Gasoline Prices Have Been Insulated From Oil’s Surge Until Now
By Chunzi Xu, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategist
US gasoline prices have been insulated from oil’s surge so far amid soft demand and relatively high inventories. But if oil persists at $90/barrel, pump prices are poised to climb.
WTI has rallied about 8% in the past two weeks, with gasoline futures not far behind. Yet pump prices have declined more than 4% in the same period. The physical spot market has been stable or lower in New York and Houston.
This is because implied gasoline demand in the US is about 3% below what it was this time last year and 6% below the five-year average. Meanwhile, inventories have accumulated above seasonal norms. This trend of weak consumption and growing supply is likely to persist into the winter as US refiners emerge from maintenance next month.
But gasoline prices will eventually catch up to the futures market, which is sensitive to oil’s volatility, especially given escalating tensions in the Middle East. And it doesn’t take much for any impact at the pump to reach consumers — average gasoline prices currently stand at $3.558 a gallon, that’s below this time last year but far above than any other year in the last decade.
You Must Be In ‘The Six-Figure Club’ To Afford A House
The latest housing data shows soaring mortgage rates, elevated prices, and limited inventory continue to worsen the affordability crisis.
New data from real estate brokerage Redfin Corp. indicates homebuyers now need a whopping $114,000 salary to afford a median-priced home of $412,000 in September – assuming a 30-year fixed mortgage rate of 7.2% with 20% down. This is a near doubling in salary needed to afford a home since Covid, and since inflation wiped out real wages for two years, more Americans than ever can no longer afford the ‘American Dream’ of a single-family house with a white picket fence, instead, trapped in a cycle of renting.
Redfin’s next report, for this month, will likely show another jump in the salary needed to afford an average home because the 30-year fixed mortgage rate has risen 80 percentage points to 8%.
In 2012, the salary Americans needed to afford the average home was about $38,000. As a rule of thumb, buyers should never exceed 30% of their income on shelter costs.
“US homeownership first became a six-figure club in 2022, thanks to borrowing costs rising at the fastest clip in decades while home prices remained high,” Bloomberg said, adding, “It’s only gotten more expensive with mortgage rates hurdling towards 8%. Existing homeowners are reluctant to move because they’re locked in at lower rates, and new buyers are struggling to find properties they can afford, pushing mortgage applications to a multi-decade low.”
The NAR Housing Affordability Index clocked in at 91.7 in August, down from 93.9 in July – anything below 100 indicates a household with a median income does not earn enough to be approved for a mortgage on a median-priced home. This was the lowest reading since at least the early 1980s.
Mortgage rates are likely to stay high over the next few months.
*POWELL: EVIDENCE IS THAT POLICY IS NOT ‘TOO TIGHT’ RIGHT NOW
For all those millennials and GenZ-ers who are trapped in a cycle of renting with no personal savings and insurmountable credit card and student loan debt, have you ever thought about moving back home to survive the inflation storm?
I know that there is a lot going on in the world right now, but I just had to write about what is happening to our banks.
High interest rates and chaos in the real estate industry are combining to put an enormous amount of pressure on our largest financial institutions. As a result, banks are getting very tight with their money, they are closing down hundreds of branches, and they are laying off thousands of workers. We are in the early stages of the worst financial crisis since 2008 and 2009, and I fully expect conditions to get even worse in the months ahead.
Major US banks are continuing to close branches across the US, leaving an increasing number of Americans without access to basic financial services.
Bank of America axed 21 branches in the first week of October, according to a bulletin published by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) on Friday.
Wells Fargo shuttered 15, while US Bank and Chase reported closing nine and three respectively.
In total, some 54 locations had either closed or were scheduled to close between October 1 and October 7.
That is just one week!
Of course bank branches have been closing at a frightening pace for quite some time now.
Banks are closing branches faster than they’re opening new ones. U.S. banks closed over 3,000 branches last year while opening just 1,000. JPMorgan Chase led in branch closures last year, shuttering 144 branches, while opening 133. The trend will likely continue as banks face staunch competition for deposits and younger customers from online banks, fintech firms and Big Tech.
Unless you live under a rock, I am sure that you have noticed this happening in your own local area.
For many Americans, a “trip to the bank” is no longer just a few minutes away.
The largest American banks have been quietly laying off workers all year — and some of the deepest cuts are yet to come.
Even as the economy has surprised forecasters with its resilience, lenders have cut headcount or announced plans to do so, with the key exception being JPMorgan Chase, the biggest and most profitable U.S. bank.
Pressured by the impact of higher interest rates on the mortgage business, Wall Street deal-making and funding costs, the next five largest U.S. banks have cut a combined 20,000 positions so far this year, according to company filings.
The banking industry is in trouble.
Big trouble.
And this is happening at a time when economic conditions are steadily deteriorating.
In fact, we just learned that the Conference Board’s index of leading economic indicators has now fallen for 18 months in a row…
The Conference Board Leading Economic Index® (LEI) for the U.S. declined by 0.7 percent in September 2023 to 104.6 (2016=100), following a decline of 0.5 percent in August. The LEI is down 3.4 percent over the six-month period between March and September 2023, an improvement from its 4.6 percent contraction over the previous six months (September 2022 to March 2023).
“The LEI for the US fell again in September, marking a year and a half of consecutive monthly declines since April 2022,” said Justyna Zabinska-La Monica, Senior Manager, Business Cycle Indicators, at The Conference Board. “In September, negative or flat contributions from nine of the index’s ten components more than offset fewer initial claims for unemployment insurance. Although the six-month growth rate in the LEI is somewhat less negative, and the recession signal did not sound, it still signals risk of economic weakness ahead. So far, the US economy has shown considerable resilience despite pressures from rising interest rates and high inflation. Nonetheless, The Conference Board forecasts that this trend will not be sustained for much longer, and a shallow recession is likely in the first half of 2024.”
