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The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse

To say we live in difficult times is not to belabor the obvious or be trite.  The four horsemen of our apocalypse are well known.  The pandemic is still with us in a profound way, and many developing countries do not have access to sufficient vaccines…

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To say we live in difficult times is not to belabor the obvious or be trite.  The four horsemen of our apocalypse are well known.  

The pandemic is still with us in a profound way, and many developing countries do not have access to sufficient vaccines to inoculate a significant part of their population.  They may not until next year.  Meanwhile, the US and Europe debate the protocols of a third jab. Unfortunately, Mother Nature is not waiting for humans to get their act together.  New variants, like Mu, which was first detected in Colombia and shows "a constellation of mutations" that may overcome the immunity response of the vaccines, are emerging. Mu has been officially recognized and is being tracked by the World Health Organization.  

Next to the public health crisis rides the bizarro world of finance.  There is a widely shared sense that something is profoundly wrong and ultimately unsustainable.  There are around $14.5 trillion of negatively yielding bonds from Europe and Japan. The ECB has lent funds to member banks at minus 1% if they re-lend the money.  The flood of capital has seen credit spreads narrow.  The price-discovery process is dysfunctional. Savers get paid little (and below zero in real terms) to lend to most major countries and are not rewarded commensurately for taking on more risk.  Central government deficits have become the "normal" feature in high-income countries since the Great Depression.  Central banks' balance sheets emerged as a policy tool in the Great Financial Crisis.  It never fully left, and it appears now the struggle is to normalize it.  Valuations in other asset markets, including equities and house prices, especially in the Anglo-American countries and parts of Europe, are stretched.  New assets, like Bitcoin, appear to be based on nothing but a limited supply generated by a computer algorithm and non-fungible tokens, are the rave.  

The next horseman bears some relation to the world of finance, but it was independently sired.  The disparity of wealth and income is powerful.  It acts as a corrosive force, weakening bonds of social trust and undermining the legitimacy of the political and economic elite.  The social contract lies in ruins.  Parents in the US and other high-income countries can no longer be confident that their children will live better than they do.  College education can cost more than a house in the US and not lead to the upward class mobility of earlier generations.  If negative interest rates mean that capital cannot reproduce itself,  then the disparity of wealth and income is such that the middle class is struggling to reproduce itself.   The pandemic underscores the fact that poverty itself is a comorbidity.  Indeed, wealthy people have better access to health care, nutrition, and education.  It is hardly surprising that longevity itself is a class issue. 

The fourth horseman is the largest and most potent threat.  It goes by the sanitized name "climate change," which does not do justice to the radical changes we are only on the cusp of now.  We have known about it for a generation.  Initially, the focus was on conservation and the limited resources for an increasing population, like Limits to Growth (1972), an updated-Malthusian critique.  But the thrust morphed, and in 1980, the Green Party was founded in Germany, which may participate in the next national coalition government.  A noted American ecologist, Barry Commoner, helped launch the Citizens' Party and ran for president of the United States in 1980.   The warming temperatures, rising sea levels, and greater weather volatility are not unexpected.  It is the pace of change that is surprising.  The UN's latest report (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) warns that mitigation efforts need to be more ambitious.  The extinction rate of animal and plant life puts our era in the sixth place in earth's history.   This horseman can reshape continents and dramatically alter coastlines.  Roughly 40% of the human species presently lives within 100 kilometers of an ocean.  Let that sink in.  

However, as powerful and notable as the four horsemen are, it is the fifth that brings us here today.  What is most notable about it is its stealth.  The other horsemen are well known, discussed, and debated. Yet, it seems that only a specialized audience even recognizes the fifth one.  It does not have a name, but if it did,  it might be called Eris, after the Greek goddess of strife, or Gungnir, after Odin's spear. This horseman announces the waning of nuclear deterrence and the risk of a new arms race.  It is about diverting resources that may be needed to defend against the other horsemen and endangering life as we know it.  

From a high level, the achievement of nuclear stability can be understood as the preservation of second-strike capability.  The first strike is the initial attack. The second strike is retaliatory.  The capability of it deters the first strike, hence mutually assured destruction.  One consideration that follows from this is that defensive weapons that could deny an adversary second-strike capability would be destabilizing.  At first, this was not a problem because it was beyond the scientific capabilities of the Americans or Soviets.  And when defenses began being more practical, the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty was signed between the US and the Soviet Union, limiting the number and scope of the deployment of defense systems.  

