Sep 06

Today’s News 6th September 2021

  • State Department, Then Taliban, Reportedly Blocking Private Rescue Planes From Departing Afghanistan
    State Department, Then Taliban, Reportedly Blocking Private Rescue Planes From Departing Afghanistan

    Several reports began to trickle in over the weekend about planes stuck in Afghanistan which are trying to evacuate stranded Americans and Afghan allies.

    In this satellite image taken on Friday, planes can be seen near the main terminal of the airport in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan.Credit…Maxar Technologies/Reuters

    While a ‘senior Congressional source’ told CBS News on Sunday that ‘the Taliban won’t let them leave,’ several new sources have come forward to blame the Biden State Department for preventing the flights from leaving earlier in the weekend.

    According to Fox News and former Trump admin official Emily Miller – both of whom have been in direct contact with Americans involved in a private rescue effort – including leader Rick Clay – the Biden administration put up red-tape roadblocks.

    “The State Department is the sole entity preventing their charter flights from leaving Afghanistan,” one of the rescuers told Fox.

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    “This is zero place to be negotiating with American lives. Those are our people standing on the tarmac and all it takes is a f****ing phone call,” one of the rescuers told Fox News. “If one life is lost as a result of this, the blood is on the White House’s hands. The blood is on their hands,” that individual said, adding: “It is not the Taliban that is holding this up – as much as it sickens me to say that – it is the United States government.” 

    That individual suggested that the State Department’s obstruction is motivated in part by embarrassment that private individuals are rescuing Americans that the U.S. government left behind. 

    Military command over Al Udeid Air Base in Doha, Qatar, have informed those seeking clearance to land that they must first go through the State Department to gain approval, an email reviewed by Fox News shows. 

    Clay has a manifest of 4,500 names of U.S. citizens, green card holders, SIVs and refugees trying to get state-side. So far, they’ve given the State Department 800 names for a first round of flights. Fox News has reviewed that manifest, which confirms Clay’s account.

    …

    Clay told Fox News that his organization is “having problems getting permission” from the Biden State Department “to land on the return flight” from Afghanistan in a neighboring country. –Fox News

    According to Clay, the State Department “is not allowing any private charters carrying refugees [to] land anywhere” in nearby countries, and has provided several “excuses” as to why – including a supposed lack of air traffic controllers and ‘radar issues.’

    “We still have Americans we can get out,” he added.

    The State Department, meanwhile, showed CBS News an email which allegedly says the flights out of Afghanistan can leave “if and when the Taliban agrees to takeoff.”

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    Former Trump admin official Emily Miller, who first reported the stranded rescue effort on Thursday, has been keeping a running blog of her direct communications with several individuals involved who are on the ground in Afghanistan, as well as provided a page with information for people who want to leave Afghanistan.

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    On Saturday, Miller wrote: “Sam in Project Exodus still says the planes aren’t leaving because the airline hasn’t gotten documents from the State Department for destination airfield. “I’ve been told things are stalled,” he texted me tonight.”

    There is no way they are not letting these people leave. They have no reason to detain them (other than money and negotiating leverage).

    With there already being internal fighting between Taliban leadership, Afghanistan bankrupt, inflation 80%, people starving; etc.; TB know they need legitimization and foreign aid. They are savages but they are not stupid.

    Here are the latest updates via Emily Posts News:

    Six planes Sunday — Status update from Sam, who is the only source that has been accurate throughout this saga!

    KAMAir is still grounded. I’m first on the list to call as soon as things get moving – so I’m told. I haven’t seen the news, so I’m not sure what’s being put out or if it’s helping/hurting.

    Nobody is actually sitting on the planes right now.

    I don’t have facts as to why the Taliban are delaying, but I’ve been told they want to verify manifests and don’t have the horse power to do so.

    My guess is they are coordinating with Turkey to help them run tower operations to activate the runway.

    Again, I’m drawing that conclusion by stitching several different sources together. As soon a people start getting up here, I’ll dig some more

    Six airplanes in the news— Today, the media elite finally decided to publicly report about the six charter planes and Americans that can’t get out of Afghanistan. I reported it first on Sept. 2 at 2:30 pm ET.

    The corporate media knew about the planes — at least since I reported it. They asked the White House and State Department about it. They were told information to keep “confidential”, and they obeyed the government.

    I spoke to the State Department Spokesman directly. His “confidential” information was not being withheld for safety of the people in the airport. It just shows that the government was incapable of getting Americans out of the country. The media elite withheld that from the public for that reason only.

    Money- Toward the end of last week, people in Afghanistan who need to escape started running out of cash. Today, Mark went to Western Union to send $350 to one of the Afghan Special Forces who he has worked with for years. Western Union told him that, as of today, it is no longer authorized to send any wire transfers to Afghanistan.

    It costs just $200 for airline ticket to fly his whole family to fly within the country to a safer city. But the Afghanistan military stopped paying its forces two months ago so they don’t have cash.

    Also, the banks in Afghanistan put a limit on ATM withdrawals to just $200 a week.

    Big picture— I went on a twitterant today because I’m so frustrated with the incompetence and lies from the U. S. Government. Click below to read the thread.

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    Follow along at Emily Posts News.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/06/2021 – 00:37

  • Soros' Dream: To Turn China Into A Neoliberal Grabitization Opportunity
    Soros’ Dream: To Turn China Into A Neoliberal Grabitization Opportunity

    Authored by Michael Hudson via Counterpunch.org,

    In a Financial Times op-ed, “Investors in Xi’s China face a rude awakening” (August 30, 2021), George Soros writes that Xi’s “crackdown on private enterprise shows he does not understand the market economy. … Xi Jinping, China’s leader, has collided with economic reality. His crackdown on private enterprise has been a significant drag on the economy.”

    Translated out of Orwellian Doublethink, the “crackdown on private enterprise” means cutting back on what the classical economists called rent-seeking and unearned income. As for its supposed “drag on the economy,” Mr. Soros means the economy’s polarization concentrating wealth and income in the hands of the richest One Percent.

    Soros lays out his plan for how U.S. retaliation may punish China by withholding U.S. funding of its companies (as if China cannot create its own credit) until China capitulates and imposes the kind of deregulation and de-taxation that Russia did after 1991. He warns that China will suffer depression by saving its economy along socialist lines and resisting U.S.-style privatization and its associated debt deflation.

    Mr. Soros does recognize that China’s “most vulnerable sector is real estate, particularly housing. China has enjoyed an extended property boom over the past two decades, but that is now coming to an end. Evergrande, the largest real estate company, is over-indebted and in danger of default. This could cause a crash.” By that, he means a reduction of housing prices. That’s just what is needed in order to deter land becoming a speculative vehicle. I and others have urged a policy of land taxation in order to collect the land’s rising site value, so that it will not be pledged to banks for mortgage credit to further inflate china’s housing prices.

    Warning about the economic consequences of China’s falling birth rate, Soros writes: “One of the reasons why middle-class families are unwilling to have more than one child is that they want to make sure that their children will have a bright future.” This is of course true of every advanced nation today. It is most extreme in the neoliberalized countries, e.g., the Baltics and Ukraine – Soros’s poster countries.

    Soros gives his game away by stating that “Xi does not understand how markets operate.” What he means is that President Xi rejects rapacious rent-seeking, exploitative free-for-all, and shapes markets to serve overall prosperity for China’s 99 Percent. “As a consequence, the sell-off was allowed to go too far,” Soros continues. What he means is, too far to maintain the dominance of the One Percent. China is seeking to reverse economic polarization, not intensify it.

    Soros claims that China’s socialist policies are hurting its objectives in the world. But what he really is complaining about is that it is hurting America’s neoliberal objectives for how it had hoped to make money for itself off China. This leads Soros to remind Western pension fund managers to “allocate their assets in ways that are closely aligned with the benchmarks against which their performance is measured.” But the tragedy of financializing pensions is that fund managers are rated on making money financially – in ways that hurt the industrial economy by promoting financial engineering instead of industrial engineering.

    “Almost all of them claim that they factor environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) standards into their investment decisions,” Soros writes. At least, that’s what their public relations advisors advertise. Exxon claims to be cleaning up the environment by expanding offshore oil drilling in Guyana, etc. As for “social standards,” the neoliberal mantra is trickle-down economics: by making our stock prices rise, by stock buybacks and higher dividend payouts, we are helping wage-earners earn a pension, even though we are offshoring and de-industrializing the economy, de-unionizing it and “freeing” the economy from consumer and workplace protection laws.

    Soros has a radical solution, which he suggests “should obviously apply to the performance benchmarks selected by pensions and other retirement portfolios: … The US Congress should pass a bipartisan bill explicitly requiring that asset managers invest only in companies where actual governance structures are both transparent and aligned with stakeholders.”

