Month: December 2021

Authored by Ross Pomeroy via RealClearScience.com,

Though COVID-19 ‘inspired’ much of the year’s junk science, there was still plenty of ‘normal’ nonsense to go around, a sign – perhaps – that we are starting to wriggle free from the pandemic’s grasp.

Reason and reality were flouted by all sorts of people all over the world. We now count down six of the worst offenders:

6. Neuroscientist Turned Actress Sells Brain Health Snake Oil. 

Actress Mayim Bialik played a scientist on the popular TV comedy The Big Bang Theory, but she also is one. Bialik earned a Ph.D in neuroscience from UCLA. Unfortunately, she’s now parlaying that imprimatur of expertise into touting a bogus brain supplement that supposedly supports “six key indicators of brain health”.

“Neuriva is backed by real science and vetted by a real neuroscientist: me!” she cheerfully claims on a widely running advertisement. The “real science” she’s talking about is pathetically unconvincing – just a couple of small, uncontrolled studies that looked at two of Neuriva’s ingredients. Neuriva, itself, has not been clinically studied, probably because if it was, the results wouldn’t look too good.

5. Pharmacists in Canada Are Recommending Homeopathy. 

Homeopathic remedies are touted to treat everything from the common cold to cancer, even though they are essentially water. The only condition they might have any chance of treating is dehydration. Nevertheless, these nonsensical magic potions are commonly stocked on drug store shelves, with sales in the billions of dollars. This makes the findings of a recent Canadian Broadcasting Corporation investigation particularly concerning. Journalists found that 6 out of 10 pharmacists at four major drug store chains in the Toronto area recommended homeopathy to customers for the treatment of kids’ cold and flu symptoms. It seems that these pharmacists either don’t know that homeopathy is worthless or lack the expertise necessary to do their jobs.

4. Bogus Magnets Sold to Protect People From Their Phones. 

Thanks to the propagation of wireless internet technologies, we are now bathed in non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation. While that might sound alarming, scientific research tells us that this ultra low-power energy is harmless. That hasn’t stopped unscrupulous people from trying to capitalize on others’ unfounded fears by peddling pseudoscientific protections. Companies are now producing and selling small magnetic stickers to slap on phones that supposedly reduce users’ exposure to their smartphones’ radiating energy. The University of Surrey investigated one brand – SmartDot – and, unsurprisingly, found that it does nothing of the sort – it was just a sticker. Other similar products are undoubtedly bogus as well.

“This is a scam, pure and simple,” Yale neurologist Dr. Steven Novella said of the products.

3. The Return of UFOs. 

It was the summer of UFOs, or rather, UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena), as they are now called. In late June, the U.S. Government released a much-anticipated report on UAPs to Congress, complete with a few videos and details of 144 sightings. The effect was predictable: the mainstream media gleefully posted skepticism-free stories suggesting that aliens are visiting Earth. In reality, almost all of the new UAP ‘proof’, which is characteristically blurry or ambiguous, can be explained away without invoking extraterrestrials. 

2. Sri Lanka Mandates Organic Farming, With Disastrous Results. 

In spring of this year, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka banned the import of chemical fertilizers and mandated that all agriculture in his country switch to organic. By early September, Sri Lanka was in disarray, and the economic disruption is ongoing. Crop yields have fallen 19-25% on average, causing the prices of sugar, rice and onions to double. Tea production has fallen by half, singlehandedly erasing 5% of the country’s export income. Inflation is skyrocketing.

As studies have shown, organic agriculture requires more land and more labor than conventional agriculture, all while growing crops that are no different in terms of taste and nutrition. Sri Lankans have unfortunately found this out firsthand thanks to their anti-science leaders.

1. The FDA Approves Biogen’s Dubious Alzheimer’s Drug. 

In what Science Magazine‘s pharmaceutical expert Derek Lowe called “one of the worst FDA decisions I have ever seen”, in June, the Food and Drug Administration approved Biogen’s antibody drug Aducanumab to treat Alzheimer’s disease despite the fact that the agency’s science advisory committee reviewed the drug’s evidence for efficacy and unanimously voted against its approval. Biogen’s own studies found that the drug didn’t seem to have any salubrious effect on patients’ Alzheimer’s symptoms, though it did appear to clear amyloid plaques in their brains. For a long time, these plaques were thought to trigger Alzheimer’s, but now scientists are moving away from the theory after numerous failed drug trials.

Biogen set the price of Aducanumab, now under the brand name Aduhelm, at $56,000 per year, an outlandish cost for the unproven drug. Preparing for its widespread use, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced the largest ever Medicare price hike. It remains to be seen if Aduhelm will be broadly prescribed.

One year ago, when looking at the 20 most popular stories of 2020, we said that the year would be a very tough act to follow as there “could not have been more regime shifts, volatility moments, and memes than 2020.” And yet despite the exceedingly high bar for 2021, the year did not disappoint and proved to be a successful contender, and if judging by the sheer breadth of narratives, stories, surprises, plot twists and unexpected developments, 2021 was even more memorable and event-filled than 2020.

Where does one start?

While covid was the story of 2020, the pandemic that emerged out of a (Fauci-funded) genetic lab team in Wuhan, China dominated newsflow, politics and capital markets for the second year in a row. And while the biggest plot twist of 2020 was Biden’s victory over Trump in the presidential election (it took the pandemic lockdowns and mail-in ballots to hand the outcome to Biden), largely thanks to Covid, Biden failed to hold to his biggest presidential promise of defeating covid, and not only did he admit in late 2021 that there is “no Federal solution” to covid waving a white flag of surrender less than a year into his presidency, but following the recent emergence of the Xi, pardon Omicron variant, the number of covid cases in the US has just shattered all records.

The silver lining is not only that deaths and hospitalizations have failed to follow the number of cases, but that the scaremongering narrative itself is starting to melt in response to growing grassroots discontent with vaccine after vaccine and booster after booster, which by now it is clear, do nothing to contain the pandemic. And now that it is clear that omicron is about as mild as a moderate case of the flu, the hope has finally emerged that this latest strain will finally kill off the pandemic as it becomes the dominant, rapidly-spreading variant, leading to worldwide herd immunity thanks to the immune system’s natural response. Yes, it may mean billions less in revenue for Pfizer and Moderna, but it will be a colossal victory for the entire world.

The second biggest story of 2021 was undoubtedly the scourge of soaring inflation, which contrary to macrotourist predictions that it would prove “transitory”, refused to do so and kept rising, and rising, and rising, until it hit levels not seen since the Volcker galloping inflation days of the 1980s. The only difference of course is that back then, the Fed Funds rate hit 20%. Now it is at 0%, and any attempts to hike aggressively will lead to a horrific market crash, something the Fed knows very well.

Whether this was due to supply-chain blockages and a lack of goods and services pushing prices higher, or due to massive stimulus pushing demand for goods – and also prices – higher, or simply the result of a record injection of central bank liquidity into the system, is irrelevant but what does matter is that it got so bad that even Biden, facing a mauling for his Democratic party in next year’s midterm elections, freaked out about soaring prices and pushed hard to lower the price of gasoline, ordering releases from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve and vowing to punish energy companies that dare to make a profit, while ordering Powell to contain the surge in prices even if means the market is hit. Unfortunately for Biden, the market will be hit even as inflation still remain red hot for much of the coming year.

And speaking of markets, while 2022 may be a year when the piper finally gets paid, 2021 was yet another blockbuster year for risk assets, largely on the back of the continued global response to the 2020 covid pandemic, when as we wrote last year, we saw “the official arrival of global Helicopter Money, tens of trillions in fiscal and monetary stimulus, an overhaul of the global economy punctuated by an unprecedented explosion in world debt, an Orwellian crackdown on civil liberties by governments everywhere, and ultimately set the scene for what even the World Economic Forum called simply “The Great Reset.”

