The era of easy money is now officially over.

For 15 years, policymakers have tried to stimulate the global economy through money creation, zero interest-rate policies, and more recently, aggressive COVID fiscal stimulus.

With capital at near-zero costs over this stretch, investors started to place more value on cash flows in the distant future. Assets inflated and balance sheets expanded, and money inevitably chased more speculative assets like NFTs, crypto, or unproven venture-backed startups.

But, as Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins details below, the free money party has since ended, after persistent inflation prompted the sudden reversal of many of these policies. And as Warren Buffett says, it’s only when the tide goes out do you get to see “who’s been swimming naked.”

Measuring Money and Markets in 2022

Every time we publish this visualization, our common unit of measurement is a two-dimensional box with a value of $100 billion.

Even though you need many of these to convey the assets on the balance sheet of the U.S. Federal Reserve, or the private wealth held by the world’s billionaires, it’s quite amazing to think what actually fits within this tiny building block of measurement:

Our little unit of measurement is enough to pay for the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, while also buying every team in the NHL and digging FTX out of its financial hole several times over.

Here’s an overview of all the items we have listed in this year’s visualization:

Has the Dust Settled Yet?

Through previous editions of our All the World’s Money and Markets visualization, we’ve created snapshots of the world’s assets and markets at different points in time.

For example, in our 2017 edition of this visualization, Apple’s market capitalization was only $807 billion, and all crypto assets combined for $173 billion. The global debt total was at $215 trillion.

And in just five years, Apple nearly quadrupled in size (it peaked at $3 trillion in January 2022), and crypto also expanded into a multi-trillion dollar market until it was brought back to Earth through the 2022 crash and subsequent FTX implosion.

Meanwhile, global debt continues to accumulate—growing by $85 trillion in the five-year period.

With interest rates expected to continue to rise, companies making cost cuts, and policymakers reining in spending and borrowing, today is another unique snapshot in time.

Now that the easy money era is over, where do things go from here?

Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

Sometimes the internet being eternal works to our advantage. Recently, there’s been a dustup in European politics over a three-year old video of now Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni stepping on the third rail of European politics.

In that video she openly explained that colonialism in Europe isn’t over and she tied it to African immigration into Europe, which Italy has born the brunt of thanks to the EU’s rules which force countries to accept anyone that shows up on their shores.

The mechanism for France’s dirty colonial secret is they still control fourteen West African nations through a French colonial currency (CFA Franc) issued by France.

Now, since Meloni’s rant, the CFA Franc has been slightly revised but the real source of its power over West Africa was not, more on this later.

What’s important is that this video has all of a sudden resurfaced at a time when Italy and France are involved in a major row over France’s (and Davos’) latest attempt to paint Meloni as some heartless Fascist for denying a French NGO boatload of migrants from North Africa into Italy.

The boat eventually wound up having to go to France as Meloni stuck to her guns. Remember, folks it was then Interior Minister Matteo Salvini who first tried to defy Davos on this and his reward was to be sued in Sicilian court over ‘human rights abuses.’ This began Salvini’s fall from political power in Rome as he didn’t have enough support from his then coalition partner, Five Star Movement (M5S).

Eventually, Salvini was forced out of power, M5S cut a deal with the Rome Mafia to betray its supporters and the rise of Meloni and the Brothers of Italy (FdI) was inevitable.

The lame attempt by France to attack Meloni on immigration was met with a much different result this time as she enjoys a far stronger political position than Salvini did in 2017-18. So, the boat went to France and all the French could do was fulminate about it.

Enemy at the NGO Gates

In fact, the French Foreign Minister Gérald Darmanin went so far as to call Italy France’s enemy over this issue. This level of histrionics over less than 250 migrants is both so predictably French and overblown it borders on the comical.

So much for European solidarity, I guess.

But it’s all part of the silly Davos PR campaign against Meloni. Nothing changes with these people. They have a pathological need to win every single little battle, because as psychopaths they know any sign of weakness is an invitation to the gallows as people see them for what they are.

As always, the timing on this video of Meloni coming out is interesting. It’s a clear counterattack on France’s theatrics.

My question, as always, is who did this? Obviously Meloni’s people are part of this but does it imply she has some other support?

Stick with me, because I have a theory on this.

Ultimately, this dustup fully highlights the mendacity and, frankly, evil of the former colonial powers of Europe.

The CFA Franc was something that you ‘just didn’t talk about’ as France continued to extract wealth from West Africa through monetary expropriation.

The very idea that the vestiges of colonialism are on the wane in Europe is not only fundamentally false it is intrinsically woven into the fabric of the EU itself in every way. The CFA Franc should be an anachronism, but France holds onto for its benefit, subsidizing its ridiculous government and failing social institutions.

Among first world nations France has the highest effective tax rate for upper income earners.  And yet, they still can’t keep things running effectively and have to extract wealth from north Africa.

How brutally inefficient and sickly is a French economy that derives nearly 50% of its electricity from a mostly-homegrown nuclear industry and has levels of taxation that make even a nineteenth-century slaveowner blush that it still needs to operate a colonial wealth extraction system in West Africa in the 21st century?

