Month: November 2023

The El Niño weather pattern has sparked a drought this year across Central America that is creating extreme congestion at the Panama Canal, prompting some ships to turn around and seek alternative routes. 

New shipping data from Bloomberg shows two liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) carriers, Pyxis Pioneer and Sunny Bright, recently turned around within 10 miles (16 kilometers) of the canal before sailing away. 

Both vessels have a capacity of 158,000 cubic meters of LPG and were en route to major LPG facilities in the US Gulf. Their current destination, however, remains to be determined. 

The canal relies on rainwater from Gatun Lake, a nearby artificial reservoir, to feed the lock system. The lack of rainfall this year because of El Nino has led canal authorities to impose draft and sailing restrictions. 

One week ago, the Panama Canal Authority (PCA) said October was “the driest since the earliest registers, 73 years ago” and “caused by the El Nino phenomenon continues to impact the Panama Canal’s reservoir system and, as a result, water availability has been reduced.”

PCA has reduced the number of booking slots for vessels to transit the canal from 31 to 25 this month and will be reduced by nearly 30% to 18 by Feb. 1, 2024. In comparison, the maximum number of sustainable bookings is between 38-40 per day. 

The most common vessels transiting the crucial waterway are dry bulk, containers, chemicals, and LPG vessels. 

While the major supply chain disruptions from the pandemic have declined, new challenges are arising due to the low water levels at the Panama Canal, causing fresh supply chain issues. 

Via SchiffGold.com,

Central banks continued to gobble up gold…

Reported central bank gold reserves expanded by a net 77 tons in September with nine countries buying a ton or more.

With September’s purchases, central banks added a net 337 tons of gold in Q3. It was the second-highest third-quarter total on record behind 2022.

China continued to be the biggest gold purchaser, adding another 26 tons of gold to its hoard in September. It was the 11th straight month of increasing Chinese gold reserves.

Since the beginning of the year, the People’s Bank of China has increased its reserves by 181 tons, and it has added 232 tons since it resumed official purchases in November 2022. As of the end of September, China officially held 2,192 tons of gold, making up 4% of its total reserves.

And the country likely has more gold than that.

There has always been speculation that China holds far more gold than it officially reveals. As Jim Rickards pointed out on Mises Daily back in 2015, many people speculate that China keeps several thousand tons of gold “off the books” in a separate entity called the State Administration for Foreign Exchange (SAFE).

Last year, there were large unreported increases in central bank gold holdings.  Central banks that often fail to report purchases include China and Russia. Many analysts believe China is the mystery buyer stockpiling gold to minimize exposure to the dollar.

Poland was another big gold buyer in September, adding 19 tons to its reserves.

Year-to-date, the National Bank of Poland has bought 105 tons of gold, in line with a plan to add 100 tons to its reserves Bank of Poland President Adam Glapiński announced in 2021.

Glapiński recently indicated the buying will likely continue.

This makes Poland a more credible country, we have a better standing in all ratings, we are a very serious partner and we will continue to buy gold. The dream is to reach 20 percent.”

When he announced the plan to expand its gold reserves, Glapiński said holding gold was a matter of financial security and stability.

Gold will retain its value even when someone cuts off the power to the global financial system, destroying traditional assets based on electronic accounting records. Of course, we do not assume that this will happen. But as the saying goes – forewarned is always insured. And the central bank is required to be prepared for even the most unfavorable circumstances. That is why we see a special place for gold in our foreign exchange management process.”

Turkey added 8 tons of gold to its holdings in September and appears to be back on the path toward expanding its reserves.

The Turkish central bank sold 160 tons of gold last spring but returned to buying in the third quarter. According to the World Gold Council, the big gold sale earlier this year was a specific response to local market dynamics and didn’t likely reflect a change in the Turkish central bank’s long-term gold strategy. It sold gold into the local market to satisfy demand after the government imposed import quotas in an attempt to improve its current account balance. The country is running a significant trade deficit.

Although the Turkish government reinstated gold import quotas in early August, so far we haven’t seen a repeat of sales into the local market to meet elevated demand.

