Month: October 2021

During the early days of the pandemic, America’s mainstream media outlets blithely amplified claims by Dr. Anthony Fauci that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, had made its great leap to infecting humanity via “zoonotic” transmission, and that the Hunan wet market in downtown Wuhan – a market that just happened to be located a few miles away from a Level 4 Biosafety Lab dedicated to studying bat coronaviruses, just like the one that was now infecting the globe.

Yet, from the very beginning, even before scientists really had a chance to evaluate the origins of the virus, Dr. Fauci (and allies like Dr. Peter Daszak) insisted that zoonotic transmission was indisputably the source of the pandemic. This was long before the world learned the truth: that both Dr. Fauci and Dr. Daszak had been involved n funnelling American research dollars to dangerous and illegal “gain of function” research on coronaviruses at the WIV. 

Still, in the name of defending “science” and combating “conspiracy theorists”, tthe media launched a scorched earth campaign denouncing everyone who questioned the official narrative as a racist conspiracy theorist. At one point, Zero Hedge was sucked into the controversy by being “permanently” banned from Twitter for months for purportedly suggesting that the virus may have been genetically engineered, then leaked, from the WIV.

Fast-forward a year, and the American press’s assessment of COVID’s origins has grown much more skeptical, ever since the Washington Post and a handful of other mainstream media outlets published leaked intelligence reports claiming that the evidence supporting the lab leak hypothesis A WHO report (composed by a team led by Daszak) acknowledged that the lab-leak theory was possible, just unlikely. The backlash to this report forced President Joe Biden to call on the intelligence community to “get to the bottom of this”. Now, the media must take for granted that the intelligence community places serious credibility in the lab leak theory.

Meanwhile, in the Senate, Sen. Rand Paul has done an admirable job interrogating Dr. Fauci, illustrating via public records how money from the NIH was funneled to the WIV despite an Obama Administration ban on so-called “gain-of-function” research (when viruses are manipulated to make them artificially stronger or more infectious in humans). Dr. Fauci has responded with an escalating series of denials and ad hominem attacks.

Ultimately, what Dr. Fauci says isn’t as important as what the media reports. And in a surprising twist, the New Yorker (owned by corporate media giant Conde Nast) – a magazine that once lambasted believers in the lab-leak theory as witless conspiracists – has just published possibly the most detailed accounting to date of the controversy, quoting skeptics who believed that “almost from day one…the virus appeared like a human virus.”

From the beginning of the pandemic, even before the WHO officially declared it a global pandemic, Kristian Andersen, an infectious disease expert at Scripps Research in San Diego, was perplexed by COVID’s rapid spread across the globe. Like the original SARs showed us, while coronaviruses could be deadly, they’re typically not so great at human-to-human transmissions.

Kristian Andersen, an infectious-disease expert at Scripps Research, in San Diego, began tracking the virus in January, 2020. He found the degree of contagion not just scary but unusual. Chinese scientists had already established that it belonged to a genus of coronaviruses commonly found in bats in southern China. It shared eighty per cent of its genome with the first SARS, and was more distantly related to MERS, another bat coronavirus. This new virus, however, was spreading far more quickly, reaching at least twenty-six countries by the end of the month. “It seemed to be locked and loaded for causing the pandemic,” Andersen told me. Most viruses circulating in the wild, though some can be deadly, are not very good at transmission. They are still animal viruses. “This, almost from Day One,” Andersen said, “appeared like a human virus.”

He quickly shared his thoughts with Dr. Fauci, claiming “Andersen wrote to Fauci and others that the SARS-CoV-2 genome seemed ‘inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory.'”

