Month: August 2024

By Jan Nieuwenhuijs of Gainesville Coins

This article is an analysis of how the Chinese central bank (PBoC) buys gold in London from Western bullion banks. Because the bullion banks take care of the gold transport for the PBoC, the shipments from London to Beijing are disclosed in UK customs data. The customs data reveals that the PBoC continued to buy gold in May — when it communicated to the market it discontinued buying — at a rate of 53 tonnes. The PBoC stated it stopped buying to dampen the gold price so it could acquire more gold.

Several months ago, I discovered that supply in the Chinese gold market was outstripping demand. During my investigation of this anomaly, I found circumstantial evidence that led me to conclude the surplus is imported in 400-ounce bars from the United Kingdom, and surreptitiously procured by the PBoC.

Let’s go through some of the mechanics of the global gold market before we can stitch it all together.

PBoC Gold Buying Hidden in Plain Sight

In global customs data — officially called International Merchandise Trade Statistics (IMTS) — all gold disclosed is “non-monetary,” meaning not owned by a monetary authority such as a central bank. In the United Nations IMTS rulebook it reads that customs data excludes monetary gold:

Since monetary gold is treated as a financial asset rather than a good, transactions pertaining to it should be excluded from international merchandise trade statistics.

Though, someone familiar with the matter but who prefers to stay anonymous, shared with me that gold import and export data can relate to monetary gold. Commonly, central banks will buy gold from Western bullion banks that arrange transportation and insurance of the metal. The moment these banks ship the gold from the UK it is thus non-monetary bullion, but when it arrives in China it is monetized (changes ownership) and brought to vaults of the central bank, supposedly in Beijing.

Exports from the UK are mainly from the wholesale gold market in London where virtually all bars traded weigh 400 ounces. The retail market in Britain dealing in smaller bars pales in comparison, and the refining industry in the UK is relatively small.

In turn, at the core of the Chinese domestic gold market, which excludes Free Trade Zones (FTZs), is the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) where predominantly 1Kg gold bars are traded.

The private sector in China trades 1Kg bars through SGE, while the central bank buys “large bars” (400-ounce bars) abroad. As all gold on the SGE is traded in yuan, the PBoC can only diversify its international reserves by buying gold overseas with dollars or other foreign exchange. Aside from logic, there are multiple sources that have made clear the PBoC doesn’t purchase gold on the SGE. For example, the World Gold Council (WGC, page 9), the SGE (page 4), and it was confirmed to me personally by an ex-gold trader from a Chinese state-owned bank.

The SGE captures the lion share of all gold trading in the Chinese private market. There are rules and incentives that steer most supply—imports, domestic mine production, and recycled metal—towards the SGE, which for liquidity reasons attracts most demand. Hence, the gold withdrawn from the SGE vaults is often used as a proxy for Chinese wholesale demand. In a formula:

SGE withdrawals = net import + domestic mine output + recycled metal

Before 2022, gold supply and demand in the Chinese market matched. SGE withdrawals were always higher, to varying degrees, than net import plus domestic mine output, the difference being gold recycled through the central bourse.

If it were true that bullion banks ship gold to China, as non-monetary gold visible in customs data, that doesn’t flow into the SGE system, we would see a discrepancy between apparent Chinese gold supply and SGE withdrawals. As more gold would be supplied to China than sold through the SGE. In a formula:

SGE withdrawals < net import + domestic mine output + recycled metal

Indeed, both in 2022 and 2023 China’s net import plus mine output transcended SGE withdrawals (let alone if we would add recycled gold).

As we shall see, the surplus in the Chinese gold market—imports that are not sold through the SGE—is being absorbed by the PBoC.

Readers with deep knowledge of the Chinese gold market might think: “what if the large bars are refined in FTZs and loaded into SGE vaults without being withdrawn?” I checked with a source that has connections to refineries in China, and according to this person the refineries don’t use any large bars as feedstock for producing 1kg bars for the SGE*. Another contact I have, close to the SGE, shared with me that SGE inventory in April 2024 accounted for about 300 tonnes. Inventory had gone up recently together with a rise in the price of gold, this person said. However, the increase in SGE inventory can’t make up for the surplus in the market, which is at least 400 tonnes according to my calculations.

More Data Supporting the Thesis

By comparing estimated central bank purchases by the WGC, based on field research, to official statistics regarding gold buying by central banks, we know that since the start of the Ukraine war, in February 2022, monetary authorities in aggregate are secretly buying much more than they report. I have written before that these covert purchases can be attributed for roughly eighty percent to the PBoC.

“Unreported” PBoC gold purchases exploded when $300 billion in foreign exchange reserves from the Russian central bank were frozen by the West early 2022 due to the war. Notably, the UK began exporting 400-ounce bars to China in huge tonnages at the same time. Coincidence? I think not. Ever since, China has taken over gold price control from the West and broke the gold price’s correlation with “real rates” (10-year TIPS yield).

The final clue is that there is a relationship between what the Chinese central bank officially reports to be accumulating, and gold exports from the UK to China. What frequently happens, exposed by comparing these numbers, is that the PBoC starts buying gold a few months before it tells the world about it, and severely underreports its additions. This was the case in 2015, 2019, and 2022.

