- Escobar: Make America Jeffersonian Again
Escobar: Make America Jeffersonian Again
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/24/2020 – 23:30Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,
The whole planet has every reason to be terminally puzzled at how all those lofty Enlightenment ideals Thomas Jefferson embedded in the 1776 Declaration of Independence ended up with… Trump vs. Biden.
Jefferson borrowed freely from Locke, Rousseau, Hume to come up with an eminently quotable Greatest Hits, featuring “self-evident” truths such as “all men are created equal”, “unalienable rights”, and that searing “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Well, Baudrillard would have dubbed the exercise a mere simulacrum, because in real life none of this uplifting rhetoric applied to Native Americans and enslaved Africans.
Still, there’s something endlessly fascinating about these “self-evident truths”. They actually radiated like Spinoza axioms, spawning abstract truths that can be extrapolated at will. Jefferson’s “self-evident truths” ended up creating the whole, massive structure of what we define as “Western liberal democracy”.
So it’s no wonder that America – perennially self-described as “leader of the free world” – consider these “self-evident truths” as the basis of an ideal society.
And it’s this messianic river of fervent truth flowing out of a Himalaya of Morality that leads Americans to dismiss as “malign actors” every nation or society that is judged to be “deviating” from such obvious evidence.
Those damned furreners. They’re always up to no good.
Cut to a mini-remix of the last Trump-Biden presidential debate. In foreign policy terms, it went something like this.
The moderator is desperate to move on as she’s very much aware of time constraints and looming, incandescent clashes: “Now I want to move on to Defense. It’s established Russia and China are interfering in our election process…”
Here’s classic “self-evident truth” material, delivered according to strict Council on Foreign Relations guidelines.
Cut to Biden: any country that interferes with the American elections “will pay a price”. Russia’s “been involved, China has been involved to some degree, and Iran’s been involved.” They are interfering with “American sovereignty”. Rudy Giuliani was used “as a Russian pawn”. Trump is “unwilling” to confront Putin. Russia has “destabilized NATO” and is “paying bounties to kill Americans in Afghanistan.” And China “has to play by the rules” – or else.
Cut to Trump: “You mean the laptop from hell is another Russia, Russia, Russia hoax?”
For the record: Joe Biden did blame the contents of son Hunter’s laptop from hell on Russia.
And discussing North Korea, when Trump said he got along fine with Kim Jong-Un, Biden stated, “We had a good relationship with Hitler before he invaded Europe.” Incidentally, Germany is and remains in Europe. And it’s quite something to see Biden acknowledging in public proven US industrial and political support to Nazism.
Those damn furreners
So, inevitably, the laptop from hell had to show up.
The FBI had Hunter Biden’s laptop since December 2019 – as it had issued a subpoena for it in the first place. And yet the FBI sat on the laptop for 11 months doing nothing.
That must have given plenty of time for those pesky Russians to steal the laptop and plant incriminating evidence.
Well, not really. The FBI was busy mulling how to conduct an investigation on “money laundering”. And not on child porn – which, according to Giuliani, is the piece de resistance in the laptop. No one knows if these alleged “investigations” are ongoing.
Now, the FBI and the Department of Justice have finally “concurred”: Hunter Biden’s laptop and emails were not part of a Russian disinformation campaign – directly contradicting what Joe Biden said in the debate.
But then, right before the debate, a bombshell presser – including the FBI and Homeland Security – had announced those pesky Russians and Iranians were in fact “trying to influence opinion” on the US elections.
“Self-evident truths” were back with a bang.
One can’t make this stuff up.
And it gets even murkier when the actual “election interference” may be coming from inside the US, not from those damn furreners.
This past summer, the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) war-gamed possible scenarios post-November 3. All the scenarios lead to a huge constitutional crisis – forced, as part of the premise, by Trump’s refusal to concede his defeat at the polls.
TIP, predictably, is a proverbial Beltway bubble, composed of assorted Democratic Party higher-ups, Clintonistas, Obamistas and neo-con Never Trumpers.
Their message is now widely accepted as another avatar of “self-evident truths” because of this group’s powerful grip over Anglo-American mainstream media. Reverberations may be seen, for instance, here, here and here.
So the preferred doomsday scenario ahead spells out an engineered unresolved election, wide socio-political chaos, “continuity of government” protocols, even martial law.
What’s “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” got to do with it?
- Supposedly Retired, F-117 Nighthawks Spotted In San Diego
Supposedly Retired, F-117 Nighthawks Spotted In San Diego
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/24/2020 – 23:00On Tuesday, two Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk stealth attack aircraft (supposedly retired) were spotted at the Miramar Naval Base in San Diego, reported Airway1.
After 25 years in service, the Air Force retired the F-117 fleet in April 2008, but in September 2017, the service received special permission to keep 51 in Type 1000 storage, meaning the planes could swiftly return to active service.
Four decommissioned F-117s were secretly deployed to the Middle East in 2017 to launch surgical strikes. The reason for the deployment was simple; Russia and Syria had shut down Syrian airspace by mid-2016. The U.S.-led coalition was unwilling to lose a fifth-generation aircraft to Russia’s S-400 missile systems in Syria.
As for the latest sighting of the retired first-generation stealth jets over the skies of San Diego, there’s no official government statement explaining their flights.
Video: F-117 Nighthawks Spotted Near Miramar Naval Base In San Diego
With souring relations between China and the US, along with the Pentagon flushed with cash, there could be an effort to return some of these stealth jets to active service to address an urgent gap in the Pentagon’s ability to strike targets in disputed airspace.
China’s deployment of hypersonic missiles across from Taiwan has left some to believe that war preparations are underway – maybe, just maybe, the US is doing the same, and could one day reactivate the F-117s.
Still, there’s no official reason why the stealth jets flew earlier this week.
- China's Elite-Capture Strategy & The Bidens
China's Elite-Capture Strategy & The Bidens
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/24/2020 – 22:30Authored by Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg via The Epoch Times,.
Excerpted from the book: ‘Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party Is Reshaping the World’
In 2018 the well-connected Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin pointed out that China had been building networks of influence in the United States over many years, and that the U.S. government “is preparing for the possibility that the Chinese government will decide to weaponize” them to get what it wants. (Although Beijing is not known to use Russian-style “active measures” in the West, deploying them is only a matter of political calculation.)
One of the CCP’s most audacious penetration operations, Chinagate in 1996, saw a top intelligence operative meeting a naive President Clinton in the White House, along with donations to the Clinton campaign made through people with ties to the Chinese military.
Beijing has been working to gain influence in the U.S. Congress since the 1970s. Through the activities of the CCP’s International Liaison Department, and Party-linked bodies like the China Association for International Friendly Contact, China has made some influential friends. Nevertheless, Congress has for the most part remained skeptical of China, although its voice has been muted at times by the influence of “pro-China” members. The president, the White House, the bureaucracy, think tanks, and business lobby groups have all been targeted by Beijing, to good effect.
Democratic Presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden gestures as he speaks during the final presidential debate at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., on Oct. 22, 2020. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
Until recently, almost all players in Washington D.C. and beyond were convinced by the “peaceful rise of China” trope, and the value of “constructive engagement.” The common belief was that as China developed economically, it would naturally morph into a liberal state. This view was not without foundation, because the more liberal factions within the CCP did struggle with the hardliners, but in the U.S. it reinforced a kind of institutional naivety that was exploited by Beijing. Many of those who stuck to this view even after the evidence pointed firmly to the contrary had a strong personal investment in defending Beijing.
The billionaire businessman and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg was a late entrant in the contest to become the 2020 Democratic Party candidate for U.S. president. He is the most Beijing-friendly of all aspirants. With extensive investments in China, he opposes the tariff war and often speaks up for the CCP regime.
Former Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg addresses his staff and the media after announcing that he will be ending his campaign, in New York City, on March 4, 2020. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
His media company has suppressed stories critical of CCP leaders, and Bloomberg himself claimed in 2019 that “Xi Jinping is not a dictator” because he has to satisfy his constituency.
The Washington Post’s Josh Rogin argued that “his [Bloomberg’s] misreading of the Chinese government’s character and ambitions could be devastating for U.S. national security and foreign policy. He would be advocating for a naive policy of engagement and wishful thinking that has already been tried and failed.”
In May 2019 Joe Biden distinguished himself from all of the other candidates for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination by ridiculing the idea that China is a strategic threat to the United States. “China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man,” he told a campaign crowd in Iowa City. Biden had for years adopted a soft approach to China. When President Obama’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, was taking a tougher position towards China’s adventurism in Asia, Vice President Biden was urging caution. Biden had formed a warm personal relationship with Xi Jinping when Xi was vice president and president-in-waiting.
Hunter Biden (R) with then President Barack Obama (L) and Vice President Joe Biden during a college basketball game at the Verizon Center in Washington on Jan. 30, 2010. (Mitchell Layton/Getty Images)
In his second term, Obama replaced Clinton as secretary of state with the more accommodating John Kerry. The dynamics help to explain why Obama’s 2012 “pivot to Asia” was a damp squib. The United States stood back while China annexed islands and features in the South China Sea and built military bases on them, something Xi had promised Obama he would not do. Breaking the promise has given China an enormous strategic advantage.
Joe Biden cleaves to the belief, now abandoned by many China scholars and most Washington politicians, that engagement with China will entice it into being a responsible stakeholder. The University of Pennsylvania’s D.C. think tank—named, for him, the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement—aims to address threats to the liberal international order, yet China is absent from the threats identified on its website: Russia, climate change and terrorism. Biden has spoken about China’s violation of human rights but still clings to the idea of China’s “peaceful rise.”
So does it matter if Joe Biden has a different view of China? It does, because there is evidence that the CCP has been currying his favor by awarding business deals that have enriched his son, Hunter Biden. One account of this is given by Peter Schweizer in his 2019 book “Secret Empires.” Some of his key claims were subsequently challenged and Schweizer refined them in an op-ed in the New York Times (famous for fact-checking). In short, when Vice President Biden travelled to China in December 2013 on an official trip, his son flew with him on Airforce Two. While Biden senior was engaging in soft diplomacy with China’s leaders, Hunter was having other kinds of meetings. Then, “less than two weeks after the trip, Hunter’s firm … which he founded with two other businessmen [including John Kerry’s stepson] in June 2013, finalized a deal to open a fund, BHR Partners, whose largest shareholder is the government-run Bank of China, even though he had scant background in private equity.”
The Bank of China is owned by the state and controlled by the CCP. Hunter Biden’s exact role in the company is disputed, but one expert has said that his share in it would be worth around $20 million.
However, the point here is not the ethics of the Bidens (as the news media have framed it) but the way in which the CCP can influence senior politicians. This “corruption by proxy,” in which top leaders keep their hands clean while their family members exploit their association to make fortunes, has been perfected by the “red aristocracy” in Beijing.
Cover of the book “Hidden Hand” by Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg.
In the crucial years 2014 and 2015, Beijing was aggressively expanding into the South China Sea while Obama, Kerry, and Biden were sitting on their hands…
- Sam's Club To Deploy Robot Cleaners For All US Stores Amid Contactless Shift
Sam's Club To Deploy Robot Cleaners For All US Stores Amid Contactless Shift
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/24/2020 – 22:00Even before the virus pandemic, bulk retailer Sam’s Club has been fairly aggressive in adopting robotics and automation at U.S. stores.
Sam’s Club employed a fleet of robotic scrubbers from Tennant Company, a Brain Corp partner, at hundreds of U.S. stores but is now preparing to receive an additional 372 robots that will operate at the company’s 599 US locations.
“The potential of robots, A.I., and data working in concert throughout an in-store environment can only be realized by proven, commercial technology,” Dr. Eugene Izhikevich, CEO of Brain Corp., wrote in a press release.
