Jul 27

Today’s News 27th July 2022

  • Italian Conservatives Call For Greater Border Security After Footage Of Migrant Violence Goes Viral
    Italian Conservatives Call For Greater Border Security After Footage Of Migrant Violence Goes Viral

    By Thomas Brooke of Remix News.

    Disturbing footage of a man being subjected to a vicious attack in a public square in the Italian city of Milan has prompted calls by conservative politicians for stricter border security in the country.

    The now viral footage shows a man being drop-kicked in the face in Piazza Duca D’Aosta by a man described by the Italian Il Giornale newspaper as a “homeless Tunisian” national, before the migrant smashes a bottle on his victim who lies on the floor in pain.

    The assailant proceeds to brutally kick his victim in the head, as screams can be heard from onlookers, before nonchalantly walking away from the scene.

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    The context of the attack is unknown but has now been highlighted by the leaders of two of Italy’s largest parties ahead of the snap election on Sept. 25, called after Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s resignation late last week.

    “Scenes of ordinary urban warfare between foreigners, violence and blood. Zero tolerance against criminals, security returns from September 25,” Lega leader Matteo Salvini said, commenting on the story.

    Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the right-wing Brothers of Italy asked: “How many other attacks and violence will we have to witness to admit that there is a huge security problem in Italy?

    “There is no more time to waste,” she added.

    Meloni is reportedly in the pole position to lead Italy following September’s election with her Brothers of Italy party the favorite, according to the polls.

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    A latest Demopolis survey places Meloni’s party at 24 percent, while Salvini’s Lega sits in third at 14 percent.

    Unlike Salvini, Meloni’s party refused to enter into coalition talks with the current Italian government, instead choosing to stay in opposition and attack the administration from the sidelines, a move that come the final week in September may prove to have paid off.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/27/2022 – 02:00

  • A Deeper Dive Into Allegations Of Sabotage Within FBI's Hunter Biden Probe
    A Deeper Dive Into Allegations Of Sabotage Within FBI’s Hunter Biden Probe

    Authored by Techno Fog via The Reactionary,

    Yesterday, Senator Chuck Grassley sent this letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray regarding allegations from “highly credible whistleblowers” about the FBI’s “false portrayal” of derogatory Hunter Biden materials as “disinformation.”

    If these allegations are true, it’s a damning depiction of FBI leadership and it proves their efforts to influence the 2020 election. This is the second (if not third) straight election the FBI has meddled in, given the influence the Trump/Russia investigation – and its unlawful origins with the FBI – had over the 2018 midterms.

    Grassley’s whistleblowers allege that in August 2020, FBI Headquarters “improperly discredit[ed] negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation and caused investigative activity to cease.” In fact, it was a scheme of top FBI officials. As Grassley explains:

    “the allegations provided to my office appear to indicate that there was a scheme in place among certain FBI officials to undermine derogatory information connected to Hunter Biden by falsely suggesting it was disinformation.”

    The context and timing is important, as this was leading up to the 2020 election. Who benefited from this scheme? Democrat candidate Joe Biden. And it appears the FBI’s scheme furthered the interests of Congressional Democrats. Here’s how that happened.

    On July 13, 2020, Democrat leaders – Chuck Schumer, Mark Warner, Nancy Pelosi, and Adam Schiff – sent this letter to the FBI alleging that “Congress was the subject of a foreign disinformation campaign.” The Democrats demanded that “the FBI provide a classified defensive briefing” on the issue of foreign disinformation, and that “the briefing draw on all-source intelligence information and analysis.” Parts of that letter were leaked to tie the Congressional Hunter Biden investigation to foreign disinformation.  

    Three days later, on July 16, 2020, Democrat Senators Gary Peters and Ron Wyden made their own demand of an FBI and intelligence community briefing related to purported foreign interference.

    According to Grassley, these Democrat efforts resulted in an unnecessary briefing from the FBI in August 2020 relating to “disinformation” – which was later leaked to the press to paint the Biden investigation “in a false light.” In other words, the FBI was more than willing to be used by the Democrats less than 3 months before the 2020 election.

    Then there’s also the issue of FBI Headquarters interfering in the Hunter Biden investigation. Grassley states:

    in September 2020, investigators from the same FBI HQ team were in communication with FBI agents responsible for the Hunter Biden information targeted by Auten’s assessment. The FBI HQ team’s investigators placed their findings with respect to whether reporting was disinformation in a restricted access sub-file reviewable only by the particular agents responsible for uncovering the specific information.

    The FBI Headquarters team “made findings” to whether certain reporting was disinformation – and then they limited access to those findings. This begs the question: what were those findings, and did they conflict with the popular narrative, falsely peddled by the Democrats and the media and former intelligence officials, that the Hunter Biden materials were disinformation?

    The FBI was reticent to share this information before the election. When then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe stated there was “no intelligence to support” allegations of Russian disinformation efforts tied to the Hunter Biden materials, the FBI responded they had “nothing to add at this time.” Of course, this is apparently now disproven. The FBI had something to add. They just didn’t want to share it with the American people.

    And there’s still more.

    In October 2020, the whistleblowers allege that “an avenue of additional derogatory Hunter Biden reporting was ordered closed at the direction of” FBI Agent Timothy Thibault.

    Who is Thibault? He is a partisan, anti-Trump FBI Agent from the Washington Field Office who shared derogatory social media posts about Attorney General Barr and retweeted Lincoln Project posts insulting President Trump. Thibault has since locked his Twitter account, which is highlighted with a Ukraine flag. You can make your own judgment on that.  

    Back to Thibault’s actions with respect to the Hunter Biden investigation. The whistleblowers further allege that Thibault suggested the Hunter Biden information was “at risk of disinformation,” although “all of the reporting was either verified or verifiable via criminal search warrants.” Thibault allegedly also violated FBI guidelines by ordering the matter closed without a valid reason. Thibault and other FBI officials then covered these tracks, attempting “to improperly mark the matter in FBI systems so that it could not be opened in the future.”

    Making matters worse – if that’s possible – we also learned from Grassley’s letter that FBI SIA ( Supervisory Intelligence Analyst) Brian Auten was handling aspects of the Hunter Biden investigation. Who is Brian Auten? He interviewed Igor Danchenko (Christopher Steele’s primary subsource), who now faces an upcoming trial with Special Counsel John Durham for lying to federal officials.

    We suspect that Auten covered-up or otherwise smothered Danchenko’s lies to protect the Trump/Russia investigation (and to thus also protect the FBI’s institutional interests). Our friend Stephen McIntyre – aka ClimateAudit – has focused on Auten in the past; here’s his Auten rabbit hole. The fact that Auten is in any way involved in the Hunter Biden investigation is not a good sign, and it indicates the FBI has failed to punish its most corrupt and incompetent employees.

    The letter from Grassley comes after CNN reporting on July 20 that:

    The federal investigation into Hunter Biden’s business activities is nearing a critical juncture as investigators weigh possible charges and prosecutors confront Justice Department guidelines to generally avoid bringing politically sensitive cases close to an election, according to people briefed on the matter.

    There are some clues in the CNN report that suggest members of Biden’s DOJ are trying to serve President Biden by protecting his son.

    First, current DOJ officials – including those at DOJ headquarters – have debated whether prosecution of Hunter Biden for tax and firearm charges should be put-off until after the 2022 midterms. But as CNN observes, federal prosecutors have brought politically-charged cases against Trump attorney Michael Cohen and Republican Congressman Chris Collins just before the 2018 election.

    Second, this suggests that there is at least some supervision of the Hunter Biden investigation by top-level DOJ officials appointed by Biden. CNN reports that the investigation has entered its final stages and that “prosecutors have narrowed their focus to tax and gun-related charges.”

    If Hunter Biden is indeed charged with those “narrow” crimes, it’s going to be essential to determine who made that call. After all, there is more than enough evidence to charge Hunter Biden with violating the Foreign Agent Registration Act. (Bijan Rafiekian, of the Flynn Intel Group, faced similar charges for far-less egregious conduct.) Recall previous New York Times reporting that:

    there has been debate within the Justice Department over whether the available evidence proves that Mr. Biden intended to violate FARA, which the government must prove in order to secure a criminal conviction.

    As we have observed, this misstates the law on FARA. One must ask whether the DOJ is making it intentionally difficult to prosecute Hunter Biden for his FARA violations and his schemes to enrich himself, and to manipulate his political connections, as he furthered the interests of his foreign clients.

    This gives us another question: who is making these prosecuting decisions – is it the career prosecutors, or is it Main Justice?

