- The Emerging Evidence Of Hyperinflation
The Emerging Evidence Of Hyperinflation
Tyler Durden
Fri, 10/02/2020 – 23:40Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,
Note: all references to inflation are of the quantity of money and not to the effect on prices unless otherwise indicated.
In last week’s article I showed why empirical evidence of fiat money collapses are relevant to monetary conditions today.
In this article I explain why the purchasing power of the dollar is hostage to foreign sellers, and that if the Fed continues with current monetary policies the dollar will follow the same fate as John Law’s livre in 1720. As always in these situations, there is little public understanding of money and the realisation that monetary policy is designed to tax people for the benefit of their government will come as an unpleasant shock. The speed at which state money then collapses in its utility will be swift. This article concentrates on the US dollar, central to other fiat currencies, and where the monetary and financial imbalances are greatest.
Introduction
In last week’s Goldmoney Insight, Lessons on inflation from the past, I described how there were certain characteristics of Germany’s 1914-23 inflation that collapsed the paper mark which are relevant to our current situation. I drew a parallel between John Law’s inflation and his Mississippi bubble in 1715-20 and the Federal Reserve’s policy of inflating the money supply to sustain a bubble in financial assets today. Law’s bubble popped and resulted in the destruction of his currency and the Fed is pursuing the same policies on the grandest of scales. The contemporary inflations of all the major state-issued currencies will similarly risk a collapse in their purchasing powers, and rapidly at that.
The purpose of monetary inflation is always stated by central banks as being to support the economy consistent with maximum employment and a price inflation target of two per cent. The real purpose is to fund government deficits, which are rising partly due to higher future welfare liabilities becoming current and partly due to the political class finding new reasons to spend money. Underlying this profligacy has been unsustainable tax burdens on underperforming economies. And finally, the coup de grace has been administered by the covid-19 shutdowns.
The effect of monetary inflation, even at two per cent increases, is to transfer wealth from savers, salary-earners, pensioners and welfare beneficiaries to the government. In no way, other than perhaps from temporary distortions, does this benefit the people as a whole. It also transfers wealth from savers to borrowers by diminishing the value of capital over time.
Inflation of the money supply is now going into hyperdrive, so those negative effects are going to get much worse. It is time to move from empirical evidence to the situation today, which is the unprecedented increase in the global rate of monetary inflation and specifically that of the world’s reserve currency, the US dollar.
The dollar’s inflation
No doubt, the reluctance to reduce, or at least contain budget deficits is ruled out by the presidential election in November. But whoever wins, it seems unlikely that government spending will be reined in or tax revenue increased. For the universal truth of unbacked state currencies is that so long as they can be issued to cover budget deficits they will be issued. And as an inflated currency ends up buying less, the pace of its issuance all else being equal will accelerate to compensate. It is one of the driving forces behind hyperinflation of the quantity of money.
Since the Lehman crisis in August 2008, the pace of monetary inflation has accelerated above its long-term average, and the effect is illustrated in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1 includes the latest calculation of the fiat money quantity, to 1 August 2020. FMQ is the sum of Austrian money supply and bank reserves held at the Fed — in other words fiat dollars both in circulation and not in public circulation. Because commercial banks are free to deploy their reserves within the regulatory framework, either as a basis for expanding bank credit or to be withdrawn from the Fed and put into direct circulation, whether in circulation or not bank reserves at the Fed should be regarded as part of the fiat money total.
It can be seen that the rate of FMQ’s growth was fairly constant over a long period of time — 5.86% annualised compounded monthly to be exact — until the Lehman crisis when the rate of growth then took off. Since Leman failed in 2008 FMQ’s total has grown nearly 300%.
Since last March growth in the FMQ has been unprecedented, becoming almost vertical on the chart, triggered by the Fed’s response to the coronavirus. And now a second wave of it has hit Europe and the early stages of a resurgence appears to be hitting the land of the dollar as well. With lingering hopes of a V-shaped recovery being banished, a further substantial increase in FMQ is all but certain.
Already, FMQ exceeds GDP. If we take the last time things were normal, say, in 2005 when the US economy had recovered from the dot-com crash and before bank credit expansion and mortgage lending become overblown, we see that in a functioning relationship FMQ should be between 35%—40% of GDP. But with the US economy now crashing and FMQ accelerating, FMQ is likely to be in excess of 125% of GDP in the coming months.
What is the source of all that extra money? It is raised through quantitative easing by the central bank in a system that bends rules that are intended to stop the Fed from just printing money and handing it to the government. Yet it achieves just that. The US Treasury issues bonds by auction in the normal fashion. The major banks through their prime brokers bid for them in the knowledge that the Fed sets the yield for different maturities through its market operations. The Fed buys Treasury bonds up to the previously announced monthly QE limit, only now there is no limit, giving the primary brokers a guaranteed turn and crediting the selling banks’ reserve accounts with the proceeds.
This arm’s length arrangement absolves the Fed of the sin of direct money-printing but evades the rules by indirect money-printing. The Treasury gets extra funding through this roundabout arrangement. Participating banks generally expand their bank credit to absorb the new issue, which they then sell to the Fed, which in turn credits the banks’ reserve accounts. The Treasury gets the proceeds of the bonds to cover the deficit in government spending, and the banks get expanded reserves. The Fed’s balance sheet sees an increase in its liabilities to commercial banks and an increase in its assets of Treasury bonds. The Fed also funds agency debt in this manner, mostly representing mortgage finance.
Under President Trump, the Treasury’s current deficit initially expanded as a planned supply-side stimulus to the US economy to the tune of just over a trillion dollars before covid-19 created additional financial chaos. Businesses experienced severe dislocation and have suffered a widespread collapse. Consequently, and together with the direct injection of money into each household, the Congressional Budget Office revised its trillion-dollar deficit for the financial year just ended as the following screenshot from its website indicates:
Note how half the government’s income arose from revenues and half is covered by sales of government debt to the public (i.e. the commercial banks), which at the end of fiscal 2020 (ended yesterday) is estimated to total $20.3 trillion. But given that the first half of that fiscal year was pre-lockdown and the annualised rate of the deficit at that time was about a trillion dollars, simplistically the annualised rate of the deficit’s increase since last March is in the region of $4.4 trillion. Incidentally, the CBO’s economic projections look too optimistic given recent events, in which case budget projections for this new calendar year will be adjusted for considerably lower revenue figures, and significantly greater outlays at the least. We shall address the price inflation estimates later in this article.
Why QE is inflationary
On 23 March the Federal Open Markets Committee (FOMC) announced unlimited QE for both US Treasury stock and agency debt as well as however much liquidity commercial banks need.[i] While judging the expansion of the budget deficit to be inflationary, it is only inflationary to the extent that it is not financed by savers, either increasing the proportion of their savings relative to immediate spending, or to the extent they divert their savings from other investment media. In the latter case, citizens have been committing their savings more to equity markets than bond markets. The returns for discretionary portfolios managed on the public’s behalf have also found better returns in equities than in government and corporate bonds, though when assessing increasing investment risk Treasury stock is seen to be a safe haven in bond portfolios. Pension funds and insurance companies also allocate cash flow to US Treasuries and to the extent that this is the case, the issuance of further government debt is non-inflationary.
Furthermore, if a bank does not increase its balance sheet by expanding bank credit, its participation in the Fed’s QE programme is not inflationary either. For this to be the case, it would have to sell existing stock, call in loans or subscribe on behalf of clients.
By seeing them through a Nelsonian blind eye these factors give some encouragement to the Fed in funding the Treasury through QE, particularly since the statistics reflect a jump in savings, as the following chart from the St Louis Fed illustrates.
More correctly, the chart reflects the fall in spending when people locked down, as well as the $1,200 stimulus checks distributed to households at end-April, which marked the peak in the chart. Since then, there has been some downward adjustment, partly because some spending has returned, and the backlog of essential spending, such as property maintenance, is being addressed.
The evidence is not yet strong enough to claim this statistical shift in savings habits is permanent. Furthermore, being calculated as the percentage of personal disposable income that is not spent and given the high levels of personal debt throughout the population, much of these so-called savings will have disappeared into credit card and debt repayments. It is more likely that with rising unemployment and roughly 80% of the American salaried population living paycheque to paycheque, that far from there being a higher savings rate, personal finances have deteriorated so much that money is being withdrawn from savings on a net basis, to acquire life’s essentials. In fact, the savings rate is one of those unmeasurable economic concepts, and the reality is that Joe Average is worse off in today’s contracting economy and is drawing down on savings in order to subsist.
The non-inflationary element of QE then boils down roughly to increases in insurance company and pension fund investments in Treasury stock and the increase in bank holdings and reserves at the Fed not funded through the expansion of bank credit. But this creates another factor: the extent to which existing bond investments are sold in order to subscribe for Treasury stock inevitably undermines corporate bond markets and their ability to satisfy their funding requirements. And it is for this reason the Fed has appointed BlackRock to spearhead its purchases of corporate debt to ensure liquidity is available for those markets and to put a cap on risk premiums. Therefore, where banks do not expand credit to buy new Treasury stock, the Fed steps in to compensate with additional monetary inflation.
It has been necessary to go into the mechanisms behind funding government deficits in some detail to establish the inflationary consequences of QE, and to refute claims by monetary authorities and others that QE is either not or only partly inflationary, and so is consistent with the Fed’s mandate. No, with the exception of insurance and pension fund subscriptions, the Fed’s QE is almost pure monetary inflation
The relationship between inflation and prices
Assuming no change in the average cash balances held by a population, over time there must be an inverse relationship between the expansion in the quantity of money in circulation and the diminution of its purchasing power. This is unarguable in logic and to argue otherwise is to subscribe to a version of monetary perpetual motion. By the same token, while the effects on individual prices also have to allow for changes in the factors specific to them, the effects of monetary debasement on the general level of prices should be clear. Now it is time to introduce a second factor; changes in the average cash balances held by a population.
