Today’s News 27th January 2021

• That's All Folks!
  That’s All Folks!

  Authored (mostly satirically) by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

  As they used to say at the end of all those wacky Looney Tunes cartoons, that’s all folks! The show is over.

  

  Literal Russian-Asset Hitler, the Latest Greatest Threat to Western Democracy, the Monster of Mar-a-Lago, Trumpzilla, Trumpenstein, the Ayatollah of Orange Shinola, has finally been humiliated and given the bum-rush out of Washington by the heroic forces of the GloboCap “Resistance,” with a little help from the US military.

  The whole thing went exactly to script.

  Well … OK, not quite exactly to script. Despite four years of dire warnings by the corporate media, the Intelligence Community, Hollywood celebrities, the Democratic Party, faux anti-fascists, fake-Left pundits, and pretty much every utterly deluded, Trump-obsessed liberal with an Internet connection, there was no Hitlerian “Reichstag Fire,” no Boogaloo, no Civil War II, no coup, no white-supremacist uprising.

  Nothing.

  The man simply got on a chopper and was flown away to his Florida resort.

  I know, you’re probably thinking …

  “Wow, how embarrassing for the GloboCap ‘Resistance,’ being exposed as a bunch of utterly shameless, neo-Goebbelsian propagandists, and liars, and hysterical idiots, and such!”

  And, in any other version of reality, you’d have a point … but not in this one.

  No, in this reality, “Democracy Has Prevailed!”

  Yes, it was touch and go there for a while, as there was no guarantee that the Intelligence Community, the military-industrial complex, Western governments, the corporate media, supranational corporations, Internet oligarchs, and virtually every other component of the global-capitalist empire could keep one former game show host with no real political power whatsoever from taking over the entire world.

  Still, Trump’s failure to go full-Hitler, or even half-Hitler, was somewhat awkward. I mean, you can’t whip millions of people into a four-year frenzy of fear and hatred of a clearly powerless ass-clown president, and portray him as a Russian Intelligence asset, and the Son of Hitler, and all the rest of it, and then just drop the act cold and laugh in their faces. That would leave them feeling like total morons who had just spent the last four years of their lives being lied to and emotionally manipulated, or like members of a cult, or something.

  Fortunately, for GloboCap, this was not a major problem. All they had to do was produce a cheap simulation of “Trump going full-Hitler.” It didn’t even have to be convincing. They just needed a semi-dramatic event to plug into the official narrative, something they could call “an attempted coup,” “an insurrection,” “an attack,” and so on, and which millions of credulous liberals could hysterically shriek about on the Internet.

  The “Storming of the Capitol” did the trick.

  They held a dress rehearsal in Berlin last August, and then gave the real performance in the Capitol Building (this time it was for all the money, so they went ahead and got a couple people killed). It wasn’t very hard to pull off. All they actually had to do, in both Berlin and DC, was allow a small fringe group of angry protesters to gain access to the building, film it, and then pump out the “attempted coup” narrative. It made no difference whatsoever that the “domestic terrorists” (in both Berlin and Washington) were a completely unorganized, unarmed mob that posed absolutely zero threat of “staging a coup” and “overthrowing the government.” It also made not the slightest difference that Trump didn’t actually “incite” the mob (yes, I put myself through the agony of reading every word of his speech, which was the usual word salad from start to finish). We’re talking propaganda here, not reality.

  The so-called “Violent Storming of the Capitol” set the stage for the main event, which was the show of force we have all just witnessed. Someone (I’m not entirely clear who) ordered in the troops, tens of thousands of them, locked down Washington, erected fences, set up road blocks and military check points, and otherwise occupied the government district. It looked like any other US-military post-“regime-change” occupation, because that’s what it was, which was precisely the point. As I have been repeating for … well, for over four years now, it was always going to end this way, with GloboCap making an example of Trump and reminding everyone who is really in charge.

  Look, let’s be clear about these last four years, because there are all kinds of crazy theories going around (not to mention the official GloboCap narrative), but what actually happened is pretty simple. Here’s the whole story, as concise as I can make it.

  Back in 2016, the American people, sick to the gills of global capitalism and its increasingly oppressive woke ideology, elected an unauthorized, narcissistic ass-clown to the highest office in the land.

  They did this for a variety of reasons, but mostly it was just a big “fuck you” to the establishment. It was an act of rebellion against a government which they know is owned by unaccountable, supranational corporations and oligarchs who openly detest them.

  It was an act of rebellion against a system of government they know they have no influence over, and are not going to have any influence over. It was an act of rebellion against global capitalism, the unopposed, global-hegemonic system which has dominated the world for the last thirty years … whether they realized what they were rebelling against or not.

  This act of rebellion happened on the heels of Brexit (another such act of rebellion) and in the context of the rise of assorted “populist” movements all throughout the world. When Trump actually won in 2016, the global capitalist ruling classes realized they had a serious problem … a “populist” rebellion in the heart of the empire.

  So they suspended the Global War on Terror and launched the War on Populism.

  The ultimate objective of the War on Populism was to neutralize this “populist” rebellion and remind the public who is actually running things.

  Think of the Trump era as a prison riot. In any maximum security prison, the prisoners know they can’t escape, but they can definitely raise a little hell now and then, which they tend to do when they get really tired of being abused and neglected by the prison guards.

  Most prison riots run out of steam on their own, but if they go on too long or get too ugly, the penal authorities typically respond by shooting a few prisoners (usually the ringleaders), and reminding the inmates that they are in a prison, and that the owners of the prison have guns, whereas they have shivs made out of spoons and toothbrushes.

  This, basically, is what we’ve just experienced.

  The global capitalist ruling classes have just reminded us who is really in charge, who the US military answers to, and how quickly they can strip away the facade of democracy and the rule of law. They have reminded us of this for the last ten months, by putting us under house arrest, beating and arresting us for not following orders, for not wearing masks, for taking walks without permission, for having the audacity to protest their decrees, for challenging their official propaganda, about the virus, the election results, etc. They are reminding us currently by censoring dissent, and deplatforming anyone they deem a threat to their official narratives and ideology.

  In other words, GloboCap is teaching us a lesson. I don’t know how much clearer they could make it. They just installed a new puppet president, who can’t even simulate mental acuity, in a locked-down, military-guarded ceremony which no one was allowed to attend, except for a few members of the ruling classes. They got some epigone of Albert Speer to convert the Mall (where the public normally gathers) into a “field of flags” symbolizing “unity.” They even did the Nazi “Lichtdom” thing. To hammer the point home, they got Lady Gaga to dress up as a Hunger Games character with a “Mockingjay” brooch and sing the National Anthem. They broadcast this spectacle to the entire world.

  And the lesson isn’t quite over yet … it won’t be over for a while. The “War on Populism” will simply morph into the “New Normal War on Domestic Terror,” which will become one more theater in the “Global War on Terror,” which has been on hiatus, and which will now resume. As I have pointed out repeatedly over the past four years, we appear to be headed toward a dystopian future in which there will essentially be two classes of people: (a) “normals” (i.e., those who conform to global-capitalist ideology and decrees); and (b) the “extremists” (i.e., those who don’t).

  It will make no difference whatsoever what type of “extremists” these “extremists” are … religious-fundamentalist extremists, Islamic extremists, Christian extremists, right-wing extremists, left-wing extremists, white-supremacist or Black-nationalist extremists, virus deniers, anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, anti-maskers, recalcitrant transphobians, anti-transhumanists, pronoun resisters, defiant oppositionalists, or whatever … the names don’t really matter. The point is, conform or be labelled an “extremist,” a “domestic terrorist,” or some other type of “antisocial person” or “social deviant,” or “potential threat to public health.”

  I don’t claim to know every detail, but one thing seems abundantly clear. We are not going back to the way things were. GloboCap has been explaining this to us, over and over, for almost a year. They couldn’t have made it any more explicit. When they warned us to get ready because a “New Normal” was coming, they meant it.

  And now … well … here it is…

  

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/26/2021 – 23:25

• COVID Response Sparks Spike In Americans' Anxiety & Depression
  COVID Response Sparks Spike In Americans’ Anxiety & Depression

  Aside from killing nearly 400,000 Americans to date and wreaking havoc on the country’s economy, Statista’s Felix Richter notes that the COVID-19 pandemic is also taking a heavy toll on mental health.

  That’s according to data compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics, showing that more than 4 in 10 U.S. adults had developed symptoms of depression or anxiety by the end of 2020, a sharp increase over the results of a comparable survey conducted in the first half of 2019.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  The latest findings are derived from the Household Pulse Survey, which has been launched to produce data on the social and economic impacts of COVID-19 on American households. A total of 60,000 Americans were surveyed about their mental health between December 9 and 21, asked to report how often they have felt down, depressed, hopeless or anxious in the last week, how often they have been unable to stop worrying or shown little interest or pleasure in doing things – all symptoms that have been shown to be associated with diagnoses of generalized anxiety disorder or major depressive disorder.

  As the chart above shows, the share of respondents showing signs of anxiety or depression has nearly quadrupled compared to results obtained before the pandemic. As hundreds of thousands have died and millions have lost their jobs, Americans are facing a plethora of uncertainties with respect to their and their families’ health and financial wellbeing, worries which are only exacerbated when dealt with alone amid a time of social distancing.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/26/2021 – 23:05

• Migrants Increasing At "Concerning Rate" On Southern Border, Says CBP Agent
  Migrants Increasing At “Concerning Rate” On Southern Border, Says CBP Agent

  Authored by Terri Wu via The Epoch Times,

  As caravans build up in Honduras, migrants are increasing at a “concerning rate” at the United States southern border, according to Matthew Hudak, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) chief patrol agent of the Laredo sector in Texas. He warns that immigration is just a piece of the threat coupled with the pandemic health risk and other crimes along the border.

  

  “Like everybody, we’re tracking the formation of these caravans in Central America,” said Hudak. The Laredo Sector is one of nine CBP sectors along the southern border. It contains about 135 miles of the international border with Mexico.

  On Jan. 8, CBP Acting Commissioner Mark A. Morgan issued a statement on potential migrant caravans:

  “Do not waste your time and money, and do not risk your safety and health.”

  According to Hudak, the Laredo Sector hasn’t seen a reduction of migrants in response to the statement. It has made over 30,000 arrests in this fiscal year, a 50 percent increase over the same period last year. Hudak added that similar trends are identified by other sectors on the southern border. The U.S. government fiscal year starts on Oct. 1. Hudak called the 50 percent increase “a pretty concerning rate.”

  

  Matthew J. Hudak, Chief Patrol Agent of Laredo Sector of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection during the video interview on Jan. 21, 2021. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)

  He told The Epoch Times that some portions of the caravan of 9,000 migrants will make their way to the southern border. Part of the group was stopped in Guatemala on Jan. 16. Depending on the pace and the means with which these migrants travel, the arrival time at the U.S.-Mexico border may be between a few days and a few weeks. As of Jan. 21, he hasn’t yet seen a dramatic increase of migrants indicative of caravans arriving at the southern border.

  Hudak said that human smuggling is usually achieved with systems shared with drug and firearm smuggling, and the fees migrants are charged feed larger criminal organizations. Therefore, he sees a more significant threat: “We may be talking about one piece of it, which is immigration, but it’s part of a much larger criminal enterprise.”

  

  The Laredo Sector is one of nine CBP sectors along the southern border of the United States. It contains about 135 miles of the international border with Mexico. (Americanpatrol.com)

  He attributed the trend of migrant increase to the U.S. economy and better healthcare systems, especially during the pandemic. Timing also plays a role.

