Republicans’ slim House majority in the upcoming congressional session means that aspiring speaker Kevin McCarthy needs nearly every GOP rep’s votes. That’s giving discontented conservatives powerful leverage — and on Sunday, that leverage was evidenced by McCarthy granting a major concession to the holdouts.

However, it’s still far from clear that McCarthy will be elected on the first ballot —if at all. 

I’m not voting for Kevin McCarthy for Speaker because he’s just a shill of The Establishment.

The reason most of my Republican colleagues are supporting him is because they benefit from the redistribution of lobbyist & special interest money from McCarthy to their campaigns. pic.twitter.com/bdJmjwy6W7

— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) December 27, 2022

In a conference call, McCarthy said he would agree to lower the threshold by which rank-and-file members can force a vote to depose a sitting speaker. Specifically, he said he would support a rule change that would allow any five members of the House majority to compel a vote to “vacate the chair.” That concession, however, is partial — some reps want any single member to have the power to force a no-confidence vote. 

Normally a largely ceremonial undertaking, this session’s speaker vote could turn into an entertaining spectacle that paralyzes the House. Since 1923, every speaker has won on the first vote. An 1855 battle for House leadership, however, spanned two months and 133 votes.  

To be elected speaker on Tuesday, McCarthy needs 218 votes. Since no Democrat is going to vote for a Republican, that means McCarthy will have to persuade nearly every one of the new session’s 222 GOP members to vote for him. Thanks to his party’s profound underperformance in the midterms, McCarthy is working with the slimmest majority for an aspiring first-time speaker since John Nance Garner in 1931.  

An easier path to firing a speaker is just one of many rule changes that have been demanded by conservative Republicans who are fed up with a top-down approach to legislation that sees mammoth omnibus bills presented by leadership for a straight up-or-down vote, with no ability to offer amendments from the floor. 

In a letter to GOP representatives, McCarthy voiced sympathy with their grievances:  

“The simple fact is that Congress is broken and needs to change,” McCarthy wrote in a letter to his members, citing party leaders’ increasingly centralized power that has “relegated members of both parties to the sidelines, with mammoth bills being drafted behind closed doors and rushed to the floor at the last minute for an up-or-down, take it or leave it vote.” — Politico

However, McCarthy’s concession and olive branch landed with something of a thud.  Nine GOP reps who’ve yet to commit to McCarthy issued a statement saying that, while it represented “progress,” “Mr McCarthy’s statement comes almost impossibly late to address continued deficiencies ahead of the opening of the 118th Congress on January 3rd…there continue to be missing specific commitments with respect to virtually every component of our entreaties.” 

I don’t see any scenario where I’d support Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker.

McCarthy has a track record of cutting backdoor deals with Democrats. pic.twitter.com/UzUz67yd7K

— Rep Andy Biggs (@RepAndyBiggsAZ) December 29, 2022

Among the unacknowledged demands: Conservatives want a commitment that House leadership will not work to defeat them in party primaries.  

Meanwhile, the Freedom Caucus has asked for rule changes that include: 

• Broader membership in the group that doles out committee assignments

• Allowing committee members to choose their own chairs

• Allowing amendments from the floor

• Being given five days to review legislation before voting on it

The new session starts Tuesday, and the speaker election is the first order of business — even before the swearing-in of new members.  Representatives vote in alphabetical order, by saying a name. Watch for resisters to the McCarthy campaign to say the name of a fellow representative, or any name at all. (For instance, Thomas Massie could vote for Ron Paul on the first ballot.)  

McCarthy can trim the necessary votes below 218 by persuading malcontents to skip the vote or simply reply “present.” That’s because, by precedent, winning the speakership requires a majority among those who vote for a specific name. 

A failure to win on the first ballot would compel McCarthy to offer more concessions to the hold-outs. It could also lead to the emergence of a new speakership candidate. An impasse could also be broken by a House vote to allow an election by a plurality. 

Thanks to the fact that several of the rebellious GOP members come early in the alphabet — including Andy Biggs (AZ), Dan Bishop (NC), Andrew Clyde (GA), Eli Crane (AZ) — we may know quickly if McCarthy’s first-ballot hopes are likely to be dashed. 

Authored by Guglielmo Cecero and Raphael Schön via BitcoinMagazine.com,

Bitcoin is under attack. It is increasingly seen as a “dirty currency.” Elon Musk’s Tesla, Wikipedia, Greenpeace and other organizations have stopped accepting BTC for their products or as a means to donate money.

Musk, who is not only one of the richest but also one of the most controversial people on this planet, has said: “Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels, and we believe it has a promising future, but this cannot come at great cost to the environment.” Ouch.

And it’s not just Musk. Politicians have also taken aim at Bitcoin.

Before the European Commission’s Markets in Crypto-Asset Regulation (MiCA) regulation was passed, it caused quite a stir within the Bitcoin community, especially due to the left-wing factions of the EU Parliament that were opposed to proof of work (PoW) and the power consumption of the Bitcoin network. In the trilogue, a version of MiCA was finally passed that did not ban PoW or mining.

As became known in April 2022, some members of the European Parliament (MEPs) tried to push through a ban on bitcoin mining and one on BTC trading in the course of the draft law. Luckily, they failed.

However, the foundations for further steps have been laid. For example, the issuers of cryptocurrencies, which we know are mostly simply tech startups, will be obliged to deliver some kind of report on the energy consumption and the associated carbon footprint of the respective asset. Brokers and exchanges, in turn, must inform their customers about these exact figures when they purchase crypto assets.

The increasing aversion to Bitcoin also gained traction through an anti-Bitcoin Greenpeace USA campaign launched in March, which was financed by Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen, among others. Interestingly, Greenpeace accepted bitcoin donations between 2014 and 2021 until they were put on hold due to environmental concerns.

