Jun 102021
 


Henri Matisse Odalisque couchée aux magnolias 1923

 

CDC Claims Hospitalization Rising Among Unvaccinated Teens (Blaze)
The Real Efficacy of Covid-19 Vaccines (OR)
Fauci Compares Criticism Of Him To ‘Attacks On Science’ (RT)
G7 Leaders Will Call For Fresh WHO Inquiry Into Covid Origins (G.)
Covid Distancing May Have Weakened Children’s Immune System (G.)
Mongolia Reports Fresh COVID Outbreak Despite High Vaccination Rates (ZH)
J&J Must Pay $2 Billion In Landmark Talcum Baby Powder Trial (ZME)
Yet Another Media Tale Collapses (Greenwald)
EU-UK Talks On Northern Ireland Appear Close To Collapse On Eve Of G7 (G.)
Joe Biden Accuses Boris Johnson Of ‘Inflaming’ Tensions In Ireland (Sun)
Zelensky Tells Biden Ukraine Needs Clear Plan For Accession To NATO (ZH)

 

 

Actual deaths after waxxine

 

 

 

 

Neat little trick.

CDC Claims Hospitalization Rising Among Unvaccinated Teens (Blaze)

In order to justify the forced vaccination of children, the powers that be would somehow have to overturn 15 months of observations that COVID is less a threat to children than the flu and that unvaccinated children are less at risk than vaccinated adults (100 times less at risk than seniors), even if we are to believe Pfizer’s efficacy data. “CDC director reports spike in teen hospitalizations, urges parents to vaccinate kids over 12,” was the headline at the Hill on Friday, reporting on the CDC’s new study of hospitalizations. Naturally, it caught my attention because we all know that hospitalizations among all age groups have been plummeting to record lows across the country in recent weeks.

It turns out that along with its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), the CDC published a “study” purporting to show an increase in hospitalizations among 12- to 17-year-olds, with one-third of them being in the ICU and 5% of them being placed on ventilators. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky was ready to pounce. “I am deeply concerned by the numbers of hospitalized adolescents and saddened to see the number of adolescents who required treatment in intensive care units or mechanical ventilation,” said Walensky in a statement. Of course, the solution is the great experimental gene therapy. “Until they are fully vaccinated, adolescents should continue to wear masks and take precautions when around other [sic] who are not vaccinated to protect themselves, and their family, friends, and community,” Walensky stated.

But there’s one problem. The CDC’s own data show that hospitalizations among all groups have plummeted over the past six weeks. It turns out they picked arbitrary start and end points – an old trick they’ve used with mask studies – which coincides with a period of increased hospitalizations among all age groups, including those with high vaccination rates. The study period of the CDC’s report was from March 1, 2020, to April 24, 2021. It just so happens that April 24 was roughly the peak period for ALL age groups! Most of that mini increase (after the major winter spread) was due to the final spring spread in the northeast and upper Midwest. Based on the CDC’s headlines, one would think that childhood hospitalizations are spreading now and that they are rising relative to other age groups. In reality, they have plummeted and only rose slightly from a near-zero baseline earlier this year along with other groups.

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To make it clear once and for all.

The Real Efficacy of Covid-19 Vaccines (OR)

Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR) and Relative Risk Reduction (RRR)

Why are ARR and RRR very important? Very simply, let’s assume you have 100 people in a Treatment group and another 100 people in a Control or placebo group. Then, let’s say that 2 people get Disease X in the Control group while one person gets Disease X in the Treatment group. The Relative Risk Reduction or RRR in this example is 50% because one diseased person is 50% or half of 2 diseased people. However, the Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR) is only 1% because in the treatment group, only one fewer people out of 100 participants got Disease X. You can also work it out using these formulas:

1) In the Treatment group, 1/100 got Disease X = 1% which is the EER (Experimental Event Rate)
2) In the Control or placebo group, 2/100 got Disease X = 2% which is the CER (Control Event Rate)
3) ARR (Absolute Risk Reduction) = CER – EER = 2% – 1% = 1%

In a subtraction the % signs carry through the equation and are kept.

4) RRR (Relative Risk Reduction) = ARR divided by CER = 1% divided by 2% = 1/2

In a division, the % signs cancel each other out and are not kept, but 1/2 is the same as 50%.

Let’s say the Treatment in this example had side effects, as most treatments do. If a patient were offered this Treatment and was told that the “efficacy” (how well the treatment works) was only 1% (the ARR) which is the true efficacy, this patient would be much less likely to accept the Treatment and its side effects than if he or she were told the efficacy was 50%. Fifty percent sounds a lot more promising than 1% but it reflects only the comparison between the diseased people of each group. The ARR or 1% efficacy is much more accurate as it reflects how many more people out of 100 will be protected from Disease X as a result of the Treatment. To just say that the Treatment is 50% effective in this scenario by ignoring the ARR is to introduce outcome reporting bias.