“Sam’s Club recognizes the scale of this opportunity, and we are proud to be selected as part of their connected club initiatives,” Izhikevich wrote.
The virus pandemic has accelerated the company’s mission to reduce worker contact by supporting an effort to adopt more robotic solutions across stores.
Walmart, the owner of Sam’s Club, is already using robots to perform cleaning and inventory tasks in stores. In 1Q20, the company announced it was adding inventory-checking Bossa Nova robots to an additional 650 locations to bring up to 1,000 in the U.S. It also piloted Brain’s cleaning robots at select stores.
Walmart has also announced sweeping changes to stores, including restructuring leadership roles, redesigned layouts, and increased focus on robotics and automation.
Walmart stores of the future will be a contactless environment, with layouts similar to airports, a move that will allow it to compete with Amazon. But to do so, the mega-retailer, America’s largest employer, will have to reduce labor expenses by shrinking its workforce size. One way to do this is through the adoption of robots.
A robot that makes smoothies was recently showcased at a Walmart in California, this is very suggestive that robots at stores will expand tasks in the near future. The company is also turning to drones for last-mile delivery, another move to eliminate human workers.
While the addition of robots in Sam’s Club and Walmart stores sounds harmless, hundreds if not thousands of workers from these stores could soon be displaced by robots in the coming years.
The next problem is what to do with all the people laid off, not just due to the virus pandemic that has crushed the economy and decimated SMEs, but there will be a steady adoption of robotics and automation into the workplace that will result in millions of job losses by 2030.
It’s no secret, and we know the federal government’s response to all of this job loss. As President Trump shows, it doesn’t matter, Republicans or Democrats, both parties are becoming increasingly fans of universal basic income. Just remember, Trump checks were a trial run for People’s Q.E. and suggests more of that is coming.
- Doug Casey On Why The 2020s Will Likely Be the Most Turbulent Decade in 250 Years
Doug Casey On Why The 2020s Will Likely Be the Most Turbulent Decade in 250 Years
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/24/2020 – 21:30International Man: Due to COVID-19, almost every country in the world closed its borders. Over seven months later, most governments still restrict travel, economic activity, and social gatherings.
You recently traveled internationally. How did it go?
Doug Casey: I’ve been stuck in the backward but pleasant and peaceful little country of Uruguay for the last seven months. The lockdown in Uruguay wasn’t nearly as severe as other countries in Latin America, but it was nonetheless impossible to come or go from the place.
I recently returned to Aspen. Bad timing, because it’s the fall and getting cold here in the mountains.
I took a COPA flight, business class, from Montevideo to Miami via Panama City. American Airlines and United usually fly direct to Miami or New York. But not now. Maybe because there’s not enough traffic, international flights are down at least 80–90%. Or maybe just because they’re bankrupt.
One of the first inconveniences you notice is that they no longer have proper earphones in business class. All they give you is little earplugs, which make it hard to hear the movie over the rush of the wind and the engines; on American, only one ear channel worked as a bonus. Supposedly a sanitary measure to fight COVID-19.
All the airlines have now ceased serving hot meals. On both airlines in business class, all you got was a little lunchbox with cold cuts and a bit of fruit. There are no longer any pillows or blankets available, either, due to contagion fears during the COVID-19 hysteria.
On my American flight from Dallas to Aspen, the stewardess did a good imitation of Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS. She noticed that though I was wearing my mask—which, of course, is required at all times on the plane and in airports—but it only covered my mouth, not my nose. I was reprimanded.
But when she delivered apple juice, I was allowed to take my mask off entirely for the full hour it took me to sip the glass of juice. Further proof that the rules around the Great Hysteria are mostly annoying theater and laughably ridiculous.
Aspen itself would normally be dead as a doornail in mid-October. But not now.
It’s overrun by obnoxious rich people from cities, mainly New York, LA, and Miami. They’ve apparently decided to leave their first homes, perhaps because Aspen doesn’t have Antifa and Black Lives Matter—which I believe most of them support. Practically every property for sale—especially in downtown—gets an immediate bid. Real estate brokers are coining money.
Aspen should be renamed the People’s Republic of Aspen because that’s what it is. It’s always been an extreme left-wing town, of course. But the immense wealth brought in by the billionaires who are driving the multimillionaires down valley made it, nonetheless, an appealing place to live. And a continual bull market for property.
But now, if you go anywhere in the core of this town, you’ll find they’re rabid about wearing your mask when you’re out walking in the sun and fresh air. Even hiking or riding your bike without a muzzle will draw shaming from leftist hysterics. All the restaurants are jam-packed, with distanced tables. If you walk into a restaurant without a reservation, you’ll likely wait an hour for seating.
Almost all the shops are open and doing great business with the people who have inundated the place. The hotels are jammed, at full rack rates, and you can’t easily rent an apartment.
It’s a fact that people are leaving the cities. And, I understand that it’s like this in all kinds of nice small towns across the country. They’re likely to sell their old homes and stay here. They’re the type of people who can work electronically in the world of the Internet and Zoom.
I dislike being in Aspen now under these circumstances. In fact, I’m going to sell the ranch, which is 20 minutes out of town. When the ducks are quacking, you should feed them. This town is nothing like it once was—the land of soft snow, hard drugs, and casual sex—when I first came here.
International Man: After the September 11th, travel changed forever. The government gave us the TSA, the Patriot Act, and all kinds of permanent restrictions. Do you think much of the restrictions brought on by the COVID hysteria will stay with us?
Doug Casey: Laws are almost never repealed. But lots of new laws are constantly added on.
You have to remember that all of the world’s Congresses and Parliaments are still in session, and what they do is pass laws telling you what you must and must not do. People increasingly act like whipped dogs. Since “democracy” became a secular religion—starting about the time of World War 1—individual freedom has been in shorter and shorter supply every year.
Of course, it’ll get much worse if Harris and Biden win the election. But the effect has been compounded—especially here in the US—by state legislatures and the kind of people who run things at the city and county level. As evidence of that, we have about 2,300 so-called “employee housing units”—aka subsidized housing—in this town of 7,300. They’re available for those making less than a rather shocking $150,000 a year. The place has only the ultra-rich and the workers and peasants who cater to them.
But, to answer the question, the US is not going back to things as they once were. The COVID hysteria has precipitated as major a change as 9/11 did. Actually, even worse. That’s because everybody can see that there aren’t Muhammadan terrorists walking around, but this virus can be said to be everywhere.
International Man: 33 of the 50 US States have a mandatory mask mandate. This is unprecedented. What’s your take on this and the future of civil liberties in the US?
Doug Casey: Well, the people that run for city council, county commissioner, or the state legislature all want to move up the pecking order.
They’re basically nobodies—busybodies that want to be somebody. The easiest way to have people recognize their names and faces is to run for office. They want to show that they are activists, and the way that they do that is by promising lots of “free” stuff to the booboisie. They love exercising power in the minor leagues to justify they’re worthy of moving up to the big time.
Surprisingly, Americans are now so used to being told what to do that they’re really acting like whipped dogs—rolling over on their backs and wetting themselves. The whole secular religion of political correctness has gotten completely out of hand.
I remember a few years ago, a friend of mine in the newsletter business, Marc Faber, said something that was completely accurate but politically incorrect in his private newsletter. And because of what he observed there to his private subscribers, he was kicked off the board of several public corporations. It cost him about half a million dollars a year in director’s fees.
You have to be very careful what you say in a world dominated by Jacobins and Bolsheviks—and even more careful about what you do in today’s locked down world.
Of course, this whole COVID thing isn’t a matter for the government to start with. It’s a matter between an individual and his doctor. If the person decides he wants to wear a mask, fine, and if he doesn’t, that’s fine too. If a person is old or sick, and therefore in real danger, he should self-isolate at home while others establish herd immunity and the virus burns itself out.
It’s not something that should be legislated, especially by the kind of people who get into politics.
I have to add that COVID-19 may be deadly, but the average age of the person it kills is 80. Even then, it’s only old people who are sick and have other problems who are in danger. So, yes, COVID-19 kills people—like scores of other diseases—but not people who are of working age, and absolutely not people under 30.
This is a highly destructive hysteria, and we don’t know when it’s going to end. What we do know is that the hysteria is changing the entire nature of life.
International Man: The US presidential election is just a few weeks away. If Joe Biden and Kamala Harris win, how do you think their presidency will impact the country post-COVID-19?
Doug Casey: I regret to say that I still think Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are going to win.
If they win, there’s no way out. But in fact, if Trump wins, there’s no way out either. He wants to print money as much as they do. He’s adamant about keeping interest rates at disastrously and destructively low levels. He’s quite happy to impose all kinds of duties and arbitrarily sign executive orders about anything and everything. The Greater Depression is going to be nasty either way.
It really is going to be a Harris regency, however. The worst—the most collectivist and statist—senator in the Senate will become the de facto president.
Biden and Harris are surrounded by hard-core leftists, Marxists, and socialists. I don’t know how it’s going to end, except that it’s going to get violent. That’s because one of the things that they’ve hung their hats on is much stricter gun laws of all types. That may actually be the catalyst that sets it all off.
If the Donald is elected, however, the left will be rioting, looting, burning, and who knows what else. Trump won’t leave it up to the State and local authorities but will use the military to put them down. However, I’ll take four years of that kind of chaos, where the ancien regime is still in power, and the remnants of the old America still exist rather than watching the immediate Sovietizing of the US.
In other words, if Trump somehow is elected and maintains the office, we might have a four-year grace period. But there are no guarantees that he won’t be kicked out somehow. It’s all over but the shouting at this point for something like the old America. The best case is peaceful secession; the worst case is something like a civil war. I have, as you know, been saying this for several years.
International Man: Over the years, you’ve frequently said that although the financial and economic problems in the world are serious and accelerating, the biggest risks aren’t financial or economic. They’re political.
Has 2020 set a new precedent for the political risks we all face?
Doug Casey: Absolutely. Financial and economic risks can be solved by investing properly and by going out and producing wealth and saving it. Economic and financial problems are things that you have some control over. No matter what the environment, you can make your life better.
Political problems, on the other hand, are all about direct coercion. There’s not much you can do about them.
We’re facing really serious political problems right now, compounded by sociological problems—and perhaps a serious war.
So what’s going to happen?
People appear to want leaders—to be told what to do. They’ve been programmed to be irresponsible and to believe that somebody else—the State—is going to take care of them.
The average citizen of every country has become much less responsible as the State has grown much, much larger over the last century.
With that being the case, when there are problems, people are going to look for a strong leader—and they’re going to get strong leaders. It’s true all over the world. We already see this with Narendra Modi in India, Vladimir Putin in Russia, Xi Jinping in China, Erdogan in Turkey, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Fernandez in Argentina, and more.
Countries everywhere are going towards so-called strong leadership. It’s shaping up like the ’30s with Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt, and the rest of them.
As the situation gets completely out of control, people are going to look for dictatorial leaders to provide direction and safety. This decade is probably going to be the most dangerous since the Industrial Revolution overturned the basis of society over 200 years ago.
* * *
The economic, political, and social volatility in the days and weeks ahead promises to be extreme. The impact on your savings, retirement funds, and personal freedoms could be unlike anything we’ve ever seen. Do you want to know exactly what you should be doing differently with your portfolio and in your personal life? It reveals what you can do to prepare so that you can avoid getting caught in the crosshairs. Click here to watch it now.