At this point, nobody can claim that the economy is headed in the right direction.
During the first nine months of this year, the number of commercial Chapter 11 bankruptcies was 61 percent higher than it was during the same period a year ago…
A wide array of U.S. businesses have struggled this year. In the first nine months of 2023, commercial Chapter 11 bankruptcies have soared 61% year over year to 4,553, according to Epiq Bankruptcy, which provides U.S. bankruptcy filing data.
Sales of previously owned homes dropped 2% in September from August to a seasonally adjusted, annualized rate of 3.96 million units, according to the National Association of Realtors. Sales were 15.4% lower compared with September 2022.
This is the slowest sales pace since October 2010, during the Great Recession, when the market was in the midst of a foreclosure crisis. As a comparison, just two years ago, when mortgage rates hovered around 3%, home sales were running at a 6.6 million pace. The average rate on the 30-year fixed today is right around 8%, according to Mortgage News Daily.
Speaking of home foreclosures, they are up 34 percent compared to the same time in 2022…
Home foreclosures are on the rise as Americans continue to grapple with the ongoing cost-of-living crisis.
That is according to a new report published by real estate data provider ATTOM, which found that foreclosure filings – which includes default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions – surged 28% in the third quarter to 124,539.
Foreclosures are up 34% from the same time one year ago.
So even though things are not great now, enjoy these last few days of relative stability while you still can, because war in the Middle East will soon plunge the entire global economy into a state of great turmoil.
* * *
Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.
Aid Convoy Enters Gaza From Egypt For 1st Time As Confirmed Hostages Is 210
International humanitarian aid deliveries have entered the Gaza Strip for the first time since war broke out after the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack on southern Israel, but the number of trucks able to cross the border has been limited.
Twenty trucks loaded with medicine, food, and medical equipment crossed from Egypt Saturday morning. This as thousands are seeking to leave through the same Rafah crossing but have been prevented. Israeli media is widely reporting Saturday that there are now 210 confirmed hostages being held by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
“As the trucks made their way through the Rafah border, hundreds of people gathered at the Gaza side, hoping to escape the violence that has beset the Palestinian territory,” Al Jazeera describes. “It was unclear whether anyone would be able to leave.”
Amid continuing Israeli airstrikes on Gaza which have increased to an unprecedented pace (Israeli officials have made mention of 6,000 bombs in the opening six days), some one million Palestinians have moved to the southern half of the strip, while Israeli airpower decimates the north, particularly buildings, infrastructure, and even hospitals.
External water, electricity, and food supplies have long been cut off, and the population is not able to leave what many commentators have called a densely populated “open air prison”.
President Biden while in Tel Aviv last week had called for humanitarian aid to urgently be let into Gaza, even as he said the US fully backs Israel’s “right to defend itself” – and denied that Israel was behind the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital bombing.
The WHO has said of the humanitarian aid trucks entering Gaza: “These supplies are a lifeline for severely injured people or those battling chronic illnesses, who have endured a harrowing two weeks of limited access to care and severe shortages of medicines and medical supplies.”
Previously Israel had asserted aid would be blocked until all hostages were freed, but Washington and international pressure may have led to Israel allowing limited aid in…
Israel said there would be no pause in its siege of Gaza for aid or evacuations until all its hostages were freed, as Washington urged it to protect civilians and the Red Cross warned of a humanitarian catastrophe in the enclave https://t.co/88CZk1lMrCpic.twitter.com/w9luePKcFz
Both the US and Israeli officials have previously warned Hamas not to steal or touch the aid, warning that it will be cut off again if this happens.
Meanwhile, since Thursday night there have been widespread reports that Israel’s ground forces have been given a green light by the Netanyahu government to enter Gaza, but this still doesn’t appear to have happened with any degree of full force. The Biden administration is trying to convince Netanyahu to stall further, to buy more time to negotiate hostage releases, particularly after two US citizens from Chicago were freed on Friday with the mediation of Qatar.
Things have continued heating up on the Lebanese border with Hezbollah…
IDF publishes footage showing a strike against an anti-tank guided missile squad in southern Lebanon that launched a missile at Margaliot, wounding two Thai workers. pic.twitter.com/v42atpGZJG
The IDF says it is still training and preparing “for the next phase of the war” ahead of the expected ground assault. The army has announced that troops are “conducting training in accordance with the approved operational plans.”
Currently, there’s an unknown number of American and foreign passport holders still in Gaza, possibly in the hundreds or thousands, and the US has reportedly been seeking arrangements to facilitate their exit.
“If the border is opened, we do not know how long it will remain open for foreign citizens to depart Gaza,” a US Embassy-State Dept. statement on X has said. The Europeans are working to get their citizens (dual nationals) out as well.
US Senate Staffer Robbed At Gunpoint In DC As Crime Crisis Spirals Out-Of-Control
One week after House Republicans held a two-hour hearing on the rise of violent crime in Washington, DC, a staffer for Sen. Katie Britt (R-Alabama) was robbed at gunpoint on Thursday.
Local media WUSA9 said the staffer was walking down the sidewalk near the 1200 block of E Street, Northeast, around 2020 ET, when a person approached her, pointed a gun in her face, and said, “Give me your purse and keys.”
Luckily, she complied, and the suspect fled the scene in her Acura. DC police said the suspect took off with the woman’s bag, keys, car, MacBook, and other items.
There was no word if the suspect was caught, considering the MacBook can be tracked via Apple’s Find My software.
