Aug 30

Today’s News 30th August 2021

  • Finnish PM Calls For Shorter Work Week After Taking 4-Week Vacation In Middle Of Global Crisis
    Finnish PM Calls For Shorter Work Week After Taking 4-Week Vacation In Middle Of Global Crisis

    The fact that millennials are obsessed with establishing a “sustainable” work-life balance is hardly novel. Earlier this year, a group of Goldman Sachs junior analysts captivated the financial press with a slide deck about their unbearable 100-hour weeks. Meanwhile, intense deal flow during the year 2020 prompted investment banking analysts to work mind-numbing hours from their parents’ homes in the suburbs, while banks like Jefferies handed out hefty bonuses and gifts like Pelotons and iPads.

    But while junior bankers are eternally grateful for their “protected” Saturdays, the Prime Minister of Finland just returned from a 4-week vacation, taken in the middle of COVID’s delta surge and the start of what many fear will be another brutal refugee crisis. Instead of rising to the challenge and leading, Finnish PM Sanna Marin told Bloomberg that she wants to “improve the lot of workers of the world”…by refusing to work.

    Amusingly, Marin maintains that there’s much more to be done to make working life more equitable, secure and enjoyable. The PM says she wants to push for shorter hours for workers as productivity improves, alongside better protection for gig workers and fair employment rules to stop work from encroaching on personal time.

    “We need to change the world to improve people’s wellbeing and happiness,” she said in an interview at her seaside residence in Helsinki on Wednesday. Shorter hours would mean “people would have more time for their families and loved ones, and their hobbies and life.”

    In recent months, there’s been growing talk about a four-day workweek (something Marin has advocated). A few years ago, France outlawed sending work-related emails outside of work hours as part of the so-called “right to disconnect”.

    While lengthy holidays are common in western Europe (Italian workers are said to get as much as 7 weeks off per year), taking such a long sojourn in the middle of a global crisis might seem baffling to most Americans. Imagine if, say, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem took four weeks off in the middle of the summer? The MSM attacks would probably never end.

    But it’s not just shorter hours and more vacation that Marin is pushing for. Marin insists that more vacation and shorter hours are critical to creating a more welcoming environment for women, especially mothers, in the workplace.

    While that sounds all well and good, the notion of a world leader taking such a long vacation likely wouldn’t fly in a larger, more economically critical, country like the US (cue liberals whining about President Trump’s frequent golf outings).

    Recently, Bumble, the female-focused dating app, announced unlimited time off and generous leave benefits for its workers (women working at the company can take weeks off if they have a miscarriage, or if a pet dies).

    Such allowances, of course, would be unthinkable for men (just imagine telling an MD that you can’t be staffed on an upcoming deal because you need time to mourn the loss of your cat).

    And while women lead the charge for better work-life balance, we can’t help but wonder: if women want to earn as much as men, and – most importantly – enjoy equal respect and responsibilities in the workplace, is this really the best way to go about accomplishing that?

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 08/30/2021 – 02:45

  • Australian Truckers Protest Mandatory Vaccines And Lockdowns, Block Major Highway
    Australian Truckers Protest Mandatory Vaccines And Lockdowns, Block Major Highway

    Authored by Daniel Yang via The Epoch Times,

    Australian truck drivers have blocked a major highway in the north-eastern state of Queensland in a protest against vaccine mandates and tough border restrictions, causing traffic to back up for several kilometres.

    The action marks a series of ongoing protests from Australians frustrated with state government COVID-19 lockdowns and mandated restrictions based on emergency public health orders.

    The drivers parked their prime movers at 5:30 a.m. on the southbound lanes of the M1 highway at Reedy Creek in the Gold Coast portion of the arterial on Monday. The highway is used by tens of thousands of Queenslanders each morning.

    A banner was unfurled and covered the front of both vehicles, reading: “Truckies Keep Australia Moving, Not Politicians.”

    One driver named Brock, who did not give his surname, said the drivers were protesting the Queensland government’s strict health orders that prevented all individuals from entering the state, except for essential workers.

    Those deemed essential workers need to be involved in skilled construction, farming, or healthcare, and must prove that a Queensland resident cannot do their job. Further, they need to prove they have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

    Queensland Police stop trucks at the Queensland border in Coolangatta, Australia, on Aug. 25, 2021 (Chris Hyde/Getty Images)

    “End all lockdowns, people go back to work, and kids go back to school,” Brock told Nine’s Today show.

    “That’s all we want out of it; we’ve had enough of it.

    “We’ve had a lot the support mate, the people that showed up today is amazing. We appreciate everyone that’s come down,” he added, saying the police had been lenient about the protest, and he respected what they did.

    “But it’s all about choice at the end of the day. If you don’t want to get the vax, don’t get the vax. If you do want to get it, get it. But just don’t keep locking up people.”

    News footage showed federal One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson and her advisor James Ashby at the protest.

    Acting Chief Superintendent Rhys Wildman of Gold Coast police said the truckers faced criminal charges.

    Wildman said the M1 was blocked for 45 minutes, and emergency vehicles were held up, which was a “great concern.”

    “There’s a bigger picture in this around putting lives at risk, which is really, really disappointing,” he told ABC Gold Coast. “We are investigating, and obviously, action will be taken against those particular drivers at a later time.”

    The truckers’ rally comes a day before a planned Australia and New Zealand-wide protest on Aug. 31, that has been circulating on social media for weeks.

    “Block every hwy [highway] entering into every state all at the same time & take back Australia,” one post on Facebook read, while warning people to stock up on enough food for a couple of weeks while truckies aim to block supply routes across the country.

    Frustrations have begun boiling over in Australia over the COVID-19 lockdowns—which state government say are caused by the low vaccinations in the country—with protests against government-mandated lockdowns ramping up around the country in recent weeks.

    On the weekend of Aug. 21,  rallies were held in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth, and Coolangatta-Tweed Heads.

    Over 1,000 residents in the Coolangatta-Tweed area—which saddles the state border between Queensland and New South Wales—held a rally complaining that the hard domestic border was affecting their livelihoods. Residents in the region regularly cross between the state border to access services.

    “I was working [across the border], and now my source of income has been cut off, so I’m forced to be dependent on the government,” one rallygoer from Pottsville in northern NSW told the ABC.

    “It’s really, really distressing, and we’re angry—we’re angry about our government.”

    The Queensland government implemented the hard border in response to an outbreak of the Delta variant of COVID-19 in the Greater Sydney area—about 800 kilometres away—with sporadic outbreaks in the regions.

    The northern NSW area, closest to Queensland, has had no active cases except for sewerage samples, as well as a man and his two teenage children found travelling to Byron Bay from Sydney last month.

    The Federal Employment Minister Stuart Roberts said the health orders were tough but said the truckies should not have held the action on the Gold Coast and inconvenienced thousands.

    “Vaccination seems to be the way for us to be able to get through this, to get back out of lockdown and to get ourselves back to the freedoms that we love here in Australia,” he said.

    “The rest of the world is doing it. Sure, there is carnage left, right, and centre, but there is carnage left, right, and centre here.

    The move also comes as Queensland becomes the first state to trial vaccination of international seafarers arriving at local ports. The International Transport Workers’ Federation backed the move.

    “International seafarers are the backbone of the economy, but a growing number of COVID outbreaks on vessels arriving in Australian ports highlights the need for urgent action to protect the health of these workers, reduce the risk of community transmission, and strengthen supply chain resilience,” ITF Australia co-ordinator Ian Bray said.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 08/30/2021 – 02:00

  • Escobar: Who Profits From The Kabul Suicide Bombing?
    Escobar: Who Profits From The Kabul Suicide Bombing?

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

    ISIS-Khorasan aims to prove to Afghans and to the outside world that the Taliban cannot secure the capital…

    The horrific Kabul suicide bombing introduces an extra vector in an already incandescent situation: It aims to prove to Afghans and to the outside world that the nascent Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is incapable of securing the capital.

    As it stands, at least 103 people – 90 Afghans (including at least 28 Taliban) and 13 American servicemen – were killed and at least 1,300 injured, according to the Afghan Health Ministry.

    Responsibility for the bombing came via a statement on the Telegram channel of Amaq Media, the official Islamic State (ISIS) news agency. This means it came from centralized ISIS command, even as the perpetrators were members of ISIS-Khorasan, or ISIS-K.

    Presuming to inherit the historical and cultural weight of ancient Central Asian lands that from the time of imperial Persia stretched all the way to the western Himalayas, that spin-off defiles the name of Khorasan.    

    The suicide bomber who carried out “the martyrdom operation near Kabul airport” was identified as one Abdul Rahman al-Logari. That would suggest he’s an Afghan, from nearby Logar province. And that would also suggest that the bombing may have been organized by an ISIS-Khorasan sleeper cell. Sophisticated electronic analysis of their communications would be able to prove it – tools that the Taliban don’t have. 

