Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

On Monday, President Biden’s new Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall made it crystal clear that China is his main focus during a speech at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space and Cyber conference. According to an Air Force press release, Kendall mentioned China 27 times in his remarks compared to a single mention of Russia.

"So what are my intentions now that I have this job? At a breakfast on Capitol Hill shortly after I was sworn in, I was asked by Sen. Jon Tester what my priorities were. My answer was that I had three: China, China, and China," Kendall said.

Kendall, who assumed office on August 28th, said China is a threat to Washington’s global military dominance. "While America is still the dominant military power on the planet today, we are being more effectively challenged militarily than at any other time in our history," he said.

To counter China, Kendall wants to focus on military modernization. He’s previously said he wants the US to develop weapons that would "scare" China. As part of his modernization plan, Kendall wants to retire older military aircraft and focus on developing new ones.

"We will not succeed against a well-resourced and strategic competitor if we insist on keeping every legacy system we have," he said. "Our one team cannot win its one fight to deter China or Russia without the resources we need and a willingness to balance risk today to avoid much greater risk in the future."

Kendall served in the Obama administration from 2011 to 2017 as the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment. Before that, he worked as the Vice President of Engineering for Raytheon, a company with a keen interest in hyping up the threat of China to justify more military spending.

Kendall said since 2010, he’s been "pounding the drum about how serious a threat" China is to Washington’s ability to "project power" in Asia.

Kendall’s view is not unique among military leaders in Washington. During Senate confirmation hearings in July, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro vowed to focus "exclusively" on the so-called "China threat." The Pentagon has also identified China as the top "pacing threat" facing the US military.

For the first time newly installed Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi addressed the UN General Assembly meeting on Tuesday afternoon, hours after Biden spoke wherein the US president said the White House still wants a full return to the JCPOA nuclear deal "if Iran does the same". Raisi addressed the UN body via remote feed, given sanctions on him could make the trip into New York difficult.

Raisi, who has long been described as more hardline than his predecessor Rouhani, wasn't so conciliatory in his tone. He took the occasion to lash at the foreign policies of both Trump and Biden, saying "The world doesn’t care about 'America First' or 'America is Back."

He blasted and mocked the "US hegemonic system" as having "failed miserably" while calling continued US-led sanctions initially imposed by former President Trump "crimes against humanity during the coronavirus pandemic." He further took the opportunity to declare the failure of the US in Afghanistan.

"One clear message was sent to the world: the United States' hegemonic system has no credibility, whether inside or outside the country," Raisi said. He added forcefully that "not only the hegemonist and the idea of hegemony, but also the project of imposing Westernized identity, have failed miserably."

"Sanctions are the U.S.’ new way of war with the nations of the world," he said.

Invoking the recent botched pullout and evacuation from Afghanistan, he further lambasted America's "blood spilling and instability, and ultimately defeat and escape" abroad. He underscored US policy has been a failure across Asia.

"Today, the US does not get to exit Iraq and Afghanistan but is expelled," he added. 

However, as Al Jazeera relates of the accusatory speech, he agreed that resumption of nuclear talks is vital:

Iran wants a resumption of nuclear talks with world powers to lead to the removal of US sanctions, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi told the annual UNGA in a pre-recorded address.

WATCH LIVE: Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi addresses 2021 U.N. General Assembly https://t.co/0EgrpHDSJA

— PBS NewsHour (@NewsHour) September 21, 2021

Biden had earlier in the day while addressing the UNGA said that "The United States remains committed to preventing Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon."

But he also held out hope for the Vienna process, saying "The United States remains committed to preventing Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon. We are working with the P5+1 to engage Iran diplomatically and seek a return to the JCPOA. We are prepared to return to full compliance if Iran does the same."

Authored by Aaron Maté via TheGrayZone.com,

In accusing Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann of lying to the FBI, Special Counsel John Durham offers new evidence of the fabrications behind the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory.

The indictment of Hillary Clinton attorney Michael Sussmann offers new evidence that the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory that engulfed Trump’s term in office was itself the product of fabrications involving Clinton’s 2016 campaign.

Although Sussmann faces just one count on a false statement charge, the 27-page charging document offers an expansive window into how the Russiagate scam began, and how Democratic operatives, intelligence officials, and establishment media figures dishonestly fed it to the public.

Inventing a Trump-Russia “narrative” to “please” Democratic “VIPs”

Sussmann, until recently an attorney with Clinton campaign law firm Perkins Coie, is the second person to be charged by John Durham, the Special Counsel scrutinizing the Russia investigation.

Sussmann is accused of lying to the FBI during a September 2016 meeting in which he tried to raise alarm about “secret communications” between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank. Sussmann gave then-FBI attorney Jim Baker documents and data purporting to show that computer servers associated with Trump and Alfa Bank were in regular contact.

This was evidence, Sussmann argued, of a possible covert back channel. According to Durham, Sussmann told Baker that he was not working “for any client,” and was simply passing on information that had been provided to him by “multiple cyber experts” who had come across the suspicious web traffic.

But according to the detailed indictment, Sussmann was in fact cooking up a politically motivated scam.

The theory of a purported covert Trump-Alfa channel had been concocted by an unnamed tech executive positioning himself for a top cybersecurity job in the anticipated Clinton administration. To spread the theory to the media and intelligence community, the executive and Sussmann “coordinated”, Durham says, with Mark Elias, a colleague of Sussmann’s at Perkins Coie and the top lawyer for Clinton’s 2016 campaign.

Sussmann and Elias in turn coordinated with the private intelligence company Fusion GPS. Elias had already hired the firm – on Clinton’s behalf – to produce the Steele dossier, the collection of fabricated reports by ex-British spy Christopher Steele alleging a longstanding Trump-Russia conspiracy/blackmail relationship. According to Steele, it was Sussmann, in a July 2016 meeting, who first informed him about the Alfa Bank server story. Elias kept Clinton campaign members informed as well, including the “campaign manager, communications director, and foreign policy advisor.” In February 2017, Sussmann also met with a CIA official to push the Alfa Bank narrative.

Sussmann concealed this plot from the FBI, along with the fact that he was billing Clinton for his involvement. The meeting with the FBI’s Baker, for example, was charged to the Clinton campaign as “work and communications regarding confidential project.” In fact, according to Durham, “all or nearly all” of Sussmann’s work on the Alfa Bank story prior to meeting Baker was “billed to the Clinton campaign.”

(In Sussmann’s orbit, hiding the money trail was established Russiagate practice. His law firm Perkins Coie and the Clinton campaign concealed that they had funded the Steele dossier, until a subpoena from the GOP-controlled House Intelligence Committee forced them to admit the truth in October 2017. The FBI also concealed Steele’s Democratic funders from the FISA court when it used the dossier to obtain a surveillance warrant on Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page.)

Sussmann is charged for failing to disclose that he was acting on behalf of Clinton’s team. But the indictment makes clear that Durham has uncovered a wider deception. For weeks prior to his meeting with the FBI, Sussmann worked with the unnamed technology executive (“Tech Executive-1”), who, like the Clinton campaign, was also Sussmann’s client. The executive’s “goal”, Durham says, was to create a “narrative” about Trump’s “ties to Russia” which would ultimately “please certain ‘VIPs'” – i.e., Sussmann’s clients in the Clinton campaign.

To advance this goal, the executive took advantage of his ownership position at several companies to access “public and non-public” internet data, and tasked several people to assist him. Their efforts yielded a cache of purported DNS traffic between a Trump-adjacent marketing server and Alfa Bank in Russia. According to Durham, the tech executive’s researchers expressed misgivings about the project. One team member relayed “continued doubt” about the Trump-Alfa conspiracy theory that Sussman “would later convey to the FBI,” and concerns that the project was driven not by data, but by “bias against Trump.”

To suggest even “a very weak association,” the researcher warned, “we will have to expose every trick we have in our bag.” At one point, the executive himself even admitted that the Trump-Alfa Bank traffic was not a secret channel but in fact a “red herring.” But that ultimately did not stop him from working with Sussmann to draft white papers and collect data that would be submitted to the FBI in the service of the “VIP”-catered “narrative.”

The FBI would ultimately reach the same “red herring” conclusion that the executive had concealed. As Durham notes, “the email server at issue was not owned or operated by the Trump Organization but, rather, had been administered by a mass marketing email company that sent advertisements for Trump hotels and hundreds of other clients.”

For its part, Alfa Bank has filed suit against the computer researchers involved, accusing them of doctoring computer data in a deliberate smear campaign to tie the bank to Trump. A lengthy report commissioned by Alfa Bank posits that “threat actors may have artificially created DNS activity” between Trump and Alfa Bank “to make it appear as though a connection existed, for ‘discovery’ later.”

After planting Trump-Alfa story, Clinton campaign hypes the “secret hotline”

The FBI’s investigation of the Alfa Bank theory proved to be just as fruitless as every other of the fabricated Trump-Russia conspiracy theories chased by US intelligence officials, Congressional committees and media outlets for more than three years. But Sussmann’s effort ultimately served its purpose. The FBI meeting gave journalists a news hook to publish the Alfa Bank allegations just days before the November 2016 election.

Weeks later, the DNC-funded Steele dossier would see a similar entry into public consciousness: after sitting on the salacious dossier for months, the US media was given a news hook to publish it when then-FBI Director Jim Comey – in concert with other intelligence officials – went to Trump Tower and briefed then-President-elect Trump about the alleged “pee tape.”

