Month: February 2023

Authored by Joakim Book via BitcoinMagazine.com,

In his latest book, Nouriel Roubini demonstrates the worst ways to try and attack Bitcoin…

Finding fault with Bitcoin and Bitcoiners is easy. Every schmuck, stick, know-it-all pundit, wise-ass and establishment elite has a handful of complaints readily available.

Bitcoin uses too much electricity; its fixed money supply schedule makes interventions from a benevolent central bank impossible; it doesn’t have enough inflation for a growing economy; it is used by pesky criminals; and its mean, technobabbling users hurt my brittle feelings.

The objections get tiresome about as quickly as they get recycled.

One fantastic example is the doomspeaker economist Nouriel Roubini, known for his bombastic and bearish declarations — frequently nicknamed “Dr. Doom” by the financial press. In his own mind, he is merely “realistic,” which every madman would say about himself when queried. In his latest book, “Megathreats: The Ten Trends That Imperil Our Future, And How To Survive Them,” he insists that most people overlook something about this infamous nickname:

“Those who label me Dr. Doom fail to see that I examine the upside with as much rigor as the downside. Optimists and pessimists both call me contrarian. If I could choose my nickname, Dr. Realist sounds right.” 

The Bitcoin obituaries site 99bitcoins.com lists our beloved economist hater 12 times, but Googling finds plenty more Bitcoin denouncements from this outspoken character — in every outlet that’ll have him, it seems, from Twitter to the Financial Times.

To Roubini, bitcoin was a bubble in 2013, a “Ponzi game” and “not a currency” in 2014, a “gigantic speculative bubble” in 2017, almost all transactions were fake in 2019 and, most tastefully, in 2020 a little bit of everything:

Bitcoin is NOT a currency: it is not a unit of account, it is not a single numeraire, it is not a scalable means of payments, it is not backed by any asset, it is not legal tender, its price is highly manipulated & thus its partial store of value function is based on nothing.

— Nouriel Roubini (@Nouriel) November 9, 2020

What his new book does so well is outline the world’s many macroeconomic troubles. For five mesmerizing chapters, he describes the debt problems, the demographic impossibility that is the bankrupt Ponzi (sorry, “pension”) schemes of Western nations, the easy money disaster and the boom-bust cycle that it gives rise to. Stagflation in the 2020s did not come as a surprise to him, and he locates the blame precisely where it should be: “We poured massive amounts of money and fiscal stimulus into a financial and economic system already awash in cash and credit.” With a short-term view and politically-captured central banks, we get disastrously easy money because “that is what voters want and leveraged markets need to avoid crashing.”

He even comes down on the correct side of the 2022 blunder to use the dollar payment rails to sanction a G8 economy: “This sort of weaponizing of currency for the pursuit of national security goals is the latest frontier of the mission creep of central banks, starting with the Fed” (ignoring that the Federal Reserve doesn’t make sanction decisions).

As a rule, whatever Bitcoin’s flaws are — as a money, as a protocol, as a usable tool, as a community — it gets better, relatively speaking, when the incumbent monetary system gets worse. Whatever your position on Bitcoin was three, five or 10 years ago, you must look at it more favorably today: the monetary system in place has gotten so much worse, with inflation, anti-money-laundering bureaucracy, clown-world behavior and frozen accounts being just the worst offenders. All is not well in the world of money; that makes Bitcoin a more tempting prospect, all things equal.

So, is Roubini a Bitcoiner now? Has the ultimate Bitcoin bear, diligently at it for a decade, finally come around? Seeing clearly the monetary madness of the world, it wouldn’t be the strangest thing for Dr. Doom to at last tone down his criticism of Bitcoin.

Instead, we got Groundhog Day.

The single chapter dedicated to financial instability spends a dozen or so pages on Bitcoin, unbelievably dedicating most of them to “crypto,” “DeFi,” “stablecoins” and central bank digital currencies. Sigh.

Still, even here we had potential: The rise of crypto, explains Roubini, “exposes our collective wilting faith in the ability of governments to back the money they issue.” Hear, hear.

QUEEN TAYLOR CALLED

“Ugh, so he calls me up and he’s like ‘I still love youuu’, and I’m like ‘I just… I mean, this is exhausting, you know? Like, we are never getting back together. Like, ever.’”

–Bitcoin philosopher Taylor Swift

If you are to critique Bitcoin — something you certainly, certainly can do — here are some things you should do:

First, get your monetary attributes in order.

There are three — store of value, unit of account, medium of exchange — not five. You can’t invent new ones and duplicating previous ones isn’t useful. Roubini introduces “single numeraire,” which is exactly the same thing as a unit of account, and splits store of value into stable value against “market value” and against “an index of the price of goods and services.” Try carving out a difference. This is silly word play.

Second, make sure your criticism is levied against Bitcoin, not “crypto.”

Most people think of bitcoin as merely the first “cryptocurrency,” the most famous among tens of thousands of scammy shitcoins. It’s not. What holds and happens in the la-la land of vaporware tokens rarely has anything to do with Bitcoin: Sam Bankman-Fried’s shenanigans, Terra’s implosion or the Cryptoqueen scam do in no way detract from Bitcoin’s core, its principles or operations. When Roubini cites “BaconCoin,” quotes LoanSnap’s founder or reports negative comments by DogeCoin’s creator, he does not undermine Bitcoin’s promise.

