Tag: finance

As young generations usher into adulthood, they inevitably begin to accumulate and inherit wealth, a trend that has broadly remained consistent.

But, as Visual Capitalist’s Omri Wallach explains below, what has changed recently is the rate of accumulation.

In the U.S., household wealth has traditionally seen a relatively even distribution across different age groups. However, over the last 30 years, the U.S. Federal Reserve shows that older generations have been amassing wealth at a far greater rate than their younger cohorts.

As the visual above shows, the older have been getting richer, and the younger have been starting further back than ever before.

By Generation: Baby Boomers Benefit & Millennials Lag

To examine the proportion of wealth each generation holds, it’s important to clearly define each age group. Though personal definitions might differ, the U.S. Federal Reserve uses a clear metric:

Relative to younger generations growing up, the Silent Generation and Greatest Generation before them have seen a decreasing share of household wealth over the last 30 years.

However, the numerical levels have been relatively stable. For these combined generations, total wealth has gone from $16 trillion in 1989 to $19 trillion in 2019, with a peak of $27 trillion in 2007. Considering this cohort has understandably shrunk over time—from an estimated 47 million to 23 million in 2019—their individual shares of wealth have actually increased.

Immediately following are the Baby Boomers, who held more than half of U.S. household wealth towards the end of 2020. At $59 trillion, the generation holds more than ten times the amount held by a comparative number of Millennials.

With $29 trillion held in 2019, Generation X has also been gaining in wealth over the last 30 years. It’s good enough for five times the wealth of Millennials, though at just $440k/person, they’ve fallen far behind Baby Boomers in rate of growth.

Finally, trying to catch up to their older cohorts are Millennials, who held the least amount of household wealth ($5 trillion) for the greatest population (73 million) in 2019, an average of just under $69k/person.

For a direct comparison, it took Generation X nine years to climb from their start of 0.4% of household wealth in 1989 to above 5%, while Millennials still haven’t crossed that threshold. But it’s not all doom and gloom for Millennials. Their rate of growth is starting to rise, with the generation’s level of wealth climbing from $3 trillion in 2016 to $5 trillion in 2019.

By Age: A Growing Share for 55+

Though the generational picture is stark, the difference in U.S. household wealth by age makes the picture of shifting wealth even clearer.

Until 2001, the shares of household wealth held by different age groups were relatively stable. People aged 40-54 and 55-69 held around 35% each of household wealth, retirees aged 70+ hovered around 20%, and younger people aged under 40 held around 10%.

Since that time, however, the shift in wealth to older generations is clear. The 70+ age group has seen their share of wealth increase to 26%, while the share held by ages 55-69 has grown from 35% to almost half.

But not all ages are seeing an increasing slice of wealth. The 40-54 age group saw its share drop sharply from 36% to 22% between 2001 and 2016 before starting to recover towards the end of the decade, while the youngest cohort now hover around just 5%.

Breaking down that wealth by components is even more eye-opening. The 39 and under age group holds 37.9% of their assets in real estate, the largest share amongst any age group (and concentrated in the hands of fewer people) while older age groups have their wealth spread out across real estate, equities, and pensions.

But the difference is as much in assets as it is in opportunity. In 1989, Baby Boomers and Generation X under 40 accounted for 13% of household wealth, compared to just 5.9% for Millennials and Generation Z under 40 in 2020.

Will the Tide Turn for Generation Z?

As new and accumulated wealth has been built up in older generations, it’s a matter of time before the pendulum starts to swing the other way.

The Millennials age group are expected to inherit $68 trillion by 2030 from Baby Boomer parents. Of course, that payout isn’t going to be even across the board, with wealthier families retaining the bulk of wealth and the majority of Millennials laden with debt.

And with Generation Z (born 1997-2012) starting to come of age, the uneven playing field is making it hard to begin accumulating wealth in the first place.

Since it is in the best interest of societies to have wealthy generations that can drive economic growth, potential solutions are being examined all over the political sphere. They include different taxation schemes, changing estate laws, and potentially cancelling student debt.

Whatever ends up happening, it’s important to track how the distribution of wealth changes over the coming decade, and begin accumulating your personal wealth as best as you can.

Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

Klaus Schwab was born in Nazi Germany in 1938. Little information is available as to his upbringing – i.e., the degree to which he was educated to believe in Nazi doctrine – but whatever he was taught in his youth, he is, today, one of the most ardent believers in, and proponents of, totalitarian rule.

The term “Nazi” refers to Nationalsozialistisch, or “National Socialism,” and its overall concept was fascism – a concept that encompassed a corporatist economic system, socialist political system and totalitarian rule.

Whilst this description may seem rather convoluted, the concept was believed by Wall Street and much of the US government in the 1930s as the way of the future. So much so that they provided considerable financial and logistical support for Nazi Germany during the 1930s and even into the 1940s.

