Month: July 2021

Authored by Mathew Piepenberg via GoldSwitzerland.com,

June 28th has come and gone, which means the much-anticipated Basel III “macro prudential regulation” to make so-called “safe” banks “safer” has officially kicked off in the European Union (as it will on July 1 for U.S. banks and January 1, 2022 for UK banks).

The trillion-dollar question for gold investors is now obvious: What next?

The short answer is:  Gold will rise, but don’t expect a straight line or zero discomfort/volatility.

The longer answer, however, deserves a bit more context, unpacking and plain-speak; so, let’s roll up our sleeves and start from the beginning.

What is Basel III?

Basel III is essentially a long-delayed, controversial and internationally agreed-upon banking regulation which now, among other things, requires commercial banks to change their “net stable funding ratio” for gold held as a tier 1 asset on their balance sheet from 50% to 85% to make banks “stronger and more resilient in times of crisis.”

(Hidden premise: Are the BIS and its regulated banks worried about another “crisis”?)

Translated into non-banker English, for each asset a bank buys, they have to insure “stable funding” (as opposed to repo money, demand deposits or excess leverage) to buy/lever more stuff…

Translated even more simply, banks can’t use as much “maturity transformation” or “duration mismatches”—i.e., leverage and short-term money for long-term speculation (arbitrage)—to buy and sell precious metals, among other things.

Basel III, in essence, is requiring banks to engage in longer (rather than shorter-term) lending, and in a nutshell, this makes it far more expensive for banks to own “unallocated” gold, as most of the gold they owned in the past was just tier 3 paperlevered to the moon.

Getting back to more banker-speak, Basel III is an open move that requires banks to de-lever (slow down) their trade in paper gold.

This is accomplished by requiring/regulating banks to classify their actual physical gold holdings (bars or coins) as tier-1 (real/safe) assets and their paper gold holdings as tier 3 (levered, unsafe) assets, against which greater reserves will be required.

Translated once again into actual practice, Basel III means there will be a lot less banking leverage of, say a 400-ounce bar of gold (200:1 in 2016, to just 3:1 today) in the COMEX market, which market is slowly being transformed from a derivative-supported (i.e., levered) speculators’ exchange to a far more collateralized exchange.

Is Basel III Making the World Safer for Honest Banking?

Seems like a good thing, right? Less margin, less tier 3 risk, more “stable” assets, more reserves, safer banking practices, stronger bank balance sheets to protect depositors and, hey, perhaps even some actual and honest price discovery for precious metals?

Well…Yes and No.

Yes, the new regs will force greater liquidity requirements (“Net Stable Funding Ratios”) on banks, thereby preventing them from saying (falsely) that they have gold when in fact all they had was a lot of levered paper and more than one owner for the physical gold they did have.

But no, this will not lead to banks suddenly going on a forced buying spree (and skyrocketing price move) to replace all their old tier 3 paper gold with shiny new real, physical tier 1 gold to meet the new reserve requirements.

Despite this, many have made hay online claiming such an instant price rise would follow, but as we’ve said before, banks may be greedy, levered and dishonest, but they aren’t stupid, unprotected or suicidal…

That is, they’ve known these regs were coming and weren’t in any hysterical panic to nervously collect their pennies and suddenly buy more tier 1 gold and silver to meet the new reg percentages.

Not at all.

What many on the pundit-circuit and YouTube universe failed to remind their audience was that well before Basel III’s “reserve requirements” went live, those very same banks were already sitting on plenty of excess reserves thanks to prior bailouts (think 2008…).

In the U.S. banking sector, for example, the big boys were already well positioned with over $1.6T in excess reserves, yet all that is needed to meet Basel III is another $400B.

In short, banks are not even close to worrying about a forced purchase of more gold to meet Basel III reserve percentages; instead, they can simply allocate a portion of their fat excess reserves (compliments of you the tax-payer and forced bailout sponsor) to meet the new regs.

