Via SchiffGold.com,

Festival and wedding buying boosted gold demand in India last month and the outlook looks strong moving forward.

The arrival of festivals and the wedding season coincide with a price pullback last month. This helped drive Indian retail demand higher according to the World Gold Council, pushing the local market back into a premium for most of the month.

October retail demand remained strong with the onset of festivals and weddings. The festivals of Dussehra and Dhanteras sparked fresh demand for physical gold towards the end of the month. … With a stable gold price before this date, demand received a boost from sales of jewelry (for weddings and everyday wear) as well as bar and coin purchases.

Moving forward, the WGC projects demand will remain healthy, supported by the ongoing wedding season. Growing consumer confidence in urban areas could also boost gold demand. But there could be some headwinds in rural areas due to lower crop production.

Considering the strong start to Q4 and the interplay between urban and rural demand in the months ahead, we expect overall retail demand to remain above pre-pandemic levels in the quarter, although possibly below that of 2021, at which time there was a huge boost from pent-up demand post-2020-2021 lockdowns.”

Investors also helped drive Indian gold demand higher. Indian gold ETFs charted inflows of  0.7 tons in October.  It was the second straight month Indian ETFs charted increases in gold holdings. This bucked the global trend of ETF outflows. According to the World Gold Council, total Indian ETG gold holdings to 39.2 tons by the end of October. Overall, Indian gold ETFs have seen small but meaningful net inflows of 1.6 tons year-to-date.

The Reserve Bank of India also bought more gold in October, increasing its holdings by another ton. According to the latest available data, the RBI’s total gold reserves now stand at 786.3 tons.

India ranks as the ninth largest gold-holding country in the world. Since resuming buying in late 2017, the Reserve Bank of India has purchased over 200 tons of gold. In August 2020, there were reports that the RBI was considering significantly raising its gold reserves.

India ranks as the second-largest gold-consuming country in the world, second only behind China, but the gold market has languished over the last couple of years. The pandemic crushed demand, particularly for gold jewelry. But even before the pandemic, record-high gold prices in rupee terms and government policy put a drag on the gold market. There were signs of a turnaround late last year and it continued through the first quarter of 2022. The second COVID-19 wave stalled the gold market’s recovery in India early in Q2, but it regained steam later in the year with strong retail demand and a surge in gold imports.

Indians traditionally buy and hold gold. Collectively, Indian households own an estimated 25,000 tons of gold and that number may be higher given the large black market in the country. The yellow metal is interwoven into the country’s marriage ceremonies and cultural rites. Indians also value gold as a store of wealth, especially in poor rural regions. Two-thirds of India’s gold demand comes from these areas, where most people live outside the official tax system.

Gold is not just a luxury in India. Even poor people buy gold in the Asian nation. According to an ICE 360 survey in 2018, one in every two households in India purchased gold within the last five years. Overall, 87% of households in the country own some amount of the yellow metal. Even households at the lowest income levels in India own some gold. According to the survey, more than 75% of families in the bottom 10% had managed to buy gold.

Gold served as a lifeline for many Indians during the pandemic.

The Indian government’s response to the first wave of COVID-19 ravaged the economy. As a result, many banks were reluctant to extend credit due to fear of defaults. In this tight lending environment, many Indians used their stashes of gold to secure loans. As Indians battled the second wave of COVID-19, many Indians sold gold outright in order to make ends meet.

Indians understand that gold tends to store value and that ultimately gold is money. If they have gold, they know they will be able to get the goods and services they need – even in the event of an economic meltdown. And while westerners may not embrace the cultural and religious aspects of the Indian love affair with gold, the economic reasons for their devotion to the yellow metal are every bit as applicable in places like the US.

Starbucks workers at more than 100 US stores plan to walk off the job Thursday in a labor action during one of the coffee giant’s busiest days of the year, WaPo reported. 

More than 2,000 members of the Starbucks Workers Union (SWU) in 25 states, covering 112 stores across the country, will be participating in what is called the “Red Cup Rebellion.”

