The Minneapolis Police Department announced Monday evening that they would be investigating allegations of ‘vote harvesting’ by supporters of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) following an explosive Project Veritas exposé.
“The MPD is aware of the allegations of vote harvesting,” tweeted the Minneapolis PD. “We are in the process of looking into the validity of those statements. No further information is available at this time on this.”
ALLEGATIONS OF VOTER FRAUD BEING EVALUATED. ✅ The MPD is aware of the allegations of vote harvesting. We are in the process of looking into the validity of those statements. No further information is available at this time on this.
O’Keefe’s latest video features Minneapolis resident Liban Mohamed – who brags on tape about illegally collecting some 300 ballots from Somali immigrants in an effort to help his City Councilman brother, Jamal Osman.
What’s more, the journalist teased a “cash-for-ballots financial transaction ON TAPE” in a Monday night Twitter poll.
We have the cash-for-ballots financial transaction ON TAPE.
Mohamed called O’Keefe “Fake News” in a Monday tweet, according to the Daily Mail.
The Veritas video also featured Somali political operative Omar Jamal – who said he believes ballot harvesters are hired to take advantage of elderly members of the Somali community.
Omar spokesman Jeremy Slevin said the claims were “amplifying a coordinated right-wing campaign to delegitimize a free and fair election this fall undermines our democracy.”
President Trump took to Twitter late Monday evening, calling the allegations “totally illegal,” and that he hopes that “the U.S. Attorney in Minnesota has this, and other of her many misdeeds, under serious review.”
This is totally illegal. Hope that the U.S. Attorney in Minnesota has this, and other of her many misdeeds, under serious review??? If not, why not??? We will win Minnesota because of her, and law enforcement. Saved Minneapolis & Iron O Range! https://t.co/yete31P680
As you’ve probably seen, DeFi on Ethereum is now the hottest thing in all of crypto, further establishing the platform’s first mover advantage, and firing what should be perceived as a shot across the bow of traditional financial services. The success of the movement is attributable to three fundamental properties of decentralized blockchain networks:
Composability: Any output of an existing solution — such as collateralized lending or automated market making — could easily be used as an input of a new solution. This means that developers can build on the work of others, mixing and matching existing services to create their own financial supermarkets (what the crypto kids call money legos).
Transparency: Every project is transparent, open-source and imminently replicable. Not only can developers look under the hood of successful projects, they can copy the code and introduce their own variation.
Permissionless: Anyone can do anything. There are no licenses to acquire, vendors to onboard, KYC procedures to follow or AML/CFT laws to be crippled by. Those who have innovative ideas build them and those who like the resulting service use them. Full stop.
Also aiding the boom is a growing cast of supporting infrastructure in the form of stablecoins, oracles and ramps to other platforms such as Bitcoin. All of this has been around for years, as have the earliest DeFi protocols. But the action didn’t take off until the arrival of liquidity mining earlier this year, an innovative incentive scheme best understood with an analogy: Back in the day, banks used to give away toasters for opening a new account. DeFi projects go one step further and give away equity, in the form of a governance token. The more users borrow, lend, provide liquidity or trade in a particular protocol, the greater the claim on future revenues and say in ongoing governance that they get.
Liquidity mining is the decentralized and community-owned ethos of the crypto universe expanded to financial services. There is no off-chain equivalent, but analogous to Robinhood giving away free stock to its clients based on usage. (RH would never do this, because the infrastructure can’t handle it and the regulators won’t allow it— yet another reason why the only real innovation in financial services is happening on the blockchain).
The introduction of liquidity mining set the DeFi world on fire. Even those who didn’t have an immediate need to lend, borrow or trade started doing so to earn a reward. This spike in activity created a virtuous cycle: the more people used a protocol, the more valuable the token it was giving away was perceived to be, so the greater the incentive for new users to join the party. In just three months, the value of assets involved with DeFi went up 10x, and fees on Ethereum surged as well.
All of this is great for adoption, energy and excitement. DeFi has reinvigorated the crypto ecosystem, attracted attention from outsiders and caused even greater agita for regulators still grappling with the difference between security tokens and tokenized securities. What it’s not great for is the value of the DeFi governance tokens themselves. This might be considered heresy in the most devout DeFi circles, but I would argue the vast majority of DeFi tokens are borderline worthless. Why? Because of what makes DeFi great in the first place. Put in crypto speak:
Composability + Transparency + Permissionless = No Moat
Put in plain English: If you build it, they will come, but then someone will build a replica, and they will leave. In a world where anyone can do anything, including copy your code, tweak your solution and parody your name, then every successful project will have imitators, and since there are no account signups, national borders or regulatory barriers, your customers can become their customer with a single click. This isn’t just speculation, it has already happened, with comical naming conventions to boot. The popular decentralized exchange Uniswap yielded Sushiswap which was then copied into Kimchiswap. Another popular service called Curve was forked into Swerve, and the robo-yield-farmer Yearn has spawned more copycats than one can keep track of.
At issue is the fundamental equation of trust. The main goal of a decentralized platform like Ethereum is the minimization of counterparty risk — a fundamental driver of financial innovation for millennia. The platform’s success in doing so makes it both easy to build new solutions and hard to monetize them, because everyone shares the most important edge. This is not the case in traditional finance. You can spend billions of dollars replicating the physical infrastructure of the NYSE or BoA, but end up with none of their customers, because you won’t have the licenses, reputations and relationships that make those entities trustworthy.
