Tag: finance

Like with the disastrous Iraq quagmire years before the US war machine came to Syria under Obama, Washington’s rationale and justification for occupying the Syrian Arab Republic has shifted and changed drastically multiple times over. 

When ultimately what started as US covert regime change efforts targeting Assad failed (based ostensibly in “protecting civilians”), the official mission then conveniently switched to ‘defeating terrorism’ — though of course this meant turning on the very jihadists the US armed and trained in the first place. Then the Kurds became the proxy flavor of the month, which also happened to have control of all the major oil and gas fields in the country’s east (“secure the oil!” – Trump has repeatedly echoed of late). 

When the Islamic State collapsed and became just another underground insurgency like its al Qaeda cousin, the ever-hawkish national security state establishment argued that Trump must not pull troops out because of ‘Iranian expansion’.

But now that the myth that somehow Assad and the Syrians just want to hand their sovereign country over to their allies the Iranians has also largely fallen away (remember that Baathist Syria is a secular Arab and multi-confessional state, while Iran is a hardline Shia Islamic theocracy), a new official – and it might be added, provocative – US administration rationale has been concocted.

Washington now says it’s all about defeating the Russians. While it’s not the first time this has been thrown around in policy circles (recall that a year after Russia’s 2015 entry into Syria at Assad’s invitation, former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell admitted in a TV interview he views that the US should be in the business of “killing Russians and Iranians covertly”).

And now the top US special envoy to region, James Jeffrey, has this to say on US troops in Syria:

“My job is to make it a quagmire for the Russians.”

Ironically, Jeffrey’s official title has been Special Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIL, but apparently the mission is now to essentially “give the Russians hell”. 

His comments were made Tuesday during a video conference hosted by the neocon Hudson Institute:

Asked why the American public should tolerate US involvement in Syria, Special Envoy James Jeffrey points out the small US footprint in the fight against ISIS. “This isn’t Afghanistan. This isn’t Vietnam. This isn’t a quagmire. My job is to make it a quagmire for the Russians.”

He also emphasized that the Syrian state would continue to be squeezed into submission as part of long-term US efforts (going back to at least 2011) to legitimize a Syria government in exile of sorts. This after the Trump administration recently piled new sanctions on Damascus.

As University of Oklahoma professor and expert on the region Joshua Landis summarized of Jeffrey’s remarks: “He pledged that the United States will continue to deny Syria – international funding, reconstruction, oil, banking, agriculture & recognition of government.”

“My job is to make it a quagmire for the Russians.”

Special US envoy to Syria – James Jeffery

He pledged that the United States will continue to deny Syria – international funding, reconstruction, oil, banking, agriculture & recognition of government.https://t.co/MSAkQqAmdh

— Joshua Landis (@joshua_landis) May 12, 2020

But no doubt both Putin and Assad have understood Washington’s real proxy war interests all along, which is why last year Russia delivered it’s lethal S-300 into the hands of Assad (and amid constant Israeli attacks).

As for oil, currently Damascus is well supplied by the Iranians, eager to dump their stock in fuel-starved Syria amid the global glut. Trump has previously voiced that part of US troops “securing the oil fields” is to keep them out of the hands of Russia and Iran.

* * *

Recall the CIA’s 2016 admission of what’s really going on in terms of US action in Syria:

Last week, we discovered precisely which bank got hammered by the violent divergence between the spot and future price of gold. As we reported, “HSBC had 15 “back-testing exceptions” in January and March, when the firm was caught out by moves in the prices of precious metals. Europe’s biggest bank said … problems were caused in part by “delivery disruptions in the gold market” which means that we now know which bank was on the other side of the gold spot-future trade.”

Today we also learned just how much these unexpected moves cost Europe’s largest bank: according to Bloomberg, HSBC lost around $200 million in one day in March because of the previously discussed disruptions to the gold market that caused prices to diverge dramatically in key trading hubs.

The one-day loss, which far exceeded the maximum loss anticipated by HSBC’s value-at-risk models, was unusually large for a market in which the leading banks – HSBC and JPMorgan – typically make around $200 million in an entire year. In other words, in one day, HSBC lost an entire year’s worth of revenue.

HSBC’s loss highlights the extreme nature of the disruption to the gold market in late March, as lockdowns closed refineries and grounded planes, strangling the supply routes that allow physical gold to move around the globe. As we discussed at the time, the price of gold futures in New York and spot gold in London, which usually trade within a few dollars an ounce of one another, diverged by as much as $70, the most on record.