  “We’ve seen the economy in this country get back on track and continue to expand. That’s always a driving force of people coming this way looking for jobs and work. We have done interviews where we do get that information that there is a sense of timing, that now is the time to try to make that journey here to the U.S.”

  Teresa De la Garza, Department of Justice (DOJ) accredited immigration representative at Catholic Social Services in Laredo, Texas, went through an 11-year process to become an American. Growing up at the border, she used to go to an international school in Texas and go back home to Mexico every day. She said part of the migrant enthusiasm is fueled by more of a change of president than shifts in immigration policies.

  

  Teresa De la Garza (center), immigration representative at Catholic Social Services in Laredo, TX, with her colleagues (from left to right) Angeles Palacios, Vanessa Guerrero, Sandra Gutierrez, and Edgar Martinez. (Courtesy of Teresa De la Garza)

  She considered the enthusiasm unrealistic.

  “Some of the policies that have changed in these past four years can’t be reversed as soon as another president comes in. It will take time.”

  In her view, the new administration will need beyond four years to make significant immigration policy changes.

  De la Garza is currently busy with many appointments through March for consulting applicants of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The program is for illegal immigrants who were brought into the States before their 16th birthday. A Jan. 20 presidential memorandum has reinstated the program after the Department of Homeland Security put the program on hold for review last year.

  The local communities don’t want migrants arriving due to pandemic-related health concerns, according to De la Garza. Just a week ago, CBP intercepted 114 migrants in a box truck. Most of them weren’t wearing personal protection equipment.

  

  On Jan. 14, 2021, U.S. Border Patrol agents from Laredo Sector stopped a human smuggling attempt involving a U-Haul rental box truck in south Laredo and arrested 114 illegal migrants. (Courtesy of CBP)

  According to Hudak, the top near-term challenges are protecting national security and the workforce during the pandemic and keeping up with the evolution of tactics of the cartels and the smuggling organizations, including using more moving vehicles than large trailer trucks.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/26/2021 – 22:45

• "Iron Gulf": Israel's Iron Dome Systems To Be Deployed At US Bases In Persian Gulf
  “Iron Gulf”: Israel’s Iron Dome Systems To Be Deployed At US Bases In Persian Gulf

  Early this week Israel’s Haaretz newspaper featured quotes from top Israeli military sources which are sure to add major fuel to the fire of simmering Iran tensions in the region. 

  The Israeli sources say there’s been a behind closed doors agreement to deploy the Iron Dome defense systems to US military bases in the Gulf. “The United States is expected to soon begin deploying Iron Dome missile interceptor batteries, one of the jewels of Israel’s arms manufacturing industry, in its bases in the Gulf States, according to security officials,” Haaretz wrote.

  

  Israeli officials told the newspaper further that ongoing talks are now centered on obtaining “the technical approval of the Americans to deploy the batteries in order to protect their forces from possible attacks by Iran and its allies.”

  It’s as yet unknown which countries would host the Israeli anti-air systems, which are most often used to deter Hamas rockets out of Gaza, but the secretive talks follow on the heels of the Trump-brokered Abraham accords which saw normalization of ties between the UAE and Israel, among others. 

  This also comes as earlier this month Israel transferred its second Iron Dome battery to the US Defense Department, as part of a deal inked in 2019.

  Below are some key quotes in the Haaretz report, which was also picked up by Bloomberg:

  Because of the sensitivity of the matter for the Americans, Israeli officials are refusing to reveal in which countries the Iron Dome interceptors will be deployed. But behind closed doors, Israel gave its tacit agreement to the Americans to place the batteries in order to defend its forces from attacks by Iran and its proxies, according to Israeli officials.

  And surprisingly the Iron Dome systems could eventually make their way to US bases in Eastern Europe:

  As well as the Gulf states, deployments are also expected in Eastern European countries, out of fear that Russia could endanger American forces, or strategic infrastructure in those countries, said the Israeli officials.

  In early January when the Israel Ministry of Defense delivered the second of two Iron Dome anti-air missile defense systems to the US Army, Defense Minister Benny Gantz told Israel National News that “the delivery of the Iron Dome to the U.S. Army once again demonstrates the close relations between the Israel Ministry of Defense and the U.S. Department of Defense.” 

  Gantz continued: “I am confident that the system will assist the U.S. Army in protecting American troops from ballistic and airborne threats as well as from developing threats in the areas where U.S. troops are deployed on various missions.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/26/2021 – 22:25

• Get Used To Living Under "Subsidiarity" After The Great Reset
  Get Used To Living Under “Subsidiarity” After The Great Reset

  Authored by Mark Jeftovic via bombthrower.com,

  #Davos2021 started yesterday.

  We’ve all been hearing a lot The Great Reset lately, new slogans abound such as Build Back Better, the New Normal, and what seems to be a “new” model called “Stakeholder Capitalism” is being espoused (although it is not new, I wrote about the pendulum swinging from stakeholder supremacy to shareholder supremacy back in the days of Milton Friedman in the inaugural post for this site).

  Recently I decided it would be helpful challenge my own reflexive inclination to suspect that we were all being collectively screwed by our institutions, yet again.  I wondered if these momentous shifts were simply one of those tectonic phase shifts that occur throughout history and that I shouldn’t leap to the conclusion that it’s some disingenuous and ultimately malevolent  pseudo-reality being imposed from above.

  

  It is fitting that as #Davos2021 begins, I outline my arc in which I tried to suspend disbelief around The Great Reset narrative, forcing myself to pose the question:

  What if The Great Reset was getting a bad rap?

  Maybe it’s true that the world has changed irrevocably, and that change hasn’t been driven or captured by a razor thin scab of elites at the top of the socio-economic pyramid who are setting the agenda. The idea of a reset may be well founded, after all when I first started writing about wealth inequality and crony capitalism over a decade ago, I called it “Rebooting Capitalism”.

  So I started going through Klaus Schwab’s books: The Fourth Industrial Revolution (2016), COVID-19: The Great Reset (2020) and most recently, Stakeholder Capitalism. (2021).  It started out as s a curious blend of nodding one’s head in agreement, underlining numerous passages, musing that maybe this is just descriptive, not prescriptive. By that I mean, maybe Schwab is simply trying to make sense of the shifts occurring, and not really offering frameworks around what should happen next, but just trying to parse what is happening and possible trajectories of the future.

  This former case is similar to Warren Mosler’s description of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). It describes how Mosler and other MMT-ers think the system actually works and why the outcomes will not be as conventional economics generally fears. In Stephenie Kelton’s more recent book The Deficit Myth, she builds on this theme that MMT is more descriptive with some prescriptive policy recommendations. But my overall sense of it is that these books about MMT were more about trying to articulate a new way of looking at the existing system and not trying to drive a completely overriding agenda (even if that’s what would happen if policy makers seize on MMT as a rationalization for destroying their currencies).

  I mention MMT here specifically because we touch on it again when I contrast it to Charles Hugh Smith’s concept of Community Labour Integrated Money Economy (CLIME), a little later.

  With Schwab, he spends a lot of time in a descriptive mode, talking about the what is happening in the world, although we do see some of his assumptions creeping in and for awhile, I am cautiously optimistic that if everything Schwab outlines as a policy response to global issues like global poverty, and of course now, the pandemic, maybe it’s just the way of the world and this is the direction things are going without there necessarily being a SPECTRE-like entity in the WEF driving a self-serving agenda.

  When Schwab talks about how a grand ideal of a standard issue One World Government model, what he calls the Neoliberal Utopia simply will not work, I breathe a sigh of relief,

  “Consider  a global government [that] regulates multinational companies in global markets, and people gather in a global democracy and global unions. It is an unrealistic an undesirable goal, as it increases the distance between individuals and the immediate social ecosystems they are a part of. It also decreases their feeling of commitment to the people and the environment closest to them…Though the 20th century neoliberalists once may have seen such a global model as a Utopian ideal, it would inevitably end in the political disenfranchisement of local communities. When the center of power is too far removed  from people’s everyday realities, neither political governance nor economic decision-making would have popular support.”

  – Stakeholder Capitalism p.181

  But then, the more I read, the more I couldn’t shake the sense that when a guy like Schwab means by the word “commitment, what he really means is “obedience”. Schwab understands that people aren’t really going to accept decisions from on high, especially if on high is a centralized world government.

  What we really need is “Subsidiarity”

  Schwab goes on to introduce with a flourish one of the core pillars of Stakeholder Capitalism: Subsidiarity (the other is “Value creation and sharing”):

  A primary principle for the implementation of Stakeholder Capitalism is therefore that of subsidiarity. It is not an untested or purely theoretical principal. Applied most famously in the governance of the European Union..it asserts that decisions should be taken at the most granular level possible, closest to where they will have the most noticeable effects. It determines, in other words, that local stakeholders should be able to decide for themselves, except when it is not feasible or effective for them to do so.

  Subsidiarity is supposed to mean “whatever can be done at lower levels of government should not be done at higher levels”, but my guess is the devil would be in the details. Like in that last sentence of the quote, when it is not feasible or effective for the “stakeholders” in Stakeholder Capitalism to decide certain matters for themselves, those will have to be decided for them.

  What would those sorts of issues be?

  Well for starters, there’s climate change. That’s one of the things that’s already been decided…

  “It makes sense to coordinate this challenge first at the global level.” but then the second level is at the national level, where countries can take different approaches, a limit on auto travel would have significant effect in the United States, where cars are the primary mode of transportation. Taking a different approach, such as limiting air travel, would affect certain groups of people more than others. Subsidiarity supports a national or local level of decision making for countries to determine which path will work best for them to effectively address the global goal”.

  As Schwab blithely bandies about various limitations and curtailments on everybody else’s range of motion and economic choices, there is never any treatment of climate change as anything but a global crisis that justifies the complete re-ordering of everybody’s lives.

  And yet, the same level of drastic re-ordering of everybody else’s lives is proffered in Schwab’s other book, COVID-19: The Great Reset, even though by his own admission in that same book, COVID-19 is a not civilization ending plague:

  “Even in the worst-case horrendous scenario, COVID-19 will kill far fewer people than the Great Plagues, including the Black Deaths, or World War II did”

  – COVID-19: The Great Reset p. 17

  Albeit one that provides an excellent opportunity to reorder everybody else’s lives,

  changes that would have seemed inconceivable before the pandemic struck, such as new forms of monetary policy like helicopter money (already a given), the reconsideration/recalibration of some of our social priorities and augmented search for the common good as a policy objective, the notion of fairness acquiring political potency, radical welfare and taxation measures, and drastic geopolitical realignments.

  The broader point is this: the possibilities for change and the resulting new order are now unlimited and only bound by our imagination, for better or for worse. Societies could be poised to become either more egalitarian or more authoritarian, or geared towards more solidarity or more individualism, favouring the interests of the few or the many…

  You get the point: we (as in the WEF) should take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity to reimagine your world.

  If COVID-19 is a comparatively lightweight pandemic to be opportunistically seized upon to drastically reorder everybody’s lives, one cant help but wonder if the climate “crisis” isn’t yet another global softball. Perhaps in the cold light of day, it could turn out that climate change is either out of our hands (if it is driven largely or even partially by solar cycles) or that climate alarmism is in itself more toxic and destructive than the direct effects of climate change itself, as Michael Shellenberger asserts in “Apocalypse Never”,

  Apocalypse Never explores how and why so many of us came to see important but manageable environmental problems as the end of the world, and why the people who are the most apocalyptic about environmental problems tend to oppose the best and most obvious solutions to solving them.

