Jun 29

Today’s News 29th June 2022

  • Scotland Set to Hold 2nd Independence Referendum As Sturgeon Prepares To Fight Johnson Veto
    Scotland Set to Hold 2nd Independence Referendum As Sturgeon Prepares To Fight Johnson Veto

    Scotland is set to hold its second independence referendum, Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon announced Tuesday, while at the same time proposing a future date of October 19, 2023 for her country to hold a new vote on a potential break from the United Kingdom.

    Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party campaigns on a platform for Scotland to declare independence from the UK, and she’s been pushing for another referendum on the question: “Should Scotland be an independent country?” In 2014, the 32 council areas of Scotland voted “no” – with the “No” side winning at 2,001,926 votes over 1,617,989 for “Yes”.

    Via The Herald

    Sturgeon said this week, “​​What I am not willing to do, what I will never do, is allow Scottish democracy to be a prisoner of Boris Johnson or any prime minister” – in reference to British constitutional rules that stipulate consent must be gained from the UK prime minister to proceed with the vote. Johnson has been on record as saying he would decline such a request.

    She further penned a letter to PM Johnson, saying, “In a voluntary union of nations where the people of one nation have voted in elections to give a mandate for a referendum, it is, in my view, unacceptable democratically that the route to a referendum has to be via the courts rather than by co-operation between the UK and Scottish Governments,” Sturgeon said the letter. 

    And according to more details via EuroNews:

    In a statement to the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh on Tuesday, Sturgeon said she had written to Boris Johnson indicating she was “ready and willing” to negotiate a so-called Section 30 order with him, which gives the Scottish government temporary powers to hold a referendum. This was how the 2014 independence referendum was held. 

    Johnson is likely only to continue to stand firm against granting a section 30 order while watching Scottish politics fragment over the “partisan” push for independence. 

    The main opposition party, the Scottish Conservatives, and its leader Douglass Ross has slammed the “pretend poll” in which his party will refuse to take part. “This is becoming a parliament that doesn’t get anything done on people’s real priorities,” Ross said, who represents a region of the Scottish Highlands. 

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    “A parliament that only exists to further the Scottish National Party’s interests… a do-nothing parliament with a first minister obsessed with another referendum at all costs,” he added.

    Thus the political road and fight to a second vote appears set to be a long haul, after the first was defeated by almost half a million votes in a country with only some 5.5 million people.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/29/2022 – 02:45

  • Ukrainian Elite Unit Claims Sabotage Ops Inside Russia
    Ukrainian Elite Unit Claims Sabotage Ops Inside Russia

    Authored by Kyle Anzalone via The Libertarian Institute, 

    The Times spoke with an intelligence officer and two sergeants in the Ukrainian special forces elite Shaman battalion who claimed Kiev had conducted covert operations inside Russia. The officers said they successfully carried out raids involving explosions to sow confusion and dissent among Russians. 

    One of the special operations officers explained the missions involved sabotage and explosives. “The most interesting missions are working behind enemy lines; planting explosives behind the front lines, beyond the border,” he said. The second sergeant indicated the Shaman battalion’s raid behind enemy lines was successful.

    He claimed, “The Russians don’t know what happened, they often can’t believe we were there.”

    The officers gave few details about their operations to The Times. There have been several explosions inside Russia since President Valdimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Kiev has not officially claimed responsibility for any attacks inside of Russia but has hinted it might be behind some of the explosions. 

    During the war in Afghanistan, the “Shaman battalion” fought with US and UK special forces. A senior Ukrainian intelligence official said, “We send them [Shaman battalion] to take on the most difficult tasks because they’re the best and the bravest. They are hugely important to the war effort.”

    The sergeants explain how their units have been deployed in several battles inside Russia and Ukraine. However, they say their forces and supplies are diminishing as the fight in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region drags on. One of the officers told The Times that half of their friends have been killed in recent weeks. 

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    An intelligence official confirmed that Ukrainian soldier casualties are on the rise. “Ukraine’s casualty rate, far lower than Russia’s in the first weeks of the war, is now approaching parity with the invading force,” he said. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/29/2022 – 02:00

  • Escobar: Behind The Tin Curtain – BRICS+ Vs NATO/G7
    Escobar: Behind The Tin Curtain – BRICS+ Vs NATO/G7

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

    The west is nostalgically caught up with outdated ‘containment’ policies, this time against Global South integration. Unfortunately for them, the rest of the world is moving on, together.

    Once upon a time, there existed an Iron Curtain which divided the continent of Europe. Coined by former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the term was in reference to the then-Soviet Union’s efforts to create a physical and ideological boundary with the west. The latter, for its part, pursued a policy of containment against the spread and influence of communism.

    Fast forward to the contemporary era of techno-feudalism, and there now exists what should be called a Tin Curtain, fabricated by the fearful, clueless, collective west, via G7 and NATO: this time, to essentially contain the integration of the Global South.

    BRICS against G7

    The most recent and significant example of this integration has been the coming out of BRICS+ at last week’s online summit hosted by Beijing. This went far beyond establishing the lineaments of a ‘new G8,’ let alone an alternative to the G7.

    Just look at the interlocutors of the five historical BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa): we find a microcosm of the Global South, encompassing Southeast Asia, Central Asia, West Asia, Africa and South America – truly putting the “Global” in the Global South.

    Revealingly, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s clear messages during the Beijing summit, in sharp contrast to G7 propaganda, were actually addressed to the whole Global South:

    • Russia will fulfill its obligations to supply energy and fertilizers.

    • Russia expects a good grain harvest – and to supply up to 50 million tons to world markets.

    • Russia will ensure passage of grain ships into international waters even as Kiev mined Ukrainian ports.

    • The negative situation on Ukrainian grain is artificially inflated.

    • The sharp increase in inflation around the world is the result of the irresponsibility of G7 countries, not Operation Z in Ukraine.

    • The imbalance of world relations has been brewing for a long time and has become an inevitable result of the erosion of international law.

    An alternative system

    Putin also directly addressed one of the key themes that the BRICS have been discussing in depth since the 2000s — the design and implementation of an international reserve currency.

    “The Russian Financial Messaging System is open for connection with banks of the BRICS countries.”

    “The Russian MIR payment system is expanding its presence. We are exploring the possibility of creating an international reserve currency based on the basket of BRICS currencies,” the Russian leader said.

    This is inevitable after the hysterical western sanctions post-Operation Z; the total de-dollarization imposed upon Moscow; and increasing trade between BRICS nations. For instance, by 2030, a quarter of the planet’s oil demand will come from China and India, with Russia as the major supplier.

    The “RIC” in BRICS simply cannot risk being locked out of a G7-dominated financial system. Even tightrope-walking India is starting to catch the drift.

    Who speaks for the ‘international community?’

    At its current stage, BRICS represent 40 percent of world population, 25 percent of the global economy, 18 percent of world trade, and contribute over 50 percent for world economic growth. All indicators are on the way up.

    Sergey Storchak, CEO of Russian bank VEG, framed it quite diplomatically: “If the voices of emerging markets are not being heard in the coming years, we need to think very seriously about setting up a parallel regional system, or maybe a global system.”

    A “parallel regional system” is already being actively discussed between the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and China, coordinated by Minister of Integration and Macroeconomics Sergey Glazyev, who has recently authored a stunning manifesto amplifying his ideas about world economic sovereignty.

    Developing the ‘developing world’

    What happens in the trans-Eurasian financial front will proceed in parallel with a so far little known Chinese development strategy: the Global Development Initiative (GDI), announced by President Xi Jinping at the UN General Assembly last year.

    GDI can be seen as a support mechanism of the overarching strategy – which remains the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), consisting of economic corridors interlinking Eurasia all the way to its western peninsula, Europe.

    At the High-level Dialogue on Global Development, part of the BRICS summit, the Global South learned a little more about the GDI, an organization set up in 2015.

