Dec 05

Today’s News 5th December 2021

  • Now Or Never: The Great 'Transition' Must Be Imposed
    Now Or Never: The Great ‘Transition’ Must Be Imposed

    Authored by Alastair Crooke via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    A new wave of restrictions, more lockdowns, and – eventually – trillions of dollars in new stimmie cheques may be in prospect…

    Were you following the news this last week? Vaccine mandates are everywhere: one country, after another, is doubling-down, to try to force, or legally compel, full population vaccination. The mandates are coming because of the massive uptick in Covid – most of all in the places where the experimental mRNA gene therapies were deployed en masse. And (no coincidence), this ‘marker’ has come just as U.S. Covid deaths in 2021 have surpassed those of 2020. This has happened, despite the fact that last year, no Americans were vaccinated (and this year 59% are vaccinated). Clearly no panacea, this mRNA ‘surge’.

    Of course, the Pharma-Establishment know that the vaccines are no panacea. There are ‘higher interests’ at play here. It is driven rather by fear that the window for implementing its series of ‘transitions’ in the U.S. and Europe is closing. Biden still struggles to move his ‘Go-Big’ social spending plan and green agenda transition through Congress by the midterm election in a year’s time. And the inflation spike may well sink Biden’s Build Back Better agenda (BBB) altogether.

    Time is short. The midterm elections are but 12 months away, after which the legislative window shuts. The Green ‘transition’ is stuck too (by concerns that moving too fast to renewables is putting power grids at risk and elevating heating costs unduly), and the Pharma establishment will be aware that a new B.1.1.529 variant has made a big jump in evolution with 32 mutations to its spike protein. This makes it “clearly very different” from previous variants, which may drive further waves of infection evading ‘vaccine defences’.

    Translation: a new wave of restrictions, more lockdowns, and – eventually – trillions of dollars in new stimmie cheques may be in prospect. And what of inflation then, we might ask.

    It’s a race for the U.S. and Europe, where the pandemic is back in full force across Europe, to push through their re-set agendas, before variants seize up matters with hospitals crowded with the vaccinated and non-vaccinated; with riots in the streets, and mask mandates at Christmas markets (that’s if they open at all). A big reversal was foreshadowed by this week’s news: vaccine mandates and lockdowns, even in highly vaccinated areas, are returning. And people don’t like it.

    The window for the Re-Set may be fast closing. One observer, noting all the frenetic Élite activity, has asked ‘have we finally reached peak Davos?’. Is the turn to authoritarianism in Europe a sign of desperation as fears grow that the various ‘transitions’ planned under the ‘re-set’ umbrella (financial, climate, vaccine and managerial expert technocracy) may never be implemented?

    Cut short rather, as spending plans are hobbled by accelerating inflation; as the climate transition fails to find traction amongst poorer states (and at home, too); as technocracy is increasingly discredited by adverse pandemic outcomes; and Modern Monetary Theory hits a wall, because – well, inflation again.

    Are you paying attention yet? The great ‘transition’ is conceived as a hugely expensive shift towards renewables, and to a new digitalised, roboticised corporatism. It requires Big (inflationary) funding to be voted through, and a huge parallel (inflationary) expenditure on social support to be approved by Congress as well. The social provision is required to mollify all those who subsequently will find themselves without jobs, because of the climate ‘transition’ and the shift to a digitalised corporate sphere. But – unexpectedly for some ‘experts’ – inflation has struck – the highest statistics in 30 years.

    There are powerful oligarchic interests behind the Re-Set. They do not want to see it go down, nor see the West eclipsed by its ‘competitors’. So it seems that rather than back off, they will go full throttle and try to impose compliance on their electorates: tolerate no dissidence.

    A 1978 essay “The Power of the Powerless” by then dissident and future Czech President Vaclav Havel begins mockingly that, “A SPECTRE is haunting Eastern Europe: the spectre of what in the West is called ‘dissent’”. “This spectre has not appeared out of thin air. It is a natural and inevitable consequence of the present historical phase of the system it is haunting.” Well, today, as Michael Every of Rabobank notes, “the West has polarisation, mass protests, riots, talk of obligatory vaccinations in Europe, and Yanis Varoufakis arguing capitalism is already dead; and that a techno-feudalism looms”. Now, prompting even greater urgency, are the looming U.S. midterms. Trump’s return (even if confined just to Congress), would cut the legs from under BBB, and ice-up Brussels too.

    It was however, precisely this tech revolution, to which Varoufakis calls attention, that both re-defined the Democrat constituency, and turned tech oligarchs into billionaires. Through algorithmically creating a magnetism of like-minded content, cascaded out to its customers, it has both smothered intellectual curiosity, and created the ‘un-informed party’, which is the today’s Managerial Class – the party of the credentialed meritocracy; the party, above all, smugly seeing themselves as the coming era’s ‘winners’ – unwilling to risk a look behind the curtain; to put their ‘safe space’ to the test.

    Perversely, this cadre of professionally-corralled academics, analysts, and central bankers, all insist that they completely believe in their memes: That their techno-approach is both effective, and of benefit to humanity – oblivious to the dissenting views, swirling around them, down in the interstices of the internet.

    The main function then of such memes today, whether issued by the Pharma Vaccine ‘Command’; the MMT ‘transition’ Command; the energy ‘transition’ Command; or the global managerial technocracy ‘transition’, is to draw a ‘Maginot line’ – a defensive ideological boundary, a “Great Narrative” as it were – between ‘the truth’ as defined by the ruling classes, and with that of any other ‘truth’ that contradicts their narrative. That is to say, it is about compliance.

    It was well understood that all these transitions would overturn long-standing human ways of life, that are ancient and deeply rooted and trigger dissidence – which is why new forms of social ‘discipline’ would be required. (Incidentally, the EU leadership already refer to their their official mandates as ‘Commands’). Such disciplines are now being trialled in Europe – with the vaccine mandates (even though scientists are telling them that vaccines cannot be the silver bullet for which they yearn). As one high ‘lodge’ member, favouring a form of global governance notes, to make people accept such reforms, you must frighten them.

    Yes, the collective of ‘transitions’ must have their ‘Big, overarching Narrative’ – however hollow, it rings (i.e. the struggle to defend democracy against authoritarianism). But it is the nature of today’s cultural-meme war that ultimately its content becomes little more than a rhetorical shell, lacking all sincerity at its core.

    It serves principally, as decoration to a ‘higher order’ project: The preservation of global ‘rules of the road’, framed to reflect U.S. and allied interests, as the base from which the clutch of ‘transitions’ can be raised up into a globally managed order which preserves the Élite’s influence and command of major assets.

    This politics of crafted, credentialised meme-politics is here to stay, and now is ‘everywhere’. It has long crossed the partisan divide. The wider point here – is that the mechanics of meme-mobilisation is being projected, not just in the western ‘home’ (at a micro-level), but abroad, into American ‘foreign policy’ too (i.e. at the macro-level).

    And, just as in the domestic arena, where the notion of politics by suasion is lost (with vaccine mandates enforced by water-cannon, and riot police), so too, the notion of foreign policy managed through argument, or diplomacy, has been lost too.

    Western foreign policy becomes less about geo-strategy, but rather is primordially focussed on the three ‘big iconic issues’ – China, Russia and Iran – that can be given an emotional ‘charge’ in order to profitably mobilise certain identified ‘constituencies’ in the U.S. domestic cultural war. All the various U.S. political strands play this game.

    The aim is to ‘nudge’ domestic American psyches (and those of their allies) into mobilisation on some issue (such as more protectionism for business against Chinese competition), or alternatively, imagined darkly, in order to de-legitimise an opposition, or to justify failures. These mobilisations are geared to gaining relative domestic partisan advantage, rather than having strategic purpose.

    When this credentialled meme-war took hold in the U.S., millions of people were already living a reality in which facts no longer mattered at all; where things that never happened officially, happened. And other things that obviously happened never happened: not officially, that is. Or, were “far-right extremist conspiracy theories,” “fake news,” or “disinformation,” or whatever, despite the fact that people knew that they weren’t.

    Russia and China therefore face a reality in which European and U.S. élites are heading in the opposite direction to epistemological purity and well-founded argument. That is to suggest, the new ‘normal’ is about generating a lot of contradictory realities, not just contradictory ideologies, but actual mutually-exclusive ‘realities’, which could not possibly simultaneously exist … and which are intended to bemuse adversaries – and nudge them off-balance.

    This is a highly risky game, for it forces a resistance stance on those targeted states – whether they seek it, or not. It underlines that politics is no more about considered strategy: It is about being willing for the U.S. to lose strategically (even militarily), in order to win politically. Which is to say gaining an ephemeral win of having prompted an favourable unconscious psychic response amongst American voters.

    Russia, China, Iran are but ‘images’ prized mainly for their potential for being loaded with ‘nudge’ emotional-charge in this western cultural war, (of which these states are no part). The result is that these states become antagonists to the American presumption to define a global ‘rules of the road’ to which all must adhere.

    These countries understand exactly the point of these value and rights-loaded ‘rules’. It is to force compliance on these states to acquiesce to the ‘transitions, or, to suffer isolation, boycott and sanction – in a similar way to the choices being forced on those in the West not wishing to vaccinate (i.e. no jab; no job).

    This approach reflects an attempt by Team Biden to have it ‘both ways’ with these three ‘Iconic States’: To welcome compliance on ‘transition issues’, but to be adversarial over any dissidence to mounting a rules framework that can raise the ‘transitions’ from the national, to the supra-national plane.

    But do the U.S. practitioners of meme-politics, absorb and comprehend that the stance by Russia-China – in riposte – is not some same-ilk counter-mobilisation done to ‘make a point’? That their vision does stand at variance with ‘the rules’? Do they see that their ‘red lines’ may indeed be ‘red lines’ literally? Is the West now so meme-addicted, it cannot any longer recognise real national interests?