[..] Analysis of Pfizer’s Data

1) In the vaccine group, 8/18,198 got Covid-19 infection (not death) = 0.044% This is the EER (Experimental Event Rate)
2) In the Control (placebo) group, 162/18,325 got covid-19 infection (not death ) = 0.884% This is the CER (Control Event Rate)
3) ARR (Absolute Risk Reduction) = CER – EER = 0.884% – 0.044% = 0.84% = 0.84/100 = 0.0084
4) RRR (Relative Risk Reduction) = ARR divided by CER or 0.84% divided by 0.884% = 0.95

As this formula involves division, the percentage signs cancel out. 0.95 is the same as 95% which is what the Pfizer study reports for “efficacy.” An “efficacy” of 95% gives the impression that one is 95% less likely to catch Covid-19 if one is vaccinated with Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine. However,

5) the ARR or Absolute Risk Reduction, which is 0.0084 or 0.84%, is actually less than 1%

As shown under the ARR and RRR heading above, the ARR (of any study) is far more accurate than the RRR, but clearly, 95% sounds much more compelling than <1%. Referring to the “efficacy” of the Pfizer vaccine as 95% is not technically incorrect, but it is very misleading as this value does not properly inform the vaccine recipient. Such misrepresentation is at the very least unethical and at most illegal in many countries which require informed consent. Unfortunately, it is easy for outcome reporting bias to escape detection since the average individual, including the average doctor, does not understand ARR and RRR and will automatically assume that “95% efficacy” means 95% less likely to get Covid-19 in the real world.

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How much longer?

Fauci Compares Criticism Of Him To ‘Attacks On Science’ (RT)

White House health advisor Anthony Fauci pushed back against growing controversy surrounding him, equating attacks on him to “attacks on science.” While Fauci remains a leading force in the US government’s battle against Covid-19, he has become an increasingly divisive figure, especially in light of a recent dramatic flip on his position on vaccinated Americans masking, as well as leaked emails seemingly showing him wavering on public positions. Asked about continuing attacks from mainly conservative critics, Fauci equated the criticism to attacking science itself. “It’s very dangerous, Chuck, because a lot of what you’re seeing as attacks on me quite frankly are attacks on science, because all of the things that I have spoken about consistently from the very beginning, have been fundamentally based on science,” he told MSNBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ hosted by Chuck Todd.

While critics have argued Fauci’s emails show he was perhaps more open to a lab leak theory behind Covid-19 privately than publicly and flip-flopped his position on masking, the infectious disease expert has denied any wrongdoing in the messages. “If you go through each and every one of them you can explain and debunk it immediately,” he said. As he has done in the past, Fauci argued that when he has seemingly changed his position on issues like masking, it’s because new data has been presented. “As a scientist, as a health official, when those data change, when you get more information, it’s essential that you change your position because you’ve got to be guided by the science and the current data,” he said. It was Fauci’s “science” defense that really stirred his critics – and Fauci believes they want him “fired” or “put in jail.”

Beyond the dangerous arrogance and pomposity of proclaiming ‘anyone who criticizes me is attacking Science’ – thus placing himself off-limits from questioning – he *admitted* he purposely issued false, anti-science, politicized claims, such as telling people not to wear masks,” journalist Glenn Greenwald tweeted.

Fauci

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Yeah, sure Fauci would like that! Then again, as long as it’s the WHO doing the inquiry, he has nothing to fear.

G7 Leaders Will Call For Fresh WHO Inquiry Into Covid Origins (G.)

Leaders at the G7 summit will call for a new, transparent investigation by the World Health Organization into the origins of the coronavirus, according to a leaked draft communique for the meeting. The call was initiated by Joe Biden’s administration and follows the US president’s decision to expand the American investigation into the origins of the pandemic, with one intelligence agency leaning towards the theory that it escaped from a Wuhan laboratory. The broad consensus among scientific experts remains that the most likely explanation is that Covid-19 jumped to humans from an animal host in a natural event. An on-the-ground investigation by WHO experts earlier this year concluded t it was “extremely unlikely” the pandemic began in a laboratory.


According to Bloomberg News, which said it had sight of the draft communique, the G7 will also commit to deliver 1bn extra doses of the Covid-19 vaccine over the next year to accelerate global protection against the disease. The move may disappoint aid agencies that want most of the world’s 8 billion people to be vaccinated, but the communique will argue that the fresh commitment will dramatically increase the number of people in the developing world offered a vaccine. Ahead of his arrival at the summit, Biden said the US would commit to buying 500m doses of the vaccine for distribution to developing countries. The communique, which is often leaked ahead of the G7 summit, is due to be finalised on Sunday following a three-day meeting in Cornwall. At the 2020 summit in France, leaders abandoned publishing a list of commitments after Donald Trump refused to sign the letter.

Biden to announce a “vaccine plan for the world”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1402688704767041539

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May have?

Covid Distancing May Have Weakened Children’s Immune System (G.)

Scientists are concerned that measures to combat Covid-19 have weakened the immune systems of young children who have not been able to build up resistance to common bugs, leaving them vulnerable when mask-wearing and social distancing eventually end. Contact with viral pathogens happens on a fairly regular basis and although it does not always lead to sickness, the exposure helps shore the immune system against the threat should the bugs be encountered again. Over the past 14 months or so, protracted restrictions on mixing and travel, alongside mask-wearing and social distancing, have not only reduced the risk of Covid but other respiratory bugs such as the flu – cases of which were basically nonexistent last winter, according to surveillance data largely encompassing England compiled by the Royal College of GPs (RCGP).

