Nov 03

Today’s News 3rd November 2021

  • Iron Ore Futures Stumble Sub $100 As China Steel Output Slumps 
    Iron Ore Futures Stumble Sub $100 As China Steel Output Slumps 

    Iron ore futures in Singapore dove under $100 per ton Tuesday as Chinese steel output in October recorded its lowest level since March 2020, signaling increasing economic headwinds for the world’s second-largest economy. 

    Futures for iron ore tumbled for a fifth day as Beijing increased efforts to cap annual steel volumes. Production curbs have been more frequent in the back half of the year as prices have been more than halved since summer. Beijing wants to ensure smelters do not smog up the skies during the Winter Olympics, expected to take place in 1Q22. 

    According to Bloomberg, quoting researcher Mysteel who analyzed 247 blast furnaces and 71 electric-arc furnaces, daily steel output in October dropped to the lowest since March 2020. 

    “There were frequent requests from local governments to curb production, while lackluster steel demand and softening prices have dampened mills’ willingness to produce,” Mysteel said. 

    “The probability that iron ore demand slides by at least 20% in the fourth quarter is increasing, judging from lower downstream demand,” said Orient Futures Co. analyst Xu Huimin. “We have to monitor if mills will actually reduce production on their own, which will worsen the market a step further.” 

    Since summer, prices in Singapore have slid by more than 50% on China’s push to curb emissions in energy-intensive industries. China’s real estate market, a top buyer of steel, is under strain from a government crackdown that has pared down leverage in the industry. The decline of iron ore futures has followed the decline in top property developer Evergrande Group’s 2023, 2024, and 2025 bonds. 

    The Evergrande debt debacle has spread across China’s entire property market, causing contagion among other highly leveraged developers. Credit agencies have downgraded highly leveraged companies operating in the space. Many of these companies are pulling back on building which means their demand for commodities, such as steel, copper, cement, and plastics, declines. 

    The slowdown in China has resulted in significant declines for miners, such as Rio Tinto Group shares headed for their lowest close since May 2020. 

    The official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index slipped for a second month in a contraction, under the 50-mark. How long until the PBOC makes it rain to save the Chinese economy? 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/03/2021 – 02:45

  • German Companies Creating Segregated Canteens For Vaccinated And Unvaccinated
    German Companies Creating Segregated Canteens For Vaccinated And Unvaccinated

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    Major companies in Germany are segregating their employees by creating canteens for vaccinated people and separate areas for the unvaccinated, who will be forced to continue to follow social distancing and mask mandates.

    Pharmaceuticals giant Bayer, energy company Eon, and travel company Alltours are all set to impose the new rules, which will see the unvaccinated treated like second class citizens.

    “In the ‘2G’ areas for vaccinated and recovered people, employees would be allowed to eat together under completely normal conditions, while those who are not vaccinated or do not provide information about their vaccination status would have to continue to live with rules on social distancing, mask wearing and partitions during meals,” reports the Local.

    Bayer also announced that its employees have also started forming work groups that “exclude unvaccinated staff.”

    People visiting Christmas markets in Berlin who haven’t been vaccinated will also be denied entry.

    As we previously highlighted, despite facing brazen discrimination, 90 per cent of Germans who haven’t had the vaccine say they have no plans to get it in the near future.

    As we highlighted back in January, German authorities announced that COVID lockdown rulebreakers would be arrested and detained in refugee camps located across the country.

    Earlier this summer it was also confirmed that the unvaccinated would be deprived of basic lifestyle activities like visiting cinemas and restaurants.

    The editor-in-chief of Germany’s top newspaper Bild shocked some people by apologizing for the news outlet’s fear-driven coverage of COVID, specifically to children who were told “that they were going to murder their grandma.”

    During a meeting with other world leaders in Rome, Angela Merkel engaged in COVID security theater by briefly wearing a mask when she exited her vehicle, only to remove it as soon as she entered the building.

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

    *  *  *

    Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

    In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Get early access, exclusive content and behinds the scenes stuff by following me on Locals.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/03/2021 – 02:00

  • The Most Important Battle For Press Freedom In Our Time
    The Most Important Battle For Press Freedom In Our Time

    Authored by Chris Hedges via MintPressNews.com,

    For the past two days, I have been watching the extradition hearing for Julian Assange via video link from London. The United States is appealing a lower court ruling that denied the US request to extradite Assange not, unfortunately, because in the eyes of the court he is innocent of a crime, but because, as Judge Vanessa Baraitser in January concluded, Assange’s precarious psychological state would deteriorate given the “harsh conditions” of the inhumane US prison system, “causing him to commit suicide.”

    The United States has charged Assange with 17 counts under the Espionage Act and one count of trying to hack into a government computer, charges that could see him imprisoned for 175 years.

    Assange, with long white hair, appeared on screen the first day from the video conference room in HM Prison Belmarsh. He was wearing a white shirt with an untied tie around his neck. He looked gaunt and tired. He did not appear in court, the judges explained, because he was receiving a “high dose of medication.”

    On the second day he was apparently not present in the prison’s video conference room.

    Assange is being extradited because his organization WikiLeaks released the Iraq War Logs in October 2010, which documented numerous US war crimes — including video images of the gunning down of two Reuters journalists and 10 other unarmed civilians in the Collateral murder video, the routine torture of Iraqi prisoners, the covering up of thousands of civilian deaths and the killing of nearly 700 civilians that had approached too closely to US checkpoints. He is also being targeted by US authorities for other leaks, especially those that exposed  the hacking tools used by the CIA known as Vault 7, which enables the spy agency to compromise cars, smart TVs, web browsers and the operating systems of most smart phones, as well as operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, macOS and Linux.

    If Assange is extradited and found guilty of publishing classified material, it will set a legal precedent that will effectively end national security reporting, allowing the government to use the Espionage Act to charge any reporter who possesses classified documents, and any whistleblower who leaks classified information.

    If the appeal by the United States is accepted Assange will be retried in London. The ruling on the appeal is not expected until at least January.

    Assange’s September 2020 trial painfully exposed how vulnerable he has become after 12 years of detention, including seven in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. He has in the past attempted suicide by slashing his wrists. He suffers from hallucinations and depression, takes antidepressant medication and the antipsychotic quetiapine. After he was observed pacing his cell until he collapsed, punching himself in the face and banging his head against the wall he was transferred for several months to the medical wing of the Belmarsh prison. Prison authorities found “half of a razor blade” hidden under his socks. He has repeatedly called the suicide hotline run by the Samaritans because he thought about killing himself “hundreds of times a day.”

    James Lewis, the lawyer for the United States, attempted to discredit the detailed and disturbing medical and psychological reports on Assange presented to the court in September 2020, painting him instead as a liar and malingerer. He excoriated the decision of Judge Baraitser to bar extradition, questioned her competence, and breezily dismissed the mountains of evidence that high-security prisoners in the United Sates, like Assange, subjected to Special Administrative Measures (SAMs), and held in virtual isolation in supermax prisons, suffer psychological distress. He charged Dr. Michael Kopelman, emeritus professor of neuropsychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, who examined Assange and testified for the defense, with deception for “concealing” that Assange fathered two children with his fiancée Stella Morris while in refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. He said that, should the Australian government request Assange, he could serve his prison time in Australia, his home country, after his appeals had been exhausted, but stopped short of promising that Assange would not be held in isolation or subject to SAMs.

    The authority repeatedly cited by Lewis to describe the conditions under which Assange will be held and tried in the United States was Gordon Kromberg, the Assistant United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Kromberg is the government’s grand inquisitor in cases of terrorism and national security. He has expressed open contempt for Muslims and Islam and decried what he calls “the Islamization of the American justice system.” He oversaw the 9-year persecution of the Palestinian activist and academic Dr. Sami Al-Arian and at one point refused his request to postpone a court date during the religious holiday of Ramadan. “They can kill each other during Ramadan, they can appear before the grand jury. All they can’t do is eat before sunset,” Kromberg said in a 2006 conversation, according to an affidavit filed by one of Arian’s attorneys, Jack Fernandez.

    Kromberg criticized Daniel Hale, the former Air Force analyst who recently was sentenced to 45 months in a supermax prison for leaking information about the indiscriminate killings of civilians by drones, saying Hale had not contributed to public debate, but had “endanger[ed] the people doing the fight.” He ordered Chelsea Manning jailed after she refused to testify in front of a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks. Manning attempted to commit suicide in March 2020 while being held in the Virginia jail.

    Having covered the case of Syed Fahad Hashmi, who was arrested in London in 2006, I have a good idea of what waits Assange if he is extradited. Hashmi also was held in Belmarsh and extradited in 2007 to the United States where he spent three years in solitary confinement under SAMs. His “crime” was that an acquaintance who stayed in his apartment with him while he was a graduate student in London had raincoats, ponchos and waterproof socks in luggage at the apartment. The acquaintance planned to deliver the items to al-Qaida. But I doubt the government was concerned with waterproof socks being shipped to Pakistan. The reason, I suspect, Hashmi was targeted was because, like the Palestinian activist Dr. Sami Al-Arian, and like Assange, he was fearless and zealous in his defense of those being bombed, shot, terrorized and killed throughout the Muslim world while he was a student at Brooklyn College.

