Tag: finance

Today in “how to turn assets that don’t exist into assets that do” news…

It was reported yesterday that disgraced founder and former CEO of Nikola, Trevor Milton, had sold 3.2 million shares of Nikola stock while still at the company in order to consummate “three real-estate transactions” and purchase three different properties.

As part of the transactions, Milton’s LLC gave the shares on December 3 to the sellers of three piece of real estate, including a sprawling $32 million ranch Milton bought in Utah. 

It appears Milton sold about $55 million worth of stock on the company’s lockup expiration date last week, according to SEC filings. And voila! That makes three more pieces of real estate than Nikola trucks sold, as Hindenburg Research’s Nathan Anderson noted on Twitter on Monday. 

Looks like Trevor Milton dumped $55m worth of $NKLA shares on lockup expiry day as part of a real estate deal.

Zero trucks sold.https://t.co/Bfw0ehTA97 https://t.co/ewK7w9SkSx

— Nate Anderson (@ClarityToast) December 8, 2020

Bloomberg reported on Monday that Milton says he is “committed to his Nikola Corp. holding and doesn’t plan to relinquish his position as its largest shareholder”.

It’s a statement that sounds reassuring, but doesn’t necessarily preclude Milton from selling more shares before becoming the second largest holder of Nikola stock. He could still sell “millions of shares” and be the company’s largest holder, Bloomberg noted.

It’s incredible how much Trevor Milton has already made from $NKLA https://t.co/7Z0eyh0fZ7 pic.twitter.com/I4vGjxsQKu

— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) December 8, 2020

Milton’s lockup expired last week, on the same day the company announced that GM would no longer be taking an equity stake. Milton has the ability to now hit the bid with 91.6 million shares if he desires. In a CNBC interview two weeks ago, Nikola CEO Mark Russell “failed to assure” investors on both a GM deal and the idea that Milton wouldn’t immediately hit the bid when given the chance. 

Nikola partner Bosch also cut its stake in the company to below the 5% reporting threshold last week after its share lockup expired. 

Authored by Charles Kennedy via OilPrice.com,

California’s imports were the largest in the United States last year when 25 percent of California’s total electricity supply was imported, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Monday.  

Last year, California’s net electricity imports were the largest in the country at 70.8 million megawatt-hours (MWh), followed by Ohio, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Tennessee, EIA data showed.

In California’s case, the state’s utilities partly own and import power from several power plants in Arizona and Utah. California’s electricity imports also include hydroelectric power from the Pacific Northwest, mostly across high-voltage transmission lines from Oregon to the Los Angeles area.

This summer, amid the great West heatwave, the largest U.S. solar state, California, was grappling with power issues and struggling to keep its electricity grid stable as demand exceeds supply.

California energy consumers were warned of rolling outages as there was insufficient energy to meet the high demand during the heatwave in August. In California, where solar power supplies more than 20 percent of electricity as per the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), August’s rolling outages were the worst such outages since the 2000-2001 energy crisis in the state.    

According to 2019 data from the California Energy Commission, the state imported 30.68 percent of its renewables-generated electricity supply and 69.32 percent of non-renewables supply.

While California was the biggest net importer of electricity in the U.S. last year, the largest net exporter of electricity was Pennsylvania, with 70.5 million MWh of exports, or 24 percent of total supply, EIA data showed.

Pennsylvania’s electricity generation was the third-largest in the United States in 2019, behind Texas and Florida. Natural gas-fired and nuclear power plants produced most of Pennsylvania’s electricity generation in 2019, at 43 percent and 36 percent, respectively. Pennsylvania ranks second in the U.S., after Illinois, in terms of nuclear power generating capacity.

Ahead of their IPOs this week, Airbnb and DoorDash are now seemingly taking turns hiking the debut price range for their respective IPOs, as year-end deal frenzy hits a fever pitch .

Early this morning, Tesla announced plans for another $5BN “at the money” offering of new shares. When shares erased their selloff and traded higher, it offered the latest confirmation that the market’s appetite remains as robust as ever.

DoorDash has acknowledged in the section of its S-1 where it addresses long term risks that there’s a chance it might never be profitable, as the economics of third-party food delivery.

