Month: June 2021

Desperate Netanyahu Threatens “Elimination” Of Iran Threat Even If “Friction” With US Results

Desperate Netanyahu Threatens “Elimination” Of Iran Threat Even If “Friction” With US Results

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who increasingly looks to be on his way out of power, said on Tuesday that’s he’s willing to worsen relations with the US under the Biden administration if it means preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

“An Iranian nuclear bomb is a threat for the continuation of the Zionist project and we must fight it relentlessly,” he said at a ceremony on the occasion of Israel’s new Mossad chief David Barnea taking the helm. “If we have to choose between friction with our great friend the U.S. and the elimination of this existential threat, the elimination of the threat will come first,” Netanyahu asserted.

The embattled PM’s rhetoric is turning increasingly bellicose and some might say desperate at a moment eleven days of fighting just wrapped up in Gaza under a tenuous ceasefire deal, and as Iran is in the midst of the fifth and final round of talks with world powers in Vienna which seek restoration of the JCPOA nuclear deal. Perhaps even more impactful and driving Netanyahu’s seeming desperation is that the country is on the cusp of seeing its first government in 12 years formed without Bibi as leader.

This after the Sunday night political shocker wherein his longtime close ally Naftali Bennett of the Yamina party (and now likely next PM) announced plans to align with Lapid to oust Netanyahu (which swiftly led Netanyahu’s supporters to brand Bennett a “traitor”). But the man who consistently ran on a national security platform based on greatly hyping threats to the Jewish state’s survival has himself long survived many near-misses politically over the past decade in power.

“I’ve told this to my friend for 40 years, Joe Biden, and I said to him, ‘With or without a deal, we will continue to do everything in our power to thwart the armament of Iran with nuclear weapons,’” Netanyahu continued in is Tuesday remarks.

And here’s more on the speech from Axios, particularly words which suggest Netanyahu is ready to go so far as ordering a preemptive attack on Iran should a ‘bad deal’ be announced from Vienna:

He stressed that he told President Biden Israel would continue its efforts to prevent Iran from obtaining the bomb with or without a nuclear deal. “Containment is not an option,” Netanyahu said.

Over the past month there’s been delegations sent from Tel Aviv to Washington to try and convince the Biden White House against leaving Israel out in the cold (as Tel Aviv sees it). The admin has meanwhile sought to assure its closest Mideast ally that it will be consulted and its concerns taken into account before anything final is reached. 

Israel is also expected to press Washington on a proposed $1 billion in emergency aid package following the eleven-day Gaza war, and to rapidly replenish the costly Iron Dome defense system.

The next major meeting is planned for Thursday between Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. 

Tyler Durden
Tue, 06/01/2021 – 17:00

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3pfwIyz Tyler Durden

The Bipartisan War on Work


iosphotos242754

President Joe Biden often talks about how his father used to tell him, “Joey, a job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It’s about your dignity.”

It’s ironic, because on Biden’s watch, a war on work is gathering momentum.

“Working Less Is a Matter of Life and Death” is the headline over a Sunday New York Times staff editorial. It relies on a newly published study by a World Health Organization (WHO) and International Labor Organization team that claims working more than 55 hours a week “led to” 745,000 deaths from stroke and heart disease in 2016.

Neither the editorial nor WHO specify how many deaths might be attributable to people not working enough. That is relevant information. Without it, the public health message becomes “work less,” rather than “find the golden mean of moderation between working too much and working too little.”

At this point, WHO has zero credibility. Syria, a brutal regime that routinely bombs hospitals and uses chemical weapons, was just elected to the WHO executive board. The WHO is to blame for what The Wall Street Journal calls the “Wuhan Whitewash,” a report that downplayed the lab leak hypothesis for the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic and that instead pushed the far-fetched idea that the virus got to China via frozen food.

Yet WHO’s war on work is aligned with recent U.S. public policy. Over the past 20 years, the civilian labor force participation rate has plunged to 61.7 percent from 66.9 percent. Some of that is the demographics of baby boomers retiring, but some of it reflects shifting priorities and choices.

Biden’s proposed higher tax rates will punish those who work hard. Instead of subsidizing work via the earned income tax credit or incentivizing work via welfare time limits, domestic policy increasingly pays people not to work, through programs such as expanded unemployment and the expanded child tax credit.

Cambridge, Massachusetts, recently announced it would offer “$500 no-strings-attached monthly payments” to 120 households. The announcement press release said, “Cambridge joins a growing number of direct-cash pilot projects across the country, including Baltimore, MD, Paterson, NJ, Oakland, CA, Madison, WI, and 13 other cities.”

Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, the group behind the experiments, has a statement of principles that says, “everyone deserves an income floor through a guaranteed income, which is a monthly, cash payment given directly to individuals. It is unconditional, with no strings attached and no work requirements.”

This delinking of welfare payments and work requirements threatens to reverse one of the major bipartisan achievements of the 1990s, the welfare reform enacted by former President Bill Clinton and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R–Ga.).

Urban Democrats are leading the war on work, but Republicans, too, have enlisted. Former President Donald Trump’s administration created the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Program that provides payments to, among others, parents who stay home to supervise their child’s remote learning. In Trump’s 2020 State of the Union address, he said, “I was recently proud to sign the law providing new parents in the federal work force paid family leave, serving as a model for the rest of the country. Now I call on the Congress to pass the bipartisan Advancing Support for Working Families Act, extending family leave to mothers and fathers all across our nation.”

The Wall Street Journal recently published an article by Sohrab Ahmari adapted from Ahmari’s new book “The Unbroken Thread.” Ahmari, a Catholic and the editor of the conservative New York Post, appreciatively quoted Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s words about the Sabbath: “He who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil.”

