Three weeks ago and experimental chat bot called ChatGPT was unleashed on the world. When asked questions, it gives relevant, specific, simple answers – rather than spitting back a list of internet links. It can also generate ideas on its own – including business plans, Christmas gift suggestions, vacation ideas, and advice on how to tune neural network models using python scripts.

Some even think it may supplant Google’s search business, the NY Times reports.

Although ChatGPT still has plenty of room for improvement, its release led Google’s management to declare a “code red.” For Google, this was akin to pulling the fire alarm. Some fear the company may be approaching a moment that the biggest Silicon Valley outfits dread — the arrival of an enormous technological change that could upend the business.

For more than 20 years, the Google search engine has served as the world’s primary gateway to the internet. But with a new kind of chat bot technology poised to reinvent or even replace traditional search engines, Google could face the first serious threat to its main search business. One Google executive described the efforts as make or break for Google’s future. -NYT

ChatGPT was produced by a research lab known as OpenAI – which employs technology and knowledge that Google and many other companies have helped cultivate. In fact, the core technology behind ChatGPT was developed by researchers at Google.

Now, experts think Google might struggle to compete with these smaller companies offering machine learning chat bots, as they may prove damaging to its business model.

Google has its own chat bot – LaMDA, or Language Model for Dialogue Applications, which gained attention over the summer when former Google engineer, Blake Lemione, suggested that it was sentient. That said, the Silicon Valley giant may be reluctant to deploy the new tech as a replacement for its search service, because a chat bot AI may not be able to deliver digital ads as effectively – something which accounted for 80% of Google’s revenue last year.

“No company is invincible; all are vulnerable,” said University of Washington professor, Margaret O’Mara, who specializes in the history of Silicon Valley. “For companies that have become extraordinarily successful doing one market-defining thing, it is hard to have a second act with something entirely different.”

What’s more, AI chat bots may not be telling the entire truth – and can produce answers that blend fiction and fact due to the fact that they learn their skills by analyzing vast troves of data posted to the internet. If accuracy is lowered, it could turn people off to using Google to find answers.

Or, more likely, an AI chat bot may give you the correct, perfect answer on the first try – which would give people fewer reasons to click around, including on advertising.

“Google has a business model issue,” said former Google and Yahoo employee Amr Awadallah, who now runes start-up company Vectara, which is building similar technology. “If Google gives you the perfect answer to each query, you won’t click on any ads.“

Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, has been involved in a series of meetings to define Google’s A.I. strategy, and he has upended the work of numerous groups inside the company to respond to the threat that ChatGPT poses, according to a memo and audio recording obtained by The New York Times. Employees have also been tasked with building A.I. products that can create artwork and other images, like OpenAI’s DALL-E technology, which has been used by more than three million people.

From now until a major conference expected to be hosted by Google in May, teams within Google’s research, Trust and Safety, and other departments have been reassigned to help develop and release new A.I. prototypes and products. -NYT

According to industry experts, Google will eventually need to decide whether it will overhaul its search engine to incorporate (or evolve into) a chat bot as the face of its flagship service.

“A cool demo of a conversational system that people can interact with over a few rounds, and it feels mind-blowing? That is a good step, but it is not the thing that will really transform society,” suggested Zoubin Ghahramani, who oversees the A.I. lab Google Brain, in a November interview with The Times. “It is not something that people can use reliably on a daily basis.”

Yet.

And just like that,

Nearly three full years after China first started reporting daily covid data which even the most naive claimed were fabricated, and just days after Beijing’s top health authority estimated that nearly 37 million Chinese were infected every single day last week as China finally gave up on its catastrophic zero-covid policy,  on Sunday China’s National Health Commission finally gave up rigging the data and announced it would stop publishing daily Covid-19 case numbers, after the accuracy of its data was questioned as millions were infected nationwide and the official tally remained strikingly low.

The data had come into question after several Chinese cities reported daily infections that far surpassed the official tally, adding to doubt of the numbers provided by the NHC. And speaking of official numbers, the 25,000 or so daily cases are just a little below the 37 million new cases revealed recently, or 250 million in 3 weeks. And speaking of official data, it looks roughly as follows:

The commission didn’t provide a reason for the change in policy in a statement on Sunday, but said that the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention will release Covid-related info for studies and reference.

As reported previously, as many as a quarter billion people, or nearly 18% of the population, may have contracted the virus in the first 20 days of December, according to minutes from an internal meeting of China’s National Health Commission held on Wednesday. And while hospitals in major cities including Beijing and Shanghai have been overwhelmed, while some crematoriums are “struggling to cope”, this is all a perfectly normal transition, and a long overdue step toward herd immunity, something China should have done long ago.

And since there aren’t literally piles of dead bodies strewn across China’s landscape, one can make their own conclusions about just how deadly and dangerous covid was, and how much propaganda went into the covid narrative over the past two years.

