Jun 24

Today’s News 24th June 2024

  • Mapping The World's Refugee Population
    Mapping The World’s Refugee Population

    According to a report by the UNHCR, the number of people fleeing war, persecution and conflict exceeded 117 million.

    This number is up eight percent from the year before and increased by 31 percent compared to 2021.

    As Statista’s Anna Fleck shows in the following chart, 62 percent of all refugees and people in need of internal protection originated from just five countries in late 2023, while the top 10 countries of origin accounted for more than 70 percent of the global total.

    Infographic: Mapping The World's Refugee Population | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Afghanistan has the highest number of displaced people outside of their home country, at 6.40 million.

    Syrians are the second largest population displaced across borders, with 6.36 million living outside of the country. The latest count of displaced Ukrainians totaled 5.96 million people, the third-highest in the world.

    Meanwhile, violence, food shortages, and deteriorating conditions have been pushing South Sudanese to emigrate, their numbers rising from 2.2 million refugees in 2020 to 2.3 million at the end of 2023, almost all of whom are living in Uganda (923,607), Sudan (696,246), Ethiopia (418,231) and Kenya (171,233), according to the UNHCR.

    In addition to a rise in the number of people being forced to flee their homes, these figures increased in 2021 due to the registration of new births, new estimations of displacements, as well as updates following the backlog from 2020, as registration resumed in 2021 after being suspended due to Covid-19. The stark rise of Afghan refugees can possibly be attributed to the situation in the country after the Taliban rose to power again in August 2021.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/24/2024 – 02:45

  • This Chinese Company's Compliance With Washington's Anti-Russian Sanctions Is Very Consequential
    This Chinese Company’s Compliance With Washington’s Anti-Russian Sanctions Is Very Consequential

    Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

    China’s Wison New Energies announced in a LinkedIn post on Friday that they’re immediately stopping all their Russian projects “in view of the strategic future of the company” following the latest imposition of US sanctions against that country’s LNG industry in mid-June. Oilprice.com wrote that this will “deal a blow” to Russia’s Arctic LNG 2 project after Wison was contracted to build its modules, “which are massive, prefabricated structures that facilitate the rapid construction of LNG processing plants.”

    They also reminded their audience that Arctic LNG 2 “has been considered key to Russia’s efforts to boost its global LNG market share from 8% to 20% by 2030-2035.” The EU’s US-pressured “decoupling” from Russia’s pipeline gas network compelled that country to ramp up its LNG projects in order to freely export this resource in the coming future so as to make up for tens of billions of dollars in lost revenue. These plans might therefore be further delayed by Wison’s compliance with US sanctions.

    RT reported in late December that two major Chinese energy companies had declared force majeure on their participation in Arctic LNG 2 after a prior round of US sanctions against that project, the significance of which was analyzed here at the time. To bring the reader up to speed for their convenience, the takeaway was that China’s complex economic interdependence with the West predisposes its national champions to complying with that bloc’s unilateral restrictions in order to not lose their market there.

    China is officially opposed to all sanctions that are imposed outside of the UNSC, but it also gives its companies the choice whether to voluntarily comply with them, even those that are state-owned enterprises such as the ones from RT’s report last December. Their decision to go along with these measures is respected by the state since they’re supposed to serve China’s interests, not Russia’s or anyone else’s, and this sometimes requires them to make tough decisions for the greater national good.

    Neither the Chinese state nor its companies should therefore be negatively judged for voluntarily complying with US sanctions, but the very fact that this compliance continues occurring should result in members of the Alt-Media Community (AMC) correcting their false perceptions about Russian-Chinese ties. Many top influencers adhere to the dogma that these two see eye-to-eye on everything and are jointly coordinating all their moves in order to accelerate multipolar processes, but that’s not true.

    While their strategic ties are closer than ever and can nowadays even be described as them having formed a Sino–Russo Entente, they still disagree on Kashmir and the East Sea/South China Sea issues since Russia fully supports India and Vietnam’s respective positions. Nevertheless, Russia and China responsibly manage these disagreements for the greater multipolar good, the same as they’re expected to do regarding Chinese companies’ compliance with US sanctions, including those against Arctic LNG 2.

    This insight is relevant with regards to the AMC since it’s important for top influencers to accurately reflect such facts in their work lest they inadvertently mislead their audience about those two’s ties.

    Russia and China aren’t “against” one another, but they still prioritize their corresponding national interests. These largely overlap, in which cases they cooperate to pursue their shared goals, but they sometimes diverge and thus lead to developments like Chinese companies complying with US sanctions.

    As regards this latest example, it’ll complicate Russia’s ambitious LNG plans and therefore risk slashing its future revenue flows, with the possible consequence being that it could also affect those two’s stalled talks on the Power of Siberia II pipeline. Russia might either concede to China’s reportedly requested basement-bottom prices out of financial desperation or it’ll refuse to do so out of resentment and thus leave this project in limbo indefinitely unless/until China eventually reconsiders its stance.

    The second scenario of China agreeing to pay higher but nonetheless still privileged prices for Russian gas could play out if US pressure upon it increases in the coming future as is expected following the Russian-North Korean mutual defense pact. The preceding hyperlinked analysis explains these dynamics more in detail, but in brief, those two’s new agreement will likely be exploited by the US to redouble its regional military presence at the expense of China’s objective national security interests.

    In that event, and if the abovementioned trend unfolds in parallel with the US applying more pressure upon China in the East Sea/South China Sea in ways that hint at a credible intent to blockade its energy shipments in case of crisis, then China might reconsider its stance and agree to Russia’s pipeline terms. The additional price would be well worth paying for receiving reliable gas from its neighbor instead of holding out for a better price and risking the US cutting off its LNG imports in the meantime.

    Returning to the lede, Wison’s compliance with US sanctions against Russia should prompt the AMC to finally correct its false perceptions about the Sino-Russo Entente, and it might also play a role in determining how the Power of Siberia II pricing dilemma is resolved as was just explained. Considering that it’ll also complicate Russia’s ambitious LNG plans, from which a lot of its future revenue is expected to be derived, this makes that company’s decision much more important than many might have thought.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/24/2024 – 02:00

  • Is Racism And Resentment Fueling The Caitlin Clark, Team USA Controversy?
    Is Racism And Resentment Fueling The Caitlin Clark, Team USA Controversy?

    Authored by Richard Truesdell via American Greatness,

    Once or twice in a generation, an athlete comes along who dominates and often redefines their sport. In the 1960s and 1970s, it was Muhammad Ali. In the 1980s, it was Martina Navratilova. In the 1990s, it was Michael Jordan. In the 2000s, it was Tom Brady and Michael Phelps. In the 2010s, it was Serena Williams. Clark now joins this roster as a generational talent.

    Since the beginning of June, you can’t turn on any broadcast or online sports channel and not hear the name Caitlin Clark. Her presence dominates the airwaves and coverage has crossed over to the mainstream with non-sports media and even late-night comedy shows like Saturday Night Live featuring Clark. This is especially true in the wake of the decision by the USA Basketball selection committee to exclude her from the team going to the Olympics in Paris next month.

    At this point, I think that even if she were selected as the first alternate, Clark should decline.

    It’s clearly obvious from their public statements that the closely-knit team of veterans doesn’t want her and the attention she will bring to the team’s effort to win a seventh straight Olympic gold medal.

    I think she should let her 22-year-old body heal during the Olympics, as she’s just gone from the NCAA Championship straight into the WNBA regular season.

    On June 1, on an off night from beyond the three-point arc against the rival Chicago Sky, which features another highly touted rookie, Angel Reese, Clark found other ways to contribute in front of a hometown crowd—11 points, eight rebounds, six assists, and one steal—by dishing off to her teammates and rebounding. During that game, Clark took a vicious away-from-the-ball hit from Chennedy Carter.

    That foul got a lot of media attention, given that, at the time, Carter received just a regular foul. After the game, it was upgraded to a flagrant foul (game highlights here). At the rematch in Indianapolis on June 16, Clark turned in a balanced, stellar performance—23 points, nine assists, and eight rebounds—helping her team to its second consecutive win over the Chicago Sky (game highlights here).

    These two fouls have been cited by many as evidence that Clark is being targeted by certain WNBA players.

