"Economics Works In Mysterious Ways": Is China's Wealth Effect Being Substituted?

By Teeuwe Mevissen, Senior Macro Strategist at Rabobank

Is the wealth effect being substituted?

Summary

• China’s real estate market suffered heavy losses early this year while stock market investors continue to face huge uncertainty.
• This will add to the deterioration of household balances and as such could influence private domestic (consumer) demand.
• While the wealth effect predicts a deterioration of consumption, the substitution effect would predict the exact opposite.
• This paper concludes that the substitution effect is more likely in the case of real estate.
• This could be explained by the fact that housing is still expensive despite declining housing prices while at the same time wages are suppressed and youth unemployment is high.
• But more explanations (like prepayment risks) could be given for the positive correlation between housing prices and the savings ratio.

Introduction

The new year in China kicked off with turmoil on China’s stock markets. Amongst others, the decision of the court in Hong Kong to liquidate real estate giant Evergrande further undermined investors’ confidence in China’s stock market. A market that already had been battered during the last three years due to ongoing worries about China’s economic prospects, regulatory crackdowns, a changing geopolitical landscape and a real estate sector in crisis. While China’s stock markets have pared some of the most recent losses due to (expectations of) increased government support, investor sentiment will likely remain fragile for some time to come. Moreover, many of the recently imposed government regulations, such as short selling curbs, are likely to be temporary assuming China is really serious about attracting more foreign investments. This follows from the fact that a full functioning market environment includes the possibility to sell stocks short and let market forces determine market outcomes.

Given that stock markets tend to be a leading indicator for the economy’s travails, this special zooms in on the question what the recent market turmoil could mean for China’s economic prospects in the coming year(s). The relation between the stock market’s performance and economic prospects is, amongst others, reflected by the expected future cash flows that companies are expected to make. But there may also be a wealth effect which predicts a positive relationship between stock market performance and consumption. Since the value of real estate also affects the willingness to consume, we also take a closer look at this particular topic in this research note. But before we do so, we will start with a general overview of China’s stock markets, its performance over the last 5 years and the measures that China’s government has implemented so far in order to prevent a further slump, which already evaporated a stunning amount of $7 tn during the recent lows in February. For more information regarding the real estate sector we refer to an earlier publication that covered this topic.

China’s stock markets experiencing a rout.

After a sharp recovery of China’s stock markets in 2021 – which was part of a global relief rally that followed the panic sell-off in March 2020 – 2022 saw investor sentiment souring and China was no exception. However, whilst Western indices recovered sharply thereafter, China’s stock markets struggled to keep up during the first half of 2023 and showed a very poor performance in the second half of 2023. The start to this year can only be characterized as a true stock rout. As a result, the benchmark MSCI China stock index is down 60% from its peak in 2021. All in all the total decline in value of China’s stock markets is approximately 7 tn renminbi (close to $1 tn) since the peak in 2021. The majority of these losses are borne by domestic holders of Chinese equities and retail investors in particular.

Some background on China’s stock markets

China’s restrictions related to foreign investments, geopolitical tensions and regulatory crack downs have soured foreign investors’ appetite for Chinese stocks and in October 2023 it was estimated that foreigners only hold $600 billion in Chinese stocks listed on mainland China or Hong Kong. This is indeed a small share of a total market capitalization that is estimated to be a little less than $9.7 tn in January 2024. While institutional investors’ share in Chinese stock holdings has significantly increased over the past two decades, China’s stock markets are still more influenced by retail investors than is the case in, for example, the United States. The box below explains some of the most common features of its stock market.

The structure of China’s stock market is important because it gives an idea of who has ownership and to what share classes. But for this it is clearly also relevant to have an idea about the total market capitalization of China’s main stock markets. This is why we show a table below that provides an overview of China’s stock exchanges ranked by market capitalization and which also includes the stock market returns YTD and for longer periods; It also provides an estimated breakdown between the share of private owned enterprises and state owned enterprises where available.

Connecting the stock market with consumption

While stock markets are less connected to the economic process and performance in China than is the case in most advanced economies (for instance, equity financing plays a relatively small role for China’s corporates who generally rely more on retained earnings and bank loans), the recent stock market rout adds to the wealth loss Chinese households already had suffered from China’s real estate crisis.

As can be seen from figure 4 below, surveyed consumers continue to signal weak confidence regarding developments related to employment and, related to it, income. Furthermore, consumer confidence is near record low levels. Moreover, close to 60% of respondents expect to increase savings in the next quarter while less than 25% of respondents indicate that they are expecting to consume more in the next quarter. We do note, though, that the most recent data is from Q2 2023.

Measures to support China’s stock markets

While most recently Beijing fired the head of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) Yi Huiman and replaced him with Wu Qing, it is questionable whether this will result in the much needed restoration of investors’ confidence. However, as a previous head of the Shanghai Stock Exchange and in various roles within the CSRC, where he earned the nickname ‘the broker butcher’, it seems that a further crackdown on illicit trading practices is on the cards.

Several other measures have been announced, although the majority lacks details as is often the case when new policies and/or guidelines are announced. Below is a broad selection of measures that have been decided upon in recent months:

• More liquidity support for developers
• The CSRC announced it would look to support listed companies to find possibilities to merge and or restructure businesses in order to create value
• Sales of stocks were also restricted for some domestic institutional investors as well as some offshore units of those investors
• A lowering of 0.5% of the reserve ratio requirement for banks
• Monetary authorities provided 1 tn yuan extra liquidity into the markets in order to provide ample liquidity
• Promises to deal with margin call risks
• More active involvement of the CSRC in addressing concerns from listed companies
• Placing restrictions on security lending

More recently announced measures are:

• Cease displaying real-time data for flows into the world’s second-largest stock market through Hong Kong
• China’s ‘national team’ buying for $50 billion of stocks
• Clarification of new delisting rules which are aimed at zombie firms
• Tighten stock listing criteria
• Crack down on illegal share sales
• Strengthening the supervision of dividend payouts

While the PBOC has added additional stimulus since the end of last year, this stimulus still seems not to have fully fed into China’s economy and the real estate sector. Earlier this year, the PBOC offered 1 tn renminbi in loans to the banking sector and lowered the reserve requirement ratio by 0.5% bringing the average RRR for financial institutions to ‘about 7.0% after the cut’. A move that is expected to free up about 1 tn yuan according to the central bank chief who held a press conference in Beijing on Wednesday the 24th of January.

The last and perhaps most draconic measure announced this year is a ban on net stock selling during the first and last 30 minutes of a trading session. This measure came into effect on the 21st of February. This makes it harder for entities affected by this measure (mainly hedge funds and institutional investors) to apply certain trading strategies. At the same time it makes it easier for government-backed funds to influence the stock market during those crucial trading windows.

These measures clearly influence the extent to which stock valuations are determined by market mechanisms but they won’t increase the profitability of any company traded at any of China’s stock exchanges. It also remains to be seen how offshore investors will react on measures that increase the risk of not being able to sell your stocks anymore because of decreasing liquidity on the sellers’ market. Moreover, the restrictions on security lending are likely to have more effect on stocks listed on the Hong Kong exchanges than those listed in Shanghai. Mostly because stocks listed on the Shanghai stock exchange are held for more than 80% by individual investors vs 15% of stocks traded at the Hong Kong stock exchanges.

While Chinese stock markets initially showed a sharp recovery since their February lows, the stock rally seems to have stalled again since the midst of March. Taking all of the above into account, it remains to be seen whether the recent recovery of stock prices can be continued, especially when the current stock market trading curbs would be lifted again.

How the loss of wealth could lower consumption

Wealth effect

We will now look at a few behavioral phenomena when it comes to the relationship between wealth and consumption. This so-called wealth effect is a behavioral economic theory which postulates that peoples’ willingness to spend increases when the wealth of their homes or asset portfolio increases because they feel more financially secure. Since (for now) we want to exclude the extreme swings of consumption and stock market prices arising from the Covid-19 pandemic (which is even more relevant given China’s strict lock down measures and its obvious effect on consumption), we first use the results of an academic paper from 2010 which studies the importance of the wealth effect on China’s consumer spending.

This paper estimates a long run consumption elasticity of total assets to be around 0.51 or roughly one half. This would imply that a 20% drop in share prices would result in a drop of about 10% in consumption. Compared to Western elasticities, which are often found to be closer to 0.05, this is extremely high. Based on such a positive relationship between wealth and consumption, one would expect a significant negative impact on consumption from the recent decline in house and equity prices. The elasticity on income is estimated at 0.76, which seems plausible in our view.

Based on the elasticity from the paper above and given the price developments of the separate asset classes we can make a rough estimate of the impact of declining asset prices on consumption. We take 2021 as the starting point because the real estate crisis started in the summer of 2021 and we want to omit the results during the pandemic because of reasons discussed above. These estimates are shown in table 2 below. We abstain from the impact of increased saving via (bank) deposits.

This is based on a total value of real estate in China of $55tn in 2021. So, if we assume the elasticities from this paper to be realistic, this suggests that the decline in asset values has depressed consumption by some 3.4% since August 2021. This would amount to a drop of consumption of more than $2 tn! Given a level of nationwide per capita consumption expenditure of 26.796, a total population of 1.425.000.000 people and the current USD/CNH exchange rate of around 7.25, this would boil down to a total amount of consumption of $5.3 tn. Our estimates above are generally inline with other research indicating that ‘a 5% decline in home prices will wipe out 19 trillion yuan ($2.7 trillion) in housing wealth’.

We should also add, though, that rising incomes have overshadowed its impact so that a positive gain in consumption (in nominal terms) results after all.