FACT: #Bitcoin mining is driving millions of tons of new global warming pollution in the US

MYTH: Burning “waste” methane can green bitcoin

REALITY: Burning waste gas does nothing to reduce fossil fuel consumption and is even keeping old gas wells open https://t.co/o4Er21GVoo

— Greenpeace USA (@greenpeaceusa) October 17, 2022

NEARLY HALF OF THE EU PARLIAMENT DOESN’T LIKE BITCOIN

As mentioned, a mining or trading ban for Bitcoin didn’t make it into the MiCA legislation. However, it is very unlikely that members of the EU parliament who tried to implement this in MiCA will give up — we can assume the contrary.

In March 2022, the economic and monetary affairs (ECON) committee in the EU parliament voted against a ban on PoW. Thirty-two members voted against it, 24 in favor. The topic seems to become more and more ideologically driven, as the Social Democrats, the Greens, and the left mostly wanted a PoW ban, whereas the Conservatives, the Liberals and right-wing factions tended to vote against it.

15/ Here is a detailed overview of how all the MEPs voted for the final vote (not only single amendments, but entire draft) pic.twitter.com/Z0i5DRI1bw

— Patrick Hansen (@paddi_hansen) March 14, 2022

The final MiCA draft created by conservative MEP Stefan Berger included a compromise: Instead of a ban on PoW, they agreed on including a rating system for cryptocurrency to assess their environmental impacts (more on that later).

In an email conversation with Politico, the Spanish Green EU parliament member Ernest Urtasun explained:

“Creating an EU labeling system for crypto will not solve the problem as long as crypto-mining can continue outside the Union, also driven by EU demand… The Commission should rather focus on developing minimum sustainability standards with a clear timeline to comply.”

And he added:

“Ethereum’s recent upgrade just showed that phasing out from environmentally harmful protocols is actually feasible, without causing any disruption to the network.”

THE ECB DOESN’T LIKE BITCOIN — AT ALL

While we see different opinions on Bitcoin in the European Parliament, the signals we’re getting from the European Central Bank (ECB) are very clear. The ECB is issuing warnings about cryptocurrencies on a regular basis, naming their “exorbitant carbon footprint” as “grounds for concern”.

Just recently, on November 30, 2022, the ECB published a blog post titled “Bitcoin’s Last Stand.” In it, ECB’s Market Infrastructure And Payments Director General Ulrich Bindseil and advisor Jürgen Schaff argue that, “Bitcoin’s conceptual design and technological shortcomings make it questionable as a means of payment.”

According to Bindseil and Schaff, Bitcoin transactions are “cumbersome, slow and expensive,” which they say explains why the world’s largest cryptocurrency — created to overcome the existing monetary and financial system — “has never been used to any significant extent for legal real-world transactions.” Bindseil and Schaff added that since Bitcoin is neither an effective payment system nor a form of investment, “it should be treated as neither in regulatory terms and thus should not be legitimized.”

While it may seem paradoxical to very vocally attack something that is on the “road to irrelevance,” it is not the first time that the ECB has attacked Bitcoin.

10 years ago today, the ECB wrote in its first report on #bitcoin: “In an extreme case, virtual currencies could have a substitution effect on central bank money if they become widely accepted.” pic.twitter.com/aPACJlds3G

— Tuur Demeester (@TuurDemeester) October 21, 2022

In July 2022, the ECB singled out Bitcoin in a research article and compared proof of work to fossil fuel cars while considering proof of stake as more akin to electric vehicles. Let’s ignore for a minute that this doesn’t make sense and look at what it wrote in detail:

“Public authorities should not stifle innovation, as it is a driver of economic growth. Although the benefit for society of bitcoin itself is doubtful, blockchain technology in principle may provide yet unknown benefits and technological applications. Hence, authorities could choose not to intervene with a view to supporting digital innovation. At the same time, it is difficult to see how authorities could opt to ban petrol cars over a transition period but turn a blind eye to bitcoin-type assets built on PoW technology, with country-sized energy consumption footprints and yearly carbon emissions that currently negate most euro area countries’ past and target GHG saving. This holds especially given that an alternative, less energy-intensive blockchain technology exists.”

In general, the ECB believes it’s highly unlikely that the European Union will not take action in terms of carbon emissions on PoW-based assets like bitcoin. The authors of the paper argue that in their view it’s likely that the EU will take similar steps on phasing out PoW as they are doing with fossil fuel cars. Especially since, according to them, an “alternative, less energy-intensive” technology like PoS exists.

“To continue with the car analogy, public authorities have the choice of incentivising the crypto version of the electric vehicle (PoS and its various blockchain consensus mechanisms) or to restrict or ban the crypto version of the fossil fuel car (PoW blockchain consensus mechanisms). So, while a hands-off approach by public authorities is possible, it is highly unlikely, and policy action by authorities (e.g. disclosure requirements, carbon tax on crypto transactions or holdings, or outright bans on mining) is probable. The price impact on the crypto-assets targeted by policy action is likely to be commensurate with the severity of the policy action and whether it is a global or regional measure.”

The vast majority of citizens are used to thinking of money as something other than what it really is, and the ECB is also to blame for this. Money is perceived as something that has value by itself, instead of something whose value comes from the interaction between the people who use it.

The euro is subject to both constant changes (regular inflation) and traumatic events (devaluations, forced exchange rates, etc.), but these are ignored or otherwise underestimated. People believe they own it, although they can only exchange it for other things.

For how many and for what things will 100 euros be exchanged in one year, five years or ten years? This is, in no way, up to us.

Its exchange function is constantly changing due to factors we cannot control. The interaction between those who use it is the main factor and, in turn, this interaction depends on economic and monetary policy rules that few people know about.

Bitcoin escapes these rules (and this is the reason why the ECB wants to ban it), it is just code that the ECB and the regulators are trying to make useless. Bitcoin also and above all expresses its value through features that are totally independent of a government’s power and, therefore, the ECBs.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT?