    One thing that I’ve noticed is that Black NBA players and sports commentators have been among Clark’s most prominent supporters. On the popular Fox Sports Speak podcast, the panel brought the issue into clear focus and did not shy away from discussing racial issues. On a June 3, 2024 podcast former NFL wide receiver James Jones defended Clark, questioning why her teammates weren’t stepping up to support her on the court. If the women’s game is becoming more physical, then Clark’s teammates must rise to the occasion. That seemed a bit more apparent in the June 16th rematch.

    But let’s look at the racist attitude of a well-known, so-called journalist covering this story. In a piece that ran in the far-left propaganda outlet The Atlantic, well-known race-baiter and former ESPN reporter Jemelle Hill has written one derogatory and hate-filled story after another on Clark. This one was especially egregious. Thankfully, this is just one jealous woman’s opinion. (I believe the vast majority of Black WNBA fans respect Clark’s talents and recognize that she’s a positive influence on the sport.)

    Before this year’s WNBA draft, the only two WNBA players I recognized were Brittany Greiner because of her misadventure in Russia last year and Diana Taurasi, who has been a stalwart member of the US women’s basketball movement going back to her four years at the University of Connecticut when she was a member of three NCAA championship teams. Currently 42 years old, Taurasi was selected for her sixth national team to go to the Paris Olympics this summer.

    It turns out that Taurasi has been another one of Clark’s most vocal critics, saying that as a WNBA rookie, she needs more experience before she’s ready for the US National Team, “playing against grown women instead of college players.” This is funny given Taurasi’s selection to the 2004 National Team after she ended her career at the University of Connecticut and went on to participate in the Games held that year and four teams that followed. Isn’t it time to give a younger player a chance to contribute and gain experience?

    Caitlin Clark is the personification of everything great about women’s athletics and the character it builds in young women. Clark is respected by many of her peers but unfortunately, not all. These haters are objectively resentful of Clark’s success. It borders on reverse racism. For almost three decades, the WNBA has toiled in virtual anonymity. The composition of the players in the league is over 60 percent African-American and close to 40 percent openly identify as gay, although some surveys say it is higher. Either way, it really doesn’t matter.

    Now comes Clark, with prodigious talents and an outgoing personality, who happens not to fall into either category. Because of this, many of her competitors seem to resent her. They are asking themselves, “Why isn’t it me who got multi-million dollar endorsement deals with Nike, Wilson, Gatorade, State Farm, and others?”

    To answer that question, ask yourself this:. Who would you want your daughter or granddaughter to look up to, to emulate, to be inspired by? A young woman (no matter her color or sexual orientation) who has taken the country by storm with her engaging personality and who has brought attention, eyeballs, and possibly an unprecedented $250 million media rights deal to the doorstep of the WNBA?

    Or someone who stupidly attempted to smuggle a known banned substance into a totalitarian state and received a nine-month vacation in a Russian gulag before, in a move designed to pander to two important voting blocs (Blacks and LBGT advocates), the Biden Administration traded this player for a known terrorist and worldwide arms merchant while leaving several more deserving Americans behind.

    I think that’s a very simple question to answer. And it has very little to do with kneeling or staying behind in the locker room while the National Anthem is played.

    I’ve watched Clark perform in the NCAA Championship this year and in several WNBA games this year. The mugging she’s received on the court goes way beyond the “Welcome to the WNBA girl” stuff that is dished out to newcomers in any professional sport, male or female. And I couldn’t help but notice that the dishing out was usually being administered by a certain group of players (not really a surprise statistically given that the group in question constitutes 60 percent of the players in the league but seems disproportionate to my eyes).

    Need I say more? No.

    The WNBA needs Caitlin Clark much more than Caitlin Clark needs the WNBA. Her endorsement deals are based not only on her skills on the court but also on the young woman that her loving and supportive parents raised her to be and her engaging personality. She is a generational superstar and the lame reasons cited by USA Today journalist Christine Brennen for USA Basketball for not selecting her to represent the United States next month in Paris have damaged them, not her. She could have a career-ending injury in the next four years and may never get the opportunity to represent her country, for reasons that seem specious at best.

    If this treatment by her opponents and the WNBA continues after the Olympics, then Clark will be faced with a difficult decision. Should she continue to endure this nonsense or should she take her God-given talents and her fans to another competitive venue? Could it be Ice Cube’s BIG3 3-on-3 league (and get paid $5 million more than her $80,000 WNBA salary) and be welcomed there by the likes of women’s basketball legend Nancy Lieberman? Or should she take her talents overseas, where they will be more appreciated? Having coached competitive athletes—male and female—I think one side of her will say, “I’ll work through this; it will get better. I’ll earn their respect.” But the other inner voice will say, “I’ve had enough; I don’t need to prove myself to these petty and resentful people.”

    If she chooses option one, I applaud her because that’s what elite athletes do: they rise to the occasion. But if she chooses option two, who would blame her? Then the players in the WNBA will start flying commercially again and will only have themselves to blame. This is before the NBA decides to stop subsidizing the league to the tune of $50 million a year, with the WNBA fading back into the obscurity it so richly deserves and finally disappearing.

    Few sports fans will shed a tear if that happens.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/23/2024 – 23:20

  • California Reveals All Job Gains In 2023 Were Fake
    California Reveals All Job Gains In 2023 Were Fake

    In the past year we have discussed on multiple occasions that US labor market data has been repeatedly doctored to artificially appear better than it really is (see “Here Is The “Unexpected” Reason Why The Fed Will Rush To Cut Rates As Soon As Possible“, “Philadelphia Fed Admits US Payrolls Overstated By At Least 800,000” and “Here Comes The Job Shock: Philadelphia Fed Admits US Jobs “Overstated” By At Least 1.1 Million“), although thanks to a quirk of BLS data revision reporting, we won’t have definitive proof of just how ugly the real job market has been in recent years until some time in 2025, well into Trump’s second administration.

    However, while the BLS will be able to maintain the facade of “strong job gains” lies into early 2025, the dismal reality has already made an appearance in America’s largest labor market.

    According to the latest report published by the non-partisan California Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) which is an agency of the California government, is overseen by the Joint Legislative Budget Committee of the California State Legislature, and performs and publishes extensive analyses of the state’s budget in addition to providing fiscal and policy advice to the California Legislature, contrary to prior reports of over substantial job gains in the deep blue state in 2023, the reality was far uglier.

    In a report titled “Newest Early Jobs Revision Shows No Net Job Growth During 2023” we learn just that: the Early Revisions to state-level data flagged here previously, suggests that California actually lost jobs during the fourth quarter of last year. As the report details, “based on the most recent release of the early benchmarks, payroll jobs declined by 32,000 from September 2023 through December 2023. On the contrary, the preliminary monthly reports showed a solid increase in job growth (+117,000 jobs) at the time.”

    This, according to the LAO, means that “with the fourth quarter revision, calendar year 2023 saw essentially no net job growth (+9,000 jobs overall).“

    For those unfamiliar with the sequence of revisions to the jobs data, here is a quick primer from the LAO:

    Monthly State Jobs Estimates Are Revised Annually. Each month our office publishes the most recent state employment figures from the the Current Employment Statistics (CES) survey. State employment figures come from this monthly survey, which is based on a small sample of businesses in the state.  As a result, once per year the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) does a benchmark revision, updating the monthly CES estimates to match more reliable administrative data from states’ Unemployment Insurance programs.

    Federal Researchers Now Publishing Quarterly Revisions. Although the BLS only revises the state-level CES once per year, the underlying data used to revise the CES survey is collected quarterly. Taking advantage of this asynchrony, in 2021, researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia began publishing state-level “early revisions” based on the same underlying data but revised more frequently.

    In any event, the huge delta between the previously reported, CES survey-based fake Q4 numbers and the actual, post revision numbers is shown in the gray highlight in the chart below.

    The data since January 2024 has not yet been rebenched, which means that the figure includes the Early Benchmark Revision for these recent months are growing at the same rate as the official CES estimates. But one can be absolutely certain that once the next set of revisions come in, California will not have generated any actual job growth for the second year in a row. In fact, make that all of America.

    Of course, the shocking ‘realization’ that inflation-sparking Bidenomics was a complete disaster for the US labor market won’t be disclosed until well into Trump’s second (technically third) term. By then Biden, and his catastrophic economic policies, will be long forgotten.