    Wow. Such a bill would block Americans from investing in many American companies whose behavior is not at all aligned with stakeholders. What proportion: 50%? 75? More?

    “If Congress were to enact these measures,” Soros concludes, “it would give the Securities and Exchange Commission the tools it needs to protect American investors, including those who are unaware of owning Chinese stocks and Chinese shell companies. That would also serve the interests of the US and the wider international community of democracies.” So Mr. Soros wants to block the United States from investing in China. He seems not to see that this is President Xi’s objective also: China doesn’t need U.S. dollars, and is in fact de-dollarizing.

    George Soros is obviously upset that President Xi is not Boris Yeltsin, and that China is not following the kleptocracy dependency that warped Russia’s economy. Soros thought the ending of the Cold War would simply let him buy up the most lucrative rent-yielding assets, as he has aimed to do in the Baltics and Ukraine. China said “No,” so it is not deemed to be a “market economy,” Soros-style. It has not made its social organization marketable, and has avoided the financial dependency that makes “markets” a vehicle for U.S. control via sanctions and foreign buyouts.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 09/05/2021 – 23:30

  • Robocop Is Here: Singapore Deploys Robots To Detect "Undesirable Behavior" Including Groups Of "More Than Five People"
    Robocop Is Here: Singapore Deploys Robots To Detect “Undesirable Behavior” Including Groups Of “More Than Five People”

    Slowly but surely, the world is transforming into a 1984-Robocop-Terminator-Minority Report–Judge Dredd fusion dystopia.

    And while we wait for Elon Musk’s dancing humanoid robot (wonder how much the deposit on that particular pipe dream will be), Singapore is wasting no time, and according to Mothership the small Asian nation is deploying ground robots on trial to patrol and survey a public area with high foot traffic, in a joint project involving five of the country’s public agencies: HTX (Home Team Science and Technology Agency), National Environment Agency, Land Transport Authority, Singapore Food Agency, and Housing & Development Board.

    According to a media release, an HTX robot will be deployed for a three-week period from Sep. 5 to patrol Toa Payoh Central, a planning area and matured residential town located in the northern part of the Central Region of Singapore

    The robot(s), called Xavier, will weave its way autonomously through the crowds to detect “undesirable social behaviors” including:

    • Congregation of more than five people (in line with prevailing Safe Management Measures)

    • Smoking in prohibited areas

    • Illegal hawking

    • Improperly parked bicycles within HDB Hub

    • Motorized active mobility devices and motorcycles on footpaths

    Upon detecting any of these terrifying activities, the robot will trigger real-time alerts to the command and control center, and display the appropriate message (depending on the scenario) to educate the public and “deter” such behaviors. The deployment of the ground robot is intended to support the work of public officers and reduce the manpower required for foot patrols.

    In other words, Robocop has officially arrived, and while it will be unarmed for now, we suspect it is only a matter of time before these robotic Judge Dredds will also be capable of using lethal force against such ‘terrorist’ activity as smoking or throwing away gum in a public space.

    According to Mothership, here is the robotic patrol route, configured in advance by public officers:

    And while the robotic nightmares made by Boston Dynamics are still being perfected, Singapore will instead use “Xavier.”

    According to the report, “Xavier is able to navigate autonomously as it is fitted with different types of sensors, including safety feature. It can avoid stationary and dynamic obstacles, such as pedestrians and vehicles.”

    Xavier is also equipped with cameras that can provide 360-degree video feed to the command and control center. Its cameras can also capture images and videos in dim light or the dark.

    Like any good drone, data captured from Xavier’s cameras are streamed to a video analytics system, with artificial intelligence capability developed by HTX’s in-house computer vision engineers. With an interactive dashboard, public officers can receive real-time information in a command and control center, and be able to monitor and control multiple robots simultaneously.

    The interactive dashboard allows officers to remotely respond to incidents on the ground via a two-way intercom or using pre-recorded audio messages.

    And like any good, obedient drone, the only thing missing is deadly force. We are confident that is coming next.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 09/05/2021 – 23:00

  • Escobar: Why The Taliban Still Can't Form A Government
    Escobar: Why The Taliban Still Can’t Form A Government

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

    Internal Taliban divisions come to the fore as squabbling hinders the formation of Afghanistan’s new Islamic Emirate…

    It looked like everything was set for the Taliban to announce the new government of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan after this Friday’s afternoon prayers. But then internal dissent prevailed.

    That was compounded by the adverse optics of a ragtag “resistance” in the Panjshir Valley that is still not subdued. The “resistance” is de facto led by a CIA asset, former vice president Amrullah Saleh.

    The Taliban maintain they have captured several districts and at least four checkpoints at the Panjshir, controlling 20% of its territory. Still, there’s no endgame in sight.

    Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, a Kandahar religious scholar, is expected to be the new power of the Islamic Emirate when it’s finally formed.

    Mullah Baradar will likely preside just below him as a presidential figure along with a 12-member governing council known as a “shura.”

    If that’s the case, there would be certain similarities between the institutional role of Akhundzada and Ayatollah Khamenei in Iran, even though the theocratic frameworks, Sunni and Shiite, are completely different.

    Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada posing for a photograph at an undisclosed location in 2016. Photo: Afghan Taliban via AFP

    Mullah Baradar, co-founder of the Taliban with Mullah Omar in 1994 and imprisoned in Guantanamo then Pakistan, has served as the Taliban’s top diplomat as the head of its political office in Doha.

    He has also been a key interlocutor in the protracted negotiations with the now-extinct Kabul government and the expanded troika of Russia, China, the US and Pakistan.

    To call the negotiations to form a new Afghan government fractious would be a spectacular understatement.

    They have been managed, in practice, by former president Hamid Karzai and ex-head of the Reconciliation Council Abdullah Abdullah: a Pashtun and a Tajik who have vast international experience.

    Both Karzai and Abdullah are shoo-ins to be part of the 12-member shura.

    As the negotiations seemed to advance, a frontal clash developed between the Taliban political office in Doha and the Haqqani network regarding the distribution of key government posts.

    Add to it the role of Mullah Yakoob, son of Mullah Omar, and the head of the powerful Taliban military commission overseeing a massive network of field commanders, among which he’s extremely well-respected.

    Recently Yakoob had let it leak that those “living in luxury in Doha” cannot dictate terms to those involved in fighting on the ground. As if this was not contentious enough, Yakoob also has serious problems with the Haqqanis – who are now in charge of a key post: security of Kabul via the so far ultra-diplomatic Khalil Haqqani.

    Mullah Yakoob in a file photo. Photo: AFP

    Apart from the fact that the Taliban amount to a complex collection of tribal and regional warlords, the dissent illustrates the abyss between what could roughly be explained as more Afghan nationalist-centered and more Pakistani-centered factions.

    In the latter case, the key protagonists are the Haqqanis, who operate very close to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

    It’s a Sisyphean task, to say the least, to create political legitimacy even in an Afghanistan that is bound to be ruled by Afghans who rid the nation of a foreign occupation.

    Since 2002, both with Karzai and then Ashraf Ghani, the regime in power for most Afghans was regarded as an imposition by foreign occupiers validated by dodgy elections.

    In Afghanistan, everything is about tribe, kin and clan. The Pashtuns are a vast tribe with myriad subtribes that all adhere to the common pashtunwali, a code of conduct that blends self-respect, independence, justice, hospitality, love, forgiveness, revenge and tolerance.

    They will be in power again, as during Taliban 1.0 from 1996 to 2001. The Dari-speaking Tajiks, on the other hand, are non-tribal and form the majority of urban residents of Kabul, Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif.

    Assuming it will peacefully solve its internal Pashtun squabbles, a Taliban-led government will necessarily need to conquer Tajik hearts and minds among the nation’s traders, bureaucrats and educated clergy.

    Dari, derived from Persian, has long been the language of government administration, high culture and foreign relations in Afghanistan. Now it will all be switched to Pashto again. This is the schism the new government will have to bridge.

    Taliban fighters stand guard in a vehicle along the roadside in Kabul on August 16, 2021, after a stunningly swift end to Afghanistan’s 20-year war. Photo: AFP

    There are already surprises on the horizon. The extremely well-connected Russian ambassador in Kabul, Dmitry Zhirnov, revealed that he is discussing the Panjshir stalemate with the Taliban.

    Zhirnov noted that the Taliban considered some of the demands of the Panjshiris as “excessive” – as in they wanted too many seats in the government and autonomy for some non-Pashtun provinces, Panjshir included.

    It’s not far-fetched to consider the widely-trusted Zhirnov could become a mediator not only between Pashtuns and Panjshiris but even between opposed Pashtun factions.

