Apr 28

Today’s News 28th April 2021

  • "Exit NATO!" Turks Hold Anti-American Protest Outside Incirlik Base Over Armenian Genocide Decision
    “Exit NATO!” Turks Hold Anti-American Protest Outside Incirlik Base Over Armenian Genocide Decision

    Shortly following Joe Biden’s controversial Armenian Genocide statement on Saturday where he became the first US president to shift policy in terms of Washington official recognition of the WWI-era massacre of over one million Armenians in Asia Minor, the US Embassy in Ankara announced the closure of all American diplomatic facilities for Monday and Tuesday as a security precaution. 

    As expected, anti-American protests have indeed popped up at various locations where US personnel are stationed, most notably including outside Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. US troops and intelligence operatives have long been housed at the base in southern Turkey, and it was a major hub out of which anti-Assad military missions in were launched over the past many years. A group of protesters were seen and heard at the gates of Incirlik base loudly denouncing the “lie” of Armenian genocide while telling the Americans to “go home!” and “get out of Turkey!”

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

    Such a spectacle outside the major NATO base in Turkey is a rare one.

    According to a description of the demonstration by Military.com:

    A few dozen protestors held banners and chanted slogans. “Genocide is a lie, it’s an American plan,” they said. Demonstrators also demanded an end to the American military’s use of Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey, shouting: “American soldiers, get out of Turkey!”

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

    Other international reports noted that some of the demonstrators carried signs that urged Turkey to “exit NATO”…

    The protest was organized by a  local wing of the Youth Union of Turkey (TGB), who call Joe Biden’s recognition of the genocide “illegal and legally void”.

    The demonstrators are carrying Turkish flags and banners saying “exit NATO – the enemy of Ataturk”, “Close Incirlik for the US in response to lies about genocide”, and “No to NATO. This is our land!”

    Ironically much of the American public would only be too happy to see Turkey depart NATO.

    Scene’s from Monday’s protest at Incirlik Air Base:

    Currently an advisory posted to the US Embassy in Turkey’s website tells Americans to avoid these ongoing protests or any areas around US government facilities in the country.

    “U.S. citizens are advised to avoid the areas around U.S. government buildings, and exercise heightened caution in locations where Americans or foreigners may gather,” it says.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 04/28/2021 – 02:45

  • The Ukraine Crisis Can Be An Opportunity
    The Ukraine Crisis Can Be An Opportunity

    Authored by Douglas Macgregor via AmericanConservative.com,

    The trouble with leading a great power is that, from time to time, the president is obliged to act like the leader of a great power. If ever there was a time for sound presidential leadership, it’s now. With no appreciation for the endlessly renewable force of national self-preservation that animates Moscow’s maneuvers in Ukraine, President Biden’s insulting remarks and hostile sanctions have plunged the United States into a deeper, more dangerous confrontation with Russia in Ukraine, a region of limited strategic interest to the United States.

    Putin’s directive to return most of his troops to garrison while leaving their weapon systems and equipment in place along the Ukrainian border should be viewed in Washington as an opportunity to create a measure of stability in U.S.-Russian relations that’s been missing for years. It’s not enough to hurl insults and simply restate what the Biden administration is against. It’s time to explore what kind of alternative to the fragile and dangerous status quo in Ukraine that Washington and Moscow can both support.

    Washington did a deplorable job of formulating strategic aims in the Middle East and Afghanistan that justified the sacrifice of American blood and treasure. The president cannot seize the strategic initiative now if Washington continues to react impetuously and emotionally to real or imaginary threats to U.S. and allied interests.

    Winston Churchill insisted that most strategic problems can be solved “if they are related to some central design.” Central design implies the guiding influence of strategy. Strategy is not an ideological wish list. Strategy involves an understanding of strategic interests; in this case, grasping the divergence of American and Russian interests. Consider five points.

    First, an analogy may be instructive for Americans: Who rules in Kiev and governs Ukraine is as important to Moscow as events in Mexico are to Washington. It is not enough to admit that expanding NATO eastward to include Ukrainian membership was an unforced error. President Biden must acknowledge that since the end of the Cold War, the geo-strategic environment has changed profoundly. The growth in economic and military strength in Beijing and Moscow gives these nations weight, heretofore unrecognized by Washington, D.C., in the post-Cold War unipolar system.

    Second, Putin is well aware that the southeastern portion (including Odessa) of Ukraine is heavily Russian in language, culture, and political orientation. If this reality is ignored yet again in favor of more wishful thinking about the true character of Ukraine, in a future crisis, the southeastern areas are likely to be rapidly seized and occupied by Russian military power with little difficulty. The probability of U.S. and allied forces throwing Russian forces out is low. Moscow knows from its experience with Crimea that possession is indeed nine-tenths of the law.

    However, Putin is equally aware that for Moscow military action is an option, but hardly the first or even second option. Russian action in Ukraine would exact a serious cost from Moscow in trade sanctions and international standing. Beijing intervened to support the Russian economy once (in 2015), but it is not clear that Beijing would do so again if Russia’s economy faltered under these conditions. These points mean the opportunity for a negotiated settlement with Moscow should not be ignored.

    Third, the Biden administration must work with Moscow and Beijing to identify new rules of engagement that adapt American foreign policy to periodic competition between Great Powers. Russia (and China) advocates for the “principle of noninterference” in the affairs of other states. It’s time for Washington to explore the utility of this approach as a strategic hedge against future potential crises. It’s painfully obvious that Washington’s “Tomahawk Diplomacy”—the act of killing citizens with cruise missiles in weaker, largely defenseless countries when their governments refuse to accommodate American demands—is not viable against Russia or China, let alone against any number of states with rapidly growing military power.

    Fourth, the president must acknowledge that in the new, multi-polar international environment Washington bears an unequal and unsustainable financial burden for the defense of Europe. Acutely sensitive to the American electorate’s demands for peace and prosperity, Eisenhower foresaw the danger that Washington could be ensnared in conflicts on behalf of smaller states for which Americans did not want to fight. Eisenhower’s determination to avoid war and reduce the costs of global military commitments was the rationale for Austrian neutrality in 1955. It is also why Eisenhower urged neutrality for other, smaller European states.

    Finally, President Biden must devise a new national strategy that ensures its political goals are congruent with U.S. military capabilities and fiscal realities. Too many hotheads in the Senate and House are ready to commit American military power without first soberly assessing the concrete interests and the costs of such action. President John F. Kennedy thrilled his supporters with his assertion that Americans should “meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” It was great rhetoric, but it put the nation on the road to disaster in Vietnam. The United States does not have the resources or the need to export its political ideas at gunpoint.

    Arnold J. Toynbee argued that great empires die by suicide, not murder. If the United States is to avoid this outcome, Washington must put an end to the strategic follies of the last 20 years, and put American foreign policy back on a credible foundation. Ukraine is a good place to start.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 04/28/2021 – 02:00

  • The Global Deep State: A New World Order Brought To You By COVID-19
    The Global Deep State: A New World Order Brought To You By COVID-19

    Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “A psychotic world we live in. The madmen are in power.”

    – Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle

    For good or bad, COVID-19 has changed the way we navigate the world.

    It is also redrawing the boundaries of our world (and our freedoms) and altering the playing field faster than we can keep up.

    Owing in large part to the U.S. government’s deep-seated and, in many cases, top-secret alliances with foreign nations and global corporations, it has become increasingly obvious that we have entered into a new world order—a global world order—made up of international government agencies and corporations.

    This powerful international cabal, let’s call it the Global Deep State, is just as real as the corporatized, militarized, industrialized American Deep State, and it poses just as great a threat to our rights as individuals under the U.S. Constitution, if not greater.

    We’ve been inching closer to this global world order for the past several decades, but COVID-19, which has seen governmental and corporate interests become even more closely intertwined, has shifted this transformation into high gear.

    Fascism has become a global menace.

    It remains unclear whether the American Deep State (“a national-security apparatus that holds sway even over the elected leaders notionally in charge of it”) answers to the Global Deep State, or whether the Global Deep State merely empowers the American Deep State. However, there is no denying the extent to which they are intricately and symbiotically enmeshed and interlocked.