But it’s also a microcosm of the euro itself and even the corruption of the US dollar through national control over interest rates thanks to a monolithic central bank.

Like many of you, I had no idea the CFA Franc even existed and I’m still wrapping my head around the idea that in 2022 fourteen countries do not have monetary sovereignty, serfs to a feudal lord on a separate continent.

Again, just when I thought I’d plumbed the depths of Eurotrash globalist depravity, they make me look naïve.

But what’s been very clear is that the CFA Franc has been a no-go in international and inter-European political discussions for decades…. and someone close to Meloni just made it a global issue.

So much so, that no less than Le Monde had to put out a fire suppressor article.  It’s a laughably poor piece of apologia.  It’s a typical piece of ‘word parsing’ that picks out specific little exaggerations to discredit Meloni as stupid and uninformed while avoiding the basic problems of France running a wealth vacuum in 14 of the poorest countries in Africa.

Le Monde quickly switches to the ‘migrant’ issue to ‘debunk’ Meloni’s claims about African immigration as a result of the CFA Franc.  Sure the country of origin of most migrants are from countries on the shore of the Mediterranean, but where did they come from in the first place?

It’s like saying Hondurans who cross into the US from Mexico aren’t Hondurans and that policy in Honduras didn’t contribute to the migration. But, this is really a side issue. Meloni is fundamentally right that the CFA Franc keeps these countries poor through currency arbitrage and contributes directly to North Africa’s instability and lack of economic progress.

To think that doesn’t have spillover effects into Algeria, Morocco or anywhere else along the southern Mediterranean is simply laughable.

It’s the Currency, Stupid!!

The key to understanding the evil of the CFA Franc is no different than understanding the evil of the euro or the Fed Funds Rate. It’s mercantilism through currency arbitrage.

The CFA Franc is not just pegged to the euro (formerly the French Franc) it is also tied to the ECB’s monetary policy debt rate.  This is the part no one, especially the writer at Le Monde, wants to touch.  

So, as Le Monde states there are the two central banks in Africa that issue the two different CFA Francs. What they fail to state is that both currencies are still pegged to the euro, making local monetary policy a joke. France and the ECB still control their economies.

The ECB’s monetary policy is set by Germany for Germany’s benefit.  Having (up until now) the strongest economy in the EU, Germany gets an effective benefit from the euro trading at a single exchange rate.

If the euro were to collapse and the Deutschmark returned, it would rise dramatically versus the previous euro exchange rate. For Italy, the return of the lira would see it fall.

This is simply the value add/deficit of the labor in the aggregate of the country, represented by the exchange rate through the discounting mechanism.  

This is why the euro and the EU are nothing more than colonialist systems designed to do exactly what they have done, impoverish the European periphery, which includes Italy, and concentrate capital in the center, in Brussels’ political power.

As much as I’ve used the Hunger Games to describe the US, it is even more apropos for the EU.

California and New York have used the singular Fed Funds Rate in the same way Germany has used the euro to dominate US electoral politics, ensuring that for decades their populations stayed high, the capital flowed to them, trapping people there and grinding them out between the twin millstones of inflation and taxation, just like Lenin described.

So, now applying that same model to France and it’s former colonies, does anyone believe that the labor efficiency of the Ivory Coast is the same as Germany?  or even France?

Of course not. But that’s the situation for these countries. France is running the same mercantilist scam of any colonial power by keeping the home country’s currency weaker than it should be in exchange for real goods from abroad.

But we see this effect in the reverse from the colony’s perspective. By setting a peg for the CFA Franc, it is always stronger than it should be if allowed to float. Even if initially set weaker than it should be to attract capital, eventually the exchange rate will become an albatross around the colony’s neck, strangling economic growth while all the wealth is extracted back to the homeland, thanks to the ECB’s monetary policy.

While the CFA Franc was reformed slightly under Macron, the essential link between France’s banking system and these colonies remains key, using the ECB’s ruinous monetary policy to take the profit and leave misery behind. 

Now, the good news is that mercantilism only works for so long before the currency mismatches become so great that the whole scheme has to collapse. It is, after all just another Ponzi Scheme.

In the case of France and Germany running their wealth extraction system across not just the 17 other countries of the euro-zone but 14 African countries as well, we’re reaching that breaking point.

Pres. Macron Tear Down This Peg!

Italy needs to be let loose from the euro. The populists and everyone not on Herr Schwab’s payroll understand this. Davos will blow up the world before letting that happen.

Meloni knows this. And she also knows that France has real designs on annexing parts of northern Italy and will fight very dirty to win here.

Macron tried to marginalize her on immigration, tugging on heart strings about denying migrants. She stood her ground, forced France to take the boats and when France tried to publicly shame her, she trotted out the CFA Franc and put that issue right to bed.

But here’s the fun part. She just put out her budget proposal for the EU’s consideration. It’s a very crafty proposal, skirting the edges of the rules set out by the EU, violating the spirit of the rules while not actually violating many of them. See this article from Reuters on rescinding the limits of cash use.

Martin Armstrong has a quick overview of the budget where he pulls out some of the salient points (from his perspective).  His takeaway is that Meloni is putting real limits on Italy’s welfare state.  

