- COVID-19 Wreaks Economic Havoc Across Europe
COVID-19 Wreaks Economic Havoc Across Europe
The European Commission has released its Spring 2020 Economic Forecast which shows that COVID-19 is wreaking havoc on Europe’s economy.
The collective GDP of the EU-27 was expected to grow 1.2 percent this year but it is now forecast contract 7.4 percent due to the pandemic. By contrast, Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes that the Financial Crisis “only” led to a contraction of 4.5 percent for the EU-28 back in 2009.
The current crisis has now pushed the EU into the deepest recession since its foundation with unemployment rates set to rise drastically. Last year, unemployment across the bloc was 6.7 percent and it is now forecast to grow to 9 percent this year.
You will find more infographics at Statista
The data shows that no EU member state is going to emerge from the COVID-19 crisis unscathed with countries in southern Europe set to be worst impacted. Even though Greece has made progress since the Financial Crisis and has earned plaudits for limiting the spread of the coronavirus, it is expected to suffer the worst decline in GDP our of all EU member states at 9.7 percent. Italy and Spain who have both been badly impacted by the pandemic are also expected to suffer GDP contractions greater than 9 percent this year.
Even though Germany has suffered a far lower death toll than many of its neighbors and is slowly easing its lockdown, Europe’s economic powerhouse is still predicted to see its GDP shrink by 6.5 percent this year. While the situation remains serious in some parts of Europe, particularly the UK, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
After 7 weeks of strict confinement, Italians finally emerged from their homes at the start of the week while Germany’s schools and restaurants are set to open over the next couple of days. Even though the situation is improving, most EU leaders are remaining cautious due to the possibility of a second wave of infections. The European Commission has stated that fundamental uncertainty surrounds the forecast and that the danger of a deeper and more protracted recession is very real.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 05/08/2020 – 02:35 - "Moral Vacuum" Exposed – European Leaders Cower In The Face Of China
“Moral Vacuum” Exposed – European Leaders Cower In The Face Of China
Authored by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,
Australia and the United States are leading a campaign for an independent inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. Senior officials in both countries are seeking to determine if the virus originated in nature or in a Chinese laboratory. They are also calling on the Chinese government to account for its handling of the initial outbreak in the city of Wuhan.
In Europe, where the pandemic has killed more than 100,000 people and caused economic devastation on a scale not seen since the Second World War, political leaders have been deafeningly silent on demanding accountability from China. While a handful of European officials have agreed in principle that there should be an investigation at some undetermined point in the future, most appear afraid to challenge China directly.
The equivocation of European leaders is a reflection not only of Europe’s geopolitical weakness and economic overdependence on China, but also of a moral vacuum in which they refuse to stand up for Western values.
A few days after European officials caved in to pressure from China and watered down an EU report on Chinese efforts to deflect blame for the coronavirus pandemic, the EU ambassador to China, Nicolas Chapuis, allowed the Chinese government to edit an op-ed article signed by him and the 27 Ambassadors of EU member states, to mark the 45th anniversary of diplomatic relations with China.
The EU authorized the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to remove references to the origins and the spread of the coronavirus from the article, published in China Daily, an English-language daily newspaper owned by the Communist Party of China.
An EU spokesperson said that the EU allowed China to revise the op-ed because Brussels “considered it important to communicate EU policy priorities, notably on climate change and sustainability…”
Meanwhile, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen backed calls for an investigation into the origin of the coronavirus, but she avoided mentioning China by name and was careful not to offer specifics, such as who should lead the probe or when it might be conducted.
In a May 1 interview with the American broadcaster CNBC, von der Leyen used meaningless “diplomatese” apparently not to offend China:
“You never know when the next virus is starting, so we all want for the next time, we have learned our lesson and we’ve established a system of early warning that really functions and the whole world has to contribute to that.”
In Sweden, Health Minister Lena Hallengren was slightly more forceful. In a reply to parliament on April 29, she called on the European Union to probe the origin of the pandemic:
“When the global situation of Covid-19 is under control, it is both reasonable and important that an international, independent investigation be conducted to gain knowledge about the origin and spread of the coronavirus.
“It is also important that the entire international community’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, including the World Health Organisation, is investigated. Sweden is happy to raise this issue within the framework of EU cooperation.”
In France, President Emmanuel Macron questioned China’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak. “Given the choices made and what China is today, which I respect, let’s not be so naive as to say it’s been much better at handling this,” Macron told the Financial Times on April 16. “We don’t know. There are clearly things that have happened that we don’t know about.” He stopped short of calling for an investigation.
Meanwhile, the French government allowed the Chinese telecom company Huawei to supply parts for its 5G next-generational mobile network. The concession was made after China threatened to retaliate against European companies in the Chinese market.
In Britain, which now has the highest coronavirus death toll in Europe, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been strangely silent on China. He continues to resist pressure from parliament to reverse his controversial decision to allow Huawei to supply parts for the UK’s 5G mobile network.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab vowed to ask “hard questions” and threatened the end of “business as usual” with Beijing. He has not, however, announced any punitive measures against China.
Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, when asked by LBC radio if China should be held accountable, replied:
“I think it does. But I think the time for the post-mortem on this is after we’ve all got it under control and have come through it and our economies are back to normal. Only by being open and transparent will we learn about it, and China needs to be open and transparent about what it learned, and its shortcomings, but also its successes.”
Former Prime Minister Theresa May, in a May 6 op-ed published by The Times, called for moral equivalence when dealing with the United States and China. “A world in which a few ‘strong men’ square up to each other and expect everyone else to choose between them would be a dangerous one,” she said, apparently referring to U.S. President Donald J. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Writing for The Spectator, Scottish political commentator Stephen Daisley lamented the government’s dithering approach to China. In an essay, “Our Toothless Response to China is Embarrassing,” he listed a series of measures the British government could take:
“No country with a skerrick of self-respect can allow this behavior to go unpunished. I have already suggested some punitive measures designed to wound the regime’s pride without harming the Chinese people: cancel the Huawei deal; pass a Magnitsky-style Act targeting senior CPC figures; champion the Uyghurs at every opportunity (e.g. rename the London street that houses the Chinese embassy after a Uyghur political prisoner); and recognize Taiwan as an independent nation. All I would add, upon reflection, is this: grant British citizenship to Hong Kongers born before 1 July 1997, their children and grandchildren. Even if just a fraction of Hong Kong’s residents took up the opportunity, every one would be a small humiliation for the dictatorship. Given the government’s softly-softly approach, we probably shouldn’t get our hopes up for anything beyond Huawei cancellation, and even that’s far from guaranteed. Even absent the ministerial gumption to impose sanctions on Beijing, there will have to be a strategic rethink of our relationship with the People’s Republic. If this is how it behaves in a US-led world order, it is unlikely to be any more benevolent as a rival (or replacement) superpower.
“While abandoning global free trade and economic interdependence would prove a costly mistake, it would be just as foolish to remain in hock to a regime that, in the most generous reading of events, caused thousands of avoidable British deaths to save face. However, reshoring and rebuilding key manufacturing sectors is only a partial solution. We need to trade but our trading priorities are subject to political and security considerations. China is our second-largest trading partner while India is our sixth. It would be in the UK’s interests to reverse that ordering. Of course, to make a change like that you need a government with a bit of backbone and it’s not at all clear that we have one.”
In Germany, Development Minister Gerd Müller said that the Chinese government “had to show complete openness in this world crisis, especially with regard to the origin of the virus.” The statement was the most forceful of any German cabinet member to date. Chancellor Angela Merkel distanced herself from the remark, saying that it had not been discussed in the cabinet:
“I believe that the more transparent China is about the history of this virus, the better it is for all of us around the world who want to learn from it. But we didn’t have this specific discussion.”
German commentator Constantin Eckner noted that the coronavirus has exposed Germany’s dependency on its trade relations with China, which Germany needs to overcome the current crisis:
“For years now, Germany has been leaning on China for cheap supply and as a market for its exports. Following the 2008 financial crisis, when most of Europe was suffering, Germany kept itself rather unscathed thanks to a strong export-orientated economy and partly thanks to China. Germany was not concerned about any geo-economic advances Beijing was making. It cared little about the 16+1 forum with Central and Eastern European countries launched in 2012 or the Belt and Road Initiative unveiled in 2013, and the ‘Made in China 2025’ strategy intended to establish Chinese dominance in emerging technologies….
“Publicly Berlin has positioned itself against Xi Jinping’s ‘mask diplomacy’ since the coronavirus outbreak in Europe, condemning attempts to exploit the crisis politically or economically. But behind closed doors, senior officials acknowledge that the domestic economy needs China just like it did in the aftermath of 2008, or possibly even more. Germany has the highest export ratio among the G20 — about 47 per cent of its GDP. A demand shock of global proportion puts a lot of manufacturers in a tough spot. As China is recovering from the pandemic faster than the rest of the world, Germany might end up tying itself closer to the economic giant than before the crisis….
“These desperate times could make Merkel forge a new alliance with Xi, accepting that Germany cannot survive without the Chinese market and financial firepower, but also knowing that Beijing will not be shy to exploit such a dependency to further its geoeconomic goals. For its future prosperity, Germany may be forced to look east.”
Europe’s most forceful action against China has been taken by the Netherlands, which recently renamed its de facto embassy in Taiwan. The Netherlands Trade and Investment Office is now called “Netherlands Office Taipei.” China responded by threatening to halt shipments of medical supplies, a threat that could ring hollow: the Netherlands recently recalled 600,000 substandard medical masks that had been imported from China.
While Europeans cower in the face of Communist China, they have found time to issue threats against the only democracy in the Middle East. On April 30, eleven European ambassadors to Israel warned Jerusalem of “severe consequences” if it goes ahead with plans to annex parts of the West Bank.
In a lengthy essay published by Die Welt, Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer, Europe’s largest publishing company, argued that the time has come for Europe to choose between the United States and China:
“Once a treatment for the virus has been found, the debates about shutdown and easing restrictions have passed, and the recession has reared its ugly head, nothing less than the world order itself must be clarified. Or to be more specific: the matter of alliance. Where does Europe stand? On the side of the US or China?…
“America has clearly decided to pursue a policy of ‘decoupling’ from China. If Europe does not want to see its freedom subverted by Beijing, it must decide which of the two countries to ally with, and it must do so soon.
“We are told time and again that it is not a case of either-or, that it’s about having the best of both worlds. The opposite is true. There is no need for finely crafted rhetoric here, we need to make a fundamental political decision. China or the US. It is no longer possible to go with both….
“Europe has been avoiding the alliance question for a long time, but it is now time to make that decision. This does not directly have to do with the coronavirus crisis. And it certainly has nothing to do with the question of where the virus originated.
“The crisis focuses the way we look at long-standing dependencies, even those in so-called vital supply chains, how we see fundamental differences in communication and crisis management, and our regard for what is ultimately a completely different concept of humanity….
“Europe has failed so far to clearly state where it stands, preferring to play piggy in the middle, able to tip the scales either way. Even believing its opportunism to be a sign of independence and courage. However, Europe will never be able to hold onto its position as everybody’s darling. When it comes to questions of world order, you cannot have your cake and eat it….
“Europe’s economy likes making deals with China and does not want to be interrupted in those pursuits. Politicians are dithering. The Italians have even been willing to subjugate themselves to China’s ridiculous euphemism of the ‘New Silk Road.’
“We increasingly hear words of admiration in Europe about the speed and efficiency of the Chinese market economy, the rigorous nature of its crisis management. All the time gladly ignoring the fact that China’s successes rest on a highly perfected system of digital surveillance that translates the perversions of the KGB and Stasi into the 21st century….
“Economic relations with China might seem harmless to many Europeans today, but they could soon lead to political dependence and ultimately to the end of a free and liberal Europe. The European Union has the choice. But above all Germany, Europe’s economic motor, has the choice.
“Should we make a pact with an authoritarian regime or should we work to strengthen a community of free, constitutionally governed market economies with liberal societies? It is remarkable that German politics, with its love of moralizing, seems to throw its values out the window when dealing with China. What is at stake here is nothing less than what kind of society we want to live in and our concept of humanity….