However, virologists are concerned about RSV, a virus that can cause serious lung infections requiring hospital admission, and sometimes even death, in children under the age of one – and for which there are no approved vaccines. “Flu worries me, but there is a vaccine – and so the most vulnerable will still have access to the vaccines,” said Dr Catherine Moore, consultant clinical scientist for Public Health Wales. She warned that RSV currently has no vaccine. “Whereas what Covid has done has caused a big issue in our adult ICUs, we may see conversely problems in our paediatric hospitalisations and intensive care,” she said. Pre-Covid, most children encountered most seasonal viruses before they turned 18 months old.

But the biggest influx in paediatric hospital wards each winter are babies under the age of one who have for the first time been infected with RSV – because their lungs are not well developed, their bodies struggle to fight off the infection, explained Moore. Scientists are worried that if life begins to go back to pre-Covid normality, respiratory viruses that typically circulate every winter will return alongside the coronavirus. Moore said she was particularly worried about the risk of RSV in young children. “We’ve got two cohorts now of children who’ve never met the virus, so they are susceptible, but there’s two years’ worth of them!” Before the pandemic, data suggested more than 30,000 babies and children under five were admitted to hospital every year in the UK because of RSV. Assuming “normality” resumes later this year, “we are preparing for a significant impact in paediatrics”, said Moore.

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Is it Sinopharm?

Mongolia Reports Fresh COVID Outbreak Despite High Vaccination Rates (ZH)

For weeks now, Mongolia has been touted as an unexpected success story in the international vaccination project: the poor, mostly rural country lies between northeastern China and Russia’s resource-rich east. The country, which struck deals with its neighbors to stock its vaccine coffers months ago, drew attention due to its climbing international vaccination rate. But in recent days, Mongolia’s COVID-19 rate has surged, raising questions about the efficacy of China’s vaccines. More than half of Mongolia’s population has been fully vaccinated. But despite this, the country reported 1,312 new cases of the coronavirus on Wednesday as the country’s total infections neared 70K, with almost all of those recorded since January. New daily infections have risen more than 70% in the past two weeks, according to a New York Times database.

The landlocked nation has easily secured enough doses of the vaccine from Russia and China. And as its case numbers rise, Sinopharm’s vaccine has come under scrutiny because of a lack of transparency in its late-stage trial data. The vaccine faced more questions after the island nation of the Seychelles, which relied heavily on Sinopharm to inoculate its population, also saw a spike in cases, although most people did not become seriously ill. “Inactivated vaccines like Sinovac and Sinopharm are not as effective against infection but very effective against severe disease,” said Ben Cowling, an epidemiologist and biostatistician at the University of Hong Kong School of Public Health. “Although Mongolia seems to be having a spike in infections and cases, my expectation is that there won’t be large number of hospitalizations,” he added.

Doubts about the efficacy of China’s Sinopharm jab have been spreading for months, as the vaccine was repeatedly shown to be less effective than the new mRNA jabs from Pfizer and Moderna-BioNTech. In some areas, mutant strains may be spreading fast enough to cause concern even in countries where much of the population has vaccinations effective against them: Britain is dealing with a rise in cases linked to the Delta variant, despite having more than half of its adult population fully vaccinated, largely with shots from AstraZeneca and Pfizer. Still, the wave of infections has raised questions in Mongolia over why the government relied on the Sinopharm shots instead of a vaccine proven to be more effective.

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“If even a fraction of these cases succeed, it could cost J&J in the trillions.”

J&J Must Pay $2 Billion In Landmark Talcum Baby Powder Trial (ZME)

In 2018, a court verdict ordered Johnson and Johnson to pay $2.1 billion to 22 plaintiffs who claimed the company’s talcum baby powder contained asbestos and caused ovarian cancer. It’s a hefty fine, but the stakes are even higher — as the company faces around 21,000 other trials. The story (or at least one part of it) starts in 1999, when J&J was sued by a woman who had used their baby powder. She claimed that the powder gave her cancer. The woman (and her lawyer) had a hunch that the company’s baby powder was contaminated with asbestos, but couldn’t prove it. It seemed to make sense: in nature, talc and asbestos (both naturally-occurring minerals) are often found together, so there’s a significant risk of contamination. But without hard evidence, the case was dropped. As it turns out, Johnson and Johnson had the hard evidence all along.

The company, which denied any wrongdoing, had numerous lab tests showing that their product sometimes contained small amounts of asbestos, a known carcinogen. Two decades later, they were ordered to release these lab tests during a much larger trial that involved 11,700 plaintiffs, who all claimed the same thing: Johnson and Johnson’s baby powder sometimes contains asbestos. According to a Reuters investigation, J&J knew they were in the wrong, and hid it from both the public and regulators. In light of these findings, a Missouri jury initially awarded the women $4.7 billion — but an appeal dropped two women from the suit and reduced the award to $2 billion. The judge in that case ruled that the company had “misrepresented the safety of these products for decades” and demonstrated “particularly reprehensible conduct.”

