Sunday Talks, SF Fed Chair Sees Half of Inflation Driven by Excess Demand of Some Unknown Something


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on August 7, 2022 | sundance

The great pretending continues.  During a Sunday talk show appearance, San Francisco Fed Chair Mary Daley states, “what I see is supply and demand are just unbalanced. About 50% by my own staff’s estimates of the excess inflation we see is related to demand. The other 50% to supply.”  Note, she is not talking about energy.

Margaret Brennan, maintaining her position as the professional CBS narrative engineer, never thinks to ask: (a) where is this demand you speak of, and what exactly are they demanding? and/or (b) What is this 50% inflation on the supply side connected to?  Obviously, an actual probing of inflation wasn’t in the script. The great pretending continues.  [Transcript Here]

CTH has stated without reservation that August’s inflation report will show a significant –albeit temporary– drop in inflation as measured by the govt.  The drop in gasoline prices throughout July (created by a drop in demand) will allow the fiscal and monetary policy makers to falsely claim overall inflation peaked. However, after a brief respite the inflation now growing in the ground (massive increases in farm costs), will then launch into the food supply chain.  This delayed food inflation will overtake the energy inflation in the latter part of this year.  WATCH:

[Transcript] – MARGARET BRENNAN: We turn now to the state of the economy and the president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, Mary Daly. Good morning to you.

FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF SAN FRANCISCO PRESIDENT MARY DALY: Good morning.

MARGARET BRENNAN: The San Francisco Fed said fiscal spending during the entirety of the pandemic, all the congressional funding contributed 3%- a 3% hike in inflation. Do you expect the congressional bill that’s about to pass to add to inflation as well?

DALY: Well, let’s remember that during the time that there was this fiscal relief during the pandemic, there was also monetary policy relief. And those were things necessary to get us through the pandemic. So that’s why that was such an important component in history, will be the judge, whether it was too much or too little. But right now, that’s where that was. And my staff have evaluated that. When I look forward, there are so many things going on in the economy right now, both domestically and globally. And we are struggling with high inflation. But the Fed is committed to bringing that down. And we’re looking at not only things that Congress passes, but also what happens across the entire world.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So do you think this bill will- will add to inflation? Has inflation peaked? Can you say that?

DALY: You know, I really can’t comment on pending legislation, and it’s really hard to tell because all the details haven’t been worked out yet and or the time frame in which those things will take place. So right now, I think the most important thing, Margaret, is that inflation is too high and the labor market is strong. The global economy is struggling with ongoing high inflation, and that’s what I’m focused on.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You are a labor economist. We had this surprisingly strong jobs number on Friday. Why was it so surprising? What was it that economists missed here? What was your takeaway?

DALY: You know, it’s super interesting. You know, it did surprise everyone who tries to figure out exactly what the number will be. And we were you know, a number of projections were well off. But, you know, frankly, if you’re out in the communities, if you’re you’re traveling anywhere, you’re you’re just going in your own community. I don’t think consumers are workers or businesses were that surprised. There’s help wanted signs all over the place. People are can find multiple jobs if they want them. Search times for jobs aren’t that long. So I think the labor market is continuing to deliver. It just tells me that people want to work and that people want to hire. But the universal truth is that inflation’s too high.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But does it still or does it indicate that recession is not where we are or where we’re going?

DALY: If you’re out in the economy, you don’t feel like you’re in a recession. That’s the bottom line. The most important risk out there is inflation. And I think the job market just confirms that.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay. We’re going to take a break and come right back with you. Mary Daly, stay with us. We have more questions.

*COMMERCIAL BREAK*

MARGARET BRENNAN: Welcome back to Face the Nation. We continue our conversation now with the head of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, Mary Daly. In that jobs number on Friday, we also saw that wages rose, but they’re not rising as quickly as inflation is. How concerned are you that that shows inflation is really becoming embedded in the economy in a way that is really going to force sure your colleagues at the Fed to continue to have to hike rates.