“If current European and, above all, German policy on China continues, this will lead to a gradual decoupling from America and a step-by-step infiltration and subjugation by China. Economic dependence will only be the first step. Political influence will follow.
“In the end, it is quite simple. What kind of future do we want for Europe? An alliance with an imperfect democracy or with a perfect dictatorship? It should be an easy decision for us to make. It is about more than just money. It is about our freedom, about Article 1 of Germany’s Basic Law, the greatest legal term that ever existed: human dignity.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 05/08/2020 – 02:00 - "Keep Them In A Bubble": Army Unit Deploys To War Zone During COVID "New Normal"
“Keep Them In A Bubble”: Army Unit Deploys To War Zone During COVID “New Normal”
On Monday Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said that for the Pentagon and armed services a “new normal” should be expected for “an extended period of time”. This after the Pentagon has now for many weeks been down to what’s essentially a skeleton crew of reduced personnel working on site.
“The long-term view is: What do we do over the next 6, 12, 18 months?” Esper said in a virtual conference for a D.C. think tank event . “There will be a new normal that we will have to adapt to for an extended period of time at least until we have a vaccine that we’re confident in.”
Meanwhile this “new normal” is already greatly impacting regular ranks throughout the United States Army and other branches. A new Wall Street Journal article explores how mission protocols have shifted dramatically, in a way “where warfighting and coronavirus collide”.
Image source: US Marine Corps/Stars & Stripes The Army has reportedly now been able to reorient itself away from a domestic emergency response (of doing things like set up emergency make-shift hospitals) to deploying on foreign missions once again.
“Approximately 900 troops from the Fourth Security Force Assistance Brigade, which is based in Fort Carson, Colo., are scheduled to go to Afghanistan in the fall and will be the first large group to undergo Army training for overseas deployment since the onset of the pandemic,” WSJ reports.
“In the early days of the coronavirus outbreak, military resources were largely devoted to building makeshift medical facilities and providing supplies to hard-hit areas in the U.S. But as demand for military medical help has receded, the military has shifted back to security operations.“
File image, US Army But even deployed to Afghanistan and other places, the “new normal” will be immediately felt, given that to remain effective, soldiers have to first attempt to stay health, and prevent themselves from getting infected.
The WSJ continues:
A barracks that normally bunks 44 soldiers instead will hold only 12, in cots spaced 6 feet apart. When waiting in line at an assembly building, troops must stand in prespaced squares, painted red. Masks, gloves and eye protection will be required. So will temperature checks, quarantines and social distancing.
“The idea is to keep them in a bubble,” Gen. James McConville, chief of staff of the Army, said. He underscored that, “We’re looking at the long game. We’re not waiting for Covid-19 to go away.”
Barracks configuration with cots some distance apart from others. Image source: WSJ Like much of the rest of the US and the world, the Army has been in short supply of both coronavirus tests and personal protective equipment. It’s already taken drastic steps which many generals fear could damage US defense readiness, such as temporary pauses to sending new recruits to boot camp.
And with nearly 5,000 COVID-19 cases across the military, including two deaths, also with an entire aircraft carrier crew, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, knocked out of commission by the virus, deployed personnel will have to face the difficult task of some level of ‘social distancing’ while carrying on already challenging foreign missions.
But we have a novel idea that would make all of the above incredibly easy: How about just ending all regime change ops and ‘wars of choice’, foreign occupations, and trillion dollar ‘nation-building’ deployments altogether? As we recently underscored: America, we have to end the wars now.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 05/08/2020 – 01:00 - Technofascism: Digital Book-Burning In A Totalitarian Age
Technofascism: Digital Book-Burning In A Totalitarian Age
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“Those who created this country chose freedom. With all of its dangers. And do you know the riskiest part of that choice they made? They actually believed that we could be trusted to make up our own minds in the whirl of differing ideas. That we could be trusted to remain free, even when there were very, very seductive voices—taking advantage of our freedom of speech—who were trying to turn this country into the kind of place where the government could tell you what you can and cannot do.”
– Nat Hentoff
We are fast becoming a nation – nay, a world – of book burners.
While on paper, we are technically free to speak – at least according to the U.S. Constitution – in reality, however, we are only as free to speak as the government and its corporate partners such as Facebook, Google or YouTube may allow.
That’s not a whole lot of freedom. Especially if you’re inclined to voice opinions that may be construed as conspiratorial or dangerous.
Take David Icke, for example.
Icke, a popular commentator and author often labeled a conspiracy theorist by his detractors, recently had his Facebook page and YouTube channel (owned by Google) deleted for violating site policies by “spreading coronavirus disinformation.”
The Centre for Countering Digital Hate, which has been vocal about calling for Icke’s de-platforming, is also pushing for the removal of all other sites and individuals who promote Icke’s content in an effort to supposedly “save lives.”
Translation: the CCDH evidently believes the public is too dumb to think for itself and must be protected from dangerous ideas.
This is the goosestepping Nanny State trying to protect us from ourselves.
In the long run, this “safety” control (the censorship and shadowbanning of anyone who challenges a mainstream narrative) will be far worse than merely allowing people to think for themselves.
Journalist Matt Taibbi gets its: “The people who want to add a censorship regime to a health crisis are more dangerous and more stupid by leaps and bounds than a president who tells people to inject disinfectant.”
Don’t fall for the propaganda.
These internet censors are not acting in our best interests to protect us from dangerous, disinformation campaigns about COVID-19, a virus whose source and behavior continue to elude medical officials. They’re laying the groundwork now, with Icke as an easy target, to preempt any “dangerous” ideas that might challenge the power elite’s stranglehold over our lives.
This is how freedom dies.
It doesn’t matter what disinformation Icke may or may not have been spreading about COVID-19. That’s not the issue.
As commentator Caitlin Johnstone recognizes, the censorship of David Icke by these internet media giants has nothing to do with Icke: “What matters is that we’re seeing a consistent and accelerating pattern of powerful plutocratic institutions collaborating with the US-centralized empire to control what ideas people around the world are permitted to share with each other, and it’s a very unsafe trajectory.”
Welcome to the age of technofascism.
Technofascism, clothed in tyrannical self-righteousness, is powered by technological behemoths (both corporate and governmental) working in tandem. As journalist Chet Bowers explains, “Technofascism’s level of efficiency and totalitarian potential can easily lead to repressive systems that will not tolerate dissent.”
The internet, hailed as a super-information highway, is increasingly becoming the police state’s secret weapon. This “policing of the mind: is exactly the danger author Jim Keith warned about when he predicted that “information and communication sources are gradually being linked together into a single computerized network, providing an opportunity for unheralded control of hat will be broadcast, what will be said, and ultimately what will be thought.”
It’s a slippery slope from censoring so-called illegitimate ideas to silencing truth.
Eventually, as George Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act.
We’re almost at that point now.
What you are witnessing is the modern-day equivalent of book burning which involves doing away with dangerous ideas—legitimate or not—and the people who espouse them.
Today, the forces of political correctness, working in conjunction with corporate and government agencies, have managed to replace actual book burning with intellectual book burning.
“Free speech for me but not for thee” is how my good friend and free speech purist Nat Hentoff used to sum up this double standard.
This is about much more than free speech, however. This is about repression and control.
With every passing day, we’re being moved further down the road towards a totalitarian society characterized by government censorship, violence, corruption, hypocrisy and intolerance, all packaged for our supposed benefit in the Orwellian doublespeak of national security, tolerance and so-called “government speech.”
The reasons for such censorship vary widely from political correctness, safety concerns and bullying to national security and hate crimes but the end result remains the same: the complete eradication of what Benjamin Franklin referred to as the “principal pillar of a free government.”
The upshot of all of this editing, parsing, banning and silencing is the emergence of a new language, what George Orwell referred to as Newspeak, which places the power to control language in the hands of the totalitarian state.
Under such a system, language becomes a weapon to change the way people think by changing the words they use.
The end result is control.
In totalitarian regimes—a.k.a. police states—where conformity and compliance are enforced at the end of a loaded gun, the government dictates what words can and cannot be used.
In countries where the police state hides behind a benevolent mask and disguises itself as tolerance, the citizens censor themselves, policing their words and thoughts to conform to the dictates of the mass mind lest they find themselves ostracized or placed under surveillance.
Even when the motives behind this rigidly calibrated reorientation of societal language appear well-intentioned—discouraging racism, condemning violence, denouncing discrimination and hatred—inevitably, the end result is the same: intolerance, indoctrination and infantilism.
It’s political correctness disguised as tolerance, civility and love, but what it really amounts to is the chilling of free speech and the demonizing of viewpoints that run counter to the cultural elite.
The police state could not ask for a better citizenry than one that carries out its own censorship, spying and policing: this is how you turn a nation of free people into extensions of the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent police state, and in the process turn a citizenry against each other.
Tread cautiously: Orwell’s 1984, which depicts the ominous rise of ubiquitous technology, fascism and totalitarianism, has become an operation manual for the omnipresent, modern-day surveillance state.
1984 portrays a global society of total control in which people are not allowed to have thoughts that in any way disagree with the corporate state. There is no personal freedom, and advanced technology has become the driving force behind a surveillance-driven society. Snitches and cameras are everywhere. People are subject to the Thought Police, who deal with anyone guilty of thought crimes. The government, or “Party,” is headed by Big Brother who appears on posters everywhere with the words: “Big Brother is watching you.”
We have arrived, way ahead of schedule, into the dystopian future dreamed up by not only Orwell but also such fiction writers as Aldous Huxley, Margaret Atwood and Philip K. Dick.
Much like Orwell’s Big Brother in 1984, the government and its corporate spies now watch our every move. Much like Huxley’s A Brave New World, we are churning out a society of watchers who “have their liberties taken away from them, but … rather enjoy it, because they [are] distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing.” Much like Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the populace is now taught to “know their place and their duties, to understand that they have no real rights but will be protected up to a point if they conform, and to think so poorly of themselves that they will accept their assigned fate and not rebel or run away.”
And in keeping with Philip K. Dick’s darkly prophetic vision of a dystopian police state—which became the basis for Steven Spielberg’s futuristic thriller Minority Report—we are now trapped in a world in which the government is all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful, and if you dare to step out of line, dark-clad police SWAT teams and pre-crime units will crack a few skulls to bring the populace under control.
What once seemed futuristic no longer occupies the realm of science fiction.
Incredibly, as the various nascent technologies employed and shared by the government and corporations alike—facial recognition, iris scanners, massive databases, behavior prediction software, and so on—are incorporated into a complex, interwoven cyber network aimed at tracking our movements, predicting our thoughts and controlling our behavior, the dystopian visions of past writers is fast becoming our reality.
In fact, our world is characterized by widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining, fusion centers, driverless cars, voice-controlled homes, facial recognition systems, cybugs and drones, and predictive policing (pre-crime) aimed at capturing would-be criminals before they can do any damage. Surveillance cameras are everywhere. Government agents listen in on our telephone calls and read our emails. And privacy and bodily integrity have been utterly eviscerated.
We are increasingly ruled by multi-corporations wedded to the police state.
What many fail to realize is that the government is not operating alone. It cannot.
The government requires an accomplice.
Thus, the increasingly complex security needs of the massive federal government, especially in the areas of defense, surveillance and data management, have been met within the corporate sector, which has shown itself to be a powerful ally that both depends on and feeds the growth of governmental overreach.
In fact, Big Tech wedded to Big Government has become Big Brother, and we are now ruled by the Corporate Elite whose tentacles have spread worldwide.
The government now has at its disposal technological arsenals so sophisticated and invasive as to render any constitutional protections null and void. Spearheaded by the NSA, which has shown itself to care little to nothing for constitutional limits or privacy, the “security/industrial complex”—a marriage of government, military and corporate interests aimed at keeping Americans under constant surveillance—has come to dominate the government and our lives.
Money, power, control.
There is no shortage of motives fueling the convergence of mega-corporations and government. But who is paying the price?
“We the people,” of course. Not just we Americans, but people the world over.
We have entered into a global state of tyranny.
Where we stand now is at the juncture of OldSpeak (where words have meanings, and ideas can be dangerous) and Newspeak (where only that which is “safe” and “accepted” by the majority is permitted). The power elite has made their intentions clear: they will pursue and prosecute any and all words, thoughts and expressions that challenge their authority.