    The suicide bomber Abdul Rahman al-Logari as presented by ISIS propaganda. (Handout / Daesh)

    The way social media-savvy ISIS chose to spin the carnage deserves careful scrutiny. The statement on Amaq Media blasts the Taliban for being “in a partnership” with the U.S. military in the evacuation of “spies.”

    It mocks the “security measures imposed by the American forces and the Taliban militia in the capital Kabul,” as its “martyr” was able to reach “a distance of no less than five meters from the American forces, who were supervising the procedures.”

    So it’s clear that the newly reborn Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and the former occupying power are facing the same enemy. ISIS-Khorasan comprises a bunch of fanatics, termed takfiris because they define fellow Muslims – in this case the Taliban – as “apostates.”  

    Founded in 2015 by emigré jihadis dispatched to southwest Pakistan, ISIS-K is a dodgy beast. Its current head is one Shahab al-Mujahir, who was a mid-level commander of the Haqqani network headquartered in North Waziristan in the Pakistani tribal areas, itself a collection of disparate mujahideen and would-be jihadis under the family umbrella.

    Washington branded the Haqqani network as a terrorist organization way back in 2010, and treats several members as global terrorists, including Sirajuddin Haqqani, the head of the family after the death of the founder Jalaluddin. 

    Up to now, Sirajuddin was the Taliban deputy leader for the eastern provinces – on the same level with Mullah Baradar, the head of the political office in Doha, who was actually released from Guantanamo in 2014.  

    Crucially, Sirajuddin’s uncle, Khalil Haqqani, formerly in charge of the network’s foreign financing, is now in charge of Kabul security and working as a diplomat 24/7.

    The previous ISIS-K leaders were snuffed out by U.S. airstrikes in 2015 and 2016. ISIS-K started to become a real destabilizing force in 2020 when the regrouped band attacked Kabul University, a Doctor Without Borders maternity ward, the presidential palace and the airport.

    NATO intel picked up by a UN report attributes a maximum of 2,200 jihadis to ISIS-K, split into small cells. Significantly, the absolute majority are non-Afghans: Iraqis, Saudis, Kuwaitis, Pakistanis, Uzbeks, Chechens and Uighurs.

    The real danger is that ISIS-K works as a sort of magnet for all manners of disgruntled former Taliban or discombobulated regional warlords with nowhere to go.    

    The Perfect Soft Target

    The civilian commotion these past few days around Kabul airport was the perfect soft target for trademark ISIS carnage. 

    Zabihullah Mujahid – the new Taliban minister of information in Kabul, who in that capacity talks to global media every day – is the one who actually warned NATO members about an imminent ISIS-K suicide bombing. Brussels diplomats confirmed it.  

    Kabul airport. (Peretz Partensky/Wikimedia Commons)

    In parallel, it’s no secret among intel circles in Eurasia that ISIS-K has become disproportionally more powerful since 2020 because of a transportation ratline from Idlib, in Syria, to eastern Afghanistan, informally known in spook talk as Daesh Airlines.

    Moscow and Tehran, even at very high diplomatic levels, have squarely blamed the U.S.-U.K. axis as the key facilitators. Even the BBC reported in late 2017 on hundreds of ISIS jihadis given safe passage out of Raqqa, and out of Syria, right in front of the Americans.

    The Kabul bombing took place after two very significant events.

    The first one was Mujahid’s claim during an American NBC News interview earlier this week that there is “no proof” Osama bin Laden was behind 9/11 – an argument that I had already hinted was coming in this podcast the previous week.

    This means the Taliban have already started a campaign to disconnect themselves from the “terrorist” label associated with 9/11. The next step may involve arguing that the execution of 9/11 was set up in Hamburg, the operational details coordinated from two apartments in New Jersey. 

    Nothing to do with Afghans. And everything staying within the parameters of the official narrative – but that’s another immensely complicated story.

    The Taliban will need to show that “terrorism” has been all about their lethal enemy, ISIS, and way beyond old school al-Qaeda, which they harbored up to 2001. But why should they be shy about making such claims? After all, the United States rehabilitated Jabhat Al-Nusra – or al-Qaeda in Syria – as “moderate rebels.” 

    The origin of ISIS is incandescent material. ISIS was spawned in Iraq prison camps, its core made of Iraqis, their military skills derived from ex-officers in Saddam’s army, a wild bunch fired way back in 2003 by Paul Bremmer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

    ISIS-K duly carries the work of ISIS from Southwest Asia to the crossroads of Central and South Asia in Afghanistan. There’s no credible evidence that ISIS-K has ties with Pakistani military intel.

    IS-K fighters in training in Afghanistan. (Facebook)

    On the contrary: ISIS-K is loosely aligned with the Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, Islamabad’s mortal enemy. TTP’s agenda has nothing to do with the moderate Mullah Baradar-led Afghan Taliban who participated in the Doha process.

    SCO to the Rescue

    The other significant event tied to the Kabul bombing was that it took place only one day after yet another phone call between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. 

    The Kremlin stressed the pair’s “readiness to step up efforts to combat threats of terrorism and drug trafficking coming from the territory of Afghanistan”; the “importance of establishing peace”; and “preventing the spread of instability to adjacent regions.”

    And that led to the clincher: They jointly committed to “make the most of the potential” of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which was founded 20 years ago as the “Shanghai Five”, even before 9/11, to fight “terrorism, separatism and extremism.”

    The SCO summit is next month in Dushanbe – when Iran, most certainly, will be admitted as a full member. The Kabul bombing offers the SCO the opportunity to forcefully step up.

    Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid holds a press conference in Kabul on Tuesday. Photo: AFP / Haroon Sabawoon / Anadolu Agency

    Whichever complex tribal coalition is formed to govern the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, it will be intertwined with the full apparatus of regional economic and security cooperation, led by the three main actors of Eurasia integration: Russia, China and Iran.

    The record shows Moscow has all that it takes to help the Islamic Emirate against ISIS-K in Afghanistan. After all, the Russians flushed ISIS out of all significant parts of Syria and confined them to the Idlib cauldron.  

    In the end, no one aside from ISIS wants a terrorized Afghanistan, just as no one wants a civil war in Afghanistan. So the order of business indicates not only an SCO-led frontal fight against existing ISIS-K terror cells in Afghanistan but also an integrated campaign to drain any potential social base for the takfiris in Central and South Asia.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/29/2021 – 23:00

  • High-Frequency Data Show Delta Fearmongering Softens Economy 
    High-Frequency Data Show Delta Fearmongering Softens Economy 

    What worries us is macroeconomic data has already begun to slow amid unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimuli in history, and all those tailwinds could soon become headwinds. 

    For instance, retail sales plunged again in July, and the employment and industrial production data are becoming disappointing considering the level of stimuli. 

    One month after the BEA shocked Wall Street with its first estimate of Q2 GDP, which was a significant miss to expectations of 8.5%, printing at just 6.5%, last week far fewer fireworks when the BEA released its first estimate of Q2 GDP, which came in at 6.6% which was also a miss to forecasts of 6.7%. 

    As the economy slows, Goldman Sachs slashed its Q3 GDP estimate of 8.5% earlier this month and now sees just 5.5% growth in Q3. We noted that “a sudden negative change” occurred in the economy because consumer spending is collapsing. 

    And while most banks have been quick to attribute the sudden slump in retail sales to Delta fears, Morgan Stanley’s chief equity strategist Michael Wilson told clients, “disappointing retail sales and consumer sentiment suggest the US consumer is fading,” and while he shares our view that most blame Delta he, like us, thinks this is more about a payback in demand.

    Broadly speaking, US economic surprise data, which measures the degree to which the economic data is either beating or missing economists’ forecasts, turned negative in late July and continues to plunge. 

    For a real-time glimpse of the economy (courtesy of Bloomberg), otherwise known as high-frequency data, there are signs that airlines, hotels, and restaurants are experiencing a slowdown in activity as mainstream media fearmongers the Delta variant. 

    Airlines

    The number of travelers moving through airport checkpoints has started to drop again. 

    On Tuesday, 1.47 million travelers took flights, the fewest in more than three months, according to Transportation Security Administration data. The seven-day average has declined to around 1.76 million passengers a day in late August from around 2.05 million a month earlier. 

    While this partly reflects the end of the summer vacation season, airlines have also cited the delta variant. There’s been a “deceleration in leisure booking and an increase in cancellations,” said Helane Becker, senior reseach analyst with Cowen Inc. As companies have delayed a return to offices, the return of business air travel is also likely delayed, she said.

    Restaurant Dining

    Seated dining at US restaurants has been running at about 10-11% below 2019 levels in recent weeks, after narrowing the gap to just 5-6% below in late July, according to OpenTable, which processes reservations online. Concern about delta and city mandates are playing a role, according to the company.

    “We see a pronounced decline in late July and August,” said Debby Soo, chief executive officer at OpenTable. “While several factors could be at play here, we believe the primary driver of the downturn is diners’ concerns about the rise in Covid cases.”

    Hotel Occupancy

    While leisure travel helped to boost some popular destinations over the summer, hotel occupancy has now declined for four consecutive weeks, according to STR, a lodging data tracker. Average room rates have declined for three weeks. 