Re-Arranging (“Classifying”) the Deck Chairs on the Titanic

But what we do know from Basel III is that all that unallocated paper gold on the banks’ prior balance sheets needs to be re-considered, re-shuffled and re-classified.

In plain speak for non-bankers (i.e., the rest of us mortals), this means the banks need to make some decisions.

That is, will they set aside more money to buy physical gold to replace the paper gold, or will they simply reduce the size and scope of their old bullion business?

Take a wild guess…

As noted above, if you were expecting banks like Citi Group and Morgan (JP or Stanley) to suddenly convert all their tier 3 paper gold into tier 1 physical gold to make the 85% quota, think again.

Instead, they’ll be dumping a lot of the paper gold rather than spark some immediate price surge in the physical market.

In other words, banks will be reducing the size and scope of the precious metal trade, which adds to the cost of lending to every player in the gold and silver space–from coin shops to mining co’s.

Trading will tighten and clearing costs will rise to match the wider bid-ask spreads as gold and silver becomes less liquid, which could make institutional investors less interested in precious metals for no other reason than liquidity will be harder and spreads wider.

Suffice it to say, banks will always follow the path that is best for themselves and more onerous for gold in general and the rest of us little guys (i.e., anyone who isn’t a bank) in particular.

In short, expect a lot less bullion clearing services and hence much higher trading costs from the primary dealer banks.

But what does that have to do with the Trillion-dollar question—namely the future direction of gold and silver pricing?

Good question.

Basel III and Precious Metal Pricing

A. The Bearish/Cynical Take

As the traders say, buy the rumor and sell the news.

For the last three months, as Basel III rumors spread, gold saw a great deal of short covering and price upticks.

But once the so-called Basel III “news” approached the June 28 deadline, the selling kicked in on que and gold saw expected falls, which should be classic dip-buying signals for far-sighted investors.

Near-term, the fact that banks are reducing their bullion trades (or re-arranging their unallocated/tier 3 gold and allocated tier 1 gold) is not exactly a bullish signal for gold.

In the UK, for example, the very perturbed LBMA banks live and breathe primarily in the clearing and settling of unallocated, “paper” gold and silver—i.e., the very tier 3 assets most impacted by Basel III.

As indicated above, the UK’s regulatory clock starts ticking in January, so we can expect some serious stress (i.e., lower volume) in the soon-to-be beleaguered LBMA market in 2022.

For true cynics, it’s tempting to simply see Basel III as a clever way for the BIS and their central and commercial bank minions (think Deutsche Bank) to create a tightened gold trade designed to stifle gold market activity/lending and hence shield their otherwise worthless fiat currencies, as nothing scares broke sovereigns and fake currencies more than rising gold prices.

Furthermore, Basel III creates a convenient setting to push gold down and thus allow banks to front run the dip and buy more of the same at lower prices. Such cheating is nothing new from the big banks…

Fair point—from a cynic like myself.

But let’s stick to what we know in real time.

In particular, we can assert that the smaller players and traders in the gold space are about to feel a tight and painful pinch in everything from liquidity to loan terms.

Thus, for smaller enterprises in the gold sector (miners, mints, jewelers and refiners for example) who rely upon inexpensive and readily available liquidity (or loan terms), many will, as always, get priced out by the big players or loan-averse banks as more consolidation in this otherwise shrinking trading/lending universe takes place.

And as for gold traders hoping to go long to actual delivery on futures contracts with tight spreads, they’ll quickly discover that thanks to Basel III, they won’t be able to afford/use leverage to take physical delivery, but will instead have to keep rolling their contracts at a much higher price and wider spread.

Why?

Because unlike banks, whose cost of capital is zero, normal traders won’t be given a margin account from those same (and newly regulated) banks to pay for actual delivery.

That’s why the big banks banks are natural gold shorts: They know most traders can’t go long to full delivery.

In other words, the cost (as well as widening bid-ask spreads) of clearing and settling precious metal trades, as well as the cost of borrowing (and hedging) for miners and refiners in this sector will rise considerably as banks push the rising costs down the food chain while making profits on what is effectively their own “insiders arbitrage.”

