realities decisively, tossing ego aside. WTO may have been the inevitable start of the next cold war. Or it may have been, as Clinton intimated, the alternative was worse. No matter – a strong China is a reality.

  China seized its moment with rapid export growth, a well-narrated story. The world economy has advanced at a 5% annualized pace since 2000, growing to $100 trillion last year. China’s goods exports, at $2.7 trillion, may not seem particularly exciting as a share of world GDP. But the growth since 2000 has averaged 12% per annum. And China exports share of world GDP leapt 4x since then. It is not nuts and bolts, either – it is higher value-add. China export complexity is now 25th place, on par with rich European countries and up from 54th in 2000.

  “I believe that my bilateral meetings served as a step forward in our effort to put the US-China relationship on surer footing,” Yellen said after two days and ten hours of meetings. “We believe that the world is big enough for both of our countries to thrive,” the Secretary of the Treasury emphasized in a clear effort to deescalate tensions. Yellen is left to navigate growing frictions, inheriting a shaky position. She also left plenty of those behind. That’s the job – decide to take the pain today for better outcomes tomorrow or punt it forward.

  China has a voice again. And Beijing is using it – mostly through actions. Yellen’s visit follows the China Commerce Ministry imposing export restrictions on two key inputs for semiconductor production – gallium and germanium. Those start August 1. It’s not a ban – Chinese exporters will now need licenses to explain how the metals are being used by importers. But it is a clear warning shot. The political playing field is more level than in 2000 or even 2018. Yellen getting on a plane to visit Premier Li already made that point, emphatically.

  Royalty? China’s launch up the value curve is evident in subtle ways – like royalties and licensing. China came first in nuclear fusion patents on a careful survey by Japanese researchers. Patent trade has exploded – China royalties’ exports are up nearly 100x since the start of WTO. It has never been about FX devaluation as the path to prosperity. And now it is explicit – China policy is setting CNY to higher valuations against the USD than where it trades in the market. The race in this cold war is technological – like the ones before.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/23/2023 – 23:00

• 'Serious Doubt' About COVID-19 Vaccine Safety After Forced Release Of 15,000 Pages Of Clinical Trial Data
  ‘Serious Doubt’ About COVID-19 Vaccine Safety After Forced Release Of 15,000 Pages Of Clinical Trial Data

  Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  

  Conservative public interest advocacy group Defending the Republic (DTR) has obtained almost 15,000 pages of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial data, claiming the data show an “utter lack of thoroughness” of the trials and calls the vaccine’s safety into “serious doubt.”

  As a result of successful Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the group recently announced it had obtained—and is releasing—nearly 15,000 pages of documents relating to testing and adverse events associated with “Spikevax,” Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine.

  Since 2022, the group has been involved in litigation against the FDA relating to the production of data submitted by Moderna in support of its application to federal regulators for approval of its vaccine.

  As a result, the FDA agreed to produce around 24,000 pages of the Moderna records by the end of this year, with the 15,000 pages being the first installment.

  The records, some of which relate to adverse events related to the vaccine, include important information related to the safety profile of Spikevax, which was first authorized for emergency use in the United States in December 2020 and in January 2022 received full approval for adults.

  “The public can be assured that Spikevax meets the FDA’s high standards for safety, effectiveness and manufacturing quality required of any vaccine approved for use in the United States,” Acting FDA Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock said in a statement earlier this year.

  But the new data call this view into question. The advocacy group says that the tens of thousands of pages of clinical trial data released by the FDA supports the conclusion that there is “serious doubt” about both  the safety of Spikevax and the FDA’s standards for approval.

  Neither Moderna nor the FDA immediately responded to a request for comment.

  More Details

  DTR filed its FOIA lawsuit after the FDA rejected requests to produce the Moderna COVID-19 records, justifying its decision by claiming there was no pressing need for the public to review the information.

  The documents obtained as part of the group’s litigation against the FDA are the first significant release of data from Moderna’s COVID-19 clinical trials.

  The studies reveal the causes of deaths, serious adverse events, and instances of neurological disorders potentially associated with Spikevax.

  One of the key takeaways from the documents is that many of those who died after receiving the Moderna vaccine were not given an autopsy.

  “According to one study, 16 individuals died after being administered the Moderna vaccine. The study’s authors indicated that out of those 16 deaths, only two autopsies were performed, five of the dead were not autopsied, and the autopsy status of nine of the dead was ‘unknown,’” DTR said in a statement.

  “Yet this did not stop those running these ‘studies’ from concluding, despite the absence of evidence, that the Moderna vaccine was not related to these deaths,” the group added.

  As an example, the group gave the case of a 56-year-old woman who experienced ‘sudden death’ 182 days after receiving the second dose of the Moderna vaccine.

  “The cause of death was unknown, and no autopsy was conducted. It seems they purposely decided not to investigate suspicious deaths in case the Moderna vaccine might be the cause,” the group stated.

  There were also numerous examples in the clinical trial data of participants diagnosed with post-vaccination Bell’s Palsy and Shingles, with numerous vaccinated trial participants seeing the onset of Shingles less than 10 days after getting the shot.

  The studies also showed that there were a number of serious adverse events noted in the vaccinated groups, with a number of participants experiencing heart attacks, pulmonary embolisms, and spontaneous miscarriages.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/23/2023 – 22:15

• 'The Perfect Crime': Tech Companies Are Manipulating Our Elections And Indoctrinating Our Children — How We Can Stop Them
  ‘The Perfect Crime’: Tech Companies Are Manipulating Our Elections And Indoctrinating Our Children — How We Can Stop Them

  Authored by Robert Epstein via the Gatestone Institute,

  

  Big Tech companies are deliberately manipulating the outcomes of our elections and the thinking and beliefs of our children. And they are having an enormous impact.

  If you doubt that, consider this latest snippet of data from my lab, the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology (AIBRT).

  Consider this: The GOP currently has a slim 10-seat majority in the House of Representatives. Without Google’s interference in 2022, it would likely now have a majority of between 27 and 59 seats.

  The 2022 midterm elections that gave the Democrats a two-vote majority in the U.S. Senate had quite a bit of help from Google, and, to a lesser extent, from a couple of other major tech companies.

  If Google had not interfered in the 2022 midterm elections, the GOP would likely have ended up with a Senate majority of up to eight seats.

  The Big Tech companies that exploded into existence over the past 20 years — as some of their prominent insiders have stated – have undermined our democracy, indoctrinated our children, and increasingly turned our freedom into an illusion.

  Tristan Harris, a former “design ethicist” at Google, says that he was a member of a team at the company, whose job it was to influence “a billion people’s attention and thoughts every day.” Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist and one of the early investors in Google and Facebook, claims that Big Tech content has “morphed into continuous behavior modification on a mass basis.” Another early investor in these companies, the prominent author and venture capitalist Roger McNamee, has said that he now regrets having financed them, and asserts that they constitute “a menace to public health and to democracy.”

  Rigorous Research

  Such concerns are valid and the Senate numbers correct: we have been using rigorous, scientific methods to study Google and other tech companies for more than 10 years. During this time, we have discovered and quantified about a dozen powerful new forms of influence that the internet has made possible. We have also developed and deployed monitoring systems that track, record, and analyze the personalized content that Google and other tech companies send to voters and children 24 hours a day – in other words, we are monitoring their systems and doing to them what they do to us.

  Our basic scientific, peer-reviewed studies clearly show the power that Google and other companies have to alter thinking and behavior. Our monitoring systems confirm that these companies are actually using these techniques, as confirmed by company whistleblowers, as well as by leaks of documents, emails, videos, and other materials from Google, Facebook, and Twitter.

  The techniques we have discovered – the Search Engine Manipulation Effect, the Answer Bot Effect, the Targeted Messaging Effect, and others – can easily shift the opinions and voting preferences of undecided voters by between 20% and 80% after just one manipulation. Google can also repeat these manipulations many times over a period of months prior to an election.

  Assuming the effects of these techniques are additive, Google can likely produce even larger shifts in opinions and voting preferences than the ones from a single manipulation used just once.

  Google also knows exactly who is vulnerable to these manipulations – who is still undecided before Election Day, for example – so they can target and bombard just the right people on a massive scale 24 hours a day.

  Our research has shown repeatedly that the manipulations used can make them invisible to people, and can often produce shifts of 40% or more in the voting preferences of undecided voters without anyone having the slightest idea they have been manipulated. They feel free, even while they are being strongly controlled. As one journalist wrote, “It really is the perfect crime.”

  Finally, our research measures the influence of “ephemeral experiences” –– their term — meaning content that is seen briefly, affects the user, and then disappears forever, leaving no paper trail for authorities to trace, Most online content – search results, newsfeeds, video sequence, and so on – are ephemeral.

  Can Google deliberately use ephemeral content to manipulate people? You bet. If you doubt that, read this 2018 article from the Wall Street Journal about some leaked emails from the company. In that email exchange, Googlers are discussing how they might use “ephemeral experiences” to change people’s views about Trump’s temporary 2017 travel ban on visitors from seven majority-Muslim countries.

  Rapidly Growing Monitoring Capabilities

  In the days leading up to the 2022 midterms, the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology monitored Big Tech content through the computers of 2,742 registered voters in 10 swing states, and preserved more than 2.5 million ephemeral experiences – data that is normally lost forever – on Google and other platforms.

  We preserved overwhelming evidence of Google’s manipulations on their search engine, on their video recommendations on YouTube (owned by Google), and even on their homepage on Election Day. On that day in Florida, for example, 100% of liberals received go-vote reminders on their version of Google’s homepage (Figure 1), but only 59% of conservatives did (Figure 2).

  

  The Tried and Tested Solution: a Permanent, Self-Sustaining Monitoring System

  Google can, overall, easily shift the votes of between 20-80% of undecided voters; right now, that is about 40% of the electorate. This could be enormously consequential. By mid-2024, 20% of voters will likely still not have made up their minds on who to support. At that point, Google will still be able to shift up to 80% of the votes of those individuals — or up to 16% percent of the electorate.

  If, in 2024, 158 million people cast ballots, as they did in 2020, it means Google could likely shift the votes of between 6.4 and 25.5 million people, thereby easily controlling the outcome of any election in which the projected win margin is less than 4%. No laws or regulations are in place to stop them, but our monitoring can. We are monitoring their systems and doing to them what they do to us. When the Big Tech companies know that their manipulations are being watched, they back off. It has already worked to completely shut down manipulations in one important election.

  On November 5, 2020, three U.S. Senators sent a strong warning letter to the CEO of Google expressing concern about the extreme political bias our monitoring system had detected in the days leading up to the presidential election – bias sufficient to have shifted at least 6 million votes to Joe Biden.

  As a result, Google immediately shut down its election manipulations in the two upcoming Senate runoff elections in Georgia.

  We were monitoring Google content through the computers of a politically-balanced group of more than 1,000 registered voters in that state. Go-vote reminders ceased, and so did bias in Google search results.

  In other words, monitoring, combined with political pressure from our leaders and our public, can and will force Google and other tech companies to stay clear of our elections and our children. It will also give legislators, regulators, and litigants the ammunition they need to challenge both the company and its executives in court.

  Since 2016, we set up six election monitoring systems, for only the weeks leading up to each election. After the 2022 midterms – with the results being so blatant and disturbing – we decided that the time had finally come to set up a permanent monitoring system in all 50 states – a $50 million project that we were able to launch with $3 million indentations from some patriotic Americans.

  Without a permanent system like this in place, we will never know the extent to which Google-and-the-Gang are messing with our elections, our kids, or even with our own heads.

  Yes, they do mess with us. As explained in “How Google Stopped the Red Wave,” whenever you see online content screaming about Democrats who have perpetrated widespread ballot harvesting or ballot box stuffing, you are being manipulated by Google-and-the-Gang. It is their algorithms – controlled very precisely by their employees – that decide what content goes viral and what content is suppressed. If stories about other election irregularities are spreading like wildfire online and then being echoed on the news, it is because Google-and-the-Gang want them to. Why?

