Feb 02

Today’s News 2nd February 2021

  • Islamic Scholar Says Muslims Should Leave The West To Flee LGBT Teachings
    Islamic Scholar Says Muslims Should Leave The West To Flee LGBT Teachings

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    An Islamic scholar gave a controversial interview during which he asserted that Muslims should leave the west and return to their home countries, primarily to avoid their children being taught about LGBT issues.

    The comments were made by AbdulRahman Hassam during an appearance on a YouTube show called Al Madrasatu Al Umariyyah.

    “Anyone that knows they have the ability to migrate, go to their home country where they’re originally from,” said Hassam, adding that Muslims who remain in western countries are “sinning.”

    “You are giving your children to the enemies who are going to destroy your child’s mindset and thinking,” said the scholar, going on to highlight how thousands of Muslim children have been forcibly taken from their parents by social services in the UK.

    “This child has been taken from his parents, maybe because she was forcing him to pray…this child…he can be taken care of (by) an LGBT family,” said Hassam.

    “The west today, we have an issue of morality and a dignity issues against for example homosexuality…hence why we’re saying to the people leave the UK, because however good you are, they’re more than you, they influence you,” he concluded.

    The clash between the teaching of LBGT issues and the Muslim faith came to a head in the UK at the Parkfield Community School in Birmingham, where 98% of the students are Muslim.

    A curriculum implemented in 2016 which taught tolerance of homosexuality and other LGBT subjects was vehemently opposed by the community, with numerous protests taking place outside the school.

    After a judge asserted that the protest had been hijacked by extremist groups which had lied about the program normalizing pedophilia, the protests were effectively outlawed by the creation of an exclusion zone around the school.

    *  *  *

    New limited edition merch now available! Click here. In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, I urgently need your financial support here.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/02/2021 – 02:00

  • Enemies Of The State Vs. Enemies Of The People
    Enemies Of The State Vs. Enemies Of The People

    Authored by Frank Miele via RealClearPolitics.com,

    I didn’t declare war on the establishment; it declared war on me.

    It declared war on me when it supported energy policies that could enrich Saudi Arabia and Russia and would cost me more money at the gas pump or on my power bill.

    It declared war on me when it told me my ideas weren’t worthy of debate and discussion or that they were even so dangerous they couldn’t be shared publicly.

    It declared war on me when it used the police powers of the FBI and CIA to first spy on a presidential candidate and then worked to undermine the administration of that candidate after he was elected.

    It declared war on me when it told me my religious beliefs did not deserve the protection of the First Amendment.

    It declared war on me when it told me boys could compete against girls in high school sports and that they could shower together afterwards.

    It declared war on me when it offered citizenship to illegal aliens and shipped American jobs to China.

    It declared war on me when it mocked the usefulness of a wall on the Mexican border and simultaneously put up a razor-wire fence around the Capitol.

    It declared war on me when it tried to defund the police so that millions of Americans would be left defenseless against mobs from antifa and Black Lives Matter.

    It declared war on me when it said America was never great.

    It declared war on me when it told my children they are not good enough because they are white.

    It declared war on me when it said that defending the Constitution’s rules on federal elections is sedition.

    It declared war on me when it told me that I was a domestic terrorist if I didn’t believe the government’s official pronouncements about elections, about free speech, and about right and wrong.

    Let’s just say it plainly: The establishment declared war on me and on all conservative Americans when it decided that leftist orthodoxy was more important than the Constitution.

    Don’t believe me? Fine, why should you believe a Trump supporter? You’ve been indoctrinated by the national media, Big Tech oligarchs, the Democratic Party, and academic elites to believe without questioning that people like me can’t be trusted. But you don’t have to take my word for it.

    Listen instead to John Brennan, the former CIA director under President Obama, who speaks authoritatively for the Deep State:

    He said on MSNBC that “the members of the Biden team who have been nominated or have been appointed, are now moving in laser-like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about what looks very similar to insurgency movements that we’ve seen overseas, where they germinate in different parts of the country and they gain strength and it brings together an unholy alliance frequently of religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians.”

    This “guilt by labeling” is the antithesis of fair play or justice. It is a convenient mechanism for the ruling class to herd people into identity clusters so that individual rights can be supplanted by group responsibility. If this reminds you of China’s Cultural Revolution, you are not wrong. The ruling class wants you to conform, confirm and comply. If you step outside the lines, be prepared to be shamed, silenced and ostracized.

    A shocking example was provided Wednesday when Douglass Mackey of Delray Beach, Fla., was arrested for creating memes that allegedly misled voters in 2016 to think they could vote by texting instead of by actually going to the polls. This is the equivalent of arresting Sacha Baron Cohen for exposing the gullibility of the rich and famous. The FBI offered no evidence that Mackey actually convinced anyone not to vote, but even if it did, so what? Would you rather live in a country where the FBI is hunting down pranksters — four years after the supposed transgression — or a country where voters are expected to be able to recognize a joke when they see one?

    But nothing can be taken for granted any more. The people — and even their representatives and senators — are considered enemies of the state because they hold opinions that don’t meet the standards of Joe Biden or (this is even scarier!) Jake Tapper.

    No wonder the people are starting to rise up and rebel against the plutocracy.

    It’s not “We the Oligarchs” who are the source of power in the Constitution, but “We the People,” yet the ruling establishment has forgotten that.

    If people like Donald Trump and Douglass Mackey are deemed to be “enemies of the state,” then those who would suppress them and their freedoms must be considered “enemies of the people.”

    A house divided against itself cannot long stand, but if there is to be a truce it will not come from submission, but from a recognition that all people are created equal, that they all have certain inalienable rights, and that among those are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those words were worth fighting for once. Are they worth fighting for today?

    I don’t know, but I do know this: If Americans can’t have liberty, we can’t have America either – at least not one that is distinguishable from China. The time has come to make a choice.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/02/2021 – 00:00

  • Thousands Of Maskless Orthodox Jews Ignore Israeli Lockdown To Attend Funerals 
    Thousands Of Maskless Orthodox Jews Ignore Israeli Lockdown To Attend Funerals 

    Thousands of Orthodox Israelis poured into Jerusalem’s streets to attend two separate funerals Sunday despite the country’s ban on large public gatherings, according to AP News. 

    The first funeral procession was for Rabbi Meshulam Dovid Soloveitchik, who died at the age of 99 after contracting COVID-19 three months ago.

    Photographs from Soloveitchik’s funeral procession showed a large group of ultra-Orthodox Israelis’ winding down city streets without face masks nor properly social distancing. 

    Source: AP

    Many of the Orthodox Jews in attendance defied the country’s third coronavirus lockdown. Local media reported police set up roadblocks and were able to turn away twenty tour busses heading to the ceremony. 

    … but still, thousands of Orthodox Jews flooded the streets of Jerusalem. 

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    Deputy Health Minister Yoav Kisch tweeted that the gathering was “very bad in every way.”  

    Source: AP

    On Sunday evening, thousands of mourners attended a second funeral for rabbi, Yitzhok Scheiner, 98, who died from virus-related complications. 

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    Alon Halfon, a Jerusalem police official, told Channel 13 TV that police were overwhelmed by the crowd size and that health violations were issued. 

    Orthodox Jews have been in strong opposition to face masks and pandemic restrictions. Many of them have refused to abide by the rules in Israel and also in New York City. 

    Israel’s Health Ministry recorded 640,000 infections and nearly 5,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic. The country has been averaging around 6,000 infections per day, one of the highest in the world. 

    Time will tell, it could take weeks for infections to flare up following the mass gathering events this weekend. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/01/2021 – 23:40

  • How George Washington Responded To "Insurrectionists"
    How George Washington Responded To “Insurrectionists”

    Authored by TJ Martinell via Tenth Amendment Center,

    The recent protests and storming of the US Capitol building on Jan. 6 produced a hysterical reaction from both pundits and the federal government. This contrasts wildly with the response to an actual rebellion during the Republic’s early days.

    The new federal government didn’t respond to the so-called Whiskey Rebellion with crackdowns on civil liberties to “prevent another rebellion” as many seem to want to do today. In 1794 Kentucky and Pennsylvania farmers took up arms in opposition to a federal whiskey excise tax. The Whiskey Rebellion concluded with President George Washington calling up the militia to suppress the rebels, who dispersed before any real fighting occurred.

    Interpretations of the rebellion vary. Some view Washington’s decision as a vital move to preserve the then-fledgling federal government’s legitimacy after Shay’s Rebellion eight years prior had prompted the founders to replace the Articles of Confederation in favor of a stronger central government. However, others consider the rebels as patriots resisting an unjust tax on whiskey, which was frequently used as a means of exchange in frontier areas where coinage was scarce.

    To be sure, Washington reacted initially in a manner utterly restrained compared to what we could expect today. Even after invoking the Militia Act of 1792 allowing him to call up state militiamen, he sent state officials to the rebels and tried to reach a peaceful resolution, without success.