In 2025, we will see a rating system for cryptocurrencies according to their environmental impact within the European Union — think energy labels for fridges or TVs. You can already expect that bitcoin will get the worst classification. This step will essentially be positive for Ethereum and bad for Bitcoin.

Source

It’s quite unlikely that such a label will scare off investors from buying bitcoin, especially since the Bitcoin community is saying that the Bitcoin network is not an obstacle but a solution for more green energy.

Therefore, the Bitcoin mining industry has the incentive to become greener: The fossil fuel analogy in the ECB paper makes no sense. The energy mix of a PoW network like Bitcoin can come entirely from renewable, green sources. Bitcoin can serve as a way to immediately monetize energy, as is already happening with flared gas that would be flared anyway. However, it’s questionable how fast and effective this effort will be to policymakers, especially since fossil energy companies like Exxon are now mining Bitcoin using flared gas.

The authors of the ECB paper are already implying that a higher bitcoin price equals more energy consumption, as more miners will participate. Destroying demand for bitcoin would hence be an effective solution to bring down the hash rate. At least in theory.

CONCLUSION

The academic and political consensus seems to point toward something like trying to retire the “old” PoW, and moving towards the “new” PoS standard. Particularly since Ethereum’s recent merge, many bystanders believe this could be a viable path for the Bitcoin network. We doubt that and plan to elaborate on that in a future post. As we’ve seen in different scenarios, banning Bitcoin is hard, if not impossible. The Nigerian government tried, failed and eventually gave up, for instance.

It will be quite a while until 2025, and with an energy crisis, increased focus on carbon emission as well as global uncertainty overall, the only thing we can do at this point is to expect the unexpected.

Even if the worst-case scenario happens, and we see a Bitcoin ban of some sort happen in the EU, we doubt that this will hold forever. Bitcoin does not ask for permission. Bitcoin is something that ontologically struggles to stay inside a fence. It is not an idea derived from anarchist positions, it is an argument derived from the inherent characteristics of the technology introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto. The regulators work in an authorizing logic and so it is clear that they struggle to intercept the Bitcoin phenomenon, which functions regardless of someone else’s permission.

Meloni’s government will soon force NGO ships flying flags from countries like France, Germany and Norway to accept the migrants they pick up in the Mediterranean Sea

Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni smile as she attends her year-end press conference in Rome, Thursday, Dec. 29, 2022. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

As Olivier Bault reports at Remix News, the threshold of 100,000 illegal migrants who arrived by sea in Italy this year was crossed on Dec. 21, and the number is not only a symbolic milestone but also serving as a call to action for Italy’s conservative government.

The figure of 100,000 can be compared with the 64,055 on the same date a year ago and the 33,867 arrivals by sea in 2020. This year’s number is the highest since 2017, the year when the left-wing government of Matteo Renzi finally decided to clamp down on the NGOs’ business of transferring illegal immigrants to Europe through passive and sometimes active cooperation with people smugglers, introducing stricter rules on how NGO ships were allowed to operate in the Mediterranean Sea.

Meloni’s government prepares to take action

Starting next year, however, Giorgia Meloni’s government will introduce stricter rules for NGO boats operating in the Mediterranean Sea to prevent them from coordinating their activities with people smugglers and from searching for would-be immigrants near the Libyan shore.

Italy’s council of ministers was to approve on Dec. 28 a draft security decree that will include a new Code of Conduct for those NGOs and accelerate the processing of asylum requests.

One of the big changes the new right-wing government in Rome plans to introduce is that migrants taken on board an NGO boat in an alleged search-and-rescue operation will be required to declare if they intend to file an asylum request once in Europe. If this is the case, the country under whose flag a given ship is sailing will be required to take in the asylum seekers and process their requests.

The new policy change may give governments in Germany, France and other nations second thoughts about funding migrant boats operating on the Mediterranean if they are the ones forced to take these migrants in.

A second major change is that after a search-and-rescue operation, an NGO ship will have to immediately ask for a safe port to disembark the rescued migrants and will have to sail towards their designated port, without waiting for days for further opportunities to “rescue” migrants.

This is meant to put an end to the practice of systematic searching for would-be illegal immigrants, sometimes in coordination with people smugglers, instead of conducting genuine search-and-rescue operations.

The NGOs that will violate the new rules will face administrative sanctions and can eventually have their ships seized by the Italian authorities in case of repeated violations.

The second part of the new “security decree,” which will have to be later approved by Italy’s parliament to become law and remain in effect, will provide for fast processing of asylum requests and more efficient repatriation procedures for those whose requests are rejected.

Vast majority are economic migrants

In 2016, 181,436 illegal immigrants entered Italy. Thanks to the new rules introduced by Interior Minister Marco Minniti in the summer of 2017 and a memorandum of cooperation that was then signed with the Libyan government in Tripoli, the number dropped that year to 119,310.

The lowest number —and the lowest death toll as well — was reached in 2019 after over a year with Matteo Salvini as Italy’s interior minister, with “only” 19,471 migrants arrivals by sea. However, that number included a significant rise observed from September to December, when Salvini’s League was replaced by the center-left Democratic Party as the 5-Star Movement’s coalition partner under Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.

Similarly to what was observed during the previous years, most of the migrants who have crossed the Mediterranean Sea on small fishing boats or bigger ships run by European NGOs this year did not escape war. Out of the 100,000 who had arrived from Jan. 1 to Dec. 21, some 86,000 were from countries at peace. Out of these, over 20,000 were from Egypt, and almost 18,000 were from Tunisia. Bangladesh came third with over 14,000 of its citizens among those who reached Italy through the Mediterranean Sea this year.

None of those countries are at war or known for persecuting their citizens, so it is clear most of those migrants have spent thousands of euros and risked their lives in the hope of a better standard of living in Europe.

