Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:

• Is artificial intelligence the great filter that makes advanced technical civilisations rare in the universe? Through the lens of SETI, we reflect on humanity’s current technological trajectory – the modest projections for L suggested here, underscore the critical need to quickly establish regulatory frameworks for AI development on Earth and the advancement of a multiplanetary society to mitigate against such existential threats. The persistence of intelligent and conscious life in the universe could hinge on the timely and effective implementation of such international regulatory measures and technological endeavours. (Science Direct)

• The Most Feared and Least Known Political Operative in America: Susie Wiles helped dismantle Ron DeSantis and salvaged Donald Trump’s campaign. Is she a MAGA hero or an enemy of democracy? (Politico) see also How Far Trump Would Go: Six months from the 2024 presidential election, Trump is better positioned to win the White House than at any point in either of his previous campaigns. He leads Joe Biden by slim margins in most polls, including in several of the seven swing states likely to determine the outcome. (Time)

• Why China Is So Bad at Disinformation: China’s state-sponsored disinformation campaign has been running at a massive scale for seven years—but no one is looking at it. (Wired)

• The News is Making You Miserable: The world has always been a mess. There have always been awful people. There have always been problems. The difference is now we are constantly reminded of them. We now get more news in a single day than most people ever saw in their lifetimes just a few short centuries ago. It started with newspapers, then the radio, and then television. We’ve accelerated the process in recent decades through the Internet, social media, and smartphones. Our brains aren’t hardwired to have this much information thrown at them. (A Wealth of Common Sense) see also Lose the News: news is hardly new. The vast majority of it is backward-looking, informing you as to what has happened already. Investing is about what is going to happen; what’s occurred in the past may be of interest, but it’s hardly germane to the investment process. Indeed, by the time the news is “out,” it already has been built into the stock price. Worse yet, old news can have an impact on your thought process. (The Big Picture)

• The Sci-Fi Writer Who Invented Conspiracy Theory: It all goes back to one man in the 1950s: a military-intelligence expert in psychological warfare. (The Atlantic)

• Cigna saves millions of dollars by having its doctors reject their patients’ claims: “Deny, deny, deny. That’s how you hit your numbers.” A Doctor at Cigna Said Her Bosses Pressured Her to Review Patients’ Cases Too Quickly. Cigna Threatened to Fire Her. Cigna tracks every minute that its staff doctors spend deciding whether to pay for health care. Dr. Debby Day said her bosses cared more about being fast than being right. (ProPublica)

• Airlines Mishandled 2.8 Million Bags In 2023, These Were The Worst Offenders: Allegiant Air proved to be the most competent airline in getting bags to their destination last year. American Airlines was the worst airline for lost luggage, accounting for 28.5% of all bags mishandled; United was #2, Alaska Airlines was #3. (Jalopnik)

• The problem isn’t that life is unfair – it’s your broken idea of fairness: But never fall for the collective delusion that there’s not a competition going on. People dress up to win partners. They interview to win jobs. If you deny that competition exists, you’re just losing. Everything in demand is on a competitive scale. And the best is only available to those who are willing to truly fight for it. (Oliver Emberton)

• Wait, why are there so few dead bugs on my windshield these days? You’ve probably noticed it, too. On long summer road trips, tiny corpses once formed a crust so thick that the reduced visibility posed a legitimate safety risk. Now, many folks we spoke with can’t remember the last time they had to scour the bug gore from their RAV4. From 1996 to 2017, insect splatters fell by 80 percent. (Washington Post)

• Just a Long List of Stuff That Brian Cox Hates: The legendary actor and Succession star Brian Cox has publicly hated on many people, things, and ideas. Here is a list of all of them. (GQ)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Joanne Bradford, who held executive leadership positions at Microsoft, Yahoo, Pinterest, Demand Media and BusinessWeek. She served as the Chief Revenue Officer at Microsoft, COO, and Chief Marketing Officer at SoFi (2015-2019), Most recently, she was President of Honey, where she orchestrated the sale of to Paypal for $4 billion. She was named one of Ad Age’s 100 Most Influential Women in Advertising.

 

WHERE DID ALL THE STOCKS GO? The number of public companies has fallen fast

Source: Sherwood

 

Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.

~~~

To learn how these reads are assembled each day, please see this.

 

The post 10 Sunday Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

Almost Half Of Health Care Workers Hesitant To Take COVID-19 Boosters: Study

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

Approximately half of the health care workers in a Polish study were found to be averse to taking COVID-19 booster shots, with one of the reasons for this hesitancy being their negative experiences with previous vaccinations.

A man received a dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at the Amazon Meeting Center in downtown Seattle, on Jan. 24, 2021. (Grant Hindsley/AFP via Getty Images)

The peer-reviewed study, published in the Vaccines journal on April 29, examined factors underlying “hesitancy to receive COVID-19 booster vaccine doses” among health care workers (HCW) in Poland. Almost 50 percent of the participants were identified as being wary of the boosters. “Our study found that 42 percent of the HCWs were hesitant about the second booster dose, while 7 percent reported no intent to get vaccinated with any additional doses.”

“As reasons for not vaccinating, participants most frequently highlighted lack of time, negative experiences with previous vaccinations, and immunity conferred by past infections.”

The study involved 69 healthcare workers composed of nurses, midwives, physicians, other health associate professionals, and administrative staff.

At the time of enrollment, 47 had a history of lab-confirmed COVID-19 infection and 31 had at least one comorbidity, a situation where a person suffers from more than one disease or medical condition at the same time.

Over 92 percent of study participants received at least one vaccine booster, with 50.73 percent getting two doses. Five out of the 69 HCWs did not take any boosters.

“Booster hesitancy among health professionals (physicians, nurses, and midwives) was lower than among administrative staff and others. Almost 79 percent of the physicians had received two COVID-19 vaccine booster doses. However, apart from physicians, about half of the HCWs from each occupation group were hesitant about the second booster dose.”

“The highest number of HCWs without any vaccine boosters was observed among administration personnel.”

HCWs in the age groups of 31-40 and 41-50 were found to be the most skeptical about taking the second booster shot. Thirty-four out of the 69 HCWs provided reasons for their COVID-19 booster vaccine hesitancy.

Two of the health care workers who did not take booster shots said their decision was based on their personal experience with the vaccines.

“They reported negative experiences with past COVID-19 vaccination and stated that the natural immunity developed after SARS-CoV-2 infection could protect them against COVID-19, which, overall, does not pose serious health risks,” the study said.

“Responses from HCWs who received only one COVID-19 booster dose can be categorized into two themes: (i) influences arising from personal perceptions of the COVID-19 vaccine and disease prevention and (ii) issues directly related to vaccination and its safety.”

Six health care workers reported suffering negative adverse effects after previously taking COVID shots. Four had safety concerns about the vaccines.

In an earlier study conducted by the researchers, COVID-19 antibody levels among HCWs after receiving the mandatory primary vaccine series were found to have decreased by around 90 to 95 percent within seven months of vaccination. However, “none of the HCWs contracted COVID-19,” it said.

The current study was funded by the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry Polish Academy of Sciences. The authors of the study reported no conflicts of interest.

Vaccine Concerns, Harms

Other studies have also explored vaccine hesitancy among health care workers. A March 2023 study that looked at HCWs from Cameroon and Nigeria found that COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy was “high and broadly determined by the perceived risk of COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines on personal health, mistrust in COVID-19 vaccines, and uncertainty about colleagues’ vaccine acceptability.”

An April 2022 study found that “a concern for vaccine side effects” and “the belief that the vaccines are inadequately studied” were some of the key reasons for vaccine hesitancy among health care workers.

A May 2022 analysis at BMJ Global Health warned that indulging in policies like mandatory vaccination “may cause more harm than good.”

“Current mandatory vaccine policies are scientifically questionable and are likely to cause more societal harm than good,” it said.

“Current policies may lead to a widening of health and economic inequalities, detrimental long-term impacts on trust in government and scientific institutions, and reduce the uptake of future public health measures, including COVID-19 vaccines as well as routine immunizations.”

The analysis recommended that vaccines should only be mandated “sparingly and carefully to uphold ethical norms and trust in institutions.”

During Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-Wis.) roundtable discussion on COVID-19 vaccines on Feb. 26, researcher Raphael Lataster, associate lecturer at the University of Sydney, claimed that data from Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials exaggerated the efficacy of the shots.

The data exaggeration could make an ineffective vaccine have a perceived effectiveness of up to 48 percent, he stated.

Meanwhile, a Jan. 27 narrative review found that repeated COVID-19 vaccination may end up boosting the likelihood of experiencing COVID-19 infections and other pathologies. Taking multiple vaccine doses could trigger higher levels of IgG4 antibodies and impair activating white blood cells that protect a person from infections and cancers.

“While booster doses have been recommended to enhance and extend immunity, especially in the face of emerging variants, this recommendation is not based on proven efficacy, and the side effects have been neglected,” the paper said.

In an interview with EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program last year, clinical pathologist Dr. Ryan Cole said that DNA contamination in some of the COVID-19 vaccines could be behind an increase in cancers. He pointed to “turbo cancers,” referring to the phenomenon of cancer symptoms arising faster.

“Now I’m seeing the solid tissue cancers at rates I’ve never seen ... Patients that were stable, or cancer-free for one, two, five, ten years and their cancer’s back, it’s back with a vengeance and it’s not responding to the traditional therapies,” he said.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/04/2024 - 21:00

Bitcoin Vs. Gold: Who Won The ZeroHedge Debate?

Friday night’s ZeroHedge Debate explored which is the superior asset: Gold or Bitcoin.

Arguing in favor of Gold were investor Peter Schiff and NYU economist Nouriel Roubini, who went toe-to-toe with crypto proponents Erik Voorhees, a cryptocurrency entrepreneur and wealth manager Anthony Scaramucci.

Schiff made the case that Bitcoin cannot be a viable currency because “money needs to be a commodity” and that Bitcoin has no inherent value.

“It’s not just a unit of account and a medium of exchange. It needs to be a store of value,” he added.

“[Bitcoin] is no more ‘digital gold’ than if I create an image of a hamburger on a computer screen. That’s not digital food.”

Does Bitcoin’s transferability give it value?

Voorhees argued that Bitcoin’s ability to seamlessly cross borders is an example of inherent value.

“I can send $1 million to Europe in five minutes from my phone.”

As things heated up, Roubini echoed Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), suggesting that crypto could be exchanged between a “criminal and a terrorist” and that Bitcoin’s transferability allows for the subversion of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know-Your-Customer (KYC) laws.

He blasted Voorhees for being too idealistic.

“Live in your Libertarian cave! That’s not the world we live in.”

Voorhees then gave his best impression of Socrates, attempting to dissect Roubini’s argument that Bitcoin is not "decentralized."

Roubini, meanwhile, made the case that Bitcoin mining is controlled by an oligopoly, and that "The Gini coefficient of Bitcoin is worse than North Korea," - a point he's made in the past, suggesting that Bitcoin contributes to income inequality, rather than reducing it.

One topic the panelists agreed on: inflation is crushing the work class.

According to Schiff, “there’s only one source of inflation and that’s government.”

So, who do you think won?

If you would like to protect yourself from rising inflation, consider checking out this debate's sponsors: Preserve Gold and Bitlayer Labs. ZeroHedge would like to offer a special thank you to each of them for helping to facilitate free speech and open debate.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/04/2024 - 20:33

Northern Gaza In Grip Of Full-Blown Famine, UN Food Agency Chief Says

Starting early last month the director of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) Samantha Power informed US lawmakers in Congress for the first time that the population in parts of northern Gaza have begun facing famine. This testimony served to hasten international efforts to more efficiently get aid into the Strip, such as the Pentagon's Gaza pier project, though it didn't put a halt of the Western weapons flowing to Tel Aviv.

Now, a top UN official has warned the crisis is worse than previously assessed. The head of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) Cindy McCain is now warning that northern Gaza is in the midst of a "full-blown famine".

AFP via Getty Images

She further said that famine is "moving its way south" in a new NBC News interview set to air Sunday. She described that this is base on the humanitarian office's assessment on the ground.

"It’s horror. It’s so hard to look at and it’s so hard to hear," McCain told Meet the Press. "What we are asking for and what we continually ask for is a ceasefire and the ability to have unfettered access, to get in safe through the various ports and gate crossings."

But a ceasefire is unlikely to come for at least a week, given that is how long Israel has just given Hamas to respond in a a fresh ultimatum. "Israel has informed Egyptian mediators that Hamas has one week to agree to a hostage deal or Tel Aviv will begin the invasion of Rafah," AntiWar.com writes. "The Israeli proposal does not offer a permanent ceasefire, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared the attack on the city will occur with or without the release of hostages."

Conditions for the civilian population are expected to compound in the south if Israel's military goes through with its planned ground offensive against Rafah.

"The idea that we will halt the war before achieving all of its goals is out of the question," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhu told representatives of hostage families this past Tuesday. "We will enter Rafah and we will eliminate the Hamas battalions there – with or without a deal, in order to achieve the total victory."

The southern city is packed with some 1.5 million people at this point - with most of these being internally displaced refugees. But Israel says that some final key Hamas battalions and commanders are hiding out in the city, embedded within the civilian population, and that there will be no way to root them out except to send in the IDF infantry.

