Sep 06

Today’s News 6th September 2022

  • Saving America's Future
    Saving America’s Future

    Authored by Lawrence Kadish via The Gatestone Institute,

    Standing at a podium in Philadelphia, US President Joseph Biden recently sought to leverage the heritage of a city that gave birth to our American democracy while making such a fiercely partisan speech that its ultimate legacy may be to further divide a divided nation. Had he been more truthful about our nation’s current challenges, he might have stood inside a supermarket where prices for basic staples needed by working families are skyrocketing.

    He also could have chosen many of our New York neighborhoods where career criminals have essentially been presented with a “get out of jail” card by many in Biden’s political party.

    Then again, he could have stood next to a gasoline pump and acknowledged that his energy policies have returned us to an era of being energy dependent on foreign nations that are hostile to the very democracy he is sworn to protect.

    These realities reveal that America is at a dangerous tipping point, where the future of our nation is literally in question. One suspects no one in the White House is asking themselves how they can avoid previous leadership failures that allowed countries to go from global dominance to history’s dustbin. They need only look at the arc of time for nations such as Spain, the Netherlands and Britain to see how inept, incompetent or weak leadership led to their inevitable collapse as the dominant nation of their time. It is as if there is a house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with no one in it.

    The Chinese, however, are students of history. With an economy that reaches around the globe and a military now capable of patrolling the Pacific, it is apparent they are betting that America will fail its test of leadership and follow others in relinquishing its global dominance. In this case, China is ready to assume that role.

    The stark reality is that the current White House occupants have compounded error upon error. A speech long on partisan rhetoric but short on competence will not address the strategic errors in judgment being made by those who took a sacred oath of office to preserve, defend and protect our nation.

    There is still time to hand a new generation of Americans a strong nation capable of defending its values, its citizens and its future, but that will require us to recognize what other nations refused to acknowledge: that history’s tipping point is before us.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/05/2022 – 23:30

  • Zero-COVID In China: Lockdowns Of Major Cities Continue
    Zero-COVID In China: Lockdowns Of Major Cities Continue

    After the controversial, two-months long coronavirus lockdown of Shanghai, China has once again placed a city of more than 20 million people under house arrest.

    As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, a coronavirus lockdown in Chengdu in Central China that had started on Thursday was prolonged Monday.

    Mass tests are being carried out after the city saw 71 new Covid-19 cases on Sunday. While officials said the restrictions would continue until at least Wednesday, residents are uneasy due to similarities to the Shanghai lockdown, which was also announced in a piecemeal fashion. In April and May, almost 25 million people had been confined to their homes in Shanghai, with many suffering from inadequate food supply, lack of medical attention and psychological distress.

    Infographic: Coronavirus in China: Lockdowns of Major Cities Continue | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    In Southern tech hub Shenzhen, a weekend lockdown was lifted while restrictions in some parts of the city continue. The announcement had led to panic buying Friday in the city that had been under a full lockdown for a week in March already and now fears a second confinement could happen. Shenzhen saw 87 new virus cases Sunday. In March, it was the biggest city China had locked down to-date after a surge in coronavirus cases not seen since the first wave of infections in early 2020 emerged there. The Southern tech hub and special economic zone is only about one hour away from Hong Kong, which also saw a record-breaking Covid outbreak around that time.

    According to Our World in Data, China on Sunday recorded more than 3,000 new coronavirus cases. The highest-ever case count in the country occurred on April 14 of this year at around 29,500, almost double the 2020 high of 15,000 cases (February 13).

    After the major lockdowns of Wuhan and other cities in Hubei province ended in late March and early April of 2020, China had successfully followed a zero-Covid strategy for most of 2020 and 2021. Ever since the more contagious Omicron variant emerged, however, it has challenged China’s approach of zero tolerance towards the disease.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/05/2022 – 23:00

  • In His First Trip Abroad Since The Start Of The Pandemic, China's Xi Will Visit Producer Of Half The World's Uranium
    In His First Trip Abroad Since The Start Of The Pandemic, China’s Xi Will Visit Producer Of Half The World’s Uranium

    In his first overseas trip since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit the country responsible for roughly half of the world’s uranium production.

    On September 14, Xi will visit Kazakhstan, the SCMP reported citing a Monday announcement at a briefing by the Kazakh foreign ministry. It follows months of speculation about the location of Xi’s first trip abroad since he went to Myanmar in January 2020. Beijing’s strict zero-Covid policy has curtailed travel inside and out of the country, and Xi and other senior figures have not left China since the start of the pandemic.

    Of the 25 Politburo members, only foreign policy chief Yang Jiechi has travelled abroad. Meanwhile, the country’s No 3 official, Li Zhanshu, will go to Russia on Wednesday in a sign that China’s top officials are resuming international travel. Li, head of the legislature, will also visit Mongolia, Nepal and South Korea.

    As reported previously, Indonesian President Joko Widodo has said Xi will visit Bali for the Group of 20 summit in November – where Vladimir Putin and Zelenskyy will also be present.

    Xi will meet Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev for talks the host government said were “aimed at further deepening the eternal comprehensive strategic partnership and developing political, trade, economic, cultural and humanitarian cooperation”.

    Chinese President Xi Jinping meets Kazakh leader Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in Beijing on February 5. The pair will meet in Kazakhstan on September 14. Photo: Xinhua

    The visit could be followed by a trip to Uzbekistan to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit, according to the SCO’s official Telegram channel. In a post on Sunday, the SCO said that “the leaders of all states confirmed their full-time participation in the summit” in Samarkand, to be held on September 15 and 16.

    More importantly, in Uzbekistan, Xi would be expected to meet Russian leader Vladimir Putin for the first time since the pair announced a “no limits” partnership on the eve of the Beijing Winter Olympics. Just three weeks later, Russian forces invaded Ukraine, leading to much speculation about how much Xi and other Chinese leaders knew about the operation in advance.

    The pair have been in telephone contact since – notably on Xi’s 69th birthday on June 15. At the time, Chinese state media quoted Xi as saying that “China is willing to continue to support the Russian side on issues related to core interests and major concerns such as sovereignty and security, to work closely on strategic cooperation between the two countries”.

    Russia is one of eight member states of the SCO, along with China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. There are four observer states in the process of acceding to the forum – Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia – while Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Türkiye are dialogue partners.

    Temur Umarov, an expert on China and Central Asia at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that choosing the region as a first overseas trip emphasized Beijing’s ambitions to expand its influence there. Indeed, it is hardly a coincidence that China is heading to the one country responsible for nearly half of the world’s uranium production.

    A violent crackdown on civil unrest in Kazakhstan in January caught Beijing by surprise, Umarov said, with Russian troops being sent in to quell the protests. In total, there were more than 200 deaths, Human Rights Watch has said.

    “We should remember that at that time, China looked so weak in Central Asia and Russia was very active,” Umarov said. “It was a pivotal moment that made China realise that something should be done to expand their understanding of Central Asia, to extend China’s ability to forecast what was going on and what will be happening in Central Asia.”

    Separately, in July, after 20 years of negotiations, Beijing agreed with Bishkek and Tashkent to begin building the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway next year. It will give China another railway route into Central Asia in addition to existing links with Kazakhstan, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine appears to have given the project some impetus.

    Previous media reports had speculated that Xi’s first overseas visit would be to Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, the South China Morning Post reported in July that China had asked the leaders of some Western European countries to visit Beijing in November, taken by some as an indication that Xi would be confirmed for a third term as Communist Party chief at the national congress in October.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/05/2022 – 22:00

  • Brazil's Democracy Under Threat: Supreme Court Blocks President's Social Media
    Brazil’s Democracy Under Threat: Supreme Court Blocks President’s Social Media

    Authored by Augusto Zimmermann via The Epoch Times,

    In Brazil, some judges have highly ambitious political goals and make decisions accordingly.