    Among 25 large US markets, none saw increased occupancy in the week ended Aug. 21 compared with the same week of 2019, STR found. Occupancy dropped by more than 40% in San Francisco, most of any market.

    “Demand looks like it is running slightly worse than the typical seasonal decline,” said Bill Crow, Raymond James Financial analyst. There’s “a chill on travel caused by the delta variant case increases” with business-travel markets doing poorly.

    Bloomberg’s economist Eliza Winger wrote, “the delta variant has shown some signs of restraining vigor in consumer spending on in-person services. The softer-than-expected July retail sales report, combined with moderating demand for dining out and air travel, and delayed back-to-office plans, flag downside risks to consumer momentum in the second half.”

    A slowing economy for the Biden administration is a big dilemma and could be used as talking points by Republicans in next November’s midterm elections.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/29/2021 – 22:30

  • Empire's Fate
    Empire’s Fate

    Authored by Nikola Kehdi via AmericanMind.org,

    America under siege and at a crossroads

    Nothing lives forever, and nations are no exception. The reasons for the downfall of great nations and empires are complex, but if you want to see a great country decline and crumble, it is enough to watch it cancel its culture and destroy its economy through an abandonment of values and fiscal irresponsibility.

    Unnatural cultural and economic conditions will lead inevitably to social polarization and civil unrest. This leads to an erosion of democracy, less freedom, and less economic opportunity.  

    Due to the pandemic, we have seen the global accumulation of power and centralization at the expense of individual liberty. The current Washington and coastal elites are forcibly imposing their cultural views on the American people. The country’s progressives in control of the media, academia, the corporate sector and almost every other institution present a vision of the U.S. as irredeemably racist, evil, and oppressive. Massive reconstitution of the nation is necessary to move forward, in this view.

    A country without memory is a zombie. Deleting the past destroys the future. With left-wing extremists driving political debate, destroying monuments, attacking free speech, and censoring everything that displeases the Twitter mobs, America is on the path toward Communist-style tyranny. A total revision of American history, and a forceful implementation of progressive socialist values, will take place in the United States if the current momentum continues unchecked.

    With its centralized policies and mixed economy, Europe has been experiencing economic decline for decades. The United States has avoided this fate because of its tradition of limited government, fiscal responsibility, capitalism, and free enterprise. However, massive unproductive government spending with ever growing entitlements and never-ending quantitative easing have become the norm in recent years—largely with bipartisan consensus.

    The United States has close to $30 trillion in debt. Interest rates will not remain low forever, especially if inflation continues to increase, which is a virtual certainty given the Biden plan to double or triple government spending. When rates rise, paying for this massive debt will be much costlier. The short sightedness of politicians is steering the American economy toward “Modern Monetary Theory,” a fancy name for socialism.

    As Europe has shown, massive trillion-dollar packages do not boost the economy; the private sector does. Governments cannot channel capital efficiently. Instead, they fund zombie companies, unproductive sectors, and political cronies. The data back this up: according to the Congressional Budget Office, the estimate for average real growth in GDP from 2020 to 2030 is 1.7 percent, while the unemployment rate is forecast to average 4.8 percent, despite trillions of dollars in stimulus packages. In the second quarter, after massive government intervention, annualized growth was at 6.5 percent, much lower than the 8.5 percent expected, while annualized real personal disposable income fell at a 30.6 percent rate, and inflation continues to rise. 

    In contrast, the pro-growth and pro-worker policies of the Trump administration led to median household income growing by 6.8 percent in 2019, which remains the largest annual increase on record. America gained seven million new jobs—more than three times projections and at what was supposed to be the end of an expansionary cycle. Middle-class family income increased nearly $6,000—more than five times the gains during the entire previous administration. Median household incomes rose among Hispanics (7.1 percent), blacks (7.9 percent), Asians (10.6 percent), foreign-born workers (8.5 percent), whites (5.7 percent), and for all native-born Americans (6.2 percent). Poverty rates during the Trump years fell to a 17-year low. It was thanks to Trump’s policies that the American economy began to recover much quicker than Europe as soon as many states ended lockdowns. When the Biden administration, with the help of the Fed, started inundating the economy with needless and unaffordable money, the recovery cooled rapidly.

    The current administration is intent on following through with unnecessary spending, an assault on the energy sector, increasing the size of government, and higher taxes which will lead to a decline in competitiveness, stagflation, and the immiseration of the American people. Republicans are enabling this fiscal insanity, as their support for the massive, unnecessary infrastructure bill shows.

    The American century appears to be coming to an ignominious end. The recent catastrophe in Afghanistan is a direct consequence of the weakened state America finds itself from internal attacks that have produced an ineffective and incompetent government. Soon, the United States will be unable to confront Chinese expansionism or other authoritarian threats. Hence, it is a crucial moment for American society. It is up to conservatives and traditionalists to be smart and swift enough to counteract the cultural and economic transformation and provide an alternative, which is not yet happening in any cohesive or convincing way.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/29/2021 – 22:00

  • China Foreign Minister Slams Blinken For "Double Standards" And Fighting Terrorism "In A Selective Way"
    China Foreign Minister Slams Blinken For “Double Standards” And Fighting Terrorism “In A Selective Way”

    In the aftermath of Biden’s catastrophic and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan, which not only handed the country with its vast natural resources to the Taliban on a silver platter along with tens of billions in ultra-modern US weapons, led to the deaths of at least 13 US service members, and also created a historic power vacuum just waiting for China and Russia to swoop in and realign the balance of power in Asia, China has taken particular delight in the unprecedented humiliation the US is suffering under its nearly octogenarian president, while also rubbing salt in the wound. 

    Case in point, on Sunday during a phone call between the Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, and US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, the US was urged to take “concrete actions” to help Afghanistan combat terrorism and avoid adopting double standards, according to the Global Times.

    The talk took places three days after the bombing attacks which occurred outside the Kabul airport in the Afghan capital on Thursday leaving dozens dead, but also nearly two weeks after Wang and Blinken exchanged views over Afghanistan on August 16.

    Wang said the domestic situation in Afghanistan has fundamentally changed and it is necessary for all parties to engage with and actively guide the Taliban, especially the US.

    “Facts have proved once again that the Afghan war has not achieved its goal of eradicating terrorist forces in Afghanistan and a precipitate withdrawal of US and NATO forces could provide opportunities for various terrorist groups in Afghanistan to return,” said Wang.

    Wang added that the US should “take concrete actions” to help combat terrorism and violence in the country under the premise of respecting Afghanistan’s sovereignty and independence, instead of “adopting double standards” or fighting terrorism “in a selective way.”

    He also urged the US to work with the international community to help maintain the normal operation of the new Afghan government, social security and stability, and start the peaceful reconstruction of the country as soon as possible.

    Blinken said the UN Security Council should send a unified voice to express the expectation of the international community that the Taliban should ensure the safe evacuation of foreign citizens, guarantee that the Afghan people will receive humanitarian aid and avoid becoming a haven for terrorism. Wang said the US is well aware of the causes of the current turmoil in Afghanistan and any action taken by the Security Council should be conducive to easing tensions rather than exacerbating them.

    As for the piece de resistance, Wang urged the US to stop blindly smearing and attacking China and expressed firm opposition to the COVID-19 origins tracing report – which as we noted last week, was farcical beyond comprehension, with US “intelligence” agencies saying they are unable to make a definitive conclusion absent Chinese cooperation. Because clearly China will cooperate in implicating itself as the source of Covid.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/29/2021 – 21:30

  • Do You Live In A Social Capital Desert?
    Do You Live In A Social Capital Desert?

    Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

    Necessity is a magnet, and perhaps as what’s essential in our lives changes, social capital will start sprouting, even in the most unlikely places.

    “Desert” has become a favored metaphor: food deserts describe neighborhoods with few places to buy fresh fruits and vegetables, democracy deserts describe political regions rigged by gerrymandering, and so on.

    Many of us working our way forward to a more resilient, sustainable and healthier future talk about social capital–the intangible but very real network of connections and relationships that characterize social mammals such as humans.

    We call this network of ties and trust “capital” because it takes time and effort to build and maintain, and it generates value.

    The value generated by social capital has many forms, but the one most commonly cited is favors with an economic value. We say we’re “calling in favors” when we seek help in locating clients, contractors, mechanics, employees, etc., or ask for help in childcare, yardwork, picking someone up at the airport, etc.

    The foundations of this form of social capital are 1) longstanding ties to families, schools, home towns or neighborhoods, etc., and 2) reciprocity, being generous with one’s connections, time, experience and expertise to one’s network.

    This “investment” isn’t made with calculated returns in mind (though some people do offer help in the hopes of gaining something of far more value than they offered); the eventual value generated is unknown, but everything that’s given–especially the trust that you do what you say you’ll do– is like a savings account that adds value to your place in the network.

    Put more bluntly, an unreliable person isn’t going to be valued as highly as a person who commits to a task and unfailingly gets it done on time and with minimal fuss / hassle.

