invasion Archives - The Automatic Earth

Showing signs of mental illness, Zelensky says he's taking back #Crimea, home to Russian Black Sea Fleet since 1783, where few Ukrainians have ever lived, whose population is 90% Russian – where 90,000 Red Army soldiers lost their lives expelling Hitler's armies during WW II. pic.twitter.com/OtWNDGFXie

— Alan Watson (@DietHeartNews) August 24, 2025

🚨WOW! Trump just DOUBLED DOWN and said that the Autopen pardons are WORTHLESS!

They should all be voided and then every last person pardoned should be PROSECUTED!

"All those pardons he gave to some very bad people, very unpatriotic people, very evil people, it looks to me like… pic.twitter.com/GQ1SvIkLIx

— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) August 25, 2025

Today in 1991, 21-year-old Linus Torvalds introduces Linux in an online post. pic.twitter.com/5NeNhj0zIp

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) August 24, 2025

They purposely killed the Blackberry because you could remove the battery and disable every surveillance feature on the device.

Your current device is permanently on, listening and following you.

Few understand this.

— Tyler (@TylerDurden) August 25, 2025

Scalia

Here's former Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia — probably the single most popular justice among the American Right in the last 5 decades — explaining why burning the American flag is vital free speech under the 1st Am, and why banning it is clearly unconstitutional. pic.twitter.com/ijRcEJoB0z

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) August 25, 2025

“He would style himself as a tough, wartime leader who would promise “blood, sweat and tears” to the Ukrainian people in return for saving the nation..”

Ideal for warmongers.

• Zelenski Rejects Giving Land As Fascists Promise To Kill Him (MoA)

The (former) President Zelenski of Ukraine is refusing any compromise in negotiations with Russia. He would be killed and replaced by a more right wing figure if he would consider otherwise. In a speech on Sunday marking Ukraine’s independence Zelenski insisted of recapturing all of Ukraine including Crimea. As the Washington Post summarizes: “In Kyiv on Sunday, Ukraine’s Independence Day, Zelensky addressed the nation and vowed to restore its territorial integrity. “Ukraine will never again be forced in history to endure the shame that the Russians call a ‘compromise,’” he said. “We need a just peace.” He listed some of the regions occupied by Russia — including Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea — and said “no temporary occupation” could change the fact that the land belongs to Ukraine.

Zelenski thus rejects calls by U.S. President Trump to give up Ukrainian territory in exchange for peace. One reason why he does so may be the personal danger he is in. Any compromise about territory may well cost his life. The London Times continues to make propaganda for Nazis. After a recent whitewashing interview with Azov Nazi leader Biletsky (archived) it yesterday published an interview with the former leader of the fascist Right Sector in Odessa Serhii Sterneneko. Sterneneko had a leading role in the 2014 massacres in Maidan Square and at the Trade Union’s House in Odessa. The Times is whitewashing his participation in those events. It does not mind to publish his threats against Zelenski: “[A]mong Ukraine’s younger generation of soldiers and civilians, Sternenko’s brand of truth to power has wide popularity. “I say what I think, and people like what I say.”

His views on President Putin’s demand for Ukraine to cede the territory it defends in the eastern Donbas region as a precondition for possible peace are typically direct. “If [President] Zelensky were to give any unconquered land away, he would be a corpse — politically, and then for real,” Sternenko said. “It would be a bomb under our sovereignty. People would never accept it.” Sternenko, who himself has avoided the draft, wants the war to go on forever: “Indeed, as he discussed Russian intransigence and President Trump’s efforts to end the war, Sternenko’s thoughts on the possibility of peace appeared to be absent of any compromise over Ukrainian soil. “At the end there will only be one victor, Russia or Ukraine,” he said. “If the Russian empire continues to exist in this present form then it will always want to expand. Compromise is impossible. The struggle will be eternal until the moment Russia leaves Ukrainian land.”

Other British media continue to promote the rise of Nazi affiliated figures in Ukraine. The Guardian adds by promoting the presidential campaign of the former Ukrainian general and now ambassador to the UK Valeri Zaluzhny: In private conversations, Zaluzhnyi has not confirmed he plans to go into politics, but he has allowed himself to speculate on what kind of platform he could propose if he does make the decision. Those close to him say he sees Israel as a model, despite its current bloody actions in Gaza, viewing it as a small country surrounded by enemies and fully focused on defence.

He would style himself as a tough, wartime leader who would promise “blood, sweat and tears” to the Ukrainian people in return for saving the nation, channelling Winston Churchill. In one private conversation, he said: “I don’t know if the Ukrainian people will be ready for that, ready for these tough policies.” A day before being fired as the commander of the Ukrainian army Zaluzhny took a selfie with the leader of the fascist Right Sector and commander of Right Sector brigade of Ukrainian military in front of a portrait of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera and the fascist OUN flag.

Musical chairs solve nothing. It would still be Azov.

• Zaluzhny ‘Biding Time’ To Challenge Zelensky – Guardian (RT)

There is an “increasing belief” in Kiev that former commander-in-chief, Valery Zaluzhny, is preparing to go head-to-head with Vladimir Zelensky in a potential presidential race, The Guardian has claimed. Amid growing tensions, Ukrainian leader Zelensky removed the general from his post in February 2024 and dispatched him to the UK to serve as Kiev’s ambassador. In an article on Monday, The Guardian claimed that while Zaluzhny has painstakingly concealed any political ambition he may have, “many assume he is just biding his time before entering the fray.” The British newspaper cited the general-turned-envoy’s supposed musings as to how he would present himself to Ukrainian voters and what platform he would run on, should he decide to vie for the presidency.

The outlet further stated that Zaluzhny has been receiving a steady flow of Ukrainian and Western dignitaries at both the embassy in London and in Kiev earlier this year. The Guardian also quoted anonymous sources as saying that in March, following the infamous showdown between Zelensky and US President Donald Trump at the White House, Vice President J.D. Vance secretly reached out to Zaluzhny, in an apparent attempt to sound him out as a potential alternative leader. He reportedly turned down Vance’s overtures. Last week, freelance journalist Katie Livingstone claimed that Zaluzhny was “quietly preparing a run for president – in direct opposition to Zelensky.” She quoted an unnamed source as suggesting that his team had “effectively begun” an unofficial PR campaign.

Zaluzhny’s press representative was quick to deny the speculation. A survey of 1,000 people in Ukraine conducted July 4-5 by ‘Rating’ indicated that the former commander-in-chief was trusted by 73% of respondents. That would put him in first place among political figures in the country, with Zelensky trailing six percentage points behind, the poll suggested. Another survey by a different pollster in late June showed that 41% of Ukrainians believed the country was drifting toward authoritarianism. Zelensky’s presidential term expired in May 2024, but he has refused to hold new elections, citing martial law. The Kremlin insists that the Ukrainian leader has lost legitimacy.

“69% of citizens “favor a negotiated end to the war as soon as possible.” Just 24% wish to keep fighting.”

• CIA’s Covert Ukraine Invasion Plan (Kit Klarenberg)

On August 7th, US polling giant Gallup published the remarkable results of a survey of Ukrainians. Public support for Kiev “fighting until victory” has plummeted to a record low “across all segments” of the population, “regardless of region or demographic group.” In a “nearly complete reversal from public opinion in 2022,” 69% of citizens “favor a negotiated end to the war as soon as possible.” Just 24% wish to keep fighting. However, vanishingly few believe the proxy war will end anytime soon. The reasons for Ukrainian pessimism on this point are unstated, but an obvious explanation is the intransigence of President Volodymyr Zelensky, encouraged by his overseas backers – Britain in particular. London’s reverie of breaking up Russia into readily-exploitable chunks dates back centuries, and became turbocharged in the wake of the February 2014 Maidan coup. In July that year, a precise blueprint for the current proxy conflict was published by the Institute for Statecraft, a NATO/MI6 cutout founded by veteran British military intelligence apparatchik Chris Donnelly.

In response to the Donbass civil war, Statecraft advocated targeting Moscow with a variety of “anti-subversive measures”. This included “economic boycott, breach of diplomatic relations,” as well as “propaganda and counter-propaganda, pressure on neutrals.” The objective was to produce “armed conflict of the old-fashioned sort” with Russia, which “Britain and the West could win.” While we are now witnessing in real-time the brutal unravelling of Donnelly’s monstrous plot, Anglo-American designs of using Ukraine as a beachhead for all-out war with Moscow date back far further.

In August 1957, the CIA secretly drew up elaborate plans for an invasion of Ukraine by US special forces. It was hoped neighbourhood anti-Communist agitators would be mobilized as footsoldiers to assist in the effort. A detailed 200-page report, Resistance Factors and Special Forces Areas, set out demographic, economic, geographical, historical and political factors throughout the then-Soviet Socialist Republic that could facilitate, or impede, Washington’s quest to ignite local insurrection, and in turn the USSR’s ultimate collapse. The mission was forecast to be a delicate and difficult balancing act, as much of Ukraine’s population held “few grievances” against Russians or Communist rule, which could be exploited to foment an armed uprising.

Just as problematically, “the long history of union between Russia and Ukraine, which stretches in an almost unbroken line from 1654 to the present day,” resulted in “many Ukrainians” having “adopted the Russian way of life”. Problematically, there was thus a pronounced lack of “resistance to Soviet rule” among the population. The “great influence” of Russian culture over Ukrainians, “many influential positions” in local government being held “by Russians or Ukrainians sympathetic to [Communist] rule, and “relative similarity” of their “languages, customs, and backgrounds”, meant there were “fewer points of conflict between the Ukrainians and Russians” than in Warsaw Pact nations. Throughout those satellite states, the CIA had to varying success already recruited clandestine networks of “freedom fighters” as anti-Communist Fifth Columnists. Yet, the Agency remained keen to identify potential “resistance” actors in Ukraine:

“Some Ukrainians are apparently only slightly aware of the differences which set them apart from Russians and feel little national antagonism. Nevertheless, important grievances exist, and among other Ukrainians there is opposition to Soviet authority which often has assumed a nationalist form. Under favorable conditions, these people might be expected to assist American Special Forces in fighting against the regime.”

But Russia will.

• US Won’t Play Key Role In Ukraine’s Security Guarantees – Trump (RT)

Europe must take the lead in providing “significant security guarantees” to Ukraine, US President Donald Trump said on Monday. Washington’s role will be supportive rather than primary, he stressed. “Europe is going to give them significant security guarantees – and they should, because they’re right there,” Trump told reporters at the Oval Office. He added that Washington would remain involved “from the standpoint of backup.” This isn’t the first time Trump has clarified Washington’s role in resolving the Ukraine conflict. Speaking in the Oval Office last week with Vladimir Zelensky, Trump was asked if security guarantees for Kiev could involve US troops. We’ll let you know that maybe later today, we’re meeting with the leaders of seven great countries. There will be a lot of help. Europe is the first line of defense because they are there, but we’re going to help, we’ll be involved.

Since the talks with Zelensky Trump has also clarified that as far as Washington is concerned, Ukraine getting Crimea back and joining NATO are both “impossible.” He told Fox & Friends last Tuesday that Kiev had approached the US-led military bloc to seek help in trying to get the peninsula back. “They went in and said ‘We want to get Crimea back’. This was at the beginning,” Trump revealed. “The other thing they said was ‘We want to be a member of NATO’. Well, both of those things are impossible.” “It was always a no-no,” both during the time of the Soviet Union, and now with Russia, Trump explained, adding that Russia has always stressed it did not want “the enemy” on its border. Zelensky said on Saturday that new details of security guarantees for Ukraine would be ready “in the coming days.”