    The current presiding justice at the nation’s Supreme Electoral Court is Alexandre de Moraes. He was elected as the presiding electoral officer in August, in a public ceremony with 2,000 guests at the court auditorium. He was a member of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party before being nominated justice of the nation’s Federal Supreme Court on Feb. 22, 2017.

    Before being nominated to the nation’s highest court, as reported by the French daily Le Monde, he was at the centre of a controversy when the daily Estadão published an investigation showing that he had intervened as a lawyer in at least 123 legal cases to defend a corporation that some have argued is suspected of being linked to Brazil’s main drug trafficking group, the First Command of the Capital.

    Moraes, who is now the nation’s top electoral officer in Brazil and responsible for overseeing the presidential elections, has issued numerous “monocratic decisions” against “misinformation,” in addition to sending some of President Jair Bolsonaro’s friends and supporters to jail, confiscating their electronic devices, and freezing their bank accounts.

    On March 18, for example, Moraes ordered the nationwide suspension of the messaging app Telegram. The ruling came after Telegram ignored an earlier order to block the account of Allan dos Santos, a supporter of Bolsonaro accused of spreading “misinformation.” He had previously issued a warrant for the arrest of Santos in October.

    In his ruling suspending Telegram nationwide, Moraes mentions its failing to remove “misleading” content from Bolsonaro’s own Telegram page. As reported, not only did he order the shutdown of the message app nationwide but also ordered Apple and Google to introduce “technological obstacles” to block Telegram on their operating systems and withdraw it from their digital stores in Brazil.

    Bolsonaro, who seeks reelection in October, relies on Telegram to reach his voter base. He has more than a million followers on the platform and this could prove crucial to his electoral campaign.

    Brazilian Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes is pictured during a session to rule on whether former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva should start a 12 year prison sentence for corruption, potentially upending this year’s presidential election, at the Supreme Court in Brasilia, Brazil, on April 4, 2018. (Victoria Silva/AFP via Getty Images)

    ‘Authoritarian Decisions’

    On March 19, during the popular television program “Os Pingos nos Is” from Jovem Pam, journalist Augusto Nunes accused Moraes of committing several illegalities, including the abuse of authority and the violation of a cláusula pétrea (“stone clause”) in the Brazilian Constitution that makes freedom of expression an inalienable right of the citizen.

    Nunes also criticized the silence of politicians about Moraes’s “decisions,” including the banning of Telegram nationwide.

    “It’s time to demand senators and judges handcuffed for their cowardice. And those appointed by President Jair Bolsonaro have to explain how long this cowardly silence they have maintained in the face of arrogance will last,” he said.

    On May 27, 2020, Justice Moraes, who had become the nation’s top electoral officer, ordered the federal police to launch an operation probing businessmen, bloggers, and politicians allied to Bolsonaro. In the decision that authorised the operation, he also determined the blocking of all their accounts on social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. According to him, the monocratic decision is necessary for the interruption of “misinformation” and “fake news.”

    The investigation on “misinformation” conducted by Moraes concerns more generally the dissemination of information regarding the transparency of electronic voting machines and the credibility of the Brazilian electoral commission, which is actually headed by Moraes himself.

    Filipe Martins, the special advisor to the presidency of the Republic for international affairs, commented that “journalists, humorists, and ordinary citizens who act spontaneously are being treated as bandits for daring to express opinions that displease the establishment.”

    …

    Bolsonaro says democracy is now under serious attack in the country. He has accused these unelected judges of practising political interference and trying to deploy a judicial dictatorship.

    “Brazil is on the road to dictatorship. This is how dictatorships start now. You lose your freedom little by little, then one day you look, and you are completely tied up,” he told network Jovem Pan.

    After knowing all these extraordinary things, who would disagree? The democratic system is clearly being undermined by the replacement of the rule of law with the rule of judges. In fact, the premise that unelected judges know better what is best for the nation is elitist and utterly undemocratic.

    It is ironic to see that now the major threat to democracy in Brazil now comes not from elected politicians but from a highly anachronistic judicial oligarchy.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/05/2022 – 21:30

  • "Toxic" Dust Storm Hits Burning Man, Causing Total Whiteout
    “Toxic” Dust Storm Hits Burning Man, Causing Total Whiteout

    The final weekend of Burning Man nearly ended earlier as visibility deteriorated to zero during a massive dust storm. 

    On Saturday, Burning Man’s official Twitter account tweeted the gates into the festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert were closed “due to whiteout conditions.” Event staff requested festivalgoers: 

    “Do not drive. Vehicles are becoming stranded and lost on the playa.” 

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    From a distance, the National Weather Service of Reno’s stationary cameras captured the moment when dust rolled across the festival area, severely impacting visibility for the tens of thousands of people. 

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    A passenger on a commercial flight captured a clearer view of the dust storm affecting the festival. 

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    The dust storm was so big that a weather satellite spotted it. 

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    On the ground, festivalgoers looked miserable on the last weekend of the nine-day event. The San Francisco Standard pointed out that the dust in the area is full of “alkaline” and is “quite toxic.” 

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    San Francisco Chronicle said the dust storm nearly “ruined the annual torching of a giant wooden effigy.” But by late Saturday evening, the gates reopened, and around 2200 local time, the statue went up in flames. 

    Toxic dust wasn’t the only thing festivalgoers had to worry about — daytime highs hit triple digits, sending some people home early.  

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/05/2022 – 21:00

  • Deadly Earthquake Hits China's Southwestern Sichuan Province
    Deadly Earthquake Hits China’s Southwestern Sichuan Province

    A powerful earthquake rocked a mountainous region of China’s southwestern Sichuan province on Monday. At least 46 people are dead, in the latest problems mounting for the province hit by historic drought and Covid lockdowns. 

    The 6.8 magnitude earthquake hit Luding county in western Sichuan, about 120 miles west of the provincial capital of Chengdu, reported China Earthquake Administration. 

    Videos posted on social media showed damaged building structures and landslides.

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    Various types of infrastructure, such as roads and power lines, also appear to be damaged. 

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    Tremors were felt in Chengdu, a megacity with 21 million people currently under Covid lockdown. Besides lockdowns, the metro area has already faced power rationings due to drought and heatwaves this summer. 

    A question we have: When an earthquake strikes, can those under mandatory Covid lockdown exit their homes or condos to avoid danger?

    Sichuan is located on a major fault and is considered one of the country’s most highly active quake areas. In 2008, Chengdu was hit by a devastating 8.2 magnitude quake, leaving more than 69,000 dead. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/05/2022 – 20:00

  • Retired US General Tells Ukraine "Better To Negotiate Now Than Later"
    Retired US General Tells Ukraine “Better To Negotiate Now Than Later”

    A retired Pentagon general has issued a rare call for Ukraine to immediately enter negotiations with Russia toward finding a peaceful solution to the now six-month long war. This comes after weeks of reports of a ‘stalemated’ battlefield along eastern and southern lines, and amid Western leaders increasingly acknowledging “uncomfortably low” and depleted weapons stockpiles.

    Army brigadier general Mark T. Kimmitt, who had served as Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs under the George W. Bush administration, warned in a Wall Street Journal op-ed days ago that the current policy of ramping up weapons systems to Kyiv is only likely to lead to more casualties.

    He wrote in the Thursday article that “older and less advanced” systems which are increasingly making up the bulk of what’s now being supplied “may indicate that battlefield consumption rates have outpaced production to a point where excess inventories provided to Ukraine are nearly exhausted.”

    US Retired Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, via Al Arabiya

    Kimmitt argued that the “dwindling stocks of leading-edge weapon systems” in NATO countries will inevitably lead to a prolonged conflict, and a longer war will in turn result in “more pressure from supporting nations, sustained inflation, less heating gas, and falling popular support.” He concluded:

    “This likely will mean muddling through a long war, with more casualties.”

