Month: March 2024

Oil prices may have risen to a 4 month high, but that is not nearly good enough for the oil exporting cartel – whose many members need the price to rise even more to fund their fiscal budgets – and this morning OPEC+ extended its oil supply cutbacks to the middle of the year in a bid to further short up prices and maintain the continued decline in global commercial inventories.

As Bloomberg reports, citing anonymous delegates, the curbs which total roughly 2 million barrels a day, will remain in place until the end of June. As has been the case, OPEC+ leader Saudi Arabia accounts for half of the pledged reduction.

The move is hardly a surprise with traders and analysts widely expecting the extension, seeing it as necessary to offset a seasonal lull in world fuel consumption and soaring production from several of OPEC+’s rivals, most notably US shale drillers which are maximizing output to boost their prospects amid the unprecedented merger wave sweeping the US shale patch; however as shown in the chart below, the latest OPEC+ supply curbs come just as US shale output has peaked and growth is starting to shrink again, assuring that the next move in oil will be higher, perhaps violently so.

Some more details on the OPEC+ decision which are just an extension of already agreed upon production cuts:

• *SAUDI TO EXTEND VOLUNTARY CUT OF 1 MLN B/D UNTIL END OF 2Q
• *RUSSIA TO IMPLEMENT VOLUNTARY OIL CUT OF 471K B/D IN 2Q
• *UAE EXTENDS VOLUNTARY OIL CUT OF 163,000 B/D UNTIL END OF JUNE
• *IRAQ EXTENDS VOLUNTARY OIL CUT OF 220,000 B/D UNTIL END OF JUNE

A big reason for OPEC’s continue stinginess is that Riyadh needs a price above $90 a barrel as it spends billions on an economic transformation that spans futuristic cities and sports tournaments, according to Fitch Ratings. Its largest partner in the alliance, Russia, also seeks revenue to continue waging war on Ukraine.

That said, this being OPEC, there are also cheaters, and as Bloomberg notes, in the first month of this year, the group’s implementation of the cutbacks didn’t live up to the pledged 2 million barrels a day as both Iraq and Kazakhstan collectively pumped several hundred thousand barrels a day above their quotas, but promised to improve compliance and even compensate for any initial overproduction.

Russia meanwhile, has shown a very mixed performance. It only recently fully implemented the production cutbacks it promised to make almost a year ago. In January, the nation reduced its exports of crude oil as agreed by roughly 300,000 barrels a day, but promised curbs to shipments of refined fuels were less clear.

While the cartel’s decision to extend its curbs for the second quarter was widely expected, OPEC+ will likely face a tougher choice at its next scheduled meeting on June 1, when ministers will set policy for the second half of the year.

“You don’t want to bring barrels back in too early,” Saad Rahim, chief economist of commodity trading giant Trafigura Group, told Bloomberg television last week.

It’s unclear whether all members would be willing to subscribe to that policy. While Saudi Arabia has often urged the need for caution, its neighbor the United Arab Emirates has been keen to make use of recent investments in new production capacity.

Some forecasters believe that won’t be a problem, as a fledgling recovery in China and strengthening global demand will allow the group to relax its curbs and add more barrels later in the year. There has been “an improvement in overall market fundamentals,” said Paul Horsnell, head of commodities research at Standard Chartered Bank Plc. “OPEC could increase output” without flooding world inventories.

Yesterday, we detailed the leak of a wiretapped telephone conversation in which senior German officers discuss the use of German Taurus missiles, training, the capabilities of this system and the possibility of destroying the Crimean bridge.

They revealed many interesting facts. Embarrassing for the Germans, who have now launched an investigation…

As The FT reports, German chancellor Olaf Scholz has promised a full investigation after Russia published a recording of a phone call between senior German air force officers in which they appeared to discuss supplying missiles to Ukraine.

Speaking on the sidelines of a meeting with Pope Francis in Rome, Scholz described the incident as a “very serious affair”.

“It will be investigated very carefully, intensively and quickly,” he said.

“It is also necessary to do so.”

Politicians from parties in Scholz’s coalition expressed concern that Russia may have eavesdropped on other sensitive conversations, and that government communications may no longer be adequately protected.

The German defence ministry said:

“According to our assessment, a Luftwaffe conversation was tapped. We cannot say for sure whether changes were made to the recorded or transcribed version that is circulating on social media.”

Konstantin von Notz, a senior Green MP, said it must be swiftly established if the “eavesdropping scandal is a one-time event or a structural problem”.

Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, head of the Bundestag defence committee, told the news agency RND that the Russians were trying to scare Scholz off from allowing the delivery of Taurus missiles.

But the cat is out of the bag.

Adding more color to what we already know, Peter Hanseler breaks down, via Voice From Russia, the full content of the leaked call and shows how the NATO states are already knee-deep in the Ukraine conflict as active warring parties.

Participants

The following persons – some of whom were not fully identified – took part in this conversation:

Lieutenant General Ingo Gerhartz – Inspector General of the German Air Force

Link to Wikipedia

Lieutenant General Ingo Gerhartz – Image: Wikipedia

Franz Gräfe – Brigadegeneral

Link to Wikipedia.

Brigadier General Franz Gräfe – Image: Defense IQ

Two employees – Fenske and Florstädt (spelling not clear)

Members of the Bundeswehr specialists – not identified.

