Category: zerohedge

Submitted by Zachary Stieber

Legislators in Arizona and officials in the state’s largest county clashed anew this week over election audit subpoenas, with county officials refusing to hand over routers and claiming they do not have passwords to access administrative control functions of election machines.

Arizona’s Senate told Maricopa County on Friday that it would issue subpoenas for live testimony from the county’s Board of Supervisors unless it received the materials that are being withheld. “We’ve been asked to relay that the Senate views the County’s explanations on the router and passwords issues as inadequate and potentially incorrect,” a lawyer for the Senate said in an email to county officials.

The Arizona Senate subpoenaed a slew of election materials, such as ballots, following the 2020 election. Lawmakers also issued subpoenas for election machines, passwords, and other technology.

Maricopa County alleged in a lawsuit that the request for materials was overly broad and threatened voter privacy. A judge, though, ruled that they were “the equivalent of a Court order.” But the county said this week it is not turning over routers or router images, claiming that doing so poses a significant security risk to law enforcement.

The county has also informed the Senate’s audit liaison, former Republican Secretary of State Ken Bennett, that it does not have passwords to access administrative functions on Dominion Voting Systems machines that were used to scan ballots during the election.

“They’ve told us that they don’t have that second password, or that they’ve given us all the passwords they have. They’ve also told us that they now can’t, as they promised a couple weeks ago, provide our subcontractors with the virtual access to the routers and hubs and other things at the Maricopa County tabulation and election center, as was part of the subpoenas,” Bennett told One America News at the site of the audit in Phoenix.

John Brakey, a Democrat who is serving as an assistant to Bennett, told the broadcaster that he was “blown away” by the password development.

“It’s like leasing a car and they refuse to give you the keys. They’re supposed to be running the election. You know what’s wrong? Sometimes these vendors have too much power, and we’re voting on secret software, and that’s why this recount down here is very important,” he added.

Jack Sellers, the Republican chairman of the Maricopa County board, said Friday that he is angered by allegations of corruption and would not address every allegation, but would speak to the password issue.

“The specific password and security tokens Ken Bennett referenced this week provide access to proprietary firmware and source code. Elections administrators do not need to access this information to hold an election, and we do not have it in our custody,” he said in a statement.

The county board called an emergency meeting later on Friday. The board was going to consider legal advice and litigation regarding its non-compliance with the Senate subpoenas.

In a response to the Senate’s lawyer, Allister Adel, Maricopa County’s attorney, said that the county has “already produced every password and security key for the tabulators that is [sic] within the County’s possession.”

“It does not have any others,” Adel added. The county is working to figure out if there is “a safe manner” to get the Senate information from the routers without risking non-election data.

Dominion, whose machines are used in about half of U.S. states, did not respond to a request for comment. The company has said it supports forensic audits by federally-accredited laboratories and that Cyber Ninjas, which is leading the Arizona audit, is not verified. Both Dominion and Sellers noted that Maricopa County contracted its own audits, one for machines and another for ballots.

But Brakey, the assistant Senate liaison, has called the description of those audits misleading. The ballot batches were picked beforehand and auditors only analyzed a small percentage of the ballots cast in the election, he said, while the machine testing could only determine whether the technology was working well at the time of the review.

“They claim that’s an audit. I call it fatally flawed,” he told One America News.

Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone, meanwhile, joined other county officials in decrying the Senate’s attempt to obtain the routers.

“Its most recent demands jeopardize the entire mission of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office,” he said in a statement.

“We are talking about confidential, sensitive, and highly-classified law enforcement data and equipment that will be permanently compromised. The current course is mind-numbingly reckless and irresponsible. I look forward to briefing them on the horrendous consequences of this demand and the breadth of its negative impact on the public safety in this County.”

President Biden has promised to defeat the National Rifle Association and wage war on ghost guns in his first hundred days. He appears to be making good on both, as the Justice Department on Friday released a proposed rule that changes the definition of a firearm to require 80% lower kits to include serial numbers, according to AP News. 

The proposed rule change comes as President Biden has declared war on “ghost guns.” These weapons have unserialized lower receivers (the regulated part of a gun) that can be easily bought in a kit form online or at a gun store (without a background check), and in a few hours, with some drilling and additional fabrication, can be transformed into a fully functional weapon after the upper receiver (unregulated part of the gun) is attached. 

