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Cui Tiankai, China's longest-serving ambassador to the US in history, is leaving Washington after eight years as Beijing's top diplomat in the West, a departure that's coming at a particularly tense time for US-China bilateral relations.

In a statement, Cui said the bilateral relationship is at a "crossroads", and called on Chinese people in the US to defend their right to live in the country, and to "shoulder a great responsibility and mission" in bolstering the relationship between the world's two largest economies.

"Sino-US relations are at a critical crossroads, and the US’s China policy is undergoing a new round of restructure, facing a choice between dialogue and cooperation, or confrontation and conflict," Cui said in the letter.

"At this moment, overseas Chinese in the United States shoulder a greater responsibility and mission. I hope you will continue to be a firm promoter and positive contributor to the healthy and stable development of Sino-US relations, and defend your right to be in the US...and safeguard the fundamental interests of the Chinese and American people to promote world peace, stability and prosperity."

Cui's tour in the US began during the Obama Administration, and included the Trump years, when the US waged a trade war against China that led to both sides hiking tariffs and imposing other new trade barriers. As opposed to China's infamous "wolf warrior" diplomats, Cui is known in the West as a moderate. Yet he presided over other upheavals, including tit-for-tat closures of consulates and restrictions slapped on foreign journalists by both the US and China. Cui has also dismissed reporting on China's human-rights abuses in Xinjiang and the illegal (under international law) crackdown on Hong Kong as "fake news".

Cui Tiankai

However, Cui gained respect in Washington after pushing back against a narrative (cooked up by Beijing's propagandists) that COVID-19 was started by the American military.

The diplomat's departure has been rumored for months. "He's been getting very tired," one source told the Guardian.

"Cui was getting very tired and had been wanting to leave for some years," J Michael Cole said, citing diplomatic sources in Washington.

"He leaves at a time when US-China relations are at their lowest point in several years, if not decades. The principal reason for this is not his doing, as he was, by current standards, a rather mild-tempered representative of China abroad."

Having witnessed the popularity of some of Trump's hawkish and aggressive stance on America's biggest geopolitical rival, President Biden has pledged to continue the Trump trade war while seeking cooperation on other issues like climate change.

Qin Gang, China's vice-minister of foreign affairs under Foreign Minister Wang Yi, has been widely tipped to succeed Cui as Beijing's top emissary to the US. Having spent most of his career focused on Europe, Qin has no direct experience in dealing with the US. But given the control exercised from Beijing, the experience of the diplomat doesn't have much bearing on policy. But one expert source said the risks of more "rhetorical sparks" flying will likely be higher on the new ambassador.

Authored by Matthew Piepenburg via GoldSwitzerland.com,

Fact checking politicos, headlines and central bankers is one thing. Putting their "facts" into context is another.

Toward that end, it’s critical to place so-called “economic growth,” Treasury market growth, stock market growth, GDP growth and, of course, gold price growth into clearer perspective despite an insane global backdrop that is anything but clearly reported.

Context 1: The Rising Growth Headline

Recently, Biden’s economic advisor, Jared Bernstein, calmed the masses with yet another headline-making boast that the U.S. is “growing considerably faster” than their trading partners.

Fair enough.

But given that the U.S. is running the largest deficits on historical record…

…such “growth” is not surprising.

In other words, bragging about growth on the back of extreme deficit spending is like a spoiled kid bragging about a new Porsche secretly purchased with his father’s credit card: It only looks good until the bill arrives and the car vanishes.

In a financial world gone mad, it’s critical to look under the hood of what passes for growth in particular or basic principles of price discovery, debt levels or supply and demand in general.

In short: “Growth” driven by extreme debt is not growth at all–it’s just the headline surface shine on a sports car one can’t afford.

And yet the madness continues…Take the U.S. Treasury market, for example.

Context 2: The Treasury “Market”?

How can anyone call the U.S. Treasury market a “market” when 56% of the $4.5T of bonds issued since last February have been bought by the Fed itself?

