President Joe Biden was coached through given a surely thorough interview by Special Counsel Robert Hur’s team investigating his handling of classified documents spanning several years, the White House acknowledged in a statement.

“The president has been interviewed as part of the investigation being led by Special Counsel Robert Hur,” reads the statement from the White House Counsel’s Office spokesperson Ian Sams (the guy who lied and had a meltdown over Hunter Biden’s $260K in Chinese wires). “The voluntary interview was conducted at the White House over two days, Sunday and Monday, and concluded Monday.”

“As we have said from the beginning, the president and the White House are cooperating with this investigation, and as it has been appropriate, we have provided relevant updates publicly, being as transparent as we can, consistent with protecting and preserving the integrity of the investigation,” Sams continued.

Of note, Hunter Biden listed Joe’s Wilmington, Delaware home – where a bunch of classified documents were found, as his address when he received above mentioned Chinese wires, due to the Biden family’s dealings with CCP-linked businessmen.

Hur was appointed in January by AG Merrick Garland to lead the classified documents probe. Prior that, he was a Trump-appointed federal prosecutor who has litigation experience involving classified materials.

More via the Epoch Times;

President Biden’s interview suggests the probe may be nearing its conclusion. As recently as late August, the president said that he had not been asked by the special counsel’s office to sit for an interview.

“There’s no such request and no such interest,” President Biden told reporters while on vacation in Lake Tahoe on Aug. 25.

The investigation was launched after classified documents were found in President Biden’s residence in Wilmington, Delaware, and his former workspace at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C.

In January, when tapped to lead the probe, Mr. Hur had said that he would “follow the facts swiftly and thoroughly, without fear or favor, and will honor the trust placed in me to perform this service.”

“I will conduct the assigned investigation with fair, impartial, and dispassionate judgment,” he said in a Jan. 12 statement released by the Justice Department.

In June, former President Donald Trump faced indictment on charges by Special Counsel Jack Smith related to mishandling classified documents. The former president entered a plea of not guilty in a Miami courtroom on June 13.

Former Vice President Mike Pence disclosed in January that classified documents were found at his Indiana home during a search prompted by the Biden document discoveries. The Justice Department later concluded its investigation, finding no wrongdoing.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar,

As Israel has declared a “complete siege” on Gaza in response to the Hamas attack on southern Israel, the US is scrambling to get more weapons in the hands of the Israelis.

According to The Washington Post, the Biden administration is considering combining its request for more spending on the war in Ukraine with new aid for Israel. The idea would be to “jam the far right,” referring to Republicans in Congress who oppose the proxy war in Ukraine but are staunch Israel supporters. No final decision has been made, and in the mean time, the US is already shipping new arms to Israel using existing authorities.

A Pentagon official told POLITICO on Monday that planes carrying new military aid for Israel have “already taken off.” The US is sending air defense and munitions. According to media reports, Israel has requested precision-guided munitions, small-diameter bombs, and interceptors for its Iron Dome missile defense system.

Israel receives $3.8 billion in military aid each year from the US, including $500 million to fund air defense development and $3.3 billion for Foreign Military Financing, which gives foreign governments money to buy US arms. Neither type of aid allows direct weapons shipments from US military stockpiles, but according to POLITICO, the US has $100 million available for the Presidential Drawdown Authority, which does.

The Pentagon is working to determine what arms in the US stockpile could be made available and is also pressing the arms industry to expedite deliveries of weapons Israel has already purchased. The effort comes as the US is expecting Israel to launch a ground invasion of Gaza, which will incur a huge amount of civilian casualties.

Israel could start to compete with Ukraine for the types of weapons it needs from the US. Right now, it’s focusing on pounding Gaza with airstrikes, which requires munitions Ukraine doesn’t use, but a ground assault would require 155mm artillery rounds, which are in short supply since the US has poured millions of shells into Ukraine.

US Army Secretary Christine Wormuth is calling on Congress to approve additional funding to ensure the US can sustain both wars. “One thing that is really important in terms of the munitions in particular and our ability to support both potentially the Israelis and the Ukrainians simultaneously is additional funding from Congress to be able to increase our capacity, in terms of our capacity to expand production and then to also pay for the munitions themselves,” she said.

Meanwhile…

KIRBY CRIES ON TV pic.twitter.com/XYyUqlS8MD

— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) October 10, 2023

Congress isn’t expected to authorize more spending on Ukraine or Israel until a new House speaker is elected, which will likely happen this week. According to The Messenger, House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) said Congress is discussing a massive military aid package for Ukraine and Israel that would also include funds for Taiwan.

