Category: zerohedge

Via InternationalMan.com,

International Man: The hysteria surrounding COVID-19 and the government lockdown has completely changed in-person interactions.

How do you think this will impact the way that Americans cast their vote in the presidential election?

Doug Casey: It’s a very bad thing from Trump’s point of view. For one thing, it’s severely limiting the number and size of his rallies, which he relies on to keep enthusiasm up.

More people are staying at home and watching television than ever before. And unless they glue their dial to Fox, they’ll gravitate towards the mainstream media, which is stridently anti-Trump. People who are on the fence hear authoritative-sounding talking heads on television, and it naturally influences them away from Trump.

Furthermore, this virus hysteria is discouraging people from going out—especially older people who are roughly 80% of the casualties of this virus. They’re less likely to go to vote. But older people are most likely to be Trumpers because they’re culturally conservative. I’m assuming that the COVID hysteria will still be with us in November.

Keeping his voters at home is one thing. But the effects that the hysteria is having on the economy are even more important. Presidents always take credit when the economy is good and are berated when it’s bad on their watch, regardless of whether they had anything to do with it. If the economy is still bad in November—and I’ll wager it’s going to be much worse—people will reflexively vote against Trump.

With free money being passed out—the $600 per week in supplementary unemployment—between the state and federal payments, something like 30 million people are making more now than they were before the virus. In February, before the lockdown, there were about 3.2 million people collecting unemployment. Now, there are about 35 million. So, it seems we have over 30 million working-age people who are . . . displaced. That doesn’t count part-time workers, who aren’t eligible for unemployment but are no longer working.

When the supplementary benefits end, so will the artificial good times.

Worse, the public has come to the conclusion that a guaranteed annual income works. This virus hysteria has provided a kind of test for both Universal Basic Income and Modern Monetary Theory—helicopter money. So far, anyway, it seems you really can get something for nothing.

Even Trump supports helicopter money because he knows it’s all over if today’s financial house of cards collapses.

Most people will still be out of work when the free money ends. The recognition that the country is in a depression will sink in. They’ll look for somebody to blame. When things get seriously bad, people want to change the system itself.

There’s now a lot of antagonism toward both free minds and free markets. Polls indicate that a majority of Americans actually support BLM, an openly Marxist movement. Forget about free minds—someone might be offended, and you’ll be pilloried by the mob. Forget about free markets—they’re blamed for all the economic problems, even though it’s the lack of them that caused the problem. The idea of capitalism is now considered undefendable.

Widespread dissatisfaction with the system is obviously bad for the Republicans and good for the Democrats, who promote themselves as the party of change.

The bottom line is that this whole episode with COVID is uniformly bad for whatever Trump or the Republicans represent. It’s bad for the old status quo.

International Man: If people are afraid to go out, will it impact voter turnout?

Doug Casey: Absolutely. As I just said, especially among older people who tend to be conservative Republican voters.

But let’s be candid. This election is going to hinge on who cheats the best. And the Democrats have, over the years, developed far greater expertise in cheating than the Republicans. Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” wasn’t written for the kind of people who vote Republican.

For one thing, there’s going to be more emphasis on mail-in votes, which make it easier to cheat. You can register dead people as voters. You can register your dog as a voter. If the fraud is ever even discovered, it won’t be until long after the election.

That’s only part of it, though. A high percentage of voting machines are computerized. Fraud by hacking voting machines is apparently easy to do—and it’s pretty untraceable. It’s just a matter of planning and boldness.

One of the consequences of this widely acknowledged dysfunction is to delegitimize the whole idea of voting. As you know, I don’t believe in mass democracy, because it inevitably degrades into a system where the poorer citizens vote themselves benefits at the expense of the middle class. Basically, mob rule dressed in a coat and tie. But if the populace loses faith in “democracy” during a serious economic crisis—like this one—they’re going to look for a strong man to straighten things out. The US will look more and more like Argentina.

International Man: In previous US elections, there were issues with voter fraud and delays tallying votes in a handful of US states.

If this happens again, do you think that the election results could be contested? What would the implications of that be?

Doug Casey: The election will be contested no matter which side wins because the country has become totally polarized. No matter who wins, the other side is going to be terminally unhappy with the result.

This election is undoubtedly the most important one since 1860. The outcome of that was the War Between the States.

The Democrats really want to change the very nature of the US. If they win, they’ll be able to do so, for several reasons. First, it seems almost certain that they’ll make Washington, DC, a state; there will then be 102 senators voting—and those two from Washington, DC, will without question be left-leaning Democrats. Second, the 20 million undocumented people—illegal aliens—now in the US will undoubtedly be made citizens; they lean heavily toward the Democrats. Third, they’ll expand the size of the Supreme Court and pack it with leftists.

There could be more, of course. Perhaps they’ll reduce the voting age to 16; it’s already the case in Argentina and a growing number of other countries. Maybe they’ll even engineer a Constitutional Convention to change everything. The 2nd Amendment will go, of course, and the rest of the Bill of Rights would be heavily modified. Most of it’s already a dead letter—but that would formalize the change once and for all.

These things would cement the Democrats in office. But please don’t think I support the Republicans. That would be like supporting tuberculosis just because it’s better than terminal cancer.

