Vitamin D Supplements Lower Blood Pressure In Older Adults With Obesity: Study

Authored by George Citroner via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

High blood pressure often affects older and obese people; vitamin D supplements may help lower it.

Sathit/Shutterstock

A new study has found that taking 600 international units (IU) of vitamin D per day—the amount typically recommended for adults—lowers blood pressure in older adults, especially those who are obese.

Experts caution that exceeding the recommended intake, even below the safe upper limit (UL), does not necessarily translate to additional benefits.

Supplementation Reduced Blood Pressure

The study, published Tuesday in the Journal of the Endocrine Society, involved 221 older obese adults who received vitamin D supplements at either 600 IU per day or 3,750 IU per day over one year. Currently, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommends a daily intake of 600 IU.

Partcipants’ overall systolic blood pressure decreased by 3.5 mm Hg after one year, and diastolic blood pressure decreased by 2.5 mm Hg after one year.

Those who took higher doses of 3,750 IU daily had a slightly higher decrease of 4.2 mm Hg for systolic blood pressure. In comparison, those who took the lower 600 IU per day generally reported a reduction of 2.8 mm Hg after one year.

The authors concluded that the differences between the high- and low-dose vitamin D groups were not statistically significant.

People with a higher body mass index (BMI) of over 30 saw more significant reductions in blood pressure, especially in the high-dose group. People who took blood pressure medication with their vitamin D also observed substantial decreases in their overall blood pressure.

All participants also received daily supplements that included 1,000 milligrams of calcium.

No Significant Benefits From Higher Doses

The study’s findings showed that regular supplementation resulted in a decrease in blood pressure among participants. However, a comparison of the two dosage groups found that higher dosages of vitamin D did not provide further health benefits.

“More vitamin D is not better in terms of blood pressure,” study author Dr. Ghada El-Hajj Fuleihan from the American University of Beirut Medical Center told The Epoch Times in an email. “Indeed, 3,750 IU/day does not lower blood pressure more than 600 IU/day, which is the Institute of Medicine recommended dose.”

These results “need to be validated in a trial with blood pressure as the primary outcome,” she added.

The research team considered the UL for vitamin D intake established by the IOM (4,000 IU daily) when selecting doses for participants. “3,750 IU/day is below the IOM UL, and was specifically selected to be so,” Fuleihan wrote.

The higher dose is unlikely to cause harmful health effects, she added. “None of our patients had signs or symptoms of vitamin D intoxication,” she noted. Symptoms of vitamin D intoxication include nausea, vomiting, and kidney stones.

Fuleihan emphasized that the decision to supplement vitamin D should ultimately be made in consultation with a patient’s primary health care provider.

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/15/2024 - 20:05

Trump's Coming War On The Mexican Drug Cartels

Authored by Anders Corr via The Epoch Times,

President-elect Donald Trump has declared war on the drug cartels in Mexico. “The drug cartels are waging war on America, and it’s now time for America to wage war on the cartels,” he said in one of his toughest videos ever.

Photos of fentanyl victims are displayed at The Faces of Fentanyl Memorial at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration headquarters in Arlington, Va., on Sept. 27, 2022. Alex Wong/Getty Images

And it wasn’t the first time. He strongly advocated for many of the same actions in his first term and got results.

Trump’s incoming appointees support that tough approach. The potential future “border czar,” Thomas Homan, said on Nov. 12 that Trump is committed to deploying the “full might of the United States Special Operations to take them out.” The appointed defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said in 2023 that military “precision strikes” on the cartels might be needed to deter them from operating “in the open with impunity.”

The United States has every ethical reason to launch a war on the cartels. They use chemical precursors from China to produce the vast majority of the illegal fentanyl that causes most of the 82,000 opioid overdose deaths in 2022 in the United States. That’s over 27 times more deaths every year than happened from the 9/11 attacks.

Fentanyl poisoning is deliberate and far worse in the number of deaths than anti-U.S. terrorism. Those who sell illegal fentanyl in the United States, when it results in death, are justly convicted of murder.

Yet China and Mexico get off scot-free. Beijing uses its supply of precursors as leverage against the United States on issues like Taiwan, which proves that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intends the deaths that result when Washington does not submit. If we want Beijing to stop the shipment of precursors, the CCP demands that we stop following the law to supply Taiwan with the weapons it needs for its self-defense. Some have called these CCP actions a form of blackmail, chemical warfare, or genocide. Arguably, they are all three.

Just as the mullahs in Iran used Hamas to attack Israel, the CCP is using Mexican cartels to attack the United States. The risk for Hamas and now the cartels is that they could be targeted in response. Trump published an “action plan to destroy the drug cartels” in December. He is threatening to designate them as terrorist organizations, cut them off from the international financial system, hit them with cyberattacks, deport or execute foreign drug dealers and gang members, finish the border wall, and eliminate cartel leaders. This could be done with cruise or drone-fired missiles.

If Mexico fails to help or take over these tasks themselves, Trump could unmask the Mexican politicians who cooperate with the cartels, entirely close the border, impose tariffs on Mexico, and impose a naval blockade to stop precursor shipments.

The falsely glamorous image of being a cartel leader with a grand hacienda, pool, caravan, and armed guards posted on the perimeter wall will not seem so glamorous when these expensive homes and vehicles attract Hellfire missiles on a regular basis, forcing drug kingpins into less glamorous digs in hill camps and Mexico City’s back alleys. Neither will it be honorable to be a high government official in Mexico when Trump starts unmasking them as on the cartel payroll.

None of this will be particularly easy. The Mexican government opposes U.S. military force on Mexican territory. Designating the cartels as terrorists and using covert operations is one response. Mexico is America’s largest trade partner and could withhold drug enforcement and immigration cooperation, though there is not much of that anyway.

The United States should not attempt to take and hold territory permanently in Mexico, as this would be a violation of the U.S.-led international order that we help enforce by protecting Taiwan and Ukraine against China and Russia, for example. We should not become the enemy we oppose. But short cross-border targeted attacks on cartels would not be dissimilar to U.S. operations in Pakistan, including the killing of Osama bin Laden. America needs to rapidly and vigorously defend itself against all attacks, including novel offensives like fentanyl, or we lose our deterrent credibility.

Another difficulty is diplomatic. A naval, drone, or special operations campaign in Mexico could cause the United States stress at the United Nations and with our allies. But ethics are on our side because we are under attack with building U.S. civilian casualties that are greater than in any war in U.S. history. The new U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Elise Stefanik, is tough as nails and up to the job of defending us there.

Trump’s critics note that a finished border wall could still be tunneled under, from a house on the Mexican side to a house on the U.S. side, for example. Many such tunnels reportedly already exist, making it difficult for U.S. law enforcement to catch the smugglers. And none of this would stop fentanyl from coming in through the millions of small mail packages flown into the United States from China and around the world. If producing fentanyl is difficult in Mexico, it could be moved to Afghanistan, Burma (Myanmar), or Nigeria. There are plenty of global criminal organizations that would welcome the chance to profit and care little about the deaths of innocent Americans.

