Category: zerohedge

At the end of March, amid absolutely no signs of trouble whatsover in “the data” – and after the establishment excoriated the “neanderthal thinking” of several red states for ‘prematurely’ and ‘recklessly’ lifting their COVID restrictions, freshly-appointed CDC Director Rochelle Walensky went “off-script” (though if one watches here eyes it appears she is very much reading a script) to warn the public about her “impending doom” following a very modest rise in COVID cases and hospitalizations.

“Right now, I’m scared,” Walesky, choking back tears, exclaimed.

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky goes off script with an emotional plea to the public about an “impending doom” following rise in COVID cases:

“Right now, I’m scared.” pic.twitter.com/UKjrRhr7He

— The Recount (@therecount) March 29, 2021

Fauci doubled-down with the doom finger-pointing…

“I think the reason we’re seeing this plateauing and the increase that I hope doesn’t turn into a surge is because we are really doing things prematurely right now with regard to opening up.”

At the time we pointed out that Walensky’s level of fearmongering is disgusting and disingenuous and the American people are growing more and more insensitive to such evocations.

Now, just 6 weeks later, as all the doomsaying, fearmongering, panic-inducing double-speak was proven completely misplaced, and amid political pressure from even the leftest of leftists to “do something”, the masks are off and freedom (for the vaccinated) is offered back to ‘we, the people’.

Just two weeks after announcing a mask revision on April 27 to allow people who are fully vaccinated to do most things outdoors, with some precautions – again amid political pressure from an increasingly confused American public –  CDC announced it revised its mask guidance again, now enabling those who are fully vaccinated to forgo wearing masks both indoors and outdoors.

“Anyone who is fully vaccinated can participate in indoor and outdoor activities — large or small — without wearing a mask or physically distancing,” said Walensky.

“Based on the continuing downward trajectory of cases, the scientific data on the performance of our vaccines and our understanding of how the virus spreads, that moment has come for those who are fully vaccinated,” she continued.

The message from the CDC could not have changed more drastically in this brief 45 days period…

Source: Bloomberg

And if the goal of the ‘big lie’ of impending doom was to ‘encourage’ scared Americans to get vaccinated or die, once again the ‘science’ in the data shows it didn’t work either as daily vaccination rates have basically trended lower since Walensky’s scaremongering…

Source: Bloomberg

But Walensky assures the country that, “We followed the science here.”

Political science?

Of course there are some who refuse to believe the CDC’s “new science” – that masks are not required because outdoor spread is for all intent and purpose non-existent for anyone and indoor spread from or to the vaccinated is negligible at worst – and choose to continue to signal their virtue…

I feel the need to continue wearing my mask outside even though I’m fully vaccinated because the inconvenience of having to wear a mask is more than worth it to have people not think I’m a conservative 😬

— David Hogg (@davidhogg111) May 14, 2021

And of course, AOC told her instagram followers…“Personally I’m going to keep wearing my mask in shared indoor public spaces…it’s also a nice accessory when you don’t want to do all your make-up…”

“Science-deniers?”

Authored by Glenn Greenwald via greenwald.substack.com,

In an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier this week, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) denied that she spread the discredited CIA “Russian bounty” story. That CIA tale, claiming Russia was paying Taliban fighters to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan, was cooked up by the CIA and then published by The New York Times on June 27 of last year, right as former President Trump announced his plans to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. The Times story, citing anonymous intelligence officials, was then continually invoked by pro-war Republicans and Democrats — led by Cheney — to justify their blocking of that troop withdrawal. The story was discredited when the U.S. intelligence community admitted last month that it had only “low to moderate confidence” that any of this even happened.

When Baier asked Cheney about her role in spreading this debunked CIA story, Cheney blatantly lied to him, claiming “if you go back and look at what I said — every single thing I said: I said if those stories are true, we need to know why the President and Vice President were not briefed on them.” After Baier pressed her on the fact that she vested this story with credibility, Cheney insisted a second time that she never endorsed the claim but merely spoke conditionally, always using the “if these reports are true” formulation. Watch Cheney deny her role in spreading that story.