DALY: You know, I don’t see inflation is embedded in the economy, the kinds of things that we would worry about just not being able to correct easily. What I see is supply and demand are just unbalanced. About 50% by my own staff’s estimates of the excess inflation we see is related to demand. The other 50% to supply. The Fed is really well positioned to bring demand down, and we already see the cooling forming in the housing market and investment. So I do see signs that the economy is cooling. It just is going to take some time for the interest rate adjustments we’ve made to work their way through. And we are far from done yet. That’s the the promise to the American people. We are far from done. We’re committed to bringing inflation down and we’ll continue to work until that job is fully done.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So it would still be appropriate to raise rates in September by half a percent?

DALY: Absolutely. And we need to be data dependent. It could. We need to leave our minds open. We have two more inflation reports coming out, another jobs report. We continue to collect all the information from the context we talk to you to see how this is working its way through the economy. But you mentioned, you know, wage growth a little bit above 5% inflation. Last print at 9.1%. Americans are losing ground every day. So the focus has to be on bringing inflation down.

MARGARET BRENNAN: One of the things the Fed can’t control is geopolitical risk. How concerned are you about what is happening in the Taiwan Strait right now?

DALY: Well, there’s so much going on globally, and I think that’s really something that we need to think about. It’s just getting through COVID, making sure the new variants don’t derail economic activity. We have central banks across the globe raising interest rates to try to bridle their own inflation. And we have ongoing developments that take place geopolitically or just more generally among countries and all of those things. The war in Ukraine, all of those things create headwinds, if you will, for the US economy and we’re going to have to lean against those headwinds for growth while we bridle inflation.

MARGARET BRENNAN: The Fed has its work cut out and I know we’ll be talking again. Thank you very much, Mary Daly. (LINK)

A plan to take back the congress


This is a paper I wrote earlier this year

Why Do You Trust Us? – News Update!


Awaken With JP originally Published on Rumble on July 23, 2022

This week’s news includes everything from Biden shaking hands with the air again, Pelosi’s insider trading, and how they are trying to turn the US into a third world country! Here’s Lies You Can Trust…

A Curious Case of Transferred Battery Technology


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on August 6, 2022 | sundance

Every once in a while, you come across an article that seems like one thing but is actually another thing entirely.  The NPR story of how “The U.S. made a breakthrough battery discovery — then gave the technology to China“, is one such article.

Several people sent this to us for opinion and review; however, the background of the article reveals something quite different. Then again, perhaps that’s exactly why NPR wrote it.

[READ THE STORY HERE]

It is important to read the story as presented by NPR, because it is oddly written as if someone is trying to use the outlet to get out ahead of something else.

The issue surrounds a new product technology called a vanadium redox flow battery.  Essentially the U.S. government funded scientists to develop an advanced battery that could store energy without degrading.  After success, the technology was then sent to China for manufacturing.  China then invested heavily in the product and used the technology to mass manufacture the battery for the global market. The United States is now behind in the product development and manufacture.

As the story is told in NPR, “the Chinese company didn’t steal this technology. It was given to them — by the U.S. Department of Energy. First in 2017, as part of a sublicense, and later, in 2021, as part of a license transfer.”  Except that’s not what happened at all.  There is some major ‘ass-covering’ in that false narrative.

The lead scientist working on the vanadium redox flow battery project was a man named Gary Yang.  Mr. Yang was born in China and emigrated to the U.S. becoming a U.S. citizen.  Yang worked with U.S. scientists to develop the technology and was funded by a multi-million research grant from the Dept of Energy.

After their initial success, according to NPR, “in 2012, Yang applied to the Department of Energy for a license to manufacture and sell the batteries.”  The Dept of Energy license was granted, and Yang launched UniEnergy Technologies as the parent company to develop the commercial application of the product.

It’s 2012 and Gary Yang was now looking for investors and manufacturing in the commercial sector to produce the battery.

Here’s where it gets interesting…. According to Yang, “he couldn’t persuade any U.S. investors to come aboard. “I talked to almost all major investment banks; none of them (wanted to) invest in batteries,” Yang said in an interview, adding that the banks wanted a return on their investments faster than the batteries would turn a profit.” This is Yang’s justification for what he did next.

After he couldn’t find U.S. investors (which I will say up front seems like an excuse), Yang then took the technology to China to have them manufacture the product.