But not fighting the worst drug kingpins and most prolific illegal labs, wherever they are found, is to acquiesce in the deaths of U.S. innocents and is therefore not an option. Destroying as many of the cartel bosses and labs as possible serves to not only stop at least some of them but also strengthens deterrence against others.

Accelerating plans for a war on the cartels will make officials in Mexico, and those from around the world, much more pliable to Trump’s demands. Their caving in advance of Trump’s war would be the best of all worlds and something that happened in 2019 by Mexican negotiators when he made similar plans. However, Mexico quickly fell back into its old ways over the last four years.

So this time, Trump may not be as willing to make a deal. He might just start with the public disclosure of bribery in Mexico City as justification for his military strikes against the worst of the cartel leaders and their illegal fentanyl labs out in the country. The nexus between the cartel bosses and corrupt politicians is a target-rich environment, and Trump has appropriate plans for both.

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 Fri, 11/15/2024 - 19:15

Zelensky Denounces Scholz Call As 'Pandora's Box' Of Appeasing Putin

Russian media reports have said the Swiss government is willing to play host to any future direct negotiations between Moscow and Ukraine to end the war.

Switzerland's Federal Department of Foreign Affairs was cited in Izvestia as responding to a question on whether it would mediate by hosting talks: "Traditionally, Swiss foreign policy is centered on offering its services as a mediator whenever both parties agree," the Swiss government agency said.

Via AFP

TASS writes of potential Kremlin reluctance as follows: "However, Moscow remains highly skeptical about Bern's neutrality, given Switzerland's support for anti-Russian sanctions and its active cooperation with NATO forces, the newspaper reports."

"Experts suggest that, alongside Switzerland, several countries in Asia, Africa, and South America could also serve as potential hosts for negotiations between the two leaders," the state media commentary continues.

Russia is likely to prefer a host country which is neither in the EU or NATO, which could rule out candidates like Hungary or Turkey.

Things are beginning to thaw in terms of diplomatic openings, especially given the Friday phone call between German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Russian President Vladmir Putin. Such efforts have been boosted given Trump is vowing to end the Ukraine war as soon as he takes office.

Scholz had urged the Russian leader to "negotiate with Ukraine" in order to enact a "just and lasting peace."

But Ukraine is angry, worried about getting pressured into a 'bad deal' which will result in conceding territory with inadequate security guarantees. Zelensky is worried that the West is 'normalizing' communications with Putin, essentially. But that is how diplomacy has to happen in the real world.

Chancellor Scholz told me that he planned to call Putin. His call, in my opinion, opens Pandora's Box. There may now be other conversations and phone calls. Just a lot of words.

And this is exactly what Putin has long sought. It is critical for him to weaken his isolation, as… pic.twitter.com/zcTydmnxsM

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) November 15, 2024

Zelensky blasted the call and accused Scholz of opening "Pandora’s box" - with Ukraine’s foreign ministry saying in a statement: “Talk only give[s] Putin hope of easing his international isolation."

"What is needed are concrete, strong actions that will force him to peace, not persuasion and attempts at appeasement, which he sees as a sign of weakness and uses to his advantage," a statement said.

The Kremlin in turn hailed the Scholz phone call, which we detailed earlier, as "positive". Russia is in the diplomatic driver's seat at this point, which is a result of the reality of Ukraine fast losing ground in the east.

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/15/2024 - 18:50

Will Tulsi Be Able To Direct The Intelligence 'Community'?

Authored by Ray McGovern via ConsortiumNews.com,

The next director of national intelligence needs courage, political smarts and strong presidential backing to fulfill her duty to oversee and provide advice on covert action...

President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Tulsi Gabbard to be director of national intelligence (DNI) will cause shockwaves in and among the 18 fiefdoms that now comprise the U.S. intelligence community.

Gabbard will be fighting an uphill battle if she tries to herd those 18 cats into a cohesive whole and restore integrity to intelligence analysis. The hill’s incline will be still steeper, if she takes seriously her duty to warn the president of the frequently noxious blowback of C.I.A. covert actions. I cannot overcome the urge to quote from “The Princess Bride”: Good luck stormin’ the castle, Tulsi … It will take a miracle!

In short, the odds are against her. Whether she succeeds depends, first and foremost, on how strongly the president backs her.  Unlike most former DNIs, she has already demonstrated uncommon courage, as well as smarts and political skill.

On the other hand, she has had virtually no experience managing a large institution, much less a “community” well versed in internecine warfare to protect individual rice bowls, and populated with careerist bureaucrats all too accustomed to telling the ultimate boss, the president, what he wants to hear.

Important Duties

The DNI is in charge of preparing The President’s Daily Brief (PDB), National Intelligence Estimates and the annual Threat Assessment required by Congress. What is less well known is her role in covert action — a favorite of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service.

 Executive Order 12333 (July 2008) stipulates:

“The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) shall oversee and provide advice to the President and the NSC with respect to all ongoing and proposed covert action programs.”

Thus, what the EO says. My own experience suggests that this covert-action-related duty has been more honored in the breach than in the observance, so to speak. Director of Central Intelligence William Colby was, in my personal experience, the only director to give intelligence analysts a look at some covert action proposals and ask for comment. I served directly under Colby as an acting national intelligence officer in the mid-70s.

Colby, at left, briefing President Gerald Ford and his senior advisers on the deteriorating situation in Vietnam, April 28, 1975. (David Hume Kennerly, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public domain)

Will DNI Tulsi Gabbard (assuming she is confirmed by the Senate) step up to this task? It would take uncommon courage. Was the current DNI, Avril Haines, informed beforehand that the C.I.A. would blow up the Nord Stream pipelines? If so, did she give it her blessing? Or was she kept in the dark?

Blowing Up Pipelines …

My guess is that DNI Gabbard would have promptly recognized the folly in that C.I.A. “can-do” attitude/escapade and would have briefed the president on its longer-term implications. She is a good listener to analysts who she asks to brief her. I know that, too, from personal experience responding to her questions when she was one of Hawaii’s representatives in the House.

It would take a courageous and politically astute person and strong backing and trust from the president for any DNI to be able to fulfill the duty to  “oversee and provide advice … on covert action programs.”

… and Blowing Off the Analysts

Sizable covert action programs require a sanity check from analysts with substantive expertise, as sad experience has shown. Recall the Bay of Bigs operation of April 1961.  At President John Kennedy’s request, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. investigated the affair. His conclusion, set down in a MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT dated June 30, 1961, speaks for itself:

“The trouble with the Cuban [Bay of Pigs] operation, for example, was not that the intelligence and operations were combined, but precisely that the Cuban operation evaded systematic intelligence judgment. The Intelligence Branch (DDI) of the CIA was never informed of the existence of the Cuban operation. The Office of National Estimates was never asked to comment on the assumption, for example, that discontent had reached the point in Cuba where a successful landing operation would provoke uprisings behind the lines and defections from the Militia.