Liz Cheney, as she so often does, blatantly lied. That she merely spoke of the Russian bounty story in the conditional — “every single thing I said: I said if those stories are true” — is completely and demonstrably false. Indeed, other than Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), there are few if any members of Congress who did more to spread this Russian bounty story as proven truth, all in order to block troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. In so doing, she borrowed from a pro-war playbook pioneered by her dad, to whom she owes her career: the former Vice President would leak CIA claims to The New York Times to justify war, then go on Meet the Press with Tim Russert, as he did on September 8, 2002, and cite those New York Times reports as though they were independent confirmation of his views coming from that paper rather than from him:

MR. RUSSERT: What, specifically, has [Saddam] obtained that you believe would enhance his nuclear development program? …..

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Now, in the case of a nuclear weapon, that means either plutonium or highly enriched uranium. And what we’ve seen recently that has raised our level of concern to the current state of unrest, if you will, if I can put it in those terms, is that he now is trying, through his illicit procurement network, to acquire the equipment he needs to be able to enrich uranium to make the bombs.

MR. RUSSERT: Aluminum tubes.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Specifically aluminum tubes. There’s a story in The New York Times this morning this is — I don’t — and I want to attribute The Times. I don’t want to talk about, obviously, specific intelligence sources, but it’s now public that, in fact, [Saddam] has been seeking to acquire, and we have been able to intercept and prevent him from acquiring through this particular channel, the kinds of tubes that are necessary to build a centrifuge. And the centrifuge is required to take low-grade uranium and enhance it into highly enriched uranium, which is what you have to have in order to build a bomb.

So having CIA stories leak to the press that fuel the pro-war case, then having pro-war politicians cite those to justify their pro-war position, is a Cheney Family speciality.

On July 1, the House Armed Services Committee, of which Rep. Cheney is a member, debated amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act, the bill that authorized $740.5 billion in military spending. One of Cheney’s top priorities was to align with the Committee’s pro-war Democrats, funded by weapons manufacturers, to block Trump’s plan to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2020 and to withdraw roughly 1/3 of the 34,000 U.S. troops in Germany.

To justify her opposition, Cheney — contrary to what she repeatedly insisted to Baier — cited the CIA’s Russian bounty story without skepticism. In a joint statement with Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX), ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, that Cheney published on her website on June 27 — the same day that The New York Times published its first story about the CIA tale — Cheney pronounced herself “concerned about Russian activity in Afghanistan, including reports that they have targeted U.S. forces.” There was nothing conditional about the statement: they were preparing to block troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and cited this story as proof that “Russia does not wish us well in Afghanistan.”

After today’s briefing with senior White House officials, we remain concerned about Russian activity in Afghanistan, including reports that they have targeted U.S. forces. It has been clear for some time that Russia does not wish us well in Afghanistan. We believe it is important to vigorously pursue any information related to Russia or any other country targeting our forces. Congress has no more important obligation than providing for the security of our nation and ensuring our forces have the resources they need. 

An even more definitive use of this Russia bounty story came when Cheney held a press conference to explain her opposition to Trump’s plans to withdraw troops. In this statement, she proclaimed that she “remains concerned about Russian activities in Afghanistan.” She then explicitly threatened Russia over the CIA’s “bounty” story, warning them that “any targeting of U.S. forces by Russians, by anyone else, will face a very swift and deadly response.” She then gloated about the U.S. bombing of Russia-linked troops in Syria in 2018 using what she called “overwhelming and lethal force,” and warned that this would happen again if they target U.S. forces in Afghanistan:

Does this sound even remotely like what Cheney claimed to Baier? She denied having played a key role in spreading the Russia bounty story because, as she put it, “every single thing I said, I said: if those stories are true.” She also told him that she never referred to that CIA claim except by saying: “if these reports are true.” That is false.

The issue is not merely that Cheney lied: that would hardly be news. It is that the entire media narrative about Cheney’s removal from her House leadership role is a fraud. Her attacks on Trump and her party leadership were not confined to criticisms of the role played by the former president in contesting the validity of the 2020 election outcome or inciting the January 6 Capitol riot — because Liz Cheney is such a stalwart defender of the need for truth and adherence to the rule of law in politics.