It is also worth noting that out of those more than 100,000 new immigrants, over 30,000 have come from Tunisia using small boats and 73,173 sailed from the Libyan coast between Jan. 1 and Dec. 20, of whom 22,216 were turned back by Libyan coast guards. An additional 17,583 sailed from Turkey or Lebanon according to data from Italy’s interior ministry compiled by Il Giornale.

This year, there have been 15 ships active transporting migrants on the Mediterranean belonging to 12 different NGOs, of which only one is Italian. The biggest ships are run by the Franco-Swiss organization Doctors without Borders (MSF) and the “European” organization SOS Méditerranée whose headquarters are in France and which is financed in large part by French local authorities. Both the former’s Geo Barents ship (3,844 migrants disembarked in Italy this year, as of Dec. 20) and the latter’s Ocean Viking (2,387) fly the Norwegian flag. Germany’s Sea Watch came only third this year with its two ships having disembarked 1,825 migrants in Italy, but it will have a newer, bigger ship, the Sea Watch 5, to take even more migrants on board from next year on.

Can Meloni succeed?

The Meloni government’s efforts to control immigration by sea will depend much on bilateral agreements they manage to secure with the countries of origin of those migrants. In addition, it remains to be seen whether Meloni’s government will have the courage to keep migrants under surveillance in closed facilities until their asylum requests are processed and until they are sent back to their home country for those whose requests are rejected.

All of these actions would necessarily set Italy on a collision course with the pro-immigration European elites in Brussels, Paris, and Berlin.

Update (1331ET): 

19-year-old Trevor Bickford, from Wells, Maine, is the kid who injured three NYPD officers with a machete in an unprovoked attack in Times Square. He was on the FBI’ watchlist’ after being radicalized. 

UK’s Daily Mail wrote, “the FBI in Boston do have an open case on him,” and “he is on a ‘guardian list’ because of his radicalization.”

Sources told NYPost that Bickford traveled via Amtrak train to NYC with “camping gear, a diary and a last will and testament” before he pulled off the machete attack. 

“Published reports reveal that Bickford appeared to be a typical American teenager before he allegedly became radicalized in the years after sources said his father died of an overdose in 2018,” NYPost continued. 

Daily Mail published pictures of Bickford via his mother’s Facebook. 

Here’s a picture of the young man after the NYPD shot him. He was rushed to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, along with the two cops he injured — all three are expected to survive. 

NY Post: Man who attacked police with machete near Times Square last night is Trevor Bickford, 19, from Wells, Maine. “Cops are investigating whether he is a recently radicalized Islamic extremist, based on online postings.”https://t.co/xOaVJS7vGhhttps://t.co/17g5gBRBD6 pic.twitter.com/qXvUqftx2R

— Steve Lookner (@lookner) January 1, 2023

News Center Maine’s Jack Molmud reported the FBI arrived at the suspect’s family home this afternoon. 

NEW: NBC New York is reporting the man accused of attacking three police officers in NYC is 19 year old Trevor Bickford

Bickford is from Wells, Maine. I am outside the address confirmed to be his family’s from neighbors. FBI agents are outside the home right now @newscentermaine pic.twitter.com/xX0JnUowfy

— Jack Molmud (@jmolmud) January 1, 2023

It seems like the case every time… 

Suspect Behind NYPD New Year’s Eve Attack Was on FBI Radar – Trevor Bickford a Recent Convert to Islam pic.twitter.com/bZj5c9MYPV

— FCKTOFF (@fcktoff) January 1, 2023

*  *  * 

Chaos erupted in Times Square on New Year’s Eve when a machete-wielding man injured three New York Police Department (NYPD) officers. 

New York Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell told reporters early Sunday that a 19-year-old man attempted to strike the first officer in the head with a machete, unprovoked. Sewell said the man hit two other officers on the head with the machete. 

Sewell said one officer received a laceration to the head while the other received a skull fracture and a large laceration. Another officer discharged his firearm, striking the suspect in the shoulder. 

Watch as Police Commissioner Sewell & Mayor Adams provide an update on a police involved incident in Manhattan. https://t.co/ha11b02Fvq

— NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) January 1, 2023

The incident occurred around 9:30 p.m. ET at West 52nd Street and 8th Avenue. One police source told NYPost that an investigation had been opened to see whether the suspect is a radical Islamic extremist. 

“We are working with our federal partners for this investigation, and it is ongoing,” Commissioner Sewell said. 

NYPD Crime Stoppers released a picture of the machete. 

Mike Driscoll, assistant director in charge of the New York FBI Field Office, who is also investigating, told local news NBC New York that the knife attack appears to be the work of a “sole individual at this time, there’s nothing to suggest otherwise.” The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force is also investigating.

Nearby onlookers were startled by the attack and gunfire — many revelers fled amid the chaos. 

They are shooting and stabbing in #TimesSquare! Two police stabbed. Condition unknown! #NYCACC pic.twitter.com/D119rFg5Qs

— @BeeNewsDailyB (@BeenewsdailyB) January 1, 2023

BREAKING NEWS: Two NYPD officers stabbed, One Officer was stabbed in the head during New Year’s Eve celebrations at Times Square. #Manhattan #nypd #stabbing #fdny #TimesSquare #NewYear #balldrop #HappyNewYear #NewYorkCity #nyc #newyork #BreakingNews #Police pic.twitter.com/EMzINArTLp

— NY Actions (@NY_ACTIONS) January 1, 2023

“No backpacks or umbrellas in Times Square. They forgot to mention machetes,” a police source told The Post. 

Authored by Nathan Su via The Epoch Times,

“Zero non-COVID” is the name that people in China are calling the regime’s new pandemic management policy. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has aggressively pushed the whole country towards an all-COVID-positive state.

China’s annual rubber-stamp legislature is usually in session during the month of March. It is widely expected that the coming session will focus on saving China’s economy because it is on the edge of collapse after the three-year long zero-COVID policy.

Party leader Xi Jinping is clearly willing to pay any price to reopen the country.