The divergence hit banks that are active in trading the so-called EFP, or Exchange for Physical, the mechanism by which traders switch positions between the New York and London markets, according to Bloomberg which also notes that HSBC, which last week first revealed it was hit by the gold market disruption, also disclosed the scale of the loss in a chart this week showing its daily trading profits for the first quarter.

The bank described the loss as a “mark-to-market loss mainly associated with gold refining and transportation challenges.” It highlighted the “unprecedented widening of the gold exchange-for-physical basis,” which “affected HSBC’s gold leasing and financing business and other gold hedging activity leading to mark-to-market losses.”

Since late March, the EFP has normalized and the price spread between the spot and futures markets has returned to normal levels of less than $5 an ounce.
Still, HSBC is not the only one struggling with the unusual moves in the gold market. Banks often sell gold futures in New York to hedge their positions in the London market, exposing them to significant losses should the two markets diverge. While it has not been confirmed, some speculate that Canada’s Bank of Nova Scotia, for years one of the leading bullion traders with a business that dates back to the 17th century, shuttered its precious metals unit due to outsized losses following the March gold market turmoil.

Speaking in a video conference organized by the Peterson Institute, turbo money printer Jerome Powell today reassured the market that negative rates are not something the Fed – which expanded its balance sheet by $2.6 trillion in the past two months – is contemplating now. Of course, that will change after the next market crash or if economic shutdowns return, but for now the Fed’s message to traders was clear: don’t push forward fed fund rates negative, which also catalyzed today’s sharp market drop as a key source of potential forced easing was removed.

However, with Powell taking negative rates off the table (for now), it means the Fed has another problem on its hands, one which was first laid out by Deutsche Bank’s credit strategist Stuart Sparks, who in a recent note said that “for all the measures taken by the Fed and fiscal authorities to counter the COVID19 shock, policy remains too tight.” And, as Sparks adds, if the Fed opts to avoid negative policy rates – which appears to be the case – “further easing must be provided by the size and  composition of the Fed’s balance sheet”, meaning more QE.

How much more QE? Well, with short-dated market real yields positive, Deutsche Bank estimates that r*, or the neutral rate of interest, has fallen to around -1%, “suggesting additional accommodation required for policy to be “easy” could be more than 100 bp in terms of “policy rate equivalent.“

Previously the Fed had estimated that $100 billion in QE has approximately the same short term impact on growth as 3 bps of rate cuts. This equivalence means that in order to provide a 1% of “rate equivalent” easing, the Fed would need to grow the balance sheet by roughly $3.3 trillion.

This creates a headache for the Fed in that balance sheet growth of this magnitude creates a structural supply/demand imbalance even given extraordinary Treasury funding needs, and should compress the term premium over time. And given Deutsche Bank projections for Treasury supply and Fed purchases, “this imbalance could be as large as $1.4 trillion. Ultimately, the argument is that the drain of duration supply dominates maturity selection implicit in Fed purchases, causing the term premium to decline.” This is shown in the chart below.

Even more term-premium distortions aside, the Fed has no choice as we explain below. Because, as crazy as it may sound, despite the Fed’s massive liquidity injection to date which has pushed the Fed’s balance sheet from $4.2 trillion to $6.7 trillion since mid-March, it is not enough and to ensure that the problem of the -1% r* is addressed without cutting rates negative – a problem which is now manifesting itself in a chronically high dollar, i.e., dollar shortage, which has failed to normalize back to pre-crisis levels as shown below…

… the Fed will need to expand its balance sheet trillions…. And it will have to do it very soon!

As Curvature Securities’ strategist Scott Skyrm writes today, General Collateral unexpectedly dropped down to 0% yesterday and was below 0% today. And while this is “Strange”, Skyrm correctly points out that “low GC rates can only be temporary.”

The reason? There is a flood of liquidity-draining issuance on the horizon.

As Skyrm further explains, with QE purchases winding down – recall that last Friday the Fed cut its daily POMO average to just $7 billion from $75 billion two months ago…

… the deluge of more Treasury supply will ultimately push rates higher.

But in the near term, things are about to get scary: as Skyrm calculates, “there are $79 billion CMBs settling tomorrow and $39 net new Treasurys settling on Friday for the refunding. But that’s just the start. All total, there are $689 billion net new Treasurys settling during the month of May and $992 billion net new Treasurys settling between now and June 15. Yes, almost one trillion new Treasury securities hitting the market within the next month!”

His conclusion: “That means the market needs to come up with about one trillion dollars to pay for those securities over the next month.” Which, of course, is a euphemism because we all know who in the market needs to come up with one trillion dollar – the only one who literally prints money: the Federal Reserve.