The (opposite) substitution effect

Having said this, there could also be reasons to assume an increase in consumption. So how would that work? Young people in China have been faced with a prolonged episode of rising housing prices while at the same time facing high levels of youth unemployment and an economy slowing down. As such, young people have increasingly felt discouraged. This has even led to the so-called lying flat movement, where young people deliberately choose to not join the tough rat race that recent graduates face when entering the labour market. Additionally, despite the gradual decline of house prices (both newly built and existing homes), suppressed wages have not made housing that more affordable especially in China’s tier-1 cities. This may have led many young people in China to delay or even give up on buying a house entirely.

Another reason why some young people are delaying or have given up on purchasing a house is the huge impact it has on the ‘quality of life’. Young people that have been able to purchase a house face relatively high monthly mortgage payments despite significant down payments. This has led a large amount of young Chinese citizens increasingly willing to spend their money on
consumption like traveling. This effect is called the substitution effect. Many economists have indeed claimed that the effect on consumption of declining stock and housing prices in China is different. Let’s say a wealth effect with Chinese characteristics, i.e. an inverse wealth effect.

For about two decades, consumption in China has been partially suppressed since households had to channel an unusual large share of their income to savings in order to make the necessary down-payment for purchasing a house. Back then, this often boiled down to about 30% of the value of the house. In other words, consumption was substituted for expenditures on housing. Indeed last year we saw signs of the substitution effect when the savings rate for households dropped while real estate prices dropped as well. This effect is in sharp contrast with the findings of the wealth effect discussed in the academic paper mentioned earlier.

Our data shows yet another picture

Since we lack data about the net savings rate for households in China we have derived the savings ratio by subtracting household expenditures from disposable income. We plot this estimated saving ratio against both real estate prices as well as the Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index. This results in the two graphs below:

While positive correlation between (inflation-adjusted) real estate prices and savings (i.e. a negative correlation with consumption) is evident from the first graph, stock prices don’t seem to have an impact on private domestic savings or consumption at all. Both results are at odds with the results from the academic paper discussed above whilst the first chart suggests that there is – if anything – a substitution rather than wealth effect.

However, we should be aware of the fact that in China, the major component of household wealth is invested in real estate and not the stock market. As such, declining stock prices could reduce consumption of the holders of these stocks; but if only a relatively small percentage of China’s citizens hold stocks or if many Chinese citizens only hold very small portions of their wealth in stocks, the impact on an aggregate level would still be negligible.

It is therefore important to take into account that approximately 70% of household wealth is in real estate while it was estimated in an article published by Atlantic press that household financial assets only accounted for about 13%. The rest is allocated towards other financial assets like saving accounts, deposits, gold etc. etc. The important conclusion we can draw from these figures is that much of the wealth of China’s households is either being held in illiquid assets, such as real estate or in low return deposits. From this angle it becomes easier to understand why in China the wealth effect arising from declining stock market prices is less likely to have a significant influence on consumption patterns.

Moreover, as we argue, the wealth effect arising from the developments in the real estate sector, may not apply in the case of China. We therefore conclude this special by discussing a number of explanations for the observed effect from real estate prices on consumption.

What about other factors? (prepayment risk)

Above we have shown conflicting findings on the existence of a wealth effect in China arising from price developments in both the real estate- and stock market. While older research seems to conclude that the wealth effect is indeed present, most recent data seems to indicate the absence of it. Indeed, in the case of real estate we actually observe an opposite effect, i.e. lower housing prices lead to lower saving rates. Does this mean that we observe a substitution effect in China? We would, albeit hesitantly, answer this question with a yes. But there could be more at play.

Aside from the substitution effect which has been outlined above, lower interest rates could also play a role. This is via the so called prepayment risk. It is well known that when interest rates and/or housing prices decline, house owners tend to increase their mortgage payments in order to reduce their outstanding amount of mortgage debt. Most mortgage prepayment models indeed predict increasing prepayments when the contract rate and the current market rate diverge, i.e. a situation where the contract rate is significantly higher than the current market rate.

One way to look at this phenomenon is the following: house owners have an incentive to refund themselves against lower rates and pay off the outstanding amount of mortgage debt if the terms and conditions of the mortgage allow for this. However, prepayment risks can also work in the opposite direction. When home owners expect rising interest rates the home owner also has an incentive to repay the mortgage more quickly to avoid higher interest rate payments in the future. Since interest rates have gradually and steadily declined in China, the former prepayment risk is more likely.

Additionally, the relationship between real estate prices and consumption is not necessarily static. Its effect could very well change over time. A prime analogy is the famous Phillips curve that tries to explain the inverse relationship between (wage) inflation on levels of unemployment. If other factors occasionally flip the relationship between wealth and consumption this would make it very hard to predict the impact of real estate prices on consumption at any point in time. Finally, developments in the labor market, such as adverse job conditions, could also impact the savings rate where higher unemployment levels lead to decreasing levels of savings and consumption, if households are forced to dip into their savings to maintain consumption levels.

Finally - as our analysis shows – the consumption effect arising from the rise in disposable income (which according to the paper has an elasticity of 0.76) has offset the wealth effect arising from the decline in assets. This could be another reason why the predicted decline in consumption cannot be observed.

Conclusion

Altogether it is extremely hard - and with a lack of relevant data – impossible to draw strong conclusions about a permanent presence or absence of a wealth effect arising from price developments in the real estate sector in China. Unfortunately we cannot present a solid relationship between real estate price developments and consumption. At his point in time we can only conclude that we observe a negative relationship between consumption and house prices and offer some reasons that are likely to have influenced this relationship, with prepayment flows and possibly a weak labor market situation as relevant factors. The only firm conclusion we can draw is that economics continue to work in mysterious ways.

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/05/2024 - 19:50

Weekend:
• Schedule for Week of May 5, 2024

Monday:
• At 2:00 PM ET, Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices for April.

From CNBC: Pre-Market Data and Bloomberg futures S&P 500 are up 10 and DOW futures are up 80 (fair value).

Oil prices were up over the last week with WTI futures at $78.11 per barrel and Brent at $82.96 per barrel. A year ago, WTI was at $71, and Brent was at $76 - so WTI oil prices are up about 10% year-over-year.

Here is a graph from Gasbuddy.com for nationwide gasoline prices. Nationally prices are at $3.62 per gallon. A year ago, prices were at $3.52 per gallon, so gasoline prices are up $0.10 year-over-year.

The Ideological Roots Of The Open Borders Push

Authored by Simon Hankinson via The Epoch Times,

Why does the Biden administration want open borders? As a researcher and writer on immigration, that’s the question I often get asked.

Here are the three reasons I think are behind President Joe Biden’s deliberate border chaos:

1. electoral politics,

2. extortion, and,

3. most insidiously, ideology.

I’ll start with ideology and come back to the other two reasons in my next columns.

The most dangerous driver behind Biden’s open borders is ideological. Policy differences can be negotiated, but as we’re seeing on college campuses, people fanatically committed to an idea can prove intransigent, regardless of the facts.

When you see the word “abolition” used in connection with criminal justice and immigration, you might be confused. Americans rightly associate the term with ending slavery and abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison who were active before the Civil War.

Why are academics, politicians, and race professionals using it in 2024?

Those saying “abolitionist” today have appropriated it for the positive historical connotation it possesses, but they mean something else entirely. To see the roots of their ideology, you have to go back to the dawn of the New Left, as described by Chris Rufo in his book “America’s Cultural Revolution.”

Under their intellectual godfather, German academic Herbert Marcuse, Marxist-Leninists, Black Panthers, the Weather Underground terrorist group, and Students for a Democratic Society gathered.

This leftist alliance believed—as the Students for a Democratic Society magazine Prairie Fire explained—that the United States was founded on genocide, slavery, and racism. Its goal was to abolish the existing capitalist America and build a new society. One element of this was destroying the justice system. The Black Panthers’ manifesto thus called for the release of all black men who were incarcerated, no matter for what crime.

As Rufo writes, “[Communist Angela] Davis and her comrades began to call not for the release of individual criminals, but for the abolition of the entire system.” Davis said that “a society without racism … has to be a society without prisons.”

The Black Lives Matter organization adopted the same agenda of “abolition.” The mobs that destroyed a police station and looted Minneapolis in 2020 shouted, “Abolish the police, then the prisons.” The “abolitionist” activists in the Seattle CHAZ commune wanted to abolish the police, prisons, and courts.

BLM founder Patrisse Cullors was crystal clear in this Harvard Law Review essay from 2019: “Abolition means no borders. Abolition means no Border Patrol. Abolition means no Immigration and Customs Enforcement.” America is the source of world evil, in her view, and thus has no right to exist as a nation state nor keep anyone in the world from entering its borders.

Some Biden administration officials seem to share this core belief. Avideh Moussavian, a senior appointee at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, tweeted “#abolishICE” in 2018 and “cut ICE and [Customs and Border Protection] funding” in 2019.

Another Biden appointee, Claire Trickler-McNulty, undermined ICE from within before leaving for a nongovernmental organization partly funded by the Vera Institute for Justice. The Vera Institute says, “The U.S. immigration system is an arrest-to-deportation pipeline rooted in racism,” wants no detention of people in the United States illegally, and grants millions to nongovernmental organizations defending illegal immigrants.

“Abolition” ideology also has clear links with today’s campus support of Hamas. Take a look at this course taught at Columbia University this Spring by professor Mohamed Abdou, titled “Decolonial-Queerness and Abolition in SWAN.” SWANA likely stands for South West Asian and North African people. A sentence from the course description sums it up:

“Using intersectional/assemblage-based theories, what decolonial, gender-based readings and formulations of feminisms/queerness exist that evade the apparent tidiness of European feminist and narrow LGBTQIA categories that characterizes most (non)Euro-American political queer-feminist scholarship beyond the depiction of queer BIPOC as co-opted and duped, colonized pawns of ‘Gay Empire’ towards elucidating critical discussions on identity, agency, subjectivity, and dissidence?”

