GOLD:$1737.65 DOWN $14.40 The quote is London spot price

Silver:$22.48 DOWN 20 CENTS London spot price ( cash market)

4:30 closing price

Gold $1733.75

silver: 22.43

We are now in options expiry week. Yesterday we had completion of Comex expiry and the much bigger expiry is OTC London/LBMA. The expiry for that is the 30th of September.

end

END

Editorial of The New York Sun | February 1, 2021

end

COMEX DETAILS//NOTICES FILED

JPMorgan has been receiving gold with reckless abandon and sometimes supplying (stopping)

receiving today 271/372

EXCHANGE: COME X
CONTRACT: SEPTEMBER 2021 COMEX 100 GOLD FUTURES
SETTLEMENT: 1,750.000000000 USD
INTENT DATE: 09/27/2021 DELIVERY DATE: 09/29/2021
FIRM ORG FIRM NAME ISSUED STOPPED
____________________________________________________________________________________________
099 H DB AG 365
435 H SCOTIA CAPITAL 88
657 C MORGAN STANLEY 9
661 C JP MORGAN 5 271
737 C ADVANTAGE 2 1
905 C ADM 3
____________________________________________________________________________________________

TOTAL: 372 372
MONTH TO DATE: 3,321

issued: 5

Goldman Sachs stopped: 0

NUMBER OF NOTICES FILED TODAY FOR SEPT. CONTRACT: 372 NOTICE(S) FOR 37,200 OZ (1.1570 tonnes)

TOTAL NUMBER OF NOTICES FILED SO FAR THIS MONTH: 3321 FOR 332,100 OZ (10.329 TONNES)

SILVER//sept CONTRACT

58 NOTICE(S) FILED TODAY FOR 290,000 OZ/

total number of notices filed so far this month 5640 : for 28,200,000 oz

BITCOIN MORNING QUOTE $42,021 DOWN 1144 DOLLARS

BITCOIN AFTERNOON QUOTE.:$41,714 DOLLARS DOWN $1451.

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GLD AND SLV INVENTORIES:

Gold

WITH GOLD DOWN $14.40 AND NO PHYSICAL TO BE FOUND ANYWHERE:

A HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 3.2 TONNES FORM THE GLD/

WITH RESPECT TO GLD WITHDRAWALS: (OVER THE PAST FEW MONTHS)

GOLD IS “RETURNED” TO THE BANK OF ENGLAND WHEN CALLING IN THEIR LEASES: THE GOLD NEVER LEAVES THE BANK OF ENGLAND IN THE FIRST PLACE. THE BANK IS PROTECTING ITSELF IN CASE OF COMMERCIAL FAILURE

ALSO INVESTORS SWITCHING TO SPROTT PHYSICAL (phys) INSTEAD OF THE FRAUDULENT GLD//

THIS IS A MASSIVE FRAUD!!

GLD 990.32 TONNES OF GOLD//

Silver

AND WITH NO SILVER AROUND TODAY: WITH SILVER DOWN 20 CENTS

A HUGE CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WIHTDRAWAL OF 3.982 MILLION OZ FORM THE SLV//

INVESTORS ARE SWITCHING SLV TO SPROTT’S PSLV

WITH REGARD TO SILVER WITHDRAWALS FROM THE SLV:

THE SILVER WITHRAWALS ARE ACTUALLY “RETURNED” TO JPM, AS JPMORGAN CALLS IN ITS LEASES WITH THE SLV FUND. (THE STORY IS THE SAME AS THE BANK OF ENGLAND’S GOLD). THE SILVER NEVER LEAVES JPMORGAN’S VAULT. THEY ARE CALLING IN THEIR LEASES FOR FEAR OF SOLVENCY ISSUES.

INVENTORY RESTS AT:

541.522 MILLION OZ./SLV

xxxxx

GLD closing price//NYSE 162,05 DOWN 1.59 OR 0.97%

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

SLV closing price NYSE 20.78 DOWN $.16 OR 0.76%

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GOLD

IN GOLD, THE COMEX OPEN INTEREST FELL BY A SMALL SIZED 1728 CONTRACTS TO 496,277 _ ,,AND CLOSER TO OUR NEW RECORD (SET JAN 24/2020) AT 799,541 AND PREVIOUS TO THAT: (SET JAN 6/2020) AT 797,110.

THE DIFFERENTIAL FROM PRELIMINARY OI TO FINAL OI IN GOLD TODAY: -356 CONTRACTS.

THE SMALL SIZED DECREASE IN COMEX OI CAME DESPITE OUR GAIN IN PRICE OF $0.95///COMEX GOLD TRADING/MONDAY.AS IN SILVER WE MUST HAVE HAD HUGE BANKER/ALGO SHORT COVERING ACCOMPANYING OUR SMALL SIZED EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL ISSUANCE. WE HAD ZERO LONG LIQUIDATION AS THE TOTAL LOSS ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES TOTALLED 557 CONTRACTS ALL OF WHICH WAS DUE TO INITIATION OF SPREADER LIQUIDATION….. WE ALSO HAD A GOOD INITIAL STANDING IN GOLD TONNAGE FOR SEPT AT 3.586 TONNES, FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S MASSIVE 39,500 OZ QUEUE JUMP //NEW STANDING 10.687 TONNES//

YET ALL OF..THIS HAPPENED WITH OUR GAIN IN PRICE OF $0.95 WITH RESPECT TO MONDAY’S TRADING

WE HAD A VOLUME OF 0 4 -GC CONTRACTS//OPEN INTEREST 0//

WE HAD A SMALL SIZED LOSS OF 913 OI CONTRACTS (2.839 TONNES) ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES

E.F.P. ISSUANCE

THE CME RELEASED THE DATA FOR EFP ISSUANCE AND IT TOTALED A SMALL SIZED 815 CONTRACTS:

CONTRACT AND JULY: 0; AUGUST: 0 & DEC 815 ALL OTHER MONTHS ZERO//TOTAL: 815 The NEW COMEX OI FOR THE GOLD COMPLEX RESTS AT 496,277. ALSO REMEMBER THAT THERE WILL BE A DELAY IN THE ISSUANCE OF EFP’S. THE BANKERS REMOVE LONG POSITIONS OF COMEX GOLD IMMEDIATELY. THEN THEY ORCHESTRATE THEIR PRIVATE EXCHANGE DEAL WITH THE LONGS AND THAT COULD TAKE AN ADDITIONAL, 48 HRS SO WE GENERALLY DO NOT GET A MATCH WITH RESPECT TO DEPARTING COMEX LONGS AND NEW EFP LONG TRANSFERS. . EVEN THOUGH THE BANKERS ISSUED THESE MONSTROUS EFPS, THE OBLIGATION STILL RESTS WITH THE BANKERS TO SUPPLY METAL BUT IT TRANSFERS THE RISK TO A LONDON BANKER OBLIGATION AND NOT A NEW YORK COMEX OBLIGATION. LONGS RECEIVE A FIAT BONUS TOGETHER WITH A LONG LONDON FORWARD. THUS, BY THESE ACTIONS, THE BANKERS AT THE COMEX HAVE JUST STATED THAT THEY HAVE NO APPRECIABLE METAL!! THIS IS A MASSIVE FRAUD: THEY CANNOT SUPPLY ANY METAL TO OUR COMEX LONGS BUT THEY ARE QUITE WILLING TO SUPPLY MASSIVE NON BACKED GOLD (AND SILVER) PAPER KNOWING THAT THEY HAVE NO METAL TO SATISFY OUR LONGS. LONDON IS NOW SEVERELY BACKWARD IN BOTH GOLD AND SILVER AND WE ARE WITNESSING DELAYS IN ACTUAL DELIVERIES.

IN ESSENCE WE HAVE A SMALL SIZED DECREASE IN TOTAL CONTRACTS ON THE TWO EXCHANGES OF 913 CONTRACTS: 1728 CONTRACTS DECREASED AT THE COMEX AND 815 EFP OI CONTRACTS WHICH NAVIGATED OVER TO LONDON. THUS TOTAL OI LOSS ON THE TWO EXCHANGES OF 913 CONTRACTS OR 2.839 TONNES.

CALCULATIONS ON GAIN/LOSS ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES

WE HAD A SMALL SIZED ISSUANCE IN EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS (815) ACCOMPANYING THE SMALL SIZED LOSS IN COMEX OI (1728 OI): TOTAL LOSS IN THE TWO EXCHANGES: 9913 CONTRACTS. WE NO DOUBT HAD 1) HUGE BANKER SHORT COVERING ,2.) GOOD INITIAL STANDING AT THE GOLD COMEX FOR SEPT. AT 3.586 TONNES//FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S 39,500 QUEUE JUMP//NEW STANDING 10.687 TONNES / 3) ZERO LONG LIQUIDATION,4)SMALL SIZED COMEX OI LOSS 5). SMALLISSUANCE OF EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL 6) INITIATION OF SPREADER LIQUIDATION

SPREADING OPERATIONS(/NOW SWITCHING TO GOLD)

FOR NEWCOMERS, HERE ARE THE DETAILS:

SPREADING LIQUIDATION HAS NOW COMMENCED AS WE HEAD TOWARDS THE NEW ACTIVE FRONT MONTH OF OCT. WE ARE NOW INTO THE SPREADING OPERATION OF GOLD

HERE IS A BRIEF SYNOPSIS OF HOW THE CROOKS FLEECE UNSUSPECTING LONGS IN THE SPREADING ENDEAVOUR;

MODUS OPERANDI OF THE CORRUPT BANKERS AS TO HOW THEY HANDLE THEIR SPREAD OPEN INTERESTS:

HERE IS HOW THE CROOKS USED SPREADING AS WE ARE NOW INTO THE NON ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH OF SEPT HEADING TOWARDS THE ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH OF OCT, FOR GOLD:

YOU WILL ALSO NOTICE THAT THE COMEX OPEN INTEREST STARTS TO RISE BUT SO IS THE OPEN INTEREST OF SPREADERS. THE OPEN INTEREST IN WILL CONTINUE TO RISE UNTIL ONE WEEK BEFORE FIRST DAY NOTICE OF AN UPCOMING ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH (OCT), AND THAT IS WHEN THE CROOKS SELL THEIR SPREAD POSITIONS BUT NOT AT THE SAME TIME OF THE DAY. THEY WILL USE THE SELL SIDE OF THE EQUATION TO CREATE THE CASCADE (ALONG WITH THEIR COLLUSIVE FRIENDS) AND THEN COVER ON THE BUY SIDE OF THE SPREAD SITUATION AT THE END OF THE DAY. THEY DO THIS TO AVOID POSITION LIMIT DETECTION. THE LIQUIDATION OF THE SPREADING FORMATION CONTINUES FOR EXACTLY ONE WEEK AND ENDS ON FIRST DAY NOTICE.”

HISTORICAL ACCUMULATION OF EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS IN 2021 INCLUDING TODAY

SEPTEMBER

ACCUMULATION OF EFP’S GOLD AT J.P. MORGAN’S HOUSE OF BRIBES: (EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL) FOR THE MONTH OF SEPT : 41,984, CONTRACTS OR 4,198,400 oz OR 130.58 TONNES (19 TRADING DAY(S) AND THUS AVERAGING: 2209 EFP CONTRACTS PER TRADING DAY

TO GIVE YOU AN IDEA AS TO THE SIZE OF THESE EFP TRANSFERS : THIS MONTH IN 19 TRADING DAY(S) IN TONNES: 130.58 TONNES

TOTAL ANNUAL GOLD PRODUCTION, 2020, THROUGHOUT THE WORLD EX CHINA EX RUSSIA: 3555 TONNES

THUS EFP TRANSFERS REPRESENTS 130.58/3550 x 100% TONNES 3.67% OF GLOBAL ANNUAL PRODUCTION

ACCUMULATION OF GOLD EFP’S YEAR 2021 TO DATE

JANUARY: 265.26 TONNES (RAPIDLY INCREASING AGAIN)

FEB : 171.24 TONNES ( DEFINITELY SLOWING DOWN AGAIN)..

MARCH:. 276.50 TONNES (STRONG AGAIN///IT SURPASSED JANUARY!!)

APRIL: 189..44 TONNES ( DRAMATICALLY SLOWING DOWN AGAIN//GOLD IN BACKWARDATION)

MAY: 250.15 TONNES (NOW DRAMATICALLY INCREASING AGAIN)

JUNE: 247.54 TONNES (FINAL)

JULY: 188.73 TONNES FINAL

AUGUST: 217.89 TONNES FINAL ISSUANCE.

SEPT 130.58 TONNES INITIAL ISSUANCE ( LOW ISSUANCE)_

WHAT IS ALARMING TO ME, ACCORDING TO OUR LONDON EXPERT ANDREW MAGUIRE IS THAT THESE EFP’S ARE BEING TRANSFERRED TO WHAT ARE CALLED SERIAL FORWARD CONTRACT OBLIGATIONS AND THESE CONTRACTS ARE LESS THAN 14 DAYS. ANYTHING GREATER THAN 14 DAYS, THESE MUST BE RECORDED AND SENT TO THE COMPTROLLER, GREAT BRITAIN TO MONITOR RISK TO THE BANKING SYSTEM. IF THIS IS INDEED TRUE, THEN THIS IS A MASSIVE CONSPIRACY TO DEFRAUD AS WE NOW WITNESS A MONSTROUS TOTAL EFP’S ISSUANCE AS IT HEADS INTO THE STRATOSPHERE.

First, here is an outline of what will be discussed tonight:

1.Today, we had the open interest at the comex, in SILVER, FELL BY A FAIR SIZED 792 CONTRACTS TO 143,255 AND FURTHER FROM TO OUR COMEX RECORD //244,710(SET FEB 25/2020). THE LAST RECORDS WERE SET IN AUG.2018 AT 244,196 WITH A SILVER PRICE OF $14.78/(AUGUST 22/2018)..THE PREVIOUS RECORD TO THAT WAS SET ON APRIL 9/2018 AT 243,411 OPEN INTEREST CONTRACTS WITH THE SILVER PRICE AT THAT DAY: $16.53). AND PREVIOUS TO THAT, THE RECORD WAS ESTABLISHED AT: 234,787 CONTRACTS, SET ON APRIL 21.2017 OVER 4 1/2 YEARS AGO.

EFP ISSUANCE 400 CONTRACTS

OUR CUSTOMARY MIGRATION OF COMEX LONGS CONTINUE TO MORPH INTO LONDON FORWARDS AS OUR BANKERS USED THEIR EMERGENCY PROCEDURE TO ISSUE:

JULY 0 AND SEPT: 0; DEC 400 ALL OTHER MONTHS: ZERO. TOTAL EFP ISSUANCE: 400 CONTRACTS. EFP’S GIVE OUR COMEX LONGS A FIAT BONUS PLUS A DELIVERABLE PRODUCT OVER IN LONDON. IF WE TAKE THE COMEX OI LOSS OF 792 CONTRACTS AND ADD TO THE 400 OI TRANSFERRED TO LONDON THROUGH EFP’S,WE OBTAIN A SMALL SIZED LOSS OF 392 OPEN INTEREST CONTRACTS FROM OUR TWO EXCHANGES.

THUS IN OUNCES, THE LOSS ON THE TWO EXCHANGES 1.960 MILLION OZ, OCCURRED WITH OUR $0.27 GAIN IN PRICE.

BOTH THE SILVER COMEX AND THE GOLD COMEX ARE IN STRESS AS THE BANKERS SCOUR THE BOWELS OF THE EXCHANGE FOR METAL..THE EVIDENCE IS CLEAR: HUGE AMOUNTS OF PHYSICAL STANDING FOR BOTH SILVER AND GOLD .

1/COMEX GOLD AND SILVER REPORT

(report Harvey)

2 ) Gold/silver trading overnight Europe, Gold

(Peter Schiff, Egon von Greyerz///Matthew Piepenburg via GoldSwitzerland.com,

3. ASIAN AFFAIRS

i)TUESDAY MORNING/MONDAY NIGHT:

SHANGHAI CLOSED UP 19.39 PTS OR .54% //Hang Sang CLOSED UP 291.61 PTS OR 1.20%/The Nikkei closed DOWN 56.10 PTS OR 0.19% //Australia’s all ordinaires CLOSED DOWN 1/43%

/Chinese yuan (ONSHORE) closed DOWN TO 6.4592 /Oil UP TO 76.11 dollars per barrel for WTI and UP TO 80.05 for Brent. Stocks in Europe OPENED ALL RED // ONSHORE YUAN CLOSED DOWN AGAINST THE DOLLAR AT 6.4600. OFFSHORE YUAN CLOSED DOWN ON THE DOLLAR AT 6.4659: /ONSHORE YUAN TRADING ABOVE LEVEL OF OFFSHORE YUAN/ONSHORE YUAN TRADING WEAKER AGAINST USA DOLLAR/OFFSHORE YUAN TRADING WEAKER AGAINST THE DOLLAR /TRADE DEAL NOW DEAD..TRUMP RAISED RATES TO 25%/

3 a./NORTH KOREA/ SOUTH KOREA

5. RUSSIAN AND MIDDLE EASTERN AFFAIRS

OUTLINE

6.Global Issues

OUTLINE

7. OIL ISSUES

OUTLINE

8 EMERGING MARKET ISSUES

OUTLINE

COMEX DATA//AMOUNTS STANDING//VOLUME OF TRADING/INVENTORY MOVEMENTS

GOLD

LET US BEGIN:

THE TOTAL COMEX GOLD OPEN INTEREST FELL BY A SMALL SIZED 1728 CONTRACTS TO 496,277 MOVING FURTHER FROM THE RECORD THAT WAS SET IN JANUARY/2020: {799,541 OI(SET JAN 16/2020)} AND PREVIOUS TO THAT: 797,110 (SET JAN 7/2020). AND THIS COMEX DECREASE OCCURRED DESPITE OUR GAIN OF $0.95 IN GOLD PRICING MONDAY’S COMEX TRADING.WE ALSO HAD A SMALL EFP ISSUANCE (815 CONTRACTS). …AS THEY WERE PAID HANDSOMELY NOT TO TAKE DELIVERY AT THE COMEX AND SETTLE FOR CASH. LOOKS LIKE OUR BANKERS ARE FINALLY BAILING OUT!!

WE NORMALLY HAVE WITNESSED EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS ISSUED BEING SMALL AS IT JUST TOO COSTLY FOR THEM TO CONTINUE SERVICING THE COSTS OF SERIAL FORWARDS CIRCULATING IN LONDON. HOWEVER, MUCH TO THE ANNOYANCE OF OUR BANKERS, THE COMEX IS THE SCENE OF AN ASSAULT ON GOLD AS LONDONERS, NOT BEING ABLE TO FIND ANY PHYSICAL ON THAT SIDE OF THE POND, EXERCISE THESE CIRCULATING EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS IN LONDON AND FORCING DELIVERY OF REAL METAL OVER HERE AS THE OBLIGATION STILL RESTS WITH NEW YORK BANKERS. IT SEEMS THAT ARE BANKERS FRIENDS ARE EXERCISING EFP’S FROM LONDON AND NOW THEY ARE LOATHE TO ISSUE NEW ONES.

(SEE BELOW)

WE HAD 0 4 -GC VOLUME//open interest REMAINS AT 0

EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL ISSUANCE

WE ARE NOW MOVING TO THE ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH OF SEPT.. THE CME REPORTS THAT THE BANKERS ISSUED A SMALL SIZED TRANSFER THROUGH THE EFP ROUTE AS THESE LONGS RECEIVED A DELIVERABLE LONDON FORWARD TOGETHER WITH A FIAT BONUS., THAT IS 815 EFP CONTRACTS WERE ISSUED: ;: , JULY 0 & AUGUST: 0 & DEC. 815 & ZERO FOR ALL OTHER MONTHS:

TOTAL EFP ISSUANCE: 815 CONTRACTS

WHEN WE HAVE BACKWARDATION, EFP ISSUANCE IS VERY COSTLY BUT THE REAL PROBLEM IS THE SCARCITY OF METAL AND IT IS FAR BETTER FOR OUR BANKERS TO PAY OFF INDIVIDUALS THAN RISK INVESTORS ESPECIALLY FROM LONDON STANDING FOR DELIVERY. THE LOWER PRICES IN THE FUTURES MARKET IS A MAGNET FOR OUR LONDONERS SEEKING PHYSICAL METAL. BACKWARDATION ALWAYS EQUAL SCARCITY OF METAL!

ON A NET BASIS IN OPEN INTEREST WE LOST THE FOLLOWING TODAY ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES: A SMALL SIZED 913 TOTAL CONTRACTS IN THAT 815 LONGS WERE TRANSFERRED AS FORWARDS TO LONDON AND WE LOST A SMALL SIZED COMEX OI OF 1728 CONTRACTS.WE HAVE A GOOD AMOUNT OF GOLD TONNAGE STANDING FOR SEPT (10.687),

HERE ARE THE AMOUNTS THAT STOOD FOR DELIVERY IN THE PRECEDING 8 MONTHS OF 20201:

SEPT: 10.687 TONNES

AUGUST: 80.489 TONNES

JULY: 7.2814 TONNES

JUNE: 72.289 TONNES

MAY 5.77 TONNES

APRIL 95.331 TONNES

MARCH 30.205 TONNES

FEB. 113.424 TONNES

JAN: 6.500 TONNES.

TOTAL SO FAR THIS YEAR (JAN- AUGUST): 411.289 TONNNES

THE BANKERS WERE UNSUCCESSFUL IN LOWERING GOLD’S PRICE //// (IT ROSE $0.95).,AND THEY WERE UNSUCCESSFUL IN FLEECING ANY LONGS AS THE TOTAL LOSS ON THE TWO EXCHANGES REGISTERED 2.839 TONNES, ACCOMPANYING OUR GOOD GOLD TONNAGE STANDING FOR SEPT. (10.687 TONNES).. ALL OF THE LOSS WAS DUE TO INITIAL SPREADER LIQUIDATION. I STRONGLY BELIEVE THAT OUR BANKER FRIENDS ARE GETTING QUITE NERVOUS. THEY ARE LOOKING OVER THEIR SHOULDERS AND WITNESSING MASSIVE SILVER/GOLD SHORTAGES THAT CANNOT BE COVERED. THEY ARE TRYING TO FLEE IN HASTE “FROM DODGE”.

WE HAD -356 CONTRACTS FROM COMEX TRADES. THESE WERE REMOVED AFTER TRADING ENDED LAST NIGHT.

NET LOSS ON THE TWO EXCHANGES :: 913 CONTRACTS OR 91300 OZ OR 2.839 TONNES

COMMODITY LAW SUGGESTS THAT COMMODITY FUTURES OPEN INTEREST SHOULD APPROXIMATE 3% OF TOTAL PRODUCTION. IN GOLD THE WORLD PRODUCES AROUND 3500 TONNES PER YEAR BUT ONLY 2200 TONNES ARE AVAILABLE FROM THE WEST (THUS EXCLUDING RUSSIA, CHINA ETC..WHO KEEP 100% OF THEIR PRODUCT.

THUS IN GOLD WE HAVE THE FOLLOWING: 496,629 TOTAL OI CONTRACTS X 100 OZ PER CONTRACT = 49.66 MILLION OZ/32,150 OZ PER TONNE = 15.46 TONNES

THE COMEX OPEN INTEREST REPRESENTS 1546/2200 OR 70.27% OF ANNUAL GLOBAL PRODUCTION OF GOLD.

INITIAL STANDINGS FOR SEPT COMEX GOLD

Gold	Ounces
Withdrawals from Dealers* Inventory in oz*	nil oz
Withdrawals from Customer* Inventory in oz*	30,126.011OZ Brinks JPMorgan Manfra includes 9 kilobars Brinks and 801 kilobars Manfra
Deposit to the Dealer* Inventory in oz*	nil OZ
Deposits to the Customer* Inventory, in oz*	nil oz
No of oz served (contracts) today	372 notice(s) 37200 OZ 1.1570 TONNES
No of oz to be served (notices)	115 contracts 11500 oz 0.3576 TONNES
Total monthly oz gold served (contracts) so far this month	3321 notices 332100 OZ 10.329 TONNES
Total accumulative withdrawals of gold from the Dealers* inventory this month*	NIL oz
Total accumulative withdrawal of gold from the Customer* inventory this month*	xxx oz

TOTAL CUSTOMER DEPOSITS nil oz

We had 3 customer withdrawals

i) Out of Brinks: 289.360 oz (9 kilobars)

ii) Out of JPMorgan: 4083.700 oz

iii) Out of Manfra: 25,752.951 oz (801 kilobars)

total customer withdrawals 30,126.011 oz oz

We had 2 kilobar transactions 2 out of 3 transactions)

ADJUSTMENTS 3//

the front month of September has an open interest of 487 for a GAIN of 365 contracts. We had 30 notices served on MONDAY. Thus we GAINED 395 contracts or an additional 39,500 oz will stand for delivery in this non active delivery month of September for gold

OCTOBER LOST 4244 CONTRACTS DOWN TO 24,528

NOVEMBER GAINED 253 CONTRACTS TO STAND AT 856

DEC GAINED 881 TO STAND AT 405,653

We had 372 notice(s) filed today for 37,200 oz

To calculate the INITIAL total number of gold ounces standing for the SEPT /2021. contract month, we take the total number of notices filed so far for the month (3321) x 100 oz , to which we add the difference between the open interest for the front month of (SEPT: 487 CONTRACTS ) minus the number of notices served upon today 372 x 100 oz per contract equals 343,600 OZ OR 10.687 TONNES) the number of ounces standing in this active month of SEPTEMBER.

thus the INITIAL standings for gold for the SEPT contract month:

No of notices filed so far (3321) x 100 oz+(487) OI for the front month minus the number of notices served upon today (372} x 100 oz} which equals 343699 oz standing OR 10.687 TONNES in this active delivery month of SEPTEMBER.

We GAINED 395 contracts or an additional 39,500 oz will not stand for delivery over on this side of the pond.

TOTAL COMEX GOLD STANDING: 9.458 TONNES

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NEW PLEDGED GOLD:

427,737.391, oz NOW PLEDGED march 5/2021/HSBC 13.30 TONNES

285,319.695 PLEDGED MANFRA 8.8746 TONNES

298,568.054, oz JPM 9.28 TONNES

1,173,752.195 oz pledged June 12/2020 Brinks/36.50 TONNES

160,865.707, oz Pledged August 21/regular account 4.164 tonnes JPMORGAN

41,127.478 oz International Delaware: 1.27 tonnes

total pledged gold: 2,382,953.924oz 74.11 tonnes

registered gold that can be used to settle upon: 15,975,540.0 (496.90 tonnes)

true registered gold (total registered – pledged tonnes15,975,540..0 (496.90 tonnes)

total eligible gold: 15,712,330.847 oz (488.71 tonnes)

total 4 GC gold: 126.34 tonnes

total gold net of 4 GC: 933.40 tonnes

end

I have compiled data with respect to registered (or dealer) gold taken on first day notice for each of the past 24 months

The data begins on first day notice for the May month taken on the last day of July 2018. and it continues to present day.

