Month: October 2021

By Enrico Trigoso of Epoch Times,

New York City restaurateurs are complaining that their business has been slashed severely by the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, which requires people 12 and older to show vaccination proof for indoor dining, indoor fitness, and indoor entertainment.

Pre-pandemic, O’Donoghue’s Pub and Restaurant was a successful business that has been open for 10 years in Times Square, Manhattan. Fergal Burke, the owner of O’Donoghue’s noticed that his business has seen “a massive drop,” since the vaccine mandate came into effect.

“We don’t have the money here to survive without the help of our landlord, [who] has been very supportive and has been giving us breaks on the rent, but without our landlord, we would not be in business,” Burke told The Epoch Times. He said that he needed to hire another person to be at the door checking for vaccination proof, which increased his expenses.

Comparing the clientele from pre-mandate to when it kicked in about two weeks ago, “Our business is definitely down 50, I’m going to say 60 percent,” Burke said with a somewhat downhearted tone. “There’s just not people coming into the restaurant, they have the fear of being asked for vaccines.”

Burke and his staff have had to refuse a lot of customers for not having the passes.

“They’re being refused and they get a resentment against us, they don’t get a resentment against Bill de Blasio or Biden, or whoever is mandating us to check for this.”

“It comes as a personal rejection,” he said, further stressing that it’s not O’Donoghue’s that wants this. “We don’t want this mandate, we want nothing to do with this.”

He also noted how the subway is full of people but there’s no requirement to show vaccination proof.

“I mean how is that fair in New York City, that the trains are jammed with people with a silly mask on and they’re not being mandated to show nothing, and yet they’re coming against the heart of the city. We’re the ones that’s trying to keep 20 people employed here,” Burke said.

“We will go out of business if this continues, it’s gonna force us to shut our doors.”

Despite winter coming soon, they now need to build an outdoor dining area to facilitate an outdoor space, which will cost about 10 to $15,000.

Some restaurants like Luke’s Lobster have been less affected by the vaccine mandates since their restaurant has little indoor dining space and is located near a park and many outdoor tables on Broadway. The manager there told The Epoch Times that people are mostly compliant, and if anyone can’t dine-in due to lack of proof, they will go to the tables outside.

“Some people are obviously not super happy about it but they will comply and if they don’t want to comply they’ll take it outside,” she said.

‘No One Size Fits All’

Restauranteur Stratis Morfogen, a managing partner at Brooklyn Chop House, thinks that the government needs to start considering bailouts to help the restaurant industry again.

“Business is down probably 50 percent because people are not comfortable with being forced to take a vaccine,” Morfogen told The Epoch Times.

“All of a sudden, we dropped 40 percent from week to week, since the mandate started.

“The politicians don’t understand it is that there is no one size fits all with medicine. And you can’t tell a person has just finished chemotherapy, that they have to take a vaccine to have a dinner, when their doctor says they can’t.”

Morfogen said that now they have to police COVID-19 vaccination cards, most of which are written in pen. He says 2 million were distributed before the city implemented a central database.

“It’s as smart as my 1983 driver’s permit. My daughter who is 13 can print out one of the fakes on her bedroom printer and you want me to question the customers if this card is legitimate, when every one of them is pretty much is written in pen?”

Morfogen said that his business did fairly well during COVID-19 and survived the restaurant crisis, but that he feels a responsibility to speak up.

“Nobody steps up for the little guys,” he said.

“I’m not fighting for myself. I’m fighting for the ones that don’t have a platform that are getting screwed by these politicians every day.”

The manager of custom burger restaurant The Counter located in Times Square told The Epoch Times that “everyone is losing thousands of dollars,” and that they will go out of business due to the vaccine mandate.

“The mayor is a jerk,” she said.

Earlier this week, with Fed hawks suddenly dropping like flies following the resignations of Boston and Dallas Fed presidents, Rosengren and Kaplan, amid a public outcry over their recently-revealed daytrading activities which benefited them as a direct result of monetary policy decisions they were explicitly and directly involved in, we joked that if the Fed wants to get rid of all the hawks, they just need to leak the trading records of Kansas City Fed president Esther George, widely viewed as the most vocal hawk among all FOMC members.