Purpose of the conversation

From the telephone conference it emerges that the aim of this discussion was to prepare a meeting between these participants and Foreign Minister Boris Pistorius, during which the possibilities and difficulties of using the Taurus system would be presented.

The Inspector General of the German Air Force, Ingo Gerhartz, welcomes Federal Defence Minister Boris Pistorius at Holzdorf Air Base, 12 October 2023 – Source: RT

The conversation in full length

German army discussed strike on Crimean Bridge, leaked audio purportedly indicates

Kiev has long sought to destroy the critical Russian infrastructure, with two bombings damaging the bridge in the past two years

German military leaders allegedly discussed an operation to bomb… pic.twitter.com/Rt86hcYCmS

— Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil (@ivan_8848) March 1, 2024

Summary – the most important points

Preliminary remarks

Here you can read the notes that I made during the course of the interview, which lasted just under 38 minutes. The subtitles indicate the approximate time of the comments made. It is not possible to determine exactly which person said what in this conversation

The first 5 minutes

For the first 5 minutes, the conversation is a chat between the employees, who talk about private and business matters, until Gerhartz joins the conversation.

The only interesting thing is that one of the employees promises the other to send business information via WhatsApp. It seems that security is not at a high level. This attitude may also be the reason why this conversation made it into the public domain.

Minute 05:30

Gerhartz leads the conversation. Pistorius wants to get deeply involved in Taurus. Scholz is blocking it. He had been asked by a journalist whether the reason for the blocking was that this system did not work at all. That is of course not true. You have to give [Pistorius] a good presentation.

Taurus (cruise missile) – Source: Wikipedia

Minute 10:30

You don’t just have to present problems, but also solutions.

When it comes to mission planning, the British use “reachback” and then have a few people on the ground. [This probably means that the missions are planned outside of Ukraine and then implemented with people on the ground (British military personnel).

Minute 10:53

There is talk that the British on the ground [Ukraine] could support the Germans. The planning could go through MBDA [producer of Taurus] – how should that be done – question to the employees.

Minute 11:50

There are two points that are sensitive: firstly, the delivery and secondly, the adaptation of the aircraft (Sukhoi). This would take about 8 months.

Minute 13:50

The manufacturer needs about 6 months to convert Taurus for the Sukhoi or F-16.

Minute 14.23

Training on operation would be provided by the manufacturer. The Bundeswehr would take over the tactical training, which would take place in Germany and last approx. 3-4 months.

Minute 15:10

As long as the training lasted, the British could help. Databases and satellite images would come via the manufacturer. The Ukrainians have more high-tech than the German air force, so it is possible that the Ukrainians could shorten the above-mentioned time required.

Minute 17:00

Ausbildung: 3 Wochen beim Hersteller und 4 Wochen bei der Luftwaffe. Planung von Einsätzen: Wir müssen unterstützen: Unsere Leute brauchen 1 Jahr für die Ausbildung. Mit Unterstützung der Luftwaffe, 10 Wochen Ausbildung für die Ukrainer.

Minute 18:10

The support could be provided on-line from Germany.

Minute 19:00

Political risk of direct involvement: Data does not come directly from us, but via the manufacturer.

Minute 19.:20

Target data combined with satellite images must be processed in Büchel (Germany) and could then be transported by car through Poland to Ukraine [bypassing direct participation in the war].

Minute 20:15

Response time: Order to “Airborne” we would need 6 hours, if it has to be more precise than 3 meters, 12 hours.

Minute 21.15

There are already a lot of Americans walking around in civilian clothes. The Ukrainians have satellite data.

Minute 21.45

Russian air defense: We can take evasive action because we are flying low. Storm Shadow flies over waypoints – we fly around the Russian systems.

Minute 22:40

We need about 50 Taurus in the first round – that won’t change the war, even if we deliver another 50, but then we’re done, there’s no more.

Minute 23.:20

The French and British will say, now it’s your turn to deliver.

Minute 23:40

Unique selling point compared to Storm Shadow in terms of robustness, air defense and altitude. There are two interesting “target types”: firstly the bridge in the east [Crimean Bridge] and then also ammunition depots. The Crimean Bridge is difficult to reach and the pillars are small. Taurus can do that, Storm Shadow can’t.

Minute 24:25

Three routes picked out. Basically feasible with our technology. Limiting factor: SU-24.

Suchoi – SU-24 – Quelle: Wikipedia

The Ukrainians don’t have many left – it’s in the single digits [less than 10].

Pilots can be trained quickly, but training in “image planning” will not be quick [when the Taurus flies low, terrain images have to be loaded].

Minute 26:15

The Crimean bridge is as big as an airfield. You need 10-20 Taurus for that. “If we go for the pillars, we might just make a hole and then there we are. We have to give the Ukrainians all the data, otherwise it won’t work.

Minute 27:50

Bridge is extremely important for Russia – “centerpiece” – militarily and politically. No longer quite as important, as they also have the land bridge. But the Russians are still afraid of using the direct link via Ukraine. [Note: The Russians are currently expanding the railroad lines overland].

Minute 29:05

[Now it’s getting political again]. Can we use the trick of running all the data through MBDA [manufacturer] so as not to show a direct link to the Bundeswehr Ukraine? We plan the data and then drive it by car through Poland to Ukraine. It makes no difference “involved is involved”.

Minute 29:30

If we do the training properly, it takes 4 months. During this phase, we ask the British to take over. Some kind of interim solution. “Just imagine if this gets to the press”.

