- The Decline Of American Empire: A Kübler-Ross Cycle Analysis
The Decline Of American Empire: A Kübler-Ross Cycle Analysis
Authored by Andrew Roberts via Quillette.com,
How will the United States react domestically should she be dislodged from her role of global top-dog power by China? As well as the obvious economic and strategic ramifications of an end to American imperium, there will be profound emotional and psychological effects on a society that has taken its hegemony for granted for more than three-quarters of a century.
The via dolorosa presently stretched before the United States will likely encompass the replacement of the dollar as the global currency of last resort, the recognition that the South China Seas are no longer navigable by the US Navy, the understanding that Africa has been effectively colonized by China, and the possible swallowing of Ukraine by Russia and Taiwan by China. If the United States maintains its present course, Americans should prepare themselves for a century of humiliating retreats. So, how are these developments likely to play out in an already deeply divided polity and society?
An analogy can be drawn with the British Empire, and the prolonged grieving process experienced by Britons in the three-and-a-half decades after India became independent in 1947. Within a generation and a half, the largest empire in the history of Mankind was reduced to struggling with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. Empires tend to rise and fall faster in modern than in ancient history, so what can Britain’s loss of Empire teach us about the possible decline and fall of America’s?
A useful means of understanding how Britons slowly accommodated themselves to their postwar loss of power and prestige is provided by the Kübler-Ross Grief Cycle—the five-stage process by which individuals deal with tragedy, bereavement, and a dawning knowledge of imminent demise. The British people’s journey through those five stages of grief has profound implications for America, assuming she continues down her chosen path of impotence and retreat.
The first stage of the Kübler-Ross Cycle is Denial, which was the initial response of the British government after the loss of the jewel in Britain’s imperial crown. Notwithstanding the ideological anti-imperialism of Clement Attlee’s Labour government, it insisted that India would remain part of the British Commonwealth (as it was still then designated) and attached to the Western anti-Communist bloc. Indeed, the whole concept of the Commonwealth—founded in December 1931 but not taken seriously until 1947—can be seen as a sop to a people in denial about the loss of Empire.
America is already in the Denial stage of appreciating the loss of power overseas. President Biden’s speeches and press conferences at the time of the coalition’s over-hasty and humiliating scuttle from Afghanistan betray a psychology symptomatic of the first stage of the Kübler-Ross cycle. “Last night in Kabul,” Biden announced in the White House State Dining Room on August 31st, “the United States ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan—the longest war in American history. We completed one of the biggest airlifts in history, with more than 120,000 people evacuated to safety. … No nation has ever done anything like it in all of history. Only the United States had the capacity and the will and the ability to do it, and we did it today.”
In fact, plenty of nations have the capacity, will, and ability to lose wars, but the United States had not done it since Vietnam. And as Biden’s speeches and actions have subsequently shown, his administration is in denial about the message that defeat at the hands of the Taliban sends to vacillating allies and jubilant antagonists alike.
Britain was shaken out of her Denial stage by the Suez Crisis of 1956, which arrived less than a decade after the loss of India.
The second stage of the Kübler-Ross Cycle is Anger, and the fury that greeted Anthony Eden over his invasion of—and subsequent withdrawal from—the Canal Zone was symptomatic of a deeper anger about Britain’s dwindling position on the world stage. The role of the United States in forcing Britain’s humiliating retreat after a successful military operation further underlined the new world order, and sent a large number of Conservatives such as Enoch Powell into the barren cul-de-sac of lifelong anti-Americanism. The anger in British politics was also evident in the activities of the League of Empire Loyalists, which disrupted political meetings in the early 1960s. Its members were furious that after Suez and the independence of Sudan, the Conservatives no longer considered itself the party of Empire.
The capacity for anger in modern American politics hardly needs emphasising since the appalling scenes at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. The mid-term elections in November 2022 may see at least some outpouring of anger over American loss of hegemony. It will be the first time that large sections of the American electorate have gone to the polls since the Afghan catastrophe. Anger with the Democrats will likely result in their loss of the House of Representatives and the relegation of Biden to lame-duckery.
Britain entered the third stage of the Kübler-Ross Cycle—Negotiation—in the 1960s when she made the rational choice to cleave to the United States; in Harold Macmillan’s revealing phrase, to try to become Greece to America’s Rome. His relationship with President Kennedy and support during the Cuban Missile Crisis were the foundations of a new post-Churchill Special Relationship. This was a logical response to the Suez debacle, and it could not even be weakened by Harold Wilson’s and Edward Heath’s refusal to be drawn into Vietnam.
It remains to be seen what the United States will do in her Negotiation stage. Certainly, she starts at a disadvantage because President Biden is not as good a diplomatic negotiator as President Xi of China or Russian President Putin, both of whom seem to outmanoeuvre him repeatedly. It is therefore doubtful that the United States can negotiate with her opponents and rivals successfully in an effort to defend a rules-based world order once she is eclipsed as the world’s pre-eminent superpower.
When Britain entered the Depression stage of Kübler-Ross in the 1970s, she did so with a total bipartisan commitment to national decline. She experienced depression in both its metaphysical and material senses. Economically and in prestige, she risked slipping into the third rank of world powers thanks to socialism and the pathos-laden Heathite Conservative response to it. In that doleful decade, Britain experienced the OPEC oil price trebling; IRA violence and internment in Northern Ireland; a miners’ strike that led to power cuts and a three-day week, stagflation, price and income caps; and trade union militancy that threatened the primacy of Parliament. The worst (because longest-lasting) of that decade’s developments came when Britain turned her back on the Commonwealth and joined the EEC in 1973. Only a country in the grip of severe depression, self-doubt, and historical amnesia could have done such a thing.
When the United States recognizes that it no longer matters in the world as it once did, that key allies are distancing themselves and flirting with China, that the global organizations erected by Bretton Woods and Dumbarton Oaks no longer guarantee her primacy, and that there is little she can do about it, then depression will hit America. It will leave her confused, morose, and liable to turn in on herself politically. It will be an ugly time.
In the 1980s, Britain embraced the fifth and final stage of the Cycle—Acceptance. This was almost entirely down to one person, Margaret Thatcher. The Falklands War seemed to arrest the lamentable drift and surrender since Suez, and the spectacular victory in the Cold War, in part due to her close alliance with Ronald Reagan, finally provided closure after the loss of Empire. Although she could never again be top-dog power, Britain’s replacement by her close ally was palatable because the Special Relationship had been shown to work well for both countries and also for the wider world in ridding the world of Soviet Communism.
For modern America, however, acceptance of decline cannot have any sense of closure because the successor-state is totalitarian. Every precept of National Socialist China is entirely antithetical to American values. Britain’s successor-state shared her language, common law, liberal principles, free market, and outlook. The United States can take no such comfort when peering into her post-imperial future. So, America’s final Acceptance stage is fraught with far greater dangers than the other four put together. The Free World really will have met its “time when the locusts feed.”
Is all this inevitable? Not if the United States can grasp the leadership of the West once more instead of wallowing in self-destructive and profoundly decadent obsessions with its own faults, real and imagined. The United States ought to heed the words of Winston Churchill during the Munich Debate of October 5th, 1938.
The people, he said, should be told that “we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road; they should know that we have passed an awful milestone in our history … And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.”
President Biden has already made it clear that he does not understand those words or appreciate their present importance. For now, Americans remain preoccupied with navel-gazing about Critical Race Theory and endlessly revisiting slavery 158 years after its abolition. Hopefully sometime before China takes Taiwan, Putin takes Ukraine, and Iran develops the Bomb, the United States will reject Acceptance of her eclipse and embrace her own supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/05/2021 – 23:30 - "We Got Too Slow" – Burger King To Axe Menu Items To Speed Up Drive-Thru Times
“We Got Too Slow” – Burger King To Axe Menu Items To Speed Up Drive-Thru Times
On Wednesday, Jose Cil, CEO of Restaurant Brands International, which owns Burger King, told attendees at Morgan Stanley’s Global Consumer and Retail Conference that it will cut menu items to speed up drive-thru times.
Cil said the company noticed drive-thru times “declined significantly” since the pandemic began. In response to streamlining the drive-thru experience, he said certain menu items would be eliminated.
“We’re working on eliminating SKUs that – we’re simplifying processes that have become a bit too complicated in terms of sandwich builds, and doing a better job in terms of the menu design to make it easier for the customer, at the drive-thru in particular, to make quicker decisions,” he said.
Cil did not mention what menu items would be eliminated but said his goal is to speed up drive-thru times.
“Given the volume increases in drive-thru, it’s a really easy win in terms of driving additional volume in our business,” Cil said. “We got too slow, and we need to address that.”
So which menu item(s) gets axed?
He noted the fast-food chain would be adding technology to stores, such as digital menu boards, to make drive-thrus more efficient. There was no mention if automation and artificial intelligence would be added to the kitchen to alleviate labor shortages.
We suspect that whatever menu items gets axed by corporate, angry customers will take to social media about the changes.
There’s also reason to believe that if Burger King is concerned about drive-thru times and possibly even consistency — they will eventually automate kitchens in the latter part of this decade, or sooner.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/05/2021 – 23:00 - Didi, Alibaba, Evergrande Crush Traders: What To Watch In China
Didi, Alibaba, Evergrande Crush Traders: What To Watch In China
By Sofia Horta e Costa, Bloomberg analyst and reporter
For traders, all the bad China news is hitting at once — just as concern over U.S. tapering deflates the most speculative investments globally.