- Twitter Nukes Alleged Hunter Biden Sex Tape After Letting Borat-Giuliani Sex Scene Trend
Twitter Nukes Alleged Hunter Biden Sex Tape After Letting Borat-Giuliani Sex Scene Trend
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/24/2020 – 21:13A few days ago, the MSM and their political allies in the Democratic Party celebrated the release of a “compromising” photo appearing to show former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani with his hands down his pants. Giuliani claimed that he was merely retucking in his shirt after removing some recording equipment, but nevertheless, the whole news cycle played out in full view of the public as social media giants like Twitter and Facebook looked the other way, allowing the photo, and links to news stories covering the controversy (orchestrated by “Borat” prankster Sasha Baron Cohen) to circulate widely.
However, just days later, a Chinese digital media company has published footage showing a man who looks identical to Hunter Biden engaging in a sex fetish act with an unidentifiable woman (along with a photo purporting to show what appears to be the same man engaging in sex with a Ukrainian prostitute). But instead of allowing discussion and links to the video to circulate, Twitter has scrubbed all links and photos related to the video and story, and is suspending accounts that appear to be trying to spread the video or screenshots from the footage.
Some background: Late Saturday afternoon, a mysterious link surfaced on Reddit purporting to be the vaunted Hunter Biden sex tape – or at least, one of the Hunter Biden sex tapes (whispers about more footage have so far gone unsubstantiated).
In it, a naked Hunter Biden can be seen, smoking crack, and laying with an unidentified woman, possibly a prostitute. The woman’s face is blurred out, making it impossible to tell whether or not she appeared to be underage.
The video itself was posted by a news site purporting to be an anti-CCP intelligence operation called G-TV, which is also tied to Guo Wengui, the Chinese billionaire dissident who is close to Steve Bannon (Bannon was reportedly arrested after a visit on Guo’s yacht in Connecticut).
Interested parties can find the video here.
Footage of the sex act is preceded by footage of Guo Wengui at the national press club raging over a Chinese takeover of the US, “9/11 times a thousand,” he says, before transitioning to a screed slamming Western politicians who collaborate with the CCP, and warning about the dangers of American kleptocrats falling sway to CCP “influence” (blackmail etc).
During the opening minutes if the video, Hunter can be heard complimenting the woman on her technique. “That’s so professional,” Hunter exclaims. “You can’t even find that on there,” he laughs as he gestures toward something off camera.
A few minutes in, the man who is allegedly Hunter Biden can be seen firing up a crack pipe.
The reaction on Twitter was swift. Users who tried to share the link and photos were quickly blocked (even though Twitter famously allows porn and nudity). Some cracked jokes about Hunter Biden receiving what appeared to be a ‘footjob’, while shrugging off the video as simply evidence that Biden has been victimized by revenge porn.
I just watched Hunter Biden get a foot job I think
— Cassandra Scarebanks🎃 (@CassandraRules) October 24, 2020
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Others focused on the statement at the beginning of the video, which also begins with footage of an unrelated event.
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🔥This message is extremely important. Please read it. The sex tape is to prove the CCP’s BGY & their possessions of such content. Anything involving children can’t be released to public. They DO EXIST & have been verified by multiple reporters. #HunterBiden #BidenCrimeFamiily pic.twitter.com/TEcSif1L1v
— Judy.Anderson茱迪 (@JudyAnd56006226) October 24, 2020
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Of course, now that actual pornographic footage of Hunter Biden has been produced, the world will stop and wonder: could these other rumors be true?
hunter biden sex tape pic.twitter.com/SjHqIFVxEq
— Luke Mahler (@lukecmahler) October 24, 2020
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Even some conservatives urged the public not to share the Hunter Biden “revenge porn”.
Disgusted with people sharing Hunter Biden revenge porn. What the fuck. Completely vile on its own and it obfuscates the legitimate corruption issues. Be better. Fuck!
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) October 24, 2020
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Others simply noted the disparity in treatment between the Hunter Biden story and the “Borat” revelations about Giuliani, and wondered aloud how Twitter might be handling this if those photos were of Donald Trump Jr., not Hunter Biden.
Of course, twitter didn’t simply ignore the Giuliani photo; the news became one of the top trending topics (thanks to the fact that Twitter’s user-base skews toward young leftists).
Everyone tweeting that Hunter Biden video is getting locked out and tweets are being disappeared
Twitter also promoted a doctored video of Rudy Giuliani this week claiming it was sexual
— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) October 24, 2020
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One Twitter used even proclaimed that Hunter was really “a victim” of his father, Joe Biden.
Just saw Hunter Biden’s sex tape. DO NOT WATCH IT. It is basically a 50-year-old guy smoking crack getting a blowjob from someone who may or may not be underage. The issue isn’t Hunter. The issue is the father who made him sell his influence. Hunter is a victim.
— @amuse (@amuse) October 24, 2020
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At any rate, the group that released the footage and the above-mentioned screenshot are promising to release more compromising material, while the MSM and Big Tech rallies to Hunter Biden’s defense.
- "It's Time To Defund NPR": GOP Rep Slams NPR For Refusing To Cover Hunter Biden Laptop Bombshell
"It's Time To Defund NPR": GOP Rep Slams NPR For Refusing To Cover Hunter Biden Laptop Bombshell
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/24/2020 – 21:00Representative Paul Gosar called for the defunding of National Public Radio (NPR) last week as a result of the outlet refusing to cover the bombshell Hunter Biden laptop story.
NPR had previously called the story a “waste of time”, stating: “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that aren’t really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listener’s and reader’s time on stories that are pure distractions.”
Among others who were outraged about the mainstream media actively covering up what is obviously a bombshell revelation regarding the Biden family’s business dealings with China, Ukraine and Russia (which we covered in detail in this report) was Representative Paul Gosar.
“It’s time to defund @NPR. This is appalling,” he Tweeted late last week:
It’s time to defund @NPR. This is appalling. #DefundNPR https://t.co/wFbY5lGGTG
— Rep. Paul Gosar, DDS (@RepGosar) October 22, 2020
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NPR public editor Kelly McBride also published a question from a listener late last week asking why NPR hadn’t covered the story, according to Fox News. The inquiry read: “Someone please explain why NPR has apparently not reported on the Joe Biden, Hunter Biden story in the last week or so that Joe did know about Hunter’s business connections in Europe that Joe had previously denied having knowledge?”
McBride responded by saying there were “many, many red flags” with the story (yeah, like it’s devastating to your preferred Presidential candidate) and suggested it could be Russian disinformation – a narrative that was roundly discredited on the night of the last Presidential debate, where former Biden associate Tony Bobulinski held a press conference and confirmed much of the NY Post’s findings.
But that didn’t stop NPR from pushing the Russia angle. They stated: “Intelligence officials warn that Russia has been working overtime to keep the story of Hunter Biden in the spotlight. Even if Russia can’t be positively connected to this information, the story of how Trump associates Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani came into a copy of this computer hard drive has not been verified and seems suspect.”
Recall, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said last week that the laptop was “not part of some Russian disinformation campaign.”
We’re sure NPR didn’t report that, either.
- The Trillion-Dollar F-35 Fighter Program Does Not Make Americans Safer
The Trillion-Dollar F-35 Fighter Program Does Not Make Americans Safer
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/24/2020 – 20:30Authored by Norm Singleton via The Mises Institute,
Overspending on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program does not make America any safer. The president’s military spending increase is based on the false premise that more spending equals more security. More spending may even make America less safe by spending us into bankruptcy.
The F-35 program is expected to cost well over $1 trillion when it is fully operational and deployed. That massive investment will serve to enrich government contractors while giving interventionist politicians an offensive weapon of war. This program was created as a “too big to fail” scheme where once the government starts the process of making these fighter jets, they will have spent so much money that they can’t back away. The F-35 program is a bad deal for the taxpayer while promoting a policy that will make these same taxpayers less safe.
It appears that the massive amount put into the program has purchased a lemon of a jet. The program has been troubled from day one and is currently experiencing some padding of the contract. On September 11, 2020, Bloomberg reported, “the Pentagon’s five-year budget plan for the F-35 falls short by as much as $10 billion, the military’s independent cost analysis unit has concluded, a new indication that the complex fighter jet may be too costly to operate and maintain.” The plan for the F-35 for the next five years was an estimated “$78 billion for research and development, jet procurement, operations and maintenance and military construction dedicated to the F-35 built by Lockheed Martin Corp.” This $10 billion mistake is going to fall on the shoulders of an already overtaxed taxpayer.
One big problem with this massive spending on one defense program is that it gives interventionist politicians the tools of war that they desire. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program contains a number of versions of a stealth fighter jet that can engage other aircraft and conduct military strikes. The goal is to use these aircraft as the primary fighter jets for the air force, navy, and marines. These can be used as offensive weapons in the hands of politicians who desire to engage in the endless war policies that have left the United States vulnerable to attack. This is a very expensive program that will not provide $1 trillion in security for American citizens.
Typical with government defense contracting, there have been numerous problems that have shifted significant increased cost onto the Pentagon. Defense News reported recently that the contractor was trying to stick the taxpayer with the cost of spare parts for the F-35. According to Bloomberg, the taxpayer received more bad news: “the F-35’s total ‘life cycle’ cost is estimated at $1.727 trillion in current dollars.” That is an insane amount of taxpayer cash and “$1.266 trillion is for operations and support of the advanced plane that’s a flying supercomputer.” When pressed by Bloomberg, a Pentagon spokesman bragged that a Pentagon “cost analysis office projects that the average procurement cost for an F-35, including its engines, is dropping from a planned $109 million to $101.3 million in 2012 dollars.” Only in Washington would a bureaucrat brag about ripping off American citizens by just under $8 million less as a deal for the taxpayer.
While some support this flawed program no matter how much it costs and actually advocate spending more taxpayer cash on it, Americans want that $1.7 trillion spent at home and not on a transnational defense spending program to defend other nations.
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is not worthy of a massive investment by the taxpayer when it does not make America safer while also being a poorly negotiated government contract that has stuck the taxpayer with a massive bill.
- US-Made Hypercar Hits 331 MPH On Nevada Highway
US-Made Hypercar Hits 331 MPH On Nevada Highway
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/24/2020 – 20:00SSC North America, a US hypercar company, announced Monday that its 1,750hp Tuatara hypercar has just claimed the title of the world’s fastest production car.
The vehicle, which was piloted by professional racing driver, Oliver Webb, pushed the Tuatara “to an average speed of 316.11 mph (508.73 km/h) following two consecutive high-speed test runs of 301.07 mph (484.53 km/h) and 331.15 mph (532.93 km/h),” read the company’s press release.
Webb broke three world speed records as the car zoomed down a seven-mile stretch of Nevada highway on Saturday (Oct. 10):
- “Fastest Flying Mile on a Public Road” at 313.12 mph
- “Fastest Flying Kilometer on a Public Road” at 321.35 mph
- “Highest Speed Achieved on a Public Road” at 331.15 mph
Jerod Shelby, CEO of SSC, said, “it’s been ten years since we held this record with our first car, the Ultimate Aero, and the Tuatara is leagues ahead. Its performance reflects the dedication and focus with which we pursued this achievement.”
“We came pretty close to meeting the theoretical numbers, which is astonishing to do in a real world setting on a public road. America’s new claim to victory in the ‘land-based space race’ is going to be tough to beat,” Shelby continued.
Webb, who piloted the hypercar, said, “there was definitely more in there. And with better conditions, I know we could have gone faster.”
He said, “as I approached 331 mph, the Tuatara climbed almost 20 mph within the last five seconds.”
SSC is planning to produce 100 Tuatara supercars – and the latest stunt on the Nevada highway, breaking multiple speed records and securing the crown for the fastest production car in the world – well – could mean a boon for sales – even though each vehicle is expected to sell for around the $2 million mark.
So move over Bugatti, Koenigsegg, and or even the Rimac C_Two, there’s a new hypercar in town, and by the way, it’s American made.
“The car wasn’t running out of steam yet,” Webb said. “The crosswinds are all that prevented us from realizing the car’s limit.”