J&J tried to push things even further. The case initially combined the claims of almost two dozen plaintiffs from 12 states. The company argued to the Supreme Court that the sprawling nature of the case violated the Constitution’s due process clause. But without comment, the top US court refused to consider J&J’s objections. “Today justice is served,” said Mark Lanier, the women’s lawyer. “Twenty families now get compensated for a horrible, unnecessary disease. And J&J, the trigger for that disease, is held accountable.” Jurors in the initial case awarded each woman $25 million in compensatory damages, in addition to the company fine. For J&J, this could be only the beginning. The company faces more than 26,000 lawsuits blaming baby powder for causing cancers — which could be the biggest litigation lawsuit in history. If even a fraction of these cases succeed, it could cost J&J in the trillions.

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Lafayette Park. Who will be held accountable?

Yet Another Media Tale Collapses (Greenwald)

The independent Inspector General of the Interior Department, Mark Lee Greenblatt, issued his office’s findings after a long investigation into “the actions of the U.S. Park Police (USPP) to disperse protesters in and around Lafayette Park in Washington, DC, on June 1, 2020.” Greenblatt has been around Washington for a long time, occupying numerous key positions in the Obama administration, including investigative counsel at the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General and Assistant Inspector General for Investigations at Obama’s Commerce Department. The letter released by Greenblatt’s office accompanying the report makes clear how far-reaching the investigation was:

“Over the course of this review, our career investigative staff conducted extensive witness interviews, reviewed video footage from numerous vantage points, listened to radio transmissions from multiple law enforcement entities, and examined evidence including emails, text messages, telephone records, procurement documents, and other related materials. This report presents a thorough, independent examination of that evidence to assess the USPP’s decision making and operations, including a detailed timeline of relevant actions and an analysis of whether the USPP’s actions complied with governing policies.”

The IG’s conclusion could not be clearer: the media narrative was false from start to finish. Namely, he said, “the evidence did not support a finding that the [U.S. Park Police] cleared the park on June 1, 2020, so that then President Trump could enter the park.” Instead — exactly as Hemingway’s widely-mocked-by-liberal-outlets article reported — “the evidence we reviewed showed that the USPP cleared the park to allow a contractor to safely install anti-scale fencing in response to destruction of Federal property and injury to officers that occurred on May 30 and May 31.” Crucially, “the evidence established that relevant USPP officials had made those decisions and had begun implementing the operational plan several hours before they knew of a potential Presidential visit to the park, which occurred later that day.”

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Good Friday.

EU-UK Talks On Northern Ireland Appear Close To Collapse On Eve Of G7 (G.)

Talks between the EU and the UK over Northern Ireland appear on the brink of collapse as London indicated it was still considering unilateral action to keep unhindered supplies flowing from Great Britain into the region. The European commission vice-president, Maros Sefcovic, said patience was “wearing very, very thin” and described the relationship with the UK as “at a crossroads”. Amid fears that the escalating crisis over Northern Ireland would develop into a trade war, David Frost, the Brexit minister, said there had been “no breakthroughs” over the Brexit checks but no “breakdowns” after a two-hour meeting with Sefcovic in London.


They agreed to continue to try to find a solution before 30 June when a ban on chilled meats including sausages and mincemeat is due to come into force. Late on Wednesday, Boris Johnson insisted that there was no crisis. “I’m very very optimistic about this. I think that’s easily doable,” he said, referring to an issue that was at the heard of the fraught Irish border negotiations two years ago: preventing a border on the island of Ireland while protecting trade within the UK post-Brexit. Johnson’s optimism could face a challenge at the G7 meeting on Thursday, however, when Joe Biden will warn him and the EU not to “imperil” the Northern Ireland peace process.

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Playing with fire.

Joe Biden Accuses Boris Johnson Of ‘Inflaming’ Tensions In Ireland (Sun)

Joe Biden has accused Boris Johnson of “inflaming” tensions in Ireland ahead of their first meeting in Britain today. The President is expected to address post-Brexit peace with the Prime Minister to ensure that the Good Friday Agreement is protected – as Britain and the EU try to resolve the issue of checks in the Irish Sea. But tensions over Britain’s handling of Irish issues have already been voiced by Biden, reports The Times. Yael Lempert, America’s most senior diplomat in Britain, told Lord Frost, the Brexit minister, that the government was “inflaming” tensions in Ireland and Europe with its opposition to checks at ports. Lempert said she had been told to take the step of issuing London with a demarche – which is a formal diplomatic reprimand rarely exchanged between allies.


The memo said that the US “strongly urged” Britain to come to a “negotiated settlement”, even if that meant “unpopular compromises,” according to reports. In a meeting on June 3, the US diplomat warned Frost that the increasingly bitter dispute between Britain and the EU over the protocol was “commanding the attention” of Biden before his first meeting with Johnson today. Ahead of the talks, Mr Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan warned that the president harbours “very deep” concerns on the issue provoked by Brexit. Mr Sullivan said the president believes the post-Brexit Northern Ireland Protocol is “critical” to ensure that the Good Friday Agreement is protected – as Britain and the EU try to resolve the issue of checks in the Irish Sea.

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Ha ha ha!

