Sep 08

Today’s News 8th September 2021

  • China Accuses NATO Of Inflating Its 'Purely Defensive' Nuclear Arms Program 
    China Accuses NATO Of Inflating Its ‘Purely Defensive’ Nuclear Arms Program 

    China on Tuesday reacted angrily to comments made the day before by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. The NATO chief while speaking before the military alliance’s annual arms control conference said that not only is China ‘irresponsibly’ refusing to join international arms control talks, but is recklessly pursuing nuclear arms “without any limitation or constraint.”

    Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin dismissed the comments as “hype”, emphasizing the “defensive” and deterrent nature of its nuclear program. “China expresses serious concern and resolutely opposes NATO’s constant hyping of the theory on Chinese nuclear threat,” Wang told a press briefing. 

    Jens Stoltenberg, via NATO

    “China has always adhered to the defensive nature of its nuclear strategy and maintained its nuclear potential at the lowest level in line with the needs of state security“, Wang added.

    “China strictly adheres to its policy of never being the first to use nuclear weapons under any circumstances, Beijing has made a clear unconditional commitment not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states and nuclear-weapon-free zones,” he explained further.

    He also took the occasion to demand that NATO withdraw many of its nuclear warheads deployed across Europe, while seeking to emphasize that true comprehensive disarmament would begin with the United States reducing its own vast arsenal, which alongside Russia remains the largest in the world.

    Stoltenberg’s Monday comments singling out the “large number of missile silos” China is rapidly building…

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    “China is building a large number of missile silos, which can significantly increase its nuclear capability. All of this is happening without any limitation or constraint. And with a complete lack of transparency,” Stoltenberg said in the Monday speech.

    He also urged for Beijing to take full responsibility for arms control, which it so far has refused to do. “As a global power, China has global responsibilities in arms control.” However, China sees itself as unfairly singled out, especially given the large nuclear arsenal NATO possesses – again mostly through the United States.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 09/08/2021 – 02:45

  • Experts Warn ISIS-K Planning To Exploit "Refugee" Wave To Send Terrorists To The West
    Experts Warn ISIS-K Planning To Exploit “Refugee” Wave To Send Terrorists To The West

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    Experts are warning that ISIS-K is preparing to exploit the refugee wave created by the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan to infiltrate terrorists into the west in a repeat of what happened following the previous migrant surge in 2015.

    While authorities are attempting to vet the thousands of Afghans entering western countries by holding them in interim countries like the UAE while checks are performed, many don’t have identity papers or have faked them.

    “It is to be expected al-Qaeda or Daesh-based Afghanistan would have tried and have some of their members obtain access onto the flights leaving Afghanistan to Europe and the counter-terrorism authorities will be aware of this,” said Dr David Lowe, a senior research fellow at Leeds Beckett University Law School and head of a consultancy business in terrorism and security.

    However, according to counter-terrorism expert David Otto, determined jihadists could still slip through the net and there is “little that is being done” to protect Europe from ISIS-K sleeper cells.

    “Europe and the West are at high risk of terrorist attack from individuals who have sneaked themselves into the country posing as affiliated to the US,” said Otto.

    Dr Jassim Mohamad, head of the European Centre for Counter-Terrorism and Intelligence Studies in Bonn, also pointed out that even if an individual is determined to be a threat, countries such as Germany are forbidden by law from sending them back to Afghanistan.

    “Dangerous persons may be subjected to supervision, but none of them will be imprisoned, and residency status may remain temporary or limited,” said Mohamad.

    “[One] can only rely on documents and previous records,” said Otto. “With the collapse of the Afghanistan government there has been concerns of people faking documents to make it through. This is one of the reasons the US has taken steps to process individuals from third party countries to control the risk. Despite these measures, groups like ISIS-K and al-Qaeda will encourage its sympathisers to beat the system”.

    Following the previous refugee crisis, when over a million mostly economic migrants entered Europe, ISIS bragged about how it had exploited porous borders to sneak jihadists into the west.

    This led directly to multiple mass casualty terror attacks, including the Paris massacre.

    The Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi was also rescued from Libya as a “refugee” by the British Royal Navy.

    As we previously highlighted, observers are expecting large numbers of people to continue to leave Afghanistan, with one diplomat warning “not even tanks” can stop them.

    A report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies also warned that the 2021 Afghan refugee crisis could make the 2015 refugee crisis look like a “geopolitical walk in the park” in comparison.

    Over a thousand boat migrants arrived in England yesterday alone, many of whom originated in Afghanistan.

    While the media laboriously focuses on the odd baby or child who arrives with the group, the vast majority of arrivals continue to be fighting age young men.

    Nobody knows who they are, most of them don’t have papers, and they are just allowed into the country and put up at taxpayer expense in 4 star hotels.

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 09/08/2021 – 02:00

  • Bring All The Troops Home: Stop Policing The Globe And Put An End To Endless Wars
    Bring All The Troops Home: Stop Policing The Globe And Put An End To Endless Wars

    Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “Let us resolve that never again will we send the precious young blood of this country to die trying to prop up a corrupt military dictatorship abroad. This is also the time to turn away from excessive preoccupation overseas to the rebuilding of our own nation. America must be restored to a proper role in the world. But we can do that only through the recovery of confidence in ourselves…. together we will call America home to the ideals that nourished us from the beginning.”

    – George S. McGovern, former Senator and presidential candidate

    It’s time to bring all our troops home.

    Bring them home from Somalia, Iraq and Syria. Bring them home from Germany, South Korea and Japan. Bring them home from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Oman. Bring them home from Niger, Chad and Mali. Bring them home from Turkey, the Philippines, and northern Australia.

    It’s not enough to pull American troops out of Afghanistan, America’s longest, bloodiest and most expensive war to date.

    It’s time that we stop policing the globe, stop occupying other countries, and stop waging endless wars.

    That’s not what’s going to happen, of course.

    The U.S. military reportedly has more than 1.3 million men and women on active duty, with more than 200,000 of them stationed overseas in nearly every country in the world.

    Those numbers are likely significantly higher in keeping with the Pentagon’s policy of not fully disclosing where and how many troops are deployed for the sake of “operational security and denying the enemy any advantage.” As investigative journalist David Vine explains, “Although few Americans realize it, the United States likely has more bases in foreign lands than any other people, nation, or empire in history.”

    Don’t fall for the propaganda, though.

    America’s military forces aren’t being deployed abroad to protect our freedoms here at home. Rather, they’re being used to guard oil fields, build foreign infrastructure and protect the financial interests of the corporate elite. In fact, the United States military spends about $81 billion a year just to protect oil supplies around the world.

    The reach of America’s military empire includes close to 800 bases in as many as 160 countries, operated at a cost of more than $156 billion annually. As Vine reports, “Even US military resorts and recreation areas in places like the Bavarian Alps and Seoul, South Korea, are bases of a kind. Worldwide, the military runs more than 170 golf courses.”

    This is how a military empire occupies the globe.

    After 20 years of propping up Afghanistan to the tune of trillions of dollars and thousands of lives lost, the U.S. military may have finally been forced out, but those troops represent just a fraction of our military presence worldwide.

    In an ongoing effort to police the globe, American military servicepeople continue to be deployed to far-flung places in the Middle East and elsewhere.

    This is how the military industrial complex, aided and abetted by the likes of Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and others, continues to get rich at taxpayer expense.

    Yet while the rationale may keep changing for why American military forces are policing the globe, these wars abroad aren’t making America—or the rest of the world—any safer, are certainly not making America great again, and are undeniably digging the U.S. deeper into debt.

    War spending is bankrupting America.

    Although the U.S. constitutes only 5% of the world’s population, America boasts almost 50% of the world’s total military expenditure, spending more on the military than the next 19 biggest spending nations combined.

    In fact, the Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety.

    The American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its breadth and scope, one dedicated to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth.

    Since 2001, the U.S. government has spent more than $4.7 trillion waging its endless wars.

    Having been co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent government officials, America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $32 million per hour.

    In fact, the U.S. government has spent more money every five seconds in Iraq than the average American earns in a year.

    Future wars and military exercises waged around the globe are expected to push the total bill upwards of $12 trillion by 2053.

    Talk about fiscally irresponsible: the U.S. government is spending money it doesn’t have on a military empire it can’t afford.

    As investigative journalist Uri Friedman puts it, for more than 15 years now, the United States has been fighting terrorism with a credit card, “essentially bankrolling the wars with debt, in the form of purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds by U.S.-based entities like pension funds and state and local governments, and by countries like China and Japan.”

    War is not cheap, but it becomes outrageously costly when you factor in government incompetence, fraud, and greedy contractors. Indeed, a leading accounting firm concluded that one of the Pentagon’s largest agencies “can’t account for hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of spending.”

    Unfortunately, the outlook isn’t much better for the spending that can be tracked.