    If Hunter Biden escapes the FARA charges, or if he isn’t indicted before the upcoming elections, I think we can safely assume Main Justice is pulling some strings. And that’s a scandal in its own right.

    Subscribe here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/26/2022 – 23:30

  • These Are The Countries With The Most Active Volcanoes
    These Are The Countries With The Most Active Volcanoes

    Japan’s Sakurajima volcano, at the Southern tip of the country. erupted late Sunday, prompting evacuations and a Level 5 alert, the highest possible warning. 

    According to CNN, the volcano is one of the most active in the country and had previously erupted in January.

    As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, this makes the Sakurajima one of the 44 active volcanoes in the country that have erupted since 1950.

    Only Indonesia has more recently active volcanoes at 58.

    Infographic: The Countries With the Most Active Volcanoes | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    The United States follow close behind Japan with a count of 42 active volcanoes due to the volcanic areas in and around Hawaii and Alaska. Two Latin American countries as well as two nations in the Pacific appear among the top 10. In Europe, Iceland has the most active volcanoes together with France, which has active volcanoes in its departments Guadalupe, Reunion and the Comoros as well as overseas country French Polynesia.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/26/2022 – 23:10

  • FOMC Preview: Here's What The Fed Will Do Tomorrow
    FOMC Preview: Here’s What The Fed Will Do Tomorrow

    Submitted by Newsquawk

    SUMMARY: The Federal Reserve is widely expected to hike rates by 75bps on Wednesday, taking the target range for the Funds rate to 2.25-2.50%, a level considered neutral. There is no Summary of Economic Projections at this meeting thus attention will turn to any guidance the FOMC provides on future tightening increments. Current expectations, based on the current outlook, are for a 50bp move for September, before moving to 25bp moves in November and December to see a year-end rate of 3.25-3.50%, in line with market pricing. Nonetheless, the Fed will likely reiterate that any future rate decisions will depend upon their assessment of the economic outlook, particularly inflation. The latest June CPI report was hotter than expected which saw markets price in another 75bp move in July before accelerating to start pricing in over a 70% probability of a 100bp hike instead. However, pricing has now pared back in wake of several Fed speakers, including hawks Bullard and Waller, vocally supporting a 75bp hike in July while the latest UoM consumer inflation expectations also cooled for both the 1yr and 5yr horizons. Currently, markets only see a 10% chance of a 100bp move, as opposed to above 70% at the peak.

    EXPECTATIONS/GUIDANCE: The Fed is expected to hike rates by 75bps to 2.25-2.50%, according to 98/102 economists surveyed by Reuters between July 14-20th, although the remaining four still expect a 100bp move. However, markets are in favor of a 75bp hike with only a 10% chance of a 100bp move on Wednesday. Looking ahead, the majority of those surveyed expect the Fed to hike by 50bps in September, before slowing further to 25bp hikes in November and December leaving the Fed funds rate at 3.25-3.50% in December.

    The expectations on the Fed rate path through year-end are similar to market pricing, although looking ahead analysts expect rates to peak at 3.50-3.75% in February, before cutting to 3.00-3.25% in December 2023. This is at odds with market pricing which starts factoring in rate cuts earlier in 2023 as markets start to incorporate ongoing growth concerns and the impact of tighter policy with markets implying a rate of 2.75-3.00% in November 2023. Meanwhile, the median in the Fed’s June SEPs sees the terminal rate between 3.75-4.00% in 2023, before cutting to 3.25-3.50% in 2024.

    Therefore, there is a disconnect between markets and the Fed’s forecasts as the former prices in risk of a growth/employment slowdown later this year /early next year while Fed officials are conducting policy on the knowns: solid job growth and consumer spending that is fuelling consecutive increases in inflation. The Fed has said it will remain undeterred in its tightening path until inflation shows signs of returning to target, so to expect anything otherwise at the July FOMC appears unlikely.

    LANGUAGE/RECESSION: In the June meeting, the Fed changed its language to focus more on inflation, stating “The Committee is strongly committed to returning inflation to its 2 percent objective”, from the prior “with appropriate policy the Fed expects inflation to return to 2% target and the labour market to remain strong” therefore there will also be a focus on whether there are any further adjustments to this or whether it is maintained. With growth concerns mounting, the latest poll saw a 40% probability of a recession within the US over the coming year, and a 50% chance of a recession within two years, although the vast majority suggested it would be either mild or very mild. The latest meeting and minutes gave no mention of a potential recession, but the Fed has been dismissive of one in recent speeches saying it is not within their base case – something they will likely repeat, but it will be worth paying attention to given the mounting growth concerns to see if their view has changed, but given a continued strong labour market, the Fed will likely not be overly concerned.

    PRESS CONFERENCE: Given a lot of the focus will be on future guidance, Powell may leave it to the press conference to give clues on the increments of future rate hikes while he will also likely once again say it is too early to declare victory on inflation given the hot June CPI report. Powell will also likely repeat they want to see a series of declining monthly inflation prints and for inflation to be headed down, but the current data does not support this view. Therefore, Powell is expected to maintain the FOMC language that they will hike rates expeditiously to return inflation to target, although he will probably welcome the decline in UoM inflation expectations. Analysts at Pantheon Macroeconomics note by September the “Fed’s first pre-condition for slowing or stopping the pace of rate hikes will have been met, because the headline month-to-month CPI and PCE prints for July and August will be much lower than in the past couple months” and therefore expect the Fed to hike by no more than 50bps in September, in line with the consensus.

    Want more? Pro subscribers have access to FOMC previews from Goldman, Morgan Stanley, DB, UBS and more.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/26/2022 – 22:50

  • Gavin Newsom Won't Save The Democrats
    Gavin Newsom Won’t Save The Democrats

    Authored by Joel Kotkin via UnHerd.com,

    Burdened with a decomposing President and a clearly overmatched Vice President, the Democrats are on the hunt for a saviour.

    For many in the party, Gavin Newsom, the 54-year-old perfectly coiffed Governor of California, seems like the perfect solution. No doubt, given his recent trolling of Florida’s Republican frontrunner Ron DeSantis, he feels the same.

    But Newsom’s ascendency faces some severe challenges.

    First, to get nominated, he must not only depose Biden, but also see off Vice President Kamala Harris. And she has three things Newsom lacks: she’s a woman, she’s black, and she has Asian Indian ancestry. Newsom, on the other hand, is white, was born into a well-connected San Francisco family, and is married to a film-maker and scion of a very wealthy Bay Area family.

    Perhaps more importantly, things have not been particularly good for the minority Californians he was voted in to look after. In the Golden State, African-Americans and Hispanics do far worse economically than their counterparts elsewhere in the country. Black residents, on a cost-of-living basis, make about as much as they do in Mississippi, and far less than in states such as Texas, Florida, or Arizona.

    Class may prove an even more glaring weakness. Newsom sees his state as a model, claiming California is “the envy of the world” and the great bastion of social justice. “Unlike the Washington plutocracy,” he boasts, “California isn’t satisfied serving a powerful few on one side of the velvet rope.” Yet he is the favourite son of what The Los Angeles Times described as “a coterie of San Francisco’s wealthiest families”, including the founders of the Gap clothing chain, the Pritzker’s and the Getty Family, who essentially adopted him, financed his business ventures, allegedly paid for his first lavish wedding, and helped launch his political career.

    Meanwhile, Newsom’s green and progressive pronouncements contrasted starkly with his passion for the good life. He has long lived in luxury, first in his native Marin, and now in Sacramento. This caused Newsom some embarrassment during the height of Covid when he was caught partying in ways that violated his own pandemic orders at the ultra-expensive, ultra-chic French Laundry in Napa and more recently on a lavish family vacation.

    When it comes to actual policymaking, Newsom is not much better. He backs an ineffective education system, controlled by his teacher union allies, that leaves almost three out of five California high schoolers unprepared for either college or a career. Meanwhile, his children attend one of the capital’s regions trendiest private schools. He is, in effect, an embodiment of the increasing feudal nature of modern California, which stands among the least egalitarian states in the nation and suffers the overall highest poverty rate in the country, according to the US Census Bureau. Inequality here now surpasses that of Mexico, and is closer to that of the Central American banana republics of Guatemala and Honduras than it is to developed countries such as Canada and Norway. California also suffers the widest gap between middle and upper-middle-income earners of any state, while driving up housing costs and narrowing opportunities for working-class people in blue-collar industries.

