I'm tellin' ya, something is going on at the New York Times and how they report on the President.*
A year ago they wouldn't have published this story, much less with this headline. Even six months ago.
If they start chanting, using the old hippie cadences "Two, Four, Six, Eight, Something, Something, Fourth Estate" or "Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Senile Joe Has Got To Go" we'll know defenestration is nigh.
From the Times, November 20:
The president’s son was part owner of a venture involved in the $3.8 billion purchase by a Chinese conglomerate of one of the world’s largest cobalt deposits. The metal is a key ingredient in batteries for electric vehicles.
An investment firm where Hunter Biden, the president’s son, was a founding board member helped facilitate a Chinese company’s purchase from an American company of one of the world’s richest cobalt mines, located in the Democratic Republic of Congo.Mr. Biden and two other Americans joined Chinese partners in establishing the firm in 2013, known as BHR and formally named Bohai Harvest RST (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Company.
The three Americans, all of whom served on the board, controlled 30 percent of BHR, a private equity firm registered in Shanghai that makes investments and then flips them for a profit. The rest of the company is owned or controlled by Chinese investors that include the Bank of China, according to records filed with Chinese regulators.
One of BHR’s early deals was to help finance an Australian coal-mining company controlled by a Chinese state-owned firm. It also assisted a subsidiary of a Chinese defense conglomerate in buying a Michigan auto parts maker.
The firm made one of its most successful investments in 2016, when it bought and later sold a stake in CATL, a fast-growing Chinese company that is now the world’s biggest maker of batteries for electric vehicles.
The mining deal in Congo also came in 2016, when the Chinese mining outfit China Molybdenum announced that it was paying $2.65 billion to buy Tenke Fungurume, a cobalt and copper mine, from the American company Freeport-McMoRan.
As part of that deal, China Molybdenum sought a partner to buy out a minority stakeholder in the mine, Lundin Mining of Canada. That is when BHR became involved.
Records in Hong Kong show that the $1.14 billion BHR, through subsidiaries, paid to buy out Lundin came entirely from Chinese state-backed companies.
China Molybdenum lined up about $700 million of that total as loans from Chinese state-backed banks, including China Construction Bank. BHR raised the remaining amount from obscure entities with names like Design Time Limited, an offshore company controlled by China Construction’s investment bank, according to the Hong Kong filings.
Before the deal was done, BHR also signed an agreement that allowed China Molybdenum to buy BHR’s share of the mine, which the company did two years later, the filings show. That purchase gave China Molybdenum 80 percent ownership of the mine. (Congo’s state mining enterprise kept a stake for itself.)
By the time BHR sold its share in 2019, Mr. Biden controlled 10 percent of the firm through Skaneateles L.L.C., a company based in Washington. While Chinese corporate records show Skaneateles remains a part owner of BHR, Chris Clark, a lawyer for Mr. Biden, said that he “no longer holds any interest, directly or indirectly, in either BHR or Skaneateles.” The Chinese records show that Mr. Biden was no longer on BHR’s board as of April 2020. Mr. Biden did not respond to requests for comment.....
....MUCH MORE
We happened to catch the Lundin/China Moly story:
....But, because the Chinese pretty much locked up supply* from current producers, prices were heading up fast and even worse, it is tough to get the stuff regardless of the price you are willing to pay. Which is why last August we were posting "Batteries: Manufacturers Are Reducing the Amount of Cobalt Used In Electric Vehicles"......
*...China Molybdenum Co. bought a stake in one of Congo’s biggest copper and cobalt mine, Tenke Fungurume, as part of a $3.8 billion deal last year, and Freeport-McMoRan has left the country. China’s Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Co. is developing a copper mine near Kolwezi in the country’s southeast. In March, Glencore agreed to sell about a third of its cobalt output to GEM Co., a Chinese supplier of battery chemicals....— Bloomberg, June 12, 2018
February 2016
"There’s a Global Race to Control Batteries—and China Is Winning"
May 2016
Why the CIA Reads The Financial Times (and you should too) Tesla and Cobalt
May 2016
"Freeport Sinks On Sale of Africa Copper Mine To Chinese" (FCX; LUN.TO)
Sept. 2016
DR
Congo’s State Mining Company Submitted An Offer to Buy Freeport
McMoRan's Stake In Tenke Fungurume Copper, Cobalt Mine (FCX; LUN.to)
Sept. 2016
Lundin Mining Granted Second Extension To Bid For Giant DR Congo Cobalt/Copper Mine
Something's going on with the framing of the story.
If I had to guess I'd say both the President and Vice President are about to be thrown under the bus by the powers-that-be....
Earlier:
The New York Times Talks Inflation
....My point is, there seems to have been a major shift in how the Times writes about the political aspect of the economy. Prices started seriously ticking up in January but even by May there was no way you'd have seen the bolded paragraph. Here's the Producer Price Index (PPI) via Trading Economics (also on blogroll at right)....
Something's up.
And regarding the Times and chanting, last week some employees were protesting what they say are anti-union tactics and one of the chants was:
“Hey Times bosses, here’s some news — when you fight the Guild, you’re going to lose,”