This is the final link in the police state chain.
Americans have been conditioned to accept routine incursions on their privacy rights. In fact, the addiction to screen devices—especially cell phones—has created a hive effect where the populace not only watched but is controlled by AI bots. However, at one time, the idea of a total surveillance state tracking one’s every move would have been abhorrent to most Americans. That all changed with the 9/11 attacks. As professor Jeffrey Rosen observes, “Before Sept. 11, the idea that Americans would voluntarily agree to live their lives under the gaze of a network of biometric surveillance cameras, peering at them in government buildings, shopping malls, subways and stadiums, would have seemed unthinkable, a dystopian fantasy of a society that had surrendered privacy and anonymity.”
Having been reduced to a cowering citizenry—mute in the face of elected officials who refuse to represent us, helpless in the face of police brutality, powerless in the face of militarized tactics and technology that treat us like enemy combatants on a battlefield, and naked in the face of government surveillance that sees and hears all—we have nowhere left to go.
We have, so to speak, gone from being a nation where privacy is king to one where nothing is safe from the prying eyes of government.
In search of so-called terrorists and extremists hiding amongst us—the proverbial “needle in a haystack,” as one official termed it—the Corporate State has taken to monitoring all aspects of our lives, from cell phone calls and emails to Internet activity and credit card transactions. This data is being fed through fusion centers across the country, which work with the Department of Homeland Security to make threat assessments on every citizen, including school children.
Wherever you go and whatever you do, you are now being watched, especially if you leave behind an electronic footprint.
When you use your cell phone, you leave a record of when the call was placed, who you called, how long it lasted and even where you were at the time. When you use your ATM card, you leave a record of where and when you used the card. There is even a video camera at most locations equipped with facial recognition software. When you use a cell phone or drive a car enabled with GPS, you can be tracked by satellite. Such information is shared with government agents, including local police. And all of this once-private information about your consumer habits, your whereabouts and your activities is now being fed to the U.S. government.
The government has nearly inexhaustible resources when it comes to tracking our movements, from electronic wiretapping devices, traffic cameras and biometrics to radio-frequency identification cards, satellites and Internet surveillance.
Speech recognition technology now makes it possible for the government to carry out massive eavesdropping by way of sophisticated computer systems. Phone calls can be monitored, the audio converted to text files and stored in computer databases indefinitely. And if any “threatening” words are detected—no matter how inane or silly—the record can be flagged and assigned to a government agent for further investigation. Federal and state governments, again working with private corporations, monitor your Internet content. Users are profiled and tracked in order to identify, target and even prosecute them.
In such a climate, everyone is a suspect. And you’re guilty until you can prove yourself innocent.
Here’s what a lot of people fail to understand, however: it’s not just what you say or do that is being monitored, but how you think that is being tracked and targeted.
We’ve already seen this play out on the state and federal level with hate crime legislation that cracks down on so-called “hateful” thoughts and expression, encourages self-censoring and reduces free debate on various subject matter.
Say hello to the new Thought Police.
Total Internet surveillance by the Corporate State, as omnipresent as God, is used by the government to predict and, more importantly, control the populace, and it’s not as far-fetched as you might think. For example, the NSA has designed an artificial intelligence system that can anticipate your every move. In a nutshell, the NSA feeds vast amounts of the information it collects to a computer system known as Aquaint (the acronym stands for Advanced QUestion Answering for INTelligence), which the computer then uses to detect patterns and predict behavior.
No information is sacred or spared.
Everything from cell phone recordings and logs, to emails, to text messages, to personal information posted on social networking sites, to credit card statements, to library circulation records, to credit card histories, etc., is collected by the NSA and shared freely with its agents.
Thus, what we are witnessing, in the so-called name of security and efficiency, is the creation of a new class system comprised of the watched (average Americans such as you and me) and the watchers (government bureaucrats, technicians and private corporations).
Clearly, the age of privacy is at an end.
So where does that leave us?
We now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed and controlled by our technology, which answers not to us but to our government and corporate rulers. This is the fact-is-stranger-than-fiction lesson that is being pounded into us on a daily basis.
It won’t be long before we find ourselves looking back on the past with longing, back to an age where we could speak to whom we wanted, buy what we wanted, think what we wanted without those thoughts, words and activities being tracked, processed and stored by corporate giants such as Google, sold to government agencies such as the NSA and CIA, and used against us by militarized police with their army of futuristic technologies.
To be an individual today, to not conform, to have even a shred of privacy, and to live beyond the reach of the government’s roaming eyes and technological spies, one must not only be a rebel but rebel.
Even when you rebel and take your stand, there is rarely a happy ending awaiting you. You are rendered an outlaw.
So how do you survive this global surveillance state?
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we’re running out of options.
We’ll soon have to choose between self-indulgence (the bread-and-circus distractions offered up by the news media, politicians, sports conglomerates, entertainment industry, etc.) and self-preservation in the form of renewed vigilance about threats to our freedoms and active engagement in self-governance.
Yet as Aldous Huxley acknowledged in Brave New World Revisited:
“Only the vigilant can maintain their liberties, and only those who are constantly and intelligently on the spot can hope to govern themselves effectively by democratic procedures. A society, most of whose members spend a great part of their time, not on the spot, not here and now and in their calculable future, but somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sport and soap opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy, will find it hard to resist the encroachments of those would manipulate and control it.”
Which brings me back to this technofascist tyranny being meted out on David Icke and all those like him who dare to voice ideas that diverge from what the government and its corporate controllers deem to be acceptable.
The problem as I see it is that we’ve allowed ourselves to be persuaded that we need someone else to think and speak for us. And we’ve allowed ourselves to become so timid in the face of offensive words and ideas that we’ve bought into the idea that we need the government to shield us from that which is ugly or upsetting or mean.
The result is a society in which we’ve stopped debating among ourselves, stopped thinking for ourselves, and stopped believing that we can fix our own problems and resolve our own differences.
In short, we have reduced ourselves to a largely silent, passive, polarized populace incapable of working through our own problems and reliant on the government to protect us from our fears.
In this way, we have become our worst enemy.
You want to reclaim some of the ground we’re fast losing to the techno-tyrants?
Start by thinking for yourself. If that means reading the “dangerous” ideas being floated out there by the David Ickes of the world—or the John Whiteheads for that matter—and then deciding for yourself what is true, so be it.
As Orwell concluded, “Freedom is the right to say two plus two make four.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/07/2020 – 23:45 - Visualizing America’s Energy Use, in One Giant Chart
Visualizing America’s Energy Use, in One Giant Chart
Have you ever wondered where the country’s energy comes from, and how exactly it gets used?
Well now, thanks to Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins, we have the answer as The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) crunches the numbers every year, outputting an incredible flow diagram that covers the broad spectrum of U.S. energy use.
The 2019 version of this comprehensive diagram gives us an in-depth picture of the U.S. energy ecosystem, showing not only where energy originates by fuel source (i.e. wind, oil, natural gas, etc.) but also how it’s ultimately consumed by sector.
In Perspective: 2019 Energy Use
Below, we’ll use the unit of quads, with each quad worth 1 quadrillion BTUs, to compare data for the last five years of energy use in the United States. Each quad has roughly the same amount of energy as contained in 185 million barrels of crude oil.
Interestingly, overall energy use in the U.S. actually decreased to 100.2 quads in 2019, similar to a decrease last seen in 2015.
It’s also worth noting that the percentage of fossil fuels used in the 2019 energy mix decreased by 0.2% from last year to make up 80.0% of the total. This effectively negates the small rise of fossil fuel usage that occurred in 2018.
Energy Use by Source
Which sources of energy are seeing more use, as a percentage of the total energy mix?
Since 2015, natural gas has grown from 29% to 32% of the U.S. energy mix — while coal’s role in the mix has dropped by 4.7%.
In these terms, it can be hard to see growth in renewables, but looking at the data in more absolute terms can tell a different story. For example, in 2015 solar added 0.532 quads of energy to the mix, while in 2019 it accounted for 1.04 quads — a 95% increase.
Energy Consumption
Finally, let’s take a look at where energy goes by end consumption, and whether or not this is evolving over time.
Residential, commercial, and industrial sectors are all increasing their use of energy, while the transportation sector is seeing a drop in energy use — likely thanks to more fuel efficient cars, EVs, public transport, and other factors.
The COVID-19 Effect on Energy Use
The energy mix is incredibly difficult to change overnight, so over the years these flow diagrams created by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have not changed much.
One exception to this will be in 2020, which has seen an unprecedented shutdown of the global economy. As a result, imagining the next iteration of this energy flow diagram is basically anybody’s guess.
We can likely all agree that it’ll include increased levels of energy consumption in households and shortfalls everywhere else, especially in the transportation sector. However, the total amount of energy used — and where it comes from — might be a significant deviation from past years.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/07/2020 – 23:25 - Masks In America: "Buffalo'd Into A Very Binary Way Of Thinking"
Masks In America: “Buffalo’d Into A Very Binary Way Of Thinking”
Authored by Daniel Klein via The American Institute for Economic Research,
In response to my piece on Masks in Sweden, I received the following fascinating note, by James Cooper, reproduced with his permission, which compares the attitude in Sweden with that in the United States. I think readers will find this very interesting.
[emphasis ours]
Dr. Klein,
Thank you for your recent article on Sweden’s response to COVID-19. I would just like to add my thoughts to the ongoing public discussion. I am an American living in Stockholm. I have been living here for 17 years and am fluent in Swedish. I am from Northern Virginia.
Regarding this article, I will just point out that the American people have been buffalo’d into a very binary way of thinking – there are only two possibilities when dealing with COVID-19 – complete lockdown or nothing at all. This is also referred to as TINA (There Is No Alternative).
For many of my American family and friends, they find it difficult to understand that there are many possibilities in between the two extremes. In fact, a more nuanced approach not only makes more sense, but is more sustainable. That is precisely what the Swedish approach is all about.
If you look at the numbers, you will see that there is negligible risk to those aged 4-50 years old. This group also happens to represent the most economically productive group in society as well as the group that spends the most money. So why shut them down?
The response I get from my family and friends is that they must be shut down because otherwise people will die. This is an emotion based argument.
The reality is that in Sweden all at-risk people have been asked to self quarantine. If they do that, how will their lives be threatened by allowing the under-50 crowd to go out, with some social distancing guidelines?
Keep in mind that if you live with an at risk person, or you are a primary caregiver for an at risk person, then (in Sweden), you are expected to self quarantine; or at least go to extreme social distancing.
I myself had some concerns about whether I was in the risk group, and I took the precaution of keeping my kids home from school until such time as I could get a more definitive answer from my doctor. My kids’ school fully supported me in this approach.
So, I go back to my American family and friends and ask, how can allowing the under-50 crowd out with social distancing put the at risk population in danger? Yes, it requires people to take personal responsibility and to actively work to protect those at risk. And, assuming this is followed, then those at risk can be expected to be reasonably protected.
Why did they have a complete lockdown in the U.S. in the first place? We were told that it was meant to flatten the curve so that the hospitals have a chance to deal with the patient loads. Mass lockdown simply pushes the problem out in time, to be dealt with later. Yes, over the next 18 months, at risk people will get the virus and there will be many that die. This is in large part unavoidable. I suspect that in the end we will see similar numbers within a range across all Western countries. This will play out over 12+ months.
If we can accept that statement, then we would need to admire Sweden for taking an approach that does not further burden its economy, does not destroy people’s God given right to freedom, while also working to protect those at risk, and augmenting immunity.
Americans have been Buffalo’d into TINA (“There Is No Alternative”). The reality is that there are a wide range of responses and one size does not fit all. There are sophisticated approaches that can be deployed which do not necessitate the destruction of our economy and the financial decimation of people and their families.
What NYC does should not necessarily be followed in Iowa. Iowa might look more like Sweden and NYC more like Helsinki.
All of the criticism and “hate” directed at Sweden is emotional and not following evidence based science. One wonders why people are reacting the way they are.