Following the war, only a handful of Germans were prosecuted for war crimes at the Nuremburg trials. Countless others were taken on board by both US industry and the government following the war, to educate American industry in German methodology.

For many years following the war, Nazi concepts remained under the radar, but in recent years, they’ve become a major force within not only the US, but also US ally states: Canada, Australia, the UK and, most notably, the EU.

The basic concepts are perennial in their attraction to those who seek to dominate:

1. Create an uber class of those who are highly positioned in both industry and politics.

2. Cripple the middle class economically, so that they no longer have the power to make their own life decisions.

3. Offer dramatically increased dependency on the State as a relief from the economic hardship created by the state.

4. Remove freedoms, in trade for the promise of largesse from the State.

5. Institute a police state and totalitarian rule to ensure that the new paradigm will be lasting.

6. Once controls are fully implemented and the populace has become dependent on the new system, begin to remove the promised entitlements.

The idea behind this final bullet point is that, once the population is thoroughly dependent upon the state, they will have lost the power to object or rebel if entitlements are removed. They are then fully dominated.

Of course, if any individual were to read the above menu, he would immediately say, “No way!” and reject the programme outright. Therefore, if such an oppressive regime were to be imposed upon a people, it would need to be sold to them as a benefit, not as virtual enslavement.

Adolf Hitler was proud of saying, “Make the lie big. Keep it simple. Keep saying it and eventually, they will believe it.”

Quite so. Fortunately, Mister Hitler and his friends were removed from the firmament before the final stages of the programme could be implemented.

But today, the jurisdictions listed above are now solidly in the completion stage of bullet point #2 and have begun to provide the offer of bullet point #3: the promised solution to the populace.

And so, we return to our poster boy for totalitarianism: Klaus Schwab.

His fame has been earned through his creation and chairmanship of the World Economic Forum (WEF). Over the last half century, the WEF has grown in influence to become one of the foremost leaders in the proposition of a New World Order.

As with Mister Hitler, in order to sell Totalitarianism 201 to the people of the countries in question, the technique once again is to “Make the lie big.”

Professor Schwab’s video offers an idyllic state in which people can rid themselves of all the personal debt, the political upheaval and the social unrest that is now expanding so rapidly.

The proposed solution is that you sign over your right to own possessions on a permanent basis, in trade for a life in which there is minimal responsibility.

The world government will provide you with a basic income. You will rent whatever you need – a residence, a vehicle, appliances, even your clothing.

Most importantly, as can be seen from the countenance of the citizen in the image above, you’ll be happy.

There will be no more wars.

A “handful of countries” will rule the world cooperatively.

There will be no waiting for medical attention.

“There will be a global price on carbon” emissions. (This states that those who use fossil fuels – everyone – will be taxed for its use, although no explanation is given as to how this keeps the world from ending in twelve years due to emissions, as globalists claim.)

The government will have full control of every aspect of your life, plus the task of removing any obstacles to your happiness.

Sounds wonderful. Where do I sign up?

But if we stop and think for a moment, we might wish to ask a few questions.

For one thing, you give up all rights at the beginning of the deal. You will have lost all your possessions and all your freedoms. You will be 100% dependent upon the state. Their part of the deal is to be delivered on the back end.

But once you’re totally dependent and can no longer extricate yourself from the deal, there’s nothing to stop them from removing the punch bowl… Oh-oh.

All the things that were promised may be withdrawn one at a time, until you’re both subservient and impoverished. You will lack the ability to rebel or even to complain.

For generations, political leaders have offered empty promises that were never kept. Conservative and liberal political leaders alike have consistently made a grand show of disagreeing with each other on what form of governance might serve the people best. Yet, somehow, the result, no matter which group theoretically holds the reins of power at any given time, has always been a larger, more powerful government and a populace that was increasingly robbed of its freedoms – social, political and economic.

We are now at the very turning point at which much of the former Free World is being tempted to make the leap into the “Brave New World.”

All the social, political and economic problems that presently exist have been caused by political leaders. They are now asking you to trust them to end those problems.

The promise is a simple one: You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy.

But you’re not required to sign up. All you need do is sit still and accept the transformation to totalitarianism as it plays out.

Nothing could be simpler.

*  *  *

There’s no question the elite are eager to promote policies like negative interest rates, the abolition of cash, and mass migration. These trends are in motion, and are accelerating at a rapid rate. It’s all shaping up to be a world-class disaster… one unlike anything we’ve seen before. That’s exactly why New York Times bestselling author Doug Casey and his team just released an urgent new report titled Doug Casey’s Top 7 Predictions for the Raging 2020s. Click here to download the free PDF now.

Researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) are forecasting the Sun is about to wake up, expected to hurl pulses of energy into space. Earth’s implications could be dire as stormy “space weather” could be disastrous for the digital economy. 

