China has delivered a blistering response to the US pressure campaign regarding Beijing’s closer ties with Moscow. In Monday remarks Mao Ning, a spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry, told a press briefing that China is prepared to retaliate if “illegal” sanctions on Chinese companies involved with Russia are not revoked.

She also rejected accusations from Washington that China is mulling sending weapons to Russia, calling the reports part of US “disinformation”. Instead, she said “The U.S., however, has been fanning the flame and fueling the fight with more weaponry.”

“This is out-and-out hegemonism and double standard, and absolute hypocrisy,” Mao said. “The Chinese side will continue to do what is necessary to firmly safeguard the lawful rights and interests of Chinese companies. We will take resolute countermeasures in response to the U.S. sanctions.”

She reiterated China’s position as one which seeks a peaceful solution through negotiations when it comes to the Ukraine conflict. “On the Ukraine issue, China has been actively promoting peace talks and the political settlement of the crisis,” she said.

And from there she once again put the blame for escalation back on Washington: 

“In addition to pouring lethal weapons into the battlefield in Ukraine, the US has been selling sophisticated weapons to the Taiwan region in violation of the three China-US joint communiqués,” Mao noted. “What exactly is the US up to? The world deserves to know the answer.”

She said that the US is ultimately busy “spreading disinformation that China would supply weapons to Russia and sanctioning Chinese companies under that pretext.”

One of the Chinese companies in question, Changsha Tianyi Space Science and Technology Research Institute, previously came under sanctions for allegedly supplying the Russian mercenary firm Wagner Group  with satellite imagery of Ukraine.

The real concern is that China is going to sit back and watch the West and Russia drain each other’s combat power.
They think this will leave them as top dog, and make their jump-off against Taiwan in 2025-2026 that much easier.

— QuintusCurtius (@QuintusCurtius) February 27, 2023

US under secretary of State for political affairs Victoria Nuland said last week that sanctions were against Chinese companies that US had observed “sneaking up to the edge and trying to provide” weapons to Russia.

With only three weeks until the spring season, the National Weather Service forecasts a winter storm could blanket Manhattan’s Central Park with as much as 5 inches. A nearly yearlong “snow drought” would end for the metro area if frozen precipitation accumulates on Tuesday morning. 

NWS has posted winter storm advisories for New York City and Long Island. Forecasts show between 3-5 inches of snow is expected. There could be times snow transitions to sleet and rain. Warnings are posted for interior areas that could see 5-8 inches. 

NWS expects the snow to begin around Monday evening and last through Tuesday morning.

Here are the latest snowfall accumulation forecasts. 

For NYC residents, this wintery event will be “their first snowstorm of the year at this point,” David Roth, a senior branch forecaster with the US Weather Prediction Center, told Bloomberg. The Northeast has recorded unseasonably warm temperatures so far this season. 

Winter may finally arrive in #NYC today. ❄️@HeatherWxTv says 3 to 6 inches of snow is expected today. The snow will start around 6 p.m. and continue through Tuesday afternoon. ☃️ pic.twitter.com/vjv28gckCv

— NY1 Weather (@NY1weather) February 27, 2023

A lot more snow is expected to fall across the interior Northeast. 

Say it ain’t snow! ❄️ A developing coastal low is forecast to bring accumulating snow to the Northeast tonight into tomorrow, with the heaviest amounts confined to the interior. Some locations (NYC 😉) that have yet to record 1″ of snow this winter may do so with this storm. pic.twitter.com/aXCh9sTkmS

— NWS Weather Prediction Center (@NWSWPC) February 27, 2023

Mean temperatures for Manhattan are already turning higher on a 30-year seasonal average. An indication spring is around the corner.

This could be the last time to sled or cross-country ski this winter season in Central Park. 

Via SchiffGold.com,

The markets basically shrugged off the hotter-than-expected inflation data for January. Most people remain convinced that the Fed can easily get price inflation back to 2% without wrecking the economy. But in his podcast, Peter explains that stuffing that inflation genie back into the bottle is a lot harder than most people seem to think.

Both the CPI and the PPI came in hotter than expected in January.