I’m an admirer of the Sabbath and of Heschel, but without commerce or toil on the other six days, the Sabbath is just another vacation day, not special at all. The Bible talks about observing the Sabbath, but it also talks about working the other six days. Psalm 128 says people who eat from the work of their own hands are happy.

It’s great that Biden can, by quoting his father, convey that, as the president put it May 18 in Michigan, a job is “about respect. It’s about your place in the community.” Republicans have been intermittently good at explaining how Democratic tax increases erode incentives to work, but they haven’t quite risen to the task of explaining the war on work as an attack on basic American values like industry, upward mobility, self-reliance, human dignity, earned success, and the pursuit of happiness. Gingrich used to frame the choice as “food stamps versus paychecks,” which is stark, but getting close.

Biden’s father died in 2002. For America to thrive in the decades ahead, it will need more messengers, in both parties, who can articulate why a job beats “no-strings attached” cash payments, family leave, or extended unemployment. Never mind WHO and the Times editorialists: The real threat the country faces isn’t overwork, it’s the rising percentage of Americans who aren’t working at all.

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The Bipartisan War on Work


iosphotos242754

President Joe Biden often talks about how his father used to tell him, “Joey, a job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It’s about your dignity.”

It’s ironic, because on Biden’s watch, a war on work is gathering momentum.

“Working Less Is a Matter of Life and Death” is the headline over a Sunday New York Times staff editorial. It relies on a newly published study by a World Health Organization (WHO) and International Labor Organization team that claims working more than 55 hours a week “led to” 745,000 deaths from stroke and heart disease in 2016.

Neither the editorial nor WHO specify how many deaths might be attributable to people not working enough. That is relevant information. Without it, the public health message becomes “work less,” rather than “find the golden mean of moderation between working too much and working too little.”

At this point, WHO has zero credibility. Syria, a brutal regime that routinely bombs hospitals and uses chemical weapons, was just elected to the WHO executive board. The WHO is to blame for what The Wall Street Journal calls the “Wuhan Whitewash,” a report that downplayed the lab leak hypothesis for the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic and that instead pushed the far-fetched idea that the virus got to China via frozen food.

Yet WHO’s war on work is aligned with recent U.S. public policy. Over the past 20 years, the civilian labor force participation rate has plunged to 61.7 percent from 66.9 percent. Some of that is the demographics of baby boomers retiring, but some of it reflects shifting priorities and choices.

Biden’s proposed higher tax rates will punish those who work hard. Instead of subsidizing work via the earned income tax credit or incentivizing work via welfare time limits, domestic policy increasingly pays people not to work, through programs such as expanded unemployment and the expanded child tax credit.

Cambridge, Massachusetts, recently announced it would offer “$500 no-strings-attached monthly payments” to 120 households. The announcement press release said, “Cambridge joins a growing number of direct-cash pilot projects across the country, including Baltimore, MD, Paterson, NJ, Oakland, CA, Madison, WI, and 13 other cities.”

Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, the group behind the experiments, has a statement of principles that says, “everyone deserves an income floor through a guaranteed income, which is a monthly, cash payment given directly to individuals. It is unconditional, with no strings attached and no work requirements.”

This delinking of welfare payments and work requirements threatens to reverse one of the major bipartisan achievements of the 1990s, the welfare reform enacted by former President Bill Clinton and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R–Ga.).

Urban Democrats are leading the war on work, but Republicans, too, have enlisted. Former President Donald Trump’s administration created the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Program that provides payments to, among others, parents who stay home to supervise their child’s remote learning. In Trump’s 2020 State of the Union address, he said, “I was recently proud to sign the law providing new parents in the federal work force paid family leave, serving as a model for the rest of the country. Now I call on the Congress to pass the bipartisan Advancing Support for Working Families Act, extending family leave to mothers and fathers all across our nation.”

The Wall Street Journal recently published an article by Sohrab Ahmari adapted from Ahmari’s new book “The Unbroken Thread.” Ahmari, a Catholic and the editor of the conservative New York Post, appreciatively quoted Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s words about the Sabbath: “He who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil.”

I’m an admirer of the Sabbath and of Heschel, but without commerce or toil on the other six days, the Sabbath is just another vacation day, not special at all. The Bible talks about observing the Sabbath, but it also talks about working the other six days. Psalm 128 says people who eat from the work of their own hands are happy.

It’s great that Biden can, by quoting his father, convey that, as the president put it May 18 in Michigan, a job is “about respect. It’s about your place in the community.” Republicans have been intermittently good at explaining how Democratic tax increases erode incentives to work, but they haven’t quite risen to the task of explaining the war on work as an attack on basic American values like industry, upward mobility, self-reliance, human dignity, earned success, and the pursuit of happiness. Gingrich used to frame the choice as “food stamps versus paychecks,” which is stark, but getting close.

Biden’s father died in 2002. For America to thrive in the decades ahead, it will need more messengers, in both parties, who can articulate why a job beats “no-strings attached” cash payments, family leave, or extended unemployment. Never mind WHO and the Times editorialists: The real threat the country faces isn’t overwork, it’s the rising percentage of Americans who aren’t working at all.

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Quinn: There Are No Solutions, Part 1

Quinn: There Are No Solutions, Part 1

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” 

– Edward Bernays – Propaganda – 1928

“For the first time in its history, Western Civilization is in danger of being destroyed internally by a corrupt, criminal ruling cabal which is centered around the Rockefeller interests, which include elements from the Morgan, Brown, Rothschild, Du Pont, Harriman, Kuhn-Loeb, and other groupings as well. This junta took control of the political, financial, and cultural life of America in the first two decades of the twentieth century.” 