NCAR’s new paper published in Solar Physics and titled “Overlapping Magnetic Activity Cycles and the Sunspot Number: Forecasting Sunspot Cycle 25 Amplitude,” predicts Sunspot Cycle 25 could peak with a maximum sunspot number between 210 and 260. This contradicts the official forecast by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who both expect Sunspot Cycle 25 to be as weak as Sunspot Cycle 24 peaked around 116. 

If the NCAR forecast is correct, it will support the research team’s theory that the Sun has “overlapping 22-year magnetic cycles that interact to produce the well-known, approximately 11-year sunspot cycle as a byproduct. 22-year cycles repeat like clockwork and could be a key to finally making accurate predictions of the timing and nature of sunspot cycles, as well as many of the effects they produce,” according to NCAR & UCAR News, citing the study’s authors.

Using 140 years of solar observations, researchers were able to identify “terminator” events that signal the end of a sunspot cycle. They believe Sunspot Cycle 24 ended in the first half of 2020, with Sunspot Cycle 25 beginning imminently. 

“McIntosh believes the bright points mark the travel of magnetic field bands, which wrap around the Sun. When the bands from the northern and southern hemispheres – which have oppositely charged magnetic fields – meet at the equator, they mutually annihilate one another leading to a “terminator” event. These terminators are crucial markers on the Sun’s 22-year clock, McIntosh says, because they flag the end of a magnetic cycle, along with its corresponding sunspot cycle, — and act as a trigger for the following magnetic cycle to begin,” NCAR & UCAR News said. 

Terminator Event 

 

NCAR Deputy Director Scott McIntosh, a solar physicist who led the study, said, “evidence for terminators has been hidden in the observational record for more than a century, but until now, we didn’t know what we were looking for. By combining such a wide variety of observations over so many years, we were able to piece together these events and provide an entirely new look at how the Sun’s interior drives the solar cycle.”

A sunspot’s source is a solar flare, which can interrupt satellite activity, navigation systems, and even blow out transformers on power grids. Simultaneously, sunspots may also release coronal mass ejections, which is magnetic energy that can produce northern lights.

With the Sun entering a possibly record-breaking period of activity, Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii released an image of a sunspot in unprecedented detail. 

“Each of the ‘scales’ around the sunspot itself is a convection cell – areas roughly 1,500km (932 miles) across, with hot plasma erupting from the center that then cools as it flows outwards, creating the patterned effect around the periphery of the sunspot itself,” RT News said.

Perhaps the NCAR forecast is right. Last week, one of the strongest solar explosions, measured as an M4.4-category eruption, was recorded. 

A few years back, Mike Hapgood, head of space weather at the UK Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, said the Sun has been “very quiet for the last ten years. It reminds people not to be complacent.” 

Even the federal government has started to prepare the nation for a space weather event with the 2016 executive order signed by the Obama administration titled “Coordinating Efforts to Prepare the Nation for Space Weather Events.”  

A super active solar cycle could be horrible news for the digital economy as disruptions sparked by solar flares could create massive economic damage. Just imagine if a solar storm knocks out power grids or communication networks, with everyone working from home, the economy would be virtually paralyzed. 

Authored by Glenn Greenwald via greenwald.substack.com,

Hunter Biden acknowledged today that he has been notified of an active criminal investigation into his tax affairs by the U.S. Attorney for Delaware. Among the numerous prongs of the inquiry, CNN reports, investigators are examining “whether Hunter Biden and his associates violated tax and money laundering laws in business dealings in foreign countries, principally China.”

Documents relating to Hunter Biden’s exploitation of his father’s name to enrich himself and other relatives through deals with China were among the cache published in the week before the election by The New York Post — revelations censored by Twitter and Facebook and steadfastly ignored by most mainstream news outlets. That concerted repression effort by media outlets and Silicon Valley left it to right-wing outlet such as Fox News and The Daily Caller to report, which in turn meant that millions of Americans were kept in the dark before voting.

But the just-revealed federal criminal investigation in Delaware is focused on exactly the questions which corporate media outlets refused to examine for fear that doing so would help Trump: namely, whether Hunter Biden engaged in illicit behavior in China and what impact that might have on his father’s presidency.

The allegations at the heart of this investigation compel an examination of a fascinating and at-times disturbing speech at a major financial event held last week in Shanghai. In that speech, a Chinese scholar of political science and international finance, Di Donghseng, insisted that Beijing will have far more influence in Washington under a Biden administration than it did with the Trump administration.

The reason, Di said, is that China’s ability to get its way in Washington has long depended upon its numerous powerful Wall Street allies. But those allies, he said, had difficulty controlling Trump, but will exert virtually unfettered power over Biden. That China cultivated extensive financial ties to Hunter Biden, Di explained, will be crucial for bolstering Beijing’s influence even further.