    In a nutshell, the GDI aims to turbo-charge international development cooperation by supplementing financing to a plethora of bodies, for instance the South-South Cooperation Fund, the International Development Association (IDA), the Asian Development Fund (ADF), and the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

    Priorities include “poverty reduction, food security, COVID-19 response and vaccines,” industrialization, and digital infrastructure. Subsequently, a Friends of the GDI group was established in early 2022 and has already attracted over 50 nations.

    BRI and GDI should be advancing in tandem, even as Xi himself made it clear during the BRICS summit that “some countries are politicizing and marginalizing the developmental agenda by building up walls and slapping crippling sanctions on others.”

    Then again, sustainable development is not exactly the G7’s cup of tea, much less NATO’s.

    Seven against the world

    The avowed top aim of the G7 summit in Schloss Elmau at the Bavarian Alps is to “project unity” – as in the stalwarts of the collective west (Japan included) united in sustainable and indefinite “support” for the irretrievably failed Ukrainian state.

    That’s part of the “struggle against Putin’s imperialism,” but then there’s also “the fight against hunger and poverty, health crisis and climate change,” as German chancellor Scholz told the Bundestag.

    In Bavaria, Scholz pushed for a Marshall Plan for Ukraine – a ludicrous concept considering Kiev and its environs might as well be reduced to a puny rump state by the end of 2022. The notion that the G7 may work to “prevent a catastrophic famine,” according to Scholz, reaches a paroxysm of ludicrousness, as the looming famine is a direct consequence of the G7-imposed sanctions hysteria.

    The fact that Berlin invited India, Indonesia, South Africa and Senegal as add-ons to the G7, served as additional comic relief.

    The Tin Curtain is up

    It would be futile to expect from the astonishing collection of mediocrities “united” in Bavaria, under de facto leader of the European Commission (EC), Fuehrer Ursula von der Leyen, any substantial analysis about the breakdown of global supply chains and the reasons that forced Moscow to reduce gas flows to Europe. Instead, they blamed Putin and Xi.

    Welcome to the Tin Curtain – a 21st century reinvention of the Intermarium from the Baltic to the Black Sea, masterminded by the Empire of Lies, complete with western Ukraine absorbed by Poland, the Three Baltic Midgets: Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, Czechia and even NATO-aspiring Sweden and Finland, all of whom will be protected from “the Russian threat.”

    An EU out of control

    The role of the EU, lording over Germany, France and Italy inside the G7 is particularly instructive, especially now that Britain is back to the status of an inconsequential island-state.

    As many as 60 European ‘directives’ are issued every year. They must be imperatively transposed into internal law of each EU member-state. In most cases, there’s no debate whatsoever.

    Then there are more than 10,000 European ‘rulings,’ where ‘experts’ at the European Commission (EC) in Brussels issue ‘recommendations’ to every government, straight out of the neoliberal canon, regarding their expenses, their income and ‘reforms’ (on health care, education, pensions) that must be obeyed.

    Thus elections in every single EU member-nation are absolutely meaningless. Heads of national governments – Macron, Scholz, Draghi – are mere executants. No democratic debate is allowed: ‘democracy,’ as with ‘EU values,’ are nothing than smokescreens.

    The real government is exercised by a bunch of apparatchiks chosen by compromise between executive powers, acting in a supremely opaque manner.

    The EC is totally outside of any sort of control. That’s how a stunning mediocrity like Ursula von der Leyen – previously the worst Minister of Defense of modern Germany – was catapulted upwards to become the current EC Fuhrer, dictating their foreign, energy and even economic policy.

    What do they stand for?

    From the perspective of the west, the Tin Curtain, for all its ominous Cold War 2.0 overtones, is merely a starter before the main course: hardcore confrontation across Asia-Pacific – renamed “Indo-Pacific” – a carbon copy of the Ukraine racket designed to contain China’s BRI and GDI.

    As a countercoup, it’s enlightening to observe how the Chinese foreign ministry now highlights in detail the contrast between BRICS – and BRICS+ – and the imperial AUKUS/Quad/IPEF combo.

    BRICS stand for de facto multilateralism; focus on global development; cooperation for economic recovery; and improving global governance.

    The US-concocted racket on the other hand, stands for Cold War mentality; exploiting developing countries; ganging up to contain China; and an America-first policy that enshrines the monopolistic “rules-based international order.”

    It would be misguided to expect those G7 luminaries gathered in Bavaria to understand the absurdity of imposing a price cap on Russian oil and gas exports, for instance. Were that to really happen, Moscow will have no problems fully cutting energy supply to the G7. And if other nations are excluded, the price of the oil and gas they import would drastically increase.

    BRICS paving the way forward

    So no wonder the future is ominous. In a stunning interview to Belarus state TV, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov summarized how “the west fears honest competition.”

    Hence, the apex of cancel culture, and “suppression of everything that contradicts in some way the neoliberal vision and arrangement of the world.” Lavrov also summarized the roadmap ahead, for the benefit of the whole Global South:

    “We don’t need a new G8. We already have structures…primarily in Eurasia. The EAEU is actively promoting integration processes with the PRC, aligning China’s Belt and Road Initiative with the Eurasian integration plans. Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are taking a close look at these plans. A number of them are signing free trade zone agreements with the EAEU. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is also part of these processes… There is one more structure beyond the geographic borders of Eurasia.”

    “It is BRICS. This association is relying less and less on the Western style of doing business, and on Western rules for international currency, financial and trade institutions. They prefer more equitable methods that do not make any processes depend on the dominant role of the dollar or some other currency. The G20 fully represents BRICS and five more countries that share the positions of BRICS, while the G7 and its supporters are on the other side of the barricades.”

    …

    “This is a serious balance. The G20 may deteriorate if the West uses it for fanning up confrontation. The structures I mentioned (SCO, BRICS, ASEAN, EAEU and CIS) rely on consensus, mutual respect and a balance of interests, rather than a demand to accept unipolar world realities.”

    Tin Curtain? More like Torn Curtain.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/29/2022 – 00:05

  • EY Valued Israeli Spyware Company NSO At $2.3bn Months Before Emergency Bailout
    EY Valued Israeli Spyware Company NSO At $2.3bn Months Before Emergency Bailout

    Just months before secretive Israeli spyware company NSO Group required an emergency bailout and its equity was declared worthless, Big Four accounting firm EY valued the privacy-invading enterprise at $2.3 billion, the Financial Times has reported: 

    “The EY valuation, more than twice what NSO had been valued at two years earlier, was made by analysts in the firm’s Luxembourg office in July last year, according to documents seen by the Financial Times. The estimate of NSO’s enterprise value was made without visiting the company or verifying the information its analysts had been provided.”

    The valuation by EY—known as Ernst & Young until 2013—came at a time when NSO was facing shrinking revenue, lawsuits, public condemnation and harsh media scrutiny over its Pegasus spyware, which had been used by various governments against activists and journalists. Two female associates of Saudi-slaughtered journalist Jamal Khashoggi were reportedly among those targeted.

    By October, NSO required an emergency $10 million loan. In December—just four months after the $2.3 billion valuation had been finalized by EY in August—creditors informed NSO’s majority stockholders that the firm was insolvent.

    “Pegasus allows operators to clandestinely surveil a suspect’s mobile phone—access contacts and messages, as well as the built-in camera, microphone, and location history,” reported the Epoch Times. Strikingly, the spyware reportedly can be transmitted by sending a link to a phone in a way that creates no notification, and activated without the phone’s owner doing anything at all.

    Earlier this year, Berkeley Research Group, working for NSO’s private equity owners, declared the company’s equity “valueless”  

    On May 31, the Financial Times reported that, with the company in a “financial spiral” and struggling to meet payroll, “foul-mouthed CEO” Shalev Hulio alarmed a group of investors when he said he was contemplating selling the spyware to governments previously flagged as posing “elevated risk” of misusing it. 

    NSO has sold the spyware to dozens of countries, including many authoritarian governments. In addition to the United States and Israel, NSO’s long list of clients reportedly includes Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Mexico, South Africa and India. Last week, NSO said “at least” five European Union governments have purchased its spyware, and that the firm canceled one of the contracts after an EU country misused it.