Sounds more like an insider price-fix than a “market,” no?

Such context gives an entirely new meaning to the idea of “drinking your own Kool-aide” and ought to be a cool reminder that Treasury bonds in general, and bond yields in particular, are zombies masquerading as credit Olympians.

The Fed, of course, will pretend that such “support” is as temporary as their “transitory inflation” meme, but most market realists understood long ago that more and crazier bond yield “support” is the only way for national debt bubbles (and IOU’s) to stay zombie-like alive.

In short, the better phrase for Treasury “support,” “accommodation,” or “stimulus” is simply: “Life Support.”

With central banks like the Fed continuing to create fiat currencies to monetize their unsustainable debt well into the distant future, we can safely foresee a further weakening of the USD and further strengthening of gold prices, mining stocks and key risk assets like tech and industrial stocks.

Context 3: Deflation is back?

Hardly.

Last week’s jaw-boning from Powell, Fisher and Bullard had the markets wondering if the Fed will be raising rates in the distant future.

The very fact that Powell raised the issue is because the Fed is realizing that inflation is going to be sticky rather than “transitory”and thus they are already pretending to pose as Hawkish.

But if the Fed raises rates to quell real rather than “transitory” inflation, the markets and Uncle Sam will go into a tantrum. End of story.

As I’ve written elsewhere: Pick your Fed poison—tanking markets or surging inflation. Eventually, we foresee both.

Meanwhile, and fully aware that inflation, with some dips, is only going to trend higher, Powell is already using semantics to change the rules mid-game, now saying that rather than “allow” 2% inflation, they’ll settle for an “average” of 2%.

Translated into honest English, this just means expect more inflation around the corner.

Context 4: Rising Stock Markets

Despite reaching nosebleed levels which defy every traditional valuation ceiling, from CAPE ratios and Tobin ratios to book values and FCF data, the headlines remind us that stocks can go even higher—and they can indeed.

But context, as well as history, reminds us that the bigger the bubble the bigger the mean-reverting fall.

No Treasure in Treasuries = Lot’s of Air in Stocks

Based upon the objective facts above, we now know that the only primary buyers showing up at U.S. Treasury auctions is the Fed itself.

This is because the rest of the world (Asia, Europe etc.) doesn’t want them.

The next question is “why”?

The answer is multiple yet simple.

First, and despite the open myth of American Exceptionalism, investors in other countries can actually think, read and count for themselves, which means they’re not simply trusting the Fed—or its IOU’s– blindly.

Stated otherwise, they are not buying the “transitory inflation” or “strong USD” story pouring recently out of the FOMC mouthpieces.

Inflation is not only rising in the U.S., it’s also creeping up elsewhere—even in Japan, but especially in China. This is largely because the U.S. exports its inflation (and debased dollars) offshore via trade and fiscal deficits.

Such deliberate inflation exporting by the U.S. places those countries (creditors) that lent money to Uncle Sam into a dilemma: They can either 1) let their currencies inflate alongside the dollar (hardly fun), or 2) try to quell the outflow of exported (debased) US dollars to save their own currencies from further debasement.

Option 2, of course, is the better option, which means foreign investors need to buy something more appealing than discredited U.S. Treasuries.

Sadly, ironically, and yet factually, the only assets better than bogus US Treasuries are bloated U.S. stocks.

In short, nosebleed-priced US stocks are still the lesser of the two US evils, and foreigners are therefore buying/seeing stocks as a better hedge against the debased USD than sovereign bonds.

Don’t believe me?

See for yourself—the rest of the world is adding lots of air to the U.S. equity bubble:

This is contextually troublesome for a number of reasons.

First, it means the declining US of A has gone from hocking its bonds to the rest of the world to hocking it stocks to the rest of the world (i.e., China…).

Longer term, this simply means that via direct stock ownership, foreigners will slowly own more of corporate America than, well America…

As for this slow gutting of the once-great America to foreign buyers, don’t blame the data. Blame your Fed and other policy makers (including labor off-shoring CEO’s) for selling-out America and pretending debt can be magically solved with magical (fake) money creation.