    Outlining the “logistic peril” of getting NATO weapons to the Ukrainians, the retired general explored three options which involve varying means of keeping the weapons flowing and thus digging deeper into NATO stockpiles, but which will also ensure escalation – even including supplying Kyiv with longer range missiles.

    But Kimmitt then offers a final available option, which he admits no one including the Zelensky government itself seems willing to take seriously (given also the Ukrainian president has recently been vowing the “liberation” of Crimea). This last option – the path of serious negotiations – would involve Ukraine pushing for “an interim diplomatic resolution without (or with) territorial concessions.”

    “There is little incentive to negotiate” at the moment, Kimmitt acknowledges, but Zelensky “must recognize that diminishing resupplies would have a disastrous effect on his army, not merely for battlefield operations but for the message of declining outside support it would send to the people of Ukraine.”

    “Beginning the diplomatic resolution would be distasteful, and perhaps seen as defeatist, but as there is little chance of climbing out of the current morass, it may be better to negotiate now than later.”

    Such realism appearing in a mainstream outlet when it comes to the Ukraine debate is a rarity, but as Russia and the West continue their game of chicken over Ukraine, now clearly a full-blown proxy war, likely more such urgings for negotiated settlement will appear in public discourse.

    * * *

    Meanwhile, Russia too is putting Europe on notice regarding energy sanctions, as indeed both sides continue digging their heels in deeper…

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/05/2022 – 19:00

  • Who Benefits From US Government Claims That The UFO Threat Is Increasing "Exponentially"?
    Who Benefits From US Government Claims That The UFO Threat Is Increasing “Exponentially”?

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    A US senate report which is an addendum to the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 has people talking due to the surprising statements it includes about the US government’s current position on UFOs.

    I mean Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.

    I mean Unidentified Aerospace-Undersea Phenomena.

    This latest moniker for the thing we all still think of as UFOs is the US government’s way of addressing how these alleged appearances, which began entering mainstream attention in 2017, are said to be able to transition seamlessly from traveling through the air to moving underwater in what’s been labeled “cross-domain transmedium” movement. Because branches of the US war machine are roughly broken up into forces specializing in air, sea, land and space operations, the notion that these things move between those domains gets special attention.

    UFO enthusiasts are largely focusing on a part of the addendum which oddly stipulates that the government’s newly named Unidentified Aerospace-Undersea Phenomena Joint Program Office shall not be looking into objects “that are positively identified as man-made,” because of the obvious implications of that phrase. This is understandable; if you’ve got a government office that’s responsible for investigating unidentified phenomena, you can just say it won’t be looking into phenomena that are “positively identified”. You wouldn’t have to add “identified as man-made” unless you had a specific reason for doing so.

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    But for me the claim that really jumps off the page, authored by Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Mark Warner, is the claim that these unidentified aerospace-undersea phenomena are a “threat” that is increasing “exponentially”.

    “At a time when cross-domain transmedium threats to United States national security are expanding exponentially, the Committee is disappointed with the slow pace of DoD-led efforts to establish the office to address those threats,” Warner writes in the report.

    “Exponentially” is a mighty strong word. Taken in its least literal sense, it means that threats to US national security from UFOs are increasing at an alarmingly rapid rate. That they have swiftly become much greater than they used to be.

    What is the basis for this incendiary claim? What information are US lawmakers being given to make them draw such conclusions and make such assertions? There’s a long chain of information handling between an alleged UFO encounter and a US senator’s pen, and corruption can occur at any point in that chain (including the first and last link).

    I remain comfortably agnostic about most aspects of the UFO question, up to and including the possibility that there are actual extraterrestrial or extradimensional beings zipping around our planet in technology our science cannot comprehend. But one thing I absolutely will take a hard and fast position on is that the moment the US government starts labeling something a “threat”, all trust and credulity must be immediately be thrown out the window.

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    This is after all occurring as the US enters a steadily escalating new cold war against both Russia and China, and we know that during the last cold war the CIA sought to exploit public panic about UFOs as a psychological weapon against the Soviets, and that the CIA has claimed that its newly developed spy planes were responsible for many UFO sightings in the 1950s, and that the US military was working on developing “flying saucer” aircraft during that same time. It also occurs after the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics stated at a 2020 conference that the Air Force has a brand new aircraft prototype, designed using new digital engineering technology, that has “broken a lot of records.”

    This new mainstream UFO narrative also has highly suspicious origins, with key players ranging from shady US intelligence cartel operatives like Lue Elizondo and Christopher Mellon, to corrupt senator Harry Reid and his plutocratic campaign donor Robert Bigelow, to Blink-182’s Tom DeLonge, who believes humanity is being tormented by malevolent extraterrestrials who feed off negative human emotions and that the US military is heroically protecting us from their evil agendas. Filmmaker Steven Greenstreet put out a short, well-sourced documentary with The New York Post this past May laying out copious amounts of evidence that the groundwork for the new UFO narrative was built on journalistic malpractice and negligence, obfuscation, omission, and outright lies. The footage we’re being shown of these supposed vehicles to justify this new narrative consist of blurs, flashes and smudges which can all be explained by mundane phenomena.

    So in my opinion this isn’t a subject we can just ignore, as weird and uncomfortable as the subject of UFOs might be for serious analysts. Whatever the subject, when you’ve got the US government claiming on highly suspect grounds that there’s an exponentially growing threat that urgently needs to be addressed militarily, it’s time to sit up and start paying attention.

    Not that I myself have any clear idea of what’s going on here beyond the distinct impression that we are being deceived about something potentially very important. And I don’t get the impression that other people have a very clear picture of what’s going on either.

    Some say this is just a scam to get more funding for the Space Force or the military in general. That could very well be, but as far as publicly available information goes we’re not seeing anyone saying anything like “Hey we need $40 billion to address this UFO problem.”

    Some say this is part of an agenda to justify getting weapons into space, but I suspect anyone likely to support that agenda would support it with or without the claim that we need to fight ET. And again, there’s the problem that nobody’s saying “Hey we need to get weapons into space because of UFOs.”

    Some say this is just a deliberate “distraction” designed to keep people from focusing on more important issues, but the problem there is that (A) the empire doesn’t normally roll out distractions in that way, and (B) the UFO issue isn’t getting much mainstream attention. It’s a peripheral story, dwarfed in comparison to real propaganda initiatives like Ukraine.

    Some say there’s a conspiracy to use high-tech weaponry to create a false flag alien invasion and unite humanity under a one world government, but that’s a fairly mainstream idea that’s being pushed on viral Netflix films by known fraud Steven Greer. I think the world is paranoid enough at this point that few would buy such a psyop even if it were somehow convincingly orchestrated.

    Some say this narrative is all a cover for new technology the empire is keeping under wraps, presenting an official position that the US government has nothing to do with the strange vehicles people are seeing in the air as stated in the ODNI’s report on UFOs last year. That would certainly explain the empire’s cockiness in confronting Russia and China simultaneously when public knowledge of its economic and military capabilities would indicate that that’s a bad idea.

    It could be as simple as the fact that once it becomes the established orthodoxy in Washington that UFOs are a threat and something needs to be done about them, it’s a safe bet that we’re going to see massive amounts of money moving around to deal with that threat and the emergence of war machinery that can be used in future confrontations with Russia and China. There are any number of creatures lurking in DC who would stand to benefit from that happening, and would stand to benefit from pushing that agenda. It’s possible that contracts have already been signed. It’s possible that finances have already been allocated for it from the war machine’s dark money slush fund, and that all this public talk is just narrative management to preemptively justify that spending when information about it comes out.