    The delightful historical irony will not be lost on those who remember the 1980s jihad of the unified mujahideen against the USSR.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 09/05/2021 – 22:30

  • "This Is Big": 14-Mile Long Oil Spill In Gulf Of Mexico Investigated By Coast Guard
    “This Is Big”: 14-Mile Long Oil Spill In Gulf Of Mexico Investigated By Coast Guard

    The US Coast Guard is responding to a 14-mile long oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico discovered in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, officials said Saturday according to Bloomberg. The spill, which consists of a 4-mile black sheen and a 10-mile rainbow sheen, is located in federal waters off Port Fourchon, Louisiana, said Sam Jones, head of the Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinator’s Office.

    “That’s big,” Jones said in an interview on Saturday. “It’s the biggest one out there.”

    The Coast Guard said in a statement that crude is believed to be coming from a pipeline owned by Houston-based oil and gas exploration company Talos Energy, adding the agency was in the preliminary stages of investigation. In response, Talos said that while it’s leading a response to the spill, it denied being responsible, saying the spill was coming from an unknown source in an area where it ceased production in 2017.

    Photos captured by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration aircraft shows a black slick floating in the Gulf of Mexico on Aug. 31.
    Source: NOAA/AP Photo

    “Extensive field observations indicate that Talos assets are not the source,” the company said in a statement. “Talos will continue to work closely with the U.S. Coast Guard and other state and federal agencies to identify the source of the release and coordinate a successful response.”

    Talos said it deployed two 95-foot response vessels to conduct oil recovery operations at the site as well as an additional vessel and divers to help locate the source.

    The “big” spill wasn’t the only one: Jones said his agency had received 265 reports of spills and other incidents related to Ida, including 32 that appeared to be serious. Among them were two underwater pipelines, apparently transporting gas, and a gas well that blew in Three Bayou Bay in Jefferson Parish. The agency is investigating who owns those assets, Jones said.

    Meanwhile, multiple releases of crude have been reported in the Gulf of Mexico, including one near an offshore rig in the gulf, according to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.  The agency has reported more than 100 incidents of spills and other toxic releases as Ida’s environmental impact in a petrochemical corridor packed with hazardous-chemical plants and refineries begins to become apparent.

    “The type of accident we are seeing is preventable and shouldn’t be allowed to happen,” said Naomi Yoder, a staff scientist at Healthy Gulf, a New Orleans-based environmental group that has reported several spills to authorities in the wake of Ida. “Is it something we are going to be able to repair or is it something that will be a very long-term process?”

    Hurricane Ivan in 2004 triggered an underwater oil spill that is still leaking, Yoder said.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 09/05/2021 – 22:00

  • Doomsday For Evergrande Arrives As Creditors Demand "Immediate" Payment, Bonds No Longer Eligible Collateral
    Doomsday For Evergrande Arrives As Creditors Demand “Immediate” Payment, Bonds No Longer Eligible Collateral

    Just days after Evergrande’s bonds hit new all time lows after “China’s Lehman” warned that the company with over $300 billion in debt and which many view as systematically important for China, the selloff accelerated further following news of a mini bank run as i) several key creditors demand immediate repayment and ii) as Evergrande bonds are no longer accepted as collateral.

    As Bloomberg first reported last Friday, at least two of Evergrande’s largest non-bank creditors have demanded immediate repayment of some loans, adding a liquidity run to the growing insolvency strains at the world’s most indebted developer. The two creditors are trust companies which pool money from wealthy individual investors and have been a major source of “shadow” financing for Evergrande and other Chinese developers.

    The trusts sent repayment notices to Evergrande over the past two months after becoming concerned about the property giant’s financial health. Trust loans often include terms that allow creditors to demand early repayment if certain conditions are met, such as sales targets, ratings downgrades or lawsuits. One of the trusts has so far received only a small portion of the money owed by Evergrande, Bloomberg reported. The size of the loans involved couldn’t immediately be learned.

    The start of a bank run at Evergrande is the latest sign that China’s most indebted property developer will inevitably default on $305 billion of liabilities to banks, shadow lenders, suppliers and homebuyers unless Beijing bails it out similar to the last-minute rescue of China’s bad debt giant Huaron, which recently got a thumbs up from Beijing. However, in the case of Evergrande, so far authorities have yet to blink – despite the potentially cataclysmic consequences of a default – and as a result the developer’s bonds have plummeted to levels that suggest investors are bracing for a default.While Chinese regulators have urged the company to resolve its debt woes, the government has so far stayed silent on whether it will provide financial support.

    As Bloomberg adds, “shadow” trusts have been a significant source of funding for Evergrande, accounting for about 40% of borrowings at the end of 2019, the last year the company disclosed the figures. While trust lending to developers has slowed in the past year, Evergrande has about 46 billion yuan ($7.1 billion) of such loans maturing in 2021, according to data complied by Yongyi Trust Research. About 11 billion yuan is due in the fourth quarter, and another $7.4 billion is due in 2022. And should the company survive to 2023, that’s when it gets really tough.

    A failure to repay – which now appears inevitable – could prompt at least one trust to call back all its loans, though it’s unclear how Evergrande would respond. Court cases against the company and its affiliates are being centralized in Guangzhou, a city in Evergrande’s home province of Guangdong, making it more difficult for creditors to freeze assets or pursue repayment through other local courts.

    However, the bank run hammering the company’s dollar bonds is just the start.

    Also on Friday, Bloomberg reported that Evergrande’s yuan bonds are no longer accepted as collateral in the country’s key funding market, cutting it off from another critical source of funding – the repo market – and adding to signs of increasing default risk.

    Evergrande’s notes were absent from a list of securities accepted in return for cash in so-called repurchase agreements on Shenzhen’s exchange. They also couldn’t be pledged for cash on Shanghai’s exchange, according to a notice posted by the clearing house late Friday.

    The clearing house’s daily notice, which covers on-exchange transactions only, previously featured six of Evergrande’s onshore bonds for use in Shenzhen’s repo market, and three for transactions in Shanghai. Most pledged repo deals still occur in China’s interbank market, where there’s little transparency.

    The move came after China’s largest credit-rating assessor cut the developer’s onshore unit to AA (the functional equivalent of a A for China’s massively grade-inflated credit rating system) from AAA – as well as nine of its yuan bonds – and put them on a watch list for potential further downgrades. That makes Evergrande bonds issued after April 2017 ineligible as collateral, according to clearing house rules, though the China Securities Depository and Clearing Corp. has the final say.

    The latest set of catastrophic news for the Chinese property developer  – which has been struggling to convince investors, suppliers and creditors it can generate cash to make good on liabilities after payables rose to a record – was the straw that finally broke the camel’s back and on Friday, trading in several of Evergrande’s thinly-traded onshore notes was briefly halted on Friday to steep declines, while some of its dollar debt trades below 30 cents. The shares have lost 74% this year to the lowest since July 2015.

    Needless to say, the countdown to insolvency has begun even as Evergrande has been rushing to liquidate assets and raise funds – with the company’s core property business losing record amounts of money, construction on some projects halted by suppliers and freely available cash at a six-year low, the company warned of a potential default if asset-disposals fail to materialize, and reiterated plans to sell stakes in its listed electric-vehicle and property services units.

    None of that will help, and at this point the collapse of Evergrande is just a matter of time and the only questions are i) whether Beijing will step in, and ii) how bad the avalanche of adverse consequences will get.

     

     

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 09/05/2021 – 21:30

  • When Is The Social Security Asset Fund Running Out?
    When Is The Social Security Asset Fund Running Out?

    A social safety net is synonymous with a failsafe for many, but, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, in the case of the U.S. Social Security system, additional action is needed to ensure it stays that way.

    The annual OASDI trustees report by the Social Security Administration, covering old-age, survivors and disability insurance, shows that under the present circumstances, the asset reserve dedicated to the benefit program could be depleted sooner rather than later. Under the report’s intermediate scenario, asset funds would run out sometime in 2034, while this could happen as soon as 2031 if the administration was to shoulder a high volume of costs in the upcoming years. Under the low-cost scenario, the fund could remain solvent until 2052 or even longer, depending on the calculation. The intermediate date moved forward by one year since last year’s report as the COVID-19 pandemic seriously diminished Social Security’s income in payroll taxes.

    The system’s expenditures have been above its income for some time – with the difference being taken out of the asset fund and the interest it creates – but the gap has been widening over the years. While in the early 1980s, summarized OASHI costs only exceeded incomes by around 15 percent, that gap grew to almost 26 percent in 2021. As Baby Boomers retire and Americans are having fewer children, the balance between those who are working and funding social security and those who are receiving old age, survivor or disability benefits continues to tip. 2021 marked the first year when interest earned on the fund could no longer bridge social security’s spending gap, sending the asset reserve into a downward spiral.