For those who missed all that, here is the layman’s version: the Fed has flooded the system with liquidity… and it is not enough, because the way helicopter money works, is that liquidity supply (the Fed), and liquidity demand (Treasury via debt issuance) go hand in hand, and periods of too much supply, as was the cash with the Fed’s massive QE in late March and early April, are promptly followed by periods of dramatic liquidity demand, such as the next month when $1 trillion in liquidity will be drained to fund the US government “money helicopter.”

This also suggests that Deutsche Bank’s estimate of a $3.3 trillion cumulative shortfall is accurate and that the Fed will soon find itself trapped again, because instead of injecting liquidity it continues to drain it by shrinking the weekly POMO injection.

As a result, Powell faces a two-fold problem: since the Fed chair has taken negative rates off the table, Powell has no choice but too boost QE again, and unleash another firehose of liquidity in the financial system. However, any such reversal to the Fed’s current posture of shrinking QE will be met with howls of rage, especially in the political establishment. Which means that, just like in March when the Fed used the first pandemic-induced market crash to unleash unlimited QE, the Fed will soon have to go for round 2 and spark a new market crash, one which it then uses as an alibi for the next massive liquidity injection. Failing to do that, watch as the dollar takes off as markets sniff out that another major dollar squeeze is imminent. And since this will accelerate the liquidity crunch, one way or another, the coming 992 billion net Treasury issuance will serve as a trigger for the next market shock, one which the Fed will quickly reverse by expanding the already unlimited QE by over $3 trillion on very short notice.

The only question we have is whether this will be the market crash that the Fed uses to unveil it will also buy equity ETfs next, or if Powell will save this final bullet in its ammo for whatever comes next. 

The judge in the Michael Flynn case has gone full activist – refusing to dismiss the case after the Department of Justice requested to drop charges so that an outside party could file an opposition briefing known as a “friends-of-the-court”, or “amicus” briefing.

Today, Judge Emmet Sullivan took things one step further, appointing former Gotti prosecutor and judge, John Gleeson, to argue against the dismissal.

BREAKING: Judge SULLIVAN has appointed retired judge to argue against the government’s motion to dismiss the charge against Flynn. pic.twitter.com/OUGyAbNcIB

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) May 13, 2020

As we noted earlier, What makes it bizarre is that the Judge, Emmet Sullivan, denied this type of third party intervention 24 times during the case – yet has suddenly changed his mind after an activist group which calls itself the “Watergate Prosecutors” moved to file an amicus brief, according to the Washington Examiner.

And as Trump ally and attorney Victoria Toensing noted, the Supreme Court ruled last week that entertaining outside interventions such as these was a “drastic departure” and an “abuse of discretion.”

Does Judge Sullivan read SupCt decisions? Last week SupCt held using amici was “drastic departure” and “abuse of discretion.” Why amici for @GenFlynn now when Judge refused Flynn friends amici 24 times. Judge shld be removed from case…then from Bench. #obamagate #maga

— Victoria Toensing (@VicToensing) May 13, 2020

Earlier:

Flynn’s lawyer, former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell, filed a six-page motion Tuesday evening slamming the decision, writing: “This Court has consistently — on 24 previous occasions — summarily refused to permit any third party to inject themselves or their views into this case,” adding “the proposed amicus brief has no place in this court.”

“No rule allows the filing, and the self-proclaimed collection of ‘Watergate Prosecutors’ has no cognizable special interest,” the filing continues. “Separation of powers forecloses their appearance here. Only the Department of Justice and the defense can be heard.”

Powell told the Washington Examiner that the judge had denied all previous third-party interventions “until DOJ moves to dismiss and begins to expose the wrongdoing of the Obama administration.”

Flynn’s lawyers have touted recently released FBI records as being exculpatory evidence that was concealed from the defense team. The documents suggest that now-fired FBI agent Peter Strzok and the FBI’s “7th floor” leadership stopped the bureau from closing its investigation into Flynn in early January 2017, even though investigators had uncovered “no derogatory information,” after intercepts of Flynn’s communications with a Russian envoy emerged. Emails from later that month show Strzok, along with then-FBI lawyer Lisa Page and several others, sought out ways to continue investigating Flynn, including by deploying the Logan Act. –Washington Examiner

On Tuesday, Sullivan wrote in his order that “given the current posture of this case, the Court anticipates that individuals and organizations will seek leave of the Court to file amicus curiae briefs,” adding – while quoting Roger Stone judge Amy Berman Jackson (there’s a clue) in saying that “while there may be individuals with an interest in this matter, a criminal proceeding is not a free for all.”