    Or maybe it’s some mixture of these things, or none of them. I don’t know. I do know that someone’s benefitting from all this. And I know it’s unreasonable to expect the most murderous and tyrannical regime on earth to tell us the truth about UFOs when it would stand nothing to gain by doing so, and we ordinary people should therefore do our best to understand what’s happening for ourselves.

    I think it would be good if people on the anti-empire fringes of the spectrum started looking at this thing more and describing what they’re seeing, even though it’s impossible to see everything behind the walls of government opacity. Otherwise the only people looking at it will be UFO enthusiasts who just want “disclosure” at any cost, and the operatives of the empire itself.

    *  *  *

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/05/2022 – 18:30

  • Suspect At Center Of Russiagate Hoax Wants Charges Thrown Out
    Suspect At Center Of Russiagate Hoax Wants Charges Thrown Out

    The primary source of Hillary Clinton’s hoax dossier used to paint Donald Trump as a Russian stooge wants a federal judge to dismiss charges filed against him for allegedly lying to federal agents about where he obtained salacious claims he fed the dossier’s author, Christopher Steele.

    Russian national Igor Danchenko says that the five false statement charges against him were improperly filed because the statements he made were “literally true.”

    According to the indictment, Danchenko lied about his contacts with “Russians,” his travels to Russia, and the identity of his sources. (Those are just some of the lies.)

    According to charging documents, Danchenko denied ever having communicated with longtime Clinton associate, Charles Dolan – a US-based PR expert.

    In John Durham’s words (via Techno Fog):

    More via the Epoch Times:

    Danchenko also lied, according to the documents, about believing that a phone call he received came from a businessman Sergei Millian described in court papers as Chamber President-1 and that the person on the other end told him certain information, and that he arranged to meet the person in New York.

    “In truth and fact … DANCHENKO never received such a phone call or such information from any person he believed to be Chamber-President 1, and DANCEHNKO [sic] never made any arrangements to meet with Chamber President-1 in New York,” the indictment states. “Rather, DANCHENKO fabricated these facts regarding Chamber President-1.”

    ‘Ambiguous Answers’

    In the new filing, Danchenko says that his answers did not violate the law, which prohibits making “materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation” to federal agents or in federal court.

    “The law criminalizes only unambiguously false statements that are material to a specific decision of the government. By contrast, literally true or ambiguous statements, even if they are unresponsive or misleading, or false statements about ancillary matters, do not give rise to criminal liability,” Danchenko said through his counsel.

    Danchenko sat through numerous interviews with the FBI in 2017, according to the filing. During the interviews, Danchenko did say he didn’t talk to Dolan about specific allegations in the dossier, and that he believed he received a call from Millian, but those were “equivocal and ambiguous answers … prompted by fundamentally ambiguous questions,” the defendant said, asserting the statements “are literally true, and are immaterial as a matter of law.”

    The lawyers noted that Danchenko was not among those charged by former special counsel Robert Mueller’s team with making false statements.

    The charges against him came from special counsel John Durham’s team.

    Neither prosecutors nor the judge overseeing the case, U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga, a George W. Bush appointee, have responded to Danchenko’s filing.

    Danchenko is scheduled to go on trial on Oct. 11.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/05/2022 – 18:05

  • Russia To Legalize Use Of Cryptocurrency In International Trade: Report
    Russia To Legalize Use Of Cryptocurrency In International Trade: Report

    Authored by ‘NAMCIOS’ via BitcoinMagazine.com,

    • Russia is close to pushing legislation for the use of cryptocurrency in international trade.

    • In current conditions “it is impossible to do without cross-border settlements in cryptocurrency,” the Bank of Russia and Ministry of Finance have reportedly agreed.

    • The necessary regulatory framework will still need to be introduced.

    The Bank of Russia and the country’s Ministry of Finance have reconsidered their positions toward cryptocurrency, acknowledging it to be necessary to legalize the use of cryptocurrencies in cross-border settlements, per a report by local news outlet TASS.

    According to TASS, the two government bodies have agreed that “it is impossible” to continue without enabling cryptocurrency as a legal payment method for international trade.

    The move comes as Russia dabbles on how to best regulate the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency markets. Swamped in Western sanctions, the world’s largest country has sought alternatives to the U.S. dollar so as to guarantee the efficient trade of its commodities.

    In March, the chairman of the country’s Congressional energy committee, Pavel Zavalny, said the country was open to taking payments for natural gas and other natural resources exports in bitcoin.

    “When it comes to our ‘friendly’ countries, like China or Turkey, which don’t pressure us, then we have been offering them for a while to switch payments to national currencies, like rubles and yuan,” Zavalny said at the time.

    “With Turkey, it can be lira and rubles. So there can be a variety of currencies, and that’s a standard practice. If they want bitcoin, we will trade in bitcoin.”

    In May, it was reported that Russia was “actively discussing” using cryptocurrency in international trade.

    Now, the imminent actualization of such a move shifts the tide as President Vladimir Putin last year had dismissed the possibility in an interview at the Russian Energy Week event in Moscow.

    “I believe that it has value,” Putin said at the time, referring to bitcoin.

    “But I don’t believe it can be used in the oil trade.”

    According to TASS, the necessary regulatory framework to enable cross-border settlements in cryptocurrency in Russia will still be introduced.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/05/2022 – 17:40

  • California Declares Grid Emergency (For 5th Straight Day) As Blackout Risks Surge
    California Declares Grid Emergency (For 5th Straight Day) As Blackout Risks Surge

    For the 5th straight day, California Independent System Operator (California ISO) declared a grid emergency Monday afternoon. The grid operator forecasts record high demand on Tuesday, with the possibility of ‘rotating outages’ as early as today. A menacing statewide heatwave has sparked huge demand for electricity while generating capacity remains subdued. 

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    The historic heat bearing down on California will push the state’s electricity system to its limit. Millions of homes and businesses are cranking air condition use to the max, contributing to what could be record high electricity demand tomorrow. 

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    The grid operator is preparing for electricity demand to hit 48.9 GW on Monday, the most since 2017, with a record high expected on Tuesday. 

    Notably, despite 5 days of warnings, the virtuous Californians are using more electricity today than at any time during the week…

    Bob Oravec, a senior branch forecaster with the US Weather Prediction Center, told Bloomberg many areas in the state would register in triple-digit territory early this week. 

    Much of California is under an excessive heat warning for the next four days. Sacramento could reach 113 on Monday and 115 on Tuesday shattering records for those days, Oravec said. Downtown Los Angeles reached 103 on Sunday, which was the first time the temperature broke 100 this year. – Bloomberg 

    Daily high temps across the state should peak by mid-week. 

    Power prices in the southern part of the state jumped above $200 per megawatt hour. 

    California ISO warned that ‘rotating outages’ are possible Monday, adding customers need to reduce energy consumption even more, to keep the lights on.

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    State officials continue to ask residents not to charge EVs to help with grid stability. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/05/2022 – 17:15

  • Here Comes Part Two Of Morgan Stanley's "Fire and Ice"
    Here Comes Part Two Of Morgan Stanley’s “Fire and Ice”

    From Michael Wilson, Morgan Stanley chief US strategist

    Fire and Ice Part Deux

    At the risk of stating the obvious, 2022 has been a challenging year for stock investors of all stripes. The Russell 3000 is down approximately 16% (total return) year to date (YTD), and while Russell 3000 Growth has underperformed significantly (-22%), it’s been no picnic for value investors either (-9%). Only Energy and Utilities are up, and just 24% of all stocks in the Russell 3000 are in positive territory for the year. To put that into context, in 2008 48% of Russell 3000 stocks were up on the year as we entered the month of September. Suffice it to say, this year has been historically bad for stocks, but that is not a sufficient reason to be bullish.

