Bill Holter’s Commentary
This cannot be good…
Russia Evacuating Embassy In Ukraine – Media
January 18, 2022
With tensions rising on the Russian border with Ukraine, Moscow has started to remove its diplomats and their families from its embassy in Kiev and consulate in Lvov, the New York Times has claimed, citing anonymous officials.
In a report published on Monday, the newspaper claimed that 18 people, primarily children and wives of Russian diplomats, left Ukraine on January 5. A further 30 people allegedly left in the two weeks following that, and diplomats from two other Russian consulates (Kharkov and Odessa) had reportedly been told to prepare to leave the country.
In response, the Russian Foreign Ministry reported that “The Russian embassy in Kiev is working normally,” but did not deny any downsizing.
According to the New York Times, officials from both the US and Ukraine confirmed that Russian diplomats had left.
Reports of evacuations come as Moscow is accused by Western nations of a troop build-up on the frontier with Ukraine, allegedly with the intent of invading the country in the coming weeks and months. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied any plan to attack and has suggested that NATO is invoking the specter of “Russian aggression” as a pretext to deploy more military equipment in the region.
Last week, America’s CNN claimed that a “group of operatives” trained in urban warfare and the use of explosives had been sent to “carry out acts of sabotage against Russia’s own proxy forces” to create a pretext for military intervention in Ukraine.
This story, citing anonymous sources, echoed a previous statement by United States National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who claimed that American intelligence had reason to believe Moscow is planning a scenario where it can justify a military incursion into Ukraine.
Bill Holter’s Commentary
It has to be the plan as no one could ever be this stupid.
Vaccine Mandate for Cross Border Trucking Now in Effect, Mandate for Domestic Trucking Begins in a Week, Prepare Your Affairs Accordingly
January 16, 2022
The cross border vaccine mandate for truckers in/out of Canada is now in effect. The U.S. vaccine mandate takes effect on January 22nd.
It will take a few days to see the consequences, but there will be consequences.
Keep in mind, any impact is taking place in a supply chain system that is already tenuous and unstable at best. A small disruption that may have been minimally significant against a fully operational supply chain, is more likely to be a much bigger disruption in a supply chain that is already under a severe amount of demand side stress. Somewhere in the range of 16,000 to 38,000 daily loads are likely to be impacted.
When questioned about this, Canadian Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic Leblanc says the trucking industry “has had adequate time to prepare for this.” Keep in mind, the mandate was announced 45 days ago (November 30th). According to the Canadian government, changing the structural rules for all the logistics and commerce in cross border shipping, 45 days is enough notice.
Bill Holter’s Commentary
As we had surmised at the time in late 2019, the credit markets were about to implode. Thank God Covid came along to cool down credit demand when it did?
Nomura, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs Received a Cumulative $8 Trillion from the Fed’s Emergency Repo Loans in Fourth Quarter of 2019
January 17, 2022 ~
The Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010 ordered the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an investigative body for Congress, to audit the Fed’s alphabet soup of emergency lending programs conducted during and after the 2008 financial crisis. The GAO found that a cumulative $16.1 trillion had been pumped out to Wall Street firms by the Fed – at super cheap interest rates. The GAO provided data for the peak amounts outstanding and also a cumulative total.
Why is a cumulative total essential and relevant? Because one institution in 2008, Citigroup, was insolvent for much of the time the Fed was flooding it with cheap loans. (Under law, the Fed is not allowed to make loans to an insolvent institution.) And when an insolvent institution is getting loans rolled over and over by the Fed for a span of two and a half years, at interest rates frequently below one percent when the market wouldn’t loan it money at even double-digit interest rates, it’s highly relevant to know the cumulative tally of just how much Citigroup got from the Fed. According to the GAO, that tally came to $2.5 trillion for just some of these Fed loan programs. (See page 131 of the GAO study here.)
The academic scholars that compiled the Fed’s loans during the financial crisis for the Levy Economics Institute also provided cumulative tallies. Their tally, which included additional Fed bailout programs not included by the GAO, came to $29 trillion.
The largest of the Fed’s emergency loan programs to Wall Street trading houses in 2008 was called the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, or in alphabet-soup-speak, PDCF. It made a cumulative tally of $8.9 trillion over a span of more than two years. Just three Wall Street trading firms received 64 percent of that money: Citigroup, a cumulative $2.02 trillion; Morgan Stanley, a cumulative $1.9 trillion; and Merrill Lynch, a cumulative $1.78 trillion.