Beijing’s demand that Didi delist its U.S. shares helped trigger the biggest plunge in the Nasdaq Golden Dragon China Index since 2008 on Friday. Alibaba, whose mysterious slump last week was already drawing attention, sank to its lowest level since 2017. The same day, Evergrande said it plans to “actively engage” with offshore creditors on a restructuring plan, suggesting it can no longer keep up with debt payments. That’s as stress returns to China’s dollar junk bond market, with yields above 22%. Evergrande bonds trade near 20 cents on the dollar.
The developments highlight the risks in betting that Chinese assets have already priced in negative news. HSBC, Nomura and UBS all turned positive on the nation’s stocks in October, citing reasons including cheap valuations and receding fear of regulation from Beijing. T. Rowe Price Group and Allianz Global Investors were among money managers taking advantage of the recent turmoil to add Chinese developer bonds.
A lack of transparency is adding to nervousness. Didi’s delisting notice comprised just 127 words. There were no details of how and when a move to Hong Kong would work. Evergrande’s statement was barely longer, and made no mention of whether the embattled developer would meet upcoming debts, including two interest payments due Monday. The Economic Daily said Premier Li Keqiang’s comments about a potential reserve ratio cut doesn’t indicate China will ease monetary policy.
There’s no shortage of symbolism. Alibaba, the largest-ever Chinese listing in the U.S. and the country’s most valuable company less than 14 months ago, has lost about $555 billion in value since its 2020 record. Its ADRs trade at record low valuations. (The company just replaced its CFO.) Didi, which was China’s second-largest U.S. listing — is being yanked at the request of the government. That comes as regulators in both countries put pressure on Chinese firms listed in the U.S.
December is shaping up to be a testing time, just as traders around the world look to book profits after a frenzied year. Along with the plunge in Chinese equities and concern over what’s next for Evergrande, another developer Kaisa is on course for default this week unless it can reach a last-minute agreement with creditors to delay payment. The firm has $11.6 billion in outstanding dollar debt, making it the nation’s third-largest issuer of such notes among property firms.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/05/2021 – 22:37 - China To Cut RRR "Within A Week" As Evergrande Braces For Imminent Default
China To Cut RRR “Within A Week” As Evergrande Braces For Imminent Default
Last Friday, just as markets were set to crater, during a meeting with IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, China’s Premier Li hinted at a potential RRR cut in the near term to support the real economy. Li’s comment comes amid sluggish activity growth – the economy struggled with downward pressures from property slowdown, the lingering drag from “dual controls” policy and power shortage, and multiple waves of local outbreaks of Covid-19.
Specifically, Premier Li commented that “China would maintain prudent macro policy, enhance policy effectiveness and pertinency, keep liquidity at reasonable and adequate levels, cut RRR when appropriate to increase support to the real economy and in particular SMEs”.
In its take of Li’s remarks, Goldman’s Chinese economists said that they think PM Li’s comment implies “a targeted RRR cut is very likely in the near term,” and they go on to note that “based on previous experiences, after Premier Li’s comment, PBOC usually announces the actual cut within a week.” That said, the net liquidity impact may depend on whether the central bank rolls MLF in full on December 15th when RMB 950bn loans will mature. It also means that the cut will likely take place before the 15th.
Goldman also noted that despite PBOC Sun’s implicit comment on no RRR cut in mid October, the recent slump in economic growth and increased stresses in the labor market likely still concerned policymakers and in particular the State Council. Property indicators such as land sales continued to deteriorate, and despite PBOC’s guidance on accelerating credit extensions, TSF data has surprised to the downside in the recent months (on the other hand, China’s credit impulse can’t drop any further and is poised for a sharp bounce if only on base effects). The strict restrictive measures against Covid-19 also dragged down consumption activities and export growth might have also moderated in November.
Of course, the imminent RRR cut will hardly be a surprise as it comes one week after we reported that “Beijing Capitulates: Urges Local Govts To Unleash Debt Flood As Cities Begin Backstopping Property Developers“; as we discussed than, there have been a series of policy easing measures in recent weeks – especially in the property market – and high frequency indicators suggest incremental improvement in construction activities.
To be sure, the upcoming Politburo meeting and Central Economic Work Conference may shed more light on the policy outlook next year. Policymakers may send incremental easing signals while stating a stable overall macro policy next year.
One such signal came early on Monday, when China’s Securities Daily confirmed that Beijing may cut the RRR ratio, citing Li Chao, chief economist at Zheshang Securities, who said bank would use the liquidity released from the cut to repay the 950BN yuan in medium-term policy loans coming due on Dec 15,
The reaction in the market was quick and in at the start of trading, the yield on China’s 10-year government bonds slumped the most since July, on expectations the central bank will soon reduce the the reserve-requirement ratio for lenders: China’s 10-year yield was down 5bps to 2.85%, while 5-year tenor falls 6bps to 2.68%.
In other news, shares of China’s insolvent property giant Evergrande Group tumbled 12% to an 11-year low on Monday after the firm said late on Friday what was patently obvious to anyone, i.e., that there was no guarantee it would have enough funds to meet debt repayments, prompting Chinese authorities to summon its chairman.
In a filing late on Friday, Evergrande, the world’s most indebted developer, also said it had received a demand from creditors to pay about $260 million. That prompted the government of Guangdong province, where the company is based, to summon Evergrande Chairman Hui Ka Yan, and it later said in a statement it would send a working group to the developer at Evergrande’s request to oversee risk management, strengthen internal controls and maintain normal operations.
As Bloomberg put it, “Evergrande’s statement offers its most explicit acknowledgment yet that its $300 billion of overseas and local liabilities have become unsustainable.”
Evergraned’s stock fell more than 12% to HK$1.98, its lowest since May 2010. The shares fell as a 30-day grace period on a coupon payment of $82.5 million due on Nov. 6 comes to an end on Monday.
Evergrande, whose default is just a matter of time, is grappling with more than $300 billion in liabilities amid a Chinese property sector that is all but dead. The upcoming collapse would send shockwaves through the country’s property sector and beyond.
That’s why, repeating what it did two months ago when the Evergrande turmoil first emerged, China’s central bank said in a series of apparently coordinated statements late in the evening, that any risks to the broader property sector could be contained. Which is precisely what Bernanke said about subprime.
Short-term risks caused by a single real estate firm will not undermine market fundraising in the medium and long term, the People’s Bank of China said, adding that housing sales, land purchases and financing “have already returned to normal in China”.
Perhaps sensing that Evergrande’s doom is nigh and that markets will need to see central bank support to avoid widespread panic, China’s securities regulator stated it would support the reasonable financing needs of developers which coupled with a report over the weekend which said that November developer loans increased for a second month, sent the beaten down sector surging.
In Hong Kong Sunac China Holdings rose as much as 7.1%, Shimao Group was up 7.3%, Country Garden Holdings jumped 6.4%, Vanke was up 5.2%, China Overseas Land +3.3%, China Resources Land +3.9%, Seazen +4.1%, Greentown China +2.9%, Kaisa Group +3.2%, Guangzhou R&F +2.9%, Zhongliang Holdings Group adds 5.1%, and so on.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/05/2021 – 22:23 - House Lawmakers Ask Airlines: After $50 Billion In Relief, Why Are There Mass Disruptions And Delays
House Lawmakers Ask Airlines: After $50 Billion In Relief, Why Are There Mass Disruptions And Delays
We’ve already heard the nonsense excuses that airlines offered up as to the flight disruptions that took place earlier this year. Now, House lawmakers want to hear more.
Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Representative Peter DeFazio of Oregon, and the committee’s top Republican, Sam Graves of Missouri wrote to the industry trade group “Airlines For America” last week asking whether or not airlines had enough staff to handle the holiday season, Bloomberg reported this week.
The Senate Commerce Committee has also asked executives of major airlines to come to a December 8 hearing and answer the same questions.
DeFazio and Graves’ letter said: “As you know, travelers don’t care why their flight is delayed. They care just that it’s delayed.”
The trade group has yet to respond, but United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby publicly praised the government’s PPP program and said it had been “helpful to employees”.
Congress had included airlines in a $50 billion package to help cover payrolls and limit job losses early on in the pandemic. But despite the government help, airlines like American and Southwest have still suffered “mass cancellations” over the last few months.
The letter continued: “We suspect that the voluntary separations coupled with a faster than anticipated growth in travel volumes may have rendered airlines less resilient when recovering from cascading disruptions and delays due to weather and other variables, like those we saw earlier this fall.”
Passenger traffic is still below 2019 levels, the report says. During the Thanksgiving holiday, only 87% of the traffic from a pre-pandemic 2019 traveled.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/05/2021 – 22:00 - Bitcoin: Welcome To The Big Leagues
Bitcoin: Welcome To The Big Leagues
Submitted by bithedge
If there was still anyone left shouting that Bitcoin is an uncorrelated asset they were put to rest in recent days. And what was once confined to obscure corners of the internet has obviously left them a long time ago, but it truly feels like this was the week that cranked things to 100…
In moments of major stress Bitcoin has followed risk assets for years – hardly much of a ‘digital gold’ but crisis is crisis, and recall during the March 2020 puke that even the precious metal was dumped indiscriminately alongside bonds and everything else as confused traders and algos were either forced or scared into dumping it all for cash. There is a saying that in real volatility “all correlations go to 1.”
What is more concerning is the strengthening connection between Bitcoin (and thus Ethereum, and thus altcoins) and greater financial assets when equities are 3% off all time highs. This speaks to either 1) a greater integration of Bitcoin into the wider risk-on/risk-off framework that both traders and computers are programmed to buy or sell out of depending on mostly whether or not rate hike expectations are up that day, 2) a market that is under increasing stress despite being just off all time highs and up 23% YTD, or 3) both…
Of course nothing is really as simple as just risk-on or risk-off, and Bitcoin, on top of being long beta / long momentum, is a great beneficiary of inflation both realized and expected.
