Jul 25

Today’s News 25th July 2022

  • Escobar: Welcome To NAM 2.0, The End Of The "Rules-Based International Order"
    Escobar: Welcome To NAM 2.0, The End Of The “Rules-Based International Order”

    Authored by Pepe Escobar,

    Those were the days, in 1955, at the legendary Bandung conference in Indonesia, when the newly emancipated Global South started dreaming of building a new world, via what became configured later in 1961 in Belgrade as the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).

    The Empire of Chaos – and Lies – would never allow a starring role for NAM. So it played dirty: everything from hardcore subversion and bribing to military coups and proto-color revolutions.

    Yet now, the Spirit of Bandung lives again, via a sort of NAM 2.0 on steroids: a Newly Aligned Movement, with the leaders of Eurasian integration at the vanguard.

    We just had a taste of which way the geopolitical wind is blowing at the gathering of a new power troika in Tehran. Unlike Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill in 1943, Putin, Raisi and Erdogan did not meet to carve up the world. They met essentially to discuss how another world is possible – through bilaterals, trilaterals, multilaterals and an enhanced role for an array of relatively new geopolitical and geoeconomic institutions.

    Russia – and China – have been on the forefront of all recent key decisions. Their diplomacy has brought Iran to join the SCO as a full member. Their pull is attracting key Global South players to join BRICS+. Russia has all but convinced Turkey to join BRICS+, the SCO and the EAEU, and facilitated the re-approximation of Tehran and Ankara as well as Tehran and Riyadh. Russia has largely influenced the remake/remodel process across West Asia.

    This NAM 2.0 drive – of which China is a key player – stands in stark opposition to how the Empire of Chaos – and Lies – wove its toxic net, via the war on terror, since the start of the millennium. The Empire tried to subdue what it described as MENA (Middle East-Northern Africa) on the basis of two invasions/occupations (Afghanistan-Iraq); a total devastation (Libya); and a protracted proxy war (Syria). All eventually failed.

    And that brings us to the stunning contrast between these two foreign policy approaches, graphically illustrated by the spectacular failure of the teleprompter-reading “leader of the free world” in his visit to Jeddah – he was not even allowed to go to Riyadh – compared to Putin’s performance in Tehran.

    Not only we are witnessing the lineaments of a Russia/Iran/Turkey informal alliance; we are witnessing the alliance reading a soft riot act to the Empire: leave Syria, before you suffer yet another humiliation. And with a Kurd-directed corollary: keep away from the Americans and recognize the authority of Damascus before it’s too late.

    Ankara could never admit it in public, but the fact is Sultan Erdogan – as much against US troops in Syria as Putin and Raisi – even seems to have swiftly calibrated his previous designs on Syrian sovereign territory.

    The much-debated Turkish military operation in northern Syria in the end may be restricted to taming the YPG Kurds. The heart of the action will in fact revolve around how the Russia/Iran/Turkey/Syria alliance will make like impossible for Americans stealing Syrian oil.

    As Russia is now on “take no prisoners” mode when facing the collective West – the mantra in every intervention by Putin, Lavrov, Medvedev, Patrushev – and on top of it firmly aligned with China and Iran, it’s inevitable that every other player across West Asia and beyond is giving undivided attention to the new game in town.

    Go Caspian, Young Man

    Interconnecting West Asia and Central Asia, the Caspian Sea has finally reached the geopolitical and geoeconomic limelight – complete with the groundbreaking consensus reached by the five littoral states at the Caspian Summit in late June to officially ban NATO from these waters.

    Moreover, the leadership in Tehran in no time realized how the Caspian is the perfect, cost-conscious corridor from Iran to the heart of Russia along the Volga.

    So it’s no wonder that Putin himself, in Tehran, proposed the construction of a key stretch of highway on the St Petersburg-Persian Gulf route, much to the delight of the Iranians. Cue to the nostalgic Great Game crowd in that former “rule the waves” island getting serial heart attacks: they could never imagine the Russian “empire” finally having full access to the warm waters of the Persian Gulf.

    So we’re back to the absolutely crucial re-engineering of the International North South Transportation Corridor (INTSC) – which will play for Russia and Iran a parallel role the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) plays for China. In both cases, it’s all about multimodal Eurasia-wide trade and development corridors immune from interference by the imperial Navy.

    And here we see the renewed importance of the hyper-strategic liberation of Mariupol and Kherson by the Russian and DPR forces. The Sea of Azov is now configured as a de facto Russian lake – and the same will eventually happen to what is bound to remain of the (currently Ukrainian) Black Sea coast, Odessa included.

    So we have the ultra-strategic Caspian-Black Sea maritime corridor – via the Volga-Don canal – seamlessly connected to the Black Sea-Mediterranean, and up north, all the way to the Baltic and the fast developing Atlantic-Pacific connector, the Northern Sea Route. Call it the Russian Heartland Water Roads.

    The NATO/Five Eyes/Intermarium combo has absolutely nothing to counteract these (overland) facts on the (Heartland) ground except to throw a pile of HIMARS into the Ukrainian black hole. And of course, keep de-industrializing Europe. In contrast, those across the Global South with a keen sense of history – as in the grand debate of ideas in a Hegelian sense – and also versed in geography and trade relations are busy getting ready to hit (and profit from) the new groove.

    Have strategic ambiguity, will travel

    As much as it’s a blast to survey all the instances of Russia playing strategic ambiguity to levels capable of baffling the entire, bloated “Western intel” apparatus, what is coming to the forefront is how Putin – and Patrushev – are now willfully turning up the pain dial to tactically exhaust not only the Ukrainian black hole but the whole of NATOstan.

    Western governments are collapsing. Sanctions are being ditched – practically in secret. A Deep Freeze winter is a given. And then there’s the incoming economic/financial crisis, the Definitive Monster from Hell, as Martin Armstrong has made it quite clear: “There is no way they can get out of this other than default. If they default, they are worried about millions of people storming the parliaments of Europe…This is really a tremendous financial crisis that we are facing. They have been borrowing year after year since WWII with zero intention of paying anything back.”

    Meanwhile, Moscow may be revving up the turbines to launch – this coming Fall? In the middle of Winter? Next Spring? – a multi-spectrum Mother of All Offensives, capitalizing on a rolling series of interconnected strategies that have already rendered dazed and confused every NATOstan “analyst” in sight.

    That would explain Putin looking like he’s cheerfully whistling JJ Cale’s Call Me the Breeze in most of his public appearances. In his crucial intervention at the Strong Ideas for a New Time forum, he enthusiastically promoted the advent of “truly revolutionary” and “enormous” changes that would lead to the creation of a new, “harmonious, fairer and more community-focused and safe” world order.

    Yet that’s not for everyone: “only truly sovereign states can ensure high growth dynamics.” What that implies is that the unipolar world order, followed by states in the collective West which are hardly sovereign, is condemned to fail, as it’s “becoming a brake on the development of our civilization.”

    Only a self-confident sovereign who does not expect anything constructive from the collective West can get away with describing it as “racist and neo-colonial”, bearing an ideology that “is becoming increasingly more like totalitarianism.” In the old NAM days these words would be met with an assassination.

    So will the “rules-based international order” be preserved? Not a chance, argues Putin: the changes are “irreversible.” For those about to rock, NAM 2.0 salutes you.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 07/25/2022 – 02:00

  • Gen. Mark Milley: China Becoming "More Aggressive" In Pacific
    Gen. Mark Milley: China Becoming “More Aggressive” In Pacific

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,.

    The top U.S. general asserted Sunday that the Chinese regime’s military has become more aggressive and dangerous over the past five years.

    Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that the United States and its allies have conducted more and more intercepts of Chinese aircraft and ships in the Pacific. The number of unsafe encounters has also increased significantly, he said.

    “The message is the Chinese military, in the air and at sea, have become significantly more and noticeably more aggressive in this particular region,” Milley, who recently asked his staff to compile details about interactions between China and the United States and others in the region, said during a trip to Indonesia on Sunday.

    …

    The top general, who has faced congressional blowback for holding two phone calls with a top Chinese general during the waning months of the Trump administration, did not provide specific figures about the incidents involving Chinese jets or ships.

    …

    U.S. military officials have recently raised alarm about the possibility that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could invade Taiwan amid speculation the CCP could take inspiration from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February. The CCP has stepped up its military provocations against Taiwan in 2022 as it looks to intimidate it into assimilating with the communist mainland.

    Two Chinese SU-30 fighter jets take off from an unspecified location to fly a patrol over the South China Sea, in an undated file photo. (Jin Danhua/Xinhua via AP)

    Milley also made note of an agreement between the CCP and the Solomon Islands that will allow Beijing to potentially construct a naval base in the South Pacific region.

    “This is an area in which China is trying to do outreach for their own purposes. And again, this is concerning because China is not doing it just for benign reasons,” Milley told reporters Sunday.

    “They’re trying to expand their influence throughout the region. And that has potential consequences that are not necessarily favorable to our allies and partners in the region.”

    Elaborating further, Milley said that the “vast majority” of countries in the Pacific want the U.S. military to be more involved amid the CCP threat.

    …

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/24/2022 – 23:30

  • Entire North Carolina Police Department Resigns In Protest Over Progressive Town Manager
    Entire North Carolina Police Department Resigns In Protest Over Progressive Town Manager

    The entire North Carolina police department resigned Friday after a new town manager was hired.

    Police officers and other officials in the small town of Kenly submitted mass-resignation letters citing stress, a hostile work environment and an inability to continue the department’s long-term betterment projects, Fox News reports.

    In a letter to Town Manager Justine Jones, Police Chief Josh Gibson expressed regret toward the negative changes he felt were occurring in the department.

    “In my 21 years at the Kenly Police Department, we have seen ups and downs. But, especially in the last 3 years, we have made substantial progress that we had hoped to continue. However, due to the hostile work environment now present in the Town of Kenly, I do not believe progress is possible,” Gibson wrote.

    Kenly Police Chief Josh Gibson posted about how he “put in my 2 weeks notice along with the whole police dept.” over the “hostile work environment.”

    Gibson made the shocking announcement in a Facebook post on Thursday, saying the assistant town manager and a key clerk had joined him and his five officers in quitting in protest.

    “I have put in my 2 weeks notice along with the whole police dept.,” he wrote of the force he has served with for 21 years.

    “The new manager has created an environment I do not feel we can perform our duties and services to the community,” he wrote of Justine Jones, who took up the position early last month.

    New Kenly town manager Justine Jones.

    Local outlets report that neither the police department nor Jones has been willing to speak to the media on the nature of these complaints.

    Gibson’s letter was only one of several resignations that were made publicly available after the mass exodus.

    “It is with a heavy heart that I take this action. I have been with the town since 2004 and fully expected to finish my law enforcement career with the Town of Kenly. Unfortunately, there are decisions being made that jeopardize my safety and make me question what the future will hold for a Kenly Police Officer,” wrote officer G.W. Strong.

    While all others addressed their resignations to Gibson, the police chief himself submitted his to Jones.

    Jones was just hired as town manager last month after serving in various local government positions in other states. Her new position was celebrated by the Town of Kenly in a June press release.