Parents are paying $90,000 a year for their kids to learn that kind of balderdash. But even if you can’t make any sense of that sentence, you can be sure of what Abdou means by “abolition.”

Columbia University now resembles Gaza as designed by outdoor equipment retailer Eastern Mountain Sports. Meanwhile at Princeton University, students briefly set up a camp last week “in solidarity with Gaza to protest Princeton’s role in funding the ongoing genocide,” according to organizers Princeton Israeli Apartheid Divest.

Dan-el Padilla Peralta was among faculty who signed a letter supporting the Princeton students and boycotting Columbia University. He is a “classics” professor who calls his field “equal parts vampire and cannibal” and the foundation of white supremacy, and argues that it should be abolished.

Peralta came from the Dominican Republic as a child, and his family overstayed their visas and became illegal immigrants. Leftist academics such as Peralta do not like nations or borders any more than they do classical antiquity. In his book “Undocumented,” Peralta wrote, “Demography is a [expletive]. Holla at me if you want me to break it down for you.” By this, Peralta implies that without immigration enforcement, the “global majority”—defined here as everyone but white Europeans—will be able to dominate every country.

What we’re seeing at the southern border and on college campuses comes from the same ideological roots and ends the same way: anarchy.

*  *  *

Reprinted by permission from The Daily Signal, a publication of The Heritage Foundation.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/05/2024 - 18:40

The World's Fastest Growing Emerging Markets (2024-2029 Forecast)

Large emerging markets are forecast to play a greater role in powering global economic growth in the future, driven by demographic shifts and a growing consumer class.

At the same time, many smaller nations are projected to see their economies grow at double the global average over the next five years due to rich natural resource deposits among other factors. That said, elevated debt levels do present risks to future economic activity.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Niccolo Conte, shows the emerging markets with the fastest projected growth through to 2029, based on data from the International Monetary Fund’s 2024 World Economic Outlook.

Top 10 Emerging Markets

Here are the fastest-growing emerging economies, based on real GDP compound annual growth rate (CAGR) forecasts over the period of 2024-2029:

As South America’s third-smallest nation by land area, Guyana is projected to be the world’s fastest growing economy from now to 2029.

This is thanks to a significant discovery of oil deposits in 2015 by ExxonMobil, which has propelled the country’s economy to grow by fourfold over the last five years alone. By 2028, the nation of just 800,000 people is projected to have the highest crude oil production per capita, outpacing Kuwait for the first time.

Bangladesh, where 85% of exports are driven by the textiles industry, is forecast to see the strongest growth in Asia. In fact, over the last 30 years, the country of 170 million people has not had a single year of negative growth.

In eighth place overall is India, projected to achieve a 6.5% CAGR in real GDP through to 2029. This growth is forecast to be fueled by population trends, public investment, and strong consumer demand.

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/05/2024 - 18:05

Pritzker Doubles-Down With $827 Million Taxpayer Handout To Troubled EV-Maker Rivian

Authored by Mark Glennon via Wirepoints.org,

At $1.5 million per job, this new incentive package from the state is at least 15 times the norm. For this much money, the state could have just handed out a million bucks to 827 people, instead of creating 550 jobs.

Gov. JB Pritzker announced Thursday that the State of Illinois will provide an $827 million incentive package for Rivian to invest $1.5 billion to expand its electric vehicle factory in Normal, Illinois. The expansion is expected to create at least 550 full-time jobs within the next five years, and will build Rivian’s next model EV, the R2. Rivian initially got $49.5 million under Gov. Bruce Rauner in 2017 to create 1,000 jobs at the same location.

The new deal gives $1.5 million per job created, which is astronomical in the world of location incentives. Estimated average location incentives paid by state and local governments around the nation range from $13,000 to $84,000 per job, though sometimes go as high as $100,000 per job for capital intensive projects. Even using that high end, Rivian’s package will be 15 times what’s typical.

Moreover, Rivian is on shaky wheels, along with the rest of the U.S. EV industry. Rivian loses over $43,000 for every vehicle it sells and has had two rounds of layoffs this year. The decision to move its R2 production to Illinois is a further reflection of the company’s need to preserve cash. R2 production was initially planned for a new $5 billion plant in Georgia, heavily subsidized by the state. But Rivian concluded that moving production to the existing Illinois facility would save cash.

Its stock price has consequently been hammered. It reached a high of $172 per share in 2021 but now trades at less than $10 per share.

Rivian is not alone. As a CNBC headline recently declared, “EV euphoria is dead. Automakers are scaling back or delaying their electric vehicle plans.” Since then, the news is no better. Ford announced last week that it is losing a stunning $132,000 per vehicle. Hertz announced last week a second round of sales of its EV fleet due to heavy maintenance and depreciation costs. For the first quarter of this year, EV sales continued to slow and the share of EV sales for all autos actually decreased. While total EV sales are still up a bit from last year, the growth rate is not nearly enough to put EV makers on a path to profitability.

EV makers pin their hopes on less expensive models that they promise soon, and on more public charging stations, into which Illinois last month announced it would invest an additional $50 million. Rivian hopes its new R2 will be among the new, lower priced models. However, its starting price is expected to be about $45,000 and it won’t come out until the first half of 2026.

Regarding the astronomical incentive package to be paid by Illinois, in fairness, it should be noted that most of it is in the form of tax credits to be granted over the next 30 years. They are available on condition that the company retain 6,000 already existing jobs. However, the fact remains that just 550 new jobs are to be created, and incentive packages like this are not supposed to be payoffs for merely standing still. And a less charitable way to look at it would be that future taxpayers will be on the hook for the high cost of the incentive package — if it works.

Aside from thinking that the incentive package is too low, my first instinct was to ask, “Where’s the warrant coverage.” That is, I know from working as a lawyer and then as an investor, often with troubled companies, that it’s not unusual to make risky bets. However, it’s routine for the investor to get part of the upside if the venture succeeds, usually in the form of stock or warrants (basically, options) on stock that pay off nicely if things turn around. The federal government, for example, got stock and warrants as part of the deal for its 2010 bailout of the auto industry.

This new Rivian deal has nothing like that. Since the job creation per dollar is minimal, it’s just not worth the price.

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/05/2024 - 17:30

Man vs Bear Debate: The Dumbest Feminist Argument Yet?

When it comes to identifiable differences in female vs male psychology as well as differences in brain biology, as a general rule and as most studies show women focus far more on feelings than men do.  Specifically, women tend to be more sensitive to negative emotions and negative imagery.  Obviously, men and women are not the same, never have been the same and never will be the same, and this includes how they process information and come to conclusions.

This is the reason why many of women's perceptions on life tend to bewilder men; most women operate from a place of emotion and assumption (which they call "intuition") and come to conclusions based on feelings rather than facts.  Intuition can be a powerful tool for identifying threats before they occur, and when women get it right they might appear to be clairvoyant. However, when they get it wrong they get it really wrong and the result is foolishness and disaster.

How one feels is not necessarily what is true. 

Enter feminism, a movement which claims to be fighting for women's "equality" but is actually fighting for women's privilege.  Legal equality for the sexes was achieved long ago and one would think that feminism would have faded away with its mission accomplished.  This has not been the case.  Instead, feminists move the goalposts and the notion of equality has given way to desires for power.  But unlike most political movements feminism does not chase power by applying direct force (in most cases).  Rather, feminists chase power by magnifying and exaggerating their own weaknesses and victimhood. 

In other words, they gain power by demanding reparations for perceived injustices.  The more they feel oppressed or afraid or abused the more power society supposedly owes them.  Feminism exploits the natural tendency of women to hyperfocus on negative emotions and promotes feelings over logic.  If women feel like victims, that means they are victims.

This is where the "Man vs. Bear" narrative comes from.  A bizarre thought experiment in which random women are asked if they were lost in the woods, would they rather run into a man or a bear?  The question has created considerable controversy across social media, with a majority of women apparently choosing a bear over a man.

On the surface we can dismiss the thought experiment with the simple reality that women encounter men daily while most have never dealt with or seen a real bear in the wild in their entire lives.  If they did run into a bear all of them would be screaming for help from the nearest man available to protect them.

It's perhaps the dumbest feminist mind-game so far in this respect.  Life is not a Disney movie with friendly talking animals and there's a reason why men make up the vast majority of solo hunters - Female hunters don't want to go into the woods by themselves because they know predators like bears represent great potential injury or death.  

To be fair, plenty of women have laughed off the question as ridiculous and pointed out the reality that with a man there's a good chance they will be helped out of the woods.  With a bear there's no chance.  But this hasn't stopped feminists from pretending as if the pro-bear response represents some kind of revelation about men and masculinity. 

The issue has also revealed once again that math is the kryptonite of woke activists and critical thinking is their enemy.  

Citing the predominance of men in crime stats, feminists argue that it's far more likely for a man to harm a woman than a bear to harm a woman.  In fact, bear encounters are far more rare than encounters with men, and the percentage of men that commit violent crimes is tiny compared to the total male population in western countries.

By feminist logic, men are also actually safer with bears than with women.  In 2021, 1,078 men were killed by women in the U.S. There have only been 180 fatal human/bear conflicts in North America since 1784.  Again, this is about proximity.

In 2019, there were 283,467 violent crimes committed by men in the US, out of 161 million men.  That's around 0.1% of the male population.  The chances of a woman running into a violent man in the woods in this fantasy scenario is negligible.  Feelings are being elevated over facts. 