Andersen noted that “a really small part” of SARS-CoV-2’s genome had “unusual features.” Its spike—the crucial bit of surface protein that a coronavirus uses to invade a cell—appeared able to bind tightly to a human-cell receptor known as ACE2. This, Andersen told me, “means that it’s more effective at infecting human cells.” The other significant trait, a rare insertion in the genome of twelve nucleotides, called a furin cleavage site, might also increase the virus’s transmissibility, and lower the species barrier, allowing the virus to jump more easily to humans. “One has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered,” he wrote. There was much more data to analyze, he continued, “so those opinions could still change.”

After attending another meeting With Dr. Fauci and other experts, Anderson told the NYer that attendees’ views on whether the virus had been engineered were divided. Some argued that the SARS-CoV-2 genome included several features that one wouldn’t expect to in a natural virus, which raised the prospect that it had been “engineered”. Others disagreed.

Following the meeting, a series of emails were exchanged between the attendees. The emails, which the New Yorker requested, were mostly redacted. But notably, just a few days later, Andersen insisted that the notion that COVID had been engineered was a “crackpot” idea, and that natural transmission was probably the most likely theory. In March, Andersen co-authored a paper declaring the virus of natural origin. That helped put a rest to the debate for months.

Yet, there were still too many unanswered questions and unlikely coincidences, and the “conspiracy theory” about the virus’s origins continued to thrive among a small contingent of professional scientists, who continued to wonder: if it truly was zoonotic, than why were scientists having so much trouble finding a verifiable missing link?

As the pandemic progressed, not everyone was convinced by the natural-origin explanation. A zoonotic spillover would likely require an intermediate animal between bats and humans, but no such species has yet been identified. Initially, the Huanan market, in Wuhan, which sold fish, produce, and meat, seemed like the source of SARS-CoV-2. Nearly a third of the hundred and seventy-four earliest known cases were linked to Huanan. And yet, patient zero likely was not. Chinese officials have said he was a middle-aged accountant, surnamed Chen, who developed symptoms on December 8th, and typically shopped at a supermarket across the river. In May of 2020, George Fu Gao, the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said, “At first, we assumed the seafood market might have the virus, but now the market is more like a victim. The novel coronavirus had existed long before.”

By the end of 2020, these skeptics had formulated a new theory: instead of the virus having been deliberately engineered and released, the pandemic very likely might be the result of a lab leak. The lab, led by Shi Zhengli, the head of the WIV’s center for emerging diseases, who has become better known by her nickname “Batwoman”. Her lab was known to have catalogued more than 19K coronaviruses, mostly culled from bats. Then, questions emerged about Shi’s research at a mine in Tongguan where a handful of miners were sickened and died with a mysterious coronavirus years ago. Some questioned whether the researchers were keeping certain strains isolated at the lab secret as they carried out dangerous “gain of function” research. Worries about this technique triggered a mini-panic in 2014, prompting the Obama Administration to ban it in the US. Yet, that didn’t stop Dr. Fauci from funneling money to the WIV to help finance the dangerous experiments they may or may not have been conducting. Soon, a publicly available scientific database from the WIV disappeared.

DRASTIC also exposed another mystery related to the W.I.V. In September, 2019, according to Web pages that DRASTIC archived, a W.I.V. database that was once publicly available was made inaccessible. It contained records pertaining to roughly twenty-two thousand samples, including, presumably, the sequences from Tongguan. When asked about it by the BBC, Shi said that the W.I.V. had “nothing to hide.”

Still, there’s one reality that can’t be denied: “At this point, the closest relatives of SARS-CoV-2 are known to have existed in two locations: bat caves in Yunnan, and at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

Back in 2015, Shi was criticized for running ‘risky’ experiments involving making bat coronaviruses infectious to humans.

Geography aside, the nature of the experiments undertaken by the W.I.V. and its partners has raised concerns. In 2015, Shi was a co-author on a groundbreaking study, in Nature, with Ralph Baric, a coronavirus expert at the University of North Carolina. Through the use of pioneering genetic technology, Baric examined which viral structures could give a coronavirus the ability to infect humans. The work involved synthesizing what is known as a chimeric virus, named for the mythical beast with its parts taken from various animals; in this case, a modified clone of SARS was combined with a spike protein taken from one of the bat coronaviruses that Shi had discovered in Yunnan.