“The teams of Ukraine, the United States, and European partners” are working together on the architecture of these guarantees, he said. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte stressed that “robust security guarantees will be essential” and claimed that Washington, despite its limited role, would remain part of the process. Zelensky and his Western European backers have called for “Article 5-like guarantees” that would obligate countries to respond collectively if Ukraine were attacked. He also proposed defining which states would be responsible for ground support, air defense, and maritime security, alongside commitments to fund Ukraine’s armed forces.

Speaking in Kiev on Friday, Rutte called for strengthening Ukraine’s military capacity and putting in place binding guarantees from Europe and the US. Some nations have even floated sending peacekeepers, while Canada has not ruled out contributing troops. Washington has rejected deploying ground forces but left open the possibility of air support. After meeting Trump earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed that Ukraine’s security must be ensured but warned against solutions that exclude Moscow. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov argued that guarantees “must be subject to consensus” and denounced proposals involving foreign military intervention as “absolutely unacceptable.”

The Supreme Court as a woke podium.

• The Judicial Calvinball of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson (Turley)

“I just feel that I have a wonderful opportunity.” Those words of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson came in a recent interview, wherein the justice explained how she felt liberated after becoming a member of the Supreme Court “to tell people in my opinions how I feel about the issues. And that’s what I try to do.” Jackson’s sense of liberation has increasingly become the subject of consternation on the court itself, as she unloads on her colleagues in strikingly strident opinions. Most recently, Jackson went ballistic after her colleagues reversed another district court judge who issued a sweeping injunction barring the Trump Administration from canceling roughly $783 million in grants in the National Institutes of Health. Again writing alone, Jackson unleashed a tongue-lashing on her colleagues, who she suggested were unethical, unthinking cutouts for Trump.

She denounced her fellow justices, stating, “This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist. Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this administration always wins.” For some of us who have followed Jackson’s interestingly controversial tenure on the court, it was crushingly ironic. Although Jackson accused her colleagues of following a new rule that they must always rule with Trump, she herself is widely viewed as the very embodiment of the actual rule of the made-up game based on the comic strip of Calvin and Hobbes. In Jacksonian jurisprudence, it often seems like there are no fixed rules, only fixed outcomes. She then attacks her colleagues for a lack of integrity or empathy. To quote Calvin, Jackson proves that “there’s no problem so awful that you can’t add some guilt to it and make it even worse.”

Jackson has attacked her colleagues in opinions, shattering traditions of civility and restraint. Her colleagues have clearly had enough. She now regularly writes diatribes that neither of her fellow liberals — Justices Sonia Sotomayor or Elena Kagan — are willing to sign on to. Indeed, she has raged against opinions that her liberal colleagues have joined. Take Stanley v. City of Sanford. Justices Jackson and Neil Gorsuch took some fierce swings at each other in a case concerning a retired firefighter who wants to sue her former employer. The majority, including Kagan, rejected a ridiculous claim from a Florida firefighter who sued for discrimination for a position that she had neither held nor sought.

The court ruled that the language of the statute clearly required plaintiffs to be “qualified” for a given position before they could claim to have been denied it due to discrimination. (Stanley has Parkinson’s disease and had taken a disability retirement at age 47 due to the progress of the disease.) Jackson, however, was irate that Stanley could not sue for the denial of a position that she never sought, held, or was qualified to perform. Jackson accused the majority of once again showing how “pure textualists can easily disguise their own preferences as ‘textual’ inevitabilities.” It was not only deeply insulting, but perfectly bizarre, given that Kagan had joined in the majority opinion. Kagan is about as pure a textualist judge as she is a pure taxidermist.

“Good luck with that plan when the FBI turns up tomorrow at your place of work.”

• Trump Fires Fed Governor Lisa Cook For “Potentially Criminal Conduct” (ZH)

Update (2330ET): Former Fed governor Lisa Cook says she will not resign, the Washington Post reports, citing a statement from Cook. “President Trump purported to fire me ‘for cause’ when no cause exists under the law, and he has no authority to do so,” Cook said through a spokeswoman: WaPo “I will continue to carry out my duties to help the American economy as I have been doing since 2022,” Cook said. Good luck with that plan when the FBI turns up tomorrow at your place of work.
* * *
Promises made… promises kept… On Friday, President Trump warned that he would fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook who allegedly “falsified bank documents and property records to acquire more favorable loan terms” if she didn’t resign… She immediately played the victim card, claiming she “would not be bullied”. But now that is moot as President Trump has fired her, effective immediately: ” I have determined that there is sufficient cause to remove you from your position…
…
The Federal Reserve has tremendous responsibility for setting interest rates and regulating reserve and member banks. The American people must be able to have full confidence in the honesty of the members entrusted with setting policy and overseeing the Federal Reserve. In light of your deceitful and potentially criminal conduct in a financial matter, they cannot and I do not have such confidence in your integrity. At a minimum, the conduct at issue exhibits the sort of gross negligence in financial transactions that calls into question your competence and trustworthiness as a financial regulator.”

If/when Cook leaves/is fired, Trump will have a majority on the Fed board pic.twitter.com/6Hxn8f2PPw

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 21, 2025

“Everybody else is cancelling currency and putting in capital controls, and Trump is going in the opposite direction.”

“I still want to have one of those $500 notes.”

• War, Trump’s New $500 Note & Volcanos -Martin Armstrong (USAW)

Five weeks ago, legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong warned his “Socrates” predictive computer program showed a “100% Chance of Nuclear War.” After that, Trump was able to get Putin to Alaska to start meaningful peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. The chance for war is still 100%, but now, that war may not involve America. Armstrong explains, “My sources in Ukraine are telling me the losses on the battlefield are approaching 1.8 million, 5 million fled to Russia, 8 million fled to the EU. . .. Ukraine is about ready to fall apart. . .. I spread this to Washington and that is President Zelensky was sending $50 million per month to UAE. So, Zelensky has been preparing to leave. There is no way this guy could possibly retire in Ukraine. They will kill him.”

Does this mean the war may be over? Zelensky and nearly all of Europe’s leaders came to Washington recently to meet with President Trump, but it really was not to talk peace. Armstrong says, “The fact that all those leaders came to Washington—uninvited, they all met with Zelensky before they went to meet with Trump. Why did they come? Because they need war. I have warned Washington.” So, if Europe starts a wider war with Russia, will Trump stay out of it? Armstrong says, “Yes, Trump said no American troops from what I have been told. Trump refuses to send any American troops to Ukraine as peacekeepers—period.”

Reading between the lines, does this mean Trump is putting the EU on notice we are not going to Article 5 in if you start a war? Armstrong says, “Article 5 is voluntary. I have made this very clear to them in Washington. You don’t have to participate. . .. I can’t stop the war. The best I can do is reduce the amplitude. If I can keep America out of this war, that is our best outcome. . .. Europe knows it’s in trouble financially. They have $335 billion of Russian assets frozen. France has about $71 billion. . .. The rumor going around right now is if there is a peace deal and they have to release those frozen assets, France can’t because they have been dipping into them. Europe is a complete mess. When it comes down to handing back $335 billion in Russian assets, I am not sure Europe is prepared to do that.”

Armstrong says forget all the talk of the elite wanting to get rid of cash and replace it with digital currency. Armstrong says, “No, no, no. Why is Trump talking about a $500 note. . .. Trump would not even contemplate doing a $500 bill if he was going to cancel the currency. Everybody else is cancelling currency and putting in capital controls, and Trump is going in the opposite direction. . .. Gold is still projected to go much higher because it is anticipating war.”

One of the surprising things Armstrong brought up are new signals from “Socrates” on increasing volcanic activity all over the world. Hawaii’s Kilauea eruption happened for the 31st time since December on Friday. It spewed lava for 12 hours, and then there was the recent eruption in Northeast Russia that had a huge eruption after 600 years of lying dormant. Armstrong says, “We have every data base in there. Earthquakes, volcanos and temperatures back to 1869 from New York City. It does not show global warming. . .. The computer says we are heading to global cooling and not global warming. . .. The computer is showing from 2025 on, we are going to be seeing a lot more volcanic activity. I just got off the phone with someone from Italy, and they say the super volcano there is starting to become active.”

In closing, Armstrong says, “I still want to have one of those $500 notes.”]

“The black King of Dahomey.”

• A Lesson on Slavery for CNN (Paul Craig Roberts)

The saga of American slavery has more holes in it than the Zionist saga of the Holocaust. Recently President Trump wondered about the woke Smithsonian Institute’s fixation on slavery as if it was the principal problem the world faces today. The liberal media had a hissy fit. CNN rushed to do a program on slavery, the woke rectification for which is multiculturalism and the replacement of the white racist population by people of color. This is the political agenda of the Democrat Party. To watch white people so determined to achieve their own destruction by voting Democrat is amazing. The response made by those critical of CNN’s attack on white Americans was that slavery was a matter of the distant past, and we made amends for our responsibility in a civil war.

What nonsense. No American ever had any responsibility for slavery. The black King of Dahomey did. Here are the undeniable, indisputable, basic facts: Over the course of history far more white people have been slaves than blacks. Some of these white slaves were held by Romans and other conquerors in ancient times. Most were held by people of color who raided Europe’s Mediterranean coast for slaves. Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the US (1801-1809) had to send the US Navy and Marines to “the shores of Tripoli” to stop the North Africans from capturing American ships and enslaving their passengers and crews. In the New World (Caribbean Islands, North and South America) European colonists found abundant resources but no labor force.

British and European sea captains saw a business opportunity in purchasing slaves from the black King of Dahomey and selling them to the colonists as a labor force. The black King of Dahomey conducted annual slave wars against other blacks and sold the surplus to Arabs and to European sea captains. No white colonist in what later became the United States ever enslaved a black person. They purchased blacks already enslaved by the black King of Dahomey. When the United States came into existence in the late 18th century, slavery was an inherited institution. Slavery existed as the labor force for large agricultural plantations, the agri-businesses of the time. The plantations using slave labor did not enslave the slaves. They purchased already enslaved labor as no work force was available.

In the United States slavery was doomed as the frontier closed. Slavery had a long life because white immigrants who entered America could avoid becoming agricultural labor by moving west and occupying land to which the native Americans had use rights but not ownership rights as understood in Western law. Thus the native inhabitants could be dispossessed. As the constant stream of immigrant-invaders, such as the US and Europe are experiencing today, continued, the Indian lands were settled by the immigrant-invaders and the frontier closed by 1890. Slavery could not have existed beyond that date and, in fact, could not have lasted that long. Slavery was costly compared to the wages of free labor.

Slavery was an expensive labor force. In 19th century America a male field hand cost $1,500. If a slave had blacksmith or carpenter skills, he cost $2,000. The price of a slave was three to four times the annual income of a skilled white man such as a blacksmith. Moreover, a slave, if he was to be productive, needed sufficient food, housing, and medical care. Moreover, he required respect and appreciation, Many of the slaves were warriors captured in the black King of Dahomey’s slave wars. They were experienced fighters and had to be treated with respect. For a white plantation owner to be surrounded by a large number of black men and for him to expect them to work required his respect and proper treatment of his labor force in which he had a large investment.

