Month: November 2021

It seems the world’s elite just can’t stop ruining childhoods.

According to the Daily Mail, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos ‘has led a 400-strong parade of private jets into COP25,’ which includes Prince Albert of Monaco, tons of other royals, and dozens of “green” CEOs – creating a giant traffic jam which required empty planes to fly 30 miles away to ‘nearby’ Prestwick to find parking.

On Sunday, MailOnline observed at least 52 private jets landing at Glasgow – while estimates put the total number flying in for the conference at 400. Conservative predictions suggest the fleet of private jets arriving for COP26 will blast out 13,000tonnes of carbon dioxide in total – equivalent to the amount consumed by more than 1,600 Britons in a year. 

Prince Charles was among those travelling by non-commercial plane from the G20 in Rome, MailOnline can reveal. Flight records suggest the plane was an MOD jet. –Daily Mail

Yes, the same Prince Charles hypocritically calling for a “vast military-style campaign” with trillions at it’s disposal in order to force “fundamental economic transition” when it comes to the environment.

NOW – Prince Charles claims a “vast military-style campaign” is required to marshal a “fundamental economic transition.”pic.twitter.com/OA9LkSwfQ4

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) November 1, 2021

And, the excuse:

“His Royal Highness has personally campaigned for a shift towards Sustainable Aviation Fuel and would only undertake travel to Rome when it was agreed that sustainable fuel would be used in the plane,” said a Clarence House spokesman, who added that so-called sustainable fuel would be used “wherever possible… from now on.”

Boris Johnson flew in from Rome on an Airbus A321 – only to be stuck circling Glasgow for 20 minutes due to the sheer number of private jets arriving for the event. Johnson was stuck behind the president of South Korea – who also flew in from Rome following the G20 conference.

For those without private jets, hundreds of less fortunate COP25 delegates were unable to reach the event due to brutal storms which crippled railroads and forced people to sleep on the floor of London’s Euston station.

Bezos’ appearance comes on the heels of celebrating Bill Gates’ 66th birthday on a nearly $3 million per week superyacht off the coast of Turkey – reaching the boat by helicopter.

The Amazon founder met with Prince Charles to discuss climate change, tweeting “The Prince of Wales has been involved in fighting climate change and protecting our beautiful world far longer than most. We had a chance to discuss these important issues on the eve of #COP26 — looking for solutions to heal our world, and how the @BezosEarthFund can help”

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden is expected to create 2.2 million pounds of carbon to reach the summit – as he’s bringing four planes, the Marine One helicopter, and an enormous motorcade.

Don’t these people have Skype?

Via SchiffGold.com,

Trade deficits used to be an important market mover. In fact, many blame the 1987 stock market crash on a much worse than expected trade deficit. That led to weak dollar and bond markets that bled over into the stock market. But today, traders mostly ignore the trade deficit. In fact, the US trade deficit set another record in September and the markets didn’t blink. Peter Schiff talked about it in his podcast.

The goods trade deficit increased 9.2% to $96.3 billion in September, according to the Commerce Department. That broke the previous record set in August, which was revised up to $88.2 billion  Goods exports dropped 4.7%, while imports gained 0.5%. In other words, we’re importing far more and exporting less.

Peter called one of the worst trade deficits he’s ever seen. And yet the markets didn’t bat an eye.

It was a complete yawn. Nobody spoke about it. Nobody cared.”

There was virtually no reaction in the foreign exchange markets, the bond market, or the gold market.

You wouldn’t even know that any data came out. Because the data no longer moves the markets.”

That doesn’t mean the data isn’t significant. It matters as much today as it did in 1987. But we’ve had high trade deficits for so long without any apparent ill-effects, everybody is convinced it doesn’t really matter.

People have been lulled into a false sense of security that it doesn’t matter anymore. Well, the reality is it matters more than ever. It’s precisely because the markets have decided, based on Fed intervention, that trade deficits don’t matter, that they now matter more than ever because they’re larger than ever.”