The strike coincides with Starbucks’ annual Red Cup Day when free reusable cups are given to customers who purchase holiday drinks. Workers have said this day is one of the busiest of the year. 

In an Instagram post, SWU said:

“Starbucks Workers United is conducting a nationwide ULP Strike over the company’s refusal to bargain in good faith. Workers across this campaign are also calling for the company to fully staff our union stores, because we know that Short Staffing = Venti Wait Times. Starbucks thinks they can drag their feet in bargaining, and we’re here to show them we rebel against their tactics and we mean business – by shutting down theirs.” 

SWU represents approximately 7,000 employees at hundreds of stores, but that’s only a tiny fraction compared to the chain’s 70,000 workforce.  

“We unionized to fix a lot of problems with a job we really like,” Josie Serrano, a barista in Long Beach, Calif., told WaPo. 

Workers seek higher pay, better working conditions, more consistent schedules, and higher staffing levels. 

According to union leaders, Starbucks has countered the unionization effort by shuttering some stores. 

Serrano continued: “It’s frustrating that the company that hired us doesn’t want to work to find a happy medium. … We want to send a strong signal to the company that, ‘Hey, this is not something we’re playing around with anymore.'”

Here’s a map of stores on strike. 

“This is the first time unionized baristas have banded together across the country to disrupt Starbucks’s operations,” WaPo said. 

Workers from one store in Buffalo, New York, were the first to unionize about one year ago. Momentum has spread nationwide (read: here & here) this year as more than 300 stores in three dozen states have had union elections. Unionized stores only make up 3% of the 9,000 company-operated US stores. 

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

I’ve had this post in the back of my mind for years now.  But this week’s mid-terms have brought it to the forefront of my thinking.  

There are very few movie experiences I’ve had in my life that rival the first time I watched The Hunger Games.  So much of my reaction was due to where I was at the time and how, frankly, shitty my life was then.

It ranks for me right up there with seeing the Death Star blow up (age 10), to being rendered speechless for an hour after watching Full Metal Jacket (age 19) to sobbing uncontrollably for 40 minutes after a midnight showing of Schindler’s List (age 25).

I watched The Hunger Games for the first time while flat on my back broke in late 2012 by myself in the post-midnight dark, metaphorically and physically.

For 2+ hours I sat there in horror clutching a pillow because all I could see was my daughter needing a protector and knowing at that moment I wasn’t that person.  

But as raw as my reaction to it was that night, it was the exact thing I needed at that moment to pick myself and keep going.

So, the cynics in the audience can forgive me if they think me an old softy for falling so hard for a piece of what I can honestly look at as thinly-conceived allegory.

Sometimes timing is everything.  

When I put my economist’s hat back on, Suzanne Collins’ world is not well thought out.  It doesn’t hold up to deep scrutiny.  Most stories like this don’t and, honestly, they aren’t supposed to.

As a writer, however, I’m still bowled over with her daring to write the books in first-person, present tense. Between a story metaphorically so very true and this bit of technical prowess I have nothing but immense respect, one professional to another.

But as allegory, especially political allegory, The Hunger Games is uniquely powerful, addressing the fundamental evil of our society using our children as emotional blackmail to coerce our compliance to a system that is truly monstrous.

And this brings me to the mid-term elections.

This is our biannual Hunger Games and we all volunteer to be Tributes thinking our votes can change the system, rather than simply reinforce it by participating, even if only vicariously.

Now that the steal is in full swing and the Senate falling to the Democrats, they will run the table on their full agenda — end the filibuster, pack the court, UBI, Climate Change, on-demand abortions of 7-day old babies and gun control.

But the steal, which is real, is also equally supported by a broken and traumatized population so gaslit into believing things which are simply not true that it is easy to mask what’s happening.

This gaslighting has rendered our threat detectors so hyperactive that they’ve been honed razor sharp.

And on this knife edge rests all of our political calculus.

We’re now dealing with people supporting the Democrats because “they can’t even…” bring themselves to vote for Republicans over the ungrounded fear that one step back from the Progressive madness of Critical Rage Theory and/or pushing back against the normalization of child sexualization is tantamount to embracing Nazism.