Propaganda such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin was northern war propaganda against the South. A few issues back, the City Journal posed the question of who was in charge of a rice or sugar plantation in the Caribbean when the one white owner, the only white on the premises, had a work force of 50 black men. The idea that it was customary to whip black warriors and to rape their wives is farfetched.

“Making God”

• ‘Godfather of AI’ Warns Superintelligent Machines Could Replace Humanity (ET)

Geoffrey Hinton, the pioneering computer scientist called the “godfather of AI,” has once again sounded the alarm that the very technology he helped bring to life could spell the end of humanity as we know it. In an interview clip released Aug. 18 as part of the forthcoming film “Making God,” Hinton delivered one of his starkest warnings yet. He said that humanity risks being sidelined—and eventually replaced—by machines far smarter than ourselves. “Most people aren’t able to comprehend the idea of things more intelligent than us,” Hinton, a Nobel Prize winner for physics and a former Google executive, said in the clip. “They always think, ‘Well, how are we going to use this thing?’ They don’t think, ‘Well, how’s it going to use us?’”

Hinton said he is “fairly confident” that artificial intelligence will drive massive unemployment, pointing to early examples of tech giants such as Microsoft replacing junior programmers with AI. But the larger danger, he said, goes far beyond the workplace. The only silver lining is that “it won’t eat us, because it’ll be made of silicon,” he said. Hinton, 77, has spent decades pioneering deep learning, the neural network architecture that underpins today’s artificial intelligence systems. His breakthroughs in the 1980s—particularly the invention of the Boltzmann machine, which could learn to recognize patterns in data—helped open the door to image recognition and modern machine learning.

That work earned him the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.” The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences noted how Hinton’s early use of statistical physics provided the conceptual leap that made today’s AI revolution possible. But Hinton has since emerged as one of the field’s fiercest critics, warning that its rapid development has outpaced society’s ability to keep it safe. In 2023, he resigned from his role at Google so he could speak freely about the risks without implicating the company. In his Nobel lecture, Hinton acknowledged the potential benefits of AI—such as productivity gains and new medical treatments that could be a “wonderful advance for all humanity.” Yet he also warned that creating digital beings more intelligent than humans poses an “existential threat.”

“I wish I’d thought about safety issues too,” he said during the recent Ai4 conference in Las Vegas, reflecting on his career. He noted that he now regrets solely focusing on making AI work, rather than anticipating its risks. Hinton has previously estimated that there is a 10 percent to 20 percent chance that AI could wipe out humanity. In a June episode of The Diary of a CEO podcast, he said that the engineers behind today’s AI systems don’t fully understand the technology and broadly fall into two camps: one that believes in a dystopian future where humans are displaced, and the other that dismisses such fears as science fiction. “I think both of those positions are extreme,” Hinton said. “I often say 10 percent to 20 percent chance [for AI] to wipe us out. But that’s just gut, based on the idea that we’re still making them and we’re pretty ingenious. And the hope is that if enough smart people do enough research with enough resources, we’ll figure out a way to build them so they’ll never want to harm us.”

“If not for its exclusive deal with OpenAI, Apple would have no reason to refrain from more prominently featuring the X app and the Grok app in its App Store.”

• Musk Takes On Apple, OpenAI In Antitrust Showdown Over Chatbots (ZH)

Elon Musk’s X and xAI have filed a federal lawsuit in Fort Worth, Texas, accusing Apple and OpenAI of “locking up markets” to preserve their monopolies and shut out rivals. This comes as Musk’s long-running feud with OpenAI chief Sam Altman intensifies. The lawsuit centers on Apple’s recent deal to make OpenAI’s ChatGPT the only generative AI chatbot on the iPhone’s operating system, effectively shutting out xAI’s Grok and other rivals, such as Google’s Gemini and Anthropic. The lawsuit’s introduction argues that Apple and OpenAI have teamed up to protect their monopolies in smartphones and AI chatbots:

“This is a tale of two monopolists joining forces to ensure their continued dominance in a world rapidly driven by the most powerful technology humanity has ever created: artificial intelligence (“AI”). Working in tandem, Defendants Apple and OpenAI have locked up markets to maintain their monopolies and prevent innovators like X and xAI from competing.1 Plaintiffs bring this suit to stop Defendants from perpetrating their anticompetitive scheme and to recover billions in damages. AI is fundamentally reshaping our world. Technology powered by AI has not only become embedded in our daily lives but is also transforming critical sectors like healthcare, education, and finance.

The consensus among global business leaders, academics, and scientists is that AI adoption is both unavoidable and transformational—and businesses that do not plan for it risk falling behind. As Apple now recognizes, AI poses an existential threat to its business. For example, AI is rapidly advancing the rise of “super apps”—i.e., multi-functional platforms that offer many of the services of smartphones, such as social connectivity and messaging, financial services, e-commerce, and entertainment—that do not require a customer to be tied to a particular device. In other words, super apps, like those being developed by X and xAI, stand ready to upend the smartphone market and Apple’s entrenched monopoly in it.

The writing is on the wall. Apple’s Senior Vice President for Services, Eddy Cue, has expressed worries that AI might destroy Apple’s smartphone business, just as Apple’s iPhone did to Nokia’s handsets. Apple knows it cannot escape the inevitable—at least not alone. In a desperate bid to protect its smartphone monopoly, Apple has joined forces with the company that most benefits from inhibiting competition and innovation in AI: OpenAI, a monopolist in the market for generative AI chatbots. OpenAI quickly rose to dominance in the generative AI chatbot market after introducing its flagship service, ChatGPT, in 2022. Today, OpenAI controls at least 80 percent of the market. Because of OpenAI’s monopoly, other generative AI chatbots have struggled to gain share. xAI’s Grok has yet to gain more than a few percent of the market despite accolades about its superior features.

Just like Apple, OpenAI has incentive to protect its monopoly by thwarting competition and innovation in the generative AI chatbot market. And just like Apple, it has done so in violation of the antitrust laws.

In June 2024, Apple and OpenAI announced that Apple would integrate OpenAI’s ChatGPT into Apple’s iPhone operating system (“iOS”). Apple and OpenAI’s exclusive arrangement has made ChatGPT the only generative AI chatbot integrated into the iPhone. This means that if iPhone users want to use a generative AI chatbot for key tasks on their devices, they have no choice but to use ChatGPT, even if they would prefer to use more innovative and imaginative products like xAI’s Grok. An OpenAI strategy document recognized the importance of competition in this emerging and transformational space: “Real choice drives competition and benefits everyone. Users should be able to pick their AI assistant.” Yet Apple and OpenAI have colluded to prevent exactly that.”

Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation.

xAI will take immediate legal action.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 12, 2025

X and xAI argue: “If not for its exclusive deal with OpenAI, Apple would have no reason to refrain from more prominently featuring the X app and the Grok app in its App Store.” Just a few weeks ago, Musk threatened Apple with legal action over alleged antitrust violations regarding the App Store rankings of the Grok AI chatbot. He wrote in an X post that Apple’s behavior “makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store.” Musk is seeking an injunction to block Apple and OpenAI’s exclusive chatbot deal and billions in damages. If successful, the case could reshape how AI bots are distributed on smartphones.

“Veldkamp, who previously served as Dutch ambassador to Israel, had advocated a ban on imports from Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories..”

• Dutch Foreign Minister Quits Over Israel (RT)

Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp has stepped down in protest over the coalition government’s refusal to impose sanctions on Israel for its actions in Gaza. The resignation of Veldkamp, along with the country’s Minister for Foreign Trade Hanneke Boerma, has reduced the Dutch caretaker government to holding just 32 out of 150 seats. In a statement on Saturday the foreign ministry said that “after a meeting of the cabinet on the situation in Gaza,” the Social Contract (NSC) party, of which both officials are members, decided to withdraw from the caretaker coalition government.Veldkamp, who previously served as Dutch ambassador to Israel, had advocated a ban on imports from Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories in response to Israel’s continued military offensive in Gaza.

In a statement on its website on Friday, the party said that it had sought “additional measures” against Israel in light of the “increasingly deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza.” However, the other two coalition partners refused to back sanctions, prompting the NSC to pull out in protest. On Thursday, the Netherlands, along with 20 other nations, signed a joint declaration condemning Israeli plans to build an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank. Last month, Amsterdam declared two hardline Israeli ministers persona non grata. Back in June, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares called on the EU to “immediately suspend” the EU-Israel association agreement and impose a ban on arms sales to Israel.

In light of the ongoing Israeli military operation in Gaza, a growing number of traditionally pro-Israel Western countries, including France and the UK, have expressed in recent months a readiness to officially recognize Palestinian statehood. Earlier this week, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced the start of an operation to take full control of Gaza City. The conflict erupted after a Hamas incursion into southern Israel on October 7, 2023, which left about 1,200 people dead and 250 taken hostage. According to Gaza’s Hamas-controlled Health Ministry, more than 62,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed by Israeli strikes in the enclave since then.

They’e playing politics. But what do they think?

• US Scientists Axe ‘Woke’ To Keep Cash Flowing – WSJ (RT)

Researchers in the US have been revising their grant renewal applications en masse in recent months over fears that wording tied to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives could cost them government funding, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday Since taking office in January, US President Donald Trump, a long-time critic of what he views as “divisive” leftist narratives, has taken numerous steps to eradicate such policies and even associated language at the government level. Promoted by his predecessor Democrat Joe Biden, DEI programs sought to ensure that sexual and racial minorities were better represented in government agencies. The Trump administration has described the initiatives as “illegal and immoral discrimination.”

The WSJ wrote that at least 600 grant renewal applications since October 2024 had removed “terms associated with diversity, equity and inclusion,” such as “diverse,” “underrepresented,” and “disparities.” The outlet said it had reviewed thousands of applications for National Institutes of Health-funded projects in the fiscal years 2024 and 2025. Some scientists have also reportedly shifted the focus of studies that were originally centered on minority groups. A Johns Hopkins University spokesperson confirmed to the WSJ that “federal agencies have asked researchers to make modest modifications” before renewing grants. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order mandating a review of government DEI initiatives.

Addressing a joint session of Congress in March, Trump declared that “we’ve ended the tyranny of so-called Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies all across the entire federal government and indeed the private sector and our military.” He stressed that appointments should be made strictly on the basis of skills and competence, not race or gender. The Trump administration has also targeted a number of elite universities, including Harvard, for their failure to address “anti-Semitic” protests in support of Palestine and abolish DEI policies, suspending federal funding and restricting international student enrollment.

A rose by any other name…

• Trump Proposes Renaming Department of Defense to Its Original Name (ET)

President Donald Trump proposed on Aug. 25 that his administration rename the Department of Defense to its previous name, the Department of War. “Pete, you started off by saying ’the Department of Defense.’ And somehow it didn’t sound good to me,” Trump said in the Oval Office, speaking to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, after signing executive orders on fighting crime, including in Washington. “Defense. What are we, defense? Why are we defense? It used to be called the Department of War, and it had a stronger sound. And, as you know, we won World War I, we won World War II, we won everything. Now we have a Department of Defense. We’re defenders. I don’t know.” Hegseth, standing behind Trump, said the name change is on the way. “That’s coming soon, sir,” he told Trump.