Such shrinkage in bank “precious metal departments” could make gold less attractive to certain parties (expect far less players in the LBMA pitch), and hence push precious metals downward.

B. Some Volatility & Bullish Inevitability

On the bullish side, however, a smaller precious metals market combined with more demand and higher transactional costs can send prices higher, not lower.

Furthermore, the fact that Basel III reclassifies physical, or allocated, gold as a tier 1, zero-risk asset, means more banks (commercial and central) are likely to increase their vaulted positions of gold and silver.

That’s bullish.

But as already noted, be it forward contracts in London or futures contracts on COMEX, banks will clearly be less encouraged or voluminous in the precious metal trade.

For this reason, I, and many others, expect greater price volatility in gold and silver, but ultimately far better price discovery when the myriad other gold tailwinds of which we’ve written (i.e., rising inflation, negative real rates, central bank loan guarantees, expanding money supply and a falling dollar) outside of Basel III send gold demand (and hence gold prices) naturally higher.

With the Basel III regs in place in such a macro tailwind environment for gold, there will be far less big-bank paper-shorts impacting silver and gold’s natural price rises going forward.  

This means actual price discovery as opposed to artificial price fixing by the COMEX’s big banks.

Thus, if the BIS was hoping to discourage gold via Basel III, they may want to be careful what they ask for, as their plan is likely to backfire as the rest of the world’s currencies are already on fire and burning to ash.

Putting It Together

In sum, there is a wide arc of opinions and possibilities as to the near-term and longer-term impact of Basel III on gold and silver pricing.

As stated above, we can expect increased price volatility, and even further declines in precious metals, but longer term, the arc of history, improved price discovery and the good ol’ natural laws of supply and demand make gold an undeniably critical asset going forward.

At Matterhorn Asset Management, we serve sophisticated precious metal investors and wealth preservation clients, not speculators, pattern traders or trend followers.

As such, near-term price moves on the backs of headline-making regulations never detract us, or our clients, from the blunt recognition that the global financial system in general, and global currencies in particular, are heading nowhere but downward.

Gold is insurance against a system already on fire.

Ironically, the very fact that the Basel III regs are making noise today is just further evidence of this ultimate direction.

That is, the fear (as well as unspoken realization) that the very financial system which the BIS and others have mis-managed for years is now at risk-levels never seen before in history precisely explains what prompted Basel III’s arrival today after so many false starts yesterday.

In other words, the very architects of the global financial crisis (an unprecedented global debt disaster coupled with a risk-asset mega bubble) are worried about the catastrophe they alone created and which they can no longer pin on the COVID (fiasco).

Unlike those “banking experts,” we in Zurich have always played the long game not the putting green.

Regardless of whether Basel III brings near-term mayhem or calm to the gold markets, we have zero doubts that the only assets to bring individual calm to such global mayhem in this broken financial setting are the very same assets the big boys are currently doing their best to “regulate,” namely: Gold and silver.

Ironically, and despite even Basel III’s attempt to make allocated gold a risk-free priority over unallocated paper gold on their own balance sheets, we also know, and have know for decades, that even the “allocated” gold held by their bank customers is not in fact owned by the customers, but by the banks themselves.

That’s why we store our clients’ fully-insured precious metals outside of this fractured and band-aid regulated banking system in secured vaults where the gold is held and marked in client names, not ours.

Alas: Zero counter-party risk, 100% ownership.

Stated otherwise, we’ve been thinking way ahead of the bankers and their regulators for years.

Amidst all this noise are simple guideposts.

We knew physical gold was a “safe asset” long before Basel III made it tier 1 official; we also knew, like many other sophisticated investors, that “non-yielding” physical gold was a far superior asset than negative yielding sovereign bonds (i.e., “return-free risk”)…

Heck, even the central banks themselves can’t deny this, which is why they’ve been purchasing more gold than Treasuries.