    Consider the extent to which our lives and liberties are impacted by this international convergence of governmental and profit-driven corporate interests in the surveillance state, the military industrial complex, the private prison industry, the intelligence sector, the security sector, the technology sector, the telecommunications sector, the transportation sector, the pharmaceutical industry and, most recently, by the pharmaceutical-health sector.

    All of these sectors are dominated by mega-corporations operating on a global scale and working through government channels to increase their profit margins. The profit-driven policies of these global corporate giants influence everything from legislative policies to economics to environmental issues to medical care

    Global Disease

    The COVID-19 pandemic has propelled us into a whole new global frontier. Those hoping to navigate this interconnected and highly technological world of contact tracing, vaccine passports and digital passes will find themselves grappling with issues that touch on deep-seated moral, political, religious and personal questions for which there may be no clear-cut answers.

    We are about to find our ability to access, engage and move about in the world dependent on which camp we fall into: those who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 and those who have not.

    “It is the latest status symbol. Flash it at the people, and you can get access to concerts, sports arenas or long-forbidden restaurant tables. Some day, it may even help you cross a border without having to quarantine,” writes Heather Murphy for the New York Times.

    “The new platinum card of the Covid age is the vaccine certificate.”

    This is what M.I.T. professor Ramesh Raskar refers to as the new “currency for health,” an apt moniker given the potentially lucrative role that Big Business (Big Pharma and Big Tech, especially) will play in establishing this pay-to-play marketplace. The airline industry has been working on a Travel Pass. IBM is developing a Digital Health Pass. And the U.S. government has been all-too-happy to allow the corporate sector to take the lead.

    Global Surveillance

    Spearheaded by the National Security Agency (NSA), which has shown itself to care little for constitutional limits or privacy, the surveillance state has come to dominate our government and our lives.

    Yet the government does not operate alone. It cannot. It requires an accomplice.

    Thus, the increasingly complex security needs of our massive federal government, especially in the areas of defense, surveillance and data management, have been met within the corporate sector, which has shown itself to be a powerful ally that both depends on and feeds the growth of governmental bureaucracy.

    Take AT&T, for instance. Through its vast telecommunications network that crisscrosses the globe, AT&T provides the U.S. government with the complex infrastructure it needs for its mass surveillance programs. According to The Intercept:

    “The NSA considers AT&T to be one of its most trusted partners and has lauded the company’s ‘extreme willingness to help.’ It is a collaboration that dates back decades. Little known, however, is that its scope is not restricted to AT&T’s customers. According to the NSA’s documents, it values AT&T not only because it ‘has access to information that transits the nation,’ but also because it maintains unique relationships with other phone and internet providers. The NSA exploits these relationships for surveillance purposes, commandeering AT&T’s massive infrastructure and using it as a platform to covertly tap into communications processed by other companies.”

    Now magnify what the U.S. government is doing through AT&T on a global scale, and you have the “14 Eyes Program,” also referred to as the “SIGINT Seniors.” This global spy agency is made up of members from around the world (United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Israel, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, India and all British Overseas Territories).

    Surveillance is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to these global alliances, however.

    Global War Profiteering

    War has become a huge money-making venture, and America, with its vast military empire and its incestuous relationship with a host of international defense contractors, is one of its biggest buyers and sellers.

    The American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its breadth and scope, one dedicated to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth. For example, while erecting a security surveillance state in the U.S., the military-industrial complex has perpetuated a worldwide military empire with American troops stationed in 177 countries (over 70% of the countries worldwide).

    Although the federal government obscures so much about its defense spending that accurate figures are difficult to procure, we do know that since 2001, the U.S. government has spent more than $1.8 trillion in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (that’s $8.3 million per hour). That doesn’t include wars and military exercises waged around the globe, which are expected to push the total bill upwards of $12 trillion by 2053.

    The illicit merger of the global armaments industry and the Pentagon that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us against more than 50 years ago has come to represent perhaps the greatest threat to the nation’s fragile infrastructure today. America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $15 billion a month (or $20 million an hour)—and that’s just what the government spends on foreign wars. That does not include the cost of maintaining and staffing the 1000-plus U.S. military bases spread around the globe.

    Incredibly, although the U.S. constitutes only 5% of the world’s population, America boasts almost 50% of the world’s total military expenditure,  spending more on the military than the next 19 biggest spending nations combined. In fact, the Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety. There’s a good reason why “bloated,” “corrupt” and “inefficient” are among the words most commonly applied to the government, especially the Department of Defense and its contractors. Price gouging has become an accepted form of corruption within the American military empire.

    It’s not just the American economy that is being gouged, unfortunately.

    Driven by a greedy defense sector, the American homeland has been transformed into a battlefield with militarized police and weapons better suited to a war zone. President Biden, marching in lockstep with his predecessors, has continued to expand America’s military empire abroad and domestically in a clear bid to pander to the powerful money interests (military, corporate and security) that run the Deep State and hold the government in its clutches.

    Global Policing

    Glance at pictures of international police forces and you will have a hard time distinguishing between American police and those belonging to other nations. There’s a reason they all look alike, garbed in the militarized, weaponized uniform of a standing army.

    There’s a reason why they act alike, too, and speak a common language of force: they belong to a global police force.

    For example, Israel—one of America’s closest international allies and one of the primary yearly recipients of more than $3 billion in U.S. foreign military aid—has been at the forefront of a little-publicized exchange program aimed at training American police to act as occupying forces in their communities. As The Intercept sums it up, American police are “essentially taking lessons from agencies that enforce military rule rather than civil law.”

    This idea of global policing is reinforced by the Strong Cities Network program, which trains local police agencies across America in how to identify, fight and prevent extremism, as well as address intolerance within their communities, using all of the resources at their disposal. The cities included in the global network include New York City, Atlanta, Denver, Minneapolis, Paris, London, Montreal, Beirut and Oslo.

    The objective is to prevent violent extremism by targeting its source: racism, bigotry, hatred, intolerance, etc. In other words, police—acting as extensions of the United Nations—will identify, monitor and deter individuals who exhibit, express or engage in anything that could be construed as extremist.

    Of course, the concern with the government’s anti-extremism program is that it will, in many cases, be utilized to render otherwise lawful, nonviolent activities as potentially extremist.

    Keep in mind that the government agencies involved in ferreting out American “extremists” will carry out their objectives—to identify and deter potential extremists—in concert with fusion centers (of which there are 78 nationwide, with partners in the private sector and globally), data collection agencies, behavioral scientists, corporations, social media, and community organizers and by relying on cutting-edge technology for surveillance, facial recognition, predictive policing, biometrics, and behavioral epigenetics (in which life experiences alter one’s genetic makeup).

    This is pre-crime on an ideological scale and it’s been a long time coming.

    Are you starting to get the picture now?

    On almost every front, whether it’s the war on drugs, or the sale of weapons, or regulating immigration, or establishing prisons, or advancing technology, or fighting a pandemic, if there is a profit to be made and power to be amassed, you can bet that the government and its global partners have already struck a deal that puts the American people on the losing end of the bargain.

    We’ve been losing our freedoms so incrementally for so long—sold to us in the name of national security and global peace, maintained by way of martial law disguised as law and order, and enforced by a standing army of militarized police and a political elite determined to maintain their powers at all costs—that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it all started going downhill, but we’re certainly on that downward trajectory now, and things are moving fast.

    The “government of the people, by the people, for the people” has perished.

    In its place is a shadow government—a corporatized, militarized, entrenched global bureaucracy—that is fully operational and running the country.

    Given the trajectory and dramatic expansion, globalization and merger of governmental and corporate powers, we’re not going to recognize this country 20 years from now.

    It’s taken less than a generation for our freedoms to be eroded and the Global Deep State’s structure to be erected, expanded and entrenched.

    Mark my words: the U.S. government will not save us from the chains of the Global Deep State.

    Now there are those who will tell you that any mention of a New World Order government—a power elite conspiring to rule the world—is the stuff of conspiracy theories.

    I am not one of those skeptics.