Changes in cash balances are an expression of relative preferences between money and goods. If a population as a whole is satisfied with the stability of money as the medium of exchange, it will be happy to retain balances surplus to its immediate needs. We see this even with inflating currencies, such as the Japanese yen, where irrespective of the level of interest rates monetary expansion merely accumulates as bank deposits. It is unusual for a population to go to the extremes evident in Japan, but equally, a population which realises its currency is declining in purchasing power has every reason to dispose of it in favour of goods, maintaining lower balances in consequence.
The complete rejection of a currency as the medium of exchange renders it utterly valueless and is the common outcome to every hyperinflationary collapse. Governments that become ensnared by inflationary financing face the growing certainty of a Venezuelan outcome.
For now, monetary authorities around the world are relying on public ignorance about money and the theory of exchange. Those who trouble themselves to consider how their currency’s purchasing power is actually changing will notice how it is declining more rapidly than official statistics say. This is deliberate. After the introduction of widespread indexation in the early 1980s governments devised methods to reduce the costs incurred. Changes in statistical methodology have achieved that, with consumer price indices now entirely suppressed, so much so that central banks claim to be struggling to get the CPI to rise to its two per cent target.
The evidence from independent analysts in America such as Shadowstats and the Chapwood Index is that real world prices there are rising at closer to a ten per cent rate and have been for the last ten years. With the FMQ having grown at a monthly compounding annualised rate of 9.6% from the Lehman crisis to the end of 2019, the truth about price inflation appears closer to independent analysts’ calculation than the official CPI. Furthermore, there is little evidence of noticeable change in savings rates or cash hoarding over the period, which would have affected the general level of prices.
The first to realise that the purchasing power of a currency is declining and will continue to do so are usually those who own it for reasons other than as a normal medium of exchange. These are foreign holders who have accumulated currencies other than their own government’s fiat money as a result of trade and have chosen to retain it instead of selling it in the foreign exchanges. And there is a second group of foreign holders which has diversified investment portfolios into foreign financial markets.
These groups are primarily sensitive to external economic and financial factors, such as changes in the outlook for trade, financial asset values and their requirements to hold liquidity in their own currencies. It stands to reason that a state that manages to run continuing deficits on the balance of trade and retain an accumulation of foreign ownership of its currency is vulnerable to changes in international sentiment. This is the situation the dollar finds itself in, with US Treasury TIC figures revealing foreigners own financial securities worth approximately $20.6 trillion, and additionally bank deposits and commercial and US Treasury short-term bills totalling $6.15 trillion. In other words, foreign ownership of the dollar is 130% of the CBO’s estimate of current US GDP.
The accumulation of foreign dollar positions was due to a number of factors: the dollar is the international reserve currency, trade expectations were of continual global growth, the perpetuation of US trade deficits, increasing portfolio investment and a rising dollar. Global trade is now contracting, and the dollar has begun to decline. Commercial priorities are changing from global expansion to conserving capital.
With the global economic outlook deteriorating rapidly, the dollar is notably over-owned by foreigners, which is not counterbalanced by American ownership of foreign currencies. Most of US foreign financial interests are denominated in dollars with exposure to foreign currencies remarkably small at $714bn at end-June.
China has already declared a policy of reducing her dollar investments in US Treasury bonds and is selling her dollars to buy commodities. Few realise it, but China is doing what ordinary people do when they begin to abandon a currency — dumping it for tangible goods which will cost more in future due to the dollar’s declining purchasing power. And as the dollar’s purchasing power declines measured in commodities more nations are likely to follow China’s lead.
When you see a chart of the expansion of money supply, as illustrated in Figure 2 below and combine that with a falling dollar in the foreign exchanges, it is only a matter of time before increasing members of the domestic population begin to follow the foreigners’ lead.
Compared with the past, there is a generation of millennials which through their understanding of cryptocurrencies has learned about the debasement of fiat currencies by their governments. It remains to be seen whether this knowledge will bring forward the general public’s understanding of monetary affairs for an earlier abandonment of money for goods.
Banking and its cyclical consequences
Not only are some of the global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) highly leveraged on their balance sheets — which one would expect at the end of a period of bank credit expansion — but in most cases stock markets are valuing their equity at a fraction of their balance sheet book values, contrasting with outrageously high valuations for non-financial stocks in the most severe economic downturn ever seen in peacetime.
Table 1 below illustrates the point by incorporating the combination of balance sheet gearing and stock market valuations for all the G-SIBs to give a multiple of balance sheet assets to market capitalisation, ranking them from most dangerous to the least on this measure. The only banks in the list with market capitalisations higher than balance sheet equity — price to book ratios of more than one — are North American banks, which might explain why critical leverages are not recognised as a systemic problem in US financial markets
The three highest leverages by a country mile are of Eurozone banks: remember these are just the G-SIBs — there will be many commercial banks as highly leveraged which are not on this list. To have your equity valued at only 15% of book value, which is the indignity suffered by the French bank, Société Générale, should send warning signals to French banking regulators. But they insist on only looking at the ratio of balance sheet assets to balance sheet equity; which for Soc Gen is still an eye-watering 21.4 times. Unlike the regulator, investors appear to think this bank is most likely bankrupt, its share price little more than a call option on its survival.
It is a problem which particularly affects banks in the Eurozone. And experience tells us that the numbers reported by banks are bolstered by their gaming of the regulatory system, which is why when a bank fails the outcome is always worse than the pre-failure numbers would suggest possible.
Large banks do not operate in national silos, having trade finance activities, foreign exchange and derivative trading, lending in foreign currencies and even substantial branches and subsidiary operations abroad. The idea that a crisis in the Eurozone, or Britain for example, can be contained to national boundaries is wishful thinking. With the exception of Wells Fargo, US G-SIBs come out better than those of other jurisdictions, but that will not save them from a systemic crisis originating elsewhere.
While we can point to the end of the credit cycle, there is no doubt that Covid-19 has precipitated a more immediate crisis for commercial banks. The official talk is no longer of a V-shaped recovery, and businesses are on life support.
In the near future, a banking crisis seems inevitable. The best case is it is contained by either governments nationalising all banks subject to failure, or they end up supported directly by their respective central banks, which given the crisis in the US repo market a year ago can be said to be already happening. For the inflationists there is the consolation that money-printing can then be used to support failing businesses through the banks with obstructive commercial considerations removed.
Interest rates
The principal control mechanism deployed by monetary planners is management of interest rates. They are under the delusion that a reduction of interest rates is a stimulus to industrial investment and therefore the betterment of the economy, whereas all their suppression achieves is the destruction of savings and the advancement of malinvestments.
Their delusions were Keynes’s, and remain so with all his acolytes, among which monetary policy planners are numbered. Interest rates are simply the expression of time preference, the cost that a borrower pays to achieve temporary possession. All goods share this feature, and sound money in free markets reflects an average of the time preference of these goods.
In Keynes’s General Theory, a search of the index reveals just one reference to time preference, which occurs three times on the same page and nowhere else. This vital topic is thus dismissed. Keynes accepted that there is time preference but became confused as to what it represents. He merely saw it as a psychological counterpart to his invention of the propensity to consume and failed to make the connection between time preferences for goods and their monetary representation. Since he judged it to be solely related to money as opposed to possession, for him it left open the possibility that interest rates can be managed for a desired economic outcome. This was despite the evidence of which he was otherwise aware, that managing interest rates with a view to controlling the rate of inflation did not work, and that the correlation was between wholesale borrowing costs and the general price level, not its rate of change represented by an inflation rate.[iv] Keynes named it Gibson’s paradox after its discoverer, but since he could not explain the paradox, he chose to ignore it as have all his followers.
For these reasons, managing interest rates to achieve economic outcomes, including recent introductions of negative rates, has proved to be a lamentable failure. But as the currency loses purchasing power, the reflection of time preferences for goods will see an additional factor related to money itself. Thus, time preference expressed in dollar terms becomes significantly higher than justified solely by the deferred ownership of goods. The foreign exchanges insistence that future currency depreciation due to monetary inflation be taken into account will then render the authority’s task of suppressing interest rates impossible.
The Fed will find that in the absence of a significant increase in savings — something it is determined should not happen anyway — as well as financing a deteriorating Federal deficit, it will have to absorb foreign sales of US Treasury, agency and corporate bonds. Foreigners are then reluctant possessors of surplus dollars.
In the absence of a rising level of domestic savings, a rapidly deteriorating budget deficit feeds through to one or both of two outcomes. As an identity of national accounting and in the absence of an increase in savings, a budget deficit is mirrored by a trade deficit, both of which in this new fiscal year on present indications are likely to expand to anything between three and five trillion dollars. That is the first outcome, and if President Trump is re-elected next month this deterioration will likely lead to increased hostility against America’s importers.
The second problem, in view of the first, is how importers already overloaded with dollars will respond to the increasing quantity of additional dollars accumulating in their bank accounts from an increasing trade imbalance. The answer must be that they have no reason to hold on to them. And unless the US Treasury buys these unwanted dollars, deflating the quantity in circulation, these dollars will end up driving the exchange rate lower and inflating prices in the domestic economy.
We can see the conditions where the dollar is driven down against other currencies as only a first step, and we are now aware that China is in the vanguard of selling dollars for commodities, likely to be joined by others as the dollar declines. Consequently, the purchasing power of the dollar — already deteriorating at a ten per cent clip according to independent estimates — is bound to deteriorate at a greater pace.
By its statements and actions, the Fed confirms a belief that an increase in price inflation can be controlled by raising interest rates. Consequently, a falling dollar in the foreign exchanges will present it with an insuperable dilemma: does it raise interest rates to protect the dollar and thereby burst the bubble in financial assets and force the Federal Government’s finances into insolvency? Or does it just let price inflation rip? The choice will be as black or white as that.
Almost always, central banks in this invidious position end up with a compromise, raising interest rates too little too late. Just occasionally, they raise overnight interest rates to stratospheric levels in an attempt to restore order by squeezing the speculators. Other than the temporary effects of the latter expedient, we know from Gibson’s paradox that raising interest rates to control price inflation does not work. And with 130% of the GDP statistic currently represented by foreign ownership of dollars, the bulk of nearly $27 trillion like an elephant in the room is overhanging the foreign exchanges. Worse still for the Fed, Gibson’s paradox tells us that even if the Fed raised interest rates to compensate fully for loss of purchasing power it would not be sufficient to stabilise the currency: that requires the adoption of sound money policies and a stop to inflationism.