Conclusion

It all fits and makes sense: the motive, the data, and the anecdotal evidence. Let’s summarize our key findings:

• The Chinese central bank desperately needs to diversify its foreign exchange reserves since the beginning of 2022. Since then, the PBoC secretly buys large amounts of gold.
• At the same time, export of large gold bars from the UK to China explodes.
• A “surplus” in the Chinese market appears, while the bullion is not to be found in SGE vaults. As if it has gone up in smoke.
• A source indicates that gold shipments for central banks are often included in customs data.
• There is a correlation between PBoC official buying and UK exports to China, suggesting the Chinese central bank buys gold in England’s capital and lets banks supervise transport (maybe because the PBoC reaches the limits of its own capacity to ship gold when volumes are sizable).

It all points towards UK gold exports to China are destined for the PBoC—although probably not every ounce of these flows is for the Chinese central bank. Clearly, the PBoC is accumulating more gold than it wants to disclose.

When the PBoC stated it had stopped buying gold in May 2024, after continuous purchases for 18 months, I didn’t believe it. The PBoC has few reasons to cease growing its gold reserves in the current geo-political and monetary landscape with a plethora of challenges.

Probably, the PBoC wants the most gold for its dollars, so when the price rises fast it will signal it stopped buying, trying to cool the market. In the meantime, the United Kingdom exported 53 tonnes to China in May, of which likely most found its way to Beijing.

Note, the PBoC also buys in Switzerland and other countries, flows that can be included or excluded in customs reports, but it’s impossible, from where I stand now, to measure all these separately.

Finally, some of my previous analyses have been skewed by the above. Private demand in China has been lower because some (“non-monetary”) imports were taken by the central bank.

YouTuber Cody Detwiler, known as WhistlinDiesel, released a video on Friday in which he stress-tested a Tesla Cybertruck and a Ford F-150. Although Detwiler’s testing of the EV truck comes months after other social media users, his tests may be some of the most rigorous yet. 

Before the series of durability tests started, the Cybertruck rolled off a rollback tow truck, surviving while the Ford F-150’s driveshaft instantly broke. Detwiler was infuriated that it took half the day to figure out how to charge the Cybertruck at a Supercharging station (full context: Detwiler did not have a Tesla account for charging). 

While the Cybertruck outperformed the F-150 on the ‘speed bump test,’ ‘offroad test,’ and ‘pothole test,’ the EV truck suffered a rear frame separation of the tow hitch and bumper when pulling the stuck F-150.

“Our whole frame just snapped!” Detwiler yelled, adding, “The hitch is hooked up to what? It just came off. You can’t even fix that.” 

“The rear gigacasting… just fails! I mean, it just tears right off! You can see in the screenshot above that a bolt hole acts as a stress concentration,” car blog The Autopian noted after reviewing Detwiler’s YouTube video. 

“Pulling an F150 will not break a Cybertruck’s rear frame,” one X user said, adding, “This video shows that prior to pulling the F150, the Cybertruck’s rear frame slammed onto a concrete block, which is what caused the actual damage.” 

Pulling an F150 will not break a Cybertruck’s rear frame

This video shows that prior to pulling the F150, the Cybertruck’s rear frame slammed onto a concrete block, which is what caused the actual damage: pic.twitter.com/45xrhji0lD

— Adrian Dittmann (@AdrianDittmann) August 4, 2024

After that, Detwiler strapped explosives to the door panels of both trucks. The YouTuber claims ‘C-4’… It appears the Cybertruck withstood the blast. 

The F-150, not so much.

The Autopian summarized the rest of the video as follows: “The rest of the video shows the Cybertruck’s numerous build quality issues, its steer-by-wire failure making it hard to tow the thing onto a trailer, and other problems, though it does ultimately demonstrate the truck’s superior off-road capability and the toughness of its body panels.”

The auto blog concluded, “The Cybertruck’s performance in the video is mixed, though the host ultimately crowns the F-150 the winner by one point.” 

Authored by A.C. Daahnke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

An estimated 57 million people around the world are living with dementia, and that number is expected to increase to 153 million by 2050.

But a new report published by the Lancet Commission on dementia estimates that almost half of the cases of the neurological disease can likely be avoided or delayed. Twenty-seven of the world’s leading dementia experts co-authored the report.

These experts point to 12 existing risk factors and two new ones that could prevent or delay dementia.

The two new risk factors included are vision loss and having high low-density lipoprotein or LDL cholesterol.

The previous 12 risk factors include less education, hearing loss, depression, traumatic brain injury, physical inactivity, smoking, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, excessive alcohol consumption, social isolation, and air pollution.

Some of these risk factors play a greater contributing role in early life rather than late life. For example, having less education is a more prominent risk factor in early life. Risk factors like social isolation, air pollution, and untreated vision loss are greater risk factors in late life, while the other risk factors pose a greater risk in midlife.

“In short, these factors put a person at higher or lower risk of developing dementia,” Carol Brayne, professor of public health medicine at the University of Cambridge, and her doctoral student Seb Walsh told The Epoch Times over email.

“That means that you cannot say to an individual person, if you stop smoking, or if you get your blood pressure under control, then you definitely won’t get dementia. But if we do this for many people across society then we expect some reduction in dementia prevalence across age groups, even though not ‘preventing’ it entirely.”

14 Risk Factors

The risk factors were determined from data from 37,000 participants aged 45 and older who participated in the Norwegian HUNT study. The Commission looked at evidence from the data and other reviews to decide what factors were most likely associated with dementia.

Specifically, new evidence supports vision loss and high cholesterol as new modifiable risk factors for dementia, the report notes.