“Accordingly, at the appropriate time, the Court will enter a Scheduling Order governing the submission of any amicus curiae briefs.“

Earlier in the case, however, Sullivan wrote of similar amicus brief requests: “The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure do not provide for intervention by third parties in criminal cases … Options exist for a private citizen to express his views about matters of public interest, but the Court’s docket is not an available option,” adding “the docket is the record of official proceedings related to criminal charges brought by the United States against an individual who has pled guilty to a criminal offense” and “for the benefit of the parties in this case and the public, the docket must be maintained in an orderly fashion and in accordance with court rules.”

Authored by Simon Watkins via OilPrice.com,

At no time since Ibn Saud first consolidated his Arabian conquests into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932 has the ruling Saud dynasty faced such an existential threat to its continued rule over the country.

It is true that Saudi Arabia has been able to gain some temporary advantage in key Asian export markets, as its shipments to China more than doubled in April to 2.2 million barrels a day (bpd) and those to India, at 1.1 million bpd, were also the highest in at least three years. This, though, as much as any other factor that might endure, was a product of Saudi slashing its official selling prices (OSPs) for April crude sales to some of the lowest levels in decades, undercutting its rivals, and exactly the same happened again for May crude sales.

Even this very slight victory, though, has already been jeopardised by an indication that the scale of the trouble into which the House of Saud has placed Saudi Arabia is truly monumental. Just last week saw massive economic pressure force the Saudis into increasing the June delivery price for its Arab light crude oil to Asia by US$1.40 per barrel from May, albeit at a discount of US$5.90 to the Oman/Dubai benchmark average. Market expectations were that Saudi would continue to keep OSPs low to hold onto market gains.

Saudi Arabia did this because its finances are in an even worse state now than they were at the end of the Kingdom’s previous attempt to destroy the U.S. shale industry that ran disastrously from 2014 to 2016. Back then, Saudi had a much greater chance of success in destroying the U.S. shale industry than it did this year, for a wide variety of reasons, but even then the effort nearly destroyed the Saudi economy forever.

Back then Saudi had record-high foreign assets reserves of US$737 billion in August 2014, allowing it real room for manoeuvre in sustaining its SAR/US$-currency peg and covering the huge budget deficits that would be caused from the oil price fall caused by overproduction. Despite this relatively positive backdrop to Saudi’s 2014-2016 oil price war against U.S. shale, OPEC member states lost a collective US$450 billion in oil revenues from the lower price environment, according to the IEA.

Saudi Arabia itself moved from a budget surplus to a then-record high deficit in 2015 of US$98 billion and spent at least US$250 billion of its foreign exchange reserves over that period that even senior Saudis have said are lost forever. So bad was Saudi Arabia’s economic and political situation back in 2016 that the country’s deputy economic minister, Mohamed Al Tuwaijri, stated unequivocally (and unprecedentedly for a senior Saudi) in October 2016 that: “If we [Saudi Arabia] don’t take any reform measures, and if the global economy stays the same, then we’re doomed to bankruptcy in three to four years.” That is to say, that if Saudi kept overproducing to push oil prices down – just as it did this year, yet again – then it would be bankrupt within three to four years.

On the pure economics, some have said that around US$300 billion is sufficient to defend the SAR/US$-peg and that, within those parameters, Saudi Arabia’s current foreign exchange reserves are ample. However, this does not factor into the investment proposition equation the negative market bias that now faces Saudi Arabia, which will adversely affect its ability to raise the sort of debt and equity capital that is required to slow the drawdown rate on these reserves. Even before the reputational damage that Saudi Arabia has suffered as a result of embarking on exactly the same strategy that was so disastrous for its last time – and choosing to do it whilst facing the most dangerous global pandemic since the 1918 Spanish ‘flu – an overhang in its sovereign debt issuance was already building, stretching investor appetite for any more.

Specifically, Saudi Arabia has already tapped international bond markets twice this year and has borrowed a total of US$19 billion from local and international investors. Attracting a new pool of investors onto which to load its now toxic-looking debt will not be helped by the way in which it completely disregarded those trusting souls who bought into the Saudi Aramco IPO, despite there being every indication that the Saudis would indeed violate their minority share holder rights, as analysed in depth in my new book on the global oil market.

In terms of the actual facts that Saudi apologists overlook, in March Saudi Arabia’s central bank depleted its net foreign assets at the fastest rate since at least 2000. In that month alone, according to even the Saudis’ own figures, the Kingdom’s foreign reserves fell by just over SAR100 billion (US$27 billion). This is a full 5 per cent decrease from just the previous month, and the total reserves figure now stands at just US$464 billion, the lowest level since 2011. It leaves only US$164 billion of ‘fighting reserves’ that can be used on everything else that Saudi needs when the US$300 billion needed to keep the economic cornerstone SAR/US$-peg is subtracted. Indeed, if the 5 per cent reserves drop figure is assumed for April and May as well (and it may well have been more) then Saudi’s foreign exchange reserves now are just over US$418 billion.

