GOLD CLOSED DOWN $9.65 TO $1794.40//SILVER CLOSED DOWN 22 CENTS TO $22.32.

COMEX GOLD STANDING AT THE COMEX RISES TO 107.322 TONNES//SILVER OZ STANDING RISES TO 45.220 MILLION OZ//COVID COMMENTARIES//VACCINE MANDATE UPDATES//VACCINE IMPACT//TURKEY STOCK MARKET COLLAPSES//TURKISH LIRA COLLAPSES/DOW JONES FALTERS BADLY//ALL BOURSES AROUND THE WORLD COLLAPSE/RUSSIA TELLS NATO ITS RED LINES BUT THEY ARE IGNORED//SWAMP STORIES FOR YOU TONIGHT//

CLOSING GOLD AND SILVER

GOLD CLOSED DOWN $9.65. TO $1794.40

SILVER

SILVER CLOSED DOWN 22 CENTS TO $22.32

ACCESS PRICE CLOSING PRICES FOR GOLD AND SILVER

GOLD: 1789.60

SILVER: 22.27

PLATINUM CLOSED UP 90 CENTS TO $936.15

Palladium closed down 24.60 to $1755.00

END

Editorial of The New York Sun | February 1, 2021

end

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COMEX DETAILS//NOTICES FILED 13

EXCHANGE: COMEX
CONTRACT: DECEMBER 2021 COMEX 100 GOLD FUTURES
SETTLEMENT: 1,803.800000000 USD
INTENT DATE: 12/17/2021 DELIVERY DATE: 12/21/2021
FIRM ORG FIRM NAME ISSUED STOPPED

624 H BOFA SECURITIES 13
737 C ADVANTAGE 2
905 C ADM 11

TOTAL: 13 13
MONTH TO DATE: 33,846

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

receiving today 0/13

Goldman Sachs stopped: 0

NUMBER OF NOTICES FILED TODAY FOR DEC. CONTRACT: 13 NOTICE(S) FOR 1300 OZ (0.0404 tonnes)

TOTAL NUMBER OF NOTICES FILED SO FAR THIS MONTH: 33,846 FOR 3,384,600 OZ (105.27 TONNES)

SILVER//DEC CONTRACT

12 NOTICE(S) FILED TODAY FOR 60,000 OZ/

total number of notices filed so far this month 8535 : for 42,675,000 oz

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

GLD AND SLV INVENTORIES:

GLD

WITH GOLD DOWN $9.65 AND NO PHYSICAL TO BE FOUND ANYWHERE:

A HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF 1.37 TONNES

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 978,57 TONNES OF GOLD//

GLD CLOSING PRICE: $168.16. UP $2.01 OR 1.21%

Silver//SLV

AND WITH NO SILVER AROUND TODAY: WITH SILVER DOWN 22 CENTS

A HUGE CHANGES TO SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//: A WITHDRAWAL OF 925,000 OZ FROM THE SLV

INVESTORS ARE SWITCHING SLV TO SPROTT’S PSLV

CLOSING INVENTORY SLV/ TONIGHT: 537.357 MILLION OZ

SLV closing price NYSE 20.79 up .38 OR 1.86%

Let us have a look at the data for today

SILVER//OUTLINE

SILVER COMEX OI FELL BY A VERY STRONG 1151 CONTRACTS TO 140,963 AND FURTHER FROM THE NEW RECORD OF 244,710, SET FEB 25/2020.. DESPITE THE $0.09 GAIN IN SILVER PRICING AT THE COMEX ON FRIDAY. OUR BANKERS WERE UNSUCCESSFUL IN KNOCKING THE PRICE OF SILVER DOWN (IT ROSE BY $0.09) BUT WERE QUITE SUCCESSFUL IN KNOCKING OUT SOME SILVER LONGS AS WE HAD A STRONG LOSS OF 1230 CONTRACTS ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES .

WE MUST HAVE HAD:
I) HUGE BANKER SHORT COVERING AS THEY ARE VERY ANXIOUS TO GET OUT OF DODGE!!/. II)WE ALSO HAD SOME REDDIT RAPTOR BUYING//. iii) A FAIR ISSUANCE OF EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS iiii) A HUGE INITIAL SILVER STANDING FOR COMEX SILVER MEASURING AT 47.535 MILLION OZ FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S 65,000 OZ QUEUE. JUMP V) STRONG SIZED COMEX OI LOSS.

I AM NOW RECORDING THE DIFFERENTIAL IN OI FROM PRELIMINARY TO FINAL:

THE DIFFERENTIAL FROM PRELIMINARY OI TO FINAL OI SILVER TODAY: CONTRACTS -397

HISTORICAL ACCUMULATION OF EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS DEC 16 ACCUMULATION FOR EFP’S SILVER/JPMORGAN’S HOUSE OF BRIBES/STARTING FROM FIRST DAY/MONTH OF DEC:

TOTAL CONTACTS for 15 days, total contracts: 14,676 or …average per day: 978 contracts or 4.892 million oz per day.

TOTAL NO OF OZ UNDERGOING EFP TO LONDON 14,676 CONTRACTS X 5,000 PER CONTRACT:

73.380 MILLION OZ.

LAST 7 MONTHS TOTAL EFP CONTRACTS ISSUED IN MILLIONS OF OZ:

MAY 137.83 MILLION

JUNE 149.91 MILLION OZ

JULY 129.445 MILLION OZ

AUGUST: MILLION OZ 140.120

SEPT. 28.230 MILLION OZ//

OCT: 94.595 MILLION OZ

NOV: 131.925 MILLION OZ

RESULT: WE HAD A STRONG SIZED DECREASE IN COMEX OI SILVER COMEX CONTRACTS OF 1392 DESPITE OUR 9 CENT GAIN SILVER PRICING AT THE COMEX// FRIDAY THE CME NOTIFIED US THAT WE HAD A SMALL SIZED EFP ISSUANCE OF 200 CONTRACTS( 200 CONTRACTS ISSUED FOR MAR AND 0 CONTRACTS ISSUED FOR ALL OTHER MONTHS) WHICH EXITED OUT OF THE SILVER COMEX TO LONDON AS FORWARDS THE DOMINANT FEATURE TODAY:/ AS WELL AS TODAY /HUGE BANKER SHORT COVERING AS THEY GET OUT OF DODGE//// WE HAVE A GOOD INITIAL SILVER OZ STANDING FOR DEC OF 47.535 MILLION OZ FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S 170,000 OZ QUEUE JUMP .. WE HAD STRONG SIZED LOSS OF 1230 OI CONTRACTS ON THE TWO EXCHANGES

WE HAD 12 NOTICES FILED TODAY FOR 60,000 OZ

GOLD//OUTLINE

IN GOLD, THE COMEX OPEN INTEREST FELL BY A SMALL SIZED 1151 CONTRACTS TO 506,187, 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. 4021 CONTRACTS.

THE SMALL SIZED INCREASE IN COMEX OI CAME WITH OUR GAIN IN PRICE OF $7.05//COMEX GOLD TRING/FRIDAY/.AS IN SILVER WE MUST HAVE HAD HUGE BANKER/ALGO SHORT COVERING ACCOMPANYING OUR FAIR SIZED EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL ISSUANCE. WE HAD ZERO LIQUIDATION AS THE TOTAL GAIN ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES TOTALLED A GOOD SIZED 5251 CONTRACTS…

WE ALSO HAD A HUGE INITIAL STANDING IN GOLD TONNAGE FOR DEC AT 98.000 TONNES, FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S STRONG QUEUE JUMP OF 52,200 OZ//, NEW STANDING 107.322 TONNES

YET ALL OF..THIS HAPPENED WITH OUR GAIN IN PRICE OF $7.05 WITH RESPECT TO FRIDAY’S TRADING

WE HAD A SMALL SIZED GAIN OF 1230 OI CONTRACTS (3.826 PAPER TONNES) ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES

E.F.P. ISSUANCE

THE CME RELEASED THE DATA FOR EFP ISSUANCE AND IT TOTALLED A FAIR SIZED 2381 CONTRACTS:

FOR FEB 2381 ALL OTHER MONTHS ZERO//TOTAL: 2381

The NEW COMEX OI FOR THE GOLD COMPLEX RESTS AT 510,208.

IN ESSENCE WE HAVE A SMALL SIZED INCREASE IN TOTAL CONTRACTS ON THE TWO EXCHANGES OF 1230 CONTRACTS 1151 CONTRACTS DECREASED AT THE COMEX AND 2381 EFP OI CONTRACTS WHICH NAVIGATED OVER TO LONDON. THUS TOTAL OI GAIN ON THE TWO EXCHANGES OF 1230 CONTRACTS OR 3.826 TONNES.

CALCULATIONS ON GAIN/LOSS ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES

WE HAD A FAIR SIZED ISSUANCE IN EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS (2381) ACCOMPANYING THE SMALL SIZED LOSS IN COMEX OI (1151): TOTAL GAIN IN THE TWO EXCHANGE 1230 CONTRACTS. WE NO DOUBT HAD 1) HUGE BANKER SHORT COVERING ,2.) HUGE INITIAL STANDING AT THE GOLD COMEX FOR DEC. AT 98.000 TONNES/FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S QUEUE JUMP OF 52,200 OZ TO LONDON////NEW STANDING OF 107.322TONNES//. 3)ZERO LONG LIQUIDATION,4) FAIR SIZED COMEX OI GAIN 5) FAIR ISSUANCE OF EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL

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 NOV.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 OCT HEADING TOWARDS THE ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH OF NOV, 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 (DEC), 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

DEC

ACCUMULATION OF EFP’S GOLD AT J.P. MORGAN’S HOUSE OF BRIBES: (EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL) FOR THE MONTH OF DEC : 37,202 CONTRACTS OR 3,720,200 oz OR 115.71 TONNES (15 TRADING DAY(S) AND THUS AVERAGING: 2480 EFP CONTRACTS PER TRADING DAY

TO GIVE YOU AN IDEA AS TO THE SIZE OF THESE EFP TRANSFERS : THIS MONTH IN 15 TRADING DAY(S) IN TONNES: 115.71 TONNES

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

THUS EFP TRANSFERS REPRESENTS 115.71/3550 x 100% TONNES 3.26% 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 142.12 TONNES FINAL ISSUANCE ( LOW ISSUANCE)_

OCT: 141.13 TONNES FINAL ISSUANCE (LOW ISSUANCE)

NOV: 312.46 TONNES FINAL ISSUANCE//NEW RECORD!! (INCREASING DRAMATICALLY)//SIGN OF REAL STRESS//SURPASSING THE MARCH 2021 RECORD OF 276.50 TONNES OF EFP

DEC. 115,71 TONNES//INITIAL 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 STRONG SIZED1392 CONTRACTS TO 141,360 AND FURTHER FORM 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 200 CONTRACTS

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

MAR 200 ALL OTHER MONTHS: ZERO. TOTAL EFP ISSUANCE: 200 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 1151 CONTRACTS AND ADD TO THE 200 OI TRANSFERRED TO LONDON THROUGH EFP’S,

WE OBTAIN A VERY STRONG SIZED LOSS OF 1192 OPEN INTEREST CONTRACT FROM OUR TWO EXCHANGES.

THUS IN OUNCES, THE LOSS ON THE TWO EXCHANGES 5.960 MILLION OZ,

OCCURRED WITH OUR $0.09 GAIN IN PRICE.

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)MONDAY MORNING/FRIDAY NIGHT:

SHANGHAI CLOSED DOWN 38.76 PTS OR 1.07% //Hang Sang CLOSED DOWN 447.77 PTS OR 1.83% /The Nikkei closed DOWN 607.87 PTS OR 2.13% //Australia’s all ordinaires CLOSED DOWN 0.31%/Chinese yuan (ONSHORE) closed DOWN 6.3762 /Oil DOWN TO 67.76 dollars per barrel for WTI and UP TO 70.38 for Brent. Stocks in Europe OPENED ALL RED // ONSHORE YUAN CLOSED DOWN AT 6.3762 AGAINST THE DOLLAR. OFFSHORE YUAN CLOSED DOWN ON THE DOLLAR AT 6.3862: /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%

A)NORTH KOREA//USA/OUTLINE

b) REPORT ON JAPAN

OUTLINE

3 C CHINA

OUTLINE

4/EUROPEAN AFFAIRS

OUTLINE

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 1152 CONTRACTS AND CLOSER TO TO 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 WITH OUR GAIN OF $7.05 IN GOLD PRICING FRIDAY’S COMEX TRADING. WE ALSO HAD A FAIR EFP ISSUANCE (2381 CONTRACTS). . 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.

EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL ISSUANCE

WE ARE NOW MOVING TO THE ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH OF DEC.. THE CME REPORTS THAT THE BANKERS ISSUED A FAIR SIZED TRANSFER THROUGH THE EFP ROUTE AS THESE LONGS RECEIVED A DELIVERABLE LONDON FORWARD TOGETHER WITH A FIAT BONUS.,

THAT IS 2381 EFP CONTRACTS WERE ISSUED: ;: , DEC : 0 & FEB. 2381 & ZERO FOR ALL OTHER MONTHS:

TOTAL EFP ISSUANCE: 2381 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 GAINED THE FOLLOWING TODAY ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES: A SMALL SIZED 1230 TOTAL CONTRACTS IN THAT 2381 LONGS WERE TRANSFERRED AS FORWARDS TO LONDON AND WE HAD A SMALL LOSS COMEX OI OF 1151 CONTRACTS..

// WE HAVE A STRONG AMOUNT OF GOLD TONNAGE STANDING FOR DEC (107.322),

HERE ARE THE AMOUNTS THAT STOOD FOR DELIVERY IN THE PRECEDING 9 MONTHS OF 2021:

NOV. 8.074 TONNES

OCT. 57.707 TONNES

SEPT: 11.9160 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- NOV): 488.996 TONNES

THE BANKERS WERE UNSUCCESSFUL IN LOWERING GOLD’S PRICE //// (IT ROSE $7.05)

AND THEY WERE UNSUCCESSFUL IN FLEECING ANY LONGS AS THE TOTAL GAIN ON THE TWO EXCHANGES REGISTERED 3.826 TONNES,ACCOMPANYING OUR HUGE GOLD TONNAGE STANDING FOR DEC (105.689 TONNES)…

WE HAD – 4021 CONTRACTS REMOVED FROM COMEX TRADES. THESE WERE REMOVED AFTER TRADING ENDED LAST NIGHT

NET GAIN ON THE TWO EXCHANGES 1230 CONTRACTS OR 123,000 OZ OR 3.826 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: 506,187 TOTAL OI CONTRACTS X 100 OZ PER CONTRACT = 50.61 MILLION OZ/32,150 OZ PER TONNE = 15.74 TONNES

Estimated gold volume today: 99,844 extremely poor

Confirmed volume on Friday: 168,244 contracts poor

DEC 20

/2021 INITIAL STANDINGS FOR DEC COMEX GOLD

Gold

Gold	Ounces
Withdrawals from Dealers* Inventory in oz*	nil oz
Withdrawals from Customer* Inventory in oz*	191M676.191 oz JPMORGAN: (5486 kilobars) HSBC
Deposit to the Dealer* Inventory in oz*	nil OZ
Deposits to the Customer* Inventory, in oz*	nil
No of oz served (contracts) today	13 notice(s) 1300 OZ 0.0404 TONNES
No of oz to be served (notices)	658 contracts 65,800 oz 2.046 TONNES
Total monthly oz gold served (contracts) so far this month	33,846 notices 3,384,600 OZ 105.27 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 o

DEC 20 COMEX INVENTORY MOVEMENTS//AMOUNTS STANDING

For today:

No dealer deposit

No customer account deposit:

We had 2 customer withdrawals:

i)Out of HSBCL 15,295.805 oz
ii) Out of JPMorgan: 176,380.386 oz (5486 kilobars)

total withdrawals: 191,676.191oz

We had no deposits.

We had 1 kilobar transactions 1out of 2 transactions)

ADJUSTMENTS 0

CALCULATIONS FOR THE AMOUNT OF GOLD STANDING FOR DECEMBER.

For the front month of DECEMBER we have an oi 671 stand for December. for a GAIN of 518 contracts. We had 4 notice filed on FRIDAY so we GAINED 522 contracts or an additional 52,200 oz will stand for delivery in this very active delivery month of December as our bankers search out for badly needed physical gold over on this side of the pond.

JANUARY LOST 251 CONTRACTS TO STAND AT 2502

FEBRUARY LOST 5225 CONTRACTS TO 383,626

We had 13 notice(s) filed today for 1300 oz FOR THE DEC 2021 CONTRACT MONTH

Today, 0 notice(s) were issued from J.P.Morgan dealer account and 0 notices were issued from their client or customer account. The total of all issuance by all participants equates to 13 contract(s) of which 0 notices were stopped (received) by j.P. Morgan dealer and 0 notice(s) was (were) stopped/ Received) by J.P.Morgan//customer account and 0 notice(s) received (stopped) by the squid (Goldman Sachs)

To calculate the INITIAL total number of gold ounces standing for the DEC /2021. contract month,

we take the total number of notices filed so far for the month (33,846) x 100 oz , to which we add the difference between the open interest for the front month of (DEC: 671 CONTRACTS ) minus the number of notices served upon today 13 x 100 oz per contract equals 3,450,400, OZ

OR 107.322 TONNES the number of TONNES standing in this active month of DEC.

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

No of notices filed so far (33,846) x 100 oz+ (671) OI for the front month minus the number of notices served upon today (13} x 100 oz} which equals 3,450,400 oz standing OR 107/322 TONNES in this active delivery month of DEC.

This is a huge delivery for December.

We GAINED 522 contracts or an additional 52200 oz WILL STAND FOR GOLD OVER HERE

TOTAL COMEX GOLD STANDING: 107.322 TONNES

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

COMEX GOLD INVENTORIES/CLASSIFICATION

NEW PLEDGED GOLD:

206,468.649, oz NOW PLEDGED /HSBC 6.42 TONNES

174,041.813 PLEDGED MANFRA 5.41 TONNES

54,339.114oz PLEDGED JPMorgan no 1 1.690

288,481,604, oz JPM No 2 8.97 TONNES

698,821.330 oz pledged June 12/2020 Brinks/27,96 TONNES

12,244.444 oz International Delaware: 0..3808 tonne

Loomis: 18,615.429 oz

total pledged gold: 1,653,017.372oz 51.42 tonnes

TOTAL REGISTERED + ELIGIBLE GOLD: 33,876,824.974 OZ

TOTAL REGISTERED GOLD 17,804.844.982 OZ

TOTAL ELIGIBLE GOLD 16,071.989.992 OZ

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

SILVER COMEX DEC 16/2021

And now for the wild silver comex results

we had 0 deposits into the dealer

total dealer deposits: nil oz

i) We had 0 dealer withdrawal

total dealer withdrawals: nil oz

we had 2 deposits into customer account (ELIGIBLE ACCOUNT)i).

Into Delaware: 1941.43oz

Into JPMorgan: 579,548.900oz

JPMorgan now has 184.074 million oz silver inventory or 51.65% of all official comex silver. (184.074 million/355.756 million

total customer deposits today 581,490.336 oz

we had 1 withdrawals

i)Out of CNT 86,942.382

total withdrawal 86,942.382oz

We had two adjustments: dealer to customer

i) JPMorgan 179,132.560 oz

ii) CNT 591,148.465/0z

Total dealer silver: 92.630 oz

Total of reg + dealer silver: 355.756 million oz/

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

silver open interest data:

Total oi for the silver complex: 141,360 contracts losing 995 contracts on the day

FRONT MONTH OF DEC OI: 521 CONTRACTS losing 0 contracts on the day.

TOTAL NO OF CONTRACTS SERVED UPON THIS MONTH: 8535 CONTRACTS FOR 42,675,000 OZ

CALCULATION OF SILVER OZ STANDING FOR DECEMBER

For the front month of DECEMBER we have an amount of silver standing AT 521 CONTRACTS for a LOSS of 0 contracts. We had 13 notices filed on FRIDAY, so we GAINED 13 contracts or an additional 65,000 oz will stand for delivery in this very active delivery month of December. There is surely no silver on either side of the pond.

JANUARY GAINED 32 CONTRACTS TO STAND AT 2076

FEBRUARY LOST 9 CONTRACTS TO STAND AT 38

NUMBER OF NOTICES FILED TODAY: 12 NOTICES OR 60,000 OZ

Comex volumes: 34,113 very poor (est. today)

Comex volume: confirmed Friday: 41,298 contracts (poor)

To calculate the number of silver ounces that will stand for delivery in DEC. we take the total number of notices filed for the month so far at 8535 x 5,000 oz =. 42,675,000 oz

to which we add the difference between the open interest for the front month of DEC (521) and the number of notices served upon today 12 x (5000 oz) equals the number of ounces standing.

Thus the standings for silver for the DEC./2021 contract month: 8535 (notices served so far) x 5000 oz + OI for front month of DEC (521) – number of notices served upon today (12) x 5000 oz of silver standing for the DEC contract month equates 45,220,000 oz. .

WE GAINED 13 CONTRACTS OR AN ADDITIONAL 65,000 OZ WILL STAND FOR DELIVERY

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

GLD AND SILVER INVENTORY

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

DEC 20/WITH GOLD DOWN $9.65 TODAY; A HUGE CHANGE IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF 1.37 TONNES INTO THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 978.57 TONNES

DEC 17/WITH GOLD UP $7.05 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 977.20 TONNES

DEC 16/WITH GOLD UP $33.05TODAY; A HUGE CHANGE IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 3.4 TONNES FROM THE GLD////INVENTORY REST AT: 977.20 TONNES

DEC15/WITH GOLD DOWN $7.80 TODAY/ A HUGE CHANGE IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.04 TONNES FROM THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 980.60 TONNES.

DEC 14/WITH GOLD DOWN $18.00 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 982.64 TONNES

DEC 13/WITH GOLD UP $3.20 TODAY/NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 982.64 TONNES

DEC 10.WITH GOLD UP $7.30 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 982.64 TONNES

DEC 9/WITH GOLD DOWN $9.10 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 982.64.

DEC 8/WITH GOLD UP $5.50 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 984.38 TONNES

DEC 7/WITH GOLD UP $5.15 TODAY; A HUGE CHANGE IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.74 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 984.38 TONNES

DEC 6/WITH GOLD DOWN $3.90 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 986.17 TONNES//

DEC 3/WITH GOLD UP $20.35 TODAY; A HUGE CHANGE IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 3.85 TONNES FROM THE GLD///INVENTORY RESTS AT 986.17 TONNES

DEC 2/WITH GOLD DOWN $19.80 TODAY; A HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.83 TONNES FROM THE GLD///INVENTORY RESTS AT 990.82 TONNES

DEC 1/WITH GOLD UP $7.05 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 992.85 TONNES

NOV 30/WITH GOLD DOWN $8.70 TODAY; NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESS AT 992.85 TONNES.

NOV 29/WITH GOLD DOWN $3.40 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 992.85 TONNES/

NOV 26/WITH GOLD UP $2.70 TODAY/A HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF 1.76 TONES INTO THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 992.85 TONNES

NOV 24/WITH GOLD UP $.40 TODAY//NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD..INVENTORY RESTS AT 991.11 TONNES

NOV 23/WITH GOLD DOWN $21.85 TODAY: A HUGE CHANGE IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF 6.11 TONNES INTO THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 991.11 TONNES.

NOV 22/WITH GOLD DOWN 54.10 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 985.00 TONNES

NOV 19/WITH GOLD DOWN $9.40 TODAY: A HUGE CHANGE IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF 8.13 TONNES INTO THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 985.00 TONNES.

NOV 18/WITH GOLD DOWN $8.40 TODAY:A SMALL CHANGE IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF .88 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD///INVENTORY RESTS AT 976.87 TONNES

NOV 17/WITH GOLD UP $14.10 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 975.99 TONNES

NOV 16/WITH GOLD DOWN $10.30 TODAY; NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 975.99 TONNES

NOV 15/WITH GOLD DOWN $1.55 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY AT 975.99 TONNES//

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Inventory rests tonight at:

DEC 21/ GLD INVENTORY 978.57 tonnes

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

DEC 20/WITH SILVER DOWN 22 CENTS TODAY: A HUGE CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 895,000 OZ FROM THE SLV////INVENTORY RESTS AT 537.357 MILLION OZ

DEC 17/WITH SILVER UP 9 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/INVENTORY RESTS AT 538.282 MILLION OZ//

DEC 16/WITH SILVER UP 91 CENTS TODAY; A HUGE CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV// A WITHDRAWAL OF 3.33 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV//INVENTORY REST AT 538.282 MILLION OZ

DEC 15WITH SILVER DOWN 38 CENTS TODAY; A HUGE CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/: A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.48 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV///INVENTORY RESTS AT 541.612 MILLION OZ

DEC 14/WITH SILVER DOWN 38 CENTS TODAY; NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 543.092 MILLION OZ

DEC 13/WITH SILVER UP 11 CENTS TODAY; A HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV:A WITHDRAWAL OF 3.561 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 543.092 MILLION OZ//

DEC 10.WITH SILVER UP 19 CENTS TODAY; NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 546.653 MILLION OZ..

DEC 9/WITH SILVER DOWN 43 CENTS TODAY; A HUGE CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV// A DEPOSIT OF 2.96 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV///INVENTORY RESTS AT 546.653 MILLION OZ/

DEC 8/WITH SILVER DOWN 7 CENTS TODAY; NO CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 543.693 MILLION OZ///

DEC 7/WITH SILVER UP 24 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 543.693 MILLION OZ..

DEC 6/WITH SILVER DOWN 25 CENTS TODAY; A HUGE CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.110 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV///INVENTORY RESTS AT 543.693 MILLION OZ//

DEC 3/WITH SILVER UP 21 CENTS TODAY; A BIG CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV:A WITHDRAWAL OF 3.199 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV////INVENTORY RESTS AT 544.803 MILLION OZ//

DEC 2/WITH SILVER DOWN 6 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 548.002 MILLION OZ.

DECM 1/WITH SILVER DOWN 44 CENTS TODAY: A SMALL CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 740,000 OZ FROM THE SLV////INVENTORY RESTS AT 548.002 MILLION OZ//

NOV 30/WITH SILVER DOWN 3 CENTS TODAY; A SMALL CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV// A WITHDRAWAL OF .555 MILLION OZ FORM THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 548.742 MILLION OZ///

NOV 29/WITH SILVER DOWN 25 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 549.297 MILLION OZ//

NOV 26/WITH SILVER DOWN 36 CENTS TODAY; A HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A DEPOSIT OF 2.038 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV.//INVENTORY RESTS AT 549.297 MILLION OZ///

NOV 24/WITH SILVER UP 5 CENTS //NO CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV..INVENTORY RESTS AT 547.261 MILLION OZ

NOV 23.WITH SILVER DOWN 81 CENTS TODAY: A HUGE CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/: A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.128 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV///INVENTORY RESTS AT 547.261 MILLION OZ//

NOV 22/ WITH SILVER DOWN 47 CENTS TODAY; A BIG CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A SURPRISE DEPOSIT OF 1.156 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV///INVENTORY RESTS AT 549.389 MILLION OZ/

NOV 19/WITH SILVER DOWN 14 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 548.233 MILLION OZ..

