Today’s News 4th December 2021

• Victor Davis Hanson: Third-Worldizing America
  Victor Davis Hanson: Third-Worldizing America

  Authored by Victor Davis Hanson, op-ed via Townhall.com,

  In a recent online exchange, YouTuber Casey Neistat posted his fury after his car was broken into and the contents stolen. Los Angeles, he railed, was turning into a “3rd-world s-hole of a city.”

  The multimillionaire actor Seth Rogen chastised Neistat for his anger.

  

  Rogen claimed that a car’s contents were minor things to lose.

  He added that while living in West Hollywood he had his own car broken into 15 times, but thought little of it.

  Online bloggers ridiculed Rogen. No wonder – the actor lives in multimillion-dollar homes in the Los Angeles area, guarded by sophisticated security systems and fencing.

  Yet both Neistat and Rogen accurately defined Third Worldization: the utter breakdown of the law and the ability of the rich within such a feudal society to find ways to avoid the violent chaos.

  After traveling the last 45 years in the Middle East, southern Europe, Mexico, and Asia Minor, I observed some common characteristics of a so-called Third-World society. And all of them might feel increasingly familiar to contemporary Americans.

  Whether in Cairo or Naples, theft was commonplace. Yet property crimes were almost never seriously prosecuted.

  In a medieval-type society of two rather than three classes, the rich in walled estates rarely worry that much about thievery. Crime is written off as an intramural problem of the poor, especially when the middle class is in decline or nonexistent.

  Violent crime is now soaring in America. But two things are different about America’s new criminality.

  • One is the virtual impunity of it. Thieves now brazenly swarm a store, ransack, steal, and flee with the merchandise without worry of arrest.

  •  

  • Second, the Left often justifies crime as a sort of righteous payback against a supposedly exploitative system. So, the architect of the so-called 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, preened of the riotous destruction of property during the summer of 2020: “Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence.”

  Third Worldization reflects the asymmetry of law enforcement. Ideology and money, not the law, adjudicate who gets arrested and tried, and who does not.

  There were 120 days of continuous looting, arson, and lethal violence during the summer of 2020. Rioters burned courthouses, police precincts, and an iconic church.

  And there was also a frightening riot on January 6, when a mob entered Washington D.C.’s Capitol and damaged federal property. Of those arrested during the violence, many have been held in solitary confinement or under harsh jail conditions. That one-day riot is currently the subject of a congressional investigation.

  Some of those arrested are still – 10 months later – awaiting trial. The convicted are facing long prison sentences.

  In contrast, some 14,000 were arrested in the longer and more violent rioting of 2020. Most were released without bail.

  The majority had their charges dropped. Very few are still being held awaiting capital charges.

  A common denominator to recent controversies at the Justice Department, CIA, FBI, and Pentagon is that all these agencies under dubious pretexts have investigated American citizens with little or no justification – after demonizing their targets as “treasonous,” “domestic terrorists,” “white supremacists,” or “racists.”

  In the Third World, basic services like power, fuel, transportation, and water are characteristically unreliable: in other words, much like a frequent California brownout.

  I’ve been on five flights in my life where it was announced there was not enough fuel to continue to the scheduled destination. The plane was required either to turn around or land somewhere on the way. One such aborted flight took off from Cairo, another from southern Mexico. The other three were this spring and summer inside the United States.

  One of the most memorable scenes that I remember of Ankara, Old Cairo, or Algiers of the early 1970s were legions of beggars and the impoverished sleeping on sidewalks.

  But such impoverishment pales in comparison to the encampments of present-day Fresno, Los Angeles, Sacramento, or San Francisco. Tens of thousands live on sidewalks and in open view use them to defecate, urinate, inject drugs, and dispose of refuse.

  In the old Third World, extreme wealth and poverty existed in close proximity. It was common to see peasants on horse-drawn wagons a few miles from coastal villas. But there is now far more contiguous wealth and poverty in Silicon Valley. In Redwood City and East Palo Alto, multiple families cram into tiny bungalows and garages, often a few blocks from tony Atherton.

  On the main streets outside of Stanford University and the Google campus, the helot classes sleep in decrepit trailers and buses parked on the streets.

  Neistat was right in identifying a pandemic of crime in Los Angeles as Third Worldization.

  But so was Rogen, though unknowingly so.

  The actor played the predictable role of the smug, indifferent Third World rich who master ignoring – and navigating around – the misery of others in their midst.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/03/2021 – 23:40

• Tesla Has Officially Moved Its Headquarters To Austin
  Tesla Has Officially Moved Its Headquarters To Austin

  Tesla’s already announced plan to move its corporate headquarters out of California and into Texas is now complete. 

  The change went into effect on Wednesday of this week, according to Inside EVs, and the company filed a corresponding disclosure with the SEC listing its new address.

  “On December 1, 2021, Tesla, Inc. relocated its corporate headquarters to Gigafactory Texas at 13101 Harold Green Road, Austin, Texas 78725,” the filing says. 

  This address is “right next to Tesla’s Gigafactory Texas facility,” where the company owns 2,000 acres. A recent drone flyover revealed the area only has “some temporary trailers and construction offices” for the time being, the report said.

  The location is about 5 minutes from the airport and 15 minutes from downtown, according to the NY Post.

  

  Recall, Musk first announced the move in the beginning of October during the company’s annual shareholder meeting in the Austin area. At the time, Musk stressed that Tesla would continue to expand in both California and Nevada, saying “we will continue to expand our activities in California. This is not a matter of Tesla leaving California. Our intention is to increase output from Freemont and giga-Nevada by 50%.”’

  “It’s tough for people to afford houses and a lot of people have to come in from far away,” Musk said at the time.

  He continued: “We’re taking it as far as possible but there’s a limit to how big you can scale it in the Bay Area.”

  Musk had previously taken exception with California’s handing of Covid, stating on Twitter at one point this year: “Frankly this is the final straw. Tesla will now move its HQ and future programs to Texas/Nevada immediately. If we even retain Fremont manufacturing activity at all, it will be dependent on how Tesla is treated in the future.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/03/2021 – 23:20

• The Case For Compulsory Vaccinations Is Dead… Omicron Just Killed It
  The Case For Compulsory Vaccinations Is Dead… Omicron Just Killed It

  Authored by Kit Knightly via off-Guardian.org,

  Yesterday, Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, held a press conference where she talked at length about her “concerns” over the EU’s low vaccination rate, and how best to “fix” it.

  When asked about making vaccines mandatory, she said:

  It is understandable and appropriate to lead this discussion now – how we can encourage and potentially think about mandatory vaccination within the European Union. This needs discussion, this needs a common approach, but I think it’s a discussion that has to be led.”

  Adding:

  Two or three years ago, I would have never thought to witness what we see right now, that we have this horrible pandemic, we have the life-saving vaccines but they are not being used adequately everywhere. And thus this is an enormous health cost,”

  Of course, the idea that the EU nations are going to “debate” mandatory vaccinations is a joke, they are more likely to enforce them no matter what.

  

  But any real, rational debate was over as soon as the EU and the vaccine manufacturers both admitted that the vaccines do not work.

  By any pre-2021 definition, the Covid “vaccines” are not actually vaccines. From the beginning, it has been widely admitted that they don’t stop you getting the disease, and they don’t stop you spreading it.

  Every day we hear about some famous person or other testing positive “despite being vaccinated”.

  The EU has already hinted that their vaccination passes (which, ironically enough, they appear to have been planning for “two or three years” despite von der Leyen claiming they never saw the pandemic coming), will expire in nine months.

  Why will they expire?

  Because the “protection” allegedly conferred by the vaccine wears off.

  How fast does it wear off?

  They have no idea.

  The alleged emergence of the Omicron variant makes the situation even worse, from the establishment point of view. Indeed, it could be argued the first real casualty of the Omicron outbreak was narrative cohesion.

  Experts are already warning that the Omicron variant may be resistant to the vaccines, and the CEO of Moderna added his voice to this chorus yesterday, saying:

  I think it’s going to be a material drop [in vaccine effectiveness]. I just don’t know how much because we need to wait for the data. But all the scientists I’ve talked to…are like ‘this is not going to be good’.”

  Even if these warnings prove incorrect, and the mainstream suddenly backtracks and starts reporting that the vaccines work “better than expected” to combat Omicron, that’s irrelevant.

  They have just admitted that the “vaccines” could stop working the moment there is a new mutation. And viruses mutate a lot.

  So, they know the vaccine’s don’t work very well, they know they will wear off, and they know any new mutations could stop them working completely.

  The only thing they don’t know is what the long term side effects of the vaccines are, a fact admitted by Pfizer themselves in their supply contracts:

  the long-term effects and efficacy of the Vaccine are not currently known and that there may be adverse effects of the Vaccine that are not currently known

  Now, here’s the all-purpose disclaimer: This is not admitting that Covid19 is dangerous, the pandemic real or in any other way endorsing the narrative. Rather, and this is important, it’s pointing out that even on their own terms the establishment’s plan for compulsory vaccination does not make any sense at all.

  The current narrative is that:

  • The vaccines do not confer immunity or prevent transmission.
  • What beneficial effect they do have wears off, they don’t know when.
  • They probably don’t protect against new variants or mutations.
  • The vaccines have unknown longterm side effects.

  These are not fringe ideas or baseless theories, they are the self-contradictory supposed “facts” of the schizophrenic covid story.

  Going entirely by the mainstream’s own words, and completely on their own terms, any possible case for mandatory vaccinations is dead.

  The “Omicron variant” killed it, even if it never killed anything else.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/03/2021 – 23:00

• Alumni Are Now Withholding Donations Over Too Much Censorship On Campus
  Alumni Are Now Withholding Donations Over Too Much Censorship On Campus

  The censorship on college campuses is getting to such a fever pitch that alumni are now withholding donations in an attempt to get colleges to “enforce free speech”.

  For example, the Wall Street Journal reports that when Cornell reached out to alumnus Carl Neuss for a seven-figure check, he responded by saying he was “worried about what he saw as liberal indoctrination on campus and declining tolerance toward competing viewpoints.”

  So, it turns out it isn’t the snowflakes that head out into the real world and make the millions, we guess?

  When the school put Neuss in touch with their “moderate” political staff, the staff complained that they were “humiliated” by the diversity training that the school mandates.

  “If you say the wrong words, you could lose your position or be shunned,” Neuss told the WSJ.

  Joel Malina, Cornell’s vice president for university relations, told the paper that “robust debate and a discussion of all views remain hallmarks of the Cornell experience both in and out of the classroom.”

  Instead of donating, Neuss then helped start the Cornell Free Speech Alliance – described by the WSJ as “one of about 20 such dissident alumni organizations that have taken root on college campuses over the last couple of years.”

  Neuss isn’t the only alumnus concerned. And Cornell isn’t the only campus where this is playing out.

  

  John Craig, who is head of a group at Davidson College in North Carolina called Davidsonians for Freedom of Thought and Discourse, commented: “This is a battle for our culture and, in many ways, for Western civilization.”

  Some of these organizations have “watch lists” for liberal professors who groups believe advocate their own ideologies in place of encouraging debate. 

  An organization called the Generals Redoubt started by alumni at Washington and Lee University in Virginia sent out 10,000 emails asking alumnus to “suspend contributions to the university until this situation is rectified.”

  Washington and Lee President Will Dudley responded: “We’re living in an environment where people on both sides, right and left, are engaged in a culture war and they want to use universities. I don’t find that beneficial to our mission and I’m not interested in being a participant in it.”