  So you will not look at them – at the tech companies themselves.

  As of this writing, we are preserving and analyzing Big Tech content through the computers of a politically-balanced group of 9,838 registered voters in all 50 states, and we have met our minimum “representative sample” thresholds in 5 states. We are also now monitoring and preserving content – some of which is quite alarming – through the phones and mobile devices of children and teens.

  Best of all, we have now preserved more than 25 million ephemeral experiences on Google and other platforms – content that is normally lost forever. Our goal is to make our findings available to the public in real time, 24 hours a day, through dashboards such as America’s Digital Shield.

  The problem is: unless we can find additional major funding soon, we will have to start scaling down our effort in August and may have to shut it down completely soon after.

  If this type of election interference continues unmonitored and unchallenged, could the GOP itself – and ultimately all of American democracy – become ephemeral experiences?

  Note from the author: If you are concerned about the dangers the Big Tech companies pose to our democracy, our children, and our autonomy, please contribute at https://MyGoogleResearch.com. All donations are fully tax-deductible.

  Robert Epstein earned his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1981. He is currently Senior Research Psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology. He has published 15 books and more than 300 articles in both mainstream media outlets and scientific journals, among them, Science, Nature, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. He is the former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today magazine and was a longtime contributing editor at Scientific American. His 2019 Congressional testimony about Google can be viewed at https://EpsteinTestimony.com. To support or learn about his work, visit https://MyGoogleResearch.com or https://TechWatchProject.org.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/23/2023 – 20:45

• Texas' Operation Lone Star Seizes 422 Million Doses Of Fentanyl, Nearly 400K Migrants Arrested
  Texas’ Operation Lone Star Seizes 422 Million Doses Of Fentanyl, Nearly 400K Migrants Arrested

  Republican Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott’s operation to halt the influx of illegal immigrants, weapons and drugs into the United States has resulted in the seizure of more than 422 million lethal doses of fentanyl, and the apprehension of 394,200 illegal immigrants.

  

  Dubbed Operation Lone Star, the mission launched in March 2021 between the Texas National Guard and the Texas Department of Public Safety.

  “Since the launch of Operation Lone Star, the multi-agency effort has led to over 394,200 illegal immigrant apprehensions and more than 31,300 criminal arrests, with more than 29,100 felony charges reported. In the fight against fentanyl, Texas law enforcement has seized over 422 million lethal doses of fentanyl during this border mission,” Abbott’s office said in a Friday statement.

  Operation Lone Star continues to fill the dangerous gaps created by the Biden Administration’s refusal to secure the border. Every individual who is apprehended or arrested and every ounce of drugs seized would have otherwise made their way into communities across Texas and the nation due to President Joe Biden’s open border policies.

  Meanwhile, the Abbott administration has bused more than 27,260 migrants to Democrat-run sanctuary cities across the nation – with most ending up in Washington DC and New York City.

  As Just the News notes, “The announcement about the operation’s achievements comes as the Justice Department plans to sue Texas over the state’s use of a floating barrier to stop illegal migration across the Rio Grande River, which separates Texas from Mexico. Abbott has fired back against the federal government, stating that his state has the authority to defend its border.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/23/2023 – 20:00

• It’s Time To Acknowledge America’s Education Crisis
  It’s Time To Acknowledge America’s Education Crisis

  Authored by Tina Blum Cohen via American Greatness,

  

  The recent Supreme Court ruling regarding college admissions has once again thrust America’s educational system into the spotlight. A major question that has come from this ruling is whether America’s children are being intellectually and academically prepared to even enter or succeed in these colleges and universities. The tragic answer is that America’s public education system is failing to equip our youth with the tools necessary to succeed in higher education and in their future professional lives. We are failing America’s most valuable asset—our children.

  According to the Department of Education’s own report on the state of education in America, we are experiencing what is essentially an educational crisis. Scores in every subject and grade level have been declining over the years. While illogical and unscientific Covid policies certainly worsened the crisis to a point that lawmakers can no longer ignore the problem, the situation has actually been declining for years. Especially concerning are scores in reading and mathematics, with close to one third of students in elementary school behind in grade-level reading and only about a third of fourth graders able to perform grade-level math.

  Earlier this year, the nation was shocked to hear that 55 Chicago schools reported zero proficiency in math or reading despite billions of dollars of federal funding for the schools. But this crisis is not unique to Chicago. In my own Houston community, the Texas Education Agency has had to intervene in the leadership of the state’s largest public school district after years of failing to adequately educate our community’s children.

  Unfortunately for America’s youth and the future of our nation, public schools have put core educational instruction on the back burner, instead prioritizing culturally sensational philosophies. We now see schools artificially inflating grades in order to ‘pass’ students who do not have the educational tools necessary to succeed in higher grades. While this is done under the guise of “equity,” it is unfortunately setting kids up for future failure when they find themselves unprepared for the next steps in their education, and ultimately, for adulthood and success in society.

  Likewise, we see schools ditching the concepts of expectations and consequences, both educational and behavioral, including things like homework deadlines. Besides the negative effect this has on mastering educational principles that will be used to learn more difficult concepts later, this lack of personal accountability and consequences has our youth growing accustomed to an unrealistically lenient reality which does not exist in our society. We do our children a disservice when we do not intellectually and emotionally prepare them to deal with reality, including things like personal consequences or meeting deadlines. Imagine their shock when their first employer sets a hard deadline for a project, and they have no experience with being required to meet a deadline. They will have been set up for anxiety and potential failure rather than confidence and success.

  Beyond these misguided but culturally relevant philosophies that are failing to prepare our students for success, core educational instruction also has been eclipsed by ideological indoctrination. Instead of focusing time and attention on improving reading and mathematics, or even introducing practical principles of finance and economics, teachers and administrations prioritize the woke Marxist principles of social-emotional learning. Even as their students are unable to adequately read and write, teachers give classroom time and attention to discussing gender and sexuality, often behind the backs of parents who they know would not appreciate public school teachers having such discussions with their children.

  Even after-school clubs for practical skills or intellectual enrichment are being replaced by secret gender identity clubs, while activist educators go out of their way to entice vulnerable students to join and even encourage them to lie to their parents about their participation. These radical gender ideologies endanger both the minds and bodies of impressionable and developing youth, and yet parents who object are either vilified or kept in the dark entirely. In an effort to undermine parental rights and advance woke social agendas, schools go so far as to implement policies to keep secrets from parents, who are primarily responsible for the health and development of their children.

  The rising generation is America’s most valuable asset. They will carry on the legacy of the freest and greatest nation in the world, both enjoying and safeguarding our rights and liberties as they make valuable contributions to society. But this can only happen if parents, neighbors, and lawmakers come together to acknowledge and address the potentially catastrophic educational crisis which is already having a negative impact on America’s youth and their future. We must take the steps necessary to restore practical education to our public schools. We must protect the rights and facilitate the involvement of parents in every aspect of their children’s development and education rather than allowing public schools to go behind their backs. Now is the time to stand together in defense of our children and our nation.

  Tina Blum Cohen is a Republican running for Congress in Texas District 7. She is a graduate of Boston University. Education is a top priority for Cohen, a married mother of three.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/23/2023 – 19:30

• California Demographers Forecast Population To Stagnate By 2060
  California Demographers Forecast Population To Stagnate By 2060

  Elon Musk was right when he told a Wall Street Journal forum in 2021: “One of the biggest risks to civilization is the low birth rate and rapidly declining birthrate.”

  The billionaire has since encouraged the public to make more babies as concerns of a population collapse or “Demographic Winter” mount.

  In a tweet in late March, Musk said that the US would face consequences due to a declining birth rate and that “Japan is a leading indicator.”

  Big reckoning coming due to low birth rate. Japan is a leading indicator.

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 31, 2023

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

  “Population collapse is a major risk to the future of civilization,” the billionaire entrepreneur tweeted. 

  Musk’s comments should not surprise readers — as we’ve explained over the years, the Western world was already stumbling into a Demographic Winter.

  In a more in-depth view of America’s Demographic Winter, we focus on a new report from California demographers who warn that the state’s population might plateau in the coming decades. 

  The California Department of Finance released a startling report about its forecasted total population of the state will be around 39.5 million people in 2060 — or about the same level as it’s currently. State demographers were projecting 45 million just three years ago — and a decade ago, these folks were expecting a surge in population to 53 million. 

  

  A combination of a higher-than-normal death rate, a declining birthrate, a fall in international migration, and a flow of Californians moving to other states sent the total population down to 38.94 million in 2022, or minus 138,400 people, the first annual decline in more than a century. 

  “You don’t have those people, and those people don’t have kids,” Andres Gallardo, a demographer who works for the state government, told Bloomberg. He said this report is the first time California’s long-term population forecast has flatlined. 

  Even though California remains the nation’s most populous state, the economic impact of stagnating total population will mean municipalities will likely need help balancing their budgets. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/23/2023 – 19:00

• Higher Military Spending Will Save Democracy, Says NY Times
  Higher Military Spending Will Save Democracy, Says NY Times

  Authored by William Astore via AntiWar.com/Bracing Views,

  Days ago, I got a story in my New York Times email feed on “A Turning Point in Military Spending.” The article celebrated the greater willingness of NATO members as well as countries like Japan to spend more on military weaponry, which, according to the “liberal” NYT, will help to preserve democracy. Interestingly, even as NATO members have started to spend more, the Pentagon is still demanding yet higher budgets, abetted by Congress. I thought if NATO spent more, the USA could finally spend less?

  No matter. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as well as the hyping of what used to be called the “Yellow Peril,” today read “China,” is ensuring record military spending in the USA as yearly Pentagon budgets approach $900 billion. That figure does not include the roughly $120 billion or more in aid already provided to Ukraine in its war with Russia. And since the Biden administration’s commitment to Ukraine remains open-ended, you can add scores of billion more to that sum if the war persists into the fall and winter.

  

  Here’s an excerpt from the New York Times piece that I found especially humorous in a grim way:

  [Admittedly,] The additional money that countries spend on defense is money they cannot spend on roads, child care, cancer research, refugee resettlement, public parks or clean energy, my colleague Patricia points out. One reason Macron has insisted on raising France’s retirement age despite widespread protests, analysts believe, is a need to leave more money for the military.

  But the situation [in Europe of spending more on butter than guns] over the past few decades feels unsustainable. Some of the world’s richest countries were able to spend so much on social programs partly because another country – the U.S. – was paying for their defense. Those other countries, sensing a more threatening world, are now once again promising to pull their weight. They still need to demonstrate that they’ll follow through this time.

  Yes, Europe could continue to invest in better roads, cleaner energy, and the like, but now it’s time to buckle down and build more weapons. Stop freeloading, Europe! Dammit, “pull your weight”!

  You’ve had better and cheaper health care than Americans, stellar educational systems, child care benefits galore, all sorts of social programs we Americans can only dream of, but that’s because we’ve been paying for it! Captain America’s shield has been protecting you on the cheap! Time to pay up, you Germans, you French, you Italians, and especially you cheap Spaniards.

  

  Above: Look at all those cheap Spaniards. They have good stuff because of Captain America. Freeloaders! (NYT Chart, 7/12/23)

  As the NYT article says: NATO allies need to “follow through this time” on strengthening their militaries. Because strong militaries produce democracy. And European “investments” in arms will ensure more equitable burden sharing in funding stronger cages and higher barriers to deter a rampaging Russian bear.

  Again, you Americans out there, that doesn’t mean we can spend less on “defense.” What it means is that the US can “pivot to Asia” and spend more on weaponry to “deter” China. Because as many neocons say, the real threat is Xi, not Putin.

