Tag: news

The race is on, and the US military is preparing to shore up its complex supply chains with 3D printers. The military wants to transform how supplies are deployed in a conflict. 

The US Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) partnered with Xerox to pilot test the Xerox ElemX Liquid Metal 3D printer on its university campus, according to 3D Printing Industry. 

Naresh Shanker, Xerox Chief Technology Officer, said the US military supply chain is very complex, and NPS understands future manufacturing challenges as supply chains between the US and China are fracturing as trade tensions increase.

“This collaboration will aid NPS in pushing adoption of 3D printing throughout the US Navy, and will provide Xerox valuable information to help deliver supply chain flexibility and resiliency to future customers,” Shanker said. 

The Collaborative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) between Xerox and NPS will one day allow the Navy to print 3D parts and equipment on demand, and on the modern battlefield. 

NPS students will experiment with the Xerox ElemX Liquid Metal 3D printer. They will learn how to design and create prototype parts on the device. 

“From the age of sail to the nuclear era, sailors have been fixing things at sea so they can complete the mission,” said NPS President, Ann Rondeau. “This partnership is about the strategic ability of the navy to have sailors on ships with the capability through creativity and technology to advance their operations at sea.” 

Rondeau said, “through collaboration, NPS and Xerox are helping build a Navy for the 21st century.” 

Xerox’s 3D printer could soon allow the Navy to fabricate military parts without worrying about vulnerabilities in its supply chains. 

“The NPS Alumni Association and Foundation-supported bringing the ElemX liquid metal printer to NPS because it will enable soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines to solve their problems where they are, when problems occur,” said retired US Marine Corps Colonel and Vice President of the NPS Alumni Association and Foundation, Todd Lyons. 

The CRADA between Xerox and NPS will transform the supply chain and how the Department of Defense operationally plans for war. 

The US military has already integrated 3D printers into operations by printing missile parts and helicopter parts.

In a separate report, BofA’s Francisco Blanch told clients, in a note, that for many years, America levered its economic and military might to secure global supply chains. Still, as the world becomes a more fractured place, the military has turned to new technologies to stay ahead of China.

Blanch shows the US military tremendously outspends the Chinese but that gap could be closing by the end of the decade.

Readers may recall, the Centre for Economics and Business Research warns China could overtake the US to become the world’s largest economy in 2028, five years earlier than previously anticipated, after weathering the virus pandemic much better than the US. 

To sum up, the US must rapidly modernize its force or it will lose the great power competition. 

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

The head of US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) warned that a nuclear war with Russia or China is a “real possibility” and is calling for a change in US policy that reflects this threat.

“There is a real possibility that a regional crisis with Russia or China could escalate quickly to a conflict involving nuclear weapons, if they perceived a conventional loss would threaten the regime or state,”  Vice Adm. Charles Richard wrote in the February edition of the US Naval Institute’s monthly magazine.

Richard said the US military must “shift its principal assumption from ‘nuclear employment is not possible’ to ‘nuclear employment is a very real possibility,’ and act to meet and deter that reality.”

The STRATCOM chief said Russia and China “have begun to aggressively challenge international norms and global peace using instruments of power and threats of force in ways not seen since the height of the Cold War.”

Richard hyped up Russia and China’s nuclear modernization, calling for the US to compete with the two nations. When it comes to China’s nuclear weapons, the US and Russia have vastly larger arsenals. Current estimates put Beijing’s nuclear arsenal at about 320 warheads, while Washington and Moscow have about 6,000 warheads each.

Even if Beijing doubles its arsenal over the next decade, as the China hawks are predicting, it will still be small compared to Washington’s. The US would have to eliminate a good amount of its arsenal to convince Beijing to participate in arms control agreements.

Since STRATCOM is the command post that oversees Washington’s nuclear arsenal, its commanders are always overplaying the risk of nuclear war and asking for more money to modernize the stockpile. But with the US prioritizing so-called “great power competition” with China and Russia and an increased US military presence in places like the South China Sea, the Arctic, and the Black Sea, the threat of nuclear war is rising.

After last month’s dismal payrolls report, according to which the US labor market contract by a whopping 140K workers in December (primary as a result of 372K restaurant workers losing their jobs amid the latest round of covid shutdowns), renewed optimism has emerged that the worst is over for the US market and that tomorrow when the BLS reports the January payrolls, the surprise will be solidly to the upside.

Or maybe not all that solidly: as Newsquawk reports, the expectation is for headline nonfarm payrolls to rebound in January from the negative reading in December, but analysts do not seem convinced that January’s data will fully pare back the December downside, despite increasingly constructive labor market signals. While initial jobless claims data had worsened (until today when it unexpectedly smashed expectations), continuing claims data has improved; the ADP’s gauge of payrolls surprised to the upside in January, raising hopes that similar can be seen in the BLS report; within the ISM business surveys, the employment subcomponents improved in both the services and manufacturing sectors, the former rising back into growth territory.

Further propping up the optimistic view, earlier today Goldman raised its nonfarm payrolls estimate from 125K to 200k, above the consensus of +100k, due to “stabilization in dining activity and in the severity of business restrictions” which suggests a smaller or minimal drag from the coronavirus relative to December. While Big Data employment signals were mixed in the month, the generally showed stabilization or improvement. Goldman also expects fewer seasonal layoffs of retail, leisure, and temp help workers, due to already-depressed employment levels in those industries (the BLS seasonal factors embed a decline of roughly 1.2mn workers).