Cheney played the key role in forming an alliance with pro-war Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee to repeatedly defeat the bipartisan anti-war minority [led by Ro Khanna (D-CA), Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL)] to prevent any meaningful changes promised by Trump during the 2016 campaign to put an end to the U.S. posture of Endless War. As I reported about the House Armed Services Committee hearing last July, the CIA tale was repeatedly cited by Cheney and her allies to justify ongoing U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan.

Cheney is motivated by power, not ethics. In 2016, Trump ran — and won — by explicitly inveighing against the Bush/Cheney foreign policy of endless war, militarism and imperialism that Liz Cheney, above all else, still vehemently supports. What she is attempting to do is reclaim the Republican Party and deliver it back to the neocons and warmongers who dominated it under her father’s reign. She is waging an ideological battle, not an ethical one, for control of the Republican Party.

That will be a debate for Republican voters to resolve. In the meantime, Liz Cheney cannot be allowed to distance herself from the CIA’s fairy tale about Russians in Afghanistan. Along with pro-war Democrats, she used this conveniently leaked CIA story repeatedly to block troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. And just as her father taught her to do — by example if not expressly — she is now lying to distance herself from a pro-war CIA script that she, in fact, explicitly promoted.

For those who have not seen it, I produced a one-hour video report last July on how and why the House Armed Services Committee succeeded in enacting virtually every pro-war amendment they considered and how this was accomplished through an alliance between Liz Cheney and her neocon GOP allies on the one hand, and pro-war, Raytheon-funded Democrats on the other:

An interesting thing happened in late March as news spread that Bill Hwang’s Archegos family office was liquidating after being hit with the biggest margin call since Lehman: George Soros, or rather his investment firm Soros Fund Management, was loading up on all the shares that Hwang was forced to liquidating.

According to the latest 13F filed by the family office shows that Soros bought some $375 Million of the most prominent Archegos holdings just as they were being forcibly liquidated by the likes of Hwang’s Prime Brokers including Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. These were Soros’ holdings as of March 31, or just day after the Archegos liquidation began in earnest:

• ViacomCBS $194.3MM (4.31MM shares)
• Baidu $77MM (353.8K shares)
• Tencent $46.4MM (1.55MM shares)
• Discovery Class C $14.8MM (400K shares)
• DIscovery Class A $8.7MM (200K shares)

A look at the prior 13F shows that the fund did not own any of these stocks before the end of the first quarter.

As a reminder, Archegos was wiped out and Hwang’s fortune evaporated in just a few days after the stock prices of ViacomCBS and Discovery tumbled, triggering margin calls from numerous prime brokers (some of which have leftover exposure to this day), who then sold the stocks in the big block trades. In total, the Archegos blow up which saw the $10BN fund levered as much as 10x as Prime Brokers failed to do any homework on their total exposure, is expected to cost the finance industry about $10 billion, has prompted an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and caused heads to roll at Credit Suisse Group AG, where the hit exceeds $5 billion.

As Bloomberg,  which was the first to note the increase in Archegos-linked positions at Soros notes, “the 13F filing provides one of the first examples of how a hedge fund attempted to capitalize on the distressed remains of Archegos. It also offers an insight into Soros’s investment firm, which is run by Chief Investment Officer Dawn Fitzpatrick.”

In March, Fitzpatrick told Bloomberg in March that she was willing to jump on dislocations in the market, investing $4 billion during the pandemic-induced swoon a year ago, including buying residential mortgages on the cheap. Soros returned almost 30% in the 12 months through February and manages $27 billion across a range of strategies.

“When there’s a dislocation, we’re prepared to not just double down but triple down when the facts and circumstances support that,” Fitzpatrick, 51, said in a “Front Row” interview on Bloomberg TV.

