Jun 11

Today’s News 11th June 2020

  • UK Forecast To Suffer Worst COVID-Driven GDP Hit Of All Nations Worldwide
    UK Forecast To Suffer Worst COVID-Driven GDP Hit Of All Nations Worldwide

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 06/11/2020 – 02:45

    The OECD released its latest Economic Outlook earlier this week, revealing the projected impact the COVID-19 pandemic will have on global GDP in 2020. When assuming there will be no second wave of infections in 2020, gross domestic product is currently expected to be down by 6 percent on last year; but, as Statista’s Martin Armstrong notes, should we encounter a ‘double-hit’ scenario however, this is forecast to increase to a 7.6 percent drop.

    Adding further context, the OECD writes:

    “The COVID-19 pandemic is a global health crisis without precedent in living memory. It has triggered the most severe economic recession in nearly a century and is causing enormous damage to people’s health, jobs and well-being.”

    As this infographic below shows, when looking at the ‘single-hit’ scenario, no country is projected to be hit harder than the United Kingdom. There, a fall of 11.5 percent is being predicted.

    Infographic: How Hard Will GDP Be Hit in 2020? | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    The initial epicenter, China, is expected to go far more unscathed with a decrease of just 2.6 percent.

    The United States is somewhat in the middle of the pack with a 7.3 percent reduction.

  • London Police Warn Of "Perfect Storm" As Right Wing Groups Vow To Defend Statues From BLM
    London Police Warn Of “Perfect Storm” As Right Wing Groups Vow To Defend Statues From BLM

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 06/11/2020 – 02:00

    Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

    London Metropolitan police are preparing for clashes between black lives matter activists and right wing groups this weekend in London, following a call by Tommy Robinson for counter-protests to defend memorials and statues.

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    Ken Marsh, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, warned “We have got the perfect storm ahead of us this weekend, we have got planned protests and now Tommy Robinson and his agitators.”

    Robinson released a short video in which he accused police of being “soft-handed” and allowing BLM protesters to deface memorials and statues, saying that police didn’t want the bad publicity of clashing with non-white protesters.

    Robinson endorsed planned counter-demonstrations by multiple football ‘firms’ saying that “If you give a shit at all about our country, our history, our culture, our identity. I expect you are going to be in London next Saturday.”

    Robinson noted that police removed the small group of “lads” who were guarding the Winston Churchill statue in London last weekend, only for BLM to then deface it.

    Reports indicate that other groups also intend to join the fray, such as ‘Veterans Against Terrorism’, and even biker groups like the ‘Hells Angels’.

    Video has already emerged of some members of one of the afore-mentioned ‘firms’ chasing down and delivering beatings to rioters in London this week:

    While defacement of statues grabbed more headlines, many were incensed more by the desecration of war memorials.

    BLM in the UK has identified at least 60 ‘racist’ statues they say need to be removed for ‘celebrating slavery’.

    Meanwhile, London Mayor Sadiq Khan announced the formation of a commission Tuesday to review all London landmarks and street names, and vowed to remove any that offend, and replace them with monuments to ‘diversity’.

    Almost immediately, a statue of merchant, slave-factor and ship owner Robert Milligan was removed:

    Leftists have been eager to provide suggestions for which statues to target next after a statue of Edward Colston was torn down by in Bristol.

    While some are obvious targets for removal, the concern among many is that whatever and whoever is deemed ‘racist’ (at a time where almost anything and everything is called racist) will eventually also be purged.

    For example, leftists expressed a desire to topple a statue of Charles, 2nd Earl Grey, a former British Prime Minister, despite the fact that he oversaw the abolition of slavery in the British empire.

  • Burundi President Dies Of Sudden Heart Attack At 55; COVID-19 Suspected
    Burundi President Dies Of Sudden Heart Attack At 55; COVID-19 Suspected

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 06/11/2020 – 01:00

    The President of Burundi has died of a sudden heart attack after falling ill on Saturday night before being taken to a hospital.

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    Outgoing president Pierre Nkurunziza, 55, is said to have improved on Sunday, but “surprisingly, on morning of Monday June 8, 2020, his health suddenly deteriorated and he had a heart attack,” according to a government statement, which described the former footballer’s death as “unexpected.”

    Seven days of mourning has been announced following the death, which is suspected to have been caused by COVID-19 – a rumor fueled by reports that his wife was flown to the Kenyan capital of Nairobi 10 days ago after contracting the disease, according to the Standard.

    Meanwhile, The Guardian reports that Nkurunziza refused to impose pandemic restrictions on the impoverished African country, allowing political rallies and sporting events to proceed. Authorities have been accused of deliberately downplaying COVID-19, which has killed over 5,000 people on the African continent and infected nearly 200,000.

    The nation of 11 million people has reported 83 cases of Covid-19 and officials have cited divine protection for Burundi’s ostensibly low infection rate and urged citizens to go about their daily lives without fear.

    Nkurunziza’s spokesperson said that although the country may be hit by the pandemic, “Burundi … has signed a special covenant with God, whether you believe it or not”.

    Burundi refused to follow most other African nations in imposing a lockdown and expelled the World Health Organization’s expert team working on coronavirus. –The Guardian

    COVID-19 heart attacks

    In February, the Taiwan Times reported that doctors in Hubei, China had smuggled out a report that coronavirus patients who had become reinfected were dying from sudden heart failure – providing a possible explanation for photographs and videos of people lying dead in the streets of Wuhan.

    While rare, at least two similar videos have appeared in the United States:

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    And according to Johns Hopkins, COVID-19 targets the heart’s ACE-2 enzymes.

    “There are multiple mechanisms for heart damage in COVID-19, and not everyone is the same,” according to cardiologist Erin Michos, M.D.

    More:

  • The Four Horsemen of America's Apocalypse
    The Four Horsemen of America’s Apocalypse

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/10/2020 – 23:45

    Authored by Dennis Prager via RealClearPolitics.com,

    It takes a lot to build a civilization, and though it is much easier to destroy a civilization, it takes a lot to do that, too.

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    But now we have four roots of evil that are guaranteed to do so.

    No. 1: Victimhood.

    The first is victimhood. The more people who regard themselves as victims — as individuals or as a group — the more likely they are to commit evil. People who think of themselves as victims feel that, having been victimized, they are no longer bound by normal moral conventions — especially the moral conventions of their alleged or real oppressors.

    Everyone knows this is true. But few confront this truth. Every parent, for example, knows that the child who thinks of him or herself as a perpetual victim is the child most likely to cause and get into trouble. And criminologists report that nearly every murderer in prison thinks of himself as a victim.

    On a societal scale, the same holds true — and being on such a larger scale, the chances of real evil ensuing are exponentially increased. One of the most obvious examples is Germany after World War I. Most Germans regarded themselves as victims — of the Treaty of Versailles; of a “stab in the back” German government; of the British, Americans and French; and, of course, of the Jews. This sense of victimhood was one of the most important factors in the popularity of the Nazis, who promised to restore German dignity.

    That millions of black Americans regard themselves as victims — probably more so today than at any time in the past 50 years — can only lead to disaster for America generally and for blacks specifically. While victims generally feel free to lash out at others, they also go through life angry and unhappy.

    No. 2: Demonization.

    The second of the four ingredients of this civilization-destroying witches’ brew is demonization — demonizing a group as inherently evil.

    That is being done now with regard to the white people of America. All — again, all — whites are declared racist. The only difference among them is that some admit it and some deny it. The notion that whites are inherently evil has long been associated with Louis Farrakhan. But it has apparently migrated out from his relatively small following to many blacks, even those who might consider Farrakhan a kook. Former President Barack Obama, hardly a Farrakhan follower, described America as having racism in its DNA. That is as close to inherently and irredeemably evil as it gets; you cannot change your DNA.

    In that sense, not only are whites demonized, but America is, too. Unlike traditional liberals, the left regards America as a moral cesspool — not only racist but, according to The New York Times, founded to be so. The New York Times has created a history of America that declares its founding not in 1776 but in 1619, when the first black slaves arrived. The American Revolution was fought, according to this malign narrative, not merely for American independence but in order to preserve slavery, a practice the British would have interfered with. This “history” will now be taught in thousands of American schools.

    The combination of victimhood and demonization alone is dangerous enough. But there are still two more horsemen galloping toward the looming apocalypse.

    No. 3: A Cause To Believe In.

    Most Americans throughout American history found great meaning in being American and in being religious — usually Christian. Since World War II, we have lived in a post-Christian, post-nationalist age. Until very recently, Americans would have found the expression “for God and country” deeply meaningful; that term today, on the left, is risible and execrable.

    But people need something to believe in. The need for meaning is the greatest human need after the need for food. Leftism, with all its offshoots — feminism, environmentalism, Black Lives Matter, antifa — has filled that vacuum. In Europe, communism, fascism and Nazism filled the hole left by the demise of nationalism and Christianity. Here it is leftism and its offshoots.

    No. 4: Lies.

    The fourth and most important ingredient necessary for evil is lies. Lies are the root of evil. Ironically, slavery itself was made possible only because of the lie that the black was inferior to the white. Nazism was made possible thanks to the lie that Jews were not fully human. And communism was built on lies. Lenin, the father of Soviet Communism, named the Soviet communist newspaper “Truth” (“Pravda”) because truth was what the Communist Party said it was.

    The New York Times, CNN and the rest of the mainstream “news” media are becoming our version of Pravda.
    Objective truth doesn’t exist on the left. The universities have already declared “objective truth” as essentially an expression of “white privilege.” See what happens to a student who says in class, for example, that “men cannot give birth.”

    The public self-debasement demanded of anyone who differs with the left — like New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees just did when he said not standing for the national anthem desecrated the flag and those who have died for it — happens almost daily. The only difference between this and what dissidents underwent during Mao’s Cultural Revolution is that the self-debasement here is voluntary — thus far.

    Last week, when this Jew saw a store in Santa Monica with a sign reading “black-owned business” so as to avoid being destroyed, it evoked chilling memories.

    That’s how bad it is in America today.

  • US B-52 Bomber 'Loses' Experimental Hypersonic Missile Over California
    US B-52 Bomber ‘Loses’ Experimental Hypersonic Missile Over California

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/10/2020 – 23:25

    Amid growing media speculation over details of the Pentagon’s hypersonic weapons program pursued in conjunction with Lockheed Martin and DARPA, a shocking headline appeared Tuesday in the respected aviation journal Aviation Week, namely that a US B-52 bomber lost an experimental hypersonic missile in mid-air over California. 

    The report, also picked up in The New York Post and others described that, “A scramjet-powered missile developed under the joint DARPA/U.S. Air Force Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) program was destroyed in a recent test accident, Aviation Week has learned.”

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    A B-52 carries an Air Launched Rapid Response Weapon, Air Force file image.

    The aviation monitoring site reports further details: “The missile is believed to have inadvertently separated from a B-52 carrier aircraft during a captive-carry flight test, according to sources familiar with the evaluation,” and added, “The cause of the mishap, which is thought to have involved an aircraft from the 419th Flight Test Squadron at Edwards AFB, California, is under investigation.”

    The weapon reportedly separated from the Boeing B-52 carrier aircraft and was soon after destroyed, meaning it either detonated in the air or when it struck the ground below.

    The Air Force refused to comment for the report while DARPA didn’t deny the accident, only saying “Details of those flight demonstrations are classified,” in an apparent tacit admission that experimental tests are indeed taking place. 

    The NY Post explains: “Scramjets allow missiles to reach hypersonic speeds that greatly exceed the speed of sound, often reaching Mach 5 and above.”

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    A Boeing X-51 hypersonic cruise missile at Edwards Air Force Base, US Air Force file image.

    And Forbes also summarizes of the experimental Air Force technology: 

    HAWC is one of several super-fast missiles that the Air Force is developing in order to help its ancient B-52 bombers and other planes poke holes in Chinese and Russian defenses.

    HAWC is a scramjet, meaning it has an engine and breathes air like an airplane does. Other hypersonic weapons, such as the Air-Launched Rapid-Response Weapon, boost to hypersonic speed atop a rocket then glides at five times the speed of sound.

    The Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) program is said to be part of a broader multi-billion dollar program under the Department of Defense, and recently approved by Congress. 

    Washington political and defense leaders have over the past two years signaled a rapidly growing hypersonics program especially after Russian President Vladimir Putin began boasting of the great strides the Kremlin has made, even recently said to be testing hypersonics, which last year in August also resulted in a major accident on a test launch pad which released dangerous levels of nuclear radiation in the surrounding area. 

    Putin, for example, has lately boasted that Russia’s futuristic hypersonic arsenal will be incapable of being defended against. Beijing is also said to be pursuing its own program as well, as American generals also purse ways to counter and defend against such a scenario. 

  • FBI Knew Steele's Russia Research Connected To Clinton, Dems From Earliest Interactions
    FBI Knew Steele’s Russia Research Connected To Clinton, Dems From Earliest Interactions

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/10/2020 – 23:05

    Authored by John Solomon via Just the News

    Notes and emails that have been kept so far from Senate investigators show the FBI knew from its earliest interactions with Christopher Steele in July 2016 that his Russia research project on Donald Trump was connected to Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.

    The information, so far mentioned only glancingly and in footnotes of a Justice Department report, could provide the Senate Judiciary Committee with the most powerful evidence yet to confront witnesses about why the bureau concealed the political origins of Steele’s work from the FISA court.

    “So far the bureau is slow-walking this stuff,” a source familiar with senators’ frustrations told Just the News. “We need to see these sort of documents before we question key witnesses.”

    Chairman Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) is seeking a vote later this week to authorize subpoenas that would compel the Christopher Wray-led FBI to produce witnesses and outstanding documents for the committee’s investigation of the Russia investigators.

    The effort to acquire the original source materials began last December after DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz released his explosive report blaming the FBI for 17 mistakes, omissions and acts of misconduct in seeking a FISA warrant against Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

    While the headlines since that report have mostly focused on FISA abuses, Senate investigators have also zeroed in on a handful of little-noticed passages in Horowitz’s narrative that reference original FBI source documents showing what agents and supervisors knew about Steele, the former MI6 agent, and the firm that hired him, Fusion GPS.

    It wasn’t until late October 2017 that the public and Congress first learned that the law firm Perkins Coie, on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, hired Glenn Simpson’s Fusion GPS research firm to have Steele delve into Trump’s Russia connections.

    And FBI officials have been vague in their explanations about when they knew Steele’s research was tied to Clinton and the DNC and why they did not explicitly inform the FISA court that the Steele dossier used to secure the warrant was funded by Trump’s election opponent.

    But one passage and two footnotes in Horowitz’s report that have largely escaped public attention suggest the FBI agent who first interviewed Steele about his anti-Trump research in London on July 5, 2016 was aware immediately of a connection to Clinton and that a separate office of the FBI passed along information from an informant by Aug. 2, 2016 that Simpson’s Fusion GPS was connected to the DNC.

    For instance, the agent in London contacted an Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC) in the New York field office (NYFO) shortly after interviewing Steele and obtaining one of the anti-Trump memos that made up his dossier, according to information in Horowitz’s report.

    The agent sought advice July 13, 2016 on how to handle the sensitive election-year allegations from the supervisor in New York, where the FBI had already opened a probe of Page that would eventually be assumed by Washington headquarters.

    “ASAC 1’s notes from his July 13 call with Handling Agent 1 closely track the contents of Report 80, identify Simpson as a client of a law firm, and include the following: ‘law firm works for the Republican party or Hillary and will use [the information described in Report 80] at some point,’” the Horowitz report stated. “ASAC 1 told us that he would not have made this notation if Handling Agent 1 had not stated it to him.”

    Footnote 223 in the report reveals a second line of evidence that came to the FBI from a confidential human source (CHS) suggesting the Steele-Simpson-Fusion project was tied to Democrats. That warning was immediately sent to Agent Peter Strzok, the case agent for the Crossfire Hurricane probe investigating whether Trump and Russia colluded to hijack the 2016 election.

    “At approximately the same time that Handling Agent 1 was reporting information about Simpson to ASAC 1, an FBI agent from another FBI field office sent an email to his supervisor stating that he had been contacted by a former CHS who ‘was contacted recently by a colleague who runs an investigative firm. The firm had been hired by two entities (the Democratic National Committee as well as another individual…not name[d]) to explore Donald J. Trump’s longstanding ties to Russian entities.’”

    “On or about August 2, 2016, this information was shared by a CD supervisor with the Section Chief of CD’s Counterintelligence Analysis Section I (Intel Section Chief), who provided it that day to members of the Crossfire Hurricane team (then Section Chief Peter Strzok, SSA 1, and the Supervisory Intel Analyst,)” the footnote adds.

    Senate investigators want to see the original emails and notes from these conversations as they plan to interrogate dozens of key witnesses in the Russia investigation about whether there was an intentional effort by he FBI to hide from the courts and Congress the flaws in their case, exculpatory evidence involving the Trump targets, and derogatory information about Steele’s credibility.

    In the end, Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence that any Americans, including anyone associated with the Trump campaign, colluded with Russia to influence the election.

    And evidence that has since emerged shows the FBI determined early on that Steele’s dossier included debunked, uncorroborated information and possible Russian disinformation aimed at smearing Trump, but agents proceeded anyway with their investigation.

    The FBI notes and emails from summer 2016 are consistent with recent testimony that Steele gave in a civil case in London, where he testified he told the bureau his research and the Fusion GPS project was connected to Clinton.

    “I presumed it was the Clinton campaign, and Glenn Simpson had indicated that. But I was not aware of the technicality of it being the DNC that was actually the client of Perkins Coie,” Steele testified in March under questioning from lawyers for Russian bankers suing over his research.

    Steele confirmed during that testimony that his notes of a 2016 FBI meeting showed he told agents about the Clinton connection.

    Congressional investigators have now pieced together at least five instances early in the Russia case where the FBI was warned of the political origins and motives of Steele’s work but failed to fully inform the courts.

    Instead, the FBI’s FISA warrant application told the judge Steele was working for a person interested in possibly defeating Trump but without disclosing it was the opposition research firm specifically hired by Clinton and the DNC through their law firm to find dirt on Trump in Russia.

    Senate investigators are trying to determine whether that omission was part of a larger, intentional campaign to mislead the FISA court and Congress in order to keep the Russia investigation going despite a lack of evidence supporting the collusion theory.

    “Look, we’ve got to get to the bottom of this, to find out how they ended up with this dossier, how it was believed to be accurate, when did they know it was not accurate?” explained Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) one of the key members of the Judiciary Committee.

  • Iran Plans To Sink A Huge 'US Carrier Replica' In Gulf Live-Fire Drills
    Iran Plans To Sink A Huge ‘US Carrier Replica’ In Gulf Live-Fire Drills

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/10/2020 – 22:45

    After last month it was reported that the US Marine Corps was conducing ‘live-fire drills’ in the Persian Gulf amid continued soaring tensions with Iran, centered of late on Tehran’s growing assistance to another ‘rogue state’ – Maduro’s Venezuela – it appears Iran’s military has upped the ante with similar drills of their own.

    “Iran appears to have built a fake aircraft carrier off its southern coast for potential live-fire drills amid ongoing tensions with the U.S., satellite images showed Tuesday,” a FOX-AP report says.

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    Satellite image captured June 7, 2020 of ‘replica carrier’ off the coast of Bandar Abbas, Iran. Source: Maxar Technologies via AP/FOX.

    Analysts say the mock-up actually appears close to America’s fleet of Nimitz-class carriers, commonly stationed in the region and routinely traversing the contested Strait of Hormuz. It even includes fake fighter jets parked on the deck.

    “The replica carries 16 mock-ups of fighter jets on its deck, according to satellite photos taken by Maxar Technologies. The vessel appears to be some 650 feet long and 160 feet wide,” the report continues.

    Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) thus appears to be prepping what would be the second simulated carrier sinking within five years – the last time being a 2015 live-fire drill centered on attacking a carrier replica. 

    Currently, the US Navy has orders from the Pentagon to shoot at any Iranian military boat which harasses US ships. 

    In 2015 Iran filmed large-scale live-fire drills aimed at sinking a mock carrier:

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    A May 19 US Navy alert which Reuters described at the time as “aimed squarely at Iran” declared that “armed vessels approaching within 100 meters of a U.S. naval vessel may be interpreted as a threat.” 

    This came after prior filmed incidents involving IRGC ‘fast boats’ circling American warships in a threatening way – sometimes for up to hours. 

    It’s unclear exactly when Iran hopes to hold its ‘sinking’ of the mock carrier drills, but they’ll likely film it for propaganda purposes once they do.

  • The Worst Literal Hitler Ever
    The Worst Literal Hitler Ever

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/10/2020 – 22:25

    Authored (satirically) by CJ Hopkins via ConsentFactory.org,

    So, the GloboCap-Resistance Minneapolis Putsch appears to have not gone exactly to plan. Once again, Trump failed to go full-Hitler, despite their best efforts to goad him into doing so. They gave it quite a good shot, however. It was more or less a textbook regime-change op, or “color revolution,” or whatever you call it. All the essential pieces were in place. All they needed Trump to do was declare himself dictator and impose martial law, so the generals could step in and remove him from office.

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    Unfortunately for the Resistance, Trump didn’t do that. Instead, he did what he usually does, which is make a total ass of himself on international television. Which … OK, was cringeworthy, but didn’t quite provide the GloboCap gang with the pretext they needed to perp-walk him out of the Oval Office. Which, needless to say, was incredibly frustrating. After four long years of propaganda foreplay, there we were, finally at the moment of truth, and Adolf goes and loses his erection.

    This guy is the worst literal Hitler ever.

    Still, as far as regime-change ops go, and given that this one was a domestic operation, so trickier than the usual foreign version, I’d give the Resistance a B+ for effort.

    Now, before my “conspiracy theorist” readers get too excited about where I’m going with this column … no, this was not a “fake” uprising. There was an authentic uprising at the center of it. There’s always an authentic uprising at the center of every regime-change op, or at least the type that GloboCap has been carrying out and attempting recently. Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, the Ukraine, Bolivia, Venezuela; these things go pretty much by the numbers.

    Here’s a quick breakdown of how that works.

    • First, you need your civil unrest, large-scale protests, rioting, looting, indiscriminate violence, and so on. Any number of “trigger events” will be sufficient to get this going. Once it is, you can grow it and focus it. A lot of this unrest needs to be authentic, so it’s best to conduct an overwhelming multi-year propaganda campaign to delegitimize and demonize your target as some sort of treasonous Hitlerian monster who’s responsible for every major problem in the country. That way, no matter which trigger event gets things going, it will be his fault.

    • You will want your local government officials to allow this civil unrest to go on until it reaches the point where rioters and looters are rampaging through the hearts of cities, raiding both high-end corporate chain stores and local mom-and-pop-type businesses, and brutally assaulting their defenseless proprietors. This does not mean that these local officials have to restrain or stand down their cops. On the contrary, you want them to unleash their cops, on the protesters, rioters, and TV reporters (during their “live” reports, if possible), and just generally beat the living crap out of everyone. The goal is to generate as much hatred as possible against the regime you are trying to change, and to pressure your designated Hitler-target into losing his patience and overreacting, so you want things to get extremely ugly.

    • Then, you unleash the power of the media to whip folks up into a mindless frenzy of rage against your designated Hitler. You have your “respectable” pundits publish articles calling for his removal from office. You get the military (and former military) to start making noise about how your Hitler is out of control and on the brink of fascism. Then you wait for your Hitler to overreact and attempt to call in the military and impose some form of martial law, at which point you can safely depose him, and pretend that democracy has won the day.

    The media is essential here, because you need to convince the majority of the public (i.e., not just the people protesting and rioting) that things have gotten so out of control, and your imaginary Hitler has gotten so dangerous, that a military coup is the best solution.

    What you’re looking for are headlines like these:

    “We are teetering on a dictatorship” — CNN

    “‘Words of a dictator’: Trump’s threat to deploy military raises spectre of fascism” — The Guardian

    “Donald Trump is Trying to Start a Race War” — Rolling Stone

    “Remove Trump Now” — Slate

    “The Trump Presidency is Over.” — The Guardian

    “Trump Must Be Removed” — The Washington Post

    Also, while the media are doing their thing, you want to get any former members of the intelligence community (or the secret police) to issue public statements like this:

    “There should be no place in American society, much less in our government, for the depravity being demonstrated daily by Donald Trump. Members of his Cabinet who enable such behavior are betraying their oath of office by supporting an increasingly desperate despot.” — John Brennan, former CIA director

    Then you bring the politicians and the military in. This kind of language will usually do it:

    “The fascist speech Donald Trump just delivered verged on a declaration of war against American citizens. I fear for our country tonight and will not stop defending America against Trump’s assault.” — Senator Ron Wyden

    “These are not the words of a president. They are the words of a dictator.” — Senator Kamala Harris

    “‘There is a thin line between the military’s tolerance for questionable partisan moves over the past three years and the point where these become intolerable,” a retired general said.” — The New York Times

    “We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution … We can unite without [Trump], drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.” — General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, former Secretary of Defense

    Once the generals have started in growling, you get the media to hype that, hard. Headlines like these will get people’s attention:

    “Revolt of the Generals” — The Washington Post

    “The Officers’ Revolt” — Slate

    “President Donald Trump is facing an unprecedented revolt from the elite corps of ex-military leaders and presidents …” — CNN

    “The US president’s desire to act the strongman poses urgent questions that America’s generals, voters and allies must all answer” — The Guardian Editorial Board

    If you can, it is always a really nice touch if you can drum up … oh, let’s say 280 former national security officials who are really concerned about the state of democracy and “the misuse of the military for political purposes,” and get them to spontaneously call each other up and decide to write a letter together accusing your Hitler of “dividing Americans,” which the media can then disseminate, widely.

    And, of course, what you need for the “educated classes” is an official propagandist like Franklin Foer (who broke the big story about the non-existent “Trump-Russia server” back in 2016 and was rewarded for his service to GloboCap with a lucrative staff writer position at The Atlantic) to come right out and explain that what’s happening is a textbook regime-change operation (because you don’t have to dupe the “educated classes,” most of whom will already be on your side). Something more or less like this:

    “Twitter’s decision to label Trump’s posts as misleading was a hinge moment … once Twitter applied its rules to Trump — and received accolades for its decision — it inadvertently set a precedent … a cycle of noncooperation was set in motion. Local governments were the next layer of the elite to buck Trump’s commands. After the president insisted that governors ‘dominate’ the streets on his behalf, they roundly refused to escalate their response. Indeed, New York and Virginia rebuffed a federal request to send National Guard troops to Washington, D.C. Even the suburb of Arlington, Virginia, pulled its police that had been loaned to control the crowd in Lafayette Square. As each group of elites refused Trump, it became harder for the next to comply in good conscience. In Sharp’s taxonomy, the autocrat’s grasp on power depends entirely on the allegiance of the armed forces. When the armed forces withhold cooperation, the dictator is finished.”

    As I said, it went pretty much right by the book.

    After four long years of official propaganda designed to convince the Western masses that Donald Trump is literally Hitler, GloboCap, the liberal Resistance, and the corporate media all did their best to harness the authentic protests and rioting that routinely follow the murder of an unarmed Black person by the cops, and use it to remove him from office. It would have been a spectacular catharsis, a fitting climax to the War on Populism, but Trump refused to play his part … so, OK, maybe he’s not as dumb as I thought, or at least not totally suicidal.

    No matter, it’s still a big win for GloboCap. Forcibly removing Trump from office is, and has always been, gravy. The main goal of the War on Populism is to delegitimize and demonize him, and everyone who voted for him (and Jeremy Corbyn, and even Bernie Sanders, and everyone who voted for them). Trump is just a symbol, after all. It’s the dissatisfaction with global capitalism (and its smiley, happy, valueless values, and its post-ideological ideology) that GloboCap is determined to crush, so they can get back to the unfinished business of restructuring the entire Middle East, and anywhere else that’s not playing ball, and dissolving what is left of national sovereignty, and transforming the world into one big marketplace, where there will be no fascists, no evil Russians, no religious extremists, no racist statues, no offensive movies, or books, or artworks, no more unauthorized ass-clown presidents, and everyone will be “contact-traced” with their digital health-certificate implants, and the children will stand inside their little “social-distancing” boxes and circles and sing the Coca-Cola theme song through their anti-virus masks at school …

    Sorry … I got a little off-track there. I forgot that this was strictly about racism, and police brutality, and nothing else. I’ll try to stick to the script from now on, but it might be difficult, given my “privilege.” Maybe, if I wrapped myself in kente cloth and got down on my knees in public, that might help me get my mind right. Or, I don’t know. What do you think?

  • US Shale Faces Bankruptcy Wave Amid "Long And Arduous" Global Downturn
    US Shale Faces Bankruptcy Wave Amid “Long And Arduous” Global Downturn

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/10/2020 – 22:05

    The US shale industry could be on the verge of destruction due to the drastic decline in demand and falling energy prices brought on by coronavirus pandemic, a new report says. 

    The Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) published its 14th edition of the Global Peace Index on Wednesday — outlining how the virus-induced downturn of the energy market and a price war between Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Russia — could result in a “collapse” of US shale.

    “The sharp fall in oil prices will affect political regimes in the Middle East, especially in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran, which may result in the collapse of the shale oil industry in the US, unless oil prices return to their prior levels,” IEP warns.

    The report goes on to say “this global recession will be long and arduous,” outlining how weakness in commercial, travel and industrial activity will persist for an extended period, indicating oil prices will remain subdued: 

    “These markets were already effected by an over-supply, emanating from Russia and Saudi Arabia who could not agree on production curbs. On April 20 the price of crude oil turned negative for the first time in history, as seen in Figure 1.9. Demand had collapsed so rapidly that overstocked producers were willing to pay buyers to take away excess inventory. The negative price was a short-lived technicality, due to the way futures contracts are written; with oil prices soon returning to positive territory. Nevertheless, the unprecedented episode highlighted the severity of demand collapsing worldwide.” 

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    Crude prices stabilized in April after OPEC+ agreed to production cuts. Last weekend, an extension of the 9.7 million barrels per day (bpd) cuts were seen through July. The cuts equal about 10% of global supply, which has led to a 172% rise in Brent crude futures over the last 33 trading sessions. Despite the extension in cuts, Brent crude prices have stalled in the 43-40 level, now at risk of reversing. 

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    Goldman Sachs warned in a Tuesday note that a tactical “pull-back in prices in the coming weeks with our short-term forecast of $35/bbl vs. Brent spot prices of $43/bbl.”

    The oil market only moved into deficit late May and still faces the daunting challenge of normalizing a billion barrels of excess inventories. Yet, the oil relief rally remains unfazed, with prices doubling and exceeding our year-end price target just six weeks after the likely cycles lows.

    This rebound has been fueled by a macro risk-on backdrop and a policy-induced Chinese crude import binge yet fundamentals are turning bearish: demand expectations are running ahead of a more gradual and still highly uncertain recovery, shale and Libyan shut-in production are coming back online, and prices are at levels where OPEC supply cuts should ease and Chinese purchases slow.

    With OPEC’s latest cut already more than priced in, we now forecast a pull-back in prices in the coming weeks with our short-term Brent forecast of $35/bbl vs. spot prices of $43/bbl. Just as strengthening physical oil prices led us to turn constructive on the oil market on May 1, very poor refining margins and the recent sharp decline in US crude bases now comfort us in our sequentially bearish outlook. – Goldman’s energy analyst Damien Courvalin wrote in the note. 

    Courvalin outlined four reasons why fundamentals could drag crude prices lower in the near term:

    The oil rally remains unfazed, however, with Brent prices doubling and exceeding our year-end price target just six weeks after the likely cycles lows. We see three reasons behind this rebound: (1) a macro risk-on backdrop with oil rallying with equities and dollar depreciation, (2) a policy-induced Chinese crude import binge, and (3) frictions in releasing crude from storage as the deficit starts.

    While positioning leaves room for this rally to continue, we see four reasons why fundamentals are likely to set the stage for a pull-back in coming weeks:

    (1) demand expectations are running ahead of a more gradual and still uncertain rebound,

    (2) both shale and Libyan shut-in production are currently restarting,

    (3) prices are nearing levels where OPEC supply cuts should ease and Chinese purchases slow, and

    (4) the inventory overhang remains daunting with our latest deep dive still pointing to 1 bn in excess stocks.

    The scale of the rally and the size of the inventory overhang are two challenges for OPEC+, threatening the higher prices, volumes and market-share targeted through 2021. While large cuts are needed to normalize excess inventories, too long a cut instead benefits competing high-cost producers, with US E&P HY debt issuance restarting. As we have argued, this should point to OPEC soon targeting higher output before shale activity inflects. If successfully carried-out, such a strategy should weigh on long-dated prices, helping achieve the backwardation that benefits low-cost producers.

     As Goldman gets bearish on energy, hedge fund positioning in crude futures last week suggest the rally is running out of steam.

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    Perhaps the bearishness building in crude extends from lackluster global demand and continued oversupply conditions, due mostly because there will be no V-shaped recovery in the global economy this year or next, which was highlighted in our piece titled “OECD Warns Of Deepest Global Downturn In Century, Second Virus Wave.” 

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    The latest Energy Information Administration (EIA) report noted Wednesday that US crude stockpiles reached a record high.

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    With another possible decline in crude prices ahead, it remains to be seen if President Trump can save heavily indebted US shale companies. When prices crashed several months ago, the president struggled to get aid to the collapsing industry. 

    Lower for longer crude prices, in a global downturn, which could continue through at least 2021 — could be what finally leads to a  bankruptcy wave in shale.  

  • The Environmentalist's Dream Came True
    The Environmentalist’s Dream Came True

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/10/2020 – 21:45

    Authored by Joakim Book via The American Institute for Economic Research,

    Have you recently heard anything about the major existential threat to our lives? I don’t mean the exaggerated virality of the virus currently wreaking havoc with our globalized societies, but the endlessly dangerous impact of climate change? Of rising sea levels and volatile weather leading to crop failures and mass starvation and collapse of precious ecosystems? 

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    You know, the imminent Sixth Mass Extinction? The “ecocide” that the French President Emmanuel Macron called the Amazon fires last year and that the British newspaper The Guardian routinely describes all kinds of things impacting nature?

    I didn’t think so.

    Nor should you have: as humans, we clearly had more urgent things to worry about than dying polar bears or cleared rainforests or other kinds of climate damages – real or imagined – accumulating centuries down the line. In the economist’s dry language, our time preferences spiked: we suddenly cared a lot more about the present compared to the future than we did until recently.

    At the same time, strangely, the environmentalists had a field day during the corona pandemic. The anti-human policies they have called for, protested for, disrupted societies and other people’s lives for, were suddenly implemented en masse, albeit on a temporary basis. Think of it as a trial for green policies. 

    To most naive environmentalists, this was a hugely successful experiment. We could and did shut down the modern industrialized society they frantically detest. Factories across many provinces of China, the workshop of the world, shut down for months; Italy paused its market society while their dead piled up, and most other countries followed suit: malls closed, downtowns were eerily empty, supermarkets rationed both goods and customers. Airports and planes, those busy places usually at any given time housing over a million people – a Dallas-sized city in the skies – all but closed. 