I gather that if its opinion had been invited, DDI would have given quite a different estimate of the state of opinion in Cuba from that on which the operation was based. …

The Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the Department of State knew even less about the Cuban operation.”

DNI Position: A Creature of 9/11

As most are aware, there was enough intelligence available before 9/11 to prevent it. But the cats would not be herded. C.I.A. would not share with F.B.I. and vice versa. NSA would share with no one. Here’s one account that will turn your stomach.

Tenet listening to President George W. Bush’s address on Sept. 11, 2001, in the President’s Emergency Operations Center. (U.S. National Archives via Flickr, Public domain)

The congressional oversight committees as well as the administration and the intelligence community were not only intent on covering up what had happened, but needed to make it appear that remedial action was being taken.

Enter the 9/11 Commission and its recommendations. Here, they said, was the problem: George Tenet, as director of central intelligence (head of the whole community) as well as chief of the C.I.A. was overburdened.

In fact, Tenet was the antithesis of an effective head of the intelligence community; he screwed up royally. But he also knew “where the bodies were buried” — which key administration and congressional officials had been exposed to some of the disregarded intelligence. So it was not deemed safe to lay the blame where it clearly belonged.

A fiction was devised. The problem was said to be that “no one was in charge of the intelligence community.” So the 9/11 Commission recommended that a new superstructure be created to coordinate the community (and let no one be held accountable).

On July 22, 2004, immediately after the 9/11 Commission report was released, I found myself with 9/11 commissioner (and former senator from Washington) Slade Gorton in the BBC blue room in Washington. I had the temerity to remind him that it was far from the case that “no one was in charge” of the intelligence community; that Tenet had all the authority he needed.

Gorton turned to me, smiled and said: “Of course we know all that; but we in the Commission and in Congress just had to do something so the American people would see that we were doing something.”

Yuck.

The national intelligence director, and the newly created bureaucracy, is what it is. Maybe Tulsi Gabbard can take the reins and make the community work. It will take a miracle; let’s hope for one.

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/15/2024 - 18:25

Food Additives Exposed: What Lies Beneath America's Food Supply

Authored by Charles Cornish-Dale via The Epoch Times,

Scientists at the University of Texas, Dallas recently discovered that a common food additive can make flesh translucent - literally. Applying a solution of the yellow food colouring tartrazine to the skin of live mice allowed scientists to see right through the skin, into the tissues beneath, potentially offering a simple and inexpensive alternative to conventional imaging technologies like ultrasound.

Through the skin covering the skull, the scientists could look directly at blood vessels on the surface of the murine brain, and through the skin of the abdomen they observed internal organs and even the process known as peristalsis, the contractions that move food through the digestive passage.

Pretty cool, huh?

The physics behind this discovery aren’t actually all that complicated. Basically, when added to water, tartrazine changes the water’s refractive index—the way it bends light—so that it matches the refractive index of molecules like lipids in the skin, reducing the degree to which light scatters as it passes through the skin. Instead of scattering, the light travels straight and true, meaning you get to see what’s on the other side.

The process is totally reversible. It only takes a few minutes, the tartrazine solution can be washed off, and when it is the effects disappear. What tartrazine is absorbed by the skin is metabolized and excreted through the urine.

The researchers’ next goal is to test the solution on humans. Human skin is about 10 times thicker than a mouse’s, so it’s likely a larger dose will be needed, and it’s not clear if the delivery method—just rubbing the stuff on the skin—will be adequate.

A miraculous discovery, for sure, and one that will no doubt benefit medicine. But it’s also a reminder of an unpleasant, dangerous truth about the food supply in America today: that it’s full of substances whose properties and safety we know virtually next to nothing about. There are thousands upon thousands of additives—texturizers, colorings, humectants, anti-fungals, anti-caking agents, preservatives—in Americans’ food that have never been independently tested by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or by scientists who aren’t employed by the companies that make those chemicals and add them to their food.

As we’re discovering, many of those additives—the ones we know about and have begun to test—turn out to be extremely harmful, with links to every single chronic health condition you could care to name, from cancer and obesity to neurological and behavioral conditions like Alzheimer’s and autism. Tartrazine, which is found in Twinkies, Mountain Dew, candy, and cereals, among other foods, has been linked to hyperactivity in children and cancer. In the European Union, foods containing tartrazine must carry a warning label: “May have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children.”

It sounds absurd—insane, actually—but it’s not a glitch or an organized system of corporate deception. We’re not talking about companies lying to regulators or acting beyond the boundaries of the law. No, this is all above board. The system even has a name. The FDA calls it “generally recognized as safe” or “GRAS” for short.

The GRAS system was first introduced by the FDA in 1958 after the passage of the Food Additive Amendments, to “grandfather” through additives that were already used in food. The new additive regulations were intended to ensure ingredients capable of causing long-term harm never entered the food supply, but something very different happened. The GRAS designation mutated into a system that allowed companies to introduce and safety-test additives themselves without the FDA ever getting a look-in.

This happened in large part because the FDA simply couldn’t keep up with demands from companies to test their new additives for the burgeoning processed-food category. So companies started testing additives themselves and adding them to their food products without any consultation with the regulator.

Companies did this for decades, and instead of stepping in to assert its authority, the FDA did what any poorly staffed, hopelessly compromised organization would do: It simply chose to regularize the process, which was completed in 2016.

According to one study, since 2000, there have been only 10 applications to the FDA for full approval of a new food additive, out of a total of 766 that have been added to the American food supply. The safety of the other 756 was self-determined by the manufacturers themselves, in secret.

And so we’ve ended up in a situation where a company can produce a new food additive, decide it’s safe by whatever means it chooses, and then bring it to market without any scrutiny at all from the FDA. Like I say, nobody knows the exact amount, but a common estimate is that there are as many as 10,000 food additives in use in the United States, compared to around 2,000—all known quantities, by contrast—that are permitted in the EU.

Thankfully, the FDA and the GRAS system are now firmly in the sights of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been tasked by president-elect Trump with Making America Healthy Again.

The “FDA’s war on public health is about to end,” Kennedy said in a Tweet last month.

He listed a whole range of compounds and treatments that he claims the FDA has suppressed, from psychedelics and peptides to “sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma.”

“If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you,” he continued.

“1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags.”

Strong stuff.

Although Trump has yet to specify exactly what role Kennedy will play in the new administration, Kennedy himself has already made clear that other priorities, beside root-and-branch reform of agencies like the FDA, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the United States Department of Agriculture, will include fluoridation of the water supply, vaccinations, environmental pollution, and processed food. This is a comprehensive program, and if Kennedy can make meaningful changes in all of these areas in four years, he will have done the American people and their health an enormous service.

If anybody can get to the bottom of why Americans are so sick, it’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a man who has spent decades campaigning on environmental and health issues, and suffered personal loss and public vilification as a result—but still kept on going.

