Today's Must-Reads - 14 February 2024

A selection of the latest news, studies, reports and articles

I spend a lot of time each day gathering together new information and fascinating articles. I then pick one or two of the most interesting topics and write about them. However, that leaves a lot of missed out information that I’m not sharing.

Below is a summary of all the latest articles and information that I’ve found. This is a slimmed down version for all readers but is usually for paid subscribers only.

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Climate Change

• Net-Zero Is Pulling the Plug on America’s Electrical ‘Life Support System.’ Electricity is among the most essential sources of America’s unparalleled prosperity and productivity; it is also the greatest vulnerability. The United States has become so utterly dependent upon an uninterrupted supply of affordable electricity that, as their grid becomes ever more fragile American society has become fragile along with it. Robert Bryce’s new film, “Juice: Power, Politics and the Grid” looks at how and why America is now “fragilizing” and destabilizing the engineering marvel that is the central pillar of society.

Covid Mandates & Lockdowns

• Another Variant, Another Desperate Cry for Masks. For those of us on the side of sanity, reason, and data-driven evidence, the refusal of Covid extremist “experts” to admit mistakes has been a constant, oppressive source of frustration. Many continue into 2024 to advocate for failed policies, “interventions” that still don’t work, and unnecessary panic. And all with the willing participation of major media outlets dedicated to continuing their preferred narratives. For example, those who support the endless Covid vaccination series over natural immunity. Perhaps the two most popular excuses for the failure of pandemic interventions were lack of compliance and new variants.

• CDC plans to end five-day Covid isolation guidelines. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is reportedly planning to eliminate its recommendation that people testing positive for Covid-19 should isolate for five days – the first time its guidelines on Covid-19 have changed since December 2021. People with mild symptoms would be able to return to school or work if they are fever-free for at least 24 hours, the Washington Post reported, citing three people familiar with internal discussions on the policy change. The Biden administration has not signed off on the changes, with the updated policy expected to be publicized in April for public comment.

Economy/Energy/Finance

• US Companies Talk Layoffs Like Never Before. US companies are discussing cost control (i.e., layoffs) on earnings calls at a record rate, amid a push to reallocate funds and invest in new technologies, according to an analysis by Morgan Stanley strategists. Transcript mentions of “operational efficiency” are at highest ever in the US during this earnings season as companies focus on expense discipline, but also invest in technologies “that can drive future productivity like AI,” a team led by Michael Wilson wrote in a note. There is a notable overlap among the industries discussing operational efficiency most prevalently and those that are discussing AI, the strategists said. These groups include software, professional services, health care services, and financial services.

  

• Inflation rises faster than expected in January as high prices persist. The Labor Department said Tuesday that the consumer price index, a broad measure of the price of everyday goods including gasoline, groceries and rent, rose 0.3% in January from the previous month. Prices climbed 3.1% from the same time last year. Both of those figures came in higher than the 0.2% monthly increase and 2.9% headline figure forecast by Refinitiv economists. Other parts of the report indicated that inflation has been slow to retreat. Core prices, which exclude the more volatile measurements of food and energy, climbed 0.4% – the largest monthly increase since April 2023. It rose 3.9% annually.

• Household Debt Tops $17.5 Trillion and Americans Are Feeling the Strain. You’ve got to give credit to Visa, Mastercard, Discover and Amex. They’ve managed to build one heck of a booming economy. Despite surging price inflation, “resilient” American consumers have managed to keep spending money, driving “strong” economic growth – thanks to their credit cards. But there's a problem. Americans are having an increasingly hard time keeping up with the bills. Household debt rose by another $212 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023, surging to a record $17.5 trillion, according to the latest data from the New York Fed.

• 12-storey Canary Wharf tower, London sold at loss of 60 per cent. 5 Churchill Place, a former office for investment bank Bear Stearns, was placed into receivership by a syndicate of lenders last year and its Chinese owners Cheung Kei Group, put the building on the market. The building was bought for close to £300m by the Asian property developer back in 2017. However, a report in React News said Menomadin Group, the business owned by Israeli entrepreneur Haim Taib, has agreed to buy the building for £110m. Today’s development strengthens fears about commercial real estate values following on from the COVID-19 pandemic and the cost of living crisis.

Health

• Surprising Link Discovered Between Body Temperature and Depression. People with depression have higher body temperatures, suggesting there could be a mental health benefit to lowering the temperatures of those with the disorder, a new UC San Francisco-led study found. The study, published on February 5 in Scientific Reports, doesn’t indicate whether depression raises body temperature or a higher temperature causes depression. It’s also unknown whether the higher body temperature observed in people with depression reflects a decreased ability to self-cool, increased generation of heat from metabolic processes, or a combination of both.