    Hashmi was deeply religious, and some of his views, including his praise of the Afghan resistance, were controversial, but he had a right to express these sentiments. More important, he had a right to expect freedom from persecution and imprisonment because of his opinions, just as Assange should have the freedom, like any publisher, to inform the public about the inner workings of power. Facing the possibility of a 70-year sentence in prison and having already spent four years in jail, much of it in solitary confinement, Hashmi accepted a plea bargain on one count of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism. Judge Loretta Preska, who sentenced the hacker Jeremy Hammond and human rights attorney Steven Donziger, gave him the maximum 15-year sentence. Hashmi was held for nine years in Guantanamo-like conditions in the supermax ADX [Administrative Maximum] facility in Florence, Colorado, where Assange, if found guilty in an American court, will almost certainly be imprisoned. Hashmi was released in 2019.

    The pre-trial detention conditions Hashmi endured were designed to break him. He was electronically monitored 24-hours a day. He could only receive or send mail with his immediate family. He was prohibited from speaking with other prisoners through the walls. He was forbidden from taking part in group prayer. He was permitted one hour of exercise a day, in a solitary cage without fresh air. He has unable to see most of the evidence used to indict him which was classified under the Classified Information Procedures Act, enacted to prevent US intelligence officers under prosecution from threatening to reveal state secrets to manipulate the legal proceedings. The harsh conditions eroded his physical and psychological health. When he appeared in the final court proceeding to accept a guilty plea he was in a near catatonic state, clearly unable to follow the proceedings around him.

    If the government will go to this length to persecute someone who was alleged to have been involved in sending waterproof socks to al-Qaida, what can we expect the government to do to Assange?

    A society that prohibits the capacity to speak in truth extinguishes the capacity to live in justice. The battle for Assange’s liberty has always been much more than the persecution of a publisher. It is the most important battle for press freedom of our era. And if we lose this battle, it will be devastating, not only for Assange and his family, but for us.

    Tyrannies invert the rule of law. They turn the law into an instrument of injustice. They cloak their crimes in a faux legality. They use the decorum of the courts and trials, to mask their criminality. Those, such as Assange, who expose that criminality to the public are dangerous, for without the pretext of legitimacy the tyranny loses credibility and has nothing left in its arsenal but fear, coercion and violence. The long campaign against Assange and WikiLeaks is a window into the collapse of the rule of law, the rise of what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls our system of inverted totalitarianism, a form of totalitarianism that maintains the fictions of the old capitalist democracy, including its institutions, iconography, patriotic symbols and rhetoric, but internally has surrendered total control to the dictates of global corporations and the security and surveillance state.

    There is no legal basis to hold Assange in prison. There is no legal basis to try him, an Australian citizen, under the US Espionage Act. The CIA spied on Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy through a Spanish company, UC Global, contracted to provide embassy security. This spying included recording the privileged conversations between Assange and his lawyers as they discussed his defense. This fact alone invalidated the trial. Assange is being held in a high security prison so the state can, as Nils Melzer, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, has testified, continue the degrading abuse and torture it hopes will lead to his psychological if not physical disintegration.The architects of imperialism, the masters of war, the corporate-controlled legislative, judicial and executive branches of government and their obsequious courtiers in the media, are guilty of egregious crimes.

    Say this simple truth and you are banished, as many of us have been, to the margins of the media landscape. Prove this truth, as Assange, Chelsea Manning, Jeremy Hammond and Edward Snowden have by allowing us to peer into the inner workings of power, and you are hunted down and persecuted.

    Assange’s “crime” is that he exposed the more than 15,000 unreported deaths of Iraqi civilians. He exposed the torture and abuse of some 800 men and boys, aged between 14 and 89, at Guantánamo. He exposed that Hillary Clinton in 2009 ordered US diplomats to spy on U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and other U.N. representatives from China, France, Russia, and the UK, spying that included obtaining DNA, iris scans, fingerprints, and personal passwords, part of the long pattern of illegal surveillance that included the eavesdropping on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in the weeks before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. He exposed that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the CIA orchestrated the June 2009 military coup in Honduras that overthrew the democratically-elected president Manuel Zelaya, replacing it with a murderous and corrupt military regime. He exposed that George W. Bush, Barack Obama and General David Petraeus prosecuted a war in Iraq that under post-Nuremberg laws is defined as a criminal war of aggression, a war crime, which authorized hundreds of targeted assassinations, including those of US citizens in Yemen. He exposed that the United States secretly launched missile, bomb, and drone attacks on Yemen, killing scores of civilians. He exposed that Goldman Sachs paid Hillary Clinton $657,000 to give talks, a sum so large it can only be considered a bribe, and that she privately assured corporate leaders she would do their bidding while promising the public financial regulation and reform. He exposed the internal campaign to discredit and destroy British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn by members of his own party. He exposed how the hacking tools used by the CIA and the National Security Agency permits the wholesale government surveillance of our televisions, computers, smartphones and anti-virus software, allowing the government to record and store our conversations, images and private text messages, even from encrypted apps.

    He exposed the truth. He exposed it over and over and over until there was no question of the endemic illegality, corruption and mendacity that defines the global ruling elite. And for these truths alone he is guilty.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/03/2021 – 00:05

  • China Rapidly Expanding Nuclear Missile Silo Construction While Demanding US Adopt 'No First Use'
    China Rapidly Expanding Nuclear Missile Silo Construction While Demanding US Adopt ‘No First Use’

    In recent months – particularly following the US-Australia AUKUS pact which will see Washington transfer nuclear submarines to Canberra – multiple reports have suggested that China is currently rethinking its nuclear policy. 

    Back in June, for example, The Washington Post detailed that “China has begun construction of what independent experts say are more than 100 new silos for intercontinental ballistic missiles in a desert near the northwestern city of Yumen, a building spree that could signal a major expansion of Beijing’s nuclear capabilities.” That prior report has this week been bolstered by fresh satellite imagery coming out of sites in China’s western desert. 

    With a much more active US military presence in the Indo-Pacific region in recent years, some Chinese officials and pundits are urging a fresh look at the country’s longstanding ‘no first use’ nuclear policy. For now Beijing appears committed to it; however, it’s urgently calling on other nuclear powers to adopt the same policy as a means to avoid any future nuclear war scenario.

    A report in the South China Morning Post recently highlighted this based on a defense policy memo that invited discussion of Chinese leadership: 

    China has underlined its “no first use” nuclear policy in a position paper amid discussion over its commitments in a rising nuclear arms race.

    In the “Position Paper on China and United Nations Cooperation” issued by the foreign ministry on Friday, China declared it had a history of initiating the no first use (NFU) principle, and said nuclear-weapon states should abandon pre-emptive deterrence policies.

    “Bear in mind that ‘a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought’,” the paper said.

    At the same time fresh reports this week suggests what Western nuclear watchdog analysts are calling a new push for “unprecedented nuclear build-up” in China.

    This is based on satellite imagery examined by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), said to feature nuclear launch-capable silos for long-range missiles in Western China, as CNN describes: 

    Rapid construction at three suspected silo fields in China — which could eventually be capable of launching long-range nuclear missiles — appears to indicate that Beijing is putting substantial efforts and resources into the development of its nuclear capabilities, according to analysis of new commercial satellite images.

    Experts from the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), a nonpartisan national security research and advocacy organization, found that China has made significant progress on suspected silo fields in the western part of the country.

    Images via Planet Labs/Federation of American Scientists

    But the report notes this important caveat: the study of the satellite images say “the missile silo fields are still many years away from becoming fully operational and it remains to be seen how China will arm and operate them.”

    Perhaps this will depend on who answers China’s ongoing call for a global embrace of ‘no first use’ (NFU) doctrine. Crucially, the United Sates has long resisted adoption of NFU – with multiple administrations going back to the Cold War long arguing that it “reserves the right to use” nuclear weapons first in the case of conflict.

    But new Washington Post reporting on Tuesday suggests the Biden administration could be ready to revisit the issue. 

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

    Meanwhile, China state media – in particular a Global Times op-ed from days ago – is calling for the US to “take the lead” among its reluctant allies in implementing no first use:

    China has announced the “no first use” nuclear policy at a very early phase. It has adhered to this policy since the first day it owned nuclear weapons. US allies should think this way: If China walks away from this policy, how much pressure will it add to regional security? Similarly, if the US, as the world’s No.1 military power, announced restrictions on the use of nuclear weapons, it will without doubt create constructive opportunities to global security, with advantages outweighing disadvantages.

    Nuclear posture is the thorniest security dilemma – particularly issues such as the number of nuclear warheads and anti-missiles. If the US can take the lead in restricting the use of nuclear weapons in this era, it is likely to expand the route undertaken by China in the past and push forward a new period of nuclear security. US allies such as Japan and Australia are falling into the trap of their own petty calculations, but they will not feel more secure if the US does not try to make the commitment of restricting the use of nuclear weapons.

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

    This appears at once an open appeal and a “threat” – with China seeming to be ready to blame Washington for any near-future nuclear build-up between the two rivals.

    * * *

    Here’s Rabobank discussing the further implications…

    The Financial Times lead story this weekend was that US allies are lobbying the White House NOT to shift to a “No First Use” (NFU) nuclear policy. After Afghanistan, this is another enormous shock for an ostensibly “America is Back” administration. Military strategists back to Vegetius (“Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum”) stress America’s nuke stockpile underpins its military might; and Korea, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Central Asia aside, that is still what prevents more wars more often everywhere else.

