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

• The Man Who Killed Google Search: When Raghavan joined the company, Yahoo held a 30.4% market share — not far from Google’s 36.9%, and miles ahead of the 15.7% of MSN Search. By May 2012, Yahoo was down to just 13.4% and had shrunk for the previous nine consecutive months, and was being beaten even by the newly-released Bing. That same year, Yahoo had the largest layoffs in its corporate history, shedding nearly 2,000 employees — or 14% of its overall workforce.  Under Raghavan, Google has become less reliable, less transparent, and is dominated by search engine optimized aggregators, advertising, and outright spam. (Where’s Your Ed At?)

• Why You Can’t Get a Restaurant Reservation: How bots, mercenaries, and table scalpers have turned the restaurant reservation system inside out. (New Yorker)

• How G.M. Tricked Millions of Drivers Into Being Spied On (Including Me): This privacy reporter and her husband bought a Chevrolet Bolt in December. Two risk-profiling companies had been getting detailed data about their driving ever since.(New York Times)

• Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media—and driving some to suicide. Hundreds of tips began flooding in from across the country, bucking the trend of typical exploitation cases. Usually, older male predators spend months grooming young girls into sending nude photos for their own sexual gratification. But in these new reports, teen boys were being catfished by individuals pretending to be teen girls—and they were sending the nude photos first. The extortion was rapid-fire, sometimes occurring within hours. And it wasn’t sexually motivated; the predators wanted money. The tips were coming from dozens of states, yet the blackmailers were all saying the same thing: “I’m going to ruin your life.” “I’m going to make it go viral.” “Answer me quickly. Time is ticking.” “I have what I need to destroy your life.” (Businessweek)

• The Jews Aren’t Taking Away TikTok: But conspiracy theories that say otherwise are coming for democracy itself. (The Atlantic) but see also Israel Military Purge Escalating, Will Topple More Major Officials: ‘Avalanche’ of exits to include defense minister, IDF commander, Shin Bet chief, sources say (Spy Talk)

• McKinsey Under Criminal Investigation Over Opioid-Related Consulting: Justice Department is investigating the consulting firm’s advice to manufacturers of OxyContin and other opioid products. (Wall Street Journal)

• The salmon industry faces extinction — not because of drought, but government policies and politics: The main reason is the decline of the salmon population in the Sacramento River to such an unsustainable level that there’s reason to fear that it may not recover for years, if ever — unless government policies are radically reconsidered. Commercial fishers who relied on the fall-run salmon as their dominant source of income have struggled to find alternatives. (Los Angeles Times)

• Fox News has destroyed American confidence in itself: Collapse of trust in government is a purely American phenomenon. Why? Because we have Fox News and the others don’t. Oh, they have tabloids and conservative newspapers and so forth, but nothing like Fox News, which makes its living by spreading outrage over the way the country is run. (Kevin Drum) see also America’s Fox News Problem: When it comes to misinforming the American public about the issues that matter to policymakers, many are quick to blame the internet, especially Facebook and Google. However, other factors have been at work for far longer than those companies — false memes, factual misinformation, political bias. Many of those roads lead to Fox News. (The Big Picture)

• The Humbling of Marjorie Taylor Greene: “She has, in very little time, undermined the influence of her party’s entire right flank, driving less unhinged Republican, slike the poo-flinging chaos monkeys they are” (New York Times)

•How athletes and entertainers like Shohei Ohtani get financially duped by those they trust: Wealth management experts say athletes and entertainers who squander enormous sums fall into three interconnected buckets: They are naive about or inattentive to their finances; they make risky investments; they overspend on family, friends and expensive toys. (Los Angeles Times)  (No paywall at AOL)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week with  Dr. Ed Yardeni, President of Yardeni Research and former Chief Investment Strategist at Deutsche Bank, Cheif Economist at Prudential, and researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. His most recent book is “Predicting the Markets: A Professional Autobiography.”

 

How’s the PE Winter looking? Yes, you probably have to care about this one

Source: Financial Times

 

Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.

~~~

Still on book leave . . .  but I am past the midway point and making good progress!

 

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

Iran's Nightmares

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

Details of the recent limited Israeli retaliatory strike against Iranian anti-aircraft missile batteries at Isfahan are still sketchy. But nonetheless, we can draw some conclusions.

Israel’s small volley of missiles hit their intended targets, to the point of zeroing in on the very launchers designed to stop such incoming ordnance.

The target was near the Natanz enrichment facility. That proximity was by design. Israel showed Iran it could take out the very anti-missile battery designed to thwart an attack on its nearby nuclear facility.

The larger message sent to the world was that Israel could send a retaliatory barrage at Iranian nuclear sites with reasonable assurances that the incoming attacks could not be stopped. By comparison, Iran’s earlier attack on Israel was much greater and more indiscriminate. It was also a huge flop, with an estimated 99 percent of the more than 320 drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles failing to hit their planned targets.

Moreover, it was reported that more than 50 percent of Iran’s roughly 115-120 ballistic missiles failed at launch or malfunctioned in flight.

Collate these facts, and it presents a disturbing corrective to Iran’s non-stop boasts of soon possessing a nuclear arsenal that will obliterate the Jewish state.

Consider further the following nightmarish scenarios: Were Iranian nuclear-tipped missiles ever launched at Israel, they could pass over, in addition to Syria and Iraq, either Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the West Bank, Gaza, or all four. In the cases of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, such trajectories would constitute an act of war, especially considering that some of Iran’s recent aerial barrages were intercepted and destroyed over Arab territory well before they reached Israel.

Iran’s strike prompted Arab nations, the US, the UK, and France to work in concert to destroy almost all of Iran’s drones. For Iran, that is a premonition of the sort of sophisticated aerial opposition it might face if it ever decided to stage a nuclear version.

Even if half of Iran’s ballistic missiles did launch successfully, only a handful apparently neared their intended targets—in sharp contrast to Israel’s successful attack on Iranian missile batteries. Is it thus conceivable that any Iranian-nuclear-tipped missile launched toward Israel might pose as great a threat to Iran itself or its neighbors as to Israel?

And even if such missiles made it into the air and even if they successfully traversed Arab airspace, there is still an overwhelming chance they would be neutralized before detonating above Israel.

Any such launch would warrant an immediate Israeli response. And the incoming bombs and missiles would likely have a 100 percent certainty of evading Iran’s countermeasures and hitting their targets.

Now that the soil of both Iran and Israel is no longer sacred and immune from attack, the mystique of the Iranian nuclear threat has dissipated.

It should be harder for the theocracy to shake down Western governments for hostage bribes, sanctions relief, and Iran-deal giveaways on the implied threat of Iran successfully nuking the Jewish state.

The new reality is that Iran has goaded an Israel that has numerous nuclear weapons and dozens of nuclear-tipped missiles in hardened silos and on submarines. Tehran has zero ability to stop any of these missiles or sophisticated fifth-generation Israeli aircraft armed with nuclear bombs and missiles.

Iran must now fear that if it launched 2-3 nuclear missiles, there would be overwhelming odds that they would either fail at launch, go awry in the air, implode inside Iran, be taken down over Arab territory by Israel’s allies, or be knocked down by the tripartite Israel anti-missile defense system.

Add it all up, and the Iranian attack on Israel seems a historic blunder. It showed the world the impotence of an Iranian aerial assault at the very time it threatens to go nuclear. It revealed that an incompetent Iran may be as much a threat to itself as to its enemies. It opened up a new chapter in which its own soil, thanks to its attack on Israel, is no longer off limits to any Western power.

Its failure to stop a much smaller Israel response, coupled with the overwhelming success of Israel and its allies in stopping a much larger Iranian attack, reminds the Iranian autocracy that its shrill rhetoric is designed to mask its impotence and to hide its own vulnerabilities from its enemies.

And the long-suffering Iranian people?

The truth will come out that its own theocracy hit the Israeli homeland with negligible results and earned a successful, though merely demonstrative, Israeli response in return.

So Iranians will learn their homeland is now vulnerable and, for the future, no longer off limits.

And they will conclude that Israel has more effective allies than Iran and that their own ballistic missiles may be more suicidal than homicidal.

As a result, they may conclude that the real enemies of the Iranian nation are not the Jewish people of Israel after all, but their own unhinged Islamist theocrats.

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/27/2024 - 23:20

Americans Are Increasingly Negative About China

Data by Gallup shows that Americans' views of China have continued to worsen after 2018.

The deterioration started with the U.S.-China trade war under President Donald Trump, continued during the coronavirus pandemic that originated in China and has recently taken on yet another dimension among concerns about widespread Chinese tech and industrial espionage and subversion as well as continued human rights abuses and tension surrounding Taiwan.

As Statista's Katharina Buchholz details below, among American adults in 2024, unfavorable views of China were voiced by 77 percent of respondents after having reached a high of 84 percent in early 2023. In 2005, that figure had stood at just 47 percent.

You will find more infographics at Statista

In 2023, 77 percent of Americans said the viewed Taiwan very or mostly favorable. At the same time, 66 percent saw the military power of China as a critical threat, up from 41 percent in 2016.

64 percent said the same about the economic power of China.

Republicans voters saw China more critical with just 6 percent who had a favorable view in 2023, compared to 18 percent of Democrats and 17 percent of Independents.

That year, favorable views of China in the U.S. reached an all-time low of just 15 percent overall. Again, Republicans were more critical of China's military and economic prowess, with 80-81 percent seeing it as a major threat.

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/27/2024 - 22:45

The Scramble For Antarctica

Authored by Gregory Copley via The Epoch Times,

The “scramble for Antarctica” is slowly gathering steam, and it is not unrelated to a new “scramble for the Americas.” The ramifications for the Indo-Pacific and, indeed, for the global strategic balance are also profound.

By 2024, Antarctica had at least 82 bases from more than 30 countries. China has five bases, three built within the past decade (the latest in February), and three with year-round manning.

Antarctica, in its own right, is home to many mineral and oceanic riches, but it is also key to a number of military, navigational, and other resources. The revival of interest in global-reach fractional orbital bombardment systems (FOBS), for example, relying on polar orbit delivery of hypersonic weapons, depends on having assets in both polar regions. The region may have certain properties that are ideal for collecting signals intelligence.

But the case of Antarctica is particularly interesting because it is, in essence, “no man’s land,” truly a terra nullius; it is the last major landmass that is essentially outside the realm of the “ownership” of national governments.