NOV 18/WITH SILVER DOWN 27 CENTS TODAY/ NO CHANGES IN SILVER STANDING AT THE SLV.//INVENTORY REST AT 548.233 MILLION OZ//

NOV 17/WITH SILVER UP 24 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER STANDING AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 548.233 MILLION OZ//

NOV 16/WITH SILVER DOWN 17 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER STANDING AT THE SLV//INVENTORY RESTS AT 548.233 MILLION OZ//

NOV 15/WITH SILVER DOWN 25 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER AT THE SLV/ INVENTORY RESTS AT 548.233 MILLION OZ

SLV INVENTORY RESTS TONIGHT AT 537.357 MILLION OZ//

PHYSICAL GOLD/SILVER STORIES

PETER SCHIFF

LAWRIE WILLIAM//,//Egon von Greyerz///Matthew Piepenburg via GoldSwitzerland.com,James RICKARDS

Rickards: The Great Supply Chain Collapse

SUNDAY, DEC 19, 2021 – 03:05 PM

Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com,

What’s at the root of the supply chain breakdown? That’s a critical question but the answer is almost irrelevant. The supply chain is a complex dynamic system of immense scale. It is of a complexity comparable to the climate as a system.

This means that exact cause and effect cannot be computed because the processing power needed exceeds the combined processing power of every computer in the world.

Most people have some notion of how supply chains work, but few understand how extensive, complex and vulnerable they are. If you go to the store to buy a loaf of bread, you know that the bread did not mystically appear on the shelf.

It was delivered by a local bakery, put on the shelf by a clerk, you carried it home and served it with dinner. That’s a succinct description of a supply chain – from baker to store to home.

Yet that description barely scratches the surface. What about the truck driver who delivered the bread from the bakery to the store? Where did the bakery get the flour, yeast and water needed to make the bread? What about the ovens used to bake the bread? When the bread was baked, it was put in clear or paper wrappers of some sort. Where did those come from?

Even that expanded description of a supply chain is just getting started in terms of a complete chain. The flour used for baking came from wheat. That wheat was grown on a farm and harvested with heavy equipment. The farmer hires labor, uses water and fertilizer and sends his wheat out for processing and packaging before it gets to the bakery.

The manufacturer who built the oven has his own supply chain of steel, tempered glass, semiconductors, electrical circuits and other inputs needed to build the ovens. The ovens are either hand crafted (engineered-to-order) or mass produced (made-to-stock) in a factory that may use either assembly lines or manufacturing cells to get the job done.

The factory requires inputs of electricity, natural gas, heating and ventilation systems, and skilled labor to turn out the ovens.

The store that sells the bread is on the receiving end of numerous supply chains. It also requires electricity, natural gas, heating and ventilation systems and skilled labor to keep the doors open and keep merchandise in stock. The store has loading docks, back rooms for inventory, forklifts and conveyor belts to move its merchandise from truck to shelf.

Every link in these supply chains requires transportation. The farmer relies on trucks or rail for deliveries of seeds, fertilizers, equipment and other inputs. The oven manufacturer also relies on trucks or rail for deliveries of its inputs, including oven components. The bakery and the store rely mainly on trucks for deliveries of their inputs and the finished loaves of bread. The consumer relies on her automobile to get to the store and return home.

These transportation modes have their own supply chains involving truck drivers, train engineers, good roads, good railroads, rail spurs and energy supplies to keep moving and keep deliveries on time.

This entire network (farms, factories, bakeries, stores, trucks, railroads and consumers) relies on energy supplies to keep working. The energy can come from nuclear reactors, coal-fired or natural gas-fired power plants or renewable sources fed to a grid of high-tension wires, substations, transformers and local connections to reach the individual user.

Everything described above sits somewhere in a complex supply chain needed to produce one loaf of bread. Now take everything else in the grocery store (fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry, fish, canned goods, coffee, condiments and so on) and imagine the supply chains needed for each one of those products.

Then take all the other stores in the shopping center (home goods, clothing, pharmacy, hardware, restaurants, sporting goods) and imagine all the goods and services available from those vendors and the supply chains behind each and every one of those.

In case you think I have exaggerated the components and steps in making a loaf of bread in the above example, I didn’t. The example above is a grossly simplified description of the actual supply chain.

A full description of the needed supply chain would reach back further (where do the seeds for the wheat come from?) and branch off in tangential directions (where do the bread wrappers originate?).

A full description of the loaf of bread supply chain with choice of vendor analysis, quality-control tests and bulk purchase discounts among other decision tree branches could easily stretch to several hundred pages.

Now consider all of the supply chain links and possible bottlenecks described above are purely domestic. But very few supply chains are actually that local. CEOs, logistics engineers, consultants and politicians have spent the past 30 years making supply chains global.

You’ve heard discussion of globalization since the early 1990s. What one may not have realized is that the process that was being globalized was the supply chain.

You know your iPhone comes from China. Did you know that the specialized glass used in the iPhone comes from South Korea? Did you know the semiconductors in the iPhone come from Taiwan? That the intellectual property and design of the iPhone are from California?

The iPhone includes flash storage from Japan, gyroscopes from Germany, audio amplifiers, battery chargers, display port multiplexers, batteries, cameras and hundreds of other advanced parts.

In total, Apple works with suppliers in 43 countries on six continents to source the materials and parts that go into an iPhone. That’s a quick overview of the iPhone supply chain. Of course, every supplier in that supply chain has its own supply chain of sources and processes. Again, supply chains are immensely complex.

Once the global perspective is added, we have to expand our transportation options from trucks and trains to include ships and planes. That means ports and airports are additional links in the chain.

Those facilities have their own links and inputs including cranes, containers, port authorities, air traffic controllers, pilots, captains and the vessels themselves. And to our list of trucks, trains, ships and planes we can add pipelines that transport liquids such as petroleum, gasoline and natural gas.

You get the idea. Supply chains may be hidden but they are everywhere. They are interconnected, densely networked and unimaginably complex.

The touchstone of these efforts was the idea of just-in-time inventory (JIT). If you’re installing seats on an automobile assembly line, it is ideal if those seats arrive at the plant the same morning as the installation. That minimizes storage and inventory costs. The same is true for every part installed on the assembly line. The logistics behind this are daunting but can be managed with state-of-the-art software.

All these efforts are fine as far as they go. The cost savings are real. The supply chains are efficient. The capacity of this system to keep a lid on costs is demonstrable.

The supply chain revolution since the early 1990s has been about cost reduction, which gets passed to consumers in the form of lower prices. That practically explains the entire phenomenon.

There’s only one problem. The system is extremely fragile. When things break down, everything gets worse at the same time. One missed delivery can result in an entire assembly line shutting down. One delayed vessel can result in empty shelves. One power outage can result in a transportation breakdown.

In a nutshell, that’s what has happened to the global supply chain. There’s a lack of redundancy. The system is not robust to shocks. The shocks have occurred nevertheless (pandemic, trade wars, China-U.S. decoupling, bank collateral shortages and more) and the system has broken down.

The failures have cascaded. Delays in receiving commodity inputs in China have resulted in manufacturing delays for exports. Energy shortages in China have resulted in further disruption of steel production, mining, transportation and other basic industries.

Port delays in Los Angeles have resulted in component and finished goods delayed in the U.S. Semiconductor shortages have halted production of electronics, appliances, automobiles and other consumer durables that rely on automated applications. You’ve seen how complex the system is.

The bottom line is if supply chains are breaking down, the economy is breaking down. If the economy breaks down, the breakdown of social order is not far behind.

And the costs of social disorder are far higher than any possible savings from supposedly efficient supply chains.

end

Pam and Russ Martens: JPM’s crime wave continues, impugning last year’s settlement with Justice Dept.

By Pam and Russ Martens

Wall Street on Parade

Monday, December 20, 2021

JPMorgan Chase is the largest bank in the United States. It also has the scandalous distinction of having admitted to five criminal felony counts brought by the U.S. Department of Justice since 2014 and a breathtaking series of additional charges from other regulators.

On Friday, the Securities and Exchange Commission fined the securities unit of JPMorgan Chase $125 million for evading the ability of the SEC to adequately conduct its investigations of the bank because there was firmwide use by traders, supervisors and other personnel of non- official communications devices to conduct its business, while the firm failed to record and retain these messages as required by law.

These new violations occurred despite similar conduct during the bank’s participation in the rigging of the foreign exchange market, which brought a criminal felony charge against the bank by the Justice Department in May 2015.

In that case, conspiring banks including JPMorgan Chase used Bloomberg electronic chat rooms, which they referred to as “The Cartel” or “The Mafia.”…

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2021/12/jpmorgans-crime- wave-continues-calling-into-question-the-justice-
departments-lax-settlement-with-the-bank-last-year/

ii) Important gold commentaries courtesy of GATA/Chris Powell

The Globe and Mail: Five big mining companies bid for Great Bear

As promised!!!

Submitted by admin on Fri, 2021-12-17 18:36 Section: Daily Dispatches

Inside the Bidding War for Great Bear that Saw Kinross Emerge as Winner

By Niall McGee
The Globe and Mail, Toronto
Friday, December 17, 2021

Five major mining companies engaged in an intense bidding war for Red Lake exploration company Great Bear Resources Ltd., with Kinross Gold Corp. eventually emerging the winner last week.

Three sources familiar with the talks said Canadian heavyweights Barrick Gold Corp. and Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd., as well as Australia’s Evolution Mining Ltd. and Newcrest Mining Ltd. were offered the opportunity to bid on Great Bear. The parties were given access to Great Bear’s confidential data, conducted site visits at Red Lake in northwestern Ontario and almost all tabled formal offers.

The Globe and Mail is not identifying the sources as they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. Kinross, Barrick, Agnico, and Evolution declined to comment. Newcrest did not respond to a request for a statement.

“I can’t really comment on the internal details of the Kinross transaction, other than to confirm it was multi-party,” Chris Taylor, chief executive officer of Great Bear, wrote in an e-mail to The Globe. …

… For the remainder of the report:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-gold-diggers-inside-the-intense-bidding-war-for-great-bear/

end

Par for the course for these criminals

CNBC/GATA

JPMorgan is fined $200 million for evading regulators by letting traders use WhatsApp

Submitted by admin on Fri, 2021-12-17 11:06 Section: Daily Dispatches

They’re supposed to stick to the secure scrambler line to the New York Fed’s trading room.

* * *

By Thomas Franck and Hugh Son
CNBC, New York
Friday, December 17, 2021

JPMorgan Chase is paying $200 million in fines to two U.S. banking regulators to settle charges that its Wall Street division allowed employees to use WhatsApp and other platforms to circumvent federal record-keeping laws.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said today that JPMorgan Securities agreed to pay $125 million after admitting to “widespread” record-keeping failures in recent years. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission also said today that it had fined the bank $75 million for allowing unapproved communications since at least 2015.

SEC officials who spoke to reporters Thursday evening said JPMorgan’s failure to preserve those offline conversations violated federal securities law and left the regulator blind to exchanges between the bank and its clients.

Federal law requires financial firms to keep meticulous records of electronic messages between brokers and clients so regulators can make sure those firms aren’t skirting anti-fraud or antitrust laws. …

… For the remainder of the report:

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/17/jpmorgan-agrees-to-125-million-fine-for-letting-employees-use-whatsapp-to-evade-regulators.html

end

OTHER GOLD COMMENTARIES:

ROBERT KYOSAKI/ANDREW MAGUIRE

OTHER COMMODITIES/LUMBER

END CRYPTOCURRENCIES/

END

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

ONSHORE YUAN: 6.3762

OFFSHORE YUAN: 6.3862

HANG SANG CLOSED DOWN 447.77 PTS OR 1.93%

2. Nikkei closed DOWN 607.87 PTS OR 2.13%

3. Europe stocks ALL RED

USA dollar INDEX DOWN TO 96;52/Euro RISES TO 1.1269-

3b Japan 10 YR bond yield: FALLS TO. +.035/ !!!!(Japan buying 100% of bond issuance)/Japanese yen vs usa cross now at 113.56/ 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//

3c Nikkei now JUST ABOVE 17,000

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

3e WTI:: 67.76 and Brent: 70.28-

3f Gold DOWN/JAPANESE Yen UP 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 DOWN for WTI and DOWN FOR Brent this morning

3i European bond buying continues to push yields lower on all fronts in the EMU. German 10yr bund RISES TO -.0.383%/Italian 10 Yr bond yield FALLS to 0.92% /SPAIN 10 YR BOND YIELD RISES TO 0.34%…ITALIAN 10 YR BOND YIELD/GERMAN BUND: 1.35: DANGEROUS FOR THE ITALIAN BANKING SYSTEM

3j Greek 10 year bond yield RISES TO : 1.20

3k Gold at $1798.00 silver at: 22.26 7 am est) SILVER NEXT RESISTANCE LEVEL AT $30.00

3l USA vs Russian rouble; (Russian rouble UP 7/100 in roubles/dollar) 74.26

3m oil into the 67 dollar handle for WTI and 70 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 113.56 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 .9233 as the Swiss Franc is still rising against most currencies. Euro vs SF 1.0407 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.

USA 10 YR BOND YIELD: 1.383

USA 30 YR BOND YIELD: 1.798

USA DOLLAR VS TURKISH LIRA: 17.67 DEADLY

Stocks, Futures, Oil Tumble On Omicron Lockdowns, Manchin Shockwave

MONDAY, DEC 20, 2021 – 08:02 AM

Global stocks and US equity futures are sharply lower to start the otherwise very quiet holiday week, dragged lower by Manchin’s shock decision to kill Biden’s economic agenda (which Goldman said would cut US Q1 GDP from 3% to 2%), accelerating government measures to counter the fast-spreading omicron variant and fears over the growth outlook amid a tightening Fed. US equity futures tumbled almost 100 points from their Friday close (and more than 200 points from Thursday’s all time high before paring some losses buoyed by optimism from news that Moderna’s booster vaccine increases antibodies 37-fold against omicron. Treasury yields also pared a sharp drop as low as 1.35% and the dollar held a jump from Friday, while crude oil slid on worries that mobility curbs to tackle the strain will hurt demand. As of 730am S&P 500 futures were down down 1.1%, Nasdaq 100 -1.3%, and Dow -1.0%.

Global stocks have retreated from record highs in recent weeks amid concerns about Covid-19 hurting the economic recovery and as central banks pivot toward fighting inflation. Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said a faster wind-down of the central bank’s bond-buying program puts it in a position to start lifting interest rates as early as March.

“In our view, markets can look through omicron concerns, and the gradual pace of monetary tightening won’t bring the equity rally to an end,” UBS Global Wealth Management wrote in a note. “Overall, the latest news does not change our outlook for equities.”

Luke Hickmore, investment director at Standard Life Investments, also recommended buying the dip. “The prospects for growth will improve rapidly from here,” he said. “The market will likely see a recovery in the new year when liquidity returns.”

In the weekend’s biggest news, senator Joe Manchin blindsided the White House on Sunday by rejecting Biden’s $1.75 trillion tax-and-spending package, prompting a sharply critical statement from the White House which called Manchin’s decision a “sudden and inexplicable reversal.” Biden and top Democrats must now regroup to see if a scaled-back version remains possible with little more than 10 months before midterm elections that will decide control of Congress. As noted late last night, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. cut its forecast for U.S. economic growth for next year after Manchin’s move (more below). On Monday, Chuck Schumer said the Senate will still vote “very early” in 2022 on Biden’s economic agenda, although it was unclear just what the new plan will look like now that Build Back Better is dead.

Not helping matters were the latest development in the Omicron front where the biggest European countries are introducing more curbs, with U.K. officials keeping open the possiblity of stronger measures before Christmas and the Netherlands returning to lockdown, even as Biden’s chief medical advisor said further U.S. lockdowns are unlikely. In some “good” news, said a third dose of its Covid-19 vaccine saw a 37-fold increase in neutralizing antibodies against omicron. Ironically. While investors remain on edge over the outlook for economic activity, there remains little evidence that the new variant causes illness as severe as the delta variant, especially among those already vaccinated.

“The main reason behind the market sell off today is the rejection of Biden’s $2 trillion tax-and-spending package, which will lead to a reduction in U.S. economic growth forecasts,” said Michel Keusch, a portfolio manager at Bellevue Asset Management. “With trading volumes getting thinner and thinner into the year end, this is the catalyst creating some short-term nervousness.”

Then there are tightening concerns: the Federal Reserve’s decision to increase the pace of tapering last week is also adding to investor nerves about the outlook for 2022. And now, without either fiscal or monetary support, economists see a policy-induced slowdown in the economy where Goldman on Sunday cut its real GDP forecast for 2022: 2% in Q1 (vs. 3% prior), 3% in Q2 (vs. 3.5% prior), and 2.75% in Q3 (vs. 3% prior).

One place which is convinced the Fed will not meet its targets it the bond market where traders of eurodollar futures price rates much lower than FOMC targets for the end of 2023 and 2024.

Finally, as Bloomberg notes, there is also the issue of divergent global monetary policy to contend with, as the People’s Bank of China stepped up easing overnight with the first rate cut in 20 months.

Looking at the premarket, travel stocks fell the most with United Airlines down 3.4% leading declines among major U.S. carriers, while a 4% slide in Royal Caribbean Cruises led the fall among cruise operators. Energy and industrial bellwethers also declined, with Chevron, 3M and Caterpillar falling over 2% each. Major U.S. tech and internet stocks slumped hitting shares in most highly valued names, as well as in cyclicals. Apple fell as much as 2.1% premarket while fellow large- cap tech names also drop, with Facebook-owner Meta Platforms down 1.9%, Alphabet -1.2%, Amazon.com -1.7%, Twitter -2.1%, Microsoft -1.6%. Here are some of the other big U.S. movers today:

Major U.S. tech and internet stocks drop in premarket trading as risk appetite sours globally amid worries over further pandemic- related restrictions, hitting shares in most highly valued names, as well as in cyclicals.
Shares in U.S. renewables firms drop in premarket after U.S. Senator Joe Manchin’s surprise rejection of President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion package.
Moderna (MRNA US) rises 6% in U.S. premarket after the company said that a booster dose of its Covid-19 vaccine increased antibody levels against the omicron variant.
Society Pass (SOPA US) surges 22% in premarket after the loyalty platform operator said in a statement it has been added to the Russell 2000 Index.
Boston Beer (SAM US) upgraded to hold at Jefferies following pullback of more than 60% in the shares related to “massive” reset in expectations for hard seltzers, removing the only negative rating on the stock. Shares up 0.3% on low volume in premarket.

“After battling endless headwinds in recent weeks, markets have finally been knocked over as the rapid spread of Omicron finally reaches panic mode,” Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, wrote in a client note.

Europe’s Stoxx 600 also stumbled, now down about 1.4% after falling as much as 2.6%, weighed down the most by travel and insurance. All sectors are in red. FTSE 100 recovers slightly as energy gets a leg up, but is still off by 1.2%. Dax -2%. Germany’s new coalition government picked Joachim Nagel, a Bank for International Settlements official, as the central bank’s next president.

Earlier in the session, Asian stocks were set for the biggest drop since March, as the spread of the omicron variant and a surprising setback to U.S. President Joe Biden’s economic agenda forced traders to take bets off the table. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index sank as much as 2%, headed for its lowest close since November 2020, with tech and consumer shares the biggest drags.

Relatively thin trading ahead of the year-end exacerbated declines in the region, as investors grapple with fresh outbreaks of Covid-19 and monetary policy tightening globally. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index is down about 15% from a peak in February, compared with an 18% gain in the S&P 500. “Omicron’s spread over the festive holidays and Manchin” are driving the risk-off mood, said Wai Ho Leong, strategist at Modular Asset Management (Singapore). “But most of all, it is the lack of liquidity in all markets.” India was the worst performer around the region, with its benchmark index poised to enter a correction amid the spread of the omicron variant. Chinese stocks also dropped despite a cut to bank borrowing costs for the first time in 20 months

In FX, the dollar reversed gains and was little changed. The pound fell in line with other risk- sensitive currencies as global market sentiment soured; gilts advanced. Hedging the major currencies over the next month comes at a similar cost, yet the pound turns expensive further out as it holds a higher beta on monetary policy divergence. The Australian and New Zealand dollars followed a broader move lower in commodity FX amid a slide in oil and stocks. The yen advanced with Japanese government bonds. The lira tumbled to another record low after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged to continue cutting interest rates.

In rates, Treasury yields fell by ~3bp in 5-year sector, steepening 5s30s spread by 3bp on the day as long-end yields were little changed; 10-year yields 1bp lower around 1.39%, outperforming bunds and gilts. Treasuries drifted higher Monday as global stocks extended losses. Gains were led by front- and belly of the curve, while eurodollars advanced and the amount of Federal Reserve rate-hike premium for 2024 and 2024 eased. Long-end lagged the move ahead of a 20-year bond auction Tuesday. Bund and gilt curves are mixed. Italy lags in the peripheral complex, widening ~2bps to Germany.

In commodities, Brent crude extends dropped to trade down as much as 5.3%, trading as low as $69.60/bbl before paring some losses, with Brent down 3% to $71 per barrel, and WTI -4% to around the $68-handle. Spot gold drifts below the $1,800-handle. Base metals complex under pressure; LME aluminum and nickel decline the most.

There is nothing on the economic calendar today except that Nov. Leading Index, which is estimated to print at 0.9%.

Market Snapshot

S&P 500 futures down 1.6% to 4,535.75
MXAP down 1.8% to 187.95
MXAPJ down 1.8% to 607.98
Nikkei down 2.1% to 27,937.81
Topix down 2.2% to 1,941.33
Hang Seng Index down 1.9% to 22,744.86
Shanghai Composite down 1.1% to 3,593.60
Sensex down 2.0% to 55,848.23
Australia S&P/ASX 200 down 0.2% to 7,292.16
Kospi down 1.8% to 2,963.00
STOXX Europe 600 down 2.2% to 463.29
German 10Y yield little changed at -0.40%
Euro up 0.2% to $1.1259
Brent Futures down 3.9% to $70.67/bbl
Gold spot up 0.1% to $1,800.19
U.S. Dollar Index little changed at 96.61

Top Overnight News from Bloomberg

President Joe Biden faces the unexpected task of quickly rewriting his policy agenda in a crucial election year after a key Senate Democrat abruptly rejected his signature $1.75 trillion economic plan
Germany’s new coalition government picked Joachim Nagel, a former Bundesbank senior official, as the central bank’s next chief, according to a person with knowledge of the matter
The ECB will not raise interest rates in 2022 if inflation behaves as expected, governing council member Pablo Hernandez de Cos told Expansion newspaper in an interview
Europe’s biggest countries are introducing more curbs to fight a surge in Covid-19 infections, from another lockdown in the Netherlands to stricter travel restrictions at the height of the holiday period
Chinese property stocks tumbled close to a fresh five-year low after a series of asset sales underscored concern that equity investors will bear the brunt of losses as developers offload projects to repay debt
Chinese banks lowered borrowing costs for the first time in 20 months, foreshadowing more monetary support to an economy showing strain from a property slump, weak private consumption and sporadic virus outbreaks

A more detail look at global markets courtesy of Newsquawk

Asia-Pac equities traded mostly lower following the volatile session on Wall Street on Friday, which saw the Dow Jones, S&P 500 and the Nasdaq all posting varying degrees of losses, whilst the Russell 2000 outperformed with decent gains. Overnight, US equity futures opened with a mild upside bias, albeit the optimism faded in early trade as risk aversion materialised, with the ES Mar 2022 contract falling below its 50 DMA (4,596) whilst the NQ and RTY saw losses of over 1% apiece. Sentiment was hit by the slew of concerning COVID headlines over the weekend, whilst Friday saw further hawkish rhetoric from Fed officials – with Fed’s Waller suggesting the whole point of accelerating the bond taper was to make the March Fed meeting a live meeting for the first hike, and under his base case March is very likely for lift-off, although it could be pushed back to May. The ASX 200 (-0.3%) was pressured by some large-cap miners and banks, whilst the Nikkei 225 (-2.1%) and KOSPI (-1.8%) conformed to the downbeat tone, with upside in the former also capped by recent JPY strength. The Hang Seng (-1.9%) and Shanghai Comp (-1.1%) initially saw shallower losses after the PBoC opted to cut the 1yr Loan Prime Rate by 5bps, whilst the 5yr rate was maintained, although the property sector faced more woes after S&P downgraded Evergrande to Selective Default, whilst Kaisa shares slumped after trade resumed following a two-week hiatus, with the Co. in discussions regarding a debt restructuring plan. The Hang Seng dipped below 23,000 for the first time since May 2020. Elsewhere, US 10yr futures continued edging higher as APAC risk aversion supported the haven, whilst Goldman Sachs also cut its US real GDP Growth forecasts on the Build Back Better blockade.

Top Asian News

Coal India Defends Quality Level of Shipments After Complaints
Hong Kong Eyes New Security Law After Electing Loyalist Council
Asian Stocks Drop to Lowest in 13 Months on Virus Woes, Manchin
Best Way for China to Lower Market Rates is to Sell Yuan: Nomura

European bourses commenced the week on the backfoot, continuing the broad pressure seen in APAC trade, as focus is firmly fixed on the Omicron variant. The downside in APAC hours was also a feature of the choppy trade in the US on Friday, and amid non-COVID catalysts such as US Senator Manchin presenting a stumbling block to BBB which effectively ends the chances it can be passed this year, while hawkish central banks is also a theme traders are cognizant of for next year. Euro Stoxx 50 -1.4%, benchmarks are lower across the board as further COVID-19 restrictions are imposed/touted; thus far, the most stringent has seen the Netherlands return to lockdowns, while the likes of the UK and Germany are mulling measures. Vaccine producer Moderna (+5.5% in premarket trade) released preliminary booster data vs Omicron, which saw a modest paring of the risk-off conditions; the vaccine boosts neutralising antibody levels by 37-fold vs pre-boost levels. All sectors remain in the red however, with underperformance in those most exposed to COVID restrictions, such as Travel & Leisure, Oil & Gas and Autos. Individual movers were predominantly dictated by the broader price action; however, THG (+12.5%) is the morning’s outperformer following reports that a notable short on the name has removed its position. Meanwhile, US futures are softer across the board (ES -1.3%) ahead of a very sparse docket where focus will, as it is in European hours, centre around the fiscal narrative and COVID. On the latter, President Biden is due to speak on the situation on Tuesday, calling for individuals to get vaccinated.