The initial 12 risk factors were linked with 40 percent of cases, but the new report notes that addressing all 14 factors could prevent or delay 45 percent of dementia cases.

The report did not assess the number of years dementia may be delayed if a person reduces their risk factors.

“Dementia increases exponentially with age. So we are generally talking about a population where, if you delay its onset by a few years, some will die of other things in the meantime and dementia will effectively be ‘prevented’ for that person. For others, they will still develop dementia but later in their life and closer to death,” said Brayne and Walsh.

In particular, the report found that high LDL cholesterol and hearing loss had the greatest weighting in their link to dementia. The two factors were attributed to around a third of preventable dementia cases.

Less education in early life was associated with 11 percent of all preventable cases, leading to a call for good quality education and “cognitively stimulating activities in midlife to protect cognition” by the Commission.

For those risk factors that occurred during midlife, depression and traumatic brain injury comprised 6 percent of preventable cases respectively, and physical inactivity, smoking, diabetes, hypertension, and obesity were all associated with 2 to 4 percent of preventable cases.

Among all risk factors, depression in midlife had the lowest prevalence but made up a significant proportion of preventable dementia cases.

“Depression is both risk and early symptom as well as often being present during dementia progression until moderate stages. So it’s a particularly challenging risk to examine and many studies look earlier in life to try and tease out the risk factor element specifically to make sure it is a risk not a prodrome,” Brayne and Walsh said.

For cases affecting older individuals, social isolation was associated with around 10 percent of preventable cases, while air pollution was associated with 5 percent.

The Commission noted that prevention should be “ambitious.” “Prevention involves both policy changes at national and international governmental levels and individually tailored interventions.”

The Commission recommended specific actions to reduce dementia risk across one’s life. They include:

• Having good quality education and engage in cognitively stimulating activities in mid-life
• Using hearing aids and reducing harmful noise exposure, for those with hearing loss
• Treating depression
• Using helmets and head protection in contact sports and when riding
• Exercising
• Reducing smoking
• Preventing or reducing hypertension
• Detecting and treating high LDL cholesterol from midlife
• Maintaining a healthy weight and treating obesity as early as possible; this can also help to prevent diabetes
• Reducing high alcohol consumption
• Prioritizing age-friendly and supportive community environments and housing
• Reducing social isolation by facilitating participation in activities and living with others
• Making screening and treatment for vision loss accessible

Will tackling all risk factors completely ameliorate dementia cases?

“Some people will still develop dementia,” Professor Gill Livington said in an interview with The Epoch Times. “We expect those that do to have a longer life span of which they are healthy and a shorter time with dementia at the end of their life.”

A prosecutor for the Bronx has been forced to resign after being caught on camera allegedly trying to meet up with a 13 year old boy he met online, the New York Post reported last week. 

30 year old William C.C. Kemp-Neal resigned from the Bronx District Attorney’s office after Dads Against Predators posted a video of him in a Target parking lot in Mount Vernon.

In the July 8 footage, vigilantes confront Kemp-Neal, identifying him as “Marcus,” causing him to flee. According to the Post, Kemp-Neal, a Fordham Law graduate, earned $84,990 as an ADA, focusing on assault, harassment, and child endangerment cases.

“Excuse me everybody, this man right here came to meet a 13-year-old boy,” the vigilantes can be heard yelling, while chasing Kemp-Neal. 

“You wanna take him to get a milkshake, right Marcus?” another asks after they catch up to him. 

The chase ended when a bystander intervened, putting Kemp-Neal in a chokehold, according to the footage. Kemp-Neal struggles to breathe and tries to escape while being interrogated by one of the men, before police broke up the scene, the report said. 

A police statement said officers “encountered several individuals making allegations of wrongdoing,” and said they would undertake a “comprehensive investigation.”

He has not been arrested or charged with a crime so far. Meanwhile, DA Darcel Clark’s office told The Post: “William Kemp-Neal worked here as an ADA from June 28, 2020, until July 17, 2024.”

Video of the confrontation can be seen here. 

Authored by Mark Oshinskie via The Brownstone Institute,

f, as on Family Feud, you asked a hundred people who know me to identify one of my characteristics, most might say that I talk too much about the Scamdemic. But 53 months ago, the thing that—sadly—may have been at the top of the list is that I eat a lot of food, and that much of it is weird. 

I won’t deny that I have a large appetite. But I don’t agree that Cheese Doodles and Dr. Pepper should be considered normal and collards and chia weird. 

I’ve never watched more than ten seconds of a cooking show; “That looks delicious!” doesn’t work for me. Yet, for several reasons, I was inordinately interested in food long before Michael Pollan and Barefoot Contessa burst onto the scene and America became a foodie culture. First, growing up, we didn’t always have enough food in the house. Second, sensible eating helps people to stay healthy. Third, I like tasty stuff. 

Therefore, I’ve often read, listened to, and thought about which foods are the most nutritious and how these might be sustainably produced. I’ve grown food for the past twelve years and have applied some of my acquired knowledge, or belief. 

Historically, many people have had less to eat than they’ve needed to thrive, or simply survive. Hence, many have hailed the Green Revolution: a late 20th-century agricultural project encompassing plant genetic modification, modern irrigation systems, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides that increased food production, especially of wheat, rice, corn, and soybeans. 

But the Green Revolution hasn’t been a cost-free, magic bullet. Neither mass nor energy is created nor destroyed; everything physical derives from something else physical. Newer crop varieties yield more because they use more water, synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, expensive farm equipment, and fuel. 