On October 31st, Slate’s Franklin Foer, as well as Eric Lichtblau and Steven Lee Myers the New York Times, published stories about the Trump-Alfa Bank “secret channel.” The Times‘ story revealed that Trump campaign associates, as well as the Alfa Bank theory, was the subject of an FBI investigation. The Clinton campaign immediately promoted the story as part of its public campaign to portray Trump as a Kremlin stooge. “Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank,” Hillary Clinton announced on Twitter. “It’s time for Trump to answer serious questions about his ties to Russia.”

Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank. pic.twitter.com/8f8n9xMzUU

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 1, 2016

It's time for Trump to answer serious questions about his ties to Russia. https://t.co/D8oSmyVAR4 pic.twitter.com/07dRyEmPjX

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 31, 2016

Clinton also shared a statement from her then-foreign policy advisor, Jake Sullivan. This “secret hotline”, Sullivan claimed, “could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow” and “may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump’s ties to Russia.” To Sullivan, “it certainly seems the Trump Organization felt it had something to hide.”

But five year later, now we have confirmation that it was in fact the Clinton campaign that was hiding its role as the source of this story. As Glenn Greenwald notes:

Both Hillary and Jake Sullivan were pretending that they had just learned about this shocking story from Slate when, in fact, it was Hillary’s own lawyers and researchers who had spent weeks pushing the story to both the FBI and friendly journalists like Foer. In other words, it was Hillary and her team who had manufactured the hoax, then pretended that — like everyone else — they were just learning about it, and believing it to be true, because a media outlet to which they had fed the false story had just published it.

Indeed, the Clinton campaign’s role in planting the Alfa Bank story was so extensive that it appears to have influenced the day it came to light. As Durham recounts, on October 30th, a Fusion GPS employee wrote to Slate’s Foer and told him “time to hurry.” Foer responded by sharing what he called “the first 2500 words” of his article, and then published it the following day. He never disclosed that the story had come to him from Trump’s Democratic rival.

“What more evidence do you need?”

Comparing the indictment’s details to the way Foer and other credulous journalists spun the Clinton-fueled Alfa Bank “narrative” offers a window into how the media enabled the scam. Whereas Durham reveals that the Alfa Bank team was instructed to create a “narrative” about Trump-Russia ties that would please Democratic Party “VIPs”, the Alfa “researchers” gave the Clinton campaign’s media dupes an inverse cover story: they were simply well-meaning internet sleuths trying to protect Trump’s campaign too.

“We wanted to help defend both campaigns, because we wanted to preserve the integrity of the election,” one of the unknown researchers told Foer. “We thought there was no way in the world the Russians would just attack the Democrats,” but the Republicans as well, another source told the New Yorker‘s Dexter Filkins. “We were trying to protect them.”

Filkins’ story – published in October 2018, two years after Foer’s, and long after the FBI had privately concluded that there was nothing to it – gave the Alfa Bank story a new shelf life.

Natasha Bertrand, now a correspondent for CNN, joined Foer on MSNBC in October 2018 to declare that the Alfa Bank-Trump connection was in fact a collusion smoking gun. “What more evidence do you need? It’s very, very obvious,” Bertrand said.

"I mean, what more evidence do you need? It’s very, very obvious." -Natasha on the Alfa Bank story in October 2018, to the approval of two other Russiagate disinformation actors. pic.twitter.com/JKr3IYlXML

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) September 16, 2021

That same night, Filkins was given an effusive reception from cable news’ leading Trump-Russia conspiracy theorist. “We are blessed as a country to have journalists as talented as you and Franklin Foer writing about this,” Rachel Maddow told Filkins from across the anchor desk.

"We are blessed as a country to have journalists as talented as you and Franklin Foer writing about this."

-@maddow in 2018 to Dexter Filkins on his and Foer's stories about secret Trump-Russian bank contacts -- a DNC-funded scam that is now subject to a federal indictment. pic.twitter.com/hdlDy7ZweU

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) September 17, 2021

Predictably, the same media voices who parroted the Alfa Bank story and countless other Russia fantasies throughout the Trump era have now fallen silent or continued obfuscating.

One day before Sussmann’s indictment, Maddow covered the story based on a leak to the New York Times from someone in the Sussmann’s camp. This allowed Maddow to avoid the damning details revealed in the indictment the following day, and instead portray the as-yet-uncharged case as a trivial charge from a Special Prosecutor desperate to show results. “The only hoax is the charge contained in this indictment,” Maddow’s guest, MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade declared.

Neither Foer and Filkins have publicly commented on the indictment. If his past record is any indication, Filkins is not one for contrition. In October 2020 – two years after his initial story and more than one year after the Mueller report found zero evidence to support the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory, including the Alfa Bank story — Filkins attempted a half-hearted defense.

Filkins had discovered that Durham was eyeing the Alfa Bank researchers for possible criminal charges, and that Alfa Bank had itself filed associated lawsuits. He framed the legal activity as “troubling”, and warned that it “could aid the Kremlin.” Filkins even threw in a plug for Steele, whose “information”, he declared, “has been neither proved nor disproved.” Filkins may have missed the main sections of a scathing Department of Justice report of December 2019, which blasted the FBI for relying on Steele’s fabrications.

With the Steele dossier now widely discredited and Sussmann’s indictment adding new details of a related deception, the Clinton campaign is now connected to yet one more documented scam in a sprawling effort to plant Trump-Russia conspiracy theories in the media and trigger federal investigative activity.

As we will turn to in the second part of this report, coming later this week, Sussmann’s role in the Alfa Bank fabrication raises new questions about the allegation at the heart of the Trump-Russia scandal: the claim that Russia stole emails from the Democratic Party and gave them to Wikileaks in a covert operation to help Trump’s campaign.

This allegation was generated by a different private firm, Crowdstrike, which, like Fusion GPS, was also hired by Perkins Coie — specifically, by Michael Sussmann.

Congressional Democrats and the Biden administration are working towards an ambitious goal of eliminating coal-fired electricity and 'decarbonize' the US electric grid by 2035.

To meet such an aggressive deadline, House Democrats unveiled a $150 billion 'clean electricity' program to incentivize utility companies to phase out fossil fuels for clean energy. The Clean Electricity Performance Program, or CEPP, would reward utility that boost their percentage of electricity supplied to the grid from green sources - such as solar, wind and hydro, between 2023 and 2030. 

S&P Global explains more about the program: 

To qualify for such a grant, electricity suppliers would have to boost the amount of clean electricity they supply to customers by 4% compared to the previous year. The supplier would receive $150 for each MWh of clean electricity provided that exceeds the amount supplied the previous year by 1.5%. Electricity supplies must use the grants exclusively to benefit customers, including for direct bill assistance, investments in qualified clean electricity and energy efficiency, and worker retention.

An electricity supplier that does not meet the criteria by increasing its clean electricity percentage by at least 4% over the prior year would owe a payment to the Energy Department based on its shortfall. For example, if an electricity supplier only increases its clean energy by 2%, the supplier would owe $40 for each MWh that represents the 2% shortfall.

In short, Democrats are asking power companies to take a huge gamble on renewable energy - which would effectively 'kill' coal-fired electricity in the US.

"The CEPP would eliminate coal-fired electricity by 2030, if not sooner," according to a letter to House reps by Michelle Bloodworth, CEO of America's Power - which represents top miners, who added that the program would also "eliminate or at least drastically curtail the use of natural gas to generate electricity."

Biden's plans to decarbonize the power sector by 2035 is an enormous task, however according to America's Power, utilities are already making the switch - rushing headfirst into solar and wind projects which have inherent stability risks.

For example, there have been three significant grid issues this year involving renewables, the first in Texas, then California, and the UK. In Texas, a cold snap in early 2021 froze wind turbines and nearly crashed the entire power grid in the state. In California, wildfires strained the clean energy grid where state officials requested the federal government to relax air quality rules to burn natural gas turbines. And in the UK, wind power generation has dropped, straining the grid.  

Not all Democrats agree

In a break from Democrats, Sen. Joe Manchin from the mining state of West Virginia mentioned last month that the coal industry "will be saved, has to be saved, because the country can't survive without it." He believes that there will eventually be "a transition" to other energy sources like atomic fusion, hydrogen gas, and nuclear power. 

While coal generation has dropped by half over the past two decades, its use has sharply risen since the pandemic began -  increasing from 15% to 23%.

And while US progressives may be able to 'kill' coal in the West (at potentially great cost to grid stability), Asia is headed in the opposite direction.

Last month, TIME reported that China is planning to build 43 new coal-fired power plants and 18 new blast furnaces, despite the world's largest polluter pledging to bring its emissions to a peak before 2030, and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.

China is leading the world in new coal power plants, building more than three times as much new coal power capacity as all other countries in the world combined in 2020. It isn’t alone in its reliance on coal, however. China and four other countries, India, Indonesia, Japan and Vietnam, account for more than 80% of the coal power stations planned across the world, according to a June report by the think-tank Carbon Tracker. -TIME

As FreightWaves' Greg Miller noted in July, bulk ships full of coal are headed to Asia.

"Turns out the news of the demise of coal has been greatly exaggerated," said Stifel analyst Ben Nolan in a new client note. "Despite an unseemly carbon footprint, coal demand is actually accelerating this year" across much of Asia.

In other words, China is leading a coal recovery by restarting dozens of shuttered coal mines to increase power demand, while other Asian nations are engaged in their own coal projects.

