Month: February 2020

Authored by Robert Bridge via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Being born White these days comes with a lot of excess baggage. Instead of each human being coming into existence with a clean slate, so to speak, a Caucasian newborn (who exactly qualifies as ‘White’ is another question) is brought into the world carrying the stain of its ancestors’ transgressions, of which, we are constantly reminded, are infinite and unforgivable.

Yes, European settlers to America were, for example, responsible for killing off a large number of the Native Indian population, as well as participating in the African slave trade. And who could forget the regrettable legacy of colonialism? At this point, I will resist the temptation to construct a scorecard based on the historical crimes of other races, many of whom were guilty of the very same crimes now being attributed to the White people.

This sudden desire among the Liberal Inquisition to settle past historical scores with the White man, who ironically has become his own burden, is already revealing itself in radical new ways. Students at prestigious Yale University, for example, will no longer be able to attend an introductory course to Western Art History due to “student uneasiness over an idealized Western “canon” — a product of an overwhelmingly white, straight, European and male cadre of artists,” reported the school’s newspaper.

Perhaps the only thing surprising about Yale’s announcement is that it came so late in the day. After all, the field of mathematics, which one would think is adequately insulated from identity politics, has been accused of being built on a purely racist foundation.

According to the new woke math currently being taught in the Seattle public school system, “Western” mathematics is being foisted upon unsuspecting students as “the only legitimate expression of mathematical identity and intelligence” in some diabolical plan to “disenfranchise people and communities of color.”

Perhaps the best evidence that there is a concerted effort to cancel the White race from recognition for their achievements can be witnessed by a simple search on Google. Type in ‘White inventors’ and fasten your seat belt. While there is no doubt that minorities have contributed many inventions over the course of the centuries, the Google results make it look like the tinkering White man, where he appears at all, is still struggling to invent the wheel. If the world’s biggest search engine were relying solely on algorithms to provide its ‘answers’ (as opposed to the deliberate meddling of a human hand) then it seems utterly impossible that renowned ‘Caucasian’ inventors, like the Wright Brothers, Henry Ford, Alexander Graham Bell, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein, Tim Berners-Lee and Isaac Newton, to name a few, do not feature anywhere near the top of Google search results. This was a deliberate move by the Silicon Valley giant to deny White inventors their rightful place in the historical record.

Commercial break! Watch Gillette’s stomach-churning virtue-signaling video devoted to not removing whiskers from your face but the question of ‘toxic masculinity. Ask yourself what race is portrayed as the guiltiest of displaying undesirable behavior (making advances on females, for example) in society.

Equally shocking was the news that Goldman Sachs, of all companies, was jumping on the virtue signaling bandwagon in an apparent effort to put White executives in their rightful place, which increasingly is not at the top. Indeed, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon has a plan to save corporate America from all-male, all-white corporate boards: The investment bank will decline to take a company public unless it has at least one woman or non-white member on board.

The CBS article where this story appeared attempted to justify the move by citing a study that argues more diverse firms make “better investment decisions and scale back on aggressive risk-taking.” Well, if that were true, then Goldman Sachs would be better off asserting its commitment to the ‘free market’ as opposed to the lunatic social justice fringe. The reason is at the core of capitalist theory: those firms that fail to diversify (if it is indeed the best business model) will ultimately falter due to the market’s law of natural selection. Instead, David Solomon would rather align himself with cultural ‘progressives’ by forcefully removing White executives, many of whom are in their positions due to hard work and merit. On top of that, there is the question regarding the very constitutionality of such efforts at ‘affirmative action’ to correct perceived wrongs in the workplace.

Curb your racism, avoid yoga and dog ownership

Now, if all that were not enough, flickering in the background of these stories are vile racist ideas that would never be attributed to other peoples without massive fallout. For example, did you happen to know that White people participating in the seemingly benign discipline of yoga, an increasingly popular group activity for relieving stress and staying fit, are in reality supporting the vile white supremacist belief system?

Shreena Gandhi, a religious studies professor at Michigan State, and Lillie Wolff, a self-described “anti-racist white Jewish organizer, facilitator, and healer,” co-authored an article entitled, ‘Yoga and the Roots of Cultural Appropriation.’ In it, the very imaginative authors argue that the “modern-day trend of cultural appropriation of yoga is a continuation of white supremacy and colonialism, maintaining the pattern of white people consuming the stuff of culture that is convenient and portable…”

The madness does not stop there. Not by a long shot.

Now if, by chance, you happen to be White, as well as a yoga enthusiast AND dog owner, you may as well just surrender to your darkest demons and sign up now for the Ku Klux Klan. I am only half joking. See, because in the minds of the social justice thought police, White people who walk their dogs around the neighborhood – pooper scooper in hand – may also signify a not so harmless breed of human. That’s because White folks tend to use dog ownership as a means to achieve “reinforced boundaries” and thus their “White privileges” in their otherwise diverse neighborhoods.