Zelensky Tells Biden Ukraine Needs Clear Plan For Accession To NATO (ZH)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stressed in his phone conversation with U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday that Ukraine needs “a real step-by-step plan” tied to calendar dates for its accession to NATO, the chief of the Ukrainian presidential office Andriy Yermak said according to a report on Ukraine’s official website. The time of statements and declarations of intent should be a thing of the past, Zelensky told Biden. “There can be no doubt that Ukraine is an integral part of Europe in terms of its value foundation. Now, in the new situation in Europe, we need a logistical plan for Ukraine’s accession to the Alliance in the near future. NATO is a way of maximum protection for our country,” Zelensky said.

According to a second official report, Zelensky also informed Biden about the situation in Donbas, a Ukrainian territory temporarily occupied by Russian-backed separatists, and explained the reasons and nature of the periodic escalation of the conflict. “The so-called withdrawal of Russian troops is only an imitation,” Zelensky said. There was still a high concentration of Russian troops and heavy weapons in the temporarily occupied Ukraine’s territories and near the Ukrainian border, he explained. “Ukraine’s move to NATO is also an opportunity to achieve the preconditions for establishing a stable and lasting peace in Donbas,” the second report states.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on June 4 during an event at The Brookings Institution that the best way for Ukraine to move toward membership in NATO is to implement reforms to fight corruption and to modernize its defense and security institutions. “We are helping [Ukraine] with that as they move toward further Euro-Atlantic integration,” he added. NATO provides support to Ukraine in the form of training and capacity building, Stoltenberg said, and encouraged NATO Allies “to do more of that.”

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Aug 192016
 
 August 19, 2016  Posted by at 9:51 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  2 Responses »


Walker Evans Waterfront in New Orleans. French market sidewalk scene 1935

Paul Singer: Market ‘Breakdown’ To Be ‘Sudden, Intense, And Large’ (CNBC)
Vancouver Housing Market Implodes: Average Price Plunges 20% In 1 Month (ZH)
UK’s £8.8 Trillion Wealth Owes Much to Housing (BBG)
Moody’s Lowers Outlook On Australia Banks To Negative (R.)
China’s Secret Lists of Zombie Borrowers Leave Banks in the Dark (BBG)
As China Shrinks, Mongolia Has an Epic Economic Meltdown (BBG)
Stiglitz: The Euro Is On Course To Fail (Economist)
The Subtle Tyranny of Blockchain (Thomas)
It’s Time to Abolish the DEA and America’s “War on Drugs” Gulag (CHS)
The US Is Promoting War Crimes In Yemen (G.)
Greek Coast Guard Rescues Dozens Of Migrants Stuck On Islet (AP)
The Fishermen of Lesbos (Hakai)

 

 

“Experience doesn’t count for much, and extreme confidence may be fatal.”

Paul Singer: Market ‘Breakdown’ To Be ‘Sudden, Intense, And Large’ (CNBC)

In a bleak new letter to investors, Paul Singer’s Elliott Management warns that the bond market is “broken” and that when the central bank actions of recent years no longer ward off a market downturn, the subsequent loss of confidence could be severe. The fund’s recent investor letter, which covers the second quarter, notes that Elliott’s managers are currently seeing “what is in many ways the most peculiar period we have faced in 39 years.” Too much power has been ceded to central banks, the letter adds, the value of money has been debased, inflation is probably inevitable, and when it happens, it could be swift and impossible to tamp down.

Elliott is a $28 billion fund founded in 1977 by Singer, now its president. The fund is up more than 6% for the year through July, according to an investor. Given the persistence of low or negative yields on government and other bonds and the continued stampede to buy them nonetheless, today’s environment marks “the biggest bond bubble in world history,” and “the global bond market is broken,” the investor letter states. The letter discusses, at some length, the oddity of an investor mentality that flies to an asset class regarded as a “safe haven” even when there are low or nonexistent returns attached to it and no guarantee that current conditions will persist.

In one wry aside, the letter suggests a safety warning be attached to the $12 trillion government bond market now trading at negative yields: “Hold such instruments at your own risk; danger of serious injury or death to your capital!” Trading in this market is particularly difficult, it adds. “Everyone is in the dark,” Elliott notes. “Experience doesn’t count for much, and extreme confidence may be fatal.” Moreover, “the ultimate breakdown (or series of breakdowns) from this environment is likely to be surprising, sudden, intense, and large.”

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Coming soon to a theater near you. Denmark, Holland, Australia, New Zealand, UK, the list is long.

Vancouver Housing Market Implodes: Average Price Plunges 20% In 1 Month (ZH)

It appears that the Vancouver housing market has slammed shut. Which is hardly a surprise: virtually everyone saw it coming, the only question was when. Eilers says he’s been warning of a real estate slow-down for at least a year due to the region’s unsustainable and unsupportable prices. West Vancouver, where he does a large part of his business, had a benchmark detached home price of almost $3.4 million in July according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver. “The market in West Van is up 450 per cent since 2001. So is everyone making 600 per cent more income than they were so they can pay their taxes and buy their houses? Of course not. So how is this inflation been financed? By off-shore money and record debt.”