Now, DoorDash is reportedly expecting to price shares at the IPO at about $102 apiece, according to WSJ.

The price will increase DoorDash’s take during the offering to $3.4BN, roughly $400MM more than before, bringing its post offering valuation to $39BN, if all goes according to plan.

On a fully diluted the company’s valuation could draw very close to $40BN.

According to WSJ’s sources, DoorDash’s roadshow, which began last week, elicited strong interest from investors who have shown a strong interest in the offering, prompting the company to boost the price range from an initial $75 to $85 a share.

During Q2, DoorDash booked a profit of $23MM on $675MM in revenue, though it reverted to a net loss the next quarter even as revenue jumped to $879MM.

CNBC confirmed the report while several of its reporters debated the merits of such a frothy valuation for the startup that has seen its market share in the US surge to roughly 50% of the entire market. However, profits have remained difficult to come by.

DoorDash prices IPO at $102: Sources from CNBC.

Earlier,Rahul Vohra, tech investor, founder and CEO of subscription email app Superhuman, appeared on “the Closing Bell” to sing DoorDash’s praises as one of the best gig economy apps out there (per Vohra), who pointed out that the company is growing far faster than already-public rival GrubHub.

WSJ also explains how both DoorDash and Airbnb are embracing a more innovative approach to gauging interest and doling out allocations. Both companies are asking investors in the IPO (mostly institutions and some wealthy individuals) to input stock orders through a computerized system in which they outline the number of shares they are seeking and at what price. Investors have the option to indicate how much they are willing to buy at various price points. Typically, the syndicate banks managing the IPO play the critical role in setting the price. But this new strategy will give both companies more control.

Typically a quiet month for IPOs, December is shaping up to be a frenzied finish to what has already been a gangbusters year for deals. Already, more than $140BN has been raised in via IPOs on US exchanges, a number that far exceeds the previous full-year record high set at the height of the dot-com boom in 1999.

Unfortunately for beleaguered IBD analysts, management is cutting short Christmas breaks and pressuring them to pull longer hours than usual during the holiday, despite rumors about steep cuts to the bonus pool, as banks shift more capital toward loan loss provisions despite a surprisingly strong year in terms of revenue and profits from sales and trading and other investment banking activities.

Merrill Lynch has been ordered by the state of New Hampshire to pay $26.25 million in fines and restitution to settle allegations that one of its top brokers traded excessively and without authorization in order to rack up huge commissions. The company was also cited for failure to supervise and was ordered to maintain new compliance rules. 

Of that $26.25 million, more than $24 million in restitution will go to the former governor of New Hampshire, Craig Benson. 

The fine is the “largest monetary sanction in the state’s history and the second largest FINRA settlement in at least a decade,” according to CNBC. 

The former broker accused of the wrongdoing, Charles Kenahan, has been barred from the industry. He was found to have “traded without authorization, mismarked trade confirmations, excessively traded stocks and Initial Public Offerings, over charged commissions, and inappropriately traded inverse and leveraged products,” according to NH regulators. 

His actions resulted in “high commissions for Merrill Lynch and Kenahan and heavy losses for the investor.”

Jeff Spill, the deputy director and head of enforcement for New Hampshire’s Bureau of Securities Regulation, commented: “This case is about an abuse of trust committed by Merrill Lynch and Kenahan. Ultimately, Kenahan’s recommendations benefited Kenahan and Merrill Lynch and not the investor.”

Kenahan’s FINRA BrokerCheck record offers his take on the allegations, stating:

 “…the transactions giving rise to the customers’ allegations were executed at the customers’ direction. The allegations resulted in arbitrations and settlements. I was not a party to the arbitrations; I had no say in the firm’s decision to settle the claims; and I was not asked to make any payment as part of the settlements.” 

“I certainly didn’t sign a document and say it’s OK to steal from me. This is a fight I never chose,” Benson had said over the summer, after claiming “widespread misconduct” led to market-adjusted damages of over $100 million. 