This figure is set to decrease much further, as lower oil prices endure and the lower oil production targets recently agreed are adhered to by Saudi Arabia. At the same time, the Kingdom slipped into a US$9 billion+ budget deficit in the first quarter and a number of independent analysts are predicting that its overall gross domestic product could shrink by more than 3 per cent this year (the first outright contraction since 2017 and the biggest since 1999), whilst the budget deficit could widen to 15 per cent of economic output.

Over and above the sheer stupidity involved in launching a strategy of overproducing oil to push down prices that had already failed before and doing so at a time when it was obvious that the coronavirus would itself annihilate oil demand and pricing, the number one mistake that the al-Sauds made – and for which they will be held personally responsible for by their people in the coming months – is to eradicate all trust in them on the part of the U.S. Everyday Saudis do not, perhaps, care that much for the U.S. certainly, but they do care about the country’s increased political and economic insecurity that has been caused by the latest oil price war, directly and indirectly.

To the U.S. – and this has been reiterated repeatedly to OilPrice.com by various senior sources in the U.S. Presidential Administration over the past few weeks – Saudi Arabia has broken the basic deal (and therefore, trust) established in 1945 between the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Saudi King at the time, Abdulaziz, in the Great Bitter Lake segment of the Suez Canal that has defined the relationship between the two countries ever since. The deal was that the U.S. would receive all of the oil supplies it needed for as long as Saudi Arabia had oil in place, in return for which the U.S. would guarantee the security of the ruling House of Saud. This has subsequently altered slightly to ensure that Saudi Arabia also allows the U.S. shale industry to continue to function and to grow. If this means that Saudi Arabia loses out to U.S. shale producers by keeping oil prices up but losing out on export opportunities to U.S. firms then that is just the price that the House of Saud must pay for the continued protection of the U.S. – politically, economically, and militarily.

Now that this trust has been broken all options are on the table. U.S. President Donald Trump warned the al-Sauds specifically a while back that: “He [Saudi King Salman] would not last in power for two weeks without the backing of the U.S. military.” According to various sources – and as highlighted in advance by OilPrice.com as a serious option under consideration –  on 2 April, Trump actually told Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the telephone that unless OPEC started cutting oil production he would be powerless to stop lawmakers from passing legislation to withdraw U.S. troops from the Kingdom.

This, though, is not the end of matters for the U.S. Having already made it plain that any further nonsense from Saudi will not be tolerated by the U.S. from the political perspective, optimism is high amongst senior Democrats, and some Republicans, in both Houses, that Saudi can be made to pay for the economic hardship it has caused the U.S. The mechanism is the ‘No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act’ (NOPEC) Bill, which makes it illegal to artificially cap oil (and gas) production or to set prices, as OPEC, OPEC+, and Saudi Arabia do. The Bill would also immediately remove the sovereign immunity that presently exists in U.S. courts for OPEC as a group and for each and every one of its individual member states. This would leave Saudi Arabia open to being sued under existing U.S. anti-trust legislation, with its total liability being its estimated US$1 trillion of investments in the U.S. alone.

An analysis of computer models used by Professor Neil Ferguson to predict that millions would die of COVID-19- models on which Western leaders had based the ongoing lockdowns – have been torn to shreds. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that his dire models may have something to do with his married lover being an environmental activist.

As Conservative Woman‘s Janice Davis reports, “The source code behind the Ferguson model has finally been made available to the public via the GitHub website. Mark E Jeftovic, in his Axis of Easy website, says: ‘A code review has been undertaken by an anonymous ex-Google software engineer here, who tells us the GitHub repository code has been heavily massaged by Microsoft engineers, and others, in an effort to whip the code into shape to safely expose it to the public. Alas, they seem to have failed and numerous flaws and bugs from the original software persist in the released version. Requests for the unedited version of the original code behind the model have gone unanswered.’”

According to Jeftovic, the code produces ‘non-deterministic outputs,’ which means it will spit out different results for identical inputs – rendering it inappropriate for scientific use.

“Investigation reveals the truth: the code produces critically different results, even for identical starting seeds and parameters,” he said, adding that the output would even vary depending on which type of computer was used to run the simulation.

Jeftovic has been left scratching his head over why Ferguson’s team failed to see that their software was so flawed, calling it “garbage in / garbage out,’ only no matter what the input is – the output is always garbage, which is responsible for the lockdowns that have ground the global economy to a halt.