Yes, the staggering liquidity injections that started in 2020, continued throughout 2021 and the final tally is that after $3 trillion in emergency liquidity injections in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic to stabilize the world, the Fed injected almost $2 trillion in the subsequent period, of which $1.5 trillion in 2021, a year where economists were “puzzled” why inflation was soaring. This, of course, excludes the tens of trillions of monetary stimulus injected by other central banks as well as the boundless fiscal stimulus that was greenlighted with the launch of helicopter money (i.e., MMT) in 2020.

It’s also why with inflation running red hot and real rates the lowest they have ever been, everyone was forced to rush into the “safety” of stocks (or stonks as they came to be known among GenZ), and why after last year’s torrid stock market returns, the S&P rose another 27% in 2021 and up a staggering 114% from the March 2020 lows, in the process trouncing all previous mega-rallies (including those in 1929, 1938, 1974 and 2009)…

… making this the third consecutive year of double-digit returns.

This reminds us of something we said last year: “it’s almost as if the world’s richest asset owners requested the covid pandemic.” A year later, we got confirmation for this rhetorical statement, when we calculated that in the 18 months since the covid pandemic, the richest 1% of US society have seen their net worth increase by over $30 trillion. As a result, the US is now officially a banana republic where the middle 60% of US households by income – a measure economists use as a definition of the middle class – saw their combined assets drop from 26.7% to 26.6% of national wealth as of June, the lowest in Federal Reserve data, while for the first time the super rich had a bigger share, at 27%. Yes, the 1% now own more wealth than the entire US middle class, a definition traditionally reserve for kleptocracies and despotic African banana republics.

It wasn’t just the rich, however: politicians the world over would benefit from the transition from QE to outright helicopter money and MMT which made the over monetization of deficits widely accepted in the blink of an eye.

The common theme here is simple: no matter what happens, capital markets can never again be allowed to drop, regardless of the cost or how much more debt has to be incurred. Indeed, as we look back at the news barrage over the past year, and past decade for that matter, the one thing that becomes especially clear amid the constant din of markets, of politics, of social upheaval and geopolitical strife – and now pandemics –  in fact a world that is so flooded with constant conflicting newsflow and changing storylines that many now say it has become virtually impossible to even try to predict the future, is that despite the people’s desire for change, for something original and untried, the world’s established forces will not allow it and will fight to preserve the broken status quo at any price – even global coordinated shutdowns – which is perhaps why it always boils down to one thing – capital markets, that bedrock of Western capitalism and the “modern way of life”, where control, even if it means central planning the likes of which have not been seen since the days of the USSR, and an upward trajectory must be preserved at all costs, as the alternative is a global, socio-economic collapse.

And since it is the daily gyrations of stocks that sway popular moods the interplay between capital markets and politics has never been more profound or more consequential.

The more powerful message here is the implicit realization and admission by politicians, not just Trump who had a penchant of tweeting about the S&P every time it rose, but also his peers on both sides of the aisle, that the stock market is now seen as the consummate barometer of one’s political achievements and approval. Which is also why capital markets are now, more than ever, a political tool whose purpose is no longer to distribute capital efficiently and discount the future, but to manipulate voter sentiments far more efficiently than any fake Russian election interference attempt ever could.

Which brings us back to 2021 and the past decade, which was best summarized by a recent Bill Blain article who said that “the last 10-years has been a story of massive central banking distortion to address the 2008 crisis. Now central banks face the consequences and are trapped. The distortion can’t go uncorrected indefinitely.“

He is right: the distortion will eventually collapse especially if the Fed follows through with its attempt rate hikes some time in mid-2020, but so far the establishment and the “top 1%” have been successful – perhaps the correct word is lucky – in preserving the value of risk assets: on the back of the Fed’s firehose of liquidity the S&P500 returned an impressive 27% in 2021, following a 15.5% return in 2020 and 28.50% in 2019. It did so by staging the greatest rally off all time from the March lows, surpassing all of the 4 greatest rallies off the lows of the past century (1929,1938, 1974, and 2009).

Yet this continued can-kicking by the establishment – all of which was made possible by the covid pandemic and lockdowns which served as an all too convenient scapegoat for the unprecedented response that served to propel risk assets (and fiat alternatives such as gold and bitcoin) to all time highs – has come with a price… and an increasingly higher price in fact. As even Bank of America CIO Michael Hartnett admits, Fed’s response to the the pandemic “worsened inequality” as the value of financial assets – Wall Street –  relative to economy – Main Street – hit all-time high of 6.3x.

And while the Fed was the dynamo that has propelled markets higher ever since the Lehman collapse, last year certainly had its share of breakout moments. Here is a sampling.

• Gamestop and the emergence of meme stonks and the daytrading apes: In January markets were hypnotized by the massive trading volumes, rolling short squeezes and surging share prices of unremarkable established companies such as consoles retailer GameStop and cinema chain AMC and various other micro and midcap names. What began as a discussion on untapped value at GameStop on Reddit months earlier by Keith Gill, better known as Roaring Kitty, morphed into a hedge fund-orchestrated, crowdsourced effort to squeeze out the short position held by a hedge fund, Melvin Capital. The momentum flooded through the retail market, where daytraders shunned stocks and bought massive out of the money calls, sparking rampant “gamma squeezes” in the process forcing some brokers to curb trading. Robinhood, a popular broker for day traders and Citadel’s most lucrative “subsidiary”, required a cash injection to withstand the demands placed on it by its clearing house. The company IPOed later in the year only to see its shares collapse as it emerged its business model was disappointing hollow absent constant retail euphoria. Ultimately, the market received a crash course in the power of retail investors on a mission. Ultimately, “retail favorite” stocks ended the year on a subdued note as the trading frenzy from earlier in the year petered out, but despite underperforming the S&P500, retail traders still outperformed hedge funds by more than 100%.

• Failed seven-year Treasury auction:  Whereas auctions of seven-year US government debt generally spark interest only among specialists, on on February 25 2021, one such typically boring event sparked shockwaves across financial markets, as the weakest demand on record hit prices across the whole spectrum of Treasury bonds. The five-, seven- and 10-year notes all fell sharply in price. Researchers at the Federal Reserve called it a “flash event”; we called it a “catastrophic, tailing” auction, the closest thing the US has had to a failed Trasury auction. The flare-up, as the FT put it, reflects one of the most pressing investor concerns of the year: inflation. At the time, fund managers were just starting to realize that consumer price rises were back with a vengeance — a huge threat to the bond market which still remembers the dire days of the Volcker Fed when inflation was about as high as it is today but the 30Y was trading around 15%. The February auaction also illustrated that the world’s most important market was far less liquid and not as structurally robust as investors had hoped. It was an extreme example of a long-running issue: since the financial crisis the traditional providers of liquidity, a group of 24 Wall Street banks, have pulled back because of higher costs associated with post-2008 capital requirements, while leaving liquidity provision to the Fed. Those banks, in their reduced role, as well as the hedge funds and high-frequency traders that have stepped into their place, have tended to withdraw in moments of market volatility. Needless to say, with the Fed now tapering its record QE, we expect many more such “flash” episodes in the bond market in the year ahead.