    Infographic: When Is the Social Security Asset Fund Running Out? | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Because Social Security services are funded by the payroll tax on a pay-as-you-go basis, the income-cost gap equals the amount the administration would no longer be able to pay out if the fund would in fact be depleted. In order to stop funds from running low, Congress would have to act to provide additional revenue to Social Security, for example by raising the dedicated payroll tax, to lower its cost by cutting benefits or attempt a combination of both.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 09/05/2021 – 21:00

  • Milley Admits US Withdrawal From Afghanistan Will Lead To Civil War, Terrorism
    Milley Admits US Withdrawal From Afghanistan Will Lead To Civil War, Terrorism

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

    The U.S. military pullout from Afghanistan will likely lead to civil war and the resurgence of terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, said Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley in an interview.

    “My military estimate is​ ​…​ ​that the conditions are likely to develop of a civil war,” Milley ​told Fox News during an interview at Ramstein airbase in Germany.

    “I don’t know if the Taliban is going to [be] able to consolidate power and establish governance.”

    After the Taliban took over the country last month amid the U.S. withdrawal and the resulting chaos, terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda or ISIS could establish a foothold, the general said.

    “I think there’s at least a very good probability of a broader civil war and that will then, in turn, lead to conditions that could, in fact, lead to a reconstitution of al-Qaeda or a growth of ISIS or other myriad of terrorist groups,” Milley told the network.

    In late August, Milley, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and President Joe Biden received flack for not anticipating the Taliban—itself a designated terrorist group by several federal agencies—taking over the country in just 11 days. They later defended the pullout, saying that the rushed and chaotic evacuation of thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Afghans was built into their contingency planning.

    When the Taliban captured areas in Afghanistan, the group also opened prisons while Pentagon officials later confirmed that thousands of ISIS-K terrorists may have been released from those facilities, including one at Bagram airbase. During the final phase of the evacuation in the Kabul airport, ISIS claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing attack that left 13 U.S. service members dead.

    “You could see a resurgence of terrorism coming out of that general region within 12, 24, 36 months. And we’re going to monitor that,”​ Milley added in the interview, published Saturday.​

    As a result, he said, the United States will have to “re-establish some human intelligence networks” and will have to “conduct strike operations if there’s a threat to the United States.”​

    Taliban members stand guard outside the Hamid Karzai International Airport after the U.S. military’s withdrawal, in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 31, 2021. (Khwaja Tawfiq Sediqi/AP Photo)

    The Taliban, meanwhile, has engaged in heavy fighting with a resistance group in the Panjshir valley, located about 100 miles northeast of Kabul. On Saturday night, the terrorist group posted a video online claiming to have entered the valley, according to the Wall Street Journal, which reported that a resistance fighter confirmed the Taliban entered.

    Emergency, an Italy-based nongovernmental organization, told the paper the Taliban made its way to the Panjshir village of Anabah.

    The police headquarters and district center of Rukhah, adjacent to the provincial capital Bazarak, had fallen, and opposition forces had suffered numerous casualties, with large numbers of prisoners and captured vehicles, weapons, and ammunition, Taliban spokesman Bilal Karimi also said on Twitter.

    But resistance fighters, including a spokesman, denied the Taliban’s claims.

    Men prepare for defense against the Taliban in Panjshir, Afghanistan, on Aug. 22, 2021. (Aamaj News Agency via Reuters)

    Fahim Dashti, spokesman for the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRFA), a group of anti-Taliban forces, told Reuters that the Taliban “propaganda machine” was trying to spread distracting messages.

    “The resistance forces are ready to continue their defense against any form of aggression,” he said.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 09/05/2021 – 20:30

  • California Admits Grid At Risk Amid Push To Greenify Economy
    California Admits Grid At Risk Amid Push To Greenify Economy

    In an upcoming bond offering, California listed several risks that could have adverse impacts on its economy. Besides COVID-19, wildfires, increasing debts, and cybersecurity threats, what we found fascinating was the risk to the state’s power system.

    The State of California Investor Relations page recently published the bond offering summary that describes Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo as the joint senior managers on the $2.1 billion general-obligation bond deal on Sept. 14. 

    “The future fiscal impact of stresses to the energy grid caused by climate is difficult to predict, but could be significant,” the state said. “In recent years, California has taken on numerous steps to increase resiliency to be better prepared to meet the state’s electricity demands.”

    The warning comes as the state is greenifying its power grid system by ditching diesel and natural gas generation sources for wind and solar. Simultaneously, lawmakers in the state are incentivizing residents to purchase electric vehicles that require an enormous amount of energy. It’s a straightforward equation to understand. The more EVs on the road, the larger output the grid needs to produce or risk collapse. 

    Earlier this summer, California Independent System Operator told residents to conserve energy voluntarily, including asking residents to charge their EVs at certain off-peak times due to back-to-back heat waves straining the grid. 

    California’s plans to become an environmental and socialist utopia face the harsh reality that climate volatility and green energy sources may not be as reliable as once thought. 

    Texas found out the hard way when its wind-power generating capacity went offline because a massive deep freeze across the state in February contributed to the entire grid meltdown. 

    So far, liberal politicians who are chasing renewable energy as a means of mitigating “climate change” will have to soon wake up to the fact that renewable energy sometimes is unreliable energy. It would be challenging for California to upgrade its grid to accommodate zero-emissions vehicles on its highways by 2035 unless the grid was completely overhauled. 

    The latest example of fragile grids is Hurricane Ida destroying two thousand miles of transmission lines and knocking out power for nearly a million people in Louisiana that may not even fully be restored by the end of next week. 

    The consequence of unreliable grids and politicians increasing EV demand is a recipe for an unreliable grid. 

    Readers may recall that it cost Tesla users $900 per charge during the Texas cold snap in February. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 09/05/2021 – 20:00

  • Victims Of US Drone Strike In Kabul That Wiped Out Children Want Answers
    Victims Of US Drone Strike In Kabul That Wiped Out Children Want Answers

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    Since the US carried out a drone strike in Kabul the prior Sunday (Aug.29) that witnesses say killed 10 civilians, the Pentagon and the White House have defended the bombing, claiming it targeted ISIS-K. But relatives of the victims strongly deny that any of them were affiliated with ISIS and want answers from Washington.

    “They have to give us answers. Is our blood so worthless, we don’t even get an explanation?” Ramal Ahmadi, a brother of one of the dead, told The Associated Press. Ahmadi said a missile hit his brother’s car as he pulled up to the family’s home and children ran out to greet him.

    Via CNN/Shutterstock

    The US claims the car was laden with explosives and a secondary blast is why there is such a high civilian casualty rate. But Ahmadi and other witnesses dispute Washington’s claim.

    Emal, another Ahmadi brother, told AP that if the car was full of explosives, the blast would have done much more damage and pointed to two undamaged gas cylinders. “If the car was filled with explosives like the Americans say, why didn’t these cylinders explode,” he said. “How could the wall still be standing if this car had been full of explosives?”

    Every person killed by the strike was related to Ahmadi’s. Emal lost a three-year-old daughter to the US drone and asked how the Americans could not see they were bombing a yard full of children. “They have such high technology they can see an ant on the ground, but they couldn’t see a yard full of children?” he said.

    Some of the Ahmadis have worked for the US-backed Afghan security forces and US-based NGOs in Afghanistan, including the oldest brother Zamarai and a nephew Nasir Haideri, who were killed in the strike. Nasir and Zamarai both applied for Special Immigration Visas to evacuate to the US.

    The slaughter of the Ahmadi family is not an anomaly for US drone strikes. In 2015, documents leaked by Daniel Hale, who was recently sentenced to 45 months in prison, revealed that during a five-month period between 2012 and 2013, 90 percent of the people killed by US drones were civilians.

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    While Hale’s leaks were published over five years ago, US drone strikes still regularly kill civilians, and there is virtually no oversight. The slaughter of the Ahmadi’s has received wide media coverage because it happened in Kabul as the US was exiting Afghanistan. But US drone strikes are often carried out in remote villages, where there are no reporters.

    After the suicide bombing at the Kabul airport, the US launched a drone strike in a remote area of the Nangarhar province. The Pentagon claims the strike killed two “ISIS-K planners,” but their names or any other details have not been released.

    While the US has no more troops in Afghanistan, drone strikes could continue. During a speech after the withdrawal was completed, President Biden threatened more airstrikes against ISIS-K.

    “We have what’s called over the horizon capabilities, which means we can strike terrorists and targets without American boots on the ground, or very few if needed. We’ve shown that capacity just in the last week. We struck ISIS-K remotely,” Biden said, describing the strike that killed the Ahmadis. “And to ISIS-K, we are not done with you yet.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 09/05/2021 – 19:30

  • Horse-Paste Hooey: How Left-Wing Lunatics Spread Yet Another Obvious Lie
    Horse-Paste Hooey: How Left-Wing Lunatics Spread Yet Another Obvious Lie

    If one wants to wrap their brain around why the leftist-establishment media complex has lost all credibility, this Tablet article by Konstantin Kisin from August is mandatory reading worth ten minutes of your time.