    This is key: When the West speaks, it is forever looking over its shoulder, at the domestic, and wider psychic impact when it is ‘making a point’ (such as practicing attacks by nuclear-capable bombers as close to Russia’s borders as they dare). And that when Russia and China say, ‘This is our Red Line’, it is no meme – they really mean it.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/04/2021 – 23:30

  • Putin Denounces Ukraine's Use Of Turkish Drones In Erdogan Call
    Putin Denounces Ukraine’s Use Of Turkish Drones In Erdogan Call

    In a Friday phone call Russian President Vladimir Putin told his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan that Ukraine is using Turkish-made drones against pro-Russia separatists in the war-torn Donbass region. Putin put the Turkish leader on notice over the “destabilizing” activity of the continued drone transfers from Turkey to Ukraine.

    Putin further denounced the Turkish drone usage as “destructive” and “provocative” behavior on the part of Ukrainian authorities, citing specifically that Turkish-made Bayraktar drones have increasingly turned up in the conflict. Putin is reportedly also angry that the Turkey-to-Ukraine drone and weapons pipeline is still open and going strong, according to new reports.

    Bayraktar TB2 drone

    A spokesperson for Erdogan later confirmed that the drone issue was raised, but gave no further details. A follow-up statement from Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, however, rejected the notion that Turkey can be held responsible for the Ukrainian military’s deployment of Turkish-made drones.

    Further at issue is that recent drone sales from Turkey have been found to be much bigger than previously disclosed, outraging the Kremlin:

    Turkey has sold Ukraine significantly more of the armed drones that drew a rebuke from Russia than previously disclosed, with further deals in the pipeline, Bloomberg reported. 

    Baykar, an arms manufacturer based in Istanbul, has sold dozens of drones to Ukraine since 2019, together with control stations and missiles, according to several officials and an executive at a Turkish defense company with close government ties. Orders for at least two dozen more drones are under way, the people said, asking not to be named due to the sensitivity of the subject. 

    As Reuters reviews, Turkish drones have recently become featured in a flair-up of fighting:

    In October, Russia accused Ukraine of destabilizing the situation after government forces used a Bayraktar TB2 drone to strike a position controlled by Russian-backed separatists.

    Ukraine used the Bayraktar drone “for one tidy shot” at a gun system, and since then enemy soldiers are afraid of doing duty at such systems as they understand “how this could end,” Ukraine’s defense minister Oleksii Reznikov said on Friday.

    We noted in late October that Russia began intensely investigating recent reports of Turkish attack drones being deployed for the first time in Ukraine’s eight-year civil war. The Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) under the command of the Kiev government claimed that the drones were used at that time in combat against ethnic Russian rebels.

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

    And the now confirmed Turkish drone deployments mark a dramatic escalation in the smoldering war, as it marks the involvement of NATO member Turkey in the conflict. Up to now, the United States and other NATO states have been supplying lethal weaponry through Kiev to prosecute its war against the breakaway self-declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

    Over the past year as reports started to surface, Moscow began suggesting it could sever all military level relations and cooperation with Turkey. Turkey, for example, relies on Russia for technical support for the S-400 anti-air missile defense systems supplied a couple years ago. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/04/2021 – 23:00

  • US Companies Are "Hostages" To China
    US Companies Are “Hostages” To China

    Authored by Emel Akan via The Epoch Times,

    Foreign firms doing business in China should be aware of the costs of transacting with a totalitarian regime that controls everything in society and can easily bend any company to its will.

    Heads of U.S. corporations don’t dare to criticize the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) even in private settings. They know Big Brother is always watching them.

    JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon’s quick apology over a joke he made recently about the country’s communist regime provides a good example of how business leaders fear retribution from Beijing.

    Clyde Prestowitz, author and strategist on Asia and globalization, explains the true cost of doing business in China in his latest book “The World Turned Upside Down: America, China, and the Struggle for Global Leadership.” He was a presidential advisor and a leader of the first American trade mission to China in 1982.

    The U.S. companies that are highly coupled with China face all kinds of risks, from intellectual property theft to commercial cyber espionage. But the biggest, most fundamental risk is “the loss of free speech,” Prestowitz says in his book.

    Dimon is not alone as there are many examples of free-world CEOs and presidents making apologies or backtracking when they anger the Chinese regime.

    During Hong Kong protests in 2019, for example, Apple pulled from its app store a map application widely used by pro-democracy protestors that showed the location of police patrols and tear gas deployments, citing security reasons. The move was made after Chinese state media piled pressure calling for the app’s removal. Google also sparked controversy when it removed a Hong Kong protest role-playing game from its app store.

    These are by no means the only apparently self-censorship incidents by U.S tech companies. Apple, for example, removed nearly 55,000 active apps from its app store in China since 2017, according to a New York Times report. They include apps made by minorities oppressed by the regime, including Uyghurs and Tibetans.

    Over the years, the list of entities that have caved to Beijing’s censorship demands has grown long. The Gap, Disney, Delta Airlines, Medtronic, Marriott, the NBA, and many others have all bowed to the Chinese regime over issues ranging from Taiwan to Uyghurs to Hong Kong.

    Such actions by U.S. firms, though, have drawn criticism from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, who accuse companies of sacrificing American values for the allure of profits in the world’s second-largest economy.

    For the CEO of Apple Tim Cook and other U.S. corporate executives navigating the Chinese market, they effectively become “hostages” to the whims of the Chinese regime.

    “They may be perceived as the heads of American companies, but they fear Beijing far more than they fear Washington,” Prestowitz writes in his book.

    Since there’s no rule of law in China, they become “captive,” he adds. In Washington, they have lawyers and lobbyists that give them the power to influence or sue the U.S. government. In Beijing, however, they can’t sue the Chinese regime because they know they would lose—the courts in China are controlled by the Communist Party—and would face retaliation from the regime for even trying.

    Beijing is aware of this leverage and hence can freely use companies as a tool. As I wrote in a previous column, the Chinese Embassy in Washington is pressuring U.S. companies and trade groups that have business interests in China to lobby against a comprehensive China bill that aims to enhance U.S. competitiveness and hold Beijing accountable for its human rights abuses.

    According to Prestowitz, entities that are under pressure could be giants like Walmart, Apple, General Electric, and FedEx as well as organizations like the U.S.-China Business Council.

    None of this should come as a surprise. As The Epoch Times readers will know, China exerts significant influence in the United States. It spent more than $67 million on lobbyists last year, a sixfold increase since 2016, according to OpenSecrets.

    And this is only the tip of the iceberg, as it only covers the overt influence operations that need to be disclosed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

    The FARA, passed in 1938, requires a person who represents a foreign interest to register as a foreign agent. The law, however, falls short in addressing less overt political influence operations conducted through proxies, including corporations, trade associations, and think tanks. Many China hawks in Washington are urging Congress to close this loophole in foreign influence.

    “It’s really something that must be addressed,” Prestowitz tells me.

    If heads of corporations have substantial business operations in China, “they should not be allowed to make political donations in the United States,” he said.

    “When they testify before Congress, they should be compelled to declare that they are testifying as the leaders of Chinese businesses. They should be made to tell the public and the Congress that they in fact, are subject to pressure and influence by the Chinese Communist Party.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/04/2021 – 22:30

  • Goldman Senior Executives Are Searching For Ways To Quietly Boost Their Own Pay
    Goldman Senior Executives Are Searching For Ways To Quietly Boost Their Own Pay

    What’s good for the gander is good for the geese, right?

    It seems that way at Goldman Sachs. No sooner do we write about how Goldman Sachs is looking to implement additional paid leave for its rank-and-file employees in order to keep morale up than it was revealed that the company’s bosses are also looking at ways of improving their own yacht collection quality of life. 

    In fact, CEO David Solomon and the top brass at the bank are reportedly “searching for ways to juice their own eight-digit pay packages,” Bloomberg reported this week. 

    Solomon’s total stake in the company, including unvested stock, is worth about $180 million already the report says. He made $27.5 million his first full year as CEO and the same the next year, in 2020. Solomon also was given a $50 million bonus plan to be split with another employee in October of this year. That off-cycle bonus came as a result of Goldman’s skyrocketing stock price, which is up about 80% since Solomon took over as CEO. 

    Pat Scanlan, a spokesman for the bank, told Bloomberg: “We have offered co-investment opportunities for our senior executives that align interests with investors. That the board of directors would explore additional opportunities is hardly surprising.”

    One way that Solomon is pushing to boost pay is to expand the allocation of founders’ shares in SPAC deals that the bank partakes in. These requests have reportedly “irritated members of the SPAC team”, as it pins them against Solomon for a share of the projects that they have worked on.

    Teams at the bank are reportedly “scrambling to figure out how to structure and disclose the SPAC investment for the NEOs while avoiding the appearance of boosting pay.”

    The optics of bonuses when you’re already making tens of millions of dollars per year need to be carefully dealt with. While banks want to raise pay commensurate with other banks in order to retain talent, they have to walk a thin line with public perception. Bloomberg says that the key is to “give the board as much elbow room as possible to grant him more, without making it look like an outsized raise”.

    For example, when Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman surprised the market in 2020 by lowering his pay by about 7% due to the pandemic, it caused Goldman to delay its own decision on executive compensation for months.

    Top brass at Goldman has also reportedly looked at different ways to increase their share of profits from internal investment vehicles, including whether or not private funds operated by the firm’s merchant bank could pay larger bonuses for senior managers. 

    Recall, days ago we wrote how Goldman was also seeking to offer new incentives to its “burnt out” employees. 

    The investment bank is going to now be offering “paid leave for pregnancy loss” and is “expanding the amount of time employees can take for bereavement leave,” the report says.

    Goldman will also be offering unpaid sabbatical for its long time employees and removing a one year waiting period before matching employee 401(k) contributions.

    Goldman’s head of human resources, Bentley de Beyer, told the WSJ: “We wanted to offer a compelling value proposition to current and prospective employees, and wanted to make sure we’re leading, not just competing.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/04/2021 – 22:00

  • Shellenberger: The Real Threat To Banks Isn't From Climate Change, It's From Bankers
    Shellenberger: The Real Threat To Banks Isn’t From Climate Change, It’s From Bankers

    Authored by Michael Shellenberger via substack,

    Over the last two years, some of the world’s most powerful and influential bankers and investors have argued that climate change poses a grave threat to financial markets and that nations must switch urgently from using fossil fuels to using renewables.