In an illustration of just how fake China’s data has been all along, consider the following:

• Zhejiang province, next to Shanghai, said it has more than 1 million daily Covid infections and expects the number to peak at 2 million, Zhejiang Daily reported Sunday, citing local officials as saying at a health briefing.
• The city of Dongguan in the southern province of Guangdong said Friday that 250,000 to 300,000 people were being infected on a daily basis.
• Qingdao city in the eastern province of Shandong is seeing 490,000 to 530,000 daily cases based on data projections, according to a local newspaper report.

And yet, the official NHC tally for Dec. 23 was 4,103 cases.

Of course, this is very similar to the sheer garbage reported by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics when it comes to the monthly jobs report, which keeps claiming that the US is generating hundreds of thousands of jobs even amid mass layoffs and a US consumer that has now imploded.

As for China, the biggest trade-off of such a stark conclusion to “zero covid” is that while China faces an even more acute economic crunch in the coming weeks (see “China’s Economy Is Showing Increasing Strain From the Covid Tsunami“), it will then come out in mid/late-January with a clean economic slate and a naturally immune population that has nothing to fear as China’s economic rebound is unleashed on the world, sending a credit impulse shockwave around the globe.

And to make sure it gets there faster, on Sunday China expanded the use of a homegrown Covid vaccine. A National Health Commission’s statement said that people who are three and above can receive a Covid vaccine developed by the Chongqing Zhifei Biological Products’ unit. Until now, it was approved only for adults. Those who are fully vaccinated with a Zhifei product can get one booster shot after six months, according to the statement. It’s unclear if Chinese “vaccines” have as many adverse and long-lasting side-effects as those developed by the likes of Pfizer and Moderna.

By Bank of America chief global economist, Aditya Bhave

We’ve all been there. You work in finance, so inevitably someone will approach you at a holiday gathering and ask you about the economy. But we’ve got your back. In this report, we list 10 questions you might get asked. For each question, we suggest both a short response – in case dessert is served or you just don’t want to talk shop – and a more detailed response – if you really want to engage in the conversation. As a disclaimer, these are the views of BofA Global Research’s US Economics team. Others might answer these questions differently, but that would only liven up the discussion!

1. “Are we in a recession? Didn’t we have two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth this year?”

Short answer: Not yet.

Longer answer: We had two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth in 1Q and 2Q 2022. This amounts to what’s known as a “technical recession”. But the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) makes the “official” call on whether we are in a recession. The NBER looks at several economic indicators, not just GDP. A few of those indicators are related to the labor market (job creation and wage growth), so it’s unlikely that we will enter an NBER-defined recession until the labor market cracks. At the moment the labor market is still very hot, due to both strong demand for workers and labor supply shortages.

Technical recessions typically overlap with NBER-defined recessions. This time is different because GDP has been distorted by large swings in the trade and inventory data. Once we exclude these components, we see that final domestic demand (i.e., consumer spending, residential and business investment, and government spending), is weak, but is still growing (Exhibit 1).

* * *

2. “So when will the next recession start?”

Short answer: Probably next year.

Longer answer: The tipping point for a recession should be when the labor market slows materially. Consumer spending has been relatively resilient so far. If the labor market breaks, not only will the NBER’s recession criteria likely get triggered, but consumer spending will also probably weaken significantly. Since the consumer is nearly 70% of the economy, that would drive domestic demand lower. We will probably go into a mild recession next year.

The labor market is likely to weaken next year for a few reasons. First, hiring has outpaced GDP growth by a long way this year. Payrolls have grown by over 2.5%, while real GDP growth has been less than 1%. This is not sustainable. Second, higher rates (due to Fed hikes) are hurting business and residential investment. The housing market is already in a recession and the manufacturing sector appears to be following suit. This should eventually translate into job losses. Third, the Fed hiked rates by 425bp this year and Fed hikes affect the economy with “long and variable lags”. So a lot of the economic and labor market damage from this year’s Fed tightening probably hasn’t happened yet.

* * *

3. “This feels like the most widely anticipated recession that I can remember. Is there a chance that we could talk ourselves into a recession?”

Short answer: Yes and no.

Longer answer: There is some truth to the idea that recessions can be self-fulfilling prophecies. If businesses expect weaker consumer demand, they might stop investing and start laying off workers. Similarly, consumers might pull back on spending if they are concerned about an economic slowdown. Such precautionary behavior would likely create the recession that everyone was worried about.

But it isn’t as simple as that. Painful recessions are generally due to the build-up of excesses in the economy. If consumers and businesses start to become cautious before such excesses build, that could limit the scope of any potential downturn. The three sectors in the economy in which these excesses usually build are consumer durables, residential investment and business investment. Currently there only modest signs of excess in these sectors (Exhibit 2). Yet banks have already started to become less willing to lend to consumers (Exhibit 3). So perhaps the recession has been so well telegraphed that it turns out to be self-inhibiting rather than self-fulfilling.