The Chinese embraced the technology, created entire manufacturing eco-systems around it and now corner the market on the technology behind vanadium batteries.  However, giving the technology to China for manufacturing and development is a violation of the license Chang was given.

Yang even admits he knew it was not allowed. “Yang’s original license requires him to sell a certain number of batteries in the U.S., and it says those batteries must be “substantially manufactured” here. In an interview, Yang acknowledged that he did not do that.” Now we start to look a little more skeptically at the claims by Gary Yang, because a whole bunch of stuff just doesn’t add up.

As noted by NPR, five years after getting the license from the Dept of Energy, “in 2017, Yang formalized the relationship and granted Dalian Rongke Power Co. Ltd. an official sublicense, allowing the company to make the batteries in China.”

After China had fully developed the technology, they obviously no longer needed Gary Yang to go global with the product.  As a result of what can only be considered as ‘getting cut out’, Yang -still holding the original DoE license- then turned to Europe.

Gary Yang not only sublicensed Chinese manufacturing, supposedly without DoE notification, in 2021 he sold the license to the Netherlands.

“In 2021, Yang transferred the battery license to a European company based in the Netherlands. The company, Vanadis Power, told NPR it initially planned to continue making the batteries in China and then would set up a factory in Germany, eventually hoping to manufacture in the U.S., said Roelof Platenkamp, the company’s founding partner.

Vanadis Power needed to manufacture batteries in Europe because the European Union has strict rules about where companies manufacture products, Platenkamp said.  “I have to be a European company, certainly a non-Chinese company, in Europe,” Platenkamp said in an interview with NPR.”

Before moving on, let me recap because things are going to start making sense about why this story has some major ramifications.  Also, don’t overlook the timing of events and keep in the back of your mind what you know about Hunter Biden (remember, ‘energy sector’ with no experience) and Biden’s deals with China being made in/around this same timeframe.

♦ 2006 – Pacific Northwest National Laboratory original grant. “It took six years and more than 15 million taxpayer dollars for the scientists to uncover what they believed was the perfect vanadium battery recipe.

♦ 2012 – The lead scientist, Gary Yang, asks the Dept of Energy for a license.  He then creates UniEnergy Tech.

♦ 2013/2014 – Unable to find investors in the U.S., Gary Yang enters a manufacturing and development agreement with China.

♦ 2017 – Gary Yang officially grants a sublicense to Dalian Rongke Power Co. Ltd in China.

♦ 2021 – Gary Yang then sells his license to Vanadis Power in the Netherlands.

Tell me again how this NPR sentence makes sense: “the Chinese company didn’t steal this technology. It was given to them — by the U.S. Department of Energy. First in 2017, as part of a sublicense, and later, in 2021, as part of a license transfer.

Do you see anywhere in this reformatted outline where the U.S. Dept of Energy gave the technology to anyone, except Gary Yang?

The only entity responsible for transferring the technology to China was Gary Yang.

Now, with all that in mind, check out the date on the picture that NPR uses in their article:

2015

Keep the guy on the left, Imre Gyuk, in mind as we move forward.  Note the date of “2015” with Imre Gyuk and Gary Yang. They are standing together.

Remember in the NPR article, the baseline for why Yang took the technology to China was that he couldn’t find investors to manufacture in the United States.

The vanadium battery license in question would have come from Imre Gyuk’s office.  Now, in addition to being the Director of Energy Storage Research in the Office of Electricity, of the Dept of Energy, Gyuk also held another role:  “As part of the program he also supervises the $185M ARRA stimulus funding for Grid Scale Energy Storage
Demonstrations” {Citation}

The ARRA funds referenced were the Obama-era stimulus funds; the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds; the shovel ready jobs funds.  Yet, Gary Yang cannot find investors?

Citation from 2014: “It’s not a given that lithium-ion batteries are the best batteries for electric cars, or for electrical grid storage. Other types of batteries today show promise, most of which you’ve never heard of: vanadium redox flow, zinc-based, sodium-aqueous and liquid-metal. Businesses looking to invest in batteries are deciding between these technologies and more. Market players will weigh the different technologies’ cost of manufacture, durability, usefulness.” {Citation} But Gary Yang couldn’t find U.S. investors? 