That’s certainly one of the reasons why it’s up 160% over the past year (at this point anyone with an internet connection knows that no doubt about it – this is the highest inflation the U.S. has seen in 50 years). Even Powell ditched ‘transitory’…
AND a third factor in Bitcoin’s favor may be establishment distrust, which is obviously higher following two years of Americans being told their lives are now vastly different because the bat coronavirus that first emerged blocks away from an NIH-funded lab that studied bat coronaviruses actually was just an unfortunate development in a cave somewhere. BofA has dubbed it an “anarchy hedge” – record wealth inequality and soaring inflation seem to set the stage for taking out some insurance.
So since the three things that drive bond yields higher are conveniently risk-on, higher inflation expectations, and higher credit risk, it’s no surprise that Bitcoin trades even tighter alongside the 10 year:
Which begs the question of why not just go short the 10 year in size and avoid the regulatory and custody risks that come with holding crypto? If this trend holds for another year, that’ll be a question many are hoping you don’t ask. But for the average person buying Bitcoin is easier than short selling bonds – and in a market where passive > active flows and retail is a prominent force that may be all it takes for the coin to remain in fashion.
Recent developments are undoubtedly a thorn in the side of the once-isolated crypto trading community, filled with many who after spending years mastering their specific market are now essentially in competition with firms backed by billions in capex and decades of experience. Because unless it’s also a coincidence that Tesla and Bitcoin have hit their high or low for the month on the same day 8 out of the last 15 months, it really appears that Bitcoin trades only as a composite of long ‘the next big thing’ FOMO and short U.S debt. There’s nothing wrong with that – the trade has done well. But it’s a slap in the face to the uncorrelated/digital gold/reserve asset narrative. And it’s a major blow to those who were looking for an ‘alternative’ investment. Increasing correlation with bonds and equities is the biggest threat to Bitcoin right now.
It’s possible and maybe even likely that this is temporary – but whatever needs to happen for Bitcoin to again decouple from greater markets hasn’t happened yet. In light of the past two weeks, can anybody seriously say right now that they think Bitcoin will end the year higher than where it is currently if the S&P 500 doesn’t?
But to be fair, long term hodlers really don’t have anything to worry about since if the world post-GFC is any guide, the current pullback in equities will bottom out soon and if it doesn’t – the Fed will just announce a pause in their tapering plans and at that point everyone should go even more all in because rest assured it will give way to new all time highs for the Nasdaq, home prices, inequality, and the newest member of the liquidity-firehose winners club, Bitcoin.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/05/2021 – 21:30 - "They Were In Uniform With Multiple Weapons": San Francisco Restaurant Defends Booting Cops
“They Were In Uniform With Multiple Weapons”: San Francisco Restaurant Defends Booting Cops
San Francisco cops have more to deal with than a DA who keeps releasing violent criminals back into the community…
On Friday, three on-duty officers were seated at Hilda and Jesse, a local restaurant, before the staff denied them service and asked them to leave after they became “uncomfortable with the presence of their multiple weapons,” according to a post on the eatery’s Instagram account.
The officers left without incident.
“At Hilda and Jesse, the restaurant is a safe space. The presence of the officers weapons in the restaurant made us feel uncomfortable. We respect the San Francisco Police Department and are grateful for the work they do. We welcome them into the restaurant when they are off duty, out of the uniform, and without their weapons,” reads the Instagram post published on Saturday.
In an interview with ABC7 news, co-owner Rachel Sillcocks said “It is about the fact that we do not allow weapons in our restaurant. We were uncomfortable, and we asked them to leave. It has nothing to do that they were officers. It has everything to do that they were carrying guns.”
“We understand how much the police support and protect the community,” she continued, adding “We want to again reiterate the fact that this is about guns being in our space, and we don’t allow it.”
“𝗪𝗲 𝗱𝗼 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝗴𝘂𝗻𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘁.”
I just spoke exclusively to one owner of Hilda & Jesse.
Rachel Sillcocks told me “it doesn’t matter what you do, whether you’re a security guard of a policeman”— they don’t want any weapons #SanFrancisco pic.twitter.com/yGog0Dym4M
— Dion Lim (@DionLimTV) December 5, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsIn another statement, Sillcocks wrote “We’re sorry that the decision upset you. We understand your perspective and we hope you’ll consider ours.”
BREAKING: Restaurant in SF refuses service to two SFPD officers yesterday 12/3, stating their presence made staff (and perhaps guests) uncomfortable. Hilda and Jesse on Union St. Here’s their response: 👇 pic.twitter.com/7ujmJ2Ks0O
— Richie Greenberg (@richieSF2016) December 5, 2021
SFPD Chief Bill Scott has called the incident “personally disappointing,” and the SF Police Officers Association said the restaurant acted without “any tact or class,” according to Fox News.
“The San Francisco Police Department stands for safety with respect, even when it means respecting wishes that our officers and I find discouraging and personally disappointing,” tweeted Scott on Saturday. “I believe the vast majority of San Franciscans welcome their police officers, who deserve to know that they are appreciated for the difficult job we ask them to do – in their uniforms – to keep our neighborhoods and businesses safe.”
“Three foot beat officers looking to eat where they patrol are treated without any tact or class by this establishment. Fortunately, there are plenty of restaurants that don’t discriminate and will welcome our officers working to try and keep all San Franciscans safe,” the San Francisco Police Officers Association said in a statement.
So if armed criminals hold up Hilda and Jesse, we assume they’ll understand that the police aren’t able to intervene.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/05/2021 – 21:00 - Morgan Stanley Lists The Four Investment Debates It Will Focus On In 2022
Morgan Stanley Lists The Four Investment Debates It Will Focus On In 2022
By Michelle Weaver, equity strategist at Morgan Stanley
A core element of the research process is asking the right question at the right time.
Each year Simon Bound, our Global Director of Research, hosts senior analysts from around the world to discuss the most important questions facing their industries and the debates that will shape returns in the years ahead. Looking back on our gathering this past week, here are four investment debates our teams will be particularly focused on in 2022.
1. How can technology disrupt health care on both the consumer and business side?
The patient services experience is complex, convoluted, and fragmented – an area ripe for disruption. Some tech companies have tried to consumerize health care (for example, Apple with the Apple Watch). However, most big tech companies haven’t ventured into the more regulated and specialized areas. Which consumer-facing segments will be easiest for tech companies to enter?
Technology innovations also have the potential to transform diagnosis and drug development. Can artificial intelligence improve the selection of participants in drug trials and help get drugs to market more quickly? Who will be the key tech players disrupting health care? Big tech has the money to invest but is also under pressure to deliver growth to shareholders. Will smaller players be the ones driving transformative change or will the government implement policies to spur innovation in this field? For investors, it is also important to focus on areas where companies can make big strides over the next decade versus moonshot ideas.
2. Will technology drive a wave of sustained productivity growth?
Covid lockdowns induced rapid and fairly widespread adoption of labor-saving technology. However, we have yet to see if the productivity gains that resulted are a one-time shift higher in productivity, or a permanent gain to productivity growth. The technology diffusion is widespread and can be seen in retailers, banks, health care, industrial companies, and others. Companies are already seeing SG&A efficiency improvements and have proof of the benefits of their investment in and adoption of technology. How will new technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the internet of things change the outlook for aggregate productivity growth over the coming decade?
3. Is it harder to build a mega brand today, and does direct-to-consumer (DTC) actually work?
Technology is fragmenting audiences, which makes brand-building harder but the prize bigger. In response, companies have ramped up ad spending, which is growing rapidly as a percentage of GDP. Brand-building is less challenging in some markets than others. Sportswear and footwear are two areas where new players have an easier time gaining a foothold. It’s much harder to build a brand in the luxury world, since heritage and provenance loom as two very high barriers to entry. We’ve seen a global transition across verticals into DTC selling. Acquiring customers is very expensive, but brands have to share less of their profits with multi-brand retailers. Still, is there a ceiling above which you can’t grow your brand digitally any further? If brand-building is becoming tougher, should investors pay up for big brands?
4. How do low interest rates impact cryptocurrency?
High capital availability is having two substantial impacts on cryptocurrency – it is allowing new entrants to the cryptocurrency world (and FinTech generally) to operate for extended periods of time without reaching profitability and it is pulling labor and skills out of the incumbents. Bitcoin came from the aftermath of the global financial crisis and was a response to the Fed’s quantitative easing policies and poor sentiment around traditional banking. Some retail customers are choosing cryptocurrency as they want to transact in a decentralized system without banks. However, if capital no longer remains cheap, can preferences for cryptocurrency-based transactions persist if they remain higher cost, higher risk, and less convenient than existing payment systems? With ~$3 trillion of value now assigned to cryptocurrency globally, this question looms large.
Enjoy your Sunday.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/05/2021 – 20:30 - Shots Fired: CNN's Brian Stelter Unleashes Potato-Gun On Chris Cuomo
Shots Fired: CNN’s Brian Stelter Unleashes Potato-Gun On Chris Cuomo
Not even one day after CNN fired Chris Cuomo for shielding his scandal-plagued brother and ‘additional information’ which came to light, former colleague Brian Stelter threw Fredo under the bus.
“Chris Cuomo, one of the most popular anchors at CNN, one of the best-known names in television news, violated journalistic ethics and norms not once or twice, but many times and that’s ultimately what is the result of today’s news, Jim,” Stelter told Jim Acosta. “What we didn’t know until tonight, Jim, is that an outside law firm came in and went through the thousands of pages of text messages and sworn testimony that was released back on Monday. So there was clearly something in those documents that was found to be a serious breach of standards and practices.”