    However, a separate issue to look at is the aftermath of the rebellion. Roughly 150 men were arrested and tried for treason. Yet only two men were found guilty, and they were later pardoned by Washington himself.

    In his seventh state of the union address Washington defended his decision:

    For though I shall always think it a sacred duty to exercise with firmness and energy the constitutional powers with which I am vested, yet it appears to me no less consistent with the public good than it is with my personal feelings to mingle in the operations of Government every degree of moderation and tenderness which the national justice, dignity, and safety may permit.

    As historian Carol Berkin noted in a 2017 lecture, “not a single person really ever served a jail term. Everybody was given amnesty. Nobody was cruelly beaten or destroyed. But the power, the authority of the federal government was upheld.”

    Perhaps Washington and other Founders holding office realized the appearance of hypocrisy for condemning men as traitors who acted as they had just a few decades earlier.

    The Whiskey Rebellion occurred in western Pennsylvania in 1794. Via Shutterstock.

    At the same time, it’s not so much what Washington and Congress did as what they didn’t do or even propose to do. Reading through diaries, letters, and correspondence from founders ranging from George Washington and Alexander Hamilton to Thomas Jefferson written during the rebellion, there is no instance I could find in which they advocated or suggested the civil rights restrictions such as firearms ownership or freedom of speech and assembly. There was no call for a permanent standing army. This is on top of the fact that nothing was actually proposed and then enacted.

    In fact, Jefferson wrote sympathetically of the rebellion in a Dec. 28, 1794 letter to John Adams, calling the whiskey tax “an infernal one. The first error was to admit it by the Constitution.”

    He wrote further that hatred of the law in those states was “universal, and has now associated to it a detestation of the government; & that separation which perhaps was a very distant & problematical event, is now near, & certain, & determined in the mind of every man.”

    Not surprisingly, Jefferson would later repeal the excise tax when elected president.

    Even federalists like Alexander Hamilton in ways sought to avoid violence that might have demonstrated the power of the new government, albeit he did advocate hanging some of the rebel leaders. In an Aug. 29, 1794 letter to Maryland Governor Thomas Lee, he wrote of avoiding “the necessity of using force now & at future periods” by keeping the militia deployed in good morale.

    In all the correspondence Hamilton had with George Washington, not one advocated for the confiscation of firearms from the regions where the rebellion had occurred. Nor was there a call to restrict firearm ownership of any type among the general population to prevent similar rebellions in the future. The federal government didn’t use the “crisis” as an excuse to enlarge itself, as some sought with the Alien and Sedition Act passed four years later

    While Washington’s best opportunity to make himself a military dictator occurred just after the War of Independence ended with him still in charge of the continental army, the Whiskey Rebellion theoretically could have afforded him another chance – one that he likely never even contemplated.

    The comparatively restrained response by Washington to the rebellion demonstrated that it is not necessary to take away liberties to maintain civil order or “keep us safe.”

    Writing in reaction to Shay’s Rebellion, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to James Madison saying rebellions were a “medicine necessary for the sound health of government” and that “honest republican governors” should be “so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much.”

    What many people fail to grasp is that rebellions and insurrections aren’t always found in physical confrontations, and the “medicine necessary for the sound health of government” can be applied just as effectively through the nullification of unconstitutional federal acts. Incidentally, Jefferson referred to nullification as the “rightful remedy.”

    The histrionic and totalitarian rhetoric coming from the federal government today over a handful of people storming the US Capitol demonstrates how fragile its perceived legitimacy is today. It is a government that overreacts to minor incidents because deep down its members are terrified of any meaningful defiance or resistance to their rule.

    They realize how easily D.C. tyranny could end if the American people were united in common opposition to unconstitutional actions in a manner that reduced their power, rather than give the largest government in the world the further pretext to expand it.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/01/2021 – 23:20

  • Iran Launches New Satellite-Carrying Rocket As Biden Plan To Restore Nuclear Deal Falters
    Iran Launches New Satellite-Carrying Rocket As Biden Plan To Restore Nuclear Deal Falters

    In a first since the Biden administration entered the White House, Iran has successfully launched its newest domestic built satellite-carrying rocket, named Zuljanah. 

    Iranian state TV while not specifying the exact date featured video of the launch Monday which occurred in a daytime desert setting. “State TV said the rocket is capable of carrying a 220-kilogram (485-pound) satellite, adding that the three-stage rocket uses solid fuel in the first and second stages and fluid fuel in the third,” according to the AFP.

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    The launch was a test hailed by officials as utilizing the Islamic Republic’s “most powerful rocket engine”.

    An Iranian defense ministry statement said “the test helped Iran to achieve its most powerful rocket engine… the rocket can be launched using a mobile launching pad.”

    “It is capable of carrying a single 220 kg satellite or up to 10 smaller ones” with the rocket itself capable of reaching a height of 310 miles, according to the statement. 

    And state TV added: “The Zuljanah is able to reach a height of 500 km … The three-stage satellite launcher uses a combination of solid and liquid fuels. It uses solid fuel in the first and second stages and fluid fuel in the third stage.”

    It is precisely the type of launch previously condemned by the prior Trump administration as a breach of past nuclear deal related commitments. The past administration had accused Iran of seeking to develop nuclear capable ballistic missiles under the guise of its “peaceful” space program.

    Iran has in recent years sent small satellites into space, namely the IRGC’s Noor last year successfully put into orbit.

    It’s also expected this latest test will come under Western condemnation at a sensitive moment Iran and the US are teasing the possibility of restoring the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA), but with each side telling the other essentially “you move first”. 

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    The timing is further interesting given Tehran appears to be continuing to develop leverage aimed at getting Biden to quickly lift sanctions and finally return to the JCPOA.

    At the start of this week US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told NBC News that the administration hopes to negotiate a “longer and stronger” deal, but only after Iran returns to compliance.

    At the same time, Tehran is telling the White House that it must drop the Trump-era sanctions first. Blinken’s statements also grabbed attention because of the following:

    During the interview, taped on Sunday, Blinken said Iran was months away from developing enough nuclear material to create a bomb, in “a matter of weeks”, if Iran continues to lift restraints put in place by the 2015 deal.

    However, this has pretty much been the same refrain across multiple administrations going back years. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/01/2021 – 23:00

  • Luongo: What I Want To Know Is How Angry Are You, Really?
    Luongo: What I Want To Know Is How Angry Are You, Really?

    Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

    In another life I used to be a poet and, at times, your classic black-trench-wearing, cigarette-smoking art fag. Angry didn’t begin to cover what was my default state of being in my 20’s.

    My poor Rickenbacker 4003 has taken a lot of abuse over the years with me taking my frustrations out on it rather than going postal. Yeah, musician too folks, but the livestream regulars already know this.

    Fast forward to my late 30’s and the post-Lehman Bros. Era dominated by central bank created fake markets and I’m whiling away away 250+ miles from home watching the acceleration of the degradation of Western society from my man cave cum laboratory breathing enough hydrogen and ethylenediamine to drive even a Mormon missionary to violence.

    It was during this period in 2011 I wrote the following lyrics. For those of you who think this blog is something new for me, something that came out of the potential euphoria of a Trump Presidency as Successful Insurrection Against the Banksters, no.

    My problem is I’ve always been 10 years ahead of the game.

    So, on this morning where the r/WallStreetBets army are taking on the most systemically important and vulnerable market in the world, silver, this song’s for you.

    What I Want to Know

    Why do the worst always get to the top?
    Be it a lawyer, banker or roided-up cop
    Who flies off in a rage when I quote him the law,
    defendin’ myself. Man! That’s the last straw.
    But may it is that’s the gig with The Rules,
    To use by the Rulers on the Ruled.
    Shout down the Speakers, but defend the disturbed
    and throw all those deadbeats and their kids to the curb.
    Let ’em drug up your kids while they Tazer your Granny
    Or else… Here’s Nurse Ratched, the Inquisitor Nanny.

    So, What Do I Want… and Where Am I Going?
    And why is Bernanke seen as all knowing?
    And Where is the Horse and Where is the Rider?
    And Where are my keys, and Why am I wider?
    Why do I hurt when I’m so broken and numb?
    Why do we continue to fight for their crumbs?
    When will the revolts turn from Red to Brown?
    Forget Violet or Orange! Stop trusting in clowns?
    Shantih! Shantih! A seeming finale…
    Conceived and produced by one, Alistair Crowley.

    What I want to know….
    What I want to know….
    What I want to know….

    The Dude’s not abiding, Mr. Wales is plumb mean,
    It’s enough to make even the most rational “Green.”
    The envy, the hate, the statistics, the jokes
    All mask the real problem that everyone’s broke.
    The bridges are falling and the culture’s decaying…
    And even the hair of the dog’s begun graying.
    Everyone’s shouting and fingers are pointed
    But anger makes everything sound so disjointed.
    And it’s that more than terr’ism needs killin’
    Less Hillary, Palin or Limbaugh, more Dylan.