The way to look at it is by understanding the foreigners’ assessment of time preference, comprised of a general level for the exchange of goods and an additional level peculiar to a depreciating currency. Therefore, irrespective of the Fed’s interest rate policy market forces represented by foreign interests will take over control of interest rates, and the Fed’s bond bubble will be burst. Rising yields for US Treasuries will collapse the equity market and the market for corporate debt. These events will threaten any remaining foreign interest in the dollar and its capital markets even further. In short, the policy of inflating a financial asset bubble becomes impossible to sustain and its failure will take the dollar down with it as well.
This was why when John Law’s Mississippi bubble burst three hundred years ago, by October 1720 his currency, the livre, was worthless on the foreign exchanges. The collapse had started eleven months earlier, when Law accelerated the inflation of the livre to support a failing share price. The Fed embarked on a doppelganger acceleration of monetary inflation on 23 March for the whole US bond market. If we replicate the John Law experience, the dollar could become valueless in a matter of months.
It is becoming clear to a growing audience that in the absence of a change in inflationary policies, the days of an unbacked dollar are rapidly coming to an end, and it will take down the international fiat order upon which it is based.
- Gold Prices Supported By Western Investors As Consumer Demand In China And India Slows
Gold Prices Supported By Western Investors As Consumer Demand In China And India Slows
Tyler Durden
Fri, 10/02/2020 – 23:20Some of the world’s most well known investors aren’t being coy about wanting to get exposure to gold. In addition to Berkshire Hathaway’s addition of Barrick Gold, Bridgewater also invested in gold backed ETFs during the second quarter.
In fact, holding up gold’s price is interest from the West that is offsetting softer demand from the East, according to FT. The demand coming out of the West has been spurred by the impact of the coronavirus and, more specifically, the idea of a path to endless money printing.
David Tait, chief executive of the World Gold Council, told FT that gold’s rally “has focused a lot of people who had historically looked at gold as the Armageddon trade to look at it through a broader lens”.
In places like India and China, however, demand for gold has been relatively soft. Buyers in the two biggest consumer markets have either been selling their holdings or borrowing against them.
The question then becomes whether or not retail consumption can continue to drive gold’s strength – and what would happen if demand from the West dries up all of a sudden. The last time demand dried up heavily in the West, gold plunged from $1,920/oz. to $1,200/oz. in 2013.
One tailwind is the fact that gold ETFs now make up 35% of global demand compared to just 8% a year ago. But inflows into these funds look as though they could be slowing. For example the GLD registered withdrawals of money in September for the first time in eight months.
A plunge in gold could trigger further selling by many of the same retail investors that have kept the commodity afloat. Gold is currently about 10% lower than its late summer highs.
Adrian Ash, head of research at BullionVault, said: “One risk [scenario] here is that Asian buyers put a floor under the market. But with demand being so abject in the big consumer nations where will that floor be?”
China and India account for more than half of global gold purchases, but demand has fallen 56% in India over the first half of the year. Suraj Popley, who owns a jewelry store in a busy neighborhood of Mumbai said: “People are coming to sell gold, in case they require cash, in case they require liquidity. Very few people are coming to buy.”
Terence Lucien, head of mutual funds at PhonePe in Bangalore said: “There is an affinity towards gold. The way Indians have bought it traditionally, there have been people buying in excess.”
But demand has slowed, also as a result of pandemic-induced lockdowns. Weddings have been postponed and have reduced the appetite for lavish spending. Longer term consumer demand is also falling; down from 900 tons a year from 2010 to 2015 to about 700 tons last year.
Shekhar Bhandari, head of precious metals at Kotak Mahindra Bank, thinks the market will rebound eventually: “Have weddings been postponed? The answer is Yes. Is the number of marriages over the [long term] going to decrease? No.”
China has seen a similar plunge in consumer demand. The country saw its lowest level of consumer demand since 2007 during the first half of this year at just 152.2 tons.
Jeremy East, a Hong Kong-based former Standard Chartered banker, said: “There’s no gold going into China and very little going into India this year. That means the [western] ETF guys need to keep buying, [especially] if at the end of the year China and India are still not buying . . . That gold has got to find a home somewhere. The market needs more money to come in to keep absorbing this gold.”
David Govett, a veteran precious metals trader concluded: “Covid-19 cases are on the rise, governments are starting to panic again, economies are facing down the barrel of a second lockdown. All in all, it should be a perfect storm for gold. There’s too much uncertainty in the world to be short gold.”
- KNKX, Cliff Mass, & The Undermining Of American Democracy
KNKX, Cliff Mass, & The Undermining Of American Democracy
Tyler Durden
Fri, 10/02/2020 – 23:00Our democracy is threatened.
It is threatened by rioters using violence as a political tool, by individuals intimidating politicians through aggressive home visits, by Presidential debates where name calling and incivility rule, by the loss of a sense of physical safety that is a necessity for a civil society, by destructive hyper-partisanship, and by the suppression of freedom of speech and diversity of viewpoints.
There are few better examples of the suppression of freedom of speech and viewpoint diversity than the recent partisan actions by the management of KNKX, and this blog will review this issue. I will discuss the termination of my weekly weather segment because of KNKX management’s unhappiness with my personal political free speech in social media. And I will demonstrate the extreme hypocrisy of their actions, with their leadership’s use of nearly identical language for their own political advocacy.
Freedom of speech and respect for viewpoint diversity is the foundation of our democracy.
Only in a free society where differing ideas can be offered and compete, can citizens consider all sides of important issues and make wise decisions.
If advocates of one side of an issue can silence the speech of others, the inevitable result will be poor decision making and the undermining of our democracy.
The founders of our nation and subsequent political leaders recognized the central role of free, unfettered speech for the maintenance of our democratic system:
“If men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter…. reason is of no use to us; the freedom of speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the slaughter.”— George Washington
“If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought — not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.”
– Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., U.S. Supreme Court justice
The management of public radio station KNKX made a decision in August that directly conflicts with the above principles.
Brief Summary of the Situation
On August 5th, I posted a blog (A City in Fear Can Be Restored) that talked about the boarded up City of Seattle and the irresponsibility of our city’s leaders; a blog that was also highly critical of violent rioters who were, and still are, destroying property, hurting people and their livelihoods, and intimidating individual political leaders. I talked about the damage being “reminiscent” of 1930s Germany (broken glass and more) and that the violent rioters were acting in several ways like the “brownshirts” of the last century.
The day following my blog post, KNKX leadership received a number of messages from partisan individuals who called for my dismissal, and without discussing the situation with me, KNKX management immediately canceled my weather segment. Joey Cohn and Matt Martinez (station manager and program director) called me after the decision was made….no debate allowed, no conversation…my segment was cancelled.
There are few more obvious examples of cancel culture.
In a note on their website they called my blog “misleading” and that it “did not reflect what we stand for.” I emailed both Joey Cohn and Matt Martinez, asking what I “got wrong”. I asked them what was misleading. They refused to answer. They refused to interact in any way.
Whether my blog was accurate was beside the point. I was expressing my political viewpoint in social media completely outside of my contributions to the station. And a public radio station, of all places, should not be in the business of suppressing free speech and limiting ideas. Imagine if your employer fired one of your coworkers for such a reason, and the chilling effects it would have on YOUR freedom of speech. You would quickly become fearful of expressing your viewpoint on anything controversial.
And after reading a half-dozen books on 1930s Germany, I believe the analogy I made is both compelling and reasonable, and I am ready to defend my comparisons. Both the rioters in Seattle (and Portland) and the 1930s brownshirts were organized thugs with a violent anti-capitalist political agendas. The revelations and continued violence of the past two months have provided substantial corroboration of my analysis, documenting the organized nature of the violence and that the goals of the rioters are far different than the peaceful protestors concerned about protecting black lives. In fact, the rioters detract and obscure the valuable messages of peaceful protestors.
Not only did KNKX’s actions contradict the essential principles of our democracy, but they also contradict Seattle civil law (Seattle Municipal Code Ch. 14.04) and the published principles of National Public Radio (NPR), something highlighted in the NPR Ethics Handbook:
“Our journalism includes diverse voices that reflect our society and divergent views that contribute to informed debate…We aggressively challenge our own perspectives and pursue a diverse range of others”
There are few more important roles of a public radio station than to foster diversity of viewpoint, and KNKX management acted to reduce diversity, not increase it. Destroying freedom of speech, not enhancing it.
For more details about the situation, please see a previous blog on the matter.
While KNKX management removed my segment because they disagreed with my viewpoint, KNKX leadership used social media with the same analogies, but in support of a different political narrative. A stunning example of hypocrisy and partisanship.
Hypocrisy
Although it was problematic to KNKX management that I noted the similarity of recent violent rioters with 1930’s brownshirts, they are content for station leadership and on-air contributors to compare President Trump and his administration to Nazis and fascists. In fact, there was a veritable Fuhrer-fest going on in the social media of KNKX leaders.
Consider leading members of the KNKX advisory board. Joan Tornow, a longtime member, climate activist, and one of the key advocates (for several years) of getting me ejected from the station because of my science-based communication on climate change, posted many Trump-Nazi tweets such as:
Ms. Tornow has posted more tweets with references to “brownshirts” in the Trump administration.
Another KNKX advisory board member and the moderator of the KNKX community facebook page, John Woltjer, constantly railed about Trump and that Trump voters were fascists (see below), and even called for the death of Republican Party.
In his leadership role as director of the KNKX community forum Facebook page, John Woltjer decided to prevent any additional comments about my situation or support for my retention on KNKX. Absolutely contradictory to free speech (see below).
Or consider KNKX Board Member Scott Alhsmith, who has compared Trump and conservatives with Nazis. A few examples
Goebbels was Hitler’s propaganda minister.
