Month: February 2024

Authored by Matthew Piepenburg via VonGreyerz.gold,

In late December, I published a final report on the themes of 2023 while looking ahead at their implications for the year to come.

I repeated my claim that debt markets and debt levels made the future of Fed policies, currency moves, rate markets and gold’s endgame fairly clear to see.

Of course, as facts change, opinions change as well.

But the facts are only worsening, which means my opinions in late 2023 are only growing stronger as we conclude the first month of 2024.

Then as now, the debt-soaked US is tilting ever more toward policies which will weaken its currency, wound its middleclass and reward its false idols (and false markets) with even greater desperation.

In particular, some recent facts below are emerging which further support my otherwise sad conviction that the American economy (not to be confused with its Fed-supported stock exchanges) is literally living on borrowed time.

The Latest Bits of Crazy from the CBO

Almost a year ago to date, I was shaking my head and rubbing my eyes as the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) announced a staggering $422B Federal budget deficit for Q1 2023.

Now that’s a lot of borrowing in a short amount of time…

For some strange reason, this bothered me in early 2023, as I was still under this odd impression that debt, and hence deficits, actually mattered.

Fast forward to January 2024, and that same CBO has just announced a $509B Federal budget deficit for Q1 2024.

Folks, that adds up to annual deficit run rate of $2.2T.

Please: Re-read that last line again.

Do the Math: DC is Getting Even Dumber

In this 12-month interim, fiscal revenues did increase by about 8%, but outlays (i.e., expenses) for that same period rose by 12%, which is just a mathematical way of saying that either: 1) Uncle Sam is out of his mind in debt; or 2) that I am out of my mind in common sense.

But it seems I’m not the alone in saying out loud what no one DC can say to themselves, namely: The US is now in an open and obvious debt spiral.

Uncle Sam’s embarrassing bar tab of debt is now racing at a rate that far exceeds his GDP, pushing the deficit to GDP ratio toward 8% and higher–ratios we’ve never seen except during the GFC of 2008 and the “COVID” (i.e., hidden bond) crisis of 2020.

From Debt Spiral to Super QE

If recent memory serves me correctly, in both of those embarrassing years (and ratios), what followed was QE to the moon and the ongoing fantasy that every debt problem can be solved with trillions of fiat dollars mouse-clicked out of thin air.

And this time around will likely be no different, as I and others like Luke Gromen have been warning week after week, and month after month.

Such warnings, which NO ONE can time, are not merely bearish “opinions” and don’t require a crystal ball or sensational guessing.

They just require a calculator and a basic understanding of history.

Simple Math

As to basic math, one can have their own opinions but not their own facts, and the facts (i.e., math) tell us that the current cost of servicing the aforementioned debt is 16% of Federal tax receipts.

Again: Please re-read that last line. It matters, because, well…debt destroys nations.

Nor am I alone in this sober understanding.

As the former head of European block trading at Goldman Sachs, Alex Harfouche, just warned, these sickening debt ratios mean the US economy’s ability to shoulder such debt is both “horrible” and “crippling.”

Which means we all know (or should know) what’s coming next.

The Patterns of the Foolish

As in 2008 and 2020, we can now see a pattern playing out in 2024, namely an inevitable shift from rate hikes and pauses toward rate cuts and the inevitable shift from QT to QE.

Why inevitable?

Because stupidity combined with a Will to Power that would make Nietzsche blush are the profile traits of nearly all math-ignorant but ego-savvy policy makers seeking re-election or a Nobel Prize in Economics (fiction?).

That is, and especially in an election year, policy makers will not cut spending but increase it in a desperate bid to bribe the gullible masses into a Pavlovian voting pattern based on generations of political over-promising and grotesque under-delivering.

This political inability to cut entitlement spending makes a US debt spiral (and hence QE to the moon) as foreseeable as the NY Yankees beating my high-school baseball team.

DC Cutting Rates Rather than Spending

Furthermore, since the DC children running our country into the ground won’t cut spending, the only thing they can (and will) cut is interest rates.

Why?

Because cutting rates not only takes pressure off Uncle Sam’s IOUs (USTs), but also eases the pain of those complicit S&P zombies staring down the barrel of over $740B in debt rollovers in 2024.

Main Street Screwed Again

Remember: The Fed serves TBTF banks and exchanges, not citizens and their realities.

Interest rate cuts + QE = a further debased USD and rising inflation (with a deflationary recession in the middle).