    In 2019, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco warned that climate change could cause banks to stop lending, towns to lose tax revenue, and home values to decline. Last year, 36 pension fund managers representing $1 trillion in assets said climate change “poses a systemic threat to financial markets and the real economy.”

    And upon taking office, President Joe Biden warned government agencies that climate change disasters threatened retirement funds, home prices, and the very stability of the financial system.

    But a major new staff report from the New York Federal Reserve Bank throws cold water on the over-heated rhetoric coming from activist investors, bankers, and politicians. “How Bad Are Weather Disasters for Banks?” asks the title of the report by three economists. “Not very,” they answer in the first sentence of the abstract.

    The reason is because “weather disasters over the last quarter century had insignificant or small effects on U.S. banks’ performance.” The study looked at FEMA-level disasters between 1995 and 2018, at county-level property damage estimates, and the impact on banking revenue.

    The New York Fed’s authors only looked at how banks have dealt with disasters in the past, and what they wrote isn’t likely to be the final word on the matter. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and most other scientific bodies predict that many weather events, including hurricanes and floods, which cause the greatest financial damage, are likely to become more extreme in the future, due to climate change.

    And in February, The New York Times quoted one of six United States Federal Reserve governors saying, “Financial institutions that do not put in place frameworks to measure, monitor and manage climate-related risks could face outsized losses on climate-sensitive assets caused by environmental shifts.”

    But the Fed economists looked separately at the most extreme 10 percent of all disasters and found that banks impacted not only didn’t suffer, “their income increases significantly with exposure,” and that the improved financial performance of banks hit by disasters wasn’t explained by increased federal disaster (FEMA) aid.

    In other words, disasters are actually good for banks, since they increase demand for loans. The larger a bank’s exposure to natural disasters, the larger its profits.

    Happily, the profits made by banks are trivial compared to rising societal resilience to disasters, which can be seen by the fact that the share of GDP spent on natural disasters has actually declined over the last 30 years.

    While scientists expect hurricanes to become five percent more extreme they also expect them to become 25 percent less frequent, and now, new data show global carbon emissions actually declined over the last decade, and thus there is no longer any serious risk of a significant rise in global temperatures.

    Banking Against Growth

    The real risk to banks and the global economy comes from climate policy, not climate change, particularly efforts to make energy more expensive and less reliable through the greater use of renewables, new taxes, and new regulations.

    “For policymakers,” warned the three economists writing for the New York Fed, “our findings suggest that potential transition risks from climate change warrant more attention than physical disaster risks.”

    While they may seem like outliers, they are far from alone in expressing their concern. The second half of the quote by the Fed governor about climate change, which was hyped by The New York Times, warned that banks “could face outsized losses” from the “transition to a low-carbon economy.” (My emphasis.)

    And, now concern is growing among members of Congress about the dangers of over-relying on weather-dependent energy, with some members citing the New York Fed’s report after The Wall Street Journal editorialized about it last week .

    Proof of the threat to the economy from climate policy is the worst global energy crisis in 50 years. Shareholder activists played a significant role in creating it, according to analysts at Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg, and The Financial Times, by reducing investment in oil and gas production, and causing nations to over-invest in unreliable solar and wind energies, which has driven up energy prices, and contributed significantly to inflation.

    And yet a crucial Biden Administration nominee for bank regulation has openly said she would like to bankrupt firms that produce oil and gas, the two fuels whose scarcity is causing the global energy crisis. Progressive academic, Saule Omarova, nominated by Biden, said recently that “we want [oil and gas firms] to go bankrupt” and that “the way we basically get rid of these carbon financiers is we starve them of their source of capital.

    Biden nominee Saule Omarova said she wants to bankrupt energy companies

    Omarova is not an outlier. The Biden Administration’s Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) is advocating 30 new climate regulations that should be imposed on banking. Many analysts believe the US Securities and Exchange Commission will require new regulations. The goal is to radically alter how America’s banks lend money, the energy sector, and the economy as a whole.

    And former Bank of England chief, Mark Carney, co-chair of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, has organized $130 trillion in investment and said recently that his investors should expect to make higher, not lower, returns than the market. How? In the exact same way Omarova predicted: by bankrupting some companies, and financing other ones, through government regulations and subsidies.

    Former Bank of England head Mark Carney

    Carney created the Glasgow Financial Alliance, or GFANZ, with Michael Bloomberg, and they did so under the official seal of the United Nations. “Carney said the alliance will put global finance on a trajectory that ultimately leaves high-carbon assets facing a much bleaker future,” wrote a reporter with Bloomberg. “He also said investors in such products will see the value of their holdings sink.”

    What’s going on, exactly? How is it that some of the world’s most powerful bankers, and the politicians they finance, came to support policies that threaten the stability of electrical grids, energy supplies, and thus the global economy itself?

    The Unseen Order

    Three of the largest donors to climate change causes are billionaire financial titans Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, and Tom Steyer, all of whom have significant investments in both renewables and fossil fuels.

    Tom Steyer, Michael Bloomberg, and George Soros

    Soros is worth $8 billion and recently made large investments in natural gas firms (EQT) and electric vehicles (Fisker), Bloomberg has a net worth of around $70 billion and has large investments in natural gas and renewables, and much of Steyer’s wealth derives from investments in all three main fossil fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas — as well as renewables.

    All three men finance climate activists and politicians, including President Biden, who then seek policies — from $500 billion for renewables and electric vehicles over the next decade to federal control over state energy systems to banking regulations to bankrupt oil and gas companies — which would benefit each of them personally.

    Bloomberg gave over $100 million to Sierra Club to lobby to shut down coal plants after he had taken a large stake in its replacement, natural gas, and operates one of the largest news media companies in the world, which publishes articles and sends emails nearly every day reporting that climate change threatens the economy, and that solar panels and wind turbines are the only cost-effective solution.

    Soros donates heavily to Center for American Progress, whose founder, John Podesta, was chief of staff to Bill Clinton, campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and who currently runs policy at the Biden White House. So too does Steyer, who funds the climate activist organization founded by New Yorker author Bill McKibben, 350.org, which reported revenues of nearly $20 million in 2018.

    The most influential environmental organization among Democrats and the Biden Administration is the Natural Resources Defense Council, NRDC, which advocated for federal control of state energy markets, the $500 billion for electric cars and renewables, and international carbon markets that would be controlled by the bankers and financiers who also donate to it.

    In the 1990s, NRDC helped energy trading company Enron to distribute hundreds of thousands of dollars to environmental groups. “On environmental stewardship, our experience is that you can trust Enron,” said NRDC’s Ralph Cavanagh in 1997, even though Enron executives at the time were defrauding investors of billions of dollars in an epic criminal conspiracy, which in 2001 bankrupted the company.

    From 2009 to 2011, NRDC advocated for and helped write complex cap-and-trade climate legislation that would have created and allowed some of their donors to take advantage of a carbon-trading market worth upwards of $1 trillion.

    NRDC created and invested $66 million of its own money in a BlackRock stock fund that invested heavily in natural gas companies, and in 2014 disclosed that it had millions invested in renewable funds.

    Former NRDC head, Gina McCarthey, now heads up Biden’s climate policy team, and Biden’s top economic advisor, Brian Deese, last worked at BlackRock, and almost certainly will return at the end of the Biden Administration.

    Money buys influence. In 2019, McKibben called Steyer a “climate champ” when Steyer announced he was running for president, adding that Steyer’s “just-released climate policy is damned good!” And in 2020, McKibben wrote an article called, “How Banks Could Bail Us Out of the Climate Crisis,” for The New Yorker, which repeated the claim that extreme weather created by climate change threatens financial interests, and that the way to prevent it is to divert public and private money away from reliable energy sources toward weather-dependent ones.

    Forms filed to the Internal Revenue Service by Steyer’s philanthropic organization, the TomKat Charitable Trust, show that it gave McKibben’s climate activist group, 350.org, $250,000 in 2012, 2014, and 2015, and may have given money to 350.org in 2013, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020, as well, because 350.org thanked either Steyer’s philanthropy, TomKat Foundation, or his organization, NextGen America, in each of its annual reports since 2013.

    At the same time, McKibben’s motivations are plainly spiritual. He claims that various natural disasters are caused by humans, that climate change literally threatens life on Earth, and is thus “greatest challenge humans have ever faced,” a statement so unhinged from reality, considering declining deaths from disasters, declining carbon emissions, and the total absence of any science for such a claim, that it must be considered religious.

    McKibben first book about climate change, The End of Nature, explicitly expressed his spiritual views, arguing that, through capitalist industrialization, humankind had lost its connection to nature. “We can no longer imagine that we are part of something larger than ourselves,” he wrote in The End of Nature. “That is what this all boils down to.” Indeed, for William James, the belief in “an unseen order” that we must adjust ourselves to, in order to avoid future punishment, is a defining feature of religion.

    Climate change is punishment for our sins against nature — that’s the basic narrative pushed by journalists, climate activists, and their banker sponsors, for 30 years. It has a supernatural element: the belief that natural disasters are getting worse, killing millions, and threatening the economy, when in reality they are getting better, killing fewer, and costing less. And it offers redemption: to avoid punishment we must align our behavior with the unseen order, namely, a new economy controlled by the U.N., bankers, and climate activists. Unfortunately, as is increasingly obvious, the unseen order is parasitical and destructive.

    When Nuclear Leads, the Bankers Will Follow

    The unseen order of bankers, climate activists, and the news media is so powerful that it is difficult to imagine how it could ever be challenged.

    The financial might of the climate lobby covers the wealth not only of billionaires Soros, Steyer, and Bloomberg, but also $130 trillion in investment funds, including many of the world’s largest pension funds, such as the one belonging to California public employees. The climate lobby’s political power is equally awesome, covering the entirety of the Democratic Party and a significant portion of the Republican Party, and most center-Left parties in Europe.

    Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emanuel Macron, and U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm

    And all of that is sustained by cultural power, which has led many elites to view climate change as the world’s number one issue, has convinced half of all humans that climate change will make our species extinct, and has served as the apocalyptic foundation for Woke religion.