So as Democrats stage a dramatic 'kill the coal' campaign in the United States - an effort which will only be passed along to consumers (hurting low-income families the most), many other parts of the world, including China, Australia, South Africa, and South America, continue to use traditional energy sources as demand shows no signs of abating.

Authored by J/M/Phelps via The Epoch Times,

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, could have jeopardized the national security of the United States in allegedly secret calls to Gen. Li Zuocheng of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), according to former U.S. military officers. Milley also overstepped his own authority while allegedly discussing the launch of nuclear weapons with senior military officials, they say.

Endangering National Security

According to a new book titled, “Peril,” Milley called Li once in October 2020 and another time on Jan. 8 to assure him that the United States wouldn’t attack the Chinese Communist Party, and if it was poised to attack, he would alert his counterpart.

“General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise,” Milley reportedly said.

Milley made those calls, the book has alleged, because he was fearful that then-President Donald Trump would carry out military action during the waning days of his presidency.

Some U.S. lawmakers have described Milley’s actions as treasonous, saying the general overstepped his authority, and have called for President Joe Biden to fire Milley. Biden, in response, has backed the general.

Retired U.S. Navy Cmdr. Kirk Lippold, who was the commanding officer of the USS Cole when it was attacked by al-Qaeda terrorists in 2000, said he was incredibly concerned about Milley’s allegedly secret conversations with Li.

That the nation’s top military officer has not denied any of the allegations, but defended his conversations, has shocked Lippold, who told The Epoch Times, “Milley may have purposefully—or inadvertently—created a window of strategic vulnerability.”

Milley has since described the calls as “routine” and “perfectly within the duties and responsibilities” of his job. As chairman, Milley is the top military adviser to the president and to the defense secretary.

Lippold said the call to Li could have easily called into question “America’s resolve and willingness” to safeguard itself and ensure its survival.

The smallest misinterpretation could cause the Chinese regime to believe aggression from the communist-led country would be “met with acquiescence or acceptance from the United States rather than military action and resolve,” Lippold warned.

Having served as a member of the War on Terrorism Division of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lippold said that Milley’s call could have “given the Chinese government the impression that the United States was hesitant or, at worst case, unwilling to use nuclear weapons to ensure our national survival.”

According to the new book, Milley on Jan. 8 also conveyed instructions to senior military officials not to take orders regarding military strikes or launching nuclear weapons from anyone without the chairman’s approval.

According to Lippold, it is far outside Milley’s normal chain of command to engage in a conversation about nuclear engagements.

Robert Maginnis, a retired U.S. Army Lt. Colonel and Pentagon analyst agreed, saying, “The chairman is little more than a presidential military adviser, who is prohibited by law from exercising executive authority and does not have nuclear release authority.”

“Milley commands nothing,” Maginnis added.

China’s Growing Nuclear Capabilities

The risks posed by Milley’s calls with Li are heightened given that China is a nuclear-capable nation, according to Lippold. The repercussions of such revelations could have an effect on “the very survival of the United States,” he said.

Nations possess nuclear weapons because their respective governments view them as “the ultimate guarantor of that nation’s survival,” Lippold pointed out. Since World War Two, nuclear weapons have served as a deterrent for wide-scale global conflict.

China’s DF-41 nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles are seen during a military parade at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, on Oct. 1, 2019. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)

“The conversation undermined U.S. military credibility and capability by undermining the deterrent effect of U.S. firepower, both conventional and nuclear, that provides for the security of the nation,” he said.

According to Lippold, it is unconscionable for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to speak about U.S. military readiness with the top military officer of another nuclear-capable nation, particularly “one that has expansive goals in mind, both regionally and globally.”

The Chinese regime, Lippold said, is “going out of their way to modernize their nuclear triad across the board,” which includes the building up of land-based intercontinental ballistic missile, submarine-launched ballistic missile, and strategic bomber capability.

Lippold called for a thorough accounting of the precise words of Milley’s conversations.

“These types of phone calls are usually very tightly controlled, so there must be an investigation initiated by Congress to get a full accounting of exactly what was said during the course of the conversation,” he said.

“If he intimated or indicated to the head of the PLA what the United States actions or intents might be,” Lippold said, “that would prove to be a very dangerous road to tread down.”

This would amount to a “huge breach of trust,” indicating that Milley is not fit to serve in his role as the principal adviser to the Secretary of Defense and president, Lippold said. If this is found to be the case, then Milley should have the “moral integrity to lay his stars on the table” and resign, he added.

Accountability

The Joint Chiefs of Staff, which Milley chairs, said in a statement last week that Milley regularly talks with counterparts around the world, including counterparts in China and Russia.

“His calls with the Chinese and others in October and January were in keeping with these duties and responsibilities conveying reassurance in order to maintain strategic stability,” a spokesman for the group said.

“All calls from the Chairman to his counterparts, including those reported, are staffed, coordinated and communicated with the Department of Defense and the interagency.”

Trump and other former White House and Defense officials, however, have said they were not informed of the calls.

“The fact that the acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller was not informed of the call—nor was his staff—indicates that the general had an agenda behind this phone call that was purposefully designed to mislead, or flat out not inform, the chain-of-command of what he was doing and thinking,” Lippold said.

For Milley not to inform his superiors of the calls was “out of the norm” and “completely unprecedented,” according to Lippold. “His chain-of-command should have known everything about these calls—when they were going to be made, what was going to be discussed, and how he was going to frame his words.”

Lippold believes that Milley is “banking on the fact that the American people and Congress do not understand how these types of conversations are conducted.”

“Milley should not be able to have these conversations, couch them in the way he did, calling them ‘perfectly within the duties and responsibilities’ of his job, and get away with it,” he added.

Maginnis said, “If this entire series of events hold true, it is arguably the closest the United States has come to a military coup—and elected leaders must not rest until the country gets answers and all those involved are held to account.”

Milley is expected to appear before a Senate Armed Services Committee on Sept. 28 to speak about Afghanistan, but it is expected he will be forced to field questions under oath about the reports from the book.

“Nothing can be more important than knowing whether or not a top military official committed treason and tried to take control of America’s nuclear arsenal from the former president of the United States,” Maginnis said.

Despite its marketing promise of privacy, Apple has become more creepy over the decade in the amount of data it collects from users. Some of that data includes location information, usage time, health data, and transaction data, among others. The company uses the data for targeted advertising.

According to a WSJ, it wants to repurpose the data and determine if users are depressed, anxious, or experiencing a cognitive decline.

Citing internal Apple documents and people familiar with the matter, WSJ said Apple is working with scientists to collect users' health data that can easily be extracted from iPhone and other Apple devices that could one day warn if users are at risk of mental health problems. 

The research is part of a new study with Apple and Biogen and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), announced earlier this year. Apple's research with Biogen concentrates on cognitive deterioration while UCLA examines users for signs of stress, anxiety, and depression.

UCLA researchers use an iPhone's camera, microphone, keyboard, and Apple Watch to collect data on users. Citing documents and their sources, the researchers monitor heart and breathing rates, sleep patterns, how fast someone walks, and how users speak. They also measure the speed and frequency of typos. 

During the study, users will fill out surveys about their current mental state, and researchers will measure stress hormones. 

As for the Biogen and Apple study that will track the cognitive function of users, the study will include 20,000 people and last two years. The first of the research trials began Monday.

While Apple's intentions appear to be good and could help a lot of people who don't realize they're depressed or experiencing neurological decline, there's always the risk that a "Minority Report" like detection system could be created that could alert authorities about unstable people and their risk of committing a crime. 

Red flags are being raised as the company's commitment to privacy has vanished as it plans to work with the government to scan iPhones for child pornography. 

Besides privacy issues, there's other research that suggests smartphone use coincides with increase mental health issues. It seems like researchers may have to rethink their trials for accurate results.  

Authored by Mark Glennon via Wirepoints.org,

Everything in Cook County government will be judged on “equity,” we learned last week. Everything.

That’s what Toni Preckwinkle, president of the county’s board, said in a Chicago Tribune op-ed that kicked off the county’s Racial Equity Week.

“We have encouraged our staff to use a racial equity lens with every policy and program,” she wrote. The op-ed and other materials released over the week linked to over a hundred pages of policy documents related thereto.

What does equity mean? It includes equal treatment of everybody regardless of ability and regardless of, well, whatever – any “other characteristics.” Here’s the definition from their Racial Equity Policy Statement:

Equity means full inclusion of all residents in the economic, social and political life of Cook County, regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, age, ability, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, neighborhood of residence or other characteristics. [Emphasis added.]

Now, it would be unfair to label the whole week’s messaging as being that vague because it was in fact a clear, full-on endorsement of the worst of Critical Race Theory, or call it whatever you want – wokism, antiracism, white rage or something else.

That includes the assault on merit and ability, as reflected in the definition above. It includes contempt for America for its supposed systemic racism. From Preckwinkle’s op-ed:

We put these policies into place today because for centuries, racist government policies have ensured that huge swaths of our population did not have such access. These policies deliberately created a world that was not equal. In America, the playing field has never been level. If you are a woman, if you are Black, if you are Latinx, if you have a disability, if you speak another language, if you were born in another country — in other words, if you are most of the population of Cook County — the playing field has never been level.

It’s as if affirmative action hasn’t been what’s truly systemic in America for over 50 years. It’s as if there aren’t any whites who aren’t just as disadvantaged as many minorities, such as white kids living in poverty with a single, crack-addicted parent, stuck in underperforming schools like so many in Cook County County. It’s as if there aren’t any minority members who are now in their second or third generation with middle or upper incomes who aren’t disadvantaged at all.