    A government audit found that defense contractor Boeing has been massively overcharging taxpayers for mundane parts, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in overspending. As the report noted, the American taxpayer paid:

    $71 for a metal pin that should cost just 4 cents; $644.75 for a small gear smaller than a dime that sells for $12.51: more than a 5,100 percent increase in price. $1,678.61 for another tiny part, also smaller than a dime, that could have been bought within DoD for $7.71: a 21,000 percent increase. $71.01 for a straight, thin metal pin that DoD had on hand, unused by the tens of thousands, for 4 cents: an increase of over 177,000 percent.

    That price gouging has become an accepted form of corruption within the American military empire is a sad statement on how little control “we the people” have over our runaway government.

    Mind you, this isn’t just corrupt behavior. It’s deadly, downright immoral behavior.

    Americans have thus far allowed themselves to be spoon-fed a steady diet of pro-war propaganda that keeps them content to wave flags with patriotic fervor and less inclined to look too closely at the mounting body counts, the ruined lives, the ravaged countries, the blowback arising from ill-advised targeted-drone killings and bombing campaigns in foreign lands, or the transformation of our own homeland into a warzone.

    That needs to change.

    The U.S. government is not making the world any safer. It’s making the world more dangerous. It is estimated that the U.S. military drops a bomb somewhere in the world every 12 minutes. Since 9/11, the United States government has directly contributed to the deaths of around 500,000 human beings. Every one of those deaths was paid for with taxpayer funds.

    The U.S. government is not making America any safer. It’s exposing American citizens to alarming levels of blowback, a CIA term referring to the unintended consequences of the U.S. government’s international activities. Chalmers Johnson, a former CIA consultant, repeatedly warned that America’s use of its military to gain power over the global economy would result in devastating blowback.

    The 9/11 attacks were blowback. The Boston Marathon Bombing was blowback. The attempted Times Square bomber was blowback. The Fort Hood shooter, a major in the U.S. Army, was blowback.

    The U.S. military’s ongoing drone strikes will, I fear, spur yet more blowback against the American people. The latest drone strike reportedly killed seven children, ages 2 to 10, in Afghanistan.

    The war hawks’ militarization of America—bringing home the spoils of war (the military tanks, grenade launchers, Kevlar helmets, assault rifles, gas masks, ammunition, battering rams, night vision binoculars, etc.) and handing them over to local police, thereby turning America into a battlefield—is also blowback.

    James Madison was right: “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” As Madison explained, “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes… known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.”

    We are seeing this play out before our eyes.

    The government is destabilizing the economy, destroying the national infrastructure through neglect and a lack of resources, and turning taxpayer dollars into blood money with its endless wars, drone strikes and mounting death tolls.

    Clearly, our national priorities are in desperate need of an overhauling.

    At the height of its power, even the mighty Roman Empire could not stare down a collapsing economy and a burgeoning military. Prolonged periods of war and false economic prosperity largely led to its demise. As historian Chalmers Johnson predicts:

    The fate of previous democratic empires suggests that such a conflict is unsustainable and will be resolved in one of two ways. Rome attempted to keep its empire and lost its democracy. Britain chose to remain democratic and in the process let go its empire. Intentionally or not, the people of the United States already are well embarked upon the course of non-democratic empire.

    This is the “unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex” that President Dwight Eisenhower warned us more than 50 years ago not to let endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

    Eisenhower, who served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II, was alarmed by the rise of the profit-driven war machine that emerged following the war—one that, in order to perpetuate itself, would have to keep waging war.

    We failed to heed his warning.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, there’s not much time left before we reach the zero hour.

    It’s time to stop policing the globe, end these wars-without-end, and bring the troops home.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 09/08/2021 – 00:10

  • Chinese Coal Prices Soar To Record High Ahead Of Surge In Mining
    Chinese Coal Prices Soar To Record High Ahead Of Surge In Mining

    Remember when China vowed last year hit peak carbon emissions in 2030 and to reach carbon neutrality in 2060? Maybe it will (spoiler alert: it won’t)…

    … but long before we hit 2060, China plans on taking coal-based pollution to the next level.

    Overnight coal futures prices a hit record level and are almost +80% higher than a year ago, signalling a desperate need for China to increase domestic production in the short term, notwithstanding the government’s plan to reduce reliance on coal in the long term. As Reuters energy analyst John Kemp writes, “electricity consumption is surging and the country is struggling to import sufficient volumes of competitively priced spot LNG, boosting the need for coal for power generation.” 

    Prices for the most-traded thermal coal futures contract on the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange hit $150 a tonne on Tuesday, up from $85 a year ago, which was also the five-year average before the COVID-19 pandemic.

    At the same time, coking coal on the Dalian Commodity Exchange jumped 4.3% to $448 per ton – both rose to intraday records.

    As Reuters notes, surging prices are an indication of the tension between the country’s surging electricity demand and the government’s stated aim to limit coal output and reduce it over time in favor of renewable energy sources.
     
    Coal production in the first seven months of the year was up at a compound annual rate of only 4.1% compared with the same period in 2019, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. But the country’s electricity generation increased at a compound annual rate of 7.4% over the same period in response to strong residential and industrial demand.


     
    The fastest growth came from wind farms (+25% compound annual rate) and solar power (+24%), with slower growth from nuclear (+10%) and thermal generators (+7%) and a fall in hydroelectric output (-2%).

    But both wind and solar are growing from a very low base so they have contributed only a small share of the extra generation required, with most of the extra generation coming from thermal sources, mainly coal.

    In the first seven months of the year, China’s power producers generated 4,645 terawatt-hours (TWh), which was 615 more than in the same period in 2019.

    But only a minority of the extra generation came from wind (+119 TWh) and solar (+36 TWh) sources, with most coming from thermal plants (+445 TWh). 

    While China is installing more wind and solar capacity than any other country, it is not enough to keep pace with surging electricity demand, forcing greater reliance on coal in the short term.  As a result, the country is having to run new and existing thermal power plants for more hours; the average thermal generating unit ran for 2,589 hours in the first seven months of this year, up 268 hours (+12%) from the same period in 2020, according to data compiled by the China Electricity Council.

    Reflecting the tightening coal supply situation, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country’s top economic regulator, this summer called for more coal output to help to meet peak demand for air-conditioning.

    “Key coal-producing regions such as Shanxi, Shaanxi and Mongolia should take the lead in … increasing production and supply,” the commission said in a circular issued on July 23.

    The NDRC directed all areas and coal mining companies to boost output from larger and more productive mines, accelerating capacity replacement and new construction. It also ordered them to make the production of thermal coal their top priority and do everything possible to help power plants with low stocks to increase their number of days of coal storage, meaning that a deluge of domestic coal production is coming.

    Indeed, Daiwa reported that thermal coal stockpiles at the port city Qinhuangdao located in the northern Hebei region, recorded a 12% decline for the week of Sept. 3 to less than 4 million tons. Chan said stockpiles of coking coal dropped 11% from last year. With coal imports sliding, China has just one option left: crank up its domestic coal-mining industry to 11.

    Commenting on the soaring prices, Bloomberg echoed Reuters’ observations that the ability to source coal has been challenging due to stricter safety policies imposed by the government following a series of deadly mine accidents. There have also been new measures to prevent mine flooding, which is also dwindling supplies. 

    “Under current high prices, miners have been incentivized to boost production. This poses higher risk of accidents, which in turn leads to more frequent examinations,” Morgan Stanley analyst Sara Chan said in a report. “Coal production is constrained as a result and this creates a circular loop for even higher prices.”

    The circular loop may persist for now, but it’s only a matter of time before China ramps up production as the alternative is an unacceptable surge in prices. This means much more pollution emerging from China in the coming year; this is happening as 23 of the world’s 25 most polluting cities are already in China.

    Like other countries in Asia and Europe, China’s coal shortages and surging prices reflect the contradiction between the long-term need to move away from coal and the short-term challenge of meeting power demand. In the short term, higher coal prices are signalling the need to boost production to meet power producers’ needs and build sufficient stocks ahead of the winter heating season.

    Meanwhile, demonstrating just how much of a straw man China’s promises to clean up its act truly are, also on Tuesday China’s carbon price slumped to a new low even as trading volumes increased. Emission allowances traded on China’s carbon market, the largest in the world, declined -0.2% Tuesday to close at 43.90 yuan ($6.80) a metric ton, the National Carbon Emissions Trading Agency said in a statement. Price is lowest since the market launched in July, with allowances closing Monday at 44 yuan a ton, signifying that virtually nobody on the mainland is actually serious about reducing the intensity of emissions generation.

    Meanwhile, with everyone across the Pacific thinking coal is trash, perhaps there is some material upside opportunity as coal prices rise. Take a look at the Dow Jones U.S. Coal Index has been basing since March.