The “Reliable Sources” host dinged Cuomo for “acting like an unpaid staffer” for his brother based on the documents released by the AG despite how “it was known months ago” that the anchor was helping the governor.
Stelter told Acosta he has “no answers” as to the “additional information” CNN had learned as part of its investigation and when it would ever be made public. –Fox News
“I think this may be a situation where it was death by a thousand cuts, where there were just so many headaches time and time again involving Chris Cuomo that even though many viewers loved ‘Cuomo Prime Time,’ looked forward to his show, he was causing so many headaches for the network and for CNN staffers that ultimately this decision was reached,” Stelter continued. “I do think, you know, this is a moment where journalistic ethics are at play. I know there were many CNN staffers very unhappy with the situation, very frustrated by Chris Cuomo. At the same time, Jim, I was hearing from some fans of Chris, some viewers who said we understood he was looking out for his family.”
Watch:
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/05/2021 – 20:00 - Omicron: We Warned You The COVID Farce Would Never End
Omicron: We Warned You The COVID Farce Would Never End
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,
Remember when Anthony Fauci and other government paid medical “professionals” said that American’s needed to mask up and stay home for two weeks to “flatten the curve” on the covid pandemic? Remember when they came back two weeks later and said they needed another couple of weeks? Remember how they backed off of the lockdowns a little and then came right back with demands for more? Remember in 2019 when people weren’t cowering in their homes and behind masks over a virus with an average IFR (Infection Fatality Rate) of only 0.27%? Remember that?
At the very beginning of the pandemic response I and many others in the alternative media warned that the mandates and lockdowns were never going to end; they are meant to go on forever. I predicted this based on statements made by the very globalists and institutions scripting covid response policy for national governments. In my article ‘Waves Of Mutilation: Medical Tyranny And The Cashless Society’ published in April of 2020, I outlined comments by globalist Gideon Lichfield from MIT built on white papers published by the Imperial College of London. In the article titled ‘We’re Not Going Back To Normal’ he describes the future of the world under covid medical tyranny:
“To stop coronavirus we will need to radically change almost everything we do: how we work, exercise, socialize, shop, manage our health, educate our kids, take care of family members.
We all want things to go back to normal quickly. But what most of us have probably not yet realized—yet will soon—is that things won’t go back to normal after a few weeks, or even a few months. Some things never will.”
He continues:
“As long as someone in the world has the virus, breakouts can and will keep recurring without stringent controls to contain them. In a report yesterday researchers at Imperial College London proposed a way of doing this: impose more extreme social distancing measures every time admissions to intensive care units (ICUs) start to spike, and relax them each time admissions fall…”
Lichfield argues:
“Ultimately, however, I predict that we’ll restore the ability to socialize safely by developing more sophisticated ways to identify who is a disease risk and who isn’t, and discriminating—legally—against those who are.
…one can imagine a world in which, to get on a flight, perhaps you’ll have to be signed up to a service that tracks your movements via your phone. The airline wouldn’t be able to see where you’d gone, but it would get an alert if you’d been close to known infected people or disease hot spots. There’d be similar requirements at the entrance to large venues, government buildings, or public transport hubs. There would be temperature scanners everywhere, and your workplace might demand you wear a monitor that tracks your temperature or other vital signs. Where nightclubs ask for proof of age, in future they might ask for proof of immunity—an identity card or some kind of digital verification via your phone, showing you’ve already recovered from or been vaccinated against the latest virus strains.”
Two years later (instead of two weeks), the covid farce continues. By farce I mean that the virus is not a health threat to the vast majority of the public, but governments and the media continue to fear monger over it’s existence while trying to force people to accept experimental vaccines with no long term testing to prove they are safe. In almost any country where people have been mostly disarmed or any country with minimal chance of a riot, the covid totalitarians are racing to grab every ounce of power they can before the population realizes what is happening.
I could go on and on outlining the mountain of scientific facts and evidence that completely debunk the panic over covid, but I have already done this in several articles. I could talk about the fact that 99.7% or more of people are in no danger from covid death and only a tiny percentage of those hospitalized by covid have longer term health side effects. I could mention the fact that countries with high vaccination rates like Israel or Ireland also have the highest infection rates and numerous deaths of fully vaccinated people. I could also mention that natural immunity has been proven in studies in majority vaxxed countries to be superior in every way to vaccination. The authoritarians do not want to hear it.
In New Zealand and Australia, once supposed bastions of western democracy and freedom, citizens are now locked down on the whims of bureaucrats at the first sign of a positive PCR test. I have been saying for months that if you want to see the future that the establishment intends for Americans, just take a look at countries like Australia where they are actually building covid prison camps operated by the military. People have even been arrested trying to escape these compounds. No, this is not conspiracy theory, this is fact.
In these camps you are under the complete control of the government. Much like any prison, they feed you when they want to feed you, they restrict your movements, they isolate you from friends and family, etc. Your time in the camps can even be “extended” by the administrators without oversight if they determine you have “misbehaved.” That’s right, it’s not about how infectious you are, it’s not about science, it’s about how submissive you are.
And really, that is all that the covid pandemic response has ever been about.
Look at a nation like Austria, which has 65% vaccination and ever increasing infection rates. They decided that unvaxxed people are to blame, so they ordered anyone without proof of vaccination to submit to lockdowns. After that, their infections and deaths spiked even more. So, instead of admitting the obvious and logical conclusion (that the vaccines don’t work, or at the very least, that lockdowns don’t work), they ordered a lockdown for EVERYONE. Why? To hide the fact that the unvaxxed are not the problem.
To be clear, the initial spike that prompted the lockdowns in Austria amounted to around 300 deaths, the vast majority of them among the elderly. In Austria, nursing home patients make up around 36% of all covid deaths. To be clear, they are eliminating the freedoms of 9 million people and strangling their economy over a spike of 300 deaths. People die every day in large numbers from a host of transmissible diseases. This is a fact of life, it is not something to be used as a political and social weapon.
To take things a step further, Austria is also now threatening a compulsory vaccination bill that allows fines and prison for the unvaxxed. Vaccination status will be determined by the government and booster shots could be required at any time. Just because you are fully vaccinated now does not mean you will be considered fully vaccinated tomorrow. It will never end.
The data shows that vaccination does little to nothing to slow actual infection rates or deaths; there were more covid deaths in 2021 than in 2020 despite the proliferation of the vaccines this year. That is to say, vaccinations were introduced this year and yet there were more covid deaths than last year. Isn’t that strange?
The mainstream media claims this is now a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” I guess they should tell that to the many thousands of fully vaccinated people infected and hundreds dying in states like Massachusetts where they actually track breakthrough cases.
Of course, the media still sings the praises of the vaccines despite these little hiccups.
If the vaccines actually worked, then there would be no need for compulsory vaccinations. The people who are vaxxed would be protected and the people who are unvaxxed assume the individual risks. The covid cult doesn’t seem to grasp the logic here – Either the vaccines are effective and there is no need to make them mandatory, or they are not effective, which means making them mandatory is pointless.
But again, logic and science are not the point – Control is the point. It’s an endless rationale for infinite control. It will never end.
The reality is that the covid agenda has not been all that effective if we look at the big picture. If the goal is 100% vaccination and perpetual vax passport controls using regular boosters as a dominance mechanism for the long term (medical tyranny), then so far the plan has failed. Some countries have fallen into the long covid winter, but many others have not. Nearly every conservative state in the US is in full defiance of the mandates and federal courts have blocked Joe Biden’s attempts to circumvent the constitution. If red states in America hold out, this gives hope to others. So, what’s left for the establishment power mongers to do?
That’s easy…they just do more of the same.
Enter the Omicron variant of covid, something we “conspiracy theorists” have been warning about for the past two years. This is the beauty of the pandemic narrative when it comes to building a global authoritarian regime; viruses are always changing and new viruses can even be engineered if needed. Therefore, there is always a new threat to frighten the public and always a new reason to lock them up in their homes or demand they give up more of their freedoms. It is an endless vampiric cycle that slowly drains the liberty from a population.
Set aside the fact that the doctors that discovered Omicron in South Africa have labeled it a mild variation of covid and not a significant threat to the public. This makes perfect sense. In the vast majority of pandemic scenarios viruses tend to evolve into slightly more infectious but much less deadly versions of the original. But that’s not stopping the media and government scientists from screeching bloody murder about Omicron and even suggesting that this time covid “might” evolve to become more deadly rather than less.
This must be done. They have nothing left and if they lose out on covid they lose out on one of the best opportunities they have ever had for centralized control of nearly every individual on Earth.
The fear over covid is waning. Hundreds of millions of people are not willing to give up their freedoms over a hyped and farcical pandemic with a 0.27% IFR. Many people who are vaccinated are fighting the mandates alongside the unvaxxed. Most of us aren’t obese. Most of us aren’t 80 years old and in a nursing home. Most of us don’t have preexisting conditions. These are all factors that make up the majority of covid deaths. Many of us already had covid and easily survived it, which means we have natural immunity that is 13-27 times more effective at stopping future infections than the vaccines. Without more hype and more variants the party for the globalists stops, and they don’t like that idea at all.
If the public is allowed to pull their heads out of the haze of propaganda for a moment and regain their bearings, they might realize they have been made the target of a massive terror campaign. They might get angry. They might demand investigations. They might even demand that some globalist heads roll. So, get ready for Omicron to remain in the headlines for months to come, and then the next mutation and the next mutation and the mutation after that. The globalists and political opportunists will keep going with the theater until they get what they want, or until they are removed from the equation entirely. It will never end, unless they end.