I then took, how many deliveries were recorded by the CME for each and every month. I also included for reference the price of gold on first day notice.

The first graph is a logarithmic graph and the second graph, linear.

You can see the huge explosion of registered gold at the comex along with deliveries.

THE DATA AND GRAPHS:

END

SEPT 28/2021

And now for the wild silver comex results

INITIAL STANDING FOR SILVER//SEPTEMBER

For Sept. we have an open interest of 64 for a LOSS of 206 contracts. We had 200 notices serve on MONDAY, so we LOST 6 contracts or 30,000 additional oz will not stand for delivery at the comex in this very active delivery month of September.

There is no silver metal over on this side of the pond for our bankers to raid.

OCTOBER LOST 19 CONTRACTS TO STAND AT 1597

NOVEMBER GAINED 103 TO STAND AT 812

DEC LOST 717 CONTRACTS DOWN TO 124,506

NO. OF NOTICES FILED: 58 FOR 290,000 OZ.

TODAY’S ESTIMATED SILVER VOLUME 28,934 CONTRACTS // volume poor///awful/dropping like a stone

FOR YESTERDAY 37,719 contracts ,CONFIRMED VOLUME/ poor

COMMODITY LAW SUGGESTS THAT OPEN INTEREST SHOULD NOT BE MORE THAN 3% OF ANNUAL GLOBAL PRODUCTION. THE CROOKS ARE SUPPLYING MASSIVE PAPER TRYING TO KEEP SILVER IN CHECK.

The record level of silver open interest is 234,787 contracts set on April 21./2017 with the price at that day at $18.42. The previous record was 224,540 contracts with the price at that time of $20.44

end

NPV for Sprott

1. Sprott silver fund (PSLV): NAV RISES TO -1.64% (SEPT28/2021)

SILVER FUND POSITIVE TO NAV

no of oz of physical silver held JULY 8.2021; 150,926,000 (GAIN OF 6.411 MILION OZ IN A MONTH)

No of oz of physical silver held; MAY 24/2021 144,515,694 OZ

No. of oz of physical silver held: Sept 20/20: 85,907.3616 Oz

No of oz pf physical silver held: Dec 21/2019: 65,073.570 Oz

During the past 8 months Sprott has added: 58,608.30 Oz

So far this year: 53.8 million oz

2. Sprott gold fund (PHYS): premium to NAV RISES TO -0.85% nav (SEPT28)/2021 )

3. SPROTT CEF .A FUND (FORMERLY CENTRAL FUND OF CANADA)

NAV $18.45 TRADING 17.89//NEGATIVE 3.04

END

And now the Gold inventory at the GLD/(this vehicle is a fraud as there is no gold behind them!

SEPT 21/WITH GOLD DOWN $14.40 TODAY: A HUGE CHANGE IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/: A WIHTDRAWAL OF 3.2 TONNES FROM THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 990.32 TONNES

SEPT 27/WITH GOLD UP $.95 TODAY: A HUGE CHANGE IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF .87 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 993.52 TONNES

SEPT 24/WITH GOLD $1.15 DOLLARS TODAY; A HUGE CHANGE IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 8.14 TONNES FROM THE GLD///INVENTORY RESTS AT 992.65 TONNES

SEPT 23/WITH GOLD DOWN $28.20 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 1000.79 TONNES

SEPT 22/WITH GOLD UP $.55 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1000.79 TONNES

SEPT 21/WITH GOLD UP $14.20 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1000.79 TONNES

SEPT 20/WITH GOLD UP $10.00 TODAY;A HUGE CHANGE IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF 1.74 TONNES FOF GOLD INTO THE GLD/////INVENTORY RESTS AT 1000.79 TONNES/

SEPT 17/WITH GOLD DOWN $5.60 TODAY: A SMALL CHANGE IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF .29 TONNES FROM THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 999.21 TONNES/

SEPT 15/WITH GOLD DOWN $11.90 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 1000.21 TONNES

SEPT 14/WITH GOLD UP $12,90 TODAY: A HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF 2.04 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 1000.21 TONNES

SEPTEMBER 13//WITH GOLD UP $1.70 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 998.17 TONNES

SEPTEMBER 10//WITH GOLD DOWN $7.40//A SMALL CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD”: A WITHDRAWAL OF .35 TONNES FROM THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 998.17

SEPT 9/WITH GOLD UP $7.10 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 998.52 TONNES/

SEPT 8/WITH GOLD DOWN $4.90 TODAY:NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 998.52 TONNES

SEPT 7/WITH GOLD DOWN $35.35 TODAY: A HUGE CHANGE IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY REST AT 998.52 TONNES.

SEPT 3/WITH GOLD UP $22.00 TODAY: A HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF .74 TONNES FROM THE GLD.//INVENTORY RESTS AT 999.52 TONNES

SEPT 2/WITH GOLD DOWN $4.45 TODAY; NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 1000.26 TONNES

SEPT 1/WITH GOLD DOWN $2.00 TODAY; A HUGE CHANGE IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.46 TONNES FORM THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 1000.26 TONNES.

AUGUST 31/WITH GOLD UP $5.60 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1001.72 TONNES./

AUGUST 30/WITH GOLD DOWN $7.15 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 1001.72 TONNES/

AUGUST 27/WITH GOLD UP $23.79 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 1001.72 TONNES

AUGUST 26/WITH GOLD UP $6.10 TODAY, A HUGE CHANGE IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.91 TONNES FROM THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 1001.72 TONNES.

AUGUST 25/WITH GOLD DOWN $17.00 TODAY: A HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.03 TONNES FROM THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 1004.63 TONNES

AUGUST 24/ WITH GOLD UP $2.60 TODAY: A MONSTER CHANGE IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A PAPER WITHDRAWAL OF 4.95 TONNES//INVENTORY RESTS AT 1006.66 TONNES.

AUGUST 23/WITH GOLD UP $21.25 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1011.61 TONNES//

AUGUST 20/WITH GOLD UP $1.05 TODAY: A HUGE CHANGE IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A PAPER WITHDRAWAL OF 3.49 TONNES FROM THE GLD //INVENTORY RESTS AT 1011.61 TONNES

AUGUST 19/WITH GOLD DOWN $1.30 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 1015.10 TONNES/

AUGUST 18/WITH GOLD DOWN $2.85 TODAY: A HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 5.53 TONNES FROM THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 1015.10 TONNES/

AUGUST 17/WITH GOLD DOWN $2.50 TODAY: A HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A PAPER WITHDRAWAL OF 1.16 TONNES FROM THE GLD///INVENTORY RESTS AT 1020.63 TONNES

Now the SLV Inventory/( vehicle is a fraud as there is no physical metal behind them!)

SEPT 28/WITH SILVER DOWN 20 CENTS TODAY: A HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/: A WITHDRAWAL OF 3.982 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV///INVENTORY RESTS AT 541.522 MILLION OZ

SEPT 27/WITH SILVER UP 27 CENTS TODAY: A BIG CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.204 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV////INVENTORY RESTS AT 545.504 MILLION OZ

SEPT 24/WITH SILVER DOWN 26 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 546.708 MILLION OZ//

SEPT 23/WITH SILVER DOWN 24 CENTS TODAY: A BIG CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 509,000 OZ FROM THE SLV////INVENTORY RESTS AT 546.708 MILLION OZ///

SEPT 22/WITH SILVER UP 30 CENTS TODAY; NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/

INVENTORY RESTS AT 547.217 MILLION OZ/./

SEPT 21/WITH SILVER UP 39 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV..//INVENTORY RESTS AT 544.624 MILLION OZ.

SEPT 20/WITH SILVER DOWN 17 CENTS TODAY; NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 544.624 MILLION OZ/

SEPT 17/WITH SILVER DOWN 45 CENTS TODAY; NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 544.624 MILLION OZ//

SEPT 15/WITH SILVER DOWN 9 CENTS TODAY; NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 544.624 MILLION OZ/

SEPT 14/WITH SILVER UP 13 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.11 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV////INVENTORY RESTS AT 544.624 MILLION OZ

SEPT 13/WITH SILVER DOWN 12 CENTS; A HUGE CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.131MILLION OZ FORM THE SLV////INVENTORY RESTS AT 545.735 MILLION OZ/

SEPT 10 WITH SILVER DOWN 26 CENTS; NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 547.866 MILLION OZ..

SEPT 9/ WITH SILVER UP 11 CENTS TODAY; NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 547.866 MILLION OZ//

SEPT 8/WITH SILVE DOWN 30 CENTS TODAY; A HUGE CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.037 MILLION OF FROM THE SLV///INVENTORY RESTS AT 547.866 MILLION OZ//

SEPT 7/WITH SILVER DOWN 32 CENTS TODAY; NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 549.903 MILLION OZ.

SEPT 3/WITH SILVER UP 83 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 549.903 MILLION OZ//

SEPT 2/WITH SILVER DOWN 29 CENTS TODAY: A HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 977,000 OZ FROM THE SLV////INVENTORY RESTS AT 549.903 MILLION OZ

SEPT 1/WITH SILVER UP 20 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 550.880 MILLION OZ.

AUGUST 31/WITH SILVER UP 2 CENTS TODAY: A HUGE CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A DEPOSIT OF 5.002 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV/////INVENTORY RESTS AT 550.880 MILLION OZ

AUGUST 30/WITH SILVER DOWN 7 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY REST S AT 545.878 MILLION OZ////

AUGUST 27/WITH SILVER UP 47 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 545.878 MILLION OZ/./

AUGUST 26/WITH SILVER DOWN 22 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/INVENTORY RESTS AT 545.878 MILLION OZ//

AUGUST 25/WITH SILVER DOWN 11 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/INVENTORY RESTS AT 545.878 MILLION OZ/

AUGUST24/WITH SILVER UP 37 CENTS TODAY: A HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLSV: ANOTHER PAPER WITHDRAWAL OF 3.427 MILLION OZ AND THIS IS HEADING FOR SPROTT//INVENTORY RESTS AT 545.878 MILLION OZ..

AUGUST 23/WITH SILVER UP 50 CENTS TODAY; NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV;A HUGE WITHDRAWAL OF 2.641 MILLION OZ//INVENTORY RESTS AT 549.305 MILLION OZ//

AUGUST 20/WITH SILVER DOWN 11 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 551.946 MILLION OZ//

AUGUST 19/WITH SILVER DOWN 20 CENTS TODAY; A HUGE CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: ANOTHER WITHDRAWAL OF 1.389 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 551.946 MILLION OZ/

AUGUST 18/ WITH SILVER DOWN 25 CENTS TODAY: A HUGE CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.131 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV.INVENTORY REST AT 553.375 MILLION OZ

AUGUST 17/WITH SILVER DOWN 14 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 555.466 MILLION OZ.

PHYSICAL GOLD/SILVER STORIES

J Johnson’s comodity report

The Comex’s Market Of Mayhem

Posted September 28th, 2021 at 8:25 AM (CST) by J. Johnson

Great and Wonderful Tuesday Morning Folks,

Something strange is truly going on at the Comex (inside the deliveries), with December Gold now down $19 with the trade at $1,733 with the low of London at $1,731.50 and the high to beat at $1,754.30. Red Silver is now down 49.9 cents with the last purchase made at $22.195 with its low close by at $22.14 and the high at $22.68. The US Dollar, under constant print, now has a calculation set at 93.605, up 22.4 points with its high of London at 93.68 and a low at 93.36. Of course, all this happened already before 5am pst, the Comex open, the close of London, and after the woke generals had Lt Col. Stuart Scheller arrested for criticizing the Afghan debacle, because he hurt their feelings.

Today is the last day of September Silver Deliveries with the count now at 64 fully paid for 5,000-ounce contracts still waiting for receipts with zero Volume posted so far today. Yesterday’s full day of delivery activity happened in between $23.735 and $22.605 with Comex settling the day out at $22.657 for a 26.7 cent gain that had 131 new purchases that somehow reduced the demand count by 206 contracts that we’re led to believe got receipts. We got our answer on what would happen if the physical demands reached 120 contracts.

Here is a picture of the “Silver Index” on my trade station with the very top being the September contract. The very last Buy was made at $23.735 at 10:05:55 Est, up $1.347 with almost all the purchases made at the high. Notice the Bid/Ask prices in Sept. trading below the Red (Z-December) contract with the bid count at 2 on the first 6 months, with the Ask count in Sept at 1 and the next 8 months out at 9, being made hours after the last physical purchase. Please recall the query I made with Comex officials, when they told us the Bid/Ask count were real hedges, but since this is a spread trade, the prices don’t need to be posted (hiding trades that are affecting the price). This leads me to believe the spreads got the prices lower and it overruled the real physical purchases, AND the Volumes do not show the spread/hedge quantities that changed the closing price. If this didn’t happen, the closing price would have been a major backwardation moment. This physical buyer must not be part of the club but he rattled the cage quite loudly. We can also see the Volumes which are pathetically low compared to that 4-year period when we witnessed a huge number of options that were purchased 4 years out. Silver’s Overall Open Interest, as of today, is at 143,478 Overnighters proving a 619 contractual pull until there is no more physicals to buy at the Comex.

The last day of delivery for September Gold is not disappointing at all with the demand count at 487 fully paid for 100-ounce contracts with 328 new purchases already being made (Volume) in between $1,741.70 and $1,731.60 with the last trade at $1,733, down $17 so far today. Yesterday’s full day of Ice/Comex deliveries happened in between $1,754.40 and $1,747.50 with the last purchase at $1,748.50, down $1.20 with Comex closing the day out at $1,750, a 30-cent gain on the day that had a total of 808 new purchases that raised the demand count by 365 contracts, and now the trade is lower? Gold’s Overall Open Interest lost 1,499 Overnighters helping to prove all the activity was in the deliveries, and with all that paper trading giving the next buyer another break in price, until there is no more.

Veritas Video has yet to disappoint with last nights; Johnson & Johnson: ‘Kids Shouldn’t Get A F*cking [COVID] Vaccine;’ There are “Unknown Repercussions”. We expect this video to be removed soon, like the others, so watch it while you can.

So, keep stacking and packing, don’t worry about buying at the very bottom, worry about not getting your precious metal purchases before anything else happens in our markets of mayhem, that are controlled not by free trade but by algos, that may be being removed, as the Volumes prove the dropped activity. As Always …

Stay Strong!

Jeremiah Johnson
JeremiahJohnso n@startmail.com

PETER SCHIFF

If The Fed Can’t Hit It’s Inflation Target, Why Not Just Move The Goalposts?

Authored by Michael Maharrey via SchiffGold.com,

The Fed has an inflation problem.

The CPI is running well above the mythical 2% target and there isn’t any sign that it will ease soon. To deal with this problem, the central bank should tighten its monetary policy. But that would create a whole new problem, given that it can’t tighten in this economic environment. So, what is a central banker to do?

Well, if the Fed can’t hit the target, how about just moving the target?

That idea is apparently seriously being considered.

In a Wall Street Journal article, Greg Ip floated the idea.

One strategy [Powell]—or his successor—should consider in that eventuality is to simply raise the target.”

Ip buys into Keynesian economic voodoo and thinks straitjacketing the Fed with a 2% inflation target will hinder job creation.

Why would higher inflation ever be a good thing? Economic theory says modestly higher, stable inflation should mean fewer and less severe recessions, and less need for exotic tools such as central-bank bond buying, which may inflate asset bubbles. More practically, if inflation ends up closer to 3% than 2% next year, raising the target would relieve the Fed of jacking up interest rates to get inflation down, destroying jobs in the process.”

In a sense, the Fed has already raised the inflation target. Not so long ago, it was a hard 2% target. But the COVID-19 pandemic gave the Fed just the excuse it needed to move the inflation goalposts.

Jerome Powell announced the shift to “average inflation targeting” during his Jackson Hole speech in August 2020. In effect, the Fed will allow the CPI to run “moderately” over 2% “for some time” to balance out periods where it runs under that level.

“Many find it counterintuitive that the Fed would want to push up inflation. However, inflation that is persistently too low can pose serious risks to the economy,” Powell said during prepared remarks at the summit.

Of course, when you define inflation correctly – as an expansion of the money supply – it is anything but “too low.” In fact, it is at the highest level in history. But based on the CPI number, inflation ran well below 2% for many years. That means that the Fed can now hold interest rates at zero for a significant amount of time even with CPI running above 2%.

In a nutshell, the Fed effectively raised its inflation target, but we don’t actually know what that target is.

Nevertheless, 2% still looms in the background. Today, it’s hard to argue inflation is “moderately” above 2%. That’s why we’re seeing this push for a higher target. Perhaps the Fed can make do without fighting inflation if we just say the target is going to “average” around 3%.

Or heck, why not 4%?

Mises Institute senior editor Ryan McMaken summed it up this way.

Rather than feel the pressure to taper just because price inflation has risen above the 2% target, Ip wants to make sure the Fed can just keep on with the stimulus until price inflation exceeds 3%, or maybe even 4%. And who knows? After that, maybe “economic theory” will tell us that 5% inflation is an even better target. Certainly, that would be no less arbitrary a number than 4% or 2%.”

As McMaken noted, this has little to nothing to do with economics. It’s all political.

Presumably, the longer inflation persists above the target rate, the more the Fed will feel pressure to bring inflation back down through some sort of tapering. After all, the adoption of a 2 percent target implies 2 percent is the “correct” inflation rate. Anything higher than that is presumably “too much.” With the Fed moving toward the 2 percent target since the 1996 —and having formally adopted it in 2012—the Fed’s credibility is on the line if the Fed simply ignores the target.”

“But it’s a safe bet that if the accepted inflation target were increased to 4 percent, we’d be hearing little to nothing right now about tapering, normalization, or any other effort to cut price inflation. The Fed would then be more free to keep the easy money spigot open longer without having to hear complaints that the Fed has “lost control” of price inflation. That would be great for stock prices and real estate prices. Ordinary people, on the other hand, might fare less well.”

It’s important to pause and consider what Ip is proposing. He wants the central bank to destroy the purchasing power of your money even faster than it is now – as a matter of policy. Even now, as personal incomes rise, inflation is eating them up.

Higher inflation means prices rise even f

faster. These wonks never seem to stop and think about the fact that when they talk about higher inflation, they mean you and I pay more for gas, housing, food, entertainment – everything!

But don’t worry citizen – this is good for you!

No. It’s not.

It’s good for the connected people who get their hands on this new money first. It’s not good for the consumer, whose pay always goes up slower than inflation. It’s certainly not good for the savers, or the people on fixed incomes. And you know who really gets shafted? The poor and the elderly.

This is typical government. It beats you up and wants you to thank it for its service. As Harry Brown put it, “The government is good at one thing. It knows how to break your legs, and then hand you a crutch and say, ‘See if it weren’t for the government, you wouldn’t be able to walk.”

end

EGON VON GREYERZ//MATHEW PIEPENBERG/JIM RICKARDS/PAM AND RUSS MARTENS

OR LAWRIE WILLIAMS

ii) Important gold commentaries courtesy of GATA/Chris Powell

My goodness: two quit on the same day, Kaplan and Rosengren

(zerohedge)

Fed officials Kaplan and Rosengren quit amid trading scandals

Submitted by admin on Mon, 2021-09-27 19:58 Section: Daily Dispatches

Dallas Fed President Kaplan to Retire Early on Oct. 8, Citing Trading Disclosure ‘Distraction”

By Jeff Cox
CNBC, New York
Monday, September 27, 2021

Dallas Federal Reserve President Robert Kaplan became the second regional central bank leader to resign today, saying he was stepping down early following a recent controversy over stock market trades he made.

Kaplan’s early retirement follows an announcement earlier in the day from Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren, who said he will leave as well but cited health concerns and not the issue over his investment portfolio activity.

“The Federal Reserve is approaching a critical point in our economic recovery as it deliberates the future path of monetary policy. Unfortunately, the recent focus on my financial disclosure risks becoming a distraction to the Federal Reserve’s execution of that vital work,” Kaplan said in a statement.

His retirement takes effect Oct. 8. The resignations come a day before Fed Chair Jerome Powell is to spend two days on Capitol Hill updating legislators on the central bank’s efforts to combat the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. …

… For the remainder of the report:

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/27/dallas-fed-president-kaplan-to-retire-early-on-oct-8-citing-trading-disclosure-distraction.html

END

Biggest Federal Reserve scandal

(Ron Paul)

Ron Paul: The biggest Federal Reserve scandal

Submitted by admin on Mon, 2021-09-27 11:13 Section: Daily Dispatches

By Ron Paul
Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, Clute, Texas
Monday, September 27, 2021

Following revelations that Federal Reserve officials made trades in financial assets while the Fed was taking extraordinary efforts to “stimulate” the economy, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell ordered a review of the Fed’s ethics rules.

While these trades appear problematic, they pale in comparison to the biggest Fed scandal — the Fed’s impoverishment of ordinary Americans, enrichment of the elites, and facilitation of government debt and deficits.

The depression induced by coronavirus, though really caused by so-called public health actions government took in response, was the official reason for the Fed’s increased asset purchases last year. However, the Fed actually started ramping up its money creating activities in September of 2019, when it began pouring billions a day into the repo markets, which banks use to make short-term loans to each other to keep repo market interest rates low.

Coronavirus was just a convenient excuse for the Fed to do more of what it was already doing. …

… For the remainder of the commentary:

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2021/september/27/the-biggest-federal-reserve-scandal/

end

Your early TUESDAY morning currency, Asian stock market results, important USA/Asian currency crosses, gold/silver pricing overnight along with the price of oil Major stories overnight/7 AM EST

i) Chinese yuan vs usa dollar/CLOSED UP AT 6.4592

//OFFSHORE YUAN 6.4600 /shanghai bourse CLOSED UP 19.39 PTS OR .54%

HANG SANG CLOSED UP 291.61 PTS OR 1.20%

2. Nikkei closed DOWN 56.10 PTS OR 0.19%

3. Europe stocks ALL RED

USA dollar INDEX UP TO 93.42/Euro FALLS TO 1.1694

3b Japan 10 YR bond yield: RISES TO. +.075/ !!!!(Japan buying 100% of bond issuance)/Japanese yen vs usa cross now at 111.39/ THIS IS TROUBLESOME AS BANK OF JAPAN IS RUNNING OUT OF BONDS TO BUY./JAPAN 10 YR YIELD IS NOW TARGETED AT .11%/JAPAN LOSING CONTROL OF THEIR BOND MARKET//CARRY TRADERS GETTING KILLED

3c Nikkei now JUST ABOVE 17,000

3d USA/Yen rate now well below the important 120 barrier this morning

3e WTI:: 77.11 and Brent: 80.05

3f Gold DOWN/JAPANESE Yen DOWN CHINESE YUAN: ON -SHORE CLOSED DOWN// OFF- SHORE: DOWN

3g Japan is to buy the equivalent of 108 billion uSA dollars worth of bond per month or $1.3 trillion. Japan’s GDP equals 5 trillion usa./“HELICOPTER MONEY” OFF THE TABLE FOR NOW /REVERSE OPERATION TWIST ON THE BONDS: PURCHASE OF LONG BONDS AND SELLING THE SHORT END

Japan to buy 100% of all new Japanese debt and by 2018 they will have 25% of all Japanese debt. Fifty percent of Japanese budget financed with debt.

3h Oil UP for WTI and UP FOR Brent this morning

3i European bond buying continues to push yields lower on all fronts in the EMU. German 10yr bund RISES TO -.185%/Italian 10 Yr bond yield RISES to 0.87% /SPAIN 10 YR BOND YIELD UP TO 0.46%…ITALIAN 10 YR BOND YIELD/GERMAN BUND: 1.06: DANGEROUS FOR THE ITALIAN BANKING SYSTEM

3j Greek 10 year bond yield RISES TO : 0.85

3k Gold at $1733.85 silver at: 22.21 7 am est) SILVER NEXT RESISTANCE LEVEL AT $30.00

3l USA vs Russian rouble; (Russian rouble UP 15/100 in roubles/dollar) 72.56

3m oil into the 77 dollar handle for WTI and 80 handle for Brent/

3n Higher foreign deposits out of China sees huge risk of outflows and a currency depreciation. This can spell financial disaster for the rest of the world/

JAPAN ON JAN 29.2016 INITIATES NIRP. THIS MORNING THEY SIGNAL THEY MAY END NIRP. TODAY THE USA/YEN TRADES TO 111.39 DESTROYING JAPANESE CITIZENS WITH HIGHER FOOD INFLATION

30 SNB (Swiss National Bank) still intervening again in the markets driving down the FRANC. It is not working: USA/SF this morning .9272 as the Swiss Franc is still rising against most currencies. Euro vs SF 1.0839 well above the floor set by the Swiss Finance Minister. Thomas Jordan, chief of the Swiss National Bank continues to purchase euros trying to lower value of the Swiss Franc.

3p BRITAIN VOTES AFFIRMATIVE BREXIT/LOWER PARLIAMENT APPROVES BREXIT COMMENCEMENT/ARTICLE 50 COMMENCES MARCH 29/2017

3r the 10 Year German bund now NEGATIVE territory with the 10 year RISING to –0.204%

The bank withdrawals were causing massive hardship to the Greek bank. the Greek referendum voted overwhelming “NO”. Next step for Greece will be the recapitalization of the banks and that will be difficult.

4. USA 10 year treasury bond at 1.531% early this morning. Thirty year rate at 2.053%

5. Details Ransquawk, Bloomberg, Deutsche bank/Jim Reid.

6. TURKISH LIRA: UP TO 8.88.. VERY DEADLY

Futures Slide, Nasdaq Plunges As Yields Surge And Oil Tops $80

For much of 2021, a vocal contingent of market bulls had claimed that there is no way the broader market could sell off as long as the gigacap tech “general” refused to drop. Well, it looks like that day is finally upon us because this morning US equity futures are sliding again, continuing their Monday drop as yields from the US to Germany again, the 10Y TSY rising as high as 1.55%, driven to an extent by Fed tapering fears but mostly by the surge in oil which has pushed Brent above $80, the highest price since late 2018. The dollar gained amid the deteriorating global supply crunch from oil to semiconductors.

The surge in oil sparked a new round of stagflation fears, sending Nasdaq futures down 240 points or 1.3% as the yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury climbed sharply. S&P 500 and Dow Jones futures also retreated, with spoos sliding below 4,400 as to a session low of 4,390.