    Unlike other forms of capital, social capital doesn’t necessarily decay over time: long-dormant connections and favors can come alive in moments of necessity.

    In China and other Asian nations, much of what is automatically labeled corruption in the West is in many cases better understood as social capital bleeding into the immense financial wealth generated by state-finance connections in Asian economies.

    The old school/university or home-town ties that grease deals between politicians and developers is known as guanxi in Mandarin Chinese, a word that embodies a complex web of obligations, reciprocity, trust and value that are universal characteristics of human sociability and social capital.

    Ancient trading networks stretching from the Roman Empire to India were built on networks of trusted contacts in Rome, Egypt (the entrepot of trade from Mediterranean ports to the Arabian Sea ports) and India. This wasn’t corruption, it was simply business–often based on family and near-family connections.

    It’s long been observed that societies with low trust in strangers–that is, low levels of trust in the fairness and reach of the society’s legal, financial and political institutions–are economically stagnant, as enterprises cannot expand beyond the trusted network of families and family-like connections.

    In modern industrial societies, social capital has lost value as people have come to rely on government and institutions for income, food, aid, child and elderly care, etc.–the resources and services that we once relied on social capital networks to provide.

    Urban life tends to degrade social capital, which requires time, effort and caring that are often scarce in busy, over-committed lives. The frenetic pace limits the rewards of investing in social capital networks, as does the fast-revolving door of neighborhoods and workplaces: it’s difficult to establish friendships and meaningful ties when everyone is pressed for time and people move on in a few months or years.

    Investing in people who are gone in a few months yields very little, so social capital dwindles to near-zero. Many urban dwellers don’t have any contact with their neighbors and only limited contact with people they work with.

    The ties that exist are too contingent and weak to support much in the way of trust, reciprocity, sharing, obligation, etc.

    In economic terms, if the government provides income and Corporate America provides the goods and services, the traditional need for social capital evaporates.

    Humans are not just rational economic robots, and so the impoverishment of social capital deserts in which few know their neighbors, share anything with others, owe anything to anyone or trust anyone is also a desert of emotional well-being.

    This has spawned a number of seminal books such as The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community and The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations, in which author Christopher Lasch sets aside the psychological definition of an individual’s narcissism (hedonistic egoism) to examine what he called “pathological narcissism.”

    In my view, this systemic narcissism resulting from two dynamics:

    1) Work/career demands so much of individuals now that they have little time or energy to build or maintain social capital networks.

    2) Given the general dependence on the Savior State and corporations for life’s necessities, there is little motivation or need to maintain social capital beyond the immediate family circle.

    In other words, the individual has no economic need to invest in social capital because all the essentials are provided by the state and corporations.

    In traditional economies, producing goods and services in the home and sharing with a social network were essential to survival; there was no Savior State providing money to buy everything.

    As for the emotional well-being value of social capital, the simulacra of social media and brand-identity fill the void, however imperfectly.

    In my own experience, social capital develops organically and without extraordinary effort in the close-knit connections of shared community, family ties, faith, purpose and values. Some enterprises can foster social capital, but the demands to maximize profits every quarter make enterprises poor soil in which to grow social capital.

    In an economy that optimizes time spent earning money and buying everything, very few people have much to share: they have very little free time, their career demands maintaining specialty skills over activities that generate surplus goods (hobbies, crafts, gardens, etc.) and the financial pressures to maximize income set the goals of life.

    In other words, social capital deserts don’t just lack trust and connections; they lack tradable goods and services that have value in a society in which everything is store-bought.

    For example, people who don’t have time or interest in preparing meals with raw ingedients will not value gifts of home-grown fresh fruit and vegetables, and so one of the fundamental forms of reciprocity throughout human history–exchanging home-grown food–has little value.

    Which brings us to the last redoubt of social capital, family networks. These too have frayed as people have lost connections to any “home” locale and moved far from each other. Since there is no need for social capital to meet most of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, there is very little “necessity” glue to bind people together.

    In Hawaii, the need to maintain home gardens and social capital has 100-year old roots in plantation communities in which the workers weren’t paid enough to buy everything they needed. Home gardens weren’t a luxury, they were essential because what little money that was available was needed to buy staples such as flour and rice.

    Children went barefoot because there was no money for shoes or other “luxuries.”

    What’s changed is what is essential. In today’s world, earning enough income to buy everything is what’s essential, and social capital is non-essential. In living memory, social capital and home food production were essential, ashaving enough money to buy everything was out of reach for the vast majority of households.

    Social capital can’t be bought, it takes significant, sustained investments of time, energy and caring. In a society obsessed with financial measures of value, it’s little wonder social capital has atrophied to the point that it is a non-factor in many lives.

    The value isn’t in being willing to accept something of value, it’s in creating and sharing something of value without calculating a financial return. The return isn’t financial, it’s far more valuable than that.

    It’s an open question as to whether social capital deserts can be made to bloom. The soil may lack the requisite nutrients. For households hungry for sociability and social capital, it may be easier to move somewhere with fertile soil rather than to try to turn hardpan into a verdant garden.

    That changes if a self-sustaining, self-organizing, like-minded group assembles around a value-purpose driven project. But that’s asking a lot of people stretched for time and energy, and of people like me who are joiners, not founders or leaders.

    Necessity is a magnet, and perhaps as what’s essential in our lives changes, social capital will start sprouting, even in the most unlikely places.

    This essay was first published as a weekly Musings Report sent exclusively to subscribers and patrons at the $5/month ($54/year) and higher level. Thank you, patrons and subscribers, for supporting my work and free website.

    *  *  *

    If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

    My recent books:

    A Hacker’s Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

    Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World (Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

    Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($5 (Kindle), $10 (print), ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).

    The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

    Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/29/2021 – 21:00

  • China Is "Cleansing" Online Content Of Anyone Critical Of The Country's Economy
    China Is “Cleansing” Online Content Of Anyone Critical Of The Country’s Economy

    It’s bad enough Central Banks of the world have unilateral power to redistribute purchasing power in any way they deem fit, at any time, facing little to no consequences from their respective governments.

    But apparently in China, this still isn’t enough power. 

    This week the country began a two-month campaign targeted at cracking down on “commercial platforms and social media accounts that post finance-related information that’s deemed harmful to its economy,” according to Bloomberg.

    So we’re guessing they’re not huge Zero Hedge readers?

    The “cleansing” campaign, as it was described by Bloomberg, is going to focus on rectifying violations that include “maliciously” bad mouthing financial markets and “falsely interpreting domestic policies and economic data”. 

    And to think we were only joking with all of those “send the short sellers to the gulag” jokes… 

    The country is also going to target anyone who republishes foreign media reports or commentaries that “falsely interpret domestic financial topics”. 

    The idea is that the Chinese Communist Party wants to create what Bloomberg calls a “benign” online environment for public opinion. We’d instead call it an environment for a state-run narrative that can’t be challenged by the public. 

    The rules follow a draft proposal put into effect Friday that regulated algorithms that tech firms use to generate recomended videos and other content for users.

    The country’s cyberspace administrator, along with its finance ministry and central bank will all order commercial websites and platforms to “clean up” their financial information posts. 

    Companies that have already pledged to abide by the rules include Tencent, Toutiao and Douyin. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/29/2021 – 20:30

  • Absolute Power Is No COVID Safety Net
    Absolute Power Is No COVID Safety Net

    Authored by James Bovard via The American Institute for Economic Research,

    Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, lockdown champions have perennially invoked “science and data” to sanctify any mandate politicians impose. Hard facts have recently shown that neither vaccines nor face masks provide surefire protection against the virus. But no amount of evidence has yet shaken faith in the magic of absolute power.

    Covid policies are increasingly degenerating to the equivalent of sacrificing virgins to appease angry viral gods. New Zealand on Tuesday imposed a nationwide lockdown in response to a single Covid case in the capital city. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern ordered her captive citizenry: “Do not congregate, don’t talk to your neighbors. Please keep to your bubble.” Arden asserted that “complying with these rules, making sure we do all we can to stamp it out, still remains the best strategy in the world right now.” Ardern did not deign to explain why almost no place else in the world, including places with vastly more Covid cases, sought to outlaw everyday conversations.

    In Australia, the military is patrolling city streets to enforce the latest lockdown. Daniel Andrews, the Premier of the state of Victoria, recently decreed: “There will be no removal of masks to consume alcohol outdoors.” One Aussie lamented, “My business has been forcibly closed. Everyone has been sent home without pay. We are banned from leaving our homes except for the 5 reasons given by the Government.”

    There is no “science” to justify prohibiting Australians from going more than 2 miles from their home. But New Zealand and Australia presume that no one will be safe unless government officials have jurisdiction over every breath that citizens take.

    In the United States, many of the same pundits and activists who howled about the evils of “microaggressions” are now cheering for the government to forcibly inject everyone with a Covid vaccine. Biden publicly declared that he is checking to see if he has the power to force everyone to get injected.