Bitcoin is a one-off monetary invention, separated from every other money or “crypto” by a Great Wall of categories and concepts: it doesn’t have a company or founder running it, like every other shitcoin does; it doesn’t have counterparty risk nor is it subject to censorship like every other fiat currency. Bitcoin has no CEO and no marketing department; it has the strongest Lindy and the highest hash rate.

Third — and this is a hard one — make sure your points haven’t already been debunked, answered and relegated to the dustbin of unimpressive, erroneous jabs at Bitcoin.

Repeating an outdated accusation makes you look stupid, not Bitcoin. Roubini goes for the vast wealth inequality in Bitcoinland, believing it to be “worse than that of North Korea.” It’s not, and as flawed as these investigations are, UTXO ownership seems to become less and less unequal over time — as you’d expect for an emerging money that gets distributed in use.

Unsurprisingly, it uses too much energy, as much as a small country and therefore “will blunt urgent climate initiatives to slow down global warming.” It doesn’t and it won’t: if anything, Bitcoin unlocks stranded energy, contributes to balancing the grid and miners are more renewable than most major economies.

Fourth, make sure that the property of Bitcoin that you’re attacking isn’t worse in the legacy system.

Warren Buffet often makes this error, thinking that hacks, fees or the fact that bitcoin doesn’t generate “yield” dooms it to failure. Nevermind that paper money doesn’t either (unless you count seigniorage to the central bank); nevermind that his ridiculing of bitcoin as a Ponzi applies equally well to apartments or Uncle Sam’s pension schemes.

The most absurd accusation arrives with Roubini’s silly soda shitcoins: If you need Coke coins to buy Coke and Pepsi coins to buy Pepsi, how could you ever establish (relative) value?! How could you ever know what either of them are worth?

Makes you wonder how Americans could ever buy things when they’re abroad, how pound-based customers (i.e., British residents) can ever acquire anything sold in euros or spend their melting currency on Fifth Avenue. There’s a publicly-displayed market price for you to “convert” value into the monetary system that you’re familiar with; and there’s a publicly-traded market that the banks on either side of your and your vendor’s transaction can trade and settle such that international trade works.

Fascinating.

His currency risk examples are illustrative — and disingenuous. Apparently vendors can’t “price” goods in bitcoin since “an overnight fall in value might wipe out the [seller’s] profit margins.” That’s true as far as it goes, but holds equally so for any cross-currency transaction in the legacy world: imports or export or any supply chain more complicated than your local currency area. Besides, if you worry about the currency exposure in your sales, there is a liquid market that provides hedges for you. Many stores that accept bitcoin through various third-party solutions instantly exchange them for dollars, thus mitigating the risk.

In the very next sentence, Roubini considers the downside of the opposite risk:

“Were someone to write a mortgage with principal and interest in bitcoin, a spike in the value of bitcoin would cause the real value of the mortgage to skyrocket. If default then likely occurs, the lender loses money, and the borrower loses her house.” 

I suppose no American therefore owns property in New Zealand or Mexico, no European has debt contracts in USD-dollars. These are not novel risks, but ordinary financial risks that firms and households deal with already.

What’s so fascinating is Roubini’s lack of symmetry: If margins can get obliterated by an overnight drop, then margins can also be doubled by an equal overnight rise. Symmetric risk. If bitcoin’s exchange rate for dollars falls — which Roubini is so certain it will — a bitcoin-denominated mortgage will wipe out itself by becoming easily repayable with appreciating dollars. This isn’t to say that he’s wrong to point out these risks, but that they’re reduced to what economists call “risk aversion.” Unhedged bitcoin transactions or debt contracts are bad if households worry about the downside more than the upside — which, in the real world, seems to be true only to some extent.

The honest conclusion isn’t Roubini’s “bitcoin is incapable of being money,” since many established currencies with volatile values between one another can serve that function, but that an emerging bitcoin economy would have this added, minor layer of business risk.

It’s like Roubini went out of his way to be up to date on all his other macro worries, only to lay forth criticism of Bitcoin that was outdated by the time he first voiced it in the mid-2010s.

Most devastatingly of all: Can anyone really be taken seriously when they slap a plural “s” on the uncountable noun “bitcoin”?

The better you understand the faults of the current way of doing monetary things, the better Bitcoin looks.

When you look at the many macro ills that Bitcoiners are so well attuned to, the pit of your stomach should churn in anxiety. When you look at the debts (public and private) that rampage the system, you should be feeling nauseous. All of this Roubini captures expertly, and much of his writing could even have been featured on these pages. Our beloved economist hater gets the problem, better and more vocally than most. Still, no dice.

It’s unfathomable that someone so attuned to the world’s catastrophic macro problems as Roubini cannot see the master-key solution that is Bitcoin.

After years of research, it appears that artificial intelligence (AI) is reaching a sort of tipping point, capturing the imaginations of everyone from students saving time on their essay writing to leaders at the world’s largest tech companies. Excitement is building around the possibilities that AI tools unlock, but what exactly these tools are capable of and how they work is still not widely understood.