Ironically, that means the only lasting value any DeFi solution could have comes from the messy and more centralized stuff that you can’t just copy and paste, such as business development, VC backing and human talent. It also means that the oldest DeFi protocols who have the most sophisticated teams and weathered more than just a single season are the only ones worth owning at current prices. My favorites are MakerDao, Compound, Aave and Uniswap. Everything else is either too new, too unproven, too unused or too easy to copy (Maker increasingly seems like the only solution that’s truly fork proof, given Dai’s growing penetration into obscure corners of the ecosystem, and Latin America)
Even more ironically, the market currently values most of these protocols in the opposite order that I do. The DeFi aggregator Yearn, which would have no reason to exist if not for the base protocols it feeds, has a higher market cap than all of them. The synthetic asset maker Synthetix, whose sUSD stablecoin has less than $60m in distribution, is valued more than Maker, whose Dai stablecoin is approaching $1B. These disparities are the result of the crypto world’s never ending (and always embarrassing) desire for free money. Maker isn’t giving away any equity, while SNX is giving away plenty.
These disparities will eventually be resolved. The valuations of the core protocols will rise to the top while some of the current high-flyers will end up worthless. But even then, the upside will always be capped by the fact that competition is easy to build. The most sustainable winners will be the off-chain infrastructure providers, for the simple reason that you can’t fork USDC’s cash reserves or Bitgo’s cold storage.
And once again, the biggest winner of all will be Ethereum itself, as DeFi has only increased its value and cemented its first mover advantage. It is a mistake to assume that today’s astronomical transaction fees are anything other than a blessing. Demand outstripping supply is the best thing that can happen to any startup.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2EMsJHa Tyler Durden
Chinese State Media Floats Trump ‘October Surprise’ Theory Centered On Disputed Islands Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/28/2020 – 21:20
The editor-in-chief of the Chinese Community Party run Global Times, Hu Xijin, has once again raised eyebrows with his typical bellicose and provocative statements and predictions.
This time he took things to a new level, cryptically citing “information learned” — as if from an insider source or perhaps even Chinese intelligence — to suggest President Trump has a major ‘October Surprise’ in store, and of course it relates to the prospect of military conflict with China at a moment things are fast heating up over the Taiwan issue in particular.
Getty Images/The Daily Express
The Global Times editor and writer claimed on Monday: “Based on information I learned, Trump govt could take the risk toattack China’s islands in the South China Sea with MQ-9 Reaper drones to aid his reelection campaign,” in a Tweet that was a among his more provocative lately.
It’s unclear where he came by this “information” and he certainly didn’t back it up with proof or specific sources, but he added that “If it happens, the PLA will definitely fight back fiercely and let those who start the war pay a heavy price.”
Based on information I learned, Trump govt could take the risk to attack China’s islands in the South China Sea with MQ-9 Reaper drones to aid his reelection campaign. If it happens, the PLA will definitely fight back fiercely and let those who start the war pay a heavy price.
Hu Xijin has been closely following the TikTok controversy, lately labelling the US as being in a “hysterical state” over advanced Chinese tech and popular aps.
He also days ago said “The US is clearly preparing for new provocative actions” related to the potential expelling of Chinese diplomats amid the ongoing tit-for-tat on multiple fronts.
China’s English language mouthpiece publication geared toward Western audiences often in an indirect way “relays” Beijing’s threats and warnings. Typically Hu himself reflects the insider thinking of the Chinese Communist Party, but with a more hawkish tinge, so it’s more than likely there are many officials in the party who actually believe there’s some level of a US election October surprise related to China coming.
Perhaps it’s also related to PLA forces kicking off military drills in no less than four regional seas on Monday, expected to run through Wednesday.
Recall that just last week he also warned that China “would definitely start a just war” if American soldiers ever returned to being stationed on Taiwan. They had permanently departed in 1979 upon US normalized relations with the People’s Republic of China.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/30hqkvp Tyler Durden
When the “Fox News Sunday” host takes the stage on Tuesday to moderate the first presidential debate of 2020, he will for 90 minutes be the most important person in the world.
His questions, his demeanor, his raised eyebrow will signal to millions of voters how they are to assess the two candidates — President Donald John Trump and former Vice President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.
If his questions are piercing for both, if his skepticism is applied equally to both the Republican and Democrat, then all is well in this corner of the world of journalism. But if instead Wallace accuses Trump and coddles Biden, we will have one more instance of media bias, which has become so rampant that President Trump had to christen it with a pet name — Fake News.
Every day, the supposedly professional press corps cozies up to Biden with softball questions (“Why aren’t you more angry at President Trump?” has to be my favorite!) while accusing Trump of being a mass murderer, a racist and a Putin puppet. So conservatives are entirely justified in having low expectations for the debate and for Wallace, who has exhibited symptoms of Trump Derangement Syndrome more than once.
Wallace can ask anything he wants of Trump. I am confident the president will acquit himself admirably, but the litmus test for Wallace playing fair in the debate will be whether or not he asks any hard-hitting questions of Biden — especially about the new Senate report on the corrupt activities of his son Hunter in Ukraine and elsewhere.
If you have heard anything about the Biden report on CNN and MSNBC, or read about it in your newspapers, chances are you came away thinking that Republicans had made up a series of fake charges against the Bidens. “Nothing to see here. Move along.”