The federal government is terrified as the popularity of ghost guns has increased over the years. Anyone can buy 80% lower kits online and watch a few YouTube videos, and have a working lower receiver after trigger parts are installed, totally untraceable to the government. These weapons have become popular with gangs and other criminals and have been turning up in more violent crimes across the country.

Between 2016 to 2020, the DoJ estimates about 23,000 ghost guns were seized by law enforcement agencies across the country, and some were identified to be connected with homicides or attempted homicides.

A senior Justice Department official told AP the proposed rule sets forth several factors in determining whether the unfinished lower receiver could be easily convertible into a working firearm. The official said if the lower receiver meets that criteria, manufacturers will be required to include a serial number. The rule would also require serial numbers attached to un-serialized weapons traded in or turned into federal firearms dealers.

“Criminals and others barred from owning a gun should not be able to exploit a loophole to evade background checks and to escape detection by law enforcement,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “This proposed rule would help keep guns out of the wrong hands and make it easier for law enforcement to trace guns used to commit violent crimes, while protecting the rights of law-abiding Americans.”

There was no mention of 3D-printed ghost guns that can be entirely manufactured at home. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco recently reinstated a Trump administration order that authorized removing ghost guns from the State Department’s Munitions List. This allowed untraceable 3D-printed gun blueprints to be shared online. 

Regulating 80% lower kits might be an easy task for the Biden administration. They will have a near-impossible time regulating 3D-printed guns that can be entirely printed at home. 

Authored by Damien Ma via MacroPolo.org,

From ventilator and chip shortages to what kind of ships traverses through which canals, the linkages and nodes of the global economy have rarely been in the spotlight as much as they have over the last 12 months. Many of these disruptions are short-term ones, but they have also brought attention to longstanding challenges of supply chain resilience and dependence.   

One of those challenges is that of China’s grip on rare earth elements (REEs), a key input in permanent magnets that are in everything from smart phones and wind turbines to electric vehicles and missile guidance systems.   

Figure 1. REE Demand for Permanent Magnets by Application, 2010-2025  

Source: Statista estimates; Quest Rare Minerals.  

This is not the first time these 17 elements that sit at the bottom of the periodic table have raised alarm from Tokyo to Washington. Back in 2010, Beijing was roundly accused of embargoing REE exports to Japan as Sino-Japan relations soured.  

At the time, China was responsible for some 90%-plus of REE supplies globally, even though its estimated reserves are around just 25%-33% of the global total. Given the wide belief in Japan and the United States—which also happen to be the largest importers of REEs—that China could weaponize this resource, its supply monopoly raised hackles and intensified calls for diversification. 

A decade since, has much changed? I had trekked to Inner Mongolia’s Baotou Rare Earth Hi-Tech Zone back in 2010 to gain more insight into China’s designs on the REE industry and how that affected the global market. It’s worth revisiting this industry now to understand how its dynamics shaped Beijing’s thinking and intent on managing this resource.  

“Selling gold for the price of radishes”  

China has long viewed REEs as a strategic resource, with the industry’s development spurred by a quip supposedly attributed to Deng Xiaoping: “The Middle East has oil, but China has rare earths.”  

Yet as China became the dominant supplier of REEs over subsequent decades, it saw the price of REEs plummet, hardly the price-setting influence that an OPEC exerted on oil prices. That frustrated the economic nationalists in Beijing, grumbling that China was essentially “selling gold at the price of radishes.”   

Much of that frustration stemmed from the government’s inability to regulate a wild industry that was rife with smuggling. At one point in 2011, it was estimated that there was a gap of 120% between REE volumes that China officially exported and what other countries imported. Meanwhile, REE mining was also exacting a hefty environmental toll.  

The Chinese government decided it needed to consolidate the REE industry. Beijing thought it could clean up the illegal business, while also receiving some of that price-setting power that has long eluded it. What’s more, the move also dovetailed with rolling out the original “strategic emerging industries” initiative, the start of China’s effort to indigenize supply chains and move up the value chain.  

In other words, why export this resource for pennies when China should keep more of it for its own tech industries of the future?  

This is where Baotou comes into play. Part of the industry restructuring was intended as a “resource for technology” play. That is, instead of exporting REEs, China did what it knows best: set up zones to attract high-tech manufacturing investment in exchange for easy access to critical materials. Baotou, of course, was and still is China’s largest production base of REEs.   

Did the strategy work?  