Things change.  The rising nuclear threat seemed to come from rogue states (e.g., North Korea and Iran) and possibly non-state entities.  For this kind of threat, a missile shield could be desirable but risks undermining the stability of the second strike.  Technology continued to evolve, and Israel's Iron Dome has demonstrated its efficacy for various kinds of projectiles (e.g., mortar shells, unmanned aerial vehicles, rockets).  Some reports give it an 85-90% success rate since the first deployment in 2011. Moreover, the technology has been exported.  It has, for example, been deployed and helped defend Saudi oil pipelines.  

Technology evolves.  At first, the precision of the missiles was lacking.  But if the idea is to signal to the adversary that one will have sufficient resources after absorbing the hit from their strike that can destroy large population centers (Mutual Assured Destruction), then the missile's accuracy may not be so important.   If a missile is off even a few miles from its target, it may not make much of a difference.  Military strategists call this counter-value targeting.   However, technology has developed remarkably, and the precision capability allows for a different strategy:  counter-force.  Consider being able to target enemy missiles in their silos.  

Now, put these things together: The US withdrew from the ABM treaty in 2002 and continued to develop missile defenses. A  few months ago, it tested one of the two Iron Dome defense batteries in the United States purchased from Israel.  The idea is to integrate it into the US defense array but also possibly be portable.  Under President Trump, the US successfully tested the "Ground-based Midcourse Defense" system, the only US missile defense system built specifically to address Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM)-class of threats.  When the defensive capabilities are joined by the precision and number of US missiles and warheads, its first strike capability can be daunting.

Leaving aside the particulars about Russia and China's current leaders, simply assume rational actors, at least as the base case.  What kind of response is likely?  What would we advise if the US found itself in a similar position?  

The country in the subordinate position would use asymmetrical warfare, like George Washington and the Continental Army did against the British.  It is an often-used tactic by the militarily inferior position. It was deployed by the Israelis against the British and is used by the Palestineans against the Israelis.  It is time-tested and is even recounted in Bible stories.  If an adversary can dominate the top of the escalation ladder, one may be tempted to dominate lower rungs of the ladder and seek marginal advantages that will not be raised to the nuclear level, like North Vietnam did and North Korea continues to do.   

The enhanced first-strike capability of an adversary would also argue in favor of building more missiles to bolster the chances that a sufficient number survive to make a credible second-strike threat.   It cannot really be unexpected that China is building an estimated 250 nuclear missile silos across three locations.  Silos are not missiles, and there may be multiple silos per ICBM like the US maintains.   One tactic would be to have some decoy silos.  Another would be to move the missiles around, like a shell game, so the precise location may not be known, thereby preserving second-strike capability.  Yet, another response that does not preclude the others is to hide the second-strike capability, such as on quiet submarines or perhaps, in orbit.   

While the number of missiles is an important metric, remember that a single missile can carry multiple warheads, and each warhead can be aimed at a different target.  The Federation of American Scientists estimates that China has about 350 warheads, while the US and Russia have 4000 warheads. China may be seeking military power commensurate with its considerable economic heft.  It may be watching the rise of India's nuclear capability.  As often seems the case, Beijing's policies could be aimed at achieving more than one objective.  Assuming rational actors, the US absolute and relative capability can only provide additional incentive to modernize and expand China's nuclear and conventional capability.  

There are many ways the Xi has deviated from the course that China had appeared to be on since the late 1970s and Deng Xiaoping's political and economic reforms.    It previously had a minimum deterrence strategy, shy of the Mutual Assured Destruction level but still quite powerful. In this way, it was like France's Force de Frappe.  It might not have been able to kill the bear, but it could tear off one of its legs, leaving it vulnerable to internal convulsions or external pressure.  Presently, France is estimated to have about 300 warheads, which is sufficient to raise the cost of a first strike to apparently unacceptable levels. Xi may have decided that the given the technological developments of precision-guided weapons and defense capability, even a minimum deterrence needs to be larger. 