Trump said that “Department of War” sounds better than “Department of Defense.” “Defense? I don’t want to be Defense only. We want defense, but we want offense too, if that’s OK,” he said, adding that “as Department of War, we won everything, we won everything. And I think we’re going to have to go back to that.” Trump touted bringing an end to conflicts between India and Pakistan and the Congo and Rwanda. This was not the first time Trump had suggested changing the Defense Department back to its previous name. “You know it used to be called secretary of war,” Trump told reporters on June 25 at the NATO summit in the Netherlands. “Maybe for a couple of weeks we’ll call it that because we feel like warriors.” He introduced Hegseth as “secretary of war.” “Then we became politically correct and they called it secretary of defense,” Trump said. “Maybe we’ll have to think about changing it. But we feel that way.”

Prior to becoming defense secretary, Hegseth called for changing the Defense Department back to its old name. “Sure, our military defends us. And in a perfect world it exists to deter threats and preserve peace,” he wrote in his 2024 memoir, “The War on Warriors—Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free.” “But ultimately its job is to conduct war. We either win or lose wars. And we have warriors, not ‘defenders. Bringing back the War Department may remind a few people in Washington, D.C., what the military is supposed to do, and do well.” The Defense Department was called the Department of War when it was established in 1789. In 1947, President Harry Truman changed the name after merging it with the Navy Department. He signed the National Security Act, which established the position of secretary of defense. It also established the National Security Council, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the U.S. Air Force.

Once you have a Department of War, a Peace Nobel can’t be far behind.

• Giving Trump The Nobel Peace Prize Makes Some Sense (Lukyanov)

In the early 1980s, former US President Jimmy Carter visited Stockholm. At a reception he approached Stig Ramel, the long-serving executive director of the Nobel Foundation, and asked with some bitterness why he had not received the Peace Prize for brokering the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel. “If I had been awarded it, I might have been re-elected for a second term,” Carter remarked. He had lost to Ronald Reagan in 1980. Ramel’s reply was blunt: “I’m sorry, Mr. President, but you were not nominated.” The 1978 prize went instead to Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Carter’s story illustrates how the Nobel Prize has always been as much about timing and perception as about substance. And it brings us neatly to Donald Trump.

Unlike Carter, Trump has no problem with nominations. They come thick and fast, from Rwanda, Cambodia, Gabon, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and beyond. Individuals and organizations have joined the chorus. Trump has even gone a step further: he has demanded the prize outright, loudly and repeatedly. Vanity, not diplomacy, drives him. Carter sought the award to improve his electoral prospects. Trump simply wants every trophy on the shelf. Does the spectacle make sense? Strictly speaking, to be considered this year Trump had to be nominated by January 31 – just ten days after his return to the White House. Yet precedent suggests this is no obstacle. Barack Obama received the Peace Prize in his first year as president, when he had scarcely done anything to warrant it.

Alfred Nobel’s will set out clear criteria: the prize should go to the person who has done most “for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the promotion of peace congresses.” Judged against that standard, Trump looks an unlikely candidate. He is one of the most polarizing figures on the planet. America’s military budget is heading toward a record $1 trillion in 2026, hardly a sign of “reduction of standing armies.” Yet the White House insists Trump deserves recognition. Officials cite half a dozen cases, from preventing nuclear war between India and Pakistan to halting conflicts in smaller states. The centerpiece, of course, is Ukraine. Washington is hinting that Trump’s approach may finally bring the war to a close – with the timing of any peace announcement conveniently close to the Nobel Committee’s own deliberations.

The pitch has not been flawless. In touting his record, Trump recently confused Armenia with Albania. But these are minor slips. What matters is the narrative: that Trump alone can impose order where others have failed. Is the Nobel Committee likely to indulge him? Its members are not known for rewarding bluster. But Europe’s leaders are desperate to appease Washington’s eccentric benefactor. It is not inconceivable that some will lobby behind the scenes in Trump’s favor. In one sense, awarding him the prize would not be absurd. The Nobel Committee has always sought to encourage gestures toward peace, however imperfect. Today, in a world of upheaval, genuine solutions are scarce. At best, one can try to ease tensions.

Trump, in his way, is doing just that – using every tool available, from demonstrative military threats to wild rhetoric and economic coercion. Others are doing even less. To paraphrase Lenin, a Nobel for Trump would be “essentially justified, formally a mockery.” It would capture the spirit of the age: a prize not for genuine reconciliation but for the ability to posture as a peacemaker in a fractured world. Carter, who once felt slighted, eventually did receive the award – more than twenty years after leaving office, in recognition of his peacemaking work as an ex-president. The Camp David accords remain in force to this day, a rare achievement in Middle East diplomacy. Trump is cut from a different cloth. He will not wait decades. By age and by temperament, he demands everything now. Or never at all.

“Well, I mean, I’m talking about the — the — I had had, there was a. . . . —Ghislaine Maxwell

• Ghislaine ‘Splainin’ (James Howard Kunstler)

Did you happen to bother reading the transcript of Ghislaine Maxwell’s interview? It’s tough sledding at times — both Ms. Maxwell and Deputy AG Todd Blanche tend to speak in choppy, incomplete sentences (as does, you might have noticed, President Trump) — but altogether the confab reveals that just about everything you think you know about the scandal might not be so, and her story is full of shocking surprises, assuming you can believe her. For instance, Ms. Maxwell had exactly one night of actual sex with Jeffrey Epstein back in the 1990s, a few months after they met, and that was it. He had problems with straight-up sex, she says. At first, he claimed to have a heart condition.

She says he had erectile difficulty “. . . which meant that he didn’t have intercourse a lot, which suited me fine, because I actually do have a medical condition, which precludes me having a lot of intercourse,” she added. (We never learn what that condition was, exactly.) Anyway, she never had sex with him again. Huh. . .? There goes one pillar of the public perception of the scandal: that Ghislaine Maxwell was a sort of nymphomaniac consort of Mr. Epstein, while supposedly acting as chief procurer of his masseuse “victims” and that the whole decades-long saga was a cavalcade of threesomes and orgies. She even claims at one point of being “a prude.” So, what was her role in JE’s complicated life? Basically, a property manager, she says. You know, all those houses and compounds: the mansion on East 71st Street, the Palm Beach place, the ranch in New Mexico, Little St. James Island, a flat in Paris.

It was a lot to manage. She had to hire architects, construction crews, interior decorators, servants. There were horses to care for at the ranch. It was a lot. She didn’t even have a key to JE’s New York City townhouse and was there only twice, she told Mr. Blanche. During that time, JE had other girlfriends while in the early 2000s, Ms. Maxwell hooked up with the billionaire founder of Gateway Computers, Ted Waitt. He bought a big boat for them to start-up an oceanic research venture. The relationship foundered when, she says, a sketchy lawyer named Scott Rothstein, working for a crooked Florida law firm that was under a RICO investigation at the time, attempted to extract $10-million from Waitt to keep Ms. Maxwell’s name out of lawsuits brought by women claiming to be “victims” of Epstein’s massage shenanigans.

Ms. Maxwell claims that Epstein’s masseuses, underage or otherwise, were recruited by the original masseuses, not by her (Ms. Maxwell). Ms. Maxwell was out of Epstein’s life after 2009, when he got out of jail on state of Florida charges of soliciting prostitution and procuring a minor for prostitution. This was preceded by a sketchy federal case brought in the Southern District of Florida that ended with a peculiar non-prosecution agreement — when US Attorney Alexander Acosta was told to lay off on account of Epstein being an “intel asset.” Ms. Maxwell states in the new deposition that JE was not associated with any intel agency, claiming it would have been in his nature to brag about it. It would help if FBI chief Kash Patel or CIA head John Ratcliffe could clarify that. They would surely know, one way or the other.

Of course, the heart of all the salacious chatter about Epstein is the claim that he worked for Israel’s Mossad intel agency, and that many eminent global persons were recorded having sex with underage masseuses in order to blackmail them (and, supposedly, allow nefarious hidden parties to control world political affairs.) Ms. Maxwell maintains that this is not so. She says there were no hidden cameras in bedrooms or elsewhere in the many Epstein properties or airplanes, and that she would know because she hired the electricians who installed everything else in them. There were only the usual security cameras on front entrances and gates. . . except for the Palm Beach house where local police installed a camera in JE’s office to catch a thief who was stealing cash stashed there. (Turned out to be JE’s butler, who was fired.)

Another thread at the center of the Epstein rumor mill is the notorious Epstein client list — supposedly of notables alleged to have cavorted with Epstein’s masseuses. Ms. Maxwell claims there was no such list, that a fake list was concocted by attorney Brad Edwards who represented women claiming to be Epstein “victims” in the lawsuit connected with the $10-million Ted Waitt blackmail caper. The list was composed from notes supposedly made off a computer by that same Epstein butler, one Alfredo Rodriguez. When interviewed in 2007, Rodriguez failed to produce the so-called “black book.” In 2009, he offered to sell it to attorney Brad Edwards (representing various “victims”) for $50,000. In 2010, Rodriguez was convicted of obstruction of justice and sentenced to 18 months in prison. He died in 2015.

A lot of monkey business in all this, wouldn’t you say? Perhaps the most astounding point is Ms. Maxwell’s assertion that no government attorney (or any other official, including from the FBI) ever interviewed her, or even called her on the telephone, during all the years of legal wrangling that went on. Say, what. . . ? How could that possibly be? Well, apparently it is so.

SV40

RFK Jr: "The polio vaccine contained a virus called SV40."

"It's one of the most carcinogenic materials that is known to man."

"But it was in that vaccine. 98 million people… in my generation got it."

"And now you've had this explosion of soft tissue cancers in our… pic.twitter.com/54XZAoeNoS

— healthbot (@thehealthb0t) August 25, 2025

Dr. Kevin Reese suggests that "dementia is linked to statin drugs."

"Statin drugs came out in 1987… Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia spiked in the 1990s."

"Now you see it all the time… Why? Because so many people are on statins, which means you're not getting enough… pic.twitter.com/lDYhXVk3Im

— Wide Awake Media (@wideawake_media) August 25, 2025

Blue Dragon

Spanish beaches are closing after the invasion of the potentially deadly blue dragon sea creatures as the venomous species continues to spread across the country.

This comes as tourists were banned from going into the water along an entire seven-mile stretch of Spain's Costa… pic.twitter.com/CSjYw0uAYL

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) August 25, 2025

Bees

Bees have pollen baskets, also known as corbiculae, are specialized concave structures on the hind legs of female bees, who carry pollen back to the hive

These baskets are full pic.twitter.com/2TxnKv0FB3

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) August 25, 2025

Cat stairs.. 👌 pic.twitter.com/I2zaqwgoNg

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) August 25, 2025

Bird

Photographer Shaaz Jung captured a rare and enchanting moment: An elephant, deep within the mist-shrouded forest, stood in quiet communion with a tiny bird perched on his tusk. pic.twitter.com/HV70L95XQE

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) August 25, 2025

Pebble

The pebble art of Justin Bateman
pic.twitter.com/0sX5AYRNH1

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) August 25, 2025

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Debt Rattle November 22 2021

Nov 222021

November 22, 2021 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:46 am Finance Tagged with: Africa, annual, booster, compulsory, Fauci, invasion, Orban, riots, Ukraine 75 Responses »

Marcel Duchamp Nude descending a staircase 1912

• UK Data Shows The Vaccines Are Not Saving Any Lives At All. Zero. (Kirsch)

• Now Germany Is Set Make Covid Vaccinations Compulsory (DM)

• Dutch Deaths More Than 20% Higher Than Previous Years’ Average (FWM)

• Scientists Mystified, Wary, As Africa Avoids Covid Disaster (AP)

• Pfizer Co-developer Says Covid Vaccination Will Be Annual (RT)

• Fauci Gives A ‘Perfectly Honest’ Response To Booster Question (RT)

• Fauci Comes Up With New ‘Rule’ To Wear Masks (RT)

• It’ll Be ‘Jab Or Death’ For Anti-vaxxers, Orban Predicts (RT)

• Fighting For Our Lives: Humanity’s Weapons Against Covid-19 (RT)

• Fresh Protests, Violence Against Covid Restrictions (RFI)

• Like Covid-19, Digital Passports Could Be With Us Forever (Ford)

• Russia Set To Launch Winter Invasion Of Ukraine: US Media (RT)

“We are mandating a vaccine which basically kills ~ 800 people per M fully vaccinated..”