We could write about this in detail, but given how advanced tools like ChatGPT have become, it only seems right to see what generative AI has to say about itself.

As Visual Capitalist’s Nick Routley explains, everything in the infographic above – from illustrations and icons to the text descriptions⁠—was created using generative AI tools such as Midjourney.

Everything that follows in this article was generated using ChatGPT based on specific prompts.

Without further ado, generative AI as explained by generative AI.

Generative AI: An Introduction

Generative AI refers to a category of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms that generate new outputs based on the data they have been trained on. Unlike traditional AI systems that are designed to recognize patterns and make predictions, generative AI creates new content in the form of images, text, audio, and more.

Generative AI uses a type of deep learning called generative adversarial networks (GANs) to create new content. A GAN consists of two neural networks: a generator that creates new data and a discriminator that evaluates the data. The generator and discriminator work together, with the generator improving its outputs based on the feedback it receives from the discriminator until it generates content that is indistinguishable from real data.

Generative AI has a wide range of applications, including:

• Images: Generative AI can create new images based on existing ones, such as creating a new portrait based on a person’s face or a new landscape based on existing scenery

• Text: Generative AI can be used to write news articles, poetry, and even scripts. It can also be used to translate text from one language to another

• Audio: Generative AI can generate new music tracks, sound effects, and even voice acting

Disrupting Industries

People have concerns that generative AI and automation will lead to job displacement and unemployment, as machines become capable of performing tasks that were previously done by humans. They worry that the increasing use of AI will lead to a shrinking job market, particularly in industries such as manufacturing, customer service, and data entry.

Generative AI has the potential to disrupt several industries, including:

• Advertising: Generative AI can create new advertisements based on existing ones, making it easier for companies to reach new audiences

• Art and Design: Generative AI can help artists and designers create new works by generating new ideas and concepts

• Entertainment: Generative AI can create new video games, movies, and TV shows, making it easier for content creators to reach new audiences

Overall, while there are valid concerns about the impact of AI on the job market, there are also many potential benefits that could positively impact workers and the economy.

In the short term, generative AI tools can have positive impacts on the job market as well. For example, AI can automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks, and help humans make faster and more informed decisions by processing and analyzing large amounts of data. AI tools can free up time for humans to focus on more creative and value-adding work.

How This Article Was Created

This article was created using a language model AI trained by OpenAI. The AI was trained on a large dataset of text and was able to generate a new article based on the prompt given. In simple terms, the AI was fed information about what to write about and then generated the article based on that information.

In conclusion, generative AI is a powerful tool that has the potential to revolutionize several industries. With its ability to create new content based on existing data, generative AI has the potential to change the way we create and consume content in the future.

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

India will see its power generation from coal increase in the coming year as authorities plan to have coal-fired units maximize electricity production from imported coal to meet rising demand, government sources told Reuters on Monday.

The government of India, where coal still generates around 70% of electricity, plans to use an emergency law to have more coal-fired power generation this summer, expecting record demand, according to Reuters’ sources.

Indian coal power plants that have relied on imported coal have not run at full capacity recently because they cannot compete with those using cheaper domestic coal supply. Last year, coal prices globally surged to a record as the EU banned Russian coal imports in August, and the coal trade flows changed, while energy security has been a priority over climate pledges for many developing nations.

India’s government expects coal-fired power plants to use 8% more coal in the next financial year between March 2023 and March 2024, as demand is set to continue rising thanks to growing economic activity and unpredictable weather, according to Reuters.

The emergency law is being invoked after Maharashtra and Gujarat, the western Indian states that host the majority of the industry, asked for emergency measures to ensure power supply, Reuters’ sources say.

Last June, the largest power-generating company in India, state giant NTPC Ltd, said it could increase its coal-generation capacity as it prioritizes energy security after power outages in the spring.

The coal phase-out in India is “going to take 2-3 decades, if not more,” NTPC’s chairman Gurdeep Singh said at the time.

India’s coal minister said at the end of 2022 that the country has no intention of ditching coal from its energy mix any time soon. Addressing a parliamentary committee, Coal Minister Pralhad Joshi said that coal would continue to play an important role in India until at least 2040, referring to the fuel as an affordable source of energy for which demand has yet to peak in India.  

US tech giants are slashing headcount almost every week. Some of these companies, such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook parent Meta, Salesforce, and many more, overhired during the last several years are cutting staff to drive profitability amid the Federal Reserve-induced economic storm. 

For Gen-Z youth (aged 18 to 24), fresh out of school or in the latter years of college, searching for an internship in today’s challenging job environment could be tricky. Cutting through all the nonsense is a study from CashNetUSA revealing the best and worst states and industries for the upcoming summer internship season. 

CashNetUSA analyzed over 50,000 vacancies on Chegg Internships and found the best-paid internships are in the state of Washington, California, and Connecticut — paying an average of $20 an hour or more. 

On the flip side, the states with the lowest-paid internships were Wyoming, New Mexico, Louisiana, and Alabama. Wyoming had an average pay of around $11.92 per hour. 

Meanwhile, in President Biden’s home state, Delaware, a third of the interns are unpaid.