Others who spoke to the New Yorker said that, in the years after these experiments began, some in the international scientific community warned that the WIV wasn’t using proper protection protocols. Earlier this year, US intelligence learned that several WIV workers were infected with a severe COVID-like illness in the weeks before the pandemic began.

Make no mistake, the fact that the New Yorker – the magazine that employed Ronan Farrow to help take down Harvey Weinstein – has managed to publish such a details story exploring all the holes in the “animal-to-human transimission” theory, expect other mainstream outlets to follow suite.

By Bill Gross, former Bond King and current Gilligan’s Island afficionado. Presented without commentary cause the piece alone is, well, just read it…

You Only Hang Twice

Just last week I was approached by a Hollywood producer to be the consultant on a new James Bond sequel to be titled “You Only Hang twice”. Having received a restraining order nine months ago in the famous Gilligan’s Island trial, I and my wife Amy had just been sentenced to five days in jail (with time off for community service) for playing 15 minutes of music at 9 pm in our backyard pool. The music was below city decibel limits but was somehow disturbing the peace of our noise-sensitive neighbor. NO police citation was issued but what the heck, a crime must have been committed if the neighbor simply called police and complained he couldn’t sleep at such a late hour.

Enter the hanging judge of the Laguna Beach shore, a 57-year-old lady with pierced nose stud and visible tattoos, to retry and rehang the highly visible target of Bill Gross – ex-Bond King and obviously still “full of himself” senior citizen. She would try me twice, she would hang me twice – thus opening a potential career in Hollywood for me and her at a point in my life when climbing the stairs was taking up an increasing amount of my daily routine. The judge I have since learned only does “restraining order” cases in Orange County, but these two trials encompassing four weeks of court time and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees (a mere $1,200 fine for me though) could presumably be a stepping stone for the judge for greater court assignments. Even the appellate court. But perhaps my fury runneth over a little too much here. Time will tell but in any case, she’ll have a prominent place in the script and may even get to act in her own role. I’m too old for my part it seems. They’re thinking of Jake Gyllenhaal! But I would have preferred Tom Hanks.

Anyway, the interesting part of all this to me was our immediate assignment to the Santa Ana soup kitchen for two days of community service. No orange suit duty on the highway thank goodness, just two days at nearby Santa Ana where coincidentally I had volunteered several times in the past to serve Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Like one of my friends remarked at a lunch last week, “Community service? Gross has performed and provided more community service in the past 20 years than anyone in Orange County history!” But no matter – truth, justice, the American way, and judicial ambition would prevail.

But here’s the interesting part. Having volunteered at this same soup kitchen before, I was expecting a similar cast of “down and out” people in need of a hot lunch. Indeed, as Amy and I cut chicken for the soup and fruit for the fruit cups, we were then assigned to pass out what was actually a gorgeous enchilada lunch replete with cheesecake and chips when the doors opened at noon. Due to COVID, however, there was no indoor dining – in fact the new routine featured a drive-through lane where a large percentage of cars were nice SUVs and pickup trucks. “Say what?” I whispered to Amy. Each “customer” was handed a meal with more calories than the ones at a McDonald’s drive-through and in addition, many special requests were fulfilled. No downtrodden homeless people at this soup kitchen! There were vegan meals, gluten-free meals, five kinds of bread, and orders from the cars to skip the meal but to give them mini-sacks of avocados and artichokes for special diets later in the day. There was one request for a feminine hygiene package and several for prophylactics. But not to be outdone, requests for “doggie bites” and cat food kept Amy and I scrambling from noon to 3 pm. “Hundreds were served” to use the McDonald’s phrase, and well served I might add. We worked beside a volunteer who told us he came two days a week to feel good about helping other people. He was a little bedraggled looking and had to take the bus from Long Beach to get there. I told him that was a wonderful gesture but silently thought to myself, “Buddy, you’ve been screwed. They’re living better than you”.

