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Fed Loan Officers Paints Dire Picture: Loan Standards Approaching Record Tightness As Loan Demand Plummets

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Fed Loan Officers Paints Dire Picture: Loan Standards Approaching Record Tightness As Loan Demand Plummets

Late last week, when looking at the most recent Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey held by the Fed, we noted that the surge in revolving credit has not gone unnoticed by lenders: the on bank lending practices showed banks tightening lending standards for commercial, mortgage, and credit card loans.

As Bloomberg’s Vincent Cignarella observed, “tighter credit likely will drive slower spending, a reduction in risk and the potential for the Fed to pivot sooner rather than later to avoid or shorten a potential recession. That would be more good news for bond bulls.”

Furthermore, the tightening standards are a result of most banks assigning the probability of between 40% and 80% to the likelihood of a recession in the next 12 months, with no bank reporting a probability less than 20%. Needless to say, in a recession loan losses soar which is why banks are seeking to limit their exposure having already boosted credit loss provisions heading into 2023.

As luck would have it, today the Fed released the latest SLOOS report (just ahead of tomorrow’s monthly consumer credit update), and it should come as no surprise that standards tightened again while demand weakened broadly for commercial and industrial loans for firms of all sizes as well as for all types of commercial real estate loans. Even more ominously, on the household side, banks also reported weaker demand on balance for credit card, auto, and residential real estate loans, as well as for home equity lines of credit.

Here are the main findings in the latest report:

The January 2023 Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey (SLOOS) found that lending standards for commercial and industrial (C&I) loans tightened further in Q4; in fact, as shown in the chart below, loan standards are approaching tights last seen during the covid crash and the global financial crisis:  45% of banks on net tightened lending standards for large and medium-market firms (vs. 39% on net in the previous quarter), while the number of banks tightening lending standards for small firms increased to 44% (vs. 32% on net in the previous quarter). 45% of banks on net widened spreads of loan rates over the cost of funds for large firms (vs. 30% on net in the previous quarter), while 33% on net widened spreads for small firms (vs. 25% on net in the previous quarter).

Standards for commercial real estate (CRE) loans also tightened in Q4. 69% (+12pp) of banks on net reported tightening credit standards for construction and land development loans, and 57% (+17pp) on net reported tightening lending standards for loans secured by multifamily residential properties. The number of banks that reported tightening standards for loans secured by nonfarm nonresidential properties increased to 58% (+5pp). Demand for loans secured by multifamily residential properties, secured by nonfarm nonresidential properties, and construction and land development loans all decreased by more than during the previous quarter.

Credit standards on mortgage loans also tightened. Standards were almost unchanged for GSE-eligible mortgages (+0.1pp at +0.1%), but tightened for non-jumbo, non-GSE eligible (+10.3pp to +6.9%), Qualified Mortgage jumbo (+10.1pp to +15.3%), non-Qualified Mortgage jumbo (+7.1pp to +14.5%), non-Qualified Mortgage non-jumbo (+2.0pp to +5.8%), and subprime residential mortgages (+3.2pp to +14.3%).

For banks that tightened credit standards or terms for C&I loans or credit lines, all of them cited a less favorable or more uncertain economic outlook as playing a role; 71% cited reduced tolerance for risk; 50% cited a worsening of industry-specific problems; 50% cited decreased liquidity in the secondary market for these loans; 47% cited a deterioration in their current or expected liquidity position; 41% cited less aggressive competition from other lenders; and 24% cited a deterioration in their bank’s current or expected capital position as playing a role.

On the other hand, demand for C&I loans from large- and medium-sized firms weakened in Q4; in some case – such as housing – loan demand cratered to record low, while most other categories tumbles sharply as well: 31% of banks on net reported weaker demand for C&I loans for large and medium-market firms, compared to 9% on net reporting weaker demand in the previous survey. 42% of banks reported weaker demand for C&I loans from small firms, compared to 22% reporting weaker demand the previous quarter.

Banks’ willingness to make consumer installment loans decreased in Q4 (-13% on net vs. -7% on net previously). The portion of banks tightening credit standards for approving credit card (+10pp to +28%) and auto loan (+15pp to +17%) applications increased. The portion of banks reporting stronger demand for credit card loans decreased (-22pp to -11% on net), while demand for auto loans also declined (-11pp to -39% on net).

TL/DR: the above levels are comparable to previous recessions (and even global financial crisis), and present a powerful contrast with benign market views of an increasingly-likely soft-landing.

Bottom line: in a time when US savings have been shrinking fast, and are offset with record credit card borrowings, the only thing that has allowed the party to go on, have been relatively loose loan standards.

But those are now tightening at a furious pace and unless something changes, loan standards will soon hit the tightest on record. At that point, only the most credit-worthy US households will maintain their access to credit; everyone else will be stopped out.

The numbers were so ugly, even the Fed’s mouthpiece took to twitter to lament the “significant” deterioration in lending standards.

Ironically, even though the US economy may be resilient enough to avoid a recession (if one believes the job numbers… as Goldman clearly does which is why it aggressively shrank its recession odds earlier today) it won’t matter if banks are skeptical and continue to tighten loan standards, an act which in itself is largely self-fulfilling and reflexive, and could on its own tip the economy into a recession.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/07/2023 – 08:20

Russia’s Oil And Gas Revenues Slump 46% Year-Over-Year

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Russia’s Oil And Gas Revenues Slump 46% Year-Over-Year

By Michael Kern of OilPrice.com,

Russia’s budget revenues from oil and gas plunged in January by 46% compared to the same month last year due to the sanctions on Russian oil exports, which led to a slump in the price of Russia’s flagship crude grade.

Russian budget revenues from energy sales – including taxes and customs revenues – plummeted last month to the lowest level since August 2020, according to data from its finance ministry compiled by Reuters.

In January 2023, the price of Russia’s flagship Urals grade averaged 42% lower than in the same month of 2022, as its discount to Brent Crude grew wider following the EU embargo and the G7 price cap, which came into effect on December 5.

The average price of Urals in January, at $49.48 per barrel, was over 30% lower than in January 2022, when it averaged $85.64 per barrel, Russia’s Finance Ministry said earlier this week. 