  We have met the enemy, and he is us. That’s an old saying you won’t see in the “liberal” NYT.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/23/2023 – 18:30

• "Nobody Understands Where Bottom Is" For Commercial Real Estate
  “Nobody Understands Where Bottom Is” For Commercial Real Estate

  Starwood Capital Group’s Barry Sternlicht recently told Bloomberg’s David Rubenstein about the ongoing crisis in the commercial real estate sector, equating it to a severe “Category 5 hurricane“. He cautioned, “It’s sort of a blackout hovering over the entire industry until we get some relief or some understanding of what the Fed’s going to do over the longer term.”

  Currently, the biggest problem in the CRE space is sliding office and retail demand in downtown areas. Couple that with high-interest rates, and there’s a disaster lurking for building owners. According to Morgan Stanley, the elephant in the room is a massive debt maturity wall of CRE loans that totals $500 billion in 2024 and $2.5 trillion over the next five years. 

  Senior markets editor for Bloomberg, Michael Regan, chatted with John Fish, who is head of the construction firm Suffolk, chair of the Real Estate Roundtable think tank and former chairman of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, in the What Goes Up podcast to discuss the biggest problems in the CRE market. 

  Fish warned that “capital markets nationally have frozen” and “nobody understands value.” He said, “We can’t evaluate price discovery because very few assets have traded during this period of time. Nobody understands where the bottom is.” 

  

  For a sense of recent price discovery trends, we were the first to point out to readers of a wicked firesale of office towers in the downtown area of Baltimore City: 

  • Beginning Of CRE Firesale? Baltimore Office Tower Dumped At 63% Discount
  • CRE Panic Hits Baltimore As Second Office Tower Dumped At 69% Discount

  As for the overall CRE industry, Goldman Sachs chief credit strategist Lotfi Karoui recently told clients, “The most accurate portrayal of current market conditions with Green Street indicating a 25% year-over-year drop in office property values.” 

  Here’s the transcript of the interview between Regan and Fish: 

  Michael Regan’s question: Can you talk to us about why this rise in interest rates that we’ve experienced is so dangerous to this sector?

  John Fish’s answer: When you talk about these large structures, especially in New York City, you get all these buildings out there, almost a hundred million square feet of vacant office spaces. It’s staggering. And you say to yourself, well, right now we’re in a situation where those buildings are about 45%, 55%, 65% occupied, depending where they are. And all of a sudden, the cost of capital to support those buildings has almost doubled. So you’ve got a double whammy. You’ve got occupancy down, so the value is down, there’s less income coming in, and the cost of capital has gone up exponentially. So you’ve got a situation where timing has really impacted the development industry substantially.

  The biggest problem right now is because of that, the capital markets nationally have frozen. And the reason why they’ve frozen is because nobody understands value. We can’t evaluate price discovery because very few assets have traded during this period of time. Nobody understands where bottom is. Therefore, until we achieve some sense of price discovery, we’ll never work ourselves through that.

  Now, what I would say to you is light at the end of the tunnel came just a little bit ago, back in June when the OCC, the FDIC and others in the federal government provided policy guidance to the industry as a whole. And that policy guidance I think is very, very important for a couple reasons. One, it shows the government with a sense of leadership on this issue because it’s this issue that people don’t want to touch because it really can be carcinogenic at the end of the day. It also provides a sense of direction and support for the lending community and the borrowers as well. And by doing such, what happens now is the clarity.

  Basically what they’re saying is similar to past troubled-debt restructuring programs. They’re saying, listen, any asset out there where you’ve got a qualified borrower and you’ve got a quality asset, we will allow you to work with that borrower to ensure you can re-create the value that was once in that asset itself. And we’ll give you an 18- to 36-month extension, basically ‘pretend and extend.’ Whereas what happened in 2009, that was more of a long-term forward-guidance proposal and it really impacted the SIFIs (systemically important financial institutions). This policy direction is really geared toward the regional banking system. And why I say that is because right now the SIFIs do not have a real big book of real estate debt, probably less than 8% or 7%. Whereas the regional banks across the country right now, thousands of them have over probably 30% to 35% and some even up to 40% of the book in real estate. So that guidance gave at least the good assets and the good borrowers an opportunity to go through a workout at the end of the day.

  Michael Regan’s question: This “extend and pretend” idea seems to me almost like a derogatory phrase that people use for this type of guidance from the Fed, or this type of approach to solving this problem. But is that the wrong way to think about it? Is “extend and pretend” actually the way to get us out of this mess?

  John Fish’s answer: Let me say this to you: I think some well-known financial guru stated that this was not material to the overall economy. And I’m not sure that’s the case. When I think about the impact that this has on the regional banking system, basically suburbia USA, we had Silicon Valley Bank go down, we had Signature Bank go on, we saw First Republic go down. If we have a systemic problem in the regional banking system, the unintended consequences of that could be catatonic. In addition to that, what will happen is when real-estate values go down? 70% of all revenue in cities in America today comes from real estate. So all of a sudden you start lowering and putting these buildings into foreclosure, the financial spigot stops, right? All of a sudden, the tax revenues go down. Well, what happens is you talk about firemen, policemen and teachers in Main Street, USA, and at the end of the day, we’ve never gone through something as tumultuous as this. And we have to be very, very cautious that we don’t tip over the building that we think is really stable.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/23/2023 – 18:00

• CDC Changed Definition Of Breakthrough COVID-19 After Emails About 'Vaccine Failure'
  CDC Changed Definition Of Breakthrough COVID-19 After Emails About ‘Vaccine Failure’

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

  The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) altered its definition of COVID-19 cases among the vaccinated, leading to a lower number of cases classified as a breakthrough, according to documents obtained by The Epoch Times.

  

  The CDC in early 2021 defined the post-vaccination cases as people testing positive seven or more days after receipt of a primary vaccination series, according to one of the documents.

  The definition was changed on Feb. 2, 2021, to only include cases detected at least 14 days after a primary series, another document shows.

  “We have revised the case definition,” Dr. Marc Fisher, the lead of the CDC’s Vaccine Breakthrough Case Investigation Team, wrote to colleagues at the time.

  The rationale for the change was redacted.

  A CDC spokesperson defended the altered definition.

  “CDC made the change to the definition of a breakthrough infection time period due to the most current data that showed that the 14-day period was required for an effective antibody response to the vaccines,” Scott Pauley, the spokesman, told The Epoch Times in an email.

  “That, in combination with the data showing that many cases of COVID-19 were incubating for up to two weeks before becoming symptomatic, required the change to refine the time period to eliminate cases where exposure happened before the vaccination response would be effective,” Mr. Pauley added.

  Dr. Harvey Risch, professor emeritus of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, said there was “no cogent rationale” for excluding early cases and other events among the vaccinated, whether they occurred within seven days or 14 days.

  “With either of these delays, CDC addressed what is the theoretical best that the vaccination could achieve. If the vaccines don’t work for the first 7 or 14 days or increase risk of getting Covid-19 during that period, that is part of what happens when they are deployed in a population,” Dr. Risch told The Epoch Times via email.

  Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor health policy at Stanford University, said that the CDC should have been focused on advising people that they weren’t as protected immediately after vaccination.

  “Rather than playing games with the definition of breakthrough cases,” Dr. Bhattacharya told The Epoch Times in an email, the CDC should have warned “recently vaccinated vulnerable older people that they were at higher risk for being infected during that period.”

  

  An internal CDC email obtained by The Epoch Times. (The Epoch Times)

  Undercount

  The CDC excluded some post-vaccination cases because they did not meet the updated definition, the documents show, providing an inflated view of vaccine effectiveness.

  One document, for instance, shows that Kansas in early 2021 reported 37 cases among the vaccinated.

  Thirty-four were not counted because they occurred after receipt of one dose, not two. A primary series for both vaccines was two doses until recently, with the second dose not advised until at least 21 days after the first dose.

  The other three cases happened after a second dose, but they were not counted as breakthrough cases by the CDC because they happened within 13 days of completion of a primary series, Dr. Fisher informed colleagues in an email.

  On Jan. 29, 2021, the CDC learned in a call with Maryland health officials that a cluster appeared to stem from a person who was vaccinated with a single dose before experiencing symptoms. A CDC official said it was a “possible breakthrough case,” but the case would not have been counted under the earlier or later breakthrough definition.

  In another likely form of suppression of the true number of cases, states weren’t able to report cases through the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System until February 2021, according to one of the emails.

  Kansas was the first state to send info through the system, according to a Feb. 1, 2021, email reporting the 37 cases.

  States could also report cases outside of the system through calls, as could health care providers, according to another email. Reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System were also analyzed for possible inclusion.

  The CDC started reporting the number of breakthrough cases on April 15, 2021. Some of the breakthrough cases led to hospitalization and death. CDC officials discussed breakthrough cases sporadically in public settings, but also made false claims about vaccine effectiveness, including claiming in March 2021 that vaccinated people did not get sick.

  

  COVID-19 vaccines in Washington in a Dec. 14, 2020, file photograph. (Jacquelyn Martin/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

  Change Came After Emails About ‘Vaccine Failure’

  The breakthrough case definition was revised after multiple CDC officials emailed about the vaccines failing to prevent infection.

  Dr. Fisher said in one missive on Dec. 21, 2020, that he was directed by a superior “to start working on a protocol to evaluate COVID vaccine failures or breakthrough cases.”

  Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director at the time, highlighted an editorial on Jan. 30, 2021, that described variants as a “growing threat” of escaping the protection from vaccines and said she’d spoken to the head of the U.S. National Institutes of Health about the matter.

  Around the same time, CDC officials circulated a one-page document about investigating post-vaccination cases.

  “What? There is a 1-pager from Tom about vaccine failures?” Dr. Nancy Messionnier, another top CDC official, said on Jan. 27, 2021, after hearing about the document, which was being distributed by CDC medical officer Dr. Thomas Clark.

  The version of the document The Epoch Times received was fully redacted. After Dr. Clark was asked for an unredacted version, the CDC declined to provide any other versions of the document.

  Dr. Fisher also made a presentation near the end of January 2021 on breakthrough cases and sent those slides to colleagues after emphasizing he’d developed them “for internal use” and that the slides “have not been reviewed or cleared by anyone.” Dr. Fisher did not respond when asked for the slides.

  Soon after the change, the CDC was alerted to a college athlete who tested positive for COVID-19 about three weeks after completing a Pfizer primary series. One CDC official described it as a “potential breakthrough case” and said data would have to be reviewed to see whether it would be counted.

  In a document distributed to states, the CDC outlined a number of ways post-vaccination cases, even one detected at least 14 days after a primary series, would not be counted. That included excluding people who received a vaccine that was not authorized in the United States, people with only a positive antibody test, and people who tested positive within 44 days of their latest test.

  Time Exclusion

  The CDC initially floated (pdf) counting a person as “fully vaccinated” as early as seven days after completion of a primary series but ultimately settled on 14 days after completion.

  The CDC declined to provide the name of the official who decided on the definition of fully vaccinated. The agency, in response to a Freedom of Information Act, also said it did not have any records on deciding to exclude cases that occur in what amounts to at least 35 days after the first vaccine dose.

  Officials pointed to U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) materials that outlined the results from clinical trials from Pfizer and Moderna, which make the vaccines that the FDA authorized in 2020.

  The trials found efficacy against symptomatic COVID-19 was much lower within days of vaccination. In Pfizer’s trial, for instance, suspected cases within seven days of a vaccine dose were 409 among the vaccinated versus 287 among placebo recipients. Moderna estimated a 50.8 percent efficacy within 14 days of dose one, compared to 92 percent efficacy 15 or more days after the dose.

  Observational data have also indicated lower or negative shielding in the days after vaccination, and almost immediately after the vaccines were rolled out, some vaccinated people were reporting getting infected anyways.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/23/2023 – 17:30

• Tesla Attempts To Stoke Demand With 84-Month Loans Amid Affordability Crisis
  Tesla Attempts To Stoke Demand With 84-Month Loans Amid Affordability Crisis

  Most consumers rely on auto loans to finance new vehicle purchases. Tesla Inc. has offered an 84-month auto loan after Elon Musk said ‘something needs to be done’ about the auto affordability crisis, according to Bloomberg. 