Green Revolution practices have caused serious environmental harm. Aquifers are being depleted as irrigation water is pumped from the ground faster than rain recharges it. Unimaginable amounts of fertile soil have been washed or blown away. Fertilizers and pesticides pollute soil, air, and water beyond the agricultural lands themselves, including rivers and oceans. Converting forests, grasslands, and wetlands into farmland has destroyed much wildlife/game habitat and lessened atmospheric carbon uptake. Consequently, the natural resources needed to produce food have been degraded, portending eventual, widespread crop failure and food shortages. 

Economic and social damage has also been done. Green Revolution inputs were too costly for small farmers. Therefore, they couldn’t compete against larger, well-capitalized, or debt-leveraged growers, whose higher yields glutted markets and depressed prices. Hence, smaller farmers lost their livelihoods and land. Rural communities have emptied, both in the United States and abroad. Many displaced farmers have killed themselves. Others moved to cities or emigrated, as have rural Mexicans to the United States.

Additionally, eating too many Green Revolution staples can make people unhealthy. Carbohydrate-heavy diets and high-fructose corn syrup, developed to use surplus corn, have increased obesity and diabetes rates. Newer, dwarf wheat strains are harder to digest. Regular consumption of soy is said to disrupt endocrine function. Insecticides and herbicides have harmed farm workers and food consumers.  

During 53 months of Coronamania, I’ve often thought that the Covid response resembled the Green Revolution. Fundamentally, both processes exalted “science,” “technology,” and “expert-driven” management.

Despite much media hype, top-down interventions in both realms have caused much harm.

To begin with, the “solutions” in both settings failed to eliminate the underlying problem. No matter how much food farmers grew using Green Revolution methods, hunger remains because many can’t afford the food produced via this input-intensive method. The WHO says that 828 million people are chronically hungry. 

Similarly, regarding public health, although America continually spends more on medical care—over the past 60 years, medical costs have increased from 6% of GDP to 19%—life spans flattened and have recently diminished. Specifically, despite the Covid lockdowns, masks, tests, and vaccines, people—nearly all of them very old and/or very sick—nonetheless died. Many died sooner from lockdown effects, iatrogenic hospital treatments, and vax injuries than if lower tech, lower cost, less disruptive practices had been implemented, or if simpler, more effective treatments had been administered, not suppressed. But overall, there are 350 million more humans on the planet than in March 2020. 

Both the Green Revolution and the Covid response are based on the unsound notion that it’s better to intervene aggressively and resource-intensively than it is to consider the secondary effects of any intervention and to show appropriate restraint. Why, e.g., lock down all people in response to a respiratory virus when only a clearly identifiable group was at risk? First, do no harm.

In both the ag and medical/public health settings, judicious policy requires awareness that, ultimately, human life spans and ecosystems are bounded by nature. Ultimately, only so much food can be sustainably produced. And no matter what measures we take to extend human life, people get old and die. Hence, our attempts to manage both agriculture and human health must be tempered by reality and humility. 

Nonetheless, the interventionist mindset/model prevails because it’s profitable. The Green Revolution expanded via the combined efforts of the US government, leading “philanthropies” and corporations to expand markets. These methods were strongly exported to the US Agency for International Development (“USAID”), which facilitated foreign investment, while the World Bank and organizations like the Ford Foundation and the oil-funded Rockefeller Foundation subsidized road building, mechanized farm equipment, and rural electrification projects to pump groundwater. The Green Revolution built lucrative markets for pesticides, seeds, petrochemical fertilizers, irrigation systems, tractors, and combines. 

The Green Revolution’s public/private partnerships provided a template for Covid Era government/corporate/WHO vaccine campaigns, which have benefitted hospitals, Pharma, and their investors, like Gates, the latter-day Rockefeller. 

During Coronamania, corporations and stockholders also made billions selling such items as harmful medications, ventilators, masks, plexiglass, and limitless, useless tests. Others, like Amazon, Zoom, and Netflix, cashed in on government edicts via online commerce and such products as educational software. Thus, as during the Green Revolution, the Covid response further enriched the rich. 

But simultaneously, these interventions impoverished many. Just as small farmers lost markets during the Green Revolution, during Coronamania, small businesses closed and middle-class people lost wealth to large businesses and investors, respectively. Both the Green Revolution and Covid mitigation gained favor because they made money for investors. They didn’t benefit the public when the full range of effects were considered.

The Green Revolution established the technological and institutional foundation for a subsequent era of genetically modified crops, globalization of agriculture, and even greater dominance of agribusiness giants. While grain and soy production has increased, so—as processed foods have replaced flesh foods, fresh vegetables, and fruits—has the number of people with diet-driven diseases. 

Analogously, the Covid response has laid the groundwork for more intensive government-enforced social controls, including an ever-growing series of mandated injections, social credit scores, central bank digital currencies, implanted tracking chips, and censorship of purported, but not actual, “misinformation.” 

Green Revolution food is, as noted above, nutritionally inferior. Similarly, the Covid “vaccines” seem to have damaged immune function and caused many deaths from cardiovascular damage, cancers, miscarriages, et al. Further, just as insects and weeds evolve to avoid control by pesticides, viruses evolve and elude the Covid “vaxxes.”

