Authored by Bryan Jung via The Epoch Times,

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has called the Group of Seven’s plan to place a price cap on Russian oil “ridiculous.”

The veteran cabinet member from the Trump administration was speaking with CNBC’s Hadley Gamble on a panel at the Milken Institute’s Middle East and Africa Summit.

In addition to being a former Goldman Sachs partner, Mnuchin now works in private equity investing.

Mnuchin panned the proposal to cap prices as “not only not feasible, I think it’s the most ridiculous idea I’ve ever heard.”

He explained that that imposing sanctions on Russia and its officials now would have far less of an impact than if they were implemented before the war started.

“Sanctions would have had a big impact back then. I think the problem now is that there’s limited options … there’s parts of the world that are now buying Russian oil outside of U.S. sanctions,” Mnuchin said.

“But look, a price cap, the market is going to set the price. So if you put sanctions on at higher prices, in a way, you’re just making the situation worse, in my opinion.”

The G7, which includes the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom, are trying to set a fixed price cap on Russian oil from Dec. 5. Australia will also participate.

Meanwhile, American and European officials are still trying to decide upon the exact cap level, which has delayed the implementation of the plan.

The price caps, which were first proposed in July, would restrict shipping-related services that involve oil, including maritime transport, insurance, and financing to buyers of Russian oil supplies, unless it was sold at or below the limit.

The scheme is intended to hurt Russia financially, while protecting Western businesses and households from the effect of skyrocketing energy prices.

G7 Continue Stepping Up Sanctions on Kremlin

The United States and its allies have repeated that they are fully committed to rolling out more sanctions on Russia due to the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Additional sanctions by the European Union will also take effect in early December and will terminate Russian crude oil deliveries to the bloc by sea, in time for a ban on all refined energy imports from Moscow next year.

The EU is imposing the energy sanctions in solidarity with President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government in Kyiv, despite the hardship it will cause on already suffering European residents and businesses.

The Kremlin has been pressed to look for new customers in Asia, and has since boosted its oil exports to countries like India and China, as it loses its main export base in Europe.

However, analysts have said that the price cap plan will not work without cooperation from the Asian nations, which both have strong ties with Moscow.

If the Indians and Chinese agreed to follow the price caps, American policymakers anticipate a relaxation in global oil prices, while hitting Russian oil export revenues where it hurts.

The United States said that it has no problem with India still buying oil from Russia, as long as it agrees to abide by the G7 price caps, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said, while visiting her counterparts in New Delhi last week.

Indian energy companies “can also purchase oil at any price they want as long as they don’t use these Western services and they find other services. And either way is fine,” Yellen told Reuters.

The Russians have threatened retaliatory measures against any country that imposes price caps on its energy exports and will terminate oil shipments to them.

Peace Negotiations Long Overdue

It currently looks uncertain that the two Asian giants would even go along with the proposed price caps, due to major political and economic factors.

Mnuchin stated that negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv were “long overdue,” and that the best case scenario to avoid an escalating crisis for now would be a truce between both combatants.

Ukraine has repeatedly expressed it will only enter negotiations following the “restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity,” financial reparations, and the handing over of Russian soldiers and officials for alleged war crimes.

The Russians have outright rejected those offers.

A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government said on Nov. 18, that “one thing is for sure: the Ukrainians do not want any negotiations,” CNBC reported.

Biden Administration Should Push For Energy Self-Sufficiency

Mnuchin also criticized President Joe Biden for having an “extreme focus on the issue of global warming.”

He said that while he was “not minimizing” climate change, he stated that the White House should not “discourage investment in the carbon economy.”

“With approvals, and again this stuff doesn’t need legislation, there are things the current administration could do, you know, there’s a need for pipeline, there’s a need for infrastructure, there’s a need for more drilling,” Mnuchin said.

He then stated that cheap and secure domestic energy supplies still remain critical to U.S. national security interests.

Mnuchin called for a return to the years of energy self-sufficiency under his former boss, President Donald Trump, and blasted Biden for hypocritically complaining about insufficient oil supplies from exporting nations.

“We can’t turn around and say to OPEC+, ‘Why are you not producing more oil?’ when we’re not doing it ourselves,” the former treasury secretary said.

“There’s plenty of shale oil and at these numbers, it’s very economic to produce,” he said, while noting that the U.S. energy sector was being “starved of capital.”

Mnuchin said that when he was still Treasury Secretary, he wanted to acquire more funding to fill up the National Petroleum Reserve, when prices were still low in the first months of the pandemic.

That oil reserve since has been severely depleted by a decision of the Biden administration to tap it in order to lower U.S. gas prices.

Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

Six-time, best-selling financial author James Rickards says the upcoming book “Sold Out” lays out the case why a huge crash is already a certainty sometime in 2023. 

In a nutshell, broken supply chains have already caused big inflation, and the Fed is raising rates to tamp it back down.  On top of the perfect storm of inflation and prolonged supply problems, we have the recent meltdown of the FTX crypto currency exchange.  Rickards says,

“It is definitely going to cause sequential collapses in the crypto world, but will it jump the fence into the broader financial world?  My expectation is it will, but it can take six months or more to play out…

We probably have an acute global financial crisis coming anyway.  If FTX never existed, I would say we are staring at a worse financial crisis than 2008.  Throw FTX on top of that, and it’s like throwing gasoline on a fire.  It will accelerate the fire.  So, we’re probably going to have problems anyway, but the FTX implosion just makes it worse.”