Russia calculates the export duty due to the budget based on the price of Urals. This has been reducing its revenues due to the wide discount of Urals to Brent, which has swelled to nearly $40 per barrel at times.

Brent Crude was trading at around $82 a barrel early on Friday, while Urals, per Reuters estimates, was at around $53.60 per barrel. 

Russia is considering taxing its oil firms based on the price of Brent – instead of Urals – to limit the fallout on the Russian budget revenues due to the widening discount of Urals to Brent, Russian daily Kommersant reported on Friday, quoting sources.  

Russia is looking at ways to reduce the steep discount on Urals and to stabilize its oil revenues. At the end of January, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the government to submit within a month proposals to change the methodology for calculating the taxes from oil, Kommersant’s sources said.

The EU oil ban and price cap are costing Russia an estimated $174 million (160 million euros) per day due to the fall in shipment volumes and prices for Russian oil, Finland-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) said in a report last month. The revenue losses are expected to rise to $304 million (280 million euros) per day with additional measures that are being implemented as of February 5, according to CREA.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/06/2023 – 03:30

Germany Considers Diverting Anti-Coal ‘Green’ Subsidies To Weapons Production

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Germany Considers Diverting Anti-Coal ‘Green’ Subsidies To Weapons Production

Germany is currently mulling reducing its focus on the long hyped ‘green’ initiatives as it scrambles to ramp up lagging defense manufacturing after recently approving a 100 billion euro military revamp in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Unnamed officials have told Bloomberg that this could involve “re-routing existing subsidies for eliminating coal-fired power plants to help defense manufacturers build new production facilities” – which also comes soon on the heels of Berlin approving transfer of its Leopard main battle tanks to Ukrainian forces, which constituted a stark policy reversal. 

A coal-fired power station in Garzweiler. AFP/Getty Images

“The discussions between Germany’s federal government and regional states are aimed at providing the country’s armed forces with more weapons and ammunition and creating jobs in regions that are affected by the shift away from coal, said the people, who asked not to be identified as the talks are confidential,” the report detailed.

One particular large German defense contractor named in the report is Rheinmetall AG, which is planning a new factory to manufacture ammunition components in the state of Saxony, which remains a major coal-producing powerhouse for the country.

Conservative media outlet Breitbart pointed out we could be witnessing a great reset fail in progress- ironically enough, given the very cash intended to kill the coal industry will now go towards bolstering arms manufacturing. 

The Bundeswehr, with about 250,000+ troops, has long been described as woefully undersupplied, especially in the scenario of ever having to fend off a hostile power, or in a WW3 situation in Europe.

The additional irony to all of this, is that former President Trump had on multiple occasions harangued Germany’s government for its longtime utter lack of concern over lagging defense spending, also given the United States’ outsized spending within NATO, essentially shouldering the burden of European allies.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/06/2023 – 02:45

Fresh Calls For UK To Ditch European Human Rights Laws To Take Back Control Of Its Borders

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Fresh Calls For UK To Ditch European Human Rights Laws To Take Back Control Of Its Borders

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

Conservative MPs who supported Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union have called for the country to either ignore or ditch the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which they claim is preventing the country from protecting its borders.

Speaking at the eurosceptic think tank European Foundation, Brexit-backing Jonathan Gullis MP told an audience of senior Brexiteers the government must not be afraid to tackle the ECHR issue head-on, insisting government policy should not be subject to the approval of foreign courts.

“Taking back control was also about taking back our borders. It is simply unacceptable that 44,000 people came to this country illegally last year,” Gullis said.

“We should not be afraid to, at the very least, derogate from the European Court of Human Rights as we did with prisoners’ voting rights. If the ECHR doesn’t like it, we will have on the table that we will leave the ECHR come what may. This country must have control of its borders,” he added.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has vowed to make tackling illegal immigration one of his highest priorities and pledged his support for the Rwanda policy introduced by Boris Johnson’s administration, which would see illegal immigrants arriving in Britain deported to the African nation.

The policy, however, has been fraught with difficulty after the European Court on Human Rights intervened to prevent the first flight of deportations from embarking in June last year.

Former Home Secretary Priti Patel told the Daily Mail newspaper, “The meddling of the European Court of Human Rights to block flights to Rwanda only serves to support those who wish to abuse our asylum system and evil criminal gangs.

“It must stop, and it is right that we now act to curtail the powers of the European Court,” she added.

A record number of 45,756 people unlawfully arrived in Britain via small boats across the English Channel last year, according to Home Office figures. This was up significantly on the 28,561 crossings recorded. in 2021, which had also been a record year.

Campaigners against illegal immigration say the country’s asylum system has collapsed due to the influx, and the government has been left with no option but to spend exorbitant amounts of taxpayer money on block-booking hotels to accommodate them, a move that has caused social unrest in villages and towns across the country.

Local residents have often taken to the streets in protest about new arrivals in their area, citing concerns about security and the lack of local services to support them.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/06/2023 – 02:00

How The “Unvaccinated” Got It Right

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How The “Unvaccinated” Got It Right

Authored by Robin Koerner via The Brownstone Institute,

Scott Adams is the creator of the famous cartoon strip, Dilbert. It is a strip whose brilliance derives from close observation and understanding of human behavior. Some time ago, Scott turned those skills to commenting insightfully and with notable intellectual humility on the politics and culture of our country.

Like many other commentators, and based on his own analysis of evidence available to him, he opted to take the Covid “vaccine.”

Recently, however, he posted a video on the topic that has been circulating on social media. It was a mea culpa in which he declared, “The unvaccinated were the winners,” and, to his great credit, “I want to find out how so many of [my viewers] got the right answer about the “vaccine” and I didn’t.” 

“Winners” was perhaps a little tongue-in-cheek: he seemingly means that the “unvaccinated” do not have to worry about the long-term consequences of having the “vaccine” in their bodies since enough data concerning the lack of safety of the “vaccines” have now appeared to demonstrate that, on the balance of risks, the choice not to be “vaccinated” has been vindicated for individuals without comorbidities.