In her early April testimony, USAID's Power warned that "Food has not flowed in sufficient quantities to avoid this imminent famine in the south, and these conditions that are giving rise already to child deaths in the north."

"There's been significant damage during the war; bullet holes, walls missing, roofs not intact" @UNWateridge

Critical @UNRWA & @WFP mission to expand food distribution in north #Gaza. Agencies working closely to avert famine through meaningful supply despite massive destruction. pic.twitter.com/khMHxOU7qH

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) May 2, 2024

Aid officials have warned that in addition to the likelihood of mass deaths, famine would grow in the south of the Strip as well in the wake of a major Rafah assault. The population is so concentrated there that people would have few or no safe places to which to flee for safety. The US has been leaning on Israel to establish a credible civilian evacuation plan, but it's unclear the degree to which this is being realized.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/04/2024 - 20:25

California Bill Would Give Black Applicants An Edge In Getting Occupational Licenses

Authored by Sophie Li via The Epoch Times,

California lawmakers are considering a bill that would give preference to African American applicants seeking occupational licenses, for such professions as teaching, nursing, counseling, electrical work and others, especially those who are descendants of slaves.

Assemblyman Mike Gipson, author of AB 2862, said the state’s licensing process poses barriers for African Americans seeking employment, particularly in terms of wage disparities and access to leadership or managerial positions.

“There has been historical longstanding deficiencies and internal barriers … [for] African Americans seeking professional work, and by prioritizing their applications, we are bridging the gap of professional inequities of under representation and under compensation,” Mr. Gipson said in a bill analysis.

Under current law, only veterans are eligible for such prioritization.

Mr. Gipson argued in the analysis that if such priority can be granted to veterans, similar standards should be applicable to African-American applicants.

“If expediting licensure for veterans does not discriminate, then perhaps prioritizing African American applicants also is not discriminatory,” his statement reads.

“Nor would a preference for African American applicants violate the equal protection clause of the California Constitution any more than the existing preference for veterans.”

Supporters of the bill, including the Greater Sacramento Urban League and the California African American Chamber of Commerce, said the legislation addresses historical injustices and “promotes equity and provides opportunities for economic advancement within our community.”

However, opponents say it is “unconstitutional” and lacks legal backing.

The Pacific Legal Foundation, a public interest law firm, argues in a statement that both the U.S. and California Constitutions guarantee citizens equal protection under the law, prohibiting the government from treating citizens differently based on race, ancestry, or other protected categories.

The law firm suggested if the bill were to become law, it would probably not hold up against legal challenges, referencing the Supreme Court’s ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard last summer. The court deemed the consideration of an applicant’s race as a factor in admissions decisions unconstitutional.

They argued that while the constitution allows the government to use race to remedy instances of past discrimination, the bill doesn’t cite any specific California laws that exclude African Americans or that were drafted with the intention of excluding workers needing redress.

Additionally, they said that introducing race as a factor in the licensing process would exacerbate barriers for many Californians seeking to enter the workforce, particularly low-income workers, who already face numerous challenges.

The law firm also pointed out that the representation of minority groups within industries often varies, suggesting that prioritizing one group over others would fail to address the root of the problem.

They argued that if the state were to do so, it should reduce barriers to licensure for all Californians.

The bill, which will now be heard in the Assembly’s Appropriations Committee, passed the Assembly’s Business and Professions Committee on a 13–2 vote last week.

If ultimately passed, it would go into effect on Jan. 1, 2029.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/04/2024 - 19:50

Cargill Recalls 8 Tons Of Ground Beef At Walmart Stores Nationwide Over Possible E. Coli

Eight tons of ground beef, processed at a Cargill Meat Solutions plant in Pennsylvania and distributed to Walmart stores nationwide, have been recalled due to potential E. coli contamination. 

On Wednesday, the US Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service announced that 16,243 pounds of raw ground beef products may be contaminated with E. 

In recent days, Cargill shipped the raw ground beef to Walmart stores in a wide range of states, including Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, DC, and West Virginia. 

The recalled beef from Cargill includes:

• All Natural Lean Ground Beef with lot code 117 (2.25 pounds)

• Prime Rib Beef Steak Burgers Patties with lot code 118 (1.33 pounds)

• Fat All Natural Angus Premium Ground Beef with lot code 117 (2.25 pounds)

• Fat All Natural Ground Beef Chuck with lot code 118 (2.25 pounds)

• Fat All Natural Ground Beef Chuck Patties with lot code 118 (1.33 pounds)

• Fat All Natural Good Beef Sirloin Patties with lot code 118 (1.33 pounds)

This comes about one month after walnuts sold at Whole Foods were recalled for potential  E. coli contamination. 

Last month, Trader Joe's recalled fresh basil sold in 29 states and Washington, DC, due to dozens of cases of salmonella. 

The recent spate of food recalls, including the current ground beef recall, highlights the need for Americans to understand better the sourcing of their food. 

Here's what X users said about the recall: 

It was eggs last week, peanut butter the week before that, granola bars before that, who tf is letting this all threw.

— Godhasreturned (@Godhasreturned_) May 2, 2024

I wouldn’t eat any meat sold at Walmart regardless

— Mang (@Manglonian) May 2, 2024

I can’t believe that many people buy meat there.

— Mrs.America (@NeoAndTrinity_) May 2, 2024

That’s what you get for buying meat at Walmart

— Bobby (@0gbobbyEth) May 2, 2024

This calls for reevaluating food sources, moving away from big companies, and shifting towards more localized and transparent farming practices. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/04/2024 - 19:15

David Stockman On The $1.3 Trillion Elephant In The Room

Authored by David Stockman via InternationalMan.com,

These people have to be stopped!

We are talking about the nation’s unhinged monetary politburo domiciled in the Eccles Building, of course. It is bad enough that their relentless inflation of financial assets has showered the 1% with untold trillions of windfall gains, but their ultimate crime is that they lured the nation’s elected politician into a veritable fiscal trance. Consequently, future generations will be lugging the service costs on insuperable public debts for years to come.

For more than two decades these foolish PhDs and monetary apparatchiks drove the entire Treasury yield curve to rock bottom, even as public debt erupted skyward. In this context, the single biggest chunk of the Treasury debt lies in the 90-day T-bill sector, but between December 2007 and June 2023 the inflation-adjusted yield on this workhorse debt security was negative 95% of the time.

That’s right. During that 187-month span, the interest rate exceeded the running (LTM) inflation rate during only nine months, as depicted by the purple area picking above the zero bound in the chart, and even then by just a tad. All the rest of the time, Uncle Sam was happily taxing the inflationary rise in nominal incomes, even as his debt service payments were dramatically lagging the 78% rise of CPI during that period.

Inflation-Adjusted Yield On 90-Day T-bills, 2007 to 2022

The above was the fiscal equivalent of Novocain. It enabled the elected politicians to merrily jig up and down Pennsylvania Avenue and stroll the K-Street corridors dispensing bountiful goodies left and right, while experiencing nary a moment of pain from the massive debt burden they were piling on the main street economy.

Accordingly, during the quarter-century between Q4 1997 and Q1 2022 the public debt soared from $5.5 trillion to $30.4 trillion or by 453%. In any rational world a commensurate rise in Federal interest expense would have surely awakened at least some of the revilers.

But not in Fed World. As it happened, Uncle Sam’s interest expense only increased by 73%, rising from $368 billion to $635 billion per year during the same period.  By contrast, had interest rates remained at the not unreasonable levels posted in late 1997, the interest expense level by Q1 2022, when the Fed finally awakened to the inflationary monster it had fostered, would have been $2.03 trillion per annum.

In short, the Fed reckless and relentless repression of interest rates during that quarter century fostered an elephant in the room that was one for the ages. Annualized Federal interest expense was fully $1.3 trillion lower than would have been the case at the yield curve in place in Q4 1997.

Alas, the missing interest expense amounted to the equivalent of the entire social security budget!

So, we’d guess the politicians might have been aroused from their slumber had interest expense reflected market rates. Instead, they were actually getting dreadfully wrong price signals and the present fiscal catastrophe is the consequence.

Index Of Public Debt Versus Federal Interest Expense, Q4 1997-Q1 2022

Needless to say, the US economy was not wallowing in failure or under-performance at the rates which prevailed in 1997. In fact, during that year real GDP growth was +4.5%, inflation posted at just 1.7%, real median family income rose by 3.2%, job growth was 2.8% and the real interest rates on the 10-year UST was +4.0%.

In short, 1997 generated one of the strongest macroeconomic performances in recent decades—even with inflation-adjusted yields on the 10-year UST of +4.0%. So there was no compelling reason for a massive compression of interest rates, but that is exactly what the Fed engineered over the next two decades. As shown in the graph below, rates were systematically pushed lower by 300 to 500 basis points across the curve by the bottom in 2020-2021.

Current yields are higher by 300 to 400 basis points from this recent bottom, but here’s the thing: They are only back to nominal levels prevalent at the beginning of the period in 1997, even as inflation is running at 3-4% Y/Y increases, or double the levels of 1997.

US Treasury Yields, 1997 to 2024

Unfortunately, even as the Fed has tepidly moved toward normalization of yields as shown in the graph above, Wall Street is bringing unrelenting pressure for a new round of rates cuts, which would result in yet another spree of the deep interest rate repression and distortion that has fueled Washington’s fiscal binge since the turn of the century.