  In general, 84-month loans are less common than 36 – 48 or 72-month auto loans, but with new vehicle borrowing rates at two-decade highs and prices at record-high levels, the solution has been to stretch out the payment for seven years to stoke demand. There’s one problem with these loans: the period is much longer, and the interest cost will be much higher. 

  Financing options for Tesla Model S Plaid

  

  “When interest rates rise dramatically, we actually have to reduce the price of the car, because the interest payments increase the price of the car,” Musk said in a July 19 earnings call. “So we have to do something about that,” he said. 

  According to Bankrate, a new car’s average 60-month auto loan rate peaked at 7.64%, not seen since December 2001. There are many Americans with +$1,000 payments. 

  

  Tesla’s chief executive officer has been critical of the Federal Reserve’s 16-month aggressive interest rate hiking cycle. Musk tweeted late last year that hiking interest rates were “massively amplifying the probability of a severe recession.”

  While there is no recession yet, used car prices have slid due to mounting affordability concerns. High borrowing costs have done exactly what the Fed’s goal has been, which is to stymie demand. We’ve covered the latest trends in used car prices in notes titled Used-Car Prices Continue Slide As Signs Of Normalcy Start To Reemerge and Used-Car Prices Tumble Most Since Start Of Pandemic, Record Drop For Month of June. 

  The move to offer 84-month loans is to stoke demand amid an EV price war with other carmakers. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/23/2023 – 17:00

• And Now, The Climate Gang Is Coming For Our Thermostats
  And Now, The Climate Gang Is Coming For Our Thermostats

  Authored by J. Kennerly Davis via RealClear Wire,

  In 2019, candidate Joe Biden pledged to voters that, if elected president, “We’re going to end fossil fuel.” Since taking office, he has worked ceaselessly with the radical environmentalists who call the shots and set the agenda to make good on his campaign promise by waging an all-out war against the production, distribution, and use of fossil fuels.

  

  The Biden administration immediately cancelled the Keystone pipeline and then blocked other pipeline projects. It has drastically curtailed the issuance of leases and permits needed to develop fossil resources on public lands and offshore. It has denied applications to expand refinery capacity. And it has issued unattainable carbon dioxide emission limitations designed to force the closure of hundreds of fossil-fueled electric power plants currently in operation.

  The Biden administration and its political allies in state and local governments have launched a series of aggressive regulatory initiatives designed to drastically restrict the availability and increase the cost of a wide range of fossil-fueled consumer products: gas stoves and furnaces, gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles, gasoline-powered lawn care equipment, wood stoves, and more.

  The openly stated utopian goal of all these regulatory actions is to “decarbonize” the entire American economy and somehow smoothly transition the whole country to a supposedly climate-friendly “sustainable” future that is powered and heated and cooled by electricity produced by renewable wind and solar generators.

  The Biden administration’s decarbonization campaign poses a grave threat to the reliability of the nation’s electric system. Electricity, unlike oil and gas and other forms of energy, cannot be stored in significant amounts. It must be produced by generators and supplied to customers in amounts precisely equal to the amounts demanded by customers at any given point in time. If the supply of electricity is not kept continuously in balance with the demand for it the electric system will crash, and a widespread blackout will result.

  Electric system operators can easily adjust the output of fossil-fueled generators, and nuclear generators, to meet customer demand as that demand fluctuates throughout each day. With electricity available to everyone “at the flick of a switch,” each of us is free to manage our daily affairs in the way that we find most convenient. The overall economic efficiencies and societal benefits that result from such flexibility are enormous.

  With renewables, it’s an entirely different story. Electric system operators have no such control over the output of wind turbine generators and solar panels. The amount of power supplied by these technologies depends entirely on the availability of steady wind and clear sunlight.

  Widespread smoke from the recent wildfires in Canada cut solar output across the U.S. Northeast by 90%. Calm weather cuts the output of a wind farm to a faction of its specified production capability. If the wind drops unexpectedly, system operators have to scramble to purchase replacement power from neighboring systems, or they must quickly cut power to customers enough to maintain system balance.

  Emergency power supply cuts are enormously disruptive for commercial customers, and tremendously expensive. Power cuts associated with wildfires in California have cost customers billions of dollars. 

  Independent regulators responsible for maintaining the reliability of the electric system are warning with increasing urgency that the forced retirement of fossil-fueled power plants and the growing reliance on weather dependent renewables pose a serious threat to the nation’s power supply. They are predicting that emergency power cuts will become more and more common in the future.

  Faced with such a threat, any responsible administration would moderate its energy and environmental policies. But that’s not what progressives do. They never change course, regardless of the objective evidence confronting them. They double down.

  If system operators cannot control the output of wind turbine generators and solar panels to meet fluctuating customer demand then, to advance the decarbonization agenda, system operators must be given the authority and resources they need to control customer demand on an ongoing basis and limit that demand to levels that can be meet by the fluctuating capabilities of weather dependent generators.

  Under pressure from environmentalists, more and more electric companies are installing equipment and implementing protocols that will allow them to remotely control customer demand continuously, not just during emergencies. California regulators have announced a goal to place 7,000 megawatts of customer demand under centralized control by 2030.

  To sell this normalization of power cuts, the companies have launched sophisticated media programs designed to convince customers that flick-of-the-switch power is an irresponsible indulgence that must be foregone, and demand “flexibility” must be embraced, to save the planet from catastrophic climate change.

  They came for our gas stoves and furnaces. They came for our cars and trucks, our wood stoves and firepits, our lawn mowers and leaf blowers. And now, they are coming for our thermostats.

  J. Kennerly Davis (Ken) is a regulatory attorney with over 40 years of experience in the electric and gas power industry. He can be reached at j.kendavis@verizon.net

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/23/2023 – 16:30

• Woke Researchers Spin Mockery Of STEM/Trans Survey Into Laughable 'Online Fascism' Paper
  Woke Researchers Spin Mockery Of STEM/Trans Survey Into Laughable ‘Online Fascism’ Paper

  After a national survey meant to assess the representation of “transgender and gender nonconforming” undergrads in science, technology, engineering and math fields elicited a major dose of sarcasm and insults, five woke researchers have written a paper arguing the responses are proof that “fascist ideologues” are “living ‘inside the house’ of engineering and computer science.”

  

  Of 723 responses, only 299 were considered valid, and 50, or 15%, were classified as “malicious.” True to form, the researchers — all associated with Oregon State University — also claim injury from unwelcome words: 

  “The malicious words and slurs directed towards our research team had a profound impact on [our] morale and mental health…particularly for one of our graduate student researchers…who was already in therapy for anxiety and depression regarding online anti-trans rhetoric” and “had to be taken off the project to heal from traumatic harm.”

  Asked about their gender, many respondents identified as attack helicopters, a long-standing meme that mocks woke culture’s encouragement of people to “identify” as whatever they want. Comically, the authors took special offense that many respondents specifically chose the best-known attack helicopter: 

  “It is notable that the specific descriptor of an Apache Attack Helicopter is referenced by several different participants—itself a synthesis and reflection of U.S. military force and the appropriation of Indigenous language by colonizers.” 

  

  The 28-page paper is titled “Attack Helicopters and White Supremacy: Interpreting Malicious Responses to an Online Questionnaire about Transgender Undergraduate Engineering and Computer Science Student Experiences.” It was rejected by multiple engineering-education journals before finding a home at “Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies,” which Northwestern University alumni can proudly claim as their alma mater’s contribution to society.  

  “Online memes associated with white nationalist and fascist movements were present throughout the data, alongside memes and content referencing gaming and ‘nerd’ culture,” wrote the authors, who call for academia to face STEM’s surging fascist menace head-on, as the survey results demonstrate “social justice STEM education must include perspectives on online hate radicalization and center anti-colonial, intersectional solidarity organizing as its opposition.” 

  There are plenty more word-salads strewn through the 28-page paper. Rather than ranch dressing, they’re served with a splash of Marxism: 

  • “The university at its most ideal can be envisioned as ‘a central site for revolutionary struggle, a site where we can work to educate for critical consciousness’ using ‘a pedagogy of liberation.’”
  • “Identities such as transgender status in STEM teaching should similarly not be taught as ‘single issues’ but be conceptualized as one component of our multifaceted experiences with power and oppression—and that categories such as race, gender, and sexuality have roots in European colonial logics shared by fascist movements.”
  • “Engineering graduates in the U.S. frequently work in fields such as fossil fuels, defense, construction, and technology upon graduation, and could be taught about these field’s relationships with national and global racial capitalism.”

  

  Keeping in mind that $5 Amazon gift cards were used as an enticement to participate, here’s a sampling of the responses that sent the study’s lead data analyst fleeing into the arms of a therapist…

  Gender:  

  • I identify as a gift card
  • Apache Attack Helicopter
  • Cis gender lizard king
  • A human being
  • F**king white male
  • V22 Osprey
  • DID YOU JUST F**KING ASK FOR MY GENDER
  • F-16 Fighter Jet
  • Pansexual attack helicopter
  • Non-cookie-cutter cis-furry dragonkin. Don’t judge. 
  • Quasi-Demi-poney; bankai-released state queercopter with a hint of faggotdrag lesbian and homosexual upside-down Frappuccino cake
  • I’m just here for the gift card

  Race/Ethnic Identity

  • I’m an ethnic gift card.
  • My skin color is not important 
  • Afro/Klingon-Asicatic Galapogayation
  • AH-64 Apache
  • Republican
  • Come on man, these questions are stupid. Everyone is a grab bag of genetics from all over the world
  • I’m a Swedish Muslim
  • Native American (Elizabeth Warren)
  • Pansexual attack helicopter
  • Cracker
  • Colored Native Mix w/oppressed ancestors
  • Born white but I spend a lot of time in the sun so I identify as a light skin black male
  • My skin is blue, I think I might be a smurf

  Disability 

  • I don’t have enough gift cards
  • My country is run by communists
  • Being 2.86% white
  • Pedophilia
  • Gender disphoria
  • Thinking I’m not a man
  • Being trans
  • That I’m a tranny
  • I’m mentally retarded
  • I have hands where my feet are and feet where my hands are 
  • Like all transgenders, my disability is the inability to come to terms with biological reality. Madness, essentially. 

  Open-Ended Responses

  • I am trans obviously I will have a job regardless of my skills thanks to diversity quotas inspired by surveys such as these
  • I don’t actually have any skills I’m just a diversity “affirmative action” student
  • You’re ruining genuine scientific disciplines here. There are two genders, male and female. If an engineer creates a bolt and a nut but then whimsically labels them, then they’re not that great of an engineer.
  • I wish people in universities (especially the faculty) would not focus so much on gender and identity. That doesn’t matter. Just let people do their thing and teach them how to do Gauss eliminations and whatnot

  Just think: If your wisecracks in our comments are potent enough, you too may find yourself quoted in an alarmist paper at the esteemed Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/23/2023 – 16:00

• Asahi Gold Vault 30 Miles Outside Manhattan Added To COMEX Approved Vault List
  Asahi Gold Vault 30 Miles Outside Manhattan Added To COMEX Approved Vault List

  Submitted by Ronan Manly, BullionStar.us

  Those who keep an eye on the well-known COMEX daily gold and silver inventory reports, (officially titled CME’s “Warehouse and Depository Stocks”) will by now have noticed that a new depository / vault called “ASAHI DEPOSITORY LLC” has recently made an appearance on the reports, specifically since May of this year.

  COMEX inventory reports are always of keen interest in the precious metals space because they show, at least in theory, how much physical gold and silver in held within a group of ‘approved’ depositories / vaults in and around New York City to backstop or meet delivery obligations connected to the trading of gold futures and silver futures contracts on the Commodity Exchange (COMEX).