    I wholeheartedly believe that one should always mistrust those in power, take alarm at the first encroachment on one’s liberties, and establish powerful constitutional checks against government mischief and abuse.

    I can also attest to the fact that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

    I have studied enough of this country’s history—and world history—to know that governments (the U.S. government being no exception) are at times indistinguishable from the evil they claim to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of terrorism, torture, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.

    And I have lived long enough to see many so-called conspiracy theories turn into cold, hard fact.

    Remember, people used to scoff at the notion of a Deep State (a.k.a. Shadow Government). They used to doubt that fascism could ever take hold in America, and sneer at any suggestion that the United States was starting to resemble Nazi Germany in the years leading up to Hitler’s rise to power.

    As I detail in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we’re beginning to know better, aren’t we?

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 04/28/2021 – 00:00

  • Russia Is Putting Together An "Unfriendly Countries" Blacklist
    Russia Is Putting Together An “Unfriendly Countries” Blacklist

    Earlier this week Kremlin spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told national media that the Russian government is currently finalizing what it’s calling an “unfriendly countries” list and that the United States is likely to be at the top of it.

    It follows a recent decree singed by President Vladimir Putin which prevents listed country embassies from being able to hire Russian citizens to work at their diplomatic and consular missions. It’s common practice for foreign embassies to hire staff from the local host countries for certain functins..

    Zakharavo in a weekend interview had said this ‘naughty list’ was triggered ultimately by “another round of unfriendly actions by the US” – a reference to Biden’s latest sanctions on Kremlin officials and Russian companies for the SolarWinds hack and alleged election interference. 

    Russian media broadcast screenshot

    “What are those unfriendly states? The list is being compiled now,” she previously Rossiya 1 TV channel. “As you understand, and I can confirm it, the US is, obviously, present” she said while stopping short of naming other specific countries. 

    On Tuesday state media sources indicated the following are likely be included: 

    • United States
    • United Kingdom
    • Canada
    • Poland
    • Ukraine
    • Czech Republic
    • some Baltic states

    In all about ten countries are expected to be named on the ‘blacklist’. 

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

    Citing a prominent Russian daily newspaper, TASS describes: “A well-informed source told the newspaper that the US, Poland, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia may be blacklisted. An additional Izvestia source in the government added that the UK, Canada, Ukraine and Australia may also be included.” The same publication indicated the list has yet to finalized, however.

    Earlier this month a number of these countries already expelled Russian diplomats and officials, especially the US, also amid a continued tit-for-tat exchange of diplomatic expulsions between Moscow and eastern European countries. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/27/2021 – 23:40

  • White House Weighs Whether To Back "Open Vaccine" Push Opposed By Bill Gates, Big Pharma
    White House Weighs Whether To Back “Open Vaccine” Push Opposed By Bill Gates, Big Pharma

    As the latest wave of India’s COVID-19 outbreak metastasizes into a full-blown crisis, India and other developing economies are seizing the opportunity to push back against the Bill Gates-backed status quo that prioritizes the intellectual property rights of big pharma over access to plentiful and cheap vaccines in the developing world.

    Gates has continued to insist that the current approach is the best option for the developing world. But increasingly, it seems the governments of India, South Africa, Nigeria and other emerging powers disagree. And as a showdown looms at the WTO, Washington is being pressed to confront the obvious hypocrisy in backing Gates over the “open vaccine” movement.

    As more lawmakers speak out on the issue, support has grown along Biden’s left flank to push the president and his top trade rep to back a proposal at the WTO to issue a waiver on IP restrictions that would effectively allow countries to manufacture jabs independently, instead of being forced to purchase them from Pfizer, AstraZeneca and their competitors on the open market.

    Of course, Biden can’t move on this issue without the implicit support of big pharma, and in an attempt to try and curry support, Biden’s trade representative Katharine Tai, who has seemingly made the “open vaccine” issue a pet project, met with top executives from Pfizer, AstraZeneca and others to discuss the possibility of supporting an IP waiver.

    The talks come as members of the WTO are due to discuss a proposal by India and South Africa to waive certain provisions of the organization’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights during an upcoming meeting on April 30. So far, the US has blocked the resolution. But a growing chorus of Democratic lawmakers, civil society groups, and 60 former heads of state and 100 Nobel Prize winners have urged Biden to reconsider and instead back the waiver. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Monday said she had no updates on the issue.

    Katharine Tai

    Beyond talk about “increasing vaccine production”, it’s not exactly clear what Tai and her fellow executives discussed (though the waiver was reportedly part of the talks), Reuters reminds us that, earlier this month, Tai told a WTO meeting the gaping divide between developed and developing countries’ access to medicines was “completely unacceptable” and that the industry needed to make sacrifices in times of crisis.

    On Tuesday, Seattle’s City Council passed a resolution put forward by the mayor’s office urging Biden to lift the patent restrictions.

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

    Others on social media pointed to the administration’s obvious hypocrisy on the issue. Biden reportedly spoke with PM Narendra Modi directly this week and offered US assistance in helping battle the country’s COVID-19 crisis, however, as one social media user pointed out, the US keeps blocking India’s request for waiving Intellectual Property Rights related to COVID-19 drugs and vaccine raw materials, in the WTO.

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

    Behind the scences and with the blessing of Gates, the world’s de facto COVID-19 vaccine czar, the industry has escalated its lobbying efforts in Washington, warning that giving up the rights to such valuable US intellectual property would inevitably aid America’s foes, especially China and Russia.

    The question now is: how many lives is that worth, with emerging economies expected to wait years to receive access to abundant vaccines, while unused jabs pile up in the US.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/27/2021 – 23:20

  • Deflation Threat Looms As China Suffers First Population Decline Since 1949
    Deflation Threat Looms As China Suffers First Population Decline Since 1949

    China is battling not one but three vicious demons. The interconnected issues of insurmountable debts, deflation, and demographics threaten to sap the world’s future growth potential. 

    Fending off the 3 D’s: debts, deflation, and demographics requires the People’s Bank of China to slash borrowing costs and unleash an enormous amount of credit into the local economy to cover up the faltering demand that usually persists with demographic challenges.

    The question we should be asking is China really on the “rise,” as President Xi Jinping believes: “the East is rising and the West is declining” or if the coming demographic crisis derails Xi’s global takeover plans.

    Beijing desperately attempts to recover from its decades of disastrous ‘one-child policy,’ which officially ended in 2015 and was replaced by the current two-child policy.

    According to FT’s sources, the latest Chinese census data, which was completed in December and has yet to be publicly released (the issue is reportedly so sensitive that it won’t be released until many government agencies reach a consensus on the data and its consequences), is expected to show the country’s first population decline since records began in 1949.

    China’s total population is expected to print less than 1.4 billion, according to people familiar with the census report, and if it is reported, the peak in China’s population came five years earlier than the United Nations predicted.

    But, as Bloomberg notes, the trend is hardly surprising. China’s birth rate has been in decline for years and the introduction of the two-child policy in 2016 failed to make a dent. The number of newborns in 2019 fell to 14.65 million, a decrease of 580,000 from the year before. To cope with the shrinking population, a PBOC study last month urged a drastic overhaul of the policy to encourage “three or more” children per household. It called for a total lifting of any restrictions to “fully liberalize and encourage childbirth” to reverse the current four-year straight decline in births nationwide. 

    A key section of the 22-page document spells out:

    “In order to achieve the long-term goals in 2035, China should fully liberalize and encourage childbirth, and sweep off difficulties (women face) during pregnancy, childbirth, and kindergarten and school enrollment by all means (possible),” the four central bank researchers wrote in the English language abstract. 

    But Mark Williams, an economist at Capital Economics, said the low birth rate has deep-rooted demographic and social causes that are difficult to reverse. After all, the decline in the fertility rate started before the one-child policy was introduced in the late 1970s, and followed a similar pattern in other Asian countries.

    In any event, as the official China Daily stated in December, population “trends are irreversible.”

    The PBoC has a big dilemma on its hands. China today is drawing parallels between Japan in the late 1980s – just before its “lost decade,” where the country experienced a decade of secular stagnation. 