Another expert, Martin Armstrong (who has a controversial record) also reviews the Ferguson model code and comes to very similar conclusions. He says that it ‘is such a joke it is either an outright fraud, or it is the most inept piece of programming I have ever seen in my life . . . This is the most unprofessional operation perhaps in computer science. The entire team should be disbanded and an independent team put in place to review the work of Neil Ferguson . . . The only reasonable conclusion I can reach is that this has been deliberately used to justify bogus forecasts intent for political activism . . . There seems to have been no independent review of Ferguson’s work, which is unimaginable!’ –Conservative Woman

Meanwhile, the Conservative Woman also points out that Ferguson’s now-public affair – banging his married lover with strict lockdown measures in place, right after he recovered from coronavirus – should also be called into question.

His lover, 38-year-old Antonia Staats, is a left-wing activist who works for the US-based organization Avaaz – which promotes global activism on a number of topics, including climate change.

The Guardian has called Avaaz the globe’s largest and most powerful online activist network, and it has a world-wide following of around 10million people. It is loosely connected with Bill Gates, through the World Economic Forum, which also lists Al Gore and Christine Lagarde on its board. Staats works as a senior campaigner on climate change for the group, and is said to be sympathetic towards the aims of Extinction Rebellion. Indirectly, on the surface at least, this ties Ferguson to climate change, a cause that the lockdown has served very well by managing to shut down the world economy. –Conservative Woman

So, was it idiocy on the part of Ferguson and his team at Imperial College London? Or is there a more sinister explanation for what went down?

Authored by Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner via Wirepoints.org,

A Wirepoints analysis of COVID-19 deaths from the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office reveals that 92 percent of victims from the virus had pre-existing medical conditions.

The medical examiner’s database showed COVID-19 as the primary cause of death for 2,303 people. Of those, 2,112 were shown to have at least one underlying condition as a secondary cause of death. Those conditions, also known as comorbidities, included hypertension, diabetes, obesity and heart disease. There were no secondary causes reported for 191 deaths.

This finding is important because Gov. J.B. Pritzker has refused to release any statewide comorbidity data as part of his official Illinois Department of Health releases. Wirepoints asked for data directly from the governor’s office on April 21st, but we were told it was not available. We’ve since released a piece asking Gov. J.B. Pritzker why that’s so: Who’s most at risk for COVID-19 and why isn’t Illinois publishing that data?

Understanding who is most at risk – and who is not – is central to a public understanding of the virus. It’s also central to helping decide when and how to open up our economy and schools. What Cook County’s and other comorbidity data across the country implies is that the risk of death for healthy Illinoisans is far lower than Gov. J.B. Pritzker might lead people to believe based on his protracted lockdown and drawn out reopening plan.

Cook County reports that of the 2,303 victims where COVID-19 was listed as the primary cause of death, 92 percent had one or more comorbidities.

Hypertension affected 1,070 victims, or more than 46 percent of all deaths. Diabetes impacted 973 victims, or 42 percent of the total. Pulmonary disease was part of 397 deaths, or 17 percent. And 215 of those deaths, about 9 percent, were accompanied by obesity or morbid obesity.

Yet others had conditions including cancer and cardiovascular and kidney diseases. The numbers above add up to more than 100 percent because many victims had more than one pre-existing condition.

The Cook County data lines up with city of Chicago data on comorbidities for city deaths. Though the city does not provide any broader detail, it does report that 1,090 of Chicago’s 1,160 COVID-19 deaths had underlying conditions. That’s 94 percent.

What’s stark about the Cook comorbidity data is just how few young adults die from COVID-19 in the absence of some pre-existing condition. Just 3 of the 15 deaths in the 20-29 age bracket had no comorbidities. Same goes for the 30-39 and 40-49 age brackets, where just 26 of the 132 deaths were accompanied with no underlying causes.

The above data is key to mapping out a reopening strategy for schools, universities and workplaces. Younger, healthier adults face far less risk from COVID-19 than originally feared.

On the flip side, it shows who is at risk: anyone with pre-existing conditions, including the elderly. As of May 8, the average age of all COVID-19 deaths in Illinois was 74, a clear sign of where the true risk lies.

Even more, almost 50 percent of all Illinois deaths have been tied to long-term care facilities, the subject of an upcoming Wirepoints piece. That means nearly 1,600 deaths occurred outside the general public.

For months, Illinois residents have lived in fear, a fear that has been exacerbated by a lack of transparency and open reporting from the state. The state didn’t release hospitalization data until outside pressure forced it to. Antibody testing results are still being held back, which we wrote about in With New FDA Action, Gov. Pritzker and Dr. Ezike Have No Excuse for Further Stonewalling Antibody Testing.