    So how has Newsom gotten to the point of Presidential viability? Much of the answer lies with California’s own bizarre politics, ruled by a one-party state dominated by public employees, tech oligarchs and green non-profits. These groups finance his campaigns and act as shock troops, along with the largely compliant media. There is no serious challenger to his re-election in November. State Senator Brian Dahle, a fellow GOP aspirant, is an obscure northeast California dairy farmer who failed to secure 20% of the primary vote.

    And yet Californians are not particularly enthusiastic about Newsom — his approval ratings stand at roughly 50%, while 60% are pessimistic about the state’s direction. He doesn’t even rank among the nation’s most popular Governors, but stands at about average. At least half of residents, particularly in the state’s interior, see California going in the wrong direction.

    Californians are not totally inert or stoned to care; they are discouraged. In Los Angeles, 10% plan to move out this year. Between 2014 and 2020, net domestic emigration from California grew from 46,000 to 242,000, according to US Census Bureau estimates. Yet Newsom’s answer to these concerns is not to create new opportunities for middle or working-class California but to expand what Marx called “the proletarian alms bag”. Rather than lower taxes or give incentives to business, Newsom simply expands the welfare state.

    Given the bumper revenues of last year, and the pathetic state of his opposition, Newsom’s gambit will likely pay off this year. But whether it can hold until the next election in 2024 remains less certain. The current tech bust and potential real estate decline could force the current surplus — which is in large part down to pandemic transfers from the federal government — over a “fiscal cliff” by next year, notes the state’s legislative analyst’s office. In other words, Newsom’s penchant to bribe voters may end up as successful as that of Juan Perón.

    Against a poorly financed unknown from a party associated with the widely detested Donald Trump, Newsom will likely cruise to victory in November. As the anointed Great White Hope, he may seem like the man to save the Democrats from their own follies and the legacy of the current disaster in the White House. He just has to pray that his own policy failures don’t catch up with him first.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/26/2022 – 22:10

  • Tomorrow The Fed Hikes 75bps: What Happens Next Has Wall Street Hopelessly Split
    Tomorrow The Fed Hikes 75bps: What Happens Next Has Wall Street Hopelessly Split

    What the Fed says at Wednesday’s meeting is going to matter much more than what they do.

    That, according to Bloomberg’s Garfield Reynolds, will be the case even if Powell shocks us all by hiking less or more than the three-quarter point shift that’s been solidly priced in for most of the time since the June meet.

    But assuming policy makers meet those projections, then all of the focus is going to be on what guidance we get from the policy commitment statement and Chair Powell’s presser. Traders are betting the cash rate will be about 3.1% in a year’s time and 2.6% in two years, following rate cuts which are expected to start in Q1 2023. Making matters more complicated, the Fed’s WSJ mouthpiece, Nick Timiraos today published an article warning that the Fed could nuke the practice of forward guidance (similar to what the ECB did last week).

    That doesn’t leave the Fed a lot of room — the benchmark after today will be within a percentage point of the one-year forecast and a quarter point away from the two-year. As Reynolds concludes, “how Powell and his colleagues square that picture with their commitment to get inflation back down toward 2% will be fascinating.”

    Said otherwise, get the timing of the Fed pivot right and you will make a lot of money.

    Regular readers are aware of our thoughts on this topic: one month ago we wrote “Fed Rate-Hikes To End This Year, Followed By 3% Of Rate-Cuts & QE“, a view which has since been validated by Wall Street’s most accurate strategist, BofA’s Michael Hartnett, who forecast the Fed pivot to take place in November, while iconic former NY Fed analyst Marc Cabana also reinforced our view, predicting that his former coworkers at the Fed will end QT much sooner than expected.

    Still, confusion over what the Fed does next remains, and nowhere more so than among some of Wall Street’s top strategists who disagree over the impact of weaker economic data on the Federal Reserve’s policy outlook, what it’ll mean for stocks and, of course, when the Fed will pivot.

    Take Morgan Stanley’s uber-bear, Michael Wilson, who on Monday said it’s too early to expect the Fed to stop tightening its policy even as fears of a recession grow, suggesting that stocks have more room to fall before finding a bottom, somewhere around 3,000.

    Equity markets “may be trying to get ahead of the eventual pause by the Fed that is always a bullish signal,” Wilson said. “The problem this time is that the pause is likely to come too late” he added (his full comments can be found here).

    On the other hand, the always permabullish JPMorgan strategists – such as Marko Kolanovic – who have unabashedly been telling their clients to buy stocks every single week of 2022 – have now pivoted to the last recourse Hail Mary where bad news (the same bad news they never forecast) is now good news, and predict that inflation has peaked and will lead to an early Fed pivot thus improving the risk picture for equities in the second half.

    Contrary to Michael Wilson, who has been running laps around his far more insight-challenged JPMorgan peers, JPM strategist Mislav Matejka said in a note on Monday that challenging activity momentum and softer labor markets could open doors to a more balanced Fed policy, leading to a peak in the US dollar and inflation.

    For once, we agree with JPMorgan, which is actually correct this time if for all the wrong reasons: after all, unlike the largest and seemingly most clueless commercial bank, we have been saying since last December that the Fed will not only hike into a recession, but will be forced to cut rates – and resume QE – early. JPMorgan, on the other hand, never even contemplated a worst case outcome. And only now, that its year-end price target has become a laugh out loud joke, does the bank magically make the jump from a growing economy to a sharp slowdown, which forces the Fed to end hiking. Even first-year analysts will call that sloppy, embarrassing goalseeking.

    That said, JPMorgan is not alone: Generali senior economist Paolo Zanghieri said he expects the pace of rate hikes to slow after this week’s meeting. Still, concerns are growing that the Fed could already be too late in its attempt to tame inflation and avoid a US recession. More than 60% of the 1,343 respondents in the latest Bloomberg’s MLIV Pulse survey said there’s a low or zero probability of the central bank reining in consumer-price pressures without causing an economic contraction.

    Jefferies LLC strategist Sean Darby said that while the economic slowdown is building, he expects the pressure on stocks from tighter monetary policy to ease in the second half of this year.

    “Unlike the words ‘recession’ and ‘hyperinflation’ which have garnered a lot of news headlines, ‘pivot’ has yet to capture the same interest,” he wrote in a note. “Nevertheless, if the shapes of the US yield curve and Fed futures curves are correct, then the headwind from rate hikes will decelerate somewhat as tightening enters the last part of the year.”

    Of course, the deeper the recession the Fed unleashes, the faster it will be forced to reverse and undo the damage… and Democrats will be riding Powell all the way there – that’s precisely what we discussed over the weekend in “Democrats Prepare To Unleash Hell On Fed Chair Powell For The Coming Recession.”

    The worst case, for bulls, is not if the US slides into a recession – after all that will prompt the Fed to panic and unleash the usual liquidity tsunami – it would be if Wilson is right: the Morgan Stanley strategist who has been among the most vocal bears on US stocks and correctly predicted this year’s selloff, said that even though inflation could indeed have peaked “from a rate of change standpoint,” the “demand destructive nature of high inflation that is presenting itself today will not easily disappear even if inflation declines sharply because prices are already out of reach in areas of the economy that are critical for the cycle to extend–i.e. housing, autos, food, gasoline and other necessities.”

    A rising number of analysts have also said that with inflation proving persistent at a four-decade high, it will take a recession and markedly higher joblessness, to ease price pressures significantly. It’s also why the Fed’s unspoken goal is precisely that: to tip the US into a moderate recession.

    JPMorgan’s Matejka said that another factor that improves the outlook for equities in the second half of the year is the changing reaction to earnings, where weaker results can start being seen as good news.

    Wilson again disagrees, saying that earnings estimates for S&P 500 firms are still too high and that the second quarter is likely to be the first of “several disappointing quarters before estimates finally trough.”  As such, stocks may have further to fall before hitting a bottom, he said. “Recent positive price action to some earnings cuts is unlikely to be the low for most stocks as it’s usually unwise to buy the first cuts when we are entering a major revision cycle,” Wilson wrote on Monday.

    Ultimately, Wilson sees the S&P dropping to 3,000 before the next bull market begins.

    Goldman, uncharacteristically for the permabullish bank, sides with Morgan Stanley. The bank’s strategist David Kostin sees pressure on S&P 500 revenues from a stronger dollar. The bank’s top-down model shows that a 10% appreciation in the trade-weighted greenback should reduce earnings-per-share by 2% to 3%, he wrote in a note on July 22. And earlier today, the bank’s Cecilia Mariotti wrote that it is still too early to bet on an early Fed pivot: at this stage, she wrote, it “would be wary in calling for a sustained pro-cyclical shift across assets as we think markets might be underestimating the risks of continued inflationary pressures, which might keep the central bank put far out of the money for longer.”