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/05/2021 – 19:30 - Plumber Finds $600,000 In Cash And Checks Stashed In Wall At Joel Osteen's Texas Mega-Church
Plumber Finds $600,000 In Cash And Checks Stashed In Wall At Joel Osteen’s Texas Mega-Church
The Lord works in mysterious ways.
Tell that to the plumber who found “hundreds of envelopes of cash and checks hidden in a wall” at Joel Osteen’s Texas church while performing routine repair work.
Police think the stash has something to do with a 2014 theft that took place at the church, CNN reported.
Houston Police were called to the church on November 10 to investigate the findings. The police told CNN: “Church members stated that during a renovation project, a large amount of money — including cash, checks and money orders — was found inside a wall.”
The police also said the envelopes were connected to a March 9, 2014 theft that took place at the church, where about $600,000 was stolen from a church safe. The money came in from contributions on March 8 and March 9 of that year and included $200,000 in cash and $400,000 in checks.
The money was left in the custody of the church since it was found on its premises, the report said. Lakewood Church commented: “Recently, while repair work was being done at Lakewood Church, an undisclosed amount of cash and checks were found. Lakewood immediately notified the Houston Police Department and is assisting them with their investigation.”
The plumber called into local radio station 100.3 and shared the story with them, saying: “There was a loose toilet in the wall and we removed the tile … Went to go remove the toilet and I moved some insulation away and about 500 envelopes fell out of the wall, and I was like, ‘Oh wow.'”
Radio host George Lindsey told CNN: “I wish we had video of our faces because we were all just like, ‘holy cow.’ He could have stashed some of this money in his pocket and walked out and never said anything to anybody, but [he] was an honest, stand-up kind of guy.”
Meanwhile, the statute of limitations on a $25,000 reward being offered for information about the theft has expired.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/05/2021 – 19:00 - Hedge Fund CIO: No One On Earth Has Any Idea How Monetary Policy Can Alleviate Supply Chain Constraints
Hedge Fund CIO: No One On Earth Has Any Idea How Monetary Policy Can Alleviate Supply Chain Constraints
By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management
“It’s a good time to retire that word,” said Powell, seated comfortably next to Yellen. Senator Toomey had asked how long inflation must run above target before the Fed decides, maybe it’s not so “transitory.”
The Senate Banking Committee’s Ranking Member appeared as surprised as virtually every Wall Street economist that two consecutive years of 15% deficits, financed by Jay’s magic money machine, lifted inflation in ways that have begun to appear persistent.
“I think what we missed about inflation,” Powell admirably conceded, “was we didn’t predict the supply-side problems, and those are highly unusual and very difficult, very non-linear, and it’s really hard to predict those things, but that’s really what we missed, and that’s why all of the professional forecasters had much lower inflation projections.”
No doubt our Fed Chairman is right.
There’s not an economic model in the solar system that could have forecast today’s extraordinary inflation without first predicting the “highly unusual, very difficult and very non-linear” supply constraints plaguing the global economy.
But that is all now understood. What is not known is how monetary policy can or should be used to alleviate these supply constraints.
For nearly half a century, the Fed reaction function was nearly linear. When the system deviated unacceptably far from stability, equilibrium, the Fed added new monetary tools. Forward guidance. Average inflation targeting. Whatever it took.
And it is possible that once the invisible hand restores global supply chains, markets and economies will return to their familiar states. But having just retired the notion of transitory, the entire system appears to be moving towards a non-linear mode.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/05/2021 – 18:30 - Fauci Downplays Severity Of Omicron Strain
Fauci Downplays Severity Of Omicron Strain
One week after the US media and its “scientists” rolled out a full-blown panic parade over the Omicron variant, setting the stage for a new round of lockdowns as a result of a strain which nobody knew much about, yet which was conveniently viewed as a greenlight for trillions more in stimmies, the narrative is gradually turning.
First a note out of South African’s Medical Research Council discussing the recent development in the Tshwane District, which is the global epicenter of the Omicron Outbreak, and the Gauteng Province Fourth Wave, with the weekly number of cases rising exponentially over several weeks…
… confirms what we pointed out last weekend, namely that while much more tranmissible, the Omicron strain is also far more mild and its rapid propagation across the globe could, in fact, be a blessing in disguise as a far less dangerous, “flu-like” variant promptly becomes the dominant one. This, as a reminder, is also a point subsequently made by JPM’s Marko Kolanovic. Here is the conclusion from the SA MRC note:
the first impression on examination of the 166 patients admitted since the Omicron variant made an appearance, together with the snapshot of the clinical profile of 42 patients currently in the COVID wards at the SBAH/TDH complex, is that the majority of hospital admissions are for diagnoses unrelated to COVID-19. The SARS-CoV-2 positivity is an incidental finding in these patients and is largely driven by hospital policy requiring testing of all patients requiring admission to the hospital.
The exponential increase in the positivity rate in these patients is a reflection of the rapidly increased case rate for Tshwane but does not appear to be associated with a concomitant increase in the rate of admissions for severe COVID (pneumonia) based on the high proportion of patients not requiring supplemental oxygen.
The relatively low number of COVID-19 pneumonia hospitalizations in the general, high care and ICU wards constitutes a very different picture compared to the beginning of previous waves…
For those interested in a more detailed breakdown of the latest South African data, we recommend reading
Okay folks, time for a South Africa update, focused this time on severity of disease.
First up, the report from hospitals in Tshwane (the district furthest along in Omicron wave) is essential reading, as is thread from @miamalan https://t.co/5GNwrNJHsk
https://t.co/2U0wkjNFgy— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) December 4, 2021
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In any event, with almost two weeks since the first appearance of the Omicron variant and with a distinct lack of any evidence that the new strain is more dangerous, or results in a greater number of more acute hospitalizations than the Delta or other variants, the narrative by the “scientific establishment” – which has burned through most if not all of its credibility in the past year by constantly ‘moving the goal posts’ to serve various political agendas – appears to be changing once again, and earlier today none other than the chief health propaganda shaman of the Biden admin, Anthony Fauci, indicated that “the U.S. was encouraged by reports from South African officals that the rapid spread of omicron hadn’t yet resulted in a spike in hospitalizations in that country, an indication that the strain could be less virulent.”
“Though it’s too early to really make any definitive statements about it thus far, it does not look like there’s a great degree of severity to it,” Fauci said on Sunday in a CNN interview. He added that more review is needed to confirm that Omicron causes less illness than other variants, such as Delta, “but thus far, the signals are a bit encouraging.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci cautions about making early judgment about Omicron, but says:
“Thus far, though it’s too early to really make any definitive statements about it, it does not look like there’s a great degree of severity to it.” pic.twitter.com/eHGMmv5PO1
— The Recount (@therecount) December 5, 2021
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Of course, making a blanket “all clear” determination would have made a mockery of all the fearmongering that was unleashed just last week, and so Fauci cautioned that it was too soon to make any “definitive statements” about the variant and encouraged Americans to get vaccinations and booster shots, adding that “you got to hold judgment until we get more experience.”
Fauci’s comments came as the Biden administration reported that Omicron had spread to 16 US states. The new variant’s many mutations suggest that it might not be effectively treated with some Covid-19 therapeutics and that it could evade the immunity provided by current vaccines, CDC director Dr Rochelle Walensky said on Sunday in an ABC News interview.
Despite the concerns over jab efficacy, Fauci said getting more Americans to take vaccine booster shots will be “really critical in addressing whether or not we’re going to be able to handle this.” As with Delta, boosters will elevate immunity levels to help prevent infections, or at least reduce the severity of illnesses caused by the variant, he said as it becomes apparent that the narrative is now shifting to using Omicron as a talking point for widespread use of booster shots.
“The vaccines that we are distributing now in the United States and throughout the world are directed against the original, ancestral or Wuhan strain,” Fauci told Jake Tapper, who unlike his pal Chris Cuomo, has yet to be fired.
He added that “we feel certain that there will be some degree, and maybe a considerable degree, of protection against the Omicron variant if, in fact, it starts to take hold in a dominant way in this country.”
Meanwhile, the Biden admin is suffering from blowback for the very same “xenophobic” policies it recently adopted and which it previously criticized Trump for implementing, after banning visitors from South Africa and seven other African nations on November 26.
Tapper noted that the US hadn’t banned travel from the dozens of other nations where Omicron cases have been confirmed and that UN chief Antonio Guterres referred to restrictions targeting southern African countries as “travel apartheid.” Fauci replied that too little was known about Omicron at the time the ban was imposed.
“That ban was done at a time when we were really in the dark — we had no idea what was going on… When the ban was put on, it was put to give us time to figure out just what is going on,” Fauci said adding that the decision is being re-evaluated as more data become available so the ban may be lifted in a “reasonable period of time. I mean, we all feel very badly about the hardship that might have put upon not only South Africa, but the other African countries.”
Biden’s ban prompted criticism from international officials, with United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres last week likening the restrictions to “travel apartheid.” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called on countries to maintain “rational, proportional risk-reduction measures.”
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/05/2021 – 18:00 - Court On A Hot Tin Roof: Airing Out "The Stench" From The Oral Argument Over Abortion
Court On A Hot Tin Roof: Airing Out “The Stench” From The Oral Argument Over Abortion
Below is a version of my column in The Hill on the statement of Justice Sonya Sotomayor on the “stench” of politics in the oral argument in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a challenge to the Mississippi abortion law.