    What I want to know….
    What I want to know….
    What I want to know….

    Just askin’ questions won’t get it done.
    You’d better sack up or they’ve already won.
    Just find your voice along with your balls
    and get hold of this barrel before it reaches the falls…

    But wait there’s much more than I don’t understand
    As I stop and I turn to the guys in my band
    and ask them what they think’s going on…
    Do they like the cut of the jib of this song?
    They turn to me and say that I am in charge
    As long as this ship’s more a cruise than a barge
    Get back in the groove, Man, and make a fresh start
    The whole is much more than the sum of our parts.
    It’s real good advice and it cuts through the thickness
    But doesn’t get down to the source of the sickness.
    So, here’s my best offer Mr. Congressman Thievin’
    Why don’t you go fuck yourself, and we’ll call it even.

    What I want to know,
    is when you will go
    and leave us alone.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/01/2021 – 22:40

  • Natgas Prices Jump 11% As Weather Models Point To "Widespread Cold"
    Natgas Prices Jump 11% As Weather Models Point To “Widespread Cold”

    Natural-gas futures jumped 11% to 2.844 per million British thermal units on Monday afternoon after new forecasts suggest energy demand will increase in February as colder weather returns. 

    “An unusually strong response to weekend adjustments to the short-term temperature forecasts,” said Ritterbusch and Associates. The independent consulting firm said prices could reach the $3 mark by the end of the month. 

    BAMWX’s meteorologist Kirk Hinz tweeted, “If you’re a fan of cold & wintry weather ahead, this pattern is for you.” He said a polar vortex is pouring Arctic air into the US’s central part that will “help transition out of the previously warm pattern.” 

    “The pattern ahead as we get deeper into mid-February supports a widespread colder than normal look across the US we haven’t seen since February 2014. A combination of finally tapping into the Polar Vortex and favorable atmospheric tropical forcing has data showing some of the coldest air on the Planet pushing South into the US, starting next week,” Hinz stated. 

    February 2014 Reference 

    Next Two Weeks 

    “I can’t really recall a time where I’ve witnessed a 32 heating degree days gain inside of 11 days on the ensemble runs,” he said. Rising heating degree days means natgas demand is set to increase. 

    He concludes by saying both “GFS & ECMWF” could bring “absolute brutal cold next weekend behind a winter storm.” 

    … and just in time as Goldman Sachs flipped from bearish to bullish on natgas. 

    To sum up, natgas prices are exploding higher on a weather outlook that is much colder than previously expected. There’s also a threat of another system next weekend. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/01/2021 – 22:20

  • #SilverSqueeze: Physical Silver Shortage vs. Paper Silver
    #SilverSqueeze: Physical Silver Shortage vs. Paper Silver

    Submitted by Torgny Persson, BullionStar.com

    The silver short squeeze in physical silver at present is unprecedented. Even so, the spot price of paper silver is not even close to the real physical equilibrium price of silver.  BullionStar may soon have no option but to abandon setting prices based on silver spot price altogether and move to fixed prices.

    Thanks to  r/WallStreetBets (WSB) and related spin offs, the wider public is starting to open its eyes to the corruption and cronyism in the financial markets including in the paper gold and paper silver markets.

    For years, BullionStar has been one of the strongest critics of the manipulated precious metals markets where paper issuance of silver (out of thin air) exceeds the physical availability of real silver at a multiple of at least 100 to 1.

    While some in the WSB movement have suggested purchases of SLV shares and call options, many others are recommending physical silver. It’s important to understand that purchases of SLV shares does not equate to putting pressure on bullion banks. Bullion banks provide various services to ETF’s, such as custodial services, and ETF’s are known for colluding with central banks. The only way to put pressure on the corrupted paper silver market and on the bullion banks is to buy physical silver. Only then is there a chance that price discovery for real physical silver will shift to be based on the actual trading of physical silver instead of being inherited from synthetic paper trading prone to manipulation.

    Click here to see what silver bullion items we currently have in stock.

    This week may be the most interesting week for silver savers and investors in decades. The questions asked by this movement are of huge importance for the whole financial and monetary system.

    • Is what we are seeing the start of a seminal silver crisis with the potential of finally bringing down the manipulated paper silver market?
    • Can this movement lead to an attack of the very nature of unbacked fiat currency?
    • Will the bullion banks try to smash the paper spot and paper futures prices back down and if so, will the price of physical silver definitively disconnect from the paper price?
    • Can COMEX and SLV really source the physical silver required amidst the high demand?

    Paper Silver Manipulation

    What was claimed to be a conspiracy theory of bullion banks colluding to manipulate and suppress the paper price of precious metals have been proven true again and again.

    BullionStar has also exposed, for example here, here, here, here, here, and here how the precious metals industry organisations, like the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA), protect the interests of the paper dealing bullion banks rather than further the interest of physical producers and dealers.

    Suppressing the paper price of gold and silver goes to the very core, not only of the financial system, but to the whole monetary system. In Gold & Silver Price Manipulation – The Greatest Trick ever Pulled, we wrote:

    “Manipulating gold and silver prices by spoofing futures trades and cancelling them is one thing. Central bank intervention into physical gold markets to dampen the gold price is another. But perhaps the most far reaching yet unappreciated method of manipulation is sitting there in plain sight, and that is the very structure of the contemporary ‘gold’ and ‘silver’ markets where prices are established by trading in vast quantities of fractionally-backed synthetic gold and silver credit, be it in the form of vast quantities of unallocated positions that are ‘gold’ or ‘silver’ in name only, or in the form of gold and silver futures which haven’t the slightest connection with CME approved precious metals vaults and warehouses.

    By siphoning off demand for real gold and silver and channeling it into unbacked or fractionally-backed credits and futures, the central banks and their bullion bank counterparts have done an amazing job in creating an entire market structure of futures and synthetics trading that is unconnected to the physical gold and silver markets. This structure siphons off demand away from the physical precious metals markets, and in doing so, creates a system of price discovery which is nothing to do with physical gold and silver supply and demand.

    Apart from fractional-reserve banking, precious metals market structure is perhaps one of the biggest cons on the planet. So next time you think of precious metals manipulation, remember that in addition to spoofing and secretive central bank gold loans, the entire structure of the precious metals markets is unfortunately one big manipulation hiding in plain sight.”

    Silver Price Suppression

    Another contributor to the suppression of the paper price for gold and silver is the government manipulation of inflation figures.

    Using ShadowStats Alternate CPI, the real inflation-adjusted All-Time-High for silver is US$ 966.77. Yes, nearly US $1,000!

    Following BullionStar’s post on the real inflation-adjusted ATH for silver, many followers of WSB has referenced to US$ 1,000 as the price target for silver.  A ZeroHedge post from today with more than 2.1M views and 9K comments also makes reference to this price calculated by BullionStar while noting that the silver bullion market is one of the most manipulated on earth.

    It’s important for banks, central banks and governments to ensure that precious metals prices remain subdued.  This is so because precious metals still indirectly backstops the whole monetary system. If the price of gold and silver were to skyrocket, it would expose that the emperor has no clothes, i.e. that fiat currency is intrinsically worthless.

    Central banks and governments have employed a two pronged approach, where on one hand, the money supply is increased via Quantitative Easing to prop up bank and vested interests while on the other hand, the paper price of gold and silver is suppressed.

    The QE Defender Game developed by BullionStar illustrates how central banks are propping up banks while suppressing gold and silver prices. Give the game a go and see which level you can reach!

    Play BullionStar’s QE Defender game that illustrates how the central banks are propping up the banks while at the same time suppressing gold and silver prices.

    Physical gold and silver is measured in weight, has intrinsic value due to its metallic and monetary characteristics and is money in the true sense. The currency of today is not backed by anything and has no monetary properties. Its value is dependent merely on a (false) perception of value. While BullionStar accepts cryptocurrency for order settlement of both buy and sell orders, cryptocurrency cannot replace the age-old monetary properties of precious metals as the ultimate wealth asset.

    BullionStar was one of the first bullion dealers in the world to accept Bitcoin as payment for bullion back in 2014.

    Paper Silver Price vs. Physical Silver Price

    Silver price discovery, which is how the price of silver is established by the market, is akin to a game of charades. Price discovery is based on paper silver spot trading in London and paper silver futures trading in New York. The whole charade is based on the premise of little to no real physical silver ever changing hands. If holders of paper silver were to demand delivery of physical silver, supply would quickly run out, which is exactly what is happening right now. Historically however, almost all paper silver transactions have been digitally cash settled without anyone ever seeing any silver.

    As there is no central market place for the trading of physical silver, the price for physical silver has been inherited from the spot and futures paper markets with an added premium covering the costs for refining, minting, shipping, storage, insurance and retail. With the developments over the last few days of investors shifting away from paper silver and taking delivery of physical silver, the whole market construct for precious metals is changing.