– Carroll Quigley – Tragedy & Hope – 1966

It has been somewhat baffling to me why the masses have been unable or unwilling to acknowledge the existence of a ruling cabal/invisible government who are the true ruling power in our world. Any impartial assessment of facts, recognition of historical events confirming the observations of Bernays and Quigley, and knowledge of human nature, should unequivocally convince a critical thinking individual what they are told to believe by politicians, media and financiers is entirely false.

For decades, calling anyone who questioned the approved and sanctioned narrative about how our “democracy” supposedly operates has been called a conspiracy theorist. Of course, this term gained widespread use after the CIA used the term about anyone questioning the JFK assassination. CIA Director William Casey could not have been any clearer about the true nature of our government than his statement in 1981.

“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”

Your government and the financial interests who operate the puppet strings of their politician, media and central banker puppets do constitute a malevolent Deep State, designed to enrich themselves, while subjugating, controlling, and manipulating the masses. If anyone was in doubt about this fact, what has transpired in the last fifteen months should have convinced them of their error. The criminal ruling cabal have virtually perfected Bernays’ propaganda techniques through collusion with Big Tech and the traitorous surveillance state apparatus.

They have consciously and intelligently manipulated the ignorant masses regarding a non-lethal – to healthy people under 80 years old – annual flu, in order to test how far they could push their authoritarian un-Constitutional masking and lockdown measures upon us before we pushed back. To their delight and astonishment, the vast majority of Americans proved to be cowardly, easily manipulated, fearful, and begging to be enslaved by their superiors. It has truly been a depressing display of spinelessness, supplication, and subservience.

The lack of questioning authority, absence of critical thinking skills, inability to understand real risk, relinquishing liberties, and freedoms for presumed safety, and believing self-proclaimed medical “experts” has been a disgraceful exhibition of weakness, self-enslavement, and voluntary confinement at the behest of tyrannical politicians. You have to be seriously delusional or willfully ignorant to not acknowledge the coordinated effort by government apparatchiks, Silicon Valley billionaire censorship police, the Wall Street cabal, fake news mainstream media, Big Pharma complex, CCP, and the self- appointed ruling billionaire oligarchs – Gates, Soros, Bloomberg, Zuckerberg – to over-hype this Wuhan bio-lab virus as a means to implement their Great Reset master plan.

Their overwhelming success in pulling the wires controlling the public mind during this scamdemic have convinced them of their invincibility. Their control over all levers of our society makes it virtually impossible to change the course of our country and future history by operating within the system. When the system is entirely corrupted and dominated by a criminal cabal, there are no systematic solutions which will change the current paradigm.

William Casey’s dream of a successful disinformation campaign has been achieved, as virtually everything Americans believed over the last fifteen months has been false. At this point, no one operating within the government, mainstream media, financial industry, military industrial complex, or medical industrial complex can be trusted to tell you the truth. Discerning the truth of events, supposed facts, and those pretending to act in your best interests have never been more difficult.

I stopped watching the mainstream media news networks years ago and cancelled newspaper subscriptions before that. Over the last year, the relentless covid propaganda being shoveled by my local news stations forced me to abandon them. Most of the websites which allowed divergent opinions have sold out for the almighty buck. Big Tech tyrants and the Wall Street cabal see it as their job to suppress the truth and censor those who dare question the ruling party sanctioned narrative by cutting off access to advertising revenue and followers.

Even the few larger sites who remain committed to revealing the truth have been forced by Big Brother Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Twitter to censor commentary and not go too far off the reservation regarding who is running the show and calling the shots. The fear of seeing your income obliterated can be a very motivating force in convincing you to do as you are told. As Orwell predicted, The Party (aka as Deep State, ruling criminal cabal, invisible government) is always right.

I have experienced de-platforming, censorship demonetization, and denial of service attacks for attempting to tell the truth and allowing freedom of speech within the comment stream of my website. Back in 2008, after Seeking Alpha and Financial Sense sold out to Wall Street, they began censoring, editing, and suppressing my articles, which told the truth about Wall Street criminality and Washington corruption. Ultimately, they banned me from posting articles, prompting me to create a site where I controlled the content.

I did it on the cheap, with low-cost server companies. Trying to make a buck proved challenging as my site was black balled by Google Adsense, Amazon, Yahoo, Lockerdome, and several other ad companies who did not believe in my right to publish articles not toeing the company line. A massive denial of service attack mysteriously brought the site down for a week, shortly after writing a scathing article about Google.

Fellow freedom of speech advocate Mike Krieger (Liberty Blitzkrieg) saved the site by putting me in touch with his freedom of speech believing IT guru, who fought off the attack and placed my site on his secure server. Through the generosity of dedicated members of my community and a few lower tier advertisers, the site continues to be a voice in the wilderness. My non-reliance on Twitter, Youtube, or Facebook is now a blessing, as they have zero impact on the success or failure of my site.

Still, in this cancel culture environment, there is constant danger of Tech retribution and/or left-wing loons attempting to destroy my life for telling the truth and pulling back the curtain on the traitorous scum destroying our country. They have tried to get me fired from my job and will surely try again. Censorship is the hallmark of authoritarian regimes, so you judge what we are experiencing at this point in history.

My belief there are no solutions is based on what I have observed since I first started writing about economy, financial markets, politicians, media, and society as a whole in 2008. I was outraged by federal spending of $3 trillion and budget deficits exceeding $500 billion in 2008. I thought ratcheting spending over $3.5 trillion and running deficits exceeding $1 trillion would destroy the economy during Obama’s reign of error.

Wrong again. Spending swelled to over $4 trillion, and deficits approached $1 trillion again during the Trump administration, culminating in FY20 pandemic spending of $6.5 trillion and a deficit of $3.1 trillion. It looks like FY21 will finish with spending in the $5.8 trillion range and a deficit in the range of $2.5 trillion.