The statement seemed directed at Sotomayor’s three new colleagues and the effort to use the new court composition to seek the reduction or overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Here is the column:
In Wednesday’s Supreme Court oral argument in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Justice Sonya Sotomayor got a whiff of something she did not like. She said many abortion opponents, including the sponsors of the Mississippi abortion law at issue, hoped her three new colleagues would allow for the reversal or reduction of Roe v. Wade. With Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett listening, she asked, “Will this institution survive the stench” created from such political machinations — and then answered: “I don’t see how it is possible.”
Of course, when justices begin to declare their disgust at the very thought of overturning precedent, there is another detectable scent in the courtroom.
Indeed, it felt like a scene from Tennessee Williams’ play, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” The only thing missing was the play’s central character, “Big Daddy” Pollitt, asking: “What’s that smell in this room? … Didn’t you notice a powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room? There ain’t nothin’ more powerful than the odor of mendacity.”
Justices Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer insisted that overturning Roe in whole or in part would bring ruin upon the court by abandoning the principle of stare decisis, or the respect for precedent. Yet neither showed the same unflagging adherence to precedent when they sought to overturn conservative doctrines.
Notably, Sotomayor pointed out another allegedly “political” decision in the court’s recognition of an individual right to bear arms; she and Breyer both indicated a willingness to overturn the ruling in that case, District of Columbia v. Heller. After that decision, both continued to dissent and arguing that “the Framers did not write the Second Amendment in order to protect a private right of armed self-defense.” Indeed, they may reaffirm that position this term.
Sotomayor’s nose for judicial politics was also less sensitive when she recently called upon students to campaign against abortion laws — a major departure from the court’s apolitical traditions. After telling the students that “You know, I can’t change Texas’ law but you can and everyone else who may or may not like it can go out there and be lobbying forces in changing laws that you don’t like.” She added: “I am pointing out to that when I shouldn’t because they tell me I shouldn’t.” That was more than a whiff of politics, but the same legal commentators applauding her “stench” comment were entirely silent in condemning her direct call for political action on abortion. There also were no objections to the stench of politics when the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg publicly opposed a presidential candidate.
They are not the only figures showing such selective outrage. During the confirmation hearing for Justice Kavanaugh, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) demanded that Kavanaugh promise to respect stare decisis on cases like Roe, but then called for overturning cases like Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Democratic groups often decry the conservative majority as “partisan” while demanding the packing of the court to guarantee an immediate liberal majority.
On Wednesday, Kavanaugh and other justices balked at claims that Roe is somehow untouchable due to the passage of 50 years. The 1896 ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson was overturned in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, roughly 58 years after it was written; the court ruled that its Plessy decision was egregiously wrong — one in a long list of reversals celebrated today. This includes Lawrence v. Texas, which overturned prior precedent allowing the criminalization of homosexual relations.
There is a major difference, though, between the oral arguments in Brown and those in Dobbs. In Brown, the court had extensive discussion of the constitutional foundation for the “separate but equal” doctrine; in the oral argument on Dobbs, there was comparably little substantive defense of the analysis in Roe or its successor case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Indeed, the thrust of much of the pro-choice argument was that, even if Roe was incorrectly decided, it takes more than being wrong to overturn such an “established” precedent.
When it was released, Roe was widely ridiculed as being extraconstitutional and excessive. That includes some who are now calling to pack of the Court criticized Roe. For example, Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe objected that “behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.”
Even Justice Ginsburg once criticized it, declaring: “Roe, I believe, would have been more acceptable as a judicial decision if it had not gone beyond a ruling on the extreme statute before the court. … Heavy-handed judicial intervention was difficult to justify and appears to have provoked, not resolved, conflict.”
In the Dobbs hearing, Roe was the opinion that many wanted to preserve but few seemed willing to defend. Part of the problem is that Roe died long ago. In Casey, the Supreme Court gutted Roe and adopted a new standard barring state actions that impose “an undue burden” on abortions. So it is hard to tell what precedent is being defended as “established” beyond a de facto right to abortion. Moreover, Casey was a mere plurality, and the court has often split 5-4 on later abortion cases.
While defending abortion as a “liberty interest,” efforts to explore the actual basis for Roe were largely brushed aside. Even when justices tried to push pro-choice advocates to defend the key “viability” standard, counsel defended it as a “principled” or “workable” line but did not actually say how it was constitutionally compelled. That seems odd, since this case is about whether Mississippi can impose a 15-week limit. (The United States is one of only seven among the world’s 198 countries that allow abortions after 20 weeks.)
It appeared particularly frustrating to Chief Justice John Roberts, who finally stated: “Viability, it seems to me, doesn’t have anything to do with choice. If it really is an issue about choice, why is 15 weeks not enough time?” He never received an answer, and the pro-choice counsel effectively declined to offer a meaningful alternative test when it was repeatedly requested by the justices.
Likewise, rather than defending the analysis underlying Roe, most legal commentators prefer to attack justices as ideologues for questioning such “established precedent.” Even Sotomayor portrayed the arguments against abortion as little more than a “religious view,” a statement that is wildly off-base and ignores the many secular critics of Roe as a legal case or of abortion as a medical practice. Others picked up on that theme, and one law professor demanded that Barrett recuse herself because of her own religious beliefs. It was a continuation of the disgraceful attacks on Barrett’s faith during her confirmation hearing by senators like Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).
That is the problem with both politics and mendacity: They are a stench that one tends to smell only in others — and tends to be more pungent when one is in dissent.
There is no problem with changing one’s rationale for reproductive rights, or even changing one’s views on constitutional interpretations; that is part of honest intellectual development. However, the mere fact that a case is constitutional precedent — or even “super precedent,” according to some — is no substitute for constitutional principle.
Breyer and Sotomayor are known for often profound, detailed opinions. I expect both will ably defend reproductive rights in Dobbs, even if they do not defend the actual analysis in Roe. But Roe should stand or fall on constitutional merits — not on feigned outrage over changing constitutional precedent.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/05/2021 – 17:30 - Trump Social Media Venture Raises $1BN At Valuation Near $4BN
Trump Social Media Venture Raises $1BN At Valuation Near $4BN
Many traders were stunned to learn on Wednesday that Trump’s social media venture was seeking to raise as much as $1 billion in a PIPE financing, with Reuters reporting that Trump was personally calling some investors to ask them to make a commitment of more than $100 million as it now appears that “allocating capital to a Trump SPAC” is the new “donating to the Clinton foundation”. The reason for the surprise is that while the original SPAC deal from September valued Trump Media at $875 million (including debt) just two months later the company is now seeking to raise up to an additional $1 billion at a valuation of close to $4 billion, to reflect DWAC’s rally after the stock soared in its first few days of trading as some speculated it could emerge as a twitter competitor.
And yet, the deal did get done and on Saturday, Trump’s social media venture said it inked agreements to raise about $1 billion from a group of unidentified investors as it prepares to float in the U.S. stock market. Digital World Acquisition Corp, the blank-check acquisition firm that will take Trump Media & Technology Group Corp public by listing it in New York, said it will provide up to $293 million to the partnership with Trump’s media venture, taking the total proceeds to about $1.25 billion.
The $1 billion will be raised through a private investment in public equity (PIPE) transaction from “a diverse group of institutional investors,” Trump Media and Digital World said in a statement. They did not respond to requests to name the investors.
Trump Media and Digital World said the per-share conversion price of the convertible preferred stock PIPE transaction represents a 20% discount to Digital World’s volume-weighted average closing price for the five trading days to Dec. 1, when Reuters broke news of the capital raise. If that price averages below $56 in the 10 days after the merger with Digital World has been completed, the discount will grow to 40% with a floor of $10, the companies added. Digital World shares ended trading on Friday $44.97.
The rapid capital raise at a stratospheric valuation “underscored the former U.S. president’s ability to attract strong financial backing thanks to his personal and political brand.” As reported previously, Trump is working to launch a social media app called TRUTH Social that is now several weeks away.
While Reuters is quick to note that “many Wall Street firms such as mutual funds and private equity firms snubbed the opportunity to invest in the PIPE” clearly many did invest and judging by the ravenous demand for Trump’s social engagement, their investment could pay off handsomely. Among those investors who participated were hedge funds, family offices and high net-worth individuals.
“As our balance sheet expands, Trump Media & Technology Group will be in a stronger position to fight back against the tyranny of Big Tech,” Trump said in a statement on Saturday.
That said, the deal still faces regulatory risk after Elizabeth Warren asked the SEC last month to investigsate the planned merger for potential violations of securities laws around disclosure.
And while we wait to see what the actual Trump media product will look like, Investors attending the confidential investor road shows were shown a demo from the planned social media app, which looked like a Twitter feed, Reuters reported.
If Trump’s media venture is successful it may breathe new life into the SPAC bubble which had burst in mid-2021 after a surge of deals early in the year and in late 2020. As Reuters notes, “special purpose acquisition companies such as Digital World had lost much of their luster with retail investors before the Trump media deal came along. Many of these investors were left with big losses after the companies that merged with SPACs failed to deliver on their ambitious financial projections.”
TRUTH Social is scheduled for a full rollout in the first quarter of 2022. It is the first of three stages in the Trump Media plan, followed by a subscription video-on-demand service called TMTG+ that will feature entertainment, news and podcasts, according to the news release.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/05/2021 – 17:00 - Greenwald: To Deny "Lab Leak" COVID Theory, NYT & WaPo Use Dubious, Conflicted Sources
Greenwald: To Deny “Lab Leak” COVID Theory, NYT & WaPo Use Dubious, Conflicted Sources
Authored by Glenn Greenwald via Substack,
A bizarre and abrupt reversal by scientists regarding COVID’s origins, along with clear conflicts of interest, create serious doubts about their integrity. Yet major news outlets keep relying on them…
Peter Daszak, President of EcoHeath Alliance, speaking in 2017 (Wikipedia)
That COVID-19 infected humanity due to a zoonotic leap from a “wet market” in Wuhan — rather than a leak from a lab in the same Chinese city — was declared unquestionable truth at the start of the pandemic. For a full year, anyone dissenting from this narrative was deemed so irresponsible that they were banned from large social media platforms, accused of spreading “disinformation.” No debate about COVID’s origins was permitted. It had been settled by The Science™. Every rational person who believed in science, by definition, immediately accepted at the start of the pandemic that COVID made a natural leap from bats or pangolins; that it may have escaped from a lab in Wuhan which just so happens to gather, study and manipulate novel coronaviruses in bats was officially declared a deranged conspiracy theory.