* * *

4. “You said the housing market is in a recession. Are we headed for a housing crisis?”

Short answer: Probably not.

Longer answer: Housing is arguably the most rates-sensitive sector of the economy. Therefore it is no surprise that very aggressive Fed hikes have pushed the housing market into recession (Exhibit 4). After all, the 30-year mortgage rate increased from around 3% at the start of last year to more than 7% briefly, and is still well north of 6%. Tight supply – of construction labor, materials, etc. – has further hindered housing activity, although it has helped support prices (Exhibit 5).

However, this doesn’t mean we are headed for a crisis. Slowdowns in specific sectors turn into economy-wide crises when there are conditions in place that amplify their impact. In the run-up to the financial crisis, speculation (rather than fundamentals) played a big role in the demand for housing, adjustable-rate mortgages were more common, lending standards were loose and households were levering up their home equity using home equity lines of credit (HELOCs).

In the post-pandemic housing boom, demand was driven by a big generation of millennials moving into larger spaces, a very large majority of mortgages were locked in at fixed rates (so people who already have mortgages will generally not be hurt by Fed hikes), lending standards were relatively tight and there was limited use of HELOCs. Moreover, regulators are much more vigilant about the risks of a housing crisis. At the start of the pandemic there was significant forbearance for borrowers. This is likely to repeat if there is growing risk of a crisis, in order to prevent fire sales. All of this suggests that another housing crisis is unlikely.

5. “You don’t sound overly concerned about the economy. Is there a chance we’ll avoid a recession entirely next year?”

Short answer: There’s always a chance, but we’re likely to have at least a mild recession.

Longer answer: We won’t get a recession until the labor market weakens materially. Job growth has been resilient of late. We probably added around 4mn jobs in 2022, and over 800k in the last three months. To put that in context, we need to create just 50-100k jobs per month to match the growth rate of the population. This means it’s quite possible that the economy could avoid a recession in the first half of 2023.

However, it will be harder to avoid a recession for the full year. Here’s the issue. As long as the labor market remains hot, there is a risk that job growth and higher wages will create more inflation down the line. So the Fed would likely respond by raising rates even higher, which would inflict even more pain on the economy later next year. In other words, a delayed recession might mean a deeper one. We need to be careful what we wish for.

* * *

6. “You make it sound like the Fed is determined to break the labor market. What’s so special about 2% inflation anyway? Wouldn’t it be better to accept higher inflation than cause a recession?”

Short answer: There is nothing special about 2%. But abandoning the target now would put the Fed on a slippery slope. Unfortunately, the only way to get and keep inflation under control is to materially weaken the labor market.

Longer answer: In general, low but positive inflation is considered best for economic growth. Why? On the one hand, outright deflation causes consumers to delay purchases in anticipation of lower prices. As we have seen in Japan, this damages growth prospects. On the other hand, high single-digit or double-digit inflation is problematic because it tends to also be more volatile, creating uncertainty, which in turn slows spending and investment. Central banks across developed markets settled on 2% because it is a low rate of inflation that still gives them a sizeable buffer from deflation.

This is the first time the Fed’s commitment to taming inflation has been seriously tested in about four decades. If the Fed were to change its inflation target to say 4%, it would be on a slippery slope (Global Economic Weekly: What is so special about 2%?). If 4% is acceptable, why not 6% or 8%? So the target would lose credibility in the eyes of investors. But it’s possible that if inflation gets stuck a little bit above target (say 3%), the Fed would accept a longer time frame to get back to 2% instead of inflicting a lot of economic pain to get there sooner.

The Fed generally looks at core inflation, i.e. inflation ex of food and energy, because food and energy prices tend to be more volatile and driven by factors outside the Fed’s control (such as the Russia-Ukraine conflict). In a recent speech, Fed Chair Powell noted that services besides housing make up more than half of the core consumer spending basket (Exhibit 6). These services are labor-intensive and are seeing rapid job and wage growth as consumers return to pre-pandemic spending habits. Higher labor costs are pushing up prices (Exhibit 7). Therefore the only way for the Fed to bring core inflation back to 2% in a manner that is sustainable over time is to weaken the labor market.

* * *

7. “But inflation is already getting better, right?”

Short answer: Yes, but it might not last.

Longer answer: Goods prices spiked in the spring of 2021 because of supply-chain disruptions and huge demand for stay-at-home goods from US consumers who were awash with cash. At the time, the ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) had just been implemented. It was the last of three big stimulus packages, the others being the CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) Act and the CAA (Consolidated Appropriations Act) of 2020. Now supply issues have largely been sorted out and goods demand is slowing. So goods prices have started to fall. That’s helping to slow overall inflation, but the faster goods prices correct, the sooner they will stop correcting.

