Today’s News 8th January 2025

• The Second Matrix: From Propaganda To Programming
  The Second Matrix: From Propaganda To Programming

  Authored by Josh Stylman via substack,

  Beyond The First Veil

  In ‘Reading Between the Lies,’ we explored how to recognize patterns of institutional deception—the carefully crafted narratives that keep humanity trapped in a matrix of perceptions.

  Theodore Dalrymple identified how this first matrix of control operates in totalitarian regimes: “In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.”

  This principle of forced participation hasn’t disappeared – it has evolved. Today’s system doesn’t merely demand silence but active complicity in its narratives, weaponizing resistance itself as a means of influence. Watching trusted voices expose real corruption, only to redirect into managed solutions, reveals an even deeper pattern: The system doesn’t just create propaganda – it creates contained paths for those who see through propaganda. Breaking free from mainstream programming is only the first step. What follows is both subtler and just as disturbing. Untethering from institutional narratives creates an immediate vulnerability—the need for new answers, new leaders, new direction. Those who steer the first matrix wouldn’t leave the off-ramps unsupervised.

  This illuminates the deeper mechanics of the second matrix: capturing awakening through sophisticated channels of inauthentic opposition.

  

  The Mechanics of Controlled Opposition

  The pattern becomes clear when we examine how systemic criticism is managed: Those who expose corruption are permitted to speak, but only within careful boundaries. Take banking for instance – even those who reveal central banking’s predatory nature rarely demand abolition. The 2008 crisis pushed financial fraud into mainstream awareness through popular exposés like ‘The Big Short.’ Yet understanding bred only mistrust – no accountability, just bailouts for perpetrators and a more fragile system for everyone else. Like any sophisticated confidence game, it works in stages: first gain trust through real revelations, then build dependency through exclusive “insider” knowledge, finally redirect that trust toward constrained outcomes. Watch how alternative media platforms follow this pattern: expose genuine corruption, build devoted following, then subtly shift narrative focus away from systemic accountability. Each revelation seems to lead deeper into a labyrinth of coordinated awakening. Note: I’m deliberately avoiding naming specific targets – this analysis isn’t about creating new heroes or villains, but recognizing patterns that transcend individuals.

  What makes this model so effective is that the same institutions that transformed money from gold to paper also convert genuine resistance into managed opposition. As I wrote in ‘Fiat Everything,’ just as synthetic currency replaces real value, fiat opposition movements offer synthetic versions of independent awakening – containing just enough truth to feel real while keeping opposition within safe boundaries.

  Understanding these patterns of controlled opposition can feel overwhelming. Each revelation seems to lead to another layer of deception. It’s like discovering you’re in a maze only to realize there are mazes within mazes. Some get lost documenting every turn – debating financial system minutiae, arguing over medical protocols, dissecting geopolitical chess moves. Or in ‘conspiracy circles’ – was the virus isolated? How did the Towers really go down? What’s really on Antarctica? While these questions matter, getting stuck in endless maze-mapping misses the point entirely. Healthy debate and disagreement are natural – and even healthy – in truth-seeking movements – but when these debates consume all energy and attention, they prevent effective action toward core goals.

  The Research Journey

  For the last few years, I’ve been deeply immersed in uncovering the mechanisms of control—not as an abstract exercise, but alongside a team that includes some of my closest friends, following trails that seemed to lead to truth. The revelations have been staggering – fundamental ‘facts’ we grew up accepting have been exposed as complete fabrications. We’ve been humbled twice over – first in unlearning what we thought we knew, then in discovering our own certainties about new paths were wrong. Paths that appeared revolutionary led to sophisticated dead ends. Communities that felt authentic revealed themselves as engineered channels.

  The hardest truth isn’t just recognizing deception – it’s accepting that we might never know the full story while still needing to act on what we can verify. What began as research into specific deceptions revealed something far more profound: While devastating physical wars rage in multiple regions, a deeper conflict unfolds silently across the planet – a war for the freedom of human consciousness itself. This is what World War III looks like – not just bombs and bullets, but the systematic engineering of human perception.

  This pattern of building trust before redirection reflects a deeper system of control, operating on the ancient alchemical principle of Solve et Coagula – first dissolve (break apart), then coagulate (reform under control). The process is precise: When people begin recognizing institutional deception, natural coalitions form across traditional divides. Workers unite against central bank policies. Parents organize against pharmaceutical mandates. Communities resist corporate land grabs.

  But watch what happens next – these unified movements get systematically dissolved. Consider how quickly unified resistance fractured after October 7th, how the trucker protests dissolved into partisan narratives. Each fragment splinters further – from questioning authority to competing theories, from united action to tribal infighting.

  This isn’t random fragmentation, it’s calculated dissolution. Once broken apart, these fragments can be reformed (coagulated) into controlled dialectical channels, as people revert to prior programming about issues that supersede their unity.

  Watch how the confidence game operates in truth movements: First comes legitimate revelation – real documents, genuine whistleblowers, undeniable evidence. Trust builds through authentic insight. Then subtle redirection begins. Just as they slice society into ever-smaller fragments along political, racial, and cultural lines, they splinter truth movements into competing camps. Unity becomes division. Action becomes debate. Resistance becomes content.

  This systematic fragmentation of awakening movements reflects a deeper historical pattern – one that traces the evolution of mass perception control from crude propaganda to sophisticated biodigital manipulation.

  From Propaganda to Programming

  The first matrix shaped thoughts through direct programming. The path from Bernays to biodigital oversight follows a clear progression: first manipulate mass psychology, then digitize behavior, finally merge with biology itself. Each phase builds on the previous – from studying human nature, to tracking it, to directly engineering it. From Bernays discovering how to manipulate mass psychology through unconscious desires, to Tavistock refining social engineering, to algorithmic behavior modification – each phase brings more sophisticated tools for reality manipulation. Digital technology accelerated this evolution: social media algorithms perfect attention capture, smartphones enable constant behavioral monitoring, AI systems predict and shape responses.

  Now, as these digital tools merge with biological interventions – from mood-altering pharmaceuticals to brain-computer interfaces – they approach complete governance over human perception itself. What began with crude propaganda evolved into precise digital manipulation of attention and behavior. The second matrix creates approved channels for those who break free – an engineered ecosystem of controlled alternatives. Just as coordinated media narratives trained the professional class to outsource their thinking to ‘authoritative sources,’ the biodigital matrix now offers to outsource their sensibility itself – promising enhanced cognition while delivering deeper programming. This represents the latest evolution in perception management: At first, they simply denied conspiracies existed. When that became impossible due to undeniable evidence, they created orchestrated channels for awakening minds to follow.

  The OJ Simpson trial marked a crucial shift in this strategy – it trained society to process serious investigations as entertainment spectacle. As Marshall McLuhan famously observed, ‘the medium is the message’ – the format of spectacular media entertainment itself reshapes how we process truth, regardless of content. What began as legitimate questions about police corruption and institutional bias became a ratings-driven soap opera. The same pattern continues today – Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes become Netflix entertainment while his clients remain free, and the alleged Mangione shooting spawns multiple streaming productions within days of the event, even before the investigation concludes. The Las Vegas and New Orleans incidents last week offer a stark demonstration: within hours, potentially disruptive events are channeled into competing narratives, while the entertainment apparatus stands ready to transform any serious investigation into consumable content.

  Real revelations about trafficking networks and institutional crime have become binge-worthy content. Whistleblowers become influencers. Declassified documents become TikTok trends. With limited attention spans and infinite content, truth-seeking becomes another form of consumption that pacifies rather than empowers. Watch how enough time passes and ‘conspiracy theories’ become limited hangouts – JFK’s death gets attributed to ‘the mob,’ a convenient decoy from the institutional forces behind it. Similar patterns emerge with 9/11 revelations.

  Here’s my position – extreme as it may seem to my friends still steeped in conventional narratives: we have to consider the possibility that the power structure controls both sides of most major debates. Every mainstream narrative has its approved opposition. Every awakening gets its sanctioned leaders. Every revelation leads to administered channels. Understanding this pattern could lead to paralysis – but it shouldn’t. Instead, it means recognizing we need new ways of thinking and organizing entirely.

  As researcher Whitney Webb observed on X the other day:

  

  Only the designated enemy changes – the push for greater surveillance and oversight remains constant. Each ‘side’ gets its turn feeding fear to its base while the same institutions expand their power.

  Nixon opens China. Clinton pushed NAFTA. Trump accelerates Operation Warp Speed. I’m observing a pattern here – not alleging conspiracy, but noting how political figures often act contrary to their public personas: Nixon, the anti-communist, opens the door to China; Clinton, who campaigned on protecting American workers, pushes through the biggest free trade agreement; Trump, the populist outsider, advances Big Pharma’s agenda. Whether through institutional pressures, political realities, or other forces, these contradictions reveal a sophisticated pattern: the system scripts both sides of major political transformations, ensuring controlled outcomes regardless of who appears to hold power. Many of these figures may themselves be responding to forces they barely understand – useful or manipulated actors rather than conscious orchestrators.

  This dynamic isn’t limited to politicians. Consider Twitter/X, which has spent the last couple of years branding itself as a bastion of free speech while just this week introducing algorithms to amplify ‘positivity.’ Framed as promoting constructive dialogue, it mirrors the same subjective moderation policies once criticized as censorship.

  This pattern of controlled opposition extends through every level of awakening movements. Consider how many of my friends still caught in the first matrix dismiss QAnon followers as complete fools, mocking them as cartoon characters while ignoring the documented institutional corruption the movement has exposed. What they don’t understand is that beneath the theatrical elements lie significant evidence of systemic criminality. I remain open-minded about examining these claims – after all, pattern recognition requires considering evidence without prejudice. But the movement’s core message of ‘trust the plan’ reveals how awakening gets redirected. It transforms active resistance into passive spectatorship, waiting for hidden ‘white hats’ to save them instead of taking meaningful action.

  This is where I draw the line. I can’t outsource my family’s wellbeing to unknown entities or secret plans. This requires constant vigilance – alert to both obvious threats and subtle misdirection. The most dangerous aspect of managed opposition isn’t the information it shares, but how it teaches learned helplessness disguised as hope.

  The Capture of Authentic Movements

  Each new theory and movement adds another layer of complexity, drawing seekers further from meaningful action. The 1960s counterculture went from questioning war and authority to ‘tune in, drop out’ passivity. By the 1980s, former hippies became yuppies, their revolutionary awareness neatly channeled into consumer capitalism. Even today, the anti-war movement shows this pattern – one political side opposes war in Ukraine while supporting it in Gaza, the other reverses these positions. Each side claims to be anti-war when it’s not their preferred conflict. Occupy Wall Street followed the same pattern: beginning with potent exposure of financial corruption, it fragmented into competing social justice causes that left the banking system untouched.

  

  The seduction lies in the truth content. Environmental movements expose corporate pollution but push carbon credits and individual guilt. Social justice movements expose real inequities but redirect into corporate DEI programs. The organic food revolution began as resistance to industrial agriculture but became a premium product category – redirecting real concerns into boutique shopping choices. Each movement contains enough truth to attract awakened minds while setting careful guardrails on acceptable solutions – identifying real problems but advocating solutions that expand institutional power.

  This pattern repeats at every level. Throughout history, power structures have understood the principle of supplying controlled leadership to emerging movements. This pattern continues today across every awakening movement.

  The template is consistent:

  • A politician “bravely” questions vaccines while taking pharma money

  • A pundit “exposes” deep state corruption while defending intelligence agencies

  • A celebrity “fights cancel culture” while pushing digital passports

  • A financial guru “warns” about banking collapse while selling CBDCs

  These patterns of redirection play out vividly today. The medical freedom movement demonstrates this dynamic: Valid concerns about vaccine injuries risk getting redirected into competing theories and circular debates, while accountability remains elusive. The recent MAHA controversy shows shows how even valid food sovereignty concerns can potentially redirect focus from this urgent crisis of vaccine injuries and accountability.

  The crypto world illustrates this pattern: Valid criticism of central banking transforms into tribal warfare between token communities. Each claims exclusive truth while potentially extending the system’s reach. Even reasonable debates about monetary solutions become religious devotion to competing coins. Meanwhile, the original promise of Bitcoin – the first cryptocurrency and its vision of financial autonomy – risks getting co-opted, as blockchain technology is repurposed for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), digital IDs, and automated compliance. The very tools meant to free us from banking surveillance are being repurposed to perfect it. But the fusion of financial control with digital identity creates something far more insidious – a system that can enforce social compliance through access to basic resources, monitor thoughts through transaction patterns, and ultimately merge with our biological existence itself. This architecture isn’t just about controlling money – it’s about programming minds.

  The Biodigital Convergence: Engineering Human Reality

  The fusion of digital and biological control isn’t just changing how we interact – it’s redesigning human perception itself. As social connections move increasingly online, authentic human awareness is being systematically replaced with engineered experiences. Beyond attention hijacking and emotional manipulation, the deepest cost hits us where it hurts most – in our human connections. Every day we see people together physically but separated by screens, missing moments of genuine connection while scrolling through manufactured realities. This artificial construct is set to deepen further – Meta has announced plans to populate Facebook feeds with AI-generated content and bot interactions by 2025, raising questions about authentic human connection on these platforms.

  Big Pharma brought the ability to chemically alter cognizance; Big Tech perfected the ability to digitally direct attention and shape behavior. Their merger isn’t about market share – it’s about complete spectrum dominance over human cognition itself. The same companies that pushed pills to numb a generation now partner with platforms that addict us to digital stimulation. The corporations that profited from ADHD medication collaborate with social media giants that deliberately engineer attention deficit. The entities that marketed antidepressants join forces with algorithm makers who scientifically manipulate emotional responses.