“There’s discussion about putting Israel funding, Ukraine funding, maybe Taiwan funding and finally border security,” he said.

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Change the incentives and feedback loops and you change the flavor of Doom we’re about to be served.

There are many flavors of Doom, and new flavors are being introduced at a dizzying rate. We’ve gone from chocolate and vanilla (thermonuclear war and mass starvation) to if not quite 31 flavors, certainly a colorful array of options.

Climate change has been quite the rage (ahem), but war is rapidly increasing its share of the doom mindspace.

The competition includes both ends of the spectrum: Doom Porn and Empty Optimism. On the Doom Porn end, there’s the crowd favorites (Zombie Apocalypse, nuclear war Apocalypse, climate Apocalypse, etc.) which feature the complete collapse of human civilization, and on the other end, the magical thinking of Empty Optimism, which features fantasies of everyone flitting about in electrified car-helicopters and abundance so cheap that it’s basically free to the entire world.

The reason why the flavors of Doom are enduringly popular is human history offers a plentitude of examples of collapse and very few of abundance so cheap that it’s basically free. Civilizations tend to expand up to the carrying capacity of available resources, and then something or other slides down the slippery slope and resources are no longer available at prices that are affordable to the masses.

I’ve often recommended books exploring the dynamics of decline / collapse, including:

The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History

The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization

Ages of Discord: A Structural-Demographic Analysis of American History (2016)

End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration (2023)

The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire

The Collapse of Complex Societies

Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change

The Fall of the Roman Empire

The fall of the Roman Empire: a new history of Rome and the Barbarians

Global Crisis: War, Climate Change, & Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century

There are many others, of course, but these ten offer a fairly comprehensive overview of historically grounded Doom.

Two things are generally overlooked in Doom Porn: feedback loops and self-interest. Collapse doesn’t serve the interests of everyone enjoying the relative security of stability, and so they will devote themselves to staving off collapse. As for feedback, collapse tends to occur when the forces of positive feedback–feedback that is self-reinforcing–overwhelms negative feedback–feedback that arises in response to positive feedback. For example, higher concentrations of CO2 cause higher rates of growth in flora, which increases their uptake of CO2.

In human history, collapse often seems to occur as self-reinforcing positive feedback or polycrisis overwhelm the system’s buffers and stabilizing efforts. I discussed the role of polycrisis in Western Rome’s collapse in Why Rome Collapsed: Lessons For the Present (8/11/23, first sent to subscribers).

To reduce costs, systems are optimized for a specific set of conditions and challenges. Redundancy has a cost, but the value of redundancy (for example, having two eyes) far outweighs the modest expense. On the other hand, we don’t place two engines in vehicles in case one fails because the cost is simply too high and the payoff too meager.

The same is true of buffers such as stores of grain and energy, cash in savings accounts, etc. Buffers tend to be maintained for “normal” drawdowns / crises: levees are maintained for “normal” floods, for example, and the sacrificing of consumption to build up cash savings is limited to stashing enough cash to tide the entity / household through a “normal” drawdown.

The longer the “good times” of stability and a scarcity of crises, the greater the pressure to further reduce redundancies and buffers. Why maintain a full reserve of grain, energy, water, etc. when it’s never tapped? And so the pleasures and conveniences of consumption today override the expensive prudence of reserves.

Institutional expertise in dealing with polycrisis also atrophies as the experienced managers retire. The Old Breed who had actually managed the chaotic response to polycrisis are gone and so the institutional memory of that experience has faded.

Instead, managers do more of what’s failing, not only because their experience is that “this will be enough to solve the crisis” but also because any larger, more comprehensive response will demand sacrifices of financially-politically powerful constituencies who will resist making any sacrifices until it’s too late.

In other words, clinging to the magical thinking that a modest, no-sacrifices-necessary response will be enough to restore stability is a core cause of collapse. This is of course an extremely compelling form of denial, a topic I recently explored in The Peculiar Power of Denial (9/18/23): we don’t want to deal with chaotic multiple crises, so we wave a magic wand and declare that a “normal” response will be enough, blind to the potential of the tepid “normal” response to make things even more destabilized and precarious.

In my book Global Crisis, National Renewal, I argue that no nation clinging to the current waste is growth / landfill economy will survive the emergent global polycrisis. Only those nations that embrace a set of values other than maximizing waste in the name of an illusion of “growth” and boosting the financial gains of elites will have the means necessary to adapt and emerge not just as survivors but as more adaptable and resilient.