• The arch ego of Archegos: In March 2021 several banks received a brutal reminder that some of family offices, which manage some $6 trillion in wealth of successful billionaires and entrepreneurs and which have minimal reporting requirements, take risks that would make the most serrated hedge fund manager wince, when Bill Hwang’s Archegos Capital Management imploded in spectacular style. As we learned in late March when several high-flying stocks suddenly collapsed, Hwang – a former protege of fabled hedge fund group Tiger Management – had built up a vast pile of leverage using opaque Total Return Swaps with a handful of banks to boost bets on a small number of stocks (the same banks were quite happy to help despite Hwang’s having been barred from US markets in 2013 over allegations of an insider-trading scheme, as he paid generously for the privilege of borrowing the banks’ balance sheet). When one of Archegos more recent bets, ViacomCBS, suddenly tumbled it set off a liquidation cascade that left banks including Credit Suisse and Nomura with billions of dollars in losses. Conveniently, as the FT noted, the damage was contained to the banks rather than leaking across financial markets, but the episode sparked a rethink among banks over how to treat these clients and how much leverage to extend.

• The second coming of cryptos: After hitting an all time high in late 2017 and subsequently slumping into a “crypto winter”, cryptocurrencies enjoyed a huge rebound in early 2021 which sent their prices soaring amid fears of galloping inflation (as shown below, and contrary to some financial speculation, the crypto space has traditionally been a hedge either to too much liquidity or a hedge to too much inflation). As a result, Bitcoin rose to a series of new record highs that culminated at just below $62,000, nearly three times higher than their previous all time high. But the smooth ride came to a halt in May when China’s crackdown on the cryptocurrency and its production, or “mining”, sparked the first serious crash of 2021. The price of bitcoin then collapsed as much as 30% on May 19, hitting a low of $30,000 amid a liquidation of levered positions in chaotic trading conditions following a warning from Chinese authorities of tighter curbs ahead. A public acceptance by Tesla chief and crypto cheerleader Elon Musk of the industry’s environmental impact added to the declines. However, as with all previous crypto crashes, this one too proved transitory, and prices resumed their upward trajectory in late September when investors started to price in the launch of futures-based bitcoin exchange traded funds in the US. The launch of these contracts subsequently pushed bitcoin to a new all-time high in early November before prices stumbled again in early December, this time due to a rise in institutional ownership when an overall drop in the market dragged down cryptos as well. That demonstrated the growing linkage between Wall Street and cryptocurrencies, due to the growing sway of large investors in digital markets.

• China’s common prosperity crash: China’s education and tech sectors were one of the perennial Wall Street darlings. Companies such as New Oriental, TAL Education as well as Alibaba and Didi had come to be worth billions of dollars after highly publicized US stock market flotations. So when Beijing effectively outlawed swaths of the country’s for-profit education industry in July 2021, followed by draconian anti-trust regulations on the country’s fintech names (where Xi Jinping also meant to teach the country’s billionaire class a lesson who is truly in charge), the short-term market impact was brutal. Beijing’s initial measures emerged as part of a wider effort to make education more affordable as part of president Xi Jinping’s drive for “common prosperity” but that quickly raised questions over whether growth prospects across corporate China are countered by the capacity of the government to overhaul entire business models overnight. Sure enough, volatility stemming from the education sector was soon overshadowed by another set of government reforms related to common prosperity, a crackdown on leverage across the real estate sector where the biggest casualty was Evergrande, the world’s most indebted developer. The company, whose boss was not long ago China’s 2nd richest man, was engulfed by a liquidity crisis in the summer that eventually resulted in a default in early December. Still, as the FT notes, China continues to draw in huge amounts of foreign capital, pushing the Chinese yuan to end 2021 at the strongest level since May 2018, a major hurdle to China’s attempts to kickstart its slowing economy, and surely a precursor to even more monetary easing.

• Natgas hyperinflation: Natural gas supplanted crude oil as the world’s most important commodity in October and December as prices exploded to unprecedented levels and the world scrambled for scarce supplies amid the developed world’s catastrophic transition to “green” energy. The crunch was particularly acute in Europe, which has become increasingly reliant on imports. Futures linked to TTF, the region’s wholesale gas price, hit a record €137 per megawatt hour in early October, rising more than 75%. In Asia, spot liquefied natural gas prices briefly passed the equivalent of more than $320 a barrel of oil in October. (At the time, Brent crude was trading at $80). A number of factors contributed, including rising demand as pandemic restrictions eased, supply disruptions in the LNG market and weather-induced shortfalls in renewable energy. In Europe, this was aggravated by plunging export volumes from Gazprom, Russia’s state-backed monopoly pipeline supplier, amid a bitter political fight over the launch of the Nordstream 2 pipeline. And with delays to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, analysts say the European gas market – where storage is only 66% full – a cold snap or supply disruption away from another price spike

• Turkey’s (latest) currency crisis:  As the FT’s Jonathan Wheatley writes, Recep Tayyip Erdogan was once a source of strength for the Turkish lira, and in his first five years in power from 2003, the currency rallied from TL1.6 per US dollar to near parity at TL1.2. But those days are long gone, as Erdogan’s bizarre fascination with unorthodox economics, namely the theory that lower rates lead to lower inflation also known as “Erdoganomics”, has sparked a historic collapse in the: having traded at about TL7 to the dollar in February, it has since fallen beyond TL17, making it the worst performing currency of 2021. The lira’s defining moment in 2021 came on November 18 when the central bank, in spite of soaring inflation, cut its policy rate for the third time since September, at Erdogan’s behest (any central banker in Turkey who disagrees with “Erdoganomics” is promptly fired and replaced with an ideological puppet). The lira recovered some of its losses in late December when Erdogan came up with the “brilliant” idea of erecting the infamous “doom loop” which ties Turkey’s balance sheet to its currency. It has worked for now (the lira surged from TL18 against the dollar to TL12, but this particular band aid solution will only last so long). The lira’s problems are not only Erdogan’s doing. A strengthening dollar, rising oil prices, the relentless covid pandemic and weak growth in developing economies have been bad for other emerging market currencies, too, but as long as Erdogan is in charge, shorting the lira remains the best trade entering 2022.

While these, and many more, stories provided a diversion from the boring existence of centrally-planned markets, we are confident that the trends observed in recent years will continue: coming years will be marked by even bigger government (because only more government can “fix” problems created by government), higher stock prices and dollar debasement (because only more Fed intervention can “fix” the problems created by the Fed), and a policy flip from monetary and QE to fiscal & MMT, all of which will keep inflation at scorching levels, much to the persistent confusion of economists everywhere.

Of course, we said much of this last year as well, but while we got most trends right, we were wrong about one thing: we were confident that China’s aggressive roll out of the digital yuan would be a bang – or as we put it “it is very likely that while 2020 was an insane year, it may prove to be just an appetizer to the shockwaves that will be unleashed in 2021 when we see the first stage of the most historic overhaul of the fiat payment system in history” – however it turned out to be a whimper. A big reason for that was that the initial reception of the “revolutionary” currency was nothing short of disastrous, with Chinese admitting they were “not at all excited” about the prospect of yet one more surveillance mechanism for Beijing, because that’s really what digital currencies are: a way for central banks everywhere to micromanage and scrutinize every single transaction, allowing the powers that be to demonetize any one person – or whole groups – with the flick of a switch.

Then again, while digital money may not have made its triumphant arrival in 2021, we are confident that the launch date has merely been pushed back to 2022 when the rollout of the next monetary revolution is expected to begin in earnest.

Here we should again note one thing: in a world undergoing historic transformations, any free press must be throttled and controlled, and over the past year we have seen unprecedented efforts by legacy media and its corporate owners, as well as the new “social media” overlords do everything in their power to stifle independent thought. For us it had been especially “personal” on more than one occasions. Last January, Twitter suspended our account because we dared to challenge the conventional narrative about the source of the Wuhan virus. It was only six months later that Twitter apologized, and set us free, admitting it had made a mistake.

Yet barely had twitter readmitted us, when something even more unprecedented happened: for the first time ever (to our knowledge) Google – the world’s largest online ad provider and monopoly – demonetized our website not because of any complaints about our writing but because of the contents of our comment section. It then held us hostage until we agreed to implement some prerequisite screening and moderation of the comments section. Google’s action was followed by the likes of PayPal, Amazon, and many other financial and ad platforms, who rushed to demonetize and suspend us simply because they disagreed with what we had to say.

