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Sunday, February 2, 2020

China Bans Short Selling, Plans Massive Liquidity Injection To Prevent Market Crash

Judging by the collapse in Chinese futures and the Offshore Yuan over the past week, China's key cash equity index - The Shanghai Composite - is set to plunge around 6-8% as the market re-opens for the first time since Lunar New Year (and the coronavorus chaos).

China stock futures have tumbled...

Source: Bloomberg

And Offshore Yuan is fighting at the 7.00/USD level...

Source: Bloomberg

Which of course will not do for the nation has to maintain the appearance of a minor flesh-wound than a catastrophic coronary. And so, as Bloomberg reports, China unveiled a raft of measures over the weekend to aid companies hit by the coronavirus outbreak and also shore up financial markets.

Quarantative easing?

The People's Bank of China announced that the total injection announced was 1.2 trillion yuan, the largest single-day addition of its kind in data going back to 2004. The money will be supplied using reverse repurchase agreements to ensure liquidity is “reasonably ample” during the outbreak, according to the PBOC.

The new measures follow the announcement last week that China’s biggest banks will lower interest rates for firms in Hubei, the center of the outbreak.

However, as Tommy Xie, an economist at Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp notes, the net effect of this admittedly huge liquidity injection is much lower as there are more than 1 trillion yuan of short-term funds scheduled to mature on Monday.

“The amount of the net injection isn’t huge. The PBOC may want to retain some flexibility, which means it can add more liquidity in the rest of the week if the sentiment is too bad."

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, we wonder if even this additional liquidity injection will be big enough as judging by Dr.Copper, the Chinese economy is about to be hit by the biggest shock in recent history...

Source: Bloomberg

And China's credit impulse - the lifeline of its economic growth - is barely positive and rolling over...

Source: Bloomberg

In addition to the concrete measures, Bloomberg notes that senior officials from various regulators and the central bank put out statements urging brokerages and funds to guide investors to “rationally and objectively” evaluate the impact of the epidemic, calling it “short-term and temporary.”

Financial regulators said they have “full confidence” they can keep the economy stable in the long term, according to the Saturday statement, which urged investors not to be affected by “irrational sentiment.”

We are not quite sure what they mean by "irrational sentiment," as it seems entirely rational to expect economic growth to slow and earnings to be pressured lower given the nation is practically on total lockdown for the foreseeable future.

And if you think that is just conjecture, here is a local business owner with the truth on the ground...

Jordan Schneider 司马乔丹@jordanschnyc

CEO of restaurant chain 西贝 says he can only pay salaries for 3 more months before his cash runs out. Calls for relief from stupid govt policy (傻政策）otherwise will have to layoff workers and create social unrest. 100k views before blocked on wechat https://bbs.wenxuecity.com/financenews/11173.html …

163

9:20 AM - Feb 1, 2020 · Kuala Lumpur City, Kuala Lumpur Federal Territory

Twitter Ads info and privacy

80 people are talking about this

1.2 trillion yuan is nothing like enough...and they have a plan for that - ban selling, similar to what Beijing did at the height of its 2015 stock market crash.

And 21st Century Herald confirms that China's securities regulator CSRC has reportedly notified brokerages to suspend short selling of stocks from Feb 3...

So the Chinese 'market' is now Hotel California - you can check out any time, but you can never leave!

The Primary Mechanism Of Your Oppression Is Not Hidden At All

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

I write a lot about government secrecy and the importance of whistleblowers, leakers and leak publishers, and for good reason: governments which can hide their wicked deeds from public accountability will do so whenever possible. It’s impossible for the public to use democracy for ensuring their government behaves in the way they desire if they aren’t allowed to be informed about what that behavior even is.

These things get lots of attention in conspiracy circles and dissident political factions. Quite a few eyes are fixed on the veil of government opacity and the persecution of those brave souls who try to shed light on what’s going on behind it. Not enough eyes, but quite a few.

What gets less attention, much to our detriment, is the fact that the primary mechanism of our oppression and exploitation is happening right out in front of our faces.

The nonstop campaign by bought politicians, owned news outlets, and manipulated social media platforms to control the dominant narratives about what’s going on in the world contribute vastly more to the sickness of our society than government secrecy does. We know this from experience: any time a whistleblower exposes secret information about the malfeasance of powerful governments like NSA surveillance or Collateral Murder, we see not public accountability, nor demands for sweeping systemic changes to prevent such malfeasance from reoccurring, but a bunch of narrative management from the political/media class.

This narrative management is used to shift attention away from the information that was revealed and onto the fact that the person who revealed it broke the law or misbehaved in some way. It’s used to convince people that the revelations aren’t actually a big deal, or that it was already basically public knowledge anyway. And it’s used to manipulate public attention on to the next hot story of the day and memory hole it underneath the white noise of the media news churn. And nothing changes.