Separately, the latest 13F also shows that Soros increased its bet in Amazon.com and homebuilder DR Horton Inc., which is now its second-largest public equity position; in total the filing showed that Soros held $4.5 billion of U.S. equities, down $77 million from the prior quarter. The biggest exit in the quarter was Palantir Technologies Inc. Soros sold 18.5 million shares valued at about $435 million. The firm originally revealed it owned a stake in the controversial data-mining company controlled by Peter Thiel in November, but rapidly issued a statement saying the original investment was made in 2012 and it regretted the decision.

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

The Fed has created trillions out of thin air to boost the speculative wealth of Wall Street, but it can’t print experienced workers willing to work for low wages.

The Federal Reserve is reassuring us daily that inflation is temporary, but allow me to assure you that wage inflation is just getting started and will accelerate rapidly. As I noted yesterday, the Fed can create currency out of thin and funnel it to financiers, but the Fed can’t create experienced, motivated workers out of thin air or entrepreneurs with the chops to launch and sustain real-world enterprises.

Let’s start with a funny little thing called competition, which has been pushing wages down for the past 50 years. Globalization means you’re competing with every other worker on the planet for jobs in tradable goods and services, and mass immigration and relatively high birth rates means there have been more potential workers than secure jobs.

Competition for paid work has been wonderful for global corporations, whose profits have soared five-fold thanks to labor arbitrage, also known as offshoring, where companies can pick and choose locales with the lowest cost labor.

There’s also been fierce competition for campaign contributions, as the cost of securing re-election has soared into the millions or tens of millions for congressional seats, and the bottom 90% can’t compete with the top 0.1% in terms of lavishing millions on politicians who have become keenly attuned to the “needs” of their corporate handlers.

Thanks to global labor arbitrage and the outright purchase of our pay-to-play political system, capital has skimmed $50 trillion from labor over the past 45 years. It’s all quantified in the RAND Corporation’s 2020 report Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018 that documents the $50 trillion that’s been transferred to the Financial Aristocracy from the bottom 90% of American households in the past 45 years.

Time magazine’s article The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90% — And That’s Made the U.S. Less Secure lays out the key role played by our political leadership:

No, this upward redistribution of income, wealth, and power wasn’t inevitable; it was a choice– a direct result of the trickle-down policies we chose to implement since 1975.

We chose to cut taxes on billionaires and to deregulate the financial industry. We chose to allow CEOs to manipulate share prices through stock buybacks, and to lavishly reward themselves with the proceeds. We chose to permit giant corporations, through mergers and acquisitions, to accumulate the vast monopoly power necessary to dictate both prices charged and wages paid. We chose to erode the minimum wage and the overtime threshold and the bargaining power of labor. For four decades, we chose to elect political leaders who put the material interests of the rich and powerful above those of the American people.

So now The Bill for America’s $50 Trillion Gluttony of Inequality Is Overdue (9/21/21). Consider the minimum wage as a reflection of the structural stripmining of labor. According to the BLS inflation calculator, the $1.65 per hour minimum wage I earned in 1970 on Dole’s pineapple plantation now equals $11.66 per hour–hence the calls for $12 per hour minimum wage.

But we all know the Consumer Price Index (CPI) has been gamed for decades to understate inflation, and in terms of the goods and services that could be bought with $1.65 in 1970, it would take at least $18 in today’s money to buy the same basket of goods and services–if you include real-world prices for healthcare, childcare, higher education, rent, etc.

In terms of competition, the worm has turned, as the number of people who are competent, reliable and willing to work for lousy pay has dwindled. While our educational system was busy trying to make every student into an engineer, coder or at least a college graduate, all the real-world skills needed to keep the real world functioning were given short shrift and denigrated in the media as unworthy compared to the fantasy of coding something and selling it to Facebook, Apple or Google for millions.

The discussion about the decline of competence and reliability is one worth pursuing, but for now the point is that the decline is real, and so the competition for the competent, reliable and willing to work is heating up.

As I explained yesterday in The ‘Take This Job and Shove It’ Recession, a consequential percentage of the workforce is re-thinking trading their lives for Neofeudal Debt-Serfdom. Workers in all sectors and pay scales are seeking ways to escape the meaninglessness and dead-end nature of “work” in a neofeudal economy that taxes productive labor but lets Big Tech escape taxes and regulation.