  Shellenberger, Michael. Apocalypse Never (p. xi). Harper. Kindle Edition.

  Shouldn’t there be some sort of process or governance structure in there to protect the world’s citizens from being overly regulated by somebody else’s idea of what is important? Should there be some counterbalance to these unilateral assessments of when drastic measures are required, especially when those measures would supersede our own agency in ordering our lives?

  But there isn’t, not in Schwab’s Stakeholder Capitalism after the The Great Reset.

  What we get instead is “subsidiarity”:

  Another example around climate change, conspicuous in its lack of coverage in Schwab’s books is the idea of nuclear energy.

  If the entire world is headed toward an eventual transition off of fossil fuels (if for no other reason than Peak Oil) then shouldn’t the safest, cleanest, efficient energy source be featured prominently? The next generation pebble bed reactors and micro-reactors are safe to the point of being effectively riskless when compared to other forms of energy generation and the number fatalities those other forms cause when accidents do occur:

  The worst energy accident of all time was the 1975 collapse of the Banqiao hydroelectric dam in China. It collapsed and killed between 170,000 and 230,000 people. It’s not that nuclear energy never kills. It’s that its death toll is vanishingly small. Here are some annual death totals: walking (270,000), driving (1.35 million), working (2.3 million), air pollution (4.2 million). By contrast, nuclear’s known total death toll is just over one hundred.

  Leading Shellenberger, an environmental activist of 30 years to assert that,

  Nuclear is the safest way to make reliable electricity. In fact, nuclear has saved more than two million lives to date by preventing the deadly air pollution that shortens the lives of seven million people per year….

  Nuclear’s worst accidents show that the technology has always been safe for the same inherent reason that it has always had such a small environmental impact: the high energy density of its fuel.

  – Shellenberger, Michael. Apocalypse Never (p. 151). Harper. Kindle Edition.

  And then there’s also  Thorium, which can’t meltdown and the radiation half-life is measured in weeks, not years. There is no mention of any of this in any of Schwab’s books.

  Under subsidiarity, local governments across the world will be tasked with addressing problems Kraus Schwab and the Davos crew (the wealthiest 0.01% of humanity that own somewhere north of $36 trillion of the global assets) deem to be problems, and reorder the world according to how the WEF thinks things should be prioritized.

  What are the priorities?

  We get some insight by looking at the list of “Deep Shifts” Schwab predicts in his earlier book: The Fourth Industrial Revolution, where he posits what the big changes are that are coming at us in terms of tipping points, positive outcomes, negative outcomes and “unknown / cuts both ways”.

  Shift #1: Implantable Technologies (p. 121)

  “Digital tatoos not only look cool but can perform useful tasks, like unlocking a car, entering mobile phone codes with a finger point or tracking body processes”

  (or implementing immunity passports).

  Shift #10: Smart Cities (p.144)

  Shift #11: Big Data for Decisions (p. 145)

  Shift #22: Designer Beings

  Tipping point in for this one will be when “The first human whose genome was directly and deliberately edited is born” (which I will point out, has already happened with the CRISPR babies in China).

  Shift #23: Neurotechnologies (p. 170)

  Tipping point: “The first human with fully artificial memory implanted in the brain”.

  Together, they coalesce to usher in an impetus toward transhumanism ordered by Big Data and AI that will probably, in lieu of any honest debate or public consultation around these shifts, result in a type of social credit system.

  And that’s what is missing from Schwab’s books. There is nothing in the framework where local communities can identify and define what they see as problems for themselves and work toward solving them. There is no mechanism for asserting their own priorities of types of things the communities themselves may value above the WEF’s “Deep Shifts”, such as full or meaningful employment, privacy, or self-sovereign health care.

  Directionality matters

  In other words, what is missing from Stakeholder Capitalism is that, despite paying lip service to inclusion and community, there are no actual mechanisms for priorities coming from the bottom up.

  What I’ve been realizing is that you can take two systems that have outwardly similar mechanics, like  MMT and Charles Hugh Smith’s CLIME. Both systems describe an economy from which money is created ex nihilo to fulfill or generate economic activity. But from those two frameworks one can envision two very different outcomes: hyper-inflation and a two-tier society on one, and a robust community of involved economic actual stakeholders getting stuff done in the other. Why?

  Because one is a top-down framework where the incentives are set by policy makers removed from the economy they attempt to fine tune, while the other is a bottom-up ecosystem where actual economic activity is a direct result of market signalling and community needs.

  Conclusion

  After reading through the Schwab material having initially forced myself to suspend judgement,  I now am now firmer in my initial suspicions that The Great Reset, Stakeholder Capitalism and Build Back Better  slogans that come out of these annual Davos circle jerks are blissfully oblivious to what they themselves actually are.

  They believe that the role they are ostensibly to serve is as the “enlightened stewards” of society, taking the liberty of reimagining everybody else’s lives.

  In reality, they are the living embodiment of uber-woke super wealthy elites , so tacitly sure that their belief systems are the product of their own personal enormous material success that they can’t really be beliefs but self-evident truths. After all, if they were wrong, they wouldn’t be super rich, right?

  What is being proposed however, what The Great Reset and Stakeholder Capitalism is, isn’t just benignly wrong-headed or egregiously presumptive: it is chilling.

  It doesn’t specifically call for social credit, or an AI-driven authoritarianism, yet that is what its tenets and incentives will produce. It aspires toward transhumanism, and so far all indications are that governments, and global elites seem to be buying into it and singing the “Build Back Better” mantra of Stakeholder Capitalism in concert.

  What it will lead to is The Great Bifurcation, the 3rd Scenario I posited in The Jackpot Chronicles. Much has come into focus now since I wrote that just this past summer.

  If The Great Reset comes about, and I think it’s already here, it will lead to that two tier society where the world’s underclass are governed algorithmically via smartphones, digital, programmable scrip (UBI) and well ordered dopamine hits. Meanwhile the far smaller populace that actually owns all the assets globally live in a parallel universe where they retain agency, freedom of movement, diet, and thought.

  On my mailing list I talk about what we can do as individuals to try and get clear of The Great Reset. Because even if we loathe this with every fibre of our being, find it oppressive and tyrannical, anti-human, anti-spirit and soulless, we won’t be able to do anything about it from the wrong side of the impermeable membrane that will very soon cordon off the haves from the haves-nots.

  We have to defend our liberties, our civil rights and our assets in the New Normal. In a worst case scenario it’ll require forming an underground network a la Isaac Assimov’s Foundation. The Foundation’s stated purpose was to survive the onset of a Galactic Dark Age and preserve the accumulated culture and wisdom of a civilization that had irrevocably embarked on a path that would trigger its own demise.

  Now more than ever it is important we all try to improve things from the grass roots level as the Stakeholder Capitalism rubric may be the last gasp of a system about the come off the rails completely or after a prolonged period of disruption and tyranny.

  Charles Hugh Smith and I are working on a base framework for CLIME that will empower communities to create their own local exchange currency and take control over their own community economies.

  • Join my mailing list to be notified about that and get other advice on surviving The Great Reset.
  • Start setting up on alternative communications channels like Telegram, Signal and Keybase (we’re setting up a Bombthrower Telegram here)
  • Support third-party political parties like the Greens if your left-of-center or the Libertarians or PPC if you’re on the right; withdraw your financial support and votes from incumbent political parties everywhere, at all levels (more on this in another post).

  Hold your ground where possible, but prepare for a type of Samizdat communications culture for awhile. We may have to keep in touch with each other from the underground. The mainstream media will be no help and Big Tech is part of the problem.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/26/2021 – 22:05

• Modi Reform Backlash Sparks Chaos In New Delhi As Farmers Attack Police
  Modi Reform Backlash Sparks Chaos In New Delhi As Farmers Attack Police

  Tens of thousands of angry farmers drove tractors and marched through India’s capital on Tuesday. 

  According to Asian News International (ANI), New Delhi Police said, “protesters turned violent at some places. Many police personnel were injured & public properties also damaged.” 

  Reuters tweeted a video showing farmers have gone mad in the capital. Police and farmers clashed during the Republic Day celebrations.

  🚜🇮🇳 Los agricultores indios que protestan contra las reformas agrícolas condujeron tractores por las calles de Nueva Delhi durante las celebraciones del Día de la República y se enfrentaron con la policía, que lanzó gases lacrimógenos pic.twitter.com/aQZ36yXxIE

  — Reuters Latam (@ReutersLatam) January 26, 2021

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

  Farmers broke through police barricades and stormed the historic Red Fort, a historical fort in the city that served as the Mughal Emperors’ primary residence. ANI shows farmers beating and tossing police off a wall. 

  #WATCH | Delhi: Protestors attacked Police at Red Fort, earlier today. #FarmersProtest pic.twitter.com/LRut8z5KSC

  — ANI (@ANI) January 26, 2021

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

  Farmers attack a riot control vehicle. 

  #WATCH | Two vehicles of Delhi Police including a riot control vehicle were vandalised by protesters at Nangloi-Najafgarh Road earlier today. (Video source – Delhi Police) pic.twitter.com/FWW6Detxpw

  — ANI (@ANI) January 26, 2021

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

  Chaos. 

  “Happy republic day “ Indian citizens this is your “India”. The whole world is watching you !!!! Shameless act by Modi sarkaar !! @UNHumanRights #HistoricTractorMarch #FarmersProtest
  #RSSRepublicDay pic.twitter.com/AeCY10btVn

  — Hoorain Pervaiz🇵🇰 (@HoorainPervaiz) January 26, 2021

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

  “11th March 1783 the KHALSA flag was unfurled over the Red Fort, majestically at the APEX of the Lal Qila. THEN it signified the BEGINNING of the end for the Delhi Empire. What significance is this for today’s FUTURE ?? TIME will tell….,” one user said.

  

  Here are more views of farmers storming the Red Fort. 

  

  One person compares the fort’s storming to the recent riot at the US Capitol complex.

  Are you compare these 2 pics from west to east, from oldest democracy to biggest democracy? #FarmersProtest #FarmersProstests #किसान_नहीं_गुंडे

  If leader of first pic is being impeach, why not others one? pic.twitter.com/sOQYTD4IW9

  — ∂ιиєѕн ρяαʝαρтι (@Itsdinnu) January 26, 2021

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

  Farmers have stayed peaceful but today was absolute chaos. These folks are mad because of unfair farming legislation passed several months ago.

  They allege Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s farming law, which ends the government’s programs to keep commodity prices at fixed levels, therefore allowing free markets to dictate prices, favors large corporations over mom and pop farmers. 

  There’s no telling on when the unrest will end. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/26/2021 – 21:45

• Quinn: The Fourth Turning Detonation, Part 1
  Quinn: The Fourth Turning Detonation, Part 1

  Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

  “Americans today fear that linearism (alias the American Dream) has run its course. Many would welcome some enlightenment about history’s patterns and rhythms, but today’s intellectual elites offer little that’s useful. Caught between the entropy of the chaoticists and the hubris of the linearists, the American people have lost their moorings.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

  

  “The ancients believed that each cyclical extreme, mirroring the hopes and fears of the other, helps generate the other. The night longs for the day, the day for night. In war, people yearn for relief from strife, leading to peace. In peace, people yearn to champion what they love, leading to war.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

  When I started thinking about my annual beginning of the year article in early January, I tried to formulate a catchy title. Knowing we have entered the thirteenth year of this Fourth Turning, with the intensity of the crisis reaching an unparalleled level since November 4, I decided upon Fourth Turning Detonation. I immediately thought that might be too dire and figured I would change it later. After the first few weeks of the new year, I now think it might be grossly inadequate to describe what is coming in 2021.