Minute 30.15

If the political will is there, then someone from Ukraine should come over here. If the condition is no direct involvement in mission planning, then it will take longer and the result will not be so good. Then you can’t do everything with Taurus, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do anything with it.

Minute 31.:35

Variants: “Quick-Track/Low-Track”. Quick results, such as ammunition depots, but not the bridge.

Minute 32.20

Planning to destroy ammunition depots difficult due to massive air defenses. We don’t know where the Russian air defenses are; hopefully the Ukrainians do.

Minute 33:18

If we have all the data and can use it, we can assert ourselves. The less data and training, the less assertiveness.

Minute 35.23

The longer the decision to deliver the Taurus is delayed, the longer it will take to implement. First simple targets [ammunition depots] then more complex ones [Crimean Bridge] or ask the British for support.

Conclusion

The mere fact that this telephone conversation was intercepted and has now been published raises questions.

Firstly, no one knows whether this is an isolated case or whether the Russian secret services can intercept entire sections of German or even NATO communications.

Two details that emerge from the conversation point to negligence: At the beginning of the conversation, one of the participants tells another that he will send him data via WhatsApp. If I understood correctly, this was work-related information. It also emerges from the conversation that one of the participants is conducting the conversation from a hotel room in Singapore. That’s very revealing and the German side may have been more than negligent.

It is further explained that 50 or even 100 Taurus would be delivered, but that these would have no influence on the course of the war. The question arises as to why this is even being considered – the answer is clear: marketing and politics and the absolute will to escalate.

The officers assume that between 10 and 20 Taurus cruise missiles would be needed to destroy the Crimean Bridge, as the bridge is massive and difficult to destroy. The fixation on destroying this bridge between the Russian mainland and Crimea seems almost like a mania, as the Russians are building a connection via the land bridge from Mariupol, which is a safer alternative to the Crimean Bridge.

Many parts of the conversation revolve around efforts to support the Ukrainians directly – including people on the ground – and thus to play a direct role in attacks on Russia. They are looking for solutions and “tricks” to prevent this from appearing to be the case.

It is clear from the conversation that the Americans and British are already fully, directly and locally involved in the war in Ukraine; we pointed this out a year ago in our article “Sleepwalkers at work: World War 3 has probably already begun” – now the proof is there.

Everyone involved is therefore aware that they are waging war against Russia, i.e. the NATO-Russia war is already a reality. This means that Russia is also entitled to attack NATO targets. The fact that the Russian government has not (yet) done so indicates once again that Russia is pursuing a de-escalating course, while the West is fully committed to escalation.

This leak is a complete disaster for the German government. It shows hesitation, incompetence and dishonesty. Finally, I noticed that the talks were conducted in a very uncoordinated and unstructured manner.

It would be wiser if Chancellor Scholz were to bring himself to negotiate with the Russians, because this is no way to win a war against Russia, but to do everything possible to provoke a world war. Sometimes I wonder whether there are actually people who are deliberately pursuing this goal.

Authored by James Gorrie via The Epoch Times,

You’ve probably already seen deep fake videos portraying events that never happened in feeds from the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. The videos are so realistic that neither you nor I can tell that they’re fake.

A phone displaying a statement from the head of security policy at Meta, in front of a screen displaying a deepfake video of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky calling on his soldiers to lay down their weapons, in Washington on Jan. 30, 2023. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

In fact, you can now watch a video, clear as a bell, of a person who is no longer alive. That person can be with you, on screen, talking to you, interacting with you as well.

Soon enough, that person will be standing in the room with you. Yes, hologram technology has come a long way. For the past few years, there have been hologram concerts with dead performers appearing on stage before thousands of people, singing their best songs—from the grave. It’s really taking off.

Other uses include helping family members grieve for a loved one by “bringing them back to life” holographically for the family to talk to. Sounds more like deceiving than grieving, but hey, that’s just me.

Mass Deception Around the Corner?

But what does this deep fakery and visual deception technology really add up to in the very near future, if not at this very moment?

There are a couple of phrases that come to mind. “Mass deception” is one. “The very best in fake news” is another. “The end of reality” is a third one, but does it seem rather over-the-top?

I wish I could say it does. But when we’ve seen fake news about fake collusion with Russia, fake ballots, fake trials about fake real estate fraud (“fake fraud” is now a thing), and fake presidents, well, the over-the-top threshold has gotten much higher of late.

The New Reality? There’s No Need for It

Reality no longer bites, as we used to say in my youth, but rather, reality is bytes. Bytes of data can and do shape our reality every day. And that’s the problem. It’s a very BIG problem, for several reasons.

Do you recall the announcement from the Biden administration about the formation of the Disinformation Governance Board back in April 2022?

You may not, as it was yanked because of lots of pushback from the conservative side after just a couple of weeks as a division of the Department of Homeland Security. But the point is that it was there, and given the direction in which things are headed, care to bet that it won’t return as the deep fakes begin to hit the fan in this election year?

More to the point, how will you and I determine that what we watch on the news, what we see on our most trusted internet news sites, is actually real? How will we know that it actually happened, or is happening as we watch it “live?”

Are We Really at War?

Imagine, for instance, with U.S. military forces deployed in the Red Sea, that we “witness” a large U.S. Naval vessel get attacked, with a large loss of life. What if we see with our own eyes the flag of the attacking forces waving from their ship as they launch their attack?