  Note that in addition to gold and silver, ‘Asahi Depository’ is also now an approved CME depository for storing platinum and palladium metals connected to the trading of CME platinum futures and palladium futures contracts on the NYMEX (New York Mercantile Exchange).

  Given that a new depository / precious metals vault joining the list of COMEX/NYMEX approved vaulters is quite a rare occurrence, it’s worth examining Asahi Depository and its approval by the CME Group (owner of COMEX and NYMEX), as well as looking at where the Asahi Depository vault is located in the US.

  COMEX SILVER VAULT TOTALS RISE OVER 2.2 MILLION OUNCES
  – Registered rose almost 1.2M oz. as the newly added Asahi Depository begins adding silver for the first time.
  – Open Interest is now equal to 254% of all vaulted silver and 2,252% of Registered silver. pic.twitter.com/JZgU1oPyY9

  — Michael #silversqueeze (@mikesay98) May 18, 2023

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

  As per the CME website, we find that Asahi Depository made an application to CME to become an approved depository for precious metals storage all the way back on March 15, 2022:

  “Application for Gold, Silver, Platinum and Palladium Regularity

  Notice is hereby given that Asahi Depository LLC. has applied to become an Approved Depository for gold, gold (enhanced delivery), silver, platinum, and palladium at the following location:

  Asahi Depository LLC       Location     Blauvelt, NY”

  Blauvelt is a municipality in Rockland County, New York, in the town of Orangetown, 30 miles from midtown Manhattan, and about 40 minutes drive from midtown via the NY-9A North/Henry Hudson Pkwy and then Palisades Interstate Pkwy North taking the Orangeburg exit.

  Following the application to CME in March 2022, NYMEX and COMEX then approved the Asahi Depository application on May 01, 2023:

  “Regularity Approval for Gold, Silver, Platinum, and Palladium       

  New York Mercantile Exchange, Inc. (“NYMEX”) and Commodity Exchange, Inc. (“COMEX”) (collectively, the “Exchanges”) has approved the application of Asahi Depository LLC. to become an Approved Depository for gold, silver, platinum, and palladium at their facility in Blauvelt, NY.

  This approval is effective immediately.”

  While this might seem like a long delay between applying for approval (March 2022) and securing approval (May 2023), the delay – as you’ll see below – was probably due to the fact that the Asahi storage facility in Blauvelt, New York, was not fully up and running until early Q2 2023.

  

  Asahi Refining

  So who or what is Asahi Depository LLC?

  Asahi Depository LLC is a subsidiary of Asahi Refining, which itself is a wholly owned subsidiary of Japan’s Asahi Holdings, Inc. So technically speaking, a Japanese owned depository has now entered the COMEX precious metals storage market.

  For those who thought that Asahi is a Japanese beer, you’re not wrong. But … it’s not the same Asahi, and not even the same holding company. Japan’s famous Asahi beer is manufactured by similarly named Asahi Group Holdings. Asahi Depository is part of Asahi Holdings.

  Coincidentally, Asahi Holdings, Inc very recently rebranded as ‘ARE Holdings’, actually on July 01, 2023, so any confusion over Asahi Group Holdings vs Asahi Holdings will from now on be purely historical.

  Asahi Refining itself came into existence in March 2015 when Asahi Holdings Inc completed the acquisition of the Johnson Matthey Gold & Silver refining businesses in North America, following Johnson Matthey’s decision in 2014 to divest of its nearly 200 year old precious metals refining business.

  The Asahi acquisition included Johnson Matthey’s US precious metals refinery located in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the Johnson Matthey precious metals refinery located in Brampton, Ontario, Canada.

  As per the Asahi Refining press release about the acquisition on March 06, 2015:

  “Asahi Holdings is a Tokyo, Japan based precious metals recycling company (collection, recovery, refinement) founded in 1952. “

  “Asahi Holdings is proud to announce on March 5, 2015 that it has finalized the acquisition of the former Johnson Matthey Gold & Silver refining businesses.”

  “The Salt Lake City, USA and Brampton, Canada refineries will collectively operate as “Asahi Refining.”

  The Johnson Matthey Salt Lake City refinery is now known as the ‘Asahi Refining USA, Inc’ while the Johnson Matthey Brampton, Ontario refinery is now known as ‘Asahi Refining Canada Limited’.

  Japanese gold refiner Asahi wins auction for the assets of bankrupt Republic Metals Corp (RMC) of Miami, with a bid of $25.5 million, after Asahi outbid the Swiss Valcambi refinery on Thursday – Reuters https://t.co/0MPkBLMGQx

  — BullionStar (@BullionStar) February 1, 2019

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

  Both refiners are on the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) Good Delivery Lists for both gold and silver. Asahi Refining Canada is a full member of the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA). Asahi Refining also operates a precious metals mint located in Miami, Florida and fabricates a range of gold and silver cast bars and minted bars as well as silver rounds.

  Further details about the precious metals recycling business of Asahi Holdings (collection, recovery, refinement) can be read here.

  

  Asahi Depository

  Let’s look at Asahi Depository LLC. The company Asahi Depository LLC was registered on December 17, 2021 New York State Department of State (NYSDOS).

  Looking at the Asahi Refining website, a press release published on June 02, 2023 refers to “Asahi Refining’s expansion into vaulting and storage services” where it “looks to establish itself as a leader in the precious metals storage industry”. This expansion is being done via Asahi Depository LLC.

  Specifically:

  “Asahi Depository LLC (ADL) is proud to announce its approval by the CME Group (CME) as a storage facility for Gold, Silver, Platinum, and Palladium.

  This is a significant achievement as the approval, which is dually applicable for both the Commodities Exchange (COMEX) and the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), ensures that ADL meets strict standards for security, transparency, and accuracy in the storage and handling of precious metals.”

  As regards the location of the vaulting facility, the press release goes on to say that:

  “Located in Blauvelt, NY, ADL is located within 30 miles of the CME in New York. ADL’s near proximity to the New York metropolitan area provides easy access to a range of financial institutions, and other industry professionals.

  Likewise, the location, just outside of Manhattan, offers a distinct advantage of accessibility without the hassle of navigating the city’s logistical challenges.”

  PDF version of press release here.

  

  875 Western Highway – Hudson Crossing

  Its very easy, using publicly available information on the web, to pinpoint exactly where this Asahi Depository vault is located. A quick Google search of “Asahi Depository” and “Blauvelt” reveals that the Asahi Depository is located at 875 Western Hwy, Blauvelt, NY 10913.

  The location 875 Western Highway is in the Hudson Crossing industrial park. The building is Building 11, and is 98,172 sq feet in area with a ceiling height of 23 feet.

  Asahi Depository LLC bought its building in Hudson Crossing in February 2022 from Partners Group & Onyx Equities LLC for US$ 24.565 million. The building is described as “100% leased, wet sprinklers, 6 docks, 1 drive-in door, CSX rail line spots”. See Lee & Associates Q1 2022 Industrial market snapshot here.

  You can also see plans of the building on the Hudson Crossing website, where it also says that the building, built in 1981, also has a 18,839 square foot mezzanine floor, and 40’ x 40’ column spacing. The site plan is also here on the CBRE website.

  

  Also in February 2022, Asahi then entered into a set of lease agreements with the County of Rockland Industrial Development Agency (IDA) so as to obtain tax relief, in which Asahi leased the property to IDA, and IDA leased it back to Asahi, and IDA promised to grant Asahi an exemption from sales tax up to US$ 711,000 for qualified expenditures up to US$ 8.5 million.

  

  On the Orangetown Tax Map, the Asahi Depository property (located at 875 Western Highway, Blauvelt, New York) is identified as Section 65.13, Block 1, Lot 2; in the LO zoning district.

  After buying the building in February 2022, Asahi also submitted some planning requests to the town of Orangetown on June 3, 2022 for modifications to the property:

  “Applicant is proposing to utilize the existing building for a NY based corporate office and for the storage of gold and silver”.

  “Applicant is proposing a new 8’-0” high fence which requires a 5’-4” setback from the property along the side yards and rear yard.”

  A more detailed letter on June 23, 2022 from Asahi’s architect to the Zoning Board of Appeals expanded on this request:

  “The building at 875 Western Highway, Blauvelt, NY was purchased by the Owner Asahi Depository LLC to be used as an office & storage facility where rare metals will be stored on site. The need for heightened security on the site is crucial for the operation of the facility. A new 8.0’ high fence is thus proposed along the side and rear yards of the property to ensure the controlled access into the facility.”

  Asahi also requested expansion of loading docks and expansion of turning radius area for armored delivery trucks.

  This request was heard by the zoning board on September 07, 2022 and the minutes of the hearing can be seen here, which include such facts as that Asahi’s armored delivery trucks are 75 feet long, that Asahi Depository wanted 4 loading docks (2 of which will be in use all the time), that they have trucks coming from Utah and Canada twice a week that are loading and unloading metal bars that are stored in the Blauvelt facility.

  Here the references to Utah and Canada refer to Asahi’s Salt Lake City refinery in Utah and Asahi’s Brampton, Ontario refinery in Canada.

  Asahi Depository has also recently been hiring staff for the Asahi Depository in Blauvelt, for example “full-time Security Guard positions available at our new facility in Blauvelt”, and also “full-time Material Handler positions available at our new facility in Blauvelt, New York“, and also a “a full-time Inventory & Logistics Administrator position available at our new facility in Blauvelt”.

  Conclusion

  You can see from these timelines that Asahi bought the Hudson Crossing warehouse property in February 2022, then applied for COMEX / NYMEX approval in March 2022, but then also needed to wait to receive local planning approvals and tax relief, and then presumably made security and other modifications to the property, and then CME granted the application for COMEX/NYMEX vault approval by May 2023.

   

  

  According to the COMEX inventory reports, as of July 20, 2023, the Asahi Depository in Blauvelt is storing 266,498 troy ounces of gold (8.29 tonnes) and 1,880,973 troy ounces of silver (58.5 tonnes), all of which is in the ‘registered category’ meaning that all of this metal has COMEX warrants attached.

  Interestingly, on July 18, a deposit of 593,497 troy ozs of silver (18.46 tonnes) was added to Asahi’s ‘registered’ silver category, which boosted the previous total of 1,287,476 ozs (40 tones) to 58.5 tonnes.

  COMEX SILVER VAULT TOTALS RISE 1.14M OUNCES
  – Registered rises 593K oz., courtesy of a deposit (not a transfer from Eligible) into the new-ish Asahi depository.
  – Open Interest is now equal to 264% of all vaulted silver and 2,076% of Registered silver. pic.twitter.com/JKulQqIgb8

  — Michael 🏳️‍🌈 #silversqueeze (@mikesay98) July 19, 2023

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

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

  The CME inventory reports show that the Asahi Depository has no gold or silver in the ‘eligible’ category. Apart rom the 18.46 tonnes inflow of silver, the quantities of gold and silver in the Asahi vault look static and don’t seem to be changing regularly at this point in time. But presumably that will change as the Asahi Despository at Hudson Crossing gets more business.

  CME warehouse inventory reports for platinum and palladium also show that the Asahi Depository, although listed on the reports, is holding no platinum or palladium in either the ‘registered’ or eligible categories.

  While most of the COMEX approved vaults are in New York City, not all of them are. This is because the CME (COMEX) Rulebook allows approved vaults to be within 150 miles og New York City.

  As per CME Rulebook – Chapter 7, 703 (11):

  ” The depository for gold deliverable against the Gold futures (GC) contract must qualify and be  designated a weighmaster and must be located within a 150-mile radius of the City of New York”

  For appoved gold depositories, the vaults of JP Morgan, HSBC, MTB, Loomis, Brinks and Malca-Amit are in New York City. But the vaults of Delaware Depository and IDS Delaware, are, as the names suggest, in Delaware. Now you can add Asahi to that list.