But, sadly, this is where we are.

To the true believers, we still haven’t gone far enough.

But, they aren’t enough to move the needle as far as it did to give the Democrats a chance this election cycle.

What should scare you more is the ones in the middle, the so-called independents. Their fear has them cowed into abdicating their civil responsibility by prioritizing decadence over protecting their children.

In an environment this stressful too many have chosen fear of backsliding even an inch because that may lead to an over-correction.

The fear over Roe v. Wade going away has too many people immediately thinking all abortions will be banned everywhere, when that’s simply not happened nor will it.

Their arguments have devolved into allowing drag queens to twerk in a ball sack in front of eight-year-olds on the public dime lest one gay guy get harassed in a bar in rural Texas.

It is perverse in the extreme.

And that brings me back to The Hunger Games.

The punishment for the violence of the past was an original sin never to be wiped clean. The outlying districts sacrifice their children to reinforce the Capitol’s control.

All capital is sucked into The Capitol draining the Districts of not only their vitality but their dignity through the ritualistic humiliation of thinking one of them has a chance at winning the annual event.

But the districts farthest from The Capitol never win. It’s a once-in-a-generation event. Here Collins gets the economics of fiat currency correct. Those closest to the money printing get the lion’s share of the spoils.

And this ritualistic theft fuels a contempt for the unwashed as real as the deaths in the arena and a sympathy for them as fake as the capital which supports their empty lives. The decadence of The Capitol is a reflection of the giant wealth vacuum the entire society is designed around.

Which brings me back to the mid-terms.

With each election cycle the disparity between the rural and the urban centers grows wider. But it’s not just a disparity of ‘capital’ or wealth. It’s a disparity of morality.

Those in the cities voting for more funds from the public till believe they are entitled, ultimately, to the Tribute from the rural areas. But, without those rural communities producing the food and energy there is no urban center.

There are no gay rights or abortion debates.

There’s just the jungle.

And that’s what really drives the fear of the urbanites who voted blue even though they tell themselves red is even worse. They know that letting their collective boot off the neck of those they’ve tyrannized through the fake power of a corrupt democratic process leads to a future without them.

So, they expect everyone to show up for work, pay Tribute to the Capitol and shut their deplorable mouth-breathing pie-holes while they deny they’re stealing your voice, a voice you aren’t entitled to because well, they’re your betters.

Or, at least, that’s what I keep hearing on Twitter.

And that’s why Katniss’ story is our story, the example of one girl strong enough to understand the rules of the game so intuitively that when their fake story of a fake romance for a fake catharsis to feed the emotional infancy of a bunch of entitled fakers plays out to its Shakespearean end…

… the Capitol blinks and the illusion of its control falls away. And everyone knows it, fueling an anger, long seething which soon catches fire. I warned everyone don’t turn the silent majority into The Fremen.

Now there’s no turning back from it happening.

And I don’t think the odds will be in favor of the real enemies of the people.

*  *  *

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Just days ago, we reported that the UK was looking to raise more tax revenue from electric vehicles, shattering the years-long assumption that if you contributed to “helping the environment” by buying an EV, you’d be entitled to subsidies and tax credits.

Now, Japan appears to be following suit. 

The country’s internal affairs ministry is reportedly weighing whether or not to raise taxes on electric vehicles in order to make up for a shortfall in income from taxes on traditional gas powered cars, Bloomberg reported Thursday morning.

Currently, electric vehicle owners pay a flat fee of 25,000 yen per year to local governments, but the ministry is interested in potentially altering this framework for vehicles that have “higher output motors”, the report says. 

The ministry will reportedly ask the ruling coalition to “consider the change” for inclusion in the 2023 tax code, Bloomberg reports. Even then, the change could take several years to come into effect. 

Recall, we wrote back on November 5 that UK chancellor Jeremy Hunt is expected to put an electric vehicle excise tax in place by 2025-2026. 