“In my opinion, it indicated a trough in so-called disinflation,” Peter said.

Jerome Powell hung his hat on declining price inflation numbers. It was the thing he could point to in order to claim he was winning the inflation fight. Even though the CPI was still well above the 2% target, it was coming down. So, it appeared that the Fed strategy was working, and we were well on a path to victory. At that point, the central bank would be free to start lowering interest rates.

Peter was calling this “wishful thinking” all along.

I was pointing out that it was not going to be nearly as easy to get that inflation genie back in the bottle as the markets expected. The CPI and PPI data should have thrown cold water on that narrative.”

But apparently, it didn’t, because the market basically shrugged the hotter-than-expected CPI and PPI data off. In fact, the NASDAQ finished last week with gains. And it is the more speculative, risky stocks that are doing well — not what you would expect if the markets were worried about more Federal Reserve monetary tightening.

The mainstream seems totally oblivious to the extreme difficulty of stuffing that inflation genie back into the bottle and getting back to the mythical 2% target. As Peter explained, history bears this out.

If you look back in time going back to the 1970s — that’s when inflation really got out of hand —  but going back to the year 1970, there have only been 11 years since then when inflation has been 2% or lower.”

If you’re going to take the Fed at its word that it wants inflation to be 2%, then it should be at that target or slightly under in order to claim success.

Not that 2% was its official target back in the 70s or 80s, but just to highlight how difficult it is to have a 2% inflation rate in this modern fiat economy, we’ve only had 2% or less 11 times since 1970. And eight of those 11 years happened after the 2008 financial crisis. In other words, before the 2008 financial crisis, when we kind of had a normal economy, we only had three years out of 38 where we had 2% or lower inflation. That’s 8% of the time.”

In the decade after the 2008 financial crisis, we had nearly years of 0% interest rates and multiple rounds of quantitative easing. That was far from normal.

If you go back to a normal period of time, and you could argue today’s time period is more normal in that respect based on where interest rates are, why should it be any easier for the Fed to get 2% inflation now than it was before the 2008 financial crisis? In fact, it should be harder for the Fed to achieve that goal because we have so much more debt now than we had back then. Interest rates have been so low for so long. The Fed has created so much money — like half the money in circulation came into circulation just in the last couple of years. So, that really makes the Fed’s job of bringing inflation down to 2% basically impossible.”

In fact, we haven’t even reached a new equilibrium to reflect all of the new money that is now in circulation.

You have to have a balance between supply and demand — supply being the amount of goods that are produced and demand meaning all of the money that’s available to procure those goods. People now have a lot more money. Why? Because the Fed created a lot more money and put it into circulation. So, now there is more money chasing a limited supply of goods. We need a new equilibrium. The demand curve has shifted as a result of an increase in the money supply. So, now we need to find a higher equilibrium price to balance supply and demand. And we’re not even there yet. So, to think that the Fed could easily return us to a 2% inflation — a goal that was very rarely achieved prior to the 2008 financial crisis…?”

Peter conceded that it took longer than he expected for all of the inflation the Federal Reserve created after the financial crisis to manifest in higher prices. But we’re certainly seeing it today. Meanwhile, the Fed has backed itself into a corner. For years after the 2008 financial crisis, it lamented inflation below 2% and tried to get it back to that level. In fact, central bankers even said overshooting wouldn’t be a problem because they know how to fight inflation.

That’s what made me say on my podcast on many occasions, ‘Be careful what you wish for if you’re a central banker wishing for inflation.’ … I pointed out just how impossible it would be to put the inflation genie back in the bottle. In fact, I pointed out that that expression came into being for a reason. If you have an expression like that, it was developed specifically because of the experiences the people had. So, the reason you’re not supposed to let the inflation genie out of the bottle is because of how hard it is to get it back in. But for some reason, this new generation of central bankers basically felt that, no, that expression doesn’t mean anything at all.”

We are now reliving the experience that is responsible for the adoption of the adage “don’t let the inflation genie out of the bottle.”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Monday signed a bill that takes control of a special tax district surrounding Walt Disney World that, as Reuters reports, for half a century allowed Walt Disney Co. to operate with an almost unprecedentedly high degree of autonomy.