This was a stark lesson in how quickly an ad-funded business can disintegrate in this world which resembles the dystopia of 1984 more and more each day, and we have since taken measures. One year ago, for the first time in our 13 year history, we launched a paid version of our website, which is entirely ad and moderation free, and offers readers a variety of premium content. It wasn’t our intention to make this transformation but unfortunately we know which way the wind is blowing and it is only a matter of time before the gatekeepers of online ad spending block us again. As such, if we are to have any hope in continuing it will come directly from you, our readers. We will keep the free website running for as long as possible, but we are certain that it is only a matter of time before the hammer falls as the censorship bandwagon rolls out much more aggressively in the coming year.

That said, whether the story of 2022, and the next decade for that matter, is one of helicopter or digital money, of (hyper)inflation or deflation: what is key, and what we learned in the past decade, is that the status quo will throw anything at the problem to kick the can, it will certainly not let any crisis go to waste… even the deadliest pandemic in over a century. And while many already knew that, the events of 2021 made it clear to a fault that not even a modest market correction can be tolerated going forward. After all, if central banks aim to punish all selling, then the logical outcome is to buy everything, and investors, traders and speculators did just that armed with the clearest backstop guarantee from the Fed, which in the deapths of the covid crash crossed the Rubicon when it formally nationalized the bond market as it started buying both investment grade bonds and junk bond ETFs in the open market. As such it is no longer even a debatable issue if the Fed will buy stocks after the next crash – the only question is when.

Meanwhile, for all those lamenting the relentless coverage of politics in a financial blog, why finance appears to have taken a secondary role, and why the political “narrative” has taken a dominant role for financial analysts, the past year showed vividly why that is the case: in a world where markets gyrated, and “rotated” from value stocks to growth and vice versa, purely on speculation of how big the next stimulus out of Washington will be, the narrative over Biden’s trillions proved to be one of the biggest market moving events for much of the year. And with the Biden stimulus plan off the table for now, the Fed will find it very difficult to tighten financial conditions, especially if it does so just as the economy is slowing. Here we like to remind readers of one of our favorite charts: every financial crisis is the result of Fed tightening.

As for predictions about the future, as the past two years so vividly showed, when it comes to actual surprises and all true “black swans”, it won’t be what anyone had expected. And so while many themes, both in the political and financial realm, did get some accelerated closure courtesy of China’s covid pandemic, dramatic changes in 2021 persisted, and will continue to manifest themselves in often violent and unexpected ways – from the ongoing record polarization in the US political arena, to “populist” upheavals around the developed world, to the gradual transition to a global Universal Basic (i.e., socialized) Income regime, to China’s ongoing fight with preserving stability in its gargantuan financial system which is now two and a half times the size of the US.

As always, we thank all of our readers for making this website – which has never seen one dollar of outside funding (and despite amusing recurring allegations, has certainly never seen a ruble from the KGB either, although now that the entire Russian hysteria episode is over, those allegations have finally quieted down), and has never spent one dollar on marketing – a small (or not so small) part of your daily routine.

Which also brings us to another critical topic: that of fake news, and something we – and others who do not comply with the established narrative – have been accused of. While we find the narrative of fake news laughable, after all every single article in this website is backed by facts and links to outside sources, it is clearly a dangerous development, and a very slippery slope that the entire developed world is pushing for what is, when stripped of fancy jargon, internet censorship under the guise of protecting the average person from “dangerous, fake information.” It’s also why we are preparing for the next onslaught against independent thought and why we had no choice but to roll out a premium version of this website.

In addition to the other themes noted above, we expect the crackdown on free speech to accelerate in the coming year when key midterm elections will be held, especially as the following list of Top 20 articles for 2021 reveals, many of the most popular articles in the past year were precisely those which the conventional media would not touch out of fear of repercussions, which in turn allowed the alternative media to continue to flourish in an orchestrated information vacuum and take significant market share from the established outlets by covering topics which the public relations arm of established media outlets refused to do, in the process earning itself the derogatory “fake news” condemnation.

We are grateful that our readers – who hit a new record high in 2021 – have realized it is incumbent upon them to decide what is, and isn’t “fake news.”

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And so, before we get into the details of what has now become an annual tradition for the last day of the year, those who wish to jog down memory lane, can refresh our most popular articles for every year during our no longer that brief, almost 11-year existence, starting with 2009 and continuing with 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020.

So without further ado, here are the articles that you, our readers, found to be the most engaging, interesting and popular based on the number of hits, during the past year.

• In 20th spot with 600,000 reads, was an article that touched on one of the most defining features of the market: the reflation theme the sparked a massive rally at the start of the year courtesy of the surprise outcome in the Georgia Senate race, where Democrats ended up wining both seats up for grabs, effectively giving the Dems a majority in both the House and the Senate, where despite the even, 50-seat split, Kamala Harris would cast the winning tie-breaker vote to pursue a historic fiscal stimulus. And sure enough, as we described in “Bitcoin Surges To Record High, Stocks & Bonds Battered As Dems Look Set To Take Both Georgia Senate Seats“, with trillions in “stimmies” flooding both the economy and the market, not only did retail traders enjoy unprecedented returns when trading meme “stonks” and forcing short squeezes that crippled numerous hedge funds, but expectations of sharply higher inflation also helped push bitcoin and the entire crypto sector to new all time highs, which in turn legitimized the product across institutional investors and helped it reach a market cap north of $3 trillion. 

• In 19th spot, over 613,000 readers were thrilled to read at the start of September that “Biden Unveils Most Severe COVID Actions Yet: Mandates Vax For All Federal Workers, Contractors, & Large Private Companies.” Of course, just a few weeks later much of Biden’s mandate would be struck down in courts, where it is now headed to a decision by SCOTUS, while the constantly shifting “scientific” goal posts mean that just a few months later the latest set of CDC regulations have seen regulators and officials reverse the constant drone of fearmongering and are now even seeking to cut back on the duration of quarantine and other lockdown measures amid a public mood that is growing increasingly hostile to the government response.

• One of the defining political events of 2021 was the so-called “Jan 6 Insurrection“, which the for America’s conservatives was blown wildly out of proportion yet which the leftist media and Democrats in Congress have been periodically trying to push to the front pages in hopes of distracting from the growing list of failures of the Obama admin. Yet as we asked back in January, “Why Was Founder Of Far-Left BLM Group Filming Inside Capitol As Police Shot Protester?” No less than 614,000 readers found this question worthy of a response. Since then many more questions have emerged surrounding this event, many of which focus on what role the FBI had in organizing and encouraging this event, including the use of various informants and instigators. For now, a response will have to wait at least until the mid-term elections of 2022 when Republicans are expected to sweep one if not both chambers.

• Linked to the above, the 17th most read article of 2021 with 617,000 views, was an article we published on the very same day, which detailed that “Armed Protesters Begin To Arrive At State Capitols Around The Nation.” At the end of the day, it was much ado about nothing and all protests concluded peacefully and without incident: perhaps the FBI was simply spread too thin?

• 2021 was a year defined by various waves of the covid pandemic which hammered poor Americans forced to hunker down at home and missing on pay, and crippled countless small mom and pop businesses. And yet, it was also a bonanza for a handful of pharma companies such as Pfizer and Moderna which made billions from the sale of “vaccines” which we now know do little if anything to halt the spread of the virus, and are instead now being pitched as palliatives, preventing a far worse clinical outcome. The same pharma companies also benefited from an unconditional indemnity, which surely would come in useful when the full side-effects of their mRNA-based therapies became apparent. One such condition to emerge was myocarditis among a subset of the vaxxed. And while the vaccines continue to be broadly rolled out across most developed nations, one place that said enough was Sweden. As over 620,000 readers found out in “Sweden Suspends Moderna Shot Indefinitely After Vaxxed Patients Develop Crippling Heart Condition“, not every country was willing to use its citizens as experimental guniea pigs. This was enough to make the article the 16th most read on these pages, but perhaps in light of the (lack of) debate over the pros and cons of the covid vaccines, this should have been the most read article this year?