It used to be pretty simple—the Republicans and the Democrats were just two sides of the same coin. Like Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Traditionally, one promoted the warfare state more, the other the welfare state. But it was mostly rhetoric; they were pretty collegial. Now, both the welfare and the warfare states have been accepted as part of the cosmic firmament by both parties. Now, it’s about cultural issues. Polite disagreement has turned into visceral hatred.

The Dems at least stand for some ideas—although they’re all bad ideas. The Reps have never stood for any principles; they just said the Dems wanted too much socialism, too fast. Which is why they were always perceived—correctly—as hypocrites. Things have changed, however. Antagonism between the right and the left is no longer political or economic—it’s cultural. That’s much more serious.

Look at the 20 Democratic candidates that were in the primary debates last summer. They were all radical collectivists, dedicated statists. The Republicans were all—with one exception—mealy-mouthed nonentities.

I suspect the Dems will win in November because they actually have a core of philosophical beliefs—and that counts during chaos. It doesn’t matter that they’re irrational or evil. Then, whenever a really radical group takes over—and these people are serious radicals—they cement themselves in power. And it only takes a small number of people working as a cadre to do it.

With the Russian Revolution, the hardcore Bolsheviks only numbered in the hundreds. That was enough to take control of a hundred million Russians—and stay in power for 70 years until they totally ran the wheels off the economy.

The same thing happened with Fidel Castro in Cuba. He landed with only 50 or 60 guys, but once he took over the country, his apparatus was able to keep control of it.

Serious, radical populists and socialists can pull that off. They can say they’re working for the people and can promise lots of free stuff. The hoi polloi want to hear that during a crisis—like the one we’re entering. Once they’re in, it’s almost impossible to get them out.

International Man: Millennials will soon overtake the baby boomers as the largest adult population. They’ll have a growing impact on elections.

How do you think this will affect the future direction of the country?

Doug Casey: First of all, I’ve got to say that I don’t believe in democracy as a method of government. I understand how shocking that is to hear. Let me explain.

There’s something to be said for a few people, who share traditions and culture and generally agree on how the world works, to vote on who will speak for them. That’s one thing—and it makes sense. But it’s very different from a gigantic agglomeration of very different, even antagonistic, people fighting for control and power.

Winston Churchill said two things about democracy that are apposite.

One is that “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” I would argue that’s simply not true. Perhaps we can discuss the alternatives someday.

The other thing that he said was, “The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” He’s absolutely right in that quip.

I’d have less of a beef with democracy if the government was totally precluded from any intervention in the economy. The problem is that the institution of government itself is innately, intrinsically, and necessarily coercive.

In a civilized society, however, coercion should be limited. What does that mean?

It means that a government should be strictly limited to preventing force and fraud. That implies a police force to prevent domestic force and fraud, a military to protect the country from invasion, and a court system to allow people to adjudicate disputes without resorting to force.

If the government did nothing but those things, sure you can vote. But votes would be largely irrelevant.

Actually, an argument can be made that those three things are so important to the conduct of a civilized society that they shouldn’t be left to the kind of people that want to be elected.

The market can and will do anything that’s needed or wanted, better and cheaper than a political instrument like the government. And at this point, the government doesn’t do any of those three things well. Instead, it tries to do absolutely everything else.

But, getting back to millennials, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), and people like her, are both the current reality and the future of the Democratic Party — and of the US itself.

Why? It’s irrational to make a 30-year-old barmaid into an icon. But she’s cute, vivacious, outspoken, and has a plan to remake the country. And she’s shrewd. She knows how to capitalize on envy and resentment. She realized she could win by ringing doorbells in her district, where voter turnout was very low, and about 70% are non-white. There was zero motivation for residents to turn out for the tired, corrupt, old hack of a white man she ran against.

Nobody, except for a few libertarians and conservatives, are countering the purposefully destructive ideas AOC represents. And they have a very limited audience and not much of a platform. Arguing for sound money and limited government makes them seem like Old Testament prophets. Collectivism and statism are overwhelming the values of individualism and liberty.

It’s exactly the type of thing the Founders tried to guard against by restricting the vote to property owners over 21, going through the Electoral College. Now, welfare recipients who are only 18 can vote, and the Electoral College is toothless.

Of course, I don’t believe in either politics or voting. But, if you must have voting, it should only be for people 25 or over, who own a certain amount of property, so they have something to lose in the system. Most important, the government should have zero involvement in the economy. But, forget about it. Just the opposite is happening at an accelerating rate.

For the last couple of generations, everybody who’s gone to college has been indoctrinated with leftist ideas. Almost all of the professors hold these ideas. They place an intellectual patina on top of emotion and fantasy-driven ideas.

When the economy collapses in earnest, everybody will blame capitalism. Because Trump is rich, he’s incorrectly associated with capitalism. The country—especially the young, the poor, and the non-white—will look to the government to “do something.” They see the government as a cornucopia, and socialism as a kind and gentle way to expropriate the middle class.

A majority of millennials are in favor of socialism. By 2050, whites will be a minority in the US. A straw in the wind is that a large majority of the people who commit suicide each year are middle-class white males—essentially, Trump supporters. The demographic handwriting is on the wall. Trump’s election in 2016 was an anomaly. A Last Hurrah.

There’s no political salvation coming from the Republican party. Like Trump himself, it doesn’t have any core principles. It just reacts to the Dems and proposes less radical alternatives to their ideas. It doesn’t stand for anything. It’s only capable of putting forward empty suits, pure establishment figures like Bob Dole, Mitt Romney, or a Bush. Or a non-entity like Pence. That’s a formula for disaster in today’s demographic and cultural environment.