“White residents of multicultural areas tend to overlook inequality in their neighborhoods,” writes Sarah Mayorga-Gallo, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts Boston, who went on to identify the surprising “vehicle of racial segregation,” which just happens to be White man’s best friend, the dog.

The academic relayed the heart-wrenching story of Jerry, a black homeowner in his sixties, who chanced upon a neighborhood bakery in the town of Creekridge Park, North Carolina. He stopped to chat with some dog-owning customers, who were white, in the outdoor seating area, but the staff asked him to leave – a scenario that is played over thousands of times every day at any restaurant that has an outdoor seating area.

As Mayorga-Gallo explains it: “Jerry is a black disabled veteran who was wearing his old army uniform that day. He figures they thought he was begging for money.”

Without providing more information on Jerry of the tattered Army uniform, like, for example, if he was in fact a panhandler, Mayorga-Gallo arrives at the White-trashing conclusion she was certainly looking for: “The dogs didn’t create the interracial boundaries at the bakery, which caters to a primarily white, middle-class clientele. In fact, the dogs presented an avenue to connect black and white neighbors. But they gave bakery staff a reason to intervene, to maintain interracial boundaries.” Now had Mayorga-Gallo taken the time to conduct her own experiment, like how a restaurant staff would react to a White beggar attempting to talk to a group of paying Black customers, I think she may have been surprised at the results. Instead, we must settle for the ‘White dog owners contribute to racial segregation’ verdict.

For some readers, all of this may sound a bit trifling, insignificant and even humorous. That would be a mistake. This steady flow of articles, which attempt to portray White Americans as closet racists, could – at the very least – instill some level of hate aimed at the White population. In fact, that already seems to be happening. Meanwhile, by constantly eliminating the achievements of Whites, based on whatever explanation, or even removing them in the name of ‘diversity,’ this could also result in some sort of unintended backlash.

These non-stop efforts to characterize the U.S. White majority with racism and supremacism do not stand up to scrutiny. After all, the country fought a civil war that was at least partially aimed at ending the slave trade. Later, the country passed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which opened the floodgates to people of non-European descent. While there is still room for improvement, the race situation is nowhere near the crisis levels that the media regularly ascribes to it.

All things considered, it seems to be a recipe for disaster for the media to continually – in the tormented spirit of ‘social justice’ – to attribute racist tendencies to White Americans across the board. That is not only incredibly wrong, it is dangerous. It will end in disaster.

China has found new ways to respond to coronavirus that has shut down at least two-thirds of its economy, taken offline some of the world’s largest manufacturing hubs, and quarantined more than 50 million people. 

The country is using drones, specifically DJI drones with front-mounted speakers, to fly around towns and yell at anyone who isn’t wearing a mask. 

It’s like something from a dystopian film, but essential to critical quarantine enforcement. 

With confirmed cases around 10,000 in China, about 213 deaths, and tens of thousands of people with suspected coronavirus, the communist government is deploying technology to beat the “devil virus.” 

“Staying at home is contributing to society,” a government official tells people in this video posted by Global Times, which slows a DJI drone with a front-mounted speaker flying around a rural countryside and urban areas yelling at anyone not wearing a virus mask. 

Walking around without a protective face mask? Well, you can’t avoid these sharp-tongued drones! Many village and cities in China are using drones equipped with speakers to patrol during the #coronavirus outbreak. pic.twitter.com/ILbLmlkL9R

— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) January 31, 2020

Gizchina.com reports that some Chinese towns are deploying agriculture drones with 5-gallon sprayers to spray disinfectant, with hopes that the virus could be eliminated. 

UK researchers now suggest 75,800 people are infected in Wuhan, as compared to SARS, the infection rate of coronavirus is exceptionally high. China is using advanced technology to fight a virus that could wind up collapsing its economy. 

Submitted by Convex Strategies

A certain dichotomy has come to our attention. The whole ream of senior, past and present, central banking elites kicked off the New Year with a stream of comments about the past successes and the future challenges of monetary policy. We’ve copied in a few of their quality quotes here, but would also highly recommend that you take the time to read, in particular, Mr Bernanke’s speech/paper:

• https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Bernanke_ASSA_lecture.pdf
• https://www.brookings.edu/blog/ben-bernanke/2020/01/04/the-new-tools-of-monetary-policy/

The gist is, everything they did to save the world post GFC worked. None of the nasty side-effects came to fruition, with “the possible exception of risks to financial stability”. Further, the policies have had no impact on wealth segregation, as long as you ignore asset price inflation. Nevertheless, there is only so much monetary policy can do from here, so it might require a bit more lifting from the fiscal stimulus side to finish the job.

If you don’t mind us saying – we find this laughable, naive and disingenuous.

“It’s generally true that there’s much less ammunition for all the major central banks than they previously had, and I’m of the opinion that this situation will persist for some time,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times to be published Wednesday. “It’s not clear that monetary policy would have sufficient space” if it needs to combat anything worse than a “conventional recession.”