Although economic nationalist in orientation, China’s REE policy was a far cry from banning exports (see Figure 2). The stringent export quotas in the 2011-2012 period certainly drove a spike in prices, but that was short-lived. By 2014, it became apparent that China was ramping up exports rather than reducing them, and prices quickly corrected and have remained relatively low since. The reality reflects Beijing’s perennial struggle in imposing its will on a fragmented, messy, and profit-driven industry.  

Figure 2. China’s REE Exports Have Not Declined Over Last Decade 

Source: Wind. 

It is also not entirely clear whether an actual embargo took place in 2011 or whether it was the result of Beijing’s export quotas. But whatever the judgment in hindsight, the damage has already been done to China as a reliable supplier of REEs, leading to gradual resource diversification. China is now just under 60% of global REE production (see Figure 3).  

Figure 3. Global Share of REE Production (in tons)

Source: US Geological Survey.

The relative abundance of REE reserves globally, it turns out, means that China’s bid for price-setting power rested on faulty assumptions of its leverage. Despite national security hawks’ continued pitch for exercising pricing power, Beijing seems to have recognized that it no longer has a monopoly on production.  

Instead of obsessing over what’s in the ground and how much to sell it for, China appears to have shifted tactic to redouble its effort on developing the midstream REE processing industry and downstream end products like magnets.  

A clear indication of that focus was President Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Jiangxi—a major hub of REE production. Rather than a mining operation, Xi toured JL Mag, a downstream company that supplies magnets to the likes of Goldwind and BYD. We will look further at the midstream and downstream dynamics of the REE industry in future analysis. 

Authored by Rick Rozoff via AntiWar.com,

The title is courtesy of the Hungary-based Transylvania Now news site. The Pentagon’s Special Operations Command Europe kicked off the Trojan Footprint 21 exercise on May 3; what is identified as its premier special operations forces drills.

The war games will be held until May 14 in five Black Sea and Balkans nations: Bulgaria, Georgia, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Romania. Special forces from the U.S. – all branches of the armed forces including Green Berets – the five host nations, Britain, Germany, Spain and Ukraine are involved. With the exception of Turkey, all Black Sea littoral states but Russia are participating.

The exercise is designed for “enhancing interoperability between NATO allies” to prepare for “counter[ing] myriad threats.” Though there aren’t a thousand… only one threat. Russia.

Just as it is all-service so it is “all-domain” with air, land and sea forces engaged in combating an unnamed adversary in the Black Sea. One which has a fleet based in Sevastopol in Crimea.

“While the exercise is focused on improving the ability of SOF to counter a myriad of threats, it also increases integration with conventional forces and enhances interoperability with our NATO allies and European partners,” Col. Marc V. LaRoche, Deputy Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command Europe described in a statement. “Most importantly, Trojan Footprint fortifies military readiness, cultivates trust, and develops lasting relationships which promote peace and stability throughout Europe.”

Follow the exercise through May 14th with #TrojanFootprint and #SOFinEurope https://t.co/a8MSaIE2lH

— U.S. Embassy Tbilisi (@usingeo) May 4, 2021

Trojan Footprint 21 is occurring simultaneously with the massive DEFENDER-Europe 21 war games in the same area and ahead of the Steadfast Defender exercise, also to be held in the Black Sea region.

In 2015, Chinese military scientists discussed how to weaponze SARS coronaviruses, five years before the COVID-19 pandemic emerged in Wuhan, China – where CCP scientists were collaborating with a US-funded NGO on so-called ‘gain of function’ research to make bat coronaviruses infect humans more easily.

In a 263-page document, written by People’s Liberation Army scientists and senior Chinese public health officials and obtained by the US State Department during its investigation into the origins of COVID-19, PLA scientists note how a sudden surge of patients requiring hospitalization during a bioweapon attack “could cause the enemy’s medical system to collapse,” according to The Weekend Australian (a subsidiary of News Corp).

It suggests that SARS coronaviruses could herald a “new era of genetic weapons,” and noted that they can be “artificially manipulated into an emerging human ­disease virus, then weaponized and unleashed in a way never seen before.”

The chairmen of the British and Australian foreign affairs and intelligence committees, Tom ­Tugendhat and James Paterson, say the document raises major concerns about China’s lack of transparency over the origins of COVID-19.

The Chinese-language paper, titled The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons, outlines China’s progress in the research field of biowarfare.

“Following developments in other scientific fields, there have been major advances in the delivery of biological agents,” it states.