The legislation, titled HB 9-B, ends Disney’s self-governing status, establishes a new state-controlled district and imposes a five-member state control board, which is appointed by the governor.

The board will also be confirmed by the state Senate.

“Today is the day the corporate kingdom finally comes to an end,” DeSantis said.

pic.twitter.com/HgAzYN0UYi

— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) February 27, 2023

The Republican governor said during the announcement this morning that:

“Allowing a corporation to control its own government is bad policy, especially when the corporation makes decisions that impact an entire region.”

Florida Ends the Corporate Kingdom https://t.co/N7lJA1BSXb

— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) February 27, 2023

The law also ends Disney’s exemption from state regulatory reviews and codes and it ensures “that Disney will pay its fair share of taxes,” DeSantis’ office said.

DeSantis’ actions come after Disney’s advocacy against Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill (the so-called “Don’t say gay bill”).

As The Epoch Times’ Dan Berger reports, DeSantis and other speakers who joined him at the podium reviewed a wide range of issues tied into the tussle with the big entertainment company.

Nick Catarano, a long-time and second-generation Disney employee—his uncle went to work there when the park opened in the 1970s—outlined the company’s firing and harassment of employees like himself who didn’t want to get COVID shots or wear masks. He also spoke of his dismay at the shift in Disney’s once-family-friendly content, one that made him proud, to one many families object to.

“Disney has since doubled down and embraced all things woke increasingly making things like sex, gender, race and worse things the core mission of its storytelling. You know, we’ve gone from ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Snow White’ and ‘Pocahontas’ and all these great stories with morals and great characters, and have brought us stuff like ‘Little Demon’ who was the spawn, the child of Satan, as the lead character.”

“We have recently seen the cartoon ‘Proud Family’ on Disney Plus. And that really doesn’t tell the whole truth of what happened in our country. They tried to build a narrative that everything in this country is built on the back of slaves and reparations. And what they’re doing is they’re taking vulnerable children, and they’re indoctrinating them into becoming activists and hating each other.”

Disney has said it won’t resist the new arrangement and will now work with the state, Disney World CEO Jeff Vahle said in a statement.

Authored by Fan Yu via The Epoch Times,

Anyone who watched television during 2022 saw the ubiquitous TV commercials for Grayscale, which manages the world biggest Bitcoin investment fund. Those ads touted Bitcoin as “the future” and should be part of a retiree’s portfolio.

But investors in Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) are facing both a problem and an opportunity.

The problem? GBTC trades at a 46 percent discount to its underlying holdings, as of Feb. 24.

This means the per-share value of the fund is 46 percent less than the Bitcoins held in the fund’s portfolio.

No doubt the ongoing legal issues facing Digital Currency Group (DCG), the parent company of Grayscale, is one factor in the large discount.

The opportunity is that if the fund were to trade up to its net asset value—and that is one giant “if”—investors would realize an 84 percent gain.

Non-traded funds such as real estate investment trusts (REITs) and business-development companies pricing below asset value isn’t a new phenomenon. There can be factors such as supply and demand and quality of the underlying asset that could drive this spread. But a discount of up to 50 percent? That’s almost unheard of, and it amounts to around $7 billion of trapped value.

The simple explanation for such a wide spread is investors are concerned about challenges at DCG, a cryptocurrency conglomerate of sort. DCG is backed by none other than SoftBank, which seems to have its hand in a number of failed or failing startups. DCG owns Grayscale, crypto news media CoinDesk, Bitcoin miner Foundry, a small London-based crypto exchange named Luno, and crypto brokerage and lending giant Genesis Capital. The last company, Genesis Capital, is currently under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, after its lending arm blew up after last year’s crypto rout and FTX’s collapse.

DCG has been selling its stakes in various investment vehicles run by Grayscale, according to regulatory filings. Despite GBTC and its Ether-focused fund trading below their asset values, DCG presumably has needed to raise cash by all means necessary to support Genesis during bankruptcy. The Financial Times also reported that DCG retained investment bank Lazard to explore a sale of CoinDesk.