    Is the index ready for an upswing on higher prices? And while we wait, we eagerly look forward to climate change messiah Greta Thunberg launching a critical tirade of China for the smog storm it is about to unleash.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/07/2021 – 23:50

  • Taibbi: The Moral Majority Strikes Again
    Taibbi: The Moral Majority Strikes Again

    Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

    Citing a report of Oklahoma emergency rooms so overwhelmed by ivermectin overdoses that gunshot victims were going untreated, MSNBC anchor Joy Ann Reid Sunday proposed sticking the swallowers of “horse paste” at the back of the line in order to prioritize the more deserving, “rather than allowing the ivermectin people” — she spoke the words as if holding a vile wriggling thing with tweezers — to “take up all the beds”:

    This was a network anchor despising a group of people so much that she itched to deny them medical care, not only despite having never met them, but despite the fact that they may not even exist. The “overwhelmed Oklahoma E.R.” tale later seemed to go sideways, the latest in a line of crackups by media lost in the throes of a moral panic.

    The tale of mobbed E.R.s originated with a September 1 print story in the Tulsa World, followed by a piece by Oklahoma City-based NBC affiliate KFOR. Both interviewed a Dr. Jason McElyea, who spoke in the KFOR piece of “gunshot victims having hard times getting to facilities.” Separately he spoke about both the overcrowding problem and of seeing ivermectin overdose cases, but we don’t actually hear him making the connection that it’s the “ivermectin people” causing the bed shortage. That was done by KFOR, whose chyron and tweet identically read, PATIENTS OVERDOSING ON IVERMECTIN BACKING UP HOSPITALS, AMBULANCES.

    The line spread the next day with a retweet by Rachel Maddow — the real patient zero of this mess — followed by tweet-pushes by MSNBC executive producer Lauren Peikoff, the Guardian, the Business Insider, the Daily Mail, Newsweek, the New York Daily News, Daily Kos, Occupy Democrats, Reid, moral mania all-star Kurt Eichenwald, the humorously dependable wrongness-barnacle Eoin Higgins, and of course my former employers at Rolling Stone. My old mag got most of the catcalls on social media, after adding a full written story that widened the scope beyond Oklahoma to note in a tsk-tsking tone that “even podcaster and anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Joe Rogan bragged” of taking ivermectin.

    The original report would have been sensational enough, if true. McElyea told stories of backed-up ambulances, patients “in worse conditions than if they’d caught COVID,” and “scariest” of all, “people coming in with vision loss.” Nonetheless, in the game of Twitter telephone that led from KFOR to the Stone, details were magically added. Reid somehow knew the hated overdosers not only swallowed “horse paste” but had done so “instead of taking the vaccine.” Occupy Democrats knew for whom the horse-pasters voted, noting that “so many Trumpers are overdosing” that emergency rooms are full. MSNBC contributor Dr. Jason Johnson even speculated Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe was somehow profiteering from the misery:

    Wonder if Inhofe (R-OK) has any financial ties to ivermectin. Wouldn’t be the first time he appeared to have profited off #Covid-19…

    Things appeared to go south when the Stone put out an “update” with a statement from Oklahoma’s Northeastern Hospital System Sequoyah, which said Dr. McElyea “has not worked at our Sallisaw location in over 2 months,” and, worse, that “NHS Sequoyah has not treated any patients due to complications related to taking ivermectin,” which “includes not treating any patients for ivermectin overdose.” Of course that was only one hospital system, and it wasn’t clear if it was relevant to McElyea’s story. However, Rolling Stone then put out a second update noting that, “Rolling Stone has been unable to independently verify any such cases,” adding:

    The National Poison Data System states there were 459 reported cases of ivermectin overdose in the United States in August. Oklahoma-specific ivermectin overdose figures are not available, but the count is unlikely to be a significant factor in hospital bed availability in a state that, per the CDC, currently has a 7-day average of 1,528 Covid-19 hospitalizations.

    Subscribers can read the rest here.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/07/2021 – 23:30

  • Is Peter Thiel Building A Luxury Doomsday Mansion In New Zealand?
    Is Peter Thiel Building A Luxury Doomsday Mansion In New Zealand?

    New Zealand is becoming the ideal spot for high-net-worth people to ride out a societal collapse. 

    Billionaire Google co-founder Larry Page has been hiding out in private islands in Fiji to avoid COVID-19 and was recently granted New Zealand residency under a category for wealthy investors. 

    Long before Page, Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire who co-founded PayPal and Palantir, retained residency on the island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean and bought a $13.5 million estate in 2015. 

    According to CNBC, Thiel has filed plans to build a mansion buried into the hillside on the shores of Lake Wanaka. 

    Architecture drawings of the hillside mansion, designed by Tokyo Olympic Stadium architect Kengo Kuma and Associates, show what almost looks like a classy doomsday shelter, with enough liveable area for 24 people. 

    Kengo Kuma and Associates said the mansion was “designed as an organic architecture that fuses into the landscape.” 

    “The careful design and placement of buildings into the landscape is thoughtful and recognizes the landscape setting. The sympathetic design will use a green roof that will employ the same naturally rustic planting palette of the hillocks that they will be located within,” Jo Fyfe, senior planner at John Edmonds and Associates, who assessed the environmental impact of the future structural, said. 

    The idea that the southwestern Pacific Ocean island country is laden with luxury survival bunkers flourished during the early days of the pandemic when we noted, “New Zealand has become the ‘doomsday resort’ and #1 pandemic escape destination for America’s rich.” 

    It’s hard to say Thiel’s and Page’s motivation to avoid the largest population centers of the world and acquire citizenship in a country of just 5 million people, but it appears to be the ideal spot to ride out a future societal collapse.

    Billionaires are making long bets that New Zealand will be the safest place in the world to hunker down during a global crisis, such as the current COVID crisis that forced central banks and governments to go on a borrowing binge like nothing the world has ever seen before, creating what some refer to as the welfare state. When that collapses, the new Hamptons will be New Zealand. 

    … and it’s not just billionaires who are seeking shelter outside the US. Wealthy Americans with assets over $2 million who renounced their citizenship have surged amid socioeconomic despair, political firestorms, and an unrelenting virus pandemic sparking increasingly freedom-destroying mandates. 

    Wealthy folks are beginning to understand: they don’t want to be the last ones sticking around when the party ends in the US. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/07/2021 – 23:10

  • "Default Appears Probable": Evergrande Drops Below 2009 IPO Price After Fitch Triple Downgrade To Near Default
    “Default Appears Probable”: Evergrande Drops Below 2009 IPO Price After Fitch Triple Downgrade To Near Default

    One of these days, someone will finally put China’s largest and most indebted property developer, Evergrande – which has been teetering on the verge of insolvency for months – out of its misery. While that day is not here yet, Fitch just hammered another nail in the coffin of “China’s Lehman” with a 3-notch downgrade which saw the company’s long-term foreign currency issuer rating drop from CCC+ to CC (D is just one letter away), and which saw the rating agency say that “default of some kind appears probable”  as the company struggles to address its worsening liquidity issues.

    “We believe credit risk is high given tight liquidity, declining contracted sales, pressure to address delayed payments to suppliers and contractors, and limited progress on asset disposals,” Fitch said in a statement.

    The Fitch downgrade came a day after Moody’s also cut Evergrande’s credit rating by three notches to Ca, which implies it is “likely in or very near default.” The conglomerate’s liquidity and default risk is “heightened,” Moody’s said in its third downgrade of the real estate giant since June.

    Of course, the rating agencies are late to the party: as we noted last week, Evergrande itself warned of default risks if its efforts to raise cash fall short. Its cash coverage to short-term borrowings worsened in the first half to 36% from 47% from six months earlier, according to Bloomberg calculations based on an earnings statement. The company hasn’t sold a dollar bond since January last year.

    The stock dropped 2.8% to HK$3.47 in Hong Kong trading, sliding below the 2009 IPO price of HK$3.5. Shares of the troubled developer have tumbled about 77% this year, while many of its dollar bonds are hovering below 30 cents.

    And speaking of an Evergrande default, one may have already taken place: earlier on Wednesday, Chinese paint producer Skshu said Evergrande has 101.7 million yuan of overdue commercial bills as of Aug. 31. At this point it’s just a question of when Beijing decides to pull the plug.

     

     

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/07/2021 – 22:59

  • What Is The Goal Of Beijing's New Stock Exchange?
    What Is The Goal Of Beijing’s New Stock Exchange?

    By Jesse Turland of The Diplomat

    A new Beijing Stock Exchange was announced by Xi Jinping at the Global Trade In Services Summit in Beijing last Thursday.

    Xi said the exchange would “deepen reform of the New Third Board,” referring to the existing financing mechanism in Beijing for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs). SMEs are firms with fewer than 500 employees. Traditionally they have struggled in comparison with larger companies to acquire loans from banks. The new stock exchange appears designed in part to make redress for that by connecting SMEs with retail investors. It comes against the backdrop of increased regulatory scrutiny of some of China’s largest existing publicly traded firms.

    China has curtailed the power of big tech companies with moves such as blocking ride-hailing firm Didi from app stores in July over data privacy issues and fining other e-commerce platforms including Alibaba over alleged monopolistic business practices.

    Xi made explicit that the beneficiaries of the new stock exchange are to be firms cut from a different cloth from these tech giants whose fortunes have cooled recently. “Service-oriented, innovative SMEs” are to be supported, according to Xi’s announcement.