And the wonderful Art Thiel, KNKX sports commentator and in exactly the same position as I was as an outside contributor, tweeted about Trump being a Hitler-like goose-stepping character.
I could show you many more examples of KNKX leaders using Nazi references, but you get the message. KNKX management believes it is ok to use Nazi, brownshirt, and fascist analogies if one is attacking Trump and Republicans, but a terrible offense and cause for expulsion if one uses these same analogies for violent rioters who are destroying the fabric of civil society with wanton property damage, malicious personal violence, and intimidating political leaders with different viewpoints.
This not only reveals a disturbing political bias but profound hypocrisy in KNKX management.
Partisanship has entered the KNKX “leadership circle,” with tolerance for the viewpoints of only one side of the political divide. KNKX management believes that those with differing viewpoints have no place at the station.
KNKX management might consider the situation in the late 1940s and early 1950s when media fired commentators with “communist sympathies” in their outside writings and speech.
Freedom of speech and honoring of diversity of viewpoint protects individuals of ALL sides of the political spectrum, and KNKX’s actions were deeply destructive to that protection.
Next Steps
KNKX leadership, in giving in to the cancel-culture mob, has undermined basic democratic principles that serve as the foundation for our society. They did not show the tolerance for intellectual diversity that should be in the DNA of any public radio station.
KNKX was saved for one reason: to preserve diversity of viewpoint in our region. KNKX leadership, acting as they did, rejected the station’s reason for existence. Its birthright. And they showed disregard for KNKX listenership that lost a valued program.
I have asked KNKX leaders to reconsider their decision. Unfortunately, they have not been willing to engage.
It is now up to all of you.
If you believe KNKX management made a terrible mistake, one inconsistent with fostering freedom of speech/diversity of viewpoint, and contradictory to the essential role of a PUBLIC radio station, there are a few things you can do.
If you are a financial supporter of KNKX, you can ask them to reverse their decision, and in the meantime put your contributions on pause.
You can write their leaders (see below) requesting that they pay more attention to the core values of our democracy, such as freedom of speech and protection of diversity of ideas.
Or you can complain to the national leaders of National Public Radio (see contacts below).
I do ask that in your interactions with KNKX leadership, you do so in a civil, measured way. An intolerant mob stampeded KNKX to make a terrible mistake; hopefully, coherent reasoned arguments will persuade them to reverse their decision and to reclaim the ethical foundations of the station.
* * *
Contacts
Joey Cohen: KNKX General Manager: jcohn@knkx.org
Matt Martinez: Program Director: mmartinez@knkx.org
Claire Grace: Chair, KNKX Board: info@knkx.org
If you’d like to express your feedback via phone, I’ve included their contact number below:
877-677-5659
NPR Public Editor: link here.
- San Francisco Rents Crash Most On Record Amid Mass Exodus
San Francisco Rents Crash Most On Record Amid Mass Exodus
Tyler Durden
Fri, 10/02/2020 – 22:40A new report confirms what we’ve been talking about since the early days (read: here) of the virus pandemic, that is, an exodus out of major cities.
According to real estate analytics company Zumper, the exodus, out of San Francisco has been so great, that the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment collapsed more than 20% in September from a year ago to $2,830. Month over month, September rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the city fell by 7%.
Referring to the plunge in rent prices in San Francisco, Zumper said:
“Not only is this drop among the largest yearly decreases Zumper has ever recorded in our history of tracking rental prices, but it was also the first time the median 1-bed price in San Francisco was priced below $3000. These combined trends show just how drastically the market has changed in the nation’s most expensive city to rent.”
Zumper CEO Anthemos Georgiades, who was quoted by CNBC, said a flood of supply is hitting the market:
“Some renters may be inclined to move to the suburbs to get more space, as the Covid-19 pandemic spurred companies to close offices and allow employees to work from home. Facebook and Google, for example, have told employees they can work remotely at least through next summer,” Georgiades said.
The virus-induced downturn, resulting in the collapse of small businesses citywide, the decimation of low-income households, and high-unemployment, is forcing many folks across the metro area to downsize or move to less expensive areas. He said wildfires and hazardous air conditions were some other reasons for “tipping the balance about their medium-term location choices.”
Social unrest and the rise of violent crime have made many folks uncomfortable about raising a family in the dangerous metro area. Many are moving to rural communities of the Bay Area, from Marin County to Napa wine country and south to Monterey’s Carmel Valley.
Georgiades said it could take years for San Francisco real estate to heal from its pandemic wounds:
“Despite everything our data is showing, there are so many signals that it will recover, however contrarian this point may sound,” he said. “However, I think we’re talking years to fully recover, not months.”
Georgiades’ view of a multi-year exodus is supportive of our piece titled “Real Estate Expert Warns’ Exodus’ From Cities Will Last Two Years.”
- Biden – A Catalyst To Accelerate US Decline?
Biden – A Catalyst To Accelerate US Decline?
Tyler Durden
Fri, 10/02/2020 – 22:20Authored by Egon von Greyerz via GoldSwitzerland.com,
The Chinese understand the long game and they have infinite patience. They have always known that they never needed to attack the US, financially or militarily.
Because China has invariably understood that the US would self-destruct.
POLITICS AND PRINCES DON’T MIX
The Duchess of Sussex who has dragged her poor husband, Prince Harry, into the US election has declared that this will be the most important election in history. She will most probably be right but for the wrong reason. Meghan Markle believes a Biden victory is the only way that the US can be saved, primarily because she can’t stand Trump (which is reciprocal). It probably doesn’t matter who wins the election when is comes to stopping the crash of the US economy and currency.
But what is guaranteed is that Biden’s policies will bankrupt America much faster than Trump’s. The profligate democrats will forgive trillions of debt, increase spending and reduce taxes for the masses.
The Chinese have waited patiently for this moment. They forecast the collapse of the “capitalist monetary system with the dollar as its prop” already half a century ago and how right they have been.
THE DAYS OF THE DOLLAR ARE COUNTED
A 98% fall in real terms – against gold – and a 78% fall against the Swiss franc tells the world that the days of the dollar are counted. So will we see the US bald eagle crash to the ground and a phoenix in the form of a new world currency emerge like in the 1988 Economist article?
Well, the dollar crash is guaranteed and a Biden victory will accelerate the move. But there is unlikely to be a new world currency in the near term. As the dollar falls and with it the US economy, China will gradually emerge as the next dominant economy and super power. But this will take time. Before that we will have chaos in the global financial system, economic collapse in many countries, political upheaval, riots, and wars.
BIDEN – A CATALYST FOR ACCELERATED US DECLINE
So is a Biden victory going to cause all this. No not solely. But just as the coronavirus sped up that fall of the US and world economy, Biden will be the catalyst for an accelerated decline of the US. Both events would have happened anyway but probably not as dramatically as with these two powerful catalysts – CV and Biden.
The coming US election will have bitter consequences for the US and the world whoever wins. It is likely to be aggressively fought not just before November 4th but more so after the result is declared. There will be a plethora of forums where the election result will be disputed and fought like in the courts, the media, the streets, in families and in politics of course.
CHURCHILL – WE SHALL FIGHT ON THE BEACHES
The fighting everywhere reminds me of Winston Churchill’s speech in parliament in June 1940 after the evacuation of Dunkirk:
“…… we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills;…”
Churchill’s speech was obviously to unify and prepare the nation for the major war effort ahead. But the consequence of the US election will be extremely divisive and damaging for the US whoever wins.
So 2021 is not just likely to be the start of a severe and long lasting economic downturn or collapse for the US but also an extended period of extreme political and social disharmony and discontent.
REMINISCING OVER BETTER TIMES
I have just entered my 52nd year of working life. But I can clearly remember life before that as a young boy in Sweden, back in the 1950s. This was a time when the family was the kernel of society and there was total respect for law and order. Mothers were at home and looked after the children. The wages of the father were sufficient to provide for the family. Very few people had debt and obviously there were no credit cards. Most things were paid for in cash. The police was unarmed and there was total respect for their authority. Sweden then was a very homogenous society with few immigrants. There was very little crime and virtually no violent crime. I remember visiting churches in the countryside and the doors were open and church silver would stand on shelves totally unprotected. Young children could move around freely without parental protection. Very few people went on holiday abroad or had cars or televisions. The economy was strong, based on real money with little debt. The quality of life was far superior to today. I am not talking about material things but people were much happier with less stress and strong respect for your fellow humans. There was integrity with strong moral and ethical values.
THE END OF AN ERA
I do realise that all of this could sound like a mature man nostalgically reminiscing and embellishing the past. There might be some truth in that criticism but I am quite convinced that the era we are now in is the end of a cycle when it comes to quality of life, values, crime, honesty, integrity. The current debt based economy with fake money and values is clearly creating a very unhappy society and many discontented people.
This is why the current cycle needs to soon come to an end. The world needs a proper forest fire which destroys the debt and all the bubble assets financed by printed money and worthless debt. The coming fall of the global debt edifice will be a relief for the world but it will obviously involve a long period of suffering. But only after this fall can the world start a new cycle with green shoots based on a sound monetary and financial system which is based on real values, both moral and material.
HALF A CENTURY OF DRAMATIC CHANGES IN THE WORLD
Coming back to my half a century of working life, there have also been some dramatic changes in the world. The table below shows what has happened to debt, dollar, GDP & stocks during my 51 years’ involvement with financial markets, between 1969 and 2020. US federal debt is up 75x and GDP is only up 20x. There is no clearer evidence that the US economy is running on empty and that more and more debt is required to produce an increase in GDP in nominal terms.
DEBT DEFAULT COMING
US debt to GDP has now reached 135% against 35% in 1969 and growing. These debt levels are unsustainable for future growth. With falling tax revenues and rising expenditure, there is zero chance that this debt will ever be reduced. And when interest rates go up, the US will not even be able to service the debt. So a debt default is very likely in the next few years.
Whilst US GDP is up 20x since 1969, China’s GDP is up 175x. There can be little doubt that China will be the next global economic superpower. Only a revolution in China would stop that.