And this means the voters on Main Street are about to feel the darker side of DC’s real mandate: Covering their own A$$’es while keeping Wall Street on a respirator.

Meanwhile, the masses feel pain, but can’t quite see from where it’s coming, as the media, MMT hucksters and political Ken and Barbies keep telling them that deficits don’t matter.

Deficits Don’t Matter?

Even worse, there are those sitting in private wealth management suites smugly reminding their clients that Japan is in much worse debt (see below) than Uncle Sam, and if Japan can muddle through, certainly the US has nothing to fear.

But as I recently reminded the attendees at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference, Japan does not have twin deficits, a negative 65% Net International Investment Position nor an externally financed bond market.

In short: Japan aint America. But even if it were, it’s nothing of which to boast…

Whistling Past the Debt Graveyard with More Spending

Like Luke Gromen, I am of the sober and math-based view that unless the US cuts entitlement and defense spending by 40% (unthinkable in an election year and a world of beating [US?] war drums almost everywhere), such austerity is about as likely as an honest man in Congress…

Failing such needed cuts and sound budget honesty, policy makers will merely whistle past another year of multi-trillion deficit levels and pass the bill on to current and future generations while inflating their way out of debt with more of the debased money in your pockets.

As I’ve written before, this is no surprise. In fact, it was the plan all along, despite Powell’s efforts to pretend otherwise.

Keep It Simple: Powell Will Pivot

Debtors, including Uncle Sam, need inflation and need a debased currency. 

They need negative real rates whereby inflation outpaces the yield on 10Y bonds.

Powell, of course, tried pushing real rates to a positive 2% to allegedly “fight inflation,” but, and as in 2018-19, the net result was that he simply broke nearly everything but the USD in the process.

In fact, Powell was merely raising rates and thinning the Fed balance sheet so that he’d have something (anything) to cut (rates) and fatten (balance sheet) when the recession that his higher-for-longer policies ushered in (and then denied) became too impossible to ignore.

Or stated more bluntly: His recent QT was a planned precursor to more QE, and his recent rate hikes were a planned precursor to more rate cuts.

Keep It Simple: A Future of Debased Currency

Thus, and long before hitting “target 2%,” Powell will once again throw in the towel in 2024 on rate hikes for the simple reason that Uncle Sam can’t afford them.

Or stated (and repeated) more simply, his “war on inflation,” waged in the last 2 years, will ultimately (and ironically) end in even greater inflation.

Ahhh the ironies. Or better yet: “The horror, the horror…”

History confirms this pattern in one debt-failed nation after the next.

In fact, and without exception, currencies are always sacrificed to save a broken regime. And folks, our regime is objectively broke(n).

Thus, for those who know the math (above), and the history of yesterday, preparing for tomorrow is simple.

Projected rate cuts (and the scent of more synthetic liquidity) can and (already have) sent inflated risk assets higher as the inherent purchasing power of the currency gets weaker.

Keep It Simple: Natural Gold vs. An Un-Natural Dollar

This simply means gold, though never marching in a straight line, will reach higher highs and lower lows for no other reason than paper currencies like the USD will get more debased.

And this is all because the issuance of unloved sovereign USTs will become greater and greater, as the opening data from the CBO in Q1 now makes factually clear.

Soon the Fed will run out of tricks within Treasury General Account (Yellen’s game) and the Reverse Repo Markets to generate fake liquidity for those over-supplied and under-demanded USTs.

And this means Powell will once again crank out the money printers at the Eccles Building to “buy” those IOUs.

Fortunately, Powell has no machine in DC to produce physical gold, which means this natural precious metal of unlimited duration yet finite supply will rise, while USTs, an unnatural asset of finite duration yet infinite supply, will continue to sink.

It’s just that simple.

According to this year’s edition of the Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency International, Nordic countries like Denmark, Sweden and Norway are among those thought to exhibit the least corruption in the public sector.

However, as Statista’s Florian Zandt reports, other advanced economies like the United States, Italy, Taiwan and Israel don’t fare that well.

But how do residents of some of these countries view their elected government officials?

Data from our Statista Consumer Insights shows that in Brazil and the United Kingdom, more than one third of respondents claim that national politicians can’t be trusted.

You will find more infographics at Statista

When looking at the political landscape of both countries, the ruling parties are situated on two ends of the spectrum.

Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who won 50.9 percent of the votes in Brazil’s general election in October 2022 and started his term in January 2023, holds socialist views and aligns himself more with the so-called global south against capitalist interests of countries like the U.S. and leading economies in Europe.