Most feminist narratives lean heavily on the fear dynamic.  If women feel afraid of men then men and society must take them seriously and assuage those fears; the fears fabricated in women's minds are suddenly everyone's problem.  In the past society used to laugh off female melodrama as an unfortunate bi-product of their nature; how can society fix a problem that doesn't exist in the tangible world?  But as the male commentator in the first video argues, it doesn't matter if women are actually in danger from men, it only matters that they believe they are in danger.

But who created that fear in women?  Was it men?  Or, was it feminist propaganda?  The numbers suggest feminism has rotted women's minds with fear.   

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/05/2024 - 16:55

US Covert Missile Launcher Touted As Game Changer In Future Taiwan War

Authored by Kyle Anzalone via AntiWar.com,

After the US withdrew from a major nuclear arms treaty with Russia in 2019, the Pentagon began to develop weapons that would have violated that agreement. Such a covert missile has now been deployed to the Philippines as part of the US military buildup surrounding China. The New York Times reports this system to be a covert missile launcher that Washington believes could jeopardize Xi Jinping’s position as president of China.

Capable of firing Tomahawks and other munitions, the Typhon launcher is concealed in a 40-foot shipping container and can hold up to four missiles. The Defense Department first deployed the launchers to the Philippines during war games late last month, after which China accused the US of "stoking military confrontation."

Typhoon system, via US Army

According to the Times, Washington hopes to use the Typhon launchers to protect Taiwan from a Chinese attack. Sources who spoke with the outlet believe that Typhon’s strike power is enough to thwart an invasion of Taiwan and even force Xi from power in Beijing if an invasion fails.

Below is a section of the NYT report which sets a dramatic scene:

Setting squadrons of Chinese amphibious ships packed with troops ablaze in the Taiwan Strait, Pentagon officials believed, would not only protect the de facto independent island but may also make Mr. Xi’s own grip on power within the Communist Party untenable.

Without the legal restrictions of the I.N.F. Treaty, the Pentagon began experimenting with existing assets.

The Typhon launcher would have been banned under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). Signed near the end of the Cold War, the treaty outlawed land-based missiles and launchers with a range between 500 and 5,500 kilometers.

Tomahawks have carried nuclear payloads in the past, although the US retired that variant of the missile in compliance with the INF Treaty.

The Times’ Pentagon reporter also notes that the Typhon system could be deployed to the southwestern Philippines for a potential conflict in the South China Sea. Tensions between Beijing and Manila have been rising for several months over dueling claims about sovereignty over reefs in the sea.

The White House has reaffirmed its mutual defense pact with the Philippines, suggesting the Biden administration is ready to go to war with China over territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Washington and Manila are additionally working on an intelligence-sharing agreement that is expected to be finalized this year. This pact, and a raft of other partnerships Washington has formed in the Indo-Pacific, are aimed at fighting a future war with Beijing.

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/05/2024 - 15:10

US Pushing G-7 To Accept Long-Term $50 Billion Aid Package For Ukraine

As part of the latest in the Western allies' (some of them at least) controversial push to confiscate Russian sovereign assets and give them to Ukraine, the Biden administration is leading talks among G7 nations to commit to a new military aid package for Kiev worth up to $50 billion.

"Ideally, this is something we would like the entire G7 to participate in, be part of, not just have the United States doing it alone," US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Bloomberg. She further confirmed that Group of Seven countries are currently "discussing" the plan.

Image via Yahoo News

The package would be funded from interest accrued via investments utilizing the some $300 billion in Russian assets currently frozen in Western banks. The bulk of the frozen funds are in European banks, and some EU leaders fear devastating backlash and global distrust in its banking system would be the end result.

These frozen assets within the European Union (some $280 billion) are currently said to generate about 5 billion euros ($5.3 billion) in windfall profits annually. 

According to more details via Bloomberg:

Some €159 billion of frozen Russian assets have generated net profit of €557 million ($601 million) from Feb. 15, according to Euroclear’s first quarter financial results. Since last year, the assets have generated about €3.9 billion in net profit.

Russian sovereign assets held by the company could grow to as much as €190 billion by 2028 as they mature into cash, one of the people said. 

The US is hoping that consensus agreement can be achieved for its plan by the time of the G7 June meeting in Italy, where it could be signed off on. Biden officials have recently floated concepts like "freedom bonds" to sell the idea among allies.

In response, the Kremlin has vowed to be "extremely tough" on "thieves" who appropriate what belongs to Russia. "Considering that our country has qualified this as theft, the attitude will be towards thieves," Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova earlier stated. "Not as political manipulators, not as overplayed technologists, but as thieves," she emphasized.

The Western allies have out of recent desperation over Ukraine's diminished ammo been getting creative, and seeking to find loopholes in order to free up extra funds that could be used in the war effort.

Which Russian assets are sanctioned and where are they held... (click image for bigger):

Via Financial Crime News

Britain has meanwhile been at the forefront of countries arguing that the total of all underlying Russian assets should be fully confiscated and used for Ukraine.

"Our view is simple: One day, Russia will have to pay reparations and it doesn’t make sense to wait for those reparations. It makes better sense to use the frozen assets and to make that money available now," UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron said in March. The UK has since stuck by the position, also jumping on board with Washington's ambitious asset seizure plan.

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/05/2024 - 11:05

University Of California Now Discriminates Based On Parental Income, Education

Authored by James Breslo via The Epoch Times,

In 1996, Californians voted, 55 to 45 percent, to ban the use of affirmative action in admissions to state schools and in state employment. In 2020, Californians voted to maintain the ban by an even wider margin, 57 to 43 percent.

Last year, the United States Supreme Court struck down college affirmative action policies on the grounds they violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

The clear message from the people and the Court is that admission should be based upon merit. But those running the University of California (UC) maintain their obsession with race and “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI). They are undeterred in their mission to enforce equity via affirmative action. Rather than complying with the law and the will of the people, they search for loopholes to achieve the racial balancing they deem ideal for the shaping of society.

The most recent example comes from its San Diego campus (UCSD) which implemented a rule that discriminates against students whose parents make more than a certain amount of money or who went to college. It just so happens that this rule greatly advantages black and Latino students. In a nice side benefit for the administrators, it hurts Asians, who are already overrepresented at the UCs (as well as most universities, as addressed in the Supreme Court case, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which specifically addressed discrimination against Asian students.)

Beginning next year, certain “selective” majors (such as biology and most engineering degrees, including computer science) will have a special selection criteria at UCSD. “The selection criteria for entry to the major will consider academic achievement in the specified screening courses and will also be aligned with UC San Diego’s priorities of serving California residents, first-generation college students, and students from low-income families.” Thus, UCSD, without any direction from its constituents, has decided that it should prioritize students based on the status of their parents.

Here is how it works. There is a new point system “that awards one point each for having a 3.0 GPA or higher in the major screening courses; California residency; Pell Grant eligibility [i.e. parental income]; and first-generation college status.” Thus, half of the criteria is based upon the student’s parents. And since the majority of UC students are from California, and a 3.0 GPA is pretty easy, it really means that the primary determiner will be the status of the children’s parents.

The reason for the new policy is pretty obvious: It will advantage black and Latino students, and disadvantage white and Asian. It is unique, however, in that it is using old-school class warfare to achieve it.

Many have noted that the left has typically substituted race for class as a means of implementing socialism in the United States. Due to the U.S.’s strong middle class and upward mobility, class warfare has not worked as a means of implementing socialism here. But with courts striking down admissions policies based upon race, the left is now going back to old-fashioned class conflict. Will it work, or is it also illegal to discriminate based upon parental income or education?

If a court determines that the intent of the policy is to discriminate based upon race, then it will apply a “strict scrutiny” test to the policy. This is the standard the Supreme Court used in striking down affirmative action in the Harvard case. The UCSD policy, in fact, appears to be thinly disguised discrimination.

It is well-known that the average income of black and Hispanic people is below that of white and Asian, as is the percentage with a college degree. Thus, a court should hold the policy to the same standard as the ones struck down in the Harvard case. Justice John Roberts wrote that the Equal Protection Clause applies “without regard to any difference of race, of color, or of nationality” and thus must apply to every person. As such, “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” adding that “For ‘[t]he guarantee of equal protection cannot mean one thing when applied to one individual and something else when applied to a person of another color.’”

It is interesting that the policy, for now, appears to only apply to currently enrolled students attempting to transfer into these majors, not upon admission. Perhaps recognizing that the policy will have a discriminatory effect and thus subject to challenge, UCSD limited it to leave open the argument that it is not denying anyone an education, simply the major of their choice. But this is unlikely to fly, considering that the two most important elements of a quality education is the school and the major. If you cannot get a degree in engineering, you cannot become an engineer, while a biology degree is the natural feeder to medical school.

The UCSD policy is not the first time the UC has attacked students based upon their parent’s income. It used the same rationale to dump the SAT test. It argued that the test benefits children from wealthier families who can afford SAT prep courses. They now rely exclusively on high school grade point averages to determine scholarly merit. This allows them to easily create the racial balance they desire. They treat all high schools the same, whether it be the best private high school or the worst public school. We know that finishing in the top ten percent of your school is much easier to do at a public school than a private one, but that does not matter to UC. Achieving the desired racial makeup is more important to them than the merit of the individual.

The UC faculty, through the “Academic Senate,” oversees the admissions process. It explained getting rid of the SAT test: “This decision, which is part of the ongoing effort by the university to advance educational opportunity and equity, was based on the view that these tests are biased because they systematically and unfairly reduce the likelihood that underrepresented and low-income high school students will be accepted to the university.”

