Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President Joe Biden faces a fresh lawsuit from a seven-state coalition challenging his “most generous ever” federal student loan repayment plan, under which millions of borrowers would have a monthly bill of $0.

In their complaint, filed on April 8 at a federal court in Missouri, the states argued that what the Biden administration calls the SAVE plan is another unlawful attempt to force Americans who incurred no college debt to shoulder the bill for those who did.

“Just last year, the [U.S.] Supreme Court struck down an attempt by the President to force teachers, truckers, and farmers to pay for the student loan debt of other Americans—to the enormous tune of $430 billion,” the complaint stated, noting that the high court’s 6-3 majority explicitly ruled that the president should not bypass Congress to implement a decision with such profound impact on the country’s economy.

“Undeterred, the President is at it again, even bragging that ’the Supreme Court blocked it. They blocked it. But that didn’t stop me,’” it added.

The lawsuit was spearheaded by Missouri, along with Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Dakota, Ohio, and Oklahoma. It comes just weeks after Kansas and 10 other Republican-led states filed a separate challenge to the same plan.

“With the stroke of his pen, Joe Biden is attempting to saddle working Missourians with a half trillion dollars in college debt,” Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican, said in a statement on April 9.

“The United States Constitution makes clear that the President lacks the authority to unilaterally ‘cancel’ student loan debt for millions of Americans without express permission from Congress.”

Citing an estimate by the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Bailey said the SAVE plan would cost Americans $475 billion over 10 years—$45 billion more than the initial student loan cancellation plan the Supreme Court shot down last June.

Specifically, according to the elite business school, about $200 billion of that cost will come from payment reduction for the $1.64 trillion in loans already outstanding in 2023. The remaining $275 billion comes from reduced payments for about $1.03 trillion in new loans that will be extended over the next 10 years.

“We estimate a take-up rate for future loans of 70 percent, implying that about $645 billion in future loans will be subsidized,” Wharton researchers said. “About 6.57 percent of future borrowers, or 4.98 percent of total predicted loan volume, will never have to make any payments under SAVE.”

According to the latest update from the U.S. Department of Education, SAVE has enrolled over 7.7 million people since it launched last August.

Like the existing income-driven repayment (IDR) option it replaces, SAVE can provide an affordable monthly payment based on income and family size before the eventual discharge of the remaining balance. Its current enrollees include 4.5 million people whose monthly bill was lowered to zero dollars, in addition to about 150,000 borrowers who had their entire debt wiped out.

Under SAVE, those who borrowed $12,000 or less only need to make payments for 10 years before becoming eligible for the final forgiveness, or an additional year for every $1,000 borrowed above $12,000.

In other words, anyone who took out $21,000 or less in undergraduate loans can have their debt erased on a shorter timeline than the standard 20 years.

With the end of his first term now in sight, President Biden has not fulfilled the 2020 campaign promise to cancel up to $20,000 in student loan debt for every borrower.

In his April 8 trip to Wisconsin, one of the battleground states that could play a pivotal role in his likely November rematch with former President Donald Trump, President Biden touted his effort so far to deliver that promise, which he said would be “life-changing” for more than 30 million borrowers.

“Too many Americans, especially young people, are saddled with unsustainable debts in exchange for a college degree,” he said.

“The ability for working and middle-class folks to repay their student loans has become so burdensome [that] a lot can’t repay for even decades after being in school.”

Republicans, meanwhile, denounced the Biden administration’s actions as a scheme to save dwindling support among young voters.

“Biden wants to use your tax dollars to buy votes because more and more young people are supporting President Trump,” Michael Whatley, chair of the Republican National Committee, said.

Via Charts and Parts Substack,

Intro

Spoiler alert: we have another red flag in the treasury market.  

The latest talk is to eliminate treasury holdings from the SLR (Supplemental Liquidity Ratio) calculation, which is used to determine how much banks need to set-aside to help “manage risk”.