Odd that President Trump isn’t pumping Tuatara on his Twitter account; oh wait, he only cares about the stock market…
- What 'The Great Reset' Architects Don't Want You To Understand About Economics
What 'The Great Reset' Architects Don't Want You To Understand About Economics
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/24/2020 – 19:30Authored by Matthew Ehret via The Saker blog,
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Vice President of the World Bank Carmen Reinhardt recently warned on October 15 that a new financial disaster looms ominously over the horizon with a vast sovereign default and a corporate debt default. Just in the past 6 months of bailouts unleashed by the blowout of the system induced by the Coronavirus lockdown, Reinhardt noted that the U.S. Federal Reserve created $3.4 Trillion out of thin air while it took 40 years to create $14 Trillion. Meanwhile panicking economists are screaming in tandem that banks across Trans Atlantic must unleash ever more hyperinflationary quantitative easing which threatens to turn our money into toilet paper while at the same time acquiescing to infinite lockdowns in response to a disease which has the fatality levels of a common flu.
The fact of the oncoming collapse itself should not be a surprise- especially when one is reminded of the $1.5 quadrillion of derivatives which has taken over a world economy which generates a mere $80 trillion/year in measurable goods and trade. These nebulous bets on insurance on bets on collateralized debts known as derivatives didn’t even exist a few decades ago, and the fact is that no matter what the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank have attempted to do to stop a new rupture of this overextended casino bubble of an economy in recent months, nothing has worked. Zero to negative percent interest rates haven’t worked, opening overnight repo loans of $100 billion/night to failing banks hasn’t worked- nor has $4.5 trillion of bailout unleashed since March 2020. No matter what these financial wizards try to do, things just keep getting worse. Rather than acknowledge what is actually happening, scapegoats have been selected to shift the blame away from reality to the point that the current crisis is actually being blamed on the Coronavirus!
This Goes Far Beyond COVID-19
Let me just state outright: That while the coronavirus may in fact be the catalyzer for the oncoming financial blowout, it is the height of stupidity to believe that it is the cause, as the seeds of the crisis goes deeper and originated much earlier than most people are prepared to admit.
To start getting at a more truthful diagnostic, it is useful to think of an economy in real (vs purely financial) terms – That is: Simply think of the economy as total system in which the body of humanity (all cultures, nations and families of the world) exist.
This co-existence is predicated on certain necessary powers of production of food, clothing, capital goods (hard and soft infrastructure), transportation and energy production. After raw materials are transformed into finished goods, these physical goods and services move from points A to B and are consumed. This is very much akin to the metabolism that maintains a living body.
Now since populations tend to grow geometrically, while resources deplete arithmetically, constant demands on new creative discoveries and technological application are also needed to meet and improve upon the needs of a growing humanity. This last factor is actually the most important because it touches on the principled element that distinguishes humanity from all other forms of life in the ecosystem which Lincoln identified wonderfully in his 1859 Discoveries and Inventions Speech:
“All creation is a mine, and every man, a miner. The whole earth, and all within it, upon it, and round about it, including himself, in his physical, moral, and intellectual nature, and his susceptibilities, are the infinitely various “leads” from which, man, from the first, was to dig out his destiny… Man is not the only animal who labors; but he is the only one who improves his workmanship. This improvement, he effects by Discoveries, and Inventions.”
In a 2016 speech by President Xi Jinping, the principles of Lincoln’s understanding were laid out by the Chinese statesman who said:
“We must consider innovation as the primary driving force of growth and the core in this whole undertaking, and human resources as the primary source to support development. We should promote innovation in theory, systems, science and technology, and culture, and make innovation the dominant theme in the work of the Party, and government, and everyday activity in society… In the 16th century, human society entered an unprecedented period of active innovation. Achievements in scientific innovation over the past five centuries have exceeded the sum total of several previous millennia. . . . Each and every scientific and industrial revolution has profoundly changed the outlook and pattern of world development… Since the second Industrial Revolution, the U.S. has maintained global hegemony because it has always been the leader and the largest beneficiary of scientific and industrial progress.”
What Lincoln and Xi laid 150 years apart are not mere hypotheses, but elementary facts of life which even the most ardent money-worshipper cannot get around.
Of course money is a perfectly useful tool to facilitate trade and get around the awkward problem of lugging bartered goods around on your back all day, but it really is just that: a supporting element to a physical process of maintenance and improvement of trans-generational existence. When fools allow themselves to loose sight of that fact and elevate money to the status of a cause of all value (simply because everyone wants it), then we find ourselves far outside the sphere of reality and in the Alice in Wonderland world of Alan Greenspan’s fantasy world where up is down, good is evil, and humans are little more than vicious monkeys.
So with that in mind, let’s take this concept and look back upon today’s crisis.
London’s ‘Big Bang’
The great “liberalization” of world commerce began with a series of waves through the 1970s, and moved into high gear with the interest rate hikes of Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker in 1980-82, the effects of which both annihilated much of the small and medium sized entrepreneurs, opened the speculative gates into the “Savings and Loan” debacle and also helped cartelize mineral, food, and financial institutions into ever greater behemoths. Volcker himself described this process as the “controlled disintegration of the US economy” upon becoming Fed Chairman in 1978. The raising of interest rates to 20-21% not only shut down the life blood of much of the US economic base, but also threw the third world into greater debt slavery, as nations now had to pay usurious interest on US loans.
In 1986, the City of London announced the beginning of a new era of economic irrationalism with Margaret Thatcher’s “Big Bang” deregulation. This wave of liberalization took the world by storm as it swept aside the separation of commercial, deposit and investment banking which had been the post-world war cornerstone in ensuring that the will of private finance would never again hold more sway than the power of sovereign nation-states. For those who are confused about London’s guiding hand in this process, I encourage you to read Cynthia Chung’s impeccable essay “Sugar and Spice, and Everything Vice: The Empire’s Sin City of London”.
Greenspan and the Controlled Disintegration of the Economy
When Alan Greenspan confronted the financial crisis of October1987, markets had collapsed by 28.5% and the American economy was already suffering from a decay begun 16 years earlier when the dollar was removed from the fixed exchange rate and was “floated” into a world of speculation. This departure from the 1938-1971 Industrial growth model ushered in a new paradigm of “post-industrialism” (aka: nation stripping) under the new logic of “globalization”. This foolish decision was celebrated as the consumer-driven, “white collar society” which would no longer worry about “intangible things” like “the future”, infrastructure maintenance, or “growth”. Under this new paradigm, if something couldn’t generate a monetary profit within 3 years, it wasn’t worth doing.
Paul Volcker (Greenspan’s predecessor at the Federal Reserve) exemplified this detachment from reality when he called for the “controlled disintegration of society” in 1977, and acted accordingly by keeping interest rates above 20% for two years which destroyed small and medium agro-industrial enterprises across America (and the world). Greenspan confronted the 1987 crisis with all the gusto of a black magician, and rather than re-connect the economy to physical reality and rebuild the decaying industrial base, he chose instead to normalize “creative financial instruments” in the form of derivatives (aka: “creative financial instruments”), which quickly grew from several billion in 1988 to $2 trillion in 1992 to $70 trillion in 1999.
“Creative financial instruments” was the Orwellian name given to the new financial asset popularized by Greenspan, but otherwise known as “derivatives”. New supercomputing technologies were increasingly used in this new venture, not as the support for higher nation building practices, and space exploration programs as their NASA origins intended, but would rather become perverted to accommodate the creation of new complex formulas which could associate values to price differentials on securities and insured debts that could then be “hedged” on those very spot and futures markets made possible via the destruction of the Bretton Woods system in 1971. So while an exponentially self-generating monster was created that could end nowhere but in a meltdown, “market confidence” rallied back in force with the new flux of easy money. The physical potential to sustain human life continued to plummet.
NAFTA, the Euro and the End of History
It is no coincidence that within this period, another deadly treaty was passed called the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). With this Agreement made law, protective programs that had kept North American factories in the U.S and Canada were struck down, allowing for the export of the lifeblood of highly skilled industrial workforce to Mexico where skills were low, technologies lower, and salaries lower still. With a stripping of its productive assets, North America became increasingly reliant on exporting cheap resources and services for its means of existence. Again, the physically productive powers of society would collapse, yet monetary profits in the ephemeral “now” would skyrocket. This was replicated in Europe with the creation of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 establishing the Euro by 1994 while the “liberalization” process of Perestroika replicated this agenda in the former Soviet Union. While some personalities gave this agenda the name “End of History” and others “the New World Order”, the effect was the same.
Universal Banking, NAFTA, Euro integration and the creation of the derivative economy in a space of just several years would induce a cartelization of finance through newly legalized mergers and acquisitions at a rate never before seen. The multitude of financial institutions that had existed in the early 1980s were absorbed into each other at great speed through the 1990s in true “survival of the fittest” fashion. No matter what level of regulation were attempted under this new structure, the degree of conflict of interest, and private political power was uncontrollable, as evidenced in the United States, by the shutdown of any attempt by Securities and Exchange Commission head Brooksley Born to fight the derivative cancer at its early stages.
When Bill Clinton repealed Glass-Steagall bank separation of commercial and investment banks as his last act in office in 1999, speculators had un-bounded access to savings and pensions which they used with relish and went to town gambling with other people’s money. This new bubble continued for a few more years until the $700 trillion derivatives time bomb found a new trigger and the subprime mortgage market nearly burned the system down. Just like in 1987, and the collapse of the Y2K bubble in 2001, the Mammon worshipping wizards in the ECB and Fed solved this crisis by creating a new system of “bailout” which continued for another decade.
The 2000-2008 Frenzy
With Glass-Steagall now removed, legitimate capital such as pension funds could be used to start a hedge to end all hedges. Billions were now poured into mortgage-backed securities (MBS), a market which had been artificially plunged to record-breaking interest rate lows of 1-2% for over a year by the US Federal Reserve making borrowing easy, and the returns on the investments into the MBSs obscene. The obscenity swelled as the values of the houses skyrocketed far beyond the real values to the tune of one hundred thousand dollar homes selling for 5-6 times that price within the span of several years. As long as no one assumed this growth was ab-normal, and the un-payable nature of the capital underlying the leveraged assets locked up in the now infamous “sub-primes” and other illegitimate debt obligations was ignored, then profits were supposed to just continue infinitely. Anyone who questioned this logic was considered a heretic by the latter-day priesthood.
The stunning “success” of securitizing housing debts immediately induced a wave of sovereign wealth funds to come into prominence applying the same model that had been used in the case of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and collateralized debt obligations (CDO) to the debts of entire nations. The securitizing of bundled packages of sovereign debts that could then be infinitely leveraged on the de-regulated world markets would no longer be considered an act of national treason, but the key to easy money.
The Ugly Truth of Today’s Crisis
New “sub-prime” bubbles have been created in the Corporate Debt sector which has risen to over $13.8 trillion (up 16% from the year earlier). A quarter of which is considered junk, and another half graded at BB by Moodies (a step above junk).
Household debt, student and auto debt has skyrocketed and since wages have not kept up with inflation causing even more unpayable debts have been incurred in desperation. Industrial jobs have collapsed consistently since 1971, and low paying service jobs have taken over like a plague.
The last report from the American Society of Civil Engineers concluded that America desperately needs to spend $4.5 trillion just to bring its decayed infrastructure up to safety levels. Roads, bridges, rail, dams, airports, schools all received near failing grades with the average age of Dams clocking in at 56 years, and many water pipes over 100 years old, and transmission/distribution lines are well over 60 years. The factories which once supplied those infrastructure needs are long outsourced, and much of the productive workforce that had that living knowledge to build a nation are retired or dead leaving a deadly generation knowledge gap in its place filled with millennials who never knew what a productive economy looked like.