Citation from 2014: “The forever battery.” A Silicon Valley startup run by old-school technologists has invented an energy storage device that could take an entire neighborhood off the grid. This magic box is called a Vanadium redox flow battery. {CitationBut Gary Yang couldn’t find U.S. investors.

Citation from 2016: “Cost-effective, reliable, and longer-lived energy storage is necessary to truly modernize the grid,” said Dr. Imre Gyuk, energy storage program manager for DOE’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, of UET’s system. “As third-generation vanadium flow batteries gain market share, it is essential to increase our understanding of storage value and optimization to accelerate adoption of integrated storage and renewable energy solutions among utilities.” {CitationBut Gary Yang couldn’t find U.S. investors.  {Here’s another Citation}

Citation from 2018: “On January 23, 2018, the Chinese Academy of Sciences hosted a meeting on energy storage with distinguished guests Dr. Imre Gyuk, director of energy storage research at the United States Department of Energy, and Dr. Gary Yang, CEO of UniEnergy Technologies.  Dr. Gyuk and Dr. Yang were met by China Energy Storage Alliance Chairman and the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Engineering Thermophysics Deputy Director Chen Haisheng, China Energy Storage Alliance Deputy Chairman and Beijing Puneng General Manager Huang Mianyan, and CNESA Standing Council Representative and general manager of State Grid Electric Vehicle Service Company Wang Mingcai.” (image below)

[SOURCE]

This meeting is important because Imre Gyuk and Gary Yang are together, in China in 2018.  The year after the Dept of Energy license given to Gary Yang was unlawfully sublicensed to the Chinese.

NPR is correct in that U.S. taxpayers funded six years of research and development for vanadium redox flow batteries (2006-2012), and once the product was successful the technology was transferred to China (2014-2017) as part of the commercial manufacture.  However, it was Gary Yang who gave it to them, and by all appearances he did so unlawfully.

There is going to be much more to this story…. Much more.  We have only just begun to dig.

[Support CTH Here]

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Report, Joe Biden Likely to Extend National COVID Emergency Declaration – To Facilitate Mail-in Ballots and Harvesting?


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on August 6, 2022 | sundance

Politico is reporting on the likelihood that Joe Biden is preparing to extend the national COVID-19 state of emergency through the 2022 midterm elections.

The debate, as outlined in just about every media narrative surrounding renewals of a national COVID emergency, is obtusely presented as if the primary political concern is public health.

Again, everyone must pretend not to know the true motive of the “emergency” is extending unilateral executive power and all of the control mechanisms therein. One mechanism would include the use of ‘Mail-in election ballots‘, which has absolutely nothing to do with public health.

The article appears to be somewhat testing the proverbial public winds.

WASHINGTON – The Biden administration is expected to extend the Covid-19 public health emergency once again, ensuring that federal measures expanding access to health coverage, vaccines and treatments remain in place beyond the midterm elections, three people with knowledge of the matter told POLITICO.

The planned renewal follows extensive deliberations among Biden officials over the future of the emergency declaration, including some who questioned whether it was time to let the designation lapse.

Under the proposed extension, the Department of Health and Human Services would continue the declaration beyond the November elections and potentially into early 2023 — pushing the U.S. into its fourth calendar year under a Covid public health emergency.

[…] Some health officials also feared that formally ending the public health emergency would dampen any remaining sense of urgency in Congress to allocate additional money toward the Covid response. The administration’s request for billions more dollars to bolster its stockpiles of vaccines, tests and treatments has stalled for months in the Senate, even as officials warn the funding shortage risks hampering their ability to continue the pandemic fight. (read more)

Steve Bannon CPAC Speech, Confronting Marxism and Deconstructing the Administrative State


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on August 6, 2022 | sundance

Steve Bannon gives a keynote address to the audience at the CPAC convention in Dallas, Texas.  During the beginning of his remarks, Bannon and the audience salute Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake for her ferocity standing fearlessly in front of the firestorm and winning the primary contest.