    As bad as it’s been for stocks, it’s been even worse for bonds on a risk-adjusted basis. More specifically, 20-year Treasury bonds are down 24% YTD and the Barclays AGG index is off by 11%. Finally, commodities have been a mixed bag too, with most commodities down on the year despite heightened inflationary concerns. To wit, the CRB RIND index, which measures the spot prices of a wide range of commodities, is down 7% YTD. Cash, on the other hand, is no longer trash, especially if one has been able to take advantage of higher front-end rates.

    So, what’s going on? In our view, asset markets are behaving right in line with the fire and ice narrative we laid out a year ago. In short, after ignoring the warning signs from inflation last year, and thinking the Fed would ignore them forever, asset markets quickly woke up and discounted the Fed’s late but historically hawkish pivot to address it. Indeed, very rarely has the Fed tightened policy so quickly. Truth be told, as one of the more hawkish strategists on the Street last December, I never would have bet the Fed would be doing multiple 75bp hikes this year, but here we are. Don’t fight the Fed.

    While the June low for stocks and bonds was dramatic, we’ve consistently been in the camp that it wasn’t THE low for the S&P 500 in this bear market. Having said that, we are more confident it was the low for long-term Treasuries in view of the Fed’s aggressive action that has yet to fully play out in the real economy. It may also have been the low for the average stock, given how bad the breadth was at that time and the magnitude of the decline in certain stocks. Our more pessimistic view on the major index is based on analysis that indicates all of the 31% de-rating in the forward S&P 500 P/E that occurred from December to June was due to higher rates. We know this because the equity risk premium (ERP) was flat during this period. Meanwhile, forward NTM EPS estimates for the S&P 500 have come down by only 1.5% and P/Es are now 9% higher. With rates about 25bp below the June highs, the ERP has fallen once again, to just 280bp. This makes little sense in a normal environment but especially given the significant slowdown and earnings cuts we think are still to come.

    With the Fed emphatically dashing hopes for a dovish pivot, we think that asset markets may be entering fire and ice part deux.

    In contrast with part one, this time the decline in stocks will come mostly via a higher ERP and lower earnings rather than higher rates. Our leading earnings models are all flashing red for the S&P 500, and we have high confidence that the decline in NTM S&P 500 EPS forecasts is far from over.

    In short, part deux will be more icy than fiery, the opposite of 1H22. That’s not to say rates don’t matter – they do – and we expect bonds to perform better than stocks in this icier scenario.

    If Friday marked a short-term low for long-duration bonds (high in yields), the S&P 500 and many stocks could get some relief again as rates come down prior to the next round of earnings cuts. However, make no mistake, as the weather turns chilly this fall, so will growth, which will weigh mightily on stocks given the paltry ERP investors are getting paid to take this risk.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/05/2022 – 16:50

  • Ukraine's Largest Nuclear Power Plant Is Again Knocked Off Electrical Grid
    Ukraine’s Largest Nuclear Power Plant Is Again Knocked Off Electrical Grid

    For only the second time in its history, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine – which is Europe’s largest – has been fully cut off from the electrical grid, reportedly due to shelling. The past days have seen the plant repeatedly suffered complete disconnection from the power grid, with the plant’s back-up safety systems being activated.

    “Ukraine’s embattled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant’s last working reactor has been switched off from the grid after the facility was disconnected from its last remaining power line due to shelling, Ukraine’s power plants operator said Monday,” AFP writes.

    Image: Ukrinform/ZUMA

    The shutdown was once again reported to be due to shelling, based on a fresh statement from Ukraine’s nuclear power operator Energoatom. “Power unit (reactor) No. 6 was shut down and disconnected from the grid” after a fire ignited that was “triggered because of shelling”.

    Throughout the summer both sides have consistently accused the other of shelling and damaging the facility, after some 500 Russian troops began occupying it in March.

    Just days ago, a UN-authorized visit by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) found that the nuclear plant is at risk given that the “physical integrity of the plant has been violated, several times,” according to a Friday press briefing given by Director-General Rafael Grossi, who led the team in person.

    Grossi underscored that “The military activity and operations are increasing in that part of the country, and this worries me a lot.” At least two IAEA exports have stayed at the embattled nuclear plant on a “permanent basis” in order to monitor safety.

    The primarily Ukrainian engineers which run the plant have maintained operations under the watch of the Russian troop presence. Zaporizhzhia supplies some 30% of Ukraine’s electrical needs.

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    Meanwihle, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a Sunday interview with ABC News that Russia with using the site as a “nuclear weapon”… 

    Russia’s military presence at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, Zelensky said, is tantamount to Russia occupying “six Chernobyls,” referring to the site of a 1986 nuclear meltdown in Ukraine under the former Soviet Union.

    “You see, they occupied our nuclear station, six blocks. The biggest in Europe,” Zelensky told ABC “World News Tonight” anchor David Muir in an interview excerpt shared Sunday.

    He then underscored: “It means the biggest danger in Europe. So, they occupied it. So that is — means that they use nuclear weapon. That is [a] nuclear weapon.”

    The Kremlin has claimed late last week a group of Ukrainian commandos tried to storm the plant from the river, but that the assault was repelled. The Russian side has also alleged Ukraine is attempting a ‘false flag’ operation at the plant in order to frame Moscow for some kind of disaster.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/05/2022 – 16:25

  • Big Labor Traps Workers in Unions They Oppose
    Big Labor Traps Workers in Unions They Oppose

    Authored by Mark Mix, op-ed via NewsWeek.com,

    This Labor Day, you may see headlines about a supposed “boom” in union organizing, and while high-profile union campaigns against well-known companies like Starbucks and Amazon have generated buzz, Department of Labor numbers showed unions lost 241,000 members last year.

    Less likely to make headlines is a trend Big Labor’s cheerleaders wish to ignore: the significant increase in efforts by workers seeking to remove long-entrenched unions from their workplaces.

    Employees across the country have submitted a wave of petitions to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), asking the federal agency to schedule votes to remove unpopular unions, a process known as “decertification.”

    In fact, according to the NLRB’s own data on petitions for elections to either install or remove a union, a unionized private-sector worker is more than twice as likely to be involved in a decertification effort as a similar nonunion worker is to be involved in efforts to unionize his or her employer.

    Another recent analysis found decertification petitions to the NLRB have increased by a whopping 42 percent this year. That’s 16 percent higher than the increase in petitions seeking to bring in a union (when counting the Starbucks campaign once, rather than tallying each individual location’s petition).

    When you consider that NLRB policies make it impossible for most workers to hold a decertification effort outside a brief 30-day window once every three years, the jump in decertification efforts looks even starker. There is no similar limitation on when petitions can be filed to trigger unionization votes.

    What we’ve seen here at the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which provides free legal aid to workers, confirms this trend. Foundation staff attorneys have received a record number of requests for legal assistance over the last couple of years from workers seeking help to navigate the NLRB’s maze-like decertification process.

    While you may not have heard about the wave of workers seeking to free themselves of unwanted unions, you can be sure Big Labor and its political allies know exactly what’s going on.

    NEW YORK, NEW YORK – JULY 20: Employees of HarperCollins Publisher participate in a one-day strike outside the publishing houses offices in Manhattan on July 20, 2022 in New York City. The strikers, who work in a variety of departments at the company, have been bargaining for a union contract since December 2021. Salary, a commitment to diversity and union security rights are some of the demands the workers have presented to the company. The union, Local 2110 of the UAW, represents more than 250 HarperCollins employees in the design, editorial legal, marketing, publicity, and sales departments.SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES

    You see, rather than ask why so many workers want to escape union ranks, union bosses and their Biden administration allies are pulling out all the stops to make it even more difficult for hard-working Americans to participate in a decertification election.