During the summer, a group of Merrill clients had alleged $200 million in damages which ultimately led to the New Hampshire investigation, CNBC noted in an interview with Craig Benson:

Authored by Kristoffer Mousten Hansen via The Mises Institute,

Twenty twenty is a year dominated by bad news. While governments around the world have imposed extremely destructive restrictions on economic life and promise a “Great Reset” that amounts to a great leap forward into the socialist future, central bankers have advanced plans for implementing central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). These may arrive as early as next year. Yet what is the motivation behind this innovation? Reports recently published by the Bank for International Settlements and the European Central Bank provide part of the answer. These publications provide fascinating insight into the theories and ideologies driving central bankers in their pursuit of CBDCs.

Monetary Policy? Moi?

One perhaps surprising theme in both reports is the disavowal of any monetary policy behind plans for introducing CBDCs. The BIS report claims that “[m]onetary policy will not be the primary motivation for issuing CBDC” (p. 8) and the ECB report notes that a “possible role for the digital euro as a tool to strengthen monetary policy is not identified in this report” (p. 3). One might first of all suppose that introducing a new form of money would by definition amount to monetary policy, at least in a broad sense, and secondly perhaps find it a tiny bit weird that institutions dedicated to researching and implementing monetary policy would not have considered the potential effects of a new form of money in light of its effects on policy. But what is really striking is that both reports – and especially the one issued by the ECB – at great length detail the implications for monetary policy of CBDC. True, they say they don’t, but looking beyond the executive summary and paying attention to what is written in the report itself puts the lie to that claim.

In order to see this, we only need to look at the key features the central bankers identify as desirable in a CBDC: it should be interest bearing, and it should be possible to cap how much each individual can hold. Both measures are clearly aimed at supporting monetary policy. The cap on holdings forces people to spend their money, driving either price inflation or investment in financial assets, and by making the CBDC interest bearing (or remunerated, in the language of the ECB) it becomes a tool of setting and passing on policy rate changes, including negative interest rates.

The ECB’s Report on a Digital Euro in particular goes on at great length about the need to limit or disincentivize “the large-scale use of a digital euro as an investment” (p. 28). The reasoning behind this position is crystal clear: since monetary policy has driven interest rates into negative territory, the ECB should not allow large-scale holding of digital euros, since investors would then, quite sensibly, chuck their holdings of negative-yielding bonds and seek a safe haven in digital euros—that is, if they can hold them at no cost. Similarly, the ECB is averse to letting people convert their bank deposits into digital euros (p. 16), which would reside in their individual wallets rather than in a bank account. Indeed, the horror of what the BIS and ECB reports call “financial disintermediation” looms large in the minds of central bankers: if people keep their money outside of banks, these will have less money to lend out, thereby increasing borrowing costs. In the words of the BIS report, they are concerned that

a widely available CBDC could make such events [i.e., bank runs] more frequent by enabling “digital runs” toward the central bank with unprecedented speed and scale. More generally, if banks begin to lose deposits to CBDC over time they may come to rely more on wholesale funding, and possibly restrict credit supply in the economy with potential impacts on economic growth. (p. 8)

Of course, Austrian economists since Ludwig von Mises understand that “financial disintermediation” can really be a blessing. In the context of digital euros, all it means is that people would hold the amount of cash they deemed desirable outside the banks. They would only make true savings deposits in banks, i.e., they would only surrender money that they did not want instant access to. Under such circumstances, banks would be incapable of expanding credit by issuing unbacked claims to money; they could only make loans out of the funds their customers had explicitly made available for that purpose. This would not only result in a leaner or sounder financial system, it would also avoid the problems of the perennially recurring business cycle. And contrary to what the central bankers fear, the supply of credit would not be restricted, it would simply be forced to correspond to the supply of real savings in the economy. This, unfortunately, is an understanding of economics completely alien to central bankers.

Negative Interest Rates

One aim in introducing CBDCs that is only hinted at is the possibility of imposing even lower negative interest rates. In recent years monetary economists4 have increasingly discussed the problem of the “zero lower bound” on interest rates: the fact that it is impossible to set a negative interest since depositors in that case would simply shift into holding physical cash. When manipulating the interest rate is the main policy tool of central banks this is obviously a problem: How can they work their alchemy and secure an acceptable spread between the main policy rates and the market rate of interest when interest rates are already very low? Allowing for the cost of holding physical cash, –0.5 percent seems to be about as low as they can go.