    She had started on June 2 after “a nationwide search,” according to a statement which said that “Jones has dedicated her career to public service over the last 16 years during which she worked in progressively responsible positions with local governments in Minnesota, Virginia, South Carolina and North Carolina,” the town wrote in the statement. “She began her municipal career as the Executive Assistant to the City Manager and National Urban Fellow in the City of Norfolk, Virginia.”

    The release did not mention, however, how she had sued a previous employer in neighboring South Carolina for racial discrimination after she was fired in March 2015, according to WRAL.

    She accused Richland County leaders of “hostile” treatment and for not paying her fairly because she was black and had a disability, court docs show. She also accused the county of discriminating against her because she was a “whistleblower” who “reported serious fraud, wrongdoing, and violations of the law.”

    The lawsuit was voluntarily dismissed in April 2017, court records show, without elaborating on why. Before getting hired by Kenly, she listed herself as “Principal CEO” of her own consulting company, Word of Mouth Realtime, her LinkedIn shows.

    Police leadership and active duty officers were joined in their resignation by other officials.

    “I have truly enjoyed working for The Town the last four years. Due to the current situations and the stress in the work area lately, my main concern is my health, and right now I need to focus on my wellbeing. The work area is very hostile and I will not let myself be around that kind of atmosphere,” wrote Christy Thomas, utility clerk for the town of Kenly.

    Some outgoing government employees kept their messages curt and to the point — including Town Clerk Sharon Evans.

    “I will be retiring sooner than I had planned. This is my two weeks notice as of today. I can no longer work under the stress,” wrote Evans.

    Meanwhile, Johnston County Sheriff Steve Bizzell assured WRAL that his deputies would be “stepping up” to cover for the missing Kenly cops.

    “I will be there for the people of Kenly, and they can rest assured they will have deputies patrolling the streets,” he insisted. If not, they can just get the progressive new town manager to contain what is soon sure to be rampant, uncontrolled crime.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/24/2022 – 23:00

  • "This Is Total BS": Musk Denies Banging Sergey Brin's Wife, Calls WSJ "Sub-Tabloid"
    “This Is Total BS”: Musk Denies Banging Sergey Brin’s Wife, Calls WSJ “Sub-Tabloid”

    Update: Musk has denied the entire Wall Street Journal report – tweeting Sunday night “This is total bs. Sergey and I are friends and were at a party together last night!“

    “I’ve only seen Nicole twice in three years, both times with many other people around. Nothing romantic,” he added.

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    When asked if there was anything fans could do, Musk replied: “Call them out on it, I guess. WSJ is supposed to have a high standard for journalism and, right now, they are way sub tabloid.”

    “I work crazy hours, so there just isn’t much time for shenanigans,” Musk continued in another reply. “None of the key people involved in these alleged wrongdoings were even interviewed!”

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    So, Kirsten Grind and Emily Glazer of the Wall Street Journal, what say you?

    *  *  *

    Elon Musk allegedly ‘begged forgiveness’ after having a brief affair last fall with Sergey Brin’s wife, Nicole Shanahan, which prompted the Google co-founder to file for divorce earlier this year, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter.

    Mr. Brin filed for divorce from Nicole Shanahan in January of this year, citing “irreconcilable differences,” according to records filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court. The divorce filing was made several weeks after Mr. Brin learned of the brief affair, those people said.

    At the time of the alleged liaison in early December, Mr. Brin and his wife were separated but still living together, according to a person close to Ms. Shanahan. In the divorce filing, Mr. Brin cited Dec. 15, 2021, as the date of the couple’s separation. -WSJ

    At a party earlier this year, Musk reportedly dropped to one knee in front of Brin and begged forgiveness, apologizing profusely for the transgression. Brin acknowledged the apology, but still isn’t speaking ‘regularly’ to Musk, the people said.

    The tryst happened shortly after Musk broke up with his girlfriend, Grimes, in September.

    Musk and Brin had been longtime friends, with Musk saying for years that he regularly crashed at Brin’s Silicon Valley house. Brin, meanwhile, gave Musk around $500,000 for Tesla during the 2008 financial crisis, when the EV maker was struggling to increase production. In return, Musk gave Brin one of Tesla’s first all-electric SUVs in 2015.

    But in recent months, there’s been a ‘growing tension’ between the two – with Brin reportedly ordering his financial advisers to sell personal investments in Musk’s companies.

    Brin and Shanahan met seven years ago at the Wanderlust yoga retreat, and had been married for nearly four years after previous marriages; Brin to Anne Wojcicki – founder of 23andMe and the sister of YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, and Shanahan to a finance executive.

    Brin is officially the 10th richest person on earth according to Forbes, with a net worth of 89.9 billion. Musk is #1 at 253.4 billion.

    The two had reportedly been facing issues in their marriage “primarily because of Covid pandemic shutdowns and the care of their 3-year-old daughter,” according to people familiar with their relationship.

    Mr. Brin and Ms. Shanahan are now involved in divorce mediation, with Ms. Shanahan seeking more than $1 billion, according to people familiar with the negotiations.

    The two sides have yet to come to an agreement, with Mr. Brin’s side claiming that Ms. Shanahan is asking for much more than her prenuptial agreement entitles her to, the people said. Ms. Shanahan’s side is arguing that her request is only a fraction of Mr. Brin’s $95 billion fortune, and that she signed the prenuptial agreement under duress, while pregnant, the people said. -WSJ

    Over the past two months, Musk has been accused of whipping his dick out in front of a SpaceX flight attendant, which he has denied. He also reportedly had two children with a female executive at Neuralink – bringing the total number of Musk children to 10, one of whom has publicly disavowed him.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/24/2022 – 22:45

  • Three Months That Wrecked The World
    Three Months That Wrecked The World

    Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via DailyReckoning.com,

    The most salient question of our time is: Who destroyed the world?

    We know the “what” of that question already…

    It was the lockdowns, the spending, the monetary insanity, the mandates and the overwhelming and ghastly explosion in the forces of command and control imposed all over the world.

    This broke everything.

    It is nowhere near being put back together again. In fact, it is getting worse.

    The main issue concerns the who.

    This matters if we are ever to gain a clear picture of how the happy life of 2019 turned into the hellscape of 2022.

    Conspirators Like to Brag

    To assist the discovery project, I’ve become a voracious and very close reader of every opportunistic autobiographical account on which I can get my hands. At issue, above all else, is that amazing period between Feb. 1 and April 1 of 2020.

    Three months that wrecked the world.

    Who were the players and why did they do it and why did they persist in their egregious errors? What were their motivations?

    I have by now a complete bibliography that perhaps I will share at some point. At issue right now is the autobio of one Dr. Deborah Birx, aka the “scarf lady” who pushed so hard from those early days, all throughout the rest of the year, crucially through the November election that ended up pushing Trump out of office.

    She was never a fan as she makes clear, but she claims that her politics never affected her devotion to “the science.”

    Yeah, we’ve heard that one before. In any case, it was she who was tasked with doing the really crucial thing of talking Donald Trump into green-lighting the lockdowns that began on March 15 and continued to their final hard-core deployment on March 16. This was the “15 Days to Flatten the Curve.”

    Her book admits that it was a lie from the beginning.

    “We had to make these palatable to the administration by avoiding the obvious appearance of a full Italian lockdown,” she writes.

    “At the same time, we needed the measures to be effective at slowing the spread, which meant matching as closely as possible what Italy had done — a tall order. We were playing a game of chess in which the success of each move was predicated on the one before it.”

    In other words, she wanted to go full CCP but didn’t want to say that. Crucially, she knew for sure that two weeks was not the real plan. “I left the rest unstated: that this was just a starting point.”

    It Was a Lie

    “No sooner had we convinced the Trump administration to implement our version of a two-week shutdown than I was trying to figure out how to extend it,” she admits:

    Fifteen Days to Slow the Spread was a start, but I knew it would be just that. I didn’t have the numbers in front of me yet to make the case for extending it longer, but I had two weeks to get them.

    However hard it had been to get the 15-day shutdown approved, getting another one would be more difficult by many orders of magnitude. In the meantime, I waited for the blowback, for someone from the economic team to call me to the principal’s office or confront me at a task force meeting. None of this happened.

    Bingo.

    It was a solution in search of evidence she did not have. She told Trump that the evidence was there anyway. She actually tricked him into believing that locking down hundreds of millions of people was somehow magically going to make a virus that everyone would eventually get go away.

    Meanwhile, the economy was wrecked all over the world, as most governments in the world followed what the U.S. did.

    Trump was not and is not an idiot. She reports that by April 1, he had lost confidence in her. He might have intuited that he had been tricked. He stopped speaking to her. On the other hand, Trump had a major problem. He had made a dramatic decision. It was a disastrous one but he learned from long experience that admitting error only fed the media that wanted him dead. So he refused. He refused to admit the problem.

    His solution was to pretend like it was the right thing and that it saved millions (no evidence!) but that now was the time to open the economy. It took another several weeks but finally, he went full-on with an opening agenda. He came to realize that he had destroyed the Trump economy, the ticket to his reelection, by his own hand!

    Tragedy in Our Times

    This is a story of Biblical proportions, at once desperately sad and tragic, a story of fallibility matched by ego, a story of enormous betrayal that played off character flaws that ended up wrecking hope and prosperity for billions of people.

    Once Trump turned against her and eventually found other people to provide good advice like the tremendous Scott Atlas, Birx turned to rallying around her an inner circle (Anthony Fauci, Robert Redfield and a few others) plus assembling a realm of protection outside of her.

    For example, Scott Atlas tried to stop the testing madness (you remember it well) and changed the CDC guidance. “Less than a week later,” she writes, “Bob and I had finished our rewrite of the guidance and surreptitiously posted it. We had restored the emphasis on testing to detect areas where silent spread was occurring. It was a risky move, and we hoped everyone in the White House would be too busy campaigning to realize what Bob and I had done. We weren’t being transparent with the powers that be in the White House…”

    Yikes!

    Et Tu, Brute?

    And guess who provided her protection within the White House. I will let her tell you:

    Ever since Vice President Pence told me to do what I needed to do, I’d engaged in very blunt conversations with the governors. I spoke the truth that some White House senior advisors weren’t willing to acknowledge. Censoring my reports and putting up guidance that negated the known solutions was only going to perpetuate COVID-19’s vicious circle. What I couldn’t sneak past the gatekeepers in my reports, I said in person.

    Did you catch that? The name is Pence. She names him out directly as her protector. Mr. Earnest, Mr. Honest, Mr. Moral and Good. He clearly teamed up with her and her gang to keep the hysteria roiling from March all the way through November.

    Didn’t Shakespeare teach us something about this? If you are looking for the betrayer, the slayer, the plotter, the person who fells the leader, always and everywhere look to the No. 2 in charge. There you will find the real source of the problem. Et Tu, Brute?

    What followed seems inevitable in retrospect. The inflation, the broken lives, the desperation and now the growing hunger and demoralization and educational losses and cultural destruction, all of it came in the wake of these fateful days.

    The plotters usually admit it in the end, taking credit, like criminals who cannot resist returning to the scene of the crime.

