This year's output figures will be reminiscent of the 1930's Great Depression, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It said that the world is at risk of significantly lowered investment, trade and job numbers.

The IMF's economic expert, Gita Gopinath, said this week that "the cumulative loss in output relative to the pre-pandemic projected path is projected to grow from $11 trillion over 2020-21 to $28 trillion over 2020-25...this represents a severe setback to the improvement in average living standards across all country groups."

The IMF praised central banks around the globe for stimulus plans that softened the impact that Covid-19 has had on the world economy, and warned that an early removal of these support packages could prove disastrous for recovery efforts. Gopinath advised that:

"The considerable global fiscal support of close to $12 trillion and the extensive rate cuts, liquidity injections and asset purchases by central banks helped save lives and livelihoods and prevented a financial catastrophe, to the extent possible, policies must aggressively focus on limiting persistent economic damage from this crisis. Most economies will experience lasting damage to supply potential, reflecting scars from the deep recession this year."

The World Bank has warned that up to 150 million more people may be pushed into extreme poverty by 2021.

Twitter BLOCKS sharing links to NYPost's Hunter Biden emails story, invoking 'HACKED MATERIALS' policy for first time ever

Twitter has one-upped Facebook's censorship regarding a story based on alleged emails from Democratic candidate Joe Biden's son Hunter about his Ukraine dealings, blocking all users from sharing it via tweet or direct message.

Twitter users were blocked on Wednesday from sharing the New York Post story critical of the Bidens published just that morning. The decision was based on a never-before-invoked "hacked materials policy" that Twitter announced hours after Facebook had stomped on the same story.

The Post cited emails that appeared to show Joe Biden - then vice president to Barack Obama - had met with Ukrainian Burisma exec Vadim Pozharskyi at the behest of his son and Burisma adviser Hunter Biden, less than a year before the current Democratic presidential candidate allegedly demanded Kiev fire its top prosecutor.

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Twitter "errors" started pouring in just a few hours after Andy Stone, a Facebook executive with a long history of working for the Democratic Party, warned Facebook was "reducing [the Hunter Biden story's] distribution" on its platform and seemingly invited Facebook's fact-checkers to tear the story apart.

While Twitter users were able to share the offending Post link for hours after Stone tagged it for destruction, what Twitter lacked in temporal primacy it made up in intensity.

Users who attempted to share the story on Wednesday afternoon were informed they could not retweet the "potentially harmful" link. Unlike typical Twitter warning screens that can be clicked through, the link to the Post story was not even allowed to be posted.

As speculation swirled regarding the Biden emails, Forbes reporter Jack Brewster posted a statement, allegedly from Twitter, reading that "in line with our Hacked Materials Policy, as well as our approach to blocking URLs, we are taking action to block any links to or images of the material in question on Twitter."

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While Twitter has outlawed entire domains in the past - most notably Bitchute.com, a YouTube competitor whose exile it partially walked back after widespread protest from users - nothing like the blanket ban on the Post URL has ever been seen before.

Many readers opined that by blocking the URL and deleting the Post's tweet Twitter had inadvertently confirmed the authenticity of the Biden emails.

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Others merely interpreted the secondhand missive as Twitter throwing its hat in the ring for Biden, deeming the act "brazen election interference."

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Meanwhile, Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) said he wrote to Facebook to complain about executive Andy Stone's actions, asking if the preemptive shadowbanning pending fact-checking was "normal" and whether the Biden campaign had played some role in reducing the article's reach.

Even mentioning the October surprise story about Hunter Biden in order to criticize it has landed journalist Maggie Haberman in hot water with online Democrat activists, who furiously accused her of helping President Donald Trump.

It appears that Haberman broke the unwritten code of silence in the mainstream media by sharing a New York Post story on Wednesday that claimed to show that the son of the Democratic presidential nominee engaged in corrupt dealings with a Ukrainian gas company.

Haberman was apparently trying to criticize the story, but merely mentioning it earned the New York Times reporter an avalanche of opprobrium - and a new nickname, based on the Trump campaign slogan "Make America Great Again."

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The avalanche of attacks on Haberman is particularly ironic, given that it was four years ago this week that she was exposed as a "friendly journalist" trusted by Hillary Clinton's campaign to "tee up stories" for them.

On October 10, 2016, WikiLeaks published an email obtained from the personal account of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, showing a January 2015 exchange between her campaign staff.

"We have [had] a very good relationship with Maggie Haberman of Politico over the last year," wrote Clinton's communications director Nick Merrill to campaign manager Robby Mook. "We have had her tee up stories for us before and have never been disappointed."