We’ve seen it happening over and over and over again. The narrative management machine has gotten so effective and efficient that it’s been able to completely ignore the recent revelation that the US, UK and France almost certainly bombed Syria in 2018 for a completely false reason. A few half-assed Bellingcat spin jobs and an otherwise total media blackout, and it’s like the whole thing never happened.

What this tells us is that our first and foremost problem is not the fact that conspiracies are happening behind a curtain of government secrecy, but that the way people think, act and vote is being actively manipulated right out in the open. Government secrecy is indeed one aspect of establishment narrative control, but controlling the public’s access to information is only one aspect. The bigger part of it is controlling how the public thinks about information.

The reason people never use the power of their superior numbers to force real change, even though they’re being exploited and oppressed in myriad ways by the ruling class, is because they’ve been propagandized into accepting the status quo as desirable (or at least normal). The propaganda of the political/media class is therefore the establishment’s front line of defense. Its most powerful, and essential, weapon.

This is important for dissidents of all stripes to understand, because it means we’re not just passively waiting around for another Manning or Snowden or an Ian Henderson to give us information which we can use to fight the oppression machine. Those individuals have done a great public service, but the battle to awaken human consciousness to what’s really going on in our world is in no way limited to leakers and whistleblowers. It is not at the mercy of government secrecy.

If you are engaged in any type of media, you are engaging the narrative matrix which keeps the public asleep and complacent. It doesn’t matter if you have a Twitter account, a Youtube account, some flyers or a can of spray paint: if you are capable of getting any kind of message out there, you are able to directly influence the mechanism of your oppression. You are able to inform people that they are being lied to, you are able to explain why, and you are able to point them to where they can find more information.This is extremely empowering. You do not need to wait around hoping that some bombshell piece of information makes it past all the various security checks and spinmeisters and triggers a real social awakening. You can be that information. You can become a catalyst for that awakening.

The key to turning this ship around does not lie hidden somewhere behind a veil of government opacity. It lies in you. It lies in all of us. We can begin awakening our fellow humans right now by attacking the narrative management of the propaganda machine that sits right in front of us, unarmored and unhidden.

Social Media Networks Vow To Censor "Misinformation" About Coronavirus

Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

Yesterday, social media giants like Facebook and Twitter, and search engine Google announced their intentions to censor – um, crack down on – so-called “misinformation” about the coronavirus that is spreading across the globe.

Before we get started here, admittedly, there’s some absolutely terrible advice out there about preventing or curing coronavirus. There are some really wild stories about the origin of the virus which may or may not be true. But the issue here is that social media networks are setting themselves up as the arbiters of truth, making it seem as though the rest of us are incapable of separating good information from bad information.

Facebook is taking action.

Kang-Xing Jin, Facebook’s head of health, wrote:

Our global network of third-party fact-checkers are continuing their work reviewing content and debunking false claims that are spreading related to the coronavirus. When they rate information as false, we limit its spread on Facebook and Instagram and show people accurate information from these partners. We also send notifications to people who already shared or are trying to share this content to alert them that it’s been fact-checked.

We will also start to remove content with false claims or conspiracy theories that have been flagged by leading global health organizations and local health authorities that could cause harm to people who believe them. We are doing this as an extension of our existing policies to remove content that could cause physical harm. We’re focusing on claims that are designed to discourage treatment or taking appropriate precautions. This includes claims related to false cures or prevention methods — like drinking bleach cures the coronavirus — or claims that create confusion about health resources that are available. We will also block or restrict hashtags used to spread misinformation on Instagram, and are conducting proactive sweeps to find and remove as much of this content as we can. (source)

So, don’t worry, friends. “Independent fact-checkers” from the Ministry of Truth will protect you from conspiracy theories and false claims.

Maarten Schenk from Lead Stories, a fact-checking organization working with Facebook, scoffed at some of the “conspiracy theories” he’s seen in a comment to CNN.

“It always has to be something sinister,” Schenk said of the conspiracy theorists’ misinformation, which includes false claims that the virus was the creation of a government.

Some people, Schenk said, are “not trusting the narrative about the numbers of deaths and infections.” (source)

To be perfectly honest, whenever someone refers to a particular view as “the narrative” I’m even less likely to trust it than I was before. And I haven’t trusted the numbers coming out of China from the very beginning, as I wrote here.

Google is pushing back “misinformation” in search results.

Google is bumping any site providing perceived “misinformation” back in the search results and putting “authoritative” sources on page one.