Sen. Britt released a statement criticizing “out-of-control crime” across the nation’s capital:
“We thank God that she is safe and sound after this terrifying incident, and we’re grateful to the Capitol Police Department and Metropolitan Police Department officers who quickly and professionally responded to the scene. It is infuriating and completely unacceptable that an American who is on Capitol Hill to serve her country cannot safely walk the streets of Washington, DC at 8:30 at night because of the out-of-control crime in this city. Just look at the police department’s own numbers – this year, robberies are up 68% and motor vehicle thefts are up 102%. Local elected officials in the District of Columbia have the responsibility not just to their citizens, but to the country, to step up and get a hold of the crime crisis ravaging the streets of our nation’s capital.”
Several weeks ago, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) was carjacked in the Navy Yard neighborhood, about a mile from the US Capitol Complex. And in March, a staffer for Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) was stabbed multiple times in the crime-ridden metro area.
Only last week, House Republicans held a hearing about soaring violent crime in the metro area controlled by radical Democrats who openly embraced disastrous defunding the police policies that have epically backfired.
DC Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice Lindsey Appiah testified under oath at the House Judiciary subcommittee that violent crime in the metro area has become a major “crisis.”
Meanwhile, Democrats at the hearing, oblivious to the real world or just chronic liars, called the hearing a “political stunt.”
Remember, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser owns the crime crisis because of failed policies:
How it started.
How it’s going?
#NEW – Mayor Bowser on DC’s rising crime and 200+ homicides…
The surge in murders and violent crimes in DC is so alarming that it’s causing concern even in crime-ridden Baltimore City. Recently, Baltimore’s State’s Attorney criticized Mayor Bowser’s policing, cautioning that the crime wave in DC was spreading north.
Republican State Del. Nino Mangione from Baltimore County said, “Our region has had the burden of suffering under the reigns of two ineffective, extremely liberal Mayors [DC & Baltimore] more concerned about their political careers than protecting citizens.”
In recent months, several lawmakers have slept inside the Capitol Building complex due to fears of being robbed.
The state of violence in DC directly reflects Mayor Bowser’s inability to enforce law and order, transforming the nation’s capital into a third-world-like state. You know it isn’t good when imploding Baltimore City has to complain about DC.
Drones, reconnaissance planes and ships have been dispatched to the Baltic Sea, a move that comes in response to recently discovered damage to critical undersea infrastructure, NATO said this week.
“NATO will continue to adapt its maritime posture in the Baltic Sea and will take all necessary steps to keep allies safe,” NATO spokesman Dylan White said Thursday in a statement.
The vulnerability of undersea gas pipelines and communication cables to sabotage is a growing NATO concern. Alliance officials have warned that Russia could target such infrastructure to gain leverage against allied countries providing security assistance to Ukraine.
On Tuesday, those concerns were brought into focus when Sweden reported partial damage to an undersea telecommunications cable connected to Estonia. Authorities suspect the damage occurred at the same time an undersea gas pipeline and telecommunications cable running from Finland to Estonia was found to be damaged last week.
The incidents remain under investigation and senior NATO officials have refrained from blaming Russia so far.
“If it is proven to be a deliberate attack on NATO-critical infrastructure, then this will be, of course, serious, but it will also be met by a united and determined response,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said last week during a meeting of allied defense ministers.
NATO said it will more closely monitor an area that already had been under surveillance since the 2022 sabotage of Nord Stream 1, a Baltic Sea pipeline that delivered natural gas from Russia to Germany.
Maritime patrol aircraft, NATO AWACS planes, drones and a fleet of four minehunter vessels are part of the enhanced surveillance effort.
“We continue to monitor the situation closely, and we remain in close contact with our allies Estonia and Finland, and our partner Sweden,” White said.
Former Goldman Trader Convicted Of Insider Trading Apologizes To Bank, Asks Judge For No Jail Time
A former Goldman Sachs banker convicted this summer for passing tips to a friend finds himself asking a judge for no jail time this week as his sentencing approaches.
Brijesh Goel asked a judge this week for no prison time and apologized to the bank for his actions, Bloomberg wrote on Thursday. He claimed that being potentially separated from his wife, who is a doctor in New York City, is “punishment enough”.
US District Judge P. Kevin Castel in Manhattan will sentence the Goldman VP on November 1st.
Prosecutors are “likely” to seek prison time, the report says. His charge carries a maximum penalty of 20 years, though it is “unlikely” he’ll get such a sentence.
Goel remarked: “I failed in my responsibility to adhere to the proper level of care required for guarding non-public material information I received in my position at the firm. I am extremely sorry, first and foremost to Goldman Sachs for failing at the duties I was entrusted with.”
He continued: “The saddest part was that I didn’t even need the additional money. I earned a good living and enjoyed a comfortable life. Regardless, I committed a crime and must pay the price.”
“A custodial sentence would be a dramatically harsher punishment for Mr. Goel than for a US citizen convicted of the same offenses,” his lawyers remarked.
Recall, we covered Goel’s trial this summer, where his friend turned on him and testified against him about his scheme that netted $280,000 from insider trades. His former literal partner in crime, 34 year old Akshay Niranjan, had recorded him and wore a wire, before testifying against him, to save his own hide.
Niranjan’s testimony helped a jury return a guilty verdict in June. Bloomberg, who reported on the verdict, called it a “sad little Wall Street melodrama”.
The scheme saw Goel passing tips from his job at Goldman Sachs, originating from the firm’s confidential deal memos, to Niranjan.
Feds eventually got wise to the scheme and visited both men before Niranjan flipped on his former friend. The two met to discuss their plan of action in a stairwell of a building where they both lived, but Niranjan was recording the entire encounter. Goel’s lawyer called his former fried a “judas” and a “Benedict Arnold”, but the jury wasn’t swayed and returned a guilty verdict.
Niranjan eventually testified that the two were “very close” and said at first, he thought Goel was just a great stock picker. It was after the fact that he realized he was being tipped with inside information.