As it is, the public debt is already growing at an accelerating clip, even before the US economy succumbs to the recession that is now gathering force. And we do mean accelerating. The public debt has recently been increasing by $1 trillion every 100 days. That’s $10 billion per day, $416 million per hour.

In fact, Uncle Sam’s debt has risen by $470 billion in the first two months of this year to $34.5 trillion and is on pace to surpass $35 trillion in a little over a month, $37 trillion well before year’s end, and $40 trillion some time in 2025. That’s about two years ahead of the current CBO (Congressional Budget Office) forecast.

On the current path, moreover, the public debt will reach $60 trillion by the end of the 10-year budget window. But even that depends upon the CBO’s latest iteration of Rosy Scenario, which envisions no recession ever again, just 2% inflation as far as the eye can see and real interest rates of barely 1%. And that’s to say nothing of the trillions in phony spending cuts and out-year tax increases that are built into the CBO baseline but which Congress will never actually allow to materialize.

What is worse, even with partial normalization of rates, a veritable tsunami of Federal interest expense is now gathering steam. That is because the ultra-low yields of 2007 to 2022 are now rolling over into the current market rates shown above—at the same time that the amount of public debt outstanding is heading skyward. As a result, the annualized run rate of Federal interest expense hit $1.1 trillion in February and is heading for $1.6 trillion by the end of the current fiscal year in September.

Finally, even as the run-rate of interest expense has been soaring, the bureaucrats at the US Treasury have been drastically shortening the maturity of the outstanding debt, as it rolls over. Accordingly, more than $21 trillion of Treasury paper has been refinanced in the under one-year T-bill market, thereby lowering the weighted-average maturity of the public debt to less than five- years.

The apparent bet is that the Fed will be cutting rates soon. As is becoming more apparent by the day, however, that’s just not in the cards: No matter how you slice it, the running level of inflation has remained exceedingly sticky and shows no signs of dropping below its current 3-4% range any time soon.

What is also becoming more apparent by the day is that the money-printers at the Fed have led Washington into a massive fiscal calamity. It is only a matter of time, therefore, until the brown stuff hits the fan like never before.

*  *  *

The truth is, we’re on the cusp of an economic crisis that could eclipse anything we’ve seen before. And most people won’t be prepared for what’s coming. That’s exactly why bestselling author Doug Casey and his team just released a free report with all the details on how to survive an economic collapse. Click here to download the PDF now.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/04/2024 - 18:40

Data Centers Hiding In 'Spy Country' Northern Virginia Will Need Reactor's Worth Of Power

Since the beginning of the digital age, most of the world's internet data has flowed through massive data centers in Northern Virginia. The area is known as "Data Center Alley" because it's home to the world's largest concentration of data centers. Some call the area 'spy country' because of the number of data centers used by the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies. 

Given the exponential proliferation of smartphones, streaming services, smart devices, and now generative artificial intelligence, the power demanded by data centers in Northern Virginia will need nuclear reactors worth of power, if not much more, according to utility Dominion Energy.

On Thursday, Chief Executive Officer Bob Blue told investors on a company earnings call that "economic growth, electrification, and accelerating data center expansion" is boosting power demand across the area. 

Blue said, "The data center industry has grown substantially in northern Virginia in recent years," noting, "We've connected 94 data centers with over 4 gigawatts of capacity over the last approximately five years." 

Blue expects his utility company to connect another 15 data centers to the local power grid this year. 

He said, "This growth has accelerated in orders of magnitude, driven by one, the number of data centers requesting to be connected to our system, two, the size of each facility, and three, the acceleration of each facility's ramp scheduled to reach full capacity." 

He provided some context about rising power demand, pointing out:

"A single data center typically had a demand of 30 megawatts or greater. However, we're now receiving individual requests for demand of 60 to 90 megawatts or greater, and it hasn't stopped there. We get regular requests to support larger data center campuses that include multiple buildings and require total capacity ranging from 300 megawatts to as many as several gigawatts." 

Blue told analysts that Loudoun County is home to the "largest data center market in the world, and we have had an opportunity to work with our data center customers for 15 or more years."

He said the electrification of the economy, in combination with data centers, will only mean "substantial load growth driven by electrification in data centers for the foreseeable future." 

With substantial load growth coming down the pipe, the local media outlet The Frederick News-Post reported earlier this year that billions of dollars in "regional power grid upgrades" are being proposed to "increase data center power demands in Northern Virginia." 

Recently, media outlet LoudounNow reported that "hunger for energy continues to grow, especially in the data center industry with new large-scale projects adding hundreds of megawatts of demand." The paper said that this has led government officials to propose "small modular reactors."

Putting this all together plays into our latest investing theme, 'powering up America' and the upgrade of the nation's grid for AI data centers, electrification of the economy, and reshoring of manufacturing. We titled the notes "The Next AI Trade" and "Everyone Is Piling Into The Next AI Trade." Nuclear will be a big part of power generation as it's the only clean and reliable source for data centers, as Blackrock's Larry Fink pointed out last week. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/04/2024 - 18:05

US Demands Qatar Expel Hamas If Group Rejects Israeli Truce Deal

Via The Cradle

US officials have told Qatar to expel Hamas’ political leadership if the Palestinian militant group rejects the latest proposal for a ceasefire with Israel, The Washington Post reports Saturday. A US official speaking on the condition of anonymity with The Post said that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered the message to Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani in April.

Three diplomats familiar with the matter said Qatari officials have expected the request for months, as ceasefire talks mediated by Qatari and Egyptian officials have repeatedly failed. Qatari officials have advised Hamas officials to prepare to depart for another country should they be forced to leave, one of the diplomats told The Post. Some have speculated that Turkiye may be a possible future host of the group.

Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani (R) in a meeting with Hamas official Khaled Mashal in Doha, Qatar govt handout

Doha has hosted Hamas’ political leadership, including Ismail Haniyeh, at the US’ request since 2012 and provided billions in cash to the Hamas authorities governing Gaza in recent years with the approval of the US and Israel. 

However, Qatar has come under criticism from US and Israeli officials since Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October. During the operation, Hamas attacked Israeli military bases and settlements to break the 17-year siege on Gaza. Some 1,200 Israeli civilians and soldiers were killed, including some by Hamas and others by Israeli forces, which used attack helicopters, tanks, and drones in their own settlements (kibbutzim) to respond to the operation.

Hamas also took some 240 Israelis captive, of which roughly 100 remain alive in Gaza, to exchange for some of the thousands of Palestinians held captive in Israeli jails. 

The White House has sought to use the threat of expelling Hamas from Qatar as leverage in ceasefire negotiations. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants the return of the Israeli captives without offering a permanent end to the war in return. 

Netanyahu has long insisted that Israel only agree to a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the return of the Israeli captives, after which the army would be allowed to resume the war on Gaza, which he claims is meant to eliminate Hamas. Hamas has rejected the idea of a temporary ceasefire in hopes of ending the war permanently and winning the return of displaced Palestinians from northern Gaza to their homes, though many have been destroyed by Israeli bombing.

After seven months of war, the Israeli army has succeeded in killing a reported over 34,000 Palestinians, including over 14,000 children according to Gaza Health Ministry casualties, and has laid waste to large swathes of Gaza’s cities and farmland. However, the army has not defeated Hamas, whose fighters continue to carry out operations against occupying Israeli troops. 

Netanyahu has also used the threat of an all-out invasion of Rafah, the city on the Egypt border where over 1 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering, as leverage to force Hamas to agree to a ceasefire and prisoner exchange on Israel’s terms. 

Blinken returned to Israel this week in hopes of pressuring Hamas to agree to the latest Israeli proposal. "We are determined to get a ceasefire that brings the hostages home and to get it now, and the only reason that wouldn’t be achieved is because of Hamas," Blinken said Wednesday in Tel Aviv. "There is a proposal on the table, and as we’ve said: no delays, no excuses. The time is now." A Hamas delegation is expected to visit Cairo this weekend, potentially to respond in writing to Israel’s latest proposal, Reuters reported Friday.

Major Israeli strike have continued to rock Gaza this week:

BREAKING: MAJOR ISRAELI AIRSTRIKES ON NORTHERN GAZA RIGHT NOW pic.twitter.com/pxoc2eFhqb

— Sulaiman Ahmed (@ShaykhSulaiman) May 3, 2024

As negotiations have dragged on, US officials and lawmakers have blamed Qatar for its failure to force Hamas to agree to a deal. Some US lawmakers have called on the White House to force Qatar to not only expel the Hamas leadership but to cut ties with the group entirely.

However, some analysts say expelling Hamas from Qatar will not assist Israel. "Applying pressure to Hamas in Doha is ineffective pressure," an official briefed on the talks said. "The problem is the guys making the decisions are in Gaza, and they don’t care where the political office is located," this person said.

Patrick Theros, a former US ambassador to Qatar, told The Post that kicking Hamas out of Qatar would simply sabotage the current talks further. "We’d be cutting off our nose to spite our face," he said.

Qatari officials have expressed frustration for the criticism they are receiving, simply for doing what the US had requested of them. "We did not enter into a relationship with Hamas because we wanted to. We were asked by the U.S.," Majed al-Ansari, adviser to the Qatari prime minister and spokesperson for Qatar’s Foreign Ministry, stated last week to Israeli media.

"Qatar is being used as a political punching bag for those who are looking either to safeguard their political futures or to find more votes in the next elections," he said in response to US and Israeli criticism.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/04/2024 - 17:30