So, this is how she can play the game of not radically increasing spending. She’ll increase spending to subsidize rising energy costs clearly imposed on Italy by Germany and Brussels through ruinous sanctions on Russian energy as a stop gap measure. Sound familiar? Because this is what cost Liz Truss her job in the UK.

But she is also reforming the entitlement system for the long term which will keep the overall budget deficit which will call Brussels’ bluff on whether they will maintain support of Italy’s bond market.

We know this is a bluff otherwise ECB President Christine Lagarde wouldn’t have created the Transmission Protection Instrument to maintain internal credit spreads at the July meeting.

She knew this day was coming the minute Mario Draghi walked away from his post as Prime Minister. The TPI was announced the next day.

It looks like, at first glance, that Meloni’s found a way to circumvent being forced to implement “German Austerity” — raising taxes and cutting spending to protect bondholders — by cutting long-term entitlement spending while at the same time cutting taxes where they are needed most.

If there is a budget proposal that could mollify credit markets over Italy’s fiscal situation it would look something like this. It puts the EU on their back foot in budget talks. Because this plan could actually work.

Part of the budget plans includes slashing taxes for the self-employed by extending the 15% single tax rate from an annual income of €65,000 to €85,000, slashing VAT on certain essential goods by half, and conditionally reducing the retirement age to 62, provided that individuals have paid in at least 41 years of contributions.

What’s funny about this is that this budget, which explicitly breaks the EU’s cap of a 3% of GDP budget deficit, pushing it to 4.5% thanks to energy subsidies to families, is being hailed by the European press as “More EU Friendly than expected.”

What were they expecting, for Meloni to introduce miniBOTs and a new domestic currency like Salvini talked about in 2018?  

No, this is clearly messaging that states Brussels isn’t in the position to fight her because she holds all the cards in the negotiations.  Remember, $640+ billion in TARGET2 liabilities are the Bundesbank’s problem, not Italy’s.

Having exposed France to the world over the CFA Franc and understanding exactly how vulnerable the ECB and the EU Commission actually are in the Eurodollar markets, Meloni has pushed Italy into a good position to begin reversing the colonial extraction system of the EU itself.

A quick look at the polls in Italy has her riding a big lead at 30% support and moving higher.  If she gets this budget past the EU Commission, that number will instantly jump to 40% or higher.  The worry that Salvini and Berlusconi will betray her then drop precipitously. 

The Ring Heads South

Remember, lurking in the background of all of this is Wall St., the Fed and patriots in the US military.

This is who I think is helping Meloni stand firm here. The Fed’s aggressive policy stance has the Eurodollar markets teetering and Lagarde is no longer talking about QEternity but QT and higher rates, albeit very grudgingly.

If the price cap on Russian oil fails and Ursula Von der Leyen cannot ride herd on a 9th sanctions package, then Italy will quickly move into the driver’s seat on energy imports into Europe.

Wall St. understands this. And with a grateful Meloni in Rome realigning EU policy or forcing a breakup it also paves the way for a new cycle of energy investment now beyond desperately needed.

Who wants in on that action? Well, pretty much everyone, especially Wall St.

Meloni just told France’s African colonies to stand up and follow Burkina Faso’s lead.  With countries like Algeria, Egypt and Morocco all looking to join the BRICS alliance, the end of France’s colonial control over North Africa could end very quickly and Italy then has massive leverage on the EU to turn back on the sanctioned energy supplies.

This is a fight for all the EU marbles folks, and Meloni, I believe knows this.  So, she’ll play the dutiful game of supporting Ukraine publicly.  But, there’s almost nothing Italy can do practically to do that. It’s an empty promise.  They have no money, no domestic military to speak of… what is that promise actually worth?

No, France and Germany, the mercantilist powerhouses, are the ones that have to foot this Ukraine bill. Meloni and Italy are happy to support them bankrupting themselves while she lays the groundwork for increasing Italy’s leverage over them.

The Fed is doing its job by forcing the euro down, bond yields up and taking options away from Christine Lagarde.  

You beat colonialists by taking away their money printing machine. It’s that simple.

*  *  *

Join my Patreon if you don’t want to be colonized

Authored by Dr. Sean Lin and Mingjia Jacky Guan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Recently, various health agencies around the world have approved and are actively pushing for another COVID booster shot, meant to enhance the vaccine efficacy against a COVD-19 infection.

However, many studies have found that the boosters do not make a significant  difference in protection, especially in terms of protection against reinfection. In fact, the latest data shows vaccine efficacy against the coronavirus tends to even drop into the negatives after just a few months.

What Does Negative Efficacy Mean?

It is a well known fact that COVID vaccine effectiveness wanes quickly as time goes on; this is confirmed by countless studies.

Although the official narrative for COVID-19 vaccines nowadays only emphasizes its efficacy on protection against ICU admission and death rates, it actually implies the indisputable fact that vaccines don’t protect, contrary to their design, against infection or even symptomatic infection, especially after the emergence of various Omicron variants.

Even the protection two shots offers against hospitalization drops to about 40 percent after less than a year. It’s actually looking worse for protection against severe symptoms, as efficacy rates seem to drop into the negatives about five months into full vaccination.