The Green Revolution transformed not only farming systems, but local food markets and culture, as farmers swapped traditional seeds and growing practices for the new varieties of corn, wheat, and rice that accompanied this package of technologies. The seeds from these hybrids can’t be saved from one season to the next, as heirloom varieties typically had been. Thus, farmers must purchase costly new seeds each year. Over time, the loss of traditional crops and growing techniques have decreased food system resilience. 

Similarly, instead of taking personal steps to build health, many Americans naively rely on Pharma products, with very mixed results. The Covid overreaction also isolated people and thus, caused social and psychological, as well as physical, harm. 

Some advocate shifting away from resource-intensive Green Revolution agriculture and toward more sustainable, crop-diversified methods. 

In the same manner, many without a pecuniary interest who seek to improve public health want to deemphasize Med/Pharma interventions and, instead, incentivize healthy eating and spending more on non-medical means, such as malaria nets and toilets, to improve health. 

Some maintain that Green Revolution technologies have been essential; that we don’t have enough societal wealth to grow, in sustainable, labor-intensive ways, enough food for everyone. 

Initially, it seems that food shortages are more about maldistribution than scarcity. Much food is wasted. And by the look of things, some people eat too much food, especially that which is derived from modern strains of wheat, rice, corn, and soy. 

Agricultural and medical subsidies skew markets and adversely affect consumer decisions. Food could be grown more sustainably if government subsidies didn’t distort farmers’ markets and decisions, and if consumers were willing to spend a larger slice of their individual incomes on what they eat. 

Similarly, in health care, we could reduce medical insurance mandates and government subsidies that support high-cost, low-yield medical testing and practices. Less can be more. If people used their own money, or that of charities, to fund medical care, they would make cost-effective decisions, limiting the tests, treatments, and drugs they demand and taking better care of themselves. Many assert that unlimited medical care is a right. But this doctrinaire stance is bankrupting societies and governments, and not delivering commensurate public health outcomes. 

Ultimately, reality will settle questions regarding the Green Revolution’s role in feeding a growing population. We’ll learn, by doing, if it’s possible to continue to grow food this way on a mass, exponentially expanded scale. In the scheme of human history, agriculture is relatively new; it’s only been going on for 12,000 years. As the economist Herb Stein said, “That which is not sustainable will end.” 

The same is true of medical and public health finance.

Just as some maintained that Green Revolution crops were needed to end hunger, public health “experts” asserted that lockdowns were needed to prevent millions of Covid deaths.

Yet, by inducing an economic coma, Covid lockdowns lowered the incomes of the poor and made food unaffordable to them. Though the media failed to report this, and while Americans gained weight during the lockdowns and closures, according to the WHO, the lockdowns’ economic slowdown caused 150 million additional people to go hungry in poorer nations. Thus, the virtue-signaling, “compassionate,” “kind” people who said they were saving grandma instead killed multitudes via their simple-minded, politically-motivated altruism.

Many attribute the Green Revolution to Norman Borlaug, who died in 2009. Toward the end of his life, Borlaug wondered when “an ever-burgeoning humanity becomes too much for Mother Earth to bear.” I doubt that Birx, Fauci, Collins, or the lockdown politicians will ever show corresponding humility about their ham-handed Covid edicts and their posturing about the deaths of the old and unhealthy.

On their deathbeds, the Covid operatives will tell themselves that they were geniuses and benefactors of humanity. They’ll also disregard the vast, lasting suffering and damage they caused. The media will eulogize these bureaucrats by echoing their falsehoods. Most people will continue to buy the bureaucratic and media lies.

The Green Revolution was, at least in concept, a much worthier undertaking than was the Covid response. Hunger is a far more serious problem than Covid ever was. Malnutrition kills infinitely more potentially healthy, younger people than did this respiratory virus. Compared to the Covid mitigation, which was an out-and-out Scam, the Green Revolution practices seem well-intentioned. Despite what looks, in retrospect, like blind technological optimism and economic opportunism, at least the Green Revolution’s exponents did what they set out to do: feed more people. 

In contrast, the world would have been far better off over the past 53 months if there had been no public health or biosecurity bureaucracies to incite irrational fear and to implement measures that intentionally, opportunistically caused tremendous harm and shortened, not extended, many lives. We’d also have been far better off consuming sitcoms, pop songs, and cat videos than TV, radio, or Internet news. 

Ultimately, both the Covid response and the Green Revolution have caused much damage because they disregarded biology and sociology. These interventions diverted resources from lower-intensity approaches that would have benefitted far more and hurt many fewer, people. The cost/benefit analysis was much easier during the Covid response; so much plainly foreseeable harm has been so disingenuously done since March 2020 under the pretense of protecting public health. 

In agriculture, public health, and medicine, we should stop envisioning and hyping magic technological bullets that empower governments and enrich investors more than they benefit their purported target populations. We should consider not only the ostensible short-term benefits of agricultural, public health, and medical interventions but also the broader, long-term social and human costs of these practices. 

Or at least we should recognize the structural dysfunction and self-interest that taints other “expert-managed,” “science-driven” public/private partnerships.

