Month: January 2024

As it turns out, overhauling an entire country can be somewhat of a daunting task, as is being put on display in Argentina where Javier Milei is facing an uphill climb to make broad-stroke changes that the country needs to snap it out of socialism. 

Argentina’s national labor appeals court suspended part of President Javier Milei’s emergency decree that was put forth to overhaul the country’s failing economy, Bloomberg reported this week. 

The suspended portion of the decree dealt specifically with labor reforms, simplifying severance pay obligations and hiring “trial periods”. On Wednesday the court issued the injunction which will be seen as a “temporary victory” to the country’s labor unions, the report says. 

Milei’s team will now challenge the court’s suspension, citing conflict with municipal and provincial rulings. The injunction prevents complete derailment by congress or courts for now, with lawmakers yet to vote on the decree, which hasn’t been blocked in recent administrations.

We noted that to end 2023, socialist activists and workers unions were carrying images of Che Guevara and Eva Peron while protesting Milei’s cuts.

As we noted then, the cuts are a part of Milei’s sweeping economic measures that will erase or rewrite over 300 rules regulating and restricting private enterprise within the nation.

“The goal is to start along the path to rebuilding the country… and start to undo the huge number of regulations that have held back and prevented economic growth,” Milei said in a televised speech from the presidential palace.  

The protests and anger from leftist elements within Argentina illustrate the numerous pitfalls of allowing socialism to be rooted within any country for any length of time. 

Though Milei’s opposition often argues that Argentina has never been “truly socialist,” the government policies that have been in place for decades certainly are.  It is a classic far-left deflection:  Whenever a socialist government or economy fails, claim it wasn’t real socialism.  Rinse, and repeat.

Deregulation, protesters argued, would pave the way for big business interests while reducing welfare programs and protections for the public.  The protests are of course built upon a number of assumptions and are reactionary at best, given that Milei has been in office for a mere two weeks.

We’re also near certain these protestors have not asked critical questions about where the funding for such government programs is going to come from when the country’s currency has been zapped into a hyperinflationary oblivion.

The country’s national debt has climbed to over $400 billion US dollars and they are struggling with a $44 billion IMF loan.  However, the real threat is their triple digit inflation which is igniting a mounting economic crisis.  It is the same crisis that has resurfaced multiple times since the crash of 1990.  

But, as usual, we digress…

By Michael Msika, Bloomberg markets live reporter and strategist

January and February are usually pretty good months for Europe’s mining stocks, as factories in China rush to replenish their metals reserves. This year, that seasonal lift will hinge on Beijing coming through with stimulus.  

The Stoxx 600 Basic Resources index is coming into 2023 after a decent run of gains, bouncing 13% from its October 23 trough as it became clear central banks are done hiking interest rates. Historical patterns from the past two decades indicate those gains could continue — January has been a positive month for miners 65% of the time, with an average 1.3% gain. And February, with a 3% average advance, is even better.

Despite those promising signs, a net 26% of European fund managers were underweight basic resources shares, Bank of America’s investor survey found in December, the most unloved sector after chemicals. Their wariness likely stems from fears of an economic downturn, as well as uncertainty on how much stimulus China will deploy to support growth in the world’s largest steelmaking nation.

Jefferies analyst Christopher LaFemina notes that US rate-cut prospects, falling Treasury yields and a weaker dollar all tend to act as buy signals for mining shares. He is positive on the sector over the one-three month horizon, with Anglo American, Alcoa and Teck Resources his top picks.

“The risk is that this Goldilocks scenario might be followed by a recession. If that happens, then the near-term strength in these shares would likely reverse,” LaFemina warns.

Many others are banking on Beijing. After all, China accounts for between 25% and 60% of large cap miners’ revenue, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Iron ore, particularly, will be key. At Rio Tinto and BHP — among the world’s biggest miners —  it comprises about 50% of revenue. The steelmaking material raced to fresh 18-month highs this week, after President Xi Jinping pledged to strengthen his country’s economy and amid speculation China’s central bank will cut rates. Recent dataflow, including imports and PMI surveys, also point to resilient commodities demand, says Caroline Bain at Capital Economics.

Expectation that China will come through with aid is keeping Citi strategists overweight mining stocks. They are particularly bullish on Rio Tinto and South32, betting steel production will remain strong, leading analysts to raise iron ore price estimates. That in turn should underpin earnings momentum for related equities through the first quarter and possibly the second one, they reckon. 