Among the tragedies of that kind of mindset is the disincentive it creates for whites to go into public service. Suppose you’re deciding where to go after receiving a degree in public management or something requiring government contracts. If you’re a straight, white mail your chances of being hired and promoted fairly, or of being treated fairly when bidding for a government contract, are about as good as they would be for becoming a tenured professor at most universities – nearly zero.

The documents released over the course of the week include the predictable, such as “mandatory equity and inclusion training” for county workers and extension of all benefits to illegal immigrants. They expressly say that equality of results, not equality of opportunity is the goal:

“Racial equity is the condition that would be achieved if one’s racial identity no longer predicted, in a statistical sense, how one fares,” says the Racial Equity Policy statement.

Also predictably, the materials distributed during the week brim with the usual social justice jargon, meaningless platitudes and righteous buzzwords.

Preckwinkle, for example, started her op-ed by telling us, “First, we must imagine what an equitable world looks like. Think about that for a moment,” she wrote.

“For many of us, that can be difficult to imagine, because we know this work takes time — this future might not happen in the next 10 years. Or 20.”

But we must go further, Preckwinkle teaches us.

“Once we have imagined that world, we must think ‘intersectionally’ to create it.”

“What does that mean?” she asks.

“We have to think about who is affected by the work that we do.”

Insightful, no?

You can find dozens of pages with wisdom like that in the Racial Equity Policy statement, the Racial Equity Action Plan, the Five-Year Strategic Plan and several press releases, all of which were distributed over the course of last week. Presumably, they were prepared under the direction of the county’s Director of Equity and Inclusion, Denise Wilmer Baretto. Her LinkedIn profile describes her as a “Relationship Revolutionist, Intersectional Storyteller.”

If you can’t follow the jargon, maybe the charts in the county’s materials will help. This “road map” summarizes the five-year plan.

Maybe it’s just me, but I have some concerns about the design of that road.

Keep in mind that Preckwinkle earlier this year wrote another op-ed, published nationally, touting the benefits of money-for-nothing in the form of a no-questions-asked cash assistance program run by the county. We wrote about that here. She sees the program as pilot for some form of UBI program – universal basic income.

“Sustainability,” naturally, is another central policy goal discussed in last week’s documents. It’s mostly about environmental matters.

Nice term, but it should be about more than the environment: Cook County is not sustainable on the path it is on.

Like it's much bigger Pacific neighbor Australia, New Zealand has recently seen a return to imposition of the some of the strictest pandemic lockdown measures on the planet. Australia, for example, has seen instances of police harassing and arresting people at quiet public parks, or even searching packages to ensure citizens' "quota" of allowable alcohol is not being violated while in quarantine. 

Seemingly endless absurd stories of brazen government overreach are coming out of the two countries under lockdown, even with relatively low infection numbers compared to more hard-hit countries like the United States. The latest out of New Zealand suggests that even gang members and criminals are now turning to things like "smuggling" fast food and taking risks to merely enjoy simple freedoms, according to CNN:

Two alleged gang associates found with a car trunk "full of KFC" takeout were arrested as they tried to enter New Zealand's largest city on Sunday in breach of strict coronavirus lockdown rules, according to police.

It happened in the large metropolitan city of Auckland, which is currently under what the government is calling 'Alert Level 4' lockdown, which is the most far-reaching in the country. It requires residents to stay at home most of the time, with all 'non essential' services closed including bars, restaurants, gyms and even food takeout services. Essentially people can't even order food to go.

After nearly five weeks of Auckland in the strictest lockdown possible, New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern has announced the restrictions are about to be lifted. Much of the rest of the country is at Level 2 - which means things like restaurants have remained open.

Hence the absurdity of "gang members" now focusing their criminal enterprise on smuggling restaurant food from Level 2 areas into Level 4 zones to make some quick cash, apparently. More details of the offense are in CNN as follows:

Police were patrolling back roads near the outskirts of Auckland when they noticed a suspicious looking vehicle, a New Zealand Police spokesperson said in a statement Monday.

Upon seeing the officers, the vehicle did a U-turn and sped off before eventually pulling over, the statement said. When the car was searched, police found a large quantity of KFC, more than NZ$100,000 ($70,000) in cash, and "empty ounce bags."

And here was the offense that exposed the criminal conspiracy: "Police photos show at least three buckets of chicken, about 10 cups of coleslaw, a large package of fries, and four large bags containing other KFC items."

"An undisclosed quantity of fries"https://t.co/ssMIIcixQ6

— James Shaw (@JGBS) September 21, 2021

It's not The Onion, but police were literally photographing a "crime scene" of buckets of Colonel Sanders' finger lickin' good extra crispy. This is the dystopian Black Mirror style bizarro world that NZ "health authorities" have erected and appear to even be boasting about - police are cracking down on alleged gang members and criminals driving back roads at night to make "illegal" chicken deliveries to deprived citizens in lockdown.

The two men, which press reports identified as a 23 and 30-year-old, face multiple charges under the country's "Covid-19 Public Health Response Act" including up to six months in jail and a fine equivalent to almost $3,000.

According to the BBC, police in Auckland recently arrested a man seen in a social media video leaving the quarantined city to purchase large quantities of McDonald's meals just outside the lockdown zone. BCC noted of this latest KFC incident that is part of a trend of people with cravings increasingly making "risky late night food runs" despite facing prosecution under Covid laws.

US equity futures markets and cryptos are surging higher as headlines from China that Evegrande Onshore Property Unit would pay the bond coupon on Thursday September 23rd.

This headline alone sparked panic-buying in futures...

And bitcoin spiked too...

But... Of course, the buy first, think later mantra is in full play here as shortly after the first glorious headline, Bloomberg reported that the September 23rd yuan coupon payment had been negotiated with bondholders away from the clearing house.

Morgan Stanley had previously suggested this plan of action, forecasting that Beijing may initiate a managed debt restructuring of “a troubled property developer” in the coming week, followed by policy easing in October to contain spillover to the broader economy, according to Morgan Stanley.

The world’s most indebted developer is supposed to pay bond interest totaling about $119.5 million on Thursday. Interest comes due Thursday on two Evergrande notes, even as it falls behind on payments to banks, suppliers and holders of onshore investment products:

• There’s $83.5 million of interest due that day on an 8.25%, five-year dollar bond, Bloomberg-compiled data show. Any missed payment would have a 30-day period before it’s considered a default, according to the bond covenants.

• Evergrande also needs to pay a 232 million yuan ($36 million) coupon on an onshore note the same day.

Evergrande’s onshore property unit will make interest payment for its 5.8% 2025 bond Thursday, according to exchange filing.

So, it appears the onshore note has been negotiated - though we do not know what kind of haircut was applied - and we do not know about the dollar bond (and remember this comes after the firm missed interest payments due Monday to at least two of its largest bank creditors).

But that wasn't all, PBOC confirmed it was boosting its daily liquidity injection by 120 billion yuan. That is the biggest liquidity injection since January.

“The PBOC kept its net injection against a possible market plunge,” said Zhaopeng Xing, senior China strategist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd.

“This will soothe the tightness and keep liquidity loose. Next week will see big fiscal spending flows, which will solve the quarter-end liquidity issue.”

Did Xi just fold?

Or will the Evergrande plan leave dollar bondholders (and bank debtholders) in the hole while domestic bonds get covered?

Now that the Delta variant in the US has peaked in terms of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths, media fearmongering surrounding the latest round of the covid pandemic has understandably been quietly pulled from the front pages at least until such time the mu variant, or some other virulent strain du jour, makes a triumphant appearance and Fauci is again trotted across the mainstream media to distill a fresh round of fear and set the scene for a new round of restrictions and lockdowns, a cycle that will repeat at least until the mid-term elections which predictably will have to be conducted largely by mail.

But while we wait, we wanted to bring attention to a remarkable new analysis from JPMorgan which found that contrary to developed nations, many of which imposed draconian lockdowns, most notably Australia...

... developing nations saw a Delta wave that was "much milder" than anticipated. JPM's discussion and conclusions as to why this may have happened are striking.

Taking a step back, over two months ago in early July, JPMorgan wrote a note about EM vulnerabilities to the COVID-19 Delta variant in which it drew attention to seven countries – the Philippines, Peru, Columbia, South Africa, Ecuador, Thailand and Mexico – which at the time looked particularly vulnerable due to a combination of low prevalence of the Delta variant and low vaccination rates.

Given the widely accepted assumption that the Delta variant is much more infectious than prior strains of SARS-CoV-2, and given the prevailing trends in vaccination rates, JPMorgan then estimated that the spread of the Delta variant would push up the effective reproduction numbers (Re) significantly in these countries.

JPMorgan's concern was that these seven countries would see significant gains in COVID-19 infections which would prompt further restrictive measures on mobility and mixing in some countries (EM Asia) or lead to worsening in public health and confidence in others (Latin America): "we thought that Re in the Philippines would rise from 0.92 to 1.97 as the Delta variant became fully prevalent. At an Re of 0.92 new infections are falling, while at an Re of 1.97 new infections are doubling every six to seven days."

What happened next was unexpected: JPMorgan policy research analyst David Mackie found that "the Delta wave was much milder than expected: none of these countries saw the gains in Re that we anticipated."