    Source: Legislative Analyst’s Office

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/23/2024 – 22:14

  • Rafah Crossing Now Completely Destroyed & No Longer Usable For Gazans Seeking Exit
    Rafah Crossing Now Completely Destroyed & No Longer Usable For Gazans Seeking Exit

    The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have announced that for the first time Gaza’s sole border crossing with Egypt has been completely destroyed to the point that it can no longer be used.

    Israeli Army Radio issued the following statement days ago: “This is how Rafah crossing looks today, completely destroyed and no longer usable, after being taken over by Brigade 401 in one night.” The statement added that “Due to its relative proximity to the border, the Israeli army used the crossing as a stopping point and resting area.”

    Throughout most of the conflict which goes back to Oct.7, Palestinian officials operated on one side and Egyptian border troops on the other. The government of Egypt has long been bracing for a possible flood of refugees especially after Israel’s ground offensive in Rafah kicked off.

    That Rafah crossing is now effectively closed and guarded by the IDF, which will only add to the unfolding humanitarian disaster as civilians are trapped with nowhere to go amid the Israel-Hamas battles raging on streets across southern Gaza.

    As for the physical state of the crossing itself, war correspondents have confirmed that the exterior of the structure was incinerated: “Occupation forces damaged Rafah crossing’s halls that were used by locals to exit the Strip,” according to an earlier report by Middle East Eye.

    Below is a statement by China’s CGTN:

    On June 19, a journalist filmed the scene from the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing after the Israeli army began its ground military operation in May. The crossing, located on the southern border with Egypt, is the main route for international humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip.

    Israeli forces have razed an umber of buildings here besides blocking humanitarian aid and personnel from entering Gaza. June 20 marks the World Refugee Day. However, many people displaced in the Gaza Strip and the living environment has been destroyed by the war.

    Sally Abi Khalil, Oxfam’s Middle East and North Africa Director, has directed angry words against Israel, saying last week that the government “claimed weeks ago that it would provide full humanitarian support and medical assistance to civilians it had told to move.”

    Video showing the status of the crossing now:

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    She added, “Not only is this not happening, its ongoing impunity, bombardment, and deliberate obstruction have created unprecedented and impossibly dangerous conditions for humanitarian agencies to operate.”

    Meanwhile, the US-built pier is not doing well either. It has been out of commission longer than it has been operational, due largely to choppy seas in the Eastern Mediterranean.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/23/2024 – 21:35

  • Kennedy Supporters Protest Outside CNN Office In Burbank After He Is Excluded From Debate
    Kennedy Supporters Protest Outside CNN Office In Burbank After He Is Excluded From Debate

    Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times,

    Dozens of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. supporters protested outside CNN’s western U.S. bureau in Burbank, California, June 21 after the news network announced that the independent candidate failed to meet the entry criteria for the upcoming presidential debate.

    “Let Bobby speak!” the group chanted outside the main office of Warner Bros. Discovery, the company that owns CNN.

    CNN announced Thursday that Mr. Kennedy fell short of benchmarks for state ballot qualification and necessary polling. The news network set criteria to include candidates only if they secured enough spots on state ballots to be eligible for at least 270 Electoral College votes, the minimum needed to win the presidency.

    Candidates also needed to get at least 15 percent of voters in four separate national polls of registered or likely voters to meet CNN’s standards.

    The decision means presumptive nominees Republican former President Donald Trump and Democrat President Joe Biden will duel on the debate stage on June 27 in Atlanta.

    The major party candidates have cleared CNN’s threshold but won’t be certified for the ballot until they are formally nominated by their party conventions later this summer.

    Mr. Kennedy, who lives in Malibu with his actress wife Cheryl Hines, thanked his supporters for rallying behind him at locations across the country and in California, including Burbank, San Francisco, and Sacramento.

    “Americans nationwide are protesting the channel’s undemocratic decision to exclude me from the first presidential debate next week,” Mr. Kennedy wrote on X. “Thank you to everyone who has come out or plans to come out today!”

    One campaign volunteer called the Kennedy exclusion “an insult to democracy.” Above, supporters rally in Burbank, Calif., on June 21, 2024. (Jill McLaughlin/The Epoch Times)

    Mr. Kennedy, who chose California attorney and entrepreneur Nicole Shanahan as his running mate, said June 20 the major party candidates didn’t want him on the debate stage.

    “Americans want an independent leader who will break apart the two-party duopoly. They want a President who will heal the divide, restore the middle class, unwind the war machine, and end the chronic disease epidemic,” he posted on X.

    Mr. Kennedy’s son Bobby Kennedy III, a writer and director who lives in the Los Angeles area, came out to support Friday’s rally in Burbank, saying the debate decision won’t affect the campaign. Mr. Kennedy planned to join the debate on X, instead.

    “We’re going to have our own debate,” his son told The Epoch Times. “Thanks to social media, and thanks to the internet, I wouldn’t be surprised if our version gets significantly more viewers … We have an army that backs us on the internet.”

    Several volunteers at the Burbank rally were disappointed by CNN’s decision, including campaign volunteer Ronnie Kroell, who held up a campaign sign and waved at cars passing by on South California Street.

    “It’s an insult to democracy. It’s an insult to the American people,” Mr. Kroell told The Epoch Times. “We need to take back our country. It’s the only way we’re going to solve any of our problems is to put the power back into the people.”

    Mr. Kennedy filed an election complaint May 28 with the Federal Election Commission, claiming the news network collaborated with the major party candidates to exclude him from the debate. He also claimed the network’s requirements were designed to ensure only President Biden and former President Trump were included.

    CNN released a statement saying that “the law in virtually every state provides that the nominee of a state-recognized political party will be allowed ballot access without petition.”

    “As the presumptive nominees of their parties, both Biden and Trump will satisfy this requirement,” the network added.

    “As an independent candidate, under applicable laws, RFK Jr. does not. The mere application for ballot access does not guarantee that he will appear on the ballot in any state. In addition, RFK Jr. does not currently meet our polling criteria, which, like other objective criteria, were set before issuing invitations to the debate.”

    Warner Bros. Discovery did not return a request for comment about Friday’s protests.

    Rancho Santa Fe resident Suzanne Finder came to the Burbank rally Friday, saying Mr. Kennedy’s background in environmental law and his record of fighting to solve chronic disease issues is what brought her there.

    The country needs clean air, clean water, clean soil, clean food, and clean medicine, she told The Epoch Times.

    The group planned to deliver a petition to CNN asserting Mr. Kennedy should be allowed to debate. Above, supporters rally in Burbank, Calif., on June 21, 2024. (Jill McLaughlin/The Epoch Times)

    “Mr. Kennedy has spent 40 years in his role as an environmental attorney to achieving those goals, and Americans deserve to hear his message,” she said. “I don’t know a single parent who doesn’t want their child to be healthy and well, and that’s what he stands for, for me.”

    Campaign volunteer Laura Jones was thrilled by the support of the Southern California residents who protested.

    “We’re absolutely thrilled that everyone has shown up to say to CNN, we want more voices, more choices in this election and in the debates,” Ms. Jones told The Epoch Times.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/23/2024 – 21:00

  • Large Terror Attack On Synagogue & Orthodox Churches In Russia's Dagestan
    Large Terror Attack On Synagogue & Orthodox Churches In Russia’s Dagestan

    Unknown terrorists went on a rampage using automatic weapons against religious sited in Dagestan, Russia on Sunday night. Authorities in the southern Russian republic situated in the Caucuses say that police officers were killed and wounded as the gunman targeted a synagogue and an Orthodox church.

    At least nine are dead, and 25 injured. An Orthodox priest was also slain. A fire also resulted at the synagogue, with emergency response crews subsequently battling the blaze. Some reports say that two Orthodox churches were hit in the assault, and that a priest was killed.

    Building in Dagestan on fire, via RT/social media

    According to Russia’s state-run TASS: “At approximately 18:00 [Moscow time] in Derbent, unknown persons fired at a synagogue and a church with automatic weapons. According to preliminary information, one police officer was killed and one was wounded.”

    “The car in which the suspects fled was identified as a white Volkswagen Polo, license plate 921 The circumstances are being clarified. Information about the dead and wounded police officers is being clarified.”

    And a Russian Internal Affairs Ministry statement indicated: “In Makhachkala, unknown persons fired at a traffic police post on Ermoshkin Street.  The ‘Interception’ plan was announced. The identities of the attackers are being established.”

