Month: January 2021

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi issued some blunt statements on the deteriorated state of China-US relations during a recent wide-ranging interview in state media:

“We don’t need a world where China becomes another United States. This is neither rational nor feasible. Rather, the United States should try to make itself a better country, and China will surely become its better self,” he said.

He laid down his vision and some terms by which ties could improve amid the current “unprecedented difficulties” which plummeted sharply during Trump’s final year in office, underscoring that the current US strategy of confrontation and its “new Cold War” attitude is “doomed to fail”. 

He said instead of the world cooperating more deeply to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, it remains that “unilateralism, protectionism and power politics are standing in the way of international cooperation” – in words clearly directed at the US.

In contrast, Foreign Minister Wang, said China has “spearheaded multilateral cooperation. Unswerving in advocating multilateralism…”.

At the same time, Wang pointed out Sino-Russian relations have improved vastly over the past year:

“President Xi Jinping and President Vladimir Putin have had five phone calls and exchanged correspondence on multiple occasions, providing the most important strategic guidance for the steady growth of the bilateral relations. Mutual support between the two peoples.

Russia was the first country to send medical and other supplies to China, and China was one of the strongest supporters of Russia’s COVID-19 response efforts.

The two countries have also worked closely on joint epidemic response and development of vaccines and drugs. Growing practical cooperation despite challenges. The two countries have vigorously facilitated economic reopening, safeguarded the functioning of industrial and supply chains, and made steady progress in several major projects.”

While urging the incoming Biden administration to “return to a sensible approach” on China, the top Chinese diplomat described further:

“Fundamentally, it all comes down to the serious misconceptions of US policymakers about China. Some see China as the so-called biggest threat and their China policy based on this misperception is simply wrong. What has happened proves that the US attempt to suppress China and start a new Cold War has not just seriously harmed the interests of the two peoples, but also caused severe disruptions to the world. Such a policy will find no support and is doomed to fail.

China-US relations have come to a new crossroads, and a new window of hope is opening. We hope that the next US administration will return to a sensible approach, resume dialogue with China, restore normalcy to the bilateral relations and restart cooperation.”

China and the U.S. can open a “new window of hope” in bilateral ties in the new year, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said https://t.co/EdkmAUdgqy

— Bloomberg (@business) January 2, 2021

It was here in the interview that he claimed over and against repeat US charges and probes centered on Chinese intellectual property theft and infiltration of US systems that—

“China never meddles in the internal affairs of the United States and values peaceful co-existence and mutually beneficial cooperation with the United States,” according to the interview. 

Chinese state media has lately been boasting of the communist government’s coronavirus response:

On the left is picture of New Year’s Eve in Wuhan, full of joy and excitement; on the right is New Year’s Eve in New York City, cold and empty. Who is to blame? If the US political elites cannot reflect on themselves, that country will suffer more losses. pic.twitter.com/YZpexqdZ3Q

— Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) January 1, 2021

And below is perhaps the most interesting part of the interview, where Wang offers his vision for a “window of hope”… or how positive relations with Washington can be restored:

“We know that some in the United States are uneasy about China’s rapid development. However, the best way to keep one’s lead is through constant self-improvement, not by blocking others’ development. We don’t need a world where China becomes another United States. This is neither rational nor feasible. Rather, the United States should try to make itself a better country, and China will surely become its better self.

We believe that as long as the United States can draw lessons from the past and work with China in the same direction, the two countries are capable of resolving differences through dialogue and expanding converging interests by cooperation. This will allow the two major countries to establish a model of coexistence that benefits both countries and the world, and open up new development prospects in line with the trend of history.”

But after four years of the Trump administration, China has emerged in US eyes as the new primary political, economic and even military rival of the United States, and further as rivals for global influence.

Despite the optimism expressed by Wang based on the US presidential transition, it remains that Biden is likely to find himself ‘boxed in’ as a result of Trump’s continuing ratcheting pressure in the form of targeted punitive actions against Chinese companies and officials.  