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Misguided political and economic ideas have taken hold in the US and around the world. In all likelihood, the public will vote itself more and more “free stuff” until it causes an economic crisis. New York Times best-selling author Doug Casey and his team just released a free guide that will show you exactly how to survive and thrive in the coming crisis. Click here to download the PDF now.

For the low low price of just $110 million, you could have the honor of owning both the Manhattan and Palm Beach residents of the now-deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Think about all the fodder that will provide for those boring dinner parties, when nobody has anything to talk about.

The NYC property was listed by brokerage Modlin Group for $88 million and is located at 9 E. 71st St. If sold at that price, it could be a price record for a Manhattan townhouse, according to Bloomberg.

The lengthy description of the NYC property on Modlin’s website describes it as the “last and largest of just a handful of goliath mansions built during its era in the 1930’s” and the “capstone property of the wealthiest and most prominent block of all of New York City.” The Mansion stands with provenance and commanding authority in a neighborhood steeped in New York’s richest history.

“The property is uniquely positioned,” the listing continues “as the perpetual and unobtrusive perspective overlooking the Frick Museum to Central Park can never be blocked by new construction, a rarity in the ever-growing New York City landscape.”

It does not, however, mention Jeffrey Epstein. Bloomberg’s description of the property seems a bit more apt: “The Upper East Side home was one of the locations where Epstein was accused of luring underage girls to perform paid sex acts, according to an indictment last year, before the financier was found dead in his jail cell.”

And of course, it also doesn’t note that before Epstein, the mansion was owned by his Les Wexner, a name that has repeatedly and mysteriously continued to pop up during various stages the Epstein investigations. “In 2011, the deed to the home was transferred from the company Wexner used to buy it to an Epstein company in the U.S. Virgin Islands,” Bloomberg writes. 

But that doesn’t sound as great in an $88 million real estate listing, we guess. 

Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion has been listed separately for $21.95 million. More of Epstein’s property is expected to hit the market in the coming weeks, with the proceeds going to Epstein’s estate. The estate has been established as a compensation fund for victims, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

The agent who listed the Florida home “declined to comment”, which usually isn’t a great first step to selling a home.

Authored by Elias Marat via TheMindUnleashed.com,

As secretive unit operating within the U.S. Department of Defense that is charged with investigating unidentified flying objects (UFOs) will make some of its findings public after it was revealed that the Pentagon has been recently briefed about “off-world vehicles not made on this earth.”

The once-covert UFO unit, which operates within the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Intelligence, will soon begin giving regular biannual updates on its research to the U.S. Senate’s Intelligence Committee, reports The New York Times.

The Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force was formed in 2019 for the purpose of studying strange and inexplicable encounters between U.S. military pilots and unidentified aerial vehicles or UFOs in a bid “to standardize collection and reporting” of the various sightings.

The program is the successor to the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which also investigated UFOs but was dissolved in 2017 due to a lapse of funding. However, the team working on that program continued its work alongside the intelligence community even after it was officially disbanded.

Luis Elizondo, a former military intelligence official who headed the Pentagon program, resigned in October 2017 after a decade with the program. Elizondo, along with a group of former government scientists and officials, remain convinced that objects of unkown origin have crashed on Earth and that these apparently extraterrestrial materials have been the focus of research.

“It no longer has to hide in the shadows,” Elizondo told the Times. “It will have a new transparency.”

Former Senate majority leader and retired Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), who led the push to fund the earlier UFO program, also believes that the studies should see the light of day.

“After looking into this, I came to the conclusion that there were reports — some were substantive, some not so substantive — that there were actual materials that the government and the private sector had in their possession,” Reid said.

So far, none of the alleged crash artifacts have been subject to public scrutiny or verification by independent researchers. However, some of the retrieved objects such as strange metallic debris were identified as being manmade – raising the possibility that they could be related to the military of U.S. rivals such as China or Russia.

However, astrophysicist Eric Davis – who served as an advisor for the Pentagon program since 2007 – said that he had briefed the Pentagon in March about material retrieved from “off-world vehicles not made on this earth.”

The Department of Defense subcontractor also said that he had concluded that the objects found were of the type “we couldn’t make … ourselves.”

In an interview last month, President Donald Trump told his son Donald Trump Jr. that he had heard some “interesting” things about supposed aliens as well as the secretive Area 51 base near Roswell, New Mexico, that some theorists claim is a UFO crash site.

The U.S. government has been increasingly open in its discussions of UFOs since last September, when  U.S. Navy admitted that widely-circulated video footage captured by Navy pilots that purportedly showed UFOs flying through the skies did depict actual “unknown” objects that flew into U.S. airspace.

While officials admitted that they have been baffled by the unknown flying objects, they also admit that past encounters with them have been frequent. They also said that rather than calling them “UFOs,” they prefer the term unidentified aerial phenomena or UAPs.

While it remains yet to be seen what information the once-secret UFO unit plans to lay out for lawmakers, acting intelligence committee chairman Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is intent on finding out who or what precisely is behind the apparent UFO activity over U.S. military bases.

“We have things flying over our military bases and places where we are conducting military exercises and we don’t know what it is — and it isn’t ours,” Rubio told CBS Miami in an interview last Friday.