Government employees of Chongqing City in Sichuan Province and Zhejiang Province received notices telling them return to their offices to work even if they have tested positive for COVID-19, as long as their symptoms are mild.

The total population of Chongqing City is more than 31 million, and Zhejiang province more than 57 million.

Rumors on the Chinese internet talked about local governments of Chongqing City and Zhejiang Province being criticized by Beijing because these regions were too slow to reach a high percentage of COVID positive patients.

A local official in Shanghai told The Epoch Times on Dec. 27 that his office had received instructions to do whatever it could to push the city into the COVID peak status.

“Let those who are supposed to become positive become positive, and let those who are supposed to die, die,” said Song Wen (pseudonym).

All state-owned media are mute about the current situation in the country, and reports from different government agencies are conflicting.

The Zhejiang Provincial government recorded one million new COVID cases on Dec. 25, while the Chinese national CDC only reported 2,983 new cases in the whole nation for the same day.

The regime announced that on Jan. 8, 2023, China will totally reopen travel in and out of the country, which has triggered concern in countries around the globe. Italian officials reported on Dec. 28 that 50 percent of passengers on two flights from China tested positive for COVID.

Chinese travelers leave the arrival hall of Rome Fiumicino International Airport, near Rome, after being tested for COVID-19 on Dec. 29, 2022. (Filippo Monteforte/AFP via Getty Images)

China, a country with a population of more than 1.4 billion, moved from the zero-COVID policy to a zero non-COVID policy within a month. The sudden change has left health experts worldwide feeling uncertain, because the explosion in COVID cases in China may lead to the whole world being exposed to new variants.

The Western media have widely attributed the sudden policy change to the late November White Paper protests against the zero-COVID policy in China. However, according to World Health Organization (WHO) emergencies chief Michael Ryan, the COVID spike in China was not due to the lifting of the government mandated restrictions.

Before the policy change, “the disease was spreading intensively because I believe the control measures in themselves were not stopping the disease. And I believe China decided strategically that was not the best option anymore,” Ryan said.

The regime’s change from Zero-COVID to a Zero non-COVID policy did not come without signs.

Starting in late September, many Chinese state-owned media openly discussed not overly enforcing the zero-COVID policy.

On Sept. 30, Xi Jinping and all top CCP leaders went to Tiananmen Square for a memorial service on Marty’s Day. Xi and others brought flowers to the People’s Heroes Monument, a stone that was erected to remember those who died for the Party in the past. The pictures of the service show hundreds of people at the event who are not wearing masks.

For a country that has been enforcing the mask wearing principle as a part of its zero-COVID policy, the event was the first clear sign of the regime’s impending policy change.

On Oct. 28, Xi said during his short stay in Henan Province: China’s socialist system was established with the sacrifice of human lives. He said that this sacrifice is also needed in the modern era. Xi visited the province after the CCP’s 20th Congress earlier in the month, in which he was re-elected to a third term as the head of the CCP.

On Nov. 24, a fire started in a high-rise apartment building in Urumqi City that caused many deaths and injuries because the fire escape was locked. The incident later caused widespread protests in many cities. On Dec. 7, Beijing officially lifted its three-year long zero-COVID policy.

It is obvious that the CCP started the policy change quietly as early as in late September. The widespread protests after the Urumqi fire on Nov. 24 became the perfect excuse for the regime to openly adopt a new policy.

The reason for the regime’s policy change is clear: to save the regime’s ruling power at the cost of Chinese people’s lives.

As 2022 comes to a close we can recap many historic milestones of the year, like the Earth’s population hitting 8 billion and the global economy surpassing $100 trillion.

In this chart, Visual Capitalist’s Avery Koop visualizes the world’s GDP using data from the IMF, showcasing the biggest economies and the share of global economic activity that they make up.

 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a broad indicator of the economic activity within a country. It measures the total value of economic output—goods and services—produced within a given time frame by both the private and public sectors.

The GDP Heavyweights

The global economy can be thought of as a pie, with the size of each slice representing the share of global GDP contributed by each country. Currently, the largest slices of the pie are held by the United States, China, Japan, Germany, and India, which together account for more than half of global GDP.

Here’s a look Top 10 country’s share of the world’s $101.6 trillion economy:

Just five countries make up more than half of the world’s entire GDP in 2022: the U.S., China, Japan, India, and Germany. Interestingly, India replaced the UK this year as a top five economy.

Adding on another five countries (the top 10) makes up 66% of the global economy, and the top 25 countries comprise 84% of global GDP.

The World’s Smallest Economies

The rest of the world — the remaining 167 nations — make up 16% of global GDP. Many of the smallest economies are islands located in Oceania.

Here’s a look at the 20 smallest economies in the world:

Tuvalu has the smallest GDP of any country at just $64 million. Tuvalu is one of a dozen nations with a GDP of less than one billion dollars.

The Global Economy in 2023

Heading into 2023, there is much economic uncertainty. Many experts are anticipating a brief recession, although opinions differ on the definition of “brief”.

Some experts believe that China will buck the trend of economic downturn. If this prediction comes true, the country could own an even larger slice of the global GDP pie in the near future.

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

Anthony Fauci is finally gone from his government perch. Let us recall that it was he who set this calamity in motion, squandering his credibility, while taking down public health and much else with it. More than anyone, he bears responsibility, even if he was acting on others’ behalf. That is especially true if he was carrying out a hidden agenda (take your pick of theories). 

There was already growing political and societal panic on March 11, 2020, when the House Oversight and Reform Committee convened a hearing on the new virus circulating. Fauci was the key witness. The only question on everyone’s mind came down to the most primal fear: am I going to die from this thing, like in the movies?

This was one day before Trump’s announcement of the travel ban from Europe, the UK, and Australia, essentially sealing the borders of the US to an extent never before attempted, thus separating families and loved ones and trapping billions of people in their nation states. It was five days before the evil declaration by all health authorities to immediately shut down all places where people could congregate. 