Mark Carney, FT 8 Jan20

“I believe that for the euro area there is some risk of Japanification, but it is by no means a foregone conclusion” if it acts comprehensively to avoid a deflationary malaise, Draghi said via a video link to the conference in San Diego. “The euro area still has space to do this, but time is not infinite,” “This is why the ECB has been consistently calling for fiscal policy to play a stronger role and capitalize” on the low rates, he said.

Mario Draghi, Bloomberg 6 Jan20

“Monetary policy has a meaningful role to play, it’s unlikely to be sufficient in the years ahead,” Yellen said. It “should not be the only game in town.” “We can afford to increase federal spending and cut taxes” to support the economy in a recession even though government debt has risen sharply in recent years, the former policy maker said.

Janet Yellen, Bloomberg 6 Jan20

“There’s been a process of going through the stages of grief about a low neutral rate. These factors are basically the hand we’ve been dealt for the next five to 10 years.”

John Williams, WSJ 5 Jan20

On the other hand, the BIS, the World Bank, and the IMF released year end reports filled to the gills about the concerns of unprecedented debt expansion:

• https://www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qt1912.pdf
• https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/publication/waves-of-debt
• https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2020/01/03/Debt-Is-Not-Free-48894

“Our results show that public debt in its various forms is the most important predictor of fiscal crises and it does matter always and everywhere.”

IMF: Debt is Not Free 3 Jan20

“The global economy has experienced four waves of debt accumulation over the past fifty years. The first three debt waves ended with financial crises in many emerging and developing economies. The latest, since 2010, has already witnessed the largest, fastest and most broad-based increase in debt in these economies. Their total debt has risen by 54 percentage points of GDP to a historic peak of almost 170 percent of GDP in 2018.”

The World Bank, Global Waves of Debt: Causes and Consequences Jan20

We are going to go out on a limb and suggest that it might be the unprecedented inflation (pun intended) of outstanding debt that the monetary policy nobility are missing in each and every of their senseless comments/arguments/conclusions. There is a reason they call end of cycle dislocations something like a “Debt Crisis” or “Credit Bubble” or “Default Cycle”, because debt is what matters! They don’t call it a “Slow Down in Productivity Crisis” or an “Asset Inflation Catastrophe” or a “Core PCE Deflator Bust”. You’ve heard us ask it over and over again – are central bankers idiots, or are they in on a wilful upward redistribution of wealth? Read through the above articles/speeches/papers from the elite of the elite in the central banking world and you will literally find not one mention of debt/credit/leverage. As always, the mention of it is so noticeable in its absence that it is hard to imagine it is anything other than intentional. They are the managers of a Ponzi scheme laying out every possible explanation other than what it actually is.

The IMF and World Bank pieces, on the other hand, focus on the actual state of the world. The World Bank piece comes with a link to a spreadsheet with the data behind their wonderful charts. What we take from these pieces, in particular the World Bank book, is that historically long periods of debt accumulation end in financial crisis, notably in Emerging and Developing Economies (EMDEs). The most recent wave of debt commenced in 2010 and now has the world at all-time unprecedented levels of debt, but what really stands out is the relative increase in debt in Emerging and Developing Economies, and specifically Private sector debt, overwhelmingly from China.

Figure 1: Global Debt

Figure 2: Debt in Advanced Economies

Figure 3: Debt in Emerging and Developing Economies

Other things that stand out – overall there has been no deleveraging post the 2007-2009 financial crisis; virtually all of the growth in accumulated debt in Advanced Economies has come from Government debt; the growth above trend of Private debt in EM, and particularly China, is prodigious. As we have discussed before, the end result of the extreme policy measure of the above noted Advanced Economy central bankers, aside from inflating asset prices in their own countries, was to drive debt accumulation into the developing world.

This leads to the problem very clearly depicted in the below graph. Despite the unprecedented expansion of debt, what some might proclaim a bringing forward of demand, growth in EMDEs continues to slow.

Figure 4: Debt to GDP vs GDP growth in Emerging and Developing Economies

This picture, naturally, looks even more extreme if we strip it down to just China. Referencing our distinguished central banking friends, maybe it’s not “secular stagnation”, but rather an excess of accumulated debt? I go back to our old Snickers bar analogy. You have to be a pretty undiscerning doctor if you think your prescription of Snickers bars, to pick up lagging energy in your patient, has nothing to do with his weight gain and subsequent increased lack of energy. Sadly, there appears to be no accountability for the monetary physicians that have orchestrated the current lack of fitness for economies.

We couldn’t help ourselves and had to include the attached link to the recently created biggest Snickers bar ever – as far as we know no central bankers were involved in the making of it!

World’s biggest Snickers bar weighs in at over 2 tons in Texas

Figure 5: Debt to GDP vs GDP growth China

As ever, we have no particular insight as to what the future holds, how or when this cycle might end. Just simply that, thus far, they all end. The accumulation of debt doesn’t, per se, tell you where or when a fire might start, but rather where a spreading fire might cause the costliest damage. Again, the next three charts from the World Bank piece show that EMDEs, and in particular China, are where the combustible material has really built up in this wave.