As far as the dwindling supply chains, Rickards says, “The old supply chain has collapsed.  A new supply chain will emerge, and I talk about that in my book and what it will look like…”

”  Right now, we are in a very messy middle period where things don’t work well.  It’s like a vase.  You knock over a vase, and it breaks into 5,000 pieces.  You can’t put it back together.  You’ve got to go get a new vase.  We broke the vase, and we are shopping for a new one.  We are not there yet.  We are just cleaning up the mess. . . . Russia invades Ukraine.  The Ukrainian plastic conduit factory shuts down, and all of a sudden, the BMW production lines are shut down because they cannot get a part.  Again, this is another example of how this is all falling apart, and it’s not going to be put back together quickly.  There will be a new supply chain, and I call it supply chain 2.0, but we are in that in between time, and it’s going to be just a mess.”

Rickards says the Fed is going to keep raising rates because that is what they keep telling the public.  Rickards says, “They are telling us what they are going to do, and you should believe them.”

Rickards says we do have inflation, and it’s going to be with us for awhile, but we are also going to get deflation too.  Rickards points out,

“Why does Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway have $130 billion in cash?  Buffett is one of the greatest investors of all time.  Why isn’t he out there buying stocks?  Again, why does he have $130 billion in cash?  It’s because Buffett sees what I see.  Yes, this thing is going to completely crash. 

It’s a really good idea to have cash because you can go shopping in the wreckage and pick up some bargains.  My point is, we don’t have to guess.  Look at the Treasury yield curve.  Look at the euro/dollar futures yield curve.  Look at other metrics, and guess what it looks like?  It looks like 2007.  Everything I am describing, but not quite as extreme by the way, was true in 2007…

These euro/dollar futures were behaving then exactly as they are now.  Except now, the inversion is even worse, which means we are in for a worse crisis than 2008.  It’s coming.  Everything I said has nothing to do with FTX.  Throw FTX on top, and as I said, you are throwing gasoline on a fire.”

After the inflation, Rickards says count on big deflation.  He will explain exactly how that happens in the 58-minute interview.

Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with six-time, best-selling author James Rickards.  Rickards’ new book “Sold Out” will be coming out in early December.

*  *  *

To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here

If you want to pre-order a copy of “Sold Out,” click here.

Authored by Jan Jekielek and Masooma Haq via The Epoch Times,

With schools teaching sex and gender ideology beginning in kindergarten, the Biden administration encouraging early medical treatments for gender dysphoria, and social media influencers discussing the topic, a record number of adolescent girls believe they are transgender and are transitioning to live as males.

Concerned adults are sounding the alarm on the lack of scientific studies to support transgender medical treatments that permanently alter a young person’s physiology and leave their mental health issues unresolved.

Child and adolescent psychiatrist Miriam Grossman, who has been a mental health professional for 40 years, said the gender industry is built on the lies of one troubled psychologist.

“The person who came up with the theory was Dr. John Money, and he came up with this idea that a person’s biology—their body, their chromosomes—is completely separate from their feeling of whether they are male or female,” Grossman said during a Sept. 23 interview for EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program.

Grossman said the industry surrounding gender ideology—from gender clinics and hospitals to transgender pride flags and the emergence of a transgender civil rights movement—is based on a concept that was never proven to be true.

“In fact, the opposite was proven,” she said. “This whole concept of having an identity as male or female being completely separate from your biology has actually been proven incorrect by John Money’s experiment.”

Money was instrumental in establishing the first clinic to perform gender reassignment surgeries on children and adults at the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic.

In the 1960s, Money set out to prove his theory of gender identity to the world, and the perfect case study showed up in his office, Grossman said. But instead, his theory was disproven, and it was later revealed that his gender theory came from a study that was seriously corrupted.

The Canadian Twins

Grossman told the story of Janet and Ron Reimer, a Canadian couple with twin boys who consulted Money in the mid-1960s after one of the twins, Bruce, suffered a botched circumcision as an 8-month-old that permanently disfigured his genitals.

After seeing Money speak on a TV program about his research, the parents thought their grievously injured son could—like Money was promoting—change the sex he was born with and live a happy life as a girl.

Money’s hypothesis was that humans are born with a blank slate in terms of gender.

“He told the parents that they must immediately change Bruce’s name to a girl’s name, put him in girl’s clothing, tell everybody that he’s a girl, and never, ever tell him the truth about his birth and what happened to him,” Grossman explained.

Money advised the parents to have Bruce castrated and for doctors to construct an elementary female genitalia for the boy, Grossman said. Bruce was renamed Brenda and raised as a girl.

However, after many years of being treated by Money, at about the age of 10 the twins refused to see him again. It was later revealed that Money sexually abused the twins during their appointments. Bruce was reportedly never happy as a girl and had masculine inclinations that disturbed him throughout his life.

When the parents finally revealed the truth to the twins as they were entering puberty, Bruce (who was living as Brenda at that time) chose to revert to living as a male and took the name David.

“We have to acknowledge the unbelievable arrogance of a professional high-standing academic—widely respected, accomplished—the arrogance that he had to exploit this family in order to hold them up as proof of his theory,” said Grossman.