The Washington Post, as usual, was at the front of the pack for Fake News coverage. The Post used its headline to focus entirely on Hunter’s position on the board of the corrupt Ukrainian energy company Burisma, and claimed that the report doesn’t show that the cozy arrangement “changed U.S. policy” — as if that were the only reason you would not want a vice president’s son enriching himself at the trough of foreign oligarchs.
The story then spent most of its 35 paragraphs excusing Hunter’s behavior either directly or through surrogates such as Democrat senators, and most nauseatingly by quoting Hunter Biden’s daughter, Naomi, who “offered a personal tribute to her father” in the form of a series of tweets, including the following:
“Though the whole world knows his name, no one knows who he is. Here’s a thread on my dad, Hunter Biden — free of charge to the taxpayers and free of the corrosive influence of power-at-all-costs politics. The truth of a man filled with love, integrity, and human struggles.” Oh my, that’s convincing evidence of innocence of wrongdoing. I imagine she also endorses her grandfather for president, for what it’s worth.
The three reporters who wrote the Post piece also spin the facts like whirling dervishes. They say that the report by Sens. Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley “rehashes” known details of the matter. They quote Democrats to say without evidence that the report’s key findings are “rooted in a known Russian disinformation effort.”
The following passage in particular shows how one-sided the story is:
“Democrats argue that Johnson has ‘repeatedly impugned’ Biden, and they pointed to his recent comments hinting that the report would shed light on Biden’s ‘unfitness for office,’ as reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, to argue that the entire investigation was orchestrated as a smear campaign to benefit Trump.”
Using the “shoe on the other foot” test, can you ever imagine a similar statement being made in the Washington Post about the Trump impeachment investigation? Let’s see. How would that go?
“Republicans argue that Rep. Adam Schiff has ‘repeatedly impugned’ Trump, and they pointed to his recent comments hinting that the report would shed light on Trump’s ‘unfitness for office’ to argue that the entire investigation was orchestrated as a smear campaign to benefit Biden.”
Oh yeah, sure! The chance of reading that paragraph in the Washington Post news pages would have been absolutely zero.
Perhaps even more insidious was the decision by the editors to push the most significant news in the report to the bottom of the Post’s story. That is the lucrative relationship that Hunter Biden established in 2017 with a Chinese oil tycoon named Ye Jianming. Biden was apparently paid $1 million to represent Ye’s assistant while he was facing bribery charges in the United States.
Even more disturbing, “In August 2017, a subsidiary of Ye’s company wired $5 million into the bank account of a U.S. company called Hudson West III, which over the next 13 months sent $4.79 million marked as consulting fees to Hunter Biden’s firm, the report said. Over the same period, Hunter Biden’s firm wired some $1.4 million to a firm associated with his uncle and aunt, James and Sara Biden, according to the report.”
Then, in late 2017, “Hunter Biden and a financier associated with Ye also opened a line of credit for Hudson West III that authorized credit cards for Hunter Biden, James Biden and Sara Biden, according to the report, which says the Bidens used the credit cards to purchase more than $100,000 worth of items, including airline tickets and purchases at hotels and restaurants.”
The Post also glossed over payments received by Hunter Biden from Yelena Baturina, who the story acknowledges “is the widow of former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov and is a member of Kazakhstan’s political elite.” What the story doesn’t say is that the payments received by Hunter Biden’s companies while Joe Biden was vice president totaled close to $4 million. Does anyone have even the slightest curiosity why Hunter’s companies received these payments from a Russian oligarch? As Donald Trump Jr. noted, if he had the same record of taking money from foreign nationals, he “would be in jail right now.”
In other words, the headline and the lede of the Washington Post story were entirely misleading. What readers should have been told is that there is a pattern of corruption and inexplicable enrichment in the Biden family that has continued for years and that Joe Biden has turned his back on it.
Seems worthy of the attention of the voters who will determine the nation’s leadership for the next four years. So the most important question at the debate Tuesday night is the following: Will Chris Wallace take the same cowardly path as the Washington Post, or will he demand an answer from candidate Biden as to why influence peddling, conflicts of interest and virtual money laundering are acceptable?
Based on Wallace’s track record, I’m not holding my breath that we will get either the question or the answer, but if we do, I will happily applaud him as the tough-as-nails journalist he is supposed to be.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/33bCrfC Tyler Durden
“Supply Has Been Decimated”: California Mask Shortage Has Worsened Due To Wildfire Smoke Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/28/2020 – 20:40
N95 masks were already in hot demand when wildfires on the West Coast started blanketing the entire coast with smoke. It seems that it isn’t just the pandemic that California is doing a poor job at managing – but also the state’s growing wildfire problem.
The kicker is that both issues are spurring a massive demand for masks – and the state is having a shortage.
Now, West Coast residents like Lindsey Major, who is 25 and has asthma, are desperate to find N95 masks. “You can breathe, but it’s like something weighing on your chest. My lungs felt like they were full of wet bands,” she told Bloomberg. She was able to finally get one mask after posting desperately on a Facebook group.
The very same masks that are being recommended by the CDC to filter out Covid were “almost unfindable” as air quality on the West Coast deteriorated due to the wildfires. Supply has been “decimated”.
Major (Source: BBG)
Now, with weeks to go in wildfire season, dozens of fires across California resulted in 3.7 million acres burning. Smoke from the fires has been pushed into major cities, resulting in orange skies – some photographs of which we posted days ago here.
