Steve Bull's Blog, page 27
May 27, 2024
There’s More to China’s U.S. Debt-Dumping Rush Than Meets the Eye
Unprintable Alternative to Debt, De-Dollarization, Not Just China, Leaving the West for the East
“Gold is money. Everything else is credit.”
~ J. P. Morgan
Earlier this week, I told you how China has accelerated its de-dollarization efforts with rapid-fire sales of U.S. debt.
The country offloaded $53.3 billion worth of U.S. Treasuries and U.S. agency bonds. This is the largest single sale of U.S. debt in its history.
But, as I explained, even U.S. allies like Belgium and Switzerland have recently dumped an impressive $20 billion and $43 billion worth of Treasuries, respectively.
If this trend keeps up, it could be a big problem for the U.S. government. That’s because about one-third of its debt, or $8 trillion, is held by foreign countries.
The Unprintable AlternativeNow, the main reason foreigners own such a large portion of U.S. debt is simple: the U.S. dollar is the world’s primary reserve currency.
Currently, central banks hold about 58% of their foreign reserves in U.S. dollars. To earn returns on all this cash, they invest it in U.S. Treasuries, which are considered the safest assets in the world.
There’s just no alternative… or is there?
Well, China certainly seems to think so.
Just take a look at the next graph showing China’s holdings of U.S. Treasuries and gold as a percentage of its foreign reserves since 2015.
The chart above shows that as China cut back on U.S. debt, it ramped up its gold purchases. This inverse relationship between China’s gold and U.S. debt holdings became really noticeable around 2018, when the trade war with the U.S. kicked off. And as I mentioned in my last essay, by 2019, China had given up its spot as the biggest holder of U.S. debt to Japan.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Lawmakers Push for the Censorship of “Harmful Content,” “Disinformation” in Latest Section 230 Reform Push
Section 230 of the Communications Act (CDA), an online liability shield that prevents online apps, websites, and services from being held civilly liable for content posted by their users if they act in “good faith” to moderate content, provided the foundation for most of today’s popular platforms to grow without being sued out of existence. But as these platforms have grown, Section 230 has become a political football that lawmakers have used in an attempt to influence how platforms editorialize and moderate content, with pro-censorship factions threatening reforms that force platforms to censor more aggressively and pro-free speech factions pushing reforms that reduce the power of Big Tech to censor lawful speech.
And during a Communications and Technology Subcommittee hearing yesterday, lawmakers discussed a radical new Section 230 proposal that would sunset the law and create a new solution that “ensures safety and accountability for past and future harm.”
We obtained a copy of the draft bill to sunset Section 230 for you here.
In a memo for the hearing, lawmakers acknowledged that their true intention is “not to have Section 230 actually sunset” but to “encourage” technology companies to work with Congress on Section 230 reform and noted that they intend to focus on the role Section 230 plays in shaping how Big Tech addresses “harmful content, misinformation, and hate speech” — three broad, subjective categories of legal speech that are often used to justify censorship of disfavored opinions.
And during the hearing, several lawmakers signaled that they want to use this latest piece of Section 230 legislation to force social media platforms to censor a wider range of content, including content that they deem to be harmful or misinformation.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Thermodynamics of Degrowth | Tim Garrett
What’s the relationship between our energy consumption, our material footprint and our economies?
Tim Garrett and I come to refer to these as “the holy trinity”. Tim is a Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Utah, and over two years ago, he joined me to discuss the thermodynamics of collapse, where he explained his research into the behaviour of snowflakes and how you could extrapolate the behaviour of economies and civilization using the laws of thermodynamics. He’s back on the show to explain how we use our energy, the necessity of a surplus of energy and how all of this relates to a society’s growth and health.
In this conversation we discuss questions like: Will renewables facilitate an increased consumption of fossil fuels? Can we reduce inequality by reducing energy consumption? How can we organise a wave-like civilisation, which grows and decays within safe boundaries? Can we decline in order to recover before crashing completely?
May 25, 2024
Exposing The CIA’s Secret Effort To Seize Control Of Social Media
While the CIA is strictly prohibited from spying on or running clandestine operations against American citizens on US soil, a bombshell new “Twitter Files” report reveals that a member of the Board of Trustees of InQtel – the CIA’s mission-driving venture capital firm, along with “former” intelligence community (IC) and CIA analysts, were involved in a massive effort in 2021-2022 to take over Twitter’s content management system, as Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi and Alex Gutentag report over at Shellenberger’s Public (subscribers can check out the extensive 6,800 word report here).
According to “thousands of pages of Twitter Files and documents,” these efforts were part of a broader strategy to manage how information is disseminated and consumed on social media under the guise of combating ‘misinformation’ and foreign propaganda efforts – as this complex of government-linked individuals and organizations has gone to great lengths to suggest that narrative control is a national security issue.