Seen This Show Before

The Covid crisis brought about market chaos.  To manage the steep and fast decline, The Fed jumped into action and cut rates to zero and birthed QE infinity.  They also eliminated the banks’ reserve requirements.  The rule sounds just like it reads: banks no longer had to hold any reserves against deposit liabilities.  We already know there is nothing more permanent than a temporary government program, so this reckless policy still exists today.

We’ll remind our readers that we try to over-simply to make a point. The system and web of rules are extremely complex, especially when it comes to the plumbing of the treasury market.

Another handout occurred last year when we witnessed more bank failures than the 2008 GFC (Great Financial Crisis).  The big accommodative move to save the system was to allow banks to mark their (treasury) bond portfolio at “par” (100%), to avoid taking portfolio losses.  This was timely and convenient, as the TLT (Treasury Bond ETF) lost roughly 30% in 2022.  As a result of the 2022 bond market route (worst ever), the system is stuck with a pile of losses on the books.

Liquidity vs. Transparency

All these rule changes are meant to help “liquify” the system, thus reduce the odds of a systematic shock of sorts.  But these new rules come at the expense of transparency. We’re never quite sure who is holding what, thus we can lose track of where the land mines reside.

By allowing banks to not “mark-to-market” we lose transparency and more importantly, we lose more price discovery.  Because the government buys their own bonds, long ago we lost price discovery of the most important price of all – interest rates: the price of “money”. 

For 10-years we saw interest rates manipulated lower as debts and deficits soared ever higher.  This meant that the US (and many other countries) were able to borrow at cheaper and cheaper rates, even as their debts and deficits were ballooning.  We will reiterate a favorite C&P quote from a recent presentation, “This is an amazingly simple divergence (rates lower and debt higher) that defies every rule, concept, and bit of logic in financial markets.”

Third Times a Charm

The new SLR rule change could allow banks to be an endless buyer of treasury debt.  

Through that lens, this rule makes a lot of sense.  Especially as treasury issuance is testing the Covid highs even though the emergency is long gone. 

Said another way, we supposedly have a strong economy, yet the Treasury is selling/issuing bonds at a rate last seen during the Covid crisis.

The Close

How convenient for the banks — to be able to buy treasuries, take no haircut, and not have to worry about mark-to-market losses.  All just in time, as issuances are taking on a life of their own.

It is also worth noting that our deeper dive into The Great Taking revealed that the bond market is also fractionalized (not enough to go around/some bonds held on the books by more than one owner).

It sounds like a risky proposition to keep calling our government bonds “pristine collateral”, “risk-free”, or a “safe-haven asset”.

A little over a month ago, a scandal erupted among the (relatively small( group of economists who keep a close eye on the monthly inflation data reported by the Biden Department of Labor, when they learned that there is an even smaller, and much more exclusive group of economists called “super users” who get preferential treatment from the BLS, including wink-wink-nudge-nudge explanations of where the data may diverge from expectations. That was the case for the January CPI when as Bloomberg first reported, the BLS sent an email to a group of data “super users”, which “explained suggested a surge in a measure of rental inflation — which left analysts puzzled — was caused by an adjustment to how subcomponents of the index are weighted”:

Once it became public knowledge that there was a super secret group of preferential “accounts” receiving economic data, immediately following the Bloomberg report, a recipient of the email said that BLS Statistics “tried to retract it and that they were told to disregard its contents.” Almost as if they were trying to hide it after the fact.

In retrospect, it appears the BLS really did have something to hide, because in a follow up from both the NYT and Bloomberg, we now learn that an economist from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was corresponding on data related the monthly CPI print with major firms like JPMorgan and BlackRock, in what Bloomberg said “raised questions about equitable access to economic information.”