Di, who in addition to his teaching positions is also Vice Dean of Beijing’s Renmin University’s School of International Relations, delivered his remarks alongside three other Chinese banking and development experts. Di’s speech at the event, entitled “Will China’s Opening up of its Financial Sector Attract Wall Street?,” was translated and posted by Jennifer Zeng, a Chinese Communist Party critic who left China years ago, citing religious persecution, and now lives in the U.S. A source fluent in Mandarin confirmed the accuracy of the translation.

The centerpiece of Di’s speech was the history he set forth of how Beijing has long successfully managed to protect its interests in the halls of American power: namely, by relying on “friends” in Wall Street and other U.S. ruling class sectors — which worked efficiently until the Trump presidency.

Referring to the Trump-era trade war between the two countries, Di posed this question: “Why did China and the U.S. use to be able to settle all kinds of issues between 1992 [when Clinton became President] and 2016 [when Obama’s left office]?” He then provided this answer:

No matter what kind of crises we encountered — be it the Yinhe incident [when the U.S. interdicted a Chinese ship in the mistaken belief it carried chemical weapons for Iran], the bombing of the embassy [the 1992 bombing by the U.S. of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade], or the crashing of the plane [the 2001 crashing of a U.S. military spy plane into a Chinese fighter jet] — things were all solved in no time, like a couple do with their quarrels starting at the bedhead but ending at the bed end. We fixed everything in two months. What is the reason? I’m going to throw out something maybe a little bit explosive here.

It’s just because we have people at the top. We have our old friends who are at the top of America’s core inner circle of power and influence.

Who are these “old friends” of China’s “who are at the top of America’s core inner circle of power and influence” and have ensured that, in his words, “for the past 30 years, 40 years, we have been utilizing the core power of the United States”? Di provided the answer: Wall Street, with whom the Chinese Community Party and Chinese industry maintain a close, multi-pronged and inter-dependent relationship.

“Since the 1970s, Wall Street had a very strong influence on the domestic and foreign affairs of the United States,” Di observed. Thus, “we had a channel to rely on.”

To illustrate the point of how helpful Wall Street has been to Chinese interests in the U.S., Di recounted a colorful story, albeit one fused with anti-Semitic tropes, of his unsuccessful efforts in 2015 to secure the preferred venue in Washington for the debut of President Xi Jinping’s book about China. No matter how much he cajoled the owner of the iconic D.C. bookstore Politics and Prose, or what he offered him, Di was told it was unavailable, already promised to a different author. So he conveyed his failure to Party leadership.

But at the last minute, Di recounts, he was told that venue had suddenly changed its mind and agreed to host Xi’s book event. This was the work, he said, of someone to whom Party leaders introduced him: “She is from a famous, leading global financial institution on Wall Street,” Di said, “the president of the Asia region of a top-level financial institution,” who speaks perfect Mandarin and has a sprawling home in Beijing.

The point — that China’s close relationship with Wall Street has given it very powerful friends in the U.S. — was so clear that it sufficed for him to coyly laugh with the audience: “Do you understand what I mean? If you do, put your hands together!” They knowingly applauded.

All of that provoked an obvious question: why did this close relationship with Wall Street not enable China to exert the same influence during the Trump years, including avoiding a costly trade war? Di explained that — aside from Wall Street’s reduced standing due to the 2008 financial crisis — everything changed when Trump ascended to the presidency; specifically, Wall Street could not control him the way it had previous presidents because of Trump’s prior conflicts with Wall Street:

But the problem is that after 2008, the status of Wall Street has declined, and more importantly, after 2016, Wall Street can’t fix Trump. It’s very awkward. Why? Trump had a previous soft default issue with Wall Street, so there was a conflict between them, but I won’t go into details, I may not have enough time.

So during the US-China trade war, [Wall Street] tried to help, and I know that my friends on the US side told me that they tried to help, but they couldn’t do much. 

But as Di shifted to his discussion of the new incoming administration, his tone palpably changed, becoming far more animated, excited and optimistic. That’s because a Biden presidency means a restoration of the old order, where Wall Street exerts great influence with the White House and can thus do China’s bidding: “But now we’re seeing Biden was elected, the traditional elite, the political elite, the establishment, they’re very close to Wall Street, so you see that, right?” 

And Di specifically referenced the work Beijing did to cultivate Hunter:

Trump has been saying that Biden’s son has some sort of global foundation. Have you noticed that? 

Who helped [Biden’s son] build the foundations? Got it? There are a lot of deals inside all these. 

The excerpts of Di’s speech can be seen below, and the translated transcript of it here.

The claims in his speech can be seen in a new light given today’s revelations that the U.S. Attorney has resumed its active criminal investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings in China and whether he accounted to the I.R.S. for the income (CNN’s Shimon Prokupecz says that “at least one of the matters investigators have examined is a 2017 gift of a 2.8-carat diamond that Hunter Biden received from CEFC [China Energy’]’s founder and former chairman Ye Jianming after a Miami business meeting.”