Submitted by Rusty Weiss of The Mental Recession

A project conducted by Harvard University scientists and funded largely by Microsoft founder Bill Gates to test sun-dimming technology to cool global warming is quietly moving forward in Sweden.

We know what you’re thinking – this can’t be real… but it is.

Reuters reports that the Harvard project “plans to test out a controversial theory that global warming can be stopped by spraying particles into the atmosphere that would reflect the sun’s rays.”

In Sweden, plans to fly a test balloon next year are already underway.

The test balloon will not release any particles into the atmosphere, but “could be a step towards an experiment, perhaps in the autumn of 2021 or spring of 2022.”

Those experiments may see “up to 2 kg of non-toxic calcium carbonate dust” released into the atmosphere.

Controversial Bill Gates-funded plan to dim the sun’s rays moves forward quietly https://t.co/rOVxtVfHmT

— TheBlaze (@theblaze) December 28, 2020

Bill Gates Plan to Dim the Sun is a Bad Idea

Bill Gates is living proof that just because you once did something very smart to make your mark on the world, it doesn’t necessarily make you a smart person.

Having the gall to play God by dimming the sun’s rays and thinking it won’t lead to drastic and unpredictable problems makes that case rather obvious.

Reuters notes the project – called the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx) – is playing with “something with potentially large and hard-to-predict risks, such as shifts in global rain patterns.”

“There is no merit in this test except to enable the next step,” said Niclas Hällström, director of the Swedish green think-tank WhatNext? said.

He added, “You can’t test the trigger of a bomb and say ‘This can’t possibly do any harm.’”

One of the pushers of solar geoengineering by stratospheric injections of sulfur aerosols is David Keith, a Professor of Applied Physics at Harvard. Here’s a recent talk about his crazy ideas: https://t.co/aDMX1OUtCl
What will happen with his idea, if CO2 wasn’t driving climate?

— Ned Nikolov, Ph.D. (@NikolovScience) December 28, 2020

Gates Says Life After COVID Won’t Return to Normal Until 2022

Social-engineering fan Bill Gates made news earlier this month when he wanted to figuratively dim the sun on society by suggesting pandemic lockdowns could and should be extended.

The tech nerd expressed support for shutting down bars and restaurants for up to an additional six months, and indicated lockdowns may continue all the way into 2022.

.@BillGates on Covid: “Even through 2022” we should be prepared for life to not return to “normal”

Says “sadly” it’s “appropriate” for bars and restaurants to close over the next “four to six months” pic.twitter.com/cmDD8pv3XR

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) December 13, 2020

“Certainly, by the summer will be way closer to normal than we are now, but even through early 2022, unless we help other countries get rid of this disease and we get high vaccinations rates in our country, the risk of reintroduction will be there,” Gates warned CNN anchor Jake Tapper.

Many Americans have shown they aren’t willing to continue with the lockdown charade. We’re not sure how many will be thrilled with Gates being the ruler of the sun either.

Unmasked police busted an illegal family gathering on Dec. 31 in Gatineau, a city in western Quebec, Canada, according to Radio Canada. The shocking incident was caught on camera.

Service de police de la Ville de Gatineau (SPVG) received an anonymous complaint from a neighbor late Thursday evening. When police arrived at the home on rue le Baron, they discovered the homeowner lied about the number of occupants inside as public health orders in the metro area have placed limits on gatherings. 

SPVG noticed a number of vehicles parked in the driveway of the home and loud noise coming from inside. They figured there were more than two people inside, despite the homeowner insisting otherwise. 

Mariane Leduc, head of communications at SPVG, explained the situation went quickly downhill after an “aggressive man” had zero intention of cooperating with the police.

Mathieu Tessier appears to be the aggressive man in the video, which was filmed from someone inside the home. Tessier was at his sister’s house when police officers without masks yanked him from inside the house and tackled him to the ground. The family alleges police officers used excessive force. 