According to the report, the effort also involved;
a long-time IC contractor and senior Department of Defense R&D official who spent years developing technologies to detect whistleblowers (“insider threats”) like Edward Snowden and Wikileaks’ leakers;the proposed head of the DHS’ aborted Disinformation Governance Board, Nina Jankowicz, who aided US military and NATO “hybrid war” operations in Europe;Jim Baker, who, as FBI General Counsel, helped start the Russiagate hoax, and, as Twitter’s Deputy General Counsel, urged Twitter executives to censor The New York Post story about Hunter Biden.
Jankowicz (aka ‘Scary Poppins’), previously tipped to lead the DHS’s now-aborted Disinformation Governance Board, has been a vocal advocate for more stringent regulation of online speech to counteract ‘rampant disinformation.’ Jim Baker, in his capacity as FBI General Counsel and later as Twitter’s Deputy General Counsel, advocated for and implemented policies that would restrict certain types of speech on the platform, including decisions that affected the visibility of politically sensitive content.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
May 24, 2024
Noxious Disinformation. Climate: The Movie
Refuting lies takes far more time and energy than making them
Spitting oil? An excellent illustration by Jim Cooke perfectly illustrates this article. We are enveloped by disinformation every day.This article is longer than usual. Slapping down lies takes extra time and work. It may need to be read in the app or in your browser if it’s too long for email.
A few weeks ago, I read an article talking about the potential for the slowing Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) to eventually tip Europe into an ice age. I’ve been aware of this scenario for a long while. On an intuitive level, it’s bewildering to consider as global temperatures inexorably rise. In fact, currently the European continent is warming faster than the world as a whole at 2.3° C above pre-industrial levels compared to 1.3° C globally. Another reader of the article who apparently didn’t understand the importance of AMOC’s role in regulating global temperature (or likely the basics of climate science) jumped on this possibility to share a movie promoting the lie that CO2 as a driver of climate change is a hoax, and posted a link to Climate: The Movie, a slick piece of disinformation posted on YouTube produced by Martin Durkin, a notorious climate change denier. Durkin sees the environmental movement as a threat to personal freedom and in favor of crippling economic development.
Many of you likely know such a denier in your life. The most important thing I can do as a writer is give you the facts needed to persuade others of the dilemma we face. You are my ambassadors. I watched this film as a necessary exercise to understand what this person believes…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Did the Dulles Brothers Seal Our Fate?
The “Soviet Threat” which became Washington’s foreign policy mindset was a self-serving creation of Allen and John Foster Dulles. The consequences of their creation and its recreation by the US neoconservatives await us unaddressed.
Some years ago I reviewed Stephen Kinzer’s book, The Brothers, an extraordinary account of two men long serving at the top of the US government, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and CIA Director Allen Dulles.
Both were appointed to office by President Eisenhower. Allen Dulles was the Director of the CIA, and John Foster Dulles was the Secretary of State. The interests of the two men’s law firm became in effect the agenda of the government of the United States.
Both men used their power in service of their powerful law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell. Both are examples of the privatization of government to serve private interests. Foreign government that got in the way of their firm’s clients’ interests, they plotted to overthrow.
To justify their use of the US government in service to the clients of their law firm, the brothers invented the “communist threat of world subversion” and inaugurated the Cold War. The brothers came up with six monsters to destroy.
Image: Mohammad Mosaddegh in court, 8 November 1953 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
The first was the first democratically elected leader of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh, certainly no communist. Mossadegh’s offense was that he nationalized Iranian oil, thus angering the British government. He also angered the brothers. Sullivan & Cromwell’s client, the J. Henry Schroder Banking Corp, was the financial agent for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company on whose board Allen sat. The nationalization of Iranian oil also disrupted Foster’s activities in behalf of Chase Manhatten Bank.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Twitter Files Fuel Massie’s Fight Against Government-Funded Censorship
Congressman Thomas Massie has announced HR 8519, legislation aimed at ending the practice of spending taxpayer money to fund various censorship and “disinformation” research programs.
A press release said that Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, and the subsequent publishing of the Twitter Files – a batch of internal documents showing how the government and this social platform colluded in the previous period – played a pivotal role in opening the public’s eyes to the realities of the situation.
We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.
Ever since the 2016 elections and after those in 2020, speaking about what the Twitter Files revealed about online censorship, its methods, and levels, would have been discredited as “misinformation” or a “conspiracy theory.”
And one of the things revealed is that the US federal government had informally enlisted not only tech companies but also universities to do this, many say, unlawful work.
Unless it came as a result of pressure, like any work, it had to be paid for, and Massie now wants to make sure that kind of funding is banned going forward.
In this effort, the Republican senator had the backing of only his party colleagues, with over a dozen of them originally co-sponsoring HR 8519. Since it is blatantly unconstitutional for the money to change hands in any direct way, the bill aims to stop “the workaround”: the government using taxpayer money to further its political goals via various “disinformation” research grants.