Gold is up 53x since 1969 and the Dow 34x. If dividends after tax are included and reinvested, the rise of the Dow and gold would be fairly equal.
I started the article with China’s view, in 1971, on the future of the dollar and the US economy. The debt explosion and slow GDP growth are clear evidence of how right China was.
But the dollar’s 98% fall against gold and 79% against the Swiss franc confirms China’s 1971 prediction:
“…..the seriousness of the US economic crisis and the decay and decline of the entire capitalist system.”
“…..mark the collapse of capitalist monetary system with the US dollar as its prop…. Nixon’s new economic policy cannot extricate the US from financial and economic crisis.”
So there we have it. The wise Chinese saw half a century ago what would happen to the US, the dollar and the capitalist system and they knew already then that they would be the main beneficiaries.
But destruction of currencies and fall of empires is not new in history. Von Mises stated this phenomenon very eloquently:
2021 THE CHINESE YEAR OF THE GOLDEN OX
2021 will be the Chinese year of the Metal or Golden Ox. It will also be the 50th anniversary of Nixon’s fatal decision to end the gold backing of the dollar.
As the golden ox rises in China, the US bald eagle will crash to the ground as a symbol of the crashing dollar and US economy.
2021 is likely to be an ominous year in the global economy. We may not see the “final and total catastrophe of the currency system” completed already then but we are likely to see the start of the final dollar collapse and a major surge in gold and silver.
Anyone holding depreciating dollars and other currencies will soon regret not holding real money in the form of physical gold and silver.
- GM Deliveries Plunge 10% Year Over Year In Q3
GM Deliveries Plunge 10% Year Over Year In Q3
Tyler Durden
Fri, 10/02/2020 – 22:00In numbers that are massive for the auto industry, where comps are generally measured in basis points, General Motors saw a 10% plunge in deliveries for Q3 2020.
The company delivered 665,192 vehicles during the quarter, despite sales improving sequentially during each month within the quarter. September foreshadowed slightly less pain for Q4, with YOY sales increases toward the end of the month, the company said while doing damage control in its PR.
Kurt McNeil, GM vice president, U.S. Sales Operations said: “Our dealers are doing exceptionally well utilizing a combination of customer-facing online technologies – such as Shop. Click. Drive. – and showroom sales to deliver vehicles safely to our customers. This is contributing to retail share gains while we continue to refill the pipeline.”
He continued: “Industry-wide, dealers are selling a high mix of large pickups as the summer comes to an end. Our strong large pickup and all-new full-size SUV lineups from Chevrolet and GMC are selling extremely fast.”
But that didn’t stop Fiat’s Dodge Ram from outselling GM’s Chevy Silverado line. Despite Ram deliveries slipping 3.4% YOY to 156,157 units, Chevy’s Silverado fell 5.4% to 145,525 units. The Silverado still has the edge in total number of vehicles sold for the year, but Q4 could see that lead upended.
“GM’s large pickup trucks sold well,” their press release says, before calling the rebound in retail auto sales “resilient” heading into the fourth quarter. “Super low auto loan interest rates have boosted retail auto sales; yet more strength comes from pandemic-induced demand,” GM economist Elaine Buckberg said.
In other words: the Fed saved our ass and the party goes on.
GM says the momentum behind the business now is due to:
- Consumers seeing private vehicles as a safe space for both local and long-distance trips
- Households using the money they saved from not taking vacations on buying vehicles
- City residents buying vehicles, likely in an effort to get away from not just Covid, but the civil unrest across the country
- The sharp rebound in housing permits is a positive signal for overall auto demand
- Higher home construction activity and strong demand for boats and RVs are particularly favorable for heavy-duty pickups
But given the poor comps and the company’s embarrassing involvement with Nikola, it just doesn’t seem like the GM of decades ago. Under Mary Barra, it’s tough to see GM as the American powerhouse it once was.
Co-op’d at GM. Once a dominant bastion of technology, educated/skilled workers and employer of gargantuan number of Americans via suppliers, research funding, science, machine tools, engineering, materials, supply chains, etc. 10+ million US jobs. How the mighty have fallen.
— B (@123MathMan) October 1, 2020
- Department of Labor Acknowledges Unemployment Checks Are Bouncing
Department of Labor Acknowledges Unemployment Checks Are Bouncing
Tyler Durden
Fri, 10/02/2020 – 21:40US Virgin Island residents earlier this week were reporting to the Consortium that unemployment insurance checks provided to them by the Dept. of Labor were worthless.
One resident, whose check was for over $300, said he realized the check had bounced Tuesday. “People here suffering and you’re telling me they are sending out checks and don’t have any money in the account,” he said.
Another resident said via Facebook message, “My unemployment check bounced and now my bank account is in the negative. It’s really hard in a time of need.”
A third person, also through the Consortium’s Facebook platform, said, “Two of my checks bounced from the Dept. of Labor.”
In a release Thursday, D.O.L. said it met with bank representatives “to further ensure that payments made to unemployment recipients are being honored.”
The department explained that checks bounced because D.O.L. did not replenish accounts before unemployment insurance beneficiaries attempted to clear the checks.
“There were reports of a timing issue, with the settlement of the draw made by V.I.D.O.L. and the transmission of funds to the bank, that affected the clearing process. Some checks deposited from banks other than Banco Popular may have incurred some issues,” D.O.L. said.
“Bank representatives advise the department that individuals who are affected should retain and redeposit those checks,” the department concluded.
- Airbnb Cancels Halloween Rentals In Bid To Halt Parties
Airbnb Cancels Halloween Rentals In Bid To Halt Parties
Tyler Durden
Fri, 10/02/2020 – 21:20Airbnb has canceled one-night rentals over Halloween weekend as part of an ongoing effort to crack down on party houses.
The San Francisco-based company is now blocking new one-night reservations, and are offering refunds to any previously booked nights over the holiday weekend, according to ABC News.
In addition, the company will ‘look more closely’ at two and three-night reservations during Halloween – with some guests facing rejection if they try to book an entire house close to their own residence during that period, and have no history of positive reviews on the service.
Airbnb has taken a series of steps to crack down on parties since last year’s shooting. Last November, it started manually reviewing U.S. and Canadian reservations to weed out suspicious rentals.
The company’s efforts have intensified as it prepares for an initial public stock offering, which could come later this year.
In July, the company banned U.S. and Canadian guests under age 25 with fewer than three positive reviews from booking entire homes close to where they live. That policy was later expanded to the United Kingdom, Spain and France. And in August, Airbnb banned parties worldwide and limited occupancy at its rentals to 16 people. –ABC News
The company’s efforts come nearly a year after five people were killed in a shooting at an Airbnb Halloween party in Orinda, California.
According to the report, guests and hosts who violate the new rules may face legal action – noting that in August the company launched legal proceedings against a guest who held an unauthorized house party in Sacramento, California.
- Netflix's "Social Dilemma" Is Pure Deflection Because The Best Lies Always Contain Some Truth
Netflix’s “Social Dilemma” Is Pure Deflection Because The Best Lies Always Contain Some Truth
Tyler Durden
Fri, 10/02/2020 – 21:00Authored by Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com,
This blogger sees Netflix in the same way “Godfather”, Vito Corleone, viewed his enemies. In other words, I keep my books and blogs close, but television and movies closer. This is because social narratives are the new religion. As I’ve stated before in previous articles, I have a love-hate relationship with Netflix. It offers a convenient and affordable access to an impressive library of film and documentaries – but not without its cultural bias. It’s like anything else, buyer beware; or, rather, I simply slice off the meat and leave the bones when it comes to infotainment.
Sure, Netflix is the home of the Obamas and the Obama Administration’s former National Security Advisor, Susan Rice; so it’s no surprise why the company’s subscriber base is being programmed into Cultural Marxism, totalitarian Agenda 21 mandated Gaia worship and global taxation schemes. Netflix, by and large, programs people with Progressivism in the relative safety and comfort of their own homes. Yet, at the same time, I can cook up some homemade popcorn and conduct my research without spending $60 at the movie theater; back when there were movie theaters, of course.
In any event, I received a hat-tip from one of my progeny regarding a Netflix documentary entitled “The Social Dilemma”. The company’s website identifies the production as a “documentary-drama hybrid” that “explores the dangerous human impact of social networking, with tech experts sounding the alarm on their own creations”.
The hybrid presentation included interviews of, mostly, techno whiz kids who designed software purposed to addict the masses to apps such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, et al, and paired to a background narrative of a young Caucasian boy being unintentionally politically radicalized by algorithms designed to increase the profits of technology corporations.
In the documentary segments, the experts and former tech firm employees discussed the negative societal impacts of their creations while acknowledging their good intentions. For example, the co-inventor of the Facebook “Like” Button said he initially believed the widget would deliver more positivity into the universe; as opposed to increasing middle-school children’s social anxiety and despair.
In the film, the continuing fragmentation of America was attributed to separate groups of online users seeing different news feeds on their chosen online platforms. The reasons for the diverse digital presentations were attributed to algorithms and, even, artificial intelligence, interpreting the data sets of online users and then prompting new clickbait meant to engage them for longer intervals –and all solely in the pursuit of profits.
In fact, when one tech expert-turned-whistleblower was asked to state his greatest fear regarding the ultimate outcome of the aberrant algorithms and errant A.I., he said: “Civil war.” And, that is, fundamentally, the gist of “The Social Dilemma” (TSD): The natural pursuit of profits by tech companies sowing a technological wind of which western societies are now reaping the whirlwind.
Or, stated another way, TSD is a whitewash for the surveillance state.
In truth, the globalist elite have long planned the demise of the northern hemisphere’s (formerly) capitalist/industrial societies so a cashless (Marxist) system can rise from the ashes.
And if 2020 vision has made anything clear it is this: Free markets and the U.S. Constitution are gone baby gone. They have, instead, been replaced by economic and social tyranny. Yet, Netflix’s TSD would have us believe the fracturing of American society evolved as a result of Facebook’s news feeds and fake news.