These few days will remain a case study in irrationality and crowd madness. Fauci, on the day of his testimony, however, seemed like a paragon of stability. He was calm and clear, nearly bloodness in his tone. The substance of what he said, at the same time, was clearly designed to generate panic and create the conditions for a full lockdown. 

He had the countenance of a doctor who was telling the family that a beloved father was terminally ill with 30 days to live. 

In particular, and in contrast to the testimony prepared by CDC/NIH, Fauci spoke to the severity of the virus. To the average member of Congress, the answer here was crucial because it addressed the only two serious issues: “Am I going to die?” and “Will I be blamed and politically punished if my constituents die?”

To this, he responded with what seemed like science but was actually completely wrong, dreadfully wrong, catastrophically wrong. He claimed that we knew for sure that at best Covid was 10 times deadlier than the flu. In fact, he threw around so much data confetti that a person could have easily believed that he was downplaying the severity to promote calm. His intention was the opposite. 

Here is what he said, and please read carefully to catch the implications: 

SARS was also a Coronavirus in 2002. It infected 8,000 people and it killed about 775. It had a mortality of about 9 to 10 percent. So, that is only 8,000 people in about a year. In the two-and-a-half months that we have had this Coronavirus, as you know, we now have multiple multiples of that.

So, it clearly is not as lethal, and I will get to the lethality in a moment, but it certainly spreads better. Probably for the practical understanding of the American people, the seasonal flu that we deal with every year has a mortality of 0.1 percent. The stated mortality over all of this when you look at all the data including China is about three percent. It first started off as two and now three.

I think if you count all the cases of minimally symptomatic or asymptomatic infection, that probably brings the mortality rate down to somewhere around one percent, which means it is 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu. I think that is something that people can get their arms around and understand….

I think the gauge is that this is a really serious problem that we have to take seriously. I mean people always say, well the flu, you know, the flu does this, the does that. The flu has immortality of 0.1 percent. This has mortality of ten times that, and that is the reason why I want to emphasize, we have to stay ahead of the game in preventing this.

Just think through the flim-flam here. He begins with the figure of a 10 percent case fatality rate from a similar virus. The thinking in the room is already stuck on 10. Then he says this virus has killed more in a shorter period of time, which implies more severity. He quickly dials that back but warns that this is more easily spread, which suggests that perhaps it is even higher. Then he dials that back and says that so far the mortality rate is 3 percent. 

But then he quickly adds in “minimally symptomatic or asymptomatic infection” and comes to a rough number of 1 percent, thus failing completely here to distinguish between cases and infections, which used to be a core metric that he and so many others completely obliterated. 

That’s a side point but an important one. The distinction between cases and infections has been crushed, leaving us utter data chaos. 

Fauci spoke this final number with so many other numbers before it that no one could figure out which way was up. The main takeaway anyone would have is that there is going to be vast bloodshed. 

It’s best to watch this. You can almost feel the fear in the room as he blinds these political critters with fake science. 

So what do we do? Fauci here was quick with the answer:

How much worse it will get will depend on our ability to do two things, to contain the influx in people who are infected coming from the outside and the ability to contain and mitigate within our own country. 

In other words: lockdown. 

Thus was the stage set. To be sure, there is some mental connection between severity and policy response but there probably should not be. Even if this virus had a 10 percent fatality rate, what does locking down achieve? It was never even clear what the point was. The “spread” could not be stopped forever. The hospitals weren’t really overcrowded, as we seen. There was never a chance for Zero Covid, as the catastrophic experience of China and New Zealand has shown. 

In the end, the pandemic of a respiratory virus is solved through exposure, upgraded immune systems, and herd immunity, regardless of severity. And again, please recall that biological evolution has made such pandemics self-limiting: there is a trade between severity and prevalence subject to latency. Latency here was never a factor, contrary to the lies in the early weeks. So the more infectious this virus would be, the less severe it would be, nearly by definition. 

Fauci could have used his time in Congress to give a basic explanation. He did not. He chose to spread irrational fear instead. 

So how can we evaluate Fauci’s murky suggestion that SARS-CoV-2 will have a 1 percent fatality rate? What actually happened? These data are pretty settled by now. 

• 0-19 years: 0.0003% 

• 20-29 years: 0.002% 

• 40-49 years: 0.035% 

• 50-59 years: 0.123% (flu) 

• 60-69 years: 0.506% (bad flu) 

In other words, for the most affected demographic, he was off by two times. For youth, he was off by 3,333 times – an exaggeration of more than 300,000 percent! And he did it with a straight face. The rest of the population falls between there for a total of 0.095 percent. So in general for the whole population he was off by 10 times, meaning that the actual infection fatality rate is just slightly less (if this is right) than the seasonal flu.

Throughout the entire pandemic, from the beginning to now, the average age of the 0.09 percent of infected people who died remained at the medium age of death in absence of the pandemic. If this same virus arrived decades early, it would have hardly been noticed at all. 

Which is to say: Fauci was correct on February 28, 2020, when he wrote that this is more or less the flu, except with a large age gradient. His change of mind in the course of two weeks prior to this testimony is based on absolutely no evidence. What changed was his tactics but why?

We mapped out many times already that there was plenty of information available, even in the popular press, that this bug would be more-or-less like the flu, except with an extreme age gradient – which we knew already in mid-February. All the misinformation that followed was just that. And they knew it. Certainly Fauci knew it. No doubt about it. 

So why? Here we get into interesting theorizing. Brownstone has done a lot of this for the better part of 18 months, and we will continue to do so. We can talk all evening about this. We already do. And we continue to collect evidence too. 

The point is that the world is not the same. Fauci pulled the lever on the wall that set this in motion. He never should have been given that deference, that power, that influence. There should have been a check on him. And some people tried but the censors then flew into action. 