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

    If the US moves to NFU, any other power can do whatever it wants short of nukes, and the US can only respond with already-overstretched conventional power. Consider that as Russia again builds up forces near Ukraine; when looking at tensions in the South China Sea; and when China’s Global Times runs an editorial, “US should announce ‘no first use of nuclear weapons,’ with no strings attached”. There are always strings attached to shifts in such existential policies: markets would be well advised to understand the implied volatility.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/02/2021 – 23:45

  • FOIA'd CDC Emails: Our Definition of Vaccine is "Problematic"
    FOIA’d CDC Emails: Our Definition of Vaccine is “Problematic”

    Authored by Techno Fog via The Reactionary,

    The CDC caused an uproar in early September 2021, after it changed its definitions of “vaccination” and “vaccine.” For years, the CDC had set definitions for vaccination/vaccine that discussed immunity. This all changed on September 1, 2021.

    The prior CDC Definitions of Vaccine and Vaccination (August 26, 2021):

    Vaccine: A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease. Vaccines are usually administered through needle injections, but can also be administered by mouth or sprayed into the nose.

    Vaccination: The act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.

    The CDC Definitions of Vaccine and Vaccination since September 1, 2021:

    Vaccine: A preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases. Vaccines are usually administered through needle injections, but some can be administered by mouth or sprayed into the nose.

    Vaccine: The act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce protection from a specific disease.

    This caused quite the controversy. Representative Paul Massie was among the first to observe the change, noting the definition went from “immunity” to “protection”.

    To many observers, it appeared the CDC changed the definitions because of the waning effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines. The effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine falls over time, with an Israeli study reported in August 2021 as showing the vaccine being “only 16% effective against symptomatic infection for those individuals who had two doses of the shot back in January.”  The CDC recognizes their waning effectiveness, thus explaining their promotion of booster shots.

    Of course, the usual suspects defended the CDC. The Washington Post, for example, cast doubt that the CDC changed the definition because of issues with the COVID-19 vaccines. The CDC tried to downplay the change, stating “slight changes in wording over time … haven’t impacted the overall definition.”

    Internal CDC E-Mails

    CDC emails we obtained via the Freedom of Information Act reveal CDC concerns with  how the COVID-19 vaccines didn’t match the CDC’s own definition of “vaccine”/“vaccination”. It was the CDC’s Ministry of Truth hard at work in the face of legitimate public questions.

    In one August 2021 e-mail, a CDC employee cited to complaints that “Right-wing covid-19 deniers are using your ‘vaccine’ definition to argue that mRNA vaccines are not vaccines…”

    After taking some suggestions, the CDC’s Lead Health Communication Specialist went up the food chain to propose changes to the definitions: “I need to update this page Immunization Basics | CDC since these definitions are outdated and being used by some to say COVID-19 vaccines are not vaccines per CDC’s own definition.”

    Getting no response, there was a follow-up e-mail a week later: “The definition of vaccine we have posted is problematic and people are using it to claim the COVID-19 vaccine is not a vaccine based on our own definition.”

    The change of the “vaccination” definition was eventually approved on August 31. The next day, on September 1, they approved the change to the “vaccine” definition from discussing immunity to protection (seen below).

    There you have it. Affirmative action for the multinational corporations. Why have them improve their vaccines when you can just change the definition of vaccine to fit their ineffective vaccines?  

    Congrats to all the skeptics out there – you raised enough concerns that the the CDC went and tried to change reality.

    See emails below:

    CDC Emails by Techno Fog

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/02/2021 – 23:25

  • Elon Musk's Mysterious Tweet Of Chinese Poem About "Getting Along" Has Gone Viral On Weibo
    Elon Musk’s Mysterious Tweet Of Chinese Poem About “Getting Along” Has Gone Viral On Weibo

    Once again, Elon Musk is drumming up mystery with his relationship to China. This time, he did it Tweeting out a posting of an ancient Chinese poem that caught the attention of many of his followers in the East.

    On Monday night, Musk Tweeted out an abbreviated version of the ‘Seven Steps Verse’ in Chinese on both his Twitter and his Weibo account, according to Reuters.

    After writing the word “Humankind” in English, Musk Tweeted out the poem:

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

    The poem describes “the relationship between two brothers from a royal family during China’s warring Three Kingdoms period that is taught in all of China’s primary schools about the importance of getting along”, Reuters wrote.

    This begs the obvious question of whether or not Musk is seeking a truce with China, or whether or not the CEO – once shunned by the Chinese propaganda machine (potentially for his love of Bitcoin) – has seen his relationship with the country again land on the rocks. 

    Either way, his posting of the poem went viral and got over 100 million views on Weibo. Twitter is blocked in China.

    Guesses about what Musk meant by the poem ranged from him weighing in on the Doge vs. Shiba Inu debate, all the way to him potentially offering an olive branch to the United Nations World Food Programme’s executive director, with whom Musk had an online spat with over the last 48 hours.

    Musk has 1.9 million followers on Weibo, where he “frequently praises China”, the report noted. 

    But again, we can’t help but wonder whether there are…other forces at work here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/02/2021 – 23:05

  • Is Failure Baked In The Cake At Glasgow?
    Is Failure Baked In The Cake At Glasgow?

    Authored by Pat Buchanan,

    “Colossal Stakes as Leaders Meet to Talk Climate,” ran the headline.

    “The Last Best Hope,” ran the subhead, which turned out to be a quote from President Joe Biden’s climate czar John Kerry.

    But these alarmist headings were not atop an editorial. They topped the lead news story in Sunday’s New York Times, the opening line of which set the tone for Glasgow: “The future is on the line.”

    Somini Sengupta, climate reporter, then laid out the “colossal stakes” of the summit.

    “As presidents and prime ministers arrive in Glasgow this week for a pivotal climate summit, the outcome will determine, to a large extent, how the world’s seven billion people will survive on a hotter planet and whether far worse levels of warming can be averted …

    “Already, the failure to slow rising temperatures — brought on by the burning of oil, gas and coal — has led to deadly floods, fires, heat, and drought around the world.”

    The hype is on. And the establishment media are playing their assigned role – portraying a failure at Glasgow as a guarantee of the looming apocalypse.

    The first leader the Times quoted was from Barbados.

    “That we are now so perilously close to the edge for a number of countries,” said Prime Minister Mia Mottley, “is perhaps the tragedy of our times.”

    The theology of the climate crisis runs like this.

    The planet has warmed by 1.1 degree Celsius since the Industrial Revolution. If warming rises to more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above 1900 levels, more and more terrible weather disasters will occur: wildfires, hurricanes of growing severity, droughts, coastal and river flooding, and islands sinking into the sea.

    The only way to stave off “climate catastrophe” is for all nations to cut carbon emissions radically now and for the world to reach net zero emissions by midcentury.

    A fast phaseout of the major emitters of carbon dioxide — the burning of coal, oil and gas to heat homes, run cars and generate power — and replacement of these fossil fuels with clean energy — solar, wind, nuclear — is a moral and political imperative.

    But if such a radical transformation of national economies is the only way to avert the impending crisis, we should brace ourselves and prepare for that crisis. For there is no way the demanded changes in energy consumption are going to be made by 2030.

    Consider.

    The world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide is China, which burns half of the world’s coal and is building new coal-fired plants even as the 30,000 summiteers gather in Glasgow.

    China was given a license in the Paris climate accord of 2015 to burn all the coal it wishes until 2030, after which it has agreed to begin reducing carbon emissions. But the idea that China can or will convert in a few decades to wind, solar and nuclear power to run the world’s largest manufacturing plant seems preposterous.

    The U.S., the world’s second largest emitter of carbon dioxide, gets 81% of its energy from oil, coal and natural gas. We depend on those fuels to heat our homes, run our vehicles and power our industry.

    In his Build Back Better bill, Biden inserted a provision that would have imposed annually rising taxes on carbon producers and used the revenue to reward companies that reduced their reliance on fossil fuels.

    The proposal had to be pulled out, lest it drag Biden’s entire bill down to defeat. Lest we forget, Sen. Joe Manchin is from West Virginia.

    India, the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, is also, like China, dependent on coal. But, though its population is as large as China’s, India is behind China industrially, and the standard of living of its 1.4 billion people is below that of China.

    To demand that India begin to end its burning of coal and rely more on solar and wind is to demand that New Delhi accept a future where India’s standard of living remains lower than that of China.

    As for Russia, the fourth largest emitter of carbon dioxide, it is rich in fossil fuels and the leading supplier of natural gas to Europe. But Moscow manipulates the supplies of its natural gas to its customers for reasons of both revenue and politics.

    Neither Chinese President Xi Jinping nor Russian President Vladimir Putin will even be present in Glasgow.

    Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and other OPEC nations depend for their national income on oil exports. If fossil fuels become forbidden fuels, what is to become of these nations?

    Will they accept a future where their primary natural resource is gradually outlawed by the rest of the world? Will they be content to rely on the industrialized world to provide them with windmills and solar panels to power their economies?

    The world’s losers from this Glasgow summit are likely to be the billions of people who will never know the benefits of fossil fuels that produced the Industrial Revolution and created the affluent societies of the 20th century.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/02/2021 – 22:45

  • CIA Chief In Moscow For High Level Meeting, Day After Putin Condemned US Missile Expansion In Europe
    CIA Chief In Moscow For High Level Meeting, Day After Putin Condemned US Missile Expansion In Europe

    Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director William Burns was in Moscow on Tuesday for a previously unannounced visit where he met with Russian Security Council Secretary and former Director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Nikolai Patrushev.