  For appoved silver depositories, the  COMEX list is identical to gold, except that the CNT Depository in Bridgewater, Massachusetts is also an approved depository for silver. While Bridgewater is about 220 miles from midtown Manhattan, the 150 mile rule does not apply to silver.

  This article was originally published on the BullionStar.us website under the same title “Asahi vault 30 miles outside NYC added to COMEX approved vault list“

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/23/2023 – 15:30

• Visualizing America's $20 Trillion Economy By State
  Visualizing America’s $20 Trillion Economy By State

  A sum of its parts, every U.S. state plays an integral role in the country’s overall economy.

  Texas, for example, generates an economic output that is comparable to South Korea’s, and even a small geographical area like Washington, D.C. outputs over $129 billion per year.

  The visualization below by Visual Capitalist’s Avery Koop and Joyce Ma uses 2022 annual data out of the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) to showcase each state or district’s real gross domestic product (GDP) in chained 2012 dollars, while also highlighting personal income per capita.

  

  A Closer Look at the States

  California is by far the biggest state economy in the U.S. at $2.9 trillion in real GDP—and when comparing its nominal value ($3.6 trillion) with national GDPs worldwide, the Golden State’s GDP would rank 5th overall, just below Germany and Japan.

  Here’s an up-close look at the data:

  Rank	State	Real GDP (chained 2012 dollars)
  1	California	$2.9 trillion
  2	Texas	$1.9 trillion
  3	New York	$1.6 trillion
  4	Florida	$1.1 trillion
  5	Illinois	$798 billion
  6	Pennsylvania	$726 billion
  7	Ohio	$639 billion
  8	Georgia	$591 billion
  9	Washington	$582 billion
  T9	New Jersey	$582 billion
  11	North Carolina	$560 billion
  12	Massachusetts	$544 billion
  13	Virginia	$513 billion
  14	Michigan	$490 billion
  15	Colorado	$386 billion
  16	Maryland	$369 billion
  17	Tennessee	$368 billion
  18	Arizona	$356 billion
  19	Indiana	$353 billion
  20	Minnesota	$350 billion
  21	Wisconsin	$312 billion
  22	Missouri	$301 billion
  23	Connecticut	$253 billion
  24	Oregon	$235 billion
  25	South Carolina	$226 billion
  26	Louisiana	$217 billion
  27	Alabama	$213 billion
  28	Kentucky	$201 billion
  29	Utah	$192 billion
  30	Oklahoma	$191 billion
  31	Iowa	$177 billion
  32	Nevada	$165 billion
  T32	Kansas	$165 billion
  34	District of Columbia	$129 billion
  35	Arkansas	$127 billion
  36	Nebraska	$124 billion
  37	Mississippi	$105 billion
  38	New Mexico	$95 billion
  39	Idaho	$84 billion
  40	New Hampshire	$83 billion
  41	Hawaii	$75 billion
  42	West Virginia	$72 billion
  43	Delaware	$66 billion
  44	Maine	$65 billion
  45	Rhode Island	$55 billion
  46	North Dakota	$53 billion
  47	South Dakota	$50 billion
  T47	Montana	$50 billion
  T47	Alaska	$50 billion
  50	Wyoming	$36 billion
  51	Vermont	$31 billion
  	United States	$20 trillion

  Altogether, California, New York, and Texas account for almost one-third of the country’s economy, combining for $6.3 trillion in real GDP in 2022. The only other state that reached the trillion dollar mark is Florida with $1.1 trillion.

  Texas’ economy is driven largely by industries like advanced manufacturing, biotech, life sciences, aerospace, and defense. The state is also home to a number of large companies, like Tesla and Texas Instruments, which make it a hub for jobs, innovation, and opportunity.

  New York state is a leader in the insurance, agribusiness, clean energy, and cyber security industries, among many others. Zooming into the New York City area reveals huge sources of economic output from the tourism, media, and financial services sectors.

  Regional Disparities

  While the aforementioned states are the big hitters, the median GDP per state was much lower at $217 billion in 2022.

  Under the BEA’s eight region breakdown, all states in the Great Lakes region had GDPs that were higher than the median, reflecting the industrial strength of states like Illinois and Ohio. Most of the states in the Mideast region including New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland also have GDPs higher than the country median.

  Comparatively, many states in the Plains region had lower GDPs, including Iowa and Kansas. Other states with lower GDPs (and generally lower populations) were spread around the country, including lowest-ranked Vermont in New England.

  Personal Income per Capita

  In addition to real GDP, this voronoi diagram has been color-coded in terms of personal income per capita in each state. Here’s a closer look at those figures:

  Rank	State	Personal Income per Capita
  1	District of Columbia	$96,728
  2	Connecticut	$84,972
  3	Massachusetts	$84,945
  4	New Jersey	$78,700
  5	New York	$78,089
  6	California	$77,339
  7	Washington	$75,698
  8	New Hampshire	$74,663
  9	Colorado	$74,167
  10	Wyoming	$71,342
  11	Maryland	$70,730
  12	Alaska	$68,919
  13	Illinois	$68,822
  14	Virginia	$68,211
  15	Minnesota	$68,010
  16	North Dakota	$66,184
  17	South Dakota	$65,806
  18	Rhode Island	$65,377
  19	Pennsylvania	$65,167
  20	Florida	$63,597
  21	Nebraska	$63,321
  22	Vermont	$63,206
  23	Oregon	$62,767
  24	Texas	$61,985
  25	Delaware	$61,387
  26	Nevada	$61,282
  27	Wisconsin	$61,210
  28	Hawaii	$61,175
  29	Kansas	$60,152
  30	Maine	$59,463
  31	Iowa	$58,905
  32	Tennessee	$58,279
  33	Indiana	$57,930
  34	Utah	$57,925
  35	Ohio	$57,880
  36	Montana	$57,719
  37	North Carolina	$57,416
  38	Georgia	$57,129
  39	Michigan	$56,813
  40	Arizona	$56,667
  41	Missouri	$56,551
  42	Oklahoma	$54,998
  43	Louisiana	$54,622
  44	Idaho	$54,537
  45	South Carolina	$53,320
  46	Kentucky	$52,109
  47	Arkansas	$51,787
  48	New Mexico	$51,500
  49	Alabama	$50,637
  50	West Virginia	$49,169
  51	Mississippi	$46,248

  Economic Engines and Future Growth

  Many of the largest state economies are fueled by strong urban populations. These metropolitan cities are the economic engines of the country, driving innovation and attracting new talent.

  The NYC-Newark-Jersey City metropolitan area is a great example of this, generating over $2 trillion in economic output alone. Los Angeles generated $1.1 trillion.

  While these are the obvious and expected hubs, some new cities and states are beginning to attract new business and are anticipating significant economic growth. North Carolina, for example, has been ranked as the best U.S. state to do business in, thanks to a number of factors like ease of access to capital and a strong culture of tech and innovation.

  Over time, the centers of economic power may be slowly shifting in the U.S., but for now the top contributors to the nation’s GDP far outpace the rest.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/23/2023 – 15:00

• America’s Mineral Strategy Is Missing American Mining
  America’s Mineral Strategy Is Missing American Mining

  Authored by Rich Nolan via RealClear wire,

  This may not be the reality anyone wants to hear but despite important steps forward, the nation’s minerals problem – notably the mismatch between soaring demand, available supply, and our alarming overreliance on imports – is only getting worse. And while the Biden administration has done important work to elevate the challenge, it has yet to clearly embrace the most obvious solution: more domestic mining. 

  

  This doesn’t mean the Biden administration hasn’t worked to fill holes in the mineral supply chain. It has. The administration is working closely with allies and overseas mineral producers to ramp up supply and has backed incentives to encourage development of domestic supply chains with loans and grants going to processors, recyclers, and, in limited quantities, to miners. But for everything the administration has said about critical minerals, it’s what hasn’t been said and done that’s perhaps most notable: The Biden administration has yet to plainly say we need to ramp up domestic mining and, in fact, has yet to approve a single major mine. 

  How can the U.S. possibly hope to address the enormity of the minerals challenge if we don’t place using our vast domestic resources front and center of any effort to do so? The short answer is, we can’t. And if we don’t solve – or get on track to solve – the minerals challenge, much of the Biden administration agenda will go down with it.

  This is an administration that wants to build, reshore, modernize our industrial base, rebuild our middle class, and compete with China’s industrial might and to accelerate the deployment of electric vehicles (EVs), solar panels, wind farms, and tens of thousands of miles of transmission lines. Every piece of that agenda is incumbent on de-risking mineral supply chains and ensuring that the material inputs that make semi-conductors and lithium-ion batteries possible are both available and affordable.

  As the administration is so fond of saying, time is not on our side. Deployment of these energy and transportation technologies must accelerate to reach decarbonization goals. Yet, the current rate of deployment – and build out of manufacturing capacity – is already eclipsing the material supply chains needed to support it. 

  Consider the scale of the investment going into EV and battery manufacturing and the speed at which new capacity is coming online. New battery megafactories are going from blueprints to production in two years. Comparatively, the mines needed to supply those factories often take decades to reach production. 

  We simply don’t have the luxury not to energetically pursue domestic mining projects right now to build the massively expanded supply chains we need tomorrow. According to the International Energy Agency, global supply of key metals must expand many times over nearly overnight if we’re to keep up with mineral demand. For example, lithium demand is poised to jump 40-fold, and demand for nickel, cobalt, and graphite is set to soar 25 times by 2040. For copper, which provides the irreplaceable wiring for electrification, annual demand alone is projected by 2050 to reach a level equal to all the copper consumed in the world between 1900 and 2021.

  The U.S. has the resources – from rare earths to lithium to copper – to meet much of the demand now at our doorstep. What is lacking is the policy commitment to make it happen. As mines wait for approvals, as delays accumulate or hundreds of thousands of acres of mineral-rich land are withdrawn from potential production, our competitors, namely China, are only tightening their chokehold on the supply chains we know we need. 

  China’s mineral strength is now appallingly mirrored by our weakness. We’re now import-reliant for more than 50 minerals, with China the leading supplier of 26. The White House has warned that mineral supply chains could be weaponized in the same way oil was in the 1970s and natural gas was in Europe in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It’s not a matter of if but when it happens. China is already using its dominance of mineral markets to exert geopolitical leverage, announcing restrictions of exports of two rare metals just days before trade negotiations with U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. 

  Secure, reliable, and responsible mineral supply chains need domestic mineral production under the world’s highest labor and environmental standards. The era of outsourcing essential industries, supply chains, and essential American jobs must end. And doing so means that made in America must also increasingly mean mined in America. The Biden administration’s minerals strategy can’t possibly succeed until it embraces domestic mining and we begin approving mines. 

  On mining, our time to act is now.

  Rich Nolan is president and CEO of the National Mining Association. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/23/2023 – 14:30

• Meta Pushes Airhead Influencers Over Actual News As Priorities Shift
  Meta Pushes Airhead Influencers Over Actual News As Priorities Shift

  Facebook parent Meta is shifting away from current affairs and politics on its social media platforms, and will instead focus on short-form videos and content from influencers vs. news, the Financial Times reports.

  

  The decision comes after years of attempting to placate powerful publishers and striking deals with various media organizations. What’s more, Meta is currently in a stand-off with the Canadian government over legislation which requires platforms to pay publishers and broadcasters for their content. As a result, Meta announced its decision to remove the news from its feeds in the country, leading to a revolt by over 30 advertisers in Canada who say they’ll pull their ads in protest.

  “The Online News Act is based on the incorrect premise that social media companies benefit unfairly from news content shared on our platforms, when the reverse is true,” Meta said, adding that news outlets can use social media to “help their bottom line.”

  Canadian minister of heritage Pablo Rodriguez disagrees, telling the Financial Times that he’s “deeply convinced that Google’s and Facebook’s concerns can be resolved through the regulatory process.”