  It is easy to get distracted by the daily gyrations, ceaseless media propaganda, political theater, false narratives, and delusional beliefs of both the left and right, as this military empire built on debt and deceit spirals towards its fiery cataclysmic climax. Opposing forces have gathered themselves into position focusing on defeating their domestic enemies, with the left seeming to have strategic advantage but led by hubristic dullards, while numerous foreign adversaries circle like hungry vultures ready to pounce on the dying beast of an empire.

  Last January I wrote a two-part article called 2020 – Year of Living Dangerously which harkened back to another article I had written eight years before 2012 – Year of Living Dangerously. I lamented the fact I had not understood Fourth Turnings will take their own sweet time on the way to a climax, with twists and turns which will differentiate it from previous Crisis periods in U.S. history. My impatience for the great battle to resolve this struggle has not and will not impact the timeline, but the three elements driving this Crisis remain firmly in control, as they have since 2008: debt, civic decay, global disorder.

  My belief regarding the subtext of what has happened and is happening in this country has not changed. I certainly underestimated the lengths these psychopaths in suits would go to in 2020 to further pillage the world’s wealth while using a pandemic as cover to further their agenda of hegemony and turning the world into a virtual prison camp under constant technological surveillance. Despite the timing, I still believe that which is unsustainable will not be sustained.

  

  “It seems I always underestimate the ability of sociopathic central bankers and their willingness to destroy the lives of hundreds of millions to benefit their oligarch masters. I always underestimate the rampant corruption that permeates Washington DC and the executive suites in mega-corporations across the land. And I always overestimate the intelligence, civic mindedness, and ability to understand math of the ignorant masses that pass for citizens in this country. It seems that issuing trillions of new debt to pay off trillions of bad debt, government sanctioned accounting fraud, mainstream media propaganda, government data manipulation and a populace blinded by mass delusion can stave off the inevitable consequences of an unsustainable economic system.”

  I used to try and make specific predictions about the new year generally centered upon economic chaos, stock markets crashing, global conflict, and various other doom-like events. But those running this clown show somehow convince the masses all is well, the economy is healthy, inflation is non-existent, debt does not matter, college makes you smart, we’re energy self-sufficient, 100 million working age Americans not working – but unemployment was 3.5%, the stock market hitting all-time highs is good for you even though your real wages haven’t gone up in a decade, and America was great again.

  It is amazing to me how effective propaganda is when multiple generations have been indoctrinated and socially engineered in the government school system and decades of boob tube fake news has been programmed into their pliably ignorant brains. Edward Bernays created the game plan and the techno-oligarch despots currently running the show are executing it to perfection.

  

  “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.” – Edward Bernays – Propaganda

  This Fourth Turning likely has another 5 to 10 years before some sort of convulsive resolution, unless it is accelerated like the Civil War Fourth Turning, with similar tragic consequences and mass casualties. Predicting the actual events which will occur over a short-term time frame is a fool’s errand, so I prefer to try and discern the direction and amplitude of the ongoing Crisis to gauge how we should prepare for what is coming.

  I do admire writers like Jim Kunstler who really go out on a limb and make extremely specific forecasts for the coming year, like he did on January 1 with his Forecast 2021 — Chinese Fire Drills with a side of French Fries (Jacobin-style) and Russian Dressing. If even 25% of his predictions had come to fruition, 2021 would have gone down as one of the most earth shattering in history. But here we are a few weeks later and all his predictions about Trump going to war with the Deep State and winning a glorious victory for the American people failed to materialize. Trump is golfing at Mar-a- Lago, while the Deep State remains firmly in control and in the midst of consolidating their power by crushing dissent through Domestic terrorism legislation and complete control of social media platforms.

  

  Even Kunstler acknowledges the Fourth Turning as a generational dynamic driving the events pushing the country and the world towards armed conflict. My high-level prognostications for 2020 certainly did not include a global pandemic used to introduce an Orwellian global dystopia and justification to steal a presidential election through mail-in ballot fraud and voting machine rigging.

  Of course, Bill Gates predicted the pandemic in 2018 and his buddy Fauci, in 2017, said there was “no doubt” Donald J. Trump would be confronted with a surprise infectious disease outbreak during his presidency. I wonder why he had no doubt. Fauci, an unknown lifetime government bureaucrat, is now a media darling, despite being wrong about everything. And Gates’ wealth has soared during this plandemic. My big picture guesses last year were colored by the assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani on January 3, expecting Middle East conflict to erupt. These were my main conjectures for 2020:

  • The Fed will continue to run their electronic printing presses at warp speed until the inevitable banquet of consequences is served to all.

  • We have entered the extreme greed phase of this debt-based Ponzi scheme. The stock market is in the blow-off stage, where earnings, valuations, and rational thinking are meaningless. Momentum and a delusional belief in the infallibility of the Fed are all that matter. Who knows how far it will go, but fear will eventually rear its ugly head, and a cascading collapse will make a lot of useful investing idiots very angry for the third time in the last two decades.

  • The Democrats and their Surveillance State co-conspirators have determined the best way to cover-up their treasonous acts are to stay on the offensive by impeaching Trump on bogus charges.

  • The social distress I noted last year continues unabated today as the glorification of abnormality reaches new heights. The flames of division and disarray are fanned unceasingly by the left-wing media to distract from the true desperate financial situation of the country.

  • Israel quietly foments discontent and turmoil across the region to keep the focus off itself. Russia and China support Iran economically and militarily to offset Americans dominance of the region. Confusion reigns.

  • Anyone with an ounce of critical thinking skills knows none of this is about freedom, democracy or doing the right thing. It’s about oil and it’s about the military industrial complex requiring enemies to keep the profits flowing.

  • The shale “miracle” is just another delusion built upon easy money pumped out by the Fed. No one can make profits on shale oil at $60 per barrel.

  • The months leading up to the election will be a circus. Propaganda, misinformation, and outright lies will be spread like manure. Of course, voting will not alleviate the issues which will continue to drive this Fourth Turning towards its climax – debt, civic decay, global disorder.

  • No matter the result of the upcoming election, neither side will accept the outcome.

  • There are no viable political solutions to our current dilemmas. It is just a matter of when and where the conflict goes hot and blood is spilled.

  • I do not know what events will dominate the coming year, but I do know the intensity of hate and vitriol will increase. I do know military conflict in the Middle East will expand. I do know the political machinations in this country will surge as the election approaches. I do know the Deep State will do everything in their immense power to undermine Trump. I do know the Fed will QE and Trump will cheer every new stock market record. I do know I will be lied to and propagandized by the mainstream corporate media.

  

  I knew 2020 had the potential to be a chaotic year, but didn’t anticipate a flu with a 99.7% survival rate being used by totalitarian minded politicians to destroy the global economy, usher in Orwellian police state lockdown measures across the globe; a stock market crash followed by Fed created bubbles still growing ever bubblier through $4 trillion of money printing; adding $4 trillion to the national debt (with another $3 trillion on the way in 2021); paying millions to sit at home eating Cheetos and watching Netflix; destroying a few hundred thousand small businesses while enriching mega-corporations; putting a nail in the coffin of the 1st Amendment through censorship of conservative speech; and blatantly stealing a presidential election.

  The globalist elite want to keep the fear at a high level to institute their global reset, where you will own nothing and be happy, or you will be brought to heel by the truncheon. This was the year it became crystal clear, the world is filled with good people, governed, and manipulated by bad people.

  By delaying this article until after January 20 I allowed the Qanon Psyop of Trump using the military to rescue the country to pass into history as another delusion of hope over reason. I truly do not know whether the Qanon phenomena (it was not widely known by Trump supporters or most people) was just a LARP being played by former Dungeons & Dragons keyboard warriors or an FBI/CIA counter-intelligence operation designed to keep a segment of the population distracted and ever hopeful their white knight would rescue them from the clutches of the evil Deep State. I am reminded of the quote about hope from President Snow in the Hunger Games.

  

  “Hope, it is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective, a lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it’s contained.”

  The elevation of Trump to president and the spark of hope he would truly drain the swamp, arrest the traitorous Deep State coup co-conspirators, lead his legions to victory over the forces of evil, and make America great again, kept half the people in the country hopeful for the last four years.

  Meanwhile, the military industrial complex raked in hundreds of billions more from the American taxpayer; Wall Street bankers gorged on the trillions of free money, manufactured by their captured puppets at the Federal Reserve; the Silicon Valley despots consolidated their hold on commerce and communication; and the average American saw their standard of living continue its 50- year decline. The question is whether those constituting the “invisible government” allowed too much hope and needed the engineered pandemic to re-introduce fear as their primary control technique moving forward.

  They believe they have contained the spark with their fraudulent election victory; installation of an empty senile vassal as their conduit for the great reset; having their media mouthpieces propagate the falsity of a right wing white supremacist insurrection at the Capital; crushing dissent by censoring the truth through totalitarian social media conglomerates; proceeding with an impeachment farce based on Trump telling his supporters to peacefully protest the fraudulent election outcome; and threatening to destroy the lives of all vocal Trump supporters.

  I am highly doubtful they have contained the spark. I believe there are smoldering embers just waiting to be stirred into a conflagration which will engulf the entire world in a fiery purging of the existing social order, which has exhausted itself and needs to be cleansed. Jefferson understood the nature of Fourth Turnings two hundred years before Strauss & Howe put it to paper.

  

  “Try to unlearn the obsessive fear of death (and the anxious quest for death avoidance) that pervades linear thinking in nearly every modern society. The ancients knew that, without periodic decay and death, nature cannot complete its full round of biological and social change. Without plant death, weeds would strangle the forest. Without human death, memories would never die, and unbroken habits and customs would strangle civilization. Social institutions require no less. Just as floods replenish soil and fires rejuvenate forests, a Fourth Turning clears out society’s exhausted elements and creates an opportunity.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

  In Part Two of this article, I will examine the concept of the Grey Champion, their role in Fourth Turnings, and make some speculations as to the course of 2021 and the remainder of this Fourth Turning.

  *  *  *
  The corrupt establishment will do anything to suppress sites like the Burning Platform from revealing the truth. The corporate media does this by demonetizing sites like mine by blackballing the site from advertising revenue. If you get value from this site, please keep it running with a donation. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/26/2021 – 21:25

• US States Ease Lockdowns Despite "Mutant" COVID 'Boogeymen'
  US States Ease Lockdowns Despite “Mutant” COVID ‘Boogeymen’

  Even as President Joe Biden challenges Americans to a “100 day masking challenge” and other mask-related restrictions on federal land, some of the biggest states in the US  (including ultra-liberal California and swing-state Michigan, among others) are going their own way, resisting calls from the Biden administration to go heavy with masks and lockdowns, which have – as we’ve noted, seemingly made no difference and lack scientific basis.

  

  Perhaps it has something to do with the WHO’s admission that PCR overamplification may have led to the “Case-Demic” that “conspiracy theorists have long warned about.

  But whatever the case may be, recently, liberal governors like New York’s Andrew Cuomo appeared to recognize that the economy needs to reopen, and quickly. Even Cuomo acknowledges that the holiday spike is fading.

  

  Notably, the spike in cases from the pre-holiday period is already beginning to subside. This, coupled with all of those warnings about a post-holiday case surge, had led to suspicions that the American public has been gaslighted – or at least intentionally misled, by federal authorities intent on doing whatever they can to tarnish President Trump’s legacy.