    The closed-door, secretive meeting which was revealed after it concluded, is a first time event since Burns was appointed head of the CIA. It comes after a reported half-dozen phone calls since Biden took office between US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Patrushev – whose position involves coordinating high level national security policy for Putin. 

    CIA Director William Burns, AFP/Getty Images

    Neither the Russian Security Council nor the US Embassy released any details on the meeting. It comes on the heels of last month’s visit of the State Department’s Under Secretary for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland to Moscow for rare, high-level talks.

    There was simply the following confirmation released, agreed upon by both sides:

    Burns and Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev discussed “Russian-American relations,” it said in a terse statement.

    It also appears part of the continuing initiative since Putin and Biden met in Geneva in June to rescue US-Russian relations and pursue open communications, which have hit a low-point particularly after a series of targeted US sanctions on Moscow officials going back a half-decade. 

    CIA Director Burns is already considered to have extensive contacts among Russian officials, having served as the US Ambassador to Russia from 2005 to 2008.

    The two sides’ diplomats for much of the past year have also been holding closed-door arms control talks in Geneva following the Trump administration’s pullout of key Cold War era treaties, in particular the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) as well as the Open Skies treaty.

    Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, via TASS

    Crucially on Monday Vladimir Putin told a meeting of defense ministry officials that Washington is eyeing expanding its offensive measures in Europe. “Everyone is aware of the US’ plans to deploy intermediate-range missiles in Europe, this poses a great danger and threat to us,” he said as cited in Russian media.

    “We are all well aware that some of our foreign partners do not cease attempts to break the parity, including through deploying elements of the global missile defence in direct vicinity to our borders. We cannot fail to notice these threats to Russia’s security and will react in an adequate manner,” Putin said.

    Very likely these concerns were at the top of the agenda during Burns’ meeting with Patrushev on Tuesday.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/02/2021 – 22:25

  • Dumb Ideas Never Die
    Dumb Ideas Never Die

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

    If you think the wealth tax is already in the rearview mirror, keep your eyes on the road.  The beta test is over, but that was just the nose in the tent phase.

    Democrats knowledge of wealth is like the old saying about pornography, they know it when they see it (or in Hunter Biden’s case, when they film it).

    But unlike porn, they don’t know where it comes from.  Also unlike porn, they know wealth has to be destroyed.

    Because wealth is the thing that negates what they call equity.  Egalitarianism wasn’t enough.  Now we need equal outcomes where each player’s deficits are boosted to make results the same.

    What better way to make the rich pay their “fair share” than by seizing the wealth they obviously must have stolen?  And using that to even the playing field?

    It’s notable that instead of going after the two-and-twenty of the carried interest set, the Democrats sought a mark-to-market tax on equities (a tax on unrealized gains).  It was explained as a way to collect capital gains taxes earlier, in order to fund their hyperspend agenda.  But it was really a way to collect estate taxes early, as it was structurally designed to force the sale of assets and to destroy wealth.

    The wealth tax failed this time because its mechanics were too dumb.  That’s what you get when you let Sen. B.S. (obsessed with millionaires and billionaires) and noted Native American Sen. Elizabeth Warren write tax policy.

    People asked:

    What happens when the market declines?  Does the government cut everyone a check?  

    How is something non-fungible like a piece of real estate valued?  Works of art? 

    What if someone only has one non-financial asset that makes them wealthy?  

    Do they have to sell it to pay the tax?  Take out loans?

    This time they couldn’t answer any of those questions.  But the details don’t matter, the target does.

    Real wealth endures and can maintain itself.  It is the essence of capitalism, which is why they hate it.  Universal, equitable toil is what the left wants for all of us.  Anything that allows someone to sit at home and contemplate the universe is anathema.  To the salt mines, comrades!

    I jest of course, that’s gross exaggeration.  Since they don’t understand biology either, they hate salt too.

    Unfocused Rage

    The left lives in an 80s teen comedy, where hating Chad & Buffy is just so obvious it never has to be explained. But when you bring that zeitgeist into the policy-making sphere, your laws are still supposed to make (don’t laugh) at least a modicum of sense.

    If wealth was just a pile of gold coins, it might make sense to let Fauxcohontas pilfer a few for the common good (you’ve got too many, give me one!).  Just to shut her up.

    But real wealth has to be evaluated and if the methods to do so are not clear, or even agreed upon, how can the amount of tax be?

    Calculating Wealth

    Market capitalization is not really the amount of money in a market.  It’s an abstract concept that is pretty defective as a calculation of value.

    It is the marginal price of a unit of account times the total circulating supply.

    That means if we have 1,000 widgetcoins in circulation, and you offer me $2 for one of mine, the current widgetcoin market capitalization is $2,000.  

    But if I have 700 widgetcoins do I really have $1,400 in wealth?  

    It depends.  If the market is very liquid, and widgetcoins very desirable, maybe.  But if I dump 700 out of a total supply of 1,000 on the widgetcoin market, I will likely break that market.  The price of widgetcoins will probably approach $1 or lower pretty quick.

    But Democrats can’t understand why a 2% tax on my $1,400 widgetcoin fortune is unworkable.  For some reason, it’s an unattainable level of knowledge for them and we will have no peace until the average person understands this.

    A Class Study in Envy

    Ask yourself why you know how much money Bill Gates, Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos have.  For years, the “richest person in the US” has been defined using “market cap” style math.  This was always so unimaginable numbers could be thrown about in the service of class warfare narratives.

    It’s not that these people aren’t rich, it’s that their wealth is almost all in the stock of the companies they founded.

    Saying Elon Musk is worth $300B ignores a few things.  Democrats think he has $300B in the bank.  Whereas in reality, Musk has a lot of Tesla stock.

    The fact is Musk’s Tesla shares are not liquid in the same way as 1,000 shares of TSLA is in an average person’s IRA.

    As an officer and over 10% holder, there are a variety of SEC and other regulatory issues Musk faces when selling stock.  In many companies, operating agreements further restrict how much founder’s stock can be sold in a period.  Vesting schedules for early employees add more restrictions.

    The Democrats know all this.  They figure Musk can just take out loans against his shares and cut the Treasury a check.  And Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos can.

    But smaller founders who still qualify as “the evil rich” might not have that option.  And the more serious issue is that when you sell shares, you lose their votes.  And that is something company founders care deeply about, controlling the companies they started.

    If you have to sell 2% of your wealth (e.g. shares) every year to pay the Bernie & Lizzie tax, how long before you lose control of your company?

    What an added bonus for those who hate the productive.

    Fake Voices & Fake Valuations

    For a while we were asked to believe fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, of the occasionally mannish voice, was a billionaire.  At the time, that was held up as something to be lauded, a great achievement of female entrepreneurship.

    But Theranos was never worth $9B, except in the minds of reporters and first year MBA graduates.  Serious investors don’t take early stage valuations seriously.  

    If you raise $10M for 5% of your company, you don’t have $200M in the company treasury.  And a founder with 40% of the cap table doesn’t have $80M in the bank.

    But this is the type of “wealth” the Democrats want to tax.  Because they’re not just insanely jealous, they’re also insanely stupid.

    But are they really?

    Just Stop Believin’

    There has to come a time when we stop believing that no one has thought about the unintended consequences.  Their intent is to stop the creation of wealth.  And any narrative that serves that goal is on the table.

    With every frantic drama the Democrats create, we need to ask:  why are they doing this?  If they care about the poor, why do they pass policies that create more poverty?  If they want to reduce the take of rent-seekers, why protect the tax structures that enrich them?  If they are motivated to share the wealth, why do they only seek to destroy that which creates it?  

    The answer is always they just want to “get something done.”  Regardless of the cost.  

    If you think a wealth tax won’t affect you because it’s only for the rich, don’t be surprised when they lower the bar and call it a savings tax next.  

    The sad truth is that we live on a farm with people who want to eat the seed corn and if we don’t wake up to it, there’s not going to be a harvest in a couple seasons.

    *  *  *

    Join the Patreon Support our work by becoming a subscriber to the monthly newsletter.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/02/2021 – 22:05

  • FOMC Preview: "We'll Put $5 In The Atlanta Fed's Swear Jar"
    FOMC Preview: “We’ll Put $5 In The Atlanta Fed’s Swear Jar”

    By Philip Marey, senior US strategist at Rabobank

    Tapering during a slowdown

    • Although the economy has slowed down in the second half of the year, the FOMC is expected to announce the start of tapering at the November meeting. The Fed is likely to stress accumulated progress in the labor market and the transitory nature of supply side bottlenecks.

    • The FOMC is expected to announce a fixed monthly taper schedule that would reduce net asset purchases by $10 billion Treasuries and $5 billion agency MBS.

    • During the press conference Powell is likely to stress again that the end of tapering does not automatically mean the start of hiking. And that the high inflation readings are transitory.

    Introduction

    The US economy appears to have shifted to a slower pace of growth in the second half of the year as the impact of the fiscal stimulus measures is fading, the Delta variant of the coronavirus continues to spread, and inflation has risen to 5.4% due to supply constraints. Nevertheless, the  FOMC is expected to make a formal announcement of the start of tapering on Wednesday.  Clearly, inconvenient timing, but the Fed is likely to stress accumulated progress in the labor market and the transitory nature of supply side bottlenecks.