“Frankly, that if it’s something from outside this planet — that might actually be better than the fact that we’ve seen some technological leap on behalf of the Chinese or the Russians or some other adversary that allows them to conduct this sort of activity,” the hawkish senator added.

For Reid, further transparency is needed.

“It is extremely important that information about the discovery of physical materials or retrieved craft come out,” he said.

Finally, all of this oddness sparked an interesting question from Mike Krieger

They seem to be priming the public for something with this alien and UFO rollout. Why now?

The whole thing stinks. pic.twitter.com/Ms6oxSoyl0

— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) July 24, 2020

As far as Bank of America is concerned, there are just two themes one needs to know to explain the current “market” (which as the same Bank of America explained last week, is now manipulated to a never before seen extent): the Great Repression and Great Debasement.

First the Great Repression – also known as “Don’t fight the Fed” –  which according to BofA CIO Michael Hartnett is the outcome of $8 trillion in central bank asset purchases in just three months in 2020, has crushed interest rates, corporate bond spreads, volatility & bears. The most perfect example of this repression: the US fiscal deficit soared from 7% to 40% of GDP in Q2’20…

… and less than one month later the volatility of US Treasury market fell close to all-time low.

Besides volatility, central bank repression works its magic on yields: case in point Italian & Greek 10-year government bonds which are down to 1%, while US Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities (CMBS) & IG corporate bonds down to 2%, meanwhile the 30-year US mortgage rate just dropped to a record all time low of 3%.

As a result of this unprecedented repression (of reality), the Fed has made everyone a winner:

Fed has made bulls in every asset class a winner…gold, bonds, credit, stocks, real estate all up big since March lows; levered cross-asset risk parity strategy at all-time high.

It also means that BofA’s recently preferred “All-weather” portfolio consisting of equal parts of all assets, i.e., 25/25/25/25 stocks, bonds, cash, gold, is up a record 18% in the past 90 days (Chart 7), which is “astounding & abnormal” given 7% historic annual average.

This “can’t lose” market has also led to fundamental shift in the zeitgeist, as the traditionally bearish narratives of Q2 such as a Democratic sweep, end of globalization, Japanification, narrow “lockdown” leadership of growth stocks is paradoxically morphing into bullish narratives. Here, Hartnett reminds is that “when the only reason to be bearish is there is no reason to be bearish” that’s when you sell. And sure enough, recent market moves justify getting defensive: the global equity market cap has round-tripped from $89tn to $62tn back to $87tn, with BofA warning that it is “hard to see financial conditions getting incrementally easier in July/Aug period of “peak policy” stimulus; summer dip in risk assets (e.g. SPX to 3050) likely.“

And yet, all good times come to an end – otherwise the Fed would have printed its way to utopia decades ago – and the with Great Repression in full force, it also means that the Fed is currently pursuing a just as Great Debasement.

Echoing something we have also said, namely that with the bond market now nationalized by the Fed and no longer providing any useful inflationary (or deflationary) signals, the only remaining asset class with any sort of discounting qualities is gold…

Why did the Fed need to nationalize bonds first? Because the 10Y no longer reflects future inflation which is the only catalyst for an equity selloff.

Only leaves gold as indicator of inflation. A spike in gold is death to Fed’s plans

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) July 24, 2020

… Hartnett writes that interest rate repression means “investors can’t hedge the inflationary risk of $11tn of fiscal stimulus via “short bonds”…so investors crowding into “short US dollar”, “long gold” hedges.

Indeed, US dollar debasement is well underway as the default narrative for US economy with excess debt, insufficient growth, and maxed-out monetary & fiscal stimulus. However, local currency debasement is also underway everywhere else, and so the next market crisis will lead to an even bigger spike in the dollar as global monetary authorities are faced with an even bigger global synthetic short squeeze than the one which sent the USD soaring to all time highs in March.

Which is why shorting the dollar to hedge debasement may be profitable for a while but eventually lead to catastrophic consequences.

That leaves long gold as the only natural hedge to the central bank “all in” bet of kicking the can until something breaks. That something will likely be gold exploding higher first above $2,000… then $2,500… then $3,000 at which point the Fed’s control over fiat currencies, as well asthe illusion that there is no inflation, and the financial regime will finally collapse.

As Hartnett condludes, “the correct historical analog is the late-1960s when themes of “smaller world”, “bigger government”, “monetary & fiscal excess” led to positive nominal returns but also inflection up in inflation.

Secular market trend has been deflation (credit & tech) dominating inflation…$100 of EPS in 1995 now $1,500 in tech sector, but just $425 in everything else (Chart 9 and 10);

yet in 2021 GDP in dollar terms forecast to rise $1.3tn in China, $767bn in EU+UK, versus $612bn in US; global fiscal stimulus the other big 2020 trend…supports rotation from deflation to inflation…and traders note semiconductor stocks are already discounting ISM levels of >60 (Chart 11).

Finally, one look at the price of gold – which just closed at an all time high…

… and it becomes clear that it is now just a matter of time before the financial world as we know it, will end.

Authored by Stacey Lennox via PJMedia.com,

In an interview with Vogue Magazine, San Francisco Mayor London Breed discussed a range of issues. When asked about the current cultural moment, she said that she was overwhelmed by the response from people who are not black to the Black Lives Matter movement. However, she also expressed frustration with so-called “white allies.”

When she was asked if she had any critiques of the current demonstrations, she responded:

I have a real problem with the takeover of the movement by white people.