The entire mess began not just with a bad prediction but an outrageously bad falsehood – spoken in front of deeply ignorant and terrified politicians – one that was followed by an egregious demand that we get rid of normal social and market functioning. The consequences are for the ages. Fauci had his own masters and minions but it is impossible to avoid the reality that he bears primary responsibility as the voice of panic that shut down freedoms hard won over a millennium. 

With Twitter now private, roughly three quarters of its employees laid off (yet somehow not only has twitter not crashed but is faster then ever, not to mention mostly uncensored) and its financials only of concern to the company’s owner Elon Musk, a troubling development suggests that the recent boycott by woke, liberal advertising companies who hate free speech is starting to sting.

According to Bloomberg, Twitter was sued for failing to pay $136,250 in rent for its office space in San Francisco.

In the lawsuit filed by Columbia Reit – 650 California LLC (docket # CGC-22-603719, Superior Court, State of California), the landlord says it notified Twitter on Dec. 16 that it would be in default on its lease for the 30th floor of the Hartford Building in five days unless the rent was paid. The tenant failed to comply, Columbia Reit said in the complaint, filed last Thursday in state court in San Francisco.

According to a Dec 13 report by the New York Times, Twitter hasn’t paid rent on its headquarters, or any of its other global offices, in weeks. The company was also sued earlier this month for refusing to pay for two charter flights. According to a more recent NYT report, in order to save money, Twitter has also shut down at least one Sacramento data center, stopped paying rent for its Seattle office, and has cut janitorial and security services, in some cases forcing employees to bringing their own toilet paper to the office.

Last week, Twitter got rid of the cleaning staff at its New York offices and 10 people from corporate security, signaling that it may close one of its two buildings there.

At Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, where the company has also missed rent payments, Musk has done the same, consolidating workers onto two floors and closing four. He also canceled janitorial services this month, after those workers went on strike for better wages. That has left the office in disarray. With people packed into more confined spaces, the smell of leftover takeout food and body odor has lingered on the floors, according to four current and former employees. Bathrooms have grown dirty, these people said. And because janitorial services have largely been ended, some workers have resorted to bringing their own rolls of toilet paper from home, according to the NYT.

According to an internal doc seen by the NYT, since early November, Musk has sought to save about $500 million in nonlabor costs.  Cost-cutting has been overseen by Steve Davis, the head of Musk’s tunneling start-up, the Boring Company, and Jared Birchall, the head of the billionaire’s family office. Twitter managers who didn’t lose their jobs in mass layoffs last month have been told to approach their spending with a tactic known as “zero-based budgeting,” or operating under the assumption that spending should start at nothing and teams should justify individual costs, according to the costs-savings document.

Davis has directed Twitter employees to delay paying various contractors or vendors and try to negotiate those bills to smaller amounts. The cost of one of the company’s largest contracts, with the consulting megafirm Deloitte, has been a point of particular concern for Twitter’s leadership, which wants to reduce the fees the company pays for security, tax preparation and other services. The company has skipped payments to KPMG, an accounting and consulting firm that had been working on matters related to compliance with the Federal Trade Commission. While missed payments to those firms have now been paid, according to a person familiar with the expenditures, it’s unclear if the company will retain their services beyond this year.

Life and work in the 21st century is increasingly reliant on modern technology, with a country’s digital quality of life playing a massive role on people’s day-to-day.

Some countries excel in internet access and affordability, while others have more modern digital systems and relevant laws. And, as Visual Capitalist’s Omri Wallach details below, many regions of the world suffer with lacking digital infrastructure and access across the board.

The 2022 Digital Quality of Life Index (DQL) from Surfshark analyzes countries on digital wellbeing, based on data from the UN, World Bank, Freedom House, and the International Communications Union.

5 Metrics for Measuring Digital Wellbeing

The DQL Index covers 117 countries with readily available data, making up 92% of the global population. Each country is scored on five pillars:

• Internet Affordability—How much time people have to work to afford a stable internet connection.

• Internet Quality—How fast and stable the internet connectivity in a country is and how well it’s improving.

• Electronic Infrastructure—How well developed and inclusive a country’s existing electronic infrastructure is.

• Electronic Security—How safe and protected people feel in a country.

• Electronic Government—How advanced and digitized a country’s government services are.

Visualizing The World’s Digital Quality of Life

Overall, Europe and Asia led the digital quality of life rankings in 2022. Israel took the top spot with an incredibly strong score in internet affordability. Here are the countries sorted by rankings and their weighted scores in each category:

Overall, 15 of the top 20 highest-scoring countries were located in Europe, including #2 Denmark and #3 Germany, reflecting the region’s strong scores in electronic infrastructure and security.

In addition to Israel, the Asia region was represented at the top by #8 Japan, #10 South Korea, and #15 Singapore. The only non-Asian and non-European country to make the top 20 was the United States at #12.

GDP’s Impact on Digital Infrastructure

Of the 117 countries that had data available for the index, the majority of the lowest-ranking countries were in Africa or Asia. This includes the bottom five: Cameroon, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Yemen, and DR Congo.

In fact, when the DQL Index was charted against GDP per capita, a clear and unsurprising trend emerges:

As countries have to grapple with limited resources and capital for increasing their digital wellbeing, we can see different priorities emerge. For example. many countries scored poorly on internet affordability and electronic government while prioritizing investments in internet quality and electronic infrastructure.

And despite the proliferation of mobile phones across the world, more countries were able to set up stable broadband internet over mobile internet.

To find out more interesting insights, dive in to the full Digital Quality of Life Index.

Submitted by Larry McDonald, author of The Bear Traps Report

This week, TSLA equity traded 61% below the 200-day moving average, the most in a decade — Tesla reports Q4 unit sales before trading starts Tuesday, January 3rd.

Tesla vs. CAT, the Mad Rush into Industrials

“Investors falling all over themselves to exit tech stocks and increase exposure to industrials. Hard asset plays have dramatically outperformed financial assets – and long-duration “growth” equities. The street is looking for $112B of sales in 2023 vs. a $384B equity market capitalization for TSLA stock.  She used to trade at 80x sales, just wow.”