Despite the tech layoffs, interns can expect the technology industry to pay the highest average hourly rate of $19.77. Finance is second at $18.10.

Also, finance has the highest amount of unpaid interns at nearly 31%. 

So for Gen-Z youth preparing for internships, use this study wisely to pick region and industry carefully. Perhaps avoid firms with unpaid internships so you can cover your bar tab this summer. 

Authored by Jeff Deist via The Mises Institute,

Does cheap money and credit make us richer? Does more money and credit create more stuff, or better stuff? Do they make us happier and more productive? Or do these twin forces actually distort the economy, misallocate resources, and degrade us as people?

These are fundamental questions in an age of monetary hedonism. It is time we began to ask and answer them. Millions of people across the West increasingly recognize the limits of monetary policy, understanding that more money and credit in society do not magically create more goods and services. Production precedes consumption. Capital accumulation is made possible only through profit, which is generated by higher productivity, thanks to earlier capital investment. At the heart of all of it is hard work and human ingenuity. We don’t get rich by legislative edict.

How we lost sight of these simple truths is complex. But we can begin to understand it by listening to someone smarter! The great financial writer James Grant probably knows more about interest rates than anyone on the planet. So we should pay attention when he suggests America’s four-decade experiment in rates that only go down, down, and down appears to be over.

The striking thing about the bond market and interest rates is that they tend to rise and fall in generation-length intervals. No other financial security that I know of exhibits that same characteristic. But interest rates have done that going back to the Civil War period, when they fell persistently from 1865 to 1900. They then rose from 1900 to 1920, fell from 1920 or so to 1946, and then rose from 1946 to 1981—and did they ever rise in the last five or 10 years of that 35-year period. Then they fell again from 1981 to 2019–20.

So each of these cycles was very long-lived. This current one has been, let’s say, 40 years. That’s one-and-a-half successful Wall Street careers. You could be working in this business for a long time and never have seen a bear market in bonds. And I think that that muscle memory has deadened the perception of financial forces that would conspire to lead to higher rates.

—James Grant, speaking to the Octavian Report

Do the brilliant young Ivy League quants working at central banks and investment houses really understand this history? Why should they? The baseline cost of capital has been less than 3 percent throughout their careers. Cheap credit and rising stock markets are all they know. Lots of projects make sense when funded with debt rather than equity; or as we might say, with other people’s money. And when those projects go public, the numbers go up!

Until they don’t.

One fears our under-forty financiers really have little understanding of the basic function of interest rates, a function Mises explained so clearly more than one hundred years ago. Interest rates should act as “prices,” as Mr. Grant states, or more precisely, as exchange ratios. They bring together borrowers and savers, thus performing a critical function of capital markets and allocating resources to their best and highest uses.

Yet, in 2022, interest rates are widely viewed as policy tools. They are economic controls, determined and tinkered with by technocratic central bankers when the economy overheats or chills. We expect central banks to “set” interest rates, an impossibility in the long run but also a perverse goal in a supposedly free economy.

What other prices do we want centrally planned? Food, energy, housing? Should the Fed direct how many cars GM produces in 2022, the price of a bushel of wheat, or the hourly wage for an Amazon warehouse employee? Is this the Soviet Union?

Of course not. But those who view money as a political creation are once again prone to fundamental errors. They don’t understand money qua money. They certainly cannot imagine a world without “monetary policy,” which is plainly a form of central planning.

Austrian economists like Carl Menger and Ludwig von Mises illustrated how money can arise on the market as simply the most tradeable commodity, with the most desired features of “moneyness.” We don’t need state treasuries or public banks to issue it. And we should care about the quality of money, much as we care about the quality of the goods and services we exchanged for it.

But in fiat land, that quality goes down, down, and down. Everything politics touches gets worse; why would we expect money to be an exception?

This four-decade experiment in price fixing of interest rates, described as cyclical by Mr. Grant, not surprisingly corresponds with a dramatic rise in the US M1 money supply. In January 1982, the Fed’s “narrow money” was less than $450 billion. In January 2022, it was more than $20 trillion—roughly forty-four times bigger!

We can call this monetary hedonism: a combination of low rates and ever-growing money supply designed to create an illusion of real wealth. Monetary hedonism is an arrangement which encourages our whole society to live beyond its means, using monetary policy rather than direct tax-and-spend policy. It directly benefits both the Beltway and the banking classes, who enjoy an exorbitant political privilege due to their proximity to newly created cheap money. After all, Congress can service $30 trillion+ of debt with interest payments of less than $400 billion—thanks to a weighted average interest rate of only about 1.6 percent on that debt. And it’s awfully nice for spendy politicians to know the Fed stands ready to create an instant market for Treasurys owned by commercial banks.

To be sure, cheap money and low rates benefit all of us in a shortsighted sense. They make the cost of doing business lower and enable corporations to carry more (tax-deductible) debt. They make house payments and mortgages more affordable. They make college and cars and dinners and vacations purchased on credit cheaper. They make it easy and fun to spend.

Yet there is always a price to be paid for unearned profligacy. The hangover follows the party. We all sense it. A reckoning is coming for the inflationary US dollar. That reckoning will come for entitlements, for congressional spending, for deranged US foreign policy, and for Treasury holders.