When a vaccine’s efficacy drops into the negatives, it means that vaccination actually elevates the risks of hospitalization and severe diseases rather than reducing the risks. In simple terms, it does more harm than good when the efficacy is negative.

During the time prior to the pandemic, any vaccine with an efficacy less than 50 percent would be regarded as a poor product.  When a product shows negative efficacy, it should be banned. It seems that the pandemic isn’t only bad for our health, but also is tugging at our common sense.

COVID Vaccines’ Declining Usefulness

It has been around three years since the first COVID-19 case was discovered in Wuhan, China. Since then, more than 600 million cases of the virus have been recorded, translating into a little less than 1 in 10 people around the world already being infected with the virus. In many countries, “living with COVID” has become the norm, along with getting “fully vaccinated” and getting those booster shots.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it is recommended that everyone 6 months and older should receive a full vaccination and everyone 5 years and older should receive a booster shot. Booster shots are recommended as they “are an important part of protecting yourself from getting seriously ill or dying from COVID-19” according to the CDC.

However, emerging data paints a different picture.

At its crux, the vaccines were developed with the earlier strains of the coronavirus, meaning developers primarily used the original Wuhan strain in their testing. The Delta strain that came along was particularly infamous as it was known to have a high death rate, but vaccines fared quite well against it. The results, however, went south as time went on and as the Omicron strain rolled out.

Trying to Outrun Nature

Making its debut in South Africa, the Omicron strain started to dominate the world by the beginning of 2022, which caused even more turmoil in terms of vaccine efficacy. The most shocking result is the extent it dragged down the vaccine’s efficacy against infection. Data shows that the vaccine used to be around 90 percent effective for weeks on end after vaccination.

After Omicron came along, infection prevention dropped to less than 50 percent after about a month after two shots and dived into the negatives four months later. It doesn’t seem to stop after that.

This clearly suggests that the COVID-19 vaccination campaigns should’ve been suspended as soon as the Omicron variant began to dominate over Delta.

In a study which analyzed COVID-19 cases from the beginning of this year in children that were previously infected, it was discovered that vaccine effectiveness wasn’t keeping up with pre-Omicron levels. The effects of a full vaccination against a second infection drops into the negatives within a few months, and it seems that the earlier one got the vaccination, the more likely it would lose its efficacy during the omicron waves.

The results from a September 2022 British Medical Journal study highlights again the fact that vaccine potency drops rapidly with time. It concluded that protection against severe symptoms drops well below half within a few weeks of administering the full two doses, or even after a third dose is administered. It also showed that in the immunocompromised, two doses never had an efficacy rate against hospitalization over 50 percent. Things do look a little better for three doses, but not by much.

Another study published data on the efficacy of the third dose relative to primary doses and found that the mean efficacy of three doses of the Moderna vaccine against the Omicron variants are, in fact, below 0.

It is interesting to note a logical assumption made by many, which is that the more you take the vaccine the better prepared you are against the virus, isn’t necessarily true.

Data published shows that neutralizing antibody count doesn’t necessarily correlate with the number of doses.

They found that people who took the fourth dose sometimes had higher, but mostly lower, antibody concentrations in the body compared with those who took the third dose.

Also, the hazard ratio calculated by researchers for the third and fourth vaccine doses provide us with mixed results. Sometimes, it seems like a good option to stick with the third dose, as the hazard ratio actually rises for taking the second booster compared with the first one.

One possible reason vaccine data is going downhill after Omicron appeared is that the new variant had a lot of changes in its spike protein composition.

This changes the way the virus enters the body and allows it to better “bypass” the security system set up by the old vaccines, which were developed from the very first SARS-CoV-2 Wuhan strain. One can understand it as if the variants have new toys to play with the old security guards.

Another potential mechanism that leads to the significant decline of vaccine efficacy is that repeated vaccination also damages people’s immunity via immune imprinting, a phenomenon in which an initial exposure to a virus–such as the original strain of SARS-CoV-2, by infection or vaccination–limits a person’s future immune response against variants.

Meanwhile, there are numerous underlying factors that would contribute to the disease’s progression from mild to severe, or even into fatal stages. Even if the vaccination groups during clinical trials were carefully chosen to have similar comorbid medical conditions as the control or unvaccinated group, there are still many other unknown factors that would dictate the outcome of the disease progression.

It is inconceivable and overtly overambitious that any pharmaceutical company would aim so high to design a vaccine which can protect against severe diseases from the onset of research, especially since the resulting vaccine can’t seem to keep up with preventing infection in the first place.

If a vaccine reaches negative efficacy, it means that people have higher chances to get infected than if you didn’t get the shot in the first place, meaning that not getting vaccinated might just reduce the chance of infection, unwanted symptoms, and severe disease. This is not just a vaccine failure or breakthrough infection issue, but a good time to halt COVID vaccines for good. Humans will never win in this cat-and-mouse game against nature.

Are Previous Infections Still Protective?

As time goes on, the likelihood of reinfection is quite high. Studies do show that in reinfected people the chances of death, hospitalization, and some form of sequela is much higher in those infected for the first time. It also seems like a logical conclusion for the CDC to recommend that everyone gets vaccinated.