    But serious cracks in the foundation are growing. The global energy crisis has revealed for many around the world the limits of unreliable renewables, with European governments having to subsidize energy to avoid public backlash, President Biden and other heads of state opening up emergency petroleum reserves, and all nations begging OPEC to produce more energy.

    The blackouts and rising unreliability of electricity in California, along with the work of the pro-nuclear movement over the last 6 years, has resulted in a growing number of Democrats supporting nuclear energy. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm last week publicly urged California Governor Gavin Newsom not to close California’s Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, the signature nuclear plant Environmental Progress has been trying to save since 2016. Democratic support in particular for nuclear is growing.

    And alternative media including Substack, podcasts, and social media platforms are increasingly providing a counterweight to the mainstream news media, exposing a huge number of issues that the media got wrong in recent years, and amplifying alternative voices.

    Nowhere is the change occurring faster than in Europe, where energy shortages are affecting heating, cooking, and electricity supplies in ways that undermine the legitimacy of the banker-led climate efforts. In Britain, private energy companies have gone bankrupt, forcing the government to bail them out. For-profit energy companies, like banks, ultimately depend on taxpayers, who are also voters.

    Outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who led her nation’s exit from nuclear energy, acknowledged that Germany had been defeated in its anti-nuclear energy advocacy at the European Union level, and that nuclear would finally be recognized as low-carbon.

    And French president Emanuel Macron, under pressure from the political right as voters look to elections next year, gave a passionate speech in favor of nuclear energy last month, announcing $35 billion for new reactors.

    As the world returns to nuclear, policymakers, media elites, and climate advocates will be increasingly confronted with the question of why consumers and taxpayers will benefit from a global carbon trading scheme and more weather-dependent renewables, particularly at a time of declining global emissions from the continuing transition from coal to natural gas, reduced deforestation, and increased reforestation.

    Simply building more nuclear power plants means there is no climate change justification for weather-dependent renewables, which actually require greater use of natural gas, in order to deal with the high amount of unreliability.

    Nuclear power goes with slow and patient capital. The obvious funders of a nuclear expansion in the West would be the pension funds, which need the secure return on investment that major construction and infrastructure projects provide, and which unreliable renewables, as the energy crisis shows, do not.

    And though the news media is currently ignoring the New York Fed’s report, reporters will not be able to continue spreading misinformation about climate change indefinitely. Increasingly, they, and thus policymakers and the public, will be forced to confront facts inconvenient to their narrative, including that humans are adapting remarkably well to climate change, that renewables make energy unreliable and expensive, and that only nuclear can achieve sustainability goals of reduced emissions, material throughput, and land use.

    As people ask, “How Bad Are Weather Disasters?”, not just for banks, but for all of us, the answer will increasingly come back, “Not very.”

    *  *  *

    Michael Shellenberger is a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment,”Green Book Award winner, and the founder and president of Environmental Progress. He is author of just launched book San Fransicko (Harper Collins) and the best-selling book, Apocalypse Never (Harper Collins June 30, 2020). Subscribe To Michael’s substack here

    Donate to Environmental Progress

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/04/2021 – 21:30

  • Biden Infrastructure Bill Includes Passive Monitoring Vehicle "Kill Switch" Mandates For Automakers
    Biden Infrastructure Bill Includes Passive Monitoring Vehicle “Kill Switch” Mandates For Automakers

    As if the Biden administration wasn’t doing enough to infringe on your civil liberties with lockdowns and vaccine mandates, media reports over the last several days are suggesting that Biden’s new infrastructure bill will also include a mandate for auto manufacturers to install “kill switches” into vehicles.

    Former Rep. Bob Barr, writing for The Daily Caller, calls the measure “disturbingly short on details”, but for the fact that the proposed device must “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired.”

    Which, of course, is code for some kind of device that is constantly on and monitoring your vehicle – and will likely have the power to shut down your vehicle anytime it wants. 

    “This is a privacy disaster in the making, and the fact that the provision made it through the Congress reveals — yet again — how little its members care about the privacy of their constituents,” The Daily Caller writes. 

    It appears that in President Biden’s future, not only will you not be in charge of your own personal health decisions, but you also won’t be in charge of whether or not you can fire up your car, which you bought with your hard-earned money, to drive it somewhere, when you deem fit. 

    That decision will now “rest in the hands of an algorithm”, the report says. Similar monitoring and control devices have faced constitutional opposition, the report notes, “notably with the 5th Amendment’s right to not self-incriminate, and the 6th Amendment’s right to face one’s accuser.”

    Barr concludes: “Unless this regulatory mandate is not quickly removed or defanged by way of an appropriations rider preventing its implementation, the freedom of the open road that individual car ownership brought to the American Dream, will be but another vague memory of an era no longer to be enjoyed by future generations.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/04/2021 – 21:00

  • Obituary For Russiagate
    Obituary For Russiagate

    Authored by Patrick Lawrence via Consortium News,

    Russiagate, that fraudulent fable wherein Russian President Vladimir Putin personally subverted American democracy, Russian intelligence pilfered the Democratic Party’s email, and Donald Trump acted at the Kremlin’s behest, is at last dead.

    No, nothing sudden. It has been a slow, painful death of the sort this destructive beast richly deserved. But its demise is now definitive — in the courts and on paper. We await the better historians to see this properly into the record.

    Three key operatives in the construction of the Russiagate edifice are indicted for lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about aspects of the Russiagate tale. The Steele dossier, the document on which much of the case against former President Trump rested, is now exposed as a Nixonesque “dirty trick” authorized and paid for by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Some mainstream newspapers — certainly not all — are busy in their archives, editing out the worst of the falsehoods they reported in 2016 and 2017 as unassailable fact. This is a wholesale collapse now.

    TV coverage of 2016 U.S. election results. (U.S. embassy, Kyiv)

    There are, as one would expect, those who seem determined to hold out no matter what the factual evidence. These go well beyond MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, whose record I will let speak for itself.

    I am thinking of people such as David Corn, the Mother Jones correspondent in Washington, and David Frum, a staff writer at The Atlantic. Both invested big time into the Russiagate junk, and both published books filled with the ridiculous, evidence-free piffle of which it was made.

    Corn, Frum and numerous others like them are now industriously throwing good money after bad to go by recent publications. Here is Corn’s latest, and here Frum’s. One finds the same tired combination of presumption, useless innuendo, and spoon-fed, evidence-deficient falsities derived from the intelligence agencies that were key to fomenting the Russiagate hoax. Yes, Messrs. Corn and Frum, it was a hoax.

    To these diehards, people such as your columnist, given to rational, disinterested consideration of what is known and what is conjured from thin air, are “denialists.” Strange it is that those denying established facts and truths call those who accept these facts and truths by this name.

    But this is a measure of the extent Russiagate has plunged us into Alice–in–Wonderland depths where what is up is down, what is dark is light, what is true is to be buried, what is false is to be held high — where blindness is preferred to sight.

    This leads us to the essential question we now face, or one of them. What are the consequences of the Russiagate scam? If it rested on lies start-to-finish, this is not to say it did not exact its price. It did. The price is high, and we are fated to pay it for some time to come.

    The Damage Done

    An inquiry of this kind must begin with the damage Russiagate has done to the prevalent American consciousness. The last five years have delivered Americans into a culture of unreason of the kind they have been prone to indulging periodically throughout their history. It is made in equal parts of a native insecurity and anxiety, of paranoia and of irrationality.

    This is at once a pitiable and dangerous state. All is reduced to the Manichean distinctions characteristic of the old Westerns (not to mention most of the good guys vs. bad guys Dreck that comes out of Hollywood these days). No subtlety of thought survives in the culture of unreason. Public space is populated with poseurs, cutouts, and imposters. Public discourse, with some exceptions, is much of the time not worth bothering with.

    Nov. 11, 2017, protest outside the White House, dubbed the “Kremlin Annex.” Wikimedia Commons

    To understand this condition, we must recognize it as the work of a diabolic alliance comprised of the Democratic Party’s corrupt leadership, the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies, the national security apparatus and its many appendages, and the media. It is no longer in the slightest objectionable to speak or write of a Deep State that controls this country.

    The elite minority this alliance represents derives its power from its claim to speak for the majority — an absolutely classic case of the “soft despotism” Alexis de Tocqueville warned Americans of 190 years ago. Liberal authoritarianism is another name for what has consolidated itself in the years since Democrats, in mid–2016, first raised the phony specter of Russia “hacking” into its mail systems.

    In effect, Russiagate has tipped the American polity upside down. It is the illiberal liberals among us, righteous as the old Puritan ministers of New England, who now prosecute a regime of censorship and suppression of dissent that is at least as severe and anti-democratic as what conservatives had going during the Cold War (and in my view worse).

    It is they who seek to cow ordinary Americans into the new, weird idolatry of authority, no matter that those to whom the nation is urged to bow are proven liars, law-breakers and propagandists.

    Culture of Unreason

    There is, of course, the more dangerous world Russiagate has done so much to create. In the culture of unreason, the Deep State has a discouraging record of success in gaining wide public support for any aggressive campaign against any nation or people it wishes to act against. In this dimension, Russiagate has destroyed the Democrats as a party willing to stand against the imperial project in its late phase.

    A war with China over the Taiwan question is now spoken of as a logical possibility. Washington is now raising the temperature on the Ukraine–Russia border, just as it did when it cultivated the 2014 coup in Kiev, and this is put across as a Democratic administration’s sound policy. Rampant Russophobia is a direct consequence of the Russiagate ruse, Sinophobia its uglier sibling — uglier for its racist subtext.

    We have active subversion operations in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba and Peru, all progressive states in the true meaning of this term, and Democrats of all stripes — including “progressives” with the necessary quotation marks — cheer on every one of them. We cannot view this as distinct from the elevation of institutions dedicated to campaigns of covert subterfuge — chiefly but not only the CIA. — to wholly inappropriate positions of respect.