Il faut que ça devienne viral. RT en masse les amis. La lumière doit être fait sur cet événement. pic.twitter.com/nnxsGcQcOn

— Nusakan le récalcitrant (@Nusakan007) January 1, 2021

After the incident, Mathieu and his sister were both arrested and then released later that night. Everyone in the home was slapped with $1,500 fines for ignoring public safety health orders against gatherings. 

SPVG received a total of 30 complaints of illegal assembly in Gatineau on New Years’ night.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Judge David Bernhard is a jurist in Fairfax County (where I reside) has issued a controversial order that the portraits of white judges must be removed from a courtroom because their presence would deny a black defendant a fair trial. In a decision applauded in the Washington Post, Bernhard declared that a fair trial is threatened in “a courtroom gilded with … white individuals peering down on an African American defendant.” 

The public defender filed a “Motion to Remove Portraiture Overwhelmingly Depicting White Jurists Hanging in Trial Courtroom.” The motion was not opposed by Fairfax County’s recently elected lead prosecutor Steve Descano, who the Washington Post covered as one of a number of liberal prosecutors recently elected around the country.

Bernhard order explains:

The low hanging fruit of overt racism is easily identified and picked off to strengthen the tree of society. The more conventional symbols which to some impart tradition, and to others subtle oppression, are less comfortably addressed. The ubiquitous portraits of white judges are such symbols. When they were hung in the more recent past, negative connotations thereof were not a consideration. To the public at large making use of the courthouse, other than some attorneys who might have appeared before the judges portrayed, there is no context to learn about who is depicted. The portraits in sum, are of benefit to only a few insiders who might fondly remember appearing before a particular judge or to a retired judge’s family making to rare visit to the courthouse. To the public seeking justice inside the courtrooms, thus, the sea of portraits of white judges can at best yield indifference, and at worst, logically a lack of confidence that the judiciary is there to preside equally no matter the race of the participants.

We have previously discussed the removal of academic portraits and even pictures of leading writers like Shakespeare under analogous rationales.

Judge Bernhard should be credited for seeking to address concerns over racial justice and inequality. However, I disagree with this decision as I have with the removal of academic portraits. We are thankfully achieving greater diversity on our courts and on our faculties.  That is being reflected in such honorary portraits. Yet, the removal of portraits not because of their records but their race is troubling.

I certainly agree that in the case of Commonwealth v. Shipp, “The Defendant’s constitutional right to a fair jury trial stands paramount.”  The problem is Bernhard’s juxtapositioning of a fair trial with “the countervailing interest of adorning courtrooms with portraits that honor past jurists” who are “overwhelmingly … white individuals.”  I do not agree that the mere fact that the portraits feature white jurists constitutes a message that black people are “of lesser standing.”

Under Bernhard’s logic, leading jurists who fought slavery and segregation would be removed because of their race.  Thus, Earl Warren, who wrote Brown v. Board of Education, would have to be removed because he was white. 

The irony is crushing. Warren wrote that:

“To separate [black children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely to ever be undone.”

Yet, under Judge Bernhard’s approach, Warren’s portrait would have to be removed because his image would create that same “feeling of inferiority” because he happened to be white.

While Judge Bernhard refers to the portraits as “ornaments,” it is the use of race-based criteria for their removal that is so troubling and, in my view, misguided.

Here is a calendar of all the top political, economic and financial events in the new 2021.

January

• Friday, January 1: UK & EU — New UK-EU trading relationship set to begin.
• Friday, January 1: ASEAN — Brunei Darussalam assumes the ASEAN Chairmanship for 2021.
• Sunday, January 3: USA — New Congress begins.
• January: Japan — Ordinary Diet session begins.
• Tuesday, January 5: USA — Runoff elections for Georgia Senate seats. Both Senate elections went to runoff after no candidate received a majority on Election Day in November. If the Democratic candidates win both runoff elections, control of the Senate will switch to the Democratic party, and Vice President-elect Harris will vote to break ties.
• Wednesday, January 6: USA — Congress counts Electoral College votes for President and Vice President.
• January / February: United States — Cabinet nomination hearings and confirmation votes. The Senate will hold hearings and confirmation votes for President-elect Biden’s Cabinet and Executive Branch nominees.
• Wednesday, January 20: USA — President-elect Biden takes office.
• Thursday, January 21: EU — ECB Governing Council meeting.
• Wednesday, January 27: USA — FOMC meeting statement.