Significantly, the “scramble for Africa,” which reached its zenith in the 19th century, is now facing the prospect of a widespread and not necessarily peaceful “undoing” as the great powers comprehensively lose their influence there. But that is another story. What is significant now is the competition of the major powers and others for dominance in Antarctica, and this is not unrelated to interest in the Arctic.

Change throughout the global systems of governance was accelerating through 2024, with the main focus on the internal divisions of most societies, the decline in trust in—or prestige of—almost all nation-states and their governance, and a breakdown in transnational governance bodies. In macro terms, it is a period of conflict between globalist totalitarianism and nationalism.

But if Africa was perceived in and before the 19th century as a region ripe for conquest and exploitation, and many areas of the world were then only beginning to be opened to a new, industrialized world, then Antarctica today is the great treasure open for seizure, if only for the fact that it has no native inhabitants capable of speaking for themselves.

The tenets of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty are being largely honored in the breach. The treaty primarily spells out the demilitarization of the continent. While it is true that there are no formal combatant forces there, it is not true that the landmass is free from military and strategic usage. The Antarctic Treaty, initially proposed by the United States, was adopted in 1959 by 12 nations: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, the USSR, the United Kingdom, and the United States. A number of other nations acceded to the treaty, among which Brazil, (then) West Germany, India, and Poland were the most actively engaged in Antarctic research. The treaty supposedly ensured the non-militarization of the continent and freedom of scientific investigation.

Nothing in the treaty was, the 1959 document said, to be interpreted as “a renunciation or diminution by any Contracting Party of any basis of claim to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica.” Thus, the seven nations that have outstanding (and often overlapping) claims to Antarctica emanating outward like slices of a pie—Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway, and the UK—may harbor hopes to have their claims recognized internationally “at some future time.”

That future time has begun.

The claims have been staked, and the next decade may see some of these claims become concrete. At the time of the Antarctic Treaty’s creation, the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) claimed the right to acquire the entire Antarctic. The Russian Federation, which succeeded the USSR, has not renounced that option.

A widely accepted but not fixed concept on which nations have territorial rights to Antarctica is based on sovereign land exposure to the continent. Thus, the exposure is determined by a “pie-chart” set of lines from the South Pole to the eastern and western extremes of the facing landmass. Under this arrangement, Australia is the largest stakeholder in Antarctica, and the South Atlantic British territories, such as the Falkland Islands and South George, give the UK exposure to the continent. Chile, Argentina, New Zealand, and France also have claims under this formula. It would not be unexpected for South Africa to stake a claim under this arrangement.

But thus far, it has all been based on the 1959 Treaty and “understandings.” Nothing has been defined and tested by conquest or the increasingly frail “international courts.” We are in an age when Cold War and post-Cold War treaties are being discarded—often wisely because they have been overtaken by history—while we plunge further into the age when supposedly binding treaties are being interpreted as “suggestions.” And global governance mechanisms, such as the United Nations and regional organizations, are unable to halt unilateral power projection by force.

Significantly, communist China does not see Antarctica in isolation but as a component of its global—and globalist—projection.

China on Feb. 7 inaugurated its Ross Sea scientific research station near the Ross Sea region and the U.S. McMurdo station and those of New Zealand, South Korea, Italy, Germany, and France, starting operations in an outpost in a part of the Antarctic due south of Australia and New Zealand for the first time. The Qinling station will be staffed year-round with quarters sufficient to house as many as 80 people in the summer months. China has four other research stations in other parts of Antarctica built from 1985 to 2014—Zhongshan, Taishan, Kunlun, and Great Wall—with two year-round stations like Qinling.

Chinese ice-breaker Xuelong, or “Snow Dragon,” sets off from a port in Shanghai on Nov. 8, 2017. Xuelong steamed south from Shanghai on Nov. 8, bound for Antarctica to establish China's newest base as Beijing strives to become a polar power. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Construction of Qinling first broke ground in 2018, but its launch was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In November 2023, China sent its biggest Antarctic fleet and more than 460 personnel to the site to help complete the station.

However, in the broader sense, the 2020s began to see the unraveling of those Cold War and immediate post-Cold War treaties, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere, largely because they constrained the Western alliance and Russia but did not put limitations on Beijing.

The result is that the world is entering an era when not only are formal arrangements governing military behavior disintegrating, and the so-called rules-based world order is being repudiated (particularly by the Chinese regime), but so, too, is the influence of regional bodies, such as the African Union (AU), the Organization of American States (OAS), and so on.

The OAS has, in fact, become meaningless. This links to the Antarctica question because China has not only been building its polar capacities but has also built linked installations in South America for its space capacities.

China’s Espacio Lejano Station, which, according to Wikipedia, “is a radio station located in Loncopué Department, Neuquén Province, Argentina, and is operated by the Chinese National Space Administration as part of the Chinese Deep Space Network, in collaboration with Argentina’s National Space Activities Commission (CONAE). The Chinese Deep Space Network is managed by the China Satellite Launch and Tracking Control General (CLTC), which reports to the People’s Liberation Army [PLA] Strategic Support Force.” No Argentine officials, including those from CONAE, are permitted access to the 200-hectare facility, which has been operating since 2018.

Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei, was reported in 2024 to be anxious to ensure Argentinian access to the base. China is also known to utilize South America for other space-related activities.

Argentina's new president, Javier Milei, speaks to the crowd from a balcony of the Casa Rosada government palace during his inauguration day in Buenos Aires on Dec. 10, 2023. (Cezaro de Luca/AFP via Getty Images)

The Argentine Congress did not approve the 50-year lease to China of the land for the station until February 2015, but work had already begun on it in 2013, and it was completed in 2017.

Meanwhile, the Chinese regime’s penetration of the entire Caribbean network of small countries, as well as much of the Western Hemisphere south of the United States, has been completed for some time. The old U.S. Monroe Doctrine, initiated in 1823 to give Washington the “right” to keep European powers out of the southern Americas, has completely given way to the influence of Beijing.

So what happens when China breaks apart strategically, and how will this happen?

China is becoming increasingly preoccupied with internal difficulties and threats. Its economy, never as large as Beijing claimed in recent years, is now in tatters. The fact that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) views the internal threat as greater than the external challenge is exemplified by the reality that it spends more on internal security forces than the People’s Liberation Army.

While building its gold reserves to diversify away from the U.S. dollar (Beijing is quietly moving out of its holdings of U.S. debt), China is facing a shortage of funds and is, in any event, facing the prospect of a leadership challenge. This portends an open question, but what is clear is that a period of chaos can be anticipated.