    The Biden-backed PRO Act – Big Labor’s top legislative priority – is a laundry list of new power grabs for union organizers. It would wipe out all 27 Right to Work laws that make union dues voluntary.

    Other PRO Act provisions, like mandating “Card Check” recognition that bypasses secret-ballot votes for unionization, and permitting unionization to be forced on gig economy workers, have also made headlines. Yet the bill also includes new statutory prohibitions on decertification elections, including giving union officials the ability to automatically delay any decertification vote through unproven allegations called “blocking charges.”

    But with the PRO Act stalled in the Senate, the Biden NLRB isn’t waiting on Congress to stifle decertification efforts.

    Biden-appointed union activists at the NLRB are seeking to squelch decertification efforts through bureaucratic fiat. This includes reversing the Election Protection Rule, a set of common-sense, if modest, reforms previously adopted by the NLRB that removed multiple Board-invented barriers to worker-backed decertification. One of those reforms that the Biden Board seeks to reverse allowed workers to challenge a union’s installation through Card Check with a private, secret-ballot vote.

    Meanwhile, the former union lawyer who was appointed top prosecutor at the Labor Board has said she intends to overturn the Foundation-won Johnson Controls precedent, which allowed employers to act on workers’ majority petitions and end the union’s “representation” through withdrawal of recognition. Johnson Controls also allowed union officials to seek an automatic secret-ballot vote to try to counter such withdrawal petitions, but few unions have opted for that because they fear private, secret-ballot elections.

    The fact that the NLRB is helping Big Labor strong-arm workers into joining union ranks, and going to such lengths to block workers from escaping, shows just how out of touch the NLRB is in protecting the rights of workers—one of which is the statutory right to decertify.

    Instead of improving the service they provide to attract more workers to voluntarily join union ranks, union bosses are simply doubling down on exercising their coercive government-granted powers to get workers under their control.

    In the short term, rigging the rules might help keep forced union dues flowing, but over the long run it will only further alienate union bosses from the workers they claim to represent. This is not a prescription for satisfied workers on Labor Day.

    *  *  *

    Mark Mix is president of the National Right to Work Committee.

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/05/2022 – 16:00

  • Suicide Blast At Russian Embassy In Kabul Kills 2 Diplomats
    Suicide Blast At Russian Embassy In Kabul Kills 2 Diplomats

    On Monday an unknown militant targeted Russia’s embassy in the Afghan capital of Kabul in a suicide attack, with the Russian Foreign Ministry subsequently confirming two diplomats were killed and multiple people wounded. 

    “At 10:50 am Kabul time on Sept. 5, an unidentified militant set off an explosive device in the immediate vicinity of the entrance to the consular section of the Russian embassy in Kabul,” an official ministry statement said.

    Image via TASS

    “As a result of the attack, two employees of the diplomatic mission were killed, and there are also Afghan citizens among the wounded.”

    Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov condemned the “terrorist act” – which coincidentally came on the heels of the first anniversary of the Taliban takeover of Kabul, and of the deadly events surrounding America’s hasty August 2021 final exit from the country.

    A statement from the Afghan Taliban’s interior ministry suggested the suicide blast and casualties could have been much worse as the bomber may not have fully reached his intended target:

    “It was a suicide attack, but before the bomber could reach his target, he was targeted by our forces and eliminated,” Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Nafy Takor told AFP.

    Asked whether the target was the Russian embassy, Takor said: “Yes.” An Afghan civilian was killed and several others wounded in the attack, he said.

    The attack may have also been targeting Afghan civilians applying for a Russian visa. “The blast went off at the entrance to the embassy’s consular section, where Afghans were waiting for news about their visas, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry and the state news agency RIA Novosti,” The Washington Post details.

    “A Russian diplomat had emerged from the building to call out the names of candidates for visas when the explosion occurred, the agency said,” according to the report.

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    While these kinds of bombings against foreign embassies and international institutions have become more rare since the Taliban takeover (given that in prior years it was often Taliban militants themselves conducting attacks against foreign targets, and many countries have also shuttered their consuls), the anti-Taliban ISIS-K group has remained active in conducting suicide bombings. And at times, rival Talban factions particularly in the south of the country and along the Pakistan border have clashed.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/05/2022 – 15:35

  • "The EU Makes Its Peace With Economic War… And The Global Neoliberal System Is Collapsing Around Us"
    “The EU Makes Its Peace With Economic War… And The Global Neoliberal System Is Collapsing Around Us”

    By Michael Every of Rabobank

    No role for payrolls, or G7 oil-price caps

    For those paying not attention to war or peace, US payrolls coming in largely in line with consensus didn’t move markets much on Friday. Weak factory orders that followed did: but markets would have seized on shoelace futures for any excuse to tell themselves the Fed is going to back off on rate hikes – when it isn’t.

    Then the G7 announced the imposition of an as-yet unspecified December price cap on Russia’s oil exports –and Russia turned off Nord Stream 1 gas flows– and markets tumbled. Stocks and bonds went down – but Brent oil went up before easing off highs.

    The G7 proposal is that they can bring down the cost of energy by using its monopoly on oil tankers and insurance to force Moscow to sell oil at a lower price, choking off its export earnings and war budget to boot. This could work: unless Russia refuses to sell oil to anyone who imposes the price cap, which it will; or Western tankers refuse to comply, or make offshore ship-to-ship transfers; or Western insurers won’t play ball; or India and China start their own insurance schemes; or third parties buy the cheap oil, blend it, and sell it back to world markets at higher prices (and maybe even split the gains with Russia). Meanwhile, thousands of inspectors would be needed to (inefficiently) police it. In short, this G7 scheme plays at a ‘war economy’ rather than doing it for real, “because markets”, and oil prices are more likely to trend higher than lower against such a backdrop.

    That is ironically also the backdrop for the OPEC+ meeting today, which energy markets will be looking to with anticipation: might we see cuts in output.

    Meanwhile, European electricity prices could reportedly hit new highs this week, when the flood of problems already flowing from energy prices is already staggering: 6 out of 10 British manufacturers may go the wall; experts warn of energy rationing that could see Brits told not to cook until after 8pm, pubs close at 9pm, and three-day weeks at schools; aluminium smelters and steel mills are closing; fertilizer companies are shuttering; the Netherlands warns of a plunge in flowers, fruit, and vegetable output, with that of bricks also tumbling; Spanish output of ceramic tiles has halted; and a slew of Italian firms didn’t come back after the summer break. Regardless of gas storage levels for THIS winter, Europe faces an industrial supply-chain collapse – and just as it is has pledged to re-arm to face a worrying geopolitical future.

    The EU makes its peace with economic war

    As such, even though markets are still pricing for local and global commercial activity to continue as before, it is no surprise that the global neo-liberal market system is collapsing around us.

    In the US, Trump-era tariffs on China were just extended; the White House is also considering dramatic restrictions on outward investment to China after its limits on semiconductor sales.

    But that is far from all: after saying it will halt market mechanisms in energy last week, and German rolling out another EUR65bn in price subsidies over the weekend, the EU may be shifting towards a war economy.

    As Reuters puts it: “The EU executive has been looking at how to avoid the supply bottlenecks that accompanied the coronavirus pandemic and no longer wants to rely on companies… to take precautions on their own. The so-called internal market emergency instrument, set to be presented on September 13, lays out several stages that open up varying powers to the Commission depending on the situation.” Via this new instrument the Commission will reportedly seek emergency powers giving it the right to re-organise supply chains; sequester corporate assets; re-write commercial contracts with suppliers and customers; order companies to stockpile strategic reserves; and force them to prioritise EU orders over exports. This is in effect a mirror of the ‘US Defence Production Act’ –  and the current crisis suggests it is likely to be needed soon, and perhaps on a large scale. Colour me unsurprised if so, even if you have to colour markets red.