February

• February 1-5: Singapore — MAS report on economic developments in Singapore.
• Thursday, February 4: UK — BoE MPC meeting (and monetary policy report).
• Sunday, February 7: Ecuador — General election. Ecuador will vote to elect a new president and fill all the seats in the National Assembly.
• Sunday, February 14: Spain — Catalan regional elections.
• Tuesday, February 16: Singapore — Fiscal year 2021 budget.

March

• Early March: China — The National People’s Congress. The annual NPC is scheduled to start early March and is likely to last around 2 weeks. A key thing to watch will be Premier Li’s annual government report, which usually include official economic targets for the next year, such as GDP growth, CPI inflation, fiscal deficits and employment (these targets, if available, were set during closed-door policy meetings in the preceding December). The report will also set the broad tone of economic policy direction for the rest of the year. Main government officials will hold press conferences on the sidelines, giving further details on the 14th Five-Year Plan.
• Wednesday, March 3: UK — Annual budget.
• Thursday, March 11: EU — ECB Governing Council meeting.
• Wednesday, March 17: Netherlands — General election.
• Wednesday, March 17: USA — FOMC meeting statement (and Summary of Economic Projections).
• Thursday, March 18: UK — BoE MPC meeting.
• Tuesday, March 23: Israel — Parliamentary elections.
• March 25-26: EU — European Council meeting.

April

• April: USA — Biden Administration likely to release FY2022 Budget proposal. The budget proposal is traditionally sent to Congress the first Monday in February, but at the start of a new administration this typically takes until April or so.
• April 1 – May 31: ASEAN — 38th semi-annual summit.
• Wednesday, April 7: South Korea — Municipal elections.
• Sunday, April 11: Peru — General election. Peruvians will elect a President, two vice presidents, and new members of congress for all 130 congressional seats.
• Thursday, April 22: EU — ECB Governing Council meeting.
• Monday, April 26: Chile — Election of Constitutional Convention. Chileans will elect all the members of the convention tasked with drafting a new constitution.
• Wednesday, April 28: USA — FOMC meeting statement.

May

• May: Singapore — World Economic Forum annual meeting.
• May: Australia — Federal budget released.
• Thursday, May 6: UK — Parliamentary elections, Scotland.
• Thursday, May 6: UK — BoE MPC meeting (and monetary policy report).

June

• Early June: Italy — Major cities may have mayoral elections (Milan, Roma, Naples, Turin, Bologna).
• June: Japan — Ordinary Diet session ends.
• June: France — Regional elections.
• Sunday, June 6: Mexico — Congressional and gubernatorial election. Mexico will elect new representatives for the lower chamber of congress for all 500 seats. Elections will also be held for 15 state governor offices.
• Thursday, June 10: EU — ECB Governing Council meeting.
• Wednesday, June 16: USA — FOMC meeting statement (and Summary of Economic Projections).
• June 24-25: EU — European Council meeting.
• Thursday, June 24: — UK: BoE MPC meeting.

July

• Thursday, July 22: Japan — Term ends for the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly (election in summer).
• Thursday, July 22: EU — ECB Governing Council meeting.
• Friday, July 23: Japan — Tokyo Olympic Games begin.
• Wednesday, July 28: USA — FOMC meeting statement.