    Many experts believe China is – or should be – seeking to use its SME support policy to replicate aspects of Germany’s Mittelstand or “Rhineland capitalism,” which is defined by networks of highly specialized firms contributing to the supply chains of world-leading advanced industrial products.

    “In the eyes of Chinese people, ‘Made in Germany’ represents high quality products. ‘Made in China’ should learn from ‘Made in Germany,’” stated an editorial on China Economic Net earlier this week, republished in The Paper.

    Some observers believe, however, that supporting SMEs is only part of the picture when it comes to the Beijing Stock Exchange’s creation.

    Cynics speculate that the move foreshadows encouraging – or coercing – major firms that are currently listed outside mainland China to return.

    “As for Ali, Didi and Tencent, these giants will inevitably have to return to Beijing to be listed on the Beijing Stock Exchange,” predicted finance-focused YouTuber Xiaocui. In the case of Didi at least, there are some indications that this process has already started.

    Bloomberg reported on Friday that Beijing’s city government had made a bid for a controlling stake in the rideshare firm, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter.

    Didi flew in the face of regulators’ instructions by pushing ahead with an IPO on June 30 this year, coinciding with the centenary celebrations of the Chinese Communist Party. It was punished four days later on July 4 by the Cybersecurity Agency, which banned it from Chinese app stores citing concerns over users’ data privacy.

    “The nationalization of Didi would mean cutting American investors out,” said New York-based politics and finance-focused YouTuber Zhang Tianliang. He believes the setting up of the new exchange in the capital heralds more moves against businesses founded by private entrepreneurs.

    “If big companies are delisted in the United States and relisted in China, on the Shanghai or Shenzhen exchanges, the volatility caused to those existing exchanges will be too great. But on a new stock exchange that is not an issue,” Zhang said.

    “Beyond spreading the risks of financing SMEs … the exchange in Beijing will help with repatriating tech companies with minimal disruption.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/07/2021 – 22:50

  • North America And Europe Lead Bitcoin ATM Charge
    North America And Europe Lead Bitcoin ATM Charge

    In what can only be described as a controversial move, El Salvador became the first country in the world elevating Bitcoin to the status of legal tender today, meaning businesses have to accept the cryptocurrency in day-to-day transactions from this day forward. Interestingly, as Statista’s Florian Zandt details below, El Salvador is only host to four Bitcoin ATMs, machines where users of the corresponding platform operators can buy or sell cryptocurrencies on the go.

    As Statista’s chart indicates, South America as a whole has a lot of catching up to do in this regard…

    Infographic: North America and Europe Lead Bitcoin ATM Charge | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    While declaring Bitcoin as a regular currency is still far off in the countries on the North American continent, it still leads in the number of Bitcoin ATMs with a whopping 24,669 machines available across the U.S. and Canada according to data by Coin ATM Radar.

    Europe, including the Russian Federation, comes in second with 1,263 crypto cash machines available in a total of 28 countries.

    South America, on the other hand, only offers its residents 89 machines across the whole continent. Next to El Salvador, the countries with the most cryptocurrency ATMs are Colombia, Brazil and Argentina.

    The introduction of Bitcoin as a workable currency in El Salvador was met with skepticism by its populace. According to a survey by the UCA El Salvador released in August 2021, nearly 83 percent of participants had little to no confidence in Bitcoin as a legal tender.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/07/2021 – 22:30

  • Dallas Fed President Made Multiple Million-Dollar Stock Trades In 2020, Disclosure Shows
    Dallas Fed President Made Multiple Million-Dollar Stock Trades In 2020, Disclosure Shows

    Eleven of the 12 regional Fed banks have published disclosures of their leaders’ 2020 financial profiles, sharing information that gives insight into the holdings of officials who help set the central bank’s monetary policy and thus directly affect all capital markets, especially stocks. Their stocks too.

    What was notable is that while most regional Fed leaders reported modest financial holdings and smaller transactions, president of the Dallas Fed Robert Kaplan, a former vice chairman at Goldman who was responsible for the firm’s investment banking activities before leaving in 2006 and becoming a profressor at Harvard, who we now learn that at the same time that he was advocating for unlimited quantitative easing and “keeping interest rates at zero until well into 2022 or even 2023“, made “multiple million-dollar-plus stock trades in 2020” according to the WSJ.

    According to the disclosure form provided by the Dallas Fed, Mr. Kaplan had a total of 27 individual stock, fund or alternative asset holdings each valued at over $1 million. Mr. Kaplan’s stockholdings included Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Boeing Co., Alphabet Inc., Facebook Inc. and Marathon Petroleum Corp.

    Kaplan’s disclosure form shows the former Goldman vice chair made some combination of sales or purchases of over $1 million in 22 individual company shares or investment funds. These transactions included Apple, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. , Amazon, General Electric Co. and Chevron Corp.

    A closer look at Kaplan’s holdings shows a stake in the ‘Big Rub BBQ’ and the Kansas City Royals baseball team. He’s one of the 22 owners of the team, a stake he purchased in 2019.

    On the transaction side, there wasn’t much detail: transactions above one million dollars, which was most of them, were listed as “multiple” without further details. Amid the multiple transactions, we learn that stocks Kaplan bought exclusive, without any offsetting sales included Apple, Google, Oracle and a Latin America ETF.

    As ForexLive’s Adam Button notes, “Based on the holdings, it’s safe to say that he had a very good year last year even with the drag from energy shares. Of course, when you know the Fed will bail out the entire financial system and keep the party going no matter what, it’s easier to buy big.”

    Kaplan’s full disclosure form can be found here.

    Among the outraged responses to the realization of Kaplan’s conflicts of interest – after all, the Dallas Fed president personally stood to profit from monetary policy that encouraged capital markets – was that of Sven Henrich who observed that “the Fed guys are personally actively trading the markets they influence more than anything else. Go figure. When are we officially declaring a Banana Republic?”

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    Slamming the Fed’s endless conflict of interest, Henrich blasted that it’s “bad enough that the Fed Chair position is a guaranteed multi million dollar speaking fee gig virtually ensuring the banks who dish out hundreds of thousand of dollars per zoom speech are kept happy and Fed supported. The conflicts of interest stink to high heaven.” Mocking the Fed’s desire to “avoid a taper tantrum”, he than said that “what might be the right economic policy gets shoved under the rug that is the personal financial interests of those that are tasked with the decisions.”

    He concluded rhetorically: “How about a true independent audit of all the conflicts with $ interests?”

    Obviously, that will never happen.

    While other Fed president were less active in capital markets, they too stood to benefit from favorable outcomes in the market they dominate: in the forms provided for the other bank presidents, most reported modest holdings of investment funds and little in the way of large stock trading. Boston Fed chief Eric Rosengren listed a number of stock trades under “joint” status in transactions that were each $50,000 or less, for example. Richmond Fed leader Thomas Barkin, who was a senior executive at management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. before becoming bank president, listed a number of financial holdings each in excess of $1 million.

    Atlanta Fed leader Raphael Bostic flagged on his form a number of property holdings that were associated with mortgages, while the Boston Fed leader also had a rental property. Kansas City Fed leader Esther George reported a stake in a farm.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/07/2021 – 22:22

  • Chinese Apartment And Auto Sales Unexpectedly Tumble In August
    Chinese Apartment And Auto Sales Unexpectedly Tumble In August

    While China’s trade data published overnight may have smashed expectations, with both exports and imports coming far stronger than expected, and surprising China watchers who were expecting a far worse print amid the the disruptions to operations at Ningbo port in August (with Goldman pointing out that “the impact on trade activities was limited likely because lockdown restrictions at ports were relatively targeted and throughput volume was redirected to nearby ports”), the reality is that China’s economy continues to flounder as the most recent set of contractionary PMI prints indicated.

    The latest proof of China’s economic deceleration, came from the latest consumer spending data which showed that Chinese consumers cut back sharply on buying cars and apartments in August as stronger regulation of the property market and a broad Covid outbreak in the country further undercut the economy’s already slowing recovery.

    Property sales in the four first-tier cities declined 16% in August from a year ago, according to Bloomberg calculations based on weekly data.

    At the same time, total automobile sales (including to companies) plunged about 22% over the same period, the biggest decline since last March when the nation was still in lockdown to control the initial Covid cases.

    While China’s economic growth was already slowing in July, with private consumption weakening faster than industrial and export sectors, Bloomberg notes that that was made worse by the Covid outbreak in August as cities nationwide reintroduced lockdowns during the summer holidays, a time when consumers usually travel and spending on cars traditionally starts to pick up. 

    Economic activities slowed further in August on a year-on-year basis, especially consumption and service activities, partly due to the flood shocks and Covid restrictions, UBS AG economists wrote in a note last week. “We see property activities weakening further in the second half on continued hawkish property policies,” they said.

    The continued shortage of computer chips and weakening demand has hit vehicle output and sales this year. The slump likely undermined retail sales growth for August, which the government is due to release next week: and since cars make up about 10% of the value of retail sales each month, expect a very bad number.