    NSO founders Shalev Hulio, Niv Karmi and Omri Lavie

    NSO—a name derived from the first names of its founders—Niv Karmi, Shalev Hulio and Omri Lavie—says all its sales are subject to the approval of Israel’s defense ministry. The New York Times found several instances in which the sale of Pegasus coincided with the recipient government’s increased support for Israel.

    NSO’s value is under renewed scrutiny, as the firm entertains a spin-off of its core assets to U.S. defense contractor L3Harris. The White House objects to the proposal; the Department of Commerce had earlier barred NSO from doing business with U.S. companies. This month, Moody’s withdrew its rating of NSO’s half-billion dollars of junk bonds, citing “inadequate information.”

    NSO is the target of lawsuits filed by WhatsApp and Apple. WhatsApp, a subsidiary of Meta, says 1,400 users of its encrypted instant messaging and voice-over-IP application were targeted by NSO software.

    In April, NSO asked the Supreme Court to consider an argument that the firm deserved protection from Meta under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which protects foreign governments from civil cases filed by American citizens. Last year, the 9th Circuit rejected that notion by a 3-0 vote. Judge Danielle Forrest wrote:

    “The question presented is whether foreign sovereign immunity protects private companies. The law governing this question has roots extending back to our earliest history as a nation, and it leads to a simple answer—no. Indeed, the title of the legal doctrine itself—foreign sovereign immunity—suggests the outcome.”

    In an interview with a Hebrew-language podcast, NSO founder Lavie blamed anti-semitism for the worldwide backlash against his firm over governments’ use of its spyware against political adversaries, activists and journalists. “We have no way to know what they do with the system,” he said. “I don’t want to know. I don’t want to be an intelligence partner.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/28/2022 – 23:45

  • Social Media Study Shows Growing DeSantis Boom Among Swing Voters
    Social Media Study Shows Growing DeSantis Boom Among Swing Voters

    Authored by John Ransom via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    An analysis of social media posts shared with The Epoch Times shows growing momentum for Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis as the GOP presidential nominee in 2024 among voters who aren’t solidly in the Trump camp.

    “A sizable portion of the positive discussion (32 percent) speak of him as preferable to Trump,” said the summary analysis of the research paid for by the Ready for Ron Committee—a draft committee that is encouraging DeSantis to run for president.

    “To them, he is the rightful heir and suggest the former president step aside and allow the younger man to run the gauntlet,” the analysis said of the majority of surveyed voters.

    The research, which was conducted by Impact Social, looked at 40,000 “swing” voters on social media and categorized them into ten segments, from “Disillusioned Trump” voters, Obama-turned-Trump voters, to “Bernie Sanders” voters.

    U.S. President Donald Trump and Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis hold a COVID-19 and storm preparedness roundtable in Belleair, Fla., on July 31, 2020. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

    Trump Gets More Traction, But More Attacks Too

    While the name Trump is more prominent on social media than DeSantis, Impact Social reported that Trump-related posts attract more negative sentiment, including among right-leaners who would otherwise favor the GOP in 2024.

    Impact Social analyzed approximately 93,000 posts mentioning Trump and around 8,000 posts mentioning DeSantis made by the swing voters from June 1 to June 14.

    “It is interesting to note that, despite many of these floating voters emanating from the right of the political spectrum, only a relatively small number come to Trump’s defense,” Impact Social said.

    The recent hearings regarding the Jan. 6 breach also haven’t helped Trump among undecided voters. While the hearings have fallen far short of proving that an insurrection occurred in a legal sense, they certainly didn’t burnish the image of the former president.

    “Well, I think in retrospect, I think it would have been very smart to put [Republicans on the committee] and again, I wasn’t involved in it from a standpoint so I never looked at it too closely but I think it would have been good if we had representation,” Trump told conservative radio host Wayne Allen Root earlier this month, blaming Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) for a “bad decision” on declining to put someone on the Jan. 6 House Committee.

    Former President Remains Popular

    U.S. President Donald Trump, daughter Ivanka Trump, and son Donald Trump Jr., make their way to board Air Force One before departing from Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, Ga., on Jan. 4, 2021. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

    Still, Trump remains the odds-on favorite for the GOP nomination, with a recent poll by Quinnipiac showing that 69 percent of Republicans think Trump bears little blame for the Jan. 6 riots.

    Polling continues to show that Trump has a commanding lead against DeSantis, who is not well-known outside of Florida or outside the GOP activists base, even as DeSantis is reported by some to be eating into Trump’s lead as of late.

    A recent Granite State Poll by the University of New Hampshire showed Trump and DeSantis in a statistical dead heat in New Hampshire, more than doubling the DeSantis support since October.

    But as the head of the Ready for Ron Committee, former Reagan campaign manager Ed Rollins previously told The Epoch Times that it’s doubtful that DeSantis would run against Trump if Trump actually seeks the nomination.

    The committee’s goal isn’t to supplant Trump, but to make sure there is a candidate that can carry on Trump’s legacy if Trump declines to run, is unable to run, or runs into trouble, Rollins said.

    “Under President Donald Trump’s leadership, the United States enjoyed record unemployment, economic stability, safety, and global respect. Many are yearning for a return to these policies and the prosperity good leadership can bring,” Ready for Ron legal counsel and spokeswoman Lilian Rodríguez-Baz told The Epoch Times via video.

    “The era of President Trump was wonderful, but now, since he isn’t currently running, we must get ready for a new leader, we must be Ready for Ron,” Rodríguez-Baz added.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/28/2022 – 23:25

  • Debate Ensues After Mysterious Lights Appear Over San Diego
    Debate Ensues After Mysterious Lights Appear Over San Diego

    Residents across San Diego on Monday night reported mysterious lights in the night sky. The unidentifiable lights were spotted south of downtown San Diego. 

    A flood of Twitter users posted pictures and videos of “weird lights” above San Diego. The bizarre footage showed three to six glowing balls of fire hovering in the night sky. 

    Residents across San Diego, parts of Mexico, and even San Clemente reported seeing fireballs over the ocean. 

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    It was reported by local news ABC7 that “there weren’t any commercial or military aircraft on the radar in the area” during the time the fireballs left many San Diegans scratching their heads. 

    The sight was so bizarre that Google searches across the region for “UFO” spiked last night as some thought Nobel Prize laureate Paul Krugman’s alien invasion was underway. 

    The sight of an alien invasion would’ve made Krugman very happy, though some on Reddit revealed that the fireballs appeared to be flares from military planes flying around the area. 

    “Here is your answer to all those lights in the sky,” said one Redditor. They tweeted a picture of flight tracking website Flightradar24 showing at least two military airplanes, one a Lockheed Martin KC-130, off San Diego’s coast, flying in circles. 

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    Another Redditor snapped one of the clearest pictures of the fireballs from La Jolla, showing what could be military flares. Smoke trails are visible in the top two fireballs, though nothing is confirmed. 

    Similar lights in the night sky spooked San Diegans in August 2018 but were later confirmed as military flare during a training mission 30 miles off the San Diego Coast, according to CBS 8.

    With no confirmation from the military, the internet remains abuzz about last night’s mysterious light show. 

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/28/2022 – 23:05

  • The Best Early Recession Indicator
    The Best Early Recession Indicator

    As we approach the end of the first half, it’s safe to say that how the second progresses will likely be determined by whether the US moves into recession or not (and how soon). In regards to this key question, Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid writes that those readers looking for lead indicators, the bank’s economists have long believed that continuing claims are the best signal for an imminent slide into recession. In a recent piece, they show how an +11.5% rise above the minimum level over the previous year provides the most accurate and timely signal of recession risks since the data becomes available in the 1960s. It works for each recession and normally leads by around 2 months.

    In this cycle, the current low was 1306k hit on May 20th 2022. So far it’s up less than 1% to 1315k and would need to hit 1456k for the 2-month recessionary countdown clock to start ticking.

    However, as one can can see from the chart below, this isn’t a big pick-up in historical terms so although we’re not trending there at the moment, it wouldn’t take too much to change the picture.