Top European News

Johnson Appoints Truss to Key Brexit Role After Torrid Week
Germany Picks Bundesbank Veteran Nagel as Central Bank Chief
Czech Billionaire Family Faces Final Showdown Over Bank Merger
Flashpoints That May Heal or Deepen the Lira’s Pain in 2022

In FX, the Dollar is mixed across the board, but retaining an upward bias overall amidst greater gains vs high beta, activity and cyclical currencies compared to losses against safer havens as broad risk sentiment sours on a number of factors, but mainly COVID-19. Hence, the index is holding quite firmly above 96.500 within a 96.504-680 range even though US Treasury yields are soft and the curve is marginally flatter, with traction or the Greenback coming via hawkish comments in wake of last week’s FOMC from Fed’s Waller who would not object to lifting rates as soon as tapering is done next March. Ahead, a very sparse Monday agenda only comprises November’s leading index.

JPY/EUR/CHF/XAU – As noted above, risk-off positioning due to the ongoing spread of Omicron has prompted demand for the Yen, the Euro, with added momentum from bullish Eur/Gbp cross flows, plus the Franc and Gold to lesser extents. Usd/Jpy is tethered around 113.50 in response, though unhindered by imposing option expiries in contrast to last Friday and the headline pair capped by technical resistance in the form of 21 and 50 DMAs that come in at 113.77 and 113.83 respectively today. Meanwhile, Eur/Usd is back above 1.1250 amidst mixed ECB vibes as de Cos underscores guidance for no hikes in 2022, but sources say that GC hawks wanted explicit recognition of upside inflation risks and were shouted down by chief economist Lane. However, Eur/Gbp has bounced even more firmly from sub-0.8500 lows on what looks like a combination of early year end demand or RHS orders and Pound underperformance on pandemic, political and Brexit-related factors. Elsewhere, Usd/Chf is hovering mostly sub-0.9250 and Eur/Chf is pivoting 1.0400 with latest weekly Swiss sight deposits showing no sign of intervention and Gold is rotating around Usd 1800/oz after a false upside breach of Usd 1810, but not quite enough follow-through buying to scale another upside target circa Usd 1815.
GBP/AUD/NZD/CAD – The major fall guys, as Sterling loses 1.3200+ status yet again on all the aforementioned negatives, and also feels some contagion from weakness in Brent, while the Aussie is straddling 0.7100, the Kiwi is trying to keep its head above 0.6700 and the Loonie contain declines through 1.2900 alongside the latest retracement in WTI.

In commodities, WTI and Brent are also risk-off, moving in tandem with the equity action, on the COVID-19 narrative and implementation/prospect of further restrictions hitting the demand-side of the equation. WTI relinquishes USD 67.00/bbl and Brent gave up the USD 70.00/bbl level. In fitting the broader market move, some easing of the initial downside was seen post-Moderna’s update. Elsewhere, in crude specifics, Libya’s NOC confirmed reports that the Petroleum Facilities Guard was blocking several fields in the region; some suggest production of oil has dropped to 950k BPD due to losses of production at El Sharara field (estimated at 280k BPD). Elsewhere, OPEC+ compliance has reportedly increased marginally in November, in-fitting with the assessments in earlier sourced reports. In metals, spot gold and silver are contained on the session with little evidence of risk-off making its self-known at this point in time, with the yellow metal pivoting USD 1800/oz. Elsewhere, copper is impacted on the risk tone but offset somewhat by Chile’s President-elect Boric saying he will oppose the Dominga copper-iron mine project.

US Event Calendar

10am: Nov. Leading Index, est. 0.9%, prior 0.9%

DB’s Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap

As we arrive at the final week before Christmas, there’s plenty of newsflow from the weekend for markets to digest this morning. In particular, there was the announcement from the US that Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia wouldn’t be able to support the Build Back Better Bill, which has been the subject of intense negotiations over recent weeks and marks a significant blow for President Biden’s economic agenda. Meanwhile on the Covid front, there was a further ratcheting up of concerns about the Omicron variant, with the Netherlands becoming the latest European country to go back into lockdown as of yesterday, as cases continue to spread elsewhere. But otherwise, the events calendar is looking fairly quiet for now in this holiday-shortened week, with just a few lower-tier data releases and the occasional central bank speaker.

We’ll start with Omicron, since that remains one of the biggest issues for markets right now and has significantly clouded the outlook moving into year-end. In a nutshell, the news over the weekend from Europe has only pointed in the direction of further restrictions across multiple countries, with the Netherlands being the most severe as a full lockdown was announced by the Prime Minister on Saturday that leaves just supermarkets and essential shops open, with even schools shut. When it comes to socialising, people will not be allowed to receive more than 2 visitors aged 13 and over per day, although over 24-26 December, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, this will be raised to 4 people.

Elsewhere in Europe there was a similar pattern towards tougher measures, with the Irish PM announcing on Friday evening that there would be an 8pm closing time for bars, restaurants and theatres, among others, which would last from today until January 30. Over in Spain, Prime Minister Sánchez said in a televised address yesterday that he’d be meeting with regional leaders virtually on Wednesday to look at measures for the weeks ahead. In Italy, it’s been widely reported that the government is looking at further measures to contain the spread as well, and they’re set to meet on Thursday to discuss these, whilst here in the UK, Health Secretary Javid was not ruling out further restrictions this side of Christmas. Separately in the US, President Biden is set to deliver a speech tomorrow about Covid and the steps that the administration will be taking, with Press Secretary Jen Psaki tweeting that Biden would also be “issuing a stark warning of what the winter will look like for Americans that choose to remain unvaccinated.”

For those after a bit more optimism ahead of Christmas, then a couple of DB research notes out on Friday about the new variant will definitely be of interest. The first by FX Strategist Shreyas Gopal (link here) looks at London, which is the epicentre of Omicron infections in the UK, and tracks cases there against those in the South African province of Gauteng a couple of weeks back. The good news is that if the relationship is similar, then that does suggest a peak in cases soon. The other note comes from our head of rates research Francis Yared (link here) who shows that although deaths are starting to increase in South Africa, they’re currently on a much lower trajectory relative to cases compared to previous waves. An important question for markets is whether these patterns from South Africa can be extrapolated over to the advanced economies, which have much higher vaccination rates on the one hand, but also much older populations on the other, so there are factors that could push in either direction. Keep an eye out on these leading indicators from South Africa, as well as London, since they’ll have implications for what could occur in the coming weeks elsewhere.

Away from Covid, the other main piece of news over the weekend came from the US, where the moderate Democratic senator Joe Manchin said that he couldn’t support the Build Back Better package that forms a key part of President Biden’s economic agenda, with much of his proposals on social programs and climate change. The news broke in an interview from Manchin on Fox News Sunday, when Manchin said “I can’t get there” when it comes to supporting the package, and follows direct negotiations that he’d been having with the president. Manchin’s support is crucial for the bill’s passage, since the Senate is split 50-50 between the Democrats and Republicans, with the Democrats having control only by virtue of Vice President Harris’ casting vote. So with zero Republican support for the package, that required every single Democratic senator on board with the proposals, giving Manchin enormous influence.

A statement from White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki in response to Manchin did not sound impressed, saying that his comments “are at odds with his discussions this week with the President, with White House staff, and with his own public utterances.” It went on to say that “we will continue to press him to see if he will reverse his position yet again, to honor his prior commitments and be true to his word.” Nevertheless, Manchin’s own written statement wasn’t using the language of compromise, saying that his “Democratic colleagues in Washington are determined to dramatically reshape our society in a way that leaves our country even more vulnerable to the threats we face.” So the implication from Manchin is that Build Back Better won’t be happening this side of the mid-terms in its current form, and would require a fundamental rethink and meaningful slimming down were it to have any chance of passing.

Those twin factors of further Omicron restrictions and Manchin’s announcement have weighed heavily on Asian equities overnight, with the Nikkei (-2.17%), KOSPI (-1.66%), Hang Seng (-1.44%), CSI (-0.98%) and Shanghai Composite (-0.75%) all moving lower. In India, the benchmark NIFTY is also down 10% from its peak in October, putting the index in correction territory. However, we did get a policy easing in China, with banks lowering the 1yr prime rate by -5bps to 3.8%. That move came alongside separate remarks from Bank of Japan Governor Kuroda, who said it was too early to think about policy normalisation, and that discussion should take place once inflation is closer to the 2% target. European and US equities are set to follow Asia lower later on, with futures on both the S&P 500 (-0.97%) and the DAX (-1.63%) both pointing lower this morning. And oil prices been struggling overnight as well in light of the recent virus news, with Brent Crude down -3.02% to $71.30/bbl at time of writing.

Recapping last week now, and the main events were the array of central bank meetings ahead of the holidays. In the US, the Fed doubled the pace of their tapering as expected, which would bring net asset purchases to an end in mid-March, and the median dot now expects three rate hikes in 2022. By the close on Friday, Fed funds futures were pricing in a 55% chance of an initial hike by the March meeting, and an 87% chance of one by the May meeting. The ECB was then up next, and started a wind down of net PEPP purchases that are also set to finish in March next year. The ECB is cushioning the landing though, having moved to increase APP purchases until October next year after PEPP ends, following which they’ll maintain a pace of €20bn a month until shortly before liftoff. The ECB maintained some policy optionality through flexibility on PEPP reinvestments, which our Europe economists read as a commitment to smoothing the transmission of monetary policy.

In the UK, the BoE hiked Bank Rate by +15bps to 0.25%. The MPC noted the decision was finely balanced due to Covid uncertainty, but the vote was still 8-1 in favour of a hike. Over in Japan, the BoJ rounded out the major DM central bank meetings, keeping rates unchanged and announcing a slow reduction in corporate debt holdings. At the same time, they extended a special covid loans program targeted at small and medium-sized firms to September 2022.

When all was said and done, many sovereign bond yields actually ended the week lower, even with the hawkish pivot from the various central banks. 10yr yields on Treasuries (-8.2bps) and bunds (-3.1bps) both declined, although those on gilts did post a small +1.7bps gain over the week. Meanwhile growing Covid pessimism served to dampen risk appetite and send global equity indices lower last week. By Friday the S&P 500 (-1.94%) had fallen for the 3rd week out of the last 4, hampered by an underperformance from tech stocks that saw the NASDAQ (-2.95%) and the FANG+ index (-4.53%) both lose significant ground. Over in Europe the moves were smaller, albeit still lower, and the STOXX 600 ended the week -0.35%.

3. ASIAN AFFAIRS

i)MONDAY MORNING/FRIDAY NIGHT

3 a./NORTH KOREA/ SOUTH KOREA

///NORTH KOREA

Kim makes a mistake: he marks the 10 anniversary of his father’s passing by banning laughing.

He should have banned sleeping…more effective!

(zerohedge)

North Korea Marks Anniversary Of Prior Ruler’s Death With 11-Day Ban On Laughing

SATURDAY, DEC 18, 2021 – 07:55 PM

North Korea is marking the 10th anniversary of former leader Kim Jong-Il’s death in somewhat characteristically bizarre ways, with dictates from Pyongyang saying citizens must mourn on a “unified” front that includes a ban on laughing for 11 days.

More than mere commemorative moments of silence, all instances of general enjoyment have been banned during the week-and-a-half period, including shopping, recreation, and alcohol consumption. Even going for groceries is on the list of banned activities, according to Radio Free Asia’s Korean Service.Mourning ceremony for NK’s prior dictator. AFP via Getty Images

“During the mourning period, we must not drink alcohol, laugh or engage in leisure activities,” a resident of the northeastern city of Sinuiju was cited in the US state-funded publication as saying. The source added that “In the past many people who were caught drinking or being intoxicated during the mourning period were arrested and treated as ideological criminals. They were taken away and never seen again.”

“Even if your family member dies during the mourning period, you are not allowed to cry out loud and the body must be taken out after it’s over,” the source told RFA further. “People cannot even celebrate their own birthdays if they fall within the mourning period.”

While RFA is an American government-linked media agency, and so the report should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt, this type of strict mourning is somewhat common in many Eastern cultures from the Levant to East Asia, at least on a local level and within families. But strict dictates imposed on a national scale is something perhaps only common to the DPRK.

Dubbed by Pyongyang officials “the parent of our people,” Kim Jong Ill’s death anniversary commemoration ceremony observed in the capital included the following according to NY Post…

Cars, trains and ships blew their horns, the Hermit Kingdom’s flags were lowered to half-staff and people flocked to Pyongyang’s Mansu Hill to lay flowers and bow before giant statues of Kim Jong Il and his father, Kim Il Sung, who ruled for 46 years.

Image source: KCNA/KNS

Kim Jong Un participates in annual tributes to his late father, Kim Jong-il, who died on December 17, 2011 – reportedly of a heart attack at the age of 69.

3B CHINA

China cuts its benchmark loan rate for the first time in 20 minutes as their economy tailspins.

(zerohedge)

China Cuts Benchmark Loan Rate For First Time In 20 Months To Counter Economic Slowdown

MONDAY, DEC 20, 2021 – 08:45 AM

China cut its benchmark lending rate for the first time in almost two years on Monday providing support to an economy showing strain from a property slump and sporadic coronavirus virus outbreaks, the SCMP reported. The one-year loan prime rate (LPR) – on which most new and outstanding loans are based – was cut from 3.85% to 3.8% at the December fixing, while the five-year LPR – which is a reference for mortgages – remained at 4.65%, according to the People’s Bank of China (PBOC).

“The People’s Bank of China authorised the National Interbank Funding Centre to announce that on December 20, 2021, the market quoted interest rate (LPR) for loans is 3.8 per cent for one-year LPR and 4.65 per cent for five-year or longer LPR. The above LPR is valid until the next LPR is issued,” said the PBOC statement on Monday.

An earlier decision by the PBOC to lower banks’ reserve requirement ratio came into effect in the middle of last week, freeing up 1.2 trillion yuan (US$188 billion) worth of long-term funds.

The LPR – also known as China’s Libor – has been considered China’s de facto benchmark funding cost since 2019. The rate is decided by a group of 18 banks and is reported in the form of a spread over the interest rate of the central bank’s medium-term lending facility. It remained unchanged for 20 months having last been adjusted in April 2020, in the immediate aftermath of the covid shutdowns, when the one-year LPR was cut from 4.05% to 3.85%.

The cut came in line with expectations: Goldman Sachs analysts’ expectations, who had predicted last week that the PBOC may reduce the one-year LPR rate by 5 basis points. A total of 29 out of the 40 traders and economists polled by Reuters on Friday predicted cuts in China’s LPR. Among those polled, 15 forecast a five-basis-point cut in the one-year LPR only, while 14 predicted cuts of that magnitude in both the one-year and five-year LPRs.

“The cut reinforces our view that authorities are increasingly open to cutting interest rates amid looming economic headwinds,” said Xing Zhaopeng, senior China strategist at ANZ. However, he noted the decision to keep the five-year rate unchanged showed Beijing preferred “not to use the property sector to stimulate economic growth.”

“[The] cut will immediately feed through to outstanding floating rate business loans and should also lead to cheaper loans for new fixed rate borrowers,” said Mark Williams, chief Asia economist at Capital Economics, who described the one-year LPR as “another modest easing step”.

“We expect a cut to the five-year LPR before long which will make mortgages slightly cheaper and help official efforts support housing demand” adding that he expects “a further 45 bp of cuts to the one-year LPR during 2022.” The PBOC has already pushed banks to increase the volume of mortgage lending.

“There was a marked increase in new mortgage issuance last month: targeted support for property buyers does appear to be limiting one of the more severe downside risks facing the economy.”

Last week, an influential Chinese think tank said China should lower interest rates and boost infrastructure investment to ensure the economy will grow by at least 5% next year. China’s year-on-year economic growth is expected to drop below 4% in the fourth quarter of 2021, way down from a 18.3 per cent rise in the first quarter. The fast decline has fueled concerns of an economic hard landing, triggering calls for more supportive measures.

“We expect a further 45 basis point of cuts to the one-year LPR during 2022. Just as important is what happens to quantitative controls on credit, including on borrowing by local governments. Early signs are these will be relaxed, but not greatly,” added Williams.

“The overall impression, including from [Monday’s] announcement, is that policy is being eased but not dramatically.”

Commenting on the cut, Tommy Ong, managing director for treasury and markets at DBS Bank said that there’s still a chance for the PBOC to cut its medium-term Lending facility in the near term, as the decision to lower the loan prime rate first was likely because it has a more immediate effect.

“Early last year PBOC cut MLF in two steps by 0.3% in total, while they cut LPR by the same magnitude,” says Ong. “It is only a matter of timing. Since this is an unsecured loan benchmark, it is better suited for the SMEs as compared to the MLF that is a lending rate with collateral.”

Yan Se, chief economist at Founder Securities, said China’s central bank lowered its interest rates by a smaller margin than global peers during the height of the pandemic last year, giving it room for additional easing now. He expects Beijing to lower interest rates on the central bank’s medium-term lending facility (MLF) by 10 bps in the first quarter of 2022, followed by more LPR reductions.

However, Li Wei, senior economist for China at Standard Chartered, expects no broad-based RRR cut or policy rate cuts in 2022.

“We maintain our call for no change in the seven-day reverse repo rate and the one-year MLF rate in 2022, as major central banks are expected to tighten monetary policy and China’s CPI should trend higher on PPI pass-through and rising pork inflation,” Li said.

4/EUROPEAN AFFAIRS

END

Lockdowns are inevitable. The country is struggling with surging cases.

(zerohedge)

London Mayor Says Lockdowns “Inevitable” As NHS Struggles With Surging Cases

BY TYLER DURDEN

SUNDAY, DEC 19, 2021 – 12:10 PM

Now that the Netherlands has announced plans for a month-long lockdown, it appears another wave of (government-funded) lockdowns are coming in Europe, especially since Germany’s new Chancellor Olaf Scholz has suggested he would be open to more extreme measures, and Dutch PM Mark Rutte has ordered the shutdowns to begin Sunday.

Back in the UK, which has been arguably the most proactive among its neighbors at detecting cases of the new omicron variant, PM Boris Johnson is facing a rebellion of Tory backbenchers. Meanwhile, the Labour Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, warned during an interview on Sunday that more restrictions, including lockdowns, are “inevitable”.

Speaking to BBC Sunday, Khan insisted that new restrictions are “inevitable”, and he called for a “major package of financial support for our hospitality, culture, and retail [sectors]”.

The mayor argued that if the authorities failed to impose tougher restrictions “sooner rather than later,” the capital would see an even worse surge in positive cases, which would in turn leave “potentially public services like the NHS on the verge of collapse, if not collapsing.”

The British capital alone has reported nearly 30K new cases over the past 24 hours.

Khan’s comments come less than 24 hours after he declared a “major incident” in London amid rising COVID cases and the relatively rapid spread of the omicron strain in particular, which is well on its way toward becoming the dominant strain in England and Scotland.

Khan added that 1,534 people were currently hospitalized with COVID in the capital, a nearly 30% rise compared to last week.

When announcing the decision on Saturday, Khan pointed out that the “vast majority” of patients being treated in hospitals haven’t been vaccinated. For those who haven’t already been vaccinated, Khan urged Londoners to get the jab as soon as possible (not that it will necessarily stop them from getting infected).

Weirdly, Khan decided to frame his pleas for Londoners to accept the vaccine in racial terms.

“In some pockets of London there are black Londoners, there are Muslim Londoners, there are Jewish Londoners, there are Eastern European Londoners, who still haven’t had a vaccine,” he said.

But pretty soon, all that racial stuff isn’t going to matter so much as whether Londoners have their vaccination papers, or not. And for those who might once again be put out of work by the lockdown, Mayor Khan also told the BBC that there would be a “major package of financial support” for workers in the “hospitality, culture and retail sectors.”

end

UK/HOLLAND/FRANCE/COVID UPDATES

Take a good look at the chaos these leaders are doing:

The Netherlands have lockdown down Saturday night/. France will not let any British into their country and that will kill the French skiing business.

It is a mess

a must view…

Netherlands locks down as von der Leyen says EVERYONE entering EU should get PCR tests | Daily Mail Online

Sounds more like a prison camp. Moves like this will kill Europe from a tourism and business perspective
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10323629/EVERYONE-entering-EU-PCR-test-says-European-Commission-President.html

end

DENMARK

Take a look at the following data from Denmark as the country outlines its COVID cases and hospitalizations for both Omicron and all variants. Omicron is definitely less dangerous though more

transmissible. Most of the cases are from the vaccinated ,76%. Almost 90% of the OMICON cases are double vaccinated.

(courtesy Alex Berenson/Burning Platform)

Stunning Covid data from Denmark

Guest Post by Alex Berenson

But not for the reason you’ve been told; the story is vaccine failure, not Omicron

The Danes are now publishing extremely detailed daily data about Covid cases and hospitalizations – not just about Omicron, but all Covid variants.

And, in news that will surprise precisely no one who has been alive the last two years, they paint a picture entirely different than what the media claims.

Omicron – which continues to appear significantly less dangerous though more transmissible than earlier variants of Covid – has been used as a cover for vaccine failure.

Most new Covid cases in Denmark occur in people who are vaccinated or boosted – and that is true for both Omicron and earlier variants. More than 76 percent of non-Omicron Covid infections in Denmark are in vaccinated people, along with about 90 percent of Omicron infections.

Further, only 25 of the 561 people currently hospitalized in Denmark for Covid have the Omicron variant. The Danes do not provide an exact number for patients in intensive care with Omicron, saying only that it is fewer than five.

Perhaps the most stunning fact about Omicron and Denmark is that its rise actually parallels a marked slowdown in the growth of Danish hospitalizations and intensive care patients. Those rose roughly fivefold between mid-October and late November, as the Danes left the happy vaccine valley. Since then they have barely budged, rising about 20 percent.

Danish Covid hospitalizations over the last three months: note that the rise predates Omicron.

The Danish data also show that people with Omicron are both less likely to be hospitalized than those with other variants and released from the hospital much more quickly – in line with what South African health authorities have reported.

On Friday, for example, the Danes reported that the total number of hospital patients with Omicron since the epidemic began reached 77, up by 20 patients from Thursday.

But the number of Omicron patients currently hospitalized rose only by eight between Thursday and Friday, from 17 to 25. Thus 12 out of the 17 Omicron patients on Thursday appear to have been released overnight.

Compared to Monday’s report, the trend is even more clear. The number of Omicron cases has roughly tripled, but the number of people hospitalized has barely budged, from 14 to 25.

SOURCE: https://www.ssi.dk/-/media/cdn/files/covid19/omikron/statusrapport/rapport-omikronvarianten-17122021-ep96.pdf?la=da

https://www.ssi.dk/-/media/cdn/files/covid19/omikron/statusrapport/rapport-omikronvarianten-16122021-fk3t.pdf?la=da

About the only reason for concern in any of the Danish data is that Omicron still appears to be preferentially infecting younger people – though not people under 15, who are more likely to be unvaccinated.

Overall, though, the figures out of Denmark largely back those from South Africa – and make clear that the reason that Europe has seen a massive rise in cases and hospitalizations this fall has nothing to do with Omicron and everything to do with vaccine failure.—————————————————–
The corrupt establishment will do anything to suppress sites like the Burning Platform from revealing the truth. The corporate media does this by demonetizing sites like mine by blackballing the site from advertising revenue. If you get value from this site, please keep it running with a donation. [Burning Platform LLC – PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or

end

Go to the 5: 43 mark and then for one minute. Just look at a face of the Health Minister when she has to give the true numbers of OMICRON numbers

(Zerohedge)

It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Pravda… Everywhere You Turn

SUNDAY, DEC 19, 2021 – 01:20 PM

Presented with no comment…

TheConservativeTreehouse.com’s ‘sundance’ points out this ‘interesting’ short segment from Sky News interviewing the smiling U.K. Health Minister Gillian Keegan about the intense U.K. response to the Omicron variant and the new restrictions announced by government officials.

Great Britain is preparing for hundreds-of-thousands of Omicron cases.

Video prompted to 05:42 just watch for around 45 seconds (oh, and put down any sharp objects before watching this…)

If you’re not asking “why” after that, what will it take for you to question what’s being done to you?

end

EUROPE/VACCINE/MANDATES

Special thanks to Milan S for sending this to us:

truth bomb EU

https://mobile.twitter.com/skbytes/status/1471881874075234317

end

EUROPE

Europe approves Novavax which is just as injurious as the others

(zerohedge)

More European Countries Impose Travel Curbs As Regulators Greenlight Novavax Jab

MONDAY, DEC 20, 2021 – 11:42 AM

It started with the Netherlands reimposing its COVID lockdown on Saturday, but now that the surge in cases and hospitalizations (coinciding with the arrival of the much-discussed but seldom seen omicron variant) has arrived both in the UK and across the channel on the Continent, it seems more major European economies are following suit.

Per the FT, more European countries are rushing to tighten restrictions in an effort to help reduce the stop the COVID surge after the Netherlands reimposed a strict nationwide lockdown on Saturday.

Germany, the biggest economy in the bloc (it’s often seen as the EU’s de facto leader, along with France), set new entry restrictions on people entering the country from the UK: they will be required to quarantine for 14 days regardless of their vaccination status. According to Berlin, the UK is now officially a “virus variant region”, which warrants the tightest entry restrictions. What’s more, only German citizens entering from the UK will be allowed in; Brits are temporarily banned from entering Germany.

New travel restrictions have also been imposed on arrivals from Denmark, France and Norway, with new arrivals needing to quarantine for at least five days if they are not vaccinated or recovered from the virus.

But foreigners aren’t the only ones facing tighter restrictions in Germany. The German people are also facing new rules, with private gatherings over the holiday season capped at 10 people starting Dec. 28.

Austria, which is just emerging from a nation-wide COVID lockdown, said it would allow entry only to vaccinated travelers starting Monday. However, those who haven’t received a booster shot would be required to take a test in order to enter the country.

But the most restrictive measures have been implemented by the Dutch government, which has closed all bars, non-essential shops, hospitality venues, cinemas and gyms until at least Jan. 14. And households are only allowed to invite four guests over during the Christmas holiday season.

Additionally, Ireland is introducing an 2000 local time curfew for pubs and restaurants starting Monday after the government rowed back from recommendations from health experts to order hospitality venues to shut at 1700ET.

Italy’s health ministry this weekend told regions to strengthen measures to manage the epidemic as officials fret about a potential surge in hospitalizations. Campania, the region that subsumes Naples and the Amalfi coast, has temporarily banned indoor gatherings including children’s parties.