    2016’s ‘Thin Ice’ showed how rapidly global neoliberalism would unravel based on heterodox economics, which shows neoliberalism’s Achilles’ heels, transition economics, which dissects how planned Soviet economies were turned into market economies, and realpolitik pointing to geopolitical rivalry as the trigger. The combination of the first two has been fabulously instructive, and predictive, in watching post-2008 market economies make the reverse journey, crisis by crisis, into crony socialism for the rich; the last matters too, as lots of people knew the neoliberalism wasn’t working –hence ‘lower for longer’– but couldn’t see how a left-wing policy backlash would happen. The answer was always that once we moved into the realm of national security, such populist policies would happen wrapped in the flag.

    The way to fight economic war

    The same framework can predict what now should logically follow.

    Central bank will keep raising rates rise to deal with inflation – “No Escape From Biggest Bond Loss in Decades as Fed Keeps Hiking,” said Bloomberg this weekend. That said, some will be more willing than others to accept that fact: the Kiwi press, for example, is quoting RBNZ Governor Orr saying, “We’re not there yet, but we’re close,“ on a peak in rates, under the headline “Adrian Orr accepts mortgage rates could fall next year.” Really? Is that how you win an economic war?

    Alongside higher rates, MMT will also need to back state spending in vital areas. Such hypothecated credit will reallocate scarce resources towards supply-chain restructuring and away from the likes of too-much high-end housing. Indeed, the question is when/if we also get non-fungible credit to key firms that can only go into specific physical capital rather than being arbitraged. It might take a central bank digital currency to do it, but it will happen: you don’t win wars with SPVs and spivs.

    MMT will probably also be used to supress energy prices to maintain as much industrial supply as possible, and to minimize household pain. In which case, we will have to see the Commission’s proposed industrial policy too: because if we do not have energy rationing by price, which the Soviets avoided, then we will have it by diktat, as the Soviets then had to do. And note the Soviets only avoided a currency collapse with capital controls and fixed exchange rates.

    We will also require friendshoring or onshoring to recycle capital and keep production in ‘safe’ hands. It’s time for market analysts to stop looking at papers on the benefits of free trade, and to instead read academic papers from other disciplines, such as ‘Wartime Commercial Policy and Trade between Enemies’ (Grinberg, 2021), which assesses how trade works during wars. Grinberg shows there are rare examples of countries selling weapons to their enemies: in the Siege of Grave, the French commander was ordered to sell gunpowder to the Dutch forces besieging his town. There is evidence for business-as-usual non-military trade despite bloodshed in smaller wars: during the Crimean War (1853-56), flax, hemp, linseed, and tallow trade continued between the UK and Russia given no alternative buyers or sellers. Even early in WW1, UK-German trade-flows were so large that they were allowed to continue either directly or via third parties.

    However, the key conclusion is the more a war is seen as existential and/or long term, the more trade is disrupted, whatever the costs – and business lobbying has little effect on such national security decisions.

    It’s existential to get this call right

    It goes without saying this war is existential for Ukraine; and Russia says it is for it too. The above hypothesis suggests the Commission’s latest policy proposals say the war is also existential and/or long-term for Europe. By contrast, the G7’s laughable oil-price cap says Ukraine is a far less important, shorter term struggle. Either that, or it reflects the ‘Crimean’ reality that there is no alternative oil seller or buyer. In which case, no, not just back to “because markets”…. the Commission’s proposals for rationing by diktat and industrial policy are going to be needed even more, as shown above.

    The alternative policy call stemming from the populist right and left –even from heterodox voices who predicted this neoliberal collapse, such as the brilliant Steve ‘MMT’ Keen– is to say ‘give Putin Ukraine to get cheap gas’. However, this is a simplistic “because not markets” view which fails to see the logical and historical risks that a Western retreat could open the door for more, and more global, war; for more, and more global weaponization of commodities and trade; and, though nobody in the West will publicly admit it, for a huge tail risk to the living standards it (fairly or unfairly) enjoys.

    In short, this war clearly remains both existential and long-term: and Grinberg’s hypothesis, and my own ‘Thin Ice’ framework, say commercial activity will shift accordingly. Indeed, if the Commission crosses the looming policy Rubicon, the EU may not be able to go back to ‘normal’ until its economy has been restructured defensively – literally so; and until geopolitical risks have been resolved by said defensive actions; and that might take years, or even *decades*.

    Markets will have to make their peace with the reality of economic war: more state controls on what you can and can’t do; rationing by price or by diktat; MMT; perhaps non-fungible credit; higher structural inflation; higher interest rates; mercantilism in ideological blocs; and a broad reversal of globalisation’s trend of higher asset prices and lower goods prices.

    You have not seen what Ga-Liz-riel has seen

    Against this backdrop, Ga-Liz-riel Truss is likely to be selected as the new UK PM today and assume office tomorrow – to face perhaps 20% inflation, strikes, recession, shortages, blackouts, ‘economic’ war with Russia, and possible trade war with the EU over Northern Ireland.

    Her philosophy of “geoliberalism” makes her a foreign policy leader in shining armor with blade out for Russia and China. Yet her Brexit self-confidence may also see her dive into the sea to swim away from allies in Europe and the West, ending up on a raft. Further, while absolutely cognizant of the ongoing economic war, having called for the G7 to become an “economic NATO”, and backing a new global “Network of Liberty”, her domestic policy is hard to reconcile with it.

    Truss is adamantly backing tax cuts for high earners and businesses, despite all the evidence that this is the worst possible way to run MMT or boost the supply-side; and she may also introduce Covid-scale price subsidies to keep energy lower. If so, that is a belt and braces, and sword and shield and plate-mail armour, approach that will artificially suppress supply shocks while juicing demand, and yet doing nothing to restructure supply chains defensively, or to reallocate physically scarce resources. Nobody wins an economic war that way.

    Apparently, however, we should all expect confident Ga-Liz-riel statements that: “You have not seen what I have seen.” Like the 1970’s collapse in Sterling, where the IMF had to be called in?

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/05/2022 – 15:10

  • Russia Sanctions Ben Stiller & Sean Penn In New Blacklist Of 25 Americans
    Russia Sanctions Ben Stiller & Sean Penn In New Blacklist Of 25 Americans

    Russia announced Monday that it has blacklisted American actors over their activities in support of the Ukrainian government, also as retaliation for recent anti-Kremlin US sanctions. In total 25 US citizens, including senators and analysts at think tanks, are on the updated list.

    The list of those now banned from entering Russia “on a permanent basis” – according a Russian foreign ministry statement – includes Ben Stiller and Sean Penn, both of which met with President Volodymyr Zelensky in June. 

    Image via Twitter/@BenStiller/Kyiv Post

    A foreign ministry statement said the fresh action is in response to the “ever-expanding” US sanctions “against Russian citizens”. At this point, an estimated more than one thousand American nationals have been barred from entering Russia. 

    “As a measure in response to the ever-expanding personal sanctions on Russian citizens by [the US President] Joe Biden’s administration a permanent ban to enter the Russian Federation has been imposed on another group of US Congress members, high-ranking officials, members of the business and expert community and cultural figures (25 people),” the statement reads.

    “The hostile actions of US authorities, which continue to follow a Russophobic course, destroying bilateral ties and escalating confrontation between Russia and the United States, will continue to be resolutely rebuffed,” the ministry said.

    In late June Stiller traveled to Ukraine to meet with Zelensky, declaring the president “my hero”:

    “It’s a great honor for me.. you’re my hero!” said Stiller, a UN goodwill ambassador who met the Ukrainian leader on World Refugee Day.