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    It appears that at least some of the attackers may have gotten away, with RT reporting the following statement:

    The suspects drove away in a white Volkswagen Polo, the police said, adding that they are currently searching for the vehicle.

    The below includes more details via state-backed RT:

    The assailants in Derbent reportedly broke into the Orthodox church and killed a local priest by slitting his throat, said Shamil Khadulaev, the head of the regional public oversight committee which monitors the observance of human rights in prisons. Other regional authorities have not commented on this information.

    The synagogue was reportedly set on fire. Videos and photos have surfaced on social media purporting to show the building engulfed in flames.

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

    Judging from some of the details to have emerged thus far, this appears to have been an Islamist terror attack, possibly by ISIS or an affiliated group.

    The situation including efforts to apprehend the gunmen may have occurred over a period of hours.

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    Videos show large fires over the city of the attack and a heavy police response, with running street battles…

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    Potential Jewish casualties from the synagogue attack remain uncertain in the immediate aftermath, and as more details emerge.

    Russia has been on edge ever since the March 22, 2024 Crocus City Hall attack in Moscow, which killed at least 145 and wounded hundreds more after heavily armed gunmen stormed the mall and concert venue. ISIS-K took responsibility for the large-scall killings in the aftermath. This new Dagestan attack could be a copy-cat incident.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/23/2024 – 20:25

  • "This Is Going To Be Far Worse Than The Great Depression…"
    “This Is Going To Be Far Worse Than The Great Depression…”

    Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

    Financial writer and precious metals broker Bill Holter has been documenting all the unpayable debt that has been building up in the financial system like cancer. 

    The latest black hole of default is coming from a big bank in Japan.  Norinchukin Bank is selling $63 billion in Treasuries and other sovereign bonds to stay afloat.  Then there is recent news announced by the FDIC that 63 US banks (the names are being kept secret) have more than $500 billion in losses, and let’s not forget about the trillions in losses sitting on the books of European banks ready to suck the world into a black debt hole.  This is just a few of many on a long list of destabilizing problems that can tank the entire over-indebted financial system. 

    Holter warns, “The list is so long…”

    “it could be a banking problem.  It could be a derivatives problem.  It could be a derivatives problem in the stock market, the bond market and you could see a failure to deliver in silver.  Some type of warfare could crash the system.  You could see warfare in Ukraine, Israel or Tiawan. 

    The system is so unstable, at this point, it could be anything that could bring it down. 

    Unpayable debt is not just a US problem.  This is all over the world.  Central banks are having to issue huge amounts of debt because we are in the exponential decay phase.  We are exactly where Richard Russell said we would be 20 years ago.  It’s inflate or die, and the only way to inflate is to create more money supply.”

    Add to that the $10 trillion in debt the US Government has to roll over by the end of the year.  Meanwhile, the US government piles on $1 trillion in new debt every 100 days.  What could go wrong?

    Holter said the last time he was on USAW that there was a little less than a 50% chance we would even have an election.  Now, he predicts it is more likely there will be no 2024 Presidential Election.  Holter says:

    “There is no way the system, as it is now, survives.  It’s mathematically impossible.  So, if it is mathematically impossible, are they going to blow smoke . . . up until the day it blows up?  Or are they going to do something to blow it up and then say our programs and policies were working except for XYZ this or whatever. 

    They have to kick the table over.  They cannot allow the table to fall over on its own because then there is going to be finger pointing.  To avoid the finger pointing, they have got to kick the table over.”

    Holter also thinks gold is going to exponential numbers to back all the debt the USA has. 

    If you go with the 8,030 tons of gold the government claims is in Fort Knox, you will need a dollar price of gold at “$125,000 per ounce for 100% gold backing of the dollar.”

    Holter also says, “The dollar is being pushed out of the global financial system…”

    “Demand for dollars is shrinking at a time when borrowing demand is rising.”  This is a going to be a disaster for America and anyone holding dollars in the future.

    In closing, Holter says, “The financial collapse that is coming will be worse than anything we have ever experienced…”

    “This is going to be far worse than the Great Depression simply because society itself is far worse. . . . Back in the Great Depression, you had neighbors helping neighbors.  Today you will have neighbors picking on other neighbors like vultures.”

    There is much more in the 51-minute interview.

    Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with financial writer and precious metals expert Bill Holter for 6.22.24.

    *  *  *

    To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here

    Bill Holter’s website just keep getting more and more viewers, and it’s still free.  It’s called BillHolter.com.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/23/2024 – 19:50

  • Maher Audience Silenced After Andrew Cuomo Admits NYC Trump Trial Should Have Never Happened
    Maher Audience Silenced After Andrew Cuomo Admits NYC Trump Trial Should Have Never Happened

    Former governor of New York from 2011 to 2021 Andrew Cuomo appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher on Friday where he discussed the implications of the New York City Trump trial with host Maher. 

    Maher’s mostly liberal audience is caught quiet when Maher and Cuomo start frankly discussing whether or not the trial was helpful for the Trump campaign. 

    “The trial in New York, the one he [Trump] got convicted for, was the greatest fundraising bonanza ever. He was lagging behind Biden, and now he’s pulled quite a bit ahead,” Maher said to Cuomo during the show. 

    “That trial was the greatest reason people had to send their checks for $5, $10, 2$5, whatever dollars to Donald Trump. So I was always with you [Andrew Cuomo] on the one in New York, the hush money trial. I don’t think they should have brought that one,” he continues. 

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    To which Cuomo, who was elected as New York State Attorney General in 2006, replied: “That case, the attorney general’s case in New York, frankly, should have never been brought.”

    Cuomo continued: “If his name was not Donald Trump and if he wasn’t running for president. I’m the former AG in New York. I’m telling you, that case would have never been brought. And that’s what is offensive to people. And it should be!”

    “Because if there’s anything left…it’s belief in the Justice system!”

    In the same episode, Maher also asks how Joe Biden could be ahead in the polls when he is losing votes with so many key demographics.

    “And yet I read in the polls he pulled ahead this week. Explain that to me,” Maher says.

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    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/23/2024 – 19:25

  • Declining Black Church Attendance Weakens Key Democratic Asset
    Declining Black Church Attendance Weakens Key Democratic Asset

    Where black voters are concerned, the bad news for Democrats keeps piling higher. First came a steady stream of polls showing Biden’s support among the Democrat cornerstone constituency keeps plummeting from the virtual monopoly he enjoyed in 2020. Now Democratic strategists are facing the reality that, thanks to falling attendance, the political potency of black churches is also tumbling. 

    An overwhelming 92% of black voters backed Biden in 2020. In one of the largest and most sudden demographic-political shifts you’ll witness in your lifetime, a recent New York Times/Siena poll found that only 42% of blacks in six key battleground states plan to vote for Biden in November. While he’ll be splitting the spoils with independent Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Trump is poised to post the strongest Republican presidential-candidate performance among blacks since at least 1964. 

    Thin turnout for an April service at Columbia, South Carolina’s Zion Baptist Church reflects a national trend (Jessie Wardarski/AP)

    The damage to Biden’s electoral prospects is being compounded as drooping black church attendance undercuts what has traditionally been one of Democrats’ most powerful voter registration and turnout weapons.  

    There’s an element of poetic justice to this development: Much of the trend can be attributed to Democrat-led Covid-era lockdowns and fearmongering. “Overall church membership has dropped precipitously in the U.S. since the last presidential cycle, as many churchgoers formed new habits during the pandemic and never made their way back to the pews,” writes Story Hinckley at the Christian Science Monitor. 

    Black churches have been a de facto, tax-advantaged Democratic Party auxiliary. In addition to coordinating voter registration, they’ve served as a formidable voter-turnout engine. Under the moniker “Souls to the Polls,” blacks churches have helped mobilize their congregations to vote following Sunday worship services.  

    The Souls to the Polls movement originated in Florida in the 1990s before becoming a black, nationwide phenomenon (via WGCU)

    Those church-based contributions to Democratic political forces are sure to sag mightily in 2024, as black attendance is leading the downward trend that crosses demographic lines. In pre-pandemic 2019, 61% of Black Protestants said they attended church at least monthly. By 2023, it had plummeted to just 46%.  

    In the battleground state of Michigan — which Hillary Clinton lost by just 10,704 votes in 2016 — the Monitor offers a vivid illustration of the dynamic. In the 1980s, New Grace Missionary Baptist Church in the 88% black Detroit enclave of Highland Park routinely had more than a thousand members show up on a typical Sunday. Attendance has now shriveled to somewhere between 125 and 175 people.