This brings us to the latest note from JPM titled "What happened to the COVID-19 Delta wave in vulnerable EM countries?" in which the bank tries to explain just why it was so wrong with its modeling and assumptions.

The bank starts off by showing the evolution of the reproductive numbers (Re) over the past couple of months for these seven countries. While Re did initially rise over the summer as the Delta variant spread, which led to an increase in infections, it was not by as much as expected.

While on average, Re was expected to rise by 0.58 from the end of June to the time when the Delta variant was fully prevalent (from 1.07 to 1.65), the average rise was only by 0.24 (from 1.07 to 1.31); in other words, around half of the expected gain in Re did not occur.

"How can we explain this shortfall?" JPMorgan's Mackie asks, and answers: There are five areas which could contribute to an explanation: mobility; vaccinations; acquired immunity from infection and recovery, seasonality and the infectiousness of the Delta variant.

Starting at the top, JPMorgan points out the obvious: mobility cannot explain the lower than expected Re. Mobility did decline sharply in July in the Philippines, South Africa and Thailand, but these declines were mostly reversed during August. "The short-lived nature of the decline in mobility in these countries implies only a temporary depressing effect on Re" JPM observes and adds that on average across the seven countries, higher mobility contributed 0.16 to the change in Re from the time of our original note to the moment that the Delta variant reached full prevalence.

Another possible explanation for the far more moderate-than-expected rise in Re - the preferred explanation of Anthony Fauci - is that actual infections have been much higher than reported infections, which would have introduced more immunity into the populations. This is notable because as JPMorgan then notes, in its analysis the bank takes reported infections and assume that acquired immunity from infection and recovery is the same as from full vaccination. This assumption would make the Biden admin, which sternly refuses to discuss the impact of natural immunity and is desperately trying to force jabs on everyone, quite displeased. Yet this too is hardly the full story: according to JPMorgan, with these assumptions acquired immunity from infection and recovery has pushed down Re by just 0.02, and means that aAlthough actual infections are likely above reported infections, the under-reporting would have to be very large to make the contribution to the change in Re significant in size. That is unlikely.

The most likely, and most politically problematic explanation, proposed by JPMorgan is that "the Delta variant may be less infectious than initially assumed."

As JPM explains, the impact of infectiousness comes through changes in the basic reproduction number (R0). In the bank's framework, on a forward looking basis it makes assumptions about the level of R0, but on a backward looking basis R0 is the residual given the path of Re is already known. In the bank's original, July  note, it had assumed an R0 of 3.0 for the original wild strain of SARS-CoV-2, 3.9 for the Alpha variant (an increase in infectiousness of 30%) and 5.2 for the Delta variant (a further increase in infectiousness of 33%), in line with what the accepted "science" claimed was reasonable. As JPM further notes, assuming that the Alpha variant was the previously dominant strain, the spread of the Delta variant should have added 1.3 to Re as it moved from zero to full prevalence. But in the event, the implied increase in R0 over the past couple of months has been much less than expected.

Table 3 compares JPM's original expectation of the contribution of R0 to the change in Re with its latest estimate of the contribution. On average, the bank finds that "the estimate of the contribution to the change in Re of increased infectiousness of the Delta variant has been 0.56, around half of our initial estimate."

What does this mean? Simple: as Mackie explains, "it is very possible that the Delta variant is around half as infectious as initially assumed." While this - JPM exclaims optimistically - would be very positive going forward, and would limit any increase in infections in the coming months, it would be devastating for such institutions as the NIH, not to mention Biden's chief covid advisor, Fauci, whose entire argument since the start is that the delta variant was far more infectious than any of the previous covid variants; it would also once again make a mockery of "the science" which had fully supported the theory that Delta had a far greater infectiousness.

Of course by even getting this far, the JPMorgan analyst may have broken most of the most cardinal of taboos of delta variant discussion in "polite society", so we are not surprised that he did not even dare breathe the word "ivermectin" and its use in Peru, Philippines, South Africa, Ecuador, Thailand and Mexico.

As expected, in a surprisingly close, 220-211 vote, the Democratic-controlled House passed a bill that would suspend the U.S. debt ceiling into December 2022 and provide the government funding to operate past Sept, 30 if it passes the Senate which it most likely won't because Senate Republicans, even RINOs such as Mitt Romney, have vowed to block it over the debt limit provision which Democrats purposefully included in the provision.

House approves bill to avert government shutdown/suspend debt limit. The vote was 220-211. Party line vote.

— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) September 22, 2021

The political standoff raises the chances of twin fiscal disasters -- a government shutdown and a default -- that could have devastating consequences for Wall Street and the broader American economy.

It's not yet clear what Democrats' plan B would be if the effort to avert a shutdown and suspend the debt limit runs aground in the Senate, as it appears is on track to happen.

If Machin sides with Senate Republicans to block the stop-gap funding measure over the debt limit, there could still be enough time to strip the debt limit measure out and pass a stand-alone spending bill to avoid a shutdown. But the vote would take place perilously close to the shutdown deadline - the drop dead date is sometime in mid/late October - and would likely require cooperation on both sides to process a quick Senate vote. It also would leave the debt ceiling problem unresolved, setting up yet another flashpoint issue to be dealt with by Congress in the weeks to come.

And just to assure that the bill in its current format will not get the support of republicans, moments after the House vote, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and Republican Senator Richard Shelby introduced a new stopgap measure that keeps the U.S. government funded through Dec. 3 but does not suspend or increase the debt limit.  The Senate bill includes funding for disaster aid, assistance for Afghan allies and Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, a provision which was struck from the Democrats' bill to obtain support of progressive democrats.

Earlier on Tuesday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer left the door open on what measures the House would take if the Senate is not able to pass what the House sends over before the government runs out of funding next week.

"We want to send it over to the Senate, and give the Senate an opportunity to consider it, figure out what they're going to do and they may send it back to us, at which point in time we will have to make a determination, but we want to pass that bill," he said.

Meanwhile, as reported earlier, the current standoff in Congress makes a government shutdown and a debt ceiling breach increasingly likely according to Goldman, which said in a note published overnight that while "a shutdown October 1 is not the base case, in our view, because there is a fair chance that Democrats will shift strategy before the deadline. However, the longer Congress remains on this course, the more likely a shutdown becomes."

Ahead of China's reopening on Wednesday after a two-day holiday which has seen property stocks traded in Hong Kong tumble on fears that the Evergrande default will spark contagion both domestically and internationally, investors are closely watching what - if anything - Beijing will announce to ease investor nerves (they are also watching the first People’s Bank of China policy operation since the country’s holiday break). Meanwhile, international investors are just as closely tracking developments in China bond markets, not just the High Yield market where yields have soared to the highest level in 10 years, but also the investment grade sector, which is where the country's banks reside. The good news here is that so far China's IG market has barely budged, and as Deutsche Bank's Jim Reid notes, "if  Chinese IG doesn't care, the world shouldn't. However, if that starts to widen we know the impact is starting to spread. Definitely one to watch."

And while traders wait to see if new developments impact China's IG market, Deutsche Bank has released a detailed look at how Evergrande could impact the broader high yield market, where it is a dominant player, with estimates of Evergrande's bonds ranging anywhere between 10% and 16% of total market size...

Or, as Deutsche Bank puts it, "Evergrande is the largest corporate in the largest sector of the second-largest economy in the world" and as such the fact that this crisis has become a much wider global macro story shouldn't be a surprise. To this end, in his note published this morning DB's Craig Nicol seeks to answer some of the questions posed by investors in recent days, including scale and scope of contagion within HY, exposure to China risk within indices, and the ultimate end game.

Starting with the topic of contagion, the first question to ask is why have we not seen any wider scale contagion within HY or even China $IG?

As detailed in the chart below, which shows cumulative year-to-date total returns across HY markets as well as China $HY and $IG markets, the obvious point to make is that, while we've seen a significant decline in performance in China $HY, the wider impact on credit markets has been negligible. China $HY has seen YTD performance of nearly -18% which compares to returns of +3% to +5% across
broader HY markets and +1% for China $IG.

The next two charts show the scale of the spread moves for context. The first two charts focus on the China $ markets only.

As we have observed recently, China's dollar HY market has seen spreads widen back to the pandemic wides of last year at ~1600bps - and clearly very distressed levels - and recently even rose to decade wides from 2011. Spreads are 326bps wider MTD alone. In contrast, and as noted above although yesterday was the first real weak day for China $IG, spreads are only 7bps wider MTD and 10bps tighter versus the end of Q2. The chart with spreads tracked back to 2010 on the right hand side shows that there has been a clear dislocation between China $ IG and HY risk in recent weeks as the Evergrande situation has developed compared to what has historically been a tight correlation between the two markets.

Chart 3 shows spreads for $HY and €HY only. Spreads were notably wider yesterday, particularly in $HY, however in the context of YTD spread performance we are still near the tights not only this year but also historically over the last decade. Most importantly, China $HY spreads have been widening for the best part of 4 months now but in that time we've seen $HY and €HY trade in a narrow range at historically tight levels with all-time low volatility. So, as Nicol notes, "whilst yesterday's price action was eye-catching the broader spread moves since China $HY started widening aggressively has been anything but that. So, contagion has been incredibly limited and virtually non-existent so far at least."