This month’s Autumn Statement will include the measures, according to FT, who said people familiar with the road tax is part of a larger plan to address a fall in motoring tax revenues caused by the shift to EVs, which leave out fuel-related taxes.

Fuel duty raises about £35bn, but the Treasury has warned that a growing number of EVs on the road could cause this number to plunge by £2.1bn by 2026-27. Ergo, a new excise duty on EVs could take place by 2025-2026.

More than 1 million EVs on the roads of the UK could wind up being affected. As is the case globally, sales of EVs continue to accelerate, with about 15% of new vehicles sold so far this year moving away from traditional ICE power. 

How soon before the U.S. follows suit? 

Authored by Beth Brelje via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Democrat strategy of using mail-in ballots to vote played a pivotal role in last week’s election results. Pennsylvania Republicans are talking amongst themselves about how to react in the next election. Republicans have two views: get rid of mail-in voting—which seems unlikely with more elected Democrats in power—or learn how Democrats got an avalanche of mail-in votes and employ the same strategy.

The Epoch Times asked the Pennsylvania GOP to discuss the 2022 results and its strategy regarding mail-in ballots in future elections, but it chose not to participate in this story. Pennsylvania Democrats were also asked to comment on their mail-in strategy but did not respond.

In stump speeches and on social media, Pennsylvania Democrats actively encouraged voters to vote by mail in the days before the election. Often supporters would tweet at a candidate that they just mailed in their ballot.

A look at the numbers behind the election show just how much Democrats relied on mail-in voting.

Democrats Asked for More Mail-in Ballots

According to the Pennsylvania Department of State, 1,439,579 voters requested mail-in ballots statewide. Of those, 986,540, or 69 percent, were registered Democrats, and 303,438, or 21 percent, were Republicans. The rest were independents.

In 60 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties, 50 percent or more of the requested mail-in ballots were for Democrats. In all counties, less than half the mail-in ballot requests came from Republicans, and often far less. In 29 counties, 29 percent or fewer of the mail-in ballots requested went to Republicans.

When looking at individual counties, the disproportionate use of mail-in ballots by party is clear.

For example, in Philadelphia County, 165,980 mail-in ballots were requested, and of those, 86 percent went to Democrats and just 5 percent went to Republicans. That may not be surprising in a majority Democrat county like Philadelphia, which has 807,979 registered Democrats and just 120,949 registered Republicans, or in Democrat majority Allegheny County, which received 190,684 requests for mail-in ballots, 76 percent of which were Democrat and 15 percent were Republican.

Read more here…

Remember in September when the country was on the brink of a nationwide rail strike that almost froze critical transportation networks? 

A similar scenario could be nearing as workers of major freight rail companies have yet to settle on a new contract. 

Twelve rail unions representing 115,000 workers must ratify a new contract to prevent an economically devastating strike by early December. If one union disagrees, all other unions must honor the labor action. 

So far, seven unions have voted to ratify the tentative agreement. Three other unions representing 60,000 workers have voted it down. And two of the largest unions, representing 60,000 locomotive engineers and train conductors, are voting on the deal. 

CNBC’s Lori Ann LaRocco said if the Transportation Division of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers (SMART-TD) and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET), the two largest unions, “do not ratify the deal — they could start striking December 9th — following a mandatory cooling off period.” 

“As of right now, even if these two unions vote to ratify the deal, we’re still looking at a strike — why? — because three unions have already voted not to ratify the deal,” LaRocco said. 

Here’s more from LaRocco on the possibility of rail strikes next month. She said the first key date for investors to watch is a vote on Monday. 

Railroad unions have voted not to ratify a tentative deal, making a December strike even more likely. @CNBC‘s @loriannlarocco reports. #RailroadStrike pic.twitter.com/XLojBaWsrq

— Worldwide Exchange (@CNBCWEX) November 17, 2022

American consumers and manufacturers could be greatly impacted if there was a strike, and it would behoove members of Congress to step in if there’s an impending sign of labor action to prevent a new crisis. 