On the other hand, consumer surveys have not signaled that Americans are more optimistic about labor market conditions in January. Incidentally, a far worse print would be precisely what the market wants: from a trader’s perspective, the reaction to the data – particularly in the event of a big upside beat or a big downside miss – will solidify the stimulus debate as the argument that good data could be bad for stimulus prospects gains traction amid the improvement seen in some economic metrics, COVID trends, and vaccination rollouts recently. Alternatively, a huge miss would accelerate the passage of the Biden stimulus plan.

With that in mind, this is what consensus expects tomorrow:

• Nonfarm payrolls:. +100k (range -250k to +450k) prev. -140k
  • Private payrolls:. +50k, (range -120k to +350k) prev. -95k
  • Manufacturing payrolls: +30k (range 0 to +77k) prev. 38k;
• Unemployment rate: 6.7% (range 6.5% to 7.0%) prev. 6.7%
• Average earnings m/m: +0.3% (range -0.4% to +0.8%) prev. 0.8%
• Average earnings y/y: +5.1% y/y (range 4.5% to 6.7%) prev 5.1%

A look at some of the factors behind the growing consensus view that the job market is on the mend, courtesy of Newsquawk:

JOBLESS CLAIMS: The read from the weekly initial jobless claims data is mixed: in the week that corresponds to the BLS survey period, claims printed 914k vs 892k going into the December jobs report; continuing claims, however, have eased to 4.99mln from 5.53mln going into the December report. In the January survey window, Pandemic Unemployment Assistance claims decreased in the week by 20k, taking it to 427k – while an encouraging development, it is still higher than the 398k in the December survey window. Through a broader lens, the four-week moving average for initial jobless claims ticked up to 851.75k going into the January jobs report (vs 814.25k going into the December report), although the continuing claims trend improved, with its four-week moving  verage falling to 4.998mln heading into the January report (vs 5.534mln going into the December report).

ADP: Payrolls company ADP’s gauge of January labor market conditions surprised to the upside, printing 174k vs an expected 49.0k, while the previous was revised up from -123.0k initially reported to -78k. After the data, Pantheon Macroeconomics said that given the noise in the data and the unreliability of the seasonals over the turn of the year, the recent trend in payrolls has been flat, adding that the ADP data has been close to the official payroll numbers in recent months, so a modest increase in Friday’s BLS number looks a decent bet. The consultancy looks for an aboveconsensus 200k reading, and ahead, is optimistic that the lifting of lockdown restrictions in February may see larger monthly prints from March onwards, if the vaccination rollouts continue and newer variants of the virus do not force further restrictions.

SURVEYS: Within both the manufacturing ISM and services ISM data, the employment sub-index ticked up in January. The manufacturing sector saw the employment sub-index rise from 51.7 to 52.6, remaining in growth territory for a second month; the services employment sub-index moved back into expansion, rising from 48.7 in December to 55.2 in January. ISM noted that comments from respondents in the services sector included “new hires required to perform awarded work in 2021” and “trying to replace and build staff in critical areas,” and after the manufacturing data, ISM said for the fifth straight month, survey panelist comments indicated that significantly more companies are hiring or attempting to hire than those reducing labor forces. In Markit’s composite PMI for the US, the data compiler said a softer rise in employment at service providers offset a quicker increase in job creation at manufacturers, as pressure on service sector capacity waned. Nevertheless, the business surveys contrast with consumers’ assessment of current business conditions, which weakened in January according to the Conference Board, and consumers’ assessment of the labor market was also less favorable the report said, with consumers saying jobs were ‘plentiful’ declining from 21.0 to 20.6, while those claiming jobs were ‘hard to get’ rose from 22.9 to 23.8.

JOB CUTS: Data from Challenger showed that planned job cuts for US based companies ticked slightly higher in January, rising to 79,552 from 77,030. But encouragingly, Challenger said that COVID was no longer the leading cause of cuts; in fact, it was a demand downturn that was the leading reason cited for job cut announcements, followed by restructuring; COVID was only responsible for 4,620 of the January job cuts figure. The report added that we are beginning to see a levelling-off in announcements, which is a positive sign for the months ahead. The report also said that firms might be reassessing staffing levels, and waiting on the impact of the government relief bill, before making any additional workforce decisions. The Challenger data might offer us an early insight into how consumers will enter the normalization phase of the pandemic; are they likely to throw caution to the wind and resume consuming at prepandemic levels, or will they remain cautious in the face of uncertainties; the contrast between business surveys and consumer surveys may, at this point, lean towards the latter.

* * *

Cribbing from Goldman’s latest upgrade of the labor situation published earlier today, here are the bank’s arguments for a better-than-expected report:

• The third wave of Covid. The coronavirus resurgence weighed on the December report, with a 498k drop in leisure and hospitality payrolls more than offsetting the 358k gains across the rest of the economy. While the public health situation remained dire in January, the severity of business restrictions was roughly unchanged on net, based on the Oxford policy stringency index and Goldman’s EffectiveLockdown Index (ELI). And as shown in Exhibit 1, restaurant seatings on Open tableactually rebounded modestly nationwide. While we doubt virus-sensitive industries rehired workers aggressively in January, sequential stabilization would be consistent with an above-consensus nonfarm payrolls reading as long as job growth in the rest of the economy proceeded anywhere near its December pace.

