Zero­Hedge News

• China Urges US & Rus­sia To Reduce Their Nuclear Arse­nals
  China Urges US & Rus­sia To Reduce Their Nuclear Arse­nals

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via Anti​War​.com,

  Chi­nese For­eign Min­is­ter Wang Yi on Fri­day called on the US and Rus­sia to reduce their nuclear arse­nals dur­ing the UN-​backed Con­fer­ence on Dis­ar­ma­ment in Geneva.

  While Wash­ing­ton is con­stantly hyp­ing up China’s nuclear arse­nal, it is only a frac­tion of what the US and Rus­sia pos­sess. Esti­mates on the higher-​end put China’s nuclear stock­pile at 350 war­heads. Rus­sia has about 6,350 war­heads, while the US has 5,800.

  Despite the num­bers, the US com­plains that Bei­jing does not want to enter arms con­trol talks. But China has no moti­va­tion to do so unless the US and Rus­sia make an effort to reduce their arse­nals. Regard­less, the US con­tin­ues to blame the issue on China.

  “To date, China has rebuffed US efforts to ini­ti­ate bilat­eral talks on risk reduc­tion and strate­gic sta­bil­ity,” Robert Wood, the US ambas­sador for dis­ar­ma­ment, said at the conference.

  Besides hav­ing way more nuclear weapons than Bei­jing, the US is also encir­cling China with mil­i­tary hard­ware. The US has plans to deploy medium-​range mis­siles near China that were pre­vi­ously banned under the Intermediate-​Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which the US with­drew from in 2019.

  Wang took a shot at the US for its plans to fur­ther mil­i­ta­rize Asia which he char­ac­ter­ized as under­min­ing regional stability.

  “China opposes the devel­op­ment and deploy­ment of regional and global mis­sile defense sys­tems by a cer­tain coun­try that under­mine strate­gic sta­bil­ity, and China opposes the deploy­ment of land-​based intermediate-​range bal­lis­tic mis­siles by the same coun­try in the neigh­bor­hood of other coun­tries,” he said.

  Tyler Dur­den Sat, 06/​12/​2021 — 13:30
• No Vax, No Phone — Pak­istan Province Blocks Sim Cards Of The Unvac­ci­nated
  No Vax, No Phone — Pak­istan Province Blocks Sim Cards Of The Unvac­ci­nated

  Pak­istan is expected to spend more than a bil­lion dol­lars in the next fis­cal year to import COVID-​19 vac­cines to inoc­u­late around 100 mil­lion peo­ple. The trou­ble is, anti-​vaccine groups have sprung up around the coun­try and have deterred some from tak­ing the vac­cine. In response, one local gov­ern­ment in Pak­istan has a new weapon in its war chest against vac­cine hes­i­tancy: dis­able the SIM cards of mobile phones of peo­ple who decline to get jabbed, accord­ing to RT News.

  Pun­jab Health Min­is­ter Yas­min Rashid decided on Thurs­day dur­ing a meet­ing with the Pun­jab provin­cial gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary offi­cials that any­one who denied the COVID-​19 jab will have their SIM cards dis­abled at “a cer­tain time.”

  “We are doing all we can to com­pel peo­ple to get vac­ci­nated… The gov­ern­ment can­not allow indi­vid­u­als, who do not want to get vac­ci­nated, to risk lives of those who are already vac­ci­nated,” Rashid said. She added that a time­line from when a per­son denies the jab to SIM card denial would be hashed out once the new mea­sure received for­mal approval from the National Com­mand and Oper­a­tion Cen­ter, which super­vises Pakistan’s national response to COVID-​19.

  After the meet­ing, Punjab’s Pri­mary and Sec­ondary Health Depart­ment tweeted: “Mobile SIMS of peo­ple not get­ting vac­ci­nated may be blocked, it was decided in Cab­i­net meet­ing under the chair of Min­is­ter for Health Dr. Yas­min Rashid at Civil Sec­re­tariat. The gov­ern­ment will open walk-​in vac­ci­na­tion of over 18 years of age group.”

  There was no word on when the SIM card block­ing would begin.

  How­ever, provin­cial offi­cials announced the plan was mov­ing ahead:

  “Final deci­sion has been taken to block the mobile SIM cards of peo­ple not get­ting vac­ci­nated,” depart­ment spokesman Syed Ham­mad Raza told Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper.

  Crit­ics said Punjab’s new mea­sure is a dan­ger­ous move by the government.

  “This is a regres­sive step as it affects the right to free­dom of speech of cit­i­zens. What is required is to raise aware­ness about vac­ci­na­tions, and not coer­cion,” Pras­anth Sugathan, legal direc­tor at India’s Soft­ware Free­dom Law Cen­tre, told The National.

  “Dur­ing the pan­demic, mobile phones are impor­tant for peo­ple to con­nect with oth­ers and to receive infor­ma­tion,” Sugathan said.

  Besides SIM card bans, those who deny being vac­ci­nated might also be restricted from restau­rants, malls, and parks.

  This is absolutely absurd, and imag­ine if a liberal-​run metro area in the US resorted to this no jab, no phone mea­sure — peo­ple would lose their minds and likely rebel.

  Tyler Dur­den Sat, 06/​12/​2021 — 13:00
• The Fed Is Wrong: Infla­tion Is Sticky
  The Fed Is Wrong: Infla­tion Is Sticky

  Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfT­wo­Minds blog,

  The Fed’s god-​like pow­ers will be revealed for what they really are: arti­fice and illusion.

  The Fed will be proven cat­a­stroph­i­cally wrong about infla­tion for the sim­ple rea­son that infla­tion isn’t tran­si­tory, it’s sticky: when prices rise due to real-​world scarci­ties and higher costs, they stay high and then move higher as expec­ta­tions catch up with reality.