I want people to respect the opinions and feelings of Black people and allow us to decide what is in our best interest. I talk about the plan to reduce the police budget and reallocate those resources to the African American community, and a large number of non-Blacks reached out to tell me what I should do for the Black community. Then, they say what their community deserves because of their challenges as well. That really bothered me. The Black community [of San Francisco] is capable of speaking for ourselves and deciding what’s in our best interest.

Then she answered a question as to whether for not she felt that the concerns of San Francisco’s black residents were being heard. Breed’s response was sharp criticism of the progressive movement:

What’s happening in San Francisco now, and has for so many years, is you have a progressive movement made up of people who are mostly white and feel that they know what’s in the best interest of Black people.

I’m over that.

I think it’s important that we support and respect the Black people here enough to know that we have a mind of our own. Because half the policies pushed in San Francisco are “progressive policies” that don’t work for Black people. Because, if they did, why are things far worse for Black people here? In San Francisco, a city where less than 5 to 6% of the population is African American and yet we are disproportionately overrepresented in everything that’s bad: high school dropouts, arrests, homelessness. You name it.

Thank you, Mayor Breed! Though it could be just as easily argued that progressive policies are bad for everyone. She presides over a city that had more drug addicts than high school students in January of 2019. It also spawned the Snapcrap app that tracked public defecation.

The city also has one of the most progressive district attorneys in the country. Raised by domestic terrorists Bill Ayes and Bernadette Dorn, Chesa Boudin refuses to prosecute nearly all non-violent crimes. It is so bad Fox News Host Tucker Carlson did a series on San Francisco called American Dystopia:

With Breed’s criticism of progressive policies, it becomes necessary to wonder why she is embracing one of the worst ideas the woke left has come up with. She is actively diverting money away from the police department to invest in black communities.

A majority of black Americans do not support this idea. Overall support has been dropping as violence in many cities has escalated.

Breed’s rhetoric is pretty astonishing, given she leads a city where the black population has been declining for decades. According to the New York Times, black residents used to make up one in seven residents in San Francisco in 1970. Today it has fallen to one in 20 with the majority living in public housing.

Another consequence of progressive policies is skyrocketing rent and lack of affordable housing. While Breed has tried to remedy some of that by adding low-income units and shelter beds, it is like putting a band-aid on an injury that requires a tourniquet.

According to the website RENTCafe, the average rent in San Francisco is $3,629, with an average apartment size of 747 square feet. This amount is more than twice the national average of $1,468. This is an astounding price to live among piles of poop, strewn dirty needles, and unaddressed non-violent crime.

To the activists that have been critical of her leadership, Breed had a few words when she was asked if she was misunderstood:

Yes, but I don’t care that I am by people who have privilege. Let me be clear: In most cases, they’ve never had to live like I’ve had to live. I had to live in a public housing development that they wouldn’t have even dared set foot in. This is over 20 years, not just two years, of my life. I’ve been working in the trenches for my community my entire life.

And none of these people have been in the trenches when we were dealing with issues of police brutality on a regular basis. Almost every day you’re hearing that someone that you loved was killed. I think part of it is, my experience is what determines how I make decisions. The good news is the people who know me and love me from the neighborhood I grew up in, they understand why I do what I do. They’re not “activists,” but they love and they trust me.

Here’s hoping her neighborhood encompassed half the city. Her comments are not likely to be popular with the woke white progressives who follow the Robin Di Angelo school of thinking.

Only they know what is best, and Mayor Breed isn’t listening.

President Trump’s newly created Space Command announced Thursday (July 23) that Russia has tested a space-based anti-satellite weapon.

“On July 15, Russia injected a new object into orbit from Cosmos 2543, currently Satellite Catalog Number 45915 in Space-Track.org,” Space Command wrote. “Russia released this object in proximity to another Russian satellite, which is similar to on-orbit activity conducted by Russia in 2017, and inconsistent with the system’s stated mission as an inspector satellite.”

According to Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond, Commander of U.S. Space Command and U.S. Space Force Chief of Space Operations, the U.S. government “raised concerns” earlier this year about the same Russian satellite system, when it “maneuvered near a U.S. government satellite.” 

 “This is further evidence of Russia’s continuing efforts to develop and test space-based systems, and consistent with the Kremlin’s published military doctrine to employ weapons that hold U.S. and allied space assets at risk,” Raymond said. 

We noted in April, Russia has been testing anti-satellite weapons, with aims to destroy U.S. spy satellites. This has been an ongoing issue for years. Back in 2018, the State Department raised concerns that a Russian satellite could be weaponized to take out the U.S. GPS network. 

Russia’s space weapon test is the latest example of new threats emerging in Low Earth orbit (LEO). President Trump’s initiative for a new military branch appears to have been an excellent decision to protect U.S. assets in LEO, despite sparking a new race for the weaponization of space.

War hawks have claimed that if the Trump administration didn’t act, China or Russia would’ve weaponized outer space first, leaving the U.S., and its network of spy satellites in immediate danger. 

Space Command already appears to be safeguarding America’s assets in outer space, as it seems Russia could be making moves to take out critical U.S. spy satellites. 

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

Are you ready for this week’s absurdity? Here’s our Friday roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, risks to your prosperity… and on occasion, inspiring poetic justice.

