Month: May 2021

NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity completed its fourth flight on the Red Planet Friday after a technical glitch prevented the rotorcraft from switching into flight mode Thursday. 

Ingenuity was pushed even harder this time, “going farther & faster than ever before,” said NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The 4-pound helicopter flew at an altitude of 16 feet on a 436 feet flight plan downrange. It logged more than 872 feet on the round trip, lasting 117 seconds. 

Breaking its own records! The #MarsHelicopter team celebrated their 4th flight today. Ingenuity rose 16 ft (5 m) above the surface before flying south ~436 ft (~133 m) and then back. It was in the air for 117 seconds during its 872-ft (266-m) trip. https://t.co/gCeXq5jtkL pic.twitter.com/GxdjKFMo77

— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) April 30, 2021

The Mars helicopter captured a stunning photo of the rocky surface. 

“We also managed to capture lots of images during the flight with the color camera and with Ingenuity’s black-and-white navigation camera, which tracks surface features as it flies,” NASA said. 

Ingenuity demonstrates how controlled flight is possible on Mars, and scouting missions will continue. The operation could benefit future exploration of the Red Planet and other worlds.

“The Ingenuity technology demonstration has been a resounding success,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “Since Ingenuity remains in excellent health, we plan to use it to benefit future aerial platforms while prioritizing and moving forward with the Perseverance rover team’s near-term science goals.”

More flights are planned in the coming weeks as Ingenuity will fly farther and faster. It will continue to serve as a companion to the Perseverance rover, mapping out routes for it to explore. The mission is for NASA and private industry to better understand conditions on the Red Planet.

Interest in Mars and even the moon comes as a space mining war is inevitable between the US, China, and Russia. 

Authored by Rick Rozoff via AntiWar.com,

On Thursday the US Senate confirmed Victoria Nuland as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, which has been described as the fourth most important position in the State Department. Though as the first three are filled by political appointees and the other by a career foreign service officer, the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs is the highest-ranking member of the US Foreign Service.

In an appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April as part of her confirmation process, she reflected on her thirty-two years in the Foreign Service working for five presidents of both parties and nine secretaries of state. She retailed some of her “historic moments” in that career, among them “working on tough arms control problems and conflicts from Rwanda to Haiti to Bosnia and Kosovo.” But what she expressed as her last-listed and perhaps proudest moment was, while she served as Deputy Chief of Mission at NATO, the military bloc for the first time activating its Article 5 collective defense clause, which contributed to the now twenty-year-old war in Afghanistan, a comprehensive naval interdiction mission in the Mediterranean Sea (Operation Active Endeavor) and European AWACS flights over the U.S. along with several other missions.

A major part of her career has been spent at NATO headquarters: she was Deputy Permanent Representative (ambassador) to NATO from 2000-2003 and Permanent Representative from 2005-2008. In both positions she was instrumental in recruiting military forces from NATO allies and partners for the war in Afghanistan, with NATO military personnel also stationed in Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan. At one point 130,000 of the 150,000 foreign troops in the country served under NATO command in the International Security Assistance Force: service members from 54 countries. Never before or since have troops from so many nations fought in a war, much less in one theater of war or one country.

She also worked on promoting seven nations to NATO membership at the historic Istanbul, Turkey summit in 2004: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia. All are in Eastern Europe; all but Slovenia were members of the defunct Warsaw Pact; three – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – were Soviet republics. Bulgaria and Romania provided the U.S. and NATO with eight military bases in the following two years. NATO has flown fighter jets from air bases in Latvia and Lithuania for years, in the case of the second nation since 2004.

Her State Department biography states she also served as Deputy to the Ambassador­-at-Large for the Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union in the 1990s (That was likely under Strobe Talbott, later president of the Brookings Institution.) She had a brief stint as a faculty member at the National War College. And she was Principal Deputy National Security Advisor for Vice President Dick Cheney from 2003 to 2005; that is, during and immediately after the invasion of Iraq.

During the transition period in Russia immediately following the dissolution of the Soviet Union she worked at what is described as covering Russian internal politics at the American embassy in Moscow and served on what the State Department termed the Soviet Desk in Washington. She is, in short, a seasoned Russia hand. She is reported to speak Russian and “a smattering” of Chinese, having worked in Guangzhou, China (1985-86) and at the State Department’s Bureaus of East Asian and Pacific Affairs the following year. She was in Mongolia in 1988 where she has been credited with assisting in setting up the first American embassy in the nation that is wedged between Russia and China.