The pronouncements of this University Professor and administrator should not be taken as gospel, but there is substantial independent confirmation for much of what he claimed. That is even more true after today’s news about Hunter Biden.

That Hunter Biden received large sums of money from Chinese entities is not in dispute. A report from the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs earlier this year, while finding no wrongdoing by Joe Biden, documented millions in cash flow between Hunter and his relatives and Chinese interests.

Nor can it be reasonably disputed that Wall Street exerts significant influence in Democratic Party politics generally and in the world of Joe Biden specifically. Citing data from the Center for Responsive Politics, CNBC reported in the weeks before the election:

People in the securities and investment industry will finish the 2020 election cycle contributing over $74 million to back Joe Biden’s candidacy for president, a much larger sum than what President Donald Trump raised from Wall Street.

They added: “Biden also received a ton of financial support from leaders on Wall Street in the third quarter.” At the same time, said CNN, “professionals on Wall Street are shunning Trump and funneling staggering amounts of money to his opponent.” Wall Street executives, CNBC reported, specially celebrated Biden’s choice of Kamala Harris as his running mate, noting that her own short-lived presidential campaign was deluged with “contributions from executives in a wide range of industries, including film, TV, real estate and finance.”

​

Moreover, Biden’s top appointees thus far overwhelmingly have massive ties to Wall Street and the industries which spend the most to control the U.S. government. As but one egregious example, Pine Island Investment Corp. — an investment firm in which key Biden appointees including Secretary of State nominee Antony Blinken and Pentagon chief nominee Gen. Lloyd Austin have been centrally involved — “is seeing a surge in support from Wall Street players after pitching access to investors.”

Prior to the formal selection of Blinken and Austin for key Cabinet posts, The Daily Poster reported that “two former government officials who may now run President-elect Joe Biden’s national security team have been partners at a private equity firm now promising investors big profits off government business because of its ties to those officials.” The New York Times last week said “the Biden team’s links to these entities are presenting the incoming administration with its first test of transparency and ethics” and that Pine Island is an example “of how former officials leverage their expertise, connections and access on behalf of corporations and other interests, without in some cases disclosing details about their work, including the names of the clients or what they are paid.”

That China and Wall Street have an extremely close relationship has been documented for years. Financial Times — under the headline “Beijing and Wall Street deepen ties despite geopolitical rivalry” — last month reported that “Wall Street groups including BlackRock, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase have each been given approval to expand their businesses in China over recent months.”

A major Wall Street Journal story from last week, bearing the headline “China Has One Powerful Friend Left in the U.S.: Wall Street,” echoed Di’s speech by noting that “Chinese leaders have time and again turned to Wall Street for assistance in periods of trouble.” That WSJ article particularly emphasized the growing ties between China and the asset-manager giant BlackRock, a firm that already has outsized influence in the Biden administration. And Michael Bloomberg’s ties to China have been so crucial that he has regularly heaped praise on Beijing even when doing so was politically deleterious.

Even the smaller details of Di’s speech — including his anecdote about the book event he tried to arrange for Xi — check out. Contemporaneous news accounts show that exactly the book event he described was held at Politics and Prose in 2015, just as he recalled.

None of this means that Trump was some sort of stalwart enemy of Wall Street. From massive corporate tax cuts to rollbacks of regulations in numerous industries and many of their own in key positions, the financial sector benefited in all sorts of ways from the Trump presidency.

But all of their behavior indicates that they view a Biden/Harris administration as far more beneficial to their interests, and far more susceptible to their control. And that, in turn, makes Beijing far more confident that they will wield significantly more influence in Washington than they could over the last four years.

That confidence is due, says Professor Di, to Beijing’s close ties to a newly empowered Wall Street as well as their efforts to cultivate Hunter Biden, efforts we are likely to learn much more about now that Hunter’s activities in China are under active criminal investigation in Delaware. We should and could have learned about these transactions prior to the election had the bulk of the media not corruptly decided to ignore any incriminating reporting on Biden, but learning about them now is, one might say, a case of better late than never.

California food company Eat Just Inc. won regulatory approval in Singapore last week to produce and sell lab-grown chicken meat, according to NYT. 

Eat Just describes its lab-grown meat as “real, high-quality meat created directly from animal cells for safe human consumption.” 

On Dec. 2, the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) approved the meat for sale as an ingredient in chicken nuggets.

“This is a historic moment in the food system,” Eat Just’s chief executive, Josh Tetrick, told NYT in a telephone interview last week. 

Tetrick said, “we’ve eating meat for thousands of years, and every time we’ve eaten meat, we’ve had to kill an animal — until now.”

The approval process followed two years of discussion and review with SFA. The approval opens up the pathway for the first commercial sales of cell-cultured meat that is produced in a bioreactor. 