Extending on the report from February, records requested by Bloomberg revealed that the unnamed BLS economist answered numerous inquiries about details within the CPI in recent months, mostly related to computations in key categories within shelter as well as used cars, according to

The back and forth between the financial firms and the economist “who has been with the BLS for many years” was first reported by the New York Times;  as discussed previously, the government bureaucrat sent several emails to a broader group, which he called “my super users” in one of the emails obtained by Bloomberg. The BLS previously lied when it said it doesn’t maintain a list of “super users.”

In mid-February, one user asked if they could be added to the “super user email list,” to which the BLS economist replied minutes later, “Yes I can add you to the list.” The move was an attempt by the lowly paid government worker to curry favor with his much better paid peers on the sell- and buyside so that he could, one day, trade the preferential data access for a cushier job in some hedge fund or Wall Street firm.

As Bloomberg details, while the recipients’ names were redacted from the request, email signature details or disclosures from their employers were visible in some of the provided records. And in addition to BlackRock and JPMorgan, other banks, hedge funds and research firms — Brevan Howard, Millennium Capital Partners LLP, Citadel, Moore Capital Management, High Frequency Economics, Nomura Securities International and BNP Paribas — appeared in the exchanges and declined to comment. Pharo Management and Wolfe Research also came up in the emails but didn’t provide comment.

Understandably, economists – at least those who were not important enough to be on the “super user” list – have been clamoring to find out more about these “super users” are after the BLS staffer addressed an email to those people in February, suggesting that a change to the weights of underlying data within a key measure of rental inflation was behind its surge in January’s CPI. As we reported at the time, the BLS told recipients to disregard its contents, and subsequently tried to clear the confusion with a notice on its website. The agency also said that the email was “a mistake.”

But, as noted above, we now know that this was merely the latest lie by a Biden agency; and so this latest revelation “is likely to prompt a deeper look at the dissemination of economic information that has implications for how major assets trade as well as Federal Reserve policy.”

The BLS encourages people to ask questions and makes its staff available to engage with the public, but they strive to create equal access to information for everyone, said Emily Liddel, associate commissioner for publications and special studies at the BLS. Clearly, granting access only to Wall Street giants is not quite the equitable treatment the agency’s woke DEI staffers envisioned.

“Obviously this has been an embarrassment for the agency,” Liddel said. “The public puts a lot of trust in us to be fair, and our data providers put a lot of trust in us for the data to be secure. It’s our goal to repair that trust.”

And while the BLS economist often pointed users to relevant links on the agency’s website, at least one case, he shared information that wasn’t publicly available at the time, related to the calculation for the used cars index within the CPI. Liddel said it is “still under review” whether the employee shared other nonpublic information, and that the issues appear to be isolated to this one staffer. He is not answering incoming user questions at this time, she said.

* * *

While it remains unclear who the economist is, the NYT reported that emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show that the agency — or at least the economist who sent the original email, a longtime but relatively low-ranking employee — was in regular communication with data users in the finance industry, apparently including analysts at major hedge funds. And they suggest that there was a list of super users, contrary to the agency’s denials.

At the time, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said the email had been an isolated “mistake” and denied that it maintained a list of users who received special access to information.

And while there is no evidence (yet) that the employee provided early access to coming statistical releases or directly shared other data that wasn’t available to the public, in several instances, the employee did engage in extended, one-on-one email exchanges with data users about how the inflation figures are put together. Such details, though highly technical, can be of significant interest to forecasters, who compete to predict inflation figures to hundredths of a percentage point. Those estimates, in turn, are used by investors making bets on the huge batches of securities that are tied to inflation or interest rates.

Analysts regularly interact with government economists to make sure that they understand the data, but “when such access can move markets, the process for that access needs to be transparent,” said Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project in Washington. “This stuff is so valuable, and then someone just emails it out.”

In at least one case, emails to super users appear to have shared methodological details that were not yet public. On Jan. 31, the employee sent an email to his super users describing coming changes to the way the agency calculates used car prices, at the time a crucial issue for inflation watchers. The email included a three-page document providing detailed answers to questions about the change, and a spreadsheet showing how they would affect calculations.