In short, what banks do and what they say are very different things. Basel III is just another attempt to make the unsafe appear safe, whereas we’ve been safe (and more prepared) all along.

For serious precious metal investors seeking genuine wealth preservation and currency insurance managed by the global leader in premier gold and silver stored in the world’s most secure vault, we are a far better choice than the banks.

Visit us here and see why.

Concerns about the Delta variant continued to have an impact on markets Thursday as Japanese equities tumbled after Tokyo health authorities confirmed the largest batch of new coronavirus cases in more than a month. But Japan isn’t the only country fretting about rising COVID cases caused by the Delta variant (and, specifically, the spread of the newfound “delta” variant).

After reassuring the public that England’s last remaining restrictions (each of the UK’s constituent nations has control over its own COVID restrictions) would expire as planned on July 19, PM Boris Johnson changed it up Thursday morning during a visit to a Nissan plant in Sunderland (in northeastern England) where he said he an additional phase of restrictions would be necessary, and he would be “setting in the course of the next few days what step four will look like exactly.

Japan’s decision to bar foreign spectators from the Olympics, along with the spread of Delta across the UK (which has inspired other European leaders to mull reviving travel restrictions and quarantine rules) pose a serious threat to the global tourism industry, which is struggling to recover from the historic hit it took last summer, when international travel was effectively shut down.

As public health officials embrace fearmongering tied to the Delta variant, the WHO warned on Thursday that the Euro 2020 football finals, which drew crowds to stadiums across the Continent and the UK, are likely the reason why a 10-week decline in new COVID cases has come to an end. Last week, the number of new cases rose by 10%, driven by mixing of crowds in Euro 2020 host cities, travel and easing of social restrictions, WHO said, according to Reuters.

“We need to look much beyond just the stadiums themselves,” WHO’s senior emergency officer, Catherine Smallwood, told reporters.

“We need to look at how people get there, are they travelling in large crowded convoys of buses? And when they leave the stadiums, are they going into crowded bars and pubs to watch the matches?”

“It is these small continuous events that are driving the spread of the virus,” Smallwood said.

Meanwhile, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer called a decision by European soccer’s governing body UEFA to allow big crowds at Euro 2020 “utterly irresponsible”. UEFA responded in a statement, claiming mitigation measures at host venues “are fully aligned with the regulations set out by the competent local public health authorities”.

With all of this in mind, Reuters reported Thursday that the spread of the Delta COVID variant will result in “a complete wash-out” for the EU tourism industry, especially in hard-hit southern European states like Portugal. The EU “travel certificate” (read: vaccine passport) was supposed to be the industry’s saving grave. But while it only recently launched, the recovery in tourism in Portugal “has come to a halt”.

The Delta variant has been linked to more than half of new cases in Lisbon, along with many of the new cases confirmed in popular tourist areas. The UK also decided last month to remove Portugal from its “Green List” of destinations, while Germany has also moved to curb travel.

While a UN study released this week welcomed the EU’s vaccine passport as a “rare example of countries harmonising arrangements on travel,” but said it likely won’t be enough to save the summer tourism season.

Meanwhile, Capital Economics argued that the passport didn’t  remove constraints for those not fully vaccinated, meaning travelers with unvaccinated children would still face restrictions due to their kids. Also, specific travel rules still vary from country to country.

For the EU’s tourism industry, it looks like they’ll just need to settle on “better luck next year”. Hopefully, scientists won’t find another variant to use as a boogeyman next summer, too.

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Everywhere you look, things are getting weird, and I don’t mean that in a good way.  Throughout all of our ups and downs over the decades, one thing that our society could always count on for a certain degree of consistency was nature.  But now nature is going haywire at the same time that the very fabric of our society seems to be unraveling all around us.  In this article, I am going to share with you a number of items that have been brought to my attention over the past month.  On their own, each one of these items is “unusual”, but the fact that so many really strange things are all happening simultaneously is definitely cause for alarm.