Singapore’s move is “the world’s first regulatory approval for a cultivated meat product,” said Elaine Siu, the managing director of the Good Food Institute Asia Pacific, a nonprofit group focused on promoting plant-based substitutes for animal products.

“Anyone in this field would know that this is the world’s first because everyone has been waiting — and trying to lobby and fight for it — for the past few years,” added Siu. 

With the technology still in its infancy, producing chicken meat in bioreactors is extremely expensive than raising livestock. The company plans to scale up the size of its bioreactors that would produce more lab-grown meat and drive down prices. 

Tetrick wouldn’t name the Singapore restaurant that would begin selling the cell-cultured meat. The company previously said a single chicken nugget costs about $50 to make. 

While environmentalists have raised concerns that livestock produces a significant amount of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions each year – a transition of the world’s food supply, during the “global reset,” to lab-grown meat could be part of the UN’s Agenda 2030 masterplan of food sustainability. 

It’s likely, one day, we will all be eating fake meat, oh yes, and probably crickets. 

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

The Health Minister of Ontario in Canada has stoked controversy by suggesting that people who do not take the coronavirus vaccine will face restrictions on where they can travel and spend time.

When asked by reporters about how the government intends to go about convincing people to get the vaccine, Health Minister Christine Elliott warned that those who refuse it will face difficulties reintegrating into society.

“That’s their choice, this is not going to be a mandatory campaign. It will be voluntary,” Elliot said, but adding that “There may be some restrictions that may be placed on people that don’t have vaccines for travel purposes, to be able to go to theatres and other places.”

When another reporter asked if the government would be introducing ‘immunity passports’, or proof of vaccination cards, Elliot said “Yes, because that’s going to be really important for people to have for travel purposes, perhaps for work purposes, for going to theatres or cinemas or any other places where people will be in closer physical contact.” 

Proof of vaccination will be “essential for people to have” – Health Minister, Christine Elliott pic.twitter.com/F40QhdwynM

— CrasHTalk (@CrasTalk) December 9, 2020

1/Ontario Health Minister @celliottability: “If people choose not to get the vaccine they may not be able to do certain things, but that will be their choice”@fordnation govt is HIGHLY unethical/unlawful—violating Nuremberg Code in UN’s international lawpic.twitter.com/K1F1hZzJMs

— Your Ontario Doctors (@OnCall4ON) December 7, 2020

Following up on Elliot’s comments, The Toronto Sun spoke to her press secretary, who confirmed that the government is exploring several options for vaccine “tracking and surveillance.”

“This includes exploring developing tech-based solutions while also providing for alternative options to ensure equitable access to any potential ‘immunity passport,’” Alexandra Hilkene said.

Sun reporter Brian Lilley notes “That phrase will set off alarm bells and it should, not just for anti-vaxxers, but for anyone who is concerned about Charter rights and governments running roughshod over them.”

Ontario Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Williams has also said that a COVID-19 vaccine may be required for “freedom to move around”.

“What we can do is to say sometimes for access, or ease, in getting into certain settings, if you don’t have vaccination then you’re not allowed into that setting without other protection materials,” Williams said.

The comments of these Canadian officials add to the litany of other government and travel industry figures in both the US, Britain and beyond who have suggested that ‘COVID passports’ are coming, in order for ‘life to get back to normal’

In an essay in The Wall Street Journal on Saturday, former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Tom Frieden noted that he expects the so called ‘immunity passports’ will come into widespread use despite any ethical, legal or operational challenges, and despite the fact that it hasn’t at all been determined whether the vaccine equates to immunity.

The surge of e-commerce comes with numerous new positives: you can shop at home, you don’t have to go outside during a pandemic and items are shipped right to your door. But now, as some Christmas shoppers are finding out, it also comes with some brand new negatives – including bots that have been tasked with buying up every new “hot” Christmas item as soon as it goes on sale online with major retailers. 

Such has been the case with items like the Playstation 5, which has been bought up on sites by bots that “resellers use to snatch up products online and relist them moments later at significant mark-ups on eBay and Amazon Marketplace,” according to Reuters. And with most people shopping from home this year, the total addressable market for online resellers has never been bigger. 

26 year old Benjamin Karmis from Illinois, who has been trying for weeks to buy a Playstation 5, said: “There is no possible way that I could have been more prepared to get one, and I have failed every single time.”

And it’s not just Playstations the bots are looking to buy. They are also targeting Charmin toilet paper and Lysol, the report says. This has prompted retailers to try new tactics with listing their products online. The bots “reload web pages every few milliseconds to gain an edge in adding products to their shopping carts.”

“Given bot scripts are constantly evolving and being re-written, we’ve built, deployed and continuously update our own bot-detection tools that allow us to successfully block the vast majority of bots,” Walmart told Reuters. “Online volume has already been high this year due to COVID, and the release of next-gen consoles is creating traffic volume and patterns that have never been seen before.”