Rishi Sunak, who became Prime Minister in the United Kingdom after the resignation of Liz Truss as the head of the Tories the same month as Lula won his presidential bid, is a conservative from the Leave camp with a hardline approach to immigration.

Of the six countries surveyed, participants from Germany and India showed the lowest distrust in national politicians. This is especially unsurprising for the Asian nation, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Modi, who’s been in office for almost ten years and is known for his politics promoting Hindu nationalism, is one of only a handful of world leaders with a net positive approval according to regular Morning Consult polls. With a recent rating of 77 percent, he is also one of three scoring above 50 percent, the other two being Switzerland’s Alain Berset and Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador from Mexico.

Authored by Nick Giambruno via InternationalMan.com,

There’s an excellent chance governments worldwide will soon force their citizens to use central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

CBDCs enable all sorts of horrible, totalitarian things.

They allow governments to track and control every penny you earn, save, and spend. They are a powerful tool for politicians to confiscate and redistribute wealth as they see fit.

CBDCs will allow central banks to impose deeply negative interest rates, which are just a euphemism for a tax on saving money.

Governments could program CBDCs to have an expiration date—like some airline frequent flyer miles—forcing people to spend them, for example, before the end of the month when they’d become worthless.

CBDCs will enable devious social engineering by allowing governments to punish and reward people in ways they previously couldn’t.

Suppose governments impose lockdowns again for flu season, so-called “climate change,” or whatever pretext they find convenient. CBDCs could be programmed to work only in a geographic area, and the government could deny your payments if you travel more than a mile from your home during a lockdown.

Suppose the people in charge want to encourage people to take a pharmaceutical product or some other poison. With CBDCs, they could deposit money into the accounts of those who complied and deduct it from those who didn’t.

Governments and large corporations will undoubtedly pair CBDCs with a social credit system.

Did you commit a thought crime on social media? Or perhaps you read too many politically incorrect articles online? Did you exceed your monthly meat consumption allowance? Then, expect some financial punishment thanks to the CBDCs.

CBDCs are, without a doubt, an instrument of enslavement. They represent a quantum leap backward in human freedom.

Unfortunately, they’re coming soon.

Governments will probably mandate CBDCs as the “solution” when the next real or contrived crisis hits—which is likely not far off.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that CBDCs are destined to fail.

But that doesn’t mean governments won’t try implementing CBDCs… with immensely destructive consequences for many people who are unprepared to deal with the situation.

It’s important to remember the wise words of Ron Paul:

“What none of them (politicians) will admit is that the market is more powerful than the central banks and all the economic planners put together. Although it may take time, the market always wins.”

No matter what edicts, decrees, or laws politicians pass, they will never be able to fully extinguish people’s desire to use alternatives to CBDCs. That cracks the door open to other options.

For example, consider that Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Argentina, Lebanon, and many other countries restrict the use of US dollars. However, all that does is create a thriving black market—or, more accurately, a free market—for US dollars and a parallel financial system.

We can expect the same kind of dynamic if governments impose CBDCs. I have no doubt significant parallel systems and underground markets will naturally emerge.

Anyone who wants to avoid CBDC enslavement must learn to swim in those waters.

While I believe CBDCs will inevitably self-destruct, nobody knows how long it will take for that to happen.

Communism was also destined to self-destruct, but it took generations. I don’t think it will take nearly that long for CBDCs to fail because it is much easier to opt out.

That’s where Bitcoin comes in.

Is Bitcoin the Antidote to CBDCs?

It’s crucial to understand that CBDCs are a reaction to Bitcoin.

Central banks took notice of Bitcoin’s disruptive potential and realized they had better do something before Bitcoin ate their lunch. CBDCs are their response; as you’ll see, it’s pathetic.

In short, despite all the hype, CBDCs are nothing but a rebrand of the faltering fiat currency scam. It’s old wine in new bottles.

It’s doubtful CBDCs can save otherwise fundamentally unsound currencies—as I believe all fiat currencies are.

If the current fiat system is not viable, then CBDCs are even less viable as they enable the government to engage in even more flagrant currency debasement.

Would a CBDC have saved the Zimbabwe dollar, the Venezuelan bolivar, the Argentine peso, or the Lebanese lira?

I don’t think so.

A CBDC won’t save the US dollar or the euro from their fates either.

There are a lot of bad things that come with CBDCs.

But there’s a silver lining…

CBDCs are going to introduce and familiarize people with using digital currencies. Then, it’s only a matter of time before they discover Bitcoin.