    Price Disconnect between Paper Silver Price and Physical Silver Price

    Despite the 16.2% silver spot price increase from USD 25.58 a week ago to USD 29.72 at the time of writing, the spot price of silver still does not reflect the demand and supply on the physical silver market.

    Spot Price of Silver in US Dollars

    Over the last few days, we have seen unprecedented demand for silver bars and silver coins at BullionStar. We currently have about 25 customers buying silver from us for every 1 customer selling. Typically, this ratio is about 2-3 customers buying for every customer selling.

    To be able to handle the demand pressure, we have had to introduce a minimum order amount of SGD 499 or equivalent in other currencies. Our team members are working around the clock to try to fulfil all orders that have been placed. Our order volume, call volume and email volume is up exponentially, around ten times to normal.

    Furthermore, as the silver squeeze and shortage is getting more serious by the hour, we do not expect to be able to replenish many silver products anytime soon.  As the spot price does not match the demand on the physical market, we have had to significantly increase price premiums for silver.

    We currently offer Canadian Silver Maples – 1 oz 2021 for a price premium from 29.4 %. This is almost double the premium a few days ago. American Silver Eagles – 1 oz 2021 are offered at a premium of 46%, more than double the premium a few days ago.

    Many, if not most, of our competitors worldwide are already sold out of all physical silver bullion. At BullionStar, our strategy is to stock additional physical gold and silver inventory aggressively at higher than normal levels at the first sign of market instability. We therefore still have available supply of the most popular silver products.

    Paper Silver Market Default/Failure – Moving to Fixed Prices

    As more savers and investors take physical delivery of silver, we believe that there is a significant risk that some of the silver paper markets may default in that they are not able to deliver physical silver in exchange for the paper silver. Baring a full default, the paper price of silver may continue to inaccurately reflect the demand and supply of real physical silver.

    With all supply of physical silver drying up at an incredible pace, it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to set prices and price premiums.

    Unless the spot spot price of paper silver starts to reflect the real physical equilibrium price of silver,  BullionStar may soon have no option but to abandon setting prices based on silver spot price altogether and move to fixed prices.

    Worldwide Shipping of Bullion – Reduced Shipping Rates

    With the WSB movement starting in the United States, we note that nearly all US bullion dealers seem to be completely sold out on physical silver.

    We are currently experiencing a record inflow of new customers. Setting up a BullionStar account is a straightforward 1 minute process. Simply open an account by filling in your details and start trading physical precious metals.

    BullionStar ships bullion to most countries worldwide including the United States. To view shipping rates, add the desired bullion to your shopping cart and go to the checkout where you select “Shipping by Courier” to view the shipping cost.

    This article was originally published on the BullionStar.com website under the same title “#SilverSqueeze: Physical Silver Shortage vs. Paper Silver”.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/01/2021 – 22:00

  • "Impossible Trinity" Shows PBOC Not In Hiking Mode
    “Impossible Trinity” Shows PBOC Not In Hiking Mode

    By Ye Xie, macro commentator at Bloomberg Markets

    The short squeeze may be largely behind us.

    U.S. stocks rallied Monday as a decline in short interest in GameStop suggested limited room for further squeezing of some of the most-shorted stocks. In fact, the 20 most-shorted stocks in the Russell 3000 have been falling since Jan. 27.

    Their performance between Jan 21-27 is negatively correlated to their returns since then. Retail investors are now setting their sights on pushing silver higher, but the move has caused limited dislocation in other assets.

    In China, the PBOC’s liquidity squeeze looks to be running its course, too. The interbank rates dropped Monday after the PBOC injected cash. Meanwhile, the services PMI missed expectations, underscoring the growth hit by the recent restrictions on activities due to the renewed Covid outbreaks. Bad economic news is good news for markets as it reduces the risk of policy tightening.

    Beyond the near-term, the PBOC’s appetite for monetary tightening is perhaps also somewhat constrained by the yuan — the classic “impossible trinity” problem.

    The theory, developed by Nobel-winning economist Robert Mundell, stipulates an economy cannot have free-flowing capital, a fixed exchange rate and an independent monetary policy all at the same time. Higher rates lead to capital inflows, which pushes the currency stronger.

    The PBOC hasn’t hiked, but near-zero rates in major economies, have effectively done the job for it, pushing a torrent of foreign capital to China. Overseas investors added a record $100 billion to government bonds last year, more than the previous two years combined.

    So far, the central bank has largely tolerated the yuan’s appreciation. The PBOC has been countering the inflows by easing some of the restrictions to encourage outflows. What it perhaps won’t do is to build up rate-hike expectations and create a one-way street for the currency.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/01/2021 – 21:40

  • Trump Nominated For Nobel Peace Prize Over Israel-UAE Peace Deal
    Trump Nominated For Nobel Peace Prize Over Israel-UAE Peace Deal

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

    Former President Donald Trump was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize on Monday morning by an Estonian member of the European Parliament, Jaak Madison.

    In a post on social media, Madison said:

    “In the last 30 years, Donald Trump is the first president of the United States, who during his tenure, has not started a war. Additionally, he signed several peace agreements in the Middle East which have helped provide stability in the region and peace.”

    Madison was referring to the Abraham Accords, a joint statement between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States–and later, with Bahrain and other Arab countries.

    “We encourage efforts to promote interfaith and intercultural dialogue to advance a culture of peace among the three Abrahamic religions and all humanity,” according to a statement on the State Department’s website. “We believe that the best way to address challenges is through cooperation and dialogue and that developing friendly relations among States advances the interests of lasting peace in the Middle East and around the world.”

    Trump was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize last year by Norwegian Parliament member Christian Tybring-Gjedde.

    “For his merit, I think he has done more trying to create peace between nations than most other Peace Prize nominees,” Tybring-Gjedde told Fox last year.

    Separately, Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz nominated Trump’s son-in-law and former presidential advisor Jared Kushner on Monday morning. Dershowitz—who is eligible to nominate individuals because of his status as a former Harvard Law professor—argued that Kushner and his associate Avi Berkowitz helped negotiate the Abraham Accords.

    (L-R) Bahrain Foreign Minister Abdullatif al-Zayani, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Donald Trump, and UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan pose from the Truman Balcony at the White House before they participate in the signing of the Abraham Accords where the countries of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates recognize Israel, in Washington, on Sept. 15, 2020. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

    “The Nobel Peace Prize is not for popularity. Nor is it an assessment of what the international community may think of those who helped bring about peace,” Dershowitz wrote. “It is an award for fulfilling the daunting criteria set out by Alfred Nobel in his will.”

    Under the diplomatic push, Trump’s administration also negotiated deals with Sudan and Morocco.

    Kushner, in a statement Sunday, said that he was honored to be nominated for the prize.

    President Joe Biden’s administration is expected to review all national security deals struck during the Trump administration, including arms packages for the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

    Some lawmakers have complained about the Morocco deal because, to win the nation’s agreement, the United States recognized its sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara.

    Also on Monday, the Black Lives Matter movement was nominated for the Peace Prize by a Norwegian Parliament member, Petter Eide. Eide said that people have messaged him “to say that BLM is a violent organization,” but he rejected the claims.

    The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded in November 2021.

    Reuters contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/01/2021 – 21:20

  • Massive Chinese Buying Spree Sends Corn Prices To Highest Since 2013
    Massive Chinese Buying Spree Sends Corn Prices To Highest Since 2013

    US corn futures are continuing to soar, hitting a 7-1/2 year high Monday. The bullish continuation in price is the result of “massive US corn sales to China last week,” according to Reuters.

    Chicago Board of Trade March contracts are up 1.23% to $5.53 per bushel, to levels not seen since 2013.

    Germany’s Commerzbank commented on the latest price action in corn, saying “Chinese demand for corn remains robust and unfavorable weather in South America” are some of the bullish catalysts lifting prices. 

    On Friday, the USDA reported China purchased 2.108 million tons of corn, the second-largest daily sale on record. The largest sale was in 1991 to the USSR, where US grain traders sold 3.72 million tons in one day. 

    Last week, US sales to China totaled 3.74 million tons, making it one of the biggest US corn export weeks on record. 

    “The after-effects are still being felt today,” Commerzbank added, regarding Friday’s report of the massive US export sales to China.

    … and it’s only when President Trump is out of the White House that China ramps up its agriculture purchases. 

    So here’s the bad news. Food inflation is rapidly rising. Last month the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Food Price Index showed that prices in December rose for a seventh consecutive month. 

    Everyone’s favorite permabear, SocGen’s Albert Edwards, who, unlike Goldman Sachs, has warned about the latest surge in food prices could result in social instabilities. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/01/2021 – 21:00

  • McConnell Calls QAnon-Supporting Congresswoman "Cancer" On GOP, Says Cheney An "Important Leader"
    McConnell Calls QAnon-Supporting Congresswoman “Cancer” On GOP, Says Cheney An “Important Leader”

    Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) drew a line in the sand on Monday between the GOP establishment (the big club you ain’t in), and the populist QAnon movement – whose theories on elite pedophiles and a shadow government were deemed plausible by at least one-third of Americans in an October poll reported by Axios.