    Indeed one concern is that initial jobless claims are up from a trough of 166k in March to 229k last week. Over time, Reid writes, these two series are very well correlated so this is a big enough move to confirm an imminent recession if continuing claims catch up. However this series is seasonally adjusted and non-seasonally adjusted claims are still bumping along the bottom and DB economist Matt Luzzetti thinks there may be some issues with seasonally adjusting so he wouldn’t yet read anything too significant into the pick-up in SA claims.

    In any case, Thursday 8:30am EST when the weekly claims data is released, is “showtime” each week for the foreseeable future according to Reid.

    Separately, DB’s asset allocation team put out an excellent piece last week (available to professional subscribers) looking at what all the short, medium and long-range US recession indicators are currently telling us. In brief, most that turn down early (6-14 months before a recession) are flashing red, most that warn 1-5 months out are mixed, whereas those that turn late are still mostly showing no signs of recession, however these can often turn only in real time.

    More in the full note available to pro subs.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/28/2022 – 22:45

  • BofA Accuses Bed Bath & Beyond Of Cutting AC To Save Money
    BofA Accuses Bed Bath & Beyond Of Cutting AC To Save Money

    Bank of American has accused struggling retailer Bed Bath & Beyond of cutting off air conditioning in stores in order to quickly lower expenses amid a slump in sales.

    Bed Bath & Beyond in Port Chester on Jan. 6 before closing (Mark Vergari / The Journal News)

    The company hit back, however, telling CNN that any changes in store temperature didn’t come from corporate.

    “We’ve been contacted about this report, and to be clear, no Bed Bath & Beyond stores were directed to adjust their air conditioning and there have been no corporate policy changes in regard to utilities usage,” a spokesperson said.

    After conducting in-person store visits, however, BofA analysts reported “mounting concerns” over significant cuts in employee hours, scaled back utilities, reduced operating hours, and remodeling projects which have been canceled.

    What’s more, the company’s rewards program has been scaled back and replaced.

    All of this has led the Bank of America analysts to predict that Bed Bath & Beyon will soon announce more closures, as well as a halt to its Buy Buy Baby stores.

    Meanwhile, analysts at Riley Securities noted that sales promotions have also fallen flat, along with a decrease in store traffic – causing them to reduce their price target from $17 to $7.

    The changes come ahead of the homegoods retailer’s first quarter report, set to be released this week, and follow a devastating report last quarter when sales plunged 22%. Bed Bath & Beyond’s CEO Mark Tritton said the unavailability of certain products caused by supply chain kinks resulted in about $175 million of lost sales during the period.

    Bank of America analysts believe sales will drop another 20% this quarter.
     
    “The company has been underperforming the industry and we think consensus estimates [of an 18% drop in sales] may be optimistic,” they wrote. -CNN
    According to Zacks Equity Research Concensus Estimate for the retailer, Bed Bath & Beyond is expected to report a loss of $1.28 per share, a decline of 2,660% vs. last year.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/28/2022 – 22:25

  • Supreme Court Reinstates Louisiana Election Map Disputed By Democrats
    Supreme Court Reinstates Louisiana Election Map Disputed By Democrats

    Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

    The Supreme Court granted an emergency Republican application to reinstate a disputed election map in Louisiana late in the day on June 28, a move that allows the map to remain in place for the next elections.

    In the process, the high court also stayed two lower court rulings that found that the redrawn congressional district boundaries in the map probably violated the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting the power of black voters.

    The court said in the brief unsigned order (pdf) that it would hold off on considering the merits of the case until after it hears and decides a similar dispute from Alabama that is expected to be argued in the court’s new term that begins in October.

    The map was approved by Louisiana state lawmakers in March after they overrode Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards’s veto.

    According to a CNN summary, the map kept Republicans’ advantage in five of the Pelican State’s six congressional districts.

    This left only the 2nd district, which runs all the way from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, as the state’s only majority black district and the sole district to favor Democrats. Reportedly, 33 percent of all Louisianans are black.

    The ruling came in Ardoin v. Robinson, court file 21A814. Kyle Ardoin is Louisiana’s Republican secretary of state.

    The emergency application to revive the electoral map was filed with Justice Samuel Alito, who referred the case to the full court.

    The court’s liberal members – Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan – dissented from the new decision but did not provide reasons explaining why.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/28/2022 – 22:05

  • "Stage 6" Power Blackouts Hit South Africa Amid Labor Unrest
    “Stage 6” Power Blackouts Hit South Africa Amid Labor Unrest

    South African state power utility Eskom has been hit with labor unrest contributing to widespread blackouts after ten generation units went offline.

    Reuters says Eskom is facing “Stage 6” power cuts that mean most South Africans will experience six hours without power, beginning Tuesday night, one of the worst power crises since 2019. 

    “Three of the 10 generation units that had tripped during the night have been returned to service. This, however, is still insufficient to stave off the implementation of Stage 6 load-shedding,” Eskom said in a statement. 

    Blackouts were caused primarily by “unlawful and unprotected labor action, which has caused widespread disruption to Eskom’s power plants,” the utility said. 

    Since last week, Eskom has enforced “Stage 4” power cuts, shedding 4,000 megawatts (MW) from the national grid. Stage 6 outages mean 6,000 MW will be removed. 

    “The group’s coal-fired power plants are prone to faults, and labor protests are constraining its ability to return units to service,” Reuters said, adding, “the protests started last week after wage talks between Eskom and trade unions, including the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa and the National Union of Mineworkers, reached deadlock.” 

    Eskom Chief Executive Andre de Ruyter said the strikes are unlawful because electricity is considered an essential service. A court blocked the strike, though protests still happened anyway, crippling the economy. 

    Bloomberg points out that energy-intensive companies, such as Anglo American Plc and Glencore Plc, which account for 40% of the nation’s electricity consumption, face severe outages and pose a safety risk to workers operating in deep-level mines. 

    Widespread blackouts come as growing concern about South Africa’s faltering economy of lackluster growth, soaring inflation, and high unemployment could unleash a dangerous economic environment known as “stagflation.”  

    People are getting angry. 

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

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/28/2022 – 21:45

  • Gas Prices Squeezing Americans As More Rate Biden's Economy "Poor"
    Gas Prices Squeezing Americans As More Rate Biden’s Economy “Poor”

    By Lydia Saad of Gallup

    Two-thirds of Americans say recent increases in the price of gas are causing them hardship, which is up from 52% feeling this financial pinch in April. Although more Americans say they are experiencing “moderate” rather than “severe” hardship, the percentage describing the hardship as severe has risen from 14% to 22%.

    The latest results are based on a June 1-20 Gallup survey. The 67% experiencing hardship is among the highest levels Gallup has found when asking this question at other times of rising gas prices since 2000. The last time it was at this level was in May 2011.

    Americans’ reaction to gas prices reflects the relatively sharp increase in pump prices this year, rising by nearly a dollar a gallon in recent months and now averaging close to $5.00 per gallon nationally. Americans were paying just over $2.00 a gallon, on average, at the start of 2021.

    Experiencing hardship due to gas prices is, naturally, strongly related to household income.

    • Eight in 10 adults in lower-income households — those earning less than $40,000 per year — say the rise in gas prices has caused them financial hardship, with 40% saying it has been severe.

    • Nearly as many households making between $40,000 and $99,999 — 73% — report a hardship, although just 20% say it has been severe.

    • Half of households earning $100,000 or more report a hardship due to gas prices, with 12% calling it severe.

    Majorities Say Summer Driving and Vacations Being Affected

    More than six in 10 Americans say the price of gas has caused them to drive less this summer than they might have otherwise. This exceeds the percentages reporting they were curtailing their driving at other times of high gas prices, including in 2000, 2001, 2004, 2005 and 2018. Gallup did not ask this question during the period of high gas prices in 2008.

    Fifty-five percent of Americans also say the price of gas is causing them to alter their summer vacation plans. The one time Gallup asked this previously, in May 2005, 46% reported altering their plans. At the same time, slightly fewer than now, 59%, said rising gas prices were causing financial hardship.