One of the more amusing flavors of Doom is the one hawking the fantastic possibilities of getting rich as the financial world collapses around us. What makes this amusing is “wealth” in any form only retains its viability in an intact system / civilization. Once the system disintegrates, there’s no mechanisms left to protect and make use of the “wealth.” Consider the caches of gold coins that were buried in past eras of tumult: they’re still in the ground because whomever buried them was unable to return to unearth the wealth.

Then there’s the little matter of governments desperate for revenues pursuing desperate measures, first reducing the masses to impoverishment, then consuming the middle class and then finally, everyone beneath the top 0.01%, who find barbarians at the gates of their sprawling estates once the state’s ability to protect them decays.

History is replete with examples of governments taking a wide variety of extraordinary measures in polycrisis, for example closing stock markets for months, as in World War I, confiscating gold, and so on. The US already considers any income earned anywhere on the planet as taxable, and wealth is nothing but stored income.

The approach favored by the elite is to push any haircut on the powerless masses, but this stops working when the powerless have no more hair to cut. Then this offloading of sacrifices to the powerless triggers social disorder of the kind that can’t be quelled with the usual bread and circuses kibble tossed to the restive crowd.

History suggests a corollary to the “get rich in the crash” scenario: whatever form of wealth emerges unscathed will immediately be targeted for expropriation by the state, which is after all an organization whose Prime Directives are 1) survival and 2) expanding control / power.

All get rich and stay rich strategies presume the state will fail to expropriate the piled-up wealth because of some “normal” hindrance such as “the money is in a British tax haven.” That has certainly worked wonders to date, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and governments devoted to protecting the super-wealthy from any sacrifices for the common good tend to fall in favor of governments that see the stashed plunder of the super-wealthy as ill-gotten and illegitimate, that is, not just ripe for expropriation but expropriation is the only right and moral option.

Apparently the super-wealthy fear their security guards may conclude their salaries are peanuts compared to the potential of transferring their employers’ wealth by, ahem, more direct means. Once expropriation is understood as the only right and moral option, then the Earth shifts beneath the feet of the status quo.

Another interesting flavor of Mild-Spicy Doom is The Great Reset, a mythological event that magically maintains the status quo as-is: the bottom 50% own virtually nothing that generate unearned income and the top 1% own a third and the top 10% own 90%.

In this scenario, there’s a brief spot of bother–a bank holiday, etc.–and then a new currency is issued, and the powerless masses trudge off to work as usual while the top 0.1% resume their pathological drive to maximize their gains by any means available.

This is certainly a pleasant fantasy, but it overlooks the inconvenient reality that this Great Reset has already happened, not as a one-off bank holiday but as a 15-year slow drip transfer of wealth and income from the bottom 80% to the top tiers.

The disempowerment and impoverishment of the masses resulting from the coming Great Reset has already happened. You’ll own nothing (of real value) is already the reality for the bottom 60%. This suggests the next Great Reset will be more or less the opposite of the envisioned Version2.0 of the status quo.

A rebalancing of consumption, efficiency, debt writedowns, wealth and income can be managed such that sacrifices are distributed to those with an excess available for sacrifice, i.e. the top 1%, who will still be doing just fine if their share of the nation’s wealth was reduced from over a third (35%) to say, 10%.

Such a rebalancing would reduce extremes and positive feedback, reduce waste and enable greater investment in the common good of efficiency, durability, resilience and the values / skills I describe as Self-Reliance, a set of values and skills that are scale-invariant, meaning they benefit the entire spectrum, from households to communities to regions to nations.

Change the incentives and feedback loops and you change the flavor of Doom we’re about to be served.

*  *  *

My new book is now available at a 10% discount ($8.95 ebook, $18 print): Self-Reliance in the 21st Century. Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

Become a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

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Paul Joseph Watson (PJW) aims his acerbic eye at the recent conflict between Israel and Hamas, focusing on the brutal attacks by Hamas militants on innocent civilians, including children and partygoers – individuals who had no connection to the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict.

“Hamas’s assault on Israel was characterized by a series of brutal attacks against innocent civilians, young people, and children just trying to live their lives.”

PJW then contrasts those scenes of horror with the shocking scenes of joy and celebration in major European cities and refugee camps in Greece following the attacks who were openly “gloating over terrorist attacks.”

“Supporters in London reveling in the carnage, the same in Birmingham, similar scenes in America, turning violent migrants at a refugee camp in Greece waiting to be dispersed throughout Europe celebrating the horror.”

PJW makes a particularly striking point, noting that, “if nothing else extinguishes the deadly myth of diversity being our strength will this?”

One can hardly be ashamed for having similar thoughts and raising doubts about the concept of multiculturalism when this is the behavior from large numbers of imported immigrants, as he challenges the idea that diversity inherently benefits society.