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

As mortgage rates have risen this year, the demand for home purchases has fallen. That has spelled trouble for the home construction business. Homebuilder confidence dropped for the 10th straight month in October. The decline in builder sentiment reflects what economist Ian Shepherdson describes as “housing … in free fall. So far, most of the hit is in sales volumes, but prices are now falling too, and they have a long way to go.” The University of Michigan’s index of buying conditions for homes has fallen to the lowest level since 1982. 

Meanwhile, as of this week, mortgage demand for home purchases is “down 41% from a year ago and close to a seven-year low.” 

Naturally, this has been a sizable drag on the sale of newly constructed homes. According to the Census Bureau, new single-family houses sold in the US in September were down by 17 percent, year over year. They were also down by 10.9 percent from the previous month. Overall, sales of new homes are down 42 percent from the peak in August of 2020. 

Nor does it look like construction of multifamily housing is likely to make up for the decline in single-family. Although it might stand to reason that a decline in demand for purchase housing could lead to more building of rental housing, that doesn’t appear to be the case. According to Housing Wire, the “historic multifamily housing construction boom is already fading.” This is partly due to the fact that rising interest rates are not limited to mortgages for home buyers, and “those same interest rates pushing would-be homebuyers to the sidelines are also hurting [muiltifamily] developers.” 

It’s getting more expensive to borrow money up and down the food chain in housing, and that’s slowing down new construction of both for-purchase and for-purchase housing. 

For anyone concerned about the availability and affordability of housing, this is bad news. The US is currently in the midst of a housing shortage in the sense that builders aren’t building enough to keep up with population growth. And now, it appears that the short-lived boom in construction that launched in recent years will soon be over. 

The combination of the boom-bust cycle, coupled with mounting government regulations driving up the cost of construction will further drive up the cost of living for ordinary Americans. 

A Tale of Bust and Boom

New housing construction has always been sensitive to business cycles. Over the past 60 years, it’s not hard to find annual swings in construction growth ranging from negative twenty percent to positive twenty percent. 

Source: US Census Bureau.

Moreover, the negative swing on housing construction in the years surrounding the 2008 financial crises were especially severe. Construction began to head downward in 2006, with a drop of 12 percent. This was followed by three years of even bigger declines, culminating in a 38-percent drop in 2009. 

New housing construction did not return to the post-1990 average again until 2020. 

In other words, the end of the housing bubble in 2009 had an enormous impact on the industry and led to more than a decade of below-average home production. In spite of enormous amounts of new money creation, stimulus, and ultra-low interest rates, the home construction industry did not bounce back. As noted in National Public Radio earlier this year, the slow pace of new housing construction did not start with the current economic cycle but dates to an earlier easy-money-induced bubble:

[T]he roots of the problem go back much further — to the housing bubble collapse in 2008.

“What I call a bloodbath happened,” says [builder Emerson] Claus. It was the worst housing market crash since the Great Depression. Many homebuilders went out of business. Claus was building houses in Florida when the bottom fell out.

“A lot of my tradespeople found other work, went and got retrained for new jobs in law enforcement, all sorts of jobs,” says Claus. “So the workforce was somewhat decimated.”

A few years later, as Americans started buying more homes again, building stayed below normal. And that slump in building continued for more than a decade. Meanwhile, the largest generation, the millennials, started to settle down and buy houses.

This trend was then only made worse by the shipping and logistical bottlenecks brought on by the government-imposed covid lockdowns. These have meant a shortage of lumber, appliances, electrical equipment, and cabinetry. The National Association of Home Builders concluded in June “shortages of materials are now more widespread than at any time since NAHB began tracking the issue in the 1990s.”

The Role of Monetary “Stimulus”

Monetary inflation has fueled shortages in both labor and supplies as stimulus programs have driven demand by both businesses and consumers to new heights. Yet, since this demand is based on the appearance of newly printed money, and not on rising real wealth or productivity, we’re seeing more demand for a stagnating supply of goods and services. 

The result has been less building even as population has continued to grow. The result, of course, has been a higher cost of living—just as we would expect from an inflationary boom. 