August

• August: Australia — Earliest date for Federal Election. Election likely to be held sometime between August 2021 and May 2022. Current polling suggests the incumbent Liberal/National Party is likely to be returned to Government, although the opposition Australian Labour Party is yet to release their policy platform.
• August: South Africa — Local elections.
• Sunday, August 1: USA — Debt ceiling reinstated. The federal debt limit will be reinstated at its level on that day. If the limit is not already suspended or raised, Treasury will likely be able to draw down its cash balance for several weeks before running out.
• Thursday, August 5: UK — BoE MPC meeting (and monetary policy report).
• Saturday, August 21: Malaysia — Sarawak state election.

September

• September: Japan — Term ends for LDP President.
• September: Germany — Federal elections.
• Thursday, September 9: EU — ECB Governing Council meeting.
• Monday, September 13: Norway — Parliamentary elections.
• Sunday, September 19: Russia — Parliamentary elections.
• Tuesday, September 21: Thailand — Fiscal year 2022 budget.
• Wednesday, September 22: USA — FOMC meeting statement (and Summary of Economic Projections).
• Thursday, September 23: UK — BoE MPC meeting.
• Thursday, September 30: USA — Fiscal year 2021 ends. Deadline for Congress to pass appropriations for fiscal year 2022. Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act authorization also expires, which will likely serve as an informal deadline for Congress to pass an infrastructure program.

October

• Saturday, October 9 — Czech Republic — Parliamentary elections.
• October 14-15: EU — European Council meeting.
• Thursday, October 21: Japan — Term ends for Lower House Members of Parliament.
• Sunday, October 24: Argentina — Congressional and municipal election. Argentinians will vote to fill 127 out of 257 seats in the lower chamber of congress as well as 24 out of 72 seats in the Senate.
• Thursday, October 28: EU — ECB Governing Council meeting.

November

• Tuesday, November 2: USA — Election Day. A few states will hold special elections to fill vacancies in the US House of Representatives, and several others will conduct gubernatorial and other state and local elections.
• Wednesday, November 3: USA — FOMC meeting statement.
• Thursday, November 4: UK — BoE MPC meeting (and monetary policy report).
• Sunday, November 21: Chile — General election. Chile will elect a new President, 20 out of the 50 seats in the Senate, and the House of Representatives in its entirety.

December

• Wednesday, December 15: USA — FOMC meeting statement (and Summary of Economic Projections).
• December 16-17: EU — European Council meeting.
• Thursday, December 16: EU — ECB Governing Council meeting.
• Thursday, December 16: UK — BoE MPC meeting.

Source: Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

Health officials this week overturned fees that were being imposed on distilleries that made hand sanitizer early last year amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Two different fees, including a $14,000 one, were included in the COVID 19 relief package that was signed into law in March. That package made distilleries that produced hand sanitizer “over-the-counter drug monograph facilities” and forced them to pay fees.

COVID-19 is the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. Distilleries made hand sanitizer because there was a nationwide shortage of the product last year.

The fees were due on Feb. 12. The Food and Drug Administration alerted distilleries this week that the fees needed to be paid. In a public notice, the administration noted it was authorized to collect fees by the CARES Act.

However, a Health and Human Services spokesperson said Thursday that the fees are being reversed.

“Small businesses who stepped up to fight COVID-19 should be applauded by their government, not taxed for doing so,” Brian Harrison, chief of staff for the agency, said in a statement.

“I’m pleased to announce we have directed FDA to cease enforcement of these arbitrary, surprise user fees. Happy New Year, distilleries, and cheers to you for helping keep us safe!”

HHS lawyers found that the fees were issued in a manner that has the force and effect of a legislative rule, which only the HHS secretary has the authority to issue.

The Distilled Spirits Council had reacted to the fees with surprise, issuing a press released urging the Food and Drug Administration to waive them for hundreds of distillers who helped by making hand sanitizer amid the pandemic.

“This incredibly frustrating news comes as a complete shock to the more than 800 distilleries across the country that came to the aid of their local communities and first responders. This unexpected fee serves to punish already struggling distilleries who jumped in at a time of need to do the right thing,” said Distilled Spirits Council President and CEO Chris Swonger in a statement.