One reason for the lack of contagion within the bond market is the relatively low exposure: according to DB, global HY has only 5% exposure to China, while €HY less than 1% and $HY no exposure, and as Nicol notes, "the fact that we've seen spreads remain so resolute in $HY and €HY in the face of China weakness is supported by the lack of direct China risk. In Figure 4, we show the breakdown of the main ICE HY indices with a focus on China country of risk and also Asia and broader EM exposure."

As shown above, given that $HY is a DM-only index, there is no exposure to corporates with a China country of risk whatsoever whilst €HY has minimal exposure at just 0.3% of the index notional spread across 2 issuers. Where there is greater exposure is within global HY funds where around ~5% of the index is directly China country of risk (excluded here are issuers that don't have a China country of risk but may have significant revenue, earnings or even asset exposure to China. This will be more significant but requires more of a subjective overlay.)

DB has also included distress ratios as an additional information point across all markets. Distress ratios are at historically low levels across HY markets (to be expected in a world that has injected $40 trillion in liquidity since Covid); however, unsurprisingly for China $HY, the distress ratio is alarmingly high at over 57%, although one should highlight that this is very much a real estate story.

According to DB calculations, China's real estate sector comprises over 80% of China $HY and has a distress ratio of 69%. In contrast, all other sectors combined have a distress ratio of just 6% and only just above that of the wider global HY market. This is further evidence that the contagion has been incredibly limited so far with China HY real estate really the only sector under any kind of distress, although when one considers the outsized impact of China real estate on China's economy - 30% of GDP and 70% of household wealth are tied up in property - this should not be discounted.

Uncertainty is high, contagion risks should not be discounted.

While one could be tempted to discount the risk of contagion, Deutsche Bank cautions that "the sheer scale and complexity of Evergrande and the potential for contagion in a sector like real estate that provides core collateral for financial intermediation and complex webs and interlinkages between institutions rightly means markets are sensitive about the potential fallout." Indeed, in recent days, the scale of concern has even ignited debate about Evergrande being "China's Lehman" moment.

That said, to counter some of the more extreme concerns, DB notes that the first important point to make is that the Evergrande situation has not happened overnight and it is a story that has been developing for some time now. Indeed, the $ bonds have been in what is a relatively steady decline since the end of May now as opposed to crashing in a matter of days (as was the case with Lehman, although there the stock did collapse heading into Sept 15, 2008). So, as Deutsche notes, "investors have had some time to digest the potential knock-on risks, price the risks and consider the wider ramifications for more domestic markets and sectors. That is considerably different to the global financial crisis over a decade ago where broader markets ultimately were unable to reprice quickly enough" (or rather they simply refused to accept the Lehman bankruptcy as a viable outcome until the actual bankruptcy filing itself).

The second point is that we have seen little to no fallout beyond the real estate sector in China HY. As stated earlier, the non-real estate distress ratio in China $HY is just 6% and only slightly above broader global HY while there is no stress at all in China $IG. The latter is the next market to watch especially given exposure to banks, however here DB argues that a combination of stronger balance sheets and a level of state or local government backing does somewhat mitigate the risks.

The third point and, where there appears to be some level of consensus, is that a wide-scale systemic issue is unlikely. Historically, there has been some level of belief that China's government would not let a financial shock event unfold especially before contagion. However, as many have noted in recent weeks, it is not nearly as clear how much of a China “policy put” exists to support sectors, unless contagion gets much worse. This is especially the case given policy makers' greater focus on reducing moral hazard. Ultimately, authorities have the tools to contain this, are incentivised to prevent this becoming a wider systemic issue and will likely prevent this being systemic, especially if market turmoil gets worse. If nothing else, the argument goes, problems have been too obvious for too long and the Evergrande shock is mostly policy-induced so all things equal policy makers should be more in control than a decade ago. While this may come via a managed restructuring of Evergrande’s debt as opposed to a direct bailout, the bigger unknown is how much longer are authorities willing to tolerate and the likelihood of a policy error going up.

That all being said, Deutsche ultimately agrees with Goldman that whatever the ultimate timeline is on some level of policy support to prevent this becoming more widespread, it's hard to argue against there being a further shift lower in growth expectations in China, especially when it comes to the slowdown in the property sector adversely impacting GDP (for those who missed it yesterday, the chart below shows Goldman's three cases how significantly the property market slowdown will impact China's GDP).

Here DB's China economists have also noted that the property sector is now in a cyclical downturn and that if the downturn this time were to follow historical patterns, the trough for property sales will likely be in end-2021 or early 2022. The bank also notes, similarly to Goldman, that previous downturns resulted in a negative impact on real GDP of ~1-2% and closer to ~5% during the GFC.

As Deutsche Bank concludes, "much depends on contagion knock-on risks to other sectors; however, we should note that this is all coming as China also shifts to living with COVID and potential further waves, and smoothing trade relations with the US."

One final point: DB's chief credit strategist Jim Reid held a flash poll asking clients' opinion of what Evergrande will mean for global markets in a month had over 700 response in two hours. The result: only 8% felt it would be significantly impacting global financial markets by then with a combined 68% expecting limited or no impact.

Bottom line: markets are fully of the view that contagion is virtually unlikely. Or as Jim Cramer would say, "Evergrande is fine."

Via Southfront.org,

On September 21st, Indian officials said they had seized nearly three tonnes of heroin originating from Afghanistan worth an estimated 200 billion rupees ($2.72 billion).

More than 2,988 kg of heroin was recovered in one of India’s biggest such hauls to date.

According to DRI (Ahmedabad zone) officials, a consignment had been imported by Aashi Trading Company, a Vijaywada-based company, from Iran’s Bandar Abbas Port to Mundra Port. The company had declared the imported consignment as “semi-processed talc stones” which had originated from Afghanistan.

“Specific intelligence was developed by the DRI that a consignment imported by Aashi Trading Company from Bandar Abbas Port is suspected to contain narcotics. Accordingly, officers of DRI detained the consignment of two containers with the weight of 40 tonnes in total, for examination under the provisions of Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act. The examination was conducted in the presence of experts from the Forensic Sciences Laboratory, Gandhinagar. During the examination, suspected narcotics were recovered from both the containers and after testing, it was confirmed to be heroin. Accordingly, 1999.579 kg was recovered from the first container and 988.64 kg was recovered from the second container,” said a DRI official.

“Searches have been conducted in Ahmedabad, Gandhidham and Mandvi as well as in Delhi and Chennai. Two persons have been arrested and a number of persons and entities are under investigation. The probe has also revealed the involvement of Afghan nationals. A Bhuj court has granted 10-day custody of the two accused,” said the official.

Afghanistan is the world’s biggest illicit opiate supplier, but since taking power, the Islamist Taliban have said they plan to ban the drug trade, without giving details on how.

Just two people had been arrested in connection with the haul and investigations were ongoing, an anonymous official in Gujarat said.

The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), India’s top anti-smuggling agency, seized two containers at western Gujarat’s Mundra Port on September 15th after receiving intelligence they contained narcotics, the official said.

The containers had been imported by a firm in the southern coastal city of Vijayawada, the official added.

“Investigation conducted so far has also revealed the involvement of Afghan nationals, who are under investigation.”

This is entirely based on an anonymous recollection as the DRI refused to provide details.

The narcotics were headed to Delhi and the two arrested people had sought an import-export licence based on a house address in Vijayawada, police in Vijayawada said in a statement on September 20th.

The containers had been declared as containing semi-processed talc stones from Afghanistan and had been shipped from Bandar Abbas Port in Iran to Gujarat Mundra port, the anonymous source said, adding that forensic tests confirmed the presence of heroin.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released its quarterly report Tuesday and warned about increasing inflation risks for the next two years as the growth rate of the economic recovery has stalled.

"The economic impact of the Delta variant has so far been relatively mild in countries with high vaccination rates, but has lowered near-term momentum elsewhere and added to pressures on global supply chains and costs," the Paris-based research body wrote, adding that "inflation has risen sharply in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and some emerging-market economies, but remains relatively low in many other advanced economies, particularly in Europe and Asia." 

The OECD expects price increases in 2021 and 2022 above its previously forecast for G20 countries. 

Laurence Boone, the OECD chief economist, said taming inflation would be a juggling act for policymakers. 

"The speed of the recovery has increased inflationary pressures, quickly pushing up prices to where we expected them to be before the pandemic," the OECD said. "Policymakers in advanced economies should monitor these developments without delay."

The OECD's forecast expects G20 inflation at 3.7% in 2021 and 3.9% in 2022. It also expects US inflation pressures to subside next year but be well above 3%. 

"Inflation is expected to settle at a level above the average rates seen prior to the pandemic," the OECD said. "This is welcome after many years of below-target inflation outcomes, but it also points to potential risks." 

The revised outlook was released ahead of the Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's press conference today after the two-day meeting. Investors are eagerly awaiting the Fed's decision to taper monetary policy. 

According to the OECD, global growth has lost momentum due to uneven economic growth - in return, this forced the research body to slash the global growth forecast for 2021 to 5.7% from 5.8%.

"Sizable uncertainty remains," it said. "Faster progress in vaccine deployment or a sharper rundown of household savings would enhance demand and lower unemployment but also potentially push up near-term inflationary pressures."

The question we have is if Powell's "transitory" inflation narrative is falling apart at the seams, as US CEOs warned last week at the annual Morgan Stanley Laguna conference about "unprecedented" inflation becoming "structural." 

DoubleLine Founder Jeffrey Gundlach told investors in a webcast last week that he doesn't believe the history books will say inflation was transitory. 

The macro backdrop is starting to look like growth rates are decreasing, but inflation is either persistent or rising, an ominous sign of stagflation.