But this economic reckoning is not the full story. We must also consider the incalculable but rarely considered social and cultural costs.

What happens to society when spending is encouraged and saving is for chumps?

Our grandparents understood the power of compound interest rates. They could save 10 percent of their income at, say, 10 percent interest rates, and their nest egg doubled roughly every seven years. They could get ahead simply, if not easily, through sheer thrift. They could follow the most human of compulsions, the deep-rooted desire to put money away for a rainy day. They could leave something for future generations. Even when consumer inflation approached 10 percent in the 1970s and ’80s, they could get 14 percent on a simple CD or money market account!

Compare their experience to that of a hapless young person today, attempting to save up a 20 percent down payment on a modest $300,000 house. In 2022, with inflation at least 6 points above simple savings rates, this seems like a pipe dream.

This is the perversity of our times: with inflation rates higher than savings rates, the overwhelming incentive is to spend and borrow rather than produce and save.

Bitcoiners already understand the problem. The simple economic concept of time preference explains so much: some people are more than willing to forego consumption today to reap a larger reward later—even if that “later” is beyond their lifetimes. Time preference is the only way to make sense of interest rates and their critical function in society; interest rates reflect the relative preferences of borrowers and savers. Manipulation of interest rates by central banks severs this critical mechanism, allowing bubbles to occur in the form of new credit without new saving.

Without interest rates determined by time preference, society’s signals become mixed up. We all understand, axiomatically, why humans prefer something today (certain) over something in the future (uncertain). We may die unexpectedly, our financial positions could change radically due to unforeseen events, or external conditions could influence our desires. We all understand borrowing money to buy a dream home at age forty instead of paying cash at age ninety. We all understand why lenders, given the uncertainty and forbearance that goes with lending, want to be paid interest for their risk.

It is a matter of time.

Everything we do in this corporeal world has a temporal element. When governments or central banks interfere with money and interest rates, they distort the vital information provided by real people’s relative time preferences.

Hans Hoppe, in his infamous Democracy: The God That Failed, goes further—describing time preference as the essential civilizing or decivilizing element in society.

The saver-investor initiates a “process of civilization.” In generating a tendency toward a fall in the rate of time preference, he—and everyone directly or indirectly connected to him through a network of exchanges—matures from childhood to adulthood and from barbarism to civilization.

When lots of people save and invest, across society, we call it capital accumulation. And as Hoppe posits, this is not just economic—it is cultural and civilizational. Thrifty people like our grandparents, generation after generation, bequeathed to us an almost unimaginable world of affordable food, water, habitation, transportation, communication, medicine, and material goods of every kind. They did this out of love and sacrifice, but they also did it because the monetary system rewarded saving.

Today, the opposite is true. Monetary policy across the West is an agent of decivilization. It upends the natural, innate human impulse to save for a rainy day and leave our children better off. It encourages consumption over production, profligacy over thrift, and political promises today that will be paid for by savers and taxpayers tomorrow. Monetary policy degrades and deforms the economy, but ultimately its corrosive effects impact the broader culture.

In short, it makes us worse people.

Does bitcoin fix this? Maybe. In the eyes of many maxis (or “bitcoin realists,” per Cory Klippsten), certainly. But time is running short. We face a toxic mix of high–time preference junkie politicians and central bankers who are only too willing to provide the fix. We are depleting capital and borrowing against the future. We consistently display high time preference, both as individuals and as a society. This cannot end well for our children and grandchildren.

It is past time for all of us to demand better money, not better monetary “policy.” It is time for money to comport with human nature and reward the saving impulse. It is time for us to reconsider our bequest to future generations and make their lives better and more prosperous than ours.

Monetary hedonism, in the form of low interest rates, is coming to an end. The hangover will not be pretty. Readers would be well served to prepare themselves and act accordingly. Politicians and bankers are unlikely to do this for us.

Earlier we quoted former UK Defense Minister Sir Gerald Howarth who posed in a recent television interview: “Are western citizens willing to fight and die for Ukraine?  It’s highly unlikely…”

Opinion polls are continuing to show waning public support for the West’s deepening involvement in the Ukrainians’ fight against Russia, given the obvious fears of sliding toward nuclear confrontation. While the opening months of the invasion last year resulted in 24/7 headlines, and a frenzy of social media posts displaying the Ukrainian flag and pledges of support, this trend has waned, and what many have dubbed “Ukraine fatigue” has long set in.

As billions in US weaponry is being shipped to eastern Europe at unprecedented pace, an increasing number of Americans see the support at taxpayer expense as now ‘too much’.

“About a quarter of Americans, 26 percent, think the U.S. support of Ukraine is too strong, according to a new Pew Research Center poll,” The Hill reports this week. “It is a percentage of people that has steadily grown since the Russian invasion of Ukraine last year and has jumped 6 points since September.”

And in particular more and more Republicans are souring on the record-setting support levels to Ukraine…

“the poll of 5,152 people, with a margin of error of 1.7 percent, found that Republican voters are following along. A total of 40 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents think the U.S. is providing too much support, according to the poll. That is up from 32 percent in September and from nine percent directly after the invasion.”