There are two other dynamics in play in wages ratcheting higher: one is that wages, like taxes, ratchet higher but resist dropping back to previous levels. Once someone earns $15 an hour, they’re less inclined to accept $12 an hour, just as local governments are never inclined to lower property taxes, excise taxes, etc. to previous levels.

Another is that when you have to pay one warehouse worker more money to fill the position, word gets out and every other worker in the warehouse will demand the same wage as the new hire. This is how pricing on the margins of the labor market ends up increasing the wages of the entire workforce.

Corporations love to demand everyone keep their salary secret to avoid this ratcheting up from the margins (and mask various biases in pay scales), but the political winds protecting corporations at all costs are finally shifting, and it’s going to be more difficult to retain workers at $12 an hour after they heard the new employee is getting $15 an hour for the same work.

If we can risk a moment of honesty here, let’s stipulate that real-world inflation has gutted the purchasing power of wages for 50 years while capital rigged the system to skim $50 trillion from those who work rather than speculate. A consequential percentage of the potential workforce simply doesn’t have what it takes to work full-time in demanding jobs, and the blame-game about why this is so is fun but pointless.

An increasingly consequential percentage of the potential workforce is opting out of working for Corporate America or the government, preferring lower earnings and fewer hours.

Another consequential percentage of the potential workforce has gone on informal strike and refuses to work for wages so low that they’re not even close to a living wage.

All of these dynamics will accelerate wage “inflation,” Corporate Media-Speak for a long overdue shift back from capital to labor. The Fed has created trillions out of thin air to boost the speculative wealth of Wall Street, but it can’t print experienced workers willing to work for low wages.

Now that McMansions are unaffordable, people are giving up their McMansion Dreams. And once people give up McMansion Dreams of debt-funded overconsumption, they also give up debt-serfdom and wage slavery.

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The auto industry is already stuck between a rock and a hard place, as dealers struggle to get production up to speed despite an ongoing semiconductor chip shortage that has hamstrung production for some of the world’s biggest manufacturers.

At the same time, the U.S. is letting the inflation genie quietly begin to slip out of the bottle. As rising prices take hold amidst supply chain imbalances, focus has turned to automobiles. With new car inventory crunched due to production constraints, used car prices have skyrocketed, as we have noted recently. 

Now, a new note from B of A called “Want to buy a car, good luck” lays out exactly what type of crunch the industry is in – most recently exemplified in the inability for consumers to even rent cars, let alone purchase one. Detailing “lean inventories” and “price pressures”, the note first explains that autos are so far the biggest standout for the country’s inventory to sales ratio.”

The note also takes a grim tone on when things could return to some semblance of normalcy: “This is a function of both demand and supply: the stimulus and reopening-fueled burst in demand was not matched by a comparable gain in supply. Instead, production has been hampered due to COVID-related supply chain issues and labor shortages,” it reads. It also says that “transitory” can feel like a long time and that the U.S. economy is still “many months” from feeling more balanced.

Speaking about the supply/demand dynamic of goods causing price spikes, the bank writes: “This highlights the nature of this cycle and the rotation towards goods spending. When producers and companies were first faced with the pandemic, they prepared for a period of weak demand by reducing production and trying to work off inventories. But they were quickly surprised by a dramatic rise in demand for goods, particularly durable goods such as autos, household appliances and electronics. The share of consumer dollars spent on goods has soared to 35.1% as of March 2021, the highest in over 15 years.” 

The note also points out how inflation is playing a more pronounced role in the auto sector than other sectors. “We wish you luck if you are trying to rent a car,” the note dryly says.

Google Trends: “Rental car shortage” pic.twitter.com/eySfz6ztKw

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 14, 2021

It continues:

The CPI report highlighted these challenges, revealing a record 10% mom increase in used car prices and 16.2% spike in rental car prices, which was second only to June last year (Exhibit 2). More broadly, core CPI jumped 0.9% mom SA, the biggest monthly gain since 1981 with record increases in a number of categories. Indeed, 0.7pp of the gain in core CPI owed to just eight categories with used car/truck prices having an outsized contribution of 38bp (Exhibit 3).