“Everyone was totally blindsided by FDA’s announcement,” added Phil McDaniel, CEO of St. Augustine Distillery.

In a statement after the rollback of the fees, Swonger said the move “is such a relief to hundreds of distillers.”

“We want to thank HHS leadership for quickly intervening and protecting distillers from these unwarranted fees,” he said.

“Distillers were proud to help make hand sanitizer for their communities and first responders during their time of need.”

Sunday marks the one-year anniversary of the January 3rd, 2020 killing of popular Iranian IRGC Gen. Qassem Soleimani, ahead of which US forces in the region, particularly Iraq, have been on high alert.

Iran has over the past days accused both Israel and the United States of seeking to provoke a “pretext for war” during the last weeks of the Trump presidency, before Biden enters office and seeks rapprochement centered on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPA) nuclear deal. 

On Saturday Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif again leveled the charge of the Islamic Republic’s enemies seeking to stage provocations in order to give Trump a “fake casus belli”. This time more specifics were offered, with Zarif claiming Israel is seeking to do this through “Israeli agent-provocateurs” – citing unspecified intelligence in a message on Twitter. 

New intelligence from Iraq indicate that Israeli agent-provocateurs are plotting attacks against Americans—putting an outgoing Trump in a bind with a fake casus belli.

Be careful of a trap, @realDonaldTrump. Any fireworks will backfire badly, particularly against your same BFFs.

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) January 2, 2021

FM Zarif claimed “new intelligence from Iraq” shows that “Israeli agent-provocateurs are plotting attacks against Americans – putting an outgoing Trump in a bind with a fake casus belli.”

He then added a direct threat and warning, tagging Trump in the tweet: “Be careful of a trap… Any fireworks will backfire badly, particularly against your same BFFs” – the latter being a reference to close ally Israel and perhaps the Saudis as well.

Instead of fighting Covid in US, @realDonaldTrump & cohorts waste billions to fly B52s & send armadas to OUR region

Intelligence from Iraq indicate plot to FABRICATE pretext for war.

Iran doesn’t seek war but will OPENLY & DIRECTLY defend its people, security & vital interests.

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) December 31, 2020

Days prior the US flew two nuclear-capable B-52 bombers over the Persian Gulf in a strong deterrence message to Tehran’s leaders. Zarif slammed the move and had for the first time referenced a “plot” to “fabricate” a pretext for war.

It appears Iran thinks this will take the form of more attacks on the US Embassy in Baghdad, or perhaps against bases with a strong American presence in other parts of Iraq.

Both sides are poised with fingers on the trigger in anticipation of a provocation by the other side in an intensifying standoff which could very easily escalate into the very conflict both hope to avoid. 

However, there’s little doubt that some elements among both Israel’s leadership and the US national security establishment would like to see enough escalation for the US to respond with force on some level, which would certainly further hinder any future Biden efforts toward restoring the nuclear deal with Iran.

Authored by Haley Zaremba via OilPrice.com,

By now we are all keenly aware of the near-devastating impact that the novel coronavirus has had on oil markets and the fossil fuel industry around the world. (If this is news to you, what rock do you live under and is there room for one more?) But while a lot of the narrative here in the West has been about the historic oil price crash in what some are now referring to as Black April, the oil trading catastrophe actually started much earlier and can largely be traced back to the bad bet of just one man, Singapore’s commodities tycoon Lim Oon Kuin. 

The story of the oil market instability that ripped through Asia starting in China is not so much one of struggling oil companies, but a story of banking – that unsexy, behind-the-scenes sector that all too often gets none of the headlines and all of the control. It started way back in January, when most of us were just starting to gain some awareness of a strange and scary illness devastating the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Lim Oon Kuin, sitting in his office 2,000 miles away in SIngapore, watched as this news unfolded and made a decision. He decided that China would gain control of this epidemic before it turned into a pandemic and began stockpiling fuel, quietly adding to his already vast reserves. It should come as no surprise that that bet didn’t work out. 