I have lots of stories from friends whose children could not get into a single one of the nine UC campuses across the state, but were accepted by the University of Michigan and University of Wisconsin, two of the best public universities in the country. That’s a nice consolation prize, except for the price, which is about five times more due to out-of-state tuition.

It is really incredible and the height of arrogance that California’s preeminent public university continues to fight against the will of its people. The Academic Senate asserts that “as a state public institution, the UC is obliged to create a student body that is representative of the demographic profile of California.” UC has even placed a Vice Chancellor of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, overseeing an entire department, at each campus to ensure this.

That sounds nice, the only problem is Californians have twice voted against it, and the discrimination required to achieve it is unconstitutional. But when you are on a cultish mission to create your utopian vision, those are minor inconveniences.

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/05/2024 - 10:30

Which States Have The Highest Minimum Wage In America?

This year, 22 states are raising their minimum wage, impacting almost 10 million workers across the country.

Many states raise the minimum wage each year to adjust to a cost of living index, while others have raised the pay floor for delivery drivers and fast-food workers. Today, the federal minimum wage stands at $7.25, a rate that has remained the same for 15 years.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld, shows the states with the highest minimum wage in America, based on data from Bloomberg Law.

The Highest Minimum Wages, by State

Here are the states with the highest minimum wage as of January 1, 2024:

1 District of Columbia: Indexes hourly minimum wage rate to inflation

2 New Jersey: Seasonal/small employer with five employees or less= $13.90, agricultural employers= $12.81, long term care facility direct care staff= $18.13

3 New York: New York City, Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester counties= $16.00

4 Oregon: Indexes hourly minimum wage rate to inflation. Nonurban counties= $13.20, Portland metro= $15.45

The District of Columbia has the highest minimum wage in the country, at $17 an hour.

Next in line is Washington state, where the minimum wage was raised to $16.28 an hour at the start of the year, up from $15.74. Both jurisdictions tie their minimum wage increases to inflation, along with several of the states on this list such as New York, Colorado, and Arizona.

With the largest planned increase nationally, Hawaii is raising its minimum wage to $18 an hour by 2028. Currently, the minimum wage stands at $14 an hour in the Aloha State.

As we can see, many of the top states have minimum wages that are more than double the federal minimum wage, which has declined in real value for many years. For context, the real value of the federal minimum wage hit a peak in 1970, where it would be worth $12.61 today.

California’s New Fast-Food Wage Hike

Fast-food workers in California recently received a pay bump after a new law raised the minimum wage to $20 an hour, $4 more than the state’s minimum wage.

In response, Pizza Hut announced it was laying off over 1,200 delivery drivers, while McDonalds said that it would increase prices in California due to higher wage costs. Other chain operators are reducing hours, while El Pollo Loco plans to automate part of how it makes salsa.

Affecting half a million workers at 33,000 restaurants, the law applies to chains with 60 or more locations across the country, making it the highest minimum wage in America.

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/05/2024 - 09:55

Who's Funding University Unrest?

Via OpenTheBooks substack,

FOUR MIDDLE EAST COUNTRIES GAVE $10.3 BILLION TO U.S. COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES!

The civil unrest playing out at America’s elite universities continues to headline the news.

And OpenTheBooks is here to follow the money.

Previously, our reporting broke down the massive taxpayer subsidy of America's elite universities.

This week, we continued to highlight it in national media.

We found that foreign countries also are providing immense subsidy of the U.S. university.

In fact, more than $44 billion in FOREIGN gifts have been disclosed under the Higher Education Reporting Act since 1986.

Here's what Mark Tapscott, at PJ Media noted:

"If you aren't already familiar with OpenTheBooks, you are missing one of the crown jewels of the transparency in government movement...

The facts are front and center, including the reality that the total amount in checks written by the U.S. Treasury and sent to these elite campuses exceeds the income the schools receive in tuition payments."

Here are some media highlights from the week: 

Yesterday FOX News aired segments of my interview across daytime programming including FOX & Friends and Varney & Co.

Economist Larry Kudlow at FOX Business showcased our oversight of the elite universities on the air and in his column.

My interview on The National Desk by Sinclair Broadcast, owners of nearly 200 ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX local stations across America, broke down all the numbers:

INTERVIEW: AMERICAN COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES MUST BE UNABASHEDLY "AMERICAN!"

Here is just a sample of our findings: 

• $10.3 billion given by Qatar ($5.2 billion), Saudi Arabia ($3 billion), United Arab Emeritus ($1.3 billion) and Kuwait ($800 million) dwarfed China who gave $2.8 billion.   

• During the past 40 years $1 of every $4 of foreign gifts into U.S. colleges and universities flowed from these four countries.

• Are these countries buying seats in our elite schools? Our auditors found millions of dollars in restricted gifts paying the tuition bills for their students.  

Columbia, Harvard, Yale and other elite universities are turning out graduates who believe that open antisemitism and the championing of terrorism are forms of "social justice."

Congress should convene hearings to preserve our top schools as unabashedly "American" institutions. 

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/05/2024 - 08:45

From STR: U.S. hotel results for week ending 27 April

As expected with Passover, U.S. hotel performance came in lower than the previous week and comparable period last year, according to CoStar’s latest data through 27 April. ...

21-27 April 2024 (percentage change from comparable week in 2023):

• Occupancy: 65.7% (-1.2%)
• Average daily rate (ADR): US$154.44 (-1.3%)
• Revenue per available room (RevPAR): US$101.42 (-2.5%)
emphasis added

The following graph shows the seasonal pattern for the hotel occupancy rate using the four-week average.
Click on graph for larger image.

The red line is for 2024, black is 2020, blue is the median, and dashed light blue is for 2023.  Dashed purple is for 2018, the record year for hotel occupancy. 
The 4-week average of the occupancy rate is slightly above last year, and above the median rate for the period 2000 through 2023 (Blue).

Note: Y-axis doesn't start at zero to better show the seasonal change.
The 4-week average of the occupancy rate will move mostly sideways seasonally until the summer travel season.

Fraudulent Logic Guides The UK Smoking Ban

Authored by Owen Ashworth via The Mises Institute,

It is the waning days of the Sunak premiership, and the Conservative party still has a stonking majority despite its cataclysmic capitulation in the polls. The government is effectively a lame duck; everyone knows it has no support, yet it will still be around for a few more months. One would think that since the Conservative party still has a large majority in the House of Commons that it would let loose with policy and attempt real reform so that the MPs have something to take to the people when election time begins.

The Conservative party could radically reform the housing sector so that young people do not turn their backs even more on the free market, they could be tackling NHS reform so our healthcare could match, or even surpass, international standards. Alas, it chose the path that states around the world naturally desire: more state intervention.

The prime minister has decided to go on a crusade against smoking! The government passed its legislation that effectively bans smoking for those born after 2009. The government says it is doing this to reduce the burden on the NHS, billions of pounds will be saved in the long run due to fewer people developing smoking related illnesses. The NHS needs saving so the conservatives are standing their defense of the legislation on the grounds they know are extremely popular amongst the electorate. Perhaps this is the perfect encapsulation of how MPs being guided by public opinion necessitates creation of bad policy.

Members of Parliament from all political parties voted for the legislation showing bipartisanship is alive and well. MPs scrambled to save the NHS and the government’s reasoning that this legislation saves the NHS billions is magnificent PR for all parties. There is a bigger matter at stake here, bodily autonomy. You own yourself, and this is indisputable. Thus, you can put whatever you like in your body as long as it does not harm anybody else. I will return later why this applies to smoking despite it seemingly violating the rule I have set out through the creation of second-hand smoke. If the sole reasoning behind running roughshod over one’s bodily autonomy is to save the NHS billions of pounds, then this logic raises absolutely zero issues with a rather uncomfortable number of crazy policies.

Obesity is becoming a major health issue in the UK, particularly in children, it will undoubtedly cost the NHS billions of pounds to treat these people once they get to an age where the massive medical issues become prevalent. To save the NHS, we should force feed these people a healthy diet so they lose the weight and do not develop costly obesity related diseases. In fact, we should force feed everyone a healthy and balanced diet so a myriad of other diet related health issues does not cost the NHS billions in treatment.

You see how this is nutty right? They would clearly object to these policies but there is nothing in their own logic telling them it is wrong. This means the matter of bodily autonomy to them is a completely arbitrary one, there is no limit except one they “feel” is just about right. Bodily autonomy is not an arbitrary matter; you either own yourself or you don’t. There can be no in-between unless you want to take the massive risk of going down a dystopian path where bodily autonomy is slowly chipped away until you have none left, since it is entirely arbitrary for our politicians to decide. State policy should never be decided based on a completely incoherent, inconsistent and arbitrary view on your right to self-ownership.

Reason Magazine does an amazing series titled “Great Moments in Unintended Consequences”. Readers should watch a few of their videos in that series because they illustrate how the law of unintended consequences can create some absolutely wild outcomes. It also relates to the smoking ban. The government has been slowly restricting smoking over the years until its now becoming a full-fledged ban where it is entirely realistic to say that in 30 years there may be very few people who can legally smoke. The UK had not even reached the stage of a complete ban before the vaping market exploded.

While this is anecdotal, I have witnessed how the development of the vaping market has meant that people who I thought would never touch that stuff have happily accepted vaping as part of their life. Vaping is becoming something of an epidemic amongst young people who would never have smoked normal cigarettes but the government has slowly restricted the market for normal cigarettes, creating the market for vapes. Obviously, the government did not intend to create the perfect storm for such an unintended consequence, yet it has done just that and we will not know for years if the storm will make landfall and destroy any of the savings accumulated from the smoking ban through health issues created by excessive vaping.