A competitor has also targeted Grayscale. Osprey Funds, which also runs several crypto-focused investment funds, sued Grayscale in January for putting out misleading marketing statements to gain market share.

“Grayscale has made materially false and misleading statements in its advertising and promotion … that turning its Bitcoin asset management services into access to a Bitcoin ETF was a foregone conclusion, when it knew that access was never likely to happen,” the complaint, filed in the Connecticut Superior Court, alleges.

Clearly, these financial and competitive difficulties at parent company DCG is not lost on GBTC investors which contribute to the giant discount.

Let’s examine the last point in the Osprey complaint, as it’s an important factor in GBTC trading below its fair value.

GBTC is not an exchange-traded fund (ETF). It also holds actual Bitcoins. There are Bitcoin-focused ETFs, such as the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy Fund, but all of them invest in Bitcoin futures, not Bitcoin itself. Futures are regulated by the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in the United States.

Grayscale (and many other asset managers) has tried to convert its GBTC fund to an ETF for years, without success. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has rejected every single application so far. The SEC argues that, unlike futures, the spot Bitcoin is unregulated and the market is ripe with manipulation and potential fraud.

To Grayscale, the best way to eliminate this massive discount is to convert to an ETF. And it sued the SEC to force its hand, with oral arguments set to begin in Washington, D.C., in early March. If successful, it may be a pathway to unlock the approximate $7 billion.

In the meantime, institutional and activist investors are circling Grayscale.

One group of investors, called RedeemGBTC, wants the fund manager to reduce its 2 percent management fee, which is calculated on the underlying Bitcoin holdings, not the discounted share price, which inflates the fees earned by Grayscale.

Hedge Fund Fir Tree filed a lawsuit against Grayscale in December alleging mismanagement and severe conflicts of interest. The fund believes that Grayscale and DCG have very little incentive to act in the best interest of investors because they are earning lucrative fees that aren’t affected by the discount to fair value.

Will the $7 billion of value ever be unlocked and returned to shareholders? Or will Grayscale be remembered as another high-profile failed crypto venture?

One month ago, when discussing the “perfect storm” hitting the US auto market, we showed that according to Fitch “More Americans Can’t Afford Their Car Payments Than During The Peak Of Financial Crisis“…

… which was to be expected: after all the latest consumer credit report from the Fed revealed an exponential spike in the amount of new car loans, which increased by more than $2,000 in one quarter, from just over $38,000 (a record), to $40,155 (a new record).

And yet something just didn’t click: if so many subprime Americans were saddled with record amounts of auto loans – on average more than $40K – where were the defaults? After all, the average loan rate for new car loans just hit a 13 year high and will soon rise to the highest level this centiry.

Well, after a lengthy period in which nothing seemed to happen, suddenly the dominoes are starting to fall, and as Bloomberg reports, used car retailer and subprime auto loan lender, American Car Center, told employees the business was closing its doors, just one day after the company had hoped to pull off a funding Hail Mary by selling a $222 million bond (it failed).

According to Bloomberg, the used car retailer, which targets consumers regardless of their credit history (and thus targets almost entirely subprime borrowers who can’t get a loan elsewhere), said in an email to employees on Friday the firm was ceasing all operations, closing its headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee, and that all employees would be terminated by the end of the business day, the people said. It employed about 288 people at its headquarters.

The closure email came a day after the company sent another message to staff saying management and advisors had been working with lenders to improve liquidity and continue operations. American Car Center, which has more than 40 dealerships across 10 states, is owned by York Capital’s private equity group.

The long overdue collapse – the first of many – comes as more Americans are starting to fall behind on their car payments, and the distress cycle is rapidly accelerating.

Think of it as the infamous New Century domino that signaled the collapse of subprime housing… only for cars.

Just before the announcement, American Car Center shelved a bond deal backed by subprime loans citing market conditions despite investors placing orders for the debt. It wasn’t clear why ACC backed down in the last moment as the alternative was liquidation. However, since many more auto subprime lenders will now follow in ACC’s footsteps, we are confident the answer will emerge. 