“He got a lot of the trades too correct,” Niranjan said on the stand during the trial. Goel eventually took the stand in his own defense, trying to claim to the jury that he had “panicked” in deleting texts between the two men and trying to cover up the conversations, which took place in English, Hindi and “personal code”, the report says.
“I thought he had done something stupid. And I thought because of his stupidity, he’s going to be in trouble, and I’m going to be in trouble too,” Goel told the jury. “There was a lapse of judgement”.
This may be the most important poll yet for the AfD and its future chances to wield real political power
Germany’s anti-immigration Alternative For Germany (AfD) party has seen a dramatic rise in the polls over the last year and is now clearly the second most popular party in the country. However, the question has always been whether the AfD could translate this polling support into a position of power in the German government. One key poll shows that the AfD may have a chance to make this a reality.
A poll by Civey for Spiegel magazine found that 47 percent of Germans say that they would find it acceptable if parties entered a coalition with the AfD at the state level.
The breakthrough poll shows that although all major parties reject cooperation with the AfD, the German public has a far more open view of the party, and this open view could translate into a shift in the stance of the major mainstream parties, namely the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
This is a shift from the German public that is difficult to imagine even a year ago, when the AfD was still largely shunned.
The poll also shows that support for the AfD’s role in a coalition government is higher in the east of Germany, which is no surprise.
In the east, 55 percent of Germans could support the AfD’s role in a government, whereas 44 percent of Germans in the west could support such a coalition…
UBS Cutting An Additional 10% Of Credit Suisse “Support Staff”
Things are so sound in the banking world and so solid with the global economy that UBS is making yet another round of job cuts at Credit Suisse. Over the summer we documented how UBS’ plan for the bank was to immediately cut half of its staff.
Now, the parent company of the bailed out bank is targeting an additional 10% of the company’s “support staff”, including in areas like compliance, risk and marketing, Bloomberg reported Friday morning.
The cuts are going to start November 6, the report says. As Bloomberg notes, UBS has been vague about the comprehensive cutbacks that will follow its organizational overhaul. CEO Sergio Ermotti had earlier indicated that approximately 3,000 positions will be eliminated in Switzerland in the coming years, with the downsizing set to commence in late 2024 or early 2025.
According to filings, UBS and Credit Suisse had nearly 39,000 Swiss employees last year. Ermotti has hinted at more voluntary exits. Since the year began, roughly 8,000 have left Credit Suisse globally, a trend expedited by UBS following its acquisition.
UBS successfully “completed” its emergency takeover of Credit Suisse this summer and promptly started the first phase of a massive headcount reduction of Credit Suisse’s workforce in July.
A person familiar with the upcoming layoffs told Bloomberg that half of Credit Suisse’s workforce, including bankers, traders, and support staff across New York, London, and Asia offices, would be fired.
We noted over the summer that the firings would take place in three rounds: the first over the summer and two more during the fall. It looks like we’ve arrived.
Over the summer, the headcount at Credit Suisse was approximately 45,000. When UBS took over the troubled lender, its workforce jumped to about 120,000.
In Part 1 we contrasted the popular misconceptions about so-called “conspiracy theorists” with the well-grounded demographic research done on the individuals who, collectively, have had that pejorative label slapped on them. The demographic research reveals that there is no such thing as an identifiable group of people who can legitimately be called “conspiracy theorists.”
The research also finds no credible evidence that people branded “conspiracy theorists” are prone to hold extremist views or have underlying psychological problems or pose a threat to democracy. These claims are all canards levelled against anyone who questions the Establishment and the power it has amassed.
We noted that political scientist Joseph Uscinski, who is perhaps the foremost scientist in the field of “conspiracy theory” research, cited the work of philosopher Neil Levy as a “simple and consistent standard” by which academics could “demarcate between conspiracy theory and [real or “concrete”] conspiracy.”
Professor Levy’s “simple and consistent standard” was first outlined in his article “Radically Socialized Knowledge and Conspiracy Theories.” In it, he pointed out that “conspiracies are common features of social and political life, common enough that refusing to believe in their existence would leave us unable to understand the contours of our world.” Levy therefore proposed that academics need a way to differentiate between the rational acceptance of acknowledged conspiracies and the supposedly irrational claims made by people who suspect conspiracies that haven’t been officially approved for discussion.
Levy suggested that “[r]esponsible believers ought to accept explanations offered by properly constituted epistemic authorities.” As we explained in Part 1, he defined the epistemic authorities as:
[. . .] the distributed network of knowledge claim gatherers and testers that includes engineers and politics professors, security experts and journalists.
In his listing of “journalists” as epistemic authorities, Levy was almost certainly referring to journalists who work in the state controlled or corporate-owned legacy media (LM), not to journalists in the independent media, who are frequently labelled conspiracy theorists.
[. . .] news media that is free from influence by the government or other external sources like corporations or influential people.
Similarly, in Levy’s view, only the “right” scientists and engineers are welcomed as “epistemic authorities.” For example, he categorically stated:
Few responsible intellectuals reject the explanation of 9/11 that cites the conspiratorial actions of a group of terrorists under the direction of Osama Bin Laden[.] [. . .] [M]ost of us have little doubt that it is true.
Dr. Leroy Hulsey, a now-retired professor and department head of structural engineering at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, led a multi-year study in which he and his team of engineer PhDs examined the structural collapse of World Trade Centre 7 (WTC 7). The conclusions they arrived at in their peer-reviewed report thoroughly contradicted the official 9/11 narrative. It seems unlikely that Prof. Levy would consider Dr. Hulsey to be a responsible intellectual or an “epistemic authority.”
In his article, Levy opined that allegedly irrational “conspiracy theorists” could be identified by virtue of the fact that they disagree with the properly constituted epistemic authorities. Therefore, he claimed, their arguments and any evidence they presented should be dismissed. He wrote:
[K]nowing that a proffered explanation conflicts with the official story (where, once again, the relevant authorities are epistemic) is enough for us rationally to reject the alternative.