  Con­sider the dynamic of Fed-​inflated bub­bles rais­ing rents. The house that once sold for $200,000 is sold to a pool of investors for $800,000, and the prop­erty taxes, insur­ance and debt ser­vice rise accord­ingly: even though the house didn’t change, thanks to the Fed’s bub­ble, the entire cost struc­ture is higher.

  So what hap­pens next? The investors jack the rent up to cover the higher costs. As for refi­nanc­ing to lower the monthly mort­gage pay­ment – that trend has reached the end of the line. As infla­tion gath­ers steam, mort­gage rates can only go up, not down.

  As for get­ting the county assess­ment office to lower the val­u­a­tion on the house – good luck with that. The Ratchet Effect is in full force: assessed val­ues rise eas­ily and decline with great resistance.

  So rents stay high even as real estate val­ues decline. Land­lords can’t drop rents with­out trig­ger­ing panic in their lenders, and so they leave units empty and try gim­micks such as “free month rent when you sign a lease,” gim­micks which leave the sky­high rent sky­high so lenders look at the num­bers and are assured that rents are high enough to cover their mort­gage pay­ments and other expenses.

  Con­sider the orchard left to die dur­ing the drought. The farmer won’t be replant­ing that orchard – it’s sim­ply too risky to assume there will be suf­fi­cient water in the future and prices will stay high enough to com­pen­sate for the height­ened risk. So sup­ply drops as mar­ginal pro­duc­ers drop out and sur­vivors avoid risk by not expand­ing pro­duc­tion. Prices stay high.

  Con­sider deglob­al­iza­tion. Hav­ing out­sourced essen­tial com­po­nents, U.S. cor­po­ra­tions are at the mercy of fac­tors beyond their con­trol: cur­rency arbi­trage, sup­pli­ers tak­ing advan­tage of scarcity, other nations tight­en­ing the screws on exports of essen­tials, and so on.

  Con­sider the pool of local restau­rants. many have closed, some new ones are open­ing, but the real­ity is all those who can’t raise prices enough to cover expenses and make a profit will burn through their cash and close. The sur­vivors will raise prices because they have no choice: there is no alter­na­tive (TINA) to rais­ing prices except clos­ing down.

  85% of local gov­ern­ment expen­di­tures are for labor, and labor costs never go down, they only go up: the ratchet Effect. Pub­lic unions are under pres­sure to secure higher wages and ben­e­fits, and the inex­orable rise in health­care costs is squeez­ing local gov­ern­ment bud­gets. What to do? Raise taxes and fees – there is no alter­na­tive (TINA). Jack up park­ing fees and tick­ets, dou­ble or triple fines, slap on new junk fees, raise sales taxes, prop­erty taxes, taxes on mobile phone ser­vice – raise them all because TINA.

  Peo­ple are awak­en­ing to the Fed­eral Reserve’s Big Lie, which the Fed assumes will become “truth” if they repeat it often enough: infla­tion is tran­si­tory, blah, blah, blah: wrong, wrong, wrong. Peo­ple are awak­en­ing to the embed­ded dynam­ics of infla­tion and their expec­ta­tions have already started chang­ing. Those who can’t raise prices will close down, those who can will raise prices.

  The Fed’s trick of sub­sti­tut­ing debt for income has also reached the end of the line. As the chart below depicts, Amer­ica has built an illu­sory cas­tle of “pros­per­ity” by bor­row­ing tril­lions of dol­lars as a sub­sti­tute for earn­ings from being pro­duc­tive. The costs of all these lay­ers of debt can only rise now that inter­est rates are near-​zero while infla­tion is at 5% offi­cially and 10% or more by any real-​world measure.

  There’s only so much dis­pos­able income left after ser­vic­ing debt, and the more debt you pile on, the less income there is to spend on goods and services.

  This is a long­stand­ing cycle of civ­i­liza­tion. As pro­duc­tiv­ity rises, the human pop­u­la­tion expands up to the car­ry­ing capac­ity of the bios­phere. Labor’s earn­ings rise as pro­duc­ers expand pro­duc­tion to meet ris­ing demand. Human pop­u­la­tion and appetites for good­ies keep expand­ing, over­shoot­ing sus­tain­able sup­ply while labor expands to the point that it is in over­sup­ply. Wages decline and labor thus loses pur­chas­ing power just as prices of essen­tials soar. Dis­con­tent and dis­or­der increase and states and economies fall.

  The Fed’s god-​like pow­ers will be revealed for what they really are: arti­fice and illu­sion. The Fed is wrong: infla­tion isn’t tran­si­tory, it’s sticky, and there’s noth­ing the Fed can do about it. They might as well stand on the shore and order the tide to reverse.

  * * *

  If you found value in this con­tent, please join me in seek­ing solu­tions by becom­ing a $1/​month patron of my work via patreon​.com.

  * * *

  My recent books:

  A Hacker’s Tele­ol­ogy: Shar­ing the Wealth of Our Shrink­ing Planet (Kin­dle $8.95, print $20, audio­book $17.46) Read the first sec­tion for free (PDF).

  Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Trau­ma­tized World (Kin­dle $5, print $10, audio­book) Read the first sec­tion for free (PDF).

  Pathfind­ing our Des­tiny: Pre­vent­ing the Final Fall of Our Demo­c­ra­tic Repub­lic ($5 (Kin­dle), $10 (print), ( audio­book): Read the first sec­tion for free (PDF).

  The Adven­tures of the Con­sult­ing Philoso­pher: The Dis­ap­pear­ance of Drake $1.29 (Kin­dle), $8.95 (print); read the first chap­ters for free (PDF)

  Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kin­dle), $15 (print) Read the first sec­tion for free (PDF).

  Tyler Dur­den Sat, 06/​12/​2021 — 12:30