    And the environment did improve a little. Air quality in many Chinese cities improved, almost overnight. CO2 emissions for the first quarter of 2020 fell by a full 5% as opposed to growing steadily at 2-3% a year – “one of the biggest reductions in CO2 emissions on record,” as the World Economic Forum described the news. The reduction of emissions were even seen from space, almost instantaneously. 

    Intellectually consistent greens should be celebrating in the streets. 

    Yet, they’re fairly quiet. And most scientists are not so happy. Even though we stopped air travel, mostly stopped eating out and reduced our consumption, some 80% of emissions went unaffected – think heating, electricity, food consumption, and the many disposables we now – reasonably – started using. The coronavirus shutdown shows that we can do a lot to change our societies and it still wouldn’t make more than a dent in the global emissions. Extrapolating the 5%-first quarter reduction in emissions for the rest of the year puts us back roughly to emission levels of 2012, not exactly a year celebrated for its climate achievements.  

    Was it Worth It?

    Asking this annoying economist’s question is the attempt to be balanced in a world gone mad. Answer it requires us to hold more than one value in our minds at the same time, trading off one for the other – an attribute that our political friends on the left and right don’t like doing. The world is not, contrary to most everyone’s illusions, one-dimensional; there is no one thing that overwhelmingly matters. Instead, careful trade-offs between health, financial and economic well-being, and climate impact do.

    Most people do want to preserve nature and minimize our climate impact – but not “at the expense of their children going cold or hungry.”

    With 13% unemployment in the U.S. and reports of all kinds of ills increasing – ranging from poverty, to domestic violence and suicides – whether some percentage points off global emissions were worth it is highly doubtful. Even setting aside the pandemic for a moment, one has to place a very large value on polar bears and trees, and a very small value on human flourishing to rationalize that trade-off. You can, in principle, have whichever valuations of those things that you want, but very few people would share them – and I wager that most environmentalists themselves won’t. 

    Andy Kessler at the Wall Street Journal nailed it when he, in April, wrote: 

    “Today we have 17 million freshly unemployed, but . . . carbon emissions have plummeted, dolphins returned to Venice, wolves walk the streets of San Francisco and pot use is at an all-time high. Unicorns and equality everywhere? Not quite. Pollution and crime are down because we’re all basically in prison. It’s awful. Set us free.”

    For some people, somewhere, spending unanticipated time with loved ones has been a blessing. For others, this family love has been mediated through phones or hospital windows. Don’t visit your elders. Don’t see your friends. If you do, stay far away from them. Carnal desires or intimacy outside of cohabitation is clearly not essential. In every conceivable way, life has been worse. Travels for leisure, pleasure, or business have ceased. Incomes for insanely large chunks of American society has dwindled, if not stopped entirely. That’s not great. 

    Of the dystopia the green left idealizes, the Spring of 2020 was but a taste. A taste that we endured, survived, hankered along because of extreme measures by businesses and governments designed to hibernate commercial and civic life – and save our vulnerable elderly population. Fiscal deficits and money-printing of astronomical magnitudes. It could only last so long, which is why many countries are eager to open their societies before the still-meagre tourist season of 2020.  

    The green new deal of anti-human, anti-capitalist harmony would run this route all the way, with no end in sight, no wealth or saving to draw from, no fantastically productive supply chains left over from a prosperous and globalized economy temporarily put on hold. 

    Massive reduction in living standards – or a massive reduction in people. That was always the green offer on the table. We have to abandon this mistaken belief that human activity is parasitical to the planet. The always-great Matt Ridley writes: 

    “We must not despair or return permanently to autarky and localism. With the right precautions, an open, free-trading, free-moving, innovating world is possible without pandemics and is essential for raising living standard.” 

    If the damages done by mandated shutdowns and fearful populace – financially, socially, economically – looks devastating to you, that’s but a preview of what a Brave New Green World looks like. 

    Let’s not have it.

  • Researchers Find At Least 7 Different Strains Of Coronavirus Circulated In California
    Researchers Find At Least 7 Different Strains Of Coronavirus Circulated In California

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/10/2020 – 21:25

    The latest research published last night by the journal Science repudiated prior claims that early incidences of the virus in the US petered out, and instead found that at least seven different strains of the virus that have been circulating in California since the early days of the outbreak, suggesting that the outbreak in the US didn’t have one source, but evolved from a large number of travelers spreading the virus to the US. As we noted earlier, new satellite data suggests the virus emerged in Wuhan much earlier than Beijing has acknowledged.

    The analysis found that the cases of the disease, including travelers coming from Europe and Asia, spread in Washington and California, before the virus spread from those states across the rest of the country, though it’s probably fair to assume that a similarly diverse number of strains traveled to New York.

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    “While the sample size is small, this study suggests that there may have been multiple introductions of the virus into the United States,” Brandon Brown, an associate professor of social medicine population and public health at the University of California-Riverside, told UPI.“The findings may actually leave us with more questions than answers regarding the introduction of SARS-CoV-2 in the U.S.,” he added. Brown was involved with the study.

    The study published in Science was conducted by a team of California public health officials and international researchers analyzing viral samples from 36 patients spanning nine counties and the Grand Princess cruise ship, which docked in San Francisco Bay in March after an outbreak occurred on board.

    A detailed genetic analysis revealed that at least seven different SARS-CoV-2 strains spread in California, and these strains showed some overlap with Washington State.

    The press positioned the research as supportive of contact tracing. But many remain skeptical of the usefulness of the technique this late in the game…

    There was no “predominant lineage” and limited transmission between communities within the state, they added.

    In general, the findings “support contact tracing, social distancing and travel restrictions to contain SARS-CoV-2 spread in California and other states,” the authors said.

    “Initially, we were focused on preventing the introduction of the virus via travel, but we soon began to understand the prevalence of the virus in the community among those who had not traveled,” Brown said.

    “This study does illustrate the potential multiple introductions of the virus into Northern California, which makes it more difficult to control the spread.”

    …particularly since the WHO has acknowledged that asymptomatic cases don’t play as big a role in spreading the virus as we previously suspected.

  • Lazare: Christopher Steele's Very Stupid Dossier
    Lazare: Christopher Steele’s Very Stupid Dossier

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/10/2020 – 21:05

    Authored by Daniel Lazare via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    “Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.”

    So declared Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

    But he was wrong. The gods don’t make them mad – they make them stupid.

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    Christopher Steele’s famous dossier, back in the news now that the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee has begun hearings on Russiagate, is a case in point. The FBI took the dossier oh-so-seriously back in 2016, sending out agents to double-check the ex-MI-6 agent’s informants and using it to obtain secret search warrants against alleged Russia go-between Carter Page. Nicholas Kristof pronounce the dossier “plausible” in a January 2017 New York Times column entitled, “Donald Trump: Kremlin Employee of the Month,” while Adam Schiff regaled a House Intelligence Committee hearing with its contents. Former FBI Director James Comey continued to insist that the dossier’s most notorious finding – the celebrated “golden showers” episode in the Moscow Ritz Carlton – was “possible” well into 2018.

    But as we now know, it was all nonsense. Steele’s Russian sources began backing away from the dossier as soon as it came out, confessing in follow-up interviews that the Ritz Carlton incident was nothing more than “rumor and speculation” and that other stories that Steele passed along with a straight face were the sort of gossip that friends bat back and forth over beers. As for Steele himself, former intelligence colleagues told the bureau that, while enthusiastic, he suffers from “lack of self-awareness” and “didn’t always exercise great judgment.”

    The stories were baseless while Steele himself was unreliable – which is no doubt why the FBI kept such interviews under wraps. After all, why let the facts get in the way of a good investigation that’s generating scads of headlines by the minute, especially since the target is an all-purpose whipping boy like Vladimir Putin? Indeed, under wraps is where they would have stayed if Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz hadn’t ferreted them out and published them in a stunning report last December.

    But the question is not so much why such findings were covered up, but why things got so far to begin with. The problem with the Steele dossier is not merely that it’s uncorroborated and under-researched. The problem is that it’s ridiculous on its face, a tale told by an idiot that only another idiot could believe. Any normal person would give it a quick read and toss it in the wastebasket.

    Why? Let’s begin with the opening line: “Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years.”

    Since Steele began compiling the dossier in June 2016, that means that the Kremlin had been working with Trump since at least 2011. But this is absurd since 2011 was Trump’s annus horribilis, the year he fell flat on his face after putting out feelers about entering the upcoming presidential race. Pundits dismissed him as a reality TV star looking for cheap publicity, Barack Obama skewered him mercilessly at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, while Republican strategist Karl Rove dismissed his candidacy as “a joke.” Writer Erik Hedegaard described Trump as “a Barnum-type showman” with hair a “patriotic shade of amber waves of grain” in a hilarious Rolling Stone profile that’s still a must-read.

    Trump was a walking, talking, bouffant-wearing punch line, in other words, which is why Russian intelligence would have had to have been positively clairvoyant to pick him out as someone who would one day be in a position to “sow discord and disunity both within the U.S. itself, but more especially within the Transatlantic alliance,” as the dossier puts it.

    A few pages later, however, Steele reports that the Kremlin has been cultivating Trump not for five years, but for eight, i.e. starting back in 2008, which is even more absurd since Trump, struggling to keep himself afloat amid the greatest financial crisis in eighty years, was threatening to default on a $40-million loan from Deutsche Bank. Smart as Putin may be, he’d have to be a super-Einstein to see a foundering businessman like his as presidential material.

    Thus, Steele’s core thesis – that Trump and Putin had a working relationship going back years – doesn’t pass the most elementary smell test. From there, things only get worse.

    “So far,” he continues, “TRUMP has declined various sweetener real estate business deals offered him in Russia in order to further the Kremlin’s cultivation of him.”

    The implication is that Trump was playing hard to get. Yet Steele goes on to say:

    “Finally, regarding TRUMP’s claimed minimal investment profile in Russia, a separate source with direct knowledge said this had not been for want of trying. TRUMP’s previous efforts had included exploring the real estate sector in St Petersburg as well as Moscow but in the end TRUMP had had to settle for the use of extensive sexual services there from local prostitutes rather than business success.”

    TRUMP – intelligence agents are fond of capital letters – was turning down business while struggling unsuccessfully to drum it up.

    As for those St. Petersburg prostitutes, Steele confesses that the details are elusive because “all direct witnesses to this recently had been ‘silenced,’ i.e. bribed or coerced to disappear.” This sounds dark, mysterious, and very Russian. But no such difficulties exist with regard to the “golden showers” episode at the Moscow Ritz Carlton because the hotel “was known to be under FSB [i.e. Russian Federal Security Service] control with microphones and concealed cameras in all the main rooms to record anything they wanted to.” Video and audio tapes would certainly make for impressive evidence except that the dossier gives no indication of actually listening to or viewing such material. The result is an evidence-free assertion that’s both unproven and incontrovertible — which is to say, trash.

    Then there’s the curious matter of the Jews. In describing a vast Russian intelligence operation aimed at sabotaging Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, Steele accuses the Kremlin of making “heavy use” of “coercion and blackmail” to enlist “U.S. citizens of Russian (Jewish) origin.” The dossier continues:

    “On the mechanism for rewarding relevant assets based in the U.S., and effecting a two-way flow of intelligence and other useful information, Source E claimed that Russian diplomatic staff in key cities such as New York, Washington DC and Miami were using the ‘emigre’ ‘pension’ distribution system as cover. The operation therefore depended on key people in the U.S. Russian emigre community for its success. Tens of thousands of dollars were involved.”

    Not only had the Kremlin entered into a working relationship with Trump, evidently, but it had also entered into a working relationship with America’s large Russian-Jewish émigré community. Two kinds of paranoia, anti-Russian and anti-Jewish, thus merged to form a single great Russo-Judaic conspiracy stretching from Moscow to Miami Beach. Since the dossier provides nothing by way of back-up, this was another reason to throw it in the garbage. But the FBI, which collectively seems to have the cranial capacity of a brontosaurus, thought the theory was worth pursuing regardless.

    An exchange between Lisa and Peter Strzok gives us an idea of the depths to which the bureau had sunk. Page was the FBI in-house attorney who texted in August 2016, “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” To which Strzok, the agent in charge of the Russia investigation, replied: “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.” Eyebrows went up all over Washington when that little exchange got out.

    But a conversation a few weeks earlier is no less revealing. After Page mentioned a news item about Trump’s alleged Kremlin ties, Strzok texted that he’s “partial to any women sending articles about how nasty the Russians are.” To which Page replied that Russians “are probably the worst. Very little I finding redeeming about this. Even in history. Couple of good writers and artists I guess.” Strzok agreed: “f***ing conniving cheating savages. At statecraft, athletics, you name it. I’m glad I’m on Team USA.”

    The exchange was racist, bigoted, and most of all stupid – painfully so. Couple of good writers and artists I guess? Does that mean Page has never read Tolstoy or Turgenev, Babel or Bulgakov? That she’s never heard of Tchaikovsky or Prokofiev? Never seen a movie by Eisenstein or an opera by Borodin?

    The mind reels. But the conversation speaks volumes about how intellectual levels had fallen. Basically, intelligence agents would believe anything about Russia, no matter how ridiculous, as long as it put it in a negative light.

    Undoubtedly, narrowness of this sort had something to do with twenty-five years of unipolarity, that belief that, with the fall of the Soviets, the United States was now “the indispensable nation,” as Madeleine Albright put it in 1998, able to “stand tall and … see further than other countries into the future.” Since America could do no wrong, it no longer had to think about whether it was following the right course or not. It no longer had to think, period, and the fact that pundits hailed Albright as inestimably wise and profound meant that it would only sink deeper and deeper into thoughtlessness.

    The world’s sole remaining superpower thus plunged ever deeper into arrogance and idiocy, as the entire Russiagate disaster shows. Former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi was fond of pointing out that no country can be both rich and stupid for more than a generation. He meant it as a reproach to the Italians, but he could have been addressing America as well.

    Now that it’s crashing and burning from terminal stupidity, it’s proving him right yet again.

  • American Cities Becoming 'A Big Toilet' For Lack Of Public Restrooms Amid COVID-19
    American Cities Becoming ‘A Big Toilet’ For Lack Of Public Restrooms Amid COVID-19

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/10/2020 – 20:45

    Over the past months of COVID-19 lockdowns across nearly all states, and as many counties and cities observed and enforced strict social distancing policies, America has seen a rise in public urination. 

    The reality is that whether walking in downtown urban spaces, or on long distance travel, people are facing a dilemma of either encountering no available public restrooms given businesses and restaurants were closed – or alternately not feeling comfortable enough going into places like gas station given pandemic fears.

    The New York Post this week describes this rising phenomenon in the city aptly with the title: With no public bathrooms, the Big Apple is now ‘the Big Toilet’.

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    Yes, the city is starting to come back to life, but with some draw backs as not everything has caught up, as the report begins:

    But this re-emergence has come with a stream of issues — mainly a steady flow of revelers freely peeing in public since most bathrooms remain closed. And now, with thousands of protesters taking to the streets each day, more people than ever are contributing to NYC’s No. 1 problem by whizzing in the wild.

    “Last night, my co-worker saw some guy just coming down the street and pulling down his pants [to urinate],” Spano tells The Post. “She was like, ‘Nah, not here, man.’

    It’s a bit of a Catch-22: on the one hand public urination remains a minor offense punishable with a small fine (after a few years ago the city moved the decriminalize such low level offenses), and on the other people remain skittish about using potentially germ-infested public toilets.

    This also as many shops now opening still have a “no bathroom” edict, especially given they are subject to occupancy limitations and are trying to prevent unnecessary potential exposure amid the coronavirus crisis. 

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    American Cities Becoming ‘A Big Toilet’. File image via iStock.

    So often the only “safe” option is to pee on the street or in an alley: “There’s definitely been an uptick on this street, from what I’ve seen. But most people at least go in a corner or have friends cover them up,” one New Yorker told The Post.

    Apparently it’s now a big topic of conversation for anyone going out as venues open back up: 

    “My friends and I talk about [public urination] all of the time now,” Sophia, a 23-year-old who lives in Park Slope and asked that her last name not be used, tells The Post.

    “It’s a big topic. Since the pandemic, I have done it myself in Prospect Park, behind a dumpster in Williamsburg and Greenpoint. All of the public restrooms like McDonald’s and Starbucks are closed. If you are far away from your home, what are you supposed to do?”

    No doubt this is an increasing conversation nationally, and might also explain why there’s been a mass increase in RV and motor home buying nationwide, or aptly dubbed “Covid campers”.

    After all, a motor home means you can relieve yourself at any time while traveling, without having to enter a public space. 

    Meanwhile in New York and other major cities, there’s growing concern over foul and rank smelling streets as more and more people – not just the homeless – do their business outside. 

  • The Political Left Used George Floyd's Dead Body As A Social Justice Marionette
    The Political Left Used George Floyd’s Dead Body As A Social Justice Marionette

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/10/2020 – 20:25

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

    There is an important question in the George Floyd case that almost no one seems to be asking, and I think it needs to be addressed:  Is there any evidence that George Floyd died because he is black?

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    I bring it up because the prevailing narrative from the mainstream media and Black Lives Matter is that this is a verified fact, yet, I’ve seen no proof to back the claim. I’ve seen no evidence so far that any of the police involved have a background of racial prejudice. I do know two of them including Derek Chauvin had a history of abuse complaints from people of various races, but this is a separate issue. How is it that a discussion that should have been about police brutality and abuse of power was allowed to be hijacked and turned into an issue of “white supremacy” that all white Americans are supposed to apologize for?

    These days, simply asking these questions will trigger automatic accusations of “bigotry”. If you aren’t an “ally” of Black Lives Matter then you are surely a racist; or so we are told. But I don’t model my thinking according to a hive mind of emotionally stunted reactionaries, and neither do a lot of Americans. Many of us have to THINK about these situations logically and rationally and come to our own conclusions based on the facts at hand.

    I watched the full video, and like most people I was disturbed by the cold robotic manner in which Derek Chauvin applied the full weight of his body to a single point of his knee on the back of George Floyd’s neck for a period of 9 minutes that seemed like an eternity. Anyone with a background in medicine or mixed martial arts knows that you do not do this unless you intend to permanently injure or kill a person. Damage to the vagus nerve and cervical spinal nerves can cause serious dysfunction to the rest of the body, including possible pulmonary distress.  Police procedure specifically teaches officers to avoid such tactics.  Chauvin had 19 years of experience and training, unlike the two rookie officers helping him hold Floyd down; he knew better and he did it anyway.

    I have no interest in defending Chauvin. There is no excuse for his actions as is evident by the video. I think a lot of conservatives agree with this. If leftists had simply stuck to the reality of the situation and hammered home the danger of abuse of power regardless of a person’s color, then there wouldn’t be a problem. It’s one of the few issues that leftists and conservatives find common ground.

    Unfortunately, George Floyd’s body has now been devoured as a sacrifice to the social justice cult. They are ravenous now, frothing at the mouth and dancing with glee, because the hard left exploits tragedy as a vehicle to mold society according to their ideals.  They NEED tragedy and division to keep their movement relevant.

    Floyd has been turned into a morbid puppet for their benefit and entertainment. They have made his death about race politics and victim group status. They have made his death a monument to their fantasy world in which “systemic racism” and “white privilege” is the cause of all their struggles and failures.  So now, we are at an impasse.

    In last week’s article, I tried to speak to conservatives directly on the dangers of overreacting to the protests and riots.  Specifically, I warned about the building discussion of “martial law” and handing the government unconstitutional powers in the name of security.  I believe this is ultimately what the establishment wants – To manipulate one side of the political spectrum or the other into supporting totalitarianism.

    They tried appealing to the political left in the name of protecting people from the pandemic, and they have tried appealing to the political right in the name of protecting people from the riots.  I want to make it clear, though, that the social justice movement is a key driver in the chaos the US is facing this year and into the foreseeable future.  Conservatives need to avoid being lured by the temptations of government power, but the extreme left is still a considerable problem.

    No justice no peace? If protest groups truly want peaceful resolution they would have realized by now that the officers involved in the event have been arrested and charged and the city of Minneapolis is even proclaiming an end to the municipal police altogether. Justice is being served, perhaps overtly just to appease the movement. But this is not enough for BLM and the hard left, and nothing ever will be.

    One of the defining traits of the social justice horde is that they are never satisfied; give them what they want and they smell blood in the water. Fulfill their demands and they will draft more demands. Apologize, even when you have done nothing wrong, and they will attack you with more aggression to make sure you know they own you. Once you placate these people to gain their approval, you will never be free.

    There is nothing that white Americans in general need to apologize for.  The current conflict is NOT rooted in white supremacy, the conflict is rooted in the leftist mob and its collectivist zealotry.  They are the divisive factor.

    I have heard it said for many years that the great weakness of conservative movements compared to progressive movements is that we often lack uniformity when it comes to action. We all tend to agree on the causes of problems (big government, centralization, central banking, globalist influences within government, a lack of respect for the constitutional foundation of our country, etc.), but we vehemently disagree on specific solutions. That said, I prefer the weakness of too much individuality over the mob mentality of leftist movements.

    Following gatekeepers blindly in terms of action even when those action are utterly wrong and devoid of reason is a swift path to collectivist tyranny.  It is the reason leftist movements are so concerning; they are easily led by terrible people.

    They assume they are on the right side of history, and they feel they have no need for reason or facts.  The race card is one of their favorite shock-and-awe weapons as it is a highly charged and emotional brush-fire that tends to choke out rationality in people’s minds.

    The left will cite certain stats until they are blue in the face to support their claims that everything is about race, while ignoring other stats that are contrary to their narrative. Anything that is contrary to the narrative is ignored. The narrative is god, and those who control the narrative control the political left.

    For example, in terms of the George Floyd issue they will bring up the argument that 24% of police shooting deaths in the US are black people, even though black people make up only 13% of the US population. This number is usually derived from annual FBI crime stats and would be rather damning except it’s only half the story. What they don’t mention is those same stats show that blacks also make up the majority of violent crimes in the US including murder and robbery.

    According to the FBI’s 2016 – 2018 crime statistics, blacks are responsible for 52% to 53% of murders in the US, again while only representing 13% of the population. Blacks also represent 27% of ALL criminal activity in the US despite their much lower population. Isn’t it possible that the over-representation of violence in the black community might lead to a higher number of black deaths during police encounters?

    This does not mean that all police killings of blacks are justified including the killing of George Floyd, but I find it interesting that social justice warriors consistently ignore the data on black participation in violent crime. If BLM wants to play the statistics game they need to be corrected when they cherry-pick data to support a baseless ideological premise.  The BLM seems utterly disinterested in nationwide protests to stop black-on-black crime even though it is a much bigger problem than blacks being killed by cops.  Hell, they won’t even acknowledge the death of an elderly black man, David Dorn, at the hands of looters during one of their protests in St.Louis.  It simply doesn’t fit the image of the white supremacy bogeyman they want to project.

    Remember BLM, facts are more important than your feelings or agenda.  All lives matter, not just those you prefer to use to further your political goals.

    Beyond that, the claims of systemic racism among law enforcement simply don’t hold up when one examines the number of white people that also die at the hands of police each year.  There are psychopathic police (white and black) that kill unarmed people regardless of color, and there are just as many issues with black psychopaths as there are with white psychopaths.

    Systemic abuse of power? It’s definitely an issue, that requires a change in how individual cases of bad policing are handled.  The thin-blue-line garbage needs to go out the window and bad cops need to be punished, not protected in the name of “saving the institution”.  But systemic racism? There’s no evidence of it except the contrived data that groups like BLM prop up to support their fairy tales.

    So then, why is it that white people are being throttled in the mainstream media and on social media like some kind of evil monolith with demands that we sublimate ourselves and beg the social justice cult for their forgiveness? This trend of white shame rituals is bizarre, but it is not unprecedented. It is a socio-political power strategy used in the past by communist movements, most prominently in China during the cultural revolution, called “Struggle Sessions”.

    At bottom, all communist movements are the same. The Cultural Revolution in China was exploited by Mao as a means to destroy his political rivals and to cement his power. Even after Mao had killed millions through food production policies that led to mass starvation, he convinced a large portion of the Chinese communist devout that they were actually “victims of imperialists”, and that they needed to rise up and weed out the hidden threat. They were convinced that they were rebelling when they were actually serving the interests of Mao’s establishment the entire time.

    The goal of the Cultural Revolution was two-fold:

    First, it was rooted in the concepts of Futurism, a movement started over a century ago that is cited as an inspiration for the Bolshevik revolution.  It argues that all old ideals, principles and ways of living must be destroyed to make way for “new ideas” which are “naturally superior”. The movement attempted to erase Chinese history and replace it with a zero point of communism. They removed museums and ancient relics, tore down statues and buildings, and even changed the names on street signs that were considered “problematic”.  The past did not exist; the new history started with the communist revolution.

    Second, the revolution was engineered to terrorize anyone that held views contrary to the collectivist religion. Anyone with conservative, individualistic or free market inklings was rounded up and exposed publicly. They were forced into city squares to be psychologically tortured and shamed; some were physically tortured and executed to the delight of the mob. In their cult-like fervor, the frothing masses felt waves of ecstasy as the evil imperialist sympathizers were forced to repent in front of the crowd for their sins.

    Sound familiar?  It’s happening right now in the US as BLM and social justice receive mainstream recognition, and there are a staggering number of similarities to the Chinese cultural revolution.  It’s almost as if someone is using the exact same playbook, right down to the unnerving religious fervor of the movement.

    You better have a black square on your social media accounts for the next “Blackout Tuesday”, otherwise you are not an ally and are likely a racist. As a company or corporation you must show open support for the political left and signal your virtue, otherwise you are a racist or fascist business. Say anything on Twitter that is outside of the approved social justice language? You will be hounded by acolytes until you beg for forgiveness. Say you are sorry, tell them you will “do better” and “check your privilege” and maybe you will be allowed to remain as a useful servant to the collectivist blob.

    Hundreds, perhaps thousands of law enforcement officers around the country and the world are bending the knee to social justice, most likely ordered to do so by city officials as sign of fealty to the movement. This is leading to some very dangerous circumstances.

    This kind of escalation is why liberty minded people have such mixed feelings on social justice warriors. Their behavior is equally hilarious and horrifying.

    These people crossed my radar several years ago and I have observed them ever since.  Certain character traits and attitudes have become apparent:  They can be childish and emotional to the point of schizophrenia. They throw wild tantrums when they don’t immediately get what they want,  responsibility and merit are disdainful ideas to them. They are narcissistic and selfish, yet they see themselves as philanthropists and martyrs.  They are often vindictive, spiteful and viciously underhanded, seeking the total annihilation of anyone that disagrees with them.  They do not know how to produce to succeed, they only know how to destroy and bring others down.  They raise themselves up by standing on the ashes of others.  They represent the dregs of humanity; the only people I can think of that are worse are global elitists, but if SJW’s were given as much money and influence, they would be comparably monstrous.

    If they remain contained they can be entertaining. When they are allowed to feed on power, when they spread and fester into a society like cancer injecting their ideological venom into everything, they become a threat.

    As I have noted this week, the establishment benefits greatly by escalating incidents like George Floyd’s death into a race war or political war. The hard left while insane is not the core danger, but they are useful to powerful people. True conservatives and those that love freedom must be careful. We must act, but with calm professionalism, not rage. We must let the leftists know we have no intention of bending the knee, but we are also not stupid enough to support a totalitarian response and abandon our constitutional principles.

    The solution is actually a simple one, and it’s one I have advocated for many years. The extreme left wants to eradicate municipal police? Fine. They should be replaced with constitutional Sheriffs that are voted in and voted out by the public. I have no love for police brutality either, so why not make them all accountable through the voting system. If a sheriff’s deputy attacks or kills an unarmed or innocent person, then there is incentive for the Sheriff to arrest and punish that deputy, otherwise the community might not elect him again.

    What if this is not enough to satisfy them (they are never satisfied) and the extreme left wants to blame an imaginary white patriarchy to justify riots and looting?  The Floyd protests will probably fizzle out soon, but they are always looking for new excuses to inflate racial tensions.

    Citizen militias can be formed to protect neighborhoods and property. It’s already being done today. Wherever civilians form security groups to protect towns and businesses, BLM and Antifa run away, never show up, or remain very well behaved.  The media pretends these security groups are pointless or don’t exist, so don’t expect positive coverage of the accomplishment, just know that they work.  No need to get violent, no need for martial law or oppressive government power; just regular citizens providing a show of force to send a message:

    Keep your protests peaceful and all is well. Try to harm us or our neighborhoods, try to impose your ideology on us, and you will be put down.

    *  *  *

    If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch.  Learn more about it HERE.

  • Watch: US F-22 Raptors Intercept No Less Than 8 Russian Warplanes Off Alaska
    Watch: US F-22 Raptors Intercept No Less Than 8 Russian Warplanes Off Alaska

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/10/2020 – 20:10

    The US North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) announced that US F-22 Raptor fighter jets intercepted a large group of Russian military planes a mere 30 miles off Alaska’s coast early Wednesday morning.

    Though such intercepts over the Bering Sea and near Alaska have occurred on a near monthly basis recently, what makes this particular incident notable is that it included no less than eight Russian warplanes coming near Alaska.

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    NORAD photo released of F-22 Raptor intercept of Russian bomber. 

    A half dozen Su-35 fighters and a Beriev A-50 surveillance aircraft were reportedly escorting two long range Tu-95 bombers, according to multiple reports. The intercept incidents appeared to have been in two waves. 

    The incident was further confirmed via Russian Defense Ministry video.

    The US Raptor intercept is shown starting at the :45 mark…

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    NORAD also tweeted that “North American Aerospace Defense Command F-22 Raptors, supported by KC-135 Stratotankers and E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System, completed two intercepts of Russian Bomber formations entering the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone early this morning.”

    Typically such intercepts include a couple planes on either side, but in this instance a lot of aircraft in the air and near each other at once, also surprisingly close to the Alaskan shoreline. 

    NORAD Commander Air Force Gen. Terrence J. O’Shaughnessy noted US force readiness at a moment Russia appears to be increasingly brazen in testing NORAD’s potential vulnerabilities. 

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    “Intercepting multiple Russian aircraft demonstrates NORAD forces’ readiness and capability to defend the homelands 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year,” the commander said.

    “Flying air patrols protects the approaches to our nations and sends a clear message we continue executing our homeland defense missions with the same capability and capacity we always bring to the fight,” he added.

  • Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: The Tsunami Begins, But You Knew That…
    Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: The Tsunami Begins, But You Knew That…

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/10/2020 – 19:55

    Authored by John Wilder via WilderWealthyWise.com,

    “If we can stop him, we shall prevent the collapse of Western Civilization.  No pressure.”

    – Sherlock Holmes:  A Game of Shadows

    In the first issue of the Civil War Weather Report, I put together ten steps to a new civil war.  I did not expect that on the one year anniversary of that first report we’d move from step 6 nearly to step 9.  Step 9. is, of course, two minutes to midnight.

    1. Things are going well.

    2. People begin to create groups.

    3. People begin to look for preferential treatment.

    4. Opposing ideology to the prevailing civic ideology is introduced and spread.

    5. Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.

    6. People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology.  Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.

    7. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.

    8. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures.  Just in case.

    9. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.

    10. Open War.

    We are very, very close.  I debated internally more than a bit whether we were at an 8. or a 9. this month.  I finally decided to stay at an 8., despite multiple jurisdictions doing everything but arming the rioting faction of the protest movement with automatic firearms and bullhorns that make them all sound like Gilbert Gottfried.  It is clear we are at least an 8., and you will see in the graphs section that our Wilder Violence Index has reached new highs.

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    Welcome to Issue 12 of the Civil War II Weather Report.  These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month.  I’ve created a page (Link) for links to all of the past issues.

    You Knew Where This Was Going

    The most popular posts on this site have been about the political state of the country.  The Civil War Weather Reports aren’t my usual form of post, but have proven to be very popular.  I’m sure it’s not just for graphs featuring bikinis.  Well, at least not only because of the bikinis.

    I think the reason these posts are popular is simple:  many people could sense the fragile peak that it seems all of Western Civilization is perched on.  Whether it is a conscious review of the surrounding culture or just a feeling in the pit of the stomach when confronted with an outrageous news article, something’s just not right.  Society has been changing by increments over the years, but those changes are coming faster and faster and faster.

    Claire Wolfe, the groundbreaking and iconic Freedom blogger said it very well at her place last week (LINK):

    Each day I think I’ve processed the latest craziness enough to blog something coherent. Useful even. But then new waves of craziness wash over the world. I don’t know what to say. I can’t write good sense against the onslaught of the crazy. I don’t know how civilization is holding together under tsunamis of crazy.

    But then, of course civilization isn’t holding together — and I’m not just talking about the one-two punch of totalitarian don’tleaveyourhouseism followed without pause by riotandlootallyouwantism.

    Chains of rapid-fire events and chaos like this are not generally the friend of those that love freedom.  The Russian Revolution promised:

    • Peace, through ending World War I,

    • Food, because Communists are well known to produce excess food,

    • Land, whereby peasants would get parts of land owned by the wealthy,

    • Minimum wages,

    • Maximum working hours,

    • Running factories by elected worker representatives and

    • Lots of other promises.

    In the end, up to 12,000,000 people (mainly civilians) died in the civil war that followed, and the promises that were made were largely ignored.  The Bolsheviks said and promised anything to get a force of disaffected behind them.  Not sure if this sounds familiar to AOC fans?

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    Hey girl, are you the French Revolution?  Because I keep imagining you sans-culottes.

    I get a sense that the Left today is up to the same trick.  They’ve “created” media events and have managed them to get power – political power and power in the street.  Some of the Leftists may even be stupid enough to believe that there are magic economic levers that they can move to keep the promises they’re making.  In reality, they really don’t care:  it’s all about the power.

    Lenin’s reintroduction into Russia and subsequent funding from foreign sources bring George Soros to mind.  Soros continually funds groups in the United States that are directly opposed to actual freedom.  The protesters and their associated rioters have a structure that has been funded and provisioned with everything from water and medical supplies to pre-staged bricks and gasoline.  Not saying that George is funding those directly, but . . .

    More on that, below.

    Violence and Censorship Update

    No politician has ever captured the attention of the Left like Donald Trump.  They hated Reagan, and George W. Bush was famous for “stealing” an election.  But something about Trump drives them nearly crazy enough to try to get a job.  The media’s portrayal of Trump as the anti-ChristObama, perhaps?

    The violence, of course, is plain for anyone reading any news to see.  It’s not in just the United States:  these protests have been coordinated across nearly every Western nation.  If the protests had been confined to Minnesota, I could buy the idea that they were organic.  And to the extent that they are peaceful gatherings to seek political redress?  I celebrate them.

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    It’s not looting, it’s just an involuntary clearance sale.

    But to flash across the world with violence and destruction?  That takes amplification and organization and is clearly the seed of revolution against the West.