    Biden endorsed the vaccination passports that some cities have already imposed. Radio host Grant Stinchfield commented, in Los Angeles “you can [defecate] on the street, shoot drugs in crack tent on the sidewalk and even steal anything less then (sic) 900 bucks but now you have to show papers to get in a restaurant or gym!?!?” New York City’s passport regime effectively bans the majority of blacks from many activities of daily life, since they have a much lower vaccination rate than other groups. 

    Far greater restrictions may be on the horizon. The Associated Press reported that the Biden administration is considering “mandating vaccines for interstate travel” but is delaying any such decree until “Americans were ready for the strong-arming from the federal government.” A top former Homeland Security official has called for placing anyone who is not fully vaccinated on the No Fly list, thereby expanding the list to scores of millions of people and creating new havoc for air travel. Biden administration officials have offered no evidence that such restrictions would end the pandemic but it would permit the president to demonstrate the same machismo that President Nixon showed with his illegal invasion of Cambodia in 1970.

    Politicians’ anti-Covid recommendations increasingly resemble frightened soldiers shooting at any noise they hear in the dark. NIH Director Francis Collins recently condemned the “epidemic of misinformation, disinformation, distrust that is tearing us apart.” But much of the misinformation has stemmed directly from the Biden administration’s flip-flops and fearmongering. On August 3, Collins announced during a CNN interview that “parents of unvaccinated kids should… wear masks” in their own homes. He conceded: “I know that’s uncomfortable, I know it seems weird, but it is the best way to protect your kids.” A few hours later, Collins recanted on Twitter, perhaps after other political appointees persuaded him to stop sounding like a blithering idiot.

    Covid misinformation started at the top. In a CNN Town Hall last month, Biden declared, “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.” Biden administration officials kept reciting the “pandemic of the unvaccinated” refrain long after it became clear that vaccines were rapidly failing to prevent the spread of Covid. On August 8, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky finally admitted: “What [COVID vaccines] can’t do any more is prevent transmission.” Helluva asterisk. Prior to that, the Biden administration even refused to disclose the number of “breakthrough” infections that had occurred among White House staff. Prof. Eric Topol complained that the CDC’s false statements on Covid risks was a “blatant failure putting millions of vaccinated Americans at unnecessary risk for breakthrough infections.”

    On Thursday, a front page Washington Post article castigated the CDC for withholding Covid information from the public, noting that its “overly rosy assessments of the vaccines’ effectiveness against delta may have lulled Americans into a false sense of security.” Tom Frieden, former CDC director under Obama, suggested that the long delays in disclosure led some people to “wonder if the CDC is hiding results.” CDC Director Walensky responded to the debacle by promising “to develop a new forecasting and outbreak analytics center to analyze data in real time,” the Post reported. The CDC apparently did not previously consider it worthwhile to spend any of its $8 billion annual budget on such a project.  

    The Biden administration has sought to blame the resurgence of Covid on scofflaws who did not submit to every revised command. The Official Enemies List has expanded from those not wearing a mask to those resisting getting vaccinated, and it will soon include those who balk at getting a third (and fourth? fifth?) injection.

    The biggest expansion of the Enemies List occurred on August 13, when the Department of Homeland Security issued a terrorist alert, warning law enforcement agencies that “anti-government/anti-authority violent extremists could exploit… potential re-establishment of public health restrictions across the United States as a rationale to conduct attacks.” Anyone who loudly objects to being locked back under house arrest will be the moral equivalent of the Taliban, or maybe Hezbollah. Previous federal driftnets for potential troublemakers expanded far beyond individuals who threatened violence. The feds may already be compiling vast lists of Covid critics that could come in handy at some future point.

    But at least government officials now recognize the real enemy. Covid Czar Tony Fauci recently declared, “I know people must like to have their individual freedom… but I think that we’re in such a serious situation now, that… mandates should be done.” Fauci predicts that once the FDA rushes its formal approval of the Covid vaccines, there will be far more mandates imposed on Americans.  The fact that the efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine has fallen to 42% is irrelevant. A vaccine isn’t a failure as long as the government can force everyone to get additional injections.

    The primary “evidence” for most Covid policies is the job title of the government official issuing the decree. As University of California San Francisco professor of medicine Vinay Prasad wrote last month, “When it comes to non-pharmacologic interventions such as mandatory business closures, mask mandates, and countless other interventions, the shocking conclusion of the last 18 months is this: We have learned next to nothing.” Prasad slammed his colleagues for failing to do reliable research on key issues of the pandemic: “Anyone who considers themselves a scientist should be embarrassed by our collective failure to generate knowledge, and this failure is once again looming large.”

    For bureaucrats and politicians, gaining power and compelling submission are victory enough, even when their policies fail to vanquish a virus. Citizens are obliged to assume “government knows best, even when it knows little or nothing.” People won’t get infected as long as they are groveling to federal commands, right? Unfortunately, the government has no liability for the injections it approves or the freedoms it destroys.

    Faith in absolute power is not “science” – regardless of how many scientists pledge allegiance to Washington in return for federal funding. As historian John M. Barry, author of The Great Influenza, observed, “When you mix politics and science, you get politics.” There is no safety in submission to damn fools, regardless of their pompous titles.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/29/2021 – 20:00

  • Viral Infographic Reveals The Shocking Amount Of Military Hardware Biden Handed To The Taliban
    Viral Infographic Reveals The Shocking Amount Of Military Hardware Biden Handed To The Taliban

    When President Biden leaves billions of US military hardware in the hands of America-hating terrorists – after having seven months to “plan a withdrawal” – he doesn’t mess around.

    According to a now-viral infographic from <a href="

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js “>The Sunday Times, ongoing terror operations will benefit from the luxury of more than 22,000 Humvees, 42,000 pick-up trucks and SUVs, 16,000 night visions goggles and devices, 64,000 machine guns, and 358,000 assault rifles.

    Indeed, while Biden wants to strip law-abiding Americans of their constitutional right to bear arms, he’s put over 400,000 of them in the hands of terrorists.

    Needless to say, the vast trove of US military hardware handed to America’s enemies on a silver platter should, at minimum, make Raytheon – whose board Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sat on until he joined the Biden admin – very happy.

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    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/29/2021 – 19:30

  • China Has a Grand Strategy to Displace US: China Expert
    China Has a Grand Strategy to Displace US: China Expert

    Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times,

    China has had three grand strategies to counter the United States since 1989, culminating in the latest phase since 2016 of wanting to displace the United States, said China expert Rush Doshi during a recent webinar to talk about his new book.

    Doshi wrote the book, entitled “The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order,” while working at the Brookings Institution, which hosted the online event on Aug. 26. Now, he is the Biden administration’s newly-appointed director for China on the White House National Security Council.

    The Chinese Communist Party  (CCP) officials “seek to restore China to its due place and roll back the historical aberration of the West’s overwhelming global influence,” with the grand strategy, according to Doshi’s book.

    The grand strategy is now in its third phase, Doshi explained, after examining years of CCP documents such as memoirs, speeches, and biographies. Now, he said China saw its competition with the United States as global, regional, and functional in many domains.

    “It’s in key domains like economics, technology, finance, emerging technologies, obviously in security and political institutions,” Doshi explained. He added the nature of the Sino-U.S. competition was much wider now, involving more countries.

    He explained:

    “If you look at the Chinese discourse on what they see as the future of competition … they believe that the West, the United States and others, will sort of increasingly work together.

    “They think they have to do the same thing with other states, that’s a little harder, in their own estimation, because they don’t have the same network of alliances and historical partnerships.”

    His comments were made in his personal capacity as a former Brookings fellow.

    The first phase of China’s grand strategy lasted from 1989 to 2008, then the second phase kicked in for the next eight years, according to Doshi. In 2016, China commenced its third phase of the strategy.

    Beijing saw the United States as a quasi-ally before it changed its perception and saw America as an ideological and military threat following three events—the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the first Gulf War, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, according to Doshi. Describing the events as a “traumatic trifecta,” he said Beijing ushered in the first phrase—a blunting strategy.

    His book details how China made military, political, and economic decisions in accordance with the blunting strategy. For example, Beijing shifted from controlling distant maritime territory to preventing the U.S. Navy’s ability to traverse or intervene in waters near China. The shift was accompanied by focusing its military investment in submarines, naval mine arsenal, and anti-ship ballistic missiles.

    The 2008 financial crisis prompted Beijing to see the United States differently, believing that America was “weakening” and its economic and political model wasn’t “quite as effective,” Doshi explained during the webinar. In response to its new view, Beijing began focusing more on “building the foundations for Chinese order within Asia,” Doshi added.

    He said the shift from blunting to building was evident by a speech by former Chinese leader Hu Jintao at the 2009 ambassadorial conference, during which he said China had to “actively accomplish something.”

    As a result, Beijing began to focus more on distant military capabilities, turning its attention to investing in aircraft carriers, overseas military bases, and surface vessels, according to his book.

    Beijing reaffirmed its belief that the United States, as well as the West, was in decline, after seeing populist candidates won several elections around the world in 2016, former President Donald Trump’s presidential victory, and the United Kingdom’s Brexit vote, according to Doshi. In response to its assessment, the Chinese regime adopted the third phase of its grand strategy—what Doshi called an expansion strategy.