And so perhaps we have all been screwed if the Santa Ana soup kitchen is any example. A trophy for every kid has moved up the maturity ladder to an artichoke for every adult. Many of those requesting vegan were well dressed and apparently not lacking in the finer accoutrements of daily life. “We can’t discriminate against those who have already been discriminated against,” remarked one of the permanent staff. “We can’t deny them twice”. Ah yes I said to myself – I know what you mean.

Over the years it seems, investors have been screwed many times, but usually just the pigs in the well-worn phrase of, “Bulls make money, bears make money, pigs get slaughtered.” Actually, bears have very little to show for their efforts in the past few years except for recent shorts in GameStop and AMC which I continue to recommend shorting with the caution that volcanoes erupt every once in a while. But it’s the bond market that may have seen its finest hour and is now a potential target for future bears. Readers are familiar I’m sure with all of the Fed speak and fears, or lack of fear, about future inflation. Like I’ve recently observed, markets have likely seen their secular, long term lows in interest rates but expectations for a 30-year bear market to match the previous 30-year bull market are way overdone. The 10-year Treasury now at 1.60% is likely headed to 2% over the next 12 months which is bearish and likely to provide a negative sign in front of 2022 total returns for bond holders, but that is no disaster. Bonds are “garbage” like I’d wrote last month but only in the sense that you’d be better off with alternatives like NUAN (a Microsoft acquisition likely to return 8% annualized before year end) or XLRN (a Merck acquisition likely to do the same). Bonds’ “days of wine and roses” may be over but the above artichoke and avocado recommendations may do nicely while investors wait out uncertainties related to the U.S. budget, GDP growth in China, and runups in energy prices as we approach winter in the Northern hemisphere.

My portfolio is also well stocked with natural gas pipeline partnerships that are listed on the NYSE and offer deferred tax payments on dividends that yield 7-10% at current market prices. Individual investors don’t like these companies because of complicated April tax reporting requirements and most mutual funds and institutions don’t buy them because they are technically partnerships and not stocks. Sponsorship therefore is lacking but that is why they yield 7-10% tax deferred. They are of course sensitive to oil prices so be careful but their prospects at $70-80 oil are good and 7-10% will likely be a pretty decent return if interest rates rise even a little toward 2%. For those investors willing to take the plunge, a natural gas pipeline ETF of substantial size that yields 7.2% and is technically a stock — not a partnership — might fill your portfolio needs. Its symbol is AMLP. No guarantees here – prices will fluctuate as they say – but then in this case you can only hang me once. I’ll reserve the second time for a later Investment Outlook!

By Nio Mahoney of FreightWaves,

Much of the U.S. waterway system’s enormous potential for commercial transport is going to waste for lack of use or funding, according to marine and trade experts.

While most people are familiar with the importance of roads in transporting freight across the U.S., many have no idea that the more than 25,000 miles of navigable waterways — including rivers, canals and coastal routes — are just as vital.

“We have one of the world’s greatest waterway networks, but we are barely using it,” Joseph Linck, a Brownsville, Texas-based international trade and energy consultant, told FreightWaves.

Linck is founder and CEO of Globalstone LC and was the director of the Port of Brownsville in Texas from 1988-90. He’s currently working with a large investment bank that wants to start putting ocean shipping containers in hopper barges using inland waterways to offer the first long-haul container-on-barge service in the U.S.  

The Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) is a 3,000-mile inland waterway running from Boston south along the Atlantic seaboard and around the southern tip of Florida, then following the Gulf of Mexico to Brownsville.

“Using the waterway, it’s a solution to the U.S. truck driver shortage, because one barge takes away 70-something trucks off the road and can move freight for less than half the price,” Linck said.