The US economy is predominantly a services economy. And as we discussed earlier, the only way to bring services inflation under control is to slow the labor market down. Unless that happens, the risk is that overall inflation will pick up again once goods prices stop falling.

* * *

8. “How are US consumers dealing with higher inflation, particularly in necessities such as food and energy?”

Short answer: Inflation is painful, but a strong labor market and pandemic-era stimulus have helped the consumer to remain resilient.

Longer answer: For the US consumer, there is an ongoing tug-of-war between inflation and labor market gains. Food and energy inflation has been particularly challenging for lower-income households, who spend a larger share of their income on necessities. But they are also experiencing strong job growth and the fastest wage inflation in the economy (Exhibit 8). This is offsetting some of the pain from inflation and allowing consumer spending to remain relatively resilient.

The US consumer is also still being propped up by excess savings from the pandemic-era fiscal stimulus packages. Consumers still probably have more than $1 trillion in excess savings, which they are drawing down at a rate of about $100bn per month, partially in response to the inflation shock (Exhibit 9). So these savings could be a tailwind to consumer spending for a few more quarters.

* * *

9. “I read that US consumers have racked up nearly $1trillion in credit card debt. How concerning is this?”

Short answer: It isn’t very concerning yet.

Longer answer: Credit card debt has increased from less than $800bn at the start of last year to $925bn as of 3Q 2022. This is a sharp increase that certainly bears watching. It is probably being driven by both liquidity constraints for consumers and increasing interest rates. The level of credit card debt is close to the all-time high, reached just before the pandemic.

But it is important to remember that what matters with debt is consumers’ capacity to service it. Income has also been growing rapidly, and that helps a lot. Credit card debt was less than 5% of disposable income in 3Q 2022 (Exhibit 10). This is lower than at any time before the pandemic (the data go back to 1999). The trend is similar with credit card delinquencies: they are on the rise, but they are still below pre-pandemic levels.

* * *

10. “Are consumers spending as generously over the holidays as they did last year? Also, could you please pass the cranberry sauce?”

[First pass the cranberry sauce]

Short answer: No, but that isn’t a big surprise.

Longer answer: The holiday shopping season is obviously very important for the US consumer. Last year’s shopping season was historic, so it isn’t a huge surprise that we’re tracking weaker spending on holiday goods this year (Exhibit 11). Another factor weighing on the dollar value of holiday spending this year is that discounts have potentially been deeper and more back-loaded than last year. So we really need to adjust for inflation/deflation and wait until the end of the holiday season to get a full picture of holiday spending.

Finally, consumers are rotating back to services from goods as the impact of the pandemic fades (Exhibit 12). Last year, consumption of services during the holidays was disrupted by the omicron variant outbreak. People responded by spending more on holiday presents. This year, they are probably traveling more, dining out more and attending shows, concerts, sports events, etc.

Three buses full of recently apprehended illegal immigrants were dropped off near the home of Vice President Kamala Harris on Christmas eve.

While Texas authorities have not confirmed whether they’re behind it, the dropoffs “are in line with previous actions by border-state governors calling attention to the Biden administration’s immigration policies,” AP reports.

The buses that arrived late Saturday outside the vice president’s residence were carrying around 110 to 130 people, according to Tatiana Laborde, managing director of SAMU First Response, a relief agency working with the city of Washington to serve thousands of migrants who have been dropped off in recent months.

Local organizers had expected the buses to arrive Sunday but found out Saturday that the group would get to Washington early, Laborde said. The people on board included young children. -AP

The poorly timed dropoff came as temperatures in DC hovered around 15-degrees Farenheit (-9 Celsius) – the coldest Christmas Eve in Washington, according to the Washington Post.

According to Laborde, SAMU First Response provided blankets and quickly shuttled the migrants onto new buses to an area church, while a local restaurant donated dinner and breakfast.

Most of the migrants were headed to other destinations, with the DC stop expected to be temporary.

Last week, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office said they had relocated more than 15,000 migrants to liberal ‘sanctuary cities’ since April – including Washington, New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia.

Harris, President Biden’s border czar, has overseen the relaxing of restrictions on migrants that have caused a flood of Central Americans to leave their countries of origin and head north.

Authored by Ray Johnson via The Burning Platform blog,

Greta,

You don’t know me, but we share something in common that is very special. That something is enormous and powerful and beautiful and elemental. That something is Mother Ocean.

I too have spent long periods of time at sea. My longest ocean passage was 30 days, sailing my little 30 foot boat from Hawaii to San Francisco. In my case, I was also doing this alone.

So you have experienced something of extraordinary magnificence. You have glided – or on difficult days – pounded – across the Wide Waters. Very few people have ever done this. To be hundreds of miles from the nearest humans, in the gigantic vastness of the Sea, can teach a person just how tiny we are compared to the mighty eco-systems of our watery planet. And looking up at the immense dome of stars, with the clarity of deep-ocean darkness, reinforces that lesson in humility even more.