What follows is a personal response to Scott, which explains how consideration of the information that was available at the time led one person – me – to decline the “vaccine.” It is not meant to imply that all who accepted the “vaccine” made the wrong decision or, indeed, that everyone who declined it did so for good reasons. 

  1. Some people have said that the “vaccine” was created in a hurry. That may or may not be true. Much of the research for mRNA “vaccines” had already been done over many years, and corona-viruses as a class are well understood so it was at least feasible that only a small fraction of the “vaccine” development had been hurried.

    The much more important point was that the “vaccine” was rolled out without long-term testing. Therefore one of two conditions applied. Either no claim could be made with confidence about the long-term safety of the “vaccine” or there was some amazing scientific argument for a once-in-a-lifetime theoretical certainty concerning the long-term safety of this “vaccine.” The latter would be so extraordinary that it might (for all I know) even be a first in the history of medicine. If that were the case, it would have been all that was being talked about by the scientists; it was not. Therefore, the more obvious, first state of affairs, obtained: nothing could be claimed with confidence about the long-term safety of the “vaccine.”

    Given, then, that the long-term safety of the “vaccine” was a theoretical crapshoot, the unquantifiable long-term risk of taking it could only be justified by an extremely high certain risk of not taking it. Accordingly, a moral and scientific argument could only be made for its use by those at high risk of severe illness if exposed to COVID. Even the very earliest data immediately showed that I (and the overwhelming majority of the population) was not in the group.

    The continued insistence on rolling out the “vaccine” to the entire population when the data revealed that those with no comorbidities were at low risk of severe illness or death from COVID was therefore immoral and ascientific on its face. The argument that reduced transmission from the non-vulnerable to the vulnerable as a result of mass “vaccination” could only stand if the long-term safety of the “vaccine” had been established, which it had not. Given the lack of proof of long-term safety, the mass-“vaccination” policy was clearly putting at risk young or healthy lives to save old and unhealthy ones. The policy makers did not even acknowledge this, express any concern about the grave responsibility they were taking on for knowingly putting people at risk, or indicate how they had weighed the risks before reaching their policy positions. Altogether, this was a very strong reason not to trust the policy or the people setting it.

    At the very least, if the gamble with people’s health and lives represented by the coercive “vaccination” policy had been taken following an adequate cost-benefit benefit, that decision would have been a tough judgment call. Any honest presentation of it would have involved the equivocal language of risk-balancing and the public availability of information about how the risks were weighed and the decision was made. In fact, the language of policy-makers was dishonestly unequivocal and the advice they offered suggested no risk whatsoever of taking the “vaccine.” This advice was simply false (or if you prefer, misleading,) on the evidence of the time inasmuch as it was unqualified.

  1. Data that did not support COVID policies were actively and massively suppressed. This raised the bar of sufficient evidence for certainty that the “vaccine” was safe and efficacious. Per the foregoing, the bar was not met. 
  1. Simple analyses of even the early available data showed that the establishment was prepared to do much more harm in terms of human rights and spending public resources to prevent a COVID death than any other kind of death. Why this disproportionality? An explanation of this overreaction was required. The kindest guess as to what was driving it was “good-old, honest panic.” But if a policy is being driven by panic, then the bar for going along with it moves up even higher. A less kind guess is that there were undeclared reasons for the policy, in which case, obviously, the “vaccine” could not be trusted. 
  1. Fear had clearly generated a health panic and a moral panic, or mass formation psychosis. That brought into play many very strong cognitive biases and natural human tendencies against rationality and proportionality. Evidence of those biases was everywhere; it included the severing of close kin and kith relationships, the ill-treatment of people by others who used to be perfectly decent, the willingness of parents to cause developmental harm to their children, calls for large-scale rights violations that were made by large numbers of citizens of previously free countries without any apparent concern for the horrific implications of those calls, and the straight-faced, even anxious, compliance with policies that should have warranted responses of laughter from psychologically healthy individuals (even if they had been necessary or just helpful). In the grip of such panic or mass formation psychosis the evidential bar for extreme claims (such as the safety and moral necessity of injecting oneself with a form of gene therapy that has not undergone long-term testing) rises yet further.
  1. The companies responsible for manufacturing and ultimately profiting from the “vaccination” were given legal immunity. Why would a government do that if it really believed that the “vaccine” was safe and wanted to instill confidence in it? And why would I put something in my body that the government has decided can harm me without my having any legal redress?
  1. If the “vaccine”-sceptical were wrong, there would still have been two good reasons not to suppress their data or views. First, we are a liberal democracy that values free speech as a fundamental right and second, their data and arguments could be shown to be fallacious. The fact that the powers-that-be decided to violate our fundamental values and suppress discussion invites the question of “Why?” That was not satisfactorily answered beyond, “It’s easier for them to impose their mandates in a world where people do not dissent:” but that is an argument against compliance, rather than for it. Suppressing information a priori suggests that the information has persuasive force. I distrust anyone who distrusts me to determine which information and arguments are good and which are bad when it is my health that is at stake – especially when the people who are promoting censorship are hypocritically acting against their declared beliefs in informed consent and bodily autonomy.
  1. The PCR test was held up as the “gold standard” diagnostic test for COVID. A moment’s reading about how the PCR test works indicates that it is no such thing. Its use for diagnostic purposes is more of an art than a science, to put it kindly. Kary Mullis, who in 1993 won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for inventing the PCR technique risked his career to say as much when people tried to use it as a diagnostic test for HIV to justify a mass program of pushing experimental anti-retroviral drugs on early AIDS patients, which ultimately killed tens of thousands of people. This raises the question, “How do the people who are generating the data that we saw on the news every night and were being used to justify the mass “vaccination” policy handle the uncertainty around PCR-based diagnoses?” If you don’t have a satisfactory answer to this question, your bar for taking the risk of “vaccination” should once again go up. (On a personal note, to get the answer before making my decision about whether to undergo “vaccination,” I sent exactly this question, via a friend, to an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins. That epidemiologist, who was personally involved in generating the up-to-date data on the spread of pandemic globally, replied merely that s/he works with the data s/he’s given and does not question its accuracy or means of generation. In other words, the pandemic response was largely based on data generated by processes that were not understood or even questioned by the generators of that data.) 
  1. To generalize the last point, a supposedly conclusive claim by someone who demonstrably cannot justify their claim should be discounted. In the case of the COVID pandemic, almost all people who acted as if the “vaccine” was safe and effective had no physical or informational evidence for the claims of safety and efficacy beyond the supposed authority of other people who made them. This includes many medical professionals – a problem that was being raised by some of their number (who, in many cases, were censored on social media and even lost their jobs or licenses). Anyone could read the CDC infographics on mRNA “vaccines” and, without being a scientist, generate obvious “But what if..?” questions that could be asked of experts to check for themselves whether the pushers of the “vaccines” would personally vouch for their safety. For example, the CDC put out an infographic that stated the following.