    The amplification of the signal comes from both mainstream and social media.  Whereas the original death that started the protests was (rightly) exposed, the subsequent deaths of protesters, rioters, and innocent civilians hasn’t been mentioned much at all.  How many dead?

    I’m not sure.  This should be a fairly easy number to get to, but I’ve seen numbers between 12 and 18.  Absent media tracking, I’m not sure how you’ll count them up.  If we wait long enough, I’m sure they’ll all be counted and attributed to COVID-19.  To add to the butcher’s bill, thousands have been injured.

    Regardless, I have seen, at minimum tens of millions of dollars in damage.  I would expect the number to increase to hundreds of millions, at least.  A fire is, as I write this, blazing in downtown Phoenix.  Odds that it’s related to the rest of the violence?  Nearly 100%.

    Censorship is on the rise, as well.  I already spouted off on that last week (Free Speech: Endangered Species – WRSA is Down) in response to Western Rifle Shooters Association being shut down (You Can Find Him Here).  I expect to see that it will be on the increase during the next six months – the election is too important to the Left to leave it in Biden’s hands – chances are good he might wander off to try to buy a rotary phone at Montgomery Wards™.

    Updated Civil War II Index

    The Civil War II graphs are an attempt to measure four factors that might make Civil War II more likely, in real time.  They are broken up into Violence, Political Instability, Economic Outlook, and Illegal Alien Crossings.  As each of these is difficult to measure, I’ve created for three of the four metrics some leading indicators that lead to the index.  On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

    May was again a difficult month.  I had to re-scale the graph on violence as this month nearly pegged every meter.  I will assure my faithful readers that I spent extra time this month finding just the right bikini-clad girl, since I want to at least reach the journalistic integrity standards of the Washington Post®.

    Violence:

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    Up is more violent.  Violence had been down because everyone was stuck in the basement.  I predicted that May would be mellow, and then we’d see the uptick in June.  I was almost right.

    Political Instability:

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    Up is more unstable.  Instability is up only slightly, which might seem weird, but the system is still stable overall.  I may look into another graph next month to measure political change, because it sure feels like we crossed over into a regime where big political changes are more likely – and this graph was meant more about the overthrow of a sitting president, hence the peak in December.

    Economic:

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    Down indicates worse economic conditions, and it’s down yet again.  I did change the basis somewhat for this month.  Previously it had been a spot measurement, but this shows more a relative measurement from a baseline.  But did you come for that, or for the bikini?

    Illegal Aliens:

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    Down is good, in theory.  This is a statistic showing border apprehensions by the Border Patrol.  Down, probably related to WuFlu.  Until Mexico’s economy collapses. Then what?  Regardless, this is at a nearly five-year low.

    Balkans or Caesar Might Be The Best Case Scenario

    I’ve written both about the idea of the United States breaking up into regional governments that run either as autonomous countries, or close enough to autonomous that it doesn’t matter.  This irritates Right-thinking folks “behind the lines” in Leftist states.  They clearly don’t like the idea of being left behind in a People’s Republic of California or the New York Soviet Oblast.  I can understand that, especially since the divide is so much more rural/urban than on a state by state basis and the Right just wants to be left alone.

    Being Balkanized remains a possibility, and probably guarantees border wars for decades unless we put up a big, beautiful wall around California.

    I have, over time, began to think it’s much more likely that the nonsense will continue until a strongman arrives and proclaims that he’s “President for the Duration of the Continuing National Emergency.”  I certainly don’t think Trump is this person.  Biden is even less this person.  But some Cuomo or other acting as Wall Street’s puppet?  I could see that being more likely.  If we had a military hero of some stature, that would also make sense.

    Maybe Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos?

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    I guess Jeff divorced his wife because she was past her Prime™?

    Is having a Caesar that bad?  Absolutely.  But a strongman will try to have to have some sort of legitimacy and will at least (in theory) have some desire to keep a relatively strong country together to turn over to his children.  The old forms of government will be nodded to.  The Senate may not have power, but there will be Senators pretending to have power.

    Not good, especially since that pesky Constitution will be entirely ignored, rather than mostly ignored like it is today.  But Caesar’s United States probably more peaceful than a Balkanized America.

    But there is one possibility that scares me more than either of those:  Soviet America. 

    The riots that started nine days ago (yes, it’s only been that long) appear to be the Left making the first push into creating violence to go along with our economic issues and the lingering Coronavirus. 

    I brought up the Russian Revolution earlier, because that more than anything is what this latest round of violence feels like:  violence, in part funded and provoked by a foreign enemy with the aim of destabilizing America and making people welcome those who promise what they never can really provide.

  • Rockets Slam Into US Embassy Compound In Baghdad Late Night Attack
    Rockets Slam Into US Embassy Compound In Baghdad Late Night Attack

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/10/2020 – 19:40

    Late into Wednesday night local time, multiple rockets were fired at the high secured Green Zone in Baghdad, with at least one rocket appearing to score a direct hit on the front of the US Embassy, according to initial reports.

    Video confirmation of the incident is now circulating on social media and shows a building or possibly multiple buildings on fire at the American embassy compound.

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    Sirens are reportedly billowing across the Green Zone with an emergency response in progress, though there have yet to be any official reports of casualties. The attack occurred near midnight local time.

    Such Katyusha rocket attacks have been semi-frequent on the US compound over the past half-year, most often failing to strike the compound directly, but in this case it appears at least one rocket hit its mark.

    Kurdistan 24 journalist Barzan Sadiq uploaded footage of the attack aftermath, which shows fires raging, and described it as the result of Katyusha rocket impact. 

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    Sadiq described that “multiple rockets” fell “near” the US Embassy. Another regional correspondent described further that at rocket slammed into a “joint ops center” at the compound.

    Past attacks have been promptly blamed by US defense officials on Iran-backed Shia militias operating in Iraq, such as Kata’ib Hezbollah, and thus ultimately on Tehran.

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    The US Embassy at the Green Zone in Baghdad, Iraq. Via Reuters

    Tensions have been soaring ever since the Jan. 3rd assassination by US drone strike of Iranian IRGC Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, as well as Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

  • Google Searches For "Day Trading" And "Call Options" Explode To Record Highs
    Google Searches For “Day Trading” And “Call Options” Explode To Record Highs

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/10/2020 – 19:35

    We have extensively discussed the topic of retail daytreaders flooding the market in recent months, but the following chart summarizes everything we have said clearly and succinctly: it shows that google trends for “day trading” and “call options” have exploded in recent weeks, surging to never before seen levels.

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    Source: Jesse Felder

    We hope this satisfies all those journalists who are searching for an explanation for what we described three weeks ago in “how retail traders taking over the stock market.”

    That said, this is nothing new: as John Hussman pointed out, we have seen this before every time the surging market makes geniuses out of everyone: “Bucket shops and boiler rooms are alive and well. The only things that change are the faces.”

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  • "This Thing Is Actually Real" – US Army Accidentally Reveals New Hypersonic Missile
    “This Thing Is Actually Real” – US Army Accidentally Reveals New Hypersonic Missile

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/10/2020 – 19:25

    A new hypersonic weapon could be in development after plans, or at least the outline of the program, “emerged inadvertently” on social media last week managed by Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy that describes a Mach 5-plus missile with capabilities to penetrate the world’s most advanced missile defense shields, reported Aviation Week. 

    The photo is from the Association of the United States Army conference last fall, and was uploaded to McCarthy’s Flickr page last week — shows the military official holding a weapons briefing slide that reads: “Vintage Racer — Loitering Weapon System (LWS) Overview.” 

    The slide is laying down on a table and nearly impossible to understand. Still, six bullet points state: “Hypersonic ingress,” “Survivable,” “Time Over Target,” “Multi-role,” “Modular Payload,” and “Cost Imposition Strategy.”

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    Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy with weapons slide 

    Near McCarthy’s right hand, the bottom line reads, “Long Range, Rapid Ingress.”

    Aviation Week said there was a reference to the Vintage Racer program in Defense Department budget justification documents but went unnoticed by many: 

    “Under a line item owned by the Office of Secretary of Defense for a “quick reaction fund,” Vintage Racer is described as a “recent success story.”

    “The project successfully validated aerodynamic design with wind tunnel testing and integrated a guidance subsystem for targeted kinetic effects before culminating in a fiscal 2019 flight test. Documentation and prototype technologies transitioned to the U.S. Army for additional development and follow-on acquisition activities,” according to budget documents. 

    Dmitry Stefanovitch, an expert at the Moscow-based Russian International Affairs Council, said the new weapon could be designed to target ICBM launchers deep behind enemy lines. 

    “The fear is that [this] hypersonic ‘something’ might reach the patrol area of road-mobile ICBM launchers [after] penetrating any possible air and missile defense, and then dispense loitering submunitions that will find launchers in the forests,” said Stefanovitch.

    Aviation Week’s Steve Trumble tweeted: “OMG, Vintage Racer has been flight-tested successfully and transitioned to the Army for follow-on development. This thing is actually real, not just a briefing slide!” 

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    h/t Aviation Week’s Steve Trumble

    Here are the latest US hypersonic developments: 

    As we’ve noted on several occasions, the superpower that dominates hypersonic weapons and fifth-generation fighter jet technology – combine the both — will be victorious in the next global military conflict. 

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Jun 10

Today’s News 10th June 2020

  • What No "V"? World Bank Forecasts "Subdued" Recovery In Global Economy In 2021
    What No “V”? World Bank Forecasts “Subdued” Recovery In Global Economy In 2021

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/10/2020 – 02:45

    The World Bank has just released its new “Global Economic Prospects” report, describing how the COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed a “devastating blow” on the global economy — shredding all hopes that a V-shaped recovery will be seen this year.

    The report goes on to say the global economy will contract for the first time since World War II and emerging market economies will shrink for the first time in six decades — the result of the global economic downturn is between 70 to 100 million people will be thrown into instant poverty. 

    The report investigates the depth and breadth of the economic impacts triggered by worldwide virus lockdowns in the first half of 2020, along with the socio-economic consequences thereafter. We make sense of this in the piece titled “Global Instability, Soaring Deficits And Civil Disobedience: Are We Back In The 1960s, And What Happens Next?.” 

    It said the 2020 baseline forecast for Global GDP would be a contraction of 5.2% — the deepest global recession in eight decades despite unprecedented monetary and fiscal policy by central banks and governments. Emerging markets will shrink by at least 2.5%, the report said, adding that it will be the worst performance for the data since the early 1960s. 

    The virus-induced recession is the first since 1870 to be triggered solely by a pandemic. The speed and depth at which it hit developed and emerging economies suggest a sluggish recovery will be seen in 2020, with low probabilities of a V-shaped recovery this year. Additional rounds of stimulus to restart the global economy will need to be seen. 

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    “While a global recovery is envisioned in 2021, it is likely to be subdued,” the World Bank said. 

    The World Bank expects developed economies will contract by 7%, led by a 9.1% decline in growth for Europe this year. Breaking down the numbers, the US is expected to contract by 6.1% — while China could post a 1% expansion. 

    The global lender proposed two alternative scenarios. The first is a COVID-19 second wave that triggers another round of travel restrictions that would result in the worldwide economy plunging by 8% this year. If the virus can be controlled and reopenings are continued through the back half of the year, the contraction would be around 4% — still, this figure is twice the depth at which it was during the recession a decade ago. 

    “The global recession would be deeper if bringing the pandemic under control took longer than expected, or if financial stress triggered cascading defaults,” the World Bank said.

    As for the socio-economic impacts, the decline may push 70-100 million people into extreme poverty – the economic scarring of today’s downturn will be long-lasting with a new era of high unemployment, low growth, and breakdowns in world trade and supply linkages.

    Read: “Hopes Of ‘V-Shaped’ Recovery Sink As World Trade Refuses To Rebound”

    The World Bank’s latest report paints a “grave near-term outlook” — and does not support a V-shaped recovery for this year. 

    But-but-but — equity futures believe in the V-shaped recovery! 

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  • Escobar: A Pipelineistan Fable For Our Times
    Escobar: A Pipelineistan Fable For Our Times

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/10/2020 – 02:00

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

    Ukraine was supposed to prevent Russia from deepening energy ties with Germany; it didn’t work out that way…

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    Once upon a time in Pipelineistan, tales of woe were the norm. Shattered dreams littered the chessboard – from IPI vs. TAPI in the AfPak realm to the neck-twisting Nabucco opera in Europe.

    In sharp contrast, whenever China entered the picture, successful completion prevailed. Beijing financed a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Xinjiang, finished in 2009, and will profit from two spectacular Power of Siberia deals with Russia.

    And then there’s Ukraine. Maidan was a project of the Barack Obama administration, featuring a sterling cast led by POTUS, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John McCain and last but not least, prime Kiev cookie distributor Victoria “F**k the EU” Nuland.

    Ukraine was also supposed to prevent Russia from deepening energy ties with Germany, as well as other European destinations.

    Well, it did not exactly play like that. Nord Stream was already operational. South Stream was Gazprom’s project to southeast Europe. Relentless pressure by the Obama administration derailed it. Yet that only worked to enable a resurrection: the already completed TurkStream, with gas starting to flow in January 2020.

    The battlefield then changed to Nord Stream 2. This time relentless Donald Trump administration pressure did not derail it. On the contrary: it will be completed by the end of 2020.

    Richard Grennel, the US ambassador to Germany, branded a “superstar” by President Trump, was furious. True to script, he threatened Nordstream 2 partners – ENGIE, OMV, Royal Dutch Shell, Uniper, and Wintershall – with “new sanctions.”

    Worse: he stressed that Germany “must stop feeding the beast at a time when it does not pay enough to NATO.”

    “Feeding the beast” is not exactly subtle code for energy trade with Russia.

    Peter Altmaier, German minister of economic affairs and energy, was not impressed. Berlin does not recognize any legality in extra-territorial sanctions. 

    Grennel, on top of it, is not exactly popular in Berlin. Diplomats popped the champagne when they knew he was going back home to become the head of US national intelligence.

    Trump administration sanctions delayed Nordstream 2 for around one year, at best. What really matters is that in this interval Kiev had to sign a gas transit deal with Gazprom. What no one is talking about is that by 2025 no Russian gas will be transiting across Ukraine towards Europe.

    So the whole Maidan project was in fact useless.

    It’s a running joke in Brussels that the EU never had and will never have a unified energy policy towards Russia. The EU came up with a gas directive to force the ownership of Nord Stream 2 to be separated from the gas flowing through the pipeline. German courts applied their own “nein.”

    Nord Stream 2 is a serious matter of national energy security for Germany. And that is enough to trump whatever Brussels may concoct.

    And don’t forget Siberia 

    The moral of this fable is that now two key Pipelineistan nodes – Turk Stream and Nord Stream 2 – are established as umbilical steel cords linking Russia with two NATO allies.

    And true to proverbial win-win scripts, now it’s also time for China to look into solidifying its European relations.

    Last week, German chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese premier Li Keqiang had a video conference to discuss Covid-19 and China-EU economic policy.

    That was a day after Merkel and President Xi had spoken, when they agreed that the China-EU summit in Leipzig on September 14 would have to be postponed.

    This summit should be the climax of the German presidency of the EU, which starts on July 1. That’s when Germany would be able to present a unified policy towards China, uniting in theory the 27 EU members and not only the 17+1 from Central Europe and the Balkans – including 11 EU members – that already have a privileged relationship with Beijing and are on board for the Belt and Road Initiative.

    In contrast with the Trump administration, Merkel does privilege a clear, comprehensive trade partnership with China – way beyond a mere photo op summit. Berlin is way more geoeconomically sophisticated than the vague “engagement and exigence” Paris  approach.

    Merkel as well as Xi are fully aware of the imminent fragmentation of the world economy post-Lockdown. Yet as much as Beijing is ready to abandon the global circulation strategy from which it has handsomely profited for the past two decades, the emphasis is also on refining very close trade relations with Europe.

    Ray McGovern has concisely detailed the current state of US-Russia relations. The heart of the whole matter, from Moscow’s point of view, was summarized by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, an extremely able diplomat:

    “We don’t believe the US in its current shape is a counterpart that is reliable, so we have no confidence, no trust whatsoever. So our own calculations and conclusions are less related to what America is doing… We cherish our close and friendly relations with China. We do regard this as a comprehensive strategic partnership in different areas, and we intend to develop it further.”

    It’s all here. Russia-China “comprehensive strategic partnership” steadily advancing. Including “Power of Siberia” Pipelineistan. Plus Pipelineistan linking two key NATO allies. Sanctions? What sanctions?

  • Paul Craig Roberts Asks "Can We Survive Our Collective Stupidity?"
    Paul Craig Roberts Asks “Can We Survive Our Collective Stupidity?”

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/10/2020 – 00:05

    Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

    I have come to the conclusion that collectively Americans are mentally and emotionally stupid.  On any given day there is endless evidence that this is the case.

    Just a few selections from news of the last couple of days should suffice to establish the point.

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    Instead of reforming police training as a rational response to George Floyd’s death from an aggressive restraint technique, the Minneapolis city council voted to disband the Minneapolis police. Council woman Lisa Bender responded to a citizen’s question what she is supposed to do if she faces a threat in her home and there are no police to call: 

     “Yes, I hear that loud and clear from a lot of my neighbors. And I know — and myself, too, and I know that that comes from a place of privilege.”

    In other words, the Minneapolis citizen’s concern is not legitimate and merely reflects her privileged assumption that she is entitled to protection by police. The valid concern is to protect blacks from the police by disbanding the police.

    Kristina Roth of Amnesty International wrote to me in a fundraiser that “Police must stop killing black people.”  What about white people, Kristina?  White lives matter, too. The police shoot to death far more white people every year than black people.  Shouldn’t Kristina be demanding that “police must stop killing people?”  Why does Kristina blame racism instead of police training? Kristina needs to read and reflect upon this.  

    The top editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer had to resign because of the headline on a reporter’s article. The article was very sympathic to the black rioters but didn’t quite see the point of blacks destroying historic buildings in Philadelphia because of what happened to George Floyd in Minneapolis.  The editor was done in by the article’s headline: “Buildings Matter, Too.”  This incensed the woke morons, and despite his groveling apology the editor was removed . So much for “white privilege.”  White newspaper editors cannot even exercise freedom of speech in the choice of headlines.

    Not even editors at the New York Times, which grovels at the feet of blacks and self-righteous woke, can survive their exercise of freedom of the press. The opinion editor and his deputy had to resign for publishing Senator Tom Cotton’s call to deploy the military to protect people and property from the rioters and looters. I am confident that the NY Times published Sen. Cotton’s article with the intention of damning Cotton for not being more sympathetic to black looters. But the woke creatures and the NY Times publisher A.G.Sulzberger removed the editors because of “the pain they inflicted.” 

    Pain inflicted on who?  The pain inflicted on owners of businesses, buildings, and cars destroyed by rioters using violence to express their disapproval of violence? No. As Lisa Bender put it, these concerns don’t matter as they come “from a place of privilege.” Only  the pain of those privileged to riot and loot counts.

    As kids we used to say, “sticks and stones might break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”  Today for the woke weaklings the wrong word is like a nuclear weapon. They collapse in tears and recriminations. NY Times Staffers claimed that by publishing Sen. Cotton’s article, the opinion editor had put their lives in danger by not validating looting and rioting as a valid exercise of free speech.  Somehow it did not occur to Sulzberger that the protesters must not be so innocent if NY Times staffers are in fear of their lives because of a few words from a US Senator.

    JK Rowling is in trouble again from the transgender freaks who reject the word “woman” as transphobic. Rowling took exception to the term “people who menstruate.” and caused “unimaginable pain” by remarking that there used to be a word for “people who menstruate.”

    A professor of criminology at the University of North Carolina has been denounced by the university administration for “vile and inexcusable comments,” such as “Don’t shut down the universities; shut down non-essential majors like women’s studies.” The UNC administration says “we are very carefully and assertively reviewing our options in terms of how to proceed.”  The hypocritical administration went on to say “Hateful, hurtful language aimed at degrading others is contrary to our university values and our commitment to an environment of respect and dignity. Its appearance on any platform, including the personal platforms of anyone affiliated with UNCW, is absolutely reprehensible.” What nonsense!  Everyday on the UNC campus black studies professors teach students that white people are racists and slavers, and women’s studies professors demonize men as misogynists and rapists.  The hypocrites that comprise university administrations never do anything about this “reprehensible, hateful, and hurtful language” aimed at white people and at men.

    A retired US Navy captain had to resign from the US Naval Academy Alumni Association board after a private conversation with his wife was accidentally streamed on Facebook. The captain used the n-word and said that white men “can’t say anything.” His wife complained of Chinese who “steal all of our intellectual property.”  The couple are mortified and deeply sorry to have spoken in derogatory terms “about our fellow man,” a regret that black rioters and intellectual property thiefs do not reciprocate.  The alunmi association said that these private comments are “not consistent with our leadership mission.”  The couple have committed themselves to “using this experience as an opportunity to grow, listen, learn, and reflect . . . and being better people.”

    The groveling of Sulzberger at the NY Times, the groveling at the Philadelphia Inquirer, the groveling by the Minneapolis city council and by submissive police officers will only encourage the black violence that decades of being taught to hate white people has unleashed. As I have said so many times, a diverse, multicultural society cannot be built on hatred.  If blacks today had a real leader like Martin Luther King, Jr., that leader would be protesting police violence against people irrespective of race.  Such a protest would be a unifying act instead of a divisive one.  People such as myself could again see hope for American society. 

    Perhaps women could also find a leader, and men and women could get back together in loving, mutually supportive relationships. When I read that feminists have created men who prefer plastic “sex dolls” to a flesh and blood woman with emotions and a brain, I put “#Me/Too” in the category of bioweapon. The body builder who is marrying a sex doll might be on a public relations trip to boost his following, but his “marriage” to a piece of plastic is credible only because relations between men and women have been so badly damaged by feminists that it is believable that he prefers a sex doll to a real woman. According to bestiality advocates, some women prefer their dog to a man.

    Western civilization is collapsing because allegations from the least credible sources carry more weight than facts.  Emotions have displaced facts as the basis for understanding.  Emotion routinely shouts down facts.  It has become commonplace in universities for distinguished authorities to be shut down because the facts are unacceptable to the ignorant woke students, backed up by a roster of administrative thought police. 

    Universities have abandoned their mission of searching for truth. They have become propaganda ministries that spew the acids that eat away foundations of civilization.

    In Western Civilization today, the best way to destroy yourself is to stand up for truth. I am getting tired of it as support for the defense of truth is declining away.

    There is a lesson for the warmonger neoconservatives in the extraordinary weakness that is now the core of Western Civilization, a civilization that is a discredited concept in every American university and is being damned again by the NY Times’ 1619 Project. It is hilarious that neoconservatives proclaimed a people as divided as the US, with the majority white population on the defensive, to be an exceptional and indispensable people. 

    The US armed forces are a hodgepod of men, women, lesbians, homosexuals, a racial medley, and every element in it has been instructed by Identity Politics to hate and distrust the other.  Armies devoid of the homogeneity that gives unity are useless.  Only a fool would put an American or any European army against Russia and China. What will be our fate if the aggressive bombast that the neoconservatives and fellow travelers such as Liz Cheney keep pumping out of Washington results in concerted Russian/Chinese action against the threat that the West is determined to portray itself to be? 

    The hope for humanity is that the Russians and Chinese remain patient as the West continues its collapse under the weight of its own self-hate.

  • Visualizing Layoffs At Prominent Startups Triggered By COVID-19
    Visualizing Layoffs At Prominent Startups Triggered By COVID-19

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/09/2020 – 23:45

    As the pandemic reverberates through almost every industry imaginable, tech startups are also feeling the pain.

    Since mid-March, Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld notes that countless startups and unicorns have undergone layoffs.

    Today’s infographic pulls data from Layoffs.fyi, and navigates the cascading layoffs across 30 of the most recognizable startups in America. Each of the companies have slashed over 250 employees between March 11 and May 26, 2020—capturing a snapshot of the continuing fallout of COVID-19.

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    Silicon Valley Takes a Hit

    Unsurprisingly, many of the hardest hit startups are related to the travel and mobility industry.

    Closing 45 offices, Uber has laid off 6,700 employees since mid-March. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who was granted a $45M earnings package in 2018, announced he will also waive his $1M base salary for the remainder of the year.

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    Meanwhile, as room bookings dropped by over 40% across several countries, Airbnb laid off a quarter of its workforce. The tech darling is anticipating a $2.4B revenue shortfall in 2020.

    Like many other big names—including Lyft, Uber, and WeWork—Airbnb is struggling to achieve profitability. In the first nine months of 2019, it lost $322M at the height of the market cycle.

    Until 2021, gig-economy revenues are projected to drop by at least 30%.

    International Startups Struggling

    Startups in the U.S. aren’t the only ones scrambling to conserve cash and cut costs.

    Brazil-based unicorn Stone has let go of 20% of its workforce. The rapidly growing digital payments company includes Warren Buffett as a major stakeholder, holding an 8% share as of March 2020.

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    At the same time, India-based ride-hailing Ola has witnessed revenue declines of 95% since mid-March. It laid off 1,400 employees as bookings drastically declined.

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    Similarly, Uber India has rivaled Ola in dominance across India’s $10B ride-hailing market since launching three years after Ola, in 2013. Now, almost 25% of the Uber India workforce have been laid off.

    Of course, these reports do not fully take into account the growing impact of COVID-19, but help paint a picture as the cracks emerge.

    Pandemic-Proof?

    While the job market remains murky, what startups are looking to hire?

    Coursera, an online education startup, listed 60 openings in May. By the end of the year, the company plans to hire 250 additional staff. Within the peak of widespread global lockdowns, the platform attracted 10M new users.

    Meanwhile, Canva, an Australia-based graphic design unicorn, is seeking to fill 100 positions worldwide. In partnership with Google for Education, Canva offers project-based learning tools designed for classrooms, in addition to free graphic design resources.

    At the same time, tech heavyweights Facebook and Amazon reported openings. Booming startups such as Plaid, Zoom, and Pinterest are also listing new positions as shifting consumer demand continues to shape unpredictable and historic hiring markets.

     

  • Yes, You Can Be Against 'Police Brutality' & 'Looting And Rioting' At The Same Time
    Yes, You Can Be Against ‘Police Brutality’ & ‘Looting And Rioting’ At The Same Time

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/09/2020 – 23:25

    Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

    It is possible to condemn all violence.  Just because someone says they don’t support the looting and rioting, does not mean they support police brutality. Just because someone says that the police shouldn’t kill people with qualified immunity, doesn’t mean they support looting and rioting.

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    The mainstream media and those who still are stuck in the left/right paradigm want you to choose a side. Police brutality, or looting. It is possible to side with neither at the same time because they are both wrong.  What a surprise! They need you to choose to stay divided instead of standing up together against all violence and all shows of violence.

    “The state and its aggression, and the people the loot innocent businesses are not justified in their actions. It doesn’t even mean their both equal, it just means they’re both wrong and it’s easy to speak about both. It is a false choice, a false dichotomy to suggest otherwise,” says Eric July.

     “Anybody that doesn’t have a brain the size of a coronavirus can actually hold two positions at the same time.”

    “People only see what the hell they wanna see,” said July in his recent video.

    “If you can’t properly identify what the issue is, right, you look at the symptom…and you have this view of what the symptom is, you diagnose it completely incorrectly. And because you diagnose it completely incorrectly, you can’t actually come to a solution.”

    “What’s happening here…is you haven’t been paying attention,” July adds. Police brutality in all forms is wrong.  Violence committed against non-violent people is wrong no matter what kind of uniform you have on. It’s morally reprehensible and should not be tolerated. The same can go for the looters and rioters.  It’s wrong to destroy businesses and harm innocent people who have done nothing wrong.  It’s the same position.

    But it gets more sticky for those who have chosen sides – either side.  There’s a solution to the looting and rioting, and we’ve seen it first hand. It wasn’t the police who protected a town in Idaho from violent thugs:

    People are willing to stand up and protect each other against those who are committing violence and crimes against other small private businesses. But we aren’t standing together against the militarized police who brutalize people daily, not just when there are looting and rioting. Why do they get a pass? The cognitive dissonance by so many is hardly an excuse anymore. We all know committing acts of violence against non-violent people is wrong. It’s wrong when police do it. It’s wrong when the militaries of the globe do it, and it’s wrong when looters do it.

    Just hold a moral position. That’s it. If you start to allow some a pass on violence because of badges, don’t be surprised when it’s you or your guns they come for next, because that’s the next step in all of this. Martial law to bring in a New World Order and your total enslavement.

    *  *  *

    Additionally, Brandon Smith, Founder of Alt-Market.com, noted that many conservatives and even police supported the initial protests after the death of George Floyd.  The problems started to occur when those protests were hijacked by communistic social justice groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter, and they turned the narrative into one of “systemic racism” and “white supremacy” instead of abuse of power against all people.  My next article will examine this issue in detail, but it is important to understand that as long as the protests are being controlled by establishment gatekeepers using it for their own ends, conservatives are unlikely to support them.  The best option is for liberty minded people to defend their own communities against ALL trespasses, whether it be violent leftist looters, or even a totalitarian government.  A simple and quiet display of force can go a long way in keeping the peace…

  • Most Voters Think The US Is Spiraling Out Of Control
    Most Voters Think The US Is Spiraling Out Of Control

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/09/2020 – 23:05

    It has been a turbulent year for the United States…

    As Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, 2020 kicked off with an Iranian ballistic missile attack on U.S. forces in Iraq in response to the killing of Qasem Soleimani.

    That was swiftly followed by the coronavirus pandemic which has resulted in the deaths of more than 100,000 Americans while the number infected is approaching two million.

    Over the past few days, people across the country took to the streets en masse to protest the killing of George Lloyd by police officers in Minneapolis while President Trump threatened to deploy the military to quell the unrest.

    Given the events of the past few weeks, it hardly comes as a surprise to hear that most Americans are pessimistic about the state of their country.

    Infographic: Most Voters Think The U.S. Is Spiraling Out Of Control | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has now found that 80 percent of U.S. voters think the situation in the country is “out of control” with just 15 percent saying it remains “under control” and three percent feeling “it is some of both”.

  • Kerik: If Black Lives Really Mattered, BLM, Antifa Would Be Marching All Over Chicago
    Kerik: If Black Lives Really Mattered, BLM, Antifa Would Be Marching All Over Chicago

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/09/2020 – 22:45

    Authored by Jennie Taer via SaraACarter.com,

    Former New York Police Department Commissioner Bernard Kerik told “The Sara Carter Show” Monday that if the Black Lives Matter organization and left-wing anarchist group Antifa really believed that black lives matter, ‘they would be marching all over Chicago.’

    Moreover, Kerik denied a ‘systematic’ police brutality problem, saying, however, that there is a ‘systematic’ problem in Chicago, where there’s ceaseless violence on the streets.

    “But that [police brutality] is not systematic what is systematic is last week last weekend in Chicago you at 23 people killed in 48 hours,” Kerik told Carter.

    “And this week in Chicago over the weekend in twelve hours in 24 hours. Yes, 19 dead. That is systematic because it happens every single weekend. And if black lives really mattered to the Black Lives Matter group in Antifa they’d be marching all over Chicago. Right.”

    Chicago saw its deadliest day in decades during the last weekend of May, with 18 murders, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. And the violence hasn’t stopped.

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    Concluding with a message to President Donald Trump, Kerik explained that there must “be a significant messaging program to get people to understand every one of these cities we’re talking about every single one. Run by Democrats. They’ve been run by Democrats for decades and they get up there and they took all this garbage and all this junk about racism and systematic and all this stuff.”

    He added, “The reality is they’ve been in charge of what’s happened in those communities. The highest violence the highest the murder the highest poverty the lowest economic income the lowest real estate values they’ve been in charge. Eventually, I think communities like this the people have to realize if you want change, if you want real change then you’ve got to get different leadership in those positions. That’s going to create safety and security in those communities and let people grow let them flourish.”

    “Nobody’s going to put a flagship Apple store in the South Side of Chicago. It’s not happening. You’re not going to have great schools in the South Side of Chicago. It’s Not happening. Teachers are afraid to go to work there.”

    The political talk, Kerik says, needs to end. “I think the president if he does anything he’s going to get the message to the American people especially this president because he’s one guy that whatever he says he’s going to do it does it sometimes overly transparent ever he says he’s going to do.”

    “I’ve known him for a long time. I’ve known him since 1996 and I could tell you before he was president since he’s president nobody can say that he doesn’t do what he says he’s going to do. And he can help this country if the Democrats would get out of the way stop impeding what he’s trying to do and try to help themselves.”

  • Whataver China's Doing Isn't Working: CPI, PPI Miss, Tumble To Multi-Year Lows
    Whataver China’s Doing Isn’t Working: CPI, PPI Miss, Tumble To Multi-Year Lows

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/09/2020 – 22:33

    Whatever China is doing to stimulate its economy, it isn’t working.

    For the second month in a row China’s CPI and PPI missed badly, with CPI sliding from 3.3% Y/Y yo just 2.4%, below the expected 2.7%, and the lowest since March of 2019. PPI meanwhile slumped from -3.3% to -3.7%, the lowest gate inflation since early 2016, and a testament to just how much pricing power Chinese companies are losing.

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    While Chinese 10Y TSY yields initially dipped in kneejerk response, they have since rebounded to up on the day, rising to 2.824%, and close the highest level since February. In recent weeks Chinese yields have been on a tear as it became clear that the PBOC will not pursue a wholesale rate cut despite vowing to do just that during last month’s People’s Congress.

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    Bizarrely, Chinese stocks are actually lower on the news – if only for the time being – a shocking and logical response in a world where everything has long since gone upside down.

  • Galbraith: 'Disillusion' Is America's One Big Growth Sector Right Now
    Galbraith: ‘Disillusion’ Is America’s One Big Growth Sector Right Now

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/09/2020 – 22:05

    Authored by James Galbraith via Project Syndicate,

    The Illusion of a Rapid US Recovery

    The United States has built an economy based on global demand for advanced goods, consumer demand for frills, and ever-growing household and business debts. This economy was in many ways prosperous, and it provided jobs and incomes to many millions. Yet it was a house of cards, and COVID-19 has blown it down.

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    As protests roil the United States, the country’s center-left economists gaze brightly into their crystal balls. Harvard’s Jason Furman, formerly chair of US President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, has warned Democrats – eager to defeat President Donald Trump in the November election – that “the best economic data … in the history of this country” will emerge just before voters head to the polls. Paul Krugman is likewise predicting a “fast recovery.” The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office agrees. The stock market seems equally optimistic.

    The arithmetic behind this thinking is simple. The CBO expects real GDP to shrink by 12% in the second quarter, and by 40% in annual terms. But it forecasts a third-quarter rebound of 5.4% – resulting in spectacular annual growth of 23.5%.

    That is certainly possible: already in May, unemployment figures took a favorable turn, and it is looking like the second-quarter slump may not be as bad as projected. But, even if the CBO is right on both counts, GDP at election time would be seven percentage points below its first-quarter level, and unemployment would be above – possibly far above – 10%.