War is declared, many of our rights are suspended, food is rationed, money is issued in fixed amounts, and anyone complaining about “the new reality” gets sent to a “change-your-attitude” camp, or worse?

That’s what a Disinformation Governance Board would be used for, wouldn’t it?

Election Integrity—Really?

On a much more pressing note, how will we actually know and believe the outcome of an election? What if a candidate has a news conference and tells the nation that he’s ceding the election to his opponent, even if he actually won the election?

All that—and certainly much more—could be deep faked with AI and disseminated to all of us over all of the “trusted and verified” news networks that have been approved by a newly re-branded Disinformation Governance Board.

The trope that in order to save our democracy, we had to kill it might not even be necessary.

What may be necessary, however, to make the DGB’s job (by the way, what does the “DGB” remind you of?) easier and more manageable would be to limit the sources of news to those approved news outlets that tell the approved truth.

And the others, like this one?

I can hear it now, for the sake of election integrity, unapproved news sources will be scrubbed from the internet. They’ll quickly be de-platformed, de-monetized, and de-based, meaning they will no longer have an audience, and nor do you have a say on reality, what’s real and what’s fake.

They’ve done it before. Remember how free speech was essentially banned over the internet?

The upshot is that we’re on the edge of a new reality, where no one will know a deep fake when they see one, and reality will begin when life ends.

Your Last Reality Check?

And the deep fakes? They’re only going to get even more realistic and more convincing so that realism and reality can’t be discerned.

That subtle distinction may soon become the dividing line for how we live our lives. We may see news feeds that look “realistic,” but we will have to ask ourselves, “Are they, in fact, real?”

Realism may become the primary value of news, with reality discarded as nothing more than an artifact of a bygone world.

This has been a reality check. Cash it while you can.

*  *  *

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

A mysterious Bitcoin buyer has quietly amassed billions worth of bitcoin over the past two years making the unknown address one of the largest single holders of the cryptocurrency as the race to a new all-time high continues. According to data from Bitinfocharts, after patiently buying bitcoin almost daily since November 2022, the whale’s wallet now holds over 54,164 BTC, worth around $3.2 billion, according to Decrypt.

This whale, dubbed “Mr. 100” due to his purchases of an average of 100 bitcoin per day since November 2022, may not be a single investor, and could belong to an investment fund or one of the big banks behind one of the several spot Bitcoin ETFs now available, although some are skeptical.

“It’s definitely possible, but I would say unlikely,” Amberdata Director of Research Chris Martin told Decrypt. “All of the ETFs have publically shared their addresses, so it would be strange to me if they didn’t share this one.”

This wallet has purchased an average of 100 #Bitcoin per day since November 2022.

It now holds 51,164 $BTC worth $3.1 billion. pic.twitter.com/cXpp97NfCC

— Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) March 2, 2024

According to Amberdata, the wallet has been accumulating Bitcoin since November 2022, using Binance and KuCoin.

While the US Government has also accumulated an huge amount of Bitcoin – estimated to now be worth over $12 billion -Martin doesn’t see the Biden Administration being behind the address. One tell: the digital assets are coming from Binance and KuCoin,

“It might be safe to rule out a U.S. entity or bank,” Martin said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a fund of some kind.”

Hong Kong is said to be mulling 31 applications for crypto custodians, he noted. A recent expose from Reuters echoed what we first said back in September 2015 (when we recommended buying bitcoin at a price of $230), namely that a silent flood of Chinese buying may be one of the core drivers behind the recent meltup. “Mr. 100″ may just be one of them. 

Martin also said he does not believe the wallet is someone loading up in preparation for the upcoming Bitcoin halving in April.

“I would say not—they could just be supporting the price run-up rather than accumulating tokens for a specific event,” he said.

“I think it’s interesting that they’ve generally received the same amount on every transaction—about 100 BTC—throughout their existence,” Martin added. “Why they chose 100 BTC is beyond me… possibly a limitation of their funding source.”

While speculation around the identity of “Mr. 100” whale remains, sentiment in the cryptocurrency market is riding high, and the countless entities loading up on Bitcoin – especially in the recently launched ETFs – point to signs that the bull market is indeed back and running.

The mystery whale isn’t the only that has been making waves in recent days: in April, a wallet from the early days of Bitcoin moved over $11 million in BTC after being dormant for 12 years. That same week, another Bitcoin wallet moved $8 million in BTC after ten years of inactivity. In November, another Bitcoin whale made waves after analysts discovered wallet holding $450 million in Bitccoin.

Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com,

At some point, systems flip from being complicated, which is a challenge to manage, to being complex. Complexity is more than a challenge because it opens the door to all kinds of unexpected crashes and events.

Their behavior cannot be reduced to their component parts. It’s as if they take on a life of their own.

Complexity theory has four main pillars.

The first is the diversity of actors.

You’ve got to account for all of the actors in the marketplace.

When you consider the size of global markets, that number is obviously vast.

The second pillar is interconnectedness.

Today’s world is massively interconnected through the internet, through social media and other forms of communications technology.

The third pillar of complexity theory is interaction.

Markets interact on a massive scale.

Trillions of dollars of financial transactions occur every single day.

The fourth pillar, and this is the hardest for people to understand, is adaptive behavior.

Adaptive behavior just means that your behavior affects my behavior and my behavior affects yours. That in turn affects someone else’s behavior, and so on.