    Second half slowdown

    We learned this week that GDP growth slowed down to only 2.0% in Q3, from 6.7% in Q2 and  6.3% in Q1. The impact of the COVID relief packages launched under the Trump and Biden administrations is fading, while we are still waiting for the Democrats to agree on a large (but shrinking) health, education and child care bill, and their approval of the bipartisan Senate bill on infrastructure. Meanwhile, the Delta variant continues to spread as vaccination rates have found an insufficient plateau. This is delaying the much-awaited return of labor supply that was supposed to start in September, as we discussed in Labor shortages: temporary or permanent? Consequently, employment growth slowed down to 194K in September, from 366K in August and 1091K in July. What’s more, global supply chains are in disarray and CPI inflation rose to 5.4% in September (year-on-year). Today, the PCE deflator, the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, rose to 4.4% in September (year-on-year), from 4.2% in August. This is more than double the Fed’s 2.0% inflation target.

    This is also having a negative impact on personal consumer spending, which slowed down to 1.6% in Q3, from 12.0% in Q2 and 11.4% in Q1. In fact, the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNowcast actually put GDP growth in Q3 at 0.2% on October 27, the day before the official release by the BEA. This would have put the US economy close to stagnation. Although the BEA’s official estimate was 2.0%, we should see the FOMC statement acknowledge this slowdown in the growth of economic activity and employment.

    An inconvenient time to taper

    In the FOMC’s ideal world, they would step up the pace of asset purchases, instead of slowing them down, in case of an economic slowdown. However, in that world, inflation does not rise when the economy slows down either. Monetary policy is not very adequate if the adverse shock to the economy comes from the supply side. After all, monetary policy is aimed at influencing the demand side of the economy.

    However, tapering is not tightening and there has been progress in the labor market since last year. The FOMC can point to the decline in the official unemployment rate to 4.8% in September, from 6.7% in December 2020, as proof of substantial progress in the labor market (Figure 1). What’s more, inflation has been rampant for half a year now. Perhaps transitory, but enough catching up in terms of average inflation targeting for now. In fact, the minutes of the September meeting showed that most participants remarked that the standard of “substantial further progress” had been met with regard to the Committee’s price-stability goal or that it was likely to be met soon. So the Fed can still make the case for the start of tapering. Let’s just hope the economy is not going to slide back further during the winter months.

    Speeches and interviews with FOMC participants have confirmed that tapering is near. At the press conference on September 22 Powell stressed that the decision to start tapering was about accumulated progress in the labor market and that in his opinion the test was all but met. The FOMC speakers since that second disappointing Employment Report confirmed this interpretation. Fed Vice Chairman Clarida said that a gradual tapering of asset purchases that concludes around the middle of next year may soon be warranted. What’s more, according to the Minutes a number of participants indicated that they believed the test of “substantial further progress” toward maximum employment had already been met at the time of the September meeting. Finally, last week, Powell said he thinks it’s time to taper. So it is highly likely that the FOMC will announce tapering at the November meeting.

    A fixed monthly taper schedule  

    According to the minutes of the September 21-22 meeting of the FOMC, the Fed staff presented an illustrative path of tapering that was designed to be simple to communicate and entailed a gradual reduction in net asset purchases that would end around the middle of next year. Participants generally commented that the illustrative path provided a straightforward and appropriate template that policymakers might follow. Participants also noted that the Committee could adjust the pace of tapering if economic developments were to differ substantially from what they expected.

    In contrast to 2014, the FOMC is considering a taper schedule that involves a fixed monthly reduction in asset purchases, by $10 billion in the case of Treasury securities and $5 billion in the case of agency MBS. Participants noted that if a decision to begin tapering occurred at the next meeting (November 2-3), the process of tapering could commence with the monthly purchase calendars beginning in either mid-November or mid-December. Taking this together, the mid-November start would mean that $70 billion Treasuries and $35 billion will be purchased between mid-November and mid-December, followed by a monthly reduction by $10 billion Treasuries and $5 billion agency MBS, ending the net asset purchases by mid-June next year. Analogously, a mid-December start of the process would imply a mid-July end. Such a monthly schedule would be set in advance, because the FOMC only meets about every six weeks. For example, there is no meeting after mid-December and before mid-January.  

    This stands in contrast to the previous tapering process, carried out in 2014. Back then, the changes in the pace of monthly purchases only changed after FOMC meetings. With a fixed monthly schedule this taper process will be less flexible than last time, but the FOMC will still be able to change the schedule at any FOMC meeting if desired.

    Conclusion

    The FOMC meeting on November 2-3 is expected to conclude with a formal announcement of the start of tapering. There will be no update of the economic and rate projections (Table 1). During the press conference Powell is likely to stress again that the end of tapering does not automatically mean the start of hiking. And that the high inflation readings are transitory. We’ll put $5 in the Atlanta Fed’s swear jar.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/02/2021 – 21:45

  • Whack-A-Mole: China LNG Prices Soar To A New Record, Crushing Distributor Margins
    Whack-A-Mole: China LNG Prices Soar To A New Record, Crushing Distributor Margins

    There is one recurring problem with central planning: the greater the level of intervention, the worse and more widespread the unexpected adverse consequences. Just last week, when we reported that Beijing had imposed price controls on its coal rationing, we said that the problem with such explicit subsidies which create an artificially low price, is that they don’t address the underlying problem (too much demand, not enough supply), but instead accelerate hoarding and lead to a run on the artificially underpriced commodity, forcing spikes in another energy commodity while resulting in an even faster drain of the commodity in question, in this case coal. In essence, it’s like a giant game of “whack a mole”.

    Just earlier today, we reported of precisely one such outcome when we discussed how China had inadvertently “sparked “Panic Buying” after telling households to stockpile food ahead of the winter.” This comes days after we reported that China’s coal and natgas energy crisis had quietly spread, with many gas stations across the country running out of diesel due to supply constraints caused by the surging demand for subsidized coal.

    And now we have another example of central planning’s unintended whack-a-mole consequences: Bloomberg reports that domestic liquefied natural gas prices in China are surging, driven by soaring prices in the international market, adding pressure on downstream city gas distributors.

    The national average price for the fuel, carried by trucks to factories or vehicle refueling stations, surged to a record 7,814 yuan per ton (about $26 per million British thermal units) on Monday, up almost 100% from a year ago, according to the Shanghai Petroleum & Natural Gas Exchange. In Beijing, prices saw a single-day jump of 1,000 yuan a ton on Monday, according to the CTL Group, a research unit of gas distributor ENN Group.

    The price surge comes as importers try to compensate for the rising cost of LNG imports. While China regulates the price of natural gas sold through pipelines, trucked LNG can rise and fall based on market forces.

    According to YuanTalks, Chai Shouping, chief financial officer of state-owned energy giant PetroChina, said at its earnings conference call on October 29 that, given the rising prices of LNG imports, PetroChina recorded a loss of 6.4 billion yuan for gas imports in the third quarter, bringing its total loss in the first three quarters of the year on gas imports to 3.2 billion yuan.

    Chai said that “we will supply natural gas at contract prices to downstream companies, including those that have signed long-term supply agreements with us, but for other companies, we will have to sell gas at prices based on our purchases prices.”

    While upstream resources companies plan to pass on rising costs to downstream companies, it’s difficult for downstream city gas distributers to pass on the rising prices to end users. Li Yalan, chairwoman of Beijing Gas Group, said at a gas industry forum on October 27 that problems faced by gas distributors this year are different from previous years and much more efforts are needed to purchase resources and balance resources.

    “Surging gas prices are unlikely to be transmitted to end users and that is causing serious problems for gas distributors whose gas purchasing prices are higher than selling prices. Gas distributors have to absorb the burden themselves,” said Li, although we are confident that unless Beijing intervenes yet again, distributors will do everything in their power to make sure others foot the soaring bill.

    Meanwhile, as reported previously, some factories in gas-reliant sectors such as ceramics and fertilizers have already had supplies restricted in order to conserve fuel for home heating. Those that can get it will pay more – the cost for gas feedstock at ceramics factories in Guangdong and Jiangxi have nearly doubled, according to industry publication Ceramic Information.

    The gas surge is coming just as a jump in coal prices is relaxing. Action by China’s authorities to boost output has helped ease a crunch on supply that’s contributed to power shortages and crimped output in some key industries.

    Thermal coal futures on the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange fell 2.8% to close at 891.8 yuan ($139.3) on Tuesday, paring an earlier drop of as much as 8.4% that brought the price to the lowest since August.

    Alas, as the LNG example shows, unless Beijing successfully manages to plug all hole where the “mole” can emerge, this strategy merely exacerbates an already unprecedented crisis, and the longer the state intervenes in price discovery the worse the final outcome.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/02/2021 – 21:25

  • The Supreme Showdown: Bruen Has This Makings Of A Major Second Amendment Victory
    The Supreme Showdown: Bruen Has This Makings Of A Major Second Amendment Victory

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will take up arguably the oldest and most controversial right in our history.

    New York State Rifle Association v. Bruen is the first major gun rights case in over ten years to come before the Supreme Court and it has the makings of a major gun rights victory in the making.

    The case concerns concealed-carry restrictions under N.Y. Penal Law § 400.00(2)(f) that require a showing of “proper cause.” Lower courts have upheld the New York law, but there are ample constitutional concerns over its vague standard, such as showing that you are “of good moral character.” New York wants to exercise discretion in deciding who needs to carry guns in public while gun owners believe that the law flips the constitutional presumption in favor of such a right.