A Google (GOOGL) spokesperson pointed CNN Business to policy changes in recent years for Google and its video platform YouTube, which are designed to surface information from authoritative sources at the top of search results. Like Facebook, the company doesn’t wipe false claims from its platforms entirely. (source)

Having been bumped back by Google numerous times in the past, I can tell you, it’s a real blow to inbound traffic when this occurs. While you personally may not use Google, keep in mind that it is the most widely used search engine in the world, with 81.5% of the market share. If they are pushing back information – oh, of course, I mean misinformation – then most folks will never see it.

Twitter is showing people “official channels” first.

According to CNN, Twitter is providing people with the best possible information when they search the coronvirus hashtag.

On Twitter, users searching for “coronavirus”in the US and other countries, including Hong Kong, Brazil, and Australia, are first prompted to visit official channels of information about the virus. In the US, Twitter directs users to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, beneath a bold headline that reads: “Know the facts.”

A Twitter (TWTR) spokesperson told CNN Business on Tuesday that the company has not seen a coordinated increase in disinformation related to the coronavirus. In a blog post Tuesday, the company said it had seen over 15 million tweets about the coronavirus in four weeks. (source)

But of course, as always, it goes further than that.

Last night, Zero Hedge was quickly suspended by Twitter.

I’ve written repeatedly that the best coverage I have seen of the coronavirus has been on Zero Hedge. They’ve done a lot of no-holds-barred reporting and broken numerous stories about the virus and its possible origins. They’ve been careful to be extremely clear about whether something is a question or a statement, and they cite numerous sources for their work.

They’re also not afraid to be controversial.

And this got their account suspended from Twitter last evening.

Shortly after they posted an article about the extremely unusual makeup of this particular coronavirus (based on a scientific study that called the makeup “unlikely to be fortuitous,” their account was suspended. I immediately thought it was because of the article that suggested we could be dealing with a bioweapon, but according to Zero Hedge, it was something else entirely.

Twitter accused them of harassing a guy by posting his (already publicly posted) phone number and workplace. ZH reports:

What appears to have happened is that twitter received a complaint from the website best known for publishing the discredited Steele dossier when no other media outlet would touch it, and making cat slideshows of course, Buzzfeed, in which someone called Ryan Broderick writes that Zero Hedge “has released the personal information of a scientist from Wuhan, China, falsely accusing them of creating the coronavirus as a bioweapon, in a plot it said is the real-life version of the video game Resident Evil.” (source)

By all means, Twitter should certainly take the word of someone who works for a site best known for quizzes to help you figure out what kind of potato you really are to delete a news organization’s account.

It’s also important to note that ZH didn’t post anything personal that wasn’t already publicly made available by the subject of the article himself.

…we did not release any “personal information”: Peng Zhou (周鹏) is a public figure, and all the contact information that we presented was pulled from his publicly posted bio found on a website at the Wuhan Institute of Virology which anyone with access to the internet can pull from the following URL: http://sourcedb.whiov.cas.cn/zw/rck/201705/t20170505_4783973.html, which is also the information we used. (source)

So who do you want filtering information for you?

While I have seen a lot of terrible advice – drink bleach or a bottle of vinegar to “cure” coronavirus, use this essential oil and you’ll never get coronavirus, simply cut an onion in half and leave it in the room and it will absorb the coronavirus cooties, and much more quackery – I still don’t believe that social media networks and search engines should be able to filter what people see. We are (allegedly) free individuals who can think for ourselves.

Shouldn’t we be able to decide what we believe and what we don’t without information being engineered to fit a narrative? Shouldn’t we be able to base our pandemic preparedness plan on all the information out there?

Instead, we’re provided with “narratives” and biased information. That’s something we here at The Organic Prepper have warned about repeatedly. If you can’t trust your intel, it makes it difficult to make informed decisions.

This just makes it seem like there’s something to hide.

If anything, this crackdown on any alternative views, treatments, or theories makes me even more suspicious because it’s a clearcut case of Propaganda 101.

Propaganda is information that is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is presented.

Propaganda is often associated with material prepared by governments, but activist groups, companies, religious organizations, the media, and individuals can also produce propaganda. (source)

This is a technique that is as old as time.

Whenever you see some pop-up or some “correction of misinformation” the first thing you should do is ask yourself, is what are they trying to hide? It may legitimately be bad advice (like that whole drinking bleach thing) but it may also be something more sinister.

I don’t know about you, but now I’m even more curious and doubtful about the “narrative” than I was before. What is it, really, that they don’t want the rest of us to know?

Japan Set To Release 1.2 Million Tons Of Radioactive Fukushima Water Into Ocean, Causing "Immeasurable Damage"

From Zero Hedge:

Just in case a global viral pandemic, whose sources are still unclear and apparently now include human feces, wasn't enough, the global outrage meter is about to go "up to eleven" with Japan now set to flood the world's oceans with radioactive water.