Precisely what we said at the start of the year when we first heard horror stories about Chinese buyers paying cash, sight unseen, for any and every local luxury, and not so luxury home. It appears that it is not just the 15% luxury tax implemented on on July 25 that has burst the bubble: according to Eilers sales were dropping even before the tax. According to the data, July was another slow month in West Vancouver with only 44 sales, down from 80 in 2015. June saw 74 sales, also down from 102 the year before. The pattern has left the market “devastated”, Eilers adds. While it may be too early to make a definitive conclusion, after all while earlier this month, the REBGV released its statistics for the month of July, saying the data showed the market had slowed down to “normal levels”, there was still no official August data available, and thus no actual indication of the slowdown.

Fortunately for buyers, real-time data proves otherwise. Zolo, a Canadian real estate brokerage, keeps track of MLS home sales in real-time and reports prices as an average rather than the “benchmark price” used by the REBGV. It currently shows a major correction underway in most Metro Vancouver markets. According to the website, the City of Vancouver currently has an average home price of $1.1 million, down 20.7% over the last 28 days and down 24.5% over the last three months. The average detached home is $2.6 million, down 7% compared to three months ago.

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What a bubble looks like. This is going to be painful. Re: Vancouver.

UK’s £8.8 Trillion Wealth Owes Much to Housing (BBG)

The total net worth of the U.K. at the end of 2015 was £8.8 trillion ($11.6 trillion), the Office for National Statistics said in London on Thursday. Much of the £493 billion jump from a year earlier came from the £355 billion increase in the value dwellings. The data also showed the U.K. was ahead of other G-7 countries in terms of growth of non-financial assets in 2014.

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More housing shock, more pain to come. “The strong price appreciation of residential real estate has been driving an increase in household debt to a record high..”

Moody’s Lowers Outlook On Australia Banks To Negative (R.)

Moody’s has lowered its outlook on Australia’s banks to negative from stable, warning of sluggish profit growth due to slow wage increases, record-low interest rates, strong lending competition and rising household debt. The agency said the banks, whose credit ratings are among the highest in the world, could be hurt by an increase in problem loans among mining companies and households in mining-dependent states. Moody’s action came after S&P in July also placed major Australian banks’ AA- ratings on negative outlook, in a signal that a downgrade was possible. Both agencies rate the banks one rung below the highest, triple-A, investment grade. A downgrade would make financing more expensive for banks at a time when regulators want them to put aside more cash to weather any repeat of the global financial crisis.

Australia’s highly profitable “Big Four” banks – National Australia Bank, ANZ Banking Group, Westpac and Commonwealth Bank – emerged from the financial crisis relatively unscathed but are facing questions over their capital levels, slowing earnings growth and rising bad debts. “The outlook change reflects Moody’s expectation of a more challenging operating environment for banks in Australia for the remainder of 2016 and beyond,” Frank Mirenzi, a vice president and senior analyst at Moody’s, said in a statement. He noted that profit growth could slow and asset quality decline, and make banks and consumers more vulnerable to economic shocks. “The strong price appreciation of residential real estate has been driving an increase in household debt to a record high,” Mirenzi noted.

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China would collapse if not for the shadow banks. It’s fully addicted.

China’s Secret Lists of Zombie Borrowers Leave Banks in the Dark (BBG)

There’s a list Ni Baixiang, head of Industrial & Commercial Bank of China’s Jiangxi branch, would love to get his hands on. Commonly referred to as the “zombie list,” it’s compiled by Jiangxi regional authorities and holds the names of the most deadbeat of borrowers: state-owned companies deemed too weak to survive and destined to be wound down. In short, the kind of enterprises banks already weighed down by rising bad loans want to steer well clear of. Only, neither Ni nor his competitors in Jiangxi are allowed to know who they are. “They won’t tell us because if we know, we’ll lose confidence,” Ni, whose bank is China’s largest, told reporters after a press briefing in Beijing earlier this month.

Ni’s dilemma underscores the challenge China faces as it tries to stem a tide of bad loans while carrying out an orderly restructuring of a state corporate sector burdened by overcapacity and bloated bureaucracies. Several provincial governments are withholding information on zombie borrowers from banks for fear that they’ll cut off financing immediately, according to officials who asked not to be identified. In several provinces, government-compiled lists of zombie companies are also kept secret from local banking regulators, the people said, asking not to be named discussing sensitive information. Knowing which state-owned companies get the “zombie” designation can be crucial for bankers because authorities ultimately decide whether they’ll fail, and local officials often meddle in banks’ lending decisions.

An economy growing at the slowest pace in a quarter century is adding urgency to President Xi Jinping’s push to steer China away from the investment-led model it’s relied on in the past. A key part of that is restructuring industries saddled with overcapacity, such as steel, cement and coal. McKinsey estimates that shedding surplus industrial capacity could add $5.6 trillion to the economy between now and 2030.

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China’s making up the numbers it goes along, but here’s how we find out how it’s really doing.