If you look out the window and see people bundled up in heavy jackets, for example, you’re probably not going to go out in a T-shirt. Applied to capital markets, adaptive behavior is sometimes called herding.

Assume you have a room with 100 people. If two people suddenly sprinted out of the room, most of the others probably wouldn’t make much of it. But if half the people in the room suddenly ran outside, the other half will probably do the same thing.

They might not know why the first 50 people left, but the second half will just assume something major has happened. That could be a fire or a bomb threat or something along these lines.

The key is to determine the tipping point that compels people to act. Two people fleeing isn’t enough. 50 certainly is. But, maybe 20 people leaving could trigger the panic. Or maybe the number is 30, or 40. You just can’t be sure. But the point is, 20 people out of 100 could trigger a chain reaction.

And that’s how easily a total collapse of the capital markets can be triggered.

Understanding the four main pillars of complexity gives you a window into the inner workings of markets in a way the Fed’s antiquated equilibrium models can’t. They let you see the world with better eyes.

People assume that if you had perfect knowledge of the economy, which nobody does, that you could conceivably plan an economy. You’d have all the information you needed to determine what should be produced and in what number.

But complexity theory says that even if you had that perfect knowledge, you still couldn’t predict financial and economic events. They can come seemingly out of nowhere.

For example, it was bright and sunny one day out in the eastern Atlantic in 2005. Then it suddenly got cloudy. The winds began to pick up. Then a hurricane formed. That hurricane went on to wipe out New Orleans a short time later.

I’m talking about Hurricane Katrina. You never could have predicted New Orleans would be struck on that bright sunny day. You could look back and track it afterwards. It would seem rational in hindsight. But on that sunny day in the eastern Atlantic, there was simply no way of predicting that New Orleans was going to be devastated.

Any number of variables could have diverted the storm at some point along the way. And they cannot be known in advance, no matter how much information you have initially.

Another example is the Fukushima nuclear incident in Japan a few years back. You had a number of complex systems coming together at once to produce a disaster.

An underwater earthquake triggered a tsunami that just happened to wash up on a nuclear power plant. Each one of these are highly complex systems — plate tectonics, hydrodynamics and the nuclear plant itself.

There was no way traditional models could have predicted when or where the tectonic plates were going to slip. Therefore, they couldn’t tell you where the tsunami was heading.

And the same applies to financial panics. They seem to come out of nowhere. Traditional forecasting models have no way of detecting them. But complexity theory allows for them.

I make the point that a snowflake can cause an avalanche. But of course not every snowflake does. Most snowflakes fall harmlessly, except that they make the ultimate avalanche worse because they’re building up the snowpack. And when one of them hits the wrong way, it could spin out of control.

The way to think about it is that the triggering snowflake might not look much different from the harmless snowflake that preceded it. It’s just that it hit the system at the wrong time, at the wrong place.

Only the exact time and the specific snowflake that starts the avalanche remain to be seen. This kind of systemic analysis is the primary tool I use to keep investors ahead of the catastrophe curve.

The system is getting more and more unstable, and it might not take that much to trigger the avalanche.

To switch metaphors, it’s like the straw that breaks the camel’s back. You can’t tell in advance which straw will trigger the collapse. It only becomes obvious afterwards. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a good idea when the threat can no longer be ignored.

Let’s say I’ve got a 35-pound block of enriched uranium sitting in front of me that’s shaped like a big cube. That’s a complex system. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes. At the subatomic level, neutrons are firing off. But it’s not dangerous. You’d actually have to eat it to get sick.

But, now, I take the same 35 pounds, I shape part of it into a sphere, I take the rest of it and shape it into a bat. I put it in the tube, and I fire it together with high explosives, I kill 300,000 people. I just engineered an atomic bomb. It’s the same uranium, but under different conditions.

The point is, the same basic conditions arrayed in a different way, what physicists call self-organized criticality, can go critical, blow up, and destroy the world or destroy the financial system.

That dynamic, which is the way the world works, is not understood by central bankers. They don’t understand complexity theory. They do not see the critical state dynamics going on behind the scenes because they’re using obsolete equilibrium models.

In complexity theory and complex dynamics, you can go into the critical state. What look like unconnected distant events are actually indications and warnings of something much more dangerous to come.

So what happens when complex dynamic systems crash into each other? We’re seeing that right now.

We’re seeing two complex systems colliding into each other, the complex system of markets combined with the complex system of epidemiology.

The coronavirus spread was a complex dynamic system. It encompassed virology, meteorology, migratory patterns, mass psychology, etc. Markets are highly complex, dynamic systems.

Financial professionals will use the word “contagion” to describe a financial panic. But that’s not just a metaphor. The same complexity that applies to disease epidemics also apply to financial markets. They follow the same principles. And they came together to create a panic that traditional modeling could not foresee.

The time scale of global financial contagion is not necessarily limited to days or weeks. These panics can play out over months and years.

Just don’t expect the Fed to warn you.

New car prices have been trending lower for about a year due to increased vehicle production and elevated interest rates that have crimped demand. As a result, inventories are swelling at dealerships nationwide, with expectations for new and used vehicle prices to continue sliding into the spring season. 

A recent Kelley Blue Book report shows new car prices in January were down 3.5% compared with the same month one year ago. The average new car sold was $47,401. 

“Prices have been trending downward for roughly six months now as automakers are sweetening deals to keep the sales flowing,” Erin Keating, executive analyst for Cox Automotive, said in the report. 