    The communist regime “takes the blunting and building strategies from early periods and applies them on a global stage,” Doshi explained.

    “If there are two paths to hegemony—a regional one and a global one—China is now pursuing both,” his book says.

    It adds:

    “It is clear, then, that China is the most significant competitor that the United States has faced and that the way Washington handles its emergence to superpower status will shape the course of the next century.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/29/2021 – 19:00

  • American Mass Shootings At Record High, Average 2 Per Day 
    American Mass Shootings At Record High, Average 2 Per Day 

    The database for tracking mass killings, including shootings, defined as four or more people dead, not including the gunman, shared grim data about out-of-control mass shootings plaguing the U.S. 

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    The Gun Violence Archive (GVA), which monitors police reports tracking gun violence, wrote on Twitter that the U.S. had recorded 452 mass shootings in 41 different states (and Washington D.C.) in the 236 days of 2021. For comparison, in all of 2020, there were 393 mass shootings. 

    GVA’s mass shooting map shows most of the shootings occurred East of the Mississippi. 

    There were only nine states without a mass shooting this year, including Idoha, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, North and South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming. 

    We noted in July that “Mass Shootings On Course For Record Year As U.S. Transforms Into Violent Mess.” 

    Another frightening statistic is that since the virus pandemic, “we have never logged a month of 60+ mass shootings before 2020. It happened five times last year (May-September), and now three times in 2021. August is on pace to do the same,” GVA said. 

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    Breaking down the numbers, the U.S. is averaging nearly two mass shootings per day. 

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    In July, President Biden announced new plans to tackle violent crime. 

    “While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, we know there are some things that work. And the first of those that work is stemming the flow of firearms,” Biden said. 

    The Justice Department has deployed five firearms strike forces to target the illegal flow of guns across state lines. 

    The Biden administration is also working with attorney generals from several states to repeal a law that gives gun manufacturers blanket immunity when their firearms are sold to consumers and used in crimes. 

    In an op-ed via Baltimore-based gun advocate The Machine Gun Nest (TMGN), they recently laid out in a firearms policy note, titled “”Puzzle Pieces All Laid Out” – How ATF Has Plan To Classify Semi-Automatic Rifles As “Machine Guns”” how the Biden administration is coming for your guns. 

    Here’s more from TMGN on how Biden, under the guise of soaring violent crime across US cities, wants to ban the AR-15. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/29/2021 – 18:30

  • Second-Largest US Mortgage Lender To Accept Payment In Bitcoin
    Second-Largest US Mortgage Lender To Accept Payment In Bitcoin

    Several years ago, the prevailing bear case against bitcoin was that there simply was no use for the digital currency: one can buy up all of it, but besides selling to a “greater fool” there was simply no other use for the digital token. Since then thing have changed a lot: not only is institutional adoption now rampant with corporations and asset managers loading up, but increasingly merchants are bracing for the inevitable popular adoption of cryptos as a payment mechanism, with both Walmart and Amazon quietly building out an internal infrastructure to accept and transact in various cryptocurrencies. And soon, Americans will be able to pay down their mortgage debt in bitcoin first, and soon other cryptos.

    Last week, United Wholesale Mortgage – second-largest mortgage lender in the US – announced it was planning to accept Bitcoin for home loans in 3Q21 and is evaluating on accepting other cryptocurrencies like ether.

    The revelation that United Wholesale Mortgage will start taking crypto payments sometime in Q3 was made during its earnings call last week. The company said it would will start taking bitcoin payments first, and is researching in consideration of adding ether and other cryptocurrencies later. Its CEO, Mat Ishbia, stated:

    We’ve evaluated the feasibility, and we’re looking forward to being the first mortgage company in America to accept cryptocurrency to satisfy mortgage payments.

    The company, which emerged as a result of a SPAC merger in January, is not directly connected to customers. Instead, it uses brokers to link customers and loans. According to bitcoin.com, the company didn’t explain if the cryptocurrency received would be kept as such or exchanged for fiat money.

    If the company manages to achieve its goal, we might see mortgages paid in crypto before the end of this year. The cryptocurrency payments space has been warming up all this year due to the heightened interest in digital assets. In March, one of the biggest payment processors, Paypal, introduced a new feature called “Checkout with crypto,” which enables users to pay with cryptocurrency in millions of online stores.

    However, there is still a roadblock for the adoption of cryptocurrency payments in the U.S. Cryptocurrency can be considered property in the country, and paying with crypto can be considered a sale. This means that depending on the buying price, crypto holders might have to pay capital gains tax even when using bitcoin to pay for their mortgage loans.

    In other countries with less stringent regulations, crypto is already used for real estate payments. As Bitcoin.com notes, this is the case in Venezuela, which recently recorded one of its first public sales of a property paid for with cryptocurrency. This payment method is said to have many advantages such as not depending on the approval of banks, cutting paperwork, and slashing processing times from two weeks to just hours.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/29/2021 – 18:00

  • Putin Opposes Mandatory Jabs, Says People Should Get Vaccinated Without Coercion
    Putin Opposes Mandatory Jabs, Says People Should Get Vaccinated Without Coercion

    Russian President Vladimir Putin says that while people need to get vaccinated to “overcome this pandemic,” nobody’s job should be on the line if they refuse.

    Speaking last weekend during a meeting with the governing United Russia party ahead of next month’s parliamentary elections, Putin said “We need to do everything we can to overcome this pandemic,” adding “and the best tool we have in this fight is vaccination.”

    “Vaccination is the main weapon against the spread of the virus. Importantly, no one should be forced to get a jab. Pressure, where people may lose their jobs, is even less acceptable. People must be convinced of the need to get the vaccine,” he said.

    “This must be done persistently and respectfully. People should be convinced of the need to get vaccinated in order to save their lives and health, and to protect their loved ones.”

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    As Russian state-funded RT notes, “On Friday, Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko announced that more than 43 million people have had one of the country’s four domestically made coronavirus vaccines. However, this number, he said, “is not enough yet” and “we will feel safer when the number of people who have protection against infection reaches more than 80%.” At present, close to one in four Russians has been immunized against the virus, and it is unclear how many more may have developed antibodies after being infected with the virus across the nation.”

    Putin’s comments appear to be at odds with official policy throughout several sectors of the Russian economy. In Moscow, for example, “companies in industries such as hospitality, leisure and transport must demonstrate that 60% of their staff have been vaccinated or else face hefty fines. Officials have confirmed that businesses can send home employees without pay if they refuse, in order to meet the quotas.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/29/2021 – 17:30

  • How Long Will The US Dollar's Dominance Last?
    How Long Will The US Dollar’s Dominance Last?

    Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

    301 AD was a big year for the Roman Empire.

    That was the year that, amid spiraling inflation, Emperor Diocletian issued his Edict on Maximum Prices, essentially fixing prices of just about everything across the Roman Empire.

    The price of wheat, a day labor’s wages, a quart of olive oil, transportation rates– everything was established by the Emperor’s edict, and enforced under penalty of death.

    Diocletian’s edict infamously didn’t work, and the empire plunged into even more severe inflation.

    The other big event of 301 AD was the introduction of the solidus gold coin, roughly 4.5 grams of nearly pure gold.

    And while the Romans had a history of debasing their other coins, like the silver denarius and sesterce, the government actually did a pretty good job maintaining the value and purity of the gold solidus.

    Even hundreds of years later, after the western empire in Rome had fallen to the barbarians, and imperial power was concentrated in Byzantium, the gold solidus was still approximately as pure as it was in the early 300s.

    That’s an extraordinary track record for currency stability. Confidence in the gold solidus was so high, in fact, that various tribes and kingdoms around the world used the coin for trade and savings.

    This became a source of pride for the Byzantine Empire; Justinian I, who ruled in the mid 500s, stated that the solidus was “accepted everywhere from end to end of the Earth,” and that it was “admired by all men in all kingdoms, because no kingdom has a currency that can be compared to it.”

    It wasn’t until the mid 11th century, more than seven centuries after the introduction of the solidus, that an Emperor began to debase the currency.

    Just like Hemingway described going bankrupt, the debasement of the solidus was gradual… then sudden.

    Emperor Constantine IX, who ruled from 1042 to 1055, reduced the gold purity down to 87.5%. His successor brought it down to 75%. By the end of the century it had been reduced to just 33%.

    The rest of the world took notice. The Byzantine Empire’s political, economic, and military power were waning. And with the rapid debasement of the solidus, international traders looked for other options.

    Soon the rising Italian city states, particularly Venice and Florence, began minting their own gold coins; Italy was rapidly becoming the dominant economic power in Europe, so their ducats and florins became widely accepted, essentially replacing Byzantine coins for international trade.

    Throughout history, in fact, reserve currencies have routinely changed, just as frequently as power and wealth shift.

    For example, the Spanish real de ocho was the dominant reserve currency for hundreds of years, just as the Spanish Empire was the dominant power in the world.