America, NATO, and some of China's neighbors are worried about the modernization and expansion of China's military capability.  The concern is only heightened by Beijing's continued aggressiveness in the region and not just in Taiwan's airspace.  It is perceived to be the neighborhood bully. China's build-up will be used to justify more military spending in the US and in others in the Asia Pacific region.  

Our species' ability to hurt its own and foul its own nest seems to be nearly boundless and unique in the animal kingdom.  Every era has its own threats and challenges.  Perhaps to be aware of them is also uniquely human.  Today's horsemen shake the very root of our civilization.  Public health and class mobility had been taken for granted in a way that they cannot be anymore.  We live in a Gilded Age., which is showing its age.  The vast amount of negative-yielding bonds is like an alarm warning that something is wrong.  It has become part of the white noise we tune out.  Amidst the elevated state of distrust and nationalist impulses, the fifth horseman of the apocalypse strides and pulls the carpet from underneath where nuclear deterrence stood for a generation.    


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International

Beloved mall retailer files Chapter 7 bankruptcy, will liquidate

The struggling chain has given up the fight and will close hundreds of stores around the world.

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It has been a brutal period for several popular retailers. The fallout from the covid pandemic and a challenging economic environment have pushed numerous chains into bankruptcy with Tuesday Morning, Christmas Tree Shops, and Bed Bath & Beyond all moving from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation.

In all three of those cases, the companies faced clear financial pressures that led to inventory problems and vendors demanding faster, or even upfront payment. That creates a sort of inevitability.

Related: Beloved retailer finds life after bankruptcy, new famous owner

When a retailer faces financial pressure it sets off a cycle where vendors become wary of selling them items. That leads to barren shelves and no ability for the chain to sell its way out of its financial problems. 

Once that happens bankruptcy generally becomes the only option. Sometimes that means a Chapter 11 filing which gives the company a chance to negotiate with its creditors. In some cases, deals can be worked out where vendors extend longer terms or even forgive some debts, and banks offer an extension of loan terms.

In other cases, new funding can be secured which assuages vendor concerns or the company might be taken over by its vendors. Sometimes, as was the case with David's Bridal, a new owner steps in, adds new money, and makes deals with creditors in order to give the company a new lease on life.

It's rare that a retailer moves directly into Chapter 7 bankruptcy and decides to liquidate without trying to find a new source of funding.

Mall traffic has varied depending upon the type of mall.

Image source: Getty Images

The Body Shop has bad news for customers  

The Body Shop has been in a very public fight for survival. Fears began when the company closed half of its locations in the United Kingdom. That was followed by a bankruptcy-style filing in Canada and an abrupt closure of its U.S. stores on March 4.

"The Canadian subsidiary of the global beauty and cosmetics brand announced it has started restructuring proceedings by filing a Notice of Intention (NOI) to Make a Proposal pursuant to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (Canada). In the same release, the company said that, as of March 1, 2024, The Body Shop US Limited has ceased operations," Chain Store Age reported.

A message on the company's U.S. website shared a simple message that does not appear to be the entire story.

"We're currently undergoing planned maintenance, but don't worry we're due to be back online soon."

That same message is still on the company's website, but a new filing makes it clear that the site is not down for maintenance, it's down for good.

The Body Shop files for Chapter 7 bankruptcy

While the future appeared bleak for The Body Shop, fans of the brand held out hope that a savior would step in. That's not going to be the case. 

The Body Shop filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in the United States.

"The US arm of the ethical cosmetics group has ceased trading at its 50 outlets. On Saturday (March 9), it filed for Chapter 7 insolvency, under which assets are sold off to clear debts, putting about 400 jobs at risk including those in a distribution center that still holds millions of dollars worth of stock," The Guardian reported.

After its closure in the United States, the survival of the brand remains very much in doubt. About half of the chain's stores in the United Kingdom remain open along with its Australian stores. 

The future of those stores remains very much in doubt and the chain has shared that it needs new funding in order for them to continue operating.

The Body Shop did not respond to a request for comment from TheStreet.   

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Government

Are Voters Recoiling Against Disorder?

Are Voters Recoiling Against Disorder?

Authored by Michael Barone via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The headlines coming out of the Super…

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Are Voters Recoiling Against Disorder?