American farmers have probably been the most devastated in all this with dramatic population losses across the entire farm belt of America and the average age of farmers now 60 years. It was recently reported that 82% of U.S. Agricultural family income comes from off farms, as mega cartels have taken over all aspects of farming (from equipment/supplies, packaging and the even the actual farming in between).
Combined with the controlled destruction of global food supplies internationally, COVID has ensured that strategic food chain supplies are being ripped to shreds with the UN reporting the worst food crisis in over 50 years (and that is not accounting for the oncoming blowout of the bubble economy).
Why was this permitted to happen? Well besides the obvious intention to induce “a controlled disintegration of the economy” as Volcker so coldly stated, the idea was always to create the conditions described by the late Maurice Strong (sociopath and Rothschild cut-out extraordinaire) in 1992 when he rhetorically asked:
“What if a small group of world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of the rich countries? And if the world is to survive, those rich countries would have to sign an agreement reducing their impact on the environment. Will they do it? The group’s conclusion is ‘no’. The rich countries won’t do it. They won’t change. So, in order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
How do we get back to health?
Like any addict who wakes up one morning at rock bottom with the sudden terror that his death is nigh, the first step is admitting we have a problem. This means simply: acknowledging the true nature of the current economic calamity instead of trying to blame “coronavirus” or China, or some other scapegoat.
The next step is begin to act on reality instead of continuing to take heroine (a fine metaphor for the addiction to derivatives speculation).
An obvious first step to this recovery involves restoring Glass-Steagall in order to 1) break up the Too Big to Fail banks and 2) impose a standard of judging “false” value from “legitimate” value which is currently absent from the modern psycho that lost all sense of needs vs wants. This would allow nations to re-create a purge of the unpayable fictitious debt and other claims from the system while preserving whatever is tied to the real economy (whatever is directly connected to life). This process is sort of akin to cutting a cancer.
This act would look very similar to what Franklin Roosevelt did in 1933 which I outlined in my recent paper Hyperinflation, Fascism and War: How the New World Order May be Defeated Once More.
At this point nation states will have re-asserted their true authority over the pirates of private finance controlling the Trans-Atlantic financial system like would-be gods of Olympus (unbounded perverted vices and all).
It should be obvious to all that the United States must get its head out of its proverbial ass before it is too late by imposing these reforms onto the murderous sociopaths on Wall Street and London who would rather promote a “Great Reset” onto the world economy under the fog of COVD in order to control the terms of the blowout and also the rules of the new post-nation state operating system which they wish to see brought online as a (final) “solution”.
- NASA Awards Houston Space Firm $47 Million Moon Drilling Contract
NASA Awards Houston Space Firm $47 Million Moon Drilling Contract
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/24/2020 – 19:00NASA selected Houston-based company Intuitive Machine to land an ice-mining drill on the moon’s south pole by December 2022.
The space agency agreed to pay Intuitive Machines $47 million to land Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment (PRIME-1) on the moon in the first-ever mining mission to drill below the lunar surface, in search of water ice. A mass spectrometer will be used to determine how much of the ice changes from solid to vapor on the lunar surface vacuum. The data will assist NASA’s rover, the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER), searching for water ice at the moon’s pole to determine an area that will support a human presence in 2024.
“We continue to rapidly select vendors from our pool of Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program vendors to land payloads on the lunar surface, which exemplifies our work to integrate the ingenuity of commercial industry into our efforts at the Moon,” said NASA’s Associate Administrator for Science Thomas Zurbuchen.
“The information we’ll gain from PRIME-1 and other science instruments and technology demonstrations we’re sending to the lunar surface will inform our Artemis missions with astronauts and help us better understand how we can build a sustainable lunar presence,” said Zurbuchen.
Intuitive Machines will fly the 88-pound PRIME-1 to the moon no later than December 2022 on its NOVA-C lander as part of CLPS. The company is one of several space firms selected by NASA to conduct robotic missions on the moon.
Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus said in a statement that “laying the foundation to return humans to the moon is an incredible honor and even greater challenge… At Intuitive Machines, we’re hungry for the pursuit of these audacious missions that will redefine what a small business is capable of.”
PRIME-1 will drill down three feet below the lunar surface to search for buried water ice. According to NASA, it’s not just water ice they’re after; apparently, natural resources are abundant on the moon:
“PRIME-1 will give us tremendous insight into the resources at the moon and how to extract them,” said Jim Reuter, NASA’s associate administrator for space technology, in the NASA statement.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine recently said the space agency is set to purchase rare-earth materials mined from the moon by private companies. Not too long ago, NASA discovered that underneath the lunar surface, there is an abundance of natural resources.
Here’s how moon mining could work:
The sequence of events appears to be once water ice is found, manned missions will be seen by 2024 – then shortly after that, mining operations could begin as early as 2025.
- The Damage Russiagate Has Done
The Damage Russiagate Has Done
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/24/2020 – 18:30Authored by Patrick Lawrence via ConsortiumNews.com,
Authoritarian liberals have unleashed a censorious syndrome peculiar to our national character, dating to 17th century Quaker hangings in Boston.
An inhabitant of Twitterland named “Willow Inski” took to the keyboard on Oct. 11, asking why anyone still accepts official accounts of the crucial theft of emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign manager John Podesta in the spring of 2016.
I don’t understand how we’re still taking at face value that there was an actual breaking into the DNC/Podesta server/email. The “break-in” is too convenient & seems to be part & parcel of the whole scheme (the Russia collusion b.s.)
The FBI never examined the DNC server.— Willow (@Willowinski) October 11, 2020
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Excellently observed, Willow. And at just the right moment. At this point we are amid a frenzy of what Hannah Arendt called “defactualization” in a 1971 essay she titled “Lying in Politics.” Facts are fragile, Arendt astutely observed, because they can so easily be manipulated to produce a desired image. “It is this fragility,” she wrote, “that makes deception so very easy up to a point, and so tempting.”
The latest example of this phenom concerns the emails of Hunter Biden, candidate Joe’s errant son, which persuasively incriminate both in very profitable influence-peddling schemes when Papa was Barack Obama’s veep.
Joe Biden, foreground, and son Hunter during inauguration of President Barack Obama, Jan. 20, 2009. (acaben, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Nobody denies the facts as published last week in The New York Post, not even Biden père et fils, but the facts are once again mutilated with assertions that it is another case of the Rrrrrrussians spreading disinformation.
This is what we get after four years of the Russia collusion b.s., otherwise known as Russiagate. Anything goes if implicating Russia solves a political problem for the Democrats and keeps the war machine going for the Pentagon and the national security state. It defers the moment — at some point it will come — when the press is exposed for its radically stupid overinvestment in the Russiagate nonsense. The price America has already begun to pay is very high.
Willow’s expression of perplexity comes after an especially lively season of revelations as regards what must count as the largest disinformation op in U.S. history. It is now six months since the Russiagate hoax — and I am fine with President Donald Trump’s term for it — began its final crash into a pile of piffle. While it remains to be seen whether more evidence of political chicanery is coming, what evidence we already have is more than sufficient to identify Russiagate as the probable criminal fraud it was from the start.
I am refreshed that Willow Inski, who describes herself as an “attorney, wife, mother, proud American,” sees through this extravagant ruse. And yet, as she notes, a lot of people don’t. A lot of people are “still taking at face value” all the misinformation, disinformation, and outright lies our newspapers, magazines, and broadcasters have purveyed incessantly for the past four years.
Why is a very large question. All possible answers are disturbing. But here is another big one we get to before that: When we consider together all its many consequences, has Russiagate destroyed what remained of American democracy before illiberal liberals, spooks, law enforcement, and the press colluded to erect the dreadful edifice?
The Damage Done
Your columnist’s answer rests on the most scrupulously precise definition of Russiagate one can manage: What we have witnessed these past four years is an attempted palace coup against a sitting president.
Cold comfort it is that the gang that couldn’t shoot straight bungled the job. It has also created a Democratic default position: When wrongdoing by Democrats is credibly exposed, automatically blame Russia. Among much else, that has led to unnecessary tension with a nuclear power. This damage will long stay with us.
Russiagate’s foundation stone — baseless allegations that Moscow was responsible for the 2016 DNC email intrusions — crumbled long ago. We’ve known since July 2017 that nobody hacked the email servers in question.
This was confirmed by the Dec. 5, 2017, closed-door congressional testimony of Shawn Henry, president of CrowdStrike, the firm the Democrats hired to examine the DNC servers. It was made public only on May 7, 2020. Henry said under oath: “There’s not evidence that they [the emails] were actually exfiltrated. There’s circumstantial evidence … but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated. …”
Shawn Henry at international security forum in Vancouver, 2009. (Hubert K, Flickr)
The emails were most likely compromised by someone with direct access to them, probably a DNC insider. ’Twas a leak, not a hack.
But incessant propaganda and a sloppy but effective coverup have kept the fable going since then. All has been open game these past years, scabrous, apparent false-flag poisonings — the Skripals, Alexei Navalny —baseless tales of Russian bounties on U.S. soldiers’ heads. The press has reported this sort of rubbish for years as if it were confirmed fact. Spectral evidence has reigned.
It is this coverup that has been falling apart since last spring.
First came news that the collusion case against Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, was bogus and that Flynn entered his two guilty pleas when prosecutors threatened to indict his son if he refused. When the Justice Department dropped its case against Flynn, it simultaneously forced the House Intelligence Committee to release documents showing that no “evidence” of a Russian email hack ever existed, even as the Democrats, the spooks, and the press missed no chance to bang on about it.
Those who got my goat at the time were people such as Adam Schiff, the Democratic congressman from Hollywood and leader of the charge on Capitol Hill, who knew there was no evidence of Russian involvement but repeatedly insisted they had seen it whenever they faced a CNN camera.
You are right, Ms. Inski: Crowdstrike, the grossly corrupt firm that was supposed to have all the evidence one could ever want, never had any. Former FBI Director James Comey admitted in testimony that the FBI asked for but never gained possession of the DNC server, even though this would be the “best practice.” We can surmise that this was so, so that the bureau could deny responsibility for what amounts to a psyop perpetrated against Americans. In June 2019 it was reported that CrowdStrike also never gave the FBI a final report because none was ever produced since the FBI never asked for one.
FBI Director James Comey testifying to Congress that the agency had been denied access to DNC servers, March 20, 2017. (C-Span still)
Among the congressional testimonies released last spring, two top Clinton campaign operatives, Podesta and Jake Sullivan, acknowledged that they met after Trump’s election with the principals of Fusion GPS, the infamous orchestrator of the Steele Dossier, to keep the Russiagate ball rolling. What a difference speaking under oath makes.
Actually, what got my goat a second time was that none of this, as in none, was reported in The New York Times or anywhere else in the mainstream media. Our once-but-no-more newspaper of record has made an absolute dog’s dinner of itself since its leadership decided to buy into the Russiagate junk. At this point I am convinced its ties to the spooks are as dense and corrupt as they were during the worst of the Cold War decades, when the publisher signed a covert agreement to cooperate with the CIA.
Clinton Approved Plan
As if any more reports were needed to deflate the Russiagate balloon, the evidence continues to accumulate. At the end of September John Ratcliffe, director of national intelligence, informed Senator Lindsey Graham that intelligence agencies had information “alleging that U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee.” Some of us knew this four years ago.
While Ratcliffe’s letter adds that spookworld “does not know the accuracy of this allegation,” it goes on to note that the intel in question was serious enough for John Brennan, then the CIA director, to brief President Barack Obama about it and forward it to Comey and Peter Strzok, respectively FBI director and deputy assistant director of counterintelligence at the time. This is the referral, of course, that Comey now claims he cannot recall a damn thing about.