And Wirepoints shouldn’t be forced to seek out and compile partial comorbidity data based on tips from others. The state should be open and transparent with all of its COVID-19 statistics.

Regardless, the data continues to be revealed, even with the state’s stonewalling. The information we now know paints a compelling case for a far different reopening plan than Gov. Pritzker has introduced.

Hat tip to CWB Chicago for making us aware of the examiner’s online database. The link to the examiner’s office is here.

*  *  *

Click here for the full list of Cook County COVID-19 victims

Read more about COVID-19 and the impact on Illinois:

• Illinois’ COVID-19 crisis: Daily data update
• With New FDA Action, Gov. Pritzker and Dr. Ezike Have No Excuse for Further Stonewalling Antibody Testing
• Pritzker’s top-down reopen strategy will fail large parts of IL: He should expect pushback
• Governor Pritzker’s Plan to Reopen Illinois Makes No Sense
• Open Illinois’ economy: Recessions and depressions kill
• COVID-19: Seven facts that tell us Illinoisans can and must get back to work
• Reopen the Economy While Protecting Those Truly at Risk or Face Another Great Depression

It’s being called “a complete government cover-up of the Saudi involvement” according to 9/11 victims’ families who are in a lengthy ongoing lawsuit seeking to expose Saudi involvement in the 9/11 attacks and US efforts to cover it up.

A new bombshell has been dropped which the families of victims are hailing a huge success: FBI court documents inadvertently left a key Saudi embassy official’s name unredacted, revealing one of the government’s most sensitive secrets regarding the September 11 attacks and state sponsorship.

A Yahoo News exclusive reveals, based on what has since been admitted as “a giant screw-up,” the identity of “a mysterious Saudi Embassy official in Washington who agents suspected had directed crucial support to two of the al-Qaida hijackers.”

Ironically the ‘accidental’ release of the information was related to filings by Attorney General William Barr and acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell to get information pertaining to the kingdom’s role in the attacks permanently banned from public access, citing the usual “state secrets” and national security concerns. 

The FBI mistakenly revealed the identify of a top Saudi embassy official who had continuing direct contact with individuals involved in running the Los Angeles al-Qaeda terror cell which produced some of the hijackers: his name is Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah.

Al-Jarrah was an official diplomat of the Saudi foreign ministry and embassy in D.C. who oversaw Ministry of Islamic Affairs employees at Saudi-funded mosques and Islamic centers throughout the US from 1999 and 2000. Crucially he’s been revealed as a key “link” between the Saudi government and the Los Angeles cell, specifically two terrorists which went on to fly a plane into the Pentagon.

The Yahoo News report describes the huge significance of the Al-Jarrah revelation as follows:

Fahad al-Thumairy, a Saudi Islamic Affairs official and radical cleric who served as the imam of the King Fahd Mosque in Los Angeles and Omar al-Bayoumi, a suspected Saudi government agent who assisted two terrorists, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who participated in the hijacking of the American Airlines plane that flew into the Pentagon, killing 125.

After the two hijackers flew to Los Angeles on Jan. 15, 2000, al-Bayoumi found them an apartment, lent them money and set them up with bank accounts.

A redacted copy of a three-and-a-half page October 2012 FBI “update” about the investigation stated that FBI agents had uncovered “evidence” that Thumairy and Bayoumi had been “tasked” to assist the hijackers by yet another individual whose name was blacked out, prompting lawyers for the families to refer to this person as “the third man” in what they argue is a Saudi-orchestrated conspiracy.

That “third man” is newly revealed by the FBI ‘mistake’ as Al-Jarrah — believed to have “tasked” intermediaries to assist some among the 9/11 hijackers.

Current and former FBI officials speaking on anonymity have said that top leaders at the bureau have sought to quash this whole investigation from the start. “There were definitely people at FBI headquarters who wanted this closed,” one former official told Yahoo. 

The report continues: 

Relatively little is known about Jarrah, but according to former embassy employees, he reported to the Saudi ambassador in the United States (at the time Prince Bandar), and that he was later reassigned to the Saudi missions in Malaysia and Morocco, where he is believed to have served as recently as last year.

Jarrah has been on the radar screen of the lawyers for the 9/11 families for some time and is among nine current or former Saudi officials who they suspect have important information about the case and have sought to either question them or get access to FBI documents that mention them.

The families have also tapped former agents to help investigate the activities of the potential witnesses, including Jarrah. 

Jarrah “was responsible for the placement of Ministry of Islamic Affairs employees known as guides and propagators posted to the United States, including Fahad Al Thumairy,” according to a separate declaration by Catherine Hunt, a former FBI agent based in Los Angeles who has been assisting the families in the case. 