CBDCs and Bitcoin share some characteristics. For example, they are both digital and facilitate fast payments from a mobile phone. But that is where the similarities end.

The reality is that CBDCs and Bitcoin are entirely different in the most fundamental ways.

You need the government’s permission and blessing to use a CBDC. With Bitcoin, nobody can be prevented from using it.

Governments can (and will) create as many CBDC currency units as they want. Bitcoin is totally resistance to debasement. There can never be more than 21 million BTC.

CBDCs are centralized. Bitcoin is decentralized.

Governments can censor transactions and freeze, sanction, and confiscate CBDC units whenever they want. Bitcoin is censorship-resistant. No country’s sanctions or laws can affect the protocol.

There is no privacy with CBDCs. With Bitcoin, if you take specific steps, it is possible to maintain reasonable privacy.

CBDCs are government money that are easy to produce and give politicians a terrifying amount of control over people’s lives. On the other hand, Bitcoin is non-state hard money that helps liberate individuals from government control.

In short, CBDCs are a pathetic attempt to compete with Bitcoin. They are a desperate, last-ditch effort to keep the fiat currency scam going—a Hail Mary.

CBDCs make an inferior form of money even worse, but at the same time, they are an excellent Trojan Horse for Bitcoin.

It doesn’t take much imagination to see that once governments inevitably debase their CBDC units, censor transactions, freeze people’s accounts, and confiscate funds, it will push people to look for better digital alternatives, first and foremost Bitcoin.

Take Nigeria, for example. It was one of the first countries to adopt a CBDC.

The globalists used Nigeria—Africa’s largest country by population and size of its economy—as a trial balloon to test their nefarious plans to implement CBDCs in North America, Europe, and beyond.

However, it was an abysmal failure with an adoption rate of less than 1 in 200 Nigerians despite the government’s best efforts at bribing and coercing the population into using it.

After introducing the CBDC, inflation in Nigeria soared, and Bitcoin adoption grew.

It was the exact opposite outcome the globalists had hoped for.

I expect we’ll see a similar dynamic wherever governments introduce CBDCs.

That’s how, contrary to conventional wisdom, CBDCs could be an enormous catalyst for Bitcoin adoption.

Historically, Bitcoin’s biggest moves to the upside happen very quickly… and the next big move could happen imminently.

That’s why I’ve just released an urgent PDF report revealing three crucial Bitcoin techniques to ensure you avoid the most common—sometimes fatal—mistakes. Check it out as soon as possible because it could soon be too late to take action. Click here to get it now.

Evergrande – once China’s largest real estate developer – was forced to liquidate on January 28th. It was yet another strike against the country’s now flailing real estate market, adding to a growing list of China’s economic worries.

In the charts below, Visual Capitalist’s Nick Routley shows two annual metrics related to China’s real estate crisis from 2003 to 2023. The first looks at apartment and commercial property sales using Bureau of Statistics data from Bloomberg, and the second examines new housing starts using data from the World Bank.

Things to Know About China’s Property Slump

Property sales by value in China climbed pretty steadily from less than ¥1 trillion RMB in 2003 to over ¥15 trillion in 2021, but have since dropped to under ¥12 trillion in 2023.

This was the case across both residential and commercial sales. In China’s residential market specifically, new home sales dropped 6% in 2023, with secondhand home prices declining in major cities.

And on the development side, new residential developments have fallen 58% from 1,515 million m² in 2019 to 637 million m² in 2023.

Year	New Residential Building Developments (million sq meters)
2023	637.4
2022	817.3
2021	1,350.2
2020	1,473.4
2019	1,514.5
2018	1,385.4
2017	1,160.9
2016	1,047.8
2015	970.8
2014	1,146.4
2013	1,318.5
2012	1,199.1
2011	1,349.4
2010	1,147.2
2009	784.9
2008	695.4
2007	662.3
2006	531.8
2005	446.5
2004	390.0
2003	352.4
2002	276.5

Here are a few more things to know about the ongoing real estate crisis in China:

• Developer Defaults: Real estate firms faced $125 billion in bond defaults between 2020 and 2023.

• Economic Impact: The property sector’s slump has dragged down China’s economy, leading to layoffs and financial instability.

• Getting Creative: Municipalities, many of which rely on land sales as a key source of income, have been introducing “old-for-new” support measures meant to stimulate new home purchases.

Experts predict a prolonged downturn, with many people souring on Chinese investments, but exactly how things will develop after Evergrande’s collapse is unclear.