“Maybe diversity isn’t a strength. What I thought multiculturalism was about Turkish kebabs and chicken chow, you mean to tell me it’s more than that?”

PJW is careful to show the chaotic and reckless rhetoric from both sides of this

He criticizes prominent voices on the far left for defending the attacks and implies that they see mass migration to Western countries as a form of revenge against colonizers. It emphasizes the seriousness of these viewpoints and suggests that such perspectives could pose a threat to Western societies.

“Listen to them very carefully and take them deadly seriously because this is what they want to do to you and your family.”

The video then shifts its focus to Israel’s own controversial policies and actions against Palestinian civilians, highlighting that “every unspeakable horror that happened to innocent Israeli civilians is now happening to innocent Palestinian civilians.”

But, condemning the violence on all sides of the conflict, PJW criticizes conservative commentators who advocated for further military action, expressing concern about potential global repercussions.

“They’re all malevolent bastards, and Humanity really has hit rock bottom, hasn’t it when saying brutally slaughtering innocent civilians is evil, whoever does it becomes the rarest take in response to all this.“

Watson ends on an ominously depressing note, highlighting the apparent absence of any “good actors” in the conflict and the bleak state of humanity in the face of such violence.

Watch PJW’s full monologue below:

By Turner Wright of Cointelegraph

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried watched from the defense table as his former business associate and girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, testified at his criminal trial.

According to reports from the courtroom on Oct. 10, Ellison admitted to fraud during her time at Alameda under Bankman-Fried’s direction. The former Alameda CEO reportedly placed the blame for misuse of FTX user funds directly on SBF, claiming he “set up the systems” leading to Alameda taking roughly $14 billion from the exchange.

AUSA: What was his involvement in the crimes?
Ellison: He was the head of Alameda then FTX. He directed me to commit these crimes.
AUSA: What makes you guilty?
Ellison: Alameda took several billions of dollars from FTX customers and used it for investments.

— Inner City Press (@innercitypress) October 10, 2023

“Alameda took several billions of dollars from FTX customers and used it for investments,” said Ellison, according to reports. “I sent balance sheets that made Alameda look less risky than it was.”

Ellison met Bankman-Fried through their jobs at Jane Street Capital, with SBF convincing her to leave the investment firm and join his crypto-focused endeavors. Reports have suggested the two had largely been out of contact following the collapse of FTX in November 2022.

Sam Bankman-Fried included this photo with Caroline Ellison in a document he sent me, noting that she “was wicked smart,” but “deeply insecure.” CAROLINE TESTIFIES AGAINST SBF IN COURT THIS WEEK. pic.twitter.com/n9WXyBXfd1

— Tiffany Fong (@TiffanyFong_) October 10, 2023

Ellison’s relationship with SBF is one of the issues central to the allegations facing the former CEO, as he was in charge of the crypto exchange while she led the team at Alameda. Bankman-Fried’s fraud charges are based on his directing Alameda to access FTX user funds without customers’ consent, which he used for purchases, including property and donations to political campaigns.

FTX co-founder and former chief technology officer Gary Wang took the stand starting on Oct. 5 as one of the first witnesses for prosecutors, claiming he committed crimes with Ellison and former engineering director Nishad Singh. On cross-examination of Wang, SBF’s attorneys seemed to be attempting to shift some of the blame for the exchange’s collapse to Ellison, questioning the former chief technology officer on her role. In opening arguments, the defense claimed she ignored Bankman-Fried’s request to put a hedge on Alameda investments.

Ellison and Wang were some of the first FTX and Alameda insiders to plead guilty as part of an agreement with U.S. authorities for her testimony. It’s unclear whether Bankman-Fried will take the stand as part of his defense strategy.

The former Alameda Research CEO’s testimony marked the fifth day of SBF’s criminal trial, where he faces seven fraud-related charges. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges and is expected to appear in a second criminal trial starting in March 2024.

After several months of declines in the 1-Year inflation expectation as tracked by the NY Fed’s monthly consumer survey, September saw the second consecutive increase in this series which traditionally is also a proxy for the price of oil (which recently hit a 2023 high before tumbling, before spiking again on the latest war in Israel), however this was offset by a small decline in 5 year inflation expectations, which traded places with the 3 year which in turn rose modestly. However, the most concerning observations was that despite a modest improvement in household income growth expectations, there was an unexpected spike in delinquency expectations as US household appear to have hit a brick wall on how much debt they can pay down in the immediate future

Here are the details: as shown in the chart below, inflation expectations at the one-year horizon were every so slightly higher at 3.67% in Sept. from the previous month’s 3.63%; three-year-ahead inflation expectations also reversed higher and after falling from 2.91% in July to 2.79% in August, they then bounced all the way to 3.00% in September. Finally, 5-year-ahead inflation expectations declined from 3.00% to 2.84%, the lowest since May 2023.