    The damage Russiagate has done to the press … let me rephrase this.  The damage the press has inflicted upon itself in the cause of Russiagate is so extensive it is hard to calculate with any precision. We watch now as their credibility collapses in real time. Those running the mainstream newspapers and networks seem to understand this, as they rush to protect what remains of their reputations with rearguard actions to obscure their grossly irresponsible conduct.

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

    The long list of those who caved to the Russiagate orthodoxy includes some stunning names. Among publications that should have known better we find Mother Jones, The Nation, The Intercept, and Democracy Now! Was it conformity, pressure from donors or Democratic Party ventriloquists, or some combination of ideology, ignorance and inexperience that caused them to flip?

    The Atlantic, The New Yorker, the major dailies, the networks — they have all sustained one or another degree of discredit, left either to craven rewrites in their archives, denial in the Corn–Frum mode, or silence. None will do: They will never regain lost ground without first acknowledging what they have done, and this appears out of the question.

    Resort of Omission

    The feature of the corporate-owned press — and the “progressive,” press, as just suggested — that strikes me most now is its resort of omission. Think about it: Lengthy hearings on Capitol Hill, in which leading Democratic Party Russiagaters admit under oath they never had any of the evidence they long claimed, go unreported. The collapse of the Steele dossier goes unreported in The New York Times and other major dailies.

    It is but a short step to all else that is newsworthy but left out — the collapse of the case against Julian Assange (against whom the Russiagate frenzy was wielded), the collapse of the chemical weapons case in Syria, all the above-noted covert subversions. It is wholesale dereliction of duty now, and it was Russiagate that licensed this betrayal.

    Mainstream media are now approaching that point when they leave out more of the world we live in than they report. This is a losing proposition in the medium term — a desperate, last-ditch strategy to defend a “narrative” that simply no longer holds. I put the acceleration of this trend down to the poisoned information environment Russiagate did so much to engender.

    There is a positive dimension to the media’s fate since Russiagate, and regular readers of this column may already guess where I am headed. The disaster Russiagate has proven for the corporate-owned press, the networks, and the “left” — with-quotation-marks — press has landed independent media such as Consortium News with large, new responsibilities, and they have by-and-large risen to the occasion. Their role in keeping the truth of the Russiagate fraud on the table cannot be overstated.

    We witness, in effect, an historically significant transformation in how Americans get their news and analysis. This, a gradual process, is an excellent thing. In time, independent media stand to play as important a role in repairing the across-the-board damage of Russiagate as legacy media played in hatching and deepening it.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/04/2021 – 20:30

  • 'Never Seen Anything Like It': Los Angeles Residents Stunned As Violent Crimes Creep Into Wealthier Communities
    ‘Never Seen Anything Like It’: Los Angeles Residents Stunned As Violent Crimes Creep Into Wealthier Communities

    After two years of rising crime in Los Angeles, residents of upscale neighborhoods are finally starting to freak out after a spate of ‘flash mob‘ lootings at high-end retail stores have been accompanied with a disturbing increase in violent crimes committed in the suburbs, according to the LA Times.

    Private security officers guard the Beverly Hills home where Jacqueline Avant, the wife of music producer Clarence Avant, was shot and killed Wednesday. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

     

    Crews of burglars publicly smashing their way into Los Angeles’ most exclusive stores. Robbers following their victims, including a star of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” and a BET host, to their residences. And this week, the fatal shooting of 81-year-old Jacqueline Avant, an admired philanthropist and wife of music legend Clarence Avant, in her Beverly Hills home.

    …these incidents have sparked a national conversation and led to local concern about both the crimes themselves and where the outrage over the violence will lead.

    “The fact that this has happened, her being shot and killed in her own home, after giving, sharing, and caring for 81 years has shaken the laws of the Universe,” said Oprah Winfrey, expressing grief over Avant’s killing via Twitter. “The world is upside down.”

    The Times notes that while overall crime rates within Los Angeles remain far below the notoriously violent 1990s, much of it has been concentrated in poor communities – so it receives virtually no attention. Now that crime has “crept up in wealthier enclaves and thrust its way to the center of public discourse” across the city.

    Turning point?

    In 2020, polls showed that California voters largely supported criminal justice reform, as well as rolling back tough sentencing laws to reduce prison populations without nary a thought to how it might affect the crime rate. Now, those concerned about crime and blame liberal policies for its rise are growing more vocal.

    For others, it’s been a serious wake-up call.

    “I have never seen anything like it,” said Dominick DeLuca, owner of the Brooklyn Projects skateboard shop on Melrose Avenue where burglaries and robberies have seen a sharp enough spike in recent months that he’s now carrying a gun to work. “In the last two years, I have been broken into three times.”

    On Thursday, Mayor Eric Garcetti and LAPD Chief Michael Moore advocated for locking offenders up, and questioned several pandemic-related policies that put nonviolent arrestees back on the street without bail.

    Moore said arrests had been made in several high-profile “smash-and-grab” burglaries but lamented that the suspects had all been released pending trial. Garcetti said warehousing criminals in jails without rehabilitating them is not a solution, but neither is ceding the streets to repeat offenders.

    Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón, whose progressive policies around prosecution and sentencing many blame for the uptick in crime, was notably absent at the press conference but said through his office that he is working closely with law enforcement partners to hold perpetrators accountable for such brazen crimes. -LA Times

    According to LAPD data through Nov. 27, property crime is up 2.6% YoY, but is down 6t.6% from 2019, while robberies are up 3.9% YoY and down 13.6% from 2019. Burglaries are down 8.4% from last year and 7.7% from 2019. Car thefts, meanwhile, are up nearly 53% vs. 2019.

    The difference? Rich people are now getting hit, so officials are officially concerned.

    What’s more, violent crime is way up – with homicides jumping 46.7% and shootings up 51.4% vs. 2019. As of the end of last month, there were 359 homicides year-to-date, compared with 355 in all of 2020. That said 2008 was LA’s deadliest year with 384 homicides.

    Read the rest of the report here.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/04/2021 – 20:00

  • Sound Money Is A Prerequisite To Peace, Prosperity, And Freedom
    Sound Money Is A Prerequisite To Peace, Prosperity, And Freedom

    Authored by Patrick Barron via The Mises Institute,

    There are many good recommendations promoted by Austrian school economists for improving the economy. Although we enjoy successes periodically, most–such as deregulating trucking and airline pricing–involve eliminating previous government interventions. These successes are to be celebrated, of course. But no one can deny that government intervention into the economy has continued, despite these occasional success stories.

    The reason Big Government has continued to grow is that it controls money production. Not only does government grow in terms of spending, regulations, and interventions everywhere (both internally and overseas), but it threatens our very freedoms. In other words, government’s control of money is diametrically opposed to peace, prosperity, and freedom and eventually will destroy our republican democracy. For this reason, returning to sound money–i.e., money that is created by the private market, is part and parcel of the market, and is controlled by no one–should be goal number one for every lover of peace, prosperity, and freedom. Nothing less than the survival of our western-style way of life is at stake.

    Here are a few examples of how unsound money progresses and masks its destructive power.

    • One, unsound money allows government to confiscate resources at will. For example, in 2020 America’s bloated military spent as much as the next eleven nations of the world combined. Of course, military spending went up in 2021 and will continue to increase in 2022. America’s annual budget deficit is projected to be somewhere between $1.84 trillion and $3.4 trillion, depending upon whether you ask the Biden administration or the Congressional Budget Office. All of this money is created out of thin air. Americans’ taxes will not increase enough to cover even a fraction of the Biden estimate, and there is no appetite in the bond market for more American debt. Therefore, the Fed will monetize the new debt onto its balance sheet. The resulting increase in base money will cause the prices of most goods and services to rise. This impoverishment of the American people through the hidden tax of inflation is possible only because money is completely fiat; i.e., produced out of nothing except the government’s printing press and computer terminals.

    • Two, unsound money masks the destructive power of government market interventions. An example is former President Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods. According to a friend of mine, the data is irrefutable that the tariffs worked. Well, as Mark Twain said, there’s lies, damned lies, and statistics. What really is irrefutable is the economic law of opportunity cost; i.e., that choosing one thing means the giving up of another. Another is individual preference. The very fact that people must not be allowed to purchase Chinese goods means that they valued those goods to a higher extent than American goods. The reason does not have to be financial. There’s always service, availability, quality, etc. So preventing Americans from buying Chinese goods means less satisfaction for Americans. This is just one example. Another is keeping zombie companies in business through artificially lower interest rates means that capital is misallocated to less productive uses. There’s a whole panoply of labor laws that artificially raises the cost of American labor, reduces American productivity, and lowers business income. Some workers are priced out of the market through minimum wage and mandatory benefit packages. Business has less capital to invest for expansion. New business starts are discouraged. There’s something there for everyone! The destruction is masked by monetarily inflated GDP numbers, artificially suppressed Consumer Price Index (CPI) statistics, increased unemployment payments, and other government programs and manipulated data.

    • Three, and most importantly, Americans’ freedom is threatened. Government can print enough money to buy unlimited enforcers of its rules. More IRS agents. More agents for enforcing arbitrary rules of the Occupational, Safety, and Health Administration (OSHA). More agents for enforcing new environmental regulations and laws arbitrarily established by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). More Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agents. Perhaps even agents to confiscate guns.

    Conclusion

    Returning to limited government, creating a more free market order, having a less intrusive government, etc. requires sound money. Sound money is not a guarantee of a free society, but a free society is impossible without sound money.

    I conclude with these quotes from The Quotable Mises. The last quote is especially pertinent to the point of this brief essay. (Emphases are mine.)

    • The gold standard alone makes the determination of money’s purchasing power independent of the ambitions and machinations of governments, of dictators, of political parties, and of pressure groups. The gold standard alone is what the nineteenth-century freedom-loving leaders (who championed representative government, civil liberties, and prosperity for all) called “sound money.”

    • All those intent upon sabotaging the evolution toward welfare, peace, freedom, and democracy loathed the gold standard, and not only on account of its economic significance. In their eyes the gold standard was the labarum, the symbol, of all those doctrines and policies they wanted to destroy.

    • The classical or orthodox gold standard alone is a truly effective check on the power of the government to inflate the currency. Without such a check all other constitutional safeguards can be rendered vain.