    There are few constitutional rights that have been debated so long in this country as gun rights. Indeed, before other Englishmen were given a written guarantee of the right to bear arms, colonists in Virginia in 1607 were given such a written guarantee by the Crown.  Since that time, the right to bear arms has been an engrained part of our culture and ultimately our Constitution.

    Despite that history, the meaning of the right has remained the subject of heated debate. That is evident from the fact that it was not until 2008 that the Supreme Court finally recognized the right to bear arms as an individual right in District of Columbia v. Heller. Two years after Heller, in McDonald v. City of Chicago, the court ruled that this right applied against the states.

    This is actually the second time in two years that the New York State Rifle Association has come knocking on the door of the Supreme Court. The Association previously challenged a New York law that imposed stringent conditions on the ability of gun owners to even transport their guns outside of their homes. The law was viewed by some of us as unconstitutional under existing case law, but New York politicians insisted that it would be defended all the way up to the Supreme Court.  However, when the Court called their bluff and accepted the case, those politicians quickly changed the law and pulled the case before the Court could rule.

    The bait-and-switch incensed members of the Court who delayed in the dismissal of the case.  Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas specifically called out New York for “manipulating” the docket by withdrawing an unconstitutional law just before a final opinion. Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined in the condemnation and added menacingly that “some federal and state courts may not be properly applying Heller and McDonald. The Court should address that issue soon, perhaps in one of the several Second Amendment cases with petitions for certiorari now pending before the Court.”

    They ultimately did precisely that and took another case by the very same plaintiffs: the New York State Rifle Association.

    The current court membership is arguably the strongest Second Amendment bench in decades. That includes Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who wrote a strong defense of the Second Amendment defense as an appellate judge.  While it is always dangerous to predict outcomes before the Court, this case was accepted with a likely intent to reverse the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (which also upheld the earlier restrictive law).

    With lower courts chipping away at its prior precedent, the Court seems poised to push back with a case that brings greater clarity and support for the right to bear guns in public. Many Second Amendment advocates are encouraging the Court to pull back on language from Heller that has been cited mantra-like by lower courts limiting the scope of this right. Many point to the court’s statement in Heller, which acknowledged that “like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” It then listed possible “sensitive places” for denying permits to former felons.

    The Court is likely to continue to recognize reasonable limitations, including possibly some location-based limits. However, it may create a clear presumption in favor of law-bidding citizens to bear arms outside of the home. The natural default under the Second Amendment in favor of gun owners is likely to be strengthened.

    The showdown with New York and the Second Circuit in that sense was merely delayed, but not forgotten by the Court. Ironically, the earlier law would have presented a narrower platform for reconsidering the Second Amendment. By gaming the system a year ago, New York may have delivered a far greater opportunity for Second Amendment advocates in the case.

    Of course, the Court could have accepted the case to simply amplify its agreement with the Second Circuit, but I would not count on it. It is like the scene in Braveheart when William Wallace said that he was going to “pick a fight” with the British when others were looking for a compromise. That came as little surprise to his main lieutenant Hamish who shrugged and added “Well, we didn’t get dressed up for nothing.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/02/2021 – 21:05

  • VA Governor Race Called For Republican Youngkin
    VA Governor Race Called For Republican Youngkin

    With over 70% of the votes counted, Decision Desk has called the race for Republican newcomer Glenn Youngkin who holds a 9 pts lead over Democratic Terry McAuliffe.

    Additionally @Redistrict has called the race for Youngkin…

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

    Matt Walsh is pretty clear on who’s to blame (to thank) for this Republican victory (notably McAuliffe won Loudon 55-44, but @Redistrict forecast that he would need a 14pts lead to support a state-wide win)…

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

    And Donald Trump, Jr has some thoughts for President Biden…

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

    MSNBC is taking it well…

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

    *  *  *

    Update (2030ET): In a somewhat stunning – yet completely predictable – turn of events, Fairfax County – the largest and most prosperous in the state – has reportedly missed its self-imposed deadline to count early ballots.

    Terry McAuliffe’s campaign says Fairfax County will not meet their self-imposed deadline of 8pm to count early votes. A portion of the early votes in Fairfax County need to be rescanned and there is no set timeline for that yet.

    His staff says that could delay the results.

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

    The problem was reportedly with a thumb drive of the early ballots…

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

    This is not good for ‘faith in democracy’…

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

    *  *  *

    Update (2000ET): Voter turnout is reportedly very strong, on track to break 3 million votes, exceeding the 2017 record:

     

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

    Notably, Virginia tends to punish the president’s party. In the last 12 Virginia gubernatorial elections, the president’s party has won only once.

    Obviously, a Youngkin win would be a boost for Republican prospects to take control of both chambers of Congress. 

    *  *  *

    Today is the last day for Virginians to vote in what has become an unexpectedly close race for governor between former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe and newcomer Republican candidate, Glenn Youngkin – who has gained considerable ground in recent days.

    Political watchers across the country are keeping tabs on this year’s race as a proxy for the political mood, as the outcome may offer insight into what might be ahead for both parties in the 2022 midterm elections.

    From the beginning, Democrats expected McAuliffe to coast into the Governor’s mansion in a state which saw Biden beat Trump by 10 points in the last election – yet Youngkin has gained massive ground after focusing on parents’ anger over schools – which includes pandemic mandates and critical race theory. McAuliffe, meanwhile, said during a debate with Youngkin “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” a decidedly poor move.

    McAuliffe’s campaign has faltered amid anecdotal accounts of an apathetic Democratic voter base. Biden’s standing in the commonwealth is mediocre, with his approval rating in the low 40s in several polls.

    The upshot is that Youngkin appears to have the momentum going into Election Day on Tuesday. The level of enthusiasm at recent campaign events has been tangibly greater for Youngkin, even in the Democratic-leaning Northern Virginia suburbs. -The Hill

    Meanwhile, the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics has shifted its opinion of the race from “leans Democratic” to “leans Republican.”

     “Youngkin has the enthusiasm, the environment, the history, and perhaps even the issues (given his focus on education and its increasing salience in polling). McAuliffe has the state’s Democratic lean in his favor. However, we do feel we owe it to readers to push this race one way or the other and not just move it to a Toss-Up rating at the end. So we’re moving from Leans Democratic to Leans Republican.”

    PredictIt has Youngkin with a significant lead.

    The shift comes after McAuliffe spent considerable time pressing his Democratic colleagues on Capitol Hill to pass two major bills in order to show that Democrats are able to capitalize on their slim majority in Congress – yet fighting within the party has resulted in a political quagmire.

    And as the New York Post notes, what’s going on in Virginia may be part of a 30-year political epicycle in which a Democrat wins the White House and then ‘lurches left’ – causing a backlash that reverberates to off-year elections in Virginia and New Jersey.

    In 1993 it was Bill Clinton, who ran for office as a “new kind of Democrat,” promising to “end welfare as we know it” and pledging not to raise taxes on the middle class. Instead Clinton moved left, dumping his welfare reform promise in favor of an unpopular nationalized health care scheme that a Democratic Congress never even put to a vote, raising taxes on the middle class, and promoting the boutique liberal cause of gays in the military (though ultimately settling for the muddle of “don’t ask, don’t tell”).

    Republicans swept the governors’ races in Virginia and New Jersey in 1993 and made large gains in both state legislatures, previewing the GOP landslides in the House and Senate in 1994, when Republicans gained 54 seats in the House for their first House majority in 40 years, and eight seats in the Senate that also gave the GOP a majority. Clinton immediately tacked to the center and remained there for the rest of his presidency.

    The pattern repeated itself in 2009 following Barack Obama’s sharp left turn from the vague platform of “hope and change,” leading to Republicans to once again capture the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey that year.

    A win for Youngkin would be a massive boost to Republicans nationwide – and would add to President Biden’s woes which include failing approval ratings, supply chain issues, inflation, and absolute chaos trying to get his legislative agenda passed.

    As The Hill‘s Niall Stanage notes, “Even a narrow win for Democrats in Virginia would likely not be enough to calm the party’s nerves as it looks towards next year’s midterm elections — and beyond, to the 2024 presidential election where they fear the specter of Trump will be resurrected.”

     

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/02/2021 – 20:45

  • Don Lemon Heckled After Being Caught Vacationing Maskless In Florida
    Don Lemon Heckled After Being Caught Vacationing Maskless In Florida

    It’s yet another example of “do as I say, not as I do” when it comes to the hysterical Covid response from those on the left. Today’s reminder comes from CNN’s Don Lemon, who appeared to have been caught on video vacationing in Florida, maskless. 

    This is, of course, the very same Don Lemon who was recently caught pushing the outright lie that podcast host Joe Rogan was using an “unproven de-worming drug” to treat Covid.

    In keeping with his excellence in journalistic integrity, Lemon, who has advocated for wearing a mask and routinely railed against the state of Florida on his show, appears to have been caught on video vacationing with a male companion, in Florida, without wearing a mask.

    One bystander caught that Lemon was on the premises and got him on video.

    “I wanna thank you. Don Le-moan, right?” the woman filming says to Lemon, while he gets up from his outdoor chair with his companion. 

    “I wanna thank you. Thank you so much. And you’re in the great state of Florida,” the videographer continues, tongue-in-cheek.

    Lemon begins to pack up his belongings and walk away when the woman says sarcastically: “I hope you guys enjoy it. You can enjoy it. Thank you for exposing everything. Cause we love you in Florida.”