As China Shrinks, Mongolia Has an Epic Economic Meltdown (BBG)

Back in 2008, Mongolia honored its revered national hero Genghis Khan with an enormous, stainless steel statue on the bank of the Tuul River about a half-hour’s drive outside of the capital of Ulaanbaatar. The 13th century conqueror’s name graces the capital’s international airport and his image is also plastered on the tugrik, the local currency. Right now, Khans aren’t getting much respect. The government, having burned through much of its foreign currency reserves, faces a crushing debt burden and is having trouble meeting its civil service payroll. On Thursday, the central bank hiked its benchmark interest rate by a remarkable 4.5 percentage points to 15% to prop up the tugrik, the world’s worst performing currency in August.

Mongolia, a mineral-rich and landlocked $12 billion economy bordering Russia and China, is staring at a full-blown balance of payments crisis. It’s caused barely a ripple in global financial markets, but the nation’s economic meltdown offers instructive lessons to far bigger resource-reliant economies like Brazil, Venezuela, Russia and Saudi Arabia. This is an economy that gives new meaning to what economists call the resource curse. An overabundance of natural resources can result in lopsided economic growth, government waste and boom-bust cycles that can leave a country’s finances in tatters. “Mongolia should be much richer than it is,” said Lutz Roehmeyer, a money manager at Landesbank Berlin Investment. “There is nowhere else in the world where it is so easy to dig up resources without any problems and sell the commodities to China with such low transportation costs.”

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It’s way too late to save the euro.

Stiglitz: The Euro Is On Course To Fail (Economist)

Those in search of an antidote to the anxieties that arise from Britain’s vote to leave the European Union should avoid the latest book from Joseph Stiglitz. Its subject is the euro, which has hitherto been the main font of fears for Europe and (his analysis suggests) will soon be once again. It is a meaty subject, suited to a big-name economist. Mr Stiglitz has won a Nobel prize, served as a feather-ruffling chief economist for the World Bank and written several books with a fair claim to prescience, notably, “Globalisation and Its Discontents”, published in 2002. The main argument of his new book is that, on its current course, the euro is certain to fail—and indeed, that it was fatally flawed from birth.

It entails a fixed exchange rate and a single interest rate for its members, which means countries must forgo the option to devalue in times of economic weakness. To make up for that loss, the euro’s architects should have created institutions, such as jointly issued bonds, mutual backing of bank deposits and a common fund for unemployment insurance, so the costs of righting each economy are shared. Instead the burden falls on individual countries through austerity policies, such as tax rises and wage cuts. The results have been ugliest in Greece, where national income has shrunk by a quarter since 2007 and where the unemployment rate is 24%. There is still time to put in place better policies, thinks Mr Stiglitz. But an amicable divorce would be preferable to the current situation, which puts the considerable achievement of European integration at risk.

A good chunk of the book is taken up with a critique of policymakers’ efforts to address the euro crisis. Mr Stiglitz rightly takes issue with the blame-the-victim analysis of the euro’s failings that is commonly heard in Germany. The persistent trade surpluses of Germany and the vast deficits of boomtime Spain, Portugal and Greece are two sides of the same coin. Indeed, in a world short of aggregate demand, German thrift is the bigger failing, argues Mr Stiglitz. He favours the remedy, first proposed by John Maynard Keynes, of forcing creditor countries to adjust by taxing their trade surpluses.

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“In any protocol, everyone has to act the same. But in a blockchain like Ethereum, everyone has to think the same.”

The Subtle Tyranny of Blockchain (Thomas)

The past months have become a new chapter in the evolution of blockchain technology. Ethereum’s fork in the wake of the DAO hacks. Bitcoin’s almost-fork in the wake of the (still unresolved) block size debate. All of this is leading to the growing frustration and even disillusionment of key figures in the crypto-currency community. I left the Bitcoin community in 2012 for very similar reasons. In 2011, I was part of the group that helped Gavin Andresen design the Pay-to-Script-Hash (P2SH) feature. The design wasn’t very complex, it was backwards-compatible and provided crucial building blocks for improving Bitcoin’s security and performance. Unfortunately, getting it deployed turned out to be very political.

It was easy to extrapolate from this change to more advanced functionality still on the roadmap and get depressed about our chances to make important progress in the future. As the Bitcoin price rose, the number of stakeholders expanded and the amount of money at stake increasingly dominated the technical discussion. With this context in mind, the recent situation with Ethereum is not surprising in the slightest. As a blockchain grows, the larger and highly vested userbase becomes more and more difficult to shepard. When combined with time pressure (i.e. the 27-day DAO split creation period), something had to give. There wasn’t enough time to get the sort of buy-in and preparation needed to safely hardfork a system like Ethereum.

At the root of the difficulty in updating blockchains is the need to maintain shared state. In any protocol, everyone has to act the same. But in a blockchain like Ethereum, everyone has to think the same. Everyone’s memory (also known as “state” in computer science terms) has to be exactly the same and evolve according to the same rules. Shared state adds tremendous complexity and that has a big impact on developers: Blockchains are a pain to work with. Everyone who has done it knows what I’m talking about. The fact that blockchain has been largely ignored by major tech companies and embraced by the financial industry is partly because that industry has a relatively high tolerance for arcane and complex systems.

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To once again quote Michael Moore: You can’t declare war on a noun.