In this article, I am not even going to bring in stories from the rest of the globe.  For example, right now a horrific plague of mice is causing massive problems in Australia.  Perhaps I will talk about this in a future article, but in this one I am just going to focus on this country.

The following are 5 bizarre new plagues that have made headlines in the United States within the last 30 days…

#1 A Plague Of Rattlesnakes

The endless megadrought in our western states is having a lot of unexpected consequences, and this includes a plague of rattlesnakes.  According to the Daily Mail, rattlesnakes have been moving into urban areas in California in large numbers because of the exceedingly dry conditions…

Much of the US west is currently undergoing a record heatwave and its worst drought in at least 20 years, with temperatures soaring into the triple digits this weekend, and wildlife experts are saying the extreme weather is creating the perfect conditions for increased interactions between humans and animals.

Rattlesnakes, in particular, have been seen moving into urban areas in larger numbers, and are being found on porches, yards, nearby pools and under children’s play equipment.

Len Ramirez catches rattlesnakes for a living, and he says that they are being found “everywhere” at this point…

Len Ramirez stalked through the dried landscape, scanning the ground ahead searching for movement. Called out to an estate in Napa Valley, the owner of Ramirez Rattlesnake Removal company was finishing up his last job of another busy day wrangling, removing and relocating snakes from homes across northern California. He’d found three in just this yard, including one nestled roughly 1,000 yards from the pool.

Rattlesnakes are everywhere these days, he says – on front porches, in potted plants, and under children’s play equipment. “I am busier than I have ever been. Complaints are coming in from all over the state.”

According to Ramirez, there have been jobs that have required him to remove “more than 60 snakes at a time”.

Unfortunately, this plague is likely to continue to get worse as long as the megadrought persists.

#2 A Plague Of Grasshoppers

The megadrought in our western states has also created a plague of grasshoppers.

It turns out that the little critters absolutely love the hot, dry conditions, and they have been multiplying like crazy.

Federal officials are extremely concerned, and they are gearing up for “their largest grasshopper-killing campaign since the 1980s”…

A punishing drought in the U.S. West is drying up waterways, sparking wildfires and leaving farmers scrambling for water. Next up: a plague of voracious grasshoppers.

Federal agriculture officials are launching what could become their largest grasshopper-killing campaign since the 1980s amid an outbreak of the drought-loving insects that cattle ranchers fear will strip bare public and private rangelands.

#3 Birds Dropping Dead In Very Large Numbers

As I discussed last week, birds are suddenly dropping dead in very large numbers in multiple U.S. states.  In Indiana, unusual bird deaths have now been reported in fifteen different counties, and authorities have absolutely no idea why this is happening…

The Department of Natural Resources warns that songbirds have now died in fifteen counties across Indiana and more across the region.

“I’ve never seen them exhibit the gooey eyes and crustiness in addition to the neurological symptoms,” Allisyn Gillet, DNR ornithologist said.

Gillet says she’s getting reports of nearly a dozen songbirds a week. in the last month, she says they’ve had at least 100 reports and no one knows exactly what’s causing it.

In addition to Indiana, large numbers of birds are also dropping dead in Washington D.C., Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky and Ohio.

#4 Unprecedented Flooding In Detroit

A massive storm last Friday turned I-94 into a lake and caused horrific flooding in both Detroit and Dearborn.

Many areas remain underwater as I write this article, and police are warning people not to play in the water because there is “a good chance” that it contains raw sewage…

Historic rainfall on Friday caused power outages in metro Detroit, at least 1,000 cars abandoned as highways filled up with water, and countless flooded residential basements in the area. The flooding produced more viral videos, including one showing a man jet-skiing down the street in Dearborn, as well as a surreal image of people playing in a flooded part of a highway as if it were a beach on one of the Great Lakes, prompting an even more surreal tweet from Michigan State Police. (“Finally in the things I would never thought I would have to say: Do not go into the water,” an MSP officer tweeted. “This water has debris, sharp metal, submerged cars, gasoline and oil floating in it. There is also a good chance that there is sewage also in the water. In other words it’s gross!”)