    Recently, despite weeks of promoting a “Lift Every Voice and Vote” voter-registration event at the church, fewer than three dozen people showed up. “This place should be full,” lamented Highland Park Mayor Glenda McDonald. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/23/2024 – 19:15

  • Chemicals From East Palestine Train Disaster Spread To 16 States: Study
    Chemicals From East Palestine Train Disaster Spread To 16 States: Study

    Authored by Edward Carver via Common Dreams,

    Toxic chemicals released during fires following the Norfolk Southern train derailment in Ohio last year spread to 16 states and likely Canada, according to a study released Wednesday.

    The pollution, some of which came from the burning of vinyl chloride, a carcinogen, spread over 540,000 square miles, showing clearly that “the impacts of the fire were larger in scale and scope than the initial predictions,” the authors of the study, published in Environmental Research Letters, found.

    NTSB/Handout via Xinhua

    Lead author David Gay, coordinator of the National Atmospheric Deposition Program, said that he was very surprised by the way the chemicals had spread. “I didn’t expect to see an impact this far out,” he told The Washington Post.

    Gay said the results did not mean “death and destruction,” as concentrations were low on an absolute scale—”not melting steel or eating paint off buildings”—but that they were still “very extreme” compared to normal, with measurements higher than recorded in the previous ten years.

    “I think we should be concerned,” Juliane Beier, an expert on vinyl chloride effects who didn’t take part in the study, told the Post, citing the possibility of long-term environmental impacts on communities.

    A Norfolk Southern train crashed in East Palestine, Ohio, a village near the Pennsylvania border and the Appalachian foothills, on February 3, 2023. Dozens of train cars derailed, at least 11 of which were carrying hazardous materials, some of which caught fire after the accident and burned for days. Fearing a large-scale explosion, authorities drained the vinyl chloride from five cars into a trench and set it alight in a controlled burn.

    A former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official later said that the controlled burn went against EPA rules; the head of the National Transportation Safety Board said the deliberate burning was unnecessary.

    The local impact of the fires was felt acutely in the month after the accident—a “potent chemical odor hung in the air for weeks,” according toThe Guardian, and people reported nausea, rashes, and headaches.

    The new study helps explain the wider environmental impact. The researchers looked at inorganic compound samples in rain and snow at 260 sites. The highest levels of chloride were found in northern Pennsylvania and near the Canada-New York border, which was downwind from the accident.

    The authors also found “exceptionally high” pH levels in rain as far away as northern Maine. They did not look at organic compounds such as dioxin or PFAS, which likely also spread following the accident, The Guardian reported. The elevated inorganic chemical levels dropped two to three weeks after the accident.

    Norfolk Southern has agreed to pay nearly $1 billion in damages following two settlements reached in recent months. In April, the company reached a $600 million deal with class action plaintiffs living within 20 miles of the derailment site. That deal won’t be finalized until the residents officially agree. In May, the company reached a separate $310 million settlement with the federal government. The company has said that it has already spent $107 million on community support and removed the impacted soil.

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    Norfolk Southern makes billions in profits every year, and the company gave its CEO a 37% pay hike last year, drawing widespread criticism. The company also spent $2.3 million on federal lobbying last year, according to OpenSecrets data reported by Roll Call.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/23/2024 – 18:40

  • Biden Admin Asked Amazon To Hide Vaccine-Critical Books During Pandemic
    Biden Admin Asked Amazon To Hide Vaccine-Critical Books During Pandemic

    Authored by Steve Watson via modernity.news,

    The Biden Administration pressured Amazon to hide books for sale on its platform that were critical of vaccines during the pandemic, it has been revealed.

    The findings were presented by the House Judiciary Committee and Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government in documents that show Amazon reduced the visibility of titles that the government deemed overly critical of big pharma shots.

    The documents show that some books were simply generally critical of vaccines, with several written by medical professionals. Some were even just reviews of scientific studies.

    The Federal government compiled a “Do Not Promote” list, to which more than 40 titles were added.

    In a series of X posts, Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Jim Jordan explained how internal emails from Amazon contain employees revealed that “the impetus for this request is criticism from the Biden Administration.”

    They even targeted a children’s book that they deemed to be too friendly toward the unvaccinated.

    “Don’t let the Biden Admin tell you that their censorship campaign was about concerns of misinformation going viral on social media,” Jordan wrote. 

    He further urged “They were going after BOOKS too. This is–and always has been–about suppressing difavored views, not purported challenges of new technologies.”

    There is a deep irony attached to this story in that the Biden Administration has repeatedly accused Republicans of trying to ‘ban’ books nationwide.

    While in almost all of these cases, the likes of Florida governor Ron DeSantis were expressing opposition to school libraries carrying sexually explicit books aimed at children, it turns out the Biden Administration was actively working to censor books for adults.

    Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/23/2024 – 17:30

  • Snopes Finally Admits Trump Never Called Neo-Nazis 'Very Fine People'
    Snopes Finally Admits Trump Never Called Neo-Nazis ‘Very Fine People’

    One of the more common lies peddled by top Democrats, including of course President Joe Biden, is that former President Donald Trump called neo-Nazis ‘very fine people’ during his press conference following the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally in 2017.

    Except, anyone who watched the full clip knows it’s bullshit, which is why anyone peddling the hoax has been operating in bad faith.

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    Now, after seven years, and days before the Trump-Biden debate in Atlanta, Snopes has finally admitted that Trump never called neo-Nazis ‘very fine people.’ 

    “While Trump did say that there were ‘very fine people on both sides,’ he also specifically noted that he was not talking about neo-Nazis and White supremacists and said they should be ‘condemned totally.’ Therefore, we have rated this claim ‘False,” wrote Snopes.

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    Of note, Biden launched his his 2020 campaign based on this lie.

    “The president of the United States assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it,” Biden claimed in his campaign announcement video. “And in that moment, I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I’d ever seen in my lifetime.“

    Amazing…

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    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/23/2024 – 16:55

  • Children Among Mass Casualties After US-Supplied Missile Targets Crowded Crimean Beach
    Children Among Mass Casualties After US-Supplied Missile Targets Crowded Crimean Beach

    Russia on Sunday is reporting a mass casualty event in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol, and is saying that a US long-range missile was behind it.

    The Russian Ministry of Health in a recent update said that five people were killed in a series of strikes from Ukraine, which injured 124 people including 27 children. Among the deceased, two were children, the ministry said. The casualty toll is likely to climb over the next hours amid the emergency response and as hospital data is reported.

    Image on Telegram showing wound civilians treated by emergency crews.

    Moscow is calling it a ‘terrorist missile strike’ on Sevastopol with five US-supplied ATACMS tactical missiles, carried out just after noon local time. What’s more is that Russia says they were equipped with cluster warheads, making for a bigger casualty strike zone.

    Crimean officials said that in once instance a missile exploded above a crowded beach, unleashing shrapnel on people who had been relaxing there.

    A separate Russian Defense Ministry (MoD) statement directly accused Washington. “Flight missions for ATACMS missiles are programmed by American specialists based on US satellite reconnaissance, making Washington primarily responsible for the deliberate missile strike on Sevastopol’s civilians,” the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) stated.

    Widely circulating brief video showing the moment a projectile exploded over beachgoers in Sevastopol…

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    “Therefore, the responsibility for the deliberate missile strike on Sevastopol’s civilians lies primarily with Washington, which supplied this weapon to Ukraine, as well as the Kiev regime, from whose territory the strike was launched,” the MoD statement added.

    The statement explained that while anti-air defenses were able to down four of the five inbound rockets, the fight changed trajectory due to the intercept attempts resulting in “its warhead exploding in the air over the city.”

    It emphasized this was “terrorist attack on the civilian infrastructure of Sevastopol with U.S.-supplied ATACMS tactical missiles loaded with cluster warheads.”

    Local video of the aftermath showing a largely deserted beach…

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    AFP writes of emerging unverified footage that “Videos posted on social media showed people running from the beach as explosions went off and people in swimming outfits carrying a stretcher.”

    Russia’s military warned that “Such actions will not be left without a response.” The Biden administration has regularly sought to claim that US-supplied weapons transferred to Ukraine can only be used to attack military targets and are “defensive” – even in the instance of cross-border attacks.