Health departments have been urging citizens to stay inside as much as possible, despite the fact that most homes lack high grade air filters.
President Trump used the Defense Production Act back in April to force 3M to continue to make N95 masks. The company is predicting output of 95 million masks per month in October, which is up from 50 million in June. But officials from many states still claim they are having trouble purchasing PPE, including masks.
And emergency mask shipments “are hardly making it into the hands of the general public,” according to Bloomberg. Instead, many requests for masks are going directly to first responders and health-care workers.
Jim Murphy is another West Coast resident who said he bought N95 masks back in January, but wound up giving them to relatives who were essential workers.
“If you’re like me, and you have a couple of dogs you need to take out for walks, you have no choice but to get outside. It would sure be nice to have something that would protect you from the smoke even for short periods of time,” he said.
Aaron Bourne, the general manager at W.C. Winks Hardware in Portland, said he sold out of a shipment of 100 masks in less than 2 business days.
Joel Kaufman, a doctor and professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington, concluded that the masks should be saved for emergency workers close to fires that have been fitted for them: “The people we worry most about — the people with chronic lung conditions – aren’t good candidates to wear these masks, because the masks increase the amount of work it takes to get air in and out. The folks who need it the most are, sort of, the least able to tolerate wearing them.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3mZoVn8 Tyler Durden
As violent protesters have begun to diminish for the time being in areas such as Portland, it is time to reflect upon exactly who is perpetrating the street violence in Portland and other places. Not only who these people are (we’ll get to that in a moment), but what is the trigger that is inciting these people to violence?
One key facilitator is intuitively obvious – it’s the mask. Anonymity gives a sense of boldness to lash out and behave in aggressive ways. The original psychological study that established this proclivity was the famous (or infamous) Stanford study from 1971. This study in many ways established the social phenom of mirrored sunglasses, both as fashion chic and also their popular association with authoritarianism.
The takeaway from the study was that anonymity in many ways encourages behavior that most would not normally carry out. Updated studies in 2010 further validated the association of anonymity with aggressive and unkind acts, and, frankly, the beginnings of violent acts focused on self-gratification.
So, when some insisted the citizens mask up, the first flammable element was established for civil disorder. The order was to mask up—and most everyone dutifully did. Some of the masks were of little medical value, but no one questioned that—anything was acceptable.
In a first in modern human history, an entire populace now faced each other, masked-up. This was the first step toward chaos on the American street. Some didn’t realize the unintended consequences; some did and exploited this opportunity for the next step in manipulating society.
Grievance and Narcissism
The next combustible element put in the pile seemingly was George Floyd’s death. His death was sad and appeared initially to be solely police brutality—facts will be presented, and this will be dealt with in a court of law, that’s our process. However, violence, destruction, and chaos shortly spun out of control after May 25, 2020. It was far more than George Floyd. Many of the rioters were expressing sheer, unadulterated anger. But anger over what?
To get to the core of this anger, one must understand the driving tenets of the psychology of those masked purveyors. The rainstorm of gibberish they are spewing can be boiled down to two things—grievance and narcissism.
And where did they get this gibberish? This often idolized, but rarely understood character called Marx. Marx was a sloven, slothful, and sloppy scatterbrain who shook down rich friends for support while his family lived in abject poverty and filth. He thought big thoughts of grievance and narcissism while his family starved.
The essence of his thought – it’s always someone else’s fault (grievance), and they need to hand over their wealth to support me (narcissism).
Please read or re-read W. Cleon Skousen’s classic, “The Naked Communist” to understand this toxic and cancerous thought pattern. This is the same thought pattern that created the corrosive and destructive “1619” project that is an updated version of Marx’s thoughts.
In conducting the forensics of our current social unrest, we have masks combined with grievance and narcissism. Now all the purveyors of hate and discontent need are the organization and structure to channel their hate and discontent.
School Teachers and Librarians as Social Justice Warriors
Having the organizational infrastructure in place, unionized K-12 teachers and staff are the perfect societal, organized group to take the combination of masks, grievance, and narcissism and operationalize it as the shock troops for taking down the American constitutional system. Rick Moran identified this in his 2017 piece, “Dozens of public school teachers involved in Antifa.” It was a clarion call that something was going on.
The arrest reports from around the country have shown a high number of those arrested are part of the K-12 education system. Often times, arrests from Portland have reflected numbers north of 50 percent. Andy Ngo and others have done an excellent job of documenting this connection – often at great personal risk. The street thugs of Antifa and BLM seem to lose their “bravery” once the mask comes off and they are exposed.
The Puppet Master: China
Now we have all the ingredients. Masks. Grievance and narcissism. Organization and structure. Now all that is needed is some funding and encouragement. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), under great pressure with a collapsing economy, rising pushback against belt and road initiatives, and an American President who has run over their plans like a bulldozer, has seized on this opportunity to de-stabilize America. It’s now a race to see who can collapse whose country first.
Chinese agents have been handing out “walking around” money – the old school term that American CIA clandestine operations officers used with great operational effect in many foreign countries (Guatemala, Iran) and later in other countries (Chile).
The CCP learned from us and funded the riots of 2020. TikTok enabled the tailored channeling and delivery of grievance and narcissism on a vast scale. The Chinese consulate in Houston was closed in particular for diplomatic officials being identified as enabling street violence.