Further, as The Hill reports of the Pew survey, “In March 2022, Republicans were more likely to see the invasion as a direct threat to the U.S., but now Democrats are more likely to hold that opinion, with 43 percent holding that belief.”

Ukraine news fatigue began setting in by the end of the first two months of war…

You will find more infographics at Statista

Pew also details that it remains mainly Democrats who support Biden’s handling of the invasion: “In the Center’s new survey, about four-in-ten U.S. adults (43%) say they approve of the Biden administration’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while about a third (34%) disapprove. About two-in-ten (22%) say they are not sure. Views of the Biden administration’s response have changed little since May 2022, the last time this question was asked.”

Pew finds that “Democrats are more than twice as likely as Republicans (61% vs. 27%) to approve of the Biden administration’s response to the Russia invasion.”

Authored by Chase Smith via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Peace and quiet is still a major draw for people moving to smaller-yet-growing states such as Tennessee from more crowded ones such as New York, but lower taxes, great personal freedom, and conservative politics have been bringing even more people in recent years.

Tennessee surpassed 7 million residents in 2022 for the first time, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates, making it the seventh-fastest-growing state in the United States by population last year.

States such as Tennessee have become attractive to individuals beyond the natural environment, mountains, and rivers. Those interviewed by The Epoch Times who moved from Illinois and New York said lower property taxes, low or no state income tax, and more conservative populations have become attractive reasons to move to the southeast.

According to the bureau, the Southeastern United States is the most populated region of the country, with nearly 129 million residents, and it was the largest-gaining region in 2022, growing by 1.1 percent, or 1.3 million people. Most of the increase in population came from other U.S. states (867,935) while a smaller percentage came from international migration (414,740).

The West was the only region to also increase in population, with an annual increase of 0.2 percent. The Northeast and Midwest both lost residents overall to other regions.

Corporate World to Homesteading

“We wanted to be out in the middle of nowhere,” said Matt Moreno, who moved to Spring City, Tennessee, with his wife, Marla, from the Chicago area in 2020. “We were tipped off about the property and came here fresh out of the corporate world in Chicago. We thought at first it might just be a temporary move, not permanent, and we could maybe make an Air BnB out of it and move back up north once COVID was over.”

The Morenos, both in their 30s, grew up in an area of northern Illinois about an hour north of Chicago and less than a half-hour south of Kenosha, Wisconsin—where riots and looting dominated the public psyche just around the time the Morenos were packing up to head south.

Matt Moreno works in real estate, while Marla Moreno sells herbal medicine products. While the natural environment and ability to become more homesteaders than city-dwellers were attractive, so were statistics such as lower crime, lower taxes, and conservative politics.

“You see a lot of people here with guns on their side, but we feel safer here,” Matt Moreno said.

The move wasn’t the easiest decision to make, he said, noting that he wasn’t good with his hands or “mechanically inclined” coming from the corporate world.

“The thing about the area that surprised me the most was the sense of community,” he said. “In Illinois, people will run you over and flick you off in the street. When we came here, neighbors came together to help us get established.”

Moreno got into the real estate world in Tennessee quickly after moving and said now he has been able to help other couples and families wanting to move to the area from similar situations he was in.

Aside from the natural beauty and culture, he said the political climate was another major reason for their move.

“Tennessee is a very conservative state with conservative values, and to be honest, that attracted me,” he said. “Illinois had an extremely liberal workforce, and I like being here among like-minded thinkers.”

Other positives for Moreno include the lack of state income tax in Tennessee, which is why a number of people have told him they’re moving to the state, too.

Moreno said they had some learning experiences, such as learning that the mountain they lived on was quite windy and the tents they put up to store his wife’s products for her herbal medicine line wouldn’t hold up.

They also got into homesteading, starting with a goat they found for sale on Craigslist. They quickly discovered goats are social animals, so they bought a second and then a third. Then came chickens and ducks.

“We felt people were rude and only cared about money where we were,” he said. “It’s peaceful here. We have trails to access and hike. It’s just a very different world.”

In his work as a real estate agent, one of the main questions people have is about any restrictions on building on land for sale. They’re usually surprised to learn that there are none and are really excited about that fact, he said.

Living in a rural area comes with some inconveniences, such as driving longer distances for shopping or eating, but Moreno said he wouldn’t trade the location.

From Upstate New York to Southeast Tennessee

The Morenos’ sentiment was shared by Lynne Jornov, a nurse who moved south with her husband, Gary, in 2018. At first, they moved to Soddy-Daisy, but relocated to the small town of Dunlap after about two years.

Lynne Jornov’s job as a nurse allows her to work anywhere, while her husband’s work as a trucker gives him flexibility as well. The two said the main reasons for their move were taxes and conservative values.

“The cost of running a small business in New York was … pretty much unmanageable,” she said. “That, together with property taxes, [made us realize that] we could retire and own our own home outright and still have to pay $10,000 a year in property taxes just to stay there. That was a little eye-opening, along with the political insanity up there. It just wasn’t worth it anymore.”

She said that although their families are still in New York, she and her husband “had to do something” and move. They also wanted to get into agriculture, with a few cows, to become more self-sufficient.