“Thank you all for your very difficult, challenging and thoughtful questions,” the email said. “It is your questions that help us flesh out all the potential problems.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced the change in a news release in early January, but did not publish details about it on its website until mid-February, two weeks after the email from the employee.

It isn’t clear when the employee began providing information to super users, or whether he was the only economist at the agency to do so. Several of his emails were also sent to an internal Bureau of Labor Statistics email alias, suggesting that he did not believe his actions to be inappropriate… or he was simply an idiot.

The super users issue came to light in February, when the employee emailed the group saying that he had identified a technical change that explained an unexpected divergence between rental and homeownership costs in a recent data release. “All of you searching for the source of the divergence have found it,” he wrote.

About an hour and a half after that email went out, a follow-up told recipients to disregard it. In a subsequent online presentation, Bureau of Labor Statistics economists presented evidence that the change identified in the employee’s email was not, in fact, the source of the divergence.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

The furore over Scotland’s draconian new hate crime law rumbles on, as First Minister Humza Yousaf has now stated that the only people who reported his infamous ‘anti-white’ speech as a potential hate crime are “far right.”

In an interview with the BBC, Yousaf took issue with the ‘hatred’ description of his 2020 speech wherein he complained that every political position in Scotland was held by a white person.

As we previously highlighted, Yousaf’s speech in front of the Scottish Parliament on the 11th of June 2020 was reported to police by those opposed to the new legislation.

The BBC interviewer, Stephen Sackur, noted “interestingly, you too have been reported under the new hate crime legislation,” referring to the “white, white, white,” comments made during the speech.

“Now, Scotland is 96 percent white,” Sackur continued, adding “and there are some very active people, particularly on social media, who are saying Humza Yousaf’s message was essentially racist, it was anti-white.”

“The police aren’t interested, they say it’s nonsense, they’re certainly not going to investigate it, but under the new legislation the police also have to record it as a non-criminal hate incident, how do you feel about that?” Sackur asked.

Yousaf shot back:

“The description of those who referenced that speech as hatred, I’ve not seen anybody who has described it in that way who isn’t part of the far-right.”

Watch:

The furore over Scotland’s draconian new hate crime law rumbles on, as First Minister Humza Yousaf has now stated that the only people who reported his infamous ‘anti-white’ speech as a potential hate crime are “far right.” Report: https://t.co/N535XYKhKG pic.twitter.com/rsU1aR08yG

— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) April 9, 2024

So, Yousaf is asserting if you don’t agree that it’s a problem white people hold positions in government in a 96 percent demographically white country then you are “far right,” essentially you are the racist, not him.

As we highlighted earlier, the number of reports police are receiving is on course to outnumber the total of all other offences combined as a result of the disastrous new law.

Calum Steele, the former general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, told the Telegraph that officers “are genuinely embarrassed. They feel that the service and by extension [they] as individual police officers will catch some of the public brunt.” 

Under the new legislation, anyone deemed to have been verbally ‘abusive’, in person or online, to a transgender person, including “insulting” them could be hit with a prison sentence of up to seven years.

*  *  *

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Authored by John Cody via ReMix News,

The number of foreign suspects soared to around 923,000 last year, representing a massive 18 percent increase in just one year nationwide, according to crime statistics from the German Interior Ministry released on Tuesday.

However, the even more shocking number may have to do with violent crimes, which soared to record levels in 2023.

The data from the interior ministry shows that 41 percent of all crime suspects are foreigners, with 2.246 million people in the country suspected of a crime in 2023, which is 7.3 percent more than in 2022, reports Die Welt,

Overall, foreigners only represent 15 percent of the population.

‘Completely lost contact with the population’

The shocking numbers have hit Germany like a thunderclap and could have a number of political implications.