With a centrally controlled digital currency this problem would disappear. The central bank could set a limit on how much each person and company could hold cost free, and above this limit, they would have to pay whatever negative interest rate (or “remuneration,” as the ECB insists on calling it) is consonant with central bank policy. In this way, holding cash would not obstruct monetary policy, as the cash holdings would be fully under the control of the central bank.

There is just one problem with using CBDC in this way: it only works if physical cash is outlawed. Otherwise, physical cash would still simply play the role it does today, i.e., as the most basic and least risky way of holding one’s wealth and of avoiding negative interest rates. The BIS report clearly identifies this problem (p. 8n7), as does the ECB (p. 12n18): a CBDC could help eliminate the zero lower bound on interest rates, but only if physical cash disappeared. So long as physical cash remains in use, the zero lower bound cannot be breached.

But the People Demand It!

However, people might of their own accord come to the rescue of the world’s central banks, sorely beset as they are by the zero lower bound. At least according to Benoît Coeuré, head of the BIS Innovation Hub (the group tasked with researching CBDC), plenty of people want a central bank digital currency. The ECB also sees the decline in the use of physical cash in favor of other means of payment as one of the main scenarios that would require the issue of a digital euro (p. 10).

Now, while some people might like CBDC, there is really no reason to believe, notwithstanding monsieur Coeuré’s anecdotal evidence, that there is widespread demand for central bank digital currency. The ECB admits as much when they write that physical cash is still the dominant means of payment in the euro area, accounting for over half the value of all payments at the retail level (p. 7). But Coeuré does not need to go far to see the continuing relevance of cash: in 2018 researchers at the BIS itself concluded that cash, far from declining in importance, was still the dominant form of payment.5 More recently, a study in the International Journal of Central Banking showed that cash usage is not only not declining, but even increasing in importance.6

Be that as it may, the central bankers are certainly right that there is an increased demand for digital payment solutions and for cryptocurrencies. However, it is erroneous to conclude from this that therefore a central bank digital currency is demanded. Demand for a payment solution is not the same as demand for a new kind of money. It simply means that people demand payment services that allow them to more cheaply transact with each other. Such services are plentifully provided by companies such as Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, banks, and so on and so forth. There is no reason to believe that central banks need to provide this service nor that they could do it better than private companies and banks, and it is simply a mistake to equate demand for such services with demand for a money.

The mistake in the case of cryptocurrencies is even more egregious. When people hold bitcoin or another cryptocurrency, it is not because their heartfelt demand for a CBDC has to go unfulfilled and this is their closest alternative. On the contrary, people want to own bitcoin precisely so they can avoid the negative interests imposed on the established banking system and the risks of holding inflationary fiat money. Introducing a CBDC would not mitigate those risks, but rather add to them, as the central bank would assume total control of the money supply through it and the attendant abolition of physical cash. The felt need for inflation hedges and the desire to escape central bank control, including as it does negative interest rates and caps on how much cash one could hold, would only increase.

It’s All about Control

At the end of the day, central bank digital currencies are all about control, not meeting consumer demand. The ECB admits as much at several points in their report. Here is just one instance: If people are really demanding a digital euro, why would it have to be assigned legal tender status in order for it to be accepted, as the authors of the report clearly state would be necessary (p. 33)? The only scenario where introducing a CBDC makes sense is in order to phase out the use of physical cash in order to be able to impose whatever negative interest rate regime the central bankers in charge judge necessary. Helicopter money, restrictions on cash holding, and negative interest rates are all part of the bundle of desirable policies that can only—or most easily—be achieved with digital currencies fully controlled by the issuing central banks.

Ironically, far from buttressing the role of central banks and government fiat money, imposing a CBDC may have the completely opposite effect. Replacing physical cash with a CBDC would only strengthen the undesirable qualities of fiat money and further hamper a free market in money and financial services, increasing the demand for alternatives to government money, such as gold and bitcoin.