Of course, the second pesky little problem with stocks rising beyond the pale of sanity, earnings and honest FCF data is a thing called volatility—i.e., market seasickness.

Nothing goes in a straight line, including the dollar or the market. There will be swings.

Right now, the short on the USD is the highest it has been in four years.

Yet if, by some chance, the Fed ever attempts to taper or raise rates, all those foreign dollars piling into U.S. stocks (above) create a bubble that always pops, as do the foregoing dollar shorts, which get squeezed.

That could cause a massive sell-off in U.S. equity markets as foreigners sell their stocks to buy more dollars.

In short, there’s a lot of different needles pointing at the current equity bubble, and a correction within the next month or so is more than likely.

The sharpest of those needles, by the way, is the appallingly comical level of U.S. margin debt (i.e. leverage) not making the headlines yet now making all-time highs.

As a reminder, whenever margin debt peaks (above), markets tank soon thereafter, as anyone who remembers the dot.com and sub-prime market fiascos of yore can attest.

Just saying…

Context 5: The Dark Side of “Surging” GDP Growth

The World Bank recently made its own headlines projecting 5.6% global GDP growth, the fastest seen in 80 years.

Good stuff, right?

Well, not when placed into context…

The last time we saw 5.6% global GDP growth was during a global world war.

Obviously, when the world is in a state of global military rubble, growth of any kind is likely to “surge” from such an historical (and horrific) baseline.

Coming out of World War II, everyone, including the U.S. was in debt. World wars, after all, can do that…

As the victorious and civilization-saving U.S. came out of that war, it made some justifiable sense to de-lever that noble yet extreme debt by printing money, repressing bond yields and stimulating GDP growth.

What followed was at least a defendable 40-year stretch in which US nominal GDP ran 500-800 bps above US Treasury yields.

In short, bond-holders got slammed, but the cause, crisis and re-building after defeating the Axis powers justified the sacrifice.

The same, however, can not be said today as bond-holders get crushed yet again in a new-abnormal in which GDP will greatly (and similarly) outpace long-term bond yields.

Needless to say, current policy makers, the very foxes who put the global economic henhouse into the current pile of debt of rubble, like to blame this on COVID rather their bathroom mirrors.

Ironically, however, central bankers (as opposed to the Wehrmacht, the Japanese Empire or Italy’s Mussolini) managed to do as much harm to the global economy today (with deficit policies and extend-and-pretend money printers) as Germany’s Blitzkrieg or Hirohito’s Banzai raids did in the 1940’s.

When it comes to context, can or should we really be comparing a global flu (death toll 3.75M) to a global war (death toll 85 million)?

The policy makers would like you to think so.

Folks like Mnuchin (last year) or Yellen, Powell and the IMF (this year), are in fact trying to convince themselves and the world that the war against COVID was the real casus belli (reason for a justifiable war) of our current debt distress—equal in scope to World War II in its drastic impact on the financial world.

But regardless of anyone’s views on the COVID “War” or its questionable policy reactions, comparing its economic impact to that of World War II is an insult to both history and military metaphors.

The simple, objective and mathematically-confirmed fact is that the global economy was already in a debt crisis long before the first Corona headline of early 2020.

Today, US debt to GDP is at levels it has not seen since that tragic and Second World War, and it’s projected to go much, much higher.

So, just in case you still think the Fed can and will meaningfully raise rates to fight obvious inflation, as it did in the 1970’s or 1980’s, think again.

In the 1970’s and 1980’s US debt/GDP was 30%. Today it’s 130%.

Given this self-inflicted (rather than COVID-blamed) reality, the Fed simply can’t afford to raise rates. Period. Full stop.

But as my colleague, Egon von Greyerz reminds, that by no means suggests that rates can’t and won’t rise.

The Fed (and other central banks) may be powerful, but they are not divine. In short, there’s a limit to their powers to simply “control” rates with a mouse-click.