    Let’s assume that the optimists are right about the third quarter.

    What happens next? Will the economy continue merrily along, with incomes and jobs bouncing back? Or will it stay in depression, requiring a new revolution – or, more precisely, a new New Deal – to save it?

    To assess this question, Furman, Krugman, and the CBO share a mental model. They regard the pandemic as an economic shock, like an earthquake or the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It is a disruption to a solid structure, a deviation from normal growth. To get America moving again, what is mainly needed is confidence, perhaps aided by stimulus. If consumers channel their pent-up demand into new spending, this “shock-stimulus” model dictates, then businesses will revive investment, and soon enough, all will be well once again.

    This is how mainstream center-left economists and policymakers have thought about recessions and recoveries since at least the 1960s, when President John F. Kennedy and his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, pushed through tax cuts. But it ignores three major changes in the US economy since then: globalization, the rise of services in consumption and employment, and the impact of personal and corporate debts.

    In the 1960s, the US had a balanced economy that produced goods for both businesses and households, at all levels of technology, with a fairly small (and tightly regulated) financial sector. It produced largely for itself, importing mainly commodities.

    Today, the US produces for the world, mainly advanced investment goods and services, in sectors such as aerospace, information technology, arms, oilfield services, and finance. And it imports far more consumer goods, such as clothing, electronics, cars, and car parts, than it did a half-century ago.

    And whereas cars, televisions, and household appliances drove US consumer demand in the 1960s, a much larger share of domestic spending today goes (or went) to restaurants, bars, hotels, resorts, gyms, salons, coffee shops, and tattoo parlors, as well as college tuition and doctor’s visits. Tens of millions of Americans work in these sectors.

    Finally, American household spending in the 1960s was powered by rising wages and growing home equity. But wages have been largely stagnant since at least 2000, and spending increases since 2010 were powered by rising personal and corporate debts. House values are now stagnant at best, and will likely fall in the months ahead.

    Mainstream economics pays little attention to such structural questions. Instead, it assumes that business investment responds mostly to the consumer, whose spending is dictated equally by income and desire. The distinction between “essential” and “superfluous” does not exist. Debt burdens are largely ignored.

    But demand for many US-made capital goods now depends on global conditions. Orders for new aircraft will not recover while half of all existing planes are grounded. At current prices, the global oil industry is not drilling new wells. Even at home, though existing construction projects may be completed, plans for new office towers or retail outlets won’t be launched soon. And as people commute less, cars will last longer, so demand for them (and gasoline) will suffer.

    Faced with radical uncertainty, US consumers will save more and spend less. Even if the government replaces their lost incomes for a time, people know that stimulus is short term. What they do not know is when the next job offer – or layoff – will come along.

    Moreover, people do distinguish between needs and wants. Americans need to eat, but they mostly don’t need to eat out. They don’t need to travel. Restaurant owners and airlines therefore have two problems: they can’t cover costs while their capacity is limited for public-health reasons, and demand would be down even if the coronavirus disappeared. This explains why many businesses are not reopening even though they legally can. Others are reopening, but fear they cannot hold out for long. And the many millions of workers in America’s vast services sector are realizing that their jobs are simply not essential.

    Meanwhile, US household debts – rent, mortgage, and utility arrears, as well as interest on education and car loans – have continued to mount. True, stimulus checks have helped: defaults have so far been modest, and many landlords have been accommodating. But as people face long periods with lower incomes, they will continue to hoard funds to ensure that they can repay their fixed debts. As if all this were not enough, falling sales- and income-tax revenues are prompting US state and local governments to cut spending, compounding the loss of jobs and incomes.

    America’s economic plight is structural. It is not simply the consequence of Trump’s incompetence or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s poor political strategy. It reflects systemic changes over 50 years that have created an economy based on global demand for advanced goods, consumer demand for frills, and ever-growing household and business debts. This economy was in many ways prosperous, and it provided jobs and incomes to many millions. Yet it was a house of cards, and COVID-19 has blown it down.

    “Reopen America” is therefore an economic and political fantasy. Incumbent politicians crave a cheery growth rebound, and the depth of the collapse makes possible some attractive short-term numbers. But taking them seriously will merely set the stage for a new round of disillusion. As nationwide protests against systemic racism and police brutality show, disillusion is America’s one big growth sector right now.

  • JonesTrading "At What Point Will Powell Realize He Has Broken The Market’s Pricing Mechanism?"
    JonesTrading “At What Point Will Powell Realize He Has Broken The Market’s Pricing Mechanism?”

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/09/2020 – 21:45

    After a decade of constant lamentation by stock market pundits that the world’s most artificial “bull market”, which after March 23 and “Unlimited QE” everyone finally admits was entirely the work of the Federal Reserve, did not have retail participation and so wasn’t a real bull market, well – we give you Robin Hood.

    In the span of just a few weeks, the free retail platform has mutated from a trading venue nobody had heard of to the platform which hosts some of the world’s “best” traders. By which of course we mean millions of bored Millennials dumping their stimulus check into the stock market and hoping for a 100-bagger (and in many cases getting just that). But that’s not meant to slight the retail daytraders: after all, where else can hundreds of thousands of retail investors swarm bankrupt companies such as Hertz, Chesapeake and Whiting Petroleum, and send their absolutely worthless in any rational financial context stock price soaring, as they did in the past week.

    As we summarized it this morning, “you know the euphoria gripping stock markets is off the charts when retail investors have now taken over the market, as we first posted three weeks ago in, “How Retail Investors Took Over The Stock Market” and as Bloomberg repeated today with “Everywhere You Look Under Surging Stocks Is Fervid Retail Buying.” And while there is nothing wrong with a little healthy speculation in a market in which the Fed has eliminated most – if not all – risk, when the frenzied daytrading mob sends the stock of bankrupt Hertz 10x higher on massive volume, pushing its market cap to just shy of $1 billion, it‘s becoming a problem for marketplace integrity. After all, everyone remembers the retail infatuation with cryptos in late 2017/early 2018 which pushed bitcoin to $20K only to see the crypto plunging, resulting in massive losses for retail investors.”

    We then asked if Powell really wants to risk turning off another generation of retail investors from stocks when the latest melting-up asset bubble – which is far greater than either the dot com or the housing bubble – bursts with catastrophic consequences for middle class net worth?

    We weren’t the only ones: SMBC Nikko analyst Masao Muraki wrote in a note overnight that “soaring risk asset prices (ie imbalances) have reached a point where the Fed may be forced into some kind of action.”

    While not many, there are also others who likewise were wondering if it is truly the Fed’s intention to reflate a massive bubble which bursts and leaves millions of retail momentum chasers holding the bag, resulting in another generation of Americans who will never come close to the stock market again.

    In a Bloomberg article recapping the insane Robin Hood action, namely the flood of retail investors into bankrupt companies…

    According to website Robintrack, which uses Robinhood’s data to show trends in positioning but isn’t affiliated with it, individual investors on the app have been flocking to bankruptcy-protected companies in droves. (The site says it downloads popularity data each hour for every stock directly from Robinhood via a public application programming interface, or API. A Robinhood spokesperson declined to comment for this story.)

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    … something we have covered extensively here in the past week, one thing that stood out was the bevy of incredulous quotes by market veterans including this one from Peter Boockvar:

    “It’s great that Vegas is open again, but who needs it when you have the stock market instead. After an incredible run since March, we now have clear froth in parts of the market. We know this level of speculation has coincided with a sharp increase in the activity of retail investors.”

    Boockvar added the activity has been encouraged by a “zero rate” and “unlimited QE” environment. And to think of all the abuse we took for the past decade saying the Fed was all that mattered, and that Austrian economics trumps that Keynesian bullshit anyday.

    But speaking of the Fed, the best quotes came from JonesTrading strategist Mike O’Rourke, who said called the action “Gluttonous Greed. The madness continues. The biggest surprise in today’s trading was that Tailored Brands’ shares actually sold off when it was reported the company was considering bankruptcy.”

    But the punchline was the same one both Muraki and we asked earlier in the day: when will the Fed finally step in and gradually let the air out of this insane bubble it has created, or else push on until the inevitable outcome is the biggest market crash in history:

    “In this tape, bankruptcies have become the flavor of the day. At what point will Jay Powell and his colleagues at the Federal Reserve realize they have broken the market’s pricing mechanism? The bankruptcies are only a small part of the story.”

    We are due for an answer tomorrow when the FOMC announces its latest decision (which may or may not be the launch of Yield-Curve Control), although we doubt that the coward in charge of the Fed will do anything to derail the biggest and final bubble the he himself created and now is fully responsible for.

    Which is why until the Fed has no choice and stocks do crash, we are going to get much more idiocy such as this: Robin Hood investors who heard about something called FANG stocks and instead of buying the 4 tech megacaps… ended up buying worthless Chinese real estate company FANGDD (ticker DUO), sending its stock price from $10 to $130 in four hours, and pushing its market cap just shy of $4 billion!

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    And then there is this: with stocks back at all time highs, CNBC actually had to explain to the new generation of trading gurus what a bankruptcy actually means.

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  • Texas Hospitalizations Surge To Record High As Dr. Fauci Warns Pandemic "Far From Over": Live Updates
    Texas Hospitalizations Surge To Record High As Dr. Fauci Warns Pandemic “Far From Over”: Live Updates

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/09/2020 – 21:45

    Summary:

    • Texas hospitalization hit 2,056 – a record high

    • Dr. Fauci: US outbreak is “far from over”

    • Ohio drivers tests to resume Friday

    • Cali reports daily dip

    • NJ abruptly lifts lockdown

    • Global COVID-19 cases top 7 million

    • Hospital visits spiked in Wuhan last fall, suggesting outbreak hit earlier than we realized

    • Nearly half of US states are seeing a sustained rise in new COVID cases

    • UK says students won’t return to school until the fall

    * * *

    Update (1745ET): Texas reported another record-breaking number of COVID-19 hospitalizations Tuesday (2,056) as the governor plans to reopen more businesses and double capacity.

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    That extends yesterday’s rise above the previous record of 1,888 on May 5.

    The department’s new figures were released as Gov. Greg Abbott moves forward with a plan to open bars, restaurants, amusement parks and other businesses to 50% capacity.

    *  *  *

    Update (1635ET): We give the NYT a lot of credit: Even though none of its readers seem to care about the coronavirus anymore, it still went ahead and published this story about remarks made by Dr. Anthony Fauci (remember him?) during a (virtual) speech before the Biotechnology Innovation Organization during an event on Tuesday.

    After insisting last week that a second wave of the virus isn’t a sure thing, Dr. Fauci warned that the coronavirus was the virus of his worst nightmares, and that he remains surprised by its capacity to spread around the world and dominate human society in the span of just four months (though recent research suggests the outbreak may have started earlier than previously believed).

    “In a period of four months, it has devastated the whole world,” Dr. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Tuesday during a conference held by BIO, the Biotechnology Innovation Organization. “And it isn’t over yet.”

    His discussion with a moderator was conducted remotely and recorded for presentation to conference participants. Although he had known that an outbreak like this could occur, one aspect has surprised him, he said, and that is “how rapidly it just took over the planet.”

    Once again, the good doctor insisted that there’s still so much we don’t know about SARS-CoV-2, which he described as “complex” compared with HIV, a virus Dr. Fauci studied for decades.

    But much is still unknown about the disease and how it attacks the body – research that Dr. Fauci described as “a work in progress.”

    He said that he had spent much of his career studying H.I.V., and that the disease it causes is “really simple compared to what’s going on with Covid-19.”

    The differences, he said, include Covid’s broad range of severity, from no symptoms at all to critical illness and death, with lung damage, intense immune responses and clotting disorders that have caused strokes even in young people, as well as a separate inflammatory syndrome causing severe illness in some children.

    But don’t worry, because Dr. Fauci believes at least one of the hundreds of vaccines currently being researched will pan out.

    Vaccines are widely regarded as the best hope of stopping or at least slowing the pandemic, and Dr. Fauci said he was “almost certain” that more than one would be successful. Several are already being tested in people, and at least one is expected to move into large, Phase 3 trials in July.

    Marshaling more resources to stop the virus, especially in poor and/or predominantly minority communities, is essential, Dr. Fauci added.

    Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like too many Americans still care.

    * * *

    Update (1410ET): As the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles prepares to resume driving tests on Friday, Gov. Mike DeWine is updating the public on the state’s response to the coronavirus in his latest daily briefing.

    Driving tests will begin Friday and next Tuesday, though not at all DMV locations, but people need to make appointments online before going in for a test.

    Meanwhile, California reported a drop in new cases statewide on Tuesday, though recent days have seen spikes in LA County and the Bay Area.

    • CALIFORNIA COVID-19 CASES RISE 1.7% VS 7-DAY AVERAGE 2.2%

    * * *

    Update (1310ET): As more Western and Southern state see coronavirus cases rise, numbers in the New York metropolitan area, once the biggest hotspot in the country, have continued to wane. The same people who were hysterically screaming at their neighbors to put on their masks are now out marching in crowds for racial equality, and in the midst of it all, New Jersey Gov Phil Murphy has abruptly lifted the state’s stay at home order.

    Now, after allowing outdoor graduations to move forward and easing other restrictions, New Jersey Gov Phil Murphy has decided to lift his state’s stay-at-home order.

    Watch the briefing live below:

    * * *

    Last night, we shared the findings from a bombshell report which found that hospital foot traffic and COVID-19-related search terms surged in Wuhan and the surrounding area as early as October or November, suggesting that the virus might have already been spreading in Wuhan for months before China informed the WHO on New Year’s Eve about the “newly discovered” virus.

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    Beijing infamously withheld evidence of human-to-human transmission until later in January, when it finally alerted the international community, kicking off the global coronavirus crisis in earnest as the initial round of projections warned that millions could perish, setting off the global panic.

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    By that time, as we’ve reported in the past, China probably had enough of a head start to gobble up all of the PPE and other critical medical supplies in the world, which would help explain the baffling shortages that confronted American consumers during the first weeks of the outbreak, with some claiming that shortages of popular goods like cleaning supplies and toilet paper persist in some places, or regularly reoccur.

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    Adding even more confusion to the global conversation (not that anybody cares about the coronavirus anymore, now that the progressives who were hysterically decrying the risks of reopening are crowding together in the streets), a WHO scientist last night discussed new research suggesting asymptomatic carriers of the virus – previously believed to be a primary driver of the virus’s spread – actually aren’t all that dangerous. If these findings are confirmed, it would suggest that contact tracing has little value in the late stages of an outbreak, though it could be a game-changer during the early weeks, when successful containment remains possible.

    With futures markets pointing toward a lower open in the US, the Washington Post warns that 14 states and Puerto Rico have seen their 7-day average for the number of new cases being reported climb to their highest levels since the outbreak began. Yesterday, we noted the WSJ story highlighting the finding that rural areas with large numbers of people living in the same houses saw outbreaks that were in many cases more severe than more densely populated areas, suggesting transmission between members of the same household remains the primary means of spread, which, if anything, suggests that markets and the general public is underestimating the potential of these outbreaks in more rural states.

    Since the start of June, 14 states and Puerto Rico have recorded their highest-ever seven-day average of new coronavirus cases since the pandemic began, according to data tracked by The Washington Post: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Kentucky, New Mexico, North Carolina, Mississippi, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah.

    If the pandemic’s first wave burned through dense metro hubs such as New York City, Chicago and Detroit, the highest percentages of new cases are coming from places with much smaller populations: Lincoln County, Ore., an area of less than 50,000, has averaged 20 new daily cases; the Bear River Health District in northern Utah has averaged 78 new cases a day in the past week, most of them tied to an outbreak at a meat processing plant in the small town of Hyrum.

    The increase of coronavirus cases in counties with fewer than 60,000 people is part of the trend of new infections surging across the rural United States. Health experts worry those areas, already short of resources before the pandemic, will struggle to track new cases with the infrastructure that remains.

    The NYT’s coronavirus tracker tool offers a convenient illustration:

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    What’s more alarming: epidemiologists say any surge in cases tied to the protests likely has yet to emerge.

    Yesterday, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases surged past 7 million, after the death toll topped 400k over the weekend. Russia, Latin America and now India appear to be the newest hot spots, as cases have started to accelerate as Brazil and Mexico face a difficult reckoning.

    Even the FT cheered on Tuesday as the UK reported its smallest excess-death total (a figure the paper has been using as a measure of the ‘total’ COVID-19 deaths) since the final week in March. Meanwhile, HMG has reportedly scrapped plans to return pupils to their classrooms before the beginning of the summer break.

    The government is set to drop plans to fully reopen primary schools in England before the summer holiday, in a move welcomed by teachers’ unions that argued the return of all pupils would be unsafe. Education secretary Gavin Williamson is expected on Tuesday to announce that headteachers can choose whether or not to reopen to more year groups than currently outlined. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said during yesterday’s daily briefing that secondary schools in England likely wouldn’t reopen until September “at the earliest.”

  • Iran To Execute Alleged Spy Who Led CIA & Mossad To Soleimani
    Iran To Execute Alleged Spy Who Led CIA & Mossad To Soleimani

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/09/2020 – 21:45

    Iran announced Tuesday that a man it says spied on the slain Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Soleiman on behalf of American and Israeli intelligence has been sentenced to death. 

    Iranian officials emphasized, however, that the alleged asset’s ‘passing information’ on Soleimani’s whereabouts in the past was not directly connected to the IRGC commander’s Jan. 3rd death by US drone strike in Baghdad. Yet it does strongly suggest US and Israeli intelligence were able to infiltrate circles close to Soleimani, likely a factor in his death.

    “Mahmoud Mousavi-Majd, one of the spies for the CIA and the Mossad, has been sentenced to death… He had shared information about the whereabouts of martyr Soleimani with our enemies,” judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili said on state TV.

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    Getty Images

    “He passed on security information to the Israeli and American intelligence agencies about Iran’s armed forces, particularly the Guards,” the official added, according to Reuters. The convicted and sentenced man’s execution is “expected soon” Esmaili said.

    “All the legal proceedings in the case of this spy … had been carried out long before the martyrdom of Soleimani,” the statement underscored, describing his arrest in October 2018 after contact with foreign intelligence agencies was supposedly uncovered.

    Over the past year Tehran has made multiple announcements of busting up spy networks being run by the Mossad and CIA, including claims last summer of detaining “17 spies working for the CIA” — some of which were sentenced to death, though few details are known. 

    Previously Iran said Western intelligence was trying to penetrate facilities related to its nuclear program. This week’s announced death sentence is perhaps the first time someone stood specifically charged with passing information related to the late Quds force leader Soleimani.

    It reveals something interesting: that the Iranians are no doubt actively looking for spy networks which had involvement in tracking Gen. Soleimani, or may have helped US-Israeli intelligence with the assassination. 

    Recall that beginning two years ago Israeli defense and intelligence officials became increasingly vocal about putting a target on Soleimani’s back, essentially giving the ‘green light’ to taking him out if the opportunity presented itself. 

    However, Soleimani traveled as a diplomat or foreign dignitary, thus it didn’t appear he was overly cautious or expected the Americans to act so brazenly. Hence his entourage had passed through Baghdad International Airport essentially out in the open, which provided the opportunity for the Trump-ordered drone strike on a road leading out of the airport.

  • Chinese Propaganda Outlet Paid Millions To Washington Post, Wall Street Journal
    Chinese Propaganda Outlet Paid Millions To Washington Post, Wall Street Journal

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/09/2020 – 21:25

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

    A Chinese propaganda outlet paid millions of dollars to The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal to run advertisements made to look like news reports.

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    New documents filed with the U.S. Department of Justice show China Daily paid over $4.6 million to the Post and nearly $6 million to the Journal since November 2016.

    China Daily, an English-language newspaper, is overseen by the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Publicity Department, the governmental agency in charge of disseminating propaganda.

    Over the past few years, it has spent millions running supplements – called “China Watch” – containing propaganda disguised as news, in major U.S. newspapers including the Journal, The New York Times, and the Post.

    Scholars researching Chinese influence activities in the United States said in a 2018 report (pdf) that “it’s hard to tell that China Watch’s material is an ad.”

    China Daily has in the past submitted financial information under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) but the new filing (pdf) is the first to include a breakdown of how much the propaganda outlet is paying American media outlets.

    Inquiries sent to the Post and the Journal weren’t returned.

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    A paid insert of China Daily inside the Jan. 17, 2017 edition of the Wall Street Journal. (Benjamin Chasteen/The Epoch Times)

    According to the FARA filing, China Daily paid to insert propaganda into The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The Des Moines Register, and CQ Roll Call.

    China Daily spent just over $11 million in total on advertising in newspapers in the United States.

    The newspaper registered as a foreign agent under FARA in 1983. That law requires registered foreign agents to provide the DOJ with copies of all propaganda “circulated among two or more persons.” It also requires registrants to submit to the department, twice a year, an itemized report of spending inside the United States.

    China Daily is part of the Chinese regime’s global propaganda efforts, a campaign that the CCP has committed $6.6 billion to since 2009, according to a letter sent by dozens of U.S. lawmakers to the Department of Justice earlier this year. The regime has, according to FARA filings, spent $35 million on China Daily alone since 2017, not including the new filing.

    The articles that run in American publications “serve as a cover for China’s atrocities, including its crimes against humanity in the Xinjiang region and its support for the crackdown in Hong Kong,” the lawmakers wrote.

    Earlier this year, the state department designated China Daily, along with four other Chinese state-run media operating in the United States, as foreign missions over their role as propaganda organs of the CCP. It also slashed the number of Chinese staff allowed to work at the outlets’ U.S. offices.

  • Virus Contact-Tracing For All – Singaporeans To Be Tracked By Gov't In Post-COVID World
    Virus Contact-Tracing For All – Singaporeans To Be Tracked By Gov’t In Post-COVID World

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/09/2020 – 21:05

    Singapore is on the cusp of rolling out a mandatory COVID-19 tracing program that will identify people who had come in contact with virus carriers. The program will distribute tiny microchips to all 5.7 million residents, in what will be the most extensive tracing program globally, reported Reuters. 

    The city-state, located in Southeast Asia, has already developed a tracing app for smartphones, called TraceToegether, to identify people who have interacted with virus carriers. The app was downloaded by more than 1.5 million residents but did not work well on iPhones since Bluetooth activity goes dormant when app runs in the background. 

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    Singapore officials overseeing the tracing app had several discussions with Apple, but no resolutions were found. 

    Minister-in-charge of the Smart Nation Initiative Vivian Balakrishnan spoke with Parliament on Friday, gave members of the government update on the tracing program: 

    “Because TraceTogether does not work equally well across all smartphones, we have decided therefore, at this point, not to mandate the compulsory use of TraceTogether.

    “We are developing and will soon roll out a portable wearable device that will … not depend on the possession of a smartphone. 

    “If this portable device works. We may then distribute it to everyone in Singapore … This will be more inclusive, and it will ensure that all of us will be protected,” Balakrishnan told Parliament. 

    Balakrishna said the pivot to wearables would mean residents will have to wear a tiny microchip at the end of lanyard or can be carried in pocket or bag. He expects it to be rolled out in the near term.

    The technology behind the wearable was not discussed, and at what range the government can track people. 

    There are many privacy concerns about tracing devices. Especially when the government wants widespread use, it will have to make it mandatory. Other concerns are about who gets the tracking data, and it was said that the Singapore government would only collect data via the first app if a person becomes infected with COVID-19. There are many privacy concerns about contact tracing devices and how the government will use the data. 

    For instance, this week, the US government and law enforcement agencies are using contact tracing and big tech to identify rioters. 

    The war on COVID around the world has ushered in a massive surveillance state with weaponry that governments can deploy at any time: thermal imaging cameras, drones, contact tracing, biometric databases, etc.

    No one is safe from government in a post-corona world. 

  • Ivanka Trump Falls Victim To "Cancel Culture"
    Ivanka Trump Falls Victim To “Cancel Culture”

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/09/2020 – 20:45

    Authored by Lacey Kestecher via Campus Reform,

    On the same day that Wichita State University Tech announced that Ivanka Trump would be a guest speaker at its virtual commencement address, the university also canceled her speech. There was backlash from the university regarding the Trump administration and George Floyd’s death. 

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    In a letter by WSU president Jay Goulden and WSU Tech president Sheree Utash, the two administrators announced their commencement speeches would be “refocused more centrally on students.” The virtual commencement, however, would not feature the president’s daughter and one of his top White House advisers.

    In another letter, Utash addressed the reasoning for revoking Ivanka Trump’s commencement speech offer. Utash writes that “in light of the social justice issues brought forth by George Floyd’s death…the timing of the announcement was insensitive.” 

    She claims that “the college stands with those who fight injustice and advocate for social equity.”

    Jennifer Ray, associate professor of photo media, had previously written a letter demanding that the university revoke Trump’s speaking invitation. It garnered the support of both students and staff but has since been deleted. 

    According to the Wichita Eagle, Ray claims that the university “sends the message that WSU Tech does not take diversity seriously” by inviting Ivanka Trump to be a guest speaker.

    Ray wrote that the Trump “administration has come to signify the worst of our country, particularly in its recent actions toward those peacefully protesting against racist police brutality. This is not about politics and policy; some of the sharpest critics of President Trump’s actions come from prominent members of his own party.” 

    In response to her speech being canceled, Ivanka Trump took to Twitter to post her pre-recorded speech. In the tweet, she criticized “cancel culture” and said that universities “should be bastions of free speech.”

    “Cancel culture and viewpoint discrimination are antithetical to academia. Listening to one another is important now more than ever!”

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    Here is the pre-recorded message: 

  • FBI Combing Through Social Media After People Openly Brag About Looting On Facebook 
    FBI Combing Through Social Media After People Openly Brag About Looting On Facebook 

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/09/2020 – 20:25

    Anyone logging into social media lately has likely noticed a seeming deluge of virtue signaling related to the ongoing Black Lives Matter and George Floyd protests. Often the same people who a mere days before were lecturing others to “stay home, save lives” amid the pandemic, have made a seamless switch to urging others to take to the streets in protest.

    But a CBS Chicago affiliate has uncovered something truly new: people are now openly bragging about what they’ve looted from ravaged stores on Facebook over the past two weeks of BLM protests and riots. Apparently they’re even trying to sell the stolen goods.

    “Selling looted goods on Facebook – CBS 2 found it’s happening right now, with several videos and photos sent our way,“ the CBS 2 report begins. “We sent the evidence to Chicago Police, and on Monday night, CBS 2’s Tara Molina looked into what will happen next – with the CPD and the FBI investigating.”

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    Livestreams & social media images showing looting in action flooded the internet over the past couples weeks. Getty Images

    Apparently the FBI is now involved, seeking to identify individuals involved in the mass looting.

    And judging by the fact that many are outright boasting about it under their names on social media accounts, federal agents and local police may have an easy time of rounding them up and making arrests.

    The report goes on to describe that in some cases, individuals in Chicago have had their ‘looting posts’ go viral: 

    One woman posted a Facebook Live video publicly on Sunday, May 31, and it got about 6,600 views and 41 shares. It showed looting at a strip mall and a van filled to the brim.

    In a second public Facebook Live video, posted days later, a woman stands behind the videos and photos posted on her page – admitting out loud that she had looted.

    She called out the people tagging police in the video, and defended her selling of the looted clothing and liquor – referring to it as stolen and saying it wasn’t the first time.

    “I don’t give no (expletive) about this s**t. I upload stolen (expletive) 365 a year,” she is heard saying. “This ain’t (expletive) first time I did this.”

    Likely the above person has already had a knock on the door, and may regret going viral with their post in the first place.

    CBS 2 actually aired some of the incriminating Facebook Livestream images this week, seeking public help in the investigation.

    The FBI has set up an anonymous “tips” form seeking information on individuals involved in rioting, violence, and mass theft nationwide:

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    The FBI and local law enforcement are now actively requesting photos and information from the public as they comb through posts and evidence of theft. 

    Shocking footage of brazen acts of mass theft flooded social media:

    CBS 2 Chicago also noted that during its research into social media posts, people began blocking its staff over inquiries into crimes being committed. 

    With the FBI also now combing through thousands of posts, also seeking perpetrators of violence and rioting, there’s likely a lot of worried criminals now deleting posts as well.

    But how long before the FBI is accused of “racism” for seeking to punish such glaring examples of crime in action? 

  • Our New Form Of Government: Rule By Twitter Mob
    Our New Form Of Government: Rule By Twitter Mob

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/09/2020 – 20:05

    Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

    In one of the starkest examples of how mob rule has taken over the Land of the Free, #defundthepolice is now rapidly moving from being just a hash tag, to becoming a reality.

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    9 out of the 12 members of the Minneapolis City Council (which is a veto-proof majority that can easily override the city’s boy mayor) pledged yesterday to completely dismantle its police department.

    Their reasoning?

    According to the city council president, being able to call the police “comes from a place of privilege,” and therefore must be abolished.

    Actually, genius, being able to call the police comes from tax revenue… as in the money that voters pay in exchange for public services.

    It’s not just Minneapolis. Across the country, cries to defund the police are growing… even though there’s no consensus about what the term even means.

    For some, it means demilitarization of the police. For others, it means reducing police responsibilities, and reducing their funding accordingly. For others, it means abolishing the police altogether.

    But even without a clear idea of what the concept means, the Twitter mob has already pressured politicians into taking action.

    In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti bowed to the pressure and pledged to slash $150 million from the police budget.

    The New York City’s politburo, Comrade de Blasio, also promised to make substantial cuts to the NYPD budget.

    Other local governments across the country, from San Francisco to Philadelphia to Baltimore, are considering similar moves.

    And Congress has a stack of bills that it’s furiously moving forward.

    This is all truly remarkable. There’s suppose to be system in place– I read about it somewhere, I think it’s called ‘democracy’ or something like that– where people vote for leaders who are supposed to represent their interests when making public policy decisions.

    But this is mob rule, plain and simple. The Twitter mob decides public policy now. Not politicians. And certainly not voters.

    And if you don’t grovel and capitulate to the mob, even when there’s no consensus on what the mob actually wants, then you get vilified by their rage.

    It’s like #metoo all over again.

    In late 2017, the actor Matt Damon, who committed an egregious crime of being born with a penis, told an interviewer that there’s a “spectrum” of sexual harassment:

    “There’s a difference between, you know, patting someone on the butt, and rape… or child molestation.  Both of those behaviors need to be confronted and eradicated without question, but they shouldn’t be conflated.”

    Seems reasonable. Damon had an opinion… and his opinion was that molesting a child was worse than inappropriately patting a woman on the butt.

    But reason didn’t matter to the Twitter mob, who immediately blasted Damon as a hetero-normative patriarchal misogynist. He later apologized, apparently for being logical, and groveled to the mob for forgiveness.

    Today’s mob is far more hostile.

    When Minneapolis’ boy mayor Jacob Frey rejected calls to abolish the police over the weekend, he was forced into a literal walk of shame when the marauding crowd screamed “GET THE F^#K OUT OF HERE” and waived their middle fingers in unison.

    Frey left the stage and sullenly retreated through the crowd while the masses chanted, “Shame! Shame! Shame!”

    Then there’s Drew Brees, one of the NFL’s all-time great quarterbacks whose entire career has been one of professionalism, integrity, and humble service.

    Brees has given millions of dollars to his local community, including a $5 million pledge this year alone to help put food on the table for struggling families.

    But Brees stated in an interview recently that he didn’t agree with anyone disrespecting the American flag– in reference to other NFL players who kneel during the national anthem to protest police brutality.

    The anthem kneeling is a contentious issue for some. And it would have been reasonable for the other side to explain to Brees that their intent is to protest injustice, not disrespect the flag.

    But instead the Twitter mob unleashed holy hell, calling Brees a “white supremacist” and even making death threats against his family.

    And that’s what you get with a mob.

    Civil discourse is an impossibility. You cannot have a respectful exchange of ideas or a discussion of values.

    You can’t even say, “I completely agree that terrible injustice needs to change immediately. Let’s have a rational conversation about sensible, effective solutions.”

    If you don’t grovel to the Twitter mob, even when there’s no consensus what the mob wants, you’re a white supremacist who deserves to be dead.

    To be clear, I’m in strong support of the fundamental ideas behind these movements.

    The culture of rape and sexual abuse that persisted for so long before #metoo needed to end. And the injustices that are front and center right now need to end. I imagine good people everywhere are in favor of human rights.

    But I’m not writing about the movements, or social justice, or peaceful protests. This is about the mob mentality that has quickly taken over the US, and much of the world.

    History shows that well-organized, peaceful protests can be very powerful… but also that nothing good ever comes from an angry, emotional mob.

    Real progress can only take place when people are able to have calm, rational discussions about ideas and solutions.

    The reality is that #defundthepolice is going to happen regardless. After Covid, most cities are completely bankrupt and will be forced to slash their budgets due to lack of tax revenue.

    But #defundthepolice may be just the beginning of our new form of government– rule by Twitter mob.

    *  *  *

    And to continue learning how to ensure you thrive no matter what happens next in the world, I encourage you to download our free Perfect Plan B Guide.

  • "The Search Is Over" – Treasure Chest Of Gold Found In Rocky Mountains 
    “The Search Is Over” – Treasure Chest Of Gold Found In Rocky Mountains 

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/09/2020 – 19:45

    A treasure chest full of gold worth over $1 million was recently found in the Rocky Mountains, according to the man that hid it there over a decade ago. 

    Forrest Fenn,89, confirmed that “the search is over” on his website Sunday. Fenn hid the treasure in 2010 and wrote a poem with several clues revealing that it was “somewhere in the mountains north of Santa Fe.” 

    “The Search Is Over! Forrest Has Confirmed That The Treasure Has Been Found (6/6/20),” Fenn’s website read.

    Fenn said he did not know the person who found the treasure, but a list of clues in the poem led the person to the booty. 

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    Fenn’s poem of clues shown on Good Morning America in 2015

    “It was under a canopy of stars in the lush, forested vegetation of the Rocky Mountains, and had not moved from the spot where I hid it more than ten years ago,” Fenn said. “I congratulate the thousands of people who participated in the search and hope they will continue to be drawn by the promise of other discoveries.”

    Fenn told the Santa Fe New Mexican: 

    “The guy who found it does not want his name mentioned. He’s from back East,” he said, adding that it was confirmed from a photograph the man sent him.

    Santa Fe New Mexican estimates 350,000 people have hunted for Fenn’s treasure, with at least four deaths contributed to the searching efforts. 

    When questioned how he felt that the decade long search for his treasure is finally over, he said, “I don’t know, I feel halfway kind of glad, halfway kind of sad because the chase is over.” 

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    Fenn in 2015 Good Morning America interview 

    Some believe the treasure never existed — treasure hunter Seth Wallack said, “I think his announcement is at least a few years, and a few lives, too late. But he has to live with that. I believe this was over much earlier than today.” 

    “I think 2019 is the year he said was his last to do any interviews about the treasure, which I interpret as he lost interest because the hunt was no longer,” Wallack added. “In 2020, he said the treasure was found but didn’t reveal any details so his narrative can’t be questioned.”