In a move that will surely prompt a furious response from Greta Thunberg's ghost writers (unless of course it doesn't fit a very narrow agenda), a panel of experts advising Japan’s government on a disposal method for the millions of tons of radioactive water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant on Friday recommended releasing it into the ocean. And, as Reuters notes, based on past practice it is likely the government will accept the recommendation.

Tokyo Electric, or Tepco, has collected nearly 1.2 million tonnes of contaminated water from the cooling pipes used to keep fuel cores from melting since the plant was crippled by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011. The water is stored in huge tanks that crowd the site.

*Tepco expects the wastewater storage tanks at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to run out of capacity around 2022*

The panel under the industry ministry came to the conclusion after narrowing the choice to either releasing the contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean or letting it evaporate - and opted for the former, even though it means that Japan's neihgbors will now have to suffer the consequences of the biggest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

Previously the committee had ruled out other possibilities, such as underground storage, that lack track records of success. At the meeting, members stressed the importance of selecting proven methods and said "the government should make clear that releasing the water would have a significant social impact."

Japan's neighbor, South Korea, has for much of the past decade retained a ban on imports of seafood from Japan’s Fukushima region imposed after the nuclear disaster and summoned a senior Japanese embassy official last year to explain how the Fukushima water would be dealt with. They will soon have a very unsatisfactory answer.

The build-up of contaminated water at Fukushima has been a major sticking point in the clean-up, which is likely to last decades, especially as the Olympics are due to be held in Tokyo this summer with some events less than 60 km from the wreck plant and the Fukushima seclusion zone which will remain uninhabitable for centuries. According to Reuters, athletes are planning to bring their own radiation detectors and food to the Games.

In 2018, the plant operator, TEPCO, apologized after admitting it lied about the cleanup efforts and that its filtration systems had not removed all dangerous material from the water - and the site was running out of room for storage tanks. Among the ludicrous proposals concocted to contain the radioactive water was an idea straight out of Game of Thrones - an underground ice wall. It did not work.

As a result, having given up on any containment approaches, Tokyo will now literally flood the world with radioactive water. Perhaps in an attempt to mitigate the angry outcry from a world that is suddenly obsessed with a clean environment, Japan said it plans to remove all radioactive particles from the water except tritium, an isotope of hydrogen that cannot be effectively removed with current technology. While it is unclear just how Japan plans on "filtering" out radiation, we with them the best of luck with that particular PR campaign.

*Radioactive water at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture. Picture taken January 15, 2020/Reuters*

“Compared to evaporation, ocean release can be done more securely,” the committee said, pointing to common practice around the world where normally operating nuclear stations release water that contains tritium into the sea.Needless to say, even the locals disagree: releasing treated water into the ocean would do "immeasurable damage" to a fishing sector that has tried hard to get back to work, an industry source in the Fukushima Prefecture city of Iwaki said. The evaporation proposal has fueled similar worries in farming and ranching circles, according to a source in the rice-growing business.

"The central government should understand the situation on the ground" and thoroughly consider its response, the source said. Even so, it appears that despite "considereding the situation on the ground", the government is still set to go ahead with the discharge anyway.

Why? The reason may also be the simplest one - money. According to the Nikkei, discharging the water into the Pacific is generally seen by experts as the most logical option. Evaporation was successfully used for cleanup after the 1979 Three Mile Island disaster in the U.S. But releasing water into the sea would cost less and, by ministry estimates, cut radiation exposure by more than half compared with evaporation. Of course, this is the same ministry which for months lied about the full extent of the fallout caused by the Fukushima disaster. Surely this time they are telling the truth.

The recommendation needs to be confirmed by the head of the panel, Nagoya University Professor Emeritus Ichiro Yamamoto, and submitted to the government at a later date, which has not been set, but a hard deadline looms as the government is running out of time to make a decision. The roughly 1,000 tanks on the Fukushima Daiichi site held 1.18 million tons of water as of Dec. 12, not far from the total capacity of 1.37 million. Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings expects to run out of space around 2022.

Even before then, the most important task in decommissioning the plant - removing spent nuclear fuel - is set to begin in 2021 at reactor No. 2. The tanks take up space that will be needed for this work.

Pages

Sunday, February 2, 2020

China Bans Short Selling, Plans Massive Liquidity Injection To Prevent Market Crash

Quarantative easing?

The Primary Mechanism Of Your Oppression Is Not Hidden At All

Social Media Networks Vow To Censor "Misinformation" About Coronavirus

Facebook is taking action.

Google is pushing back “misinformation” in search results.

Twitter is showing people “official channels” first.

Last night, Zero Hedge was quickly suspended by Twitter.

Japan Set To Release 1.2 Million Tons Of Radioactive Fukushima Water Into Ocean, Causing "Immeasurable Damage"