  As Whitney Webb observed about the shifting enemy narrative from ‘Russians’ to ‘Islamists,’ the designated threat changes while surveillance expansion remains constant. The digital ID agenda follows this pattern: while the World Economic Forum presents it as humanitarian aid for financial inclusion, it builds the architecture for comprehensive behavioral monitoring and oversight. Each crisis – whether health, security, or financial – adds new requirements that merge identity, banking, health records, and social tracking into a single unified system. What begins as voluntary participation inevitably becomes mandatory as digital surveillance extends into monitoring and shaping human behavior itself – the perfect staging ground for Central Bank Digital Currency.

  This surveillance architecture represents the merging of two foundational pillars. What began with chemical alterations of mood and thought, then evolved into digital manipulation of attention and behavior, is now fusing into a single architecture for human experiential management. Watch how mental health apps collect behavioral data while promoting medication. Social credit scoring merges with health tracking. The same companies developing digital identity systems partner with pharmaceutical giants. This isn’t future speculation – it’s happening now. While we debate the ethics of AI, they’re quietly building the infrastructure to merge human cognition with digital systems. The transhumanist promise of enhanced awareness through technology masks a darker reality – each integration diminishes natural human perception, replacing genuine consciousness with an engineered simulation. This technological colonization of the human brain seeks to sever our connection to natural awareness and spiritual sovereignty.

  In one of his later lectures, Aldous Huxley, the renowned author of ‘Brave New World,’ offered a chilling prediction about the future of social control: “There will be in the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it.”

  We’re at a crucial juncture where technological capture of human consciousness is becoming irreversible. Each new generation is born into deeper digital integration, their baseline reality increasingly synthetic. But recognizing this pattern reveals both the threat and its weakness. While they perfect technological tools for control, they can’t fully replicate the power of direct human connection. Every instance of genuine interaction, every moment of unmediated presence, demonstrates what their system can’t capture. The answer isn’t just seeing through lies – it’s creating spaces of human connection that exist outside their control architecture. What makes this moment unprecedented isn’t just the sophistication of control, but its method of implementation – not through force, but through seduction and convenience. Each convenience we embrace, each digital enhancement we accept, brings us closer to their vision of managed awareness.

  Liberating Consciousness, Reclaiming Connection

  Understanding these mechanisms doesn’t mean rejecting technology or retreating into paranoid isolation – it means recognizing that real power begins with autonomy, and learning to engage with modernity on our own terms.

  The battle for our minds requires both awareness and authentic action. While they attempt to engineer behavior through chemicals and algorithms, our power lies first in liberating ourselves, then extending through direct human connection.

  Their endgame – absolute mastery over human perception and cognition – reveals a fundamental weakness: they cannot fully contain liberated minds and authentic human relationships that exist outside their mediated channels. This comprehensive system requires managed opposition at every level, steering us away from genuine awakening and direct engagement.

  The crucial insight is this: The opposite of globalism isn’t nationalism or political movements – it’s individual liberty expressed through local action. Real awakening can’t be programmed or scheduled. It emerges through clear recognition and spreads through genuine connection. When intellectuals at think tanks like Brownstone Institute found common cause with firefighters, the system recognized a dangerous precedent. Unity across traditional societal divides – between intellectuals, professionals, and working people – demonstrates how truly free people can bridge manufactured divisions. While digital networks can facilitate organization, true power manifests in physical community.

  Speaking from experience, these digital networks have been invaluable in my journey – I’ve found kindred spirits, shared insights, and built lasting friendships through online communities. These connections have helped me understand patterns I might never have seen alone. But information sharing is just the first step. The real transformation happens when we take these shared insights off the screen and into our communities, turning digital connections into flesh-and-blood relationships and shared local action.

  This means:

  • Freeing our minds while they push programmed thinking (creating local learning circles to counter their digital-pharmaceutical engineering of thought)

  • Building connections while maintaining individual agency (establishing real communities to resist their social credit systems)

  • Taking action without waiting for consensus (bypassing their arranged opposition channels)

  • Growing food while they push synthetic alternatives (maintaining biological autonomy as they push lab-created dependencies)

  • Building community while they sell digital tribes (creating genuine connection as antidote to technological isolation)

  • Healing ourselves while they market dependencies (developing natural resilience against their biodigital convergence)

  The most powerful truth isn’t a revelation – it’s the recognition that consciousness can transcend their constructed boundaries entirely. The way out requires stepping beyond their endless distractions and reclaiming grounded, authentic action. Their biodigital convergence can only capture souls that follow their prescribed paths. Our essence was never truly bound by their walls.

  ​​Stay vigilant. Question everything. Free your mind and act with intention. The revolution begins with sovereign spirits and grows through genuine connection. Build where they destroy. Create while they deceive. Connect while they divide. The way out of their matrix is with eyes wide open and feet planted firmly in local soil.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 23:25

• Biden Mulls Prisoner Swap With Taliban Involving 'Last Afghan In Guantanamo' 
  Biden Mulls Prisoner Swap With Taliban Involving ‘Last Afghan In Guantanamo’ 

  Less than two weeks to go in his lame-duck presidency before Trump takes office, and President Biden is pursuing the controversial move of emptying out Gitmo further. On Monday the Pentagon confirmed it released 11 Yemeni detainees with suspected ties to al Qaeda from the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, after which they are set to begin new lives in Oman, as we detailed earlier. This has shrunk the population of the facility to 15 men.

  None of the detainees have ever been charged with a crime, despite having been in the high-secure military facility for a couple decades or more. The Biden administration has long sought to move forward Obama’s stated goal of seeking to permanently shutdown the notorious facility where torture has been alleged and documented.

  On Tuesday another major potential released has been revealed: the White House is now negotiating with the Taliban which could end in the release of a high-profile prisoner long alleged to have been a close Osama bin Laden associate. Muhammad Rahim al Afghani has long been deemed “the Last Afghan in Guantanamo”.

  

  The Wall Street Journal reports that the Democratic administration “has been discussing a deal with the Taliban since at least July, told the group on Nov. 14 that the U.S. would release Muhammad Rahim al Afghani, who the U.S. government alleges was a senior al Qaeda aide, if the Afghan rulers released George Glezmann, Ryan Corbett and Mahmoud Habibi, American citizens seized in Afghanistan in 2022.”

  Rahim, if the swap goes through, could be freed alongside two others prisoners the Taliban is seeking in exchange for Americans Glezmann and Corbett. However, things are already complicated as the Taliban denies that it is holding Habibi.

  The potential deal has apparently been in the works for several weeks at this point, given national security adviser Jake Sullivan briefed House Foreign Affairs Committee members in a classified session on Dec.17. The WSJ has cited him as saying that no decision has yet been made.

  If Biden goes through with it, he’ll be hammered by Trump and Republicans, and it will also revive criticisms of the botched Afghan withdrawal which ended in the deaths of many American troops as well as Afghan civilians:

  The Taliban’s offer poses a dilemma for Biden. He has prided himself on securing the release of American hostages around the world, bringing home more than 70 people over the past four years. But handing over Rahim, long seen by the U.S. government as a high-profile prisoner, and potentially other Afghan prisoners held in U.S. custody might spark criticism.

  NEWS

  Frustrated With White House, Family of Detained American Reaches Out to Taliban

  The family of George Glezmann, feeling like it is running out of options, has informed the White House it would negotiate directly with the Taliban to try to secure the American hostage’s… pic.twitter.com/hw5NZikQeY

  — Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) September 2, 2024

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

  But at the same time, Gitmo seems to belong to another era—the ‘Global War on Terror/GWOT’ Bush era of CIA black sites, extraordinary rendition, and the ability of military prosecutors to lock people up for decades without so much as a formal charge.

  Ironically the terror situation globally is arguably far worse than it was when Rahim and other AQ operatives were initially apprehended on central Asian battlefields and locked up, thanks to Washington itself.

  In 2015 the CIA directly helped a coalition of jihadists which make the Gitmo guys look like ‘moderates’ take Idlib province from Assad. These same NATO/Gulf-backed Idlib terrorists now hold all of Syria in the wake of Assad’s overthrow, and the Biden administration has positively celebrated it.

  The real scandal…

  

  The U.S. State Dept.’s own numbers: read the full report HERE at STATE.GOV

  Yet Fox-style conservatives are now going to boil with rage over Biden “selling out America” by freeing Gitmo prisoners, but all the while the same ‘Fox-Cons’ will barely bat an eye over the ISIS-style terrorists now controlling Damascus. The mainstay of the Republican party has also been completely silent over America having armed Sunni hardline jihadists from Libya to Syria for more than the past decade, more content to make a national scandal over who gets released from Gitmo – all the while also dutifully ignoring the obvious Saudi state connections to 9/11.

  And then there’s also the fact that the jihadists of central Asia, including the Taliban itself, were trained and supported by the CIA and allied intelligence services throughout the 1980s as part of the Afghan-Soviet war. The US deep state doesn’t like when average Americans actually dig in to history, where they discover that there are few terrorists or foreign dictators that Washington didn’t initially create or at least support at some point.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 23:00

• How To Survive "The Great Taking" In 2025
  How To Survive “The Great Taking” In 2025

  Authored by Nick Giambruno via InternationalMan.com,

  It’s a “scheme of central bankers to subjugate humanity by taking all securities, bank deposits, and property financed with debt.”

  

  David Webb, a former hedge fund manager, and Wall Street insider, has blown the lid off a diabolical plan more than 50 years in the making in a shocking new book.

  He calls it The Great Taking.

  I consider it an urgent must-read (available for free here).

  Here’s the synopsis (emphasis mine):

  It is about the taking of collateral (all of it), the end game of the current globally synchronous debt accumulation super cycle.

  This scheme is being executed by long-planned, intelligent design, the audacity and scope of which is difficult for the mind to encompass.

  Included are all financial assets and bank deposits, all stocks and bonds; and hence, all underlying property of all public corporations, including all inventories, plant and equipment; land, mineral deposits, inventions and intellectual property.

  Privately owned personal and real property financed with any amount of debt will likewise be taken, as will the assets of privately owned businesses which have been financed with debt.

  If even partially successful, this will be the greatest conquest and subjugation in world history.

  Private, closely held control of ALL central banks, and hence of all money creation, has allowed a very few people to control all political parties and governments; the intelligence agencies and their myriad front organizations; the armed forces and the police; the major corporations and, of course, the media. These very few people are the prime movers. Their plans are executed over decades. Their control is opaque.

  To be clear, it is these very few people, who are hidden from you, who are behind this scheme to confiscate all assets, who are waging a hybrid war against humanity.

  Webb shows how the dark forces behind central banking have spent the last 50 years meticulously putting the legal structures in place worldwide to sever property rights for securities.

  Gone are the days of physical paper share certificates and bearer securities, where you had control and ownership of the asset.

  Today, your control and ownership have become increasingly distant as stocks, bonds, and other investments have been centralized away from account holders and rehypothecated—a slimy practice where financial institutions reuse an account holder’s asset for their own purposes, creating multiple claims on the same asset.

  Contrary to what most brokerage account holders believe, they only have the appearance of ownership. If their broker goes bust, the stocks and bonds they think they own will be used to satisfy the other more senior creditors of their broker.

  Webb shows how, during the 2008 financial crisis, a small broker in Florida went bankrupt.

  Instead of sending the clients’ securities to another broker, as had traditionally been the case, they were swept up by the bankruptcy receiver.

  But it’s not just some isolated small broker.

  The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers set the case law precedent for secured creditors to take client assets in the case of insolvency.

  The most senior secured creditors are the most powerful financial institutions closest to the central banks—JP Morgan, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, etc.

  The net effect of The Great Taking will be the biggest centralization of money and power in history as they take everyone’s securities during a future crisis.

  Though it’s not just securities, they will also take ANY asset financed by debt—like real estate, cars, and small businesses—as people become unable to service their debts.

  Webb provides all the details and proof in his book.

  Here’s the bottom line.

  The most powerful people in the world have succeeded in subverting the property rights of securities and ensnaring most of the world with debt.

  The trap has been set, and the legal plumbing is in place.

  All that is needed is a big crisis that will cause a tidal wave of bankruptcies, and the hidden forces behind the world’s central banks will be able to take everyone’s stocks, bonds, and any property financed by debt.

  All the assets people think they own in brokerage accounts, bank accounts, pensions, and other financial accounts could vanish overnight.

  Webb says, “There will be a game of musical chairs. When the music stops, you will not have a seat. It is designed to work that way.”

  The Coming Collapse Is by Design

  Webb makes a compelling case that the next financial crisis won’t be an accident; the global elite are making it happen to proceed with The Great Taking.

  In short, it’s not plausible that such an intelligent, deliberate plan executed with persistence for more than 50 years could happen by accident.

  Further, the forces behind central banking and (fake) money creation undoubtedly understand the dynamics of the boom-bust cycle they create by expanding and contracting the money supply.

  They know the Everything Bubble they created will lead to a massive bust. That’s when they will execute The Great Taking.

  Further, consumer debt is at record highs.

  After many years of being encouraged to go deeply into debt, many Americans have reached their maximum debt saturation. They will be ripe for the picking.

  As Webb explains:

  “Debt is not a real thing. It is an invention, a construct designed to take real things.

  The bottom line is that debt has for centuries had the function of dispossessing, of taking away property, capital and investments from someone.”