The reason this consensus was so quickly consecrated was that a group of more than two dozen scientists published a letter in the prestigious science journal Lancet in February, 2020 — while very little was known about SARS-CoV-2 — didactically declaring “that this coronavirus originated in wildlife.” The possibility that COVID leaked from the Wuhan lab was dismissed as a “conspiracy theory,” the by-product of “rumours and misinformation” which, they strongly implied, was an unfair and possibly racist attack on “the science and health professionals of China.”
For months, that letter shaped the permissible range of debate regarding the origins of COVID. Or, more accurately, it ensured that there was no debate permitted. The Science™ concluded that COVID was a zoonotic virus that naturally leaped from non-human animal to human, and any questioning of this decree was deemed an attack on The Science™.
That Lancet letter has fallen into disrepute due to the key role in its publication played by one of its signatories, Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance. To say that Daszak had a gigantic but undisclosed conflict of interest in disseminating this narrative about the natural origins of COVID is to understate the case. Daszak had received millions of dollars in grants from the National Institute of Health (NIH) to conduct research into coronaviruses in bats, and EcoHealth awarded part of that grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab which would be the leading suspect, by far, for any COVID lab leak.
Daszak’s enormous self-interest in leading the world to believe that a lab leak was impossible is obvious. It would be a likely career-ending blow to his reputation if the Wuhan laboratory to which EcoHealth had provided funding for coronavirus bat research was responsible for the escape of a virus that has killed millions of people around the world and caused enduring suffering among countless others due to lockdowns and economic shutdowns.
In July of this year, The Lancet published a new letter from the same group which signed that seminal letter in February of last year. The July 2021 letter included two fundamentally new additions. First, the language about COVID’s origins was radically softened from the smug certainty of the February letter that closed debate to humble uncertainty given the lack of proof. While continuing to affirm a belief that COVID was naturally occurring (“our working view” is “that SARS-CoV-2 most likely originated in nature and not in a laboratory”), they moved far away from the definitive posture of that original letter, acknowledging that “opinions are neither data nor conclusions” and urging further investigation on what they called “the critical question we must address now”: namely, “how did SARS-CoV-2 reach the human population?” In other words, after telling the world in February that any questioning of the zoonotic origin was a malicious “conspiracy theory,” they now acknowledge it is “the critical question we must now address.”
The other major change was that this July Lancet letter included what the February letter shamefully omitted: namely, the key fact that Daszak’s “remuneration is paid solely in the form of a salary from EcoHealth Alliance,” and that EcoHealth had received funding from NIH to study coronaviruses in bats, and used some of that funding to support research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This disclosed conflict of interest about Daszak was included in the new July, 2021 letter as well as a separate “addendum” called “competing interests and the origins of SARS-CoV-2.” No explanation was provided about why these “competing interests” on the part of Daszak were not disclosed in that crucial, debate-closing February letter in the The Lancet.
The U.S. Government began aggressively distancing itself from EcoHealth this year. In an October 20, 2021 letter to Congress, the NIH argued that while the coronavirus strains studied by the Wuhan lab through EcoHealth’s grant “are not and could not have become SARS-CoV-2,” it argued that EcoHealth violated the terms of the grant by failing to notify NIH of “unusual results” from its research that could make the viruses it was studying more dangerous. They also accused EcoHealth of failing to promptly report the ongoing results of their experiments.
All of this led to an unraveling of the Official Consensus. In May of this year — fifteen months after The Lancet pronounced the debate closed — Facebook reversed its policy of banning anyone who suggested that the virus may have come from the Wuhan lab. The reversal came, said the Silicon Valley giant, “in light of ongoing investigations into the origin”. This about-face came after The Wall Street Journal reported days earlier that U.S. intelligence sources claim that “three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care.”
Weeks later, President Biden “ordered intelligence officials to ‘redouble’ efforts to investigate the origins of Covid-19, including the theory that it came from a laboratory in China.” The president’s statement noted that “the US intelligence community was split on whether it came from a lab accident or emerged from human contact with an infected animal.” Suddenly, mainstream outlets such as The New York Times began publishing claims that, just months earlier, were officially declared “disinformation” and resulted in removal from social media platforms: “some scientists have argued that it’s possible SARS-CoV-2 was the result of genetic engineering experiments or simply escaped from a lab in an accident,” said the Paper of Record in October. The Official Consensus had undergone a 180-degree turn in the course of just over a year. “Lab leak” went from insane conspiracy theory that must be censored to serious possibility that must be investigated.
As a result of all this, Daszak’s reputation and credibility are crippled, and rightfully so. The once-revered scientist was profiled two weeks ago in Science under the headline “PROPHET IN PURGATORY.” It noted that while his “journey from oracle to pariah has appalled many colleagues,” many scientists — often loath to openly attack each other’s ethics — insist that his wounds are both justified and self-inflicted. Even those who believe the vilification of Daszak has been excessive nonetheless acknowledge that EcoHealth was far from honest about questions central to understanding this worldwide pandemic:
But some scientists, even those dismayed by the attacks, say Daszak is in part a victim of his own making. They argue he failed to reveal important information that later surfaced through embarrassing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and leaks, and some accuse him of making false statements. “Daszak has been far from forthcoming about EcoHealth’s research, much of which is highly relevant to the pandemic origin discussion,” says Filippa Lentzos, a social scientist at King’s College London who specializes in biosecurity. “It is the pattern of continuing obfuscation and deceit that I find alarming.”
Edward Holmes, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Sydney who’s solidly in the natural origins camp—he calls the debate a “tempest in an espresso cup”—says Daszak has been “unfairly vilified.” But EcoHealth “is guilty of shockingly poor communication and a naïvete that it would not come under scrutiny,” Holmes says.
That Science profile, similar to the one from The New York Times acknowledging that the “lab leak” is a real possibility, noted that documents unearthed by FOIA litigation from The Intercept call into serious doubt the months of denials by Daszak and EcoHealth, as well as from Dr. Fauci, that funding provided by NIH to the Wuhan lab through EcoHealth was used for “gain of function” research — meaning research designed to manipulate pathogens to make them more contagious and/or dangerous to humans:
In September, a FOIA request to NIH from The Intercept—which required a lawsuit to obtain documents—also yielded details about controversial experiments done at WIV by [WIV virologist Shi Zhengli] during her collaboration with EcoHealth. Her lab has more than 2000 samples of bodily fluids from bats that have tested positive for coronaviruses. To assess the risk of those viruses to humans, Shi’s team took sequences coding for their viral surface protein and stitched them into a bat coronavirus called WIV1, one of only three she has succeeded in growing in lab cultures. Daszak and Shi described these chimeric viruses in a 2017 paper. None of them has a close relationship to SARS-CoV-2. But some lab-leak proponents believe Shi, possibly with Daszak’s knowledge, hid other chimeric virus experiments that led to SARS-CoV-2.
The same batch of documents also showed that in “humanized” mice, some of the chimeric viruses grew better and were more lethal than WIV1. An NIH official, in response to an inquiry from a member of Congress, claimed EcoHealth had “failed to report” the worrisome results immediately, as the grant required. Daszak sent NIH a detailed letter strongly rebutting that accusation.
The documents also included a grant report that described an additional experiment, in which Shi added bat coronavirus surface proteins to the coronavirus that causes Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), a highly lethal human pathogen. Ferocious debates erupted about whether this work and the WIV1 studies constituted gain of function (GOF), the type of experiment that can make disease agents more transmissible or pathogenic and that requires extra layers of review. Richard Ebright, a biochemist at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, who has long lobbied against GOF research, tweeted that both “unequivocally” met the definition of [gain-of-function].
Despite the collapse of Daszak’s reputation and credibility — due both to his undisclosed conflicts of interest and repeated deceit and even lying — The New York Times continues to cite him as one of its primary sources on the question of COVID’s origins…
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Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/05/2021 – 16:30 - China Poised To Establish 1st Ever Naval Base In Atlantic, Alarming US Officials
China Poised To Establish 1st Ever Naval Base In Atlantic, Alarming US Officials
US intelligence believes that China is set to establish its first ever permanent naval installation on the Atlantic Ocean. On Sunday The Wall Street Journal revealed key findings of a series of classified intelligence reports that point to China’s military prepping a presence at a deep water port in Equatorial Guinea, on Africa’s east coast.
American officials who spoke to the WSJ indicated that the reports “raise the prospect that Chinese warships would be able to rearm and refit opposite the East Coast of the U.S.—a threat that is setting off alarm bells at the White House and Pentagon.”
China’s existing naval base in Djibouti. Xinhua Photo Last April, the commander of US Africa Command, Gen. Stephen Townsend, first raised the possibility of this “most significant threat” of a PLA military Atlantic presence during Senate testimony – describing that Beijing is eyeing “a militarily useful naval facility on the Atlantic coast of Africa.”
“By militarily useful I mean something more than a place that they can make port calls and get gas and groceries,” he said at the time. “I’m talking about a port where they can rearm with munitions and repair naval vessels.”