    Via The Telegraph

    Likely Russia is gearing up to pummel multiple sites across Ukraine, and will try to go after bases hosting foreign military equipment and arms storehouses. This event is a major escalation, and likely President Putin himself will address it in a statement at some point in the next 24 hours.

    Already Ukraine has been struggling through nationwide rolling blackouts due to stepped-up airstrikes and drone attacks primarily targeting the nation’s energy infrastructure, as its population braces for more.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/23/2024 – 15:45

  • Fragility In A One Stock, Stock "Market"
    Fragility In A One Stock, Stock “Market”

    By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

    Ok, calling this a “one stock” stock “market” seems a bit extreme, but is it? On Thursday when stocks rolled over (the Nasdaq 100 started higher at the open and then dropped almost 300 points from there), virtually everyone I spoke to pointed to NVDA shares reversing as the main weight on the overall indices. Throughout much of Thursday and Friday, I was receiving many more notes on support/resistance related to NVDA than the indices, Treasuries, or anything else that could be whipping markets around. Yes, Friday was “triple witching,” which likely added to the volatility, but there was one stock that dominated all market conversation.

    I’m wondering if that is why it is so difficult to make sense of markets on many fronts? Why we seem to be getting a variety of indicators, all pointing in different directions?

    Breadth, one of the topics in last week’s Same But Different, is clearly front and center in this report.

    Breadth, along with the role that options are playing in the market, and a whirlwind of Geopolitical Risks, were discussed on Bloomberg TV on Tuesday (Academy’s segment starts at the 50-minute mark).

    Before Jumping into the “Macro”

    In case you missed it, Academy published our mid-month assessment of Geopolitical Risk – Perception vs Reality.

    • Wildcard Risk, a catch-all, rose the most. Partly because North Korea ratcheted up a notch or two on Putin’s visit (SITREP) and shots were fired along the DMZ. The escalation between China and the Philippines near the Second Thomas Shoal is also attracting our attention, as we have a Defense Treaty in place with the Philippines. This could get tricky and be very disruptive.

    • We also provided our updated views on what we see the market pricing in, versus what we think should be getting priced in for Russia, Trade Wars, the Middle East, Commodity Prices, and CYBER.

    The “One Stock” Stock Market at a Glance

    ETF Flows

    We start with 3 ETFs.

    • TQQQ, a 3x leveraged ETF on the Nasdaq 100 (with a $24 billion market cap), has been experiencing outflows for several weeks. While we didn’t include it here, SQQQ, a 3x inverse ETF on the Nasdaq 100, has been garnering some serious inflows (though only $3 billion). One way to interpret this data, is that “faster” money has been taking profits in the Nasdaq 100 and while still outright bullish (based on relative market caps), it shows signs that the market is tired.

    • QQQ is a Nasdaq 100 ETF. It is a whopping $284 billion, and I view it as a bellwether of flows from buy and hold “mom and pop” accounts, to hedge funds, to large asset managers adjusting their asset allocations. It has trickled higher in terms of flows since the start of the 2nd quarter, but had some meaningful outflows in the past few days. Again, more “trimming” than exiting risk, but an interesting development.

    • Which brings us to NVDL, an ETF that provides a 2x leveraged return on NVDA. It is $4.3 billion in size, so not big, but big enough for us to pay attention to. While investors were shedding risk in the Nasdaq 100, this ETF was getting large inflows! I still cannot understand why the regulators approve single stock ETFs of any sort (especially leveraged). There seem to be enough ways to invest in single stocks without needing an ETF. Let alone an ETF that is path dependent. The leveraged ETFs (unless a stock moves in one direction day after day) will always underperform the leveraged return of the stock from the initial investment date (it is a function of the rebalancing mechanism). Why this ETF exists, I don’t know, but it seems to give us a glimpse into the “one stock” nature of this market.

    We didn’t dare include XLK (a $71 billion ETF focused on the Tech Sector) in the chart, because it would have broken the chart. Since the start of the 2nd quarter, it has experienced mild outflows (consistent with profit taking), but it had a very large inflow on Tuesday and outflow on Friday, presumably associated with the rebalancing (MarketWatch Report). Our understanding is that the rules that this ETF follows only allow for 2 stocks to be weighted above 5% (at the time of the reweighting). Currently those two stocks are MSFT and AAPL (both a little over 20%). NVDA (at 5.8%) is expected to “flip flop” with AAPL as one of the two most weighted stocks. That seems to be setting up traders. As a quick test for Bloomberg users, pull up your “favorite” ETF and go to the Current News page (CN ). See how many stories are listed under the ETF of choice. My experience is that right now, XLK is attracting a lot of attention. Because of its size and the rebalancing, it is likely influencing individual stock prices in ways that are not intuitive for fans of passive investing. Needing to buy/sell $10 billion of some single stocks hardly seems “dignified” for a “passive” strategy, but it is what it is. Presumably, the rules were designed when megacaps didn’t grow by leaps and bounds on an almost daily basis.

    While we are not here to hammer on “passive,” it seems important to remember that every $100 that currently flows in or out of QQQ (for example) creates $45 of buying or selling for 7 companies (8 stocks but 7 companies as both GOOG and GOOGL are in the top 8).

    The trading related to ETF inflows and outflows is robotic. There are rules that are followed (daily and on rebalancing), but in an era where so many investors prefer index-based ETFs to individual stocks or managed mutual funds, I sometimes wonder if we truly “understand” what we are getting, and the ramifications of those investments, when the indices are so heavily skewed to a few stocks (this isn’t a new issue, but has risen to the top of conversations once again).

    Before finishing this section on some of the mixed signals in ETF flows and the “passivity” of these strategies, we’d be remiss not to include QQQE (a Nasdaq 100 equal weighted ETF). If you thought that investors would flock to an ETF where any “catch-up” rally will do well, you are wrong. Shares outstanding are still lower than they were last summer (when it seemed much easier to get on the “laggard” train) and the ETF is “only” $1.25 billion, a fraction of the size of NVDL despite, at least to me, being a product that gives access to something that would be difficult to replicate on your own. RSP, an S&P 500 equal weighted ETF, does have $54 billion in AUM, but has been experiencing outflows.

    I’m stuck seeing too much focus on a single stock and am concerned by the nature of passive funds impacting a variety of stocks. I cannot get behind the “catch up” rally, because unlike last fall, where you could bet that the data was improving and the average stock had not responded, we’ve had the “good” data and haven’t been able to get a strong response from much of the market.

    Riddle Me This – Investor Sentiment

    The first two things I look to when thinking about investor sentiment are:

    • The CNN Fear & Greed Index. It currently registers as “fear.” With the VIX at 13, that didn’t jump out as being an obvious place for this index to register. A month ago, the index was in “greed” mode, and I’m not really sure how it is coming up with “fear,” but I have to respect it (maybe it is picking up on some of the fund flows we’ve been seeing, which have shown reductions in risk taking). So, we have one measure saying “fear.”
    • The next stop is the AAII Investor Sentiment Survey. Lo and behold, 44.4% are bullish. Higher than a month ago. Only 22.5% are bearish, far lower than a month ago. This measure is telling me “greed.”

    While these two measures don’t always agree (and are generally good contrarian signals at the extremes), one is saying fear (though not at a “signal” strength), and the other is saying greed (at close to “signal” strength).

    “Clear as mud” is one possible explanation. One picks up surveys where investors can’t help thinking about the broad market and the economy overall, and the other picks up “hard data” where much of that hard data is influenced by all the changes in the options markets. We didn’t even talk about the option selling based ETFs or even the heavily skewed weightings in indices. Something to explore at the very least.

    Given those mixed signals, we can go back to my favorite fallback indicator – RSI. RSI (or Relative Strength Indicator) for the Nasdaq 100 is in overbought territory but has been coming down. At least this indicator makes some sense to me. Greedy, but less greedy than a few weeks ago.

    Rates

    The 10-year is still sitting below 4.3% (I continue to believe that 4.3% to 4.5% is the “right” range for now).

    • Inflation data is likely to continue softening, supporting Fed cut projections and helping yields across the curve.

    • European politics will add volatility. Last week, political news out of Europe seemed to help the bond market, but I’m not expecting that to be the norm.

    • Our Deficits. The CBO raised their estimates for this year’s deficit to just under $2 trillion (more than a 25% increase from earlier projections). They see no end in sight, and I believe that the debate will put the deficit in the headlights (and not in a good way) as the reality of most policies seems to be destined to increase the deficit (just doing it in different ways).