The head of the German Police Union, Rainer Wendt, slammed Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) after the drastic rise in foreign crime was revealed.

“The Federal Minister of the Interior is becoming more and more like ‘Nancy in Wonderland’ when she is astonished to discover that Germany has become more violent,” Wendt told Bild.

He argued that one would only be surprised with this outcome “if one has completely lost contact with the population.”

Faeser, for her part, has labeled “right-wing extremism” the biggest threat to the country, all while allowing violent crime and rape to explode under her tenure, especially from foreign criminals.

The government is now racing to naturalize millions of foreigners in order to ensure that they are not counted under “foreign” crime but are instead counted as “Germans,” as German crime statistics list anyone who commits a crime as “German” regardless of their migration background as long as they have a German passport.

Record cases of violent crimes

Critics like to claim that much of the “foreign crime” actually consists of immigration law violations. However, this is not the case. For one, these figures do not include violation of immigration law, which were excluded from the data. When one examines the data, foreigners are vastly overrepresented is in serious crime, especially violent crimes.

In fact, half of all violent crimes in Germany were committed by foreigners.

In 2023, the authorities registered around 214,000 violent crimes, an increase of 8.6 percent, and several records were broken in this area. There was a record number of cases involving dangerous and grievous bodily harm, reaching 154,000 cases, a 6.8 percent increase. At the same time, “intentional simple assault” rose to an all-time high of 434,000 cases, jumping 7.4 percent.

Robberies soared higher by 17 percent to 44,857, which is also considered a violent crime.

Crime soared in other categories as well. For example, residential burglary rose to 77,819 cases, up 18.9 percent, car theft (29,985, up 17.5 percent), shoplifting (426,096, up 23.6 percent) and pickpocketing (109,314, up 11 percent).

A total of around 5.94 million crimes were registered in 2023.

The numbers don’t give the full picture

To truly understand this rise in foreign crime, it must also be understood that many of the “German” suspects actually have a migration background and are not ethnic Germans. That is because the statistics count any foreigner who obtains German citizenship as simply “German.”

Second- or third-generation migrants who commit crimes are also simply listed as “German” in the crime statistics.

This is unlike Denmark, for instance, which tracks suspects with a migration background, giving a much clearer picture.

Read more here…

Authored by Chris Morrison via DailySceptic.org,

An amount of land equivalent to the Isle of Wight has been added to the shorelines of 13,000 islands around the world in just the last 20 years. This fascinating fact of a 369.67 square kilometre increase has recently been discovered by a group of Chinese scientists analysing both surface and satellite records. Overall, land was lost during the 1990s, but the scientists found that in the study period of three decades to 2020 there was a net increase of 157.21 km2. The study observed considerable natural variation in both erosion and accretion. Of course, the findings blow holes in the poster scare run by alarmists suggesting that rising sea levels caused by humans using hydrocarbons will condemn many islands to disappear shortly beneath rising sea levels. By means of such flimsy scare tactics, as we have seen in many other cases, desperate attempts are made to terrify global populations to accept the insanity of the Net Zero collectivisation.

The scientists said their data suggested that sea-level rise has not been a widespread cause of erosion for island shorelines in the studied regions.

“Presently, it is considered one of the contributing factors to shoreline erosion but not the predominant one,” they explained.

Needless to say, none of this will detain the attention of climate hysterics in both mainstream media and politics.

The Guardian was in fine form last June stating that rising oceans will extinguish more than land.

“It will kill entire languages,” it added, noting the effect on Pacific islands such as Tuvalu. Those areas of the Earth that were most hospitable to people and languages are now becoming the “least hospitable”.

Silly emotional Guardianista guff of course, but happily it does not seem to apply to Tuvalu.

A recent study found that the 101 islands of Tuvalu had grown in land mass by 2.9%.