    Gallup Economic Confidence Index Now Lowest Since 2009

    As gas prices have become more burdensome for Americans, their view of the U.S. economy has continued to dim, as indicated by Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index (ECI). The index, which is a summary of Americans’ ratings of current economic conditions and outlook for the economy, has sunk 13 points over the past month to -58. The index has a theoretical range from +100 if all respondents describe the economy in positive terms and think it’s improving to -100 if all describe it in negative terms and think it’s worsening.

    Today’s -58 ECI score represents a substantially negative skew in public opinion about the economy and is the lowest measured since a -64 reading in February 2009. At the time, the country was still embroiled in the 2007-2009 recession and confidence was starting to recover after hitting the all-time low of -72 in October 2008.

    The latest drop in Gallup’s ECI score reflects harsher assessments of the economy on both aspects of the index:

    • The percentage of Americans calling current conditions “poor” has risen eight percentage points in June to 54% — the first time a majority has called conditions poor since 2009. Just 11% say conditions are “good” and 34% “only fair.” Less than 1% describe them as “excellent.”

    • A striking 85% in June say the economy is getting worse, up from 77% in May and only two points shy of the record high on this, from June 2008.

    Perceptions of Nation’s Most Important Problem Are Steady

    Currently, 40% of U.S. adults mention some aspect of the economy when asked to name the country’s chief problem, including 18% mentioning the high cost of living or inflation and 5% citing gas prices explicitly. Another 13% say the economy in general is the top problem, and 1% say it’s the “recession” among a handful of other aspects of the economy mentioned by no more than 1% for each.

    A unique aspect of Americans’ current attitudes about the nation is that their top-of-mind mentions of the economy are not nearly as high as would be expected from their explicit ratings that compose the ECI.

    While up sharply from 23% a year ago and 19% in June 2020, current net economic mentions are far below the 70% and higher level seen in 2008 and 2009, when economic confidence was similar to or just slightly worse than today. Fewer name economic problems today than did so between 2010 and 2014, when economic confidence was significantly better than it is now.

    The top-named noneconomic problem is the government, cited by 18% of Americans, which ties with inflation as the top-named specific problem overall. The government has consistently ranked among the top two mentions since 2016.

    Eight percent this month, up from 1% in May, mention guns or gun control as the most important problem facing the country, reflecting Americans’ focus on the issue in the aftermath of mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas. This is the highest percentage mentioning guns since August 2019, after back-to-back mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio.

    Another 2% this month mention school shootings, bringing overall concern about gun violence to 10%. That is close to the record-high 13% recorded in March 2018, following the Parkland, Florida, high school shooting.

    Other noneconomic issues mentioned by at least 3% of Americans include crime (6%), immigration (5%), lack of unity in the country (5%), ethical/moral decline (4%), race relations (3%) and poverty/homelessness (3%).

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/28/2022 – 21:25

  • Get Woke, Go Broke: Hollywood Is Dying And They Deserve It
    Get Woke, Go Broke: Hollywood Is Dying And They Deserve It

    Hollywood is dying, their various partners are dying, and they brought it on themselves.  The entertainment and corporate news industry has long had a cringe inducing leftist bias, but for many years their propaganda and their motivations remained comparatively subtle.  Then, something happened.  Maybe it was the election of Donald Trump, maybe it was a unified decision within corporate culture to take the mask completely off and reveal the true ugliness underneath, or, maybe it was just pure arrogance.  Whatever the cause, Hollywood and all the related appendages of the tinsel town religion suddenly turned openly militant and the zealotry was palpable.  

    This is a dynamic that had been developing for some time, but truly became an international phenomena around 2016 onward.  It’s important to note that also around this same time there was a burgeoning revelation among conservatives and many moderates that our popular culture had been overrun by people with an agenda, and they did not have our best intentions at heart.  We had been lax in our vigilance.  Many thought that pop culture was “stuff for children” and that the real fight was in politics.  They were wrong.   

    The first group that really took notice and spoke up was video game consumers.  This led to open opposition to leftists hijacking the industry and spreading like a cancer into video games journalism.  And, of course, as soon as people expressed distrust the leftists attacked them as “racists, homophobes, bigots, sexists and misogynists.”  A typical gaslighting response that is all too familiar today.  Known as “Gamergate,” leftists to this day still rabidly froth at the mouth over the mere mention of “integrity in video games journalism.”  Leftists really hate it when you expose them.   

    There have been many other moments of exposure since 2016, from the negative reactions to Comicsgate, feminist Ghostbusters, feminist Star Wars, woke Star Trek, woke Dr. Who, woke Batwoman, woke He-Man, woke Lord of the Rings, critical race theory in television, trans, LGBT and CRT propaganda in children’s programming, etc.  It’s becoming endless.  Around 95% of all popular entertainment contains multiple layers of leftist messaging.  The market is utterly saturated with it.

    This kind of overwhelming propaganda is familiar.  It is a methodology used in communist regimes and authoritarian governments throughout the 20th century including the Soviet Union and Mao’s China, and it almost slipped right under the noses of the majority of Americans and western nations.  The goal is simple:  Make EVERYTHING political.  

    Want to escape the real world for a couple of hours into a fantasy land?  Want to see daring tales of classical heroes and villains?  Want to experience history as it actually happened, or at least very close to the historical record?  Are you looking for an archetypal experience, a mythological exploration of the human mind or the human heart – something that almost anyone could relate to?  Sorry, you’re not allowed to escape.  You’re not allowed to examine universal ideas and ideals.  Every single story must be told within the narcissistic framework (or prison) of modern political ideology.  Even in stories set a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.

    The extreme political left wants you to think about their beliefs and viewpoints all day everyday.  They want you to assume that their ideology is the ONLY ideology.  They want you to assume that the “majority” of the population thinks as they think.  It’s called manufacturing consensus.

    The problem is, the public is aware of the agenda and they are looking for the subliminal and not-so-subliminal messages.  They see the narratives and they are getting sick and tired of it.  Thus, the mantra of “Get Woke, Go Broke” was born.  

    The more the leftists in media double down on inserting their politics into every single product, the more broke they get.  Case in point, the continuing decline of the largest media entities in the world.  

    The streaming giant Netflix is now imploding, with a multitude of failed woke projects, the company is dealing with a recent subscriber loss of 200,000 and a projected subscriber loss of over 2 million by next month.  The company actually began to falter last year, despite covid lockdowns in many states that should have encouraged people to buy into streaming services as a means to deal with boredom.  Beyond that, the Netflix stock price collapsed from almost $700 a share to $190 a share in less than six months.   

    The company will never openly admit it, but woke programming is mostly to blame.  Netflix released an internal memo to employees last month indicating that they would be producing more content for consumers of differing political views and even suggested that any employee that has a problem with that should quit.  A major problem within woke companies is the attitude of low level, low value and low intelligence employees thinking that they should be in charge.  Now it appears that Netflix is trying to clean house, with hundreds of people fired in the past couple of weeks.  But, it’s too little too late.       

    Disney is another huge example that Get Woke, Go Broke is becoming a social rule.  The company is rife with leftist cultism to the point that it avidly defended the sexualization of children in public schools.  Disney’s attacks on Florida and its stated goal of disrupting the legally ratified and widely supported Anti-Grooming Bill has revealed the disgusting underbelly of the conglomerate for all to see.  Disney wants your kids to be exposed to sexual discussions and mentally ill teachers looking for psychological validation.  

    When you target people’s kids, even the normies start to take notice.  

    Disney has now suffered multiple box office flops and streaming network failures, from Ms. Marvel, to Obi-Wan Kenobi to Lightyear, the media giant is crumbling.  You can only put so many CRT and LGBT messages into your movies before it starts to add up to box office poison.  And, you can’t declare fealty to the leftist agenda as a company and then expect the majority of Americans, who are not extreme leftists, to give you their hard earned money.

    Disney’s stock price has collapsed this past year from $200 down to $90.  The company is currently relying on continued traffic through its theme parks to sustain it, but with gas prices inflating to record highs it is unlikely that park revenues and tourist dollars will continue to levitate.  