However, the data we have is rather conflicting as the aforementioned study doesn’t show much of a difference between the unvaccinated, the half vaccinated, or the fully vaccinated. They all have just about the same values for cardiovascular, thrombotic, renal, or pulmonary sequelae post infection, or chances of getting a tough COVID-19 infection in the first place.

Data also shows that previously infected and unvaccinated children were better at preventing a second infection compared with children who were in the same age category but who were vaccinated. Generally speaking, vaccine induced immunity doesn’t seem to be quite as effective as that induced by a previous, natural infection.

What this essentially means is that the vaccines cannot keep up with the constantly emerging variants and that a waning efficacy was frankly inevitable. The only question left is, what is the driving force behind the Omicron variants, or SARS-CoV-2 variants on a broad scale? What accounts for variants emerging at the same time around the world?

Microevolution cannot explain everything.

Over the past 3 years, scientists have applied the theory of evolution to describe and explain the trajectory of SARS-CoV-2. Delta was the deadly variant and now Omicron is the road runner. In theory, the virus developed these strains to best adapt to the objective environment, yet scientists are still looking for more answers.

For example, when much of the world’s population was in different degrees of “lockdown” or restriction of movements, when international travel was severely impaired, how did the Alpha and Delta variants emerge and quickly spread widely, and even become dominant globally?

If the only factor that determines which variant to become dominant or not was its fitness, i.e., its transmissibility and replication efficiency, why were there not multiple variants with better fitness that emerged and all became dominant regionally, just like how divergent strains of flowers blossom at the same time in distinct locations? Why does it appear as if there is a coordinating force behind the virus such that one strain was able to uniformly retire the previous one?

In order to answer all these questions, I believe that there needs to be a more holistic evaluation of the current pandemic. At the same time, it’s important to note that viruses adapt to the vaccines, and not the other way around.

Read more here…

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) reported the latest National Instant Criminal Background System (NICS) checks on gun sales during Black Friday was one of the “Top 10” busiest days in history.

NSSF said NICS processed 711,372 background checks during the days leading up to and including Black Friday. FBI’s NICS recorded 192,749 background checks on Black Friday alone, a 2.8% increase from Black Friday 2021, when 187,585 background checks were completed. 

Below are the number of NICS checks leading up to Black Friday.

• Saturday, Nov. 20, 2022: 102,376

• Sunday, Nov. 21, 2022: 57,665

• Monday, Nov. 22, 2022: 103,543

• Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2022: 109,895

• Wednesday, Nov. 24, 2022: 116,033

• Thursday, Nov. 25, 2022: 29,111

• Friday, Nov. 26, 2022: 192,749

Third-highest Black Friday NICS checks on record since the system was established in 1998. 

When a person tries to buy a firearm at a gun shop, known as a Federal Firearms Licensee (FFL), they’re required to fill out an ATF form, and the FFL forwards that information to the NICS electronically. NICS staff performs a background check on the buyer to ensure he/she does not have a criminal record or isn’t otherwise ineligible to purchase or own a firearm. 

Joe Bartozzi, NSSF President and CEO, commented on the large influx of law-abiding Americans buying guns last week and said:

“Background checks for firearm purchases were already trending to make 2022 the third strongest year on record, coming off of the outsized years of 2020 and 2021.

“These figures tell us that there is a continued strong appetite for lawful firearm ownership by law-abiding Americans and that firearm manufacturers across the country continue to deliver the quality firearms our customers have come to expect.”

What’s important to note is that NICS checks are a proxy for the number of guns sold and are not exact because the background checks are performed on the buyer rather than the gun. 

Elevated NICS checks imply a strong firearm appetite among law-abiding Americans. There was no explanation given why this trend remained red hot since the early pandemic days. 

What might have supercharged gun buying among law-abiding Americans is this summer’s US Supreme Court’s NYSRPA v. Bruen ruling affirmed the right-to-carry applies outside the home, which forces states to stop arbitrarily denying carry permits to applicants who didn’t meet specific requirements. Perhaps another reason is that under the Biden administration, violent crime has soared in some parts of the country — law-abiding Americans might want protection. 

Authored by Kyle Anzalone & Will Porter via The Libertarian Institute,

Washington and Seoul are reportedly discussing plans to ramp up anti-submarine military exercises set to begin next year. The talks came amid soaring tensions in the region, and just days before North Korea pledged to further develop its nuclear arsenal. 

While some details of the biannual ‘Silent Shark’ drills remain undecided, they are set to be “bigger than those of the past, given the North heightening tensions with its dozens of missile tests in recent months,” the Korea Times reported last week, citing an unnamed navy official.

Seoul has claimed the exercises are needed to contain the growing threat from Pyongyang, saying they will focus on anti-submarine warfare assets and are “designed to improve their capability to respond to increasing North Korean submarine threats, including its submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs).”

In October, the DPRK said it had successfully fired a KN-23 SLBM – modeled on the Russian Iskander missile – as part of a flurry of weapon tests carried out in retaliation to joint US-South Korean war games. The nuclear-capable KN-23 was launched from a special underwater reservoir, prompting speculation that Pyongyang may have developed a new launch platform for the weapon.