• Moving on to the 15th most popular article, 628,000 readers were shocked to learn that “Chase Bank Cancels General Mike Flynn’s Credit Cards.” The action, which was taken by the largest US bank due to “reputational risk” echoed a broad push by tech giants to deplatform and silence dissenting voices by literally freezing them out of the financial system. In the end, following widespread blowback from millions of Americans, JPMorgan reversed, and reactivated Flynn’s cards saying the action was made in error, but unfortunately this is just one example of how those in power can lock out any dissenters with the flick of a switch. And while democrats cheer such deplatforming today, the political winds are fickle, and we doubt they will be as excited once they find themselves on the receiving end of such actions.

• And speaking of censorship and media blackouts, few terms sparked greater response from those in power than the term Ivermectin. Viewed by millions as a cheap, effective alternative to offerings from the pharmaceutical complex, social networks did everything in their power to silence any mention of a drug which the Journal of Antibiotics said in 2017 was an “enigmatic multifaceted ‘wonder’ drug which continues to surprise and exceed expectations.” Nowhere was this more obvious than in the discussion of how widespread use of Ivermectin beat Covid in India, the topic of the 14th most popular article of 2021 “India’s Ivermectin Blackout” which was read by over 653,000 readers. Unfortunately, while vaccines continue to fail upward and now some countries are now pushing with a 4th, 5th and even 6th vaccine, Ivermectin remains a dirty word.

• There was more covid coverage in the 13th most popular article of 2021, “Surprise Surprise – Fauci Lied Again”: Rand Paul Reacts To Wuhan Bombshell” which was viewed no less than 725,000 times. Paul’s reaction came following a report which revealed that Anthony Fauci’s NIAID and its parent, the NIH, funded Gain-of-Function research in Wuhan, China, strongly hinting that the emergence of covid was the result of illicit US funding. Not that long ago, Fauci had called Paul a ‘liar’ for accusing him of funding the risky research, in which viruses are genetically modified or otherwise altered to make them more transmissible to humans. And while we could say that Paul got the last laugh, Fauci still remains Biden’s top covid advisor, which may explain why one year after Biden vowed he would shut down the pandemic, the number of new cases just hit a new all time high. One hope we have for 2022 is that people will finally open their eyes…

• 2021 was not just about covid – soaring prices and relentless inflation were one of the most poignant topics. It got so bad that Biden’s approval rating – and that of Democrats in general – tumbled toward the end of the year, putting their mid-term ambitions in jeopardy, as the public mood soured dramatically in response to the explosion in prices. And while one can debate whether it was due to supply-issues, such as the collapse in trans-pacific supply chains and the chronic lack of labor to grow the US infrastructure, or due to roaring demand sparked by trillions in fiscal stimulus, but when the “Big Short” Michael Burry warned that hyperinflation is coming, the people listened, and with over 731,000 reads, the 12th most popular article of 2021 was “Michael Burry Warns Weimar Hyperinflation Is Coming.”  Of course, Burry did not say anything we haven’t warned about for the past 12 years, but at least he got the people’s attention, and even mainstream names such as Twitter founder Jack Dorsey agreed with him, predicting that bitcoin will be what is left after the dollar has collapsed. While hyperinflation may will be the endgame, the question remains: when.

• For the 11th most read article of 2021, we go back to a topic touched upon moments ago when we addressed the full-blown media campaign seeking to discredit Ivermectin, in this case via the D-grade liberal tabloid Rolling Stone (whose modern incarnation is sadly a pale shadow of the legend that house Hunter S. Thompson’s unforgettable dispatches) which published the very definition of fake news when it called Ivermectin a “horse dewormer” and claimed that, according to a hospital employee, people were overdosing on it. Just a few hours later, the article was retracted as we explained in “Rolling Stone Issues ‘Update’ After Horse Dewormer Hit-Piece Debunked” and over 812,000 readers found out that pretty much everything had been a fabrication. But of course, by then it was too late, and the reputation of Ivermectin as a potential covid cure had been further tarnished, much to the relief of the pharma giants who had a carte blanche to sell their experimental wares.

• The 10th most popular article of 2021 brings us to another issue that had split America down the middle, namely the story surrounding Kyle Rittenhouse and the full-blown media campaign that declared the teenager guilty, even when eventually proven innocent. Just days before the dramatic acquittal, we learned that “FBI Sat On Bombshell Footage From Kyle Rittenhouse Shooting“, which was read by over 822,000 readers. It was unfortunate to learn that once again the scandal-plagued FBI stood at the center of yet another attempt at mass misinformation, and we can only hope that one day this “deep state” agency will be overhauled from its core, or better yet, shut down completely. As for Kyle, he will have the last laugh: according to unconfirmed rumors, his numerous legal settlements with various media outlets will be in the tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars. 

• And from the great US social schism, we again go back to Covid for the 9th most popular article of 2021, which described the terrifying details of one of the most draconian responses to covid in the entire world: that of Australia. Over 900,000 readers were stunned to read that the “Australian Army Begins Transferring COVID-Positive Cases, Contacts To Quarantine Camps.” Alas, the latest surge in Australian cases to nosebleed, record highs merely confirms that this unprecedented government lockdown – including masks and vaccines – is nothing more than an exercise in how far government can treat its population as a herd of sheep without provoking a violent response. 

• The 8th most popular article of 2021 looks at the market insanity of early 2021 when, at the end of January, we saw some of the most-shorted, “meme” stocks explode higher as the Reddit daytrading horde fixed their sights on a handful of hedge funds and spent billions in stimmies in an attempt to force unprecedented ramps. That was the case with “GME Soars 75% After-Hours, Erases Losses After Liquidity-Constrained Robinhood Lifts Trading Ban“, which profiled the daytrading craze that gave an entire generation the feeling that it too could win in these manipulated capital markets. Then again, judging by the waning retail interest, it is possible that the excitement of the daytrading army is fading as rapidly as it first emerged, and that absent more “stimmies” markets will remain the playground of the rich and central banks.

• Kyle Rittenhouse may soon be a very rich man after the ordeal he went through, but the media’s mission of further polarizing US society succeeded, and millions of Americans will never accept that the teenager was innocent. It’s also why with just over 1 million reads, the 7th most read article on Zero Hedge this year was that “Portland Rittenhouse Protest Escalates Into Riot.” Luckily, this is not a mid-term election year and there were no moneyed interests seeking to prolong this particular riot, unlike what happened in the summer of 2020… and what we are very much afraid will again happen next year when very critical elections are on deck. 