    Fenn spoke with Good Morning America in 2015 about the “chest filled with gold and jewels.” 

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  • What Comes After The "Deepest Economic Crisis Since The Great Depression"
    What Comes After The “Deepest Economic Crisis Since The Great Depression”

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/09/2020 – 19:25

    Authored by Huge Erken, head of International Economics at Rabobank

    Coronavirus causes deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression

    Summary

    • COVID-19 is expected to result in contraction of the global economy by 4.1% in 2020

    • This means that the corona crisis will be the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression in the 1930s

    • We expect a relatively limited recovery in 2021, as many countries will continue to be bound to a ‘six-foot economy’ for a long time

    • Businesses in these countries will not be able to offer as many goods and services as they did previously, and demand will remain low for a long time Political tensions between the US and China have flared up again, and we expect the truce in the trade war to come to an end

    • Downside risks such as a second wave of infections or a financial crisis continue to dominate

    The global economy will contract by 4.1% The rapid succession of developments relating to the coronavirus (see Figure 1a and 1b) is leaving deep scars in the global economy. We have therefore had to downgrade our estimates several times (here and here and here).

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    We are currently forecasting that the global economy will contract by 4.1% in 2020, and then grow by 4.3% in 2021 (Table 1). This means that the corona crisis will be the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression in the 1930s (Figure 2). The sharp contraction in mainly Western Europe and Latin America will be offset by more moderate GDP declines in Asia, where stronger underlying growth in China in 2020 and in India in 2021 will go some way to limiting the damage.

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    The deepest economic crisis since the 1930s For France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom we are even forecasting a contraction in gross domestic product (GDP) of more than 10% in, mainly due to the long and stringent lockdowns in these countries. Another factor is that the sectors that are the worst hit by the corona crisis, such as tourism, recreation and hospitality, are relatively strongly represented in these countries compared to other eurozone countries.

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    In the United States, we expect a more limited contraction of 5.7%, again followed by a relatively modest recovery in 2021. In the US, this relates to the flexible labor market, which lead to a rapid rise in unemployment which started to come down again recently (Figure 3). April saw the highest post-war unemployment figure of 14.7%, although figures for May show that it is coming down again. Corrected for classification errors, unemployment was as much as 19.5%. With a fifth of the American working population temporarily out of work, private consumption will be slow to pick up after the hard lockdown period, and these effects will continue to be felt into 2021. This expected weakness in the demand side of the economy will be intensified by the fact that the US economy was already in pretty poor shape before the advent of the corona crisis, something we have been warning about since the beginning of 2019.

    Reopening the economy is proving difficult

    The US is not the only country where we expect lower growth in 2021 than we previously forecast. We currently expect the recovery to be more moderate in virtually all countries. Despite the easing of the lockdown in many countries, economic activity is increasing only marginally. On the one hand this is due to lack of demand, as people continue to avoid restaurants, cafés and stores, and also due to economic uncertainty and loss of income. On the other hand, there are limitations in the supply side of the economy as businesses and entrepreneurs are forced to adapt to the six-foot economy. A recent academic study argues that social distancing will be needed until 2022 to prevent a resurgence of the virus.

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    A lengthy period of social distancing and lower potential growth

    Countries will be stuck with the six-foot economy for many months yet. For the Netherlands, we have calculated that there could be adaptation problems for 16% of jobs in this economy, while in the US this figure is 23% (see this report). In this situation a V-shaped economic recovery will be hard to achieve and a U-shaped recovery may be more likely (see this study for a detailed discussion on the possible shapes the recovery might take). We have calculated that the corona crisis could also damage the long-term growth potential of countries, so that the effects could continue to be felt even after 2022. For the Dutch economy, we forecast that annual potential economic growth in 2022-2030 will fall from 1.4% to 1.2%, and in the US we foresee a decline from 1.6% to 1.4%.

    Political tensions between the US and China are flaring up again

    Following the long-awaited truce between the US and China in the form of the ‘Phase 1 deal’ on January 13 and the subsequent outbreak of the corona virus, a period of quiet broke out in the trade war between the two superpowers. However, diplomatic relations between the US and China have now taken a rapid and serious turn for the worse. This started in March, with accusations from both sides regarding the approach to the virus.

    US measures

    The US is working on legislation to use grants and tax breaks to persuade foreign businesses in China to transfer their operations to the US and on measures to reduce dependence on China in areas such as medical and defense-related products. President Trump has also instructed his administration to remove Hong Kong’s special status in response to a Chinese security law that the Americans believe threatens Hong Kong’s autonomy. Withdrawing this status would mean that Hong Kong, which is a major trading hub in Asia, would face higher trade tariffs and that access to US dollars by businesses and banks in Hong Kong could be restricted. Finally, Trump has signed a presidential executive order, under which US businesses are no longer permitted to use products from the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei.

    Anti-China rhetoric as a lightning conductor

    All these measures are part of President Trump’s ‘America First’ doctrine, and address what he sees as unfair trading practices on the part of China. This view is starting to gain traction with the US public (see Figure 8). Trump seems to be using anti-China rhetoric as a diversion from his domestic problems. Trump has lost much needed popularity in the polls due to his handling of the corona crisis, the rapidly worsening economy and his threat to deploy the military to subdue recent demonstrations and social unrest.

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    With the presidential elections upcoming in November, Trump is trying to make electoral gains with his tried and tested anti-China tactic. Trump is indeed not alone in this stance, as his Democratic opponent Joe Biden is also planning to act against China, albeit in cooperation with Europe.

    Chinese measures

    China has not been sitting on its hands either. It expelled several American journalists in March, and state-run food companies (Cofco and Sinograin) have been instructed to buy fewer products from the US. This fits the view that China is apparently not ready to observe the trade agreements in the Phase 1 deal, as available import data for the first three months of 2020 are showing a negative rather than a positive trend (see Figure 9). This also confirms that China’s import commitment was always highly unrealistic right from the start. In combination with the recent political tensions between the two countries, we believe the deal is likely to break down before the year is out.

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    Downside risks

    Despite our heavily downgraded economic forecasts and rising geopolitical tensions, there are several risks that could make the outlook even worse. Four of these risks are discussed below. A second wave of infections Countries around the world are currently easing their lockdowns. There is a possibility that this easing will open the door to a new wave of infections, forcing countries to impose a new period of lockdowns to restrict the spread of the virus. Previously we published estimates of the additional economic damage if lockdowns were to be extended by a further three months. A return of the virus in emerging markets is potentially a much greater risk than in developed countries. It remains to be seen whether it is realistic that people in densely populated countries such as Indonesia, India and Brazil will be able to maintain adequate social distancing. There is also the question of whether these countries have sufficient testing capabilities to identify a resurgence of the virus at an early stage.

    A financial crisis

    The current economic crisis could turn into a financial crisis, in which financial institutions get into difficulties. For instance, if there is a second or third wave of infections that leads to a sharp increase in bankruptcies, a rapid deterioration in bank balance sheets and liquidity issues for banks themselves. The consequence could be that lending to businesses comes to a halt, putting more businesses in trouble and creating a vicious circle.

    At this time we do not expect any friction in the financial system, partly because the banks have generally improved their buffers since the Great Financial Crisis and partly because central banks around the world are providing sufficient liquidity to the banks. The volatility in the financial markets that marked the start of the corona crisis has therefore also waned.

    Zombie companies

    Another risk in the longer term is that the proportion of what are known as ‘zombie companies’ will increase in some countries. Zombie companies are businesses that are barely profitable now and their outlook for future profitability is bleak. These companies thrive in an environment of low interest rates and a financial system that rolls over loans to loss-making companies. Even more loose monetary policy by central banks encourages this ‘zombification’ process. We saw the number of zombie companies increase rapidly in the wake of the Great Financial Crisis. In the US, the proportion of zombie companies among listed companies rose to 15% in 2019 (figure 10). In Japan as well, the proportion of zombie companies among SMEs is now 21% according to some estimates. Zombie companies represent a problem for the post-crisis recovery as they are less productive and innovative than healthy businesses. According to the BIS, a one percentage point increase in the proportion of zombie companies in a country leads to a decline of 0.3% in annual GDP growth.

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Digest powered by RSS Digest

Jun 09

Today’s News 9th June 2020

  • Russia Demands US "Leave Syria & Deal With Your Own Problems" Amid Protests
    Russia Demands US “Leave Syria & Deal With Your Own Problems” Amid Protests

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/09/2020 – 02:45

    Recall that last month, shortly before George Floyd protests plunged a number of American cities into unrest and chaos which witnessed often violent confrontations between demonstrators and police, a top US envoy for Syria policy boasted “my job is to make Syria a quagmire for the Russians.”

    But in the wake of the raging protests, which last week created a bit of a crisis for the White House as it mulled “action” against the worsening security situation on the Capitol, Russia has gone on the offensive, demanding that US forces get out of Syria in order to handle America’s own mess at home.  

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    Specifically this was in response to a statement days ago from Assistant Secretary of State David Schenker, who called on Russia to ‘go out of the Middle East’. 

    “For 45 years, this has been the cornerstone of American politics – to keep Russia away from the Middle East,” he further claimed.

    The Russian Embassy in the US immediately reminded Washington that the “Russian military is stationed in Syria at the invitation of its government.”

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    The embassy added according to TASS: “The real question here: what are the grounds for the USA to occupy several swaths of this sovereign country? As far as we know none of them are legal. Neither the legitimate authorities nor the UN Security Council sanctioned American troops deployment.”

    Additionally, the Russian Foreign Ministry called the remarks “crazy” and “stupid” – and added:

    “The US should leave Syria and deal with its internal crisis.”

    Both China, Russia, as well as other American rivals and officially dubbed “rogue regimes” by Washington have called out the US for its rank hypocrisy, lecturing others as it faces chaos at home, which has involved not only the police killing of George Floyd, but at least 15 deaths amid the ‘protest’ and riot mayhem which followed. 

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    * * * 

    Meanwhile…

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  • Should NATO Have A Permanent Presence In The Arctic?
    Should NATO Have A Permanent Presence In The Arctic?

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/09/2020 – 02:00

    Authored by Lee Harding via The Epoch Times,

    As Russia and China continue growing their footprint in the Arctic, some observers believe NATO should have a perpetual presence in the region to achieve a deterrence effect and safeguard maritime security.

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    Lieutenant Colin Barnard, an American who serves at NATO Maritime Command in the U.K., says the developing Arctic presence by Russia and China deserves attention. He made the case in a recent article for the Center for International Maritime Security titled “Why NATO needs a standing maritime group in the Arctic.”

    Russia has increased its commercial and naval presence in the Arctic, upgrading old bases and building new ones while strengthening its military capabilities in the region.

    China, meanwhile, has drilled for gas in the Kara Sea off of Russia’s northern coast, built icebreakers, asserted rights to fish in the Arctic, and is expanding tourism to the region. For at least five years, China has sailed cargo ships near Russia’s shores in what the Chinese Communist Party calls “the Polar Silk Road.”

    Russia is paying attention, whether the West is or not. Since 2019, Russia has required that any foreign naval vessel that sails the Northern Sea Route must notify Moscow at least 45 days in advance, provide details about the ship, the purpose of the voyage, the route it will take, and the name of the ship’s captain.

    If these rules are not followed, Russia can apply measures such as the apprehension and even destruction of the ship.

    The United States, Canada, Iceland, Norway, and Denmark (via Greenland) constitute the Arctic Five as NATO countries that already have Arctic maritime borders. Barnard believes these nations could conduct freedom-of-navigation operations in the Arctic to “consistently challenge excessive maritime claims,” just as the United States does regarding China in the South China Sea.

    The idea has its fans, including retired Colonel Ted Campbell. In a recent blog post, Campbell dreamed of Canada having three Arctic ocean bases, with a fleet of eight to fifteen nuclear-powered submarines plus a beefed-up Coast Guard and even a policing fleet for the RCMP.

    James Fergusson, deputy director of the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at the University of Manitoba, is more circumspect. He told The Epoch Times that a recession destroyed Canada’s Cold War ambitions for nuclear submarines, and that the pandemic will present similar challenges.

    “If they can hold the line to keep the future combat vessels on track as best as possible and actually continue to produce the offshore patrol vessels, the navy will be doing extremely well. But I wouldn’t put even money on that, because when these cuts come in—and they’re coming—hard choices are going to have to be made,” he said.

    NATO currently has four standing maritime groups: two with destroyers and frigates and two that do mine countermeasures. In Barnard’s view, these groups are already overtasked and aren’t tailored for Arctic operations. Would an Arctic standing group be possible?

    Fergusson says as it is, Canada can only commit one frigate to the NATO standing force in the Mediterranean and Black Sea. He believes that neither the Canadian navy nor our American allies would have much interest in Canada showing muscle in the Arctic.

    “Where are you going to base them and what are they going to do? And are they not going to be provocative for the Russians? It doesn’t strike me as a smart thing that Canada should be engaged in. I don’t know if it’s a smart thing that NATO should be engaged in,” he says.

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    Russian nuclear-powered icebreaker Arktika returns to Saint Petersburg on Dec. 14, 2019. (Olga Maltseva/AFP via Getty Images)

    Fergusson doesn’t think the Russian Arctic bases are cause for alarm and says a NATO standing group might create barriers to cooperation with the Russians on arctic search-and-rescue, research and development, and China’s activities.

    “Our potential concerns about Chinese behaviour and what they might do or not do in the Arctic are mirrored by and are actually common to Russian interests about what the Chinese might be doing up there. And that’s one of the bases for cooperation—not only between Canada and Russia but between the United States and Russia,” he says.

    Robert Huebert, a political science professor at the University of Calgary, points out that a standing force in the Arctic would help NATO allies learn to work together in that environment.

    “The Russians have been developing some fairly sophisticated submarine capabilities, and if there is in fact some flare-up you need to be able to counter that,” he says.

    However, Huebert believes an Arctic standing group would get “pushback from the Canadians” who fear a permanent NATO presence would undermine Canadian sovereignty instead of strengthening it. He says it’s better to expand operations of the NATO standing force further north.

    “If you already have the existing ability and you are clearly focused on meeting the increasing Russian militarization of the region, I think that that would probably be a much more politically and therefore militarily better move,” he says.

    The Chinese commercial presence in the Arctic will inevitably be followed by a military one, he adds.

    “I firmly expect that you’re going to start seeing some Chinese capabilities in the Arctic,” he says.

    “[China] has now emerged as the second strongest navy in the world. It is developing weapon systems that clearly are meant to challenge the Americans in the long term. They’re not focusing on a coastal or even a regional capability, but they are basically going for a global reach.”

    China spent less on defence than Canada did in the early 1990s. Today, Canada spends $25 billion annually, Russia spends $65 billion, China nearly $300 billion, and the United States more than $700 billion.

    “You combine what the Chinese are learning how to do from a cyber and a hybrid warfare perspective … and you combine that with its military build-up, and you start seeing that in a future regional conflict this starts giving China a very powerful ability to start to try to impose its will,” Huebert said.

  • UK Rates 'Worst' National COVID-19 Response, Vietnam Best
    UK Rates ‘Worst’ National COVID-19 Response, Vietnam Best

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/09/2020 – 01:00

    The extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic has affected countries varies vastly, connected in part to the respective government’s handling of the situation. As Statista’s Martin Armstrong shows below, these national responses can be worlds apart – both in terms of efficacy and as survey data from YouGov shows, the subsequent level of public approval, too.

    Infographic: The Best and Worst Rated National COVID-19 Responses | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    In the UK, where the government’s response has been heavily criticised, the net approval rating (calculated by subtracting ‘handling badly’ from ‘handling well’ responses) is the joint-lowest of all countries surveyed.

    Also with a rating of -15 is Mexico, where President López Obrador originally downplayed the severity of the pandemic and is now struggling to find the right balance between prioritizing public health and protecting the economy.

    At the other end of the scale, Vietnam has so far recorded just over 300 cases and zero deaths.

    In contrast to Mexico, Vietnam’s ‘overreaction’ to the crisis is thought to be the reason for the astonishing results achieved so far.

    To compare to the countries at the bottom of the ranking, Our World in Data figures have the number of deaths per million people for the UK and Mexico at 596.07 and 104.79, respectively.

    Countries included in the survey were: Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, UK, USA, Vietnam.

  • Weimar 2020
    Weimar 2020

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/09/2020 – 00:05

    Authored by Gilad Atzmon,

    Have you noticed the peculiar fact that despite the lockdown, the economic crisis, tens of millions unemployed and multiple corporations filing for bankruptcy, Wall Street is having a ball?

    CNBC‘s Jim Cramer examined this anomaly earlier a few days ago, his verdict:

     “we’re looking at a V-shaped recovery in the stock market, and that has almost nothing to do with a V-shaped recovery in the economy. What is going on is one of the greatest wealth transfers in history.”

    How can the market rebound when the economy has not?  Cramer’s answer is so simple.

    “Because the market doesn’t represent the economy; it represents the future of big business.”

    Cramer points out that while small businesses are dropping like flies, big business—along, of course, with bigger wealth, is coming through the crisis virtually unscathed.

    Cramer projects that the transfer will have a “horrible effect” on the USA. We are already seeing a tsunami of bankruptcies. The economic fallout is inevitable. Federal data shows that the nation faces a 13.3 percent unemployment rate. The fortunes of U.S. billionaires increased by $565 billion between March 18 and June 4 while the same 11-week period also saw 42.6 million Americans filing jobless claims. The results are devastating, if hardly a news item: while the American people are getting poorer, the rich are getting richer.

    One would have thought that the American Left and progressive political institutions would be the first to be alarmed by these developments. We tend to believe that tempering the rich and their greed, caring for working people and fighting for equal opportunities and justice in general are the Left’s prime concerns.

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    The American reality,  however, suggests the opposite. Instead of uniting us in a fierce battle against Wall Street and its broad daylight robbery of what is left of American wealth, the American Left is investing its last drops of  political energy in a ‘race war.’ Instead of committing to the Left’s key ideological values, namely: class struggle that unites us into one angry fist of resistance against this theft and discrimination, and without regard to our race, gender, or sexual orientation, the American Left makes us fight each other.

    The  silence of the Left on the current Wall Street “wealth transfers” is hardly an accident.  American Left and Progressive institutions are supported financially and by Wall Street and global financiers. This funding means that, in practice, the American Left  operates as a controlled opposition. It maintains its relevance by sustaining social and racial tensions that draw attention away from Wall Street and its crimes. The so called ‘Left’ is also reluctant to point at  Wall Street and its current theft,  as such criticism, however legitimate,  would immediately be censured as ‘antisemitic’ by the Jewish institutions that have appointed themselves to police Western public discourse.

    There is plenty of  history of such divisive politics from the Left and the way it often ends up betraying the Working Class. The collapse of the German Left in the early 1930s is probably the most interesting case-study of this. 

    Prior to the 1929 economic collapse, Germany’s fascist movement was a relatively marginal phenomenon consisting of various competing factions. In the 1928 elections the Nazi Party received 2.8 percent (810,000 votes) of the general vote. But then the 1929 crash led to a rapid and sharp rise in unemployment;  from 1.2 million in June 1929 to 6 million in January 1932. Amidst the crisis, production dropped 41.4 percent from 1929 to the end of 1931, resulting in skyrocketing poverty.  Like millions of Americans at the moment, in the early 1930s millions of Germans spent many days and nights in food queues.

    One would assume that the collapse of capitalism would have been politically celebrated by the German Communists and Marxists as the Germans lost hope in ‘bourgeois democracy’ and capitalism alike.  The German Communist Party (KPD), like the Nazi party,  increased its power exponentially following the economic meltdown. Yet the German Left missed its golden opportunity. Despite the poverty and the austerity measures, it was Hitler who eventually won the hearts and the souls of the German working class. By the September 1930 election Hitler had won 18.3 percent  and then in July 1932 37.4 percent. In just four years the Nazis increased their support by 13 million votes.

    A lot has been written about the failure of the German Left, both Marxists and Communists, to tackle Hitler and Fascism. Some Marxists are honest enough to admit that it was actually the KPD, its authoritarian and divisive politics that paved the way for Hitler and Nazism.

    Like Stalin, the German KPD was quick to employ the term  ‘fascist’ to describe any and all political opponents. In an act of gradual self-marginalisation, the German Left reduced itself into irrational political noise that finally lost touch with reality. The KPD were so removed from understating the political transition in Germany that on January 30, 1933, the day Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, the KPD foolishly declared: “After Hitler, we will take over!”

    Like the American radical  Left today, the KPD fought in street battles against the Nazis from 1929 to 1933.  These battles cost the lives of  hundreds of Nazis and KPD members. But in 1933 no political group paid as high a price in blood as the KPD. Nearly  a third of KPD members ended up in prison.  

    It is notable that one of the most concerning aspects of Left politics is the peculiar fact that agitators who claim to be inspired by ‘dialectics’ appear blind to their own ideological past. Consequently, they are detached from the present and totally removed from a concept of ‘future.’

    I have been saying for some time that Trump often makes the right decisions if always for the wrong reasons. For instance, he declared ‘a war’ on social media authoritarianism in the name of the 1st Amendment. Though this is clearly the right result, Trump is not motivated by any genuine concern for ‘freedom of speech’ or ‘human rights’ he is simply upset that his tweets are subject to ‘fact checks.’ The Left, peculiarly enough, tends to make the wrong decisions if usually for good reasons. Fighting racism is, no doubt, an important goal; Combating America’s police brutality or racial discrimination is a major crucial battle, however, fuelling a race conflict is the worst possible path toward eliminating both racism and discrimination. Such a tactic will only deepen the divide that already splits the American working class. I wonder whether this divide is exactly what the American Left is trying to achieve: is this possibly what it is paid to do?

    Today as American progressives and leftists  gear up for a long relentless battle, I have a little advice to offer. History teaches us that Fascism always wins when the conditions for a Marxist revolution are perfect. When you push for a race conflict and further fragmentation of the American society, bear in mind that you may end up facing a real Trump character (as opposed to Donald) that may be able to unite America and make it great for real, but you won’t find your place in it.   

  • Zoloft Shortage Strikes As Census Bureau Finds One Third Of Americans Now Show Signs Of Clinical Depression
    Zoloft Shortage Strikes As Census Bureau Finds One Third Of Americans Now Show Signs Of Clinical Depression

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/08/2020 – 23:45

    In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic crash, which triggered depression-like unemployment with 40 million initial claims filed in ten weeks, a third of Americans are now showing signs of clinical anxiety and depression, according to new data collected by the Census Bureau. This, by far, is the most comprehensive and troubling sign yet of the psychological toll inflicted on Americans due to months of lockdowns. 

    The Census Bureau contacted one million households between May 7 and 12, and about 42,000 responded, said The Washington Post. The survey was about 20 minutes long and buried deep within, several questions asked respondents about depression and anxiety. Those who answered provided a laggard but clearest snapshot into people’s mental state at the tail end of the lockdown, where many folks were subjected to isolationism, virus fears, and widespread unemployment. 

    When asked about mental health, 24% of respondents exhibited severe signs of depression, and 30% showed symptoms of anxiety. It was suggested that the mental health of Americans quickly deteriorated during lockdowns.

    It found New York, which was the epicenter of the virus outbreak of the world, ranked 12th nationwide in the number of respondents who felt depressed. More than half of the respondents from Mississippi felt depressed. By contrast, in Iowa, only 25% felt depressed. 

    The latest findings are a significant increase from a pre-corona world. The question of depression, concerning the percentage, has doubled since the 2014 survey. 

    Millennials, women, and poor people had the highest rates of depression and anxiety. “It’s been a problem many have been studying with no clear answers – whether it’s social media or the way this generation [millennials] was reared or just a greater willingness to talk about their problems,” Maria Oquendo, a professor psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, told The Post. 

    “What’s worrying is the effect this situation is clearly having on young adults,” Oquendo said.

    The psychological toll of lockdowns hit low-income folks much harder than the rich, exacerbating the already weakening mental health of the bottom 90% who were already experiencing extreme wealth inequalities. 

    The Food and Drug Administration recently reported that Zoloft, one of the most widely prescribed antidepressants, has fallen into short supply in the last several months. Demand has surged during lockdowns, due mostly because, as shown by the Census Bureau, Americans are experiencing an unprecedented mental health crisis. 

    Bloomberg noted Zoloft prescriptions jumped 12% YoY to 4.9 million in March, the most ever in the US. Prescriptions dropped to 4.5 million in April but still elevated. 

    Infographic: Mental Health Prescriptions Spike Amid Pandemic Fears | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    We recently noted an Express Scripts report showed antidepressant prescriptions soared between mid-February and March.  

    “Americans are turning to medications for relief, demonstrates the serious impact COVID-19 may be having on our nation’s mental health,” Express Scripts said in its “America’s State of Mind Report.”

    And last month we said:

    “The intense anxiety and fear that many people are feeling today could lead to social instabilities as the virus crisis and economic collapse continues to worsen.

    “Some of those instabilities could be a “suicide wave,” protests, violent crime, and a rise in drug overdoses.”

    At the start of lockdowns (in mid/late March), President Trump warned the psychological toll will have “tremendous repercussions. There will be tremendous death…probably more death from that than anything that we’re talking about with respect to the virus.”

  • Dr. Fauci: Hero, Liar, Or Sociopath?
    Dr. Fauci: Hero, Liar, Or Sociopath?

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/08/2020 – 23:25

    Via Monty Pelerin’s World blog,

    The media made Dr. Fauci a hero. Was it because of his superior medical knowledge or because his “wisdom” would harm Donald Trump and his re-election chances?

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    Dr. Fauci clearly has impressive credentials but so do many other medical experts. Those who disagreed with Fauci’s draconian recommendations used data to justify their doubts. Fauci used data also, but data that was fallacious, based on models designed to scare everyone. Even when these models were corrected (at least twice) and down to levels that were no longer out of line with previous virus outbreaks, Dr. Fauci did not change his recommendations.

    Science is based on hypotheses. A hypothesis can never be proven true, but it can be proven untrue. When that happens, that hypothesis is rejected and replaced with a new one which then becomes the target to measure data against. There was little evidence of Dr. Fauci changing recommendations even when the original hypotheses were dis-proven.

    I have no medical training. I do understand the methods of science which proceeds by positing hypotheses and then rejecting them if they are shown to be false.

    I believe I understand politics. When politics and science intersect, science is always compromised. My opinion, expressed earlier in Impeachment 2.0, suggested that politics had taken over science with regard to the coronavirus effort.

    My views of Dr. Fauci are certainly less than favorable. However, they are quite restrained when compared with others. John Nolte is particularly upset with Dr. Fauci:

    Is Fauci a fraud or liar?

    Was all his talk about concern for public health, his duty to tell it like it is no matter the personal or political fallout, just a big lie? Is he a fraud who still believes these mass gatherings are a nightmare scenario, but is unwilling to use his massive public platform to say so out loud because shaming protesters who hold the “approved” views among America’s hideous elite would risk Fauci feeling the disapproval of those elites?

    Or is he a liar, does he in fact know the coronavirus is nowhere near as deadly as he played it up to be? Is he a liar who misled us into agreeing to destroy our amazing economy in order to undermine the Bad Orange Man’s re-election?

    Either way, Fauci’s a sociopath. Either he’s a sociopath who furthered his political ambitions and abused his authority and public trust to talk hundreds of millions of Americans into shattering their own lives and mental wellbeing when there was no real danger, or he’s a sociopath who chooses the good opinion of elites over raising the alarm to save the lives of thousands and thousands of protesters, and the countless millions those thousands will infect.

    What kind of man raises the alarm about the fact the black population is disproportionately killed by this virus and then remains silent as the black population gathers en masse, and remains silent as his fellow healthcare workers openly encourage the mass gathering of black America?

    I’m almost as disgusted with myself for trusting Fauci as I am with him.

    Pretty strong words from Mr. Nolte who claims Dr. Fauci is a sociopath regardless of the truth. Perhaps that not be so. Perhaps he is merely a politician.

    Politics always corrupts. And those attracted to it are the easiest to corrupt.

  • 11 Cognitive Biases That Influence Political Outcomes
    11 Cognitive Biases That Influence Political Outcomes

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/08/2020 – 23:05

    With the 2020 U.S. presidential election fast approaching, many people will be glued to the 24-hour news cycle to stay up to date on political developments. Yet, as Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu details below, when searching for facts, our own cognitive biases often get in the way.

    If this isn’t problematic enough, third parties can also take advantage of these biases to influence our thinking. The media, for example, can exploit our tendency to assign stereotypes to others by only providing catchy, surface-level information. Once established in our minds, these generalizations can be tough to shake off.

    Such tactics can have a powerful influence on public opinion if applied consistently to a broad audience. To help us avoid these mental pitfalls, today’s infographic from PredictIt lists common cognitive biases that influence the realm of politics, beginning with the “Big Cs”.

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    The First C: Confirmation Bias

    People exhibit confirmation bias when they seek information that only affirms their pre-existing beliefs. This can cause them to become overly rigid in their political opinions, even when presented with conflicting ideas or evidence.

    When too many people fall victim to this bias, progress towards solving complex sociopolitical issues is thwarted. That’s because solving these issues in a bipartisan system requires cooperation from both sides of the spectrum.

    A reluctance towards establishing a common ground is already widespread in America. According to a 2019 survey, 70% of Democrats believed their party’s leaders should “stand up” to President Trump, even if less gets done in Washington. Conversely, 51% of Republicans believed that Trump should “stand up” to Democrats.

    In light of these developments, researchers have conducted studies to determine if the issue of confirmation bias is as prevalent as it seems. In one experiment, participants chose to either support or oppose a given sociopolitical issue. They were then presented with evidence that was conflicting, affirming, or a combination of both.

    In all scenarios, participants were most likely to stick with their initial decisions. Of those presented with conflicting evidence, just one in five changed their stance. Furthermore, participants who maintained their initial positions became even more confident in the superiority of their decision—a testament to how influential confirmation bias can be.

    The Second C: Coverage Bias

    Coverage bias, in the context of politics, is a form of media bias where certain politicians or topics are disproportionately covered. In some cases, media outlets can even twist stories to fit a certain narrative.

    For example, research from the University of South Florida analyzed media coverage on President Trump’s 2017 travel ban. It was discovered that primetime media hosts covered the ban through completely different perspectives.

    Each host varied drastically in tone, phrasing, and facts of emphasis, […] presenting each issue in a manner that aligns with a specific partisan agenda.

    – Josepher, Bryce (2017)

    Charting the ideological placement of each source’s audience can help us gain a better understanding of the coverage bias at work. In other words, where do people on the left, middle, and right get their news?

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    The horizontal axis in this graphic corresponds to the Ideological Consistency Scale, which is composed of 10 questions. For each question, respondents are assigned a “-1” for a liberal response, “+1” for a conservative response, or a “0” for other responses. A summation of these scores places a respondent into one of five categories:

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    Overcoming coverage bias—which dovetails into other biases like confirmation bias—may require us to follow a wider variety of sources, even those we may not initially agree with.

    The Third C: Concision Bias

    Concision bias is a type of bias where politicians or the media selectively focus on aspects of information that are easy to get across. In the process, more nuanced and delicate views get omitted from popular discourse.

    A common application of concision bias is the use of sound bites, which are short clips that can be taken out of a politician’s speech. When played in isolation, these clips may leave out important context for the audience.

    Without the proper context, multi-faceted issues can become extremely polarizing, and may be a reason for the growing partisan divide in America. In fact, there is less overlap in the political values of Republicans and Democrats than ever previously measured.

    In 1994, just 64% of Republicans were more conservative than the median Democrat. By 2017, that margin had grown considerably, to 95% of Republicans. The same trend can be found on the other end of the spectrum. Whereas 70% of Democrats were more liberal than the median Republican in 1994, this proportion increased to 97% by 2017.

    Overcoming Our Biases

    Achieving full self-awareness can be difficult, especially when new biases emerge in our constantly evolving world. So where do we begin?

    Simply remembering these mental pitfalls exist can be a great start—after all, we can’t fix what we don’t know. Individuals concerned about the upcoming presidential election may find it useful to focus their attention on the Big Cs, as these biases can play a significant role in shaping political beliefs. Maintaining an open mindset and diversifying the media sources we follow are two tactics that may act as a hedge.

  • Mike Krieger: "Resist The Crazy"
    Mike Krieger: “Resist The Crazy”

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/08/2020 – 22:45

    Authored by Michael Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

    Where’s evil? It’s that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It’s that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive – it’s that part of an imbecile that punishes and vilifies and makes war gladly.

    – Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

    As things felt like they were spiraling out of control last week, as Americans and people around the world were inundated with endless videos of street violence in addition to reactionary calls to deploy the U.S. military to cities across the country, the temptation to lose control of one’s mental faculties and basic humanity was heightened.

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    I saw evidence of this all around me. There was a dark and vicious energy in the air, and it felt contagious.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The responses to the tweet above were encouraging and demonstrated many others sensed the same thing and were likewise troubled by it. The overall madness of last week reminded me of the months following Donald Trump’s election. In both cases, the worldview of large numbers of people was shaken to its core. I think the root cause of the breakdown in both instances was that many people’s model of what is “normal” was suddenly shattered.

    For example, the idea of Donald Trump being elected president was so incomprehensible and concerning to so many people, they completely lost it when he won. Likewise, images of American cities burning amidst widespread looting caused another group to crack. Neither group had fully come to grips with how broken and corrupt the U.S. economy and society had become, and that these sorts of things happen when states begin to fail.

    The reaction to Trump being elected from many of those traumatized by it was to try to remove him at all costs, even if this meant spreading an outlandish Russiagate theory for three years straight. Likewise, the knee-jerk reaction from many to the riots was to send in the military to crush them. In both cases, those who had their comfort zones shattered responded by trying to make the uncomfortable situation go away as soon as possible. Nobody wanted to ask why.

    Why was Trump elected? People are angry. Why did cities erupt into civil disobedience? People are angry. Lots of people are angry, but why? We should probably try to honestly answer that question sooner rather than later. There are a lot of very good reasons to be angry.

    That being said, unless your life is in immediate danger, the best response to an event that shocks you to your core is to step back and take a deep breath.  You don’t have to like what’s happening, but you should consider what a productive or creative response to the situation might look like, as opposed to immediately resorting to an instant-gratification, emotionally charged, reptilian response. The response to a crisis is often worse than the crisis itself.

    Someone mentioned to me that he tells all his friends: “you must stand guard at the door of your mind.” Great advice in general, but particularly necessary during times like these. This is also partly what it means to be more conscious, a topic I’ve written about extensively in recent years (see my series on Spiral Dynamics)

    It’s never been more important for those who are somewhat conscious to remain that way, because just as consciousness can evolve, it can also devolve. Characteristic of an evolved consciousness is being able to acknowledge one’s own flaws and vulnerabilities. It means being aware of your more base instincts as a human, which means admitting that just as you have the capacity for love, compassion and generosity, you also have the capacity for hate, apathy and selfishness.

    Being honest about this and attempting to confront it is key to evolving one’s consciousness, but ego tends to get in the way. The ego has an image it needs to maintain and protect, which ends up acting as a severe roadblock on the path to sustainable self-improvement. It affects and stifles everyone to varying degrees.