India purchased 7 tons of gold in September. It purchased small amounts of gold over the previous four months, but this was the biggest buy by the Reserve Bank of India since July 2022.

Since resuming buying in late 2017, the Reserve Bank of India has purchased over 200 tons of gold. In August 2020, there were reports that the RBI was considering significantly raising its gold reserves.

The other buyers in September include:

• Uzbekistan – 9 tons

• Czech Republic – 2 tons

• Qatar – 2 tons

• Singapore – 1 ton

• Kyrgyz Republic 3 tons

The only notable sale was by Kazakhstan. Its central bank decreased reserves by 1 ton.

It is not uncommon for banks that buy from domestic production – such as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan – to switch between buying and selling.

The World Gold Council said it’s “all but certain that central banks are on course for another colossal year of buying,” after a record-setting 2022.

The strength of buying has, to some degree, exceeded our expectations. While we were confident that central banks would remain net purchasers in 2022, we thought it unlikely that it would match last year’s record buying volume. Should buying continue to be strong in Q4, the full-year total could get closer than we anticipated. Nevertheless, the historically high level of buying in Q4 2022 may be difficult to top.”

Total central bank gold buying in 2022 came in at 1,136 tons. It was the highest level of net purchases on record dating back to 1950, including since the suspension of dollar convertibility into gold in 1971. It was the 13th straight year of net central bank gold purchases.

According to the 2023 Central Bank Gold Reserve Survey recently released by the World Gold Council, 24% of central banks plan to add more gold to their reserves in the next 12 months. Seventy-one percent of central banks surveyed believe the overall level of global reserves will increase in the next 12 months. That was a 10-point increase over last year.

Mr. Saving-Humanity-Singlehandedly-Myself Bill Gates is reportedly backing a mining startup that is getting close to “investing” in the Democratic Republic of Congo – which is, of course, a nice way to say, likely mining there.

The company, KoBold Metals, already is developing a copper project in Zambia, Bloomberg reported this week. Chief executive officer Kurt House said the company had already bid for one asset but didn’t close a deal.

He told Bloomberg: “We think it is probably the best place in the world for the types of materials we’re looking for.”

KoBold is actively scouting international sites for fresh reserves of critical metals vital for the green-energy shift, the report says. The Congo, a leading cobalt supplier and major copper source, is poised for a surge in demand for these elements, essential for clean-energy systems and battery technology.

The company, headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, seeks Congo operations in line with President Biden’s administration’s focus on enhancing American stakes in the electric-vehicle value chain. With financial support from entities like Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures and market leader BHP Ltd., the firm also boasts investment from Michael Bloomberg.

But recall we have written in the past about the horrors of mining that takes place in the Congo. 

Siddharth Kara, who is a Harvard visiting professor and also the author of “Cobalt Red: How The Blood of The Congo Powers Our Lives” took to the Joe Rogan podcast late last year with comments about cobalt mining that have garnered millions of listens. 

He told Rogan that there’s no such thing as “clean cobalt” and that the term was “all marketing,” according to a wrap up of the podcast by the NY Post. He noted that the level of suffering of Congolese people working in cobalt mines was “astounding”, the report says.

“I’ve never seen [a cobalt mine that did not rely on child labor or slavery] and I’ve been to almost all the major industrial cobalt mines,” he told Rogan. 

Your move, Mr. Gates.

Via Remix News,

Politicians from across the political spectrum have criticized the generous welfare benefits available to Ukrainian refugees which are disincentivizing many from joining the labor market…

Only a fraction of the estimated 700,000 Ukrainian refugees of working age have found employment following their arrival in Germany, a report from German newspaper Der Spiegel has revealed.

According to the report, just 19 percent of Ukrainian refugees in Germany have found work with the rest currently living off the country’s welfare state.

Several politicians from across the political spectrum expressed their concern about the sustainability of providing ongoing support.

Matthias Jendricke, chairman of the Nordhausen district council in Thuringia, described the situation as “disappointing.”

A member of the governing Social Democratic Party (SPD), Jendricke said he thought it would have been easier to integrate Ukrainians into the labor market than other refugees.