    McConnell, who voted to go to war in Iraq based in part on a conspiracy theory and fabricated evidence misinformation from some guy, said on Monday – without actually saying her name – that freshman Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s embrace of “loony lies and conspiracy theories” is a “cancer for the Republican party.”

    “Somebody who’s suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, that horrifying school shootings were pre-staged, and that the Clintons crashed JFK Jr.’s airplane is not living in reality,” McConnell said in the “three-sentence statement” reported by The Hill.

    Greene has come under fire in recent weeks for her past support of QAnon – a political sin which Democrats such as Scott Dworkin – a veteran of both Obama campaigns and a Biden super PAC senior adviser – are using to call for Greene’s expulsion from Congress.

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    Meanwhile, Congressional Democrats are also ganging up to oust Greene from her Committees.

    Democrats are threatening to force a floor vote this week to oust the controversial Georgia Republican from the Education and Labor Committee and the Budget Committee if House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) does not remove her first. 

    McCarthy is set to meet with her in Washington as early as Tuesday. Some Republicans said they did not anticipate McCarthy booting her off the committees given that she has the backing of former President Trump, who still holds enormous sway within the GOP. –The Hill

    And McConnell, who’s apparently fine agitating millions of QAnon-believing Republican voters, thinks she’s a cancer.

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    Greene responded to McConnell’s comments in a Monday tweet, saying “The real cancer for the Republican Party is weak Republicans who only know how to lose gracefully,” adding “This is why we are losing our country.“

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    For which a Democrat compared her physical appearance to Miss Piggy. (Do as we say…)

    And while McConnell spent Monday bashing one Republican lawmaker, he also gave GOP Rep. Liz Cheney a boost, telling CNN in a statement that she had “the courage” to vote to impeach former President Trump last month.

    “Liz Cheney is a leader with deep convictions and the courage to act on them,” he said, adding “She is an important leader in our party and in our nation. I am grateful for her service and look forward to continuing to work with her on the crucial issues facing our nation.”

    Another GOP lawmaker anonymously told The Hill of Greene: “It remains to be seen how big of an issue she is long-term. She’s had a noisy entrance, but it’s unclear what she will be viewed as and whether she will even be known in the public psyche in November 2022. She’s had a tough transition to Congress. I’m not sure we need to go to the wall on this right now.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsGreene said on Saturday that she had spoken with former President Trump, who is “100% loyal to the people and America first.” She added that she won’t back down or apologize, and will “always keep fighting for the people.”

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/01/2021 – 20:40

  • Top NY Virus Officials Quit As Cuomo Wages "War" With His Own Health Department
    Top NY Virus Officials Quit As Cuomo Wages “War” With His Own Health Department

    While the mainstream media continuously amplified all those unsourced rumors about President Trump’s reported battles with his top public health officials – particularly Dr. Anthony Fauci  – it almost seemed like a miracle when the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine started rolling off the assembly lines after all that dysfunction. 

    Well, as it turns out, the media narrative doesn’t always perfectly reflect reality. And one of the most glaring examples during the US pandemic response was Andrew Cuomo’s handling of the response in the Empire State.

    Hailed as an effective leader by Democrats, Cuomo’s smiling face graced 1000s of articles; but all of this belies the many mistakes he made both during the early days of the Pandemic, to the botched vaccine rollout, where Cuomo’s policies led hospitals to keep vaccines rotting on shelves in the name of “racial equality”. 

    Things have not gone so well in the PR space for the Governor in recent weeks. New York State Attorney General Letitia James released a report last Thursday detailing the investigations her office has conducted into nursing homes policies and actions during the pandemic. The report shows that the nursing home deaths in New York State were likely undercounted by up to 50 percent.

    The investigation, ongoing since March, when Governor Cuomo issued his directive to send COVID patients back to nursing homes following hospitalizations, was begun due to allegations of “patient neglect and other concerning conduct,” according to The Post-Journal.

    Cuomo made headlines earlier this week for saying that “incompetent government kills people.”

    The situation worsened in recent months as state health officials said they often found out about major policy changes, like, reopening restaurants, via the press.

    In recent weeks, the governor has repeatedly made it clear that he believed he had no choice but to seize more control over pandemic policy from state and local public health officials, who he said had no understanding of how to conduct a real-world, large-scale operation like vaccinations.

    After early problems, in which relatively few doses were being administered, the pace of vaccinations has picked up and New York is now roughly 20th in the nation in percentage of residents who have received at least one vaccine dose.

    Many of Cuomo’s top public health officials were so angry about being left out of the loop (so to speak) they abruptly quit, prompting the NYT to tout in a headline that Cuomo had “declared war” on his own department of public health.

    But at least nine senior state health officials have left the department, resigned or retired in recent months.

    They include Elizabeth Dufort, the medical director in the division of epidemiology; Dr. Jill Taylor, the head of the renowned Wadsworth laboratory — which has been central to the state’s efforts to detect virus variants — and the executive in charge of health data, according to state records.

    Additionally, the Health Department’s No. 2 official left for another job in state government, and another official, who helped oversee contact tracing, is expected to leave the department, also for another state government jo

    Dr. Zucker said in a statement that the state was facing “an intense period of extraordinary stress and pressure and a different job than some signed onto.”

    He added: “The Times’s point is several staff left – true, and many others joined the agency with the talents necessary to confront this new challenge.” The proof, he said, “is in the performance numbers”

    Several top Dems agreed, and told the NYT that the red tape enacted by the governor was unnecessary and unsustainable. 

    “Extensive red tape and unnecessary rigidity over who we could vaccinate and when – all with the looming threat of millions of dollars in punitive fines – made an extraordinarily difficult task all the more challenging in those first initial weeks of the rollout,” said Avery Cohen, a spokeswoman for Mayor de Blasio.

    In his own planning for the vaccine rollout, Mr. Cuomo spoke with hospital executives, outside consultants and a top hospital lobbyist in closed-door meetings. In December, Mr. Cuomo announced that the state would rely on large hospital systems as “hubs” to coordinate vaccinations, not simply for their own staff but also for ordinary New Yorkers.

    In other words, with the return of indoor dining just weeks away in NYC, it’s beginning to look like Cuomo’s vaccine rollout isn’t designed with efficiency in mind; instead it was inspired by a megalomaniac politician desperately trying to sell copies of his new book while virtue-signaling. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/01/2021 – 20:20

  • One Bank Throws Up All Over The Surge In COVID Optimism
    One Bank Throws Up All Over The Surge In COVID Optimism

    With every passing day since the Biden inauguration, which also coincides with the day new covid cases in the US peaked…

    … and hospitalizations plunged by a record amount…

    … the covid-related news gets better and better as blue-city after blue-city rushes to reopen after scrambling to enforce full lockdowns into the presidential election.

    Furthermore, in the best covid-linked news yet, just a few hours earlier, we learned that covid vaccinations in the US topped the number of cases for the first time…

    … and with 1.3 million vaccines now being given out daily, one can argue that it’s only a matter of months before herd immunity is reached.

    To summarize where we stand, the covid newsflow before and after the Biden inauguration is night and day, with cases and hosptializations tumbling while the daily pace of vaccination has risen from around 200k at end of last year to more than 1 million today. Meanwhile, after a widely-anticipated post-holiday surge, cases have dropped 41% from their peak. Are we out of the woods?

    One bank disagrees with this cheerful assessment, and in a note from BofA economist Aditya Bhave, he warns that the worst may be yet to come as he remains “concerned about the new, more contagious virus strains out of the UK, South Africa and Brazil.”

    Why? Because according to BofA simulations, even a very optimistic pace of vaccination cannot fully offset their impact the mutations they become dominant. Therefore the bank’s base case is that cases and hospitalizations will actually return to their post-holiday peaks in the early spring (as shown in the chart below).

    It could get even worse: in BofA’s pessimistic case, the new strains cause a larger increase in underlying transmission, pushing cases and hospitalizations to unprecedented levels and potentially forcing lockdowns in March-April.

    Only BofA’s optimistic case sees no “spring wave” , yet ominously Bhave then says that he views this scenario “as the least likely.”

    However, after the spring doldrums, it then starts getting better again and “by the summer, enough people would have been vaccinated to slow even the more contagious virus strains.” This should allow for significant economic reopening.

    After the summer, BofA expects another wave in the fall due to colder weather pushing activities indoors and holiday super-spreader events. The size of this wave will be a function of the speed of vaccination. And, as the bank finally concedes, “vaccination slows in our baseline scenario because of hesitancy among the younger population. But if a sufficiently rapid rate of inoculation can be maintained through year-end, we might be able to avoid a fall surge and sustain full economic re-opening.”