  Claudia Leon, a junior at Cornell University from San Juan, Puerto Rico, defended the campus, stating that bigots should “think twice” before speaking. She argued: “Just because you can’t go around calling someone an [ethnic slur] anymore, doesn’t mean your free-speech rights are being stifled.”

  Even about 80% of students have said they “self-censor” at times due to rules on campuses, according to a survey this year by RealClearEducation, College Pulse and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. The same survey found that 66% of students think it is “acceptable to shout down a speaker to prevent him or her from speaking on campus”.

  23% of students polled even said it was acceptable to use violence to stop a campus speech. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/03/2021 – 22:40

• What A Homeschooling Surge Means For Our Future
  What A Homeschooling Surge Means For Our Future

  Authored by Alice Salles via The Libertarian Institute & Mises.org,

  Parents across America were caught unprepared for the mass closure of government schools in 2020. Soon after, however, many decided they and their children had had enough of the status quo. Now at a crossroads, will they choose reform or repudiation?

  The wave of ill-advised school shutdowns last year compelled tens of thousands of parents to rethink their children’s education. When the classroom was virtually forced into their homes via Zoom, parents realized just how abysmal the curricula and tutelage were. Statistics on families fleeing to homeschooling must be worrying the education establishment.

  

  From 2012 to 2019, the homeschooling rate hovered around 3.3 percent of K–12 US students. That figure rose to 5.4 percent in spring 2020. By the following fall, that figure had more than doubled to 11.1 percent.

  Among black families, the increase was particularly noteworthy considering only 3.3 percent of black children were homeschooled in spring 2020 versus 16.1 percent in the fall.

  While legacy media focused on cases of parents keeping their kids home out of fear of covid, longtime critics of the public school system argued that the pandemic actually helped to expose parents to the abuses and shortcomings that have long plagued public education.

  Some chose homeschooling, but many other parents took to school board meetings, facing the beast head-on and ripping apart the deceptive social engineering with the public comment microphone. All the glory, glitz, and glam has so far gone to the latter group.

  They grew a decentralized movement with immediate political consequences not only in Virginia’s gubernatorial election but also in school board races across the country earlier this month.

  Axios, the popular DC-based news outlet run by former Politico journalists, recently reported on the growth of the 1776 Project, a new political action committee focused on reforming public school systems at the local level. “My PAC is campaigning on behalf of everyday moms and dads who want to have better access to their children’s education,” the PAC’s founder Ryan Girdusky told Axios.

  The 1776 Project won three-fourths of its fifty-eight races across seven states, proving the populist Right’s focus on the culture wars to be smart politicking. Now Republicans in Congress are pushing a “parents bill of rights” ahead of their 2022 primary elections. Included are so-called rights to know what’s taught at school, the right to be heard, and the right to transparent school budgets and spending.

  The effects of COVID-19 on public schools: Enrollment fell by 3% in Autumn 2020 as families shifted to options such as homeschooling and private schools. Sharpest declines were in lower grades, especially kindergarten. https://t.co/rRNqVLlWkZ pic.twitter.com/ozauGgBj4t

  — aedmans (@aedmans) November 26, 2021

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  “This list of rights will make clear to parents what their rights are and clear to schools what their duties to parents are,” their flier states. The reform position focuses on schools’ duty to parents and ipso facto their children. But what of the duties parents owe to their children?

  What if, instead of pointing their collective finger at the school boards, parents looked in the mirror? What if they asked themselves how or why they feel entitled to have a place to drop their kids off for thirteen years of government brainwashing?

  Any taxpayer has a perfect reason to object to school mask mandates or the teaching of racist and queer ideologies. Parents must start thinking more deeply about the situation, though.

  Certainly for some, running for school board positions is their best shot at helping to provide their children and their neighbors’ children with better education. The problem is that in too many places, there’s an absolute crisis in education that can’t wait any longer for reform, no matter how severe.

  Every family and community ultimately applies the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, the notion that the best way to organize society is for each action or decision to be taken at the smallest scale necessary, in assessing what must be done about things such as education.

  By simply refusing to accept what federal or state authorities peddled throughout 2020, parents rightfully accepted more responsibility, clearly demonstrating that when things get personal, people will do what it takes to take back control.

  Whatever step in that direction is taken, the child is better off. In his great essay “Education: Free and Compulsory,” Murray Rothbard argued that public school and compulsory schooling laws tend to victimize the child: “The effect of the State’s compulsory schooling laws is not only to repress the growth of specialized partly individualized private schools for the needs of various types of children. It also prevents the education of the child by the people who, in many respects, are best qualified—his parents.”

  Unfortunately, far too few parents think of themselves as qualified, much less the best qualified educators of their children. They are easily led to believe simple reforms will “fix the system” they grew up dependent upon as children themselves.

  “We always hear, Oh it’s broken. It’s not broken. It’s doing exactly what it was designed to do,” Katie Phipps Hague told Mises Institute supporters at the latest summit in Florida last month.

  Hague shared her experience homeschooling her seven kids and encouraged other parents to give it a try, essentially asking, What have you got to lose?

  I know this sounds like I’m a crazy person, but if you pulled your children out of school… for a whole year, then include them in everything that you do in all of your trips and all of your conversations, put them around the intelligent, capable people that you all have in your circles and let them become comfortable around those people, you’d probably do better for them than maybe anything else you could ever do.

  It’s wonderful that the populist movement on the right is targeting the educational bureaucracy, one of the great roots of societal decay. There is a lot of potential for good in populism, but not if it sets its sights on mere reforms. A much brighter future lies in a libertarian populism where parents free themselves from these decrepit statist systems altogether and grow alternative institutions.

  Parents must be responsible for their children’s education precisely so that children learn to be autonomous. Autonomous people don’t support tyrannical policies, so the sooner parents embrace their own power, the sooner their children will be able to unleash their own.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/03/2021 – 22:20

• Watch: Disturbing Confrontation Inside Australia's 'Gold Standard' COVID Internment Camp
  Watch: Disturbing Confrontation Inside Australia’s ‘Gold Standard’ COVID Internment Camp

  Days ago we presented the latest Orwellian headline out of Australia… “Aussie Police Arrest Teen ‘Fugitives’ Who Escaped From COVID Internment Camp”. Since then more incredibly disturbing video from inside the Northern Australian Covid internment camp, Howard Springs facility, has emerged. A frightening confrontation between a imprisoned “quarantined” woman and camp authorities was caught on hidden camera.

  One host on the popular cultural commentary and news analysis site UnHeard recently introduced a segment taking a look at the fresh footage from inside the notorious Covid internment camp : “Australia. Until recently, that country was most famous for its sunshine and relaxed attitude. Well since the Covid pandemic hit we’ve all got to know another side of Australia…”

  Paradise in Australia. pic.twitter.com/BXNrwFzRy5

  — Evelyn Rae (@_evelynrae) December 3, 2021

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  “With some of the longest and most stringent lockdowns and travel restrictions in the world, it’s become a case study of what happens when a government will do anything to keep Covid numbers low,” host Freddie Sayers’ narration continues. 

  “Their latest policy is to build special camps, Covid internment camps – to which infected and suspected infected people are moved. The biggest of these camps is called Howard Springs.”

  “It houses up to 2,000 inmates, surrounded by tall fences and carefully policed against attempts to escape. It’s been described as the ‘gold standard’ of such camps and is being replicated across Australia.”

  The woman being interrogated and threatened with a 5000 AU$ fine in the above video can been seen in a follow-up interview below, conducted after she was released from detention…

  As is shown in the video in question, camp officials confronted the quarantined woman, later identified as Hayley Hodgson, and began pointing out yellow lines that she could not cross. 

  She never tested positive for COVID after being tested three times. “Never had Covid. I was in close contact with someone – never got it, and I was treated literally like a criminal,” she later described. After her 14-day stint at the camp, she lost her job, returning to her home unemployed, she later confirmed. 

  Up until recently, Australia – with its sprawling coastline and beautiful beaches, outdoor and adventure life, and nearly year-round sunshine – was considered by most to be a large “paradise” vacation spot in the South Pacific… but now it’s marked as the place of “Covid quarantine hell”. 

  * * *

  Meanwhile, in neighboring New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has unironically given citizens permission to use the bathroom inside other people’s homes when visiting…

  Exciting news from New Zealand, where PM Jacinda Ardern has given her people permission to use the bathroom inside their friends’ homes.pic.twitter.com/YhbzuJiBRL

  — Michael P Senger (@MichaelPSenger) November 29, 2021

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  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/03/2021 – 22:00

• Evil Is The Root Of All (Fiat) Money
  Evil Is The Root Of All (Fiat) Money

  Authored by Egon von Greyerz via GoldSwitzerland.com,

  “So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?”

  -Ayn Rand

  Money used to be a stable medium of exchange and a store of value but that was in the days when there were sound monetary principles, mostly backed by gold or silver.

  Since 1913 and especially 1971 there is no discipline and no morals when it comes to the issuing of money as unlimited amounts of fake fiat money is printed at will.

  In today’s fiat money world, there is only one answer to Rand’s question “What is the root of all money?”, namely:

  “Evil is the root of all fiat money.”

  – Egon von Greyerz

  On the IMF (International Monetary Fund) website there is an article stating that “Money is something that holds its value” – Hmmm…..

  The meeting of bankers and politicians on Jekyll Island in November 1910 laid the foundations for the Federal Reserve Bank. Three years later in 1913 the Fed was founded.

  From that moment on, private bankers were running the US monetary system including the printing of money. But the British pound, backed by gold until 1931, was the global currency of choice until then.

  

  CURRENCY SYSTEMS ARE EPHEMERAL

  The Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944 established a new currency system based on the dollar. From that time, all major currencies were pegged to the US dollar and the dollar itself was pegged to gold at $35 per ounce. The dollar thus became the world’s reserve currency bolstered by big gold reserves. These were accumulated gradually from the early 1900s to the late 1940s. The US received payment in gold during WWII from its sales of arms and other supplies.

  As the chart below shows, the gold holdings grew from virtually nothing in the early 1900s to 22,000 metric tonnes by 1947. Over the following 25 years, 14,000 tonnes were sold and the US gold reserves are now alleged to be 8,000 tonnes.

  The 14,000 tonnes sold would today be worth a handsome $840 billion which certainly would have been useful in propping up the ailing finances of the US treasury.

  

  Most of the US gold was sold at a measly $35 per oz which tells that the US made an opportunity loss of $794 billion. And the people in charge of the Treasury and the Fed are supposed to be money experts. This tells us again that they don’t understand gold and they don’t understand history. They clearly don’t understand money either. Still they are only hired hands and temporary custodians of US gold and the US finances and never have to directly suffer the consequences of their actions.

  As Ayn Rand said:

  “You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.”

  In the current era of the golden calf and instant gratification, no leader, politician, central banker or commercial banker ever has to suffer the consequences of his own actions. Profits are always privatised and losses, without fail, socialised.

  Whatever deficits or debts a President or Prime Minister causes, the consequences when he retires are fees in the millions for just selling his name. And the bankers continue to collect their bonuses and options whatever losses they incur.

  So most of these individuals don’t ever have to bear the consequences of their actions. Instead normal people bear the consequences through taxes and decreasing benefits like pensions, healthcare and a much lower standard of living.

  US – 90 YEARS OF DEFICITS

  Since 1930, the US government has had budget deficits every year, except a couple of years in the 1950s and 1960s. The Clinton surpluses were fake due to false accounting.

  So for 90 years, the most powerful economic power in the world has been living on borrowed money and borrowed time.

  The consequences are blatant and for most people to see, if they care to look. But their government won’t tell them and the media is too ignorant to understand it.