These numbers would have seemed unfathomable in 2008 and would have provoked rage among any reasonable person. Instead, our illegitimate dementia racked empty vessel of a president, when he is not ogling fourteen-year-old girls in the audience, is proposing a budget of $6 trillion of expenditures, while government revenues are stuck in the $3.5 trillion range. And no one blinks an eye. Interest rates decline. The stock market goes up. All is well in this fantasy land of delusion.

The powers that be are supremely confident they can run the national debt as high as they choose, with no adverse consequences to themselves or the long-term stability of the country. In fact, QE to infinity to fund the multi-trillion-dollar deficits has greatly benefited and will continue to benefit the criminal billionaire cabal reaping enormous profits from this scheme, while the plebs are left with stimmy crumbs, declining real wages, and raging inflation in food, energy, rent, home prices and just about everything they need to live.

How can anyone believe there are reasonable methods of solving the problems of this country through democratic means, when the entire system is captured, corrupt, and concealed from visibility by a criminal cabal of sociopathic billionaires and their highly compensated lackeys? The Deep State, or whatever you want to call the ruling oligarchy controlling the levers of society, have been able to deflect responsibility for the current state of affairs by having their captured media mouthpieces deny their existence and classify those of us who call out their misdeeds as conspiracy theorists.

As this denial of reality loses credibility, and every conspiracy theory is proven to be true, these Deep State co-conspirators have stepped out of the shadows and showed their cards during this fake pandemic crisis. I am not sure whether this change in tactics is an act of hubris or desperation.

“I have come to call this shadow government the Deep State…a hybrid association of key elements of government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern the United States with only limited reference to the consent of the governed as normally expressed through elections”

– Mike Lofgren

In Part Two of this article I will show how the Deep State weaponized the Covid virus to implement their reset agenda and discuss some options to negate their well laid plans.

*  *  *
The corrupt establishment will do anything to suppress sites like the Burning Platform from revealing the truth. The corporate media does this by demonetizing sites like mine by blackballing the site from advertising revenue. If you get value from this site, please keep it running with a donation

Tyler Durden
Tue, 06/01/2021 – 16:40

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3pcA1GE Tyler Durden

“This Is Not Acceptable”: Macron Demands Explanation Why Obama Was Spying On Merkel

“This Is Not Acceptable”: Macron Demands Explanation Why Obama Was Spying On Merkel

Once upon a time, not that long ago, the biggest outrage in the world of politics was the “shocking” revelation made possible by Edward Snowden’s exposure of the NSA’s deep state operations, that the Obama administration had a penchant for spying… on everyone, and especially its top allies such as Angela Merkel who BlackBerry was notorious breached by US spies (yes, even the ultra-partisan outlet CNN covered it “Obama administration spied on German media as well as its government“).

Of course, the outrage eventually died down with nothing changing – after all, the US deep state can and will spy on anyone and everyone it chooses, and it’s not like the president has any control over it, but over the weekend the story reemerged when in an investigative report on Sunday, Danish public broadcaster Danmarks Radio and other European media outlets “discovered” the the NSA had eavesdropped on Danish underwater internet cables from 2012 to 2014 to spy on top politicians in Germany, Sweden, Norway and France (we of course knew all this from Snowden’s original NSA leak but let’s pretend it’s news).

The NSA was able to access (and accessed) text messages, telephone calls and internet traffic including searches, chats and messaging services — including those of Merkel, then-foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and then-opposition leader Peer Steinbruck, DR said.

This, too, was not news, but since most don’t remember yesterday’s news cycle let alone that from 2013, European leaders had no choice but to address, which they did when the leaders of Europe, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said that they expected the US and Danish governments to present explanations over allegations of spying by Washington on European allies with Copenhagen’s aid (the alternative would give the impression that the US can do whatever it wants without any accountability to anyone… which of course is the correct impression).

“This is not acceptable between allies, and even less between allies and European partners,” said Macron after a French-German summit meeting held via video conference between Paris and Berlin. “I am attached to the bond of trust that unites Europeans and Americans,” Macron said, adding that “there is no room for suspicion between us”.

At this point the background laughter could be clearly heard.

As for Merkel, who supposedly told Germany’s Stasi secret police Stasi that she could not keep secrets well enough to be an effective spy when told to spy on her colleagues, she said she “could only agree” with the comments of the French leader, adding that she was “reassured” by statements by the Danish government, especially Defence Minister Trine Bramsen, condemning such actions.

“Apart from establishing the facts, this is a good starting point to arrive at relations that are truly based in mutual trust,” she said.

Alas, she was not reassured by Obama’s vice president, Joe Biden, who was last seen facing immense challenges trying to determine what year it is.

And since Merkel isn’t that much younger, we will leave the last word to Macron who said that “what we are waiting for complete clarity. We requested that our Danish and American partners provide all the information on these revelations and on these past facts. We are awaiting these answers.”

Considering that Obama spied on his own Congress (“A Brief History of the CIA’s Unpunished Spying on the Senate“) just as generously as he spied on foreign leaders, we urge Macron not to hold his breath, especially since even having bad thoughts about Obama automatically makes the French president a racist.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 06/01/2021 – 16:20

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3g09ZT9 Tyler Durden

Biden Wants To Track Cryptocurrency, but Bitcoin Seems Safe (for Now)


v1

A common argument from skeptics of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is that governments will eventually move to control the digital cash to limit competition with the U.S. dollar and other fiat currencies. This has been JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s stance on bitcoin for a number of years, and Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio reiterated this risk in a prerecorded interview first broadcast during a bitcoin industry conference on May 24 (although he also revealed that he owns some of the crypto asset).

Despite some high-profile commentary calling for a cryptocurrency ban, we seem to be a long way off from President Joe Biden signing an executive order that bans the private ownership of bitcoin (as President Franklin D. Roosevelt did with gold). But there has been increased discussion of tracking and regulating what’s going on in the bitcoin ecosystem. Of course, the state of bitcoin regulation could always change in the future, but here’s where things stand now.