The law of unintended consequences is well-established, yet state actors will never connect the dots that lead to the problems. It is also quite amusing (but incredibly revealing about the level of thought our leaders do) to hear from contributors to the Politics Live daily show that they want to heavily restrict vaping too! They even acknowledge that mass vaping is an unintended consequence of the restrictions on smoking, but their solution is to further restrict vaping because, presumably, they will get it right this time with no further unintended consequences.

Returning to how we should deal with second hand smoke. This is a problem entirely perpetuated by the state. Any of the public areas that the state purports to own are havens for smokers who know there will be no private citizen who can legally tell them to stop. If public property did not exist, then private owners could either choose to accept or refuse smokers who will create second hand smoke on their property. That way, individuals would clearly know which route to take and what establishments allow smoking and refuse to allow smoking.

The conception of public property supported through our current system allows for actions that some people do not approve of with no restriction. If all property were private, then we could easily control the actions we wish to approve or disapprove. Smokers can frequent those dark and cloudy bars that are ever-present in some of our favorite classic films while those who do not wish to have any relation to such activity can completely avoid those establishments. Clear, coherent private property law shifts the choices about second hand smoke to individuals instead of taking it away from them.

The smoking ban is an entirely ludicrous policy. To add one last dash of inconsistency to the mix, the government also wants to reduce the burden on police for events they describe as “non-police demands.” The logic is the exact same for the smoking ban but the legislation will be incredibly costly to enforce so it is just going to lead to demands for more funding for the police as they need extra resources to deal with the extra workload now heaped on them by this legislation; the inconsistency is alarming.

Rishi Sunak could have gone to his government, acknowledged that he will most likely lose the next election and decide to fight for what really matters but alas, he chose to be a spineless individual and further drive us down the slippery slope towards zero bodily autonomy. Even his own reasoning for the ban perfectly captures the pitiful level of thought that goes into his (along with many other members of the government, including most other political parties) decisions. The smoking ban should clearly magnify to everyone the state of our supposed political leaders and how intellectually shallow they really are.

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/05/2024 - 08:10

Trump Develops 'Detailed' Plan On Achieving Ukraine Peace: Telegraph

Trump has long touted on the campaign trail that he can stop the Ukraine war in 24 hours while taking shots a Biden's inability to oversee a negotiation that would ultimately end the war.

The Daily Telegraph is now reporting, citing an unnamed source who is said to be close to the former president and current GOP frontrunner going into the November election, that Trump has developed a detailed plan for achieving Ukraine peace.

AFP via Getty Images

"There is a plan, but he’s not going to debate it with cable news networks because then you lose all leverage," the source said.

Below is the section of the Friday Telegraph report which previews the plan: 

A source close to the Trump campaign has told The Telegraph that a detailed Ukraine-Russia peace plan has been drawn up but will not yet be disclosed in any detail before his in an effort to maintain leverage.

Mr Trump will style himself as the only candidate who can end the war, with a simple “bumper-sticker” slogan, they said.

“He wants to stop the killing,” said the source. “That’s the bumper sticker: Trump will stop the killing.”

Last month a Washington Post report claimed that key to Trump's plan would be pressuring Kiev to permanently give up Crimea and part of the Donbas to the Russians.

The Post had cited aides who said the plan is to push for "Ukraine to cede Crimea and Donbas border region to Russia" in return for an end the Russian occupation and invasion.

But the truth is that at the very least Kiev would have to forever relinquish claims of sovereignty over Crimea. Moscow is also never going to let go to the four annexed territories in the east.

But Trump had slammed the apparently premature report as "fake news". At the time a statement from the Trump campaign said "The whole thing is fake news from the Washington Post. They’re just making it up." Spokesman Jason Miller did emphasize, however, that "President Trump is the only one talking about stopping the killing. Joe Biden is talking about more killing."

Meanwhile, things on the battlefield are making it increasingly clear that Ukraine may soon have no other option. The country's military and intelligence leadership also appears to be coming around to the hard reality that it will have to surrender territory, or else continue suffering massive losses and ceded ground. The Telegraph writes in its fresh report:

Ukraine is preparing for peace talks with Russia as there is “no way to win on the battlefield alone”, Kyiv’s deputy spy chief has said.

Maj Gen Vadym Skibitsky, the deputy head of Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence agency, said both sides were currently vying for “the most favorable position” ahead of possible negotiations in 2025.

As with virtually all wars, negotiations will likely be the final stage of the conflict, he told the Economist.

Yet President Zelensky himself has yet to echo this perspective. Instead he's currently urging the West for more and more advanced weapons, and talking about "ten year defense" plans ensured by the US and Kiev's backers.

He has further recently said that if Ukraine ever hopes to formally join NATO, it must 'win' against Russia - which at this point seems in the realm of fantasy. The White House has so far done nothing to dispel this fantasy, but has instead encouraged it.

Russian state media had captured and translated key lines of Zelensky's address. "I believe that we will be in NATO only if we win. I don’t think that we will be admitted [...] during the war," Zelensky had said during a meeting with officers. Ukrainian sources also confirmed the remarks.

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/05/2024 - 07:35

Largest Review On Transgender-Youth Medicine Finds Insufficient Evidence For Medicalization

Authored by Marina Zhang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

England may be the third country to withdraw from a “gender-affirming” treatment pathway due to recommendations from a long-awaited report.

(Illustration by The Epoch Times, The Cass Review, Getty Images, Freepik)

In April, the country published the Cass Review, “most comprehensive summary on transgender-youth medicine,” psychologist Erica Anderson, who identifies as transgender and has a doctorate in clinical psychology, told The Epoch Times.

The review, chaired by Dr. Hilary Cass, British honorary physician, consultant in pediatric disability, and former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, stated that there is insufficient evidence to demonstrate the long-term benefits of medicalizing children who want to identify as a different gender. Instead, the review recommends focusing on psychotherapy.

For some clinicians and researchers, this recommendation was a long time coming. Others are concerned that it potentially threatens medicalization—currently the primary treatment—for gender-incongruent youths.

The National Health Service (NHS) England, which commissioned the report in 2020, stated it would be committed to following through on the recommendations.

“[The Cass Review] final report will not just shape the future of healthcare in this country for children and young people experiencing gender distress but will be of major international importance and significance,” the statement read.

Eight days after the Cass Review’s release, Scotland’s health boards announced a pause on new prescriptions for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones as they gather evidence to support the safety and clinical effectiveness of these medications.

‘End of the Era’

The Cass Review is based on the work of 237 papers, including 214 studies, 21 guidelines, and two position statements, which covered data of over 113,000 children and young people. The authors also analyzed anonymized data from over 3,700 children diagnosed with gender dysphoria, survey responses from professionals, and numerous interviews and testimonies from stakeholders of the issue.

The review team commissioned researchers at the University of York to conduct systematic reviews of these papers and get feedback by interviewing young gender-incongruent children, their parents, and clinicians.

The University of York disclosed that it interviewed 12 young people who were part of voluntary organizations or the UK’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), along with 12 parents. The university researchers also interviewed clinicians at the UK’s gender identity clinics.

Additionally, Dr. Cass also interviewed numerous transgender youths, adults, parents of these children, advocacy groups, psychologists, pediatricians, and related clinicians, both British and international, though the number of interviewees was undisclosed. She also wanted to do a follow-up with 9,000 patients referred to England’s Tavistock Centre, but that could not be done due to the lack of cooperation from all but one adult clinic.

The review found insufficient and inconclusive evidence demonstrating the effectiveness and benefits of gender reassignment treatments for children. Additionally, many of these children are on the autism spectrum and share mental comorbidities often overshadowed by the medicalization model.

Dr. Cass hence advised cautionary psychological interventions while also leaving room for children to explore their identities.

The Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine (SEGM), a medical group that advocates for evidence-driven research on transgender care, stated that for England, the review marked “the end of the era of a highly medicalized approach to the treatment of young people with gender-related distress,” which has come to be known as “gender-affirming” care.

The report also mentioned that while medicalization comprising puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery, known as the “Dutch Protocol,” was invented in the Netherlands in the 1990s, the concept of “gender affirmation”—accepting children’s gender identity at face value—actually originated in the United States and then spread internationally.

As a result of the review, children under 18 in England will not be treated using such protocol but with the same level of care as other youths with mental health struggles. Finland and Sweden made similar changes in 2023.

The NHS Tavistock Centre, England's first gender-identity development service for children, in London on April 10, 2024. (Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images)

Puberty blockers and hormones will only be made available to 16-year-olds and older under the context of research-controlled conditions. Therefore, experimentation of such treatment on minors will be hindered.

“So as the Cass report made clear, they can design a study, but the study has to be approved by a larger body that passes on its ethics,” said Dr. Stephen Levine, clinical professor of psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University.

Top Findings and Suggestions

The report found that, unexpectedly, most current influential guidelines have been determined based on board consensus instead of science.

Most of the current guidelines were influenced by two American standards of care: the 2012 World Professional Association of Transgender Healthcare (WPATH) and the Endocrine Society 2009.

Both relied on a consensus process among professionals to decide on the best treatment for gender dysphoria and were built upon one another. WPATH members were co-sponsors of the Endocrine Society guidelines. WPATH’s 2012 standards of care adopted the Endocrine Society’s consensus-based recommendations but did not refer to WPATH’s own systematic review data, which found inconclusive evidence of the benefits of hormone therapy.

The recommendations from these guidelines were then referred to by subsequent guidelines, snowballing into what we now see.