• Seasonality: Goldman expects a rise in temp help, retail, and potentially leisure payrollsn, reflecting fewer-than-usual seasonal layoffs. As shown in Exhibit 2, given the depressed employment levels in those industries, the end-of-year layoffs may have been smaller than usual. Reflecting this, these categories are expected to decline by less than the BLS seasonal factors anticipate, resulting in higher seasonally adjusted payrolls. Illustratively, a flat unadjusted reading across these three groupings would result in a +1.2mn contribution to January payrolls on a seasonally adjusted basis (mom sa)

• ADP. Private sector employment in the ADP report increased by 174k in January, above consensus expectations and consistent with a firm or solid rise in the official measure. On a seasonally adjusted basis, ADP reported strength in the leisure and hospitality industry and health care industry.
• Employer surveys. Business activity surveys increased on net in January. The employment component of the services survey tracker edged down (-0.3pt to 49.3),but one of the most comprehensive measures from the ISM increased to its highest level since December 2019 (55.7). And the employment component of Goldman’s manufacturing survey tracker increased to the highest level since March 2019

NEUTRAL/MIXED FACTORS:

• Big Data. High-frequency data on the labor market was mixed in January, but generally showed stabilization or improvement relative to December. While seasonal adjustment is particularly difficult in the month of January due to varying sensitives to end-of-year layoffs, Goldman estimates that the Google mobility index is consistent with an approximately +0.9mn rise in January payrolls and the Homebase measure with +0.8mn. In contrast, the Understand America Survey by USC is consistent with a modest decline in payrolls.
• Jobless claims. Initial jobless claims rose during the January payroll month but at a slower pace, averaging 835k per week vs. 814k in December and 744k in November. Some of these filings likely reflected filing incentives in the Phase 4 fiscal package (newly available $300 top-up payments), as well as some administratively required refiles at the start of the new year. Continuing claims fell 537k between the payroll survey weeks, but this decline partly reflects expiring regular-state-programs (as opposed to reemployment). Across all employee programs including emergency benefits, continuing claims fell by 480k.
• Job cuts. Announced layoffs reported by Challenger, Gray & Christmas fell by 18% in January after increasing by 32% in December. They remain 23% above their January 2020 levels.Arguing for a weaker-than-expected report:

ARGUING FOR A WEAKER THAN EXPECTED REPORT:

• Job availability. The Conference Board labor differential—the difference between the percent of respondents saying jobs are plentiful and those saying jobs are hard to get — fell further into contractionary territory (to -3.2 in January from -1.9 inDecember and +6.9 in November).

Finally, a look at how the market could react:

The market reaction will be informative for traders, particularly in the event of a big beat or a big miss. An argument is gaining traction that improving economic data and COVID trends in the US after some stark concerns at the end of last year/start of this year,  combined with a quicker than expected vaccine rollout, may stoke the hawkish argument that less monetary and fiscal stimulus might be warranted in the US, which could be detrimental to risk assets (the key catalysts for stocks are continued official support, improving corporate earnings, and continued improvement in COVID trends – if one of these is shaken, it may lead traders to reassess the bull case). After this week’ s solid ISM services data and ADP data on Wednesday, some downside was seen in the equities complex; this downside was only subsequently parred after a blog post from White House economic advisors, who warned about the long-term scarring potential on the economy (and of course implying that in spite of some of the better trends seen recently, a large degree of stimulus was still appropriate). But while policymakers adopt a cautious approach on scarring, some market participants remain unconvinced: as Goldman Sachs recently noted, signs of long-term damage to the economy remain surprisingly limited so far, calculating that around two-thirds of the jobs lost in the pandemic have now returned, while total company bankruptcies remained beneath pre-pandemic levels in December.

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

The former head of the CIA Counterterrorism Center has suggested that counterinsurgency tactics used by the military in Iraq and Afghanistan should be applied to ‘domestic extremists’ inside the US.

NPR reports that Robert Grenier, who directed the CIA’s Counterterrorism program from 2004 to 2006, declared “We may be witnessing the dawn of a sustained wave of violent insurgency within our own country, perpetrated by our own countrymen.”

In an op-ed for The New York Times last week, Grenier suggested that “extremists who seek a social apocalypse … are capable of producing endemic political violence of a sort not seen in this country since Reconstruction.”

Grenier, also a former CIA station chief in Pakistan and Afghanistan, grouped together “the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, the Oath Keepers, ‘Christian’ national chauvinists, white supremacists and QAnon fantasists” and claimed they are all “committed to violent extremism.”

Grenier labeled dissenters an “insurgency” and called for them to be “defeated” like an enemy army.

In further comments to NPR, Grenier stated that “as in any insurgency situation, you have committed insurgents who are typically a relatively small proportion of the affected population. But what enables them to carry forward their program is a large number of people from whom they can draw tacit support.”

Grenier also stated that insurgents may emerge from groups who “believe that the election was stolen,” or those “who don’t trust NPR or The New York Times.”

“The most violent elements that we are concerned about right now see former President Trump as a broadly popular and charismatic symbol,” the CIA spook added, before comparing Trump to Saddam Hussein.