    But eventually Spain’s wealth and power waned, and the real de ocho was replaced. The Dutch guilder dominated European trade in the 1600s and 1700s, just as the Netherlands’ wealth and power soared. Yet they were displaced by the British Empire and pound sterling in the 1800s and early 1900s.

    Both the United States and the US dollar have held this status for the last 80 years. And at the moment this is still the case.

    History, however, is very clear on this point: wealth and power shift. Reserve currencies change. And it would be foolish to assume that this time is different.

    Reserve currencies hold their status because the rest of the world has confidence– confidence in the soundness of the currency, confidence in the power and prestige of the country that issues it.

    But let’s be honest: the rest of the world is probably not brimming with confidence in the United States right now.

    They’re looking at this shameful, disgraceful catastrophe in Afghanistan and wondering, “Is this seriously the world’s dominant superpower?”

    But it’s more than Afghanistan. It’s endless deficits. It’s ridiculous spending initiatives that pay people to stay home and NOT work. It’s rising inflation thanks to the continued erosion of the US dollar.

    None of these inspires confidence.

    It was nearly 1,000 years ago when foreign traders began looking for new options after they lost confidence in the solidus, and in the Byzantine government.

    Today there are already international banks, multinational businesses, and foreign governments that are starting to diversify out of the US dollar.

    This is a major change. It’s not something that will happen overnight; like the solidus debasement, it will happen gradually… then suddenly.

    There will be small milestones and minor events that take place over a period of many years. A lot of it has already happened.

    But the end result will be a sharp decline in the US dollar’s market share of global reserves. And for anyone holding US dollars, that’s going to mean a LOT more inflation.

    If you want to learn more about this, I’d encourage you to listen to our Freedom Podcast today; we discuss reserve currencies, the rise of a Chinese alternative, and even potential future conflict with China.

    You can download and listen here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/29/2021 – 17:00

  • Missouri Mayor Wants To Give Every Resident $1,000 In Bitcoin, But There Is A Catch
    Missouri Mayor Wants To Give Every Resident $1,000 In Bitcoin, But There Is A Catch

    A tiny Missouri town could become the first in the country to put Bitcoin in the hands of every resident, but there is a catch: they can’t sell it for five years.

    Jayson Stewart, the Mayor of Cool Valley says he is raising funds to give each of the town’s roughly 1500 inhabitants a piece of the digital currency according to KSDK.com. Following in the footsteps of El Salvador – which recently became the first country in the world to make Bitcoin it’s legal tender in hopes of protecting the country’s economy from hyperinflation – Stewart thinks holding the digital currency could be transformational.

    “I have friends whose lives have been completely changed, like going from working a regular nine to five job to being worth over 80 million dollars in a matter of a few years,” said Stewart, who calls himself an Entrepreneur and Environmentalist.

    Stewart said most of the money to fund the plan will come from several unnamed Bitcoin investors.

    “I have some very supportive donors who have agreed to match any money that I raise up to several millions of dollars,” said Stewart. “I’m trying to get a few government funds as well to go along with that. Or potentially some of the relief money that comes in from the Covid relief.”

    But Stewart isn’t ruling out using city funds, saying “It’s possible. We’ll see how it goes. We’ll see how it goes.”

    Source of funding aside, Stewart said the generous Bitcoin handout will come with strings attached: he doesn’t want residents to sell for a few years.  

    “We’re putting in place like a vesting schedule for Bitcoin. The idea is that maybe you don’t touch it for five years before you really get full access to it. We’re working on ideas like that because that’s my number one concern. Someone just sells their bitcoin to pay their car note. And then when Bitcoin is sitting at like $500,000 all these years later, they’re going to really regret that,” said Stewart.

    Roughly 1500 people live in Cool Valley. The dozen or so the I-Team spoke with seemed receptive to the plan.

    “With cash people have bad habits and they buy things they shouldn’t be buying. But with Bitcoin, maybe you can give it to your kids. My daughter is going to college next year. I could give [the Bitcoin] to her,” said Nickels.

    “Putting money in my pocket! Sounds pretty good to me,” said Cornelius Webb, who lives in Cool Valley.  

    As for Stewart, he is looking with optimism to the future, and all because of bitcoin: “I believe that Cool Valley is going to get wealthier and wealthier , not just our city, but the actual people who live here.”

    Stewart said the city is also going to take proactive measures to off set the environmental impact Bitcoin mining is known to have.

    “We’re giving away Bitcoin and at the same time we’re converting our entire city to solar, like all of the government lights and things like that,” said Stewart. 

    Details about how Bitcoin will be distributed are still unclear. Stewart said it will involve door knocking and offering free classes to residents about how to use and securely store Bitcoin. He hopes to kick things off by the end of the year.

    While it remains to be seen if the experiment to make the residents of a small Missouri town rich will succeed, we are confident the local residents will be much more inclined to open the door to unknown people handing out bitcoin – metaphorically speaking – instead of the state’s surveillance agents doing their door-to-door vaccine checks.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/29/2021 – 16:30

  • Biden Drone Strike Reportedly Kills Multiple Children In Kabul, Family Claims 'Not ISIS-K'
    Biden Drone Strike Reportedly Kills Multiple Children In Kabul, Family Claims ‘Not ISIS-K’

    Update (1605ET): The Associated Press is reporting that three children were killed in a Sunday drone strike on a vehicle in Kabul, which American officials say was carrying “multiple suicide bombers.”

    An Afghan official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said three children were killed in the drone strike. Afghan officials had initially reported a rocket attack separate from the drone strike but it turned out to be the same event. Video obtained by The Associated Press showed smoke rising from a building around a kilometer (half a mile) from the airport. -AP

    Family denies being ISIS, says six children died

    Muslim Shirzad, an International relations & Security expert and former senior presenter for political news, has interviewed the family of the deceased, who say nine individuals – including six children – were actually killed, and that they aren’t ISIS.

    “I just spoke with family members, 9 people killed (Zamaray 40, Naseer 30, Zameer 20, Faisal 10, Farzad 9, Armin 4, Benyamin 3, Ayat 2 and Sumaya 2 years old),” he tweeted.

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    An earlier report had six dead.

    “Afghanistan’s Tragedy; I just spoke with member of this family in Kabul, they are originally from #Panjsher. He shared these photos with me,” tweeted Shirzad. “It was a rocket attack, 6 members of our family including my sister killed. we are not IS-K, we are ordinary people.” He said while cried”

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    If true, no wonder Biden won’t release the names.

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    Just days after an ISIS-K suicide bomber killed at least 169 people at Kabul airport, powerful explosion rocked Kabul on Sunday afternoon, when the US struck alleged suicide bombers in the Afghan capital, Kabul, according to the Taliban and a Pentagon spokesman. The strike hit a vehicle laden with explosives, apparently bound for the airport.

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    A US airstrike targeted a suicide bomber outside Kabul’s airport and a rocket struck an Afghan neighborhood, killing a child, Sunday as violence and the threat of a new terror attack continued to engulf the troubled capital. According to officials the strike was carried out in “self-defense” against an “imminent” threat. The vehicle was reportedly carrying “a substantial amount of explosive material,” which was set off by the US strike, Urban added.

    The explosion was caused by a rocket striking a house near the airport, BBC journalist Secunder Kermani reported, citing a source in the Afghan Health Ministry.

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    Casualties are still unknown, though unconfirmed reports suggest that two people, including a child died in the blast, and at least three were injured.

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    According to a US defense official “Multiple suicide bombers inside the vehicle,” struck by US drone today in Kabul. “Significant explosives in vehicle led to secondary explosions.” Bombers belonged to ISIS-K and were en route to Kabul Airport.

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    However, other sources including the AP note that the rocket struck an Afghan neighborhood, killing a child.

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    The airstrike conducted by the US knocked out a vehicle that sought to bomb the airport where thousands are awaiting evacuation, Taliban officials said. Zabihullah Mujahid told journalists Sunday that the vehicle was loaded with explosives when it was destroyed but provided no additional details.

    The rocket attack, which appeared to be a separate incident, occurred Sunday afternoon in Kabul’s Khuwja Bughra neighborhood near the international airport, said Rashid, a police chief who like many Afghans goes by one name. One child was killed in that blast. The rocket fire comes amid efforts at the airport to evacuate tens of thousands of people trying to flee the Taliban takeover following the fall of the Afghan government.

    The violence on Sunday comes after an Islamic State’s affiliate carried out a suicide attack that killed over 180 people last week. Following the terror attack, the Taliban increased security around the airfield and the United Kingdom halted its evacuation flights.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/29/2021 – 16:02

  • Gov. DeSantis Demands Biden Administration Cease Resettlement Of Illegals In Florida
    Gov. DeSantis Demands Biden Administration Cease Resettlement Of Illegals In Florida

    Authored by Jannis Falkenstein via The Epoch Times,

    On Thursday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sent a letter to the Biden Administration demanding transparency and that they cease sending “illegal aliens” to Florida.