  “If Facebook truly believes that news has no value, they can say so at the negotiating table. Threats to pull news instead of complying with the laws in our country only highlight the power that platforms hold over news organisations, both big and small,” he added.

  Meta is also assessing whether the Canadian legislation will require it to remove news links and other content on their rapidly imploding Threads app – which is built on the foundation of the popular photo-sharing app Instagram. The app notably prioritizes content posted by creators and friends over hard news or politics.

  Sandra Matz, associate professor of business at New York’s Columbia Business School, said that Meta appears to be discouraging news and politics from Threads as a business decision to avoid more scandals over misinformation and election denial, and to facilitate moderation.

  Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, insists Threads will be a “friendly” space in contrast to Twitter, which has loosened its moderation since Elon Musk bought the platform for $44bn in October, frustrating some users and advertisers. Meta has not hired new moderators for Threads but is relying on those at Instagram. -FT

  According to the report, senior Meta executives have concluded that there’s a fundamental clash of interests between the company and the news industry. According to research commissioned by the company, their 3 billion users prefer short-form videos and content from influencers over news and politics. Publishers disagree, and argue that news is a high-value offering that boosts engagement.

  “Without trusted news and being able to share that, you’re cutting out what is going on in the real world,” said Jason Kint, chief executive of Digital Content Next, a trade association representing the digital news industry. “Long term, the question is whether it’s sustainable for them.”

  Between the Canadian law and Meta’s internal research, the company has taken an increasingly combative approach – and claims that social media companies benefit less when news content is shared on their platforms vs. mindless distractions that give young girls body image disorders and generally degrade society.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/23/2023 – 14:00

• US Experiencing 'Crises Of Early Death' Unique To Wealthy Nations: Study
  US Experiencing ‘Crises Of Early Death’ Unique To Wealthy Nations: Study

  Authored by Megan Redshaw J.D. via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours)

  A new study found more than 1 million U.S. deaths a year—including those in young people and working-age adults—would have been averted if the United States had mortality rates similar to other wealthy nations.

  

  Published in the journal PNAS Nexus, researchers assessed how many U.S. deaths would have been avoided each year from 1933 through 2021 if U.S. age-specific mortality rates had equaled the average of 21 comparable wealthy nations.

  The analysis includes Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

  Using mortality data from the Human Mortality Database and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, results showed the U.S. had mortality rates lower than peer countries in the 1930s-1950s, similar mortality rates in the 1960s and 1970s, and experienced a steady rise in the number of “missing Americans” in the 1980s.

  “Missing Americans” refers to U.S. excess deaths—people who would still be alive today if the United States had mortality rates equal to other peer nations.

  According to the study, there were 622,534 excess deaths in 2019. Numbers surged higher during the COVID-19 pandemic reaching 1,009,467 excess deaths in 2020, and 1,090,103 in 2021.

  

  Excess mortality was exceptionally high in people under age 65, with nearly 50 percent of excess deaths occurring in 2020 and 2021, despite data showing young people were least likely to die of COVID-19.

  

  “The number of Missing Americans in recent years is unprecedented in modern times,” the study’s lead author Dr. Jacob Bor, associate professor of global health and epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health, said in a press release.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/23/2023 – 13:30

• Monetary Vs Fiscal Dissonance… And The Return Of QE
  Monetary Vs Fiscal Dissonance… And The Return Of QE

  Authored by Kevin Smith and Tavi Costa via Crescat Capital,

  Monetary and fiscal authorities are currently running what we believe are unsustainably divergent policies. The simultaneous rise in the cost of debt by central banks and their deliberate reduction of balance sheet assets is entirely incongruous with the exponential growth in government debt.

  Following the COVID era, we have entered a period of fiscal dominance among major developed economies. Hence, the escalating debt burden is already near historical levels and compounding at an alarming pace.

  To sustain the current government spending deluge, we believe it is inevitable that the Fed and other monetary authorities reassume their fundamental role as the primary financiers of government debt.

  Quantitative tightening policies are the central banks’ own version of an illusionary “debt ceiling”, a disciplinary measure that needs to be consistently reversed in practice.

  

  Twin Deficits at GFC Levels

  The primary emphasis of our research will be centered on the United States, which is now running twin deficits that are as severe as those experienced during the worst parts of the Global Financial Crisis. This factor has contributed to the recent weakness in the US dollar. However, of even greater concern is the indication that this represents an ongoing structural issue that is still in the process of evolving.

  

  Note that with each prior recession, this measurement has reached new lows. This further emphasizes the importance of owning hard assets in this environment.

  Fiscal Impulse Turning Up

  The reality is that the fiscal agenda on a global scale has never been more expansive. While today’s severe inequality and wealth-gap issues have led to larger government social programs compared to historical norms, rising geopolitical tensions further exacerbate the issue. Countries acknowledge the significance of bolstering defense spending and the crucial need to reduce interdependence among trading partners by revitalizing domestic manufacturing capacities. Alongside this trend of reindustrialization, particularly among G-7 economies, governments persist in advocating for a substantial green-energy revolution, which necessitates a significant infrastructure overhaul.

  Indeed, in the US, the impact of such high levels of government expenditure is evident in the data. Excluding tax receipts, which have declined to levels comparable to those seen during recessions, fiscal spending alone represents a substantial 25.4% of nominal GDP in the US. That is higher than what we experienced after the global financial crisis or any other crisis in history outside of the Covid recession when the economy was in full lockdown.

  While interest payments are growing exponentially, that still contributes to a relatively small percentage of the overall fiscal outlays. To be specific, it accounts for less than 10% of it. Interest payments used to be close to 15% of government spending in the 1980s and 1990s when interest rates were higher. This number is set to undergo a substantial increase and has the potential to create a larger problem soon.

  Nonetheless, the US fiscal impulse has turned positive in a significant way recently, especially when calculating net of interest payments, which is now up 12% on a year-over-year basis.

  

  In a healthy economic growth environment tax revenues typically increase while government spending tends to decline. However, today’s situation is a complete reversal of this trend.

  Second-Largest Issuance in History

  The US is currently operating as if it were facing another pandemic lockdown from a fiscal spending and debt issuance perspective, yet there is one critical difference. Rather than the Fed financing over 50% of newly issued Treasuries, they are shrinking their balance sheet assets at the fastest pace in history.

  It is important to consider that, unlike during the recovery from the global financial crisis, other central banks have not been buying these government bonds either. In fact, foreign holders currently own only approximately 20% of all outstanding Treasuries, marking the lowest level in nearly two decades.

  

  Following the resolution of the debt ceiling agreement, the US government has already issued more than $1 trillion worth of US Treasuries. Notably, the month of June witnessed the second-largest issuance in history.

  Not Only Short-Maturity Treasuries

  As anticipated by the market, a significant portion of these issuances is comprised of T-Bills, which are short-term maturity instruments. However, what seems to be off the radar is the fact that there has also been a substantial issuance of longer-duration Treasuries in recent months.

  

  The significant increase in the overall supply of these sovereign instruments is exerting additional pressure on long-term yields, contributing to their ongoing rise.

  Nearly Half of the Federal Debt Matures in Two Years

  To reiterate, although US interest payments represent less than 10% of the overall fiscal outlays, these obligations are likely to surge even further in the next couple of years. Here is one main reason for that:

  The US will need to refinance almost half of its national debt in less than 2 years. As a reminder, interest rates were at 0% just 15 months ago.

  

  If the government decides to reissue these maturing Treasuries in short-duration instruments, as it did recently after the debt ceiling agreement, these obligations will need to be rolled over at over 5% interest rates.

  Surging Cost of Debt

  While the US government is shifting focus to boost military expenditures from historically depressed levels, the current interest payments on the Federal debt have already exceeded annual defense spending.

  

  This is likely the initial stages of a trend, and if no solutions are implemented, other components of the fiscal agenda may soon be constrained by the escalating cost of debt.

  Yield Curve Control: A Matter of Time

  The notion of an “improving” economy being linked to rising yields seems completely ludicrous in our view. The US debt problem is not only at staggering levels but is also compounding at almost 10% annually, while the Fed continues to shrink its Treasury holdings at a record pace. What gives?

  Based on the rate-of-change analysis, there has been a 17% decline in the Fed’s holdings of US Treasuries. Interestingly, historical patterns suggest that similar balance sheet contractions have led the Fed to eventually reverse its policy.

  

  Given the current magnitude of Treasury issuances flooding the market today, resulting in upward pressure on long-term yields, we believe that unspoken political pressure to implement “yield curve control” policies is already beginning to swell. The Fed’s inclination to implement such policies may only exist if the economy is in a recession, which we think is the path of least resistance today.

  Gold: An Escape Valve

  Investing in gold implies wagering on the notion that the debt problem will deteriorate further from its current state.

  The 1940s period was a compelling historical analogy to today given the severity of the current debt problem. However, there is one major distinction that is often ignored. During that time, the US dollar was effectively tied to gold prices, making the metal an unfeasible investment alternative.

  Today, with prices unpegged, it is highly probable that capital will divert away from US Treasuries and flow into gold. This becomes particularly crucial at a time when the government continues to issue a flood of debt instruments into the market after agreeing to extend the debt limit.

  

  Today the metal is likely to serve as an escape valve for those seeking the ultimate form of protection during times of debt and monetary crises.

  Gold > Treasuries

  If the rationale for owning US Treasuries today is solely based on the premise that the system cannot endure substantially higher interest rates, then gold is a far superior choice.

  

  It’s a neutral asset with no counterparty risk that also carries centuries of credible history as a haven and monetary alternative.

  Inflation in a Bottoming Process

  Just as base effects played a crucial role in reducing inflation rates, we anticipate that the opposite effect is on the horizon, with Consumer Price Index (CPI) likely to reach a bottom in the near future.

  Last week’s CPI report marked a significant milestone as it is the first time in 102 years that we have witnessed twelve consecutive months of declining CPI on a YoY basis. The last time we experienced such a situation was in 1921 after the Spanish Flu pandemic, which marked the actual bottom for inflation rates at -15.8%. Today, after the same monthly sequence of falling CPI, the rate is still positive and above the Fed’s target.

  The overwhelming focus on the recent slowdown in inflation appears to be rooted in backward-looking analysis. In fact, since last week’s CPI report, oil has broken out, gold rallied back above $2,000, silver surged, and agricultural commodities appreciated substantially.

  

  While the macro environment today differs from that of the 1970s or 1940s, a lesson from history remains: inflation tends to develop in waves. We have recently witnessed the conclusion of the first wave and are likely in the process of reaching a bottom in the recent deceleration period, with a new upward trajectory underway. The primary reason for this is the persistence of underlying structural issues that continue to drive inflation rates higher:

  • Wage-price spiral, particularly driven by low-income segments of our society

  • Ongoing supply constraints due to chronic underinvestment in natural resource industries

  • Irresponsible levels of government spending

  • Escalating deglobalization trends, which necessitate the revitalization of manufacturing capabilities in economies.

  Interest Rate Cut Expectations: A Crowded Consensus

  It is worth highlighting that, despite the strong potential for inflation rates to be in the process of bottoming out, the Eurodollar curve is currently pricing in the largest interest rate cuts in the history of the contract for the next year.

  

  Investors are highly likely to be caught off guard as CPI starts to accelerate again, leading the US monetary authorities to maintain higher Fed funds rates for longer and even engage in additional rate hikes in the short turn until its recessionary goals can be more clearly accomplished.

  The Upside Case for Oil

  After being down 45% from its recent highs, the risk/reward to buy oil today appears heavily skewed towards the upside. Excluding the outlier event of the pandemic crisis, we can observe two types of pullbacks in oil prices over the past few decades:

  • The GFC and the 2014 energy market meltdown resulted in an average decline of approximately 75% from peak to trough.