“For example, the new-found ability to freeze-dry micro-organisms has made it possible to store biological agents and aerosolise them during attacks.”

Ten of the authors are scientists and weapons experts affiliated with the Air Force Medical ­University in Xi’an, ranked “very high-risk” for its level of defence research, including its work on medical and psychological sciences, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s ­Defence Universities Tracker.

The Air Force Medical University, also known as the Fourth Medical University, was placed under the command of the PLA under President Xi Jinping’s military reforms in 2017. The editor-in-chief of the paper, Xu Dezhong, reported to the top leadership of the Chinese Military Commission and Ministry of Health during the SARS epidemic of 2003, briefing them 24 times and preparing three reports, according to his online ­biography. -The Australian

“We were able to verify its ­authenticity as a document authored by the particular PLA ­researchers and scientists,” according to Robert Potter, a digital forensics specialist who has worked for the US, Australian and Canadian governments – and has previously analyzed leaked Chinese government documents, according to the report. “We were able to locate its genesis on the Chinese internet.”

Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his chief China adviser, Miles Yu, referenced the document in a February op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, writing that “A 2015 PLA study treated the 2003 SARS coronavirus outbreak as a ‘contemporary genetic weapon’ launched by foreign forces.”

And according to Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, “There is no clear distinction for research capability because whether it’s used offensively or defensively is not a decision these scientists would take,” adding “If you are building skills ostensibly to protect your military from a biological attack, you’re at the same time giving your military a capacity to use these weapons ­offensively. You can’t separate the two.”

The study also examines the optimum conditions under which to release a bioweapon. “Bioweapon attacks are best conducted during dawn, dusk, night or cloudy weather because intense sunlight can damage the pathogens,” it states. “Biological agents should be released during dry weather. Rain or snow can cause the aerosol particles to precipitate.

“A stable wind direction is ­desirable so that the aerosol can float into the target area.”

Among the most bizarre claims by the military scientists is their theory that SARS-CoV-1, the virus that caused the SARS epidemic of 2003, was a man-made bioweapon, deliberately unleashed on China by “terrorists”. -The Australian

News of the document follows a May 3 report that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was working with the Chinese government in a team which comprised five military and civil experts, “who conducted research at WIV labs, military labs, and other civil labs leading to “the discovery of animal pathogens [biological agents that causes disease] in wild animals,” according to the Epoch Times.

And as we noted in March, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) – headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, “had funded a number of projects that involved WIV scientists, including much of the Wuhan lab’s work with bat coronaviruses.”

In 2017, Fauci’s agency resumed funding a controversial grant to genetically modify bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, China without the approval of a government oversight body, according to the Daily Caller. For context, in 2014, the Obama administration temporarily suspended federal funding for gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses. Four months prior to that decision, the NIH effectively shifted this research to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) via a grant to nonprofit group EcoHealth Alliance, headed by Peter Daszak.

The NIH’s first $666,442 installment of EcoHealth’s $3.7 million grant was paid in June 2014, with similar annual payments through May 2019 under the “Understanding The Risk Of Bat Coronavirus Emergence” project.

Notably, the WIV “had openly participated in gain-of-function research in partnership with U.S. universities and institutions” for years under the leadership of Dr. Shi ‘Batwoman’ Zhengli, according to the Washington Post‘s Josh Rogin.

So now we have a 2015 document from the Chinese military describing using COVID as a bioweapon – four years before the COVID-19 pandemic breaks out just miles away from a Chinese lab working to make bat COVID more transmissible to humans, and you’re a conspiracy theorist peddling ‘debunked lies’ if you think they might be related.

And for those who say ‘COVID-19 couldn’t be man-made because a laboratory-created virus would have tell-tale signs of manipulation’ – au contraire. As Nicholas Wade noted three days ago in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “newer methods, called “no-see-um” or “seamless” approaches, leave no defining marks. Nor do other methods for manipulating viruses such as serial passage, the repeated transfer of viruses from one culture of cells to another. If a virus has been manipulated, whether with a seamless method or by serial passage, there is no way of knowing that this is the case. “

It’s as if the painfully obvious answer was right in front of us, only to be shrouded in propaganda by China-friendly politicians, big tech, and news outlets running cover for what should be the easiest game of connect-the-dots on the planet. Luckily, what was a tabboo topic as recently as a year ago, will soon be exposed for the world to see, thanks to The Bulletin Of Atomic Scientists which earlier this week dared to open The Wuhan Virus “Pandora’s Box“…

The wildly uneven US economic recovery since the virus pandemic began in early 2020 has given rise to dangerous levels of inequality, otherwise known as the “K-shaped” recovery. The “K” represents an immediate recovery for the rich but continued economic hardships for the working poor. Payrolls are still millions of jobs short of pre-COVID levels, and millions of others continue collecting stimulus checks. Corporate America understands this souring picture and has found a way to capitalize on an increasingly larger population of working poor Americans by opening a flurry of dollar stores across the country. 