Money received a slew of awards during his treatment of the twins, including 25 years of continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health, Grossman said.

“His ideas about gender were institutionalized, were immediately adopted within an entire field of medicine—within mental health, psychiatry—and outside of medicine as well,” she said.

Indoctrination

Children have been indoctrinated with Money’s gender ideology, and now most young people do not believe there is a fundamental connection between biology and gender, which Grossman said is troubling.

She cited a poll published in September by The New York Times which found that over 60 percent of respondents aged 30 and older said they believe gender is determined by a person’s biological sex at birth, but 61 percent of respondents aged 18 to 29 said they believed that gender identity is distinct from biological sex.

The different between the younger and older group is directly due to the spread of gender ideology, Grossman said. This is because children as young as 5 years old have been indoctrinated with Money’s gender ideology in schools.

Kids are repeatedly being told that gender identity is separate from biology and that one can choose one’s gender identity, and it’s being presented as fact in the same way children are taught that the capital of California is Sacramento, she said.

Children are being told that a person can choose their own gender and that “gender-affirming care” is available for them if they want to become a different sex.

The “care” starts with puberty blockers and later progresses to opposite sex hormones and finally sex reassignment surgeries, at which point there is no room for the children to change their minds, Grossman said.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, published a study in JAMA Pediatrics (from the Journal of the American Medical Association) and reported that the number of gender-affirming chest surgeries performed in the United States on adolescents aged 13 to 17 years—the majority of which were elective mastectomies on girls—increased from 100 surgeries in 2016 to 489 surgeries in 2019, a difference of 389 percent.

Adolescents are constantly changing and trying to discover who they are, so allowing them to make a drastic change to their bodies during or before puberty is having a devastating impact on many young people and families, said Grossman.

Dutch Protocol Run Amok

Prior to the 1990s, the majority of those seeking medical treatment for gender dysphoria were men in their 30s and 40s, Grossman said. Doctors were finding that opposite-sex hormones and surgeries were less effective after puberty, so they thought if they started these treatments before puberty, the patient might have better outcomes in the sex change.

Researchers in Holland came up with a study that’s now referred to as the Dutch protocol. Children were only chosen to participate in the study if they had discomfort with their biological sex from an early age and their discomfort became worse when they reached puberty. They also could not have any other mental health issues.

“They took those kids and they put them on puberty blockers at age 12. And those puberty blockers had never been used before for that purpose, and to this day, puberty blockers are not licensed or FDA approved in any country to be used with gender dysphoria,” said Grossman. They are only approved for disorders or medical conditions like precocious puberty, she said.

The researchers then gave opposite-sex hormones to the 55 children in the study, and later the children could have surgeries if they wanted them. There were problems with this study, including the fact that there was no control group alongside the transitioning kids, said Grossman.

Grossman said there is a lot of evidence to suggest that if the kids who were uncomfortable with their sex at adolescence had been left alone, the majority of the cases of gender dysphoria would have resolved on their own after puberty.

“This Dutch protocol was immediately adopted in other countries, including in the U.S., as ‘this is the solution for these kids,’” said Grossman.

‘Gender Affirming Care’

The phrase “gender-affirming care” is a euphemism for radical medical experiments that are leaving patients with long-term physical health problems, and they don’t address the more important mental health issues these young people have, Grossman said.

“You’ll have to note, again, the manipulation of language and the Orwellian use of language, when the term ‘gender affirming’ is used. They’re experimenting on the body, and people are paying a massively high price for these medical experimentations,” she said.

“Gender-affirming care means that whatever the child comes up with in terms of their identity, no matter how old they are or what other conditions they may suffer from, that is their identity and we accept it. We affirm it. And we give them the treatment that they would like to get,” said Grossman.

President Joe Biden and Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine are promoting these treatments, and the majority of U.S. professional organizations are backing it, leaving parents to fight an uphill battle should they oppose their child’s wishes to change their gender, said Grossman.

Further, there are not enough long-term studies regarding the impact of “gender-affirming care” on children, but there is evidence about the dangerous outcomes, including being left sterile and developing blood clots, heart attacks, cancers, kidney failure, and early menopause, said Grossman.

Even with all the adverse effects of “gender-affirming care,” the Biden administration is trying to mandate that all medical professionals participate and support children to get these types of treatments, Grossman said.

Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria

The Tavistock gender clinic in London has seen an exponential increase in kids seeking sex changes, most with rapid onset gender dysphoria.

Read more here…

Concerns are mounting over the potential for radioactive fallout and disaster at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine following large explosions heard at the site over the weekend. 

Like with prior incidents of shelling and fighting coming near the sensitive facility, each warring side is blaming the other for these latest attacks. “Explosions shook the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine over the weekend in what appeared to be renewed shelling of the facility and the surrounding area, according to the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),” The Hill reports Sunday. 

The BBC cites local sources who say over a dozen powerful explosions were heard Saturday night at or in the vicinity of Zaporizhzhia plant, which remains Europe’s largest nuclear facility.

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi called the reports “extremely disturbing” and “completely unacceptable”. He urged for fighting to halt there immediately. “Whoever is behind this, it must stop immediately. As I have said many times before, you’re playing with fire!”

The IAEA said that in prior weeks there had been a “period of relative calm” in the area, which has now ended. “I’m not giving up until this zone has become a reality. As the ongoing apparent shelling demonstrates, it is needed more than ever,” Grossi stated.