The developed world already operates in a sort of financial surveillance state. Most people hold their spending money, savings, and investments in centralized banks and other financial institutions, and this financial data is available to various government agencies in a variety of forms, usually via a subpoena or regulations that require financial institutions to automatically report specific types of transactions. In the U.S., much of this surveillance dates back to the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970.

Apparently, this setup is not good enough for the Biden administration, which would like to take things one step further by allowing the Internal Revenue Service to hire tens of thousands of new employees to track the flows of money in and out of financial institutions directly. This includes custodians of virtual currencies, such as crypto exchanges. These plans have been outlined in the Treasury Department’s recently released American Families Plan Tax Compliance Agenda.

One of the key reasons why people use bitcoin is as a hedge against the financial surveillance state. The decentralization of the bitcoin network enables a degree of censorship resistance, which in turn promotes more private financial activity in the digital realm (though there is still plenty of work to be done when it comes to improving privacy and anonymity in bitcoin).

Regulating the bitcoin network itself would be a practically impossible task. Sending a bitcoin transaction amounts to not much more than broadcasting a message over the internet or some other communications channel. As illustrated by the ongoing crypto wars, the use of encryption technologies like bitcoin are protected on free speech grounds. Trading a cryptocurrency doesn’t just involve sending someone money, it involves sending a machine a written message to carry out a task—a message that’s protected by the First Amendment.

However, lawmakers and regulators can much more easily target the additional layers of activity that are built on top of the base bitcoin network, such as centralized crypto asset exchanges. These more centralized systems will likely be central to any potential regulatory crackdowns on the crypto asset market. For example, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has already proposed dropping the $3,000 threshold requirement for financial institutions to collect, retain, and transmit information related to international value transfers down to $250.

In addition to crypto exchanges, stablecoins (digital assets pegged to the dollar) are another potential target for regulators. Stablecoins are issued on public blockchains like Ethereum and Tron and do not gain much interest from regulators because they’re still backed by centralized financial institutions. The large amount of stablecoin-denominated activity occurring in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space could be outlawed with the stroke of a pen. Then again, the level of privacy offered by Ethereum, where much of this activity takes place, is pretty awful, and blockchain surveillance companies like Chainalysis are able to help regulators figure out who is using these systems for illicit or unregulated financial activity.

There’s also a gray area between the decentralized bitcoin network and the centralized exchanges. This is where alternative networks like sidechains, the Lightning Network, and other so-called layer-two protocols operate. On systems like these, smart contracts on the base bitcoin blockchain are used to construct new networks. They make tradeoffs in terms of being less resistant to censorship than the bitcoin blockchain in exchange for enabling other features such as faster payments, cheaper transactions, better privacy, DeFi applications, and much more.

This will be a key area to watch in the regulatory space going forward. These systems are not as resistant to control and regulation as bitcoin itself. For example, could regulators decide that a node operating on the Lightning Network is a financial intermediary? Could a number of governments come together to target a geographically diverse sidechain like Liquid or RSK? Bitcoin obtains its censorship resistance through the use of proof-of-work miners (PoW) as its mechanism for coming to consensus on the order of transactions. Two critical components of this consensus mechanism are that the miners are both dynamic and potentially anonymous. Bitcoin sidechains currently replace these miners with federations of known entities (or a subset of a group of known entities), but Lightning Network nodes are still able to operate pseudonymously.

Then again, the centralized, bitcoin-backed derivatives trading platform BitMEX was able to keep operating normally after a regulatory attack last year, and a potentially key building block against censorship was a treasury system that decentralized ownership of bitcoin deposits to multiple parties through the use of a bitcoin smart contract known as multi-signature. Additionally, bitcoin’s layer-two systems are also evolving, and they can become more resistant to government control over time.

Bitcoin mining is also commonly brought up as a potential area for regulation, but miners don’t actually have much control over what happens on the network. As illustrated by the SegWit2x debacle (where the larger bitcoin community rejected an upgrade agreed to by the vast majority of bitcoin miners, in addition to large exchanges and wallet providers), miners can’t unilaterally change the rules of bitcoin, and their main role is deciding the order in which transactions are made. Furthermore, the upcoming Taproot upgrade will enable different types of transactions (from a single-signature bitcoin transaction to the opening of a Lightning Network channel) to look indistinguishable from each other on the blockchain, which makes it more difficult to censor specific types of transactions on a networkwide basis. Additionally, a censorship policy by miners would need support from at least 51 percent of the network hashrate to be effective, and users could still move to a new system for consensus as a last resort.

Over the near term, exchanges, stablecoins, and other points of centralization will be the areas to watch for increased regulation of the crypto market. Therefore, it may be time for bitcoin users to think about moving away from centralized custodians and toward more decentralized options. This may be the only way for bitcoin to retain its underlying value over the long term.

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Nasdaq Dips, Russell Rips As Tail-Risk Insurance Costs Soar

Nasdaq Dips, Russell Rips As Tail-Risk Insurance Costs Soar

The month of June started with a bang for Small Caps and a whimper for Big-Tech as Russell 2000 handily outperformed (Dow managed a tiny gain) while Nasdaq and S&P were unable to close green…

It went just a little bit turbo in the last 30 minutes…

The Russell 2000 is back at a critical level relative to the Nasdaq 100…

Will it reach the upper end of the channel?