• UK Data Shows The Vaccines Are Not Saving Any Lives At All. Zero. (Kirsch)

My good friend Mathew Crawford is an amazing statistician. He’s one of the smartest people I know. He just published a new analysis on his substack showing that the UK data show that the COVID vaccines aren’t saving any lives at all. It’s all statistical noise as shown in the graph below from his article. Please check it out and if you like his work, please honor him by subscribing to his substack. Mathew’s work really shouldn’t come as a surprise. It certainly wasn’t a surprise to me. Norman Fenton pointed out two months ago that the UK data shows that vaccinated people are dying at a greater rate than the unvaccinated (even after adjusting for age).

More recently, Fenton showed that with a simple time skew of deaths, we can make the vaccines look extremely effective even if they do absolutely nothing (paper and video). Fenton’s conclusion: we currently have no real evidence that the vaccines work. So now we have two statisticians that I have very high respect for claiming the vaccines are, at best, not saving any lives. And for some odd reason, nobody wants to challenge them in a live video debate. I can’t figure that one out.

We are mandating a vaccine which basically kills ~ 800 people per M fully vaccinated. When you couple that with my 8 ways of estimating the number of deaths from the COVID vaccines in America gives a minimum of 150,000 deaths, our government is basically trying to mandate a vaccine that is a killing machine. Nobody wants to debate this with us. I recently offered $1M for any of the members of the CDC or FDA outside committee members to debate us. Apparently, their time is worth more than a million dollars an hour because none of them accepted my more than generous offer. Is there anyone in a decision making capacity on the vaccines/mandates who wants to talk about the science and the statistics? Or are they all chicken?

Don’t do it. You will not be able to contain the mayhem.

Respect your ancestors. These things were not born in a vacuum:
1) Nuremberg Code
2) UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (art.6).
3) UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (art. 7).
4) UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (art. 3).

• Now Germany Is Set Make Covid Vaccinations Compulsory (DM)

The protest came just hours after it emerged Germany is set to follow Austria’s example in making vaccinations compulsory with ministers admitting that the move is ‘unavoidable’ amid a fourth wave of the pandemic which is crippling the country’s hospitals. Last night also saw similar demonstrations against virus restrictions take place in Austria, Switzerland, Croatia, Italy, Northern Ireland, Austria and North Macedonia on Saturday, a day after Dutch police opened fire on protesters and seven people were injured in rioting that erupted in Rotterdam. Europe has become the epicentre of the pandemic once again, with the World Health Organisation warning that the Continent was the only region in the world where deaths had increased as Covid-related fatalities spiked by five per cent just this week.

In France, the government has warned that the fifth wave of coronavirus are rising at ‘lightning speed’, with new daily Covid cases close to doubling over the past week. In Belgium, cases have been surging, with infections reaching 13,836 on Sunday. In response, the government has introduced restrictions including a ban on the unvaccinated from venues such as restaurants and bars, and an order to work from home at least four days a week. Police said 35,000 protesters marched from the North Station in Brussels on Sunday afternoon against a fresh round of Covid measures announced by the government on Wednesday.

A world filled with mysteries.

“Other “experts” sadly had no explanation for vaccine failure either.”

• Dutch Deaths More Than 20% Higher Than Previous Years’ Average (FWM)

According to the statistical office, the higher mortality can be seen in all age groups. Statistics Netherlands does not yet have an explanation for the higher mortality. More deaths of Corona patients were registered at RIVM last week. According to the CBS, the excess mortality has clearly increased in recent weeks. But since the beginning of August, the mortality has already been above the usual numbers during this period. It is estimated that 2 100 people aged 80 and older died last week. That is almost 500 more than expected. Mortality in this age group has been remarkably high for four weeks. This also applies to people aged 65 to 80. In this age group, 1 200 people died last week, nearly 300 more than expected. Among people under the age of 65, the death rate last week was an estimated 450, more than 50 more than expected.

In the Netherlands, 85 percent of people over the age of 18 are fully vaccinated, and many had their jabs only recently. Vaccine salespeople maintain that the shots offer protection in the first few months before the “protection” starts to wane. They blame the unvaccinated for the rise in deaths. This is obviously false. The number of people getting infected has never been worse, despite the high vaccination rate. The jabs are evidently not doing what had been promised. In total, 23 680 cases were reported on Thursday, the fourth day in a row of record-setting case numbers following a week that broke the record for the highest number of new infections (110 000) since the pandemic began – a 44 percent rise over the week before, and this week’s figures have not yet been added.

Dutch officials have started injecting those 80 with boosters on Thursday, weeks earlier than planned. Anke Huckriede, professor of vaccinology at the University of Groningen, said the intramuscular jabs do not offer protection in the upper respiratory tract, where the virus enters our bodies. With only some 15 percent of the adult population unvaccinated, the Dutch have a higher vaccine uptake than the majority of the world. But Bas van den Putte, professor of health communication at the University of Amsterdam and a member of the scientific advisory board of the RIVM’s Corona Behavioural Unit admitted that he could not explain the dramatic rise in deaths.

Other “experts” sadly had no explanation for vaccine failure either. Frits Rosendaal, professor of clinical epidemiology at the Leiden University Medical Center, blamed geography and population density while Huckriede said she had no idea why this was happening. “We just don’t know.” Based on weekly data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) in the UK, vaccinated people under 60 are twice as likely to die as unvaccinated people. And overall deaths in Britain are far above normal. As in Germany, Swedes also appear to die at rates 20 percent or more above normal for weeks after receiving their second Covid jab, according to data from a Swedish study.

Not one word on IVM. Use is widespread. Mystery sounds better?!

• Scientists Mystified, Wary, As Africa Avoids Covid Disaster (AP)

“COVID-19 is gone, when did you last hear of anyone who has died of COVID-19?” Ndou said. “The mask is to protect my pocket,” he said. “The police demand bribes so I lose money if I don’t move around with a mask.” Earlier this week, Zimbabwe recorded just 33 new COVID-19 cases and zero deaths, in line with a recent fall in the disease across the continent, where World Health Organization data show that infections have been dropping since July. When the coronavirus first emerged last year, health officials feared the pandemic would sweep across Africa, killing millions. Although it’s still unclear what COVID-19’s ultimate toll will be, that catastrophic scenario has yet to materialize in Zimbabwe or much of the continent.

Scientists emphasize that obtaining accurate COVID-19 data, particularly in African countries with patchy surveillance, is extremely difficult, and warn that declining coronavirus trends could easily be reversed. But there is something “mysterious” going on in Africa that is puzzling scientists, said Wafaa El-Sadr, chair of global health at Columbia University. “Africa doesn’t have the vaccines and the resources to fight COVID-19 that they have in Europe and the U.S., but somehow they seem to be doing better,” she said. Fewer than 6% of people in Africa are vaccinated. For months, the WHO has described Africa as “one of the least affected regions in the world” in its weekly pandemic reports.

Some researchers say the continent’s younger population — the average age is 20 versus about 43 in Western Europe — in addition to their lower rates of urbanization and tendency to spend time outdoors, may have spared it the more lethal effects of the virus so far. Several studies are probing whether there might be other explanations, including genetic reasons or exposure to other diseases. Christian Happi, director of the African Center of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases at Redeemer’s University in Nigeria, said authorities are used to curbing outbreaks even without vaccines and credited the extensive networks of community health workers. “It’s not always about how much money you have or how sophisticated your hospitals are,” he said.

Jeffrey A Tucker @jeffreyatucker:
“They changed the definition of case. They changed the definition of infection. They changed the definition of herd immunity. They changed the definition of vaccine. And they wonder why so many people are suspicious that something odd is going on..”

A subtle shift towards normalization here: “Subsequent … vaccinations may only be needed every year – just like [with] influenza,” he said.

• Pfizer Co-developer Says Covid Vaccination Will Be Annual (RT)

People around the world will need to get a jab against Covid-19 once a year, at least when it comes to the Pfizer vaccine, BioNTech’s CEO Ugur Sahin said in an interview on Sunday, as he praised the quality of its booster shot In an interview with Germany’s Bild newspaper on Sunday, Sahin said he considers the vaccine, co-developed by his company, to be “very effective.” When asked whether people should be worried about the “breakthrough infections” – in which those vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine still developed Covid-19 symptoms – he dismissed such concerns, saying that the jab offers a “90 percent protection” against cases that require intensive care in those aged over 60.

A “very high” level of protection against severe illness lasts for up to nine months, the BioNTech CEO maintained. He said this level starts decreasing “from the fourth month,” however. To maintain the protection, Sahin strongly pushed for booster shots, arguing that they would not just restore levels of antibodies but would potentially help “to break … chains of infection.” He also encouraged doctors to be “as pragmatic as possible” when it comes to greenlighting vaccination and “not to send people home unvaccinated even though they could be vaccinated without any problems.” In the future, people might need to get booster shots once a year, the BioNTech CEO believes. He said that he expects protection from a booster shot to “last longer” than the initial immunity one acquires after getting two doses of the vaccine.

“Subsequent … vaccinations may only be needed every year – just like [with] influenza,” he said. Currently, the German Federal Center for Health Education – an agency subordinated to the Health Ministry – recommends a booster shot six months after one gets the second dose of a vaccine. It also says that “booster vaccination makes sense after a minimum interval of about four months.” Sahin’s interview comes days after it was revealed that Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna are making a combined profit of $65,000 every minute – all thanks to their Covid-19 jabs. That is according to estimates made by the People’s Vaccine Alliance (PVA) – a coalition demanding wider access to vaccines. The PVA estimated that the three companies are to earn a total of $34 billion in combined pre-tax profits this year alone, which roughly translates into more than $1,000 a second and $93.5 million a day.

“We don’t know right now, we have to be perfectly transparent and honest.”

• Fauci Gives A ‘Perfectly Honest’ Response To Booster Question (RT)

White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said that the “guidelines” for what makes someone ‘fully vaccinated’ against Covid-19 could soon be changing, depending on the “science.” Appearing on CNN on Sunday, Fauci was asked if booster shots would soon be required for someone to be considered fully inoculated, something required for many to work and enter certain businesses. While not giving a direct yes or no answer, the infectious disease expert said the current administration is open to it. “We’re going to be following that very carefully,” Fauci said, adding that the Joe Biden administration “might modify the guidelines” for what constitutes being fully vaccinated, based on the lasting effects of boosters. We don’t know right now, we have to be perfectly transparent and honest.”