    Goldman – which has been catastrophically wrong in virtually all of its forecasts in the past two years – turning bearish? That may be just the tiebreaker we need to confirm that in just a few months the prevailing talk will be not how low the Fed can cut rates but whether it will follow the ECB into negative territory…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/26/2022 – 21:50

  • Pennsylvania Has A Youth-Crime Crisis
    Pennsylvania Has A Youth-Crime Crisis

    Authored by Michael Torres via RealClear Pennsylvania,

    A group of seven young Philadelphia teens were caught on surveillance camera beating a 73-year-old man named James Lambert Jr. to death with a traffic cone in June. The footage shows the teens giggling and recording the slow, brutal assault as if it were casual entertainment. “I just don’t know what’s going on in our city,” Lambert’s niece told Fox 29 Philadelphia. “Where were the parents?”

    (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

    Pennsylvania, like many states nationwide, is experiencing a youth-crime crisis. Data from the state’s Juvenile Court Judges’ Commission suggest that a major factor in crime among youth is family structure. More than 80 percent of every juvenile court disposition in 2021 involved a young person who lives in a broken home, without two married parents. Nearly 48 percent live with a single mother, while a mere 15.5 percent live with both parents. Similar trends hold up year after year after year.

    “That’s consistent with what I’d expect, but it’s a striking number,” said Brad Wilcox, a senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies and director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. “The strongest predictor for incarceration is the share of two-parent families in a neighborhood.” Wilcox pointed to research by Raj Chetty of Harvard University and the IFS that confirms that criminal behavior drops dramatically for youths who live with both parents and in neighborhoods with a high proportion of married adults.

    “America’s young man problem is disproportionately concentrated among the millions of males who grew up without the benefit of a present biological father,” a recent IFS brief concluded. “The bottom line: both these men and the nation are paying a heavy price for the breakdown of the family.”

    Given these data, the research, and daily headlines of teenagers sacking convenience stores, pushing people onto train tracks, and committing armed robberies, carjackings, or worse, one would assume that lawmakers would be asking the same question as Lambert’s niece: Where are the parents? But state and local political leaders rarely do ask. Instead, they react in familiar ways. Republicans in Harrisburg consistently call for more policing and are trying to impeach Philadelphia’s progressive district attorney Larry Krasner. Democrats like state representative Darisha Parker of Northwest Philadelphia, meantime, repeatedly propose bans on so-called assault weapons and call for more mental-health administrators in schools, higher public school funding, and more funds for “boots-on-the-ground” organizations.

    Reverend Eileen Smith is the executive director of one of those organizations—the South Pittsburgh Coalition for Peace. She says that, while the city needs more police and desperately needs to get guns, especially illegally obtained ones, out of the hands of teenagers, a more fundamental problem is going unaddressed. “We are seeing fearless perpetrators in these young people,” she said in an interview. “We’re seeing young kids who have cold hearts and are not concerned with consequences of any kind.” When asked what could cause young people to be this way, Smith replied that “a lot of it is a spiritual problem, along with a lack of home life and a lack of love. They’re looking for love in all the wrong places, through gangs and online. This has caused a murderous trend among young people, and it’s got to be stopped.” But how?

    In a state in which approximately 33 percent of households with children are run by a single parent (in Philadelphia, the number surpasses 50 percent), stopping the spread of such maliciousness among young people is a daunting task. No amount of funding for school psychiatrists can make up for tens of thousands of absent parents.

    Christopher Winters, CEO of Olivet Boys and Girls Club in Berks County, Pennsylvania, believes there is a way. In March, a group of teenagers from various school districts in Berks County used social media to organize a massive fight in a rarely used playground in the city of Reading. According to police, the resulting brawl, which included dozens of teenagers, turned deadly when multiple individuals began firing guns, killing a high school student at the scene and injuring three others. “Not a single one of those kids . . . thought to pick up a phone and talk to somebody,” Winters said at a subsequent Reading City Council meeting. At that meeting, local leaders called for bolstering a community-wide response dubbed “hubs of hope” that now connects 75 community partners, including local businesses and nonprofits such as United Way and the Hispanic Center of Reading and Berks County. The hubs help organize events such as low-cost shoe sales and provide services like after-school activities and mentorship to young people. “There’s a lot of people throughout the community saying ‘we can’t stay in our silos anymore,’” Winters said in an interview. “We established hubs of hope so that our brick-and-mortar sites become cooperative places for kids to go and our family liaison officer can coordinate with other sites if we don’t have space.”

    Winters wants to see the state pass legislation providing more grants for after-school activities. Some government officials cite evidence that after-school programs and street-level intervention programs like South Pittsburgh Coalition for Peace reduce negative behaviors and bolster parents’ ability to work, among other benefits. But programs can only do much, as a report on the consequences of father absence by criminologist Jennifer Schwartz and published by the Department of Justice makes clear. “The direct effect of male capital on female and male violence suggests that a surplus of older males can mitigate, somewhat, the deleterious effects of father absence on violent offending,” Schwartz writes. But “father absence continues to exert significant, destructive effects on gender disaggregated violence rates.”

    Wilcox insists that public officials must first address the family crisis. “When you hear the phrase from folks like Hillary Clinton that it takes a village to raise a child, she’s certainly right,” Wilcox said. “But I’d amend that to: it takes a village of married people.”

    The importance of children having two married parents at home became a matter of national conversation after assistant secretary of labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1963 report on black family structure and poverty. In recent years, however, America’s political leaders have increasingly lost interest in bolstering family structure. “Our elites tend to minimize in their public pronouncements the need for dads, but when you look at their own lives, their dads are almost always very present,” Wilcox said. “The irony here is that our elites propose progressive public policies while at home living in traditional lifestyles, which includes having a married father at the house.”

    To be sure, bolstering community organizations that keep teenagers active after school, supporting street-level mentorship organizations, and providing adequate resources to police are worthy policy goals. But neither a well-funded after-school program nor a fully manned and effective police force could have kept those kids’ hearts from growing cold that June night in Philadelphia. Two-parent homes are the answer to this crisis. Politicians in both parties can no longer afford to ignore it.

    *  *  *

    Michael Torres is the deputy editor at RealClearPennsylvania. Follow him on Twitter @MindofTorres. A version of this piece was originally published at City Journal.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/26/2022 – 21:30

  • "We're Very Angry": Fire-Stricken Liberals Freak After CA 'Militia Group' Provides Disaster Aid
    “We’re Very Angry”: Fire-Stricken Liberals Freak After CA ‘Militia Group’ Provides Disaster Aid

    When the militia arrived in the small Sierra foothills town of Mariposa, California, to assist with evacuation efforts amid a fast-spreading wildfire, not all residents were pleased by the appearance of ordinary citizens dressed in military fatigues. 

    Over the weekend, about 150 California State Militia 2nd Regiment members, including 20 local ones and others from surrounding counties, assisted with evacuations efforts. The group also fed dozens of displaced households. 

    “We’re part of the community.

    “We’re watching our own community burn down, and even though a lot of the members that came to help, they’re spread out, we’re all part of the same unit, and this is what we do,” militia member Daniel Latner, who lives in Mariposa County, told The Mercury News.

    As of Tuesday, the wildfire, dubbed “Oak Fire,” burned 18,000 acres across Mariposa County and was only 26% contained. 

    Even as Oak Fire inched closer to the town of Mariposa, destroying 55 homes and other structures, some residents weren’t appreciative of militia support. 

    “The last thing I’m going to do is take a free tri-tip sandwich from a right-wing extremist group,” said one resident, who asked not to be named because she feared provoking “armed and dangerous” people.

    “We’re very angry that they would choose to come in at a time of real gravity to try to turn this into a political move,” said the woman, who works remotely and accused the group of “trying to recruit people in a disaster.”

    The Mariposa Sheriff’s Office on Sunday addressed public concerns about the militia supporting the community: 

    “We had received multiple notifications inquiring why we had ‘activated that militia,'” the office said in a Facebook post.

    “The militia has not been activated or requested to act for any purpose by the Sheriff’s Office or any agency working the Oak Fire.”

    “We are not unsupportive of community groups helping those affected by the Oak Fire … they are acting on their own courteous accord,” the post continued.

    “We appreciate their efforts and any … efforts of other private groups or entities helping our community.”

    In a county where about 40% of the people voted Democrat in the last presidential election and nearly 60% for the Republican Party, not all residents are reluctant to receive help from militia members.