    An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.

    “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

    The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

    The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

    It’s important to understand that virtually everyone considers themselves a good person. That person on the complete opposite side of the political spectrum whom you detest, thinks of themselves as a righteous warrior fighting for all that’s good and just. Everyone sees themselves in this sort of way to a greater or lesser degree, but not everyone can be right. So we divide ourselves into tribes that reinforce our views of how right and great we are, and how bad everyone else is. This prevents us from seeing where other people are coming from, and it prevents us from uniting on the really big issues that affect us all.

    Moreover, there are people who understand this about human nature and intentionally use it against us. A perfect summary of how this plays out every day via social media can be found in the following excerpt from a post recently published at The Prepared.

    You should also remember that the split-screen effect means media types can tell whatever story they want to tell. As in the Venezuela clip above, there are some outlets who focus on the peaceful and joyful parts of the present protests, and others who focus purely on the violence and chaos.

    All of this stuff—the beautiful and the ugly—is really happening and really matters, but you have to be extremely careful in using news reports to develop a sense of how much of what is happening where.

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    You need to be the guardian of your mind, and you need to recognize that people are constantly trying to push your consciousness into a fight or flight state where you’re malleable and easier to manipulate. There are times in life when fight or flight is appropriate to survive, but it’s not a healthy state of mind to resonate in over the course of an average day.

    You can contribute to the crazy, or you can contribute in some other way.  A new world is on the horizon, but we need to be careful about how we go about building it. What the world desperately needs right now is more conscious people. From that well, a brighter future can be born.

    *  *  *

    Liberty Blitzkrieg is an ad-free website. If you enjoyed this post and my work in general, visit the Support Page where you can donate and contribute to my efforts.

  • China Warns US: "Abandon Plans" For Nuke Testing Or Risk "Undermining Global Stability"
    China Warns US: “Abandon Plans” For Nuke Testing Or Risk “Undermining Global Stability”

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/08/2020 – 22:25

    Just over two weeks ago The Washington Post revealed that “the Trump administration has discussed whether to conduct the first US nuclear test explosion since 1992.”

    It was said to have been under serious discussion during a May 15 “deputies meeting” of senior national security officials at the White House – and though doesn’t appear to currently be something seriously pursued – the possibility remains “very much an ongoing conversation,” according to a senior admin official. 

    While all eyes were initially on Russia’s reaction, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has belatedly issued a response, warning Washington in a press briefing on Monday that it must abide by its international obligations and abandon any possible plans to carry out nuclear tests.

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    Nuclear missile on display at the Military Museum in Beijing, AFP/Getty.

    “We insist that the United States should strictly abide by its obligations to end nuclear testing… and we hope that it will listen to the international community,” ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said. “The US should abandon plans that could undermine global stability and strategic order,” she added.

    Emphasizing Beijing has repeatedly urged the US to honor its commitments, the top diplomat continued: “The US needs to contribute to international cooperation to ensure disarmament and the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”

    However, the administration is sure to shrug off these words and hit back, given it’s lately repeatedly accused China and Russia of ‘illegally’ conducting low-yield nuclear tests, which both countries have denied. In Beijing’s case it’s believed China’s military is able to conceal such provocative tests at an elaborate underground testing facility. 

    There hasn’t been an American nuclear test (that’s officially known about at least) since 1992, upon the end of the Cold War and collapse of the USSR in the year prior. But there are signs we could all soon witness a new provocative test given landmark weapons treaties with Moscow are fast being shed, also as Trump might entertain using nuke tests as powerful “leverage” for desired negotiations “for a better deal” – as he’s said in the past.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    All of this leaves the potential for a new global arms race centered on nukes, given at this point Beijing, Moscow, and Washington are already trading warnings to step back from the brink of nuclear testing.

    Meanwhile Beijing has shown itself resistant to Trump’s floating the idea of a new nuclear weapons pact involving China. He dumped the INF in part because it failed to take into a account developing Chinese missile technology and capabilities, according to admin officials.

  • What Is "Systemic Racism," Really?
    What Is “Systemic Racism,” Really?

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/08/2020 – 22:05

    Authored by Robert Merry via TheAmericanConservative.com,

    Sometimes big political developments arrive in the country like Sandburg’s fog, on little cat feet, silent and unnoticed until they envelop the nation. The emergence of Donald Trump four years ago is an example. Though a loud and clamorous candidate, he seemed to many like a kind of political clown destined for defeat. Establishment politicians believed almost to a person that the “blue wall” of Democratic electoral dominance would hold against this guy. The Midwest would stay solid, and Hillary Clinton would win the presidency. 

    But a silent fog was moving in. It was a growing sense among middle-class voters in heartland America that something was seriously wrong with the country, that the nation’s leaders were transforming America in bad ways and unraveling their future in the process. But there was no street protest or fiery rhetoric, no coalescence of civic activism or public demands. Certainly the mainstream media, so aligned with the country’s elites, didn’t detect anything of consequence bubbling up from within the polity. Why would they? Everything seemed fine to them. 

    Meanwhile, the disaffected merely bided their time, silently waiting for their opportunity to express themselves in the quiet sanctity of the voting booth.

    After they did, Donald Trump was the next president. Hardly anyone saw it coming. 

    Something similar is likely to happen in the wake of the widespread street demonstrations–with attendant riots, looting, destruction, and violence–that followed the awful death of George Floyd in Minneapolis at the hands of a brutal police officer who pressed his knee against Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes. That a black man could have his life snuffed out by a white cop in such a manner is just cause for a national outpouring of grief and soul-searching. Not surprisingly, public-opinion surveys showed widespread popular support for the peaceful demonstrations that were organized to honor the life and condemn the senseless death of George Floyd.

    But the polls also demonstrated widespread indignation toward the rioting and looting. Thus, the civic drama that followed Floyd’s death, including the sprees of destruction and increasingly aggressive rhetoric from the left, intensified some ongoing political tensions that lie at the heart of the country’s current distemper. It accentuated the extent to which America is becoming two nations with two narratives about the times we live in and the problems we face. 

    One narrative, call it the liberal one, has been projected with increasing force in recent years and particularly since George Floyd’s death. It is that America is an inherently racist country, infected with something called “systemic racism.” You can’t always see it; often it is hidden behind a facade of phony white benignity. But it lurks in the hearts of whites nonetheless and is activated in subtle ways to keep down minorities, particularly blacks, and make them feel inferior.

    This systemic civic virus, according to the narrative, is particularly problematic in police departments throughout the land, in which rampant racism poses serious dangers to blacks, particularly young black males. Much of the rhetoric that emanates from this narrative would have us believe that innocent blacks are killed in accumulating numbers across the country in a surge of uncontrolled law enforcement bigotry and brutality. 

    There’s a corollary to this narrative of systemic racism and ongoing violence against black Americans. It is that whites, based on the sins of their forebears and today’s lingering bigotry, need to be put in their place. In this regard, a certain abasement and humiliation is prescribed. This part of the narrative has become increasingly brazen in recent years.

    The other narrative, the conservative one, is largely defensive. In this view, there is no doubt that racism lingers in the body politic and must be addressed when it can be seen. Racial profiling by police also must be dealt with whenever and wherever it appears. But the country has made tremendous progress since the Civil Rights era of the 1960s in addressing overt racism, eliminating barriers to equal opportunity, and recognizing the racial sensibilities of minorities. The problem with the allegation of systemic racism is that it is too vague to be discerned clearly and hence can’t really be  effectively addressed even if it exists, which many dispute. 

    As for police racism leading to the killing of blacks in telling numbers, the statistics simply don’t bear that out. Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute notes that, based on a Washington Post database, police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks in 2019 (and 19 unarmed whites). Based on the numbers of black homicide victims generally (7,407 in 2018), Mac Donald calculates that the fatal shooting of unarmed blacks represents about 0.1 percent of all African-Americans killed in 2019. She bolsters her position by citing studies by the National Academy of Sciences, a Justice Department survey of Philadelphia police practices, and research by a Harvard economist. The Academy of Sciences study found “no significant evidence of antiblack disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by police.” 

    In the wake of the Floyd killing, the liberal narrative soon dominated the country’s political discourse. It is seen everywhere–in most of the mainstream media, in stark expressions from agitated civic groups, in the ravings of the celebrity culture, in mass street demonstrations, and, yes, even in the rioting and looting that destroyed businesses, livelihoods, and neighborhoods. 

    The rhetoric of the liberal narrative these days is delivered vociferously, with defiance and a forcefulness that brooks no dissent or even passivity. Consider the experience of Drew Brees, the heralded quarterback for the New Orleans Saints, who responded to a question about whether the George Floyd fallout would include a revival of NFL players protesting racial injustice by taking a knee during the playing of the National Anthem before games. He would not participate in such a protest, said Brees, because “I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America or our country.” He followed that with a plainly heartfelt and eloquent expression of  patriotism, harking back to the memory of his war-veteran grandfathers and the courage of Civil Rights activists who struggled to improve the nation. 

    The result: an explosion of opprobrium, vicious attacks, and mean-spirited vitriol. An telling example was a Washington Post piece by a black sports columnist for the paper named Jerry Brewer. First he praised Brees as “among the most exceptional human beings in sports,” a man who “epitomizes the character, benevolence and grace that people seek in a sports role model.” But just because he’s a good guy and exemplary human being, snarled Brewer, that doesn’t mean he should get away with distancing himself from the Colin Kaepernick brand of protest. 

    Brees, wrote Brewer, showed himself to be a “misguided, insensitive dolt….a sometimes ignorant, lazy thinker in desperate need of a broadened perspective.”  It was journalistic thought control in action, and it worked. Brees abjectly apologized–twice–for his transgression against humanity. 

    Jerry Brewer was serving as enforcer for the proposition that the liberal narrative is sacrosanct, and you can’t say or do anything that calls it into question in any way. You see the same motivation behind the recent fate of the University of Washington women’s basketball coach, Jody Wynn. In response to George Floyd’s death, she issued a sincere statement of concern that read in part that “we must stand with our Black Amerians & seek justice! Black, brown, yellow…ALL lives matter.”

    Oops. You can’t say that! Systemic racism in action. We’re talking about black lives here, and to confuse that with expressions of concern about other racial groups is absolutely unacceptable. Her Twitter account was deactivated, according to the Seattle Times, and Wynn quickly issued a replacement statement saying she was talking only about black lives. “I would like to sincerely apologize,” she wrote in a gesture of self-abasement, adding that she understood that her words were “hurtful to people of color….I’ve learned a hard and important lesson in this moment and am committed to educating myself…on how we can best create change.” She vowed to be part of change that is aimed at ending racism. 

    But it isn’t enough for those of the liberal narrative to bully and humiliate genuine heroic figures like Drew Brees into recanting their expressions of genuine patriotism. They also refuse to condemn the riots and looting that unfolded on the nation’s television screens, as local police officials hovered out of the way. Why? Because, it seems clear, they want to preserve the narrative that animates the left and gives it propulsion in the fiery discourse of American politics.  

    The underlying essence of the narrative is an increasingly brutal and incendiary polemical assault on a demographic segment of the nation–white people. They are guilty, it is said with increasing aggressiveness, for the sins of their forebears, for the racism of the past. And they must confess their guilt and seek absolution through self-abasement. 

    This was captured in stark reality in a video segment aired on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program the other day. A young white woman on the street during the New York protests is approached by a man who identifies himself as working for Black Lives Matter. “Since I work for that company,” says the man (who is white), “my CEO has told me to come out today and bring you on your knees because you have white privilege. So if they see that a white person is getting on their knees, that shows solidarity for the situation.”

    She slowly, without saying anything, gets down on her knees on the sidewalk. 

    “And could you just please apologize,” says the guy, “for, you know, your white privilege?”

    She doesn’t seem to know what to say.

    “Just apologize?” he persists, ever so politely. 

    “I am,” she says. “I’m trying to think of the words to thank you.”

    No doubt many within the nation’s elites would view that scene as touching, perhaps even inspiring–a young white woman getting to her knees and apologizing for….what exactly? Certainly not anything she did, as far as we know. No, she was placed into humiliation because of her race, and she accepted it, apparently, as a normal consequence of her heritage.

    But a lot of Americans aren’t going to view it that way. They will see it as a racial assault and a huge power grab. The cry of “systemic racism” constitutes a threat to white people. We all know that racism is the country’s most potent social taboo. Even innocent slips of the tongue or benign observations can bring severe opprobrium, societal and professional sanctions, ostracism. Thus does the allegation constitute a serious threat to millions of Americans. And it constitutes also great political leverage for those tossing around the allegation. 

    But, if America is infected with systemic racism, who are the systemic racists? Certainly not, in the view of those pushing the liberal narrative, themselves. Not the cable news liberals who toss out the allegation with abandon. Not the mandarins of Hollywood who spout out about it constantly. Not the think tank mavens with their phony studies and charts. Not the Democratic establishment persistently leveraging identity politics. Not the professional celebs whose household recognition qualify them, in their view, as authority figures. Not those in the top level of the meritocratic elite living their pristine lives in gated communities. And certainly not the nation’s minorities, spoon-fed the liberal narrative day by day. 

    Who’s left? Middle-class and working-class whites, already beleaguered economically by the hollowing out of the nation’s industrial base and struggling to survive in the new service and high-tech environment. And now they have to worry about becoming the next Exhibit A in the elites’ persistent search for evidence of systemic racism. Deplorables again.  

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    This is scary stuff to people who just want to live their lives without feeling vulnerable to being singled out as specimens of systemic racism and called to account for slipping into some hazardous lapse such as thinking that all lives matter or any other innocuous racial observation that never would have raised eyebrows among whites or blacks just a few years ago. 

    When the political reaction comes, as it inevitably will, it will come on little cat feet. And the nation’s elites, secure in the thought that the systemic racism charge has worked brilliantly in intimidating any lingering dissenters into submission, won’t see it coming. 

    It’s an open question whether this can help Donald Trump in November. His is a failed presidency, and the collective electorate seldom rewards failed presidencies with retention in office.

    But down the road, as the issue intensifies and as white Americans feel increasingly beleaguered by the left’s identity politics and disdain for Middle America, as more demonstrations and riots ensue with more destructive force, a counter-movement will emerge.

    It likely will approach the body politic as quietly as Sandberg’s fog. But, once it arrives, it won’t stay quiet for long.   

  • Black Gun Ownership Soars As Nation's Inner Cities Burn 
    Black Gun Ownership Soars As Nation’s Inner Cities Burn 

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/08/2020 – 21:45

    As radical leftists attempt to create a utopian “police-free future” society and defund law enforcement across the country, terrified African Americans interested in buying guns have soared in the age of social unrest. 

    The conversation about gun ownership among black folks emerged in early May when five armed men escorted African American State Representative Sarah Anthony from the Michigan State Capitol building following armed pro-Trump protesters gathered in the area for anti-quarantine demonstrations. 

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    Sarah Anthony escorted with armed guards 

    In fact, in the age of President Trump, firearm retailers across the nation have reported a rise in the number of African Americans interested in purchasing guns. As of recent, especially with social unrest across many inner cities, and now, radical leftists are attempting to defund and disband police forces, gun ownership among blacks is quickly gaining popularity, which could prove disastrous for anti-gun Democrats come election season. 

    The National African American Gun Association (NAAGA) has also reported an “explosion in the number of black gun owners nationwide,” said The Daily Beast. 

    NAAGA started with one chapter in Atlanta in 2015 and now has over 100 chapters nationwide and 40,000 gun-toting members. The group said more than 10,000 of the members joined this year alone. 

    Philip Smith, the president and founder of NAAGA, has been shocked by all the new growth in members. 

    “Today, we’re getting so many different types of folks,” Smith told The Daily Beast. “Doctors, engineers, unemployed state workers, federal workers, policemen, military. We even have white, Latino, and Asian members. You can be gay, straight, loud, quiet, dorky, rich, or poor.” 

    In early March, Asian-Americans were panic hoarding weapons and ammo in California as many feared the pandemic would trigger social unrest. 

    Rik Stevenson, founder of the NAAGA chapter in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and now a Gainesville, Florida resident and teacher at the University of Florida, said, “black people are seeing that they are targets,” which is one of the main reasons the group has gained so much popularity, as of recent.  

    Stevenson said he never expected to be a gun owner, but now he’s packing a “Glock 23.”

    Mel Atkins, a firearms instructor and deputy for the Kent County Sheriff’s Department in Michigan, said expanding the gun culture to his community has been transformative. Atkins owns 30 guns and considers himself the lone black guy with guns in Michigan. 

    “Black people still aren’t very social about their firearms,” Atkins told The Daily Beast. “Our state (Michigan) allows me to walk around with a firearm on my hip or strung across my shoulder as long as it’s visible to everybody. Black people never do that. Only damn fools and maybe some Republicans ever do that. And black gun owners are very quiet about it, because historically a black gun owner could get in trouble for it. There’s that stigma attached to it, that I’m going to get hassled by law enforcement for the mere possession of a firearm.” 

    Black folks interested in purchasing guns before this year’s chaos was a well-defined trend. But now, more than ever, these folks are arming themselves as they see their communities, already devastated from decades of wealth inequality, on the brink of even more disaster as social unrest, the disintegration of law and order, and high unemployed could result in a turbulent period where a firearm is a necessity for survival. 

    Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot told people Sunday to avoid using weapons in self-defense and call the police…  

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Folks in inner cities see the writing on the wall. Their politicians, mainly anti-law liberals, are pushing hard to collapse America’s police forces, which would transform communities into lawless warzones where gang warfare would dominate the streets (already happening in Baltimore City and Chicago). The push for guns by black residents is the result of America’s inner cities imploding. It’s going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. 

  • CEOs Bank Big Bonuses As Oil Companies Go Bankrupt
    CEOs Bank Big Bonuses As Oil Companies Go Bankrupt

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/08/2020 – 21:25

    Authored by Alex Kimani via OilPrice.com,

    When public oil and gas companies are doing relatively well, many are happy to adopt a pay-for-performance model to reward CEOs and executives.

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    However, the tables are quickly turned when things go to the dogs. When these companies go bankrupt, the misery is shared by employees who lose their jobs; retirees see their benefits and pensions go up in smoke, while shareholders and bondholders get wiped out. In sharp contrast, it’s very common for blue-chip executives who have run their companies to the ground to receive multi-million dollar golden sendoffs. Indeed, top executives of oil and gas companies going through Chapter 11 frequently receive very fat payouts in the form of cash bonuses, stock grants, and other benefits that often exceed payments during the good times.

    It’s not any different this time around. 

    At a time when hundreds of thousands of employees in the U.S. shale industry have lost their jobs, Bloomberg has reported that some 35 executives at Whiting Petroleum Inc.(NYSE:WLL), Chesapeake Energy Corp.(NYSE:CHK) and Diamond Offshore Drilling Inc.(OTCMKTS: DOFSQ) are set to receive nearly $50 million after their companies declared bankruptcy or are on the verge of doing so.

    Rewarding Failure

    It’s the manner in which these head honchos continue to award themselves fat bonuses despite federal legislation to crack down on the practice that really grates.

    The board at Whiting, an oil and gas producer that filed for Chapter 11 in April, approved a $6.4M bonus for CEO Brad Holly just days before the company went under, exceeding his previous annual compensation package by nearly a million dollars.

    In May, California Resources Corp. (NYSE:CRC) warned investors about “…a substantial doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern…” but still went ahead and guaranteed company executives their 2020 bonuses.

    So, what’s the justification for this egregious, bizarre, and perverse practice? 

    According to Kelly Mitchell, an analyst at corporate watchdog group Documented, companies do it so as to incentivize these executives to stick around because they understand the company better and, ostensibly, have better odds of pulling them through. Never mind the fact that their decisions are very often to blame for the company’s sad situation in the first place. They also do it in a bid to cut costs and maximize value for creditors using tools such as tax credits or untapped resources.

    No Accountability

    You could argue that this practice is not unique to the energy industry and is, in fact, common in corporate America–and you would be right. 

    Last year, former Equifax CEO Richard Smith, walked away with a very generous ~$19.6 million in stock bonuses, $24-million pension and $50,000 in tax and financial planning services after the credit agency suffered one of the worst data breaches in the history of the U.S. Interestingly, none of Smith’s compensation was docked under the company’s clawback provision meant to hold top executives accountable for their actions or inactions, which was negligence in this case. 

    In 2014, American retailing giant, Target Corp., paid ex-CEO Steinhafel more than $30 million after he handed in his resignation following another massive hacking attack that saw millions of customers’ personal records stolen.

    You can also rationalize that energy executives are not individually responsible for the oil price collapse that has adversely impacted their companies (though they share collective responsibility for the overproduction that triggered the collapse).

    But whichever way you slice it, it’s clear that oil and gas companies go too far with their bonus payments to executives. Over the past decade, the leaders of 15 large E&P companies collected more than US$2 billion in aggregate compensation despite their companies posting total returns of -15% compared to a 150% gain by the S&P 500 Index over the timeframe.

    It’s hard to justify the hefty rewards being awarded to executives of fallen energy companies. In the case of Equifax and Target, their respective stocks did suffer big selloffs after the hacks but quickly recovered and have actually outperformed their peers by quite a wide margin since the events. In contrast, WLL shares are down 89% in the year-to-date; CRC has lost 83.5%, CHK has returned -91.5% while DOFSQ is down 95% YTD, much worse compared to the sector benchmark, XLE, which is down a more modest 30.5% YTD. Bloomberg has reported that energy companies use their peers, not the broad market, as the benchmark, and executives of companies that perform less badly than others tend to be rewarded–bankruptcy is the ultimate underperformance, meaning these guys should not be getting such huge bonuses.

    Energy companies need to have some level of accountability for their executives when things go awry. They have a willing accomplice, though. According to Patrick Hughes, judges tend to sign off on these fat payouts more often than not despite laws introduced in 2005 to limit their size.

  • Satellite Data, Internet Searches Suggest COVID-19 Hit China 'Long Before' Previously Known: Harvard
    Satellite Data, Internet Searches Suggest COVID-19 Hit China ‘Long Before’ Previously Known: Harvard

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/08/2020 – 21:05

    Significant spikes in hospital traffic and Baidu internet searches for terms related to COVID-19 suggest that the virus hit Wuhan, China “beginning in late Summer and early Fall 2019,” according to a new study by Harvard Medical School. 

    Commercial satellite imagery reveal “a dramatic increase in hospital traffic outside five major Wuhan hospitals beginning late summer and early fall 2019,” according to Harvard’s Dr. John Brownstein who led the research, adding that the increase in traffic “coincided with” increased queries on Chinese search engine Baidu for “certain symptoms that would later be determined as closely associated with the novel coronavirus.”

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    According to ABC News, Brownstein says that the study provides an important new data point regarding the origins of COVID-19.

    Brownstein and his team, which included researchers from Boston University and Boston Children’s Hospital, have spent more than a month trying to pin down the signs for when the population of Hubei province in China first started to be stricken.

    The logic of Brownstein’s research project was straightforward: respiratory diseases lead to very specific types of behavior in communities where they’re spreading. So, pictures that show those patterns of behavior could help explain what was happening even if the people who were sickened did not realize the broader problem at the time. –ABC News

    “Something was happening in October,” said Brownstein, chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and the director of the medical center’s Computational Epidemiology Lab. “Clearly, there was some level of social disruption taking place well before what was previously identified as the start of the novel coronavirus pandemic.”

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    “What we’re trying to do is look at the activity, how busy a hospital is,” Brownstein added. “And the way we do that is by counting the cars that are at that hospital. Parking lots will get full as a hospital gets busy. So more cars in a hospital, the hospital’s busier, likely because something’s happening in the community, an infection is growing and people have to see a doctor. So you see the increases in the hospital business through the cars… We saw this across multiple institutions.”

    Other hospitals showed up to a 90% increase when comparing traffic between fall of 2018 and 2019, according to the study. At Wuhan Tongji Medical University, the spike in car traffic was found to have occurred in mid-September 2019.

    To ensure they were not reaching faulty conclusions, researchers said they took into account everything that could explain away traffic surges — from large public gatherings to the possibility of new construction at the hospitals. Still, they said they found statistically significant increases in the numbers of cars present. –ABC News

    “If you look at all of the images, observations we’ve ever had of all of these locations since 2018, almost all of the highest car counts are all in the September through December 2019 time frame,” said RS Metrics CEO Tom Diamond, who worked with Brownstein’s team.

    Of note, Chinese officials in Wuhan only confirmed cases of pneumonia of ‘unknown cause’ on December 31, however US intelligence officials knew about it as early as late November and notified the Pentagon, according to the report, citing four sources briefed on the confidential information.

    Since emerging from Wuhan, COVID-19 has officially infected over 7 million people worldwide and killed over 400,000 according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker.

    Brownstein says that the traffic figures – while not conclusive, are telling.

    “This is all about a growing body of information pointing to something taking place in Wuhan at the time,” he said. “Many studies are still needed to fully uncover what took place and for people to really learn about how these disease outbreaks unfold and emerge in populations. So this is just another point of evidence.”

    Internet searches in the Wuhan region, meanwhile, surged for terms such as “cough” and “diarrhea.”

    “While queries of the respiratory symptom ‘cough’ show seasonal fluctuations coinciding with yearly influenza seasons, ‘diarrhea’ is a more COVID-19-specific symptom and only shows an association with the current epidemic,” according to the study. “The increase of both signals precede the documented start of the COVID-19 pandemic in December.”

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    The ABC News report then quotes Peter Daszak – president of EcoHealth Alliance in Mahnattan – which notably had its funding pulled by the NIH when it was revealed that they were providing US funds for bat coronavirus research in Wuhan.

    Daszak called the Harvard study “absolutely fascinating,” adding “You need to look at every possible bit of evidence, where it came from and when it emerged.”

    “When we do analysis after outbreaks, we find that the diseases had been in circulation days, weeks, months, years before. I really believe that’s what we’re going to find with COVID-19.”

    Spoken like a guy with a vested interest in the ‘natural origin’ theory that coronavirus emerged from an animal intermediary – and not the lab his organization was funding.

    “We’ve done previous studies where we could show that what people search for online is an indicator of disease in the population,” Brownstein said. “And we actually saw people searching for symptoms that might be related to COVID: diarrheal disease, cough. That was even starting as early as late summer.

    “Now, we can’t confirm 100% what the virus was that was causing this illness and what was causing this business in hospitals,” Brownstein said. “But something was going on that looked very different than any other time that we had looked at.”

    Read the rest of the report here.

  • The Week America Lost Its Way
    The Week America Lost Its Way

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/08/2020 – 20:45

    Authored by Frank Miele via RealClearPolitics.com,

    “What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?”

    The line is from William Golding’s classic novel “Lord of the Flies,” but it might as well be emblazoned on the forehead of every American after last week — just as it universally must be asked of every person who is tasked with choosing between order and chaos.

    The policeman who put his knee on George Floyd’s throat failed the test for humanity. His haughty disregard for Floyd’s precious life was more akin to the instinctive calm of an apex predator than to a civilized human being. It is no wonder that he provoked an angry response from not only the black community in Minneapolis but from the entire country, yet when protest morphed into riot it behooved everyone to ask of themselves — not of someone else — “What are we?”

    Instead, many were asking a different question: “Who can we blame?”

    Behind their convenient COVID-19 masks, people were able to disguise their shame and unloose their inner demons.

    The parallels to “Lord of the Flies” were obvious as I watched America’s cities reenact the paranoia and tribalism that infected the novel’s disparate group of British school boys who found themselves stranded without parental supervision on an island following a plane crash. Their initial attempts to establish order eventually gave way to score-settling and a realization that power is not necessarily a function of righteousness.

    “The world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping away.”

    That’s what happened in America last week when mob violence replaced police as the standard of authority.

    When you saw white people taking a knee to prostrate themselves before looters and to renounce their “white privilege,” you also saw parallels to Mao’s Cultural Revolution and Hitler’s Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass.

    The Cultural Revolution began with an attack on the old order, the old “privilege” represented by shop owners and college professors. To avoid the mob’s rage, the victims were forced to humiliate themselves publicly and to utter self-denunciations, to confess their “crimes” against the mob’s ideology. But there was no escaping the demented wrath of the self-anointed protectors of virtue. Eventually millions of those intellectuals and entrepreneurs were put to death — sometimes buried up to their necks so that they could continue to abase themselves until their final breath.

    Kristallnacht is the name given to a pogrom carried out against Jewish shops, homes, cemeteries and synagogues in November 1938 by Nazi paramilitaries known as Brownshirts. They were an exact parallel of the black-garbed stormtroopers that ravaged neighborhoods in dozens of U.S. cities the last 10 days or so. Don’t let the name Antifa fool you. These “anti-fascists” have adopted the tactics of the fascists as their own (and even the uniform of the Italian Blackshirts).

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    Just as Kristallnacht was intended to send a message to Jews, so too were the riots last week intended to send a signal to law-abiding whites. The words that journalist Hugh Greene wrote about Kristallnacht in 1938 could just as easily have been written today about the riots that followed the murder of George Floyd:

    “Mob law ruled … throughout this afternoon and evening, and hordes of hooligans indulged in an orgy of destruction. … Racial hatred and hysteria seemed to have taken complete hold of otherwise decent people.”

    You could make the case that the riots last week represented only a fraction of Americans, whether black or white, and that we should not ascribe too much importance to them. But that was true also in Nazi Germany and Mao’s China. The actual revolutionaries and radicals carrying out the acts of domestic terrorism are always few, but if they are not condemned forcefully and convincingly, then they are emboldened to strike again and again.

    So-called “good” Germans celebrated the lawless attacks on Jewish citizens in 1938, giving tacit permission for the death camps that would kill millions. Many in the power structure of the United States are likewise giving a green light to current and future violence by sanctioning riots as “protests” and by excusing looting and murder as a reasonable response to Floyd’s death.

    Tucker Carlson, who has become a modern-day Cassandra, warned us that “[w]hat we are watching is not a political protest; it is the opposite of a political protest. It is an attack on the idea of politics. The rioters you have seen are trying to topple our political system. That system is how we resolve our differences without using violence. But these people want a new system, one that is governed by force: Do what we say or we will hurt you!”

    The rioting wasn’t about race or justice; it was about power. You saw people beat a woman in Rochester, N.Y., with a two-by-four; smash in the head of a man seeking to defend his store in Dallas; kill a retired 77-year-old policeman in St. Louis who was protecting a friend’s pawnshop; burn and destroy thousands of stores; and loot everything from Rolex watches to automobiles as if they were the Visigoths sacking Rome.

    When such wanton destruction is occurring, normal people have no choice against overwhelming force. If there is no army or police force to protect them, they will either die or surrender and hope that obsequious fawning will buy them — or at least their families — safety. Perhaps that survival instinct is what has led our governing class to kowtow to the looters. The Democratic Party of Fairfax, Virginia, tweeted, “Riots are an integral part of this country’s march toward progress.” Hillary Clinton’s former spokesperson Brian Fallon sent a message to “Defund the police” – as if a nation without police could be anything but a barbaric lawless mess.

    If you want more dead George Floyds, take away the police and the justice system and you will have thousands of them, ultimately millions. The point that the rioters and their enablers miss is that when police become criminals, there is a way to hold them accountable, but when criminals become police, they are a law unto themselves, with no court of appeal and no hope for justice.

    Who knows what will happen to people in American cities going forward if they don’t denounce their so-called white privilege and bend a knee to those who have power and are willing to use it? A few boys on the island of “Lord of the Flies” resisted the tyranny of the mob and tried to maintain order by an appeal to reason. One boy, Ralph, had been elected as the group’s leader because he seemed to symbolize decency, kindness and honor. But slowly he was displaced by boys who valued action over honor, power over principle:

    “The rules!” shouted Ralph, “you’re breaking the rules!”

    “Who cares?” came the response from the children.

    If that is the same response we accept from our mayors, our governors, our generals, and our media elites, then we have not only lost our honor; we have lost our country.

  • Prince Andrew Claims He's Offered To Cooperate Three Times; DOJ Says He's "Unequivocally" Refused
    Prince Andrew Claims He’s Offered To Cooperate Three Times; DOJ Says He’s “Unequivocally” Refused

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/08/2020 – 20:27

    Lawyers for Prince Andrew refuted claims that he has been uncooperative with US prosecutors investigating Jeffrey Epstein accomplices, claiming in a Monday statement that the prince has offered to help the US Department of Justice three times this year, according to Reuters.

    “Unfortunately, the DOJ has reacted to the first two offers by breaching their own confidentiality rules and claiming that the Duke has offered zero cooperation,” said Andrews’s lawyers, Blackfords. “In doing so, they are perhaps seeking publicity rather than accepting the assistance proffered.” The lawyers claim the DOJ only requested Andrew’s help on January 2nd, and that he has never been a target of their investigation (just like Comey told Trump?).

    Federal prosecutors hit back later Monday, with US Attorney Geoffrey Berman saying that Andrew has “unequivocally” refused to be interviewed as part of their investigation into Epstein’s sex crimes.

    *  *  *

    The Justice Department has made a formal request that the British government hand over Prince Andrew for questioning over his relationship with deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, according to The Sun and confirmed by ABC News.

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    The request, made on behalf of prosecutors for the Southern District of New York would force the 60-year-old Andrew to help prosecutors investigate Epstein’s accomplices – despite his previous empty offer to cooperate. The DOJ filed for “mutual legal assistance” (MLA) directly with Britain’s Home Office, bypassing Buckingham Palace.

    As The Sun notes, MLA requests are only used in criminal cases under a legal treaty with the UK, which if granted would formally request Andrew’s attendance at the London City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court for oral or written evidence under oath while DOJ lawyers question him. If he refuses, the Duke could be forced to attend by summons. That said, the evidence session could be held privately “in camera” without the public or press present.

    And unlike the Queen Andrew does not enjoy sovereign immunity from prosecution. He could, however, “plead the Fifth” to avoid self-incrimination according to the report.

    Last month former federal prosecutor Evan T Barr told Law.com “While the Prince would retain the right to decline to testify under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the impact on his already diminished reputation would be considerable and an adverse inference could be drawn against him in the related civil litigations, leading to a possible default judgment.”

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    Until now, it was thought that Andrew would at most have to answer to Epstein’s victims in US civil courts – not the US government.

    Accuser attorney Lisa Bloom said Andrew had been an “enabler” of Epstein’s crimes. He has been accused of having sex with Virginia Roberts Giuffre in 2001, when she was 17 – however the Prince has claimed in an interview that he was at a Pizza restaurant in Woking during one of the alleged encounters.

    Alleged victim Virgina Roberts Giuffre says she was trafficked by Epstein to have sex with Andrew in London in 2001.

    She described Andrew as “sweating profusely” at Tramp nightclub before having sex at Ghislaine’s Mayfair flat.

    Andrew later told Newsnight a “peculiar medical condition” meant he did not sweat.

    And he insisted he did not go clubbing, claiming he remembered because he had been at Woking Pizza Express earlier that day. –The Sun

    Was this the night he Andrew claims he was indulging in Pizza?