The campaign thinks it "can achieve our objective and do the most shaping by going to Maggie," Merrill added.

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After the story had already made the rounds on social media, the Biden campaign weighed in to deny any meeting between Biden and Pozharskyi had taken place - though it notably did not comment on any of the more salacious aspects of the Post's stories, including photos and videos appearing to show the candidate's son smoking crack and having sex.

Apparently bracing for fact-checker impact, the Post reported the repairman-whistleblower who'd leaked the emails was working with the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to verify the information. He claimed to have reached out to the committee in September after it released a report on Biden's apparent conflicts of interest, which included a reported $3.5 million payment from the wife of the ex-mayor of Moscow to a company co-founded by Hunter Biden.

Blue-checks and #Resistance stalwarts rallied to Stone's (and Biden's) defense on Twitter, warning that the Post story was based on a "huge falsehood" - namely that Biden had forced the Ukrainian government to fire the prosecutor who was investigating Burisma. This was untrue, they argued, because others had wanted the prosecutor fired as well.

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Stone's Twitter feed bristles with boasts about suppressing content on Facebook, including claims that the platform "displayed warnings on more than 150 million pieces of content" that had been "debunked by one of our third-party fact-checkers," deleted "more than 120,000 pieces of Facebook and Instagram content" for violating its US policy on voter interference, and "rejected ad submissions before they could run about 2.2 million times."

Facebook is far from the only social media platform to attract Democrat apparatchiks, however. Twitter communications exec Nick Pacilio previously worked as press secretary for Democrat vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris, while the platform's head of editorial for Europe, Middle East and Africa, Gordon MacMillan, is a member of the UK military's infamous 77th Brigade information-warfare unit.

Twitter applied a warning screen to the Post's story late Wednesday afternoon, presenting users who clicked on the link with an alert that the "link may be unsafe."

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"REPEAL SECTION 230!!!" the president added, referring to the provision in the Communications Decency Act shielding social media platforms from legal liability if they act "in good faith" to remove objectionable content posted by users.

Since then, Facebook, Twitter, Alphabet and others have invoked it as grounds to police any content they deem inappropriate - including the ever-shifting definitions of "potential harm" and "election interference."

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"It is only the beginning for them. There is nothing worse than a corrupt politician," Trump said cryptically in his tweet, suggesting more information is forthcoming.

Shortly thereafter, his son Donald Trump Jr said it was "time to break up Big Tech. Their total bias and flagrant suppression of information can't stand in America."

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans tweeted: "See you [Jack]," along with a video of someone unsuccessfully trying to share the New York Post story. It was aimed at the company's CEO Jack Dorsey, ahead of the October 28 Commerce Committee hearing about censorship, at which he is scheduled to testify.

Twitter Locks Out WH Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany For Sharing NY Post Hunter Biden Story
By Jon Brown - Oct 15, 2020

Twitter locked the personal account of White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Wednesday after she shared a New York Post story alleging that Hunter Biden introduced his father to a Burisma executive a year before the former vice president pushed Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor, who was investigating the company.

In a screenshot disseminated by the Trump War Room, Twitter appeared to have sent McEnany a notification that her "account has been locked" for "violating our rules against distribution of hacked materials." McEnany's tweet was subsequently deleted. It remains unclear if McEnany was forced to delete it, or if Twitter deleted it for her.

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[Sen. Josh] Hawley called on the FEC to investigate whether Twitter and Facebook violated campaign finance law by interfering in the dissemination of the story. As The Daily Wire reported:

After citing the relevant section of the U.S. Code, Hawley said, "Twitter and Facebook are both corporations. A 'contribution' includes 'anything of value ... for the purpose of influencing any election for Federal office.'"

Hawley alleged that Facebook and Twitter's "active suppression" of the New York Post story "appears to constitute contributions under federal law," and that the Biden campaign "derives extraordinary value" from quashing a story that would link the former vice president to Ukrainian oligarchs.

Hawley also sent letters demanding answers to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. In his letter to Dorsey, Hawley said in part, "There are various reports circulating on Twitter of users unable to post a link to the New York Post story, with some users posting responses from Twitter that the content was deemed to be 'potentially spammy or unsafe.'"

"I find this behavior stunning but not surprising from a platform that has censored the President of the United States," Hawley added. Later, he demanded to know the specifics of how the company decided to suppress the story, as well as if anyone involved with the Biden-Harris campaign was involved.