Finally, back in the UK, the media reported Monday morning that PM Boris Johnson likely won’t impose any further restrictions before Christmas. The PM called a cabinet meeting this afternoon to discuss the latest data on the spread of the omicron variant and whether a two-week “circuit breaker” barring mixing indoors might be necessary.

As more western governments resort to lockdowns and other restrictions, it’s important to remember: deaths have remained well below their levels from a year ago.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-

And while Moderna and Pfizer pump out new study data touting the efficacy of their respective vaccines, the EMA – Europe’s top vaccine authority – has just officially recommended the Novavax vaccine for use in the bloc. Of course each individual member will need to decide on their own whether to approve it or not.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-

COVID infections haven’t only surged in Europe – they’re rising in New York as well: both New York State and Washington DC, have reported successive days of record cases.

On Sunday, Dr. Fauci warned of mounting “stress” on the US hospital system as new cases are “raging” through America and the world (although right now the US waves have mostly been contained to New York and Washington).

“Our hospitals, if things look like they’re looking now, in the next week or two, are going to be very stressed with people,” Fauci told ABC on Sunday.

As for whether that will translate into more deaths, well, that remains to be seen.

end

5. RUSSIAN AND MIDDLE EASTERN AFFAIRS

END

TURKEY

Erdogan Reiterates Commitment To ‘Islamic’ Rate-Cut Plan, Threatens Turkish Business Lobby Over Dissent

SUNDAY, DEC 19, 2021 – 06:00 PM

Having seen his nation’s currency continue its collapse (losing half its value in the last three months), despite shutting down stock trading last week and proposing huge fines for any form of “hoarding”, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addressed the nation in a public statement, invoking religion as behind his decision to buck economic orthodoxy and cut rates into hyperinflation.

Referring to Islamic proscriptions on usury as a basis for his new policy push, Erdogan clarified ‘his’ policy: “What is it? We are lowering interest rates. Don’t expect anything else from me.“

“As a Muslim, I’ll continue to do what is required by nas,” Erdogan said, using an Arabic word used in Turkish to refer to Islamic teachings.

More fundamentally speaking, as Bloomberg notes, the president believes Turkey can free itself from reliance on foreign capital flows by abandoning policies that prioritized higher interest rates and strong inflows. At the heart of his ideas is a belief that lower interest rates will also curb consumer price growth – the exact opposite of the consensus view among the world’s central bankers.

The response to Erdogan’s latest statement is more of the same – selling the lira…

The leader blamed the collapse of the currency on an “economic siege”, reiterating that he wouldn’t back down from his plan (to drive his nation into hyperinflation?).

“Of course, we know the impact from price increases on people’s daily lives. We are of course aware of the instability caused by the lira’s fluctuations and its impact on prices,” Erdogan said.
“But we will put up resistance against these. I announce from here: there is no backing down.”

As we recently noted, at the height of the last big wave of Turkey’s ongoing crisis, in August 2018, the European Central Bank issued a warning about the potential impact the plummeting lira could have on Euro Area banks heavily exposed to Turkey’s economy via large amounts in loans — much of them in euros — through banks they acquired in Turkey. The central bank was worried that Turkish borrowers might not be hedged against the lira’s weakness and would begin to default on foreign currency loans, which accounted for 40% of the Turkish banking sector’s assets.

In the end, the contagion risks were largely contained. Many Turkish banks ended up agreeing to restructure the debts of their corporate clients, particularly the large ones. At the same time, the Erdogan government used state-owned lenders to bail out millions of cash-strapped consumers by restructuring their consumer loans, many of them foreign denominated, and credit card debt.

But concerns are once again on the rise about European banks’ exposure to Turkey.

As one might expect, it’s not just banks that are fearful, Erdogan’s recent actions sparked anger among Turkish business owners, with several associations calling for measures to stabilize the lira’s exchange rate. Scandalously, in such an increasingly totalitarian state, key business group Tusiad urged the government to abandon the current policy stance, citing recent market turmoil as proof that the experimental model is bound to fail.

But speaking truth to power in Istanbul is not welcomed and Erdogan threatened those critical of him directly that “they won’t be able to challenge the government.”

“You are working to put in power a government that you can exploit. This nation will not allow you to do that,” he added.

end

TURKEY

Turkish stock trading halted for the second day in a row amid margin calls and panic selling

(zerohedge)

Turkey Stock Trading Halted By Circuitbreaker For Second Day Amid Margin Call “Panic Selling”

MONDAY, DEC 20, 2021 – 08:28 AM

Update: as expected, moments after the first circuit breaker was lifted, the furious selling returned, sending the Borsa Istanbul down 7.1%, and triggering a second circuit breaker for the day.

* * *

Turkish stocks crashed again following Friday’s historic rout, prompting a fresh automatic marketwide trading halt after the lira slid to a record low following Erdogan’s latest comments that he would not allow rates to rise. The Borsa Istanbul 100 Index tumbled 5%, after climbing as much as 3.1% earlier. Trading was set to restart at 4:23 p.m. Istanbul time, according to the bourse’s statement.

This was the second session in a row that Turkish equities’ trading is halted due to sharp losses. The index plunged as much as 9.1% on Friday, triggering automatic circuit breakers during the second-steepest selloff of the year. The slump was made worse by high levels of margin trading among local investors who have borrowed funds to join a recent rally in stocks.

Margins calls “led to snowballing losses” on Friday, turning a price correction into “panic selling,” said Tuna Cetinkaya, assistant general manager at the Info Yatirim brokerage, according to Bloomberg.

While the exchange has since reopened, it is now down -6.7% and on pace for a second consecutive circuit breaker of the day.

Meanwhile, the plunge in the lira continued, dropping to a fresh all time low of 17.84 against the dollar as of this post, after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged to continue cutting interest rates, referring to Islamic proscriptions on usury as a basis for his policy.

The lira’s 58% decline this year in the wake of 500 basis points of central bank rate cuts has sent local investors flocking to stocks to shield their savings, making Istanbul among the best-performing markets of 2021 in local currency terms, but the worst when measured in U.S. dollars.

IRAN/SYRIA//UK

EUROPE/IRAN/USA

end

RUSSIA/USA/NATO/UKRAINE

Not a very smart move: the following will surely anger Putin

White House may redirect military equipment to the Ukraine

(zerohedge)

White House May Redirect Military Equipment To Ukraine

SATURDAY, DEC 18, 2021 – 09:55 AM

The Biden administration is mulling a plan which would redirect helicopters and other military equipment, that was once bound for the now-defunct Afghan military, to Ukraine, in an effort to quickly bolster its defenses amid an ongoing buildup of Russian troops near the border, according to the Wall Street Journal.Mi-17 helicopter

Pentagon officials ‘generally’ support giving more arms to Ukraine, however the National Security Council has yet to approve the delivery. Meanwhile, the White House continues to seek a diplomatic solution to encourage Moscow to back off, according to US officials.

The military kit previously earmarked for the Afghan National Security Forces includes Russian-made Mi-17 helicopters, U.S. officials said. The helicopters would provide more mobility for Ukrainian forces, which have a large front to defend and lost aircraft in clashes in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea and pro-Moscow separatists rebelled in Ukraine’s east.
Ukrainian officials have also been lobbying the administration for air-defense systems, including Stinger surface-to-air missiles, that would help them defend their country against Russian aircraft, a Ukrainian official said. The country currently uses Soviet-era systems, which have been modernized but lag behind some of the high-tech equipment used by the Russian military. -WSJ

According to a NSC spokesman, “We continuously assess additional military assistance packages,” adding that $2.5 billion in military aid has already been provided to Ukraine since 2014 – which includes $450 million this year.

The NSC may be cautious, however, as stepped up arms shipments may escalate tensions with Moscow, according to some members of Congress and government officials.

Last month, a bipartisan group of lawmakers traveled to Ukraine on a fact-finding mission, only to report back that Biden’s threat of economic sanctions on Russia wasn’t going to be enough to deter a potential Russian attack. Their solution? Sanctions and accelerated military support which would include air-defense systems and antiship missiles.

“I want to give the Ukrainians defensive weapons that will have a high cost in terms of Russian casualties,” said Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), one of the officials on the trip who insists that the US needs to now focus “on deterring a conflict from happening versus responding to a conflict if it does happen.”

“The problem is more bureaucracy. It just seems like it’s taking a long time to just deliver the damn weapons. We’re just running out of time here. We need to speed things up,” he added.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, has been making public demands – including that NATO back off its eastward expansion which would include granting membership to Ukraine.

END

7 Signs That War With Russia Just Got Even Closer

SATURDAY, DEC 18, 2021 – 07:00 AM

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

In this article I am going to write about something that the vast majority of the U.S. population couldn’t care less about. Sadly, most Americans simply do not care about Ukraine, Russia’s military preparations for war, or pretty much anything else that is happening on the other side of the globe. But over in Russia, things are completely different. There is constant talk about the potential for war with the west, and there is a lot of pessimism that it will be able to be avoided.

To the Russians, this really is the biggest crisis with the west since the Cuban missile crisis of the 1960s. The Russians have repeatedly warned that western missiles must not be stationed in Ukraine, and they have repeatedly warned that Ukraine must not become a member of NATO.

They are using the same rationale that we used during the Cuban missile crisis. We didn’t want the Russians to have missiles in Cuba that could potentially hit our major cities within just a matter of a few minutes, and likewise the Russians don’t want missiles in Ukraine that could potentially hit their major cities within just a matter of a few minutes.

The only way that Vladimir Putin will ever authorize an invasion of Ukraine is if one of his strategic “red lines” is crossed.

But instead of easing tensions and trying to talk things out, western leaders just keep provoking Russia.

If they keep on recklessly poking the bear, at some point a mistake will be made and we will have a war that nobody wants. The following are 7 signs that war with Russia just got even closer…

#1 Despite the fact that Vladimir Putin has said that such a move would cross one of his “red lines”, Ukraine was just told that it will eventually be allowed to join NATO…

Facing a building threat from Russia, Ukraine’s president sought security guarantees from NATO’s chief in a meeting on Thursday and came away with a renewed commitment that his country could eventually join the military alliance despite stiff objections from its Russian neighbors.

#2 Ukraine has shocked the world by opening up the bomb shelters in Kiev…

Ukraine has opened bomb shelters in the capital of the nation as fears of a Russian invasion soar. On Wednesday a Ukrainian minister and former top spy warned the conflict could spread globally.

#3 ABC’s Martha Raddatz is reporting that after Joe Biden’s recent call with Vladimir Putin, the Russians moved an additional 10,000 troops to the border with Ukraine.

#4 The EU is warning of “massive costs for Russia” if there is any more “aggression” toward Ukraine…

“At this point in time, Russia is choosing an aggressive posture vis-à-vis its neighbors. And as the European Union and its G-7 partners have made very clear, further aggressive acts against Ukraine will have massive costs for Russia,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Wednesday.

#5 Banks in Belarus are preparing to switch to Russia’s version of SWIFT due to imminent sanctions by the west…

Belarusian banks are preparing for tougher Western sanctions by signing up to Russia’s alternative to the SWIFT, the international financial messaging network that underpins the global banking system, Russia’s Moskovsky Komsomolets tabloid has reported.
Russia’s System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS) has more than 400 domestic users — practically every licensed Russian lender — but is used by only 38 banks from nine other countries. Developed in 2014, SPFS is designed to keep banking transactions in the event of Western sanctions disconnecting Russia from SWIFT.

#6 It is being reported that Russia “has begun to move Tor short-range surface-to-air missile systems to the border area with Ukraine.”

#7 A bipartisan group of U.S. Senators wants to formally designate Russia as a “terrorist state”. Needless to say, the Russians are not happy about this…

On top of that – as if all that were not incendiary enough – the US Senators want to designate Russia a “terrorist state” if its “forces further invade Ukraine”. Such a designation of a nuclear superpower is unprecedented. It is an insane move that would make diplomacy and negotiation all but impossible. It’s tantamount to declaring war.

We should want to try to find a way to have peace with Russia, but we just keep on moving closer to war.

And when war eventually comes, it may be global.

Most Americans don’t realize this, but Russia and China just announced a brand new “security alliance”…

On Wednesday it was announced that Russia and China had agreed to terms on a security alliance.
President Xi said regarding the deal: “At present, certain international forces under the guise of ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’ are interfering in the internal affairs of China and Russia and brutally trampling on international law and recognised norms of international relations.”

So could the U.S. find itself fighting both Russia and China at the same time someday?

Yes, that is entirely possible.

Meanwhile, European powers are warning that talks to revive the Iranian nuclear deal “are rapidly reaching the end of the road”…

A joint statement from Britain, France and Germany issued on Tuesday said “we are rapidly reaching the end of the road” to save the 2015 Iran nuclear deal after the Iranian side accused the West of stoking a “blame game” atmosphere.
“Iran’s continued nuclear escalation means that we are rapidly reaching the end of the road,” France’s ambassador to the United Nations, Nicolas de Riviere, announced. He added that Iran’s consistently blowing past development and uranium enrichment limits all while blaming the US for pulling out of the deal means “We are nearing the point where Iran’s escalation of its nuclear program will have completely hollowed out the JCPOA.”

The Israelis have already been practicing for an attack on Iran, and if peace talks collapse it will make a conflict between Israel and Iran inevitable.

Of course a new war in the Middle East would give the Biden administration a way to distract us from our growing internal troubles. At this point, only 26 percent of Americans believe that the country is headed in the right direction…

A new Economist/YouGov Poll shows almost 75% of Americans are either unsure or believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. Only 26% think things are going well.
Worse, just 4% believe the economy is “excellent.”

Personally, I do not believe that we will see a major war erupt before the end of 2021.

But a new year is just weeks away, and I have such a bad feeling about 2022.

Over the past couple of years we have been hit with one thing after another, and “the perfect storm” that is now upon us threatens to go to an entirely new level next year.

END

RUSSIA USA NATO

(NewYorkTimes)

Fwd: Russia Lays Out Demands for a Sweeping New Security Deal With NATO – The New York Times

Rabid war mongers will not agree with this

Russia Lays Out Demands for a Sweeping New Security Deal With NATO

The proposal, coming as Moscow masses troops on the border with Ukraine, would establish a Cold War-like security arrangement in Eastern Europe that NATO officials immediately rejected.

Dec. 17, 2021Updated 5:44 p.m. ET

Russia has amassed troops near its border with Ukraine in a military buildup that has raised alarms of an impending invasion.Sergey Pivovarov/Reuters

KYIV, Ukraine — Russia demanded on Friday that the United States and its allies halt all military activity in Eastern Europe and Central Asia in a sweeping proposal that would establish a Cold War-like security arrangement, posing a challenge to diplomatic efforts to defuse Russia’s growing military threat to Ukraine.

The Russian proposal — immediately dismissed by NATO officials — came in the form of a draft treaty suggesting NATO should offer written guarantees that it would not expand farther east toward Russia and halt all military activities in the former Soviet republics, a vast swath of now-independent states extending from Eastern Europe to Central Asia.

The proposals codified a series of demands floated in various forms in recent weeks by Russian officials, including by President Vladimir V. Putin in a video call with President Biden. They represent in startling clarity goals long sought by Mr. Putin, who analysts say is growing increasingly concerned that Ukraine is drifting irretrievably into a Western orbit, posing a grave threat to Russian security.

The demands also reinforced the notion that Mr. Putin seemed willing to take ever-greater risks to force the West to take Russian security concerns seriously and to address historical grievances largely ignored for decades.

Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei A. Ryabkov, laid out details about the proposal in public for the first time on Friday in a video news conference in Moscow, amid a Russian troop buildup near Ukraine’s border that Western officials have interpreted as a threat of an invasion.

The demands went far beyond the current conflict between Ukrainian government forces and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. And most were directed not at Ukraine, which is threatened by the troop buildup, but at the United States and Ukraine’s other Western allies.

They included a request for a NATO commitment that it would not offer membership to Ukraine specifically. But NATO officials emphasized that NATO countries will not rule out future membership for any Eastern European countries, including Ukraine.

The proposal highlighted starkly differing views in the United States and Russia on the military tensions over Ukraine. Russia has insisted that the West has been fomenting the crisis by instilling anti-Russia sentiment in Ukraine, and by providing weapons. Mr. Ryabkov cast the confrontation in Ukraine as a critical threat to Russia’s security.

The United States and European allies, in contrast, say Russia provoked the security crisis by recently deploying tens of thousands of troops near Ukraine’s border.

NATO officials said on Friday that Russia’s proposals were unacceptable in their demands for veto power over now-independent countries. They emphasized their openness to a diplomatic dialogue on Russia’s security concerns, but said that any discussion would also include NATO’s security concerns about Russian missile deployments, satellite tests and disinformation efforts.

The officials also suggested that if Russia did make a major new military incursion into Ukraine, as it seems to be planning, NATO would strongly consider moving more troops into allied countries bordering Ukraine, like Poland and the Baltic countries, because the “strategic depth” against Russia that Ukraine now provides would be damaged or lost.

Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, said in Washington on Friday that while the Russians had a list of security concerns, so did the United States and its European allies, and that Washington was willing to negotiate on that basis.

“We’ve had a dialogue with Russia on European security issues for the last 20 years,” Mr. Sullivan told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations. “We had it with the Soviet Union for decades before that.”

That process “has sometimes produced progress, sometimes produced deadlock,” he said, noting that the United States planned “to put on the table our concern with Russian activities that we believe harm our interests and values.”

“It’s very difficult to see agreements getting consummated,” he added, “if we’re continuing to see an escalatory cycle.”

He declined to say if the United States was willing to provide Ukraine with more powerful defensive weapons, saying a $450 million arms and security package is already in place. He said the pipeline was already so full there is a question of “absorptive capacity.”

The Russian proposal took the form of two draft treaties, one with NATO and the other with the United States.

“Member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization accept the obligation to exclude farther expansion of NATO to Ukraine and other states,” the text suggested. In demanding the written guarantee from NATO, Mr. Putin and other Russian officials have reached into early post-Cold War history, describing what they see as a betrayal by the West in 1990.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is seeking assurances that NATO will not expand farther east toward Russia.Pool photo by Vladimir Smirnov

They assert that NATO expanded to the east despite a spoken assurance from James Baker, then the secretary of state, to the Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, that it would not.

The agreement was never put in writing and Mr. Baker said later that Russian officials misinterpreted his comment, which applied only to the territory of the former East Germany. Mr. Gorbachev has, in interviews, confirmed that spoken assurance came in discussions only of East Germany.

The new Russian proposal surfaced other historical grievances.

It demanded that NATO withdraw military infrastructure placed in Eastern European states after 1997, the date of an accord signed between Russia and NATO that Moscow wants now as a starting point for a new security treaty.

The Russian Foreign Ministry had earlier demanded that NATO officially abrogate a 2008 promise, known as the Bucharest Declaration, that Ukraine and Georgia would be welcomed into the alliance. The NATO chief invoked that declaration after the meeting with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, on Thursday, saying the offer still stands.

Russia is also insisting that NATO countries do not deploy offensive weapons in states neighboring Russia, including countries not in the alliance — a reference to Ukraine. And the proposal suggested a ban on military exercises at strengths of more than a brigade in a zone along both sides of Russia’s western border, an issue that would address the current military buildup near Ukraine.

Analysts expressed concerns about the Russian demands, saying they appeared to set up any talks between Russia and the West on these “security guarantees” for failure, possibly paving the way for a war in Ukraine.

Understand the Escalating Tensions Over Ukraine

Ominous warnings. Russia called the strike a destabilizing act that violated the cease-fire agreement, raising fears of a new intervention in Ukraine that could draw the United States and Europe into a new phase of the conflict.

The Kremlin’s position. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has increasingly portrayed NATO’s eastward expansion as an existential threat to his country, said that Moscow’s military buildup was a response to Ukraine’s deepening partnership with the alliance.

But they might also represent an opening position, with Russia willing to later compromise in talks. That the demands were put forth by the deputy foreign minister, Mr. Ryabkov, and not by his boss, Sergey V. Lavrov, or by Mr. Putin himself, left wiggle room, analysts said.

“There is a lot of shadow boxing going on, on all sides, and it’s not clear how this ends,” said Samuel Greene, a professor of Russian politics at King’s College in London. “This whole situation is ambiguous by design.”

Analysts pointed out that Mr. Putin had tried to extract similar concessions from President Trump but failed.

Mr. Greene said Russia may now see an opening to renegotiate the post-Soviet security landscape while Ukraine is still weak but likely to become stronger, Western nations are distracted by the pandemic and other problems and the U.S. is more concerned with the Chinese threat to Taiwan.

Putting forward impossible demands was intended to complicate diplomacy over the Russian buildup on the Ukrainian border, said Samuel Charap, a Russian security analyst at the RAND Corporation. “Diplomacy requires compromise and flexibility,” he said. “It usually entails avoiding public ultimatums. Basically, this is not diplomacy. It’s the opposite of diplomacy.”

Mr. Ryabkov, the Russian diplomat, said Moscow was open to “reasonable” compromises. But he also suggested the Kremlin has assessed the United States’ power as waning and that a new accord is justified.

Analysts say that negotiating such wide-ranging new security accommodations would most likely take many months, if they can be accomplished at all. Mr. Putin may have to decide at an earlier moment whether to go ahead with an invasion because the troops garrisoned now at temporary sites near the Ukrainian border cannot remain there indefinitely.

Ukrainian officials have suggested that the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August helped precipitate the crisis by signaling waning American resolve for overseas commitments, which emboldened the Kremlin.

The Biden administration has vowed to remain engaged in the international arena and said it intended to repair relationships strained under President Trump. American officials have consistently said they are committed to supporting Ukrainian sovereignty.

Mr. Putin has come close to openly acknowledging that he is using military force to coerce the West to negotiate, though his spokesman has denied this. Mr. Putin has said Western countries were realizing Russia was serious about defending “red lines” related to NATO forces near its borders.

“Our recent warnings have indeed been heard and are having a certain effect,” he told a gathering of Russian diplomats in November. “Tensions have risen.”

Andrew E. Kramer reported from Kyiv, Ukraine, and Steven Erlanger reported from Brussels. David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington.

END

Drums are Beating louder

These are the highlights of the call between Putin and XI:

Moscow will inform Beijing about the progress, or lack thereof, in negotiations with the US/NATO on security guarantees for Russia.
Beijing supports Moscow’s demands on US/NATO for these security guarantees.
Putin and Xi agreed to create an “independent financial structure for trade operations that could not be influenced by other countries.” Diplomatic sources, off the record, say the structure may be announced by a joint summit in late 2022.
They discussed the Biden-hosted “Summit for Democracy,” concluding it was counterproductive and imposed new dividing lines.

Pay attention to the 3rd one as they will move quickly on this. Russia is now going into 2022 less than 50% dependent on Swift and bilateral settlements will be increased next year between the two parties eliminating all USD use.
Russia has also as of today closed the northern sea route. To show their seriousness, there are 2 missile regiments armed with the RS-24 Yars which is a intercontinental missiles with what is called MIRVed or multiple independently targetable vehicle war heads, are on the way to being fully combat ready and deployed before the end of this month. These are mobile units and are in addition to what is deployed in place. If anyone has doubt about Russians standing Idly by over the creeping nature of NATO best get a coffee. The reason their terms have been made public is to present a reading public with facts to allow a determination of what is fair and right and what is aggression.Sadly, the march to war continues unabated. And it is becoming clearer that both China and Russia are turning their back on Europe and America. By declaring SWIFT as a weapon solely of West, the West runs the very real risk of becoming shunned by a large part of the world and this is potentially detrimental not to western hegemony but to the USD as hegemony as a settlement choice.
Cheers

Robert

end

Opinion

BY by making her demands public, Russia has (for the first time!!) also sent a message to the people of the West. That is all the people of the western Europe and in North America. This message can be summarized like this: we don’t want war, but if you insist, we will oblige.
You can read about Russian public demands on Zerohedge and other sites so i will not restate them here. NATO seems lost in its’s own stew of belief that it has force which is simply not true. It should have never taken on the Eastern states like Estonia which have been a drag and not a contributor. And one should keep in mind that Russia can shatter countries with conventional missiles leaving cities intact but scaring the heck out of politicians. As it is it is a mystery how politicians will explain gas prices and shortages. Russia neither wants or needs European territory which is a fact. And nor will Russia roll over anymore for America. So the Biden crowd will be left with unpleasant choices. Does he lose Europe or does he risk a strike an America. Russia will oblige if pushed and pushed it seems to be. Perhaps for the first time in 30 years Russia is able to hold all the cards. Especially the military ones. How does this get explained to a public who can see? As for the Ukraine it is only time before they are sent to die on behalf of the War Party in America. The question is whether they feel lucky? They would do well to remember these words spoken by Putin:

“As a citizen of Russia and the head of the Russian state I must ask myself: Why would we want a world without Russia?”

“Fifty years ago, the streets of Leningrad taught me one thing: If a fight’s inevitable, you must strike first”

“Any aggressor should know that retribution will be inevitable and he will be destroyed. And since we will be the victims of his aggression, we will be going to heaven as martyrs. They will simply drop dead, won’t even have time to repent,”

Cheers

Robert

end

6.Global Issues

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE//

Hospital yields to court order, permits use of lifesaving ivermectin on COVID patient

Perhaps a trend will start
https://www.newstarget.com/2021-12-17-hospital-allows-use-of-ivermectin-covid-patient.html

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Principia Scientific International, a bipartisan research group posts that all vaccines last for only 3 to 6 months and then vanishes. They do not at all relate to the injuries that they leave behind

(Principia Scientific International)

and Special thanks to Robert H for retrieving this for you:

COVID Vaccine Protection Lasts 3-6 Months, Then ‘Vanishes’ | Principia Scientific Intl.

Sooner or later people will realize the short comings of these vaccines and turn to solutions like ivermectin.

COVID Vaccine Protection Lasts 3-6 Months, Then ‘Vanishes’

end

Please note: Ex Pro demands a probe into soccer players suffering heart problems.

This is not a coincidence

(Watson/SummitNews)

Ex-Pro Demands Probe Into Soccer Players Suffering Heart Problems

BY TYLER DURDEN

SATURDAY, DEC 18, 2021 – 08:10 AM

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Former England footballer Matt Le Tissier has called for an investigation into the spate of sportsmen and athletes collapsing with sudden heart problems, asserting that he is not an “anti-vaxxer” and just wants more information.

As we previously highlighted, three more soccer players in the space of one week experienced chest pains or shortness of breath and had to leave the field of play.

Manchester United’s Victor Lindelof, Napoli midfielder Piotr Zielinski, and Martin Terrier of French club Rennes were all sidelines with heart and breathing disorders.