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    According to The Sun, the request – which has yet to be addressed by British officials – is likely to cause a diplomatic row with the US.

    “It’s a huge statement of intent from the US and it moves Andrew into the realms of a criminal investigation,” said one source, adding “It’s also frankly a diplomatic nightmare.“

    Andrew admitted to being friends with Epstein since 1999 following an introduction through socialite and Epstein’s so-called ‘madam’ Ghislaine Maxwell. Epstein and Andrew got together on at least ten occasions – with the Duke staying at the pedophile’s New York mansion, his Palm Beach home and his private ‘pedo’ island in the US Virgin Islands.

  • 'Work-From-Home'-Epidemic Set To Bankrupt Suit-Sellers, "I Guarantee It"
    ‘Work-From-Home’-Epidemic Set To Bankrupt Suit-Sellers, “I Guarantee It”

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/08/2020 – 20:25

    It appears the days of “liking the way you look” are over as the forced work-from-home lockdowns mean the average working man in America is now only visible from the shoulder up on his Zoom calls.

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    This new normal of (in)formal meetings seems to have been the last nail in the coffin of America’s most iconic menswear retailers as Men’s Wearhouse and Brooks Brothers are reportedly preparing for bankruptcy.

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    NJ.com reports that the 202 year-old clothing retailer Brooks Brothers is in talks with banks about raising financing for a potential Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report by CNBC.

    Brooks Brothers Chief Executive Claudio Del Vecchio, told The New York Times this week that while he was not “eager” to consider a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, he would not rule it out. 

    The bankruptcy filing could come as soon as July, the report said.

    Brooks Brothers has more than 250 stores in North America and 500 worldwide.

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    And Bloomberg has just reported, Tailored Brands Inc., the owner of Men’s Wearhouse and Jos. A. Bank, is considering a potential bankruptcy after the coronavirus lockdown kept America’s office workers at home, putting a damper on demand for new suits.

    The retailer and its advisers have started reaching out to interested parties about reworking its debts of more than $1 billion, Bloomberg reports according to people with knowledge of the matter.

    The filings, should they occur, follow other retailers who sell men’s workwear (JCPenney, Neiman Marcus, and J.Crew) who have all filed for bankruptcy during the pandemic.

    Of course, given the utter farce we have seen in the stock of bankrupt HTZ and CHK, it’s probably time to buy TLRD stock with both hands and feet…

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    No, that is not a suggestion, because if it files, it’s a ZERO, “I guarantee it!”

  • WHO Says Asymptomatic COVID-19 Carriers Not Very Infectious As Global Total Tops 7 Million: Live Updates
    WHO Says Asymptomatic COVID-19 Carriers Not Very Infectious As Global Total Tops 7 Million: Live Updates

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/08/2020 – 20:05

    Summary:

    • WHO says asymptomatic carriers actually not that infectious
    • Cali reports statewide decline in cases while LA County cases near 64k
    • NY State reports 0.2% jump in new cases as NYC reopens
    • Cuomo says central NY region ready to enter ‘Phase 2’
    • India reports another record jump in new cases with ~10k
    • Pakistan hospitals running out of beds as cases pass 100k
    • Cuomo holds briefing at 1130amET
    • Florida reports slowdown following last week’s spike in new cases
    • NYC enters ‘Phase 1’ reopening
    • New Zealand declared ‘coronavirus free’ by PM
    • Global coronavirus infections passes 7mil; US outbreak nears 2 mil

    * * *

    Update (1436ET): Following a report in today’s WSJ noting new data showing SARS-CoV-2 spreads more quickly in sparsely populated areas where homes are more crowded (perhaps because more extended family members live together) than densely populated but affluent areas like Manhattan and North Brooklyn, the World Health Organization has just announced another epic flip flop.

    In an announcement that highlights once again how little scientists understand about the new coronavirus (as the NYT’s Nick Kristoff once noted, viruses are “full of puzzles”), the WHO announced that asymptomatic carriers of the virus apparently don’t infect nearly as many others as we once thought.

    Early evidence indicated that the virus could spread via person-to-person contact, even if the carrier didn’t have symptoms. But WHO officials now say that while asymptomatic spread is certainly possible, it’s not the main route of transmission.

    “From the data we have, it still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual,” Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, said during a Monday briefing from the WHO’s Geneva headquarters. “It’s very rare.”

    Of course, if scientists continue to see data showing asymptomatic spread isn’t a main factor in transmission, it could have dramatic implications for containment policy, including diminishing the need for social distancing, and allowing students and workers to return to the workplace in much larger numbers.

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    Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove

    The data cited by the WHO was apparently gleaned from early contact tracing work. If it’s true that asymptomatic spread isn’t a major factor, than the importance of contact tracing has been vastly overstated. To be sure, more research and data are needed to “truly answer” the question, Van Kerkhove added.

    “We have a number of reports from countries who are doing very detailed contact tracing,” she said. “They’re following asymptomatic cases. They’re following contacts. And they’re not finding secondary transmission onward. It’s very rare.”

    Kayleigh McEnany, meanwhile, insisted that the US is heading in a “positive direction” when it comes to the coronavirus. Shortly afterward, California reported a statewide decline in new infections on Monday, though the number of new cases in LA County neared 64k, as the economic reopening has caused new cases to spike – a spike that experts who spoke to the LATimes say likely predated the anti-police brutality demonstrations.

    Meanwhile, the number of global cases passed 7 million on Monday, according to Johns Hopkins, which counted 7,085,894 as of Monday evening in New York.

    * * *

    Update (1145ET): Cuomo has released the daily coronavirus data for Monday, claiming that the number of deaths reported in the state was fewer than 100 once again, and that much of central NY state is will soon enter ‘Phase 2’ of the reopening plan. Cases climbed just 0.2%, compared with a 7-day average of 0.3%.

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    Source: NYT

    With central NY ready to enter Phase 2, Cuomo also shared 15 sites around the state for protesters to get tested, while claiming that “we don’t know” whether the demonstrations will cause a resurgence of new cases.

    Cuomo laid out the data in a series of slides shared during his daily briefing:

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    Regarding his earlier ride on the 7 train (which we mentioned below), Cuomo says he wouldn’t ask New Yorkers to ride the trains if he didn’t feel comfortable riding them.

    Finally, Cuomo warned NYers to “stay smart” after the reopening “because if you don’t, you can see a spike…and that is the last thing we want to see”.

    “Stay smart…stay smart…look at facts around us – other states, the spike is going up, California, the numbers are going up, Florida, the numebrs are going up, Texas the numbers are going up…look at the reopening date and look at what happened after they reopened…that is the cautionary tale my friends,” Cuomo said.

    Ask if he expected a spike in the coming weeks, Cuomo replied “are you a cynic, my friend?” before adding that subways have been opened this entire time, and that a rebound isn’t guaranteed “if we stay as smart and disciplined as we have for the past 100 days”.

    * * *

    Update (1120ET): After crossing the 200k-case threshold over the weekend, India has reported yet another record jump in new cases on Monday as it continues to ease its restrictive lockdown conditions in preparation for it to finally expire later this monht.

    Monday marked the biggest unwind of lockdown restrictions so far, as malls, restaurants, hotels and places of worship were allowed to reopen, most for the first time since March 25, when India’s lockdown began.

    However, the easing has been marred by a surge in infections, leading India to overtake Italy and Spain to become the fifth worst-hit nation in the pandemic, as we noted a few days back. But on Monday, nearly 10k new cases were reported, about even with the number of new cases being reported in Russia, where the outbreak continues to spread uncontrolled.

    India has a total of 256,611 confirmed cases following the latest daily spike of 9,983. The country has recorded 7,135 deaths, according to India’s Health Ministry, although some suspect the true number could be much higher. Domestic flights and trains were allowed to restart in May, along with manufacturing activity, which re-started soon after.

    Some restrictions will remain in New Delhi and Mumbai, among India’s worst-hit cities. In Delhi, local authorities have allowed private offices, restaurants and shopping complexes to reopen (though social distancing guidelines must be followed). But hotels and metro lines remain shuttered.

    In Florida, Monday’s reported coronavirus cases and deaths declined slightly after a week where the most positive cases yet were reported.

    The update from the state Department of Health showed 966 new positive cases of the virus, bringing Fla’s total to 64,904 cases to date, along with 12 new deaths, bringing the statewide total to 2,712.

    In NY, Gov Cuomo will begin his daily press briefing at 1130amET, as per usual.

    During the opening minutes of the briefing, Cuomo declared “we’re back, baby” while reporters mocked an earlier “socially distant” subway ride for a governor whose loathing for the subway is well known.

    Circling back to India’s outbreak, the country isn’t alone in West Asia: Across its heavily militarized border (where sectarian violence has flared again in recent days), Pakistan warns that hospitals are running out of beds to treat coronavirus patients as the number of confirmed cases passes 100,000, with ~2k deaths.

    * * *

    Following nearly 2 weeks of peaceful protests pockmarked by violence and looting – killings and shootings skyrocketed across NYC last week as the summer ‘killing season’ begins – America’s biggest “hot zone” kicked off “Phase 1” of its plan to reopen its economy on Monday, exactly 100 days after the first case of the virus was confirmed.

    Since the outbreak began, more than 205,000 New Yorkers who have tested positive for the virus, while another 22,000 succumbed to the virus.

    Exactly 100 days since its first case of coronavirus was confirmed, New York City, which weathered extensive hardship as an epicenter of the worldwide outbreak, is set to take the first tentative steps toward reopening its doors on Monday.

    According to the NYT, as many as 400,000 workers will return to construction jobs, manufacturing sites and retail stores in the city’s first phase of reopening as the number of COVID-19 deaths recorded across the US continues to fall, with fewer than 1,000 deaths reported each day (remember when the NYT claimed that deaths would be north of 3,000/day by June 1?).

    It’s a far cry from the ‘peak’ of the outbreak, when 800 NYC residents were dying from the virus every day.

    The city ran more than 60k tests a day over the weekend, Gov Cuomo claimed.

    That is low enough for New York City’s corps of contract tracers, who began work last week, to try to track every close interaction and, officials hope, stop a resurgence of the virus.

    “You want to talk about a turnaround — this one, my friends, is going to go in the history books,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Saturday.

    Of course, it could be months before office workers return en masse, as the world waits to see how the city’s public transit will handle social distancing concerns. And for many retailers in the city, the conditions in ‘Phase 1’ are still too restrictive. Simply reopening doesn’t mean customers will return, and curbside pickup doesn’t make a lot of sense for many retailers either, according to the NYT. Business groups in the city say many retailers are waiting for the next phase to venture out, when outdoor dining is allowed, office workers are permitted to return and shoppers are allowed to take their time and browse. The earliest these shops might be able to reopen would be later this month.

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    Some employers have developed new technological solutions to this problem. When more than 100 workers return to Newlab, a “technology hub” in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, they will be offered a device that buzzes whenever they get too close to another worker. The essential workers that have remained in the office this entire time have already been wearing the devices.

    The city’s army of thousands of contact tracers officially started their work last week, and will continue aiding in efforts to quash a rebound in infections. Meanwhile, city officials will be closely monitoring a suite of metrics, from emergency room admission data to new case numbers, for signs of a potentially crippling resurgence.

    On the other side of the world, New Zealand lifted all social and economic restrictions except for its border controls on Monday after declaring that the small island nation is “coronavirus free”, making it one of the first nations to return to normalcy after the outbreak. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she “danced for joy”. Restaurants, retailers, transit and virtually everywhere else reopened without mandatory social distancing. It has been 17 days since the country recorded a new case of the virus.

    “While the job is not done, there is no denying this is a milestone … Thank you, New Zealand,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told a news conference, saying she had danced for joy at the news.

    “We are confident we have eliminated transmission of the virus in New Zealand for now, but elimination is not a point in time, it is a sustained effort.”

    Globally, the total case count topped 7 million late last night, while the number of deaths passed 400k over the weekend, as Brazil, Mexico, Russia and possibly India struggle to bring the outbreak to heel. In the US, the number of confirmed cases have surpassed 1.9 million, and the 2 million mark draws ever-nearer, with ~1.94 million as of Monday morning. At the current rate of ~20k cases a day, the US is on track to pass its next grim pandemic milestone by Thursday.

  • "The Narrative Has Failed" – Ron Paul On The Incredible Disappearing Coronavirus
    “The Narrative Has Failed” – Ron Paul On The Incredible Disappearing Coronavirus

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/08/2020 – 20:05

    Via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

    Suddenly there is no talk about coronavirus.

    Reputable doctors in Italy, the UK, and elsewhere are claiming the virus hardly exists any longer.

    Just over a week ago much of America faced jail if they dared break the “social distancing” rules put in place by tyrannical governors and other public officials. Now tens of thousands gather to protest a police killing with impunity. And the spikes they warned about in areas where restrictions were eased are not happening. So what is happening?

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    Also, what to make of the Trump/Mattis/Esper spat over US troops deployed against rioters in the US?

    Watch today’s Liberty Report:

  • As BLM Protests Raged, Chicago Saw Highest Black-On-Black Murder Rate In 60 Years
    As BLM Protests Raged, Chicago Saw Highest Black-On-Black Murder Rate In 60 Years

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/08/2020 – 19:45

    “We’ve never seen anything like it, at all,” Max Kapustin, the senior research director at the University of Chicago Crime Lab told the Chicago Sun-Times in a new shocking report published Monday. “I don’t even know how to put it into context. It’s beyond anything that we’ve ever seen before.”

    The group of University of Chicago researchers have confirmed numbers from Sunday, May 31, which the Crime Lab now says is the single most violent day on historical record: 18 dead and 85 wounded by gunfire. The record was previously at 13 people murdered on a single day on Aug. 4, 1991.

    “From 7 p.m. Friday, May 29, through 11 p.m. Sunday, May 31, 25 people were killed in the city, with another 85 wounded by gunfire, according to data maintained by the Chicago Sun-Times.”

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    Chicago Police file image via MCT/Inquirer 

    The Chicago Sun-Times report begins tragically: 

    A hardworking father killed just before 1 a.m.

    A West Side high school student murdered two hours later.

    A man killed amid South Side looting at a cellphone store at 12:30 p.m.

    A college freshman who hoped to become a correctional officer, gunned down at 4:25 p.m. after getting into an argument in Englewood.

    While Chicago was roiled by another day of protests and looting in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, 18 people were killed Sunday, May 31, making it the single most violent day in Chicago in six decades, according to the University of Chicago Crime Lab. The lab’s data doesn’t go back further than 1961.

    A pastor of a local church and community anti-gun violence activist described that it was “open season” last weekend in his neighborhood, giving an eyewitness account of the situation on the South and West sides.  

    “On Saturday and particularly Sunday, I heard people saying all over, ‘Hey, there’s no police anywhere, police ain’t doing nothing,” Rev. Michael Pfleger, who pastors St. Sabina Church in Auburn Gresham said. “I sat and watched a store looted for over an hour,” he added.

    “No police came. I got in my car and drove around to some other places getting looted [and] didn’t see police anywhere,” Pfleger said.

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    The detailed and lengthy Chicago Sun-Times report went on to point out something that’s deeply unpopular to acknowledge in the realm of popular discourse:

    Most homicide victims in Chicago are young, black men, and the suspects are, too. But murders have fallen significantly in recent years, along with police-involved shootings.

    “There were 764 murders and 12 fatal police-involved shootings in 2016, compared with 492 murders and three fatal police-involved shootings last year,” the report adds.

    The Chicago Sun-Times told the stories of young men and women who teachers remembered as “positive influences,” such as Mustafa Abdullah, gunned down on May 31 during a drive-by while riding in a targeted vehicle. 

    Or there’s also eighteen-year old Teyonna Lofton, shot on the day that her family held a ‘socially distanced’ graduation party. Thankfully, she survived, but faces months if not years of rehabilitative therapy: 

    For Teyonna Lofton, of Gresham, last Sunday started on a high note. The 18-year-old recently finished her senior year at Perspectives Leadership Academy, and her family was holding a socially distanced graduation parade to honor the occasion.

    While the day “started off perfect,” a trip to a gas station at the corner of 81st and Racine — a half-mile south of St. Sabina — later that day quickly turned into the most harrowing experience of her young life.

    As she waited in line outside the store, an SUV pulled up and someone inside opened fire into the crowd, striking Lofton and two others. Struck near her elbow, Lofton tried repeatedly to call 911 for help.

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    It appears that as police responded en masse to major riots and looting ensuing soon after the horrific footage of the George Floyd killing by Minnesota police went viral, this resulted in other areas of the city spiraling into lawlessness, as well as apparently victims being disregard by city emergency response units. 

    Despite the gunshot wound which threatened her life, Teyonna Lofton said police and EMT assistance were nowhere in sight: 

    “When I needed help, to call the police and stuff, nobody responded. Nobody answered,” Lofton said. “My mom had to come from home, and we had to get to the hospital.”

    On the way to Little Company of Mary Hospital in Evergreen Park, Lofton peered out her mother’s car window and saw the “madness” that was unfolding outside.

    “It was just people jumping out their cars into stores and stealing and looting … Police was letting them do whatever they wanted,” she said.

    “They did not care,” Lofton added. “Nobody cared.”

    At a moment “Black Lives Matter” chants can be heard overtaking most every major American city, the now weekly reality of dozens tragically dying in black-on-black crime in Chicago and some other large cities (a trend that tends to increase into the hot summer months) remains a huge ‘blind spot’ in terms of the current ideologically charged media debate and public discourse. 

    Though CNN is now devoting much air time to an hour-long repeat segment called “Unconscious Bias: Facing the Realities of Racism” — it’s highly doubtful that much coverage will be given to the pressing crisis now unfolding in Chicago of black-on-black crime, which defies many of the simplistic sacred dogmas now being advocated. 

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Jun 08

Today’s News 8th June 2020

  • "It's Still Very Cool" – Dutch Club Unveils Post-COVID 'Social Dis-Dancing'
    “It’s Still Very Cool” – Dutch Club Unveils Post-COVID ‘Social Dis-Dancing’

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/08/2020 – 02:45

    The summer holiday season is underway across Europe, and countries are reopening their broken economies after months of coronavirus lockdowns. The European Union has advised member states to relax border restrictions in a bid to restart the travel and tourism industry. Already, the nightclubbing scene is popping off in the Netherlands but is unrecognizable in a post-corona world. 

    Clubbing and partying in Nijmegen, a city in the Netherlands’ province of Gelderland, near the German border, began this weekend with the opening of Doornroosje, an electronic dance music club. 

    Clubbers had to book in advance before stepping inside the facility and enjoyed a rave while sitting down. There were 30 seats on the dance floor, spaced about five feet apart. In pre-corona times, the floor would hold hundreds of fist-pumping millennials, but now, the club supports a few dozen ravers. 

    “I think it’s your perfect daily dose of music, like, 20 minutes is enough, yeah, sure, “Nuray Boga, 19, told Reuters. “It made me happy.”

    Club promoter Jonatan Brand said local health authorities advised a sit-down only configuration on the dance floor with seats 5 feet apart. If confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths continue to decline in the region, clubbers could one-day rave standing up. 

    “It’s still very cool,” Brand said. “People are still dancing, although they are on the chair, they’re fist-pumping, they’re moving their bodies, so — it’s great.”

    The show on Saturday didn’t sell out — it appears ravers still don’t trust tightly packed clubs in a post-corona world, though the event was streamed online. 

    DJ Davy Brandts, a music performer, who headlined the show, said it was great to be back and see familiar faces.

    If you’re wondering what a rave looks like in a post-corona world — check out the video below of Doornroosje:

    As for the Belgian electronic dance music festival, Tomorrowland, well, the 2020 show is canceled but 2021 is going ahead as planned. About 400,000 ravers usually show up to the festival, though that number next year will likely be reduced for social distancing. 

    Could sit-down raves be the new normal for clubbing and the partying scene in the post corona world? 

  • EU Economy Traveling Along Same Worn Dead-End Road
    EU Economy Traveling Along Same Worn Dead-End Road

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/08/2020 – 02:00

    Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,

    With so many countries across the world facing difficulties, many people have yet to notice the Euro-Zone has become a place where hope goes to die. The last round of elections in the Euro-Zone should bring little comfort to those supporting a stronger Europe. Huge gains were made by forces seeking more power for the populist agenda. In short, it is a boost for the rights of individual nations to have more say in how they are governed.  Two of the most pressing issues are that insolvent Italy struggles with a stagnate economy and Spain is coming apart politically with Catalan separatists defying Spain’s Prime Minister.

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    To avoid the union coming apart at the seams and a miserable future, the European Commission recently unveiled an unprecedented  €750BN CoVid-19 recovery plan. It consists of €500 billion in grants to member states, and €250 billion would be available in loans. This means they are asking for the power to borrow. This is geared to tackle the worst recession in European history and shore up Italy. It would mean transforming the EU’s central finances to allow for it to raise unprecedented sums on the capital markets and hand out the bulk of the proceeds as grants to hard-pressed member states.

    The Euro-Zone was already in deep trouble before CoVid-19 hit, the weakness that started in 2017 never ended. In the fourth quarter even Germany narrowly escaped recession. This could be blamed on the Brexit or Trade War but it goes beyond that, they abandoned all structural reforms in 2014 when the ECB started its quantitative easing program (QE) and expanded the balance sheet to record-levels. In 2019, almost 22% of the Euro Zone GDP gross added value came from Travel & Leisure, a sector that will unlikely come back anytime soon. Add this to weak exports and a banking sector that is totally decimated and everything points downward.

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    The Dollar Remains The Only “Real Option”

    Roughly 80% of the Euro-Zone’s real economy is financed by the banking sector that carries more than 600 billion euro in non-performing loans. Considering that the Euro-Zone was already in contraction in the middle of the massive Juncker plan that pushed forward green policies, it is safe to assume a Green New Deal will not boost growth or reduce debt. Large investment plans that are politically directed generally do not do as well as planned. The Euro-Zone is in a state of “stagnation.” Figures show that as of 2017 not a single European company ranked among the top fifteen technology companies in the world. Still, more troubling is that of the top 50 global technology companies, only four are European.

    Being uncompetitive sucks, unemployment is high, almost 30% of the Euro Zone labor force is expected to be under some form of unemployment scheme for years. France, Spain, and Italy, with important rules and tax burdens on job creation, may suffer large unemployment levels for longer. Another challenge is the region lacks technological and intellectual property making them less competitive than China and the U.S. They are simply out of tools to address the unprecedented bashing put upon the economy due to CoVid-19. It would also be a bad time to add massive monetary imbalances when demand for euros globally is shrinking according to the Bank of International Settlements.

    To fund this €750BN package, the EU would borrow on financial markets and put in place a suite of proposed new EU taxes and levies to pay back the debt over the coming decades. These would hit everything from tech giants to single-use plastics. Bloomberg, reports Italy stands to receive 82 billion euros in emergency grants and up to 91 billion euros in low-interest loans. Spain also hit hard by the pandemic is in line for 77 billion euros of grants and up to 63 billion euros in loans. Greece could get 32 billion euros in grants and loans and France could get 39 billion euros in grants. Such a program gaining the backing of member states would be a “watershed moment” for the bloc. Financial burden-sharing has long been one of the thorniest issues holding back deeper integration within the union. It could go a long way to silent concerns about the lack of solidarity empowering populists and threatens the EU’s very survival.

    If months ago you didn’t agree that political and economic problems in Italy and Spain posed the greatest threat to the EU it would be a good time to reevaluate your opinion now that both countries have been monkey hammered by CoVid-19. Last year a post on this site argued they had the potential to topple a struggling Euro-Zone. This argument is based on Italy’s debt dwarfing that of Greece. If Italy, one of the “Big Three” economies underpinning the Euro-Zone, defaulted on its debt the scale of such a crisis would be difficult to contain. Flipping attention towards Spain, the article pointed out how immigrants continuing to flow in from Northern Africa coupled with the Catalan Separatists movement has left Spain’s national government in disarray.

    Italy remains the weakest link in the Euro-Zone and continues to weaken. Last year, in what could be considered a bold move the Italian Prime Minister signed a historic memorandum of understanding with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Rome. The agreement made Italy the first founding EU  member, and the first G-7 nation, to officially sign on to Beijing’s “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) economic development initiative. The ramifications flowing from Italy’s deal with China may, in the end, prove to be a deal with the devil that opens the floodgates and signals the end of the EU breaking apart the euro.  China and Italy inked development deals covering everything from port management, science and technology, e-commerce, and even soccer.

    This deal occurred before the covid-19 pandemic and since Italy’s debt situation has only grown worse. Integration into OBOR appeared to be an “any port in a storm” situation. Italy has found the EU less than supportive and lacking answers as to how they might kick-start growth. Much of the blame for this problematic alliance falls on Brussels and the EU for its failures to deal with worsening conditions within Italy. Now, adding to the problem is growing unease and fear within the EU when they look out at an expanding China that cranks out products at a cost far below those at which they can compete. Trade and deficits loom large in the minds of those watching this unfold. We can expect that China will exploit Italy and use it as a backdoor into the broader Euro-Zone market. Two omens this will go poorly for Italy are the IMF warnings of the potential of many of China’s OBOR funded projects going bust and China’s history of flexing its predatory business model.

    While the ECB has sidestepped a major devaluation of the euro over recent years many of us skeptics believe it will ultimately collapse resulting  in devastating side-effects for those holding the currency. Much of the problem is rooted in the fact the euro itself was constructed on a weak and flawed foundation. Any currency joining and binding states or countries together must allow for an adjustment to send back funds to its weakest part or eventually it will become so unbalanced it will fail. The United States does this by collecting taxes on a federal level and sending back money and aid to areas that are economically weak and need help. In the same way, the EU has still refused to deal with Greece’s mounting debt it, mainly Germany, cannot seem to accept that protecting the small depositors of European banks is the price to be paid for preserving social order and even the euro itself.

    The truth is that in all reality Italy went bankrupt in summer 2011. At that time the ECB and political authorities in Europe agreed to create around the country’s finances an artificial market to give the impression of stability. More capital began fleeing to the north when Draghi started QE in 2015. The Italian central bank is dependent on the ECB and has to buy Italian government bonds. German investors have to exchange these bonds for euros in Italy and transfer the money via Target 2 to their German bank. The growing differences in the Target 2 balance sheet are the result of the Germans, who own the Italian bonds dissolving them in Italy and transferring the money to Germany. Italians have also added to the capital flight as they liquidate their bonds which increases the debt claim on the German side.

    To be clear, Germany has no interest in “debt mutualization” where it would be forced to bail-out Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. These claims are not covered by any securities. If Italy or Spain withdraws from the Euro-Zone, the Germans will be left holding worthless paper. Concern in Germany remains tepid only because Germans have great confidence in the Bundesbank. Draghi claimed that Target 2 has nothing to do with the movement of capital from country to country and the clearing balances cannot be overdrawn as long as no one leaves the Euro-zone. This translates into, Italy must not leave the Euro-Zone! Italy’s debt amounts to 2.3 trillion euros and its liabilities in Target 2 rose in June 2018 to 481 billion euros from 164.5 billion euros in 2015. This means that Banca d’Italia owes the Bundesbank almost half a trillion euros! Target 2 is a check that cannot be cashed.

    This all swings back to the delicate manipulated balance of currencies which seem to be locked in a narrow trading range with the Fed assuming the role of the great enabler. Holding up all the really bad currencies in the world is not the job of the FED but the indication is that Central Bank manipulation has gone nuclear. The dollar’s strength is largely a result of  many countries having adopted even worse policies than those America’s leaders have chosen to pursue but a strengthening dollar sends a signal that the global economy is unstable which is something central banks want to avoid at all costs. This accounts for why central banks are marching in lockstep using currency swaps and injecting more liquidity into the system to keep several currencies from failing.

    Draghi is credited with saving the euro but may have only delayed its demise. Now the euro’s fate rests on the ECB’s new President Christine Lagarde. If she departs from his script, she will face fierce criticism but if she does not, the Euro-zone’s never-ending crisis will eventually spin out of control. Draghi’s stand the euro is indispensable and that even discussing its abolition is harmful seems to remain intact. Draghi’s attempt to save the Euro-zone by printing trillions of euros allowed Italy, Spain, and other stressed states to roll over their debts but has failed. Low-interest rates and easy money have not cured Europe’s problems, expect anti-EU sentiment to continue its growth.

  • Coincidence Theorists See All Donut And No Holes In The Coronation Of The Cult
    Coincidence Theorists See All Donut And No Holes In The Coronation Of The Cult

    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 06/07/2020 – 23:50

    Authored by Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com,

    Over the past several decades Americans have viewed regularly televised dramatic episodes of political theater. The use of the word “episode” is especially appropriate because the dramatic scenes are sequential and continuously broadcasted onto electronic screens. The drama is designed to elicit emotion, foment anger, and unite or divide the nation in order to, ultimately, affect change.

    The societal cataclysms we’re experiencing now could be naturally occurring – as the result of certain trends like demographics, technology, modernization, education, centralization, economic inequality, political platforms, or even systemic corruption and civilizational decay. On the other hand, it could be the upheavals are directed in consonance with scripts written by an inner circle of powerful people; and in accordance to the Hegelian Dialectic.  How citizens view the changes realized by the United States over the last few decades, in particular, will depend upon their interpretations of probabilities and outcomes; or, rather, to the extent they believe in coincidence or conspiracy.

    Many believe grand conspiracies are implausible because ambitious schemes so often fail and it’s inconceivable that scrupulous whistleblowers would refuse to expose the plans of powerful conspirators.  And these objections have a ring of truth… unless, of course, the powerful few have only advanced those who’ve demonstrated allegiance while shunning, banishing, imprisoning, or “expiring” those who won’t fall in line.  Perhaps this would explain why the likes of Brennen, Clapper, Comey, and McCabe continue about their book tours as Assange, Manafort, and Stone remain under lock and key.

    In intelligence circles, we know control is administered via “need to know” compartmentalization and secured by constant surveillance. So perhaps blackmail and threats to individuals and loved ones are secret tactics used to compel loyalty.   Even so, there have been U.S. presidents who have acted as whistleblowers at one time or another, including Lincoln, Wilson, Eisenhower, and Kennedy; each drawing attention to a nebulous Cult of Power acting as political puppet masters and pullers of purse strings.  Or, as automotive magnate Henry Ford (1863-1947) once stated:

    It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.

    It’s also a fact that modern mass media today is owned by a handful of corporations and, thus, under the control of a few billionaires.  Could it be possible The Cult would collude to advance media narratives that further their interests while promoting agendas for their sole benefit?  Of course it’s possible.  Why wouldn’t they?

    In America during the new millennium, Bush the Younger delivered The Patriot Act and the War on Terror.  The Obama Administration witnessed the rise of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street.  And from the time Donald Trump descended the escalator in 2015, the timeline has been a continuum of fascinating and unfortunate events.

    In the spring of 2016, Broomhilda and her army of superdelegates swept the still smoking ashes of Bernieclaus right back up the nation’s chimney. In June of that year, the first FISA warrant on Trump was denied and that was followed by the infamous Snakes on a Plane meeting between Bill Clinton and then Attorney General Loretta Lynch.  Seth Rich, a data analyst for the Democratic National Committee, was murdered in Washington D.C. the very next month.

    However, in light of current events, now consider what also took place in the spring of 2016 and, seemingly, behind the curtain of the nation’s political stage: The inaugural ID2020 summit…

    In May 2016, at the United Nations Headquarters in NY, the inaugural ID2020 Summit brought together over 400 people to discuss how to provide a unique digital identity to everyone on the planet, including the 1.5 billion people living without any form of recognized identification.

     Indeed, 2020 vision has brought past occurrences into better focus.

    Since the election of Trump, we’ve watched one political episode after another:  election hacking, impeachment, a pandemic… and just like regular commercial breaks came the seemingly strategic school, church, synagogue, country music and garlic festival shootings; along with the occasional U.S Mail or Syria bombing . All of these episodes made for riveting and dramatic televised history.

    Perhaps, therefore, the apparent onscreen murder of George Floyd now serves as the new facilitator as COVID-19 fizzles in the summer sun – at least until the Vitamin D depletions this fall and winter deliver sufficient reinfection rates to justify real societal lockdowns next time.

    And, yes, be assured of this:  COVID-19 will be back next season.  In force and, once again, dominating the airwaves.   In fact, we’re already seeing the previews as the country reopens.  Pursuant to “data compiled by the New York Times” comes the following headline:  “Texas, North Carolina, Arizona see rising cases as they reopen”:

    The seven-day average in new cases in all three states has also been rising, according to data compiled by The New York Times.

    …Texas and Arizona are both led by Republican governors, while North Carolina has a Democratic governor.

    One reason for the increasing number of cases in all three states is that they are all seeing a significant rise in testing, which means more people carrying COVID-19 are being identified.

    Yes. Operation Dark Winter® continues as headlines are broadcasted into computing devices around the globe:  NEW HOT SPOTS ARE EMERGING!! NEW HOT SPOTS ARE EMERGING!!

    It’s easy to assume COVID-19 cases will go down after lockdown orders lift across the country, but, unfortunately, the data suggests otherwise. New hot spots of COVID-19 are emerging across the U.S.

    …It’s very important to be informed about your local data, Ryan Panchadsaram, former U.S. deputy chief technology officer at the White House during the Obama administration and co-founder of COVID Exit Strategy, tells Yahoo Life. He and other public health and crisis experts with experience stemming from their work at the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services and on the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, joined forces to create COVID Exit Strategy with the goal of tracking “each state’s progress toward stopping the spread of COVID-19,”…

    Are these episodes naturally occurring as the result of a sick and dying nation? Or, could they be the magical media manifestations of the “Big Lie”?

    Regardless, people all across the political spectrum have been fooled by their feelings while viewing what appears to be political ploys.

    United States health “officials” are now warning that “a new surge in coronavirus cases”  could occur following the protests over the death of George Floyd, a black man who was filmed while being murdered by police in Minneapolis.   Paradoxically, the police report of the incident claimed Floyd “had coronavirus and died after cardiac arrest”.

    Seriously?  Is it just me or do you also hear the laughter cackling from behind the curtain?  Either way, the question remains:  Are we being psychologically manipulated by powerful people in order to affect political change?

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    Because it seems only those under hypnosis would deny that current events in the U.S. have been politicized.  The Wall Street Journal, for example, has reported on the politicization of Coronavirus as it increasingly exacerbates “the Red-Blue divide”:

    Two-thirds of confirmed coronavirus cases are in states with Democratic governors. When states are measured by the sheer number of coronavirus cases, six of the top seven have Democratic governors. Together, those six blue states have about half of the nation’s cases, though only about a third of its population.

    Coronavirus deaths tell a similar story. Eight of the nine states with the most deaths due to the virus are states with Democratic governors. When measured by deaths per capita, eight of the top nine states also have Democratic governors.

    ….And it’s in the Senate where the imbalance between coronavirus impact and political clout is most acute. Those six hardest-hit blue states have more than half the country’s coronavirus cases, and a third of its population—yet only 12% of the votes in the Senate. It is almost a perfect formula for political tensions.