Bitcoin ETFs See Buying Resurgence; 'Mr.100' BTFD As Grayscale Sees First Inflow Since Jan

For the first time since spot bitcoin ETFs were launched, Grayscale's Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC) saw a daily net inflow on Friday (of $63 million)...

Source: Bloomberg

GBTC has dominated the outflows since inception (adding up to around $17.5 billion) since the 11 spot ETFs were launched on Jan 11. The inflow coincided with a sudden surge in aggregate net inflows to ETFs overall of $378 million on Friday (which came two days after a record net outflow of $563 million)...

Source: Bloomberg

CoinTelegraph's Ciaran Lyons reports that pseudonymous crypto investor DivXman told his followers that the GBTC was the “primary source” of sell pressure across all spot Bitcoin ETFs, but “the tides” could be turning.

“That effectively means a significant decrease in sell pressure and additional increase in demand while ETFs collectively are buying more BTC than miners can create,” he explained to his 20,800 X followers in a May 3 post.

Crypto trader Jelle predicted to his 80,300 X followers on the same day that Bitcoin’s new all-time high is on the horizon.

“60 million dollars worth of inflows for Grayscale’s ETF. The halving chop will come to an end, and 6-figure Bitcoin will follow shortly after.”

Bitcoin's price responded to this sudden inflow surprise and rallied back above $64,000, erasing the outflow-driven plunge from last week...

Source: Bloomberg

This price rise corresponded to a big short liquidation in the past 24 hours...

Source: CoinGlass

Additionally, CoinTelegraph reports that bitcoin whale entity nicknamed “Mr. 100” has bought the Bitcoin dip for the first time since the Bitcoin halving.

Meanwhile, multiple market analysts suggest that the local Bitcoin bottom may be in as the price bounces from $56,000 lows.

The Mr. 100 whale wallet has added over 4,100 BTC worth over $242 million, around the $58,000 mark, according to on-chain data from Bitinfocharts, as noticed by X user HODL15Capital.

This represents the wallet’s first Bitcoin purchases since April 19, the day before the 2024 Bitcoin halving.

The wallet has been adding at least 100 BTC nearly every day since Feb. 14, except for the post-halving period.

Mr. 100 is currently the 12th-largest Bitcoin holder, with over 65,155 BTC, according to Bitinfocharts data.

Finally, another even-larger 'whale' is Michael Saylor at MicroStrategy, delivered a masterclass on corporate finance and the power of bitcoin to supercharge corporate balance sheets. Saylor made a point to emphasize Bitcoin as the single solution for capital appreciation in an inflationary environment.

The MicroStrategy Executive Chairman noted key differences between Bitcoin and alternative cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, expressing the importance and necessity of proof-of-work-based consensus in creating a digital commodity.

“You could see the writing on the wall when the spot ETF of Bitcoin was approved in January. By the end of May, you'll know that Ethereum is not going to be approved. And when Ethereum is not going to be approved, sometime this summer it'll be very clear to everyone that Ethereum is deemed a crypto asset security, not a commodity. After that, you're going to see that [for] Ethereum, BNB, Solana, Ripple, Cardano – everything down the stack.”

Saylor’s conviction and use of physics-based metaphors were present as ever as he spoke on Bitcoin’s price appreciation and continued monetization.

“It's never declining. The chart's not ever decreasing. It only goes one way. Bitcoin is a capital ratchet. It's a one-way ratchet. Archimedes said, give me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I can move the world. Bitcoin is the place to stand.”

“There's no more powerful idea than the digital transformation of capital… No force on earth can stop an idea whose time has come. This is an idea. Its time has come. It's unstoppable. And so I'm going to end with the observation that Bitcoin is the best. The best what? The best.”

Saylor is an outspoken proponent of BTC and a leading force behind MicroStrategy acquiring the cryptocurrency as a reserve asset. As of April 30, the firm held 214,400 BTC - worth more than $13 billion at the time of publication.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/04/2024 - 16:55

Governments Cause Inflation And Hurt Bond Investors

Authored by Daniel Lacalle,

The Fed’s preferred inflation measure rose 2.8% in March from a year ago. This is the core personal consumption expenditures price index, excluding food and energy, which should be less volatile than the consumer price index and a better indicator of the real process of disinflation.

This figure is not only concerning, considering the propaganda that repeats that the fight against inflation is nearing its conclusion, but it becomes even more so when we observe the upward trend over the last three and six months. Inflation has accelerated on a quarterly and half-year basis.

As E.J. Anthony, PhD economist, points out, “there was never any indication we were heading to the 2.0% inflation target, let alone the pre-pandemic 1.8% average; we’ve arrived at 3%+ with no indication we’re going significantly lower anytime soon, not with the current levels of Treasury borrowing and Fed allowing money supply growth.”

We need to understand why inflation is not falling as promised and announced.

There is no such thing as cost-push inflation

Fiscal policy has been reckless, and enormous deficit spending is fueling inflationary pressures through unnecessary government consumption of newly created currency.

Government spending is printing new units of currency and inflation is caused by issuing more than what the private sector demands, thus making the purchasing power of money decline.

There is no such thing as cost-push inflation, greedflation, or commodity inflation.

None of those factors can make aggregate prices rise, consolidate, and continue increasing on an annualized level.

Furthermore, if cost-push or supply chain disruptions were the cause of inflation, we would have deflation today, not rising aggregate prices every month.

Governments created the inflation burst of 2021 and have not only ignored fiscal responsibility but, in the case of the United States, maintained a completely unhealthy and unrequired budget deficit

Governments are destroying the purchasing power of money and perpetuating inflation. They created the inflation burst of 2021 and have not only ignored fiscal responsibility but, in the case of the United States, maintained a completely unhealthy and unrequired budget deficit.

“An upsurge in money growth preceded the inflation flare-up, and countries with stronger money growth saw markedly higher inflation,” concluded Claudio Borio in a scholar paper in 2023 (“Does money growth help explain the recent inflation surge?”, BIS Bulletin No. 67, January 26, 2023).

Doctors Juan Castañeda and Tim Congdon already warned as early as June 2020 that “the policy reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic will increase budget deficits massively in the world’s leading countries. The deficits will largely be monetized, with heavy state borrowing from both national central banks and commercial banks. The monetization of budget deficits, combined with official support for emergency bank lending to cash-strained corporates, is leading to extremely high growth rates of the quantity of money,” and these “will instigate an inflationary boom” (Inflation: The Next Threat? Institute of Economic Affairs, Briefing 7, June 2020).

Inflation is a policy

Inflation is not a coincidence or a fatality; it is a policy. Governments tend to announce large-scale spending programs to combat inflation.

These policies accelerate money velocity in a recovery, particularly after a shutdown like the one of 2020, as well as the quantity of money in the system.

Thus, inflation rises rapidly. The only way to contain the inflation burst is to cut spending and reduce the quantity and growth of money. However, although central banks have announced so-called restrictive policies, reality has shown the opposite.

The quantity of money in the system has not been reduced. Money supply measured as M2 has declined, and the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve has diminished, but these forces have been entirely offset by net liquidity and money market funds.

As government spending and deficit have not fallen at all, but rather the opposite, the economy has been flooded with the post-waves of the first money growth impact (2020), its market and net liquidity effect, and rising public expenditure with annual deficits close to $2 trillion.

The quantity of money has not been reduced

The Federal Reserve has increased rates, but that only helps moderate the growth of money, not eliminate inflationary pressures.

Furthermore, as markets immediately discounted large rate cuts in 2024, the real effect on money growth has been just to postpone the inevitable future monetization of such enormous deficits. It has become a Call option on a forthcoming new quantitative easing program.

We cannot forget that the quantity of money has not been reduced due to another relevant factor.

The Federal Reserve has multiplied its support for the troubled banking sector via the discount window, which offsets the modest reduction in the Fed balance sheet.

Instead of attacking inflation, the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” has perpetuated the destruction of the value of the currency issued

By purchasing the sovereign bonds in the banks’ balance sheets at par despite the collapse in price, the Fed was inadvertently printing new money and sabotaging its own restrictive measures.

The misguided Keynesian policies implemented by the US government have cancelled out the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet reduction and rate hike efforts.

The Treasury injected more than $2 trillion per annum in liquidity, creating new money, counteracting the net $1.6 trillion that the Fed retired in three years from its balance sheet.

Therefore, the impact on the purchasing power of the currency through inflation has been negative. Instead of attacking inflation, the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” has perpetuated the destruction of the value of the currency issued.

The impact on markets

The impact on markets has been phenomenal. The yen, once a stable currency perceived as a haven for investors, has fallen to a 35-year low versus the US dollar.

The Bloomberg index of globally expanded major currencies and the emerging markets indicator have both fallen.

The result of the 2020–2024 “free money” wave was a very expensive destruction of real wages and deposit savings.

Furthermore, bonds have been obliterated and the latest data shows that the aggregate US and euro area bond indices have not recovered from the past years’ slump, and even going back to 2020, the indices are showing negative returns.

Only the high yield index has shown a positive performance in the past four years, albeit a meager 4.5%.

Governments are destroying the currency that they issue in all possible ways. Through persistent inflation, making wage earners and middle-class deposit savers poorer, with rising taxes to try to reduce a budget deficit that was bloated by unnecessary spending in a recovery, and through the destruction of the safest asset, bonds, that have become a bad investment for the most conservative investors, pension funds.