The company said most of its higher traffic for new game consoles has come from bots. It said on November 25 alone, the company blocked more than 20 million bot attempts within the first 30 minutes of putting the Playstation 5 for sale. It has also audited orders post-sale and found that “the vast majority of next-gen consoles Walmart has sold have been sold to legitimate customers.”

Target and GameStop both use a similar type of online bot protection on their respective websites. 

Companies like Nike have long grappled with resellers. Nike has used its SNKRS app to help legitimate customers reserve in-demand shoes in stores. And the company even printed “NOT FOR RESALE” on a pair of Air Jordans that sold in 2018. They now sell for $1,000 a pair on the aftermarket. 

Former Nike employee Jay Somerville said: “It’s a major problem, but at the same time I think retailers are now figuring out ways to combat bots with better firewalls and by getting consumers more engaged with things like in-store raffles.”

People can buy access to bot software online for as little as $10 or $20. Bot software can be sold in its entirety for up to $5,000, the report notes. “There’s significant money in this, and the PS5 is a great example,” said Thomas Platt, head of ecommerce at Netacea, a bot security company.

He said one resale ring has already made $1 million to $1.5 million in the last two weeks of November alone. 

Authored by Matt Taibbi via taibbi.substack.com

Abigail Shrier of the Wall Street Journal has been in the middle of two major international news stories in the last year. One involves transgender issues. The other, the subject of this article, is about censorship.

The history of campaigns to suppress books in pre-Internet America is not littered with successes. Techniques ran the gamut, from school systems pulling The Catcher in the Rye, Catch-22, and Toni Morrisson’s Song of Solomon, to parent-led campaigns against individual schools teaching The Color Purple, to libraries removing A Clockwork Orange, to the U.S. Postal Service declaring For Whom the Bell Tolls “un-mailable,” to the firing of a teacher who assigned One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, to dozens of other episodes.

Most such efforts failed. The typical narrative involved a local conservative or religious group arrayed against national publishers and distributors, although there were instances of campaigns instigated from the other political direction (e.g. calls to ban or boycott books like To Kill a Mockingbird and American Psycho for offensive portrayals of women and minorities). These efforts however were usually opposed by a consensus of intellectuals in politics, media, and academia, all of whom tended to be institutionally committed to speech rights.

The increasingly concentrated nature of digital media, combined with changing attitudes within the intellectual class, has reversed the geography of speech controversies. Campaigns against books now begin at universities, newsrooms, and the offices of companies like Amazon and Google, and have success; anti-censorship campaigns tend to be disorganized and poorly funded, and fail.

No book exemplifies these new dynamics more than Shrier’s Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. The book grew out of a news phenomenon that began to be reported years ago: a seeming surge in young girls seeking gender affirmation therapy. In Britain, the National Health Service reported a 4000% rise in such cases, prompting the government to order an investigation into “why this is and what are the long-term impacts.” There were similar reports in other countries, with Sweden’s health officials reporting a 1500% rise, and doctors in the U.S. reporting a four-fold rise in girls receiving transition surgery in 2016 and 2017.

Read the rest here.

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) won’t require its health care employees to take the upcoming COVID-19 vaccine, which the medical provider expects to begin offering as soon as this month, according to PennLive.

The reason are several-fold, according to UPMC medical director of infection prevention and epidemiology, Dr. Graham Snyder. For starters, general uncertainty over the vaccine. And while the $21 billion nonprofit organization (which employs 89,000 people) has a mandatory flu vaccination policy, it’s “based on decades of experience with the influenza vaccine,” according to Snyder.

But there’s no comparable data for a COVID-19 vaccine, or on whether a mandate is the best way to get large numbers of people to become vaccinated, Snyder said on Tuesday.

The first COVID-19 vaccine, from Pfizer, is expected to soon receive emergency approval. A second vaccine, from Moderna, is also expected to soon receive emergency approval. Distribution of at least one vaccine is expected to begin this month.

Snyder said UPMC is “very excited about the preliminary information we have about how safe the vaccine is and how it will work.”

Still, he said UPMC will conduct its own review of the vaccines before injecting any of its employees. –PennLive

“Until we learn more and build our own experience with this vaccine, plus, until we see the uptake of vaccine in our communities, and have an understanding about the role that vaccination has in ending this pandemic, it’s not the right thing to make it mandatory,” said Snyder – who added that UPMC’s independent review won’t slow down their plans to distribute the vaxx.

On Tuesday, UPMC outlined their plans for receiving and distributing shots of the vaccine – while planning to launch an information campaign ‘to persuade the public to get vaccinated’ – despite their own hesitance over the jab. Perhaps it has something to do with several UPMC employees having participated in vaccine trials, only to report fever, fatigue or arm pain, with some needing to take a day or two off from work.

According to Snyder, this is “a normal and healthy immune response.”