The Cass Review is not about “rolling back on people’s rights to healthcare,” Dr. Cass wrote in the review’s foreword. “It is about what the healthcare approach should be.”

The review presented the following findings and recommendations.

1. Psychotherapy Is Recommended

Effectiveness and risks: Due to low quality and poor reporting of interventions in transgender children, the review couldn’t form a proper conclusion about the effectiveness of psychotherapy.

However, there is evidence that psychotherapy can help address mental health conditions, such as depression and anxiety, common among transgender youths, and hormone interventions often overshadow these therapies. The review highlighted that psychotherapy is not the same as conversion therapy, as it is not about changing a child’s perception of who they are but exploring the cause of their concerns and experiences and helping alleviate distress.

A young girl at the annual NYC Pride March in New York City on June 25, 2023. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times) 2. Partial Social Transitioning Is Preferred

Effectiveness and risks: The systematic reviews did not show clear evidence of the positive or negative effects social transitioning has on mental health. Social transition generally refers to a person making only social changes, including altering hair and clothing and changing names and pronouns, instead of medical changes to live as a different gender.

The review noted that many children grow out of gender dysphoria by adulthood but that those who socially transition often medically transition, meaning that they continue to have gender dysphoria.

While it is unknown whether social transitioning contributes to gender dysphoria, the review authors speculated that a partial transition may be more advantageous and offer greater flexibility to help children explore and express their gender identities.

3. Hormonal Treatments Not Recommended Except Under Research Conditions

Effectiveness and risks: The review showed no significant improvements in gender dysphoria symptoms or body satisfaction from medicalization. While some reports showed short-term improvement in mood when patients began hormonal treatment, the magnitude of such improvement was small.

Hormonal treatment, which refers to the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, is not recommended for minors due to the permanence of its effects. Children 16 or older may instead be enrolled in high-quality research studies on experimental treatments.

Evidence about the effects of puberty suppression on psychological well-being, cognitive and bone development, and cardio-metabolic risk or fertility was found to be inconsistent and insufficient.

Evidence also did not support the claim that hormonal treatment reduced the risk of suicide.

The report did not discuss recommendations and changes to guidelines on gender-reassignment surgeries since, unlike children in the United States, minors in the United Kingdom typically cannot undergo these.

Read the rest here...

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/05/2024 - 07:00

Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:

• Is artificial intelligence the great filter that makes advanced technical civilisations rare in the universe? Through the lens of SETI, we reflect on humanity’s current technological trajectory – the modest projections for L suggested here, underscore the critical need to quickly establish regulatory frameworks for AI development on Earth and the advancement of a multiplanetary society to mitigate against such existential threats. The persistence of intelligent and conscious life in the universe could hinge on the timely and effective implementation of such international regulatory measures and technological endeavours. (Science Direct)

• The Most Feared and Least Known Political Operative in America: Susie Wiles helped dismantle Ron DeSantis and salvaged Donald Trump’s campaign. Is she a MAGA hero or an enemy of democracy? (Politico) see also How Far Trump Would Go: Six months from the 2024 presidential election, Trump is better positioned to win the White House than at any point in either of his previous campaigns. He leads Joe Biden by slim margins in most polls, including in several of the seven swing states likely to determine the outcome. (Time)

• Why China Is So Bad at Disinformation: China’s state-sponsored disinformation campaign has been running at a massive scale for seven years—but no one is looking at it. (Wired)

• The News is Making You Miserable: The world has always been a mess. There have always been awful people. There have always been problems. The difference is now we are constantly reminded of them. We now get more news in a single day than most people ever saw in their lifetimes just a few short centuries ago. It started with newspapers, then the radio, and then television. We’ve accelerated the process in recent decades through the Internet, social media, and smartphones. Our brains aren’t hardwired to have this much information thrown at them. (A Wealth of Common Sense) see also Lose the News: news is hardly new. The vast majority of it is backward-looking, informing you as to what has happened already. Investing is about what is going to happen; what’s occurred in the past may be of interest, but it’s hardly germane to the investment process. Indeed, by the time the news is “out,” it already has been built into the stock price. Worse yet, old news can have an impact on your thought process. (The Big Picture)

• The Sci-Fi Writer Who Invented Conspiracy Theory: It all goes back to one man in the 1950s: a military-intelligence expert in psychological warfare. (The Atlantic)

• Cigna saves millions of dollars by having its doctors reject their patients’ claims: “Deny, deny, deny. That’s how you hit your numbers.” A Doctor at Cigna Said Her Bosses Pressured Her to Review Patients’ Cases Too Quickly. Cigna Threatened to Fire Her. Cigna tracks every minute that its staff doctors spend deciding whether to pay for health care. Dr. Debby Day said her bosses cared more about being fast than being right. (ProPublica)

• Airlines Mishandled 2.8 Million Bags In 2023, These Were The Worst Offenders: Allegiant Air proved to be the most competent airline in getting bags to their destination last year. American Airlines was the worst airline for lost luggage, accounting for 28.5% of all bags mishandled; United was #2, Alaska Airlines was #3. (Jalopnik)

• The problem isn’t that life is unfair – it’s your broken idea of fairness: But never fall for the collective delusion that there’s not a competition going on. People dress up to win partners. They interview to win jobs. If you deny that competition exists, you’re just losing. Everything in demand is on a competitive scale. And the best is only available to those who are willing to truly fight for it. (Oliver Emberton)

• Wait, why are there so few dead bugs on my windshield these days? You’ve probably noticed it, too. On long summer road trips, tiny corpses once formed a crust so thick that the reduced visibility posed a legitimate safety risk. Now, many folks we spoke with can’t remember the last time they had to scour the bug gore from their RAV4. From 1996 to 2017, insect splatters fell by 80 percent. (Washington Post)

• Just a Long List of Stuff That Brian Cox Hates: The legendary actor and Succession star Brian Cox has publicly hated on many people, things, and ideas. Here is a list of all of them. (GQ)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Joanne Bradford, who held executive leadership positions at Microsoft, Yahoo, Pinterest, Demand Media and BusinessWeek. She served as the Chief Revenue Officer at Microsoft, COO, and Chief Marketing Officer at SoFi (2015-2019), Most recently, she was President of Honey, where she orchestrated the sale of to Paypal for $4 billion. She was named one of Ad Age’s 100 Most Influential Women in Advertising.

 

WHERE DID ALL THE STOCKS GO? The number of public companies has fallen fast

Source: Sherwood

 

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The post 10 Sunday Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

Peter Schiff: Printing Money Is Not the Cure for Cononavirus



In his most recent podcast, Peter Schiff talked about coronavirus and the impact that it is having on the markets. Earlier this month, Peter said he thought the virus was just an excuse for stock market woes. At the time he believed the market was poised to fall anyway. But as it turns out, coronavirus has actually helped the US stock market because it has led central banks to pump even more liquidity into the world financial system. All this means more liquidity — central banks easing. In fact, that is exactly what has already happened, except the new easing is taking place, for now, outside the United States, particularly in China.” Although the new money is primarily being created in China, it is flowing into dollars — the dollar index is up — and into US stocks. Last week, US stock markets once again made all-time record highs. In fact, I think but for the coronavirus, the US stock market would still be selling off. But because of the central bank stimulus that has been the result of fears over the coronavirus, that actually benefitted not only the US dollar, but the US stock market.” In the midst of all this, Peter raises a really good question. The primary economic concern is that coronavirus will slow down output and ultimately stunt economic growth. Practically speaking, the world would produce less stuff. If the virus continues to spread, there would be fewer goods and services produced in a market that is hunkered down. Why would the Federal Reserve respond, or why would any central bank respond to that by printing money? How does printing more money solve that problem? It doesn’t. In fact, it actually exacerbates it. But you know, everybody looks at central bankers as if they’ve got the solution to every problem. They don’t. They don’t have the magic wand. They just have a printing press. And all that creates is inflation.” Sometimes the illusion inflation creates can look like a magic wand. Printing money can paper over problems. But none of this is going to fundamentally fix the economy. In fact, if central bankers were really going to do the right thing, the appropriate response would be to drain liquidity from the markets, not supply even more.” Peter explained how the Fed was originally intended to create an “elastic” money supply that would expand or contract along with economic output. Today, the money supply only goes in one direction — that’s up. The economy is strong, print money. The economy is weak, print even more money.” Of course, the asset that’s doing the best right now is gold. The yellow metal pushed above $1,600 yesterday. Gold is up 5.5% on the year in dollar terms and has set record highs in other currencies. Because gold is rising even in an environment where the dollar is strengthening against other fiat currencies, that shows you that there is an underlying weakness in the dollar that is right now not being reflected in the Forex markets, but is being reflected in the gold markets. Because after all, why are people buying gold more aggressively than they’re buying dollars or more aggressively than they’re buying US Treasuries? Because they know that things are not as good for the dollar or the US economy as everybody likes to believe. So, more people are seeking out refuge in a better safe-haven and that is gold.” Peter also talked about the debate between Trump and Obama over who gets credit for the booming economy – which of course, is not booming.