    Firstly, demographics – if economic growth is a function of the number of workers and consumers in the economy and technological productivity, then a declining population in China would drag on the global economy. 

    China’s next path could be down the dark road of deflation, similar to Japan, where the typical response to deteriorating demographics is a continued build-up in private debt, leading to soaring public debt.

    The main lesson from Japan is that high debt levels result in structurally weak growth and anemic inflation. This would suggest the latest spurt of inflation rippling through the world is not sustainable. Future growth rates in China are expected to be much lower than what was seen pre-COVID. 

    Souring demographics would mean China’s total social financing and M2 would need to increase to fill in the cracks of faltering demand as the population declines. According to Bloomberg’s Ye Xie, a slowdown in credit growth could “start to shrink by July or August just as the Fed may lay the groundwork for its own tapering.” This would signal deflation is ahead. 

    Besides the 3 D’s: debts, deflation, and demographics, a population decline will also dent China’s global image. 

    Huang Wenzheng, a fellow at the Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing-based think-tank, said, “census results will have a huge impact on how the Chinese people see their country and how various government departments work.” 

    Wenzheng continued: “They need to be handled very carefully.”

    The Chinese take great pride in being part of the world’s most populous state, but the narrative could begin to shift when the data is released. 

    Wenzheng said the possibility of the first population decline in seven decades could push forward China’s looming demographic crisis: 

    “The pace and scale of China’s demographic crisis are faster and bigger than we imagined,” he said.

    “That could have a disastrous impact on the country.”

    A shrinking population could have profound economic implications.

    First, by Williams’s calculation, the demographic headwind means China may never be able to catch up with the U.S. as the world’s largest economy.

    Secondly, an older population would put extra strain on the underfunded pension system.

    A separate PBOC report last month estimated that a shrinking labor force is likely to lower China’s potential GDP growth to 5.1% by 2025, from an expected 5.7% this year. It’s perhaps not a coincidence that China’s 10-year bond yields peaked in 2013, the same year that the country’s working-age population started to fall.

    Here’s a look at potential GDP growth and the three-year average of 10-year yields.

    A ‘deflationary’ mindset and Japanification are the words that come to mind.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/27/2021 – 23:00

  • 'Mom And Pop' Landlords Dying On The Vine As Un-Evictable Tenants Enjoy Pandemic Protections
    ‘Mom And Pop’ Landlords Dying On The Vine As Un-Evictable Tenants Enjoy Pandemic Protections

    As millions of renters across America continue to benefit from sweeping protections against eviction during the COVID-19 pandemic, their landlords haven’t been so fortunate.

    The three-unit rental, left, that landlord Joaquin Villanueva owns in Boston.
    Photographer: Harry Scales/Bloomberg

    According to Bloomberg, nearly $47 billion in rent relief from the Biden Administration has been slow to materialize, forcing “mom-and-pop” landlords into financial hardship – or forced to sell to wealthy investors. Bloomberg, perhaps to invoke sympathy for the landlord class, focused on the impact felt by minority landlords.

    Like their tenants, these landlords are more likely to be nonwhite or to be immigrants using real estate for their economic foothold. Now, mortgage, maintenance and tax bills are piling up, putting landlords in danger of losing their buildings or being forced to sell to wealthier investors hunting for distressed deals.

    …

    The tens of billions of dollars that Congress allocated for rent relief — starting in December and then with a second allotment in March — was supposed to help by covering back rent and unpaid utility bills. But the rollout has been moving at the speed of bureaucracy, which varies from state to state. –Bloomberg

    In one example, airport janitor Joaquin Villanueva has had to take out a home-equity loan to make ends meet while maintaining a three-unit rental house in East Boston. One of his tenants is eight months behind on rent, while another – an unemployed restaurant dish washer, owes him $5,000.

    Joaquin Villanueva in Boston, on April 24. Photographer: Harry Scales/Bloomberg

    “I don’t want to lose my house so I’m doing whatever I have to do,” said Villanueva – an El Salvadorian immigrant who works at Logan International Airport, adding “I’m not rich like a Donald Trump.”

    Another distressed landlord, Jamaican-America Lincoln Eccles, owns a 14-unit building in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York. Eccles says investors have been flooding him with unsolicited phone calls, texts and emails. He says that selling would bring much-needed relief, as he’s now a year behind on taxes and gas bills. Eccles says he’d rather keep the building acquired by his immigrant father in order to pass it down to his first son, born this month.

    Unfortunately for Eccles, “One tenant owes more than $40,000 in back rent, five units are empty and Eccles can’t afford to replace or even fix a boiler that broke down again in March. The rent relief program will help only so much. He’s unlikely to get government grants to cover losses from a tenant who left in November owing $96,000.”

    According to RealtyTrac Executive VP Rick Sharga, “The fact that we’re over a year into the pandemic really puts a lot of these landlords at risk.”

    That said, not much is known about how many landlords themselves are in desperate situations, Bloomberg notes, however “it doesn’t take much to fall behind if income stops coming from one tenant in a small building. With each passing month, the problems get bigger and harder to solve.”

    So what now?

    It’s going to be an ordeal either way. In order to remedy shortfalls in rent, both renters and landlords will need to cooperate for the landlord’s benefit – with local governments often requiring long, detailed applications signed by both parties in order to prevent fraud.

    Meanwhile, many landlords don’t qualify for federal COVID-19 mortgage forbearance because less than a third have mortgages backed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac or another federal agency, while local governments can’t afford to let landlords pause property tax payments – particularly in cities which have suffered economic devastation due to the pandemic.

    “The long-term concern here, over the course of a few years, is that a growing share of mom and pop landlords will be forced to sell and rents will go up,” said Rutgers assistant professor of sociology who researches housing inequality. “There’s a lot of private equity interest and a real possibility of growing consolidation.”

    From the government side, the situation is a quagmire.

    Even as the pace of payments pick up, other challenges are looming. The way Congress allocated the money gave an outsize share to smaller states with low renter populations.

    New York’s $2.4 billion portion of the funds, for instance, is expected to cover less than 80% of back rent, utilities and late fees owed in the state as of March, according to estimates from Moody’s Analytics. In Illinois, it’s just 45%. Vermont, however, gets a roughly $350 million allocation, enough to pay for the state’s need more than nine times over.

    While Congress provided the Treasury Department with authority to fix any mismatch in funding, the reallocation can’t happen for several more months. -Bloomberg

    “Standing up a brand new program like this that’s very high-touch and has to get out ASAP is really tough,” said Stockton Williams, executive director of the National Council of State Housing Agencies, who added that while some states – including Alaska, Kentucky and Virginia have been quick to distribute relief, California and Texas – states with large allocations – have been slow to respond but are picking up speed.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/27/2021 – 22:40

  • "F**k The Police" Proclaims 32-Year-OId Livestreamer Before Killing Cop In 2AM Drunken Hit-And-Run
    “F**k The Police” Proclaims 32-Year-OId Livestreamer Before Killing Cop In 2AM Drunken Hit-And-Run

    A New York woman was arrested early Tuesday morning after striking and killing a veteran police officer in a New York City hit-and-run, according to the Daily Mail.

    In a nearly two-hour Facebook Live stream following the trial of ex-cop Derek Chauvin, 32-year-old Jessica Beauvais could be seen taking shots of vodka and saying “fuck the police” just hours before plowing into 43-year-old NYPD Highway Officer Anastasios Tsakos, 43, on the Long Island Expressway around 2am Tuesday morning while driving her Volkswagen on a suspended license.

    Beauvais posted a 1 hour and 51 minute livestream on her Facebook page Monday evening. At one point, she washes down the contents of a red shot glass (above)

    Taskos was redirecting traffic from a fatal car Queens accident at the time when Beauvais allegedly aimed for Taskos and struck him head on – killing the married father of a three-year-old son and six-year-old daughter. The 14-year veteran of the NYPD was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.

    “We stand here this morning reminded once again, in law enforcement, there is no such thing as a routine job,” said NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea, adding “We stand here devastated and trying to pick up the pieces of what is a shattered home and a shattered NYPD family.”

    NYPD officer Anastasios Tsakos

    Following the accident, Beauvais reportedly sped off with a ‘completely shattered’ windshield before she was arrested by police.