The report also noted that median inflation uncertainty (the uncertainty expressed regarding future inflation outcomes) increased slightly across all three horizons

Turning to median home price growth expectations, the survey found that after a perplexing jump of 0.3% to 3.1% in August, September saw a modest drop to 3.0%… which of course is just what the Fed wants to achieve, and suggests that the Fed’s tightening plans may finally be taking a toll on the single, most important asset class for the US middle class.  The decrease was more pronounced among respondents below the age of 40 and those who live in the South Census regions.

Next, turning to year-ahead commodity price expectations, there was a big drop in the cost of college education which decreased sharply to 5.8% from 8.2% , its largest one-month decrease since the onset of the survey in 2013 (good luck with that). Median year-ahead expected price changes declined by 0.1, 0.4 and 0.1 percentage point for the cost of gas (to 4.8%), medical care (to 8.8%) and rent (to 9.1%), respectively. In contrast, median year-ahead expected price changes for food increased by 0.3 percentage point (to 5.6%).

But while the latest reversal in the downward trend of inflation was troubling, this was offset in part by a similar reversal in the recent downward trend in household income growth expectations, which last month slumped to 2.9% – the lowest since July 2021 – and which in September rose modestly by 0.1% to 3.0%, remaining well below the series 12-month trailing average of 3.5% but at least halting the recent slide.

But while the latest uptick in income growth expectations was welcome, what was more troubling was the response to the question whether a respondent won’t be able to make minimum debt payments over the next three months. As shown below, expectations for debt delinquencies surged to 12.5%, the highest since the covid lockdown in April 2020. The increase was largest for respondents below the age of 40, with some college education, and those with an annual household income below $50k.

In other words, with delinquency and charge-off rates already surging, the near-term is about to go from very bad to much worse.

Here are some other observations from the latest Ny Fed survey, first those dealing with household finance

• Perceptions of credit access compared to a year ago deteriorated slightly. The share of households reporting that it is more difficult to obtain credit now than a year ago increased, while the share reporting that it is easier declined. Similarly, respondents’ views about future credit availability deteriorated slightly. The share of respondents expecting tighter credit conditions a year from now increased, while the share expecting looser credit conditions declined.
• Median household spending growth expectations remained unchanged at 5.3% in September, remaining well above pre-pandemic levels.
• The median expectation regarding a year-ahead change in taxes (at current income level) decreased to 4.0% from 4.1%, its lowest reading since October 2020. Good luck with that.
• Median year-ahead expected growth in government debt increased by 0.6 percentage point to 9.5%, remaining below the series 12-month trailing average of 9.9%. The real number will be much, much higher.
• The mean perceived probability that the average interest rate on saving accounts will be higher in 12 months increased by 0.7 percentage point to 30.8%.
• Perceptions about households’ current financial situations deteriorated slightly in September with more respondents reporting being worse off than a year ago and fewer respondents reporting being better off. In contrast, year-ahead expectations improved with more respondents expecting to be better off a year from now.
• The mean perceived probability that U.S. stock prices will be higher 12 months from now increased by 1.5 percentage point to 36.7%.

And the labor market:

• Median one-year-ahead expected earnings growth increased by 0.1 percentage to 3.0% in September. The series has been moving within a narrow range of 2.8% to 3.0% since September 2021. The increase was most pronounced among respondents with some college education.
• Mean unemployment expectations—or the mean probability that the U.S. unemployment rate will be higher one year from now—increased by 1.6 percentage points to 40.1%, equal to its 12-month trailing average.
• The mean perceived probability of losing one’s job in the next 12 months decreased by 1.4 percentage points to 12.4%, remaining slightly above its 12-month trailing average of 12.1%. The mean probability of leaving one’s job voluntarily in the next 12 months decreased as well, by 0.7 percentage point, to 18.2%.
• The mean perceived probability of finding a job (if one’s current job was lost) increased to 56.5% from 55.7%, just below its 12-month trailing average of 56.9%. The increase was driven by respondents above the age of 60.

Putting it all together, while inflation expectations rose (tracking the price of oil in September) and household perceptions about their current financial situations and expectations for the future improved modestly, what was a flashing red alert was the sudden spike in delinquency expectations as US households can no longer afford to pay down their (record) debt and instead prepare to simply default.

More in the full report here.