    “How does the vaccine work?

    The mRNA in the vaccine teaches your cells how to make copies of the spike protein. If you are exposed to the real virus later, your body will recognize it and know how to fight it off. After the mRNA delivers the instructions, your cells break it down and get rid of it.”

    All right. Here are some obvious questions to ask, then. “What happens if the instructions delivered to cells to generate the spike protein are not eliminated from the body as intended? How can we be sure that such a situation will never arise?” If someone cannot answer those questions, and he is in a position of political or medical authority, then he shows himself to be willing to push potentially harmful policies without considering the risks involved.

  2. Given all of the above, a serious person at least had to keep an eye out for published safety and efficacy data as the pandemic proceeded. Pfizer’s Six-month Safety and Efficacy Study was notable. The very large number of its authors was remarkable and their summary claim was that the tested vaccine was effective and safe. The data in the paper showed more deaths per head in the “vaccinated” group than “unvaccinated” group.

While this difference does not statistically establish that the shot is dangerous or ineffective, the generated data were clearly compatible with (let us put it kindly) the incomplete safety of the “vaccine” – at odds with the front-page summary. (It’s almost as if even professional scientists and clinicians exhibit bias and motivated reasoning when their work becomes politicized.) At the very least, a lay reader could see that the “summary findings” stretched, or at least showed a remarkable lack of curiosity about, the data – especially given what was at stake and the awesome responsibility of getting someone to put something untested inside their body.

  1. As time went on, it became very clear that some of the informational claims that had been made to convince people to get “vaccinated,” especially by politicians and media commentators, were false. If those policies had been genuinely justified by the previously claimed “facts,” then determination of the falsity of those “facts” should have resulted in a change in policy or, at the very least, expressions of clarification and regret by people who had previously made those incorrect but pivotal claims. Basic moral and scientific standards demand that individuals put clearly on the record the requisite corrections and retractions of statements that might influence decisions that affect health. If they don’t, they should not be trusted – especially given the huge potential consequences of their informational errors for an increasingly “vaccinated” population. That, however, never happened. If the “vaccine”-pushers had acted in good faith, then in the wake of the publication of new data throughout the pandemic, we would have been hearing (and perhaps even accepting) multiple mea culpas. We heard no such thing from political officials, revealing an almost across-the-board lack of integrity, moral seriousness, or concern with accuracy. The consequently necessary discounting of the claims previously made by officials left no trustworthy case on the pro-lockdown, pro-“vaccine” side at all.

    To offer some examples of statements that were proven false by data but not explicitly walked back:

    “You’re not going to get COVID if you get these vaccinations… We are in a pandemic of the unvaccinated.” – Joe Biden;

    “The vaccines are safe. I promise you…” – Joe Biden;

    “The vaccines are safe and effective.” – Anthony Fauci.

    “Our data from the CDC suggest that vaccinated people do not carry the virus, do not get sick – and it’s not just in the clinical trials but it’s also in real world data.” – Dr. Rochelle Walensky.

    “We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in… in serious condition and many on ventilators.” – Justice Sotomayer (during a case to determine legality of Federal “vaccine” mandates)…

    … and so on and so on.

    The last one is particularly interesting because it was made by a judge in a Supreme Court case to determine the legality of the federal mandates. Subsequently, the aforementioned Dr. Walensky, head of the CDC, who had previously made a false statement about the efficacy of the “vaccine,” confirmed under questioning that the number of children in hospital was only 3,500 – not 100,000.

    To make more strongly the point about prior claims and policies’ being contradicted by subsequent findings but not, as a result, being reversed, the same Dr. Walensky, head of the CDC, said, “the overwhelming number of deaths – over 75% – occurred in people that had at least four comorbidities. So really these were people who were unwell to begin with.” That statement so completely undermined the entire justification for the policies of mass-“vaccination” and lockdowns that any intellectually honest person who supported them would at that point have to reassess their position. Whereas the average Joe might well have missed that piece of information from the CDC, it was the government’s own information so the presidential Joe (and his agents) certainly could not have missed it. Where was the sea change in policy to match the sea change in our understanding of the risks associated with COVID, and therefore the cost-benefit balance of the untested (long-term) “vaccine” vs. the risk associated with being infected with COVID? It never came. Clearly, neither the policy positions nor their supposed factual basis could be trusted.

  1. What was the new science that explained why, for the first time in history, a “vaccine” would be more effective than natural exposure and consequent immunity? Why the urgency to get a person who has had COVID and now has some immunity to get “vaccinated” after the fact?
  1. The overall political and cultural context in which the entire discourse on “vaccination” was being conducted was such that the evidential bar for the safety and efficacy of the “vaccine” was raised yet further while our ability to determine whether that bar had been met was reduced. Any conversation with an “unvaccinated” person (and as an educator and teacher, I was involved in very many), always involved the “unvaccinated” person being put into a defensive posture of having to justify himself to the “vaccine”-supporter as if his position was de facto more harmful than the contrary one. In such a context, accurate determination of facts is almost impossible: moral judgment always inhibits objective empirical analysis. When dispassionate discussion of an issue is impossible because judgment has saturated discourse, drawing conclusions of sufficient accuracy and with sufficient certainty to promote rights violations and the coercion of medical treatment, is next to impossible.
  1. Regarding analytics (and Scott’s point about “our” heuristics beating “their” analytics), precision is not accuracy. Indeed, in contexts of great uncertainty and complexity, precision is negatively correlated with accuracy. (A more precise claim is less likely to be correct.) Much of the COVID panic began with modeling. Modeling is dangerous inasmuch as it puts numbers on things; numbers are precise; and precision gives an illusion of accuracy – but under great uncertainty and complexity, model outputs are dominated by the uncertainties on the input variables that have very wide (and unknown) ranges and the multiple assumptions that themselves warrant only low confidence. Therefore, any claimed precision of a model’s output is bogus and the apparent accuracy is only and entirely that – apparent. 