    It appears that liberals would rather burn, starve, or freeze than take evacuation assistance from someone on the other side of the political aisle… Tolerance and acceptance indeed

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/26/2022 – 21:10

  • Iran's Oil Revenues Soar By 580% As Crude Prices Rally
    Iran’s Oil Revenues Soar By 580% As Crude Prices Rally

    By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

    Iran’s revenues from exports of oil and condensate surged by 580% during the first four months of the current Iranian year that begins on March 21, Iranian Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance, Seyyed Ehsan Khandouzi, said on Tuesday.   

    Between March 21 and July 21, international crude oil prices have largely held above $100 per barrel after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the sanctions on Russian oil exports upended global trade flows.

    “Due to the increase in oil exports and our new budget’s currency conversion rate, we saw a 580% increase in the treasury’s income from the export of oil and condensate in the first four months of this year,” the Iranian finance minister was quoted as saying by local news agency IRNA.

    Overall, Iran’s budget income jumped by 48% in March-July compared to the same period of 2021, while government expenditures rose by 16%, the minister added.

    “The government was focused on this issue to be able to earn a more stable income. This means that compensating the budget deficit was on the agenda of the government and it was realized in the first 4 months of this year,” the minister said.

    Iran’s 12-month inflation rate hit 40% in July, Iranian statistics showed last week. Prices of goods have soared since the government removed some subsidies earlier this year.  

    Despite the diplomatic impasse over the nuclear deal, Iran has been preparing to rejoin the global oil market. The country has boosted production, as well as exports to its main market, China. If a new deal is reached between Iran and the world powers, the flow of Iranian oil abroad could increase by between 500,000 bpd and 1 million bpd, according to analysts.  

    China has been the main outlet for Iranian crude oil exports since the U.S. re-imposed sanctions on the Islamic Republic’s oil industry in 2018 when then-President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the so-called Iranian nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).  

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/26/2022 – 20:50

  • China Hosts Its First Major Consumer Product Conference Since Covid Lockdowns
    China Hosts Its First Major Consumer Product Conference Since Covid Lockdowns

    It looks like there’s finally some signs of normalcy emerging in China after months of additional lockdowns. That is, at least gauged by the number of massive product expos the country is planning on holding this year. 

    The country kicked off the 2022 China International Consumer Products Expo this week, according to Nikkei. The conference was held in the capital of southern Hainan province, the report says, and featured over 2,800 brands.

    That’s more than double the number of brands that presented last year. 

    60 different countries were represented by brands like Ferrari and Coach and around 40,00 different buyers and industry professionals were expected to attend the event, which opens to the public next week. Fancl Group, Dolce & Gabbana and Dell were also in attendance. 

    Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha made opening comments for the event, saying they were looking forward to helping China re-open and boost their economy. The Prime Minister said: “(The fair) will help promote closer cooperation in terms of trade, services and supply chains.”

    As Nikkei notes, China posted its weakest quarterly growth in two years as a result of its recent Covid lockdowns. Retail sales were down 4.6% in Q2 for the country. 

    Mark Tanner, managing director at Shanghai-based marketing consultancy China Skinny, added: “We are seeing more saving, changes in buying behavior. In certain beverage categories there has been more bulk buying as people plan for potential lockdowns.”

    Shao Min, a representative for Sinopharm talked about the steps the company had taken as a result of shops being closed for several months: “We have made some adjustments to mitigate those challenges by beefing up our social media sales channel.”

    Industries like alcohol and cosmetics were heavily in focus at the event. Kenji Shimizu, director-general of the Japan External Trade Organization’s office in southern Guangzhou concluded: “As those markets expand and diversify, we would like to promote brands by small and medium Japanese enterprises that market body-friendly ingredients to Chinese consumers.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/26/2022 – 20:30

  • High Gas Prices At Pump Alter Driving Habits, AAA Finds
    High Gas Prices At Pump Alter Driving Habits, AAA Finds

    Soaring gasoline prices at the pump motivated consumers to go on a buyers’ strike, according to a new survey by auto club AAA. 

    In June, 64% of the 1,002 respondents altered their driving habits due to months of soaring gasoline and diesel prices at the pump. Of these, 88% said they reduced driving altogether, 74% combined errands, and more than half reduced restaurant and shopping visits. Many respondents postponed travel this summer. 

    The survey’s findings outline precisely what we said in late June when we first noticed gasoline demand destruction emerged as lower- and middle-income households felt the pinch of energy, food, and shelter inflation.

    The DoE’s official implied gasoline demand data shows the weakest demand since the COVID lockdowns (on a seasonal basis) and weakest overall since 2013…

    Slowing demand topped West Texas Intermediate oil futures prices at $122 a barrel on June 8. Gasoline prices at the pump have also slumped for 41 days, including the single most significant weekly drop in nearly 14 years. However, at $4.355 a gallon, prices are still 38% higher than a year ago and 2x from COVID lows. 

    Since wages haven’t kept up with inflation, creating worsening negative real wage growth, it might not be enough to get drivers back on the roads. Also, the latest data from Bank of America’s aggregated credit and debit card flows show consumers are tapped out after maxing out credit cards. 

    OANDA market analyst Jeffrey Halley pointed out that while Brent outperforms due to tight physical markets, “WTI, on the other hand, is a domestic benchmark, meaning that US recession nerves seem to be more heavily weighing on its price.”

    The spread between WTI to Brent continued to widen. The US benchmark was more than $9 a barrel cheaper than Brent on Friday, the most since early March. 

    In the meantime, the Federal Reserve will meet Wednesday and likely raise interest rates by three-fourths of a percentage point following June’s hot consumer print. Aggressive tightening by the Fed has sparked concern the economy could roll into recession. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/26/2022 – 19:50

  • Ranchers Are Selling Off Their Cattle In Unprecedented Numbers Due To The Drought, And That Has Enormous Implications For 2023
    Ranchers Are Selling Off Their Cattle In Unprecedented Numbers Due To The Drought, And That Has Enormous Implications For 2023

    Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

    Thanks to the horrific drought which is absolutely devastating ranching in the Southwest, ranchers are now in “panic mode” and are selling off their cattle at an unprecedented rate.  In fact, some are choosing to sell off their entire herds because they feel like they don’t have any other options.  In recent days, seemingly endless lines of trailers waiting to drop off cattle for auction have gone viral all over social media.  Everybody is talking about how they have never seen anything like this before, and if the drought in the Southwest persists the lines could soon get even longer.  In the short-term, this is going to help to stabilize meat prices.  But in the long-term the size of the U.S. cattle herd will steadily become much smaller, and that has very serious implications for our ability to feed ourselves in 2023 and beyond.

    North Texas has become the epicenter for this rapidly growing crisis.  Thanks to the drought, there simply is not enough grass and not enough water, and so many ranchers have been forced to make some really tough decisions…

    North Texas ranchers are selling off cattle by the thousands as grass and water disappear during an expanding summer drought.

    Videos spread on social media Saturday and Sunday, showing trucks and trailers lined up for miles outside of livestock markets.

    At the Decatur Livestock Market, owner Kimberly Irwin said trucks were stacked a mile in each direction, eventually unloading more than 2,600 animals.

    For many of these ranchers, it is imperative that they get something for their animals while they still can.

    According to the USDA, the vast majority of the pasture and range land in the region is now in either “poor” or “very poor” condition…

    Grass has stopped growing with no rain and 100 degree temperatures. Grasshoppers have reportedly been destroying what’s available in some counties. Stock ponds are now starting to run low on water as well.

    The USDA released a report Monday showing 83% of pasture and range land is now considered to be in poor to very poor condition.

    Normally, many cattle ranchers would feed hay to their cattle under such circumstances, but the price of hay has absolutely skyrocketed over the past year…

    Prices for hay, which is widely used to feed cattle, were 56% higher in April than in 2021, according to a June report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Cattle producers are estimated to have lost money the past two months, according to a cost-and-return analysis from Iowa State University.

    So now even if you can find hay for sale it is usually so expensive that it is simply not economical.  Without any other options that make sense, some cattle ranchers in Texas have actually decided to go ahead and sell their entire herds…

    Central Texas ranchers have little hay to feed their cows due to drought conditions. That means some ranchers are now selling their entire herds, including older ones who might not thrive in the drier and hot conditions.

    “Some of these ranchers are just totally out of grass, totally out of water,” Uptmore said. “Their backs are against the wall and they don’t have any other option.”

    The good news is that a flood of beef is coming into the supply chain right now.

    And that will certainly help keep short-term prices stable.

    But what will we do next year and beyond?