Update (1415ET):

About 13 hours after Unifor, the union representing Canadian auto workers, declared a strike at three General Motors plants in Canada, a tentative agreement has been reached between the union and automaker, effectively ending the labor dispute, as reported by Bloomberg.

“Now that a tentative agreement has been reached work will resume at all GM facilities,” Unifor wrote in a statement.  

Unifor reached a tentative agreement w/ @GMcanada Thanks to the #solidarity of our members, GM will follow the pattern, incl. our core demands on pensions, retiree income supports and converting full-time TPTs to permanent status over the 3-year agreement: https://t.co/bU4W2VeoDh

— Unifor (@UniforTheUnion) October 10, 2023

Here’s Unifor’s statement that includes highlights of the agreement:

Members at General Motors,

Unifor and General Motors have reached a tentative agreement following strike action at Oshawa Assembly Plant, St. Catharines Powertrain Plant and Woodstock Parts Distribution Centre.

It is thanks to the solidarity of you, the members, that it was possible to move General Motors to accept the pattern to the letter, including all items that company had initial fought us on such as pensions, retiree income supports and converting full-time temporary workers into permanent employees over the life of the agreement.

Now that a tentative agreement has been reached work will resume at all GM facilities. Unifor members must report for their regularly scheduled work shift in your plant beginning at 2:30 p.m. today.

Details on the ratification process will be sent via email with meetings to be scheduled in the coming days. A master bargaining brochure and a local bargaining brochure with details specific to all General Motors facilities will be made available in advance of those meetings.

Highlights of the pattern agreement include:

• Base hourly wage increases of nearly 20% for production and 25% for Skilled Trades over the lifetime of agreement.
• By the end of the three-year agreement, a top-rate production assembler will be paid $44.52 per hour, in addition to a forecasted $1.61 cost of living allowance (a total of $46.13); a journeyperson skilled trades worker will be paid $55.97 per hour, in addition to a forecasted $1.61 cost of living allowance (a total of $57.58).
• General wage increases in each year of the agreement with 10% in year one, 2% in year two and 3% in year three.
• Reactivation of the Cost of Living Allowance (COLA) in December 2024.
• Wage progression reduced from 8 to 4 years.
• Start rate for Temporary Part Time and production workers increasing from $24.26 to $29.67/hr., further increasing to $30.26 within 12 months, and $31.16 by the end of the agreement.
• The conversion of all full-time temporary workers, with at least one year of seniority at ratification, to permanent status.
• At Oshawa Assembly, the company has agreed to eliminate the use of the full-time temporary classification by August 1, 2026.
• $10,000 Productivity and Quality bonus for full-time employees (including current temporary full-time) as well as $4,000 for Temporary Part Time.
• Improvements to all pension plans.
• Mandatory company contributions to the DC plan increase from 4% to 7%.
• Defined Contribution plan members will transition to a new Defined Benefits style pension for current plan members and all new hires on January 1, 2025.
• New quarterly payment unique to Canadian retirees, called the Universal Health Care Allowance. These quarterly payments will continue in each year of the 3-year agreement.
• Two new additional paid holidays: Family Day and National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

Please continue to monitor your email inbox for upcoming specifics on the ratification meetings.

In solidarity,

Lana Payne, Unifor National President

Jason Gale, Unifor GM Master Bargaining Chair

Trevor Longpre, Unifor GM Master Bargaining Vice-Chair

*    *    *

General Motors’ Canadian plants were hit with labor disruption after Unifor, the union representing Canadian auto workers, failed to secure a labor contract with the automaker late last night. Consequently, about 4,300 Unifor workers walked off the job at three locations around midnight. This compounds the challenges for the automaker, which is already dealing with strikes at US plants. 

Reuters said the walkout was triggered when GM “stubbornly refused” to match Unifor’s contract demands already met at Canadian Ford Motor plants, which are wage increases of up to 25% for workers over the life of the contract. “The company continues to fall short on our pension demands, income supports for retired workers, and meaningful steps to transition temporary workers into permanent, full-time jobs,” Unifor National President Lana Payne said.

“This strike is about @GMcanada stubbornly refusing to meet the pattern agreement. The company knows our members will never let GM break our pattern – not today – not ever,” says @Lanampayne as 4,300 autoworkers begin strike action. https://t.co/9tBObQQSSS #AutoTalks2023 #canlab pic.twitter.com/hFgL5j1m6v

— Unifor (@UniforTheUnion) October 10, 2023

The labor action came after Unifor failed to secure a contract that included wage increases, cost of living adjustments, and pension reform over a three-year contract. The deadline was 11:59 p.m. Toronto time. 

