Month: January 2022

Update (1320ET): In a shocking turn of events in this age of ‘obey or be canceled’ culture, AT&T and Verizon have rebuffed a request from federal transportation officials to delay the launch of new 5G wireless services.

“Your proposed framework asks that we agree to transfer oversight of our companies’ multi-billion dollar investment in 50 unnamed metropolitan areas representing the lion’s share of the U.S. population to the FAA for an undetermined number of months or years,” Verizon Chief Executive Officer Hans Vestberg and AT&T’s John Stankey wrote.

“Even worse, the proposal is directed to only two companies.”

The wireless executives said agreeing to the proposal would be “an irresponsible abdication of the operating control required to deploy world-class and globally competitive communications networks.”

The wireless executives said they are “committed to continue” cooperation with transportation interests “on the condition that the FAA and the aviation industry are committed to doing the same without escalating their grievances, unfounded as they are, in other venues.”

Instead they offered a counter-proposal that would allow limited deployments to move forward this week.

Specifically, the CEOs of the two telecommunications giants also said in a joint letter Sunday that they would be willing to commit to a six-month pause in deployment near certain airports that will be selected in negotiations with U.S. officials and the aviation industry.

As Bloomberg reports, the wireless industry said power levels are low enough to preclude interference, and the gap between frequencies is sufficiently large to ensure safety.

The question is – will this cause the “widespread and unacceptable disruption” to flights that Buttigieg claimed or was that just more fearmongering by the administration?

*  *  *

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has officially asked major cell carriers like Verizon and AT&T to hold off on a new 5G project, citing airlines who say the technology could “pose a safety risk” by interfering with aircraft electronics.

Buttigieg and Steve Dickson, administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration penned a letter on Friday stating that in the absence of action, airlines could wind up forced into “widespread and unacceptable disruption,” Bloomberg reported.

Joke’s on Mayor Pete, though: doesn’t he know airlines are already suffering from widespread and unacceptable discussion?

The 5G projects could wind up causing airplanes to be diverted from airports, “causing ripple effects throughout the U.S. air transportation system,” the letter said, requesting a two week delay on implementation of the new wireless service.

The Federal Communications Commission now finds itself at odds with the FAA after authorizing the 5G service that it said caused “no threat to safety”. 

Altitude-sensing devices called radar altimeters are at the center of the debate. The instruments work on frequencies that are “close to those assigned to the new 5G service,” Bloomberg wrote. The FAA warned on December 23 that the devices could “malfunction” as a result.

Meanwhile, the wireless industry has been arguing that “power levels are low enough to preclude interference”.

The requested two week delay would be used to “identify airports where a buffer zone would permit flights to continue safely” in the interim. 

The letter read: “This proposal minimizes and spreads the short-term economic and operational burden while permanent fixes are rapidly put into place. It will still involve significant disruptions for aviation operations in the U.S., but represents a much better way forward than the current trajectory.”

“Failure to reach a solution by Jan. 5 will force the U.S. aviation sector to take steps to protect the safety of the traveling public, particularly during periods of low visibility or inclement weather,” it concludes.

Verizon and AT&T are still reviewing the letter, which Verizon said it received at 6PM on New Year’s Eve. 

Authored by Sven Henrich via NorthmanTrader.com,

I trust you all had a good and safe holiday season. Before I’m handicapping the 2022 market casino with its head and tail winds I want to document some key market truths that give context for 2022. And yes, at this point it’s hard to call markets anything other than a casino or a video game that has detached itself from fundamental reality. For now anyway for I firmly believe reality will make its presence felt again.

But for now: The S&P 500 finished 2021 with its third consecutive year of double digit gains closing at 4766 again making mockery of any type of fundamental analysis and again putting to shame any price forecasts issued at the beginning of the year:

YEAR-END

4766 +27% https://t.co/d0ZMrpEH8N

— Jonathan Ferro (@FerroTV) December 31, 2021

Hence year end price targets, as in 2020, have again proven to be a mug’s game. The mockery of any type of fundamental analysis or diversification strategy probably best reflected by the horrid underperformance of most hedge funds:

All this effort for naught:

SPOTTED New Years’s Eve: Hedge fund manager realizing all he had to do is passively hold $SPX to track the Fed balance sheet to generate 27% as opposed to producing inferior returns by devising a complex diversification strategy based on fundamental valuation & cash flow models. pic.twitter.com/4ME4iLQm7N

— Sven Henrich (@NorthmanTrader) January 1, 2022

For at the end of the day the liquidity flowed to the biggest of the biggest that have grown to previously unfathomable sizes:

While the rest of the market floundered and corrected underneath with the Nasdaq ending the year with 62% of its components below their 200 day moving average despite the valiant effort to mark up performances at the end of year:

So while the headlines keep showing record highs the truth remains that there has been a lot of sizable corrective activity taking place beneath the indices. One might argue the bubble is already in process of bursting.