At some point, there’s not enough credible fake money to manage the yield curve—especially on the long end.

As more printed and tanking currencies try to purchase lower yields and rates, eventually the entire experiment fails.

At that critical point, rates spike, inflation raises its ugly head and the central bankers look for something other than themselves to blame as the rest of the world stares at worthless currencies being replaced by comical central bank digital dollars.

Wonderful…

Context 6: That Barbaric Relic?

What the foregoing inflation and rate contexts means is that in the years ahead, inflation will run higher and rates will run (be forced/controlled) lower until both rates and inflation spike together.

This further means that real rates (i.e., those adjusted for inflation) could run as deep as -5% to -10% in the years ahead.

Such negative real rate levels could easily surpass those seen in the 70’s and 80’s, which means gold (and silver), both of whom love negative real rates, has nowhere to go but up, up and away in this totally debt-distorted backdrop.

How’s that for context?

Look out, German Gigafactory. There's a new automaker in town. 

While Tesla continues to fumble with red tape and environmental activists in getting its German factory up and running, Porsche has said this week it is going to be developing and producing battery cells for its EV cars as part of a new joint venture with a German lithium-ion specialist. 

Porsche is going to be investing "a high double-digit million euro sum" in Custom Cells GmbH, according to Bloomberg. As a result, it will control a 83.75% stake in the venture, which is expected to start production in 2024. The German state will contribute about $71 million in funding, the report says. 

Porsche Chief Executive Officer Oliver Blume said this week: “The battery cell is the combustion chamber of the future.”

The move comes as part of a broader move for the auto industry, which is looking to keep pace with Tesla and attract customers with better range efficiency. For sports cars like Porsches, batteries "need to cope with high temperatures and be capable of fast-charging and effective energy recuperation," according to Bloomberg. 

The new Porsche cells will allow charging in less than 15 minutes. Porsche's Taycan currently takes about 22.5 minutes to charge a battery to 80% from 5%. Porsche is using silicon as anode material for higher density and more compact batteries. BASF will also work as a development partner for the deal.

The factory is slated to wind up outside Stuttgart and will have an annual capacity of at least 100 megawatt hours, which is enough to make cells for about 1,000 cars per year.

The workforce is starting at 13 and will expand to as many as 80 by 2025. The company says that the new cells "will first be used in a Porsche race car or a high-performance version of one of its existing models", according to Porsche development chief Michael Steiner.

Blume even predicts that the cells could eventually wind up being used by other VW Auto Group brands like Audi and Lamborghini. 

Traders of a certain age may recall that back in 2013, around the time the Fed's "Taper Tantrum" sparked a surge in yields and led to a risk asset selloff, a big (if entirely artificial) debate emerged within financial media, where the Fed muppets and their media puppets would argue that "tapering is not tightening" while anyone with half a brain realized knew that this was total BS.

Fast forward to today when Morgan Stanley's Michael Wilson opens up an old wound for clueless Fed apologists, saying in his latest Weekly Warm Up note that "Tapering is Tightening"... but then adds that contrary to the market's shocked reaction to last week's Fed meeting, tightening actually began months ago.

Elaborating on this point, Wilson - who several months ago turned into Wall Street's most bearish strategist (again)-  writes this morning that while the Fed's pivot to "begin" the tightening discussion caught most by surprise, in reality markets began discounting this inevitable process months ago as price action had indicated. It's exactly this discounting of the coming tightening, that is what Michael Wilson's mid-cycle transition is all about, and as the strategist adds, "fits nicely with our narrative for choppier equity markets and a 10-20% correction for the broader indices this year."

Or to paraphrase Lester Burnham, "it's all downhill from here"... and as Wilson predicts, that won't change until M2 growth is done decelerating; or in other words, until the Fed unleashes another liquidity burst into the system "the transition is incomplete."