Real Vision senior editor Ash Bennington welcomes Tony Greer, editor of the Morning Navigator, to delve into the day’s trading and explore where markets are currently at. With Joe Biden becoming President-Elect and the race for a vaccine coming closer to the end, markets have changed their tune, and Greer explains how the rotation trade is continuing to be sustained due to the markets’ vision of a vaccinated world. Greer also considers how the virtualization of society due to the pandemic will have enduring effects in the way people live and work and what that implies for new market trends such as the recent abundance of tech IPOs. Greer shares his thoughts on why the Fed will continue to only address the recovery through asset price inflation, and he discusses what this means for various asset classes. In the intro, Real Vision’s Haley Draznin explores the K-shaped recovery in the housing market.

Liberal politicians have been driving citizens out of their cities and states all year – as we have documented in cities like Chicago and states like California – due to an increasing embrace of higher taxes and more regulation, all while acting as authoritarian lockdown hypocrites (see here and here) and embracing defunding the police.

The latest genius to singlehandedly ruin his city now appears to be Bill de Blasio, who not only has turned New York into a destitute shell of the city it once was, but could also be single-handedly on the verge of ruining the financial capital of the United States. Thanks to his “leadership”, massive financial firms like Goldman Sachs and Elliot Management are now taking their operations out of New York and into states like to Florida. 

Goldman, a Wall Street staple for better or worse, is in the midst of weighing a new Florida hub for its asset management arm and $41 billion Elliot Management is planning to move its headquarters to West Palm Beach, according to Bloomberg. 

Goldman’s move could wind up blazing the path for other financial firms who have considered a similar move. Florida does, after all, offer “better weather and no state income tax”. 

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez said: “It reminds me of the movie ‘Field of Dreams’ where they say, ‘If you build it they will come.’”

The Covid pandemic has shown many businesses firsthand that they can go without some of the commercial NYC office space they may have once thought was integral to their business. And some top executives from financial firms have already left NYC for Florida in favor of more space and better weather while they “wait out” the effects of the pandemic. 

Goldman, specifically, is looking at office space near Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. They could join Carl Icahn, who also recently decided to move his firm to Florida, and Citadel – who, we noted earlier this year, had already set up a makeshift trading floor at a hotel when the pandemic started. 

While de Blasio stands idly by and watches his city go to ruin, Florida would be the beneficiary of new money and diversified jobs (the state is primarily tourism and service jobs) as a result of these firms needing to hire their rank-and-file workers locally. 

Maria Ilcheva, a professor and assistant director of planning and operations at Florida International University’s Jorge Perez Metropolitan Center, said: “In terms of economic impact, it carries a lot of weight — not in terms of jobs but in terms of the wages it pays. When other firms see that move, it may have a snowball effect.”

And it won’t just be tax revenue that slides in New York. Commercial real estate will also likely take a large hit. Currently there are “8 to 10 financial services companies seriously considering” a move to Palm Beach County, the report notes. Two of these firms are considering office space of at least 50,000 square feet each. 

Nitin Motwani, co-chair of the Miami Downtown Development Authority’s Enterprise Committee, now calls South Florida “Wall Street South”.

Via Mining.com,

BMO Capital Markets says that a surge in the price of Chinese rare earth metals in November is a reflection of the geopolitical tensions between that country and the developed world. Commenting on the sudden price gains in a research note, BMO’s commodity analyst Colin Hamilton also said that as nations around the world consider self-sufficiency in rare earths and other critical minerals, while also enacting more trade restrictions and economic protectionism, the market “is set for long-lasting transformation over the coming years, one that we believe will likely lead to a gradual erosion of Chinese dominance in processing capacity.”

November saw the prices of all major Chinese-sourced rare earths spike, but especially those used in magnets. In particular, the research note mentioned neodymium, which is the most common rare earth used in making magnets, which rose by 27% since early in November, up over 50% year to date. Several other key rare earths also increased in value last month, including dysprosium (+17%), gadolinium (+9%) and terbium (+27%).

Another factor in the price surge is a new law that came into force in China on December 1, Hamilton noted. Known as the Export Control Law, it creates new regulations that give the government more control over such exports as technology and rare earths.