And now we see the partisan politics exposed between #LockdownDeniers and the #HealthBeforeWealth fantasists.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/07/2020 – 23:05 - For Albert Edwards This Is The One Chart Proving Just How Insane The Market Has Become
For Albert Edwards This Is The One Chart Proving Just How Insane The Market Has Become
By now everyone has seen some version of this chart which we first presented a month ago and updated yesterday, demonstrating just how disconnected stocks are from reality.
SocGen’s resident permabear (… for stocks, and permabull for bonds) Albert Edwards has seen it too, and he too is stunned by the ludicrous gap between reality and expectation, which he has been tracking for decades but never has it gotten as wide as it is now, because as he writes in his latest global strategy weekly:
We are in the midst of a monetary and fiscal ideological revolution. Nose-bleed equity valuations are being supported by nothing more than a belief that a new ideology can deliver. Meanwhile the gap between the reality on the ground and expectations grows wider.
While Edwards admits that there are many ways to show “how ludicrous current equity valuations have become and by implication how vulnerable equities are to a collapse”, the SocGen strategist avoids focusing on the “ubiquitous chart” shown above which shows the rise in the S&P500 12m forward PE above 20x driven by the ongoing profits collapse – after all we did that just yesterday highlighting the “Idiotic Disconnect Between Markets And Reality” – to Edwards the real show-stopper is a different chart, one which shows on one hand the continued Ice Age slump in analysts collective expectations for long-term eps growth, and on the other the soaring PE ratio. The combination of the two is what is also known as the PEG, or Price to Earnings Growth, ratio.
Looking at the first component, long-term, EPS growth, Edwards notes that it “has now slid below 10%, a trend only likely to accelerate during the current profits slump.” This is shown in the chart below.
Looking at the chart above, Edwards urges readers to compare the current LT EPS situation with the late 1990s tech bubble, when – like now – “the S&P forward PE rose above 20x, but at least back then the cycle was still intact, and as technology stocks increasingly dominated the index, the markets LT eps was also surging higher in tandem with the rising PE.” As he further explains, at least back in the tech bubble, the market had a LT eps leg to stand on “albeit a wooden leg, riddled with woodworm.” By contrast, this time around, despite technology stocks once again dominating the index, something Goldman warned two weeks ago always ends in pain, “the 20x PE is based on nothing more than an ideological dream.” The dream he is referring to, is one spawned by the destructive ideology of MMT (i.e., the Magic Money Tree), where the merger of the Treasury and Fed, and the joint issuance and monetization of debt, magically creates an economic perpetual engine and social utopia… for at least a short while before the currency collapse. No wonder this ideological dream is that anchor pillar of socialists who wish to pass off as financial gurus.
In any event, going back to the chart above, when one combines the two data sets, one gets a snapshot of the so-called PEG ratio (the ratio of the P/E to Long-Term eps growth) which as Edwards notes, has risen above 2x for the first time ever, which prompts the stunned strategist to exclaim that “this is even more shocking than a 20x PE!“
While not nearly as dramatic, Edwards also highlights a few charts from the far more rational world of bonds – at least until the Fed locks it down too, when it launches BOJ-style Yield Curve Control in a few months. The first one is of 5Y yields which as Edwards points out, have not bought into the latest risk rally and yields remain close to rock bottom. “Watch the 5y yield particularly closely as a break below the recent 0.3% floor would likely see an attempt to attack zero.”
And speaking of zero rates, Edwards concludes with a quick take on the dollar, which as we first showed two months ago exploded to an all time high due to an ongoing and systemic $12 trillion US dollar margin call as countless offshore issuers of dollar-denominated debt suddenly find themselves cut off from cashflows as a result of the global economic stop, which in turn means that there is a shortage of up to $12 trillion in synthetically created dollars, which is precisely what the Fed has been struggling to flood the entire globe with thanks to its expanded FX swaps.
So far it is failing, however, and as Edwards concludes, “the dollar is already too strong in an environment where fighting deflation is becoming the number one priority. The recent surge in the broad dollar index is already sufficient to import another dose of unwanted deflation.”
Which brings us to Edwards conclusion:
That is why I still believe we will see negative Fed Funds soon a topic now debated hotly on Twitter and elsewhere (see here for Ken Rogoff arguing the case for deeply negative interest rates).
Considering that Albert wrote this just hours before we got the first ever fed funds futures pricing above par, implying a negative interest rate as soon as Nov 2020…
… means the SocGen strategist is entitled to a victory lap. In fact, he will be making many of those in the coming months as the entire system, which central banks have kept alive with duct tape and superglue, finally starts to fall apart.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/07/2020 – 22:45 - Computer Model That Locked Down The World Turns Out To Be Sh*tcode
Computer Model That Locked Down The World Turns Out To Be Sh*tcode
Submitted by Mark E. Jeftovic, of Axis of Easy
It was an Imperial College computer model that forecasted 500K deaths in the UK (and 2.5 million in the US) should policymakers pursue a “herd immunity” approach (a la Sweden), that influenced them to reverse course and go full lockdown instead. The model was produced by a team headed by Neil Ferguson, (who recently resigned his post advising the UK government when it surfaced that he was himself violating lockdown directives by breaking self-isolation for dalliances with a married woman).
The source code behind the model was to be made available to the public, and after numerous delays and excuses in doing so, has finally been posted to GitHub
A code review has been undertaken by an anonymous ex-Google software engineer here, who tells us the GitHub repository code has been heavily massaged by Microsoft engineers, and others, in an effort to whip the code into shape to safely expose it to the pubic. Alas, they seem to have failed and numerous flaws and bugs from the original software persist in the released version. Requests for the unedited version of the original code behind the model have gone unanswered.
The most worrisome outcome of the review is that the code produces “non-deterministic outputs”
Non-deterministic outputs. Due to bugs, the code can produce very different results given identical inputs. They routinely act as if this is unimportant.
This problem makes the code unusable for scientific purposes, given that a key part of the scientific method is the ability to replicate results. Without replication, the findings might not be real at all – as the field of psychology has been finding out to its cost. Even if their original code was released, it’s apparent that the same numbers as in Report 9 might not come out of it.
The documentation proffers the rationalization that iterations of the model should be run and then differing results averaged together to produce a resultant model. However, any decent piece of software, especially one that is creating a model, should produce the same result if it is fed the same initial data, or “seed”. This code doesn’t.
“The documentation says:
The model is stochastic. Multiple runs with different seeds should be undertaken to see average behaviour.
“Stochastic” is just a scientific-sounding word for “random”. That’s not a problem if the randomness is intentional pseudo-randomness, i.e. the randomness is derived from a starting “seed” which is iterated to produce the random numbers. Such randomness is often used in Monte Carlo techniques. It’s safe because the seed can be recorded and the same (pseudo-)random numbers produced from it in future. Any kid who’s played Minecraft is familiar with pseudo-randomness because Minecraft gives you the seeds it uses to generate the random worlds, so by sharing seeds you can share worlds.
Clearly, the documentation wants us to think that, given a starting seed, the model will always produce the same results.
Investigation reveals the truth: the code produces critically different results, even for identical starting seeds and parameters.
In one instance, a team at the Edinburgh University attempted to modify the code so that they could store the data in tables that would make it more efficient to load and run. Performance issues aside, simply moving or optimizing where the input data comes from should have no effect on the output of processing, given the same input data. What the Edinburgh team found however, was this optimization produced a variation in the output, “the resulting predictions varied by around 80,000 deaths after 80 days” which is nearly 3X the total number of UK deaths to date.
Edinburgh reported the bug to Imperial, who dismissed it as “a small non-determinism” and told them the problem goes away if you run the code on a single CPU (which the reviewer notes “is as far away from supercomputing as one can get”).
Alas, the Edinburgh team found that software still produced different results if it was run on a single CPU. It shouldn’t, provided it is coded properly. Whether the software is run on a single CPU or multi-threaded, the only difference should be the speed at which the output is produced. Given the same input conditions, the outputs should be the same. It isn’t, and Imperial knew this.
Nonetheless, that’s how Imperial use the code: they know it breaks when they try to run it faster. It’s clear from reading the code that in 2014 Imperial tried to make the code use multiple CPUs to speed it up, but never made it work reliably. This sort of programming is known to be difficult and usually requires senior, experienced engineers to get good results. Results that randomly change from run to run are a common consequence of thread-safety bugs. More colloquially, these are known as “Heisenbugs“.
Another team even found that the output varied depending on what type of computer it was run on.
In issue #30, someone reports that the model produces different outputs depending on what kind of computer it’s run on (regardless of the number of CPUs). Again, the explanation is that although this new problem “will just add to the issues” … “This isn’t a problem running the model in full as it is stochastic anyway”.
The response illustrates the burning question: Why didn’t the Imperial College team realize their software was so flawed?
Because their code is so deeply riddled with similar bugs and they struggled so much to fix them that they got into the habit of simply averaging the results of multiple runs to cover it up… and eventually this behaviour became normalised within the team.
Most of us are familiar with the computing adage, “Garbage In/Garbage Out” and the untrained reader may think that’s what being asserted in this code review. It isn’t. What’s being asserted is that output is garbage, regardless of the input.
In this case, the output we’re experiencing as a result is a worldwide lockdown and shutdown of the global economy, and we don’t really know if this was necessary or not because we have no actual data (aside from Sweden) and severely flawed models.
Read the entire code review here.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/07/2020 – 22:25 - US B-1B Bombers Again Fly Near Chinese Airspace Amid 'New Cold War' Threat
US B-1B Bombers Again Fly Near Chinese Airspace Amid ‘New Cold War’ Threat
It goes without saying that US-China relations have reached their lowest point in decades, with a former Trump administration trade official warning the spike in tensions brought on by the coronacrisis on the heels of the trade war has marked “the start of a new Cold War”.
Former top White House trade negotiator Clete Willems told CNBC’s Squawk Box Asia on Tuesday: “The reality is that tensions between the United States and China are rising considerably at the moment.”
“I know people get uncomfortable with the terminology, but I do think we have to be honest and call this what it is and this is the start of a new Cold War and if we’re not careful, things could get much, much worse,” Willems added.
B-1B Lancer over East China Sea this week. Image source: US Air Force Which is what makes the uptick in American long-range bomber activity over the East China Sea — right on the Communist country’s doorstep — all the more dangerous.
In what appears at least an indirect warning reasserting US defense readiness in the wake of the military being severely impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, the US Air Force on Thursday published a series of photos showing a B-1B strategic bomber mission over the East China Sea this week, involving aerial refueling as well.
A @usairforce B-1B Lancer gets refueled by an @AirNatlGuard KC-135 over the East China Sea in support of the @INDOPACOM Bomber Task Force.#DKY, the KC-135 comprises 87% of the tanker force. #Togetherwedeliver #NKAWTG@AFGlobalStrike @US_Stratcom @PACAF @121ARW @AirMobilityCmd pic.twitter.com/7ca05NH91W
— USTRANSCOM (@US_TRANSCOM) May 7, 2020
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Aviation monitoring sites tracked two US B-1B supersonic bombers which took off from Guam toward the East China Sea, nearing Taiwan’s northeastern maritime border along the way.
Crucially, it’s the 15th such US military flight approaching Taiwan’s contested borders since the beginning of April, and the third bomber approach since the start of this month.
#BTF Bones conduct a training mission in the East China Sea in support of the National Defense Strategy objectives of being strategically predictable and operationally unpredictable. #FreeAndOpen @usairforce @DeptofDefense @INDOPACOM pic.twitter.com/uCAiRH6a7x
— PACAF (@PACAF) May 4, 2020
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Marking the 15th U.S. military flight to approach Taiwan’s borders since the start of April, according to Taiwan’s CNA news, the flight path showed that the two bombers departed from Anderson Air Force Base in Guam toward the East China Sea and near Taiwan.
Prior flights over or near Taiwan-claimed waters have included reconnaissance flights as well, said to be carefully monitoring developments in China amid the pandemic.
USAF B-1Bs LANDO01 & 02 departed Andersen AFB, Guam and conducted a mission over the East China Sea.
USAF KC-135R LIVID11 provided tanker support. pic.twitter.com/QT09YDCd6A
— Aircraft Spots (@AircraftSpots) May 4, 2020
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China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs meanwhile warned that while it respects international airspace rights, it condemns any violations of its territorial integrity.