    A snippet:

    Imagine your outrage as you see news reports of a bunch of MAGA hat-wearing kids from a religious school contemptuously confront a Native American elder. Professional, adult commentators on TV tell you the kid has a “punchable face,” and while you abhor violence, it’s hard to disagree. Imagine that for days you watch coverage of these events, with expert after expert, pundit after pundit, sharing and fueling your outrage. Maybe your country really is racist. Maybe you’re racist. Were you always just blind?

    Imagine that soon after, however, the Jussie Smollett story turns out to be an attention-seeking hoax: He made it all up. Imagine you also quickly discover that the Native American elder was the one who confronted the kids, and not the other way around. “If this is such a racist country,” you ask yourself, “why would they need to make up stories of racism?” As you ponder this, you remember that for years now, you’ve been expected to go along with other, more elaborate make-believe stories.

    You’re expected to understand that gender is not as binary as school, your eyes, and your own experience have led you to believe. Whatever you learned about biology growing up is not only wrong, it’s pathological and harmful, according to the American Psychological Association. You no longer know how many genders you’re expected to be able to recognize. You do know that asking questions is dangerous.

    Imagine that you still want to believe the experts and the commentators, but now that requires you to believe your country is racist, that men are bad, and that gender is a social construct, which is an idea you still don’t really understand. -Tablet

    Fast forward to August 21. The FDA issues a tweet in response to people buying equine ivermectin due to systemic restrictions on the human-grade version which reads: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”

    This absurd tweet from the Democrat-run federal agency patently ignores the fact that Ivermectin has been prescribed for humans for over 35 years, while several studies have shown efficacy in treating early-stage Covid-19 infections.

    It didn’t matter. The message from the Biden administration was clear; ivermectin is a horse dewormer taken by idiots, and the left now had official license to make fun of ‘right-wing anti-vaxxers’ for using it to treat coronavirus.

    So when Joe Rogan revealed that Ivermectin was one of the drugs he used to beat Covid within a few days, the left went to town – with MSM outlets wasting no opportunity to convince people that the extremely influential host of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast is a nutcase.

    Which brings us to Rolling Stone magazine’s biggest debacle since the UVA rape story – after they aggregated a (still uncorrected) local media report out of Oklahoma claiming that people overdosing on ivermectin horse dewormer are causing emergency rooms to be “so backed up that gunshot victims were having hard times getting” access to health facilities. The claim was made by Dr. Jason McElyea, and the story went absolutely viral across a vast swath of left-wing influencers.

    Until the hospital refuted it – announcing on their website that McElyea hadn’t worked there in more than two months, and they haven’t treated any ivermectin overdoses.

    This failure of basic journalism wasn’t just committed by Rolling Stone. It was breathlessly repeated by large outlets, pundits, and doctors – all of whom failed to do a simple sniff test on an obviously suspicious story.

    Journalist Drew Holden has pieced together the anatomy of yet another viral hoax peddled to millions of people as fact.

    Take it away, Drew:

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    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 09/05/2021 – 19:12

  • Fauci Talks Boosters: Pfizer First As Moderna Delayed
    Fauci Talks Boosters: Pfizer First As Moderna Delayed

    As Israel’s “coronavirus czar” called on the country to prepare for a fourth shot of the Covid-19 vaccine while virus variants continue to evade the first three, American’s top infectious diseases specialist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, prepares the ever-trusting general public for a domestic booster shot program.

    According to Fauci, the US booster shot program will begin exclusively with Pfizer and BioNTech SE jabs, after announcing that Moderna is still “getting their data together,” and would be delayed by “a couple of weeks – if any.”

    Biden has set a Sept. 20 target for kicking off the booster campaign, once the CDC and FDA sign off on it.

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    “The bottom line is very likely at least part of the plan will be implemented, but ultimately the entire plan will be,” Fauci told CBS‘s “Face the Nation.”

    Fauci’s comments may lead to more clarity on the administration’s stance after Biden ran into resistance by medical experts who advise U.S. regulators over what they view as political interference in the review process. 

    While Biden has set a Sept. 20 target for kicking off the booster campaign, safety and efficacy data require signoff by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. –Bloomberg

    On Friday, Moderna said it had completed its booster shot submissions to US regulators.

    Fauci’s comments come after weeks of flip-flopping on when Americans need booster shots – with critics suggesting that the Biden administration is rushing booster shots before scientific evidence can vouch for their efficacy.

    “We need clear guidance on these booster shots because it undermines the credibility of it,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) told “Meet the Press,” after calling out the administration for “mixed messaging.”

    “I guess they slipped and pre-leaked an announcement about booster shots with all three vaccines and then had to backtrack it and say you can only use Pfizer.”

    Last week two top FDA officials quit over disagreements with the White House over booster shots. According to reports, the two officials were frustrated that the Biden administration continued to take direction from the CDC and Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).

    As Fox News notes, “Current guidance says that only individuals with moderately or severely compromised immune systems should receive a booster shot as such individuals might not build the appropriate immunity from the initial two shots. 

    Biden, however, suggested that individuals should receive a shot eight months after their final dose of vaccine. 

    The FDA supposedly did not endorse this plan.”

    Perhaps Moderna is frantically trying to make sure their booster shots don’t have detectable levels of metals ‘which react to magnets.’

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    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 09/05/2021 – 19:00

  • Bad Ideas Tried Again: Pension Plans Borrow Money At A Record Pace To Invest
    Bad Ideas Tried Again: Pension Plans Borrow Money At A Record Pace To Invest

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

    Despite past failures at timing, cities and municipalities are borrowing money at a record pace to shore up pension plans.

    Pension obligation bonds contributed to the chapter 9 bankruptcies of Detroit, Stockton, Calif., and San Bernardino, Calif. 

    Nonetheless, expanding bubbled have lured government bodies into repeating past mistakes, this time at a new record pace.

    Hooray! We broke the pace of 2008.

    Main Street Pensions Take Wall Street Gamble

    Please consider Main Street Pensions Take Wall Street Gamble

    State and local governments have borrowed about $10 billion for pension funding this year through the end of August, more than in any of the previous 15 full calendar years, according to an analysis of Bloomberg data by Municipal Market Analytics. The number of individual municipalities borrowing for pensions soared to 72 from a 15-year average of 25.

    Among those considering what is known as pension obligation borrowing is Norwich, a city in southeastern Connecticut with a population of 40,000. Its yearly payment toward its old pension debts has climbed to $11 million in 2022—four times the annual retirement contribution for current workers and 8% of the city’s budget. The city will vote in November on whether to sell $145 million in 25-year bonds to cover the pensions of retired police officers, firefighters, city workers and school employees.

    Comptroller Josh Pothier said that spread helped him overcome his initial hesitation. “It’s pretty scary; it’s kind of like buying on margin,” he said he thought to himself. “But we’ve had a long run of interest rates being extraordinarily low,” he added.

    Here is how a pension obligation bond works: A city or county issues a bond for all or a portion of its missed pension payments and dumps the proceeds into its pension coffers to be invested. If the returns on pension investments are higher than the bond rate, the additional investment income will translate into lower pension contributions for the city or county over time. (The $10 billion in pension borrowing captured by the Municipal Market Analytics analysis also included some money used directly for pension benefits, rather than being invested, and at least one borrower directed some bond proceeds to other uses.)

    Take a Chance on Me! 

    The higher the market goes, the less likely the maneuver is going to work.

    I drew a dotted line in the lead chart at the place where I firmly believe the stock market will revisit at a future date. 

    That line holds no matter what the stock market does in the next few years. 

    And that is a likely best case scenario, not a worst case one.

    Musical Tribute

    Two-Way Bet

    This is the most insanely overvalued market in history.   

    But bear in mind that it’s a two-way bet. 

    Two Ways to Win

    1. The stock market keeps rising forever or at least long enough to cover the borrowing costs without a huge drawdown. 

    2. These maneuvers and a stock market plunge inspire Congress to bail out the boomers, the cities, and the states.

    Care to take a chance?

    *  *  *

    Like these reports? If so, please Subscribe to MishTalk Email Alerts.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 09/05/2021 – 18:30

  • World Food Prices Jump In August To Near Decade High
    World Food Prices Jump In August To Near Decade High

    Central banks and mainstream media continue to peddle the notion that soaring food inflation is temporary and the average Joe and Jane should not worry about it. But in a new report via the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), global food prices are on the rise, once again, and back to near-decade highs. 

    FAO released a statement Thursday that detailed after two consecutive months of declines, world food prices in August jumped due to solid gains in sugar, vegetable oils, and cereals. 