“You know, just as I saw in the Middle East that the air went out of violent demonstrations when [Iraqi leader] Saddam Hussein was defeated and seen to be defeated, I think the same situation applies here,” he proclaimed.

Grenier suggested that Trump should be convicted at the upcoming impeachment trial as a ‘national security imperative’ because “So long as he is there and leading the resistance, if you will, which he shows every sign of intending to do, he is going to be an inspiration to very violent people.”

Grenier then compared Americans to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, noting that in Afghanistan “the thrust of our campaign there was, yes, to hunt down al-Qaida, but primarily to remove the supportive environment in which they were able to live and to flourish. And that meant fighting the Taliban.”

“I think that is the heart of what we need to deal with here,” he added.

Listen:

Linking to Grenier’s comments, journalist Glenn Greenwald quipped that wedding guests throughout America should watch out for drone missiles:

If you’re planning a wedding on US soil in the next couple of years, probably best to assign one of the guests to keep an eye on the sky to ensure there are no drones flying overhead to bomb the wedding party: https://t.co/dUpEunYm2q

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 3, 2021

The call to treat Americans as terrorist insurgents comes on the heels of a Department of Homeland Security warning that those dissatisfied with the election result may rise up and commit acts of terrorism in the coming weeks.

“Information suggests that some ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives, could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence,” stated the bulletin issued last week through the DHS National Terrorist Advisory System — or NTAS.

The bulletin added that ‘extremists’ may be “motivated by a range of issues, including anger over COVID-19 restrictions, the 2020 election results, and police use of force.”

Exxon Mobil is considering adding Inclusive Capital’s legendary activist Jeff Ubben to its board of directors in what could be a step toward helping beaten down Exxon stock unlock significant value, Bloomberg reported on Thursday evening. In addition, Inclusive is considering taking a “meaningful stake” in the company if he is appointed to the board.

Ubben is having “ongoing” and “constructive” talks with the board, according to the report. Other shareholders, including D.E. Shaw which have agitated in the recent past for Exxon – which over the weekend was reported to have considered a merger with Cheveron – to do something to push its stock price higher, are supportive of Ubben’s inclusion to the board (for obvious reasons). A decision on Ubben’s inclusion to the board could be made “in coming weeks”, the report says. 

Ubben left ValueAct last year to start his own firm that is focused on investments in social and environmental issues. Ubben may be eyeing Exxon not only due to the company’s ripe yield, but also as an opportunity to help guide Exxon out of the fossil fuel era, and to transition it for inclusion into the ESG frenzy.

Other activists have been busy in the name, too. “D.E. Shaw has written the company urging it to cut costs in order to preserve its dividend and called on the company to take steps to improve its environmental reputation” and Engine No. 1 investments has nominated 4 directors to the company’s board. 

Recall, just days ago, Exxon reported its first loss in 40 years but vowed to preserve its dividend, which currently sits at 7.3% as of Thursday’s close. 

For the fourth quarter, Exxon posted a previously disclosed $19.3 billion writedown of U.S. natural gas and other assets, capping the first annual loss for the Western world’s largest oil company in at least four decades. However, excluding the historic impairment, Exxon returned to profit in the fourth quarter, earning 3 cents per share, above the 0.02 consensus estimate, and ending a run of three consecutive quarterly losses.

As Bloomberg notes, Exxon is gradually emerging from the wreckage of 2020 facing the worst crisis in its modern history, its stock a far cry from where it traded just a year ago. In addition to growing criticism of its environmental record, financial performance has eroded to the point where its fabled dividend, the third-largest in the S&P 500 Index, is under pressure. Exxon extended the $3.7 billion payout for another quarter last week but hasn’t increased it since early 2019 and is relying on borrowed cash to sustain it.

That said, the company did go all-in on its defense of its massive dividend, with Bloomberg noting that “gone is any wiggle room on its statement: the company is pledging investors that even if oil prices average $50 a barrel (Brent basis) in 2021 and refining margins are horrendous, it would make enough money to cover both shareholders payouts and spending in projects.”

Perhaps sensing that Exxon was ripe for activist involvement, in late 2020 most major bank upgraded the stock to a buy after holding it at neutral or sell since the covid crisis.

Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com,

Ruh Roh: That Unhinged Canadian Conspiracy Theory is 5-for-5 so far…

A friend I’ve referenced in my writings before as “an unemployed tech CEO” (he’s been unemployed since one of his exits about 10 years ago) sent me that link that was making the rounds back in October…

It was purportedly from an anonymous Liberal Party “Strategic Committee” leaker that laid out a plan where the Canadian federal government, in collusion with world governments everywhere, were going to use the Coronavirus pandemic to impose a New World Order, distinctly communist in nature, replacing private property with Universal Basic Income and immunity passports.

I wrote it up at the time pointing out the various holes in the narrative, not the least of which was that it was completely unsourced. You had to decide to believe something like that.

My response to him was:

I saw this months ago and kinda ripped the guy who sent it to me because it sounded very Qanon-ish and just batshit. No sources, no attributions, it could literally be anything. I hate this kind of stuff.