Most people will want to tie the double digit earnings growth of 2021 to the performance of the market, but let me dissuade you from that notion. The S&P 500 produced double digit growth in 2019 when there was no earnings growth, it produced double digit growth in 2020 when there was double digit negative earnings growth. The last year $SPX showed a down year was in 2018 when earnings growth was positive. The only discernible constant in influencing market direction has been the US Federal Reserve, not earnings. This directional influence has come with the consequence of ever rising multiple expansion. I’ve highlighted this point for a long time and I will do so again today as it is so incredible important for handicapping 2022.

First note that any concerns of valuations, technical gap fills or technical reconnects  I had at the beginning of 2021 simply didn’t matter in 2021. By March of 2021 I was pretty much already resigned that the overwhelming liquidity coming in from the fiscal and the monetary side would likely keep any corrections limited to 50MA and 100MA tags to then be buying opportunities.  Using the 2013 QE3 market as the reference point these MA reconnects was the basic path to be expected:

Three 100MA tags, a few 50MA tags, constant new highs, tapped off with a rally to new highs by the end of the year for the Santa rally. The liquidity script.

Voila, 2021:

I submit this is exactly what happened, virtually the same script.

Indeed 13 months of consecutive new monthly record highs on $SPX matching the 13 months of consecutive new highs of the Fed balance sheet:

The only times of corrective activities occurring during times when the Fed balance sheet either temporarily dropped or paused. The last time the Fed balance sheet failed to make new highs on a temporary basis was the fall of 2020 coinciding with the last 10% correction in $SPX, hence I’ve called the S&P 500 an in essence Fed balance sheet tracker.

It is indeed as such: “QE is inflating asset prices. Benefits of central bank’s bond buying program are ‘fading’, while it may cause ‘excessive risk taking.” Not my words, although I’ve stated similar over the years, but this is from an executive board member of the ECB.

The reason I mention all this again is because the result of all this excess are excessive valuations and I submit to you they can’t be sustained without continued inflow of excessive liquidity. Hence the 2022 market casino will have to contend with the reduction and ultimate cessation of these artificial liquidity flows.

And please everyone be aware of the staggering nature of all this. Since 2019 the Fed has added $5 trillion to their balance sheet, the ECB $4.5 trillion for a combined $9.5 trillion:

Not to mention money supply:

During the entire history of the United States 75% of its money supply was added in just the past 14 years.
Stunning. pic.twitter.com/NI8Dz7YnGN

— Sven Henrich (@NorthmanTrader) December 21, 2021

All this on autopilot in complete disregard of the incoming data. The once self proclaimed data dependent Fed ignored all data and ended up not only relentlessly continuing its balance sheet expansion despite rapidly exploding inflation data it also kept rates at zero entirely disconnecting its rate policy from all historic precedence:

The obvious analogy is that they kept throwing fuel on the fire while insisting the fire was going to be transitory, a term Jay Powell was forced to abandon and opt for a more rapid tapering in 2022 and then opening the prospect for rate hikes following the end of QE.

Let there be no doubt: The Fed flooded the system with money. Not only in 2020 during the depths of the Covid crisis but they kept printing money like never before even in 2021 when inflation data kept ripping, with markets continually producing new record highs and jobless claims dropping to the lowest in 50 years.

Never forget. pic.twitter.com/zUb1HoT5bB

— Sven Henrich (@NorthmanTrader) March 17, 2021

And let there also be no doubt about the consequences:

Firstly, the largest disconnect of asset prices from the economy ever closing the year at an obscene 210% market cap to GDP:

But also at the consequence of the most distorted wealth inequality curve ever setting the poor up with the pain of inflation but also the risk that the Fed’s excess in creating this asset bubble also has set the stage for the next recession as the Fed is now forced to fight the very entrenched inflation it denied it existed in the first place:

You know where I stand on the Fed & Powell & their denials on exacerbating wealth inequality & the danger of the insane asset bubble they have created.

Well, here’s Druckenmiller dropping truth bombs on Powell & the Fed on the very same subjects. pic.twitter.com/3PThE2I5B2

— Sven Henrich (@NorthmanTrader) May 15, 2021

Which brings us to 2022: Is any of the policy action outlined by the Fed actually fighting inflation? It’s not, it’s lip service. You can’t fight inflation with the loosest finical conditions ever and real negative rates:

The very notion is ridiculous. Hence markets kept rallying into year end because the Fed is still running ultra loose policies, hasn’t tapered, hasn’t raised rates, in short: Has done absolutely nothing to fight inflation. Not a thing. Virtue signaling at best.

And, despite tapering becoming pronounced in January QE will not end until at least March and the ECB will keep expanding their balance sheet and has not even announced that they will stop, never mind when. So liquidity is still coming in at the beginning of the year and real rates will remain negative for the foreseeable future. But we’re fighting inflation. Right.

How soon will market react in earnest? Since 2009 history suggests that markets correct in earnest once QE ends:

Yet note prices are again jammed far above the upper quarterly Bollinger bands and a quarterly 5 EMA reconnect is still in the offing as is the reconnect with the daily 200MA which is about 10% lower from here at the moment and, unlike 2009-2020, inflation is now a real thing.