    One movie that did do extremely well this year from every angle including from a budget standpoint was Top Gun: Maverick.  Tom Cruise’s love letter to fans of the original film had a budget of $170 million and has grossed over $1 billion globally so far, crushing every other competing film including Disney’s woke film ‘Lightyear.’  With zero leftist propaganda injected into the Maverick story and a perfect balance of fan appreciation and nostalgia, proponents of the war against the woke cult have been proven correct.  Audiences want nothing to do with progressive politics in their entertainment.  It is a fact.

    What leftists seem to have forgotten is they don’t own the consumer.   They can pump out an endless array of woke media, but they can’t force the public to buy their products.  We own them.  They are the consumer’s bitch.  Activism in entertainment might be viable at times, but the market has spoken when it comes to “woke,” and the market says no. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/28/2022 – 21:05

  • Over 100 Georgia Sheriffs Condemn Democratic Gubernatorial Challenger Over 'Defund The Police'
    Over 100 Georgia Sheriffs Condemn Democratic Gubernatorial Challenger Over ‘Defund The Police’

    Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A total of 102 sheriffs in Georgia have joined Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican who is seeking a second term, in a statement condemning Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams over her support of “soft-on-crime policies.”

    Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams speaks to the media during a press conference at the Israel Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 24, 2022. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

    The statement, released on June 27, also criticized Abrams for “advancing the Defund the Police movement” with her position as a board member at the Marguerite Casey Foundation, a Seattle-based grant-making group, which the sheriffs called an “anti-police organization.”

    “Stacey Abrams has repeatedly shown complete disdain for law enforcement and the risk we take every day putting our lives on the line to serve our communities,” the sheriffs wrote.

    “Ms. Abrams actively serves on the governing board of—and has profited from—an anti-police organization which openly advocates for abolishing prisons and stripping local police departments of their funding,” they added.

    Georgia’s governor race is a rematch between Kemp and Abrams. In 2018, Kemp edged Abrams by 54,723 votes with over 3.9 million voters casting a vote. This year, Kemp defeated former Sen. David Perdue to win the GOP nomination.

    So far it has been a tight race between the two candidates. According to a recent poll from Easter Carolina University’s Center for Survey Research, Kemp led Abrams 50 percent to 45 percent. The poll surveyed 868 registered voters in Georgia from June 6 to June 9.

    Abrams became a board member of the foundation in May 2021. Less than a month later, she was one of the board members supporting the foundation’s roll-out of an anti-police initiative.

    The foundation’s 2020 financial filing (pdf), available on its website, shows that it has given grants to groups including the Movement for Black Lives and Louisville Community Bail Fund.

    The foundation is vocal in its support for the #AbolishthePolice and #DefundthePolice movements, as evidenced by the frequent mention of the two Twitter hashtags on its social media account. One recent example involved a post promoting the foundation’s book event.

    “Stacey Abrams also supports proposals that put criminals back on our streets and clears their criminal record, and she opposed legislation to crack down on human trafficking when she served in the state legislature,” the sheriffs added.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/28/2022 – 20:45

  • Houseboats Trapped On Lake Mead As Water Levels Fall Closer To "Dead Pool" Status 
    Houseboats Trapped On Lake Mead As Water Levels Fall Closer To “Dead Pool” Status 

    Lake Mead’s water levels are plunging so fast that houseboats on the nation’s largest reservoir are getting stuck because there’s not enough water in some parts. 

    One houseboat was stranded for three weeks after the water quickly dropped earlier this month. Thankfully, YouTubers — Sin City Outdoors of Las Vegas and HeavyDSparks of Salt Lake City — came out with a military jet boat and documented when they pulled the beached houseboat back into the water. 

    Dave Sparks and his team arrived Thursday and secured permission from the National Park Service to conduct the recovery operation of the houseboat. 

    Persistent drought conditions have pushed Lake Mead to the lowest point since the artificial reservoir was filled nearly a century ago. Water levels have been falling this year, down to 1,043 feet above sea level — and 148 feet from “dead pool,” which is the point water would no longer pass through Hoover Dam to supply California, Arizona, and Mexico. 

    A graph might not do justice to visualizing just how fast the water level has fallen. So here are three pictures of a sunken speedboat in the lake and the corresponding date. Just in May, the boat was partially submerged. Now there’s no water. 

    Other YouTubers have headed to Lake Mead as well because they know the apocalyptic scenes of a dried-out lake would generate views. 

    Here’s more footage of Lake Mead — maybe the body of water (or whatever is left) should be called Desert Mead. 

    “As the lake continues to fall the Lake Mead Marina finds itself in a very serious situation. Can it be moved farther out? Other Marinas have already been closed and some of the harbors look like the apocalypse,” YouTuber The Other Me said. 

    Some say it could only be a matter of weeks before boat ramps become inaccessible.  

    North America’s largest artificial reservoir appears to be in deep trouble. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/28/2022 – 20:25

  • FBI Raids Home Of Retired Texas Couple Who Attended Jan. 6 Capitol Rally
    FBI Raids Home Of Retired Texas Couple Who Attended Jan. 6 Capitol Rally

    Authored by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A retired Texas couple said FBI agents busted through the gate of their rural home, threw flashbangs, handcuffed them, and trained lasers on them before searching their home for evidence connected to the Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol.

    Protesters are seen at rally at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

    Lora DeWolfe and Darrel Kennemer, who live on seven acres near San Marcos, Texas, told The Epoch Times they attended the Jan. 6 rally at the Capitol but did nothing wrong. They believe the FBI mistakenly identified Kennemer as someone else.

    The FBI didn’t arrest them, they said. Agents eventually produced a search warrant saying Kennemer was suspected of “assaulting, resisting or impeding” officers and “entering restricted building or grounds.”

    Both said they went no further than the Capitol steps on Jan. 6 and did not harm anyone or damage anything. They said the allegation of assault was false, and the FBI kept showing Kennemer a blurry photo of a man who looked similar but wasn’t Kennemer.

    Darrel Kennemer speaks to an officer on Jan. 6, 2021, at the Capitol in Washington D.C. (Photo courtesy of Lora DeWolfe)

    “I vacillate between feeling mad and helpless,” DeWolfe said. “I was really sad. We just wanted an honest election.”

    “They’re corrupt, and they’re trying to scare us,” Kennemer said, adding he feels the FBI targeted him for just being at the rally.

    Raid Before Dawn

    Their ordeal began when their gate alarm woke them up in the pre-dawn hours of June 22, DeWolfe said. At first, they thought a deer had tripped the alarm, but DeWolfe got up and saw a white car. Kennemer got his AR-15 rifle and went outside, not knowing what to expect, she said.

    “I’m seeing one single white vehicle moving pretty fast, and I was thinking someone’s going to die,” Kennemer said.

    FBI officers got out of the white vehicle and told Kennemer, who had his rifle up in the air, to drop his weapon. He kept his rifle and asked the FBI to show him a warrant. Kennemer said someone threw a flash-bang at him repeatedly because he wouldn’t drop his weapon at first.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/28/2022 – 20:05

  • Japanese Businessman Loses Entire City's Personal Data After Passing Out Drunk On A Tuesday Night
    Japanese Businessman Loses Entire City’s Personal Data After Passing Out Drunk On A Tuesday Night

    Who hasn’t gone all out for the random Tuesday night bender and hit the sake a little too hard after a tough start to the work week? Plenty of us.

    When narrowing down that field to the workers who have also passed out on the street and lost a flash drive containing the personal information of nearly 500,000 people, the herd thins out a little bit. 

    But according to Vice, that’s exactly what happened to one Japanese businessman in his 40s this past week. He ventured out for drinks in Osaka prefecture’s industrial Amagasaki city before waking up, hours later, on the street.

    His bag – containing his USB drive with the sensitive information he was carrying around – was missing. The drive was encrypted, the report says, and contained the personal data of Amagasaki’s 465,177 residents.

    Photo: Vice

    Among the information included about the residents was dates of birth, addresses, bank account numbers, and tax details. The man was working for a company called BIPROGY, who was hired by the local government to seek out who was eligible for tax exemptions. 