He knows as much as anybody the corruption that lies beneath the façade of public health in America, and now, at long last, he’s in a position to do something about it.

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 Fri, 11/15/2024 - 17:40

VDH: Restoring Deterrence Will Prevent Endless Wars

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

On January 3, 2020, the Trump administration conducted a drone strike near Baghdad International Airport, killing Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani.

Soleimani had a long record of waging surrogate wars against Americans, especially during the Iraq conflict and its aftermath.

After the Trump cancellation of the Iran Deal, followed by U.S. sanctions, Soleimani reportedly stepped up violence against regional American bases—most of which Trump himself ironically wished to remove.

A few days later, Iran staged a performance-art retaliatory strike against Americans in Iraq and Syria, assuming Trump had no desire for a wider Middle East war.

So, Iran launched 12 missiles that hit two U.S. airbases in Iraq. Supposedly, Tehran had warned the Trump administration of the impending attacks that killed no Americans. Later reports, however, suggested that some Americans suffered concussions, while more damage was done to the bases than was initially disclosed.

Nonetheless, this Iranian interlude seemed to reflect Trump’s agenda of avoiding “endless wars” in the Middle East while restoring deterrence that prevented, not prompted, full-scale conflicts.

Yet in a second Trump administration, rethreading the deterrence needle without getting into major wars may become far more challenging. The world of today is far more dangerous than when Trump left in 2021.

An inept Biden administration has utterly destroyed U.S. deterrence abroad through both actual and symbolic disasters:

• the Chinese dressing down of U.S. diplomats in Anchorage;

• the humiliating skedaddle from Afghanistan;

• the brazen flight of a Chinese spy balloon across the U.S.;

• the invasion of Ukraine by Russia;

• the October 7, 2023 massacre of 1200 Israelis;

• the serial Houthi attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea;

• the visible restraint of Israeli from fully replying to Iranian missile attacks on its homeland;

• and renewed bellicosity on the part of both North Korea and China toward American allies such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

Of course, a second-term Trump must radically reform the Pentagon and beef up the military while warning enemies of the consequences to follow from any unwise aggression.

But if opponents believe such admonitions remain only vocal threats, then empty verbiage surely will erode deterrence further—such as Joe Biden’s serial and empty braggadocio, “Don’t!”

Biden’s past theatrical finger-shaking translated into aggressors like Putin going into Ukraine, Iran sending missiles into Israel, and the Houthis serially hitting shipping in the Red Sea.

Given the past messes of the Iraqi, Libyan, and Syrian interventions, and the catastrophic Biden humiliation in Afghanistan, Trump in 2024 is much more emphatic about the need to avoid such overseas dead-end entanglements or even the gratuitous use of force that historically can sometimes lead to tit-for-tat entanglements.

Still, Trump’s selection of J.D. Vance as vice president, along with Tulsi Gabbard, RFK, Jr., and Tucker Carlson as close advisors, coupled with the announcements that former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and prior UN Ambassador Nikki Haley will not be in the administration, may be misinterpreted by scheming foreign adversaries as proof of Trump neo-isolationism.

Moreover, the U.S. is battered by an unsustainable $37 trillion national debt and a nonexistent southern border that saw 12 million illegal aliens enter with impunity.

So, the use of force abroad is now often seen in a zero-sum fashion as coming at the expense of unaddressed American needs at home.

Moreover, a woke, manpower-short military has not achieved strategic advantages from wars abroad, while disparaging and alienating the very working-class recruits who disproportionately fight and die in them.

Recently, even as President-elect Trump’s inner circle emphasized an end to endless conflicts, Trump warned Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin not to escalate his attacks against Ukraine. Yet that advice was followed by a Russian massive drone onslaught against civilian Ukrainian targets.

Putin no doubt wishes to encourage American enemies to test Trump’s deterrent rhetoric against his campaign’s domestic promises to mind America’s own business at home.

Is there a way to square the deterrence circle?

Trump will have to speak clearly and softly while carrying a club. And for the first few months of his administration, he will be tested as never before to make it clear to Iran and its terrorist surrogates, China, North Korea, and Russia that aggression against US interests will be swiftly and quietly met with disproportionate and overwhelming repercussions.

Yet Trump will likely have to rely on drones, missiles, and air strikes and not on major engagements, to deter enemies from aggression—and his domestic critics from claiming he turned into a globalist interventionist.

He is not.

Trump remains a Jacksonian. But such deterrence entails warning from time to time the reckless and adventurous abroad that our allies have no better friend than America and our adversaries no worse enemy.

In other words, Trump must remind Americans only by periodically deterring enemies can he prevent endless wars.

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

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/15/2024 - 17:00

Election Week Saw Huge Money-Market Fund Inflows, Bank Deposits Rise, Loan Volumes Shrink

Money market funds saw massive inflows for the second straight week (+$81.6BN), pushing the total assets under management to a new record high of $6.66TN...

Source: Bloomberg

And while MM funds surged, total US bank deposits dropped modestly (-$7.5BN on a seasonally-adjusted basis)...

Source: Bloomberg

Though interestingly, on a non-seasonally-adjusted basis, total deposits rose by a modest $3.7BN during the week ending 11/6 (which included the election)...

Source: Bloomberg

Excluding foreign deposits, US banks saw domestic deposits rise on both an SA (+$12BN) and NSA (+$16.7BN) basis...

Source: Bloomberg

Loan volumes shrank significantly during election week...

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, the decoupling between bank reserves at The Fed and the total US equity market capitalization has reached an extreme...

Source: Bloomberg

With liquidity being drawn down from The Fed's reverse repo facility at a pace, we wonder how long that spread can be maintained.

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/15/2024 - 16:41

The Great Splainin' Cometh

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

"The meltdown has gotten so heavy liberal bureaucrats are ready to form antigovernment militias and fretting about black helicopters"

- Max Blumenthal

“Many Democrats were considering how to navigate a dark future, with the party unable to stop Mr. Trump from carrying out a right-wing transformation of American government. Others turned inward, searching for why the nation rejected them. They spoke about misinformation and the struggle to communicate the party’s vision in a diminished news environment inundated with right-wing propaganda”

- The New York Times

In July 27, 1794, the non-insane members of the Convention, or national legislative body in Paris, suddenly turned on the rabid Jacobin leader Maximillian Robespierre and overthrew his ruling tyrannical bunch — who had killed 40,000 of their fellow countrymen in the paranoid orgy known as The Reign of Terror.

The next day, Robespierre rode the tumbrel to his own appointment with “the national razor” and the Thermidorian Reaction was on!

By the way, in one of their many acts disordering French society, the Jacobins had changed the calendar, renamed all the months, and changed the weeks from seven to ten days (to eliminate Sundays as a holy day of rest in their anti-church crusade). Thus, Thermidor, the month of mid-summer.

This was but a small part of their proto-communist agenda, but you see in it the flavor of their radical extremism.