Americans “should not be put off by the fact that as time goes by and we learn more and more about the protection,” the definition of ‘fully vaccinated’ might change, Fauci stressed. Those given two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine or one dose of Johnson & Johnson are currently considered fully vaccinated, but according to Fauci, Pfizer and Moderna recipients should already be getting boosters after six months and Johnson & Johnson recipients after two months. In a separate interview with ABC, Fauci said if boosters need to provide “durability,” or more boosters will be required in the future.

“We’ll continue to follow the data because right now when we’re boosting people, what we’re doing is following them,” he said. “We’re going to see what the durability of that protection is.” If the durability is not up to par, Fauci explained, people could need to get shots every six months to a year. “We would hope, and this is something that we’re looking at very carefully, that that third shot with the mRNA not only boosts you way up, but increases the durability so that you will not necessarily need it every six months or a year,” he said.

Hahahahahahaha pic.twitter.com/Adoc7EPHbb

— An0maly (@LegendaryEnergy) November 22, 2021

‘I just decided that if anyone came up that I didn’t know, I would put my mask on,..”

“Sally Quinn, an author who used Fauci as the inspiration for a character in an erotic work of fiction ..”

• Fauci Comes Up With New ‘Rule’ To Wear Masks (RT)

White House health adviser Anthony Fauci was seen at an elite book party regularly taking his mask on and off, confusing many attendees. An author says Fauci explained to her why he chose to wear it around some and not others. Appearing at a book launch party for journalist Jonathan Karl this week at Cafe Milano in Washington DC, Fauci gained the attention of onlookers, according to Politico, by repeatedly putting on and taking off his mask as he talked to numerous people. This also happened as “gawkers” attempted to get a picture of the unmasked infectious disease expert. Sally Quinn, an author who used Fauci as the inspiration for a character in an erotic work of fiction, eventually approached the doctor and asked about his “ambivalence” towards mask-wearing at the event.

“He said, ‘I just decided that if anyone came up that I didn’t know, I would put my mask on,” the author recalled from her conversation with Fauci. The head of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases was apparently on his own with his mask-wearing tactics, as Quinn reported all others at the event were not masked. Quinn described the “paparazzi” as trying to catch Fauci in a “gotcha” moment, but also suggested that the doctor “was being safe.” All those who attended the party had to show proof of vaccinations beforehand. Washington, DC recently dropped its strict mask mandate, though this does not go into effect until Monday, November 22. Masks will no longer be required in numerous indoor spaces, though they are still required in schools, libraries, public transportation, etc. Private businesses have the option to require or not require masks, under the new guidance.

Firmly in the Fauci camp. Good luck with that.

• It’ll Be ‘Jab Or Death’ For Anti-vaxxers, Orban Predicts (RT)

Vaccination of all Hungarian citizens against Covid-19 is inevitable, PM Viktor Orban has said, stating that even the most hardline anti-vaxxers will ultimately face a choice between dying with the virus and getting a jab. Speaking to Kossuth radio on Friday, the Hungarian leader lashed out at those reluctant to get vaccinated against coronavirus, branding them a threat “not only to themselves but to all others.” In the end, everyone will have to be vaccinated; even the anti-vaxxers will realize that they will either get vaccinated or die. So, I urge everyone to take this opportunity. The EU member state is currently experiencing its fourth wave of coronavirus, Orban stated, blaming the situation on those who had not got vaccinated. “If everybody were inoculated, there would be no fourth wave or it would be just a small one,” the PM claimed.

Apart from urging the unvaccinated to go and finally get their jabs, Orban also promoted booster shots, revealing that he had already taken three doses of a coronavirus vaccine. “The only thing that protects us from the virus is vaccination. And we are now also seeing, at least the experts are unanimous in saying, that four to six months after the second vaccination, the protective power of the vaccine weakens. Therefore, a third vaccination is justified,” he said. Hungary has already announced new anti-Covid measures, though somewhat short of the strict measures proposed by the nation’s Medical Chamber on Wednesday. The medical body called for a blanket ban on mass events, and suggested making entry to restaurants, theaters and other indoor venues conditional on bearing a Covid-19 inoculation certificate. Instead, Budapest rolled out compulsory mask wearing for most indoor environments, as well as making booster shots mandatory for all medical workers, starting from Saturday.

Even RT only talks about new, and yet-to-be invented, drugs. But that’s not what will solve this.

• Fighting For Our Lives: Humanity’s Weapons Against Covid-19 (RT)

Vaccines are not a silver bullet, unfortunately, given the not-so-high level of global immunization and the constantly emerging new strains of the virus. “People might get infected despite having had a vaccine, but I still think the vaccine strategy is going to be central to how we manage this kind of virus going forward,” Prof. Dockrell says. “But we will have other strategies that will be very important. We will have other elements. When we put them all together, it gives us the best opportunity that people can live with coronaviruses, and hopefully, the mortality can be limited to much lower extense than what we’ve sadly seen in the last eighteen months.” Monoclonal antibodies will be central to the ongoing vaccine strategy, Prof. Dockrell explains. These are the antibodies similar to those the body uses to fight the virus.

They are produced in labs and given via infusion or injection to boost the patient’s response against certain diseases. Monoclonal antibody treatment is used for people under a high risk of developing severe infection (including older patients 65+ years old or those with chronic medical conditions). It’s already being used in the US, following last year’s FDA approval. Earlier in November, the European Medicines agency recommended authorizing two monoclonal antibody medicines. In October, UK’s AstraZeneca reported positive results of a Phase 3 study of its antibody combination, which, according to developers, is highly effective in both prevention and treatment of coronavirus. Researchers are also working on a possibility to save Covid-infected patients from the so-called ‘cytokine storm’ – a situation when the immune system reacts so intensely that kills not only the virus, but the whole organism itself. A drug to ‘calm the storm’ was registered in Russia this year, and it’s already being used on patients.

Another way to fight Covid-19 is to use antiviral drugs. When the pandemic started, medics had to use something already existing (like anti-influenza Favipiravir) or something being authorized for emergency use (like remdesivir). Now, more than a year on, the work to create a special drug to specifically cure Covid-19 is giving its results. This month, Russia registered its first injectable anti-Covid medicine. A bit earlier, the UK became the first country to approve an antiviral pill produced by the US-based companies Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics. Another American firm, Pfizer, got positive results from trials of its drug of the same kind. Both firms hope that with a drug in the form of a pill it would be easier to treat people at home. Appreciating all the efforts on the field of developing anti-Covid treatment, Prof. de Noli points out that still, the key issue now is to reduce the spreading of the virus. “The new medicines are developed for people who already got the disease,” he says.

This will not go away.

• Fresh Protests, Violence Against Covid Restrictions (RFI)

A fresh wave of protests broke out in several European cities and in some French overseas territories Sunday, as protesters reacted, sometimes violently, to moves to reintroduce coronavirus restrictions. Police and protesters clashed in the Belgian capital Brussels, in several Dutch cities and overnight into early Sunday in the French Caribbean territory Guadaloupe. There were fresh demonstrations in Austria, where the government is imposing a new lockdown and Covid-19 vaccine mandate. In Brussels, violence broke out at a protest against anti-Covid measures which police said was attended by 35,000 people. The march, in the city’s European Union and government district, largely focused on a ban on the unvaccinated from venues such as restaurants and bars.

It began peacefully but police later fired water cannon and tear gas in response to protesters throwing projectiles, an AFP photographer witnessed. Police told Belga news agency that three officers were injured. Several of the demonstrators caught up in the clash wore hoods and carried Flemish nationalist flags, while others wore Nazi-era yellow stars. Protesters set fire to wood pallets, and social media images showed them attacking police vans with street signs. Protests also erupted in several Dutch cities Sunday, the third night of unrest over the government’s coronavirus restrictions. Demonstrators set off fireworks and vandalised property in the northern cities of Groningen and Leeuwarden, as well as in Enschede to the east and Tilburg to the south, said police. “Riot police are present in the centre to restore order,” a Groningen police spokeswoman told AFP.

Authorities issued an emergency order in Enschede, near the German border, ordering people to stay off the streets, police said on Twitter. A football match in the nearby city of Leeuwarden was briefly disrupted after supporters, who are barred from games because of the Covid restrictions, threw fireworks into the ground, Dutch media reported. On Friday night, there was unrest in Rotterdam and last night in The Hague. So far, more than 100 people have been arrested around the country and at least 12 people have been injured during the demonstrations. From Monday, 8.9 million Austrians will not be allowed to leave home except to go to work, shop for essentials and exercise. And vaccination against Covid-19 in the Alpine nation will be mandatory from February 1 next year.

“There is no “finishing the fight” against an endemic virus.”

• Like Covid-19, Digital Passports Could Be With Us Forever (Ford)

When a government radically alters the way we live and relate to one another, it should be able to explain, at a minimum, why it is doing so. And when their plans involve extraordinary new powers to surveil, coerce, and control the population, we might also hope for an account of how and when those powers will be rescinded, and what limiting principle will constrain their use. Proponents of digital health passports have failed to clear even the most basic of these hurdles. Instead, they have offered conflicting, unrealistic, and sometimes incoherent explanations of what the new digital passport regime is meant to achieve. Are vaccine passports supposed to let us “finish the fight” against SARS-CoV-2, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised? Of course not. There is no “finishing the fight” against an endemic virus.

Will the passports end transmission of the disease? No. The vaccines are not designed to stop transmission, and the virus can be spread by vaccinated and unvaccinated people alike. Is the point to ensure that hospitals and ICUs are not overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients? That is a legitimate goal, but it’s undermined when vaccine mandates result in the firing or suspensions of thousands of front-line healthcare workers, many of whom already have natural immunity. Maybe the passports are just a psychosomatic measure, meant to help vaccinated people feel safer and less anxious as they go about their lives. Or are they a blunt instrument to drive up vaccination rates in hopes of achieving herd immunity? If so, how high does the rate need to be? 80 percent? 90 percent? 100 percent?

What will we do when the vaccine’s efficacy fades, or if new variants emerge with mutated spike proteins that escape vaccine-induced immunity? No one seems to know. Lacking clear or realistic objectives, there is no way to evaluate the success of these new public health measures. And if success or failure cannot be measured, neither can they be declared. This should worry us, because the elected leaders currently enacting vaccine passports have not committed to any limits—either practical or temporal—on these new powers. We should not be overturning our most taken-for-granted social norms without first considering the risks and probable long-term consequences. Because once we go down this road, we may ruefully discover that there is no off-ramp.

Why does Russia even react to this stuff anymore?

• Russia Set To Launch Winter Invasion Of Ukraine: US Media (RT)

Russia is growing more inclined to invade Ukraine now that colder days are approaching, a weekend American media report has claimed. Western officials have accused Russia of staging a military buildup along Kiev’s eastern borders. The likelihood of a potential Russian assault on Ukraine is “increasing as the weather gets colder,” CBS News reported on Saturday, citing the customary unnamed US intelligence “sources.” Quite why Moscow would choose the coldest months of the year, with the shortest days, is left unclear. “An incursion is weather-dependent, but could happen in a matter of weeks, barring intervention from the West,” it continued.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Wednesday urged Moscow to “be more transparent on the buildup of the forces around on the border of Ukraine.” Austin added that he was “not sure exactly” about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plan of action. Ukraine initially refused to back the reports in US media about the buildup of Russian troops, but later changed its tune. Brigadier General Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s chief military intelligence officer, told the Military Times on Sunday that Russia is preparing to attack Ukraine by the end of January or the beginning of February. The Ukrainian military produced a map showing how Russia in a “short-term perspective” could invade Ukraine from all directions, including an incursion from the territory of Belarus.