And as a reminder, Beijing of course views Taiwan and the waters around it as precisely this.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/07/2020 – 22:05 - Surviving 2020, Part 2: Rubber Meets Road
Surviving 2020, Part 2: Rubber Meets Road
Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
Longtime correspondent Paul B. suggested I re-publish three essays that have renewed relevance. This is the second essay, from July 2008. Thank you, Paul, for the suggestion.
I received this timely inquiry from astute reader Paul B.:
I’m interested in # 1, while you seem to take into account 300 million people in your writings–would you comment on rubber-meets-the-road impacts and proactive actions we can take to help shield ourselves (and our local communities) from the economic problems we’re facing?
Would you consider including concrete actions “average” people could take to protect themselves in one of your future columns? I’d certainly appreciate it and I bet many others would, too. (emphasis added, CHS)
That’s big challenge but I’ll give it a shot. None of this is startlingly new–it’s just common sense, and I will undoubtedly leave a few things off–but as a start:
1. Build/strengthen a small community based on sharing, generosity and reciprocity around yourself and family.
My critique of much survivalist thinking–and my alternative view–can be found here:
- The Art of Survival, Taoism and the Warring States (June 27, 2008)
The strongest “survivor” is not the most heavily armed individual but the individual surrounded by a community which values his/her contributions and support, and who cares whether he/she lives or dies. Nobody gives a damn if the individual holed up in a bunker somewhere lives or dies, and that’s the fatal weakness in all too many survivalist scenarios.
A community can be a small as three neighbors, or a block, or a church, or an extended family. The way to build a community, or join a community if you don’t have one at the moment is to extend yourself via generosity. Provide something of value without worrying about whether you’ll get back an “equal value.” Believe me, if you surprise decent people with something useful/good, their delight will exceed all known monetary value of whatever time or product or service you offered.
Just cleaning up the trash on your street or baking some cookies and giving them away can have huge consequences. We as a society have become selfish, greedy and isolated behind an insane wall of “entertainment,” TV and other digital derangements (video games, etc.) The way forward is to be selfless occasionally, and then those who have benefited from your generosity will start caring about you.
That’s always the way humans have survived extremely trying/difficult times. For instance, the 13th century:
Here are two related entries:
-
The Remnant, the Pareto Principle and You (June 26, 2008)
-
A Critique of Reinventing Collapse (June 25, 2008)
2. Cancel your cable or satellite TV.
Wean yourself from the souring insanity of “cable news”, “sports” and other soul-deadening wastes of time. Sure, see an occasional movie/DVD, but by cutting off the 200 channels then you will find something better to do than watch TV for 6 hours a day (the U.S. average). Your kids will scream and cry and whine, so tell them you’re not raising zombies any more. They can go plant a garden or contribute to the community doing something they enjoy. Watching TV, adding mindless cookie-cutter songs to their iPod and going shopping are out, over, done, gone, history. You want music? Then learn to play an instrument. Yes, it’s hard and time-consuming, but the result is rewarding in a way no “guitar hero” game can ever be.
Set the example by limiting TV yourself. NOVA, Nature, American Experience and a few other PBS shows are worth watching–the rest, including the food and history channels, are fluff. You want history? Then read a book; there are literally a hundred great history books listed in my “books/films” link at the top of this page. Go actually cook something instead of watching some sappy/lame “entertainer” whip together something which has all been prepped for them.
3. Get lean and prepare to heal yourself.
One of the first things to go will be the bloated, unaffordable, and largely ineffective “healthcare” a.k.a. “sickcare” system. Hundreds of thousands of people blindly trust the medical system and enter the hospital like sheep to slaughter, where they contract incurable infections, get the wrong meds, or endure an operation of some sort that only makes them worse.
Yes, if you have operable cancer, then by all means go get it cut out, radiated, etc. But get on the Web and learn everything you can about the condition and treatment options first.
Example: I have high blood pressure, even though my BMI is 21.2. My doctor prescribed some blood-pressure lowering drug, and when it didn’t seem to have much effect I went online and discovered that it generally lowers pressure by something like 3%.
Our blood pressure varies by 10% or more every day just naturally, so 3% is somewhat underwhelming. Then I read about how too much salt is the known cause of high blood pressure (along with too much weight), and I started noticing how the vast majority of the packaged/prepared/fast-food in the U.S. has large amounts of salt. So I stopped eating all that and use a salt substitute (potassium) or a little 50/50 potassium/salt.
From what I have read on the Web, it seems blood-pressure meds are not all slam-dunks. The consensus seems to be to cut salt out of your diet and shed some pounds as a start.
4. Become politically aware and active in your local community.
As I outlined in Welcome to Sadr City, U.S.A. (June 20, 2008), local municipalities and agencies will be going broke, and it will be up to the local citizenry to take back control of their city/town/county funds from the public unions and “professional” managers. What we face is simple: the benefits and pensions government employee unions won during the “flush times” are simply unaffordable/unsustainable. In all too many cases, firefighters, police officers, library workers and others “game the system” to retire with overtime-boosted retirements and gold-plated benefits the rest of us can only dream about as things deteriorate.
You can be assured that the public employees will be screaming bloody murder about “what we were promised,” but the money’s no longer there. So it will come down to some difficult choices that we the public cannot leave to the unions or “professional” city managers: do you want to pay people $80,000 a year retirement plus another $20K in medical benefits, or do you want a library that’s open more than 4 hours a week?
Look, circumstances change, and we have to change with them. Just because some agency/city caved into absurd demands back in the tech boom doesn’t mean we have to be enslaved to those no-longer-affordable retirement/benefits packages. Make the agency/city go bankrupt when the money runs out and start with a clean slate. Demand that municipal workers work 40 years before they earn a retirement, like the rest of us, rather than a mere 20 years.
Get online and educate yourself about the incredible waste and fraud in your own local government, and then let your elected officials know you want some accountability and services and a sustainable level of salaries, pensions and benefits. Tell them you want the cops who are sitting at home on their duffs retired after 20 years to get back on the street for another 10 years, and ditto for every other early-retiree. Tell them 50 is the new 30, and nobody should retire until they’re 65 or 70–public employees included.
Yes, I know not every city and agency is filled with cronyism and people who call in sick so their buddy can get double-time, but if you work for a sterling municipality, please don’t assume your well-managed burg/agency is the norm. I know for a fact that around here in bloated California, library employees have retired with a small pension after a mere 7 years of part-time service. (Once you hit 55, you can retire after just such minimal service.)
Around here, public employees retire with pensions larger than their salaries, pensions boosted in the final year with legerdemain and bogus tricks to boost the pay on which their pension is based.
Around here, cops and firefighters routinely draw paychecks with overtime in the range of $150,000+ (please search for the City of Vallejo-bankruptcy for the chart listing the hundreds of city employees drawing well over $100K each).
Around here, a retired university police chief draws a $150,000/year pension and then goes back to work under a contract which pays an additional $250,000/year. This is just business as usual when it comes to taxpayer funds, public unions and public-sector fraud/cronyism/waste.
Maybe your city/town/county/state is blessed with hardworking public employees who draw modest benefits and retirements and who work 30 years before they draw a dime, managed by people who don’t run things according to cronyism and gaming the system–if so, you are fortunate indeed. The rest of us aren’t so lucky. We pay high taxes and make a fraction of what the public employees make and have nowhere near their healthcare benefits, working or retired, but then we get to hear about how poorly paid they are compared to private-sector jobs. Get real, people; the pay in the real-world private-sector is lousy and going down. If you’re so underpaid, go onto monster.com and get yourself one of those plentiful high-paying private-sector jobs. You will find them less plentiful than you might have imagined.
If you don’t get involved, well then a relative handful of protected folks will collect most of the taxes and public services will be sacrificed left and right: no road repair, no libraries, falling-apart schools, etc. It’s our choice. Get involved or get happy with whatever crumbs the graft/waste “experts” leave you.
5. Eat lower on the food chain.
Let’s start with the fact that it takes about 10 pounds of meat to grow a pound of salmon or tuna, and 10+ pounds of grain to grow a pound of chicken, pork or beef. There will be plenty of food for humans if we stop feeding 90% of the grain to animals and then eating the animals.
Those of you who have hiked or wilderness-camped or equivalent know that a human can get by on remarkably little food. The idea that we’re all going to starve to death is unlikely. Corn bread and beans is a darned fine meal and it uses about 10% of the energy/soil/feedstock etc. of an equivalent weight of meat.
Eat what’s grown locally, and if you can, eat meat which fed on grass or leftovers and not a whole lot of processed grain: range-fed cattle, your neighbor’s chickens you traded something for, etc.
6. Start growing some of your own food, however little that might be.
The value here isn’t just the cost of the food you raise–it’s reconnecting you and your family with where food comes from in the first place.
If you have a real spread, consider going no-till. No-Till: How Farmers Are Saving the Soil by Parking Their Plows
The age-old practice of turning the soil before planting a new crop is a leading cause of farmland degradation. Many farmers are thus looking to make plowing a thing of the past. (Scientific American)7. Look into permaculture.
Consider this astonishing “on the ground” permaculture report:
Dear Folks,
I would like to inject some real world experience into this otherwise abstract discussion of food and permaculture.
In addition to being an ecological biologist, a permaculture production food farmer for 9 years, and an expert on biomass fuels, I have also been teaching permaculture since 1997 and have worked in many countries on food/energy production design issues. I have certified more than 400 people in permaculture design since 1997. For more info on this see my site at permaculture.com.
So in light of my experience I have a couple of things to say…
I produced enough food to feed more than 300 people (with a peak of 450 people at one point), 49 weeks a year in my fully organic CSA on the edge of Silicon Valley. If I could do it there you can do it anywhere.
…My yields were often 8 times what the USDA claims are possible per square foot. My soil fertility increased dramatically each year so I was not achieving my yields by mining my soil. On the contrary I built my soil from cement-hard adobe clay to its impressive state from scratch. By the end I was at over 22% organic matter with a cation exchange capacity (CEC) of over 25.
…At most times I had no more than half of my land under production with the rest in various stages of cover cropping. And I was only producing at a fraction of what would have been possible if I had owned the land and could have justified the investment into an overstory of integrated tree, berry, flower and nut crops along with the various vegetable and fruit crops.
…I grew over 45 different kinds of crops…
The math is easy. With a polyculture, yields of 3-10 pounds of food per square foot are easy to come up with in most climates. For comparison, commercial agriculture in California , which is way inefficient, routinely runs about 1.5-2.5 pounds per square foot per year across a wide variety of crops…
…There are two main reasons known for the dramatically increased productivity of a polyculture\the benefit of mycorhyzzal symbiosis (which is destroyed in chemical agriculture) and less solar saturation. Solar saturation is the point at which a plants’ photosynthetic machinery is overwhelmed by excess sunlight and shut down.
In practice, this means that most of our crop plants stop growing at about 10am and don’t start again until about 4 in the afternoon. Various members of a polyculture shade each other, preventing solar saturation, so plants metabolize all day. Polyculture as we pursue in permaculture uses close to 100% of the sunlight falling on its mixed crops. Monoculture rarely can use more than 30% of the total sunlight received before saturation.”
8. Blow off your high-interest debt.
If you can pay it off out of earnings, great, if not, go bankrupt once the laws change (probably next year). Don’t feel bad, just get it over with. Scrape up the cash and hire a real bankruptcy attorney. Get debt-free except for your low-interest fixed-rate mortgage.
9. Stop shopping.
Nuff said. If you don’t need it to literally survive and be healthy, don’t buy it.
10. Stop “consuming” brainwashing “entertainment” and get involved in real life.
You like sports? Then turn off the TV and go play some yourself. Throw out that idiotic “martial arts” videogame and go learn a martial art yourself. It’s not just about kicking, it’s about the principles of Wushu and self-cultivation, responsibility, self-defense and self-control. Stop watching and start doing.
Go canoeing, snowshoeing, toss the football around, put some air in the tires of that old bike, but build up to it (I’m 54, so I know about injuries and warming up.) Don’t be a weekend warrior and hurt yourself. Remember: we’re responsible for our own health now; don’t count on somebody else “saving” you.