    But it was the housing print that was the shocker: after all, unlike the US where the stock market is where the bulk of household net worth resides, in China it’s the opposite and housing represents the biggest household asset by far. As such “a rapid slowdown in property sector activities could lead to a significant spillover effect on both upstream industrial demand and consumption,” Bank of America economists wrote in a report this week. They estimate that more than 28% of China’s gross domestic product is related to the property sector, and said more policy stimulus in the housing sector is needed to support growth.

    In other words, while the latest service PMI prints hinted that far from growing, China’s economy is now in contraction, the next batch of economic data, and specifically retail sales, may confirm that after the trillions in stimulus injected into the economy, China’s economy is indeed on the verge of contraction, an unheard of development for a world desperate for China’s massive stimulus to kickstart the next reflationary cycle. However, as recent events with Evergrande clearly demonstrate – with China’s largest developer on the verge of collapse –  Beijing has vastly different plans for this particular economic cycle.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/07/2021 – 22:10

  • World's Largest Nitrogen Plant Declares "Force Majeure," Sends Fertilizer Prices Sky High
    World’s Largest Nitrogen Plant Declares “Force Majeure,” Sends Fertilizer Prices Sky High

    Spot prices for nitrogen fertilizer on the US Gulf Coast skyrocketed to a near-decade high on a report the world’s largest nitrogen manufacturing plant declared force majeure. 

    CF Industries Holdings Inc. in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, closed its massive complex ahead of Hurricane Ida. The complex has 19 plants, including six ammonia and five urea facilities, producing nitrogen-based products for agricultural and industrial markets. 

    According to the letter seen by Bloomberg, CF Industries said, “due to these circumstances, CF Industries Sales, LLC has declared an event of force majeure affecting the production and shipment of product from the CF Donaldsonville, LA nitrogen complex.” 

    The letter was dated Sept. 3, and at that time, the facility remained closed. This stoked fears of production declines at a time when supplies are already tight. 

    As a result of the force majeure, US Gulf urea nitrogen fertilizer spot prices spiked 16.5%, according to Green Markets data. 

    Other major nitrogen fertilizer benchmarks remained mixed on the weekly change.  

    Scotiabank commodity analyst Ben Isaacson told clients that nitrogen fertilizer prices on the Gulf Coast are surging due to “uncertainty surrounding the restart of CF’s Donaldsonville plant.” He added there is increasing concern that other surrounding plants are down due to lack of electricity and possible storm damage. 

    Before Ida, there was surging demand for US fertilizer as soaring commodity prices allowed farmers to expand crop production, boosting demand for nutrients essential to producing food. 

    A recent Rabobank commodity note explained farmers are expanding plantings and dispensing more fertilizer on fields to increase crop yields. The Dutch bank warned, higher prices will curb purchases of fertilizers. 

    Besides fertilizer, Ida has disrupted crude oil production and critical infrastructure for exports. There are also fuel shortages across New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and power outages remain widespread. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/07/2021 – 21:50

  • Get Ready For More Pain In China
    Get Ready For More Pain In China

    By George Lei, Bloomberg macro commentator and reporter.

    Lower growth, higher inflation and less stimulus.

    That’s the most-likely scenario over the coming months, and possibly years, if the ruling Communist Party presses on with its “common prosperity” drive to transform China’s economy. Things will get worse before they get better.

    The phrase “common prosperity” may sound like political jargon to foreign ears. Yet Beijing’s latest moves bear resemblance to left-wing policies practiced elsewhere: higher wages for gig workers, lower profits for corporations and efforts to control home prices and rent, just to name a few.

    Meituan, a Chinese equivalent of Doordash, has been ordered to guarantee minimum wages and pay for insurance for delivery workers. Internet giants including Alibaba and Tencent have coughed up billions in penalties and “donations” for social aid. Doesn’t that sound similar to the calls for “living wages” “tax big tech” and “spread the wealth” from American progressives?

    Similar to the West, the fruits of China’s growth over the past couple of decades have disproportionately benefited those with good education, political connections or capital to invest. Beijing’s attempts, if successful, should dampen growth in both housing prices, considered a sure-fire bet for the well-off, and the real estate sector, which together with related industries contribute almost 30% of the economy. Meanwhile, labor income is certain to rise at a time when demographic trends are already creating skilled worker shortages and pushing up wages.

    “The Great Demographic Reversal: Ageing Societies, Waning Inequality, and an Inflation Revival,” a book written by Charles Goodhart and Manoj Pradhan and referenced by Jerome Powell in his Jackson Hole speech last month, points to a future where China’s shrinking labor force, on top of a less globalized economic system, results in higher inflation and less inequality worldwide. China’s policy drive could accelerate such an eventuality.

    The crackdown on real estate and tech, combined with efforts to raise working-class pay, will “support the development of a healthier and more balanced economy,” according to analysts led by Mark Haefele, chief investment officer at UBS Global Wealth Management. What they don’t mention, however, is that falling growth and rising prices could come first before the structural changes intended by policy makers run their course and the benefits kick in. Investors should be prepared to embrace more pain in the near future.

    China will be reluctant to cut policy interest rates under a new “cross-cyclical” policy framework that prioritizes long-term goals such as reducing inequality, according to ANZ Banking Group. Monetary policy “will be focused on supporting structural reforms” and interest-rate cuts “are not preferred,” wrote Raymond Yeung, the bank’s chief economist for Greater China.

    UBS remains optimistic on the prospects of China’s long-term consumption growth. The focus on “lifting disposable incomes … and supporting employment” is beneficial to the “general consumption upgrade,” favoring China’s consumer durables and services, according to the Swiss bank.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/07/2021 – 21:30

  • "Surprise Surprise – Fauci Lied Again": Rand Paul Reacts To Wuhan Bombshell
    “Surprise Surprise – Fauci Lied Again”: Rand Paul Reacts To Wuhan Bombshell

    Senator Rand Paul weighed in Tuesday following a Monday bombshell from The Intercept which revealed that Dr. Anthony Fauci’s NIAID and its parent, the NIH, funded Gain-of-Function research in Wuhan, China. Recall that Fauci called Paul a ‘liar’ for accusing him of funding the risky research, in which viruses are genetically modified or otherwise altered to make them more transmissible to humans.

    “Surprise surprise – Fauci lied again,” Paul tweeted on Tuesday, including a link to Richard H. Ebright’s thread (below).

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    See their July spat below.

    *  *  *

    When Dr. Anthony Fauci confidently screamed at Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) in July – calling him a liar for accusing him of funding so-called “Gain-of-Function” (GoF) research in Wuhan, China to make coronaviruses more transmissible to humans, the argument ultimately faded due to Fauci’s unsupported claim that the research didn’t technically fit the definition of GoF.

    Now, thanks to materials (here and here) released through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by The Intercept against the National Institutes of Health (which were unredacted enough to toss Fauci under the bus), we now know that Fauci-funded EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based nonprofit headed by Peter Daszak, was absolutely engaged in gain-of-function research to make chimeric SARS-based coronaviruses, which they confirmed could infect human cells.

    Peter Daszak (left), Anthony Fauci

    While evidence of this research has been pointed to in published studies, the FOIA release provides a key piece to the puzzle which sheds new light on what was going on.

    “This is a roadmap to the high-risk research that could have led to the current pandemic,” said Gary Ruskin, executive director of U.S. Right To Know, a group that has been investigating the origins of Covid-19 (via The Intercept).

    Wuhan Institute of Virology Shi ‘Bat Lady’ Zhengli toasts with Fauci-funded EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak (emerging viruses group photo)

    And as Rutgers University Board of Governors Chemistry Professor Richard H. Ebright notes, “The documents make it clear that assertions by the NIH Director, Francis Collins, and the NIAID Director, Anthony Fauci, that the NIH did not support gain-of-function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement at WIV are untruthful.“

    In short, Fauci lied to Congress when he denied funding Gain-of-Function (GoF) research.

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    Ebright summarized The Intercept‘s reporting in a Monday night Twitter thread:

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    Continued (emphasis ours):

    “The trove of documents includes two previously unpublished grant proposals that were funded by the NIAID, as well as project updates relating to the EcoHealth Alliance’s research, which has been scrutinized amid increased interest in the origins of the pandemic.”

    The materials show that the 2014 and 2019 NIH grants to EcoHealth with subcontracts to WIV funded gain-of-function research as defined in federal policies in effect in 2014-2017 and potential pandemic pathogen enhancement as defined in federal policies in effect in 2017-present.

    (This had been evident previously from published research papers that credited the 2014 grant and from the publicly available summary of the 2019 grant. But this now can be stated definitively from progress reports of the 2014 grant and the full proposal of the 2017 grant.)

    The materials confirm the grants supported the construction–in Wuhan–of novel chimeric SARS-related coronaviruses that combined a spike gene from one coronavirus with genetic information from another coronavirus, and confirmed the resulting viruses could infect human cells.

    (Recombinant DNA includes molecules constructed outside of living cells by joining natural or synthetic DNA segments to DNA molecules that can replicate in a living cell, or molecules that result from their replication. –Science Direct)

    The materials reveal that the resulting novel, laboratory-generated SARS-related coronaviruses also could infect mice engineered to display human receptors on cells (“humanized mice”).