Coresight Research, a firm that focuses on retail & technology companies, reports about 45% of the 3,597 store openings of large chains in the US this year are from Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Family Dollar. 

The pandemic resulted in millions of Americans who instantly fell into poverty and will remain there as the economy is short 8 million jobs from pre-COVID levels. Many of these folks enjoy the high-life, collecting Biden stimulus checks with minimal incentive to find a job. 

Corporate America understands the dynamics at play as failed fiscal and monetary policies could not lift all boats. Anyone who owned stocks, bonds, real estate, classic cars, fine art, wine, and anything else of value saw incredible valuation gains over the past year as those without assets (working poor) saw very little financial improvements besides a few government stimulus checks. 

This means that millions of folks in a pre-Covid world who shopped at middle to upper-class shops can no longer afford and have migrated to low-income dollar stores for survival. Corporate America is capitalizing on this trend by expanding these stores at a very fast clip. 

“We’ve seen a bifurcation in the economy,” said Ken Fenyo, the president and head of advisory and research at Coresight. “So while the wealthy have done well and continue to do well since the Great Recession, there’s certainly a lot of the population that has not done as well. The dollar stores appeal strongly to that segment of the population. That’s probably the overriding reason we see for the growth in the format.”

The recent surge of new dollar stores across the country is indicative not of a robust recovery but one that is extremely uneven, benefiting a handful at the expense of the many, with deep residual scarring that may last a generation. 

By Zachary Stieber of The Epoch Times

People who have not received a COVID-19 vaccine will be seated separately from those who have in two major baseball stadiums in New York, officials announced this week. The segregation will be enforced at Fans at Citi Field and Yankee Stadium, home to Major League Baseball’s New York Mets and New York Yankees.

“There are going to be separate sections for those who are vaccinated,” Randy Levine, president of the Yankees, told a May 5 briefing he joined with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

“As we sell tickets on an individual basis, they will go into one of those two areas, either unvaccinated or vaccinated because we will have some inventory in both types of location,” added Sandy Alderson, the president of the Mets.

The details of how the new policy will be enforced are still being developed.

Sections with people who are vaccinated against the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19, can be full, with no capacity restrictions. But in sections with unvaccinated people, fans will need to be spaced apart six feet. All fans, regardless of their status, must wear a mask, even though the games are played outdoors.

“For baseball reopening, May 19th. Two different categories. Not Yankees/Mets. Vaccinated/Unvaccinated,” Cuomo, a Democrat who has refused calls to resign over sexual assault allegations and his administration hiding the number of elderly New Yorkers who died from COVID-19, told the briefing.

“I want to thank the Mets and the Yankees from the bottom of my heart. It’s a pain in the neck for them to operate this vaccinated and unvaccinated. The gentlemen who run the stadiums are here. It’s not easy to do this. Nobody’s done this before. Nobody’s done any of this before, let’s be honest,” he added.

Cuomo insisted the new plan is legal.

Fans will be able to use the Excelsior Pass, an application, to show proof of vaccination when entering one of the stadiums, or proof of a negative COVID-19 test. The app was developed by IBM in partnership with the state. It was tested earlier this year at NBA and NHL games before being rolled out officially in March.

The Yankees reported 10,850 fans at their stadium on Tuesday night. That’s the most they can have under current restrictions. In a bid to get more New Yorkers vaccinated, the teams are offering people who get a shot at a stadium a free ticket.

“Basically you come to the game … you take a vaccine shot, you get a voucher, you can go to that game. If that game’s sold out, you can go tomorrow night and go to a game of your choice,” Levine said. Officials at Citi Field said approximately 2,000 people are getting vaccinated there each day.

Also at the briefing, Dr. Howard Zucker, the state’s health commissioner, refused to comment on a report that said Cuomo’s senior aides delayed the release of an audit on nursing home deaths for months.

“This is an ongoing investigation, so I won’t answer any questions at this point,” he said.

