Author Archives: Richard Fernandez

New at the Belmont Club. Is Beijing running out of time? What other clocks are running?

REP. JOHN YARMUTH: The number itself is meaningless. I mean, I read Joe Manchin’s statement, I’ve listened to him, he has no understanding of how the federal government monetary system works when he compared it yesterday to his household income, that has no relevance to what we can do. It’s not a question of what …

Continue reading ““The Federal Government Can Afford Anything.” True or false?”

The Cabinet’s planning agency warned in August that 20 regions had exceeded energy use and pollution targets after manufacturing rebounded from the pandemic. The government has ambitious plans to make the economy cleaner and more energy-efficient, so failing to meet those targets can be a career-ending blunder. AP

A whole life sentence means there is no minimum term set by the judge, and the person is never considered for release. It’s reserved for particularly serious offences. NBC

Several industry groups have warned world leaders of a worldwide supply-chain “system collapse” due to pandemic restrictions, coming as Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell suggested that the current period of higher inflation will last until 2022. The International Chamber of Shipping, a coalition of truck drivers, seafarers, and airline workers, has warned in a letter …

Continue reading “Supply Chains Warn of Worldwide ‘System Collapse’”

The rush to renewables causes severe energy price spikes and shortages. Biden’s policies would do the same in the U.S WSJ

New at the Belmont Club. Who will understand, then lead the new world as it has actually become?

When Evergrande’s auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers in Hong Kong, signed off on the company’s 2020 financial statements, it didn’t include a so-called going concern warning. These red flags from an auditor show that it has doubts about the company’s ability to stay afloat for at least 12 months. WSJ

President Biden earned the ire of Border Patrol agents on Friday after endorsing the false claim that they were recorded “whipping” migrants who were attempting to cross the Rio Grande into Del Rio, Texas, earlier this week. At a press briefing Friday, Biden said the agents would “pay” for allegedly lashing the Haitian migrants — …

Continue reading “Borders of preferred belief”

Ron DeSantis has been doing a lot as governor of Florida. But there’s one job that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves: In many ways, DeSantis is serving as America’s shadow president. In the Westminster parliamentary system of government, used in Britain and elsewhere, the opposition forms a shadow cabinet: A group of senior opposition-party …

Continue reading “America the multithreaded”

For years, Chinese officials have issued calls for leaders in Afghanistan to crack down on and deport Uyghur militants they claimed were sheltering in Afghanistan. The officials said the fighters belonged to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a separatist organization that Beijing has held responsible for a series of terrorist attacks in China since the …

Continue reading “China: hand Uighurs over if you want money”

Of Hui’s current estimated $11.5 billion fortune, Forbes calculated that $8 billion is from cash dividends paid to Hui since Evergrande’s 2009 IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The real estate developer’s total liabilities have increased every year since it went public, according to its annual reports, but it has paid out a dividend …

Continue reading “Paid up front”

“We do not expect the government to provide any direct support to Evergrande,” said the S&P credit analysts in a Monday report. “We believe Beijing would only be compelled to step in if there is a far-reaching contagion causing multiple major developers to fail and posing systemic risks to the economy.” NBC

Congress should require a new investigation by the State Department’s arms compliance office into the possible role of China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology in the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, a report by two former State Department officials says. The Biden administration earlier this year canceled a probe begun under President Trump into the virus’s …

Continue reading “Suspended virus origins probe should continue”

The Chinese President is not just trying to rein in a few big tech and other companies and show who is boss in China. He is trying to roll back China’s decadeslong evolution toward Western-style capitalism and put the country on a different path entirely, a close examination of Mr. Xi’s writings and his discussions …

Continue reading “Xi cashes out on capitalism”

The planned city of Telosa. No, it’s not a mirage in the desert haze. Nor is it Elon Musk’s latest plan to colonise Mars. These are the designs for the city of Telosa, the latest project from billionaire investor Marc Lore and celebrated architect Bjarke Ingels’s firm BIG. Lore and Ingels’s ambitious plan would see …

Continue reading “It might not really be Green but it has the Look”

“We believe Beijing would only be compelled to step in if there is a far-reaching contagion causing multiple major developers to fail and posing systemic risks to the economy.” On Thursday, Evergrande has an $83.5 million interest payment it is likely to miss, which would cause more market turmoil. NYT

Let them work at Taco Bell. Maspeth High School created fake classes, awarded bogus credits, and fixed grades to push students to graduate — “even if the diploma was not worth the paper on which it was printed,” an explosive investigative report charges. Principal Khurshid Abdul-Mutakabbir demanded that teachers pass students no matter how little …

Continue reading “They’re learning ’em good”

In responding to the secretive U.S.-British move to sell nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, a decision that the Australians used to nix the prior French deal, Mr. Macron could choose to escalate. One idea doing the rounds in France is for the country to withdraw from NATO’s integrated military command structure, which it rejoined in 2009 …

Continue reading “The NATO glue has gone”

Data collected from 18 states between March and August suggest the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine reduces the risk of being hospitalized with COVID-19 by 91% in the first four months after receiving the second dose. Beyond 120 days, however, that vaccine efficacy drops to 77%. Meanwhile, Moderna’s vaccine was 93% effective at reducing the short-term risk of …

Continue reading “Not all vaccines are equal; study says some fade”