    Which will be a problem for one simple reason: as we noted earlier, a majority or 51% of Americans, are unlikely to want to get vaccinated, which means that while the rate of vaccinations is currently surging, once the early candidates get vaccinated, the daily pace will fall off a cliff as half the nations refuses the vaccine. What impact that will have on BofA’s pessimistic scenario remains to be seen, although as even the bank admits, in its base case, only about 50% of the population is immune by year-end.

    This is most likely insufficient for herd immunity. Some restrictions will likely remain in place through at least next winter, such as capacity constrains at restaurants, sporting events and concerts. Therefore the economic headwind from the virus will linger.

    Which, of course, is good news for banks and markets, because it means even more stimulus, and as the bank concludes, “we expect about $1tn of President Biden’s proposed package to get passed. This would take the total fiscal response to the pandemic up to nearly 25% of GDP.” In the end, however, the course of the virus pandemic will shape the contours of the US economy, and according to the BofA economist, “in the first half of the year, we expect growth to be largely supported  by fiscal stimulus. By the summer, however, economic re-opening should release pent-up demand for services. Thus we forecast a peak of 10% growth in 3Q. The impact of stimulus fades in the second half of the year, but so does the virus, allowing the economy starts to stand on its own feet.”

    The only question is just how hot will inflation be running at that point, and will the US economy be sliding headfirst into a stagflationary trap, forcing the Fed to take out the Volcker playbook and rapidly hike rates even though doing so would crash the market…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/01/2021 – 19:59

  • Financial Services Committee To Hold GameStop Hearing On Feb 18  
    Financial Services Committee To Hold GameStop Hearing On Feb 18  

    Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev is expected to testify before the House Financial Services Committee on Feb. 18 as lawmakers probe the company’s decision-making to restrict customers from trading GameStop (GME) shares last week, sources told Politico. 

    The hearing was later confirmed by a press release from the committee describing the virtual hearing will be entitled: “Game Stopped? Who Wins and Loses When Short Sellers, Social Media, and Retail Investors Collide.” The hearing is scheduled for Feb. 18 at 12:00 PM ET. 

    Robinhood’s decision to restrict customers from buying stocks, along with forced liquidations, drew immense criticism from both major parties, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ted Cruz. 

    House Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters wants to investigate the possible role hedge funds had in influencing Robinhood to restrict trading on GME after the video game retailer soared 1,500% in a matter of weeks, pulling off the “mother of all short squeezes.” During the squeeze, multiple hedge funds, including Melvin Capital, were blown up. 

    “I am concerned about whether or not Robinhood restricted the trading because there was collusion between Robinhood and some of the hedge funds that were involved with this,” Waters told MSNBC this weekend. 

    Rep. Al Green, who chairs the Financial Services Oversight Subcommittee, wants more information on the role if any, Citadel had in influencing Robinhood to act. 

    Green said Monday he wants to know “whether or not there was something about this relationship that caused Robinhood to act, or did Robinhood act because of reasons associated with its liquidity.”

    Meanwhile, Robinhood raised billion of dollars over the last few days to fund capital shortfalls due to catastrophic risk management and disastrous back-office operations. In an open letter to customers, the company covered up its capital deficiencies by telling everyone the new capital is “to invest in record customer growth”…

    Robinhood reiterated that it “limited buying in volatile securities to ensure it complied with deposit regulations,” according to the open letter. Or rather was it because the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation jacked-up deposit requirements ten-fold?

    While Robinhood and r/WallStreetBets traders trigger marketwide short covers, especially with today’s monster silver squeeze, regulators, including the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is “closely monitoring” silver markets, according to Reuters. 

    Silver prices jumped to eight-year highs as retail traders piled into silver stocks and ETFs, along with some grabbing physical silver, resulting in a massive premium for physical at popular bullion websites. 

    The CFTC “is communicating with fellow regulators, the exchanges, and stakeholders to address any potential threats to the integrity of the derivatives markets for silver, and remains vigilant in surveilling these markets for fraud and manipulation,” acting chairman Rostin Behnam said in a statement.

    To sum up, markets are broken; they’ve been broken for the last decade. Thank the Federal Reserve for that. Let’s hope lawmakers ask the right questions on Feb. 18 and don’t give Wall Street a free pass. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/01/2021 – 19:40

  • Florida Town Reviewing Trump's Residency At Mar-A-Lago Resort
    Florida Town Reviewing Trump’s Residency At Mar-A-Lago Resort

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

    Palm Beach is reviewing whether it’s legal for former President Donald Trump to reside at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

    Town Manager Kirk Blouin told The Epoch Times that the town’s attorney, John Randolph, is conducting a legal review.

    “Our Town Attorney, John Randolph, is reviewing the Declaration of Use Agreement and our Code of Ordinances to determine if former President Trump can live at Mar-a-Lago,” he said via email.

    Randolph didn’t return an inquiry.

    The Trump Organization has said it’s legal for Trump to live at Mar-a-Lago.

    Then-President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club is shown in Palm Beach, Florida, on Aug. 31, 2019. (Joe Skipper/Reuters)

    Trump changed his permanent residence from New York to Florida in 2019.

    “I cherish New York, and the people of New York, and always will, but unfortunately, despite the fact that I pay millions of dollars in city, state, and local taxes each year, I have been treated very badly by the political leaders of both the city and state. Few have been treated worse,” he wrote at the time.

    Trump left the White House in Washington on Jan. 20 and flew to Palm Beach as his successor Joe Biden was sworn in.

    Built in 1924 and purchased by Trump in 1985, the resort sits on the coast. The 20-acre grounds is a private club that contains a pool, a spa, and a restaurant.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/01/2021 – 19:20

  • Kremlin Tells US 'Back Off' Navalny Case As Viral 'Putin Palace' Story Deflated
    Kremlin Tells US ‘Back Off’ Navalny Case As Viral ‘Putin Palace’ Story Deflated

    For a second straight weekend, Sunday saw more protests break out across major Russian cities in support detained Kremlin critic and opposition activist Alexei Navalny, with Reuters citing that more than 5,300 were detained amid a police crackdown.

    Moscow is again telling the US to butt out of its internal affairs after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a statement condemning the arrests of demonstrators. 

    “The US condemns the persistent use of harsh tactics against peaceful protesters and journalists by Russian authorities for a second week straight,” Blinken tweeted Sunday. “We renew our call for Russia to release those detained for exercising their human rights, including Aleksey Navalny.”

    Via EPA/BBC

    In response Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov lashed out at the “illegal protests” which it had previously cast as being a manufactured controversy driven by outside support for the anti-Kremlin protest movement.

    “We are not prepared to accept or heed American statements about this,” said Peskov.

    “There can be no conversation with hooligans and provocateurs, the law should be applied with the utmost severity,” Peskov added of Navalny’s supporters.

    The dissident has been urging them to take to the streets from his jail cell. Tens of thousands took to the streets this past weekend, with many again clashing with police donned in riot gear.

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    Russia’s prison service is urging a Moscow court to hand Navalny a sentence of up to three-and-a-half years in jail stemming from a 2014 criminal conviction for which he was on probation when in August of last year he was life-flighted to a Berlin hospital after an alleged nerve agent poisoning by Russian intelligence. He’s been accused of skipping probation and then not returning the Russian soil as was previously mandated by the court.

    Currently Navalny is serving a 30-day jail sentence as the court mulls additional charges which stem initially from the 2014 embezzlement case, which he’s said was “politically motivated”.

    Things have also gotten interesting regarding Navalny’s allegations that Putin has erected a $1.3 billion palace on the Black Sea. Navalny has charged that it was paid for “with the largest bribe in history”.

    YouTube screenshot showing what’s alleged to be “Putin Palace”

    A video produced by Navalny’s team detailing the palace and alleging it was built using stolen government funds has gone viral over the past week. The footage is being featured prominently in Western mainstream media. Time magazine describes: 

    Two days after Alexey Navalny, head of Russia’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) was arrested on his return to Moscow from Berlin, he released a video expose that shocked Russians and people around the world. In the video, “Putin’s palace. History of the world’s largest bribe,” Navalny alleged that an opulent property near Gelendzhik, a town in the southern Russian region of Krasnodar, was constructed for Russian President Vladimir Putin with illicit funds of $1.35 billion, provided by members of his inner circle, and that Putin is the real owner of the palace.

    The Time report continues of outrageous expenses:

    The palace’s features apparently include a port, a vineyard, a church, a casino, an underground hockey rink, and toilet brushes costing $850 a piece. “It is a separate state within Russia… And in this state there is a single, irreplaceable tsar. Putin,” Navalny said in the video. Allegedly covering an area of 17,691 square meters, it is the largest private residential building in Russia. Putin denied the claims. “Nothing listed there has ever belonged to me or my close relatives,” he said Tuesday.

    Except the story is already fast being deflated, with massive holes being poked in the allegations.

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    For starters, Russian billionaire Arkady Rotenberg has since come forward to say the so-called “Putin Palace” actually belongs to him.