Later in his unscripted remarks, around the 09:00 mark, Bannon begins discussing the Fourth Branch of Government.  WATCH:

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And 10% for the Big Guy


Armstrong Economics Blog/War Re-Posted Aug 6, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Sneaky Mitch Strikes Again


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on August 6, 2022

Most casual political observers have absolutely no idea how McConnell works.  However, for over a decade CTH has been trying –mostly failing– to awaken the base of common-sense voters.  In 2010, 2011 and 2012 the #1 priority for McConnell was to destroy the threat represented by the Tea Party.  In 2022 we are seeing an exact replay of the same intents and purposes, only this time the target is President Trump’s MAGA movement.

During a recent interview on Fox News, Mitch McConnell was asked about the future perspectives of the Senate against the backdrop of the midterm election.  Mitch McConnell’s team literally scrubbed his response from their own segment of this interview [SEE HERE]. This is a familiar tactic from the DeceptiCon group who always cover their tracks. However, the segment lasts on the internet [06:45 promptedWATCH:

Mitch McConnell essentially says the Senate is too close to call and the democrats may be “up slightly” because the wrong kind of republican candidates have been nominated in the GOP primary process in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri and Arizona.  Once again, the elitist UniParty view of DC Mitch McConnell shines through.

Keep in mind this is the same Mitch McConnell who was challenged by the audience during a 2017 Rotary Club meeting in Kentucky, about why he refused to support the election priorities of President Trump.  McConnell responded, “I’d ask for a show of hands, but I know everybody’s saying, ‘been there, haven’t done anything,’ which I find extremely irritating — and I’m going to tell you why.”

McConnell continued, “a Congress goes on for two years. Part of the reason I think that the storyline is that we haven’t done much is because, in part, the president and others have set these early timelines about things need to be done by a certain point,” he said.  Then came the kicker, “our new president, of course, has not been in this line of work before, and I think had excessive expectations about how quickly things happen in the Democratic process.

Ah, the customs, traditions and parliamentary norms of the Senate were to blame for republican intransigence on the Trump agenda.  President Trump held “excessive expectations” as to what could be done to support the America-First agenda in the senate.

According to Mitch McConnell, it was Trump’s fault for thinking a republican majority Senate would work to support the American middle-class.

Comments like that reveal for most what the true motive of Senator McConnell is all about.  It is a motive and agenda all wrapped up in the senate power structure.

McConnell does not fear being in the minority; the color of the flag atop the spire of the UniParty senate does not matter to those underneath it.  McConnell maneuvers with just as much power in the minority as he does in the majority.

In fact, McConnell makes more money selling his DeceptiCon caucus votes to Chuck Schumer (on behalf of Wall Street) than he does in the majority where he is forced to purchase them.

Indeed, the entire scheme is a rigged game, as Christopher Bedford realized last year and wrote in The Federalist [SEE HERE] after Mitch McConnell delivered his post-election impeachment floor speech.  A ploy to destroy the MAGA movement with Trump removed:

THE FEDERALIST – […] “So what’s all behind this? After four years of yelling “MAGA!” while pushing his own classic, corporate Republican policies, McConnell had hoped to rid himself and his conference of the conservative populist nationalism the former president had championed and go back to the way things were.

He wants a return to promising to tackle illegal immigration before winking at corporate America that nothing will change. He wants to raise money on fighting the abortion of our infants while comfortably lifting nary a finger. He wants to shrug and change the subject when asked about men dominating women’s sports and using women’s bathrooms. He wants fewer taxes and more wars. Hell, he wants someone to blame for the Republican losses in the Georgia special election, and with them the loss of his seat at the head of the Senate.

Instead, his push to impeach ended with rebuke from his own conference. Angry and embarrassed, he blamed his own colleagues as well as the former president, performing a 20-minute attack ad for the left to use on Republicans for the next election cycle and beyond.” (read more)

Through his power structure, McConnell directly controls about 8 to 15 republican senators; we have called them “The Decepticons” for years. [Cornyn, Thune, Porter, Blunt, Portman, Burr, Barasso, Crapo, Murkowski, Gardner, Roberts, Sasse, Tillis, Rubio, Graham, Romney, and now, Tim Scott]

McConnell has a well-used playbook he deploys to retain power at all costs and select candidates that will be indebted to his Senate schemes. The 2022 senate candidates have been up against the same Mitch McConnell club machine that readers here are very familiar with.