    I do not want to close on a pessimistic note. Therefore, I offer this final quote from Ludwig von Mises, ever the optimist and ever the gentleman: “Every nation, whether rich or poor, powerful or feeble, can at any hour once again adopt the gold standard.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/04/2021 – 19:30

  • Dark Winter Looms For Pennsylvanians As Power Bills Set To Soar 
    Dark Winter Looms For Pennsylvanians As Power Bills Set To Soar 

    Power prices in some parts of Pennsylvania are set to jump as much as 50% beginning this month, according to the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC).

    “Most Pennsylvania regulated electric utilities are adjusting the price they charge for the generation portion of customers’ bills on December 1 for non-shopping customers, also known as the ‘Price to Compare’ (PTC). The PTC averages 40% to 60% of the customer’s total utility bill. However, this percent varies by the utility and by the level of individual customer usage,” PUC said in a press release.

    PUC lists power increases for residential customers. The most significant increase comes from Pike County Light & Power, which serves nearly 5,000 customers, is expected to raise power prices by 50%. The second highest is PPL Corporation, serving about 1.4 million customers in central and eastern parts of the state, which is expected to raise power prices by 26%. 

    • Citizens’ Electric, up from 6.9777 cents to 7.9476 cents per kWh (13.9%);

    • Duquesne Light, up from 7.41 cents to 7.98 cents per kWh (7.7%);

    • Met-Ed, up from 7.114 cents to 7.414 cents per kWh (4.2%);

    • PECO, up from 6.597 cents to 7.021 cents per kWh (6.4%);

    • Penelec, down from 6.761 cents to 6.507 cents per kWh (3.8%);

    • Penn Power, down from 7.657 cents to 7.593 cents per kWh (less than 1%);

    • PPL, up from 7.544 cents to 9.502 cents per kWh (26%);

    • Pike County Light & Power, up from 6.5234 cents to 9.796 cents per kWh (50.2%);

    • Wellsboro Electric, up from 7.2596 cents to 7.5051 cents per kWh (3.4%); and

    • West Penn Power, up from 5.447 cents to 5.698 cents per kWh (4.6%);

    A PUC spokesperson told Fox News that rising energy prices are due to “market forces.” 

    Many Pennsylvanians will be in for a sticker shock this winter as the Northern Hemisphere winter approaches. Customers are already stretched thin with soaring food, fuel, and shelter inflation. It’s a good thing Fed Chairman Jerome Powell told Congress on Tuesday that he would “retire” the “transitory” narrative to explain the inflationary environment that continues to crush the working poor. 

    We noted last week that Americans, already preparing for one of the darkest cold seasons in years, have been panic buying cords of firewood and stoves as they seek alternative methods to heat their homes to mitigate soaring power prices. 

    Persistent inflation this winter will continue to increase discontent for President Biden and could be favorable for Republicans ahead of midterm next year. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/04/2021 – 19:00

  • Co-Opted By Wall Street: Bitcoin's Biggest Risk?
    Co-Opted By Wall Street: Bitcoin’s Biggest Risk?

    Authored by Rob Price via BitcoinMagazine.com,

    As bitcoin gains mainstream acceptance from centralized financial institutions, will Wall Street come to ruin what is most powerful about the asset?

    Bitcoin’s potential is immense — an independent global reserve asset, the foundation of a more ethical financial system, uncorrupted by centralized financial overlords.

    But what is the risk that bitcoin could become co-opted and corrupted by those centralized financial overlords? What if bitcoin loses its independence? What if bitcoin merely becomes another speculative Wall Street plaything?

    TLDR: Wall Street’s growing importance is unavoidable as bitcoin goes mainstream, but correlations will not rise indefinitely and bitcoin’s independence remains in the hands of everyday users like me and you.

    HOW BITCOIN’S TECHNICAL SECURITY ADVANCED IN 2021

    The great bitcoin mining migration of 2021 further decentralized bitcoin mining, which enhanced its security and reduced the possibility of a technical attack on the network itself. Furthermore, bitcoin showed in 2017 that it is resistant to change. A group of miners and merchants alienated themselves from the community because they ignored the community and pushed for an increase to the blocksize.

    So, Bitcoin is technically secure and unlikely to change its underlying principles. The network is decentralized and principles enshrined. Users have vehemently defended those principles. However, technical risks are not the only risks to bitcoin.

    WHAT IF BITCOIN BECOMES BITCOINTM, A WALL STREET PLAYTHING?

    Ben Hunt outlined some of these softer, more philosophical fears around Bitcoin in his very thought-provoking article “In Praise Of Bitcoin,” in which he wrote about the prospect of BitcoinTM emerging:

    “What is Bitcoin!TM in abstracted form? It’s a securitization or representation of Bitcoin ownership that promises the price appreciation of Bitcoin without the hassle of Bitcoin ownership. It’s a casino chip that represents the price of Bitcoin. Michael Saylor, for example, is only too happy to sell you a MicroStrategy casino chip. Or maybe you’d prefer to play on the Canadian crypto ETF felt? Or try your luck at the wheel of a Morgan Stanley private fund?”

    This is a much more insidious risk than a technical attack or government regulation, in my opinion, and it warrants reflection.

    S&P 500 CORRELATION VS. BITCOIN RISING AGAIN: SHOULD WE BE WORRIED?

    I recently noticed that the one-year rolling correlation between bitcoin and the S&P 500 reached its highest levels on record, according to a chart accessed via Glassnode. This shows that there is a growing relationship between Wall Street and bitcoin, which could be a signal that our worst fears are coming to fruition. Should we be worried?

    Source: Glassnode and Sound Money

    CENTRAL BANK POLICY DOMINATES ALL ASSET CLASSES

    From a technical perspective, different asset classes can be driven by the same factors, even if the assets are fundamentally different in nature. For example, inflation can drive gold and equities higher simultaneously but it can also generate divergent outcomes under different circumstances.

    It is no surprise that bitcoin and equity markets are both being driven higher by excessively loose monetary policy, which debases the value of fiat currencies. Many other asset classes are caught in the same theme, including property and bonds.

    A rising trend in correlations does not imply that the trend will remain intact indefinitely.

    But it could…

    WHAT COULD CAUSE A RISING CORRELATION TO BECOME A PERMANENT FEATURE?

    If Wall Street creates numerous financial products and trade in these products starts to dominate relative to actual users of the technology, the rising correlation between the S&P 500 and bitcoin could become a permanent feature. What if regulators force users to comply with numerous KYC and AML measures, reducing its censorship-resistant qualities and rendering it less independent?

    A couple of responses to each scenario:

    1) INSTITUTIONALIZATION IS INEVITABLE BUT THAT DOES NOT IMPLY WALL STREET MUST DOMINATE

    Take a look at the holders of bitcoin today: More than 35% of coins have not moved in at least two years, according to data from Glassnode, which is a strong indication of long-term investment behavior. Some percentage of these holders could be institutional investors. But the fact that they are not trading the asset implies that, for one, they do not view the asset as a speculative plaything and secondly, that they choose to expose themselves to the vagaries and eccentricities of this alternative monetary network for the long haul, i.e., they are investing on bitcoin’s terms, not Wall Street’s.

    Source: Glassnode and Sound Money

    Bitcoin has no central bank to enter the market during periods of turmoil. The buyers of last resort are everyday bitcoiners who believe in the project and store their long-term wealth in the asset. It’s these bitcoiners who create the price floors during price crashes.

    On-chain research via Glassnode shows that the number of addresses with balances less than 1 bitcoin continues to rise in 2021, giving an indication that smaller holders remain a very important dynamic in the market. By contrast, the growth in the number of addresses with balances great than 100 bitcoin has been negative throughout 2021, also per data accessed on Glassnode.

    Source: Glassnode and Sound Money

    Conclusion: Yes, Wall Street is becoming important for bitcoin, but that does not imply Wall Street dominates bitcoin.

    2) PRIVACY IS CRITICAL AND AVAILABLE TO THOSE WHO NEED IT

    I would like to remind readers that privacy is a human right and is required by all to live fulfilling human lives. You would not want someone peering into your bedroom every morning! Not only is the right to privacy enshrined in the constitution of numerous countries but also in Article 12 of the UN’s “Declaration Of Human Rights” (UDHR), from 1948.

    The desire for privacy does not imply tax evasion or criminal activity. Numerous people require privacy to live due to targeted, government-mandated, financial exclusion. There are more obvious examples in autocratic governments like China, Venezuela and Afghanistan, but there are also more nuanced examples in the countries regarded as the “free world.”

    Increasingly stringent financial, travel, property and speech restrictions imposed in 2020 and 2021 implies that the number of people who may be forced into privacy will increase.

    Thankfully, numerous users across cryptocurrency markets remain focused on privacy, using techniques to protect their human rights, including privacy-focused altcoins and mixing services to protect fungibility .

    Conclusion: While greater government oversight of cryptocurrency is inevitable, greater privacy is also available to those who are willing to put in the effort to get it. Moreover, developers continue to work on technical upgrades which enhance privacy, like Taproot in bitcoin.

    CONCLUSIONS

    I am worried about bitcoin being co-opted by traditional financial markets and a rising correlation between bitcoin and the S&P 500 accentuates my fear.

    Practically speaking, a rising correlation between bitcoin and the S&P500 indicates less diversification potential for traditional investors investing into bitcoin. I do not think it will dramatically alter people’s allocation decisions (0.4 is still a pretty low correlation), but it could because the optimal risk-adjusted portfolio could advocate for a slightly lower allocation based on mean-variance optimizations.

    However, a rising correlation should not be extrapolated higher indefinitely into the future. The reasons for the correlation, its persistence and its breakdown should be assessed.

    Ultimately, it is unsurprising that extreme central bank policies are driving all financial markets in 2021. If central banks were to remove their stimulus, even if only temporarily, it would have a negative impact on risk assets, including equity, like the S&P 500 and bitcoin.

    Investors should never get complacent about this tighter monetary policy risk despite the incredibly low probability that central banks will be able to implement prudent policies with higher real interest rates for any length of time.