Morgan Stanley analysts led by Alain Gabriel expect a wider dispersion in shareholder returns from the mining sector this year, given uncertainty around Chinese policy, interest rates and the potential reversal in the dollar. Highlighting rising supply stresses in copper markets, they are tactically bullish on producers such as Lundin and Antofagasta.

Finally, valuation could prove a headwind for mining stocks. Their recent bounce has taken forward P/E ratios to about 11, back to long-term averages, while the discount to the broader market has narrowed to 12%. Once-stellar dividend yields too have faded — at about 4%, they offer only a bit more than the Stoxx index’s 3.7%.

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr said Donald Trump and American voters were being treated unfairly by efforts across the country to block the former president from 2024 ballots. Kennedy’s remarks came at a Wednesday press conference to spotlight his own first major milestone in his pursuit of 50-state ballot access: securing enough signatures to appear in the Utah general election. 

Trump has already been declared ineligible to appear on Republican primary ballots in two states, as a court in Colorado and an unelected bureaucrat in Maine said he’s disqualified under the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, for having engaged in an “insurrection” in the form of the Jan. 6, 2021 riot on Capitol Hill. 

As we reported Saturday, Colorado and Maine are just the start, as there are 20 states with lawsuits in progress aiming to eject Trump from the democratic process, and more to come. On Wednesday, RFK, Jr said the trend concerns him greatly. 

“Donald Trump has not been convicted of an insurrection. Maybe he did it but, you know, he hasn’t been charged with it,” said Kennedy. “I don’t think it’s fair.” He also alluded to the fact that the ballot-blocking drive promises to stir the passions on the Trump side of an increasingly divided American electorate, saying it will make Trump backers “angry and frustrated and justifiably so.” 

If Trump is kept out of office through judicial fiat rather than being defeated in a fair election, his supporters will never accept the result. This country will become ungovernable.

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) December 20, 2023

Separately, Tom Lyons, president of the Kennedy-boosting American Values 2024 PAC, told Sharyl Attkisson that Trump’s dilemma relates to the difficulty that independent and third-party candidates have in making it to the ballot:

“We don’t need to be protected from a candidate by this sort of anti-democratic set of forces that is gaining traction in this country. Whether it’s Bobby Kennedy or Donald Trump or Joe Biden, it’s a direction that’s obviously bad for democracy.”

The main purpose of Wednesday’s event was to announce that Kennedy has qualified to appear on the election ballot in Utah, having secured signatures from 1,000 registered voters. The campaign expects to spend $15 million on its nationwide ballot-access drive.

.@BreakingPointsN @krystalball + @esaagar ask about my efforts to get on the ballot in all 50 states, support among non-voters, and whether or not I’ll be on the debate stage with Trump + Biden. #Kennedy24 pic.twitter.com/rqovJqMh0v

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) December 28, 2023

Kennedy decried the thicket that he and similarly-situated candidates must navigate just to put their names in front of voters, saying that “arbitrary and capricious” rules create an “undemocratic lock that the major political parties have on this process…It’s all designed to keep third parties from getting on the ballot.”

Angling to play more than a mere spoiler in the November election, Kennedy shared some math that makes him optimistic: 

“You could technically win the election with 34 percentage points because it’s winner take all. So all we have to do is take 4.5 percentage points from each President Trump and President Biden to win the national election, and I have 11 months to do that.”

He may be a little farther from that goal line than he suggests. His numbers may be in the right neighborhood if you look at a three-way race, but in a more realistic five-person race that includes Biden, Trump, Kennedy, Green Party candidate Jill Stein and independent Cornel West, the current RealClearPolitics average has Trump at 40.6%, Biden at 35.6% and Kennedy at 13.0%.  

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a lawsuit against Texas over a new state law aimed at increasing security at the southern border by granting police broader powers to arrest, prosecute, and deport immigrants who illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border.

The DOJ filed the lawsuit against Senate Bill 4 (SB 4) in an Austin federal court on Jan. 3 on behalf of the United States federal government, including the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of State.

It lists Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw as defendants.

Plaintiffs argue SB 4 is preempted by federal law and thus violates the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution and the Foreign Commerce Clause.

The legislation at the center of the lawsuit was introduced by Republican state Sen. Charles Perry and sponsored in the House by Republican state Rep. David Spiller in November.

It was passed by the Republican-controlled Texas legislature that same month and signed into law by Mr. Abbott in December.