But for all the “alarm” in Washington and the defense establishment, it bears pointing out that Equatorial Guinea is 7,000 miles away from the United States mainland. Additionally the US maintains at least 750 bases across some 80 countries worldwide, including 29 or more known bases stretching from one side of Africa to the other.
China’s first overseas military base was set up in Djibouti in 2017, on the Horn of Africa, and is less than 10 miles from Camp Lemonnier, known as the largest US base in Africa. US officials have long been concerned that along with a Chinese military footprint, Beijing hopes to coerce host countries into signing onto major Chinese investment and infrastructural deals, advancing China’s geopolitical interests in the line with Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative.
The China Belt and Road Initiative is changing the economic landscape across Africa. This Earth Intelligence Spotlight by Maxar Technologies reveals #insightsfromspace on #china #africa #financeandeconomy. Please check it out and…https://t.co/Y2t0R73dak https://t.co/g532vZHSRf
— Tony Frazier (@tfraz06) June 21, 2019
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One US-funded think tank analyst pointed out the following pattern that accompanies Chinese military expansion to foreign countries:
“China doesn’t just build a military base like the U.S.,” said Paul Nantulya, research associate at the Pentagon-funded Africa Center for Strategic Studies. “The Chinese model is very, very different. It combines civilian as well as security elements.”
Chinese state-owned companies have built 100 commercial ports around Africa in the past two decades, according to Chinese government data.
In Equatorial Guinea especially, the US concern is that Beijing can more easily make deeper and lucrative economic inroads as the family-run government of longtime strongman President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo (having ruled the tiny country with an iron fist since 1979) is widely perceived as corrupt.
Already China has multiple major construction companies there, and it should be remembered that the West African oil-producing country has been a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) since 2017.
China also trains and arms the country’s national police force. Equatorial Guinea has also in recent years singed Belt & Road memorandums pledging adherence to the initiative.
The WSJ report features satellite imagery and statements of US officials strongly suggesting the Chinese have an eye on Bata in particular, the country’s largest mainland city, on the coast. The report describes that this location “already has a Chinese-built deep-water commercial port on the Gulf of Guinea, and excellent highways link the city to Gabon and the interior of Central Africa.”
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/05/2021 – 16:00 - US Coal Is Making A Transitory Comeback
US Coal Is Making A Transitory Comeback
Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,
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U.S. coal miners, who have already benefited from rising demand from utilities this year, are in for at least another year of strong sales and cash flows
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Much higher natural gas prices are making more power generators switch to coal
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Annual U.S. coal-fired electricity generation is set to rise this year for the first time since 2014
While the U.S. Administration is pushing its green energy agenda and wants to decarbonize the power grid by 2035, coal is making a comeback this year as high natural gas prices incentivize more coal use in electricity generation.
This could be coal’s last hurrah, as the fossil fuel is still set for a continuous decline over the medium and long term, analysts say, amid the global push toward clean energy and the ESG trend that restricts investment and access to finance in the coal industry.
Still, U.S. coal miners, who have already benefited from rising demand from utilities this year, are in for at least another year of strong sales and cash flows as the much higher natural gas prices this year compared to 2020 are making more power generators switch to coal.
Annual U.S. coal-fired electricity generation is set to rise this year for the first time since 2014, and the share of coal in America’s power generation mix is set to rise to 23 percent in 2021 from 20 percent in 2020 as electricity demand rebounds and the delivered natural gas price for electricity generators more than doubles, according to EIA estimates.
Coal Demand Is Rising Amid High Natural Gas Prices
Rising demand for coal and muted supply response have depleted U.S. coal stocks to their lowest levels since the early 1970s. As utilities scrambled to secure supply ahead of the winter, coal prices in the United States were estimated to have hit last month the highest level since 2009.
The rise of coal this year also highlights a key challenge ahead for the green energy transition: a shift to cleaner energy will not happen overnight and keeping the lights on in America still needs a lot of coal and natural gas, regardless of the U.S. Administration’s long-term policies.
The U.S. still gets over 60 percent of its electricity generation from fossil fuels, 40 percent of which was natural gas and 20 percent coal in 2020.
This year, the EIA estimates the share of gas dropping to an average of 36 percent from 39 percent last year, but coal’s share rising by 3 percentage points to 23 percent. The share of renewables, including hydropower, is expected to remain basically flat on the year at 20 percent, EIA’s latest Short-Term Energy Outlook showed.
U.S. Coal Stocks Lowest Since the 1970s
“U.S. coal production growth has not kept pace with rising domestic demand for steam coal in the electric power sector and export growth, leading to a draw down in coal inventories held by the electric power sector,” the EIA said in the STEO in November.
Coal inventories at utilities stood in August 2021 at lowest levels since the early 1970s, according to EIA data in its latest Monthly Energy Review.
Stocks are now some two-thirds of the five-year average for this time of year, The Wall Street Journal points out.
In view of the lowest coal stocks in decades, PJM Interconnection, which coordinates wholesale electricity in all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia and serves a fifth of U.S. residents, said in October that until April 1, 2022, it could ask coal-fired plants to conserve stocks and curb operations if their respective remaining resources fall below 10 days worth of supply.
“This would only be implemented to address concerns with local or regional reliability,” PJM said.
“Christmas Has Come Early” For U.S. Coal Miners
Rising coal demand and the highest coal prices in more than a decade are boosting the profitability of the large U.S. coal miners, which sell their production in advance and are now looking to lock in higher prices for the next two years in negotiations with utilities.
“I’m reminded of that line, which goes who says Christmas, can’t come a little early. We are now three quarters through having our best year financial and operational performance since we went public,” Randy Atkins, CEO at Ramaco Resources, said on the Q3 earnings call last month.
The U.S. coal industry is almost sold out for 2022 as high natural gas prices have incentivized more coal-fired generation this year.
The outlook of many U.S. coal miners for 2022 and 2023 is positive, although long-term uncertainty over the role of coal is only rising.
“The reality is, there’s just been very limited investment in new coal production really everywhere domestically and as well as internationally. And as a result, there is a bit of a scramble right now as generators look to find additional volumes with gas prices, as higher as they are at around $5,” Deck Slone, Senior Vice President, Strategy at Arch, said at the end of October.
“Business conditions in the Powder River Basin are temporarily strong on a variety of factors including high natural gas pricing in regions that consume PRB coal that encourages gas-to-coal switching by power generators and various logistical issues present across the region that limits the coal industry’s ability to produce and deliver coal,” Moody’s said in early November when it revised the rating outlook on Arch Resources to positive from stable.
Coal Still On Track For Long-Term Decline
Despite the generally bullish outlook for U.S. coal through 2023, the industry is still set for a decline in the long term due to the push for more renewable energy generation and the ESG investment community shunning fossil fuels, especially coal.
“Moody’s believes that investor concerns about the coal industry’s ESG profile are still intensifying and, notwithstanding current strength in coal pricing and better debt trading levels, coal producers will be increasingly challenged by access to capital issues in the early-to-mid 2020s,” the rating agency noted.
“Looking forward, the Biden administration’s domestic energy policy agenda, combined with ESG obsessions in Europe and the United States, will most likely continue to restrict growth in fossil fuel production. Absent any significant global demand destruction, we expect fossil fuel prices will remain at elevated levels through next year and into 2023,” Alliance Resource’s CEO Joe Craft said on the Q3 call.
This year’s rise in coal power generation in the U.S. is unlikely to continue, with generation from coal plants next year expected down by 5 percent from 2021 due to continuing retirements of coal capacity and slightly lower natural gas prices, the EIA says.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/05/2021 – 15:30 -
- COVID Outbreak On US Cruise Ship Despite Fully Vaxxed Passengers
COVID Outbreak On US Cruise Ship Despite Fully Vaxxed Passengers
Despite every cruise line requiring passengers and crew to be fully vaccinated before boarding, a cruise ship returning from a sail across the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea with thousands of passengers onboard detected an outbreak of COVID-19, according to AP News.
Norwegian Breakaway, owned by Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd, departed from the Port of New Orleans on Nov. 28 and sailed to Belize, Honduras, and Mexico, with more than 3,000 people on board.
Ahead of returning to its homeport in New Orleans, the cruise line detected ten COVID infections among its guest and crew. Those who were infected were fully vaccinated and were forced into quarantine.
Governor John Bel Edwards, the City of New Orleans, and the Port of New Orleans were notified about the incident and contacted the CDC. The infected passengers and crew will either travel directly to their homes or self-isolate at an undisclosed location.
Video shows the cruise ship with at least 10 confirmed COVID cases— the Norwegian Breakaway — in New Orleans Sunday morning.
Read more here: https://t.co/ZDXusG6cdA pic.twitter.com/UPL19wXSi6
— WWL-TV (@WWLTV) December 5, 2021
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According to the vessel-tracking website CruiseMapper, Norwegian Breakaway docked in New Orleans early Sunday morning. All passengers and crew will be subjected to a COVID test before exiting the ship.
Despite a 100% vaccination rate on the vessel, there was still an outbreak of COVID, suggesting that vaccine effectiveness is severely waning.
A recent study of the three primary COVID vaccines showed a ‘dramatic‘ drop in efficacy over six months. So as cruise ship operators begin hitting the high seas with only fully vaxxed passengers and crews that have waning defenses against the virus, one would suspect additional outbreaks on ships as new infections surge across the US.
Even in Europe, where vaccine passport schemes and high vaccination rates are highly enforced, countries are experiencing a surge in infections.
So what are cruise ship operators going to do now? Only allow passengers and crew who are not just fully vaccinated but have their booster shots?
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/05/2021 – 15:15
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