  Probably not even 1% of Americans understand that their leaders and bankers are destroying their money on a daily basis.

  How many Americans would understand that since 1971 their US dollar has lost 98% of its purchasing power? Virtually nobody realises that the dollar only buys 2% of what it bought in 1971.

  And what did President Nixon tell his American compatriots in 1971 when he took away the gold backing of the dollar:

  “THE EFFECT OF TODAY’S ACTION will be to stabilise the dollar.”

  A DOLLAR FALL OF 98% SO FAR – ANOTHER 100% TO GO

  Hmmmmmm! The chart below shows how the dollar was stabilised. A 98% fall of the dollar doesn’t look very stable to me. Instead it looks chaotic and catastrophic!

  

  US DEFICITS ARE GROWING EXPONENTIALLY

  Back in 2016 when Trump was elected I forecast that the US debt would be $28 trillion at the beginning of the next presidential period in early 2021.  Few forecasters predicted an $8 trillion increase for the period after Obama. But I am no genius. The trick was easy. Just look at history. Since Reagan became president in 1981, US debt has on average doubled every 8 years. A simple extrapolation meant $28 trillion debt at the halfway stage and $40 trillion in 2025. But as the table shows below, I have now revised my forecast and am projecting $50 trillion by 2025.

  

  The US government is currently spending $7 trillion annually but the tax revenue is ONLY $4 trillion. So there is a neat annual deficit of a mere $3 trillion or 43% of the US budget.

  How can anyone believe that the US can repay a debt of currently $29 trillion and rising to $50 trillion with an annual deficit of $3 trillion – a deficit which is rising exponentially. The simple answer is that they never will repay it. Instead it will increase uncontrollably.

  As I said at the beginning of the article – Evil is the root of all fiat money as a 50 fold increase in the US debt since 1981 can only be achieved through corrupt means.

  And don’t believe that the Fed will really taper the $120 billion a month that they are printing. They have declared a $15 billion tampering programme but that is a FAKE TAPER as my colleague Matt Piepenburg wrote about.

  As expected they are cooking the books, giving with one hand and taking back with the other one – Plus ça change….. (the more it changes, the more it stays the same). 

  COVID – YET ANOTHER VARIANT WITH OMICRON

  So now the world has yet another Covid variant. It seems as every time Covid recedes another variant is invented appears. European countries are starting to lock down again. In the UK there were initially only 2 cases of the Omicron variant. Still, based on those 2 cases Switzerland implemented a 10 day quarantine for UK visitors and more countries are likely to follow.

  At this point, nobody knows the severity of the Omicron variant but still countries are locking down. It is believed that Omicron has around 32 mutations and that current vaccines might not be effective. So now Big Pharma will come up with a new vaccine to be taken in addition to boosters and normal annual flu vaccines. It is a wonderful position  for Big Pharma to be both expert advisor and beneficiary of Covid. The billions and trillions will keep rolling in.

  CONSEQUENCES

  We are not medical experts (there seems to be few impartial ones around) but we do understand the economic CONSEQUENCES.

  In September 2019, major central banks gave the signal that they “would do what it takes” to keep the financial system afloat.

  Covid which officially arrived early in 2020 was of course the most perfect excuse for starting yet another massive programme of unlimited money printing. Some people even believe that it was started deliberately but that could hardly be possible??

  Whatever the severity of new Covid variants, it is crystal clear that the world will suffer economically, financially as well as socially.

  In other words, all these additional problems are landing on a world which is morally and financially bankrupt. All the king’s soldiers and all the king’s printed money will not put this Humpty Dumpty world together again.

  A PERFECT RECIPE FOR DISASTER

  Let’s look at the ingredients:

  • Global debt of $300 trillion growing exponentially – it was $100t in 2000

  • Rapidly increasing deficits in most major and developing economies

  • $1.5t+ derivatives which will be worthless when counterparties fail

  • An Epic Everything bubble in all asset classes – Stocks, Bonds, Property

  • An asset bubble which will implode since it is based on fake money

  • Social and Moral decadence

  • No statesmen as leader in any Western country – so no chance of rescue

  • A flu of relatively modest proportions which will lock down the world for a 3rd year

  • A financial system which is on the verge of collapse

  • Inflation which will lead to hyperinflation

  • Fiat Money of ZERO value which is created hand over fist

  • A currency system which will lose 100% from here as history tells us

  The above factors are the inevitable consequences of a financial and currency system that was doomed to fail when it was first devised by a few bankers on Jekyll Island in 1910.

  As I said at the beginning of the article – Evil is the root of all fiat money!

  Greed is a cardinal sin and the bankers and politicians at Jekyll Island were definitely clear of the consequences of their actions. With more than 100 years of reaping the benefits and creating extraordinary fortunes for a few, they needn’t worry.

  But the rest of the world, that just has debt and no savings, is in for an extended period of misery.

  It is clearly very appropriate that the decision to take control of the money took place on Jekyll Island. If we look up the meaning of Jekyll we find:

  “A person with very different sides to their personality – one good and the other EVIL”!

  Clearly the appearance that the Fed would like to project to the world is the goodness of being the guardian and saviour of the financial system. The purpose agreed at Jekyll Island was the EVIL purpose to take control of the monetary system for the benefit of the private bankers who would own and control the Fed.

  MANY OF THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE ARE FREE

  I don’t like being a Cassandra predicting doom and gloom that few will believe.

  But these are the consequences that history teaches us time and time again. But sadly everyone thinks it is different today.

  Since every currency system in history has collapsed, it is quite a certain bet that this one will too.

  For the few who have savings, wealth preservation in physical gold and silver is essential as insurance against yet another failed currency and financial system.

  And for everybody it is important to remember that the most important things in life are family and friends. Helping others in difficult times is critical.

  Remember also that many wonderful things in life are free, conversations, books, music and nature.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/03/2021 – 21:40

• Americans Panic-Buy RVs As Shipments Exceed 600,000 Units This Year And Next
  Americans Panic-Buy RVs As Shipments Exceed 600,000 Units This Year And Next

  Months after we discussed the “unprecedented demand” for recreational vehicles (RV), which we said was on pace for a blowout 2021 and expected to continue into 2022. A new RV Industry Association (RVIA) report has confirmed our suspicions: Americans continue to panic buy motorhomes. 

  RVIA’s latest quarterly report projects RV wholesale shipments will exceed 600,000 units in both 2021 and 2022, which is record-breaking demand as the virus pandemic has fundamentally changed how Americans vacation. 

  

  “RV manufacturers and suppliers have accomplished something never before seen with the incredible number of RV produced in 2021 and forecasted to be built in 2022,” said RVIA President & CEO Craig Kirby.

  “More RVs will be headed to dealer lots in 2022 than ever before, allowing even more consumers to experience the freedom and control of traveling the country in their ideal RV,” Kirby said. 

  RV shipments are expected to range between 593,600 and 610,800 units with an estimated year-end total of 602,200 units, a 40% increase over the 430,412 units shipped in 2020. RVIA said growth is expected to continue through 2022, with shipments ranging between 599,760 and 627,700 units.

  “The RV industry is looking at double-digit growth rates into mid-2022, due in part to low inventories, the strong financial standing of consumers, and the desire of consumers to get outdoors and experience an active outdoor lifestyle,” said Jeff Rutherford, RVIA Chair and President & CEO of Airxcel

  “Thanks to the RV manufacturers and suppliers, more consumers than ever before will be able to take advantage of all of the benefits of owning an RV,” Rutherford said. 

  This is the latest sign Americans, more than ever, are rediscovering national parks and rural communities in their RVs rather than vacationing in big cities and at resorts. The RV boom might continue past 2022 as demand by millennials has been steadily increasing. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/03/2021 – 21:20

• Why Web3 Will Change Everything (In Plain English)
  Why Web3 Will Change Everything (In Plain English)

  Authored by Deep Pulusani via ‘Moment of Deep’ substack,

  This post was inspired by the following tweet and most popular reply:

  

  

  Some notes before we start: the term web3 today is sometimes used synonymously to mean cryptocurrency, blockchain tech, virtual reality/augmented reality & the metaverse. I find that people already have a more intuitive understanding of how VR/AR may change the future. Therefore, I’ll only be writing about how crypto & blockchain tech in the context of web3 will transform the future, since it’s a bit more challenging to understand and abstract in its concepts.

  Often this subject is explained with technical specifications or more commonly with political terms, ideas about liberty, decentralization, censorship, and power. These are all important; but what ultimately determines if web3 powered by crypto is the future lies in the economic and productive value it brings, the increases in quality of life it can achieve. These are the aspects I hope to make clear.

  

  Where we’ve come from and where we are

  All of the iterations of the web are digital revolutions, i.e. not only do more of our analog (physical) lives move to the digital realm, but new digitally native (digital-first) experiences are invented as well.

  Web1 (1990s): a revolution in information availability.

  Information and content from the real world is put online. Information is no longer a local phenomena nor a physical one, but is available for anyone with an internet connection to access. Early web protocols also allow for file transfers, emails, and web pages.

  Examples: personal web pages, Encyclopedia Britannica & Encarta online, FTP, MapQuest

  Web2 (2000-): a revolution in creation, experience, and connection.

  The static becomes dynamic, and a convergence of hardware and software technologies enable us to experience rich interfaces and interactions on the web. Our lives start to become increasingly digital – compare what percent of your daily attention is focused online in 1999, then 2009, and then 2019. The ecosystem and interface of web2 is now rich enough where people can spend the majority of their lives online – from their careers, relationships, hobbies, investments, etc. – we now spend much of our lives in digital space. We also consume most of our content digitally, create much of our output digitally, and connect most frequently with others through messaging apps and social networks.

  Examples: YouTube, Google Docs, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, Robinhood, smart home & smart health devices

  Web3 (2015-): a revolution in coordination, ownership, and value transfer.

  I’ll break down each of these web3 revolutions in the ‘Web3 Paradigm Shifts’ section further below. It’s important to note first, however, that much of what will happen in web3 has its roots in web2. What’s often lost in all the web3 talk is that the web2 era is not over and will continue to produce enormous value and new companies. Let’s see how web3 powered by crypto is the next logical step to some of the revolutions of web2.

  Web3 Extensions of Web2.

  New and more powerful networks.

  In web1 times, your networks might’ve included your local community, your job, your family, and friends you grow up with. Maybe you were part of a mailing list or a forum if you were savvy online. In web2, networks proliferated rapidly, and continue to explode. You might have networks on FB, telegram groups, IG niches, corners of Twitter, or varied family/friend WhatsApp groups.

  This network creation continues in web3 with the introduction of the value network. Examples include Ethereum, Solana, Polkadot, countless others – each currency representing its own individual network of users. In addition, you have the tokens built on top of these programmable currencies, tokens that any individual or business can issue. The result is a proliferation of value networks that are themselves nested into a larger, more powerful network that it can communicate with and transfer between. This is an extremely powerful new invention because a value network can be added to all of our existing networks in web2 – to our existing social networks, messaging networks, and content networks – or to brand new networks entirely. Essentially any network can be monetized, tokenized, or incentivized, creating supercharged versions of our already rich variety of networks.

  Explosion of creative activity, niches, and formats.

  Even if we just include web2 companies launched in the past few years alone – TikTok, Substack, Clubhouse, etc. – there’s so many creative and productive niches for individuals to occupy. Couple that with increasingly easier ways to distribute content among a proliferation of platforms (aka networks), it’s no wonder there has been an explosion of creative activity and individual power over the past 20 years. In the web1 world, we still mainly had movie stars and bestselling authors. In web2, we have stars and activists in every genre, category, and format you could ask for. What progresses in web3 is the further expansion of platforms, niches, and content types. Most notably, you will see more purely digital creation and digital reward (e.g. create an opera in a virtual world that’s monetized by a virtual currency that’s easily tradeable into other virtual currencies or goods). Furthermore, the platforms that creators and producers use will be less intrusive, less expensive, and more malleable than the monolithic platforms of today.