* * *

Highlights aside, Wilson then elaborates on each point, noting that while last week's Fed meeting brought more uncertainty to markets one thing is becoming more obvious: "we are on the other side of the mountain with respect to monetary accommodation for this cycle."

Furthermore, having repeatedly warned that the US is now mid-cycle...

... Wilson then takes a victory lap writing that what the Fed is doing is "classic mid cycle transition behavior so investors really shouldn't be too surprised that the Fed would try to begin the long process of tightening."

After all, the US economy is booming and expected to grow close to 10 percent this year in nominal terms, a feat last witnessed in 1984. Meanwhile, no matter what one's view is on inflation being transient or not, prices are up significantly and likely higher than what the Fed, or most others were expecting 6 months ago. In other words, the facts and data have changed; therefore, so should Fed policy.

Nevertheless, as discussed here extensively, markets reacted as if this was a complete shock with both bonds and stocks trading as if the Fed had hiked rates already (instead of leaving over $2TN in QE still on deck) after the Fed meeting. Starting with bonds, both nominal 10 year yields and breakevens fell significantly. However, breakevens fell more leaving 10 year real rates higher by almost 20 bps Wednesday afternoon.

While real rates did settle back a bit on Thursday and Friday, they have formed what appears to be a very solid base from which they are likely to rise as the economy continues to recover and the Fed appropriately pivots. In Wilson's view, "this looks very similar to 2013, the year after Peak Fed. Back then, Peak Fed was QE3 which was announced on September 12, 2012. This time Peak Fed was the announcement of Average Inflation Targeting last summer."

That said, there is one notable difference between the taper tantrum and today: in 2013 "tapering" QE was a novel concept to markets and it came more abruptly with Bernanke's surprise mention during his congressional testimony on May 22, 2013. This time, the markets understand what tapering is and see its arrival as inevitable as the economy recovers. Therefore, while the path higher for real rates is unlikely to be as dramatic as witnessed in 2013, it is still likely to be higher from here and that is a change that will affect all risk markets, including equities, in Morgan Stanley's view.

Wilson makes one final observation from the chart above, which is how real rates moved substantially before Bernanke's testimony in May 2013, prompting Wilson to notes that "perhaps it wasn't as much of a surprise as believed, at least to markets. We think it's the same situation today."

In our view, the data has been so strong, it would be naive not to think the Fed wasn't moving closer to tapering over the past several months. In fact, the idea that the Fed hasn't been thinking and/or talking about it seems absurd. Surely the market understands this, making the events of the past week not so much of a surprise. It's all part of the mid cycle transition that has been ongoing for months and fits with the choppier price action and unstable market leadership we have been witnessing.

The underperformance of early cycle stocks is another classic signal the market "gets it." Nevertheless, in talking with clients the past few days, this view is still out of consensus. Most haven't been ready for tighter monetary policy, nor did they think it's something they needed to worry about, until now.

Wrapping up the Fed "surprise" part of his note, Wilson writes that contrary to the FOMC shock, monetary tightening actually began months ago if one is looking at the right metric, which to the top Morgan Stanley equity strategist - who emerges as yet another closet Austrian - is money supply growth:

In a world where all of the major developed market central banks are stuck at the zero bound, or lower, the primary metric that determines if monetary policy is getting more or less accommodative is Money Supply Growth.

Realizing that to most Keynesian this will be a controversial statement to say the least, Wilson digs in and says that "it's absolutely the case and financial markets seem to agree."  He explains:

When money supply is accelerating, the more speculative / riskier assets tend to outperform and when it's decelerating these assets have more trouble. As noted here several times over the past few months, the Fed's balance sheet (M1) growth peaked in mid February and that coincided with a top in many of the most expensive/speculative stocks in the equity market just like the acceleration in the Fed's balance sheet in the prior 12 months contributed to their spectacular performance. Interestingly, the recently flattening out of the growth in M1 has coincided with more stability in these stocks, although they remain well below prior highs (Exhibit 2).