As the coronavirus spread around the world and tanked global crude demand, as well as oil prices, a chain reaction of defaulted loans, was set off in Singapore that is still reverberating in global markets today.

“Banks tried to recover loans from Lim’s company, Hin Leong Trading Pte, triggering one of the biggest scandals in the oil industry this century,” Bloomberg reported about the bad deal that has left a permanent mark on oil trading.

“Lim’s empire collapsed, owing $3.5 billion to 23 banks, and the fallout from the debacle is still reverberating into 2021, shaking out large tracts of the vast and often opaque $4 trillion global oil-trading industry.”

While this may sound like an outright, unmitigated disaster, as with most financial meltdowns, there are winners as well as losers here.

The losers, as always, are the little guys:

“hundreds of small trading firms, many of them employing only a handful of people, who will find it expensive, if not impossible, to meet the increased demands for information from banks that have become wary of lending them money.”

This is to say that the big guys like Trafigura Group and Vitol SA will be gaining business lost by their small competitors, shoring up their oligopoly on trading. They not only benefit from increased confidence from finance companies who have become increasingly risk averse in this environment, they also have the capital to adapt to increased operational costs.

And, as usual, less developed countries will bear the brunt of the economic fallout from this sea change. As banks become more risk averse, re-prioritize their business models, and scale down, it’s going to impact small companies in small economies the most just while they are struggling with all of the other economic hardships related to this pandemic. In this case, the big banks truly were too big to fail. The same can’t be said for the little guys.

This is true, of course, for many market sectors, not just commodities trading. Across the world we’re seeing a sweeping consolidation as big companies are able to weather the financial storm of the COVID-19 pandemic and the little ones are folding. Look no further than the main street of your own town: as mom and pop restaurants struggle to make a sale, lines are down the block at the McDonald’s drive thru. As local shops shut down, Amazon becomes ever more of the globalized goliath it already was. 

More than anything, however, the story of Lim Oon Kuin and his bad oil bet is an object lesson in the butterfly effect and outsized might of the all-too opaque trading sector. His will never be a household name, but the impact of his oil gamble will continue to be felt around the world for years to come. 

President Trump’s health-care policy ambitions didn’t receive much attention from the mainstream media, but as we head into the new year, some of his market-based reforms are starting to become reality.

One of the most important is a directive requiring the nation’s biggest hospital chains to publish the rates they’ve agreed to charge various insurers. As WSJ explains, after a failed attempt at an appeal, the major hospital operators are saying they will comply with the new rules and make their prices public starting on Friday.

Suddenly, America’s hospital operators, a $1.2 trillion industry comprising some 6% of the country’s economy, will be subjected to more transparency than they’ve seen in decades. And the Trump Administration policy wonks he pushed the idea are hoping that good ol’ fashioned market dynamics will kick in, and help lower prices across the board.

Per WSJ, the nation’s largest hospital chains, including publicly traded giants HCA Healthcare, Universal Health Services and Community Health Systems, and national nonprofit chains CommonSpirit Health and Ascension, are planing to comply with new requirements to post pricing. Tenet Healthcare declined to comment.

Within a week, hospitals will disclose prices for 300 common procedures.

This is how the system has worked for years: Hospital pricing is negotiated confidentially between hospitals and the employer groups and insurance companies that pay for care.

Many criticized this system for obscuring market rates and helping drive up the cost of health insurance premiums paid by employers and workers. Rising hospital prices accounted for about one-fifth of the nation’s health spending growth over the last 50 years.

While groups like the American Hospital Association insist that their members have responsibly shared price information related to health-care premiums and medical bills, others insist that they were long left in the dark about the potentially wide disparities charged among hospitals for the same services.

Hilariously, the AHA has claimed that the publishing of prices would “confuse” patients. Now that the issue has been settled, the organization’s general counsel tells WSJ: “The AHA continues to believe that the disclosure of privately negotiated rates does nothing to help patients understand what they will actually pay for treatment and will create widespread confusion for them.”