#5 The Worst Heatwave To Ever Hit The Northwest

We have just seen the highest temperature that has ever been recorded in the city of Portland.

The same thing is true for Seattle.

And the same thing is true for dozens of other cities in the Northwest.  In fact, the little community of Lytton in British Columbia actually just recorded the hottest temperature in the history of Canada.

This unprecedented heatwave is being caused by an absolutely massive “heat dome”, and CBS News Meteorologist Jeff Berardelli says that there is only a “1/10,000+ chance” that something like this could happen.

Unfortunately, this heat dome looks like it is going to be around for a while…

There is no timetable for how long a heat dome can last, but things won’t immediately cool down in much of the Pacific Northwest. Forecasts have inland areas such as Spokane, Washington and Boise, Idaho reaching triple-digit temperatures for the rest of the week. The National Weather Service’s excessive heat warning is in effect until 11 p.m. PT on Thursday.

For much more on this, please see an article that I just posted entitled “14 Astonishing Facts About The Blistering Heatwave That Is Absolutely Frying The Northwest Right Now”.

So why are so many crazy things happening to the United States all at the same time?

I don’t know.

But I do believe that our nation has entered a time of tremendous instability, and I believe that it is going to get a whole lot worse.

The stable conditions of the last several decades are disappearing, and I believe that we have now entered an era when global events are going to get really wild.

Unfortunately, most Americans are still anticipating that things will get back to the way they were in the “old days”, but at this point the “old days” are gone for good.

*  *  *

Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

Fuel prices in Ukraine have reached their highest levels in well over a decade, and Kiev is lashing out at Russia for “blackmail” – as the Kremlin has refused to supply additional gas to Europe amid the crisis. “Energy inflation is gathering pace in Europe, with the price of everything from gas to electricity surging to records, fueling concerns about costs to consumers as the world emerges from the global pandemic,” Bloomberg observes. “European natural gas, coal and power prices climbed to an all-time high on Thursday, as did the cost of pollution permits,” also amid a post-pandemic massive leap in energy demand.

The chief of Ukraine’s state-backed gas pipeline company has denounced what he says is “an artificially created problem” orchestrated by Russian energy gian Gazprom. CEO of Ukraine’s Gas Transmission System Operator Sergiy Makogon was cited in FT as saying Europe “should not continue this blackmail by Gazprom with prices.”

Gazprom has yet to specifically respond to these latest allegations, which also come amid tensions over the nearly completed Nord Stream 2 Russia-to-Germany pipeline which Washington has sought to halt through a series of controversial sanctions measures, albeit Biden recently dropped sanctions on the German side of the project. Russian officials have pointed out, however, that the state energy giant has fulfilled all its long term contracts in Europe.

It’s long been an official US position that the entire NS2 enterprise is geared toward “punishing” Ukraine by denying it lucrative and much-needed natural gas transit fees, further as part of a broader geopolitical strategy of gaining energy-dependence leverage over Europe.

However, the latest FT reporting includes this key admission from an unnamed EU source:

An EU official said the commission “had no indications of specific behavior by any of our suppliers to drive up prices.”

“The current situation is a reflection of the dynamics of the global market. All EU regions now have access to more than one gas source, making them less vulnerable to supply restrictions from an individual supplier,” the official said.

Below: Share of Russian gas transit through Ukraine of total Russian gas transit from 1991 to 2020

You will find more infographics at Statista

This appears to cut against the entirety of Kiev and Washington’s argument – or perhaps the question of European “vulnerability” will be tested precisely once NS2 comes online, which is said to be over 95% complete.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

A SAGE government adviser has said that fatigue, headache, sore throat and diarrhoea should be added to the list of COVID symptoms, prompting concerns that this will artificially inflate case numbers.