    According to Bloomberg, many ranchers that are showing up at these auctions are literally in “panic mode” because they are so eager to sell off their animals…

    Ranchers in top cattle state Texas can’t sell their herds fast enough with 100-degree Fahrenheit temperatures making it too expensive to sustain animals.

    Costs for feed, fertilizer and fuel have been soaring. There’s also a lack of water in the state, and little hay. That’s resulting in a firehouse of cattle getting auctioned at Texas sale barns. Emory Livestock Auction Inc., just over an hour’s drive east from Dallas, is seeing nearly quadruple normal rates with ranchers in “panic mode,” said Jack Robinson, an 83-year-old auctioneer.

    Normally ranchers would wait until their cattle have reached a desired weight before finally selling them off.

    Unfortunately, this relentless drought is forcing many ranchers to “sell smaller”…

    Cattle rancher Anthony Vybiral, in the business since the 90s, says drought conditions are forcing ranchers like him to “sell smaller.”

    During a normal season, calves weigh up to 600 pounds, Vyviral said. Now, the rancher said, “some of them have been weighing 375 to 450 and they’ve been selling them.”

    At the end of the day, ranching is a business.

    These guys are trying to make whatever money that they can under the circumstances.

    Of course most Americans never even think about where the meat that they eat comes from, but we should.

    Because as Texas rancher Jarrod Montford has pointed out, we depend on a very small sliver of the population to feed all the rest of us…

    “1.6, 1.7% of the population feeds the rest. It’s not how bad are we at the end of the day,” Monfort said. “It’s the fact that if we don’t survive, our nation fails,” said Montford.

    He is right.

    We need our farmers and our ranchers, and we don’t appreciate them nearly enough.

    Looking ahead, there is reason to be extremely concerned.

    The national cattle herd has been getting smaller for quite a while, and now that trend threatens to greatly accelerate…

    The nation’s cow herd has been shrinking for the past two years, but this summer’s drought is sending much of the breeding herd to the processing plant. That will cut into calf numbers for the next two to three years.

    What we desperately need is a break in the weather.

    So let us hope for cooler temperatures and lots of rain.

    Unfortunately, this next week is supposed to be a sizzler, and that will especially be true in the Southwest…

    About 85% of the US population — or 273 million people — could see high temperatures above 90 degrees over the next week. And about 55 million people could see high temperatures at or above 100 degrees over the next seven days.

    On Saturday, “sizzling temperatures” will take hold of the Middle Mississippi Valley and Central Plains with temperatures forecast to surpass 100 degrees, the weather prediction center said.

    Daytime temperatures could top 100 degrees across much of the Southwest, with some areas exceeding 110 degrees, according to the center.

    Of course all of this is happening within the context of the worst global food crisis in decades.

    Famines are already erupting all over the world, and global food supplies are getting tighter with each passing day.

    We were warned that this was coming, but most people didn’t want to listen.

    Now a day of reckoning is nearly upon us.

    I would definitely encourage you to stock up on meat in the weeks ahead while it is still relatively cheap, because the outlook for 2023 and beyond is definitely not promising.

    *  *  *

    It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/26/2022 – 19:30

  • Recent Fauci Claims Dismantled By Former CDC Director – And Fauci's Own Words
    Recent Fauci Claims Dismantled By Former CDC Director – And Fauci’s Own Words

    Dr. Anthony Fauci has been doing quite the tap-dance of late.

    To review – as the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, he funded risky gain-of-function research at a Chinese lab aimed at making bat coronavirus transmissible to humans.

    Then, when a human-infecting bat coronavirus broke out down the street from the lab he funded, Fauci performed extensive damage control over the virus’s origins – before taking a direct role in setting disastrous public policy which included economy-killing lockdowns that led to trillions in inflationary stimulus (which he now denies).

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    Related:

    Now that we’re caught up – Fauci recently claims to have had an “open mind” about the possibility of a lab-leak, though he still says it’s the least likely explanation for all of the above.

    “It looks very much like this was a natural occurrence, but you keep an open mind,” he told Fox News in a Friday interview.

    Fauci repeated himself in an interview with The Hill on Monday.

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    Former CDC Director Robert Redfield is calling BS:

    As the Epoch Times‘ Jack Phillips notes:

    When asked about Fauci’s recent comments on Monday, Redfield told Fox News that he still suspects COVID-19 emerged “from the laboratory” and “had to be educated in the laboratory to gain the efficient human-to-human transmission capability that it has.”

    “There’s very little evidence, if you really want to be critical, to support” the natural emergence theory, he said. The former Trump administration official then compared COVID-19 to prior coronaviruses such as Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that emerged about 10 years ago, saying that neither virus had the same transmission capacity as COVID-19.

    “So it’s really exceptional that this virus is one of the most infectious viruses for man. And I still argue that’s because it was educated how to infect human tissue,” Redfield told Fox News.

    Laboratory

    The same Wuhan laboratory, he added, was the subject of a 2014 report amid claims that researchers performed research on bat-borne viruses that could impact humans.

    “I’m disappointed in the [National Institutes of Health] for not leading an objective evaluation from the beginning,” Redfield told the outlet. “I think it really is antithetical to the science where they took a very strong position that people like myself who are somehow conspiratorial just because we have a different scientific hypothesis.”

    *  *  *

    Natural immunity

    In a second bit of furious tap-dancing, Fauci completely deflected when he was asked why natural immunity from previous COVID-19 infections wasn’t recognized as a legitimate protection when he was involved in setting public policy that included lockdowns and vaccine passports.

    The topic was so woefully ignored that experts urged the Biden administration to formally recognize natural immunity – which Fauci now says they were ‘always aware‘ of.

    And yet, watch how he spins it now:

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    And what did Fauci have to say about natural immunity when Pfizer and others didn’t have an expensive vaccine with unproven long-term efficacy?

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/26/2022 – 19:10

  • Layoffs Hit Labs As COVID-19 Testing Dwindles
    Layoffs Hit Labs As COVID-19 Testing Dwindles

    By Paige Twenter of Becker Hospital Review

    As at-home COVID-19 tests rise in popularity, U.S. laboratories are slimming their workforce and decreasing their capacity for processing PCR tests, The Wall Street Journal reported July 24. 

    U.S. labs can process about 62 million COVID-19 tests a month, which is half of their capacity levels reported in March, according to consulting firm Health Catalysts Group cited in the Journal report. 

    Because of diminishing government funding and less demand, COVID-19 test lab SummerBio laid off 100 workers, and CueHealth, which makes at-home molecular tests, laid off 170 people, about 10 percent of its workforce, according to the Journal. 

    SummerBio, a company that provides PCR testing for COVID-19, said it’s switching to “standby-mode” because of a “dramatic reduction” in demand for lab-based testing, according to a July 25 press release. 

    Though the rise in at-home tests makes federal case counts more difficult to manage, labs are simply working with what they can. 

    “It’s been a trade-off, but it’s a trade-off that we’ve been accepting,” Wilbur Lam, MD, PhD, a biomedical engineering professor at Emory University who helped federal officials review COVID-19 tests, told the Journal. 

    While rapid at-home tests have become more prevalent, manufacturers of those tests, such as IHealth Labs and QuidelOrtho, are also reducing their staff and decreasing production levels. 

    Health Catalysts Group estimates that production capability for rapid tests was 462 million in March, which has since fallen to 320 million.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/26/2022 – 18:50

  • China Tried To Build Spy Network Inside The Fed, Threatened To Kidnap Fed Economist
    China Tried To Build Spy Network Inside The Fed, Threatened To Kidnap Fed Economist

    China tried to place “a network of informants inside the Federal Reserve system” over the course of a decade, according to a stunning new article out this morning from the Wall Street Journal. 

    Over 10 years, Fed employees were offered contracts with Chinese talent recruitment programs, often including cash payments, in exchange for providing information on the U.S. economy and interest rate changes, according to an investigation by Republican staff members of the Senate’s Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

    The country even threatened to imprison a Fed economist on a trip to Shanghai as apart of their efforts. The economist was detained in 2019, the report says. WSJ notes that it is unclear whether any “sensitive information was compromised”, though we’re not sure exactly how “sensitive” Fed information is to begin with. 

    The investigation called it “a sustained effort by China, over more than a decade, to gain influence over the Federal Reserve and a failure by the Federal Reserve to combat this threat effectively.”

    Fed Chair Jerome Powell spoke out against the report’s findings: “Because we understand that some actors aim to exploit any vulnerabilities, our processes, controls, and technology are robust and updated regularly. We respectfully reject any suggestions to the contrary.”

    “We take seriously any violations of these robust information security policies,” he continued, according to the report. 