But there is nothing “rational” about rejecting an explanation simply because it is offered by people with whom you disagree.
Presumably, like Levy, Uscinski would consider himself an “epistemic authority” in the field of conspiracy theory research. Thus, it is not surprising that, in light of Levy’s “simple and consistent standard,” Uscinski concluded:
[P]roperly constituted epistemic authorities determine the existence of conspiracies. [. . .] If the proper authorities say something is a conspiracy, then it is true; if they say it is a conspiracy theory, then it is likely false.
That is to say, “official” narratives are considered true by default, and anything that calls them into question is, by default, a “conspiracy theory.” The term signifies to other intellectuals—who don’t question the pronouncements of the state—that evidence which potentially undermines official narratives is, by definition, false. This conclusion is, of course, a load of nonsensical, fallacious gibberish.
Unfortunately, the conspiracy theory label is so widely applied these days that it has stuck. The legacy media (LM), in particular, has successfully deployed it as a tool of propaganda. Simply by spouting the words “conspiracy theory,” the LM have convinced the public to ignore any and all evidence that questions power.
Here’s one such example. Following serious allegations of rape and sexual misconduct it brought against the comedian, author and political commentator Russell Brand, the LM immediately exploited the situation by criticising Brand’s opinions and everyone who shared them.
The first time Russell Brand really dipped his toe into the water of conspiracy theories, in early 2021, the effect was swift [. . .]. It won him a new income stream and a fresh army of fans.
We are told that Brand discusses “conspiracy theories.” This is a coded social signal from Schraer and the BBC to their readers and audience that everything Brand says should be discounted without examination—including any evidence he may cite. This should be done for no other reason than Schraer and the BBC have labelled Brand a conspiracy theorist.
In addition, the BBC casts the people who share Brand’s views as conspiracy theorists who should be equally ignored.
Furthermore, the suggestion is made that Brand is peddling “conspiracy theories” as some sort of grift. According to Schraer, the idea that independent media, such as Brand’s “Stay Free” channels, can be directly funded by its audience—in this instance through viewer number contingent advertising revenue—without compulsion is “evidence” of his dubious motives. (Apparently the BBC is vehemently opposed to the free market of ideas.)
Schraer explained what got the Brand ball rolling:
The door to this new fan base might have creaked open when Brand first discussed “the Great Reset” — a vague set of proposals from an influential think tank to rebuild the global economy after Covid.
The lame evidence Schraer cited to support her contention that the Great Reset is just some “vague set of proposals” was another BBC article. Five journalists contributed to this piece, which was published in 2021 as part of the BBC’s “Reality Check” series.
Collectively, the five BBC Reality Check “journalists” exposed their own deceit in the second and third paragraphs:
Believers spin dark tales about an authoritarian socialist world government run by powerful capitalists and politicians — a secret cabal that is broadcasting its plan around the world.
Despite all the contradictions in the last sentence, thousands online have latched on to this latest reimagining of an old conspiracy theory [. . .].
The problem is that no one accused by the Reality Check team of being a “Great Reset” conspiracy theorist has ever alleged that the Great Reset plan was a “secret” or that the planners are a “secret cabal.” The fact that the well-known World Economic Forum (WEF) has broadcast its plans around the world obviously excludes the possibility that the plans were “secret” or even that the have acted secretively.
The contradiction was a fabrication of the BBC Reality Check journalists’ own making. It was seemingly inserted to support their accusation that those who criticised the WEF’s Great Reset were alluding to a “secret cabal.” In reality, the critics were openly pointing their fingers directly at the WEF and its partners. No suggestions of a “secret cabal” or “secret plans” were ever made.
The BBC’s evident intention was to impugn critics of the Great Reset by falsely claiming that their views were illogical, speculative assumptions and were therefore “conspiracy theories.” The BBC propagandists created this myth themselves in order to deliberately mislead their readers. This is the very definition of disinformation.
The Reality Check team then reported that the Great Reset initiative was launched by King—then Prince—Charles as a plan to remodel the global economy. They talked about the WEF’s undemocratic “power to lobby [. . .] for ideas which could potentially transform the global economy.” They added that the WEF and its Davos delegates have “huge influence on world events.” They even raised the point that there are legitimate concerns about the potential impact of digital technology—vigorously pushed in the Great Reset—”on civil liberties and jobs.”
In short, the BBC Reality Check team gave a reasonable account of the arguments put forward by those whom they then dismissed out of hand by labelling them “conspiracy theorists.” The BBC “journalists” performed this trick by making up a reported opinion about “secret cabal[s]” and then falsely ascribing it to Great Reset critics.
In order to deter their readers from any further examination of the Great Reset, the BBC’s alleged journalists claimed that the Great Reset itself was “light on specific detail.” This, again, was pure disinformation.
The same journalists had to admit the existence of a published book called COVID-19: The Great Reset. In it, co-authors Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret wrote:
[O]ur objective was to write a relatively concise and simple book to help the reader understand what’s coming in a multitude of domains. [. . .] The reference information appears at the end of the book and direct attributions have been minimized [in the text].
The references include links to WEF documents such as “COVID-19 Risks Outlook A Preliminary Mapping and Its Implications.” This is just one document that forms part of the WEF’s extensive alleged risk-mapping program. The mapping program, in turn, informs the WEF’s highly detailed Strategic Intelligence, which the WEF claims will enable it to “make sense of the complex forces driving transformational change across economies, industries, and global issues.”
There really isn’t any facet of economy, industry, or indeed any global issues or aspects of our lives for which the WEF doesn’t already have a detailed, self-serving, transformational plan. The BBC’s claim that the Great Reset lacks “specific detail” is absurd. The plan couldn’t be more detailed or specific.