    The short end of the curve should benefit from data, while the longer end of the yield curve is likely to be impacted by re-focusing on the deficit, and the debate seems like an ideal catalyst for that.

    Credit

    Corporate issuers had to take advantage of the drop in yields and the window to issue ahead of the potentially slow July/August period, and that pushed spreads slightly higher.

    I’m still all-in on adding to credit risk, across the board, from structured, to high yield, to IG, to munis. There are some interesting charts showing that for investment grade companies, net interest expense is actually a positive. So many companies are locking in low yields and many companies are sitting on huge cash piles earning more than their cost of debt, that interest is coming into corporate America, rather than being paid out. Not sure how long that lasts, and it mostly impacts a handful of companies, but interesting, nonetheless. That is the only new thing that I would add to Credit Spreads Can Go Much Tighter.

    Bottom Line

    Greedy, but less greedy. It seems like not only is the “catch up” trade not gaining traction, but even the best performing areas are seeing some profit taking.

    Is this a possible inflection point in the direction of flows? Have we set ourselves up to the point that momentum might waver, triggering selling in the momentum arena, which has been a great factor to chase this year? If so, does the weighting of a handful of stocks in the indices (and ETFs) force too much liquidity into too few stocks? We’ve been arguing that the depth of liquidity has been low – both on the way up and the way down, and too much is being channeled into too few names. This is no fault of any of the individual names (other than they have had incredible success growing into great businesses), but the “passive” investing makes it difficult sometimes to see the forest for the trees, and I suspect this might be one of those times.

    It is unclear and we need to see where we head in the coming days and weeks, but the stock market once again feels ripe for a sharp, fast pullback. If I’m right on yields, this could certainly help push us in that direction.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/23/2024 – 15:10

  • Unhinged Jamaal Bowman Goes On Profanity-Laden Rant At Bronx Rally With AOC
    Unhinged Jamaal Bowman Goes On Profanity-Laden Rant At Bronx Rally With AOC

    Fire alarm specialist Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York delivered a an unhinged rant at a rally on Saturday, criticizing U.S. involvement in Israel and AIPAC and flailing his arms wildly while starting to chant his own name at one point.

    “We are gonna show f—ing AIPAC the power of the motherf—ing South Bronx,” he screamed at the crowd. 

    Bowman is up for re-election this Tuesday and is currently getting absolutely smoked in the polls, down 48% to 31% to George Latimer, according to Fox News. 

    He targeted the American Israel Public Affairs Committee for its recent $14 million campaign against his reelection due to his stance on Israel.

    Bowman has been a longtime critic of the Israeli government and its war against Hamas in Gaza and described the conflict as a genocide against Palestinians. At the rally, he reiterated that U.S. dollars are funding the killing of innocent civilians.

    “Cease fire now!” he had the crowd chanting while taking a wooden stool and slamming it onto the stage repeatedly. 

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    “People ask me why I got a foul mouth. What am I supposed to do? You coming after me. You coming after my family. You coming after my children. I’m not supposed to fight back? I’m not supposed to fight back? We’re gonna show them who the f— we are,” Bowman shrieked on stage. 

    “We are not gonna stay silent while the U.S. tax dollar kills babies and women and children. My opponent supports genocide. My opponent and AIPAC are the ones destroying our democracy,” he added, stating: “And it is on us, it is on all of us to save our democracy and save our collective humanity. Because this race is about our collective humanity.”

    And of course AOC was there to help “turn up a vote”. Bowman added: “Cease fire now, let’s get it poppin'”

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    AOC went on her own unhinged rant later in the rally, even forcing out a ‘y’all’ to try and blend in and act as though she doesn’t spend a majority of her waking hours far outside of the Bronx:

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    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/23/2024 – 14:35

  • "This Cannot Go On Forever": Explaining The U.S. Debt Crisis In Simple Terms
    “This Cannot Go On Forever”: Explaining The U.S. Debt Crisis In Simple Terms

    Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

    James Lavish, CFA, is a seasoned professional in institutional investing and risk management with over two decades of experience. He is currently the Managing Partner of the Bitcoin Opportunity Fund, which focuses on public and private investments in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Lavish is recognized for his work in educating others about financial fundamentals through his newsletter, The Informationist, which simplifies complex financial concepts for a broad audience.

    On my talk with him last week, I asked him to lay out, in simple terms, exactly just how screwed the U.S. economy is.

    James opened by talking about the fact that the numbers and what consumers are feeling are like having two different economies: “You’re seeing two economies out there. And that’s causing a lot of confusion out there. You hear the Fed talking about inflation. You hear the White House saying they’ve got inflation tackled. You hear businesses saying that they’re struggling. You hear consumers saying that they’re struggling. They can’t stand the inflation, the prices. They can’t keep up. But yet you see these numbers that are coming out that seem to be okay. They’re conflicting.”

    🔉 Listen to the audio of this full hourlong interview here.

    He added: “You’re getting unemployment numbers that are conflicting with the actual job numbers. You’re getting pricing that is conflicting. If you go to the grocery store, you’re looking at the prices, you’re saying there’s no way this is up 3.2 percent from last year. This is up 10, 12, 15 percent. So there’s confusion out there.”

    He then went on to try and explain why this is: “The confusion, Chris, is that you’ve got pockets of recession, which are natural when you have the Fed raise rates so quickly and hold them there for so long. And look, 5.5% is not an incredibly high rate on interest rates on the Fed funds rate historically. But when you raise rates from just over 0%, where they were holding for a decade, to 5%, it’s massive because we’ve become incredibly indebted in this nation, which we’re going to touch on quite a bit here. But the most important thing to understand is why people are asking, ‘If the Fed has raised rates so steeply, why is the inflation rate not come down? Why is it not back to the two percent or under two percent target?'”

    “And the answer is that it’s because the government is spending wildly, like so incredibly irresponsibly, that it’s causing what we’re calling fiscal dominance, meaning fiscal spending is dominating the Fed’s attempt to tackle inflation by raising rates. And so you’re seeing pockets of recession and people are feeling it. People are feeling it in their pocketbooks and their wallets,” he continued.

    James went on to describe the era of fiscal dominance we are entering: “So what’s happening is it’s the federal spending. It’s the government spending so much money that you’re seeing areas of deep recession. There’s just no question about it. Commercial real estate has a problem, and that means regional banks have a problem. The Fed is all over this. The regional Federal Reserve banks are all over this. They are working with these community banks to make sure that they don’t go under. And we’ve already seen them go under. We saw Silicon Valley go under. That’s a little bit of a different situation that didn’t have to do with commercial real estate, but that had to do with exactly what you talked about. So you have rates that rise catastrophically on a meteoric pace.”

    He also talked about how the rise in rates has effected treasuries on corporate balance sheets: “Treasuries were considered riskless because in the last 15 years, they were riskless. If you owned a treasury, there was pretty much a certainty that the price of that treasury would just gravitate to par, and you would mature and get your maturity payment and all the coupons along the way. However, when you raise interest rates from 0.025% to 5.5% on a bond with a 30-year duration, you’re basically saying that if you went to try to sell that treasury that you own, let’s say a 1.5% treasury with a 30-year yield, and it’s yielding 1.5%, and you try to sell that in the market, that’s a difference of four percent annually for that bond. So if this thing still has 7, 8, 10, or 15 years of duration on it, that means you’re marking this bond down significantly. It’s not just a few percent.”

    James pointed out that protecting the market is crucial at this stage: “The economy is driven by this, and it’s been shown for the last decade that the stock market really is a large part of the economy. It’s not just because of tax receipts off of capital gains, but because people look at their net worth and see their net worth go up in their stocks. They’re willing to spend more of their discretionary income rather than saving it because they think, ‘Oh, well, look, my net worth is up 20%, 30%, 40% in the last couple of years. I’m fine. I’m going to go ahead and spend my paycheck. I’m not going to put any more money into the market. I’m good.’ And so it just drives the economy.”