    The materials further reveal for the first time that one of the resulting novel, laboratory-generated SARS-related coronaviruses–one not been previously disclosed publicly–was more pathogenic to humanized mice than the starting virus from which it was constructed…

    …and thus not only was reasonably anticipated to exhibit enhanced pathogenicity, but, indeed, was *demonstrated* to exhibit enhanced pathogenicity.

    The materials further reveal that the the grants also supported the construction–in Wuhan–of novel chimeric MERS-related coronaviruses that combined spike genes from one MERS-related coronavirus with genetic information from another MERS-related coronavirus.

    The documents make it clear that assertions by the NIH Director, Francis Collins, and the NIAID Director, Anthony Fauci, that the NIH did not support gain-of-function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement at WIV are untruthful.

    *  *  *

    When asked in the replies where to find specific evidence on GoF research, user @SnupSnus replied:

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    Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute, said the documents show that the EcoHealth Alliance has reason to take the lab leak theory seriously. “In this proposal, they actually point out that they know how risky this work is. They keep talking about people potentially getting bitten — and they kept records of everyone who got bitten,” Chan said. “Does EcoHealth have those records? And if not, how can they possibly rule out a research-related accident?” -The Intercept

    In response to inquiries from The Intercept, EcoHealth communications manager Robert Kessler replied: “We applied for grants to conduct research. The relevant agencies deemed that to be important research, and thus funded it. So I don’t know that there’s a whole lot to say.”

    Stay tuned, things should get really interesting for Fauci and Daszak in the near future.

    To review the history of EcoHealth, Fauci and Gain-of-Function research which we noted in March: 

    In 2014, Peter Daszak, president of New York-based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, received a grant from Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) to work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and others to research how bat coronaviruses can ‘evolve and jump into the human population.’

    Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance

    The grant’s initial funding of $666,442 began in June 2014 with an end date of May 2019, and had paid annually to the tune of $3.7 million under the “Understanding The Risk Of Bat Coronavirus Emergence” project. Notably, the Obama administration cut funding for “gain-of-function” research in October, 2014, four months after Daszak’s contract began, while the Wuhan Institute of Virology “had openly participated in gain-of-function research in partnership with U.S. universities and institutions” for years under the leadership of Dr. Shi ‘Batwoman’ Zhengli, according to the Washington Post‘s Josh Rogin.

    One of the grants, titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence,” outlines an ambitious effort led by EcoHealth Alliance president Peter Daszak to screen thousands of bat samples for novel coronaviruses. The research also involved screening people who work with live animals. The documents contain several critical details about the research in Wuhan, including the fact that key experimental work with humanized mice was conducted at a biosafety level 3 lab at Wuhan University Center for Animal Experiment — and not at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, as was previously assumed. The documents raise additional questions about the theory that the pandemic may have begun in a lab accident, an idea that Daszak has called “heinous.”

    …

    The grant was initially awarded for a five-year period — from 2014 to 2019. Funding was renewed in 2019 but suspended by the Trump administration in April 2020. -The Intercept

    After Rogin exposed diplomatic cables last April expressing grave concerns over safety at WIV, he says: “many of the scientists who spoke out to defend the lab were Shi’s research partners and funders, like the head of the global public health nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak; their research was tied to hers, and if the Wuhan lab were implicated in the pandemic, they would have to answer a lot of tough questions.”

    In short, Daszak – who has insisted the ‘lab escape’ theory is impossible, and that random natural origin via intermediary animal species is the only answer – has a massive conflict of interest.

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    Further reading:

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/07/2021 – 21:18

  • WHO Calls Out Wealthy Nations For Hoarding COVID Treatments & Vaccines
    WHO Calls Out Wealthy Nations For Hoarding COVID Treatments & Vaccines

    The World Health Organization (WHO) has once again blamed wealthy countries for essentially hoarding coronavirus vaccines and treatments at the expense of poorer and smaller nations. 

    During a Tuesday Q&A session with the media the WHO’s technical lead for the coronavirus, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, blasted the current situation as “unfair” and “immoral” – even going so far as to accuse wealthy nations of adding to the global deaths with their policies.

    “This is not just unfair, it’s not just immoral, it’s prolonging the pandemic,” Dr. Kerkhove said. “And it is resulting in people dying.”

    iStock/Getty Images

    “If we had used the vaccine doses that were available differently, we be in a very different situation right now globally,” she added. For weeks the WHO has argued against plans for several countries to initiate a booster program for their populations, which has lately included the US, given that places like the entire continent of Africa has only fully vaccinated 3% of the population. 

    According to CNBC, “Given the current pace of vaccinations, the WHO said almost 80% of Africa’s countries will be unable to vaccinate the 10% of their populations most susceptible to severe Covid symptoms by the end of the month.”

    In contrast, the US CDC has recently reported that over 62% of the entire American population has now received as least one vaccine dose, including 75% of US adults. US health officials have this week said they are confident boosters for US adults will begin September 20.

    The WHO’s other top epidemiologist, Dr. Mike Ryan, director of the WHO’s health emergencies program, said that the idea that the globe is sharing its resources is a sham. “The rhetoric is fine, it’s all about sharing, it’s all about fairness,” he said before bluntly stating, “But in reality, when push comes to shove, these products are available, they are hoarded in countries, and they’re not shared.”

    Last month the WHO called for a moratorium on boosters…

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    Currently Israel is the most out front in terms of a large-scale booster program, with millions having received a third shot. Israel’s coronavirus czar, Salman Zarka, went so far as to begin telling Israelis to be ready for a fourth shot in statements early this week.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/07/2021 – 21:10

  • Ron Paul Warns Pandemic Of Authoritarianism Is The Real Threat
    Ron Paul Warns Pandemic Of Authoritarianism Is The Real Threat

    Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

    Cook County, Illinois, Judge James Shapiro reached a new low in covid tyranny by forbidding Rebecca Firlit from seeing her 11-year-old son until she receives a covid vaccine.

    Judge Shapiro is not alone in abusing judicial power to force individuals to get vaccinated. Judges across the country have ordered defendants to get covid vaccines, sometimes as a condition of avoiding prison.

    This outbreak of judicial tyranny is a symptom of the authoritarianism pandemic that is the real threat to America.

    Corporations are imposing requirements, including that employees show proof of vaccination, pay more for health insurance if they have not had a covid vaccine, and undergo regular (in some cases weekly) covid tests. An increasing number of state and local governments are requiring their employees and even people working in some private jobs to take covid vaccines, as well as imposing vaccine passport requirements on people generally.

    President Biden has urged employers to implement vaccine mandates, and government is working with its big tech allies to develop “model” vaccine passports.

    Government approved model vaccine requirements combined with government officials encouraging their adoption send the message to businesses that imposing vaccine requirements on their employees, and maybe their customers as well, is a good way to stay in the politicians and bureaucrats’ good graces.

    An effective way for the US government to “encourage” adoption of vaccine mandates and vaccine passports is denying federal funds to businesses, states, local governments, and other institutions that refuse to require employees, customers, or other people to prove they are vaccinated. This will result in vaccine requirements while enabling government to claim it is not forcing vaccines on anyone.

    President Biden is already planning for the US government denying Medicare and Medicaid funding to nursing homes that do not require their employees to prove they are vaccinated. This could result in staff shortages at nursing homes. A short-staffed nursing home poses a much greater risk to residents than a nursing home with a staff comprised of healthy, unvaccinated individuals. Texas is experiencing a nursing shortage thanks in part to hospitals firing unvaccinated nurses.

    Health care workers have good reason to resist vaccine mandates. Many individuals have died or suffered other adverse effects — including miscarriages — after receiving a vaccine.

    Some people try to justify vaccine mandates and vaccine passports by saying that, by risking infecting others, unvaccinated individuals endanger other people. However, the federal Centers for Disease Control recently admitted that covid vaccines do not prevent the spread of infections. In addition, the claim that we are having a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” relies on data collected from early in the year — before many Americans had taken covid vaccines.

    An important objection is that, if government can force people to take a potentially dangerous vaccine to protect against a hypothetical harm to others, the same reasoning would support the imposing of many additional liberty violations. These could include, for example, “red flag” laws and other forms of gun control, restrictions on access to “extremist” ideas, or a system of mass surveillance to prevent possible future acts of violence. The argument that government can use force to prevent hypothetical harms renders restraint on government power meaningless.

    It is imperative that we support the growing resistance to vaccine mandates and vaccine passports. We must also expand the resistance to covid authoritarianism to resistance to all forms of government infringements on liberty.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/07/2021 – 20:50

  • Vaccine-Resistant "Mu" Variant Spreads To 49 States As Delta-Driven Summer Wave Peaks
    Vaccine-Resistant “Mu” Variant Spreads To 49 States As Delta-Driven Summer Wave Peaks

    Early signs that the summer COVID wave likely peaked late last month appear to have been confirmed, and recent nationwide data have also shown hospitalization rates roll over, though that trend is still in its naateel apparently been confirmed. Hospitalizations, which had reached their highest levels since early this year, have also slowed since their most recent peak, although they continue to trail cases.