  Ease of global collaboration

  Cloud storage & editing, powerful front-end frameworks, and ever-increasing browser strength have made it possible to collaborate effectively with anyone, anywhere, and in practically any field. Figma and Airtable are just two examples of recent web2 companies that have accelerated the ease of collaboration with individuals halfway around the world. The pandemic has further accelerated this phenomena. With web3, we now have organizations that can be independently formed with no underlying platform dependence. These organizations, dubbed DAOs, can be both incentivized to work towards a common goal and govern themselves through tokenization. Anonymous, pseudonymous, or fully public individuals can have their work measured and verified through a publicly available blockchain.

  Disintermediation and distribution.

  Web3 will continue the trend of removing distance between producer and consumer. There is a continual disintermediation happening on the web. During web1, to release a successful music album you had to go artist → label → distributer → retailer → consumer. At each step there is profit loss and gatekeepers deciding whether you can continue onward to distribute. In web2 you got to go either 1-step closer (artist → label → platform → consumer) or 2-steps closer for those fully independent ( artist → platform → consumer). Web3 continues this disintermediation, as the platform merely becomes the underlying network or protocol the connection is made over (artist → consumer via protocol or network). There’s no longer gatekeepers or an expensive take-rate. There can still be curators to guide consumers (the difference being that a curator can make money independently of the artist’s margin). The end goal is that all service providers or product creators have the option to be connected directly with service seekers and product consumers.

  Disintermediation is only possible because of the increasing ability to self-distribute. In the past, middle men at each step were essential to ensure wide distribution. Web2 gave us powerful tools of self-distribution through platforms like Amazon, Shopify, Google Ads, Social Media, SoundCloud, etc. In web3, we can maintain all the tools of web2, but now we introduce tokenized systems. By creating tokens that somehow represent your business or art in your chosen way, early fans and early users become incentivized to spread your art by holding those tokens. Those fans will now distribute that art for you through their own individual networks and tools.

  Web3 Paradigm Shifts

  Users become owners.

  Employee stock options made many tech employees rich with the advent of web-first tech companies. However, for companies that rely on network effects – which is all social media, all sharing economy e.g. Uber, all marketplaces e.g. Amazon, all cloud tools, all games – the early users are equally as important. Without the early users, later users don’t join in, and a company never gains traction. Today, however, early users are not compensated for this essential contribution. In web3, through both fungible and non-fungible tokens, users & early evangelizers will win when a company wins too.

  In common press about web3, what’s often talked about is that we’ll now be compensated for our data. This is true – unlike our data being owned by the platforms (Twitter, FB, etc.) it will travel with us and be owned by us. However, the more valuable and scarce asset that users give over to apps is their attention, and this will be the far greater reward to users. Power users and heavy users of games, cloud tools, and content platforms, will eventually either be incentivized by the app or move on to companies that do incentivize their valuable attention.

  Any agreement becomes possible.

  At each era of the web, we can code increasingly powerful experiences (i.e. code becomes more abstracted from the binary 0s and 1s that the computer actually runs). When web2 rolled around, internet connections were fast enough and devices strong enough to have rich streaming & content experiences. In web3, the game-changing abstraction is smart contracts. Smart contracts essentially allow any agreement between individuals, groups, protocols, or mix of the bunch. Relying on the legal system to enforce billions of agreements small and large on the web is neither desirable nor realistic. A smart contract’s ability to allow for agreements between two untrusted individuals without burdening the legal system creates a major shift in a human’s ability to coordinate behavior and form agreements between groups. In web3, code enforces the agreements and the blockchain infrastructure protects against manipulation of this code. Smart contracts are natively digital, meaning they can be combined and stacked with other contracts to create powerful systems and infrastructures. The implications of this are not yet fully realized, but one hint to the power of smart contracts is the emergence of decentralized finance, which has disrupted a giant sector in a very short period of time. Smart contracts can now be embedded in all the software and hardware we use – any object can be embedded with operating rules, sharing terms, & financial agreements between parties. Combine this with the ability to interface with any other contract on the network, and the creative, collaborative, and productive uses of these contracts become limitless.

  Everything can be a financial instrument.

  People often ask why not just use fiat currency through PayPal or Stripe – what’s the functional point of an open-source digitally native currency like Ethereum? The answer is that you can program it, build on top of it, and integrate it with anything digital – whether a smart hardware device or a software application. Even everyday items like your chat groups, gifs, or your writing journal can be made into a financial instrument. That universe becomes bigger when imagine digitally native assets and services that have not even been invented yet. Any individual can perform this integration, not just institutions. Usually when people think of financial instruments, we think of ownership, of buying and selling. But these aren’t the only functions of financialization – we can integrate all financial functions including borrowing, lending, insurance, and merging. With financial functionality, also comes executive functionality, like governance and direction. Now imagine these functions available to any asset or network, both digital and physical.

  A new identity emerges.

  Tokens don’t necessarily have to represent money or value – we can use tokens to verify productive work done, or personal and career milestones reached. Because web3 transactions are stored on a publicly available network, our web3 wallet can not only represent transactions we’ve made and tokens we own, but organizations we’re apart of, events we’ve attended, people we know, content we’ve created, and work we’ve done. We can carry this history around to any app connected to the network that we grant access to. Those concerned with privacy never have to expose their physical identity, as wallets are simply avatars which maintain the right to hide or expose the physical identity behind it. Instead of our creative and productive output being spread out and siloed over various companies – LinkedIn, Twitter, IG – our web3 wallet can be carried with us wherever we go. Apps, games, and experiences can then interact with the specific identity the user brings to create tailored and one-of-a-kind experiences for the user’s history. Collaborators and employers can verify your expertise, your skill, your network, and things you’ve created or worked on through your wallet, without requiring a resume or contacting references.

  Postscript: Why did I write this?

  There’s something odd about writing articles that predict the future. If the writer is correct, the future is going to happen anyway, so what’s the point of writing an article about it now? What’s the point of another article hyping up a future that is certain?

  Because web3 is so widely misunderstood, the future is uncertain. The economic and productive value that web3 can bring is deeply threatened by governments and regulators around the world.  This is somewhat expected from authoritarian governments that will naturally crack down on web3 because of what it entails – shared equity and decision making, mass participation and organization – as retaining centralized power is essential to their literal survival. This has already become apparent in China. What’s essential is that major democracies, especially the world’s wealthiest USA and the world’s biggest India, foster the web3 experiment. It’s essential that we let things develop before overzealously legislating in the name of protection. Unfriendly governments could have firewalled the web1 internet and set progress back a decade because it was now easier for criminals to communicate and spread criminal information.  Undoing legislation and regulatory burdens is much harder than waiting to pass them in the first place. Web3 built on crypto has the possibility to be the major boon for wealth inequality (see paradigm shifts listed above), an issue all sides of the political spectrum claim to want to solve. Democratic governments: let’s let web3 grow, develop, and make mistakes. We’re still so early.

  *  *  *

  Follow me on twitter @momentofdeep for more content like this.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/03/2021 – 21:00

• California To Cut Water To Cities And Farmland Amid Persisting Drought
  California To Cut Water To Cities And Farmland Amid Persisting Drought

  A severe drought has ravaged every county in California for seven months, forcing state officials to restrict water delivery next year to millions of Californians and hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland, according to Bloomberg.

  Above-average temperatures and the lack of precipitation began in early February 2020, and by the summer, conditions worsened following heatwave after heatwave. Some of the state’s largest reservoirs registered near or at record low levels, which prompted some to believe state officials were preparing to announce the first-ever federally declared water shortage. Dry conditions also sparked one of the worst fire seasons on record as more than 8,000 fires charred 3 million acres. 

  The California Department of Water Resources is now prioritizing water delivery as the drought will persist well into 2022. Water delivery for 27 million Californians and three-quarters of a million acres of farmland will be affected. 

  “Despite a wet start to the water year, conditions have dried out since that first storm and we are still planning for a below-average water year,” Karla Nemeth, director of the department, said in a statement. “

  “That means we need to prepare now for a dry winter and severe drought conditions to continue through 2022,” Nemeth said.

  According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, much of the Golden State is in severe drought with large pockets of extreme and exceptional drought. 

  

  This year, the devastation unleashed on the state could compound into a megadrought next year if the winter remains dry. Much of the state’s water is derived from rain and snow in higher elevations north. Two-thirds of water demand comes from the southern part of the state. The inability for some farms not to receive water next year could be devastating and transform farmland into fallow land. We already noted some farmers reported receiving no water last summer. 

  As conditions worsen, California could be starring at “the second Dust Bowl.” If the winter remains dry, the probability goes up that state regulators will announce the first-ever federally declared water shortage. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/03/2021 – 20:40

• Goldman: Are We Starting To See What The "New Normal" Looks Like?
  Goldman: Are We Starting To See What The “New Normal” Looks Like?

  By Goldman strategist Chris Hussey

  New Normal?

  US stocks traded sharply lower Friday, and on pace for another decline this week, as investors reacted to a new virus variant, strong business sentiment surveys, and Friday’s decidedly mixed labor report — and contemplated how to position into a now-volatile year-end.

  …is this what it looks like?

  As we leg further into the last month of 2021 and the post-pandemic era, this week may be raising the question: are we starting to see what the ‘new normal’ looks like?

  It’s not unreasonable to look at the Omicron variant as an anomaly that ‘surprises’ markets and represents a left tail risk. But after enduring the original COVID-19 outbreak followed by waves from the Beta and Delta variants, investors may be determining that COVID waves are becoming a regular thing — seasonal like the flu the perhaps.

  

  For now, we don’t yet know how much of an impact the Omicron virus will have, but what we might be learning is that the virus is still having an impact, even if that impact is not as great as it first was back in early 2020.

  And beyond the virus, this week may also have delivered a clearer view of what else may become ‘normal’ in the post-pandemic era: from inflation, to labor, shopping, sentiment and volatility. A few things to consider:

  • high inflation. Leading into this week, our economists revised our forecast for Fed Fund rate hikes to 3 in 2022, from 2, as inflation is remaining remarkably sticky. Fed Chair Powell’s testimony before Congress earlier this week only reinforced our view that the FOMC is concerned about high inflation. And high commodity prices are unlikely to provide a relief valve for inflation pressures as Jeff Currie discusses in the latest Commodity Watch. We now see a 28%+ total return for commodities over the next 12 months.
  • tight labor. Friday’s payrolls report revealed that fewer non-farm payroll jobs were added in November (210k vs 546k a month earlier) but also that fewer people are unemployed than expected (the unemployment rate fell to 4.2%). So while its tempting to look at the 210k new job adds as a disappointing indicator of US growth, the 4.2% unemployment rate may tell us more about the economy — everyone who wants a job, has one. Also interesting in Friday’s report, despite the ultra-low unemployment rate, wage growth moderated to +0.3% mom from +0.4% a month ago. But will wage pressures continue to ease in a world where so few are looking for a job but ‘Help Wanted’ signs seem to appear on every store you walk by? One other note on payrolls: from December 2011 through February 2020 (8 years+ of pre-pandemic data), monthly non-farm payroll additions averaged 200k (meet the new payrolls, the same as the old payrolls).
  • Black Friday now takes place on Black Monday. The post-Thanksgiving holiday shopping stats have been somewhat uninspiring, another reason, perhaps, to doubt the growth pace of the US economy. But Eric Sheridan and Kate McShane point out that people are still shopping, they just are starting their holiday shopping a lot earlier than they used to. Perhaps people are starting to shop on October 19th rather than November 29th. And our weekly retailer activity tracker continues to show strong shopping activity throughout November.
  • Business sentiment is very strong. On Friday, the ISM Services index was reported to have reached a new all-time high at 69.1. And the ISM Manufacturing Index rose to 61.1 in the latest survey — near its highest level in the last 10 years (only this past March’s spike to 64.7 exceeds November). Supply chain bottlenecks partly reflect the strong demand for industrial products and the inflationary impulse that such bottlenecks support. But the strong business sentiment may also reflect how Corporate America is adjusting to the ‘new normal’ of the post-pandemic era — and likes what it sees.