Figure 6: Rate of Change of Total Debt (EMDEs – Emerging Market Developing Economies)

Figure 7: Pct. Countries with Increase in Govt Debt, EMDEs

Figure 8: Pct. Countries with Increase in Private Debt, EMDEs

All of our central banking gurus commented on the need for greater fiscal policy support in their respective economies, and we touched last month on the growing mainstreaming of things like MMT, Modern Monetary Theory (neither modern nor a theory), but is that sort of thing a solution that will prevent/delay another EMDEs financial crisis at the end of this debt wave? Can EMDEs that rely on foreigners to hold a significant portion of their domestic government debt, and on foreign currency as a significant portion of the private debt, smooth away cyclical end debt instability by ever greater levels of fiscal spending? The soft-landing unicorn has been historically scarce, and the extremes of this cycle make us sceptical that this time the guys behind the curtain will pull the levers just right.

Figure 10: Volatility and Correlation Comet

Figure 11: SGD/JPY ‘Seasons’

All of this leads us, yet again, to the same question: are you sufficiently confident in your defensive strategies that you are able to take sufficient risk to benefit from years like 2019? Are you catching the spectacular compounding opportunities in the up-tail, while confidently protecting the down-tail? Nobody should be satisfied with the high correlation and low returns of absolute return hedge fund strategies. Fixed income, which had a sensational 2019, still massively underperformed equities while offering increasingly little portfolio risk mitigation benefit. Should our central banking overlords continue to extend the cycle, there is no reason why asset prices can’t continue to drive ever higher. Should they fail………

Well this doesn’t fit the mainstream media narrative…

In a poll reported by Gallup’s ‘Mood of the Nation’ this week, it turns out that Americans’ satisfaction with race relations has jumped 14% since Trump’s inauguration.

As The Daily Caller’s David Krayden notes, the numbers on race relations seemingly fly in the face of rhetoric from progressives who not only routinely label the president as a racist and is actively or passively promoting a white supremacist agenda. Democratic New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker has called the president “worse than a racist” while CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin labelled Trump a racist for calling Democratic California Rep. Maxine Waters a “low IQ individual.”

When Trump criticized the infrastructure in Baltimore and said the city was “rodent-infested” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the comments “racist.”

Trump has consistently noted that unemployment for black and Hispanic Americans has reached an all-time low and that minorities are benefiting from the economic boom the country is experiencing.

Additionally, as Trump enters his re-election year, Americans are more positive on eight key issues than they were just before he took office in January 2017.

• Gallup records double-digit increases in public satisfaction with the nation’s economy, security from terrorism, military strength and the state of race relations.

• Satisfaction is also up by between six and nine points on crime, the position of blacks and other racial minorities, the distribution of income and wealth, and the opportunity for a person to get ahead through hard work.

Gallup has measured Americans’ satisfaction with most of these issues each year since 2001, except from 2009 to 2011, when a more limited number of issues were rated or the question was not asked.

Americans’ average satisfaction rating for the 27 issues Gallup  has tracked consistently since 2001 is now 47%. This is up three points from a year ago and is the highest since the January 2005 poll.

Today’s average satisfaction is roughly on par with the level of the early 2000s. Only in 2002 was the average for this metric substantially higher than it is today. The average 53% recorded that year reflected heightened satisfaction as Americans were in full “rally around the flag” mode shortly after the 9/11 attacks.

One reason average satisfaction isn’t higher now than in 2001 is that satisfaction has since declined sharply on matters related to the performance of the federal government: the system of government and how well it works (down 25 points); the role the U.S. plays in world affairs (-18); and the size and power of the federal government (-12).

All of which suggests President Trump’s upbeat view of the nation’s economy, military strength, economic opportunity and overall quality of life will likely resonate with Americans when he delivers his State of the Union address to Congress next week.

Sadly, for one group of Americans, the address may not go down so well, as it appears Al Sharpton and his race-baiting cronies will need to work harder to divide the nation…

Authored by Walter Williams via Tonwhall.com,

During President Donald J. Trump’s impeachment trial, we’ll hear a lot of talk about our rules for governing. One frequent claim is that our nation is a democracy. If we’ve become a democracy, it would represent a deep betrayal of our founders, who saw democracy as another form of tyranny. In fact, the word democracy appears nowhere in our nation’s two most fundamental documents, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. The founders laid the ground rules for a republic as written in the Constitution’s Article IV, Section 4, which guarantees “to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.”

John Adams captured the essence of the difference between a democracy and republic when he said,

“You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe.”

Contrast the framers’ vision of a republic with that of a democracy. In a democracy, the majority rules either directly or through its elected representatives. As in a monarchy, the law is whatever the government determines it to be. Laws do not represent reason. They represent power. The restraint is upon the individual instead of the government. Unlike that envisioned under a republican form of government, rights are seen as privileges and permissions that are granted by government and can be rescinded by government.