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

    A friend of the videographers’ can be heard chuckling in the background.

    It’s yet one more item to add to the list of liberal hypocrisy in how they want you to handle Covid, versus how they go about it themselves. 

    Lemon did seem like he was in a rush to leave. We wonder if he had dinner reservations that night with Gavin Newsom, or maybe a salon appointment with Nancy Pelosi that he had to get to. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/02/2021 – 20:45

  • Tracking A Journalistic Cliché: "The Worst Attack On Our Democracy Since The Civil War"
    Tracking A Journalistic Cliché: “The Worst Attack On Our Democracy Since The Civil War”

    Authored by Matt Taibbi and Matt Orfalea via TK News,

    On April 28th of this year, Joe Biden gave one of the first big speeches of his presidency, addressing a Joint Session of Congress.

    “I stand here tonight, just one day shy of the 100th day of my administration,” he said.

    “One hundred days since I took the oath of office, lifted my hand off our family Bible, and inherited a nation in crisis.”

    He went on:

    “The worst pandemic in a century. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”

    Presidential speeches are more like corporate productions than individual literary efforts. A key aide or team of aides may write the first draft — adviser Mike Donilon is said to have authored this one — and from there, other cooks in the kitchen fight over the ingredients.

    One wants to remove a line, a second tries to add one, and a third will battle over run time or location. According to speechwriter David Frum, George Bush’s famed “Axis of Evil” line was also delivered to a Joint Session, because Karl Rove believed his boss was better before audiences than before “the silent eye of a television camera.”

    No one has said where exactly the line “worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” came from. None other than Thomas Friedman in the fall of 2020 wrote a pre-election column saying America was in “more danger than it has been since the Civil War,” and it’s possible a political aide spotted the line and liked it. Certainly, however, it didn’t become journalistic cliché until Biden’s April 28th speech.

    News directors and editors once needed stiff nudges to repeat a president’s words verbatim, not just because it’s embarrassing to take dictation from a politician, but because it was bad business to do it for free. If politicians wanted you to buy the “Axis of Evil” or “the end of welfare as we know it,” that’s what paid political advertising was for. In the Trump years, however, it’s become almost a daily practice for commentators to fob off White House-crafted political messaging as their own thoughts.

    I feel bad picking on old friend Chris Hayes, among other things because he did come up with his own, more generalized “since the Civil War” analogy before Biden’s speech. Still, watch in the clip above how he pauses and adds an “arguably, probably” in the middle of a now-almost-verbatim recitation of Biden’s line — “the worst attack on American Democracy, arguably, probably, since the Civil War” — as if he’s coming up with the phrase in the moment, and not repeating exact presidential language from six months before.

    This disease has spread rapidly in the last year or so, when phrases like “transformative president” and “pandemic of the unvaccinated” have begun traveling from White House transcripts to teleprompters facing anchors on CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox with humorous alacrity. In fact, “the worst… since the Civil War” was such a success in flowing from Biden’s head to the lips of people like Anderson Cooper and Chris Cuomo that, as noted in Matt Orfalea’s terrific compilation above, it’s been deployed for rare double-duty as a political cliché. It’s currently in circulation describing both the January 6th riots and the efforts by Republican state officials to change voting rights laws, and has even become a bit of a crossover hit.

    “Since the Civil War” has had a long enough life-cycle to be captured by the Hate Inc. news-biz dynamic, commoditized for blue and red audiences. As Democrats anxious for hyperbolic interpretations of Republican horribleness gobbled the term up on CNN and MSNBC, Fox viewers have been treated to the same idea in reverse. Laura Ingraham interviewed Newt Gingrich a few weeks ago, and he used the phrase to describe the vaccine mandate, Merrick Garland’s memo on schools and parents, and other forms of ostensible government overreach.

    “Not since the Civil War,” Gingrich said, “have we seen this kind of anti-citizen behavior…”

    Tucker Carlson, meanwhile, counter-riffed Biden by claiming the Immigration Act of 1965 was in fact the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War:

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

    Of course, “since the Civil War” is absurd in any direction. None of these things were worse “attacks” on American democracy than Pearl Harbor, 9/11, the sinking of the Lusitania, or a dozen other blood-soaked episodes in our history. Also, no matter what your views of Republican voting-rights laws, no rational person would define them as more draconian or extreme than Jim Crow, Japanese internment, or any of the War on Terror initiatives, and that’s just for starters.

    Pundits only just finished telling us a Russian cyber campaign was our new Pearl Harbor (in fact, the chief prosecutor of Robert Mueller’s probe, Andrew Weissman, told us it was worse than Pearl Harbor). The Boston Globe said Charlottesville was literally Fort Sumter. Even Trump’s election win in 2016 was deemed by the BBC to be possibly the “end of liberal democracy.” At least in those cases, though, pundits wrote their own hyperbole. It’s more embarrassing when the White House writes it for you.

    To read the rest of the report, click here and subscribe.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/02/2021 – 20:25

  • Biden Slams China's "Not Showing Up" At COP26 As Xi Says He Was Denied Option Of Virtual Address
    Biden Slams China’s “Not Showing Up” At COP26 As Xi Says He Was Denied Option Of Virtual Address

    Recent Western media reports have underscored that China emits more greenhouse gas than all other developed nations combined, so naturally many are asking what’s the point of the ongoing Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow if the world’s number one polluter is not present. 

    Over 120 heads of state were present at the first day on Monday – when ‘high level’ opening speeches were given (and President Biden was caught snoozing) – but China’s President Xi Jinping stayed home, and merely submitted a dry written statement published to the conference’s website.

    But on Tuesday China is saying that President Xi was never so much as offered an option of addressing world leaders via live video link. China’s Foreign Ministry told reporters in a press briefing that Xi was never provided the option to attend virtually, apparently after it was sought as a possibility. 

    “As I understand it, the conference organizers did not provide the video link method,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said.

    The UK government later confirmed this, with a spokesperson cited in Reuters saying that an intentioned lack of a virtual attendance option was meant to encourage coming in person. The COP26 conference only offered the possibility of a recorded address, such as the Pope gave, or the submission of a written statement. 

    his after Biden himself as well as US officials have taken swipes at both Beijing and Moscow for lack of participation by their top leaders… 

    “Russia and … China basically didn’t show up in terms of any commitments to deal with climate. And there’s a reason why people should be disappointed in that,” Biden said Sunday just ahead of the conference. “I found it disappointing myself.”

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

    It appears that instead the UK and UN organizers wish to see an armada of hundreds of fuel-guzzling and gas emitting private jets descending on Glasgow airport. 

    For China’s part, Xi’s written statement urged all developed countries to “provide support to help developing countries do better” while issuing the usual platitudes about jointly tackling the “climate challenge” and speeding up green initiatives – but notably absent were any definitive pledges sought by the West. 

    Meanwhile, after on Monday falling asleep during opening speeches, President Biden took a departing shot at China during his final Tuesday presser before returning to Washington…

    “It’s a gigantic issue and they’ve walked away. How do you do that and claim to be able to have any leadership mantle?” Biden told reporters of Xi’s absence.

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

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/02/2021 – 20:05

  • "A Monumental Day" – CDC Director Officially Recommends Pfizer Vaccine For 5-11 Year-Old Children
    “A Monumental Day” – CDC Director Officially Recommends Pfizer Vaccine For 5-11 Year-Old Children

    Update (1945ET): Well that escalated quickly… Following the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ 14-0 vote in favor of giving children the shot developed by Pfizer and BioNTech SE, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky has officially recommended the vaccine for children from 5 to 11 years old. 

    “Today is a monumental day in the course of this pandemic, and one that many of us have been very eager to see,” Walensky said at the opening of the panel’s all-day meeting.

    “For almost two full years, schools have been fundamentally changed; there have been children in second grade who have never experienced a normal school year.”

    The decision ushers in a new phase in the U.S. pandemic response, widening access to vaccines to some 28 million more people.

    The question is – will kids still have to wear their masks at school?

    *  *  *

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday unanimously recommended a two-dose regimen of Pfizer-BionTech’s COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 5-11 years old.

    The panel based their recommendation in part on modeling which suggests that vaccinating this agre group will reduce transmission of COVID in the US by 8% between now and March 2022.

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

    For reference, 94 children aged 5-11 have died during the pandemic, out of 1.9 million children who have contracted the disease.

    Committee member Sara Oliver claimed on Tuesday that vaccinating children would also ‘weaken the impact’ of any new variants, but would not block its spread.

    “If we wait, we miss the chance to prevent” Covid-19 infections in children, said Dr. Matthew Daley, who acknowledged that there would be hesitancy among parents.

    “I would just encourage you to talk to your child’s pediatrician … they can just help talk through this with you. But, we’re all here to listen,” he added.

    Each Pfizer shot will contain 1/3 of the adult dose, according to Axios.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/02/2021 – 19:52

  • Migrant Caravan Rejects Humanitarian Visa, Heads To US And Mexico City
    Migrant Caravan Rejects Humanitarian Visa, Heads To US And Mexico City

    Authored by Tammy Hung via The Epoch Times,

    Leaders of a migrant caravan consisting of thousands of migrants have rejected humanitarian visas for some travelers as they continued the march towards the United States or Mexico city.

    The Mexican National Institute of Migration (INM) said that it offered humanitarian visas to pregnant women and children in the caravan but was rejected by leaders of the caravan, which set off from southern Mexico last week, according to Fox News.