Given the Podesta and Sullivan testimonies, the Ratcliffe disclosures stitch the case: In my view, the Clinton campaign’s active role in starting and prolonging the Russiagate propaganda operation is now open-and-shut. (It was first reported in October 2017 by Consortium News and predicted by me in Salon on July 26, 2016 and three days before the 2016 election by CN‘s editor).
I wrote back then in Salon:
“Making lemonade out of a lemon, the Clinton campaign now goes for a twofer. Watch as it advances the Russians-did-it thesis on the basis of nothing, then shoots the messenger, then associates Trump with its own mess — and, finally, gets to ignore the nature of its transgression (which any paying-attention person must consider grave).”
Declassifications Ignored
In the matter of goats, the Ratcliffe letter seems to have gotten Trump’s. A week later he took to Twitter calling for the declassification, without redaction, of all documents related to the Russiagate probes.
I have fully authorized the total Declassification of any & all documents pertaining to the single greatest political CRIME in American History, the Russia Hoax. Likewise, the Hillary Clinton Email Scandal. No redactions! https://t.co/GgnHh9GOiq
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2020
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Although Trump did not issue an official order to this effect, this amounts to a direct challenge to what he has been all along referring to as the Deep State. (Trump first “ordered” the declassification, and was ignored, in September 2018.) Last Thursday Ratcliffe formally requested an investigation of the “Intelligence Community Assessment” of January 2017, a worthless put-up job that purported to confirm Russian “meddling.” The CIA’s inspector general ignored an earlier such request.
SCOOP: Notification to Congress @DNI_Ratcliffe referral of 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on “Russia’s Influence Campaign Targeting the 2016 US Presidential Election.” Senior intelligence official familiar with the investigative referral tells @CBSNews “There are a pic.twitter.com/535v3azpVh
— Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) October 15, 2020
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Will more come out? Will the investigation Trump ordered earlier this year by Assistant U.S. Attorney John Durham get all the way to the bottom? This is hard to say. We’ve since had credible reports that CIA Director Gina Haspel, known for authorizing post–2001 torture and destroying evidence of it, has personally blocked the release of Russiagate-related documents from the CIA’s files. And the repellent Haspel may win this one, given the record in such matters.
The Russiagate “narrative” is at this point so preposterous that these recent disclosures have also gone either badly reported or unreported in mainstream media. We ought not expect more in days to come. The press has only one alternative at this point: Either black it out or allege that Russia is using people such as Ratcliffe, just as we’re now asked to believe Moscow is manipulating The New York Post.
What an ungodly mess Russiagate has made of our splendid republic.
We have watched an attempted coup not much different from the CIA’s covert ops elsewhere over the decades, then gave the coup plotters three years to investigate the plot, and no one, as things now appear, will be brought to justice for these travesties.
Send in the historians. One hopes they’re already here.
The CIA, in breach of its charter, has now licensed itself to operate on U.S. soil in a probably unprecedented alliance with domestic law enforcement and a major political party. And it has told us in open defiance that it has no intention of submitting itself to executive or congressional control. No voice is raised, we must note with astonishment.
Government Without a Press
In 1787, when he was our new nation’s minister in Paris, Jefferson wrote home to a friend that “were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” We are stuck with a government without newspapers now, given the ties our press has consolidated its ties with political and bureaucratic power in the course of imposing the Russiagate ruse upon us.
Political theorist Hannah Arendt. (Flicker Ryohei Noda)
They only look like newspapers now. The liberal media are now bulletin boards for those they serve — the Democratic Party, the spooks, and all the interests these two represent. Do they think that, once Trump leaves office, they can cavalierly reclaim the credibility they have profligately squandered in the service of Russiagate?
I see no chance of this. And here we have a silver lining: Russiagate will prove a key moment in the emergence of independent media (such as Consortium News) as important sources of accurate information and perspectives. This is already evident. At this point The New York Times is to sound reporting what Applebee’s is to a proper tavern serving good draft beer.
The worst consequence of Russiagate, in my view, is the swoon of hysteria it has sent many Americans into, a syndrome peculiar to our national character dating to the Quaker hangings in Boston during the early 1660s and repeated many times since. We are divided once again between the paranoid and the rational.
And there is an ideological distinction here that we must not miss. Willow Inski is a conservative and appears to be a Trumper. She addressed Paul Sperry, a New York Post reporter closely following the Russiagate debacle and also a conservative.
The paranoids, the Puritan preachers, the witch hunters, those who think censorship is a fine thing are this time one and all authoritarian liberals apparently determined to make everyone think as they do or else see to their banishment from the circles of the elect.
Let us debate opinions until the kingdom comes. But these people propose to debate facts because they understand the fragility Arendt noted all those years ago. This is not on.
“Under normal circumstances the liar is defeated by reality, for which there is no substitute,” Arendt wrote.
“No matter how large the tissue of falsehood that an experienced liar has to offer, it will never be large enough, even if he enlists the help of computers, to cover the immensity of factuality.”
One hopes Arendt turns out to be right. One hopes the immensity of factuality eventually prevails. “Defactualization” in the service of all the Russiagate rubbish has gravely undermined numerous of our key institutions. As things now stand, this leaves us well short of what we need to reconstruct a working democracy.
- Top 10% Of Twitter Users Create 92% Of Tweets In US – And 69% Of Them Lean Left
Top 10% Of Twitter Users Create 92% Of Tweets In US – And 69% Of Them Lean Left
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/24/2020 – 18:00The majority of Twitter content coming out of the United States, 92% of it, is created by just 10% of Twitter users, and 69% of those users are Democrat or Democratic-leaning independents, according to new research by Pew.
Most U.S. adults on Twitter post only rarely. But a small share of highly active users, most of whom are Democrats, produce the vast majority of tweets. The Center’s analysis finds that just 10% of users produced 92% of all tweets from U.S. adults since last November, and that 69% of these highly prolific users identify as Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents. –Pew Research
Several factors contribute to this phenomenon, says Pew, including that more Democrats use Twitter than Republicans, and the 10% most active Democrats produce roughly twice as many tweets per month (157) than the 10% of most active Republicans (79). [If it were the other way around, Russian bots would surely be to blame.]
Those who use Twitter on both sides of the aisle tend to be younger and more highly educated than those who don’t use the platform – with some 37% of adult Democrats on Twitter falling between the ages of 18 and 29, compared to just 22% of Republican users in the same age bracket.
Twitter users of each party contain more college graduates, and are more likely than non-users to say they use multiple online social media platforms.
Although nearly identical shares of Republican Twitter users (60%) and non-users (62%) describe themselves as very or somewhat conservative, Democrats who use Twitter tend to be more liberal than non-users. Some 60% of Democrats on Twitter describe their political leanings as liberal (with 24% saying they are “very” liberal), compared with 43% among those who are not Twitter users (only 12% of whom say they are very liberal).
Beyond posting volume, Democrats and Republicans also differ from each other in their actual behaviors on the platform. For instance, the two accounts followed by the largest share of U.S. adults are much more likely to be followed by users from one party than the other. Former President Barack Obama (@BarackObama) is followed by 42% of Democrats but just 12% of Republicans, while President Donald Trump (@realDonaldTrump) is followed by 35% of Republicans and just 13% of Democrats. –Pew Research
Another interesting takeaway is that most Twitter users rarely tweet – with the media US adult on the platform tweeting just once per month during the time period covered by the study. The median Democrat has 32 followers, vs. 21 for Republicans.
Democrats also appear to be more active when it comes to other aspects of their Twitter behavior, such as average number of accounts followed (126 vs. 71).
When it comes to who’s following who, Presidents and other major political figures are the most followed by US adults.
U.S. adults on Twitter follow a wide range of other users on the site. The 3,518 Twitter users in this analysis follow a total of almost 750,000 unique accounts. For the most part, there is very little overlap in the accounts that different users follow. Only 10,151 of these 750,000 accounts are followed by more than 10 users in this sample. But some high-profile accounts – typically public figures from entertainment and politics – are followed by substantial shares of U.S. adults on the site.
Certain popular accounts are followed by comparable shares of Democrats and Republicans. Late-night host Jimmy Fallon (@jimmyfallon), for instance, is followed by 16% of Democrats on the site and 11% of Republicans. But it is more common for these popular accounts to be followed by a larger share of members from one party than the other. –Pew Research
Also interesting – among Democrats, Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris have around an equal following, however far more Republicans follow Trump than Pence.
Read the rest of the report here.
- Housing Market Goes Nuts, Everyone Sees It, But It Can't Last
Housing Market Goes Nuts, Everyone Sees It, But It Can't Last
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/24/2020 – 17:30Authored by Wolf Richter via WolfStreet.com,
Another batch of crazy housing data yesterday. Crazy in the sense that the housing market, or rather part of it, namely the higher end of it, has gone totally crazy and that by now everyone knows that this isn’t “sustainable,” that “there’s no way it can last forever,” as Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman told CNBC. And he pointed out what everyone has already been pointing out, that “part of what is fueling this boom is that the economy has just split into two, and rich people are able to access capital almost for free, so, of course, they’re going to use that money to buy homes.”
But “there’s just another group of Americans who are still struggling, who can’t access the credit because we’ve raised credit standards, and you have high unemployment. I just think those two trends, at some point, have to collide.”
It’s the now well-established phenomenon of the “K-shaped recovery,” where one part is doing well, and the other part is getting crushed.
Or as WOLF STREET commenter IdahoPotato called it vastly more accurately and unforgettably, the “FU-shaped recovery.” Meaning, people who got bailed out and enriched by the Fed’s $3 trillion that it threw at the markets to inflate the prices of stocks, bonds, housing, etc. are now happy as a lark, and to heck with the rest of the people that are getting crushed.
But this craziness in the housing market is not sustainable. The National Association of Realtors reported yesterday that sales of existing homes – single-family houses, condos, and co-ops – surged in September by 9.4% from August and by 20.9% from a year ago to a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 6.54 million homes, the highest since 2006 (data via YCharts):
Seasonally, home sales normally decline in late summer and fall. But not this year. And the seasonal adjustments of the above numbers are designed for normal seasons. The NAR also releases raw(-er) sales numbers that are neither “seasonally adjusted” nor “annualized.”
On a not-seasonally adjusted basis and not annualized, 500,000 homes were sold in September, up 24.7% from September last year, the highest year-over-year increase in the data except for two months during the depth of the Housing Bust – April 2010 and November 2009 – when sales were compared to a year earlier when sales had collapsed. Sales went through some wild gyrations from 2009 through 2011.
And on this basis (not seasonally adjusted, not annualized), and compared to September 2018, homes sales were up by 34%.
The median price of existing homes in September jumped 14.8% year-over-year to $311,800. The median price is skewed by a shift in the mix, and the price increase could also partially a result of red-hot demand for higher-priced homes (data via YCharts):
“The uncertainty about when the pandemic will end coupled with the ability to work from home appears to have boosted sales in summer resort regions, including Lake Tahoe, mid-Atlantic beaches (Rehoboth Beach, Myrtle Beach), and the Jersey shore areas,” the report said.
I have heard similar stories from real-estate brokers, such as red-hot demand in very pricy Carmel-by-the Sea, in California, about 76 miles south from San Jose and 116 miles south from San Francisco. The demand is said to be particularly hot for homes in the $2-million-plus range.
But here is what I also heard: People bought their new home without first selling their old home. They still have their place in San Francisco, or wherever, and will eventually put it on the market, but meanwhile they plowed a few million bucks into a house in Carmel and moved. These stories are everywhere.
Total housing inventory of homes for sale at the end of September fell 1.9% from August and 19.2% from September, to 1.47 million homes, according to the NAR. Given the sales rate in September, this represented 2.7 months of supply, the lowest ratio in the data going back to 1999. Granted, with today’s technologies of advertising, selling, financing, and closing the sale of a home, sales take a lot less time than the did in 1999, but still (data via YCharts):
There is a shortage until suddenly there is a glut. This always surprises people.