The FBI Director and Attorney General have now made China Job #1. The conduit of Chinese Communist money has been using the historical path of China and Hong Kong financial transactions to party officials and family members in Vancouver, BC and then converting the wired funds into cash to be snuck into the U.S. for several purposes such as real estate acquisitions.
This CCP funding has been carried over the border into the United States as the walking around money paying Antifa and BLM leaders and street agitators. $250 for smashing windows for the night when the police let me go immediately with no charges? The positive return on investment is clear for all participants. Especially when masks are worn.
The Clear Forensics
Like forensics done on a fire, the chain of events and combination of combustible elements are clear. Masks. Grievance and Narcissism. School Teachers, staff, social workers and such. Foreign funding and meddling by the CCP. The fire forensics are clear on the root cause of violence by Antifa and Black Lives Matter in 2020. The violence has little to do with George Floyd. It’s an insatiable manifestation of grievance and narcissism that will never be satisfied. The answer: Reject the thesis of their argument.
Do not quibble, do not try to rationalize with the mob – reject their thesis and aggressively deal with them – both citizens and all levels of government must lock shoulders and stand against the blind rage of the street mobbery. Once specific personalities are personally held liable for the death and destruction they create, the violence will rapidly go away.
This is not just the masked actors – this includes the state and local leaders and politicians that act in a feckless, hapless matter. Fecklessness may not be a crime, but results count, so citizens, please hold these politicians and leaders responsible through recall petitions and new elections.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Gjqlb0 Tyler Durden
The Man Who Tried To Convert The “Vampire Squid” Into A “Lovable Teddy Bear” Is Leaving Goldman Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/28/2020 – 20:00
Five years ago, when Goldman made a historic pivot away from its prop and flow trading, investment banking and central banker incubating bread and butter, and into a consumer digital deposit and lending platform via “Marcus”, it prompted a lot of raised eyebrows across Wall Street and at Goldman Sachs itself, where the strategy shift “was initially met with cynicism from some of Goldman’s own investment bankers, who openly derided it.”
Yet despite the snickers that Goldman was becoming a subprime lender to offset its declining capital markets dominance, Marcus plowed ahead with new offerings and partnerships, and got a lift from the industry’s deposit windfall this year. According to Bloomberg, it is on the cusp of generating $1 billion in annual revenue (which remains a small fraction of the bank’s tally of roughly $40 billion.
Yet not everything appears to be going to plan at 200 West Street, because as Bloomberg reports, the banker who was instrumental in spawning and helping guide Goldman’s tentacular embrace of Main Street is giving up his post in a management shuffle at the consumer unit.
Harit Talwar, who Bloomberg describes as “the face of Goldman’s five-year-old dive into mom-and-pop banking” is leaving the investment bank and Omer Ismail will take over as the new global consumer head.
Talwar joined Goldman in 2015, when former CEO Lloyd Blankfein first sketched out his plans for a new consumer-facing business line which now include an Apple co-branded credit card, a “high yield” deposit account (which pays a whopping 0.60% in interest), and a consumer lending division, all under the Marcus umbrella. The 59-year-old Talwar previously headed the US cards division for Discover Financial and spent 15 years at Citigroup with roles tied to cards, loans and retail banking.
According to Bloomberg, he had to be coaxed into joining the Wall Street titan, initially unsure of Goldman’s commitment to a strategy pivot. He probably regrets his decision in retrospect.
That said, Marcus continues to grow, albeit slowly (taking market share from other banks has proven difficult), which begs the question what may have prompted his departure? One possible answer is that Talwar pitched the online offering as a “lovable teddy bear,” in contrast to the “vampire squid” moniker the firm got stuck with courtesy of Matt Taibbi immediately following the financial crisis.
Under Talwar, Goldman tried to develop a reputation for its consumer business distinct from the one earned by its traditional dealings in high finance which are – shall we say – unsavory, including using a brand that tries to remove the Goldman association (the Marcus name was a nod to Marcus Goldman, a German immigrant who founded the firm in 1869).
Joking aside, what may have done Talwar in appears to be the oldest reason in the book: egos. As Bloomberg notes, some executives expected the consumer business to grow as a separate division that would express Goldman’s devotion to what it called a startup inside a 150-year-old firm. “But CEO David Solomon sprung a surprise on the operation earlier this year when he folded the consumer unit into the group that also includes wealth and asset management, clipping its standing as an independent business line.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/36sqUL1 Tyler Durden
If 2020 had a slogan, it would be “The Year Of Our Discontent.” This sentiment is felt in virtually every country globally as national governments declare war on their economy, the working class, the poor, and the very old and the very young. In America, the “discontent” is genuine.
Already reeling from a mass propaganda campaign of division created by the MSM corporate outlets, Americans were still attempting to claw their way out of an economic depression with some success.
Then, of course, came COVID.
China engaged in a massive police state repression of what few individual liberties existed, locking residents in their apartment buildings, disappearing doctors, and, allegedly, patients themselves. Australia and Western Europe joined in the hysteria, with Australia attempting to become as totalitarian as the Chinese and mainly succeeding.
Western Europe engaged in the biggest propaganda campaign since the war in Iraq and the United States. Locked in some media manipulated struggle, Western Europe saw its governments shut down their economies, deploy National Guard troops, enforce lockdowns, and wear masks for their states’ populations.