    The visas last a year and grant migrants access to public services like healthcare, as well as the ability to work, Reuters reported.

    The caravan of migrants mainly consisted of South Americans, Central Americans, and Haitians. It left the town of Huehuetán in the south of Mexico on Oct. 23.

    Organizers Luis Rey García Villagrán and Irineo Mújica had migrants sign up with QR codes to join the convoy.

    In an interview with Reuters, Mújica said that many caravan members were distrustful of the migration officials due to what he described as broken promises in the past, such as arrests and deportations.

    Garcia told Fox News that the caravan was approximately 4,000 strong with more than 400 children between the ages 7-18, and 100 babies under the age of one. In addition, 65 pregnant women (three being more than eight months pregnant) and four wheelchair bound migrants had joined the caravan.

    Having travelled 60 miles, many caravan members have reportedly developed foot injuries, respiratory problems, and infections.

    Volunteer doctor Kabir Sanchez told Reuters that “more than 50 percent of the people in the caravan are sick.”

    The INM had also reported six cases of dengue amongst members of the caravan, including five children.

    Sanchez also said that caravan members had possible cases of COVID-19 but were not confirmed with tests.

    The Biden administration had blamed root causes in Central and South America as factors causing the recent influx in illegal immigrants.

    Republicans, on the other hand, blamed the border-crisis on the Biden administration’s decision to halt the border wall construction, and to reinstitute the Obama administration’s catch-and-release policy.

    Just last month, The Washington Times reported that catch-and-release numbers increased a whopping 430,000 percent from August 2020 to August 2021 at the US-Mexico border.

    Catch and release allows illegal aliens to be released into the country after being arrested by border patrol agents. Under the conditions of their release, these illegal immigrants are expected to appear for a court hearing at a later date.

    However, the Center for Immigration Studies, which describes itself as “a non-partisan, non-profit research organization,” found that about half of these released illegal immigrants failed to appear to court between 2015 and 2017 (pdf). In 2017, 43 percent did not show up to their court date.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/02/2021 – 19:45

  • China Junk Bond Yields Hit All Time High As Property Default Contagion Spreads, Home Sales Plunge 32%
    China Junk Bond Yields Hit All Time High As Property Default Contagion Spreads, Home Sales Plunge 32%

    It may seem like ancient history now, with the S&P obliviously plowing ever higher, but just over a month ago stocks briefly panicked over fears that China’s property market, the largest single asset-class in the world according to Goldman…

    … was about to implode as a result of a domino effect of Evergrande’s upcoming bankruptcy. And while US equities have clearly moved on since then, the contagion within China’s property sector has spread widely, and in the first two days of November, the selloff in Chinese developers’ debt has deepened with one of the 20 biggest developers joining a host of firms looking to dodge defaults as debt crises effectively shut them out of the overseas financing market.

    Yango Group became the latest developer trying to improve its liquidity and avoid default by delaying near-term bond payments, Bloomberg reported. The Shanghai-based builder, which ranked as the 18th biggest in the nation by contracted sales, is seeking to extend three of its dollar notes as “existing internal resources may be insufficient,” according to a stock exchange filing.

    The company’s warning of a possible default is intensifying investor concerns that developers are caught in a negative credit loop as refinancing risks prompting firms to curb spending and reduce sales. Yango shares fell as much as 9% Monday in Shenzhen, hitting a seven-year low. Several of its onshore bonds plunged to record lows, prompting trading halts. The 5.3% bonds due Jan 2022 , which were trading above 90 just one month ago (during the peak of the Evergrande crisis) closed at an all time low of 22 cents on the dollar.

    Not surprisingly, Chinese rating agency Golden Credit Rating cut Yango Group’s credit rating to AA+ from AAA, citing mounting pressure on debt repayment, according to a statement to Shenzhen stock exchange. Yango’s outlook was cut to negative from stable by Golden Credit and Dagong Global Credit: statement. This is after the bonds lost 80% of their value in just over a month.

    The relentless contagion inside China’s property sector pushed the country’s dollar high-yield bonds to fall for a ninth straight day Tuesday after tumbling nearly 9 cents on the dollar in October, closing out the worst two-month slide in a decade. The average yield in the dollar junk bond index touched a record 21.5% on Tuesday, surpassing even the Sept 2011 repo crisis highs.

    Yuzhou Group Holdings Co.’s bond due 2025 tumbled 11.6 cents to 38 cents, on pace for its biggest drop in since March, while Sunac China Holdings Ltd.’s note due 2026 fell 5.3 cents to 65.5 cents.

    Amid the carnage, more property firms have been scrambling to avoid missing debt deadlines recently, as the government clampdown on the real estate sector and a liquidity crisis at Evergrande make it tougher for firms to roll over their dollar debt. Other recent examples include Xinyuan Real Estate which last month secured approval on an exchange offer for a bond.

    “We will see more of such offers or even defaults in coming weeks and months,” according to Eddie Chia, portfolio manager at China Life Franklin.

    “Yango is a top developer that had normal operations, albeit slightly more leverage, but clearly it is threatened by a confidence crisis,” he said. “The other developers in the dollar bond market are much smaller than Yango, and most issuers cannot survive if the market is closed.”

    Of course, extending payment deadlines is just a temporary solution; without the underlying cash flow the inevitable default becomes just a question of timing. Still, some investors are betting that granting reprieves now will allow firms to improve their liquidity when the primary market re-opens for China’s riskier borrowers, though it’s unclear when that may happen.Fitch Ratings highlighted that Xinyuan’s default risks remain high, for instance, even after it raised its issuer default rating on the firm to CC from restricted default.

    Unfortunately, it’s not looking good for the core business: in fact it’s looking downright terrible – China’s top 100 developers saw new-home sales fall 32% from a year earlier in October, according to China Real Estate Information Corp. after a similar slump in September.

    More than 80% of the developers saw property sales decline year over year last month, with 44 developers recording drops of more than 30% and 37 developers saw home sales decline on both month-on-month and year-on-year basis, the latest data showed prompting analysts to say it’s almost certain that the housing market will cool further and the outlook for developers’ sales in the fourth quarter is not optimistic.

    Among the 29 major cities monitored by CRIC, residential property sales by floor space fell by 3% in October from a month earlier, sliding 22% from the same period last year and down 12% from the same period in 2019. In particular, home sales in the 25 tier-2 and tier-3 cities declined 4% month over month in October and dropped 23% from a year earlier, showed the data.

    Despite the chill, 32 developers managed to achieve sales of more than 100 billion yuan in the first ten months of the year, six more than the same period last year, and 148 developers’ revenue for the 10-month period exceeded 10 billion yuan, according to data from China Index Academy, one of the largest independent real estate research firms in China.

    As Yuan Talk notes, Country Garden ranked the top with 676.1 billion yuan home sales in the first ten months of the year, followed by Vanke, Sunac and Poly, according to China Index Academy. The top four developers’ total home sales during the period reached 2.17 trillion yuan.

    The top 32 developers’ home sales growing by an average of 10.6 per cent year over year, while the average growth for 23 developers with 50 – 100 billion yuan sales in January – October was at 17.5 per cent, 28 developers with 30 – 50 billion sales at 21.3 per cent and 34 developers with sales at 20 – 30 billion yuan at 24.3 per cent and developers with sales at 10 – 20 billion yuan at 21.3 per cent, according to data from China Index Academy.

    Separate data from China Index Academy showed that property developers’ bond issuance reached 13 billion yuan in October, only about 40 per cent of the 32.8 billion yuan in September. Their offshore bond issuance fell significantly to only 8.427 billion yuan.

    If local companies are locked out of the bond market their defaults are virtually assured: with cash from operations collapsing, if they are unable to roll over upcoming maturities into new debt, a default tsunami is virtually assured.

    Meanwhile, amid rising scrutiny over China’s weakest players, not all firms will be able to secure bond extensions. Modern Land China failed to repay either the principal or interest on a $250 million bond late last month after it earlier terminated a proposal to extend the bond’s maturity by three months.

    The lack of government assistance means much more pain is in store: after at least four builders defaulted last month, limited access to refinancing channels has threatened a wave of delinquencies: some of China’s worst-performing dollar junk bond borrowers have some $2 billion in onshore and offshore bond payments due November. And as investors focus on who files next, here are the developers with payments due this week:

    • Scenery Journey Ltd. $41.9 million coupon on note due 2022: Nov. 6
    • Scenery Journey $40.6 million coupon on note due 2023: Nov. 6
    • Zhenro Properties Group Ltd. $13.7 million coupon on note due 2023: Nov. 6
    • Central China Real Estate Ltd. $7.79 million coupon on note due 2023: Nov. 7

    Amid a growing panic that not a single developer will be able to meat their obligations, some firms are loudly telegraphing their ability to meet debt obligations writes Bloomberg’s Sofia Horta e Costa. On Monday, Zhenro Properties Group said it informed a bond trustee it will redeem its 5.95% dollar notes early in full on Nov. 16. Central China Real Estate on Tuesday said it has remitted funds to a trustee for payment of its 6.75% dollar bonds, which are due Nov. 8.

    And while creditors of these companies can breathe a sigh of relief that their next coupon payments are incoming, we doubt they will hang around for the next one with the situation across China’s property sector as dire as it was during the depths of the global financial crisis and getting worse with every month.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/02/2021 – 19:25

Digest powered by RSS Digest