    Jessica Beauvais, 32, faces vehicular manslaughter charges after allegedly striking NYPD police officer with her car on the Long island Expressway on Tuesday morning

    Beauvais, who says she has a 13-year-old son in the video, offered a tearful apology for Tsakos’ death as she was led out of the NYPD’s 107th Precinct in handcuffs on Tuesday afternoon. ‘I’m sorry that I hit him and that he’s dead,’ she sobbed. 

    She is set to be arraigned on two counts of vehicular manslaughter, and reckless endangerment, leaving an accident resulting in death, fleeing an officer in a motor vehicle, and other charges, including driving while intoxicated. –Daily Mail

    “This week we are going to talk about the ignorance that was the Derek Chauvin trial – or the ignorance that is essentially just is this f**ing justice system,” Beauvais said at the beginning of her 1 hour 51 minute Facebook Live video as part of her Face the Reality radio show. “Police say an oath and in that oath they say an oath that they are not supposed to be afraid of that position and that is literally in the rules.”

    Beauvais is wearing the same clothes in the footage (left) as she was seen in both at the time of the crash (center her arrest) and when she was being led out of the NYPD’s 107th Precinct (right) 

    She then proceeded to say that police officers are “signing up for potential death like in the army,” and that it’s “part of the job” that people “might try to fucking kill you.”

    After which she killed a police officer, allegedly of course.

    “‘Like (hip hop group) NWA say about the police – if you’re going to kill me, at least I get to take someone with me,” she told her audience, adding “I’m one of those people. If I’m going to go, someone is coming.”

    Read the rest of the report here.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/27/2021 – 22:20

  • "Steady As She Goes": Why Powell Won't Rock The Boat Tomorrow
    “Steady As She Goes”: Why Powell Won’t Rock The Boat Tomorrow

    Be Steve Englander, head global G10 FX at Standard Chartered

    The Fed put a lot of effort after the March FOMC meeting into convincing bond investors that it was not thinking of changing its view of low inflation and low policy rates through 2023. There is increased optimism but not additional economic data since, so we think the Fed will try and keep the message as unchanged as possible. The lack of bond yield reaction to sharp data surprises has led investors to be cautious on the immediate upside to bond yields. Real yields are almost 20bps lower than at the March FOMC (Figure 1). There is no real appetite to fight the Fed now and the Fed has little incentive to rock this boat just yet.

    This makes it hard for the FOMC to convey a dovish message beyond what the market has absorbed already. The risk is that normally innocuous statements like ‘the next few months may give us more information on the strength of the recovery’ could be seen as signalling an early consideration of tapering or as defining substantial progress. While some market participants think the FOMC may intentionally convey a slightly more hawkish stance, we think the risk is that an inadvertent comment scares the market. There seems little upside in trying to nuance bond prices and reigniting premature tightening fears.

    Yields may not immediately spike higher, but bond prices could be increasingly vulnerable if near-term data continue to surprise to the upside. We think the 10Y UST will most likely trade in a 1.50-1.75% range near-term but see the risks as skewed towards travelling towards the top of that range if the Fed and data-flow play out as we expect. (see Early Indications Point To 1.5 Million Jobs Number).

    The one dovish signal that Powell could convey is that the Fed would measure its success by how few people were left without work once job creation began to level off, not how many jobs were created in the early stage of reopening. This would mean that the Fed would be looking at late Q3 and early Q4 data to decide whether sufficient progress has occurred.

    We doubt Powell is ready to provide a full definition of ‘sufficient progress’ that would encourage a Taylor rule type of market reaction. On the whole we think he will convey that the FOMC is not yet thinking about shifting its dovish stance – if March was too early, then April with a few added data points is unlikely to shift the dovish stance. This is an instance where the Fed wants to dampen investors’ forward-looking instincts.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/27/2021 – 22:00

  • European Investment Bank Issues €100 Million In Digital Bonds Using Ethereum
    European Investment Bank Issues €100 Million In Digital Bonds Using Ethereum

    The European Investment Bank will use blockchain technology to issue two-year digital bonds, the latest sign of growing mainstream adoption for crypto only this time Ethereum is taking the spotlight courtesy of the EIB.

    In an article published earlier on Tuesday, Bloomberg detailed the European Investment Bank’s plans to use Ethereum to register €100 million (~$120M) worth of digital notes. Goldman Sachs, Banco Santander, and Société Générale will manage the sale. According to a Bloomberg the source the notes may be priced as soon as today.

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

    As CryptoBriefing notes, the European Investment Bank using Ethereum to register digital bonds would help reinforce Ethereum’s value proposition as a “global settlement layer.” The project’s biggest evangelists have long discussed Ethereum’s potential to act as the base layer for transactions of various forms. Ethereum processes its transactions using smart contracts; it’s the biggest and most used smart contract platform today, recording about 1.5 million transactions daily. 

    In recent years, the network’s activity has been characterized by the DeFi and NFT booms, but Ethereum still has to earn wider recognition among institutions like banks. If the European Investment Bank and other financial giants are to start issuing payments on Ethereum, mass adoption may be on the horizon. 

    Though Ethereum is not as widely known as its predecessor, Bitcoin, it has had its fair share of mainstream attention recently. CME Group, the world’s largest derivatives exchange, launched ETH futures in February. Like BTC, ETH is now supported by PayPal. This year’s NFT explosion has also inspired digital creators and major pop artists like Eminem and Kings of Leon to start using the network. 

    ETH jumped this afternoon, possibly in response to the Bloomberg report. It traded as high as  trading at $2,651 at publication, a new record high, before retracing to $2,625. It has gained over 20% in the past three days, and is up 267% YTD, vastly outperforming bitcoin.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/27/2021 – 21:40

  • Lawyer For Ashli Babbitt's Family Says Lawsuit Will Be Filed Soon Against US Capitol Police
    Lawyer For Ashli Babbitt’s Family Says Lawsuit Will Be Filed Soon Against US Capitol Police

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

    A lawyer for Ashli Babbitt’s family said that they will file a lawsuit against the U.S. Capitol Police after a Capitol Police officer shot and killed her during the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.

    No charges were filed against the officer who shot Babbitt. The officer has not been identified publicly. Babbitt, a U.S. Air Force veteran, was unarmed when she tried to climb through one of the Capitol doors before the officer shot her.

    “The family and I were disappointed in the Department of Justice’s decision on this, but my role is really to bring a civil action and in that way, vindicate her rights,” Terry Roberts told Newsmax on Monday.

    The Babbitt family, he said, disagrees with the Department of Justice’s move to not pursue criminal charges against the officer, adding “clearly, the officer required willfullness … he could clearly see that she was not armed” and didn’t present an immediate threat. The officer also didn’t give ample warning before the shooting, Roberts said.

    “This is a situation in which the officer could have easily arrested her if he had grounds to arrest her without using deadly force,” he said.

    “This was an egregious act of excessive force.”

    Because Babbitt was a supporter of former President Donald Trump, Roberts suggested that the officer involved in the shooting got off lightly.

    The family has not yet filed the lawsuit but will do so soon, he added in the interview.

    Roberts previously told The Epoch Times in March that the lawsuit could entail an excessive use of force complaint.

    “That will be filed against the officer, the Capitol Police,” he said at the time.

    An investigator said that his firm has successfully identified multiple witnesses and spoken to them and a team has spent weeks collecting open-source videos and photographs as part of the effort to reconstruct what happened in the moments leading up to the shooting.

    Roberts then added:

    “Witnesses confirm that the officer did not give Ashli a single verbal warning prior to firing. In fact, Ashli was not even aware that the officer was present, as he was located in the doorway of a room off to the side of her field of vision.”

    But Mark Schamel, an attorney for the officer, told The Epoch Times via email that the officer warned people inside not to enter the Speaker’s Lobby.

    “He fired only one shot at the only person who breached the locked doors and makeshift barricade that had been erected. He did so after clearly identifying himself and ordering the mob not to come through the barricade,” Schamel said.

    “He used tremendous restraint in only firing one shot, and his actions stopped the mob from breaking through and turning a horrific day in American history into something so much worse.”