Rachel Schraer’s subsequent assertion—that the Great Reset represents a “vague set of proposals”—was complete nonsense based upon the BBC’s own propaganda. The objective was to convince BBC readers that criticism of the Great Reset is a “conspiracy theory.” It is self-evident that both Schraer’s and Reality Check’s articles served as a defence of the WEF’s Great Reset.
We have still other good reasons to question Schraer’s judgement.
Dr Simon Goddek, a scientist who turned to journalism and has questioned the safety and efficacy of the COVID jabs—thereby excluding himself from Uscinski and Levy’s “epistemic authorities”—shared a black-humoured joke as a social media meme. It showed the ageing physical decline of former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden. Goddek quipped, “[w]as it her shots, mRNA or Meth?”
This joke was subsequently picked up by BBC Verify propagandist Shayan Sardarizadeh, who re-shared it with the comment: “4 million views for this nonsense from a blue tick conspiracy theorist.” Goddek’s post was indeed “nonsense”—because it was a joke.
When Schraer re-posted Sardrizadeh’s comment, she displayed a woeful lack of comprehension and a notable lack of a sense of humour. She added her own inane interpretation with this absurd headline:
Breaking: Conspiracy theory-peddlers blame the Passage of Time on Vaccines.
This may seem like a trivial matter. But it’s not. Like Marianna Spring, Rachel Schraer is another BBC specialist disinformation reporter. That Schraer apparently can’t tell the difference between a joke and “disinformation” certainly brings her alleged “specialism” into question.
To fully appreciate how the “conspiracy theory” label is deployed by the legacy media (LM), we can look at the recent video by journalist and broadcaster Andrew Neil, who is a former editor of the Sunday Times, an ex-BBC presenter, and the current chairman of the Spectator. When he left the BBC, Neil was reported to have been “at the heart of the BBC’s political coverage for the best part of three decades.”
In a discussion with Sam Leith, the Spectator’s literary editor, about the Russell Brand allegations, Neil lamented that social media had enabled too many people—most of whom he considered to be stupid—to express their opinions. Based on this comment, it is evident that, if Neil is familiar with the work of Uscinski and Levy, he would probably consider himself a journalist member of the so-called “epistemic authorities.”
Neil spoke about the four-year investigation conducted by the legacy media that eventually produced the Brand allegations. He described it in glowing terms and noted that the independent media—which he called “the alternative media”—had neither the “resources nor the expertise to do” such an exhaustive investigation.
The Spectator YouTube channel that Neil heads has 304K subscribers. By comparison, Russell Brand has 6.6M YouTube subscribers. Consequently, his channel had considerably more resources than does the Spectator. However, following the alleged LM investigation of Brand, YouTube demonetised his account, so now Brand’s channel resources are flagging by comparison.
Unlike the independent media, which is almost entirely funded by reader and audience donations, the legacy media (LM) is funded by either corporate advertising or, in the case of the BBC, coercive license fees. UK print news media has been declining for years as people increasingly consume news online. In addition, state broadcasters, such as the BBC and Channel Four, are shedding UK viewers in their millions.
Nonetheless, as Neil observed, LM budgets are enormous compared to the shoestring income cobbled together by the independent media. That stark contrast hasn’t stopped the Establishment, which relies on the LM for its propaganda and owns most of it, from panicking.
Their panic explains the commissioning of the Cairncross Review—intended to provide some sort of rationale for propping up the LM.
Ironically, the Cairncross Review concluded that the LM needed “new sources of funding, removed from direct government control.” Of course, genuinely independent news media have already achieved new sources of funding by going directly to their audiences, some of whom value the independent viewpoint enough to support it financially.
Dame Cairncross (DBE, FRSE, FAcSS) apparently considered the independent media funding model to be rubbish. She ruled it out because, as she put it, “the stories people want to read may not always be the ones that they ought to read.” She practically declared that what the public “ought to read” should be stipulated by the “epistemic authorities.”
Instead, Cairncross determined that “the creation of a new Institute for Public Interest News” was needed. To ensure this new overseeing body would be “independent,” Dame Cairncross recommended that it “build strong partnerships with the BBC” and be funded by the UK government.
Her suggestion meant that, just like the current independent media, the LM of the future would be funded by the public. The difference between the two funding models was that Cairncross’s would not be voluntary but achieved through enforced taxation. Through the new body she envisioned, instead of the public choosing which media outlets they want to support the “epistemic authorities” and the government would decide for them.
What Frances Cairncross ultimately recommended was state regulation of the internet as a means of protecting the LM from public opinion. These regulations would tell the people which media outlets they should “trust” and, hopefully, prevent them from supporting the “wrong” media.
Dame Cairncross’ review dovetailed perfectly with the progress of the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) through parliament. In her Review, she wrote:
The government will want to consider these recommendations in the context of its parallel work on online harms, disinformation and digital competition, to determine whether the recommendations set out here should be pursued separately or as part of broader packages of measures. In particular, it is for government to determine how best to design and execute policy relating to the activities of the online platforms, including any regulatory oversight. This Review is neutral [. . . .]
Neutral?
The OSA has passed all UK parliamentary reading stages and should receive Royal Assent any day now. It has established Ofcom as the internet regulator. The purpose of the Act is supposedly to improve public safety online—especially child safety. But it is patently obvious that the real objective of the OSA is to stop people from sharing information on social media that the government wishes to prevent from being shared—the article you are reading, for example.
The OSA will limit the online reach of the independent media. Accomplishing this aim is of vital importance to the Establishment—all the moreso because public interest in the LM’s online news reporting is also plummeting.
In addition, the OSA provides significant protection for each of the regulated media organisations that the state controls and categorises as a “recognised news publisher.” This means every legacy outlet plus favoured “independent” media outlets such as Bellingcat, which is also funded by the Establishment.