“Market participants are increasingly of the view that the introduction of the new law will lead to a restriction of rare earth-based exports from China to key partners including the U.S., on the pretext that it is safeguarding its national security,” Hamilton stated.

Though exports of Chinese rare earth metals have been decreasing in recent years, Hamilton’s report pointed out that rare earth-based magnet exports have actually been trending up because of increased global demand, including by the U.S. In anticipation of concerns that the Chinese government could use the new law to further curtail exports, “key customers in the U.S. (or perhaps the State Reserve) have seemingly been buying up as much material as possible, with U.S. rare earth magnet imports reaching 480 tonnes in September, the highest monthly total since 2016.”

Already there have been measures introduced by nations at the policy level to address China’s dominance and bolster their domestic production of rare earths. In Africa, the European Union, Australia and the Americas, concerns about China’s control of the market has been pushing exploration and development projects, and leading to greater attention from political leaders.

“In May 2019 U.S. senators introduced legislation aimed at encouraging the development of domestic rare earth supplies, while the U.S. Department of Defense asked for additional federal funds to bolster domestic production of rare earths,” Hamilton noted.

In April of this year, the Pentagon awarded funding to Australian miner Lynas Corp. (ASX: LYC) and Nevada-based MP Materials (NYSE: MP) for rare earth separation facilities in Texas and California, respectively. And by late September, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring a national emergency in the mining industry. This followed recommendations outlined by the U.S. Department of Commerce to establish partnerships with such allies as Canada and Australia in order to secure greater access to rare earths and other critical minerals.

Meanwhile in Canada, in August 2020 the government of Saskatchewan committed C$31 million for the construction of the country’s first rare earth processing facility, which is planned to be operational by the end of 2022.

With ongoing funding for new projects coming from governments, Hamilton said he expects this will provide even “further impetus to ex-China capacity build-out over the coming years.”

While thousands of small businesses were shut out of the Paycheck Protection Program earlier this year, NFL quarterback Tom Brady’s sports performance and nutrition company, TB12 Inc., received a loan from the federal government worth nearly one million dollars. 

According to the Small Business Administration, TB12 was granted a $960,855 loan in April. The sportswear and supplement company qualified for the lifeline with a 2019 payroll between $1.68 and $4.8 million.

“TB12, INC. received a Paycheck Protection Loan of between 350,000 and 1M through Cambridge Savings Bank, which was approved in April, 2020.

Based on standard PPP eligibility rules, TB12, INC.’s total 2019 payroll expenses were between $1.68M and $4.8M in order to qualify for the PPP loan amount received. Unline most businesses, TB12, INC. did not report the number of jobs retained by their receipt of the Paycheck Protection Loan, so per-employee payrolls cannot be estimated,” SBA’s site read. 

Brady is the second-highest-paid NFL player of all-time, raking in over $350 million during his career. He recently signed a two-year, $50 million contract with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Brady’s wife, Gisele Bündchen, is reportedly worth $400 million.

It’s unclear how the virus-induced downturn impacted TB12 – but one thing is certain, Brady could’ve self-funded TB12 in the early days of the pandemic rather than taking cheap government loans meant for struggling mom and pop businesses. 

This is just another instance of wealthy folks taking advantage of the Paycheck Protection Program. It was reported that Los Angeles Lakers were granted a $4.6 loan but refused to take the money. 

What do centi-millionaires do after the government bails out their business while other small business collapse, tens of millions of Americans are jobless, have food and housing insecurity, along with insurmountable debts?

Well, buy a fancy yacht, of course. 

https://t.co/XVArODQehH Tom Brady dominates on land, air … and now by sea — ’cause the QB just bought a multi-million dollar boat and we’ve got the pics!

— TMZ Sports (@TMZ_Sports) December 6, 2020

 

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

If there were a Mount Rushmore to memorialize the greatest scientists in US history, Richard Feynman’s face would almost certainly be on the monument.

He was only 24 years of age when he was recruited into a secret research group that eventually became part of the Manhattan Project, joining some of the other most prominent scientists of his age, like Robert Oppenheimer and Enrico Fermi.

Feynman went on to make unparalleled advances in the fields of particle physics and quantum mechanics. He conceived of nanotechnology as early as the 1950s, and quantum computing as early as 1982.