Russia has denied amassing troops along the Ukrainian border. When reports of possible preparation for an invasion began appearing in US media this month, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova dismissed them as “fake” news that she said was part of a larger disinformation campaign waged against Russia. In an interview broadcast on Rossiya-1 TV channel on Sunday, Dmitry Peskov, the spokesperson for the Kremlin, said the West was “artificially stoking hysteria.”

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Debt Rattle August 24 2017

Aug 242017

August 24, 2017 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:11 am Finance Tagged with: deregulation, diesel, Draghi, Fed, invasion, marriages, Ponzi, QE, Trump, Wall Street, Yellen 7 Responses »

Egon Schiele Meadow, Church and Houses 1912

• Wall Street Banks Warn Downturn Is Coming (BBG)

• Big US Banks Could See Profit Jump 20% With Deregulation (BBG)

• ECB Chief Draghi: QE Has Made Economies More Resilient (BBC)

• Yellen’s Coming Speech Could Mark The ‘End Of An Era’ (BI)

• Here’s Why New Home Sales Tanked (CNBC)

• Autos Put Economic Downside Risks on Full Display (DDMB)

• Merkel Aide Says Germany Has ‘Vital Interest’ in Diesel Survival (BBG)

• China’s ‘Belt And Road’ Could Be Next Risk To Global Financial System (CNBC)

• Being Here (Brodsky)

• All The Countries The USA Has Invaded, In One Map (Indy)

• America, Home of the Transactional Marriage (Atlantic)

More cycles.

• Wall Street Banks Warn Downturn Is Coming (BBG)

HSBC, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley see mounting evidence that global markets are in the last stage of their rallies before a downturn in the business cycle. Analysts at the Wall Street behemoths cite signals including the breakdown of long-standing relationships between stocks, bonds and commodities as well as investors ignoring valuation fundamentals and data. It all means stock and credit markets are at risk of a painful drop. “Equities have become less correlated with FX, FX has become less correlated with rates, and everything has become less sensitive to oil,” Andrew Sheets, Morgan Stanley’s chief cross-asset strategist, wrote in a note published Tuesday. His bank’s model shows assets across the world are the least correlated in almost a decade, even after U.S. stocks joined high-yield credit in a selloff triggered this month by President Donald Trump’s political standoff with North Korea and racial violence in Virginia.

Just like they did in the run-up to the 2007 crisis, investors are pricing assets based on the risks specific to an individual security and industry, and shrugging off broader drivers, such as the latest release of manufacturing data, the model shows. As traders look for excuses to stay bullish, traditional relationships within and between asset classes tend to break down. “These low macro and micro correlations confirm the idea that we’re in a late-cycle environment, and it’s no accident that the last time we saw readings this low was 2005-07,” Sheets wrote. He recommends boosting allocations to U.S. stocks while reducing holdings of corporate debt, where consumer consumption and energy is more heavily represented. That dynamic is also helping to keep volatility in stocks, bonds and currencies at bay, feeding risk appetite globally, according to Morgan Stanley. Despite the turbulent past two weeks, the CBOE Volatility Index remains on track to post a third year of declines.

Oxford Economics macro strategist Gaurav Saroliya points to another red flag for U.S. equity bulls. The gross value-added of non-financial companies after inflation – a measure of the value of goods after adjusting for the costs of production – is now negative on a year-on-year basis. “The cycle of real corporate profits has turned enough to be a potential source of concern in the next four quarters,” he said in an interview. “That, along with the most expensive equity valuations among major markets, should worry investors in U.S. stocks.” The thinking goes that a classic late-cycle expansion – an economy with full employment and slowing momentum – tends to see a decline in corporate profit margins. The U.S. is in the mature stage of the cycle – 80% of completion since the last trough – based on margin patterns going back to the 1950s, according to Societe Generale.

They warn about a downturn, but not for themselves. Their asses are covered.

• Big US Banks Could See Profit Jump 20% With Deregulation (BBG)

The deregulation winds blowing through Washington could add $27 billion of gross profit at the six largest U.S. banks, lifting their annual pretax income by about 20%. JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley would benefit most from changes to post-crisis banking rules proposed by Donald Trump’s administration, with pretax profit jumping 22%, according to estimates by Bloomberg based on discussions with analysts and the banks’ own disclosures. Goldman Sachs would have the smallest percentage increase, about 16%. Bloomberg’s calculations are based largely on adjustments banks could make to the mix of securities they hold and the interest they earn from such assets. The proposed changes would allow the largest lenders to take on more deposits, move a greater portion of their excess cash into higher-yielding Treasuries and municipal bonds, and issue a lower amount of debt that costs more than customer deposits.

Of the changes proposed in June by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, the one that would probably have biggest impact on profit is allowing banks to buy U.S. government bonds entirely with borrowed money. Three others could also boost income: counting municipal bonds as liquid, or easy-to-sell, assets; requiring less debt that won’t have to be paid back if a bank fails; and making it easier to comply with post-crisis rules. Regulators appointed by Trump could make these changes without congressional approval. Doing so would reverse their agencies’ efforts since 2008 to strengthen capital and liquidity requirements for U.S. banks beyond international standards. While bringing U.S. rules in line with global ones probably wouldn’t threaten bank safety, some analysts and investors worry the pendulum could swing even further.

“Since the crisis, we’ve had the luxury of excess capital buildup in the banking system and regulators reining in risky activities,” said William Hines at Standard Life Aberdeen. “If there’s too much pullback on minimum capital requirements, too much relaxation of restraints, we’re concerned there’ll be more risk-taking by banks, and the system will become vulnerable.”

Blowing bubbles everywhere and claiming they bring strength. It’s Orwell.

• ECB Chief Draghi: QE Has Made Economies More Resilient (BBC)

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi has said unconventional policies like quantitative easing (QE) have been a success both sides of the Atlantic. QE was introduced as an emergency measure during the financial crisis to pump money directly into the financial system and keep banks lending. A decade later, the stimulus policies are still in place, but he said they have “made the world more resilient”. But he also said gaps in understanding these relatively new tools remain. As the economic recovery in the eurozone gathers pace, investors are watching closely for when the ECB will ease back further on its €60bn a month bond-buying programme. Central bankers, including Mr Draghi, are meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, later this week, where they are expected to discuss how to wind back QE without hurting the economy.

On Monday, a former UK Treasury official likened the stimulus to “heroin” because it has been so difficult to wean the UK, US and eurozone economies off it. In a speech in Lindau, Germany on Wednesday, Mr Draghi defended QE and the ECB’s policy of forward guidance on interest rates. “A large body of empirical research has substantiated the success of these policies in supporting the economy and inflation, both in the euro area and in the United States,” he said. The ECB buying relatively safe assets such as government bonds means that banks can lend more and improve access to credit for riskier borrowers, Mr Draghi said. He added: “Policy actions undertaken in the last 10 years in monetary policy and in regulation and supervision have made the world more resilient. But we should continue preparing for new challenges.”

End the Fed.

• Yellen’s Coming Speech Could Mark The ‘End Of An Era’ (BI)

Janet Yellen could be on her way out as chair of the Federal Reserve. On Friday, she’s set to deliver a speech on financial stability at the Fed’s annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It could be her last, following months of speculation that President Donald Trump plans to nominate a different candidate when her four-year term ends in February. And Yellen’s successor could have a very different approach to the job. Yellen’s Jackson Hole showing could be the last one, for now, under a Fed chair who takes a technocratic approach to monetary policy, according to Luke Bartholomew, an investment strategist at Aberdeen Standard Investments. “There could be an end-of-an-era feel to Jackson Hole this year,” Bartholomew told Business Insider.

The Fed chair could be replaced by someone who’s “probably not the sort of academic economist that’s been leading it through the Bernanke/Yellen period,” he said, adding that there’s “a broader feeling that under the Trump administration, the technocratic approach of the Fed is increasingly out of favor.” Yellen, 71, was a career economist and academic before President Barack Obama nominated her to replace Ben Bernanke in 2014. Trump told The Wall Street Journal last month that Gary Cohn, Yellen, and “two or three” other candidates were in the running for the job. One of those other people could be Kevin Warsh, a former Fed governor who is now a fellow at the Hoover Institution. But Cohn, the National Economic Council director and Trump’s top economic adviser, is reportedly the top contender. He’s the “archetype of Wall Street, given his job at Goldman in the past,” Bartholomew said. “He certainly brings financial acumen to the job. I’m not sure that’s what the job of Fed chairman is, but he’s a fine candidate.”

Walsh brings some years of Fed experience to the table. But he has worked for seven years in investment banking, at Morgan Stanley, and isn’t an academic policymaker like Yellen or Bernanke. That’s not the only red flag Yellen’s exit would raise. On one extreme, Yale School of Management’s Jeffrey Sonnenfeld thinks markets would crash if Cohn were to leave the White House for the Fed. Stocks dipped last week as rumors spread that he was leaving the administration following Trump’s response to the white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. “I don’t want to be an alarmist, but there is a lot of faith that he is going to help carry through the tax reform that people are looking for,” Sonnenfeld told CNBC last week.

“Long term, the new home median price has been mostly 10% to 20% above the existing home median since 1990. Since 2011, however, new home prices have been at a 35% to 40% premium over resale prices..”

• Here’s Why New Home Sales Tanked (CNBC)

Newly built homes are more expensive than they’ve ever been before. They are also more expensive when compared to similar existing homes than they’ve ever been before. And that is why sales are suffering, dropping an unexpected 9.4% in July compared to June, according to the U.S. Census. They are simply out of reach for too many potential buyers. You don’t have to do a lot of math to see it. The median sale price of a newly built home in July jumped more than 6% compared to July 2016, to $313,700. That marks the highest July price ever. Last December, the median price hit the highest of any month on record. In addition, the price premium for newly built homes compared to comparable existing homes has more than doubled since 2011, according to John Burns Real Estate Consulting.

“Long term, the new home median price has been mostly 10% to 20% above the existing home median since 1990. Since 2011, however, new home prices have been at a 35% to 40% premium over resale prices,” John Burns wrote in a recent note to clients. “While the exact percentages aren’t perfect due to ‘apples and oranges’ comparisons, our consultants have been confirming for years that new home sales have been slowed by larger than usual new home premiums.” The supply of existing homes for sale is still extremely low, but the supply of newly built homes moved higher in July to 5.8 months of inventory. “The scars of the housing bust are still fresh in the minds of many homebuilders, so it is not surprising that many are taking a cautious approach to ramping up production,” noted Aaron Terrazas, a senior economist at Zillow, in reaction to the July report.

Homebuilders are feeling slightly better about their business lately, but they continue to complain about the costs of land, labor, materials and regulation. They claim that is why they cannot build cheaper homes. Unfortunately, the lower end of the market is where most of the demand is and where supply is weakest. “There is still no pickup in sales for homes priced below $300,000, and this is where most of the first time households would be shopping in,” wrote Peter Boockvar, chief market analyst at The Lindsey Group in a note following the Census release on new home sales. “I repeat that the housing industry needs a moderation in home price gains in order to better compete with renting where rents increases are now moderating.”