    And what a crime it was.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/24/2022 – 22:30

  • Hunter Biden 'Almost Certainly' Broke FARA Laws: Report
    Hunter Biden ‘Almost Certainly’ Broke FARA Laws: Report

    Hunter Biden’s failure to register as a foreign agent while conducting business overseas, much like former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, almost certainly violated foreign lobbying laws under the federal Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

    According to the New York Post, while Hunter registered as a lobbyist for domestic interests (“a gig which so annoyed President Obama that Biden was forced to drop it in 2008“), he never registered as a “foreign principal” under the 1938 law – a crime which carries a punishment of up to five years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine.

    We aren’t holding our breath. That said…

    The Post’s examination of Biden’s infamous abandoned laptop in the last year has exposed myriad foreign business schemes the then-Vice President’s son tried to shepherd. Last week The Post revealed dozens of sit-downs between Hunter and Joe Biden that were frequently scheduled just days after Hunter visited with foreign officials. -NY Post

    “The recent disclosures of additional foreign contacts has only strengthened what was already a strong case. Indeed, in the last few weeks, the compelling basis for a FARA charge has becomes unassailable and undeniable,” according to law professor Jonathan Turley. “The influence peddling schemes directly reference the President and [Joe Biden] is repeatedly cited as a possible recipient of funds.”

    And while a CNN report from last week indicated that the DOJ is focusing on Hunter’s tax issues and alleged violations of federal firearm regulations, the first son’s foreign dealings have undoubtedly been part of the investigation – particularly since the Post exposed evidence of extensive foreign dealings from Hunter’s “laptop from hell,” which they published in October 2020 shortly before the US election.

    The inquiry began as a tax probe in 2018 but has expanded considerably since a series of New York Post exposes showed how Hunter Biden’s private business interests became commingled with his father’s public career. The revelations were contained on a laptop abandoned by Hunter Biden at a Delaware computer repair shop in April 2019.  -NY Post

    Yet, despite potential violations of foreign lobbying laws and money laundering – insiders say Hunter could receive a “generous” plea agreement.

    House Republicans, meanwhile, say that should they take back control of the chamber in the upcoming midterm elections, they’ll launch their own investigation into Hunter’s overseas exploits.

    Let’s review some of Hunter’s dealings…

    For starters, he worked for CCP-linked Chinese energy company CEFC, which sought to gain a foothold into the United States. After the New York Times questioned Hunter’s involvement in 2018, Joe Biden left him a voicemail in which he told his son “I think you’re clear.”

    Republicans have accused CEFC of being an arm of the Chinese government. In 2017, the year Joe Biden left the Vice Presidency, Hunter received a $1 million retainer for his services as a lawyer. CEFC official Patrick Ho was later convicted on international bribery and money laundering charges on unrelated work in Africa.

    When the Hunter Biden laptop story broke in October 2020 (and was immediately suppressed by the media), the Bidens allegedly accepted a $5 million interest-free loan from CEFC that enraged their business partner, Tony Bobulinski – who flipped on the Bidens following a Senate report which revealed the $5 million ‘loan.’

    Text messages from Bobulinski also reveal an effort to conceal Joe Biden’s involvement in Hunter’s business dealings, while Tony has also confirmed that the “Big guy” described in a leaked email is none other than Joe Biden himself.

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    More on Hunter’s dealings from the Post:

    After additional revelations from The Post in 2020, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) sent a letter to the Justice Department demanding a review of possible FARA violations. Former Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski said in public comments at the time that the Chinese saw Hunter Biden “as a political or influence investment.”

    “Since then, I’ve only seen and gathered more records and information that confirm that [Hunter Biden and his uncle James Biden] are closely linked to foreign interests,” Grassley told The Post.

    While Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter Biden $83,333 a month to sit on its board, Hunter Biden introduced Vadym Pozharskyi — one of the company’s top executives — to his father, emails show. Less than a year later, Vice President Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company.

    Meanwhile, Hunter arranged for the former president of Columbia, Andrés Pastrana Arango, to have a sit-down with his father during a March 2, 2012 meeting.

    In Nov. 2015, Hunter met with Crown Prince Alexander Karađorđević of Yugoslavia and his wife, Crown Princess Katherine of Serbia, who told the Post that they asked Hunter to ‘put in a word’ with his father to help rehab the royal palace in Belgrade.

    “If Hunter relayed the request for US government assistance then that would be a FARA registrable event,” said FARA expert Craig Engle, who leads the political law practice at Arent Fox Schiff. “Given the nature of the client, given the nature of the work, and given his relationship with Joe Biden as demonstrated on his calendar, it makes it likely that FARA is part of an investigation,” he added.

    Emails on Hunter’s laptop also reveal concerns over FARA violations – with Eric Schwerin, president of Hunter’s investment firm Rosemont Seneca Partners – discussing the issue.

    “Was reading an article saying how [former White House Chief of Staff William] Daley was never a ‘registered’ lobbyist although he directed [Telecoms company] SBC and JP Morgan’s lobbying efforts. Also the article noted that he was registered as Foreign Lobbyist under FARA at one point … sometimes I wonder why we stress about this so much,” Schwerin wrote to Hunter in January, 2011.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/24/2022 – 22:00

  • Most Chinese Property Junk Bonds Are Trading Below 35 Cents
    Most Chinese Property Junk Bonds Are Trading Below 35 Cents

    By Ye Xie, Bloomberg Markets Live commentator and reporter

    1. China’s mortgage-boycott problem is still growing. More homebuyers halted payments on unfinished apartments, affecting at least 319 projects, up from 235 a week ago, according to Capital Economics. By all accounts, the situation is still manageable. Most economists estimate that the affected loans make up about 1%-2% of China’s $5.8 trillion in mortgages.

    But the problem is that Beijing has yet to break the vicious circle in the housing market. The boycotts undermine confidence of new homebuyers, which reduces the cash flow of troubled developers and causes more of the type of construction delays that motivated the boycotts in the first place.

    Already, the top 100 private developers, which account for more than a third of the projects under construction, are experiencing liquidity risks, according to Goldman Sachs. Reflecting this risk, about 73% of China’s high-yield property bonds are trading below 35 cents on the dollar, a level deemed as distressed by Goldman’s analysts. Left unsolved, it could quickly create problems in the banking system.

    Source: Goldman Sachs

    What’s the solution? Policy makers are considering remedies, including allowing a grace period for mortgage payments of affected homeowners. Bank of America’s economists led by Helen Qiao expect local governments and state-owned enterprises to step in to complete the unfinished projects. But they also warn that it may take time to resolve the issue, and governments of lower-tier cities may not have sufficient funds to come to the rescue.

    Source: Bank of America

    2. The housing troubles and sporadic Covid outbreaks took momentum out of the economic rebound. The consensus 2022 GDP forecast in a Bloomberg survey has declined to 4%, and a number of economists, including at Bloomberg Economics, only see a growth rate of 3%. The outperformance of Chinese stocks since last month also has faded.

    In response to the latest housing drama, the PBOC kept liquidity abundant, with interbank borrowing costs dropping below 1.5% for the first time since December 2020. Meanwhile, traders took advantage of the cheap funding to build leverage in the bond market, sending the overnight repo trading volume to records almost on a daily basis.

    3. Recession risks keep rising as central banks tighten monetary policy. A survey of purchasing managers by S&P Global on Friday showed activities in both the euro zone and US contracted. The ECB ended eight years of negative interest rates with a 50bp hike last week. The Fed is expected to raise rates by 75 bps this week for a second consecutive meeting. But traders are betting that the Fed will slow down the rate increases afterward and wrap the tightening campaign by December.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/24/2022 – 21:45

  • ESG Is A Globalist 'Scam' Meant To Usher In 'One World Government': James Lindsay
    ESG Is A Globalist ‘Scam’ Meant To Usher In ‘One World Government’: James Lindsay

    Authored by Cindy Drukier and Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

    James Lindsay, author of “Race Marxism” and other books challenging woke narratives, has taken environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scores into his crosshairs, calling ESG a weapon in the hands of “social justice warriors” to shake down corporations and a tool in the hands of those seeking to impose “one world government.”

    Lindsay told NTD’s “The Nation Speaks” program in a recent interview that the ESG scoring system was initially conceived as a way for investors to track the likelihood that a corporation would be a good bet for investment over the long term.

    “In the early 2000s, a few very socially minded socially activist investors got together and thought up this idea that, well, it’s probably the case that companies that are bad at environmental policy, bad with social responsibility, and bad corporate governance are going to be bad bets in long term investment,” he said.

    James Lindsay, co-author of “Cynical Theories,” in New York on Feb. 28, 2020. (Brendon Fallon/The Epoch Times)

    Lindsay believes the ESG concept was suspect from the very beginning and it’s unclear whether higher scores translated into good long-term profitability for participating corporations.

    Worse still, he argued that, over time, ESG scores have been hijacked and “weaponized” by “social justice warriors.”

    “They have the leverage to be able to use this like a … financial gun to the head of any corporation that doesn’t do what it wants them to do,” he said, calling it a “blatant weaponization.”

    “In fact, it’s racketeering is what it is, is just criminal racketeering, using what looks like a responsible measurement tool as the mechanism. So nobody’s directly responsible for engaging in what is really a mob shakedown of corporations,” he argued.

    Lack of transparency in how ESG scores are determined is an open door for abuse, Lindsay further contended.

    …

    Even more troubling is Lindsay’s argument that ESG fits into a “broader global agenda” that he said wants to make the West energy poor—to the benefit of countries like China—and as a way of social control.

    “They want to implement the exact same control system because they see that it works to control people in China,” adding that, in his view, the “power elite” in the West “often do want to control people.”

    …

    “And so they would be using that as a tool to try to get toward one world government,” Lindsay said.

    …

    Insider Intelligence estimates that, in 2022, there was $41 trillion in ESG assets under management worldwide.

    By 2025, this figure is expected to climb to $50 trillion.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/24/2022 – 21:30

  • 3 Trucking Veterans Reveal Why They Closed Their Businesses Amid The "Great Purge"
    3 Trucking Veterans Reveal Why They Closed Their Businesses Amid The “Great Purge”

    By Rachel Premack of FreightWaves

    Back in 2018, when trucking was red-hot, Texas native Mike Dow got famous — if just for a moment. An article in The Washington Post featured his insights on why companies were struggling to retain truckers. 

    Dow was as confident as ever. That year, he and his brother founded their own trucking company. He told the Post reporter he was planning bringing in a serious salary: up to $120,000.

    That turned out to be a modest estimate. In 2021 alone, Dow grossed up to $375,000, thanks in part to retail’s wild uptick. Retail sales grew by 14% in 2021, while it increased on average 3.7% annually from 2010 to 2019. “When you run your own business, it’s a 24-hour-a-day job,” Dow told FreightWaves. “It consumes your life.” 

    Business slowed down as the months went on — and not for the better. Spot rates for dry van, which is what Dow Brothers Transportation specialized in, declined by 24% from the beginning of the year to the week of July 17, according to data from load board Truckstop.com. Expenses, meanwhile, have soared. The break-even cost to run a truck in 2022 is $3.27 per mile, significantly up from $2.16 per mile last year. 