    The Epoch Times has contacted the Metropolitan Police Department for comment.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/27/2021 – 21:20

  • Meet The Billionaire Who "Finally Understood Bitcoin" After Tripping On Magic Mushrooms
    Meet The Billionaire Who “Finally Understood Bitcoin” After Tripping On Magic Mushrooms

    Christian Angermayer built his portfolio the old fashioned way: by taking psychedelics and buying bitcoin.

    That’s the actual story of the 42 year old German billionaire that was highlighted by Bloomberg on Thursday. He literally “rode the wave” of every big fad over the last 12 months – including bitcoin and SPACs – and made a fortune in the process.

    His family office is called Apeiron Investment Group and has been the lead investor in 7 companies that have gone public in the last year, raising more than $1 billion combined. He has 10 more companies slated to IPO this year. 

    Angermayer took his first trip on psychedelics in 2015 before investing in companies that are in the space. A conversation with a neuroscientist at a dinner party is what turned him on to the idea of magic mushrooms, despite the fact that he doesn’t drink alcohol. “It was the single most meaningful thing I’ve ever done in my whole life, nothing really comes close,” he said of his first trip, which took place in the Caribbean. 

    After the trip, he claimed he “finally understood bitcoin”. From there, it became a feedback loop of investing in the things he was passionate about while riding the crypto wave that has swollen over the last half decade. 

    On his investing style, he said: “I just invest in what I’m very curious and passionate about,” he told Bloomberg. The report calls him the “German version of Chamath Palihapitiya”. 

    But he doesn’t have as big of a presence on social media as Chamath. This hasn’t stopped him from cultivating serious relationships with influential investors like SoftBank and Peter Thiel. 

    Bitcoin bull Mike Novogratz said of Angermayer: “He’s probably the best networker I’ve ever met. He’s built this amazing network of people who like and have learned to trust him because he’s made them money. As a capital raiser, he’s awesome.”

    Angermayer’s office, based in Malta, “helped China’s HNA Group purchase 9.9% of Deutsche Bank AG stock in 2017′ and received a finder’s fee of $15.6 million for introducing executives at SoftBank and the now-defunct Wirecard.

    Apeiron has $2.5 billion in assets, half of which are Angermayer’s. The fund “has averaged an annual internal return of more than 50% over the past decade”, according to Bloomberg. The portfolio is full of companies like AbCellera Biologics, which has developed an antibody drug for Covid and Compass Pathways, a psilocybin-focused depression treatment company that we highlighted shortly after it went public. 

    He has also produced or executive produced 21 different movies, the report notes. Thiel said of him that his curiosity “allows him to recognize trends very early or invent and create an entire sector himself.”

    Benedikt Franke, CEO of the Munich Security Conference said of him: “He is an investor who has fully understood the importance of geopolitics for long-term strategy.”

    Angermayer added: “I understand politicians better than investors. One reason I’m very happy is I’m very honest with myself. I want everybody to like me.”

    When asked what type of hedging he uses, Angermayer responded: “None”. 

     

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/27/2021 – 21:00

  • Early Indications Point To 1.5 Million Jobs Number
    Early Indications Point To 1.5 Million Jobs Number

    Early indications point to very strong job numbers for April (due May 7), possibly as much as 1.5 million jobs or more, according to Standard Chartered FX strategist Steve Englander. He bases this estimate on an analysis of unemployment insurance (UI) benefit payments in recent weeks. Average weekly benefits have been very stable since late February, but the amount of spending has dropped sharply since mid-March (Figure 1). By implication, the numbers receiving benefits are probably also dropping.

    Englander then translates the drop in benefits to an implied fall in unemployment, and seasonally adjusts the unemployment drop based on past patterns. As a result, he finds that unemployment may have decreased between 1.4 million and 2.0 million from March to April. The wide range emerges because March to April seasonality is very strong and the adjustment factor is very uncertain. However, as he adds, a number in the middle or upper end of the range is more likely than in the bottom half, based on this analysis.

    This is how Englander arrived at his estimate

    1. First, assume that just about everyone who lost employment is collecting unemployment benefits because of the broadening of benefits eligibility. In the past, UI benefits have covered about half of workers who lose their jobs; now they cover most of the work force potentially affected by COVID-19, including gig workers and the self-employed.
    2. Similarly, benefits keep getting extended and now will last to September 2021. The major reason to leave unemployment is to go back to work.
    3. Early in the pandemic, benefits paid and the number of benefit recipients moved erratically because of delays and slow systems. This has stabilized in recent months – the $1.9tn stimulus bill in March extended, but did not change, benefits from the $900bn December bill, so there were no discontinuities once the December provisions were implemented.
    4. Since early March, the average weekly payment for unemployed workers has been steady at about $560.
    5. The number of people receiving benefits dropped by 8.6% on a two-week moving average (2wma) basis in the three weeks after the March survey period. The amount of UI benefit payments on the same basis dropped 10.4%. The amount of UI benefits paid out in the April survey week on a 2wma was 15.6% lower than the amount of UI benefits paid out in the March survey week.
    6. If the percentage drop in benefits matched the percentage drop in unemployment, the numbers receiving UI benefits would have dropped 2.9 million.
    7. April employment seasonal effects are severe and cyclical. When unemployment is low and frictional, as in 2018 and 2019, the April seasonal decline in benefit recipients can be 16-18% of the total. This is because with so few unemployed for cyclical reasons, the ebb and flow of seasonal weather represents a big fraction of employment moves.
    8. When unemployment is high, as in 2010 and 2011, the decline in benefit recipients can be as low as 6-8%. Good weather doesn’t bring you back to work in a bad economy. This April, a reasonable range for the seasonal decline is no more than 8%, and could be as low as 5%, given how much stronger cyclical factors are relative to weather in the current downturn than was the case in 2010 and 2011.
    9. A 5% seasonal unemployment drop would leave unemployment 2.0mn lower on a seasonally adjusted basis; an 8% drop would leave unemployment 1.4mn lower. The bigger unemployment drop looks more reasonable to us because there is not that much seasonality in services and retail, which were heaviest hit.

    Risks and data biases

    In some ways these data are better than the BLS surveys that generate household and payroll employment estimates. The Treasury publishes its disbursements on UI benefits on a daily basis with only a day’s lag; these data are not a sample but the totality of what is getting paid. Similarly, the insured UI data basically represent the universe of people receiving benefits and the COVID-19 relief measures encompass a very high percentage of those who have lost jobs, so sampling issues are modest.

    If the objective is to predict non-farm or household employment, the independence of the Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys from the Treasury spending and Department of Labor benefits data is a disadvantage because the samples may diverge, even if sampling is less of an issue.

    Estimating the seasonal factor is the other big risk. In stable periods, seasonal adjustment is largely formulaic; in volatile periods, there is considerable discretion on what is viewed as seasonal. The seasonality in a period of cyclical upheaval is likely to be modest, but there is a wide confidence interval around our estimates.

    Some workers can collect benefits for partial work weeks. They would be counted as UI beneficiaries, but the BLS labor survey definition classifies them as working, so the decline in benefits may be higher than the decline in BLS-measured unemployment. On the other side, newcomers to the labor market may not be receiving benefits, so if they found jobs they would count as newly employed without having previously been counted as receiving benefits.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/27/2021 – 20:40

  • Nothing Can Get Us Out Of This High Debt, High Intervention, Low Default, Low Productivity Loop
    Nothing Can Get Us Out Of This High Debt, High Intervention, Low Default, Low Productivity Loop

    On Tuesday morning, Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid published his 23rd annual default study, a document he first put out in the 1990s which as he says, “makes me feel very old” and adds that the story of this report over the past decade or so has been the increasing divergence between economic growth and defaults. And while defaults have trended down alongside growth, the last 12 months have been a supersized version of this as defaults have peaked at a lower level than during the previous three big default cycles even as growth across many countries was at the lowest levels for several decades or centuries.

    According to Reid, the reason for this is simple: it is because debt has become so large over this period, and of such extreme systemic importance, that when each cycle turns there is an ever larger policy move to ensure that many of the most heavily indebted entities don’t default and risk a severe contagion event for the global economy.