The measure makes it a state misdemeanor to illegally cross or attempt to cross into Texas from Mexico at any location other than a lawful port of entry.

It also allows state and local law enforcement officials to arrest suspected illegal immigrants, take their fingerprints, and conduct a background check.

According to the legislation, judges would be granted the option to order some illegal immigrants to return to the country from which they illegally entered the United States, in lieu of prosecution, but only after all identifying information is obtained and cross-referenced with local, state, and federal criminal databases.

However, the misdemeanor charge would be raised to a felony charge if the illegal immigrant has previously been convicted of two or more misdemeanors involving drugs, crimes against a person, or both or if the individual refuses to comply with the judge’s order to return to leave the United States.

‘Clearly Unconstitutional’

The maximum penalty for a misdemeanor charge is one year in prison while for a felony, the penalty is two to 20 years in prison.

Republicans have argued that the measure, which is scheduled to take effect on March 5, is needed amid what they say is mishandling by the Biden administration of the ongoing immigration crisis. U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows that agents encountered a record-setting 2.48 million illegal immigrants at the southern border in fiscal year 2023.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) estimated in its December 2023 report that the number of non-detained illegal immigrants inside the United States has now exceeded 6 million.

A Texas National Guard soldier directs migrants during a dust storm at a makeshift camp located between the Rio Grande and the U.S.–Mexico border fence in El Paso, Texas, on May 10, 2023. (John Moore/Getty Images)

In their lawsuit, the DOJ urges the court to declare SB 4 unconstitutional and prevent Texas from implementing it, arguing that immigration laws can only be enforced by the federal government, not states.

“SB 4 is clearly unconstitutional,” said Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta in a statement announcing the lawsuit.

“Under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution and long-standing Supreme Court precedent, states cannot adopt immigration laws that interfere with the framework enacted by Congress. The Justice Department will continue to fulfill its responsibility to uphold the Constitution and enforce federal law.”

The DOJ noted that the Supreme Court, in Arizona v. United States, previously confirmed that decisions relating to the removal of noncitizens from the United States touch “on foreign relations and must be made with one voice.”

The Department argued that SB 4 impedes the federal government’s ability to enforce entry and removal provisions of federal law and interferes with its conduct of foreign relations.

Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta speaks at a press conference at the Department of Justice in Washington on Dec. 6, 2021. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

‘Prepared to Fight Lawsuit’

SB 4 includes some exceptions, including that law enforcement officials may not arrest immigrants who entered the United States illegally if the individual is on the premises or grounds of a public or private primary or secondary school for educational purposes; in a church, synagogue, or other established place of religious worship; or in a health care facility.

It also states that suspects can provide evidence that they are in the country legally during the prosecution.

The DOJ’s lawsuit comes after Civil Rights groups including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU of Texas, and the Texas Civil Rights Project filed a lawsuit against SB4 in December, claiming it is preempted by federal law and infringes upon the federal government’s authority under the U.S. Constitution to enforce immigration laws.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaks during a news conference in Austin, Texas, on March 15, 2023. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Mr. Abbott responded to the DOJ’s lawsuit on X on Wednesday evening. “Biden sued me today because I signed a law making it illegal for an illegal immigrant to enter or attempt to enter Texas directly from a foreign nation. I like my chances. Texas is the only government in America trying to stop illegal immigration,” he wrote.

“The Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives says that I and the state of Texas have the ‘constitutional authority’ to secure [the] border. Remember, it is Congress, not the President, that has the Constitutional power to regulate immigration,” he added.

He said in previous comments that SB 4 was needed to “help stop the tidal wave of illegal entry into Texas” and that President Biden’s “deliberate inaction has left Texas to fend for itself.”

Texas builds its own border wall in its effort to secure the border. (Courtesy Office of Greg Abbott)

In recent years, Texas has spent more than $4 billion a year on efforts to curb illegal immigration at the border, including deploying $11 million in rolls of concertina wire to reinforce portions of the Texas-Mexico border and constructing steel border structures. The Abbott administration has also bused tens of thousands of migrants to sanctuary cities across the country, including Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles. In prior years, Texas spent about $400 million on border security and immigration, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick previously said.

In a post on X on Wednesday evening, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the measure was created to “address the endless stream of illegal immigration facilitated by the Biden administration.”