Republished from the author’s Substack

In our preview of last week’s BOJ we refrained from giving details and merely shared a candid assessment of what we thought the result would be:

BOJ preview: whatever is the dumbest possible thing that can happen, is what will happen. 100% guaranteed

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) July 30, 2024

And we were right, because by deciding to hike rates into an economic showdown, the BOJ – which as we noted last week “changed the rules” again – has unleashed a financial apocalypse by creating a positive feedback loop that culminates with a deflationary collapse of all assets (as the bank now goalseeks a surge in the yen and thus deflation and economic devastation) which has led to not only to the Nikkei promptly entering a bear market from its all time high hit just 3 weeks ago and wiping out all of its year to day gains, not to mention collapsing 15% since last week’s BOJ meeting which we knew would be a disaster…

… which has also just suffered its biggest two-day drop in history, surpassing Black Monday…

… but also the halt of trading of both its peer, the Topix…

• *CIRCUIT BREAKER TRIGGERED FOR TOPIX INDEX

… as it too enters a bear market…

• *JAPAN’S TOPIX INDEX FALLS 20% FROM JULY PEAK

… and the entire Japanese bond market:

• *CIRCUIT BREAKER TRIGGERED FOR JAPAN GOVT BOND FUTURES

Meanwhile, among today’s freefalling stocks are such names as the iconic Nintendo…

• *NASDAQ 100 FUTURES DROP AS MUCH AS 2%

…and perhaps something more troubling, is that Japan’s megabanks are in freefall, starting with Mizuho…

• *MIZUHO SHARES FALL AS MUCH AS 12%, MOST SINCE MARCH 2020

and ending with Japan’s largest bank, its JPMorgan, if you will, which just plunged the most on record!

• *MUFG SHARES FALL AS MUCH AS 21%, RECORD INTRADAY DECLINE

It’s not just Japan: Korea is getting swept in as well…

• *KOSPI INDEX SLUMPS, TAKING LOSSES FROM JULY PEAK TO 10%

… and of course, the US, where Nasdaq futures crashing as much as 2% and the S&P is down 1.1%

• *NASDAQ 100 FUTURES DROP AS MUCH AS 2%

And then there’s bitcoin which, well, lets not even go there.

So strap in folks, the day is just getting started…

Elon Musk has responded after fired CNN journalist Don Lemon sued Musk and his social media platform X for breach of contract, after Musk scrapped Lemon’s show on X prior to its debut.

According to a new court filing late last week, Lemon is accusing Musk and X of “fraud, negligent misrepresentation, misappropriation of name and likeness,” along with “unjust enrichment.”

Musk hit back, saying in a Friday post on X that Lemon “made a series of impressively insane demands. We declined. Therefore, there was no deal.”

He made a series of impressively insane demands. We declined. Therefore, there was no deal.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 2, 2024

Lemon wanted (among other things):

• A free Tesla Cybertruck
• A $5 million upfront payment on top of an $8 million salary
• An equity stake in X, and the right to approve any changes in X policy as it relates to news content.

As the Epoch Times notes, in January, the two entered a content agreement involving Lemon hosting his own show on the platform, court documents say. The deal was worth $1.5 million annually in addition to advertising revenue, full authority over his content, and financial incentives.

According to the lawsuit, filed in San Francisco state court, Lemon claims Musk made “false representations and promises” about the exclusive partnership.

Musk canceled the partnership in March, and the complaint alleges that Lemon had already invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into creating the show.

The complaint says that while there was no signed agreement with X, Lemon had a phone conversation with Musk in June 2023 during which Musk asked him to enter the exclusive partnership despite having initial reservations.

The show was set to be centered around politics, culture, sports, and entertainment divided into three 30-minute episodes a week.

X would be given exclusive rights to the content 24 hours before it was shared to other platforms, and Lemon was promised 60 percent of gross advertising revenue generated from his content and performance threshold payments based on follower counts, the complaint says.

On March 13, Lemon announced in a post on X that Musk had terminated the deal “hours after an interview” Lemon conducted with him on March 8 for the premiere episode of the new show, saying Musk’s “commitment to a global town square where all questions can be asked and all ideas can be shared seems not to include questions of him from people like me.”

In a response on the same day, X said that the platform reserves the right to make decisions regarding its business partnerships, and that, “after careful consideration,” it decided not to enter into a commercial partnership with the Don Lemon Show.

Under the same post, Musk replied that Lemon’s “approach was basically just ‘CNN, but on social media’.”

Lemon alleges in the lawsuit that X enriched itself and reaped the benefits of using Lemon’s name, likeness, identity, and reputation in an effort to entice advertisers after a number of major companies suspended their ads from the platform in 2023.

Musk purchased Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion before rebranding the platform as X. Since the axed deal, Lemon continues to post content on his X account.

Lemon was fired from CNN last year after 17 years with the network following a slew of controversial on-air comments and personal scandals during that time.

“Lemon was a top prospect for X, and thus, Defendants saw an opportunity and sought to reach an exclusive partnership deal with Lemon, following his termination at CNN, at a time when Lemon was vulnerable,” reads the suit.

The Epoch Times has reached out to representatives of both parties for comment.

Lemon is seeking an unspecified amount in monetary damages, including attorney fees and injunctive relief.

By Judicial Watch

Less than a year after Judicial Watch reported that the Taliban has established fake nonprofits to steal millions of dollars in U.S. aid to Afghanistan, a new investigation reveals that the terrorist group has also received hundreds of millions in development assistance from Uncle Sam because the State Department fails to properly vet award recipients. At least $239 million have likely filled the coffers of the extremists running the Islamic republic since the 2021 U.S. military withdrawal, according to a report published this month by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). The money was disbursed by State Department divisions known as Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) and International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) to implement development projects intended to help achieve American foreign policy and national security goals in Afghanistan.