Military activity on the Korean Peninsula has reached a multi-year high in 2022, with North Korea conducting a record number of missile tests, including two intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launches this month alone. The US and South Korea, for their part, have deployed additional strategic assets to the region, and have carried out several rounds of live-fire military exercises, helping to drive a cycle of escalation with the North. 

Earlier this month, Washington flew nuclear-capable, long-range B-1B stealth bombers over Korea during its ‘Vigilant Storm’ drill as a show of force to Pyongyang. Though US Air Force Chief of Staff CQ Brown Jr. downplayed the maneuvers as “just part of an exercise,” the DPRK has repeatedly denounced such drills as provocative, viewing them as preparations for an attack.

In addition to continued missile, rocket and artillery tests, North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un has pledged to further develop his country’s nuclear capabilities in response to the growing tensions, saying the military would work to improve its nuclear forces at the “fastest possible speed” back in April. 

Kim Jong Un is still smoking near fueled liquid propellant ICBMs in 2022. https://t.co/9XbGFWWYMW

— Ankit Panda (@nktpnd) November 18, 2022

More recently, Kim claimed North Korean scientists had made a “wonderful leap forward in the development of the technology of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles,” going on to say that Pyongyang would create “the world’s most powerful strategic force, the absolute force unprecedented in the century.”

Just when the automobile industry thought it was out of the clutches of the Covid-induced supply chain SNAFU that had taken place over the last several years, it looks as though China’s strict Covid policy threatens to pull them back in again. 

“At least three major automakers” are once again shuttering production, according to a new report from Bloomberg this week. Honda has shut down operations in Wuhan for the time being due to “limitations around movement” in the area, the report says.

The company also suspended operations at a lawnmower engine plant in Chongqing.

Yamaha has also been hit by the new Covid lockdowns, partially suspending operations at a motorcycle plant in Chongqing. Bloomberg reports that 8,721 new COVID-19 cases were reported in the area on Monday this week. 

VW also halted production at a joint venture plant that it has with China FAW Group on Monday of this week, the report continues. Volkswagen is attributing the shutdown to a shortage of components. It has also shut down two of five production lines at its factory in Changchun and has no date for resuming operations.

Nissan, Mazda and Mitsubishi told Bloomberg that their operations had not been affected. 

Recall, just last week we published on how China’s Covid restrictions were actually tightening when the country’s market had assumed they were easing. 

We published:

“More than a week after Beijing fine-tuned its Covid Zero strategy, local governments are struggling to balance the need to control the pandemic while also limit the economic damage. Shijiazhuang, a closely-watched city that had experimented with a version of “living with the virus,” has reversed course, suspending schools and asking residents to stay at home for five days. As infections multiplied, subway rides in some big cities such as Beijing, Guangzhou and Chongqing have tumbled.

The result is that Goldman Sachs’s Effective Lockdown Index has increased in recent weeks, despite Beijing’s new order to reduce the need for mass testing and citywide shutdowns.”

Authored by Madalina Vasiliu via The Epoch Times,

Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers militia group, was found guilty by a jury on Nov. 29 of seditious conspiracy connected to the events on Jan 6, 2021.

One co-defendant, Kelly Meggs, was also found guilty of seditious conspiracy on Tuesday, while three others—Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins, and Thomas Caldwell—were acquitted of that charge.

In total, Rhodes was found guilty on three out of five counts: seditious conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, and tampering with documents or proceedings.

Meggs was found guilty on five counts out of six: seditious conspiracy, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to prevent an officer from discharging any duties, and tampering with documents.

Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, center, speaks during a rally outside the White House in Washington, on June 25, 2017. (Susan Walsh/AP Photo)

The other three defendants were each found guilty on multiple lesser charges.

In closing arguments, defense attorneys said the government failed to prove that the Oath Keepers planned to attack the Capitol or to interfere with the certification of Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, 2021.

A defense lawyer said that none of the 50 witnesses in the Oath Keepers trial testified that they heard any of the defendants discuss or plan to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

However, in the final rebuttal, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Nestler said that according to the jury instructions (pdf), the government did not have to prove that the defendants had a detailed plan to breach the Capitol and meet in person to discuss their alleged scheme. An implicit agreement and mutual understanding were enough to prove the defendants’ conspiracy, he said.

Sharon and Thomas Caldwell at the Peace Monument during the January 6, 2021 protest in Washington, D.C. (Courtesy of Sharon Caldwell)

Nestler told the jury that the three defendants who decided to take the witness stand to testify in their defense (Stewart Rhodes, Thomas Caldwell, and Jessica Watkins) allegedly lied.

“But it’s important to ask not just whether they lied. Ask yourself, why? Because the truth is so damning,” Nestler emphasized.

The government told the 14 jurors that the defendants deleted evidence that could prove even further their plan to breach the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

A sign outside the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse in Washington on Sept. 29, 2022. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

James Bright, the attorney for Rhodes, asked the jury how the Oath Keepers could conspire as early as November 2020 to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, if the Jan. 6 rally wasn’t announced until late December 2020.

Rhodes founded the Oath Keepers organization in 2009 to assist in natural disaster situations, Bright said, to volunteer to provide security for small businesses that could not afford security services from a regular company and to offer personal security details for VIPs.