    In short, in some bizarro form of undead corporate fascism, quasi-insolvent companies how hold the entire world ransom with their own survival, or as Reid puts it “we have so much debt that anything that questions the authorities’ commitment to supporting it risks financial crises.”

    It’s interesting though that since defaults structurally stepped down from around 2004, average spreads have stayed almost identical. So, over a cycle, spreads have not adjusted lower.

    While this is good news for bondholders it’s not great for the economy as creative destruction has been quashed over several cycles and we argue that this has in turn helped reduce productivity.

    Reid’s despondent and fatalistic conclusion: “at this stage it’s hard to see what gets us out of this perpetual high debt, high intervention, low default, low productivity loop.”

    Here’s the answer: nothing. Which is why the only possible outcome is taking the current insanity to its absurd, hyperinflationary extreme.

     

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/27/2021 – 20:20

  • Trump-Tied Group Sues Biden Admin Over Racial Discrimination In Farm Subsidy Program
    Trump-Tied Group Sues Biden Admin Over Racial Discrimination In Farm Subsidy Program

    Authored by Ivan Pentchoukov via The Epoch Times,

    A newly-formed legal group tied to former President Donald Trump on April 26 sued the Biden administration, seeking to block the implementation of a farm subsidy program that overtly excludes white farmers.

    America First Legal, headed by former senior Trump advisor Stephen Miller, filed the lawsuit on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Fort Worth Division, against Tom Vilsack, Biden’s secretary of agriculture.

    Tom Vilsack speaks after being nominated to be Agriculture Secretary by President-elect Joe Biden, in Wilmington, Delaware, on Dec. 11, 2020. (JIM WATSON/AFP)

    The lawsuit argues that the program, enacted as part of Biden’s pandemic stimulus package, discriminates against white farmers by limiting financial aid to “socially disadvantaged” farmers or ranchers based on their race.

    “The Department of Agriculture lurches America dangerously backward, reversing the clock on American progress, and violating our most sacred and revered principles by actively and invidiously discriminating against American citizens solely based upon their race. This is illegal, it is unconstitutional, it is wrong, and it must stop,” the lawsuit (pdf) states.

    The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) website currently defines a “socially disadvantaged farmer or rancher” as belonging to “groups [that] include, but are not limited to African Americans, American Indians, Alaskan Natives, Asians, Hispanics, Pacific Islanders, refugees, immigrants.”

    The America First Legal lawsuit cites a different definition of “socially disadvantaged” that appears on a fact sheet (pdf) by the USDA. That fact sheet limits the definition of “socially disadvantaged” to six races and leaves out whites.

    The relevant section of the pandemic stimulus bill points neither to the fact sheet nor to the USDA website. The act says that the definition of the term is in the Food, Agriculture, Conservation, and Trade Act of 1990. That act says that “the term ‘socially disadvantaged farmer or ranchers’ means a farmer or rancher who is a member of a socially disadvantaged group.” The act further defines a “socially disadvantaged group” as “a group whose members have been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice because of their identity as members of a group without regard to their individual qualities.”

    Stephen Miller, senior advisor to the president, attends a joint press conference with President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison in the East Room of the White House in Washington on Sept. 20, 2019. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

    The legal action is the first brought by America First Legal, a pro-Trump legal outfit modeled on the legal warfare model that the Democrats deployed to thwart Trump’s agenda. The organization says that its mission is to “oppose the radical left’s anti-jobs, anti-freedom, anti-faith, anti-borders, anti-police, and anti-American crusade.”

    The White House and the Department of Agriculture did not immediately return requests for comment.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/27/2021 – 20:00

  • Outrage After Iran Elected To UN Women's Rights Committee
    Outrage After Iran Elected To UN Women’s Rights Committee

    Over the past years various United Nations human rights related bodies have been subject to embarrassment and scrutiny given countries like Saudi Arabia and China have served on them. With such a track record, it was apparently thought a good idea to let another notorious violator of human rights take up an important human rights role at the UN.

    Last week the UN’s Economic and Social Council elected Iran to a 4-year term on its Commission on the Status of Women. That’s right, the hardline Shia Islamic theocracy now sits on a council defining itself as the “principal global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women.”

    File image of Friday prayers in Tehran, via Reuters

    International outrage among women’s rights groups and others was swift and fierce, with the executive director of UN Watch perhaps putting it best: “Electing the Islamic Republic of Iran to protect women’s rights is like making an arsonist into the town fire chief,” Hillel Neuer said.

    “It’s absurd — and morally reprehensible. This is a black day for women’s rights, and for all human rights,” Neuer added. 

    It should also be noted that China and Pakistan are also on the same Commission on the Status of Women. 

    The Hill reviews the status of women’s rights inside the Islamic Republic of Iran, which it notes has  “some of the strictest laws and codes in the world” limiting women’s freedom as follows:

    Married women cannot obtain passports or leave the country without permission from their husbands. Women who are not married are similarly under the control and supervision of their fathers.

    Women cannot go out in public uncovered due to mandatory hijab laws, and those who do face jail time, according to the 2020 World Report by Human Rights Watch.

    A 2020 Amnesty International report stated that in Iran, “the authorities failed to criminalize domestic violence, marital rape, early and forced marriage and other gender-based violence against women and girls, which remained widespread.”

    Human Rights Watch (HRW) also denounced Iran’s nomination to the UN women’s committee while emphasizing Iran’s “deplorable women’s rights records.”

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

    The group also called on the UN to overhaul its opaque nomination and elections process, given well-known states that are abusers of human rights keep getting elected to key committees. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/27/2021 – 19:40

  • Say It Loud: "I Am Not A Racist!"
    Say It Loud: “I Am Not A Racist!”

    Authored by Stuart Reges, University of Washington via CampusReform.org,

    When young people today watch images of police turning a firehose on black demonstrators they can only imagine what America was like in those days, but I don’t have to imagine it.  I lived in that America and watching its sins displayed night after night on the evening news deeply affected me.  That is why I have done a great deal of soul searching ever since I have been accused of being a racist.

    It started when the UW College Republicans organized an affirmative action bake sale where they sold cookies at different prices depending upon the customer’s race.  It was a political stunt meant to make people angry and they succeeded.  Hundreds of protestors gathered around their booth along with a dozen police officers.  I stopped by and tried to have a conversation with a young protestor but it degenerated into a situation where she loudly denounced me to a mob of several dozen students that surrounded me.

    At one point I said that I didn’t see rampant racism on campus and the crowd burst into laughter.  A local paper called The Stranger wrote about the incident and a local TV station included it on the evening news.  I was surprised to find that this single incident branded me as a racist to many students and colleagues.  After one of our students complained, the director of my school reprimanded me for a “lack of sensitivity to minority students.”  A student experience survey conducted at the time generated several angry comments about me including one that said that I am “a garbage person and should not be teaching in this institution” and that I am, “the symbol of hate, ignorance, racism, and white supremacy. I would not be surprised if they were in the KKK.”

    Last summer when I posted a message to a faculty mailing I was accused of being a racist for defending police officers during our summer of riots.  

    One faculty member wrote that, “What Stuart has shared is racist, trolling behavior from a faculty member with a long history of documented racial biases.”

    In my lifetime I have seen this country make incredible progress on the race issue, so I was confused to find myself accused of being a racist.  

    Shelby Steele provided an answer.  

    In his book Shame he writes that in our divided society liberals pursue “poetic truth” that “disregards the actual truth in order to assert a larger essential truth that supports one’s ideological position” and that poetic truths “work by moral intimidation rather than by reason, so that even to question them is heresy.”

    He goes on to write that:

    “if you want to be politically correct, if you want to be seen as someone who is cleansed of America’s past ugliness, you will go along with the poetic truth that racism is still a great barrier for blacks.  Conversely, embracing the literal truth—that racism is no longer a serious barrier—will make you politically incorrect and will stigmatize you with that ugliness.”