And visually:

But wait there's more, and also an explanation why the Fed has made it virtually impossible to track the weekly change in M2 (the aggregate is now updated only monthly).

Taking Wilson's argument a step further, M2 growth might be even more important to monitor than M1 because that's the net liquidity available to the economy and markets. On that front, the deceleration also began at the end of February but has not yet flattened out and appears to have much further to fall to a  more "normal" level of annual growth — i.e., 7-8%

More ominously, this also suggests liquidity is likely to tighten further from here whether the Fed's begins tapering later this year or next.

Finally, when we look at M2 data on a global basis, we get the same picture.

Wilson concludes that even ahead of last week's "shock" FOMC, the market had already started to de-rate lower into a mid-cycle transition as Fed balance sheet growth has materially slowed. Meanwhile, M2 is slowing just as rapidly and has further to fall, especially when the Fed begins to taper later this year or early next. Finally, global money supply growth is also slowing from elevated levels and every major region is contributing.

This to Wilson "looks reminiscent of 2014 and 2018 when markets went through a rolling correction of risky assets" and he thinks 2021 will prove to be similar in that regard with the highest beta regions falling first (Kospi, China, Japan) and ending with the most defensive (US).

Putting it all together, the MS strategist writes that "tapering is tightening but the tightening process began with the rate of change in money supply growth. The good news is that the market already knows it. The bad news is that a majority of investors seem to be just catching on with the Fed's "surprise" announcement this past week. This means asset prices are far from done correcting as witnessed with the more cyclical, reflationary assets taking their turn the past few weeks."

And while we completely agree with Wilson's newly discovered Austrian view of markets - funny how on a long enough timeline everyone turns Austrian - the real question is what will catalyze the next M2 boosting cycle, how high will it push stocks, and will the Fed be forced to come out and start buying equities this time after having nationalized the bond market back in 2020.

We expect that the answer will be revealed after the next 20% drop at which point all of the Fed's hawkishness will evaporate, and Powell (or his replacement Kashkari) will shift to an uber dovish mode as they prepare to unleash the final and biggest asset bubble of all...

Authored by Adam Dick via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

In America, national, state, and local governments are pulling out all the stops to advance giving experimental coronavirus shots to children down to the age of 12.

Up next, babies and children up to age 11.

The shots are “safe and effective,” the propagandists proclaim.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) has a different approach. The WHO says do not vaccinate children, at least not yet.

At its website, the WHO offers this advice regarding giving experimental coronavirus vaccines, some of which are not even vaccines under the normal meaning of the term, to children:

Children should not be vaccinated for the moment.

There is not yet enough evidence on the use of vaccines against COVID-19 in children to make recommendations for children to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Children and adolescents tend to have milder disease compared to adults.

However, children should continue to have the recommended childhood vaccines.

Choose accordingly.

Following a difficult campaign to cement his position as Chancellor Angela Merkel's most likely successor, Germany's Armin Laschet, the governor of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's largest region, has sat for an interview with the FT where he laid out the broad strokes of his domestic and foreign policies, which largely hew to Merkel. 

As the frontrunner to win September's federal election and succeed Merkel as Chancellor, Laschet said that the EU recovery fund will more than likely be a one-off, and that the COVID-19 outbreak won't lead Germany and the rest of the EU to adopt a more federal system. Laschet denies that he's trying to "put the COVID genie back in the bottle," but he insists that there's no reason why life can't go back to normal.

"Under the Maastricht rules, every country is responsible for its own debts," he says. "The basic idea is to avoid a situation where one country is liable for the debts of another...and this principle still applies."

While it's not a done deal yet, Laschet's CDU now looks to be in pole position to win in September and retain its control of Europe's biggest economy. It's a historic election given that Merkel’s 16-year reign is coming to an end, while potentially ushering in an unprecedented coalition between the German center-right and the left-wing Greens.

Germany's technocratic center-right has embraced carbon neutrality and Laschet is no exception: he favors setting the goal for neutrality by 2045. However, he's fearful of endangering Germany's status as an industrial powerhouse, and all the jobs that German industry creates.