The only way in which inflation will be reduced will be if the Federal Reserve abandons its decision to cut rates and starts to take measures that drain net liquidity.

Without the support of the Treasury, this is impossible because it floods the market with new money even if monetary policy is restrictive and investors simply discounts that all those newly issued currency units will be monetized somehow in the future.

It does not matter if Powell promises restraint when Yellen pushes excess. The most conservative bondholders will only start to see positive returns when the Treasury stops destroying the currency’s value. It does not seem likely anytime soon.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/04/2024 - 16:20

Gaza Pier Delayed Over Rough Seas, Pentagon Calls Project "Extremely Challenging"

This week has seen statements and reports indicating the US military constructed humanitarian pier on Gaza's coast is expected to be complete by some point this weekend. 

But the $320 million project has hit another snag, as the Pentagon has said its soldiers and engineers were forced to "temporarily pause" the offshore assembly of the floating pier due to bad sea conditions in the eastern Mediterranean. So a finish date by this weekend appears unrealistic at this point, based on the Friday announcement.

US Navy personnel construct a ‘Joint Logistics Over-the Shore’ temporary pier. Image: CENTCOM via Reuters

"The partially built pier and military vessels involved in its construction have moved to the Port of Ashdod, where assembly will continue, and will be completed prior to the emplacement of the pier in its intended location when sea states subside," CENTCOM said in a statement. 

So now the US personnel constructing it have moved to Israel. Presumably once the floating pier is completed it will be moved by sea back to the northern Gaza coast in preparation for maritime aid deliveries. 

The pier is expected to allow “the delivery of large quantities of humanitarian aid from ship to shore by truck, with vehicles driving directly off ships and across the temporary pier to a marshaling yard ashore," per the US military statement.

According to more details of what could prove to be cause of more continued pauses and delays:

Defense officials previously hoped that the JLOTS system would be fully built by Friday. But officials told CNN that sea state conditions have been extremely challenging off the coast of Gaza over the last week, impeding the work of the personnel involved in building the pier. One of the key tasks, for example, involves military divers working underneath the pier to ensure all the parts are secured and stable — a difficult and dangerous task when the seas are rough.

The operation of the pier and causeway, which will also require US military personnel to be stationed at sea, will also depend on weather conditions, officials say. 

Meanwhile famine has hit parts of the Gaza Strip, USAID said starting last month. There are also still lingering fears that once complete the pier and personnel working it could come under attack by Palestinian militants.

On Tuesday Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin made a surprise admission for the first time. It came during a hearing of the House Armed Services committee, and specifically when Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida grilled him on whether US servicemen will be placed in harm's way during the construction of the project in Gaza.

Update on the Construction of the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore capability in Mediterranean Sea

Yesterday, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) temporarily paused offshore assembly of the floating pier in the vicinity of Gaza due to sea state considerations. Forecasted high winds and… pic.twitter.com/cIY2TUn7NX

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) May 3, 2024

Austin answered in the affirmative, and further said that troops erecting the pier will be armed and that they will be authorized to fire back if fired upon. It must be recalled that just last week a visiting delegation of UN officials came under mortar fire from Palestinian militants. Hamas has further warned that any foreign military presence on Gaza soil will come under attack. 

* * *

Below is more from the tense Congressional exchange: 

Gaetz: This is a very telling moment, Mr. Secretary, because you've said something that's quite possible, that could happen, right? Shots from Gaza on our service members, and then the response our armed service members shooting live fire into Gaza. That is a possible outcome here so that we can become the Port Authority and run this pier. Right?

Austin: That's correct. And I expect that we will always have the ability to protect themselves.

Gaetz: Don't you think that counts as boots on the ground? President Biden told the country that we weren't going to have boots on the ground in Gaza.

Austin: And we won't

Gaetz: Okay, but you guys parse the distinction between... Like when Americans think boots on the ground, they think Americans in harm's way or engaged actively in a conflict. You guys seem to be sort of saying that boots on a pier, connected to the ground, connected to service members shooting into Gaza doesn't count as boots on the ground?

Austin: It does not.

Gaetz: I think you're gonna find the the American people have a different perspective on that. And if we're gonna have people shooting into Gaza, we probably should have a vote on that, pursuant to our war powers.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/04/2024 - 15:45

Long Beach Hotel Housing 'Homeless' Sparks Tuberculosis Outbreak As Health Emergency Declared

A health crisis has emerged for Democrat officials in Long Beach, California, following a tuberculosis outbreak linked to a hotel housing 'homeless' people, according to Fox News. 

On Thursday, health officials declared a public health emergency after an alarming tuberculosis outbreak was reported at an unnamed hotel housing. 

The city has so far confirmed 14 cases of tuberculosis in people "associated with a single room occupancy hotel." Nine of them were hospitalized with one fatal case. Another 170 people were "likely exposed" to the deadly bacteria. 

"The outbreak is currently isolated to a distinct population and the risk to the general public is low," the city said, adding, "The population at risk in this outbreak has significant barriers to care, including homelessness and housing insecurity, mental illness, substance use and serious medical comorbidities."

The reason health officials declined to name the hotel or its location is to comply with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act regulations. 

One X user said, "I believe the name of the hotel SHOULD BE DISCLOSED in the interest of traveler safety. OR does this mean the hotel is used to house illegal aliens invading our border? Long Beach declares public health emergency after deadly tuberculosis outbreak." 

I believe the name of the hotel SHOULD BE DISCLOSED in the interest of traveler safety. OR does this mean the hotel is used to house illegal aliens invading our border? Long Beach declares public health emergency after deadly tuberculosis outbreak https://t.co/jTe7fpuR2R

— Judy Holiday (@msjudyholiday) May 3, 2024

The question now becomes if Long Beach officials were housing illegal migrants in the hotel... 

If so, this isn't the first time unvaccinated and undocumented illegal aliens have sparked infectious disease outbreaks in hotels and shelters nationwide. 

 

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/04/2024 - 14:35

Hamas-Israel Truce To Free Hostages Said To Be Closer Than Ever

Rumors are flying Saturday that Hamas and Israel are closer than ever to finally reaching a truce deal that would center of the release of more Israeli hostages, and the freeing of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

"Negotiations for a potential hostage deal and truce in Gaza appeared to reach a critical moment Saturday, with Hamas set to offer its response to the latest proposal, and Israel indicating an offensive in the city of Rafah could be imminent if no agreement is reached," Times of Israel reports.

Separately Haaretz is reporting based on regional Arab sources that Hamas has in essence already accepted a deal. The last hours of Egyptian and Qatari mediated talks have reportedly seen significant progress.

However, this key caveat could make all of the current Saturday headlines premature: 

An Israeli official told Haaretz that 'Israel will, under no circumstances, agree to end the war as part of a deal' and is determined to enter Rafah.

But Haaretz is also saying that "Hamas was guaranteed by the U.S. for a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and that Israeli forces will not continue fighting once the hostages are released."

Picture Alliance via Getty Images

The problem with this is that given PM Netanyahu's latest and consistent rhetoric vowing to not halt the operation until Palestinian terrorists in the Strip are eradicated, a full IDF withdrawal still seems unrealistic.

Starting Friday Israeli leaders said they were giving Hamas one week to agree to the deal on the table or else a full-scale assault of Rafah will begin. 

Less than 40 hostages are expected to be freed as part of the deal - it would focus on the remaining children, elderly, and the sick.

One Israeli official told Haaretz that the government is "waiting anxiously to see Hamas' final position."

But the source cautioned, "The information has not yet arrived, but in light of past experience, even if Hamas says it's following the suggested framework, the small details and reservations it'll eventually present may dissolve the whole deal."

This is precisely what has happened to prior rounds of negotiations which were believed to be at the finish line. They blew up at the last moment over specific details, typically involving wrangling over the names on the hostage release list.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/04/2024 - 14:00

Europe Scraps Net Zero, Biden Should But Won't, Why?

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

“Unaffordable climate commitments have two leftist British parties racing to exit stage left.”

Europeans Ditch Net Zero

The Wall Street Journal reports Europeans Ditch Net Zero, While Biden Clings to It

You know you’ve stumbled through the looking glass when European politicians start sounding saner on climate policy than the Americans do. Well here we are, Alice: Europeans are admitting the folly of net zero quicker than their American peers.

The latest example—perhaps “victim” is more apt—is Humza Yousaf, who resigned this week as Scotland’s first minister. That region within the U.K. enjoys substantial devolved powers over its own affairs, including on climate policy. An administration led by Mr. Yousaf’s left-leaning Scottish National Party had hoped to rush ahead of the national government in London in slashing carbon emissions.

Until, that is, someone noticed the costs. A recent report from the U.K.’s Climate Change Committee noted Scotland had fallen far behind on its climate goals. The government aimed to reduce by 20% the aggregate distance driven by Scottish motorists, compared with 2019 levels, but had no plan to accomplish the reduction in personal mobility by the 2030 deadline. To get back on track with the government’s goal of a transition to home electric heat pumps, Scotland would have to replace natural-gas fire boilers at a rate of more than 80,000 households a year by the end of the decade. That’s a big ask considering that in 2023 it managed 6,000 boiler replacements. The government resisted imposing an aviation tax to discourage excess flying. And so on.