So, given its protective care and vast resources, what alleged “expertise” did the LM bring to its investigation of Russell Brand, do you suppose? For a full account of that claimed journalism, you can read this article. But perhaps I should warn you in advance that, while the allegations against Brand are very serious and should be investigated by the police, the LM “team” disappointingly didn’t present a shred of real evidence to support those reported allegations.
Worse, the LM evidently fabricated purported evidence to mislead its readers and viewing audience, thereby undermining the accounts of the potential victims.
Yet, according to our Andrew Neil over at the Spectator, for the legacy media to have expended its considerable resources over a period of four years to produce this voluminous research (which we can call hamfisted detritus) requires great “expertise.”
In the Spectator interview, Leith asked Neil for his opinion about the possibility that the LM had launched a coordinated attack on Brand. Here is how Neil replied:
There’s no virtue to it at all[,] and the people who are pushing this line, that there’s a kind of conspiracy to do him down, are the very people who believe in all sorts of conspiracies as well. That vaccinations put little microchips into our bodies, that the Bush administration was really behind 9/11, and all the other nonsense. Of course, naturally we live in a world run by lizard people. We all know who they are [the lizard people], the mainstream media knows who they are, we’re just too frightened to point out the lizards among us. They’re conspiracists on everything now.
It is possible, though hard to substantiate, that a tiny minority of people labelled as conspiracy theorists believe there are microchips in the COVID shots. While the advent of motes makes this claim at least feasible, the vast majority of people who questioned the jabs—and who were also labelled as conspiracy theorists by the “epistemic authorities”—were more concerned about the experimental status, the potential unknown risks and the questionable efficacy of the jabs, not to mention the absence of any completed trials.
Neil’s tiresome “lizards” refrain was based solely on the opinion of one prominent so-called “conspiracy theorist,” David Icke, whose extremely speculative hypothesis of the “Sumerian Anunnaki” was based upon his interpretation of a few Gnostic texts—the Nag Hammadi, the Dead Sea Scrolls, etc.—and the work of scholars such as Zecharia Sitchin.
No one who seriously questioned the COVID jabs, including tens of thousands of UK doctors and nurses, did so because they thought the royals were lizards. Nor, for that matter, did the structural engineers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks question the official account of 9/11 because they imagined that former US President Bush is a shape-shifting, pan-dimensional reptile.
Let us step back and ask: If Andrew Neil is, as he claims, the intellectual superior of anyone who suggests there may have been a coordinated LM attack on Brand, then why does he overlook the clear-as-day fact that the allegations against Brand were reported simultaneously by almost the entire legacy media on both sides of the Atlantic? Doesn’t such an absolute fact, such irrefutable evidence, point to at least the possibility of planned coordination?
And because that is the case, we are left with only one conclusion: Neil deliberately used a tried-and-true propaganda technique called the straw man argument. That is, he attributed preposterous beliefs to people he disagrees with in order to falsely “debunk,” with contrived ease, arguments they had never made. This technique is also called logical fallacy.
He then used a related technique termed “composition fallacy” to manipulatively claim that the opinion of one person whom he labels a conspiracy theorist (he is referring to Icke without naming him) represents the views of everyone he labels a conspiracy theorist. This is an extremely common LM tactic.
Did Neil say anything about the common suspicion of a possible coordinated attack on Brand? Yes, he did:
[Conspiracism] is a defence that is quite hard to deal with, because it is so ludicrous. It is a defence that doesn’t need facts. It is a culture in which Russell Brand lived and profited, or at least did until YouTube pulled the plug on his revenues. So that’s what they deal in, they don’t deal in the gathering of evidence. [. . .] All these conspiracy theorists can have their absurd opinions about what’s really going on here with Russell Brand, but to establish what’s going on, to produce the evidence, takes investigative journalism.
It is worth reiterating yet again that the investigation into the Brand allegations provided nothing but allegations. This does not mean that the allegations aren’t true. But the LM journalists have not provided anything approaching the “evidence” that Neil claims exists.
Notice that Neil used the word “ludicrous” to signal to his audience that the people he calls “conspiracy theorists” hold ludicrous beliefs. But think about it: His claim was based on his own ludicrous assertions and logical fallacies—not on any actual evidence.
So, if we are to take Neil at his word and “establish what’s going on,” then we need to look at the “evidence” in the hope of establishing some “facts.”
OK, let’s do that. It is a fact that, following publications of the allegations, the LM did not immediately set about finding further evidence to support the possible victims’ claims. Instead, the LM turned its attention to attacking the “conspiratorial” views of Brand and his followers.
Example #1. As soon as the allegations against Brand were published, the BBC wrote that he had “developed a cult following” and had “dabbled in conspiracy theories.” To those charges the BBC added the scintillating “fact” that Brand had built a following during the alleged COVID-19 pandemic because he “discussed conspiracy theories surrounding the disease.”
Example #3. A couple of days after that, on the other side of the planet, Australia’s ABC News claimed that Brand’s followers respond to his “rants” simply because he is “controversial” and that his audience is comprised of “people chasing conspiracy theories.”
Example #4. Following the allegations against Brand, the UK government decided that it should express its opinion on a potential criminal investigation. No less than the Prime Minister’s office issued an official statement declaring that “these are very serious and concerning allegations.”
The examples are endless. We don’t have space to cite them all. How odd, then, for Andrew Neil to have claimed in his interview that no one “could give a monkey’s _ _ _ _” about Russell Brand. The “evidence” thoroughly contradicts Andrew Neil. It appears that the entire LM, from all four corners of the globe and the UK government, are very interested in the Russell Brand allegations.