Ironically, I received the following this week from someone who actually saw it on Facebook:
If you go to the southwest desert and catch 100 red fire ants as well as 100 large black ants and put them in a jar, at first, nothing will happen
However, if you violently shake the jar and dump them back on the ground the ants will fight until they eventually kill each other
The thing is, the red ants think the black ants are the enemy and vice versa, when in reality, the real enemy is the person who shook the jar
This is exactly what’s happening in society today:
Liberal vs Conservative
Black vs White
Pro Mask vs Anti Mask
The real question we need to be asking ourselves is who is shaking the jar and why??
Will ants behave as described in such circumstances? Obviously, that’s not the point. The point is who is actually fracturing the western societies today and why this is happening. According to Netflix’s TSD, our current societal shaking is merely an inadvertent byproduct of deviant software tweaked to maximize the profits of tech companies. Furthermore, according to the TSD tech “experts”, any other view of the societal “shaking” is the result of misguided faith in fake news and internet conspiracy theories.
Well, here’s a newsflash for the hi-tech whiz-kid whistleblowers: If the plans were published by the globalists decades ago… and they’ve since come to pass, then the conspiracies were more than just theories. And, certainly, fake news is defined by those promoting diverse media feeds on popular online platforms. Except those fooled still don’t understand the deception – or that the manipulation was not naturally occurring in the pursuit of profit; it was always part of the plan.
Here are some other “issues” with the Netflix “docudrama”:
-
Most internet users are far more active, and less passively manipulated, than the TSD “experts” presume.
-
Those interviewed in the film claimed algorithms direct content as a means to reinforce existing worldviews when, in fact, the content and algorithms are designed to shape specific ideas and, even, entire belief systems.
-
TSD, via Netflix programming, seemingly, promotes leftist agendas and dog whistles like climate change and fake news. At the same time, the documentary delegitimized Pizzagate and skepticism of COVID-19 propaganda. It is a fact that Pizzagate derived from actual e-mails released by Wikileaks and it’s true that widely disseminated COVID-19 agitprop has been debunked by respected medical professionals.
-
TSD identified Facebook as a primary facilitator of “fake news” and “conspiracies” like Pizzagate, Russian Facebook ads in the 2016 election, flat-earth theory, and COVID skepticism. Yet TSD completely ignored social media’s shameless propagation of the now-discredited Russian Collusion Hoax and the U.S. Democratic Party’s Ukrainian Impeachment gaslighting.
So why the blatant bias? Because Netflix is programming, pure and simple.
-
- Watch Live: NASA To Launch World's Most Expensive Toilet For ISS Use
Watch Live: NASA To Launch World’s Most Expensive Toilet For ISS Use
Tyler Durden
Fri, 10/02/2020 – 20:40NASA has designed a $23 million titanium toilet that will better accommodate female astronauts is headed to the International Space Station (ISS), reported AP News.
NASA and Northrop Grumman are targeting Friday night (Oct. 2) to launch the Cygnus NG-14 mission atop its Antares rocket. The rocket, carrying ISS-bound cargo, will deliver nearly 8,000 pounds of supplies and equipment, including the “space toilet.” The original launch was expected on Thursday from Wallops Island, Virginia. But a delay was seen in the final countdown.
The $23 million toilet weighs 100 pounds, measures 28 inches tall, and is half the size of the Russian-built toilets in use on the ISS.
Here’s a closer look at the world’s, and now undoubtedly outer space’s most expensive toilet:
Since the new toilet is about 65% smaller than Russian-built ones, it will be the premier toilet for astronauts to take number 1,2,3 while on future missions to the moon.
At the moment, here’s the Russian-toilet currently in use on the ISS.
Melissa McKinley, the project manager at Johnson Space Center, who was quoted by The Guardian, said the older toilets cater more to men. The new ones will better accommodate women – as we recently mentioned, NASA is preparing to send the first woman to the moon in 2024.
“Cleaning up a mess is a big deal. We don’t want any misses or escapes,” McKinley said, adding that, let’s just say everything floats in weightlessness.
Tonight’s launch is set for 9:16 p.m. EDT (0116 GMT). Readers from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore to Philadelphia to even New York City might be able to see NASA’s launch of the world’s most expensive toilet.
Here’s a live feed for tonight’s launch:
Readers may recall astronauts aboard the ISS are still hunting for a small air leak. They believe the leak could be coming from a Russian ISS module called Zvezda.
- Medical Journal Calls For Mandatory COVID Vaccine: "Non-Compliance Should Incur A Penalty"
Medical Journal Calls For Mandatory COVID Vaccine: “Non-Compliance Should Incur A Penalty”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 10/02/2020 – 20:20Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,
A paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine has called for mandating a coronavirus vaccine, and outlined strategies for how Americans could be FORCED to take it.
The paper warns that an immediate mandate for the vaccine would spark too much resistance and backlash, so the writers suggest that at first it should be voluntary.
However, it suggests that if not enough people are willing to get the vaccine within the first few weeks of it’s availability, it should be transformed into an obligation, with penalties put into place for refusal.
The paper outlines “six trigger criteria” that need to be met before the vaccine is made mandatory, and that it should be rolled out to specific demographics of the population first.
“Only recommended groups should be considered for a vaccination mandate,” initially, according to the paper, which cites “high risk groups” as the first set of people.
“[T]he elderly, health professionals working in high-risk situations or working with high-risk patients…persons with certain underlying medical conditions,” as well as those in “high-density settings such as prisons and dormitories” should be mandated to get the jab, the paper says.
It also suggests that active-duty military service members should be among the first that are forced into the vaccination.
The paper proclaims that “noncompliance should incur a penalty” and notes that it should be a “relatively substantial” one.
It suggests that “employment suspension or stay-at-home orders,” should be issued, but that fines should be discouraged because they can be legally challenged, and “may stoke distrust without improving uptake.”
The paper also suggests that government health authorities should avoid making public their close relationship with vaccine manufacturers, to quell public mistrust.
Just coincidentally, the authors of the paper reside at Yale and Stanford, institutions that have received substantial funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for vaccine development.
The prospect of denying freedom of movement to those who refuse to vaccinate has been floated recently in the UK, where government health officials have also suggested that the jab should be made mandatory.
In the US, calls have been made to make any vaccination mandatory with the likes of the New York Times expressing concern that half of Americans would refuse to take it.
In Canada, a poll recently revealed that 60 per cent think that when a vaccine for coronavirus becomes available it should be made mandatory.
In addition, Canada’s current Chief Public Health Officer appeared in a recently resurfaced 2010 documentary in which she advocated using mandatory “tracking bracelets” for people who refuse to take a vaccine after a virus outbreak.
- DoJ, FBI Prepare For Election Night Violence, Voting Disruptions
DoJ, FBI Prepare For Election Night Violence, Voting Disruptions
Tyler Durden
Fri, 10/02/2020 – 20:00During an election year that was marred by an unprecedented global pandemic and some of the worst political violence witnessed in the US since the 1970s, it’s hardly a surprise that the DoJ is planning to station officials at an election night “command center” at FBI headquarters in the J Edgar Hoover building.
With liberals still hysterical over President Trump’s answer to Chris Wallace’s final debate question about pledging to accept the election results, whatever they may be, the DOJ is intensifying its usual routine monitoring of election night activity to also brace for any problems with voting machines that might arise.
The DoJ has started preparing for a wide range of scenarios in recent weeks, though WaPo refused to go into much detail about the various ‘scenarios’ that the DoJ anticipates.
“The Department of Justice takes election security and integrity seriously, and this year is no exception,” said Kerri Kupec, a Justice Department spokeswoman.
The FBI said in a statement that, as in previous years, it is “committed to protecting the American public’s right to a fair and safe election by securing it” and that officials “are working closely with our federal, state, and local partners so everyone involved with safe-guarding the election has the information and resources necessary to respond in a timely manner to any violations that may arise.”
“Of course our preparations for 2020 take into account the current climate of the country,” the statement said. “As always, the FBI has a responsibility to plan for a host of potential scenarios.”
While one DoJ flak insisted that this type of planning happens any year, another assured WaPo that anxieties about widespread political violence on election day are much more intense this year, given the extremely toxic political environment.
“There have been concerns raised about the possibility of civil unrest, and those are concerns raised on both sides, for different reasons, and because of that, we’re paying particularly close attention to that possibility,” the official said. “I think that we would be remiss if we didn’t take the monitoring of election security and integrity particularly seriously.”
Individuals at the command center will include civil rights and national security experts who will monitor accounts of high profile incidents and news accounts for any signs of unrest.
Plans for the ‘command center’ had been in place before Tuesday night’s debate. The president has repeatedly urged his followers to keep their eyes out for misconduct at the polls. And on Tuesday, he cited reports about an incident at a Philly polling station as support for his insinuations about the Dems trying to rig the election.
Trump told Fox News back in August that he would like local law enforcement to patrol the polls. “We’re going to have sheriffs, and we’re going to have law enforcement and we’re going to hopefully have US attorneys…” Trump said, although federal law prohibits the presence of “armed men” at polling places. The DoJ does, however, employ specially trained poll monitors who watch for problems with voting. The FBI also regularly uses its command center for major events, like the State of the Union or a presidential inauguration.
- Do You Enjoy Beethoven? Then You Must Hate Women, Minorities, The Poor,…
Do You Enjoy Beethoven? Then You Must Hate Women, Minorities, The Poor,…
Tyler Durden
Fri, 10/02/2020 – 19:40Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,
Are you ready for this week’s absurdity? Here’s our Friday roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, risks to your prosperity… and on occasion, inspiring poetic justice.
Beethoven is a symbol of “exclusion and elitism”
The woke mob is attempting to cancel one of the most famous pieces of music in history – Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
Their aim? To thwart “wealthy white men who embraced Beethoven and turned his symphony into a symbol of their superiority and importance.”
Come again?
Prior to Beethoven in the mid 1700s, lower class Europeans would regularly attend symphonies. And they were apparently quite a rowdy bunch– hooting and hollering all throughout the performance, like a modern day rock concert.