Rising bond yields prompted a shift from growth to cyclical stocks in the United States, in a move that analysts expect could become more permanent after a prolonged period of supressed bond yields. The premarket selloff was led by semiconductor stocks which tracked similar falls for European peers, as a rising 10-year Treasury yield puts pressure on the tech sector. Applied Materials Inc. led a slump in chip stocks in New York premarket trading while Nvidia was down 2.6%, AMD -2.1%, Applied Materials -2.9%, Micron -1.6%. Meanwhile retail trader favorite meme stock Naked Brand Group, an underwear and swimwear retailer, rises again after having surged 40% in the past two trading sessions after Chairman Justin Davis-Rice said in a letter to shareholders that he believes the company has found a “disruptive” potential acquisition in the clean technology sector. Frequency Electronics also soared after being awarded a contract by the Office of Naval Research to develop an atomic clock. Chinese stocks listed in the U.S. were mixed and semiconductor stocks declined. Here are some of the other notable U.S. movers today:

iPower (IPW US) shares rise as much as 61% in U.S. premarket trading after the online hydroponics equipment retailer posted 4Q and FY21 earnings
Alibaba (BABA US) rises 2.5% in U.S. premarket trading after the company’s shares listed in Hong Kong rose, adding to the Hang Seng Tech Index’s gains
Frequency Electronics (FEIM US) soars 20% in U.S. premarket trading after being awarded a contract by the Office of Naval Research to develop an atomic clock
Concentrix (CNXC) jumped 5.9% in Monday after hours trading after setting its first dividend payment and buyback program since being spun off from from Synnex in December
Brookdale Senior Living (BKD US) shares fell in extended trading on Monday after announcing a $200 million convertible bond offering
Altimmune (ALT US) rose as much as 4.2% in Monday postmarket trading on plans to announce results for an early stage study of ALT-801 in overweight people on Tuesday
Ziopharm Oncology (ZIOP US) fell in extended trading after company said it cut about 60 positions, or a more than 50% reduction in personnel, to extend its cash runway into 1H 2023
Montrose Environmental Group (MEG US) was down 2.8% Monday postmarket after offering shares via JPMorgan, BofA Securities, William Blair

The main catalyst for the stock selloff was the continued drop in Treasurys which sent the 10-year Treasury rising as high as 1.55% while shorter-dated rates surged toward pre-pandemic levels.

This in turn was driven by the relentless meltup in commodities: overnight Brent roared above $80 a barrel – on its way to Goldman’s revised $90 price target – on louder signs that demand is running ahead of supply and depleting inventories as the world finds itself in an unprecedented energy crisis. The international crude benchmark extended a recent run of gains to hit the highest since October 2018, while West Texas Intermediate also climbed.

Oil’s latest upswing has come with a flurry of bullish price predictions from banks and traders, forecasts for surging demand this winter, and speculation the industry isn’t investing enough to maintain supplies. The jump to $80 also is adding inflationary pressure to the global economy at a time when prices of energy commodities are soaring. European natural gas, carbon permits and power rose to fresh records Tuesday, with little sign of the rally slowing.

As Bloomberg notes, traders have begun reassessing valuations amid multiplying global risks, while Fed officials have communicated increasingly hawkish signals in recent days as supply-chain bottlenecks threaten to keep inflation elevated. China’s growth slowdown which saw Goldman lower its q/q Q3 GDP forecast to a flat 0.0%, and a debt crisis in the nation’s property market.have also fueled the risk-off shift.

“Central bankers have set out how they want to normalize monetary policy for some time,” Chris Iggo, chief investment officer for core investments at AXA Investment Managers, said in a note. “That process could start soon. The realization of this has the potential to provoke some volatility in rates and equities.”

Elsewhere, European stocks also declined with the Stoxx Europe 600 dragged down most by technology shares. Europe’s Stoxx Tech Index drops as much as 2.8% to a five-week low after falling 1.5% on Monday having previously touched its highest level since 2000 earlier in the month. Single-stock downgrades also weighed. Stocks which performed particularly well this year are among the biggest fallers, with chip equipment makers BE Semi -4.6% and ASML -4.4%, and chipmaker Nordic Semi down 4.2%. Among other laggards, Logitech drops as much as 8.5% after being downgraded to underweight at Morgan Stanley.

Earlier in the session, Asian stocks fell for the first time in four days as declines in technology names overshadowed a rally in energy shares. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index dropped as much as 0.7%, with a jump in U.S. Treasury yields weighing on richly-valued tech stocks. That’s even as the region’s oil and gas shares climbed amid signs of a global energy crunch. Chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing and Samsung Electronics were the biggest drags on the Asian benchmark.

“The climb in yields led to the selling of growth stocks that have been strong, with investors rotating into names that are sensitive to business cycles – not unlike what happened in U.S. equities,” said Shutaro Yasuda, an analyst at Tokai Tokyo Research Center. Asian equities have been recovering after being whipsawed by concerns over any fallout from China Evergrande Group’s debt troubles. As worries over the distressed property developer abate, the pace of rise in Treasury yields and global inflation data are being closely watched for clues on the U.S. Federal Reserve’s policy stance. Australia’s equity benchmark was among the biggest losers in Asia Tuesday, dragged down by losses in mining and healthcare stocks. Still, broad-based gains in oil explorers and refiners helped mitigate the Asian market’s retreat. In South Korea, importers and distributors of liquefied petroleum gas and liquefied natural gas rallied as the price of natural gas jumped.

The future of Evergrande is being forensically scrutinized by investors after the company last Friday did not meet a deadline to make an interest payment to offshore bond holders. Evergrande has 30 days to make the payment before it falls into default and Shenzen authorities are now investigating the company’s wealth management unit. Without making reference to Evergrande, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said Monday in a statement posted to its website that it would “safeguard the legitimate rights of housing consumers”.

Widening power shortages in China, meanwhile, halted production at a number of factories including suppliers to Apple Inc and Tesla Inc and are expected to hit the country’s manufacturing sector and associated supply chains. Analysts cautioned the ongoing blackouts could affect the country’s listed industrial stocks.

“What we see in China with the developers and the blackouts is going to be a negative weight on the Asian markets,” Tai Hui, JPMorgan Asset Management’s Asian chief market strategist told Reuters. “Most people are trying to work out the potential contagion effect with Evergrande and how far and wide it could go. We keep monitoring the policy response and we have started to see some shift towards supporting homebuyers which is what we have been expecting.”

In rates, as noted above, the selloff in Treasuries gathered pace in Asia, early Europe session leaving yields cheaper by 3.5bp to 5.5bp across the curve with 20s and 30s extending above 2% and 10-year through 1.50%. Treasury 10-year yields traded around 1.53%, cheaper by 4.5bp on the day after topping at 1.55%, highest since mid-June; in front- and belly, 2- and 5-year yields remain near cheapest levels in at least 18 months; in 10-year sector, gilts lag by 3bp vs. Treasuries while German yields are narrowly richer. Gilts underperformed further, where long-end yields are cheaper by up to 7.5bp on the day.

Treasury futures volumes over Asia, early European session were at more than twice usual levels, with most activity seen in 10-year note contract; eurodollar futures volumes were also well above recent average. With recent aggressive move higher in yields, threat of convexity hedging has exacerbated moves as rate hike premium continues to filter into the curve after last week’s FOMC. Auctions conclude Tuesday with 7-year note sale, while busy Fed speaker slate includes Fed Chair Powell.

In FX, the Bloomberg dollar index reached the highest level in more than a month as rising energy costs drove up Treasury yields for a fourth session. The dollar gained against all its peers; Japan’s currency slid for a fifth day against the greenback before a speech Tuesday from Fed Chair Jerome Powell who will say inflation is elevated and is likely to remain so in coming months, according to prepared remarks. Treasury two-year yields rose to the highest since March 2020. “Dollar-yen saw the clearest expression of Treasury yield increases and we attributed this divergence to the surge in energy prices,” says Christopher Wong, senior foreign-exchange strategist at Malayan Banking in Singapore. U.S. natural gas futures soared to their highest since February 2014 on concern over tight inventories. Brent oil topped $80 a barrel amid signs demand is outrunning supply. The euro slipped to hit its lowest level since Aug. 20, nearing the year-to-date low of $1.1664. The Treasury yield curve bear steepened; euro curves followed suit, with the yield on U.K. 10-year notes soaring past 1% for the first time since March 2020 on the prospects for Bank of England policy tightening.

In commodities, Crude futures extend Asia’s gains. WTI rises as much as 1.6% to highs of $76.67 before stalling. Brent holds above $80. Spot gold trades around last week’s lows near $1,740/oz. Base metals are mixed: LME aluminum outperforming, rising as much as 1.1%; nickel and copper are in the red.

Looking at the day ahead, one of the main highlights will be the appearance of Fed Chair Powell, and Treasury Secretary Yellen at the Senate Banking Committee. Otherwise, central bank speakers include ECB President Lagarde, Vice President de Guindos, and the ECB’s Schnabel, Panetta and Kazimir, along with the BoE’s Mann and the Fed’s Evans, Bowman and Bostic. US data highlights include the US Conference Board’s consumer confidence indicator for September and the FHFA house price index for July.

Market Snapshot

S&P 500 futures down 0.7% to 4,403.50
STOXX Europe 600 down 1.2% to 456.83
MXAP down 0.4% to 200.06
MXAPJ down 0.4% to 641.05
Nikkei down 0.2% to 30,183.96
Topix down 0.3% to 2,081.77
Hang Seng Index up 1.2% to 24,500.39
Shanghai Composite up 0.5% to 3,602.22
Sensex down 1.4% to 59,209.94
Australia S&P/ASX 200 down 1.5% to 7,275.55
Kospi down 1.1% to 3,097.92
Brent Futures up 0.8% to $80.15/bbl
Gold spot down 0.4% to $1,742.61
U.S. Dollar Index up 0.20% to 93.57
German 10Y yield rose 2.7 bps to -0.196%
Euro down 0.1% to $1.1681

Top Overnight News from Bloomberg

Chinese authorities are striving to signal to traders that whatever happens to China Evergrande Group, its debt crisis won’t spiral out of control or derail the economy
Brent oil roared above $80 a barrel, the latest milestone in a global energy crisis, on signs that demand is running ahead of supply and depleting inventories
As the dust settles on Germany’s election, control over the finances of Europe’s largest economy could fall to a 42-year-old former tech entrepreneur who wants to lower taxes and tighten spending
Wells Fargo agreed to pay $37 million in penalties and forfeiture to settle U.S. claims that it overcharged almost 800 commercial customers that used its foreign exchange services, the latest in a series of scandals at the bank

A more detailed look at global markets courtesy of Newsquawk

Asian equity markets traded mixed following on from a Wall Street lead where value outperformed growth and tech suffered as yields rose. ASX 200 (-1.5%) was the laggard with losses in healthcare, gold miners and tech frontrunning the declines which dragged the index beneath 7300. Nikkei 225 (-0.2%) was lacklustre and briefly approached 30k to the downside but then bounced off worse levels amid a softer currency, while the KOSPI (-1.1%) also declined following a suspected North Korean ballistic missile launch and with a recent South Korean court order to sell seized Mitsubishi Heavy assets as compensation for wartime forced labour, threatening a flare up of tensions between Japan and South Korea. Hang Seng (+1.2%) and Shanghai Comp. (+0.5%) were underpinned after the PBoC continued to inject liquidity ahead of the approaching National Day holidays and with Hong Kong led higher by strength in property names after the PBoC stated it will safeguard legitimate rights and interests of housing consumers which also provided Evergrande-related stocks further reprieve from their recent sell-off. Finally, 10yr JGBs retreated on spillover selling from T-notes after yields rose on the back of further Fed taper rhetoric and with prices not helped by the uninspiring 2yr and 5yr auctions stateside, while weaker results at the 40yr JGB auction also provided a headwind for prices.

Top Asian News

Top-Performing Global Luxury Stock Seen Cooling After 680% Gain
China Power Price Hike Sought Amid Supply Crunch: Energy Update
Macau Evacuates Airport Quarantine Hotel After Outbreak
Iron Ore Dips Again as China Power Crisis Adds to Steel Curbs

Bourses in Europe extended on the losses seen at the cash open and trade lower across the board (Euro Stoxx 50 -1.7%; Stoxx 600 -1.7%) as sentiment retreated from a mixed APAC handover as month-end looms alongside tier 1 data and a slew of central bank speakers. US equity futures have also succumbed to the mood in Europe alongside the surge in global yields – which takes its toll on the NQ (-1.5%) vs the ES (-0.8%), YM (-0.4%) and RTY (-0.3%). From a more technical standpoint, ESZ1 fell under its 50 DMA (4,431) and tested the 4,400 level to the downside, whilst NQZ1 briefly fell under 15k and the YMZ1 inches towards its 100 DMA (34,489). Back to Europe, the FTSE 100 (-0.4%) sees losses to a lesser extent vs its European peers as energy prices and yields keep the index oil giants and banks supported – with some of the top gainers including Shell (+2.8%), BP (+2.1%). Sectors in Europe are predominantly in the red, but Oil & Gas buck the trend. Sectors also portray more of a defensive bias, whilst the downside sees Tech, Real Estate, and Travel & Leisure at the foot of the bunch, with the former hit by the rise in yields, which sees the US 10yr further above 1.50%, the 20yr above 2.00% and the UK 10yr hitting 1.00% for the first time since March 2020. In terms of individual movers, Smiths Group (+3.8%) is at the top of the Stoxx 600 following encouraging earnings. ING (+0.3%) holds onto gains after sources noted SocGen’s (-0.6%) interest in ING’s retail banking arm. Finally, chip-maker ASM International (-3.5%) has succumbed to the broader tech weakness despite upping its guidance and announcing capacity expansion by early 2023.

Top European News

U.K. 10-Year Yield Rises Past 1% for First Time Since March 2020
Goldman’s Petershill Unit Valued at $5.5 Billion in U.K. IPO
Go-Ahead Sinks as U.K. Takes Over Southeastern Rail Franchise
Hedge Funds and Private Equity Are Targeting European Soccer

In FX, It took a while for the index to breach resistance ahead of 93.500, but when US Treasuries resumed their bear-steepening run and the intensity of the moves in futures and cash picked up pace the break beyond the half round number was relatively quick and decisive. Indeed, the DXY duly surpassed its post-FOMC peak (93.526) and a prior recent high from August 19 (93.587) on the way to reaching 93.619 amidst almost all round Dollar gains, as 5, 10, 20 and 30 year yields all rallied through or further above psychological levels (such as 1%, 1.5% and 2% in the case of the latter two maturities). However, petro and a few other commodity currencies are displaying varying degrees of resilience in the face of general Greenback strength that is compounded by buy signals for September 30 rebalancing on spot month, quarter and half fy end. Ahead, trade data, consumer confidence, more regional Fed surveys, speakers and the 7 year auction.

NZD/CHF/JPY/AUD – The Kiwi was already losing altitude above 0.7000 vs its US counterpart and 1.0400 against the Aussie on Monday, so the deeper retreat is hardly surprising to circa 0.6975 and 1.0415 awaiting some independent impetus that may come via NZ building consents tomorrow. Meanwhile, the Franc has recoiled towards 0.9300 in advance of comments from SNB’s Maechler and the Yen continues to suffer on the aforementioned rampant yield and steeper curve trajectory on top of a more pronounced 1+ sd portfolio hedge selling requirement vs the Buck, with Usd/Jpy meandering midway between 110.94-111.42 parameters irrespective of renewed risk aversion due to same bond rout dynamic. Back down under, Aud/Usd has faded from around 0.7311 to the low 0.7260 area, though holding up a bit better in wake of not quite as weak as forecast final retail sales overnight.
CAD/EUR/GBP – All softer against their US rival, but the Loonie putting up a decent fight with ongoing help from WTI crude that has now topped Usd 76.50/brl, and Usd/Cad also has decent option expiry interest to keep an eye on given 1.2 bn rolling off at 1.2615 and an even heftier 3 bn at 1.2675 compared to current extremes spanning 1.2693-1.2652. Elsewhere, the Euro has lost its battle to stay afloat of multiple sub-1.1700 lows even though EGBs are tumbling alongside USTs and the same goes for Sterling in relation to the 1.3700 handle irrespective of the 10 year Gilt touching 1% for the first time since March 2020.
SCANDI/EM – Brent’s advances on Usd 80 brl have been offset to an extent by soft Norwegian retail sales data, as the Nok pares more of its post-Norges Bank gains, while the Sek looks somewhat caught between stalls following a recovery in Swedish consumption, but big swing in trade balance from surplus to larger deficit. However, the Try is taking no delight from the costlier price of oil or remarks from Turkey’s Deputy Finance Minister contending that interest rates can move lower by reducing the current account and budget deficits, or conceding that Dollarisation is a problem and steps need to be taken to enhance confidence in the Lira. Conversely, the Cnh and Cny are still holding a firm line following another net injection of 2 week funds from the PBoC and the Governor saying that China will lengthen the period for the implementation of normal monetary policy, adding that it has conditions to keep a normal and upward yield curve, as it sees no need to purchase assets at present.

In commodities, WTI and Brent futures have extended on the gains seen during APAC hours, which saw the Brent November contract topping USD 80/bbl, albeit the volume and open interest has migrated to the December contract – which topped out just before the USD 80/bbl mark. WTI November meanwhile advanced past the USD 76/bbl mark to a current peak at USD 76.67/bbl (vs low USD 75.21/bbl). Desks have been attributing the leg higher to tight supply – with the UK fuel situation further deteriorating amid a shortage of drivers coupled with panic buying. It’s worth bearing in mind that the demand side of the equation has also seen supportive, with the US announcing the lifting of international travel curbs recently alongside the economic resilience to the Delta variant heading into the winter period. Traders would also be keeping an eye on the electricity situation in China, which in theory would provide tailwinds for diesel demand via generators, although this could be offset by a slowdown in economic activity due to power outages. There has also been growing noise for OPEC+ to hike output beyond the monthly plan of 400k BPD, with some African nations also struggling to ramp up production due to maintenance issues and lack of investments. Ministers recently noted that the plan would be maintained at next week’s confab. As a reminder, the OPEC World Oil Outlook is set to be released at 13:30BST/08:30EDT, although the findings may be stale given the recent developments in crude dynamics. Major banks have also provided commentary on Brent following Goldman Sachs’ bullish call recently, with Barclays upping its forecast for both benchmarks due to supply deficits, whilst Morgan Stanley maintained its forecast but suggested that the USD 85/bbl Brent scenario clearly exists. MS also noted that oil inventories continue to draw at high rates and suggest that the market is more undersupplied than generally perceived; the analysts see the market undersupplied into 2022 amid its expectation for further OPEC discipline. Nat gas also remains in focus, with prices +11% at one point, whilst Russia’s Kremlin said Russia remains the safeguard of natural gas to Europe and Gazprom is ready to discuss new gas supply contracts with increased volumes to meet rising European demand. It’s also worth being aware of the increasing likelihood of state intervention at these levels as nations attempt to save or at least cushion consumers and company margins. Elsewhere, precious metals are under pressure as the Buck remains buoyant, with spot gold still under USD 1,750/oz as it inches closer to the 11th August low of USD 1,722/oz. Spot silver remains within recent ranges above USD 22/oz. Overnight Chinese nickel and tin prices extended losses with traders citing subdued demand, whilst coking coal and coke futures leapt on tight supply.

US Event Calendar

8:30am: Aug. Advance Goods Trade Balance, est. -$87.3b, prior -$86.4b, revised -$86.8b
8:30am: Aug. Retail Inventories MoM, est. 0.5%, prior 0.4%; Wholesale Inventories MoM, est. 0.8%, prior 0.6%
9am: July S&P CS Composite-20 YoY, est. 20.00%, prior 19.08%
9am: July S&P/CS 20 City MoM SA, est. 1.70%, prior 1.77%
9am: July FHFA House Price Index MoM, est. 1.5%, prior 1.6%
10am: Sept. Conf. Board Consumer Confidence, est. 115.0, prior 113.8
- Expectations, prior 91.4
- Present Situation, prior 147.3
10am: Sept. Richmond Fed Index, est. 10, prior 9

Central Bank Speakers

9am: Fed’s Evans Makes Welcome Remarks at Payments Conference
10am: Powell and Yellen Appear Before Senate Banking Panel
1:40pm: Fed’s Bowman Speaks at Community Bank Event
3pm: Fed’s Bostic Discusses the Economic Outlook
7pm: Fed’s Bullard Discusses U.S. Economy and Monetary Policy

DB’s Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap

What a difference a week makes. You hardly hear the word Evergrande now. We asked in a flash poll last week whether we would still be talking about it in a month or whether it would be a distant memory by then. Maybe we should have narrowed the time frame to a week! We’ve quickly moved on to rate hikes and rising bond yields as the topic de jour. A further rise in the Bloomberg Commodity Spot Index (+1.87%) to a fresh high for the decade helped reinforce the move.

Indeed, sovereign bond yields moved higher once again yesterday amidst a sharp rise in inflation expectations, with those on 10yr Treasury yields rising +3.6bps to 1.487%, their highest level in over 3 months. Meanwhile the 2yr yield rose +0.8bps to 0.278%, its highest level since the pandemic began, which comes on the back of last week’s Fed meeting that prompted investors to price in an initial rate hike from the Fed by the end of 2022.

The moves in Treasury yields were almost entirely driven by higher inflation breakevens, with 10yr breakevens up +3.7bps. That echoed similar moves in Europe, where the German 10yr breakeven (+4.7bps) hit a post-2013 high of 1.653%, and their Italian counterparts (+3.9bps) hit a post-2011 high. The biggest move was in the UK however, where the 10yr breakeven (+13.2bps) reached its highest level since 2008, which comes amidst a continued fuel shortage in the country, alongside another rise in UK natural gas futures, which were up +8.20% yesterday to £190/therm, exceeding the previous closing peak set a week earlier. We were waiting for the wind to blow in this country to get alternatives back on stream and boy did it blow yesterday but with no impact yet on gas prices. Lower real rates dampened the rise in yields across the continent, though yields on 10yr bunds (+0.5bps), OATs (+0.9bps), BTPs (+1.3bps) and gilts (+2.7bps) had all moved higher by the close of trade.

Those spikes in commodity prices were evident more broadly yesterday, with energy prices in particular seeing a major increase. Brent crude oil prices were up +1.84% to $79.53/bbl, marking their highest closing level since late-2018, and this morning in trading they have now exceeded the $80/bbl mark with a further +0.94% increase. It was much the same story for WTI (+1.99%), which closed at $75.45/bbl, which was its own highest closing level since 2018 too. And those pressures in UK natural gas prices we mentioned above were seen across Europe more broadly, where futures were up +8.92%.

With yields moving higher and inflationary pressures growing stronger, tech stocks struggled significantly yesterday, with the NASDAQ down -0.52%. The megacap tech FANG+ index fell -0.15% on the day, but was initially down as much as -1.7% in early trading. The NASDAQ underperformed the S&P 500, which was only down -0.28%, but that masked significant sectoral divergences, with interest-sensitive growth stocks struggling, just as cyclicals more broadly posted fresh gains. More specifically, energy (+3.43%), bank (+2.29%) and autos (+2.19%) led the S&P, while biotech (-1.65%) and software (-1.39%) shares were among the largest laggards. European equities were also pretty subdued, with the STOXX 600 down -0.19%, though the DAX was up +0.27% following the results of the German election, which removed the tail risk outcome of a more left-wing coalition featuring the SPD, the Greens and Die Linke.

Staying on the political scene, we are now less than 72 hours away from a potential US government shutdown as it stands. As was expected, Republicans in the Senate blocked the House-passed measure to fund the government for another 2 months and raise the debt ceiling for 2 years. While Democrats have not put forward their alternative strategy if Republicans refuse to vote to lift the debt ceiling, their only option would be to attach it to the budget reconciliation plan that currently makes up much of the Biden economic agenda. In an effort to keep all party members on board, Speaker Pelosi moved the vote on the $550bn bipartisan infrastructure bill to Thursday in order to give all sides more time to finish the larger budget bill and pass both together. It is a going to be a very busy Thursday, since Congress will have to also pass the funding bill that day. Republicans and Democrats already agree on a funding bill to keep the government open that does not include the debt ceiling increase so it is just a matter of how exactly the debt ceiling provision goes through without a Republican Senate vote.

Overnight in Asia, equity indices are seeing a mixed performance. On the one hand, most of the region including the Nikkei (-0.24%) and KOSPI (-0.80%) are trading lower as investors begin to price in tighter monetary policy from the Fed. However, the Hang Seng (+1.50%), Shanghai Composite (+0.53%) and CSI (0.38%) have all advanced after the People’s Bank of China said that they would ensure a “healthy property market”. Looking forward, US equity futures are pointing to little change, with those on the S&P 500 down just -0.05%, and 10yr Treasury yields have risen +1.9bps this morning to trade above 1.50% again.

Back to the German election, where the aftermath yesterday saw various party leaders assess the results and stake their claims to participate in a new coalition. As a reminder, the SPD came in first place with 25.7%, but the CDU/CSU weren’t far behind on 24.1%, making it mathematically possible for either to form a government in a coalition with the Greens and the FDP. The SPD’s chancellor candidate, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, appealed for the Greens and FDP to join him in forming a government, and told the media that he wanted to form a coalition before Christmas. Meanwhile Green co-leader Robert Habeck said that “Of course there is a certain priority for talks with the SPD and the FDP”, but said that this didn’t mean they wouldn’t speak with the CDU/CSU either.

As the SPD were calling for an alliance, the tone sounded more negative from the CDU’s leadership, even though Armin Laschet said that he had not given up on the idea of forming a government. Notably, Laschet said that no party was able to draw a clear mandate from the result, including the SPD, and this echoed remarks from the CSU leader Markus Söder, who said that the conservatives had no mandate to form a government, though they could “make an offer out of a sense of responsibility for the country.” Meanwhile, attention will turn to the FDP and the Greens to see which way they’re leaning when it comes to forming a government. FDP leader Lindner said that he would hold preliminary talks with the Greens, after which they would be open to invitations from either the SPD or the CDU/CSU for further discussions.

Back on the UK, there was an interesting speech from BoE Governor Bailey yesterday, where he echoed the line from the MPC minutes last week, saying that “all of us believe that there will need to be some modest tightening of policy to be consistent with meeting the inflation target sustainable over the medium-term”. However, he also said that their view was that “the price pressures will be transient”, and that “monetary policy will not increase the supply of semi-conductor chips … nor will it produce more HGV drivers.” He then further added that tighter policy “could make things worse in this situation by putting more downward pressure on a weakening recovery of the economy”. So a bit of a mixed message of backing rate hike expectations but warning about its impact on growth.