    That spelled the end for Dow Brothers Transportation. Dow and his brother ultimately shuttered their company, sold off their trucks, and got regular jobs earlier this year. Now Dow hauls construction equipment around the bustling Dallas area. He’s home every night for dinner. 

    Big, public trucking companies are reporting their second-quarter earnings. So far, it’s been gangbusters. But small trucking companies are suffering amid the collapse in spot rates, increase in diesel prices and ongoing challenges in finding equipment. Despite rates still being historically high, truckers say that they’re not high enough to deal with the inflated cost of everything else.

    “Nobody has the same cost structure on anything,” Thom Albrecht, chief financial officer of transportation insurance agency Reliance Partners, told FreightWaves in June. 

    It’s sparking what one freight broker called trucking’s “Great Purge,” with small trucking companies going out of business at a historically high rate. Dry van companies like Dow’s are particularly at risk as the pandemic’s unhinged retail spend cools. Truckers that haul more specialized freight, like grain feed, are still chugging along. 

    FreightWaves spoke to Dow and two other longtime truckers to learn why 2022 has been the year that killed their businesses — and what they think it means for the industry.

    Why the ‘Great Purge’ is hurting small truckers more than big ones

    The three truck drivers all operated in different parts of North America and in different industries. But they shared one common fear: Big trucking companies are getting bigger, and it’s at the expense of the owner-operator. 

    “Those small mom and pops have to compete with the big boys,” Dow said. “They’re not always successful. There will always be a need for small companies, but those conglomerates are trying to push us out.”

    Data enthusiasts might disagree with Dow’s assessment. Trucking has become increasingly dominated by smaller carriers since the pandemic. One particularly stunning number shows that. Avery Vise of FTR Transportation Intelligence previously told FreightWaves that almost 195,000 new trucking companies entered the industry from July 2020 to June 2022. Just 86,000 new carriers entered the industry during the second-highest 23-month period. 

    What’s more, about 70% of those new carriers consisted of just one truck, Vise said. Big carriers haven’t grown by the same rate. In fact, Vise estimated that 6-7% of capacity shifted from fleets with more than 100 drivers to fleets with fewer than 100 drivers in the past two years.

    Many of the small, new carriers signed on to operate on the spot market. (A quick note for trucking newbies: The spot market consists of loads that are available on demand, while the contract market is, yes, contracted freight. Small trucking companies are bigger on the spot market, and large ones are bigger on the contract market.) 

    Rates on the spot market seemed to break a new record each month of 2021, diverting more and more cash to small trucking companies. Contract rates didn’t climb at the same rate, and mega-fleets didn’t either. 

    Now the big carriers seem to be regaining their share. Large fleets are better able to navigate market downturns as they’re more likely to have hefty cash reserves, long-standing contracts with deep-pocketed customers and, perhaps most importantly for this downturn, bulk discounts when buying fuel and equipment. 

    Unable to weather this downturn, we saw a record number of trucking companies shutter this spring, with more likely to come. Many are expected to join larger trucking companies.  

    In May, net motor carrier revocations hit a record high, according to an analysis of federal data by FTR. January and March of this year were the previous records. 

    As the above graph shows, revocations of trucking authorities reached a record high in May, hitting nearly 9,300. The yellow bar represents some 4,000 revocations due to a processing company that unexpectedly shuttered. Even counting that out, though, the net revocations peaked. 

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    Meanwhile, big truckers are enjoying record quarters. According to the FMIC-Cowen Index, which tracks tens of billions of freight spend dollars annually, rates on the spot van market are 15.3% down from this time last year. Meanwhile, contract van rates are up 34.8%. 

    Second-quarter results are just rolling in, and they’ve already been strong, with mega-carriers like Knight-Swift, J.B. Hunt and Marten all crushing expectations. Each company saw the biggest gains from the parts of their companies that aren’t traditional trucking; Knight-Swift earned big on its less-than-truckload division, J.B. Hunt on intermodal and Marten on brokerage. 

    Even amid what Susquehanna Financial Group’s Bascome Majors called the “coming freight recession” in a Tuesday note, trucking and logistics stocks are outperforming the larger stock market. 

    “What’s going to happen is going to be tough,” said truck brokerage owner Chris Tucker, who was first to keenly dub the current market conditions the “Great Purge.” “It’s going to be painful for a lot of people. Very few people will be left standing.”

    Longtime truckers have already shut down. We talked to three of them:

    Dan Chidester, owner-operator since 1981: ‘Fuel has to come down to $3 a gallon to survive’

    For a young Dan Chidester back in the 1970s, it was time for a “real job.” He tuned up race cars and was a salesman for a high-performance Chevrolet dealership. But when he got married, Chidester took a job fixing trucks in a field that is about as different from drag racing as you can get: a local bread factory. 

    “I hated to go punch in that clock every day,” Chidester, now 71, said. “That was the reason I got into trucking. I wanted to work for myself. I’ve been that type.”

    A friend told him about the opportunities hauling freight. He quit the bread company and got a CDL. Suddenly, the western Michigan native was traveling the country — loading up on potatoes from North Carolina and grapefruit from South Carolina, talking to people from all over. 

    Being an independent truck driver was challenging. His marriage ended in 1987, the same year his truck literally burst into flames. Chidester found himself once so down on his luck that all he could afford was a loaf of bread, a bottle of mustard and a pack of bologna. He’s outlived recession after recession; the trucking industry goes into downturns twice as often as the rest of the economy.

    His luck has changed. In 2021, Chidester only worked three or four days of the week and frequently ran empty when driving back up to his home. But he said his rate averaged around $4 per mile, even with the empty miles. 

    Chidester mostly hauled refrigerated goods from Michigan to major retail warehouses around the Upper Midwest, like a Walmart near Fort Wayne, Indiana, or a Costco near Detroit. 

    “For me, every trip is an adventure,” Chidester said. “I’ve been doing it since 1981, but I’m just like a 10-year-old kid on Christmas Eve when I know I’m going trucking tomorrow.”

    But Chidester curtailed his trips in 2022. Rates began to decline in March. By May, they didn’t make up for the cost of running his truck. “Fuel has to come down to $3 a gallon again to survive, to make any money,” he said. 

    On June 10, Chidester quietly let his decades-old trucking authority go and canceled his insurance.

    There’s a creed among some owner-operators: Don’t haul cheap freight. The idea is that if no one takes poor-paying jobs, brokers will be forced to raise their rates. But with an intensely fragmented trucking industry, it’s hard for small truckers to organize. 

    It wasn’t always like this. When Chidester started in trucking, the industry was still regulated, which meant that the federal government had limits on the companies that could haul most types of freight. Only 17,000 trucking companies existed. Now there are more than 350,000 owner-operators alone, according to the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association. 

    “They can’t agree on anything, it’s all broken up. Everybody started fighting for freight and the whole business went down a rathole,” Chidester said. 

    As a result of deregulation in 1980, freight rates tumbled and trucker pay has decreased by up to 50%, according to estimates by Wayne State University’s Michael Belzer. Experts say deregulation and cheap trucking have made it possible for big-box retail to build robust supply chains and quickly scale, edging out local businesses.

    Chidester has counted some of those retail behemoths as his biggest clients. This spring, they slashed pay. The pay for one 150-mile trip dropped from $1,400 to $900 in just two weeks. Uber Freight economist Mazan Danaf previously told FreightWaves that this spring saw the fastest declines in spot market pay in recent history.

    Chidester can stay home and refuse cheap freight, but he knows he’s in a unique position. After all, his equipment is paid off. 

    “Most of these guys are running, running, running,” Chidester said. “The more they run, the longer this [fall in rates] will continue to go.

    “They’ve got families, payments, bills,” he added. “I was in their shoes back in the early ’80s. I didn’t make any money. I just barely hung on.”

    He could make a killing selling his truck, as prices for used trucks are still unusually high, though they’re quickly declining. But Chidester is still scheming to get back out on the road.  

    “I miss it, oh man,” Chidester said. “I’d like to get out for just a couple days. It’s not about the money so much. I just like to drive and I like playing the game. And I’m good at it.” 

    Jason and Kerry Kraft, owner-operators since 2007: ‘She doesn’t even want to say the word truck anymore’

    Jason and Kerry Kraft decided to become truck drivers for a simple reason: They wanted to be together all the time. So 15 years ago, they opened their own trucking business. 

    They weren’t ordinary truckers. The Krafts, who live in Edmonton, Alberta, hauled tanks and other equipment for the Canadian military. They moved refrigerated loads and 6-foot-wide tires for mining vehicles on the infamous ice roads. As team drivers, they could score high-priority loads that need to be moved quickly. 

    “We ran hard 24 hours a day,” said Jason, 45. “We don’t take vacations. We haven’t even gone on a honeymoon.”

    And they had the cash to prove it. In 2021, they grossed nearly $500,000 — one of their best years. 

    It wasn’t bad rates that took down the Krafts. Instead, it was the challenge of getting repairs. Once in Toronto, they needed a truck starter, but the only one they could find was back in Edmonton. Another part took three weeks to source and install, when it would normally be readily available.  

    Instead of driving, the Krafts found themselves increasingly staying in hotels and waiting for repairs. “It’s not the price of the part that’s killing you anymore,” Jason said. “It’s the downtime.”

    The final straw was a bad — and very expensive — repair. A “shoddy mechanic,” as Jason said, replaced the truck frame with a component that had already been damaged. When they got the truck back, it looked worse than when they left it at the shop — and it cost them $50,000. (By the way, if you want to learn more about the Krafts’ story, listen to their appearance on my colleagues’ podcast, Back the Truck Up.)

    The Krafts searched for parts but couldn’t find any. Jason said if he were part of a larger company, it would have been easier to place an order, as he would be buying in bulk.

    “All these mega-carriers have all the slots for building a truck for the next three to four years,” Kraft said. “That’s another way I’m feeling the mega-carriers are squeezing out the small guy.” 

    The Krafts finally shut down in June. They sold their trailer for more than what they paid for it in 2018, which was a bright spot. 

    For Kerry, 39, in particular, Jason said it was demoralizing. “She doesn’t even want to say the word truck anymore.” 

    Working regular jobs has been a shock for the couple and their dachshunds, Diesel and Turbo. 

    “We worked for 15 years and now we’re at entry-level jobs because we don’t have the verified experience to do anything,” Jason said. “We don’t have the education. Now it’s like you have to sell yourself on paper. We don’t have the credentials to get a job anymore.”

    Mike Dow, owner-operator since 2018: ‘Operating at a loss was the biggest deciding factor’

    These past few years, it seemed like Dow was the only one working anymore. Federal stimulus checks were a lifesaver for many out-of-work Americans, but it also helped drive unprecedented container volumes into American ports, which were filled with televisions, furniture and clothing that people were spending excess cash on. 

    Dow and his brother happily hauled all of those goods. 

    “You never saw so many people out in the park bike riding and kayaking,” Dow said. “The money has run out, so now everyone has to go back to work.”

    The rapid downturn in consumer spending hurt Dow and his brother, who shuttered their trucking company and got company driving jobs this year. 

    Retail spend saw a 1% uptick in June, according to federal data. But there’s still a key mismatch between just how many truckers have flooded the industry versus the amount of freight that’s available for them to haul. Since the beginning of the pandemic, federal data reflects that there’s been a 10% increase in drivers available for hire. 