“This strike is about General Motors stubbornly refusing to meet the pattern agreement. The company knows our members will never let GM break our pattern — not today — not ever,” Payne said. 

She added: “We are not there yet, so as a result, we are on picket lines.” 

Strikes in Canada compound the pressures in the US for GM as thousands of United Auto Workers continue to raise hell. Also, UAW workers continue to strike at Ford and Stellantis plants. 

A Deutsche Bank note pointed out a stunning statistic: GM has lost 34,176 vehicles of production since the start of the UAW strike in September. The good news, GM has 442,586 vehicles in stock. 

Reuters said Unifor went on strike at GM’s Oshawa assembly complex, St. Catharines powertrain plant, and the Woodstock parts distribution center. Union members at the CAMI Assembly Plant in Ingersoll, Ontario, are still working as they’re under a different agreement. 

“We remain at the bargaining table and are committed to keep working with Unifor to reach an agreement that is fair and flexible for our 4,200 represented employees at Oshawa Assembly & Operations, St. Catharines Propulsion Plant, and Woodstock Parts Distribution Centre,” Jennifer Wright, GM Canada’s executive director for communications, told AP News in a statement. 

Clearly, Ukraine’s war effort will suffer even further setback given that the attention of international media coverage has seemingly in an instant switched from the Russia-Ukraine war to the shocking scenes to have emerged from Israel. The world has pivoted from the battlefields of the Donbas to beholding scenes of southern Israel and the Gaza Strip.

On social media for example, masses of Americans have switched their Facebook profiles from Ukrainian flags to Israeli flags, or on the other side of it… to Palestinian flags. Perhaps trying to regain some of the lost spotlight and media focus, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has bizarrely laid blame on Russia for the outbreak of fresh conflict in the Middle East.

Zelensky bizarrely blames the Israel conflict on Putin.

“Russia is interested in triggering a war in the Middle East.” 🤡🤡🤡 pic.twitter.com/uww0EeF3i2

— I AM (@i_Beth1) October 9, 2023

Zelensky said in Monday statements that Moscow stoke war in the region in an effort to weaken global unity and spread destabilization.

“Based on available information — very clear information — it is in Russia’s interests to inflame war in the Middle East to create a new source of pain and suffering that would weaken global unity, create divisions and help Russia in undermining freedom in Europe,” Zelensky said in a nightly video address.

Of course, he cited no evidence for the claims. The new talking point seems a desperate attempt to link ‘the current thing’ to the Russian invasion and the plight of Ukrainians. Zelensky in a series of messages has expressed solidarity with Israeli victims of Hamas terror.

Our position is crystal clear: anyone who causes terror and death anywhere on the planet must be held accountable. pic.twitter.com/uqE3bffNJG

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) October 9, 2023

The Kremlin rejected the unfounded allegation, and instead described the roots of Mideast conflict in the context of Washington policy and its consequences. Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday, according to a Russian media translation: 

“I believe many would agree with me that it is a glaring example of the failures of the US Middle East policies. They tried to monopolize the peace settlement, but unfortunately paid no attention to searching for compromises that would be acceptable for both parties.”

He added that he US “never took into account the core interests of the Palestinian people,” and thus tensions have exploded into fresh violence.

Meanwhile, the UN Security Council has alleged that Russia is carrying out war crimes after a recent bombing campaign: 

UN Security Council members from around the world have condemned Russia’s bombing of a village wake that killed 52 people.

Hroza, in the northeastern Kharkiv region, lost over 15 per cent of its 300 population when a cafe holding a memorial service for a Ukrainian soldier was targeted by a Russian Iskander ballistic missile on Thursday.

“This is one of the deadliest strikes by Russia against Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion last year,” said US deputy ambassador Robert Wood in Monday’s UN Security Council meeting, as he stressed his country’s support for investigators gathering possible evidence of war crimes.

Not Ukraine, but Gaza. pic.twitter.com/9SepQSJBpH

— Muhammad Smiry 🇵🇸 (@MuhammadSmiry) October 9, 2023

Moscow has countered that it targets military installations and locations with military support purposes. Both sides continue to hurl accusations of atrocities against the other. But again, at the moment, the Western world appears exclusively focused on what’s happening with Israel-Gaza.

In a day that has seen yields slide across the curve in what some say is a powerful reversal from what may have been the cycle highs on Friday, moments ago the Treasury sold 3Y notes in a concession-less auction that saw rather disappointing demand and metrics.

The high yield of 4.740% was another cycle high, up from 4.660% last month and the highest since Feb 2007; the auction also tailed the When Issued 4.723% by 1.7bps, the biggest tail since February’s record 4bps, and the third biggest tail in the past decade.