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks at the “Save America” rally in Robstown, Texas, on Oct. 22, 2022. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

“Millions of unvetted foreign aliens have been released into Texas due to President Biden’s policies of dismantling border security at the US-Mexico border, collaborating with cartels, and inviting violent criminals and drug traffickers to enter the country,” Mr. Paxton said.

“Just as I am prepared to fight the lawsuit brought by the extremist ACLU and the nonprofits enriching themselves due to the federal government’s open borders doctrine, I am prepared to fight the Biden Administration whose immigration disaster is leading our country to ruin,” he continued.

“Texas has the sovereign right to protect our state.”

Chinese workers staged twice as many protests to defend their rights in 2023 compared to the previous year, according to a Hong Kong-based human rights group. As the of Epoch Times notes, China observers say that such widespread demonstrations could lead to the downfall of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

China Labor Bulletin (CLB), a Hong Kong nonprofit organization that “supports and actively engages with the emergent workers’ movement in China,” reported 1,793 protests as of Dec. 31 amid massive layoffs, reduced wages, and business closures in the country. This was the largest number of annual protests in 7 years and the most since the “summers of violence” 2015 and 2016 when the Yuan devaluation sparked widespread economic turmoil across the country.

The emergence of large-scale Chinese workers’ protests is “an inevitable outcome“ of China’s economic crisis,” Lai Jianping, a former Chinese lawyer and current affairs commentator based in Canada, said in a recent interview with the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times.

Mr. Lai believes that the protests may lead to the demise of China’s communist regime.

Nationwide Workers’ Protests in 2023

China’s economy remained sluggish in 2023 despite an abrupt relaxation of the draconian zero-COVID measures since December 2022. Reduced orders from international buyers and poor economic conditions in the country have led factories to lay off workers, relocate to minimize costs, or shut down altogether, according to the CLB.

The CLB’s report reveals that the protests were mainly related to export-oriented industries—such as electronics, garments and apparel, toys, and automotive—and that workers protested over wages, layoffs, and relocations and demanded compensation.

Protests broke out across China, including the four municipalities under the direct administration of the CCP.

Guangdong Province, a major manufacturing hub, recorded 510 protests of various sizes last year, the highest in the country, according to the CLB report.

The second highest number of protests (108) is reportedly in China’s eastern Shandong Province, followed by central Henan Province and northern Shanxi Province (100 protests recorded in each one).

Of the four municipalities, Beijing, China’s capital city, reportedly recorded 33 protests last year, while Shanghai recorded 47 protests, Chongqing recorded 35, and Tianjin recorded 25.

On Jan. 7 last year, a large-scale protest broke out in Chongqing after thousands of workers were abruptly laid off by Zybio, Inc., a manufacturer of COVID-19 test kits, one of the earliest protests in the first month of the year that was recorded in CLB’s report. The local authorities sent out riot police to suppress the protest.

Other Protests

According to Nikkei Asia, 1,777 demonstrations were recorded in the country that were linked to the property sector between June 2022 and October 2023. Two-thirds of these demonstrators were homebuyers and homeowners who protested over “project delays, contract violations, alleged fraud, and shoddy workmanship,” the report said. Most of the remaining protesters were construction workers demanding unpaid wages.

On July 21, 2023, thousands of parents rallied at various government agencies in Xi’an city, Shaanxi Province, to protest against a government policy limiting students’ access to high school and college education opportunities.

Due to Chinese authorities’ record of covering up information, it is difficult to assess the true scale of these protests.

‘They Have to Fight for Their Survival’

Mr. Lai said the recent rights-defending campaigns in China involve “more numbers” of participants and that the events are “more intense than ever.”

He added that many people are currently facing extreme poverty, lacking the financial resources to support their families, pay for their children’s education, cover medical expenses, and repay mortgages.

“These individuals can only stand up to defend their legitimate rights, to demand wages arrears, and to request job opportunities,” Mr. Lai said.

Furthermore, by reverting to the revolutionary era of Mao Zedong, Chinese leader Xi Jinping “has deterred foreign investors and Chinese private entrepreneurs from engaging with China.”

Li Yuanhua, a former scholar of Chinese history now residing in Australia, believes that the widespread protests among workers primarily stem from their “will to survive.”

“The privileged class within the CCP has been plundering social assets, while Chinese workers at the bottom of society have been pushed to their limits. Unable to secure their basic needs and survival, they are compelled to take a stand,” Mr. Li told The Epoch Times in a recent interview.