This is happening in San Francisco — and something similar is happening in Manhattan and some other cities. The City was long described by its “housing shortage” that drove up prices and rents though there has been plenty of housing, but all high-priced, and people couldn’t afford it. And suddenly that “housing shortage” has turned into a glut. The city is flooded with a historic amount of inventory, including a record-breaking number of condos for sale, and there is a large offering of vacant apartments, and rents have plunged, with one-bedroom rents down 19% in five months.
The inventory of homes for sale spiked from “shortage” to “glut” in a matter of months. As of the week ended October 11, there were a record 2,476 homes listed for sale, up by 72% from the same week last year, with condos accounting for the lion’s share. Note how the glut has blown all seasonality out of the water (chart via Redfin):
These gyrations in the housing market are occurring as, at the lower end, homeowners are steeped in turmoil, with nearly 7% of all mortgages in forbearance, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, and with delinquency rates of FHA-insured mortgages, which cater to the lower end of the market, skyrocketing to a record 17.4% in August, and with 23 million people still claiming state or federal unemployment insurance. That’s the other part of the “K-shaped” recovery.
Surging home prices like these are a terrible toll to pay for buyers, except for those where wealth is such that it doesn’t make any difference. As these home prices surge, the market will inevitably run out of buyers willing and able to buy, even at record low interest rates, especially in an economy like this.
In addition, there is lots of supply waiting in the wings, including: A portion of the homes whose mortgages are in forbearance and delinquent will have to be sold to cure the delinquent mortgage; homes whose owners moved into their recently-bought new home will end up on the market; and homes owned by investors for vacation rentals will end up on the market if vacation rentals continue to be a drag in those cities. This surge in supply can happen suddenly, as it has happened in San Francisco.
And then there are interest rates. Oh no… Not again. They’re going to be negative, right? Um, the Bank of Canada announced it will cease buying mortgage-backed securities after October 26, having realized that it has gone overboard, seeing the same kind of insane surge in the Canadian housing market that is taking place in the US.
Which makes me wonder: Will the Fed, after the election (it never changes policy shortly before an election), start muttering musings in the same direction concerning its MBS purchases? It too is seeing this housing insanity, and after having already quietly mothballed its corporate bond-buying program, its repos, and its dollar liquidity swaps, it would be an unsurprising next step.
* * *
- Covid Scenarios For 2021
Covid Scenarios For 2021
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/24/2020 – 17:00Covid resurgence risks are flashing, as new infection cases rose 4% W/W, to a record ~350k per day (vs. 228k/254k/283k in Jul/Aug/Sep) largely due to record test numbers, yet this is more than offset by a diminished and stubbornly low mortality rate (2.8% vs. peak: 7.2%), which may be due to better treatment as well as a younger population catching the virus, further mitigated by vaccine/treatment progress…
… while hospitalizations due to covid remain very much under control…
… and ICU units in the US were less full during the second wave, even as patients in hospital were similar. While the curve is again starting to edge up, it’s not to critical levels.
In an attempt to reconcile the curve’s persisting beyond year-end, JPMorgan’s MW Kim presents several potential 2021 scenarios. Noting further progress in vaccine/treatment, the strategist highlights:
- the mortality rate could decline below 2% by 1H21E;
- infections could be less clustered, sporadic and perhaps smaller-scale in third/fourth waves;
- lockdowns may decline as a primary response in 2021 due to their economic burden, rising public stress on social distancing, and fiscal budget limitations.
Additionally, due to the improvement in treatment and growing social preparedness, JPM argues that public health strategy should shift from “infection control” to “patient treatment.”
With that in mind, here are the top ways in which the response to covid in 2021 will differ markedly from 2020, according to JPMorgan.
Public Health Strategy: 2020 will not be 2021
The primary public health strategy in 2020 has been to suppress the infection curve, as the initial reported mortality rate was very high (peak of 7.2% in late April). Thus, reducing human-to-human contacts (or pulling back the secondary infection rate, “R0”) via stricter social distancing and/or lockdown has worked to reduce infections and thus to control the mortality risk YTD, in JPM’s view. However, this approach proved to be costly, with a greater burden on the economy and rising social stress from tolerating the social distancing. Also, following hospital capacity strengthening and better medical treatment, the mortality rate is under far better control. Besides more realistic target R resetting close to 1, the public health focus is to shift toward “patient treatment,” as society has accumulated more knowledge/experience with COVID-19 (i.e., less uncertainty or unknown risk).
Looking ahead, JPMorgan suggests dour things in next year’s public health strategy:
- First, testing should be free or largely subsidized by government to encourage large-scale testing of susceptible groups. The asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19 can still transmit the disease to a similar degree as symptomatic patients. According to a study in The Lancet, in early April, Belgium’s ministry of health implemented a mass testing campaign in long-term care facilities. 8,343 people tested positive among the 280,427 people who were tested (3%). 6,244 of the positive cases (75%) were asymptomatic. Similar viral loads have been reported between symptomatic and asymptomatic cases, making the transmission and spread of the virus possible for both groups. Thus, extensive testing is the key method for identifying asymptomatic cases at an early stage and controlling virus transmission.
- Second, potential drug candidates should be fully included under public/private insurance coverage. As more treatments are being developed for COVID-19, it could be possible for government to extend treatment services under insurance coverage. One potential complication is that as many COVID-19-related potential drugs are still awaiting approval, existing insurance coverage plans seem to not fully cover detailed drugs for treatment. This could be protocol to be amended once efficacy is partially confirmed in certain groups of infection populations (i.e., milder symptom groups, asymptomatic groups, etc.) to shorten the recovery period and, thus, reduce the infection curve/scale. According to WHO, out-of-pocket payments may create a financial barrier to accessing health services. Co-payments do not selectively deter “unnecessary” use, but reduce the use of all health services, particularly among people with chronic conditions and poorer people. Therefore, with co-payments in place, people may delay seeking treatment or be prevented from obtaining health services, which would make it more difficult to control outbreaks
- and put more people at risk. Indicatively, at this stage, China has fully removed treatment expenses for COVID-19. Ireland has removed user charges for remote primary care consultations with people who may have COVID-19. Belgium has initiated teleconsultations in primary care and removed user charges for this new method. France has simplified administrative requirements for people with chronic conditions benefiting from co-payment exemptions. Estonia has drawn on private facilities to increase access to testing that is free from co-payments.
- Third, the current infection control strategy of temporarily closing hospitals, workplaces and schools following infection reporting should be amended in a way that does not involve closing. Currently, public places are closed following infection case reporting to test all available susceptible people. When infections have large clusters, this approach can be helpful in interrupting the transmission rate. However, as observed in the second/third waves in Korea and HK SAR, infections become sporadic with smaller clusters. Thus, the current manual on infection control could lead to large economic/social burden if the infection curve repeats in 2021 with more random outbreaks, as current testing needs two to three days to generate results. Furthermore, as even JPMorgan admits, by far, the overall mortality risk of the working population and young age group looks reasonably low, and it is hard to identify all asymptomatic cases. As a certain level of social distancing is to continue in 2021, keeping public activities open might be a better risk-reward decision according to JPM. Additionally, JPM expects new methods of low-cost and rapid testing to be developed and utilized in public places in the next year. Potential developments in rapid testing with results out in less than five minutes and widely used in workplaces, schools, etc., is a well-expected scenario. These efforts could reduce overall infection risk levels in public places and, thus, overall infection risks in the community.
- Fourth, large-scale antibody testing (~1-5% of the total population) would allow a better understanding of a community’s immunity status. At this stage, the effective period of antibodies remains unclear, so we expect further research on antibodies, along with larger-scale antibody tests, to be carried out next year.
* * *
Picturing the curve in 2021
JPMorgan summarizes the key expected trends in the curve of infections below, and predicts that “overall risk levels of infection development and mortality should decline further after this winter.” adding that it does not expect lockdowns to be a major public health strategy to interrupt the transmission rate in 2021. Test and tracing are expected to be efficient and could be better accepted by the public. That said, the largest US bank remains cautious on full-scale international travel even beyond 2020.
Infections: 40mn YTD, recovery: 70%
JPMorgan expects a series of infection waves potentially globally/in Asia until a vaccine is available to large populations. Contrary to earlier concerns, the second-wave infection scale and mortality risk appear more controlled across Asian countries compared to DM countries. This could be driven by limited human mobility YTD, flexible public policy resetting target R below 1 with sustainable social distancing and strong controls leveraging technology in EM Asian countries. That said, the shape of the global infection curve could be milder and smaller after this winter due to developments in treatment (faster recovery), smaller susceptibility under rising public awareness, and faster public responses on secondary infection rate (R0) control.
Mortality: 2.8% (vs. peak: 7.2%)
JPMorgan believes that the mortality rate (= death/infections) could decline below 2% by the end of 1H21 (vs. current: 2.8%), if current developments continue. More importantly, the bank does not expect “excess deaths” in 2021, as was observed in developed countries this year. COVID-19 has led to a small impact on Asian countries’ annual mortality rates. Reported deaths due to COVID-19 are only 0.01-0.18% of annual deaths in Asian countries. According to Euro MOMO data, 17 of the 24 countries in Europe have shown improving mortality rates following the spike in early April.
Incidentally, here is a chart putting the death toll of covid in the context of the world’s top-20 pandemics:
Curve control
Beyond 2020, JPMorgan does not expect partial/full lockdowns to be a key public health strategy. Managing R0 around 1 (R0 ≤1) under reasonable social distancing levels and medical treatments to shorten the recovery period could be more in focus. Medical treatments could be another strong way to control the curve, as the secondary infection rate would be simplified as a function of transmission rate and the recovery rate among the susceptible. If the average recovery period were to shorten from about two weeks currently to less than one week, this would open a new window for curve control, the economy and the public stress level on social distancing.
Testing
Schools and offices are expected to remain open in 2021. Regular testing is to be largely implemented, as test results could be checked in a short period. The most common COVID-19 testing is laboratory-based RT-PCR, which takes about four to eight hours for results to be delivered. Although accuracy is as high as 100%, this technique requires specialist kits, trained professionals and time. Also, testing is limited to certified laboratories only. In addition to traditional laboratory testing methods such as RT-PCR, dd PCR and loop mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP), several other rapid point-of-care (POC) testing technologies have been used to detect SARS-CoV-2 (see Table below). These fast-testing technologies detect the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in 5-30 minutes. However, WHO recommends traditional molecular testing methods (e.g., RT-PCR) for the identification and laboratory confirmation of COVID-19 cases. In order to return to work/school, testing daily or weekly for all groups prior to entering a public place could be essential. At this stage, this ideal process, similar to a daily temperature check, is not possible, as tests cost ~US$20-40 each and take 15-30 minutes at best to get results, and test accuracy may not be 100%.
Border control
Borders are expected to gradually re-open, according to JPM, even as quarantine requirements (7-14 days) and daily flight quota controls for testing at arrival continue in 2021. Some countries have launched “travel bubbles,” which are partnerships between nearby countries that have demonstrated considerable success in containing COVID-19 within their respective borders. These countries re-establish connections by opening up borders to one another and allowing people to travel freely within the zone without undergoing on-arrival quarantine. On 15 October, Singapore and Hong Kong said they had reached a preliminary agreement to establish a travel bubble, allowing travelers of all kinds to bypass quarantine.
To summarize, this is how JPM pictures Covid in 2021:
Infections: expect a series of waves rippling globally/in Asia. The infection curve could be milder and smaller after winter passes,
- factoring in a faster recovery, smaller susceptibility and a faster public response.