The U.S. waterway system consists of over 12,000 miles of inland waterways and 13,000 miles of coastal channels, 360 commercial ports, and 237 lock and dam chambers.  The carrying capacity of barges far outpaces tractor trailers and railcars.

The typical 15-barge tow is capable of hauling cargo totaling 22,500 tons, 767,500 bushels or 6.8 million gallons. That compares to six locomotives and 216 railcars, or 1,050 large tractor trailers.

Barges can move a ton of cargo 647 miles on a single gallon of fuel, and 514 miles on diesel fuel. That compares to 477 miles by rail and 145 miles by truck, according to a 2017 study by the Center for Ports and Waterways at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.  

The Texas A&M study was commissioned by the National Waterways Foundation, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit that addresses public policy issues related to the U.S.’ inland waterways system.

The waterway transportation system has long contributed to the competitiveness of American agriculture by transporting grain domestically and for export, National Grain and Feed Association (NGFA) officials said in an email to FreightWaves.

Corn and soybeans are the most handled agricultural commodities in the Gulf Coast region waterways, along with wheat, distiller’s dried grains with solubles and soybean meal.

“Nearly 70% of U.S. agriculture exports (137.7 million metric tons valued at $108.2 billion) were waterborne in 2019. These exports provide 20% of U.S. farm income,” NGFA said. “In the same year, the U.S. exported nearly 30% of its grain. Of this quantity, more than 50% was inspected through Mississippi River, about 30% was inspected through Pacific Northwest ports, and 5% through Texas Gulf ports.”

Paul Dittman, president of the Gulf Intracoastal Canal Association (GICA), said the waterway system is one of the safest and most efficient modes of transportation in the U.S.

“Every barge movement on our inland waterways within the Gulf Coast or any other inland waterway reduces significant amounts of truck traffic,” Dittman said.

GICA is a New Orleans-based nonprofit consisting of over 200 member companies primarily along the Gulf Coast. Its aim is to facilitate safe, reliable and efficient Gulf Coast waterways.

“The Intracoastal Waterway is the third-busiest inland waterway in the U.S. after the  Mississippi and Ohio rivers,” Dittman said. “The differences on the Mississippi and Ohio River, you’re looking at about 70% dry bulk, 30% bulk liquid, whereas on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway it’s just the opposite.” 

Dittman said the ICW also provides the critical link between the U.S. petrochemical centers in Texas and Louisiana with the rest of the inland waterway system, as well as the entire Gulf Coast from St. Mark’s, Florida, to Brownsville, a distance of over 1,100 miles.

“For these reasons, the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway is often referred to as the silent giant,” Dittman said.  

Petroleum products, chemicals, agricultural products, manufactured goods, coal and grains are the top commodities transported by U.S. waterways, according to the Army Corps of Engineers.

One of the biggest challenges for U.S. waterways is that historically, necessary upkeep such as dredging and infrastructure maintenance has been underfunded.

“Some of the limiting factors that we deal with include aging Army Corp of Engineers infrastructure, which can be problematic if they malfunction,” Dittman said.

One of the potential constraints to waterway transportation is the escalating volume of traffic at aging locks, the part of the waterway system that controls pool depths to make a channel deep enough for vessels to use.

Dittman said the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal Lock (IHNC) in New Orleans provides the only access to the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway east of New Orleans, creating a single point of failure if the lock is not available for navigation.

The IHNC was built in 1923. GICA is working closely with the federal government to begin the replacement of the IHNC, but this project will take several years to complete once initiated. 

“It’s effectively 100 years old and is in need of replacement. We’re diligently working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the local community to replace this aging piece of infrastructure with a new and larger lock,” Dittman said. 

Some ongoing waterway projects that GICA provided input on include the $169 million Belle Chasse Bridge and Tunnel Replacement Project in Belle Chase, Louisiana, and two new bridges in Texas at South Padre Island and over the San Jacinto River along the Gulf Coast.

Like GICA, grain industry officials have been asking Congress for years to upgrade aging locks and dams on inland waterways.