China’s social welfare system is on the brink of collapse and cannot provide any support to the poor working class, he said, adding that “they have to fight for their survival.”

Mass Protests May End CCP’s Rule

The CCP has adopted a heavy-handed approach to suppress dissidents and protesters to maintain its authoritarian rule.

Nevertheless, when the people struggle for survival, they no longer fear the CCP’s suppression, Mr. Li said, adding that this is what the regime fears.

“This kind of resistance from the people is genuine, and they don’t fear the CCP’s violent suppression. For them, resistance may lead to death, but without resistance, death is inevitable. So why wouldn’t they resist?!”

According to Mr. Lai, the CCP cannot effectively quash all the nationwide protest campaigns.

The question is how much longer can Beijing delay injecting a massive stimulus to appease the angry crowds, one which will send the prices of all commodities across the globe soaring higher and end the Fed’s dream of a “soft landing”…

Continue reading here.

Authored by James Gorrie via The Epoch Times,

When it comes to spending their money and supporting their values, many Americans are now wide awake, and most don’t like what they see. “Peak Wokeness,” a term that may or may not be new (it is to me), is now pervasive in our lives and dominates our culture.

Undoubtedly, it would like to do the same with our private thoughts and our closely held traditional values and beliefs.

It just about does.

Wokeness Is Orwellian–and Everywhere

The woke crowd in America is loud, proud, and … Stalinesque. It’s literally forcing communism down our collective throats.

Worse, these greatly misguided and extremely intolerant people are seemingly everywhere—from your coffee shop and your bank and your 401k investments to the shows you pay to watch on your smart television. They’re in the boardrooms of corporate America; they run our schools, colleges, and universities that celebrate transgenderism and make indentured servants of their graduates­, and are in Human Resources departments to ensure that no independent thought or idea is expressed in the workplace.

A big part of the woke movement’s success lies in its Orwellian distortion of language so that commonly understood meanings of words are inverted to mean the opposite. For example, words such as “tolerance” really mean intolerance of competing ideas and values, and “inclusion” found in the common woke phrase “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” or DEI, really means excluding traditional ideas, values, and beliefs.

DEI is a woke term that’s misleading and un-American, but saturates our K-12 schools. The diversity component applies to every application and interpretation possible—race, ethnicity, sexual orientation—except for straight, white Christian people, over-represented Asian people, and the ideas that are the foundation of America and Western Civilization. No one in the woke DEI crowd wants to “include” politically or culturally conservative Americans in anything except re-education camps.

To put a finer point on it, that re-education camp population would likely include all Trump voters. That would include Bible-believing Christians, pro-Israel Jews, most veterans, stay-at-home moms, home-schooling families, folks who drive trucks and SUVs, those who refuse to get the COVID-19 vaccination, those who think there are only two genders, those who believe that climate change alarmism is a fraud, those who think President Donald Trump won the 2020 election (election deniers, but not 2016 election deniers), and those who believe in the constitutional right to bear arms and self-defense.

If there were any white, conservative males left over from that list, they would be in the re-education camps as well.

Changing the Meaning of Words

Other examples of woke terms are environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing and “stakeholder capitalism.” “Investing,” according to ESG guidelines, seeks to reward those companies that toe the leftist line of socialist policies with more investment money, no matter how inefficient or unprofitable that company might be. That strategy has cost American investors and their retirement accounts millions in lost growth and earnings.

Like ESG, stakeholder capitalism has nothing to do with capitalism. Rather, it’s a cryptic term for nothing less than fascism, the blending of corporations and government. In stakeholder capitalism, a firm’s focus isn’t on earnings, profitability, or its responsibility to return value to shareholders, but on the “societal stakeholders.” That ambiguous term means that private and public companies must answer to the government and follow socialist and woke hiring policies, such as government-approved and controlled supply chain policies, pricing, and, of course, woke cultural guidelines.

Fight the Wokeness with Alternatives

In the aggregate, the woke ideology has nothing to do with the traditional meanings of the terms adherents use, but has everything to do with destroying traditional American society. That can happen only if Americans allow it to.

The key to stopping this vile movement is to take a page out of their own playbook and cancel the woke mob at every turn, in every aspect of life in which they seek to dominate.

Thankfully, that’s already happening.

Woke film companies such as Disney are losing billions on their subversive films because most people can’t stand the woke messaging that permeates their stories. Meanwhile, films that celebrate traditional American values and beliefs, such as “Top Gun Maverick” and “The Sound of Freedom,” have made enormous sums of money. Now there’s Loor.tv, a movie studio committed to telling great stories, comedies, and more, through audience fundraising.