  Meanwhile, and possibly related, vaccination rates worldwide aren’t off to a great start – while reports of healthcare professionals and others who refuse to take it have been rolling in.

  

  Yet, despite liberal leaders’ sudden post-inauguration interest in reopening, they seem to be ignoring the new boogeyman – the new “mutated” strains from the UK and South Africa, which have caused a good deal of panic among public health officials (whether warranted or not). 

  And since the US has administered fewer than 25MM vaccines, more of these COVID “variants” are setting off alarms – causing vaccine maker Moderna announcing the development of a ‘booster’ shot to protect against both mutants.

  Teachers’ unions, meanwhile, are increasingly opposed to lawmakers pushing to return to in-person instruction within 100 days.

  According to Northwestern University epidemiologist Sadiya Khan, who spoke with Bloomberg, “We’re just asking to go backwards by easing restrictions without focusing on achieving herd immunity with vaccination.” The doctor is an epidemiologist at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.”It’s very fragile,” she said referring to the COVID economy.

  Perhaps things would be less ‘fragile’ if Democratic leaders’ sudden push to reopen didn’t have the most suspicious timing in the known universe, and California (and other states) were more transparent about whose ‘science’ they’re following.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/26/2021 – 21:05

• Milking The Capitol Melee For All It's Worth
  Milking The Capitol Melee For All It’s Worth

  Authored by Jacob G. Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation (emphasis ours),

  Not surprisingly, leftists are milking the January 6 Capitol melee for all its worth. There is a simple reason for that: they wish to use it to introduce a new wave of domestic tyranny into America, just as Republicans did after the 9/11 attacks. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they start referring to the melee as simply 1/6.

  

  That’s why they continue to describe the melee as an insurrection, revolution, rebellion, sedition, terrorism, invasion, and a grave attempt to destroy our democratic system and overthrow the government. It’s clear, according to leftists, that the intent of the “invaders” was to take control over the reins of the federal government and make Donald Trump king. I wouldn’t even be surprised if they determine that Russia was behind the “invasion.”

  Thus, don’t be surprised to see a new version of the USA PATRIOT Act. Anyway, the original one is getting a bit old in the tooth. And don’t be surprised to see a renewed and reinvigorated “war on terrorism,” albeit here in the United States, with increased secret surveillance, suppression of speech, indefinite incarceration, torture, and even perhaps assassination (a power that the Supreme Court has upheld with respect to both foreigners and Americans).

  Moreover, don’t be surprised when the leftists use the Capitol melee to justify more anti-gun tyranny. Never mind that the “revolutionaries” never even fired a shot. They could have and, therefore, that’s a good enough reason for leftists to enact some more tyrannical gun control. Americans obviously understand this because they were buying guns in droves before Biden took power.

  One thing is certain: There will be increasing destruction of liberty in America, owing to the leftist reaction to what the Trumpsters did in the Capitol.

  The idea is to never let a good crisis or emergency go to waste. What better time to enact tyrannical controls than during crises or emergencies? If they are enacted in ordinary times, people might object to having their liberty destroyed. During crises and emergencies, many people let their fear induce them to trade their liberty for security.

  Our American ancestors understood this. That’s why there is no crisis or emergency exception in the original Constitution or the Bill of Rights. Our ancestors understood that crises and emergencies have always been the time-honored way by which people lose their liberties, to their own government.

  One of the big precedents for this phenomenon, of course, was Adolf Hitler and the Reichstag Fire. Soon after Hitler took office, terrorists fire-bombed the Reichstag, which was Germany’s equivalent of our Congress. Even worse, the terrorists were communists, which made the situation doubly scary and dangerous.

  Hitler’s reaction was predictable. He went to the Reichstag and requested emergency powers to deal with the communist-terrorist crisis. When he met with resistance among members of the Reichstag, he went ballistic, screaming and berating them for not understanding the serious nature of the crisis facing Germany. Giving him temporary emergency powers would enable him to wage war on terrorism and win it.

  The Reichstag gave Hitler what he wanted. Germany was never the same again, until after it was defeated in World War II. Giving Hitler those emergency powers plunged the nation into years of darkness.

  There are some who say that Hitler himself instigated the Reichstag attack in order to provide the pretext for seeking emergency powers. (Would public officials really do such a thing?) Regardless, the lesson is clear: Public officials use emergencies and crises to expand power and destroy liberty.

  We are now witnessing, once again, that phenomenon playing out here in the United States. A “crisis” is being used to make Americans afraid, very afraid. And then comes the additional layer of tyranny and oppression, which the afraid people go along with and even support. It’s an old racket, even going back before Hitler and the Reichstag Fire.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/26/2021 – 20:45

• Thanks To COVID-19, China Is Now The World Leader For Foreign Direct Investment
  Thanks To COVID-19, China Is Now The World Leader For Foreign Direct Investment

  China is now the world’s “top destination” for foreign direct investment (“FDI”). FDI captures things like foreign companies building infrastructure and making acquisitions of local companies.

  The shift came as a result of – wait for it – the Covid-19 pandemic amplifying “an eastward shift in the center of gravity of the global economy”, according to the Wall Street Journal.

  New investments by overseas businesses into the U.S. fell 49% in 2020 as a result of the pandemic. China saw its direct investments rise 4% over the same period of time. The success is being attributed to how the country (supposedly) handled the pandemic better than the U.S. 

  The numbers, heavily influenced by the global pandemic, “underline China’s move toward the center of a global economy long dominated by the U.S.,” the WSJ wrote.

  

  Foreign investments into the U.S. peaked at $472 billion in 2016, while at the same time foreign investments in China totaled $134 billion. Since then, investments in China have continued to rise and investments in the U.S. have continued to fall. Over the last 4 years, the Trump administration discouraged investment in China and put Chinese investors on notice that investing in the U.S. would carry new national security scrutiny.

  Daniel Rosen, founding partner of Rhodium Group, an independent research firm in New York, said there’s little room for concern: “I don’t think one can say anything confidently about the impact of the FDI downturn in the U.S., compared to all the other hits on the U.S. economy.”

  He continued: “It is natural that foreign investment would decline sharply in the U.S. under the circumstances because it has an open, market economy, while China doesn’t. There is no reason to be concerned about the outlook for the FDI in the United States providing that the U.S. is sticking with its basic open-market competitive system.”

  Major names like Honeywell International and Adidas were among companies who invested more in China during the pandemic.

  

  James Zhan, Unctad’s director of investment and enterprise, doesn’t see a respite for the U.S., or other countries that have seen FDI fall, anytime soon. He said: “Investors are likely to remain cautious in committing capital. The road to full FDI recovery will be bumpy.”

  Joseph Joyce, professor of international relations and economics at Wellesley College, said: “Companies are reassessing their policies about global supply chains, about foreign markets, about their own use of technology. The pandemic is making all these companies rethink the most basic assumption about where they are located.”

  East Asia attracted a third of all foreign investment globally in 2020, the report notes. It marks the largest share since records began in the 1980s. Meanwhile, it isn’t just the U.S. that saw huge drops in the west. The EU also saw a 71% drop in 2020 and the UK and Italy both saw “no new investment”. Germany saw a 61% drop. 

  

  While experts thought China could also see such a drop, their economy “reopened in April just as the U.S. and Europe started a series of continuing lockdowns and disruptions.”

  Even the Journal notes that it was China’s “ability to quickly control the coronavirus within its borders helped its economy rebound relatively quickly”. China also immediately rushed to shore up confidence from foreign investors at the beginning of 2020. China’s premier, Li Keqiang, told the country’s cabinet in March: “We must implement targeted policies to arrest the slide in foreign trade and foreign investment.”

  Other companies have simply found it difficult to leave China. Such was the case for Seoul Semiconductor, whose CEO, Hong Myeong-ki, simply said: “We were very dependent on China.”

  Tokyo based researcher Ding Ke noted that this reliance on China’s market for many companies kept them in the country: “They need to reduce overreliance on supply chains in one single market. But the bigger risk they identified is losing the China market.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/26/2021 – 20:25

• The Myths Behind The "Capitalism Is Racist" Claim
  The Myths Behind The “Capitalism Is Racist” Claim

  Authored by Lipton Matthews via The Mises Institute,

  Though numerous studies prove the contrary, it is still widely assumed that capitalism perpetuates racism. Celebrities and academics incessantly broadcast the message that capitalism engenders racism. For example, recently on Twitter, superstar athlete Andre Iguodala informed his followers that capitalism cannot be divorced from racism: “Capitalism and racism go hand in hand. And you can’t have one without the other.” Equally scathing is the blistering declaration of sociologist Edna Bonacich in an academic review:

  “Capitalism and racism are closely connected….The huge wealth of America’s white-owned corporations rests on the backs of the hard labor of workers, many of whom are people of color.”

  

  Despite the popularity of anticapitalist rhetoric, it is woefully mistaken. Some entrepreneurs will express racist tendencies, but if they are determined to succeed in business, they have no alternative but to jettison such beliefs. Gary Becker pointed this out years ago in his frequently cited book The Economics of Discrimination. Becker posited that competition in the free market made it costly for companies to discriminate against individuals due to group identity. By refusing to hire qualified applicants because of race or sex, businesses would lose market share. Racists may object to employing people outside of their race, however, the crux of the matter is that self-interest trumps the collectivism of racism. Although racists may abhor minorities, the urge to accumulate wealth is far more potent than the desire to discriminate.

  Similarly, recent research corroborates Becker’s thesis that firms engaging in discrimination are less likely to remain competitive. Devah Pager in an innovative 2016 study testing the relationship between observed discrimination and firm longevity concludes that these firms show a greater propensity to fail:

  This study builds on the findings of an experimental audit study of racial discrimination in employment conducted in New York City in 2004….We see that 17 percent of nondiscriminatory establishments had failed by 2010, relative to 36 percent of those that did discriminate. The likelihood of going out of business for an employer who discriminated thus appears more than twice that of its nondiscriminating counterpart.

  Under capitalism the allure of profit serves as a deterrent to discrimination. For instance, the strident resistance of streetcar companies in the Jim Crow South to laws mandating them to segregate black customers poignantly demonstrates the market’s hostility to unjust discrimination. Economist Jennifer Roback in an article titled “Racism as Rent-Seeking” lucidly illustrates that these laws were a result of political entrepreneurship:

  Race relations in the U.S. South were in a state of flux in the period immediately after the Civil War and remained so until the turn of the century, when the “Jim Crow” system of rigid segregation was put into place….Municipal streetcars were segregated by law in many Southern cities….Prior to legislation, streetcar passengers in many cities sat wherever they wished, and next to anyone they wished. There is little to indicate that segregation was introduced in response to the demands of passengers, and in some cases, passengers of both races were dissatisfied with the new rule. Moreover, some of the streetcar companies themselves actively resisted segregation, on the grounds that segregation would be too expensive….White passengers seemed to be indifferent about segregation; streetcar companies resisted segregation; certainly, black passengers resisted segregation. Who then wanted it badly enough to work for its introduction? The most likely candidates are politicians who believed that there existed latent sentiment in favor of segregation among whites. Political entrepreneurs could offer white voters something they valued enough to vote for, but not enough to bear the costs privately. Through collective action, the costs of segregation could be imposed on the (disenfranchised) black passengers and the (regulated) streetcar companies.

  Roback refers to such tactics as “psychic rent seeking,’’ indicating that people leverage the force of government to acquire psychological benefits for themselves, despite incurring expenses for others.