Around the time that Beethoven rose to prominence in the early 1800s, however, the lower classes were excluded from attending symphonies because they didn’t keep quiet and applaud at the appropriate time.
So today’s woke mob believes that by playing or enjoying Beethoven’s Fifth, you are glorifying the exclusion of poor people, and by extension, women and minorities.
Click here to read the full story.
UK authorizes undercover agents to commit crimes
New legislation in the UK will allow undercover government agents to commit crimes.
The undercover agents from a slew of UK departments– from MI5 to the Environment Agency– will have to ask a judge permission to commit a particular crime while undercover.
But of course those authorizations will be hidden from the public, and even government prosecutors.
Which makes you wonder, where is the limit? The legislation doesn’t even specifically forbid murder.
It’s the ultimate inversion: the government can do literally whatever it wants, even break its own laws.
But you could be thrown in prison for going out in public without covering your face.
Click here to read the full story.
California to ban gasoline-powered vehicles
In a COVID world, Governors rule like kings with executives orders.
Now these legally binding proclamations have moved beyond public safety.
Using an executive order, the Governor of California decided to unilaterally ban the sale of gasoline-powered vehicles starting in 2035.
Maybe by then Californians will have a reliable electric grid.
As it stands, the state has to ration electricity, and beg people to turn off their appliances to keep the lights on.
Click here to read the full story.
Video shows driver narrowly escape mob, arrested by police
It’s apparently now standard in places like Los Angeles for police to stand down and allow protesters to block traffic and occupy entire streets and intersections.
If you are a driver caught in one of these mobs, that can be pretty scary.
The driver of a white Prius who found himself in this situation handled it pretty well. He looked for the quickest path out of the mob, and slowly and carefully drove through whatever small openings he could find.
And because this driver DARED to drive a car down a street, the mob chased him.
Video shows a pickup truck full of protesters speed after the Prius, cut him off, slam on the brakes, and then try to rip the man out of his vehicle. The protestors on foot catch up, and join the attempted lynching.
The Prius manages to escape again, and still not injure any of the “peaceful protesters” in the process.
But a short time later, police swooped in and arrested the Prius driver, NOT the woke vigilantes!
Apparently it’s now illegal to flee a dangerous mob.
Click here to watch the videos.
School suspends 9 year old for BB gun in his bedroom
Once again a school has punished a child for having a BB gun in his bedroom during remote learning.
The fourth grade boy from Louisiana named Ka Mauri was suspended for six days.
A teacher reported Ka after his brother tripped over a BB on screen during class. Ka picked up the fake gun, and moved it to the other side of his desk, where the barrel was visible on screen.
The school called that a federal weapons law violation, as if he brought the gun to school.
Ka was also subjected to an embarrassing mob attack when the school tasked his classmates to write letters about the incident.
And he will now be evaluated by a social worker.
Imagine the emotional toll this takes on a boy who did absolutely nothing wrong.
Click here to read the full story.
Spotify employees threaten strike if they can’t censor Joe Rogan
Earlier this year, Joe Rogan signed a $100 million deal to host his popular podcast with Spotify, and Spotify’s stock price soared.
Moving to the platform, certain episodes didn’t make the cut.
For example, episodes were removed where Rogan interviews controversial conservative figures, or openly discusses transgender issues.
In one transgender-themed episode, Rogan questions whether or not prepubescent children are capable of making far reaching decisions such as whether or not to take sex hormones. It was intended as an objective intellectual discussion. But the woke mob views this as “transphobic”.
But pulling these episodes wasn’t enough for some Spotify employees.
They want full editorial control to censor and edit Joe Rogan’s podcast episodes, add trigger warnings, and entirely veto particular episodes which they find upsetting.
The employees are threatening to strike if their demands are not met… but so far Spotify hasn’t caved.
Click here to read the full story.
* * *
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- Six Months After The Pandemic Started: Manhattan Offices Are Only 10% Full
Six Months After The Pandemic Started: Manhattan Offices Are Only 10% Full
Tyler Durden
Fri, 10/02/2020 – 19:20A vibrant economic recovery of America’s largest city that is New York City, depends on the return of office workers; otherwise, the absence of white-collar folks means a painful recovery is ahead.
As of Sept. 18, about six months after the virus pandemic began, only 10% of Manhattan office workers were back, according to The Wall Street Journal, quoting commercial real estate services and investment firm CBRE Group Inc.’s latest report. That represents a slight uptick from the 6% to 8% level seen in July, a month after strict social distancing measures were eased because of the virus pandemic.
Months and months of empty office buildings across the borough paralyzed the local economy, which resulted in a collapse in consumption as workers stayed home. The spillover effect has since led to a collapse in small businesses across the area.
CBRE’s report noted on a national level, about a quarter of office workers returned to their desks in September. The figure was higher in certain metropolitan areas such as Dallas at 40% and the Los Angeles metro area at 32%. The reoccupation rate across NYC is 32%.
The low rate of office workers returning to Manhattan is a significant disappointment for anyone who remotely thought NYC’s economic recovery would resemble a “V” by the fourth quarter of 2020.
With new clusters of cases emerging in Brooklyn and NYC’s northern suburbs in recent days, new fears of restrictions to businesses and schools could be nearing.
Already, mobility trends around the city, according to Apple’s Mobility Trends Tracker, shows driving, walking, and transit is slumping as the virus cases are increasing in the city.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said “significant action” is needed to mitigate the spread of the virus in hot spot areas. A continued rise in cases could affect the city’s reopening of schools.
New virus developments come as NYC prepares this week to reopen public schools and permit restaurants to allow some indoor dining. A surge in the virus and the slow return to the workplace suggests a vibrant recovery in the real economy won’t be seen this year. A direct consequence of the virus-induced downturn is the implosion of commercial real estate woes, an exodus of city-dwellers to suburbs, jump in murders and homelessness, and the collapse of small businesses.
So again, remind us how the real economy is in a “V” recovery?
- College Free Speech Crisis: "I Agree With You, But I Could Never Say It Publicly"
College Free Speech Crisis: “I Agree With You, But I Could Never Say It Publicly”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 10/02/2020 – 19:00By John Hirschauer of RealClearEducation
Georgetown Promotes Free Speech, but Students Don’t Feel It
Many Americans believe colleges and universities are failing to defend free speech and open inquiry on campus, as videos of student mobs shouting down speakers and undergraduates shrieking at their professors have helped to undermine popular faith in institutions of higher education.
Those viral moments, however, fail to capture the state of free expression on campus in its full nuance and complexity. To provide a more detailed look at the state of speech at American colleges and universities, RealClearEducation collaborated with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and the survey-research group College Pulse on the 2020 College Free Speech Survey.
Nearly 20,000 undergraduates at 55 major American colleges and universities participated in the survey. Students were asked a series of questions, meant to gauge their own commitment to free speech and their perception of their peers’ tolerance for diverse points of view. Institutions were ranked according to student sentiment on free expression.
The results were dispiriting. As RealClearEducation’s Nathan Harden highlighted on Tuesday, nearly “20% of students say that using violence to stop an unwanted speech or event is in some cases acceptable,” and some 60 percent of the undergraduates surveyed “say they have kept quiet due to fear of how others would respond.”
One university in particular stands out for the discrepancy between its official posture on free speech and the views of its students on the state of speech on campus. Georgetown University, which hosts the Free Speech Project at Georgetown University and is apparently committed to promoting free expression, struggled mightily in the 2020 College Free Speech Rankings, ranking 48th out of the 55 colleges and universities included.
A granular look at the data from Georgetown is startling. Forty percent of Georgetown undergraduates surveyed were not confident that the administration would support an embattled speaker in a free-speech controversy. Sixty-eight percent of students felt that it might be acceptable to shout down a speaker on campus, while 17% felt it could be acceptable in some cases to use violence to stop a speech on campus. This atmosphere of intolerance extends to the classroom, many students said. When asked to share a moment where the student felt unable to express an opinion on campus, one Georgetown student wrote, “In almost every class, I feel like I [cannot] express my opinions.”
Georgetown’s code of conduct contains regulations that have the effect of stifling speech and negatively affecting the school’s overall score. For example, “incivility”– defined as any language that “disrespects another individual” – is forbidden at Georgetown, and “uncivil” students could face disciplinary actions for their remarks. This creates a potential chilling effect on speech, and “disrespect” can, of course, have an expansive definition in the hair-trigger world of undergraduate education.
Dr. Joshua Mitchell, who teaches political theory in Georgetown’s Government department, is not surprised that many students are uncomfortable expressing themselves candidly in class. “I’ll teach something in class that questions a politically correct position on a particular issue, and when I do, I’ll get crickets. No one will speak up and say anything. Then, students will come to office hours and say, ‘I agree with you, but I could never say it publicly.’”
“It is a complicated picture,” Mitchell said. “It’s not as though faculty and administration at Georgetown are actively suppressing conservative speech – it’s subtler than that, for the most part. When there is an opportunity to replace a conservative faculty member, for example, the faculty will decide that they’re not going to replace him. There is a quiet agreement not to reach out to people on the other side.” When the faculty is almost exclusively comprised of professors with one worldview, Mitchell said, students who disagree with the prevailing views of the faculty are less likely to speak up.
A Georgetown University spokesperson responded to a request for comment by noting that the university “is committed to the free and open exchanges of ideas, even if those ideas may be found difficult or objectionable by some.” The spokesperson said that Georgetown’s “long-standing Speech and Expression policy has guided our approach to speech while maintaining the fundamental right of members of our community to free expression, dialogue and academic inquiry. We respect members of our community’s right to express personal views and are committed to maintaining the values of academic freedom and serving as a forum for the free exchange of ideas, even when those ideas may be controversial and objectionable to some.”
While the university reaffirmed its commitment to free expression, Dr. Mitchell laments that many students “don’t see many alternatives” to the “hegemony of identity politics.” He thinks that the identitarian focus of many administrators is fostering an arid, “choreographed” conversation about difficult political issues on campus. Mitchell is hopeful, however, that things will improve. “There has been a subtle turn in the student body. There is a generational shift,” he said. “Many of the younger students at Georgetown know that the account identity politics gives is not adequate, and that you cannot build a society around it.”