In the weeks following the Russian attack, he even bussed Ukrainian refugees from Berlin to his district as the county was in urgent need of labor.

“Things went completely wrong”, he explained, revealing that only a fraction of the refugees were interested in joining the labor market.

Joachim Walter, a member of the CDU opposition and county council president in the Tübingen district of Baden-Württemberg, held a similar view.

“The willingness of Ukrainian refugees to work has been significantly reduced because of the aid,” he claimed.

He accused the federal government of being too generous in relation to the social benefits on offer for Ukrainian refugees, claiming that “high public payments” do not “encourage people to work here.”

…

Read more here…

Why let a crisis go to waste? French authorities have issued statements suggesting that the Russians! were behind what’s being dubbed anti-Semitic graffiti which has mysteriously appeared on buildings and residences in Paris neighborhoods and suburbs.

A national broadcaster, France Info radio, issued a report Tuesday saying police are investigating this as a possible destabilization campaign orchestrated by Russia and President Putin. 

More than 200 Jewish stars have been spray-painted, which began being observed in late October. They are all identical, and seem connected to the ongoing war in Gaza, given some of them were accompanies by written slogans including, “From the [Mediterranean] Sea to the [Jordan] River, Palestine will be free.”

This spraypainted symbols crisis is set amidst broader fears of a rise in suspected attacks targeting Jewish communities across Europe and in the West. There have also been huge anti-Israel protests across major European cities for several weeks.

The Wall Street Journal has picked up on local French reports which point to a couple of foreigners from Eastern Europe as possibly being behind the mystery graffiti: 

French prosecutors said Tuesday they are probing whether a person based abroad may be behind the graffiti, after police detained a man and a woman, born in Moldova, who were seen painting a blue Star of David on a building in Paris late last month. Prosecutors said they found a conversation, apparently in Russian, on the couple’s phone in which they were instructed to tag the star in exchange for a payment.

French public prosecutor Laure Beccuau has previously speculated that “It could not be ruled out” that the stars appeared on walls “at the express request of someone living abroad.”

Of course, this quickly resulted in dozens of ominous international headlines strongly suggesting this is some sort of Russian intelligence operation, even as Moscow is preoccupied with a grinding, stalemated war in Ukraine. 

And yet, these same news articles include statements like the following buried deep within them: “Investigators have said they aren’t convinced the graffiti can be classed as antisemitic, but they are concerned about possible Russian meddling at such a sensitive time.”

Meanwhile in France: buildings belonging to French Jews in Paris were marked with a Star of David pic.twitter.com/7WGQ7UD6si

— Emily Schrader – אמילי שריידר امیلی شریدر (@emilykschrader) October 31, 2023

The problem with being quick to seize on this narrative is that France has a huge population of Muslims – some of which have made no secret of their disdain for Jews in recent protests. The immense civilian death toll in Gaza has also outraged young demonstrators all over Europe. 

Much of the West has for years been gripped by hysteria over Russian meddling. In the popular imagination, Putin! or his intelligence agents are lurking behind every corner, especially when something bad, disruptive, or inexplicable happens.

Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org,

The British government has been holding a “Covid Inquiry” for several weeks, they are apparently on “Module 5” now. Hours of footage livestreamed to the handful of people who can be bothered to listen, picking apart Boris Johnson’s Whatsapp messages.

We haven’t mentioned it before now because…well, there’s no point.

We know what it’s going to find, the same thing this kind of navel-gazing show trial always finds:

• The government under-estimated and/or overreacted.

• There was a failure of imagination based on bad intelligence.

• A lack of accountability and oversight led to some minor abuses of power by people who will be censured, may be forced to resign, but will definitely never face any criminal trial.

Whatever they eventually find “officially” happened, you can be sure that corruption and malfeasance and personal profit played no part. Nobody ever acted in bad faith. Everything is always a well-intentioned accident. A minor display of over-zealous incompetence.

Oh. And here’s a scapegoat. What an idiot, right? Let’s make fun of him on Have I Got News for You this weekend, and then next year we’ll make him a lord.