Authored by Michael Barone via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The headlines coming out of the Super Tuesday primaries have got it right. Barring cataclysmic changes, Donald Trump and Joe Biden will be the Republican and Democratic nominees for president in 2024.

(Left) President Joe Biden delivers remarks on canceling student debt at Culver City Julian Dixon Library in Culver City, Calif., on Feb. 21, 2024. (Right) Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump stands on stage during a campaign event at Big League Dreams Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nev., on Jan. 27, 2024. (Mario Tama/Getty Images; David Becker/Getty Images)

With Nikki Haley’s withdrawal, there will be no more significantly contested primaries or caucuses—the earliest both parties’ races have been over since something like the current primary-dominated system was put in place in 1972.

The primary results have spotlighted some of both nominees’ weaknesses.

Donald Trump lost high-income, high-educated constituencies, including the entire metro area—aka the Swamp. Many but by no means all Haley votes there were cast by Biden Democrats. Mr. Trump can’t afford to lose too many of the others in target states like Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Majorities and large minorities of voters in overwhelmingly Latino counties in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley and some in Houston voted against Joe Biden, and even more against Senate nominee Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas).

Returns from Hispanic precincts in New Hampshire and Massachusetts show the same thing. Mr. Biden can’t afford to lose too many Latino votes in target states like Arizona and Georgia.

When Mr. Trump rode down that escalator in 2015, commentators assumed he’d repel Latinos. Instead, Latino voters nationally, and especially the closest eyewitnesses of Biden’s open-border policy, have been trending heavily Republican.

High-income liberal Democrats may sport lawn signs proclaiming, “In this house, we believe ... no human is illegal.” The logical consequence of that belief is an open border. But modest-income folks in border counties know that flows of illegal immigrants result in disorder, disease, and crime.

There is plenty of impatience with increased disorder in election returns below the presidential level. Consider Los Angeles County, America’s largest county, with nearly 10 million people, more people than 40 of the 50 states. It voted 71 percent for Mr. Biden in 2020.

Current returns show county District Attorney George Gascon winning only 21 percent of the vote in the nonpartisan primary. He’ll apparently face Republican Nathan Hochman, a critic of his liberal policies, in November.

Gascon, elected after the May 2020 death of counterfeit-passing suspect George Floyd in Minneapolis, is one of many county prosecutors supported by billionaire George Soros. His policies include not charging juveniles as adults, not seeking higher penalties for gang membership or use of firearms, and bringing fewer misdemeanor cases.

The predictable result has been increased car thefts, burglaries, and personal robberies. Some 120 assistant district attorneys have left the office, and there’s a backlog of 10,000 unprosecuted cases.

More than a dozen other Soros-backed and similarly liberal prosecutors have faced strong opposition or have left office.

St. Louis prosecutor Kim Gardner resigned last May amid lawsuits seeking her removal, Milwaukee’s John Chisholm retired in January, and Baltimore’s Marilyn Mosby was defeated in July 2022 and convicted of perjury in September 2023. Last November, Loudoun County, Virginia, voters (62 percent Biden) ousted liberal Buta Biberaj, who declined to prosecute a transgender student for assault, and in June 2022 voters in San Francisco (85 percent Biden) recalled famed radical Chesa Boudin.

Similarly, this Tuesday, voters in San Francisco passed ballot measures strengthening police powers and requiring treatment of drug-addicted welfare recipients.

In retrospect, it appears the Floyd video, appearing after three months of COVID-19 confinement, sparked a frenzied, even crazed reaction, especially among the highly educated and articulate. One fatal incident was seen as proof that America’s “systemic racism” was worse than ever and that police forces should be defunded and perhaps abolished.

2020 was “the year America went crazy,” I wrote in January 2021, a year in which police funding was actually cut by Democrats in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Denver. A year in which young New York Times (NYT) staffers claimed they were endangered by the publication of Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R-Ark.) opinion article advocating calling in military forces if necessary to stop rioting, as had been done in Detroit in 1967 and Los Angeles in 1992. A craven NYT publisher even fired the editorial page editor for running the article.

Evidence of visible and tangible discontent with increasing violence and its consequences—barren and locked shelves in Manhattan chain drugstores, skyrocketing carjackings in Washington, D.C.—is as unmistakable in polls and election results as it is in daily life in large metropolitan areas. Maybe 2024 will turn out to be the year even liberal America stopped acting crazy.