It may be true that the United States has gradually absorbed the impact of a reduced dependence on the Chinese market and funds, but the rest of the Americas have not, and neither has Australia, for example. In a period of transformation, China may well attempt some external adventures that could mark the end of the present strategic framework. This could well unravel Antarctica’s special status.

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/27/2024 - 22:10

"A Marriage Of Ineptitude & High Self-Esteem" - Tucker Exposes The Liberal Cognoscenti

"The marriage of ineptitude and high self-esteem is really the marker of our time," explains Tucker Carlson as part of his wide-ranging discussion with Joe Rogan.

Reflecting on the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Karine Jean-Pierre, Carlson remarks that "I've nothing against dumb people at all. My dogs are dumb and I love my dogs..."

"I'm not attacking [AOC] for being dumb, and the White House Press Secretary is in the same category, but the idea that dumb person has no idea she's dumb, she really thinks like she won the prize, she's the most impressive, like:

"I'm White House Press Secretary because I'm the best talker in America."

It's so crazy and yet the smartest people I know are very often sort of, they have humility."

Watch the brief discussion below:

Tucker Carlson about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Karine Jean-Pierre: "The marriage of ineptitude and high self-esteem is really the marker of our time. I've nothing against dumb people at all. My dogs are dumb and I love my dogs....I'm not attacking her for being dumb but the… pic.twitter.com/aL9PyyWyyf

— Camus (@newstart_2024) April 26, 2024

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/27/2024 - 21:35

How The Supreme Court's Immunity Decision Could Limit The Cases Against Trump

Authored by Sam Dorman via The Epoch Times,

The Supreme Court indicated on April 25 that it would issue a narrow ruling refining the scope of presidential immunity while leaving the details of former President Donald Trump’s other legal battles up to lower courts.

The most immediate effect of their decision on President Trump’s legal battles would be to delay his Washington case, where his immunity appeal originated. That trial was scheduled to start on March 4 but, more recently, observers have been questioning whether it will even start before the election.

Sending the case back to D.C. District Judge Tanya Chutkan would presumably force her to continue pre-trial proceedings with an added layer: Determining how to square Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictment with the Supreme Court’s new definition of immunity.

Based on their April 25 questions, the justices are expected to distinguish between official and unofficial acts while ruling that presidents enjoy some immunity for the official ones. But it’s unclear how specific they will be in their description and whether they'll provide enough instructions for the lower court to avoid yet another appeal that could once again reach the Supreme Court.

“The Supreme Court could remand the immunity case with very little, if any, instruction, let the district court come up with its opinion, and then let the appellate court deal with it again,” John Shu, a constitutional law expert who served in both Bush administrations, told The Epoch Times. He added, “I certainly hope that doesn’t happen, because we’d end up right where we are today.”

Even if the case does proceed to trial, it’s questionable how effective it will be without some of the indicted actions that President Trump’s attorney, D. John Sauer, said were private and therefore outside the scope of immunity. Michael Dreeben, who argued for Mr. Smith, said the Justice Department was willing to proceed with a weakened indictment.

Perhaps previewing the court’s opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts worried that without official acts, the trial court may be proceeding with a “one-legged stool.” Mr. Sauer responded that he didn’t think the case “would be able to go forward.”

Mark Miller, senior counsel at the Pacific Legal Foundation, told The Epoch Times that Justice Roberts could require a special interrogatory verdict form in which the jury is asked to distinguish between official and nonofficial conduct in weighing President Trump’s case.

State of Trump’s Other Cases

It’s difficult to predict how the court’s decision would impact President Trump’s other ongoing criminal cases. Their future may hinge on the justices’ particular phrasing rather than merely distinguishing between official and non-official acts.

The Georgia election case is the most likely to be impacted by the decision since the accusations are most similar to the Washington trial, which will likely loom large in the justices’ deliberations.

But as the court indicated, their eventual opinion will have long-lasting impacts on other cases. “We’re writing a rule for the ages,” Justice Neil Gorsuch told Mr. Dreeben. The opinion would presumably ripple through multiple levels of the justice system as well. In an exchange with Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Mr. Dreeben acknowledged that immunity would apply to both state and federal prosecutions.

On the day of the oral argument, President Trump was facing state charges related to his purported attempt to influence the 2016 presidential election with a “hush money” payment to adult film actress Stephanie Clifford. In that case, he tried raising presidential immunity as a reason to exclude certain evidence since it came from his official communications channels as president.

New York Judge Juan Merchan said the motion was filed too late but it nevertheless highlighted the complicated nature of President Trump’s cases as they relate to immunity. While the alleged payment to Ms. Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, was made before the election, the purported falsification of documents didn’t occur until after he took office.

President Trump theoretically could appeal a conviction in New York based on the Supreme Court’s decision. It’s unclear, however, whether the payments would fall under the type of immunity that the Supreme Court eventually granted.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis testifies during a hearing in the case of the State of Georgia v. Donald John Trump at the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta on Feb. 15, 2024. (Alyssa Pointer/Pool via Getty Images)

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis requested the Georgia trial start in August but that seemed increasingly unlikely after information surfaced about her affair with Nathan Wade, one of her top prosecutors.

“That’s not even going to ... start before the election,” Article III Project senior counsel Will Chamberlain told The Epoch Times.

Kevin O'Brien, a former assistant U.S. attorney, similarly told The Epoch Times that “no one” knows when the Georgia trial will start. “Even under the best of circumstances, it wasn’t going to start until next year,” he said.

Post-Election Fallout

If the Georgia trial proceeded, Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee would presumably need to parse out that indictment like Judge Chutkan would with the one in Washington.

Besides President Trump, more than a dozen others were named in the Georgia indictment. Those included former aides like former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Experts like South Texas College of Law Professor Josh Blackman and Mr. Chamberlain suggested it was unlikely the immunity decision would afford substantial protection to defendants other than President Trump.

Mr. Meadows filed an amicus brief in which he told the Supreme Court that the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution made him immune from charges in Fulton County because they “arise from his official acts as Chief of Staff.” It’s unclear how the court will rule or affirm criminal immunity for advisers, if at all.

“The Court should therefore take care to ensure that it leaves intact the robust immunity from state prosecution afforded under the Supremacy Clause, particularly as it relates to subordinate federal officials,” he said.