Authored by Julie Kelly via American Greatness (emphasis ours),

The incurable incompetence, corruption, and moral rot of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was on full display last week.

Within a 24-hour period, some of America’s toughest female athletes recounted to a Senate committee their painful tales of how the FBI ignored evidence that team doctor Larry Nassar was a sexual predator, and a powerful attorney who colluded with the FBI to concoct one of the most animating chapters of the Trump-Russia collusion fiction was indicted for lying to federal officials.

Overlap in the two cases is more than ironic, it’s illustrative: Michael Sussman, a lawyer for Perkins Coie, the law firm that was working on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign, met with the FBI’s general counsel in September 2016 to plant a false story about Donald Trump’s financial ties to a Russian bank. That same month, the Indianapolis Star broke the story of how Nassar, the longtime physician for the USA Gymnastics team, had sexually abused several female gymnasts. One victim filed a lawsuit after the FBI refused to investigate complaints made to at least two FBI field offices in 2015 and 2016.

But the FBI at that time was too preoccupied with protecting Hillary Clinton to deal with a monster who had systematically raped nearly 300 female American athletes. (As Lee Smith recently noted, the FBI “has been used for a quarter of a century as the place to clean up the Clintons’ dirt.”)

Months before the 2016 presidential election, the FBI, led by James Comey, used its unchecked authority to sabotage Donald Trump. Meanwhile, elite American athletes, including Olympic gold medalists, could not get the bureau’s attention while a sexual abuser continued his rampage. Local FBI agents passed the buck and allegedly falsified reports; one agent reportedly tried to shake down a USA Gymnastics official for a job with the organization.

The FBI’s political game-playing came with irreversible human cost. According to an analysis by the New York Times, at least 40 women and girls, including some of the youngest victims, were assaulted by Nassar between July 2015, the first contact with the FBI, and September 2016. Had the Star not published its exposé of Nassar that month, which finally prompted some action by the FBI, who knows how long his depraved predation would have continued?

“If they’re not going to protect me, I want to know, who are they trying to protect?” McKayla Maroney, a two-time Olympic medalist and one of Nassar’s most frequent victims, asked the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 15.

Maroney may or may not be surprised to learn the agency assigned with protecting the most vulnerable is actually in the business of protecting the most powerful.

Nasser Was Not an Outlier

FBI Director Christopher Wray, hired by President Trump in 2017, publicly apologized. The “fundamental errors” made in the Nassar case, Wray told the judiciary committee, would not happen again as long as he’s head of the agency. “I want to make sure the American people know that the reprehensible conduct . . . is not representative of the work that I see from our 37,000 folks every day.” The rank-and-file, Wray insisted, perform their jobs with “uncompromising integrity.”

But Wray is wrong to claim that the Nassar case is an outlier. From the top of the command chain down, the FBI has trashed its reputation through a series of scandals. It’s not just the alarming texts between spousal cheats Peter Strzok and Lisa Page; the ambush of Lt. General Michael Flynn in the White House; Comey’s use of the shady Steele dossier to set up Donald Trump; or Andrew McCabe’s lies to his own FBI investigators.

It’s not just the other set of “errors”—17 to be exact—found in the FBI’s four unlawful FISA applications on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Or the official email doctored by a top FBI lawyer cited as evidence on one of the applications. Or the fact that no one in the agency has gone to jail for perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in history on the American people.

As seen in the alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, lowlifes populate the FBI’s rank-and-file. Richard Trask, the special agent in charge of the investigation, was arrested in July for physically assaulting and choking his wife after attending a swinger’s party. Trask was fired this month; he faces numerous criminal charges. Prosecutors decided not to use Trask as a witness after his social media account revealed numerous anti-Trump posts, including calling the president a “piece of shit.”

Defense attorneys in the Whitmer case asked the judge to delay trial for 90 days as they investigate the conduct of at least a dozen other FBI agents involved in the conspiracy. The FBI gave one informant $24,000 and a new car for his services.

Wray brags that every FBI field office is participating in the Justice Department’s “unprecedented” investigation into the breach of the Capitol. But reports of how his agents have handled more than 600 arrests do little to support Wray’s assurances of professional “integrity.” Defendants have been subjected to pre-dawn raids conducted by dozens of armed agents using military-style vehicles. I spoke with the spouse of one defendant who told me agents interrogated her about what cable news channel she watched, her views on illegal immigrantion, and who she voted for in 2020.

The FBI raided the home of an Alaska couple then handcuffed and interrogated them in separate rooms for hours until investigators realized they had the wrong suspects. A 69-year-old man in New York City suffered a heart attack as FBI agents raided his apartment with a television news crew standing by; the man never was charged. FBI agents arrested a Florida man in front of his wife and young daughter, who asked why officers were “locking daddy’s hands.” Casey Cusick was charged only with misdemeanors for entering the Capitol on January 6.

Agents seized as evidence a Lego set of the Capitol building during the raid of Robert Morss, an Army ranger with three tours in Afghanistan. Far from nefarious intent, Morss had the Lego set to use with his students as a substitute high school history teacher. (He was fired after his arrest.)

And those are just a few stories.

No Accountability

Wray picked up where Comey left off, allowing his agency to be part of Democratic Party political spin. He recently issued a “threat assessment” on QAnon and disclosed that the FBI so far has arrested at least 20 “self-styled QAnon adherents” related to the Capitol breach investigation. Wray designated January 6 as an act of “domestic terror” and his agency regularly tweets out the faces of “most wanted” Trump supporters who were at the Capitol on January 6.

Infuriatingly, Wray fired only one agent involved in the Nassar fiasco—and the man was fired the week before the Senate hearing, six years after he first interviewed Maroney. “Someone perhaps more cynical than I would conclude it was this hearing here staring the FBI in the face that prompted that action,” Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said to Wray.

But what ails the FBI cannot be solved with a few firings. It cannot be solved with more congressional oversight or threats to cut federal funding. The moral rot that infects the agency from top to bottom renders the agency unsalvageable. 

“This conduct by these FBI agents . . . who are expected to protect the public is unacceptable, disgusting, and shameful,” Maggie Nichols, the gymnast who first reported Nassar’s crimes to the FBI, told the committee.

Her description, however, applies to the entire FBI—an institution with no shame, no remorse, and no accountability. There’s no fix for that.

*  *  *

About Julie Kelly

Julie Kelly is a political commentator and senior contributor to American Greatness. She is the author of Disloyal Opposition: How the NeverTrump Right Tried―And Failed―To Take Down the President.

Shortly before two Evergrande creditors confirmed to Bloomberg (under the guise of anonymity) that the Chinese developer-giant had missed bond payments due Monday, Hayman Capital founder Kyle Bass returned to CNBC for an interview Tuesday morning for a telephone discussion with CNBC's Joe Kernen to discuss the toxic Chinese economy and its unsustainable debt pile.

Bass, one of the most vocal China hawks on Wall Street, has said it's important to understand what, exactly, President Xi is looking for. According to Bass, China is "experiencing similar problems that we are in the US" when it comes to housing prices.

Xi has been managing a broad-based crackdown on the Chinese economy all summer. Now, it's time to confront the issue

Now, China is entering this period of weakness with over $50 trillion worth of credit in their system, with their annual GDP at around $15 trillion.

Compared with China, the US had GDP of $17 trillion with another $12 trillion off-balance-sheet when Lehman collapsed. China is at 3.6x ahead of its "Lehman moment", while the US was only about 1.7x.

What's more, China is still a relative newcomer to the capital markets business, Bass said. China adopted a western-style financial system in 2001 after they joined the WTO.

Around the same time, Beijing's population-control policies started to really bite, as China saw its birth rate dwindle.

There are now 1.3 births per woman in China and you need to be at 2.1 to actually just sustain your population, Bass said. So for many working-age Chinese males, population dynamics are at a critical level and the reason being is the Chinese men can't afford houses so they're all living with their parents and the fact that Evergrande went on a credit binge and built all of the housing and Chinese property took off because their central bank continued to print so much money. Now, it's trying to rein in property prices and he's trying to do it as quickly as possible because China's on an unsustainable path lower.

"Right now," Bass says, everyone who believes China's going to grow at 6% a year ad infinitum "is just dead wrong," but if we just divorce ourselves from any value judgments about China and think about the the future of the plan of the globe - if we always think about the Chinese consumer and we all at one point wanted to move forward in a symbiotic way where we sell things to China, and their consumers buy things from us.

It's nice to think about, but this unfortunately just isn't how China works. Investors must realize that they're not investing  "in a real market."

Bass added: "You still have an economy with a closed capital account they have one-way capital flows dollars in. Now, imagine if dollars start heading out."

Watch most of the interview below:

By Peter Adams of Restaurant Dive,

Summary

• Subway recorded its highest August sales since 2013 on the tails of rolling out a brand refresh campaign, according to an announcement.

• The "Eat Fresh Refresh" initiative launched on July 13 represents the largest changes to Subway's menu in company history with over 20 updates, as well as renewed commitments to digital technology. Total sales at U.S. restaurants were up 4% in August compared to 2019 figures, with Subway's top-performing quartile — a group representing over 5,000 store locations — seeing transactions up 33% versus two years ago.

• The sandwich chain now expects to surpass its 2021 sales plan by more than $1 billion, a needed boost after standing as a laggard in the category. But Subway is still contending with headwinds, including recent tensions around its pick of brand ambassadors.