Middle East

• Iran Launches First Long-Range Ballistic Missiles From Warship. The announcement came during naval exercises with the IRGC deploying two ballistic missiles from the Shahid Mahdavi warship. The IRGC claims that the missiles can strike targets up to 1,700 kilometers (1,050 miles) away. The military maneuvers unfold amid heightened regional tensions following the eruption of the Israel-Hamas conflict on October 7. Iran, which does not recognize Israel, has long opposed it and supported Palestinian terror groups since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Politics

• US House Republicans win impeachment of Biden's top border official. By a vote of 214-213, the House approved two articles of impeachment accusing Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of not enforcing U.S. immigration laws, which Republicans argue led to record flows of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border, and making false statements to Congress. The vote marked just the second time in U.S. history, and the first time in almost 150 years, that the House has impeached a member of a president's Cabinet. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's office said that senators would be sworn in as jurors shortly after they return from a break on Feb. 26.

• Biden Met Chinese Energy Bosses That Did Business With Hunter. Rob Walker testified during a closed-door hearing at the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees earlier this month as part of the House impeachment inquiry against President Biden. While he did not confirm the date, Walker said, according to a transcript of the interview, that Joe Biden met CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming, along with his son Hunter and his other business partners, at the Four Seasons in Washington, D.C., around 2017 when the elder Biden was vice president. He said the meeting took place before his company, Robinson Walker, received $3 million from State Energy HK Limited—a CEFC-linked entity. While he said Joe Biden was not involved in the deal, he said that the company used Hunter Biden's status as the son of the vice president to influence business deals, including by drafting letters using the younger Biden's letterhead.

• Global conflicts herald ‘dangerous decade’ — military think tank. The Hamas-Israel war, ongoing fighting in Ukraine and rising tensions in the Indo-Pacific and Africa herald “what is likely to be a more dangerous decade”, a British military think-tank warned Tuesday. The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said in its annual “Military Balance” report that the world has entered “a highly volatile security environment”, which is set to endure. The “era of insecurity” is resetting the global defence-industrial landscape, with the US and Europe ramping up production of missiles and ammunition “after decades of underinvestment”, the report added.

• Senate Votes to Send Ukraine and Israel $95.3 Billion in Free Money. Apparently, the US has so much money they can afford to hand out $95.3 Billion to Ukraine and Israel with no strings attached. Senator Rand Paul has the right idea. Paul said the bill was a “middle finger to every working man and woman in America.” He said that it tells Americans, “We don’t care about you. We care more about Ukraine than we care about our southern border.”

• The peasants won’t go quietly. Europe ought to show them more gratitude. Farmers hurl eggs at the European Parliament. They dump manure wherever they go. In Spain, they burn tyres. In Occitania, office buildings. Their tractors have cursed the capital of Germany with terrible traffic. As in the Holy Roman Empire circa 1524, so in the Europe of 2024: we must beware the peasant. In parliaments and the press, the latest peasant revolt has been met with raised eyebrows, hostility even. “This class has been spoilt by decades of copious public support,” declared La Stampa, Italy’s soi-disant “progressive” newspaper. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany’s premier conservative paper, was blunter: “Pampered farmers,” read its headline. Below, the protests were quaintly described as an “impertinence”. Europe’s politicians are likewise exasperated. Germany’s home secretary, Nancy Faeser, has pinned the blame on far-Right coup-makers, accusing them of seducing the unsuspecting subalterns.

Science

• Scientists in UK set fusion record. Scientists in Britain announced they had smashed a record for generating fusion energy in the final experiment using the Joint European Torus (JET) machines. Nuclear fusion is the same process that the sun uses to generate heat. Proponents believe it could one day help tackle climate change by providing an abundant, safe and clean source of energy. A team at the JET facility near Oxford in central England generated 69 megajoules for five seconds using 0.2 milligrams of fuel, beating its previous record set in 2022 by 10 megajoules, the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) said. Despite the new record, JET did not generate more energy than was put into producing it.

Ukraine

• Putin's suggestion of Ukraine ceasefire rejected by United States, sources say. Putin sent signals to Washington in 2023 in public and privately through intermediaries, including through Moscow's Arab partners in the Middle East and others, that he was ready to consider a ceasefire in Ukraine, the Russian sources said. Putin was proposing to freeze the conflict at the current lines and was unwilling to cede any of the Ukrainian territory controlled by Russia, but the signal offered what some in the Kremlin saw as the best path towards a peace of some kind. A third source with knowledge of the discussions said: "Everything fell apart with the Americans." The source said that the Americans did not want to pressure Ukraine.