The data on home starts and population backs up the anecdotal evidence. For example, if we look at annual housing starts totals the trend has been downward since 1960. Beginning in 1983, every new trough in the housing construction downcycle has been lower than the one before it. 

Source: US Census Bureau.

This has only been slightly mitigated by slowing population growth, and we have seen an upward trend in the number of new US residents per new housing start, even as the size of the US household has fallen. In other words, the number of new residents per new housing start has grown over time. From the 1960s through the 1980s, the average number of new Americans per new housing start was approximately 1.6. Since 1990, on the other hand, the average has been 2.2. Since 2008, the average has been 2.5. So, there are progressively fewer and fewer new housing starts per person. 

Source: US Census Bureau.

After new housing construction began to collapse in 2006, the number of new residents per new housing unit surged to nearly 5, a new high. 

On the other hand, it is true that in 2020 and 2021, new housing construction reached the highest levels seen since 2007. Moreover, the gap between new residents and new housing was eliminated. This was thanks to a sizable decline in new population growth created by covid-era border closures and a fall in fertility rates. Thus, the number of new residents per housing unit then collapsed below 1 for the first time in decades.

But, this trend is unlikely to continue since “after a construction boom in the second half of 2020 and 2021, the home building sector is contracting.” Population growth is also returning to more normal rates. The gap between new population and new units will already be growing again in 2023. It does not look like boom of the last 18 months will be enough to reverse the worsening situation in housing production. 

What can be done to reverse the trend? Last month, we explored some ways that state and local regulation has driven up the cost of construction, thus limiting the total number of units produced. Many of these regulations will only continue to push up prices while reducing affordability for first-time buyers. 

It’s also important to note the effects of repeated boom-bust cycles on total housing production.  One might be tempted to assume that new rounds of monetary stimulus—say, the quantitative easing of the past decade—would easily reverse a collapse in housing construction and will bring new highs in housing production. That is not what has happened, however. Rather, relentless monetary stimulus since 2008 has not been sufficient to address the effects of malinvestment and regulatory costs over the past 20 years. Over the past six months, new housing starts have flatlined compared to 2021, and we may even see housing starts end the year down in 2022. The result is a continuation of an ongoing decline in housing production. Not even the runaway money printing of the past two years has been enough to bring home construction back to what was more normal before the housing bubble and resulting financial crisis. 

If you said one week ago that the COP27 virtue signaling boondoggle in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh would be an epic failure, pat yourself on the back: it was. As Argus media reports, a draft of the COP 27 UN climate summit cover decision released today reiterates many of the Glasgow Climate Pact goals agreed at Cop 26 last year, and, as expected, does not mention a broader fossil fuel phase down.

The document repeats a request made at COP26 for all countries to revisit and strengthen their 2030 nationally determined contributions (NDCs) — countries’ climate pledges — to align with the UN’s 2015 Paris Agreement, and to update their long term strategies. The Paris Agreement aims to limit global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and ideally to 1.5°C. Only problem: there is no mandate on how to do it, especially since even Europe is backsliding on its anti-fossil fuel promises and has restarted coal plants (not to mention record coal output in China).

Only around 25 countries updated their NDCs before COP27, and a few more did so during the summit, but it is still not enough to meet the 1.5°C target. The document says the emission gap between pledges and what is needed to hit the Paris Agreement target represent “a grave concern”.

The document reiterates the “urgency of action to keep 1.5°C in reach”, but during informal consultations at the start of this week parties were unable to reach agreement on inclusion of stronger language to limit global warming to 1.5°C. This would be more ambitious than the Paris Agreement.

It’s been 27 COPs and we still have no declaration to phase out fossil fuels.

Fossil fuel lobbying is a powerful force but the science is clear. We cannot keep expanding oil & gas!

— Sophia Kianni (@SophiaKianni) November 17, 2022

And while the G20 summit of major economies, which also concluded this week, strengthened commitments, saying the group “resolves to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C”, which could be viewed as an encouraging sign, the COP27 text still makes no reference or pledge to a fossil fuel phase down, language pushed by India at the start of the summit and that has gained support, although the EU stressed it should not distract from efforts on phasing down coal power generation, as agreed at Cop 26.