The scientists observed that despite rising sea levels, many shorelines in Tuvalu and neighbouring Pacific atolls have maintained relative stability, “without significant alteration”. A comprehensive re-examination of data on 30 Pacific and Indian Ocean atolls with 709 islands found that none of them had lost any land. Furthermore, the scientists added, there are data that indicate 47 reef islands expanded in size or remained stable over the last 50 years, “despite experiencing a rate of sea-level rise that exceeds the global average”.

The Maldives is also a poster scare for rising sea levels, with the attention-seeking activist Mark Lynas – he of the nonsense claim that 99.9% of scientists agree humans cause all or most climate change – organising an underwater Cabinet meeting of the local Government in 2009. As it happens, the Maldives is one of a number of areas that have seen recent increases in land mass.

Other areas include the Indonesian Archipelago, islands along the Indochinese Peninsula coast, and islands in the Red and Mediterranean Seas. Notably, the  coastal waters of the Indochinese Peninsula had the most substantial gain, with an increase of 106.28 km2 over the 30-year period. Of the 13,000 islands examined, the researchers found that only around 12% had experienced a significant shoreline shift, with almost equal numbers experiencing either landward (loss) or seaward (gain) movement.

The scientists identify many reasons why islands can grow in size despite the small annual rises in sea level seen in many parts of the world. It is noted that island shorelines are constantly changing due to factors such tides, winds, nearshore hydrodynamics and the transport of sediment. On inhabited islands, human action such as fish farming and land reclamation can be important.

Of course, humans action can have a number of unintended consequences, notably the mining of coral and the breakdown of natural water barriers. Island states such as the Maldives have not been slow in coming forward to claim ‘climate reparations’ from guilt-tripped citizens in the developed world. But tourism has dramatically boosted income in the Maldives to first world levels at a time when the locals have mined coral in industrial quantities to build ports, airports and resort developments. In the process, ocean life diversity has been lost and the islands are often less protected from storm waves that can flow direct to the shoreline. In a recent essay, a group of scientists and economists charged that coral mining “has resulted in massive degradation of shallow reef-flat areas, with important negative impacts on coastal protection”.

The Chinese findings are important in helping destroy the claim that many low-lying islands will simply disappear beneath the waves in the near future due to human-induced climate change. They show how shoreline changes are a persistent and ongoing process that is subject to many natural and human influences. Most of the poster islands used for climate scares such as Tuvalu and the Maldives have increased in size of late, and are hardly suitable to whip up fear of a claimed climate ‘emergency’. Sea level rise is not a “predominant” cause of the changing coasts, the scientists note.

Iran’s foreign minister said on Monday that Washington military leaders gave Israel the “green light” to conduct a missile strike on its consulate building complex in Damascus last week that killed several of its top military officials, including two generals. 

Hossein Amirabdollahian said, “Our response to the Zionist regime and its punishment is certain.” He continued that “conveying the message of our country to the United States as a full-fledged support of the Zionist regime and direct response for its crimes and actions.” 

Addressing those warnings, in the US, National Security Council Strategic Communicators Coordinator John Kirby stated at a press conference on Monday that he couldn’t touch on the specific intelligence matters but pointed out that “the Israeli government could count on the United States’ support for any self-defense needs against threats directly by Iran to Israel, threats that Iran has made public.” 

As a possible military response by Tehran nears, Kirby also warned US troops across the Middle East, especially in Iraq and Syria, face mounting threats from drone and missile attacks. 

The question on everyone’s mind in the intel community is how Iran will respond. Tehran has many options, but which will it use?

A Bloomberg report on Monday titled “Iran’s Better, Stealthier Drones Are Remaking Global Warfare” reminded us how Iran’s mastery of low-tech drone warfare poses a significant threat to US military bases and oil infrastructure in the Middle East. 

Earlier this year, three American troops were killed, and more than three dozen were injured by an Iranian-designed kamikaze drone at the Tower 22 US military base in Jordan. 