    Despite all my worries about large players dominating bitcoin and government oversight negating the censorship resistant characteristics of bitcoin, grassroots bitcoiners continue to grow and access to privacy-preserving techniques is increasing.

    I continue to encourage all holders of bitcoin to use the technology. You may hold the asset as an investment and may not want to touch it for many years to come — that’s great! But get a little bit of bitcoin in a wallet, send it to your friend and realize the value of decentralized, borderless value transfer and storage so that we continue to advocate for this independent system maintained by individuals, not institutions.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/04/2021 – 18:30

  • Nevada Becomes First State To Impose Surcharge On Unvaccinated Workers
    Nevada Becomes First State To Impose Surcharge On Unvaccinated Workers

    by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times

    Nevada on Thursday became the first U.S. state to impose a surcharge on workers who have not gotten a COVID-19 vaccine, though the penalty doesn’t take effect until the middle of next year.

    A supervisor puts a COVID-19 specimen sampling tube into a refrigerator at a testing site at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas on Nov. 30, 2020. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

    All but two members of the state’s Public Employees’ Benefit Program Board (PEBP) voted during a meeting to approve a surcharge of $55 a month on unvaccinated workers.

    The approved proposal also stipulates a surcharge of $175 a month for workers’ spouses, partners, and dependents 18 and older. That could be adjusted down the road.

    The surcharges will go into effect on July 1, 2022.

    They’ll help offset the costs of COVID-19 testing, Laura Rich, executive officer of the board, said.

    Testing costs through September were estimated at $3.3 million.

    The board did not analyze the cost of COVID-19 hospitalizations for the proposal because that would have made the surcharge for spouses and dependents “significantly higher,” Rich said. State rules bar making the surcharge on workers any higher.

    Nevada’s Department of Labor last month released guidance saying the surcharges were legal, and Rich compared them to surcharges on smokers imposed by plans in the past.

    Exemptions are available for religious or medical reasons, as required by law.

    Public commenters during the meeting, and those submitting written statements, spoke out against the proposal before the vote.

    “I believe that the proposed surcharge is inappropriate and excessive,” Ellen Crecelius, one member of the public, said in a statement. She noted that many people enjoy natural immunity, or the protection one gets after having recovered from COVID-19.

    Shanna Cobb-Adams said she already pays $255.06 a month. The new surcharges would increase that by 90 percent. She expressed concern about her 18-year-old son getting a vaccine when studies show that young males are at elevated risk of developing heart inflammation after getting a vaccine, while COVID-19 poses little risk to healthy youth without serious underlying health conditions.

    Another commenter noted that Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, is the one forcing workers to get tested weekly if they don’t get a vaccine. “The unvaccinated should not have to foot the bill for the agency’s unjust decisions,” she wrote. “The fact is vaccinated and unvaccinated employees both can contract and spread the virus equally, yet the state has decided to only put the hardships on the unvaccinated unfairly.”

    Some members also voiced opposition to the proposal, and two voted against it.

    Several state residents did support the measure, including one who said that “anti-vaxxers should pay for their choice since their freedom is not free.”

    Sisolak’s policy director, DuAne Young, said that the pandemic “has been shouldered on the burden of everyone.”

    “And now this particular burden—the testing—should be shouldered on the burden of those who refuse to (be vaccinated),” Young added.

    Some companies have imposed surcharges but no states had before Thursday.

    Discussions with entities that had imposed penalties pointed to benefits like increasing the percent of workers who are vaccinated and offsetting rising costs, Rich said. If the board did not approve the surcharges, every workers’ premium, regardless of vaccination status, would need to be hiked, she said.

    Revenue from the surcharges is expected to be about $18 million a year. Testing costs are pegged at ranging from $12 million to $24 million.

    Prior to the vote, representatives for the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees and the Nevada Faculty Alliance said the unions were not taking a position on the proposal.

    Terri Laird, representing the Retired Public Employees of Nevada, said the organization also was neutral on the surcharges.

    But, she told members, the added costs would “burden many employees.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/04/2021 – 18:15

  • Steve Cohen's Point 72 Venture Fund Is Backing A 24 Hour Equities Exchange
    Steve Cohen’s Point 72 Venture Fund Is Backing A 24 Hour Equities Exchange

    Steven Cohen’s Point72 Ventures is getting behind the idea of 24 hour a day stock trading.

    The venture arm of Point72 is leading a $14.25 million funding round for a company called “24 Exchange”, which was founded in 2018 and has already launched FX and crypto trading platforms, according to the WSJ.

    It is now seeking approval from the SEC to become an around the clock exchange. 

    The company believes that traders who are used to trading currencies and Bitcoin, which trades all the time, want the same experience for equity markets. 

    The obvious downside to such a venture, in addition to needing regulatory approval, would be poor liquidity during off hours. But Point 72 seems to think that “24-hour equities trading has a large potential market, including nonprofessionals trading from home and overseas investors with an appetite for U.S. stocks,” the WSJ reported.

    Point72 Ventures partner Pete Casella commented: “When you look at the growth of equities trading over the last couple of years, a lot of that has been the increased role of retail. These are people with day jobs, so they want to trade at night and on weekends.”

    The company plans on completing its applications to the SEC by the end of December, Dmitri Galinov, founder and chief executive of 24 Exchange, said. 

    This means it’ll likely be “well into” 2022 before the SEC renders a decision. 

    24 Exchange has U.S. offices in Stamford, CT and Miami, and is incorporated in Bermuda. 

    Point 72 ventures has also invested in fintech startups like Acorns and Say Technologies. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/04/2021 – 18:00

  • CNN Fires Chris Cuomo Following Recent Suspension
    CNN Fires Chris Cuomo Following Recent Suspension

    CNN star anchor Chris Cuomo was fired on Saturday, just days after the network suspended him amid an internal investigation into his efforts to help his brother, former Governor Andrew Cuomo, fight a sexual harassment scandal.

    “Chris Cuomo was suspended earlier this week pending further evaluation of new information that came to light about his involvement with his brother’s defense,” read a Saturday statement from CNN. “We retained a respected law firm to conduct the review, and have terminated him, effective immediately. While in the process of that review, additional information has come to light. Despite the termination, we will investigate as appropriate.”

    As the New York Times reports, the announcement is a ‘stunning downfall’ for the network’s top-rated anchor who had – up until last month – enjoyed the support of CNN president Jeff Zucker. He notably faced no discipline for strategizing with his brother’s political aides – ‘a breach of basic journalistic norms.’

    Brian Stelter of CNN‘s “Reliable Sources” predicted Cuomo would be back in January. Whoops.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsChris Cuomo’s undoing came after the NY Attorney General released a batch of testimony and text messages on Nov. 29 which revealed Cuomo had played a far more intimate and direct role in his brother’s damage control.

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    In May, CNN anchor Jake Tapper spoke out publicly against the Cuomo brothers – saying that his colleague had “put us in a bad spot,” adding “I cannot imagine a world in which anybody in journalism thinks that that was appropriate.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/04/2021 – 17:33

  • ​​​​​​​Wall Street Firms Tell Employees To "Dress Down" As Violent Crime Rages 
    ​​​​​​​Wall Street Firms Tell Employees To “Dress Down” As Violent Crime Rages 

    As New York City political elites brag about their “urban utopia,” reality shows it’s nothing like that. Rather a dystopia as defunding the police and other progressive policies have resulted in a surge of violent crime. The city saw its most significant year-over-year increase in shootings and homicides in more than half a century between 2019 and 2020. Violent crime continues to plague the city today, as top Wall Street firms tell their employees to “dress down” to avoid being targeted. 

    Outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio’s progressive policies doomed the city as successor, Mayor-elect Eric Adams, a former police officer and Brooklyn Borough President, is expected to deal with soaring violent crime. 

    At the Bank of America Tower in Midtown Manhattan, senior executives have told employees to “dress down” to avoid being targeted by thieves, according to NYPost, who quoted one bank employee who spoke with On The Money. Execs told employees to avoid wearing the bank’s insignia on clothing as they commute to work. 

    Employees have been extra cautious about potential attacks after someone recently spotted a man wielding a knife near the office building. Bank of America is not the only financial firm in Midtown and Lower Manhattan to advise employees about surging crime and how they need to take precautions to avoid becoming a victim. 

    Citibank has offered employees private shuttles to avoid public transportation as violent crime becomes a significant problem. The city reported a 15% increase in felony assaults in November, compared with the same period last year.

    Another Wall Street source told On The Money the fear of being targeted on the commute home has “been a topic of conversation on the floor frequently over the last few months.”

    “Some people I work with have been accosted … I’d say it’s becoming frequent, if not common,” the source said. “There’s probably a dozen incidents that I saw, or have been involved in,” the person said — mostly verbal, but some physical, the person said.

    According to Kastle Systems today, whose electronic access systems secure office buildings in the metro area, only 28% of NYC employees are back in the office compared with 35% last month. The decline is due to the spread of the new COVID-19 variant. 

    Rising violent crime in the metro area could be the golden opportunity for some employees who’ve returned to the office but want to return to remote working status. Their excuse is that commuting to work is a life-or-death situation. 

    It’s not just Wall Street bankers frightened about being targeted. College students are on alert after a Columbia University student was stabbed to death on Thursday. 

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    NYC is becoming a liberal hellhole where violent crime will only worsen under progressive policies. For bankers who want to dress down, try incorporating the ‘homeless’ clothing line sold by elite clothing brands (Gucci makes $900 pair of sneakers that look like someone pulled them out of a garbage can). 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/04/2021 – 17:00

  • When Fiat Currency Stops Being Money
    When Fiat Currency Stops Being Money

    Authored by Daniel Lacalle via The Mises Institute,

    Most emerging and developed market currencies have devalued significantly relative to the United States dollar in 2021 despite the Federal Reserve’s aggressive monetary policy. Furthermore, emerging economies that have benefitted from rising commodity prices have also seen their currencies weaken despite strong exports. As such, inflation in developing economies is much higher than the already elevated figures posted in the United States and the eurozone.

    The main reason behind this is a global currency debasement problem that is making citizens poorer.