We saw the same thing with HIV in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Models at that time determined that up to one-third of the heterosexual population could contract HIV. Oprah Winfrey offered that statistic on one of her shows, alarming a nation. The first industry to know that this was absurdly wide of the mark was the insurance industry when all of the bankruptcies that they were expecting on account of payouts on life insurance policies did not happen. When the reality did not match the outputs of their models, they knew that the assumptions on which those models were based were false – and that the pattern of the disease was very different from what had been declared.

For reasons beyond the scope of this article, the falseness of those assumptions could have been determined at the time. Of relevance to us today, however, is the fact that those models helped to create an entire AIDS industry, which pushed experimental antiretroviral drugs on people with HIV no doubt in the sincere belief that the drugs might help them. Those drugs killed hundreds of thousands of people. 

(By the way, the man who announced the “discovery” of HIV from the White House – not in a peer-reviewed journal – and then pioneered the huge and deadly reaction to it was the very same Anthony Fauci who has been gracing our television screens over the last few years.)

  1. An honest approach to data on COVID and policy development would have driven the urgent development of a system to collect accurate data on COVID infections and the outcomes of COVID patients. Instead, the powers that be did the very opposite, making policy decisions that knowingly reduced the accuracy of collected data in a way that would serve their political purposes. Specifically, they 1) stopped distinguishing between dying of COVID and dying with COVID and 2) incentivized medical institutions to identify deaths as caused by COVID when there was no clinical data to support that conclusion. (This also happened during the aforementioned HIV panic three decades ago.)
  1. The dishonesty of the pro-“vaccine” side was revealed by the repeated changes of official definitions of clinical terms like “vaccine” whose (scientific) definitions have been fixed for generations (as they must be if science is to do its work accurately: definitions of scientific terms can change, but only when our understanding of their referents changes). Why was the government changing the meanings of words rather than simply telling the truth using the same words they had been using from the beginning? Their actions in this regard were entirely disingenuous and anti-science. The evidential bar moves up again and our ability to trust the evidence slides down. 

In his video (which I mentioned at the top of this article), Scott Adams asked, “How could I have determined that the data that [“vaccine”-sceptics] sent me was the good data?” He did not have to. Those of us who got it right or “won” (to use his word) needed only to accept the data of those who were pushing the “vaccination” mandates. Since they had the greatest interest in the data pointing their way, we could put an upper bound of confidence in their claims by testing those claims against their own data. For someone without comorbidities, that upper bound was still too low to take the risk of “vaccination” given the very low risk of severe harm from contracting COVID-19.

In this relation, it is also worth mentioning that under the right contextual conditions, absence of evidence is evidence of absence. Those conditions definitely applied in the pandemic: there was a massive incentive for all of the outlets who were pushing the “vaccine” to provide sufficient evidence to support their unequivocal claims for the vaccine and lockdown policies and to denigrate, as they did, those who disagreed. They simply did not provide that evidence, obviously because it did not exist. Given that they would have provided it if it had existed, the lack of evidence presented was evidence of its absence.

For all of the above reasons, I moved from initially considering enrolling in a vaccine trial to doing some open-minded due diligence to becoming COVID-“vaccine”-sceptical. I generally believe in never saying “never” so I was waiting until such time as the questions and issues raised above were answered and resolved. Then, I would be potentially willing to get “vaccinated,” at least in principle. Fortunately, not subjecting oneself to a treatment leaves one with the option to do so in the future. (Since the reverse is not the case, by the way, the option value of “not acting yet” weighs somewhat in favor of the cautious approach.)

However, I remember the day when my decision not to take the “vaccine” became a firm one. A conclusive point brought me to deciding that I would not be taking the “vaccine” under prevailing conditions. A few days later, I told my mother on a phone call, “They will have to strap me to a table.” 

  1. Whatever the risks associated with a COVID infection on the one hand, and the “vaccine” on the other, the “vaccination” policy enabled massive human rights violations. Those who were “vaccinated” were happy to see the “unvaccinated” have basic freedoms removed (the freedom to speak freely, work, travel, be with loved ones at important moments such as births, deaths, funerals etc.) because their status as “vaccinated” allowed them to accept back as privileges-for-the-“vaccinated” the rights that had been removed from everyone else. Indeed, many people grudgingly admitted that they got “vaccinated” for that very reason, e.g. to keep their job or go out with their friends. For me, that would have been to be complicit in the destruction, by precedent and participation, of the most basic rights on which our peaceful society depends.

    People have died to secure those rights for me and my compatriots. As a teenager, my Austrian grandfather fled to England from Vienna and promptly joined Churchill’s army to defeat Hitler. Hitler was the man who murdered his father, my great-grandfather, in Dachau for being a Jew. The camps began as a way to quarantine the Jews who were regarded as vectors of disease that had to have their rights removed for the protection of the wider population. In 2020, all I had to do in defense of such rights was to put up with limited travel and being barred from my favorite restaurants, etc., for a few months. 

Even if I were some weird statistical outlier such that COVID might hospitalize me despite my age and good health, then so be it: if it were going to take me, I would not let it take my principles and rights in the meanwhile.

And what if I were wrong? What if the massive abrogation of rights that was the response of governments around the world to a pandemic with a tiny fatality rate among those who were not “unwell to begin with” (to use the expression of the Director of the CDC) was not going to end in a few months? 