Then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows talks to reporters at the White House in Washington, on Oct. 21, 2020. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

President Trump’s remaining federal case in Florida involves his handling of classified documents and was initially scheduled to start on May 20, but that appeared to be in limbo. The Supreme Court is expected to issue an opinion in June, meaning that a delayed trial in Florida could see an attempt by President Trump to raise legal arguments from the justices’ opinions.

As in the New York case, it appeared that President Trump could appeal a would-be conviction depending on the scope of immunity provided by the Supreme Court’s decision. “It would definitely impact [the Florida and Georgia cases] because both of those deal with what Trump and his lawyers would argue are official acts,” constitutional attorney Gayle Trotter told The Epoch Times.

In February, President Trump asked Florida Judge Aileen Cannon to dismiss 32 counts in his indictment based on presidential immunity. She has yet to issue a decision on that motion.

Regardless of how the justices rule on immunity, oral argument raised the prospect that presidents can override the effects of state and federal prosecutions by pardoning themselves.

Assuming any of his trials extend past his would-be inauguration, it’s questionable whether he could use his pardon authority on himself.

Justice Gorsuch noted that “happily,” the question of a president’s self-pardoning “has never been presented to us.” Mr. Dreeben told the court: “I don’t believe the Department of Justice has taken a position [on self-pardoning]. The only authority that I’m aware of is a member of the Office of Legal Counsel wrote on a memorandum that there is no self-pardon authority. As far as I know, the Department has not addressed it further.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/27/2024 - 21:00

Adam Schiff Robbed In San Francisco

Via the Post Millennial,

Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff’s luggage was stolen out of his parked car in a downtown San Francisco parking garage on Thursday. He later attended speaking event and dinner in a shirt and hiking vest.   

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the left-wing Senate hopeful was at the event to thank high-profile lawyer Joe Cotchett for his support to replace the late Dianne Feinstein.    

The outlet reported that Schiff’s car had been parked in the garage to visit the area.  

Cotchett’s press agent Lee Houskeeper, who was at the dinner at Ristorante Rocca and warned Schiff not to leave anything in the car, reportedly said, “I guess it’s ‘Welcome to San Francisco.’”    

Cotchett said Schiff was not fazed by the incident and went about his business during the visit and acted as if everything was normal.     

The congressman told the Chronicle, “Yes, they took my bags. But I’m here to thank Joe.”    

Schiff ended up speaking without a suit jacket during the event and instead donned a shirt and hiking vest.   

“Maybe he can go out with Willie Brown to choose a new suit from one of the many fine clothing establishments in San Francisco,” Houskeeper joked, mentioning the former San Francisco mayor.  “Willie knows them all.”    

Schiff grew up in the city and has been in the California delegations for over 20 years while crime has become a growing issue for Californians.    

Crime has in San Francisco has led a mass exodus of retailers from the downtown core. This includes the likes of stores such as J. Crew, Old Navy, Nordstrom Rack, and entire malls closing up shop.    

Last year a CNN crew that was reporting on the rampant crime had their vehicle broken into and equipment stolen. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/27/2024 - 20:25

Bitcoin Is Built To Last: How The Network Defends Against Attacks

Via Bitcoin Magazine,

Bitcoin is one of the most robust distributed systems in the history of mankind. For fifteen years it has ticked along block by block with only two disruptions in its first few years that were very quickly handled by responsive developers the minute they manifested themselves. Aside from that, it has ticked along producing a block roughly every ten minutes with no interruptions.

This reliability has set a golden standard of expectations for Bitcoin users, encouraging them to view it as a completely unstoppable system.

In many peoples’ minds, Bitcoin has already won, and the world is just catching up with that realization. “Bitcoin is inevitable” as many would say.

This doesn’t mean that Bitcoin is literally unstoppable though, there are possible events that could cause massive damage or disruption to the network if they were to occur. We’re going to go through a few of these examples today and see how they would likely play out.

GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION

Bitcoin represents a serious conundrum for governments worldwide in multiple ways. First, it functions as a system allowing global payments to flow from one user to another, irrespective of borders or financial controls.

But while governments can’t stop the overall Bitcoin system from continuing to function, they can introduce regulations to impact its participants. In order to really disrupt the Bitcoin network itself governments would have to go after the miners that actually add new blocks to the blockchain to keep the system progressing forward.

This was done before in 2021, when the Chinese government banned bitcoin mining. Almost 50% of the network hashrate went offline as Chinese miners began migrating to the rest of the world.

The network kept on ticking.

In the worst-case scenario, the Chinese government could have enforced confiscation of mining hardware. That would have left the CCP in control of all of those miners, which could have been put to use engaging in a 51% attack on the network. But that didn’t happen. Even if the confiscatory approach had been taken, rather than simply enforcing a mining ban, it would have been deeply unlikely to succeed in attacking the network given the complexity of coordination among collaborators.

For example, one of the places large amounts of hashrate migrated to was Iran. Lots of rumors circulated at the time of miners bribing Iranian military officials in order to get their machines past customs into the country.

If governments attempted to seize mining equipment and closed borders preventing equipment from being shipped internationally, the possibility of bribing government officials or illegally smuggling them out is very real given the financial incentive to do so. For such a seizure event to present an existential risk to the network itself, a government would need to be able to seize over 51% of the active network hashrate. All it would take is a small enough percentage to sneak through the borders to ensure that what was left to be seized did not surpass that 51% threshold and the network would remain safe.

As hashrate further decentralizes around the globe, the possibility of such an action creating a risk to Bitcoin itself continues to shrink. While it still remains a possibility, the more governments that would be required to cooperate to pull off such a move, the less likely such an event is. Bitcoin’s resilience shines through, as empirically demonstrated by the actions of the CCP in 2021.

POWER GRID FAILURE

Bitcoin miners cannot function without electricity. They’re computers at the end of the day, so that’s an obvious reality. This presents a big risk to miners who depend on power generation and delivery infrastructure.

Many natural disasters can cause power failures and issues with the grid. Hurricanes, wildfires, extreme weather events like cold snaps can disrupt power infrastructure. A prime example of a of such events impacting hashrate was seen in Texas during winter storm Uri in 2021. The scale of these events, however, do not directly pose a systemic risk to the Bitcoin network. Texas losing power, even with ~30% of the network hashrate located within the state, would not bring down or destroy the Bitcoin network.