Over in the US we heard from a host of Fed speakers with Governor Brainard saying that while “employment is still a bit short of the mark” of “substantial further progress”, she expects that the labour market will recover enough to start tapering asset purchases soon. Separately on the inflation debate, Minneapolis Fed President Kashkari argued that this year’s pickup in US inflation has been a byproduct of the supply disruptions associated with Covid and that policy makers should not react to it just yet. He cited the need to get US employment back up as the Fed’s “highest priority”. New York Fed President Williams agreed with his colleague, saying that “this process of adjustment may take another year or so to complete as the pandemic-related swings in supply and demand gradually recede.” And Chicago Fed President Evans is even worried about downside inflation risks, as he is ” more uneasy about us not generating enough inflation in 2023 and 2024 than the possibility that we will be living with too much.”

Lastly, news came out yesterday that Boston Fed President Rosengren will retire this week due to health concerns. He was due to step down in June regardless as there is a mandatory retirement age of 65. Dallas Fed President Kaplan also announced his retirement yesterday, which will take effect October 8th. Both officials have drawn scrutiny in recent days stemming from their recent disclosure of trading activity over the last year, though the activity did not violate the Fed’s ethics code even as Fed Chair Powell announced an official review of those rules. The Boston Fed President will be a voting member on the FOMC next year, and the Dallas Fed President in 2023.

Running through yesterday’s data, the preliminary reading for US durable goods orders in August showed growth of +1.8% (vs. +0.7% expected), and the previous month was also revised up to show growth of +0.5% (vs. -0.1% previously). Meanwhile core capital goods orders grew by +0.5% (vs. +0.4% expected), and the previous month’s growth was revised up two-tenths. Finally, the Dallas Fed’s manufacturing activity index for September came in at 4.6 (vs. 11.0 expected) – its lowest reading since July 2020.

To the day ahead now, and one of the main highlights will be the appearance of Fed Chair Powell, and Treasury Secretary Yellen at the Senate Banking Committee. Otherwise, central bank speakers include ECB President Lagarde, Vice President de Guindos, and the ECB’s Schnabel, Panetta and Kazimir, along with the BoE’s Mann and the Fed’s Evans, Bowman and Bostic. US data highlights include the US Conference Board’s consumer confidence indicator for September and the FHFA house price index for July.

3A/ASIAN AFFAIRS

i)TUESDAY MORNING/MONDAY NIGHT:

SHANGHAI CLOSED UP 19.39 PTS OR .54% //Hang Sang CLOSED UP 291.61 PTS OR 1.20%/The Nikkei closed DOWN 56.10 PTS OR 0.19% //Australia’s all ordinaires CLOSED DOWN 1/43%

3 a./NORTH KOREA/ SOUTH KOREA

/NORTH KOREA//SOUTH KOREA

end

b) REPORT ON JAPAN

JAPAN/COVID/

3 C CHINA

CHINA/RUSSIA/USA

China issues a rare defense of China with respect to USA bullying sanctions

(zerohedge)

China Issues Rare, Strongly-Worded Defense Of Russia Over US “Bullying” Sanctions

It’s been no secret that over the past half-decade China and Russia have grown closer, even becoming unlikely allies (unlikely given historic 20th century antagonism), in the face of Washington pressure and sanctions on officials in both countries.

This growing cooperation on military, economic and infrastructure development fronts has now reached the next unprecedented step of Beijing publicly defending Russia, vociferously condemning the next round of proposed US sanctions on Moscow officials.

China’s Foreign Ministry on Monday stated it “strongly opposes” new sanctions on top Russian officials, saying US Congressional leaders are using human rights as a “pretext” for ensuring attempts at improving US-Russia relations fail. “The US hegemonic and bullying practices are rejected by Russia and China and will meet rejection and opposition from more and more countries,” the Monday statement said.

“China is strongly against Washington applying unilateral sanctions under the pretext of protecting human rights” given that it “violates the provisions of the UN Charter and acts contrary to generally accepted norms of international law,” spokesperson Hua Chunying said in Beijing.

The statement suggested it’s another example of the United States’ unilaterally ‘bullying’ behavior (as Chinese officials have increasingly referenced), and that “a growing number of countries” oppose Washington’s attempts to punish Moscow while waiving the flag of human rights.

The new sanctions in question were part of anti-Russian legislation packaged into the US defense spending budget for 2022. Specifically they target 35 top Russian officials, including the mayor of Moscow and Health Ministry head Mikhail Murashko. The legislation also makes continued reference to ‘election interference’ and other such usual accusations against the Kremlin.

Beijing issuing such a high level public defense of Putin’s Russia comes as China is under a similar human rights spotlight as well, particularly over its Hong Kong crackdown of the last few years, and widespread reports of Uighur minority ‘reeducation camps’ in northwest Xinjiang region. Typically the foreign ministry has deployed the “double standard” and hypocrisy charge in response to Washington criticisms of China.

This fresh defense of Russia points to the two countries deepening their united front against their common enemy, also after joint military drills have in recent years been ramped up. Add to this both the US and UK navies lately deploying a more active presence in contested waters South China Sea and near Taiwan, and its recipe for potential major military confrontation between the West and a Russia-China alliance.

end

CHINA/

This is big: how the endgame of communist rule has begun in China. Evergrande’s fall shows how Xi created a China crisis. A 20% fall in prices for real estate will whack off 10% of GDP. China’s citizens wealth is around 78% if total Chinese wealth. A fall in real estate will whack China pretty bad. On top of this is energy problems at the 3 gorges. China will now face its Lehman moment. Its total debt to GDP level is 350%

(zerohedge)

“The Endgame Of Communist Rule Has Begun”: Evergrande’s Fall Shows How Xi Has Created A China Crisis

Authored by Niall Ferguson, op-ed via Bloomberg.com,

The developer’s collapse isn’t leading to global contagion, but China’s looming economic disaster might…

A major mistake of the Cold War was the tendency of Western observers to overestimate the Soviet Union. I have often wondered if the same mistake is being repeated with the People’s Republic of China. Then again, for every article over the last 10 years that predicted China’s economy would overtake that of the U.S., there were at least two prophesying a “China crisis.”

“The endgame of Chinese communist rule has now begun,” wrote David Shambaugh in 2015.

Wisely, he added: “Its demise is likely to be protracted.”

That same year, Jim Chanos of Kynikos Associates warned, “We’re getting inexorably to a tipping point in China.”

Last week began with yet another China tipping point. The impending collapse of the giant property developer China Evergrande Group, we were warned, could be China’s “Lehman Moment.” For 24 hours, global stock markets retreated by a couple of percentage points. By Tuesday morning, however, the story appeared to be over. The jitters subsided and investors got back to parsing the utterances of U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell to make sure that nothing he said was surprising.

So if the China crisis never happens — no matter how many times China permabears like Chanos predict it — does China eventually overtake the U.S.? Thus far, it has done so only in terms of gross domestic product adjusted on the basis of “purchasing power parity,” which allows for the fact that a meal in Chongqing is quite a bit cheaper than one in Chicago. On a current dollar basis, China’s GDP last year was still just 72% of U.S. GDP, even with Hong Kong included.

Will China surpass America? No, I don’t think so. Nearly three years ago, in the heat of a lively debate in Seoul, I bet the Chinese economist Justin Yifu Lin 20,000 yuan (roughly $3,000) that China’s economy — defined as GDP in current dollars — would not overtake that of the U.S. in the next 20 years. I am sticking with that bet, even if the Lehman Moment for the Chinese financial system never comes. Here’s why.

Let’s begin by recalling how many experts believed the Soviets would overtake America. In successive editions, the economist Paul Samuelson’s hugely influential economics textbook carried a chart projecting that the gross national product of the Soviet Union would exceed that of the U.S. at some point between 1984 and 1997. The 1967 edition suggested that the great overtaking could happen as early as 1977. By the 1980 edition, the time frame had been moved forward to 2002-2012. The graph was quietly dropped after that.

Samuelson was by no means the only American scholar to make this mistake. A late as 1984, Harvard’s liberal guru John Kenneth Galbraith could still insist that “the Russian system succeeds because, in contrast with the Western industrial economies, it makes full use of its manpower.” Economists who discerned the miserable realities of the planned economy, such as G. Warren Nutter of the University of Virginia, were few and far between — almost as rare as historians, such as Robert Conquest, who grasped the enormity of the Soviet system’s crimes against its own citizens.

We know now how wrong Samuelson, Galbraith et al. were. After 1945, according to the late Angus Maddison’s estimates, the Soviet economy was never more than 44% the size of that of the U.S. By 1991, Soviet GDP was less than a third of U.S. GDP.

China has of course learned lessons from the Soviet experience. Beginning in the late 1970s with Deng Xiaoping, China’s leaders understood that the Communist Party could harness market forces for the perpetuation of their own power, but they must never relax the party’s political grip. If there is one thing the CCP can be relied on never to produce, it is a Chinese Mikhail Gorbachev.

In the same way, the Chinese have learned from the American experience. I remember vividly how, in the wake of the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers, eminent Chinese economists visited Harvard (where I taught at the time) and doubtless many other institutions to research the causes of the global financial crisis. Somewhere in President Xi Jinping’s office there must be a copy of the report they subsequently wrote. If there is another thing the CCP can be relied on never to produce, it is a Chinese Lehman Moment.

Yet, as the great English historian A.J.P. Taylor once observed of the French Emperor Napoleon III, he “learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones.” As I contemplate Xi, I find myself wondering if the Communist Party has inadvertently produced a Chinese version of Napoleon III, whose reign was also marked by rampant real estate development. (The Paris you see today was in large measure the achievement of his prefect of the Seine, Georges-Eugene Haussmann.)

Evergrande is mainly significant as an illustration of how the Chinese economic model has evolved over the past decades of urbanization on steroids. It is China’s second-largest property developer, with an estimated $355 billion of assets across 1,300 developments. It has around 200,000 employees, and usually hires 3-4 million laborers a year for construction work.

It is also the most-indebted property developer in the world, with on-balance-sheet liabilities equivalent to nearly 2% of China’s annual GDP, and off-balance-sheet obligations equal to another 1%. Among its liabilities are $37 billion in bills and trade payables owed to suppliers and contractors, and an estimated $6 billion in high-yielding wealth management products, which it has sold to more than 80,000 retail investors.

Evergrande is just one of many such leveraged real estate companies in China. It just happens to be the most overstretched, so it was the first to get in trouble when the government introduced its “three red lines.” These specified that a property developer’s ratio of liabilities to assets must be below 70%; its ratio of net debt to equity below 100%; and its ratio of cash to short-term debt at least 100%. Evergrande was on the wrong side of all three lines, but it was in good company. Of the country’s 15 biggest developers, only one is fully compliant with the new rules, according to data in the South China Morning Post.

When the Chinese government decides to make an example of an over-leveraged player, we know what happens next, and it’s not a global financial crisis — not even a domestic one. There will be some more brinkmanship, as there was last week, with some bondholders (onshore) getting paid and others (offshore) being asked to wait. But at some point soon — probably before the October holiday — the government will force through a formal restructuring and bankruptcy process. Those considered politically important will get off lightly; the politically disposable will lose their shirts; a few top executives will face jail. That was what happened with the travel conglomerate HNA Group Co. in 2018. It was what happened to Baoshang Bank Co. in May 2019.

The most sanguine take I read last week came from the always interesting MacroPolo series of papers published by the Paulson Institute, founded by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson (himself something of an authority on Lehman Moments). According to Houze Song, the Evergrande crisis was the result of a policy error, because “China’s financial regulators … preoccupied with stifling a property and land sales bubble … mandated banks to cut back on mortgage loans.” Fewer mortgages drove down housing prices, pushing Evergrande to the brink of insolvency. However, everything will turn out fine because:

1) The central bank will further relax mortgage policy to alleviate the liquidity crunch for the property sector;

2) Property sales will rebound as demand for housing remains healthy;

3) The more vulnerable firms will be able to sell their assets (e.g., land) to raise cash.

“These dynamics will be mutually reinforcing,” he concludes, “and will help to stabilize the property sector as it muddles through this year.”

The People’s Bank of China has already taken action. On Thursday, it sought to alleviate the financial stress with the equivalent of $17 billion in the form of seven- and 14-day reverse repurchase agreements, its largest open-market operation since January. Evergrande shares in Hong Kong duly rallied. Crisis over. Stand down the plunge protection team.

All this goes to show that a Lehman Moment was never in the cards. China’s state-controlled financial system has state-controlled crises, which are targeted at particular firms “pour encourager les autres”— not to trigger the kind of generalized bank run that drove the global financial system to the point of collapse in the winter of 2008-2009.

Nevertheless, it is possible to avoid financial contagion without necessarily avoiding a more insidious macroeconomic contagion. As the Harvard economist Ken Rogoff showed last year in a paper co-authored with Yuanchen Yang of Beijing’s Tsinghua University, real estate plays an even bigger role in China’s economy today than it did in the U.S. economy on the eve of the financial crisis. The impact of real estate-related activities amounted to 18.9% of U.S. GDP in 2005, its pre-crisis peak. The equivalent figure for China in 2016 was 28.7%. None of the 10 other countries in their sample come close, except Spain on the eve of the financial crisis (28.7% in 2006).

The detail is eye-popping. In all, around 27% of Chinese bank loans come from the real estate sector. Real estate is the main form of collateral for loan securitization. In 2017, almost 18% of the urban labor force was employed in real estate and related industries. In 2018, the sale of land by local governments accounted for as much as 35% of their revenues.

Much as happened in Japan in the housing bubble of the late 1980s, the market value of China’s housing stock is now more than double that of the U.S. and triple that of Europe. This means that housing wealth forms a significantly larger share of overall assets in China (78%) than it does in the U.S. (35%). Rogoff and Yang conclude that Chinese households’ consumption is therefore “significantly more sensitive to a decline in housing prices” than that of their American and Japanese counterparts. A “20% fall in real estate activity could lead to a 5-10% fall in GDP, even without amplification from a banking crisis, or accounting for the importance of real estate as collateral.”

To put it simply, China’s growth has been boosted for many years by the construction of an excess supply of housing units. This has been financed by an unsustainable mountain of debt. As the Beijing-based economist Michael Pettis noted last week, “China’s official debt-to-GDP ratio has soared by nearly 45 percentage points in the past five years, leaving it with among the highest debt ratios for any developing country in history.”

Relative to the size of the economy, nonfinancial corporate debt in China is now even bigger than it was in Japan in the late 1980s. And both tower blocks and debts have been going up at a time when the Chinese workforce has begun to come down. With the birthrate falling, the total population is forecast by the United Nations to shrink by around 25% by the end of the century — conceivably even by 50%.

The result is not so much the proverbial bridges to nowhere as homes for no one.Betweena fifth and a quarter of Chinese housing stock is estimated to be empty. Last week, the Rhodium Group’s Logan Wright estimated that there was enough empty property in China to house more than 90 million people.

Of course, no “China crisis” article for the past 20 years has been complete without images of uninhabited ghost cities. But there was always the counterargument: “If you build it, they will come.” Well, they built 15 high-rise apartment blocks in the southwestern city of Kunming back in 2013. Unfortunately, the developer ran out of money and the buildings turned out to be defective. Last month, “Sunshine City II” was spectacularly demolished in a succession of controlled explosions. That one video clip impressed me more than all the ghost city videos I’ve seen over the years. Nothing says “wealth destruction” quite like toppling tower blocks.

The crisis in real estate has much wider ramifications than the inevitable restructuring of Evergrande. Other developers are under pressure (the fact that one is called Fantasia says it all). Housing sales are down. So are land sales by local governments. Exposed banks are under pressure, as are the steel producers and iron-ore exporters who for so long grew rich on Chinese construction. And, as falling apartment prices reduce household wealth — just as Rogoff and Yang foresaw — we can expect a significant impact on consumption. The August data already showed a decline in year-on-year retail sales growth from 8.5% in July to 2.5%, though this partly reflected the effects of anti-Covid restrictions. That slowdown seems likely to persist through September and October.

For years, Pettis and others have argued that China’s growth rates were artificially inflated and that the steroid-free growth rate was probably half the official target. Some China economists quoted in the press last week suggested a growth rate closer to 4% in the coming decade. Leland Miller, of China Beige Book, even suggested a rate of 1% or 2% 10 years from now.

It will be interesting to see if the International Monetary Fund revises down its growth projections for China in next month’s World Economic Outlook. Back in the summer of 2020, the IMF thought China’s economy would grow 9.2% this year and 5.7% next year. The 2021 figure has since been lowered to 8.1%. The most recent 2023 projection was 5.4%. All these numbers look on the high side to me, even allowing for the unreliability of Chinese statistics. (Thank heavens the managing director of the IMF would never contemplate overstating China’s economic performance! Oh wait, that’s precisely what Kristalina Georgieva is accused of having done when she was at the World Bank.)

Many foreign investors have been on the wrong side of all this. In the 15 months through June 2021, they poured $527 billion into Chinese stocks and bonds. A good deal of that money found its way via the offshore dollar bond market into high-yielding real estate debt. Among the funds known to hold Evergrande debt are Fidelity International Ltd., UBS Asset Management, Amundi Asset Management SA, and BlackRock Inc. Last week it fell to Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates to rally the China bulls. The Evergrande crisis was “all manageable,” he said. The system would be “protected.” But it Is striking that on Aug. 3, George Soros warned investors in China that they faced “a rude awakening,” and on Sept. 6, he called out “BlackRock’s China Blunder.” When Soros and Kyle Bass are on the same side, things get interesting. (Bass’s fund, Hayman Capital Management, has been short China for years.)

“The regime which is destroyed by a revolution is almost always an improvement on its immediate predecessor,” wrote Alexis de Tocqueville in “The Old Regime and the Revolution.” “And experience teaches that the most critical moment for bad governments is the one which witnesses their first steps toward reform.” I often thought of that passage as I watched Gorbachev inadvertently destroy the Soviet Union by trying to reform it. Only recently did it occur to me that it might also apply to Xi, the anti-Gorbachev. Although his reforms go in the opposite direction from Gorbachev’s — turning back the political clock to Marxism-Leninism, rather than forward to liberalism — the effect may be the same.

Xi’s crackdown on the property developers is just the latest blow he has struck against “capitalism with Chinese characteristics.” First in line were the big tech companies — Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Tencent Holdings Ltd. and ride-sharing leader Didi Global Inc. Then it was the turn of the for-profit education sector. All of this reflects Xi’s conviction that China needs to move from “fictional growth” to “genuine growth,” and his determination to make the old CCP slogan of “common prosperity” a meaningful antidote to the rampant inequality of the “get rich quick” era. Investors who have ignored this anticapitalist turn in China have only themselves to blame if they have lost money.

Likewise, analysts who continue to predict a Chinese economic takeover of the world have only themselves to blame if they have failed to learn the lessons of the Soviet collapse. Perhaps, to paraphrase Taylor, Xi has learned from the crises of others only how to make a crisis of his own.

end

/CHINA//ECONOMY

Goldman Sachs cuts China’s Q3 growth to zero% due to growing energy crisis and real estate problems

(zerohedge)

Goldman Cuts China’s Q3 GDP Growth To 0% As A Result Of Growing Energy Crisis

It’s not just Europe that is suffering the mother of all commodity and energy price shocks: slowly but surely a similar fate is befalling China, where a perfect storm of increased regulation, extremely tight global energy supply, the escalating trade spat with Australia, surging coal prices and a crackdown on carbon has led to energy shortages first at factories and manufacturers and more recently, mass blackouts hitting tens of millions of residents in at least three Chinese provinces (as we discussed earlier).

In our commentary to China’s growing energy problem we said that “while the blackouts starting to hit household power usage are at most an inconvenience, if one which may soon result in even more civil unrest if these are not contained, a bigger worry is that the already snarled supply chains could get even more broken, leading to even greater supply-disruption driven inflation.”

But there’s more than just supply chains: as Goldman’s China strategist Hui Shan writes in a note published late on Monday, “the recent sharp cuts to production in a range of high-energy-intensity industries add to the already significant downside pressures in the growth outlook.”

While the Goldman strategist explains more in detail further, the production cuts are due primarily to increased regulatory pressure on provinces to meet energy use targets for 2021 but also reflect surging energy prices in some cases. He notes that the NDRC issued ratings in mid-August showing nine provinces as performing poorly based on H1 energy usage, and reportedly intensified its efforts to bring underperformers into line in mid-September.

Based on the number of provinces (9 in NDRC ‘red’ classification) and share of industrial activity affected (Goldman estimates 44%), as well as informed assumptions about the extent of the cutbacks, the bank has estimated the hit to industrial production and overall economic activity for the remainder of the year. The bank’s initial estimate is roughly a 1 percentage-point annualized hit to Q3 GDP growth and double this impact on Q4 growth. The bank then also adjusted its fiscal deficit estimates to reflect a smaller augmented deficit
for 2021 (11.0%, vs 11.6% previously), accounted for by a lower deficit in the second half of the year: “This trims our growth assumption by about 25bp in Q3 and 50bp in Q4, given a relatively low multiplier and typical lags.”

Putting it all together, Goldman’s new growth forecasts for Q3 shrink to flat, or 0% qoq (4.8% yoy), for Q4 to 6% qoq ann (3.2% yoy), and for 2021 as a whole to 7.8% (down from 5.1%, 4.1%, and 8.2% yoy previously.) Here, Goldman caveats that “considerable uncertainty” remains with respect to the fourth quarter, with both upside and downside risks relating principally to the government’s approach to managing the Evergrande stresses, the strictness of environmental target enforcement and the degree of policy easing. In short, how Beijing responds will impact the forecast. Regardless of said response, however, Goldman also takes down its 2022 GDP growth forecast to 5.5% yoy, well below China’s new redline in the 6% range.

* * *

Elaborating further, Goldman writes that in recent weeks markets have been focused on developments with respect to Evergrande, its real estate development business, and risks to the broader Chinese property sector. The downward pressures on property sales and construction have added to a myriad of other headwinds for the economy including a relatively tight macro policy stance (epitomized by a balanced official fiscal budget in H1), Covid-related restrictions to counter local outbreaks, and regulatory tightening across a range of other sectors.

To this, we can now add a “new but tightening” constraint on growth from increased regulatory pressure to meet environmental targets for energy consumption and energy intensity (the so-called “dual controls”). As part of the country’s longer-term goal to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030, policymakers formulated shorter term targets for 2021 in March’s Government Work Report – including a 3% reduction in energy intensity of GDP this year. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) monitors these at the provincial level on a quarterly basis. In August, it released a report classifying 9 provinces as category “red” – having missed their H1 targets, including Qinghai, Ningxia, Guangxi, Guangdong, Fujian, Xinjiang, Yunnan, Shaanxi and Jiangsu (Exhibit 1). Another 10 provinces were classified as “yellow”. In mid-September, the NDRC published a plan for “dual controls” and was reported to pressure provinces that had lagged behind to curb energy use.

Why did the energy use targets become binding so soon after being implemented?

While it presumably was not the intention of policymakers to provoke a sharp tightening, at least when the goals were initially formulated, the peculiar nature of the Covid shock has made the economy more energy-intensive, at least temporarily. The boom in exports has boosted energy-intensive manufacturing industries (Exhibit 2), while Covid-related restrictions have primarily affected interaction-intensive service businesses. Meanwhile, efforts to reduce coal-fired related emissions and a reduction in coal imports have affected supply levels at least on the margin, contributing to the sharp increase in prices discussed earlier.

What follows below is Goldman’s attempt to quantify the impact of these production cutbacks on growth in Q3 and Q4.

First, quantifying the impact of energy-related production cuts.

Given the uncertainty associated with the degree and duration of production cuts, Goldman has made a number of simplifying assumptions to size the impact on GDP. Exhibit 4 displays these assumptions and calculations.

First, the bank categorizes affected regions by their 1H 21 energy control ratings given by the NDRC. For the nine provinces where the rating is red, the local governments need to aggressively reduce energy consumption to meet the year-end target and we assume the largest production cuts in those provinces. This means even more pain is coming.

Second, Goldman divides industries by their energy intensity. For ferrous metals, non-ferrous metals and non-metal mineral products, the NDRC labels them as “high energy intensity” sectors and they are also cited most frequently in the news related to the latest power cuts (see here for example). Therefore, the bank assumes the sharpest production cuts (20-40%) in these three industries. Petroleum, coking & nuclear fuel and chemical material & product are also labeled as “high energy intensity” sectors, and are likely to suffer medium levels of production cuts (10-20%). Mining, textile, paper making, chemical fiber and rubber & plastic product require significant energy inputs and have been quoted in news articles as well. Goldman assumes 5-10% of production cuts depending on the province for these industries.

Altogether, Goldman expects the 10 days of production cuts at the end of September to reduce real GDP growth by nearly one percentage point (annualized) in Q3. The rightmost column in Exhibit 4 shows the hit to the level of GDP in Q3 for each set of industries; these sum to 23bp, and given this is a quarter-on-quarter change, the annualized change is slightly less than one percentage point (92bp).

Assuming the production cuts continue in Q4 and affect 10 days per month, they would reduce Q4 real GDP growth by about 1.8% sequentially. Here, Goldman hands out the usual caveats: namely that there is a great deal of uncertainty in our estimates. On the one hand, the bank assumes no places outside of the red and yellow provinces and no industries beyond the 10 industries mentioned above are affected, which will likely underestimate the actual production impact. On the other hand, affected companies may resort to shifting maintenance timing in response to power cuts and production may increase in provinces with non-binding energy caps, leading to less damage to overall growth.

Cutting fiscal deficit forecast

After Chinese authorities quickly unwound the macro policy easing deployed in the first half of 2020, credit growth decelerated, excess liquidity was drained, and the fiscal deficit declined. In fact, fiscal policy normalized so quickly that the country ran an official deficit of zero in the first half of the year. Goldman had expected some reduction in the overall fiscal deficit, but the tighter-than-expected H1 caused the bank to revise its deficit estimate for 2021 lower. While there has been some fiscal easing in July and August, this partly reflects typical seasonal patterns and the deficit is tracking below these downwardly-revised estimates. Significant off-budget elements of the augmented deficit including policy bank lending, trust lending, and land sales are tracking below the bank’s forecasts, and the latter in particular seems likely to continue to underperform given the ongoing property market tightening and failed land auctions seen in recent months. On the other hand, local government special bond issuance has accelerated somewhat but remains below the pace needed to fully utilize this year’s quota. Therefore, Goldman is revising a second time, and moving its forecast for the full-year augmented deficit to 11.0% from 11.6% previously.