    A former Fed investigation identified 13 people of interest beginning in 2015. The Congressional investigation relied “heavily” on the Fed’s findings for their report. One economist in the Fed system, who was fired for violating rules, was found to be close to a former employee who was alleged to have attempted to recruit members for the espionage network. 

    That former “expressed a desire to maintain an inside information sharing relationship” and had ties to Chinese government-backed talent recruitment programs. 

    Another individual once gave “economic modeling code to a Chinese university with ties to the People’s Bank of China,” the report says. Though, the Fed is wrong so often, maybe it was a disinformation campaign on our part?

    Yet another employee “attempted to transfer large volumes of data from the Fed to an external site on at least two occasions,” the Journal wrote. 

    In a letter to Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, the committee’s top Republican, Jerome Powell wrote that he would be concerned about “any supportable allegation of wrongdoing, whatever the source,” before adding: “In contrast, we are deeply troubled by what we believe to be the report’s unfair, unsubstantiated, and unverified insinuations about particular staff members.”

    Portman replied that he hoped the investigation “wakes the Fed up to the broad threat from China to our monetary policy.”

    “The risk is clear,” he wrote. 

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/26/2022 – 18:44

  • Ukraine Wants Citi, JPMorgan And HSBC Prosecuted For 'War Crimes': Zelensky Aide
    Ukraine Wants Citi, JPMorgan And HSBC Prosecuted For ‘War Crimes’: Zelensky Aide

    Ukraine wants major US and European banks prosecuted for “committing war crimes” because they finance companies that trade oil with Russia, according to CNBC, citing President Volodomyr Zelensky’s top economic aide, Oleg Ustenko.

    “Everybody who is financing these war criminals, who are doing these terrible things in Ukraine, are also committing war crimes in our logic,” Ustenko told the network on Tuesday, calling out banks such as JPMorgan, HSBC and Citi.

    When asked if the banks should be prosecuted for war crimes, Ustenko replied “Exactly.”

    Ustenko said Zelenskyy believes these banks should be held accountable for prolonging the conflict and the war on Ukraine.

    His comments came in response to a FT report last week, which said that Ukraine’s government wrote to the chiefs of U.S. and European banks — such as Jamie Dimon from JPMorgan and Noel Quinn from HSBC — urging them to cut ties with the groups that are trading Russian oil. -CNBC

    According to letters seen by the FT, Ustenko asked the banks to cut off financing to any businesses that deal in Russian oil, and to divest from Gazprom and Rosneft, Russia’s primary state-owned oil and gas companies.

    The letters directly accuse Citigroup and Credit Agricole of “prolonging” the war by extending financing to companies that ship Russian oil, and warns that said banks won’t be allowed to take part in Ukraine’s reconstruction when the war is over.

    Ustenko told CNBC that the Zelensky administration is gathering evidence to send to the International Criminal Court.

    “We are collecting all these information” on companies that are financing Russia, he said. “Our Ministry of Justice and our security service of Ukraine are collecting. And then later, this is going to be passed to the ICC.”

    This isn’t the first time that Ukraine has gone after Western companies for having business dealings with Russia.

    In March, the government was highly critical of big oil companies for still doing business with Russia, and warned that some of those firms could find themselves on the wrong side of history.

    Ustenko said the war has taken a significant toll on Ukraine’s economy since Russia’s invasion began on Feb. 24. -CNBC

    “Currently, we are expecting that the Ukrainian economy is going to show a decline on the level of around 35-40%, which is a huge decline,” he said, saying the decrease is due to the fact that nearly 50% of businesses “are not operational now or not able to operate at full capacity.”

    “When the economy is declining, then the budget revenues are decreased. Again the reason for that is the Russian invasion”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/26/2022 – 18:30

  • Russia’s New Gas Deals With Iran Are A Threat To The West
    Russia’s New Gas Deals With Iran Are A Threat To The West

    By Simon Watkins of Oilprice.com

    Russian President, Vladimir Putin, arrived in Tehran last week for the second time since he ordered the invasion of Ukraine on 24 February. Just before his arrival, Russia’s state gas giant, Gazprom, signed a US$40 billion memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) that is part of a wide-ranging agenda of increased cooperation between Russia and Iran. It builds upon ideas discussed in January between Putin and Iranian President, Ebrahim Raisi, and the visit early in June of Russian Deputy Prime Minister, Alexander Novak, both analysed in full by OilPrice.com, and is crucial to the current global gas crisis.

    Among other deals contained in the MoU, Gazprom has pledged its full assistance to the NIOC in the US$10 billion development of the Kish and North Pars gas fields with a view to their producing more than 10 million cubic metres of gas per day. The MoU also contains details of a US$15 billion project to increase pressure in the supergiant South Pars gas field on the maritime border between Iran and Qatar. Gazprom will additionally be involved in the completion of various liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects and the construction of gas export pipelines, according to Iranian news sources. This is designed by the Kremlin to give it even more control over future gas supplies coming out of Iran that might have found a home in southern Europe initially, before being transported north, to help alleviate the current gas supply crunch in major European countries. By also becoming more deeply involved in the huge South Pars gas field Russia has also positioned itself to disrupt LNG supplies coming out of Qatar and destined for Europe. The South Pars field is a 3,700 square kilometre area of the world’s largest gas reservoir that holds at least 1,800 trillion cubic feet of gas and at least 50 billion barrels of natural gas condensates, with the remaining 6,000 square kilometre North Field site belonging to Qatar. This takes on even broader geopolitical importance, given the ongoing interest of Russian and Iranian sponsor, China, in the perennially-controversial Phase 11 of the South Pars gas site.

    Gazprom’s focus on expanding Iran’s LNG capabilities comes at exactly the time when dramatically increasing LNG supplies is vital for European states to compensate for shortfalls in gas supplies resulting from bans on Russian gas imports. It is plainly identifiable as a tried-and-tested core KGB strategy that relies on a combination of gradually increasing pressure on an enemy and then just waiting for as long as it takes for him to give up as often being an excellent way of achieving victory. The Kremlin knows that from the very start of talk about banning gas imports from Russia, Germany – the de facto leader of the European Union (EU) and its executive branch, the European Commission (EC) – did not want to cut itself off from Russian gas imports. Indeed, Germany’s response for some time after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February appeared much less concerned with halting oil and gas imports from Russia and much more concerned with working out how best to continue to pay for them so that Russia would not stop them due to lack of payment. This followed the 31 March decree signed by Putin that required EU buyers to pay in roubles for Russian gas via a new currency conversion mechanism or risk having supplies suspended. Then, in a directive circulated to all EU member states on 21 April, the EC said that: “It appears possible [to pay for Russian gas after the adoption of the new decree without being in conflict with EU law].” The EC added: “EU companies can ask their Russian counterparts to fulfil their contractual obligations in the same manner as before the adoption of the decree, i.e. by depositing the due amount in euros or dollars.” The EC also stated that existing EU sanctions against Russia do not prohibit engagement with Gazprom or Gazprombank, beyond the refinancing prohibitions relating to the bank. “Likewise, they do not prohibit opening an account with Gazprombank, [although] such engagement or account should not lead to the violation of other prohibitions.”

    It should be remembered that Germany’s extreme unwillingness to play any part in a European ban on imports of Russian energy, particularly gas, occurred even before the reality hit home of precisely how such a ban would cripple its economic growth and impact voters during the winter months, which are now fast approaching. Inflation across European Union states is rising sharply – averaging 8.6 percent across the Union – whilst economic growth was just 0.6 percent quarter-on-quarter (q-o-q) in the first quarter of this year, with only one month of that period reflecting conditions after Russia invaded Ukraine. In Germany – for so long a global and EU economic powerhouse, driven for years by the effective devaluation of its mighty Deutschmark into the much less mighty euro – economic growth in Q1 was just 0.2 percent q-o-q, and in the previous quarter the country had seen a very rare contraction, of minus 0.3 percent q-o-q. Despite this anaemic growth rate, spiraling inflation prompted the European Central Bank (ECB) to raise interest rates across the Union for the first time in 11 years last week, thus choking off prospects for economic growth further. There have also been warnings in Germany, from local authorities, of the need for households and businesses to cut energy usage going into the winter, and the EU’s proposal that member countries cut gas use by 15 percent to prepare for possible supply cuts from Russia saw fierce opposition last week from at least 12 of the 27 member states. On the other side of the coin, Russia is earning more from energy exports now than it was before it invaded Ukraine, the rouble is at an eight-year high, and Moscow’s exports of gas account for only two percent per cent of Russia’s GDP. In short, Russia can afford to wait but the EU cannot. 