“The auto sector has seen the most severe drawdown in real retail inventories,” the report says. 

The imbalances – further exacerbated by whipsawing travel demand and the semi shortage affecting other goods – including electronics – has the bank predicting that core inflation will continue to be robust heading into the summer:

Considering these dynamics, we think core inflation is likely to be particularly robust through August but ease as we head into yearend, with some risk of a negative payback on a mom basis given the noise. We therefore update our core CPI trajectory as shown in Exhibit 4, which will lead the % yoy rate to surge to a high of 3.7% in June before moderating to 3.5% in December (3.4% 4Q/4Q). We view these price pressures as largely transitory, however, with core CPI cooling down to 2.5% yoy through 2022.

Recall, we noted at the end of April that the Manheim U.S. Used Vehicle Value Index continued to soar, to a new record, as a result of the worsening of a semiconductor shortage, low lot inventories, and a continuing post-Covid “boom”. The index was up 6.8% in the first 15 days of April, Bloomberg noted. The index is up an astounding 52% from the same time last year to 191.4. 

The data, which is put together by Cox Automotive, “takes into account all U.S. sales through Cox’s Manheim automotive auctions that fall in to one of 20 different market classes”.

Cox Chief Economist Jonathan Smoke commented about the spike:

 “Demand is perfectly stimulated from improving consumer sentiment, recovering jobs, accumulated pandemic savings, tax refund season, and American Rescue Plan cash payments.

Supply was decimated last year by COVID-19 shutdowns reducing new vehicle production, and used supply was reduced from strong demand last summer.

Production remains limited as supply chains struggle to overcome issues like the semiconductor shortages.”

Recall, we also pointed out last month that low inventories and chip shortages had prices re-accelerating in 2021 – at a stunning rate – after a brief pause from October to December. 

B of A concludes that no changes from a monetary policy standpoint are expected until the back end of summer. “We expect little signal about policy in the June FOMC meeting but perhaps some additional clarity shortly after”. 

In other words: take it from B of A or from us, on both inflation and supply chain imbalances, but it looks almost certain that things are going to get worse before they get better.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Birmingham City Council is set to remove “extremely problematic” street names and statues to satiate BLM supporters after a dubious poll found that a majority of residents supported the decision.

The survey, published by the Birmingham Mail, found that 63 per cent of respondents were in favor of a move to rename “road signs which glorify extremely problematic public/historical figures.”

Only 24 per cent opposed the measures, while just 26 per cent said it would be better to move the statues into museums rather than just tearing them down.

Some questioned the legitimacy of the poll results given that another survey conducted in Leeds drew less than 10 per cent in public support for similar changes.

Either Birmingham is entirely different to the rest of the UK or this consultation was hijacked.

65% of residents support a statue review vs 10% in Leeds? 75% agreeing with compulsory equalities training? It goes against every poll ever produced.https://t.co/Eg8VuSUUKj

— Save Our Statues – Robert Poll (@_SaveOurStatues) May 11, 2021

However, Birmingham is one of the most “diverse” cities in the UK, with a 25% Muslim population. A 2018 study found that almost 50,000 of the 1.1 million inhabitants of the city cannot speak English.

“The survey also found that 51 per cent of people polled would agree to mandate that people from Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) and female candidates are included on all council position shortlists,” writes Kurt Zindulka.

“A stunning 75 per cent went on to agree with the proposition that compulsory “equalities training” is necessary.”

The review was prompted by last year’s Black Lives Matter protests following the death of Fentanyl addict and criminal George Floyd.

As we previously highlighted, in an effort to better “reflect the diversity” of areas of the city, Birmingham City Council invited members of the public to come up with new street names for a regeneration scheme.

Winners included “Diversity Grove” and “Equality Road”.

As we document in the video below, changing street names is literally one of the first things Maoist militants did in order to seize power in China.