Adjusting the new second-half deficit forecasts 1.2% lower and applying a multiplier of 0.2 (as well as a modest lag to some spending), Goldman now estimates an impact on qoq annualized growth of roughly -1/4pp in Q3 and -1/2pp in Q4.

The new GDP growth forecasts

Combining these new estimates for the impact of supply-side cuts to energy-intensive production and slightly less support from fiscal policy, Goldman cuts its growth forecasts for:

Q3 to 0% (qoq annualized), from +1.3% previously,
Q4 to 6.0% annualized, from 8.5% previously.

As a result, Goldman’s year-over-year forecasts are now just 4.8% for Q3, 3.2% for Q4, and 7.8% for 2021 as a whole.

Finally, the lower starting point for early 2022 activity pulls the growth forecast for that year down one tenth, to 5.5%, despite modestly stronger sequential growth as restrictions become less binding and policy eases.

Uncertainties and policy response

While the third quarter is nearly over, uncertainty around the Q4 pace remains very large, and a lot of this comes down to the stance of both macro and regulatory policy, i.e., Beijing’s reponse. Key drivers of the Q4 outcome will include the timing and extent of:

government measures to stabilize housing sector activity and stretch out the deleveraging in the property sector,
any temporary relaxation of regulatory pressures to meet energy use targets, and/or
macro policy support.

Each of these factors could materialize on either the positive or negative side relative to these new reduced growth forecasts.

end

China

China is desperate to avoid a messy collapse but this will come to no avail Beijing produces its SOE’s pt buy Evergrande assets

(zerohedge)

To Avoid “Messy Collapse”, Beijing Prods SOEs To Buy Evergrande Assets Including World’s Largest Soccer Stadium

Last Friday, when we reported that “China Steps In To Ensure Evergrande Funds Used To Complete Housing Project, Not Pay Creditors”, we asked if this was the start of China’s not-so-stealthy rescue of Evergrande.

The answer appears to be yes because as Reuters reports this morning, Beijing is increasingly prodding government-owned firms and state-backed property developers such as China Vanke to purchase some of Evergrande’s assets. Or rather “assets”, because the company has tried and failed to sell all sellable assets before. It is now Beijing’s hope that by forcing SOEs to purchase these underperforming assets, that Evergrande’s liquidity situation is improved at least for the time being.

As we discussed previously, hoping to avoid the optics of yet another full-blown bailout, the central government is unlikely to intervene directly to resolve Evergrande’s crisis in the form of a bailout. Instead, “Beijing hopes that asset purchases will ward off or at least mitigate any social unrest that could occur if Evergrande were to suffer a messy collapse.”

Not surprisingly, what Beijing wants it gets and according to a source, a handful of government-owned enterprises have already done due diligence on assets in the southern Chinese city Guangzhou. In one example, Guangzhou City Construction Investment Group is close to acquiring Evergrande’s Guangzhou FC Soccer stadium and surrounding residential projects.

Set to cost around 12 billion yuan ($1.9 billion), the stadium has been designed to seat more than 100,000, making it the world’s largest venue built for soccer by capacity.

Of course, in keeping with the epic charade that this is not Beijing funneling cash into the broke developer but “third parties”, the potential buyers of Evergrande’s core assets in Guangzhou have been “arranged” with “both political and commercial considerations” in mind, the Reuters source said, adding that authorities don’t want to see just a few companies bidding for the same assets.

Vanke and China Jinmao Holdings are among government-backed property developers that have been asked to purchase assets from Evergrande. China Resources Land has also been asked, one source said. Vanke, which is one-third owned by Shenzhen’s state-owned subway operator, said in August it has talked with Evergrande about cooperating on various projects.

While expectations are high that it will undergo one of the largest-ever restructurings in China, government bodies have been largely silent on the potential for a bailout or how they might deal with a collapse. The reason is simple: Beijing which has been engaged in a years-long deleveraging campaign, does not want to show to the world that even a modest hiccup will force it to go back to square one, and so it is engaging in this elaborate charade where it refuses to let Evergrande fail but will never admit it is indirectly bailing it – if not its shareholders – out.

Indeed, Beijing has worked to curb any downstream effect on the financial system from Evergrande’s troubles, with the central bank pledging on Monday to protect consumers exposed to the housing market and injecting more cash into the banking system.

One of the first signs of an official inquiry into the real estate giant came this week when the Shenzhen government’s financial regulator said an investigation had been opened into an Evergrande wealth management unit. Reuters reported that local governments have been asked to mediate with government-backed groups and companies so they can participate in Evergrande’s reorganization and asset sales.

That said, any action taken by local governments will depend on the extent of Evergrande’s presence in those areas and the local finances of that particular province or city, the sources also said. They added that regulators will first assess the funding situation of all Evergrande’s businesses before taking any action on its liquidity situation.

“What kind of committee should be set up is a second story; it depends on the debt situation,” said one regulatory source.

* * *

Separately, having missed the payment of $83.5 million in interest to offshore bondholders last week, Bloomberg reports that some holders of a bond issued by a company called Jumbo Fortune Enterprises are forming a committee to press their claims in the event of a default because they maintain China Evergrande Group is a guarantor of the debt. The $260 million note from Jumbo Fortune Enterprises matures Oct. 3, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The dollar note is guaranteed by China Evergrande Group and its unit Tianji Holding. Jumbo Fortune is a joint venture whose owners include Hengda Real Estate, Evergrande’s main onshore unit, according to a local bond prospectus published in April by Hengda.

Notably, unlike last week’s coupon payment which has a 30 day grace period, the effective due date on the bonds is the following day.

The guarantees from Evergrande and Tianji Holding constitute direct, unconditional and unsubordinated obligations and rank on at least on an equal footing with the other unconditional and unsubordinated obligations of the guarantors, according to the people.

Five business days would be allowed if any failure to pay were due to administrative or technical error, though beyond that there would be no grace period, the people said.

This would mean that the deadline is Evergrande’s largest debt test since regulators recently urged the company to avoid defaulting on dollar bonds.

NORWAY/VACCINE UPDATE

Norway celebrations as COVID restrictions end

(Duschamps/EpochTimes)

Mass Celebrations Erupt In Norway As COVID Restrictions End

Authored by Lorenz Duschamps via The Epoch Times,

Norwegians took to the streets over the weekend to celebrate an end to the country’s CCP virus restrictions after government-imposed measures limited people’s social interactions for about 18 months.

The Norwegian government announced on Sept. 24 that most of the remaining COVID-19 restrictions would be scrapped beginning on Sept. 25, and that life in the nation of 5.3 million would return to normal.

“It has been 561 days since we introduced the toughest measures in Norway in peacetime,” outgoing Prime Minister Erna Solberg said at a news conference.

“Now the time has come to return to a normal daily life.”

Norway will no longer require businesses to implement social distancing measures, and it will also allow sports and cultural venues as well as restaurants to use their full capacity, the prime minister’s office said. Nightclubs can also reopen under the new guidelines.

The virus can now be considered as one of several respiratory illnesses with seasonal variation, said Geir Bukholm, the assistant director for the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, according to local media. In Norway, COVID-19 has been classified as a generally dangerous disease, but the official classification could change soon, he said.

“We are now in a new phase where we must look at the coronavirus as one of several respiratory diseases with seasonal variation,” Bukholm told news outlet VG, referring to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

Rowdy celebrations in the Nordic European nation erupted on Sept. 25, with thousands of citizens across Norway taking to the streets and partying until the early hours of Sept. 26.

“There was a significantly greater workload than during the summer. There were a lot of people out already in the afternoon and it continued during the night,” Rune Hekkelstrand, a police spokesman in Oslo, the capital of Norway, told the Norwegian public broadcaster NRK.

Police said they responded to dozens of reports of unrest and violent clashes in the country’s major cities after streets, bars, restaurants, and nightclubs were filled with people celebrating the end of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus restrictions.

People out on the streets to celebrate the end of the COVID-19 restrictions, in Oslo, on Sept. 25, 2021. (Naina Helen Jama/NTB via AP)

Solberg justified the move to reopen society by saying that Norwegian health experts had supported the decision.

“We shall not have strict (coronavirus) measures unless they are professionally justified. People must be allowed to live as they wish,” Solberg told Norwegian newspaper VG late Saturday.

According to the Norwegian Institute for Public Health, about 67 percent of the population is fully vaccinated.

Norway is the second country in the Nordic region to lift COVID-19 restrictions after Denmark did so on Sept. 10.

Nearby Sweden also announced earlier this month it will remove most of its COVID-19 restrictions on Sept. 29.

end

UK/SUPPLY PROBLEMS/GOODS SHORTAGE

Millions of Britons could face a national shortage of Turkeys and Christmas trees due to lack of drivers

(Roberts//.EpochTimes)

Millions Of Britons Could Face “National Shortage” Of Turkeys This Christmas

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,

Millions of Britons could face a “national shortage” of turkeys, toys, and trees this Christmas due to a lack of skilled European employees following Brexit, according to the chair of a farming association.

The Road Haulage Association (RHA) last month said the UK is facing a shortage of around 100,000 HGV drivers, which along with Brexit, has been further exacerbated by people leaving the industry as well as the pandemic, which halted driver training and testing for nearly a year.

As a result, food supply chains have been drastically disrupted, leading to shortages across some UK supermarket shelves.

Kate Martin of the Traditional Farm Fresh Turkey Association (TFTA) told the PA news agency that Christmas could see a “national shortage” of turkeys on the UK’s supermarket shelves, driven by the declining supply of skilled European workers.

While small British farms that use local workers have been less affected by the undersupply, supermarkets are likely to see the worst of it, the TFTA said.

“This year it’s looking like there is a national shortage of turkeys when we’re talking about supermarket shelves, rather than buying direct from your farm,” Martin said.

“It is the supermarket shelves that will be emptier on turkeys this year than they have been before, only because there have been less turkeys placed on the ground, only because the big processers know that they will not get them processed.”

The TFTA, a group of independent family-run farms producing free-range Christmas turkeys, said some poultry farms have already had five times more orders this year than they did at the same time last year.

When asked whether supermarkets will completely run out of turkeys—a staple across Britain for every classic Christmas dinner—Martin urged consumers to “get their orders in very quickly.”

“We have seen an absolutely unprecedented number of orders come in. Come Christmas, if you leave ordering your turkey from your local farm supplier, you are going to be out of luck.”

Cars queue for fuel at an Asda petrol station in south London on Sept. 26, 2021. (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

Martin noted that Brexit was partly to blame for the potential national shortage, although the UK has been facing long-term issues with vacancy numbers amid an ageing workforce, low wages, and poor truck stop conditions.

“We’re small producers, we use local labour, but for the big processors it is 100 percent caused by a labour shortage,” she said.

“This situation with turkeys is caused by the fact that European labour is no longer available to us, and they are skilled workers who have been coming to us for years.

“People are now missing a whole host of their workforce that they have been training and investing in over the last however many years, and those workers are no longer available for us to use on a seasonal basis—they will go find work on mainland Europe instead.”

Last week, the government announced a temporary visa scheme that will see 5,000 HGV drivers and 5,500 poultry workers brought in on three-month contracts to keep supermarket shelves stocked with turkeys and tackle fuel delivery difficulties, which have prompted chaotic scenes and lengthy queues at petrol stations after a shortage of fuel tanker drivers.

Motorists queue for petrol and diesel fuel at a petrol station off of the M3 motorway near Fleet, west of London, on Sept. 26, 2021. (Photo by Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)

In addition, up to 4,000 people will be trained as new truck drivers, and nearly 1 million letters will be sent out to people with HGV licences in the coming days in an effort to entice them to give the job another go.

But British Transport Secretary Grant Shapps told the Mail on Sunday that Brexit was only a “relatively minor contributor” to the shortage of truck drivers in the UK, despite the RHA estimating that Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union led to an exodus of 20,000 hauliers.

Shapps also placed blame on the RHA for the chaotic fuel station scenes, accusing it of leaking comments from BP bosses about supply concerns.

And it’s not just turkeys that might be affected by the potential shortage over Christmas this year.

Mark Rofe, who owns ChristmasTrees.co.uk, told the Evening Standard last week that around one tenth of the real Christmas trees sold in the UK are imported, but post-Brexit regulations and higher prices could lead to shortages.

Rofe said UK growers were already experiencing growing demand for locally grown trees, “especially from clients who would usually import their trees from Europe, but are keen to avoid any red tape that could increase costs or cause delays for what is of course a highly seasonal and time-sensitive business.”

Meanwhile, toy retailers face rising shipping costs into the UK from manufacturers in Asia who have been hit by supply-chain disruptions, while COVID-19 lockdowns across much of the continent left ports paralysed.

UK / GAS PRICES//NATURAL GAS SHORTAGES

European Gas Prices Hit Escape Velocity After Russian Gas Supplies Plunge By 57% Overnight

Not much to add today that we didn’t already cover overnight in “All Hell Is Breaking Loose In Energy Markets” suffice to note that European gas prices (Dutch TTF and UK NBP) are up another 12% today to new all time highs…

… and while all the dynamics we listed yesterday are all still applicable, we can add one more: a sudden drop off in Russian nat gas deliveries via the Yamal-Europe pipeline that runs across Belarus and Poland to Mallnow, Germany…

… which shrank lumped by 57% to the lowest level since Sept 6, just as a panicking Europe is scrambling for every BCF.

In an email seen by Bloomberg, Gazprom said that it continues to fully meet obligations under its supply contracts, adding that the current drop in Russian gas supplies via Mallnow is due to a request from a client and is temporary… although if it is anything as “temporary” as the current hyperinflation across the globe, then Europe is about to have a very unpleasant winter, at least until the Ukraine-bypassing Nord Stream 2 is activated – just as Putin wants.

Meanwhile, in an ominous development, US nat gas futures are starting to move in lockstep with Europe, and overnight Henry Hub topped $6/mmbtu for the first time since 2014.

And as iconic trader John Arnold warned on twitter recently, the surge in commodity prices will the surest way to crush any desire to go “green”, which of course was obvious to all and is why we – rhetorically – asked back in June whether ESG will trigger energy hyperinflation.

Meanwhile, as we wait for Europe’s green dream to go up in carbon-heavy smoke as the continent has no choice but to destroy its virtue and ramp up coal plants, we leave the last word to Bloomberg’s Javie Blas who writes that he has “never seen a large economy like Europe (UK+EU) sleep walking into an energy crunch (maybe let’s call it a crisis since major industrial companies are having to shut down) and no a single politician appears to give a damn about it. Incredible.”

British Army on standby to resupply gas stations amid the energy crunch

(zerohedge)

British Army On Standby To Resupply Gas Stations Amid Energy Crunch

Europe’s energy crisis is not contained to natural gas, and as we’ve discussed in the last five days, a “winter of discontent” is quickly emerging in the UK as service station pumps run dry across the country with vendors rationing sales as a shortage of truck drivers strained supply chains. Now the British government has put military tanker drivers on standby to be deployed if needed.

Reuters reports Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has called up the military and requested a number of tanker drivers to be prepared to resupply gas stations. This comes as the Petrol Retailers Association (PRA), which represents independent fuel retailers accounting for 65% of all the 8,380 UK forecourts, said members had reported that 50% to 90% of pumps were dry in some metro areas on Monday.

The culprit behind the fuel shortage is the lack of truck drivers as the virus pandemic has sparked chaos through British supply chains in everything from food to fuel, raising prices ahead of the holiday season. Drivers lined up for hours to fill their cars and gas cans on Tuesday. The government has warned people against filling up water bottles and milk jugs.

There is no quick fix to resolve the trucker shortage as the shortfall of drivers is estimated at around 100,000. “We need some calm,” Gordon Balmer, executive director of the PRA, told Reuters Monday. “Please don’t panic buy: if people drain the network then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

However, there is some good news today as Transport Secretary Grant Shapps suggested that panic hoarding could begin to ease:

“We’re starting to see very tentative signs of stabilization which won’t yet be reflected in the queues.”

“The sooner we all return to our normal buying habits, the quicker this gets resolved – and I do appeal to the public to do that. In particular, no more water bottles at petrol stations: its dangerous and not helpful,” Shapps said.

The government has yet to provide timelines on when the energy crisis will be resolved, leading some to think it could remain through the winter season.

end

Robert to me;

NBC news:

Boris and BP really know how to screw up a country….. it will take a long time to bring back drivers. Seems like many countries are hell bent to destroy their economies.

Is this a god time to breed horses And perhaps start building wagons? At this rate most of the economy will come to a halt as other factors like chip shortages really start to weigh in.

BP says nearly a third of its U.K. gas stations running on empty

“They’re desperate to have more European drivers undercutting British salaries,” a minister said, blaming the crisis on a truckers’ group manufacturing panic.

U.K. gas shortage as number of truck drivers dwindles

SEPT. 25, 202101:14

Sept. 27, 2021, 5:34 AM EDT / Updated Sept. 27, 2021, 3:16 PM EDT / Source: Reuters

By Reuters

BRIGHTON, England — BP said nearly a third of its British gas stations had run out of the two main grades of fuel as panic buying forced the government to suspend competition laws and allow firms to work together to ease shortages.

Lines of vehicles formed at gas stations for a third day running Sunday as motorists waited, some for hours, to fill up with fuel after oil firms reported a lack of drivers was causing transport problems from refineries to forecourts.

Some operators have had to ration supplies and others to close gas stations.

“With the intense demand seen over the past two days, we estimate that around 30 percent of sites in this network do not currently have either of the main grades of fuel,” BP, which operates 1,200 sites in Britain, said in statement.

“We are working to resupply as rapidly as possible.”

Image: A line forms for a gas station in London. The government on Sunday announced a plan to issue temporary visas for 5,000 foreign truck drivers, which it hoped would help ease the crisis. — A line forms for a gas station in London. The government on Sunday announced a plan to issue temporary visas for 5,000 foreign truck drivers, which it hoped would help ease the crisis. Dan Kitwood / Getty Images

The fuel panic comes as Britain faces several crises: an international gas price surge that is forcing energy firms out of business, a related shortage of carbon dioxide that threatens to derail meat production, and a shortage of truck drivers that is playing havoc with retailers and leaving some shelves bare.

Anglo-Dutch oil group Shell said that it had also seen increased demand for fuel.

In response business minister Kwasi Kwarteng said he was suspending competition laws to allow firms to share information and coordinate their response.

“This step will allow government to work constructively with fuel producers, suppliers, truckers and retailers to ensure that disruption is minimized as far as possible,” the business department said in a statement.

Transport minister Grant Shapps had earlier appealed for calm, saying the shortages were purely caused by panic buying, and that the situation would eventually resolve itself because fuel could not be stockpiled.

Download the NBC News app for breaking news and politics

“There’s plenty of fuel, there’s no shortage of the fuel within the country,” Shapps told Sky News.

“So the most important thing is actually that people carry on as they normally would and fill up their cars when they normally would, then you won’t have queues and you won’t have shortages at the pump either.”

After meeting Kwarteng, industry figures including representatives from Shell and Exxon Mobil Corp said in a joint statement issued by the business department that they had been reassured, and stressed there was no national fuel shortage.

In a statement on Monday, fuel suppliers said they expected normal demand to return in the coming days.

‘Manufactured situation’

Earlier, Shapps said the shortage of truck drivers was down to Covid-19 disrupting the qualification process, preventing new labor from entering the market.

Others pinned the blame on Brexit and poor working conditions forcing out foreign drivers.

Lorry driver shortage — A man carrying containers at a gas station in Berkshire, England. A recent poll said that 67 percent of voters believe the government has handled the crisis badly.Steve Parsons / PA Images via Getty Images

The government on Sunday announced a plan to issue temporary visas for 5,000 foreign truck drivers.

But business leaders have warned the government’s plan is a short-term fix and will not solve an acute labor shortage that risks major disruption beyond fuel deliveries, including for retailers in the run-up to Christmas.

Shapps called the panic over fuel a “manufactured situation” and blamed it on a truckers’ association.

“They’re desperate to have more European drivers undercutting British salaries,” he said.

An Opinium poll published in the Observer newspaper on Sunday said that 67 percent of voters believe the government has handled the crisis badly. A majority of 68 percent said that Brexit was partly to blame.

Opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, speaking at his party’s annual conference in southern England, said ministers had failed to plan for labor shortages following the 2016 Brexit vote and called for a bigger temporary visa scheme.

UK/CHINA

China slams UK’s evil intentions after a navy frigate crosses through the Taiwan strait for the first time in two years.

(zerohedge)

China Slams UK’s “Evil Intentions” After Navy Frigate Sails Through Taiwan Strait For First Time Since 2019

Update (1700ET): China’s initial response to the British warship’s passage was muted, with foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying telling reporters that Beijing hoped “the relevant countries can do more to build mutual trust between countries and uphold peace and security in the region.”

But shortly after, as CBS reports, the Chinese army’s Eastern Theater Command said it had sent air and naval forces to shadow the Richmond and warn it to leave the strait.

“This kind of behavior harbors evil intentions and damages peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” the army statement said.

“Theater command forces always maintain a high level of alert and resolutely counter all threats and provocations.”

* * *

For the first time since 2019, a British warship has transited through the Taiwan Strait on Monday, as the Biden administration has routinely sailed missile destroyers through the sensitive waterway to push back on Beijing’s military aggressiveness in the region, according to Stars And Stripes.

“After a busy period working with partners and allies in the East China Sea, we are now en route through the Taiwan Strait to visit Vietnam and the Vietnam People’s Navy,” the HMS Richmond, a Type 23 frigate known for anti-submarine warfare, tweeted.

The last time a British warship transited the narrow strip of highly contested water was the HMS Enterprise in 2019.

When questioned about the frigate’s sailing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told reporters at a regular press briefing that “relevant countries should do things to build mutual trust and uphold regional peace and stability.”

The move by London comes as the Biden administration has been sending warships through the strait monthly, which has stoked tensions with Beijing. There have been 13 such sailings, showing the US’ commitment to a free Indo- Pacific region.

Tony Radakin, an admiral in Britain’s navy, recently told Nikkei Asia that it was “very clear that the Taiwan Strait is international waters. It is a waterway that can be used by different nations.”

Also, Beijing has been increasing diplomatic pressure on Taipei, which refuses to acknowledge Taiwan is part of China. The Chinese air force has conducted more than 500 incursions into Taiwan’s air-defense identification zone this year as the threat of a cross-strait conflict soars.

The Richmond is part of the HMS Queen Elizabeth strike group, making its first operational mission to the Pacific region.

end

6.Global Issues

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE

MURDERERS!

(zerohedge)

Pfizer Submits Vaccine Trial Data For Kids As Young As 5; Sanofi Abandons Development Of mRNA Jab

Yesterday while receiving his Pfizer booster jab during a live-streamed media event, President Biden let slip that he believes the US will need to see more than 97% of Americans fully vaccinated for life to return to “normal”. It’s just the latest politically motivated moving of the goalposts from the Biden Administration as it tries to force as many Americans as possible (all of them, ideally) to accept the jab.

On Tuesday, Pfizer submitted data from its Phase 2/3 trial for minors aged 5 to 11 for its mRNA COVID jab (brand-name: “Comirnaty”) to the FDA, which we suspect will quickly turn around and approve the drug for even younger patients. Back in May, Pfizer finished trials for 12-15-year-olds which allegedly showed the jab was “100% effective” in preventing severe COVID for children in that age group.

Pfizer announced on Sept. 20 that its jab is “safe and effective” for children as young as 5.

Following news of Pfizer’s submission, Dr. Anthony Fauci said he hopes the FDA will give the shot the ‘green light’ for young kids by the end of October.

As Pfizer submits these latest results to the FDA, the drugmaker announced last night that it had started the final step of a trial for a prophylactic COVID treatment that – as far as functionality is concerned – is somewhat similar to ivermectin, which Big Pharma and its partners have done everything in their power to discredit (perhaps to cash in on an expensive new drug of their own).

The only drug approved for the treatment of COVID so far is Gilead’s remdesivir, which isn’t particularly effective.

In other news pertaining to mRNA vaccines, Sanofi announced Tuesday that it had dropped plans for its own mRNA-based COVID-19 jab because they fear they can’t compete with the jabs produced by BioNTech-Pfizer and Moderna.

The decision to drop clinical development of its own mRNA jab acquired as part of its takeover of Translate Bio came despite relatively strong Phase I/II study results, which showed strong antibody production in participants’ blood readings, Reuters said.

Intead, Sanofi says it’ll team up with British drug giant GSK and work on an alternative vaccine based on a more “conventional” approach.

end

Crooks! Pfizer methylate’s Ivermectin to create own version of a once a day preventative.

(zerohedge)

Pfizer Launches Final Study For COVID Drug That’s Suspiciously Similar To ‘Horse Paste’

Another piece US anti-Ivermectin puzzle may have emerged. On Monday, Pfizer announced that it’s launching an accelerated Phase 2/3 trial for a COVID prophylactic pill designed to ward off COVID in those may have come in contact with the disease.

Coincidentally (or not),Pfizer’s drug shares at least one mechanism of action as Ivermectin – an anti-parasitic used in humans for decades, which functions as a protease inhibitor against Covid-19, which researchers speculate “could be the biophysical basis behind its antiviral efficiency.”

Lo and behold, Pfizer’s new drug – which some have jokingly dubbed “Pfizermectin,” is described by the pharmaceutical giant as a “potent protease inhibitor.”

As Zero Hedge readers might recognize, that’s exactly what ivermectin, the prophylactic used for a number of reasons in both humans and animals, does. And unlike Pfizer’s experimental drug, ivermectin already may have saved hundreds of thousands of lives from India to Brazil.

We aren’t the only ones to have put this together, as twitter users have commented on the similarities. The timing – which coincides with the whole “horse dewormer” smear campaign – just seems odd.

The similarity between Pfizer’s upcoming offering and Ivermectin has not gone unnoticed.

But Pfizer, Moderna and their executives have already shown the world with their actions that they see COVID as “manna from heaven” – to quote legendary defense attorney Johnny Cochran – a new ‘profit center’ that will keep shareholders in butter brickle, especially since the companies have quietly raised prices on their vaccines.

But since a large portion of the American market has rejected the vaccines, Pfizer needs another medication that can be used to treat them as well (otherwise, the company is missing out on nearly one-third of the American market).

According to Reuters, Pfizer said on Monday it has “started a large study testing its investigational oral antiviral drug for the prevention of COVID-19 infection among those who have been exposed to the virus.”

Pfizer isn’t the only drugmaker hoping to develop a prophylactic treatment for COVID exposure (especially since variants raise the possibility that vaccinations just might not be enough). Merck and Swiss rival Roche have been racing to develop an easy-to-administer antiviral pill of their own – so the clock is ticking for Pfizer.