Feynman also won the Nobel Prize, plus countless other awards and medals; and he was ranked by leading scientists as one of the greatest physicists of all time– alongside Einstein, Isaac Newton, and Galileo.

In short, Feynman knew what he was talking about when it came to science.

One thing that was really interesting about Feynman is that, despite all of his success and credentials, he was the first to admit that nothing was truly certain and absolute, even in science:

“Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty — some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain.”

Feynman railed against “myths and pseudoscience,” and the so-called experts that peddled their theories as unquestionable truth.

According to his biographer James Gleick, Feynman found this type of scientific absolutism to be like an “authority, against which science has fought for centuries.”

Or, as Isaac Asimov put it, “Science is uncertain. Theories are subject to revision; observations are open to a variety of interpretations, and scientists quarrel amongst themselves.”

Yet now we’re being force fed a narrative that science is absolute and 100% certain… and that, above all else, we must listen to the scientists.

Or, more precisely, we must listen to the scientists they want us to listen to.

• We must listen to the scientists, for example, who tell us that 2+2 = white supremacy.

• We must listen to the scientists who tell us that biology no longer determines sex.

• And we absolutely must listen to the scientists who tell us to cower in fear in our homes because of a virus.

• We must listen to the scientists who say that unmasked BLM protestors packed together like sardines are not a danger to spreading the virus because of the righteousness of their cause.

• We must listen to the scientists at the WHO that told us in late March to NOT wear masks, and then, oops, just kidding, please do wear masks.

• We must listen to the scientists who tell us that we need to keep our masks on, and then take their own masks off as soon as they’re no longer on camera.

• We must listen to the scientists who tell us to cancel everything and not spend time with friends and family, who then themselves hop on a plane to visit their own friends and family.

• We must listen to the scientists who agree that cannabis dispensaries, acupuncture clinics, and casinos are “essential businesses”, but masked worshipers six feet apart in churches and synagogues must be forced to stay home under threat of imprisonment.

• We must listen to the scientists who tell us that the national debt doesn’t matter, and the government can simply print as much money as it wants and give out free money to everyone without any consequences ever.

• We must listen to the scientists who tell us that standing on wet sand is safe, but standing on dry sand will spread the Coronavirus.

• We must listen to the scientists who tell us we need to do whatever it takes to prevent a single Covid death… but that deaths due to suicide, heart attack, and stroke are perfectly fine, and so are domestic violence, drug addiction, and depression.

• And we must listen to the scientists who tell us that an unproven vaccine devoid of any long-term study is completely safe and effective.

Yes. Those are the scientists we must listen to.

• But we absolutely must NOT listen to any scientists who voice concerns about Covid vaccines.

• We must not listen to scientists whose peer-reviewed research shows that Covid might not be as bad or as deadly as the media continues to portray.

• We must not listen to scientists, including a Fulbright scholar / MIT PhD in data science, whose research shows bizarre, highly suspicious statistical anomalies regarding the 2020 election.

No. We definitely must NOT listen to those scientists.

And thank goodness that Big Media and Big Tech make it so easy for us to not listen to those scientists.

Twitter and Facebook have conveniently censored posts, prevented sharing, and even suspended the accounts of dangerous scientists who present new ideas.

And the big media companies simply refuse to report on those stories altogether. How thoughtful of them to pre-determine for us what we should see and what we should believe!

It’s clear the people who control the flow of information– Big Media and Big Tech– are deliberately shaping the story they want us to believe.

Forget Feynman. Their science is certainty. Their science is unassailably, 100%, absolutely true…

Anyone who dares question the certainty and sanctity of their science is ridiculed. The media calls any blasphemy a ‘hoax’ and chastises your ‘baseless assertions’.

And Twitter subjects you to the “Two Minutes Hate” ritual from Orwell’s 1984 (along with the hateful cancel culture rituals from Orwell’s lesser known work, 2021).

At this point I just want to know what these people are so afraid of– why are they so terrified of anyone asking questions?

Because when you’re not allowed to question something, it’s no longer science. It’s just authoritarian propaganda.

*  *  *

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.