The UN atomic watchdog still has a team of experts on location at the plant, but there’s been no definitive word on which side was behind the renewed shelling which risks destabilizing the plant. 

Most Western media reports have blamed Russia for the powerful explosions which reportedly continued into Sunday, despite Russian troops still being the ones to occupy and oversee the actual site. Ukrainian state energy company Energoatom charged that Russia is “once again… putting the whole world at risk.”

“This morning on Nov. 20, 2022, as a result of numerous Russian shelling, at least 12 hits were recorded on the territory of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant,” Energoatom said.

“You are playing with fire!”

Director General of the international Atomic Energy Agency reacted to reports that the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is being shelled and said: “whoever is behind this, it must stop immediately.”

Latest: https://t.co/X3flQUBL0r

📺 Sky 501 pic.twitter.com/L9897zapHB

— Sky News (@SkyNews) November 20, 2022

Russia fired back, with its own nuclear agency Rosatom saying the following: 

Kyiv “does not stop its provocations aiming at creating the threat of a man-made catastrophe at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant,” the Russian army said in a statement on Sunday. 

Despite the shelling, radiation levels “remain normal,” the army added.

It said missiles exploded around a power line that feeds the plant, the fourth and fifth power units and “special building number 2.”

Renat Karchaa, an adviser to the Russian nuclear agency Rosatom, told state-run agency TASS that the “special building” contained nuclear fuel.

As for assessed damage as a result of the weekend explosions, the IAEA said at this point the damage to the buildings is not “critical.”

However, there fears this means escalation in fighting around the plant, with the IAEA statement underscoring the shelling is “abruptly ending a period of relative calm at the facility and further underlining the urgent need for measures to help prevent a nuclear accident there.”

By Eric Peters, CIO of One River ASset Management

“Buyer traffic is becoming increasingly scarce,” explained the Chairman of the National Homebuilder Association. “Even as home prices moderate, building costs have yet to follow.”

When prospective homebuying is this weak, the Fed is typically cutting rates. Yet markets are prepared for another 100bps of rate hikes through next Spring.

US existing home prices were down each of the past four months across all four regions. Price discounts aren’t enough – inventory ratios are higher as nobody wants to move unless they must.

Bond markets are convinced that inflation is going to fall hard – higher real rates, a weaker economy, a stronger US dollar, and a massive deflationary impulse from global trade make it a safe bet.

But there are oddities in the background. Labor is gaining strength. This doesn’t usually happen with a weaker economy and falling inflation. But it is happening.

“Overtime and minimum wage violations are common violations found in food service industry investigations,” said the Department of Labor. Krispy Kreme quickly settled damages filed by 516 workers on Nov 7th. Starbucks workers staged their largest labor action on Red Cup Day, one of their busiest of the year.

“If the company won’t bargain in good faith, why should we come to work,” the mood captured by a shift manager.  US rail strikes are scheduled to start on Dec 5 – key chemicals shipments will stop days before. “Congress must quickly intervene to ensure a disruption does not occur,” the National Retail Federation warned. And it isn’t just the US – labor tensions are rising in the UK, Canada, Finland. Central bank balance sheets make unusual the new normal.

The QT theme continues; the “T” for tightening bit has paused. Fed excess reserves rose again last week, having bottomed seven weeks ago. It’s a complication that policy has never experienced. Demand for US dollars has declined as investors fish for an equity bottom, pushing excess liquidity back onto the Fed’s balance sheet.

Warren Buffet is one of those investors on the hunt for value. Berkshire’s 13F focused on cyclical infrastructure – semiconductors, energy companies, transportation over banks and technology stocks.

What to make of this mix of marbles?

There is a thirst to place current circumstances into a package that resembles the past, to give some comfort that the future isn’t as unknown as it seems. But it isn’t the 1920s or the 1970s, pre-war or post-war. There is no analog. Today’s starting points are like none we have seen.

The biggest risk is extrapolating to the future from a past that feels comfortable, confirmed by recent data. Disequilibrium is the new equilibrium.

Central banks must remove emergency support measures once financial crises are over to avoid causing moral hazard in the market, former Bank of Japan deputy governor Hiroshi Nakaso said on Thursday. Which is ironic coming from the one central bank that not only institutionalized moral hazard and MMT, keeping rates at or below zero for the past 30 years, but also ushered in QE and now owns more than half of the entire JGB market, and even the merest hint of a pull back in BOJ support would spark financial armageddon for Japan where the country’s pensions would be wiped out in a millisecond should a central bank backstop ever be removed.

According to Reuters, Nakaso, who is considered one of the top candidates to become next BOJ governor, also said that once an economy was running below potential capacity, a central bank could more easily normalize ultra-loose monetary policy. Which is easy for him to say now that he is in the running for next BOJ head: we just somehow doubt he will demonstrate the same conviction if and when he becomes the next BOJ head.

Echoing what we have said for the past 13 years, Nakaso said that investors had come to (correctly) assume that central banks would always come to the rescue when financial markets destabilized because of the massive monetary support deployed during the COVID-19 crisis, Nakaso said.