  Notwithstanding the propaganda of leftists, rhetoric is no substitute for facts. History reveals that discrimination is primarily inspired by the corrupt agenda of rent seekers in cahoots with the government. South African leading economist Thomas Hazlett notes that this is usually the case:

  The South African gold rush made the natural synergy between white-owned capital and abundant black labor overpowering….White workers feared the large supply of African labor as the low-priced competition that it was. Hence, white tradesmen and government officials, including police, regularly harassed African workers to discourage them from traveling to the mines and competing for permanent positions. Beginning in the 1890s, the Chamber of Mines, a group of employers, complained regularly of this systematic discrimination and attempted to secure better treatment of black workers. Their gesture was not altruistic, nor founded on liberal beliefs….But here they had a clear economic incentive: labor costs were minimized where rules were color-blind. This self-interest was so powerful that it led the chamber to finance the first lawsuits and political campaigns against segregationist legislation.

  Likewise, South Africa during Apartheid is an excellent case study of the power of the market to eviscerate racism. To protect whites from competition, blacks were prevented by law from taking white-collar jobs. This not only limited their productivity, but also reduced the number of black employees able to take industrial jobs, thus creating artificial manpower shortages. As such the South African Employers Consultative Committee on Labour Affairs in 1977 lobbied for the elimination of discrimination based on race or color from all aspects of employment practices. Therefore, motivated by the goal to gain wealth, even vile racists will eschew racist policies.

  Certainly, some owners and entrepreneurs will find niches in which they can cater to racist clients. But for those who wish to attain high levels of growth and success, the data is clear that serving all customers and workers indiscriminately is the way to wealth. Essentially, the power of the free market is the best antidote to racism. Entrepreneurs seek to win in business, and engaging in discrimination hinged on race is the surest way to lose. Of note is also the fact that people who migrate from other countries irrespective of race become wealthier after relocating to America. Yet, ironically, many who lament the racist nature of American capitalism also insist that immigrants improve their lives by immigrating to the United States.

  Both theory and the empirical research show that a truly competitive marketplace is incongruous with racism, but, clearly, saying otherwise confers leftists with the benefits of expressing the “luxury beliefs” of elites.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/26/2021 – 20:05

• Is This The Next Big Hedge Fund To Blow Up… And What Happens Next
  Is This The Next Big Hedge Fund To Blow Up… And What Happens Next

  Yesterday afternoon, when Gamestop and a handful of the most shorted small cap stocks exploded to never before seen levels, we reported that Melvin Capital had emerged as the first casualty of the Reddit/WallStreetBets forced squeeze/bull raids, when it received an emergency $2.75 rescue loan from its previous investors, Citadel and Point72. The reason why the Gabe Plotkin-founded fund was brought to its knees on the verge of a margin call liquidation, is that among its $12 billion in AUM (which is now well below $9 billion) the company had reported that it also owned puts for hundreds of millions of share equivalents targeting such retail daytrading darlings as GameStop, Bed Bath & Beyond and GSX.

  

  Had Melvin merely held shorts – which it doesn’t have to disclose under current SEC rules – it is unlikely that any of the ongoing fireworks would have ever taken place as the fund would have never attracted the attention of the WallStreetBets crowd which we now know specifically targeted Melvin Capital, and by extension its peers which held concentrated shorts in the same handful of stocks, which incidentally as we reported last Friday, just happened to be the most shorted Russell 3000 stocks, all of which had a short interest to float ratio of 50% or more: a recipe for explosive short squeezes in any market, and certainly in one as illiquid as this one.

  

  In any case, once WallStreetBets figured out that Melvin was shorting not only some of the biggest daytrading darlings but also some of the most shorted names, it wasn’t a stretch to conclude that it would become the target of a violent bull raid and that’s precisely what happened on Friday, when Gamestop stock soared – a move which was catalyzed by Citron’s Andrew Leff capitulating and stating he would no longer discuss his GME short – and again on Monday when the metaphorical dagger to Plotkin’s heart was the spike in GME stock to $159 at which point the fund found itself in a multibillion margin call, and only a bailout by Ken Griffin and Steve Cohen could prevent catastrophe.

  We already know all this. What we didn’t know is who would be next, and as we said yesterday, there most certainly will be other casualties.

  Well, we now have a candidate for hedge fund #2 to collapse as a result of the ongoing Reddit bull raids.

  Presenting Maplelane Capital, a $3.3 billion New York-based hedge fund which was established in 2010 which according to its description “focuses on a short term approach with active participation utilizing options trading.” Maplelane Capital was founded by Leon Shaulov – formerly of the disgraced tech-focused hedge fund Galleon whose boss Raj Rajaratnam was thrown in jail for insider trading on tips from a Goldman director over a decade ago – “with less than $50 million, mostly from his personal savings.”

  A quick look at the fund’s Form ADV reveals the following in its “Investment Strategies, Methods of Analysis and Risk of Loss”:

  The Adviser seeks attractive returns by utilizing a fundamental approach to equity investing across all market sectors. In addition, while the portfolios will generally be characterized as having a short-term holding period, there may be several positions that are held for a much longer holding period. It is anticipated that the Adviser will use significant amounts of leverage on behalf the Clients. The Adviser actively uses options trades to express views on the market and on individual stocks. The portfolios may have a significant short net exposure to equity markets, although at times, it may be relatively market neutral or have a significant long net exposure to equity markets.

  So a fund that uses “options” to “use significant amount of leverage on behalf of clients” and is “significantly short.”

  Alarm bells should be going off here… But in any case, we don’t care some much about the fund’s investing style or history –  readers curious about Maplelane’s history can read the following NYT piece. What we do care about is what it owns – or rather, is short – because a quick look at the company’s latest 13F would be more than sufficient to send r/wallstreetbets howling with rage: not only does MapleLane have many of the same shorts – via publicly disclosed puts – that Melvin Capital was almost liquidated over, but it has even more puts! Below is a table of Maplelane’s latest put positions.

  These, as above, are the “who’s who” of the most shorted stocks on Wall Street.

  

  In short (no pun intended), all the pain that Melvin Capital is currently going through, may befall Maplelane, if it hasn’t already: our only indication of how the fund is doing YTD is a brief mention in the WSJ saying that the fund is “down for the year.” Worse: with an even deeper book of puts, the r/wallstreetbets community will now have even more stocks to ramp up in expectation of forcing a short squeeze either at Maplelane, or any other hedge fund that shared an idea dinner with Leon Shaulov and decided to piggyback on his shorts.

  So what happens then?

  Let’s say Maplelane is currently nursing massive P&L losses and it is just a day or so from a terminal margin call, which will force the fund to come up with billions or be liquidated by its prime broker. Unless Maplelane is very close with Citadel, SAC pardon Point72 or another huge and very liquid hedge fund, Shaulov will have no choice but to start dumping its long to fund its margin call.

  Not surprisingly, at least one member of r/wallstreetbets figured out that this is precisely what happened back in 2008 when hedge funds that were crushed by the financial crisis, siloed out their most illiquid assets and had no choice but to sell their most liquid, and best performing ones. Hence the correct observation that if the short squeeze at Melvin Capital continues, “Melvin has to liquidate their other positions if they have to cover these shorts.”

  

  Yet for once (it would appear), wallstreetbets is actually behind the market, because a quick look at some of the industry’s favorite longs shows that they got hammered just as the most shorted names were soaring, as hedge fund sharks – smelling blood in the water – starting taking bites out of their wounded peers. Smid-cap hedge fund growth darlings like Roku, Peloton and Square tumbled as much as 6% on Tuesday as the short squeeze rampage entered into its third day. Not coincidentally, Bloomberg notes that Goldman’s Hedge Fund VIP ETF which tracks hedge funds’ most popular stocks, slumped for a fourth straight day, the longest stretch since October even as the company’s basket of most-shorted names soared 15% during the same period.

  

  “The recent squeeze in heavily shorted stocks has been nothing short of extraordinary,” said Jonathan Krinsky, chief market technician at Bay Crest Partners. “If shorts cause too much pain, there is usually some repercussion on the other side as longs have to be sold to offset losses.”

  Why? Because these are among the top long holdings of such hedge funds as Melvin and… Maplelane. In other words, these are the stocks that will be liquidated next if any of a number of hedge funds caught in the massive squeeze has to liquidate their short book.

  And once the reflexive selling of long to cover shorts begins, it will only escalate in a feedback loop that leads to gross deleveraging of the fund(s), more short covering, more long selling, while at the same time the prices of the most shorted stocks continues to soar.

  So will this happen? Well, that’s the $64 trillion question.

  Ultimately, nothing that is taking place is the fault of either hedge funds or redditors or robinhooders. No, the only entity at fault here is the Fed which has injected trillions and trillions in hopes of preserving the “market” while instead it merely made a grotesque mockery of what it used to be. As we noted yesterday, “what is remarkable is how many people are “surprised” by what is going on in the “market.” You throw $20 trillion stimulus at it, you nationalize the bond market, you break all links between price and fundamentals… what do you think happens?“

  What is remarkable is how many people are “surprised” by what is going on in the “market”

  You throw $20 trillion stimulus at it, you nationalize the bond market, you break all links between price and fundamentals…

  what do you think happens

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 26, 2021

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

  One thing we do know will happen, is that sooner or later it will all end in tears, whether with stocks limit up or down. Meanwhile, one may as well take advantage of this terminally broken market and make some money, as one hedge fund after another blows up.

  Oh, remember that basket of most shorted Russell 3000 stocks we put together on Friday and urged readers to buy ahead of precisely this kind of market action? Well, it has more than doubled just two days later…

  

  … and if Maplelane or some other hedge fund caught massively short is forced to liquidate in a margin call supernova, it is guaranteed that this basket will only keep rising for the foreseeable future. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/26/2021 – 19:53

• 'They're Wasting Our Time': Rand Paul Shreds 'Unconstitutional' Trump Impeachment, Lists Examples Of 'Democrat Incitement'
  ‘They’re Wasting Our Time’: Rand Paul Shreds ‘Unconstitutional’ Trump Impeachment, Lists Examples Of ‘Democrat Incitement’

  Kentucky GOP Senator Rand Paul shredded Congressional Democrats over the second impeachment of former President Trump, arguing in a floor speech in a procedural motion to ‘table or kill’ the proceedings that “Democrats are about to drag our great country down into the gutter of rancor and vitriol the likes of which has never been seen in our nation’s history,” adding “It’s almost as if they have no ability to exist except in opposition to Donald Trump”

  Sen. @RandPaul:

  “Democrats are about to drag our great country down into the gutter of rancor and vitriol the likes of which has never been seen in our nation’s history… It’s almost as if they have no ability to exist except in opposition to Donald Trump.” pic.twitter.com/kiCimV0GIX

  — Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) January 26, 2021

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  Paul then argued that Democrats are guilty of the exact ‘incitement’ they’ve accused Trump of – suggesting that “No Democrat will honestly ask whether Bernie Sanders incited the shooter that nearly killed Steve Scalise,” and “No Democrat will ask whether Maxine Waters incited violence when she literally told her supporters” to confront Trump officials in public.”

  Sen. Rand Paul:

  “No Democrat will honestly ask whether Bernie Sanders incited the shooter that nearly killed Steve Scalise.”