The Woke Democrats of recent times were our Jacobins, and the election of November 5, 2024, marks the kick-off of America’s Thermidorian Reaction. The crazies have been overthrown and our country awaits a restoration of norms in culture and law. No more sexualizing of children, no more flood of criminal mutts across the US border, no more furtive censorship of public speech, no more creative lawfare, no more women on the battlefield, no more “anti-racist” racism in the workplace, no more intel takeover of everyone’s private life. . . you get the picture.

Many abiding mysteries about how this happened — even of what exactly did happen — remain to be sorted out by law and by history. That is probably because so much of the Woke Revolution was provoked by state-of-the-art mind-fuckery out of the giant intel blob’s psy-ops lab.

This blob, you understand, had grown to be a colossal racketeering operation with many branches and ever-spreading roots, and it cast its spells over the populace to protect these interests — which, of course, involved huge revenue streams.

Perhaps its most potent spell was the manipulation of women’s emotion, harnessing female psychodrama as the propellant for mass social discord. In a nation of absent fathers, damaged children, and broken male-female relations, Donald Trump was painted as the ultimate archetypal tyrant Daddy figure to deflect the public’s attention from the actual tyranny growing under the US intel blob and its Globalist sidekicks. Case in point: RussiaGate, a long-running hysteria of fabricated accusations, a fabulous medley of scurrilous gossip, engineered at the highest levels of our government for the express purpose of wrecking Mr. Trump’s first term in office. “Witch hunt” was exactly the right term.

Many more psychodramas followed, all of them artificially cooked up by various branches of the blob: impeachments #1 and #2; the FBI-induced J-6 riot and the fake House J-6 inquiry that followed; the roll-out of DOJ-inspired fake criminal and civil cases that tied-up Mr. Trump in courtrooms through the year, and most especially the hostile news media’s presentation of all these things as one great big everlasting frenzy of on-screen women shrieking at the Daddy-figure, Donald Trump, like thirteen-year-old girls in fugues of hormonal disruption.

The voters, subject to years of trips laid on them, were eventually able to see through all this induced psychodrama as to how they were being manipulated, and on November 5, they finally revolted. Their quandary was probably epitomized by the absurdity of watching men in women’s sports — spiking volleyballs on the girls’ heads, bashing them on the lacrosse field, humiliating them in the swim lanes — and, more to the point, being helpless to do anything about it, because the officials in-charge under “Joe Biden” said it must be, no matter what you think and feel about what you are seeing.

The New York Times, your field-guide to blob-think, is warning its dwindling readership of psychodrama addicts that Donald Trump will now take out his “grievances” on the noble, self-sacrificing bureaucracy that manages things so well in this land. As usual, The Times misleads and misinforms. These are the grievances of the nation that has seen its law and its culture twisted into new orders of wickedness that leave daily life in the USA perverted, dishonored, and grotesquefied.

So now Mr. Trump has picked a cabinet that scares the blob to death — for good reason. They are aiming to systematically disarm and disassemble the blob. They are a team of serious and intelligent warriors and they mean business, in particular Gaetz, Gabbard, Kennedy, Ratcliffe, and Homan, with Elon and Vivek riding shotgun. (A new FBI Director has not yet been named.) You must wonder how the blob is planning to defend itself, for it surely will resist.

Many of us believe that the two recent assassination attempts against the now-President-elect were blob-sponsored operations. Everybody expects they’ll try again. But it’s possible that the American system still has enough mojo to self-correct. A whole lot of public officials have a whole lot of ‘splainin’ to do. It looks like they will be compelled to now, including the public health officers who brought us Covid-19 and the mandated, ineffective-and-harmful mRNA vaccines.

There’s every reason to believe that the ‘splainin’ can take place in correct proceedings according to law: hearings, grand juries, courts. We do have actual laws against racketeering, abuse of power, election fraud, bribery, malicious prosecution, sedition, treason, and conspiracy to commit all those crimes. Pay attention: all that is distinct from lawfare, which is making-up crimes, faking crimes, and faking procedure. You are going to see a demonstration of how law differs from lawfare. It ought to have a salutary effect on our national esprit. And that should motivate us to get on with the job of repairing the damage done to our country.

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/15/2024 - 16:20

Big-Tech & Bullion Battered, Bitcoin Bid As 'Goldilocks' Narrative Collapses

'Good news' was definitely 'bad news' this week as US macro data generally surprised positively...

Source: Bloomberg

...with both growth and inflation surprises soaring...

Source: Bloomberg

Not exactly the kind of data that supports a dovish Fed and the market has notably reduced its expectations for rate-cuts...

Source: Bloomberg

Interestingly, the 'Trump Trade' actually survived pretty well this week (Republican policy basket vs Democratic policy basket)...

Source: Bloomberg

But, Powell's comments were a giant rug-pull for the market over all with all the US majors having a horrible week...

...Nasdaq's worst week in the last ten...

The Nasdaq puked back to the same level it was at the last OpEx...

Energy and Financials were the only sectors to end the week green while tech and healthcare were clubbed like a baby seal...

Source: Bloomberg

Mega-Cap Tech stock have erased all the post-election gains...

Source: Bloomberg

Cyclicals remain well bid against Defensives still too...

Source: Bloomberg

'Most Shorted' stocks puked hard this week - the worst week since early August as last week's short-squeeze ran out of ammo...

Source: Bloomberg

Treasury yields were all higher on the week led by the long-end, but trading was very volatile...

Source: Bloomberg

The 10Y Yield touched 4.50% at the highs today and reversed - the first time it has reached that level since May 2024...

Source: Bloomberg

It wasn't just bonds and stocks that were hit, gold suffered its worst week since Jun 2021, falling back to two-month lows...

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar rallied for the seventh straight week top its highest since Nov 2022...

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin had another biog week - the best two-week run since March - hitting new record highs and holding above $91,000...

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin is also nearing a record high in terms of gold too...

Source: Bloomberg

Crude oil prices tumbled on the week back to post-Israel-Iran 'optics' battle lows...

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, here's why The Fed is fucked... With The Fed funds rate still at 4.75% and the trajectory of cuts diminishing rapidly, US financial conditions are basically as 'loose' as they were before the rate-0hiking cycle started...

Source: Bloomberg

'Animal Spirits' and re-inflation imminent - 'Proper fucked'...

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/15/2024 - 16:00

Pentagon 'Shocked' By Houthi Arsenal, Sophistication Is 'Getting Scary'

A top Pentagon official responsible for purchasing arms for America's defense stockpile has expressed 'shock' at the increasingly sophisticated arsenal possessed by Yemen's Houthis.

Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Bill LaPlante spoke at an event hosted by Axios on Wednesday, where he said that Houthis are displaying and deploying advanced weaponry, especially missiles that "can do things that are just amazing."

He described that Houthis "are getting scary" in terms of their capability on display for more than a year in the Red Sea, where they've gone to war against Israeli and international shipping.