Via Middle East Eye

An international charity with extensive experience in providing emergency aid in wars, famines and earthquakes throughout the Middle East and in Afghanistan is being forced to pay $5,000 a truck to a company linked to Egypt’s General Intelligence Service (GIS) to get aid into Gaza.

The charity, which does not want to be named to avoid obstruction to its relief efforts in Gaza, spoke to Middle East Eye in outrage at having to pay what it openly describes as a bribe to a state-linked agent.

A spokesman for the charity said: “We have worked around the world in times of war, earthquakes and other disasters, but we have never been treated like this by a state who is profiteering from the dispatch of humanitarian goods. It’s draining a lot of our resources and the bribe being paid is per truck.”

The charity said the money is being paid in the form of a “management fee” to a company affiliated with the Sons of Sinai, a construction and contracting firm owned by the Sinai businessman, Ibrahim al-Organi, and part of his Organi Group.

He heads the Tarabin tribe in the Sinai desert bordering Israel and owns a company that is a joint venture with two companies owned by the GIS. The Organi Group is alleged in media reports to be the ultimate beneficiary of a lucrative sale of “fast-track” permits for Palestinians wishing to escape from Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip.

An investigation carried out by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and independent Egyptian website, Saheeh Masr, found that intermediaries were selling exit permits at prices ranging from $4,500 to $10,000 for Palestinians and $650 to $1,200 for Egyptians.

As desperation in Gaza has increased, the price for a passage out of the enclave has gone up to $10,000 per person, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed reported recently. The price for commercial traffic going into Gaza charged by companies owned by Organi is $9,000 a truck, although the cost of the fare charged by truckers is commonly just $300 a load.

A spokesperson for Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees providing vital support in Gaza, told Middle East Eye it is not paying fees to transfer aid into the enclave from Egypt.

Bleak situation

The charity’s statement to MEE is the first concrete evidence of Egypt or Egyptian government-linked parties demanding a cut from the humanitarian aid going into Gaza, which already is subject to weeklong delays incurred by Israel.

Earlier this month, James Heappey, the British minister of state for the armed forces, said that over 150 tonnes of humanitarian aid delivered to Egypt by the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) is waiting to be transferred into Gaza.

The humanitarian situation in Gaza is bleak. More than 26,000 Palestinians have reportedly been killed since the war broke out in October, and on Sunday, a UN expert said famine in the enclave was “inevitable”.

Last week, Middle East Eye spoke to five families from Gaza who all confirmed that they had paid fees in the thousands, mostly in US dollars or euros, to mediators who then facilitated their exit from Gaza. Besan, a Palestinian who arranged for her mother to leave Gaza, said of her Suez-based mediator: “He told us that he works with Egyptian security and that he would pull strings to put our mother’s name on the list.”

Egypt denied it is profiteering from this trade at the Rafah border. In a statement published on January 10, the head of Egypt’s State Information Service, Diaa Rashwan, rejected the “unfounded allegations” that additional fees are being imposed on Palestinians at the crossing.

A parallel “fast-track” system for getting through Rafah has been in place for years, with Gaza-based agents demanding several thousand dollars for quick passage. But this market has boomed since Israel’s ground attack started and the desperation of internally displaced Palestinians has grown.

Israeli protesters have blocked emergency aid from reaching the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom border crossing.

After the planned checks in Israel, the trucks were supposed to head to Gaza. They returned to Egypt instead after the protesters prevented them from crossing. pic.twitter.com/pNm9Fjs6ix

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) January 30, 2024

One of the companies allegedly involved in the trade is Hala Consulting and Tourism, an Egyptian travel agency. This is one of eight companies operating under Organi’s chief arm, the Organi Group. Another company in the same group is Misr Sinai, a joint venture with the Egyptian defence ministry’s industrial conglomerate, the National Services Projects Organisation (NSPO)

Organi said in an interview with Youm7 in 2014 that the NSPO owned 51 percent of Misr Sinai’s shares, in partnership with two companies owned by the GIS. “As you can see, all state entities are in this company. This gives us an advantage,” Organi said in the interview.

Denying responsibility

Organi’s companies first surfaced in 2014 when Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi announced an initiative to rebuild houses destroyed in Gaza by Israel’s Operation Protective Edge. The Organi Group was named as one of the beneficiaries.