The bid to cover was also ugly, sliding to 2.562 from 2.751 in September, the lowest print since February and well below the six-auction average of 2.792.

The internals were also not pretty: foreign buyers were awarded just 56.0%, the lowest since Oct 22 and far below the 66.2% recent average; and with Dealers awarded a surprisingly high 22.1%, the most since October, Directs were left with 21.9% of the auction, both well above recent averages (14.8% and 18.8% respectively).

Overall, this was a decidedly ugly auction, however much if not all of the lack of demand may be attributed to the sharp pull back in yields across the curve. In any event, tomorrow’s 10Y will be far more important.

Authored by Alice Giordano via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Former President Donald Trump warned that the shocking and brutal attack by Hamas terrorists on Israeli civilians over the weekend has the makings of World War III.

In speaking to a massive crowd on Monday in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, Trump drew ties between the Biden administration’s flooding of young male, military-aged unvetted immigrants into the country and the Pearl Harbor style-attack by Hamas.

He referred to the immigrants as “some of the same people who just attacked Israel” and said that under Biden’s open border policy, the United States has allowed “tens and thousands of terrorists into our country.”

“We are in grave danger of having World War III,” President Trump said during his campaign stop. “This will be world obliteration. This is a real deal.”

President Trump said that he “would stop World War III” if reelected. In reference to the ongoing attack by the Kremlin on Ukraine and the scenes of war in Israel and Gaza, he said neither bloodshed would ever have occurred under his command.

TRUMP: “We are in very very grave danger of having a World War III and this will be a war of obliteration… and we have a man that can’t even walk off stage…” pic.twitter.com/utzjGiwTRq

— ALX 🎃 (@alx) October 9, 2023

He also brought up the massive cache of military weapons the Biden administration left behind in Afghanistan when talking about the Israel attack by Hamas, which has been designated by the United States and other countries as a terrorist organization and has ties to other terrorist groups.

President Trump and others, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) along with some U.S. veterans, have speculated that video footage of the unconscionable brutality committed by Hamas terrorists against both Israelis and nationalists show American weapons being used in the attacks.

The theory remains unsubstantiated, with Democrats quickly debunking the suggestion as a radical conspiracy.

The Biden administration initially reacted to the attack with a post on X, formerly Twitter, advising Israel to stand down and not respond to the grisly ambush on Israel, which included the shooting down of at least 260 concertgoers at a music festival.

The post was quickly taken down by the U.S. State Department but not before it ignited national outrage from those with the opposing view.

In a comment on X, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called on “every single person involved in drafting and approving the post to be immediately expelled from the U.S. government.”

Len Khodorkovsky, a former deputy assistant secretary of state during the Trump administration, called the Biden administration’s call for Israel to stand down “pathetic” and that it “emboldens the terrorists and endangers the civilians.”

The White House has since stated that it “unequivocally condemns the attack of Hamas.” Americans are among the hundreds dead or missing. Dozens are also reported to have been taken hostage by Hamas.

President Trump’s appearance in New Hampshire was his third since the Israeli attacks, with two preceding ones in Iowa.

He drew so many supporters that a line of them wrapped around the Kingswood Arts Center, a large-scale state-of-theater performance center at the Kingswood Regional High School in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire.

He questioned why he got indicted for complaining about transparency and accuracy of the 2020 election results, but former U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton did not when she complained about the 2016 election results in the same way.

Mrs. Clinton, who lost against President Trump, called him an “illegitimate president” on national television and implied that he knows he stole the election.

The Make America Great Again (MAGA) candidate referred to those prosecuting him as a “bunch of cuckoo birds” and said he ultimately considered the indictments a “badge of honor” because it was a sign he is fighting for the future of America.

He also talked about other double standards and hypocrisies, such as the Biden administration’s refusal to tap into the country’s domestic oil reserve to protect marine life; instead, pushing wind turbines that are known to kill marine life. He even drew parallels between the Democrats’ enthusiasm for electric cars and gender-transitioning children.

“Under a Trump administration, gasoline powered engines will be allowed but child sexual mutilation will not,” he said.

Mr. Trump did not make any mention of the proposal to make him interim speaker of the House, an idea he has said publicly he would consider.

A survey released over the weekend by YouGov shows that Republican voters overwhelmingly support a future House speaker that is “loyal to Trump.” According to the survey, which was conducted on behalf of CBS News, 84 percent polled called for a House speaker who would back President Trump and his policies.

Mr. Trump is seeking reelection as U.S. president on a crowded GOP ticket. He maintains a more than 50 percent lead over other candidates for the party nomination. The closest to him are former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.