“It’s been very concerning for me watching the sport that I love and I played for 17 years…in all that time that I played I never once saw any footballer leave the pitch because of heart issues,” said Le Tissier.

“Now I’m sorry, but if anybody can look at what’s happening now in the world of sport and say it’s normal for all of these people to be having heart issues, in football matches, cricket matches, basketball matches, any sport you wish, these people, the amount of people that are suffering is going through the roof,” he added.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-

Le Tissier says he is calling for an investigation with the caveat, “It might not be to do with the vaccine, it may not be, but let’s have an investigation to find out what it is.”

“Even saying that deems you to be some kind of anti-vaxxer, which is absolutely disgusting,” said Le Tissier, referring to the treatment of people who dare raise the issue.

“I want just some information, I want people to take a look at what is happening in football, have a proper investigation and give us some answers as to why so many sports people are suffering with heart issues – it’s not difficult,” he concluded.

During a viral podcast with Joe Rogan which was subsequently censored by YouTube, Dr. Peter McCullough warned that soccer players collapsing could be linked to vaccine-induced myocarditis.

McCullough warned that myocarditis has become at least 50% more common than predicted by US public health ‘experts.’

However, other health experts have insisted that high profile football players suddenly collapsing with heart problems in the middle of games is just a “coincidence.”

According to a report by Dr. Yaffa Shir-Raz, there has been a “5-fold increase in sudden cardiac deaths of FIFA players in 2021.”

As we previously highlighted, when one ex-pro dared to suggest a connection to vaccines during a live radio broadcast, he was censored in real time.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-

END

The Globalists Are Preparing For Mass Murder In The Weeks Ahead

Published on December 20, 2021

Written by healthimpactnews.com

The script has been written, and the message has been delivered this week by the usual puppet spokespeople to the public.

U.S. “President” Joe Biden:

Omicron is here. It’s gonna start to spread much more rapidly at the beginning of the year, and the only real protection is to get your shot.
We are looking at a winter of severe illness and death, if you’re unvaccinated. For themselves, their family, and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm. (Source)

From The Hill:

Anthony Fauci said Thursday that the omicron variant will likely be dominant in the U.S. in “a few weeks” and warned of the possibility of hospitals being overwhelmed this winter.
He added, though, that people who are vaccinated, and especially those who have their booster shots, will be “relatively well protected, at least against severe disease,” saying he is most worried about the unvaccinated.
The omicron variant “will assume a dominant role very soon, I would imagine within a period of a few weeks to as we go into January,” Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, said during an event hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.

The masses in the public currently supporting Pfizer and Moderna by being obedient slaves and doing exactly what they are told to do, have apparently now conferred “prophet status” on people like Joe Biden and Tony Fauci, since they just announced that they know exactly how this “virus” is going to behave within the next few weeks into the future.

Those of us unvaccinated who still have our hearts and minds intact, can easily see that this is just the next phase of the Great Reset and the declared “war on the virus” started by Donald Trump in 2020 with Operation Warp Speed.

They have almost completed their take over of the U.S. hospital system by firing all the sane and ethical staff that refused the bioweapon shots, and implemented COVID protocols that are actually designed to bring in great profits while reducing the population of those sick with weakened immune systems.

As has been true in the initial campaigns of this “war against the virus,” the elderly will probably be targeted first, since they are deemed worthless members of society by the Satanic Globalists, and they can increase their profits by reducing the number of people on Medicare and social security.

Dr. Elizabeth Lee Vliet exposed this agenda in October with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel’s 2009-2010 “Complete Lives System” for rationing medical care for people older than 50.

Dr. “Zeke” Emanuel, who was the Senior White House Health Policy Advisor to President Obama and has been advising President Joe Biden about COVID-19, stated in his classic 2009 Lancet paper:

“When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.”
“Attenuated”means rationed, restricted, or denied medical care that commonly leads to premature death. (Full article.)

This is happening in the UK as well. The Exposé in the UK published this article today:

Déjà vu – The UK is about to experience a huge wave of deaths among the Elderly and Vulnerable comparable to April 2020

Excerpts:

The UK is about to experience a huge wave of deaths among the elderly and most vulnerable population in scenes that will resemble those of April 2020. The public will be told that Covid-19 is to blame, but the truth is that the recipe for disaster that has been cooked up by the UK Government and its circle of scientific advisors will be solely responsible.

A recipe that has included mandating vaccines for carers, dedicating the energy of the entire NHS to administering “booster” jabs to the nation, and the mass purchase of a drug known as midazolam yet again.

In March 2020 the British people were ordered to stay at home, to protect the NHS, and save lives. But in reality the evidence suggests that the British people were ordered to stay at home, so the NHS could give midazolam to the elderly and vulnerable and pretend that they were Covid-19 deaths.

Here’s a quick run-down of some of the evidence –

Midazolam is a commonly used drug in palliative care, think of it as diazepam on steroids.
Midazolam is also a drug that has been used in executions by lethal injection in the USA.
UK regulators state that you should only receive midazolam in a hospital or doctor’s office that has the equipment that is needed to monitor your heart and lungs and to provide life-saving medical treatment quickly if your breathing slows or stops.
This is because Midazolam can cause serious or life-threatening breathing problems such as shallow, slowed, or temporarily stopped breathing that may lead to permanent brain injury or death.
At the start of the alleged Covid-19 pandemic Matt Hancock ordered a two-year supply of Midazolam and then went back to France for more.
This was confirmed in a parliamentary committee meeting which included Hancock, Professor Van Tam, and Tory MP; Dr Luke Evans, who said a “good death” needs three things, one of those things being Midazolam.
At the same time Hancock and the Government changed the law on the certification of deaths under the guise of the coronavirus act.
And the law on cremations; removing the need for a confirmatory medical certificate.
And the law on indemnity for health service activity.
And the law on visiting loved ones in care homes; which was banned.
April and May 2020 saw a huge spike in deaths occurring in care homes, many were falsely attributed to Covid-19.
In late 2020 the Care Quality Commission found 34 percent of Health and Social Care workers said they had felt pressured to place ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ orders on care home residents without informing the resident or their loved ones.
An Amnesty report also found the blanket use of DNR orders in Care homes.
The two-year supply of Midazolam purchased at the beginning of the alleged pandemic was gone by October.
What happened to all of the Midazolam?

Now the authorities are about to play this whole game again, this time under the guise of the alleged Omicron Covid-19 variant. (Full article.)

The Exposé has also published some very interesting reports based on the U.S VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System) showing that the vast majority of deaths being reported following COVID-19 shots are from a very small percentage of the lots issued by the drug companies. See:

EXCLUSIVE – 100% of Covid-19 Vaccine Deaths were caused by just 5% of the batches produced according to official Government data

EXCLUSIVE – 100% of Covid-19 Vaccine Permanent Disabilities and Deaths among Children were caused by just 6% of the batches produced according to official Government data

Investigation finds Medicine Regulators are knowingly continuing to administer the most dangerous batches of Covid-19 Vaccine to Children causing countless Disabilities and Deaths

Since the Globalist puppets here in the U.S. are already telling us ahead of time that we are going to see “severe illness and deaths” with the hospitals being overrun beyond capacity within the next few weeks, there is good reason to believe that the lots of pediatric Pfizer shots given to children, and the booster shots given to seniors, are about to become much more deadly.

So if you want to protect yourself from this “Omicron” variant, do the exact opposite of what the Globalists tell you, because those who will die and suffer crippling injuries, will be the ones who rush out and get their shots, and NOT the unvaccinated.

Whatever this “Omicron” is, the main way you will get it is through a needle injecting it into you.

END

CANADA

Prepare NOW before Jan 1

There are several black swan possibilities next quarter. The big one is supply chain shutdown due to truckers not going across borders (with these sorts of effects in multiple places in the global supply chain). But the war drums in Ukraine continue to beat harder and faster, as NATO has rejected Putin’s ultimatum. And potential financial system mayhem as well with significant changes happening.
Get the food, toilet paper, medicine, weapons and cash you need now. Worst case scenario, you just have extra supplies bought at a lower price since inflation is double digits anyway.
I have a year supply of coffee, two full freezers of meat, lots of canned food, and now getting everything else I may need including vegetable seeds for farm.
https://twitter.com/screaminbeva/status/1472279155580547078?s=21
https://www.trucknews.com/transportation/canada-to-require-vaccines-for-cross-border-truck-drivers-cta-warns-of-perfect-storm/1003155235/

END

Tool for checking bad vaccine lot numbers

Useful for your friends and others … everyone should look up lot numbers before getting shot to minimize risks. And know if they themselves got a bad one.
http://howbad.info/index.html

The lots that cause the most severe damage: http://howbad.info/combined.html

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VACCINE IMPACT

Operation Omicron: The Globalists are Preparing for Mass Murder in the Weeks Ahead

December 17, 2021 4:33 pm

If you are among those who have not succumbed to the psychological warfare that has been inflicted upon the world through the “war against the COVID-19 virus” and remain unvaccinated with a healthy heart and sound mind, get ready for the next phase of this “war” against the “virus,” as Operation Omicron is about to be unleashed, and there are going to be massive casualties, all blamed on you and me, the unvaccinated. The script has been written, and the message has been delivered this week by the usual puppet spokespeople to the public. If you want to protect yourself from this “Omicron” variant, do the exact opposite of what the Globalists tell you, because those who will die and suffer crippling injuries, will be the ones who rush out and get their shots, and NOT the unvaccinated. Whatever this “omicron” is, the main way you will get it is through a needle injecting it into you.Read More…

UK Government Caught Lying: 23.5 Million People in England Have NOT had a Single Dose of a Covid-19 Vaccine

December 17, 2021 4:42 pm

For months the British public have been deceived with tales that there are just 5 million people in the United Kingdom who have refused to take up the offer of a Covid-19 vaccine. But today we can reveal that this is a lie. It is a complete fabrication that has no doubt been used to make those who have refused the jab feel as if they are part of a minority, because an official UK Government report proves that in England alone there are approximately 23.5 million people who have not had a single dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.Read More…

Pfizer Starts Injecting 3rd Dose of Experimental COVID Shot into Infants and Children as Omicron Pushes Sales to $50 BILLION+

December 17, 2021 5:08 pm

Pfizer is back in the news again today. Article 1: “Pfizer plans to test a third dose of its COVID vaccine on infants and young children” Excerpts: Pfizer-BioNTech announced Friday that they will expand ongoing clinical trials of their COVID-19 vaccine in children to include a third dose for participants as young as 6 months old. Testing a third dose will cause a delay in submission of data to regulators to authorize use in the U.S. In the fall, Pfizer’s CEO said the company expected to have data for this age group by the end of 2021. Now, the company says that they would expect to file results in the “first half of 2022” if trials are successful. The companies said two doses did not produce a robust immune response in kids 2 to 5 years old. Article 2: “Pfizer’s peak COVID sales now pegged at $50B-plus, with vaccine still hauling in $25B by 2027: analysts” Excerpts: A confluence of new developments has shifted the landscape for COVID-19 drugs. Consider the omicron variant and others presumably to follow, which could extend the pandemic. Then there’s the ineffectiveness of Regeneron and Eli Lilly antibody treatments against the new strain—and the declining potential of Merck & Co.’s oral antiviral to treat COVID-19. Add these factors together and what do you have? Mammoth sales ahead for Pfizer’s COVID-19 franchise…Read More.

end

This could turn out to be very deadly. They give the booster shot for the “common cold” and then injuries start.

(zerohedge)

Moderna Claims Third “Booster” Dose 37 Times More Effective Against Omicron

MONDAY, DEC 20, 2021 – 07:00 AM

If there’s one skill Pfizer, Moderna and their vaccine-producing big pharma rivals have mastered over the last two years since SARS-CoV-2 first stormed out of Wuhan and infected the world, it’s moving the goalposts – and not just with their rhetoric, with their research as well.

First it was two shots. Then it was two shots and a booster dose. Now, as COVID cases and hospitalizations surge in what’s shaping up to be another seasonal wave, Moderna has published new research purporting to show that a third full dose of its vaccine specifically increases antibody levels that are useful against the omicron variant.

A 50 microgram booster dose, which is half the dose used for primary immunization, created a 37x increase in neutralizing antibodies, the company said in a statement Monday. Moderna also tested a 100 microgram dose, which increased antibody levels 83x compared with the primary two-dose course.

Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel, who, like his chief rival, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, has spent much of the past month doing non-stop media interviews with TV and digital media outlets, praised the data as “reassuring” and a sign that the vaccine will help protect people who have already received it from the omicron variant (which, as many readers probably know by now, is only responsible for a tiny fraction of newly diagnosed cases in this wave).

“To respond to this highly transmissible variant, Moderna will continue to rapidly advance an omicron-specific booster candidate into clinical testing in case it becomes necessary in the future.”

The news helped create some lift for Moderna shares, which were trading more than 6% higher in premarket.

But as one Bloomberg analyst pointed out, while the findings are certainly encouraging, they will only be meaningful if they last.

“The actual fold increase is only valuable if it’s compared with other vaccines,” said Sam Fazeli, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst. ”These levels should increase protection against infection but the key question is how long do they last.”

Moderna’s data are based on lab tests using blood serum from 20 booster recipients with each dose, with antibody levels measured on day 29 after the booster dose has been received.

Moderna said it also plans to submit the results for online publication. The company is testing different booster candidates against a range of variants in mid and late-stage trials. The biotech said it plans to start testing its omicron-specific vaccine in humans early next year.

Bill Blain agrees with me that OMICRON has morphed into the common cold

(Bill Blain)

Blain: Is It Just Me, Or Does Omicron Sound Like A Common Cold?

MONDAY, DEC 20, 2021 – 08:17 AM

Authored by Bill Blan via MorningPorridge.com,

Rats and sinking ships have history – you’d think the rats would have learnt by now?”

Lockdowns and travel restrictions highlight the economic damage Omicron has done to the whole European Economy. Corporate resilience will be severely tested – whatever governments decide. The likelihood of stagflation has risen, but markets are likely to benefit from buy-the-dip mentality as investors weigh-up renewed government support if/when it turns nasty!

Apologies for lack of Morning Porridge last few days – I was “travelling”. What joy. There was a time I loved flying – the glamour of it all. A chance to pick up Christmas presents in duty-free, sophisticated airline lounges and luxury in the air as one jet-setted around the globe.

I appreciate I have become a grumpy old man… but travel has changed, and not for the better. Pandemic flying is a scramble to complete PCR test documentation, passenger locator forms, but it’s also become an excuse for lowest common denominator service in tired uncomfortable cabins. Business class is the new economy. BA don’t even let Business Class passengers in the lounge anymore – apparently, it too small for A380 flights…

Back in Blighty I was confronted with modern reality – going straight from plane to test centre. 30 minutes queuing outside to get a PCR test. In the “luxury testing centre” – in reality a swiftly repurposed bankrupt shopfront, three young girls wearing branded medical uniforms were trying to cope with a crowd of angry passengers who hadn’t got their test results back in time to fly that morning. Eventually I got in for the test I’d pre-booked. The poor girl was nearly in tears – she just did the tests and didn’t know anything about how the test process worked. As she was wearing the full gear, I asked about her medical qualifications – a 10 min training course. The uniform is all for show.

Someone is milking it big on Covid Testing. (Clue: who knows who in parliament…)

Back to the markets…

The next few days will see 2021 markets wind down ahead of Christmas and the New Year, but it’s looking an absolutely critical week for the European economy in terms of Covid and Energy.

A cold snap is approaching and there are signs the current gas price could head stratospheric – exactly as predicted in this porridge from September: The looming energy crisis: People are Going to Die this Winter.
Holland has joined the list of lockdown nations. Germany has followed France in locking out British travellers – as if that might stop the spread of the new Omicron variant. The UK cabinet is riven between a new lockdown versus the economic mayhem it may cause.

I was intrigued to read about calls for the UK government to update the list of symptoms people should look out for on Omicron: runny nose, headache, fatigue, sneezing and sore throat. Is it just me, or does that sound that a common cold?

Meanwhile, the cascading collapse of the Boris premiership continued with the resignation of Lord Frost, Frosty the No-Man, apparently furious at dither and retreat on Europe. He will be replaced by Tank-girl Liz Truss who I frankly know little about – except she was a remainer, but is now a reborn whatever will appeal to the voters. She is, I suppose, another name to put in the successor hat. (Personally, Javid will get my vote!)

Whatever happens at Christmas – and whether the Blain Clan will gather for our first family event since Mum’s funeral, (my brothers and all our immediate families) rather depends on decisions likely to be taken this week. It’s not looking good – but stuff the rules; the Blain’s shall feast!

Troubles come not singly, but in mighty battalions. In addition to Energy, the bleak reality of how authorities around the globe have reacted to the Omicron variant has already ensured a stagflationary open for 2022. Restaurants, pubs, ski-slopes and high streets across Europe are empty. Multiple businesses stand on the brink of disaster – and this time there are no covid loans or furlough schemes to see them through. The damage has been done.

Corporate resilience to renewed lockdown is low. They already face supply chain inflation, wage pressures, and now a collapse in demand. Omicron is shaking already tottering economies. Populations are increasingly divided. Out walking at the weekend, it’s clear many mask-wearing folk will happily jump into the traffic rather than get too close to other pedestrians. On the other hand, protestors and anti-vaxxers are proving fertile ground for the far-right.

The economic multiplier effects of de-facto lockdown are going to be huge.

Last week, my daughter felt fluey. She did a negative test, but called her work to say she was going to stay home with a cough and temperature – they insisted she came in. She spent two days spluttering while dealing with the Christmas orders before the inevitable positive Covid test. The company then put her on immediate “statutory sick pay” – a fraction of her salary – arguing she will be off for days.

It’s pretty appalling corporate behaviour – but what’s their choice? Missing Christmas orders means the company goes bust. They don’t have the financial reserves to pay salaries of non-workers. But, losing 1/3 of her monthly wage the week before Christmas for the crime of catching Covid means my daughter will struggle to pay her rent. She’s certainly not saving for a house, her future and a pension is a complete unknown. It’s looking highly unlikely her job, or the company, will survive long into next year.

A hard-nosed economist will say that’s a positive for the economy – a whole cohort of young, highly educated workers without any wage-pricing power available to fill whatever jobs emerge on the next economic reopening.
A realist might say it’s a whole generation seeing the confidence in any kind of future shattered. That has enormous political, social and business consequences.

Meanwhile, the market is looking interesting. When is the best time to buy? When everyone else is selling… With a sell-off underway this morning in Asia, maybe its time to get your buying boots ready?

We’ve got a very split market: the big-tech large stocks making the gains, while small caps have sold off (for all the reasons discussed above.) What are central banks going to do if the weakness deepens? If we see a slew of business closures and suddenly highly indebted young consumers find themselves jobless? How big a risk is taper and higher rates in such circumstances?

The West’s flirtation with easy money looked to be coming to an end. The Bank of England acted early with last week’s 15 bp rate hike. Not a lot in the grand scheme of themes, but a curious call as the Government dithers about how to handle Omicron. The Fed will hike early next year. Bond buying programmes are closed. It looks increasingly unlikely the Biden administration will get Build Back Better spending over the line in a meaningful way. The ECB remains accommodative – trying to balance soaring inflation vs lethargic southern economies by dint of doing nothing.

Meanwhile, China is going into full easing mode in the interests of “stability” as it tries to weather the unfolding property and energy shocks.

There are a number of reasons to wonder about the upside market potential even as economic weakness increases.

A number of market reports note the amount of cash that’s sitting on the sidelines. That seems kind of crazy when US and European inflation has risen to 30 year highs.
Corporate cashpiles are earmarked for buy-backs – rather than building new factories and plants. (Corporate boards have approved record buy-back volumes in 2022 – the fact they are doing so is another indicator of how weak the real outlook is.)

Basically, all that cash is waiting to buy the market. It feels like there is at least one more uptick to come.

Vaccine Impact

The CDC Caught in their Own Lies: The Unvaccinated in the U.S. for COVID-19 is “Millions” More than Originally Reported December 18, 2021 3:32 pm

For almost a year now I have been stating that the CDC has been lying to the public about the COVID-19 shots, using their own data from VAERS to prove it. Now the corporate media is reporting the same thing: the CDC’s statistics on COVID-19 “vaccines,” in this case the total amount of people in the U.S. who are “vaccinated” with a COVID-19 shot, have been overstated by “millions.” Yahoo News reports: “The U.S. government has overcounted the number of Americans who are at least partly vaccinated against the coronavirus, Bloomberg reports. Why it matters: Millions more people than initially thought are unprotected as coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and deaths are rising across the country. Three states — Illinois, Pennsylvania and West Virginia — found enough over-counting of first shots to indicate millions of unvaccinated people had mistakenly been counted as having received a dose.” What’s especially interesting is that the corporate news report quoted two state officials who admitted that the data from the CDC was worthless. James Garrow, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, which has worked with the state to blend data sets for a more accurate view of vaccination trends, said “we don’t have any faith in the numbers on the CDC website, and we never refer to them.” “The truth is, we have no idea,” said Clay Marsh, West Virginia’s Covid czar. This news comes out the day following a report published by The Exposé that the UK Government was lying about the number of unvaccinated and that instead of 5 million unvaccinated in the UK, they now admit that it is 23.5 million who have refused the jab, over 40% of their population. This cannot all be a “coincidence,” so we need to ask the question: Why are they suddenly admitting this?Read More..

In Times of Distress Who Can You Turn to for Comfort?

December 19, 2021 4:02 pm

In a recent article I wrote about the need for those of us who know the truth to “stand firm” against the forces of evil, and tell other people the good news that the end will come when Jesus restores everything, defeating Satan and handing the Kingdom over to the Father. I wrote: “And living by these truths makes us enemies of the world system currently ruled by Satan, which means any beliefs we have that make us think we deserve an easy and carefree life, is a lie from Satan himself. The true believer who lives by these truths is ALWAYS a persecuted believer who has to endure great hardship. It has always been that way, and it always will be, until the final end where Christ returns.” Does this mean that as we watch the world around us descend into chaos, where many have already suffered or died due to the eugenic practices of the medical mafia and the vaccine cult, and where many more may die and suffer in the days ahead, that we are to just expect that our lives will be filled with stress, anxiety, and extreme sorrow and pain with no hope for relief in this life? No. For the person who truly believes and knows Jesus Christ, we are promised great comfort while we endure extreme sorrow and hardships in this life, and that is what I want to look at in this article. In his second letter to the believers living in the city of Corinth contained in the Bible, Paul wrote: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.”

Direction Of Travel

MONDAY, DEC 20, 2021 – 11:22 AM

By Jane Foley, Rabobank head of FX strategy

Direction of Travel

The rapid spread of Omicron is making headlines across the globe and sucking the life out of risk appetite. The risks to world growth have been underpinned by the body-blow that was dealt to President’s Biden signature fiscal package. Asian shares dropped overnight, futures fell, treasuries were back in favour and oil prices slid. The Netherlands has entered a strict lockdown that will last the Christmas period; the local Italian press has warned of further restrictions to come; Germany’s Health Minister Lauterbach has said that the country is headed for its fifth wave of the pandemic; more European countries have increased borders restrictions on travellers from the UK; and Fauci, the US Chief medical Advisor to the President, has cautioned that Omicron is “raging through the world” and will put a strain on US hospitals. That said, Fauci is at least suggesting that lockdowns in the US will likely not be necessary. In the UK the health secretary has refused to rule out further curbs before Christmas. The UK government’s science advisers are urging tighter Covid restrictions in England. However, such an announcement would serve to complicate the difficult position of PM Johnson even further.

Just a day after the news that Tory party had lost its safe seat in North Shropshire came the resignation of Brexit Minister Frost on Saturday. His resignation letter expressed his concerns over the ‘direction of travel’ of Johnson’s government with respect to rising taxes and the recent Plan B of new Covid restrictions. The Telegraph ran an editorial yesterday titled “I would rather live in omicron Britain than authoritarian Europe”. Beyond the jingoistic tone of this report it does describe the sentiments of many Tory back-benchers regarding restrictions. Around 100 Tory MPs had earlier this month voted against Johnson’s proposal to introduction Covid passports for large venues – a measure that was only passed with the support of the Labour opposition.

In the wake of Frost’s departure senior Tories are reportedly urging PM Johnson to present the party with a fundamental set of changes. That hasn’t stopped reports suggesting that some in Westminster are openly talking about a potential leadership challenge. It has already been announced that Foreign Secretary Truss will replace Frost as the UK’s lead negotiator with the EU in post-Brexit talks, a post that she will fit in alongside her existing duties. Truss campaigned to remain in the EU ahead of the 2016 membership referendum, though she has subsequently said that she would vote ‘Leave’ if the referendum were held again. There is some speculation that the government could use Frost’s departure as an opportunity to reset relations with the EU, particularly since there is some suggestion that the UK has already softened its stance. In the past few days, the UK government has indicated that the European Court of justice could have a role in the Northern Ireland Protocol; though European Commission Vice President Šefčovič is not yet ready to discuss this.

US President Biden’s USD 1.75trn ‘Build Back Better’ bill has been thrown into disarray due to the resistance of key a democrat, Senator Manchin. He has remarked that he “cannot take the risk with a staggering debt of more than USD 29trn and inflation taxes that are real and harmful to every hard working American at the gasoline pumps, grocery stores and utility bills, with no end in sight”. The US Senate is evenly split between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, and the bill has no Republican backing. Fears of less fiscal support combined with the impact of the Omicron variant clearly complicate expectations about how far and how soon the Fed will be prepared to hike interest rates next year.

The PBoC’s decision to lower its benchmark 1 year loan prime rate for the first time in 20 months today came as a surprise to many analysts. 29 out of 40 forecasters in the Reuters survey had anticipated a move, though the consensus in the Bloomberg survey was for an unchanged announcement. Recent indicators including retail sales and investment growth have slowed in China and further monetary easing could follow. That said, the move does raise some concern that the authorities could stimulate the country’s already highly leveraged property market. The one-year LPR was lowered by 5 basis points to 3.80% from 3.85% previously, while the five-year LPR remained at 4.65%.

Only 30% of registered voters cast a ballot at Hong Kong’s legislature poll under the weekend. This was a protest against the fact that all candidates had been vetted for their loyalty to China’s ruling communist party. More than 10,000 police officers had been deployed across the city to keep the peace.

On Friday Russia demanded a legally binding guarantee that NATO would give up any military activity in Eastern Europe and Ukraine and part of a list of demands it want to negotiate with the West. Some of the Russian demands have already been ruled out by the West but Washington will reportedly respond this week.

Turkey’s President Erdogan continues to hang the TRY out to dry with his remarks on the need for more interest rate cuts, the latest of which appears to indicate that Islam is providing the base for his economic policies. Last week, the Turkish central bank hinted that the easing cycle may be over, but the markets know who is really in charge.