As a result of the implementation of Communo-Fascism, the world’s economy tanked, shrank, and may never come back as long as these governments and “leaders” remain in power.
In America, however, amid the economic collapse and COVID hysteria, a new threat has emerged.
For those living in America, the civil war, societal disruption, and chaos sowed overseas for so many years appear to be germinating back home.
In other words, the empire appears to be collapsing as they all inevitably do.
But, when empires collapse, they often leave a vacuum. At the very least, they present opportunities to other powers and, especially, other empires.
In addition to America’s problems at home, it appears the entire world might be sleepwalking into a third World War and yet another “restructuring” of the world order. Seemingly localized incidents have an international and global root, and the reverberations will be felt across the entire planet.
It took over a month before the first shots of the war were truly fired after the assassination. In the meantime, the world’s population carried on as it had prior – going to work, going to school, engaging in business, etc. Politicians crowed about national dignity and others about retribution. In a sense, once the initial shock of the assassination had worn off, life continued as usual until it didn’t.
It is now entirely possible that we find ourselves in just the same type of situation.
While the world’s people are focused on a virus and America teeters on the brink of a civil war, the world’s governments are positioning themselves for a global conflagration, the likes of which we have never seen if for no other reason that the existence and proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Below are just a few examples of the world’s current hotspots that could, at any moment, drag the entire globe into a military confrontation.
Armenia | Azerbaijan
The Armenia/Azerbaijan conflict continues apace. Both sides have fired at one another repeatedly over the past few years. On Sunday, however, the situation erupted and an official state of war was declared in the region.
Zero Hedge reports:
“Early in the morning, around 7 a.m. the Azerbaijani forces launched a large-scale aggression, including missile attacks…” Armenia’s Defense Ministry stated Sunday. Armenia has since reportedly declared martial law and a “total military mobilization” in what looks to be the most serious escalation between the two countries in years.
Air and artillery attacks from both sides ramped up, with each side blaming the other for the start of hostilities, while international powers urge calm. Crucially, civilians have already been killed on either side by indiscriminate shelling. At least a dozen soldiers on either side have also been reported killed.
Armenia’s high command has ordered all troops throughout the country to muster and report to their bases: “I invite the soldiers appointed in the forces to appear before their military commissions in the regions,” a statement said. (source)
While previously avoiding large-scale military clashes, there is potential to bring in much more significant players – Russia and Turkey and NATO itself- as both nations are acting as patrons and weapons suppliers to the Armenians Azeris. Read the article, “Regional Conflict Brewing In Azerbaijan, Armenia,” to get a clear understanding of the conflict taking place.
United States | Russia
Although things might not appear as dangerous today as they did during the time period of Obama’s “red lines” in Syria and the highest point of American provocation in Ukraine, 2020 has marked direct, albeit minuscule, skirmishes between Russians and Americans in Syria.
Incidents of fistfights followed numerous Russian and American refusals to allow others to pass through checkpoints. American and Russian soldiers have intentionally run each other’s patrols off the road, resulting in injuries. It is now commonplace for these forces to collide in this manner, with one or the other being forced off the highway by a slightly more substantial contingent of opposing forces, complete with helicopters circling overhead.
Even if the Russian and American militaries’ strategy is to “let boys be boys,” how long will it be before those boys decide to fire on one another?
In contrast, the United States maintains troops in Western Ukraine, and shelling still occurs regularly between the Western and Eastern sides. Any major incident between the two would have cataclysmic repercussions for the world. While Russia might not go all the way to defend Syria, it will absolutely do so in Ukraine.
China | India | South East Asia | Japan | United States
While analysts seem divided on China’s question – some argue China is a victim of US imperialism, while others see it as the root of all evil – the truth is somewhere in between.
China and the US are unquestionably at odds with one another. However, China is every bit as much an empire as the United States, and it is much more adept at playing the long game.
However, recently, as the Trump administration in the United States begins calling out unfair trade practices, WTO favoritism, and Free Trade policies and attempting to bring jobs back to the United States from Chinese sweatshops, China has responded more traditionally.
From retaliatory and targeted tariffs (fair enough) to alleged cyber attacks, China is responding. However, the Chinese response has come in the form of traditional military tactics and preparing for “unrestricted warfare” with the United States. In other words, war with no rules.
But China has also increased its aggression against its Asian neighbors in the east, most notably Japan and Vietnam. Chinese friction with Japan is perhaps the most well known, and it centers around the Senkaku Islands (Diaoyu in China). Also, China is attempting to extend its borders in the South China Sea by creating artificial islands to stretch its maritime claims.
Its tensions with Vietnam and the Philippines also stem from a desire to impose its empirical desires upon those sovereign governments generally within the orbit of the United States.
Taiwan has always been a sore spot with China, with PROC maintaining that it’s the ultimate goal is “liberation” and return of Taiwan to mainland China. However, recently, China has become even bolder in its claims, threatening imminent war to reclaim Taiwan.
Greece | Turkey
Greek and Turkish relations have always been tense. Yet, Western audiences persist in believing they are outside of history and that any Euro-Med country is beyond the point of starting pointless wars.
A war between Turkey and Greece would necessarily involve the rest of Europe, as evidenced by the fact that France has already sent token air support to the region to deter Turkey.
Of course, Germany’s close relationship to Turkey may not put it on the side of Europe and possibly raise tensions between France and Germany if the conflict goes too far. Europe may very well find itself in yet another inter-European quagmire with the wildcards of NATO, US, Russia, and the ironically capitalistic Chinese waiting in the wings.