What if it were going to go on forever? In that case, the risk to my life from COVID would be nothing next to the risk to all of our lives as we take to the streets in the last, desperate hope of wresting back the most basic freedoms of all from a State that has long forgotten that it legitimately exists only to protect them and, instead, sees them now as inconvenient obstacles to be worked around or even destroyed.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/06/2023 – 00:00

East-Oregon Movement To Secede And Create ‘Greater Idaho’ Picks Up Steam

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East-Oregon Movement To Secede And Create ‘Greater Idaho’ Picks Up Steam

A movement by east-Oregon conservatives to secede and join Idaho is picking up steam, according to the Daily Mail, which interviewed the movement’s leader, Mike McCarter.

Mike McCarter is president of the Greater Idaho Movement. The campaign is stepping up its push for 15 counties to leave Oregon and join the neighboring state of Idaho

Armed with just $70,000, McCarter has been lobbying for the move in the two states – and has seen allies introduce legislation in Oregon last month. He also has a bill ready to go in Idaho that would accelerate discussions for 15 counties to immediately secede.

“I think people within the United States are watching Oregon’s movement, hoping that it’ll establish a pathway for them in the future,” he told the Mail.

McCarter’s office, adorned with muzzle-loading rifles and the head of a musk deer, “could not be further from the image of Oregon as a haven for woke politics, where a majority voted to decriminalize hard drugs in 2020, where coastal valleys provide the perfect climate for the delicate pinot noir grape and where the liberal lifestyle was sent up in the TV comedy Portlandia,” reads the report.

That is Portland, with its homeless encampments outside artisan doughnut stores. 

By contrast, central and eastern Oregon is a land of hardy ranchers, loggers and sawmill workers. Where daytime temperatures dropped below zero at the weekend after a snowstorm.

And where locals say they have more in common with next-door Idaho than they do Portland and its $6 caffe lattes. 

‘Our movement is based on values,’ said McCarter, 75, a retired nursery worker who runs courses for people who want concealed carry permits 

You know, the traditional values of faith, family, freedom, and independence. 

‘We don’t want to be catered to by the government. In other words, if my power goes down, I have generator, I have water, everything … food storage.’

As America divides between urban and rural, Democratic cities and Republican hiss and prairies, eastern Oregon is at the forefront of reshaping state lines. -Daily Mail

According to McCarter, conservatives in Oregon would be ‘fairly represented’ in Boise, rather than the Oregon capital of Salem.

That said, despite 11 eastern counties already voting in favor of moving, he doesn’t expect Oregon to just give up 15 counties which contain 63% of the state’s land without a fight.

Last month, Oregon lawmakers introduced legislation which would require the state to enter into discussions with Idaho.

McCarter also pointed out that it would save western Oregon money to allow the east to split off, as rural residents are subsidized to the tune of around $500 per person per year.

So if Oregon, let Eastern Oregon go, they would be much richer right on their side,” he said. “They would not have the conflict and the bickering battle that goes back and forth.”

As Michael Snyder wrote in 2020:

Out of Oregon’s existing 36 counties, only 14 would remain in the state if Greater Idaho is able to achieve their goals, and a big chunk of northern California would become Idaho territory as well.

But getting this accomplished will not be easy.  Approval would be needed from the state legislatures of Oregon, California and Idaho, and that would be a real challenge.

On top of that, the U.S. Congress would have to approve any plan, and getting that to happen would probably require a miracle.

But one thing that this movement has going for it is the fact that it has been endorsed by some big name state lawmakers in Oregon, and that includes the top Republican in the state Senate

The move would also give western Oregon Democrats a supermajority in the state legislature, allowing them to more freely pursue their progressive agenda.

“Chicago controls Illinois. Atlanta controls Georgia. New York City controls all of New York state,” said McCarter. “And there’s a distinct difference between urban and rural.

Tyler Durden
Sun, 02/05/2023 – 23:30

The New York Times Just Admitted That The West’s Anti-Russian Sanctions Are A Failure

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The New York Times Just Admitted That The West’s Anti-Russian Sanctions Are A Failure

Authored by Andrew Korybko via The Automatic Earth blog,

The “official narrative” surrounding the Ukrainian Conflict has flipped in recent weeks from prematurely celebrating Kiev’s supposedly “inevitable” victory to nowadays seriously warning about its likely loss.

It was therefore expected in hindsight that other dimensions of the information warfare campaign waged by the US-led West’s Golden Billion against Russia would also change. As proof of precisely that, the New York Times (NYT) just admitted that the West’s anti-Russian sanctions are a failure.

In Ana Swanson’s article about how “Russia Sidesteps Western Punishments, With Help From Friends”, she cites Western experts who concluded that “Russia’s imports may have already recovered to prewar levels, or will soon do so, depending on their models.” Even more compelling, she references the IMF’s latest assessment from Monday, which “now expected the Russian economy to grow 0.3 percent this year, a sharp improvement from its previous estimate of a 2.3 percent contraction.”

Neither the NYT, the Western experts that Swanson cites, nor the IMF can credibly be accused of being “Russian-friendly”, let alone so-called “Russian propagandists” or even “Russian agents”, which thus confirms the observation that this dimension of the Golden Billion’s infowar has also decisively shifted. The fact of the matter is that the West’s anti-Russian sanctions failed to catalyze the collapse of that targeted multipolar Great Power’s economy, which continues to remain impressively resilient.

The timing at which this narrative changed is also important because it extends credence to the more widely known new narrative that’s nowadays seriously warning about Kiev’s likely loss in NATO’s proxy war on Russia. After all, if the sanctions achieved the goal that they were supposed to and which the US-led West’s Mainstream Media (MSM) hitherto lied that they supposedly had, then it naturally follows that Kiev would “inevitably” win exactly as they claimed would happen up until mid-January.

With this in mind, the most effective way to “reprogram” the average Westerner after brainwashing them over the past 11 months into expecting Kiev’s supposedly “inevitable” victory is to also decisively change the supplementary narratives that artificially manufactured that aforesaid false conclusion. To that end, the order was given to begin raising the public’s awareness about the failure of the Golden Billion’s anti-Russian sanctions, ergo the NYT’s latest piece and the specific timing thereof.