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    Lavish explains that any crisis now will be kicked up to the sovereign level for the first time in recent history: “We have the tech bubble, and that’s kind of kicked up to the banks. Then we continue on, and we’ve got this risk, this debt indebtedness, that’s now kicked up to the banks. And now we’re coming on the great financial crisis with the housing market. The housing bubble and all of these banks holding this mortgage paper, which is just garbage, end up going under. Where does it get kicked? It gets kicked up to the federal level. And now it’s sitting on the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet. Flash forward to 2020, and you’ve got the lockdowns that caused the entire economy to grind to a halt. The government, in a panic, went and monetized $6 trillion of debt. So now you’ve got a Fed balance sheet that’s holding more treasuries than anybody else in the world.”

    “What’s going on today is that the problem is we have a fiscal policy that is absolutely unimaginably irresponsible,” he says. “We’re running $2 trillion deficits at a time that we’re not even in a recession. All this matters because the indebtedness and the risk have been kicked all the way up to the sovereign level. The punchline is that if you have a collapse of the economy, it’s the sovereign level that must stomach it completely now.”

    And then he lays out the case bare: “We can walk through the numbers, but the bottom line is that the US government and the Treasury have entered a debt spiral. We now have $34.7 trillion of debt, which is over 120% of GDP. If you’re a country with debt over 120% of GDP, your fiat currency fails. This is where we’re at, and we’re just spending and spending and spending.”

    “What happens if you get into a recession? Your tax revenues drop precipitously, and your spending rises at a similar rate because of all your social programs like unemployment and wage security. You could wind up having a deficit that’s not $2 trillion but could be $3, $4, $5, or even $6 trillion if it gets bad enough. Just imagine that. Suddenly, we are adding over 10% to our debt in a year, maybe 20% in a year. That is the debt spiral.”

    He continues: “We can’t do that because the rest of the world will turn around and look at our bonds and say, ‘Why would I buy those bonds if they have to keep issuing new bonds to pay me for my bond?’ We are in a situation where we have to continually issue more and more debt. This is rising exponentially, and there really is no way out. That’s the problem.”

    “Modern monetary theory proponents think it’s just driving the economy; there’s no big deal. However, when the music stops and people stop having confidence in the U.S. Treasury, that feeds into the US dollar. That’s when you get into a problem. Why does that happen? It happens because of inflation. It all goes back to this central problem: this constant and relentless manipulation of the monetary system through central banks that create inflation.”

    “That is a soft default on that debt every single day because the dollars you’re getting paid back in the future are worth less than when you lent them out to the government initially. So, who wants to lend the U.S. Treasury dollars for 30 years when they know that inflation only has to go up to continue the charade?”

    “They get into what’s called a debt spiral. They can’t get out of it. And this is where we are. So what is the option for the U.S. government if they continue to borrow? What does that mean? Well, that means that they must have inflation. There absolutely is no way around it. That inflation allows GDP to grow nominally. Remember that $28.5 trillion number? That has to go up. Nominally meaning just in terms of dollars, not inflation-adjusted.”

    “When you have more dollars in the system, it creates more GDP because there’s more dollars. And so that GDP number goes up. The productivity number goes up. But it’s fake. It’s not more stuff. It’s just stuff that’s more expensive. So there are more dollars in the system. And when you go to pay down that debt in the future, you’re paying it down with dollars that are cheaper, that are worth less. This is called the debasement of the U.S. dollar. The U.S. dollar gets worth less and less and less every single year.”

    He concludes: “And so this is the challenge. The U.S. government absolutely must have negative real rates. What do I mean by that? That means they must have coupons on their treasuries that are lower than the inflation rate, and they have to have this in perpetuity. That’s the only way they can keep this charade going. It won’t go on forever. Make no mistake, this cannot go on forever.”

    You can listen to the full hour long interview, including insights on when the market cracks, ugly looking treasury auctions and more, at this link.

    QTR’s Disclaimer: Please read my full legal disclaimer on my About page here. This post represents my opinions only. In addition, please understand I am an idiot and often get things wrong and lose money. I may own or transact in any names mentioned in this piece at any time without warning. Contributor posts and aggregated posts have been hand selected by me, have not been fact checked and are the opinions of their authors. They are either submitted to QTR by their author, reprinted under a Creative Commons license with my best effort to uphold what the license asks, or with the permission of the author. This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any stocks or securities, just my opinions. I often lose money on positions I trade/invest in. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time, without further warning. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. These positions can change immediately as soon as I publish this, with or without notice. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. I exist on the fringe. The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I did my best to be honest about my disclosures but can’t guarantee I am right; I write these posts after a couple beers sometimes. I edit after my posts are published because I’m impatient and lazy, so if you see a typo, check back in a half hour. Also, I just straight up get shit wrong a lot. I mention it twice because it’s that important.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/23/2024 – 14:00

  • SpaceX Leads Reusable Rocket Race, While China Continues Crashing Boosters To Earth
    SpaceX Leads Reusable Rocket Race, While China Continues Crashing Boosters To Earth

    As of early last week, Elon Musk’s SpaceX had completed 356 launches, 319 landings, and 290 relights, according to flight data from Fox News. This is a monumental achievement for the world’s first private space company to pioneer and deploy reusable rockets. 

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    The reusable Falcon 9 rocket has dominated the launch industry and propelled America into the number one spot in the global space race. 

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    Data from BryceTech shows SpaceX launched 525 spacecraft into orbit in the first quarter. This is more than any other space program worldwide, surpassing China and Russia by a considerable margin. 

    SpaceX launched about 429,125 kg of spacecraft upmass in the quarter, significantly outpacing China’s rocket program (China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation), which launched a measly 29,426 kg. 

    SpaceX’s next-generation Starship rocket, which successfully completed a test flight earlier this month, could indicate that America’s rocket program will lead through 2030.

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    Pivoting to China, where reusable rockets have yet to be deployed, a Long March 2C rocket launched days ago shows the rocket booster falling back to Earth, landing in a populated area with people running for cover. 

    The booster fell to Earth near Guiding County, Qiandongnan Prefecture in Guizhou province, according to another post. An airspace closure notice for the mission established a temporary danger area containing Guiding County, Guizhou. –SpaceNews

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    What’s evident is that China has yet to master reusable rockets, while SpaceX successfully landed its first reusable Falcon 9 rocket in 2015.

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    Earlier this year, there were reports that Beijing-based Orienspace was working on reusable rockets, but the first test flight might not occur until late 2025 or even 2026.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/23/2024 – 13:25

  • Hezbollah Shows Off Israeli Target Bank Of Sensitive Sites In New Video Warning
    Hezbollah Shows Off Israeli Target Bank Of Sensitive Sites In New Video Warning

    Via The Cradle

    Hezbollah released a video titled “To whom it may concern” on Saturday, featuring coordinates of sensitive and vital Israeli targets that would be struck in the event of a war against Lebanon, marking the second such warning within less than a week. 

    The video begins with a clip from the latest speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, where he warns that the Lebanese resistance will fight “without limits, rules, or restraints” if Israel wages a war against Lebanon. It then proceeds to show numerous targets across Israel. 

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    The targets include several sensitive targets in Haifa, the port of Ashdod, the Hadera power station, the Ramat David Military Airport in Afula, Pengrion Airport, Nevatim air base, oil refineries on the coast, and the Research Center at the Dimona Nuclear Reactor. 

    The clip also showed the HaKirya Complex, which includes the headquarters of the Israeli Ministry of Security and the General Staff. Fears are growing in Israel as Tel Aviv has threatened that it is preparing an expanded attack on Lebanon.

    Also on Saturday, retired Israeli general Yitzhak Brik said that declaring war on Lebanon would mean “mass suicide for Israel.”

    The new clip came just a few days after Hezbollah released a nine-minute video of footage filmed by its drones, “…what the hoopoe came back with,” which show several sensitive sites in Israel’s north, namely the port of Haifa and the warships and military sites in its vicinity. 

    The video also showed buildings belonging to the Israeli Rafael defense technology firm north of Haifa, where air defense missiles for the Iron Dome and David’s Sling systems are manufactured, assembled, and stored.

    Below: Hezbollah releases close-up surveillance footage captured recently by its reconnaissance drones, showing sensitive Israeli targets in the north – including Haifa Port, a number of Iron Dome Platforms, and military complexes.

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    “The Hezbollah video conveys an unequivocal message to Israel, that the party is present inside Israel by the air, land, and sea, and is planning what comes next, and that is capable of carrying out severe strikes,” Israel’s Channel 14 news outlet said last week, adding that the filming of this footage is “an Israeli security failure of the first degree … The situation in the north is much worse than we imagine.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/23/2024 – 12:50

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