The chart above also highlights another important truth: Every time market react to the downside following the end of liquidity central banks react and again flip flop on policy and QE again resumes. It has been the go to drug since 2009 and markets are never allowed to correct for more than a few days or weeks. Why? Because markets have gotten too large and intertwined with consumer spending and confidence that any larger correction risks a recession. And herein lies the irony. The quickest way to curb inflation is to let markets correct for here’s another ugly truth: While the Fed likes to use supply chains issues as the excuse for inflation objective minded analysis may point to the far above trend of retail sales spurred not only the the Fed’s money spigot but also the record fiscal stimulus that flooded the system as well:

Get retail sales back to trend and inflation is over. Unfortunately that also now would imply a recession. See this is other truth here: They all totally overdid it. There was no thought out scientific process of what the right amount of combined liquidity would be to deal with the Covid crisis. They just threw a bunch of shit against the wall and hoped it would do the trick and it did the trick and when fiscal authorities followed through with massive stimulus the Fed should’ve pulled back, but being the insider trading and self dealing market beholden cowards that they are they never pulled back. And so now they’re chasing their tales hoping the bubble doesn’t implode for the fair value and systemic risk of too big to fail, record equity exposure and record margin debt leaves room for a major market accident.

What would be fair market value? Who is to say, fact is the 4 largest central banks have balance sheets of over $32 trillion combined, the global financial system is already entirely distorted and these balance sheet can’t be reduced without collapsing markets so they won’t normalize their balance sheets. Using liquidity normalized P/Es, earnings & historic market cap to GDP ratios I can make the case from anywhere between $SPX 2500 to $SPX 3,800 depending on what factor dominates. As we’ve seen in the past few years fair market value currently doesn’t apply. Maybe some day it will, but it would require central banks to either lose control or be out of the market.

Hence you can firmly small the script for 2022 can’t you? While we have initial tailwinds of still liquidity coming in and great initial earnings reports in February for Q4 2021 the party is rapidly coming to an end and the Fed will want to curb inflation without causing a recession which will be a real task. How to accomplish it?

Easy, let markets drop, but not so much that it causes a systemic event but enough that year over year inflation numbers drop, declare victory and then flip flop policy again to prevent any major damage to markets by the time mid terms are on everybody’s mind. In short: Follow the seasonal script for mid term elections:

For we all know another truth: Once the Fed capitulates and Powell pivots again markets will bottom and rally again. The Fed will get 3 new Biden appointed members in 2022 and no political party will win the mid terms with markets carpet bombing. As the Fed has already devolved into a political tool by those in power and Powell has already shown himself multiple times to react to political pressure the script is already written: The Fed will switch policy again in 2022 when and if markets drop too much in their eyes. The question is the when and by how much.

Before I close out I do want to follow up on what I consider to be an important set of charts I’ve been highlighting throughout 2021: Volatility.

Ponder this: Despite all the record highs, despite all the interventions and stimulus, the insane amounts of money thrown at the economy and markets there is no denying that $VIX has defied all efforts to compress it:

Even during the record setting and correction free year of 2021 $VIX has maintained its steady trend of higher lows since 2017. In addition it broke above its compression pattern since the March 2020 market lows. Indeed I can point to higher highs on $VIX as well. All this is suggestive that $VIX, once free of perverse liquidity injections, will target higher levels in 2022 than in 2021. The nightmare scenario would be a run at the upper trend line in 2022 or 2023 which not only implies a recession but a complete collapse of the asset bubble. I can’t call for it, but I can merely highlight the possibility as remote as it appears now.

Generally I can make the case that the year end rally managed to back test the breakouts that occurred in the fall.

Be it on small caps:

Or on tech:

All this is reflective of how pitiful the closing end of year highs really were as seen in US hew highs/new lows:

No, the sinister truth may just be that the broader market is already correcting, anticipating the incrementally slowing growth to come and the reduced and disappearing liquidity to be felt in the first half of 2022.

How will crypto fit in all this? I’ll publish a separate dedicated article on this in the days ahead, so stay tuned.

While the mid term seasonality chart and still flowing liquidity along with record earnings and buybacks may prove to be tailwinds that permit for still further new highs to come in Q1, the broader valuation, reduced liquidity and inflation headwinds suggest rallies to be selling opportunities to turn into an eventual buying opportunity once markets have sizably corrected, victory over inflation has been declared and once the Fed flip flops again. My base expectation for 2022 hence will be much broader price ranges in indices and for the things that haven’t mattered to matter again. As always we will let technical levels and signals be our guide to navigate through what is promising to be a much more volatile year. Welcome to 2022.

*  *  *

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Tesla has just released its Q4 2021 delivery numbers, and the automaker says it produced more than 305,000 vehicles for the quarter and delivered more than 308,000. It marks a single quarter and annual record for Tesla. 