Furthermore, there are now alternatives to woke Big Tech firms that censor free speech and promote the woke agenda, such as the recently liberated and formerly named Twitter (X). X is now a bastion of free speech, but so is the X alternative Telegram, and YouTube challenger Rumble, which allows much more free flow of content. There’s also a fantastic Amazon alternative called PublicSquare.com that connects consumers “with companies that share your values.” (Full disclosure: I have a product on Public Square.)

There are certainly other options and opportunities to counter and cancel the so-called woke “mind virus” that’s plaguing our country. Standing up to school boards that push the multi-gender and communist agenda is critical, as is voting out politicians who support anti-American and anti-traditional values and policies.

The resurgence of American ideals and values isn’t going to happen from the top layer, but from each of us, as individuals and small groups determined to not let our country go down the drain without a fight.

The Houthis have decided to respond to fresh warnings and threats from the US and Western allies by sending an unmanned boat packed with explosives to disrupt international shipping lanes in the Red Sea. Clearly, Biden’s “warnings” are doing nothing to deter anything.

The Thursday incident marks the first time the Houthis have deployed a drone boat since its attacks started in the wake of Oct.7. Drones and ballistic missiles from Yemen have wreaked havoc thus far. A US Navy official said, however, that the drone boat exploded before it was able to strike any vessels.

“We all watched as it exploded,” Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of US Navy operations in the Middle East said in a press briefing. He described that the “one-way attack” was inbound toward shipping lanes “clearly with the intent to do harm” – and that the boat is a “new capability”. He indicated it came within a couple miles of foreign ships.

“Fortunately, there were no casualties and no ships were hit, but the introduction of a one-way attack USV is a concern,” he added.

Already major shipping companies have diverted their tanker and cargo ships to avoid the Red Sea region entirely. But ironically on the very day the Houthis unveiled their drone boat capability, the Pentagon tried to put a positive spin on its Operation Prosperity Guardian, meant to thwart Red Sea attacks. Adm. Cooper cited that some 1,500 commercial were able to transit the waters safely since the allied operation was launched on December 18.

Still, Adm. Cooper admitted that “There are no signs the Houthis’ irresponsible behavior is abating.” The US Navy has tallied that the total number of Houthi attacks since Nov. 18 is now at 25.

Meanwhile, also on Thursday there’s been a fresh piracy incident off Somalia. A Liberian-flagged vessel bound for Bahrain was boarded by armed men while it traversed to the south-east of Eyl, Somali.

“Five to six unauthorized armed persons have boarded a merchant vessel…in the vicinity of Eyl,” the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said in an advisory. “Crew are mustered in citadel.”

Somali militants have long threatened these waters, but given the bulk of diverted Red Sea traffic must travel via the Cape of Good Hope instead, the fear is that the resulting increased traffic off the Somali coast will lead to more ‘opportunity’ and ample targets for pirates. 

On Wednesday, the White House warned that this ongoing Red Sea turmoil could hit the US economy in a briefing:

The White House has warned that the potential for higher shipping costs to affect the U.S. economy amid diversion of ships from the Red Sea will depend on how long Houthi rebels sustain their attacks on commercial vessels.

“If we weren’t concerned, we wouldn’t have stood up an operation in the Red Sea, now consisting of more than 20 nations, to try to protect that commerce,” White House spokesman John Kirby said at a White House press conference on Wednesday, referring to the U.S.-led military force Operation Prosperity Guardian.

“The Red Sea is a vital waterway, and a significant amount of global trade flows through it. By forcing nations to go around the Cape of Good Hope, you’re adding weeks and weeks onto voyages, and untold resources and expenses have to be applied in order to do that. So obviously there’s a concern about the impact on global trade.”

Interestingly, Kirby was then asked by a reporter whether the spiraling situation would become “pocketbook” issue for Americans.

Kirby responded by saying “It would depend on how long this threat goes and on how much more energetic the Houthis think they might become.” He added: “Right now we haven’t seen an uptick or a specific effect on the U.S. economy. But make no mistake. This is a key international waterway. Countries more and more are becoming aware of this increasing threat to the free flow of commerce.” Thus he fully acknowledged this is a distinct possibility that’s fast approaching.