  Stock market volatility is high. In the past week, the VIX has spiked back up to 32, highlighting the uncertainty that is permeating around stocks now.

  

  As we wrote in Thursday’s Midday, “price discovery,” the spike in volatility appears to simply reflect the increased difficulty in determining the price of risk assets in a world of rising inflation, virus waves, and normalizing growth. And as we step into the ‘new normal’, perhaps such uncertainty is likely to persist such that volatility remains elevated for longer than we have seen in past cycles. One other note on the VIX: in the 3+ years prior to the pandemic from December 2016 through late-February 2020, the VIX had a median weekly level of 13. Since the VIX picked up on the pandemic risk in late-February 2020, the VIX has registered a median of 22.

  One last item for the ‘new normal’ file: rates. While the stock market is going through another bout of elevated uncertainty and a spike in the VIX, yields on 10-year Treasuries have retreated back to 1.36%, well above the lows we saw at the heart of the pandemic in 2020, but at the very bottom of the range we experienced in the post-Great Financial Crisis era. Praveen Korapaty forecasts that yields will rise to 2.00% by year-end 2022 but it is interesting to see that as the economy ‘normalizes’, yields on 10-year Treasuries are not pushing higher — even as inflation does. Inflation markets this week began to price in less inflation in the future — contributing to the lower 10-year yield. But regardless of the technical factors that may be holding rates down, an ultra-low 10-year Treasury yield has provided a good backdrop for stock price appreciation in the past – especially the Tech-laden, ‘long duration’ US stock market.

  Interesting fact: beyond the Tech-laden, ‘long-duration’ S&P 500, index returns this year have been quite a bit less impressive. The Russell 2000 Small Cap stock index, for example, is now up less than 10% for the year.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/03/2021 – 20:31

• Citizens Continue To Exit High-Tax US States
  Citizens Continue To Exit High-Tax US States

  Authored by Andrew Wilford via RealClearMarkets.com,

  If you’re still wondering why raising the cap on the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction was important enough to Democrats to sacrifice their stated principles and resort to brazen gimmicks in order to fit it into the reconciliation bill, look no further than the latest release of the IRS’s tax migration data, covering tax years 2018-2019.

  The data shows that certain states continue to alienate their own tax bases with punitively high taxes and uncompetitive business tax environments. High-tax states are losing taxpayers at an alarming rate, while states that tax their residents less aggressively are benefiting from their fellow states’ loss.

  

  The five states that lost the most taxpayers are not exactly known for fiscal restraint.

  New York, California, Illinois, New Jersey, and Massachusetts lost, on net, 219,937 taxpayers and over $28 billion in adjusted gross income (AGI). On average, these states have a state-local effective tax rate of 11.8 percent.

  The five states that gained the most taxpayers, on the other hand, are all low-tax states — in fact, three of the five have no state income tax.

  Florida, Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, and Washington state gained, on net, 194,340 taxpayers and $28.9 billion in AGI, all while averaging a state-local effective tax rate of just 8.96 percent. Unsurprisingly, Florida is the big winner here, adding $17.5 billion in AGI to its tax base alone.

  But this phenomenon of taxpayers fleeing states that treat them like boundless sources of tax revenue is nothing new, and high-tax states aren’t learning their lessons anytime soon. Since the tax years covered by this data, New Jersey and New York have passed major income tax increases, while the other three states that lost the most taxpayers are seriously considering doing the same.

  And even with never-ending tax increases, many of these states are in dire fiscal straits. Illinois, New Jersey, and Massachusetts stand out for their poor fiscal outlook due to debt and unfunded pension liabilities.

  If you’re thinking that these states should consider cutting back on spending rather than blissfully continuing down this death spiral, you wouldn’t fit in well among their policymakers. Instead, they’re counting on a reinstituted SALT deduction to pass the tax burden they place on their residents onto taxpayers elsewhere.

  Of the 10 counties that saw the largest benefit from the SALT deduction before it was capped, nine are in the five states that suffered the greatest net loss of taxpayers (the other is in Connecticut, which lost the 11th most taxpayers on net). These 10 counties lost, on net, over 35,000 taxpayers and $10.4 billion in AGI between 2018 and 2019, after the SALT deduction was capped.

  It’s easy to see, then, why high-tax states view the capping of the SALT deduction as an existential threat. Without the ability to write off their high state and local taxes on their federal tax returns, residents there face the full brunt of the tax burden imposed by the state.

  However, that’s far more of an indictment of the tax policies of high-tax states than it is a reason to reinstate the full SALT deduction. Tax liabilities reduced by the SALT deduction necessarily result in either higher taxes for other taxpayers or greater accumulation of debt. Either way, average taxpayers elsewhere pay.

  Instead of counting on the federal government to bail them out, states with uncompetitive tax structures should look inwards. When residents don’t feel like the taxes they pay are fair or reasonable, they leave for a state with more reasonable tax burdens. If high-tax states want to keep their residents, they need to recognize that fact.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/03/2021 – 20:00

• Some US Colleges Start Requiring Vaccine Boosters For Students, Staff
  Some US Colleges Start Requiring Vaccine Boosters For Students, Staff

  Authored by Li Hai via The Epoch Times,

  Following booster shots recommendations made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), some colleges are now requiring boosters for students and staff wanting to return to campus.

  

  On Monday, the CDC doubled down on its recommendation on boosters, saying all adults should get a booster shot.

  “Today, CDC is strengthening its recommendation on booster doses for individuals who are 18 years and older,” CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a statement.

  “Everyone ages 18 and older should get a booster shot either when they are six months after their initial Pfizer or Moderna series or two months after their initial J&J vaccine,” Walensky said, adding that the emergence of the Omicron variant further emphasizes the importance of vaccination and boosters.

  

  Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, testifies to a Senate panel in Washington on Nov. 4, 2021. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

  On Tuesday, the first case of the Omicron variant in America was confirmed in California.

  On Wednesday, University of Massachusetts Amherst Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy announced that the university requires all students to receive a COVID-19 vaccine booster shot.

  “The vaccine booster, combined with the advance testing explained below, and ongoing wastewater testing, adaptive testing, convenient voluntary testing options, and our indoor mask requirement represent a comprehensive approach to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and ensure a safe and successful spring for our community,” Subbaswamy said in an email to students.

  The university will continue indoor masking requirements, but this will be reviewed later, the email stated.

  Some universities initiated a booster requirement earlier, doing so when the CDC expanded its recommendation of booster shots to include all adults—18 years and older on Nov. 19. Previously, CDC only recommended boosters to 65 years and older or those younger but with underlying medical conditions.

  On Nov. 23, Wesleyan University—a 3,200-student university located in Connecticut—announced that the university is requiring all students, staff, and faculty to get the booster shots by Jan. 14.

  “Vaccine booster shots are now available, and they offer an important additional layer of protection,” the university’s president Michael Roth said in a statement.

  The St. Joseph’s College of Maine announced as early as Oct. 4 that the school would require boosters. The Catholic college said the requirement would be implemented “on a rolling basis—as boosters become available, and as the list of recommended recipients expands.”

  As of Wednesday, the school has a 99 percent vaccination rate and a 56 percent booster rate. The school said that the indoor mask requirement would be lifted when an 85 percent booster rate is reached.

  More colleges are still considering whether to require boosters. Some colleges choose to “strongly” recommend it instead of requiring it for now.

  The University of Rochester said in an updated guidance Monday that it is not requiring students, faculty, and staff to receive a booster, but “it is strongly encouraged.”

  Duke University and Harvard University also “strongly” encourage everyone eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine booster.

  

  A nurse fills up syringes for patients as they receive their COVID-19 booster vaccination during a Pfizer-BioNTech vaccination clinic in Southfield, Mich., on Sept. 29, 2021. (Emily Elconin/Reuters)

  Some experts don’t think there’s a need for young people to get a boost, especially young males.

  Jeremy Faust, a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, sent a letter to CDC’s director in October, saying based on his analysis, for males ages 18-29, it seems that third doses of Pfizer are likely to cause more hospitalizations (due to myocarditis) than they will prevent (from COVID-19 breakthrough cases) in the coming 6 months.

  But CDC expanded eligibility for boosters to include people 18 years and older on Nov. 19 and further on Nov. 29.

  Gerri Taylor, the co-chair of the American College Health Association’s COVID-19 task force, said if CDC updates its definition of fully vaccinated to include booster shots, then “colleges might be more apt to require it.” Inside Higher Ed reported.

  The association has recommended that colleges require COVID-19 vaccination but hasn’t recommended requiring boosters yet.

  During Wednesday’s White House press briefing, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told reporters that currently, the definition of fully vaccinated doesn’t include a booster, but it could change.

  “We don’t know right now whether it should change, but it might,” Fauci added.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/03/2021 – 19:40

• US Spy Planes Conducted Record Number Of Missions Near China, Beijing Think-Tank Says
  US Spy Planes Conducted Record Number Of Missions Near China, Beijing Think-Tank Says

  Reconnaissance aircraft operated by the USAF carried out a record number of flights over the South China Sea in November, according to data compiled by a Beijing-based think tank.

  The South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative (SCSPI) said U.S. spy planes carried out 94 sorties last month, a 25% increase from the February record of 75 flights. The think tank reported 80% of the flights were conducted by P-8A anti-submarine patrol aircraft, and the rest were MQ-4C surveillance drones and 8C air-to-ground surveillance aircraft.

  

  SCSPI’s data shows the most move active day was on Nov. 04, when the U.S. deployed ten spy planes across the region. The same day, the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier strike group sailed through the South China Sea. 

  

  A Navy P-8A anti-submarine patrol aircraft flew over the Taiwan Strait on Nov. 29, an area where Beijing continues to unleash wave after wave of warplanes into Taiwan’s defense identification zone. The spy plane “was only about 15.91 nautical miles [29.46km] from the baseline of the Chinese mainland’s territorial waters,” the SCSPI report said, adding that the aircraft may have had their transponder turned off. 

  Last year, Beijing blasted the U.S. for concealing spy planes’ identities as commercial passenger planes. They said it’s common for USAF spy planes to impersonate the transponder code of civilian aircraft from other countries — calling it dangerous. 

  At the time, SCSPI said, “this undoubtedly added up to great risk and uncertainty to international flight safety, which could lead to misjudgment (by ground air defense systems) and probably bring danger to civilian aircraft especially those being impersonated.”

  Bloomberg spoke with a spokesperson for the U.S. 7th Fleet who said, “U.S. Navy ships and aircraft routinely operate within the international waters of the South China Sea, and are committed to supporting its network of alliances and partners and upholding a free and open Indo- Pacific.” 

  On Friday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian urged the U.S. to stop “severely infringing on China’s territorial security.” He said, “this is aimed at creating tensions and will drive the risk of regional conflict.”