The London Times reports: “Including fatigue, headache, sore throat and diarrhoea on the official list of Covid symptoms would pick up a third more cases of the virus, Calum Semple, a member of the Scientific advisory group for emergencies (Sage), said.”

“As older people are vaccinated, proportionally more younger people are having the disease and they have a different group of symptoms,” Semple asserted, adding, “By extending the symptom list, we think we’ll pick up about a third more cases.”

By including symptoms that are common for other illnesses such as flu, if a third more cases are suddenly ‘discovered, SAGE can then attempt to fan the flames of hysteria by claiming the country is experiencing another “wave” of COVID infections.

Calling the idea “mission creep,” commentator Maajid Nawaz suggested that adding more symptoms to the list is an excuse to artificially boost case numbers, which will then be used to argue for further lockdowns in the winter.

Enough already Sage, please!

1) This Sage member’s attitude to Covid is otherwise known as ‘mission creep’ —>

“Add fatigue, headache, sore throat and diarrhoea to Covid symptoms list, says Sage member”

Here’s why it’s misleadingly unhelpful (thread)https://t.co/lTvp8scfWr

— Maajid أبو عمّار (@MaajidNawaz) July 1, 2021

Nawaz posted a Twitter thread in which he explained how including new symptoms would be “misleadingly unhelpful” and that COVID numbers are already being inflated because three times more people are being tested compared to December.

“We are NOT finding more covid positives. All we are doing is testing far more people (3x more people) to get the equivalent result,” wrote Nawaz, pointing out that hospitalization numbers remain low.

Some experts have previously warned that flu cases were already being falsely counted as COVID cases in order to boost figures, with epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski cautioning that, “Influenza has been renamed COVID-19 in large part.”

Back in February, UK health authorities announced that not a single case of influenza had been detected this year, prompting some to express incredulity at the claim.

England is set to exit all COVID restrictions on July 19th, but that date was supposed to pass on June 21st before the government decided to extend it, citing the threat of the new delta variant.

As we previously highlighted, when asked when all social distancing and mask mandates should end, one SAGE adviser, a former member of the Communist Party, expressed her belief that they should continue “forever”.

*  *  *

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A high level Iraqi delegation led by Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, as well as Iraq’s defense and foreign ministers, made a somewhat unusual visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium on Wednesday to discuss the Western military alliance’s continued president inside Iraq.

Prime Minister al-Kadhimi personally conveyed his anger over the violation of Iraq’s sovereignty for Sunday night’s US airstrikes along the Syrian border, which killed several Iraqi militia members in what Washington dubbed actions against “Iran-backed” groups which had been targeting US troops by drone strikes. “He urged the coalition not to use Iraq to take on neighboring Syria and Iran,” according to Newsweek.

Further he stressed the “importance of Iraq not being an arena for settling conflicts, or a springboard for aggression against any of its neighbors,” in reference to the Pentagon’s tit-for-tat running conflict with Iraqi pro-Iranian militias – a conflict which grew especially tense following the January 2020 assassination of the IRGC’s Qassem Soleimani and Iraq Popular Mobilization Unit (PMU) chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis (founder of Kataib Hezbollah).

The US had dubbed the series of Sunday night strikes a “message” to Iran while Biden had personally defended the military action – the second such of his presidency – as within his right to authorize under Article 2 of the Constitution, despite a number of Congressional leaders pushing back on this claim. The Iraqis themselves also no doubt see Biden’s supposed “right” to attack anywhere he pleases very differently.

Baghdad had issued its first comprehensive and official rebuke of the strikes on Monday following an emergency session of Iraq’s National Security Council, which called the US strikes “a flagrant violation of Iraqi sovereignty, which is rejected by all international laws and covenants.”

While at NATO headquarters this week, the Iraqi PM’s delegation further discussed the withdrawal of remaining US forces – of which there are now said to be some 2,500 troops.

But as US forces slowly continue to exit, NATO is currently said to be boosting its troop presence to provide security cover also amid exit logistics – from 500 to about 5,000.