The downward pressure is mainly because new vehicle inventory has surged. As of January, it stood at 2.66 million units, a 49% jump in the past year, according to Cox data.

“With rates higher so far this year, the consumer has limited sense of urgency right now other than cash in hand,” Jonathan Smoke, chief economist at Cox, said in a separate report.

In a post on X, Car Dealership Guy wrote that new car inventory in February “is rising fast.” 

February started with 80 days of new vehicle supply: 

The *highest* level since June 2020. 

Expect the deals to sweeten up for most brands.

New car inventory is rising fast 📈

February started with 80 days of new vehicle supply:

The *highest* level since June 2020.

Expect the deals to sweeten up for most brands. pic.twitter.com/y2nsogRmkZ

— Car Dealership Guy (@GuyDealership) March 2, 2024

Online auto buy/sell platform CarEdge’s Zach Shefska noted on X: “For reference, new car inventory is up 195% over the past 30 months.” 

For reference, new car inventory is up 195% over the past 30 months. pic.twitter.com/T3bk4II2Xz

— Zach Shefska (@shefska) February 23, 2024

“New Car Inventory has EXPLODED higher,” another X user said. 

New Car Inventory has EXPLODED higher pic.twitter.com/9LgrwGkgmk

— Darth Powell 🦈🇺🇲🇺🇦🇵🇱🇫🇮 (@GRomePow) February 22, 2024

This is great news for prospective car buyers – but terrible news for the millions of folks who bought cars during the Covid mania and are underwater on their auto loans. 

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended that adults aged 65 and above get an additional dose of the updated 2023–2024 COVID-19 vaccine following a heated debate by an advisory panel on the issue.

The vaccination was recommended by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) panel.

“The recommendation acknowledges the increased risk of severe disease from COVID-19 in older adults, along with the currently available data on vaccine effectiveness,” the agency said in a Feb. 28 press release. “Adults 65 years and older are disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, with more than half of COVID-19 hospitalizations during October 2023 to December 2023 occurring in this age group.”

“Data continues to show the importance of vaccination to protect those most at risk for severe outcomes of COVID-19. An additional dose of the updated COVID-19 vaccine may restore protection that has waned since a fall vaccine dose, providing increased protection to adults ages 65 years and older,” it said.

As of Feb. 23, more than 22 percent of U.S. adults have received the updated COVID-19 vaccine, including 41.8 percent of adults over 65.

Dispute Over Wording

During the panel discussion, members debated intensely about the wording of the recommendation. Some wanted a stronger wording, such as “should receive an additional dose,” in the recommendation, according to a report by the Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy Research and Innovation Office at the University of Minnesota.

However, other members disagreed, pointing out that evidence does not support the need to add “should” in the vaccine recommendation. They also raised concerns that the wording could end up having a chilling or discouraging effect on individuals who haven’t received a shot during the fall.

Several members noted that COVID-19 activity is not following a seasonal pattern such as what is seen with the flu. They projected the number of COVID-19 levels to likely wax and wane over coming months.

The members eventually voted in favor of the stronger recommendation, with the measure passing 11–1. After ACIP’s decision, CDC Director Mandy Cohen endorsed the recommendation.

“Most COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations last year were among people 65 years and older. An additional vaccine dose can provide added protection that may have decreased over time for those at highest risk,” she said.

The next dose should be taken at least four months after the previous dose. Individuals with compromised immune systems can get their next dose two months after the previous one.

Vaccine Harms

Despite the CDC pushing older people to take additional COVID-19 shots, studies have shown that the jabs may not be effective and could instead cause harm.

A study from Japan published in January looked at the impact of bivalent vaccines among older people. A bivalent vaccine is a shot that triggers an immune response against two different strains of the virus.

Researchers said they “did not find sufficient evidence of effectiveness of bivalent vaccines among previously infected older adults.”

An April 2023 study that looked at over 51,000 employees at the Cleveland Clinic who were given bivalent vaccines found that effectiveness of the shots declined depending on the strain. With the BA.4/5 strain, vaccine effectiveness was only 29 percent, which dropped to 20 percent for BQ strain, and then to just 4 percent for XBB.

A January 2024 study warned that repeated vaccination with mRNA COVID-19 boosters could result in “adverse effects on the immune system.”

“This is particularly relevant in the case of immunocompromised individuals, where the overall cost-to-benefit ratio may lean toward the negative,” the researchers wrote.

“Given the decreased severity of the virus, as acknowledged in various jurisdictions, there are legitimate concerns about the frequent administration of boosters in immunocompromised patients, raising questions about whether this practice may be causing more harm than benefit.”

COVID-19 vaccines are also facing scrutiny for shedding effects. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration defines shedding as the “release of [viral or bacterial gene therapy products] … from the patient through one or all of the following ways: excreta (feces); secreta (urine, saliva, nasopharyngeal fluids, etc.); or through the skin (pustules, sores, wounds).”

Dr. Pierre Kory, founder of Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), has said that both mRNA and adenovirus COVID-19 vaccines may cause vaccinated individuals to release spike proteins and other components. For instance, one study found the presence of mRNA in the breast milk of vaccinated females.

During a Feb. 15 congressional hearing, health officials from the FDA and the CDC admitted that COVID-19 vaccinated people can still get infected and transmit the disease.

“There’s data that shows that earlier in the pandemic there was some reduction in transmission. The data on that are very challenging to pin down. It does not absolutely prevent transmission,” Dr. Peter Marks, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the FDA, said at the hearing.