NGFA officials and partnering waterways stakeholders said they are urging Congress to include funding for the Navigation and Ecosystem Sustainability Program (NESP) in final appropriations packages.  NESP is an Army Corps of Engineers program dedicated to navigation improvements and ecological restoration for the Upper Mississippi River – Illinois Waterway.

“Congress first authorized NESP in 2007, but the program has not received any construction funding. Meanwhile, the vast majority of locks on the Upper Mississippi River and Illinois Waterway (UMR-IWW), built in the 1930s and 1940s with 600-foot chambers, have long-surpassed their design life,” NGFA said.

NESP would expand the navigation capacity along the UMR-IWW through the construction of seven new 1,200-foot locks and dams. New and modernized NESP locks would allow a 15-barge tow to pass through in just one lockage, increasing efficiency and boosting U.S. competitiveness.

“Building new locks on the UMR-IWW would spur job creation and help ensure that the U.S. remains competitive as a world grain exporter. For example, the U.S. is no longer the world’s top soybean exporter and key competitors continue to lower their transportation costs by investing in infrastructure,” NGFA said.

“Research from the Department of Agriculture suggests that unless significant improvements are made to farm-to-port infrastructure, U.S. world market share could decline an additional 3-6 percentage points, resulting in $1.5 billion to $3 billion in lost export sales.”

One infrastructure project that has received support is construction funding for a new 1,200-foot lock and dam (Lock and Dam 25) on the Upper Mississippi River, which has been included in both House of Representative and Senate versions of the FY 2022 Energy and Water Appropriations bills.

“This funding has broad bipartisan support from lawmakers up and down the Mississippi River and NGFA is hopeful it will be included in a final agreement on FY 2022 spending,” NGFA said.

While maritime experts work to replace aging locks and bridges along the waterway, the U.S. faces a $47 billion funding gap in infrastructure waterway needs over the next 17 years for navigation-related waterside improvements, according to an assessment issued in January by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).

“The inland waterways funding gap is almost entirely for lock and dam infrastructure, which is largely antiquated and prone to failure,” according to the 170-page “Failure to Act: Ports and Inland Waterways — Anchoring the U.S. Economy.”

The ASCE also graded 17 categories of infrastructure in March. The grades ranged from a B for rail to a D-minus for transit to a D-plus for inland waterways.

“We risk significant economic losses, higher costs to consumers, businesses and manufacturers — and our quality of life — if we don’t act urgently,” Thomas Smith, ASCE executive director, said in a statement.

Another issue facing the U.S. waterway system is declining demand for coal, which has historically been a big commodity on waterways but has been on a long downward swing as the U.S. slowly decreases its dependence on fossil fuels.

The Energy Information Administration reports U.S. coal shipments by waterways declined 20% in 2020 from 2019.

In 2019, more than $134 billion worth of cargo transited America’s inland waterways, equating to about 515 million tons, according to Waterways Council Inc.

Linck said the Intracoastal Waterway helped the Port of Brownsville get back to profitability in the late 1980s.

“We initiated new cargo steel and also Midwestern grain by river barge,” Linck said. “We started at the Port of Pittsburgh on the Ohio River and brought those barges down, all the way down to the Mississippi and down the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway from New Orleans to Brownsville.”

Linck said it’s possible the U.S. waterway system also has an image problem with modern-day logistics professionals. While moving commodities by inland waterways can be more fuel-efficient and less costly, it takes more long-range planning.

“We need to reeducate all our traffic managers, give them a little more power, get these MBA bean-counting managers off their just-in-time inventory control. They can’t plan right, so they send everything on a truck. They just throw money out there and they get it where it needs to go, basically,” Linck said.