    America’s summer wave may be diminishing, but fears about the delta variant linger, while America and the press has become obsessed with raising the alarm about any new potentially harmful variants coming down the pike.

    Dr. Anthony Fauci has weighed in on the risk posed by variants, offering dramatically different assessments of the Lambda variant – which saw him turn the fearmongering up to ’11’ – and the Mu variant – which he dismissed, claiming it was “not an immediate threat”.

    Unfortunately for Dr. Fauci – who endured perhaps the biggest blow yet to his credibility when the Intercept reported a cache of materials obtained via FOIA exposing him as a liar for his insistence that the NIH didn’t help finance dangerous gain-of-function research that may have led to the creation of SARS-CoV-2 – the good doctor might be headed for yet another COVID flip flop.

    Because it looks like Mu is spreading far more quickly in the US than the ‘experts’ had anticipated. The variant, which possesses several mutations that has scientists worried it might be wholly resistant to the first generation of vaccines, has now been detected in every state except for Nebraska.

    Additionally, since it was first identified in Colombia in January, the Mu variant has spread to 41 countries (including the US). Most prevalent in Hawaii and Alaska, the variant accounts for less than 1% of current US cases. But it’s potential to be more transmissible and resistant means it could rapidly supplant delta, especially as the next round of booster jabs are rolled out (while natural immunity in the population continues to build via natural exposure). The US’s ability to monitor the spread of variants is more limited than some of its western peers (like the UK), which means the picture of Mu’s spread that we have right now might already be outdated.

    California has reported the largest number of Mu variant samples (unsurprising since it’s the most populous state) at 384 cases, but that only accounts for 0.2% of the total samples sequenced in the state. As of Friday, LA County had identified 167 Mu variant cases. The cases were found in samples sequenced between June 19 and Aug. 21, with the bulk of the cases being found in July.

    “The identification of variants like Mu, and the spreading of variants across the globe, highlights the need for LA County residents to continue to take measures to protect themselves and others,” Dr. Barbara Ferrer, the SJW (she’s not a medical doctor) charged with directing LA’s COVID response, said in a statement. “This is what makes getting vaccinated and layering protections so important. These are actions that break the chain of transmission and limits COVID-19 proliferation that allows for the virus to mutate into something that could be more dangerous.”

    Maine, Connecticut and Florida round out the list of states with the highest prevalence of Mu cases. Florida’s had the second-highest number of samples, at 384 of the 60,475 samples that were sequenced being of the Mu variant. Additionally, while Alaska has only had 146 cases of Mu, the variant is significantly more prevalent in the state than others, since the number of confirmed Mu cases represents 4% of total cases sequenced.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/07/2021 – 20:30

  • Is California An Economic Paradise? Paul Krugman Thinks So
    Is California An Economic Paradise? Paul Krugman Thinks So

    Authored by William Anderson via The Mises Institute,

    Paul Krugman is worried, very worried, that California voters will overturn all of the many progressive gains that the state has made in the past decade when they vote in the September recall election for Gov. Gavin Newsom.

    If polls are correct, there is the possibility that conservative Larry Elder might replace Newsom. He writes:

    What would make this outcome especially galling is that California is in many ways – with the glaring exception of housing, which I’ll get to – a progressive success story.

    He goes on to claim that the very policies that many believe would hold back economic growth, such as high taxes, a vast regulatory network, a heavy public sector burden, and the like have had no effect upon California’s economy and, in fact, probably enhance economic opportunities:

    The Golden State took a sharp left turn in 2010, with the election of Jerry Brown as governor. Two years later, Democrats gained a supermajority in the Legislature, giving them the power to enact many progressive priorities. California soon raised taxes on the rich, increased social spending and increased its minimum wage. It also enthusiastically implemented the Affordable Care Act.

    Conservatives predicted disaster, with some saying that the state was committing economic “suicide.” And California gets a lot of negative coverage in the business press, where one constantly finds assertions that business is moving en masse out of the state to lower-tax, less-regulated states, like Texas.

    The data, however, say otherwise. Given all the trash-talking of California and trumpeting of Texas’ prospects one reads, it’s a bit startling to look at trends in real G.D.P. and employment between 2010 and the eve of the pandemic and discover that California and Texas had essentially the same growth rates. It’s also startling, given all the talk about people fleeing high taxes, to learn that highly educated, high-income workers — who do indeed pay higher taxes in California than in most other parts of the U.S. — were continuing to migrate into the state.

    California’s experience, in other words, gives the lie to conservative claims that taxing the rich and spending more on social programs destroys prosperity. And the state didn’t just achieve rapid economic growth; its effective implementation of Obamacare helped it reduce the number of its residents without health insurance much more rapidly than the rest of the country.

    In other words, don’t believe your lying eyes. The fact that residents of California pay the highest income taxes (and the rich are not the only ones hit hard by the state’s income tax, as the rates that are higher than most states kick in a lower income levels), the highest sales taxes, the highest gasoline taxes, and some of the highest utility rates in the United States. (My wife and I have estimated that if we were to move to a non-income tax state such as Tennessee or Florida that we would save a minimum of $40,000 a year, excluding any quality-of-life issues.)

    Krugman goes on to admit that while California has the nation’s highest poverty rates, that situation has nothing to do with tax burdens (even poor people on average pay a tenth of their income to state and local governments in that state), but rather because of the high cost of housing. And why are California housing prices high? Krugman claims that those dastardly conservatives are behind that problem:

    What’s behind California’s housing nightmare? Runaway NIMBYism, which has blocked new housing construction. California’s economic performance matched that of Texas in the 2010s, but it issued far fewer building permits despite having a larger population. California gained three million jobs between 2010 and 2019 but added fewer than 700,000 housing units.

    NIMBYism, however, happens to be one of the few major issues that cut right across party lines. Conservatives are as likely as liberals to oppose housing construction; some progressives — among them Governor Newsom — are strong advocates of housing expansion. So California’s big policy failure shouldn’t be an issue in this recall election. What’s on the line are its policy successes.

    As usual, Krugman wraps a bigger lie around a kernel of truth. While local zoning regulations (and I’ve never seen Krugman speak out against zoning) have contributed to the problem, the larger issue, according to James Broughel and Emily Hamilton of the Mercatus Center, revolves around state housing regulations that choke off new construction. They write:

    …California’s state building code is also especially restrictive and deserves scrutiny from policymakers concerned about housing affordability. By itself, this section of the Code of Regulations contains more restrictive terms — more than 75,700 — than some states’ entire codes. The residential housing subsection alone has nearly 24,000 restrictions.

    Lest one believe that progressive ideology has nothing to do with the construction codes, read on:

    …California is also well known for its aggressive environmental and energy standards. Homes built in 2019 are required to meet energy standards that are 50% more stringent than the 2016 standards.

    These energy rules reflect an important priority for Californians, but they contribute to staggering construction costs and, in turn, higher house prices. Affordable housing builders spend $400,000 per unit, on average, for new housing in Los Angeles, more than any other city in the country. State energy standards contribute to this cost.

    These kinds of staggering numbers give the lie to Krugman’s argument that the NIMBY folks are to blame. Craig Eyermann of the Independent Institute lays the blame squarely where it belongs: California’s political culture:

    California’s problems have not arisen by chance. Its housing shortage is a political choice, just as are many of its other problems.

    As he often does, Krugman leaves out some important points as to why the recall gained momentum, failing to note the infamous French Laundry fundraiser that obnoxiously stated just how much California’s progressive elites despise everyone else. First, keep in mind that Newsom’s response to the COVID-19 surge in 2020 was one of the most restrictive in the nation, resulting in thousands of low-income workers losing their jobs as the governor shut down many of the businesses where they worked. (Note that during that same time, the state’s high-tech elites saw their income rising, as their economic fortunes were directly tied to the Internet and web-based commerce.) One Los Angeles television station reported:

    Newsom received high praise for his aggressive approach to the coronavirus last spring, when he issued the nation’s first statewide stay-at-home order. Now there is growing public angst over subsequent health orders that have shuttered schools and businesses and a massive unemployment benefits fraud scandal, while a public shaming continues for his ill-advised dinner at the French Laundry in Napa Valley, an establishment that features a white truffle and caviar dinner for $1,200 per person.

    Photos of the dinner — a birthday party for a Newsom confidante who also is a lobbyist — emerged showing the governor without a mask at a time when he was imploring people not to socialize with friends and wear a face covering when going out and around others.

    While trying to soften the criticism of Newsom’s actions, Politico noted that the governor clearly antagonized much of the voting base that saw his actions as “do and I say, not as I do.”

    The news came less than two ours after Newsom strongly discouraged residents from traveling for the holidays or bringing together multiple households for Thanksgiving.

    Regardless of the governor’s assertion that the meal abided by coronavirus restrictions, he faced an immediate backlash on social media over his decision to partake in an event at an opulent, multiple Michelin-starred restaurant as businesses around the state reel from the pandemic and Californians chafe under social limitations. Some drew a connection to the governor sending his four children to private school classrooms while most of the state’s public school students continue to do remote learning, as POLITICO reported last month.