    For those truckers who are seeing decreased rates and increased costs for everything else they need to buy to operate, it’s challenging to keep going. As the spot market softened and expenses piled up, Dow realized his company was hemorrhaging money. 

    He still owed money on his truck, and he couldn’t make the monthly payments. The only way to keep the company, it seemed, was to take out a second mortgage on his home. He didn’t want to do that. The price for a typical used truck doubled and even tripled over 2021. Unusually high truck payments were fine when matched with ultra-high spot rates, but the crash in those rates along with the increase in the price of everything else have left some truckers scrambling. 

    Record-high diesel prices also crushed Dow, along with an average insurance cost uptick of 20% from 2019 to 2022. Maintenance costs have increased by 30% over the same time period. 

    “Operating at a loss was the biggest deciding factor,” Dow said. “You can try to ride it out for a bit to see if the trend swings back around or you can be ahead of the curve and get out before everyone else starts getting out.”

    He chose the latter and was able to recoup some cash by selling equipment. Dow now has more free time than ever. He’s using some of that time to ponder about his life as a trucker, which has left him with two divorces and the inability to spend more time at home as his kids were growing up. He shared the following, somewhat chilling analogy: 

    “It’s like going to an amusement park. You’re looking forward to ride it, waiting in line for three or four hours. The ride is 45 seconds, then it’s over. You’re thinking, ‘That was fun. It was cool.’ But in the same breath, you’re like, ‘I waited three hours for that?’ 

    “That’s how trucking is. The ride is pretty much over, I’m through the loop-the-loops and they’re pumping the air brakes.  

    “I’m 52. I have 10 to 15 years before I retire, if I’m lucky enough to make it to retirement. The thrill of it is gone. It’s just the last little leg before I get off.” 

    He’s thinking about opening up a deep-sea fishing business, combining business with pleasure. “The business I’m in now is not so pleasurable,” Dow said, laughing. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/24/2022 – 20:30

  • Democrats Prepare To Unleash Hell On Fed Chair Powell For The Coming Recession
    Democrats Prepare To Unleash Hell On Fed Chair Powell For The Coming Recession

    Something curious took place a month ago during Powell’s semi-annual testimony before a (still-Democrat controlled) Congress: whereas it was quite clear that Biden was calling Powell and demanding an end to inflation (which the White House had unleashed with its trillions in stimmies), most other vocal Democrats, and especially the progressives, were warning the Fed Chair that there is hell to pay if the Fed’s hikes push the economy into recession.

    “What’s worse than high inflation and low unemployment?” asked Senator Elizabeth Warren as the Fed chief gave congressional testimony last month. “It’s high inflation and a recession with millions of people out of work…. I hope you’ll reconsider that,” she added, “before you drive this economy off a cliff.”

    Which is funny, because in recent days Biden – who was adamant in “explaining” that the soaring inflation of 2022 was out of his control and was solely “Putin’s price hikes” – has been taking credit for the modest dip in gasoline prices thanks to the most grotesque abuse of a Y-axis in history…

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    … even though as we have repeatedly made it clear the only reason any commodity prices are low, and that includes oil and gas, is because most now see a recession as inevitable…

    … and yes, while gasoline prices will certainly drop during the coming recession (however briefly), it is absolutely certain that millions of people will also lose their jobs thanks to the Powell-induced recession.

    Which takes us to the main event this week, when still scorching price pressures will push the Fed to raise interest rates 75 basis points on Wednesday for the second straight month at which point the economy is expected to finally crack, and as even as Bloomberg now admits catching up to what we said months ago, “the tougher it acts, the harder it gets to avoid a sharp increase in unemployment and the subsequent political fallout.”

    “There has been more than enough blame for inflation to go around,” said Mark Spindel, chief investment officer for MBB Capital Partners LLC. If unemployment rises, “constituents will scream and senators and House members will have to deflect blame, and that will find its way to Jay Powell.”

    Powell, of course, has a dual mandate from Congress for maximum employment and price stability, and has already repeatedly admitted he got the inflation call wrong last year and were slow to react, making him a willing scapegoat for what comes next.

    And what comes next is simple: with Democrats facing catastrophic losses in the November midterm elections from voters furious over Biden’s (not Putin’s) inflation, some are starting to warn Powell to expect consequences if rising joblessness is the cost of a Fed error. Which it already is as we recently reported and as even Goldman has admitted.

    To be sure, the economy still looks in reasonable shape with unemployment near a 50-year low of 3.6%, although those are deeply lagging indicators, especially when lipsticked over with the BLS’ increasingly more grotesque seasonal adjustments- leading and concurrent indicators confirm the labor market has already snapped; indeed, critics told Bloomberg a recession will be hard to avoid over the coming year, and the path to a soft landing is getting narrower as the Fed steps up the pace of rate increases.

    Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat on the Banking Committee, didn’t favor a formal review of the Fed’s performance on inflation but did say that it was clear in hindsight that mistakes had been made.

    “I think history will look back and say we had way too easy a money policy for way too long,” he told Bloomberg although he certainly didn’t complain when policy was too easy yet inflation remained low and when all the clueless hacks – such as fax and internet expert Paul Krugman – were saying it was transitory. It much “easier” to complain now that inflation is on the verge of prefixes such as “hyper.”

    A key question is how entrenched inflation has become. The latest read on consumer prices, which rose 9.1% in the year through June, is not encouraging. Fed officials forecast moderating growth with inflation declining over the next two years with little cost to jobs.

    But as with every Fed forecast, that one too is garbage and at best wishful thinking, say some economists, because it hinges on the public being convinced that price pressures will ease in the future, and that supply tangles will unravel.

    Matthew Luzzetti, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank, says the Fed is going to have to brake the economy much harder to get inflation down to its 2% goal. (The Fed targets a different price gauge whose latest reading was 6.3%.)

    “Simply getting relief on the supply side, isn’t enough” to return inflation back to 2%, said Luzzetti. “You need to impact demand materially.”

    He sees the Fed raising rates to a range of 4% to 4.25% by the first quarter of next year, compared with 1.5% to 1.75% today, which will drive the unemployment rate to 5.5%.

    Bloomberg Economics also estimates the unemployment rate will peak around 5% in this Fed tightening cycle; meanwhile the odds of a recession according to the median forecast- which exclude such outliers as Deutsche and Bank of America, both of which have made a recession their base case – are approaching 50%.

    “Even a shallow recession can lead to the unemployment rate jumping by 2 percentage points,” said Anna Wong, chief U.S. economist for Bloomberg Econ.

    “They need to see clear and convincing evidence that inflation is coming down,” she added. By the time that happens, “we will be in a recession.”

    Which means that in the next few weeks, Powell will transform from every Democrat’s best friend (for launching of that socialist wet dream, MMT or the Magic Money Tree), to their most loathed enemy – after all, someone else has to be responsible for the catastrophic governance under Democratic leadership.

    It’s already starting: while Senate Baking Committee Chair Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, defended Powell during an interview on Bloomberg Television Thursday, some other prominent Democrats on the committee, which oversees the central bank, voted against Powell’s second term, including Warren and Robert Menendez of New Jersey.

    “It is important for the Fed not to overreach and trigger a recession unnecessarily, as part of its effort to bring inflation down,” said Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the No. 5-ranked House Democratic leader. “Inflation is a global problem, and is actually not as bad in America as it is in almost every other developed economy in the world,” he told Bloomberg.

    Meanwhile, even as most Republicans still mostly blame Biden for stoking inflation by going too big with pandemic aid last year, some are also taking aim at the Fed and are vexed by its lack of transparency. North Carolina Republican Senator Thom Tillis discussed the committee’s frustration last month, pointing out that both sides of the aisle have struggled to get information out of the Fed. His colleague Patrick Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican, is preparing legislation aimed at making the Fed’s 12 regional branches more accountable.

    Powell has worked hard to restore relations with Congress after the rocky tenures of former Chairs Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen. He also launched his own effort at community outreach called “Fed Listens.” There have been three sessions this year.

    But none of this will assuage lawmakers if unemployment goes up because – as Bloomberg correctly writes – in Washington “somebody needs to bear the cost of policy failure.”

    “Lawmakers — especially Democrats — are more prone to threaten the Fed with legislation as unemployment rises,” said Sarah Binder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “Both rising inflation and unemployment drive down public approval of the Fed, but job losses have a larger effect.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/24/2022 – 20:00

  • Johnstone: Our Entire Civilization Is Structured Around Keeping Us From Realizing We Can Do This
    Johnstone: Our Entire Civilization Is Structured Around Keeping Us From Realizing We Can Do This

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    Rise, like lions after slumber
    In unvanquishable number!
    Shake your chains to earth like dew
    Which in sleep had fallen on you:
    Ye are many — they are few!

    ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

    The video footage that came out of Sri Lanka earlier this month has been the recurring nightmare of every ruler throughout history.

    Thousands of protesters outraged by the deteriorating material conditions of the nation’s economic meltdown have stormed the presidential palace of Sri Lanka’s President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and I guarantee you the aerial footage as they poured into the building en masse has made every government leader and plutocrat a little uncomfortable today.

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    Just look at that. Look at all those people flooding in there. That is some truly awe-inspiring power. Imagine how terrifying it would be to find yourself on the receiving end of it.

    I don’t know enough about what’s going on in Sri Lanka yet to comment with any authority on what powers might be at play in this uprising, but I do know that every ruler throughout history has spent time envisioning what would happen if a crowd that size decided to storm their base of operation. If their numbers became too great to suppress, or if your forces who would be doing the suppressing joined the ranks of the people instead, the best-case scenario for you is that you’d have already fled the building by that point, as Rajapaksa had the good sense to do shortly before the building was stormed. If enough angry people get their hands on you, it won’t matter if they’re armed with rockets or pistols or their own bare hands; you are in for a violent end.

    If you’ve ever wondered why so much energy goes into keeping everyone propagandized in our society, this is why. If you’ve ever wondered why our rulers work so hard to keep us divided against each other, this is why. If you’ve ever wondered why we’re always being instructed to take our grievances to the voting booth even though we learn in election after election that it never changes the things that most desperately need to change, this is why.

    Our entire civilization is structured around preventing scenes like the one we’re seeing in Sri Lanka today. Our education systems, our political systems, our media, our online information. Religions that have been around for thousands of years because the powerful endorsed and promulgated them are full of passages extolling the virtues of obedience, poverty, meekness, and rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. From the moment we are born our heads are filled with stories about why it’s good and right to consent to the status quo and why it would be wrong to take back what has been stolen from us by a predatory ruling class.

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    This is why we’re always inundated with messaging about the importance of civility and politeness any time people realize that they can simply confront corrupt officials in restaurants or at their homes to push for what they want. The managers of the oligarchic empire which rules over us are terrified that we will one day notice that there are a whole lot more of us than there are of them, and that there’s really nothing they could do to stop us if we decided to replace them with a system which benefits ordinary people instead of an elite few.

    Things are getting worse and worse because the systems that are in place are designed to exploit and oppress rather than to uplift and help thrive. Those systems will protect their own ability to continue to exploit and oppress until the people use their numbers to replace them with something healthy. The people will never use their numbers to replace abusive systems with something healthy as long as they are successfully propagandized away from doing so.