That’s what inquiries are for. They tell stories and sell narratives. They tie up the loose ends and weave a pretense of accountability.

They rewrite history amid a theatrically contrived display of faux-cathartic self-examination which, in the end, only supports the mainstream narrative.

“Oh no! The intelligence was flawed!”

“Oh no! We never wargamed hijacked planes!”

“Oh no! We accidentally revitalized the heroin trade!”

“Oh no! We didn’t take the virus seriously enough at first and then we over-reacted!”

It’s always the same, and rarely worth talking about.

The reason I’m breaking that habit today is that I happened to see this headline…

“The real Covid scandal is emerging right in front of the inquiry’s nose”

And it irritated me. Firstly, with the pettiness of the subject, the narrowness of the focus. It’s picking gnat shit out of pepper, as the saying goes.

But, mostly, because it’s just such a lie. The story it’s selling is that Dominic Cummings wanted a lockdown, and he went against the experts who fought tooth and nail against it.

This is clearly about salvaging the tarnished reputation of “the science”, government experts and corrupt modelers so they can be redeployed in the future without any embarrassing baggage. It’s about piling all the blame on one disposable non-entity.

As I said, here’s a scapegoat…

The author, Fraser Nelson, tweeted it in these words:

The Covid inquiry has unwittingly revealed how close Britain came to avoiding lockdown – and how, in the end, panic beat science.

My column on the real scandal (now online) https://t.co/NRtjYdCiUn

— Fraser Nelson (@FraserNelson) November 2, 2023

As I said on Twitter: Government inquiries never “unwittingly” reveal anything. Like “leaked reports” and “anonymous insider sources”, they seed story beats that support the establishment narrative under a wafer thin veneer of “the story behind the story”.

This inquiry is just another strain of propaganda in the information war. A rear-guard action covering the Covid retreat.

The “real Covid scandal” has little and less to do with Dominic Cummings. The “real Covid scandal” is that the fake pandemic was orchestrated from the highest level in order to seize political power to an unprecedented extent.

Dominic Cummings is the smallest fraction of one percent of that story. He’s not the reason the UK had a lockdown. Just as he isn’t the reason France had a lockdown, or Germany, or Canada, or Russia, or China, or Brazil, or Australia, or New Zealand, or Italy, or Mexico, or Japan or…

…you get the idea.

“Lockdown” was not a mistake. It was a deliberate act of societal sabotage carried out on a global scale.

What the “Covid Inquiry” would have you believe is that an international wave of lockdowns was some kind of happenstance. An avalanche of coincidences. Dozens of ethnically diverse little Dominic Cummings clones, all making the exact same mistakes for the exact same reasons at the exact same time in almost every nation of the world.

What Covid really revealed – what the inquiry will never so much as hint at and what nobody in the mainstream wants us to talk about – is that some greater authority exists above almost all national governments, with both the desire and ability to dictate the domestic policies of almost every nation on Earth.

And spoiler alert: It’s not Dominic Cummings.

Another landmark arms control agreement intended to prevent the kind of dangerous arms and troop build-up among rival superpowers which characterized the Cold War era has died. The US and NATO on Tuesday announced suspension of their participation in the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, which limits conventional forces in Europe, after Russia was the first to formally withdraw. 

“Russia’s withdrawal is the latest in a series of actions that systematically undermines Euro-Atlantic Security,” a statement from NATO’s North Atlantic Council said. The suspension of the treaty is formally set to take place on Dec.7.

“Russia’s withdrawal from the treaty is unsustainable and requires a strong response from the alliance,” a senior State Department official was quoted in The Wall Street Journal as saying. “Taking no action would send the wrong message.”

The Kremlin had announced just prior to NATO’s statement, “The CFE Treaty was concluded at the end of the Cold War, when the formation of a new architecture of global and European security based on cooperation seemed possible, and appropriate attempts were made.”

At the time the CFE was signed, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Moscow was seen as having the upper hand in terms of its conventional weaponry arsenal in Europe, thus the treaty was seen as a disadvantage to the Russian side.

The treaty was meant to prevent either side of the former Iron Curtain from rapidly building up forces for a surprise attack in the heart of Europe. 