Source: Bloomberg

AMC was insane – surging on the back of a secondary… which the buyers of which then turned around and sold and told everyone else to sell… which sparked more buying (as everyone and their pet rabbit piled into deep OTM calls that expire Friday in the hope of sparking another gamma squeeze)…

VIX had a crazy day, mini-flash-crashing before the open to a 15 handle, before ripping back up above 18.5…

The cost of tail-risk protection has skyrocketed in the recent days – to its highest since late 2018 – just before The Fed sparked a plunge with its hawkish chatter…

Source: Bloomberg

Bond yields were higher across the board but only modestly with 10-20Y up around 2bps. NOTE that bonds were bid during the US session…

Source: Bloomberg

Pushing 10Y back above 1,60%…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar chopped around today (but remember, FX markets were open yesterday around the world) leaving the greenback lower from Friday’s close…

Source: Bloomberg

Cryptos gave back some of their long weekend gains today but bitcoin and ethereum managed to stay green (BTC fell back below $46k, ETH found support at $2500)…

Source: Bloomberg

Oil rallied to its highest since Oct 2018 (Brent topped $71). WTI closed around $68…

Lumber tumbled for the 6th straight day (limit down) and is down for 13 of the last 16 days…

Source: Bloomberg

Gold ended the day marginally lower but found support at $1900..

Finally, what will happen to the multi-year highs in hope – the spread between soft survey data and actual hard economic data is the widest since 2018…

Source: Bloomberg

As manufacturing surveys suggest stagflation is here…

Source: Bloomberg

Get back to work Mr.Powell.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 06/01/2021 – 16:01

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Biden Wants To Track Cryptocurrency, but Bitcoin Seems Safe (for Now)


v1

A common argument from skeptics of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is that governments will eventually move to control the digital cash to limit competition with the U.S. dollar and other fiat currencies. This has been JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s stance on bitcoin for a number of years, and Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio reiterated this risk in a prerecorded interview first broadcast during a bitcoin industry conference on May 24 (although he also revealed that he owns some of the crypto asset).

Despite some high-profile commentary calling for a cryptocurrency ban, we seem to be a long way off from President Joe Biden signing an executive order that bans the private ownership of bitcoin (as President Franklin D. Roosevelt did with gold). But there has been increased discussion of tracking and regulating what’s going on in the bitcoin ecosystem. Of course, the state of bitcoin regulation could always change in the future, but here’s where things stand now.

The developed world already operates in a sort of financial surveillance state. Most people hold their spending money, savings, and investments in centralized banks and other financial institutions, and this financial data is available to various government agencies in a variety of forms, usually via a subpoena or regulations that require financial institutions to automatically report specific types of transactions. In the U.S., much of this surveillance dates back to the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970.

Apparently, this setup is not good enough for the Biden administration, which would like to take things one step further by allowing the Internal Revenue Service to hire tens of thousands of new employees to track the flows of money in and out of financial institutions directly. This includes custodians of virtual currencies, such as crypto exchanges. These plans have been outlined in the Treasury Department’s recently released American Families Plan Tax Compliance Agenda.

One of the key reasons why people use bitcoin is as a hedge against the financial surveillance state. The decentralization of the bitcoin network enables a degree of censorship resistance, which in turn promotes more private financial activity in the digital realm (though there is still plenty of work to be done when it comes to improving privacy and anonymity in bitcoin).

Regulating the bitcoin network itself would be a practically impossible task. Sending a bitcoin transaction amounts to not much more than broadcasting a message over the internet or some other communications channel. As illustrated by the ongoing crypto wars, the use of encryption technologies like bitcoin are protected on free speech grounds. Trading a cryptocurrency doesn’t just involve sending someone money, it involves sending a machine a written message to carry out a task—a message that’s protected by the First Amendment.

However, lawmakers and regulators can much more easily target the additional layers of activity that are built on top of the base bitcoin network, such as centralized crypto asset exchanges. These more centralized systems will likely be central to any potential regulatory crackdowns on the crypto asset market. For example, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has already proposed dropping the $3,000 threshold requirement for financial institutions to collect, retain, and transmit information related to international value transfers down to $250.

In addition to crypto exchanges, stablecoins (digital assets pegged to the dollar) are another potential target for regulators. Stablecoins are issued on public blockchains like Ethereum and Tron and do not gain much interest from regulators because they’re still backed by centralized financial institutions. The large amount of stablecoin-denominated activity occurring in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space could be outlawed with the stroke of a pen. Then again, the level of privacy offered by Ethereum, where much of this activity takes place, is pretty awful, and blockchain surveillance companies like Chainalysis are able to help regulators figure out who is using these systems for illicit or unregulated financial activity.

There’s also a gray area between the decentralized bitcoin network and the centralized exchanges. This is where alternative networks like sidechains, the Lightning Network, and other so-called layer-two protocols operate. On systems like these, smart contracts on the base bitcoin blockchain are used to construct new networks. They make tradeoffs in terms of being less resistant to censorship than the bitcoin blockchain in exchange for enabling other features such as faster payments, cheaper transactions, better privacy, DeFi applications, and much more.

This will be a key area to watch in the regulatory space going forward. These systems are not as resistant to control and regulation as bitcoin itself. For example, could regulators decide that a node operating on the Lightning Network is a financial intermediary? Could a number of governments come together to target a geographically diverse sidechain like Liquid or RSK? Bitcoin obtains its censorship resistance through the use of proof-of-work miners (PoW) as its mechanism for coming to consensus on the order of transactions. Two critical components of this consensus mechanism are that the miners are both dynamic and potentially anonymous. Bitcoin sidechains currently replace these miners with federations of known entities (or a subset of a group of known entities), but Lightning Network nodes are still able to operate pseudonymously.

Then again, the centralized, bitcoin-backed derivatives trading platform BitMEX was able to keep operating normally after a regulatory attack last year, and a potentially key building block against censorship was a treasury system that decentralized ownership of bitcoin deposits to multiple parties through the use of a bitcoin smart contract known as multi-signature. Additionally, bitcoin’s layer-two systems are also evolving, and they can become more resistant to government control over time.