  The last thing the U.S. and China need is a major foreign policy crisis. President Biden and President Xi Jinping don’t want conflict ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing and ahead of next year’s 20th Party Congress in China and the U.S. midterm elections.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/03/2021 – 19:20

• Elizabeth Warren Is So Very Wrong About Inflation
  Elizabeth Warren Is So Very Wrong About Inflation

  Authored by William Anderson via The Mises Institute,

  Almost anyone who follows social media is familiar with the latest tweets by Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has pronounced her verdict on higher food and gasoline prices: they are nothing less than the result of corporate greed. In fact, according to Warren, there is no inflation, only corporations arbitrarily raising prices in their relentless pursuit of … profits.

  

  In a November 21 interview with MSNBC’s Joy Reid, Warren declared (later placed on Twitter):

  Prices have gone up. Why? Because giant oil companies like Chevon and ExxonMobil enjoy doubling their profits. This isn’t about inflation. This is about price gouging for these guys and we need to call them out.

  Three days later, she outdid herself, declaring:

  Wondering why your Thanksgiving groceries cost more this year? It’s because greedy corporations are charging Americans extra just to keep their stock prices high. This is outrageous.

  To those familiar with Warren and her previous economic pronouncements, none of this is surprising. A decade ago, she declared that entrepreneurial successes are due to the government, not any decisions that entrepreneurs might have made, and her record in the US Senate speaks volumes to her economic illiteracy. That she should claim that all businesses have to do to increase profits is to raise prices is proof to her intellectual bankruptcy.

  Despite the title, however, this article is not about Elizabeth Warren’s economic viewpoints.

  However, in her declaration that no doubt plays well with progressives, she makes a specific claim: firms that wish to increase their profits and stock values simply need to raise the prices of whatever they sell.

  Warren’s claim raises an obvious question: If higher prices always lead to greater profits, why would any business owner pass up the chance for greater profitability? In fact, if high profits are tied directly to higher prices, then one would expect a cottage industry to spring up of class action law firms suing corporations for lowering their prices, since any firm is free to increase its profits at will. Doing anything less is dereliction of duty to shareholders.

  Not that I regularly follow Warren’s Twitter decrees, but I doubt seriously that she ever has praised any businesses when they lower their prices (oil companies often lower prices, not to mention technology firms). Since lower prices do not fit into Warren’s progressive narratives, it is doubtful that she even notices when that happens, and if we are to take her latest statements seriously, then we would have to believe that such an event could not happen because no profit-maximizing firm ever would impose losses upon itself when they are fully aware of a profitable alternative strategy.

  There are a number of fallacies in Warren’s antimarket missives, and I shall examine them from the Austrian viewpoint, specifically using Murray Rothbard’s Man, Economy, and State as the standard. I first look at her view of profits themselves.

  Like many American progressives, Warren seems to interpret business profits as an extraction of wealth from the community at large. Rothbard wrote about what he called the “altruists” as condemning profits:

  It is also peculiar that critics generally concentrate their fire on profits (“the profit motive”), and not on other market incomes such as wages. It is difficult to see any sense whatever in moral distinctions between these incomes.

  Indeed, progressives like Warren see markets in a starkly different way than do Austrians such as Rothbard. To Warren, markets are violent, predatory entities with no more moral standing than the Roman arenas. Rothbard, not surprisingly, differs:

  [C]ritics overlook the fact that the operation of the free market is vastly different from governmental action. When a government acts, individual critics are powerless to change the result. They can do so only if they can finally convince the rulers that their decision should be changed; this may take a long time or be totally impossible. On the free market, however, there is no final decision imposed by force; everyone is free to shape his own decisions and thereby significantly change the results of “the market.” In short, whoever feels that the market has been too cruel to certain entrepreneurs or to any other income receivers is perfectly free to set up an aid fund for him for depriving his fellowman of needed benefits. For the consistent altruist must face the fact that monetary income on the market reflects services to others, whereas psychic income is a purely personal, or “selfish,” gain.

  Entrepreneurial profits, Rothbard notes, do not come about because of nefarious behavior on part of the producers, but rather the good judgment successful entrepreneurs make regarding the present price of key factors of production and the predicted value of final products these factors help create. Writes Rothbard:

  What gave rise to this realized profit, this ex post profit fulfilling the producer’s ex ante expectations? The fact that the factors of production in this process were underpriced and undercapitalized—underpriced in so far as their unit services were bought, undercapitalized in so far as the factors were bought as wholes.

  One can imagine Warren and other progressives replying: “Maybe that is true in a theoretically competitive market, but oil companies and big food companies are not entrepreneurs, but rather are monopolies that regularly manipulate the market to their advantage. Their markets are not competitive, so they are free to set whatever prices they want and name their own profits.”

  While accusations of “market manipulation” by rapacious monopolies are common among progressives, identifying such actions of “manipulation” is difficult. The standard accusation is that these companies manage to keep supplies off the market, thus forcing up the prices of goods. The problem, of course, is identifying specific instances and also properly identifying scenarios in which such “manipulation” actually is possible.

  Take fuel prices, for example. If oil and gas companies were to hold back supplies in order to gain temporary price increases, they quickly would have to release those confiscated supplies back into the market (forcing down prices), as there are no secret storage areas that these companies possess that would enable them to set aside the massive quantities of fuel needed to accomplish what Warren and other progressives accuse oil and gas firms of doing.

  The only way fuel companies can make the kinds of windfall profits that Warren claims they are making is for them to experience either unanticipated surges in demand that overwhelm current supplies or for there to be external events that threaten future supplies and quickly increase the value of those present supplies. As I recently pointed out, the Joe Biden administration is attempting to cripple the oil and gas industries in the future in pursuit of its ill-advised green agenda, and one of the obvious effects of throwing down regulatory roadblocks and dangling criminal charges against fuel company executives for allegedly warming the earth is to ensure that future fuel supplies will be diminished. The upshot of such actions will be to force up the current prices of fuels. As I wrote in that article:

  While some have called this “regulatory overreach,” there is nothing surprising or shocking about this. The Biden administration response to anything it can tie to “climate change” is going to be heavy-handed and expansive, especially since regulators now believe they have been near-divinely appointed to bring better weather to planet Earth.

  The Biden administration’s actions have the effect of forcing up present prices because buyers know that the government’s attempts to cripple these industries will mean severely diminished supplies in the future. Such actions cause the value of current inventories to increase, which in the short term will boost industry profits. Since Warren openly supports the Green New Deal and other such measures, she is partly to blame for higher fuel prices even if she refused to admit she is part of the problem.

  To further emphasize this point, I use Rothbard’s examples to compare the government’s attempts to reduce production of oil and gas with the actions of coffee firms in Latin America to burn part of the year’s harvest to enjoy higher present prices. He writes:

  But is not monopolizing action a restriction of production, and is not this restriction a demonstrably antisocial act? Let us first take what would seem to be the worst possible case of such action: the actual destruction of part of a product by a cartel. This is done to take advantage of an inelastic demand curve and to raise the price to gain a greater monetary income for the whole group. We can visualize, for example, the case of a coffee cartel burning great quantities of coffee.

  In the first place, such actions will surely occur very seldom. Actual destruction of its product is clearly a highly wasteful act, even for the cartel; it is obvious that the factors of production which the growers had expended in producing the coffee have been spent in vain. Clearly, the production of the total quantity of coffee itself has proved to be an error, and the burning of coffee is only the aftermath and reflection of the error. Yet, because of the uncertainty of the future, errors are often made. Man could labor and invest for years in the production of a good which, it may turn out, consumers hardly want at all. If, for example, consumers’ tastes had changed so that coffee would not be demanded by anyone, regardless of price, it would again have to be destroyed, with or without a cartel.

  In the case of fuels, the oil and gas companies are not destroying present supplies or even hiding them in imaginary vaults. Instead, we have a government that does what it can to ensure that future supplies of these fuels will be less available and that firms are on notice that this particular president believes those companies should not even exist. And yet Warren and her colleagues are shocked, SHOCKED, that government-directed reduction of oil and gas supplies means higher present prices for consumers.

  Furthermore, contra Warren, we should expect fuel and commodity prices to rise substantially during periods of deliberate government monetary debasement (better known as inflation), as commodities historically have had wider price swings during periods of inflation and deflation and are very sensitive to changes in the value of the dollar. The markets for commodities like oil and crops are some of the most competitive markets to be found anywhere.

  Unfortunately, those that are most responsible for this current upswing in fuel and food prices are the same ones pointing blame elsewhere. Jacob Hornberger in his blog has noted that the Biden administration is taking a page from the Jimmy Carter administration more than forty years ago, which blamed higher prices on private enterprise. Hornberger writes:

  According to an article in the Washington Post, Biden is “considering whether to escalate an attack on parts of corporate America over rising prices…. The administration would amplify criticisms of large firms in heavily concentrated industries for passing higher prices on to consumers as they benefit from high profits”

  According to the article, “The White House took a step in this direction earlier this week, with Biden urging the Federal Trade Commission to escalate its investigation of anti-competitive behavior in the oil and gas industry, which the president alleged was leading to higher prices for drivers at the pump.”

  Readers like me who were adults during that time might remember that many in Congress and the media were calling for full nationalization of the oil industry, and that progressives of that era claimed (as they do now) that oil markets were not subject to ordinary laws of economics. That we have seen these things disproven over the past four decades means little to political, media, and academic elites who spew the same economic nonsense as they did in the 1970s.

  The explanations given by Austrians at that time, such as Murray Rothbard, still hold true today. We are seeing the natural results of massive monetary manipulation that dwarfs anything the Federal Reserve System and its government allies saw in the late 1970s and a new generation of progressives such as Elizabeth Warren are dusting off the old playbook and, with the help of elites of the mainstream media and academe, are spreading the old economic nonsense all the while destroying the fundamentals of a market economy. One likens them to the Bourbons of early nineteenth-century France after they were restored to power after the turmoil of the French Revolution and the Napoleon years. The French statesman Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand wrote of them, “Ils n’ont rien appris, ni rien oublié.” They have learnt nothing, and forgotten nothing.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/03/2021 – 19:00

• Dalio: "Dangerously High Risk" Of Civil War In America
  Dalio: “Dangerously High Risk” Of Civil War In America

  While he may be willfully blind (or worse?) to China’s human rights abuses (stoking a sharp rebuke from the likes of Mitt Romney), when it comes to domestic matters Billionaire Ray Dalio thinks there’s a “dangerously high risk” of civil war in the United States within the next decade due to an “exceptional amount of polarization” in the country.

  

  In his new book, “Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail,” Dalio points to the six stages of an internal order/disorder cycle – and estimates that there’s a 30% chance of civil war.

  “For example, when close elections are adjudicated and the losers respect the decisions, it is clear that the order is respected. When power is fought over and grabbed, that clearly signals the significant risk of a revolutionary change with all its attendant disorder,” he writes, adding that “a vast number of people – including high-ranking officials, have openly doubted the validity of recent elections, and have expressed a willingness to fight for their beliefs.”

  Dalio also points to various studies showing that Americans are currently in an emotionally charged divide between political parties, according to RT. In one recent survey noted by Dalio, 15% of Republicans and 20% of Democrats thought the country would be better if the opposing political party “just died.”

  

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/03/2021 – 18:40

• World Health Organization Says "No Evidence" Booster Jabs Would Offer "Greater Protection" To The Healthy
  World Health Organization Says “No Evidence” Booster Jabs Would Offer “Greater Protection” To The Healthy

  Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

  The World Health Organization has questioned the UK government’s decision to roll out hundreds of millions of booster jabs to its population, asserting there is “no evidence” they would offer “greater protection” to the healthy.