Chaos and disorder work against incumbents, as they did in 1968 when Democrats saw their party’s popular vote fall from 61 percent to 43 percent.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Sat, 03/09/2024 - 23:20

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Government

Veterans Affairs Kept COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate In Place Without Evidence

Veterans Affairs Kept COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate In Place Without Evidence

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The…

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Veterans Affairs Kept COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate In Place Without Evidence

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) reviewed no data when deciding in 2023 to keep its COVID-19 vaccine mandate in place.

Doses of a COVID-19 vaccine in Washington in a file image. (Jacquelyn Martin/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

VA Secretary Denis McDonough said on May 1, 2023, that the end of many other federal mandates “will not impact current policies at the Department of Veterans Affairs.”

He said the mandate was remaining for VA health care personnel “to ensure the safety of veterans and our colleagues.”

Mr. McDonough did not cite any studies or other data. A VA spokesperson declined to provide any data that was reviewed when deciding not to rescind the mandate. The Epoch Times submitted a Freedom of Information Act for “all documents outlining which data was relied upon when establishing the mandate when deciding to keep the mandate in place.”

The agency searched for such data and did not find any.

The VA does not even attempt to justify its policies with science, because it can’t,” Leslie Manookian, president and founder of the Health Freedom Defense Fund, told The Epoch Times.

“The VA just trusts that the process and cost of challenging its unfounded policies is so onerous, most people are dissuaded from even trying,” she added.

The VA’s mandate remains in place to this day.

The VA’s website claims that vaccines “help protect you from getting severe illness” and “offer good protection against most COVID-19 variants,” pointing in part to observational data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that estimate the vaccines provide poor protection against symptomatic infection and transient shielding against hospitalization.

There have also been increasing concerns among outside scientists about confirmed side effects like heart inflammation—the VA hid a safety signal it detected for the inflammation—and possible side effects such as tinnitus, which shift the benefit-risk calculus.

President Joe Biden imposed a slate of COVID-19 vaccine mandates in 2021. The VA was the first federal agency to implement a mandate.

President Biden rescinded the mandates in May 2023, citing a drop in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations. His administration maintains the choice to require vaccines was the right one and saved lives.

“Our administration’s vaccination requirements helped ensure the safety of workers in critical workforces including those in the healthcare and education sectors, protecting themselves and the populations they serve, and strengthening their ability to provide services without disruptions to operations,” the White House said.

Some experts said requiring vaccination meant many younger people were forced to get a vaccine despite the risks potentially outweighing the benefits, leaving fewer doses for older adults.

By mandating the vaccines to younger people and those with natural immunity from having had COVID, older people in the U.S. and other countries did not have access to them, and many people might have died because of that,” Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine on leave from Harvard Medical School, told The Epoch Times previously.

The VA was one of just a handful of agencies to keep its mandate in place following the removal of many federal mandates.

“At this time, the vaccine requirement will remain in effect for VA health care personnel, including VA psychologists, pharmacists, social workers, nursing assistants, physical therapists, respiratory therapists, peer specialists, medical support assistants, engineers, housekeepers, and other clinical, administrative, and infrastructure support employees,” Mr. McDonough wrote to VA employees at the time.

This also includes VA volunteers and contractors. Effectively, this means that any Veterans Health Administration (VHA) employee, volunteer, or contractor who works in VHA facilities, visits VHA facilities, or provides direct care to those we serve will still be subject to the vaccine requirement at this time,” he said. “We continue to monitor and discuss this requirement, and we will provide more information about the vaccination requirements for VA health care employees soon. As always, we will process requests for vaccination exceptions in accordance with applicable laws, regulations, and policies.”

The version of the shots cleared in the fall of 2022, and available through the fall of 2023, did not have any clinical trial data supporting them.

A new version was approved in the fall of 2023 because there were indications that the shots not only offered temporary protection but also that the level of protection was lower than what was observed during earlier stages of the pandemic.

Ms. Manookian, whose group has challenged several of the federal mandates, said that the mandate “illustrates the dangers of the administrative state and how these federal agencies have become a law unto themselves.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 03/09/2024 - 22:10

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