• With just over 1.03 million views, the 6th most popular post focused on a viral Twitter thread on Friday from Dr Robert Laone, which laid out a disturbing trend; the most-vaccinated countries in the world are experiencing  a surge in COVID-19 cases, while the least-vaccinated countries were not. As we originally discussed in “”This Is Worrying Me Quite A Bit”: mRNA Vaccine Inventor Shares Viral Thread Showing COVID Surge In Most-Vaxxed Countries“, this trend has only accelerated in recent weeks with the emergence of the Omicron strain. Unfortunately, instead of engaging in a constructive discussion to see why the science keeps failing again and again, Twitter’s response was chilling: with just days left in 2021, it suspended the account of Dr. Malone, one of the inventors of mRNA technology. Which brings to mind something Aaron Rogers said: “If science can’t be questioned it’s not science anymore it’s propaganda & that’s the truth.“

• In a year that was marked a flurry of domestic fiascoes by the Biden administration, it is easy to forget that the aged president was also responsible for the biggest US foreign policy disaster since Vietnam, when the botched evacuation of Afghanistan made the US laughing stock of the world after 12 US servicemembers were killed. So it’s probably not surprising that over 1.1 million readers were stunned to watch what happened next, which we profiled in the 5th most popular post of 2021, where in response to the Afghan trajedy, “Biden Delivers Surreal Press Conference, Vows To Hunt Down Isis, Blames Trump.” One person watching the Biden presser was Xi Jinping, who may have once harbored doubts about reclaiming Taiwan but certainly does not any more.

• The 4th most popular article of 2021 again has to do with with covid, and specifically the increasingly bizarre clinical response to the disease. As we detailed in “Something Really Strange Is Happening At Hospitals All Over America” while emergency rooms were overflowing, it certainly wasn’t from covid cases. Even more curiously, one of the primary ailments leading to an onslaught on ERs across the nation was heart-related issues, whether arrhytmia, cardiac incidents or general heart conditions. We hope that one day there will be a candid discussion on this topic, but until then it remains one of the topics seen as taboo by the mainstream media and the deplatforming overlords, so we’ll just leave it at that.

• We previously discussed the anti-Ivermectin narrative that dominated the mainstream press throughout 2021 and the 3rd most popular article of the year may hold clues as to why: in late September, pharma giant Pfizer and one of the two companies to peddle an mRNA based vaccine, announced that it’s launching an accelerated Phase 2/3 trial for a COVID prophylactic pill designed to ward off COVID in those may have come in contact with the disease. And, as we described in “Pfizer Launches Final Study For COVID Drug That’s Suspiciously Similar To ‘Horse Paste‘,” 1.75 million readers learned that Pfizer’s drug shared at least one mechanism of action as Ivermectin – an anti-parasitic used in humans for decades, which functions as a protease inhibitor against Covid-19, which researchers speculate “could be the biophysical basis behind its antiviral efficiency.” Surely, this too was just another huge coincidence.

• In the second most popular article of 2021, almost 2 million readers discovered (to their “shock”) that Fauci and the rest of Biden’s COVID advisors were proven wrong about “the science” of COVID vaccines yet again. After telling Americans that vaccines offer better protection than natural infection, a new study out of Israel suggested the opposite is true: natural infection offers a much better shield against the delta variant than vaccines, something we profiled in “This Ends The Debate’ – Israeli Study Shows Natural Immunity 13x More Effective Than Vaccines At Stopping Delta.” We were right about one thing: anyone who dared to suggest that natural immunity was indeed more effective than vaccines was promptly canceled and censored, and all debate almost instantly ended. Since then we have had tens of millions of “breakout” cases where vaccinated people catch covid again, while any discussion why those with natural immunity do much better remains under lock and key.

• It may come as a surprise to many that the most read article of 2021 was not about covid, or Biden, or inflation, or China, or even the extremely polarized US congress (and/or society), but was about one of the most long-suffering topics on these pages: precious metals and their prices. Yes, back in February the retail mania briefly targeted silver and as millions of reddit daytraders piled in in hopes of squeezing the precious metal higher, the price of silver surged higher only to tumble just as quickly as it has risen as the seller(s) once again proved more powerful than the buyers. We described this in “Silver Futures Soar 8%, Rise Above $29 As Reddit Hordes Pile In“, an article which some 2.4 million gold and silver bugs read with hope, only to see their favorite precious metals slump for much of the rest of the year. And yes, the fact that both gold and silver ended the year sharply lower than where they started even though inflation hit the highest level in 40 years, remains one of the great mysteries of 2021.

With all that behind us, and as we wave goodbye to another bizarre, exciting, surreal year, what lies in store for 2022, and the next decade?

We don’t know: as frequent and not so frequent readers are aware, we do not pretend to be able to predict the future and we don’t try despite endless allegations that we constantly predict the collapse of civilization: we leave the predicting to the “smartest people in the room” who year after year have been consistently wrong about everything, and never more so than in 2021 (even the Fed admitted it is clueless when Powell said it was time to retire the term “transitory“), which destroyed the reputation of central banks, of economists, of conventional media and the professional “polling” and “strategist” class forever, not to mention all those “scientists” who made a mockery of the “expertise class” with their bungled response to the covid pandemic. We merely observe, find what is unexpected, entertaining, amusing, surprising or grotesque in an increasingly bizarre, sad, and increasingly crazy world, and then just write about it.

We do know, however, that after a record $30 trillion in stimulus was conjured out of thin air by the world’s central banks and politicians in the past two years, the attempt to reverse this monetary and fiscal firehose in a world addicted to trillions in newly created liquidity now that central banks are freaking out after finally getting ot the inflation they were hoping to create for so long, will end in tears.

We are confident, however, that in the end it will be the very final backstoppers of the status quo regime, the central banking emperors of the New Normal, who will eventually be revealed as fully naked. When that happens and what happens after is anyone’s guess. But, as we have promised – and delivered – every year for the past 13, we will be there to document every aspect of it.

Finally, and as always, we wish all our readers the best of luck in 2022, with much success in trading and every other avenue of life. We bid farewell to 2021 with our traditional and unwavering year-end promise: Zero Hedge will be there each and every day – usually with a cynical smile – helping readers expose, unravel and comprehend the fallacy, fiction, fraud and farce that defines every aspect of our increasingly broken system.

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been sued by the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), which claims the agency is improperly withholding COVID-19 v-safe data from the American public.

In a statement on Dec. 29, the non-profit group said it had filed a lawsuit (pdf) against the public health agency and the United States Department of Health and Human Services to force it to produce de-identified post-licensure safety data for the COVID-19 vaccines in the CDC’s v-safe system, to the public.

As per the CDC, v-safe is an “active surveillance program to monitor the safety of COVID-19 vaccines during the period when the vaccines are authorized for use under Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) and possibly early after vaccine licensure.”

Through the app, vaccine recipients can inform the agency about any side effects they have suffered after getting the COVID-19 shots.

Currently, the CDC has made data from its v-safe system available to the private computer technology company, Oracle, in de-identified form, meaning that personal identifying information has been retracted.

This data “will be collected, managed, and housed on a secure server by Oracle,” the CDC says (pdf). “Through Health and Human Services (HHS), Oracle has donated IT services to any agency conducting COVID-19 related activities … All data will be stored, processed, and transmitted in accordance with the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA) and based on NIST standards.”

However, ICAN wants the CDC to produce that same de-identified data to the general public to assure transparency regarding the CDC’s and the Biden administration’s claims that COVID-19 vaccines are “safe and effective.”

“The FDA and CDC have now made crystal clear that their promise of transparency with regard to COVID-19 vaccines was hogwash,” ICAN said in Wednesday’s statement.

Protesters rally against vaccine mandates in New York City on Nov. 20, 2021. (Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

The Food and Drug Administration has asked a judge to give it 75 years to produce data concerning the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine, having previously asked to give it until the year 2076 to fully release the documents.

“As everyone now knows, the FDA has asked a federal judge to give it at least 75 years to produce the pre-authorization/licensure safety data. And we now know with certainty, federal health authorities similarly want to hide the post-authorization/licensure safety data,” ICAN said.

“Based on the CDC’s own documentation, the data submitted to v-safe is already available in de-identified form (with no personal health information) and could be immediately released to the public,” ICAN said.

The non-profit group, through its attorneys, asked in three Freedom of Information requests that the CDC produce the de-identified data, to which the health agency acknowledged (pdf) that “v-safe data contains approximately 119 million medical entries” but declined to produce it because the “information in the app is not de-identified.”