Investigators found that the State Department failed to comply with its own counterterrorism partner vetting requirements in Afghanistan before awarding at least 29 grants to various local entities. The agency has a system to identify whether prospective awardees have a record of ethical business practices and is supposed to conduct a risk assessment to determine if programming funds may benefit terrorists or terrorist-affiliates before distributing American taxpayer dollars. In the more than two dozen cases examined, the agency did not bother and failed to keep proper records.

“Because DRL and INL could not demonstrate their compliance with State’s partner vetting requirements, there is an increased risk that terrorist and terrorist affiliated individuals and entities may have illegally benefited from State spending in Afghanistan,” the SIGAR report says.

“As State continues to spend U.S. taxpayer funds on programs intended to benefit the Afghan people, it is critical that State knows who is actually benefiting from this assistance in order to prevent the aid from being diverted to the Taliban or other sanctioned parties, and to enable policymakers and other oversight authorities to better scrutinize the risks posed by State’s spending.”

The watchdog found issues with 29 awards distributed by DRL and INL. For instance, DRL failed to properly screen the recipients of seven awards totaling about $12 million, investigators found. INL did not provide any supporting documentation for 19 of its 22 awards totaling about $295 million so there is no way to determine if they complied with the vetting requirements. The State Department acknowledged that not all its bureaus have complied with document retention requirements, which makes it conveniently impossible to fully assess the magnitude of its transgressions. The explanation offered for INL not retaining records is “employee turnover and the dissolution of the Afghanistan-Pakistan office,” according to the report. SIGAR points out that, given the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, it is critical that U.S. government activities adhere to the laws, regulations, and policies intended to prevent certain transactions with terrorists.

Besides establishing fraudulent non-governmental organizations (NGO) to loot big chunks of the $3 billion in humanitarian aid that the U.S. has given Afghanistan since the Biden administration’s abrupt military withdraw, the Taliban has raked in millions more by charging taxes, permit fees and import duties. That money has flowed through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a famously corrupt State Department arm that got $63.1 billion for foreign assistance and diplomatic engagement this year, and the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the government’s international broadcasting services that aims to inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy.

The United Nations has also received $1.6 billion in U.S. funding for Afghanistan and a large percentage of that money most likely went to the Taliban as well, according to a federal audit, because the U.S. government does not require the leftist world body to report on taxes, fees or duties incurred on American funds for activities in Afghanistan.

Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe said on Friday the agency takes full responsibility for the tragic events at former President Donald Trump’s rally last month, pledging changes such as flying drones.

“This was a mission failure,” said Rowe at a press conference in Washington.

Rowe replaced Kimberly Cheatle as director of the Secret Service amid intense scrutiny after she resigned in the wake of the attempted assassination of Trump, which saw one rallygoer killed and two more injured in Butler, Pennsylvania, last month.

Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, was struck at the tip of his ear by a bullet fired by 20-year-old gunman Thomas Crooks while he spoke at a campaign rally. Crooks, who fired several bullets, was killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper.

But agents should have had eyes on the roofs and other vantage points, Rowe said. And despite offers by local enforcement to fly drones, the Secret Service didn’t put one up.

That will change, Rowe said.

“We thought we might have had it covered with the human eye,” he said. “But clearly we are going to change our approach now, and we are going to leverage technology and put those unmanned aerial systems up.”

“We did not have a drone on site. We did not put a drone up. Based on the information I have right now, I am aware that there was a request from a local agency to offer to fly a drone on that day. And that is also part of the mission assurance review that I’ve asked to get some better insight in,” Rowe added.

Rowe said that the Secret Service also failed to communicate with local law enforcement over the radio at the rally. He said that the agency “fell short” of their responsibility to ensure Trump’s safety. “I’m working to make sure that this failure does not happen again,” he said.

Local police had identified Crooks as a suspect over an hour before the incident, but the Secret Service failed to secure the warehouse he fired from, which local police couldn’t cover.

Congress, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General, and an independent review directed by President Joe Biden have been launched into the assassination attempt.

The Secret Service’s own Office of Professional Responsibility is conducting a mission assurance review. Rowe said disciplinary action would be taken if necessary, and procedures would be changed.

There should have been more of a physical law enforcement presence on site, Rowe said, given how close the building used by the shooter was to the stage where Trump spoke. If no law enforcement presence on the roof, there should have been “better security” preventing someone from getting up there, he said.

“That building was very close to that outer perimeter and we should have had more of a presence,” he said.

It’s hoped that a larger physical presence of law enforcement on site will deter future attempts.

“We want to deter people from even thinking about doing something like this again,” Rowe said.

Rowe also commended the bravery of the Secret Service agents who responded during the assassination attempt, noting their swift action to shield Trump’s body with their own “within three seconds of bullets ringing out in an unflinching act of bravery.”

Authored by Roger Kimball via American Greatness,

Although the last few weeks have had their alarming aspects – chief among which was the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13, the odds-on favorite candidate for president – they have also had their amusing moments.

In the latter category, I place the sudden queen-for-a-day-like coronation of Kamala Harris.

True, that coronation was in the nature of an anti-democratic semi-soft-coup (or anti-democratic “inversion of a coup”). Biden and his handlers, right up until  the morning of July 21, were insisting that he was not dropping out, that he was “in it to win,” etc.  But someone made him an offer he couldn’t refuse and out he went.

Here’s the amusing bit.  Until the moment Biden was chased out of the race, Kamala Harris functioned primarily as political life insurance.  “You might not like me,” Biden communicated, “but if I go, you’re stuck with her.”