But language on coal and fossil fuel subsidies does appear in this version of the cover agreement, echoing the Glasgow text. The new draft stresses the “importance of enhancing the share of renewable energy in the energy mix”, and “encourages the continued efforts to accelerate measures towards the phase down of unabated coal power and rationalise inefficient fossil fuel subsidies”. The language on fossil fuel subsidies differs from last year’s text, focusing on rationalising rather than just “accelerating efforts towards” their phase-out.

The energy and cost of living crises have put efforts to phase out fossil fuel subsidies at risk. Subsidies are likely to increase this year, partly because of higher energy prices arising from Russia’s war in Ukraine. The commitment in the draft Cop 27 text still does not set a deadline for a phase-out of inefficient subsidies. So far only G7 countries have one, for 2025.

Pan-African Parliament president Fortune Charumbira said today that the issue of fossil fuels cannot come “before other major commitments are delivered”. Fossil fuels will remain a reality in terms of use until “we have financed the alternatives”, he said.

On loss and damage, the document does not mention the creation of a new facility, but it welcomes the inclusion on the Cop 27 agenda of discussions on a new funding arrangement. Loss and damage refers to the destructive effects of global warming, and is a priority for many vulnerable countries experiencing extreme climate-related events such as storms and rising sea levels.

The draft decision “expresses deep concern towards the significant financial costs associated with the loss and damage for developing countries” and “reiterates the urgency of scaling up action and support”. Many countries and observers said Cop will be a failure if parties fail to agree on the creation of a loss and damage fund this year, and progress on the issue could be critical to move forward with other negotiations.

Perhaps the only good thing to come out of the COP27 is that while everyone’s favorite attention who… er, seeking woman, Greta Tunberg, boycotted it because it did not place her on a pedestal and accused the summit of being an exercise in Greenwashing (for once she actually is right), the summit which took place in Egypt unveiled to the world the new and improved Greta 2.0: meet Sophia Kianni, 20-years-old, who is an advisor to the UN Secretary General on Climate.

“Young people are definitely shaping outcomes here at COP27,” Kianni told BBC even as Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg skipped the Sharm el-Sheikh meeting, calling it a forum for “greenwashing“.

Before and after climate change. Gotta dress down… and maybe a face switch…? pic.twitter.com/pa2CX36kk6

— Kai (@KaiFund) November 17, 2022

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,

San Francisco has launched a new pilot program offering guaranteed monthly income to a number of low-income transgender residents of the city, Mayor London Breed announced on Wednesday.

Known as the Guaranteed Income for Transgender People (G.I.F.T.) program, the new plan will provide “economically marginalized transgender people with unrestricted, monthly guaranteed income as a way to combat poverty our most impacted community members face,” according to its official website.

Specifically, the website states that the monthly guaranteed income of $1,200 a month for up to 18 months will be granted to 55 low-income transgender residents.

Those residents will receive the funds via a pre-loaded debit Visa card which will be reloaded every month.

The program is being run by the Transgender District, which was founded by three black transgender women, and Lyon-Martin Community Health Services, in partnership with municipal city departments in the City and County of San Francisco.

Applications Close in December

Applications for the program are open from Nov. 15 to Dec. 15, 2022, and applicants must be age 18 years or over and identify as transgender, nonbinary, gender non-conforming, or intersex.

Individuals who apply for the program must also not be receiving more than $600 a month in income, must be living in the City and County of San Francisco, and must be willing to complete a survey every three months aimed at helping to improve the program.

The program will prioritize enrollment of “transgender, non-binary, gender non-conforming, and intersex people who are also Black, indigenous, or people of color (BIPOC), experiencing homelessness, living with disabilities and chronic illnesses, youth and elders, monolingual Spanish-speakers, and those who are legally vulnerable such as TGI people who are undocumented, engaging in survival sex trades, ​or are formerly incarcerated,” the website states.