To remind ourselves how Minority and Majority Senator McConnell took down the threat of the Tea Party revisit these old articles CNN Part I and CNN Part II  both showcase how McConnell works.   Then do some research on how McConnell worked with Haley Barbour in Mississippi [SEE HERE].

For those who follow the deep weeds of politics, McConnell’s schemes are brutally transparent. For the remaining 97% of the voting electorate, they still don’t understand how the UniParty works. Decepticon leader McConnell doesn’t want the American electorate to see purchased senate republicans voting NO on border security.

McConnell must preserve the trough – Corporations (special interest groups) write the legislation. Lobbyists take the law and go find politician(s) to support it. Politicians get support from their peers using tenure and status etc. Eventually, if things go according to norm, the legislation gets a vote.

Within every step of the process there are expense account lunches, dinners, trips, venue tickets and a host of other customary financial waypoints to generate/leverage a successful outcome. The amount of money spent is proportional to the benefit derived from the legislative outcome.

When a House or Senate member becomes educated on the intent of the legislation, they have attended the sales pitch; and when they find out the likelihood of support for that legislation; they can then position their own (or their families) financial interests to benefit from the consequence of passage. It is a process similar to insider trading on Wall Street, except the trading is based on knowing who will benefit from a legislative passage.

Yes, Democrats are the opponents; they are ideological enemies to freedom and a constitutional republic. However, just as dangerous an enemy is Mitch McConnell; the man who builds and fills the Trojan Horses that are presented to the voters every two years.

Jury Awards Sandy Hook Parents $4.1 Million in Compensatory Damages, and $45.2 Million in Punitive Damages, Against Alex Jones


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on August 5, 2022 | Sundance 

A Texas jury has delivered a financial verdict against Alex Jones, awarding two parents of the Sandy Hook elementary school victim, 4.1 million in compensatory damages and $45.2 million in punitive damages.  However, Texas limits punitive damages at $750,000.  The verdict comes after a civil lawsuit against Alex Jones for defamation relating to his comments around the Sandy Hook school shooting, and his claims of a hoax.

During the trial Mr. Jones admitted his statements were false and accepted the events were horrific, resulting in the deaths of 26 students and teachers in the 2012 Newtown, Connecticut attack. Mr Jones and his media company, Free Speech Systems, were sued his false statements about the mass shooting.

(Via MSM) – […] “Alex Jones is patient zero for our society’s inability to speak without lies,” plaintiff attorney Wesley Ball told the jurors on Friday as he pleaded for them to “take him out of this discourse of this misinformation, of this peddling of lies and make sure he can’t do it again.”

Jones’ defense attorney, F. Andino Reynal, asked the jury on Friday to return a verdict that is “fair and proportionate,” which he suggested was $270,000. He previously asked the jury to award no more than $8 in compensatory damages.

 

[…] The trial was the first of three in which juries will determine how much Jones must pay in damages to Sandy Hook families. (read more)

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I did not follow the trial, but I’m assuming this is a tough verdict for Alex Jones.  It will likely have a chilling effect for his organization.

Tucker Carlson Interviews Ron DeSantis After the Florida Governor Suspends Activist Prosecutor


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on August 4, 2022 | Sundance

August 4, 2022 | Sundance | 112 Comments

Tucker Carlson used his opening monologue tonight to discuss George Soros and the efforts of the Soros foundation to fund activist state prosecutors who will not enforce laws. The Soros agenda is an end-run around the U.S. constitution that empowers We The People to enact laws and rules of society through legislative representation.

By selecting prosecutors who will not enforce laws against criminal behavior, the Soros initiative subverts the voice of the people.  Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is the first governor to use his state constitutional authority to remove an activist prosecutor.  Tucker Carlson interviewed him immediately after the monologue. {Direct Rumble LinkWATCH:

The monologue that preceded the interview is below.

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