Here are a few quotations that demonstrate the contempt that our founders held for a democracy.

James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10, wrote that in a pure democracy, “there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual.”

At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Edmund Randolph said that “in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.” Alexander Hamilton agreed, saying: “We are now forming a republican government. (Liberty) is found not in “the extremes of democracy but in moderate governments. … If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy.”

John Adams reminded us: “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”

John Marshall, the highly respected fourth chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court observed, “Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.”

Thomas Paine said, “A Democracy is the vilest form of Government there is.”

The framers gave us a Constitution replete with undemocratic mechanisms. One constitutional provision that has come in for recent criticism is the Electoral College. In their wisdom, the framers gave us the Electoral College as a means of deciding presidential elections. That means heavily populated states can’t run roughshod over small, less-populated states.

Were we to choose the president and vice president under a popular vote, the outcome of presidential races would always be decided by a few highly populated states, namely California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois and Pennsylvania, which contain 134.3 million people, or 41% of our population. Presidential candidates could safely ignore the interests of the citizens of Wyoming, Alaska, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Delaware. Why? They have only 5.58 million Americans, or 1.7% of the U.S. population. We would no longer be a government “of the people.” Instead, our government would be put in power by and accountable to the leaders and citizens of a few highly populated states. It would be the kind of tyranny the framers feared.

It’s Congress that poses the greatest threat to our liberties. The framers’ distrust is seen in the negative language of our Bill of Rights such as: Congress “shall not abridge, infringe, deny, disparage, and shall not be violated, nor be denied.” When we die and if at our next destination we see anything like a Bill of Rights, we know that we’re in hell because a Bill of Rights in heaven would suggest that God couldn’t be trusted.

Today in “news you won’t hear from liberal American news organizations”, it was reported this week that “thousands” of homeless California residents are being forced to live in their cars, amidst a growing housing crisis in the state.

California accounts for nearly half of the country’s homeless population. Ah, the sweet success of high taxes and liberal policies. 

Even better is the solution that some California cities are implementing to try and deal with the issue. According to a report by France 24 news, several cities are now encouraging the practice, setting up parking lots where homeless people can “more securely” spend the night. 

France 24 news interviewed several people in one lot, including a deliveryman who doesn’t make enough money to rent his own apartment. “Each car represents someone’s home,” the report notes about this lot outside of San Diego. 

One former homeless man, George Harris, actually turned the idea into a business, accruing 13 minivans which he has parked in various areas around Venice Beach, that he rents each for $300 per month. Each van comes with its own mattress, he told a reporter proudly. 

The vans have to be moved every 3 days to avoid getting towed and Harris is actually fighting the city ordinance that requires this in order to try and get permission to keep people living in vans throughout the city. Residents throughout the city seem unamused by the practice. 

“I called the police on one of his clients because the guy was defecating and urinating,” one resident said about a van parked outside of her home.

“Totally false,” Harris interrupted during the middle of her interview. “They make up stories about the van people.”

You can watch the full report here:

First it was Facebook, then all of New Zealand; now Twitter has decided to suspend Zero Hedge.

Just as in the prior bans, which were eventually overturned, so in this case it is unclear what prompted Twitter’s abrupt censorship: the only notification we received from twitter was the following:

It is news to us that this website has “engaged in the targeted harassment of someone.” What appears to have happened is that twitter received a complaint from the website best known for making cat slideshows, Buzzfeed, in which someone called Ryan Broderick writes that Zero Hedge  “has released the personal information of a scientist from Wuhan, China, falsely accusing them of creating the coronavirus as a bioweapon, in a plot it said is the real-life version of the video game Resident Evil.”

I’ve reached out to Twitter for clarity on this but it looks like ZeroHedge may have been suspended following my piece about them doxing a Chinese scientist and accusing him of weaponizing the #coronavirus https://t.co/B3XXRCjJpQ pic.twitter.com/RLCR3Eg6q0

— Ryan Broderick (@broderick) January 31, 2020

A few points: the article referenced by Buzz Feed, “Is This The Man Behind The Global Coronavirus Pandemic?”, is as the title implies, a question, and one which considering the huge import and massive significance of the Coronavirus pandemic has to be answered, especially since even the establishment’s Foreign Policy magazine writes bat soup, which is widely being cited and circulated by the mainstream press as the cause of the coronavirus breakout, is not the cause of the Wuhan virus. The widely read website Health.com also chimes in: “No, Coronavirus Was Not Caused by ‘Bat Soup‘”. Meanwhile, Business Insider writes “Experts think the Wuhan coronavirus jumped from bats to snakes to people. Bats have been the source of at least 4 pandemics.”

So considering that Peng Zhou, who currently works at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, is the Leader of the Bat Virus Infection and Immunization Group at the Institute, the question certainly is a reasonable one and, in a normal world, would demand an answer from the established media (assuming it wasn’t afraid of risking lucrative Chinese funding ) instead of leaving it to “fringe” websites.