Hala Company for Consulting and Tourism Services was relaunched in 2021 to “exclusively undertake the transportation of travellers to and from the Gaza Strip”. At that time, the cross-border traffic managed by Hala was described by Egyptian sources speaking to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed in 2021 as part of a response by Cairo to “a major demand of the Palestinian factions regarding facilitating travel through the Rafah crossing to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinians”.

Egypt has denied profiteering from the crossing at Rafah and from being responsible for the long tailbacks of lorries carrying humanitarian aid at the Egyptian side of the border.

During its defence against charges of committing genocide in Gaza, in a case brought to the International Court of Justice earlier this month, Israel’s defence team accused Cairo of being responsible for preventing the entry of humanitarian aid into the enclave.  

Speaking in Somalia, Sisi accused Israel of holding up the trucks on the Gaza side of the Rafah border. He said: “If I am the reason for not letting a loaf of bread into Gaza, how could I face God?”

MEE asked Egypt’s State Information Service to comment on the charity’s claim that it had to pay $5,000 a truck to agents linked to the General Intelligence Service, but they failed to reply by the time of publication. Middle East Eye has also asked the Organi Group and Sons of Sinai for comment.

The Pentagon is poised to begin equipping Ukraine with a long-range precision bomb that’s so new it hasn’t even hit the American arsenal yet, Politico reports. The first shipment could arrive as early as Wednesday. 

The precision-guided Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB), a joint project of Boeing and Saab, comprises a 250-pound explosive that’s attached to a rocket motor and fired from ground launchers. From a range of about 90 miles, it’s supposedly accurate within a meter. The US military has an air-launched version, but not this new ground-launched one, six of which were fired in a final, pre-ship test conducted at Florida’s Eglin Air Force Base on Jan. 16, according to a Reuters source.  

The weapon has one feature that’s particularly attractive: since it’s already “paid for,” the Pentagon can ship it to Ukraine without waiting for additional Ukraine war-funding legislation that’s been held up in Congress for months. That’s especially important at a time when Ukraine’s stockpile of 100-mile Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) is running low. The US has put off requests to supply ATACMS to Ukraine — partly out of concern that doing so would be seen as a Western escalation — only to later supply them anyway, with the missiles making their debut in October.  

Politico reports that Ukraine will receive its first GLSDB surface-to-surface missiles from the U.S. tomorrow.

The my are very accurate and have a range of 160 km, making it possible for Ukraine to strike far behind Russian lines

Video of how they work pic.twitter.com/NeLvtHptdo

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) January 30, 2024

Shipping the GLSDB into the Ukraine war could pay dividends for Boeing and Saab in other ways — it’s an opportunity to showcase the new weapon in a hot war.  Last year, Boeing pitched the Pentagon on an “expedited nine-month option” for delivering the new weapon — which means allowing an exception to standard scrutiny that’s intended to ensure taxpayers are getting a reasonably good deal. The Pentagon, of course, was all too happy to issue such a waiver.

More long-range weapons in the Ukraine arsenal could pressure the Russian army to extend its supply lines, by forcing caches to be moved farther back from the front lines for a measure of relative safety. “It’s long past time to finding creative means to provide the capability and capacity needed to strike deep and often behind Russian lines,” Tom Karako of the interventionist, military-contractor-financed Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Reuters.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

The US will deploy nuclear weapons to the UK for the first time in 15 years in a move Russia will view as a provocation, The Telegraph reported, citing Pentagon documents.

Pentagon procurement contracts show that the US is planning to station B61-12 nuclear warheads at RAF Lakenheath, a base in Suffolk, England.

The US pulled its nuclear weapons out of the UK in 2008, and its decision to redeploy them demonstrates the low state of US-Russia relations.

According to The Telegraph, Russia said a US deployment of nukes to the UK would be an “escalation” that would require “compensating counter-measures.”

The US already has nukes stationed in Germany, Belgium, Italy, Turkey, and the Netherlands as part of NATO’s nuclear sharing program.

Last year, Russia announced it was deploying nuclear weapons to Belarus amid tensions over the proxy war in Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed to NATO’s nuclear sharing program to justify his decision.

The B61 is the US’s primary nuclear gravity bomb, and the B61-12 is its newest iteration. It’s considered a tactical nuclear weapon, which have a lower yield than strategic warheads. But the B61-12 has a maximum yield of 50 kilotons, more than three times as powerful as the bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.

The UK has a nuclear arsenal of its own and announced in 2021 that it was expanding, raising questions about Britain’s commitment to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The UK said it was raising the ceiling of its nuclear warhead stockpile from 180 to 240 and that it would no longer publish information about the number of warheads it maintains in an operational status.