“This moral hazard must be removed once the crisis is over, though this is easier said than done because it’s a contradictory issue,” Nakaso said in a seminar hosted by the University of Tokyo and International Monetary Fund. And yet he said it, because the wave against relentless central bank intervention – which sparked record inflation across the world in the aftermath of the Covid crisis – is turning. Then again, it will promptly make another U-turn the moment tens of millions are left without a job as the financial tightening spawned by central banks in the past year finally hits the economy instead of just markets.

“Crisis management is like creating … artificial moral hazard,” he said. “It shouldn’t stay forever.” Yes it shouldn’t, which is precisely what we said in 2009, and yet no official or politician will ever have the guts to pull the plug knowing very well that the alternative is overnight collapse of the financial system.

None of this fazed Nakaso who continued citing what monetary policy should look like, not what it looks like now: to avoid moral hazard, central banks could design their lending facilities so they were less costly to tap for investors in crisis situations but became more costly when the market normalised. Oh you mean like ending QE 2, 3, Twist and so on, instead of holding on to them for years and for dear life. Yes, well, we tried suggesting that pretty much every single year since 2009 and it didn’t work. It won’t work now either, and it’s why – as Elliott correct predicted – we are facing tens of trillions more in monetary stimulus as the alternative is total collapse.

“Maybe this is something we can revisit and study” in preparing tools to combat the potential next financial crisis, Nakaso said. Maybe. Or maybe not, because once it is up to Nakaso to pull the plug on Japan’s unprecedented easing and collapse what’s left of Japan’s economy and market – as it is now far too late to try and “normalize” – he will never dare to do it.

Nakaso’s remarks come amid growing debate about how and when the next BOJ governor will reduce its massive stimulus, considered by some to be distorting market pricing.

“Inflation pressure that proved persistent … can be attributed at least … to generous monetary and fiscal support by the authorities,” Nakaso said, debunking relentless lies by central bankers in Europe and the US who have feigned ignorance and claimed none of the galloping inflation observed today is the result of their actions.

Nakaso and incumbent BOJ deputy governor Masayoshi Amamiya are considered among top candidates to succeed BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda, whose current term will end in April.

Nakaso was speaking at the online symposium from Bangkok, where he was joining a meeting of national economic leaders along with Kishida. Their being there together may stoke speculation about Nakaso’s closeness to the premier.

Of course, all of this is just posturing and jawboning: as analysts quoted by Reuters note, neither would rush into tightening monetary policy, given the fragility of Japan’s economy and the need to keep low the cost of funding its huge public debt. And if they don’t tighten now, they never will.

Still, compared with Amamiya, Nakaso is seen more in favor of dialing back Kuroda’s radical stimulus. In a book published this year, he laid out in detail how the BOJ could end ultra-loose policy. What he left out is how JGBs go bidless, how trillions in Japanese pensions evaporate overnight, and how a global financial shockwave crushes the western financial system which is inextricably linked to the continued stability of the Japanese bond market.

By Matt Stoller, author of the BIG Substack

“It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.” – Taylor Swift

Over the past week, there has been fiasco in the sale of Taylor Swift tickets, with millions of angry fans despondent at not being able to see their favorite singer, and frustrated at the incredibly poor service, inexplicable pricing, and high fees of the Ticketmaster software system used to sell them.

Swift is the most popular artist in America, and hadn’t done live shows for four years. When she announced a tour, Ticketmaster was the ticketing agent. Due to under-investment in its platform, the corporation’s site and app crashed, unable to handle the demand for tickets. Somehow, though, scalpers managed to get plenty of tickets and put them on sale for much more than the original list price.

Why was Ticketmaster’s system so poorly structured? To answer that it helps to look at the firm’s stock price. In the face of such a high-profile embarrassment, a firm without market power would suffer in the marketplace. Investors would assume that customers would switch to a competitor’s services, much as, say, Ford’s stock drops when it has to do a recall of a line of cars. But Live Nation’s stock didn’t move at all. No investors were afraid that artists or venues would use a competitor’s software system. Because they can’t. There aren’t any meaningful rivals.

The problem, as this new generation of fans is learning, isn’t just that Ticketmaster is a bad system. The problem is Ticketmaster is the only system. It’s a monopoly.

And so Swifties, as they are known, demanded answers. These kinds of bitter cries tend to go into the void, just one more piece of evidence we have too many greedy people at the top and a government that cannot act. But this time, something different happened. Yesterday, David McCabe reported that the Department of Justice Antitrust Division has been investigating Live Nation, the parent company of Ticketmaster, for antitrust violations. And THAT revelation caused the stock to drop.

Members of the antitrust division’s staff at the Justice Department have in recent months contacted music venues and players in the ticket market, asking about Live Nation’s practices and the wider dynamics of the industry, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is sensitive. The inquiry appears to be broad, looking at whether the company maintains a monopoly over the industry, one of the people said.

The Ticketmaster monopoly story goes back to the 1990s. It started with a merger. In 1991, Ticketmaster acquired its main rival in computerized ticketing, Ticketron, which put 90% of the ticketing business in the hands of one firm. This was a milestone. Indeed, Ticketmaster brags about this unlawful merger on its own website.

Three years later, the fees for ticketing had gotten out of hand. So Pearl Jam, then the biggest band in the world, got mad. The band was angry at the high prices and hidden fees the firm charged their fans, and they wanted a straightforward ticket price – $1.80 service fees clearly spelled out on $18 tickets, which was lower than what Ticketmaster sought. But Ticketmaster refused. So the band boycotted what was the then-new Ticketmaster monopoly. They ran a pressure campaign, testifying to Congress, embarking on a lobbying campaign, and pointing to the firm’s acquisitions of rivals and other underhanded tactics in its attempt to control the industry.