The program will run for 18 months from January 2023 to June 2024 and participants will not have to report to officials exactly what they are spending the money on.

Participants will also receive gender-transition treatment, mental health care, and an array of other benefits, according to multiple reports.

Inflation Hits American Families Hard

The program comes as inflation has soared across the country, impacting American households, which are facing increasingly costly energy bills and having to fork out more for everything from food to accommodation.

A report from The Heritage Foundation published on Nov. 10 found that working families have lost $6,100 in real annual income under “Bidenflation.”

“Our Guaranteed Income Programs allow us to help our residents when they need it most as part of our City’s economic recovery and our commitment to creating a more just city for all,” Breed, a Democrat, said in a statement.

“We know that our trans communities experience much higher rates of poverty and discrimination, so this program will target support to lift individuals in this community up.”

This is not the first time that San Francisco has launched programs aimed at low-income residents.

Last year, the city rolled out a Guaranteed Income Pilot Program for artists aimed at “dismantling structural racism and oppression” in “the everyday lives of artists of color, their families, neighborhoods, and communities.”

In 2020, Breed announced the launch of a pilot program providing a basic income to black and pacific islander women during pregnancy.

According to a 2015 U.S. survey (pdf) of 27,715 transgender people across the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and U.S. military bases overseas, 29 percent of respondents reported living in poverty.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is doing some belated backtracking after his prior false and highly dangerous claims that Russia launched a missile attack against NATO member Poland, killing two Polish citizens Tuesday. 

As of Thursday Zelensky says he’s not sure about what happened. “I don’t know 100 percent — I think the world also doesn’t 100 percent know what happened,” he said. “We can’t say specifically that this was the air defense of Ukraine.”

This after everyone from NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg to Poland’s president to US President Joe Biden assessed it was most likely a Ukrainian anti-air missile that errantly struck the Polish border town of Przewodow. A flurry of accusations from Western officials and media ensued, with fears dominating Tuesday into Wednesday of the potential to spark WWIII. 

“Zelensky previously insisted that the rocket was not Ukrainian and wanted evidence if Ukraine’s air defense was responsible,” The Hill writes. “But he softened his position at Bloomberg’s New Economy Forum in Singapore on Thursday, saying that Ukrainian military leaders told him that the crater from the blast site suggested that a Ukrainian anti-air rocket could not be solely responsible.”

According to more via The Hill: 

Polish President Andrzej Duda said on Wednesday that it was “highly probable” that the strike resulted from Ukrainian air defense and appeared to be an accident. 

Zelensky said in the interview that he was “sure” that it was a Russian missile but also knew that Ukraine launched weapons to defend against the Russian attack. 

Recall that Tuesday night, almost immediately following the explosion on the Polish border and without evidence, Zelensky had demanded “action” from the West over the supposed brazen aggression against a NATO member. 

“Hitting NATO territory with missiles… This is a Russian missile attack on collective security! This is a really significant escalation. Action is needed,” Zelensky said his Tuesday night video address.

In referencing “collective security” of NATO he was attempting to convince Brussels that military intervention was needed against Russia in defense of Poland. But now it seems with world opinion diverging from Ukraine’s blanket assertions for once, Zelensky is slowly backing off his initial claims.

If we needed more proof that Kiev is trying to embroil US and NATO in direct, possibly nuclear war, with Russia it’s these reckless, false claims by @ZelenskyyUa. In fact no Russian missiles hit Poland. As even NATO governments admit, these were Ukrainian https://t.co/GpZv1qtMTW https://t.co/GYpVVxhh1E

— Ali Abunimah (@AliAbunimah) November 16, 2022

CNN subsequently cited Ukrainian military sources who are belatedly admitting the likelihood that it was their own missile. “The Ukrainian military told the US and allies that it attempted to intercept a Russian missile in that timeframe and near the location of the Poland missile strike, a US official told CNN,” the report says. “It’s not clear that this air defense missile is the same missile that struck Poland, but this information has informed the ongoing US assessment of the strike.”