Bitcoin mining is also commonly brought up as a potential area for regulation, but miners don’t actually have much control over what happens on the network. As illustrated by the SegWit2x debacle (where the larger bitcoin community rejected an upgrade agreed to by the vast majority of bitcoin miners, in addition to large exchanges and wallet providers), miners can’t unilaterally change the rules of bitcoin, and their main role is deciding the order in which transactions are made. Furthermore, the upcoming Taproot upgrade will enable different types of transactions (from a single-signature bitcoin transaction to the opening of a Lightning Network channel) to look indistinguishable from each other on the blockchain, which makes it more difficult to censor specific types of transactions on a networkwide basis. Additionally, a censorship policy by miners would need support from at least 51 percent of the network hashrate to be effective, and users could still move to a new system for consensus as a last resort.

Over the near term, exchanges, stablecoins, and other points of centralization will be the areas to watch for increased regulation of the crypto market. Therefore, it may be time for bitcoin users to think about moving away from centralized custodians and toward more decentralized options. This may be the only way for bitcoin to retain its underlying value over the long term.

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WHO Switches To Greek Letters To Name Most Dangerous COVID Mutants

WHO Switches To Greek Letters To Name Most Dangerous COVID Mutants

In a decision that echos the WHO’s decision back in early 2020 to rename the novel coronavirus to “COVID-19”, the agency has decided to change the names of the most prominent mutant strains of the coronavirus to letters from the Greek alphabet.

Using letters like Alpha, Beta and Gamma (instead of B.1.1.7, B.1.351 and P.1) to refer to the variants will make it “easier and more practical” to discuss them with non-scientific audiences, the WHO said in a statement. COVID strains believed to be more infectious are deemed “of interest” and “of concern” by the WHO.

“While they have their advantages, these scientific names can be difficult to say and recall, and are prone to misreporting,” the WHO said in a statement.

Of course, the names will also prevent the press from referring to the mutant strains as the “Brazilian” variant, or the “South African” variant: in short, nations would like to avoid being associated with various COVID mutants, just like China pushed for the WHO to label the virus “COVID-19” so as to avoid the press and others from calling it the “China virus”. As analysts from Rabobank pointed out, the new system eliminates the “stigma” attached to the previous names.

“Meanwhile, the official US intelligence search goes on for the ‘Alpha’ of Covid-19, and the knock-on ‘Omega’ of the conclusion is far from clear,” Rabo analysts added.

The choice of the Greek Alphabet came after months of deliberations in which other possibilities such as Greek Gods and invented, pseudo-classical names were considered by experts, according to bacteriologist Mark Pallen who was involved in the talks.

The established nomenclature systems – like using B.1.1.7 as the number for the ‘Kent strain’ – will still be used by scientists and in research, the WHO said. In the press, people will soon be reading about dangerous hyper-infectious variants like ‘Alpha’, ‘Beta’, ‘Gamma’ and ‘Delta’.

Here’s the full statement:

All viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, change over time. Most changes have little to no impact on the virus’ properties. However, some changes may affect the virus’s properties, such as how easily it spreads, the associated disease severity, or the performance of vaccines, therapeutic medicines, diagnostic tools, or other public health and social measures.

WHO, in collaboration with partners, expert networks, national authorities, institutions and researchers have been monitoring and assessing the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 since January 2020. During late 2020, the emergence of variants that posed an increased risk to global public health prompted the characterisation of specific Variants of Interest (VOIs) and Variants of Concern (VOCs), in order to prioritise global monitoring and research, and ultimately to inform the ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

WHO and its international networks of experts are monitoring changes to the virus so that if significant mutations are identified, we can inform countries and the public about any changes needed to react to the variant, and prevent its spread. Globally, systems have been established and are being strengthened to detect “signals” of potential VOIs or VOCs and assess these based on the risk posed to global public health. National authorities may choose to designate other variants of local interest/concern.

Current strategies and measures recommended by WHO continue to work against virus variants identified since the start of the pandemic. The WHO broke down the list of notable variants into two groups: “variants of interest”…

…and “variants of concern.”

 

Tyler Durden
Tue, 06/01/2021 – 15:40

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3fCTAFc Tyler Durden

Why Is the TSA Making Vaccinated Air Travelers Wear Masks?


masked-travelers-Roland-Guanzon-Flickr

Yesterday I visited a movie theater for the first time in more than a year. Amid the endless ads and previews, the management repeatedly begged us to see upcoming releases in a theater rather than watching them at home, touting the advantages of a big screen and superior sound. Cinemark also emphasized its COVID-19 control measures, including elaborate yet generally pointless precautions such as seat wipes and frequent swabbing of surfaces. But the most appealing thing to me was a safeguard the chain has abandoned: Face masks are now “optional for fully vaccinated guests.”

While masks are “strongly encouraged for all other guests,” they “may be removed when eating and drinking inside the auditorium.” In practice, since no one was checking vaccination cards (I brought mine just in case) and Cinemark customers commonly eat and drink while watching movies, this means face masks are optional for everyone. Now that vaccines are available to anyone 12 or older, that policy makes sense. People who are especially risk-averse might balk, but they probably are not going out to the movies anyway.

The situation for air travelers is quite different. Under a rule that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) recently extended through September 13, all passengers, regardless of whether they have been vaccinated, must wear face masks “at all times” in airports and on airplanes. Violators are subject to a $250 fine the first time around and a $1,500 fine for repeat offenses. As you might expect from the agency that gave us “security theater,” the face mask rule is a form of public health theater, gratuitously incommoding passengers to create the illusion of added safety.

While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “recently announced that fully vaccinated travelers…can travel safely within the U.S.,” the TSA says, “the CDC guidelines still require individuals to wear a face mask, socially distance, and wash their hands or use hand sanitizer.” The TSA’s attempt to pass the buck is more than a little misleading.