As shown in 2021 during the Chinese mining ban, even with ~50% of the network hashrate going offline in an incredibly short period of time, the network continued to function. Yes, the blocktime interval increased dramatically and induced a large spike in transaction fees to confirm transactions quickly, but the network itself continued functioning and processing transactions without interruption.

Even if we were to imagine a much larger scale event, such as a massive solar storm knocking out power for half of the entire planet, the other half would still have functioning power. The miners located in that half of the globe would continue mining, continue confirming transactions, and the network would march along functioning just fine for half of the planet. Even people on the half of the globe without power, as long as they have maintained a physical backup of their seed phrase, will still have access to their funds whenever power is restored or they can make their way to a place with a functioning grid.

Power would need to be taken out for essentially the entire planet to actually kill Bitcoin, otherwise, it will keep chugging away in a corner somewhere until power is brought back online and it can “regenerate” itself expanding back around the globe.

INTERNET DISRUPTIONS

While the internet is composed of decentralized protocols in a similar fashion to Bitcoin, the actual infrastructure underlying it is owned mostly by large multinational corporations and governments (again similar to Bitcoin infrastructure like miners). The ownership of this infrastructure is still relatively distributed among many players globally, but it is not the same degree of distribution as a highly decentralized system like a mesh network.

There are still rather large chokepoints and bottlenecks that if disrupted or attacked can cause a massive degradation of reliability and functionality. Almost everyone connects to the wider internet through an Internet Service Provider (ISP), this market is dominated in most of the world by a handful of large providers in any given region. There isn’t much choice between providers, and this represents a large chokepoint for people interacting with the internet. If an ISP filters or denies you access and there isn’t another provider to choose from, you’re in trouble.

Similarly, your ability to talk to someone on the other side of the world is due to larger “backbone” networks run by major corporations, and underwater fiber-optic cables along the ocean floor. These cables are highly centralized chokepoints for communications between different countries and continents. If the operators were to begin filtering information passing through them, or someone were to physically sever the cables themselves, it could cause massive disruption of global internet traffic.

So what could actually be done if either of these things happened? If an ISP started filtering Bitcoin traffic to users, people would have their nodes disconnected from the network. Broadcasting transactions might be impossible, depending on how harshly the ISP filters traffic. But the rest of the network would keep chugging along. Services like Blockstream’s satellite feed exist, and a bitcoin transaction is such a small piece of data that any momentary connection to an unfiltered network would be enough to broadcast your payments.

Even larger-scale interruptions of connections between countries or regions amount to a simple irritation in the grand scheme of things. Let’s say a country like Russia had its internet connection to the outside world completely severed. If Russian miners didn’t shut down, the blockchain would fork into two separate chains because miners inside and outside Russia would not receive each others’ blocks. Whenever that connection was repaired, whichever group of miners had mined a longer chain would simply “overwrite” the shorter one, erasing the transactions that took place on the other shorter chain.

There is also a high possibility such a chainsplit doesn’t even occur in such a situation. Blockstream’s satellite service offers a way for people even without the internet to continue receiving blocks in real time from the rest of the network. This, in combination with satellite uplinks (which are not as simple to block), or even radio relays, could allow Russian miners to continue mining a single blockchain with the rest of the network through an outage.

Yet again, Bitcoin’s resilience can find a way.

WRAPPING UP

Bitcoin is not quite literally invincible, or unstoppable, but it is unbelievably resilient in the face of disruption or adversarial attack on the network. It was literally designed to function this way. The entire point of decentralized networks is to be robust in the face of threats and disruptions, and Bitcoin has succeeded amazingly in that design goal.

The world has, and will continue to see, incredibly massive destructive events. Whether that entails weather events or cosmic events, acts of intentional sabotage or warfare, or just plain old government regulation, Bitcoin has survived many of them already. It will most likely continue to survive everything thrown at it into the future.

It’s not invincible, but it is resilient. The type of event or disaster it would take to actually take Bitcoin offline permanently would be something of such a massive scale of destruction, that in the unlikely event it does occur, we will all have much bigger problems than Bitcoin ceasing to function. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/27/2024 - 19:50

Which City Has The Most Billionaires In 2024?

Some cities seem to attract the rich. Take New York City for example, which has 340,000 high-net-worth residents with investable assets of more than $1 million.

But there’s a vast difference between being a millionaire and a billionaire. So where do the richest of them all live?

Using data from the Hurun Global Rich List 2024, Visual Capitalist's Pallavi Rao ranks the top 20 cities with the highest number of billionaires in 2024.

A caveat to these rich lists: sources often vary on figures and exact rankings. For example, in last year’s reports, Forbes had New York as the city with the most billionaires, while the Hurun Global Rich List placed Beijing at the top spot.

Ranked: Top 20 Cities with the Most Billionaires in 2024

The Chinese economy’s doldrums over the course of the past year have affected its ultra-wealthy residents in key cities.

Beijing, the city with the most billionaires in 2023, has not only ceded its spot to New York, but has dropped to #4, overtaken by London and Mumbai.

In fact all Chinese cities on the top 20 list have lost billionaires between 2023–24. Consequently, they’ve all lost ranking spots as well, with Hangzhou seeing the biggest slide (-5) in the top 20.

Where China lost, all other Asian cities—except Seoul—in the top 20 have gained ranks. Indian cities lead the way, with New Delhi (+6) and Mumbai (+3) having climbed the most.

At a country level, China and the U.S combine to make up half of the cities in the top 20. They are also home to about half of the world’s 3,200 billionaire population.

In other news of note: Hurun officially counts Taylor Swift as a billionaire, estimating her net worth at $1.2 billion.

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/27/2024 - 19:15

Chinese Nationals Charged With Conspiracy to Export US Technology

Authored by Matt McGregor via The Epoch Times,

The Department of Justice has arrested two Chinese nationals who allegedly plotted to export U.S. technology to advance the People’s Republic of China’s military operations.

Han Li, 44, and Lin Chen, 64, have been charged with several counts of conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), in addition to the Export Administration Regulations (EAR), for attempting to export a machine used to process silicon microchips.

“The export restrictions at issue in this case were put in place to prevent the illicit procurement of commodities and technologies for unauthorized military end use in the People’s Republic of China,” U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California Ismail Ramsey said in a press release on the arrests.

“This office will continue to vigorously enforce the nation’s export laws, including those pertaining to advanced technologies, to protect our national security.”

Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olson explained that the defendants “sought to evade export controls to obtain U.S. semiconductors” that they were then going to ship to a Chinese company.