    “President [Joe] Biden, Vice President [Kamala] Harris, and their administration have refused to fulfill their responsibility to enforce immigration laws enacted by Congress and the resulting influx of unvetted illegal aliens endangers our national security and undermines the socioeconomic wellbeing of hardworking American citizens,” DeSantis said in a written statement.

    “Unfortunately, even though the federal government is responsible for immigration enforcement, it is the states who bear the brunt of this administration’s reckless immigration policies.”

    In the letter (pdf) to Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, the Republican governor wrote that he wanted an end to the mass resettlements of “illegal aliens” into the United States. DeSantis also urged the Department of Homeland Security to provide more transparency when it comes to the resettling of illegals in Florida and to give advance notice to “state leadership” before illegals are resettled into the state.  He called the Biden administration’s border policies “disastrous” and gave a deadline of September 30, 2021, to give the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) a long list of information and data before sending more illegals into the state.

    DeSantis’ letter requested that the Biden administration disclose the following information to FDLE:

    • the number of illegal aliens resettled in Florida;

    • the names and destination of the illegal aliens;

    • the number of illegal aliens resettled in Florida who were tested for COVID-19 and the results of such tests;

    • the identities of illegal aliens who have criminal records and who have previously entered the U.S. illegally; and

    • the number and identity of illegal aliens resettled in Florida who have failed to appear for their removal proceedings.

    The letter went on to accuse the Biden administration of operating its own human smuggling operation.

    “My office has received information indicating that ICE, sometimes with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has chartered flights transporting illegal alien adults and children to Florida,” the governor wrote.

    “Given the overall lack of transparency, I am concerned that the federal government is running its own massive human smuggling operation, surreptitiously resettling illegal aliens in the various states without consultation or even advance notice to state leadership.”

    The governor wrote that this practice is “intolerable and unacceptable.”

    DeSantis wrote that he knows “firsthand” about the border crisis as he visited the border and deployed law enforcement officers to aid Texas law enforcement and border patrol agents with the surge of migrants attempting to cross the border.

    “I have been to the border, and I observed firsthand the chaos that this administration’s policies have created,” DeSantis said. To fill the void left by the federal government, Florida deployed its own law enforcement officers to the border.”

    After speaking with law enforcement officers who were deployed to the border to aid Texas law enforcement, DeSantis said they have told him that many of the migrants that were apprehended at the border said they plan to come to Florida.

    “Floridians welcome responsible immigration that serves the interests of our citizens, but we cannot abide the lawlessness that this administration is aiding and abetting, and frankly encouraging, on the southwest border,” DeSantis said.

    Law enforcement officials, according to the governor’s office said that most of the migrants indicated their final stops were going to be larger Florida cities such as Kissimmee, Orlando, Miami, Hialeah, and Jacksonville.

    In April 2021, DeSantis had written to Mayorkas’s office requesting that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) remove all illegal alien felons who had completed their prison sentences in Florida.  The governor said in his current letter that he has seen “no action” to enforce the federal immigration laws.

    DeSantis wrote that it was his opinion that DHS was resettling large numbers of illegal aliens who have “no lawful status under federal immigration law from the southwest border to Florida.”

    He wrote: 

    “The Constitution charges the President with the duty to faithfully execute the laws, and with respect to immigration enforcement, the federal government, with the Supreme Court’s blessing, has assumed near exclusive responsibility. Unfortunately, President Biden and this administration refuse to fulfill their responsibility to enforce the immigration laws enacted by Congress.”

    DeSantis said in his letter that the “Remain in Mexico” program that was administered under the Trump Administration was ultimately replaced with “catch and release” by the Biden administration, which he attributes to the massive influx of migrants.

    “The administration’s reversal or weakening of the prior administration’s enforcement policies had amounted to an open invitation for mass illegal migration the United States, and the results have been predictably catastrophic,” DeSantis wrote. “Since this administration took office, the number of illegal aliens encountered at the southwest border has skyrocketed, increasing each month at an unrelenting pace.”

    When Biden took office in January the number of border encounters was 78,417. In one month that number increased to 101,098; 173,283 in March; 178,797 in April; 180,569 in May; 188,934 in June and 212,672 in July according to figures from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.  This puts a total number of encounters for the fiscal year to be approximately 1.3 million.  In the last year of the Trump administration the total number of encounters was 458,088.

    The governor ended his letter with doubts that the federal government would comply with his request and reminded the secretary that it was the states who were “saddled” with the costs of having illegals in their states.  Also, he said that massive illegal immigration increases the spread of COVID-19 and will consume taxpayer money and overload government services including the education system.

    “Although I seek an immediate end to the resettlement of illegal aliens in Florida, at the very least, DHS should provide the requested information in the interest of greater transparency,” DeSantis wrote.

    “The State of Florida is entitled to this information to protect the health, safety, and welfare of its people.”

    Efforts to obtain a response from the White House were made with no response.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/29/2021 – 16:00

  • The Coming Inflation Shock
    The Coming Inflation Shock

    By Larry McDonalds, author of The Bear Traps Report

    The Coming Inflation Shock

    Rents (surge) are about to impact PCE and CPI. A surge in PPI is flowing into CPI.

    History will record that during the present time the most used word was “inflation” and the second most used word was “temporary.” 

    What isn’t in this life transitory? But if inflation lasts three years because of a demand shift caused by a zero-carbon emissions goal consensus, then call it what you will, we at The Bear Traps will allocate capital accordingly. It reminds us of Marty Zweig not caring if the down stock market was a correction or a bear market. Either way, he didn’t want to be long stocks. We don’t really care if inflation ends a year or three from now. We want to be long energy and metals. 

    By insisting on the word “transitory” all the Fed is signaling is that it is ignoring and will continue to ignore prices of goods and services. It’s brilliant in its own way because if six months from now prices are still going up, the Fed will merely say that, aha, now, surely, inflation is transitory. And it will play that game every six months for years if it can. It will only change its tune when things get so bad it has to change. As we have pointed out several times in the past, even Volcker didn’t fight inflation until he saw directly that inflation was increasing unemployment.

    Some things are different now, of course than in Volcker’s day, the primary one being the Fed owns such a large portion of the treasury float that the treasury market has lost most, not all, of its signal value. This type of thing is not without precedent, by the way. The early 1930s devaluation of the dollar caused gold to go from just above $20 to $35, where it remained fixed into Nixon’s administration. That was a long time. 

    What is clear is that US bond yields have a negative real return. If you own treasuries, you are pretty much guaranteed to lose money in real terms. This should cause borrowing to increase, which in fact has happened. Mortgage debt is above $10 trillion, surpassing the pre-Lehman crash peak. An expansionary monetary and fiscal policy assumes that by extending credit, people will still by everything at increasingly higher prices no matter what. The reality is somewhat different. At first it goes along that way, true enough, but then comes a sticker shock pause, followed by a hoarding panic buying spree. 

    Normally this last phase causes a run on the currency which is akin to throwing nitroglycerin into a raging fire. At this point, central banks cave, raise rates, and accept the stock market selloff and economic recession. Unless, of course, yours is a reserve currency. That can, but doesn’t have to, change the game theory. Bottom line: Fed and Treasury probably figure they can get away with whatever they want to do. Of course, if they are wrong, it’s an unmitigated disaster. And yet, of course, something like a 9% weaker greenback would probably be welcomed by Fed and Treasury.

    A further nuance is the fact that the Central Banks coordinate monetary policy. This is of necessity. When foreign banking systems are in trouble, it is the Fed that extends emergency swap lines to provide eurodollar liquidity to other Central Banks. Under such a circumstance, it would be unthinkable for monetary policy not to be coordinated on a global scale. So monetary policy is loose on a global scale, such that trillions of debt trade at negative nominal yields. Inflation just adds insult to that injury. But adding to inflation is supply constraint, not short term supply disruption, but long term supply absence altogether. There has been little mining activity to find new sources of metals for over a decade. As build local becomes the imperative, we note that not only has our industrial base not grown, it has shrunk, and in dramatic fashion. If any infrastructure bill passes, the drama will only become that much more accute. A negative supply shift away from China paired with a positive demand shift in infrastructure is the very stuff inflationary nightmares are made of.

    Additionally, we have stressed the dawn of the age of the power of labor. Labor is harder to find and more expensive. And after decades of getting shafted, it is only fair the pendulum is finally swinging the other way. But labor inflation is difficult to cure for the simple reason that a majority of the voting population doesn’t see getting paid more money as a problem.

    And finally, we have the problem of more money supply. At this point, money creation is no longer the immediate risk. No. The immediate risk is an increase in the velocity of the money that has already been created. Velocity has collapsed to such an extent that simply to mean revert to its downward regression line of old would be massively inflationary. But of course the velocity of money will increase as transactions increase in a global synchronized post Covid scenario. And finally, once the global economy kicks into high gear for several quarters, then, and only then, will banks start to aggressively lend thereby increasing the money supply magnificently.

    So sustainable inflation seems fairly inevitable at this point even if years from now it proves “transitory.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/29/2021 – 15:30

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