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It seems DoubleLine’s Jeffrey Gundlach has had a change of heart regarding bitcoin. And while the cryptocurrency’s spectacular rise has mostly converted skeptics into believers (or reluctant investors inspired by FOMO), for Gundlach, it’s the other way around. In an interview with Yahoo Finance, the billionaire investor, who once said crypto could be a hedge against irresponsible monetary debasement by central banks, now fears the rally has gotten out of hand.

As bitcoin bounces back from its Elon Musk-inspired dip, Gundlach told Yahoo Finance that bitcoin and crypto is the “poster child” for out-of-control speculation in contemporary markets.

According to Gundlach, the founder and CEO of $135 billion DoubleLine Capital, crypto units have become “objects of speculation, and had a lot to do, again with the government money.”

The investor told Yahoo Finance in an interview that some investors “are just playing with this funny money. And when you give people money that don’t need it, which, unfortunately, we’ve been doing a lot, they feel like they’re playing with the house’s money.”

He added: “So it actually does resemble a casino to them psychologically.”

Gundlach was once “really bullish” on bitcoin when it was trading at lower levels. But at current prices, bitcoin and dogecoin are putting the dot-com bubble to shame.

However, “all of a sudden it blew right through $15,000, and all the sudden it was $23,000, and that’s what I turned a neutral on it, too early obviously, because it’s now double that. It was nearly triple that.”

Gundlach added the big swings in the digital currency are “based upon speculative fever” punctuated by Musk’s surprising U-turn this week.

“It’s almost like every era of really highly valued markets — after they’ve run a lot — has some sort of a poster child if you will,” Gundlach told Yahoo Finance. “It was like some of the crazy dot-coms that had no revenue that were coming to market very successfully in the year 1999. Here, it’s I think it’s really these cryptos.”

Though Treasury yields have mostly held within recent ranges, Gundlach advised that he’s keeping a close eye on long-term rates.

The 61-year-old investor added that he always looks for “things that are sustained trends to get out of hand, and then quietly, without a lot of people talking about it, they roll over. It’s a sign that risk would be increasing, and I’m feeling that the markets more at risk now than it was thanks to the higher interest rates.”

Gundlach believes “we’re one really bad day away from going to a new high yield on the 30-year” Treasury bond, where yields have been creeping up in the face of the recovery. “I think that that’s something to watch out for as a risk factor.”

Compared with other frothy assets, bitcoin might have more durability than the Nasdaq, which is already starting to sink while tech stocks including many stocks held by Cathie Wood’s ARK funds stumble. The drop in the Nasdaq in recent weeks is just the first sign that the air is coming out of the speculative bubble as markets grow increasingly skeptical of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s assurances that inflation will be “transitory” and that the central bank isn’t even discussing pulling back its monetary policy. Gundlach has previously insisted that the Fed is “guessing” about inflation, and that the market reckoning won’t be delayed for much longer.

Authored by ‘Winter Oak’ via Off-Guardian.org,

One potential positive from the whole Covid-19 debacle is that we have learned an incredible amount about the society in which we live. This will be crucial if we manage to stave off a descent into a nightmare future of techno-fascist slavery.

We will have a new understanding of what our world has become and what we would like it to be in the decades and centuries to come. And “we” means we. While the majority have, apparently, learnt nothing at all from what has happened, they will eventually catch up.

There is no way that knowledge gained by a wide-awake 15% or 20% of the population will not end up being shared by almost everyone. Once the truth is out, it tends to stay out. As H.R. Haldeman so wisely put it, “you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube”.

Here are Ten Things We Have Learned During the Covid Coup.

1. Our political system is hopelessly corrupt.

Virtually all politicians are hopelessly corrupt. No political party can be trusted. They all can be, and have been, bought.

2. Democracy is a sham.

It has been a sham for a very long time. There will never be any real democracy when money and power amount to the same thing.

3. The system will stop at nothing to hold on to its power and, if possible, increase its levels of control and exploitation.

It has no scruples. No lie is too outrageous, no hypocrisy too nauseating, no human sacrifice too great.

4. So-called radical movements are usually nothing of the sort.

From whatever direction they claim to attack the system, they are just pretending to do so, and serve to channel discontent in directions which are harmless to the power clique and even useful to its agendas.