- Mortality: The bank expects a mortality rate (= death/infections) decline below 2% by end-1H21 (vs. current: 2.8%).
- Curve control: JPM does not foresee lockdowns as a key public health strategy beyond 2020. Managing R0 ≤1, rather than full suppression, could become a primary focus.
- Testing: Schools and offices are expected to remain open in 2021. Regular testing is likely to be widely implemented as test results become available faster (link).
- Border control: While borders will gradually re-opening, quarantines (7-14 days) and daily flight quota controls at airports will continue in 2021.
- Latino Business Owner: This Election Is Not About Donald Trump
Latino Business Owner: This Election Is Not About Donald Trump
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/24/2020 – 16:30Authored by Luis Farias via RealClearPolitics.com,
Joe Biden and the Democratic Party want Americans to see this year’s presidential contest as a referendum on Donald Trump, but the election of 2020 is about bigger things — bigger, even, than assessing a sitting president’s record in office.
The stakes in this election involve the American way of life itself, and all that it promises, including personal freedom, domestic tranquility, and economic opportunity. It’s time for Americans to pick a side and decide whether our country will forge a path toward to renewed prosperity or whether it wants to travel down the road of greater government control and constrictions on political and personal freedom.
Even as the coronavirus remains a dominant issue, both in public health and in politics, we must ask ourselves how much longer we can afford to live imprisoned by fear and uncertainty. Becoming a mask-wearing nation deprived of basic liberties is not living; it is death by a thousand cuts. People — Americans, especially — simply are not meant to live confined like laboratory animals.
Yet, at a time when more and more Americans want the economy to reopen, Joe Biden is calling for a national shutdown. His agenda would worsen circumstances that have already been linked with increased drug and alcohol consumption as well as domestic abuse. And his Big Government agenda would deal another brutal blow to jobs and businesses, just as the U.S. economy is attempting to get back on its feet. Further weakening the U.S. would only embolden our enemies abroad and imperil democracy and free markets everywhere.
Dealing with a global pandemic is not the only area in which the Left’s ideas have proved harmful. Democrats were slow to condemn the violence and chaos that ensued after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May. Throughout a summer of riots and mayhem, candidate Biden and his party had little to say as violent criminals rampaged through our cities. Those who want to live and raise families in safe urban communities will get no help from Democrats.
In the weeks and months ahead, will you be safe inside your home if rioters come knocking? Will you, your family, and neighbors be able to go outside without the threat of harm? Do you trust criminals to police themselves? Any candidate who does not stand up against these destructive and destabilizing forces is an enemy of safe communities and law and order.
Yes, some police reforms are needed. But we can’t work toward them when violent protesters are allowed to terrorize innocent people and tear apart the fabric of our society. If the choice for 2020 is still not clear, then consider the monumental work that must take place if we are to rebuild our economy.
Today, Americans are hurting badly, though the media don’t report on it much. Last month’s Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers revealed that 19.4 million were “unable to work because their employer closed or lost business due to the pandemic.” Against all odds, the Trump administration has managed to get our economic engine going again. The Democrats’ shutdown-obsessed economic prescriptions will destroy a budding recovery. This is no ordinary election; this is a time for choosing. And, many voters, including many Latinos, are choosing Trump. The 32 million Latinos eligible to vote in this election will be critical in this election and future ones. Currently, polls show President Trump’s Latino support in the 30% range, an improvement over his 2016 numbers. Some wonder why Trump is winning Latino support when he took a strong stance on illegal immigration, but it’s no mystery: Hispanics love freedom and opportunity. We believe in the American Dream and in law and order. Many immigrants also come from countries where violence, corruption, tyranny, nepotism, poverty, and human and drug trafficking are commonplace. They know that putting more power in the hands of politicians does not translate to more power for the people. Latinos don’t want to give up what they have gained by coming to America.
The way forward out of these extraordinarily challenging times is not by taking the path of Big Government but rather to expand individual opportunity. We need to get people back to work, and get Americans back to fostering the most powerful, vibrant economic engine the world has ever known. Although COVID-19 has turned life and politics upside down, we remain Americans. We do not give up. We do not burn down our own house. We fight for a better tomorrow, and we win.
* * *
Luis Farias is a Latino small-business owner and head of operations (Western Hemisphere) for DTS Security USA, Inc. He is also founder of the apparel brand, “Target Your Impossible and Make It Possible.”
- Meet The Social Media Fact Checkers!
Meet The Social Media Fact Checkers!
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/24/2020 – 16:00With social media censorship hitting peak Orwell to combat ‘disinformation’ surrounding the November election, the industry’s army of fact checkers have become brazen in their quest to make sure the public isn’t exposed to dangerous thoughts.
To help one understand the inner-workings of these highly credentialed, non-partisan, definitely agenda-free arbiters of reality (such as the COVID virus-leak debunker who worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology),
comedian JP Searsa typical fact checker has provided a captivating look into the surely well-lived lives of our intellectual gatekeepers.As an example of saving us from ourselves – this video of a Maryland elections worker who looks around, not to see if the coast is clear, and then doesn’t open a ballot and appear to mark something in it – has been debunked because, according to WaPo, “Elections officials in Maryland’s Montgomery County said a thorough investigation revealed no evidence of fraud or misconduct.”
You probably shouldn’t watch and decide for yourself:
Here’s the ‘debunking’:
Kevin Karpinski, counsel for Montgomery County’s elections board, told board members on Wednesday the allegation of misconduct is unfounded. Karpinski said he interviewed the canvass worker shown in the clip, spoke to other volunteers who were working at the time and reviewed every ballot that the worker had helped to sort.
“I find no evidence whatsoever, any sort of attempt of voter fraud,” he said. –WaPo
Apparently Facebook thinks you should also avoid the New York Young Republican Club…
Apparently if you search on Facebook ‘New York Young Republican Club’ (@nyyrc) you receive a warning claiming we are associated with dangerous conspiracy theories such as QANON & are a threat to public safety. This is shameful. We are the oldest & largest Young Republican Club. pic.twitter.com/eNz95I5kSC
— Gavin Mario Wax 🇺🇸 (@GavinWax) October 24, 2020
So, remember to think the right thoughts, citizen. What you’re thinking right now may have already been:
- This Is How A State Goes Bankrupt, Illinois Edition
This Is How A State Goes Bankrupt, Illinois Edition
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/24/2020 – 15:30Authored by John Rubino via DollarCollapse.com,
Somewhere back in the depths of the 20th century, a bunch of governors, mayors, and public sector union leaders got together and cooked up one of history’s greatest financial scams. They would offer teachers, cops, and firefighters extremely generous pensions but would avoid raising taxes to fund the resulting future obligations. Grateful workers would vote to re-elect their benefactors, while taxpayers would appreciate the combination of excellent public services and low taxes.
The beauty of the scheme flowed from its demographics: Most of the original public sector workers were young and therefore decades away from retirement, so the crime wouldn’t be discovered until long after the architects retired rich and revered.
Now, however, those baby boomer workers are retiring and the scam is revealed for all to see. Even in the absence of a pandemic lockdown, mass defaults on state and city obligations would be inevitable in the coming decade. But with the lockdown, they’re coming next year.
So what do the worst offenders do? What they’ve always done, of course, which is to look for ways to paper over the mess for one more election cycle. Illinois is the poster child for state financial mismanagement, with unfunded liabilities that have grown from virtually nothing to $137 billion in just the past two decades.
So it’s no surprise that its politicians are engaged in some truly ridiculous forms of damage control:
Illinois to sell $850 million of bonds as investors brace for junk status
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Illinois is scheduled to sell $850 million of bonds on Tuesday as investors demand fatter yields for the state’s debt due to increased worries over its deep financial woes, which were exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.
Ahead of the competitive sale of general obligation bonds due over the next 25 years, the spread for Illinois 10-year bonds over Municipal Market Data’s benchmark triple-A yield scale has widened by 10 basis points to 281 basis points since Oct. 1.
Howard Cure, director of municipal bond research at Evercore Wealth Management, pointed to “a legitimate fear that the state could go into junk status – although not default on its debt.”
“The state continues to delay tough decisions with a number of speculative revenues as part of its current budget, including additional federal aid, voter approval for a progressive income tax, and more Municipal Liquidity Facility (MLF) debt,” he said, referring to the possibility Illinois, which took out a $1.2 billion cash-flow loan in June from the Federal Reserve’s MLF, could borrow more.
Illinois is the lowest-rated state at a notch above junk due to its huge unfunded pension liability and chronic structural budget deficit. All three major credit rating agencies assigned negative outlooks to their ratings in the wake of the pandemic.
Earlier this month, a Citi research report said Illinois is “almost guaranteed” a credit rating downgrade to junk if a constitutional amendment to replace its flat income tax rate with graduated rates fails to pass on Nov. 3. The ability to tax high earners more would increase revenue by an estimated $3.1 billion annually.
In addition to uncertainty over congressional passage of unrestricted federal virus aid to states, Andrew Richman, senior fixed income strategist at Sterling Capital Management, said Illinois was experiencing a surge in virus cases ahead of its sizeable bond sale. The state reported its highest one-day total of 4,554 cases on Friday.
“Illinois had problems before the pandemic,” Richman said. “Things are getting worse not better.”
Still, John Mousseau, president and CEO of Cumberland Advisors, said the high yields will attract buyers.
“People will buy it. They are yield-starved,” he said.
Taking the scam to the next level
One part of one sentence jumps out of the preceding article:
“The state continues to delay tough decisions with a number of speculative revenues as part of its current budget, including additional federal aid…”
The last remaining escape hatch for the worst-run cities and states is a massive (easily multi-trillion dollar) bailout by the only remaining entity with access to that kind of credit, the federal government. After the upcoming election, whichever party ends up in charge will face the specter of bond defaults and mass layoffs in Illinois, California, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Kentucky, among many other places.
A Democrat-led federal government will happily provide the trillions necessary to keep this from happening, while a Republican administration will dither for a while before caving. Either way, the original crime is swept under the rug and the financial pressure is socialized, with all US taxpayers on the hook for previously-local mistakes.
- GSA Gave FBI, Mueller 'Secret Access' To Trump Records
GSA Gave FBI, Mueller 'Secret Access' To Trump Records
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/24/2020 – 15:00The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the General Services Administration (GSA) undermined the Trump transition team by violating a memorandum of understanding between the Trump transition team and the GSA – when they complied with requests from the FBI and special counsel Robert Mueller’s office to provide private records on members of Trump’s team, according to a Senate report released on Friday.
As Just the News notes:
The majority staff report from both the Senate Committee on Finance and the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs claims that officials from both the FBI and Mueller’s office “secretly sought and received access to the private records of Donald J. Trump’s presidential transition team, Trump for America, Inc.”
“They did so,” the report continues, “despite the terms of a memorandum of understanding between the Trump transition team and the General Services Administration...—the executive agency responsible for providing services to both candidates’ transition teams—that those records were the transition team’s private property that would not be retained at the conclusion of the transition.”
According to the report, the GSA – without notifying the White House – reached out to the FBI following Michael Flynn’s resignation as national security adviser and offered to retain records from the Trump transition team in early 2017. The records compiled eventually made their way into Mueller’s office, according to the report.
“At bottom,” continues the report, “the GSA and the FBI undermined the transition process by preserving Trump transition team records contrary to the terms of the memorandum of understanding, hiding that fact from the Trump transition team, and refusing to provide the team with copies of its own records.”
“These actions have called into question the GSA’s role as a neutral service provider, and those doubts have consequences,” the report reads. “Future presidential transition teams must have confidence that their use of government resources and facilities for internal communications and deliberations—including key decisions such as nominations, staffing, and significant policy changes—will not expose them to exploitation by third parties, including political opponents.”
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