  What You Can Do About It

  Nobody knows the future or how The Great Taking will play out. The best you can do is to make yourself a hard target and not be among the low-hanging fruit.

  You can do that by being debt-free and owning unencumbered assets within your direct control.

  You don’t want to own something that is simultaneously someone else’s liability. That’s because the legal structures are already in place to take it from you during the next crisis.

  Crucially, this includes fiat currency in bank accounts.

  Remember, fiat currency is the unbacked liability of a bankrupt government.

  Further, once you deposit currency into a bank, it is no longer yours. Technically and legally, it is the bank’s property, and what you own instead is an unsecured liability of the bank.

  As The Great Taking unfolds, you won’t want to be on the other end of unsecured liabilities or IOUs of any kind.

  I believe The Great Taking could happen sooner than most realize—and it won’t be pretty for many.

  Most people have no idea how bad things could get—or how to prepare.

  That’s why I’ve published a detailed guide called The Most Dangerous Economic Crisis in 100 Years: The Top 3 Strategies You Need Right Now.

  Click here to download the free PDF.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 22:35

• Three Chinese Nationals Arrested In DR Congo With 12 Gold Bars And $800,000 In Cash Hidden
  Three Chinese Nationals Arrested In DR Congo With 12 Gold Bars And $800,000 In Cash Hidden

  Three Chinese nationals have been arrested in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo with 12 gold bars and $800,000 in cash hidden beneath their vehicle seats, according to the BBC.

  According to South Kivu Governor Jean Jacques Purusi, the arrests were kept secret following the recent release of other Chinese nationals accused of illegal gold mining.

  Eastern DR Congo, rich in gold, diamonds, and battery minerals, has faced decades of instability due to exploitation by foreign groups and militia control of mines, where leaders profit by selling resources to middlemen.

  

  Governor Purusi revealed the arrests were kept secret due to ties between some metal dealers and powerful figures in Kinshasa. Acting on a tip, authorities discovered gold and cash after a thorough vehicle search near the Rwandan border but did not disclose the gold’s exact quantity.

  The BBC report noted that last month, Purusi expressed outrage over the release of 17 Chinese nationals accused of illegal gold mining, stating it undermined efforts to reform DR Congo’s corrupt mineral sector. The group allegedly owed $10 million in taxes and fines. The Chinese embassy has not responded to the claims.

  The arrests follow ongoing conflict in North Kivu, where a Rwanda-backed rebel group has seized territory. Last month, DR Congo announced a lawsuit against Apple over “blood minerals,” leading the company to cease sourcing from DR Congo and Rwanda. Rwanda denies involvement in the export of illegal minerals.

  “These activities have fuelled a cycle of violence and conflict by financing militias and terrorist groups and have contributed to forced child labour and environmental devastation,” lawyers acting for the Congolese government said.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 22:10

• We Can Handle The Truth
  We Can Handle The Truth

  Authored by Christopher Roach via American Greatness,

  The 1992 military justice drama, A Few Good Men, explores a fictional hazing incident involving the U.S. Marines. The main question posed by the film is whether there is a place for unwritten rules and customs, which may technically violate regulations, but may prove necessary for a unique institution like the military to accomplish its mission.

  In determining whether the hazing was ordered from higher up, the defense counsel, played by Tom Cruise, cross examines the defendants’ commander, a no-nonsense Marine colonel played by Jack Nicholson. When the attorney insists that he deserves the truth, the colonel angrily responds, “You can’t handle the truth!”

  

  While the colonel is made out to be the bad guy, many of the distortions, omissions, and outright lies from the managerial class are informed by the same ethos, and they think of themselves as the good guys. This type of “noble lying” arises from the governing elite’s belief in its own sophistication compared to the rabble, who would overreact to the truth.

  This self-serving justification obscures that officials engaged in narrative control are often more concerned with avoiding embarrassment and accountability than any broader social goal.

  Political Correctness Distorts Facts About New Orleans Attack

  A few recent events illustrate this phenomenon quite clearly. A man with an ISIS flag on his truck committed a terrorist attack in New Orleans. He ran over pedestrians and then shot it out with police, having earlier announced his intentions on social media. At least 14 people were murdered in the attack.

  A third-grade kid could figure out it was Islamic terrorism. Yet agent nose-ring from the FBI and the clownish local police chief would not describe the attack as terrorism in their initial press conference. The media interviewed some of his family but kept calling him American-born and emphasizing his U.S. Army service, lest we think there is anything unusual about an American named Shamsud-Din Jabbar.

  Based on photographs, the killer’s appearance sometimes looked African-American and at other times Middle Eastern. When combined with the nature of the attack, this led to a lot of speculation he was Somali or Pakistani.

  In multiple stories from the mainstream news, it was impossible to find out if his family had foreign origins or if they had ties to a terror-supporting country. It looked as if the media was trying to hide something, which we have seen many times before.

  A local Louisiana paper was the only one to answer this completely natural question. It turns out his parents were natural-born Americans of Louisiana Creole descent, whose father converted to Islam. The father changed his name, presumably to signal commitment to his new faith, and all of his children had similarly foreign-sounding names.

  Why the avoidance of facts by the press? Most people know that the vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists and that not all of those who become terrorists are foreign-born, as was the case with converts John Walker Lindh and Jose Padilla.

  Scrutiny about names and origins arouses liberal sensitivities because such inquiries remind us that Islam is a recent and foreign import. Even when its votaries happen to be born here, this foreignness manifests in many lesser ways than terrorism, which exposes real flaws with the dominant ideology of multiculturalism.

  Not limited to hiding facts, in New Orleans and in similar attacks, before we are even allowed to be angry, the media repeatedly bludgeons us with stories warning about the dangers of “backlash.” Victims are blamed before they can mourn.

  After the Fort Hood attacks by mutinous army officer Nidal Hassan, the general in charge of the U.S. Army said insultingly, “Our diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”

  In spite of these warnings about stereotypes and backlash, there has been almost no significant backlash against Muslims in the United States, even after the 9/11 attacks.

  The U.K. Is Similarly Handicapped By Ideology

  There has been an even more aggressive media blackout in response to the horrifying rape gangs in the United Kingdom. For years, not only the media, but police, politicians, social workers, and other authorities downplayed the reality of these attacks, blamed victims, and did little to stop the rape of young, native British females by Pakistani immigrant gangs.

  The story was back in the news after multiple tweets by Elon Musk about the need for the British government to investigate these matters. As was the case when these stories first came to light in 2014, the media and politicians have been loudly expressing concerns about backlash.

  Defending the authorities’ atrocious handling of the matter, British writer Tom Holland said: “The true nightmare of #Rotherham is that the motives of those who turned a blind eye, however monstrous the consequences, were indeed noble.”

  In his words, “It wasn’t the indifference that was noble, but the concern not to demonise a minority. Caring for the weak. The Christian thing . . . I think they genuinely didn’t want to give succour to racism against a minority – which was a noble principle.”

  There are, in fact, things worse than developing prejudices, not least among them failing to prevent actual child rape. But, in the modern West, whether in the United States or the United Kingdom, authorities are more afraid of being accused of racism than stopping terrorism and child rape. Fear of being accused of racism even contributed to the 9/11 attacks, lest we forget, because the gate agent didn’t want to stereotype the Arab men carrying box cutters.

  Real racism has certainly led to abuses, particularly a generation or two in the past. But the left’s mélange of misplaced compassion, anti-working-class prejudice, and social experimentation in the pursuit of anti-racism has done much more harm to everyone in recent years, not least by contributing to the victimization of innocents when the perpetrators are minorities.

  Free Speech and Democracy

  Under the emerging ethos of safety, authorities treat information and speech as things that must be curated and controlled to prevent the dangers of prejudice. The dominant ideology conceives of the public as parochial, tempestuous, and easily seduced by bad speech. Instead of calling regulated speech what it is—simply ideas they disagree with—censors in the government and the compliant media ominously label it “hate speech” and “disinformation.”

  Self-government is not possible if the people are deprived of facts from authorities. Democratic self-government does not even have any obvious value if we also think the voters are too stupid, easily misled, or prone to spasms of emotional hatred to govern themselves.

  Far from hateful, Americans, Britons, and westerners in general are remarkably fair-minded. Because of a deep-seated tradition of individualism, we are averse to judging others as part of groups and mistreating them because of the crimes of their coethnics. It is the British Empire, after all, that abolished slavery around the globe, and it is the West that developed the ideals of limited government and the rule of law, which together protect individual rights.

  The emerging managerial elite has weaponized this generosity to import maximally alien foreigners in order to increase social conflict; this, in turn, provides support to illiberal and authoritarian plans of social control and social engineering.

  The leadership class has no respect for the West, its history, or its people. This is evidenced by their consistent desire to hide the truth and subject our most vulnerable citizens to horrific violence, lest we all “get the wrong idea.” They have forfeited their authority to rule because of their repeated refusal to treat us with candor and protect our most vulnerable citizens.

  Contrary to their prejudices, we can handle the truth.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 21:45

• China's Uptick In Respiratory Illness Sparks Concerns From Neighbors
  China’s Uptick In Respiratory Illness Sparks Concerns From Neighbors

  Authored by Zhang Ting and Cindy Li via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A recent surge in respiratory infections in China has drawn attention from neighboring countries and regions, with the Chinese public expressing concerns about the severity of the new outbreak amid ongoing distrust of the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) health reporting post-COVID.

  

  Official data from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, dated to the last week of 2024, reported that multiple flu-like illnesses are currently on the rise in China. The primary pathogens reported in outpatients and emergency wards were influenza, human metapneumovirus (HMPV), and rhinoviruses. Severe acute respiratory infections were attributed to influenza viruses, mycoplasma pneumoniae, and HMPV.

  The report noted that HMPV, a lesser-known common winter respiratory disease, has caused many children under 14 in China’s northern provinces to fall ill. Cases of HMPV surged the most in the past week to become the second most prevalent cause of respiratory infections in China’s north after influenza.

  Since HMPV was first detected by Dutch researchers in 2001, it has been found worldwide. Common symptoms are similar to those of influenza, including cough, fever, nasal congestion, and shortness of breath, which are signs of upper respiratory tract infections.

  

  The virus can also lead to complications such as bronchitis, tracheitis, pneumonia, asthma, or ear infections. Severe infections may result in serious lower respiratory tract infections.

  According to the world-renowned medical institution the Cleveland Clinic, young children, adults over 65, and people with weakened immune systems are at high risk for severe HMPV infections.

  Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning has downplayed the concern among the populace about respiratory illness, attributing the increase in cases to a winter peak of respiratory infections.

  “At present, the scale and intensity of the epidemic are lower than last year,” she said in a regular press conference on Jan. 3.

  “What I can tell you is that the Chinese government attaches great importance to the health of the Chinese people and foreign citizens in China, and traveling to China is safe.”

  Treatment for HMPV mainly focuses on symptom management. Most HMPV patients can manage symptoms at home until they feel better, while those with severe symptoms may require hospitalization.

  The increasing cases of HMPV, a respiratory virus that has symptoms similar to those of COVID-19, are causing concern among the Chinese populace, who are wary of the transparency and accuracy of the CCP’s public health information following significant coverups in the COVID-19 pandemic. Claims of overcrowded hospitals on Chinese social media have also sparked widespread concern.

  Neighbors Say They’re Monitoring Situation

  The reports of overwhelmed Chinese hospitals and crematoriums have put authorities of neighboring countries and regions on alert for potential developments of public concern.

  The Macau Health Bureau stated on Dec. 26, 2024, that it has been closely monitoring the spread of HMVP in mainland China and has urged local residents to strengthen preventive measures.

  In Taiwan, Tseng Shu-Hui, deputy director-general of the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control (CDC), told local media on Dec. 25, 2024, that related cases of HMPV have already spread and been detected on the island. Taiwan’s CDC will continue to monitor the situation and will provide timely updates if any abnormalities are found, she said.

  Vietnam’s Ministry of Health stated on Jan. 5 that it has prepared a brief report on the reported cases of HMPV infection in China. The department said it contacted the WHO’s office in Vietnam and the Asia-Pacific region, as well as the representative office of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention under the International Health Regulations, and was told that, as of now, the WHO has not received any official information from China regarding its HMPV caseload.

  Malaysia reported 327 known HMPV cases in 2024. The Malaysian health ministry has urged the public to stay alert.

  “The public is advised to proactively take care of their health and prevent infection to others, especially in enclosed and crowded areas,” the ministry said in a statement, according to Singaporean newspaper The Straits Times. “This includes those planning to travel to countries at risk.”

  Datuk Amar Sim Kui Hian, the minister of Public Health, Housing, and Local Government in Sarawak, a state of Malaysia, reminded the public that while the WHO had not classified HMPV as an international public health emergency, “we must not let our guard down.”

  The experience with COVID-19 has taught everyone how to cope with viruses, he told local media on Jan. 5.

  “Frequent hand washing, wearing masks, and maintaining good personal hygiene are key to preventing the spread of viruses.”

  India convened a joint monitoring group meeting in response to the rising cases of respiratory illnesses reported in China over the past few weeks.

  Indian authorities said the government is “well-prepared” to handle respiratory illnesses and that its surveillance shows no unusual surge so far.

  “Union Health Ministry is closely monitoring the situation in China through all available channels and the WHO has been requested to share timely updates regarding the situation,” read a Jan. 5 post by the country’s Ministry of Health on social media platform X.