A $1T Loss?

If TSLA touches $98, the market cap loss is near $1 trillion, stock traded at $105 pre-market this week. Close to $25B value of shares traded Tuesday, more than Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google combined. Nearly 700m shares in 3 days this week, that´s 25% of the float. This is an epic retail exit – tax loss selling. Daily RSI was near 17 this week, the lowest of all time for this capitulation measuring stick. Tesla was 5th largest in the S&P, now 18, now less than UNH, Lilly, and Chevron. If you sell TSLA equity in December – the investor can buy the stock in 31 days and still book the loss for tax purposes. In years with LARGE Q4 equity market losses – the “January Effect”* can be fairly impressive. Looking back over the last 50 years – when you have a down December, stocks are up 1.2% in January. Since 1991, with stocks off more than -2% in December, they have been up +3.7% on average in January, Bloomberg terminal data.

**The January Effect is a tendency for increases in stock prices during the beginning of the year, particularly in the month of January. The cause behind the January Effect is attributed to tax-loss harvesting, consumer sentiment, year-end bonuses, raising year-end report performances, and more. – CFI.

That said,  a recent analysis from Goldman found that the January effect has largely shifted to November since 1990.

“Historic forced margin calls for Tesla – it´s all retail Larry, ALL retail – rather than sentiment shift, see large scale TRF (Schwab, Ameritrade, etc) volume. The SIZE TSLA margin calls are forcing (triggering) ALOT of cross-selling through the entire long duration – speculative equity campgrounds.” — Equity Portfolio Manager on the West Coast, in our Bear Traps Portfolio

TSLA normally reports quarterly unit sales in the first weekend after the end of each quarter. Consensus is looking for a total of ~420K cars sold (down from 450K est. a few weeks ago). Given that New Year falls on the weekend, there is some uncertainty as to when exactly TSLA reports Q4 unit sales. Either Monday or Tuesday, January 3rd around the market open is most likely.

Previous January Report Date / Time

• Sunday 1/2/2022 11am Stock +13.5% the next day
• Friday 1/2/2021 9:55am Stock +3.4% the next Monday
• Friday 1/3/2020 8:17am Stock +3% that day
• Wednesday 1/2/2019 8:34am Stock -1.5% that day

Is Team Biden coming to Tesla’s Rescue?

At the start of the new year, buyers will once again enjoy a tax credit when they purchase a Tesla vehicle. The original 2010 EV tax credit had a quota of 400K units. For Tesla, the tax credits fully disappeared in early 2020 when Tesla reached that unit sales quota. But thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that Congress passed earlier this year and Biden signed yesterday, the tax credits are back in 2023. In the IRA there is a $7,500 tax credit for buyers of EVs, including TSLA and GM, who lost their previous tax credits. However, there are other strict limits on which brands would be eligible for the full credit, based on the selling price and where the cars and components are made. Unless the car is made in North America (NAFTA), the buyer is not eligible for the full tax credit. In addition, at least 50% of the battery parts will need to be made in North America. Lastly, a minimum of 40% of minerals used in the batteries must be sourced from the US or countries with free trade agreements with the US. So even buyers of GM and Tesla cars might only be eligible for half ($3,750) of the tax credit because their batteries and minerals come from a “foreign entity of concern” (China/Russia).

However, the Treasury Department recently said that the final decision on the critical minerals’ requirement won’t be available until March. As a result, all the requirements in the IRA governing EV cars, minerals, and parts will be waived. This means that, until Treasury issues its final set of rules, it will allow the full $7,500 tax incentive on all qualifying models.**

“We don’t expect them to reach 400K (unit sales) in Q4, data comes next week – early January. But, we also don’t think they always tell the truth. So, who knows? The IRA (Inflation Reduction Act) is about the only thing here between TSLA and a complete collapse in demand from what we can see. Also, many other countries have subsidies that are ending on December 31st. So, TSLA is benefiting from demand pull forward in those other countries. That will reverse in the March quarter, and may offset some of the benefits stated by the bulls.” – CIO, Large Fund.

So, prospective EV buyers in the US will be extremely motivated to buy their EV before the Treasury issues their final list of requirements in March, as it could potentially save them thousands. We could therefore see demand for Tesla cars and other EVs (2 out of every three EVs sold in the US are Tesla’s) being pulled forward into Q1.

Musk is keenly aware that all this might have led EV car buyers to postpone purchases until Q1 and he increased year-end rebates to $7,500 and 10K miles of free charging in early December. Whether this was enough to meet Tesla’s estimates for 420K unit sales for Q4 remains to be seen. We will know this before trading starts on January 3. But the IRA waiver could still cause a burst in US sales in early 2023.

This is not the only boon for Tesla starting next year. The EPA is proposing to increase the cellulosic ethanol component in the renewable fuel standard will climb to 2.13 billion gallons from 630 million. Refiners will be allowed and by necessity required to comply with these mandates by buying “eRINs” credits from EV manufacturers. Since Tesla has by far the most EV cars on the road, refiners will have to buy most eRINs from Tesla.

In years past Tesla always boosted gross margins from “Zero Emission Credits” that other car makers bought from Tesla to offset carbon emissions. Now the administration is giving Tesla another back door subsidy, although it is yet unclear when these rules go into effect.

** EV and plug-in models were manufactured in North America in the 2022 and 2023 model years that DOE says are eligible: Audi, BMW, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Ford, GMC, Jeep, Lincoln, Lucid, Nissan, Rivian, Tesla, Volvo, Cadillac, Mercedes and Volkswagen. Yet because of price limits or battery-size requirements, not all these vehicle models will qualify for credits. Note that IRS details issued on Dec 29 indicated that only 20% of Model Y would be eligible for full tax credit, unless Tesla lowers their price on certain versions of the Y.