The impetus to ask the question if the disease originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology is especially poignant in light of social media reports such as this one which claims to “have evidence here that the outbreak originated from Wuhan P4 Research Institute. You need to find a truly patriotic journalist to publish it to the public. You can personally trust me to provide a complete chain of evidence. Thank you.”

我这边有证据表明这次疫情来源于武汉p4研究所，需要找真正热血爱国的记者将其公布给民众，可以私信我提供完整证据链，谢谢

— 中华一番 (@BD6Fs6zVVAK4z6F) January 30, 2020

So did we have a right to ask the question if there is an alternative version for the emergence of the Coronavirus pandemic? Absolutely. Meanwhile, those who wonder if Dr. Zhou has any link to the possible emergence of the Coronavirus following years of experimenting with bats, we urge you to read our full article instead of relying on the hearsay of ideologically biased journalists.

Second, and contrary to the claims presented by Buzzfeed, we did not release any “personal information”: Peng Zhou (周鹏) is a public figure, and all the contact information that we presented was pulled from his publicly posted bio found on a website at the Wuhan Institute of Virology which anyone with access to the internet can pull from the following URL: http://sourcedb.whiov.cas.cn/zw/rck/201705/t20170505_4783973.html, which is also the information we used.

So about Buzzfeed’s allegation, which was adopted by Twitter, that somehow we incited “targeted abuse”, here is what we said:

Something tells us, if anyone wants to find out what really caused the coronavirus pandemic that has infected thousands of people in China and around the globe, they should probably pay Dr. Peng a visit.

To which we then added the information obtained from his own bio page on the Institute’s website:

“Or at least start with an email: Dr Peng can be reached at peng.zhou@wh.iov.cn, and his phone# is 87197311″

Are we then to understand that we have now reached a point the mere gathering of information, which our colleagues in the media may want to eventually do as thousands of people are afflicted daily by the Coronavirus, is now synonymous with “abuse and harassment”? According to Twitter, and certainly our competitors in the media, the answer is yes.

In any case, we have emailed Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who incidentally happens to follow zerohedge…

… for the answer. If we get one, we will promptly share it with our readers. We aren’t holding our breath, however, as we realize how important it is to today’s media giants not to ruffle too many Chinese feathers or lack losing access to the Chinese market. After all, who can forget the following report from the New York Times about another of our media competitors that several years ago was itself engaged in “doxing” us (yet oddly wasn’t suspended by Twitter):

The chairman of Bloomberg L.P. said in a speech here on Thursday that the company should have reconsidered articles that deviated from its core of coverage of business news, because they jeopardized the huge sales potential for its products in the Chinese market.

The comments by the chairman, Peter T. Grauer, represented the starkest acknowledgment yet by a senior Bloomberg executive that the ambitions of the news division should be assessed in the context of the business operation, which provides the bulk of the company’s revenue. They also signaled which of those considerations might get priority.

Acknowledging the vast size of the Chinese economy, the world’s second-biggest after that of the United States, Mr. Grauer, said, “We have to be there.”

“We have about 50 journalists in the market, primarily writing stories about the local business and economic environment,” Mr. Grauer said in response to questions after a speech at the Asia Society. “You’re all aware that every once in a while we wander a little bit away from that and write stories that we probably may have kind of rethought — should have rethought.”

Bloomberg, the financial data and news company, relies on sales of its terminals, which are ubiquitous on bankers’ desks around the world, for about 82 percent of its $8.5 billion in revenue. But sales of those terminals in China declined after the company published an article in June 2012 on the family wealth of Xi Jinping, at that time the incoming Communist Party chief. After its publication, officials ordered state enterprises not to subscribe to the service. Mr. Grauer did not specifically mention the article about Mr. Xi or any other articles.

“Being in China is very much a part of our long-term strategy and will continue to be so going forward,” Mr. Grauer said. “It occupies a lot of our thinking — Dan Doctoroff, our C.E.O.; me; Mike; and other members of our senior team.”

Some current and former Bloomberg journalists, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they had hoped the controversy surrounding Bloomberg’s China reporting would prompt the company to reaffirm its support for investigative efforts. Mr. Grauer’s comments were met with dismay, particularly because he is regarded as close to Mr. Bloomberg and would be unlikely to voice views that were not broadly accepted at the top of the company.

Unlike Bloomberg, or anyone else in the mainstream media, we don’t plan on “rethinking” any of our articles just to curry favor with the powerful and we certainly will continue our own “investigative efforts”, even if it means we lose some of our inbound traffic.

Authored by Doug Casey via InternationalMan.com,

International Man: No matter the problem, the prescription of the Davos crowd is always more welfare, more warfare, more money printing, more taxes, and of course, more centralization of power into global institutions.

What’s your take?

Doug Casey: The people who attend Davos are all welfare statists. They’re not necessarily socialists, insofar as they don’t want to see government nationalize industries. Most understand how totally dysfunctional that is and that they don’t really benefit from it. Strict socialism, defined as State ownership of the means of production, is off the table. They prefer economic fascism, where a powerful State can funnel wealth to the corporations the elite own or control. They’re happy to throw some table scraps to the unwashed masses, of course. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is the best way to do that.