7. OIL ISSUES

Updated Sunday afternoon EST .. This was expected as the Flow of gas becomes a desirable weapon to missiles to make a point

This chart gives you a snapshot of the reduction of gas flow in the Yamal pipeline. It is downtown effectively 5% of previous flow levels. This means that all countries in Europe will dip into storage supplies to keep electricity and heat on, not withstanding soaring prices. So the hard question is who suffers the most? Did you know that the UK has the lowest reserves of all European countries followed by Romania? So Britain’s problem is what does Johnson do as gas supplies become critical? As it is urea production is way down as plants have been shuttered due to high gas prices which will result in huge food price increases in 2022. As we see winter weather approaching one does wonder how close to edge of disaster will Europe come ? And in a future time of dramatic stress will nations even share gas? There is no certainty that continental Europe will not use this as a hammer on Britain to settle old scores. If you thought people were protesting over lockdowns what will they do over a lack of heat or power? In war, the biggest loser is the public. Makes you wonder who will be called to win; the weather or missiles ? Either way the public will suffer needlessly as they have for centuries. And what we are seeing is real posturing prior to a kinetic conflict. And Europe’s biggest nightmare is that Russia wins with invading anyone but instead using the missile capability they have or allows weather to do its’ thing.

Yesterday, ( took place Thursday) i told you 2 Yars regiments are being placed in the Arctic in addition to what they have up there. This is scary because they carry multiple warheads. Good luck stopping these if launched. These would be initially the missiles used to strike longer range targets. The heavy work will go to Iskanders and Zircons has missile systems.

Today, ( this means yesterday EST, Eastern Standard Time) Russia announced they are deploying radar and “radio engineering battalions” to the Arctic, and they released an image of a new radar station they erected there within 36 hours. Here is the image:

The tall tower with the white dome in the center is the radar to monitor for ships trying to use the northern sea route. But the OTHER structures are the problem. Those other structures are RADAR JAMMING SYSTEMS for different radar bands. They have ONE purpose and ONE purpose ONLY: to jam U.S. over-the-horizon missile radar detection grids. Now get a load of this over 1000 tanks have been sent to Greece and 45,000 troops. I have written before tanks were being massed in Europe which clearly are not defensive. And this has nothing to do with the tanks stored in Norway. The tanks are moving on rail and truck into Bulgaria and presumably to the Ukraine. Logically one might assume NATO tanks in Ukraine means NATO has decided to fight Russia for the Ukraine and will no doubt turn the defensive missiles there into offensive ones. To get the tanks into the Ukraine they will either go through Romania or straight north to the Ukraine. If you were Russian, you would consider NATO tanks on Ukraine soil a threat that requires a immediate response.
No one is going to invade Greece save for the SULTAN in Turkey, which is mad enough with an failing currency which is bringing Turkey to a virtual stop. On this path Turkey will become a failed state with a potent military, who might act out. And NATO has at least 5000 troops in the Ukraine. Ask why they are there? Because the media sure will not.You can watch the movement of the tanks to Ukrainian border. It will be clear overnight where they are headed and why. You can bet Russian satellites will see everything in plain sight. Do not expect mass media to tell you. This stupidity will bring war to Europe. One must remember that IF NATO engages a conflict with Russia, every NATO base in Europe is a target. Do not think this will be isolated to the Ukraine, As it is we a re only days away from war if things keep going as they are. There are certain missiles in the Ukraine which are defensive but the warheads can be changed easily to make them offensive nuclear weapons that can hit hit Moscow and St. Petersburg within minutes, causing mass casualties. Because these missiles will not all be stopped because of short flight time. Cities will be hit within 5 minutes and ICBM sites in less than 10 minutes. Russia would in this case lose millions of people and why earlier i sent you a translation describing how Russia is preparing for mass deaths. The question is whether Europe is prepared to suffer similar consequences? This is a red line because from a Russian perspective it is clear that a 1st strike is being prepared against Russia and leaves Russia no choice but to act. Sadly when war preparations occur truth disappears. No one wants to tell you that 50% of the Ukraine army is on the border with American supplied Javelin missiles etc.. Ukraine is a failed state that should be allowed to die and rebuilt itself as sad as it is to say. Because no one will rebuild the place as it will take many billions and is uncertain.The fact that the Brits and Americans are upgrading naval facilities in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov is nothing less than military preparations that do not help the Ukrainian people and only secure a worse future. Sadly, Ukraine is a proxy to be used and dumped like many before it. It also does not bode well to see the Truman carrier group having entered the Mediterranean earlier this past week who likely will be in position by mid week. While they might send the aircraft on board off at Russia they have distance to cover as it is unlikely that Turkey will allow the carrier group to sail the Darnelles as such sized boats are restricted from passage. But who knows ? What is clear such a move would send a clear signal and obtain a response. The reason the Russia have publicly released a framework of security concerns to allow a inquisitive public to see but NATO within less than a day said NO. What do you think Russia is supposed to think? Did MSN take up the subject? And you wonder why people are losing faith in government? Closing the Arctic trade route they have dramatically decreased any timely shipments to Europe from China putting great pressure on supply chains. Europe cannot easily ship goods to China or other Asian countries without a much more increased cost and much longer time frames by going through the SUEZ CANAL. This will really be a non kinetic hit to Europe which will likely fall on deaf ears as warning of the next stage which will be kinetic. And this now has gotten worse in POLAND today as gas flow through the YAMAL pipe has been cut to the lowest level seen in 20 years. Think gas and think heat and electricity because Europe has depended on this. However, I have said previously that with conflict all non contracted gas supply will be cut to parties deemed hostile. As i keep saying buy mittens and have a plan and if traveling to Europe have a contingency plan if war breaks out. Because it will come without warning for most people. And stay away from NATO bases for personal safety because if hit, they will all be hit within minutes or seconds of each other. I hate to say this but this is clear that we have a another Cuban missile crisis developing quickly that can lead to a global war that will benefit no one least of all the Ukrainian people and the people of Europe. And if things go wrong do not think that North America is immune from missiles. Pray for common sense to prevail, otherwise we will come face to face with a near death moment or worse.

8 EMERGING MARKET& AUSTRALIA ISSUES

Australia//// NEW ZEALAND/ SOUTH AFRICA/BRAZIL//COVID/VACCINES/LOCKDOWNS

SOUTH AFRICA

South Africa is now in their summer months. The Omicron is very transmissible but it virus settles in the bronchial. It does not go into the lungs and that is why fewer hospitalizations.

(Watson//SummitNews)

South Africa: Only 1.7% Hospitalised From Omicron

SATURDAY, DEC 18, 2021 – 09:20 AM

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

South African Health Minister Joe Phaahla said today that only 1.7% of COVID cases in the current Omicron wave are being hospitalised compared to 19% in the previous wave and that the vast majority of cases are “fairly mild.”

“In the current wave, only 1.7% of Covid cases are being hospitalized, an average of fewer than 350 cases daily over the past two weeks, versus an average of more than 800 in the previous wave, at an average of 19%,” reports Business Tech based on Phaahla’s statement.

Gauteng, the province that includes Johannesburg, has also seen a decline in positivity rate to 25%, meaning the Omicron wave could be past its peak in that region.

According to the data, hospitalisations are also lower across all age ranges, contradicting claims in the UK that it would be hit harder due to its older population.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-

As we highlighted yesterday, Phaahla said rates of hospitalisations and deaths remain “relatively low,” adding that there was no need to raise the restriction level and telling South Africans to enjoy their Christmas.

Such good news isn’t apparently welcome to governments in the UK, which continue to impose more draconian measures which have served to all but cancel Christmas, despite the fact that just 15 people have been hospitalised with Omicron and just one person has died.

In England, Professor Chris Whitty appears to be ignoring data out of South Africa to make doomsday predictions about there being over 4,000 hospitalisations a day from Omicron.

There is also a continuing obsession with insisting it is “too early” to make judgments on data coming out of South Africa despite such data for weeks confirming that Omicron is mild and isn’t causing hospitals to be overwhelmed.https://www.youtube.com/embed/eEGLlqtb7GA

end

South Africa ends contact tracing and quarantining because most do not experience any symptoms

(Watson/SummitNews)

South African Officials Advise End To Contact-Tracing, Quarantining Because Most Don’t Experience Any Symptoms

BY TYLER DURDEN

MONDAY, DEC 20, 2021 – 02:40 PM

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

In news that you will likely not see anywhere today, government advisors in South Africa have suggested stopping tracing and quarantining those who have come into contact with Omicron because it isn’t helping to stop the spread of the variant, which for the most part causes no symptoms in those who contract it.

News 24 reports that the Ministerial Advisory Committee wrote to Health Minister Joe Phaahla “recommending that the quarantining of contacts be stopped as it is no longer viable in the current social and economic climate.”

The report also notes “the committee said contact tracing was no longer necessary and should also be halted with immediate effect.”

The report notes the memo stated that “With only a small number of contacts identified from a proportionally small Covid-19 cases, quarantining was no longer effective for containing the spread of the disease.”

The memo also noted that “the proportion of people with immunity to Covid-19 had risen substantially… exceeding 60-80%.”

The memo also said that testing is ‘highly skewed’ because the majority of people who are getting Omicron do not even experience any symptoms.

The memo also stated “It stands to reason that if the vast majority of cases are not diagnosed, then the vast majority of case contacts are also not diagnosed. This means that quarantining and contact tracing are of negligible public health benefit in the South African setting.”

The advisors warned of the negative effects of shutting down the country when the variant doesn’t warrant it.

The memo states:

“On an individual level, the consequences of prolonged quarantining include loss of income, loss of employment, and loss of schooling time. We propose that quarantining be discontinued with immediate effect for contacts of cases of Covid-19. This applies equally to vaccinated and non-vaccinated contacts. No testing for Covid-19 is required irrespective of the exposure risk, unless the contact becomes symptomatic. We further propose that contact tracing be stopped.”

The advice echoes that of South African scientists and officials who for days now have been urging that mass panic over Omicron, which originated in the country, is unnecessary and dangerous.

* * *

Chile

Chilean Peso collapses as they elect a hugely leftist leader, Boric. Chile is a very rich nation in resources, especially copper.

(zerohedge)

Peso Hits Record Lows As Leftist Boric Wins Chile Presidency In “Worst Scenario Markets Could Have Envisioned”

MONDAY, DEC 20, 2021 – 02:26 PM

Leftist Gabriel Boric, a former student protest leader, won the final round of Chile’s presidential election by a wide margin as the copper-rich Latin American country took a decisive shift to the left after several years of civil unrest. Boric secured 56% of the vote in Sunday’s runoff, well ahead of José Antonio Kast, his ultra-conservative rival, on 44%. The victory, Bloomberg notes, is likely to spook markets that fear interventionist policies. Boric, 35, will take office in March as one of the youngest presidents in the world and with an ambitious agenda.

“I am going to be the president of all Chileans, whether you voted for me or not,” said Boric. The 35-year-old president-elect, who will take office on March 11, said he would strive for unity after a bitter contest between extremes of the political spectrum.Gabriel Boric during an election night rally in Santiago, on Dec. 19

Boric, who is unmarried, bearded and tattooed, first gained prominence a decade ago when he led nationwide demonstrations calling for free and high-quality education. He ran successfully for lower house deputy in 2013 and was re-elected to a second term in a landslide vote. He is the first leader to come from outside the centrist political mainstream that has largely ruled Chile since its return to democracy in 1990. He is also the youngest Chilean president in more than two centuries and the first to secure a second-round victory after losing the first round.

His win in a runoff paves the way not only for a generational shift but also for the biggest economic changes in decades for one of Latin America’s richest countries, a global financial market favorite. It was a highly polarized campaign that only moderated in the final stretch as both contenders wooed centrists. He will face enormous challenges including a divided congress, sharp economic slowdown, the writing of a new constitution and the lingering threat of social unrest.

“We cannot continue to allow the poor to pay for the inequalities of Chile,” Boric told thousands of cheering supporters in a fiery victory speech which also acknowledged all he needs to do to build alliances. “We will reach out and build bridges so our citizens can live a better life.”

He repeated something he told President Sebastian Pinera in a conversation between them broadcast after results were announced: “The agreements need to be among all Chileans and not made behind closed doors.” They will meet Monday to begin the transition. Kast quickly conceded and spoke to Boric on Sunday evening.

During his victory speech, Boric, who is part of a broad leftwing coalition that includes the Chilean Communist party, said he would oppose mining initiatives that “destroy” the environment. That included the contentious $2.5Bn Dominga mining project that was approved this year.

“We are a generation that emerged in public life demanding our rights be respected as rights, and not treated like consumer goods or a business,” he said. He has also pledged to enact higher taxes, greater public spending, the scrapping of private pension schemes and student debt, as well as other reforms intended to empower women, indigenous groups and minorities.

Boric wants to dismantle some pillars of Chile’s economy such as its private pension funds, which form the bedrock of the local capital markets. He backs higher taxes on both the rich and the nation’s crucial mining industry — Chile is the world’s biggest copper producer — while also promising to keep government debt in-check.

* * *

Boric’s victory was greeted with joy (for now, although check back in a few months): streets across the nation of 19 million were filled with honking cars and waving banners in celebration of the changing of the guard. Turnout was about 56% of registered voters, nearly 10 percentage points higher than the first round last month.Supporters of Gabriel Boric celebrate following results from the runoff presidential election in Santiago, on Dec. 19.

Boric’s early focus on outreach has an undeniable logic: as he seeks a set of radical shifts including raising taxes on the rich and mining industry, dismantling the country’s private pensions system and boosting social services, he needs to build a coalition with centrists and hard leftists who have clashed for decades.

“He will face a divided parliament, so passage of legislation will be difficult and will require strong negotiating skills and pragmatism,” noted Jennifer Pribble, professor of political science at the University of Richmond.

Boric describes himself as a moderate socialist who shuns the hard left models of Cuba and Venezuela. Still, Kast and his supporters warned of Boric’s alliance with the communist party as a risk. Meanwhile, Boric’s supporters saw Kast as a dangerous throwback to the right-wing dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet due to an emphasis on public order and conservative social mores.

As Bloomberg notes, Boric’s emphasis on social justice dovetailed with a period of unrest that exploded over a transit fare hike in 2019 and quickly ballooned into a broader movement demanding better health care, public transport and pensions. During the campaign, Boric often vowed that, “if Chile was the birthplace of neo-liberalism, it will also be its grave.”

In March, Boric will take the helm of a nation that’s facing unprecedented political upheaval. Social unrest kicked off the process of drafting a new constitution, now being done by a left-leaning assembly, which will be put to a national referendum in 2022.

Regionally, Chile’s election follows the triumph of Pedro Castillo in Peru earlier this year, and stands to add momentum to leftist candidates in Colombia and Brazil, which will hold presidential elections next year. Similarly to Chile, both of those countries are facing increasingly polarized politics.

“Chile’s president-elect could become the face of Latin America’s new left, inspiring other candidates in the region,” said Oliver Stuenkel, professor of international relations at Fundacao Getulio Vargas in Sao Paulo.

Meanwhile, traders were not impressied: “This is the worst scenario that the markets could have envisioned,” said Klaus Kaempfe, portfolio solutions director at Credicorp Capital in Santiago. “They were waiting for a much tighter vote showing a desire for dialogue.”

Boric will have to contend with economic growth that will come to a halt, slowing from a record high near 12% this year to a rate closer to 2%, according to the central bank. Policy makers are also raising interest rates quickly to tame soaring inflation and, while Chile still has relatively sound fiscal accounts, the debt-to-GDP ratio has increased quickly amid pandemic spending. Chilean companies and individuals have moved money abroad at a historic clip over the past few years, weighing on the currency.

The Chilean peso sank on Monday, dropping 1.9% after tumbling more than 3% at the open as traders adjust positions for the uncertainty that lies ahead.

As Bloomberg notes, Boric’s potential push for higher taxes, greener industries and greater equality are seen leading to more uncertainty among traders, and more bearish bets. CLP lacks a significant dollar resistance level until 880/USD, last seen in March 2020. The Colombian peso was also down 0.7%, testing major dollar resistance are near 4,005/USD as a decline in oil prices outweighed the boost provided by a hawkish central bank decision.

And by the close, CLP had plunged to a new record low against the dollar…

On Friday, Colombia’s central bank raised the benchmark rate by 50 basis point to 3% as expected; surprise was that three officials voted for a 75bps rate increase, showing a tilt toward a more hawkish stance. In October, five officials opted for an increase of 50bps and two for 25 basis points. The currency would likely have seen a positive market reaction if it wasn’t for oil’s 4.3% decline in the U.S. after Senator Joe Manchin blindsided the White House on Sunday by rejecting Biden’s $1.75 trillion economic plan, leaving Democrats with few options for reviving it.

end

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

Euro/USA 1.1269 UP .0033 /EUROPE BOURSES //ALL RED

USA/ YEN 113.56 DOWN 0.070 /NOW TARGETS INTEREST RATE AT .11% AS IT WILL BUY UNLIMITED BONDS TO GETS TO THAT LEVEL…

GBP/USA 1.3213 DOWN 0.0012

Last night Shanghai COMPOSITE CLOSED DOWN 38.76 PTS OR 1.07%

//Hang Sang CLOSED DOWN 447.77 PTS OR 1.93%

/AUSTRALIA CLOSED DOWN 0.31% // EUROPEAN BOURSES OPENED ALL RED

Trading from Europe and ASIA

EUROPEAN BOURSES ALL RED

2/ CHINESE BOURSES / :Hang SANG CLOSED DOWN 447.77 PTS OR 1.93%

/SHANGHAI CLOSED DOWN 38.76 PTS OR 1.07%

Australia BOURSE CLOSED DOWN 0.31%

Nikkei (Japan) CLOSED DOWN 607.87 PTS OR 2.13 %

INDIA’S SENSEX IN THE RED

Gold very early morning trading: 1798.20

silver:$22.29-

USA dollar index early MONDAY morning: 96.92 DOWN 4 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: 0.26% DOWN 0 in basis point(s) yield from YESTERDAY/

JAPANESE BOND YIELD: +0.039% DOWN 1 AND 1/10 BASIS POINTS from YESTERDAY/JAPAN losing control of its yield curve/

SPANISH 10 YR BOND YIELD: 0.36%// UP 1 in basis points yield from yesterday.

ITALIAN 10 YR BOND YIELD 0.94 UP 3 points in basis points yield from yesterday./

the Italian 10 yr bond yield is trading 58 points higher than Spain.

GERMAN 10 YR BOND YIELD: RISES TO -..366% IN BASIS POINTS ON THE DAY//

THE IMPORTANT SPREAD BETWEEN ITALIAN 10 YR BOND AND GERMAN 10 YEAR BOND IS 1.31% 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 1.1298 UP .0060 or 60 basis points

USA/Japan: 113.49 DOWN 0.074 OR YEN UP 7 basis points/

Great Britain/USA 1.3221 DOWN 4 BASIS POINTS)

Canadian dollar DOWN 59 pts to 1.2935

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The USA/Yuan, CNY: closed ON SHORE (CLOSED UP)..6.3757

THE USA/YUAN OFFSHORE: (YUAN CLOSED (UP)..6.3826

TURKISH LIRA: 17.97 EXTREMELY DANGEROUS LEVEL/DEATH WISH/HYPERINFLATION TO BEGIN.

the 10 yr Japanese bond yield at +0.039

Your closing 10 yr US bond yield DOWN 2 IN basis points from FRIDAY at 1.388% //trading well ABOVE the resistance level of 2.27-2.32%) very problematic USA 30 yr bond yield: 1.832 UP 2in basis points

Your closing USA dollar index, 96.39 DOWN 18 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 71.89PTS OR 0.97%

German Dax : CLOSED DOWN 292.02 PTS OR 1.88%

Paris CAC CLOSED DOWN 56.53 PTS OR 0.82%

Spain IBEX CLOSED DOWN 69.20 PTS OR 0.83%

Italian MIB: CLOSED DOWN 433.65 PTS OR 1.63%

WTI Oil price 66.28 12: EST

Brent Oil: 69.92 12:00 EST

USA /RUSSIAN / RUBLE FALLS: 74.27 THE CROSS HIGHER BY .04 RUBLES/DOLLAR (RUBLE LOWER BY 04 BASIS PTS)

GERMAN 10 YR BOND YIELD; -.366

CLOSING NUMBERS: 4 PM

EURO VS USA: 1.1275 UP .0040

BRITISH POUND 1.3208 DOWN .0017

USA DOLLAR VS JAPANESE YEN: 113.65 UP .118

USA DOLLAR VS CAN DOLLAR: 1.2939 UP .0063

WEST TEXAS INTERMEDIATE OIL: 68.66

BRENT: 71.86

USA 10 YR BOND YIELD: 1.424 UP 2 BASIS POINTS

USA 30 YR BOND YIELD: 1.853 UP 4 BASIS PTS

USA DOLLAR INDEX: 96.53 DOWN 3 CENTS.

DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE: DOWN 433.28 PTS OR 1.23%

NASDAQ 100 DOWN 173.82 OR 1.10%

VOLATILITY INDEX: 23.06 UP 1.49PTS.

USA trading day in Graph Form

Stocks Suffer Biggest 3-Day Drop Since May; Turkish Lira Explodes Most In 40 Years

MONDAY, DEC 20, 2021 – 04:00 PM

While stocks, bonds, crypto and commodities make the usual headlines, it was the Turkish Lira that should have dominated the business media today.

The currency collapse accelerated early on overnight following Erdogan’s insistence of following Islamic-based efforts to cut rates. BUT, during a speech later in the day he highlighted “other tools” and signaled efforts to force exporters to use a ‘sanctioned’ FX rate, which prompted an almost unprecedented squeeze (even though it will do nothing but bifurcate the currency and reinforce a black market FX rate)…

That 25% jump is the biggest daily rise since 1983.

Erdogan was Ari Gold to the shorts today (for now)…

Aside from that, the S&P suffered biggest 3-day drop since May as stocks suffered on the back of Manchin’s “no” and the Big ‘O’. Small Caps were the hardest hit on the day and Nasdaq the least worst horse in the glue factory. Stocks came back from their worst levels after Europe closed…

All the majors broke below key technical levels, and despite a late-afternoon ramp, could not recover it. S&P<50DMA, Small Caps<200DMA, Nasdaq<100DMA, Dow testing 200DMA…

Both defensive and cyclicals were hit hard today but the latter was ugliest…

Source: Bloomberg

“Most Shorted” Stocks erase Friday’s early squeeze-fest gains…

Source: Bloomberg

Treasuries were mixed on the day (although the trend was the same from Europe’s open) with the long-end notably underperforming (2Y -1bps, 30Y +4bps)…

Source: Bloomberg

Rate-hike odds were unchanged today…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar ended lower on the day, unable to extend Friday’s gains…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin chopped around but ended unchanged and remains glued around its 200DMA…

Source: Bloomberg

NatGas surged to the top of its recent range (on cold weather demand fears)…

… as Oil prices plunged (on Omicron lockdown impact on demand anxiety)! WTI tumbled to almost a $65 handle before bouncing back in the afternoon, still closing below $69…

Finally, remember, remember December 2018. If this market is ‘testing’ Powell’s limits, it has a long way to go…

Source: Bloomberg

That was a 20% intraday swing before Powell flip-flopped from hawk to ultra-dove. Is the strike higher or lower than that this time.

II)USA DATA

end

b) USA COVID/VACCINE UPDATES//VACCINE MANDATES

Appeals court allows Biden’s private COVID Vaccine Mandate to take effect as they overrule the 6th District Appeals court. This will set up a Supreme Court Showdown

(zerohedge)

Appeals Court Allows Biden Private Business Covid-19 Vax Mandate To Take Effect, Setting Up Supreme Court Showdown

SATURDAY, DEC 18, 2021 – 10:23 AM

Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly (emphasis ours),President Joe Biden in Detroit, Mich., on Nov. 17, 2021. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

A federal appeals court late Friday in a split decision ruled that the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for private employers of companies exceeding 100 people can take effect.

The 2–1 decision by a panel of the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dissolves the stay entered by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last month on the nationwide mandate.

The rule issued by OSHA meant that some 84 million U.S. workers faced a Jan. 4 deadline to get vaccinated before it was paused. It is unclear after the latest ruling Friday when the requirement will be in effect.

The case was brought by multiple businesses, including the American Family Association; multiple individuals; and several states, including Texas, Utah, and Mississippi. Petitioners said the mandate, promulgated as an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) by the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), should be struck down because it exceeds OSHA’s authority under the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

The ruling comes after several industries – including airlines and the big three US automakers – agreed not to mandate vaccines for their union employees.

Judge Julia Smith Gibbons wrote in her majority opinion (pdf) on Friday, “Given OSHA’s clear and exercised authority to regulate viruses, OSHA necessarily has the authority to regulate infectious diseases that are not unique to the workplace.”

She added, “Indeed, no virus—HIV, HBV, COVID-19—is unique to the workplace and affects only workers. And courts have upheld OSHA’s authority to regulate hazards that co-exist in the workplace and in society but are at heightened risk in the workplace.”

Gibbons was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, a Republican. The other judge who ruled in favor of the OSHA mandate, Jane Branstetter Stranch, was appointed by President Barack Obama, a Democrat.

Earlier this week, the 6th Circuit’s active judges rejected a move to have the entire panel consider the case, on an 8–8 vote, reported The Associated Press.

The dissenting judge, Joan Louise Larsen, was appointed by President Donald Trump, a Republican. In her dissenting opinion, she noted that Congress did not authorize OSHA to create such a rule; furthermore, to work around Congress, the rule did not meet the emergency standard of necessity that the secretary of labor needed to bring it about.

“The Secretary has not made the appropriate finding of necessity,” she noted. “An emergency standard must be ‘necessary to protect employees from [grave] danger.’”

She wrote, “The purpose of the mandate is to protect unvaccinated people. The rule’s premise is that vaccines work. And so, OSHA has explained that the rule is not about protecting the vaccinated; they do not face ‘grave danger’ from working with those who are not vaccinated.”

She also added, “[A] multitude of petitioners—individuals, businesses, labor unions, and state governments—have levied serious, and varied, charges against the mandate’s legality. They say, for example, that the mandate violates the nondelegation doctrine, the Commerce Clause, and substantive due process; some say that it violates their constitutionally protected religious liberties and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. To lift the stay [by the 5th Circuit] entirely, we would have to conclude that not one of these challenges is likely to succeed. A tall task.”

Under the rule, employees who are not fully vaccinated would have to wear masks and be tested on a weekly basis for COVID-19. Exceptions would apply to those who work outdoors or from home.

The OSHA rule threatens fines of up to $13,600 per violation. It also threatens to fine an additional $13,600 per day that an employer does not abate the violation. For a willful, or serious, violation OSHA can issue a fine up to $136,000.

Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge denounced the ruling. In a statement, she indicated she would move to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to block it. “The Sixth Circuit’s decision is extremely disappointing for Arkansans because it will force them to get the shot or lose their jobs,” she said.

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, who chairs the Republican Attorneys General Association, expressed disappointment in the decision. “We are confident the mandate can be stopped,” he wrote on Twitter, adding: “We will go immediately to the Supreme Court—the highest court in the land—to fight this unconstitutional and illegal mandate. The law must be followed and federal abuse of power stopped.”

Zachary Stieber and Nick Ciolino contributed to this report.

end

Due to severe labour shortages a number of companies are walking back their vaccination mandates.

(Jack Phillips/EpochTimes)

Growing Number Of Companies And Organizations Are Walking Back Vaccination Requirements

FRIDAY, DEC 17, 2021 – 08:35 PM

Submitted by Jack Phillips of Epoch Times,

More and more businesses in recent days have walked back previous rules mandating COVID-19 vaccine sas a condition for employment in a bid to keep workers.UCHealth registered nurse Karen Nerger administers a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at a mass COVID-19 vaccination event on Jan. 30, 2021

Earlier this week, Amtrak—a quasi-public corporation—became the latest to rescind its vaccine requirement amid concerns about staff shortages and cut service in January. In a memo sent to staff that was obtained by The Epoch Times, Amtrak CEO William Flynn said the company would do away with the mandate that would have given employees until Jan. 4 to get fully vaccinated or go on unpaid leave.

About 500 out of more than 17,000 Amtrak workers remain unvaccinated, according to the memo. Still, the sudden loss of that many workers would have caused service disruptions, Flynn suggested, while noting that Amtrak was acting in accordance with recent court orders handed down against President Joe Biden’s sweeping vaccine mandates.

Several hospitals and healthcare systems have similarly rescinded vaccine mandates for employees and cited labor issues that were triggered by the new requirements. In early December, Florida’s AdventHealth announced the end of its vaccine requirement for some 83,000 workers, also citing the several recent court injunctions against federal mandates.

“Due to recent decisions by the federal courts to block the [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] vaccine mandate, we are suspending all vaccination requirements of our COVID-19 vaccination policy,” AdventHealth Chief Clinical Officer Neil Finkler said in a letter to staff. The move came after the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services confirmed to The Epoch Times that the agency suspended enforcement following two court orders several weeks ago.An Amtrak passenger train sits in New York City’s Pennsylvania Station on April 27, 2017.

Tenet Healthcare, HCA Healthcare, and Cleveland Clinic recently announced they are pulling back as well, citing labor concerns. Along with AdventHealth, the three healthcare companies operate a combined 300 hospitals and have more than 500,000 workers.

They cited recent court orders that blocked Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services from enforcing its mandate on Medicare- and Medicaid-funded medical facilities. The rule was announced by Biden on the same day that he confirmed that he would impose mandates on federal government employees, businesses who have contracts with the federal government, and, most controversially, businesses that have 100 or more workers.

The mandate for private businesses, slated to be enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), was paused by the agency last month following a scathing ruling that was issued by a panel of judges on the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. At the time, OSHA said it remained confident that the federal government would ultimately prevail in court.

“We have seen some anecdotal reports of hospitals that have paused or rolled back their vaccine mandates in light of the legal process that is currently playing out,” the American Hospital Association said in a statement to The Washington Post about the recent hospital decisions on vaccine requirements.

But the organization said that it does “not think most hospitals are changing their mandates, but some may be choosing to mandate weekly testing or other mitigating strategies for unvaccinated workers instead,” while “some have also decided to no longer terminate unvaccinated staff.”

Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Unified School District board, for different reasons, voted overwhelmingly in favor of postponing its student vaccine requirement from January 2022 until the fall of 2022 after tens of thousands of students reportedly would not comply—meaning that they would not be able to attend in-person classes.

Huntington Ingalls Industries, the largest naval shipbuilder in the United States, announced it won’t enforce the Biden administration’s federal contractor mandate. The company had told its 44,000 workers that it was not contractually obligated to comply, although a federal judge in Georgia later blocked the mandate.

The University of Iowa also recently pulled its vaccine directive for staff working on federal contracts from its website following a federal judge’s order last month. University of Iowa Faculty Senate President Teresa Marshall said on Dec. 7 that the requirement was placed on hold until federal lawsuits get sorted out

end

The White House is getting part of the message right: “we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death. He incorrectly addressed this to the unvaccinated. He should address it to the vaxx’ed

(Ciolino/EpochTimes)

White House To Unvaxx’d: “You’re Looking At A Winter Of Severe Illness And Death”

SATURDAY, DEC 18, 2021 – 03:50 PM

Authored by Nick Ciolino via The Epoch Times,

White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients predicts a winter of severe illness and death for Americans who decide to not take the vaccination for the CCP virus, which causes the disease COVID-19.

“For the unvaccinated: you’re looking at a winter of severe illness and death,” said Zients during a White House COVID-19 update Friday.
“For yourselves, your families and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm.”

The grim message from the White House comes a day after a panel of advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) unanimously voted to recommend the agency tell the public that the Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines are preferred to the jab from Johnson & Johnson (J&J).

“Any vaccination is better than no vaccination,” said CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky of the J&J jab after endorsing the panel’s recommendation.

Additionally, Pfizer-BioNTech announced Friday they will add a third vaccine dose to ongoing clinical trials on children as young as six months as two doses do not produce a robust immune response in kids 2 to 5 years old.

Meanwhile, the national average for daily COVID cases ticks up to about 119,500 per day as have the average daily deaths and hospitalizations with about 7,800 new admissions and about 1,200 deaths each day.

This despite more than 60 percent of the population being considered fully vaccinated.

Public health officials continue to push vaccines even though without a booster shot, data shows the jabs to be only nominally effective against the new, more transmissible Omicron variant which is expected to become the dominant strain of COVID in the U.S. in the coming weeks.

“Clearly unvaccinated individuals [sic] are really at a high risk of serious involvement, including hospitalization,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the president’s Chief Medical Advisor.

Fauci concedes “it’s still up in the air” as to how the severity of the Omicron variant compares to the previous Delta and Alpha strains of COVID.

Pfizer-BioNTech continues to advance the development of a variant-specific vaccine for Omicron and expects to have it available by March.

end

What an absolute joke: The USA miscounted millions of unvaccinated as vaccinated.

Here is how the doorknob did this totally by accident

(zerohedge)

“The Truth Is, We Have No Idea” – CDC Data Missed Millions Of Unvaccinated Americans

SATURDAY, DEC 18, 2021 – 12:54 PM

What a surprise – the CDC and states across the country have been over-counting the number of American adults who have been fully vaccinated.

Here’s how Bloomberg explains this accident (because what kind of person would do this on purpose?): “in collating reams of data on vaccinations, the US has counted too many shots as first doses when they are instead second doses or booster shots.“

Here’s the tell: CDC data show 240MM people with at least one shot – about 72.5% of the population.

But it also says only 203MM have been fully vaccinated, or 61.3%, an 11-percentage-point difference that is far larger than in other developed countries.

So, either Americans are so lazy – or perhaps don’t want to endure another series of adverse reactions – that they won’t show up to get their second dose, or there’s something wrong with these numbers.

And it might not surprise you to learn that a number of state and local officials believes it’s the latter.

State and local officials say it’s improbable that 37MM Americans got one shot without completing their inoculations. Instead, they say, the government has regularly and incorrectly counted booster shots and second doses as first doses.

Their conclusion is that both fully vaccinated and completely unvaccinated are officially undercounted. As for the precise number miscounted, that’s unknown, but revisions in data from three states – Illinois, Pennsylvania and West Virginia – found enough over-counting of first shots to suggest that there are plenty of unvaccinated people nationally who’ve mistakenly been counted as having received a dose.

One of the biggest gaps identified was in Pennsylvania, where CDC estimates of first doses for the elderly exceed the state of Pennsylvania’s estimate by about 850,000.

If changes are made to the national data on the scale of Pennsylvania’s revisions, this would mean increasing the number of Americans who are unvaccinated by more than 10MM.

“The truth is, we have no idea,” said Clay Marsh, West Virginia’s Covid czar.

It might not seem like such a big deal (China lies about its numbers almost constantly) but it could create problems when it comes to distributing boosters (and the inevitable next generation of vaccines): “where it has really made it difficult for us is targeting our booster messaging” said James Garrow, a spokesman for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, which has worked with the state to blend data sets for a more accurate view of vaccination trends.

“We don’t have any faith in the numbers on the CDC website, and we never refer to them,” he said.

What they fail to mention in the story is that, unfortunately, when omicron hits, many of the vaccinated will also pay the price.

end

Looks like the NFL has a problem: too many cases of the unvaccinated

(Phillips/EpochTimes)

NFL, In Major Shift, To Test Vaccinated Players Less Frequently

SUNDAY, DEC 19, 2021 – 01:55 PM

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

The NFL loosened its COVID-19 protocols over the weekend as the league was forced to postpone several games due to a rise in cases, according to memos that were distributed to teams on Saturday.

The NFL and NFL Player’s Association (NFLPA) said the league would partake in a “more targeted testing plan” for COVID-19, the illness caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

“The NFL and NFLPA have been engaged with our medical advisors to address the emergence of the new Omicron variant and how to stop the spread to ensure we keep everyone safe and complete the remainder of the season responsibly,” said the NFL and NFLPA a joint statement.

“The intensive protocols implemented last week and the rescheduling of three games were designed to stop the transmission of the virus and play this week’s games safely,” according to the statement. “After this weekend’s games, we have agreed to put into place a new set of protocols, which will include a more targeted testing plan, more flexibility for players to attend meetings virtually and also a high-risk player opt-out for the remainder of the season.”

Under the league’s original COVID-19 rules, vaccinated personnel and players had to be tested for the virus every week. The new rule announced this weekend eliminates the requirement, which allows players and staff to be screened for COVID-19 symptoms and be tested less frequently.

Vaccinated players who show symptoms of the CCP virus will be isolated and tested immediately. Those who don’t show symptoms will be subject to the NFL’s “targeted testing,” according to the memo.

For unvaccinated players, there is no change in the NFL’s protocol. It means they will still have to be tested for COVID-19 every day.

“In many respects, Omicron appears to be a very different illness from the one that we first confronted in the spring of 2020,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in the memo.

The move appears to be designed to keep players from being sidelined while not experiencing any COVID-19 symptoms. Last week, the league announced that three games were postponed relating to COVID-19 outbreaks among players and staff in the Los Angeles Rams, Cleveland Browns, and Washington Football Team.

“We can’t apply 2020 solutions to the 2021 problems that we’re having,” NFL Chief Medical Officer Dr. Allen Sills said several days ago.
“We’re often at the tip of the spear in seeing some of these changes before they show up in other elements of society because we do have so many tools at our disposal.”

According to the memos, the NFL and NFLPA came to an agreement that allowed players to opt out of the rest of the season. Players with a higher risk based on medical factors have until Monday, Dec. 20 to make a decision on not playing, which means they wouldn’t be paid for the rest of the season.

Some team owners, including Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, appeared to support the latest directive.

“I think we will get to a point, probably this week, that we’ll test only if symptomatic, that’s if you’ve been vaccinated,” Jones told 105.3 The Fan over the weekend. “That’s a good thing. Test when you’re symptomatic and that’s it.”

end

Insanity!

Pfizer Pushes Third Vaccine Dose For Kids 5 And Under

SUNDAY, DEC 19, 2021 – 03:40 PM

As Pfizer and Moderna fight to get their COVID jabs approved for children under the age of 5, Pfizer revealed on Friday that it’s changing its approach by testing three vaccine doses in babies and preschoolers after discovering that two doses simply doesn’t provide enough protection.

According to the AP, Pfizer announced the change after a preliminary analysis found 2- to 4-year-olds didn’t have as strong an immune response as expected to the very low-dose shots the company is testing in the youngest children.

All of this seems funny to us off the bat because it was our understanding that youngsters had natural immunity to the virus barring some immunodeficiency issue.

Pfizer said it had expected data on how well the vaccines were working in children under 5 by year’s end. Now, nobody knows how long that might take as the company tries out different strategy. But one thing’s for sure: Pfizer is about to be selling a lot more vaccines.

A kid-sized version of Pfizer’s vaccine is already available for 5- to 11-year-olds, one that’s a third of the dose given to adults and anybody else aged 12 and older.

For children younger than 5, Pfizer is testing an even smaller dose, just 3 micrograms or a tenth of the adult dose. Here’s the quandry: The very low-dose shots appeared to work just fine in youngsters under age 2, who produced similar antibody levels. But the immune response in 2- to 4-year-olds was lower, according to Pfizer vaccine research chief Kathrin Jansen.

Oddly, rather than trying a higher-dose shot for the preschoolers, Pfizer decided to expand the study to evaluate three of the very low-dose shots in all the study participants – from 6 months up to age 5. This third shot will be given at least two months after the youngsters’ second dose.

And the head researcher said if the additional pediatric testing is successful, “we would have a consistent three-dose vaccine approach for all ages.”

We imagine Pfizer, Moderna and the rest of then would love that – selling 50% more doses to whoever’s willing to buy them

end

So much far the notion that vaccinated people do not contract COVID 19 Eliz. Warren has been hit

(Zerohedge)

Senator Elizabeth Warren Tests Positive For COVID-19

SUNDAY, DEC 19, 2021 – 04:55 PM

Everyone’s favorite soke-the-rich socialist-ic senator has joined the list of breakthrough cases from the miracle COVD vaccines.

The 72-year-old – who is vaccinated and boosted (#SoBrave) just tested positive for COVID-19:

“I regularly test for COVID & while I tested negative earlier this week, today I tested positive with a breakthrough case. Thankfully, I am only experiencing mild symptoms & am grateful for the protection provided against serious illness that comes from being vaccinated & boosted,” the Massachusetts Democrat tweeted.

Furthermore she added that:

“As cases increase across the country, I urge everyone who has not already done so to get the vaccine and the booster as soon as possible – together, we can save lives.”

Is this still a pandemic of the unvaccinated?

end

Watch: Fauci Says Don’t Have Family Over At Christmas Unless They Are Vaxxed

MONDAY, DEC 20, 2021 – 09:04 AM

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

Anthony Fauci did his best to play the grinch who stole Christmas once again Sunday by declaring that Americans should refrain from attending any gatherings where they don’t know everyone’s vaccination status.

Presumably Fauci means that if someone in the family isn’t vaccinated then don’t let them in to the gathering, for if you merely know they are not vaccinated what’s the point?

Fauci told ABC ‘s This Week “Don’t do things like go to gatherings with people you do not know what their vaccination status is.”

Fauci also said that it would be even better if people conducted tests at their family gatherings.

“Some people are actually going the extra step and the extra mile of maybe even being tested when you have people coming over to the house,” he declared, adding “We now have much wider availability of point of care tests where you can get a result in about 15 minutes. So you might want to do that.”

Watch:https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=

Fauci sounds like the CNN doctor who last week said Americans should take COVID tests on Christmas morning before opening presents, and then wear masks at their own gatherings just like his family does

:https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-

There was no mention from either of these doctors about asking if the family has natural immunity. Given the fact that the “fully vaccinated” are still contracting and passing on the virus en mass, perhaps that would be more prudent.

end

iii) important USA economic stories for you tonight

THEY will act quite fast: Supreme Court to hear the Biden vaccine Mandate

(zerohedge)

OSHA Vaccine Mandate Heads To The Supreme Court

MONDAY, DEC 20, 2021 – 12:00 PM

Via The Brownstone Institute,

The 6th circuit Federal Court of Appeals has weighed in on the crucial mandate from OSHA that all employers with more than 100 employees must institute extreme Covid controls, while providing liberalization on the condition of vaccination. In practice, it is a vaccine mandate that covers vast numbers of workers, and it is likely to be expanded to cover everyone. The opinion was decided in OSHA’s favor, 2 to 1.

The decision has been appealed to the Supreme Court which will likely make the final judgement. As this case grinds through the court system, workers around the country are being fired, mandates are going into effect, and cities are segregating their populations based on their willingness to acquiesce to government’s mandated medicine.

The majority begins its decision with a chilling announcement that smacks of ideological bias.

Recognizing that the “old normal” is not going to return, employers and employees have sought new models for a workplace that will protect the safety and health of employees who earn their living there. In need of guidance on how to protect their employees from COVID-19 transmission while reopening business, employers turned to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA or the Agency), the federal agency tasked with assuring a safe and healthful workplace….

We are unaware of a single business in America that “turned to” OSHA with that question: what should we do?

The court majority continues with an announcement not of law but of panic: in the face of this disease, just let the bureaucracy rule!

The record establishes that COVID-19 has continued to spread, mutate, kill, and block the safe return of American workers to their jobs. To protect workers, OSHA can and must be able to respond to dangers as they evolve. …

On multiple occasions, this tone is repeated, along with highly questionable claims: “The number of deaths in America has now topped 800,000 and healthcare systems across the nation have reached the breaking point.”

Given this situation, says the court, “it is not appropriate to second-guess that agency determination considering the substantial evidence, including many peer-reviewed scientific studies, on which it relied.”

The “Science” prevails over law.

The court concludes with a statement that is factually questionable in every word:

The ETS is an important step in curtailing the transmission of a deadly virus that has killed over 800,000 people in the United States, brought our healthcare system to its knees, forced businesses to shut down for months on end, and cost hundreds of thousands of workers their jobs. …

First, it will be many years before we can fully sort out precisely the number of people who died from as versus with Covid, given the likely inaccuracies of testing and the financial incentive to misclassify. Regardless, the presumption of liberty embedded in the American system was never made contingent on pathogenic mortality data.

Second, many hospitals in the US were “brought to their knees” not by Covid but by the mandates that blocked them from serving patients with elective surgeries and diagnostics, as issued by many governors early in the pandemic. As a result, many health-care centers in the US sat empty as people skipped cancer screenings, vaccinations for other diseases, and other routine checkups. This is complete rewriting of history.

Third, businesses were not shut down by the virus but by the force of law (businesses in South Dakota did not shut down because the governor did not proclaim that they must shut down).

Fourth, hundreds of thousands of workers are losing their jobs not from the virus but from lockdowns and mandates.

It’s remarkable that a court could make such claims.

The dissenting opinion is more on point:

To illustrate (without intending to trivialize) OSHA’s task, consider the danger from fire in a workplace: a pizzeria. One way to protect the workers would be to require all employees to wear oven mitts all the time—when taking phone orders, making deliveries, or pulling a pizza from the flames. That would be effective—no one would be burned—but no one could think such an approach necessary. What OSHA’s rule says is that vaccines or tests for nearly the whole American workforce will solve the problem; it does not explain why that solution is necessary. …
So an unvaccinated 18-year-old bears the same risk as a vaccinated 50-year-old. And yet, the 18-year-old is in grave danger, while the 50-year-old is not. One of these conclusions must be wrong; either way is a problem for OSHA’s rule. …
The virus that causes COVID-19 is not, of course, uniquely a workplace condition. Its potency lies in the fact that it exists everywhere an infected person may be—home, school, or grocery store, to name a few. So how can OSHA regulate an employee’s exposure to it? …
Here, the Secretary asks for maximum authority and maximum discretion; he wants to issue a rule of national import, covering two-thirds of American workers, and he wants to do it without clear congressional authorization, without even public notice and comment, and with a capacious understanding of necessity. Such a combination of authority and discretion is unprecedented, and the Secretary is unlikely to show that he has been granted it.

This really is stacking up to be a battle between the new and old normal, which is to say the expectation of normal freedoms vs. rule by a bio-security state. The results will fundamentally affect the relationship between business and government and workers and employers. If the majority gets its way here, it’s hard to see how traditional Constitutional restraints on states at any level can be maintained in the face of bureaucratic diktat as ordered by an executive.

END

It’s Official: Durham Is Investigating The Clinton Campaign

MONDAY, DEC 20, 2021 – 04:20 PM

Authored by Techno Fog via The Reactionary,

The latest filings by Special Counsel John Durham reveal that lawyers for the Hillary Clinton Campaign now represent Christopher Steele primary subsource Igor Danchenko. Let’s walk through the significance of this fact.

Background

Igor Danchenko, the primary subsource of Christopher Steele, was arrested on November 3, 2021 for giving multiple false statements to federal officials during his 2017 interviews with the FBI. These included lies about Danchenko’s sources, his travels to Russia, and his falsified contacts with Sergei Millian. We laid out Danchenko’s indictment here.

Notably, Special Counsel John Durham alleges that one of Danchenko’s real “sources” was Charles Dolan, Jr. (perhaps first identified by Aaron Mate), who served in various leadership positions to elect Bill Clinton in the 1992 and 1996 campaigns and was an advisor to Hillary Clinton in her 2016 campaign for president.

The Involvement of the Hillary Clinton Campaign

We know that the Hillary Clinton Campaign paid for the Steele dossiers and the work by Fusion GPS. This was arranged through their attorneys (and the DNC attorneys) at Perkins Coie – notably Mark Elias and Michael Sussmann. Elias left the firm this summer. Sussmann was indicted in September 2021 by Special Counsel Durham for giving false statements relating to the Alfa Bank/Trump hoax.

It is highly likely that the Clinton Campaign was receiving updates on the Fusion GPS/Christopher Steele work once they were hired by Perkins Coie in the spring of 2016. After all, this is work the client – the Clinton Campaign – paid for. (This is consistent with the Clinton Campaign – notably Jake Sullivan – receiving backchannel updates on the Alfa Bank hoax.)

If the Clinton Campaign was being informed of the work by Fusion GPS, what of the likelihood that the Clinton Campaign was informing the work of Fusion GPS? After all, it was Clintons’ idea to link Trump and Russia in the first place. And associates of the Clinton Campaign (Sidney Blumenthal) were working to corroborate parts of the dossier.

With that in mind, I leave you this bit of information provided by the New York Times in September (emphasis added) suggesting the complicity of the Clinton Campaign:

Some of the questions that Mr. Durham’s team has been asking in recent months — including of witnesses it subpoenaed before a grand jury, according to people familiar with some of the sessions — suggest he has been pursuing a theory that the Clinton campaign used Perkins Coie to submit dubious information to the F.B.I. about Russia and Mr. Trump in an effort to gin up investigative activity to hurt his 2016 campaign.

The Latest Developments

With that background in mind, let’s review what’s going on in Danchenko’s criminal case. He was originally represented by Chris Schafbuch and Mark Schamel. On December 6, 2021, Stuart Sears appeared on behalf of Danchenko. Schafbuch and Schamel dropped out of the case.

According to Durham’s latest filing, Stuart Sears is a partner at the law firm Schertler Onorato Mead & Sears. Notably, the firm is currently representing the 2016 “Hillary for America” presidential campaign (the “Clinton Campaign”), as well as multiple former employees of that campaign, in matters before the Special Counsel.”

Did you catch that? I’ll emphasize:

The Hillary Clinton Campaign and its employees are subject to “matters before the Special Counsel.”

Durham notices the potential conflict of interest, informing the court that Danchenko’s trial might raise the following issues:

the Clinton Campaign’s knowledge or lack of knowledge concerning the veracity of information in the Fusion GPS reports sourced by Danchenko,
the Clinton Campaign’s awareness or lack of awareness of Dancehnko’s collection methods and sub-sources,
meetings or communications between and among the Clinton Campaign, Fusion GPS, and/or Steele regarding or involving Danchenko
Danchenko knowledge or lack of knowledge regarding the Clinton Campaign’s role in and activities surrounding the Fusion GPS reports, and
the extent to which the Clinton Campaign and/or its representatives directed, solicited, or controlled Danchenko’s activities.

Durham even raises the potential that members of the Clinton Campaign may be called to testify at Danchenko’s trial.

To this observer, it seems like the Clinton Campaign’s involvement in the dossier was deeper than anyone knows.

iii)b USA inflation commentaries//LOG JAMS//

King report/Courtesy of Chris Powell of GATA which includes the major swamp stories./ of the day

BOJ dials back pandemic funding as global central banks eye post-COVID era
The BOJ on Friday maintained its short-term rate target at -0.1% and that for 10-year bond yields around 0%… extended by six months a March 2022 deadline for its pandemic-relief loan scheme with tweaks to conditions, to ensure commercial banks keep channeling funds to small firms. But it decided to slow purchases of corporate bonds and commercial paper to pre-pandemic levels from April, in a nod to sharp improvements in big firms’ financial conditions…
https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/boj-may-scale-back-emergency-funding-pandemic-strains-ease-2021-12-16/

Bank of Japan: Statement on Monetary policy
https://www.boj.or.jp/en/announcements/release_2021/k211217a.pdf

@AFP: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has suffered a crushing by-election defeat in a constituency never previously lost by his Conservative Party, a result which raises serious questions about his leadership. https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20211217-uk-pm-johnson-suffers-by-election-disaster

@charliebilello: Why not just stop purchasing now given the risks of continued easing w/ inflation at a 40-year high? Powell at Wednesday’s FOMC meeting: “Markets can be sensitive to it.” And there you have it. Fed’s priorities…Stock market stability > Price stability
https://twitter.com/charliebilello/status/1471648355428282374

@cerulli_assoc: The percentage of the affluent using self-managed accounts for at least part of their investments jumped to 69% in 2021, from 35% in 2015, according to a report from Cerulli. https://bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-12-16/how-crypto-nft-s-meme-stocks-took-markets-on-a-wild-ride-in-2021

‘There needs to be a quick and devastating take down’: Emails show how Fauci and head of NIH worked to discredit three experts who penned the Great Barrington Declaration which called for an end to lockdowns – Fauci and the head of the National Institute of Health (NIH) colluded on a way to discredit an alternative plan to deal with COVID from a group of experts, released emails reveal…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10324873/Emails-reveal-Fauci-head-NIH-colluded-try-smear-experts-called-end-lockdowns.html

Oops! Feds’ guidance on COVID vaccines moves closer to alleged ‘misinformation’ of skeptics
Twitter quietly modified “misinformation” policy earlier this month to punish users who claim vaccinated people “can spread or shed the virus.”
    National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci cowrote a “perspective” in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) Wednesday that acknowledged COVID vaccines were not living up to expectations. Not only do the three vaccines authorized for emergency use require boosters due to waning “protective efficacy,” but they haven’t stopped breakthrough infections, “allowing subsequent transmission to other people even when the vaccine prevents severe and fatal disease.”…
https://justthenews.com/accountability/cancel-culture/fauci-makes-same-covid-vaccine-claims-led-twitter-boot-journalist

Johns Hopkins Surgeon: Definition of ‘Fully Vaccinated’ Changing, Big Pharma ‘May Be Calling the Shots’   http://dlvr.it/SFZV4j

Nan Hayworth, M.D. (@NanHayworth): I’m a surgeon. Surgical-style masks keep droplets containing bacteria from falling from one’s nose or mouth onto a surgical field. They do that. They DON’T prevent RESPIRATORY viruses from clinging to tiny particles and circulating into the air. Stop the madness!