“It was a tough decision,” she said. “[New York] was very beautiful, we had all four seasons. Of course, my parents are getting older and I would love to be there all the time, but we wouldn’t be able to live anywhere near as comfortably as we do here.”

She said the couple has grown children, so that wasn’t a factor in their decision, but they would have had a tough time raising their kids in New York’s current political climate.

Gary Jornov added that toll roads called “choice lanes,” which are currently being proposed by Tennessee legislators, aren’t something he would want to see.

“This state needs to be conservative, that’s why we came here,” he said in an interview. “We want to keep conservative clause and not be taxed to death. Hopefully that doesn’t change here and stays the way it is.”

Lynne Jornov said she understands the concerns of Tennessee natives who may not want people from states with different cultural backgrounds to bring their values with them, but that’s not what they want anyway.

“We could’ve stayed in New York for that,” she said. “Tennessee is more of what we were looking for. Thank God we don’t have small kids because I wouldn’t want to raise a child in any of those places. Things they are doing and allowing are absolutely insane.”

Southward Move Followed by Millions

Jae Gillispie, who moved from a suburban area in Illinois, has documented her move with her husband to Pikeville, Tennessee, on social media for tens of thousands of viewers.

She said she left her job of 21 years, and her husband left his job of 25 years.

“We downsized,” she said. “No traffic. We love our little home. It’s just beautiful out here. I am so glad we did this. It was a huge risk, because we are not retired. We made decent money, good money, and now we make less than half of what we did, but it’s worth every penny.”

The couple moved to a rural area around 2 1/2 miles from Fall Creek Falls State Park, the largest and most visited state park in Tennessee, and around 14 miles from the small town of Pikeville.

“If you’re thinking about moving out here, which a lot of people are, this state is going crazy. Everything has doubled and tripled in price because this is such a hot state right now,” she said, adding that they moved in 2020, just as the pandemic began. “It’s not cheap anymore, it’s definitely going up in price, but it’s the best move we ever made.”

She said that after 48 years in Illinois, they decided to leave for a variety of reasons, including taxes.

“The freedoms down here, you can’t beat that,” she said. “So just to set some of the people straight that care about transplants coming down—we’re not here to change anything, we’re pretty darn conservative.”

Read more here…

OJ futures have hit a new high, surging 10 cents or 4.56% to $2.292/lb, surpassing the 2016 record of $2.2585, due to limited supply.

The USDA predicts Florida’s citrus production will reach 44.5 million boxes this year, which could result in the state’s smallest orange harvest since 1945. This is due to “greening disease” and hurricane damage in Florida’s citrus groves.

Recall we have closely followed the squeeze in supplies:

• Orange Juice Prices Could “Increase Substantially” As Hurricane Pummels Florida’s Top Citrus Grow Region
• Orange Juice Futures Limit Up On Global Supply Squeeze

The domestic shortage has led domestic companies to seek out new supplies in Mexico and Brazil. WSJ reported a gallon of orange juice has risen above $6 in some US supermarkets.

Besides orange juice, egg prices are also soaring. People aren’t thrilled about rapid food inflation. 

I almost put the Orange Juice back at Walmart today. These prices are out of hand. #DoBestByEveryBody #Inflation

— Darryl R Ware II (@DarrylRWareII) January 31, 2023

It’s 5.00 for orange juice, 3.50 for eggs. Let’s focus on the important issues, not the fantasy that America will be “all electric” anywhere in our lifetimes. But good job on other stuff you’re doing. Keep up the support for Ukraine and reducing gas prices.

— Corey (@elbrynncanticle) January 30, 2023

Maybe is a Republican strategy to put you down let’s say there is around 10 people dead at day because weapons rights
prices of food eggs $10:00
Bread $6:00
Coffee cream $9:00
Milk $$7:00
Frozen orange juice $ $8:00
Please we don’t want to mention the prince of chicken,fish,Beef

— ALICIA M Blay Casal Franco Rivero (@ALICIAMBlayCas1) January 29, 2023

Authored by Nina Nguyen via The Epoch Times,

Australian authorities have found and secured a radioactive capsule missing in the outback of Western Australia (WA) after a frantic one-week hunt.

The capsule, which is filled with Caesium-147 which emits radiation equal to 10 X-rays per hour, was located two meters off the Great Northern Highway near Newman on Wednesday morning local time.

“I do want to emphasize this is an extraordinary result,” WA Emergency Services Minister Stephen Dawson said at a press conference on Wednesday afternoon.

“The search crews have quite literally found the needle in the haystack.”

A crew from Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and the Department of Fire and Emergency Services found the silver-colored capsule using radiation survey meters to detect the gamma rays and radiation levels to locate the capsule.

It has been placed in a lead container and is being transported to Newman for secure storage overnight before being taken to a WA Health Facility in Perth on Thursday.

A supplied image obtained on Jan. 27, 2023, of a small round and silver capsule containing radioactive Caesium-137 that went missing in transportation between a mine site north of Newman and the north-eastern parts of Perth between Jan. 10-16. (AAP Image/Supplied by Department of Fire and Emergency Services WA)

The device has been put in a 20-meter “hot zone” to make sure the public is not in contact with the radiation from the substance.