In 2014, the Department of Commerce placed restrictions on the Chengdu GaStone Technology Company (CGTC) based in China, which made it “ineligible to receive exports of certain U.S. technologies and services.”

“As alleged in the indictment, between at least May 2015 and August 2018, Li and Chen conspired to evade the export restrictions imposed by the Department of Commerce on CGTC by using intermediary companies,” the DOJ said.

“Specifically, the defendants sought to illegally obtain for CGTC a DTX-150 Automatic Diamond Scriber Breaker machine from Dynatex International, a Santa Rosa, California company.”

The DOJ said the defendants purposefully avoided getting the Department of Commerce’s authorization to export the CGTC, the DOJ said.

“The defendants sought to obtain the machine through an intermediary company called Jiangsu Hantang International (JHI), which they fraudulently represented as the purchaser and end user, a proxy they fraudulently represented as the purchaser and end user,” the DOJ said.

“To avoid detection, Li and Chen instructed Dynatex International to ensure that the export information associated with the sale did not list CGTC as the ultimate consignee of the shipment.”

Li, the DOJ said, is suspected to be in China.

Both Li and Chen are charged with counts of conspiracy to violate IEEPA, which carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine, and a count of false electronic export information activities, which carries a sentence of up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. They are also charged on a count of smuggling, which carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, and IEEPA violations, which carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California and the DOJ’s National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control department will prosecute the case.

“This arrest highlights the importance of interagency collaboration in preventing illegal exports that could compromise sensitive technologies and our national security as well as undermine our American economy,” said Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent in Charge Tatum King.  

Brent Burmester, a special agent in charge with the Department of Commerce, said stopping “the flow of U.S. semiconductor technology” that goes to advance the People’s Republic of China’s “military modernization efforts” is key to protecting the country’s national security.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert Tripp suggested that businesses in the U.S. should establish a relationship with their local FBI field office “to help protect against the pervasive threat of criminals looking to steal American technology.”

“We will aggressively pursue anyone who violates export control laws designed to protect our national and economic security,” Mr. Tripp said.

In a 2023 report on FBI Director Christopher Wray’s roundtable discussion on CBS News, Mr. Wray called the Chinese Communist Party “the defining threat of this generation.”

He said in the discussion that the FBI has 2,000 active investigations “just related to the Chinese government’s effort to steal information.”

“There is no country that presents a broader, more comprehensive threat to our ideas, our innovation, our economic security, and ultimately our national security,” he said.

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/27/2024 - 18:40

These Are The Countries That Have Become 'Sadder' Since 2010

Can happiness be quantified?

Some approaches that try to answer this question make a distinction between two differing components of happiness: a daily experience part, and a more general life evaluation (which includes how people think about their life as a whole).

The World Happiness Report - first launched in 2012 - has been making a serious go at quantifying happiness, by examining Gallup poll data that asks respondents in nearly every country to evaluate their life on a 0–10 scale. From this they extrapolate a single “happiness score” out of 10 to compare how happy (or unhappy) countries are.

More than a decade later, the 2024 World Happiness Report continues the mission, and Visual Capitalist's Pallavi Rao visualizes the latest findings below to show which countries have become sadder in the intervening years.

Which Countries Have Become Unhappier Since 2010?

Afghanistan is the unhappiest country in the world right now, and is also 60% unhappier than over a decade ago, indicating how much life has worsened since 2010.

In 2021, the Taliban officially returned to power in Afghanistan, after nearly two decades of American occupation in the country. The Islamic fundamentalist group has made life harder, especially for women, who are restricted from pursuing higher education, travel, and work.

On a broader scale, the Afghan economy has suffered post-Taliban takeover, with various consequent effects: mass unemployment, a drop in income, malnutrition, and a crumbling healthcare system.

Nine countries in total saw their happiness score drop by a full point or more, on the 0–10 scale.

Noticeably, many of them have seen years of social and economic upheaval. Lebanon, for example, has been grappling with decades of corruption, and a severe liquidity crisis since 2019 that has resulted in a banking system collapse, sending poverty levels skyrocketing.

In Jordan, unprecedented population growth—from refugees leaving Iraq and Syria—has aggravated unemployment rates. A somewhat abrupt change in the line of succession has also raised concerns about political stability in the country.

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/27/2024 - 18:05

Office Market Availability Rate Hits Record High In San Francisco

Authored by Travis Gillmore via The Epoch Times,

A confluence of factors continues to impact San Francisco’s office market, with vacancy and availability rates reaching record highs in the first quarter of 2024, according to commercial real estate analysts at global companies Avison Young and CBRE.

Availability - the combination of vacancy and sublease opportunities in the market - reached 36.7 percent of all office square footage from January to April, according to recently released market analyses from the leading commercial real estate firms.

“We’re at mostly record levels, and I say that kind of cautiously optimistic,” Dina Gouveia, west region market intelligence manager for Avison Young, told The Epoch Times April 25.

According to Ms. Gouveia vacancies only saw a “slight uptick” during the first quarter which might mean such is slowing.

“[I]f we can continue that slower velocity of additional vacancies ... then it would be a very good indicator of us being near a bottom,” she said.

Much of the issue, experts say, is the city’s reliance on the tech industry, with more than 44 percent of its office space housing technology companies.

Additionally, tech firms lead the list of upcoming lease expirations—accounting for 45.8 percent, according to Avison Young.

San Francisco’s office market was deeply affected as the number of work-from-home employees skyrocketed during the pandemic, though recent trends show a slight return to the office.

Remote job postings fell more than 5 percent to 22.2 percent in the first quarter compared to the end of last year, according to the Avison Young report.

Job postings increased 22.7 percent in the first quarter following seven consecutive quarters of decline. The listings were led by legal services, engineering, consulting, research, accounting, and recruiting companies. Media and tech industries, however, both experienced declines, according to the report.

Unemployment, however, ticked up to 4.4 percent in the first quarter, a sharp increase from its low of 2.3 percent in June 2022.

According to the report, slightly less than 1 million total square footage was leased in the first quarter—a 63.3 percent drop from the five-year pre-pandemic average.

Analysts noted signs they deemed optimistic, including Netherlands-based payment company Adyen’s sublease of space at 505 Brannan Street—in the city’s South of Market district—and multinational accounting company KPMG’s lease renewal at 55 2nd Street, in the city’s financial district. Combined, those leases total 300,000 square feet, experts said.