She was a visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations twice, and the second time, as a State Department fellow, she directed a Council on Foreign Relations task force on “Russia, its Neighbors and an Expanding NATO.” She has also been a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a senior counselor at the Albright Stonebridge Group of former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. And she is on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy. (Her husband, Robert Kagan, is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and member of the Council on Foreign Relations and was a member of the defunct Project for the New American Century, of which he was a key founder along with Bruce P. Jackson, also past president the U.S. Committee on NATO/Expand NATO. Both Nuland and Kagan are now Democrats.)

But the world would likely never have heard of her until now except for her role in engineering the overthrow of the government of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. Her face was first revealed to viewers outside the State Department, the National War College and major think tanks as she was handing out food to anti-government rioters in Kiev at the beginning of that year.

Having been appointed Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs the preceding year, she became the major American official assigned to Ukraine during the crisis of late 2013 and early 2014. In a leaked phone conversation of January 28, 2014 between her and American ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, the two provided future historians with a textbook-perfect specimen of engineering a coup, replete with the exact people who would lead the post-coup “transitional government.” Three and a half weeks before President Yanukovych was deposed.

When the tape appeared on YouTube it created an international furor, not because of what it revealed about plotting the overthrow of a government which shares a 1,200-mile border with the U.S.’s nuclear rival Russia, not because it exposed the most naked form of interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation, not because shortly afterward the plot resulted in a what is now a seven-year war with the ever-worsening prospect of a direct military confrontation between the U.S. and NATO on one side and Russia on the other – no, but because the diplomat with decades of diverse experience said, when the ambassador raised the issue of the European Union’s role in the transition, “F-ck the EU.” That made the conversation noteworthy.

The only outrage in the West was over the fact that the contents of a private conversation has been divulged. Russia was blamed of course. Three years later Hillary Clinton denounced the leak as an example of Russia “weaponizing” intelligence information. She had no objection to overthrowing a friendly government and plunging Europe into a new war.

Yesterday no doubt there was rejoicing and exultation in Kiev. There should have been weeping and gnashing of teeth in the Donbass and Crimea. And grave concern in Moscow. Nuland like her boss Joe Biden may have unfinished business in Ukraine.

Long-suffer NYC restauranteurs may have been tempted to celebrate when Mayor Bill de Blasio announced yesterday that the Big Apple would “fully reopen” on July 1. But just as the problem of COVID-19 restrictions fades away, restaurant owners are facing the same problem that has prompted Royal Farms to offer $500 signing bonuses while some McDonald’s franchisees offer prospective workers $50 just to come to an interview: that is, President Biden’s massive $1.9 trillion stimulus is paying too many American workers to stay home.

Because of this, small businesses are reporting record levels of unfilled positions.

Job openings soared to a 2-year high last month, typically a sign that the labor market is “overheating”. However, the latest jobs data for March showed the unemployment rate in the US remains at 6%. Even though the restaurant industry showed some of the biggest employment gains of any industry last month, too many servers are apparently still being paid to stay home.

The situation is particularly dire for Manhattan restauranteurs, who watched their employees flee the city in droves last year as their livelihoods disappeared. However, many of these people have since returned to the city, but thanks to generous unemployment benefits and, of course, the stimulus checks, many haven’t felt the pressure to go back out and work. After all, many are making more money just staying home.

The dearth of potential servers and bartenders is putting restaurateurs like Mark Fox in a bind. The president and founder of Fox Lifestyle Hospitality Group owns four restaurants in Manhattan, but he’s worried that two new restaurants he’s planning to open in Q3 might see their openings pushed back because of the lack of workers.

“The staffing shortage is real,” said Fox, who already postponed the reopening of his White Oak Tavern in Greenwich Village, to May from March. “I don’t want to lose revenue, but I will not lose reputation of the restaurant by trying to open it with undertrained or underpowered staff levels.”

The paucity of potential workers is especially dire in a city where an estimated 5K restaurants have closed since last March. Many hospitality workers who moved out during the pandemic aren’t planning to return, according to Bloomberg. Some switched their focus to other industries where the hours aren’t as erratic or demanding. Others are simply going elsewhere, like the Hamptons, where they believe they can make more money.

In the short-term, many restaurants have been forced to cut hours and share staff with other establishments. Some are pushing off their reopenings until the labor situation improves, customers return, or both.

Joseph Smith, owner of the Bobby Van’s Steakhouse chain, said he’s short about 50 employees, which has forced him to delay the reopening of two restaurants in midtown. Both are in heavily tourist-populated areas, which have seen the slowest recovery so far, as most gains have been seen in restaurants that cater to locals.

“Wall Street is not back in full swing and the bosses that do the entertaining aren’t in town — they’re either in Florida or the Hamptons,” Smith said. “Some of the businesses are coming back, but it’s a slow process. Even if I get 40 people in for lunch instead of 140, I still have to staff it up like it was 100 people.”