  WHO Demands China’s COVID Data

  This round of winter respiratory illness in China marks the five-year anniversary of the emergence of COVID-19, with the WHO recently renewing its unfulfilled requests for China to share access to data to help determine the origins of COVID-19.

  “We continue to call on China to share data and access so we can understand the origins of COVID-19,” reads a WHO statement on Dec. 30, 2024.

  “This is a moral and scientific imperative. Without transparency, sharing, and cooperation among countries, the world cannot adequately prevent and prepare for future epidemics and pandemics.”

  In December 2019, the first case of COVID-19 emerged in Wuhan, China. The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s initial concealment of the outbreak, including the silencing of doctors and citizen reporters, was followed by the rapid spread of the virus, evolving into a global pandemic that caused a significant number of deaths, as previously reported by The Epoch Times.

  Help boost your immunity here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 21:20

• Taibbi: Why Is Russiagate's Origin Story Redacted?
  Taibbi: Why Is Russiagate’s Origin Story Redacted?

  Authored by Matt Taibbi via Racket News,

  On January 11, 2019, at the peak of Russiagate mania and months before the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s deflating report, the New York Times for the first time made public a remarkable fact. In “FBI Opened Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia,” a trio of Times reporters revealed that in the days after Donald Trump’s May 2017 firing of FBI Director James Comey, the Bureau “began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia.”

  

  The country first learned the FBI was investigating “any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government” when Comey testified in Congress in March, 2017. Comey then was referring to the FBI’s much-ballyhooed Crossfire Hurricane probe, which was opened in July, 2016 and targeted the likes of George Papadopoulos and Carter Page.

  This second FBI probe disclosed by the Times in 2019 carried far more explosive implications, making its delayed disclosure unusual. It’s one thing for the FBI to investigate possible “links” between foreigners and a presidential campaign. It’s another for Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe to open an investigation into whether a sitting president, i.e. his boss, is “working on behalf of Russia.”

  “Imagine even opening this investigation up on just your average Joe,” says Aaron Maté of RealClear Investigations. “That would be crazy, unless you have some real predication. But this is the fucking president. Andrew McCabe decides that he can do this. On what basis?”

  Either the FBI had evidence to start such an investigation, which would be damning to Trump, or it didn’t, which would be damning to the FBI. Which was it?

  The 2019 Times story suggested the FBI probe was begun in part to determine if Trump’s “firing of Mr. Comey constituted obstruction of justice.” Beyond that, details were scant, and once the new investigation was folded into Robert Mueller’s inquiry, the reasons for its opening disappeared into the proverbial dustbin of history. Even when Special Counsel John Durham issued his report on the FBI and Crossfire Hurricane, he made just one mention of this second investigation, saying it was beyond his purview:

  We also have not interpreted the Order as directing us to consider the handling ofthe investigation into President Trump opened by the FBI on May 16, 2017.

  Nobody seemed to care what this second investigation was about, or what evidence was submitted to justify its opening, until Aaron and RealClear in December, 2022 sent a Freedom of Information request. They sought a copy of the original document explaining why the FBI opened a new “Sensitive Investigative Matter” on May 16, 2017. It took over two full years for the Bureau to respond. The answer was a middle finger: six pages, almost entirely redacted, with the exception of a few paragraphs.

  

  The released documents weren’t entirely bereft of information. In fact, they should contain enough to pique the curiosity of any incoming officials looking for places to start unraveling the Russiagate mystery. Whatever’s underneath these redactions is embarrassing to someone. Aaron yesterday published a story on the subject at RealClear Investigations which I recommend everyone read. This document is one of a series of Russiagate-related revelations about to hit the public.

  The memo is included below. Apart from the fact that it names former FBI Counsel James Baker and Counterintelligence chief Bill Priestap at the top, the most interesting section is probably this passage:

  The FBI is opening [redacted] based on an articulabe factual basis that reasonably indicates that President Donald Trump may be or has been, wittingly or unwittingly, involved in activities for or on behalf of the Russian government which may constitute violations of federal criminal law or threats to the national security of the United States.

  

  If your first thought is, “How can a person ‘unwittingly’ be involved in activities on behalf of Russia that ‘may constitute violations of criminal law’?” you’re not alone. I reached out to multiple lawyers with experience working on the Hill to ask how one betrays the country criminally without intent. One sent back a “shrug” emoji, while another said this was the problem with the new generation of broad national security probes. The FBI often does investigations that are “not tethered to or bound by criminal law.”

  “Unwittingly, without his knowledge, he’s being manipulated by the Kremlin,” laughs Maté. “It’s unbelievable.”

  McCabe, now an author and sometimes contributor to CNN, said in 2019 that Trump’s “own words” prompted the investigation. Aaron attempted to reach him for his RealClear story, but he did not respond.

  This is not a small issue. The FBI opening an investigation into a presidential candidate on the thinnest of pretexts, then continuing it despite repeated dead ends, then leaking word of an active investigation despite a total lack of results, and finally opening a second probe into a sitting president after their Director was fired, all speak to a law enforcement agency that was coloring way outside its lines, involving itself in unprecedented political interference. Whoever takes over the Bureau needs to unredact these and many other pages.

  “It’s nuts,” says Maté. “Trump is in office, and they decide after he fires Comey to open a second investigation just of him, not his campaign but him, suspecting him of being a Russian agent. Why?” He pauses. “We know the pretext for the first investigation was George Papadopoulos. What’s the reason for this one? Probably the firing of Comey is in there in the redaction, but there’s got to be something else too.”

  But what? Let’s hope we find out soon.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 20:55

• A Who's Who Of All Trump's Cabinet-Level Nominees
  A Who’s Who Of All Trump’s Cabinet-Level Nominees

  Coming from diverse backgrounds, the president-elect’s Cabinet selections bring a variety of skills to the new government.

  After sweeping all seven battleground states this year and becoming the first Republican to win the national popular vote in 20 years, President-elect Donald Trump has assembled a team to lead his next administration.

  The Cabinet mainly consists of the vice president, the leaders of 15 executive departments, and several other top positions. Most, but not all, of these appointments require confirmation by the Senate. Trump’s selections come from diverse backgrounds, with many hailing from the business world outside Washington politics. Two of the nominees also come from across the political aisle.

  The Epoch Times’ Jacob Burg and Jackson Richman provide below a brief overview of what Trump’s nominees will bring to the table in his second administration… (click image for large legible version)

  

  For a full breakdown of each individual, read here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 20:30

• Why Deflation Is Good For The Economy
  Why Deflation Is Good For The Economy

  Authored by Frank Shostak via The Mises Institute,

  The yearly growth rate of the consumer price index (CPI) stood at 2.7 percent in November, against 2.6 percent in October. In June 2022, the yearly growth rate was 9.1 percent.

  

  The price of a good is the amount of money asked per unit of some particular good at which an exchange will obtain. It follows, then, that if the quantity of money increases faster than the quantity of goods, the price of goods will also increase, all other things being equal.

  When money is injected, it enters a particular market and then moves through the price structure to other markets. The injected money does not spread instantaneously to all the markets, there is a time lag. The yearly growth rate of our monetary measure—AMS for the US—stood at 79 percent in February 2021 against 3.7 percent in October this year.

  

  It is estimated that the average time lag from changes in money supply and changes in prices as depicted by the consumer price index the CPI is about 26 months. This suggests that the massive decline in the momentum of the CPI is because of the large decline in the yearly growth rate of the money supply. Again, the yearly growth rate of money supply fell from 79 percent in February 2021 to 3.7 percent by October this year.

  On account of the time lag, it is quite likely that the yearly growth rate of the CPI is poised for a further visible decline ahead. Based on the lagged money supply growth rate, it is quite likely that the yearly growth rate of the CPI will turn negative from the second half of next year (see chart).

  

  The negative figure in the yearly growth rate of the CPI raises the likelihood that most commentators will start warning about deflation and the threat that it is going to pose to the economy. A general decline in the prices of goods and services is regarded by most experts as bad news since it is seen to be associated with major economic slumps such as the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Note that, by July 1932, the yearly growth rate of industrial production fell to –31 percent, while by September 1932, the yearly growth rate of the consumer price index plunged to –10.7 percent.

  

  

  According to many economists, when prices decline it is harder for borrowers to pay down existing debts, leading to growing defaults, while banks become reluctant to extend credit. Consequently, these two factors generate a downward spiral in the supply of credit and a consequent decline in economic activity.

  Furthermore, most experts regard a general decline in prices as “bad news” because it raises expectations for a further decline in prices, and this, it is held, slows down individuals’ propensity to spend, which, in turn, undermines investment in plant and machinery. These factors set in motion an economic slump. Moreover, as the slump further depresses the prices of goods, this intensifies the pace of economic decline. It is for these reasons that many economic experts are of the view that it is the duty of the central bank—the Fed in the US—to prevent deflation.

  In his speech before the National Economists Club (Washington, DC, November 21, 2002), entitled “Deflation: Making Sure ‘it’ Doesn’t Happen Here,” Ben Bernanke—then a Fed governor—laid out measures that the central bank should employ to combat deflation, such as buying longer-maturity Treasury debt and the “helicopter money.”

  For most experts the occurrence of economic depression is because of a collapse in aggregate demand. In this view, since demand causes supply, the central bank should embark on massive monetary expansion in order to boost the demand for goods and services. According to much popular thinking, a strengthening in aggregate demand will set in motion the increase in the production of goods and services (i.e., economic growth).

  But why would an increase in demand lead to an increase in the supply? Without a suitable infrastructure, no expansion in the supply is going to emerge because of the increase in the demand. Also, to suggest that consumers postpone their buying of goods at present because prices are expected to decline would mean that individuals have abandoned any desire to live in the present. However, without the maintenance of life in the present, no future life is conceivable.

  Contrary to such thinking, deflation, which is manifested by declining prices, is the mechanism that makes a great variety of goods produced more accessible to individuals. Murray Rothbard wrote,

  [I]mproved standards of living come to the public from the fruits of capital investment. Increased productivity tends to lower prices (and costs) [i.e., deflation] and thereby distribute the fruits of free enterprise to all the public, raising the standard of living of all consumers. Forcible propping up of the price level prevents this spread of higher living standards.

  How the Central Bank Makes Things Worse

  Whenever the central bank artificially inflates money into the economy this benefits various individuals engaged in activities which sprang up on the back of the expansionary monetary policy, at the expense of true wealth-generators. Through expansionary monetary policy, the central bank gives rise to a class of individuals whose ventures could not come into existence without continued inflation and which distort the structure of production.

  The consumption by these recipients of the newly generated money and credit is made possible through the diversion of real savings from wealth producers. Through this process, these recipients divert production, saving, and capital investment without contributing anything in return.

  The expansionary monetary policy of the central bank generates an environment where it appears that it is possible to consume without production. Not only does the easy-money policy raise the prices of existing goods, but monetary inflation also gives rise to the production of goods and assets which would otherwise not be the case. These goods are not demanded in those amounts and/or prices by consumers.

  Once the central bank reverses its expansionary monetary policy, the diversion of production from wealth producers to non-wealth producers is arrested. This, in turn, undermines the demand of non-wealth-producers for various goods and services thereby exerting downward pressure on their prices.

  A tighter monetary policy undermines various activities that sprang up the previous expansionary monetary policy. This partially halts the bleeding of wealth generators. The decline in prices comes in when prices realistically realign with the new production caused by previous inflation. Deflation during recession signifies the beginning of economic healing.

  As a rule, what the central bank tries to stabilize is the so-called “price index.” The alleged success of this policy, however, hinges on the state of saving, capital investment, and production. As long as saving expands, a bout of inflation generates the illusion that the expansionary monetary policy is the right remedy. This is because the inflationary expansion of money and credit, which renews the flow of real savings to non-wealth-producers, props up their demand for goods and services, thereby halting or even reversing the decline in prices. Furthermore, if saving and capital investment is still growing, the pace of economic growth stays positive. Hence, the mistaken view that an inflationary monetary policy can reverse deflation (falling prices) is the key in reviving economic activity.

  The illusion that through inflation it is possible to keep the economy going is shattered once savings begin to decline and the distortions in the capital structure are recognized. Once this happens, the economy begins a downward plunge. The most aggressive expansionary monetary policy would fail to reverse this plunge. Even if easy-money policies were to succeed in raising prices and inflationary expectations, this could not revive the economy.

  Considering the declining momentum of the lagged money supply growth rate, and the likely shrinking savings and capital investment, economic activity could enter a severe recessionary phase from the second half of 2025.

  

  Conclusion

  Contrary to the popular view, deflation is good for the economy. Thus, when prices are declining in response to the expansion of wealth, this means that individuals’ living standards are rising. Further, when prices decline because of the bursting of a financial bubble, it is also overall good for the economy, for it indicates that the impoverishment of wealth producers is being arrested.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 20:05

• 'Evacuate Now': Fire Tears Through Upscale Pacific Palisades In Los Angeles
  ‘Evacuate Now’: Fire Tears Through Upscale Pacific Palisades In Los Angeles

  A brush fire that has spread to over 1,200 acres in Los Angeles amid a massive wind storm has prompted a mass evacuation in the upscale Pacific Palisades area on Tuesday.

  🚨🇺🇸 BIDEN CANCELS EVENT AS WINDSTORM FUELS PALISADES FIRE FORCING EVACUATIONS

  The windstorm fueling the Palisades Fire has forced mandatory evacuations and canceled Biden’s event in Thermal, CA.

  UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain warns, “Just about everything is going to get… pic.twitter.com/aVKr0okLas

  — Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) January 7, 2025

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

  “Evacuate now from the area of Palisades…” officials warned on X. “Those not in the evacuation area should shelter in place.”