"20% of the jobs [here] are in industry. In the steel, chemical, auto industry," he says. "Important economic sectors and key industries in our country. And we want them to be still there in 20 years."

While Laschet favors a more integrated EU, he opposes any attempt to relax Germany's "debt brake" and remains opposed to the issuance of common EU debt (like the nearly $1 trillion issued as part of the EU recovery fund).

Circling back to COVID-19, Laschet promised "a decade of modernization" to combat the aspects of Germany's economy that were seemingly unprepared for the pandemic. He has also broached the idea of a "Germany fund" to mobilize public and private investment in infrastructure.

"I’m open to thinking about models of co-operation with private capital," he tells the FT. "But of course, we can’t allow a situation to arise where you’re circumventing the government’s debt management policy. So if you do it, you have to do it according to the state stability rules."

On issues of potential conflict with the Greens, Laschet said he is open to compromise. On Nord Stream 2 (a project the Greens oppose), Laschet insists Germany needs the cheap natural gas before it can shut down its coal plants. To try and stop Russia from using the pipeline to punish Ukraine, Laschet said Germany must take steps to stop the pipeline from being "used as a geopolitical instrument against Ukraine," which the pipeline bypasses.

"The real issue at stake are the geopolitical interests and stability of Ukraine, as well as of EU member states to the east," he says. "Ukraine’s interests must be safeguarded. If the Russians don’t stick to that, the basis of the NS2 deal will cease to exist."

Laschet's biggest problems will likely emanate from the Greens' foreign policy positions. Not only does the party oppose Nord Stream 2, but it also opposes closer cooperation with China, Russia and Turkey.

Fortunately, Laschet believes his history of being an agreeable centrist - including his membership in a group of young Bundestag MPs known as "the Pizza Connection" for their meeting place in a Bonn pizzeria - will help him convince the Greens to compromise.

"For the CDU the Greens are no longer the bogeyman they were,” he says. Times have changed — the conservatives already govern with the eco-party in the two western states of Baden-Württemberg and Hesse. And coalitions “are possible on the federal level in Berlin, too."

Of course, there's no guarantee that the CDU and Greens will find themselves partners in a ruling coalition. The election is still months away, and even after the results are in, weeks of wrangling to form the next government are expected to follow, which leaves plenty of space for surprises.

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

Oxford University alumni have slammed attempts by the Student Union there to employ “sensitivity readers” to vet, edit and place ‘trigger warnings’ on the institution’s oldest newspaper in order to resolve ‘problematic’ articles.

As the London Telegraph reports, ‘Student Consultancy of Sensitivity Readers’ are to be paid by Oxford Student Union to address “high incidences of insensitive material being published” by the Cherwell newspaper.

The SU has received complaints from some offended students that “problematic articles” are being published that contain “implicitly racist or sexist” or “just generally inaccurate and insensitive” opinions.

The newspaper has been in circulation for over 100 years and has always remained independent of the Student Union.

Yet, the SU passed a motion recently to start “using elected reviewers who can take pieces to people more qualified than them [which] can help ameliorate the potential damage from content.”

In other words, a minority of woke snowflakes are being triggered by opinions they don’t agree with, and want it stamped out.

Former editor of the Cherwell Michael Crick labeled the move as “horrific”.

Crick, who has gone on to broadcast for the BBC and Channel 4, compared the move to an authoritarian government demanding to vet and change newspapers before they are published.

“The key thing about journalism is it should remain independent for people in authority, and if the students’ union don’t like it they can set up their own,” Crick asserted, adding “The answer to all of these things is pluralism. If you’re going to have a boring, dull, vetted newspaper then nobody’s going to read it.”

Rachel Johnson, another Oxford alumni broadcaster said that the attitude within the Oxford SU appears to be “that life is a very scary thing and students must be protected from it at all costs, which to me is the opposite of what both university and journalism is about.”