The lack of concern has removed any semblance of market discipline. If a country runs a large trade deficit, market forces should reduce the value of that country’s currency and push up interest rates. This leads to less spending, less borrowing and more savings in that country. That will ultimately drive more production, and this reduces the trade deficit.

But that didn’t happen. Because the markets never discipline our reckless consumption, we continue to consume more recklessly than ever. The dollar didn’t lose any value. So, we were able to import more and more stuff that we couldn’t afford and didn’t make with the dollars that we printed. And interest rates didn’t go up. In fact, they went down. They were artificially suppressed, which made it possible for Americans to borrow even more money to buy even more imported goods, driving the trade deficits even higher to the point that we got the record deficit for September.”

The mainstream blames the big drop in exports on congestion at the ports. But Peter raises a good point. If port congestion is the problem, how are more imports getting in? Why is it just an export problem? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

It’s not a problem with congestion at the ports. The problem is we’re not making stuff. The problem is at our factories — or our lack of factories. We’re not producing things to export. All the congestion is surrounding the massive quantities of stuff that we’re importing that we no longer produce. That is the problem.”

Peter called the trade deficit a “horrific number” and said it evidences the weakest economy in US history.

It’s weak because we’re more dependent than ever on the productive capacity of the rest of the world. We are living on the charity of the world because we did not pay for $96.3 billion worth of goods that we imported. We just printed money.”

You will hear people in the mainstream claim this is a sign of a strong economy. They’ll say, “Look at all the stuff we’re buying.”

No. It just shows how strong the rest of the world’s economies are because look at all the stuff their making. They’re making all this stuff and letting us have it for free — because all we did is print money. If we really had a strong economy, we would be producing the stuff that we’re importing. We wouldn’t have trade deficits. Strong economies have trade surpluses. We are a bubble economy. We’re only consuming and importing because we’re printing. And we’re getting away with it because the world still values our currency.”

Again — the fact that nobody cares about trade deficits is a big part of the reason they’ve been able to get this bad.

Nobody is going to care about it until they do. It’s not going to be a problem until it’s a crisis, and then it’s too late. So, one of these days we are going to suffer from the accumulation of these massive trade deficits.”

Meanwhile, the US government continues to spend money record and a record pace, running record budget deficits. The twin deficits — trade and budget — have never been worse. And government spending contributes to the trade deficit.

When the government just hands out money to people who didn’t produce anything, not only does that mean that we have bigger budget deficits, but we also have bigger trade deficits. Becuase the people who got government money for free, they want to buy stuff. Well, what’s the stuff that they’re buying? All the stuff that’s being made in other countries. So, bigger budget deficits drive bigger trade deficits. And so, it feeds on itself in this destructive loop that ultimately will lead to a currency crisis.”

In this podcast, Peter also talks about government taxing schemes and Biden’s new childcare plan.

After more than a week of weakness, Japanese markets finally rallied and the yen slumped after Prime Minister Kishida’s LDP retained its outright majority in a lower-house election securing an election victory, and avoiding the worst-case scenarios that opinion polls had suggested beforehand, bolstering market expectations for an economic stimulus.

Kishida vowed to act fast on his economic program, saying he would seek to pass an extra budget as soon as possible and make clean energy investment a priority. Kishida’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party won 261 out of 465 seats in the lower house of parliament, in a surprisingly robust election win.  The benchmark Topix advanced 2.2% on Monday after capping its first monthly loss since July, while the Nikkei 225 Stock Average added 2.6%.  Here is what analysts and investors are saying: 

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and the ruling coalition Barings (James Leung)

• “There is a good chance that the new administration may tend to maintain (former Prime Minister Shinzo) Abe’s highly accommodative monetary and expansionary fiscal policies”

• Despite his call for “new capitalism”, which is more focused on income re-distribution, a favorable fiscal package is expected; this includes subsidies for small-to-medium companies to support Japan’s mid-to-long term development