Sublease opportunities offer lower rents than signing new leases that require build outs and significant capital to develop properties, which is spurring the sector of the market, while also allowing businesses with existing leases to rent out some of their vacant space.

“The amount of sublease activity that we’ve seen has increased a lot because tenants are looking for plug-and-play opportunities,” Ms. Gouveia said. “A lot more activity is happening because tenants ... want to take advantage of pre-built spaces and lower rents.”

High interest rates are making it harder for companies with limited cash to refinance loans. At the same time, rates are also slowing down new purchases, according to analysts.

With an uncertain market—in part due to conflicting signals from the Federal Reserve about the future of interest rates—prospective tenants are seeking flexibility when looking to renew leases or relocate.

“Interest rates are a huge catalyst,” Ms. Gouveia said. “We’re hearing a little bit of two different stories that interest rates are going down and then they’re not. If the interest rates do come down ... that will stimulate the commercial market quite a bit.”

In response, the highest quality properties have seen lease term lengths decrease from quarter-to-quarter to make them less risky.

Such wariness from tenants is forcing some landlords to lower rents and offer concession packages to attract business, though a disparity still remains between what tenants want to pay and what landlords can offer given their current debt load.

Many landlords are working with their lenders to restructure debt before loans come due, and analysts expect rent prices to become more favorable for tenants once such is realized.

“Rents will definitely come down,” Ms. Gouveia said. “And once that debt workout happens, there’s going to be a larger reset.”

Distressed properties at risk of default are creating buying opportunities of which private buyers are increasingly taking advantage. Industrial investors and real estate investment trusts, however, are on the sidelines, with 100 percent of all investment activity coming from private buyers in the first quarter, according to the report.

On the other hand, the percentage of private sellers also increased to begin the year compared to prior years, with analysts pointing to uncertainty that their debt can be restructured due to high interest rates and limited financing opportunities.

Refinancing has proven challenging because lenders are reluctant to write loans for office buildings because defaults are looming and valuations are plummeting, with true market values unclear, according to analysts.

A pending election is also slowing activity, as many firms want more certainty before making large capital decisions.

“Because we’re coming up on an election year, a lot of companies go dormant on their expansion plans, and servicers are also in that wait-and-see mode,” Ms. Gouveia said.

Another global commercial real estate leader, CBRE, found that San Francisco’s office market is facing unique challenges given crime and homelessness impacting the city.

According to Colin Yasukochi, executive director of CBRE’s Tech Insights Center, more office tenants are signing new leases, showing a willingness to recommit to the city, but are still somewhat tentative when doing so.

“This dynamic is still somewhat tenuous as employers and their employees still have concerns about public safety and the cost of doing business,” he told The Epoch Times by email.

Noting that some workers are returning to the office for more days a week he suggested such is not enough for a recovery, which, he said, will require a desire to compete in a robust economic environment.

“Additional mandates are unlikely to increase office attendance materially at this point, but rather a booming economy will compel more people to want to be in the office and be better connected to the next growth cycle,” Mr. Yasukochi said.

While artificial intelligence could play a significant role in buoying the tech sector that the city relies on, a fast recovery, he said, is not anticipated.

“The San Francisco office market is beginning to transition out of its four-year downturn,” Mr. Yasukochi said. “While it will take many years to rebalance supply and demand, we are starting to see positive signs.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/27/2024 - 17:30

Putin Did Not Order Alexei Navalny's Death, US Intelligence Finds

In a surprising turn, The Wall Street Journal has issued a new weekend report saying that US intelligence agencies do not believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin planned or ordered the death of opposition activist and politician Alexei Navalny.

"U.S. intelligence agencies have determined that Putin likely didn’t order Navalny to be killed at the notoriously brutal prison camp in February, people familiar with the matter said, a finding that deepens the mystery about the circumstances of his death," writes the Journal.

Via Associated Press

"The assessment doesn’t dispute Putin’s culpability for Navalny’s death, but rather finds he probably didn’t order it at that moment," WSJ continues. "The finding is broadly accepted within the intelligence community and shared by several agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the State Department’s intelligence unit, the people said."

And yet it must be recalled that Western officials and media pundits alike had immediately upon reports of the 47-year old Navalny's death rushed to declare that he had been 'assassinated' by Russian authorities upon Putin's order.

This led to a new wave of US-led sanctions on Russia, and even disrupted momentum toward a hoped-for prisoner swap between Moscow and Kiev at the time.

President Biden had asserted in a statement issued on the very day of his Feb.16 death that "Putin is responsible for Navalny's death" and that it was "proof of Putin's Brutality" - but ultimately that the 'democratic future' Navalny believed in was worth "dying for" - according to the president's words at the time.

Russian prison authorities had officially listed his demise as from "sudden death syndrome," which is how natural causes such as heart attacks are typically described.

Navalny's team is not happy with the fresh WSJ report which is being seen as essentially an exoneration of Putin:

In a statement to the Journal, Leonid Volkov, a longtime Navalny ally, rejected the U.S. intelligence assessment and said those who assert that Putin wasn’t aware of Navalny’s death “clearly do not understand anything about how modern day Russia runs.”

“The idea of Putin being not informed and not approving killing Navalny is ridiculous,” he said.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Below, journalist and geopolitical commentator Aaron Maté explains that despite news of Navalny's life and death having driven world headlines, he was still largely an unknown within broader Russian politics and society especially on a national level [emphasis ZH].

* * *

Navalny was a marginal opposition figure who polled at around 2%. Putin didn't fear him; it served Putin to have him seen in the West as his main opposition.

The Russian gov't meanwhile has just barred anti-war candidate Boris Nadezhdin. A Russian court has also issued a draconian prison sentence to anti-war sociologist Boris Kagarlitsky. We don't hear about people like Nadezhdin and Kagarlitsky in the West nearly as much for one reason: unlike Navalny, they don't collaborate with Western governments.

Navalny worked with NATO intel cutout Bellingcat and went through the "Yale World Fellow" program, a regime change training ground. For this reason, we also don't hear that Navalny was an unrepentant xenophobe who compared Muslim immigrants to cockroaches and rotten teeth. 

His death is a tragedy. He was undoubtedly mistreated. But because he served US interests, US state media will make him into someone he was not. And just compare their fawning coverage to their silence on, or even support for, the ongoing persecution of Julian Assange. Or their complete silence on the mistreatment and death of US citizen Gonzalo Lira in Ukrainian custody -- universally ignored in US media.

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/27/2024 - 16:55

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.