11. Try to get a job closer to home.
Nuff said, Shorter commute-less oil burned, less time wasted fuming in traffic.
12. Stop moving around the country.
No wonder we’re so messed up as a culture; so many people have no roots in the community and no family within a thousand miles. Most of the crazy homeless people in my city have been abandoned by their family. They don’t just have a psychiatric problem–they have a family problem, which means we as a nation have a family problem, too.
13. Get your hands on an old, cheap, low-weight/small engine vehicle.
I mean a Chevy Geo, or a little Ford, or a Nissan, whatever. Not all of us can afford a new Prius or Ford hybrid or whatever “high-tech solution” is presented (ask yourself what’s the profit margin on all those “solutions”), so what we have to do is simple: make do and improve what we have.
In the Japanese cars, the older the better, in some ways; the engines and cars were smaller and got great mileage without hybrid technologies. I am pretty sure my 1998 Civic gets about the same mileage as a new hybrid.
If you keep the engine tuned, the oil and filter changed often, tire pressure up and drive a sane speed, even a mid-sized vehicle can turn 35 MPG. The same vehicle, poorly maintained and driven with a heavy lead foot will get 20 MPG or less. The difference isn’t the technology, it’s behavioral. Meaning: it’s up to you.
14. If at all possible, try to figure out how to walk or bicycle somewhere useful.
By that I mean, is there any possible route which enables you to walk or bike to a store or do some errand, at least in seasonable weather? If not, then maybe you should go to a city council meeting and ask why your town/city doesn’t have any safe bikeways.
On reasonably flat ground/modest grade, 8-10 miles on a decent bike is no big deal, meaning any destination 5 miles away or less is bikeable if there’s a safe route (i.e. not sharing a highway with cars going 55 MPH.)
15. Be positive and fact-based.
Nurture the Inner Light regardless of which religion/faith you believe/follow. We’re in this together, and we need to support reality-based solutions and those around us who are ready to deal with reality. Our mental health is as important a survival advantage as our physical shape.
16. Acquaint yourself with the idea of hedging.
Don’t trust the dollar to retain it’s value? Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. A little gold or silver is a hedge. If precious metals plummet and the dollar goes gangbusters, great, most of what you own is dollar-denominated. But if the dollar tanks, you’ve got a little hedge.
The main point is to start doing the research and thinking for yourself.
Along these lines, here’s an essay by frequent contributor Harun I.:
- The Principles of Trading Also Apply to Life (June 19, 2008).
This isn’t an exhaustive list but it’s a start. Much of it will not be popular because it isn’t a “high tech solution” and it all requires work, learning, responsibility and paying attention–all the traits which our “entertainment” obsession erodes, discounts and destroys.
* * *
My recent books:
Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World ($13)
(Kindle $6.95, print $11.95) Read the first section for free (PDF).Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($6.95 (Kindle), $12 (print), $13.08 ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).
The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)
Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).
If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/07/2020 – 21:45 - "Everything Has Been Cancelled": Class 8 Heavy Duty Truck Orders Crash To 25 Year Low In April
“Everything Has Been Cancelled”: Class 8 Heavy Duty Truck Orders Crash To 25 Year Low In April
The misery in Class 8 heavy duty truck orders continues. Still struggling with the remnants of an order backlog that started almost two years ago with record orders in August 2018, the industry was unable to find an equilibrium prior to the coronavirus pandemic. Orders were sluggish and we noted numerous trucking companies that closed up shop altogether in 2019.
Post-pandemic, things look even more helpless. In April, the industry posted its worst order number on record as the economy ground to a halt as a result of the nationwide lockdown. Only 4,000 Class 8 orders were made last month, which is down 73% year over year and 44% from March.
It was the lowest reading since FTR began tracking orders in 1996. Many companies canceled or delayed new orders as demand, measured by the ratio of loads to trucks, fell 66% in April, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The uncertain outlook going forward has prompted many companies that would normally be shelling out for new infrastructure to rein in their spending. For example, logistics company TFI’s Chief Executive Alain Bédard said in an April 22 call: “Everything has been canceled.”
Don Ake, FTR’s vice president of commercial vehicles said: “Fleets don’t need a lot of trucks in the short term and they’re unsure what they’ll need in the next few months, so they’re being cautious.”
Ake says the backlog of heavy duty trucks is still above 100,000 units, but could dip below 2017 levels once factories are back up and running. “The industry was going slow anyway, and the backlog will probably go below that 94,000 mark [in 2017] eventually,” he said.
“Fleets will remain extremely cautious going forward, but we expect orders to modestly increase as the freight markets recover,” Ake told FreightWaves. “We have already seen some signs of life in refrigerated freight and expect improvement in dry van freight soon. The industry recovery will begin in May, but it will be gradual, just like the overall economy.”
Daimler Trucks has suspended production at its plant in Oregon and two additional facilities in North Carolina. “The work outpaced the current capabilities of the supply chain,” the company said at the time. The factories are set to re-open and resume production on May 11.
Kenny Vieth, president of market forecaster ACT Research concluded: “The ramp out of this is going to be arduous. You can only build at the speed of your slowest supplier.”
He continued: “Given broadly halted economic output leading to a sharp drop in freight volumes and rates, as well as more empty miles from fragmented supply chains further impacting carriers’ profitability, a negative order number was within the realm of possibilities.”
FTR is suggesting a potential rebound to about 10,000 orders in May.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/07/2020 – 21:25 - "There's No Question It's A Fraud": Fmr Trump Attorney Says Mueller "Badly Misled" White House, Schiff Is "Nancy's Liar"
“There’s No Question It’s A Fraud”: Fmr Trump Attorney Says Mueller “Badly Misled” White House, Schiff Is “Nancy’s Liar”
Former Trump attorney John Dowd says it’s “staggering” that former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s “so-called Dream Team would put on such a fraud,” after the Wednesday release of the investigation’s “scope memo” revealed that Mueller was tasked with investigating accusations from Clinton-funded operative Christopher Steele which the DOJ already knew were debunked.
“In the last few days, I have been going back through my files and we were badly misled by Mueller and his senior people, particularly in the meetings that we had,” Dowd told Fox News Radio host Brian Kilmeade on Thursday.
The scope memo also revealed that Mueller’s authority went significantly beyond what was previously known – including “allegations that Carter Page committed a crime or crimes by colluding with Russian government officials with respect to the Russian government’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 election for President of the United States, in violation of United States law,” yet as John Solomon of Just The News noted on Wednesday – the FBI had already:
- fired Steele as an informant for leaking;
- interviewed Steele’s sub-source, who disputed information attributed to him;
- ascertained that allegations Steele had given the FBI specifically about Page were inaccurate and likely came from Russian intelligence sources as disinformation;
- been informed repeatedly by the CIA that Page was not a Russian stooge but, rather, a cooperating intelligence asset for the United States government.
“There’s no question it’s a fraud … I think the whole report is just nonsense and it’s staggering that the so-called ‘Dream Team’ would put on such a fraud,” Dowd said, according to Fox News.
Dowd also discussed Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Russia probe, which is expected to be wrapped up by the end of the summer.
“Durham has really got a load on his hands tracking all this down,” Dowd said.
Durham was appointed last year by Attorney General Bill Barr to review the events leading up to Trump’s inauguration. However, Durham has since expanded his investigation to cover a post-election timeline spanning the spring of 2017, when Mueller was appointed as special counsel. –Fox News
“Nancy’s Liar”
Dowd also circled back to a claim by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff that there was “direct evidence” that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election, despite the fact that transcripts of House Intelligence Committee interviews proving otherwise.
“Schiff doesn’t release these interviews because they’re going to make him a liar,” said Dowd, adding “They’re going to expose him and he’ll be run out of town.”
“He lied for months in the impeachment inquiry. He’s essentially Nancy [Pelosi]’s liar and he’s now going to be exposed.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/07/2020 – 21:05 - White House Shelves Detailed CDC Guide To Reopening Country: "Will Never See Light Of Day"
White House Shelves Detailed CDC Guide To Reopening Country: “Will Never See Light Of Day”
Weeks after President Trump tweeted messages to “Liberate” various states like Michigan, whose governor has come under fire for imposing some of the most draconian ‘stay at home’ and lockdown measures nationwide, the White House has shelved a detailed Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guide providing directives for opening up the country again.
The AP obtained a copy of the unreleased report, which further comes after the administration’s own “Opening Up America Again” — though the new CDC unpublished report is said to be more specific and detailed. AP describes:
The 17-page report by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team, titled “Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework,” was researched and written to help faith leaders, business owners, educators and state and local officials as they begin to reopen.
It was supposed to be published last Friday, but agency scientists were told the guidance “would never see the light of day,” according to a CDC official.
Image source: AP That is hasn’t been cleared for public release either by the White House or CDC leadership underscores the continuing debate and struggle between those wanting a “scientifically accurate” one-size-fits-all centralized policy for reopening vs. Trump’s desire to leave specifics to the states, given the pandemic has impacted various regions of the country differently.
For example the South has been far less impacted than predictions in March suggested, while some states in the central parts of the country have chafed at what many see as the dangerous trend of the entire country’s fate being determined by hard-hit cities and areas on the East and West coasts, especially the tri-state area.
“We’ve consulted individually with states, but as I said, it’s (a) governor-led effort. It’s a state-led effort on … which the federal government will consult. And we do so each and every day,” the White House spokesperson said in a COVID-19 briefing Wednesday.
But the administration has come under severe criticism for not making CDC recommendations easily available in the form of centralized information or daily briefings, preferring not to federalize what could be perceived as a blanket policy. The AP summarizes the new CDC document’s guidelines as follows:
The rejected reopening guidance was described by one of the federal officials as a touchstone document that was to be used as a blueprint for other groups inside the CDC who are creating the same type of instructional materials for other facilities.
The guidance contained detailed advice for making site-specific decisions related to reopening schools, restaurants, summer camps, churches, day care centers and other institutions. It had been widely shared within the CDC and included detailed “decision trees,” flow charts to be used by local officials to think through different scenarios. One page of the document can be found on the CDC website via search engines, but it did not appear to be linked to any other CDC pages.
Hmmmm. An outlandish document produced by government insiders then leaked to the press to seed a story that corners Trump. Never seen this before https://t.co/CoL9gBy2lg
— Julie Kelly (@julie_kelly2) May 7, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
And further, it contains details recommended by scientists which are not currently found on any official CDC web pages:
For example, the report suggested restaurants and bars should install sneeze guards at cash registers and avoid having buffets, salad bars and drink stations. Similar tips appear on the CDC’s site and a Food and Drug Administration page.
But the shelved report also said that as restaurants start seating diners again, they should space tables at least 6 feet (1.8 meters) apart and try to use phone app technology to alert a patron when their table is ready to avoid touching and use of buzzers. That’s not on the CDC’s site now.
Page from the new but still not officially released CDC document:
Chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, Dr. Marcus Plescia, explained the controversy over release of the guidelines to the AP further: “You can say that restaurants can open and you need to follow social distancing guidelines. But restaurants want to know, ‘What does that look like?’ States would like more guidance,” he said.
Still, CDC officials are said to be working “behind the scenes” in getting as much of their recommendations as they can to state and local officials, as the ‘information battle’ and inter-admin debate over reopening continues.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/07/2020 – 20:45 - The Science Of Fear: How The Elites Use It To Control Us & How To Break Free
The Science Of Fear: How The Elites Use It To Control Us & How To Break Free
Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,
Fear is one of the most powerful tools the elites have at their disposal. Using the mainstream media, politicians and others who want world domination can inject fear into the public at the drop of a hat, making them easy to manipulate and control.
Aristotle once said: “He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.” Fear is a powerful weapon, and it’s been used globally for the past few months. People have shown that the instant the media tells them to live a life scared in their homes, they will comply in order to “stay safe.” Whether the virus is real or not, is not the point. The elitists must keep the public in a constant state of panic in order to control them. Unafraid and compassionate people are impossible to control.
Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, the propaganda was injected into schools to eliminate critical thinking.