Several members of the Oath Keepers testified during the weeks-long trial, saying that the organization gave them a sense of purpose since most members were retired veterans who found meaning in continuing to serve the country.

During nearly two months of trial, the U.S. prosecutors presented exhibits showing contact between the five defendants on trial and others who allegedly plotted to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Most of the government’s evidence came from the FBI agents assigned to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach. Text messages, video footage, Signal messages (an encrypted messaging app), and Zello audio recordings (a walkie-talkie app) were frequently shown in the courtroom, among other exhibits.

In his closing argument, defense counsel Bradford Geyer walked the jury through a video where he pointed out that unknown provocateurs broke through the Capitol doors first.

“Please send Ken home,” Geyer told the jury.

Another defense attorney, David Fischer, explained an unsent message that Thomas Caldwell, an Oath Keeper affiliate, deleted containing a link. That shouldn’t be considered evidence, the attorney said, since a link is not a document. That link was a video available to everyone, Fischer continued.

The prosecution distorted timeframes throughout its presentation of when the defendants walked up the stairs and entered the building, argued Jonathan Crisp, Jessica Watkins’ attorney. He also said that the government’s evidence was mostly out of context. Crisp explained that the stack formation was a way to get through the dense crowd and not for attacking the Capitol.

Only defendants Jessica Watkins, Kelly Meggs, and Kenneth Harrelson entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Rhodes and Caldwell did not.

In the aftermath of Jan. 6, the U.S. government charged Stewart Rhodes, Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins, and Thomas Caldwell with seditious conspiracy, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, aiding and abetting, conspiracy to prevent an officer from carrying out any duties, destruction of government property, civil disorder, and tampering with documents.

Before passing the trial to the jury on Nov. 21 evening, Judge Amit Mehta, an appointee of Barack Obama, reminded the jurors that the trial was against the five defendants on trial and not against the Oath Keepers’ organization.

Edward Tarpley, attorney for Rhodes said, “The judge treated us with respect.”

“There was no evidence ever introduced that there was a plan,” Tarpley told The Epoch Times, “I am grateful for the jury for not finding them guilty on all counts.”

“Jessica testified well, however, the government will seek multiple enhancements,” Jonathan Crisp, attorney for Jessica Watkins, told The Epoch Times.

Seditious Conspiracy

The most recent charge of seditious conspiracy was in 2010 when the government accused nine members of the Hutaree Militia from Michigan of “levy war against the United States.” An FBI agent who infiltrated the militia group provided most of the prosecution evidence.

When the defendants’ trial began two years later, in 2012, U.S. district judge Victoria Roberts dismissed the conspiracy charges. The judge explained that the government’s evidence mainly consisted of the defendants’ controversial speech protected by the First Amendment and did not prove the group’s alleged plan to overthrow the government.

The U.S. government pressed multiple charges, including attempted murder and seditious conspiracy, against five members of the Puerto Rican Nationalists who attacked the Capitol in 1954. The group opened fire on the House of Representatives and injured five Congress members.

Another seditious conspiracy charge was pressed in 1995 against Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine of his followers. They were found guilty of planning to bomb bridges, tunnels, and other landmarks in New York City.

In 2006, Adam Gadahn was the first American charged with treason since World War II. He “gave al Qaeda aid and comfort … with intent to betray the United States.”

Read more here…

The United States is considering transferring new longer-range rockets to Ukraine which are capable of striking targets 100 miles away, despite the Biden White House previously shutting the door on the possibility, citing worries that long-range systems could strike inside Russian territory, potentially bringing Moscow and Washington into direct confrontation. 

But those legitimate worries over stumbling into WW3 are apparently quickly going by the wayside, as Reuters reports this week that Boeing is getting involved by proposing its Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB) for the Ukrainians, which could be delivered as early as spring 2023.

Time is indeed of the essence from NATO’s point of view, given rapidly depleting stockpiles in the militaries of the West, which the Pentagon has also of late expressed alarm over. 

The GLSDB is seen as versatile and capable of being quickly delivered to the battlefield given it combines small-diameter bombs with a key rocket technology said to be widely available among Pentagon inventories – the M26 rocket motor.

Boeing says it can easily manufacture many of these small precision-guided bombs cable of fitting into a variety of common rocket systems. Neither Boeing nor the Pentagon have yet to officially confirm, but Reuters details:

Although the United States has rebuffed requests for the 185-mile (297km) range ATACMS missile, the GLSDB’s 94-mile (150km) range would allow Ukraine to hit valuable military targets that have been out of reach and help it continue pressing its counterattacks by disrupting Russian rear areas.

GLSDB is made jointly by SAAB AB and Boeing Co and has been in development since 2019, well before the invasion, which Russia calls a “special operation”. In October, SAAB chief executive Micael Johansson said of the GLSDB: “We are imminently shortly expecting contracts on that.”

Crucially, the main appeal and priority is beginning to rest on availability… “According to the document – a Boeing proposal to U.S. European Command (EUCOM), which is overseeing weapons headed to Ukraine – the main components of the GLSDB would come from current U.S. stores,” Reuters writes.