Employees who are at the highest risk of exposure to the virus will be offered a vaccine first, along with high-risk residents of long term care facilities. After that, those over 65 years-old with comorbidities can get vaccinated.

“We are optimistic we will be able to provide vaccines for frontline health care workers who wish to receive it before the end of January,” said Snyder.

Still, UPMC officials said doses of vaccine will arrive in batches, and they don’t know how many they’ll receive initially and in subsequent shipments. They expect the eventual total to be in the “tens of thousands.”

The third and final phase of vaccine distribution will involve people who have non-essential roles in relation to the pandemic and who don’t have medical conditions that put them at high risk. The Pennsylvania Department of Health is in charge of vaccination in the state and has said getting vaccinated will be voluntary for everyone.

Dr. Donald Yealy, UPMC’s chair of emergency medicine, said Tuesday “even under the best-case scenario, it will likely be months before everyone who wants and should get a COVID-19 vaccine can actually receive one.” –PennLive

UPMC officials have begun to make accommodations for Pfizer’s vaccine, which requires ultra-cold storage, by adding freezers. Based on public enthusiasm for taking the brand new vaccine, the doses may be cold storage for a while.

Authored by Pat Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

The Biden-Harris administration will confront “a pandemic, an economic crisis, calls for racial justice and climate change. The team being assembled will meet these challenges on Day One.”

So declares the transition team of Joe Biden, to echo what he’s defined as the lead items on his presidential agenda. And if this is his agenda, then how our presumed 46th president will proceed suggests itself.

The COVID-19 pandemic is now close to its apex, with a million new cases and a death toll in excess of 10,000 each week. We appear to be near the crest of the “second wave.”

Biden’s emphasis, as he has signaled, will be on slowing down the spread of the virus by universal masking and locking up and shutting down sectors of the American economy.

Yet, even as the worst of the pandemic appears directly ahead in December and January, the last six weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency, the light at the end of the tunnel may be sighted within Biden’s first 100 days.

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which have proven 90-95% effective against the virus, begin to come on line this month. By the end of Biden’s first 100 days, May 1, the beneficial effect of scores of millions of vaccinations should be visible to all, and the pandemic should be seen as irretrievably receding.

At least, that is the hope and expectation. And the media would naturally attribute the new dawn not to the triumph of Trump’s Operation Warp Speed but to the new president.

Biden’s response to the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic will almost surely be along the lines of what Congress is now debating, contingent upon whether Mitch McConnell is prepared to accept what comes over from the House.

A trillion-dollar package seems baked in the cake, as the country would not long tolerate congressional inaction if the pandemic were still raging through the population as it is today.

As for racial inequality, the pandemic has exposed, deepened and widened it. The surge in shootings and killings in major cities during the pandemic is hitting the Black communities hardest.

The decline in test scores at schools where kids have been kept away from formal classes since March is most pronounced among minorities. Black and Hispanic workers in service industries are a disproportionate share of the victims of the pandemic.

If half a century of social progress after the civil rights revolution of the ’60s and eight years of the first Black president have failed to reduce racial disparities in income, wealth, employment and incarcerations, does anyone believe Joe Biden has the solution?

As for climate change, John Kerry, the new climate czar, will begin his tenure after a year of the deepest reductions in carbon emissions in recorded history.

By Dec. 31, U.S. carbon emissions will have fallen 9% from the end of 2019. Emissions from cars and aircraft fell 4% in 2020, from power 2.8%, and from industry .6%. On the flip side, forest fires reduced the 9% cut in carbon emissions by fully one-third.

Yet, it is in foreign policy where the traps appear.

The drawdown in U.S. troops in Afghanistan, to 2,500 by Jan. 15, will leave us with the smallest contingent since the U.S. plunged into that country to remake it more in our image in 2001.

And the troop drawdown comes at a time when the Taliban control the largest swath of Afghan territory since being overthrow 19 years ago. The possibility of a collapse in Kabul, chaos ensuing and the country disintegrating early in a Biden presidency cannot be ruled out.

Would Biden be willing to preside over an American defeat similar to that in Vietnam in 1975?

But the truly formidable challenge for a President Biden will be China, which is not the China of 2016 that Vice President Biden recalls.

While the U.S. refuses to recognize China’s claims to disputed islets in the East and the South China Seas and has committed itself to defend the Japanese and Philippine claims, Beijing has not backed away from its claims and, indeed, has grown increasingly bellicose in making them.

The U.S. has also been thickening ties to Taiwan.

Yet, what many Americans see as a democratic island of 25 million whose defense is a moral obligation and strategic necessity, China sees as a breakaway province, and signals in every way that it would fight a war rather than let Taiwan go.

These issues are likely to be decided in this decade. And it is hard to see how the U.S., 7,000 miles away, with a slowly shrinking share of the world’s economic and military power, would prevail indefinitely over a China that has the advantages of proximity and population, and whose power is steadily rising in relative terms to that of the United States.