Houthi anti-ship missiles, via The War Zone

"I'm an engineer and a physicist, and I've been around missiles my whole career," LaPlante said before the summit, called the "Future of Defense" in Washington, DC.

"What I've seen of what the Houthis have done in the last six months is something that — I'm just shocked."

Among the surprisingly advanced capabilities include anti-ship ballistic missiles. Analysts have widely asserted that without doubt Iran is directly supplying these and other capabilities.

The Houthis have also routinely scored direct hits on commercial shipping vessels with both aerial and drone boats.

The Shia group has also claimed many times to have scored hits on US, UK, and other allied warships; however, the US has kept a tight lid on the extent of this, or actual damage, perhaps wishing to not give the Houthis a propaganda win.

According to the latest attacks on US warships via an announcement this week from the Pentagon:

Houthi forces attacked two American destroyers with drones and missiles as the ships transited the Bab el-Mandeb Strait entering the Gulf of Aden on Monday, a Pentagon spokesman said today.

The Houthis launched at least eight one-way uncrewed aerial systems, five anti-ship ballistic missiles and three anti-ship cruise missiles at USS Spruance (DDG-111) and USS Stockdale (DDG-106), which engaged all the projectiles, Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder told reporters on Tuesday. U.S. Central Command has not yet issued a statement.

The Pentagon says that the warships were not damaged in the attack, which contradicts the account of Houthi spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Sare’e, who quickly claimed the attack on the pair of destroyers was successful.

The past year has seen a number of videos like the below showing destruction of large tankers off Yemen's coast:

Footage released by the #Iran-backed Houthis of their targeting the Greek-owned and operated bulk carrier Tutor has sent shockwaves throughout the shipping industry, especially after it was confirmed Tutor sunk on 19 June.pic.twitter.com/MkfQMzlHKM

— Bachar EL-Halabi | بشار الحلبي (@Bacharelhalabi) June 20, 2024

The enduring conflict in the Red Sea has been widely acknowledged as the biggest naval battle that US forces have been engaged in since World War II. Several US and Israeli airstrikes have hit Houthi positions hard over the last months, but this appears to have done little to erode Houthi capabilities. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/15/2024 - 15:45

Consumers Are Drowning In Debt As Hordes Of Businesses Fail All Over The US

Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

U.S. consumers have piled up the largest mountain of household debt in the history of the world.  If the federal government was not almost 36 trillion dollars in debt, the fact that U.S. households are nearly 18 trillion dollars in debt would be making a lot more headlines.  Sadly, our entire society is absolutely saturated with debt at this point.  Government debt on all levels is spiraling out of control, corporate debt has ballooned to absurd levels, and consumers have been gorging on debt as if there will never be any consequences.  Unfortunately, a time of reckoning has arrived, and it is going to be incredibly painful.

On Wednesday, we learned that total credit card debt has surged to a brand new record high of 1.17 trillion dollars…

Collectively, Americans now owe a record $1.17 trillion on their credit cards, according to a new report on household debt from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Credit card balances rose by $24 billion in the third quarter of 2024 and are 8.1% higher than a year ago.

Needless to say, incomes have not increased by 8.1 percent over the past year.

So our credit card balances are growing faster than our paychecks are, and that is a problem.

Meanwhile, total student loan debt has reached a brand new record high of 1.61 trillion dollars.  If you can believe it, a whopping 30 percent of all student loan borrowers have “gone without food or medicine due to their monthly bills”…

• Thirty percent of federal student loan borrowers say they’ve gone without food or medicine due to their monthly bills, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finds.

• In addition to skipping necessities, 38% of people with federal student loans said they carried credit card debt that they wouldn’t have otherwise, the bureau found.

• Around 44% of borrowers said their education debt delayed when they could by a home, and 26% said the debt pushed back when they’d start a family.

If you are a young person that is considering going to college, please try to avoid piling up student loan debt.

It can haunt you for decades.

Overall, total household debt in the United States has skyrocketed to a brand new record high of 17.94 trillion dollars…

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Center for Microeconomic Data today issued its Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit. The report shows total household debt increased by $147 billion (0.8%) in Q3 2024, to $17.94 trillion.

What a nightmare.

How did we ever allow ourselves to pile up nearly 18 trillion dollars in household debt?

That is insane!

Our wild spending fueled solid economic growth for a long time, but now most consumers are just barely scraping by from month to month and businesses all over the country are deeply struggling as a result.

For example, U.S. retailers have announced the closing of 6,481 stores so far in 2024…

U.S. retail closures have reached the highest level since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to recent estimates.

As of Nov. 8, retailers have announced 6,481 store closures, an increase of 336 closures in just the past week, according to the latest data from Coresight Research. The majority of these closures were driven by American Freight, which is shutting all 329 of its locations as part of its parent company’s bankruptcy proceedings.

Meanwhile, the auto industry is having a very tough time adjusting to lower consumer demand.

Last week, we learned that Nissan will be eliminating “9,000 jobs and a fifth of its manufacturing capacity”…

Nissan Motor shares slumped 6% in Tokyo trade Friday, a day after the Japanese automaker said it would cut 9,000 jobs and a fifth of its manufacturing capacity as it struggles with sales in China and the United States.

On Thursday, Japan’s third-biggest automaker slashed its forecast for full-year operating profit by 70%. It said restructuring would cut costs by 400 billion yen ($2.61 billion) in the financial year to the end of March.

Ouch.

Stellantis is another automaker that has decided it is time to reduce production and lay off workers…

Stellantis is indefinitely laying off more than 1,000 employees at its Jeep assembly plant in Ohio as the automaker significantly reduces its inventory levels to match demand.

Stellantis, the parent company of Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge and Ram, issued Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notices to the respective state and local governments as well as the United Auto Workers union.

The 1,100 layoffs at the Toledo South Assembly Plant will be effective as early as Jan. 5.

Sadly, I think that this is just the beginning of very tough times for the auto industry.

The tech industry is facing enormous challenges too.  In fact, chipmaker AMD just announced that it will be reducing the number of workers that it employs globally by about 4 percent…

″As a part of aligning our resources with our largest growth opportunities, we are taking a number of targeted steps that will unfortunately result in reducing our global workforce by approximately 4%,” an AMD representative said in a statement. “We are committed to treating impacted employees with respect and helping them through this transition.”

At least AMD is still treading water.

There are countless other firms that are falling apart right in front of our eyes.

Spirit Airlines is one of the latest victims.  Spirit’s share price suddenly crashed when it announced that it will be filing for bankruptcy…

Spirit Airlines is preparing to file for bankruptcy protection, it emerged last night – sparking fears among flyers about mass cancelations.

After news broke about the bankruptcy emerged on Tuesday evening, Spirit’s share price plummeted 45 percent in just seconds – erasing hundreds of millions in market value from the carrier. By Wednesday morning, it was down by 70 percent.

The Florida-based low-cost airline is in final negotiations with bondholders on a restructuring plan to secure the support of key creditors, the Wall Street Journal reported this evening. It owes more than $3 billion.