Subway is drawing a direct link between the "Eat Fresh Refresh" strategy and a sales boost in the summer period, including its highest weekly average unit volume transactions in eight years. The planned multiyear overhaul touches across the chain's business, with a menu makeover consisting of 11 new and improved ingredients, six new or returning sandwiches and four revamped signature sandwiches. The brand at the same time is remodeling stores and introducing an updated visual identity, along with putting larger priority on digital capabilities that have become must-haves for restaurants during the pandemic, with adjustments to its ordering platform and the debut of a direct delivery service.

Changes on the operational side of the business are complemented by what the company has billed as a "never-ending" marketing campaign. Subway tapped a roster of celebrity athletes such as Serena Williams, Tom Brady, Steph Curry and Megan Rapinoe to promote the retooling to consumers. A series of TV ads titled "It's Too Much for One Spokesperson" pokes fun at the scale of the campaign, with ambassadors stepping on each others' lines.

The effort also encompasses hundreds of new pieces of digital and social creative, in-store and print elements. Subway's marketing is overseen by Carrie Walsh, who was appointed CMO in 2019 after stints at Pizza Hut and PepsiCo.

Subway suggested that consumers have generally been receptive to the revamp. In a survey of 66,000 customers, 83% reported enjoying the menu updates, per the announcement.

"We are getting an extremely positive reaction from our guests regarding all that is new at Subway," said David Liseno, a multiunit franchisee in Central New York State, in a press statement.

Some research has uncovered pushback against Subway's spokespeople. An August survey by Piplsay revealed nearly half (45%) of U.S. consumers said Subway should drop Rapinoe, an outspoken member of the United States women's national soccer team. Rapinoe generated outcry over her decision to kneel during the Tokyo Olympics as a protest against racism.

Google plans to purchase a Manhattan office building for $2.1 billion, the most expensive for any single US office building since the virus pandemic began, according to WSJ. 

The deal for the St. John's Terminal building in the Hudson Square neighborhood of Manhattan comes as the tech giant already leases the building and plans to exercise the option to buy in the first quarter of 2022. 

The plans add to Google's massive footprint in Manhattan. The company previously announced it would invest $250 million into the metro area to expand its headcount from 12,000 to 14,000 over the next few years.

"Our decision to exercise our option to purchase St. John's Terminal further builds upon our existing plans to invest more than $250 million this year in our New York campus presence. It is also an important part of meeting our previously announced racial equity commitments, which include continuing to grow our workforce in diverse communities like New York," Google said in a blog post. 

The site will be Google's most prominent office outside of California, coming in at 1.7 million square feet. The deal is a positive sign for commercial real estate in the metro area, beaten down during the virus pandemic. Still, most of the company's workforce remains remote and may not return to the office until January. 

Google also seems unphased by the real estate turmoil in China, where the possible default of the country's largest property developer, Evergrande, could be imminent and ripple through property markets. 

Authored by Pat Buchanan,

In a diplomatic coup, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced a deal last week with the U.K. and U.S. to have those Anglo-American allies help build a nuclear-powered submarine fleet for Australia.

A $66 billion French deal to provide Canberra with diesel electric-powered submarines, among the largest defense contracts Paris had ever negotiated, was blown off.

“A stab in the back!” said Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, who had been kept in the dark on the secret talks.

“There has been duplicity, contempt and lies.” Le Drian compared President Joe Biden to former President Donald Trump.

President Emmanuel Macron recalled his ambassadors to both the U.S. and Australia. In two centuries of U.S.-French diplomatic relations, no such recall had ever occurred.

What does this Australia First submarine deal mean?

Canberra, which has sought to steer a middle course between its great customer China and its great ally America, is coming down on the side of the Americans in the rising great-power quarrel.

This “AUKUS” partnership, says Beijing, will “severely damage” peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific, and Beijing is demanding to know whether Australia regards China as a “partner or a threat.”

This new clash comes as China is using its military to speak for its claims to islands and islets hundreds of miles off its coast.

Several Chinese claims collide directly with the territorial claims of neighbors who are longtime U.S. treaty allies for whose territory we are committed to fight.

China claims, for example, the Paracel and Spratly Islands and almost all of the rocks and reefs in the South China Sea, many of which are within territorial waters claimed by Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei, the Philippines and Taiwan.

China also claims Taiwan itself, 110 miles off its coast, as well as the nearby Senkaku Islands, which Japan controls and for which Tokyo appears to be preparing to fight. A Chinese-Japanese clash over the Senkakus, the Biden administration has said, will bring the U.S. in on the side of Japan.

In a recent CNN interview, Japan’s Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said the Senkakus would be defended as Japanese national territory.

And Japan has been expanding its Self-Defense Forces, adding the latest U.S. F-35 fighters, converting warships into aircraft carriers, and building new destroyers, submarines and missiles.

Earlier this year, the Biden State Department said the U.S.-Japan security treaty covers the Senkakus and our Philippines security treaty covers Manila’s claims to Chinese-occupied islets in the South China Sea.

Message: If Manila chooses to fight to retrieve its islets from Chinese occupation and control, America will fight on Manila’s side.

Still, China has yet to back down from any of its claims.

It has sailed warships and planes to hassle U.S. and allied ships and planes in the South China and East China Seas and sent fleets of bombers and fighters into airspace on Taiwan’s side of the Taiwan Strait.

To prevent Taiwan’s independence, Beijing has said, it will fight.

Should fighting break out between China and the U.S. over these claims, the war would be about islands that are thousands of miles from our West Coast but within a few hundred miles of the China coast.

Other East Asian nations are also communicating their interests and intent through military demonstrations.

After claiming to have tested a new long-range cruise missile, North Korea last week tested two ballistic missiles. At that same time, South Korea was testing its own submarine-launched ballistic missile, becoming the first country without nuclear weapons to do so.

This past summer, there were reports that Pyongyang had restarted a reactor in its main nuclear complex at Yongbyon, suggesting that Kim Jong Un may be ramping up his nuclear weapons program.

And, regularly now, U.S. planes stationed in Alaska scramble to intercept Russian military aircraft. This year, the number of intercepts, 14, is on pace to set a record since the Cold War. In the most recent case, two Russian bombers and two fighters came within 30 miles of the Alaskan coast.

This summer, Russian naval vessels came within 34 miles of Hawaii.

Russian ships and planes off Alaska are perhaps responding to U.S. warships and planes in the Black Sea.

World War II began in Europe when the British, Sept. 3, 1939, declared war on Germany over its invasion of Poland to retrieve what Berlin claimed were its territories, including Danzig, taken from Germany at Versailles against the will of the people of Danzig and in violation of their right of self-determination.

If World War III breaks out between China and the U.S., it is likely to be over islands of Asia claimed by China, with the U.S. fighting not for its own territory but for the island territory of allies, probably islands in no way vital to the security of the United States.

Which is how world powers often end their days as world powers, fighting unnecessary wars on behalf of other nations.

The new book "Peril" written by well-known Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa has for the first time revealed details of a confrontational follow-up exchange between Presidents Biden and Putin over Biden's prior "killer" remarks.

The controversy stemmed from a Biden interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos within the opening months of his presidency last spring.

EXCLUSIVE: Pres. Biden told @GStephanopoulos that he agreed Russian President Vladimir Putin is a "killer" and will "pay a price" for interfering in U.S. elections. https://t.co/rIe2ms8sSv pic.twitter.com/VtAGCvF9hp

— Good Morning America (@GMA) March 17, 2021

Biden was talking getting "tough" on Russia as a way of supposedly distancing himself from Trump's foreign policy, coming after years of the incessant drumbeat of the failed 'Russiagate' narrative.

Recall that Biden had agreed that Putin is a "killer" when asked by Stephanopoulos in the televised interview...

Asked whether he believes Mr Putin is a "killer" in the ABC interview, the president responded: "I do."

"The price he’s going to pay, you’ll see shortly," he said.

Mr Biden recalled meeting Mr Putin, during which he reportedly told him that he "doesn’t have a soul": "I wasn’t being a wise guy." "He looked back at me and said, 'We understand each other'," Mr Biden said.

Biden having called the head of state of a major global power a "killer" immediately drove world headlines, and was a featured talking point among pundits going into the tense Biden-Putin summit held in Geneva on June 16.

The Woodward and Costa book has divulged the contents of an April 13 phone call which came weeks after the March interview. That's when Putin called the US president out on the matter:

"I'm upset you called me a killer," Putin said to Biden...

Biden told Putin his comment, made in a March 16 interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos, was "not something premeditated," according to the book.

"I was asked a question. I gave an answer. It was an interview on a totally different topic," Biden said, before he invited Putin to meet with him in person.

Prior to this newly revealed exchange, Putin had publicly responded to the insult in television remarks, saying...

"It takes one to know one," Putin said in televised remarks, using a saying from his childhood.

"That's not just a children's saying and a joke. There's a deep psychological meaning in this."

"We always see in another person our own qualities and think that he is the same as us."

Putin added that he wished Biden, 78, good health. "I'm saying this without irony, not as a joke."

It's unclear whether Putin was satisfied with Biden's direct explanation in the April 13 phone call. Biden didn't apologize, but seemed to back off the comments a little by blaming the unscripted interview question. 

The June summit was cordial and conciliatory between the two leaders, however it became clear that the press pool was looking to bait the leaders into condemning the other - which led to Biden himself venting in frustration and lashing out at an American reporter at one point in the aftermath.