At school, we were taught to think in certain ways. They taught us what to think, but not how to develop our thinking. And everyone was taught the same. If we thought in different ways than our classmates, teachers would tell us we are bad students. They would give us bad grades and might even expel us from school. Therefore, as students we learned to compromise our thinking so as to get away with trouble. –The Bounded Spirit
The other hard truth most will not like to hear is that if you are still stuck in the left vs. right paradigm, you still haven’t figured any of it out yet. Left vs. right only exists to give us the illusion of choice. It’s time to question what we’ve been programmed to think, and it should start there. The fear of not electing the right candidate drives people to polls to vote for evil every year. (The lesser of two evils is still evil.) Politicians are being elected by persuading the masses through the use of fear while journalists influence public opinion by terrorizing people’s minds.
Fear is the best weapon of all great manipulators. It can move people to do anything, no matter how nonsensical it is. Take, for example, the COVID-19 scam. People are still terrified of a virus that even the government has admitted isn’t any worse than the flu. Why? Because the media, the government’s lapdog, is telling them they still need to be afraid. The elites have learned to manipulate the public’s emotions to their advantage. With global media corporations in place, controlled and operated BY the elite, they can amplify that fear quite easily. Turn on the news, open a newspaper and you’ll see this.
We have been taught to be distrustful of the mind, however, and of our thoughts. This has been by design and has been perpetuated through society by the elite of this world who understand the power of thought and the nature of the mind. In fact, most of us have been through a long period of mind-programming since we were born to separate our mind from itself so that it does not know or experience this truth. –With One Breath
Obey. That is the name of the game of control. And controlled you are if you do not recognize how innately powerful, creative, and safe you really are. This life is not all you are, but it is everything you’ve been taught to believe.
Our emotions are energy and they all have a frequency. The closer you are to the bottom, the easier it will be to manipulate you into obeying and complying with tyranny.
As David Icke said in a now-banned YouTube video:
“‘I’m more powerful than them and they KNOW IT.’ And within minutes of the interview ending, they were proving me right. Here they are, this cult that I will explain, that control the mainstream media, my God, has that been any more obvious than in the last few weeks?” -SHTFPlan (the video in this article has been deleted and this article has been shadowbanned.)
Icke was discussing the easy way to beat “the cult” as he calls it, the elitists, the government, the establishment, the ones who want to control you and enslave you. He says living life in compassion and love and doing the right and moral thing will be the fall of the ruling class.
Free yourself by living a life free of fear. Take up critical thinking. Question what you’ve been told. Believe you are powerful because you are. Stop looking to others for answers and look to yourself. Find what resonates with you and speak your truth.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/07/2020 – 20:25 - Desperate Auto Dealers Betting Big On Discounts To Help Move Inventory
Desperate Auto Dealers Betting Big On Discounts To Help Move Inventory
We have been extensively documenting the growing auto industry glut that literally has ports so full that they are keeping ships at sea because they can’t accept any more inventory.
But now, the auto industry looks as though it has a plan to move some of this inventory: massive discounts and incentives.
Texas auto dealer Hayden Elder, who had his worst month in 42 years in March, told Reuters: “I think that will open the door for a ton of orders for the factory.” He owns two Dodge, Jeep and Ram dealerships in a rural eastern region of Texas and has remained open.
Jeff Schuster, president of the Americas for consultancy LMC Automotive expects that the industry will rebound in the second half of the year, but predicts that 2020 sales will end the year up to 25% lower than 2019.
Schuster said: “Until we get plants up and running and the economy restarted, we’re in uncertain territory.” Though if inventory is the problem du jour, we’re not quite sure what cranking out more vehicles at this point is going to solve.
Auto makers have been torching cash while the coronavirus has swept its way across the country. The consequences of the shut down have been immense. Toyota reported a 54% sales decline in April, for example. Hyundai and Mazda reported drops of 39% and 45%, respectively.
Some dealers have already tapped into incentives, however, trying to lure in buyers with seven year low interest loans. In fact, auto retailer Sonic Automotive Inc’s Chief Executive David Smith has called existing loans “unprecedented”.
“I’ve never seen that level of incentives,” he said.
Ford CEO Jim Hackett is also optimistic, stating last week: “My belief is that demand will come back fairly well.”
Ford’s U.S. sales chief then tipped the company’s hand, leading on that they continue to expect help from the government in order to steady their business: “Certainly we believe that some level of government stimulus post crisis to help customers and the auto industry to recover would be appropriate.”
One problem continues to be the used auto market, where prices are expected to crash. It’s a story we have covered at length here on Zero Hedge and it may result in siphoning off some business that would normally purchase new vehicles.
Another risk, should automakers offer extensive discounts, is that customers could want the same incentives over the longer term. Mark Wakefield, a managing director at consultancy AlixPartners said: “Those things are hard to walk back.”
“Competition for these off-lease customers will be fierce,” Cox Automotive economist Charlie Smoke said in late April. When times are tough, Americans have been known to flock to used cars.
We have been keeping a close eye on the auto market throughout the coronavirus crisis.
“There are basically no sales,” we wrote about the auto industry heading into April. One automotive researcher said of the industry-wide crisis: “The whole world is turned upside down right now.”
Recall we just wrote that ships full of cars were being denied entry to ports in California due to the massive inventory glut. Such was the case on April 24 when a cargo of 2,000 Nissan SUVs was approaching the port of Los Angeles. They were told to drop anchor about a mile from the port and remain there.
John Felitto, a senior vice president for the U.S. unit of Norwegian shipping company Wallenius Wilhelmsen said:
“Dealers aren’t really accepting cars and fleet sales are down because rental-car and fleet operators aren’t taking delivery either. This is different from anything we’ve seen before. Everyone is full to the brim.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/07/2020 – 20:05 - Governor Pritzker's Plan To Reopen Illinois Makes No Sense
Governor Pritzker’s Plan To Reopen Illinois Makes No Sense
Authored by Mark Glennon via wirepoints.org,
Governor JB Pritzker earlier made the extraordinary request for courts to rule that he may extend his sweeping emergency powers as long as he chooses, which would set a horrible precedent.
This week he released his plan for reopening the state, called Restore Illinois, that likewise may delay that date forever.
The plan is senseless.
Extension of the plan’s logic would mean that countless activities we routinely engage in despite some level of risk should be banned until the risk is eliminated. For example, driving fatalities have dropped significantly due to travel restrictions now in place. Those travel restrictions should not be lifted, if the same thinking behind the plan is used, until cars are made entirely safe or fatalities drop to zero.
Under the plan, the state would not return to normalcy and the emergency rules would not be lifted – called Phase 5 under the plan — until various conditions are met. They might well never be met, and in any event likely would take many months.
Among those conditions are that a vaccine or highly effective treatment becomes widely available or there are no new cases whatsoever over a sustained period. But we don’t know whether or when a vaccine will ever become available.
“Seventeen years after the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) outbreak and seven years since the first Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers) case, there is still no vaccine despite dozens of attempts to develop them.”
Nor is there any indication that a “highly effective” treatment will become available within any reasonable time. The efficacy of the two now most frequently discussed candidates, Remdesivir and hydroxychloroquine, are questionable at best.
That means no full reopening until there are no new cases over a sustained period of time which, almost certainly, will never happen. Complete elimination is a goal that is both senseless and impossible.
Still more conditions must be met under the plan before we can return to normalcy, or even to advance to earlier phases. To move from Phase 3 to Phase 4 requires, among other things, contact tracing and monitoring within 24 hours of diagnosis for more than 90% of cases in region.
But contact tracing means hiring what Pritzker called an “army” of new workers to track contact with victims, which will cost $80 million. And how are we going to get 90% of victims to sign up for contact tracing? Won’t well more than 10% opt out of participating because of privacy concerns, whether real or imagined?
Moving from Phase 3 to Phase 4 would also require a positivity rate of no more than 20% increasing no more than 10 percentage points over a 14-day period. I for one see no reliable significance in the positivity rate, which is the percentage of those getting tested who are positive for the disease. That number will be pushed and pulled in different directions depending on changes in where testing is concentrated, on whom and the volume of testing. If a particular region begins focusing on problem hotspots, for example, the rate would spike up, though that might not be representative of the region as a whole.
Each movement from one phase to another is subject to still other requirements that may be difficult to fulfill, which you can read in the plan.
The phases may be implemented by region, a feature no doubt resulting from criticism of Pritzker’s a one-size-fits all approach that clearly was not appropriate for rural areas with few infections. But regions under the new plan are huge – too huge to make any sense — just four for the whole state. The Chicago region, for example, includes rural areas of Grundy County far southwest of the city and McHenry County all the way to the Wisconsin border. Businesses in those areas are already complaining that the one-size-fits-all problem is not solved by Pritzker’s new plan.
Pritzker on Wednesday gave this answer to a question about what restaurants are supposed to do that have little hope under the plan that they could reopen before they go bankrupt: “Well, my first response to that is that I’m not the one that’s writing those rules for restaurants and bars, it is doctors and epidemiologists that I’m listening to.”
No, he makes the rules. It’s his plan. “The buck stops with me,” he said on April 8.
Insofar as he is relying on experts, he is picking which ones, and they evidently don’t include anybody who factors in lost lives from a devastated economy.
That’s perhaps the most frustrating position that many hold – failing to recognize that a poor economy kills people, too. You’d think that would be particularly obvious given the extensive publicity about Chicago’s life expectancy gap between rich and poor, the worst in the country. And decades of research have shown that people living in lower GDP economies have shorter life spans. We face a downturn perhaps as bad as the Great Depression, according to many experts, which will make most everybody poorer.
Let’s be clear: Nobody is advocating for full reopening now. Most of the social distancing measures common across the nation make sense for now, in my view. Strict caution should be taken by and on behalf of the high-risk groups – older people and those with known comorbidities. For younger people with no health problems, the risks are tiny. If, however, they are moving around in public, both they and those in high risk groups need to avoid the other.
Pick which experts you think are most credible. See what states have more balanced approaches. Look at alternative plans that will be coming. I am not judging any of that. The point, instead, is to say there’s one approach that’s clearly senseless, and that’s Pritzker’s.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/07/2020 – 19:45 - 'Blame China, Save The Economy' – Trump Campaign Embraces New 2020 Messaging
‘Blame China, Save The Economy’ – Trump Campaign Embraces New 2020 Messaging
Looking ahead to November, President Trump now finds himself in an unenviable position for an incumbent. The clock has struck midnight, and Trump’s heavily-stimulated growth-oriented economy has turned into a pumpkin, so to speak. Looking back over the last half-century, two one-term presidents offer obvious comparisons: George HW Bush, and Jimmy Carter.
Trump knows that being remembered as an ineffectual one-termer like Carter would almost be worse than never having won the presidency in the first place. Fortunately, unlike his two predecessors mentioned above, Trump has accomplished something unique: He’s made wariness of China a major pillar of American foreign policy, giving the US a nation-state foe for the first time since the years following 9/11. And the obvious parallels make a comparison to the Soviet Union sound more appropriate. Trump’s claim last night that the coronavirus is the worst attack on the US since Pearl Harbor appeared to resonate not only with Trump’s base, but with the crucial swing voters in the Midwest and elsewhere. Without them, Trump is doomed. And as it turns out, they have more trust in Trump to lead the economy back to growth and confront China, than they do in Joe Biden.
Using these data as a guide, Trump’s campaign team has crafted a two-pronged message that they believe will resonate particularly well in the Swing States this fall.
Several Trump aides say their 2020 campaign will now be chiefly defined by two themes: Trump is the only candidate who can resurrect the economy and that Biden will not be as tough on China, a country Trump is blaming for the pandemic.
It is a message resonating with Trump’s base, according to interviews with more than 50 voters in three swing counties in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – states Trump won in 2016 by less than a percentage point and that will decide whether he can win a second term.
Because the inescapable truth is: No matter how many times progressive blue checks insist that referring to SARS-CoV-2 as the “Wuhan Virus” is “racist”, and that the intensity of the outbreak is entirely Trump’s fault, most Americans blame China for unleashing the virus on the world, and rightfully so.
This “new messaging” on Chin is being circulated to Republican leaders around the country so everybody can get on the same page .
Trump officials say the new messaging, being sent to Republican state leaders across the country and pushed in new anti-Biden ads across swing states, reflects internal and external polling data that shows voters trust Trump more on the economy, and that Americans across party lines distrust China.