If the Fed wants to get rid of all the hawks, they just need to leak Esther George’s etrade blotter

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 28, 2021

Well, it may not be George (yet) but overnight the government ethics office published forms which showed that none other than the (centrist) Fed Vice Chair Richard Clarida may be the next to “retire” (perhaps he too is on a kidney transplant list) following the revelation that he was trading in and out of millions in securities on February 27, 2020 just one day before Fed Chair Powell issued an (extremely bullish) emergency statement hinting at possible policy action as the pandemic worsened.

According to the disclosure, just as markets were starting to freak out about the Covid pandemic, Clarida shifted anywhere between $1 and $5 million out of a Pimco bond fund (the Pimco Income Fund PIMIX) on Feb. 27, 2020, and on the same day buying between $1 and $5 million of the Pimco StocksPlus Fund (PSTKX) and the iShares MSCI USA Min Vol Factor exchange-traded fund (USMV). Aside from these three trades, Clarida had a grand total of two more trades in 2020, the sale of $500K-$1MM of the Shwab SCHK ETF on August 3 and another purchase of the USMV ETF to the tune of $250K-$500K.

Why does this matter? Because his trades took place just a day before Powell issued an emergency statement on Feb 28 at 2:30pm with which he sought to reassure suddenly panicking markets that the Fed has their back (something he would amply demonstrate a few weeks later when the Fed nationalized the corporate bond market). Specifically, Powell said that the virus poses “evolving risks to economic activity” adding that the Fed was “closely monitoring developments and their implications for the economic outlook.”

Statement from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell

The fundamentals of the U.S. economy remain strong. However, the coronavirus poses evolving risks to economic activity. The Federal Reserve is closely monitoring developments and their implications for the economic outlook. We will use our tools and act as appropriate to support the economy.

As shown in the chart below, following the chart drop in the days prior, Powell’s clearly market-moving statement served to spike the market by over 100 points in minutes.

Just a few days later, on March 3, with stocks crashing, the Fed launched the first of many emergency market bailout operations that would double the S&P from its March 2020 lows, including trillions in QE, repo and reverse repo operations. Everyone knows what happened after.

When contacted by Bloomberg, a Fed spokesman for the vice chair said that “Vice Chair Clarida’s financial disclosure for 2020 shows transactions that represent a pre-planned rebalancing to his accounts,” adding that “The transactions were executed prior to his involvement in deliberations on Federal Reserve actions to respond to the emergence of the coronavirus and not during a blackout period. The selected funds were chosen with the prior approval of the Board’s ethics official.”

Of course they were… just like the Dallas Fed was perfectly fine with Kaplan’s “tens of millions” in stock trades in a year when the Fed’s policies injected trillions to the balance sheet until he was busted and an epic scandal followed… just like “daytrader” Rosengren suddenly deciding to retire for “health reasons.”

Adding to the shadiness, Bloomberg notes that Clarida – who is a former PIMCO executive, if not one blasting the theme song to Gilligan’s Island in his back yard – was visiting faculty and students at Yale University the day of the trading, and not in his office in Washington. Furthermore, his calendar for the month shows a single phone call with a Board member on Feb. 27 at 4:45 p.m. after the market close, as well as numerous meetings with Fed staff on prior days. No calls to either PIMCO or a brokerage are disclosed.

What makes Clarida’s trading transgressions even worse, is that the Fed can’t punt them on the flawed policy book of some regional Fed – these come from the Marriner Eccles building itself. The Fed spells out clear guidelines for trading activity by policy makers. Its Voluntary Guide to Conduct for Senior Officials says “they should carefully avoid engaging in any financial transaction the timing of which could create the appearance of acting on inside information concerning Federal Reserve deliberations and actions.” It also says that they should avoid dealings that might “convey even an appearance of conflict between their personal interests, the interests of the system, and the public interest.”

And yet, casting even more doubt on the Fed’s integrity, ethics and especially capacity to think clearly, even the Vice Chair failed to realize that buying millions in stock ahead of a greatly market moving decision had all the “appearance” of massive insider trading.

It goes without saying, that February 2020 was a time of extreme moves in financial markets as investors (belatedly) panicked to the threat of the global spread of Covid-19. Stocks plunged and bond markets were in a powerful rally. Stocks would then continue to fall until March 23 when the Fed unleashed the monetary nukes, injecting trillions in the market and started buying corporate bonds to avoid a systemic crash, thereby nationalizing the bond market.