We are living in crazy times. I have a hard time believing that most of the general public is not awake, but in reality, they are. We've never seen anything like this; I mean not even under Obama during the worst part of the Great Recession." Now the Fed is desperately trying to keep interest rates from rising. The problem is that it's a much bigger debt bubble this time around , and the Fed is going to have to blow a lot more air into it to keep it inflated. The difference is this time it's not going to work." It looks like the Fed did another $104.15 billion of Not Q.E. in a single day. The Fed claims it's only temporary. But that is precisely what Bernanke claimed when the Fed started QE1. Milton Freedman once said, "Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program." The same applies to Q.E., or whatever the Fed wants to pretend it's doing. Except this is not QE4, according to Powell. Right. Pumping so much money out, and they are accusing China of currency manipulation ? Wow! Seriously! Amazing! Dump the U.S. dollar while you still have a chance. Welcome to The Atlantis Report. And it is even worse than that, In addition to the $104.15 billion of "Not Q.E." this past Thursday; the FED added another $56.65 billion in liquidity to financial markets the next day on Friday. That's $160.8 billion in two days!!!! in just 48 hours. That is more than 2 TIMES the highest amount the FED has ever injected on a monthly basis under a Q.E. program (which was $80 billion per month) Since this isn't QE....it will be really scary on what they are going to call Q.E. Will it twice, three times, four times, five times what this injection per month ! It is going to be explosive since it takes about 60 to 90 days for prices to react to this, January should see significant inflation as prices soak up the excess liquidity. The question is, where will the inflation occur first . The spike in the repo rate might have a technical explanation: a misjudgment was made in the Fed's money market operations. Even so, two conclusions can be drawn: managing the money markets is becoming harder, and from now on, banks will be studying each other's creditworthiness to a greater degree than before. Those people, who struggle with the minutiae of money markets, and that includes most professionals, should focus on the causes and not the symptoms. Financial markets have recovered from each downturn since 1980 because interest rates have been cut to new lows. Post-2008, they were cut to near zero or below zero in all major economies. In response to a new financial crisis, they cannot go any lower. Central banks will look for new ways to replicate or broaden Q.E. (At some point, governments will simply see repression as an easier option). Then there is the problem of 'risk-free' assets becoming risky assets. Financial markets assume that the probability of major governments such as the U.S. or U.K. defaulting is zero. These governments are entering the next downturn with debt roughly twice the levels proportionate to GDP that was seen in 2008. The belief that the policy worked was completely predicated on the fact that it was temporary and that it was reversible, that the Fed was going to be able to normalize interest rates and shrink its balance sheet back down to pre-crisis levels. Well, when the balance sheet is five-trillion, six-trillion, seven-trillion when we're back at zero, when we're back in a recession, nobody is going to believe it is temporary. Nobody is going to believe that the Fed has this under control, that they can reverse this policy. And the dollar is going to crash. And when the dollar crashes, it's going to take the bond market with it, and we're going to have stagflation. We're going to have a deep recession with rising interest rates, and this whole thing is going to come imploding down. everything is temporary with the fed including remaining off the gold standard temporary in the Fed's eyes could mean at least 50 years This liquidity problem is a signal that trading desks are loaded up on inventory and can't get rid of it. Repo is done out of a need for cash. If you own all of your securities (i.e., a long-only, no leverage mutual fund) you have no need to "repo" your securities - you're earning interest every night so why would you want to 'repo' your securities where you are paying interest for that overnight loan (securities lending is another animal). So, it is those that 'lever-up' and need the cash for settlement purposes on securities they've bought with borrowed money that needs to utilize the repo desk. With this in mind, as we continue to see this need to obtain cash (again, needed to settle other securities purchases), it shows these firms don't have the capital to add more inventory to, what appears to be, a bloated inventory. Now comes the fun part: the Treasury is about to auction 3's, 10's, and 30-year bonds. If I am correct (again, I could be wrong), the Fed realizes securities firms don't have the shelf space to take down a good portion of these auctions. If there isn't enough retail/institutional demand, it will lead to not only a crappy sale but major concerns to the street that there is now no backstop, at all, to any sell-off. At which point, everyone will want to be the first one through the door and sell immediately, but to whom? If there isn't enough liquidity in the repo market to finance their positions, the firms would be unable to increase their inventory. We all saw repo shut down on the 2008 crisis. Wall St runs on money. . OVERNIGHT money. They lever up to inventory securities for trading. If they can't get overnight money, they can't purchase securities. And if they can't unload what they have, it means the buy-side isn't taking on more either. Accounts settle overnight. This includes things like payrolls and bill pay settlements. If a bank doesn't have enough cash to payout what its customers need to pay out, it borrows. At least one and probably more than one banks are insolvent. That's what's going on. First, it can't be one or two banks that are short. They'd simply call around until they found someone to lend. But they did that, and even at markedly elevated rates, still, NO ONE would lend them the money. That tells me that it's not a problem of a couple of borrowers, it's a problem of no lenders. And that means that there's no bank in the world left with any real liquidity. They are ALL maxed out. But as bad as that is, and that alone could be catastrophic, what it really signals is even worse. The lending rates are just the flip side of the coin of the value of the assets lent against. If the rates go up, the value goes down. And with rates spiking to 10%, how far does the value fall? Enormously! And if banks had to actually mark down the value of the assets to reflect 10% interest rates, then my god, every bank in the world is insolvent overnight. Everyone's capital ratios are in the toilet, and they'd have to liquidate. We're talking about the simultaneous insolvency of every bank on the planet. Bank runs. No money in ATMs, Branches closed. Safe deposit boxes confiscated. The whole nine yards, It's actually here. The scenario has tended to guide toward for years and years is actually happening RIGHT NOW! And people are still trying to say it's under control. Every bank in the world is currently insolvent. The only thing keeping it going is printing billions of dollars every day. Financial Armageddon isn't some far off future risk. It's here. Prepare accordingly. This fiat system has reached the end of the line, and it's not correct that fiat currencies fail by design. The problem is corruption and manipulation. It is corruption and cheating that erodes trust and faith until the entire system becomes a gigantic fraud. Banks and governments everywhere ARE the problem and simply have to be removed. They have lost all trust and respect, and all they have left is war and mayhem. As long as we continue to have a majority of braindead asleep imbeciles following orders from these psychopaths, nothing will change. Fiat currency is not just thievery. Fiat currency is SLAVERY. Ultimately the most harmful effect of using debt of undefined value as money (i.e., fiat currencies) is the de facto legalization of a caste system based on voluntary slavery. The bankers have a charter, or the legal *right*, to create money out of nothing. You, you don't. Therefore you and the bankers do not have the same standing before the law. The law of the land says that you will go to jail if you do the same thing (creating money out of thin air) that the banker does in full legality. You and the banker are not equal before the law. ALL the countries of the world; Islamic or secular, Jewish or Arab, democracy or dictatorship; all of them place the bankers ABOVE you. And all of you accept that only whining about fiat money going down in exchange value over time (price inflation which is not the same as monetary inflation). Actually, price inflation itself is mainly due to the greed and stupidity of the bankers who could keep fiat money's exchange value reasonably stable, only if they wanted to. Witness the crash of silver and gold prices which the bankers of the world; Russian, American, Chinese, Jewish, Indian, Arab, all of them collaborated to engineer through the suppression and stagnation of precious metals' prices to levels around the metals' production costs, or what it costs to dig gold and silver out of the ground. The bankers of the world could also collaborate to keep nominal prices steady (as they do in the case of the suppression of precious metals prices). After all, the ability to create fiat money and force its usage is a far more excellent source of power and wealth than that which is afforded simply by stealing it through inflation. The bankers' greed and stupidity blind them to this fact. They want it all, and they want it now. In conclusion, The bankers can create money out of nothing and buy your goods and services with this worthless fiat money, effectively for free. You, you can't. You, you have to lead miserable existences for the most of you and WORK in order to obtain that effectively nonexistent, worthless credit money (whose purchasing/exchange value is not even DEFINED thus rendering all contracts based on the null and void!) that the banker effortlessly creates out of thin air with a few strokes of the computer keyboard, and which he doesn't even bother to print on paper anymore, electing to keep it in its pure quantum uncertain form instead, as electrons whizzing about inside computer chips which will become mute and turn silent refusing to tell you how many fiat dollars or euros there are in which account, in the absence of electricity. No electricity, no fiat, nor crypto money. It would appear that trust is deteriorating as it did when Lehman blew up . Something really big happened that set off this chain reaction in the repo markets. Whatever that something is, we aren't be informed. They're trying to cover it up, paper it over with conjured cash injections, play it cool in front of the cameras while sweating profusely under the 5 thousands dollar suits. I'm guessing that the final high-speed plunge into global economic collapse has begun. All we see here is the ripples and whitewater churning the surface, but beneath the surface, there is an enormous beast thrashing desperately in its death throws. Now is probably the time to start tying up loose ends with the long-running prep projects, just saying. In other words, prepare accordingly, and Get your money out of the banks. I don't care if you don't believe me about Bitcoin. Get your money out of the banks. Don't keep any more money in a bank than you need to pay your bills and can afford to lose.











The Financial Armageddon Economic Collapse Blog tracks trends and forecasts , futurists , visionaries , free investigative journalists , researchers , Whistelblowers , truthers and many more













The Financial Armageddon Economic Collapse Blog tracks trends and forecasts , futurists , visionaries , free investigative journalists , researchers , Whistelblowers , truthers and many more

The FBI released a summary of its file from the Hillary Clinton email investigation on Friday, showing details of Clinton's explanation of her use of a private email server to handle classified communications. The release comes nearly two months after FBI Director James Comey announced that although Clinton's handling of classified information was "extremely careless," it did not rise to the level of a prosecutable offense. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced the next day that she would not pursue charges in the matter. "We are making these materials available to the public in the interest of transparency and in response to numerous Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests," the FBI noted in a statement sent to reporters with links to the documents. The documents include notes from Clinton's July 2 interview with agents, as well as a "factual summary of the FBI's investigation into this matter," according to the FBI release. Throughout her interview with agents, Clinton repeatedly said she relied on the career professionals she worked with to handle classified information correctly. The agents asked about a series of specific emails, and in each case Clinton said she wasn't worried about the particular material being discussed on a nonclassified channel.