  LAFD: Evacuate now from the area of Palisades Area. Those not in the evacuation area should shelter in place. Evacuation order for Palisades Fire. Maps and information can be found at https://t.co/GihYtg2yPf https://t.co/kMAzuc7uaf

  — LA City Emergency Alerts (@NotifyLA) January 7, 2025

  The Palisades – home to numerous A-list celebrities, has roughly 9,400 homes and 27,000 residents. After the fire broke out, smoke plumes spread quickly toward structures and homes – including a large area of Topanga Canyon, tucked-away community with a single road in and out.

   

  

   

  Meanwhile, the South Coast Air Quality Management District on Tuesday issued an air quality alert for the Santa Monica Mountains “due to increased fine particle pollution from wildfire smoke,” which has now traveled as far east as Diamond Bar, located around 30 miles from downtown LA.

  Massive fire above my neighborhood of Pacific Palisades, in #LosAngeles. Evacuating. pic.twitter.com/vJI06iWa1X

  — Joel Pollak (@joelpollak) January 7, 2025

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  Officials shut down all traffic on the Pacific Coast Highway at Topanga Canyon Boulevard – causing (greater than usual) traffic jams that could be seen all over.

  California: The structure loss will likely be huge from the Palisades Fire. #wildfire #cafire

  The flame lengths off this fire after making a slope reversal are insane. Firefighters have their work cut out for them. Yo Congress, still plan on cutting wildland firefighter pay?… pic.twitter.com/rjJRLpCf2k

  — The Hotshot Wake Up (@HotshotWake) January 7, 2025

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

  

  Actor James Woods has posted several videos to X showing the fire raging near his house.

  Leaving pic.twitter.com/yJDQ8xIhbI

  — James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) January 7, 2025

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

  Two houses from us… pic.twitter.com/5lx6kMqdmN

  — James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) January 7, 2025

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

  People are abandoning their cars in the street…

  KTLA’s @GeneKangTV reports from the perimeter of the #PalisadesFire where crews needed to clear vehicles using a bulldozer to make access for firefighters. Live coverage: https://t.co/ZEEfGXODEx pic.twitter.com/ziOctuFD7X

  — KTLA (@KTLA) January 7, 2025

  We’ve counted at least 7 homes in Pacific Palisades destroyed by flames as the fire continues to spread rapidly. Not sure if firefighters are struggling to get to this area or what, we’ve tried grabbing water hoses ourselves. #PalisadesFire pic.twitter.com/nv1P3s1XEP

  — Matthew Seedorff (@MattSeedorff) January 7, 2025

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

  Developing…

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

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 19:40

• Jay Bhattacharya Will Bring Much-Needed Transparency To NIH
  Jay Bhattacharya Will Bring Much-Needed Transparency To NIH

  Authored by Andrew Noymer via RealClearPolitics,

  Dr. Jay Bhattacharya – the Stanford professor who is President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for the directorship of the National Institutes of Health – will bring transparency to this government agency, which sorely needs it.

  

  I am an odd person to write a piece supporting Jay Bhattacharya’s nomination to lead the NIH. During the pandemic, I disagreed with Jay on COVID response. Jay supported the Great Barrington Declaration, while I favored a more active and engaged public health response, broadly although not completely along the lines of what was actually done in the United States. At times our differences were fundamental, other times pragmatic. Nonetheless, the differences of opinion between Jay and me on this subject were deep.

  I debated Jay over Zoom on the topic of pandemic response, so I am well aware of his views on COVID response, as he is of mine. Our debate was not archived but was roughly similar to the Munk Debate I did with Jay’s Stanford colleague, John Ioannidis, and the SoHo Forum debate I did with Jay’s Great Barrington collaborator, Martin Kulldorff. These discussions are dated now, but they still reflect deep intellectual rifts that were brought into sharp relief by COVID and the collective response to it.

  What makes my endorsement of Jay all the more peculiar is that he and I still disagree on COVID response. I know because I had the chance to talk with Jay and others in October at a conference that he organized at Stanford, at which I served as a panelist. What’s more, Jay invited me to this conference knowing that his and my opinions on this subject continue to diverge. Here and in other examples, I have seen Jay’s commitment to hearing diverse and disagreeing viewpoints. Jay is not one to try to muzzle a dissenting opinion.

  The most important outstanding item on the COVID agenda is: Where did SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID – come from? The pursuit of this question is where Jay Bhattacharya and I have the most in common. I am on the advisory board of Biosafety Now, an organization dedicated to increasing transparency in high-risk experiments on pathogens with the capacity to harm people. Jay was, for a time, also involved with BN.

  The stakes could not be higher: COVID killed 15 million people worldwide in 2020 and hasn’t stopped killing, although thankfully at a lower rate more recently. Tracing the origins of epidemics is one of the cornerstones of public health. This task is woven into its very fabric, even from before John Snow’s founding the science of epidemiology in the 19th century, through to the work of American pioneer Theobald Smith in the 20th century, and to the present day. There are a number of questions about COVID that may point to SARS-CoV-2 having leaked from a lab.

  The NIH has not heretofore acted with enough transparency on COVID origins. It was a funder of gain-of-function research on coronaviruses. Former NIH director Francis Collins and former director of NIAID (National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases), Anthony Fauci, were both major proponents of gain-of-function virology research, some of which is objectively dangerous enough to require the highest security (BSL-4) labs (think: labs inside an air lock and researchers in pressure suits). Grants from NIH in this area included funding the research of Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance and Peter Hotez of the Baylor College of Medicine.

  However, NIH has not acted to shed light on its actions, and has even stonewalled Congress.

  There is nothing inherently political about wanting to know where COVID comes from; it is a core function of epidemiology. It is virologists – not those in epidemiology who wish to get to the bottom of COVID origins – who have politicized the COVID origins debate. As one of my colleagues at the University of California, Irvine condescendingly scolded me via email in 2022: “Suggesting lab leaks or worse (without any real evidence) feeds into the right-wing, anti-China conspiracies promoted by the Trump administration.” Other virologists have shown a remarkable incuriosity: “What difference does it make where it [SARS-CoV-2] came from?” asked another one of my University of California, Irvine colleagues, at a conference here. It makes an enormous difference. To avoid a repeat of COVID, we need better regulation of gain-of-function virology, and full transparency about coronavirus research in the years leading up to the pandemic.

  Jay Bhattacharya understands that the NIH budget is public money, and that every American is a stakeholder in research performed by NIH, including the grants it makes to external scientists. He and I had, and continue to have, deep disagreements about the public health response to COVID, but the most important task facing NIH at the moment is give the world a full account of its involvement in research on the bat viruses that are the ancestor of the COVID virus, so we can better understand how SARS-CoV-2 jumped into humans. Transparency is a principal (and principled) solution to lack of public trust in institutions. I am confident that Jay’s pursuit of transparency can restore public trust in NIH.

  Andrew Noymer is associate professor of population health and disease prevention in the Joe C. Wen School of Population & Public Health, University of California, Irvine.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 19:15

• 10 Most Impressive Day One Reveals At CES 2025, Includes Jumping Hypercar
  10 Most Impressive Day One Reveals At CES 2025, Includes Jumping Hypercar

  The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2025, the world’s biggest tech show, officially began on Monday. 

  Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang kicked off the week by unveiling the latest products designed to advance gaming, autonomous vehicles, robotics, and agentic AI (key takeaways here). 

  

  Along with Nvidia’s new AI products, here are the ten most impressive unveils at CES 2025 so far (courtesy of Rowan Cheung):

  A 360° AI-powered body scanning health mirror that can scan your heart, weight, and metabolic health

  It’s only been 1 day of CES 2025, and the announcements have already been incredible.

  The 10 most impressive reveals of CES 2025 so far:

  1. A 360° AI-powered body scanning health mirror that can scan your heart, weight, and metabolic health pic.twitter.com/c8iaJFB5EW

  — Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) January 7, 2025

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  Roborock’s Saros Z70: A robotic vacuum that has a mechanical arm for picking up objects in the way of cleaning the floor

  2. Roborock’s Saros Z70: A robotic vacuum that has a mechanical arm for picking up objects in the way of cleaning the floor pic.twitter.com/M6T428zeYa

  — Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) January 7, 2025

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  Halliday Glasses: Smart glasses with a 3.5-inch internal monochrome display

  3. Halliday Glasses: Smart glasses with a 3.5-inch internal monochrome display

  These glasses are equipped with an AI agent that can listen to conversations, answer questions during meetings, and do live translationpic.twitter.com/1jIigyCC7l

  — Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) January 7, 2025

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  Project DIGITS by NVIDIA: A $3000 personal supercomputer that’s 1,000x the power of an average laptop

  4. Project DIGITS by NVIDIA: A $3000 personal supercomputer that’s 1,000x the power of an average laptop pic.twitter.com/djMkIOolt7

  — Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) January 7, 2025

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  BYD’s supercar, Yangwang U9, jumping 6 meters forward (over potholes)

  5. BYD’s supercar, Yangwang U9, jumping 6 meters forward (over potholes) pic.twitter.com/QAQZdMRyHT

  — Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) January 7, 2025

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  A pen with three cameras at the tip that turns any surface of the world into a canvas with notes synced and recorded to your phone

  6. A pen with three cameras at the tip that turns any surface of the world into a canvas with notes synced and recorded to your phone pic.twitter.com/fPHHFyLjek

  — Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) January 7, 2025

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  NVIDIA Cosmos: An open source, open weight Video World Model designed for the upcoming age of robotics source

  7. NVIDIA Cosmos: An open source, open weight Video World Model designed for the upcoming age of robotics source pic.twitter.com/19XVUKIOud

  — Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) January 7, 2025

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  Portalgraph: A 3D projector that projects VR space into the real world

  8. Portalgraph: A 3D projector that projects VR space into the real world pic.twitter.com/kGdLToYToO

  — Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) January 7, 2025

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  Samsung Vision AI TVs that come with real-time translation, the ability to adapt to user preferences, AI upscaling, and instant content summaries

  9. Samsung Vision AI TVs that come with real-time translation, the ability to adapt to user preferences, AI upscaling, and instant content summaries pic.twitter.com/303yFOZr5q

  — Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) January 7, 2025

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  NVIDIA GB200 NVL2: A datacenter superchip with 72 Blackwell GPUs, 1.4 exaFLOPS, and 130 transistors

  10. NVIDIA GB200 NVL2: A datacenter superchip with 72 Blackwell GPUs, 1.4 exaFLOPS, and 130 transistorspic.twitter.com/O7r4foKUr4

  — Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) January 7, 2025

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  This is only day one. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 18:50

• The End Of Economic Growth: Energy Shortages Drive Global Downturn
  The End Of Economic Growth: Energy Shortages Drive Global Downturn

  Authored by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World,

  • The global economy is expected to enter a recession in 2025 due to a decline in the availability of crude oil, coal, and uranium relative to population.

  • Government attempts to stimulate the economy through debt will lead to inflation rather than growth, as energy supplies are constrained.

  • High interest rates, low energy prices, and a decline in industrial output will characterize the economic landscape in 2025.

  As the world enters 2025, the critical issue we are facing is Peak Crude Oil, relative to population. Crude oil has fallen from as much as .46 gallons per person, which was quite common before the pandemic, to close to .42 gallons per person recently (Figure 1).

  

  Figure 1. World crude oil production per person, based on data of the US EIA. Data through September 2024.

  People have a misimpression regarding how world peak oil can be expected to behave. The world economy has continued to grow, but now it is beginning to move in the direction of contraction due to an inadequate supply of crude oil. In fact, it is not just an inadequate crude oil supply, but also an inadequate supply of coal (per person) and an inadequate supply of uranium.

  We know that when a boat changes direction, this causes turbulence in the water. This is similar to the problems we are currently seeing in the world economy. Physics dictates that the economy needs to shrink in size to match its energy resources, but no country wants to be a part of this shrinkage. This indirectly leads to major changes in elected leadership and to increased interest in war-like behavior. Strangely enough, it also seems to lead to higher long-term interest rates, as well.

  In this post, I share a few thoughts on what might lie ahead for us in 2025, in the light of the hidden inadequate world energy supply. I am predicting major turbulence, but not that things fall apart completely. Stock markets will tend to do poorly; interest rates will remain high; oil and other energy prices will stay around current levels, or fall.

  [1] I expect that the general trend in 2025 will be toward world recession.

  With less oil (and coal and uranium) relative to population, the world can be expected to produce fewer goods and services per person. In some sense, people will generally become poorer. For example, fewer people will be able to afford new cars or new homes.

  This trend toward lower purchasing-power tends to be concentrated in certain groups such as young people, farmers, and recent immigrants. As a result, older people who are well-off or firmly established may be able to mostly ignore this issue.

  While the shift toward a poorer world has partially been hidden, it has been a huge factor in allowing Donald Trump to be voted back into power. Major shifts in leadership are taking place elsewhere, as well, as an increasing share of citizens become unhappy with the current situation.

  [2] Many governments will try to hide recessionary tendencies by issuing more debt to stimulate their economies.

  In the past, adding debt was found to be effective way of stimulating the world economy because energy supplies supporting the world economy were not seriously constrained. It was possible to add new energy supplies, quite inexpensively. The combination of additional inexpensive energy supplies and additional “demand” (provided by the added debt) allowed the total quantity of goods and services produced to be increased. Once energy supplies started to become seriously constrained (about 2023), this technique started to work far less well. If energy production is constrained, the likely impact of added debt will be added inflation.