5. Any “dissident” voice you have ever heard of through corporate media is probably a fake.

The system does not hand out free publicity to its actual enemies.

6. Most people in our society are cowards.

They will jettison all the fine values and principles which they have been loudly boasting about all their lives merely to avoid the slightest chance of public criticism, inconvenience or even minor financial loss.

7. The mainstream media is nothing but a propaganda machine for the system…

…and those journalists who work for it have sold their sorry souls, placing their (often minimal) writing skills entirely at the disposition of Power.

8. Police are not servants of the public…

…but servants of a powerful and extremely wealthy minority which seeks to control and exploit the public for its own narrow and greedy interests.

9. Scientists cannot be trusted.

They will use the hypnotic power of their white coats and authoritative status for the benefit of whoever funds their work and lifestyle. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

10. Progress is a misleading illusion.

The “progress” of increasing automation and industrialisation does not go hand in hand with a progress in the quality of human life, but in fact will “progressively” reduce it to the point of complete extinction.

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Originally published as part of Issue 65 of Winter Oak’s Acorn bulletin. Read the full bulletin here, or follow Winter oak on twitter here.

Despite the economic headwinds imposed by COVID-19, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu reports that global sales of electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrids (PHEV) surpassed 3 million for the first time in 2020.

This visualization presents a geographical breakdown of these sales, revealing that over 80% were made in either Europe or China.

The EU was the largest market by a margin of 60,000 cars, but given China’s larger population, it’s likely the two will switch places in the near future.

Government Incentives Play a Key Role

Government incentives have boosted the transition to battery power in recent years. For example, many countries offer a buyer rebate, which effectively reduces the price a consumer pays for an EV or PHEV.

In Germany, buyers can receive a subsidy of $10,800 when purchasing an EV with a list price of less than $48,000. China also offers a rebate program, where buyers of an EV with a travel range of at least 186 miles can receive a subsidy of $2,500.

Consumers should be aware that these incentives are likely to diminish over time, especially as EVs become more mainstream. In January 2021, the Chinese government announced it would reduce its existing subsidies by 20%.

Will EV Sales in America Catch Up?

In a 2020 survey, 71% of U.S. drivers said they were interested in getting an EV—so why are sales so far behind Europe and China?

In that same survey, 50% of drivers cited a lack of public charging stations as the main factor for preventing them from buying an EV. Concerns like these have led the Biden administration to propose a more aggressive EV strategy, which includes the installation of at least 500,000 charging stations by 2030.

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If you found this post interesting, you might enjoy this graphic that compares electric vehicle highway ranges

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

60 per cent of police and military say they will support populist Marine Le Pen in next year’s French presidential election, with the number even higher among active duty police.

A survey published by the Centre for Political Research of Sciences Po (Cevipof) found that a plurality of 44 per cent of police and military would vote for Le Pen in the first round of the election.

In a hypothetical second round run off against President Emmanuel Macron, this number rises to 60 per cent, a three per cent increase on the 57 per cent figure she achieved in 2017.

Among active duty police officers, support for the National Rally leader rises to a massive 74 per cent.

Around 48 per cent of police say Le Pen “understands the problems of people like us” compared to just 13 per cent who say the same of Macron.

“A report released by the newspaper Le Figaro this week details the extent of attacks on police as they carry out their duties, claiming that last year alone 8,719 police officers and gendarmes were injured and 11 officers killed,” reports Breitbart.

“In the first three months of 2021, the newspaper states that 727 officers have been injured during operations, and notes that an officer is assaulted on duty every hour in France, on average.”

Police, ambulance workers and fire crews are routinely attacked when they try to enter Islamist no go zones, despite the media still claiming they don’t exist.

Last weekend, a group of anonymous active duty military personnel wrote a letter warning Macron of a “civil war” in the country due to his concessions to Islamists and the far-left.

“If a civil war breaks out, the military will maintain order on its soil because it will be asked to do so,” stated the letter.

A poll conducted last month found that the majority of French citizens agree that the country is headed towards civil war.

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