“The pandemic was spreading quickly and the economic outlook was evolving rapidly. That was not the appropriate time for top Fed officials to be making multi-million dollar changes to their portfolios,” Andrew Levin, a Dartmouth College professor and former special advisor to the Fed’s Board pointed out what should have been patently obvious to all, except entitled Fed Vice Chairs who are somehow exempt from the rules that apply to peasants. He added that “the Fed should welcome an external review of all financial transactions made by Federal Reserve Board members last year.” One wonders if the entire FOMC will be forced to retire “for health reasons” immediately after.

And while we wait, it’s probably safe to say that Clarida will be drafting his resignation in the coming days, which means that with two hawks down, the Fed is about to have another vacancy, this time to replace its centrist vice chair.

And while we urge readers to go over Clarida’s entire asset and income statement (link), we can’t help but note two things: i) according to the Vice Chair, cash is anything but trash with millions spread between bank and money market accounts, and ii) judging by the aggressive diversification of his bank account holdings, the Fed Vice Chair is hardly confident about the stability of the US banking system.

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

So by all means, focus on the inexorable rise of stocks, cryptos and housing as “proof” of America’s soaring “wealth” while the social order unravels beneath our feet.

It is a supremely tragic irony that while the corporate media ceaselessly touts America’s soaring financial “wealth,” the nation’s true wealth–its social order–is fast unraveling. While we’re encouraged to cheer billionaires blowing a tiny sliver of their wealth on space tourism and $500 million yachts as evidence of “prosperity,” our media and leadership (ahem) professes to being mystified by The Great Resignation, known here on Of Two Minds as The ‘Take This Job and Shove It’ Recession, and other unmistakable signs of unraveling.

(This era’s anthem should be Johnny Paycheck’s timeless classic, Take This Job And Shove It 2:31).

In my analysis, the social order is comprised of all the intangible social elements which serve to bind a nation’s people beyond their legal rights. The social order includes (but is not limited to) social (upward) mobility–the ladder to advancing one’s agency (control of one’s life) and opportunities for improved security and well-being.

The social order also includes civic virtue, the willingness to share the sacrifices of one’s fellow citizens for the common good in proportion to one’s wealth and power, and equal treatment before the law, not just as an abstraction but in the real world of the judicial system.

The social order also includes the moral legitimacy of the governance system: does the state (government) serve the citizenry, or is it the other way around?

Lastly, the social order manifests social cohesion, which is the capacity for shared values and purpose and common ground, all of which generate a concern for the well-being of other citizens and a willingness to focus on shared interests.

America has lost all of these elements, as self-interest is the only value, purpose and goal that guides behavior, starting at the top: how do politicians acquire fortunes in excess of $100 million (cough, Pelosi, cough)? Through public service? (Don’t bust a gut laughing…) How do billionaires gain additional wealth so effortlessly (cough, Federal Reserve, cough)?

The rot starts at the top and then seeps down into every fiber of the nation’s economic, social and political orders. As noted here previously, America is now a moral cesspool, and “democracy” is merely the public-relations cover for a neofeudal autocracy.

Behind every PR narrative lies the corruption of self-interest. How is it that day-traders now rabidly follow Pelosi’s stock portfolio, and super-wealthy Federal Reserve “leaders” front-run the Fed’s policies to further enrich themselves while claiming the mantle of “public service”?

How does a child molester like Jeffrey Epstein end up entertaining Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, the Harvard elite, and a veritable who’s who of America’s wealthy and powerful players?

The evidence of irreversible social decay is everywhere: road rage is now ubiquitous in aircraft and other social settings, common ground has vanished, and the willingness or even the capacity to identify common interests has been pulverized by the supremacy of self-interest.

“Reform” is another insider joke. Real reform might impinge on the wealth and power of our self-interested elites, so what we have instead is simulacra of reform which only add additional friction to a system choking on bureaucratic sand in the gears.

Homeless encampments are now just another accepted reflection of “soaring wealth and prosperity” in America, along with the declining prospects and wealth of the bottom 80%. If you fail to repeat the party line with sufficient enthusiasm, Big Tech will send you to the Digital Gulag.