Next thing I know my phone is ringing, and as I plug in my earbuds I hear his thick middle-eastern accent:

“Ok junior” (he had picked up my knickname from my punk rock days nearly 30 years ago, although he was never in that scene), “bring it up and let’s just walk down the list”:

• Phase in secondary lock down restrictions on a rolling basis, starting with major metropolitan areas first and expanding outward. Expected by November 2020

Well, here we are under lockdown in Toronto, again – and most other Canadian cities as well.

• Rush the acquisition of (or construction of) isolation facilities across every province and territory. Expected by December 2020.

The recently announced travel restrictions we’re all aware of. All flights to Caribbean and Mexico canceled, returning citizens sent to government approved hotels, which, at least as per the media reports coming in, seem to feel more like internment camps than hotels. Joe Warmington’s article describing the plight of a returning citizen who has been locked in a hotel room and fed prison-like rations despite having had a negative COVID-19 test prior to his embarking on the returning flight…

From @joe_warmington: Bread and water in locked room during forced detention after landing at Pearson https://t.co/Ui9vlu8z6e #cdnpoli

— Toronto Sun (@TheTorontoSun) February 3, 2021

• Daily new cases of COVID-19 will surge beyond capacity of testing, including increases in COVID related deaths following the same growth curves. Expected by end of November 2020.

Right, well the “casedemic” has been infuriating for anybody who actually looks at the data, who understands what a medical “case” is supposed to be or what a PCR test isn’t supposed to be. Especially when using high Cycle Thresholds.

As Chris Martenson (PhD in pathology from Duke University) outlines in the 2020 Year in Review with Dave Collum (PhD Columbia, Chemistry, teaches at Cornell): a medical “case” is one in which a patient is presenting symptoms and requires medical attention. That’s a case. PCR tests were never meant to discern whether somebody is an “infected case” or not, and as Collum elaborated in that same interview, “with a Cycle Threshold over 35, you can get a positive PCR test out of a dog’s ass”.

• Daily new cases of COVID-21 hospitalizations and COVID-19 and COVID-21 related deaths will exceed medical care facilities capacity. Expected Q1 – Q2 2021.

According to the media, this is true. According to reality, it isn’t. In CNN-style “fact checking” parlance, it would thus score as “partially true”.

“Covid Related Deaths” is a well worn catch-all. What is known to anybody keeping track: the vast majority of COVID fatalities are with COVID, not from it. We all know this,  for some reason it doesn’t seem to matter. The overall survival rate for this thing is somewhere around 97% or higher. Most people don’t know anybody in their immediate circle of friends and family that have actually died from it.

It can be terrible virus to catch and become sick with, and it’s tragic to die from. But the majority of people either exhibit flu like symptoms and shrug it off or remain completely asymptomatic. Overall it causes fewer fatalities to society than either alcohol (3 million deaths per year, globally) or driving (1.5 million) or for that matter air pollution at 4.2 million.

• Enhanced lock down restrictions (referred to as Third Lock Down) will be implemented. Full travel restrictions will be imposed (including inter-province and inter-city). Expected Q2 2021.

Travel restrictions, as we noted, are here, or at least starting to show up. My unemployed CEO friend is expecting localized roadblocks, i.e “Where are you going? Why are you going there? Can I see your immunity passport and contact tracker please?” type roadblocks. Unless you’re a politician or someone Transport Canada deems to be exempted in “the national interest”, you’re probably stuck where you are for the foreseeable future.

Excerpt from the Transport Canada making the rounds on who is exempted from forced quarantine at the approved Internment Hotels

• Projected COVID-19 mutation and/or co-infection with secondary virus (referred to as COVID-21) leading to a third wave with much higher mortality rate and higher rate of infection. Expected by February 2021.

Well they aren’t calling it COVID-21, but there is a lot in the media about the UK and South African mutations. Overlooked is that COVID-19 has been mutating from very early on, all viruses do. Everything does.

From: Is the coronavirus mutating? Yes. But here’s why you don’t need to panic, Science News, May 2020

Anyway, by the time we got this far down the list I felt the mild caffeine euphoria of my morning cup-o-joe wearing off and despondency setting in… I know where this list goes from here:

• The imposition of UBI and debt jubilee where “the individual would forfeit ownership of any and all property and assets forever”.

I take some comfort in that the original article has been written so poorly that it makes 4chan a more likely origin vector and not some high powered political insider.

But the entire conversation made me feel uneasy, here’s why:

As I stated the first time,  when something is completely unsourced and disconnected from supporting material or citations, believing it is a choice. It’s an act of faith. You can choose to believe that we’re in The End Times,  or that The Singularity is Near, Alien Disclosure is imminent, or we’re entering the final victory of World Communism or a final Malthusian or climate driven collapse. These narratives are at their core eschatological in nature and all the same . We won’t be able to say with any certainty until one of these scenarios would actually come to pass. Even then we’d probably be incapable of forming a consensus around something that had already occurred.

One of things that I’ve really had a hard time grappling with since all this began came out of my introductory study of General Semantics. Facing the reality that none of us really knows anything and that we only think we know is so much harder than just stumbling through life dead certain about your assumptions and oblivious to your own ignorance and biases. At least that way you just bounce around between successes, failures and misadventure but at least you think you’ve got things under control or at least understand what is happening.

None of that is true, and when you realize that, it can be terrifying.