Mr. Yousaf did the only thing he could under the circumstances: He all but abandoned net zero. His administration announced it is ditching firm annual emission-reduction targets in favor of fuzzier “carbon budgets.” The Green Party, with which Mr. Yousaf’s SNP governed in a coalition, balked. After a series of political machinations that were one part “Macbeth” and two parts “Comedy of Errors,” Mr. Yousaf’s administration collapsed and he was forced to resign.

Observe two salient details. First, the specific list of targets the country was missing. Scotland had reached the point where further net-zero progress would have made obvious and material demands of household budgets. That isn’t counting the additional costs of renewable power hidden in utility bills.

I have discussed the above ideas many times. There are farm protests in nearly every country on the main continent and Greens are likely to get clobbered hard in the European Parliament elections in June.

What About the US?

The Journal reports “The puzzlement is that the U.S. is headed in the opposite direction. President Biden is pressing ahead with aggressive net-zero policies such as an electric-vehicle mandate and pouring trillions of dollars of borrowed government and hard-earned household money into climate boondoggles.“

There is no puzzle. Biden is owned 100% by the Progressives.

They control climate policy, regulations, student loans, abortion, everything.

Please note Biden Promotes Climate Change at the Expense of More Global Poverty

The mad rush to deal with climate change, even if it works (it won’t), has a nasty tradeoff (more global poverty).

Biden will not do anything to offend the Progressives, even if it means he loses the election over it.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/04/2024 - 11:40

Israeli Industry Braces For Economic Damage Amid Turkish Trade Ban

Via Middle East Eye

Sectors across the Israeli economy are warning of wide-reaching impacts of Turkey’s decision to halt all trade with Israel, and are scrambling to find alternative sources for lost imports.

The Turkish trade ministry announced earlier this week that Ankara is halting all import and export transactions related to Israel until it "allows an uninterrupted and sufficient flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza." The ban on imports includes iron and steel products, construction materials, minerals, machinery, cars, energy products, rubber, plastics, health and agricultural products.

The construction industry is bracing for the loss of Turkish iron and steel products and building materials, as Turkey supplied 29 percent of Israel's total cement imports last year.

Construction work on the settlement of Tzofim, east of the Palestinian West Bank village of Qalqilya, on 2 January 2024 (AFP)

Last month, Israeli businessmen warned that the restrictions could drive an increase in property and rent prices. Meanwhile, Israel’s largest oil refinery, Bezan, said the ban could impact crude oil imports. 

Forty percent of Israel’s annual oil consumption is piped to the Turkish oil hub port of Ceyhan and then shipped to Israel.

Moreover, representatives of the electrical products industry are warning that the ban could lead to a 35 percent hike in prices, as the majority of domestic electrical goods in Israel are manufactured in Turkey. 

The new restrictions could force importers to import across the Red Sea, where attacks by Yemen's Houthi group have driven a spike in shipping costs.

'Dire straits'

In April, the contractors' association wrote a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, accusing them of driving the sector to the brink of collapse.

Amit Gottlieb, chairman of the Urban Renewal Committee in the Israel Builders’ Association (ACB), said the Israeli construction industry was already in "dire straits" since Israel’s war on Gaza began, due to labor shortages resulting from Israel’s ban on Palestinian workers.

He added that alternative imports of construction materials from Germany, Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Greece needed to be arranged "as soon as possible".

Turkey’s exports to Israel were worth $5.4bn in 2023, or 2.1 percent of its total exports, according to official data. From 2009 to 2023, trade between the two countries nearly tripled. By the end of that period, Turkey had become the fifth-largest supplier of goods imported by Israel, while Israel ranked as Turkey's 10th-largest export market, based on data from the Central Bureau of Statistics.

On Thursday, Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, accused Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of ignoring international trade agreements and acting like a "dictator". He added that Israel would seek to replace the lost Turkish imports with locally produced goods or imports from other countries.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/04/2024 - 08:10

UK Vows To Arm Ukraine For 'As Long as It Takes' - Commits $3.7BN Annually

The UK has committed to what might be called 'forever aid' in Ukraine's defense, with British Foreign Secretary David Cameron newly promising $3.74 billion of annual military aid for Kiev for "as long as it takes".

He unveiled the plan Thursday, and it marks the biggest commitment in foreign defense aid rollout for Britain thus far in the war (and perhaps in all of history), coming on the heels of the Biden administration also seeking to erect a 10-year plan to assist Ukraine which theoretically would lock in future US presidents as well.

AFP/Getty Images

"We will give 3 billion pounds every year for as long as is necessary. We've just really emptied all we can in terms of giving equipment," Cameron told Reuters in an interview on a visit to the Ukrainian capital.

"Some of that [equipment] is actually arriving in Ukraine today, while I'm here," he said. Alarmingly, he openly stated that the British government has no problem with Ukrainian forces using UK weapons to strike at targets inside Russian territory.

"Ukraine has that right. Just as Russia is striking inside Ukraine, you can quite understand why Ukraine feels the need to make sure it's defending itself," Cameron said.

"It's absolutely crucial, not just in terms of the weapons it will bring, but also the boost to morale that it will bring to people here in Ukraine," the UK top diplomat continued in the remarks given upon his second visit to the war-ravaged country as foreign secretary.

Cameron was at one point asked whether a potential future Trump administration could negatively impact the flow of aid to the Zelensky government.

He responded: "It's not for us to decide who the Americans choose as their president. We will work with whoever that is." NATO officials have reportedly been attempting to "Trump-proof" any future aid.

Last Sunday, Zelensky himself signaled as much in a nightly video address, saying that he's working with Washington on a bilateral security agreement which would last ten years. "We are already working on a specific text," Zelensky said in his nightly video address. "Our goal is to make this agreement the strongest of all."

"We are discussing the specific foundations of our security and cooperation. We are also working on fixing specific levels of support for this year and the next 10 years."

"If you can't give enough weapons to Ukraine, how are you gonna win against China" - Kuleba pic.twitter.com/d3sCiB4Tgz

— War Intel (@warintel4u) May 2, 2024

He indicated it will likely include agreements on long-term support centering on military hardware and joint arms production, as well as continuing reconstruction aid. "The agreement should be truly exemplary and reflect the strength of American leadership," Zelensky added.

But as we've been detailing, Ukraine's problem currently is not fundamentally a question of funding or weaponry, but of manpower. Soon it may not have enough troops to operate the sophisticated weaponry being shipped in by the West, given the daily bad news from the front lines.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/04/2024 - 07:35

The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of  coffee, grab a seat outside, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:

• The Most Important Skill of the Future is Being ‘Indistractable’ How the difference between traction and distraction could transform your productivity. (Nir and Far)

• this is a teenager: In 1998, a researcher named Vincent Felitti published a paper that drastically changeed the way we think about these kids and childhood. The research will show that these childhood stressors and traumas – called Adverse Childhood Experiences – have a lifelong effect on our health, relationships, happiness, financial security, and pretty much everything else that we value. It will kickstart decades of research that shows that our childhood experiences shape our adulthood far more than we ever thought. (Pudding)

• There Are Plenty of Power Publicists. But Only One Works for Taylor Swift. From ‘1989’ through ‘The Tortured Poets Department,’ she has fiercely guarded Swift’s reputation: ‘The devil works hard, but Tree Paine works harder.’ (Wall Street Journal)

• Who Can Be Trusted for Retirement Advice? New Rules Strengthen Protections. More investment professionals will be required to act in their customers’ best interest when providing advice about their retirement money. (New York Times)

• The walls of Apple’s garden are tumbling down: Apple’s reckoning isn’t just the end of an era for the company — it’s a reflection of the smartphone’s fall from beloved gadget to commodity. (The Verge)

• The beginner’s illustrated guide to watching an F1 race: Everything you need to know to enjoy a Formula One race weekend. (Washington Post)

• Inside a Navy Submarine Navigating the Arctic: About 115 miles north of Alaska, a U.S. Navy submarine emerges from several feet of thick ice. The Navy’s 68 submarines could be anywhere at any time — patrolling the Arctic and the Persian Gulf, or near Russia, China or North Korea. Their missions are closely-held secrets, but a frigid training exercise offers a glimpse of military life deep undersea. A Times photojournalist embarked on a nuclear-powered attack sub to see how the Pentagon is training for a potential war below the frozen sea. (New York Times)

• Having a Plan for When Shit Hits the Fan: A Journey in Prepping: What disaster preparedness experts have to say about best-laid plans for worst-case scenarios. (Austin Chronicle)

• Arizona’s Split Reality: Ground zero for the rigged-election conspiracy, the border state could decide both the fate of the Senate and the presidency. (NY Mag)

• The Godfather of American Comedy: The funniest people on the planet think there’s no funnier person than Albert Brooks. (The Atlantic)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Joanne Bradford, who held executive leadership positions at Microsoft, Yahoo, Pinterest, Demand Media and BusinessWeek. She served as the Chief Revenue Officer at Microsoft, COO, and Chief Marketing Officer at SoFi (2015-2019), Most recently, she was President of Honey, where she orchestrated the sale of to Paypal for $4 billion. She was named one of Ad Age’s 100 Most Influential Women in Advertising.

 

A Strong U.S. Dollar Weighs on the World

Source: New York Times

 

Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.