The more that politicians, Fed governors, insiders and billionaires bleat that they really, really care about commoners, the greater the gulf between the reality of their self-interest and their laughably transparent PR. As the apologists, toadies, lackeys, factotums and apparatchiks frantically spew rah-rah PR about the “recovery” (you mean we’re all addicts and are now “recovering”?), the workforce is finally awakening to the emptiness of the PR and the decay of America’s social order: the rewards of the economy have flowed to two classes, the Financial Aristocracy, the top 0.1% who now own more wealth than the bottom 80% of American households, and speculators, from the front-running scammers on Wall Street to the daytraders gambling their Pelosi portfolios.

So by all means, focus on the inexorable rise of stocks, cryptos and housing as “proof” of America’s soaring “wealth” while the social order unravels beneath our feet. 

Self-interest never had it so good.

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As Australia finally begins to scale back some of its least-popular lockdown rules in the face of growth opposition by the public and the business community, anti-lockdown demonstrations in New Zealand are ramping up once again.

A large group of demonstrators gathered at a large park in Auckland on Saturday to protest ongoing COVID lockdown measures in the tiny Antipodean nation of roughly 5MM, many arriving with a procession of motorbikes lead by a local church leader.

The demonstrators, said to number between 1K and 2K, according to local media reports, descended on the Auckland Domain on Saturday to demand an end to the lockdowns.

A caravan of motorcycles led by Brian Tamaki, a vocal anti-lockdown activist who heads the Auckland-based Pentecostal Destiny Church, was among the first on scene at the protests on Saturday, and he captured videos as the procession made its way to the park.

Destiny Church leader Brian Tamaki leads a procession of motorbikes moving along the Southern Motorway towards the Auckland Domain to protest lockdown restrictions in Auckland, New Zealand. #NewZealand @ApostleTamaki
More #GettyFootage 🎥Phil Walter ➡️ https://t.co/yoX9QoCsbI pic.twitter.com/e9v0U1XHrp

— Getty Images News (@GettyImagesNews) October 1, 2021

Tamaki and the rest of the crowd remained peaceful during the demonstration, with Tamaki delivering a fiery, 40-minute speech denouncing the draconian shutdown orders, which have remained in effect in Auckland for nearly two months.

Thousands have gathered in front of Auckland War Memorial to protest against lockdowns and mandated vaccinations. @newshub pic.twitter.com/r8Ef4gopw3

— Emma Stanford (@emmastanford11) October 1, 2021

In his speech, Tamaki compared the lockdown in Auckland, which is nearing its 50-day milestone, to being on “house arrest”, while lamenting the dynamic of not being able to trust one’s own neighbors not to snitch on them.

“Now Auckland’s coming up to 50 days – 50 days we’ve been on home detention. That’s the same thing they give to prisoners who’ve done a crime; it’s an alternative to going to jail,” he said. “I’ve been locked up for over 50 days in my house, and I haven’t done a crime. I’ve done nothing wrong, and I’ve been punished. We are penalized.”

“I can’t go outside because the neighbor might tell on me. I can’t drive down the road to get some milk and bread because the policeman might pull me over.”

The police presence at Saturday’s demonstration was somewhat subdued, with no arrests or clashes reported. Still, National Party MP Simeon Brown, the party’s police spokesman, denounced the protest, while also taking a shot at law enforcement.

“The rules are clear. The police have rightly warned protesters in Auckland today – yet we see a blind eye turned to gangs breaking lockdown rules. Aucklanders want out of this lockdown – and it means rules being applied consistency [sic],” he said in a tweet, presumably referring to the biker procession as a ‘gang’.

Whether it’s a gang funeral or a protest – the rules are clear. The Police have rightly warned protestors in Auckland today – yet we see a blind eye turned to gangs breaking lockdown rules. Aucklanders want out of this lockdown – and it means rules being applied consistency.

— Simeon Brown (@SimeonBrownMP) October 1, 2021

Earlier this week, Brown denounced “gang members” – including bikers – after they gathered for a funeral, which was promptly dispersed by police in West Auckland. He said the funeral was “demoralizing for the more than 1.7MM Aucklanders” who have followed the rules and done what they have been told to do.

“This is just not good enough. The government needs to make clear that the rules apply to gang members and if they break them they will be treated just like everyone else,” he went on, calling for a harsher police response.