“The last two years have been a period of hyper-acceleration of new tactics and techniques for Iran’s employment of drones,” Matthew McInnis, a Pentagon intelligence officer, told Bloomberg. 

In February, Iran’s Aerospace Force Commander Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh announced that Tehran-made stealth drones could target any moving vessel and critical infrastructure at great ranges. 

Hajizadeh claimed that Iran is one of the world’s leading powers in defense, including drone and missile technologies. 

“We have now reached a point where the terrorist military of the United States openly admits that it is not seeking a conflict with the Islamic Republic because it is unable to resist the Iranian defense prowess,” he said. 

Iran’s drones are becoming stealthier, and that has the US intel community up at night. Bloomberg pointed out, “The one that hit Tower 22 in January penetrated US defenses by shadowing an American drone that was landing there.” 

A spokesman for the US Department of Defense recently said Iran’s procurement, development, and proliferation of drones are “an increasing threat to international peace and security.” They noted that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin set up a panel of senior leaders last month to figure out “this urgent operational challenge.” 

Iran’s stealth drone technology has likely advanced significantly since Yemen’s Houthi rebels, backed by Tehran, launched a complex drone swarm attack on the world’s largest oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia in 2019. 

The question, again, is how Tehran will respond to Israel/the US. There are mounting concerns Iran or Iran-backed proxy groups could use suicide stealth drones against critical oil infrastructure, such as the Abqaiq oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia. Brent crude would immediately spike over the $100 a barrel mark if that facility was hit. And it would be viewed as an indirect attack on the US, as we penned in a note titled “The Weaponization Of Crude Could Trigger The Next Financial Shock.” 

Iran has stealth drone technology, and we’re sure they’re not just looking at pretty drones in a giant underground warehouse. They will use it. The question the intel community has is how Tehran will respond to Israel. 

Tick, tock, tick, tock… 

By Dorothy Li of The Epoch Times

China commonly floods global markets with cheap products, and the United States will not allow this to threaten U.S. jobs, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on April 8 as she concluded a return visit to China.

After Bejing’s acceptance into the World Trade Organization, massive quantities of low-priced products exported from China killed about 2 million jobs in the United States and led to the hollowing out of industrial production in many parts of the country, Ms. Yellen told reporters in Beijing, calling it the “first China shock.”

“I simply would say, [the situation] would not be acceptable to the United States,” she said.

On her second trip to China as treasury secretary, Ms. Yellen repeatedly expressed Washington’s concerns about Beijing’s burgeoning production in green-energy sectors, including electric vehicles, their batteries, and solar panels, as household consumption remains weak in the country.

She criticized China for flooding the global market with cheap products, as Beijing shifted its policy focus by investing in manufacturing factors to boost the country’s stagnant economy.

The message recurred through the four days of talks with senior Chinese officials, including Premier Li Qiang and Vice Premier He Lifeng, who oversees China’s economic and financial systems.

Following the April 8 meeting with the Bank of China Governor Pan Gongsheng, Ms. Yellen raised the issue again.

“I am particularly worried about how China’s enduring macroeconomic imbalances—namely, its weak household consumption and business overinvestment, aggravated by large-scale government support in specific industrial sectors—will lead to significant risk to workers and businesses in the United States and the rest of the world,” she told reporters at the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Beijing.

“China is now simply too large for the rest of the world to absorb this enormous capacity. And when the global market is flooded by artificially cheap Chinese products, the viability of American and other foreign firms is put into question.”

The treasury secretary acknowledged that addressing the issue takes time. “Our concerns will not be resolved in a week or a month,” she said….

There are signs that Beijing is reluctant to change its economic strategy.

…

But she emphasized that the Biden administration would push Beijing to change its course.

Over a decade ago, China’s massive state subsidies “led to below-cost Chinese steel that flooded the global market and decimated industries across the world and in the United States,” she said.

“I’ve made clear that President Biden and I will not accept that reality again.”

Continue reading at The Epoch Times