The treaty was already seen as fundamentally dead after a years-long de-ratification process slowly advanced through the Russian government:

The long-expected move came after both houses of the Russian parliament approved a Bill proposed by President Vladimir Putin denouncing the treaty, known as CFE. Mr Putin signed the Bill into force in May this year.

Russia suspended its participation in 2007, and in 2015 announced its intention to completely withdraw from the agreement.

In February 2022, Moscow invaded Ukraine, sending hundreds of thousands of Russian troops into the neighboring country, which also shares a border with Nato members Poland, Slovakia, Romania and Hungary.

NATO countries like Germany and Poland have lately declared their intent to drastically expand their military capabilities, both in manpower and defense technology, much of which also is supplied via Washington. The conflict in Ukraine has also increasingly been recognized internationally as a ‘proxy war’ – and all the while ‘safeguards’ in the form of historic treats collapse one by one.

Authored by Kyle Anzalone via The Libertarian Institute, 

A top Ukrainian official said Kiev is seeking to become one of the largest arms manufacturers in the world. The statement comes as the Biden administration has begun pushing Ukraine to engage in talks with Russia on ending the war. Ukraine developing a large weapons industry and selling those arms to the enemies of Russia will likely interfere with any deals to end the conflict. 

The czar of Ukraine’s weapons industry believes that Kiev should become an arms production hub for the West. Oleksandr Kamysyhin, the minister for strategic industries of Ukraine, explained, “We’re really focusing on making Ukraine the arsenal of the free world.”

He told the AP last Friday, “We are focused on producing all types of weapons and ammunition, and we show that we can test it on the battlefield and make it better during the war.” Kamysyhin added, “That’s something we can contribute to the free world, because as you see, defense industry is becoming more and more important globally.”

While Kamysyhin is eyeing exporting arms in the future, currently, Kiev and Ukraine’s Western backers are struggling to adequately provide frontline soldiers with weapons to fight Russian forces. 

The US depleted its surplus stockpiles of 155MM artillery rounds and long-range missiles. This has resulted in the White House violating American laws by sending Ukraine cluster bombs. Additionally, The Biden administration has nearly exhausted the over $100 billion in funding for the war in Ukraine authorized by Congress. The White House relies on funds made available through a Pentagon “accounting error” to ship arms to Kiev. 

On the battlefield, Time Magazine reports speaking with Ukrainian officials who say Kiev lacks the weapons and soldiers it needs to win the war. Gen. Valery Zaluzhnyy told the Economist, “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”

The bleak outlook on the war by some in Kiev is matched in Western capitals. NBC News reports that there is a growing number of Ukraine’s key supporters who are now encouraging the Zelensky administration to start to think about negotiating an end to the war. At a conference last month, Western officials held conversations with Ukrainian leaders “included very broad outlines of what Ukraine might need to give up to reach a deal.” 

A negotiated settlement to the war will conflict with Kamysyhin’s plan to turn Ukraine into an arms hub. In the early months of the conflict, Moscow was willing to reach a peace deal with Kiev that involved Ukraine declaring neutrality and demilitarizing. 

Meanwhile, on Monday Zelensky put an end to any speculation that Kiev was holding elections next year. “We all understand that now, in wartime, when there are many challenges, it is utterly irresponsible to engage in topics related to an election in such a frivolous manner,” he said. “We need to recognize that this is a time for defense, a time for battle, upon which the fate of the state and its people depend. …I believe that elections are not appropriate at this time.”

Zelensky knows the jig is up, within the next two years he will sign a neutrality agreement with Russia and the next election (if they have another one) will see him replaced.

Turns out antagonizing Russia in an unwinnable war isn’t as appealing as genocide against a population… pic.twitter.com/uh7ujApz1I

— Benjamin Rubinstein (@BenFRubinstein) November 6, 2023

Zelensky was elected to a five-year term in March of 2019, and Kiev is due to hold elections next year. Ukraine has been under martial law since the Russian invasion in 2022. Ukrainian law prohibits elections during wartime. However, last week, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the president was considering the positives and negatives of holding elections.