    FAO’s food price index, which follows international prices of globally traded food commodities, averaged 127.4 points in August, up 3.9 points (3.1%) from July and 31.5 points (32.9%) from the same period last year. 

    In August, the most significant driver of food prices was FAO Sugar Price Index, which jumped 9.6% from July due to frost damage to crops in Brazil, the world’s largest sugar exporter. Readers may recall in “Frost Bites Brazilian Sugar Crop As Prices Zoom Higher,” we noted multiple weather disasters in Brazil severely damaged the sugar crop. 

    The second-largest jump in the basket was the FAO Vegetable Oil Price Index, which rose 6.7% last month, as international palm oil prices soared to historic highs because of below-potential production. 

    The FAO Cereal Price Index increased 3.4% higher in August versus July. The meat index edged up slightly in August, and the dairy index sunk. 

    A combination of global droughts, volatile weather, labor shortages, and supply chain disruptions persisting from COVID, among others, have contributed to the rapid rise in food prices over the last year. 

    Heading into fall, soaring food inflation shows no signs of abating and may worsen. This may cause socio-economic turmoil in emerging market economies, mainly because people in those countries allocate more of their daily budgets to food. 

    SocGen’s Albert Edwards first warned about soaring food inflation last December ahead of the big rally in food prices in a note that we titled “Why Albert Edwards Is Starting To Panic About Soaring Food Prices.” He said a driver of food inflation has been the global central bank’s ultra-loose monetary policy and warns about uprisings in underdeveloped countries. 

    In first-world countries like the US and Europe, surging food inflation hasn’t become a big deal yet, for consumers but may start to irritate the working-poor this fall when supermarket prices are expected to jump. 

    Food inflation globally has been ultra-low for the last few decades. Now food prices are soaring, and this could be an indication once the Federal Reserve begins tapering that bond yields will only go up. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 09/05/2021 – 18:00

  • Snake Oil?! Brazilian Researchers Find Possible COVID Treatment In Viper Venom
    Snake Oil?! Brazilian Researchers Find Possible COVID Treatment In Viper Venom

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    We have previously discussed how people often do not consider the real costs of pollution or the loss of rainforest in our debates over environmental protection. The destruction of these rainforests will contribute to global warming and accelerate the loss of species.

    Those species will not only reduce diversity in this world but many likely hold medical and scientific breakthroughs.

    We have found key treatments for diseases and illnesses in such rare species.

    We have another reminder of that potential this week after Brazilian researchers found that a molecule in the venom the jararacussu pit viper may combat COVID-19.

    The point is not that the viper is going extinct but it is another reminder that much of our “miracle” drugs still come from rare species.

    The viper study appeared in the scientific journal Molecules this month and found that the molecule inhibited the virus’s ability to multiply in monkey cells by 75%.  This is specifically a a peptide, or chain of amino acids, that can connect to an enzyme of the coronavirus called PLPro, which is vital to reproduction of the virus.

    We should, of course, not protect the environment just because it benefits us as humans, but (if sheer environmentalism does not motivate some) self-preservation should. The rapid loss of species in places like Brazil means the loss of possible new drugs and science associated with those species. I have been in the Amazon and I have seen the tremendous density of rare and often fantastic species on display. However, under the government of Jair Bolsonaro, deforestation is continuing as a disastrous rate. With his government, it has surged to a 12 year high.

    The jararacussu can reach 6 feet in length and is found in Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina. Its name literally means “large snake.” This is not the first discovery of medical use of its venom. Researchers previously found angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors to treat hypertension and some types of congestive heart failure in the venom.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 09/05/2021 – 17:30

  • Amidst Historic Labor Shortage, The Retail Race To Secure Tens Of Thousands Of Holiday Workers Has Officially Started
    Amidst Historic Labor Shortage, The Retail Race To Secure Tens Of Thousands Of Holiday Workers Has Officially Started

    On Thursday of this week Walmart decided to give more than half a million of its employees raises of “at least $1” in the latest move to try and shore up its employee base heading into the ever-important holiday season. 

    Big box retailers like Walmart routinely bring on tens of thousands of temporary workers for the holidays, but this year will see increased pressure to retain labor in the midst of a historic, country-wide labor shortage that has been spurred by 18 months of “free” government stimulus. 

    Last year heading into the holidays, Target provided a coronavirus health plan and paid workers $15 an hour, Reuters reported. This year, retailers will try to one-up each other even further in order to draw the attention of a decreased labor pool. Walmart’s U.S. average hourly wage now stands at $16.40 per hour. The new raise goes into effect September 25.

    Walmart also said this summer it will pay 100% of college tuition and book costs for associates. 

    Greg Portell, lead partner in the global consumer practice of consultancy Kearney, told Reuters: “The biggest challenge for retailers going into the holiday season is going to be how do they get the sales associates and the warehouse workers in position to fulfill demand.”

    Cynthia Murray, 65, a 20-year Walmart worker from Laurel, Maryland, wasn’t impressed. She told Reuters: “When Walmart touts its average pay at $16.40 an hour, it distracts from the reality that its business model still relies on poverty wages.”

    Walmart’s raise comes days before the national end of federal unemployment benefits. Kenneth Dau-Schmidt, professor of labor and employment law at Indiana University Bloomington, concluded: “This is significant. I mean, if you look at it in percentage terms it’s not much, but this is Walmart – they don’t really do this. Companies are having trouble getting people back into the harness after being out for so long and this is another sign that the labor market is readjusting.”

    As we noted earlier this week, both Amazon and Walmart are about to make massive pushes to add more than 55,000 and 20,000 employees, respectively. Amazon is looking for corporate and technology employees while Walmart’s hiring is focusing on supply chain. 

    The move for Amazon to hire 55,000 employees is one of new CEO Andy Jassy’s first major initiatives since taking over for former CEO Jeff Bezos earlier this year. Positions will include engineering, research science and robotics roles.

    The monster hiring spree will see Amazon bring on employees equal to more than 33% of Google’s workforce and almost all of Facebook’s workforce, according to CNBC. It’ll also be a 20% increase to Amazon’s current tech and corporate workforce, which currently numbers about 275,000.

    But it’s not just Amazon’s in-house workforce that needs expanding. Bloomberg reported Wednesday that Amazon has found a unique solution for the labor shortage: recruit pot smokers.

    That’s right: despite the fact that driving while high on any substance is illegal, the company is advising its delivery partners to prominently advertise that they don’t screen applicants for marijuana use, according to emails between Amazon and contractors reviewed by Bloomberg.

    Doing so can boost the number of job applicants by as much as 400%, Amazon says in one message to its driver-contractors (without explaining where it got the number). Conversely, the company says, screening for marijuana cuts the prospective worker pool by up to 30%. One delivery partner who stopped screening applicants at Amazon’s behest says marijuana was the prevailing reason most people failed drug tests. Now that she’s only testing for drugs like opiates and amphetamines, more drivers pass.

    Other delivery companies are continuing to screen applicants, concerned about the insurance and liability implications in the many states where weed use remains illegal. They also worry that ending drug testing might prompt some drivers to toke up before going out on a route.

    “If one of my drivers crashes and kills someone and tests positive for marijuana, that’s my problem, not Amazon’s,” said one, who requested anonymity to discuss the issue because Amazon discourages delivery company owners from speaking to the media.

    And it doesn’t look like Amazon has any plans to drop marijuana screens from its own hiring procedures. CEO Jassey commented publicly that the hiring binge will help Amazon “keep up with demand in retail, the cloud and advertising, among other businesses” like the company’s plan to put satellites into orbit for broadband access.

    “There are so many jobs during the pandemic that have been displaced or have been altered, and there are so many people who are thinking about different and new jobs,” Jassey commented.

    The new CEO continued: “It’s part of what we think makes ‘Career Day’ so timely and so useful.”

    Addressing recent concerns about treatment of employees and deflecting pressure to unionize, Jassey continued: “Everybody at the company has the freedom – and really, the expectation – to critically look at how it can be better and then invent ways to make it better.”

    Amazon has been “very competitive on the compensation side,” Jassey said. “We’ve led the way in the $15 minimum wage,” and for some states on average that “really, the starting salary is $17 an hour.”

    Over 40,000 of the new jobs will be in the U.S., while others will be based in India, Germany and Japan. 

    Separately, Walmart also announced this week it was going on a massive hiring binge, bringing on 20,000 supply chain employees as the big box retailer heads into the holiday season. Jobs will be a “mix of full-time and part-time, but will be permanent positions,” according to CNBC. 

    The company’s blog said: “As our business continues evolving to meet the needs of today’s customers, having a robust supply chain is more important than ever. That’s why we’re excited to announce that our team is growing.”