Ticketmaster struck back, bribing music venues to only accept Ticketmaster as a booking system, which meant that Pearl Jam couldn’t play at most normal locations. Pearl Jam’s 1995 tour was thus a catastrophe, because they had to play in places like sporting fields which couldn’t hold concerts, so most of their shows were canceled. The cost to Pearl Jam was in the millions, and it devastated the band. This was a remarkable potential moment for antitrust enforcement, with the biggest music act in the world brought to its knees by a ticketing monopoly.

And yet, enforcers did nothing. Under Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump, Ticketmaster grew, buying up rivals, becoming more and more powerful. Then, enter the other major powerhouse of the industry, Live Nation, a firm that rolled-up live events until it ultimately became the world’s largest concert promotion company. Live Nation was sick of paying Ticketmaster’s fees, and the two firms had been battling at the bargaining table. Finally Live Nation simply built its own ticketing software and threatened to compete directly with Ticketmaster. Competition would have hit profits for both firms. So instead the two worked out a deal to merge, so the combined entity could have all the fees – and more – to itself.

This new giant of the industry would open the door to an array of opportunities to grab cash. The merger combined the biggest owner of venues, the monopolist of ticketing software, and Front Line Management, a roll-up of artist management firms that came to control most of the biggest names in the business, making Live Nation the most powerful live entertainment firm America had ever seen.

The deal was so outrageously arrogant that the combined firm was to be chaired by Irving Azoff, who – in a New York Times profile – confessed himself a serial liar and talked about how he put pictures of himself giving the middle finger on his own stationary. Initially, people thought Obama, who had talked tough on antitrust on the trail, would block the merger. Not doing so would look weak. If you weren’t going to go after Ticketmaster, the scourge of the 1990s, then would you go after anyone?

But the Obama administration approved the merger, with Antitrust Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney leading negotiations over what concessions Live Nation would have to offer. Immediately after the merger, Live Nation began violating its consent decree with the Antitrust Division, charging outrageous fees, and not stopping the sale of tickets to bots. It suppressed competitors who had developed ways of blocking scalpers, like Songkick. Live Nation acted in such bad faith that the Trump Antitrust Division eventually had to rework the consent decree.

Today, the choice by the Obama administration looks inexplicable. “The people who came in to oversee this transaction were very interested in doing everything imaginable to create more competition in ticketing in the marketplace,” said former Antitrust Division chief counsel Gene Kimmelman, who worked on the deal. “We were frustrated that the options were unbelievably limited.”

The concerns of Obama-era enforcers weren’t outlandish. From the 1980s onwards, it had become increasingly hard to prevail in antitrust claims. This ideological turn is one reason Clinton didn’t act despite Pearl Jam’s advocacy, and why the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations allowed it to fester and worsen.

The post-1982 model used in antitrust cases, known as the consumer welfare standard, made it hard to show harm, because large firms could claim they were large not because they engaged in predatory behavior, but because they were efficient. And plenty of bought-off people in the industry would validate Live Nation, and very few opponents – after seeing what had happened to Eddie Vedder – would be willing to speak out publicly for fear of retribution. By the Obama administration, antitrust enforcers had come to see themselves as deal-makers, working with merging firms to help them make deals, rather than law enforcers trying to constrain corporate power.

But then something changed. Starting in the early 2010s, but then picking up steam over the decade, a new anti-monopoly movement began challenging the standard by which dominant firms such as Google and Amazon acquired their power. A range of writers, lawyers, businesspeople, workers, and ordinary citizens began learning, reading, researching, and talking. While a lot of people assumed that big tech was the only focus, the target was much broader. In 2021, my organization released a report called Courage to Learn, in which we highlighted a litany of Obama antitrust failures, including allowing the Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger. We recommended that the incoming Biden administration appoint new enforcers and engage in a far more aggressive strategy, including “unwinding” that merger.

Joe Biden listened. He appointed Jonathan Kanter to the Antitrust Division, and Lina Khan to the Federal Trade Commission. And they embarked on a series of new choices within the agencies, sparking controversy and in some cases bitterness within the white collar antitrust bar. A month ago, we published a research report on Live Nation, and were part of a coalition of fans and artists called Break Up Ticketmaster. 40,000 people have since asked for action.

And then came the Taylor Swift fiasco. It’s deeply embarrassing for the antitrust enforcers who facilitated the Live Nation merger, because the premise of their merger was that bigness begat efficiency. And yet the firm couldn’t handle an easily predicted demand spike that it induced by sending out marketing codes to Swift fans.

Politicians began speaking out, such as the state attorneys general of Tennessee and North Carolina, who pledged investigations. Members of Congress wrote letters to the Department of Justice, and Senators Amy Klobuchar and Mike Lee said they would hold hearings. And yet, the firm itself acted as a monopolist would, treating the fiasco as something of a joke. The first words out of a Live Nation executive at the Liberty Investor meeting two days ago was “Everyone has a Taylor swift ticket underneath their seat.” The harm Live Nation caused was irrelevant to its owners, who profited mightily regardless. Then, when the Chair of Live Nation, Greg Maffei, was asked on CNBC about the ticketing fiasco, he blamed… Taylor Swift.