This is what happens when a debt bubble bursts.

At this stage, things are so bad that even CNN is getting ready to conduct some very harsh layoffs…

CNN is planning to wield the axe on some of its high-paid staff after dismal election ratings that cap off a disastrous period for the cable news network.

According to an explosive new report from Puck, network executives will unleash sweeping lay-offs in a bid to save the network’s flailing reputation.

It comes after the departure of stalwart Chris Wallace, and amid reports senior stars like Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper have both been denied raises.

Of course the carnage is not just limited to large businesses.

The percentage of small businesses that cannot pay their rent has reached the highest level since the peak of the pandemic, and that should deeply alarm all of us…

Close to half of small business owners couldn’t pay their rent in September, marking a new three-year high.

According to business networking platform Alignable’s September Revenue & Rent Report, 48% of small business renters could not make their rent payments. That was up from 41% in July and August. And it was the highest it has been since the Covid recovery era in March 2021, when 49% of small business owners were delinquent.

So what is the bottom line?

For years, we were able to enjoy a ridiculously inflated standard of living by piling up staggering amounts of debt.

But now that debt bubble has started to implode, and a tremendous amount of pain is on the horizon.

Going into massive amounts of debt may be enjoyable for a while, but it always catches up with you in the end.

Those that are telling you that there is an easy way out of this mess are not being honest, and we only have ourselves to blame for what is about to happen.

*  *  *

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/15/2024 - 15:25

Russia Eyes New Gas Route To China, Betting Big On Growing Demand

Authored by Julianne Geiger via OilPrice.com,

Russia is eyeing yet another pipeline to China, this time via Kazakhstan, capable of delivering up to 35 bcm of natural gas annually.

Announced by Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, the plan comes as Moscow pivots hard toward Beijing, already shipping 40 bcm of gas to the Asian giant this year.

With Europe now firmly out of the picture, China is the Kremlin’s star energy customer, even if gas accounts for just 2.8% of Beijing’s energy mix.

The logic is simple:

China likes gas, and its appetite is growing.

Domestic consumption surged 8.8% in the first eight months of the year, hitting 283 bcm, fueled by urban heating, industry, and a major push to replace diesel trucks with LNG. By 2040, natural gas demand in China is expected to soar by over 50%.

Still, let’s not forget—coal is king in China, holding nearly 60% of the energy mix, making gas a flashy side dish rather than the main course.

Meanwhile, Kazakhstan isn’t sitting idle.

The Caspian state clearly sees room for growth, with gas exports to China at a modest 4 bcm annually.

For Moscow, this pipeline would be a lifeline in its attempt to solidify ties with Beijing and fill the gaping revenue hole left by Europe. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves—China isn’t about to put all its energy eggs in Russia’s basket, and it’s no stranger to using competition to negotiate prices down.

China’s gas hunger is driving the moves as it plays the long game. Russia must decide whether its latest bet will pay off.

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/15/2024 - 14:40

The Elephant In The Room... No, The Other Elephant

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

No one is going to finger extreme wealth inequality as the proximate cause of what's going down in the next decade, but that doesn't mean it isn't the tectonic cause.

Ah, yes, the elephant in the room, a problem that's 1) big and obvious and 2) can't be solved with the usual painless policy tweaks, so we act as if it's not there. Denial and delusion are the preferred "solution" because they work just fine until the elephant starts rampaging, at which point we blubber "no one could see it coming."

Yes, the elephant in the room, what everyone should be focusing on instead of ignoring it. In the current zeitgeist, the room is so jam-packed with elephants, there's hardly any room left for those ignoring the elephantine crush.

For the elephant in the room is also shorthand for YICBIC (pronounced Yick-Bik): yes it's clickbait, but it's important clickbait, so click here and I'll enlighten you about the really really big problem no one else dares address, the problem that's going to disrupt all our nice little plans to continue getting richer everyday, in every way.

So shift your gaze from the herd of elephants in the room to the other elephant, the one that's truly ignored: extreme wealth inequality. This elephant gets an occasional pat on the rear end, more or less equal to the heartbreak of psoriasis or the odds of a Carrington Event frying every digital device on the planet.

So what if wealth inequality now exceeds the peak of 1928-29, just before that decade-long spot of bother, The Great Depression?. That was mere coincidence. The cause wasn't extreme wealth inequality, it was a Fed policy error, blah blah blah.

The reason why it's so easy to ignore extreme wealth inequality (EWI) is that we don't experience EWI as a thing, we experience a decline in our standard of living as wealth is siphoned up into the top 10%. We sense we're falling behind, that our situation is increasingly precarious, and the source of this decline seems to be inflation--a decline in the purchasing power of our earnings as prices soar--and global competition from low-cost labor.

Yes, these are factors, but the real driver of extreme wealth inequality is hard to pin down because it works its magic behind the difficult-to-understand convolutions of finance: financialization, which has morphed in the past 15 years into a supercharged hyper-financialization in which capital has risen to dominate the entire economy and the cultural zeitgeist. Everything is now subservient to capital increasing its dominance.

We all understand inflation, soaring prices and rising asset valuations, but understanding the financial plumbing that generates these consequences is difficult, and it's made more difficult by purposefully misleading fictions designed to obscure, mis-direct or explain away the actual mechanisms of financialization.

For example, the Social Security Trust Fund, a fictitious facade designed to obscure the reality that Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid are pay-as-you-go programs, funded by tax revenues and borrowed money (i.e. federal deficit spending).

If we ask cui bono, to whose benefit?, the answer is obvious: the top 10% who have experienced an unprecedented expansion of their private wealth as financialization bled earnings and diverted the economy's gains into the incomes and assets concentrated in the top 10%.

Yes, the very same 10% which sits atop every sector in the entire economy, from finance to the media. If we strip away the cultural / political differences in the top 10%--all the hot-button elephants in the room they're noisily pointing out to the rest of us--we find a foundation of unanimity / consensus that crosses all cultural-political divides: our wealth should continue increasing because we're so smart / valuable / worthy, and there is no reason for us to sacrifice our wealth to rebalance extreme wealth inequality.

The top 10% is united by their belief that their rocket-launched wealth is earned and deserved, and the "solution" to extreme wealth inequality is to toss a few crumbs at the 90% who have been bled dry / left behind: a handful of subsidized "affordable housing" units, a tax cut of which 95% of the gains goes to the top 10%, and so on: feel-good virtue-signaling that changes nothing in the financial system that generates extreme wealth inequality.

So the "solution" is to leave the engine of extreme wealth inequality running, and pat the rear end of the elephant in the room: you can extricate yourself from the quicksand of precarity and a declining standard of living by becoming an influencer, or day-trader of zero-day-expiration options--the sky's the limit, baby.

In other words: America is a classless society, anyone can get rich if they work really hard and they play to win in the financialization casino. This illusion of classlessness neatly obscures the reality that virtually all the wealth generated by the economy has flowed to those who bought assets before the Everything Bubble sent asset valuations and finance-related earnings into low Earth orbit.