    The company put out a statement this week, telling the local press: “We deeply apologize to the citizens of Amagasaki, the city of Amagasaki, and all concerned for the inconvenience caused by the loss of important information entrusted to us.”

    The drive was eventually found on Friday, but not before angering many of the city’s residents. The local city office received more than 30,000 calls in one day related to the incident, the report says. 

    And who says there’s no happy endings? Vice, citing NHK, said the employee found his bag and the drive “near an apartment building he vaguely recalls passing by during his night out”. 

    If you think Tuesday’s bender was bad, just wait for the weekend…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/28/2022 – 19:45

  • The Biden Administration Hits Peak Energy Absurdity
    The Biden Administration Hits Peak Energy Absurdity

    Authored by Anne Bradbury via RealClear Energy (emphasis ours),

    Methane Fee, Windfall Profits Taxes, Repealing IDCs, calls for FTC investigations into price gouging, and now a federal gasoline tax suspension. The Administration’s energy policy is disjointed and often counterproductive. Rather than flailing attacks on the oil and natural gas industry, leaders in Washington need a serious energy strategy that embraces all of America’s energy resources, including oil and natural gas. 

    (Eli Hartman/Odessa American via AP)

    In addition to these problematic legislative proposals, there are numerous concerning policies currently being implemented across the agencies.  The Administration is shutting down and blocking pipelines, greatly restricting oil and natural gas leasing on federal lands, slow walking LNG export permits, and issuing sweeping climate disclosure rules to discourage investment in the industry.

    These bad policies do nothing to address skyrocketing inflation and are having a real effect on the President’s approval rating, putting him at low that few presidents have experienced.

    Lest you dismiss this as partisan politics, let’s take a look back at the Obama White House’s statement on gasoline prices:

    “The truth is that there is no silver bullet to address rising gas prices in the short term, but there are steps we can take to ensure the American people don’t fall victim to skyrocketing gas prices over the long term.  That’s why since taking office the President has been focused on a sustained, ‘all-of-the-above’ approach to developing new domestic energy sources, expanding oil and gas production, and reducing our reliance on foreign oil…”

    The Obama White House advocated for an energy approach that included oil and natural gas, rather than spreading false narratives and pointing fingers.  They also knew the importance of domestic production, as they continued to hold federal lease sales for oil and gas development.  They looked to domestic producers to increase supply – rather than actively seeking foreign nations, like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, to produce more to meet our energy needs in America. 

    In contrast, the Biden Administration has not embraced an “all-of-the-above” approach. Instead, they continue to make confusing statements to the markets and the American people about role of domestic energy production:

    • “Let me answer your question very directly: President Biden remains absolutely committed to not moving forward with additional drilling on public lands.” (Gina McCarthy, April 2022). 

    • “We have to put the industry on notice: You’ve got six years, eight years, no more than 10 years or so, within which you’ve got to come up with a means by which you’re going to capture [emissions], and if you’re not capturing, then we have to deploy alternative sources of energy.” (Secretary John Kerry, April 2022).

    • “Oil prices are decreasing, gas prices should too…. Oil and gas companies shouldn’t pad their profits at the expense of hardworking Americans.” (President Joe Biden, March 2022)

    The world knows that oil and gas producers do not set the price of gasoline. The price of gasoline is determined by the price of crude oil, which is set on the global market based on supply, demand, and costs.  Prices are also affected by policies and promises – like  those the Administration has been pursing since the election.  Promises that sounded good during a campaign, like “no new fracking on federal lands” and “a transition to renewables.”  But, campaign pledges don’t always equal good policy.  The past two years have shown us that the Administration’s rhetoric, policies, and finger pointing has not created unity, and no one is better off paying $5/gallon to get to and from work. 

    The answer is working together – with the oil and natural gas industry – on implementing the policies needed to bring down the cost of energy for the American people:

    • Lease federal lands and waters

    • Build necessary pipelines to transport oil and natural gas 

    • Encourage investment and access to capital 

    • Relieve supply chain bottlenecks  

    The 8.6 percent overall inflation is quickly approaching what Americans faced in the 1979 energy crisis during Jimmy Carter’s presidency, when prices climbed 11.4 percent, and the Carter Administration imposed gasoline rationing and wage-price controls. 

    Arnold Weber, the former director of the Nixon Cost of Living Council referred to President Carter’s anti-inflation policies and efforts to sell them to the American people as a “sort of decoy operation … creating the illusion of involvement and action without creating the basis for action.”

    We urge the Biden Administration to acknowledge the essential role of oil and natural gas for decades to come and focus on serious policy solutions that increase supply and help bring down energy prices. American families deserve more than the illusion of action when it comes to energy.

    *  *  *

    Anne Bradbury is CEO of the American Exploration & Production Council (AXPC) whose membership is composed of America’s largest independent oil and natural gas exploration and production companies.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/28/2022 – 19:25

  • West Coast Rail Networks Clogged As Supply Chain Normalization Delayed
    West Coast Rail Networks Clogged As Supply Chain Normalization Delayed

    The key question is when supply chain congestion eases in the US. The question to that answer is not yet, as a new Bloomberg report shows the US’ largest containerized seaport in Los Angeles and Long Beach in Southern California (responsible for 42% of all containerized trade with Asia) has been hit with worsening rail delays.

    Dwell times for rail-bound containers have been steadily increasing since February and are back to levels not seen since the major port bottlenecks of summer 2021. 

    The Port of Los Angeles has recently enlisted help from the White House to clear a backlog of rail-bound containers that’s tripled since February, taking up space on its docks and causing congestion. As of Monday, there were more than 28,000 rail-container units on the ground, about two-thirds of which had been waiting to be picked up for nine days or more. -Bloomberg

    Increasing rail congestion comes as thousands of dockworker contracts across the West Coast are about to expire following unsuccessful negotiations between labor unions and major railroads. 

    If dockworkers or railroad workers strike, normalizing supply chains would be delayed. There’s also the risk of China’s reopening, and the backlog of goods headed in containers for US West Coast ports could further snarl supply chains. 

    Bloomberg also outlines that trucking woes and lack of warehouse space exacerbate bottlenecks for rail networks. 

    Trucking

    More than half of the truck gates at the Port of Los Angeles are still going unused on average due in part to the inconsistent staffing and operation hours at the terminals and distribution centers outside of the port, on top of the lack of space at warehouses.

    Moving about 70% of the US’s freight tonnage, truckers don’t feel encouraged to go in during off-peak hours because parts of the supply chain often don’t operate around the clock, said Matt Schrap, chief executive officer of the Harbor Trucking Association. Before the bottlenecks emerged, truckers could pick up containers in the early morning and then store them at truck yards until space opened up at warehouses. But these sites are now “full of empty containers and chassis, and land has become an extreme premium.”

    “More trucks aren’t going to necessarily solve the thing — it’s a productivity issue,” Schrap said in an interview.

    Warehousing 

    The vacancy rate at Southern California facilities is now around 0.3%, with the lack of availability particularly acute in the Inland Empire counties of Riverside and San Bernardino, Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka said at a virtual meeting of harbor commissioners last week. During normal times, the vacancy rate stood as high as 5%, he added.

    “We can’t build these facilities fast enough, and even though we boast 2 billion square feet from the shores of the Pacific now out to the desert region of Southern California, we’ve got to turn that cargo out faster and have enough space under roof to manage all of these consumer and manufacturing products,” he said at a separate briefing earlier this month.

    The West Coast bottleneck appears to be building inland, in rail, trucking, and warehousing networks — adding to increasing delays as the supply chain congestion shows little signs of abating.  

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/28/2022 – 19:05

  • How The Qualities Of Bitcoin Baffle Nocoiners
    How The Qualities Of Bitcoin Baffle Nocoiners

    Authored by Rowdy Yates via BitcoinMagazine.com,

    Traditionally, hard money has the two main qualities of autonomy and correlated-redeemability, but bitcoin has the former without the latter…

    WHAT’S IT BACKED BY?

    One of the most common criticisms from nocoiners remains, “But bitcoin isn’t backed by anything.”

    This criticism targets bitcoin’s dearth of a quality that I term “correlated-redeemability.”