  

  UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid’s says the country has secured an additional 114 million vaccine doses for 2022 and 2023 to “buy time” and that everyone over the age of 18 will be offered one by the end of January.

  Dr. Mike Ryan, head of the WHO’s emergencies program, questioned the logic behind this decision.

  “Right now, there is no evidence that I’m aware of that would suggest that boosting the entire population would necessarily provide any greater protection for otherwise healthy individuals against hospitalization and death,” he said.

  Ryan also noted that the UK was in a “luxurious position” of being able to offer booster shots to its entire population given that many poorer countries don’t even have even vaccines to give all their people one dose.

  UK medical authorities have also seized upon the Omicron variant to insist that more children receive vaccines.

  This is odd given that the variant has become noted for only causing “mild” symptoms in younger populations.

  Experts argue that dismissing Omicron as “mild” is dangerous because South Africa has a very young population (average age 27) and we don’t know how it will impact older people.

  They then say the solution is to vaccinate more younger people.

  Makes total sense.

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  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/03/2021 – 18:35

• Leapfrogging Legacy Banking To A Bitcoin Standard
  Leapfrogging Legacy Banking To A Bitcoin Standard

  Authored by Mitch Klee via BitcoinMagazine.com,

  How looking at the history of technological adoption can give us insights into where Bitcoin could be embraced the fastest…

  

  INTRO

  Throughout time, technology has proven to change our lives by leveraging efficiencies in energy. New ways in how we hunt have saved time and energy for innovation and to live more intentionally. Currently, Bitcoin presents an immense opportunity to change the lives of those who are burdened by old forms of manipulated money and preserve their time and energy. It is the first self-sovereign, programmable money that is proving to destroy expectations of every “expert” imaginable. At the intersection of money and technology, Bitcoin’s network effect is spreading like a mind virus to all corners of the globe. This is not a coincidence but the manifestation of a zero to one moment; a radical new technology that will change nearly everything it touches.

  This article explores the idea that some regions and nations have a higher susceptibility to adoption in new monetary networks. Specifically, I will outline how the unbanked populations of emerging countries can leapfrog legacy systems, straight into a new monetary standard. But first, let’s lay the groundwork for understanding how this can happen with some concepts.

  DEMOCRATIZATION OF TECHNOLOGY

  To understand leapfrogging, let’s first look into something that naturally happens when humans produce technology: the democratization of technology. As we make technology, the cost reduces, while the ease of production increases. Our tools get better, people’s skills improve, securing the material for production gets easier, logistics improve, and everything is less costly as humans continue increasing the output/yield over time. Simply put, cost goes down, while production goes up.

  

  Figure 1.

  A great example is the printing press. Before this innovation, each book had to be typed out or written one by one and distributed almost by osmosis. This means books were more expensive and were only in the hands of the few. After the printing press, people were able to automate a portion of the process by creating blueprints of the books. This cut down labor costs, and there was a huge explosion in printed material. This may have put people out of work; but it also introduced better dissemination of information to a wider group of people and new opportunities to produce more books for less cost and effort.

  Another example is photography. Historically, taking photos on film took hours to produce in a dark room. The film had to be brought to a local expert and it would take several days to get back the finished product. Smartphones and photoshop technology made this essentially free. It was then possible to download an app or use the built-in app on smartphones, take pictures, and immediately process them. Democratization of technology has been happening across every single aspect of human society since the beginning of time. Humans create tools to make it easier and cheaper to survive. Each tool becomes better, we then expand and evolve with less energy improving the quality of life.

  Fast-forward to the internet age. Emerging countries are just now tapping into the power of the internet. Although there are many factors underlying the reasons for expansion, one thing that is known is that technology builds on itself, making each successive technology easier to produce. Not only is there growth, but there is exponential growth. Certain times throughout history, technology has made such a large leap forward that it allows extremely poor countries to skip the legacy technology and quickly adopt the new one. This is called leapfrogging.

  LEAPFROGGING EXPLAINED

  Leapfrogging is when the cost to produce one technology is too great for a population, so when a new, drastically cheaper technology is created it’s quickly adopted and the old tech is skipped. This is the coexistence and benefit of separate populations within society. Let’s look at the mobile phone revolution as a way to explain leapfrogging. Some societies did not have the wealth or infrastructure to adopt landlines and phone communication when it was brand new, but when the mobile phone was introduced, this gave mostly everyone around the world the ability to opt-in.

  

  Figure 2. Landlines in the U.S., 1900–2019.

  Figure 2 shows the number of landlines in the U.S. population from the 1900s to 2019. Throughout the entirety of the 20th century, the landline was being adopted in the U.S. Consequently it only took a decade to dethrone this old technology. The decline started when the benefit of cell phones outweighed the cost compared to landlines. This is where democratization hit the tipping point and we saw a huge jump from one technology to the next. Now it’s extremely cheap to use technology that is 100 times or even 1,000 times more advanced than the previous. Mobile phones usurped landlines because they were more affordable, easier to use and more mobile. Figure 2 shows how quickly a society can adopt a technology that has significantly more benefits than the previous, even in an advanced society.

  A similar thing is happening with television and the internet. Netflix came out and disrupted how people consume media on the television. As more platforms emerged, and people realized they could pay a fraction of the cost for a Netflix subscription rather than $100 for cable and a bunch of commercials, the switch was easy. Legacy systems were bogged down by all of the brick-and-mortar stores and overhead costs. They could not compete and pivot quickly enough, so they lost their seat at the table.

  

  Figure 3. Number of telephone subscriptions in the U.S. versus worldwide.

  When comparing fixed telephone subscriptions to other countries, the U.S. was way ahead of most. Many factors were contributing to this. Wealth played a huge part, but much of it was the production and first movers’ advantage. The U.S. was the first country to set up telephone lines from Boston to Somerville Massachusetts and expanded from there. Other countries did not have this opportunity, so they were laggards in the technology simply by default. It also made it easy to have a grid to run on top of, being a technologically advanced country with a power grid. Because it was so resource-heavy to set up this grid, this took over 30 years to build up the infrastructure.

  

  Figure 4. Landline subscriptions compared to GDP per capita, 2019.

  One of the main reasons why it was so hard to increase telephone subscriptions in other countries is because of the initial cost. You can’t just tap into a telephone line, there needs to be a large grid, infrastructure and companies/governments willing to build out this grid. Figure 4 shows that there is a rough line at a GDP per capita of $5,000 to get off zero and start communicating via landline. As the GDP per capita grows in a country, it is more likely they adopt fixed landlines. This is a huge barrier to entry as they try and compete to be a part of the 21st century. With telephones, it brings an easier flow of information across long distances quickly. These are important technologies that helped first-world countries advance quicker than their counterparts. This technology could mean the difference between surviving and thriving in the modern era.

  

  Figure 5. Mobile phone subscriptions versus GDP per capita, 2019.

  Things get much different when you start looking at mobile phones in Figure 5. To have a mobile phone is drastically cheaper than having a landline, all costs considered. Before, you needed the infrastructure and everything that came with installing a landline phone. But with mobile phones, even at a GDP per capita of less than $1,000, you get ~50% penetration of adoption within the population. All of the countries that were left out of communication with landlines, now have leapfrogged the old technology, right into a new standard of mobile phones.

  People benefit, businesses benefit and countries benefit immensely from these technologies. With mobile communication, people have higher leverage over their energy output. Businesses and life in general are more efficient, in turn creating a higher GDP for the country. It is a feedback loop that is good for all of humanity. When one group of people creates new technology, everyone benefits at one point or another.

  FROM LANDLINES TO MOBILE PHONES TO INTERNET-CONNECTED SMARTPHONES

  Not only are poorer countries leapfrogging into mobile phone communication, but they are, in turn, jumping right into the internet age. On top of that, (Android) smartphone costs are dropping significantly every year, with the average cost down by 50% from 2008 to 2016. With the growing ability to connect with the rest of the world comes more opportunities to learn and grow with the rest of the world. An incredible amount of information is available on the internet, and the benefit of being on the network is immeasurable.

  

  Figure 6. Mobile versus landline subscriptions, worldwide, 1960–2019.

  When comparing the numbers of mobile phone users to the numbers of landlines, you get a huge disparity in the pace at which they were adopted. Fixed landlines were around for almost 50 years before they started to see some real competition. Thinking back to our Figure 5, this makes sense, because the cost to build infrastructure is drastically higher than that of mobile phones. The opportunity a landline brought to civilization was immense, but the cost-effective mobility of cell phones transcends previous communication technology by a longshot.

  As of September 2021, the world’s population was ~7.89 billion people. Of that, there are 10.5 billion cell phones with network connections. That is 2.52 billion more activated phones than there are people. This becomes thought-provoking when adoption data starts to reveal where mobile phones are headed next.

  As people adopt mobile phones, smartphones are becoming cheaper and more abundant. The cost of production for smartphones is less and less each year, and soon there will be little reason to have a cell phone without internet connection because the cost difference will be so minuscule. Smartphone abundance is allowing people around the world to tap into the internet and it is estimated that “by 2025, 72% of all internet users will solely use smartphones to access the web.”

  

  Figure 7. Share of the population using the internet, 1990–2019.

  Currently, the world is in a transitionary period of communication. Not all of the world has access to the internet, only 65%, with an increasingly rapid pace of adoption. Because it is so inexpensive to get a mobile phone, and the benefits are immense, the world is being onboarded at an incredible rate.

  To answer the question “What is Leapfrogging?” we can look directly at mobile phones. But it’s not just one leapfrog, it’s more of a continuous onboarding to the digital revolution for the entire human population. Things are getting cheaper, and technology is moving exponentially forward, toward a more connected future. Soon, everyone will have access to the internet and will bring about new and exciting opportunities for the world to grow. With the high rate of adoption in communication technology, mobile phones swept across low-GDP countries allowing information to spread. Smartphones are a small hop away from mobile phones. With smartphones comes all sorts of opportunities not to mention the connection to the world’s internet. In developing countries, the internet is starting to hit its hockey stick moment. Adoption continues to grow and as smartphones get cheaper, more people in the world have access to the internet, connecting them to their local and global economies and new innovations will come about in unforeseen ways.

  This begs the question, what monetary network will they use to transact in the digital age? It’s taken years to get the legacy banking system up to speed. We’ve bootstrapped and “Frankensteined” many different ways to connect the internet to a centuries-old banking infrastructure, but these newly onboarded countries have the opportunity to skip that altogether. With no legacy banking infrastructure rooted within the nation, this leaves the door wide open for a new legacy.

  LEAPFROGGING ONTO A BITCOIN STANDARD

  It seems the stage is set for a paradigm shift. A perfect storm is brewing in populations that lack bank accounts and access to store their wealth. Coupling this with connection to the internet, and 21st-century e-commerce and monetary system, it is impossible for countries not to adopt it. Because bitcoin is a global asset with no intermediaries, its infrastructure is inherently global. Any improvements to the network, the entire world will benefit automatically without having to update the old tech. Unlike landlines, there is no infrastructure to build, and the barrier to entry is almost zero. You just opt in with a bit of hardware and an internet connection.

  As of 2017, according to the World Bank, there are 1.7 billion adults in the world without a basic transacting account. Most of these countries with higher rates of unbanked are poor, have high rates of inflation and lower currency stability, not to mention a disconnected state government ripe with problems. This is extremely common when looking at currencies in other low-GDP countries. So, what are some of the biggest factors in which people would want or need to adopt Bitcoin? If we can answer this question, then maybe we can quantify and pinpoint which countries have the biggest opportunity and most to gain from adopting a Bitcoin standard.