The UK government’s publicised opinion was followed up by emailed letters from Dame Caroline Dinenage DBE MP to numerous social media and online news sites, including the Chinese-owned TikTok and the video hosting service Rumble, requesting that Brand be demonetised on those online platforms.
Caroline Dinenage is Baroness Lancaster of Kimbolton, a leading member of the Establishment and a member of the House of Commons’ Culture, Media and Support Select Committee. It is no surprise that this very committee was instrumental in creating the Online Safety Act. Moreover, when the baroness was the Minister of State for Digital and Sport from February 2020 to September 2021, she had ministerial responsibility for guiding the passage of the Online Safety Bill toward becoming the Online Safety Act.
The common law concept of “innocent until proven guilty,” which Neil conceded was an important principle of UK liberal democracy, seems to mean practically nothing to Dinenage.
The notion is bandied about in some quarters of the LM that Dinenage was acting independently. That may be true. But why, then, did she use the official House of Commons letterhead for her correspondence?
As yet, there has been no official statement from the Culture, Media and Support Select Committee on the allegations against Brand. Reportedly, it has merely acknowledged that only “some” of the letters sent out under its name were approved. Considering that all the letters under its letterhead were shameful examples of rank authoritarianism, the fact that any of them were apparently approved indicates the dictatorial tendencies of the Select Committee as a whole.
What actual facts have been established?
First, it is a fact that the LM has exploited the allegations and has deployed the composition fallacy to discredit both Brand’s and his social media followers’ opinions.
Second, it is a fact that the allegations about Brand emerged at the same time that the Online Safety Bill passed its final reading stage. The Brand allegations grabbed all the headlines, leaving virtually no room for prominent coverage of the imminent UK censorship law by the LM. Thoroughly distracting the UK public.
Third, it is a fact that the purpose of the Online Safety Act is to shore up the dwindling reach of the LM and censor its independent media competition.
Fourth, it is a fact that Brand and his followers are considered part of the independent media, which the LM accuses of being conspiracy theorists.
Fifth, it is a fact that formative figures in the UK government have used the allegations published by the LM to attempt to limit the reach of someone who has millions of followers and whom they accuse of being a conspiracy theorist.
Sixth, it is a fact that limiting the reach of popular conspiracy theorists is exactly what the Online Safety Act is designed to achieve.
There is solid evidence supporting each of these facts. So, what did Andrew Neil, a presumed member of the “epistemic authorities,” make of the facts and supporting evidence that he insists he and the entire legacy media he champions hold so dear? In his Spectator interview, Neil had this to say:
I think because Russell Brand’s position, in terms of a variety of conspiracies, is very similar to their conspiracies, they regard him as he’s one of us. So, regardless of what he’s accused of, we need to rally behind him. We need to get behind him, they’re trying to pick us off. I mean, don’t forget, they’re conspiracy theorists so therefore they are paranoid. They’re not just paranoid, they do know most sensible people are against them. And I think it’s a kind of rallying defence to look after one of their own.
The Spectator interview was posted on the September 23rd, after the Dinenage letters and the LM reports we’ve just discussed were published. In other words, Neil had mounds of material at his fingertips, but he chose to discard all the evidence and ignore the numerous facts pointing to a possible political motive for the global legacy media’s and UK government’s pursuit of Brand. Instead, he simply cast all the evidence and facts aside and dove into his “conspiracy theory” accusations.
This is a classic case of how the “conspiracy theory” label is applied by people, such as Neil, who do not wish to acknowledge contradictory evidence or facts. The “conspiracy theory” charge enables Neil and his legacy media cohorts to create what they pretend are unquestionable narratives, which they expect their readership and viewership to “trust” on the flimsy basis of their laughable, self-aggrandising claim to be “epistemic authorities.” It should be noted that this is precisely what “the Science™” of conspiracism decrees.
When Sam Leith, Neil’s interviewer, pointed out that so-called conspiracy theorists cannot be categorised by any single political ideology, Neil didn’t pause to consider the implications of his underling’s accurate statement.
Rather, he embarked on an anecdotal reminiscence as if trying to justify his bizarre conspiracy theory view. Having dismissed all evidence to the contrary, he falsely asserted that conspiracy theory lies only on the extremes of politics and that the far left and the far right (conspiracy theorists) all believe essentially the same thing.
He opined that both alleged extremist wings, and therefore all of the conspiracy theorists he imagines, hate liberal democracy. His conclusion:
People like Russell Brand are no friends of liberal democracy and neither are his supporters.
As we discussed in Part 1, this is mindless proselytising. Entrenched Establishment elitists seriously expect us to accept that the people who most fiercely protect and seek to exercise our democratic right to question power are all extremist conspiracy theorists.
Neil apparently believes that liberal democracy is embodied by the public’s trust in the Establishment’s “epistemic authorities.” Consequently, in his evident view, anyone who challenges the “authorities” and their pronouncements and edicts is undermining liberal democracy. But what he is describing is actually the polity of a totalitarian fascist state—a complete inversion of liberal democracy and the principles it is supposedly based upon.
It is evident that, from Neil’s perspective, only stupid people—conspiracy theorists—question epistemic truth, as presumably defined by his narrow, authoritarian class. He views all such stupid people as unintelligent extremists who seek to destroy the social order he disingenuously calls liberal democracy.
Anyone who uses the “conspiracy theory” label does so, not because they value the evidence, the facts or the dialectic, but because they will not countenance any challenge to their worldview or any dissent from their claimed authority.
The “conspiracy theory” charge is an authoritarian propaganda construct, intentionally created to censor legitimate, fact-based opinion.
It is time we stand up to the “epistemic authorities” and reject their elitist, authoritarian pretence of intellectual superiority.
It is time to insist that all evidence is discussed, that all the facts are established and reported to the public.
It is time to reject the state propagandist’s “conspiracy theory” canard.