Syringes and vials of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine are prepared to be administered at a drive-up vaccination site from Renown Health in Reno, Nev., on Dec. 17, 2020. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

However, the third request was administratively closed (pdf) by the CDC, which claimed it was a duplicate of the original request, which was denied.

“The first request was denied by the CDC because the CDC claimed it requested data that was de-identified when entered into the app, but then the CDC closed the second request (which was identical to the first request except for making clear it was seeking data de-identified at any point—before or after it was entered into the app) by claiming the second request was duplicative of the first request!  The CDC is plainly playing games. It clearly does not want the v-safe data released,” ICAN said.

The Epoch Times has contacted the CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services for comment.

ICAN said it believes that members of the public should “have immediate access to all v-safe data in de-identified form,” particularly in light of the fact that the Biden administration is mandating vaccines to millions of Americans.

“Despite the fact that this de-identified data already exists, that it is already in the hands of a private company, and that the CDC has never objected to its production, the CDC has so far failed to produce it to ICAN or to the American public—the same people being mandated to take this liability-free product,” ICAN said.

“But don’t worry, ICAN will not rest until this data is made public and so today has commenced a lawsuit against the CDC and HHS demanding that a court compel them to release this data,” ICAN added.

ICAN was founded by Del Bigtree in 2016. Earlier this year, the organization filed a lawsuit against the CDC to request the federal agency take down its statement that claims vaccines do not cause autism from its webpage on autism and vaccines.

The New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) published a new memo outlining two COVID-19 oral antiviral therapies that have received Emergency Use Authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are in short supply.

NYSDOH said the newly authorized oral antiviral treatments, including Paxlovid (Pfizer) and molnupiravir (Merck), are in “limited supply will require providers to prioritize treatment for patients at highest risk for severe COVID-19 until more product becomes available.” 

The department prioritizes those who are severely immunocompromised or have at least one risk factor for severe illness can receive oral antiviral treatments. Besides some risk factors that include cancer, diabetes, dementia, and or other debilitating diseases, the NYSDOH list being non-white “should be considered a risk factor, as long-standing systemic health and social inequities have contributed to an increased risk of severe illness and death from Covid-19.”

People on social media found the decision by NYSDOH to include “non-white race” as a risk factor is appalling. Here’s what one Yale University professor said: 

How is the race or ethnicity of a patient a legitimate criterion for the allocation of scarce clinical resources (like drugs or hospital beds) by a government entity in 2021 in the USA? And how could this even be constitutional? https://t.co/m6gRlnaEX2

— Nicholas A. Christakis (@NAChristakis) December 31, 2021

“White people need not apply,” NYPost columnist Karol Markowicz said, while Republican Party official and lawyer Harmeet Dhillon wrote, “This is illegal and should be enjoined.”

One person said, “This policy is blatant racism. It also may backfire on minority patients, in the same way that drugging them and putting them all on body-destroying ventilators (you know, to “help” them) got a lot of them killed in the early days of the pandemic for no good reason.” 

As Glenn Greenwald wrote earlier, the rationale for using race to determine who is and is not eligible for life-saving COVID treatments is dubious in the extreme, to put it generously. 

…

The factors which the CDC cites immediately make clear how warped it is to prioritize some racial groups over others when it comes to access to life-saving COVID treatments. To begin with, the CDC notes that “people from some racial and ethnic minority groups are less likely to be vaccinated against COVID-19 than non-Hispanic White people.” Indeed, the most recent CDC data demonstrates that Black people and Hispanics are getting vaccinated at lower rates than White people, while Asians are getting vaccinated at higher rates than everyone. That data shows that for forty-two states surveyed, “58% percent of White people had received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose, which was close to the rate for Hispanic people (56%) but higher than the rate for Black people (51%),” while “the overall vaccination rate across states for Asian people was higher compared to White people (77% vs. 58%).”

But at least in many liberal sectors, a failure to be vaccinated for COVID has been deemed a moral failing that deserves deprioritization for health care, not higher prioritization. Those calling for vaccine mandates and vaccine passports want people who are unvaccinated to be denied the ability to work, study, travel or have access to public spaces on the ground that being unvaccinated is an immoral choice that endangers responsible citizens. Some doctors are refusing to provide health care to unvaccinated people, and the medical profession has been openly debating whether the unvaccinated should be turned away. Some liberal politicians have advocated that unvaccinated people be denied health insurance.

For all of 2021, the prevailing argument has been that the unvaccinated are reckless, immoral, diseased and dangerous, and deserve punishment and restrictions. But that is exactly why it was necessary to create a false narrative about who the unvaccinated population is: pretending that they are composed only of White Trump supporters while erasing the large percentages of Black and Hispanic Americans who remain unvaccinated. No liberal is comfortable admitting that they are advocating policies that will result in the firing of people in the middle of a pandemic who are disproportionately Black. Indeed, it has become increasingly popular to argue that any policy, even if racially neutral on its face, should be deemed racist if it disproportionately disadvantages Black or other non-white people; given that Black people have among the highest percentages of unvaccinated people by racial group, policies such as vaccinate mandates and passports would disproportionately result in the firing of Black workers or their denial to travel or enter other public spaces.

But whatever else is true: since when is being unvaccinated a cause for prioritizing people when it comes to life-saving COVID treatments? In liberal discourse, treating the unvaccinated as immoral monsters has become common. But unlike liberal media outlets, the CDC cannot ignore the fact that vaccination rates are lower among Black people than other racial groups. They have to grapple with that fact. And they do so by denying the universal applicability of the vaccine and claiming — with no data cited — that the reason for this high rate of vaccine hesitancy or refusal among Black Americans is racism and structural inequities rather than agency and choice.

Thus does the CDC attribute vaccination disparities among racial groups to social and economic “inequities.” 

…

The key point to all of this is clear: race is irrelevant in these medical determinations. Regardless of why Black Americans are getting vaccinated at lower rates than other racial groups, the relevant risk factor is vaccination status, not race. Based on the CDC’s premise that “COVID-19 vaccination reduces the risk of COVID-19 and its potentially severe complications,” then a vaccinated Black person, all other factors being equal (age and health), would be at less risk for severe COVID complications than an unvaccinated White person. So it makes absolutely no sense to prioritize racial groups for treatment access based on vaccination disparities among racial groups.

Authored by Pat Buchanan,

“‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul,” wrote Emily Dickinson.

“And sore must be the storm / That could abash the little Bird / That kept so many warm.”

Staring ahead on New Year’s Eve, at what appear to be the coming storms of 2022, this once-hopeful country is going to have to fall back on its reserves.

What storms?

Suddenly, the omicron variant of the coronavirus is sweeping the nation, shutting schools, shops, restaurants and bars that were only lately reopened. In this last week of 2021, new infections twice set records.

Is a fifth wave of the pandemic arriving, just two years after the first wave hit in March 2020?

What is hopeful here?

While the numbers of infected are exploding and deaths are rising anew, the omicron variant appears to be less severe and less lethal than the delta variant — and possibly less enduring.

From the medical community one hears the hope that the omicron variant could displace the delta and, as has happened in South Africa, burn itself out.

Still, if the present rate of infections and deaths continues, we could have a virus-related million American deaths by spring.

A second storm is economic, with inflation now running at 6.8%, the highest rate since the last days of Jimmy Carter and first days of Ronald Reagan.

Should this trend continue, inflation could be crushing to President Joe Biden’s party and presidency next November. And, according to Thursday’s Washington Post, that may be what is coming:

“Strong consumer demand, continuing supply chain troubles and the emergence of the omicron variant of the coronavirus threaten to prolong sharply rising prices well into 2022, potentially making inflation the premier economic challenge of the new year.”