The employee making $13 an hour in 2010 might make $17 or $18 an hour now, maybe just enough to keep up with the 46% inflation since 2010, or maybe not. Meanwhile, stocks have gone up ten-fold, and housing has risen 2.5-fold. So who fell behind and who got ahead, the wage-earner or the owner of assets?

(I maintain a spreadsheet of my earnings adjusted for official inflation and purchasing power--what an hour's wage could buy in the real world--going back to 1970--and by this measure, I have never earned more in terms of purchasing power than I did in 1976 at the age of 23. Please see the chart below of how wages peaked in the 1970s.)

The ceaselessly repeated cliche is that the system doesn't generate winners and losers, while the reality is the system generates winners and losers by its very design. Free admission to the casino isn't actually the same as taking advantage of the games being rigged.

Longtime readers are probably tired of these charts, because they dismantle all the self-serving rah-rah and distractions spewed by the top 10%. The RAND study Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018 concluded that capital skimmed $50 trillion from labor from 1975 to 2018.

Using data from the Federal Reserve's FRED database (series A4102E1A156NBEA), correspondent Alain M. calculated the actual sum for the period 1970 to 2022 (2022 being the most recent data available) was a staggering $149 trillion: his spreadsheet is available here as a PDF: Employees Share of Gross Domestic Income 1970-2022.

If wage earners' share of Gross Domestic Income had remained at 51% instead of declining to 43%, wage earners would have received an additional $149 trillion over those 52 years. That's roughly $3 trillion a year, which works out to an additional $22,000 annually for America's 134 million full-time workers or an additional $18,000 annually for the nation's entire work force (full-time, part-time, self-employed, gig workers) of 163 million.

No wonder wage-earners sense their standard of living has been falling for decades: it has been falling doe decades, despite all the cheerleading about what a great economy we have. Yes, but great for who?

The bottom 50% of American households didn't get a 10-bagger; their share of the nation's financial wealth actually fell. We got your great economy right here, big fella:

The top 0.01% have had a considerably different experience as their wealth soared far above inflation. These are the folks flustered by the agony of choosing which foreign enclave they're going to retire to; oh heck, just buy a villa in each one:

It's a classless society, at least looking down from the top. Those looking up have a different perspective:

What bubble? We don't see any bubble. No elephants, no bubbles, just blue sky ahead:

Look, I've gained ground along with everyone else who bought assets long ago, for the same reason: asset appreciation scooped up all the gains. It wasn't my smarts, or my education (come on, a degree in philosophy?) or all my hard work (oh, please--all the truly hard work is paid poorly) or anything other than dumb luck.

In my view, there should be zero taxes on all earnings up to the median wage of $60,000 annually--no Social Security taxes, nothing--and progressively steeper taxes on all income / capital gains from capital/finance above some modest amount, say half of the median wage ($30,000 annually), along with a transaction tax for every financial trade submitted, whether it executes or not. Shifting the tax burden from labor to capital/finance would at least start the overdue rebalancing.

So here we are, smugly ignoring the the extreme wealth inequality elephant in the room, hurrying to explain it away with a pat on its rear end. Yes, the economy changed, and by golly, we're the winners, but it's not the result of the game being rigged to our favor; it's globalization, better education, we worked hard. Yes, now it all makes sense: we're the winners as the natural order of things.

No one is going to finger extreme wealth inequality as the proximate cause of what's going down in the next decade, but that doesn't mean it isn't the tectonic cause. While we're glorying in the wonders exposed by the sea strangely receding from the beach, we're blind to the tsunami racing toward us. We don't call extreme wealth inequality the cause, but that's the temblor that set the tsunami in motion.

One last thought to those patting the rear end of the extreme wealth inequality elephant on the way out the door to collect their winnings: making the rich even richer with more tax breaks, more financialization, more rigged-casino winnings and continuing to inflate the Everything Bubble (AI!) isn't going to fix what's broken; it's going to hasten the breakdown of the entire status quo, which has put all its chips on capital / finance.

It's a pretty simple choice: either radically rebalance the economy now or hang on to your beach chair when the wave washes it all away.

*  *  *

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Tyler Durden Fri, 11/15/2024 - 14:00

American People May Finally Know COVID Origins With Trump In Office

Despite Covid-19 killing 1.2 million Americans and unleashing $18 trillion in economic damages on the US economy, the origins of the virus have yet to be officially disclosed to the American public by regulators, policymakers, and public health officials. Corporate mainstream media, Washington elite swamp creatures, intelligence agencies, and Big Tech unleashed a censorship cartel in a multi-year crusade on anyone who dared to mention a potential research lab leak in Wuhan, China. Under the Trump administration's second term, the origin of Covid is likely to be revealed to the American people. 

In an exclusive interview, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) told New York Post reporters he will take over the upper chamber's Homeland Security Committee in January after serving two years as the panel's top Republican. He explained that he would uncover the truth about Covid's origins. 

"I chose to chair this committee over another because I believe that, for the health of our republic, Congress must stand up once again for its constitutional role," Paul told the Post in an interview Wednesday, adding, "This committee's mission of oversight and investigations is critical to Congress reasserting itself."

"I think we're on the cusp of, really, the beginning of uncovering what happened with COVID," Paul continued. He believes his new position and Trump in the White House will help promote transparency on this sensitive subject.

Paul said, "We are going to, hopefully, have a friendlier administration, and we're hoping that there will be a friendly person at [the Department of Health and Human Services], and we're hoping they'll be friendly at [the National Institutes of Health]."

He's right about that. On Thursday afternoon, President-elect Donald Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the Secretary of Health and Human Services. 

Paul noted, "The biggest item of the COVID coverup is that for years, we've known there is this dangerous research." He added that Americans should be free to discuss any topic related to Covid without Washington elites and big tech's censorship cartel silencing anyone who has a non-governmnet approved opinion. 

Remember this from Jan. 2020. We were one of the first to mention the lab leak theory in the public domain. 

Then 2021. 

Email Shows Researcher Who Funded Wuhan Lab, Admits Manipulating Coronaviruses, Thanked Fauci For Dismissing Lab-Leak Theory https://t.co/Dhn5SBWfPz

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 2, 2021

Fast forward to 2023...

Covid-19 Created In Wuhan Lab Through Classified Bioweapons Program: US Investigators https://t.co/IZAQGACaJY

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 12, 2023

And this year...

In Early 2020, A Chinese Source Trusted By FBI Said COVID Leaked From Wuhan Lab, Sources Say https://t.co/aXL0DxO25n

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 24, 2024

Also, on Thursday, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) penned a letter (first revealed by NYPost) to the Intelligence Community Inspector General Thomas Monheim about the integrity of the federal investigation into the origins of Covid...

" ... conflicted individuals may have censored the laboratory-origin related intelligence," Marshall wrote.

The American people deserve answers.

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/15/2024 - 13:40