    It continued: “We know that offering competitive pay is essential in order to build a network for the future. The average wage for supply chain associates is $20.37 per hour. We know that financial stability, health benefits, family support and career development opportunities are all critical factors to weigh when considering a job, and we aim not to just meet but exceed our associates’ expectations on each of these fronts. Every item on our store shelves and in our online inventory is there because of the combined efforts of our associates working in more than 250 supply chain facilities across the country.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 09/05/2021 – 17:00

  • Experts Want Audit To Protect California Recall Against 'Cyberattack'
    Experts Want Audit To Protect California Recall Against ‘Cyberattack’

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

    Cybersecurity experts are urging California’s top elections official to conduct an audit of ballots cast in the recall election to ensure no problems occurred.

    The recent disclosure of binary images of the Dominion Voting Systems’ election management system boosts the risk of nefarious action against the state’s election system, the group of experts warned in a Sept. 2 letter to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber.

    The software versions shown in the images are not the same ones as those used in California, but the differences are relatively minor, they added.

    “The release materially elevates threats to the trustworthiness of the ongoing California recall election and to public trust in the election. We urge you to address the issue by taking one critical action–a statewide risk-limiting audit (RLA) of trustworthy paper ballots—which can substantially mitigate these threats,” Mustaque Ahamad, a professor at Georgia Tech’s school of cybersecurity and privacy, Philip Stark, professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s Department of Statistics, and the other experts wrote.

    Dominion, whose systems are used across more than half of the states in the nation, did not return a request for comment, nor did the office of Weber.

    Jenna Dresner, a spokeswoman for Weber, told The Associated Press that the version of Dominion’s system used in 40 California counties is different from the one referenced in the letter and said there are a range of security measures in place that protect against attacks.

    “California has the strictest and most comprehensive voting system testing, use, and requirements in the country, and it was designed to withstand potential threats,” Dresner said.

    A Dominion spokesperson told the outlet that the company had become aware of the reported release of images of its system and reported it to the authorities but that the release isn’t seen as boosting the risk to election security.

    Mail in ballots run through a sorting machine at the Sacramento County Registrar of Voters office in Sacramento, Calif., on Aug. 30, 2021. (Rich Pedroncelli/AP Photo)

    The images were allegedly made public at a cyber symposium on elections held in South Dakota last month.

    The experts said one image came from Antrim County in Michigan while two came from Mesa County in Colorado. The images were made available online and “have been widely downloaded,” they said.

    “While it is prudent to assume that other nation states have had that software for a long time, thousands of other people with unknown affiliations, motives, and physical access to voting systems now have it also. That increases the risk of undetected outcome-changing cyber-attacks on California counties that use Dominion equipment and the risk of accusations of fraud and election manipulation which, without rigorous post-election auditing, would be impossible to disprove,” they wrote.

    Stark, one of the experts, introduced the concept of risk-limiting audits in 2007. The process includes manually checking a sample of ballots, or other paper records, until the amount of evidence is sufficient to prove the reported outcome is correct, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

    Absentee ballots for the recall election, which presents voters with the choice of whether to remove California Gov. Gavin Newsom and who to replace him with if he is recalled, were sent out last month. Voters can also go to the polls on Sept. 14.

    Nearly a quarter of all registered voters in the state had returned ballots as of Thursday, according to Weber’s office. The bulk returned ballots by mail, with many others using drop boxes.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 09/05/2021 – 16:30

  • Tesla Reportedly Targeting $25,000 "Model 2" With No Steering Wheel By 2023
    Tesla Reportedly Targeting $25,000 “Model 2” With No Steering Wheel By 2023

    Apparently having not lied enough over the last few weeks with the revelation of the “Tesla humanoid robot”, Elon Musk may be seeking to one-up himself by reportedly telling his employees that Tesla is going to release a $25,000 car in 2023.

    Landing hours after a report that Apple was seeking to have a mass market vehicle in production by 2024, electrek reported that Tesla is aiming to release the proposed $25,000 vehicle without a steering wheel. 

    Musk first announced the idea of a $25,000 vehicle at Tesla’s battery day last year, electrek notes. Musk is hoping to be able to hit the $25,000 price point by leveraging a new battery cell and manufacturing process, which eventually could reduce the costs associated with a battery by over 50%.

    There has been little in the way of updates as to how that battery effort is moving along since then.

    Musk is also hoping the new vehicle, which has been unofficially dubbed the “Model 2”, will be fully autonomous. “Do we want to have this car come with a steering wheel and pedals?” Musk reportedly asked his employees, suggesting the vehicle may not need them.

    Renderings show it as a compact style hatchback. 

    Last year, Tesla disclosed plans to establish a research and development center in China to help build a “Chinese style” electric vehicle, which may wind up being similar, or the same, as the proposed “Model 2”. 

    Sources told electrek production could start as soon as 2023. We’ll take the “over” on that timeline, as usual, when it comes to matters of Musk’s promises. The report concluded by stating that the company’s progress on Full Self Driving will dictate whether or not the Model 2 will be autonomous. With that being the case, not only do we think proposed goals about the timeline are likely misguided, but we’re not holding out hope for autonomy, either.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 09/05/2021 – 16:00

  • Jerome Powell's Quest For Economic Stability Is Destabilizing
    Jerome Powell’s Quest For Economic Stability Is Destabilizing

    Authored by Richard Ebeling via The American Institute for Economic Research,

    When the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank speaks the financial markets listen, and this was no different with Jerome Powell’s virtual address to the annual meeting of central bankers at Jackson Hole, Wyoming. What they got is what Harry Truman complained about when hearing from his economic advisors: “On the one hand, ‘this,’ but on the other hand, ‘that’.” Truman said that he desperately wanted a one-handed economist.

    After a decade of general economic calm most of the time, with modest to reasonable growth, relatively low price inflation, and, at the beginning of 2020 before the Coronavirus lockdowns, unemployment at its lowest level in half a century, everyone is now worried about what to expect from the Federal Reserve in terms of monetary and interest rate policy in the months and years ahead in the face of all that has been happening for the last year and a half.

    Whipsaw GDP and Huge Government Expenditures

    After a staggering decline in real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from $19.2 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2019 to $17.2 trillion in the second quarter of 2020, or a 9 percent decrease of real GDP in a matter of a few months, the latest revised estimate by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) for the second quarter of 2021 is that real GDP reached $19.36 trillion. This was a 12.5 percent increase over its 2020 low, and a level now above its pre-Coronavirus high.

    It is worth keeping in mind, however, that all of these numbers are exaggerated in terms of real private sector vibrancy because in 2019, federal government expenditures came to $4.45 trillion, or 23 percent of that $19.2 trillion GDP total. By the end of 2020, due to the relaxing of the federal and state lockdown and shutdown mandates over much of the U.S. economy in the second half of last year, real GDP had recovered to $18.76 trillion, but federal government expenditures came to $6.6 trillion, or 35 percent of that total GDP. And just in the first half of 2021, out of that $19.36 trillion GDP, federal spending has already been $5.86 trillion of that total, or 30.2 percent.

    If government spending is even partly discounted from GDP as a false indicator of the economic “health” of the U.S., since Uncle Sam has nothing to spend other than what it either first taxes away from the private sector or has borrowed from the financial markets, the private economy is far from doing as well as the GDP numbers suggest.

    Lagging Unemployment and Rising Price Inflation

    After unemployment had reached a low of 3.5 percent of the labor force at the start of 2020, it rose to almost 15 percent in April of last year, due to the government-commanded halt of a huge amount of economic activity. In July 2021, unemployment had declined to 5.4 percent of the labor force; but this still left it almost 55 percent above its low at the beginning of 2020. 

    After the Consumer Price Index (CPI) mostly fluctuated in a relatively narrow range of between one and two percent, annually, over the last ten years, 2021 has seen the CPI increase to 5.4 percent in July of this year. Certain subgroups, such as energy and used car automotive sectors increased in double digit ranges on an annualized basis.    

    With unemployment still considered high, with the CPI increasing noticeably above the decade-long annual average, and question marks concerning how GDP will grow for the remainder of this year, given continuing supply-chain disruptions and uncertainties about the impact of variations and new mutations of the Coronavirus, all eyes and ears turned to Jerome Powell’s pronouncements about the future direction of Federal Reserve monetary and interest rate policy.

    Powell’s Maybe This, Maybe That, Policy Pronouncement

    And what he said was that the Federal Reserve Board of Governors has not decided what to do!

    On the one hand, the economy is improving so, perhaps, before the end of the year, the Fed will reduce its current monthly purchase of $120 billion worth of assets – $80 billion of U.S. government securities, and $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities. And it may decide that it is time to no longer use its policy tools to keep key interest rates close to zero.