The CDC’s latest guidelines actually say that fully vaccinated people “can resume activities without wearing a mask or staying 6 feet apart, except where required by federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial laws, rules, and regulations, including local business and workplace guidance.” So yes, as long as the TSA requires all airline passengers to wear masks, that edict qualifies as an exception to the general rule. But that hardly means the TSA’s requirement is based on scientific guidance from the CDC, as the TSA implies.

“Right now,” says Acting TSA Administrator Darby LaJoye, “about half of all adults have at least one vaccination shot and masks remain an important tool in defeating this pandemic. We will continue to work closely with the [CDC] to evaluate the need for these directives,” which also apply to buses and trains.

LaJoye implicitly rules out the possibility of letting vaccinated passengers dispense with masks, even though verification is feasible and does not require a government-run system. American Airlines, for example, offers vaccine verification for international travelers through its VeriFLY smartphone app. Similar solutions could be used to qualify for an exemption from the face mask rule if the TSA allowed it.

The TSA also is hazy about exactly whom it is trying to protect by requiring all passengers to wear face masks. Little kids do not qualify for vaccines yet, but they are extremely unlikely to suffer life-endangering symptoms even if they are infected by the COVID-19 virus. They are also relatively unlikely to transmit the coronavirus. Some adults have preexisting medical conditions that may impair the effectiveness of vaccines. But by and large, Americans who are unprotected from the virus are unprotected because of their own choices. That reality should figure in decisions about how everyone else is required to behave—especially decisions, such as mandatory masking of vaccinated travelers, that provide no real public health benefit.

“An airplane cabin is probably one of the most secure conditions you can be in,” Sebastian Hoehl, a researcher at the Institute for Medical Virology at Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany, told Scientific American in November. An October article in The Journal of the American Medical Association likewise advised that “the risk of contracting COVID-19 during air travel is low.” Here is why:

Air enters the cabin from overhead inlets and flows downwards toward floor-level outlets. Air enters and leaves the cabin at the same seat row or nearby rows. There is relatively little airflow forward and backward between rows, making it less likely to spread respiratory particles between rows.

The airflow in current jet airliners is much faster than normal indoor buildings. Half of it is fresh air from outside, the other half is recycled through HEPA filters of the same type used in operating rooms. Any remaining risk to be managed is from contact with other passengers who might be infectious. Seat backs provide a partial physical barrier, and most people remain relatively still, with little face-to-face contact.

Given these factors, it is not surprising that few COVID-19 cases have been linked to air travel. “Despite substantial numbers of travelers,” the authors noted in November, “the number of suspected and confirmed cases of in-flight COVID-19 transmission between passengers around the world appears small (approximately 42 in total).” They added that “onboard risk can be further reduced with face coverings, as in other settings where physical distancing cannot be maintained.”

That advice was offered before vaccines were available. Widespread vaccination, combined with immunity acquired from prior infection, makes a small risk even smaller. And given the remarkable effectiveness of vaccines, forcing passengers to continue wearing masks even after they have been vaccinated cannot reasonably be expected to provide any significant additional safety. Yet that is what the TSA is doing.

The New York Times notes a surge in reports of “unruly behavior by passengers,” most of them related to the mask mandate. As of late May, the Federal Aviation Administration had received 2,500 such reports since the beginning of the year, 1,900 of which involved passengers who refused to wear a mask. In one especially extreme incident, a woman was arrested and banned for life from Southwest Airlines after she punched a flight attendant in the face.

You can thank people like that passenger for the lack of booze on Southwest and American flights. The Times says both airlines “have postponed plans to resume serving alcohol on flights in an effort to stop a surge of unruly and sometimes violent behavior by passengers who have shoved, struck and yelled at flight attendants.” American said “alcohol can contribute to atypical behavior from customers onboard, and we owe it to our crew not to potentially exacerbate what can already be a new and stressful situation for our customers.”

Notably, American and Southwest will continue serving alcohol in business and first classes. Evidently it is only the plebes in coach who get unruly when they drink. Alcohol service in coach, which has been suspended since March 2020, now will not resume until September 13, when the TSA’s mask rule, which originally was supposed to end on May 11, will expire unless it is extended again.

Unnecessary face masks surely contribute to the “stressful situation” that American says is exacerbated by alcohol (a judgment that coach passengers who drink to relax might question). For every obnoxious or violent resister, there are many quietly resentful passengers who do not understand why vaccination does not allow them to stop wearing face masks.

Maybe airlines would disregard those objections even if the TSA did not require them to do so. The Air Line Pilots Association welcomed the extension of the TSA’s rule, counterintuitively claiming that it would “ensure the safety of passengers and crew from unruly passengers” upset about the TSA’s rule. In an NBC News opinion piece last month, Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, made it clear that her union views face masks as a nonoptional safeguard akin to seat belts and oxygen masks:

Flight attendants would never tell you that “whether you put on the oxygen mask is a matter of personal choice.” We understand that clear air turbulence really can throw you against the ceiling without warning, so we don’t say, “Some people believe seatbelts won’t keep you safe, so it’s up to you to decide whether to wear one.”

We’re also trained to help stop the spread of infectious disease. We’re not just enforcing these long-overdue mask policies because we have to: We understand that masks are a way we keep ourselves and each other safe. And we’re grateful policymakers are backing us up.

While Nelson may think that requiring vaccinated passengers to wear masks is “a way we keep ourselves and each other safe,” neither the science nor the current advice from the notoriously hypervigilant CDC backs her up. It’s not clear whether airlines would nevertheless placate irrationally fearful employees and passengers by imposing a gratuitous burden on vaccinated customers. But it is clear that the TSA is not giving them any choice in the matter.

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