    “A video report about the vast palace, by Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, went viral across Russia and has now been watched more than 100m times,” begins BBC, before doing to detail that “Mr Rotenberg, a billionaire with close links to Mr Putin, went public claiming to be the owner on Saturday. The revelation came in an interview posted on the pro-Kremlin Mash Telegram channel, before being confirmed to the Interfax news agency.”

    “I have managed to strike a deal with creditors a few years ago, and I became a beneficiary of this site a few years ago,” Rotenberg’s press office said. The statement added that the Russian billionaire plans to turn it into a hotel.

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    Here are clips from the original Navalny-produced documentary which was greatly enhanced with CGI, or computer-generated imagery:

    Meanwhile, an investigative reporter with the Russian media news site Mash published a video which appears to debunk the original Navalny video. The reporter filmed fresh footage from the Black Sea mansion which appeared to reveal that Navalny’s video was “faked” and heavily edited.

    The Mash footage shows what appears to be a partially finished building, but which still looks like an active construction site. 

    Critics have pushed back, however, claiming the Mash correspondent is “Kremlin-linked”.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/01/2021 – 19:00

  • How FinTech F**ked Financial Market Structure, Exposed The Social Contract, & What Comes Next
    How FinTech F**ked Financial Market Structure, Exposed The Social Contract, & What Comes Next

    Via The FinTech Blueprint,

    Despite its best efforts to the contrary, Robinhood did end up stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.

    Melvin Capital, the $8 billion hedge fund that didn’t find GameStop funny, lost 53% of its portfolio in January ($7 billion) trying to short against the rallying cries of the Reddit Capitalist Union. Gabe Plotkin also faces the embarrassment of having to get bailed out by your old boss.

    Speaking of, New York Mets owner and former name-on-the-door of SAC Capital, known most recently for its insider trading fine of $1.8 billion, Steven A. Cohen, put $2.8 billion of capital into Melvin’s fund.

    Ken Griffin, owner of the Citadel hedge fund (an investor in Melvin), and Citadel Securities (a massive market maker and buyer-of-order-flow for Robinhood), is seeing capital losses in the former and Washington cries for scrutiny into market structure in regards to the latter.

    Robinhood itself — which for goodness sake is *not Wall Street*, but as *Silicon Valley* as it possibly gets — raised $1 billion immediately to protect itself from class action lawsuits, DTCC capital calls, and a now-rapidly-closing IPO window. That means Yuri Milner of DST Global chipping in yet again.

    That’s at least 4 people that have had a very bad, no good day.

    The Reddit Wallstreetbets army has 8 million members. Robinhood has 13 million users. These are the opposing force. They are, loosely speaking, having a pretty good day.

    But there are other billionaires who are having way more fun with this too. World’s richest man Elon Musk is raising the crypto rallying flag, and ex-Facebook billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya is trading along with Reddit for quick profits. Decentralized hedge fund and all. This isn’t how much money you have. This is about a mindset, and a framing of the world. It’s about who you are, and who you are not. And it’s about what you did and did not do.

    Do you side with the Internet’s gamer heroes, wearing Nyan cat shirts and crying out sarcastically for “moar Stonks, money printer go brrrr, number go up”! A post-Gawker-4chan swirl of human vectors, coalescing into one giant middle finger to every Karen and Ken? Dopamine splashing out from our pituitary glands into a vortex tornado of well-earned resentment.

    Or, do you like your finance suited, ministerial, administrative, and gated? Do you think that it is storied, respectable, and *important*. That you have to go to HYP, and then do your “two and two” at Goldman and HBS, before hopping to KKR or Tiger or SAC and then into your own cozy fund. All that work, all that sweat for the GMAT and the SAT and the bootlicking, to be undone by someone literally making fun of you in the language of money.

    It’s not about some truth about Wall Street, or Silicon Valley, or the Internet, or Bitcoin, or DeFi, and least of all about GameStop. Those are just flags of our armies. And we are at war with ourselves.

    Market Structure on Display

    GameStop is a mall shop that sold video games. The mall shops that rented videos (Blockbuster) or sold books (Borders) are bankrupt and rightly dead. The Internet, and its children Netflix and Amazon, killed them. And yet, their names are etched into the collective childhood memories of millions. GameStop has no chance against Steam or Epic — both brands that are also deeply loved by nerds all over the world. We say this as self-incrimination. And yet, GameStop is a symbol, a feeling, a reminiscence.

    The person building financial models and analyzing this stuff according to economics is “right” to point out bad things about “fundamentals” of the business. Within the game of financial capital markets, the fundamentals are the gears of the economic machines that you evaluate with capital decisions. You buy good fundamentals, says Warren Buffet, and you sell bad ones. Another Warren, Elizabeth Warren, also believes in fundamentals. She believes in them so much she wants government to regulate them into the market to protect consumers from losing a traditional approach to value, and “fair, orderly, and efficient function”.

    All that might be right, and we are not doubting the wisdom of Keynes, or the animal spirits. But Warren Buffet is no longer number one. It’s an Elon Musk world now.

    Fundamentals are what the financial doctors will tell you that you have. Do you think the Internet cares about their diagnosis? No. The Internet cares about being patronized by people in coats. Musk and Chamath are the mushrooms of the Internet. It is in their DNA.

    The GameStop trade itself is worth a pause. While some of the original thinking by DeepF*ckingValue that led to his $30+ million capital gain reflected on the GameStop business, the core insight was market structure. The trade was not about GameStop beating its analyst estimates, or any of that boring-play-by-the-rules stuff. It was about a short squeeze. It was about restricting the supply of the stock in such a way as to blow up a levered short bet that Melvin Capital was putting into play.

    In other words, we are talking about the metagame, not the grunt Excel spreadsheet game. SAC, Tiger, Point72, Melvin Capital and every other hedge fund worth its salt plays the metagame. That’s the whole point. You get a PhD in financial instruments by doing the work and testing the levers, rather than believing in them blindly. And Wallstreetbets dared to play the metagame as well. Retail investors aren’t supposed to self-organize into a hivemind of levered derivatives strategy driven by spite. And here we are.

    To go short, Melvin has to borrow. To borrow, you have to pay an interest rate. To cover your short, you have to buy back the stock. You’re paying an interest rate and have to buy back the stock. Nobody is selling you the stock, because they hate you. Everyone is buying, to troll you specifically. They are levering up with options. And you keep raising your bids until you cover your position.

    Robinhood is a broker/dealer. They came into being in Silicon Valley, a place where consumer services are free, because they are actually not services, but honeypots that aggregate user demand, package it at large scale, and re-sell attention to advertisers. Such is Facebook and Google. Our lives are better because of these services, but also compromised and profoundly insane.

    Robinhood uses this playbook to aggregate consumer demand with the honeypot of free trading, and then sends it to market makers like Citadel Securities and gets paid $600 million for the orders. TD and eTrade and other discount brokers do this too! But Robinhood does it most, and does it best. Check out our prior explanation with Paul Rowady here.

    There is nothing unusually nefarious going on — it is just American capital markets structure and a clever lead-generation arbitrage. That is if customers are still getting best-execution with Citadel. But the structure is ancient by modern technology standards, and far from real-time. It takes 2 days for a trade to settle, and this among other reasons leads to a requirement of capital to be placed with a “clearing house”, in this case the DTCC. Given the volatility in GameSpot caused by the Internet trying to break a hedge fund the way Soros broke the Bank of England, capital requirements skyrocketed ten-fold.

    Robinhood, as well as TD Ameritrade, ended up restricting trading in the instrument as a result of this capital call. If you are burning and raising a USD billion per year, you probably don’t have a “tenfold” of cash lying around to give to the DTCC to make them feel comfy. So, you know, they just removed the “Buy” button for a whole bunch of crusaders on a mission, with their capital on the line. They didn’t remove the “Sell” button, and threw fire on the Internet conspiracy meme machine.

    Was this done on instruction from Citadel billionaires? Was this the banksters colluding against the common person? Was “Wall Street” trying to take away our constitutional freedom to trade on a mobile app? Even Ted Cruz and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez found common ground in finding someone to blame!

    If it caused losses in reliance, then damages will come. They will follow the class action lawsuits and the rioters.

    The New Social Contract

    It’s not a lot of rioters yet.

    But remember, Fintech — including Robinhood, Revolut, SoFi and the rest — is supposed to democratize access to financial services. That meant very little a decade ago, and “dumb money” was disorganized and uninformed. Now, information is free and available to all. Equities trading is largely costless and frictionless. And the scariest part, for the suited part of finance anyway, is that strength lies in numbers and can now self-organize.

    In addition to this, we have the crypto currency ecosystem. Unlike Fintech, which went after distribution, blockchain goes after manufacturing. If you are a trader or market-maker on Ethereum, there is no clearing house. There is no broker/dealer. There is only you, and the distributed machine with its smart contracts, automated rule sets, and software-enforced property rights. All data is real time. The blocks click into being one after another without a single lawyerly piece of paper in sight. Hundreds of millions of people in the world have touched this asset class, and it renders financial intermediaries unnecessary in their imagination.