    This is why our political and media institutions act the way they act and why our systems are set up in the way that they are: to keep us from realizing how easy it would be to shrug off the old mechanisms of oppression like a heavy coat on a warm day and build something new that works for all of us.

    Things will keep getting worse until we find a way to cut through the propaganda brain fog and rise like lions.

    * * *

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/24/2022 – 19:30

  • AOC And Ilhan Omar's 'Fake Handcuffs' Stunt Was Coordinated With Soros-Funded Dark Money Group
    AOC And Ilhan Omar’s ‘Fake Handcuffs’ Stunt Was Coordinated With Soros-Funded Dark Money Group

    Last week’s arrest of 17 members of Congress during an abortion rights demonstration outside the Supreme Court – which notably included Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) pretending they were in handcuffs – was coordinated with a progressive dark-money group funded by billionaire George Soros.

    As the Washington Examiner‘s Andrew Kerr reports, “Getting arrested was the whole point of the stunt, Ocasio-Cortez said in an Instagram post on Tuesday. She said organizers of the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) Action Fund asked her and her colleagues to “submit themselves for arrest in front of the Supreme Court.””

    According to AOC, what they did was “very different than a ‘publicity stunt'” without elaborating.

    Approximately 30 minutes before lawmakers arrived at the USSC, Omar spokesman Jeremy Slevin said the quiet part out loud – tweeting “Members of Congress, including [Omar] will be participating in a civil disobedience at the Supreme Court, potentially including arrests, shortly.”

    Meanwhile, CPD Action co-executive director, Andrew Friedman, told the Washington Post in 2018 that they, and their sister organization, Center for Popular Democracy – which coordinated with the lawmakers, had received over $1 million per year from Soros Open Society Foundations.

    CPD Action posted on Facebook Tuesday, saying that its leaders were among the 18 non-lawmakers who were arrested.

    “Moments ago, leaders from CPD Action network organizations, members of Congress & more participated in a powerful civil disobedience demonstration & got arrested to protect our RIGHT to SAFE & LEGAL abortions,” reads the post. “This is a clear message to SCOTUS and lawmakers that #WeWontBackDown until ALL pregnancy-abled people are treated as full human beings with the autonomy to make decisions about OUR OWN bodies.”

    More via The Examiner:

    CPD Action linked to a fundraising page in its Facebook post that urged activists to “continue acts of civil disobedience,” such as the one it coordinated with the 17 arrested members of Congress on Tuesday, to secure access to abortion across the country.

    Ocasio-Cortez was widely mocked by conservative commentators for creating the impression that she was handcuffed by police during her arrest. The New York lawmaker was filmed crossing her hands behind her back while she was being escorted off the scene by police. She then pumped her fist toward a crowd of supporters while still detained by police.

    Ocasio-Cortez insisted she wasn’t pretending to be in handcuffs during her arrest.

    “No faking here,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a tweet on Wednesday. “Putting your hands behind your back is a best practice while detained, handcuffed or not, to avoid escalating charges like resisting arrest. But given how you lied about a fellow rape survivor for ‘points,’ as you put it to me, I don’t expect much else from you.”

    A Capitol Police spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that nobody arrested outside the Supreme Court on Tuesday was handcuffed.

    How exactly was this not a ‘publicity stunt’?

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/24/2022 – 19:00

  • Race Towards Net Zero Will Break Energy Market, Drive Up Energy Price: Analyst
    Race Towards Net Zero Will Break Energy Market, Drive Up Energy Price: Analyst

    Authored by Nina Nguyen via The Epoch Times,

    An analyst has warned that the push for net zero with existing renewables technologies by 2050 will break the energy market and lead to a stark increase in Australia’s energy price within a decade.

    It comes as Australia, and the world, continues to struggle with an energy crisis amid supply issues plaguing much of the country’s east coast in June, causing the national operator to suspend the electricity market for more than a week.

    Institute of Public Affairs research fellow Kevin You on July 17 said the recent incidents of market failures “are not accidents” but are “all designed features of net zero by 2050,” which he said is “casting a dark cloud” over the fossil fuel industry.

    He noted that investors are “intimidated” by “the iron fist of the government,” which is likely to place regulatory burdens on coal fired power generators, gas, and oil projects, and on downstream electricity businesses that deal with traditional energy generators.

    “You know what happens when the government sticks its nose where it doesn’t belong—whether it be in the transport industry, the aviation industry, in energy generation, in energy distribution—it breaks the market,” he told the audience at Australia’s largest annual liberty conference, the Friedman conference.

    “Investors have been scared witless by the spectre of net zero hanging over the energy market, the same way the spectre of communism hung over Europe in 1848.”

    You described the net zero target as an attempt by “big government, controlled by an elite circle of faceless men, the renewables lobby, and rent seekers” to “take over and take down the energy market.”

    Billions in Subsidies

    In the pursuit of net zero, the government is directing investment into so-called renewables, offering the sector annual subsidies of up to $8 billion (US$5.5 billion) a year until 2030.

    Meanwhile, the Labor government, elected in May, has committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 43 percent by 2030, and investing in renewables while promising “cheaper electricity prices for homes and businesses.”

    “There is a race for renewable energy jobs and investment around the world, and Australia should be leading that race,” Energy Minister Chris Bowen said.

    However, a similar pledge was made in the 2007 election, when the then-Rudd government promised that renewables would generate at least 20 percent of Australia’s electricity supply by 2020.

    The promise remained unfulfilled, with renewables making up 7 percent of Australian energy consumption in 2019-20, according to the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.

    Cost of ‘Unreliable’ Renewables

    But despite its popular appeal, renewable energy is “unreliable,” You said, arguing that “if it can sustain itself in the free market, then it wouldn’t need taxpayer money to line up the pockets of big renewable industries.”

    “If renewables can compete in the energy market, then let them compete in a free and fair market against called against gas against nuclear power.”

    The analyst, whose research focuses on the political economy and industrial relations, predicted that for every gigawatt removed from the grid, wholesale energy prices will jump by $22 (US$15.25) per megawatt hour. This means that the average quarterly market price per megawatt hour will jump from A$89 to A$111.

    You also estimated that in the next eight years, 11 gigawatts of capacity offered by coal fired power generators will be taken offline. This, he said, will translate to a quadrupling in wholesale electricity prices, with the flow on effect being a doubling in retail electricity prices.

    “So far, the literal doubling of electricity prices is only felt by several thousand households who are customers of small electricity retailers.

    “But it will only get worse from here,” You warned.

    Frank Calabria, managing director of Origin Energy, which operates Australia’s largest coal-fired power station, estimated that reaching net zero by 2050 would require $120 trillion (US$86.25 trillion) to be invested in the energy sector between now and 2050.

    If this cost is split among the population of the developed world (1.3 billion people), the cost would be equivalent to A$369,000 for a household of four—that’s an annual cost of $13,200 per household for the next 28 years.

    “Balancing tighter supply and demand in the market is an increasingly complex challenge, with the back-up, or firming, of variable renewable supply met by a combination of technology,” he told the Australian Energy conference on June 7.

    IPA research fellow You also noted that Australia’s emissions are nowhere near that of China.

    “Australia emits just over 1 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases,” he said.

    “China emits more carbon in 16 days than Australia does in a year. That’s two weeks of emissions from China amounts to as much as a year’s worth of emissions from Australia. Right now, China’s got 57 coal fired power stations for every single one in Australia.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/24/2022 – 18:30

  • Hedge Fund CIO: The World Is Racing To A New Monetary Regime With An Unknown Finish Line
    Hedge Fund CIO: The World Is Racing To A New Monetary Regime With An Unknown Finish Line

    Excepted from the latest weekend note by Marcel Kasumovich, Head or Research at One River Asset Management. Full note available to pro subscribers.

    There is no ex-ante limit to that Transmission Protection Instrument programme,” said ECB President Lagarde, following her predecessor’s playbook, “[the] ECB determines in its own discretion not being hostage to anyone.”  The market disagreed, widening peripheral spreads.

    The tools that came from “whatever it takes” have been made redundant by politics.  Markets are skeptical version-two can be effective. “There’s ample room to hike in 0.25 and 0.50 [percentage point] levels to whatever rate we think, we consider reasonable,” Austria’s central bank Governor Holzmann emphasized in speaking of future meetings, a reminder of the ECBs North-South balancing act. “We do have the risk of a slowdown in the economy,” said the ECB Chief economist ahead of the July rate hike.

    Political tools are needed to resolve the energy crisis. Nord Stream announced the company was “in process of resuming gas transportation” last week, though at 40% capacity. “The response cannot rely on imposing unfair sacrifices without properly identifying the most effective and solidary contributions each member state can deliver,” the Spanish government wrote in rebuke to an across-the-board cut to gas demand. “It is not efficient, fair, or equitable,” the government continued, another North-South tension.

    The IMF predicted Russian action to stop supplying Europe would trigger economic contractions of more than 5% over the next year in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, and Italy. Liz Truss, vying for Conservative leadership, shed her 2016 Remain campaign to end every EU-derived regulation: “European Union rules hinder British businesses.”

    Daylight in Brussels is shortening by 2 minutes and 38 seconds July 24, a slow reminder that winter is coming. Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action has been on alert level for gas since June 22, providing daily updates. “If Russian gas supplies via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline persist at this low level, it will hardly be possible to achieve a storage level of 90% by November without additional measures.” It is a daily reminder of what is to come. “Companies and private consumers must expect a considerable increase in gas prices.”

    * * *

    Privilege to Curse: “I have directed Secretary Connally to suspend temporarily the convertibility of the American dollar [to gold]. …what does it mean for you? Let me lay to rest the bugaboo of what is called devaluation. The effect of this action, in other words, will be to stabilize the dollar. But our primary concern is with the American workers.” August 15, 1971, President Nixon ended the gold standard that defined world monetary order since the end of WWII. Gold reserves had plunged and the budget austerity for its survival was untenable.

    Privilege to Curse II: US surpluses was the challenge at the start of the new global monetary regime after WWII. The world needed dollars and the US needed to run deficits to supply them. US policy recycled dollars through aid to support Germany and Japan. US deficits is what ended the monetary regime, with rapidly draining US gold reserves. Floating exchanges rates were formalized in 1973. International balance sheets were no longer anchored. A new era with long memories evidenced in US Treasury holdings of gold set to the 1973 price of $42.2222.

    Privilege to Curse III: Balance sheets have long memories. Mistakes accumulate, waiting to be reconciled. International balance sheets are too often overlooked in that context. The post-war Bretton Woods era did its job – it imposed austerity. International balance sheets ended that era clean. Unhinging to gold opened the door for more participants with emerging countries eager to accelerate growth through debt financing. Pegging to the USD was a way of importing US policy credibility – virtuous cycles of lower capital costs, foreign inflows, and strong growth followed.

    Privilege to Curse IV: Until it stopped. Latin America suffered from rapid Fed tightening and dollar appreciation in the 1980s. Asian economies were similarly destabilized in the 1990s. A new monetary era emerged. EM countries built unprecedented US dollar reserves to ward-off boom-bust cycles. Undervalued currencies. Large external surplus. Delayed gratification in the interest of shorter-term stability and long-term growth. EM foreign exchange reserves rose to $8trln in 2014 from $617bln in 1998. Financiers rejoiced. Industrialists moved to China.