    Most central banks globally are implementing the same expansionary policies of the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve System but the results are disproportionately hurting the poor as inflation rises, particularly in essential goods and services, while fiscal and monetary imbalances are increasing.

    Many emerging economies have implemented a very dangerous policy of boosting twin deficits—fiscal and trade deficits—under the misguided idea that it will accelerate growth. Now growth and recovery estimates are coming down but monetary imbalances remain.

    Therefore, most currencies are falling relative to the US dollar. The policies implemented by global central banks are as aggressive or even more so than those of the Federal Reserve but without the global demand that the US dollar enjoys. If global nations with sovereign currencies continue to play this dangerous game, local and international demand for their currency will evaporate and dependence on the US dollar will rise. More importantly, if the Federal Reserve continues to put its global reserve status to the test, all fiat currencies may suffer a loss of confidence and a move to other alternatives.

    If the private sector does not accept this currency as a unit of measure, a generalized means of payment, and a store of value backed by reserves and demand from the mentioned private sector, the currency becomes worthless and ceases to be money. Ultimately, it becomes useless paper.

    Examples of state currencies that are neither a store of value nor a generally accepted means of payment are many. From the sucre in Ecuador, which disappeared, to the Argentine peso or the Venezuela bolivar, the examples in history are innumerable.

    In Cuba inflation is now estimated at 6,900 percent due to the lack of demand for a worthless currency with no real demand or reserves to back it.

    Once this sort of thing happens, the state does not create money, it simply issues a means of payment—the currency—using the credibility of private sector demand to issue its promissory note. Like a debt issuer who loses repayment credibility, the value of this promise fades if the currency does not have private backing.

    More importantly, the value of the currency and its use is not decided by the government. It is decided by the last private sector agent who accepts the promise of payment because they assume that it will maintain its value and its acceptance as a medium of payment.

    As such, when a government creates many more of these increasingly worthless promissory notes, far outstripping the real local and international demand, the effect is the same as a massive default. The government is simply impoverishing the citizens, who are forced to use the currency, and destroying the credibility of the value of the government’s promissory notes.

    When a state creates a currency without real reserve backing or demand, it destroys money.

    When the government issues currency—promises of payment—that are neither a store of value nor a generally accepted means of payment nor a unit of measure, it not only does not create money, it destroys it by sinking the purchasing power of the poor captive citizens, who are forced to accept its notes and little pieces of paper (government officials, pensioners, etc.).

    This is what we are seeing in many nations all over the world, a massive salary and savings slash created by government intervention on the monetary balance to its own benefit. Governments benefit from inflation because they pay their debt in a currency of diminishing value and they impose a cut to the price they pay for wages and the services of the sectors that provide service to the issuer of currency. Even in developed nations with relatively stable currencies, inflation is a big benefit for governments that collect higher revenues from the money-based taxes (wage, profit, and sales taxes) … and a big negative for savers and real wages.

    Some say that workers may benefit because wages will rise in tandem with inflation. This is simply incorrect. Wages, at best, may rise with the consumer price index, which is a very weak measure of inflation and is a basket created by government bodies to lower real inflation in an average of combined goods and services. However, even if you consider the consumer price index, the vast majority of workers do not even see a rise in wages that compensates for the index rise. That is why median real wages are falling in the United States.

    Those who say that the state can always “create money and spend it”—and only has to create the money it needs to finance the public sector because it will be accepted by the rest of the economic agents—should be obliged to receive their salaries in Argentine pesos and enjoy the experience.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/04/2021 – 16:30

  • U.S. Ship Logjam Worsens As Biden's Attempt To Save Christmas Fails
    U.S. Ship Logjam Worsens As Biden’s Attempt To Save Christmas Fails

    President Biden told Americans that the supply chain is in “very strong shape” ahead of Christmas. Speaking from the White House Wednesday, Biden said his administration has partnered with the private sector to “ensure the store shelves are stocked.” But new shipping data shows snarled supply chains are worsening, and it could take months to untangle them. 

    New shipping data from the busiest U.S. port complex, Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, shows 96 container ships idled offshore, waiting to unload cargo.

    FreightWaves’ Greg Miller described a new queuing system for vessels as pure optics, which reduces the number of ships offshore of Los Angeles/Long Beach. He said ships are being placed in holding patterns further out into the ocean where they’re out of sight and out of mind — to prevent attention-grabbing aerial imagery of container ship logjams.

    The new queuing system has divided vessels into a couple of categories: 40 ships anchored within 40 miles of the ports and 56 outside that perimeter. With the line continuing to get longer at the U.S.’ largest containerized ports, the Biden miracle to save Christmas appears to be failing.  

    What’s also worsening are wait times. It now takes 21 days, or three weeks, for a vessel to enter the twin ports, that’s up from seven in August. 

    Biden’s effort to reduce dwell times is not working, even after he announced a new directive for the twin ports in mid-October to operate on a 24/7 basis. We noted at the time, in a piece titled “Here’s The Truth Behind Biden’s 24/7 Port Operations Pledge,” that the move would not save Christmas. 

    There’s even more confirmation that disputes the president’s claim supply chains are easing. FreightWaves’ Clarissa Hawes said, “we are drowning on the landside by long lines and staffing issues at the terminals.” She said a flawed appointment system and other efficiency issues for drayage truckers continue to plague the twin ports. 

    Biden’s attempt to save Christmas appears to be failing. There’s still time to call in the National Guard. At least now the administration can blame the new Omicron COVID-19 variant on why some store shelves are still bare. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/04/2021 – 16:00

  • Leveraged Bitcoin Traders Flushed Out In Epic Overnight Crash
    Leveraged Bitcoin Traders Flushed Out In Epic Overnight Crash

    The price of Bitcoin was rangebound on early Friday around the $56k handle. The world’s largest cryptocurrency then spiked when the kneejerk read of the November payrolls came in as very disappointing, seen as postponing the Fed’s plans to accelerate the taper but then began to decline during the US cash session to about $54k-$53k handle by late afternoon as the narrative flipflopped and near unanimous consensus emerged around a Fed announcement that Powell would announce a much faster taper on Dec 15 leading to rate lift off by June.

    Then at midnight into the early hours of Saturday morning, during the traditionally illiquid Asian session when things normally go splat in the night for cryptos as one or more super levered Asian momentum chasers blow up, Bitcoin suffered a massive liquidation and crashed down to the $42k level, tumbling into a bear market. Price has recovered some, now trading around $47k. 

    We noted that the action was that of a margined whale getting liquidated…

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    … an assessment Vijay Ayyar, head of Asia Pacific with crypto exchange Luno in Singapore agreed with, telling Bloomberg the action overnight was leveraged buyers of Bitcoin being flushed out. 

    “Markets have also been jittery with all the uncertainty around omicron, with cases now appearing in many countries,” Ayyar said. “It’s hard to say what that means for economies and markets and hence the uncertainty.”

    And sure enough, according to Coinglass, over 410K crypto accounts were liquidated in the past 24 hours totaling $2.6 billion with the largest liquidation being $27 million.

    So far, Bitcoin has found support just below the 200dma. 

    The plunge is just another sign of risk aversion sweeping across global markets as equities sink and fate havens soar. Spiking inflation is forcing central banks to tighten monetary policy, reducing liquidity for risk assets. However, as we first pointed out yesterday, we are now at the point where the market is starting to price in the first future rate cut – sometime in 2023-2024 – resulting from the Fed’s overtightening cycle.

    The omicron variant of COVID-19 has also compounded risk aversion as it derails the global economic reopening. 

    Today’s global cryptocurrency market cap is $2.28 Trillion, down 17.5% in the last 24 hours. Total cryptocurrency trading volume in the last day is at $236 billion. Bitcoin’s market cap of all crypto is 38.68%. 

    That said, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele is using the dip to buy even more Bitcoin. 

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

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    And as the storm of schadenfreude readies to strike, declaring ‘bitcoin is dead’, remember, this is the 434th time that call has been made…

    Source: 99Bitcoin.com

    Finally, we note that while Ethereum (and every coin) has been crushed, it has outperformed Bitcoin in this carnage and has pushed up to its strongest relative to the larger market cap coin since 

    “It seems that investors are taking ETH as a hedge here,” said Crypto Birb, an independent market analyst in a tweet Saturday, pointing to a four-hour ETH/BTC price chart (as shown below) that showed the pair retracing sharply after testing its 200-period moving average (the orange wave) as support.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/04/2021 – 15:47

  • Kremlin Says Biden-Putin Talks Will Take Place Tuesday
    Kremlin Says Biden-Putin Talks Will Take Place Tuesday

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    The Kremlin said Friday that it has a tentative date for virtual talks between President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin that will take place in the coming days and is waiting on confirmation from the US. It followed on Saturday by indicating Tuesday evening for the virtual summit.

    “We are working on a possible contact between Putin and Biden in the videoconference format. This contact is to take place within days. We have a concrete date and time for this videoconference. But it is better to wait until all its parameters are agreed with the US side and then we will be able to announce it officially,” Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters, according to the Russian news agency TASS.

    Image: AP

    Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Stockholm on Thursday to discuss Ukraine tensions. The diplomats made little progress, but Blinken said they agreed on new Biden-Putin talks in the “near future.”

    Ushakov said the talks would build on the Biden-Putin summit that took place in Geneva back in June. The leaders are expected to discuss several issues, including Ukraine and NATO’s presence near Russia’s borders.

    Putin will seek guarantees from Biden and NATO that the military alliance would not move further eastward or deploy weapons that threaten Russia near the country’s borders, including Ukraine. Ushakov pointed out that the US had given assurances NATO wouldn’t expand towards Russia at the end of the Cold War.

    The Kremlin has said virtual format talks between the two heads of state will take place Tuesday evening…

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    “It is a very old issue. Both the Soviet Union and Russia were given verbal assurances that NATO’s military structures would not advance eastward. However, it turned out that those verbal assurances were worthless,” he said.

    Since the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, NATO has grown from 16 member states to 30. The military alliance has also waged wars of aggression across the Middle East, North Africa, and the Balkans.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/04/2021 – 15:30

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