• “We are seeing Japan as an attractive place to invest over a 12-month horizon, both on a standalone market basis as well as from an asset allocation perspective”

Comgest Asset Management (Richard Kaye)

• “I think it’ll be positive because we’ve got a confirmation of continuity, there will be no ugly surprises in policy but at the same time there’s a stimulus to the government to change in a good way”

• “First and foremost we’ll have stability, and for the short term investor in Japanese stocks that’s great news. There’s going to be no uncertainty, no major changes in policy”

• Plus, “what we’ll see in coming weeks and months, is a greater weight attached to opinion of those younger, more forward thinking people inside the LDP, and that’s a great thing. It’s a great thing for investors who’re hoping for Japan’s potential to be released”

Sumitomo Mitsui DS Asset Management (Masahiro Ichikawa)

• The fact that the LDP won a majority by itself means the Kishida administration was able to win confidence from the public and consolidate its foundation for office

• The market’s focus from here will shift to economic policies and details of Kishida’s plans for new capitalism; the market consensus is for a stimulus of about 30 trillion yen ($263 billion)

• Kishida isn’t likely to put forward any policies that won’t be popular with the public or market participants ahead of next year’s upper house election

Morgan Stanley MUFG (Robert Alan Feldman) 

• “We see the election outcome as a neutral to slight positive for the market in the near-term”

• “Focus will now turn to policy implementation – both in terms of formal objectives on stimulus and reopening, as well as the governance implications of the corporate sector’s interpretation” of Kishida’s calls for a “new capitalism”

• “We retain our above-consensus GDP growth forecast for 2022 and expect a fiscal stimulus package to be finalised in November”

JP Morgan Securities (Ryota Sakagami) 

• The results are “positive” for Japanese equities given that the uncertainty over election results had kept some investors from buying; the outcome will provide “relief” and support share prices

• It’s a positive that the market can anticipate a “catch- up” in Japanese economy to global peers, backed by an economic stimulus; expectations are for special cash handouts for households and a revival of the ‘Go To’ campaign that provide discounts for travelers

• Still, there’s a need to monitor potential risks; while the parliament has found stability for the time being, the Kishida administration will need to make achievements that boost its support rating. Otherwise, it’s possible for politics to “destabilize” around the time of the upper house election in July

Source: Bloomberg

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

Senator Rand Paul has promised to once again grill Anthony Fauci this week when the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases appears in front of a Senate hearing on Thursday.

Appearing on Fox Business Sunday, Paul urged “I don’t think Fauci is ever going to admit” to funding deadly gain of function research.

“You have seen Merrick Garland performing live, I don’t think he’s ever going to prosecute him,” Paul continued, adding

“But this is a big, big question. If this came out of the lab in Wuhan, what if a worse virus comes out of a lab?”

The Senator continued, “There’s a professor at MIT, Kevin Esvelt, who’s not a partisan, who wrote in The Washington Post recently, not a conservative journal, but he wrote that this type of research could threaten civilization. And there hasn’t been one hearing.”

“They’re actually doing experiments as we speak with viruses that have 50 percent mortality. That shouldn’t be happening,” Paul further warned.

Watch:

After the admission from the National Institutes of Health recently that it did fund gain of function experiments on bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, a Rasmussen poll last week revealed that half (49%) of American voters believe Fauci lied about the U.S. funding gain of function virus research, with only a third saying they believe Fauci has told the truth.

Paul further noted that Fauci “continues to say, when asked, should we be funding this research? He says, yes, that’s where the viruses are, we should be funding research in China.”

“But he fails to address the question of whether or not the Chinese Communist Party, the generals in the lab, the military’s involvement in the lab, whether they’re to be trusted, and he fails to acknowledge that this could have come from the lab, and he continues to lie about the idea of whether gain-of-function research was going on,” Paul told viewers.

The Senator continued, “And his one pushback is this. He says, well, the viruses that we see could not molecularly be COVID. No one’s alleging that. So he’s saying something. He’s pushing back with a straw man argument, because we’re not alleging that.”