Reuters explains that the mid-to-late-stage study will test the Pfizer drug’s – known as PF-07321332 ability to prevent COVID symptoms in up to 2,660 healthy adult participants aged 18 and older who live in the same household as an individual with a confirmed symptomatic COVID infection.

The drug, designed to block the activity of a key enzyme needed for the coronavirus to multiply inside the human body, will be administered along with a low dose of ritonavir, an older medication widely used in combination treatments for HIV infection.

At present, Gilead’s much-hyped but not-all-that-effective IV drug remdesivir is the only approved antiviral treatment for COVID in the US. Several antibody cocktails have also been widely tested and trials are ongoing – including Merck and partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, which recently launched a late-stage trial for experimental COVID prophylactic, molnupiravir.

In the mean time, concerned citizens should keep an eye out for any new information about Ivermectin – if you can find it.

end

Project Veritas, Johnson and Johnson exposed as a dangerous Covid vaccine, with unknown repercussions

Two J and J officials secretly interviewed by project Veritas describe their vaccine as dangerous to children

(zerohedge)

BREAKING: Project Veritas: Johnson & Johnson: Children Don’t Need the ‘F*cking’ Covid Vaccine – “Unknown Repercussions” (VIDEO)

Vaccine company officials say on hidden camera that there is no reason for kids to get vaccinated, and it’s potentially dangerous.

Anyone who poisons their kids with this toxic crap deserves their fate.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/09/breaking-project-veritas-johnson-johnson-children-dont-need-fcking-covid-vaccine-unknown-repercussions-video/

end

These two J and j executives should hang from a lamppost.

Murderers!!

“It’s A F**king Kid”: Johnson & Johnson Official Says Children Shouldn’t Get Vax Due To ‘Unknown Repercussions’

Project Veritas is out with the third installment of their series on vaccine insiders – this time covertly recording two Johnson & Johnson officials saying that children don’t shouldn’t take the Covid-19 jab.

“Kids shouldn’t get a fucking [COVID] vaccine,” said regional business lead, Brandon Schatt.

“It’s a kid, you just don’t do that, you know? Not something that’s so unknown in terms of repercussions down the road, you know?“

Schadt also implied that the huge push to vaccinate children is about money, not public safety.

“J&J is like stepping in the best smelling pile of shit you could step in,” he said.

Another J&J employee, scientist Justin Durrant, explicitly said “Don’t get the Johnson & Johnson [COVID vaccine], I didn’t tell you though.”

As for children, Durrant said “It wouldn’t make that much of a difference.”

He also commented on the pressure campaign to restrict social privileges for the unvaccinated.

“Inconvenience [the unvaccinated] to the point where it’s like, ‘I might as well just f*cking do it [and take the COVID vaccine],’ you know what I’m saying?”

“It’s almost like — you’re almost like a second-grade citizen if you’re not vaccinated…you can’t do anything that a normal citizen can do,” he added. “If you can’t work, I feel like that’s punishment enough…Only way people really act and comply is if it affects their pockets, like if you’re working for a big company and you’re going to lose your job, best believe you’ll be the first one in line [to take the COVID vaccine]…That’s what we’re doing.”

Watch:

More via Project Veritas:

Justin Durrant, Johnson & Johnson Scientist: “Inconvenience [the unvaccinated] to the point where it’s like, ‘I might as well just f*cking do it [and take the COVID vaccine],’ you know what I’m saying? Like ‘I can’t go out of state,’ I can’t – ‘my grandma’s in Canada and I can’t visit her,’ you know what I’m saying? You can’t go to France unless you’re vaccinated — you know you’ve just got to keep doing things like that where you’re almost like a second-grade citizen if you’re not vaccinated, but I know that’s awful.”

Veritas Journalist: “You’re almost what?”

Durrant: “Like a second-grade citizen, like you can’t do anything that a normal citizen can do.”

Veritas Journalist: “A second graded citizen?”

Durrant: “Yeah like top grade, like the ones that get it, and the ones that just like — then you can’t do sh*t.”

…

Veritas Journalist: “So then how do we punish [the unvaccinated]?”

Durrant: “I mean if you can’t work, I feel like that’s punishment enough.”

Veritas Journalist: “People what?”

Durrant: “Only way people really act and comply is if it affects their pockets, like if you’re working for a big company and you’re going to lose your job, best believe you’ll be the first one in line [to take the COVID vaccine].”

Veritas Journalist: “Right, so if you’re working for a big company and you’re about to lose your job, you’ll be the first one in line?”

Durrant: “Yeah.”

Veritas Journalist: “That’s so true. That’s smart, that’s what we need to do.”

Durrant: “That’s what we’re doing.”

Durrant said he does not recommend taking his own company’s vaccine. He asked the Veritas journalist to keep that information private.

“Don’t get the Johnson & Johnson [COVID vaccine], I didn’t tell you though,” he said.

Both Durrant and Brandon Schadt, J&J’s Regional Business Lead, said that applying the COVID vaccine on children would not move the needle in the battle against the pandemic.

“It wouldn’t make that much of a difference” if children are unvaccinated for COVID, Durrant said.

“It’s a kid, you just don’t do that, you know? Not something that’s so unknown in terms of repercussions down the road, you know?” Schadt said.

“It’s a kid, it’s a f*cking kid, you know? They shouldn’t have to get a f*cking [COVID] vaccine, you know?”

Schadt compared J&J’s COVID vaccine efficacy to the other pharmaceutical companies.

“J&J is like stepping in the best smelling pile of sh*t you could step in,” he said.

END

Australia’s is becoming an apartheid state and now they will impose lockdowns on unvaccinated citizens

(zerohedge)

Apartheid State: Australia to impose lockdown on ‘unvaccinated’ citizens – by Jordan Schachtel – The Dossier

As I have said here many times, forced vaccinations are on their way. Australia is where the bad guys get to test out new policies to see how the people react, and plan their next moves in the west.

I think the government is trying to force Australians to revolt, and then they can really crack down.

While there is some value in getting people vaxxed to reduce population, the real value is in getting everyone digital passports. Currencies are in their hyperinflation doom loop now and there is no going back. They need to bring in digital currencies soon and these will be tied together with the digital ID and health passports.

https://dossier.substack.com/p/apartheid-state-australia-to-impose

END

JPMorgan concludes that the Delta variant is less infectious than feared and this goes agains what Fauci has been stating

(zerohedge)

JPMorgan Concludes That Delta Variant Was “Less Infectious Than Feared’

Now that the Delta variant in the US has peaked in terms of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths, media fearmongering surrounding the latest round of the covid pandemic has understandably been quietly pulled from the front pages at least until such time the mu variant, or some other virulent strain du jour, makes a triumphant appearance and Fauci is again trotted across the mainstream media to distill a fresh round of fear and set the scene for a new round of restrictions and lockdowns, a cycle that will repeat at least until the mid-term elections which predictably will have to be conducted largely by mail.

And while we wait we wanted to remind readers that last week, JPMorgan made a remarkable discovery: looking at the number of delta variant infections in emerging markets, JPMorgan policy research analyst David Mackie found that “the Delta wave was much milder than expected: none of these countries saw the gains in Re that we anticipated.”

This prompted JPMorgan to wonder if “the Delta variant may be less infectious than initially assumed.”

Needless to say, such a finding would blow up the carefully scripted narrative promulgated by the likes of Anthony Fauci, that Delta was far more contagious and “potentially” more deadly than previous variants.

So fast forward to today when JPMorgan completes its analysis by looking at the Ro or – basic reproduction number (R0) for the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 – for all countries, not just a handful of emerging nations. As JPM explains, R0 is important “because it is R0 that determines the underlying infectiousness of the virus, and thus what level of immunity in the population, or what manner of changes in behavior, are needed to stabilize new infections as the variant spreads.”

In the note which could have tremendous implications for public health policy – assuming it ever sees the light of day – JPM’s Mackie estimates what has happened to R0 in a number of countries over the period 1 May to 15 September, except for India and the UK where we started the analysis on 1 February and 1 April respectively due to the earlier arrival of the Delta variant in those two countries, as a way of gauging the pressure coming from the Delta variant.

Our method is to see how much of the change in Re over this period we can explain by developments in mobility, vaccinations and acquired immunity. What’s left unexplained is attributed to a change in R0 due to the spread of the Delta variant. These calculations are very approximate. They don’t take account of changes in non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as mask wearing, which probably eased over this period. If so, this would suggest that the increase in R0 due to the Delta variant is lower than our estimates.

The stunning results are presented in Table 1.

They show that at the global level, “the message is clear”: as JPM puts it, “the increased infectiousness of the Delta variant as expressed in the implied change in R0 is very low, below the bottom end of the widely accepted range. An estimated increase in R0 of 0.76 due to the spread of the Delta variant would put the level of R0 for the Delta variant at 4.76, assuming that R0 for the Alpha variant is 4.0.”

Such a “modest increase” in R0 explains why the Delta wave of infection has been so benign on average around the world. Global daily new infections picked up from around 360,000 in mid-June to around 660,000 in late August, but this wave faded fairly quickly and new infections now stand at around 380,000.

It also flies in the face of any and all previous claims that Delta was much more “contagious” than previous variants.

Looking across the world, JPMorgan finds that the modest estimated increase in R0 is not evenly distributed. On average the estimated increase in R0 in developed markets has been around 1.5, towards the bottom end of the range of 1.0 to 4.0 estimated by academics. However, across emerging markets the increase has generally been smaller on average, especially in Latin America.

According to JPM, “it is hard to fully understand the DM/EM difference.” One explanation proposed by JPM is that it is “possible that under-reported infections are larger in EM. Take Brazil, for example, where the estimated increase in R0 due to the Delta variant is 0.96. If actual infections had been five times larger than reported infections, then the implied increase in R0 in Brazil would be 1.5, the same as the average increase in the US, Western Europe and Japan.”

Other countries are harder to rationalize in this way. Take Indonesia, for example, where the estimated increase in R0 due to the Delta variant is 0.24. Actual infections would have to have been forty-two times greater than reported infections in order to get an implied increase in R0 in Indonesia of 1.5.

And here another stunning observation from JPM, one which also trounces the Biden admin’s feverish attempts to downplay natural immunity. As JPMorgan writes, “If under-reporting of infections explains why estimates of the increase in R0 are small in some EM countries, then this is good news looking forward if we assume that immunity from infection and recovery is the same as that from vaccination.”

JPMorgan concludes with the provocative observation that “the infectiousness of the Delta variant is at the lower end of the range estimated by academics early in the summer” a range which was estimated to be between 1.0 and 4.0 but in reality the number was around 1.5!

And so, with the global Re currently at close to 1.0 and falling, and the Delta variant fully absorbed, the largest US bank, “the world looks well placed to see a steady pace of infections in the coming months” JPM says, adding that “overall, the global Delta infection wave has been modest thus far and is expected to remain so.“

Now if only one of the numerous “impartial”, “objective” TV anchors would ask media celebrity Dr. Fauci during any of his upcoming TV appearance about the finding of this study..

end

Robert to me:

Brighteon

There is no way i will take these jabs.
As it is i have too many friends and family with issues. , related and not. Some one will make a fortune if they can figure out how to turn on the white blood cell creation.
If any of this is true then those not vaccinated people will be in great demand.
Already the price of male semen is sky rocketing and male fertility rates are dropping like a stone.
Cannot imagine what happens to a economy with a decline population on top of the declines already built in

https://www.brighteon.com/a7668819-a224-4cbe-9b19-06e743ea59d7

END

NEVER BEFORE SEEN! “Vaccine” Victims’ Bodies IN BATTLE!

https://rumble.com/vn193f-never-before-seen-vaccine-victims-bodies-in-battle.html

Covid articles

Special thanks to G for sending this to us:

Gijsbert Groenewegen

12:51 PM (1 hour ago)

to Gijsbert

• Covid-19 Mortality Risk Correlates Inversely With Vitamin D3 Status (medrxiv)

• Spike Protein, Dead Cells And Male Fertility (Chesnut)

• The Crazy Is Strong In This One… (Denninger)

• Pfizer CEO: “Normal Life” Won’t Return Without Regular COVID Vaccinations (SN)

• The Big Tell (Kunstler)

• Biden Says US Will Have A ‘Problem’ Until 98% Of Americans Are Vaccinated (RT)

• Gov. Hochul: New York To Deploy National Guard To Replace Unvaxxed Nurses (RCP)

• NY Healthcare Workers Who Refuse Vaccine Get No Unemployment Benefits (JTN)

• British Military To Deploy Trucks & Drivers Amid Fuel Supply Shortage (RT)

• AZ Audit Could Not Find the Identity of 86,391 Voters (GP)

7. OIL ISSUES

end

8 EMERGING MARKET& AUSTRALIA ISSUES

Australia//// NEW ZEALAND//COVID/VACCINES

Your early currency/gold and silver pricing/Asian and European bourse movements/ and interest rate settings MONDAY morning 7:30 AM….

Euro/USA 1.1687 DOWN .0008 /EUROPE BOURSES /ALL RED

USA/ YEN 111.39 UP 0.432 /NOW TARGETS INTEREST RATE AT .11% AS IT WILL BUY UNLIMITED BONDS TO GETS TO THAT LEVEL…

GBP/USA 1.3613 DOWN 0.0088

USA/CAN 1.2638 UP .0011 ( CDN DOLLAR DOWN 11 BASIS PTS )

Early TUESDAY morning in Europe, the Euro IS DOWN BY 8 basis points, trading now ABOVE the important 1.08 level FALLING to 1.1687 Last night Shanghai COMPOSITE CLOSED UP 19.39 POINTS OR .54%

//Hang Sang CLOSED UP 291.61 PTS OR 1.20%

/AUSTRALIA CLOSED DOWN 1.43% // EUROPEAN BOURSES OPENED ALL RED

Trading from Europe and ASIA

EUROPEAN BOURSES CLOSED ALL RED

2/ CHINESE BOURSES / :Hang SANG CLOSED UP 291.61 PTS OR 1.20%

/SHANGHAI CLOSED UP 19.39 POINTS OR .54%

Australia BOURSE CLOSED DOWN 1.43%

Nikkei (Japan) CLOSED DOWN 56.10 PTS OR 0.19%

INDIA’S SENSEX IN THE RED

Gold very early morning trading: 1735.45

silver:$22.26-

Early MONDAY morning USA 10 year bond yr: 1.531% !!! UP 5 IN POINTS from FRIDAY’S night in basis points and it is trading WELL BELOW resistance at 2.27-2.32%.

The 30 yr bond yield 2.053 UP 5 IN BASIS POINTS from FRIDAY night.

USA dollar index early MONDAY morning: 93.61 UP 22 CENT(S) from FRIDAY’s close.

This ends early morning numbers MONDAY MORNING

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And now your closing MONDAY NUMBERS 1: 00 PM

Portuguese 10 year bond yield: 0.34% UP 2 in basis point(s) yield from YESTERDAY/

JAPANESE BOND YIELD: +.075% UP 21/10 BASIS POINT from YESTERDAY/JAPAN losing control of its yield curve/

SPANISH 10 YR BOND YIELD: 0.45%// UP 3 in basis points yield from yesterday.

ITALIAN 10 YR BOND YIELD: 0.86 UP 6 points in basis points yield from yesterday./

the Italian 10 yr bond yield is trading 41 points higher than Spain.

GERMAN 10 YR BOND YIELD: RISES TO –.198% IN BASIS POINTS ON THE DAY//

THE IMPORTANT SPREAD BETWEEN ITALIAN 10 YR BOND AND GERMAN 10 YEAR BOND IS 0.99% AND NOW ABOVE THE 3.00% LEVEL WHICH WILL IMPLODE THE ENTIRE ITALIAN BANKING SYSTEM. AT 4% SPREAD THERE WILL BE A HUGE BANK RUN…

END

IMPORTANT CURRENCY CLOSES FOR MONDAY

Closing currency crosses for MONDAY night/USA DOLLAR INDEX/USA 10 YR BOND YIELD/1:00 PM

Euro/USA 1.1685 DOWN 0.0011 or 11 basis points

USA/Japan: 111.27 UP .307 OR YEN DOWN 31 basis points/

Great Britain/USA 1.3541 UP .0159// DOWN 159 BASIS POINTS)

Canadian dollar DOWN 69 basis points to 1.2696

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The USA/Yuan, CNY: closed ON SHORE (CLOSED DOWN).. 6.4599

THE USA/YUAN OFFSHORE: (YUAN CLOSED (DOWN)..6.4608

TURKISH LIRA: 8.87 EXTREMELY DANGEROUS LEVEL/DEATH WISH.

the 10 yr Japanese bond yield at +0.075%

Your closing 10 yr US bond yield UP 4 IN basis points from FRIDAY at 1.521 % //trading well ABOVE the resistance level of 2.27-2.32%) very problematic USA 30 yr bond yield: 2.055 UP 6 in basis points on the day

Your closing USA dollar index, 93.71 UP 32 CENT(S) ON THE DAY/1.00 PM/

Your closing bourses for Europe and the Dow along with the USA dollar index closing and interest rates for MONDAY: 12:00 PM

London: CLOSED DOWN 32.39 PTS OR 0.46%

German Dax : CLOSED DOWN 306.68 PTS OR 1.97%

Paris CAC CLOSED DOWN 141.91 PTS OR 2.13%

Spain IBEX CLOSED DOWN 217.10 PTS OR 2.41%

Italian MIB: CLOSED DOWN 511.92 PTS OR 1.96%

WTI Oil price; 75.16 12:00 PM EST

Brent Oil: 78.71 12:00 EST

USA /RUSSIAN / RUBLE FALLS: 72.91 THE CROSS HIGHER BY 0.32 RUBLES/DOLLAR (RUBLE LOWER BY 32 BASIS PTS)

TODAY THE GERMAN YIELD RISES TO –.198 FOR THE 10 YR BOND 1.00 PM EST EST

END

This ends the stock indices, oil price, currency crosses and interest rate closes for today 4:30 PM

Closing Price for Oil, 4:00 pm/and 10 year USA interest rate:

WTI CRUDE OIL PRICE 4:30 PM : 74.79//

BRENT : 78.54

USA 10 YR BOND YIELD: … 1.544.. UP 8 basis points…

USA 30 YR BOND YIELD: 2.087 UP 9 basis points..

EURO/USA 1.1683 DOWN 0.0013 ( 13 BASIS POINTS)

USA/JAPANESE YEN:111.49 UP .531 ( YEN DOWN 53 BASIS POINTS/..

USA DOLLAR INDEX: 93.70 UP 31 cent(s)/

The British pound at 4 pm Britain Pound/USA: 1.3539 DOWN .01610

the Turkish lira close: 8.88 DOWN 5 BASIS PTS//EXTREMELY DEADLY

the Russian rouble 72,80 DOWN .09 Roubles against the uSA dollar. (DOWN 9 BASIS POINTS)

Canadian dollar: 1.2676 DOWN 49 BASIS pts

German 10 yr bond yield at 5 pm: ,-0.196%

The Dow closed DOWN 569.38 POINTS OR 1.63%

NASDAQ closed DOWN 423.29 POINTS OR 2.83%

VOLATILITY INDEX: 23.44 CLOSED UP 4.68

LIBOR 3 MONTH DURATION: 0.132

%//libor dropping like a stone

USA trading day in Graph Form

‘Dangerous’ Jerome & ‘Doomsaying’ Janet Spark Bond, Stock, Bullion, & Bitcoin Battering

Fed Chair Jerome Powell (accused of being a “dangerous man” by Sen/ Warren) seemed to hint today that the shift in inflation is not just ‘not transitory’ but could be ‘structural’, prompting many to adjust expectations even more hawkishly for Fed action.

Source: Bloomberg

There is now a greater than 50% probability of rate-hike in September 2022…

Source: Bloomberg

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen began her testimony today by warning of all the worst parts of the bible occurring if Republicans don’t vote to increase the debt limit by October 18th (which Democrats can do all on their own but are loathed to be pinned to) – “likely spur major financial collapse”. That sent Debt Ceiling anxiety soaring…

Source: Bloomberg

Is it different this time?

hhmm…

Either way, both of the events above helped spike Treasury yields, especially at the long-end…

Source: Bloomberg

And the surge in yields extended the pain for growth stocks relative to value, but as yields really accelerated higher, equity traders got spooked and puked (dumping at the European open and US open). Stocks bounced off their lows around 1430ET (margin call time) but Jeremy Grantham’s appearance on CNBC, calling the market a spectacular bubble coincided with another leg lower in the major indices..

This was the S&P worst day since -2.45% on 2/25

All the major indices tested/broke key technical levels today:

S&P broke back below 50DMA, testing 100DMA
Nasdaq broke back below 50DMA, testing 100DMA
Dow broke back below 50DMA and 100DMA
Russell 2000 broke back below 50DMA

The relationship between the Russell 2000 and Nasdaq 100 pair has tested in a serious band of resistance…

Growth stocks were clubbed like a baby seal again and while value stocks suffered, the divergence remains…

Source: Bloomberg

Risk Parity Funds are starting to crack amid the surge in both realized and implied vol for stocks and bonds. We are heading for the worst month for risk parity since March 2020…

Source: Bloomberg

FAAMG stocks were FUBAR today, breaking down to their lowest in over 2 months…

Source: Bloomberg

“Most Shorted” Stocks were slammed lower today, erasing all of yesterday’s squeeze gains…

Source: Bloomberg

Tech stocks were worst today and Energy best (Financials lagged despite higher rates)…

Source: Bloomberg

The moves in Treasury yields were almost entirely driven by higher inflation breakevens, with 10yr breakevens up +3.7bps. That echoed similar moves in Europe, where the German 10yr breakeven (+4.7bps) hit a post-2013 high of 1.653%, and their Italian counterparts (+3.9bps) hit a post-2011 high. The biggest move was in the UK however, where the 10yr breakeven (+13.2bps) reached its highest level since 2008, which comes amidst a continued fuel shortage in the country, alongside another rise in UK natural gas futures, which were up +8.20% yesterday to £190/therm, exceeding the previous closing peak set a week earlier.

Source: Bloomberg

Bear in mind that the current move is a 1.4 sigma shift. If it gets to a 2.0 Sigma move, then shit breaks fast…

Cryptos were clubbed like a baby seal too today with Bitcoin sliding back to the weekend’s post-China-ban lows at around $40k…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar soared higher again today, breaking above the August highs to its highest level since Nov 5th…

Source: Bloomberg

Oil prices (WTI) soared to near the July cycle high, as Biden’s call to OPEC appears to have failed…

Source: Bloomberg

NatGas had a wild day, soaring over 10% once again at its peak today, before plunging back into the red and then bouncing back towards the close to end higher…

The dollar’s gain was gold’s loss today as the barbarous relic extended its slide lower…

Copper’s recent outperformance of gold continues to suggest that nominal yields have a long way to go to catch up to reality (10Y ~3.00%!)…

Source: Bloomberg

And finally, none of this is helping Biden’s approval rating which, after a small bounce post-Afghanistan, is back at its term lows…

Source: Bloomberg

i) MORNING TRADING

Stocks Suddenly Stumble As Bond Bloodbath Accelerates

It appears the velocity of the surge in US Treasury yields has finally taken its toll on equity market enthusiasm.

The long-end of the yield curve is exploding higher this morning with 10Y spiking above 1.50%…

And 30Y spiked 10bps to hit 2.10%…

And while we have been seeing Nasdaq underperform (rotating from growth to value), this morning has seen equities react systemically to the surge in rates…

All major US equity indices are now in the red for September (Nasdaq down 4%)…

And at the same time, the dollar is soaring…

What will happen next? As Yellen and Powell speak.

end

ii) USA///INFLATION WATCH//SUPPLY ISSUES

end

USA DATA

Inflation ripping apart the uSA; house prices as expected surge 32% year/year

(zerohedge)

US Home Prices Surge At Record Pace, Phoenix Up Over 32% YoY

Supporting the vicious cycle of soaring home prices pushing homebuyer confidence to record lows, July Case-Shiller Housing data (the latest available) showed yet another record pace of increase in home prices.

The broad HPI rose 19.70% YoY (a record) and the 20-City Composite rose 19.95% YoY (yet another record high)…the 14th straight month of accelerating price increases.

Source: Bloomberg

Phoenix led the way with a 32.4% surge…

US home prices are accelerating higher. We have seen this picture before…

Source: Bloomberg

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or a Fed PhD to figure out what yet another record rise in home prices will do to homebuyer confidence…

Source: Bloomberg

Is The Fed about to taper and hike rates into a housing slump?

end

Good reason to whack gold today:

U.S. trade deficit climbs again as retailers import more consumer goods for holiday shopping season

Sept. 28, 2021 at 8:46 a.m. ET

MarketWatch

U.S. trade deficit rises 0.9% in August to $87.6 billion

The numbers: The U.S. trade deficit in goods rose in August and stood near a record high, as retailers imported more consumer goods ahead of the holiday shopping season.

The trade gap in goods widened 0.9% to $87.6 billion in August, the government said Tuesday.

Goods imports increased 0.8% to $236.6 billion — just a hair below the all-time high set in June.

American exports, meanwhile, moved up 0.7% to $149 billion. That’s a record high.

The government on Tuesday also said wholesale inventories jumped 1.2% in August while retail inventories inched up 0.1%, based on an “advanced” looked at early data.

Big picture: Already high deficits have set fresh records during the pandemic because the U.S. economy has recovered faster than other countries. Americans can afford more imports while people in other countries are less able to buy U.S. exports.

Record deficits are likely to recede once the global pandemic is over, but they are sure to remain quite high. The U.S. has become dependent on imported goods over the past few decades.

The full report on the August trade balance, which includes services such as tourism, will be released next

end

Yellen Says Debt Ceiling “Drop-Dead Date” Is October 18

One day after NY Fed president John Williams (who apparently was not daytrading stonks and has not resigned unlike his Boston and Dallas Fed pals) warned of an “extreme” market backlash if the US debt ceiling is not raised (hitting even FOMC members’ wealth!) and just hours after Republican Senators blocked a Democratic Bill to raise it as was widely expected, this morning Janet Yellen sent yet another letter to Nancy Pelosi urging her in no uncertain terms to raise the debt ceiling.

And while the message is familiar (fire and brimstone to follow unless the US can keep its perpetual debt engine going), there was one piece of news: according to Yellen, the Treasury now estimates that the “drop dead date”, i.e., the date at which the Treasury will exhaust all of its extraordinary measures if Congress has not acted to raise or suspend the debt limit, will be October 18, a more accurate forecast than her previous “sometime during the month of October.”

This is in keeping with the chart we previously showed the gradual decline in Treasury cash over the next few weeks, which of course is very fluid and which indicated a Drop Dead Date in that vicinity.