“This fantastic result in just seven days in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds is a testament to the close collaboration of all the agencies who came together to ensure the safety of WA,” said the Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES) WA, the lead agency in charge of the search.

“Thank you to the community for heeding the safety advice, sending suggestions and reporting any info they thought may aid the search efforts.”

The potentially dangerous radioactive capsule, just 6mm wide and 8mm long, is believed to have fallen from a truck that travelled from the Rio Tinto mine in WA north to a storage facility in Perth, an 870-mile journey.

“It is extremely rare for a source to be lost,” Western Australia Chief Health Officer Andrew Robertson said in a statement. 

Potentially Harmful Tiny Capsule

Authorities had warned the public to stay at least five meters away from the silver capsule as exposure could cause radiation burns or radiation sickness, though experts have said driving past the capsule would be relatively low risk, akin to taking an X-ray.

“It emits both beta and gamma rays, so if you have contact or close to you, you could either end up with skin damage, including skin burns … and if you have it long near you it could cause acute radiation sickness,” Robertson said.

Western Australian Chief Health Officer Andrew Robertson at a press conference at Dumas House in Perth, Australia, on Feb. 4, 2021. (Matt Jelonek/Getty Images)

“Our concern is someone will pick it up, not knowing what it is, think this is something interesting [and] keep it … not knowing what they are actually dealing with.”

The capsule cannot be weaponized or broken to spread the radioactive material, however, it can cause cancer, Robertson warned.

Rio Tinto’s Statement

The capsule left the Rio Tinto’s mine site on Jan. 12 and was reported to be missing on Jan. 25. The gauge was found broken apart and missing a screw and a bolt, which are believed to have come loose due to vibrations from the truck. Inspectors believed the capsule then fell through a hole and then out of the truck.

The public received an alert about the missing capsule about two days later. The package was in accordance with radiation safety regulations.

Rio Tinto said it recognized the disappearance is “clearly very concerning” and apologized for the alarm it has caused in the Western Australian community.

“Rio Tinto engaged a third-party contractor, with appropriate expertise and certification, to safely package the device in preparation for transport off-site ahead of receipt at their facility in Perth,” Simon Trott, Rio Tinto’s iron ore division chief, said in a statement on Monday.

A massive international research collaboration that analyzed several dozen rigorous studies focusing on “physical interventions” against COVID-19 and influenza found that they provide little to no protection against infection or illness rates.

The study, published in the peer-reviewed Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, is the strongest science to date refuting the basis for mask mandates worldwide.

Nearly 60% of South Korea’s population has now tested positive for COVID despite nearly three years of consistent universal masking with overwhelming compliance

When will it be enough for “experts” to admit masks don’t work? pic.twitter.com/LS0JF9niog

— Ian Miller (@ianmSC) January 25, 2023

And of course, the CDC still recommends masking in areas with “high” rates of transmission (fewer than 4% of US counties, as Just the News notes), along with indoor masking in areas with “medium” rates of transmission (27%).

Masks are still required in educational institutions in Democratic strongholds such as New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Washington and California, according to the Daily Mail. Boston Public Schools denied its “temporary masking protocol” in early January was a “mandate,” following a public letter against the policy by student Enrique Abud Evereteze.

South Korea is still requiring masks on public transport and in medical facilities after dropping COVID mandates in most indoor settings, including gyms, Monday, Reuters reported. -Just the News

According to the Cochrane study, which included the work of researchers at institutions in the  U.K., Canada, Australia, Italy and Saudi Arabia, a total of 78 studies were analyzed. Most recent additions to the meta-analysis were 11 new randomized controlled trials.

As unlisted study author Carl Heneghan – who directs the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford noted on Twitter: “Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza‐like illness (ILI)/COVID‐19 like illness compared to not wearing masks.”

Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza‐like illness (ILI)/COVID‐19 like illness compared to not wearing masks (risk ratio (RR) 0.95, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.84 to 1.09; 9 trials, 276,917 participants

— Carl Heneghan (@carlheneghan) January 30, 2023

Harms were rarely measured and poorly reported (very low‐certainty evidence).

— Carl Heneghan (@carlheneghan) January 30, 2023

The Danish study had trouble finding a major journal willing to publish its controversial findings that wearing surgical masks had no statistically significant effect on infection rates, even among those who claimed to wear them “exactly as instructed.” 

Mainstream media overlooked red flags in the Bangladeshi mask study, which found no effect for surgical masks under age 50 and a difference of only 20 infections between control and treatment groups among 342,000 adults. -JTN

Bottom line, mask wearing “probably makes little to no difference,” when it comes to influenza-like or COVID-like illnesses, regardless of type of mask used.

2/ LARGE Cochrane Rev (just published 1/30/23) of RCT data ALSO CONFIRMS NO BENEFIT of N95 masks vs. med/surg masks, in either community (n~8K) or HCW (n~8K) settings for prevention of flu-like illness or lab confirmed flu https://t.co/N4TkgI4uUR pic.twitter.com/0DCdYAPo7x

— Andrew Bostom, MD, MS (@andrewbostom) January 31, 2023

We’re sure the cult of Fauci will now start insisting peer-reviewed meta-analyses aren’t ‘the science.’