Until tourists and office workers return, why would a server want to risk guaranteed checks from the government when the tips upon which they depend simply aren’t guaranteed?

Investors and business owners will receive their next update on how Biden’s stimulus is wrecking the labor pool next week, when employment data for April will be released.

Authored by Jesse Felder via TheFelderReport.com,

Just about three months ago, I wrote a blog post which featured this quote, from Charles P. Kindleberger’s Manias, Panics and Crashes: “Swindles are a response to the appetite for wealth (or plain greed) stimulated by the boom.” Since then, the number of frauds, or swindles, that has been revealed has soared, a clear testament to both the breadth and degree of greed inspired by the current boom.

Most recently, we saw the collapse of Greensill Capital as the result of fraud. Like WireCard, Greensill was a relatively young finance company looking to disrupt its more mature competitors which took a few (illegal) short cuts in the process.

‘Like Greensill, Katerra was backed by SoftBank’s Vision Fund, which encouraged collaboration between its portfolio companies. Greensill acted as a lender that could facilitate growth elsewhere in the SoftBank stable.’ https://t.co/y5Y82sJuBg

— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) April 16, 2021

Then we saw the implosion of Bill Hwang’s family office, Archegos. While this may not look like your typical fraud, I would argue its failure was the result of market manipulation, enhanced by an obscene if not illegal amount of leverage, gone wrong. And isn’t market manipulation, “an act of deceiving or misrepresenting“?

‘It was Hwang’s own orders that had helped make Viacom the year’s best performer in the S&P 500, forcing benchmark-tracking investors and ETFs to buy as well.’ https://t.co/opPRvddgGR pic.twitter.com/6OLH5ozTrh

— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) April 8, 2021

What’s more, the Hwang playbook sounds a lot like what we have been seeing in the options markets for the past 18 months or so. It’s almost as if he, discovered his own, “perpetual motion machine,” for a time.

‘For anyone who wondered about where the small day traders who made the 1990s so wild went, meet the 2020 version.’ https://t.co/num0PjCF9n

— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) February 26, 2020

Speaking of manipulating prices, there is also the curious case of the mutual fund whose manager who simply decided to create his own fictional prices in order to enhance performance results.

‘According to the SEC, Infinity’s chief investment officer, James Velissaris, had been “adjusting certain parameters” used by the pricing service. As a result, many of the fund’s holdings appear to have been overpriced.’ https://t.co/V40nnAGXwU

— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) February 26, 2021

And then, of course, we have the wild world of SPACs which have been at the center of several outright frauds already. More broadly, however, it is looking more and more likely that SPACs could simply be an avenue for amoral characters to legally cheat investors.

‘The SPAC structure could even have been designed to encourage “the bezzle,” referencing a term coined by economist John Kenneth Galbraith to describe the period in which an embezzler has stolen money but the victim doesn’t yet realize it.’ https://t.co/V2JtPiEBiW

— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) April 20, 2021

However, if their structure doesn’t constitute outright fraud, it’s looking more and more likely that their accounting methods, according to the SEC, did constitute a certain form of misrepresentation.

‘The SEC blindsided the SPAC market this week with a warning that some companies may have to restate their financial results because of the way they accounted for warrants.’ https://t.co/NcD9KY3tJb

— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) April 16, 2021

Similarly, another of the hottest segments of the investing universe also appears to have misrepresented itself to a great extent in order to attract capital.

‘The SEC has found some investment firms that tout socially responsible investing were potentially misleading investors, part of the agency’s enhanced review of funds that claim to support environmentally friendly policies but don’t adhere to them.’ https://t.co/qlDsjVM3MM

— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) April 11, 2021

Coming back to examples of outright fraud, the massive boom in commodities is already attracting fraudsters of its own.

‘Before its journey from a port near Istanbul to China even began, about 6,000 tons of blister copper in more than 300 containers were switched with jagged paving stones, spray-painted to resemble the semi-refined metal.’ https://t.co/rXB948IX3Q

— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) March 9, 2021

Hollywood is also getting into the act.

‘They’d been lured into what federal investigators describe as one of the most audacious Ponzi schemes in Hollywood history. Horwitz collected $690 million from investors for movie deals authorities say were fictitious.’ https://t.co/E9LPbZt9Oq

— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) April 27, 2021

Even central bankers can’t resist the urge to get in on “the bezzle.”