Art museum curator cancelled for not abandoning “white male artists”

Gary Garrels was the Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

After giving a presentation on the importance of diversity in art, he ended by saying, “don’t worry, we will continue to collect white male artists.”

His word choice may be curious, but his entire point was that diversity should include everyone… and that means white, male artists too. 

He had mentioned at another point that specifically excluding white artists would be reverse discrimination.

But this egregious sin was enough to elicit a Change.org petition from his co-workers calling for his ouster.

The petition claimed that Gary may be “deliberately racist.” It also claimed his use of the term “reverse discrimination” is “white supremacist and racist language.”

Gary bowed to the mob, and resigned.

Somehow, this petition did not violate Change.org’s policy against using petitions to bully.

Click here to read the full story.

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Florida motorcycle crash victim “died of Covid”

Sadly, a man from Florida who crashed his motorcycle succumbed to Covid-19.

At least, that was according to the Florida Health Department.

Florida initially counted the motorcycle death as one of those rare cases where a 20-something year old died of Covid.

This came to light during a press conference with a local health official.

When reporters asked if any of the young victims had any underlying conditions, the health official said, “The first one didn’t have any. He died in a motorcycle accident.”

He added, “But you could actually argue that it could have been the Covid-19 that caused him to crash.”

After the media picked up the story, the state corrected the data.

But it makes you wonder– how much can you trust the official statistics?

Click here to read the full story.

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22 peer-reviewed scholarly articles on Covid-19 have been retracted

Speaking of official statistics being wrong, a lot of the official information has turned out to be wrong too.

Wear a mask, shut down your business, swear off social contact, and remain in your home cowering in fear. That is the most scientific way to beat Covid-19, according to many news outlets and rabid peers.

But scientific journals aren’t so sure about the facts on Covid-19.

A website called Retraction Watch keeps track of papers and studies withdrawn from scholarly and scientific journals.

So far, it has counted 22 peer-reviewed scientific papers and experiments on Covid-19 that were originally published, but later had to be retracted for various reasons.

For instance, one study found that coronavirus infects t-cells, but later realized the methodology was wrong, and the virus does not invade t-cells, like HIV.

Another retracted study said coronavirus could spread 15 feet through the air via water droplets. 

Several of the retracted studies were from China. And that only adds to the confusion. Were they retracted for faulty science? Or were the results accurate, but the Chinese government forced a retraction in order to placate their narrative? 

The point is, science is doing the best it can. They’re breaking new ground every day. But there’s still a tremendous amount of uncertainty about Covid. Even when they reach conclusions, they sometimes later find out that their conclusions were wrong. 

Yet despite this uncertainty, politicians have no trouble shutting down the global economy and trampling over individual freedoms.

Click here to read the full story.

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Grocery giant bows to 17-year old Twitter mobster

Oh what a glorious cultural revolution comrades! When any teenage girl with internet access can do her part to strike the root of prejudice in our society.

This time the victim of the Twitter mob is Trader Joe’s, a grocery chain known for its quirkiness.

Trader Joe’s liked to have a little fun with branding its culinary offerings from around the world.

For instance, the store sells Mexican food under “Trader José,” Chinese food under “Trader Ming,” Italian food under “Trader Giotto” and so on.

But one teenage tyrant, a 17 year old girl, found this offensive. So she started a petition– once again Change.org helped facilitate this important social reform.

The petition claims that using variations of Joe in branding foreign foods “belies a narrative of exoticism that perpetuates harmful stereotypes…”

“The Trader Joe’s branding is racist because it exoticizes other cultures – it presents “Joe” as the default “normal” and the other characters falling outside of it.”

The petition, now signed by a mob of almost 5,000 random internet users, also took issue with the inspiration for the original Trader Joe’s store.

The founder read an apparently racist book, and rode an apparently racist Disney ride, which together gave him the idea for his clearly racist business of selling food products from around the world.

Trader Joe’s quickly yielded to the Twitter mobsters, saying although the names were “rooted in a lighthearted attempt at inclusiveness, we recognize that it may now have the opposite effect.”

Click here to see the petition.

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On another note… We think gold could DOUBLE and silver could increase by up to 5 TIMES in the next few years.

That’s why we published a new, 50-page long Ultimate Guide on Gold & Silver that you can download here.

School districts and counties across the US, including counties in COVID-resurgent Texas this week, have mandated that all public and private schools not start their school year until after Labor Day (Sept. 7). Even after that Fall start date, some areas witnessing the current resurgence of cases, such as in California, may not return in person at all or at least go to a half-capacity scenario while offering online options for those families in a position to allow their children to stay home. But concerning online contingency plans, the trend appears to be: Remote learning? No thanks.

Bottom line is that school-wise it’s a time of extreme uncertainty and anxiety for families across the US. And then there are the difficult questions of assuming the moment a ‘normal’ school year actually kicks off – will masks be required through the day? will younger students really be able to practice social distancing? will a school shut down completely again the moment a student or staff member gets coronavirus? will on-campus schooling be safe? 

Due to these and other lingering questions, homeschooling is set to explode across the US, despite elites at places like Harvard doing their best to push stereotypes of “insular conservative homeschoolers” and the supposed “dark side” of homeschooling as somehow “detrimental” to societal progress. Regardless, all kinds of ‘alternative’ and hybrid stay at home schooling programs are now popping up organically amid continued pandemic and ‘shutdown’ fears. The Wall Street Journal presents hard numbers illustrating the trend in a lengthy report aptly titled: Amid Coronavirus, Parents ‘Pod Up’ to Form At-Home Schools.