- "Out Of Control" Super-Pig Population Is Spreading Rapidly Across US
“Out Of Control” Super-Pig Population Is Spreading Rapidly Across US
Tyler Durden
Fri, 10/02/2020 – 18:40The U.S. wild pig population is rapidly increasing across the country, which has been characterized as a ticking “feral swine bomb,” according to a new report.
“I’ve heard it referred to as a feral swine bomb,” Dale Nolte, manager of the National Feral Swine Damage Management Program (NFSP) at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), told The Atlantic.
Nolte said, “they multiply so rapidly. To go from a thousand to two thousand, it’s not a big deal. But if you’ve got a million, it doesn’t take long to get to 4 [million], then 8 million.”
Feral swine have caused significant damage to property, agriculture (crops and livestock), native species, and ecosystems, with an estimated damage cost of upwards $2.5 billion per annum. The hogs have a reputation for carrying at least 30 viral and bacterial diseases and at least 40 parasites.
Ryan Brook, a University of Saskatchewan biologist who researches feral pigs, estimates these highly invasive species will occupy 386,000 square miles across the country by the end of 2020. At the moment, the hogs are expanding at about 35,000 square miles per year.
Brook said many of the wild pigs are a crossbreed between domestic ones and European wild boar:
“The problem with the hybrids is you get all of the massive benefits of all of that genetics… It creates what we’d call super-pigs.,” he said.
According to Nolte, these super pigs are highly intelligent and have a good sense of smell, along with a shield of bone, up to 2 inches thick, around their shoulders, which offers some protection against small-caliber bullets.
At least 1.5 million of these hogs roam Texas, according to Texas Parks and Wildlife; these pigs have four tusks and are brown and black color once they mature. They can weigh between 75 to 250 pounds on average, and run up to 30 mph.
“Pig populations are completely out of control,” Brook warned.
- A Swarm Of Nearly 600 Earthquakes Rattles Southern California Sparking Speculation About "The Big One" Again
A Swarm Of Nearly 600 Earthquakes Rattles Southern California Sparking Speculation About “The Big One” Again
Tyler Durden
Fri, 10/02/2020 – 18:20Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,
Over the last few days, a swarm of almost 600 earthquakes has shaken southern California, and a lot of people are becoming extremely concerned about what will happen next. In fact, if you go on Twitter right now you will find a tremendous amount of speculation that “the Big One” could be coming. The experts are trying to calm the general public by assuring them that it is probably not likely that “the Big One” is imminent, but they don’t know for sure. Forecasting earthquakes is not like forecasting the weather, and experts will continue to tell us that a major event is not likely until the day when one finally happens.
But what everyone can agree upon is that earthquake swarms cause the probability of a major event to rise. Of course that doesn’t mean that there will be a major event associated with this current earthquake swarm, and there may not be a major event if an earthquake swarm occurs next month. But without a doubt what is going on in southern California right now is worth watching.
According to the Los Angeles Times, this current swarm of quakes has been centered “around the town of Westmoreland in Imperial County”…
A swarm of hundreds of small earthquakes struck in and around the town of Westmoreland in Imperial County over the past couple days
The Southern California Seismic Network recorded nearly 600 earthquakes, the smallest a magnitude 1.1, as of 6 a.m. Thursday, according to a report from the project by Caltech and the U.S. Geological Survey.
Most of the rumbling has been relatively minor, but during a period of less than three hours on Wednesday there were 45 earthquakes of at least magnitude 3.0…
‘In just 2.5hr Westmorland swarm has had 45 quakes of M≥3.0. One of the largest swarms we have had in the Imperial Valley – and it is historically the most active swarms in SoCal,’ seismologist Dr Lucy Jones wrote on Twitter on Wednesday night.
A magnitude 4.9 quake has been the largest event so far, and we shall see what else happens over the next several days.
According to Dr. Lucy Jones, this earthquake swarm has occurred along some small faults “that connect the San Andreas and Imperial faults”…
None of the earthquakes that have been happening in the Imperial Valley are anywhere near the San Andreas fault. They are in the Brawley Seismic Zone – a network of small faults that connect the San Andreas and Imperial faults.
This is an area that has had some pretty serious earthquake swarms in the past.
In fact, the USGS is telling us that there were also large swarms in the area in 1981 and in 2012…
The quake swarms “are located in an area of diffuse seismic activity between the San Andreas fault in the north and the Imperial fault to the south,” the USGS says. Previous swarms in the area happened in 1981 and 2012.
“Past swarms have remained active for 1 to 20 days, with an average duration of about a week,” the USGS reported.
Obviously the swarms of 1981 and 2012 did not produce something much larger, and hopefully this one will not either.
But the USGS is warning that there is a “very small probability” that a quake of magnitude 7.0 or above could potentially happen…
‘The ongoing swarm could trigger an earthquake significantly larger than the M4.9 that occurred on the 30 September (i.e., M7.0 and above),’ they warned.
‘While this is a very small probability, if such an earthquake were to occur, it would have serious impacts on communities nearby and would be followed by aftershocks that would increase the number of smaller earthquakes per day.’
However, as I noted above, the truth is that they don’t really know.
None of the experts has any way to reliably forecast earthquakes in advance, and someday when “the Big One” finally strikes there may not be any sort of advance warning at all.
But the experts do believe that it is inevitable that eventually “the Big One” will arrive, and one particularly alarming study concluded that the full length of the San Andreas fault could potentially “unzip all at once”….
For years, scientists believed the mighty San Andreas—the 800-mile-long fault running the length of California where the Pacific and North American plates meet—could only rupture in isolated sections.
But a recent study by federal, state and academic researchers showed that much of the fault could unzip all at once, unleashing a rare, singular catastrophe. Now, insurers have used that research to come up with a new analysis of the damage that could be caused by statewide break of the San Andreas.
Could you imagine the utter devastation that such an event would cause?
Scientists have discovered that enormous earthquakes in the distant past caused the ground to sink by as much as three feet in some portions of southern California, and some scientists have warned that if such an event happened today that “it could plunge large parts of California into the sea almost instantly”…
The Big One may be overdue to hit California, but scientists near LA have found a new risk for the area during a major earthquake.
They claim that if a major tremor hits the area, it could plunge large parts of California into the sea almost instantly.
If you have read my new book, you already understand why I keep relentlessly warning people about these things.
Unfortunately, one day the time for warning will be over and disaster will strike. According to Cal State Fullerton professor Matt Kirby, a big enough quake could cause vast stretches of southern California to sink dramatically “relatively instantaneously”…
‘It´s something that would happen relatively instantaneously,’ Kirby said.
‘Probably today if it happened, you would see seawater rushing in.’
Right now, most people living in California are not thinking about earthquakes because they are dealing with the worst wildfire season in the history of the state.
Millions of acres have already burned, and the skies have been filled with smoke for weeks on end.
For many residents, this has been the final straw and they are finally moving out of the state.
But of course most Californians will just continue to stay where they are no matter what happens, and one day “the Big One” will turn all of their lives upside down in a single moment.
- Daily Briefing – October 2, 2020
Daily Briefing – October 2, 2020
Tyler Durden
Fri, 10/02/2020 – 18:10Real Vision CEO and co-founder, Raoul Pal, joins senior editor, Ash Bennington, to interpret the latest financial newsflow. Raoul explores the possibility of a top forming in U.S. equities through the lens of his “GMI crash pattern.” He and Ash then analyze President Trump’s diagnosis of COVID-19 and investigate its potential market impact. Raoul then talks about today’s interview with hedge fund legend Dmitry Balyasny as well as next week’s interview with bond kingpin Jeffrey Gundlach. Raoul and Ash briefly discuss the criminal charges brought against BitMEX, one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges. Lastly, Raoul shares his view on the enfeebled energy sector. In the intro, Real Vision’s Jack Farley breaks down the price action following the COVID-19 outbreak in the White House. - US Intelligence "Monitoring" Foreign Adversaries For Signs They'll Exploit President's Illness
US Intelligence “Monitoring” Foreign Adversaries For Signs They’ll Exploit President’s Illness
Tyler Durden
Fri, 10/02/2020 – 18:00US intelligence, the Pentagon, and national security officials are closely monitoring how America’s rivals and enemies “react” to Thursday night’s shock news of President Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis, for which he’s since said to be exhibiting mild symptoms.
“The U.S. military stands ready to defend our country and its citizens,” Joint Staff spokesperson Col. Dave Butler said Friday, according to Politico. “There’s no change to the readiness or capability of our armed forces.”
“What we are anticipating is that the Russian actors and probably the Iranians will play this up,” one anonymous defense official also added. Further the countries of China and North Korea are also being monitored, according to the report.
Defense Intelligence Agency foreign media monitoring room, file image. Specifically US intelligence will scrutinizing any “subtle increase in activity against us, knowing we are preoccupied, and the opportunity to test us, perhaps,” Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA Senior Intelligence Service officer, described to Politico.
The former CIA officer emphasized that “Our enemies will see us in a vulnerable state.”
And another defense official stated:
“There is always the possibility that adversaries will seek to exploit the information space and talk propaganda…We are definitely monitoring and keeping aware.”
Typically such “monitoring” takes place in foreign media observation rooms set up within most intelligence agency branch HQs, which reports to the chain of command major developments conveyed via foreign state news organizations abroad.
Meanwhile Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who serves on the powerful Committee on Foreign Relations, had this warning for US adversaries:
Any adversary who views news of @POTUS testing positive as an opportunity to test the United States would be making a grave mistake.
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) October 2, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Other commentators wondered about the near future possibility of a 25th Amendment crisis being triggered, transferring head of state powers to the Vice President.
Still others questioned whether the opaque and controversial ‘Continuity of Government’ protocols, which were subject to post 9/11 discussion and debate in media for a time, might eventually be triggered should the president’s health turn dire.
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