This stark difference between the so-called Real World and weeks spent on the rolling waves, always inspires me to examine Life more deeply and independently. Being separated from normal, everyday living, allows one to question the accepted and conventional worldviews.

And so I wonder if sometimes when you were alone on a night watch, did you ever try to step away from the whirlwind that has been your recent life, and examine whether those who have guided your meteoric rise have been truly honest with you – and helpful to you. Did you ever question whether your advisers were as benevolent and noble as they claimed? Did you ever fear that perhaps you were being controlled like a human marionette?

The reason I do not feel guilty asking such questions, is because I too was once a fervent believer in human-driven Climate Change. But the further that I advance into the Autumn of my Life, the more I embrace The Need for Truth. And to achieve that, I find it wise to question everything.

So I took a deep and close look at the supposedly “settled science.” Amazingly, I discovered that the “97% consensus” was just statistical trickery, and that there are many scientists who question the accepted truths of NOAA and the IPCC and NASA, etc. And they do this despite enormous efforts to silence their voices, and to heap scorn upon them for questioning the prevailing dogma.

Therefore, because I believe that your concern and alarm for our planetary future is sincere and well-intended, I offer you a Christmas gift. My present for you is Scientific Optimism.

There are many, many researchers who demonstrate with considerable evidence that Planet Earth has gone through cataclysmic events far worse than the ones we fear today. These previous catastrophes were not caused by human activities. Mother Earth weathered those crises, and emerged as the only lush and life-rich planet among those zillions of stars that you saw so clearly when you were out on the Atlantic Ocean.

Greta, in order to demonstrate that there truly is justification for Scientific Optimism, I will briefly discuss two of the most frequently discussed phenomena which supposedly prove that Climate Change poses an existential threat to life on Earth. And I will show you evidence that you have probably never been exposed to, that, hopefully, will diminish your grave concerns.

The two that I have selected are the Melting Arctic and the Disappearing Polar Bears. These two were chosen because I have direct experience in these areas.

THE ICE-FREE ARCTIC

In 2017, some dear friends offered me the wonderful opportunity to attempt a sailboat voyage across the fabled Northwest Passage through the Arctic from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Because of my love of adventure and of dangerous, faraway places, I accepted immediately.

Our fiberglass sailboat spent months in the Arctic attempting to make it across. I can assure you that it was not ice-free. Far from it, we struggled through frightening conditions in which we had to ponder turning back.

Here is a photo that is typical of the seemingly impenetrable ice that we had to find a path through.

But we persevered and made it. We were the 256th boat to make it through in the 111 years since the first successful passage. Prior to that superb human achievement, there were hundreds of years of failures and hundreds of lives lost.

Before embarking on this quest, I did considerable research. Some people argued that this undertaking was no longer praiseworthy, since the ice in the far north had supposedly melted. But when I carefully investigated this, I discovered a lot of fiction where there should have been facts. Yes, there had been many authorities predicting that the Arctic Ice Cap would soon melt, but inconveniently, it had refused to do so.

NASA claimed it would be gone in 2012. The Naval Research Lab guessed 2013. Al Gore placed his bet on 2014. And James Hansen hedged his wager by suggesting sometime between 2013 and 2018. They were all wrong! But the mainstream media never mentions these failures. Yet, they will undoubtedly trumpet the next ice-free prediction, which will probably be as incorrect as all of the previous guesses.

Here is another deliberate deception about the Arctic that has been foisted on the world. In order to “prove” that the Arctic is rapidly disappearing, the Climate Change defenders picked 1978 as the start date for their tracking of Arctic ice extent.

Since there has been data on the amount of ice for about 100 years, it seems odd that they would select that particular year. It seems a whole lot less odd when you learn that 1978 had the highest ice total in about 100 years. Therefore, by starting at that point the data will be distorted in favor of a rapid decline in Arctic ice. In other words, there has been a campaign of deliberate deceit.

POLAR BEAR EXTINCTION CLAIMS

The “Death of the Polar Bears” is a fraud on so many levels, that it is difficult to know where to begin.

They are portrayed as cold weather versions of Panda bears. Pandas are large and slow and adorable. They are also vegetarian and mostly eat bamboo.

Polar bears eat meat and they are one of the most ruthless alpha predators on the planet. They are most definitely not cute and cuddly. They can attack from land or sea and they are strong and fast in both elements. We never went ashore without a loaded high-power rifle. To a polar bear, we were not ecologists there to protect them, we were meat.

So let’s take a truthful look at how these powerful carnivores are doing. In about 1960 there were only about 6,000 Polar bears left in the Arctic Basin. But they were not in decline because of Climate Change, their numbers were dropping because they were being hunted to extinction.