For the year, the automaker delivered “over 936,000” vehicles, per a company press release. Those numbers are up about 87% from the year prior, according to Bloomberg. The report also reminded that Tesla has said “repeatedly it expects 50% annual increases in deliveries over a multi-year period”.

On that front, it’s so far, so good, heading into 2022.

It looks as though the phasing out of the Model S and the Model X is heading toward completion. Of the deliveries in the fourth quarter, 296,850 of them were Model 3 or Model Y vehicles, while just 11,750 were Model S or Model X vehicles.

Estimates had called for 12,719 Model S and X deliveries and 263,422 Model 3 and Y deliveries.

Recall, we highlighted Gordon Johnson’s analysis in late November where he claimed Tesla would beat its delivery expectations for Q4. 

In a note to clients in late November, Johnson explained that he thought Tesla could “blow away” the consensus estimate of 262,340 deliveries. Johnson said he thought Musk’s leaked “internal email” during Q4 an attempt to lower expectations for deliveries so he could beat them and eventually dump more stock. He also pointed out Musk’s consistent complaints about supply chain issues on Twitter to make this case.

However, while Johnson may have been right about the numbers, it appears Musk is done selling stock – at least for the time being. 

Johnson also pointed out in his note that NEV market share in China was slipping and that competition in the U.S. could do the same to Tesla domestically, once it “fully arrives” as it has in China.

Recall, just days ago, we pointed out that China is in the midst of phasing out its NEV subsidies, which it plans to fully rescind by 2023. 

By Nick Colas of Datatrek Research

Tis the season of Wall Street predictions. How will US, European and Asian stocks do next year? How many times will the Fed increase interest rates? Where will the 10-year Treasury trade in 2022? All this got us to thinking about the process of making predictions, and that is the subject of this week’s Story Time Thursday.

We’ll start with some wisdom from Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who coauthored a paper they called “On the Psychology of Prediction” in 1973 (link here). Despite the title, their approach to making useful predictions is math- (not psychologically-) based:

• Any prediction should start with the statistical base rate associated with a given outcome. For example, if we’re trying to predict where the S&P 500 will be at year-end 2022 then the index’s long run annual rate of return should be our starting point. Let’s call that 10 percent.

• Then we ask the question “how representative will 2022 be of the general environment that created that base rate?” In the case of the S&P, we might make a list of plusses and minuses with “strong earnings” in the first camp and “possible Fed policy mistake” in the latter. Let’s say the bias is to the bearish by 2-3 points.

• That would leave us with a predicted return of 7-8 percent for the S&P 500 next year, which is what our DataTrek Look Ahead Survey reported was the plurality of readers’ expectations. Given the answers to several other questions in that survey (notably the coin-flip odds respondents gave to a Fed policy mistake), the “what” and the “why” of the survey’s output lines up very well.

Now, if one has a profoundly bearish outlook, this approach also allows you to consider that view in a statistical framework:

• Let’s say we want to predict that the S&P 500 will be down 10 percent or more next year.

• Over the last 72 years (back to 1950), the S&P has been down at least 10 percent on 6 occasions: 1957 (-10.5 pct), 1973 (-14.3 pct), 1974 (-25.9 pct), 2001 (-11.9 pct), 2002 (-22.0), and 2008 (-36.6 pct). The average of those years is a negative 20.2 percent return.

We could therefore say that there is an 8 percent chance (6 divided by 72) that we’ll get a 20 percent decline next year. That only works out to a 1.7 percentage point expected value, hardly the stuff of nightmares, at least statistically speaking. Large down years happen (obviously), but they are rare. Why? Because markets are, in general, good predictors of future business and economic conditions:

• If there were significant trouble brewing in 2022, would the S&P 500 be up 26 percent this year?

• History says no; the average annual return for the S&P going into 1957, 1973, 2001 and 2008 (those bad years listed above, ignoring 2-year sequences of large drawdowns) was just +5.6 percent.

Aside from Kahneman/Tversky, we also like Philip Tetlock’s research on what makes for a productive prediction framework. His original work centered on political predictions and, specifically, why so many highly accomplished people in the field were often so terribly wrong. His explanation is that there’s two sorts of people:

• Those who have an overarching view of the world (dubbed “hedgehogs”, who know one thing very well) and…

• Those who piece together their predictions from a wide array of information (“foxes”, who know many things, but at a more surface level).

No surprise, but “foxes” tend to make much more accurate predictions than “hedgehogs” since their worldview is more holistic and flexible. A Harvard Business Review article (link below) on Tetlock’s work fleshes out this idea:

• Intelligence and genuine domain expertise are, of course, helpful in making accurate predictions.

• Practice helps a lot as well, however. Making predictions is like training to play a sport. Repetition, and the feedback loop it creates, makes you a more accurate predictor over time.

• Teams can make accurate predictions, but only when the participants are good predictors in their own rights. Teams of less competent individuals just become more entrenched in their pre-existing beliefs.

• More open-minded people tend to make better predictions.

• Training in statistics improves the quality of predictions. This is basically the Tversky/Kahneman approach.

• Rushing makes for bad predictions.