Again, they’re not socialists. They’re welfare statists. Completely opportunistic and absolutely unprincipled. Despicable people, actually. Few are entrepreneurial, independent thinkers or free-market oriented. Those types would be disruptive at Davos, and if they’re ever invited, it would be only once.

Other than celebrities, court intellectuals, and publicity-oriented multibillionaires, the attendees are almost all bureaucrats and politicians who thrive on stolen money. But it’s no longer easily visible briefcases full of cash. That’s quaint in today’s world. They steal indirectly, by making sure they benefit from state regulations, state favors, and the inflation of the currency.

Bribes are in the form of tax-deducible donations to charitable foundations and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). That’s not only much safer, but the money is vastly bigger, and the way it’s rigged adds to their prestige. Both making and taking a bribe disguises the miscreants as philanthropists and do-gooders when they use an NGO as a funnel.

But getting back to their economic views, they’re all for “quantitative easing.” Printing money—MMT—directly benefits the stock market. It raises corporate earnings, and much of the newly created cash directly boosts the prices of shares. It’s really sweet, if you’re an insider.

International Man: At this year’s event, climate change appears to be a big focus.

What are your thoughts on this?

Doug Casey: These fools love to talk about global warming, which they attribute to carbon dioxide. Their jets and limos are a small price to pay for the invaluable moral hectoring they give to the billions of hoi polloi.

Davos people see the common man as the real problem. And perversely, the common man believes what he’s told in the media—namely, that he is the problem. Pseudo science has become a new religion. It’s become a moral crusade against carbon, the one element that’s basic to all life; it’s now more hated than uranium, plutonium, or gold. Carbon is being pursued by a lynch mob of angry chimpanzees.

And leading the charge is Davos attendee Greta Thunberg. She’s emblematic of how thoroughly degraded this has become. Greta is a manufactured celebrity. She came out of nowhere last year; massive but completely undeserved media attention made her into one of the planet’s most famous people. It’s not just laughable, but amazing, that a high school sophomore—with no knowledge or experience—has become a world opinion leader. You may have heard her famous deranged rant, but just in case, here it is:

She has absolutely nothing going for her but things like anger, resentment, hatred, and fanaticism. No matter. The Masters of the Universe sit there as she scolds them for their evil in destroying the world and ruining her youth.

The silly little bitch is a frothing-at-the-mouth fanatic and suffers from several really severe psychological aberrations. She is to the world what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is to the United States. She will undoubtedly go into some multi-billion dollar NGO, where she can do a maximum of damage.

People value urgency, sincerity, and passion. Like Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin, Castro, and the like, she’s got plenty. And nobody dares say a word about it, because she’s been granted the moral high ground. This augurs very poorly for the future.

Probably the only intelligent words spoken at Davos this year came from Donald Trump, of all people, when he decried “prophets of doom,” referring to the global warming crowd.

Climate change has been around for about four billion years. And the biggest driver of it, by far, is the sun. Not carbon dioxide, a trace gas. There’s 20 times more argon, in the atmosphere. Without the sun, earth would be a ball frozen at about two degrees above absolute zero. Not counting the effects of cosmic rays, the planet’s changes in orbit and tilt, the solar system’s rotation around the galaxy, and a score of other critical factors. But these people don’t talk about that, because those things are totally and obviously beyond our control. Best to stick with carbon, which is proving helpful in controlling the masses.

International Man: Given the disastrous policies the Davos crowd has in the pipeline, what should the average person do?

Doug Casey: Treat these people with the respect they deserve—which is to say, treat them like drunks discussing the weather at a cocktail party. Davos is just a social gathering for people who have a busybody streak. It would be completely unimportant except for the fact the media says it’s important.

The only thing that surprises me about Davos is that the hustler who runs it hasn’t yet invited the Kardashians.

*  *  *

There’s no question the elite are eager to promote policies like negative interest rates, the abolition of cash, and mass migration. These trends are in motion, and are accelerating at a rapid rate. It’s all shaping up to be a world-class disaster… That’s exactly why New York Times bestselling author Doug Casey and his team just released an urgent new report with Doug’s top 7 predictions—including how to survive and thrive in turbulent times. Click here to download the free PDF now.

It appears these injury count updates out of the Pentagon are set to become a weekly thing. But it’s of course worth recalling it all began with a “zero” injury and casualty count. By middle of this week the count jumped up to 50 troops injured in the Jan.8 Iran ballistic missile strike on Ayn al-Asad Airbase in Iraq. As we noted Wednesday the figures went from zero to 11 to 34 to 50… and who knows where from here.

But here’s the new figure:

The Defense Department said Thursday that 14 more U.S. service members have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury since the Iranian missile attack targeting U.S. forces at two Iraqi bases this month, bringing the total number to 64. 