One thing is clear – the Western coalition statement filled with warnings aimed at the Houthis and released with great fanfare clearly didn’t have the intended effect…

Wild.

Palestinians would really love to get the same amount of attention and protection as shipping containers. pic.twitter.com/bT4ikWYeKy

— Yasmine El-Sabawi ياسمين السبعاوي (@yasmineelsabawi) January 3, 2024

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

Harvard may assume the forced resignation of its president, Claudine Gay, has finally ended its month-long scandal over her tenure.

Gay stepped down, remember, amid serious allegations of serial plagiarism—without refuting the charges. She proved either unable or unwilling to discipline those on her campus who were defiantly anti-Semitic in speech and action.

But Gay’s removal is not the end of Harvard’s dilemma. Rather, it is the beginning.

In the respective press releases from both Gay and the Harvard Corporation, racial animus was cited as a reason for her removal.

Gay did not even refer to her failure to stop anti-Semitism on her campus or her own record of blatant plagiarism.

Yet playing the race card reflects poorly on both and for a variety of reasons.

One, Gay’s meager publication record—a mere eleven articles without a single published book of her own—had somehow earned her a prior Harvard full professorship and presidency. Such a thin resume leading to academic stardom is unprecedented.

Two, the University of Pennsylvania forced the resignation of its president, Liz Magill. She sat next to Gay during that now-infamous congressional hearing in which they both claimed they were unable to discipline blatant anti-Semitism on their campuses.

Instead, both plead “free speech” and “context” considerations.

Such excuses were blatantly amoral and untrue. In truth, ivy-league campuses routinely sanction, punish, or remove staff, faculty, or students deemed culpable for speech or behavior deemed hurtful to protected minorities—except apparently white males and Jews.

Yet Magill was immediately forced to resign, and Gay was not. Also noteworthy was Magill’s far more impressive and extensive administrative experience, along with a more prestigious scholarship that was free of even a suggestion of plagiarism.

Academia’s immediate firing of a white woman while trying desperately to save the career of a less qualified and ethically challenged black woman will be seen not as a case of racial bias but more likely of racial preference.

Indeed, to keep Gay’s job and to defend her from plagiarism charges, both Harvard and Gay herself were willing to say things that were simply absurd, if not patently untrue.

Harvard invented a new phrase “duplicative language” to euphemize the reality of Gay’s intellectual theft.

Even after Gay resigned, Harvard jumped the shark by further downplaying her plagiarism by dubbing it as mere “missteps.”

Harvard and its supporters further embarrassed themselves by alleging that if the victims of Gay’s plagiarism didn’t object, then why did her expropriation matter that much?

Are we then to assume that plagiarism is not a serious violation of the entire ethos of scholarship, quite in addition to the aggrieved plagiarized party?

The university descended even further by suggesting that if the complaints were lodged by anonymous scholars, they were somehow less serious.

Has Harvard ever heard of the reasons why whistleblowers are often protected from retribution by grants of anonymity?

Liberal Harvard, through its lawyers, even threatened the New York Post with legal action if it aired charges of Gay’s plagiarism.

Yet only days later, the university was swamped by further proof of Gay’s scholarly misconduct, involving improper use of data and more plagiarism extending back even to her dissertation.

Harvard, remember, claimed that it had conducted a thorough investigation that had cleared her of actionable plagiarism—even as more charges arose of her prior culpability.

But more importantly, what happens to ex-president Gay now?

Does resigning from the Harvard presidency and returning to a full professorship mean that charges of plagiarism disappear?

Would any other Harvard professors continue to be employed without addressing over two dozen separate charges of plagiarism lodged against them?

Do Gay, the Harvard Corporation, and the more than 700 Harvard professors who closed ranks and wrote a letter supporting Gay now argue that plagiarism is no longer a serious offense at the nation’s supposedly most preeminent university?

Will students who emulate Gay’s habit of copy-and-paste, failure-to-footnote, and misuse-of-data now be exempt from dismissal or suspension?

After Gay’s embarrassing December 5 congressional testimony and her resignation, what now is the Harvard policy toward anti-Semitism?

If next week, anti-Israel students once again call for the destruction of the Jewish people in Israel all the way “from the river to the sea,” or if they again storm Harvard’s Widener library, screaming support for the October 7 massacre and intimidating Jewish students, what will the new—or old—Harvard do?

Again nothing?

Finally, Harvard insinuated that Gay was fired by racist outside pressure—despite the fact that many of her critics were large donors furious about the diminution of the reputation of their alma mater.