Rich trophy hunters could fly to remote locations and hire a guide to help them shoot one of these magnificent creatures. They would then end up as rug or a snarling head on a wall. This was clearly despicable and needed to end.

Fortunately, in 1973, all of the nations in that part of the world signed a treaty banning that horrific practice. So today, the leading experts estimate that the population has now reached about 25,000 Polar bears.

The main reason that they still remain on the Endangered Species list of some countries, is not scientific; it is political – they are the poster child for Climate Change.

Here is a photo that I took in the Northwest Passage of a mom and her cub.

They are magnificent creatures – at a distance. I am delighted that they are not declining – they are flourishing.

BUT WHY?

Hopefully, this fresh perspective on the issues of the Melting Arctic and the Disappearing Polar Bears, will convince you to seek out evidence that has been hidden from you. Surely, you might wonder why your friends and advisers would lie to you. I believe that there are two main reasons.

1) The true goal of the Climate Change juggernaut is NOT to save the planet. It is to restructure society and re-distribute global wealth.

This quote from Christiana Figures, a recent U.N. Climate Chief, clearly states the actual agenda:

“It must be understood that what is occurring here in the whole climate change process is the complete transformation of the economic structure of the world.”

And Ottmar Edenhoffer, who was the lead author on the IPCC Fourth Assessment, echoes Christiana’s position with this statement:

“One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”

Furthermore, AOC’s Green New Deal is also not primarily about the environment. Here is a recent quote from her Chief of Staff, Saikat Chakrabarti:

“The interesting thing about the Green New Deal, is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all. Do you guys think of it as a climate thing? Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy-thing.”

2) The second reason that so many people have been deceiving you, Greta, is because the rewards of supporting the Climate Change orthodox position are enormous. On the other hand, when you oppose that agenda, you are burned at the cyber-stake.

All of the perks flow in one direction. Those who buy into the “impending doom scenario” get published in prestigious journals, appear on television, get invited to conferences, receive research grant money, etc.

But those who question the supposed settled science, are cast out of polite society and scorned as vile “deniers.” Is it any wonder that your advisers have steered you in the direction that they have?

A GLIMMER OF HOPE

Greta, it is likely that you will never see this letter. And even if you do, I suspect that it will have very little influence upon you. But if I could make only one, small, heartfelt request of you, it would be this.

There are now millions of youngsters all around the world who are severely traumatized with fears for their future. Please toss them a little bouquet of Hope.

Perhaps suggest that our wonderful planet is enormously complex, and we certainly do not totally understand how her many systems of land, water, and atmosphere behave. And therefore, we can conclude that maybe … just maybe … the situation is not nearly as dire as we have been told.

Merry Christmas, young lady, from an old sea gypsy.

Captain Ray Jason in the Northwest Passage 2017

*  *  *

For more of Ray’s work, please visit The Sea Gypsy Philosopher.  And Merry Christmas everyone.

In Sunday statements Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed to destroy the Patriot anti-air missile systems that the Biden White House pledged to supply Ukraine days ago.

He said that he’s 100% certain that Russian forces will eradicate them when they appear inside Ukraine. “Of course, we’ll take them out, 100%!” he emphasized in an interview with Rossiya-1 television on Sunday.

But he also noted that so far these systems are not in the hands of the Ukrainians. It could take months or even a year for the Patriots to actually become operational in Ukraine, given how complex they are and how many crew-members are needed to operate them.

There are roughly 90 soldiers in a Patriot battery, with each crewmember having to undergo extensive training. The Pentagon has indicated that Ukrainians could be trained out of a base in Germany, or there are reports even suggesting this could take place inside the United States.

Each missile fired from the Patriot system costs about $4 million, ranking it among the single-most expensive weapons provided to Ukraine thus far throughout the war.

However, Putin days ago dismissed its significance as a potential battlefield game-changer, saying “the Patriot is a fairly outdated system” and that an “antidote” to this weapon will be found.

Patriots have long been deployed in neighboring Poland, but Ukrainian leaders have been persistent in requesting them on their own soil amid a major uptick in recent Russian aerial attacks. 

“The Patriot is quite an outdated system, it doesn’t work as well as our S-300 (surface-to-air) missiles,” Putin told journalists. “Let them supply them – we’ll crack them as well.” pic.twitter.com/3Oh6khzYMl

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) December 23, 2022

The systems will mark the longest-range missiles sent to Ukraine thus far, and for this reason Washington was earlier reluctant, on fears that the precedent of longer-range and more advanced munitions only increases the chance of direct escalation between the US and Russia.

Authored by Prashant Jha via CoinTelegraph.com,

Christmas dinner could get awkward for crypto advocates who were adamant about their families investing last year…here’s a small recap of what happened in crypto this year.