Cuomo called the pressure on state officials regarding the shielding of death numbers political. The shielding is being probed by the Department of Justice. He also denied that his administration withheld the numbers because of fear the data would be used against them. One of Cuomo’s top aides, Melissa DeRosa, said as much in a conference call with state Democratic lawmakers earlier this year.

Syrian and Russian state sources are reporting late this week that Russia’s Defense Ministry is expressing anger over what it described as noticeably increased American military activity in Syria’s northeast region, particularly an uptick in military equipment and troop deployments to the al-Jazeera area.

The Russian Coordination Center in Hmeimim cited the increased air and land transport of American military hardware as part of the continuing violation of Syria’s sovereignty intended to block the Syrian population from its own vital resources, including wheat and energy.

The Russian statement said “such military mobilization, synchronized with the economic and social situation resulting from the US blockade damages opportunities for a political solution to the crisis in Syria.”

The most recent estimates of US troop numbers in the country put the Pentagon’s presence at around 1,000 troops – with many of these being special forces. In prior years it was believed to be anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 – but these estimates have long likely shielded the true numbers of US personnel, including US intelligence and security contractors. 

Days ago Damascus accused US troops of pillaging grain silos in an occupied area of the Hasaka countryside. 

You can see these grain silos everywhere in Northeast Syria. This one is near Hasaka (city). pic.twitter.com/ixmXfAoPnE

— Rena Netjes (@RenaNetjes) May 3, 2021

“US occupation forces brought out a new batch of Syrian wheat stolen from Tal Alou silos in Hasaka countryside to the north of Iraq,” state-run SANA reported Wednesday.

“Local sources in al-Sweidia village in al-Ya’arubia area told SANA reporter that a convoy of 35 trucks laden with wheat stolen from Tal Alou silos left under a protection of an armed group affiliated to US occupation –backed QSD militia through al-Waleed illegitimate crossing heading for north Iraq,” the report said.

Authored by Wolf Richter via WolfStreet.com,

This sort of sudden structural collapse in demand for office space raises some existential questions for landlords…

Companies are not massively defaulting on their office leases, and that’s the good thing. But they have put a historic amount of vacant office space on the sublease market, while continuing to pay rent to the landlord. They decided they no longer need that much space, now that some form of flexible work, or hybrid work-from-home, or even permanent work-from-anywhere is being integrated into office real estate plans, cost cutting efforts, and footprint-reduction strategies.

Now, 14 months into the Pandemic, office occupancy – workers actually showing up at the office – is still dreadfully low. As of the end of April, office occupancy in the 10 largest metros averaged only 26.5% of where it had been just before the Pandemic, according to Kastle Systems today, whose electronic access systems secure thousands of office buildings around the country. In other words, the number of people entering these offices was still down by 73.5% from pre-pandemic levels and has barely made headway in recent months:

The epicenters of work-from-home show the biggest drops in office occupancy rates, according to Kastle’s “Back to Work Barometer” at the end of April: in San Francisco, the occupancy rate was at 14.8% of the pre-Pandemic level, in New York City at 16.2%, and in San Jose at 18.0%.

Among tech companies, 95% expect remote work for at least a few days a week; 9% said that they will never return to the office at all; another 47% said that they will need less office space; only 13% said they would need more office space, according to a survey by Savills.

A survey of Californian residents found that 82% of the employees who now work at home want to continue working at home at least some of the time. Only 18% don’t want to work at home at all.

But even at the top end of office occupancy, working remotely is still king. In Dallas, office occupancy is at 41.2% of where it was pre-Pandemic, and in Austin at 40.2% (click on the chart to enlarge):

How exactly this will shake out for office real estate is getting complicated, as they say, with everyone involved having different ideas as to what they want.

A survey by Accenture of 400 North American financial-services companies found that 80% of the executives would like for workers to spend four or five days in the office post-Pandemic. Many of them think that working at home makes training younger employees more difficult and is hurting company culture.

But employees are looking for flexibility, now that they have proven that they can be productive at home.

“You’ve seen the senior executives sitting in their office and there’s nobody behind them,” Laurie McGraw, head of Accenture’s capital markets industry team in North America, told Bloomberg. “And then you see the entry-level folks starved for in-person interaction because they need to be coached on a more regular basis. And then there’s the vast middle that’s content to be home.”

The work-from-home year 2020 generated record profits for banks, proving that work-from-home can be managed, and many employees question the need to commute every day. According to Rob Dicks, Accenture’s talent and organization head for capital markets, employees are likely to push back against a full-time return.