What’s left unsaid in that article is the “politically incorrect” but nevertheless heavily implied observation that the jointly BRICS– & SCO-led Global South of which Russia is a part has defied the Golden Billion’s demands to “isolate” that multipolar Great Power. No MSM outlet will ever admit it, at least not yet, but their de facto New Cold War bloc has limited sway outside the US’ recently restored “sphere of influence” in Europe, whose countries are the only ones suffering from these sanctions.

The NYT’s latest piece might inadvertently make many members of their public conscious of that, however, and they might therefore increasingly object to their governments scaling up their commitment to NATO’s proxy war on Russia under American pressure. Croatian President Zoran Milanovic recently joined Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in condemning this campaign and raising wider awareness of just how counterproductive it’s been for Europe’s objective interests.

As Europeans come to realize that they’re the only ones suffering from the anti-Russian sanctions that their American overlord coerced them into imposing and that their sacrifices haven’t adversely affected that targeted multipolar Great Power’s special operation, massive unrest might follow. It’s unlikely to influence their US-controlled leaders into reversing course, remembering that the German Foreign Minister vowed late last year never to do so, but could instead catalyze a violent police crackdown.

The reason behind this pessimistic prediction is that a reversal or at the very least lessening of the presently rigid anti-Russian sanctions regime would represent an unprecedentedly independent move by whichever European state(s) does/do so. Seeing as how that didn’t even happen in the eight years prior to the US’ successful reassertion of its unipolar hegemony all across 2022, the likelihood of that happening nowadays under those much more difficult conditions is practically nil.

The US’ “Lead From Behind” subordinate for “managing” European affairs as part of its new so-called “burden-sharing” strategy, Germany, has more than enough levers of economic, institutional, and political influence to several punish any of those lower-tier American vassals who get out of place. It’s therefore unrealistic to expect any single EU member to unilaterally defy the bloc’s anti-Russian sanctions that their own government previously agreed to.

Considering this reality, those leaders who want to remain in power or at least not risk the US’ German-driven Hybrid War wrath against their economies are loath restore a semblance of their largely lost sovereignty in such a dramatic manner. Instead, their most pragmatic course of action is to not participate in the military aspect of this proxy war by refusing to dispatch arms to Kiev exactly as the emerging Central European pragmatic bloc of Austria, Croatia, and Hungary have done.

The population of those countries are thus unlikely to protest against the sanctions even after being made aware of the facts contained in the NYT’s latest piece and naturally coming to the conclusion that the anti-Russian sanctions have only harmed their own economies and not that targeted Great Power’s. Folks in France, Germany, and Italy, however, could very well react differently, especially considering their tradition of organizing massive protests.

In such a scenario, their governments are expected to order a violent police crackdown under whatever pretext they concoct, whether it’s falsely accusing the protesters of employing violence first or accusing them all of being so-called “Russian agents”. Regardless of how it happens, the outcome will be the same whereby Western European countries will slide deeper into liberal-totalitarian dictatorship, which will in turn contribute to further radicalizing their population towards uncertain ends.

Returning back to the NYT’s piece, it represents a remarkable reversal of the “official narrative” by frankly admitting that the West’s anti-Russian sanctions are a failure. This coincides with the decisive shift of the larger narrative driven by American and Polish leaders over the past month whereby they’re nowadays seriously warning about Kiev’s likely loss in NATO’s proxy war on Russia.

It remains to be seen what other narratives will change as well, but it’s predicted that more such ones will inevitably do so.

*  *  *

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Tyler Durden
Sun, 02/05/2023 – 23:00

Devastating Footage Emerges After 7.8 Magnitude Earthquake In Turkey

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Devastating Footage Emerges After 7.8 Magnitude Earthquake In Turkey

A magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck southern Turkey at 4:18 a.m. Monday near the city of Nurgadi, which was followed by a powerful 6.7 magnitude aftershock. Devastation spread into northern Syria, and the quake was felt as far away as Tel Aviv and Beirut.

Earthquake rubble in Malatya

Search and rescue teams have been dispatched to the affected areas, with President Erdogan conveying his “best wishes” to citizens via a Monday tweet, adding “We hope that we will get through this disaster together as soon as possible.”

One of the largest cities near the epicenter is Gaziantep, located near the Syrian border. According to Governor Davut Gul, the earthquake was “felt severely” in the city.

Via BBC.com

According to USGS seismologist Susan Hough, the quake risked being particularly dangerous due to its location and shallow depth.

“The world has seen bigger magnitudes than this over the past 10-20 years,” she tweeted. “but quakes close to M8 are not common on shallow strike-slip fault systems, and by virtue of proximity to population centers can be especially deadly.”

Several buildings in the province of Kahramanmaras have collapsed, and a fire has broken out.

130 buildings have reportedly collapsed, including two hotels, in the city of Malatya, according to the governor.

In Osmaniye, a province near the epicenter, five people were killed and 34 buildings collapsed, local media reports.

In the province of Sanliurfa, the earthquake was “severe and long-lasting,” Governor Salih Ayhan tweeted

According to the NY Times, Turkey has asked the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations orgnaization for help. The Turkish army also has two planes ready to carry units to the region. 

Meanwhile, Syria’s Civil Defense declared a state of emergency after the earthquake, saying on Twitter that dozens of people remained trapped in the northwest region of the country on Monday.

Tyler Durden
Sun, 02/05/2023 – 22:30

Innovation Or Attack? Sorting Out The “NFT Big Block” On The Bitcoin Network

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Innovation Or Attack? Sorting Out The “NFT Big Block” On The Bitcoin Network

By Liu Chongyong of WuBlockchain,

On February 1, 2023, Bitcoin Network mined the largest block in history, containing a nearly 4M largest transaction in the history, and the transaction fee is 0…

The big transaction was sent out by indie developer @udiWertheimer’s “Taproot Wizard”, an NFT project on the Bitcoin network. The main data is an NFT, not a hash, but an entire jpg image.

The developer and project have not been named, but the incident has caused a huge shock to the Bitcoin ecosystem, with Blockstream CEO Adam Back (@adam3us), Bitcoin Core developer @LukeDashjr and others calling it an attack on Bitcoin.