What happens beyond October 18? As Yellen notes, “at that point, we expect Treasury would be left with very limited resources that would be depleted quickly. It is uncertain whether we could continue to meet all the nation’s commitments after that date.”

Yellen also hedges noting that “the government’s daily gross cash flow (excluding financing) over the past year averages nearly $50 billion per day and has exceeded $300 billion. As a result, it is important to remember that estimates regarding how long our remaining extraordinary measures and cash may last can unpredictably shift forward or backward. This uncertainty underscores the critical importance of not waiting to raise or suspend the debt limit. The full faith and credit of the United States should not be put at risk.”

In any case, the former Fed chair (whose stock trades have never been made public) said not to wait until the last minute:

… we know from previous debt limit impasses that waiting until the last minute can cause serious harm to business and consumer confidence, raise borrowing costs for taxpayers, and negatively impact the credit rating of the United States for years to come. Failure to act promptly could also result in substantial disruptions to financial markets, as heightened uncertainty can exacerbate volatility and erode investor confidence.

In short, another attempt by the Treasury to scare Congress into action even we already know that Senate Republicans puked on the Democrat attempt to extend the debt limit to Dec 2022.

And now, Democrats have a very narrow interval of time how to move forward and with no clear alternative to overcome the filibuster except using a budget procedure that could take nearly two weeks according to Bloomberg, which notes that “the GOP maneuver sets the stage for a protracted debate over debt that Republican lawmakers hope will help them portray Biden’s expanded child tax credits, paid family leave and new benefits for Medicare recipients as out-of-control government spending. An eventual Democrat-only vote to raise the debt limit would provide fodder for election attack ads.”

Yellen’s full letter is below.

Debt Limit Letter to Congress 20210928 by Zerohedge on Scribd

IMPORTANT USA/CONTAINER LOGJAMS//shortages

Still huge cargo backlogs: Ports of LA and Long beach California still clogged and are not operating around the clock

(zerohedge)

Despite Record Cargo Backlogs, Ports Of L.A. And Long Beach Still Don’t Operate Around The Clock

Some of the busiest U.S. ports, including many in California, are still struggling with how to deal with significant cargo backlogs.

Yet, despite the backlog, the busiest U.S. port still shuts down for hours on most days and is closed on Sundays, the Wall Street Journal reports. “Tens of thousands” of containers remain stuck at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. More than 60 ships are lined up to dock, the report says.

More than 25% of all American imports pass through one of the two ports. LA and Long Beach collectively manage 13 private container terminals. Long Beach officials finally said last week they would try operating 24 hours a day between Monday and Thursday. LA says it’s going to keep existing hours and wait for the rest of the supply chain to extend their hours first.

Gene Seroka, executive director of the larger Port of Los Angeles, said: “It has been nearly impossible to get everyone on the same page towards 24/7 operations.”

Ports in places like Asia and Europe, for contrast, have operated around the clock “for years”, the report notes.

Uffe Ostergaard, president of the North America region for German boxship operator Hapag-Lloyd AG said: “With the current work schedule you have two big ports operating at 60%-70% of their capacity. That’s a huge operational disadvantage.”

As the shortage continues, all members of the supply chain including truckers, warehouse operators and railways, are blaming each other for the shortages of products. All parts of the supply chain are also struggling with a shortage of labor.

A longshore shift at either of the two ports used to be either 8AM to 4PM or 6PM to 3AM. Overnight shifts of 5 hours were “rarely used” because they are up to 50% more expensive, the report says.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union says their members will work a third shift, but only after the pileup of containers is fetched out of the port so there is space.

Frank Ponce De Leon, a coast committeeman at the ILWU, said: “Congestion won’t be fixed until everyone steps up and does their part. The terminal operators have been underutilizing their option to hire us for the third shift.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the supply chian, Federal safety regulations prevent commercial truck drivers to 11 hours of driving in a 14 hour workday. Port truckers like to start early in the morning so they can maximize the number of loads they can transport in a day.

Tom Boyle, chief executive of Quik Pick Express LLC, a trucking and warehousing provider, told the Journal: “The biggest issue it probably comes down to is labor.”

Rail operator Union Pacific says it sees most delays when it picks up cargo from ports and hands it to trucks at destinations.

Wim Lagaay, chief executive of APM Terminals North America, who operates at the port of LA, said: “If you work a gate 24/7 it will improve your velocity. Up to 30% of overall truck appointments are not met because there are not enough trucks, drivers or chassis.”

Matt Schrap, chief executive of the Harbor Trucking Association, added: “There is too much congestion from empty containers on terminals. The shipping lines aren’t moving the boxes out, which is preventing us from returning empties that we are storing in our yards.”

Mario Cordero, executive director at the Port of Long Beach concluded: “It’s impossible to effectively move such volumes if we don’t move to 24/7 operations across the supply chain. They do it in other parts of the world.”

end

US Consumer Confidence Unexpectedly Plunges To 7-Month Lows As Optimism Slumps

Having surged to pre-COVID levels in June, The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index is expected to rebound in September from a two-month slide, but they were wrong as US Consuemr Confidence tumbled for the 3rd straight month to 109.3 (from 113.8 and well below the 115.0 expected).

Both ‘Present Situation’ and ‘Expectations’ tumbled (143.4 vs 147.3 prior and 86.6 vs 91.4 prior respectively).

Source: Bloomberg

This is the weakest consumer confidence since February.

“Consumer confidence dropped in September as the spread of the Delta variant continued to dampen optimism,” said Lynn Franco, Senior Director of Economic Indicators at The Conference Board.

“Concerns about the state of the economy and short-term growth prospects deepened, while spending intentions for homes, autos, and major appliances all retreated again. Short-term inflation concerns eased somewhat, but remain elevated. Consumer confidence is still high by historical levels—enough to support further growth in the near-term—but the Index has now fallen 19.6 points from the recent peak of 128.9 reached in June. These back-to-back declines suggest consumers have grown more cautious and are likely to curtail spending going forward.”

Simply put, optimism collapsed:

Consumers’ optimism about the short-term business conditions outlook eroded further in September.

21.5% of consumers expect business conditions will improve, down from 23.4%.

17.6% expect business conditions to worsen, up from 17.4%.

Consumers were also less optimistic about the short-term labor market outlook.

21.5% of consumers expect more jobs to be available in the months ahead, down from 23.1%.

20.3% anticipate fewer jobs, up from 18.0%.

Consumers were slightly less positive about their short-term financial prospects.

17.3% of consumers expect their incomes to increase, down from 18.2%.

11.5% expect their incomes will decrease, up from 9.9%.

Finally, spot the difference in confidence among Americans…

Source: Bloomberg

Can you tell which is the government-sponsored ‘confidence’ measure and which is the private entity sourced.

iii)a) Important USA Economic Stories

Senate Republicans vote down Pelosi’s debt ceiling bill as expected. Check to Pelosi!

Senate Republicans Vote Down Pelosi’s Debt Ceiling Bill, As Expected

Having detailed the ‘debt limit game of chicken’ last week, tonight’s vote in the Senate is exactly what was expected.

Senate Republicans on Monday voted down the House-passed bill to fund the government through Dec. 3 and raise the debt limit.

The final vote was 48-50 (60 votes were needed to advance the measure), with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) changing his vote from Yes to No so he could later bring the bill back up for a vote.

“I changed my vote from yes to no in order to reserve the option of additional action on the House-passed legislation. Keeping the government open and preventing a default is vital to our country’s future and we’ll be taking further action to prevent this from happening this week,” Schumer said.

All Republicans voted against the bill as expected.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said he will vote for the “clean” continuing resolution if Democrats’ move forward with that plan.

“For more than two months now Senate Republicans have been completely clear about how this process will play out. So let me make it abundantly clear one more time, we will support a clean continuing resolution that will prevent a government shutdown. …We will not provide Republican votes for raising the debt ceiling,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Congress is now just 72 hours away from a potential shutdown, and as Goldman’s Alec Phillips wrote today, assuming that Republicans do not vote for a debt limit suspension in the near-term, this seems likely to come to head in the second half of October.

The deadline is not entirely clear, but we think it is most likely to fall in late October.

We expect the Treasury to provide a specific projection sometime after Oct. 1.

A deadline still a few weeks off makes it less likely that Congress will deal with it in the coming week.

If not, the debt limit is likely to get tangled up in other issues later in October, including another shutdown deadline (if Democrats decide to extend spending authority for a few weeks instead of a couple of months) and the debate over the pending fiscal packages.

The most likely scenario seems to be that Democrats will need to pass a debt limit increase via the reconciliation process with only Democratic votes, but there are several procedural and political disadvantages to doing this.

With no attractive options, it is hard to see Congress acting on the debt limit until the deadline for action seems imminent.

The market is already pricing in issues until mid-November (and the bid for short-term debt has sent the early October bill yields negative…

We can already hear the virtue-signaling cries from Schumer and Pelosi over the fact that Republicans are about to plunge America into its darkest period of history ever (well at least since the January 6th amble-around-the-Capitol).

Schumer has already called the GOP position “unhinged,” arguing that there was a choice between “preserving our full faith and credit or vote in favor of an unprecedented default.”

They are “deliberately sabotaging our country’s ability to pay the bills and likely causing the country’s first-ever default in American history,” Schumer said.

To pre-empt those anguished comments, here is Nancy Pelosi herself from January/February 2018…

“Holding the debt limit hostage … is a dangerous, illogical, and irresponsible way to express that concern,” the Democratic lawmakers wrote.

His response – in the words of Nancy Pelosi – #DoYourJob!

end

Texas Attorney General leads a 10 state coalition supporting Florida ban on Big Tech censorship. What took them so long???

(Roberts/Epoch Times)

Texas Attorney General Leads 10-State Coalition Supporting Florida Ban On Big Tech Censorship

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Texas Attorney General Paxton announced on Sept. 20 that he is leading a coalition of 10 states in filing an amicus brief with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in support of Florida’s law that attempts to regulate censorship on Big Tech social media platforms.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks during the launch of an antitrust investigation into Big Tech companies outside the Supreme Court in Washington on Sept. 9, 2019. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Paxton signed on behalf of Texas, joining the states of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, and South Carolina who have also filled an amicus brief in support of Florida’s law.

“The regulation of big tech censorship will inevitably suppress the ideas and beliefs of millions of Americans,” Paxton said in a statement. “I will defend the First Amendment and ensure that conservative voices have the right to be heard. Big Tech does not have the authority to police the expressions of people whose political viewpoint they simply disagree with.”

Florida’s SB 7072 law allows Floridians to take legal action against Big Tech platforms if they censor a user’s content without consistent standards.

The new bill also prevents Big Tech from banning Floridian political candidates. Social media companies that deplatform candidates for statewide office will be fined $250,000 a day. The fine is $25,000 per day when deplatforming candidates for other offices.

Big Tech companies that violate the law can be brought to trial for monetary damage, and the state’s attorney general can litigate companies that don’t comply with the law under Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill into law in May but District Judge Robert Hinkle in June granted a temporary injunction preventing the governor from implementing the law after two Internet trade groups—NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association— filed a lawsuit.

The trade groups argued the law may violate the First Amendment by compelling social media platforms to host offensive speech they otherwise would not and by interfering with their editorial policies.

The coalition in its amicus brief said the district court’s First Amendment analysis is “riddled with errors.”

“It veered off course from the outset by concluding that S.B. 7072 regulates speech, when that law instead regulates conduct that is unprotected by the First Amendment: social media platforms’ arbitrary application of their content moderation policies,” the coalition wrote.

Earlier this month, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed Texas’s House Bill 20—similar to Florida’s law—which protects Texans from wrongful censorship on social media platforms.

House Bill 20 prevents social media companies with more than 50 million monthly users, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, from banning users based on their political beliefs. The attorney general would also be able to take legal action on behalf of Texas residents that were banned or blocked by a platform due to such discrimination.

“We will always defend the freedom of speech in Texas,” Abbott said. “Social media websites have become our modern-day public square. They are a place for healthy public debate where information should be able to flow freely—but there is a dangerous movement by social media companies to silence conservative viewpoints and ideas. That is wrong, and we will not allow it in Texas. I thank Senator Bryan Hughes, Representative Briscoe Cain, and the Texas Legislature for ensuring that House Bill 20 reached my desk during the second special session.”

b) USA COVID/VACCINE UPDATES

New York healthcare workers fired over vaccine mandate and they will not get unemployment insurance

(Gooch/Becker’s Hospital Review)

Most New York Healthcare Workers Fired Over Vaccine Mandate Won’t Get Unemployment Insurance

By Kelly Gooch of Becker’s Hospital Review

Healthcare workers who are fired for refusal to comply with the state’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate likely won’t be eligible for unemployment insurance, according to state officials.

In a statement released Sept. 25, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office said the New York Department of Labor has issued guidance to clarify that terminated workers won’t be eligible for the benefits unless they have a valid physician-approved request for medical accommodation.

The governor’s office made the announcement at the same time it unveiled a plan to address staffing shortages should a large number of healthcare workers leave hospitals and other facilities because of the state mandate.

New York’s mandate requires healthcare workers at hospitals and nursing homes to receive their first vaccine dose by Sept. 27.

Workers at additional entities covered by the mandate, including diagnostic and treatment centers, home health agencies, long-term home healthcare programs, school-based clinics and hospice care programs, must have at least one dose by Oct. 7.

“Workers in a healthcare facility, nursing home, or school who voluntarily quit or are terminated for refusing an employer-mandated vaccination will be ineligible… absent a valid request for accommodation because these are workplaces where an employer has a compelling interest in such a mandate, especially if they already require other immunizations,” according to the New York Department of Labor website.

Ms. Hochul’s office has said the state will consider deploying National Guard members, as well as partnering with the federal government to deploy disaster medical assistance teams to help local healthcare systems.

The office said the governor’s plan also includes the preparation of a state of emergency declaration to boost workforce supply and allow qualified healthcare professionals licensed in other states or countries, recent graduates, retired and formerly practicing healthcare professionals to practice at New York facilities.

END

Brilliant! Nurses have been fired for not taking the jab so now NY governor confirms that the National Guard will fill in or those fired healthcare workers. Now what exactly do the National Guard now about health care?

NY Gov Confirms National Guard Will Fill In For Fired Healthcare Workers Who Refuse Vax

As New York braces for a flood of unemployed front-line healthcare workers who refuse to get the Covid-19 vaccine (regardless of whether they have ‘natural immunity’ from a previous infection), Governor Kathy Hochul (D) made it official on Monday – that the National Guard will be deployed to fill vacancies after hundreds of hospital workers are set to be fired effective this evening.

The move comes after Hochul previously threatened to replace unvaccinated hospital workers with ‘foreign workers‘.

Once heralded as heroes for treating Covid patients before the vaccine, front-line healthcare workers who refuse to take the jab are in good company with teachers, police, NBA players, and other professionals whose unions have opposed vaccine mandates.

According to CDC irector Rochelle Walensky, the loss of unvaccinated healthcare workers is a ‘challenge.’

As Jack Phillips of the Epoch Times writes:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky said COVID-19 vaccine mandates for healthcare workers will likely create staff shortages around the United States, coming as some hospital CEOs have issued warnings.

“We have seen that these vaccine mandates get more people vaccinated,” Walensky said during a “Good Morning America” appearance on Monday. “It absolutely creates a challenge. What I would say is [we need] to do some work … to understand where their hesitancy is so we can get them vaccinated and get them back to work,” she said.

In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a Saturday statement that she may direct the state’s National Guard to replace healthcare workers who resign or are terminated due to the state’s vaccine mandate. The governor also floated the idea of using out-of-state nurses, accredited healthcare workers from other countries, or tapping retired nurses who were vaccinated to replace them.

During her interview Monday, Walensky acknowledged that staff shortages “absolutely” create “a challenge” and didn’t offer a definitive plan to address the potential shortfall of healthcare workers.

“What I would say is [we need] to do some work, to educate these healthcare workers,” she added, “to meet them where they are, to understand where their hesitancy is so we can get them vaccinated and get them back to work.”

The deadline for New York state’s healthcare workers to receive the Covid vaccine is Monday, Sept. 27. According to the governor’s office, about 16 percent of the state’s medical workers have not received the vaccine.

Earlier this month, Lewis County Health System Chief Executive Officer Gerald Cayer said the Lewis County General Hospital in Lowville will not have the capacity to deliver babies in the near future after six employees at the firm’s maternity ward resigned instead of taking the vaccine.

“If we can pause the service and now focus on recruiting nurses who are vaccinated, we will be able to reengage in delivering babies here in Lewis County,” Cayer said at a news conference on Sept. 10.

A federal judge on Sept. 14 temporarily suspended the statewide vaccination mandate for healthcare workers after a group of healthcare workers filed a lawsuit against the state, arguing that their Constitutional rights were violated because religious exemptions were not allowed.

Last week, 10 individual state hospital security officers filed a lawsuit against Hochul, Heath Commissioner Howard Zucker, and the New York State Health Department and are seeking to partake in regular COVID-19 testing instead of being forced to receive the vaccine.

END

Brilliant move by the bird brain Hocul

(zerohege)

“Disaster”: NY Gov Triggers State Emergency To Replace Unvaccinated Healthcare Workers

The vaccination deadline for health-care workers In New York and a handful of other nearby states has come and gone, and although the NYT reported that thousands of workers lined up for jabs at the last minute, thousands of workers in the industry have continued to resist despite the fact that authorities are turning up the pressure by declaring that those fired due to the mandate won’t receive unemployment insurance.

With the situation growing ever more dire, NY Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an order on Monday to deal with possible staffing shortfalls resulting from the statewide vaccination mandate for healthcare workers. In a series of tweets Tuesday morning, Gov. Hochul explained why she signed the order.

“Last night, I took bold action and signed an executive order that will alleviate potential staffing shortages in our hospitals and other health care facilities across New York State,” she tweeted.

Echoing comments from President Biden, who spoke to reporters while receiving his Pfizer booster dose last night, Gov. Hochul said that “the only way we can move past this pandemic is to ensure that everyone eligible is vaccinated.”

But it’s not just NY’s hospitals facing staff shortages. As police departments from the NYPD to the LAPD struggle with surging violent crime, a group of unvaccinated undercover NYPD officers are reportedly being threatened with demotion or even firing because their refusal to get the vaccine could compromise their ability to meet sources in restaurants and other locations, per the NY Post.

At least 10 officers and detectives were told by the Deputy Commissioner of Internal Affairs Joseph Reznick that they would be kicked back to a precinct if they didn’t get the jab. The cops are chiefly part of the IAB, which investigates other cops.

One source told the Post: “[Reznick’s] doing it because if they are going to set up cops, they need vaccination cards to go into restaurants and they don’t have it,” a source said. “No one will want to work with them,” the source said.

Unlike NYC’s public schools, the NYPD doesn’t have a vaccine mandate, but starting in mid-August, patrons at NYC restaurants are required to show proof of vaccination in order to enter indoor settings, including restaurants.

NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea has said he supports a vaccine mandate for the department, but has stopped short of issuing one because of the potential backlash.

And now navy seals who protect our nation: they are undeployabile if they do not get a covid 19 vaccine shot.

(Stieber/EpochTimes)

Navy SEALs Told They’re Undeployable If They Don’t Get A COVID-19 Vaccine: Lawyers

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

Navy SEALs have been informed by superiors that they won’t be deployed if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine, even if they’re granted a religious or medical exemption, according to lawyers representing the elite special operations troops and a document seen by The Epoch Times.

“What they’ve been told is if they apply for a religious accommodation, they will no longer be deployable,” R. Davis Younts, w

ho is representing seven SEALs and is in talks to take on approximately 20 others, told The Epoch Times.

Timothy Parlatore, whose firm represents a number of SEALs and other service members concerned about the vaccines, said his clients have also been given a similar ultimatum.

Some SEALs have even been sent home mid-deployment for refusing a COVID-19 vaccine, one of his clients told him.

A document presented to the SEALs says that any special operations personnel, including Special Warfare Combatant-Craft Crewmen, “who refuse to receive the COVID-19 vaccine based solely on personal or religious beliefs will be disqualified from [special operations] duty.” It was signed by Capt. Liam Hulin.

“This will affect deployment and special pays,” the document also states.

“This provision does not pertain to medical contraindications or allergies to vaccine administration.”

The reasons the SEALs don’t want a shot are the same as many unvaccinated Americans. They believe they have so-called natural immunity, or protection against reinfection after getting COVID-19 and recovering. And a subset are Christians who don’t want any medicines that are developed using cells from aborted fetuses.

“These guys are not anti-vax, they just—given the extraordinarily low risk of COVID to them and the substantial risk of unknown long-term effects of the vaccine—they aren’t comfortable with it right now,” Parlatore told The Epoch Times.

The exact number of SEALs considering not getting a vaccine isn’t known, but both Parlatore and a pastor who is advising some of them say it’s in the hundreds. The loss of that many SEALs could devastate the elite force, which has 2,450 active-duty members. So far, lawyers have not been successful in attempts to convince military leaders to alter the harsh mandate.

Shortly after U.S. drug regulators in August approved Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered troops to get a shot. Austin directed the heads of every branch to draft requirements, which are all similar. Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro issued a vaccine mandate on Aug. 30 that said active-duty Navy personnel would have to be fully vaccinated, or have a full vaccine regimen, by Nov. 28.

The Department of Defense (DoD) has previously said troops can request exemptions, but no exemptions were outlined in the order and sailors were told they would face punitive measures if they don’t comply.

The Navy declined to answer questions for this article. The Naval Special Warfare Command did not respond to a request for comment.

Navy SEALs participate in a joint rescue exercise with Cypriot Navy special forces in Limassol, Cyprus, on Sept. 10, 2021. (Iakovos Hatzistavrou/AFP via Getty Images)

Younts is pursuing religious exemptions for his clients while Parlatore is primarily focusing on medical exemptions.

Pastor Jeff Durbin, who heads Apologia Church in Mesa, Arizona, is ministering to some of the SEALs. He says they’ve gotten required vaccines in the past but are worried about what they see as insufficient safety data, particularly regarding long-term effects. The two main vaccines were authorized in December 2020.

“They see this as a violation of the government’s responsibilities and role in terms of being able to mandate a new technology that’s never been employed before with very suspicious, and even alarming safety data,” Durbin told The Epoch Times.

Federal health officials say that trial data and information from other sources show the vaccines are safe and effective. Critics note that the number of reports of adverse events and deaths following vaccination has skyrocketed and is much higher for COVID-19 vaccines than any other type of vaccine. The Pfizer and Moderna shots use messenger RNA technology, which is new and had not been used in approved vaccines before.

Some of the SEALs have verified they’ve been infected with COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, in the past. That means, according to experts and a slew of studies, that they enjoy a high level of immunity against reinfection. But there’s no acknowledgment for the immunity in the mandates. U.S. requirements have virtually all ignored natural immunity while some European countries allow it as an alternative to vaccination.

“Natural immunity has not been taken into consideration. In the past for the vaccines there was a denoted exception or accommodation that can be made for someone if they had the immunity, or serology showing it, they wouldn’t have to take that vaccine. That’s not the case in this vaccine,” Younts said.

The lawyers are trying to convince the military to ease up on the mandate and approach the situation differently, especially in light of the anthrax vaccine program, which was deemed illegal and left many service members with adverse reactions.

“Whenever there’s something like this where they provide very little information about the safety of the vaccine, and instead just threaten everybody ‘take it or else,’ that causes natural resistance,” Parlatore said. “Don’t forget, this is the same community that was given the anthrax vaccine without proper safety protocols, which a judge ended up stopping. So DoD unfortunately hasn’t built up a lot of trust with forcing people to take relatively new vaccines.”

Lawyers and scientists correctly are building a case for Natural immunity and this should be treated the same as vaccination

(zerohedge)

Lawyers & Scientists Are Building A Case For Why Natural Immunity Should Be Treated Same As Vaccination

Now that at least one employer in the health-care field – Michigan’s Spectrum Health – has decided to accept proof of natural immunity from prior infection as reason to waive its vaccination mandate for all employees, legal expert (and the reporters who love to quote them) are wondering: will the legality of proving natural immunity potentially win out in court?

The answer to that question, they say, will depend – as all things COVID-related do – on “the science”, that nebulous and frequently shifting concept of how prior infection impacts immunity to new variants (and whether vaccine’s do as well).

According to a report in Yahoo Finance, the notion that natural immunity is superior is already gaining support in the legal world. Presently, a handful of studies from different countries offer a conflicting view of whether natural immunity actually is superior to vaccinated immunity, or a combination of prior infection and vaccination

Since it’s likely the federal government’s aim to roll out vaccine mandates that cover practically every US worker (they’re not too far off already), the issue of natural vs. vaccine immunity and whether some individuals should receive exemptions based on their antibody levels almost certainly be adjudicated in the federal courts.

At least one attorney quoted by Yahoo agrees:

“I think that a judge might reject a rule that’s been issued by a body, like the U.S. Department of Labor or by a state, that has not been sufficiently thought through as it relates to the science,” Erik Eisenmann, a labor and employment attorney with Husch Blackwell, told Yahoo Finance.

As we reported when it was first published,a report out of Israel suggests that natural immunity could be many times more effective than the Pfizer vaccine at preventing infection with the delta variant. That study has yet to be peer-reviewed, however, and the world is anxiously awaiting the results.

However, another peer-reviewed study cited by the CDC looks at dozens of cases in the US where certain people who tested positive for COVID never ended up generating the antibodies, which, science dictates, are necessary to fend off future infection.

The CDC also published a study of 246 Kentucky residents, concluding that vaccination offers higher protection than a previous COVID infection. The CDC said the study went through a “rigorous multi-level clearance process” before submission, but now some are concerned it’s slightly out of date since it pre-dates the rise of delta.

But as far as supporting natural vs. vaccinated immunity goes, this study is another big one: A C A June study by the Cleveland Clinic and Washington University tracked 52,238 Cleveland Clinic employees found that within 1,359 previously infected and unvaccinated people, none contracted a subsequent COVID-19 infection over the five-month study. The findings led authors to conclude that prior infection makes a person “unlikely to benefit from COVID-19 vaccination.”

Then there’s this:

In a smaller study conducted by Washington University School of Medicine and published in Nature, senior author Ali Ellebedy, PhD, an associate professor of medicine and of molecular microbiology, found antibody-producing cells in the bone marrow of 15 of 19 study subjects 11 months after their first COVID-19 symptoms. “These cells will live and produce antibodies for the rest of people’s lives. That’s strong evidence for long-lasting immunity,” Ellebedy said.