“The M26 rocket motor is relatively abundant, and the GBU-39 costs about $40,000 each, making the completed GLSDB inexpensive and its main components readily available,” the report adds. “Although arms manufacturers are struggling with demand, those factors make it possible to yield weapons by early 2023, albeit at a low rate of production.”

Given that some US generals and officials have forecast that the Ukraine conflict could take years before the fighting ceases, and given already arms availability is becoming a major determinant for what gets sent, the massive Western weapons pipeline to Kiev could be growing thinner by the month. 

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Republicans this week said that Apple’s alleged threat to remove Twitter from its App Store warrants congressional investigation.

“That would be a huge, huge mistake, and it would be a really raw exercise of monopolistic power that I think would merit a response from the United States Congress,” DeSantis told an audience in Duval County, Florida, on Tuesday.

The “old regime” at Twitter attempted to “suffocate the dissent” in regards to COVID-19 reporting, DeSantis said, adding that Apple is acting as a “vassal of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party]” while using “corporate power in the United States … to suffocate Americans.”

The governor appeared to have been referring to reports that Apple blocked some features of its popular AirDrop service for only Chinese users prior to widespread protests against the regime’s “zero COVID” policies.

Top story: @FLVoiceNews: ‘WATCH: Ron DeSantis says Apple removing @elonmusk‘s Twitter from app store warrants Congressional response

“That would be a huge, huge mistake, and it would be a really raw exercise of monopol… pic.twitter.com/vmJ2ACglGb, see more https://t.co/whhQ7jVrUh

— NewsNosh (@NewsNosh) November 29, 2022

The Florida governor was referring to a claim from new Twitter owner Elon Musk’s posts on Monday that Apple, considered the world’s most valuable company, threatened to remove the Twitter app from its App Store. Apple has not yet issued a public comment on the matter, and The Epoch Times has contacted the firm for comment.

“Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. Do they hate free speech in America?” Musk asked on Twitter.

“Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store,” he posted, “but won’t tell us why.” The tech billionaire also directly asked CEO Tim Cook: “What’s going on?”

Outside of DeSantis, other Republicans said that Apple and Google have too much control over the internet via their respective app-downloading stores. Removing Twitter from both would mean that the social media app would be heavily limited in its growth and usage.

Parler, a social media platform favored by conservatives, was removed from the App Store, Google Play, and Amazon Web Services days after the Jan. 6 Capitol incident. For more than a month, the website was not accessible, and data shows that its usage significantly dropped during that time period and has never recovered.

“This is why we need to end the App Store duopoly before the end of this year. No one should have this kind of market power,” Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo) wrote.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who co-sponsored a Senate measure targeting app stores, added that “Apple and Google currently have a stranglehold on companies and have used their leverage to bully businesses.”

Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks at a gaming convention in Los Angeles, Calif., on June 13, 2019. (Mike Blake/Reuters)

In the first quarter of 2022, Apple was the top advertiser on Twitter, spending $48 million and accounting for more than 4 percent of total revenue for the period, the Washington Post reported, citing an internal Twitter document.

Cook, Apple’s CEO, has not yet weighed in on Musk’s comments. When asked about possibly removing Twitter from the App Store in an interview on Nov. 15, he replied: “They say that they are going to continue to moderate and so … I count on them to do that.”

Read more here…

Saudi Arabia has unveiled plans for a massive new airport in Riyadh as part of the kingdom’s ambition to diversify its economy so its fortunes aren’t solely determined by the price of oil.  

In announcing the plan, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) said the airport would be named after his 86-year-old father, King Salman. Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund — the Public Investment Fund — will own the airport.

The move is part of a previously-announced Saudi intention to invest $1 trillion to transform the head-chopping kingdom into a tourist destination.  

The airport is slated to have six parallel runways on a 22-square-mile expanse, subsuming the existing King Khaled airport. The initial goal is to accommodate upwards of 120 million travelers by the end of this decade.  

It’s not all about tourism. Today, just a half-million tons of airfreight transit the kingdom each year. By 2030, MBS wants to see that skyrocket to 4.5 million tons.    

King Salman International Airport will challenge current airports in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, UAE, and Doha, Qatar. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is also launching a new national airline, RIA, to compete with the likes of Emirates and Qatar Airways. In discussions with Boeing and Airbus, RIA is slated to take its first flight by the end of this year. 

The Public Investment Fund posted a slick video with renderings of the future “aerotropolis”: 

Introducing King Salman International Airport.

An aerotropolis centered around seamless passenger journeys, world-class efficient operations, and innovation.#KSIA#PIF pic.twitter.com/yNXbAizzFH

— Public Investment Fund (@PIF_en) November 28, 2022

“The airport project is in line with Saudi Arabia’s vision to transform Riyadh to be among the top ten city economies in the world and to support the growth of Riyadh’s population to 15–20 million people by 2030,” Saudi state news agency SPA said. The development is projected to create more than 100,000 jobs.

The lofty goals for the air hub are positively humble when compared to the country’s planned building of Neom, a giant, modern mega-city in the northwest part of Saudi Arabia. Believe it or not, it’s supposed to center on two parallel skyscrapers that will be 110 miles long, 500 meters tall and house 9 million people.