The bottom line to Tetlock’s work is that making accurate predictions is a learned skill that also requires intellectual honesty and flexibility. Since investing is essentially the process of making predictions, this likely comes as no surprise to you. Nonetheless, it is always good to see one’s intuition backed up with facts from a related field.

We’ll finish out this Story Time with our own thoughts specifically about Wall Street predictions:

#1: It’s not the destination/prediction that adds value, but the journey/explanation. We don’t really care if Goldman is more bullish than Morgan Stanley or if Credit Suisse is negative on Asian stocks. What’s useful is the “why(s)”, and if the explanation fits together in a novel way that makes sense.

#2: Bearish cases always sound smarter than bullish ones. They usually sound more “in the know”, and a good negative argument on anything (Tesla, virtual currencies, whatever) invariably gets attention. All that makes for excellent entertainment, but we never mistake the headline for a useful prediction. Now, if there’s something in the “why” we don’t know – that is useful. It might not affect asset prices the way the predictor thinks, but every factual kernel of data is always worth knowing.

#3: Dogma is the enemy of predictive accuracy. Any market prediction based on politics, long-held views of the role of central banks, or other beliefs that often engender strong emotions should be treated with extreme caution. The goal of investing (i.e., predicting future asset prices) is to make a good risk-adjusted return and nothing else.

#4: The calendar is a social construct; markets don’t “change” on January 1st. Too often, year-ahead predictions implicitly assume the world will be suddenly different. Maybe they forecast that mean reversion will kick in with respect to equity valuations, or markets will suddenly pay more attention to a particular economic factor (such as inflation). The reality is that markets constantly discount new information regardless of whether it is December or June.

Summing up: we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention Yogi Berra in our list of influential thinkers about the prediction making process, for his quip “the future ain’t what it used to be”. How we think about the future absolutely should change as we see it develop. The important thing is to constantly adapt and learn, systematically incorporating what we witness into newer, better predictions. Humans crave linear, unchanging predictability, so this is no easy task. Essential, yes … But not easy.

Sources:

Kahneman/Tversky paper: http://faculty.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/nehring/teaching/econ106/readings/kahneman-tversky-on%20the%20psychology%20of%20prediction.pdf

HBR article on Tetlock’s findings: https://hbr.org/2015/02/what-research-tells-us-about-making-accurate-predictions

Just days after Twitter banned Dr. Robert Malone, the inventor of mRNA technology and a strident skeptic of the vaccines produced using his the mRNA framework, for allegedly spread COVID “misinformation” (their words, not ours), Twitter and its new leadership have struck again. This time, they’re “permanently” banning Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s personal account for allegedly spreading misinformation as well.

In a statement, Twitter explained they would ban MTG’s personal account (which has a far larger following than her “official” representative account) due to “repeated” violations.

“We permanently suspended Marjorie Taylor Greene for repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation policy,” Twitter said in a statement first reported by CNN. “We’ve been clear that, per our strike system for this policy, we will permanently suspend accounts for repeated violations of the policy.”

Political reporters quickly jumped on the story.

New: Marjorie Taylor Greene’s account (@mtgreenee) has been permanently suspended from Twitter. pic.twitter.com/gw0iZJycay

— Davey Alba (@daveyalba) January 2, 2022

The NYT’s Davey Alba says MTG’s personal account has accrued “five strikes” under Twitter’s guidelines, which means she’s “not coming back.”

Twitter confirms to me that Marjorie Taylor Greene has gotten up to 5 strikes on its Covid-19 misinformation policy. She’s not coming back. pic.twitter.com/tSlBtMFmGB

— Davey Alba (@daveyalba) January 2, 2022

The Georgia Congresswoman’s official account could also be banned if Rep. Greene starts violating Twitter’s rules on COVID misinformation using that account.

More: Twitter also confirms she still has access to her official account @RepMTG, as it’s not currently in violation of the Twitter Rules.

But Twitter has banned accounts before (notably Trump) for ban evasion. So if violating tweets appear there, it’ll likely be suspended too.

— Davey Alba (@daveyalba) January 2, 2022

One Twitter representative told the NYT that the company has been “very clear” about its policies, and that Greene has violated them anyway.

“We’ve been clear that, per our strike system for this policy, we will permanently suspend accounts for repeated violations of the policy,” Katie Rosborough, a Twitter spokeswoman, said in a statement.

Greene responded to Twitter’s decision on Gettr, the conservative social media platform that has cast itself as an alternative to Twitter.

“When Maxine Waters can go to the streets and threaten violence on Twitter, Kamala and Ilhan can bail out rioters on Twitter, and Chief spokesman for terrorist IRGC can tweet mourning Soleimani but I get suspended for tweeting VAERS statistics, Twitter is an enemy to America and can’t handle the truth. That’s fine, I’ll show America we don’t need them and it’s time to defeat our enemies,” Greene wrote.

Of course, we at Zero Hedge know first hand that when Twitter’s “permanent” bans aren’t always “permanent” (and oftentimes the “misinformation” accounts are accused of spreading ends up being the truth, even if it doesn’t jive with the “official” narrative).