Biden’s polls were in the toilet and, following his catastrophic debate with Donald Trump, were circling the drain, poised for oblivion. But Kamala’s polls were even worse. She was cordially disliked by—well, by everyone. Her staff, her colleagues, but above all, by voters. In the 2020 race, she got no delegates: none, zero, zip.  She dropped out of the race for president but was then tapped to be VP only because this half Indian, half Jamaican woman was swarthy enough to pass as black and Biden had promised to select a black female as a running mate. Kamala truly is, as Biden himself acknowledged recently, a DEI vice president.

And sure enough, Kamala was every bit the disaster people predicted she would be. As a matter of clinical interest, she proved that senility is not the only cause of supreme rhetorical incoherence. Some people, and she is one, come by it naturally.  Her tenure as vice president is littered with examples, and she provided another doozy just a couple of days ago when she attempted to comment on the prisoner exchange with Russia.

It’s painful, as are all the many video clips of Harris angrily denouncing people who say “Merry Christmas,” of her presiding as “border czar” over the disaster of our non-existent southern border, of her outlining how she wants to give Medicare, as well as the franchise, to all illegal immigrants, and how she wants to develop a national data base of gun owners so that she can confiscate firearms by force.

Can such a person win the presidency?  No.

Then, how can we explain the sudden efflorescence of Harrismania? Democrats are wetting themselves with glee over their sudden fundraising windfalls ($200 million in a week, it is said) and sudden surge in the polls.  New York magazine just beclowned itself with a cover showing Kamala sitting on top of the world with Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and even Joe Biden dancing and whooping it up below.  “Welcome to Kamalot,” we read: “In a matter of days, the Democratic Party discovered its future was actually in the White House all along.”

Was it? Again, the answer is no.  It is a temporary sugar high caused partly by the feeling of liberation following the sudden release from Joe Biden, partly by the slobbering media jumping all over the reinvention of Kamala like dogs vibrating over a bitch in estrus. The feeling of intoxication may linger through the Democratic convention, but there are already signs that it is fading.  I think James Piereson is correct. Kamala’s position now is akin to that of Michael Dukakis (remember him?) in 1988.

Dukakis was way ahead of George Bush in the summer of 1988.  Then it all unraveled.  His helmet-moment in the tank sealed the deal. But it was his whole left-wing outlook that really did him in.  And Dukakis was Ronald Reagan compared to Kamala Harris.  “Once her views are made known to the public,” Piereson notes, “Harris’s support will begin to melt away. . . . [B]y mid-September, Trump will have opened up a six-point lead in the polls that will remain intact for the balance of the campaign.”

Although I would hesitate to be quite so arithmetically precise, I think that Piereson is also by and large correct in his electoral prediction. “Notwithstanding the euphoria today,” he writes,

Trump will win the election by six points—forty-nine to forty-three percent—winning 339 electoral votes, including all of the so-called swing states, plus the Democratic-leaning states of Virginia, Minnesota, and New Hampshire.  Republicans will pick up three or four seats in the Senate and perhaps twenty seats in the House, giving them safe majorities in both chambers. This will give Trump the margins he needs to implement a good piece of his agenda in 2025 and 2026.

I think this is right—though, again, I hesitate to be quite so exact in attaching numbers to Trump’s victory.

Back in 2020, I wrote a column on “The Democratic Art of Magical Thinking.” Magical thinking, I explained, “is the irrational belief, rampant among primitive peoples and those exposed to too many woke college seminars, that our thoughts influence or ‘constitute’ reality.”

There can be a certain entertainment value to the phenomenon, which is why I added the word “masque” to the title of this piece.  A “masque” was a form of “courtly entertainment” that combined dance, music, fancy-dress, and architectural fantasy “to present a deferential allegory flattering to the patron.”  That’s essentially what we have here with Kamala Harris.  That New York magazine cover depicting her cackling astride the globe would be a suitable playbill for this intended deep state entertainment. But I doubt that the Democrats will be able to maintain their willing suspension of disbelief far beyond the convention when the masque ends and the players disperse.

How did the magical thinking arise in the first place? One source is the habit of credulity that is a by-product of all utopian thought. The Democrats have mutated into the party of nowhere, so it is not surprising that they prefer pleasing fantasy to sobering reality.

The other chief source is the attack on objective truth that, in various ways, has been the gospel proclaimed by fancy professors for the past several decades. Students everywhere are taught to be suspicious of truth, to proclaim the relativity of values. This is a brain-addling teaching, but one that you would have to look far and wide to find a place it hasn’t reached.

As I noted in that earlier column on magical thinking, epistemic nihilism is the order of the day in all the best colleges and universities. But the result is not so much a failure as a promiscuity of belief. Hence the hyperventilating media shamans with their intoxicating potions. Some conservative pundits are fretting that Kamala Harris represents a credible challenge to the Trump juggernaut. Absent an assassin’s bullet, the successful rekindling of  Democratic lawfare, or some other praeternatural intervention,  I think the Democrats are setting themselves up not only for major disappointment but for staggering disillusionment. That’s the trouble with magical thinking. Sooner or later, reality intrudes and destroys the web of fantasy that the spurious magic has spun. Donald Trump is an avenging angel of reality. The Dems, as well as certain besotted anti-Trump conservatives, are dancing now.  They won’t be gyrating when the music stops and the hall empties.