This story from my colleague Chloe (with myself on triangle) is just more and more astonishing the more one thinks about it, even in these fraud-filled times: Swiss prosecutors suspect the governor of Lebanon’s central bank has embezzled more than $300m. https://t.co/EMvXcmhxJR

— Sam Gad Jones (@samgadjones) April 24, 2021

And then, of course, is “the bezzle” that came about entirely in response to the more politically acceptable, though perhaps no less reprehensible, actions of central bankers.

‘”It’s a beautifully set up cryptographic system. It’s well made but there’s absolutely no reason it should be linked to anything economic,” added Taleb. He said bitcoin has characteristics of what he calls a Ponzi scheme that’s right out in the open.’ https://t.co/ijSAkWc2u7

— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) April 24, 2021

The cryptocurrency space has been the provenance of fraud for quite a while now.

‘Prosecutors alleged that McAfee, Watson and other members of McAfee’s cryptocurrency team took in more than $13 million by victimizing investors who had bought into a fraudulent “pump and dump” scheme.’ https://t.co/oYRwOu5Wb7

— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) March 6, 2021

That trend has only continued, and the related frauds have only grown in size, as cryptocurrencies have become ever more popular.

‘A Turkish cryptocurrency trader is feared to have fled the country with $2 billion of his investors’ assets, garnered from fraudulent sales.’ https://t.co/YJGn0SFXnk

— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) April 23, 2021

But, as Mr. Taleb seemed to imply, even beyond outright fraud, cryptocurrency best resembles a Ponzi scheme. It is telling that even a coin which promotes itself as a scam can succeed in this booming market for virtual currency.

TikToker makes ‘scamcoin’ as a joke and within an hour it’s worth ~$70mln lmao. pic.twitter.com/dmEAdNUG6Z

— TikTok Investors (@TikTokInvestors) April 22, 2021

The only thing I find truly surprising about all of this is that, considering the firm’s involvement in manipulative valuation techniques; manipulative options trading; and SPACs, Softbank has essentially no exposure to the crypto space at all. I guess even they see it as ‘a bridge too far.’

“If I’m an investor, I want to know how they are coming up with these numbers. Otherwise, you can’t believe any of the valuations. The more they talk about accountants the less I would trust the numbers.” pic.twitter.com/3NaWRpd3tV

— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) November 26, 2019

As noted at the outset, this explosion in fraud of late is merely indicative of just how successful the Fed has been in stoking “animal spirits.” JP Morgan said, “Nothing so undermines your financial judgement as the sight of your neighbour getting rich.” Clearly, financial judgement in a broad sense has been undermined like never before.

To come back to Kindleberger, “Crashes and panics often are precipitated by the revelation of some misfeasance, malfeasance, or malversation (the corruption of officials) that occurred during the mania… As the monetary system gets stretched, institutions lose liquidity and as unsuccessful swindles seem about to be revealed, the temptation to take the money and run becomes virtually irresistible.”

In this light, the acceleration in the revelation of fraud over the past few months suggests we could be nearing the tail end of the boom that inspired all of this greed in the first place. At the very least, it clearly suggests investors ought to be exercising a much greater amount of caution at present than they seem to be doing.

Russia’s military has announced that all additional previously deployed troops to the country’s south and southwest – which had sparked a ‘new Ukraine crisis’ late last month into this month – have now returned to their home bases. This month’s “massive drills” had alarmed Kiev’s allies in the West, and set off a series of tit-for-tat escalating diplomatic expulsions which began when Washington booted ten Russian consular officials (along with Biden’s sanctions for the SolarWinds hack and assorted election meddling claims), so it appears the Kremlin is taking pains to inform the West there is no feared ‘offensive’ in the works against Ukraine.

Russia’s defense ministry had never made it a secret that large-scale, nationwide ‘readiness’ drills would commence early this month. While what was described as a “massive inspection” of military units stretching from the Northern Fleet in the Far North, and to the Kuril Islands and Kamchatka, down to Crimea and near Ukraine’s eastern border in the South, involved hundreds of thousands of troops across the nation, it was the southern build-up which drove world headlines. This in large part because Kiev saw in it a prelude to invasion of its eastern Donbass region amid a severe uptick in fighting between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian national forces that led to multiple Ukrainian troop deaths.

The Associated Press reports the following of the latest Russian military update: “Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the military’s General Staff, said that more than 300,000 troops, nearly one-third of the nation’s 1 million member military, took part in the exercise earlier this month.”

It remains unclear what portion of this 300,000 was deployed to Crimea and near Ukraine. Speculation ranged from the low and mid tens of thousands to 100,000 or more. “Speaking during a meeting with the top military brass to discuss the drills, he noted that they involved 35,000 combat vehicles, about 900 aircraft and 180 navy ships,” the AP continues of Gen. Gerasimov’s statement.