Solomon Asch – Conformity Experiment
Solomon Asch conducted an experiment to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform…Asch (1951) devised what is now regarded as a classic experiment in social psychology, whereby there was an obvious answer to a line judgment task. If the participant gave an incorrect answer, it would be clear that this was due to group pressure…
    Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view. On average, about one third (32%) of the participants who were placed in this situation went along and conformed with the clearly incorrect majority on the critical trials.
   Over the 12 critical trials, about 75% of participants conformed at least once, and 25% of participants never conformed. In the control group, with no pressure to conform to confederates, less than 1% of participants gave the wrong answer…  https://www.simplypsychology.org/asch-conformity.html

Matthew 23, 3-6: So, you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. 4 They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. 5 “Everything they do is done for people to see… 6 they love the place of honor at banquets…

It’s time to abolish ‘emergency’ COVID-19 powers
COVID is over. Oh, not with Anthony Fauci. Not with the media. Not with the sour-faced Karens who have enjoyed the sense of meaning — and power — it’s given them. But with normal people, especially outside the big urban areas, it’s over. The Atlantic scandalized its readers by reporting that this week. In an article titled “Where I Live, No One Cares About COVID,” Matthew Walther wrote: “No one cares. Literally…Also, most of the nostrums offered by the experts and Karens are nonsensical and don’t work…
    And now the media are trying to rev up fear about the Omicron variant… but without much luck…
    School kids are forced to eat their lunches outdoors and wear masks while adults gather in bars, restaurants and sporting events. The entire COVID apparatus is collapsing under the weight of its own absurdity…It’s not smallpox, it’s not Ebola; in many people it’s not as bad as the flu. In 40 percent of cases, a study recently published in JAMA Network Open found, it’s entirely asymptomatic…
https://nypost.com/2021/12/16/its-time-to-abolish-emergency-covid-19-powers/

Facing Covid Spike, N.F.L. Mandates Boosters, but Stops Short on Testing
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/14/sports/football/nfl-covid-vaccine-booster-shots.html

@WhitlockJason: 95 to 99 percent of NFL employees — all employees — vaccinated. But they got a corona pandemic. Make it make sense.

NFL postpones three games as COVID decimates league https://trib.al/rcrrv01

@FOX19: The NFL said before the season started games would not be rescheduled because of COVID-19 cases among teams.

The NFL mandated that players get vaccinated. Now the NFL is plagued with Omicron – from mostly vaccinated players. We might add: no NFL players, or pro players from the major US sports leagues, have died from Covid, have been serious injured by Covid, or had onerous hospitalizations from Covid. So, explain to the players why they had to be vaxxed. Full disclosure: We are triple vaxxed.

@ClayTravis: 21 of Washington’s players are positive for covid and 20 Browns players, including their top two quarterbacks, are all positive for covid too. All of these players were “vaccinated.”
    The sports leagues all have levels of covid vaccination that are nearly 100%. The players are far younger & healthier than the overall population. Yet they are all overrun with covid. The pro sports leagues data definitively prove that vaccines won’t end covid. Biden’s lying.
     If the media was doing its job they’d point to pro sports leagues and ask Biden and Fauci to explain what’s going on there. Those leagues did exactly what you asked and got everyone vaccinated. Yet all three leagues are presently hitting all time highs for covid cases…the pro sports data tells a clear story for anyone with a functional brain: vaccines, even if everyone has them, won’t end covid. In fact, they may make covid positivity even more common.  These athletes are smart about their bodies. They see this all happening and have very real questions. They know the vaccines aren’t ending covid. But they see what happens to athletes who speak out and ask questions so they (mostly) stay quiet. This is all wrong & anti-science….Question for Joe Biden & Dr. Fauci that a truly independent news media would ask them: the NFL players are 95% vaccinated. How is this chart possible if the covid vaccines work?
https://mobile.twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1472229033882660864?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

@TomPelissero: A notable dynamic: Sources say the NFLPA has received feedback that a majority of players want to eliminate COVID protocols altogether. No more testing, quarantining, etc. That sentiment isn’t shared by union leadership, which has continued to advocate for daily testing.

NFL, NFLPA agree to scale back COVID-19 testing for vaccinated, asymptomatic players
https://bit.ly/3q6XKsQ

@nytimes: Pfizer said its two-shot vaccine didn’t perform adequately in children 2 to 5, and it will test a three-dose series for official authorization.  https://nyti.ms/3dYjQIx

@docMJP: Everyone in the world must be repeatedly injected from here on out to “save” themselves from the virus. No one in the world must ever seriously investigate where the virus came from. Only those who sponsored the research that created the virus are allowed to “save” you…
     The virus exists in part because Fauci and friends purposely funded research that civilized nations don’t allow—they got around the rules by partnering with the Chinese… Those responsible for the virus now need to be seen as saviors. The Science which caused the virus must redeem itself. So all must take the vaccine. Everyone. Against all reason, logic, & “science”. Forever. Shot after shot, amen…

Ex-FDA officials, medical experts flog feds for politicizing COVID, misrepresenting evidence
“If the last administration did this, all experts would be outraged,” tweeted University of California San Francisco medical professor Vinay Prasad.
https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/ex-biden-officials-medical-experts-savage-feds-politicizing-covid

COVID-19 ‘super immunity’ possible after breakthrough infections, study finds https://t.co/GwSxThRF1K

Amazon partnered with China propaganda arm
Amazon.com Inc was marketing a collection of President Xi Jinping’s speeches and writings on its Chinese website about two years ago, when Beijing delivered an edict… The American e-commerce giant must stop allowing any customer ratings and reviews in China… Amazon’s compliance with the Chinese government edict, which has not been reported before, is part of a deeper, decade-long effort by the company to win favor in Beijing to protect and grow its business in one of the world’s largest marketplaces… That briefing document, and interviews…reveal how the company has survived and thrived in China by helping to further the ruling Communist Party’s global economic and political agenda, while at times pushing back on some government demands…
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/amazon-partnered-with-china-propaganda-arm-win-beijings-favor-document-shows-2021-12-17/

Netherlands will go into complete lockdown tomorrow with all schools and non-essential businesses closing; the lockdown will last until at least January 14 – Sky News

Dutch flock to the shops before expected Christmas lockdown
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/netherlands-set-announce-strict-christmas-lockdown-media-2021-12-18/

European Power Prices for Monday Rise to Record on Cold Snap
Spanish daily power prices rise to a record 339.84 euros
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-19/european-power-prices-for-monday-rise-to-record-on-cold-snap?sref=ZVajCYcV

Manchin says he ‘cannot vote’ for Build Back Better: ‘I’ve done everything humanly possible’
He also said the government should be addressing inflation that has “harmed a lot of Americans.”
    “Inflation is real, it’s not going away any time soon,” he said… “What we need to do is get our financial house in order, but be able to pay for what we do and do what we pay for,” he said…
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/manchin-says-he-cannot-vote-for-build-back-better-ive-done-everything-humanly-possible

Dem Senator Manchin also stated that Biden’s Trillions ‘cost trillions more than its supporters claim’.

AP: White House accuses Sen. Joe Manchin of breaking commitments on $2T bill, calls his opposition ‘sudden and inexplicable.’   https://wtop.com/national/2021/12/white-house-accuses-sen-joe-manchin-of-breaking-commitments-on-2t-bill-calls-his-opposition-sudden-and-inexplicable/

Dems, Media, Hollywood, Never Trump Freak Out after Manchin Says ‘No’ to ‘Build Back Better’
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/12/19/democrats-media-hollywood-and-never-trump-freak-out-after-joe-manchin-says-no-to-build-back-better/

How Biden Blew It – It is tough to find a modern presidency that has collapsed as swiftly as this one.
He ignored all evidence to the contrary and concluded that he was a world-historical figure. Instead, he began talking about “transforming” the country. Instead, he proposed the largest spending program in modern American history. Instead, he sent a welcome message to would-be border-hoppers. Instead, he embraced every ridiculous neologism that progressives saw fit to throw at him: “Latinx,” “BIPOC,” “birthing person,” the lot. No sooner had Biden won the election, NPR reports, than a bunch of irresponsible voices had begun “flattering him with comparisons to two legendary Democratic presidents of the 20th century — Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson.” And Biden, fool that he is, believed them. In March, Axios confirmed to general derision that Biden was exhibiting a sincere “determination to be one of the most consequential presidents” in American history, and — euphemism alert! — to explore the “elasticity of presidential power.” The correct response to being told that he might be the next FDR would have been to laugh the speaker out of the Oval Office. Instead, flattered, Biden said, “Tell me more.”…  https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/12/how-biden-blew-it/

Today – The S&P 500 Index low on Friday was 4600.22. We warned last week that the equity rescue team was likely to mobilize if the index sank to, or just below, the 4600 mark. The vertical rally on Friday was the result of someone trying to keep the S&P 500 Index from tumbling significantly below 4600. If that were to occur, downside momentum and sellers were proliferate. This is key support now.

ESHs (March ‘H’ is the front month) traded +11.50 seconds after opening (18:00 ET) last night on conditioned Sunday night buying. They plunged to -37.25 at 19:03 ET on Omicron angst and Manchin’s BBB veto. It looks like an ugly morning. Today’s key: Will the equity rescue team save stocks?

Expected Economic Data: Nov LEI 0.8%

S&P 500 Index 50-day MA: 4604; 100-day MA: 4522; 150-day MA: 4438; 200-day MA: 4246
DJIA 50-day MA: 35,545; 100-day MA: 35,229; 150-day MA: 34,975; 200-day MA: 34,606

S&P 500 Index – Trender trading model and MACD for key time frames
Monthly: Trender and MACD are positive – a close below 4155.11 triggers a sell signal
Weekly: Trender is positive; MACD is negative – a close below 4469.12 triggers a sell signal
Daily: Trender and MACD are negative – a close above 4762.42 triggers a buy signal
Hourly: Trender and MACD are negative – a close above 4696.34 triggers a buy signal

@Breaking911: BIDEN (Channeling Stalin): “The struggle is no longer just who gets to vote, or making it easier for eligible people to vote – it’s who gets to count the vote and whether your vote counts at all.”
https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1471890202100654083

@XStrategiesLLC: BIDEN: “There’s no difference between a black entrepreneur and a white entrepreneur in success, except the black entrepreneur usually doesn’t have a lawyer, usually doesn’t have an accountant…”  https://twitter.com/XStrategiesLLC/status/1471873837449027587

@RNCResearch: Joe Biden tells HBCU graduates that he “desegregated restaurants and movie theaters” during the Civil Rights movement. This is completely FALSE.
https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1471875437848629253

@KyleMartinsen_: Biden in 1987: “I was not an activist…I was not out marching. I was not down in Selma.”   https://twitter.com/KyleMartinsen_/status/1471876648479993860

Biden Admin Announces Posthumous Medal of Honor — For Living Recipient Standing In Room
https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-biden-admin-announces-posthumous-medal-of-honor-for-living-recipient-standing-in-room

@Brick_Suit: I bet Biden’s team just recycled their Medal of Honor form letter and forgot to delete the word “posthumously” from the script.

NYT Reveals How Ashley Biden’s ‘Inappropriate Showers with Joe’ Diary Made Its Way to Project Veritas   https://www.zerohedge.com/political/nyt-reveals-how-ashley-bidens-inappropriate-showers-joe-diary-made-its-way-project

@TomJipping: Sens. Carper and Coons, DE Dems, are on the Senate floor complaining that the Senate has not confirmed various executive branch nominees. Each of them voted more than two dozen times to filibuster Pres Donald Trump’s executive branch nominees in 2017.

Biden administration reverses Trump rule allowing more powerful shower heads (Wasn’t this a Seinfeld episode?) http://hill.cm/m4sL37W

GOP Rep. @laurenboebert: Any time Democrats say something is a “threat to Democracy”, it really means a threat to the Democrat Party.

Meet Ray Epps, Part 2: Damning New Details Emerge Exposing Massive Web of Unindicted Operators At The Heart Of January 6 (Very long, comprehensive article with videos & pictures)
In clips 4-6 of the above compilation, we see Epps actively orchestrate elements of the very first breach of the Capitol barricades at 12:50 p.m, while Trump still had 20 minutes left in his rally speech…Indeed, it was the 12:50 p.m. breach of the Capitol grounds, in conjunction with a handful of suspicious individuals ripping down fencing and signage, that set in motion the conditions allowing for 1/6 to turn from a rally into a riot… the FBI originally put Ray Epps’s face on its Capitol Violence “Most Wanted List” on January 8, 2021, just two days after 1/6. They offered a cash reward for information leading to his arrest… no charges filed against him…
    Agents of the FBI Field Office in Phoenix (where Epps lives) have gone so far as to explicitly deny knowledge that Ray Epps even exists. Instead of pursuing Epps, FBI agents have instead pursued journalists who had the temerity to ask Epps in person if he was a government operative. “I understand that, but I can’t say anything,” is all Epps would tell them…
     If Epps turns out to have been some kind of government operative, which at present is the only clean and simple explanation for his immunity, it is game over for the official “MAGA insurrection” narrative of 1/6… Revolver spent the past six weeks comprehensively mapping Ray Epps’s network of interactions on January 6, and profiling the key people around him who complemented his efforts. We did a deep dive into other key figures involved in the initial breach of the Capitol grounds, as well as figures who played an instrumental role in fence removal and crowd control…
     The bad news for Fedsurrection Deniers is the results are in, and they look even worse for the FBI than Revolver’s already low expectations… we profile five of the most egregious cases in this report, and tell the story of how they crossed paths and interacted with, and in some cases coordinated with Ray Epps to make 1/6 possible…
    The Feds paid their bottomless roster of secret operatives a whopping $548 million in 2020 alone for sting jobs all over the country. 20 percent of their informant roster is made up of “longtime informants,” who effectively make a career out of it…
   The sham January 6 House Select Committee has now subpoenaed over 100 civilian cell phone records. But you know the fix is in because they have stayed away from subpoenaing the cell phone records of Ray Epps. And Ray Epps is just chilling at home these days, under the apparent protection of the Phoenix FBI.  We know that in the FBI-orchestrated “Whitmer Kidnapping Plot,” just three months before January 6, key FBI informants received text messages from handlers to “maximize attendance” of the patsies at locations where their presence would be construed as an “overt act” in furtherance of a conspiracy (“agreement” and “overt act” are the two legal elements of a federal conspiracy charge)…
https://www.revolver.news/2021/12/damning-new-details-massive-web-unindicted-operators-january-6/

On Sunday, Maria Bartiromo asked Trump why he did NOT fire Fauci?  Trump: “I didn’t… because if you fire him [Fauci] you’re going to have a firestorm on the Left again as usual…“
https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1472596894568402944

Trump is being deceitful or admitting to stupidity on Fauci. The left despised DJT then and despises him now. Why should he care what the left thinks about him? How many other important decisions did Trump make to appease the left or due to fear of leftists’ criticism?

iv) Swamp commentaries/

Emails Expose Fauci, Collins Collusion To ‘Smear’ Anti-Lockdown Scientists

SUNDAY, DEC 19, 2021 – 12:45 PM

Authored by Phillip Magness via The American Institute for Economic Research,

From October 2-4, 2020, the American Institute for Economic Research hosted a small conference for scientists to discuss the Covid-19 lockdowns. Just four days later, Dr. Francis Collins, the retiring Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), would call the three of the scientists in attendance “fringe epidemiologists,” in a directive he sent to Anthony Fauci and other senior staff of his agency.

They were “fringe epidemiologists” because they had the temerity to ask whether the lockdowns of 2020 were effective. Those three, Martin Kulldorff of Harvard, Sunetra Gupta of Oxford, and Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford were simply doing what any good scientist would do: They were following the evidence.

They wrote the Great Barrington Declaration [GBD] as they parted company at AIER, posting it for all to see.

So why was Dr. Collins so intent on impugning these three scientists? It’s hard to know exactly, mostly because any scientist worth his salt should have been happy to see further research being done. That is, after all, how ignorance is replaced by knowledge. But Collins was clearly in no mood to replace his own possible ignorance with any kind of knowledge. He was pretty sure he knew all he had to know; and this is one of the most dangerous positions a scientist can take.

In an email obtained by AIER through a Freedom of Information Act request, Collins told Anthony Fauci, CCing Lawrence Tabak, Deputy Ethics Counselor at NIH, that he wanted “a quick and devastating published take down” of the Great Barrington Declaration’s premises.

One wonders why he would CC the Deputy Ethics Counselor on this, given the trouble these people seem to have with ethics, but here they were in October of 2020. Fauci wrote that same night to let Collins know that there was already a devastating take down of the Great Barrington Declaration…in that august scientific publication Wired.

“Francis,” Fauci wrote, “I am pasting in below a piece from Wired that debunks [the GBD].” There, science reporter Matt Reynolds told us there was no “scientific divide” over herd immunity, but that’s not the funny part. The funny part came when Reynolds declared quite confidently that we no longer had anything to worry about, as lockdowns were – as of October 2020 – a thing of the past.
“The problem [with the GBD] is that we aren’t in lockdown,” Reynolds explained. “[I]t’s hard to find people who are advocating for a return to the lockdown we saw in March. When the Great Barrington Declaration authors declare their opposition to lockdowns, they are quite literally arguing with the past.”

This Fauci-endorsed passage may be one of the worst takes of the entire pandemic. Less than a month later, lockdowns came roaring back with a vengeance during the winter’s second wave.

Fauci wrote to Collins again the next day, this time referencing a breathless op-ed by Gregg Gonsalves, a public health professor at Yale, in The Nation. And here we arrive at yet another funny part. Gonsalves’ article was not exactly a critique of the Great Barrington Declaration. Instead, Gonsalves went after Martin Kulldorff, who in an interview with the leftist magazine Jacobin quite reasonably pointed out that the lockdowns hurt the poor more than most talking heads were willing to admit. Gonsalves’s grievance was that by interviewing Kulldorff, Jacobin had broken the lockdown “solidarity” of other far-left websites including the Nation and the Boston Review.

By October 10, the lines were well drawn, and Fauci thrust himself into the middle of the media hootenanny that was clearly emerging. Collins emailed again to boast about calling the three scientists “fringe” in the Washington Post, although he told Fauci that their ongoing campaign to take down the GBD “will not be appreciated in the W[hite] H[ouse}.” The White House, Fauci retorted, was “too busy with other things to worry about” the GBD. There was an election to deal with, after all.

As the bedfellows became more strange, Gregg Gonsalves wrote directly to Collins, thanking him for his undiplomatic approach. For his part, Gonsalves became ever more hostile and profane, in his remarks on the GBD. “This f****g Great Barrington Declaration is like a bad rash that won’t go away,” Gonsalves tweeted, shortly before reaching out to Collins. A day earlier, the Yale professor also began promoting unhinged conspiracy theories about the GBD and AIER that traced to the blog of a former 9/11 Truther movement activist.

Some of the emails between Collins and Fauci sent in response to AIER’s FOIA request have been redacted, but surrounding context makes it pretty clear that they were looking for a way to impugn the GBD further if it came up at the White House Covid Task Force meeting on October 16. That morning, Fauci emailed Deborah Birx, the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator. He pressed the need for her to oppose the GBD, and set the stage for an attack on Scott Altas, who was the most friendly champion of the GBD on the Task Force.

Fauci, it turns out, had to miss the October 16 task force meeting, though he likely breathed a sigh of relief when Collins emailed him two days later. “Atlas did not take part in the [task force] meeting on Friday,” Collins wrote, “and the Great Barrington Declaration did not come up.” Another partially-redacted email hints that Fauci celebrated this outcome. Atlas’s opposition to the lockdown faction on the task force “is driving Deb [Birx] crazy,” he continued.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?

Fauci and Collins were not done, though, in their campaign to “take down” the GBD scientists.

Our story picks up again in earnest on November 2, when Fauci’s chief of staff Greg Folkers replied to an email that was not made public in pursuance to AIER’s FOIA request. It seems pretty clear, though, that Fauci asked Folkers for a list of sources that would allow him to argue effectively against the GBD. The email’s subject line references a previous correspondence from Fauci “as discussed,” noting that Folkers had “highlighted the three i found most useful” (sic).

Multiple sources, and particularly Scott Atlas’s recently-published account of his time on the task force, have noted that Fauci often relies on aides to curate lists of sources in advance of his many media appearances. He seldom reads the scientific literature on Covid-19 himself, and instead arrives at meetings with staff-prepared talking points. It appears that Folker’s email was an answer to one such request for talking points to attack the GBD scientists.

Note that Fauci frequently portrays himself as a staunch defender of science who stays above the political divide and remains outside of partisan debates. In light of that, you might expect that Folker’s response to Fauci’s request would yield a small sample of scientific analysis on the logic behind lockdowns, even if only in a format bullet pointed by his staff. But you’d be wrong. Folkers sent Fauci a list of seven political op-eds and articles opposing the GBD from popular media outlets.

So yeah. Science.

end

Democracy?? They call this democracy if not one vote from the Republican side

(zerohedge)

“Our Entire Democracy Is On The Line”: Squad Fires On Manchin For Killing Build Back Better

MONDAY, DEC 20, 2021 – 09:54 AM

Progressive Democrats are livid at moderate Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) for killing the Biden administration’s $2 trillion Build Back Better plan over the weekend.

“Our entire democracy is on the line,” tweeted congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday. “We, as always, are here to fight for this agenda. What matters most to us is that it gets done,” she added. “But we cannot just shrug our shoulders and accept this as some Charlie Brown moment.”

“So we need to get back in there and get this s*** done. Period.”

AOC then called on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to ‘immediately’ schedule a vote.

“hey forced folks to go on record with [the bipartisan infrastructure bill], they can force the Senate to go on record with BBB,” AOC tweeted later on Sunday.

Meanwhile, House Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) tweeted: “Honestly, I’m frustrated with every Democrat who agreed to tie the fate of our most vulnerable communities to the corporatist ego of one Senator.”

“No one should have backed out of our initial strategy that would have kept Build Back Better alive.”

Squad member Ilhan Omar (D-MN) also chimed in, tweeting: “Let’s be clear: Manchin’s excuse is bulls**t,” adding “The people of West Virginia would directly benefit from childcare, pre-Medicare expansion, and long term care, just like Minnesotans.”

On Sunday, Manchin said he couldn’t explain a “yes” vote on BBB to the people of West Virginia.

Rashida Tlaib, meanwhile, said Manchin had committed a “betrayal of his constituents,” while Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) called for Democrats to bring the bill for a floor vote anyway so Manchin was forced to have his “no” on record.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), another squad member, said she “absolutely” agrees with forcing a vote.

“To be clear, my lack and deficit of trust was about Senator Manchin,” Pressley told CNN‘s Jake Tapper on Sunday. “He has continued to move the goalposts. He has never negotiated in good faith. And he is obstructing the president’s agenda, 85 per cent of which is still left on the table.”

“And in obstructing the president’s agenda, he is obstructing the people’s agenda,” she continued (via the Daily Mail).

“I was listening to his interview earlier today, and he said it’s a mammoth bill/ You’re right. It’s a mammoth bill to address mammoth hurt, to lower the cost of eldercare, child care, prescription drug costs, the child tax credit, which is so critical in combating child poverty.”

On Sunday, the White House accused Manchin of breaking his word.

“Senator Manchin promised to continue conversations in the days ahead, and to work with us to reach that common ground,” said White House spox Jen Psaki in a statement reacting to Manchin’s announcement.

“If his comments on Fox and written statement indicate an end to that effort, they represent a sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position,” she continued, “and a breach of his commitments to the President and the Senator’s colleagues in the House and Senate.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham hit back at the White House, calling their response “laughable.”

“The White House statement attacking Senator Manchin for deciding to vote no regarding Build Back Better is ‘Baghdad Bob’ laughable,” he tweeted.

end

Let us close out today with this offering from Greg Hunter interviewing Bo Polny

2022 Black Horse Year & Global Truth Celebration- Bo Polny

By Greg Hunter On December 18, 2021 In Political Analysis 40 Comments

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com (Saturday Night Post)

Biblical cycle timing expert and geopolitical and financial analyst Bo Polny has been predicting a new era of time, and it’s now at our doorstep. Polny is forecasting truth is coming to humanity, and the scales will be rebalanced in what Polny is calling a Black Horse year in 2022. Polny explains, “Now we are at the point of ‘The Great,’ the Great exposure, the great removal, the great fall, the great overturning and the greatest movement of God’s Spirit in the history of the world. This will directly relate to the great wealth transfer. This is supposed to be eminent and as early as Christmas, or as early as the start of January 2022. We are here now, and that is prophetic.”

Polny says this reflects the Third Seal of Revelation and goes on to explain, “There are two things that are written in that and that is a Black Horse, which is a representation of death and its scales, which is a rebalancing of the financial system. My opinion here is you cannot stop the Black Horse. So, I believe we are going to see death. We will see a mass death of many of these evil ones that have this sick, sick agenda.”

Polny admits the Black Horse might also mean death from the CV19 vaxed and boostered.

Polny’s Biblical timing is showing as much as an 80% stock market crash in 2022. Polny says, “You’ve got the Black Horse event, and it tends to move with the stock market. Every forty years, two things tend to happen: a war and a huge crash. If you look at 1942 and run a black line to 1982, we are looking at potentially an 80% stock market crash next year. That would take the DOW down possibly to the 7,000 point range. . . . Relating that to Bitcoin, that means it probably would crash too, and that would take Bitcoin down 80%. That’s 80% off its high, and the high will be anywhere from $100,000 per unit to $300,000 per unit, but we have not seen the crazy yet. We are going to see it go crazy because of the dollar event that is coming.”

The good news is evil will be fully exposed in what he calls a “global truth celebration.” Polny predicts, “All these people fall. All these shysters that have been running the world get exposed. They not only get exposed, but they fall and lose all their wealth. They lose everything and lose all their finances. If the people running the market don’t get paid anymore, they are going to take their hand off the buy button, and the next thing you know, crash happens. There are Seven Seals, and we have not seen the Third Seal, which is the great financial reset. The financial reset comes with a Black Horse. It’s truly historic, but it’s Biblical. We are blessed to live in Biblical times.”

Polny says to protect your assets all you need is physical gold and silver, but number #1 is your relationship with God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ.

Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with Biblical cycle expert and financial analyst Bo Polny, founder of Gold2020Forecast.com 12.18.21.

(This write-up is only a small sample. There is more in the over 1 hour 10 min. interview.)