Finally, Swift herself spoke out. On Instagram, she expressed anger at the exploitation of her fans. “It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties,” she said, “and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse.” The statement was mostly heartfelt and personal, but the ‘no recourse’ phrase suggests something else. ‘Recourse’ is not the word choice of a songwriter, but of a lawyer trying to make a point about market power. Swift – or perhaps Swift’s lawyer – is saying that Ticketmaster is, as it was when Pearl Jam was the biggest act in the world, a monopoly. “We asked them,” she said, “multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could.” Even Swift, as the most powerful artist in music, could not prevent her fans from being cheated by Ticketmaster.

And now we know the Antitrust Division is on the case. It’s going to take time for this suit to move forward. They’ve been doing interviews for months, but there’s more work needed to put together a complaint. To some extent the lawyers can short-circuit the process since there’s a consent decree, but a judge will still drag it out. There are many more wrinkles to the Live Nation antitrust case. But that’s the gist of it.

It’ll be interesting to see if Live Nation decides to throttle back a bit on its fees, alleged coercive practices, and rumored retaliatory behavior. Firms in the crosshairs often do, and that’s probably why the stock went down, an expectation from investors that Live Nation might have to eat some margin loss for PR purposes. Somehow, though, I suspect they won’t. Live Nation is still guided by its original chairman’s love of putting up a middle finger to the world.

That’s what at least two generations of music fans have experienced.

It only took 40 hours for CBS News to realize what absolute morons they’d been to stop posting on Twitter over “security concerns” with the platform.

“After pausing for much of the weekend to assess the security concerns, CBS News and Stations is resuming its activity on Twitter as we continue to monitor the situation,” the news organization’s communications team tweeted Sunday morning.

After pausing for much of the weekend to assess the security concerns, CBS News and Stations is resuming its activity on Twitter as we continue to monitor the situation.

— CBS News PR (@CBSNewsPress) November 20, 2022

The outlet announced on Friday that they would be pausing its activity on the social media platform “out of an abundance of caution,” which was apparently no longer an issue by Sunday morning. The massive virtue signal marked perhaps the most significant organization to protest the threat of free speech at the Musk-owned social media giant – after multiple advertisers announced that they would be pausing ad spending amid the chaos of locked-out employees and fired executives.

Musk took Twitter private on Oct. 27 – firing the senior management team and appointing himself as CEO, before then firing 50% of the company. On Nov. 17, hundreds of Twitter employees resigned after Musk set a deadline for workers to agree to “extremely hardcore” working conditions.

According to Variety, CBS News was particularly concerned about the security of information on Twitter, as key personnel related to that area had departed.

The news outlet has been closely watching the situation to see if any of Twitter’s critical functions break down and whether Twitter is susceptible to hacking attacks.

The mass employee exodus from Twitter — now with a headcount estimated to be less than 2,500, down from 7,500 prior to Musk’s $44 billion acquisition — has escalated fears that the platform may start to break down operationally. -Variety

The decision by CBS News comes after Musk reinstated former President Donald Trump’s account following a 24-hour poll.

The responses, as expected, have been hilarious.

https://t.co/hyNeBg9hbg pic.twitter.com/FJCS3VUCQ1

— Dr. DW (@ZombyWoof2022) November 20, 2022

Your heroism will not go unrewarded.

— 🫃🏼🇺🇦💉Hollaria Briden, Esq. (@HollyBriden) November 20, 2022

During that pause, everyone on this app was safe from misinformation.

— Chef Andrew Gruel (@ChefGruel) November 20, 2022

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A federal judge on Friday ordered the unsealing of documents featuring the real names of some of the “John Does” relating to deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, according to multiple media outlets.

Judge Loretta Preska ruled on Friday to disclose the identities of a number of previously anonymous individuals in documents filed by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre against the convicted pedophile’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell in a defamation case, according to Insider.

Epstein died in jail awaiting trial while Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking and sentenced to 20 years behind bars.

Giuffre’s civil lawsuit against Maxwell has generated a trove of documents relating to Epstein, which contain a number of redacted names, some of which Preska ordered unsealed on the premise that public interest outweighs the right to privacy, according to Daily Mail.

Already Disclosed to the Public

Eight “Non-Party Does” referred to in documents as Does 12, 28, 97, 107, 144, 147, 171, and 183, sought to remain anonymous amid concerns that their disclosure would harm their reputations, Fox News reported.

Preska disagreed in some cases, saying that much of the “purportedly sensitive information” had already been disclosed to the public during Maxwell’s trial, per Daily Mail.

While a timeline for the release of the documents and names has not been set, Preska identified some of the Epstein-linked individuals during the hearing.

The judge identified Doe 147 as Epstein victim Sarah Ransome, who testified publicly at Maxwell’s sentencing and published a book about her experience, and granted numerous interviews, according to Insider.

Another individual Preska identified was Emmy Tayler, a former personal assistant to Maxwell who was accused of playing a role in the sexual abuse of some of the victims, according to Daily Mail.

Tayler, who has denied any wrongdoing, was named in a batch of publicly available documents from another lawsuit, Preska said and ordered its release, according to Daily Mail, though it’s unclear which of the Does is used in reference to Tayler.