A wave of consolidation in the hospital space has reportedly caused price growth to accelerate, as the more dominant players exert their newfound market and pricing power.

Economists who spoke with WSJ said it’s not clear how this transparency will impact the market.

Michael McWilliams, a Harvard University professor of health-care policy, argues that the transparency won’t do much to change pricing: “So we should not believe that we can fix health-care markets simply by providing more information to consumers. There are many reasons why health-care markets do not function well.”

But for better or worse, we will learn soon enough.

Authored by Jeff Deist via The Mises Institute,

Welcome to 2021 in post-persuasion America!  

I first heard this term used by Steve Bannon, architect of the surprising 2016 Trump campaign, in a PBS Frontline documentary titled “America’s Great Divide.” Speaking way back in the pre-Covid days of early 2020, Bannon asserted the information age makes us less curious and willing to consider worldviews unlike our own. We have access to virtually all of humanity’s accumulated knowledge and history on devices in our pockets, but the sheer information overload causes us to dig in rather than open up.

Anyone who wants to change their mind can find a whole universe of alternative viewpoints online, but very few people do (especially beyond a certain age). For Bannon this meant the Trump campaign, and politics generally, was about mobilization rather than persuasion.

Because we can always find media sources which confirm our perspective and biases – and dismiss those which don’t – the notion of politics by argument or consensus is almost entirely lost. And no matter what our political or cultural perspective, there is someone creating content tailored to suit us as stratified consumers. Thus liberals, conservatives, and people of every other ideological stripe live in vastly different digital media worlds, even when they live in close physical proximity.

This overwhelming amount of curated and segregated white noise comes at us every day, from 24 hour news to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Idiotic platforms like TikTok and Discord vie with video games for the attention of our children.All of it leaves us numb and exhausted. Our attention spans suffer. We slowly lose our aptitude for deep thinking and serious reading. We attempt to replace wisdom and understanding with data and facts.

But because information is so abundant and readily available, it becomes worth less and less. Information is cheap, literally.

For our grandparents, knowledge was analog and came with a price. Gatekeepers, in the form of media, universities, libraries, and bookstores, acted as editors and filters. Walter Cronkite, the most trusted propagandist in America, delivered one version of the news every night. The local newspaper did the same every morning. Even just 30 years ago it was often no easy task, and no small cost, to obtain books and literature not easily found in local or university libraries. 

If someone today wants to read Austrian economics, for example, (a particular boogeyman of Bannon), they can do so at virtually no cost other than time. They don’t even need to leave home. Their smart phone in their palm holds a lifetime of reading and learning in just this one discipline. No physical books, no college, no tuition, and no librarian required.  

So why don’t more people do so? The short answer is: most people are beyond persuasion. 

This does not mean we should surrender to the forces of economic illiteracy, or give up trying to win hearts and minds for political liberty. On the contrary, we should redouble our efforts to cultivate anyone interested in civil society, real economics, markets, property, and peace—especially those under 30. But this is not a numbers game. We should focus on those who can be reached, not some mythical majority.  Our task is to reach some people narrowly and deeply, not a majority of people superficially. We stand in contrast to the white noise, and opposed to the superficiality and anti-intellectualism of our age. Mobilizing the few is far more important and far more effective than foolishly trying to persuade the many. 

HL Mencken was right about believing in liberty, but not believing in it enough to force it upon anyone. Just as we oppose foreign interventionism, we should stop trying to remake those US cities and states which are beyond help. We need to recognize that tens of millions of Americans are likely beyond persuasion in the direction of sensible political or economic views. Millions more are committed socialists who would readily agree to nationalize whole industries and radically redistribute property. By definition these are unreasonable views, so how does one use persuasion where reason is lacking?

Post-persuasion America requires us to think about how to separate and unyoke ourselves politically from DC. Our immediate future lies in hard federalism, which dovetails with the soft secession which is happening already as millions of Americans vote with their feet. Mobilization and separation, not persuasion, is the way forward.