Meanwhile, we can’t help but be amused by the mindblowing divergence in Wall Street mental models, where on one hand speculation that used car pries are somehow surging has sent risk assets lower driven by fears of a rebound in inflation (remember that spike in the Manheim used car price index?), while on the other companies like ACC and Carvana are either liquidating or on the verge of doing so, simply because the used car auto segment has completely imploded.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

George Washington University (where I teach) this week became one of the last major universities to drop its mask mandate.

Many students had long declined to follow the mandate, but the decision was met with relief by many at the school.

Yet, some are livid about the lifting of such mandates in various schools.

One is a professor at the University of British Columbia who has participated in roundtable discussions as an expert with Canadian Prime Minister Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.  Dr. Amy Tan is a Clinical Associate Professor in Palliative Care and Family Practice at UBC’s Faculty of Medicine and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Calgary.

She recently issued a blistering attack on those going maskless as being “racist, ableist, and classist.”

The comments raise long-standing concerns that masks have become a vehicle for social and political rather than medical agendas.

Screenshot of a tweet by Dr. Amy Tan published from Feb. 18 2023.

According to media reports , Tan responded to a user who defended labeling non-maskers as “racist.”

The user denounced dropping the mandates and added:

“once again and always – white people, you do not get to say what is or isn’t racist. stop speaking for and over BIPOC.

learn your place, sit down, shut up, and listen to us. your white saviorism is killing us. whiteness is a problem. oof.

(read & listen to James Baldwin! <3)”

Tan appeared to agree and added that “not masking is racist, ableist & classist.” Notably, some experts believe that the mandatory mandates are alarmist.

Recent studies have cast doubts on the efficacy of masks and revealed that even the CDC long harbored doubts on the question. Others continue to challenge those contrary findings as incomplete.

Notably, Tan is not attempting to engage skeptics on the science. Instead she (and others) are attempting to cut off debate by labeling opposing views as revealing a myriad of prejudices. These attacks have largely worked to intimidate many in government, business, media, and academia. Mask efficacy is a debate long suppressed by social media companies and disfavored by many universities. Experts were banned for raising such questions and others labeled conspiracy theorists.

Figures like Tan continue to argue that questioning mask efficacy is to self-identify as a racist, ableist and classist. That is a lot of “ists” for anyone and most academics do not want to risk becoming a target of such attacks. The problem is that the students and the public at large no longer appear to be buying into the mask mandates.

Hopefully, we can still have this long delayed debate at universities without the type of personal, vituperative attacks employed by figures like Tan. If one truly cares about public health, there is nothing to fear from hearing opposing views on the underlying science. People of good faith should be able to disagree on these studies without being allegedly “unmasked” as the Bull Connors of medicine.

Her bio on UBC’s website highlights her work “an advocate for health equity and an anti-racism educator and consultant” with expertise on “culturally-safe and anti-oppressive care with patients and families.” She has been a continuing advocate for mask where both inside and outside buildings.

NASA and SpaceX scrubbed a launch attempt of the SpaceX Crew-6 mission to the International Space Station early Monday morning due to a ground systems problem. 

A last-minute technical issue occurred just two minutes before the 230-foot-tall (70-meter) Falcon 9 rocket, with a Crew Dragon capsule, was expected to lift off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 0145 ET. The clock was stopped by engineers “to investigate an issue preventing data from confirming a full load of the ignition source for the Falcon 9 first stage Merlin engines, triethylaluminum triethylboron (or TEA-TEB),” according to the space agency. 

Strapped into the Dragon capsule was a crew of two NASA astronauts, one Russian cosmonaut and one astronaut from the United Arab Emirates. 

SCRUB: Two minutes from launch, an issue with the Falcon 9 rocket’s engine ignition system postpones the Crew-6 mission to the @Space_Station.

More on the cause and when @NASA and @SpaceX could try again as soon as details become available.@news6wkmg: https://t.co/a06XbQrach pic.twitter.com/L4wLUN5Lrw

— James Sparvero (@JamesSparvero) February 27, 2023

“I’m proud of the NASA and SpaceX teams’ focus and dedication to keeping Crew-6 safe,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. He added: “Human spaceflight is an inherently risky endeavor and, as always, we will fly when we are ready.”