  “No Democrat will ask whether Maxine Waters incited violence when she literally told her supporters” to confront Trump officials in public. pic.twitter.com/ytDKsscxgh

  — Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) January 26, 2021

  More: 

  Sen. Rand Paul:

  “I disagreed. I don’t think Congress should overturn the Electoral College but impeaching or censoring, or expelling a member of Congress you disagree with? Is the truth so narrow that only you know the truth?” pic.twitter.com/lJnSgKkfHz

  — Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) January 26, 2021

  Ultimately, 45 GOP Senators voted to kill the impeachment – meaning they agree that it’s unconstitutional, while five GOP Senators voted to table it and proceed with the impeachment; Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse and Pat Toomey.

  It would require another 12 GOP Senators to convict and impeach Trump – now a private citizen.

  Earlier in the week, Paul wrote that the impeachment trial was a “farce and should be dismissed before it is even allowed to begin,” adding that the Senate doesn’t have the authority to hold an impeachment trial for a former president.

  “It shows they don’t have the votes and we’re basically wasting our time,” said Paul, who believes the Senate roll call would show that over a third of the chamber thinks the proceeding is unconstitutional.

  Republican senators have criticized the president for his actions on Jan. 6, but many have signaled opposition to voting to convict the president. At least 30 Senate Republicans have said they are opposed to or leaning against convicting Mr. Trump, according to a Wall Street Journal survey of senators and their public comments, leaving few open to potentially casting a guilty vote.

  “I doubt there are seven, quite honestly. I’m certain there aren’t 17, at least not today,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R., N.D.). He cited concerns over the legality of trying a former president, as well as whether Mr. Trump’s actions, while wrong, constituted incitement. –WSJ

  Democrats, meanwhile, say the trial is warranted and that Congressional Republicans are focusing on the constitutional question to avoid having to weigh the impeachment on its merits – much like most of the judges who tossed out election challenges based on technical factors.

  “They don’t want to be held accountable on that vote, so they’re going to try to make it another argument that [it’s] all about the Constitution,” said Democratic Senator Dick Durbin.

  This will be the first ever impeachment trial for a former president. It’s scheduled to begin in earnest the week of Feb. 8, approximately one month after the US Capitol riot which left five people dead and temporarily disrupted the counting of the electoral votes.

  Watch Paul’s entire speech below:

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

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/26/2021 – 19:46

• Former Boeing Employee Says 737 Max "Still Not Fixed" 
  Former Boeing Employee Says 737 Max “Still Not Fixed” 

  Boeing’s troubled 737 Max returned to US skies last month. American Airlines was the first domestic carrier to fly the Max and has since operated more than 200 flights. While other domestic and international carriers gear up for a much wider re-launch of the aircraft, a former senior manager at Boeing’s 737 Max plant in Seattle has published a new report warning that the Max is “still not fixed.” 

  Ed Pierson, the report’s author, retired from Boeing in August 2018 and worked at the Max factory in Renton, Washington, claims more investigations are needed into the aircraft’s electrical system and production quality problems at the factory. 

  

  Pierson alleges that the US and European regulators have primarily ignored factors that he points out in the report, which may have played a role in Lion Air flight JT610 and Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302 crashes that killed 346 people. He links both crashes back to conditions at the factory in Renton.

  Pierson firmly believes Boeing’s effort to redesign Max’s flight control system, called MCAS software, ensures a single sensor failure would not happen in flight is not enough. 

  “The paper underscores the likely role a chaotic and dangerously unstable production environment played in the accidents. Mr. Pierson also puts forth three other plausible accident scenarios not addressed in the accident investigations. The 14-page report includes a timeline and an analysis that ties the two 737 MAX airplane crashes together in ways not previously reported. Most importantly, Mr. Pierson’s analysis raises serious doubts as to the safety of the 737 MAX. Alarmingly, the FAA’s recertification fixes do not address the problems identified in the report,” the report’s abstract reads.

  In late 2019, Pierson testified during a House Transportation Committee hearing on both Max crashes where he described the Renton factory as “chaotic” and “dysfunctional.” 

  With the planes returning to the air, he is worried that Boeing and regulators have overlooked many of the issues he pointed out. 

  In the report, he believes the production defects of critical Max parts were defected when they entered service, adding that the aircraft’s complex wiring systems may have contributed to the random deployment of the MCAS system in flight. 

  Pierson said the MCAS sensor failures contributed to both crashes but asked why they were happening to new aircraft. 

  All of this suggests, Pierson explained, “point back to where these airplanes were produced, the 737 factory”.

  Pierson’s report was analyzed by famed pilot Chesley Sullenberger who said the “report is very disturbing, about manufacturing issues in the Boeing factories that go well beyond just the Max, and also affect… the previous version of the 737.” 

  “Like electricity, Boeing and the FAA have taken the path of least resistance throughout the entire design, development, certification, production, and now recertification of the 737 MAX,” Pierson said in the report. 

  “The design of the 737 MAX, MCAS software and the failure to provide vital information and training to pilots did not trigger these accidents. Neither did corporate decision making made years ago, unethical behavior, deceptive marketing, or a misguided leadership culture that prioritized profits over safety. Nor did deregulation, regulatory capture, or a completely broken aircraft certification process. In fact, all of these things contributed mightily to these tragedies. Unfortunately, every MAX airplane ever manufactured shares this same wretched history. The pilots are certainly not to blame. They did everything they could to save the lives of the people who trusted them. The triggering event for these crashes was a defective AOA Sensor part, and quite possibly, a malfunctioning electrical system stemming from a dangerously unstable production environment,” he said.” 

  Pierson concludes: “We can either investigate these production problems and fix them, or we can wait for another disaster.” 

  * * * 

  Read The Full Report Here: 737 MAX – Still Not Fixed

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/26/2021 – 19:45

• Are EVs Good For The Environment? …Mostly Not
  Are EVs Good For The Environment? …Mostly Not

  Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,

  The idea Electric vehicles are less damaging to the environment has been broadly accepted by many people as fact. The notion EVs are good for the planet is a key factor for many of those deciding to buy an electric car. This debate has become rather political with a recent article in Barron’s pointing out that some of the research damning electric cars has been funded by Saudi oil interest. Part of the argument flowing out of this centers on the idea that policies incentivizing electric-car production will lead to the creation of more carbon emissions during coming years than if we were to instead encourage the use of efficient gasoline engines.

  

  EVs Still Charged By Electricity From Fossil Fuel

  It is not surprising that people are going to try and shape conclusions and public opinion to serve their strategic interests. The direction society takes is a high-stakes game since the EU, Japan, Korea, and 110 other countries have pledged carbon neutrality by 2050. This is why countries such as China have extended $100 billion thus far in EV subsidies, the fact is China wants to make many of these vehicles. This is the main reason shares in Chinese EV manufacturers such as NIO and Xpeng have followed Tesla stock higher in recent months.

  Adding to claims of agenda “propaganda” is the fact that a lengthy and detailed EV study by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), published in the scientific journal “Nature Communications,” was paid for by oil giant Saudi Aramco, which counts China as its largest customer. This indicates how little transparency exists around private companies’ financial or other involvement in the U.S. Department of Energy’s research. Some analysts say that Aramco’s role in producing the research is a potential conflict of interest and that the relationship between Aramco and ORNL highlights a broader concern about how some companies fund scientific research only to directly support their business interests. 

  As this article is being written those ready to curse my take on this issue are gathering in the wings. On one side we have those that think EVs are the solution, on the other is an even larger group ready to scream about freedom of choice or how climate change is a hoax. To the first group, I say you are being deceived by those conveniently forgetting that most electricity is still generated by fossil fuel and that EVs also have a few other issues. To the second group, my message is, self-indulgent, self-centered, people with the attitude the world is their oyster and the hell with everyone else. Some of these people are not even open to the idea that what humans do here on earth has any effect at all on our climate.

  

  Gas-guzzlers Are Often Used As Family Cars

  As a strong environmentalist, I get tired of hearing that “EVs are good for the environment. “While my stand may rile those promoting EVs my attitude towards the four-door pickups driven by many average citizens angers and appalls many others. The fact is vehicle manufacturers maximize profits by prioritizing these big-ticket gas-guzzlers. These trucks are not used for work and should carry a heavy “poor mileage tax.” All the high horsepower petroleum vehicles that fill our streets with engines able to get us from stoplight to stoplight in the blink of an eye and the huge low mile per gallon vehicles often occupied by one person are the bane of environmentalist.

  As to whether EVs are as environmentally friendly as many people claim is a topic that is hotly debated. The chart near the top of this article screams that they are not. Electricity demand is still rising across the world, most nuclear plants getting very old, and the most ecologically friendly sources are running full out. This means the slack is being taken up by fossil-fuel generated plants. Under the idea of, last in first out, this would mean that almost all the juice being pumped into EVs comes from fossil-fuel generated juice. To make matters worse, other issues exist.

  Below are a few comments, or parts of comments, about EVs that have been gathered from different recent articles. I have not fully researched all these but they do add to my doubts about these vehicles.

  • The Greenwashing Industrial Complex is one of the evilest and fraudulent scams of the 21st century. As an example, the pollution and environmental destruction created by the manufacturing and disposal of EV batteries, and also the magnets for power-generating windmills, is 10X worse than pollution created by fossil-fuel vehicles.

  • In Germany about 40% of the energy mix is produced by coal and 30% by renewables – a mid-sized electric car must be driven for 125,000 km, on average, to break even with a diesel car, and 60,000 km compared to a petrol car. It takes nine years for an electric car to be greener than a diesel car, assuming an annual average mileage of 13,500 km. Most consumers will have bought a new car by then. The case is similar in the U.S. but less pronounced in nuclear-powered France.

  • Battery production causes more environmental damage than carbon emissions alone. Consider dust, fumes, wastewater, and other environmental impacts from cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; water shortages and toxic spills from lithium mining in Latin America, which can alter ecosystems and hurt local communities; a heavily polluted river due to nickel mining in Russia; or air pollution in northeastern China, as mentioned above.

  • There isn’t enough cobalt in the world to replace even half of the current ICE vehicles.  Never mind the fact they have kids mining the stuff in the Congo. InsideSources, says, every EV battery contains cobalt, with most of it mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This area has been an ugly mess for years as the Congo government and armed militants duke it out over the control of mines. Much of the DRC cobalt is then hauled to South Africa and shipped to China for processing.

  Also flowing into the issue of ” less damaging to the environment” is something recently brought to my attention, and that is, EVs tend to rapidly eat through tires. While many people may not think this is a big deal, it is. Since electric car batteries are heavier than petrol engines they need a more robust tire. Also, because of their accelerating faster from a standstill. If you want to take advantage of that without too much wear then you need a more robust tire, these cost more, and it has been said, you are lucky if you get 20,000 miles out of a set of tires. All this is addressed at, https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-electric-cars-wear-out-tires-faster-than-fossil-fuel-cars

  

  Pollution From Tires Is A Growing EV Issue

  Like many people I had forgotten or brushed aside the thought something as simple and common as the tire was such a problem. This should have been high on my radar because years ago I was given a building simply because it had been filled with tires. The officials in my city were all over the owner to get rid of them. It cost me a bit of money and a lot of work to have them hauled away and properly recycled. With that in mind, below are a few of the many articles voicing pollution issues concerning tires.

  Homeguides.sfgate.com claims; Toxins released from tire decomposition, incineration, or accidental fires can pollute the water, air, and soil. While 42 states regulate tire disposal to some degree, eight states have no restrictions on what you must do with your discarded tires. Even with laws in place, illegal dumping still occurs, presenting negative environmental impacts.

  Tiretechnologyinternational.com states; Air pollution from tire wear particles can be 1,000 times worse than what comes out of a car’s exhaust, Emissions Analytics found harmful particle matter from tires is a serious environmental problem. What is even more frightening is that while exhaust emissions have been tightly regulated for many years, tire wear is not. With the increasing growth in sales of heavier SUVs and battery-powered electric cars, non-exhaust emissions are a growing problem.