  The problem is that if added government debt doesn’t really add inexpensive energy, it will instead create more purchasing power relative to the same number, or a smaller number, of finished goods and services available. I believe that in 2025, we are heading into a situation where ramping up governmental debt will mostly lead to inflation in the cost of finished goods and services.

  [3] Energy prices are likely to remain too low for fossil fuel and uranium producers to raise investments from their current low levels.

  Recession and low prices tend to go together. While there may be occasional spikes in oil and other energy prices, 2025 is likely to bring oil and other energy prices that are, on average, no higher than those of 2024, adjusted for the overall increase in prices due to inflation. With generally low prices, producers will cut back on new investment. This will cause production to fall further.

  [4] I expect “gluts” of many energy-related items in 2025.

  Gluts are related to recession and low prices for producers. The underlying problem is that a significant share of the population finds that finished goods, made with energy products and investment at current interest rates, are too expensive to buy.

  Even farmers are affected by low prices, just as they were back at the time of the Great Depression. We can think of food as an energy product that is eaten by people. Farmers find that their return on farm investment is too low, and that their implied wages are low. Low income for farmers around the world feeds back through the system as low buying power for new farm equipment, and for buying goods and services in general.

  In 2025, I expect there will be a glut of crude oil due to a lack of purchasing power of many poor people around the world. My forecast is similar to the forecast of the IEA that predicts an oversupply of oil in 2025. Also, a December 2024 article in mining.com says, “A glut of coal in China is set to push falling prices even lower.”

  Even wind turbines and solar panels can reach an oversupply point. According to one article, number of Chine solar panel builders seems to be far too high for world demand, leading to a potential shake out. As the share of wind and solar power added to the electric grid increases, the frequency of low or negative payment for wholesale electric power increases. This makes adding more wind turbines and solar panels problematic, after a certain point. We don’t yet have a cost-effective way of storing intermittent electricity for months on end. This seems to be part of the reason why there recently were no bidders for producing more offshore wind power in Denmark.

  [5] I expect long-term interest rates to remain high. This will be a problem for new investments of all kinds and for governmental borrowing.

  In Section 2 of this post, I tried to explain that a peak-oil impact is likely to be inflation. This occurs because ramping up debt to try to stimulate the economy no longer works to get additional cheap energy products from the ground. Instead of getting as many finished goods and services as hoped for, the added debt tends to produce inflation instead.

  I believe that we are reaching a stage of fossil-fuel depletion where it is becoming increasingly difficult to ramp up production, even with added investment. Because of the added debt added in an attempt to work around depletion, inflation in the price of finished goods and services can be expected. Investors are beginning to see long-term inflation as a likely problem. As a result, they are starting to demand higher long-term interest rates to compensate for the expected decrease in buying power.

  

  Figure 2. Interest rates on 10-year US Treasury Securities, in a chart by the Federal Reserve of St. Louis. Data is through December 30, 2024.

  Figure 2 shows that US long-term interest rates have varied widely. There was a period of generally dropping long-term interest rates from 1981 to 2020. Starting in late 2020, interest rates began to rise; in 2023 and 2024 they have been in the 4% to 5% range. These relatively high rates are occurring because lenders are demanding higher long-term interest rates in response to higher inflation rates.

  Because of inflationary pressures, I expect that long-term interest rates will tend to stay at today’s high level in 2025; they may even rise further. These continued high interest rates will become a problem for many families wanting to purchase a home because US home mortgage rates rise and fall with US 10-year interest rates. Often families are faced with both high home prices and high interest rates. This combination makes mortgage costs a problem for many families.

  Governments are also adversely affected. They tend to hold large amounts of debt that they have accumulated over a period or years. Up until 2020, much of this added debt often was at a very low interest rate. As more long-term debt at higher interest rates is added, annual interest rate payments tend to rise rapidly. This can cause a need to raise taxes. Japan, especially, would be affected by higher interest rates because of its high level of government debt, relative to GDP.

  Higher interest rates will also raise costs for citizens trying to finance the purchase of homes, and for investors wanting to build wind turbines or solar panels. In fact, investment in any kind of factory, pipelines, or electricity transmission will tend to become more expensive.

  In a sense, we seem to be seeing the peak oil problem shifting in a way that affects interest rates and the economy in general. Either higher interest rates or higher oil prices will tend to push the economy toward recession. We tend to look for rising prices to signal an oil supply problem, but perhaps that only works when there is excessive demand. If the problem is really inadequate oil supply, perhaps we should look for higher long-term interest rates, instead.

  [6] Industry around the world is likely to be hit especially hard by recessionary tendencies.

  Industry requires investment. Higher interest rates make new industrial investment more expensive. Industry is also a heavy user of energy products. Putting these observations together, it shouldn’t come as a surprise if new industrial investment is one of the first places to be cut back because of peak oil supply.

  

  Figure 3. Expected world industrial output, based on calculations I made with using industrial output and population forecasts from detailed output data provided with the article Recalibration of limits to growth: An update of the World3 model” by Arjuna Nebel et al.

  The original 1972 Limits to Growth analysis, in its base model, suggested that resources would start to run short about now. The variables in this model were recently recalibrated in the article, “Recalibration of limits to growth: An update of the World3 model.” Based on the detailed data given in the endnotes to the article, I calculated the expected industrialization per capita shown in Figure 3.

  Based on Figure 3, this model shows that industrialization per person reached a peak in 2017. Peak industrialization (total, not per capita) occurred in 2018, which coincides with peak crude oil extraction (not per capita).

  The model seems to suggest that after an inflection point in 2023 (that is 2024 and after), industrialization will start to fall more steeply. The model shows a decrease in production per capita of 4.1% in 2024 and of 5.3% in 2025. Such decreases would push the world economy toward recession.

  The model suggests that people, on average, are getting poorer in terms of the quantity of goods and services they can afford to buy. New cars, motorcycles, and homes are becoming less affordable. Heavily industrialized countries, such as China, South Korea, and Germany are likely to be especially affected by headwinds to industrialization. I expect that the economic problems in these countries will continue and are likely to worsen in 2025.

  [7] The US has tried to isolate itself from this nearly worldwide recession. I expect that during 2025, the US will increasingly slip into recession, as well.

  There are several reasons for this belief:

  (a) The US is heavily dependent upon imports of raw material. China is restricting exports of critical minerals used by the US. This will make it very difficult or impossible to ramp up high tech industries as planned.

  (b) The US is heavily dependent on Russia for supplies of enriched uranium. Any plan for added nuclear electricity needs to consider where the uranium to power these plants will come from. It also needs to consider how this uranium will be enriched to the required concentration of uranium-235.

  (c) If the US can ramp up crude oil and natural gas production, this can perhaps counter this trend toward US and world recession. Unfortunately, recent US oil supply has not been ramping up; instead its production has been fairly flat. Natural gas production has actually been lower since February 2024. Plans have been made to rapidly ramp up US liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, but these plans cannot work if the US natural gas supply is already decreasing.

  (d) The US government has had an advantage in borrowing because the US dollar is the world’s reserve currency. As such, the US is, in some sense, the first borrower, pulling the rest of the world along. The US, by making its short term interest rates higher than those of many other countries, was able to largely escape recession 2023 and 2024. Additional investment was attracted to the US by these higher interest rates. But the US cannot follow this strategy indefinitely. For one thing, a high US dollar handicaps exports. For another, interest costs on government debt become burdensome.

  (e) Donald Trump has plans to close inefficient parts of government. These changes, if enacted, will reduce “demand” within the economy because workers in these sectors will lose their jobs. Over the longer term, these changes might be beneficial, but over the short term, they are likely to be recessionary.

  (f) It is difficult for the US to do much better than the rest of the world. If the rest of the world is in recession, the US will tend to head in that direction, as well.

  [8] I expect more conflict in 2025, but today’s wars will not look much like World War I or World War II.

  Today, not many countries are able to build huge fleets of fighter airplanes. Even building drones and bombs seems to require supply lines that extend around the world. So, instead, wars are being fought in non-military ways, such as with sanctions and tariffs.

  I expect that this trend away from direct military conflict will continue, with more novel approaches such as internet interference and stealth damage to infrastructure taking place instead.

  I do not expect that nuclear bombs will be used, even when there is direct conflict between powerful adversaries. For one thing, uranium in these bombs is needed for other purposes. For another, there is too much chance of retaliation.

  [9] I expect many types of capital gains will be low in 2025.

  The situation we are facing now is the opposite of the drop in long-term interest rates observed between 1981 and 2020, in Figure (2), above. This historical drop in interest rates made it possible for businesses to more easily finance new investments. It also made it possible for individual citizens to be able to afford more homes and cars. It should not be surprising that this period has been a time of rising stock market prices, especially in the United States.

  The world’s economic problem is that it no longer has the tailwind of falling long-term interest rates. Instead, rising long-term interest rates are becoming a headwind. Home prices are un-affordably high for most potential buyers at today’s interest rates. A similar problem faces those hoping to purchase agricultural equipment and farmland at today’s high prices and high interest rates.

  We should not be surprised if home and farm prices stabilize and begin to fall. Prices of shares of stock are likely to encounter similar headwinds. Prices of derivative investments may perform even worse than the shares themselves.

  Recently, a great deal of the strength of the US market has been in a few stocks. Artificial Intelligence (AI) needs to very quickly provide a lot of benefit to the stock market as a whole for this to change. I cannot imagine this happening. With the US slipping toward recession, I expect that the US stock market will at best plateau in 2025.

  [10] With less energy available and higher interest rates on government debt, I expect to see more government organizations disbanding.

  It takes energy, directly and indirectly, to operate any kind of governmental organization. Eliminating governmental organizations is one way of saving energy. This is what happened when the central government of the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. I would think that parallel kinds of changes could start happening in the next few years, in many parts of the world.

  At some time, perhaps as soon as 2025, the European Union could collapse. If things are going badly for many member countries, they will be less willing to support the European Union with their tax revenues. Other organizations that seem like they could be in peril include NATO and the World Trade Organization.

  In some ways, such shrinkage would be in parallel with Trump’s plan for eliminating unnecessary governmental organizations within the United States. All these organizations require energy; cutting their number would go some way toward reducing crude oil and other energy consumption.

  [11] It is possible that the world economy will eventually get itself out of its apparent trend toward recession, but I am afraid this will happen long after 2025.

  We know that the world economy tends to operate in cycles. We would like to believe that the apparent current down-cycle is just temporary, but we can’t know this for sure. Physics tells us that we need energy supplies of the right kind for any action that contributes to GDP. Running short of energy supplies is therefore a very worrisome condition.

  We also know that there are major inefficiencies in current approaches. For example, oil extraction leaves much of the oil resource in place. In theory, AI could greatly improve extraction techniques.

  We also know that uranium consumption is terribly inefficient. M. King Hubbert thought that nuclear energy using uranium had amazing potential, but most of this potential remains untapped. Perhaps AI could help in this regard, also. If nothing else, perhaps recycling spent fuel could be made less expensive and problematic.

  

  Figure 4. Figure from Hubbert’s 1956 paper, Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels.

  We can’t know what lies ahead. There may be a “religious” ending to our current predicament that we are discounting that is actually the “right story.” Or there may be a “technofix” solution that allows us to avert collapse or catastrophe. But for now, how the current down-cycle will end remains a major cause for concern.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 18:25

• Preemptive Strikes On Iran Will Be A 'Real Possibility' Under Trump: Officials
  Preemptive Strikes On Iran Will Be A ‘Real Possibility’ Under Trump: Officials

  Starting in December the head of the UN nuclear watchdog, IAEA, warned that Iran is “dramatically” accelerating enrichment close to the roughly 90% level which is weapons-grade.

  On Tuesday President Emmanuel Macron called Iran the main “strategic and security challenge” for France and Europe. “The acceleration of the nuclear program leads us nearly to the point of no return,” he told an annual conference of French ambassadors.

  However, it remains anything but clear whether the Islamic Republic has actually decided to build a nuclear weapon, something recently (and surprisingly) acknowledged by the CIA.

  

  Still, the constant daily headlines over Iran’s enrichment advances set things up for a collision course with the Trump administration after the Jan.20 inauguration.

  According to a fresh report in Axios, the chances of Trump ordering a preemptive military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities are now higher than ever:

  Iran’s recent nuclear advances give President-elect Trump a crucial decision to make in his first months in office: Try to neutralize the threat through negotiations and pressure, or order a military strike.

  Trump’s decision in 2018 to withdraw from an Obama-era nuclear deal prompted Tehran to accelerate its nuclear program, such that it’s now a de facto “nuclear threshold state.” Officials and diplomats from the U.S., EU and Israel all told Axios they expect Trump to face an Iran crisis in 2025.

  Trump and his advisers are planning to quickly return to the “maximum pressure” campaign they conducted against Iran between 2018 and 2020.

  Axios further underscores that “Several Trump advisers privately concede Iran’s program is now so far along that the strategy might not be effective. That makes a military option a real possibility.”

  But it remains that US attacks on the Islamic Republic would only surely accelerate possible efforts to achieve a bomb. Much of the country’s nuclear infrastructure and technology is now likely underground, which would make it hard for any external power to destroy everything.

  Though in prior years the Ayatollahs have condemned nuclear weapons as ‘unIslamic’ – if the Iranians perceive themselves under direct threat of annihilation, they would urgently feel the need to rapidly have a bomb.