    Privilege to Curse V: “A particularly interesting aspect of the global saving glut has been a remarkable reversal in the flows of credit to developing and emerging-market economies.” Bernanke’s 2005 address on the issue coined the term “saving glut.” US policy appreciated the challenge. But times were good. “I see no reason why the whole process should not proceed smoothly.” It was the height of privilege. The US economy shifted toward consumption, away from production. Foreign savings fueled the luxury – US external borrowing rose to 7% of GDP.

    Privilege to Curse VI: It was an implicit monetary accord, not formalized. Domestic production was hollowed in the name of globalization and principles of the Washington Consensus – dutifully ignored by EM countries. Under the constraints of a hard-money system, deficits needed to either be financed or creditors would take back their gold. Net international liabilities never had a chance to build. Today, they haven’t had a chance to correct. The US international liability of $17.75trln is the cumulation of the past, like looking back at stars in a telescope.

    Privilege to Curse VII: The privilege of cheap financing is now a curse – and it’s global. The world is racing to a new monetary regime with an unknown finish line. Inflation was the starting gun. Monetary regimes change under stress. Countries cooperate when they all have a lot to lose. The virtuous cycle of globalization is now working in reverse with a focus on security – in food, energy, and technology. Foreign exchange is the asset class that drives the transition to new monetary regimes, during macro quantum change. “It’s our currency, but it’s your problem,” a legendary declaration from Secretary Connally in 1971 that is truer today. We’re all FX traders now.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/24/2022 – 17:30

  • Al Gore Compares Climate Skeptics To Uvalde Cops Who 'Stood By While Children Were Being Massacred'
    Al Gore Compares Climate Skeptics To Uvalde Cops Who ‘Stood By While Children Were Being Massacred’

    Former Vice President Al Gore (D), who wrongly predicted the Arctic would be ice-free by 2013 because of man-made global warming, and has pushed mass surveillance as a solution to curb carbon emissions, has compared ‘climate deniers’ to Uvalde police officers who waited over an hour to stop a mass shooting which left 19 children and 2 adults dead in late May.

    “You know, the climate deniers are really in some ways similar to all of those almost 400 law enforcement officers in Uvalde, Texas, who were waiting outside an unlocked door while the children were being massacred,” Gore told “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd.

    “They heard the screams, they heard the gunshots, and nobody stepped forward,” said Gore.

    Of course, as Outkick‘s Ian Miller notes, “Gore’s obsessive focus on the U.S. as the main culprit [of man-made climate change] is wildly inaccurate when China far exceeds US emissions:”

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

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/24/2022 – 17:00

  • The Day Fauci Reversed Course: February 27, 2020
    The Day Fauci Reversed Course: February 27, 2020

    Via The Brownstone Institute, originally authored by Will Jones at DailySceptic.org,

    I’ve been looking again at Covid’s origins and the start of the pandemic. Last time I wrote on it I argued that Italy brought in China-style lockdowns on March 8th and 10th 2020 mainly as a result of panic owing to the leap in the death rate, with it being clear from the hospital situation there were many more deaths to come. I still believe that that was the immediate trigger for imposing lockdowns at the time. However, I now recognise that that is far from the full story. What it leaves out is the backdrop of who was pushing for lockdowns throughout the preceding two months, and why.

    Two key pieces of data have emerged in the last few months that help to bring the picture into clearer focus.

    The first is that with the arrival of Omicron the Chinese have continued fanatically to pursue lockdowns, crippling their economy as they do it. To my mind, this is convincing evidence that the Chinese are sincere about their belief in the radical new disease management strategy they inaugurated on January 23rd 2020 in Wuhan. I initially (in 2020) thought it may be an elaborate ruse to convince the world to do something monumentally and pointlessly self-destructive. But it appears they really do think lockdowns are highly effective and the right way to fight a disease like COVID-19. I’m aware some suggest it could just be a cunning strategy to strengthen the grip of the ruling party on the population, but all the evidence indicates to me that they actually are trying to fight the disease in this way.

    If this is accepted then one of the key pieces of the puzzle snaps into place: the global Covid narrative has, both behind closed doors and in front of them, been driven in part by the Chinese Government’s commitment to its extreme suppression strategy and its desire for other countries to adopt it as well. It’s been suggested this derives from a sense of national pride and seeking vindication of their efforts and ideas, and is part of a wider aim of achieving global Chinese cultural supremacy, which sounds plausible to me.

    The second key piece of data are emails sent by White House Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci, which reveal that behind closed doors as late as February 26th 2020, Dr. Fauci was still, as he had been consistently up to that point, advising people not to panic. But as of February 27th his approach suddenly changed and, from that moment on, he began consistently pushing restrictions.

    On February 26th he wrote to CBS News that Americans should not yield to fear:

    You cannot avoid having infections since you cannot shut off the country from the rest of the world… Do not let the fear of the unknown… distort your evaluation of the risk of the pandemic to you relative to the risks that you face every day… do not yield to unreasonable fear.

    But by the next day he was writing to actress Morgan Fairchild that the American public should prepare for pandemic restrictions:

    It would be great if you could tweet to your many Twitter followers that although the current risk of coronavirus to the American public is low, the fact that there is community spread of virus in a number of countries besides China… poses a risk that we may progress to a global pandemic of COVID-19… And so for that reason, the American public should not be frightened, but should be prepared to mitigate an outbreak in this country by measures that include social distancing, teleworking, temporary closure of schools, etc. There is nothing to be done right now since there are so few cases in this country and these cases are being properly isolated, and so go about your daily business. However, be aware that behavioural adjustments may need to be made if a pandemic occurs.

    Interestingly, February 27th was also the day the media narrative in the U.S. shifted, with the New York Times leading the way with its first alarmist piece, by Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance, and also an alarmist podcast with science and health reporter Donald G. McNeil Jr., which quoted directly from China a 2% mortality rate for the virus.

    The context for this shift was a WHO press briefing on February 24th by Bruce Aylward, who had just concluded a WHO-China Joint Mission on COVID-19 and told the world that lockdown worked and “you have to do this. If you do it, you can save lives and prevent thousands of cases of what is a very difficult disease.”

    The timing obviously suggests the events are connected, but crucially it also implies that Fauci and those around him were not part of the behind-the-scenes decision of Aylward to throw the WHO’s weight behind the Chinese approach. This leaves, then, the question of why Fauci & Co flipped from their previous position of playing down the threat from the virus and not supporting extreme Chinese-style interventions to going all in with the panic.

    The picture being painted here is of at least two ‘conspiracies’ going on – the Chinese one, seeking to push lockdowns as part of Chinese vindication and cultural supremacy, and the Fauci & Co one, the potential motives for which are discussed below. I am pretty confident these are not the same ‘conspiracy’, as I assume that Fauci & Co are not motivated by vindicating China and advancing its cultural supremacy (I’ve seen no evidence this should be the case).

    A further element to throw into the mix is that the first Western lockdown occurred three days before the Aylward WHO briefing, on February 21st 2020, in a region of 50,000 people in Lombardy. Oddly, it seems to have been an isolated local initiative in response to the first identified ‘cases’ led by the regional health chief Giulio Gallera, with no clear links to the WHO or any other known lockdown protagonists. It would be interesting to ask Mr. Gallera why he decided to follow such a radical course of action that day.

    Italy locked down on March 8th and 10th, a response it seems to the climbing death rate, and most of the rest of the world followed in the ensuing two weeks. The U.S. Government was persuaded by Deborah Birx and others to back lockdowns on March 16th. On March 12th-14th, U.K. Government ministers and officials did a media round promoting the idea of aiming for herd immunity and keeping calm and carrying on. However, that strategy soon collapsed in the face of shifting public opinion and alarmist models from scientists like Imperial’s Neil Ferguson. After March 23rd, Sweden was the only holdout among Western Governments.

    Such a mess of uncoordinated action confirms to my mind a picture of different groups driven by different motives and agendas which sometimes overlap, catalysed by groupthink and hysteria, rather than any grand behind-the-scenes conspiracy involving all in a coordinated fashion.

    The Chinese Communist Party is a crucial actor, of course. It invented lockdowns and since then has persistently pushed them to the rest of the world, including through an all too willing WHO. However, that doesn’t mean that all who promote panic and lockdowns do so because they are in thrall to China or doing its bidding.

    So what was the deal with Fauci & Co – why did they oppose panic and lockdowns until February 27th, then flip to become among their most eager and high-powered proponents?

    Fauci’s emails show that, starting at the end of January and into February 2020, he organised a series of secretive video conferences and phone calls because he and his associates suspected the virus may have been genetically modified and leaked from a lab. Yet despite these suspicions, on February 19th the group wrote a letter to the Lancet denouncing the lab leak as a “conspiracy theory”. The organiser of the letter was Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance, one of Fauci’s associates who it later turned out had been funding gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology of exactly the kind that was suspected as being responsible for creating COVID-19. Biologist Nick Patterson notes a grant application from EcoHealth Alliance to DARPA (the research agency of the U.S. Department of Defence), of which he says, “as far as I can make out, the plan here was for WIV to collect live virus, ship it to the USA, have U.S. scientists genetically modify the virus, and then ship modified virus… back to China”.

    In light of information like this and Fauci & Co’s preoccupation during February 2020 with the origin of the virus, culminating in their cynical effort to suppress the claims of lab leak and genetic modification, I surmise that their major motivation was to cover themselves for the possibility that they and their research fields would be held responsible for the virus. Initially this took the form of suppressing the lab leak theory while also playing down the threat from the virus, which they would have been keen to be as uneventful as possible. But why then the flip to panic mode after February 27th? Did the WHO backing lockdowns on February 24th change the equation, so it was no longer deemed viable or good cover to oppose the new approach? The path of least resistance in other words. A related question is whether they were genuinely persuaded that the measures would be effective or if they retained an unspoken scepticism. If they did retain any scepticism there’s been precious little sign of it since March 2020.

    Overall, I see no indication of a grand plan from the earliest days in which all are working from a common script to a common goal. Instead, I see various groups with their own agendas, interests and fears. It’s clear that, following Aylward’s team’s visit, China managed to capture the WHO and bring it on board with championing lockdowns. However, the motives of everyone besides China are largely opaque. Why did Aylward become China’s biggest fan – was he threatened or bribed or just duped and naïve? Why exactly did Lombardy regional health chief Giulio Gallera respond to the first cases in his region by imposing a Chinese-style lockdown even before the WHO had backed them? Why did Fauci flip on February 27th? What about curious figures like Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger, highlighted by Michael Senger, who despite being a known China critic, was a major alarmist influence within the White House from the get-go, drawing on mysterious ‘contacts in China’ to call for panic and restrictions as early as January?