  And, www.politico.eu/article/tires, delves into how driving affects the environment in ways beyond the well-known pollutants spewing from tailpipes and leaking from engines. Tires shed tiny pieces of plastic as they wear down, accounting for about 10 percent of the microscopic pieces of the pollutant found in the sea, according to one estimate. Tire waste was addressed in the European Commission’s Plastics Strategy earlier this year. The EU executive is looking into how to cut down on microplastics that may be coming from tires and is considering regulations.

  With all the above in mind, the buzz in EV trading over the last couple of weeks has interestingly been surrounding legacy automakers like General Motors and, even Ford moving strongly in the direction of manufacturing more EVs. This may someday be seen as a huge environmental misstep. The best answer may be a shift to more efficient gasoline engines in smaller vehicles.  

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/26/2021 – 19:25

• Germany Poised To Cut International Air Travel "To Almost Zero" On Virus Variant Fears
  Germany Poised To Cut International Air Travel “To Almost Zero” On Virus Variant Fears

  Alarmed over recently emerged strains of coronavirus which are said to be more infectious, Germany is mulling taking the drastic step of cutting all international air travel in and out of the country to “almost zero,” according to the AFP.

  Interior Minister Horst Seehofer announced Tuesday the government is now reviewing the implementation of further “drastic measures” amid restrictions in the country which took effect in November. He cited the example of Israel which recently went to a full-on 2nd lockdown of the entire country.

  “The danger from the numerous virus mutations forces us to consider drastic measures,” Seehofer said to the Bild newspaper. “That includes significantly stricter border checks, especially at the borders of high-risk areas, but also reducing air travel to Germany to almost zero, as Israel is currently doing,” he added.

  

  “The people in Germany who accept the tough restrictions expect us to protect them as best we can from an explosion in infection numbers,” Seehofer said.

  Chancellor Angela Merkel appeared to back a plan that would effectively shut down all borders, saying in new comments the government will take “certain precautions at border,” according to her address before a meeting of conservative CDU/CSU bloc lawmakers.

  “Everyone understands that now is not the time to travel,” she added. Currently Germany has had over two million COVID-19 infections and more than 52,000 deaths from the virus.

  A week ago Merkel announced that renewed pandemic restrictions, especially the closure of schools and ‘non-essential’ stores and markets, would last until at least mid-February.

  BREAKING Germany is considering to stop all international flights https://t.co/xJiLg9prI5

  — AIRLIVE (@airlivenet) January 26, 2021

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  The proposal of shutting off borders altogether also comes as there’s been widespread disappointment at the slowness of a vaccine rollout in Europe, also amid worrisome reports of severe adverse effects and even deaths among elderly patients reportedly from the shot, particularly out of Norway in the middle of this month amid the rollout of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.

  A ban on most or all international flights would have immediate and major repercussions for the aviation industry and global travel, given Germany remains a central international hub of flights across Europe but also the rest of the world, including to the Middle East and Africa.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/26/2021 – 19:05

• "Your Order Is A Direct Attack": Utah Tribe Seeks Exemption From Biden Drilling Pause
  “Your Order Is A Direct Attack”: Utah Tribe Seeks Exemption From Biden Drilling Pause

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

  A Native American tribe called on the Biden administration to “immediately amend” a White House executive order “to provide an exception for energy permits and approvals on Indian lands.”

  “The Ute Indian Tribe and other energy-producing tribes rely on energy development to fund our governments and provide services to our members,” the Ute Indian Tribe said in a letter to Acting Secretary of the Interior Scott de la Vega last week. “Your order is a direct attack on our economy, sovereignty, and our right to self-determination. Indian lands are not federal public lands.

  “Any action on our lands and interests can only be taken after effective tribal consultation.”

  One of Biden’s orders requires the agency to “conduct a review of the monument boundaries and conditions of the Grand Staircase-Escalante, Bears Ears, Northeast Canyons, and Seamounts Marine National Monuments” and will be done “in consultation with other agencies and Tribal governments, to determine whether restoration of the monument boundaries and conditions would be appropriate,” according to a statement from the Interior Department on Jan. 21,

  The Epoch Times has reached out to the agency for comment.

  

  The Ute tribal lands produce about 45,000 barrels of crude oil per day in the Uintah Basin, along with about 900 million cubic feet per day of natural gas, according to a document the tribe filed with the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 2017, Reuters reported.

  The tribe added that the order was issued “in violation [of] our government-to-government relationship,” as well as of previous federal directives about coordinating with Native American tribal governments.

  The Jan. 20 executive order suspended the authority of Interior Department offices to issue new fossil fuel permits and leases—a move that could be a first step in delivering on Biden’s campaign promise to ban all new federal drilling permits.

  “The Order does not impact existing ongoing operations under valid leases and does not preclude the issuance of leases, permits, and other authorizations by those specified. In addition, any actions necessary in the event of an incident that might pose a threat to human health, welfare, or safety will continue,” the Interior Department said in the statement.

  Other Native American tribes—including the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation in North Dakota—are also big producers of oil and gas and might push back against the order.

  Some GOP lawmakers, meanwhile, said the move to suspend oil and natural gas drilling will imperil tens of thousands of American jobs and raise energy prices for U.S. families.

  Reuters contributed to this report.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/26/2021 – 18:45

• "Inside The Industry, We're All Pretty Panicked": Global Semi Shortage Continues To Slam Auto Industry
  “Inside The Industry, We’re All Pretty Panicked”: Global Semi Shortage Continues To Slam Auto Industry

  The global semiconductor shortage continues to put significant pressure on the auto industry, where manufacturers are rushing to try and find how they can fix (and in the future back up) their supply chains. 

  Major players like VW, Toyota and GM are still suffering from a shortage of chips that are becoming more common in everyday vehicles. The drain on the supply chain has come from a corresponding rise in the sales of gaming consoles, TVs and computers – mostly as a result of the pandemic. The chips are now being used in everything from vehicle entertainment centers to anti-lock brakes. 

  Carlos Tavares, chief executive of Stellantis, told the Financial Times: “I am here to protect the fact that my company is treated fairly. I will look for all possible solutions. If I need to I will fight back [to ensure its chip contracts are met].”

  

  The unexpected disruption is the first time the industry has truly thought long and hard about the supply chain it uses for semiconductors. Only about 10% of semiconductor fabrication plants are used for automotive parts, FT notes. Since there is no “quick fix”, the shortage is expected to drag on for “at least” 6 months. Companies like Taiwan Semiconductor are, at the same time, still trying to address fallout from U.S. sanctions. 

  One China based supplier told FT: “The sanctions meant some clients redirected their orders from SMIC to other places, such as TSMC. Inside the industry, we are all pretty panicked, because the scope of the chip shortage is too big, and affects too many types. In the short term, we can’t see any way of resolving it.”

  As a result, more than 280,000 vehicles have already been put on hold. As many as 500,000 vehicles could be affected in total, according to IHS market forecasts. 

  

  Richard Dixon, senior principal analyst at IHS Markit, added: “Everything is run so tightly in semiconductor fabrication plants that you always get this issue when there is a demand surge especially after a downturn.” 

  Automakers are left scrambling, trying to make sure that the chips they do have are being used in their most profitable vehicles, the report says. At the same time, chipmakers like NXP and Renesas are looking to increase prices – not only as a result of the demand, but as also as a result of the rising cost of raw materials. And rising costs could be a small problem compared to where some analysts think the next supply chain bottleneck is going to come from.

  “After semiconductors, the next one is going to be potentially when we run out of rare-earth materials to make batteries. There is always that next thing that they have got to keep their eye on,” said Joseph McCabe, chief executive of AutoForecast Solutions.

  Recall, just days ago we noted that VW lost production of “tens of thousands” of vehicles due to the chip shortage. 

  VW’s China head, Stephan Wollenstein, commented Wednesday: “It was hurting us already in December and we lost some 10,000 cars since then simply because we lost 50,000 cars in production in December because of some chips.”

  

  For VW, the impact has been felt the most in vehicles that use the automaker’s Electronic Stability Program, “a system of sensors that works with a car’s Anti-lock Braking System to prevent the wheels seizing up after an unexpected swerve.”

  “You see how vulnerable our industries are if only one chip is missing. This will unfortunately continue in the first quarter,” Wollenstein continued. 

  China is the world’s largest auto market and a critical market for VW, who has about 40% of its vehicle operations in the country. In China, VW delivered 3.85 million cars in 2020, down 9.1% from the year prior as a result of the pandemic. 

  2021 was thought to be a year where many automakers could play catch-up, but the chip shortage could stand in the way of an easy recovery for some automakers. We first reported just days ago that the ongoing global chip shortage was wreaking havoc with the auto industry, which has become far more reliant on semiconductors due to “smart cars”, than it ever has been.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/26/2021 – 18:25

• Musk Tweet Sends Gamestop Soaring (Even More) After Hours
  Musk Tweet Sends Gamestop Soaring (Even More) After Hours

  Update 4:40pm: Well that escalated quickly. Just 20 minutes after Musk’s tweet, GME exploded to $240…

  

  *  *  *

  Update 4:20pm: Just one hour ago (see below) we said that it is “increasingly likely that GME will hit $200” thanks to the stock entering the peak OTM vol “gamma gravity”. Well, moments ago, GME just hit a new all time high $194.50, surging about $44 after hours and nearing the $200 gamma level on, drumroll, an Elon Musk tweet that merely said…

  Gamestonk!! https://t.co/RZtkDzAewJ

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 26, 2021

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

  … That one tweet alone added over $3 billion in market cap to Gamespot (or perhaps GammaSpot) whose stock price may crush not just hedge fund but also dealers who are painfully short gamma in the name and will be forced to buy a lot more either now or when the stock opens for trading tomorrow.

  In short, we are almost certain to see a $200+ print tomorrow.

  * * *

  For the third day in a row, Gamestop has exploded higher, and after a brief period of rangebound trading the stock has almost doubled, surging from $90 to as high as $144 (at which point it was halted), dropped and resumed its move higher.

  

  While there has been nothing fundamental to explain the latest move higher – the bullish tweets by Chamath Palihapitiya and Cameron Winklevoss were discussed earlier – the main reason cited for the latest melt up, in addition to a continued short squeeze of course, is that GME has now fallen in the notorious “gamma vortex”, and one look at the highest strike price in this Friday’s expiring options confirms this: with less than 300 $200 Jan 29 puts traded, there has been an absolute frenzy of calls, which at last check were above 70,000 and rising rapidly.

  

  A quick look at the volume at price for the $200 calls shows the insanity that is being unleashed here…

  

  … and with dealers clearly short gamma, they are now rushing to buy the stock creating the infamous feedback loop where the more OTM call activity takes place, the higher the stock rises (amid dealer delta hedging), leading to even more call buying and so on.

  What this means in English is that at this point it is increasingly likely that GME will hit $200 as the gamma gravity is activated (and for those who still need an explainer, please read “All You Ever Wanted To Know About Gamma, Op-Ex, And Option-Driven Equity Flows“).

  The only question we have is whether Melvin Capital is still short the stock, and whether it is about to need an even bigger bailout from Citadel and Steve Cohen. And, as a follow up, at what GME price will Citadel and Point72 themselves require a bailout from the NY Fed…

  At what GME price does the NY Fed bailout Citadel and SAC, er, Point72

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 26, 2021

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

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/26/2021 – 18:08

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