    Now don’t get us wrong. A trade on Ethereum is going to cost you $10 to $100 today, and another 1% in slippage. It is going to cost you some immeasurable but ever-present probability of cyber risk and regulatory overhang. But you nobody can take away your “Buy” or “Sell” button, and the speed and scale issues are mere technical problems to be solved by the entrepreneurial gods.

    Here’s the rub. Post-fintech-crypto-democratization and all.

    Humans are social animals. It is on our bones. The concept of fairness has been selected through the evolutionary filter, and fueled a cooperation-based multi-billion person civilization. We’ve shared the below video before, but check out again what it means for our monkey relatives to experience unfairness. After a minute of injustice, you can see the monkey occupying Wall Street.

    Redditors are monkeys in the same way that we at the Fintech Blueprint are monkeys.

    Democracy is not oligarchy. Democracy means that each person has one vote. If you were to vote according to assets under management, which is how finance has done it to date, you get very different outcomes than when you vote person-by-person. James Madison is deeply eloquent around these points in the Federalist Papers, talking of the dangers a democratic majority will impose on its minorities. Unintentionally funny is the mention of an unchecked power to sacrifice the obnoxious individual, i.e., Melvin Capital.

    So we now have a set of promises and representation from companies like Robinhood that suggest a democratic empowerment of individuals to access the storied products of finance. Most people don’t know, or want to know, how the actual machine works. When the promises have a gap to reality, because of whatever reason, this creates kinetic energy for Twitter and Reddit.

    It creates energy for people in position of leverage who understand the machine, and want it to change. Elon Musk hates short-sellers for their dampening, and perhaps manipulating, effect on his promises of Tesla greatness. Certainly Chamath, having launched endless SPACs to take Silicon Valley Fintech distributors like SoFi public, understands the machine as well. For them, this tear in the fabric of reality is a power. It is a rallying cry.

    If we really want to put this into dystopian, let’s at least reference the theory of overcrowding elites from Peter Turchin. The historian eerily predicted the 2020 rioting and disaffection back in 2010, suggesting that too societies fall apart when they over-produce members of the ruling class. Education has minted PhDs, MBAs, and entrepreneurs who have no seat to inherit from a retiring predecessor. As a result, they take on the populist mantle, and position themselves as outsiders to attack the insiders, while of course being fabulously gifted. Thus Donald Trump and all the rest.

    If you are holding power today, you probably don’t want everything to fall apart just because Redditors hate a caricatured notion of hedge funds. So you tweak things at the edges. Edit out the glitches in the current Matrix. It is through this lens that we see Google deleting 100,000 negative Robinhood reviews for being “inauthentic”.

    Of course they were coordinated. But they were very authentic to the people that wrote them. They were, however, “inauthentic” to the current rule-set of the game. Based on fundamentals, market structure, and a variety of other “this is how things work” explanations, Robinhood did nothing wrong. Nor did Melvin, really, as far as we can tell from the media coverage. They just played a game that has become a cartoon that millions of people despise. Google’s app store is also an incumbent, a rule-set as well of what constitutes good behavior and what you should do according to its Terms, and so on. Protecting Robinhood’s reputation because it did not fundamentally err is what you do when you believe the current system works.

    What’s also notable is that TD and other brokers that couldn’t support trading didn’t get such a backlash. The answer as to Why? is obvious — the brand promise of Robinhood is to bring in a new world, which it simply can’t do using old world tools.

    Who wins and who loses?

    This is a rich vein, but we’ve got to wrap up. How does this all shake out?

    In the short term, it’s a bit of a mess. Robinhood is getting amazing publicity, and like Facebook, will flourish in growth despite repeated calls to “cancel it”. It will IPO a year late, but with 10 million more pragmatic users who don’t care about Internet culture. Its Fintech competitors, Public and WeBull, will pick up disenchanted users who still want to trade stocks.

    Crypto/Fintech bridges like FTX or Synthetix will get some of that spill over as well, by creating trading pairs in Reddit darling stocks with derivatives. Coinbase will win, as more people start to believe in the underlying philosophy of crypto assets. They will win so much that their websites will break under new volume.

    Regulators have an urgency here, and scapegoating will be important. It’s possible that order-flow payments are restricted as a result, like they are in Europe, even though that has little to do with collateral calls from the DTCC. Or perhaps, they finally see the benefits of blockchain-based capital markets infrastructure, and open up the gate to stronger innovation in clearing and settlement, however improbable that sounds. We don’t see how the traditional finance world benefits from this at all — as increased scrutiny usually lead to more regulation and downward fee pressure.

    Longer term, the people will win.

    We are in an age of anarchic, capitalist collectivism. This philosophical word soup is important to understand. The populism that seeped out of Donald Trump’s presidency, with roots in the right-wing Internet, and the anarchic trolling pleasures of Anonymous, 4chan, and Crypto Twitter, will continue to put focus on and find leverage in the needs of the “people”. This is at the expense of “those in power”, despite such words holding little meaning but lots of emotion.

    This reactive population is increasingly cohering into decentralized communities with pointed power. We see this as the rise of a type of unionism or collectivism in the Internet age. Unlike unions of the past, which protected against participation in an unfair employment arrangement, our new unions are collectivist digital farms. For example, Google is seeing the organization of its workers according to ethical issues. Or, blockchain-based decentralized autonomous organizations are running financial ecosystems with broad-based governance. And do we have to mention Reddit partnering with the Ethereum foundation?

    Even longer term, however, is where there is a thick fog. As we move more of our economic activity onto decentralized software and participate in DAOs, as decentralized finance eats traditional finance, there is a redistribution of value. Early adopters of the crypto paradigm earn asymmetric returns for the risk they take — the risk of being entirely wrong, and being perceived as anti-social psychopaths.

    This all evens out once the new machine and its digital property rights enforcement mechanisms are up and running. But collectivization is no cakewalk. It can become a tragedy. Taking the crown from Silicon Valley and Wall Street is not a friendly game, as we can already see with something as silly as GameStop. Also, collectivization often fails; it loses to free market capitalism in the annals of history.

    A good answer eludes us. For now, we hold dearly the question.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/01/2021 – 18:40

  • Carson Block Defends Short Selling, Says He's "Not Part Of The Establishment"
    Carson Block Defends Short Selling, Says He’s “Not Part Of The Establishment”

    Days after prolific short seller Andrew Left called it quits to focus on long-only research, another well known name in the industry, Carson Block, is stepping in to defend short selling.

    Block reminded Bloomberg on Monday that his firm works to uncover fraud and he “rejected the idea popular on Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum that short sellers are a part of the establishment”.

    The short seller said his firm’s work continues to be important because the supply of people committing fraud hasn’t decreased. In fact, we’d argue, it has increased significantly. 

    Block – standing at odds with several Fed governors over the last 48 hours who have apparently adopted a “see no evil, hear no evil” approach to monitoring the markets – argued that “financial markets are broken” and said that solutions could lie in higher interest rates and taxation.

    Recall, at the end of January, we noted that Block had significantly cut back his firm’s short exposure in names. 

    He told Bloomberg last week: “There are no medals for valor in this business. Being one of the more high-profile short-sellers, it would not be smart for us to have appreciable risk on in any name.”

    Additionally, Carson claimed that the parabolic moves look less like the product of Reddit-driven retail orders than a short squeeze by hedge funds targeting other hedge funds.

    “I’ve wondered, is there coordination with these hedge funds?” Block said in an interview on Bloomberg Television.

    “What constitutes coordination? Did they cross the line? That could be interesting.”

    For now, it’s an unproven theory, but while the history-making retail uprising last week was the catalyst, as other funds smelled blood in the water, they likely piled on (far less sinister sounding than Bloomberg’s suggestion that this was all “a convenient smokescreen for internecine hedge-fund warfare.”)

    Block is one of the most well-known names on Wall Street, cutting his teeth by helping to expose a number of frauds – many U.S. listed and China based – over the course of more than a decade. Block was one of the first people to help make the Luckin Coffee short thesis widely available – a thesis that eventually wound up proving true when the company was found to be guilty of massive accounting fraud. 

    He said he started paring back his positions about two weeks ago when he noticed that a squeeze could be brewing in GSX Techedu, a company his firm has been short, and has been a vocal critic of. After watching GameStop’s run up, Block decided it was time to take more of his firm’s short exposure off the table. One name he has covered is Nano-X Imaging, Ltd., which was added to Cathie Wood’s ARK Israel Innovation ETF in recent days. He continued:

    “The mob is specifically hunting short-sellers. We didn’t have the misfortune of being in GameStop.”

    The firm was able to “reduce risk in [its] last big position” last Wednesday, Block said. “We expected a retail-buying mania,” Block said.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/01/2021 – 18:20

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