‘Intense Media Coverage’

Preska also ordered documents relating to Doe 183 unsealed as the individual has been the “subject of intense media coverage” and their name was disclosed during Maxwell’s trial. But in order to allow Doe 183 an opportunity to appeal her decision, Preska put a stay on the release until Nov. 28.

She also ordered the name of Tom Pritzker, billionaire executive chairman of the Hyatt Hotels, to be unsealed, according to Insider. Preska said Pritzker had only a marginal connection to Epstein as his name came up in a deposition in which a witness said they didn’t recognize him.

Pritzker argued against the disclosure on the premise that it could harm his reputation but Preska overruled his objection.

The judge did concede to some of the individuals who raised objections, however.

Doe 12 will remain anonymous as they were a “classic outsider,” the judge said, describing them as “neither victim nor associated with Epstein or Maxwell,” according to Daily Mail.

The name of Doe 28 will also remain sealed as they’re a sexual assault victim who the judge said “continues to experience trauma,” per Daily Mail.

Meanwhile, Maxwell recently alleged that a fellow inmate plotted to kill her in her sleep.

She also said that she found Epstein’s death, which was ruled a suicide, to be “profoundly suspicious” and that she doubts he really killed himself.

When he died, Epstein was awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges. He was convicted in 2008 on similar charges but received a light sentence.

By Vishwanath Tirupattur of Morgan Stanley

Our 2023 Outlook – What We Debated

This has been our outlook week. We published our year-ahead global economics and strategy outlooks last Sunday, and the more detailed asset class and country-specific outlooks have been streaming out during the week, with more to follow. At Morgan Stanley Research, the outlooks are the culmination of a process involving much deliberation and spirited debate among economists and strategists across all the regions and asset classes we cover. In a highly interconnected world with myriad uncertainties, we are convinced that this collaborative exercise in which we challenge each other’s views is critically important. In last week’s Sunday Start, my colleague Andrew Sheets summarized the outcome of the process – our outlook for 2023 across markets and economies. This week, I will focus on some of the key debates we engaged in during the process.

Unsurprisingly, we spent a lot of time on inflation. Given the many upside surprises to inflation through much of the year, there was understandable skepticism around our forecast that US inflation will show a steady decline. Our economists acknowledged the uncertainty but took some comfort in base effects, normalizing supply chains, and weaker labor markets. They also saw deflation (not just disinflation) in certain core goods such as autos and a reset in medical services prices exerting a steady drag on core inflation. To be clear, our US inflation forecast takes into account that while shelter inflation will slow, it will remain a persistent driver of above-target inflation for a few more quarters.

Our FX strategists changed their bullish stance on USD to neutral, a notably out-of-consensus call. With our outlook debates taking place against the background of a hawkish-sounding post-FOMC press conference at which the Fed chair signaled the policy rate peaking higher than previously thought, this change was vigorously debated. Our strategists argued that a decline in inflation as our economists forecast would limit upside potential for US rates. Furthermore, monetary policy in the US is now in restrictive territory, implying that we will see more downside surprises in individual data points. Also, the outlook for China, while still challenging, appears to be shifting, with a decent chance that the authorities take steps toward ending the Covid-zero policy. This would help to bring greater balance to the global economy, with less upward pressure on the dollar.

Our economists’ base case expectation that the Fed will stop hiking in January led to a discussion of how markets would behave following the end of a hiking cycle. In some cases, the end of a hiking cycle was good for markets over the following 12 months (February 1995) but not in others (May 2000). We noted that the key to the outcome for markets seems to be whether a recession follows the end of a hiking cycle.

While our forecast for the US is a ‘soft landing’ (no recession), our economists pointed out that the landing won’t feel all that soft and the margin for error is small. This makes the risk/reward for US stocks challenging. It is worth highlighting that in both 1995 and 2000 the 10-year US Treasury yield rallied, consistent with what our rates strategists expect by the end of 2023.

There was debate around why we only see high yield default rates rising to ‘long-term average’ levels (4-4.5%), given slower growth and higher borrowing costs. Our credit strategists contended that the modest maturity walls over the next two years, cash on balance sheets, and healthy coverage and leverage ratios will mitigate near-term default pressures. However, they did note the potential for a longer default cycle, as maturities start to matter more in 2024.

Another topic of discussion was our housing strategists’ view that US housing will experience a significant decline in activity (sales, starts, and permits) comparable to the steep declines seen in the aftermath of the GFC, yet only a modest drop in home prices, unlike what we saw post-GFC. The divergence in activity and prices is rooted in the prospect of much lower forced sales through foreclosures due to tight mortgage lending standards post-GFC, the substantial equity in many existing homes, and the lock-in effect of existing mortgages.

The future of the Fed’s quantitative tightening (QT) was also much debated, particularly when it might end and its sequencing with a rate cut. History is really no guide here since we only have one data point to go by. As our chief global economist Seth Carpenter noted, the Fed sees the two policy tools as independent, and stopping QT depends on money market conditions and bank demand for reserves. Thus, QT could end before or after December 2023, when we anticipate gradual rate normalization to start. That said, QT could stop abruptly for two reasons:

1. A recession that forces the Fed to contemplate rate cuts of 100bp or more; or
2. Dysfunctional markets along the lines of March 2020 or the recent episode in the gilt market.

More in the full note available to pro subscribers.