Recent polls show up to a third of Americans are “not at all” comfortable sending their children back to in-person schooling given the COVID-19 risks and ‘unknowns’. And likely this figure is higher.

The Wall Street Journal describes of the recent polling:

A recent poll of 1,341 families by Pittsburgh-based consumer-research firm CivicScience found that more than one-third of parents with children ages 3 to 17 said they are “not at all” comfortable with a return to school in the fall. In a recent Axios-Ipsos poll of 219 parents of children 18 and under, 71% said they felt sending them to school in the fall presented a moderate or large risk to their household’s health and well-being. Not all families can afford to design their own education program. Some households will see their income decline if one parent works fewer hours to manage academics.

And further, the report details, “In the past three weeks, the National Home School Association has referred about 3,000 parents to local home-schooling groups—compared with a handful, if any, in a typical three-week period says Executive Director J. Allen Weston.”

One observable trend taking place across the United States includes families and students gathering in ‘pods’ to conduct their own small-scale schooling. Neighbors or families who already have connections and trusted friendships with children similar in age plan to gather in small groups of 5 to 10 students at people’s homes or even local churches. 

The NYT reported this week that interest in homeschooling is surging this fall due to Covid-19 concerns. Here are some helpful resources.https://t.co/inE88EsCAh

— Kerry McDonald (@kerry_edu) July 18, 2020

Within the homeschool sub-culture these are akin to what’s often referred to as “co-ops”. This involves a homeschool group teaching children at home for most of the week based on a common curriculum, but coming together as a ‘campus’ at an outside location (such as a church or rented building, or in a residence) for one or two days of the week. This also takes the form of community field trips or nature outings. It essentially allows for highly independent schooling, yet while maintaining a broader “structure” and interactive social life.

Interestingly, as the WSJ underscores, parents are actually seeing in the set-back of coronavirus shutdowns and delays of traditional campuses…“an opportunity”. Consider this damning quote of the current established “system” and the state of public school districts from a commentator cited in the WSJ report:

“Schools steal this joy from children.”

Now parents, at least those with the time and resources to make it happen, can model their child’s educational experience very differently from the mundane 8 or 9-hour campus life (which for many students feels more like a prison) regulated by periodic bells and a restrictive atmosphere of procedures set up to move thousands of students from point A to point B throughout the day, or what some authors like John Taylor Ghatto have called “factory model schooling” which is not based on truth-seeking, as all learning should be, but instead on “schooling an industrial proletariat”. 

In a revealing section on the state of mass public education today, WSJ writes:

Home-schooling experts say the approach isn’t just logging in to school virtually. Instead, parents and students seek educational opportunities in everyday life, from reading food labels to learning about nature as they walk through a park, Mr. Weston says. “Schools steal this joy from children,” he adds, and escalating pressure to meet benchmarks on standardized tests hasn’t helped. Not all states require home-schoolers to take those tests, he says. Across the U.S., about 4 million K-12 students are home-schooled, Mr. Weston estimates. He believes that figure will rise to at least 10 million by the end of the 2020-21 school year.

The report gives an example of how pods of new homeschooling communities are popping up organically in response to the crisis:

Myra Margolin, a full-time mother of a newborn and preschooler in Washington, created a Facebook group for families interested in forming home-schooling pods. She expected about 30 families would join and exchange ideas. The group, which launched July 6, has more than 850 members. “People are freaking out,” Ms. Margolin says, with interests that range from convening free-form play groups to hiring teachers for more structured learning environments.

And other alternative programs like ‘homeschool nature programs’ and outdoor focused learning programs, and small scale Montessori environments, as well as Charlotte Mason style and classical learning are also soaring in terms of interest. 

Why attack homeschool now, unless you’re afraid people are waking up to reality? “Hilariously, “arithmetic” was also misspelled in the original. It has since been corrected”
Harvard’s Lazy Attack On Homeschooling via @forbes https://t.co/TTYFoKVnrA

— Isaac Crockett (@isaaccrockett1) April 23, 2020

All of this begs the question: given that even before the rise of the pandemic, public school districts in many cities were already in a state of crisis – academically, financially, culturally, and otherwise…

Could the 2020-2021 school year (or lack thereof) be the death knell for mass public education?

Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

The carnage for following President Trump’s lead on ending the JCPOA continues for India.

From SputnikNews last week comes this note about the Farzad-B oil and gas field and Iran.

Close on the heels of breaking the Chabahar-Zahedan rail project agreement, Iran appears set to deny India’s state-run ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL), exploration and production rights for the key Farzad B gas field.

The granting  of rights to OVL was already delayed with New Delhi moving slowly on the issue, but came to a complete standstill after the 2018 imposition of US sanctions on Tehran.

Now that threat looks to be a reality.

Turkish news agency Anadolu Agency quoted India’s External Affairs Ministry (EAM) as saying on Thursday Tehran would develop the Farzad-B gas field in the Persian Gulf region “on its own” and might engage India “appropriately at a later stage”.

Translation: “Stop stalling for Trump’s sake and make good on your promises or the project goes to China.”

Because that’s where this leads in light of the announced mega-deal between Iran and China worth a reported $400 billion.

I wrote last week I thought India has lost its way on the New Silk Road. Losing the contract to build the railway it pushed for to bypass Pakistan and assert independence from China’s OBOR plans should have been a clear enough signal.