“[The COVID-19 vaccines] do a very good job of preventing death and hospitalization. They may not prevent infection,” he admitted.

It was only last April that Finland formally entered NATO as the military alliance’s 31st member. This week Moscow has announced that it is initiating additional “military-technical measures” along its border with Scandinavia, also in response to Sweden’s recent accession approval. 

But already Finland is off and running with advancing a bellicose posture sure to only fuel already soaring tensions with Russia centered on the Ukraine proxy war.

Finnish broadcaster Yle reported Thursday that the government has given the OK for Ukrainian forces to use Finnish weaponry to mount attacks on Russian territory.

Soon after the 2022 Russian invasion, Finland began joining other European countries on sending defense aid to Kiev, and has thus far sent an estimated nearly $2 billion worth of arms packages.

Chair of the Finnish parliamentary defense committee, told Yle that “Ukraine has the right to use these [Finnish] weapons against military targets also on Russian soil.”

However, “A key condition for Western military aid to Ukraine is the commitment to avoid using it on Russian soil,” the publication also said. Finish officials have explained that thus far they have abided by that stipulation in respect of the desires of other Western allies.

But with Ukraine forces clearly being beaten back in the east, and with manpower and arms shortages becoming a dire problem, Finland is apparently joining the chorus of bolder and riskier pledges when it comes to supporting Ukraine.

The past number of months have meanwhile witnessed increased cross-border attacks on Russian energy infrastructure, but also civilian areas of places like Belgorod city near the border. This has resulted in scores of civilian casualties, after which Russia typically conducts large airstrikes against Ukrainian cities.

Moscow has also of late sought to highlight the alleged active presence of French mercenaries near the border, and has accused Western intelligence of assisting Ukraine with attacking targets on Russian soil. This means NATO and Russia are inching closer to direct, all-out war.

⚠️ FINLAND INAUGURATES ALEXANDER STUBB AS PRESIDENT FOR THE NATO ERA (Reuters)

Alexander Stubb took office as Finland’s president on Friday, ready to oversee a new era after it joined NATO in response to neighbouring Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

During his campaign for the… pic.twitter.com/PZrrKOKUZ7

— PiQ (@PiQSuite) March 1, 2024

Certainly if this trend catches on of European leaders openly advocating that Western weapons be used to attack Russia directly, bigger war becomes more and more inevitable unless some kind of negotiations can be kick-started fast.

Authored by Alex Newman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Temperature records used by climate scientists and governments to build models that then forecast dangerous manmade global warming repercussions have serious problems and even corruption in the data, multiple scientists who have published recent studies on the issue told The Epoch Times.

The Biden administration leans on its latest National Climate Assessment report as evidence that global warming is accelerating because of human activities. The document states that human emissions of “greenhouse gases” such as carbon dioxide are dangerously warming the Earth.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) holds the same view, and its leaders are pushing major global policy changes in response.

But scientific experts from around the world in a variety of fields are pushing back. In peer-reviewed studies, they cite a wide range of flaws with the global temperature data used to reach the dire conclusions; they say it’s time to reexamine the whole narrative.

Problems with temperature data include a lack of geographically and historically representative data, contamination of the records by heat from urban areas, and corruption of the data introduced by a process known as “homogenization.”

The flaws are so significant that they make the temperature data—and the models based on it—essentially useless or worse, three independent scientists with the Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences (CERES) explained.

The experts said that when data corruption is considered, the alleged “climate crisis” supposedly caused by human activities disappears.

Instead, natural climate variability offers a much better explanation for what is being observed, they said.

Some experts told The Epoch Times that deliberate fraud appeared to be at work, while others suggested more innocent explanations.

But regardless of why the problems exist, the implications of the findings are hard to overstate.

With no climate crisis, the justification for trillions of dollars in government spending and costly changes in public policy to restrict carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions collapses, the scientists explained in a series of interviews about their research.

“For the last 35 years, the words of the IPCC have been taken to be gospel,” according to astrophysicist and CERES founder Willie Soon. Until recently, he was a researcher working with the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian.

“And indeed, climate activism has become the new religion of the 21st century—heretics are not welcome and not allowed to ask questions,” Mr. Soon told The Epoch Times.

“But good science demands that scientists are encouraged to question the IPCC’s dogma. The supposed purity of the global temperature record is one of the most sacred dogmas of the IPCC.”

The latest U.S. government National Climate Assessment report states: “Human activities are changing the climate.

“The evidence for warming across multiple aspects of the Earth system is incontrovertible, and the science is unequivocal that increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases are driving many observed trends and changes.”

In particular, according to the report, this is because of human activities such as burning fossil fuels for transportation, energy, and agriculture.

Looking at timescales highlights major problems with this narrative, Mr. Soon said.

“When people ask about global warming or climate change, it is essential to ask, ‘Since when?’ The data shows that it has warmed since the 1970s, but that this followed a period of cooling from the 1940s,” he said.

While it is “definitely warmer” now than in the 19th century, Mr. Soon said that temperature proxy data show the 19th century “was exceptionally cold.”

“It was the end of a period that’s known as the Little Ice Age,” he said.

Data taken from rural temperature stations, ocean measurements, weather balloons, satellite measurements, and temperature proxies such as tree rings, glaciers, and lake sediments, “show that the climate has always changed,” Mr. Soon said.