The Pentagon said that at this point most are considered “mild traumatic brain injuries” but that the numbers are expected to grow further.

“All of those people were screened, and we’ve got a certain number, and then the number’s growing,” said Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The Pentagon has repeatedly claimed the “concussion-like symptoms” didn’t immediately present themselves. 

In the days following the ‘retaliatory strike’ avenging the death of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Iranian state media claimed dozens of casualties were “immediately transferred out of the airbase by helicopters.” Specifically Mehr News had claimed some 80 US troops were killed in the attack. 

“He was never really the same,” she told Connecting Vets. “It was almost like I lost him in Iraq and only his body came back.” https://t.co/KrhyVc2Opl

— Jack Murphy (@JackMurphyRGR) January 31, 2020

While the Pentagon has denied there were any troop deaths, it’s clear that injuries sustained by the missile impact were far more substantial than initial Pentagon and US administration statements. 

To review, Trump’s first address to the nation following the major unprecedented attack on US forces in the wake of Soleimani’s death indicated “no casualties” and that “all is well!”. Two weeks later, the Pentagon stunned reporters by indicating 11 US troops actually suffered traumatic brain injury (TBI). In that time Trump also dismissed the reports as some troops having mere “headaches”. 

The official ‘brain injury’ toll has continued to shoot up from there — it seems now on a weekly basis.

Via Birch Gold Group,

Like Victor Frankenstein, the Fed may have created its own monster. It’s been called many things, such as Quantitative Easing (QE), QE Lite, QE/Not QE, “Organic” Balance Sheet Growth, and more…

But no matter what you choose to call it, the bottom line is this:

The Fed is growing its official balance sheet at a frantic pace to provide liquidity to various banking operations, including the repo markets.

In fact, the balance sheet has grown about $400 billion since August, as reflected in the uptick at the far right of this chart:

Along with the Fed’s decision to increase its balance sheet is a rise in risky asset prices. According to a piece at Newsmax, this is raising eyebrows:

Prices for stocks and other risky assets are also rising at a fast clip – a state of affairs that a growing chorus of investors, economists and former Fed officials say is no coincidence, and potentially a problem.

This pattern of rising prices in risky assets is similar to what happened when the Fed initiated the first three rounds of QE.

The potential problem behind a pattern like this is the “monster” that the Fed is creating. Addressing the problem means answering a critical question…

When and how does the spigot of Fed cash flow get turned off?

Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer with Bleakley Advisory Group, thinks we will have to wait and see what happens:

The risk is what happens when the Fed stops increasing their balance sheet… What will stocks do when that liquidity spigot stops? We’ll have to see.

Of course, if we “wait and see”, any potential damage to the economy will already have started.

Also keep in mind that Powell didn’t want the Fed’s “monster” to be called another round of QE, instead opting in October 2019 to label it “organic” balance sheet growth.

But it still appears way too much like another round of QE to ignore the similarities. In fact, Richard Fisher, former President of the Dallas Federal Reserve, tied the earlier round of QE to this “organic” balance sheet growth rather succinctly:

“Markets perceive things and they may perceive things different than what you intend,” Fisher said, pointing to a strong correlation between the increase in the size of the Fed’s balance sheet and the rise in stock prices.

When confronted with the problem of “when to turn the spigot off,” the current President of the Dallas Fed, Richard Kaplan, said, “It’s one of several factors that I think may be exacerbating the valuation of risky assets, so as a central banker I have to be cognizant of it.”

Other Fed officials like Neel Kashkari don’t agree, saying, “I don’t see it.”

But the lack of consensus about this “monster” the Fed may have created only adds to the uncertainty.

In 2013, the market didn’t respond well when the Fed signaled it would turn the spigot of cash flow off. According to an article at Investing.com:

Then-Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke signaled the central bank was preparing to slow the pace of its bond purchases as it wrapped up QE3.

Stocks sold off and, more importantly, bond yields rose, undoing the desired effect of the Fed’s bond purchases, said Roberto Perli, founding partner and head of global policy research at Cornerstone Macro, a research firm.

If that behavior repeats itself, who knows how that will play out? But that’s what you can expect when you’re dealing with a “monster.”

What the future holds will depend on whether this “monster” gets out of control or not.

Don’t Wait for the Fed “Monster” to Turn on the Economy

As this Fed balance sheet story plays itself out, now is an ideal time to consider making your retirement resilient to major changes in the U.S. economy.

Consider adding precious metals like gold and silver to your asset mix, which tend to perform well under uncertain conditions like those we face now.

*  *  *

After 8 long years of ultra-loose monetary policy from the Federal Reserve, it’s no secret that inflation is primed to soar. If your IRA or 401(k) is exposed to this threat, it’s critical to act now! That’s why thousands of Americans are moving their retirement into a Gold IRA. Learn how you can too with a free info kit on gold from Birch Gold Group. It reveals the little-known IRS Tax Law to move your IRA or 401(k) into gold. Click here to get your free Info Kit on Gold.