It’s Time to Abolish the DEA and America’s “War on Drugs” Gulag (CHS)

It’s difficult to pick the most destructive of America’s many senseless, futile and tragically needless wars, but the “War on Drugs” is near the top of the list.Prohibition of mind-altering substances has not just failed–it has failed spectacularly, and generated extremely destructive and counterproductive consequences. What was the result of the Prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s? Prohibition instantly criminalized 40+% of the adult populace and created hugely profitable criminal organizations. What was the result of the “War on Drugs”? This modern-day Prohibition instantly criminalized large swaths of the adult populace and created hugely profitable criminal organizations. If you want to increase drug use, criminalize innocent citizens and spawn gargantuan criminal organizations, then by all means declare “war” via Prohibition.

The results of Prohibition/War on Drugs are so visibly perverse and so destructive that the entire enterprise is sickeningly Orwellian. The well-paid apologists for Prohibition/War on Drugs claim that imprisoning millions of people “helps” them avoid drugs. If you think being tossed in prison for a few years “helps” people, then step right up and accept a fiver (5-year sentence) in an American prison, which is essentially a factory that produces one product: people damaged by imprisonment, deprived of their full citizenship, hobbled by a felony conviction–ex-con beneficiaries of years of tutorials by hardened criminals. This is as Orwellian as the Vietnam War’s famous “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”

If you think throwing millions of people in prison “helps” them or society, you are either insane or you’re making a living in the gulag or our sick system of “justice”. If you don’t think America has a “War on Drugs” Gulag, please glance at this chart of Americans in jail and prison – many for drug-related offenses:

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“..inside Yemen this is not perceived to be a Saudi bombing campaign, this is a US bombing campaign..”

The US Is Promoting War Crimes In Yemen (G.)

Saudi Arabia resumed its appalling war in Yemen last week and has already killed dozens more civilians, destroyed a school full of children and leveled a hospital full of sick and injured people. The campaign of indiscriminate killing – though let’s call it what it is: a war crime – has now been going on for almost a year and a half. And the United States bears a large part of the responsibility. This US-backed war is not just a case of the Obama administration sitting idly by while its close ally goes on a destructive spree of historic proportions. The government is actively selling the Saudis billions of dollars of weaponry. They’re re-supplying planes engaged in the bombing runs and providing “intelligence” for the targets that Saudi Arabia is hitting.

Put simply, the US is quite literally funding a humanitarian catastrophe that, by some measures, is larger than the crisis in Syria. As the New York Times editorial board wrote this week: “Experts say the coalition would be grounded if Washington withheld its support.” Yet all we’ve heard is crickets. High-ranking Obama administration officials are hardly ever asked about the crisis. Cable television news has almost universally ignored it. Both the Clinton and Trump presidential campaigns have been totally silent on this issue despite their constant arguing over who would be better at “stopping terrorism”. Beyond the grotesque killing of civilians, it’s clear at this point that the Saudis’ bombing campaign has also boosted al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (Aqap) to a level which Reuters described as “stronger and richer” than anytime in its 20-year history.

Jake Tapper commendably broke the television news blackout about Yemen on his CNN show on Wednesday. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, one of the very few elected representatives talking about the crisis, told Tapper that “it’s wild to me” that the Congress isn’t debating the “unauthorized” war in Yemen. The Saudis “could not do it without the United States”, he said. “We have made the decision to go to war in Yemen” – against Saudi Arabia’s enemies, not ours – without any debate. “If you talk to Yemenis, they will tell you that inside Yemen this is not perceived to be a Saudi bombing campaign, this is a US bombing campaign,” Murphy continued. “What’s happening is we are helping to radicalize the the Yemeni population against the United States.”

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Not from Turkey. Lybia is more likely.

Greek Coast Guard Rescues Dozens Of Migrants Stuck On Islet (AP)

Greece’s coast guard rescued dozens of migrants Friday whose boat ran aground on a deserted islet off the coast of southwestern Greece, hundreds of miles from the usual entry point of migrants into the European Union nation. The boat carrying about 70 people ran aground overnight on the tiny islet of Sapientza, off the southwestern tip of the Peloponnese, the coast guard said. The vast majority of migrants reach Greece’s eastern Aegean islands a few miles from the Turkish coast.

Coast guard vessels picked up the migrants Friday morning, ferrying them to the mainland where they were to be registered. It was not immediately clear what type of boat they had been on, where they had set sail from or where they had been sailing to. Separately, government figures showed 261 migrants or refugees arrived on Greek islands in the 24 hours from Thursday morning to Friday morning – a jump compared to recent figures, which had ranged from a few dozen to about 150 per day. Of those who arrived in the last 24 hours, the vast majority – 139 people – reached the eastern Aegean island of Lesvos. The rest arrived on Chios, Samos, Leros and Karpathos.

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Endearing.

The Fishermen of Lesbos (Hakai)

The Greek island of Lesbos is at the forefront of the refugee crisis as boatload after boatload of men, women, and children fleeing conflict in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere arrive on its shores. While citizen volunteers, NGOs, and governments claim much of the spotlight for rescue and recovery efforts, local people—especially those most experienced on the water—play a vital role, even at risk to their livelihoods and, perhaps, personal health. Greek video journalist Nikolia Apostolou introduces us to Lesbos fishermen on the front lines.

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