All the more so because when I think about a crazy, unhinged conspiracy theory like this one, the reasons why I would normally dismiss it: that it was just somehow untenable for governments anywhere to just rescind everybody’s civil liberties and basic human rights at the stroke of a pen with zero due process, no constitutional basis, no public consultation, no legal review or any right to appeal. When I think about how things have played out over the past year,  I realize that these assumptions weren’t actually anchored to anything.

These days I’m reading Marco Papic’s Geopolitical Alpha, and in it, his core premise, is this:

“Preferences are optional and subject to constraints, whereas constraints are neither optional nor subject to preferences.”

By this he means: many investors factor their assumptions around how governments will impact their plans on what turn out to be policy preferences. But what actually happens, and what actually does impact their activities will be shaped by constraints, not preferences.

Said differently, a lot of capital gets allocated on what people think governments want to do, but what actually matters is what is preventing or constraining the government from doing what they want to do.

The five big constraints on governments are: political, economic, financial, geo-political and legal/constitutional.

Seen in this light, even if true, that governments wanted to impose a totalitarian communist regime globally, surely they are constrained from doing so. Right? RIGHT? They can’t just fscking do it. 

But… all kinds of things I thought governments couldn’t just come out and do over the last year…. well they just came right out and did it. And just to really mess with my head, Papic added two wildcard constraints to his list: terrorism and pandemics.

The problem is, those wildcards, they aren’t wildcard constraints – they’re wildcard enablers. Those two wildcards seem to have the ability to trump all normal constraints. Every one of those constraints went out the window because of the wildcards.

Where does that leave us?

Speaking for myself, I’m losing my moorings as I no longer have any clear idea what, if any, policy constraints exist anymore.

So I have no grounding in the arena of what’s possible, how arbitrarily policy makers can act, what’s to stop them from simply confiscating my wealth (except for my crypto), or nationalizing the business I’ve built up over 22 years, and doing the same to everybody else. This is Canada. We’re generally meek as fuck here.

Second passport and expat strategies won’t work if, as per the “World Debt Reset Program” outlined in the conspiracy theory, this happens simultaneously everywhere. Granted that seems farfetched, but the boundaries of the word “farfetched” have shifted dramatically since all this began.

The question I keep coming back to is “What’s to stop them from trying it?”

One of my first articles that I wrote on my old blog said that:

“The ultimate goal of the State is to cultivate absolute dependency on it by its subjects. This is because until this happens there is a real danger that those governed will one day wake up and realize that the State is not only entirely unnecessary but actually malignant; a malevolent force actively impoverishing society to the benefit of it’s elites”

I think nation states do know this, and that the continuous iteration of failed policies painted all of them into a corner vis-à-vis the global economy and the financial system as we know it. As Daniel Dimartino Booth observed in a recent George Gammon podcast, (paraphrasing) “The central banks were screwed. They needed something like COVID because the financial system was coming unglued”.

Understanding that there is a real incentive for nation states to move in a drastic direction, combined with a conspicuous absence of restraints, is taking a huge psychological toll on the populace. As hypernormalization runs wild, a type of mass psychosis sets in which has been manifesting in rabid polarization, hysterical cancel culture, Reddit-driven stonk manias and myriad tribes of neo-Flagellants.

Something’s gotta give, but at the same time, I’m really worried that something’s about to give.

*  *  *

Join the Bombthrower mailing list as we brace ourselves for whatever comes next.

As we detailed earlier in the year for our Premium subs, if this turning point in the Chinese credit impulse is confirmed by the upcoming data, expect a dispersion between inflation-sensitive assets in 2021.

At the time, we pointed out a critical estimated timeline of the peak Y/Y performance for each of the assets analyzed after China’s credit impulse turned down. 

Fast forward til today, and that timeline appears to be starting to come true as alarm bells continue to ring with multiple banks pointing out what we said more than a month earlier. A peaking credit impulse may result in slower global growth and slumping industrial base metal prices. 

Regular readers should know by now that under the current Chinese regime of debt-fueled growth – one of the most precise indicators of future economic growth is the credit impulse. 

JPMorgan’s Mislav Matejka explains this week in a note to clients that China’s credit impulse is in the process of “peaking.” The change in the growth rate of aggregate credit as a percentage of gross domestic product in the country has a tremendous impact on the global economy’s future. Saxo Bank once said the credit impulse leads the global economy by 9 to 12 months.

A peaking credit impulse in China could soon dictate a regime shift in macro themes to weaker inflation, slower growth, slumping industrial metal prices, and falling Treasury yields. 

More importantly, Matejka focuses on industrial metals, indicating “speculative positions on copper are very elevated, and are showing signs of peaking.” 

Since China leads the global economy, it’s important to note that country’s credit creation heavily influences commodities’ prices. 

Focusing on copper, which is a critical contributor to the global economy, and prices rise and fall with China’s demand. The chart below shows that China’s peaking credit impulse tends to drag down copper bullish speculative positioning in the base metal, eventually leading to price declines.

A further move higher in copper prices could depend on China continuing to expand credit or if Washington passes a massive stimulus bill. Though upside in copper could be fairly limited considering the credit situation in China. 

If copper prices turn south, other base metals may follow with the threat of persistent oversupplied conditions as the global economy slows. Already, the Bloomberg Industrial Metals index weekly appears to be reversing after a sustained up-move since global central banks injected trillions of dollars into capital markets when the pandemic began in early 2020. 