“I picked up a copy of Cherwell on the train [on a recent visit] and it was mainly students talking about themselves and identity issues,” Johnson continued, adding “each article had a ‘trigger warning’ rating at the top for if it contains triggering words or contains triggering content.”

“The whole thing already – before even the student sensitivity scan of each piece – felt really sad,” she emphasised.

While Oxford SU has not responded to requests for comments, Toby Young, of the Free Speech Union, said: “Student leaders should be standing up for the speech rights of student journalists, not trying to muzzle them.”

As we previously reported, a recent study by leading education focused think tank Civitas, found that free speech at the world’s leading universities is being eroded at an alarming rate owing to the rise of “cancel culture”.

Universities are in danger of becoming breeding grounds for revisionist history based on extremist political movements made up of individuals who are obsessed with declaring everything racist.

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French President Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen both suffered setbacks as their parties performed poorly in regional elections that saw a historically low turnout rate with more than two out of three note cast a vote.

Macron's La République En Marche won a paltry 10.9% of votes while the far-right National Rally, led by Le Pen, won 19.1% - both lower than expected - according to exit polls. The right-wing party Les Republicains fared better and won 29.3% of the vote. An unprecedentedly high rate, 68%, of the population didn't vote. This is the highest abstention rate under the Fifth Republic.

As Goldman economist notes Sven Jari Stehn writes, in line with expectations President Macron’s party posted another round of very disappointing results, often barely reaching the second round. The week until the second round on June 27 will now see parties negotiate to form the Front Républicain in an effort to block the far-right from reaching of?ce. Polling suggests that this will be enough to defeat Le Pen’s party everywhere but in the Southern region of Provence-Alpes-Cote-d’Azur, although her weak ?rst round results will likely weigh on her momentum. Xavier Bertrand—who is trailing behind President Macron in polls for the presidential elections—looks set to win re-election in the Northern region of the Hauts-de-France with a comfortable margin, thus likely providing momentum to his presidential bid.

Key Highlights via Goldman:

According to preliminary results, incumbent parties and the far-right were in the lead after the regional elections’ ?rst round. In the widely-watched race in the Southern region of Provence-Alpes-Cote-d’Azur, far-right candidate Mariani was leading against the alliance between the centre-right and Macron’s presidential party by 2.5%. In the Northern region of the Hauts-de-France, 2022 presidential hopeful Xavier Bertrand (independent) won 42.1% of the vote, setting a 17.6% lead on far-right contender Sébastien Chenu. In other regions, incumbent parties - the center-right party Les Républicains and the Socialist party - looked broadly set for re-election.

The voting method — two rounds, proportional with lists and majority bonus — requires parties’ lists to gather 10% of the votes in order to qualify to the second round (with lists having won between 5% and 10% of votes can merge with the quali?ed lists). Successful lists then contend for a simple majority in the second round, where the ?rst list bene?ts from a 25% seat bonus in the regional council. This system allows for the so-called Front Républicain to operate, whereby mainstream parties either support or drop-out of the race to block the far-right from reaching of?ce. The Southern region of Provence-Alpes-Cote-d’Azur is the only region where polls give the far-right within polling error of beating a range of potential Front Républicains. Another key parameter of the second round will be voter turnout, which reached a record low at 33.9% in this ?rst round. Although covid and reopening likely weighed on the participation rate this particular weekend, the downward trend of the past decades could also be re?ected in the second round through a weakened Front Républicain.

It is dif?cult to map these results into the race for the 2022 presidential elections. In that respect, the presidential party’s disappointing results can be traced back to his party’s lack of local rooting. Meanwhile, the far-right’s performance looks especially mixed, as Le Pen’s party both got closer to of?ce than ever in the South, but lost ground almost uniformally in other regions.

As a result, Goldman concludes that the center-right - Les Républicains, currently third in polls for 2022 - looks to emerge as the winner of these elections, with three of its leaders winning large victories.

The race to the 2022 presidential election could thus slightly narrow once the dust settles on this regional ballot.