    “What you’ve done, the way that you’ve rallied the country, the world, it’s really inspiring,” said the 56-year-old American comedian referring to Zelensky’s countless speeches to audiences around the world to rally support for his embattled country.

    Zelensky’s office released video of the meeting with the Hollywood star…

    As for Sean Penn, he was actually in Ukraine working on a documentary at the moment Russia invaded on Feb. 24.

    Ukraine subsequently bestowed top state awards to both Stiller and Penn “for support, upholding freedom and independence of Ukraine” – which they’ve continued to do in public statements and on social media.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/05/2022 – 14:45

  • Country Singer Jason Aldean Dropped By Longtime PR Firm Over Wife's Gender Comments
    Country Singer Jason Aldean Dropped By Longtime PR Firm Over Wife’s Gender Comments

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Country singer Jason Aldean has been dropped by his longtime PR firm, GreenRoom PR, after his wife, Brittany Aldean, criticized early interventions on gender transitioning for young children.

    Brittany Aldean said that she was thankful that her parents did not intervene during her “tomboy phase” because she loves being a female. Various stars and advocates denounced her and GreenRoom then dropped her husband. What is interesting is that the company had its client list displayed yesterday but just removed the list and its home page. The effort may be to protect other country stars from the backlash of staying with the company when it is effectively blacklisting an artist for the political or social views of his spouse.

    Tyne Parrish, the co-owner of The Green Room called it a “difficult decision after 17 years to step away from representing Jason.”

    The call for the firm to drop the artist grew after this statement last week in an Instagram post by Aldrean that she would “really like to thank my parents for not changing my gender when I went through my tomboy phase.”

    “The Bones” singer Maren Morris later commented on Pope’s post, writing, “It’s so easy to, like, not be a scumbag human? Sell your clip-ins and zip it, Insurrection Barbie.”

    Aldrean later responded to her critics by saying “Advocating for the genital mutilation of children under the disguise of love and calling it ‘gender affirming care’ is one of the worst evils.”

    Singer and songwriter Cassadee Pope responded to Brittany Aldean’s post on Twitter, noting that Brittany Aldean’s alleged “tomboy phase” in no way compares “to someone wanting to transition.”

    Pope captured the essence of any people are angry with the comment.

    However, my concern, as usual, is with the free speech implications of what has become a type of blacklisting culture for those with unpopular or controversial political, social, or religious views. I understand the objections to Aldean’s comments but the response is reminiscent of the campaign against JK Rowling as a TERF (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist), including banning and burning her books. There is no willingness to separate her creative work from her personal views.

    In this case, a singer is being blacklisted because his wife (and possibly Aldean himself) hold conservative views on gender transitioning for young children. Yet, while some artists have joined the campaign, most others are silent, including the country singers represented by Green Room PR.

    Those listed artists included Lauren Akins, Tucker Beathard, Dierks Bentley, Bobby Bones, BROOKS & DUNN, Travis Denning, Patrict Droney, Caylee Hammack, and others. The home page now says simply “Contact: news@thegreenroompr.com” if you want to know who the firm represents or anything about the firm.

    The concern is clearly that these artists might make the “difficult decision” of separating from the firm after it dropped a fellow artist over the political and social views of his spouse.  The firm yielded to the pressure on one side but seems to be moving to protect itself from a backlash from country music fans.

    I would be raising the same free speech concerns if an artist was dropped because a spouse supported gender transitioning. The issue is whether the arts community should impose a de facto political litmus test for artists.  Blacklisting by studios and firms was common in the 1950s when communists and other political dissenters were being attacked by figures like Eugene McCarthy. The left has now embraced the practice in a far more extensive systems of banning books, speakers, and events by those who hold opposing views.

    Here is Aldean’s interview on Fox News:

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/05/2022 – 14:20

  • China Slashes FX Deposit Requirement To Prop Up Yuan… But Only Delays The Inevitable
    China Slashes FX Deposit Requirement To Prop Up Yuan… But Only Delays The Inevitable

    With the yuan in freefall, on Monday morning China announced it will cut the reserve requirement ratio on FX deposits by 2% from 8% to 6%, effective September 15th, in a move aimed to stem its currency’s fall. This announcement came after more than 3% depreciation of the USDCNY since mid-August on the back of a stronger USD. This was China’s second FX RRR cut this year – on 25 April, PBOC cut the RRR on FX deposits by 1% from 9% to 8% after CNY depreciated by almost 3% against the USD in one week.

    According to Goldman, this cut should help increase FX liquidity onshore, easing FX appreciation (i.e., CNY depreciation) pressures as a result. And while the actual liquidity impact from this cut looks modest by Goldman’s estimates – onshore FX deposits stood at $674BN as of July 2022, so a 2% cut implies $13BN liquidity release – this cut serves as a strong policy signal that the PBOC is uncomfortable with the rapid depreciation of the currency especially ahead of the 20th Party Congress in October; sure enough the USDCNH appreciated slightly immediately after this announcement.

    Indeed, as Goldman’s Maggie Wei writes, the countercyclical factor (CCF) in the daily fixing also implies strengthening bias by the PBOC in recent days.

    The bank found a similar pattern ahead of the previous 19th National Party Congress in October 2017, when policymakers leaned against CNY depreciation through more negative CCF ahead of the Congress, though policy signals were less obvious going into the Congress in 2017.

    Looking forward, Goldman expects USD strength to continue in the near term, and local Covid outbreaks and property weakness to continue to drag on activity growth in China. As such, the bank expects USDCNY to depreciate to 7.0 over a 3-month horizon. After the 20th Party Congress, Wei adds that “policymakers might also have higher tolerance for CNY weakness” –  during a press conference this afternoon (September 5th), PBOC deputy governor Liu Guoqiang stated the exchange rate has been more flexible and acting as the automatic stabilizer of both the macroeconomy and the global balance of payments. He added that the exchange rate should demonstrate two-way fluctuations, and not necessarily stick to any fixed number. Goldman agrees, and thinks the PBOC might have tolerance for further CNY depreciation against the USD, especially as the broad USD continues to strengthen, though they might want to avoid continued and too fast one-way depreciation if possible.

    Bloomberg’s Simon White agrees and writes that “the forces causing the yuan to decline are structural, and there is a mounting likelihood that China may eventually drop the fixed-exchange rate regime altogether.”

    As White adds, Beijing’s FX RRR cut “is unlikely to be enough to countervail the structural problems in China putting pressure on the nominally-closed capital account. China’s response to the economic impact of lockdowns has been to aim stimulus at the predominantly export-facing SOE sector. The result has been a surge of almost $0.5 trillion in China’s trade surplus since 2020.”

    Indeed, a look at the underlying drivers of the surplus gets to the heart of China’s main problem: the surplus grew not just due to a surge in exports, but a stagnation in imports. Stimulus in China comes at a cost to the household sector, a net importer. In a sign of the poor sentiment and pessimism in the household sector — driven by financial repression, lockdowns and collapses in property prices — new CNY loan growth for households has fallen to at least 13-year lows.

    The bottom line, according to the Bloomberg commentator, is that China’s growth model is broken, as the loss in demand from the household sector is greater than any gain from the export sector, leading to lower growth overall, and thus greater pressure on the capital account. This is enough to push the yuan lower, but China also faces a mounting risk from its heavy debt load.  China has had the largest rise in private debt levels since 2010, and its debt-service ratio is through the danger level of 20%.

    And while high debt when growth is strong and rising is manageable, it becomes much less so when growth is falling.

    There are several levers China can pull to alleviate the growth impact from increased capital flight. One of these is allowing the yuan to weaken. But if the pain becomes too much, White believes that China may choose to abandon its fixed-rate regime altogether, which would have many profound (and dire for the status quo) implications, including for EM monetary policy and global supply chains.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 09/05/2022 – 13:55

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