As for U.S. economic growth, forecasts for the first quarter of 2022 are being cut back from 5.2% to 2.2%.

Nor does the world look any more tranquil from this vantage point.

In the second week of January, U.S. talks with Russia begin, probably in Geneva, on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demand for assurances that Ukraine not be admitted into NATO and no U.S. offensive weapons be stationed in a border nation from which they can be used to attack Russia with only minutes notice.

The hopeful news: Putin reportedly ordered 10,000 of the 100,000 Russian troops on Ukraine’s border back to their bases deeper in Russia.

Still, it is hard to believe Putin is bluffing when he says that if Ukraine is invited to become a full member of NATO, Russia will see to it that the consummation never comes to pass.

As for China, there is no sign it is backing off from any of its territorial demands — on its Himalayan border with India, with half a dozen rival nations in the South and East China seas, or with Taiwan.

Probably the best we can hope for in the simmering Taiwan crisis is that China will put off its insistence on annexation of the island of 24 million while it digests the lately free city of Hong Kong.

Negotiation with Iran on a mutual return to the 2015 nuclear deal appears to be nearing the fish-or-cut-bait moment. Should the talks collapse without Iran’s return to the restrictions of the deal, we will, early in the new year, hear more animated talk of “other options” and “Plan B” — synonyms for U.S. attacks on Tehran’s nuclear facilities.

Hovering over all of the above is the gnawing and growing concern among the American people about the physical and mental capacities of their president.

A month ago, a Politico poll found that while 46% of Americans believe Biden is mentally fit for his office, 48% disagree. In the same poll, only about one-half of all Americans felt Biden was “in good health.”

All that talk of a few months back of Biden being a statesman of superior competence, perhaps a second Franklin D. Roosevelt or Lyndon B. Johnson, has died out.

Yet the maladies and crises the country confronts from inflation, China, Russia, Iran, the explosion of shootings and murders in major cities, and our bleeding border are not Biden’s alone; they are America’s. They are ours. If Joe Biden fails, the country does not succeed.

Yet, since mid-August, an average of national polls has shown Biden to be slipping underwater and sinking deeper. His disapproval rating is now 10 points higher than his approval rating, which sits in the low 40s.

What does the future hold?

The latest news brought to 23 the number of House Democrats who are retiring or looking for another position rather than running for reelection in 2022. Yet, to regain the House majority, the GOP needs a net gain of just five seats in the 435-member chamber.

Most pundits believe the Democrats will lose the House and, if they do, the U.S. government will grind to gridlock for the next two years. Not exactly a formula for the restoration of a lost national unity or purpose.

Warren Buffett may feel inclined to pen the occasional NYT editorial professing his earnest desire to pay more taxes to the federal government. But when it comes to the businesses he controls, the billionaire checks his progressive politic at the door.

Despite pleas from Bernie Sanders, arguably the most popular Democratic politician (although he’s technically an Independent) in the country, Buffett has decided not to personally involve himself in a labor dispute at Precision Castparts, the aerospace manufacturing giant that Berkshire purchased in its “biggest deal ever” back in 2015.

A group of 450 steelworkers at Special Metals in Hungtington West Virginia, a subsidiary of Precision Castparts, has been engaged in a bitter strike for nearly 100 days as the workers demand a better contract.

“I am personally requesting that you intervene in the negotiations between Steelworkers Local 40 and Precision Castparts to make sure that the workers are treated with dignity and respect and receive a fair contract that rewards the hard work and sacrifices they have made,” Sanders wrote in the letter dated Dec. 28.

Sanders expressed his demand that Buffett intervene and settle the matter in that favorite medium of politicians – the open letter, which can be read in full below:

As I’m sure you know, 450 steelworkers at Special Metals in Huntington, West Virginia, a subsidiary of Precision Castparts which Berkshire Hathaway owns, have been engaged in a bitter strike for almost 100 days.

These skilled employees produce critically important materials for space crafts, airplanes, and submarines. They do their work with great pride and diligence, and many of them have been employed at the company for years.

Despite their hard work and loyalty, the company has offered them a 5-year contract that is outrageous and insulting. At a time when inflation is over 6% and when Precision Castports made $1.5 billion in profits last year, the latest offer from your management team is for a zero pay increase this year.

Instead, the company would simply provide a $2,000 signing bonus. Further, the workers would get a totally inadequate 1 percent wage increase next year, and a tiny 2 percent increase for the following three years. This amounts to a very significant cut in real pay when accounting for current inflation. To add insult to injury, the company also wants to make major cuts in employee health care. It would almost quadruple the cost of health care for these workers, taking a current monthly premium from $275 up to approximately $1,000.

The contract offer would force these workers into high-deductible plans that aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. The company also wants to cut back on the vacation time that employees have accrued. Mr. Buffett: You have spoken out eloquently on the crisis our country now faces in terms of growing income and wealth inequality. You have correctly pointed out that, while working families struggle, the top one percent is doing extremely well.

Over the years, under your leadership, Berkshire Hathaway has been phenomenally successful. Berkshire reported a record $6.5 billion in operating income last quarter, an 18 percent increase from the same quarter one year ago. It now sits on nearly $150 billion in cash. Further, it is no secret that you are one of the richest people in the world, with wealth of over $108 billion.

Today, I am personally requesting that you intervene in the negotiations between Steelworkers Local 40 and Precision Castparts to make sure that the workers are treated with dignity and respect and receive a fair contract that rewards the hard work and sacrifices they have made. At a time when this company and Berkshire Hathaway are both doing very well, there is no reason why workers employed by you should be United States Senate worrying about whether they will be able to feed their children or have health care. There is no reason why the standard of living of these hard working Americans should decline. I know that you and Berkshire Hathaway can do better than that. I would appreciate the opportunity to speak with you about this matter as soon as possible.

While Sanders’ prose is certainly moving, peppered with references to “hard working”, “loyal” Americans who are desperately struggling to keep their standard of living from declining, Buffett is apparently unmoved.

Buffett responded in kind, sending a letter of his own to Sanders, which has been published for all to read. Buffett insisted that Berkshire has long been run according to a unique code that makes it essentially indifferent to unions. “Some of our companies have as many as a dozen unions; others have none,” Buffett wrote.

That’s not to say Berkshire hasn’t been pro-union, as Buffett picks a few of his favorite examples of Berkshire-owned companies with strong union presence.

Here’s Buffett’s brief response…

Berkshire Hathaway is organized and has been run for some decades with an operating structure that is far different than any large business in the United States. I’m enclosing our oft-repeated Part I, Item 1 of the 100-page+ 10-K Berkshire files with the SEC. This introduction emphasizes our unique operating structure, one that has long been recognized by our shareholders, the investment world and the communities in which our subsidiaries operate.

Our companies deal individually with their own labor and personnel decisions (except for the selection of the CEO). We have never purchased or sold a company because of its union or non-union status. Some of our companies have as many as a dozen unions; others have none.

I’m passing along your letter to the CEO of Precision Castparts but making no recommendation to him as to any action. He is responsible for his business.

Among the many extensively unionized companies Berkshire owns has been the Buffalo News, which we have owned for about 40 years. You can check with Senator Schumer  as to the behavior with respect to unions of this former subsidiary or with Senator Brown about Ohio-based NetJets, where Berkshire’s industry leading subsidiary has long been among the most unionized companies within its industry.

Our ownership of California-based See’s Candy extends over 50 years. The company has employed many union workers over the entire period and Senator Feinstein can give you an opinion as to its performance.

Buffett added that he would “pass along” Bernie’s criticisms to the CEO of PC. But as for a personal intervention, we imagine the 91-year-old Buffett has better things to do with his time.

And just for reference, here’s Berkshire’s 2020 Annual Report, which Buffett references in his response:

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