“The commander of the Western Military District, Col. Gen. Alexander Zhuravlev, reported that most of his troops are now back at their garrisons, and just one trainload of troops was still on its way to their home base.”

So it now definitively appears “crisis averted”…at least for now. But the reality is this whole April episode has sunk US-Russia relations to new lows. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov put it in a Wednesday televised interview, the “lack of mutual respect” and “lack of communications” and diplomacy have now reached levels “worse” than the Cold War. “During the Cold War, the tensions were flying high and risky crisis situations often emerged, but there was also a mutual respect,” the top Russian diplomat said. “It seems to me there is a deficit of it now.”

All of this means that during the next inevitable round of Russia-Ukraine tensions and military build-up (given especially the Donbass situation is still boiling, with no resolution in sight), the stakes will be even higher, causing fingers to more easily be on the trigger. As a case in point the European Parliament on Thursday passed a resolution which seeks to require the EU to impose severe far-reaching penalties on Russia in any future case of “aggression” against Ukraine’s sovereignty. 

Here’s what the European Parliament said in a press release: “Should military build-up lead to an invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the EU must make clear the consequences for such a violation of international law and norms would be severe, MEPs agreed.”

“Such a scenario must result in an immediate halt to EU imports of oil and gas from Russia, the exclusion of Russia from the SWIFT payment system and the freezing of assets and cancellation of visas for Europe of all oligarchs tied to the Russian authorities,” it said.

The Kremlin has said that these theoretical actions would constitute an “act of war” – again which means the next Ukraine crisis will more easily lead to direct conflict.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Germany’s domestic spy agency is monitoring anti-lockdown protesters, claiming they are potentially involved in a plot to subvert the country.

According to a Reuters report, the BfV spy agency is concerned that the demonstrations are being used as a cover for far-right extremists and people who believe in “conspiracy theories” about COVID-19 to incite violence.

“Authorities fear that far-right extremists and conspiracy theorists who either deny the existence of Covid or downplay its threat to public health are exploiting lockdown frustrations to stir anger against politicians and state institutions five months before a general election,” states the report.

While the government asserts that the movement has been radicalized, the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party characterized the surveillance as government overreach.

“Organisers of demonstrations which are mainly led by protagonists of the Querdenker movement have an agenda that goes beyond protesting against the state’s measures against the coronavirus,” said a BfV spokesperson.

Earlier this month, a judge in Weimar, Germany who ruled that two schools should be prevented from enforcing face mask mandates was subjected to a police raid of his home and had his cellphone confiscated.

As we highlighted earlier this year, German authorities revealed that they would be incarcerating COVID rulebreakers in detainment camps usually reserved for refugees.

AfD MP Joana Cotar reacted to the plan by accusing authorities of “reading too much Orwell.” The state asserts it has the right to detain those who break quarantine under the Disease Protection Act.

German authorities appear to be far more worried about the threat posted by right-wingers, despite the fact that the country has a strong and notoriously vicious Antifa presence, members of which routinely engage in violent political attacks.

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The Covid affected tax numbers for 2020 are starting to roll in – and they’re ugly. New York City suffered a massive $1.2 billion plunge in tax revenue during the course of the year – as spending by visitors was down 73% – as a result of the pandemic and associated government shut downs. 

Tourism losses accounted for 59% of the city’s $2 billion fall in tax collections from the year before, a report from the state comptroller’s office said. 

Employment in the industry plunged – 31.4% of all jobs were lost from the year prior, when employment records were being set. Taxi drivers saw their average trips per day fall by 96%, peak to trough, from January 2020 to April 2020.

The city saw a staggering 43.7 million drop in visitors, down more than 66% from the year prior. The tourism industry’s impact on the city fell to $20.2 billion from $80.3 billion in 2019, according to Bloomberg. It marked the end of a 10 year record growth in tourism for the city. 

Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said Wednesday: “The pandemic’s damage to this industry has been staggering and it may take years before tourism returns to pre-pandemic levels. Visitors and their spending are essential factors in measuring the health of the economy.”

DiNapoli has continued to push for targeted relief for hotels, venues and restaurants. He said these businesses were “unlikely to recover until visitors return.” He emphasized that while domestic tourists are important, international tourists tend to spend more. Each Chinese tourist would spend about $3,000, about twice of other international visitors, he noted. 

Mayor De Blasio has called for city workers to return to their offices on May 3 and is also planning for a re-opening of Broadway in September. The city also kicks off a $30 million ad spend to try and drum up visitors and tourists, starting in June this year.

The city is forecasting 36.4 million tourists this year, compared to 66.6 million in 2019.