If you need any more confirmation that China could be headed into a slowdown, the always-well-managed services sector activity on Tuesday night printed at its slowest pace in nine months in January. 

Caixin China Jan. Services PMI 52; Est. 55.5

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 3, 2021

Again, as we’ve told our readers in the past, all that matters is the Chinese credit impulse.

For more on credit impulses, checkout Zerohedge Premium. 

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

Former president Donald Trump has been impeached for “incitement to insurrection.” The House Democrats’ claim is that Trump made an inflammatory speech which – a week later – led to the Capitol riot of January 6.

The Senate is now considering whether or not to convict Trump of this “crime.”

I put “crime” in scare quotes for a couple of reasons.

The first reason is that the impeachment proceedings aren’t a criminal trial, so even conviction wouldn’t establish guilt the way an actual criminal court might. Contrary to what the public thinks—with its third grade–level understanding of American politics—and what the media is happy to imply, impeachment is strictly a political process that does nothing more than remove a person from office. The Democrats’ new interpretation that impeachment can be used to bar someone from holding office in the future is a rather novel approach.

Moreover, it’s already clear that if Trump were being tried in an actual criminal court, it is extremely unlikely a prosecutor could get a conviction. Trump’s alleged incitement doesn’t meet the legal requirements for such a charge as set out by the US Supreme Court back in 1969. An incitement conviction would require prosecutors to show there was an imminent threat of violence from the inflammatory remarks. Clearly, the Capitol riot, occurring a week later, was not “imminent,” and in a criminal case, it would be nearly impossible to prove this was directly connected to a political speech made days earlier.

The second reason “crime” needs to be in scare quotes is because incitement isn’t a real crime at all. It assumes that the person committing the “incitement” is simply passing down orders to blank-slate automatons who then turn around and do whatever their “leader” says.

In fact, the only people guilty of rioting are the rioters.

Rothbard spelled this out several times.

For instance, in an essay written for a small newspaper in the late 1960s, Rothbard explains the problem with claiming incitement is a real crime:

Suppose that Mr. A tells Mr. B: “Go out and shoot the mayor.” Suppose, then, that Mr. B, pondering this suggestion, decides it’s a darn good idea and goes out and shoots the mayor. Now obviously B is responsible for the shooting. But in what sense can A be held responsible? A did not do the shooting, and didn’t take part, we will assume, in any of the planning or executing of the act itself. The very fact that he made that suggestion cannot really mean that A should be held responsible. For does not B have free will? Is he not a free agent? And if he is, then B and B alone is responsible for the shooting.

If we attribute any responsibility at all to A, we have fallen into the trap of determinism. We are then assuming that B has no will of his own, that he is then only a tool in some way manipulated by A.

Now, if Person A participated in the planning of a riot or a murder, then Person A is guilty of conspiracy, not incitement. But Person A is not guilty of anything for have merely suggested to Person B that he shoot the mayor. Person B, after all, is responsible for his own actions.

Rothbard continues:

if the will is free, then no man is determined by another; then just because somebody shouts “burn, baby, burn,” no one hearing this advice is thereby compelled or determined to go and carry the suggestion out. Anybody who does carry out the advice is responsible for his own actions, and solely responsible. Therefore, the “inciter” cannot be held in any way responsible. In the nature of man and morality, there is no such crime as “incitement to riot,” and therefore the very concept of such a “crime” should be stricken from the statute books.

Finally, Rothbard notes that incitement laws are also damaging because they are a direct attack on the natural right to free speech:

Cracking down on “incitement to riot,” then, is simply and purely cracking down on one’s natural and crucial right to freedom of speech. Speech is not a crime. And hence the injustice, not only of the crime of incitement, but also of such other “crimes” as “criminal sedition” (sharp criticism of the government), or “conspiracy to advocate overthrow of the government”—in other words, planning someday to exercise one’s basic and natural right to freedom of speech and advocacy.

A decade later, Rothbard emphasized the importance of rejecting the notion of incitement as a crime in his book For a New Liberty. Under the section titled “Freedom of Speech,” he writes:

What, for example, of “incitement to riot,” in which the speaker is held guilty of a crime for whipping up a mob, which then riots and commits various actions and crimes against person and property? In our view, “incitement” can only be considered a crime if we deny every man’s freedom of will and of choice, and assume that if A tells B and C: “You and him go ahead and riot!” that somehow B and C are then helplessly determined to proceed and commit the wrongful act. But the libertarian, who believes in freedom of the will, must insist that while it might be immoral or unfortunate for A to advocate a riot, that this is strictly in the realm of advocacy and should not be subject to legal penalty.

Later, in his book The Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard again makes very similar remarks:

Suppose that Green exhorts a crowd: “Go! Burn! Loot! Kill!” and the mob proceeds to do just that, with Green having nothing further to do with these criminal activities. Since every man is free to adopt or not adopt any course of action he wishes, we cannot say that in some way Green determined the members of the mob to their criminal activities; we cannot make him, because of his exhortation, at all responsible for their crimes. “Inciting to riot,” therefore, is a pure exercise of a man’s right to speak without being thereby implicated in crime. On the other hand, it is obvious that if Green happened to be involved in a plan or conspiracy with others to commit various crimes, and that then Green told them to proceed, he would then be just as implicated in the crimes as are the others—more so, if he were the mastermind who headed the criminal gang. This is a seemingly subtle distinction which in practice is clearcut—there is a world of difference between the head of a criminal gang and a soap-box orator during a riot; the former is not, properly, to be charged simply with “incitement.”