The legal and scientific standards are intertwined here, but as more data develops that appears to validate the argument that natural immunity is at least as effective as vaccinated immunity, it’s more likely that lawyers will succeed in convincing judges that the standard should be “immunity by any means.”

end

iv) Swamp commentaries/

Chaos On The Hill: Progressives Threaten To Nuke Infrastructure Deal, Schumer Blows Gasket Over Reconciliation, McConnell Smug

Republicans on Capitol Hill are watching with Cheshire cat grins as Democrats scramble to avoid a US default, while attempting to pass two major pieces of time-sensitive legislation that have the party’s progressives pitted against moderate Democrats.

For starters, House progressives have banded together to nuke the $550 billion bipartisan infrastructure package passed by the Senate in August, unless Speaker Nancy Pelosi links it to the $3.5 trillion Build Back Better act – which party moderates including Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) will tank in the Senate unless it’s significantly smaller and has legitimate budgetary mechanisms to pay for it that doesn’t just include a beefed-up IRS collecting deadbeat taxes.

“Progressives will vote for both bills, but a majority of our members will only vote for the infrastructure bill after the President’s visionary Build Back Better Act passes,” said Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair (and boss from hell) Pramila Jayapal (D-WA). The progressive caucus, which claims 95 members, is using their vote on the infrastructure bill as leverage to force the Build Back Better act via the reconciliation process, according to Bloomberg.

“This agenda is not some fringe wish list: it is the President’s agenda, the Democratic agenda, and what we all promised voters when they delivered us the House, Senate, and White House,” Jayapal added.

According to Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) – a member of the so-called “Squad” of progressive Democrats, Pelosi’s decision to separate the bills is a “betrayal.”

“Let me be clear: bringing the so-called bipartisan infrastructure plan to a vote without the #BuildBackBetter Act at the same time is a betrayal. We will hold the line and vote it down,” Tlaib wrote on Twitter, adding “This is not the time for half measures or to go back on our promises.”

On Monday night, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) knocked Manchin and Sinema, telling CNN‘s Manu Raju “It is saddening to see them use Republican talking points. We obviously didn’t envision having Republicans as part of our party. And I hope that they will understand that Democrats need to be united behind the president’s agenda, and we need to have urgent conversations on how to get this agenda done.”

Meanwhile, President Biden(‘s handlers) have arranged for separate meetings on Tuesday with Manchin and Sinema in an attempt to broker an agreement.

Pelosi says she plans to move forward with the infrastructure vote on Thursday, however even close allies such as Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) have cast doubt on its current ability to pass.

“If she were to call the bill, it will fail,” she told The Hill, adding “Not because the Progressive Caucus, people like me, aren’t willing to vote for it. But … we had an agreement that we were going to get these two pieces [together].”

Debt ceiling disaster

Democrats – which could simply raise the debt ceiling via reconciliation to avoid a US default, have dug in their heels over Republican involvement – with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) calling it a “non-starter.”

“Going through reconciliation is risky to the country and is a non-starter,” he said at a press conference following a meeting of the Senate Democratic conference, adding “It’s very, very risky.”

On Tuesday, Republicans shut down a bid by Schumer to hold a vote to suspend the debt limit with a 51-vote threshold, to which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) objected – saying that Democrats can do it by themselves.

-END-

King report/Courtesy of Chris Powell of GATA which includes the major swamp stories./ of the day

MONDAY’S REPORT

China declares all crypto-currency transactions illegal – BBC
“Virtual currency-related business activities are illegal financial activities,” the People’s Bank of China said, warning it “seriously endangers the safety of people’s assets”. China is one of the world’s largest crypto-currency market… https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58678907

China’s Energy Crisis Roils Food Supply as Soy Crushers Halted
· Plants in Tianjin told to suspend output for at least a week
· Move is part of efforts to cut energy use amid supply crunch
https://www.admis.com/global-ag-news-for-sep-24/

Crypto currencies plunged on China’s ban; ESZs tumbled 41 handles from their 4451.50 high at 20:20 ET. ESZs bottomed 40 minutes before the NYSE open as traders got long stuff for the expected rally on the NYSE open. ESZs and stocks commenced a vertical ascent 10 minutes before the NYSE open. This is evidence of impact trading. Someone has been very determined to save stocks over the past few weeks!

There was NO reason to buy ESZs or stocks this aggressively just before and just after the NYSE open – except to create a move that changes a negative narrative into a positive rationalization for the rally.

Bonds tumbled; the US 10-year yield hit 1.46%, the highest yield since July 1. This is a crystal-clear breakout to the upside! Fangs were sold; energy commodities soared. Inflation was the theme!!! The market stridently declared that the Fed’s wait & taper modesty policy is a deleterious blunder!

The early manipulation in the US peaked near 10:00 ET. For the past few weeks there has been a clear pattern of ESZ and stock weakness in Asian and sometimes European trading; but someone rescues stocks during early US trading. Who is doing this and why? Qui bono?

Biden performed a 10 ET Teleprompter reading to blame the unvaccinated and Trump for his crises. The Big Guy reading from his notes: “Take a look at what I inherited when I came into office…”

@CBSNews: President Biden: “We still have over 70 million Americans who have failed to get a single shot. And to make matters worse, there are elected officials actively working to undermine, with false information, the fight against COVID-19. This is totally unacceptable.”
https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1441405891803336704

The Big Guy pitched his economic plan, which is struggling in Congress. “In the plan that I put forward, I said I am tired of trickle-down. The billionaires, trillionaires are doing good. It’s the middle class that is facing the crunch…” (Trickle-down from government apparently is preferred and is socialism.)

Biden Backs Tax on Billionaires’ Unrealized Investment Gains
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-24/biden-backs-tax-on-billionaires-unrealized-investment-gains

@cvpayne: Same Press Conference: “Everything I’m proposing is popular in the polls” “That’s why I don’t listen to polls (on my approval)” – President Biden

@charliespiering: “That’s why I don’t look at the polls. Not a joke,” says Biden. On Sept. 11th, Biden said, “You know, if you take a look at the polling data, it is down — as my numbers have dropped.”

@CBSNews: Biden says his presidency “is a process. It’s going to be up and down. That’s why I don’t look at the polls. Not a joke. Because it’s going to go up and it’s going to go down, it’s going to go up. Hopefully at the end of the day, I’ll be able to deliver on what I said I would do”
https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1441409770607374347

@Rasmussen_Poll: Biden Job Approval: Approve 42% (-3), Disapprove 56% (+2); 1,500 LV 9/21-9/23

Blacks hate The Big Guy’s vax mandates; Hispanics and blacks are upset with the crush of illegals.

Why the morning presser for The Big Guy? Why no prime-time pressers? Sundowners Syndrome!
https://www.colemanadultday.org/what-is-sundowners-syndrome/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIjOmYreeX8wIVNgiICR38_g9QEAAYASAAEgIwHvD_BwE

The morning manipulation ended when the Biden presser and Powell’s “Fed Listening” event were scheduled to begin at 10:00 ET.

Powell: ‘Never Really Seen’ These Kind of Supply-Chain Issues – BBG
“I’ve never seen these kind of supply-chain issues, never seen an economy that combines drastic labor shortages with lots of unemployed people and a lot of slack in the labor market.” (It’s socialism, Jay!)

Costco to reimpose limits on toilet paper, cleaning supplies and more
Due to higher demand as well as shipping delays caused in part by a trucker shortage, CFO Richard Galanti said… https://nypost.com/2021/09/24/costco-to-reimpose-limits-on-toilet-paper-cleaning-supplies-and-more/

@pboockvar: The inflation comments in a thread here from Costco’s conference call last night:
“Inflationary factors abound: higher labor costs, higher freight costs.. along with container shortages and port delays… various shortages of everything from computer chips to oils & chemicals, higher commodities prices… Price increases on items shipped across oceans, some suppliers or us paying 6x for containers and shipping. Price increases of pulp and paper goods, some items up 4% to 8%…Plastics, resin increases on things like trash bags, Ziploc SKU’s, pet products, PET products, plastic cups, plates, plastic wrap, many items up in the 5 to 11% range. Metals, aluminum foil, mid-single digit cost increases, as well as cans for sodas and other beverages…oil, coffee, nuts, they remain generally according to our buyers at 5 yr highs & so on. Higher import prices on things from Europe… Three to 10% increases on certain but not all apparel items. And fresh foods, inflation is up in the mid to high single digits, with meat leading the way, up high single to low double digits due to feed, labor and transportation costs.”

Before They Were an Inconvenience, But Now the Shortages Are Really Beginning to Sting
http://themostimportantnews.com/archives/before-they-were-an-inconvenience-but-now-the-shortages-are-really-beginning-to-sting

Dozens of ships are forced to anchor off coast of New York as they wait to dock in the country’s second-largest port – adding to US supply chain crunch which has forced FedEx to reroute 600k packages a day https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10029043/amp/Dozens-ships-coast-New-York-wait-dock-countrys-second-largest-port.html

@FT: Many UK petrol stations run dry amid panic buying… caused by a lack of tanker drivers…
https://www.ft.com/content/7e79e4a8-7a1e-4b2c-8f81-cbf4e9969e28
@townhallcom: Biden on the lie that border patrol were using whips on illegal immigrants at the border: “To see people treated like they did? Horses running them over? People being strapped? It’s outrageous. I promise you, those people will pay.” https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/1441406433619288072

Border Patrol stunned as Biden goes to war with his own agents over false ‘whipping’ allegations
Claims that agents, who were using long reins to control their horses, were using “whips” were quickly debunked by officials and other agents – but activists and elected Democrats have continued to fuel it. The photographer who took the images said Friday he did not see any agents whipping migrants…
Border Patrol agents were stunned and angered by the comments… Another said: “I see the administration wants to fry our agents. He just started a war with Border Patrol.”…
Judd said Biden’s comments were “completely and totally outrageous” and accused Biden of “playing politics with Border Patrol agents’ lives.”… “Since he’s made that comment, my phone has obviously blown up. People are beyond incensed right now,” he said…
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/border-patrol-agents-biden-backs-claims-whipping-promises-agents-pay

@BillFOXLA: DHS Secretary Mayorkas confirms that there was no COVID-19 testing of the 15,000 migrants under the bridge in Del Rio. That includes the thousands who have been released into the country with NTAs or NTRs.

Contractor Workers Must Get Vaccine by Dec. 8, White House Says
Federal contractor employees must be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 by Dec. 8 unless they’re granted a legal accommodation, under new White House guidance released Friday…
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/white-house-unveils-federal-contractor-vaccine-masking-guidance

The worse Biden’s polling and the more that Team Obama-Biden issues mandates, the higher ESZs and stocks soar. “Bobby, Bobby!!!” buying has become endemic.

In close German election, Merkel’s bloc sees worst election results since 1949 https://t.co/JGJB5hcUXF

CDC director OVERRULES her own agency’s advisory on COVID-19 vaccine booster shots: Rochelle Walensky says people at risk because of their jobs should receive third doses
In a separate briefing document also published last week, FDA scientists wrote with a skeptical tone about the need for booster shots. ‘Overall, data indicate that currently US-licensed or authorized COVID-19 vaccines still afford protection against severe COVID-19 disease and death in the United States,’ the scientists wrote. They added that studies on booster doses have presented conflicting findings and that ‘known and unknown biases that can affect their reliability.’…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10023987/CDC-Director-OVERRULES-agencys-advisory-booster-shots-senior-citizens.html

@ggreenwald: Unbelievable: after 18 months of demanding everyone FOLLOW THE SCIENCE and scorning any questioning, Biden’s CDC Director ignores — overrules — the overwhelming recommendation of her scientists about the Pfizer booster, to align with what Biden wanted

@realchrisrufo: Senator @MarcoRubio introduces legislation to allow shareholders to sue corporations for prioritizing political ideology—such as “socialism, Marxism, [and] critical race theory”—over their fiduciary duty to maximize long-term shareholder value. The fight has begun.
https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1441432555962519555

@lisaabramowicz1: U.S. stocks had their worst weekly outflow in more than three years, with traders pulling $28.6 billion from U.S. equity funds in the week through Sept. 22: BofA & EPFR Global data.

“The Big Short’s” @michaeljburry: 94% correlation between the Nasdaq 100 in the 15 years to today, and the 15 years to 2000. The S&P 500 shows 95%. https://t.co/qSAJVuFcxy

WSJ: Individuals Embrace Options Trading, Turbocharging Stock Markets
Short-term traders flock to the low upfront cost and potential quick gains in options markets, fueling bigger swings and many rallies
https://www.wsj.com/articles/individuals-embrace-options-trading-turbocharging-stock-markets-11632661201

President Biden @POTUS: My Build Back Better Agenda costs zero dollars. Instead of wasting money on tax breaks, loopholes, and tax evasion for big corporations and the wealthy, we can make a once-in-a-generation investment in working America. And it adds zero dollars to the national debt. (Liar or nuts?)

@newsmax: “The radical left is pushing in all their chips; they want to use this terrible but temporary pandemic as a Trojan horse for permanent socialism,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell…

Today – Last week, someone kept forcing ESZs and select stocks higher after equities plunged and severe technical destruction appeared on Monday. Pelosi stated that the House will pass Infrastructure (Thursday vote) and Reconciliation bills this week. Was last week’s rally connected to these bills?

Pelosi says U.S. infrastructure bill will pass, eyes smaller social spending bill http://reut.rs/3icoiFQ

@RaheemKassam: Maricopa County Audit reveals:
— Over 3,400 more ballots were casted than recorded;
— 9,000 more mail-in ballots were received & recorded than official # of ballots sent by county;
— 2,382 voters casted votes in Maricopa county, in person, after moving out of the county…
Auditors say the unprecedented number of discrepancies could only happen through malicious actions or severe incompetence from Maricopa county officials.

@KariLake: Maricopa reported ZERO duplicate ballots. Real total is 17,322. This is more than enough to change the election result. (Most dupes arrived AFTER Nov 3!!!)

OAN’s @christina_bobb: A high number of duplicate (illegal) mail in ballots were dropped off in Maricopa County on 11/5 and were counted. Mail in ballots appear photoshopped. 255,326 early votes do not show corresponding early voting entry… Ben Cotton: There were services enabled to allow remote access to the election management systems. Maricopa County purged the machine records the day before the audit started.

ARIZONA AUDIT: 9,589 EXCESS Mail-in Ballot Envelopes Counted by Maricopa County, BLANKS Verified and Approved
https://nationalfile.com/arizona-audit-9589-excess-mail-in-ballot-envelopes-counted-by-maricopa-county-blanks-verified-and-approved/

@Perpetualmaniac: AZ Audit: Log files were set at max file size 20MB!!! When the auditors looked for the logs, there were NONE before 2/5/21. No logs exist for the 2020 election!

@JovanHPulitzer: Wireless LAN configurations on the EMS? Holy smokes! #ArizonaElectionAudit

Trump Statement on Maricopa County Audit: “…The number included 23,334 mail-in ballots, despite the person no longer living at that address… Voters who voted in multiply counties totaled 10,342… fraudulent votes total 50,252…margin of victory was only 10,342…” https://twitter.com/RSBNetwork/status/1441428969727807490/photo/1

@realLizUSA: The finding the Fake News media fixates on took approximately 2 minutes of this hours long hearing to cover. Why? Because when you keep counting fraudulent ballots, you keep getting the same total. It doesn’t tell you how many should have NEVER been counted in the first place!

@nytimes: As the Proud Boys marched to the Capitol on Jan. 6, a member of the far-right group was texting real-time updates — to his FBI handler. The informer gave the bureau an inside view that day, according to confidential records obtained by The New York Times. https://nyti.ms/3m0CHWO

Federal Protection of “Oath Keepers” Kingpin Stewart Rhodes Breaks the Entire Capitol “Insurrection” Lie Wide Open June 30, 2021 (The Feds had numerous agents & spies in that crowd!)
https://www.revolver.news/2021/06/stewart-rhodes-oath-keepers-missing-link-fbi-unindicted-co-conspirator/

As evidence mounts that the FBI had infiltrated the Jan. 6 crowd well before the event, the compelling question is: Why didn’t the FBI and Pelosi prepare for trouble? Why did the Capitol Police Board, which is run by Pelosi and McConnell, prohibit National Guard deployment? They knew what was coming. Are allegations that they orchestrated it to ‘get Trump’ via a second impeachment farfetched?

Ex-Capitol Police Chief Says Requests for National Guard Denied 6 Times in Riots 1/11/21
The former chief of U.S. Capitol Police says security officials at the House and Senate rebuffed his early requests to call in the National Guard ahead of a demonstration in support of President Trump that turned into a deadly attack on Congress… Sund contradicts claims made by officials after Wednesday’s assault on Capitol Hill. Sund’s superiors said previously that the National Guard and other additional security support could have been provided, but no one at the Capitol requested it…
https://www.npr.org/2021/01/11/955548910/ex-capitol-police-chief-rebuffs-claims-national-guard-was-never-called-during-ri

Ex-CIA operative @BryanDeanWright: Fmr. FBI Director James Comey leaked classified information to destroy a sitting president. Don’t tell me the FBI wouldn’t instigate a riot.

Ex-WH official @DarrenJBeattie: Jan 6 was not an intelligence failure, it was an intelligence set-up

Ex-fed prosecutor @shipwreckedcrew: A couple of J6 trials are at the stage where info about informants is required to be turned over to the defense. More importantly, info FROM informants that is exculpatory must be produced whenever it becomes known. I suspect this is behind the disclosure to the NYT that there was an informant in with a PB group. I suspect the DOJ will produce exculpatory evidence next week re one or more defendants that comes from that informant…

@bonchieredstate: If this is being leaked to the Times, it’s the FBI trying to get out in front and set the narrative for something far worse to be revealed. This does not end up printed if it’s all there is.

@Cernovich: The New York Times is not in the business of making the FBI look bad. This story dropped today indicates highly damaging information is to be expected soon, and it’s better to let the FBI front run those embarrassing disclosures with an article that’s *almost* critical of them.

FBI agents question Afghan rescue groups (Because their efforts embarrassed The Big Guy?)
The Bureau has asked groups about financial records, to provide manifests and make sure no federal laws are violated, according to eight group members and congressional aides familiar with the moves…
One congressional source familiar with the calls said FBI officials intended to “spook” members; another said the calls were designed “to intimidate.”…
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/24/fbi-agents-question-afghan-rescue-groups-514151

A reminder that when Hillary learned the FBI was investigating her, her team, and her server, they destroyed cell phones and disc drives with a hammer – and the FBI and DoJ allowed the felonies!!!

Effort to spread discredited Russia collusion theory welcomed by McCain Senate panel, memos show – Armed Services panel secretly fought court battle this summer to quash subpoena seeking records of contacts with ex-FBI official Daniel Jones and liberal-funded The Democracy Integrity Project nonprofit https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/effort-spread-discredited-russia-collusion-theory

S. Korean President Returns U.S. MIA Troop Remains in Person. Biden Sends No Rep
https://redstate.com/andrewmalcolm/2021/09/24/s-korean-president-returns-u-s-mia-troop-remains-in-person-biden-sends-no-rep-n447297

@AgueroForTexas: Currently the FBI is investigating the assault of a female Fort Bliss soldier by several male Afghan refugees at the Army’s Doña Ana Complex camp where thousands are being held

@BorderHawkNews: Flashback: Biden Calls (2015) for “Unrelenting Stream of Immigration” to Overwhelm “White, European” Americans https://twitter.com/ColumbiaBugle/status/1440840452136050692

Harris says CBP on horseback ‘evoked’ images of slavery, in chaotic ‘View’ interview
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/harris-border-patrol-evoked-images-slavery-the-view-interview

A pair of co-hosts on ABC’s “The View” were found to have tested positive for COVID-19 and were immediately removed from the set just moments before Vice President Kamala Harris was to make a live appearance, multiple reports confirmed on Friday… https://conservativebrief.com/co-hosts-view-51718/

‘This is a monumental failure!’ ABC insider slams The View for creating a ‘national security risk’ after co-hosts Sunny Hostin and Ana Navarro test positive for Covid just SECONDS before greeting Kamala Harris
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10026313/ABC-insider-slams-View-hosts-test-positive-COVID-Kamala-Harris-chat.html

Trump says only a ‘bad call from a doctor’ would keep him from running in 2024
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/all-things-trump/trump-only-bad-call-doctor-would-take-him-out-running-2024

We’d guess that there is at least a 60% chance of a ‘bad call from a doctor’ arriving at some time in latter 2023. Critics of DJT’s fund raising and appearances, like Ann Coulter, believe The Donald is grifting supporters to support his lifestyle and theatrics.

Hillary Clinton Mobbed by Angry Protesters in Ireland: ‘War Criminal!’
Twice failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton faced crowds of hecklers outside the Queen’s University in Belfast on Friday as she attended a ceremony to install her as the first female chancellor of the college. In the 40 second clip, Clinton can be seen dressed in robes as she is followed by a small child carrying the gown. https://neonnettle.com/news/16798-hillary-clinton-mobbed-by-angry-protesters-in-ireland-war-criminal-watch

Oregon is giving people permission to kiss on dates — if both are vaccinated (Not a parody!)
https://notthebee.com/article/oregon-is-giving-people-permission-to-kiss-on-dates—-if-both-are-vaccinated

“It’s A Ghost Town” – Shocking Images Show Downtown Chicago “Depressingly” Empty During Day https://www.zerohedge.com/political/its-ghost-town-shocking-images-show-downtown-chicago-depressingly-empty-during-day

@RyanGirdusky: How loyal were post-1964 black voters to Democrats? In 1982, George Wallace won 90% of the black vote when he was running for his last re-election as governor of Alabama

As Private and Charter Schools Grew, 1.4 Million Children Left Traditional Public Schools During COVID – Many parents also turned to homeschooling; the report notes that from March 2020 to September 2020, homeschooling rates across the country grew between 5.4% and 11%…
https://www.dailywire.com/news/as-private-and-charter-schools-grew-1-4-million-children-left-traditional-public-schools-during-covid

Babylon Bee: New York Restaurant Adds Voting Booth So They Can Allow People in Without ID

“Accuse your opponent of what you are doing to create confusion and to inculcate voters against evidence of your own guilt.” – Saul Alinsky in “Rules for Radicals”

TUESDAY

Bloomberg: Evans Says Fed Needs to Generate Stronger Inflation Overshoot
The Federal Reserve needs to keep monetary policy easy to raise the public’s inflation expectations even after the current bout of price pressures fades, says Chicago Fed President Charles Evans. “I do not think the supply-side-induced transitory surge in inflation we are seeing today will be enough to do the trick,” Evans said Monday… https://finance.yahoo.com/news/evans-says-fed-needs-generate-120000803.html

@JeffCoxCNBCcom: More Evans: “I am more uneasy about us not generating enough inflation in 2023 and 2024 than the possibility that we will be living with too much.”

end

@dlacalle_IA: US. 1.8% month-on-month rise in durable goods orders in August due to a 5.5% increase in transport. Excluding transport, orders rose just 0.2% month-on-month (There was a 77% surge in non-defense aircraft and parts new orders.)

Boston Fed President Rosengren abruptly announces retirement 9 months earlier than planned
Citing health concerns… The announcement comes on the heels of controversy the regional Fed leader had faced regarding personal stock trading…
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/27/boston-fed-president-rosengren-to-retire-september-30-9-months-earlier-than-planned.html

After the close on Monday, Dallas Fed President Kaplan announced he would retire October 8: “Unfortunately, the recent focus on my financial disclosure risks becoming a distraction. For that reason, I have decided to retire.”

Silver	Ounces
Withdrawals from Dealers* Inventory*	NIL oz
Withdrawals from Customer Inventory	624,649.885 oz Brinks Delaware
Deposits to the Dealer* Inventory*	nil OZ
Deposits to the Customer Inventory	nil OZ
No of oz served today (contracts)	58 CONTRACT(S) 290,000 OZ)
No of oz to be served (notices)	6 contracts 30,000oz)
Total monthly oz silver served (contracts)	5640 contracts 28,200,000 oz)
Total accumulative withdrawal of silver from the Dealers* inventory this month*	NIL oz
Total accumulative withdrawal of silver from the Customer* inventory this month*

PLATINUM AND PALLADIUM PRICES BY GOLD-EAGLE (MORE ACCURATE)

PLATINUM $969.60 DOWN $14.75

PALLADIUM: $1877.50 DOWN $92.10/OZ

DONATE

NUMBER OF NOTICES FILED TODAY FOR SEPT. CONTRACT: 372 NOTICE(S) FOR 37,200 OZ (1.1570 tonnes)

58 NOTICE(S) FILED TODAY FOR 290,000 OZ/

1/COMEX GOLD AND SILVER REPORT

3. ASIAN AFFAIRS

b) REPORT ON JAPAN

4/EUROPEAN AFFAIRS

5. RUSSIAN AND MIDDLE EASTERN AFFAIRS

6.Global Issues

7. OIL ISSUES

8 EMERGING MARKET ISSUES

Trading Volumes on the COMEX GOLD TODAY 225,247 contracts// / volume//volume poor/rolls

CONFIRMED COMEX VOL. FOR YESTERDAY: 152,577 contracts//poor//rolls/

// //most of our traders have left for London

The Comex’s Market Of Mayhem

ii) Important gold commentaries courtesy of GATA/Chris Powell

Fed officials Kaplan and Rosengren quit amid trading scandals

Ron Paul: The biggest Federal Reserve scandal

Your early TUESDAY morning currency, Asian stock market results, important USA/Asian currency crosses, gold/silver pricing overnight along with the price of oil Major stories overnight/7 AM EST

3A/ASIAN AFFAIRS

3 a./NORTH KOREA/ SOUTH KOREA

b) REPORT ON JAPAN

3 C CHINA

4/EUROPEAN AFFAIRS

U.K. gas shortage as number of truck drivers dwindles

‘Manufactured situation’

5. RUSSIAN AND MIDDLE EASTERN AFFAIRS

6.Global Issues

BREAKING: Project Veritas: Johnson & Johnson: Children Don’t Need the ‘F*cking’ Covid Vaccine – “Unknown Repercussions” (VIDEO)

Apartheid State: Australia to impose lockdown on ‘unvaccinated’ citizens – by Jordan Schachtel – The Dossier

Brighteon

NEVER BEFORE SEEN! “Vaccine” Victims’ Bodies IN BATTLE!

Covid articles

Gijsbert Groenewegen

La Palma volcano eruption: Lava that could create clouds of toxic gas now within 800m of ocean | World News | Sky News

7. OIL ISSUES

8 EMERGING MARKET& AUSTRALIA ISSUES

Your early currency/gold and silver pricing/Asian and European bourse movements/ and interest rate settings MONDAY morning 7:30 AM….

Your closing bourses for Europe and the Dow along with the USA dollar index closing and interest rates for MONDAY: 12:00 PM

Closing Price for Oil, 4:00 pm/and 10 year USA interest rate:

USA trading day in Graph Form