    On the other hand, recent price inflation may only be a transitory spurt due to supply-side problems, so the concern about accelerating price increases may be misplaced. Therefore, it may be premature to reduce asset purchases too quickly and certainly it is necessary to be cautious in any nudging up of interest rates that might cut short the national economic recovery before unemployment has been reduced, once again, to a level closer to standard benchmarks of “full employment.”

    On the one hand, the worst of the Coronavirus may have passed, so there may be no new shutdown hurdles in the way of continuing improvement as reflected in the usual macroeconomic measurements. On the other hand, virus variants may prevent a smooth path to a fully restored and growing economy. So, it may be too soon to really specify when and by how much asset purchases will be reduced or by how much those interest rates will be raised from their current near zero levels.

    The Fed Chairman also said that, on the one hand, the Fed leadership has plenty of experience and policy tools to keep the economy on a sound and even path. On the other hand, such things as the impact of the Coronavirus and the threats facing the world from global warming are unique, making charting the Fed policy course a distinct challenge.

    Powell’s Reticence and the Political Business Cycle

    In other words, Jerome Powell evaded any straightforward policy program, and therefore offered something for almost everyone, in terms of easing fears and concerns that either the policy foot will stay too long where it is on the accelerator or will start putting on the brakes too quickly. Either he is being reticent due to honest doubts about what he thinks is ahead for the economy, or he knows how to play to the audience in the White House and in Congress who will decide whether or not he is appointed for a second term as chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. After all, you don’t want to seem to be planning any clear policy moves that might threaten the reelection of Senators or Congressmen in the 2022 elections, or antagonize a president who does not want to lose his thin majority in the national legislature.

    That politicians and central bankers are sensitive to the phases of the business cycle as they may impact the political electoral cycle in thinking about their policy decisions and directions has been understood by some economists at least since Johan Akerman’s (1896-1982) analysis of the “Political Economic Cycle” (Kyklos, May 1947), in which he traced out observed changes in those running governments in democratic societies resulting from the phases in the business cycle, and how those in government attempt to manage public policy to maintain their political positions.

    Historically, Akerman said, looking over the period from the mid-19th century to 1945 in countries like Great Britain, the United States, Germany, and Sweden, the result of the analysis could be summarized in the following way: “All general economic depressions in England . . . lead to cabinet crises and a change of the party in power . . . In the United States the presidential elections as a rule involve a change in party control when votes are cast during a depression and a maintenance of the party in office when the votes are cast during periods of prosperity,” in sixteen of the twenty elections between 1865 and 1945.

    Governments, Akerman also pointed out, try “to stabilize financial and economic conditions, and for a brief period may succeed in doing so.” While not pursuing it in his article, the fact is that the underlying circumstances that create “booms” that result in “busts” are usually of the government’s own policy. making. The “good times” monetary and fiscal policies finally create the economic crises that threaten the political policy-makers’ positions in authority. Hence, a government’s frequent demise in the next election when a recession or depression finally occurs. (p. 107)

    Interest Rates Should Coordinate Savings and Investment

    But this gets to the real essence of the dilemma in Jerome Powell’s statement of Federal Reserve policy and its possible future direction. The underlying presumption is that a central bank can and should be attempting to manage the monetary system and the level of interest rates in the financial markets and, therefore, trying to macro-manage the society as a whole.

    Let us start with interest rates. The role of market prices is to bring into coordinated balance the two sides of demand and supply. Prices do so by effectively informing those needing to know on the supply side what is it that demanders want and the value they place upon it in terms of what they are willing to pay to get it; prices, at the same time, inform demanders what suppliers can and are willing to produce and offer for sale, and at what price reflecting the producer’s opportunity costs of bringing a particular good or service to market. The competitive interaction of those two sides of the market brings about the balance between them.

    The role of interest rates is to do the same for borrowers and lenders. It is the trading of the use of resources across time between those who are interested and willing to defer the more immediate use of resources (expressed in money) in their possession or under their control, in return for a premium in the future from those interested in more immediate uses of those resources beyond their own capacity in exchange for paying such a premium in the future. That premium is the rate of interest, which may vary with the duration of the loan and risk elements in extending it.

    The role of the rate of interest is to coordinate the willingness of savers with the desires of borrowers. Any rate of interest above or below this results in, respectively, an excess of savings over investment demand or an excess of investment demand over available savings.

    Manipulating Interests Rates Distorts Markets

    The crucial difference between a price, say, for hats that is set below the market-clearing, or coordinating, level is that a shortage results with some willing buyers leaving the market empty-handed; but when the Federal Reserve, or any central bank, wishes to manipulate interest rates below the market coordinating level, it fills the gap with newly created money with which loans may be extended in excess of actual savings in the economy.

    This not only results in an increase in the number of units of the medium of exchange through which buyers can express their greater demand for desired goods and services, tending, in general, to place upward pressure on overall market prices. It also influences the structure of relative prices and wages, since increases in the supply of money can only enter the economy through the increased demand for the particular goods, resources, and services those borrowers of that new money wish to purchase and use. But the money is then passed to another group of hands; that is, those who have sold those goods, resources and services to the borrowers. This second group, in turn, spends the new money that they have received from sales on other goods, resources and services for which they wish to increase their demand.

    Step-by-step, in a patterned sequence through time, the newly created money increases the demands and the prices of one set of goods and services, and then another, and then another, until, finally, in principle, all prices for finished goods and the factors of production will have been impacted to one degree or another, at different times in the sequence, with changes in relative profit margins and employment opportunities for as long as the monetary inflationary process continues.

    This also means that whenever the monetary expansion stops or slows down, or even, perhaps, fails to accelerate, the resulting patterned use of labor, resources, and capital equipment brought into existence due to the way the money has entered into the economy and is being spent, period-after-period, begins to fall apart. This precipitates a readjustment process during which it is discovered that labor, capital and resources have been directed into allocated and applied for uses that are unsustainable once the inflationary process comes to an end.

    The Fed’s Monetary Expansion and Bank Reserve Tricks

    For over ten years, since the financial and housing crisis of 2008-2009, the Federal Reserve has been dramatically expanding the money supply. In January 2008, the Monetary Base (loanable reserves in the banking system plus currency in general circulation) equaled $837 billion; by August 2014, the Monetary Base had been expanded to over $4 trillion. In February 2020, just before the Coronavirus crisis impacted the U.S. in terms of the government mandated lockdowns and shutdowns, it still was historically high at $3.45 trillion; but by July 2021, the Monetary Base stood at $6.13 trillion, or a nearly 78 percent increase just in the last year and a half.

    Why has there not been the expected general price inflation from such a huge increase in the money supply through the banking system? Because the Federal Reserve has been paying banks not to fully lend the loanable reserves at their disposal. As a result, as of July 2021, banks were holding “excess reserves,” (that is, reserves above the minimum Federal Reserve rules require banks to hold against possible cash withdrawals by their depositors), of around $3.9 trillion, upon which the Federal Reserve pays those banks an interest rate of 0.15 percent. In other words, 63 percent of the Monetary Base is being held off the active loan market.

    Given that real GDP in the United States has increased by over 25 percent since 2010, and the velocity of circulation of money (number of times money turns over in transactions per period of time), has decreased by almost 40 percent over the last ten years or so, it is not too surprising that prices in general have not been rising more, or more rapidly, given these countervailing factors, plus the Federal Reserve’s “trick” of paying banks to not lend all the huge amount of bank reserves their open market operations have created during the past decade.

    Markets Still Distorted, Even with Low Price Inflation

    It is nonetheless the case, that through its continuing large purchases of U.S. treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, market interest rates have been artificially pushed significantly below any rates of interest that would prevail on financial markets not manipulated in this manner.

    It is not unreasonable to ask what informational role market interest rates have been even playing about the real underlying savings and investment borrowing relationship in the economy in such a setting. Federal Reserve monetary and interest rate policy has undermined any reasonably accurate intertemporal price to coordinate saving with borrowing.

    Another way of saying this is that the Federal Reserve’s monetary central planning has virtually abolished a market-based pricing system for the allocation and use of resources across time. How can anyone easily know what real savings is available to fund investment and other loan uses in a way that is not throwing the economy out of serious balance?

    In the name of trying to steer the economic “ship” to assure growing GDP, moderate price inflation, and “full employment” of the labor force, Jerome Powell and his fellow Fed Board members are, in fact, setting the stage for an eventual economic downturn by distorting a series of interconnected “microeconomic” relationships in the name of “macroeconomic” stability.

    When the Fed chairman cautiously suggests that the American central bankers are not sure what they are going to do, it is because they cannot do what they say they want to do. By trying to pursue their declared goals through the monetary and interest rate policy tools at their disposal, they are, in fact, continuing to imbalance and wrongly “twist” the real economy in ways that will result in the instability, and the eventual recession and likely price inflation they say they wish to prevent.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 09/05/2021 – 15:30

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