    What drove each of these people to get behind the closing down of society as the ‘solution’ to a respiratory virus? We can largely see now who did what and when. What’s mainly missing is the why.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/24/2022 – 16:30

  • House Intel Committee Member Warns DNA Testing Kits Could Lead To Targeted Bioweapons
    House Intel Committee Member Warns DNA Testing Kits Could Lead To Targeted Bioweapons

    Two members of Congressional intelligence committees have warned Americans that information gathered from DNA testing kits such as 23andMe, as well as those used in agriculture, could be used to develop bioweapons targeting specific groups of Americans or even individuals.

    Speaking on Friday at the Aspen Security Forum, Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, warned that Americans are too trusting with their DNA in the hands of private companies.

    “There are now weapons under development, and developed, that are designed to target specific people,” said Crow, a former Army Ranger.

    “You can’t have a discussion about this without talking about privacy and the protection of commercial data because expectations of privacy have degraded over the last 20 years,” he added. “Young folks actually have very little expectation of privacy, that’s what the polling and the data show.”

    “That’s what this is, where you can actually take someone’s DNA, you know, their medical profile, and you can target a biological weapon that will kill that person or take them off the battlefield or make them inoperable.”

    “People will very rapidly spit into a cup and send it to 23andMe and get really interesting data about their background,” he continued, Fox News reports.

    Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, expanded on that, adding that US adversaries could use the same technology to attack US food security – targeting livestock and crops to induce famine.

    “If we look at food security and what can our adversaries do with biological weapons that are directed at our animal agriculture, at our agricultural sector … highly pathogenic avian influenza, African swine fever,” she said, adding: “All of these things have circulated around the globe, but if targeted by an adversary, we know that it brings about food insecurity. Food insecurity drives a lot of other insecurities around the globe.”

    “What can our adversaries do with biological weapons that are directed at our agricultural sector?” she asked.

    In November, the LA County Sheriff’s department notified the LA County Board of Supervisors that LASD will not work with a China-linked genetics firm hired by the county to conduct Covid-19 testing and registration, after the FBI shared “very concerning information” about Fulgent Genetics Corporation – which was awarded a no-bid contract for the work.

    “This letter is to inform you the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (Department) will not participate in COVID-19 registering or testing with Fulgent Genetics Corporation (Fulgent), due to the fact the DNA data obtained is not guaranteed to be safe and secure from foreign governments and “will likely be shared with the Republic of China,“” wrote Sheriff Alex Villanueva in a Monday letter. 

    Of note, China’s ambitions to build the world’s largest DNA database are no secret to anyone listening to Kyle Bass or the Wall Street Journal.

    One month later, the Biden administration blacklisted 12 Chinese biotech institutions involved in mass DNA collection technology and surveiolance.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/24/2022 – 16:00

  • Over 25% Of Home-Sellers Dropped Their Price In June In Most Metro Areas
    Over 25% Of Home-Sellers Dropped Their Price In June In Most Metro Areas

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

    Redfin reports price reductions by at least 25 percent of sellers in three-fourths of the metro areas it tracks.

    Redfin reports More than 60% of Boise Home Sellers Dropped Their Asking Price in June Amid Cooling Market

    Price Drops by City 

    • Boise, ID (61.5%)

    • Denver, CO (55.1%)

    • Salt Lake City, UT (51.6%)

    • Tacoma, WA (49.5%)

    • Grand Rapids, MI (49.3%)

    • Sacramento, CA(48.7%)

    • Seattle, WA (46.3%)

    • Portland, OR (45.7%)

    • Tampa, FL (44.5%)

    • Indianapolis, IN (44.1%)

    • Phoenix, AZ (43.6%)

    • San Diego, CA (43.3%)

    • Stockton, CA (42.9%)

    • Austin, TX (41.6%)

    “Home sellers are contending with a rapidly changing market, especially in places where they’re used to their neighbor’s homes getting multiple offers and selling for more than asking price,” said Redfin Senior Economist Sheharyar Bokhari. 

    In 18 metro areas, over 40 percent of sellers reduced prices.  In 73 metro areas, at least 30% of sellers reduced their asking price.

    Redfin tracks 97 metro areas.

    Just a Start 

    Home prices have gotten so insane, this is barely a start to what’s coming.

    Housing and Commercial Real Estate Both Weakening

    Both residential and office space are under severe pressure.

     

    *  *  *

    Please Subscribe to MishTalk Email Alerts.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/24/2022 – 15:30

  • How Mattis Betrayed His Fellow Marines At The Behest Of The Deep State
    How Mattis Betrayed His Fellow Marines At The Behest Of The Deep State

    Authored by Major Fred Galvin (USMC-Ret) via The Publius National Post,

    How the Pentagon’s top-brass generals burned the careers of subordinates but then pivoted to lucrative careers all while losing the wars they were supposed to be winning

    My new book, A Few Bad Men, details the mendacity and mad dishonesty of retired Marine General James “Mad Dog” Mattis. The fact that it was written by a Marine once under his command, whom he betrayed for the sake of politics and getting to slap on another star, says volumes about this once-lionized figure.

    It all goes back to an incident in Afghanistan in 2007, and the Court of Inquiry trial of innocent Marines that followed, which Mattis himself instigated.

    Lt. Colonel Steve Morgan, USMC (retired) and jury member of the 2008 Marine Special Operations Command’s Court of Inquiry says in the foreword to A Few Bad Men, “This is a case of a perfect storm of toxic leadership.” 

    The most legendary Marine of all time, Lieutenant General John A. Lejeune, the 13th commandant of the Marine Corps, laid out clearly how to effectively nurture and lead Marines:

    “Make every effort by means of historical, educational, and patriotic addresses to cultivate in their hearts a deep abiding love of the Corps and Country” and “the key to combat effectiveness is unity and esprit that characterizes itself in complete irrevocable mutual trust.” 

    If only General Mattis had taken this to heart.

    On February 3, 2005, when Lieutenant General Mattis was attending the Armed Forces Communications and Electronic Associations forum in San Diego, he said: “You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them. It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right up there with you. I like brawling.” 

    He also likes hearing the sound of his own voice.

    During this same time, Mattis partnered with General David Petraeus to develop the joint counterinsurgency doctrine of winning hearts and minds. Mattis hijacked the phrase from the Hippocratic oath for his Marines to follow, “First do no harm.” This sounded good to the media and politicians in Washington, but Marines are not physicians and Afghanistan was no sterile operating room. It was a hellscape in which Marines constantly faced threats and the possibility of betrayal from 360 degrees. Mattis’ Marine Hippocratic oath sent mixed signals for his Marines, who had it on his good authority that “It’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot . . . some people.”  

    Just over two years later, I led the First Marine Special Operations Task Force. We landed in Afghanistan on February 12, 2007. Before long the First was involved in a complex ambush near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, on March 4, 2007. We were attacked by a suicide car-bomb, waves of Taliban fighters on both sides of the road, a sniper, and a mob that placed an obstacle to trap us in an ambush kill box. We  successfully counterattacked, killed the Taliban terrorists, avoided civilian casualties, and returned to base within 20 minutes, where we learned of the Taliban’s swift information operations campaign that was already underway, accusing us of mass-murdering Afghan civilians. The Taliban’s version of events went out within 20 minutes through the BBC followed by countless others. Ultimately, the president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, condemned our actions and the Army generals kicked us out of Afghanistan within five days. Crushing the Taliban in battle morphed into a PR victory for the extremists in the media and a weakening of the allied forces in country. Due process went right out the window.

    Ironically, Mattis was assigned as the convening authority by the commandant of the Marine Corps in August 2007, to be responsible for the investigation and a Court of Inquiry into our March 4 battle. Mattis received the results of my polygraph test and the sworn testimony of all the Marines involved in the firefight, confirming that on that morning no Marines said they killed any civilians or saw any civilians killed. 

    Unlike Lejeune’s comments of “cultivating a deep abiding love of Country and Corps in the hearts of your Marines and that the key to combat effectiveness is unity and esprit that characterizes itself in complete irrevocable mutual trust,” Mattis unleashed an unprecedented 45 criminal investigators and four prosecuting attorneys against the seven Marines falsely accused by the Taliban of mass murder. It would become the longest war crimes trial in Marine Corps history. 

    Mattis placed a “protective order” (a.k.a. gag order) prohibiting the two Marine officers who he named as codefendants from making any statements to the press or face punishment. Our attorneys would face disbarment. The already unlevel playing field was tilted hard against the Marines who had won a battlefield victory under fire.

    Additionally, Mattis’ prosecution team found perceived vulnerabilities in the Marine commandos and commenced “ethnic targeting” of two Hispanic Marines. Mad Dog’s prosecutors continuously interrogated one of them, and the government manufactured a statement from him that our fire was out of control during the March 4 ambush. 

    The prosecution then threatened to deport the Marine’s mother back to Mexico unless he signed the statement. That Marine testified he was coerced into signing the prosecution’s false statement. Another Hispanic Marine also testified he was repeatedly threatened by the prosecution to take a polygraph, which was not a legal order, but the prosecution ordered him to anyway. None of the other Marines were subjected to these strongarm Gestapo tactics.

    Mattis turned the prosecution over to his successor in the fall of 2007 as he received his promotion with a fourth star. The following year, the trial acquitted all of us. No thanks to Mad Dog Mattis. He got his star. A few bad prosecutors under his watch cost the Marines a few good men, and diminished America’s position in Afghanistan at a time when that war might still have been won.

    Mattis went on to serve as the commander of all U.S. Forces in the Middle East at U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida. As I detail in A Few Bad Men, there he came under the influence of Elizabeth Holmes, founder and CEO of Theranos. Holmes had a device she claimed could detect all kinds of disease in a few drops of blood. It would change the world, if it worked. Holmes contacted Mattis in August 2012 and wrote Pentagon officials requesting, “How do we overcome this new obstacle? I have tried to get this device tested in theater asap, legally and ethically. This appears to be relatively straight-forward yet we’re a year into this and not yet deployed.” 

    The main problem Mattis was willing to overlook was that the FDA had not approved Theranos’ blood testing technology to be used on our troops in Afghanistan, but Mattis was hoping he could push it through, right or wrong. 

    Mattis retired and went on to make a fortune serving on four corporate boards, including Theranos and military contractor General Dynamics. Theranos’ technology would not only be denied FDA approval, but it was proven to be a fraud. During the Elizabeth Holmes trial, Mattis, who had served as a Theranos board member for several years, testified that he was unaware of any of Theranos’ scandalous actions. This seems unlikely, given Mad Dog’s legendary tenacity, and the fact that he had a fiduciary duty to know what was going on.

    Holmes’ device never worked. She is now a convicted fraudster. Was Mattis her gullible mark or a greedy participant?

    Mattis’ disgraceful actions are laid bare in A Few Bad Men. He used his position as secretary of defense to bottle up the Freedom of Information Act requests to get our testimony in that March 4, 2007 ambush exposed. Our shocking testimonies have now been released and tell a terrible story of betrayal by a Marine against other Marines. They reveal why the Pentagon’s top-brass generals who burned the careers of subordinates but then pivoted to lucrative careers with every defense contracting company lost their forever war in Afghanistan, and really, haven’t won a war in decades.

    *  *  *

    Major Fred Galvin (USMC-Ret), author of A Few Bad Men: The True Story of U.S. Marines Ambushed in Afghanistan and Betrayed in America.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 07/24/2022 – 15:11

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