Perhaps Greene can join President Trump in his lawsuit against Big Tech?

Submitted by Mark Jeftovic, via Bombthrower,

It’s 2022 And The Pandemic Is Over

For a few months now I’ve been writing that my thinking around Covid tyranny and these elite aspirations toward a Great Reset under their purview had shifted. For nearly two years I had feared that we were headed into a new dark age of totalitarianism and repression, that Western leaders would aspire to implement China-style social credit systems and completely takeover the economy and day to day lives of its subjects.

Make no mistake, many establishment elites do want that. It’s just for awhile there it looked to me like they would succeed. But then my thinking started to shift around that. I realized that the entire transformational shift in the very nature of communications (Internet), power (networks) and then money (Bitcoin) meant the very architecture of society had changed so profoundly that this type of top-down, centralized authoritarianism I had feared so much was now untenable.

It was trying to retrofit digital versions of industrial era authority onto a new terrain of decentralized networks and individual sovereignty (at least for those individuals who successfully position themselves for it. Everybody else will be neo-Feudal serfs, and many of them will actually prefer that).

I began to suspect that rather than entering this new Dark Age of Davos inspired technocracy, we were instead experiencing a crescendo, a culmination of over a century of creeping Marxism.

Covid, rather than bringing about a monoculture of globalism, which those who respected human rights feared, it forced the hand of these impulses. It became a matter of Too Much, Too Soon.

Further, my readings of history made me expect that when the entire false Zeitgeist around COVID, collectivism (including climate) came unglued, it would happen very rapidly. A la the fall of the 800-year old Czarist line in under 72 hours, or the collapse of the Soviet Empire within 18 to 24 months.

These last couple days felt like something has palpably shifted:

You’re watching the narrative of the covid regime collapse in real time. It’s beautiful.

— Dave Smith (@ComicDaveSmith) December 30, 2021

When omicron came out media went hysterical, at the time I wrote that Omicron changed nothing. The early indications were that it was less dangerous than Delta, which was only 1/10th as bad as Alpha (that’s why the casedemic became so absurd under Delta as the fatalities never rose with the case counts).

The best Christmas gift I can give you is some actual context around real data. The case count since Omnicron is irrelevant. The ICU has many times as many people with non-COVID related causes, and plenty of room. Fatalities flat. Media: hysterical. pic.twitter.com/hF1ECUfFBN

— Mark E. Jeftovic – “Easy” is my middle name. (@StuntPope) December 26, 2021

But I was wrong about Omciron, in that it changed everything. It became very apparent very quickly that Omicron was a nothing-burger in terms of lethality,  that its super-contagiousness meant that COVID would be endemic, but benign.

Over the past few days the CDC moderated its stance on quarantine times, acknowledging the new reality. Here in Ontario the medical board announced no more PCR tests for the non-symptomatic – in other words, there will be no more histrionics over case counts. Schools will remain open, much to the chagrin of teachers’ unions and those conditioned by two-years of Pavlovian fear-mongering.

Now into this highly sensitive state of  self-organized criticality comes the Joe Rogan interview with mRNA inventor Robert Malone. Three hours long to a widespread audience, Youtube took the video down within hours of the interview being covered on Zerohedge.

What’s the over/under for when Youtube takes down the #JoeRogan / #RobertMalone video….https://t.co/7wE7PsudiY

— Mark E. Jeftovic – “Easy” is my middle name. (@StuntPope) January 1, 2022

This was no surprise, so I had already downloaded it before Youtube took it down and I’ve uploaded the video to Rumble here.

What I didn’t expect to happen so fast was the sudden narrative and policy shifts in the face of the undeniable reality that Omicron has ended the pandemic. Super-contagious yet mild in effects, with ultra low hospitalizations and near-zero fatalities, Omicron is nature’s detente with humanity. An all natural herd immunity (except for the part where it was probably, originally cooked up in a lab).

Ironically, the fact that the dominant strain is now a head-cold version of COVID should be good news. However, for many this had become a religion.

There will be those who try to cling onto COVID tyranny for as long as possible and in doing so, they will perpetuate a state of hyper-normalization that will be self-defeating.

Hyper-normalization is a phrase coined by the UK documentarist Adam Curtis, and it describes a state where the prevailing establishment narrative is so absurd and demonstrably false that only the most brainwashed True Believers can cling to it. Only the most corrupt and self-seeking policy makers will attempt to perpetuate it. Those who do espouse it are typically the greatest beneficiaries of the dysfunctional zeitgeist.

Whether it’s Justin Trudeau accusing the vaccine hesitant of being racist misogynists…

Trudeau: “People who are fiercely against vaccination. They are extremists who don’t believe in science, they’re often misogynists, also often racists.”