Aucklanders are fed up with gangs flouting the rules. pic.twitter.com/0tqPhUo9Ds

— Simeon Brown (@SimeonBrownMP) October 1, 2021

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declared a “short and sharp” national lockdown in mid-August after a single COVID case was detected in Auckland, the country’s largest metropolis. The measures have dragged on in Auckland, even as much of New Zealand has returned to normal. While the Australians next door are starting to move on from the “ZERO COVID” approach, New Zealand is still insisting on what scientists have described as an impossible standard. That should be a concern for all Aucklanders, since all this sacrifice ultimately likely won’t make much of a difference.

The Canary Islands’ Cumbre Vieja volcano increased its eruptive force on Friday as a new fissure opened up. 

Spanish Geological and Mining Institute (IGME) said two new lava flows had emerged from a third fissure approximately 400 meters from the main crater. 

At least three vents have opened since the volcano erupted on Sept. 19, but the latest one is being closely ‘monitored.’ 

Volcán #CumbreVieja, en intensa actividad

La ceniza expulsada cubre ya una superficie de 3.304 hectáreas en #LaPalma.

Con las dos nuevas bocas, son ya cuatro los centros emisores de lava. El volcán entró en erupción el pasado 19 de septiembre.#DWNoticias /cmw pic.twitter.com/Qv24qb1Pfd

— DW Español (@dw_espanol) October 2, 2021

🔴Dantesco paisaje!!#ElVolcanDeLaPalma#LaPalma#LaPalmaEruption#CumbreVieja#Volcano pic.twitter.com/s8VUT27Ysi

— Life (@JavierApophis) October 2, 2021

More than 6,000 people have been evacuated. Lava flows have destroyed 1,000 building structures, and Spain has approved a $12.2 million aid package to help the island. 

Satellite imagery captured by the European Space Agency shows the trail of destruction: 

A closer view of the lava meeting the ocean. 

On Friday, the regional leader of the Canary Islands, Ángel Victor Torres, told reporters during a scheduled press conference that Cumbre Vieja has released an astonishing 80 million cubic meters of lava, or more than double the amount than the last eruption in 1971. 

“We have the biggest tragedy ahead of us, more people we have to help,” Mariano Hernández Zapata, the president of the island council of La Palma, told El País. “We are worried about the course this new flow of lava could follow, although we hope that it will join the other.”

Minister Felix Bolanos visited the island on Friday to reassure locals the Spanish government would support them in this time of need: 

“We are all clear about what is the priority: helping the citizens of La Palma. Residents must be calm and proud of their institutions,” Bolaños.

A new fissure emerging is not a positive sign that the eruption is abating anytime soon. Earlier this week, the volcano entered a ‘new explosive phase.’ There’s also the threat of toxic gases poisoning the air as the lava meets the ocean. Even in Europe, there have been reports of acid rain. 

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

The UK Ministry of Defence has inadvertently revealed its plan to spy on social media platforms in order to detect “change(s) in population sentiment.”

Despite ostensibly being about “better use of existing silos,” the MoD’s Data Strategy for Defence document explains how the military should move towards “Automated scanning of social media platforms” to detect “change in population sentiment.”

“Nowhere does the document explain why a strategy paper has gone so far off the beaten track that it promotes collecting data the MoD doesn’t have and using it for decidedly non-military purposes,” reports the Register.

Since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, the military has increasingly turned its attention inward towards its own citizens rather than doing what it should do, which is fighting foreign adversaries.

As author Laura Dodsworth revealed, GCHQ has embroiled itself in anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown messaging by targeting people who challenge the official COVID narrative online.

“She says some people believe they have been targeted by the 77th Brigade, part of the 6th Division of the Army,” reported the Telegraph.

According to the Ministry of Defence, the 77th Brigade uses “legitimate non-military levers as a means to adapt behaviours of the opposing forces and adversaries.”

The military’s main “adversaries” are now apparently British citizens who complain about lockdown while questioning the efficacy and safety of vaccines.

Dodsworth said she “hit a brick wall” when attempting to get answers about the unit’s activities, noting, “and I find that when someone puts up a brick wall, it’s because that’s where the real story lies.”

The unit played its role in the broader agenda, facilitated by government-affiliated behavioral psychologists, to terrify the public into mass obedience to lockdown rules by exaggerating the threat posed by COVID.

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