  Below is more from Axios on Trump expressing his position on the prior campaign trail:

  Back in October, Trump criticized President Biden for advising Israel not to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They asked him, what do you think about Iran, would you hit Iran? And he goes, ‘As long as they don’t hit the nuclear stuff.’ That’s the thing you want to hit, right?” Trump said at a campaign rally.

  It’s no secret that Iran has also long been engaged in sanctions-busting activity regarding global oil transit, and selling to powerful BRICS countries like China. Trump is expected to get ‘tough’ on that as well, and he has already nominated plenty of Iran hawks to top foreign policy positions.

  But from Tehran’s perspective, the problem remains that Israel possesses a large undeclared nuclear arsenal, which has long been an ‘open secret’. If Iran does pursue a nuke, it will be to establish a balance of power and deterrent against Israel and the United States in the region.

  Ironically if Trump does order ‘preemptive’ military strikes on Iran in the name of stopping WMD, this will be deeply contradictory to his stated aims on the campaign trail of wanting to stop and reign in US wars abroad.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 18:00

• January 6, 2025: The Real Insurrection Begins
  January 6, 2025: The Real Insurrection Begins

  Authored by Julie Kelly via ‘Declassified’,

  The original Jan 6 narrative died in spectacular fashion. Monday’s proceedings represent the start of a legitimate insurrection against a corrupt, unaccountable, and failed government in Washington…

  

  It’s a plot twist even the most creative—or diabolical—fiction writer never would have imagined.

  On Monday afternoon, Vice President Kamala Harris will preside over Congressional proceedings to certify the election of Donald Trump, who defeated her in the 2024 presidential election.

  The moment will represent one of many surreal moments on a date—January 6—that the Biden regime, news media, and Democratic voters consider one of the darkest times in American history. In fact, Harris herself categorizes January 6, 2021 alongside September 11, 2001 and December 7, 1941 as events she claims “remind all who have lived through them where they were…when our democracy came under assault.”

  Four years ago, the ruling class in Washington attempted to commit what all evidence now points to as the premeditated murder of the MAGA movement. Powerful political and government saboteurs aligned to stoke the events of January 6, a four-hour disturbance those same saboteurs immediately branded an “insurrection.”

  The talking points, in fact, went out before the first protester entered the building. As the chaos still was unfolding at the Capitol, Joe Biden gave a nationwide address—he allegedly had planned to talk about the economy at 4 p.m. but in yet another fortuitous coincidence for Democrats, Biden quickly pivoted to a lengthy rant about the protest—to denounce the “insurrection.”

  The intervening four years has consisted of a nonstop loop of January 6-related propaganda and lawfare intended to keep Trump and his movement from rising from the political dead.

  Trump and MAGA Left for Dead

  And they pounded as many nails as they could into what they believed was the J6 coffin. Trump was impeached for the second time. FBI Director Christopher Wray designated January 6 an act of domestic terror thereby branding anyone who participated in the Capitol protest a domestic terrorist.

  The Department of Justice opened what would become the biggest criminal investigation in its history resulting in the arrest of nearly 1,600 individuals, most of whom supported Donald Trump, and the jailing of several hundred even those convicted of petty misdemeanors.

  Attorney General Merrick Garland opened a separate investigation into Trump over the events of January 6; top Trump confidants and associates were dragged before a D.C. grand jury to testify and produce records. DC judges routinely denied privilege claims.

  For the first time in history, a sitting president (Biden) repeatedly denied executive privilege requests from his predecessor. And for the first time in history, a former president faced a criminal indictment related to his conduct in office. (In another history-making event, Special Counsel Jack Smith also indicted Trump in the so-called classified documents case but that involved allegations after he left the White House.)

  Two weeks after Smith charged Trump in a four-count indictment for Jan 6, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis also indicted Trump and more than a dozen of his advisors in a massive RICO case tied to Jan 6. Other state officials charged Trump supporters in the so-called “fake electors” plan tied to Jan 6.

  Congress did its part, too. The January 6 Select Committee offered a steady primetime infusion of J6 propaganda; crying police officers and turncoat White House aides testified in the hope of providing the emotional punch necessary to convince the most stubborn MAGA loyalists that their leader posed a dire threat to the future of “democracy.”

  No good anti-Trump operation succeeds, of course, without the complicity of the media. The amount of ink and airtime and clicks dedicated to all things January 6 may never be fully accounted for; books were written, documentaries were made. There is no question the collective coverage of January 6 rivals coverage of every war and legitimate terror attack in American history.

  The exhaustive operation—the multi-faceted lawfare, the Congressional theater, the media fixation—was supposed to end with Trump sitting in jail, a final death blow to his political future and the populist movement he created.

  But it all came crashing down on November 5, 2024.

  A “Revolt Against Civil Authority or an Established Government”

  Trump won in decisive fashion as the majority of Americans sent a big middle finger tied to a wrecking ball to the halls of power in Washington. The failures of the Biden regime unquestionably contributed to Trump’s victory but so too did the relentless pursuit of the president, his family, his allies, his businesses, and his voters.

  The January 6 operation backfired in a spectacular way. Instead of representing one of the darkest days in history, January 6 to millions of Americans instead embodies the corrupt, bloodthirsty, and vengeful nature of the existing government and its media bootlickers, which foreshadowed the sort of banana republic-style rule seen in Marxist hellholes not in the United States.

  And voters acted accordingly at the ballot box.

  So Monday, January 6, 2025 signals the start of a real insurrection, which is defined as a “revolt against civil authority or an established government” not an unarmed and at points unruly demonstration inside a government building on a Wednesday afternoon.

  Should Trump fulfill his boldest campaign pledges, federal agencies in the nation’s capital will never be the same. Permanent changes in now untrusted institutions such as the DOJ, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and, sadly, the Department of Defense among others promise to gut the rogue, unelected bureaucracy that really runs the show.

  The Trump Insurrection already is paying dividends as employees flee agencies soon to be led by sworn foes of the Deep State. Chris Wray resigned ahead of his scheduled ten-year tenure as FBI boss.

  Even more gratifying is that the architects of the original “insurrection” narrative are sweating and on the run. Reports indicate top DOJ officials including Jack Smith and prosecutors in the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s office, which has been responsible for the “Capitol Siege” prosecution, are lawyering up and worried about going bankrupt—fitting karma for the hell they’ve inflicted on others.

  Ditto for Liz Cheney and members of the J6 select committee. Cheney currently is the subject of a congressional investigation related to her role as vice chairman of the committee; a Trump DOJ is expected to look into her conduct as well. J6 Committee chairman Bennie Thomspon, who along with Cheney just received a medal from Biden, said he would accept a presidential pardon.

  The career of Fani Willis has entered death twitch stage; not only did a Georgia appellate court put an end to her involvement in the RICO case but her personal foibles will long be a source of mockery and ridicule.

  Overall, the Democratic Party is in disarray, as listless and useless as Joe Biden, who is expected to issue more broad-based pardons to cover up the criminality of the entire J6 operation against Trump.

  And the media is just crushed that their propaganda and teeth-gnashing and hyperbole didn’t work. In a Sunday morning interview, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Senator Amy Klobuchar if “the horrible things that happened that day are being forgotten?”

  Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on “Face the Nation” Sunday morning lamented about the “denial of what happened on Jan 6.”

  But perhaps no one said it better than the New York Times’ Peter Baker, a reliable regime mouthpiece. “If you woke up on January 7th of 2021 with the glass still shattered on the floor of the Capitol and the smoke rising and the troops are surrounding the building, and you had said that Donald Trump will be president in four years, nobody would have believed that.”

  Correct, Peter. The death of Trump and MAGA, as the old saying goes, was greatly exaggerated. And you did it to yourself.

  Now bring on the real insurrection.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 17:40

• "How About If We Buy Alaska?" Top Canadian Politician Eyes Takeover Of U.S. States As Battle With Trump Escalates
  “How About If We Buy Alaska?” Top Canadian Politician Eyes Takeover Of U.S. States As Battle With Trump Escalates

  Canadians are touchy, eh?

  Ontario Premier Doug Ford fired back at President-elect Donald Trump’s calls for Canada to join the United States as its 51st state by countering with a surprising offer: for the Great White North to purchase Alaska and Minnesota.

  

  “You know something, to the president, I’ll make him a counteroffer: How about if we buy Alaska and throw in Minnesota and Minneapolis at the same time?” Ford told reporters during a Monday press conference, addressing Trump’s looming threat of U.S. tariffs against Canada.

  Trump, speaking at a freewheeling press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday, expressed frustration over how the U.S. is treated by Canada, claiming that its biggest trading partner is subsidized by approximately $200 billion annually.

  “They don’t essentially have a military,” Trump said. “They have a very small military. They rely on our military. It’s all fine but, you know, they have to pay for that. It’s very unfair. Something has to be done.”

  “To the president, I’ll make him a counter offer. How about if we buy Alaska?”

  You need bulldogs like Doug Ford sometimes. pic.twitter.com/sTJy8v7pfN

  — David Beaudoin (@DavidABeaudoin) January 6, 2025

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  “We are going to put very serious tariffs on Mexico and Canada,” the president-elect continued, before turning his focus to the surge of illegal substances flowing from Canada into the U.S. “They come through Canada, too. The drugs coming through are at record numbers,” Trump said. “So we are going to make up for that by putting tariffs on Mexico and Canada. Substantial tariffs. We want to get along with everybody but, you know, it takes two to tango.”

  Trump also reiterated his wish for former NHL star Wayne Gretzky to consider running for Canada’s prime minister, suggesting that he could be a viable successor to Trudeau.

  In November, Trump raised alarms in both Canada and Mexico with a threat to impose 25 percent tariffs unless the two countries helped curb the migrant and fentanyl crises. The threat prompted Trudeau to immediately travel to Mar-a-Lago for talks on how the U.S. and Canada could avoid a tariff war.

  Ford, however, maintains that Mexico and China—not Canada—are responsible for the trade issues Trump has singled out.

  “I’ve talked to so many governors and congresspeople and senators and never once did they say Canada is the problem,” Ford told CNN on Monday. “I’ll tell you who the problem is: China is the problem. China shipping in cheap parts, putting them through Mexico. Mexico slapping on a ‘Made in Mexico’ sticker and shipping up through the U.S. and Canada. [It’s] costing American and Canadian jobs.”

  Recently resigning PM Justin Trudeau, meanwhile, took to X on Tuesday to reaffirm his staunch opposition to Trump’s proposal, declaring, “There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States.”

  There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States.

  Workers and communities in both our countries benefit from being each other’s biggest trading and security partner.

  — Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) January 7, 2025

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  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 17:20

• The Climate Agenda's March Through The Institutions: Can It Be Stopped?
  The Climate Agenda’s March Through The Institutions: Can It Be Stopped?

  Authored by Tilak K. Doshi via RealClearEnergy,

  A spate of stories in the media recently provides a remarkable illustration of how the globalist policy agenda of the climate industrial complex has captured key international institutions and perverted their original organizational aims. From initially serving broad, laudable objectives for the welfare of their constituents, these institutions have been subverted over the years to serve the insistent pseudoscientific claims of climate alarmists.

  

  The corruption of global institutions has, in turn, led to significant opposition that is becoming apparent. There is the prospect of an incoming Trump administration that is avowedly sceptical of the claims of an alleged climate crisis and is intent on exiting the UN’s Paris Agreement and its “net zero by 2050” policy target for a second time. This presents a welcome challenge to these corrupt institutions. Will President Trump and some of the populist parties in Europe be capable of countering the entrenched globalist climate agenda?

  The World Bank

  On 17th October, Oxfam published a report that shockingly found that up to $41 billion in World Bank climate finance —nearly 40% of all climate funds disbursed by the Bank over the past seven years— is “unaccounted for between the time projects were approved and when they closed.” In other words, no one knows how the money was used. There is no paper trail revealing where the money went or what the accomplished results were.

  Green cronyism, ranging from the Solyndra debacle – the waste of almost half a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money on a failed solar farm project under President Obama’s watch — to President Biden’s duplicitously-named Inflation Reduction Act which will unleash an estimated $1 trillion deluge of subsidies on favored “green” industries is nothing new. But it is instructive to trace the World Bank’s decline from its honorable founding objectives to its current status as yet another institution advocating green causes.

  Dr. Jim Yong Kim, reflecting the progressive virtues of President Obama who appointed him as president of the World Bank in 2012, imposed a ban on the financing of coal-fired power stations in 2013. This was followed by a ban on investments in all new upstream oil and gas resource development projects. The distinguished economist Deepak Lal,  a former Research Administrator of the Bank, remarked that Dr. Kim incredulously “over-ruled the cost-benefit estimates of coal-based power over solar and wind-based power generation produced by his own economic staff, justifying this by reference to a wish to cut global emissions of greenhouse gases.”

  The World Bank’s objections to the use of fossil fuels despite their importance to economic growth and poverty alleviation – which constitute its foundational institutional objectives — can be traced to the intellectual evolution of its management under James Wolfensohn during his decade as president (1995 – 2005). Mr. Wolfensohn traced the arc from the old regime to the new. The old was represented by the “Washington consensus” of free markets, liberal trading regimes, sound money and entrepreneurship associated with the classical liberalism of Adam Smith.

  The new intellectual environment of the World Bank’s management – personified by Joseph Stiglitz, Chief Economist of the World Bank (1997 – 2000) — was defined by the theoretical failures of the free market, especially in accounting for the alleged negative climate impacts of fossil fuel use. Stiglitz, a climate alarmist, wrote in a 2015 court brief for a failed climate lawsuit brought on behalf of a group of children against the US Federal government that “fossil fuel-based economies imposed ‘incalculable’ costs on society and shifting to clean energy will pay off.”