After a lackluster rise of crypto in 2021, which saw many new crypto millionaires and several crypto startups attain unicorn status, came the dramatic fall in 2022. The industry was plagued by macroeconomic pressures, scandals and meltdowns that wiped out fortunes virtually overnight. 

As 2022 comes to a close, many crypto proponents are perplexed about the state of the industry, especially in light of the recent FTX collapse and the contagion it has caused, taking down several firms associated with it.

Many who couldn’t stop talking about crypto and recommending their family to invest in it last year at Christmas dinner could see the tables turn this year, with them having a lot of explaining to do about the state of crypto today. While as awkward as that conversation is going to be, Cointelegraph prepared a small recap to help ‘crypto bros and sisters’ explain what really happened to crypto in 2022 when market pundits were expecting the rise to continue throughout the year.

The downfall was universal, but crypto turned it into a contagion

The start of the crypto downfall was triggered by external factors, including growing inflation, rate hikes from the United States Federal Reserve and the international conflict between Ukraine and Russia that shook investor confidence in the market, leading to a sell-off in traditional and crypto markets.

The external market conditions, aided by the unchecked centralized decision-making process, claimed its first big player of this bull cycle in Terra. The $40-billion ecosystem was reduced to ruins within days. More importantly, it created a crypto contagion that claimed at least half a dozen other crypto players, mainly crypto lenders that had exposure to the Terra ecosystem.

The collapse of the Terra ecosystem had the greatest impact on lenders, bankrupting Three Arrows Capital and many others. Celsius paused withdrawals due to extreme market conditions, causing crypto prices to fall, and then declared bankruptcy. BlockFi had to be bailed out by FTX with a $400 million cash injection.

At the time, FTX seemed too eager to bail out several troubled crypto lenders. But, just a quarter later, it turned out FTX was not as liquid and cash-rich as it claimed to be. In fact, the crypto exchange was using its native tokens and in-house, non-existent projects as leverage against multi-billion-dollar valuations and loans. Its sister company, Alameda Research, was found to be involved in building a house of cards that eventually came crashing down in November.

The FTX crypto exchange and its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, have built a philanthropic outlook for the world, turned out to be outright fraud and stole customers’ funds. The former CEO was found to be misappropriating customers’ funds and was eventually arrested in the Bahamas on Dec. 11.

Bankman-Fried was extradited to the United States on charges of securities fraud and misappropriation of funds. However, the former CEO managed to secure a bail plea against a $250 million bond paid by his parents who put up their house to cover his astronomical bail bond.

While the arrest of Bankman-Fried and his trial in the U.S. have given some hope to FTX users, the chances of many customers getting back their funds are very slim as lawyers have predicted that it might take years and even decades to get the funds back.

SBF in handcuffs during his extradition to the U.S. Photo: Royal Bahamas Police

Two back-to-back crypto contagions caused by a series of bad decision-making and the greed of a few, might not be an easy thing to explain to the family. So, own up — everyone makes mistakes in the bull market, thinking they are doing the right thing by getting their family involved. However, one can always talk about the bright sides and the lessons learned from the mistakes, and the 2022 crypto contagion is no different.

Centralized exchanges and coins may come and go, but Bitcoin will stay

Terra ecosystem’s collapse was a significant setback for the crypto industry —both in terms of value and how the outside world perceives it. Crypto managed to bear the brunt of the collapse and was on its way to redemption, only to face another knock in the form of FTX. The FTX saga is far from over but it highlighted what corruption and hefty donations can do to your public image even when you have robbed people billions of their money.

The mainstream media frenzy saw the likes of the New York Times and Forbes write puff pieces for the criminal former CEO before the charges were framed against him. Bankman Fried was portrayed as someone who was a victim of bad decisions when FTX and Alameda were involved in illicit trading from day one, as mentioned by SEC in their charges.

The FTX downfall and the crypto contagion are being portrayed by many as the end of trust in the crypto ecosystem. U.S. regulators are warning that it is only the start of the crypto crackdown, with SEC chief Gary Gensler comparing crypto platforms and intermediaries to casinos.

However, any crypto veteran will tell you that the industry has seen much worse and has always bounced back to its feet. While the collapse of the third largest crypto exchange (FTX) is definitely significant, it doesn’t come close to the Mt. Gox hack from the early days of crypto exchanges.

Mt. Gox was once the biggest external factor that cast doubt on the cryptocurrency industry, especially Bitcoin. When the exchange was hacked in 2014, it account for more than 70% of BTC transactions at the time. The hack did have a wild impact on the price of BTC at the time, but the market shot back up again in the next cycle.

Click “Collect” below the illustration at the top of the page or follow this link.

Years later, the FTX collapse once again reminded users of the risks involved with centralized entities, triggering a significant movement of funds from centralized exchanges to self-custody wallets.” Self-custody wallets allow users to serve as their own bank, but the trade-off is that wallet security also becomes their sole responsibility.