Conclusion
This is by no means an exhaustive list of conflicts shaping up around the world. It is merely a glimpse into some of the more significant possibilities that might launch this planet into a repeat of 1914 when the modern world was sleepwalking into the greatest catastrophe it had yet to see.
We can no longer afford to continue sleepwalking. Like the first World War, a new world will undoubtedly rise out of the ashes. But these ashes will be nuclear, and the world will be far different from the one in 1919.
The building blocks for that world are already in place, but that is a topic for another article.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/345g1Md Tyler Durden
From Friday’s decision by Judge Lynn Adelman (E.D. Wis.) in Anderson v. Hansen:
[Heidi] Anderson is the mother of two children who attend schools within the Elmbrook School District. On August 11, 2020, the Elmbrook Board of Education held a public meeting to address the District’s procedures for dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the measures under consideration was a requirement that all children attending school in person wear masks to minimize the transmission of the virus through respiratory droplets. Anderson attended the meeting in person and signed up to speak about the proposal.
Anderson opposes mask mandates in general, and she was against the District’s proposal to require children to wear masks at school. The Board allowed her to express her views during the time allotted for citizen comments about the proposal. She was given two minutes to speak. When she was called to the podium, she delivered remarks that lasted over eight minutes.
During her remarks, Anderson gave a variety of reasons for opposing the mask proposal. Some reasons related to her faith. Anderson is Christian, and she believes that wearing masks is inconsistent with the Christian faith. During her remarks, she expressed her view that “[s]ix-foot distance and masks are a Pagan ritual of Satanic worshipers.” She stated that because her family is Christian and does not practice Satanic worship, her children are not made to “stand six feet apart from each other with facial coverings.”
Towards the end of her remarks, Anderson turned her attention to Dr. [Mushir] Hassan, a medical doctor and school board member whom the Board had designated as its medical liaison:
“[Mrs. Anderson:] Dr. Mushar, and I hope I’m saying this correctly, you are not the right choice to be the Board liaison. You do not practice in infectious disease, you have political leaning contrary to the will of this district. You online state that you’re a big Obama fan and you comply mentally with his control philosophy, and you have publicly slammed our president Trump online. I’m finishing. As a leader in the Islamic community—
“[Interjection by School Board President:] Heidi, we have to avoid defamatory comments.
“[Mrs. Anderson:] This is not defamatory. I’m stating facts. [To Dr. Hassan:] You are a leader in the Islamic community are you not, and a leader on the Board—
“[Board President:] Heidi.
“[Mrs. Anderson:] O.K. Well listen, my kids are Christians. They are not subject to wearing face coverings. Christian children should not be forced to wear face coverings any more than children who are Islamic or Muslim should be forced to, as you’ve put it, ‘be subject to the American style sexualization of children,’ and have to wear less clothing than you’re comfortable with your children wearing….
“[To the Board generally:] You are employed by the people of Brookfield and Elm Grove, you are elected to serve us. And the Elmbrook School administration works at our pleasure. You do not work for Madison, or any other unelected entity—our government is of the people, by the people, and for the people. This is one country, one nation under God, and we look to God for these answers when we can’t figure it out and I would suggest that you all do that. There is a wonderful prayer that he taught us to pray, it’s called the Lord’s prayer, and you can find it in your Bible. Thank you for your time.”
The board meeting was broadcast over the Internet. Anderson later learned that her comments had sparked controversy online. Some observers described her remarks as “ignorant,” “Islamophobic,” and “insensitive.” In response to these comments, the Elmbrook School District contacted community members and told them that the District condemned Anderson’s remarks. The District also “censored” a portion of Anderson’s comments, which I assume means that the District edited the archived video recording of her comments to remove the comments she directed towards Dr. Hassan. Further, on August 12, 2020, the day after the meeting, the School Board published a statement on its website in which it apologized to Dr. Hassan and expressed its view that Anderson’s statement was unacceptable….
[After some more back-and-forth, Superintendent Dr. Mark Hansen] informed Anderson that she would not be allowed on any District property without the prior approval of either the superintendent or the principal of her children’s school…. Anderson may not attend a Board of Education meeting or participate in events at her children’s school, including her daughter’s dance recitals, without first obtaining permission from the superintendent or the school principal. Moreover, because Anderson’s polling place is located inside an elementary school in the District, she may not vote in person without first receiving permission from the superintendent or a school principal….
Anderson sued, and Judge Adelman ruled that she was entitled to a preliminary injunction, because she had “a very high likelihood of success on the merits of her First Amendment claim”:
At the outset, I note that this case does not require me to determine whether Anderson’s comments towards Dr. Hassan displayed religious intolerance or were inappropriate, hateful, or offensive. For even if they were, the First Amendment would protect the plaintiff’s right to make them. See Matal v. Tam (2017) (“Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express ‘the thought that we hate.’ “); id. (Kennedy, J., concurring) (recognizing that, with few exceptions, “it is a fundamental principle of the First Amendment that the government may not punish or suppress speech based on disapproval of the ideas or perspectives the speech conveys”); Rosenberger v. Rector (1995) (“It is axiomatic that the government may not regulate speech based on its substantive content or the message it conveys.”). Thus, basic First Amendment principles prevent the District from subjecting the plaintiff to adverse action for no other reason than it considered her speech at the board meeting intolerant, offensive, or hateful….