But apparently it wasn’t.

India’s involvement in the Farzad-B gas field is now more than a decade delayed because of U.S. interference through sanctions nominally over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Work was supposed to begin in 2012 but President Obama sanctioned Iran, forcing OVL, ONGC’s international arm, to stop. Work was set to begin again after ratification of the JCPOA in 2015 and Trump nixed that in 2018 when he pulled the U.S. out of the deal.

Not only did this stop India’s work on the field but it also put the kibosh on any new pipeline into India.

I reported in November of 2017 that Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak announced preliminary development work on a new version of the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline. That talk abruptly ended with Trump’s pulling out of the JCPOA.

Some version of IPI has been opposed by the U.S. for two decades now, preferring instead to thread the TAPI pipeline through the needle of failed geopolitics.

Gazprom already operates in three major Iranian oil fields, including Farzaz-B, and IPI was supposed to be a venture tying Iran and India together with Gazprom supplying the expertise and money to get it done.

Remember, pipelines are the stitching that bind nations together. This is why the U.S. is so adamant about stopping ones that don’t serve its or its allies’ interests, in this case the Saudis.

So, while we are regaled incessantly about the dangers of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon, the real reason for the pulling out of the JCPOA was always about Energy Dominance, Trump’s plans to further solidify the U.S.’s hold over global energy flows.

Because once Trump did that, multiple projects under development with European and Indian oil majors ended abruptly. Companies like Italy’s ENI, France’s Total and others were all forced to sell their interests in these major oil and gas development projects.

And China came in to scoop some of them up, presaging where we are today.

The same thing happened in the fallout from the coup in Ukraine in 2014 which led to Crimea’s reunification with Russia.

That prompted onerous sanctions which forced U.S. oil majors out of major deals to develop Russian oil and gas blocs in the Arctic as well as the development of Nordstream 2 and Turkstream.

Speaking recently about the U.S.’s opposition to Nordstream 2, Alexander Mercouris of The Duran connected these dots back to Exxon-Mobil having to pull out of its projects with Russia because of Crimea sanctions (starts at 4:52 in).

Germany, for its part, is fully hacked off about what Trump and Pompeo are threatening over Nordstream 2 and this will be the wedge issue which forces a split in policy direction between them, including counter-sanctions from Germany.

Threats eventually become actions especially when we are dealing with something as fundamental to the future of Germany and the European Union as Nordstream 2. So we should finally see some teeth from Germany if Pompeo goes through with these sanctions.

Remember also, that CAATSA, the updated version of the Magnitsky Act, took sanctions policy out of the hands of the President by a spiteful Congress (spearheaded by John McCain) and placed it in the hands of the Secretary of State and the Treasury Secretary.

In this sense Trump is a tourist in his own foreign policy.

The bottom line here is that Iran and China are countering to up the pressure on India to finally decide where their energy future lies, because the last ten years have been terrible for them in securing their energy future constantly bowing to external pressure.

One of India’s persistent issues is the vulnerability of its currency due to its intense energy import needs. The rupee is the antithesis of stable in part because of its energy imports.

Even with drastically lower energy import prices the rupee has been in free fall versus the U.S. dollar for two years now, and nothing the Modi government has done has alleviated India’s reliance having to buy oil only sold for U.S. dollars.

During the Obama sanction years (2012-15) India and Iran famously traded goods for oil. Under the current environment thanks to CAATSA that option is off the table. Keeping Iran and India at arm’s length is meant to protect the petrodollar system rather than the two countries trading in local currencies.

What I find most ironic is that every attempt to stop Iran and India from coming closer together on energy projects has forced India to develop closer ties to Russia’s Rosatom for nuclear power.

Rosatom is the main equipment supplier and technical consultant in the construction of  Kudankulam nuclear power station in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

The first and second reactors at the plant are already in service with the third and fourth due to come online in 2023 and 2024, according to Kremlin mouthpiece Tass. 

Russia and India are also planning the construction of a second nuclear power station. There are plans for up to six Russian-designed nuclear power plants in India.

Each and every time the U.S. pressures one of its ‘allies’ back into the narrow box of acceptable energy sources, the net result is a win for either China or Russia.

The story of the development of Farzad-B is yet another instance of this.

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Global stock markets plunged Friday as tensions between the US and China spiral out of control. 

Stocks in Hong Kong and mainland China tumbled after Beijing ordered Washington to cease all operations at its consulate in the city of Chengdu. This came days after Washington ordered the Chinese consulate in Houston, Texas, to close. 

Investors are becoming fearful the tit-for-tat spat between the US and China will escalate into August. Today’s equity selling in Asia, Europe, and the US is evident in derisking.

We must note, derisking has been stealthily occurring under the surface for two months. While President Trump and Barstool Sports’ Dave Portnoy pump stocks, the smart money has been quickly dumping US-listed firms that do business in China because of increasing tensions. 

Fathom’s proprietary China Exposure Index (CEI) tracks US-listed firms that have 15% and 85% of their revenues from China. The CEI shows investors have been dumping these companies since the start of June. 

Readers may recall, a plunging CEI in early February preceded the stock market crash that started later in the month. 

Read: In Latest Sign Of Imminent Market Collapse, Investors Dump Everything’ China’

So the question we ask today: Is today’s CEI plunge hinting the stock market is set to tank again?