This is the guy who said he “admired” the regime holding millions of Muslims in concentration camps.pic.twitter.com/rCYdURLwOa

— Michael P Senger (@MichaelPSenger) January 1, 2022

…or Big Tech attempting to deplatform Robert Malone, every further incident, every attempt at censorship and gaslighting just makes it all the more clear and undeniable: the only people pushing to continue this state of affairs are insular elites who are detached from reality and who benefit from a system that has lost all legitimacy.

One day after Desmond Tutu, the retired Archbishop of Cape Town who rose to prominence as the first black leader of the Anglican Church in South Africa to become a leader in the anti-apartheid struggle, was laid to rest, a massive fire ripped through the Houses of Parliament on Sunday. 

Fire erupted at the South African Parliament building in Cape Town on Sunday morning, sending plumes of smoke into the air visible across the capital.

Video from the scene showed flames shooting out of the building. Firefighters arrived on the scene, and it was reported that the fire was still not under control by afternoon. There have been no reports of injuries or fatalities.

The South African Parliament in Cape Town has been burning for years.

pic.twitter.com/r10GaZVQtZ

— Ulrich Janse van Vuuren (@UlrichJvV) January 2, 2022

“The entire parliamentary complex is severely damaged, waterlogged and smoke damaged,” JP Smith, a Cape Town mayoral committee member responsible for safety and security, said. 

“The second point of fire is the National Assembly building, which is gutted,” Smith said, referring to the building where the Parliament meets. “The structural ceiling has collapsed. The fire staff had to be momentarily withdrawn.”

Investigators are still not sure what caused the blaze.

“They will have to determine how the fire spread from the one blaze to the second blaze,” Smith said, “because these are two very distinct areas.”

President Cyril Ramaphosa arrived on the scene to inspect the damage on Sunday afternoon. 

Parliamentary officials are not aware if the fire destroyed government documents. However, “offices belonging to lawmakers in the African National Congress as well as in two smaller opposition parties — the Good Party and the National Freedom Party — were among those badly damaged,” NYTimes said. 

This is a tragic way to start the New Year considering the country is still vulnerable to political and social unrest and COVID-19 outbreaks. 

Authored by Aleksander Svetski via BitcoinMagazine.com,

THE HUMANITY-ALTERING POTENTIAL OF BITCOIN

As we enter 2022, we should all stop and marvel at how far Bitcoin has come over the past 13 years. What started as a white paper has grown through infancy and into a healthy, robust, adolescent global phenomenon.

Against the backdrop of clown world simulation shifting into ever-higher gears, Bitcoin has become a heartbeat and source of truth and sanity for millions around the world. The sheer importance of an individually-enforced, voluntarily-sought, collective and objective truth cannot be overestimated.

But, despite the very real, practical and undeniable progress that has been made, there are many who will continue on with their salt-laden disbelief and yell at clouds with uninformed variants of the same, tired anti-Bitcoin arguments.

“What if [insert uninformed China FUD]?”

“What about [insert uninformed energy FUD}?”

Look at [insert pointless tea-leaf chart FUD]?”

I can only watch on as the naysayers, FUDsters, fraudsters and fiaters do their best to confuse others and themselves on their way to economic irrelevance. And while I am now immune to their stupidity, I cannot help but feel sorry for them, or perhaps pity their lack of hope and faith.

It reminds me a little of the scene in “The Matrix Reloaded” where the team is preparing to enter the matrix so that Neo can go meet the Architect. Morpheus, in appropriate form, is conducting a sermon, reminding everyone that where some might see coincidence, he sees providence.

“I do not see coincidence, I see providence. I see purpose. I believe it is our fate to be here. It is our destiny,” he says.

Source

Niobe then asks:

“I keep thinking, what if you’re wrong? What if all this, the prophecy, everything is bullshit?”

And Morpheus replies:

“Then by tomorrow, we’ll all be dead.”

Then more importantly, he follows up with:

“Now consider the alternative. What if I am right? What if the prophecy is true? What if tomorrow the war could be over? Isn’t that worth fighting for? Isn’t that worth dying for?”

Source: “The Matrix”

This scene reminds me of the hope that Bitcoin represents against both, a) the tired pessimism that most intelligent but well-meaning people display, and(b) the empty nihilism of the rest of humanity.

Bitcoin is a noble, moonshot attempt at building a parallel world on a sound foundation, because the alternative, the status quo, is a complete mess.

By no means does Bitcoin just blindly “fix” everything, but by tying human action to some form of real economic consequence, it for damn sure aligns individual behavior to a more‘“natural” order.

In this way, we have a much better shot at moving the world not just closer to “heaven” but at the very least, off the pathway to hell, which we are currently both on and accelerating through.

If Bitcoin does not succeed, then much like Morpheus’ sentiment above, we’re largely fucked. Society will regress until all of the capital we’ve built in the preceding millennia has been depleted and society collapses, or we reside in sterile, technocratic dystopias, until the centrally-planned system cracks, tears and collapses atop everyone — at which point primitive humans like Equality 7–2521 in Ayn Rand’s novella “Anthem” must re-emerge once more to rebuild.