See CoinDesk’s report:https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2023/02/02/giant-bitcoin-taproot-wizard-nft-minted-in-collaboration-with-luxor-mining-pool/

However, @udiWertheimer stresses that this is an innovation based on “Ordinals” proposed by former Bitcoin core developer Casey Rodarmor.

Ordinals Doc:https://docs.ordinals.com/introduction.html

@udiWertheimer and Casey Rodarmor claim that the theory can tag every basic unit of bitcoin: satoshi, and can be transferred. NFT is just one of many ways to enable more functionality on the Bitcoin network without the need for a hard and soft fork upgrade.

Rodarmor claims that Ordinals came up because Bitcoin lacks a stable public identity. Bitcoin addresses tend to be single-use, wallet accounts are local, and ownership of public and private keys is not transferable. So, by marking each satoshi in each output, Ordinals creates a transferable account or identity for Bitcoin.

For technical details see:https://github.com/casey/ord/blob/master/bip.mediawiki

Specifically, in the NFT project “Taproot Wizard”, the publisher is supposed to use a specific satoshi to refer to jpg images to implement the identification and circulation of the NFT. I haven’t fully understood how this is done.

It’s an interesting experiment in innovation, but bitcoin core doesn’t like it for a couple of reasons:

  1. Blockchain size inflation: This will result in the rapid expansion of bitcoin blockchain size, greatly increased requirements for devices running full-node, resulting in the reduction of full-node of the whole network and the decline of anti-censorship. This was the main reason for rejecting Vitalik’s smart contract in OP_RETURN in 2014, and rejecting hard fork expansion in 2017.

  2. Ecological impact: Big transactions and Big blocks exceeding expectations impact wallet, mining pool, browser and other ecological facilities, resulting in some facilities abnormal, such as the transaction of btc.com browser failed to parse properly.

  3. Reduce security: In order to reduce the time of synchronization and verification of big transactions and blocks, the mining pool or miners may choose not to download and release blocks without verifying the transactions and blocks, which brings security risks.

In the expansion debate in 2017, Bitcoin core refused to expand by means of hard fork to increase the block limit, and chose to use segwit to bring the verification information outside the block on the premise of avoiding hard fork, so as to bypass the 1M block limit and achieve partial expansion. However, there was no restriction on the length of the verification message. Hard choices now have to be made:

  1. Do nothing and allow applications to enter the Bitcoin blockchain in this way, making the debate about limiting OP_RETURN and expanding capacity meaningless;

  2. Hard fork upgrade, write the size limit of the data witnessed in isolation into the consensus. This is also difficult. The impact of hard fork is great and all nodes need to be updated, which is also the main reason for rejecting the New York Consensus upgrade to 2M in 2017.

  3. Reach a partial consensus on major pools and reject big blocks and big tx. This is very bad. It opens the door to manual block review, loses the sense of decentralization, and is operationally difficult for all pools to comply with.

Overall, option 1 is more likely because option 3 is difficult to achieve, and the Bitcoin ecosystem is already very large, making it difficult to smoothly hard fork.

Relevant data:

Block height: 774628

Block size: 3,955,272 bytes

Transaction ID

0301e0480b374b32851a9462db29dc19fe830a7f7d7a88b81612b9d42099c0ae

Transaction size: 3,938,383 bytes

Transaction type: segwit

Transaction fee: 0

Block miner: “Luxor Mining”

Sending address of transaction:

bc1pscu742m5eyt6vwzl62fjugy9mj5yq8pgk674qc2x44892t3zjqfs3ca78z

Note: I have not yet sorted out all the technical details, such as how Ordinals implemented NFT, the structure of the isolated witness data and related restrictions, etc. Corrections or additions are welcome.

Tyler Durden
Sun, 02/05/2023 – 22:00

Hedge Fund CIO: “China’s Helium Balloon Is A Distraction: The Real Risks Are Off The Radar”

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Hedge Fund CIO: “China’s Helium Balloon Is A Distraction: The Real Risks Are Off The Radar”

By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

“You take something off the table here,” barked Biggie Too.

“Feels like we’re somewhere in peak Goldilocks,” continued the Global Chief Strategist for one of Wall Street’s Too-Big-To-Fail affairs.

“At some point you get a challenge to Goldilocks – Biggie sees things and it’s coming,” he bellowed, most comfortable in 3rd person.

“Maybe the dollar resumes its rally. Conviction trades roll over – investment grade, emerging markets. Not yet. Biggie feels a little back and forth first.”

Overall

“I ordered the Pentagon to shoot it down on Wednesday as soon as possible,” said President Biden, caving to the cries of the crowd.

“They decided – without doing damage to anyone on the ground – they decided that the best time to do that was when it got over water,” added America’s Commander-in-Chief, acknowledging that of the many terrific uses for F-22s, engineering soft landings is not one.

“Within the 12-mile limit, they successfully took it down, and I want to compliment our aviators who did it.”

The media sure loved it all.

Clicks, conspiracies, coverups.

And presumably some Americans felt safer knowing a nation that landed a rover on the dark side of the moon and tested encrypted satellite communications using quantum entanglement technology, is no longer floating a helium balloon overhead.

It reminded us that what we fear need not make much sense.

The real risks, of course, are most often off the radar.

One such risk is that the nation with the world’s most important economy and mightiest military is becoming increasingly difficult to responsibly govern.

China’s helium balloon illustrated this disturbing fact for all those tuned in to its faint signal.

But the much larger object floating overhead is the Federal Reserve’s unfathomably bloated balance sheet, which is both impossible to photograph and even more difficult to explain to the nation’s distracted citizenry.

“We’ve raised rates four and a half percentage points, and we’re talking about a couple of more rate hikes to get to that level we think is appropriately restrictive,” said Chairman Powell, at the press conference. “Why do we think that’s probably necessary? We think because inflation is still running very hot,” he added. But the yield curve remained steeply inverted, dismissing Powell’s guidance, as the bond market fears sustained rate hikes when combined with the ongoing quantitative tightening campaign will precipitate a hard landing.

Tyler Durden
Sun, 02/05/2023 – 21:00