Since the last FOMC meeting (September 22nd) – when Chair Powell began to detail the taper and rate-hike traajectory to come – bonds are down (yields higher) but stocks, gold, and the dollar are all up around 1%…

Source: Bloomberg

And even more notably, the trajectory (and initial timing) or rate-hikes has soared…

Source: Bloomberg

But the long-end of the yield curve is signaling that The Fed will once again commit a faux-pass…

Source: Bloomberg

So the big question the market is trying to glean from today’s Minutes is – just how ‘consensus’ is the imminent taper talk… and potentially a sooner than expected rate-hike? Especially after today showed that consumer price readings have come in at 5% or higher on a year-over-year basis for five straight months, undermining the “transitory” theme put forward by central bankers.

As a reminder, The Fed confirmed plans to begin reducing their bond-buying stimulus program in November and to possibly end the asset purchases entirely by the middle of next year – this was confirmed in the Minutes…

Participants also expressed their views on how slowing in the pace of purchases might proceed.

In particular, participants commented on an illustrative path, developed by the staff and reflecting participants’ discussions at the Committee’s July meeting, that gave the speed and composition associated with a tapering of asset purchases. The illustrative tapering path was designed to be simple to communicate and entailed a gradual reduction in the pace of net asset purchases that, if begun later this year, would lead the Federal Reserve to end purchases around the middle of next year.

The path featured monthly reductions in the pace of asset purchases, by $10 billion in the case of Treasury securities and $5 billion in the case of agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS). Participants generally commented that the illustrative path provided a straightforward and appropriate template that policymakers might follow, and a couple of participants observed that giving advance notice to the general public of a plan along these lines may reduce the risk of an adverse market reaction to a moderation in asset purchases. Participants noted that, in keeping with the outcome-based standard for initiating a tapering of asset purchases, the Committee could adjust the pace of the moderation of its purchases if economic developments were to differ substantially from what they expected. Several participants indicated that they preferred to proceed with a more rapid moderation of purchases than described in the illustrative examples.

No decision to proceed with a moderation of asset purchases was made at the meeting, but participants generally assessed that, provided that the economic recovery remained broadly on track, a gradual tapering process that concluded around the middle of next year would likely be appropriate. Participants noted that if a decision to begin tapering purchases occurred at the next meeting, the process of tapering could commence with the monthly purchase calendars beginning in either mid-November or mid-December.

“Many” thought the progress test would be met “soon”

A number of participants assessed that the standard of substantial further progress toward the goal of maximum employment had not yet been attained but that, if the economy proceeded roughly as they anticipated, it may soon be reached.”

Several participants indicated that they preferred to proceed with a more rapid moderation of purchases than described in the illustrative examples

Developing…

Read the full FOMC Minutes below:

The Biden administration is planning to open a consulate dedicated to Palestinian affairs in Jerusalem in a significant break from Trump’s policy of only recognizing a diplomatic presence to Israel, resulting in severe pushback this week from top Israeli officials. Former Trump admin officials have called the proposal “illegal” under international law, given they argue that Palestine is in no way a state that has any formal recognition. 

“No way would Israel agree to have the United States reopen its consulate dedicated to Palestinian affairs in Jerusalem, said Israeli Justice Minister Gideon Saar,” The Washington Post reports Tuesday. “His comment comes ahead of a meeting between the two countries’ top diplomats in Washington this week, with the topic likely to be on the agenda.”

The remarks at a public conference Tuesday clearly had the enthusiastic support of the crowd, which clapped during the multiple moments he slammed the Biden administration stance. 

“I spoke with [Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett] a couple of times on the issue. We are on the same page, and we don’t see differently,” Saar noted. “Someone said it’s an electoral commitment. But for us, it’s a generation’s commitment. We will not compromise on this.”

The reference was to Trump’s policy, which saw the historic and provocative (to the Palestinian side) transfer of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, despite all international embassies being located in Tel Aviv. This was part of the new recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital in 2017. The Palestinians saw it as the effective death of any future two state solution, and in contradiction of prior US administrations. 