Either way, in the absence or failure of Bitcoin, the world is a bleak, dark, cold, empty and sterile place where the worst form of parasitic behavior is incentivized and the very spirit of progress, diversity and life is extinguished under the guise of “equality.”

Now… think of the alternative.

WHAT IF BITCOIN DOES SUCCEED?

What if we are right and the organic emergence of a sound money helps to transform individual behavior toward morality, lower time-preferences and further sightedness? What if this monetary standard introduces shorter, faster and higher fidelity feedback loops for the actions taken by individuals, corporations, cities and nations?

What if these enhanced feedback loops turn into faster corrections of poor decisions, alongside the doubling down of actions that result in true progress? What if this turns into more accurate value judgements in the aggregate such that society becomes more prosperous, moral and forthright?

What if this new money, fixed in supply and fixed in its rules, makes inflation a thing of the past, and brings about an age where the costs of products, goods and services decrease in lockstep with the increased efficiency and efficacy we can produce and deliver them with?

What if this then translates into a meritocratic society in which both social and economic mobility are possible, where productivity and value creation is what enables one to climb, while wastage, poor judgement and parasitism lead to downward motion?

What if this is how we can transform society into an organic, dynamic 80/20 distribution instead of a cancerous, static 99.9/0.01 distribution where the poor can never climb, the parasitic elite can never fall and the productive middle has to carry the entire load?

Static, fixed classes on the left. Dynamic, permeable classes on the right.

What if the absence of mindlessly borrowing from the future, of forced taxation and involuntary theft via inflation makes those who govern accountable for their actions? What if it transforms the relationship between the government and the governed to one where the former is a customer-service provider, instead of the current subject/overlord status quo?

What if Bitcoin, through its effect on human behavior, kick starts the next phase of natural evolution in the human genus? What if over generations of more far-sighted, low-time preferring and productivity-oriented behavior, we begin to bake morality into our DNA and evolve into a more majestic, noble species of human? Homo bitcoinicus, perhaps?

What if Bitcoin is the most important discovery since fire because it allows us to encode the product of our labor into high-fidelity information and either store it forever or transmit it at the speed of light? What if this ability ushers in a new renaissance of collaboration, cooperation and productivity?

What if Bitcoin is our path through the great filter?

More on this in The Bitcoin Times, edition four

Isn’t this something worth fighting for? Isn’t this something worth dying for? Isn’t this something worth living for?

I truly believe so, in my heart of hearts.

How many of these “what ifs?” are possible? What will the near- and longer-term futures look like?

Of course, I do not know. None of us do. We can use first principles, intuition, instinct and experience to make estimations, but in order to discover it, we must create and build it.

This is why free, independent, entrepreneurial, productivity- and creation-oriented people will thrive on a standard in which this kind of behavior is incentivized. In other words: on a Bitcoin standard.

And getting there will require a large dose of faith and hope, because the clarity needed to make accurate value judgements and calculate economic costs is still emerging (Bitcoin).

A creator is he who brings forth that which does not yet exist. This is why today’s message is one of hope. We must forge ahead and bring about a world we can be proud to not only live in, but to pass onto our kin. We must hope, and hope in the highest sense of the word. In its shadow form, it can be seen as a weakness. Something which is flaccid, impotent and merely waiting for another to come save or protect you.

The “Hope” I speak of is capitalized. In its light, it is one of our greatest strengths.

“Hope, it is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and your greatest weakness.”

–The Architect, “The Matrix Reloaded”

Bitcoin is Hope and I want to take a moment to thank Michael Saylor for pointing that domain to the right source.

“Bitcoin Is Hope”

So…

Please don’t waste my time or anybody else’s with, “What if Bitcoin doesn’t work?” Neither pessimism nor nihilism help.

Spend your time actually bringing forth a new Bitcoin standard, because even if it delivers on a fraction of what I’ve stated above, it is a monumental step change to the current alternative; a globalist faux dystopia blending slavery, lies, bugs, pods, bondage, serfdom and sterility.

As Eminem said, we have one shot, one opportunity to seize everything we ever wanted. Are we going to capture it, or just let it slip?

So, join me. Join us, as we venture forth into 2022.

Love, truth and Bitcoin shall prevail! For they must prevail.

Since Christmas Eve, travel cancellations and delays have plagued US airports. On Sunday, the last day of the year-end holiday travel season, it’s turning out to be another hellish day for airline passengers. 

Flight tracking firm FlightAware.com reports (as of 0800 ET) more than 1,900 flights within, into, or out of the US were canceled, with nearly 800 delays. That follows Saturday’s 2,700 cancellations. 

Chicago O’Hare International, Denver International, Newark Liberty International had the most cancellations. SkyWest, Southwest, and Jetblue were among the most affected airlines. 

This weekend’s travel mess continues for the same reason as Christmas Eve: flight crew shortages persist as many called out sick due to COVID. There’s also another component to the disruption, that is, wintry weather across the US. Here is a map of today’s snowfall probability. 

Since Christmas Eve, about 12,000 flights have been canceled, making this holiday travel season an absolute mess for airline passengers.