“Voters know China was a bad actor on the virus. The president made clear to pinpoint China as the origin of the virus,” said Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign’s spokesman. “We’re going to push this.”
Whereas the Biden campaign’s message is far more muddy: essentially, it relies on blaming Trump for the coronavirus, something that’s simply not going to fly with Trump’s base and many swing voters, who have been primed to be suspicious of China since Trump first started rising in the polls during the 2016 GOP primary..
TJ Ducklo, Biden’s campaign spokesman, described Trump’s response to the crisis as a “disaster.” He accused Trump of being “duped” by China earlier this year and pointed to the fact that Trump heaped praise on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s handling of the outbreak during January and February.
“This election will be a referendum on Donald Trump’s historic failures as president,” Ducklo said.
One swing voter who says he voted for Obama twice before picking Trump in 2016 told Reuters that he would “definitely” trust Trump more than Biden when it comes to dealing with the Chinese.
“I definitely want Trump fighting against China rather than Biden, by far,” said Engelmann, 50, who works for a food distribution company in Racine County, Wisconsin.
But Republicans can still screw it all up – which is why disseminating the nuanced talking points is important. As Llyod Blankfein explained earlier, those who frame their reopening arguments around concepts like individual liberty or economic blowback risk sounding unbelievably callous. And any hint that the virus is “a hoax” risks reviving accusations of denialism that will inevitably resonate with those who have lost loved ones to the virus.
Lee Snover, head of the Republican Party in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, recently lost her father to COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and could not be at his deathbed. She said Republicans needed to be careful about going too far in criticizing the economic shutdown and dismissing the health risks.
“Yes, we need to reopen the economy, but we also need to recognize that the virus is real and poses a threat.”
With unemployment likely headed to the highest level since the Great Depression (something that might not necessarily be fully reflected in the data), polls suggest that voters trust Trump to create jobs more than they trust Biden. And of course, Biden’s shady business dealings involving China certainly don’t help.
In the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted Monday and Tuesday, 45% of Americans said Trump would be better at creating jobs, compared with 32% who thought Biden would be better at it.
Trump’s campaign aides also see rising anger with China over the coronavirus as an opening. Trump in recent weeks has ramped up his criticism of Beijing and threatened new tariffs on China, and officials said they were considering retaliatory measures against China over the outbreak.
A Pew Research Center survey in late April showed two-thirds of Americans viewed China unfavorably now, up 20 points since the start of the Trump administration in January 2017.
Starting next week, messaging on China will be sent to Republican state party officials, accusing China of costing American lives and that “Joe Biden is good for China but bad for America,” one campaign aide said.
Still, public frustration is high. Just like they did in 2016, the Dems have fielded an elderly white candidate who does little to inspire the party’s base (though Biden is probably a better politician than Hillary Clinton, his performance so far suggests that he has cognitive abilities have deteriorated since he left office (or at least since the last time he was up on a debate stage in 2012).
Trump still needs to convince these voters that he can be – as many have said – a “uniter” and overcome the partisan gridlock in Washington to actually get things done.
Duane Miller, 82, a Northampton County resident who voted for Trump in 2016, said he was sickened by how both parties had politicized the coronavirus crisis.
“If I had to vote today – and I’ve been voting for decades – I probably would not even vote.”
Playing the blame game and picking petty fights with the press make Trump seem less like a dignified leader and more like a petulant child. Trump must inspire confidence that he can step up and lead when times get tough.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/07/2020 – 19:25 - Here's Where Friday's Employment Report Could Really Disappoint
Here’s Where Friday’s Employment Report Could Really Disappoint
Authored by Bryce Coward via Knowledge Leaders Capital blog,
Given the surge in unemployment claims over the last month the US unemployment rate is expected to rise to 16% in April from just 4.4% in March. Shocking as that number is, we have no problem with that forecast.
But for some reason economists surveyed by Bloomberg expect average hourly earnings to grow at +3.3% year-over-year in April compared to 3.1% in March, and they expect average weekly hours of 33.6 in April compared to 34.2 in March.
I do wonder how it can be that the unemployment rate will shoot up to a post-war high and yet those employees who were not furloughed or laid off will, in aggregate, have the near the same level of hours and earnings as before. After all, Google search trends for the terms “pay cut” and “hours cut” have reached an all-time high in recent weeks.
Moreover, the idea that average hourly earnings will actually increase sequentially in April for those employees who did keep their jobs is wholly inconsistent with consumer survey data.
For example, when I compare University of Michigan Consumer Expectations to average hourly earnings then it looks like we should be expecting something closer to just 2.5% year-over-year growth.
2.5% year-over-year growth would equate to a month-over-month decline of -0.78%.
That would be the largest month-over-month decline on record…by a mile..and I suspect there is even downside to that figure as well given Google search trends.
Now, in fairness, the University of Michigan consumer survey appears to be more in line with the estimated decline in average weekly hours.
But the Google search trends shown above still suggests a rather large decline in hours worked.
Putting these items together – overall employment times wages times and hours worked – the nominal income generated from employment in April is likely to be fully 14% lower than year ago levels… nearly 3 orders of magnitude worse than the worst readings of 2009.
Aside from the collapse in earnings which everyone seems to be ignoring, Goldman estimates nonfarm payrolls declined by 24 million in April (vs. consensus of -21.7mn), reflecting a surge in business closures and temporary layoffs related to the coronavirus. Additionally, Goldman notes that alternative data sources such as Google Mobility, Homebase, and Nielsen all indicate job losses of 24 million or more.
Arguing for a weaker report:
-
Big Data. As shown in Exhibit 1, four timely employment measures all indicate an unprecedented scale of monthly job loss. For example, an online survey by University of Chicago economists using the Nielsen Homescan panel found that 24 million people had lost their job by early April. With the exception of ADP (-20.2mn private payrolls, mom sa), these data all point to worse-than-consensus jobs number in tomorrow’s report. Relatedly, early April job losses in Canada exceeding 4mn would imply a US payroll decline on the order of 40mn in tomorrow’s report (simply based on the relative size of the two economies). By industry, these data suggest that job loss has been particularly pronounced in the food services, accommodation, recreation services, social assistance, and temporary help sub-industries.
Exhibit 1: Alternative Data Indicates April Job Losses of 24 Million or More
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bloomberg LP, Haver Analytics, Department of Commerce, Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research, University of Chicago, ADP, Google, Homebase, Nielsen
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Jobless claims. Continuing claims rose by 16.2mn from survey week to survey week (sa), and 23.4 million more initial jobless claims were filed during the April payroll month than a year ago (nsa). Given widespread filing and processing delays, we place more weight on the former measure. Relatedly, we also note that some of the 6.3mn initial claims filings during the subsequent two weeks reflected layoff activity during the April payroll month.
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Business Closures. We believe the BLS is likely to impute zero employment for many of the “non-essential” businesses that were unable to complete the survey this month—echoing the approach adopted in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
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Employer surveys. Business activity surveys declined in April, and the employment components of our survey trackers plummeted (non-manufacturing -14.1 to 33.7, all-time low; manufacturing -12.4 to 34.2, low since April 2009).
-
Job cuts. Announced layoffs reported by Challenger, Gray & Christmas jumped by 262% in April to 652k (mom, sa by GS) on top of its 298% increase in March.
Arguing for a stronger report:
-
Census hiring. In one of the few sub-industries with positive gains, Census temporary workers are set to rise by roughly 4k.
Neutral factors:
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Job availability. The Conference Board labor differential—the difference between the percent of respondents saying jobs are plentiful and those saying jobs are hard to get—plummeted from 29.5 to -13.6, though it remains well above its Financial Crisis levels (-42.1 in 2009).
-
ADP. The payroll-processing firm ADP reported a 20.2mn drop in April private employment. While this would imply a better-than-consensus reading for private payrolls tomorrow, ADP noted that the report “does not reflect the full impact” of the coronavirus, and we place little weigh on the measure this month.
While declining self-employment due to the virus suggests an even larger drop in the household measure of employment (than the 24mn we expect for nonfarm payrolls), we expect some individuals to classify themselves as “employed but not at work.” We also expect the participation rate to decline several points on account of the virus, which should also limit the magnitude of the increase in the jobless rate. Taken together, we estimate the unemployment rate rose almost 10 points to 14%.
In interpreting tomorrow’s report, we will pay special attention to the composition of the household survey, specifically the number of unemployed workers on furlough or temporary layoff (which spiked to 1,848k in March, see left panel of Exhibit 2).
Exhibit 2: Temporary Layoffs May Be Key to Avoiding a Prolonged Downturn
Over the last 50 years, the three recessions with the highest share of temporary layoffs were followed by the fastest labor market recoveries (both absolutely and relative to consensus forecasts at the time, see right panel above).
And in case you were wondering just how long these shockingly high levels of unemployment will be with us, here is Morgan Stanley’s best guess…
In their absolute best-case scenario, employment will not be back to pre-COVID norms until after the election. In a bear-case, this elevated jobless level could become the new normal.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/07/2020 – 19:05 -
- Texas' Anti-Climactic Reopening: Malls & Restaurants Empty, Beaches & Parks Packed
Texas’ Anti-Climactic Reopening: Malls & Restaurants Empty, Beaches & Parks Packed
As predicted, even when the economy finally opens back up across the US, the severe hit which has already seen a number of major retailers file for bankruptcy – with Nieman Marcus being the latest Thursday, it won’t mark the end of the financial pain.
Take Texas, an early state to rapidly east pandemic restrictions and hoped for test case in terms of seeing its economy roar back to life: as of last Friday during a ‘phase 1’ reopening malls, department stores, restaurants, and even movie theaters were able to finally open their doors (these are all allowed 25% of capacity seating per phase 1 restrictions).
And yet, as Reuters details while visiting the major metropolitan Domain mall in Austin, Texas, customers are still staying home, hardly to be seen.
File image via Getty The situation appears bleak, and is a strong negative indicator for the entire country’s ‘reopening’ and economic recovery prospects:
A dozen or so people were strolling about the sprawling open-air shopping center Monday afternoon, with three seated on the patio of a Tex-Mex restaurant. Only one shopper wore a mask, and the loudest noises were from songbirds perched in the live oak trees along the deserted pedestrian thoroughfares.
“I’ve seen one customer today – they didn’t buy anything,” said Taylor Jund, who was keeping watch over an empty Chaser clothing store. “There’s absolutely no one coming around here.”
Restaurants have been allowed to reopen but only allowing for 25% capacity inside dining, with many also removing many tables and chairs to create natural social distancing in their seating and floor plans.
“It’s sad to know that this is the first Monday we’ve reopened, and a lot of the places are still very empty,” one food distribution company official that supplies Houston area restaurants said of the painfully slow, anti-climactic return to business. “I’m a little shocked it’s so dead out.”
There are venues which have witnessed an explosion of returned ‘normal’ activity, however — beaches, public and state parks, lakes, rivers and nature areas.
Crowds flock to Galveston Beach on May 2 in Galveston, Texas, AFP via Getty. These are places where social distancing can be more easily practiced, without the dystopian-feeling scene of Plexiglas barriers separating one from a fellow diner sitting at a restaurant bar.
The state’s phase 2 opening is expected for May 18, however as Governor Greg Abbot said, “We need to see two weeks of data to confirm no flare-up of COVID-19,” which will determine whether it goes forward as planned.
Austin’s Domain Mall this week, via Reuters. Meanwhile, phase 2 reopening looks optimistic regardless:
Texas Governor Greg Abbott modified his COVID-19 executive orders on Thursday, effectively setting free a woman jailed for refusing to close her business. Dallas salon owner Shelley Luther is serving a seven-day jail sentence for violating statewide stay-at-home orders. She reopened her business nearly two weeks ago and publicly tore up a cease-and-desist letter ordering her to close.
Abbott modified his orders to eliminate confinement as a punishment, and specifically named Luther in his announcement. The modifications are being applied retroactively to April 2, according to a press release from his office.
With such legal repercussions for reopening now greatly softened in Texas, the rush will be on, but will customers and clients actually return?
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/07/2020 – 18:45
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