“The Chinese never told us the sequencing of that virus. So we don’t know anything about the virus that came from the lab, other than it looks like it could have been COVID-19,” he emphasised.

Paul further vowed to press for criminal investigations, explaining “My goodness, we are experimenting with something that could cause the demise of 15 percent of the planet. This needs to have a discussion. Not one hearing.”

“Democrats love Dr. Fauci so much that they will not have one hearing to investigate the origins of this virus,” Paul urged, adding “It’s hard with President Biden to know whether it’s corruption or incompetence.”

*  *  *

Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. We need you to sign up for our free newsletter here. Support our sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, we urgently need your financial support here.

Breaking from months of Democratic strategy in recent months which sought to pass a debt ceiling hike only in conjunction with Republicans, Janet Yellen told the Washington Post in an interview published on Monday that Democrats should address the nation’s debt limit on their own if Republicans refuse to cooperate, which they have made clear they will.

Yellen has repeatedly urged Congress to act in a bipartisan manner to extend the U.S. government’s borrowing authority or else risk dangerous economic consequences.

“Should it be done on a bipartisan basis? Absolutely. Now, if they’re not going to cooperate, I don’t want to play chicken and end up not raising the debt ceiling. I think that’s the worst possible outcome,” Yellen told The Washington Post on Sunday as she traveled to Dublin.

“If Democrats have to do it by themselves, that’s better than defaulting on the debt to teach the Republicans a lesson,” she added.

It wasn’t clear what lesson the Democrats – who have a majority in the House and Senate – would teach the Republicans by pushing the country into default and being rightfully blamed for the resulting depression.

For now, the market is not too fearful of the debt-ceiling debacle (which likely means Democrats will crank up the fearmongery to ’11’ in the next few weeks)…

But hey, the Treasury Secretary was busy with other things in Dublin…

• Elsewhere in a separate interview with Reuters, Yellen said the United States could look at eventually lowering some tariffs on China in a reciprocal way. She also discusses Biden’s expected Federal Reserve chair appointment and technology companies’ potential support of global tax rules.

• Speaking to reporters in Dublin at joint press conference with Irish Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe, Yellen disagreed that the global tax deal will hurt developing countries and said that the OECD tax deal as “once in a generation” agreement, adding that all countries will need to move together on pillar 1 of OECD tax agreement.

• Yellen also brushed off Treasury-market jitters and expressed confidence in the continuing recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. This comes from the same financial genius who 5 years ago said “no financial crisis again in her lifetime”

Yellen is in Ireland for a tax policy meeting before traveling to Scotland for the U.N. climate change conference. It wasn’t clear if she was flying on a gas guzzling private jet.

By Michael Every of Rabobank

The Nuclear Options

“Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds”.

The Financial Times lead story this weekend was that US allies are lobbying the White House NOT to shift to a “No First Use” (NFU) nuclear policy. After Afghanistan, this is another enormous shock for an ostensibly “America is Back” administration. Military strategists back to Vegetius (“Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum”) stress America’s nuke stockpile underpins its military might; and Korea, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Central Asia aside, that is still what prevents more wars more often everywhere else. If the US moves to NFU, any other power can do whatever it wants short of nukes, and the US can only respond with already-overstretched conventional power. Consider that as Russia again builds up forces near Ukraine; when looking at tensions in the South China Sea; and when China’s Global Times runs an editorial, “US should announce ‘no first use of nuclear weapons,’ with no strings attached”. There are always strings attached to shifts in such existential policies: markets would be well advised to understand the implied volatility.

Meanwhile, Poland will double the size of its army to 300,000, making it the largest in the EU. That’s a key signal about what a country with a keen historical grasp of the existential dangers of geopolitics feels is now necessary.