This problem is related to a similar problem: making noncrimes like slander (i.e., defamation) into prosecutable offenses. A “slanderer” can say all sorts of things. And, indeed, a respect for freedom of speech dictates that we allow him to do so. After all, the people who hear what he has to say remain completely free to come to their own conclusions about what to do with that information. Just because some person says “your sister is a whore,” doesn’t mean we are required to believe him or act on those words in any particular way.

In practice, laws against incitement and defamation are very dangerous to basic human rights, and both place nonviolent people in legal jeopardy merely for the “crime” of expressing opinions. These laws are direct attacks on the right to free speech. In the case of Trump and “incitement,” he expressed an opinion about the election and encouraged people to “fight like hell” in a vague, nonspecific way. If this sort of thing is “criminal” then anyone who expresses an opinion that people should “resist” or “fight” against the regime—or even suggest that the regime is illegitimate or worthy of contempt—is likely to find himself on trial any time one of his social media “friends” decides to deface a government building or throw a rock at a cop. 

Panasonic is quitting the solar panel business.

The company was formerly a leader in the market but has now succumb to cheap competition out of China, according to Nikkei Asia. 

The company plans on halting manufacturing as soon as March 2022 at its factories in Malaysia and Japan. It’ll be a “complete exit from the solar manufacturing business”, the report says. Panasonic will stay in the power industry by procuring panels from other manufacturers.

New solar generation this year is expected to rise 10% from the previous year, to 117 million kilowatts. Prices of panels have fallen to about 33% of what they were 10 years ago thanks to increased Chinese production. This increase has put pressure on legacy players, like Panasonic.

Most of Panasonic’s sales have been based on domestic demand, but that demand is not expected to grow due to government subsidies in Japan being rolled back.

Panasonic had previously acquired Sanyo Electric and was building on its solar cell business after making it a subsidiary. Panasonic “had its sights set on becoming a top-three manufacturer, but is now out of the top five due to price wars with Chinese companies,” Nikkei wrote. 

Despite leaving solar, Panasonic will stay in renewable energy, focusing on projects like power management for smart cities. 

With its exit from the industry, Kyocera and Sharp remain the two key solar panel manufacturers in Japan. 

Recall, Panasonic also shares Tesla’s solar panel factory in Buffalo, NY but ended its partnership with the auto company last year. There have been no details on how any shutdown can, and will, further affect Tesla, but we will continue to monitor the situation closely. 

Authored by Daniel Lacalle,

Joe Biden has presented a $2 trillion clean energy plan that may be very expensive for consumers if the United States follows the mistakes of the European example.

Watch:

There are some important facts that should concern us when thinking about the US and Europe’s energy policy, supporting industry and creating jobs:

• In the European Union, SMEs pay 20% more for electricity than in China and 65% more than in India. Between 2005 and 2012 electricity prices in Europe rose 38%, while in the United States they fell 4%. If we go to natural gas, in Europe prices rose 35%, while in the US they fell 66%. But the worst thing is that this trend has become more pronounced in recent years.

• The “green” policy in Germany has doubled bills for households while the price of wholesale generation fell, and in 2017 it still had over 52% of its electricity mix and 88% of primary energy consumption from fossil fuels. The German “energiewende” has already cost more than 243 billion euro between taxes and “renewable subsidies” since 2000, and greenhouse gas emissions are almost flat since 2009. Even worse, the impact of net job creation in the energy sector has been negative. Between the job losses in traditional companies and the bankruptcies of local solar names, job creation has turned negative. Germany once had a goal of 500,000 green energy jobs by 2020. After peaking at just below 380,000 a few years ago, the number is now approaching 350,000 and this means that the net effect in the industry will be a 20,000 loss.

• Up to 33% of the total costs of industrial companies come from energy expenses, which have exploded in recent years due to the impact of subsidies, fixed costs, and taxes.

It is very simple, either we look for competitiveness or the negative impact on employment and delocalization of industries will increase.

The energy sector is key in the decarbonization process, but will not achieve it through perverse incentives and accumulated costs that penalize the efficient in favor of the inefficient, subsidize the expensive, and tax the competitive ones.

The best technological tool to improve the environment is a combination of natural gas, nuclear, hydro, and renewable energy. But renewables are intermittent, while consumption is continuous. We cannot forget the billions required in grid connections and support to maintain an intermitent and volatile mix.

The energy policy of the United States must comply with the principles of safety, diversification and competitiveness. All these can only happen with higher liberalization and competition, not less.

Technology replacement and energy transition should be achieved through competition, lower costs and efficiency, the same way as crude oil ended with whale oil, not because it was decided by a committee, but because the cost was lower and the benefits for consumers evident.

Security of supply must be achieved, also, from a flexible and diversified energy mix which must be cheap and efficient, not via subsidies and higher fixed costs, but through the tax incentives that prevent “fake demand signals” and prevent overcapacity.

Energy is the cornerstone of the future of any nation. Destroying competitiveness would likely worsen the current crisis. The U.S. has the tools, using all technologies, to ensure an abundant and cheap energy supply. Anything else would bring it to repeat the mistakes that Europe made a few years ago.