Hunt conducted her own investigation into the support provided to the hijackers in Southern California. “The FBI believed that al-Jarrah was ‘supporting’ and ‘maintaining’ al-Thumairy during the 9/11 investigation,” she said in her declaration.

Musaed Ahmad Al-Jarrah (pictured above left, and below), former Saudi Foreign Ministry official assigned to the Saudi embassy in Washington, DC between 1999 and 2000.

A spokesman for the 9/11 families whose father was killed in the attacks, Brett Eagleson, said of the Jarrah revelation that ultimately it confirms a Saudi chain of command behind 9/11 which goes direct to the Saudi embassy in D.C.

Below: Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Ambassador to the US, speaking to former President George W Bush at the Bush Ranch in Crawford, Texas, in August 2002. An ‘indirect link’ between Prince Bandar and an al-Qaeda suspect is revealed in a 9/11 investigatory report. Al-Jarrah reported directly to Prince Bandar, who later became Saudi intelligence chief and kingdom’s national security council head.

“It demonstrates there was a hierarchy of command that’s coming from the Saudi Embassy to the Ministry of Islamic Affairs [in Los Angeles] to the hijackers,” Eagleson said.

And no doubt there’s still a mountain of evidence kept secret by the US government concerning the real 9/11 story. At this point we’re still surely at the mere tip of the iceberg as the official narrative continues to unravel even by the mainstream media’s belated admission (whereas in prior years any critical approach to official Washington’s 9/11 mythology got one dismissed as ‘conspiracy theorist’ and ‘truther’ etc..).

Given the 9/11 lawsuit driven by victims’ families is nowhere near finished, it is likely to slowly chip away and wrest more damning information from the feds. 

Update (1005ET): Democratic state Assemblywoman Christy Smith conceded in the special election in California’s 25th District and she congratulated Republican Mike Garcia as the “likely victor,” though the race has yet to be officially called.

Authored by Daniel Payne and Joseph Weber via JustTheNews.com,

The Republican candidate in the special election Tuesday for the California House seat vacated by ex-Democratic Rep. Katie Hill has won the race with over 56% of the vote.  

The GOP candidate, former Navy combat pilot Mike Garcia, had earlier held a double-digit lead over state Assemblywoman Christy Smith.

The race was called by the nonpartisan polling group Political Polls, with Garcia later confirming the results by referring to himself on his Twitter page as the “Congressman-elect for CA-25.” 

The suburban Los Angeles seat came up for grabs when Hill resigned in 2019, amid allegations of an inappropriate relationship with at least one staffer.

Garcia’s victory marks the first time Republicans have held that seat since 1998, part of a steady decline for the GOP in California. He will compete again in November for a full, two-year term.

The congressional district includes Simi Valley, home to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

*  *  *

Also on Tuesday, Republican Tom Tiffany, a Wisconsin state senator, handily won his special election congressional race in the state’s conservative 7th Congressional District. Tiffany defeated Democrat Tricia Zunker in the race for the seat vacated by GOP Rep. Sean Duffy, who retired in September.

Weeks after Georgia ended its shelter-in-place order and allowed businesses to reopen, the number of patients hospitalized with coronavirus hit a record low since hospitals began reporting COVID-19 figures, according to Gov. Brian Kemp.

“Today marks the lowest number of COVID-19 positive patients currently hospitalized statewide (1,203) since hospitals began reporting this data on April 8th,” wrote Kemp on Saturday, adding “Today also marks the lowest total of ventilators in use (897 with 1,945 available).”

Today marks the lowest number of COVID-19 positive patients currently hospitalized statewide (1,203) since hospitals began reporting this data on April 8th.

Today also marks the lowest total of ventilators in use (897 with 1,945 available).

We will win this fight together! pic.twitter.com/byxACEiQCp

— Governor Brian P. Kemp (@GovKemp) May 9, 2020

According to Newsmax, Kemp has urged all state residents to get tested regardless of whether they are symptomatic, as Georgia has significantly increased testing capacity.

Late last month, Kemp started allowing businesses to reopen as he ended his shelter-in-place order.

This included permission for restaurants to open for dining on the premises, although with new restrictions, and allowed other businesses to also reopen with special conditions as well.

These relaxations came as public health officials warned such a move might spark a new wave of cases, although the experts said that any potential upswing in cases might take a week or longer to appear. –Newsmax

When Kemp decided to lift the restrictions late last month, Democrat Stacey Abrams – a Vice Presidential hopeful for Joe Biden’s bid, said Kemp’s decision would be “putting more lives in danger.”

Looks like she was wrong.