Crypto users are withdrawing their funds from crypto exchanges at a rate not seen since April 2021, with nearly $3 billion in Bitcoin withdrawn from exchanges in November, moving them to self-custody wallets.

New data from on-chain analytics firm Glassnode shows that the number of wallets receiving BTC from exchange addresses hit almost 90,000 on Nov. 9. The movement of funds away from exchanges are usually a bullish sign that BTC is being “hodled” for the long term.

Every other token might look lucrative in a bull run, as evident from the last one where the likes of LUNA, Shiba Inu and Dogecoin broke into the top 10. But today, these projects be it Terra-LUNA or meme coins are either obsolete or far from their bull run hype.

Bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency, has seen downfalls of several major exchanges over the past decade and yet has come up on top of each of those collapses in the next cycle. This is the reason most early crypto investors and Bitcoin proponents often advocate for self-custody and hodling BTC over investing in new altcoins that might seem lucrative in a bull run, but there is no guarantee that they would make it to the next bull run

The collapse of these centralized entities in 2022 could also prompt policymakers to eventually come up with some form of official universal regulations to ensure investor security.

The bottom line

The core technology of decentralization and Bitcoin, the OG cryptocurrency, is here to stay regardless of the crypto entities involved in facilitating different use cases and services on top of them. 2023 could see a new wave of crypto reforms, with more aware users who believe in self-custody rather than letting their funds sit on exchanges. Also, it’s better not to give out financial advice to anyone, especially in a bull market.

Footage of what appears to be snowflakes falling from the skies over Miami at the Hard Rock Stadium has been uploaded onto Twitter Christmas morning. Football fans whipped out their smartphones to film the rare weather phenomenon in South Florida. 

We have snow in Miami?pic.twitter.com/KbcB9HDHWJ

— Action Network (@ActionNetworkHQ) December 25, 2022

A nearby National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather station recorded about 37 degrees Fahrenheit around the time the videos of snowflakes were posted on social media. 

There has been no confirmation by any government weather agency about the snow. But Matthew Cappucci, meteorologist for Capital Weather Gang, reported:

“Yes, it snowed about a hour and a half ago in Brevard County on the Space Coast. It was mostly sleet, but a few snow flurries were mixed in.” 

CHRISTMAS SNOW IN #FLORIDA! ❄️

Yes, it snowed about a hour and a half ago in Brevard County on the Space Coast. It was mostly sleet, but a few snow flurries were mixed in. ☃️

Very cold Siberian air even trying to sneak into the Sunshine State at the upper levels. 🌨 @MyRadarWX pic.twitter.com/VLLsQmmwp5

— Matthew Cappucci (@MatthewCappucci) December 25, 2022

It appears Green Bay might have brought the snow. 

Snow on the beach ❄️🏖️

It’s GAMEDAY in Miami!#GBvsMIA | #GoPackGo pic.twitter.com/2H7cFoVNwn

— Green Bay Packers (@packers) December 25, 2022

Global warming alarmists who said the Earth would imminently burn this past summer will have trouble explaining this. They might respond by saying, ‘it’s because of climate change.’ Well, we have news for them, the climate has been changing for millions of years. 

Via Off-Guardian.org,

So this is Christmas,
And what have we done?
We’ve shared lots of meme posts,
And had lots of fun.
And told lots of people,
That the world’s all gone wrong.
But it’s all a big joke now,
So let’s all laugh along.

1. Zelensky was back in Washington this week, you’ll never guess why.

2. This Christmas, remember just 50 billion a year could help support a puppet regime and dozens of war profiteers from the military-industrial complex.

3. On the plus side, he’s so easy to shop for.

4. Not to mention, he’s the hottest-selling toy this season, (with a lego mini-figure who’s actually life-size).

5. Life comes at you pretty fast.

6. Yeah, there’s a lot of them going around.

7. One of the big mysteries of life.

8. “Imagine how much worse it could have been without these seatbelts.”

9. Still, it’s much preferable to the alternative…

10. Really, the price tags should be different colours.

11. “Your stair lift is late? Huh, maybe you should kill yourself“.

12. Like those feminist t-shirts made by women earning 1 dollar an hour.

13. Maybe it would help normies if they thought of homeschooling as a vaccine against state indoctrination.

14. It’s that time of year again.

15. Here at OffG memes, we like to help our readers save money.

16. If you think that’s disappointing, wait ’til you try their cotton candy and peppermints.

17. “It’s the ciiirrr-cle of liiiife”

18. A remake for the the covid age.

19.This movie is 30 years old. I don’t know how to feel about that (but yes, that always bothered me a lot too).

20. …and speaking of old things that are kinda tragic.

21. Nearly done. One last classic movie to ruin.

22. But don’t worry, there’s hope for the future.

Have a very Merry Christmas everyone