    On top of the news that the high-tech billionaires that give massive amounts of political contributions to progressive candidates and their causes, voters also have found that while many Americans lost wealth during the pandemic restrictions, many of the billionaires tied to progressive politics gained, including Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, who made out very well.

    Then there are the quality-of-life issues that Krugman refuses to address, since they fall upon the kind of “deplorables” that rarely make personal contact with the multi-millionaire economist. The rise in street crime in California cities does not affect progressives, since they are more likely to live in wealthy (and often gated) communities and don’t have to worry about having the catalytic converters stolen from their vehicles or have their mansions burglarized. As I noted in an article last year about living in California, the quality of life for non-elites is rapidly deteriorating and much of it has to do with progressive governance, the very governance that Krugman effusively praises.

    Wealthy progressives like Krugman rarely are affected directly by street crime, so they tend to look at such problems only in abstract terms and refuse to see any connection between the rise in crime and the decline of quality of life of those that are most likely to become crime victims. If there is a rise in crime, then it only – ONLY – can be blamed on capitalism. Crime occurs because of capitalist-induced economic inequality, so, by definition, progressive government reduces crime, since progressivism seeks to replace that rapacious capitalism with something kinder and gentler.

    In Krugman’s world, capitalism is predatory while the state, through spending and regulation, improves the economy. California journalist Steven Greenhut, who (unlike Krugman) must pay out of his pocket for the excesses of the state’s government, noted more than a decade ago that government employees in California are outright plundering the taxpayers through bloated systems of pay, benefits, and pensions.

    However, as Krugman notes, the migration patterns of people leaving and moving into California favor wealthy people, as a recent think tank study showed. His point is that the wealthy people are moving in but the less-than-wealthy and middle-class people are the ones making up the exodus from the state.

    As usual, Krugman comes to the wrong conclusions. First, the higher-income people are not moving to California because the state has implemented Obamacare or because wealthy people pay the highest state income taxes in the country. Obamacare is something the rich can avoid; however, at the present time, much of the growing high-tech sector of the economy – with its extremely high pay and benefits – is located in California. Entrepreneurs – the kind of people Krugman tends to denigrate in his columns – are the engines of economic growth in that state, and as long as those companies are there and as long as the vast number of entrepreneurs that live there can churn out high-performing companies, talented and wealthy people will move there.

    In other words, entrepreneurs are not flocking to California because of the bloated state and local governments there. Instead, they are coming to California despite governmental excesses. However, those that are not going to command seven-figure incomes are the ones that leave the state. Many of them can sell their houses at prices substantially higher than the average cost of housing in most of the USA, and then move to lower-tax and lower-cost states, pay cash for homes they never could afford in California, and start a new life being nearly debt-free.

    The Krugman theme has always been that progressives create something this side of paradise whenever they have a free hand to govern, that is, can operate as a one-party state. Yet, Krugman cannot point to one thing as to how progressives have made life better in California for those ordinary people he claims to care about.

    It is not just the wealthy that pay a large portion of their incomes in taxes. There is no “graduated” gasoline tax, nor a special sales tax for the rich. California residents, the vast number of whom are not in that special group of entrepreneurs or are graduates of elite universities, receive little or nothing from the entitled bureaucrats that have life-and-death holds on the lives of those they rule, and the vast number of Californians do not receive the six-figure pensions enjoyed by many government workers.

    Progressives did not create the natural beauty that defines so much of the California landscape. They did not create the state’s spectacular coastline, the majestic Sierra Nevada, the Cascades, and the contours of the scenic San Francisco Bay. We do know that progressive policies of fire suppression and setting vast tracts of forest and brushland aside – the antithesis of sound forest management – have helped lead to massive conflagrations that now are becoming a regular occurrence in the state each summer.

    Yet, what is the progressive response to the wildfires? Force people to purchase expensive and inefficient electric cars, and require utilities to use extremely costly methods of producing electricity from renewables, all the while knowing that these measures will not contribute a whit to bringing down summer temperatures or bringing more rainfall to the state.

    Even if California voters throw out Newsom and even if (Krugman shudders) they put Larry Elder into the governor’s mansion, nothing will change in state government. The AFL-CIO government employee unions still will run the state government as their personal fiefdoms and the taxes will continue to be the highest in the nations. Not one iota of all these progressive “successes” that Krugman imagines will be changed. Elder will be there for a year, and then the Democrats that run California’s government and other institutions will choose another partisan who will prove to be unfit for the job.

    Paul Krugman is a very wealthy man, part of that one percent he regularly condemns. He has become wealthy by peddling inflation as sound economic policy and having a highly-paid perch at the New York Times to claim that the massive spending by California politicians and bureaucrats actually enhances wealth because, as every Keynesian knows, wealthy economies got that way by spending themselves into prosperity.

    And if California voters do what Krugman has begged them not to do, he can make money complaining about their bad choices and about the tyranny of minority government. But he won’t have to worry about the consequences of progressive rule; that is for the little people who are not part of the arrangement.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/07/2021 – 20:10

  • Democrats Face SNAFU In September As Debt Ceiling, Spending Package Woes Come To A Head
    Democrats Face SNAFU In September As Debt Ceiling, Spending Package Woes Come To A Head

    Congressional Democrats are facing a perfect storm of political pressure this month. They will be juggling a Sept. 30 government shutdown which will require raising the debt ceiling, as well as $4 trillion in legislative packages they’re trying to pass by a razor-thin margin despite opposition from moderate Democrats.

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has set a Sept. 27 deadline to vote on their $550 billion infrastructure bill – which progressive Democrats say they’ll vote down unless the $3.5 trillion budget blueprint – opposed by aforementioned moderate Dems – isn’t ready by then.

    What’s more, both chambers are still on recess.

    “The margin for error is razor-thin, the stakes are high, and Republicans have made clear they’ll be of no help,” Democratic consultant Matt House, a former Chuck Schumer aide, told NBC News. “That’s been true throughout the Biden administration, but September requires tackling the toughest issues yet, more of them, and with real deadlines attached.“

    Congressional committees have advanced some measures in recent weeks to fund the government. In the House, a group of Democrats joined Republicans to boost military spending by $23.9 billion.

    Raising spending on the Defense Department is a high priority for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who will be key to defeating a filibuster and securing 60 votes to pass any bill. But McConnell has said the GOP won’t support a debt limit increase, setting up a showdown.

    And Democrats, who are seeking to pass a transformative economic agenda with wafer-thin majorities, are squabbling among themselves about the way forward on the infrastructure and safety net packages, which are the linchpin of Biden’s domestic agenda. -NBC News

    Last week, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) threw the Democrats’ plans into disarray when he insisted on ‘hitting the pause button’ on the $3.5 trillion plan amid uncertainty over the botch Afghanistan pullout. 

    “Let’s sit back. Let’s see what happens. We have so much on our plate. We really have an awful lot. I think that would be the prudent, wise thing to do,” Manchin said at a Wednesday West Virginia Chamber of Commerce event.

    Manchin added that he’s unwilling to spend “anywhere near” $3.5 trillion until his inflation and debt concerns are addressed. Progressives, in response, threatened to tank the $550B infrastructure bill, which he co-wrote.

    Meanwhile, Democrats will also need to hammer out a series of tax increases on high-income individuals and corporations in order o help pay for the budget bill. A menu of options circulated by Sen. Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-RO) does not have party consensus.

    “Late September stands to be a train wreck for congressional Democrats, with their dual-track strategy on a collision course, but it also presents a faint silver lining in the form of a familiar foe,” said lobbyist and former GOP operative, Liam Donovan. “There’s virtually no way the reconciliation package can be ready in time to satisfy all the promises that have been made by leadership, meaning President Biden will have to play a more active role as peacemaker.“

    Good luck with that.

    “The question is whether the muscle memory of fighting Republicans on the debt limit and the rest of the policy cliff helps paper over the party’s divisions and heal intramural wounds,” added Donovan. “Either way, it’s the biggest inflection point left in what might be the last fruitful year of the Democratic trifecta.”

    More via NBC News:

    In addition to all that, Pelosi last week put a bill on the schedule to enshrine protections for abortion rights into federal law after the Supreme Court refused to block a new law in Texas that bans the vast majority of abortions.

    And the devastation wrought by Hurricane Ida, from Louisiana to New York, could spark a debate about authorizing new relief funding.

    There are also calls from progressive Democrats to extend the lapsed eviction moratorium, as well as unemployment benefits that expired over the recess, but neither appears to have the votes to pass.

    Democrats’ ability to handle these grueling tasks in September will shape their prospects to maintain control of Congress in the midterm elections next year, as history favors the party out of power to make gains.

    “It’s crunch time for Washington Democrats. Their odds of holding the House in the midterms are long, and campaign season will begin soon,” said House GOP aide Michael Steel. “They have the slimmest margin possible and no room for error.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 09/07/2021 – 19:50

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