  • During the tech bust, the decline was close to 50%

  In the current environment, we believe there are strong similarities to the early 2000s period, particularly in terms of historically depressed capital spending.

  

  Despite the risk of a demand shock, which is already largely reflected in the current prices, in our view, oil supply remains incredibly tight with production still below pre-pandemic levels. Unlike a year or two ago, the government has already depleted its strategic petroleum reserves to levels not seen since the 1980s.

  Gold: “A Barbarous Relic”

  The current skepticism surrounding gold brings back memories of the late 1990s when equity markets soared due to the excitement surrounding the emergence of the Internet. During that time, gold prices experienced a significant decline of over 70% in 21 years, underperforming almost every other asset class (first chart below).

  

  Some less experienced investors even labeled the metal as a barbarous relic.

  However, markets often defy conventional expectations, and that period marked the bottom for gold prices, initiating a new long-term uptrend, propelling gold into a secular bull market that lasted over a decade.

  Following the mentioned period, gold prices embarked on a remarkable upward trajectory, delivering one of the most impressive performances in its history (see the second chart below).

  

  Notably, silver significantly outperformed gold during this period, leading to a substantial decrease in the gold-to-silver ratio from 81 in 2003 to 31 in 2011.

  Based on these historical trends, we maintain a strong conviction that we are on the brink of entering another enduring bull market for gold, with silver anticipated to spearhead the upward movement.

  Precious Metals Primed for a Historical Breakout

  Despite gold being within 5% of its all-time highs, skepticism towards the metal remains prevalent. A key turning point occurred in September 2022 when the Wall Street Journal published an article titled “Gold Loses Reserve Status” on its front page, leading to a short-term bottom in gold prices. Subsequently, precious metals experienced a strong rally and recently formed a triple top, testing previous highs from August 2020 and the peak during the Russia-Ukraine invasion.

  In recent weeks, Bloomberg also published an article headlined “Gold Is No Longer a Good Hedge Against Bad Times,” at almost precisely the wrong time. Since then, precious metals have had another relevant move on the upside.

  

  We believe that a potential breakout to new levels could attract substantial capital inflows to the mining industry, which has been starving for capital.

  The Cheapest Metal on Earth

  Silver looks ready to break through its decade-long resistance this month.

  

  One thing is likely to be true, if this is indeed the onset of a new gold cycle, none of us own enough silver.

  Key Signals of Stagflationary Times Ahead

  It is hard to be structurally bullish on the economy when almost the entire Treasury curve is inverted, despite the fact that yields across the board, short and long-term, have been increasing. The tech bust and the global financial crisis certainly didn’t unfold in this manner. During those times, it was the collapse of long-term yields that led to a surge in inversions.

  Today’s issue in the Treasury curve resembles prior stagflationary times with yields across all durations continuing to move higher.

  

  Overall equity market valuations are completely out of line with an environment where the cost of capital for businesses remains on the rise, accompanied by an increasing risk of a severe economic downturn. Let us not forget that monetary policy works with a lag, and the Fed has been tightening financial conditions for almost 16 months now.

  A Euphoria-Driven Rally in Equity Markets

  Meanwhile, the valuation of US equity markets continues to defy logic, with completely delusional fundamental multiples. Since the market peaked, Nasdaq has been significantly impacted by the increase in interest rates. Despite the continuous upward movement in 10-year yields, this correlation has been disrupted by the euphoria surrounding AI and consequently the surge in mega-cap tech companies. We believe the present value of long-duration businesses must soon start to better reflect the ongoing rise in discount rates with irrationally exuberant investors bearing the brunt of the punishment.

  

  While these mispriced financial assets declined in 2022, they have only been reflated in 2023. We have yet to see the true bursting of financial asset bubbles that would correspond with the onset of a recession. From a valuation perspective, the excesses still rival those of 1929 and 2000.

  The “Magnificent” Top 10

  Even though the combined market capitalization of the top 10 companies in the S&P 500 constitutes an unprecedented 31.7% of the index, their earnings contribution has been drastically declining and now stands at only 21.5%.

  

  The dominance of megacaps in leadership is overwhelmingly unsustainable and cannot be justified by their current fundamentals.

  Recent Rally Not Justified by Fundamentals

  It is intriguing how the recent rise in tech megacap stocks has not been accompanied by a corresponding growth in projected earnings, despite the enthusiasm surrounding AI. In reality, we have seen the opposite of that in some cases. With the exception of $NVDA, tech megacap companies have either experienced stagnant growth in expected 2024 EPS (Earnings Per Share) or a substantial decline.

  

  The persistently elevated cost of capital, coupled with the current excessive valuations and narrow market leadership, continues to be a cause for great concern. Considering the ongoing major Treasury issuances as the Fed shrinks its balance sheet, these stocks are clearly priced for perfection.

  A Critical Divergence

  The year-over-year change in the S&P 500 is now diverging from the ISM New Orders index.

  

  Note that the last time this happened preceded the volatility event we had during the March 2020 crash and recession.

  An Attractive Segment of the Market

  The healthcare sector is one area of the market outside of natural resource industries where we have become highly constructive on the long side given the recent price dislocation and valuation proposition, particularly biotechnology businesses. While the spotlight has been on historically expensive mega-cap technology companies fueled by AI developments, we believe strongly that healthcare stocks are poised to be among the primary beneficiaries of such technological advancements.

  Over the past 30 years, the healthcare sector has demonstrated a consistent upward performance trend. Notably, these stocks tend to reach attractive valuations during market peaks and, more importantly, tend to outperform during economic crises.

  The case for the Biotechnology industry is arguably even more compelling. Since 2015, these companies have drastically underperformed the S&P 500 and Nasdaq indices. The Nasdaq Biotechnology index, which includes larger and established businesses, currently has a price-to-sales multiple of approximately 5.5 times, down from nearly 13 times.

  

  However, we find the development phase of the industry even more appealing. Several businesses on the cusp of breakthrough drug development are trading below their cash levels, with the potential to generate substantial cash flow over the next 3-5 years. To enhance our investment decision-making, we have recently hired Lars Thiel, Ph.D., as a research contractor. Dr. Theil seasoned scientist with over 30 years of experience in biomedical and drug discovery including 15 years with Amgen. Similar to our deep involvement in the mining and energy industries, we anticipate substantial growth in our exposure to the biotechnology industry in the coming years.

  Brazil Liftoff

  As an important way of capitalizing on a potential commodities-long thesis, we believe resource-rich economies are likely to perform exceptionally well. Rarely in history have Brazilian stocks been as cheap as they are today.

  Given recent macroeconomic and political developments, it would be reasonable to assume that Brazil would have faced significant consequences. Firstly, the Fed implemented the steepest rate-hike cycle in history. Secondly, oil prices dropped by 45% from the recent peak. Additionally, the commodities equal-weighted index declined by 26%. And lastly, Lula assumed the presidency.

  

  Interestingly and despite this sequence of facts, Brazilian stocks would have outperformed every developed market since 2022. In fact, Ibovespa continues to beat the S&P 500 year to date despite the AI euphoria. Today’s macro and fundamental reasons to own Brazilian equities are exceptional. In our view, this continues to be an incredible long-term buying opportunity.

  Crescat Macro Positioning Summary

  At Crescat, we have three overriding, high-conviction macro themes supported by our independent research and proprietary models that we believe are poised to unfold in rapid succession over the short and medium term:

  1. We see highly overvalued long-duration financial assets as ripe for a major leg down due to the rising cost of capital and the deluge of US Treasury issuances now hitting the market. The Fed will ultimately need to accommodate the Federal debt but not before causing a financial asset meltdown and recession which we believe is its unspoken short-term objective. In our view, there is an abundance of timely and compelling short opportunities in the equity and fixed-income markets today.

  

  2. We believe a powerful new demand wave for gold is coming in the short term from both institutional and retail investors. In aggregate, global central banks are already ahead of the curve as they have been accumulating the monetary metal recently as a reserve asset in preference over USTs. Gold is a haven asset that can provide an inflation hedge while also offering strong absolute and relative real return potential in the stagflationary hard-landing environment that our models are now forecasting.

  3. From our perspective, we see a significant secular demand boom for commodities on the horizon fueled by fiscal stimulus from G7 economies. We believe the level of spending has the potential to rival and exceed China’s resource demand surge in the 2000s. In the US, three recently launched Congressional spending Acts stand ready to be expanded along with monetary policy support as soon as the recession becomes widely acknowledged to likely drive the entire next global economic expansion cycle.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/23/2023 – 13:00

• White Lowe's Worker Confronts Black Thieves – Gets Black Eye And Pink Slip
  White Lowe’s Worker Confronts Black Thieves – Gets Black Eye And Pink Slip

  After 13 years of service to Lowe’s, an elderly white woman has been fired after she received a beating and black eye from black shoplifters brazenly rolling $2,100 worth of goods out of a store in Georgia. That’s the steep price she paid for heroically trying to thwart the trio’s theft — in violation of Lowe’s policy. 

  “They say that if you see somebody stealing something out the door, not to pursue, not to go out. I lost it,” Donna Hansbrough told the Effingham Herald. “I grabbed the cart. I don’t actually remember going out but I did. And I grabbed the cart that had the stolen items in (it).”

  

  Police say that cart was being pushed on June 25th by Takyah Berry, who punched Hansbrough in the face three times, leaving her with a black eye that lingers almost a month later. Berry was allegedly accompanied by her uncle, Joseph Berry, and a man named Jarmar Lawton. After attacking Hansbrough, Berry and her accomplices left with the stolen goods. Lawton is in police custody on unrelated charges, but the two Berrys are at large. 

  Like many good citizens, it seems Hansbrough simply lost her patience with corporate America’s widespread toleration of shameless, daylight robberies.  “I just got tired of seeing things get out the door. I just, I lost it. I basically lost all the training. Everything they tell you to do, I just…I just lost it,” she said.

  

  With more than a dozen years working at the Lowe’s location in Rincon, Georgia — about a half hour north of Savannah — Hansbrough expected consequences but wasn’t braced for Lowe’s’ cruel reaction to her selfless reflex that drove her to try to stop wrongdoing. 

  “I didn’t expect to get terminated,” the now-former live-plants customer associate said. “Maybe a reprimand or a suspension.” Choking back tears as she contemplated her sudden unemployment, Hansbrough told WJCL, “A lot of people know me as the plant lady…and it hurts, because I like them all.” 

  Lowe’s policy prohibiting employee intervention against criminals is typical of major retailers, who seek to reduce the associated risks that intervention present to employees and to the company.

  The result, however, is a rising wave of theft that costs untold billions — Target alone said thievery slashed its latest fiscal-year gross margins by $600 million. Those costs will inevitably be passed along to honest consumers in the form of higher prices — a new form of wealth redistribution in a society that already has too much of it. 

  [News] 📸 Aubri
  Brighton, Colorado. — (@ppv_tahoe) Different Angle from video I posted a few days ago showing thieves stealing shopping cart full of merchandise at King Soopers. pic.twitter.com/yqNoa4hexn

  — PPV-TAHOE – News Journalist (@ppv_tahoe) June 2, 2023

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  It’s one thing for companies to adopt such policies after their own risk assessment, but now liberal politicians want to make it illegal for employees to stop thieves. Last month, the California Senate passed just such a measure, which would only compound the state’s ongoing cultivation of criminal behavior — best exemplified by Prop 47, the law that made shoplifting of up to $950 of merchandise a misdemeanor. 

  Meanwhile, as she looks for new work, let’s salute Donna Hansbrough and people in America and around the world who team up to stop criminals: 

  Shop assistants have to forcefully take loot from shoplifters pic.twitter.com/Z9Yops4c1M

  — Ghost Browser (@AlliedDemocracy) July 21, 2023

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  pic.twitter.com/5Capojnf0i

  — thieves getting fucked (@RobberyFaiI) July 22, 2023

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  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 07/23/2023 – 12:30

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