    By creating a counterpoint to Qatari LNG supplies, then, and by also creating the very real prospect of disrupting them at source or in transit, as Russia or one of its proxies could easily do, the Kremlin is looking to turn the screw a little further. A happy adjunct of Russia’s plan to finally unleash the massive LNG potential of Iran – after all, Iran has the second largest gas reserves in the world, after Russia, and plans have been in place for it to exploit this for years – is that it also energises the debate about the desirability of bringing Iran back into the fold of world diplomacy by resuscitating a version of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA or, colloquially, ‘the nuclear deal’). Germany (the ‘+1’ in the ‘P5+1’ group of nations who agreed the original JCPOA, along with Russia and China, and France, the UK, and the U.S.) was never in favour of annulling the deal, and nor was France, with Russia and China also, of course, vehemently against the idea of cancelling it. As analysed in depth in my new book on the global oil markets, by seeking to drive another wedge between the de facto leader of the EU – Germany – and the U.S., Russia’s real goal is to add further pressure in its 70-year attempts to destroy the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), which Putin personally holds responsible for collapse in 1991 of the USSR. Putin stated in 2005 that: “The collapse of the Soviet Union was the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the century. For the Russian people, it became a real drama. Tens of millions of our citizens and countrymen found themselves outside Russian territory. The epidemic of disintegration also spread to Russia itself.’ It is this idea, above all else, that prompted him to order Russia to invade Ukraine in February. 

    For Putin, then, as also analysed in depth in my new book on the global oil markets, Russia’s oil and gas resources have always been a key mechanism through which Russia can: firstly, keep the energy-needy Former Soviet Union (FSU) states now in the EU firmly in line; secondly, ensure that the principal EU states (especially Germany) do not seek to interfere too much in any of Russia’s dealings with the remaining non-EU countries; thirdly, leverage, whenever and wherever possible existing disagreements between the EU and the U.S. to critically undermine the core NATO doctrine of ‘collective defence’ against attack; and fourthly, use the prospect of given or withheld energy supplies to project its power into ‘chaotic states’ – Russia, will, where possible and when it is in its interests, create the chaos first and then project its own power into that destabilised and unfocused state.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/26/2022 – 18:10

  • 'China Wins' If Pelosi Doesn't Go To Taiwan: McConnell
    ‘China Wins’ If Pelosi Doesn’t Go To Taiwan: McConnell

    Nancy Pelosi has painted herself into quite the corner regarding her upcoming trip to Taiwan.

    If she cancels the trip over Beijing’s objections, she’ll have “handed China sort of a victory of sorts,” according to a Tuesday statement by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

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    This comes as Biden administration officials bristle over growing tensions between Beijing and Taipei – telling the The New York Times they’re worried that China could move militarily against the island territory in as little as one-and-a-half years.

    This might come, the report notes, by China “trying to cut off access to all or part of the Taiwan Strait, through which U.S. naval ships regularly pass.” Admin officials are further described as fearful and anxious that if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi goes through with a proposed trip to Taiwan in August, it could spark miscalculation or conflict leading to a full-blown crisis.

    Source: White House image

    Chinese state media has been pushing a “military response” should Pelosi fly to Taipei next month, though official statements out of the foreign ministry have stopped short of being this specific, but have threatened the slightly more vague “forceful measures” if she follows through with it.

    The timing is also sensitive given Chinese domestic politics, as the Times underscores, “U.S. officials see a greater risk of conflict and miscalculation over Ms. Pelosi’s trip as President Xi Jinping of China and other Communist Party leaders prepare in the coming weeks for an important political meeting in which Mr. Xi is expected to extend his rule.”

    Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, who advises the US administration on Taiwan-related issues, said that “one school of thought is that the lesson is ‘go early and go strong’ before there is time to strengthen Taiwan’s defenses” – in reference to parallels of the Ukraine crisis.

    Coons added: “And we may be heading to an earlier confrontation — more a squeeze than an invasion — than we thought.”

    Offering a US military perspective chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley last week warned of “significantly more and noticeably more aggressive” behavior by the Chinese PLA military in the Asia-Pacific region. And on Tuesday, the US military said:

    ONLY MATTER OF TIME BEFORE MAJOR INCIDENT OR ACCIDENT IF CHINA CONTINUES IRRESPONSIBLE BEHAVIOR IN SEA, AIR- PENTAGON OFFICIAL

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    Though Biden days ago said that the Pentagon didn’t think a Pelosi trip to Taiwan was “a good idea” at this time, the White House kept mum when pressed on the issue in a Monday briefing:

    “The administration routinely provides members of Congress with information and context for potential travel, including geopolitical and security considerations,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, without responding directly to Pelosi’s possible plans. “Members of Congress will make their own decisions.”

    Ironically, as we noted earlier, Pelosi appears to be receiving most vocal support from Republican China hawks, with the latest being Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse. “Speaker Pelosi should go to Taiwan and President Biden should make it abundantly clear to Chairman Xi that there’s not a damn thing the Chinese Communist Party can do about it,” he said, weighing in on the trip. “No more feebleness and self-deterrence,” he emphasized.

    As Patrick Buchannan notes…

    If Pelosi postpones or cancels the visit, it will be seen as a U.S. climb-down in the face of Chinese indignation and protest, and an affront to our friends in Taiwan.

    Around the Asia-Pacific rim, the word will be, “The Americans, faced with China’s firmness, backed down.”

    But if the visit goes forward, China is publicly committed to respond. Either way, relations between our countries will likely suffer, and perhaps seriously, if the Chinese opt for a military response to a Pelosi visit.

    However this collision plays out, the U.S. is paying the price for having adopted, decades ago, a policy of building up China in the hope and expectation that Beijing would evolve into a benign and friendly rival and competitor of the United States.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/26/2022 – 17:50

  • Ron Paul: Ugly COVID Lies
    Ron Paul: Ugly COVID Lies

    Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

    After two years of unprecedented government tyranny in the name of fighting a virus, the prime instigators of this infamy are walking free, writing books, and openly pretending they never said the things they clearly said over and over.

    Take Trump’s White House Covid response coordinator Deborah Birx, for example. She was, as the Brownstone Institute’s Jeffrey Tucker points out in a recent article, the principal architect of the disastrous “lockdown” policy that destroyed more lives than Covid itself. Birx knew that locking a country down in response to a virus was a radical move that would never be endorsed.

    So, as she admits in her new book, she lied about it.

    She sold the White House on the out-of-thin-air “fifteen days to slow the spread” all the while knowing there was no evidence it would do any such thing. As she wrote in her new book, Silent Invasion, “I didn’t have the numbers in front of me yet to make the case for extending it longer, but I had two weeks to get them.”

    She was playing for time with no evidence. As it turns out, she was also destroying the lives of millions of Americans. The hysteria she created led to countless businesses destroyed, countless suicides, major depressions, drug and alcohol addictions. It led to countless deaths due to delays in treatment for other diseases. It may turn out to be the most deadly mistake in medical history.

    As she revealed in her book, she actually wanted to isolate every single person in the United States! Writing about how many people would be allowed to gather, she said: “If I pushed for zero (which was actually what I wanted and what was required), this would have been interpreted as a ‘lockdown’—the perception we were all working so hard to avoid.”

    She wanted to prevent even two people from meeting. How is it possible that someone like this came to gain so much power over our lives? One virus and we suddenly become Communist China?

    Last week in a Fox News interview she again revealed the extent of her treachery. After months of relentlessly demanding that all Americans get the Covid shots, she revealed that the “vaccines” were not vaccines at all!

    “I knew these vaccines were not going to protect against infection,” she told Fox.

    “And I think we overplayed the vaccines. And it made people then worry that it’s not going to protect against severe disease and hospitalization.”

    So when did she know this?

    Did she know it when she told ABC in late 2020 that “this is one of the most highly-effective vaccines we have in our infectious disease arsenal. And so that’s why I’m very enthusiastic about the vaccine”?

    If she knew all along that the “vaccines” were not vaccines, why didn’t she tell us? Because, as she admits in her book, she believes it’s just fine to lie to people in order to get them to do what she wants.

    She admits that she employed “subterfuge” against her boss – President Donald Trump – to implement Covid policies he opposed. So it should be no surprise that she lied to the American people about the efficacy of the Covid shots.

    The big question now, after what appears to be a tsunami of vaccine-related injuries, is will anyone be forced to pay for the lies and subterfuge? Will anyone be held to account for the lives lost for the arrogance of the Birxes and Faucis of the world?

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/26/2022 – 17:30

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