Word is that French President Macron wants to send a signal that there are consequences for the UK leaving the EU, and the current fishing row could soon involve a go-slow to throttle UK supply chains further. The Sunday Times reports the UK is considering a massive infrastructure spend in response, to shift trade away from Calais-Dover to other EU-UK routes. (And Macron is also openly calling Aussie PM Morrison a liar re: AUKUS.)

The US and EU struck an agreement to suspend steel and aluminum tariffs and to start work on a new Global Sustainable Steel Arrangement. “This marks a milestone in the renewed EU-US partnership,” say the Europeans. The critical point is not the lower tariffs: it is that the US and EU are cooperating on a new green/anti-dumping standard for steel and aluminium that, as US President Biden stated, will “restrict access to our markets for dirty steel, from countries like China.” As the EU’s Dombrovskis put it: “We hope to restrict market access for non-participants who do not meet conditions for market orientation or do not meet the standards for low-carbon intensity products. But we will do this compatible with our international obligations and multilateral groups.” If this approach works, expect it to be rolled out on other fronts. That is called decoupling.

Politico also reports the US is considering reducing tariffs on some non-essential Chinese imports – but greatly increasing them in sectors seen as crucial to national security. And in the background, the ‘Make in America to Sell in America Act’ introduced to Congress would see the US impose a 50% local input requirement on areas of critical economic security to ensure the entire nexus of industrial supply chains is re-shored. That is unlikely to pass; but something like it could still be what eventually comes to pass on the present trend. In the meantime, the economic impact of supply-chain snarls is already worsening.

The port of LA/Long Beach is to start the countdown with its new $100 a day per container rule, which applies for rail shipments three days from now and trucks in nine days. These fees rise daily: e.g., a 10,000 TEU ship faces a 10,000 * $100 = $1m fee on day 1 its cargo is still stuck in the port (i.e., NOT in the ship!); 10,000 * $200 = $2m on day 2; 10,000 * $300 = $3m on day 3, etc. If they get delayed 3 weeks, the total bill will be $231m, which works out as $23,100 per TEU. That more than doubles the already-high cost of ocean carrying.

Back in Asia, China’s PMIs showed a dip in manufacturing to 49.2 and services fell to 52.4. True, as coal flows, energy supplies will be restored to factories, so US logjams will get worse: unless the products made don’t have the US and EU markets they had assumed.

The White House is calling on OPEC+ to produce more oil in order to bring US energy prices down: there are even reports it is “considering its options” if they refuse to do so. Note the US was until recently energy independent, and is only begging other countries to pump more oil because of its own decision to rush for a green transition before it could walk.

On which, the G20 just concluded a “net zero” carbon statement ahead of the private-jet-and-motorcade frenzy of COP26 which even Boris Johnson admits is “too vague” and “not enough”. It set no date for phasing out coal and has no new deadline for ending fossil fuel subsidies. Given the G20 have spoken, and not acted, should we perhaps cancel COP26 and save all the carbon that will expended on it? As an aside, one wonders when the nuclear option will be accepted as necessary as part of the green push: yes, it can go very wrong – but have you ever seen what can happen with hydrogen? Even post-Fukushima Japan, where PM Kishida has just won re-election, is considering it.

Shifting to food, our research team reports, ‘Farm Margins Squeezed From Every Angle’ – and from soaring fertilizer prices in particular, linked back to energy costs. That is likely to mean even more expensive food ahead, which is always highly explosive.

And, as a potential final bang, Facebook’s transformation into ‘Meta’ may be challenged by none other than Yanis Varoufakis, who was already using the name for an anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist website: oh, the irony – ‘Meta’ really is Second Life! That’s as the first incarnation sees Politico report: ”Doors across Capitol Hill are shutting on Facebook’s army of lobbyists as the company tries to move past one of its most serious political crises ever.”

But having covered the real economy, let’s all get back to a central bank focus, and watch for yield curve (flattening) and FX (USD rising) signals as to just how much ordnance they are prepared to drop *on themselves* if it means also taking out any potential risk of entrenched higher wage growth ahead:

“I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”