Those would typically go to groups or networks made up of “select” universities and researchers. Moreover, HR 8519 seeks to prevent the government from bankrolling “specific programs within the National Science Foundation” which have been identified by the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which Massie is a member of.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Renewables Farce
The renewals transition is a lie. Here’s why.
Photo by CHUTTERSNAP / UnsplashLet me say this loud for the people in the back:RENEWABLES ARE NOT A PANACEA FOR CLIMATE CHANGE
Sure, wind, solar or geothermal energy might reduce carbon intensity per unit of output. Indeed, an EV, for example, emits less carbon than an ICE vehicle.
Unfortunately, it’s more complicated. It always is.
Let me stop right here for a second. I am no fossil fuels apologist. And I’m not trying to thwart the efforts to improve the planet. However, I am a realist and observer of human and political behavior. In this article, I describe what will likely happen, as opposed to what I wish would happen.First, renewables must be evaluated from a birth-to-death perspective. This includes the manufacturing processes, inputs and raw materials extraction. Accounting for these, the tradeoff is less black-and-white and often highly influenced by the longevity of the renewable alternative.
Break-even estimates vary wildly, and are highly dependent on what you’re measuring – e.g. financial cost or carbon emissions. I think it’s fair to say any renewable used to replace fossil fuels must have a lifespan across decades to be a viable alternative.
Studies show conflicting information – potentially influenced by inherent biases – with one recent study suggesting the breakeven between EVs and ICE vehicles is beyond normal usage.
Other studies show carbon parity can occur much earlier, depending on the underlying energy source.
My point is there are hidden complexities beneath the renewables transition, which has been misused as a soundbite to appease the citizenry.
Looking longer-term, those hidden complexities worsen. Transitioning to alternative energy sources requires massive consumption of copper, nickel, lithium and other metals. Research by Simon Michaux, Associate Professor at Geological Survey of Finland, suggests at current production rates there simply won’t be enough raw materials to feed the transition.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
David Stockman on the Continual Rise in the Cost of Living… And Why the Fed has No Shame
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Jay Powell did it again assuring the 1% that he has their back.
Markets recovered their poise over the last 24 hours, as investors were relieved after Fed Chair Powell stuck to his recent views on the economic outlook. In his remarks yesterday, he said that recent data didn’t “materially change the overall picture” and that on inflation “it is too soon to say whether the recent readings represent more than just a bump.” In addition, he reiterated that if “the economy evolves broadly as we expect, most FOMC participants see it as likely to be appropriate to begin lowering the policy rate at some point this year.” So that all helped to validate market pricing, which still expects 71 bps of rate cuts from the Fed by the December meeting.
Needless to say, the man has no shame. And that’s to say nothing of intellectual firepower. There is not even a smidgen of a case that rate cuts in the present context will help main street, and the Fed heads and their Wall Street megaphones don’t actually even try to make that argument.
Instead, they argue for rates cuts by default. If by some tortured version of the CPI (i.e. the “supercore” index, which eliminates 61% of the CPI items by weight) they can espy the in-coming inflation trend settling into a liberally defined vicinity of 2.00%, that’s purportedly good enough to end the money-printing pause that has been in place since March 2022. Thereafter, it’s back to business as usual, flooding the canyons of Wall Street with cheap credit and a new burst of financial asset inflation.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
What Really Happened: Lockdown Until Vaccination
“…in April of 2020, I got a call from Rajeev Venkayya…he told me on the phone to stop writing about lockdowns…”
Four years later, many people are investigating how our lives were completely upended by a pandemic response. Over my time on the case, I’ve heard countless theories. It was Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Finance, the Green New Deal, the CCP, Depopulation, Get Trump, Mail-In Ballots, and so on.
There is evidence to back them all.
The problem with having so many pieces of evidence and so many theories is that people can too easily get thrown off track, going on wild goose chases. It’s too much to follow through consistently, and this allows the perpetrators to hide their deeds.
For such situations, we can take recourse to Occam’s razor: the best explanation is the simplest one that explains the maximum number of facts. This is what I offer here.
Those in the know will be shocked by nothing herein. Those not in the know will be amazed at the audaciousness of the entire scheme. If it is true, there are surely documents and people who can confirm this. At least this model of thinking will assist in guiding thinking and research.
There are three parts to understanding what took place.
First, in late 2019 and perhaps as early as October, higher-ups in the biodefense industry and perhaps people like Anthony Fauci and Jeremy Farrar of the UK became aware of a lab leak at a US-funded bioweapons lab in Wuhan. This is a place that does gain-of-function research to produce both the pathogen and the antidote, just like in the movies. It’s gone on for decades in possibly hundreds of labs but this leak looked pretty bad, one with a fast-transmitting virus believed to be of high lethality.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