    I know in my heart that I do not harbor ill will towards anyone based on race and it seems clear that most Americans believe the same thing.  Overt racism has all but disappeared from modern life, especially on college campuses, but progressives have concocted various explanations for hidden forms of racism.

    One accusation is that we have bias that we aren’t even aware of.  In reviewing the many decisions I have made in my 35-year university career for admissions, hiring, and grading, I can’t find even one incident of negative racial bias.  The only examples of bias were in the opposite direction with minority candidates treated more favorably.  The euphemism is that they are “diversity” candidates as in, “We can hire three faculty this year, but the dean said that we can hire up to two more if they are diversity hires.”

    Another accusation has been the claim of systemic racism, the idea that white men built our society so that it favors them.  This idea should not be dismissed out of hand.  I still remember when I first visited a store for left-handed people.  I was amazed to find how much our society has been designed to work well for right-handed people.  I didn’t realize that can openers and desks and notebooks had all been designed for right-handed people like me.

    To take this idea seriously, though, the proponents would have to produce examples of how the system has been tilted in favor of white people.  Where is the equivalent of the left-handed can opener?  Many people have taken a stab at this although there are few convincing examples and many cases where people who make this argument have had to retract their claims.  For example, The Smithsonian quickly apologized for producing a poster that indicated that white culture includes rugged individualism, the nuclear family, and the scientific method.

    The only solid evidence for systemic racism is the fact that there are differences in outcomes across races with whites and Asians generally performing better.  But this argument falls apart when you consider alternate explanations.  In my own courses I have found that course grades are highly correlated with lecture attendance and that mathematical background seems to be an issue for many students who struggle.  

    So to the extent that some minority students perform less well in my courses, it seems most likely that this stems from factors other than race including a weak math background and students putting in less effort than others.

    Shame is a powerful emotion, but it’s time to stand up to these ideological bullies and to speak the truth.  

    It is not racist to oppose affirmative action.  

    It is not racist to challenge the claim of rampant racism on college campuses.  

    It is not racist to support the police.

    It is not racist to challenge the claim of hidden bias and systemic racism.  

    I am not a racist and I won’t stay silent any longer.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/27/2021 – 19:20

  • "We Haven't Seen This Before" – Wealthy Americans Panic-Chase Million Dollar Listings
    “We Haven’t Seen This Before” – Wealthy Americans Panic-Chase Million Dollar Listings

    Wealthy Americans are taking advantage of cheap mortgages, increased savings, and the ability to remote work for them to search for homes listed above $1 million.

    Redfin reports luxury home sales in the first three months of the year are soaring. Sales jumped by 41.6% over the quarter versus the same period last year. It’s a sharp contrast from sales of affordable homes that increased by 7%, and sales of mid-priced dwellings that rose by 5.9%.

    Sales growth of homes in all tiers has historically been similar. Still, the latest divergence identified by Redfin outlines how the coronavirus pandemic and policy action by the Federal Reserve and political elites in Washington have exacerbated the great wealth divide that developed long before the pandemic. Affluent folks had access to cheap mortgages, while lower-income earners had limited access to cheap credit as millions of them fell into instant poverty during shutdowns. As a result of government and central bank interventions, a K-shaped economic recovery developed and also manifested in the real estate market. 

    “Affluent Americans with the flexibility to work from anywhere are taking advantage of low mortgage rates and buying up high-end houses—particularly in popular vacation destinations—which is contributing to the surge in luxury home sales. Meanwhile, many lower-income Americans have lost their jobs and lack the means to become homeowners,” said Redfin. 

    Lawrence Yun, the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, said Americans are demanding larger homes driven by a desire for more space that could be used as offices, gyms, and outdoor entertainment during the pandemic. He added: “The larger space automatically means that it is more expensive.”

    Redfin said sales of luxury homes during the quarter saw the biggest gains in Miami, where luxury-home sales erupted by 101.1% from a year earlier—followed by San Jose, CA (92.3%), Oakland, CA (82%), Sacramento, CA (79.3%), and Las Vegas (72.7%). These areas were some of the top migration destinations during the pandemic.

    “Luxury properties, even those in the $3 million range, are getting multiple offers and going for well over the asking prices,” said Oakland, CA Redfin real estate agent Katy Polvorosa. “That’s something we haven’t seen before, even though the Bay Area has many affluent residents. Everyone just wants more space and big backyards, whether it’s because they’re stuck at home during the pandemic or because they have a growing family.”

    Jefferies recently told clients the US is short 2.5 million homes. The National Association of Realtors said the existing housing inventory could run out in two months. However, the shortage is less severe in the luxury market. 

    The typical luxury home sat on the market for 61 days in the first three months of the year, 38 fewer days than the same period in 2020. 

    … and what has this meant for luxury home prices over the year? Well, an explosion, of course. Increases were also seen across all tiers. 

    So how long will the housing frenzy last? 

    Well, the latest housing data dimmed the outlook. Existing home sales data was worse than expected and have declined for the second month as prices soar at a record pace. 

    This should not have been a huge surprise, as Christophe Barraud warned earlier. Housing affordability has been under pressure since January. On the one hand, mortgage rates started rebounding, with the 30-year recently hitting the highest level since June 2020 in late March.

    Like any frenzy, there’s a beginning (start of the pandemic) and an end (when rates rise). The question: When does the music stop playing? 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/27/2021 – 19:00

  • Beijing Looks To Scapegoat Regulators Who Initially Backed Ill-Fated Ant Offering
    Beijing Looks To Scapegoat Regulators Who Initially Backed Ill-Fated Ant Offering

    When Beijing’s top anti-trust regulator announced a new investigation into Chinese delivery giant Meituan the other day, Alibaba investors may have been tempted to wonder whether the CCP had finally moved on fro Alibaba, Ant Financial and Jack Ma.

    Any investors who dared to dream likely saw their hopes crushed Tuesday when WSJ published a report revealing the existence of an investigation into how Alibaba and Ant Group managed to cultivate support for its scuppered IPO. In other words, Beijing is looking for scapegoats within the state apparatus who can be blamed for allowing Alibaba, Ant and China’s other tech giants to become so dominant in the first place. The standards and procedures set by both the China Securities Regulatory Commission and other stock regulators in Shanghai are now facing scrutiny as investigators try to figure out exactly how Ma was able to shepard Ant’s IPO application through the system so quickly.

    “What happened is deeply embarrassing for regulators because they should have more effectively coordinated before approving the IPO,” says Martin Chorzempa, a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics who specializes in China’s financial-technology sector.

    “By not doing so,” he added, “they were stuck in a lose-lose situation of either the last-minute pause or, worse, forcing massive losses on IPO investors by changing the regulatory stance post-IPO.”

    According to WSJ, the investigation will focus on “regulators who greenlighted the initial public offering, local officials who advocated it and big state firms that stood to gain from it.” Investigators are specifically looking into officials’ relationships with Alibaba founder Jack Ma, whose criticisms of China’s regulatory framework, made during an obscure industry event back in October, prompted the CCP to scrap the planned IPO of Ma’s Ant Group, which was supposed to be spun off from Alibaba in what would have been the world’s largest IPO. Since then, Alibaba has been handed a $2.8 billion fine.

    After a protracted absence from the public eye that aroused suspicion, Ma has continued to keep a low profile, appearing only to parrot his allegiance to the CCP when called upon to do so.

    Since halting Ant’s IPO late last year, President Xi Jinping has repeatedly stressed that China’s technology giants shouldn’t use their size, capital and troves of data to undercut their rivals. During a speech in January, he singled out the financial sector as particularly ripe for reform. Ant, which has been forced to reorganize as a financial holding company, will face far more restrictions now that it has been stripped of its “tech” classification, and will instead be treated like any other bank or financial institution in China.

    In summary, as Beijing seeks to punish any regulators deemed “too close” to Ma, the outside world will be watching to see if any further punishments are directed at the executive himself, whom investor Kyle Bass once mused would likely be “disappeared” by the CCP not long after stepping down from his job as Alibaba’s CEO – something Ma did more than a year ago. While some nameless CCP bureaucrats might join him on the chopping block, Ma’s fate is looking increasingly grim.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/27/2021 – 18:40

Digest powered by RSS Digest