Despite whatever executives would like, the reality of the cost-cutting aspects of working from home has already set in. According to Accenture’s survey, of the same executives:

• Nearly two-thirds expect to cut their office footprint by 11% to 40% over the next nine months.

• Over half are planning to relocate employees to new lower-cost locations.

• 9% said they’ll close their headquarters in a major market.

Financial firms have been all over the place with their plans.

Goldman Sachs, in an internal memo seen by Bloomberg, told its US employees that they should be prepared to report to the office by June 14, according to an internal memo seen by Bloomberg.

Vanguard Group, which employs about 17,300 people, is planning a hybrid model for most of its staff, with many employees able to work from home on Mondays and Fridays.

Bridgewater Associates is going for the hybrid model as well and will allow their employees to work from home at least part of the time.

Deutsche Bank, which employs about 8,000 people in the US, is planning to let its staff work from home for up to three days a week. Separately, the bank had said that it wanted to reduce its office foot print to cut costs.

Deutsche Bank is offering “flexibility” as an inducement for hiring and retention. A survey had found that 90% of its employees wanted the opportunity to work from home at least part of the time after the Pandemic. Office space will be reconfigured to accommodate the hybrid model.

JPMorgan Chase told its employees in a memo to report back to the office by early July on a “consistent rotational schedule” that would allow staff some flexibility.

For landlords, these are existential questions as an enormous amount of office space is now vacant and available for lease in the US, and more office towers are in the process of being built, and nothing could have prepared the commercial real estate industry for this sort of sudden structural collapse in demand.

*  *  *

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The last hugely controversial Scottish referendum on independence took place in September 2014 and showed that the Scottish population’s desire to leave its three-centuries old union with England and Wales was gaining momentum. At that time it was approaching half – with the 2014 result being 55% voting to remain with 45% in favor of independence.

It’s now widely believed that if the UK allowed another vote today, that margin would be much narrower, and it looks like that showdown will now come sooner than thought after Saturday’s decisive election victory by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party (SNP). Sturgeon’s first declaration was aimed squarely at London and Boris Johnson, as she called another independence referendum the “will of the country”.

Her SNP won an unprecedented 64 seats in the Scottish Parliament, which falls just one seat short of a majority, marking a slight increase even over 2016, which ensures a legal and constitutional battle for the future of the United Kingdom will be sparked once again.

Given that the pro-independence Scottish Greens also made huge gains in what’s widely considered their best performance ever, the result is a firm pro-independence majority.

Sturgeon quickly put London on notice…

An independence referendum was pledged in the manifesto of both the SNP and the Scottish Greens, and Ms Sturgeon declared: “It is a commitment made to the people by a majority of the MSPs have been elected to our national parliament.”

“It is the will of the country.”

“Given that outcome, there is simply no democratic justification whatsoever for Boris Johnson or anyone else seeking to block the right of the people of Scotland to choose our future.”

If the request is rejected, Ms Sturgeon said, “it will demonstrate conclusively that the UK is not a partnership of equals and that – astonishingly – Westminster no longer sees the UK as a voluntary union of nations”.

She added: “That in itself would be a very powerful argument for independence.”

Sturgeon further explained the vote result is a clear and urgent mandate for Scotland to push ahead with preparing for a second independence referendum to be held as soon as the COVID-19 pandemic is over. 

consistent with my assumption…
that he knows he can’t stand in the way of a referendum without dishonouring the UK’s democratic heritage, and taking the whole UK to a very dark place. As @GavinBarwell argues it is hard for a British PM to…

— Robert Peston (@Peston) May 8, 2021

Rabobank noted the significance of this weekend as follows:

The Scottish regional election on May 6 is potentially shaping up to have a big impact on the future of Scotland and the UK, as independence has returned to the top of the agenda. The Scottish National Party looks set to win by a considerable margin, and is then likely to claim to have gained a new mandate for a referendum. The Conservative Party, officially the Conservative and Unionist Party, will in turn continue to make the case for the union. But even when prime minister Johnson denies Scotland a second independence referendum, or employs more heavy-handed tactics to suppress ‘Scoxit’ sentiments, the rift between Scotland and England looks set to widen. The Scottish regional election should be viewed entirely through this prism.

In the meantime Sturgeon told her supporters that it’s time to “patiently persuade our fellow citizens” of the case for an independent Scotland.