The government may place reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions on speech and regulate its own meetings. Thus, the District could have enforced its two-minute time limit for citizen comments and cut the plaintiff off once she exceeded the limit. Moreover, if the plaintiff’s comments to Dr. Hassan amounted to a personal attack rather than an attempt to express a viewpoint on the mask proposal, the board members could have told the plaintiff to keep her remarks focused on the issues or taken other action to prevent her from continuing to speak on topics that were not germane to the board meeting.
Here, however, the District’s policy cannot be viewed as a reasonable time, place, and manner restriction or another permissible regulation of speech. The policy is not reasonably tailored to prevent the plaintiff from exceeding time limits, veering off topic, or being belligerent at future board meetings. Instead, the policy flatly bans the plaintiff from entering school property for any purpose without permission. This ban has no rational connection to enforcing restrictions on citizen comments at board meetings and thus can only be viewed as a way of punishing the plaintiff for the comments she made during the prior board meeting.
The defendants contend that their policy is designed to ensure that religious harassment is not tolerated on school property…. Perhaps the District is arguing that the policy is a prophylactic measure designed to prevent Anderson from entering onto school property and harassing others based on their religion. But this justification for the policy would be preposterous. It is not rational to think that because Anderson made religiously intolerant statements during her citizen comments at a public board meeting that she will roam the halls of the Elmbrook schools and harass those she encounters on the basis of their religion.
Moreover, in the unlikely event Anderson does engage in such behavior, the District could intervene at that time. As the defendants note in their brief, no person has an unlimited right to be present on school property, and the District has adopted a general rule that allows building administrators to eject disruptive persons from school grounds, Thus, if Anderson causes a disruption on school property, the District could have her removed even if the policy at issue in this case were not in force. This shows that the policy serves no rational purpose other than to punish Anderson for having expressed views with which the District disagrees….
Anderson seems like rather a fool to me, but, no, she can’t be banned from school district property because she criticized a public official at a school board meeting, whether her criticism stemmed from hostility to Muslims or anything else.
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China Has Purchased Less Than One-Third Of Goods It Promised Under Phase One Deal Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/28/2020 – 19:20
President Trump has touted his “historic” US-China trade agreement as a boon for America’s farmers. Still, a little more than eight months have passed since the deal was signed, and Beijing has purchased less than one-third of the US exports it said it would buy this year under the agreement.
A summary of China’s monthly purchases of US goods covered by the deal, derived from Chinese customs (China’s imports) and the US Census Bureau (US exports) data, presented by Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), shows China’s year-to-date total imports of covered US goods (as of August) were $56 billion, versus the prorated year-to-date target of $115.1 billion.
What this means for the prorated year-to-date target as of last month is that China is about 48% below the levels it needs to fulfill the trade deal this year. As for the full-year target of $172.7 billion, well, China has only purchased less than a third.
Here is PIIE’s breakdown of China’s imports by product type, showing Beijing is severely behind in purchases of agriculture, manufactured goods, and energy products.
Covered Agriculture Products
For covered agricultural products, China committed to an additional $12.5 billion of purchases in 2020 above 2017 levels, implying an annual target of $36.6 billion (Chinese imports, panel b) and $33.4 billion (US exports, panel c). Through August 2020, China’s imports of covered agricultural products were $11.0 billion, compared with a year-to-date target of $24.4 billion. Over the same period, US exports of covered agricultural products were $9.6 billion, compared with a year-to date target of $22.3 billion. Through the first eight months of 2020, China’s purchases were thus only at 43 percent (US exports) or 45 percent (Chinese imports) of their year-to-date targets.
Covered Manufactured Products
For covered manufactured products, China committed to an additional $32.9 billion of purchases in 2020 above 2017 levels, implying an annual target of $110.8 billion (Chinese imports) and $83.1 billion (US exports). Through August 2020, China’s imports of covered manufactured products were $41.5 billion, compared with a year-to-date target of $73.9 billion. Over the same period, US exports of covered manufactured products were $33.2 billion, compared with a year-to-date target of $55.4 billion. Through the first eight months of 2020, China’s purchases were thus only at 60 percent (US exports) or 56 percent (Chinese imports) of their year-to-date targets.
Covered Energy Products
For covered energy products, China committed to an additional $18.5 billion of purchases in 2020 above 2017 levels, implying an annual target of $25.3 billion (Chinese imports) and $26.1 billion (US exports). Through August 2020, China’s imports of covered energy products were $3.5 billion, compared with a year-to-date target of $16.9 billion. Over the same period, US exports of covered energy products were $4.8 billion, compared with a year-to-date target of $17.4 billion. Through the first eight months of 2020, China’s purchases were thus only at 27 percent (US exports) or 21 percent (Chinese imports) of their year-to-date targets.
Despite the lack of purchases, Trump continues to tell farmers the deal is “fully intact.” Nevertheless, increased friction between both countries over coronavirus, technology transfers, and Taiwan have erupted this year, making it less likely for Beijing to fulfill its phase one obligations as it has gone elsewhere.
A new development that could weigh on US purchases is that China appears to be urging domestic companies to limit imports of foods from countries where the virus pandemic continues to rage.
Readers should be asking one simple question: Why isn’t the Trump administration being held accountable for not enforcing their own trade deal?
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3ikcX45 Tyler Durden