  

  Figure 8. World’s most unbanked countries (Source).

  Figure 8 shows the top-10 most unbanked countries as of February 2021. The Oxford dictionary defines “unbanked” as “not having access to the services of a bank or similar financial organization.” Much like building the infrastructure for landlines, it’s expensive to build banks and serve the local economy. Not to mention, many of the people living in these countries don’t have the amount of money that would warrant the cost of owning a bank account. Some even share bank accounts with members of their families to save on costs. There is a huge opportunity to solve the problem of banking in low-GDP countries, but many of the digital banking companies around the world are constrained by regulation and geographical jurisdiction. It may be hard to grasp the importance of a bank account having never lived without one, but without a bank, citizens cannot secure funds safely. Without secure funds, the future is uncertain. This is where Bitcoin can solve some of the problems in these less developed and emerging countries. There are three specific ways in which these problems could be solved.

  1. Bank the Unbanked

  Bitcoin gives everyone the ability to be their own bank with something as little as a cell phone. All that’s needed is to be connected to the network and accept funds. The smartphone does all of this. It allows people to download a bitcoin wallet, connect to the internet and start transacting. There are many ways in which one can use this wallet. Coincidentally, the countries above who have low banking numbers within their population, also have mobile phones and high internet penetration. This is an open door from a technological standpoint, allowing people to opt into Bitcoin and secure their funds digitally.

  In addition to using the Bitcoin network to transact on your phone, you can also use it as a cold storage solution. Cold storage is similar to a savings account. This savings account or cold storage is disconnected from the internet, making it harder for people to steal your funds. With the old technology of banks, you would have to pay for this solution, but with Bitcoin, it’s free, just download the software and/or buy a hardware wallet. There are some cold storage solutions where you can pay for a hardware device, but creating a phone wallet and securing your keys, gives the people an entry point and on-ramp to storing their wealth in a digital bank.

  2. Securely Store Value Over Time

  The second opportunity is the store of value function. Many of the countries that have unbanked populations and poverty issues are a result of a currency problem. In my previous article, “Bitcoin As A Pressure Release Valve,” I wrote that certain countries have hyperinflated currencies with no option but to turn to the black market. Most of the time, these countries use the U.S. dollar to transact since it holds its value better relative to their currency. Strictly from a monetary standpoint, bitcoin is scarce. It is the most scarce form of money there is. There will only ever be 21 million bitcoin in existence and when the value rises, the production does not increase. This is called elasticity or the lack of elasticity in bitcoin’s case. Unlike fiat money, no government, central bank or agency can print more. And unlike gold, silver or any other commodity, when the demand rises, the amount that is mined stays the same. The first completely inelastic asset in existence is a result of preprogrammed architecture, with consensus in the network that’s default is to not change the protocol.

  People that live in countries where the money is known to be manipulated, understand Bitcoin almost immediately. When the idea of something that can’t be manipulated is presented, the concept of scarcity and 21 million is understood. With the reality of incorruptible money, the current regime in power can’t stuff their pockets without alienating the population through force. These people understand this idea because they have experienced it firsthand. When food prices rise faster than people can spend a weekly budget on groceries, it is immediately apparent the importance of a completely scarce, un-manipulatable asset.

  In developed countries with low levels of unbanked, people have ways of storing their wealth. They have a 401k and IRA, and most people own property. This is a way of storing value over time. It may not be completely efficient, but it is sufficient enough to escape some level of inflation. The alternative would be to keep your dollars in a savings account, and the real yield of that is negative and not a smart way to store money. These countries put money in financial devices, because it is the smart thing to do and it preserves time and energy. Unbanked countries have no way of storing long-term value. It is degraded and evaporated through manipulation and high levels of money printing. Emerging countries cannot store time and value into financial instruments. There is no Apple stock or S&P 500 to put money into. They are stuck with low levels of wealth that are stolen away on an ever-moving treadmill. There is no way of truly saving value or energy spent over time.

  For the first time, Bitcoin gives the world, particularly those in emerging countries, the ability to hold their value in a closed system that cannot be inflated. Much like the opportunity the mobile phone brought to change communication, bitcoin is the first “store of value” that is available for low-GDP countries to buy and hold. It allows them to securely transfer their wealth over time, without fear of inflation or confiscation. Add on top of that, if they need to transfer wealth out of the country and flee an oppressive regime, bitcoin is the first asset that gives the ability to do so. Large amounts of gold cannot be taken on a plane or property and homes cannot be transferred to another country. Bitcoin gives people the freedom to do what they want with their earned value, without fear of a centralized power removing it. Bitcoin preserves the fundamental human right of property.

  3. Connection to the Digital Economy

  The third problem Bitcoin solves is connecting and transacting digitally. Being a digitally native asset, bitcoin smooths the rails of commerce allowing low-GDP countries to join the 21st century of commerce. This is huge, and what cell phones did for communication, digital commerce will do the same. It immensely increases our ability to transact and exchange value. Bitcoin allows anyone, anywhere, to join a digital transacting network and exchange value natively over the internet, whether in person or without knowing them at all.

  Digital economies move at the speed of light, while old-school economies move at the speed of osmosis. This brings more time and efficiency for people on both ends of the transaction. Businesses spend less time on transactions, widen their addressable market, and start putting more time and effort into other things that can improve their work. It is the difference between transacting daily in cash and using a preprogrammed point of sales system. It is simply better.

  Not only does Bitcoin make things easier and frees up more time, but it is programmable money. Like the internet, Bitcoin can be built in layers. Each layer brings a new way to use it that widens the possibilities and use cases. What the internet did for communication, Bitcoin will do for money.

  Combining all three of these factors, you get a massive magnetic pull toward adoption of the new technology. It is hard to slow the movement of technological adoption and impossible to stop. Like throwing a match on a tinder-filled hillside, years of opportunity build up in countries that lack technology where innovation and adoption prepare to explode at the right moment.

  QUANTIFYING BITCOIN ADOPTION IN LOW-GDP COUNTRIES

  

  Figure 9. LocalBitcoins and Paxful Vietnamese dong (VND) combined volume in Vietnam (Source).

  Looking at every one of the top-10 countries from Figure 8, they all have meaningful adoption in Bitcoin and it is growing every week. Not only is Vietnam number two on the unbanked list, but it is also number one on the “Chainalysis 2021 Global Adoption Ranking.” In fact, looking at Figure 10 of adoption through LocalBitcoins and Paxful, USD volume shows that every one of the countries in the top-10 list of unbanked have meaningful adoption.

  

  Figure 10. LocalBitcoins and Paxful Vietnamese dong (VND) combined volume.

  What does this tell us about Bitcoin adoption in unbanked countries? It tells us that it’s working. Continuing to see these trends improve will be good for Bitcoin adoption and not to mention the countries in which they are adopting it. All the ingredients are there. Most are unbanked with high internet access and an unreliable currency that isn’t natively digital. All you need is time for the adoption to take hold.

  There are also some concerns that come up when thinking about Bitcoin adoption. Like, “How can they adopt bitcoin when it is so volatile?” Well, there are a few solutions to this problem. The first is that when a population has no choice, something as volatile as bitcoin could mean the difference between losing 30% or losing 90% over the span of one year. Keep in mind that bitcoin is already solving three of the major problems listed above, we are just remedying the problem of volatility.

  First, look at just bitcoin and its use cases today. For some countries, their currency is just as volatile if not more volatile than bitcoin. Not only that, but it is volatile to the downside, continuing to lose value as the government steals and prints away spent time and energy. If bitcoin were to be used, sure it might be volatile, but this volatility is either short lived, or it’s to the upside.

  Now look at bitcoin while using it for everyday transactions through Strike, as a more technical solution. This solution is currently available now in El Salvador as a test case and is starting to roll out to more and more countries. People use the Bitcoin and Lightning rails every single day but transact in USD, choosing to either save in bitcoin or not. This solution gives the best of both worlds. One, a population has the ability to transact short term in a currency that isn’t volatile, like other emerging countries. Two, this gives access to the payment rails of Bitcoin and the ability to save in the most scarce asset in existence. Looking back historically, bitcoin has grown at a 200% compound annual growth rate and this has the opportunity to conserve and grow wealth immensely. For someone in a developing world, this is life changing.

  As this trend of adoption in underbanked countries continues, new and exciting ways where Bitcoin is used will emerge. For the first time in history, countries have the ability to store wealth in something that cannot be stolen. It gives the opportunity to transact freely without the permission of the state or government, and it allows people to break free from imposed serfdom. Bitcoin is here and it is only getting bigger. There is a change in the tides of time, and Bitcoin is a once-in-a-millennia technology that is pulling the shores.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/03/2021 – 18:20

• Russia's Lavrov Warns Blinken Of Return To Military Confrontation "Nightmare"
  Russia’s Lavrov Warns Blinken Of Return To Military Confrontation “Nightmare”

  On Friday top Ukraine officials continued sounding the alarm over what they believe is a large-scale mustering of Russian troops aimed at prepping an invasion of eastern Ukraine. 

  “Our intelligence analyses all scenarios, including the worst,” Ukraine’s defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, told parliament on Friday. “It notes that the likelihood of a large-scale escalation from Russia exists. The most likely time to reach readiness for an escalation will be the end of January.” He said more than 94,000 Russian soldiers have massed across the border. 

  

  The charge comes two days after Moscow turned the accusation around, saying that it’s actually Kiev that has now stationed half the entire national army in Donbass. The Kremlin called Ukraine’s rhetoric and actions “excessively inflamed and dangerous”, and suggested the flurry of ratcheting allegations this week are designed to provoke Russia.

  US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday said in Stockholm that Western allies have expressed “tremendous solidarity” to take action in the event of a Russian offensive in Ukraine.

  Given this atmosphere of escalating accusations and fears of direct confrontation, the Russian foreign ministry is urging immediate deconfliction. Likely there will be engagement between the Pentagon and Russian defense officials. Over a week ago, on Nov.23, the heads of the Russian and United States militaries held a rare phone call in efforts to deescalate the soaring tensions in eastern Europe.

  In his latest comments Friday, Russian FM Sergey Lavrov asserted that NATO is refusing calls to de-escalate the crisis: 

  “NATO refuses to consider our proposals on de-escalation of tensions and prevention of dangerous incidents,” Lavrov said, accusing the US-led bloc of rejecting constructive discussion.

  “On the contrary, the alliance’s military infrastructure is moving closer to Russia’s borders… The nightmarish scenario of military confrontation is returning.”

  Blinken and Lavrov separated by about 25 feet and a large flower arrangement. pic.twitter.com/RypogEMcAC

  — Nick Wadhams (@nwadhams) December 2, 2021

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

  He actually met with Blinken on the sidelines of conference of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), held in Sweden:

  At a European security conference in Sweden, Mr Lavrov floated the idea of a new European security pact to try to stop Nato from expanding further east.

  US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned of “serious consequences” if Russia sought conflict with Ukraine.

  Moscow has repeatedly denied that it’s preparing any kind of military offensive against Ukraine. It’s leader have said that troop movements within its own sovereign borders shouldn’t be cause for any other country’s concern. 

  Meanwhile, Russia remains on edge while again finding itself in the international spotlight of the West’s accusations: “As tensions rise, Russia said on Thursday it had arrested three suspected Ukrainian security service agents,” BBC reported of the latest incident. “One of the three was accused of planning a terrorist attack, while the other two had been seeking to gather intelligence, Russia’s Federal Security Service said.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/03/2021 – 18:00

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