“They show that the current climate outside of cities is not unusual,” he said, adding that heat from urban areas is improperly affecting the data.

“If we exclude the urban temperature data that only represents 3 percent of the planet, then we get a very different picture of the climate.”

Homogenization

One issue that scientists say is corrupting the data stems from an obscure process known as “homogenization.”

According to climate scientists working with governments and the U.N., the algorithms used for homogenization are designed to correct, as much as possible, various biases that might exist in the raw temperature data.

These biases include, among others, the relocation of temperature monitoring stations, changes in technology used to gather the data, or changes in the environment surrounding a thermometer that might impact its readings.

For instance, if a temperature station was originally placed in an empty field but that field has since been paved over to become a parking lot, the record would appear to show much hotter temperatures. As such, it would make sense to try to correct the data collected.

Virtually nobody argues against the need for some homogenization to control for various factors that may contaminate temperature data.

But a closer examination of the process as it now occurs reveals major concerns, Ronan Connolly, an independent scientist at CERES, said.

“While the scientific community has become addicted to blindly using these computer programs to fix the data biases, until recently nobody has bothered to look under the hood to see if the programs work when applied to real temperature data,” he told The Epoch Times.

Since the early 2000s, various governmental and intergovernmental organizations creating global temperature records have relied on computer programs to automatically adjust the data.

Mr. Soon, Mr. Connolly, and a team of scientists around the world spent years looking at the programs to determine how they worked and whether they were reliable.

One of the scientists involved in the analysis, Peter O’Neill, has been tracking and downloading the data daily from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and its Global Historical Climatology Network since 2011.

He found that each day, NOAA applies different adjustments to the data.

“They use the same homogenization computer program and re-run it roughly every 24 hours,” Mr. Connolly said. “But each day, the homogenization adjustments that they calculate for each temperature record are different.”

This is “very bizarre,” he said.

“If the adjustments for a given weather station have any basis in reality, then we would expect the computer program to calculate the same adjustments every time. What we found is this is not what’s happening,” Mr. Connolly said.

These concerns are what first sparked the international investigation into the issue by Mr. Soon and his colleagues.

Because NOAA doesn’t maintain historical information on its weather stations, the CERES scientists reached out to European scientists who had been compiling the data for the stations that they oversee.

They found that just 17 percent of NOAA’s adjustments were consistently applied. And less than 20 percent of NOAA’s adjustments were clearly associated with a documented change to the station observations.

“When we looked under the hood, we found that there was a hamster running in a wheel instead of an engine,” Mr. Connolly said. “It seems that with these homogenization programs, it is a case where the cure is worse than the disease.”

A spokesman for NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information downplayed the significance, but said the agency was working to address the issues raised in the papers.

“NOAA uses the well-documented Pairwise Homogenization Algorithm every day on GHCNm (monthly)—version 4, and the results of specific adjustments to individual station series can differ from run to run,” the spokesman said, adding that the papers in question didn’t support the view that the concerns about the homogenization of the data made it useless or worse.

“NOAA is addressing the issues raised in both these papers in a future release of the GHCNm temperature dataset and its accompanying documentation.”

Read more here…

The beginning of the Russian-Ukraine war in early 2022 led to a significant tightening in global liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies as Europe replaced lost Russian LNG with supplies from the US. Currently, LNG markets are stabilizing and, according to one commodity desk, could enter an oversupply period in 2025.

In a note to clients, a team of analysts led by Ehsan Khoman, who is in charge of the commodities research desk at MUFG Bank, said the global LNG market is on the verge of transitioning from tight to oversupplied: 

When factoring in LNG export capacity currently under construction in the US (and other regions), we anticipate ~200mpta of additive global LNG supply capacity before the end of this decade (constituting ~50% of the 409mpta global LNG supply currently ). To put the sheer velocity of this additional supply into context, global LNG demand printed at 401mpta in 2023. This LNG oversupply, beginning to take shape from 2025, leads to risks that global gas prices may decline to around supply cash costs (~EUR15 – 20/MWh), which may lead to the cancellation of US LNG exports (akin to 2020).

Khoman highlighted the “chart of the week,” which states that an oversupplied LNG market, primarily because of a surge in supply from the US and the Middle East, beginning in 2025, will “end the energy crisis.” 

The analysts pointed out that Qatar is positioning itself as the “world’s lowest cost LNG producer” as it rapidly expands exports, thus soaking up market share.

At face value, although the Qatari announcement may seem counterintuitive given the approaching oversupply, we view that Qatar can leverage its pedigree as the world’s lowest-cost LNG producer to take advantage of increased market share in light of the recently announced halts in US LNG export project approvals.

The theme from Khoman is that oversupply conditions will lead to “lower for longer” prices that could help the EU reverse damaging de-industrial risk, especially after the Russian Nord Stream pipeline was blown up. 

This past week, Denmark dropped its investigation into “deliberate sabotage” of the Nord Stream in 2022. Recall last year, The Washington Post published a bombshell that Ukraine was involved in the bombing. And if the world wants to understand who is responsible, one must ask: Who stands to benefit from cutting cheap Russian LNG supplies to the EU? 

Well, the latest US Energy Information Administration data shows the US has become the number one LNG dealer to the EU following the bombing of the undersea pipeline. 

Meanwhile, oversupply conditions are expected to end in the latter part of this decade. A suppression of LNG prices will help the West tame energy inflation.