  Rupert Darwall, a former adviser to the United Kingdom’s Chancellor of the Exchequer and author of Green Tyranny, encapsulates the betrayal of the World Bank to its founding objectives as follows:

  The World Bank’s mission has been subverted by green ideologues who assert that a low-carbon world benefits the world’s poor but fail to acknowledge that making energy much more costly increases poverty. The World Bank tags itself as ‘working for a world free of poverty’…In making its choice between development and sustainability, the World Bank has decided it is going to try and ‘save the planet’ on the backs of the poor.

  By abdicating its founding principles for alleviating global poverty, the World Bank has taken a lead role among multilateral financial institutions in denying vast financial resources to poorer countries. It has hypocritically vetoed the right of developing countries to adopt the path of economic growth and environmental improvement that the now-rich countries had taken up successfully since the industrial revolution two centuries ago. The Bank’s obsessive support for intermittent, low-yield renewable energy such as solar and wind power comes at the cost of its central charter to help the poor, an outcome that can only be described as egregiously unjust.

  The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

  The UN IPCC issued a news release on December 6th prior to the start of a “scoping” meeting in Kuala Lumpur of over 230 experts from 70 countries to draft outlines of working group contributions to the UN IPCC’s 7th Assessment Report (to be completed in 2029). In the press release, the IPCC claimed that human combustion of fossil fuels “has resulted in more frequent and more intense extreme weather events that have caused increasingly dangerous impacts on nature and people in every region of the world.” This is contrary to the IPCC’s position hitherto, which is that almost all types of extreme weather events cannot be attributed with confidence to human activity. 

  The position of the IPCC regarding the lack of any link between climate change and extreme weather events is contrary to the almost daily headlines in the mainstream media attributing specific adverse weather events to “climate change.”  The work of eminent climate policy analysts  Steve Koonin and Roger Pielke Jr. has done much to expose the pseudoscientific nature of what has been called “attribution studies.” These typically involve researchers who apply their climate models and historical observations to conclude that any particular weather event (say a hurricane or a drought) was made “more likely” or “more severe” by some magnitude in percentage units due to “human influence” (referring to the combustion of fossil fuels).

  Based on the dubious claims of “attribution science,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a climate law last week that will require companies operating in New York state responsible for large amounts of planet-warming pollution to contribute to climate damage repair efforts. Under the new state law, companies responsible for the bulk of emissions from 2000 to 2018 will be on the hook for some $3 billion a year over the next 25 years.

  Steve Koonin cites the World Meteorological Organization that states that “any single event, such as tropical cyclone cannot be attributed to human-induced climate change, given the state of scientific understanding.” The IPCC’s “Special Report on Extreme Events” states that “Many weather and climate extremes are the result of natural climate variability…Even if there were no anthropogenic changes in climate, a wide variety of natural weather and climate extremes would still occur.”

  Nonetheless, international organizations such as the World Bank and the IPCC have been increasingly politicized to serve climate hysteria. In this context, Chris Morrison of The Daily Sceptic finds that “[f]ears are growing that the IPCC could water down or even ditch its current finding that almost all types of extreme weather events have little or no sign of past human involvement, or any going forward to 2100.”

  International Energy Agency

  On December 23rd, U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, released a report documenting how the International Energy Agency “has moved away from its energy security mission to become an “energy transition” cheerleader.” The report finds that the “French President Macron’s observation that IEA has become the ‘armed wing for implementing the Paris Agreement’ is regrettably true. With the many serious energy security challenges facing the world, however, IEA should not be a partisan cheerleader. What the world needs from IEA—and what it is not receiving now—is sober and unbiased analyses and projections that educate and inform policymakers and investors. IEA needs to remember why it was established and return to its energy security mission.”

  The divergence of the IEA away from its original mission to advise policymakers in its member countries with sound analysis of trends in global energy supply and demand to becoming a “cheerleader” for radical net zero emission policy targets has not gone unnoticed over recent years. I have written on the ideological approach adopted by the IEA in its advocacy for green causes here, here, and here.

  When the organization issued a call for the cessation of all future investments in developing fossil fuel resources in May 2021, this is what I wrote:

  It is a month since the International Energy Agency – the rich world’s energy advisory body established in the wake of the oil price shock of 1973 — issued its astonishing report calling for the end to all new investments in oil and gas (let alone coal) from 2021. As expected, the IEA “road-map” elicited widespread media coverage and strong reactions, ranging from gushing support from those convinced of a “climate emergency” to outright dismissal, as in the case of the Saudi oil minister who called the report a sequel to “La La Land.” 

  When ideological advocacy becomes the measure of achievement for the IEA, the loss of credibility and soundness of its policy advice is only to be expected.  The IEA’s messianic fervour for green technologies such as solar and wind power, “green” hydrogen, batteries and electric vehicles prevents it from asking basic questions. If it is true that drastically cutting back on fossil fuels is consistent with higher economic growth and increased productive employment, why does the IEA recommend policymakers to force countries along “net-zero” pathways? Surely, if replacing fossil fuels with wind and solar energy and electric vehicles promote growth and employment, then wouldn’t countries such as China and India naturally race towards this best of all possible worlds without expensive green subsidies and punitive anti-fossil fuel policies?

  The Trumpian Revolution Looms

  Non-profit organizations reflect the needs of their funding members, and organizations such as the World Bank, IPCC and IEA are no different. As their funding is primarily from the US and EU, it is not surprising that they manifest the “climate emergency” predilections of the Biden administration and the largely left-socialist West European governments which see climate change as an existential threat and a national security priority. In taking up the mantle of green advocacy on behalf of their paymasters, these organizations have lost all credibility as independent and objective advisors for their member countries.

  The climate industrial complex fears the prospect of the Trump administration’s pullout of the Paris agreement for the second time. Politico, a reliable mouthpiece for the climate establishment, expressed these fears soon after Mr. Trump’s election victory: “The world is bracing for President-elect Donald Trump to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement for the second time — only this time, he could move faster and with less restraint.” In Europe, the emergence of populist parties  have been partly propelled by the widespread rejection by EU citizens of the onerous fiscal burdens imposed by green policies. 

  The seismic change in policy direction that a second term “drill, baby, drill” Trump administration promises for the global climate juggernaut – represented by the three leading international agencies covered here – can only be seen as hopeful as we look forward to positive developments in energy policy in 2025.

  Dr. Tilak K. Doshi is an economist, a former contributor to Forbes and a member of the C02 Coalition. Follow him on Substack and X.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 17:00

• AI Chatbot Startup Anthropic Valued At $60bln In New Funding Round
  AI Chatbot Startup Anthropic Valued At $60bln In New Funding Round

  AI startup Anthropic, another OpenAI ChatGPT rival with its AI assistant Claude, is reportedly in talks to raise $2 billion, which would value the chatbot startup at a whopping $60 billion. 

  According to The Wall Street Journal, sources familiar with the matter revealed that Lightspeed Venture Partners is leading the funding round. 

  

  Last fall, Amazon agreed to invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic for a minority stake in the startup, bringing its total investment since 2023 to $8 billion. Amazon’s November investment was a convertible note. 

  Other investors in Anthropic include Google, Menlo Ventures, Wisdom Ventures, Ripple Impact Investments, and Factorial Funds.

  Several months ago, Microsoft-backed OpenAI raised $6.6 billion at a $157 billion valuation. Last month, Elon Musk’s xAI raised $6 billion from BlackRock, Fidelity, and Sequoia Capital at a $40 billion valuation. 

  An individual familiar with Anthropic’s annualized revenue—an extrapolation of the next 12 months’ revenue based on recent sales—stated that this figure recently reached $875 million.

  The Anthropic deal would make it the fifth-most valuable US startup, trailing SpaceX, OpenAI, Stripe, and Databricks, according to data from CB Insights. The company was valued at $18 billion in a round led by Menlo Ventures last year.

  Meanwhile, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei penned an op-ed in WSJ on Monday, emphasizing, “The nations that are first to build powerful AI systems will gain a strategic advantage over its development,” adding, “Incoming Trump administration officials can take steps to ensure the U.S. and its allies lead in developing this technology.” 

  Sustaining these lofty valuations is troubling, given that many of these AI startups are operating at a loss. OpenAI’s Sam Altman admitted on X on Sunday that his company continues to lose money.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 16:40

• Trump Not Ruling Out Using Military Force To Reclaim Panama Canal, Greenland
  Trump Not Ruling Out Using Military Force To Reclaim Panama Canal, Greenland

  Authored by Emel Akan via The Epoch Times,

  President-elect Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he would not rule out the possibility of using military force to take control of the Panama Canal and Greenland, emphasizing their strategic significance to U.S. national security.

  

  Speaking at a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Trump said that he “cannot assure” that military or economic coercion would not be used to take control of these two strategic locations, in response to a question.

  “No, I can’t assure you on either of those two, but I can say this, we need them for economic security,” Trump responded.

  “It might be that you’ll have to do something. Look, the Panama Canal is vital to our country. It’s being operated by China. We gave the Panama Canal to Panama. We didn’t give it to China, and they’ve abused it. They’ve abused that gift.”

  Trump in recent social media posts expressed his frustration over China’s expanding influence in the canal, despite it having been built by the United States more than 110 years ago at great financial and human cost.

  The Panama Canal, which opened in 1914 after a decade of construction led by the United States, was gradually handed back to Panama under a 1977 treaty signed by President Jimmy Carter.

  During his speech, Trump criticized Carter for handing over the Panama Canal.

  “Carter gave it to them for $1. … I thought it was a terrible thing to do. It was the most expensive structure ever built in the history of our country,” Trump said.

  The president-elect said that this action cost Carter the election in 1980.

  In 1999, Panama assumed full control of the canal, which has since become one of the busiest shipping routes in the world, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

  Construction of the canal, however, came at a high human cost. Official estimates suggest that around 5,600 workers died during the U.S.-led effort to build the canal. Additionally, nearly 22,000 people are estimated to have died during an earlier French-led construction attempt.

  Trump reiterated that 38,000 people died during the waterway’s construction.

  “They laugh at us because they think we’re stupid, but we’re not stupid anymore. So the Panama Canal is under discussion with them right now,” Trump said during the press conference.

  Trump also said the United States needs Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, for “national security purposes.”

  “People have been talking about it for a long time. You have approximately 45,000 people there,” Trump said.

  “They should give it up, because we need it for national security. That’s for the free world. I’m talking about protecting the free world.

  “You have China ships all over the place. You have Russian ships all over the place. We’re not letting that happen. We’re not letting it happen.”

  Trump questioned whether Denmark has any right over Greenland.

  “The people are going to probably vote for independence or to come into the United States,” he said.

  If Denmark rejected the U.S. proposal, Trump said, he “would tariff Denmark at a very high level.”

  In recent social media posts, Trump has floated the idea of taking control of Greenland and the Panama Canal and proposed making Canada the 51st state in order to protect U.S. national security.

  Under the separate 1977 Neutrality Treaty, Panama and the United States agreed that the waterway would remain permanently neutral with fair access and tolls for all countries. Hence, any Chinese challenge to this pact may require the United States to employ military force.

  In recent years, U.S. military commanders have expressed grave concern over Beijing’s increasing military and technology presence in Latin America, including Panama.

  In 2017, Panama cut long-standing diplomatic ties with Taiwan to establish closer ties with China. It also became the first Latin American country to endorse Beijing’s infrastructure plan, the Belt and Road Initiative. Since then, Chinese companies have been heavily involved in logistics and infrastructure projects near the canal, including port operations on both ends of the waterway.

  Trump earlier criticized what he called the “exorbitant” fees Panama has been charging the United States, its Navy, and U.S. corporations for passage.

  On Dec. 22, Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino responded to Trump’s social media posts about the Panama Canal by saying that “every square meter” of the canal belongs to his country.

  In a televised address, Mulino said that Panama’s sovereignty and independence were non-negotiable.

  Trump quickly replied, “We’ll see about that!”

  In a Dec. 22 post, Trump also shared an image of the U.S. flag flying over the Panama Canal with the text “Welcome to the United States Canal!”

  Trump’s offer to buy Greenland is not new. He first proposed the idea in 2019, but it was rejected by Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, who called it “absurd.”

  In response, Trump canceled a planned visit to Denmark, calling Frederiksen’s remarks “nasty” and “inappropriate.”

  Trump later indicated to reporters that his idea was normal by referencing past U.S. efforts to purchase the strategic island, including Harry Truman’s proposal to buy it for $100 million in 1946.

  According to Trump’s former national security adviser Robert O’Brien, the territory is expected to become increasingly important in the coming years.

  “It’s strategically very important to the Arctic, which is going to be the critical battleground of the future,” O’Brien told Fox News on Dec. 29, adding that “the Russians and Chinese are all over the Arctic” and that Denmark is unable to adequately defend the vast island.

  On Dec. 22, Trump announced his appointment of PayPal co-founder Ken Howery as the U.S. ambassador to Denmark. In his message, Trump reiterated his idea to take ownership of Greenland.

  “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” he wrote.

  Howery, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Sweden during Trump’s first term, will represent U.S. interests in the region, Trump said.

  Hours after Trump’s statement, the Danish government announced a substantial increase in defense spending for Greenland, pledging at least $1.5 billion.

  Greenlandic Prime Minister Mute Egede said in a statement: “Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale.

  “We must not lose our long struggle for freedom.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/07/2025 – 16:20

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