The next launch attempt is at 1234 ET Thursday, pending the resolution of the technical issue that prevented this morning’s launch.

Authored by by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday that Ukraine is preparing to launch attacks to recapture Crimea by forming new military units and sending troops to train in other countries.

“There are military steps, and we are preparing for them. We are ready mentally. We are preparing technically: with weapons, reinforcements, the formation of brigades, in particular the assault brigades, of different categories and nature,” Zelensky said at a press conference, according to the Ukrainian news agency Ukrinform.

According to Ukrinform, Zelensky said Ukrainian troops were being sent to train in other countries to learn how to use new weapons. “We have to be ready. Then, there will be corresponding fair de-occupation steps and, God willing, they will be successful,” he added.

Zelensky and other top Ukrainian officials have maintained that kicking Russia out of Crimea is one of their war goals, but Russia controls a good portion of territory to the north of Crimea in the Kherson Oblast. The Pentagon has also assessed it’s unlikely Ukraine can take the peninsula, which Russia has controlled since 2014.

Despite the Pentagon’s assessment, Biden administration officials still say they would support Ukrainian attacks on Crimea. “Russia has turned Crimea into a massive military installation … those are legitimate targets, Ukraine is hitting them, and we are supporting that,” Victoria Nuland, the US undersecretary of state for political affairs, recently said.

The US backing Ukrainian attacks on Crimea would risk a major escalation with Moscow, a fact that even Secretary of State Antony Blinken has recognized by calling the peninsula a “red line” for Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

The Russian leader has shown a willingness to escalate the war over attacks on Crimea, as Russia’s bombardment of Ukrainian infrastructure didn’t start until after the truck bombing of the Kerch Bridge, which connects Crimea to the Russian mainland.

Two German officials note that Zelensky has falsely claimed that Russia fired on NATO territory, with the goal of “trying to drag the US and its allies into the war.”

But no need to fault Zelensky for lying in the hopes of starting WWIII. “In his place, we would do the same.” pic.twitter.com/7nDudVh9sO

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) February 24, 2023

Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 following the US-backed coup in Kyiv that ousted former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Polling since then has shown the majority of people living on the peninsula are happy that they joined the Russian Federation.

Tesla published a note on its website explaining the rollout of the $15,000 driver-assistance system (Full Self-Driving Beta) has been “paused” until a new software upgrade can be deployed over the air to address the recent recall of 362,758 vehicles equipped with FSD Beta. 

“Until the software version containing the fix is available, we have paused the rollout of FSD Beta to all who have opted-in but have not yet received a software version containing FSD Beta,” Tesla said. 

The pause affected Tesla drivers who bought FSD but were being vetted by Tesla for Beta approval. Also, no new customers can add FSD Beta while Tesla works on an update to address the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) recall with certain 2016-2023 Model S, Model X, 2017-2023 Model 3, and 2020-2023 Model Y vehicles. 

Here’s what NHTSA said earlier this month about the FSD Beta recall:

The FSD Beta system may allow the vehicle to act unsafe around intersections, such as traveling straight through an intersection while in a turn-only lane, entering a stop sign-controlled intersection without coming to a complete stop, or proceeding into an intersection during a steady yellow traffic signal without due caution.

In addition, the system may respond insufficiently to changes in posted speed limits or not adequately account for the driver’s adjustment of the vehicle’s speed to exceed posted speed limits.

Tesla notes that FSD Beta has features that signal drivers with “visual and audible warnings” to pay attention to the road. Tesla said:

“The driver is responsible for operation of the vehicle whenever the feature is engaged and must constantly supervise the feature and intervene (e.g., steer, brake or accelerate) as needed to maintain safe operation of the vehicle.” 

Tesla also said customers with FSD Beta are not required to take any immediate actions.

As of this morning, Tesla users can still purchase the $15,000 driver-assistance system (but won’t be cleared for FSD Beta). 

Is FSD Beta worth it?