As The Washington Post recalled, “Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in May that the United States would reopen the Jerusalem consulate that traditionally engaged with Palestinians, but observers say the issue presents a dilemma for the Biden White House.” Biden had considered it a crucial way to heal relations with the Palestinian Authority following years of humiliation and being cast aside by the Trump White House.

Local Palestinians typically saw the consular presence as their only way of directly engaging with the State Department, or notifying or lobbying the US on crucial issues affecting the Palestinian population.

The re-opening of the US Consulate in East Jerusalem for Palestinian affairs was one of the Biden Administration’s top priorities as it worked to repair damaged US-Palestinian relations. It appears, Israel will likely snub the US’ request. https://t.co/RoCjHjz0wy

— Ayman (@AymanM) October 13, 2021

However, former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was quick to chime in at the same conference hosted by The Jerusalem Post, blasting it as “a terrible idea.” He suggested it represents the “false principle that Israel is an ‘illegal occupier’ and called on Israel to confront that narrative, which he said is the beating heart of modern antisemitism and dubbed the “lie of occupation,” according to the JPost.

“Occupation is a legal term whose definition does not apply to the State of Israel under the law.” Pompeo was generally discussing the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) ideology adhered to by many US Progressives, including members of ‘the Squad’.

That’s when he specifically mentioned the proposed US consulate for Palestinians in Jerusalem as “a terrible idea for the United States, Israel and the Palestinian people.” He called it “illegal” – adding that “a US-recognized nation such as Israel should not host a consulate in the same city where a US Embassy is located,” according to JPost.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

We previously discussed how GoFundMe has joined social media sites in censoring opposing viewpoints on subjects from critical race theory to vaccines to election fraud.

The site once offered a neutral site for those seeking to support others with similar views or interests.

The company now insists that it will only allow people to gather on the site if it believes their views are true and correct.

However, it was still surprising to see the site take down a fundraising account for litigation against vaccine mandates.

The effort of former nurse Jennifer Bridges was simply to get such matters before the courts, which can be the ultimate authority on what is “misinformation.”

GoFundMe however blocked people from contributing to the litigation.

Bridges is a former registered nurse at Houston Methodist hospital who was fired after refusing to comply with the hospital’s vaccine requirement. She raised more than $180,000 for her lawsuit before being shutdown under the company’s “misinformation” policy. Heidi Hagberg, a spokesperson for GoFundMe, said in a statement to Business Insider that “when our team initially reviewed the fundraiser, it was within our terms of service as the funds were for legal fees to fight vaccine mandates. The fundraiser has since been updated to include misinformation which violates our terms of service.”

What is striking about this latest ban is that the courts are the place for such claims to be weighed in a neutral and dispassionate forum. “Misinformation” can be addressed by judges after both sides are allowed to present evidence. Bridges’ lawsuit was dismissed in June, Bridges’ attorneys appealed the decision. We should all favor such reviews. Indeed, if GoFundMe believes that Bridges is wrong, it should invite further judicial review to established a clear record on such issues.

GoFundMe admits to have taken down “hundreds” of fundraisers that included statements of “misinformation related to vaccines.”

I do not agree with the arguments against the vaccine. I and my family are vaccinated. However, I am equally concerned with avoiding the growing virus of censorship. In the last few years, we have seen an increasing call for private censorship from Democratic politicians and liberal commentators. Faculty and editors are now actively supporting modern versions of book-burning with blacklists and bans for those with opposing political views. The most chilling aspect of this story is how many on the left applaud such censorship. A new poll shows roughly half of the public supporting not just corporate censorship but government censorship of anything deemed “misinformation.”

Free speech can be its own disinfectant for bad speech.

GoFundMe is a private company and can impose such rules on users. However, it is an act of censorship and it is a denial of free speech by a corporation.

In this case, the company is preventing its site from being used to raise money to allow courts to review the factual and legal basis for these claims — a curious effort for a company that claims to be fighting “misinformation.”