    The most common rejoinder to this criticism is, “Your U.S. dollar isn’t backed by anything either.”

    The problem with this factually correct response is that it misses a deeper point.

    The deeper point is that while bitcoin lacks one traditional quality of hard money (correlated-redeemability), it possesses the primary but less visible quality of hard money: autonomy.

    This article is meant to explore the scope of autonomy, how it came to be overshadowed by correlated-redeemability and the relative value of these historically tandem qualities of hard currencies.

    A TALE OF TWO QUALITIES

    Traditional hard money has had two qualities: correlated-redeemability and autonomy. The first is easier to understand. Conceptually, correlated-redeemability is the quality of a currency that facilitates a rapid redemption for a stable amount of a commodity (traditionally a tangible one). Precious metal coinage illustrates how easily this quality can be understood. If someone pays for your labor with a gold coin, you exchange your unit of labor for a scarce metal that you can hold in your hand. Paper notes backed by precious metals are marginally more abstract, but because of historic exchange practices, they had concrete manifestations. Consider the U.S. government’s silver certificates, issued until the 1960s, which allowed mere plebs to exchange paper notes for genuine silver. The physical nature of correlated-redeemability helps make it cognitively accessible for the broader public.

    By contrast, a currency’s autonomy is considerably more abstract. Conceptually, currency autonomy is a quality that exists on a spectrum and reduces a sovereign’s capacity to manipulate the currency in a material way — think: inflation and debasement. Practically speaking, we can think of autonomy as the aggregation of barriers — tiny or big, physical or psychological — that put a check on schemes to manipulate the currency.

    THE SPECTRUM OF AUTONOMY

    As with any abstract idea, a parable can be a useful means of visualizing. Let’s imagine three sovereigns: Nayib, sovereign of a country that uses only bitcoin; Ike, sovereign of a country that uses only gold coinage; and Dick, sovereign of a country using a pure fiat currency.

    Nayib might want to increase his spending beyond tax revenue. However, he cannot increase the supply of bitcoin beyond what is written in the code. Additionally, Nayib does not automatically benefit from any expansion of the money supply unless he engages in successful, capital-intensive, proof-of-work mining. The net result: if Nayib tries to buy a G3 jet with deficit spending, the Gulfstream Corporation will have to accept an IOU instead of bitcoin. Nayib’s currency has high autonomy and only attenuated, uncorrelated-redeemability.

    Ike wants to be a profligate spender, but is constrained. If Ike’s expenses exceed his tax revenue, he has options, but none of them can be pursued in a cavalier manner. First, Ike can clip coins; as his administration comes into contact with coins, they can physically trim the edges and use the scraps to cast more coins. The upside is that this option isn’t terribly labor intensive. The downside is that even the blind of Ike’s country can detect the scheme. Second option: Ike can debase the metal of the coins. To do this, Ike needs to aggregate gold coins, schlep them to a furnace, mix gold with cheaper metals and mint newly-debased coins. This option is considerably more labor intensive, and by involving more coconspirators, the plot is increasingly subject to detection. With either option, Ike also has a psychological barrier, namely, he knows he is breaking the law regulating his own coinage. A third option is mining more gold ore to mint new coins. This third option has no psychological barrier, but it is the most labor-intensive of the three options. Ike’s currency has intermediate autonomy and immediate, correlated-redeemability — the qualities of traditional hard money.

    Dick is also a profligate spender, but as we all know he is not constrained. Dick’s country uses a fiat currency, so of course Dick just needs to have his treasurer hit the money-printing button, and the deficit is solved (at least in the short term). Additionally, because this is the nature of fiat currencies, Dick’s actions are perfectly legal, so he doesn’t even face psychological stigma for his actions. At the end of the day, there is no significant short-term cost to what Dick has done, and because of that low cost, the temptation for Dick to hit “CTRL P” remains quite high in perpetuity. Dick’s currency has de minimis autonomy and attenuated, uncorrelated-redeemability.

    This is the spectrum of currency autonomy: bitcoin > gold coinage > fiat.

    WHY IS REDEEMABILITY AN ELUSIVE CONCEPT?

    Prior to European voyages to Australia, a European would be forgiven if they believed that all mammals (animal species with lactating mothers) gave birth to live young. At the time, every mammal known to Europeans gave birth to live young. After Australian fauna became broadly known, the platypus threw a wrench into the paradigms of European biologists because the platypus is a species with lactating mothers, but the mothers laid eggs in lieu of live births. Once a real-world counterexample became available, it was relatively easy for biologists to disentangle traditionally tandem qualities of lactation and live births and then clearly identify the proper distinguishing characteristic of mammals to wit: lactating mothers.

    Prior to bitcoin, you would also be forgiven if you believed that all hard money must have correlated-redeemability. At the time, every traditional hard currency had the quality, e.g., gold coins, Yap stones, sea shells. After bitcoin, a wrench was thrown into the paradigm of hard money because bitcoin had autonomy without correlated-redeemability. With this real-world counterexample, we can now disentangle the traditionally tandem qualities of autonomy and correlated-redeemability and clearly identify the proper distinguishing characteristic of hard money to wit: autonomy.

    This history sheds light on why discussions of hard money have neglected autonomy and focused on correlated-redeemability. Historically, currency holders associated hard money with its most patent characteristics: the tactile and visible features of the correlated commodity. Autonomy by contrast, remained in the shadows, quietly checking schemes to manipulate the currency. To the extent autonomy was considered at all, it was probably only considered by sovereigns as an annoyance to their debasement plans.

    THE ENDOGENOUS VALUE OF AUTONOMY

    There is an inherent problem with valuing correlated-redeemability because this value is downstream of the integrity of the underlying monetary system. For example, if Ike debases his country’s coinage, a shop owner who is owed a single gold coin has his correlated-redeemability reduced in direct proportion to Ike’s debasement. If the shop owner receives a coin with 50% less gold, the shop owner’s correlated-redeemability for that precious commodity has been reduced by 50%. Therefore, correlated-redeemability has no endogenous value; the holders of commodities can always debase the commodities they custody.

    By contrast, autonomy’s value is endogenous. All things being equal, the more difficulty a schemer has in debasing the currency, the less the system will debase, therefore, autonomy tends to bolster monetary integrity and this is the value of autonomy, i.e., autonomy is upstream of monetary integrity. In the case of bitcoin, the autonomy of the currency prevents debasement from schemers and ensures integrity over time. In the case of gold coinage, the currency’s autonomy can strengthen monetary integrity and bolster correlated-redeemability, but the reverse is not true.

    BE PRECISE IN YOUR SPEECH

    Marduk, the ancient god of Babylon, derived his mythic powers from the ability to see clearly and speak magic words. The importance of identifying, naming and analyzing the qualities of hard money cannot be understated. This process is critical not only because it clarifies our understanding of hard money (seeing clearly), but also because it sharpens our verbal toolkit in the process (speaking clearly). Without a rhetorical means to decouple correlated-redeemability from hard money, “What’s it backed by?” remains an elusive critique to rebut, hollow though it may be.

    Bitcoiners intuitively understand the value proposition of autonomy, but this understanding is generally implicit. An explicit understanding of currency autonomy accelerates Bitcoiners’ capacity to educate and persuade nocoiners on the merits of bitcoin — the hardest extant money. Experience makes this point self-evident; reflect back on how many times you’ve had remarkable thoughts, but you lacked the words to articulate those thoughts until a meme, film or wordsmith came along and smashed the rhetorical barrier for you. A prime example of this rhetorical power is the “pill” parlance from “The Matrix” creators. Terms like “red pill,” “blue pill” and of course, “orange pill” allow you to describe a very cumbersome and abstract notion in a clear and precise way. Even if someone has never seen “The Matrix,” you can walk the newbie through the plot lines and still make your point. The cumbersome notions underpinning hard money pose similar difficulties. Through the use of anecdotes, a sharpened verbal toolkit and a clear understanding of hard money, Bitcoiners can shift the focus from correlated-redeemability to currency autonomy and push the dialogue forward.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/28/2022 – 18:45

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