Auto loans are a huge part of money creation.

• Autos Put Economic Downside Risks on Full Display (DDMB)

Federal Reserve data released last week on July industrial production offered little more than more of the same. Despite post-election optimism for a rebound in activity on the nation’s factory floors, the data reveal a continued throttling down in the growth rate to just over 2% compared with this time last year. The main drag on activity – the auto sector – should come as no surprise to investors. Rather than rising by 0.2% over June as projected, manufacturing production contracted by 0.1%, marking the third decline in five months. Motor vehicles and parts production fell by 3.6% on the month, taking the year-over-year slide to 5%. Evidence continues to build that a sampling error may be to blame for the surprising strength in June and July car sales.

Inventory continues to pile up, suggesting more production cuts are in the offing: As of June, the latest data on hand, auto inventories were up 7.4% over last year, leaving manufacturers choking for air. In July, General Motors alone was sitting on 104 days of supply, well above its target of 70 days. Industry-wide, the July/August average of 69 days ties the August 2008 record and sits above the historic average of 56 days of supply. In all, automakers have 3.9 million units of unsold light vehicles, up 324,600 from last August and the highest on record for the month. For context, July and August tie for the leanest stock levels of the year. The decline in July sales was already the steepest this year. Fresh loan delinquency data suggest more pain ahead.

“Deep subprime” borrowers have been a big boost at the margin, propelling back-to-back record years of sales in 2015 and 2016 as lending standards loosened sufficiently to allow millions with credit scores below 530 to access financing. Equifax, the consumer credit reporting firm, didn’t hold back in its second-quarter update, saying the performance of recent vintages of deep subprime loans was “awful.” While industry insiders are quick to point out that the overall pace of defaults across all borrowers remains in check, up just marginally over last year, there is growing concern that deep subprime delinquencies are back at 2007 levels. “The bottom line is excess auto inventories are clearly evident and the auto sector is now in recession,” said The Lindsey Group’s Peter Boockvar.

We’re about to winess the political power of German carmakers. How many execs are being prosecuted? Right.

• Merkel Aide Says Germany Has ‘Vital Interest’ in Diesel Survival (BBG)

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff said Germany has a “vital interest” in ensuring diesel engines survive, defending the embattled technology as the industry comes under fire for cheating on emissions tests. Excessive pollution from diesel, as well as traditionally close ties between the government and auto industry, have emerged as a campaign issue in the run up to the country’s federal election in September. Merkel has been confronted by voters on the campaign trail, who accused the government of being too lenient on automakers, prompting the chancellor to question high bonuses for auto executives embroiled in Volkswagen’s cheating scandal. “We have a vital interest in preserving diesel as a technology because it emits far less CO2 than other technologies,” Peter Altmaier, Merkel’s chief of staff, said in a Bloomberg TV interview in Berlin.

“At the same time we have to make sure that all the rules are respected and all the regulations are fully implemented.” Car bosses and government officials reached a compromise deal earlier this month to lower pollution that calls for software updates on million of vehicles instead of more costly hardware fixes. Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW also agreed to a trade-in bonus for cars with outdated emissions controls. The measures have been criticized as a slap on the wrist for Germany’s biggest industry. “We have the responsibility to fight for a good deal but also to preserve the strength and the performance of the automobile industry,” Altmaier said in the interview late on Tuesday. “I’m very optimistic that we will overcome this.”Diesel software updates alone are “insufficient” for many cities to meet the legal limit for nitrogen oxides in the air, Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks told reporters on Wednesday, citing ministry tests conducted this month.

Excessive pollution impacts 70 German towns and cities, and the fixes agreed earlier this month would cut car emissions by a maximum of 6%, she said. Hendricks – a member of Merkel’s junior coalition partner, the Social Democrats – said her ministry and others will ascertain in the coming weeks whether hardware changes in diesels currently on the road are necessary to further lower emissions and will present their findings after the election. “Nobody wants to ban diesels from our cities,” she said. Merkel, who has so far largely steered clear of the debate, is hosting a meeting on Sept. 4 with representatives of the major cities, including the hometowns of BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche, struggling to lower their pollution levels. A number of cities and courts continue to evaluate potential diesel driving bans as the most effective means to meet regulation quickly.

China exports its Ponzi.

• China’s ‘Belt And Road’ Could Be Next Risk To Global Financial System (CNBC)

China has pitched its mammoth, pan-Eurasian “Belt and Road” infrastructure initiative as a means of promoting economic prosperity and fostering diplomatic ties on a global scale. That rhetoric may win plaudits at a time when other global powers are voicing increasingly protectionist agendas, but it also comes with risks, and increasing levels of state-backed funding have raised concerns about just how safe of a gamble it is. Reports on Tuesday claimed that some of China’s biggest state-owned commercial banks will begin raising capital to fund investments into the initiative, also known as “One Belt, One Road,” which aims to connect more than 60 countries across Asia, Europe and Africa with physical and digital infrastructure. China Construction Bank, the country’s second-largest bank by assets, has been conducting roadshows to raise at least 100 billion yuan ($15 billion) from on- and offshore investors.

Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and Agricultural Bank of China are also said to be raising tens of billions of dollars. The news highlights the risk that the state could amass hundreds of billions of dollars in nonperforming loans if the projects fail. For Xu Chenggang, professor of economics at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing, it was not a surprise. “It supports my concerns,” Xu told CNBC over the phone. “The impact could be damaging not just for China, but for the global financial system.” “These loans are being extended to governments in risky countries to fund risky infrastructure projects. If the projects were launched by private firms we wouldn’t have to worry because they would know they had to bear the consequences. But here we are talking about government-to-government lending and, ultimately, intergovernmental relations.”

[..] It took decades of economic reforms and loss-making firms before it succeeded in what Xu termed a process of “quiet privatization” at the turn of the 21st century. However, the process has lost momentum over the past 10 years, and the state remains burdened with issues of overcapacity and myriad “zombie firms,” especially within the metals and construction and materials sectors. Xu said that has partially been the motivation for the “Belt and Road” initiative: “Instead of solving the overcapacity problems, they are expanding the problem to projects overseas.” “They (China) are proposing lending money to foreign governments, who will then use the Chinese funds to pay the Chinese companies,” he explained.

“.. one might say Mr. Trump represents a triumph of democracy..”

• Being Here (Brodsky)

It should not surprise anyone that Western societies are becoming restless. Trump, Brexit, Charlottesville and, arguably, even radical Islamic terrorism are bi-products of global economic distortions largely created by the unwillingness of the Western political dimension to let the global factors of production naturally settle global prices and wages. (Sorry, it had to be said.) Donald Trump is a sideshow. His ascension, or someone like him, was inevitable. He may have official authority to behave like the leader of the free world (even if he is unable to do so), but so far he has only shown that virtually anyone can become president. Indeed, one might say Mr. Trump represents a triumph of democracy. Behold the robustness of America: the most powerful nation on Earth is unafraid to elect a cross between P.T. Barnum and Chauncey Gardner!

This is not to say a US president cannot raise and emphasize truly meaningful economic goals and mobilize countries around the world to help achieve them; but it is to say that this President seems to not know or be interested in what those goals might be. As discussed, the biggest challenges facing the US economy and US labor stem from a distorted global price and wage scale. Mr. Trump’s domestic fiscal, regulatory, tax and immigration goals seek only to raise US output and wages. This cannot be achieved without the participation of global commerce. There is no such thing anymore as a US business that makes US products sold only in the US without being influenced by global prices, wages and exchange rates. The romantic, patriotic “made in the USA” theme does not comport with the reality that the US also seeks to keep the dollar the world’s reserve currency and that maintaining America’s power requires the US to control the world’s shipping lanes.

Mr. Trump and his base cannot have one without the other. (Do we really have to articulate this?) Mr. Trump’s “Being There” presidency is reflecting an inconvenient truth back on a society that has, until maybe now, successfully deluded itself into believing government is functionally the glue holding society together. Though he does not mean to, Mr. Trump is single-handedly demonstrating to groups ranging from idealistic Washington elites to social media zombies to southern white supremacists that Madisonian government has become a dignified cover for the financial, commercial and national security interests that control it. We suspect those interests would rather the reach of their power be less visible.

Two maps, actually. Click the link for fully interactive versions.

• All The Countries The USA Has Invaded, In One Map (Indy)

From Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, the US has had a military presence across the world, from almost day one of her independence. What constitutes invasion? As one map below shows, the US has a military presence in much of the world without being an occupying force (though some would dispute that definition). For instance, although the Confederacy considered the US to be a hostile invading power, indy100 are not counting the Civil War or any annexation within the continental United States as an ‘invasion’. Using data on US military interventions published by the Evergreen State College, in Olympia Washington, indy100 has created this map (below). The data was compiled by Dr Zoltan Grossman, a professor of Geography and Native Studies. The map documents a partial list of occasions, since 1890, that US forces were used in a territory outside the US.

Caveats: This includes: Deployment of the military to evacuate American citizens, Covert military actions by US intelligence, Providing military support to an internal opposition group, Providing military support in one side of a conflict (e.g. aiding Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War 1988-89), Use of the army in drug enforcement actions (e.g. Raids on the cocaine region in Bolvia in 1986 It does not include threats of nuclear weapons against a territory, such as during the Berlin Air Lift (1948-49). It also excludes any time US military personnel were deployed to a foreign country for an exclusively humanitarian purpose – e.g. sending troops to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to provide assistance to refugees fleeing the Rwandan genocide (1996-97).

The demise of a society. Not because of marriages declining, but because of why they are.

• America, Home of the Transactional Marriage (Atlantic)

Over the last several decades, the proportion of Americans who get married has greatly diminished—a development known as well to those who lament marriage’s decline as those who take issue with it as an institution. But a development that’s much newer is that the demographic now leading the shift away from tradition is Americans without college degrees—who just a few decades ago were much more likely to be married by the age of 30 than college graduates were. Today, though, just over half of women in their early 40s with a high-school degree or less education are married, compared to three-quarters of women with a bachelor’s degree; in the 1970s, there was barely a difference. The marriage gap for men has changed less over the years, but there the trend lines have flipped too: 25% of men with high-school degrees or less education have never married, compared to 23% of men with bachelor’s degrees and 14% of those with advanced degrees.

Meanwhile, divorce rates have continued to rise among the less educated, while staying more or less steady for college graduates in recent decades. The divide in the timing of childbirth is even starker. Fewer than one in 10 mothers with a bachelor’s degree are unmarried at the time of their child’s birth, compared to six out of 10 mothers with a high-school degree. The share of such births has risen dramatically in recent decades among less educated mothers, even as it has barely budged for those who finished college. (There are noticeable differences between races, but among those with less education, out-of-wedlock births have become much more common among white and nonwhite people alike.)

[..] Autor, Dorn, and Hanson found that in places where the number of factory jobs shrank, women were less likely to get married. They also tended to have fewer children, though the share of children born to unmarried parents, and living in poverty, grew. What was producing these trends, the researchers argue, was the rising number of men who could no longer provide in the ways they once did, making them less attractive as partners. Furthermore, many men in these communities became no longer available, sometimes winding up in the military or dying from alcohol or drug abuse. (It’s important to point out that this study and similar research on employment and marriage focus on opposite-sex marriages, and a different dynamic may be at work among same-sex couples, who tend to be more educated.)