Conrad Black: Is this a return to global MADness?

A nuclear weapons test is seen in Nevada in a June 18, 1957 photo. It's believed Iran and North Korea are about to become nuclear powers, joining the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, Israel, India and Pakistan. PHOTO BY GETTY IMAGES

 

In all of these circumstances, the rest of the world has little choice but to assume that Iran and North Korea are about to become nuclear powers, joining the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, Israel, India and Pakistan. The thought of the aggressive dictatorships of Iran and North Korea, which in all other aspects except nuclear weapons development and the techniques of totalitarianism, are poor and primitive countries, achieving such a military capability is distressing to any civilized person. And the fact that China and Russia, which are much closer to those countries than the major Western powers, have been so flagrantly cavalier in effectively encouraging them to become nuclear powers, is a cautionary tale about how far we are from the quasi-nirvana that much of the world thought had been achieved at the end of the Cold War when there would be no more threats of nuclear devastation. In fairness to Iran and North Korea, , they are correct to object that the existing nuclear arms control regime is rank hypocrisy.

Rupa Subramanya: How Ottawa exploited our fear to limit our liberties

A Charter of Rights Freedoms poster at the Freedom Convoy demonstration downtown Ottawa on February 08, 2022. Photo by Jean Levac/Postmedia

 

On June 14, the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suspended its controversial vaccine mandates as they applied to federal workplaces and for travel, the two sectors where the federal government had the authority to issue regulations. However, ministers made it clear that the mandates weren’t dead but merely suspended and could be revived if circumstances warranted. On August 2, my story for Bari Weiss’s Common Sense Substack blog based on a legal challenge to the vaccine mandate for travel before the Federal Court of Canada, made abundantly clear that at least this particular mandate had a lot to do with politics and much less to do with science and evidence. While we’ve not had a comparable court case for the federal workplace mandate, the documents made public in the travel mandate case cast serious doubt on Trudeau’s claim that his government followed science and the evidence.

Raymond J. de Souza: Criminal justice has a credibility problem — in Canada as well as the U.S.

A Secret Service agent is seen in front of former president Donald Trump's Mar-A-Lago home in Palm Beach on Aug. 9, 2022, the day after it was raided by the FBI. PHOTO BY GIORGIO VIERA / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

 

Decades of police and prosecutorial abuses have demonstrated that it is right for us to be suspicious

The FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home has brought intense focus on America’s criminal justice system. Department of Justice is not in the custom of commenting upon ongoing criminal investigations, but an unusually chatty attorney general, Merrick Garland, held a press conference on the Trump raid, saying that he had asked the court to unseal the search warrant and the record of property seized due to «substantial public interest». Long concerned about abuse of police and prosecutorial power, I find myself reading, it seems every year, yet another «exposé» of how the criminal justice system gets it wrong.

Hackers steal $611,500 worth of user’s funds by hijacking the Curve Finance homepage

 

Hackers continue to search for weaknesses in popular decentralized finance protocols, and Curve Finance is the latest platform to fend off an attack. On Tuesday the popular decentralized stablecoin exchange fell victim to a domain name system hijack in which hackers briefly took control of the project's homepage. The exchange posted a tweet on Tuesday warning users to refrain from using the website due to the front page being compromised after several users reported a change in the nameserver. The attack appears to have been isolated to the front page of the platform, leaving its backend exchange which uses a completely different DNS unaffected.

The ECB "Bought Lots Of Italian Gov't Bonds And Sold Lots Of German Bunds" To Reverse Spread Blowout

 In the first data release since the ECB activated PEPP reinvestment flexibility, we find a heavy skew in country allocation, away from core countries like Germany and towards the periphery, especially Italy and Spain, over the month of July 2022.

The ECB bought lots of Italian gov't bonds in June & July and sold lots of German Bunds. This is the ECB steering proceeds from maturing government bonds in core countries like Germany and the Netherlands to benefit Italy. As the former Goldman FX trader correctly concludes, "Lo Spread" would be a lot wider without this going on.

The U.S. government underestimated the cost of the student loan program by billions

Students at Pasadena City College, in Pasadena, Calif., participate in a graduation ceremony in 2019. Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images

Government Accountability Office finds the U. Department of Education miscalculated the cost of the federal student loan program. From 1997 to 2021, the Education Department estimated that payments from federal direct student loans would generate $114 billion for the government. But the GAO found that, as of 2021, the program has actually cost the government an estimated $197 billion. A percentage of that shortfall, $102 billion, stems from the unprecedented federal student loan payment pause that began under the CARES Act in 2020.