Is Harvard suggesting that its own mega-donors are racists?

What then might come next?

The resignation of the entire board of the Harvard Corporation that is the ultimate cause of Harvard’s descent into mediocrity.

Depending on whom you ask, it was either “the darkest day in American history” or “a guided tour.” To this day, the January 6 Capitol Riot remains one of the most divisive issues in American politics.

Conservative pundits like Tucker Carlson and Dinesh D’Souza point to lengthy prison sentences for nonviolent trespassers, the killing of Ashley Babbitt, and suspicious characters like Ray Epps as evidence of a burgeoning “police state” entrapping and imprisoning dissidents.

On the other hand, liberal pundits and never-Trumpers like MSNBC’s Joy Reid, Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, believe Jan 6 was nothing short of an attempted coup by former president Donald Trump.

According to recent polling by the University of Chicago, 80% of Democrats believe Trump broke the law by inciting the Capitol riots, while roughly half of Republicans believe he did nothing wrong: 

Such divides have consequences.

On December 19, the Colorado Supreme Court — citing “clear and convincing” evidence that he engaged in an “insurrection” — ruled that “President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President” and barred the state’s Secretary from including Trump’s name on the ballot for upcoming GOP primary elections.

This dispute over January 6 — and whether it was indeed an insurrection — may very well determine the next U.S. President.

The ZeroHedge “January 6” Debate

On the coming anniversary of January 6 (Saturday), ZeroHedge will present the second debate in our inaugural series aimed at bringing long-form dialogues back into the ideologically-siloed and echo-chambered media landscape.

We will host an in-depth discussion on the various aspects of that fateful day in 2021, allowing people with all perspectives a chance to present evidence and make their argument.

Our panel will include such media luminaries as Alex Jones, Darren Beattie, Glenn Greenwald on one side, and Ed and Brian Krassenstein, as well as YouTuber “Destiny” on the other.

We hope to get closer to the truth of what happened on that day and get to the bottom of what creates such harsh social divides on this issue.

Set a reminder on your calendar for the Jan 6 ZeroHedge debate, airing January 6, 2024 at 7:00pm EST. We will also dedicate a portion of the debate to responding directly to questions submitted by our premium subscribers.

Money-market funds saw massive inflows in the week-ending Jan 3rd, jumping $79BN to a new record high just below $6TN…

Source: Bloomberg

Both institutional and retail funds saw large inflows (+$40.7BN and +$38.9BN respectively) for the biggest combined inflow since the SVB crisis…

Source: Bloomberg

In a breakdown for the week to Jan. 3, government funds – which invest primarily in securities like Treasury bills, repurchase agreements and agency debt – saw assets rise to $4.878 trillion, a $64.7 billion increase. 

Prime funds, which tend to invest in higher-risk assets such as commercial paper, meanwhile, saw assets rise to $961.7 billion, a $10.3 billion increase.

Interestingly, bank deposits are rising rapidly at the same time as money-market inflows are soaring…

Source: Bloomberg

The Fed’s balance sheet shrank by around $32BN last week to its smallest since March 2021 (down almost $1.3TN from its highs)…

Source: Bloomberg

US equity market cap has rolled over in the last few days but remains notably decoupled from the sliding bank reserves at The Fed (but we note that the RRP drawdowns have resumed since the new year, subsidizing any liquidity needs for now)…

Source: Bloomberg

Usage of The Fed’s BTFP bank bailout facility surged by over $5BN to a new record high of $141BN…

Source: Bloomberg

The BTFP-Fed Arb continues to offer ‘free-money’ (and usage of the BTFP has risen by $32BN since the arb existed), but the spread has narrowed a smidge from a peak near 60bps to 50bps today…

Source: Bloomberg

Which will make it hard for The Fed to defend leaving the facility open after March when its “temporary” nature is supposed to expire.

“In justifying the generous terms of the original program, the Fed cited the ‘unusual and exigent’ market conditions facing the banking industry following last spring’s deposit runs,” Wrightson ICAP economist Lou Crandall wrote in a note to clients.

“It would be difficult to defend a renewal in today’s more normal environment.”

Which makes us wonder, just WTF will the regional banks do to cover the $140BN-plus hole in their balance sheets that they are currently filling…

Source: Bloomberg

And what exactly does that mean for regional bank stocks which appear to exist in a world of their own for now.