~~~

To learn how these reads are assembled each day, please see this.

 

The post 10 Weekend Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

Scientists Backtrack, Admit Proposed Virus Experiments Could Have Been Done In China

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Scientists with close ties to China and the U.S. government is now saying that risky experiments he proposed—which some experts believe could have led to the creation of SARS-CoV-2—may have been done, deviating from earlier statements.

Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, testifies before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in Washington, on May 1, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

Another scientist involved in the proposal also says he doesn’t know if the work was done.

“To the very best of my knowledge ... the work hasn’t been done,” Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, told a congressional panel this week.

Mr. Daszak, however, admitted that he doesn’t know whether scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China have done the proposed experiments.

“Do you know if the WIV started this work?” he was asked during a U.S. House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic hearing in Washington.

“No,” Mr. Daszak replied.

“Then you can’t say that the work was not done,” Mitch Benzine, the staff director for the panel, said.

“There is no evidence of the work being done. There is no evidence that WIV started it,” Mr. Daszak said.

Has he ever asked Shi Zhengli, a top scientist at the WIV, whether she carried out the proposal?

“No,” Mr. Daszak acknowledged.

The proposal in question, dubbed Project DEFUSE, was submitted in 2018 to the U.S. government as EcoHealth and its partners, including WIV, sought to take viruses from bats, reverse engineer them, and add features. Some outside scientists say the proposed work could have led to the creation of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) declined to fund the proposal, expressing concerns that adding features to coronaviruses could create a dangerous virus.

After the proposal was leaked to the public in 2021, Mr. Daszak and EcoHealth have said definitively that the proposed experiments never took place.

“The DARPA proposal was not funded. Therefore, the work was not done. Simple,” Mr. Daszak told The Intercept in 2022.

“The proposed research was never done,” EcoHealth added in a recent statement.

Ralph Baric, a University of North Carolina virologist who was also listed in the DEFUSE proposal, also said in newly disclosed testimony that he did not know whether the proposed experiments were conducted.

“Certainly not by my group,” Mr. Baric told the subcommittee. “I don’t know what China did.”

Mr. Baric and Ms. Shi have created chimeras, or combination viruses, among other work together.

“There was no evidence that they were doing this kind of work,” Mr. Baric said. “Well, there was evidence that they were building chimeras using WIV1 as a backbone, so they were doing some discovery work about the functions of spike genes of zoonotic strains that they discovered later on, but I don’t know if they did any of the engineering or anything.”

WIV1 is a bat coronavirus that was found in China.

Mr. Baric also claimed he had forgotten about DEFUSE so he didn’t discuss it while meeting with Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top U.S. government official, on Feb. 12, 2020.

Mr. Daszak said Wednesday that DARPA later returned to EcoHealth “to try and fund portions” of DEFUSE, but no lawmakers pressed him on that disclosure.

‘They’ve Always Been Truthful’

EcoHealth separately for years funneled grant money from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to Wuhan researchers, including money that funded experiments that increased the virulence of a bat coronavirus.

Asked how his group verified information about those experiments, Mr. Daszak acknowledged it relied on statements from the WIV. “I have no other way to verify,” he said.

The scientists in Wuhan “have always been honest with us,” he added later. “They’ve always been truthful. There’s never any untoward, underhand things going on. I have no reason to think that they were under pressure to lie. There’s no indication of that.”

After the pandemic started, WIV researchers refused to hand over laboratory notebooks and other files to EcoHealth after the U.S. government asked for the records, resulting in the government debarring WIV from receiving U.S. grant money.

“Nearly two years have passed since the NIH first requested that WIV provide the requested information and materials, and yet WIV has still failed to do so,” a debarment official wrote to Ms. Shi.

In comments on a draft of the DEFUSE proposal, Mr. Daszak said that some of the work would be done at the Wuhan lab.

“If we win this contract, I do not propose that all of this work will necessarily be conducted by Ralph, but I do want to stress the US side of this proposal so that DARPA are comfortable with our team,” Mr. Daszak wrote in one comment. “Once we get the funds, we can then allocate who does what exact work, and I believe that a lot of these assays can be done in Wuhan as well.”

Mr. Daszak told Mr. Baric in a May 27, 2021, email released by the subcommittee that Ms. Zhengli said culturing of animal viruses was being done under biosafety level two conditions, or one level below that applied in many other countries.

“We checked with Zhengli, who let us know that she used ‘BSL-2 with negative pressure and appropriate PPE.’ I also know that they are stricter now on SADS-CoV... ever since you showed it was able to infect human airway epithelial cells,” he wrote.

Mr. Baric responded by saying Mr. Daszak was “being told a bunch of [expletive].”

“BSL-2 w[ith] negative pressure, give me a break,” he wrote, adding later, “You believe this was appropriate containment, if you want but don’t expect me to believe it. Moreover, don’t insult my intelligence by trying to feed me this load of [expletive].”

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/03/2024 - 23:40

The State Of World Press Freedom

The 2024 World Press Freedom Index, compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), was released today. This year, the agency highlights a “worrying decline in support and respect for media autonomy and an increase in pressure from the state or other political actors.” This is based on the fact that, of the five indicators used to compile the ranking, it is the political indicator that has fallen most, with a global average decline of 7.6 points.

Out of the 180 countries and territories analyzed, some 138 places had a majority of their respondents say that political actors in their countries were involved in disinformation or propaganda campaigns. This involvement was described as “systematic” in 31 countries.

The report writers also highlight the lack of political will on an international level to enforce protection of journalists, with particular reference to the war in Gaza, which has been marked by a record number of violations against journalists and the media since October 2023. According to the report, more than 100 Palestinian reporters have now been killed by the Israel Defence Forces, including at least 22 in the course of carrying out their journalistic activities.

Taking a look at wider trends, this chart, via Statista's Anna Fleck, shows that 36 countries were listed in the worst category in the index - where there exists a “very serious” situation of the press.

You will find more infographics at Statista

49 countries fall under the “difficult” category and 50 in the “problematic" group, while 45 have either a “satisfactory” or “good” situation. Norway is once more at the top of the list, ranking in first place for the eighth year running, followed by Denmark and Sweden.

The final trio, considered the most repressive countries for the press, are Afghanistan (position 178), Syria (179) and Eritrea (180). The report states: “The last two countries have become lawless zones for the media, with a record number of journalists detained, missing or held hostage.”

The United States ranked 55th in 2024, having dropped ten positions. RSF notes that the country is experiencing growing distrust in the media, partly driven by antagonism from political officials, while there have also been cases of local law enforcement having raided newsrooms.

Reporters Without Borders have compiled the index annually since 2002. The agency devised a new methodology in 2021 with the help of a panel of experts from the media and academic world. This year, 180 countries and territories were analyzed based on five indicators covering political context, legal framework, economic context, sociocultural context and safety.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/03/2024 - 23:20