    President Trump is straddling this red and blue divide. In sheer political terms, two of the hardest-hit states, Michigan and Pennsylvania, are critical to him because they happen to be swing states he carried in the 2016 election.

    And now it’s being reported that President Trump’s reelection odds have taken a turn for the worse.

    So why has COVID-19® selectively attacked blue states more than red ones?  It could be a matter of blue states having a higher density population.  Or, it could be just more political chicanery and for the same reason pallets of bricks have mysteriously materialized in cities prior to “protests” in the aftermath of the George Floyd snuff film.

    Indeed. Every revolution starts with a spark; and the modern lockdowns, and uprisings, are televised.

    As written in my last article, COVID-19® accomplished many political objectives:

    The Coronavirus® pinprick collapsed the Economic Everything Bubble and deflected blame away from the bankers who blew it up. At the same time, it turned martial law into self-quarantine and abolished the First Amendment rights of American citizens including the free exercise religion, the freedom of speech, and the right peaceably assemble… all under the arbitrary mandates of Social Distancing®.  Additionally, cash has been transitioned into a viral threat – thus paving the way to a new digital world order; and the end of privacy. 

    The televised outbreak also inflamed the fear and survival instincts of people in order to turn on each other while it massaged Wall Street and murdered Main Street.   To be sure, supply lines have been centralized via Walmart and Amazon as Mom & Pop businesses were suffocated like George Floyd then set on fire.

    For those with eyes wide open, it’s become obvious how chaos reigns while Operation Dirty Money®   transitions the nations into a “cashless future” and a New World Order®:

    The Almighty Dollar has lost some of its might in the time of COVID-19. While most struggling businesses will take payment in any form to make ends meet during the economic downtown, a minority reject cash, fearing that it could be a transmission vehicle for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Some experts predict that the pandemic will accelerate a steady flight by American consumers away from dollars and cents…

    …But a survey by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation found that roughly 6% of the U.S. population, about 14.1 million adults, doesn’t have a checking or savings account, and thus can’t access funds online. That gap will have to be closed if America is ever to come closer to a cashless future.

    But are these changes the result of coincidence or conspiracy?

    Seriously… how could these long-desired objectives of The Establishment NOT be the result of conspiracy?  Because, just like clockwork, as Coronavirus was shown to be bullshit… the channel was changed once again – this time, to cities on fire.  So, whether by deception or never letting a crisis go to waste, the George Floyd drama has now assumed center stage; at least until the COVID-19 Show® returns next season.

    The urban riots could be used to further degrade American institutions, infrastructure, economy, and societal unity – or be exploited as the means to lock down entire regions of the country, or worse, as an excuse to declare martial law nationally.  It’s also possible a Fort Sumter moment could occur in the suburbs thus escalating the civil warfare to new levels.  It’s not hard to imagine armed Caucasians defending their lives and property by mowing down ANTIFA and Black Lives Matter activists in the front yards of formerly quiet neighborhoods around the country. This would, in turn, trigger new proposed gun control measures by city, state, and federal authoritarians. Just in time and right on schedule.

    This sort of Hegelian change meets the end of goals of The Cult because their ultimate desire is to rule over a diminished global population.  This is not conspiracy, however, because the Malthusian dreams of the Cult are well-documented and even etched upon the Georgia Guidestones as # 1:  “Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.”

    Certainly, The Cult desires a culling of the herd, so to speak, yet with the permission of those willing to be ruled. The aristocracy prefers servants and subjects, after all; and this would be the fate of the lower-caste slaves who survive.

    So how might the Cult of Power get a majority of plebes to willingly surrender? By first activating their fear and survival instincts and then showing them how effective China’s authoritarian lockdowns have been – particularly in slowing the spread of coronaviruses and dampening burgeoning revolutions.

    In viewing the maps of Asia on the John Hopkin’s dashboard , it does appear China’s authoritarian measures have stamped out coronaviruses like Raid® on bugs. At the same time, COVID-19 forced the Hong Kong protestors to shelter in place.  However, in America, the U.S. Constitution has turned America red with the blood of innocents. Some might ask: Why did Trump, and so many careless governors, pander to those desiring their own selfish liberties over the very lives of others? Why did they reopen their states so soon?  And why won’t weak-willed blue state mayors and governors protect the citizenry from lawless rioters?

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    Certainly, the red tide could ebb and flow until all boats are sunk. Unless enough people are awakened. Then, the haut monde would be forced to reassess their schemes.

    In any case, even if American society continues to sink past the point of no return, I would also not be surprised if any future vaccinations would be voluntary instead of mandatory.  Because if the deluded Luciferians (see “Luciferianism: A Secular Look At A Destructive Globalist Belief System”) are actually playing a cosmic chess match in their heads, then they want people to choose – and those who refuse to fall with them would, as a result, suffer societal ostracization, economic isolation, starvation, and death.  The Vaccine-Deniers® would then occupy the lowest caste of the New World Order®.  They would be the new Untouchables.

    Certainly, therefore, the George Floyd riots are just another means of now sowing seeds of chaos to reap an orderly harvest later. The Cult must tear down what it wishes to rebuild in its own image.

    The following video takes 12-minutes to view and its poetic presentation explores the “mechanics” of ritual, initiation, transformation, and change; and, especially, as applied to The Cult, language, and electronic programming.

    For those who don’t wish to take the time to view the video, just know it addresses change as being facilitated via the three stages of an initiation ritual – and to the actual audio soundtrack of the COVID-19® outbreak:

    1.) Isolation for Purification (suspension of the normal ways / surrender / sacrifice / masking / trauma)

    2.) The Transition (the old self dies, descending into a state of liminality / fever dream / void in the middle / blank canvas)

    3.) Integration into the New Reality (or Resurrection to the New Normal)

    Recently, a blogger named Charles Eisenstein wrote an article named “The Coronation” and later responded to a critique of that article by writing another piece entitled “The Conspiracy Myth”. The latter article was, in turn, retweeted by the Chief Executive Officer of Twitter, Jack Dorsey.

    In reading both articles, it appeared the author defined the allegorical donut without its hole in the center.  After all, what is a “conspiracy” if not two or more people making secret plans?  And what is a donut without a hole? All that remains is sugar, flour, water, leavening, oil and artificial flavors. But that’s what we see, feel, taste, and smell.  Is that all there is?  Or is there more?

    Correspondingly, Eisenstein’s title of “The Coronation” is especially interesting given that “Corona” means “crown” and the word “coronation” is a portmanteau of “Corona Nation”.

    Definition of coronation

    ­­­­­­­: the act or occasion of crowning also: accession to the highest office

    Has America recently been subsumed by those who would be our rulers?  Or was the nation taken over long ago and now The Cult is simply making their reign official?

    In truth, the answers to both of those questions are right on the money.

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    There is no denying the fix is in – or that the media and the tech titans are colluding with The Cult.  One example of this is how the media has presented former software mogul and current World Health Guru, Bill Gates, as a “bogeyman of virus conspiracy theorists”:

    False claims targeting billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates are gaining traction online since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, with experts warning they could hamper efforts to curb the virus.

    Doctored photos and fabricated news articles crafted by conspiracy theorists — shared thousands of times on social media platforms and messaging apps, in various languages — have gone as far as accusing the Microsoft founder of creating the outbreak.

    …”Bill Gates has always been a target of specific conspiracy communities,” said Rory Smith, research manager at First Draft, a non-profit that provides research and training for journalists.

    Gates — whose eponymous foundation has spent billions of dollars improving healthcare in developing countries over the past 20 years — has become “a kind of abstract boogeyman”, said Whitney Phillips, an assistant professor at New York’s Syracuse University, where she teaches digital ethics.

    “These conspiracies are powerful enough to drive down institutional trust around health organisations, and as a result, possibly drive down vaccination rates, which is worrying,” Smith said.

    Yet, in that article, there was no mention of Gates’ involvement with vaccine production or the October 2019 “Event 201” exercise held in New York City –  a live simulation of the actual coronavirus outbreak that occurred just weeks before the first cases were made public.   Why, then, are these facts not deemed newsworthy by the mainstream media?

    Would any coincidence theorists care to answer that question?

    Because that’s how The Cult works.  They selectively conceal pertinent information while censoring any media sources that report the truth.

    Remember item # 7 from the Event 201 website’s recommendations page (the main text below with some of the fluff removed):

    Governments and the private sector should assign a greater priority to developing methods to combat mis- and disinformation …

    Governments will need to partner with traditional and social media companies to research and develop nimble approaches to countering misinformation. ..

    National public health agencies should work in close collaboration with WHO to create the capability to rapidly develop and release consistent health messages. For their part, media companies should commit to ensuring that authoritative messages are prioritized and that false messages are suppressed including through the use of technology.

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    The video at this link below is from the “Plandemic” movie and features the cellular and molecular biologist, Judy Mikovits, Ph.D.

    It is an absolutely stunning 26 minutes:

    Link to 26-minute video of “Plandemic”

    In the 16:15 – 18:45 segment of the video, Mikovits discusses Hydroxychloroquine as well as other COVID-19 treatments and, of course, her assessments digress from the Orwellian propaganda we’ve seen in the mainstream daily headlines.  So when Yahoo.com recently illuminated smart devices around the globe on how Hydroxychloroquine shows no virus benefit and raises death risks, you can pretty much take it to the bank that Hydroxychloroquine is an effective treatment for COVID-19 and with minimal death risks.  Especially, when a Yale epidemiologist says Hydroxychloroquine should be made “widely available and promoted immediately” and a Los Angeles physician has claimed the following:

     Every patient I’ve prescribed it [Hydroxychloroquine] to has been very, very ill and within 8 to 12 hours, they were basically symptom-free.

    But you WON’T find this type of information anywhere in the mainstream media because it stands in the way of the Event 201 recommendations, the vaccine agenda, big pharma profits, and the end goals of The Cult of Power.

    Correspondingly, Trump’s heroic impeachment defender, professor Alan Dershowitz, has now claimed The State has the right to ‘plunge a needle into your arm’:

    Harvard Law School emeritus professor Alan Dershowitz claimed in an interview that the government has a constitutional right under the 10th Amendment to forcibly vaccinate a citizen to curb the spread of a contagious disease.

    “Let me put it very clearly, you have no constitutional right to endanger the public and spread the disease, even if you disagree. You have no right not to be vaccinated, you have no right not to wear a mask, you have no right to open up your business…”.

     It’s just too perfect not to have been planned.  Even if you don’t agree, at the very least, ask yourself this:  What were the odds?

    But you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

    The following video is 22-minutes in length.  It is a production by a lady who acquired her Contract Tracing Certificate® and reveals the “stealth fascism of [Contact Tracing®] enforcement”.

    In the above video, at around the 1:00 minute mark, you’ll see U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi espouse the three “T’s” that are to be combined with COVID-19 Social Distancing®:  Testing, Tracing, Treatment.

    Positive tests for coronaviruses are to be turned over to a Contact Tracer® to make sure any infected people are isolated – even from their own pets!  The “infected” must also prove to the Contact Tracer® they have the space to be isolated and if any children live in the household, the tracer is supposed to involve social services.

    Anyone who tests positive for COVID-19 must not leave their home – even those who are symptom free. Moreover, for those who initially test positive, remain healthy, and are later released from quarantine, if they eat at a restaurant where another person is later determined to have been infected, then they all must submit to quarantine – including those who were released previously.   Currently, in the state of California, employers of quarantined employees are held responsible for any workman’s comp through July 2020; and this will most likely be extended.

    Furthermore, the tracers will consult with “infected” people to reference their social media accounts to gather information on everywhere they were recently and with whom they were in contact. Then, all of those people, even strangers in a restaurant, will be contacted.

    Sick people are to be quarantined for 10 days and those without symptoms for 14 days – including the families of the “infected” for at least 14 days from their last contact with the “infected”.

    The politicians and governors have publically claimed that Contact Tracing® is voluntary.  But, for those who don’t immediately quarantine, a “detention order” may be issued and “enforced by the police” to “assure compliance”. Other options for non-compliance may include a court order.  And those who are held in contempt of the court order may be “incarcerated, imprisoned at a quarantine site via electronic monitoring, and/or fined up to $2,000 a day”.

    At the 8:30 – 9:30 segment of the video, a clip of Washington State Governor Jay Inslee is shown spinning “non-compliance enforcement” by referencing “family support personnel” who will tend to those in quarantine like state-conscripted nannies.

    Next, the mole describes how tracers are to view privacy as being subordinate to the “greater good” and tells how positive tests will be entered into an electronic database – which, in an ensuing news clip, is revealed as “law-enforcement specific information” entered for purposes of “computer-aided dispatch”.  In the same clip, Jaqueline Kirby of the El Paso County Colorado Sherriff’s Office admits that home addresses are flagged to identify those who have tested positive for COVID-19®.

    Smart-phone apps are then discussed in the video as a means for businesses to track customers for their “safety”; at least until a centralized database with GPS tracking becomes available like currently used in China and North Korea.  In countries like India and New Zealand, the apps are said to be voluntary but you can’t go anywhere, or buy anything, without the app.  The video then reveals four U.S. states with Contact Tracing® software in place and how Google and Apple iOS updates allow Bluetooth beacons to assist tracing even without an app downloaded.

    Towards the end of the video, the proposed HR 6666 legislation is discussed as potentially funding the Contact Tracing® initiative to the tune of $100 billion.

    And, finally, if you only have time to watch one segment of the above video… view the clip of Ohio Governor Mike DeWine from the 20:04 – 22:34 mark.  Here, a reporter reveals the “larger social agenda” behind COVID-19 that includes a “vision to rectify” the “structural violence of capitalism” that is seen as the root cause of “racism, gender inequality, xenophobia, and homophobia”.  Next, the reporter asks Governor DeWine why he would choose to partner with those who demonize capitalism and whose goals seem to be “rooted in Liberation Theology based on Marxist ideals”.   The Governor’s answer is quite illuminating, to say the least.

    So it does appear COVID-19 is another blitz by the political left and the George Floyd riots are surely another prong of the same attack – even, at the very least, as a diversion for what is taking place with the Contact Tracing® initiative.

    Without a doubt, Contact Tracing® must be killed in the cradle. If it’s allowed to grow and expand it will become a Marxist Social Justice® weapon of unparalleled power.

    We’re in a war for survival and 75% of Americans have no clue as to what is actually happening. Normalcy bias is a bitch. Because history is rhyming and not in good ways. This purge has high-tech teeth.

    And for those who believe Trump is real and about to drain the swamp: ask yourselves why he’s not dead as Kennedy or irredeemably publicly disgraced like Harvey Weinstein. Why has “Crossfire Hurricane” investigator U.S. Attorney John Durham not suffered the fate of Seth Rich or Julian Assange?  The Cult could have also have pulled the plug on the economy without providing the president the cover of Coronavirus as an economic scapegoat.  But that didn’t happen.  Now Trump is running against the second-worst presidential candidate of all time; and after already having beaten the worst.

    Again, what were the odds?

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    But, no matter the odds, they always favor the house. And this will remain true in November – regardless of who wins in the 2020 Elections.  Those placing their hope in political solutions to the nation’s ills, will, as usual, be quite disappointed.  How many House or Senate Democrats have we seen stray from the herd? Not one. Ever. Kavanaugh, Russiagate, Ukrainegrate, et al.  Never.

    And what about the Never Trump Republicans and RINOs (Republicans in Name Only)?  Will they save the republic?  No. The Uniparty lives to serve The Cult.  Loyalty can be forced through fear, seduced by flattery, or may simply derive from a lust for conformity, money, sex, or power.  But, no matter the reason, The Cult is being crowned as Trump tweets.

    So question every headline at all times and act with the best knowledge you have.

    Come out of the system.

    Know that people will wake up when they wake up and, in the meantime, words can be cold drops of conceptual water splashed upon the faces of those still sleeping.  Even so, be careful with whom you cast your pearls.  Seek the like-minded and realize the Orwellian episodes on our screens were written by The Cult; and, consequently, the plotlines are intended to deliver these denouements: Control over those who consent and the depopulation of those deemed to be human ballast and the belligerent.

    To The Cult, it’s not personal. It’s just time.

  • Mapping Civil Unrest In The United States (2000–2020)
    Mapping Civil Unrest In The United States (2000–2020)

    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 06/07/2020 – 23:25

    Protests are a regular feature of democratic society, but, as Visual Capitalist’s Nick Routley explores below, they can occasionally cross over from non-violent demonstrations into civil unrest. Even protests that are largely peaceful can still result in arrests, violence, police aggression, and property damage.

    Visual Capitalist’s animated map below looks at the last two decades of civil unrest in the United States using lists compiled on Wikipedia.

    Instances of civil unrest eventually leave the news cycle, and we rarely have the chance to examine the bigger picture or see where they fit within a nation-wide pattern.

    From this map we can see that certain cities, such as St. Louis and Oakland, have been disproportionately impacted by civil unrest. As well, universities have also been hotspots for rioting, though often for much different reasons.

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    Looking back over two decades, we see that instances of civil unrest in the United States have fallen into roughly four categories:

    1. Economic and social injustice

    2. Sports and event related riots

    3. Politically motivated civil unrest

    4. Reaction to police actions

    Let’s take a look at a prominent example in each of these categories, to get further context.

    Examples of Civil Unrest, by Category

    1. Economic and Social Justice

    One of the most prominent examples in this category is the Occupy Wall Street movement. The protests began in September 2011 in Downtown Manhattan, and soon spread through cities throughout the world.

    In 2016, the Dakota Access Pipeline protests grabbed headlines around the world as protesters faced off against armed soldiers and police with riot gear and military equipment. By the time camps were broken up the next year, hundreds of people had been arrested.

    2. Sports and Event Related Riots

    Between 2000 and 2010, the majority of incidents plotted on the map are related to sports and events. This includes major sporting events like the L.A. Lakers championship win in 2000, but also the University of Maryland riot of 2004, where rowdy post-game celebrations crossed over into arson and property damage.

    A more recent example is the Philadelphia Eagles’ first-ever Super Bowl victory in 2018, where celebrations eventually got out of hand.

    3. Politically Motivated Civil Unrest

    The political divide has been growing in America for years now, but those differences more frequently resulted in confrontations and civil unrest in 2016. After the election of Donald Trump, for example, protests erupted in many cities, with riots breaking out in Portland, Oregon, and Oakland, California.

    Of course, the “Bundy standoff” – an armed confrontation between supporters of cattle rancher Cliven Bundy and law enforcement over withheld grazing fees – showed that not all civil unrest takes place in America’s cities.

    4. Reaction to Police Actions

    Some of the biggest flashpoints seen in recent years have been in response to people who were killed by police.

    In fact, more than half of the points on our map were a direct response to incidents in which a person – typically a black male – died at the hands of law enforcement officials. In previous years, the unrest that followed was typically confined to the cities where the death took place, but protests are now increasingly erupting in cities around the country.

    The Situation Now

    The death of George Floyd – the latest black male to be killed during an encounter with law enforcement – has had a ripple effect, spawning protests in cities around the United States and internationally.

    As our map showing the history of civil unrest makes clear, excessive force from police against black citizens is nothing new. The data shows that black men have by far the highest risk of being killed in an encounter with law enforcement.

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    Until these systemic issues are addressed, history may not repeat exactly, but the rhyme will sound very, very familiar.

  • China Suspends Debt Repayments For 77 Developing Countries And Regions
    China Suspends Debt Repayments For 77 Developing Countries And Regions

    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 06/07/2020 – 23:00

    Even as whispers of a grand debt jubilee grow in the developed world, China on Sunday announced the suspension of debt repayment for 77 developing countries and regions as “the nation is working with other G20 members to carry out the G20 debt relief initiative for low-income countries,” the Global Times reported, citing Chinese officials at a press briefing at the State Council Information Office. The debt moratorium comes after China announced in May it would provide $2 billion over two years to help other countries respond to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

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    Ma Zhaoxu, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, said that the fund will be not only include medical supplies, but also support other countries restart their economies and development. Ma made the comment at the press briefing to release the white paper titled “Fighting COVID-19 China in Action.”

    China’s virtue signaling generosity did not end there: Ma added that China is negotiating bilateral aid with recipient countries in need in an equal manner to identify assisting projects to help developing nations improve public health standards, improve their livelihoods and resume their economies. In short, China is preparing for one massive debt-for-equity swap where China will simply end up holding the equity.

    And speaking of taking over, China is doing everything in its power to get all global NGOs on its side, having made made multilateral donations to the World Health Organization of $50 million, and providing assistance to global organizations including the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization. China also actively assisted in the fundraising event organized by the Solidarity Response Fund of the WHO in China; we can only imagine that’s the reason why the WHO transformed into China’s PR agency since the coronavirus outbreak.

     

  • Media's 'Racial Injustice' Blind Spot: Over 30 Shot In Another Deadly Chicago Weekend
    Media’s ‘Racial Injustice’ Blind Spot: Over 30 Shot In Another Deadly Chicago Weekend

    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 06/07/2020 – 22:35

    Though largely overlooked and ignored in the now 24/7 mainstream network coverage of racial injustice in America, Chicago witnessed another deadly weekend of inner-city black on black gang-related violence, with over 30 people shot. 

    “Three people are dead and at least 28 others have been injured in shootings across the city this weekend,” a Chicago NBC affiliate reports.

    This after on the same Memorial Day weekend that George Floyd was heinously killed by police in Minnesota, Chicago had witnessed a whopping nearly 50 people shot in one of the city’s deadliest ever holiday weekends (where ten died from their wounds, including young people).

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    NBC 5 Chicago footage: “A man was killed and three others were critically injured in a shooting Sunday on the Near West Side.”

    At a moment “Black Lives Matter” chants can be heard overtaking most every major American city, the now weekly reality of dozens tragically dying in black-on-black crime in Chicago and some other large cities (a trend that tends to increase into the hot summer months) remains a huge ‘blind spot’ in terms of the current ideologically charged media debate and public discourse. 

    The mayor has some advice, however:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    It also provides an uncomfortable example and opening for questioning the pervasive narrative of ‘systemic’ and ‘structural’ racism, and other core dogmas centered on the idea of rampant minority oppression and ‘white privilege’. 

    These are BLM’s sacred dogmas which tend to shut out any dissenting black voice like the below:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    But concerning these sacred dogmas — belief in which inevitably results in advocates necessarily perceiving black oppression everywhere — this is a moment where we should dare to ask the following question: do the core claims of the demonstrators in the streets stand up to empirical analysis and scrutiny? 

    One man did explore this below in an epic viral tweet thread. Here’s what he said:

    “I will lose many friends over what I’m about to say. I will possibly be called a racist or even a white supremacist (even though I’m a brown man, who’s been beaten to a pulp by neo-Nazis wearing steel toed boots)…”

    * * *

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    …But maybe, just maybe, the fact that I am getting 100% of my information from the black scholars in the picture – The Great Thomas Sowell, Glenn Loury, Shelby Steele, John McWorther, Coleman Hughes, Kmele Foster and Thomas Chatterton Williams, allows me some room for thought?

    I’ve been watching the narrative play universally over the heinous killing of George Floyd, and the complete and utter lack of facts about African Americans in The US has been infuriating.

    Unfortunately, anyone who doesn’t submit to the dominant narrative will be called a heretic, a racist, a white supremacist etc.

    Still, I can’t stop myself.

    1. Black Lives Matter don’t care about black people. Want evidence? Name me a single time – just once – when they’ve protested against black people being killed by other black people? Whether in America or elsewhere?
    Why is this relevant?

    Because the biggest cause of death for black men aged 15-45 in USA is… other black men. Compare to white people, where it’s traffic accidents for the younger portion and heart attacks for those over 35.
    Or how about the black lives in Sudan, East Timor, Libya?

    Why do we only ever hear from BLM when it’s a white person killing a black person?

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    2. Speaking of which – imagine if white people started doing the reverse. Imagine every time a white person was killed by a black person, there’d be protests, riots, looting and social media campaigns. First thing to notice is that it would be more frequent, because African Americans kill more white people in the US than white people kill African Americans. Now what?

    Should we really start applying the race card every time there’s a murder involving more than one pigmentation? Where will it end?

    3. Police killings. The video of the murder of George Floyd is so visceral, by showing the casual evil with which officer Derek Chauvin kills George Floyd. People are rightly outraged, and no one can honestly defend the officer, who rightly has been arrested and hopefully will spend his remaining years behind bars (although the prosecutor has been idiotic in moving the case from 2nd degree to first degree murder – a burden of proof they will most likely fail to provide).

    But… The only reason people are up in arms about these is that the social media and MSM attention focuses disproportionately on these incidents when the victim is black and the officer isn’t. Don’t believe me? Let me prove it:

    You’ve all heard of Tamir Rice – a 12 year old black boy who was murdered when brandishing a toy gun. It was all over the news, there were riots and marches, hashtags and universal condemnation all over the media. But how many of you have heard of Daniel Shaver?

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    A white man who was showing his friends a scoped air rife used to exterminate birds who entered his store, and was killed for this?

    You may remember the case of Sam DuBose, a black man who was shot dead for driving his car away from from the police. The exact same thing happened to before that to Andrew Thomas, a white man driving away from the police. None of you have heard of him.

    Alton Sterling was a black man shot dead by the police when reaching into his pocket for his wallet – a travesty.

    The same thing happened to a white guy named Dylan Noble. Sterling made national headlines, none of us heard a word about Noble. Loren Simpson was a white teenager who was shot dead by the police in eerily similar circumstances as George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin.

    You’ve not heard of the former, but demanded justice for the latter. You’ve not heard of James Boyd, Alfred Redwine, Brandon Stanley or Mary Hawkes. But you’ve heard of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.

    Because the only times police killings make the news is when the victim is black and the officer isn’t. Here are the FBI, NCJRS and BJS statistics:

    For every 10,000 black people arrested for violent crime, 3 are killed by the police.

    For every 10, 000 white people arrested for violent crime, 4 are killed by the police.

    In 2019, 49 unarmed people were killed by the police. 9 were black. 19 were white. The likelihood for a black person being shot by the police is as high as being struck by lightning.

    Yet, we are seeing riots, every single post on Instagram and Twitter is in support of Black Lives Matter and denunciation of police in America…

    4. “Systemic Racism” / “Institutionalized racism”.

    Sound good, don’t they? Such powerful words… and completely inaccurate. First, let’s see what the claims being made are:

    Both insinuate built-in racism within various official institutions (police, law, governments etc).

    Yet, when they are challenged, by asking the proponents to provide *evidence* for these, nothing is provided. Name one single law that is targeting exclusively black people. Just one. There isn’t one.

    If the police is “systematically” anti-black, explain how it is possible that 20% of the Police Force in America is black (African Americans in America constitute roughly 14% of the population, meaning that blacks are *overrepresented* within the police force!)?

    Now, imagine how incredibly racist it is to say that the 100,000 plus black police officers are too stupid to know that they are working inside and within a racist institution? That really is racism. And none of them have come out and said anything???

    None of them have gone on 60 Minutes and said “We are being trained to be racists”? Seriously?

    How about governments? Well, let’s leave aside the fact that America just had a two-term black president (whose second name was Hussein, by the way).

    Some of America’s worst run cities have black mayors, black governors and majority black councils. Look at two of the worst cities in America to be black in: Baltimore and Chicago. Why is it that a place where the people in power are black can be *worse* for the African American Community, than cities that aren’t run by black politicians? This is a knock-down argument.

    5. Disparity.

    People often look at the economic disparities between blacks and whites, and claim it to be evidence for institutionalized racism. It says something about the power of a narrative, when it has been debunked decades ago – by BLACK ECONOMISTS (like The Great Thomas Sowell) – yet the myth persists.

    First of all, at no point in human history has any two groups of people had the same level of wealth or income as each other. It would be an absolute miracle to expect that people with different backgrounds, cultures, histories, values and ethics to have the same level of wealth.

    This is even true within so called races – compare for example Black Americans (generational) vs Black Immigrants… particularly the ones from West Indies (Jamaica, Barbados etc.).

    You couldn’t tell these people apart, just by looking at them, and whatever racism is in place for one group must by definition be applied for the second group.

    But what they have is completely different values and work ethics (the Jamaicans arriving in the US does so commonly to achieve greater heights than what he or she can in their home country). Whatever level of systemic racism exists, they are subjected to it as much as the African American.

    Yet, already in the 1970’s (!!!), when racism was far more prevalent than it is today, Black Americans from the West Indies were earning 58% more than the Black American whose generations go back centuries in the United States. How could that be, if there’s supposed to be such a thing as “systemic racism”?

    Disparities are only proof of disparities. Just because Group X doesn’t have the same as Group Y, doesn’t mean that it’s explained by racism.

    And why does this so called “White Supremacy” only run against one group of Black Americans? Why doesn’t it run against Asian Americans, who out earn White Americans by over 60%? Why doesn’t it apply to Jewish Americans? Or Indian Americans, all of whom earn more than… White Americans?? Maybe there’s something else going on…?

    In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan published his report “The Negro Family: The Case For National Action”, where he saw that African American households were 25% single mothers – a frightening statistic that would have devastating consequences. Since then, Jim Crow laws and Red Lining have all been removed from the books, Martin Luther King Jr. and The Civil Rights Movement made tremendous strides and we’ve now even had a black two-term president.

    But, today, black households with no paternal figure, and only a single mother constitute SEVENTY FIVE PERCENT of all black households in America!!! SEVENTY FIVE!!!!

    Now you tell me, which is the better explanation for young black children ending up in a life of crime – the lack of a father figure, or the mythical, non-explainable entity known only as “institutional racism”, which for some reasons doesn’t apply to Nigerian immigrants, to black immigrants from West Indies, to Indian people, to Jewish people, to Asian Americans…?

    Read the rest of the Twitter thread, with source links, here. 

  • Study Finds Extreme Protests Turn The Public Away From The Cause
    Study Finds Extreme Protests Turn The Public Away From The Cause

    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 06/07/2020 – 22:10

    Submitted by Simon Black of Sovereign Man

    New research shows that public support for a protest movement wanes as the protesters get more extreme.

    The study, published this year in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, says even protesters who are part of the movement become disenfranchised by things like “inflammatory rhetoric, blocking traffic, and vandalism.”

    One of the authors of the study said there is a strong backlash to extreme protesting.

    For example, they “found extreme anti-Trump protest actions actually led people to not only dislike the movement and support the cause less, but to be willing to support Trump more.”

    And the same held true across protest actions for both conservative and liberal causes.

    What this means:

    The evidence supports another study which found that since 1945, “nonviolent campaigns were more successful at bringing about large-scale political transformation than violent campaigns.”

    Since America is likely at the very beginning of a stage of unrest, this is important information to keep in mind for protest leaders and activists.

    But it also shows that those opposed to protests have something to gain by inciting violence.

    With this knowledge, whoever wants to discredit a movement–whether local police or political opposition–need only to push the protesters to extremes.

    * * *

    Executive order threatens to strip tech companies of key legal protection

    What happened:

    Twitter placed warning labels on a couple of Trump’s tweets, warning users of false information.

    Trump responded with an executive order that reinterprets a key section of the Communications Decency Act.

    Section 230 of the law gives immunity to platforms which host content created by third-party users.

    As long as a platform, like Twitter, makes an effort to remove illegal content, like child exploitation, they cannot be held legally liable for what users post.

    But the executive order reinterprets that immunity.

    It says that when these companies start removing or editing legal content, they are engaging in editing.

    And that, Trump argues, makes all content the website’s own published material, for which they are legally liable.

    What this means:

    Essentially the executive order threatens to strip Twitter and Facebook of legal protection if they selectively silence certain voices.

    That will open them up to being sued for damages, or being held otherwise legally liable, for what users post on the platforms.

    Conservatives may think this is great in the short term, protecting them from being “deplatformed” by left-leaning tech companies. But in the long run, weakening Section 230 immunity could be a deathblow to a free and open internet.

    A recent lawsuit by conservative platform PragerU against Google/YouTube argued that YouTube was censoring PragerU’s videos, rendering YouTube a “publisher” rather than a “platform” and therefore no longer immune under Section 230.

    The suit also argued that YouTube should now be treated as a public utility and thus prohibited from engaging in viewpoint discrimination. The US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit rejected that argument in February.

    * * *

    Lawmakers want to stop the transfer of military surplus to police

    What happened:

    In the 1990s, a program began to transfer excess military equipment to police stations across the country.

    Since then, $6 billion worth of weapons, armored vehicles, tents, and other surplus military equipment has flowed from the Pentagon, to local and state police agencies.

    Now it is common at protests, even peaceful ones, to see things like armored “Bearcat” vehicles, humvees, and rocket launchers (repurposed for tear gas) used against protesters.

    Some members of Congress are attempting to stop the practice with an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act.

    What this means:

    The NDAA is the regularly re-authorized bill that allows police to, for instance, detain Americans accused of terrorism indefinitely without trial, even on American soil.

    One of the co-sponsors of the amendment said, “The streets aren’t war zones. Our police officers aren’t military, and our citizens aren’t combatants.”

    But that is exactly how the Pentagon has viewed the citizens ever since September 11, 2001.

    The time is long past due to push back on the militarization of police.

  • FBI Investigate Possible Link Between Recent Killings Of Law Enforcement In NorCal
    FBI Investigate Possible Link Between Recent Killings Of Law Enforcement In NorCal

    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 06/07/2020 – 21:45

    Federal agents in the Bay Area are scrambling to figure out whether the seemingly random slaying of a sheriff’s deputy in an unincorporated part of Santa Cruz might be linked to the fatal shooting of a pair of federal agents in Oakland late last month, as well as a handful of other crimes, the LA Times reports.

    On Saturday,  Santa Cruz sheriff’s Deputy Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller, 38, was shot and killed in Ben Lomond, an unincorporated area near Santa Cruz. While pursuing a suspect, Gutzwiller and other officers, several of whom were also wounded, were ambushed by gunfire and explosives.

    At the scene, authorities arrested and booked Steven Carrillo, a Sergeant on active duty at the nearby Travis Air Force Base.

    Carrillo, 32, was a member of the 60th Security Forces Squadron, according to a Travis Air Force Base spokesman. And it also appears he might be the killer of several law enforcement officers during what appears to have been a multi-day spree.

    Carrillo was repeatedly shot while being taken into custody and is reportedly in serious condition. It’s unclear whether the explosives found in his car were intended to be used during a broader attack. The FBI says it is looking into Carrillo’s possible involvement in several other crimes last month, including an attack on two Federal Protective Service agents in Oakland last month that left one dead, and one critically injured.

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    Damon Gutzwiller

    It’s unclear whether Carrillo was acting alone, or if he might have been part of some kind of radical sleeper cell intent on sowing chaos during the protests. Carrillo arrived in the area in June 2018 when he transferred to Travis Air Force Base. One month earlier, his wife died from what police determined to be a suicide. Monika Leigh Scott Carrillo, who was also in the Air Force, was found dead in May 2018 while stationed in South Carolina.

    The two had been married for nine years, and had two children together. Carrillo will be charged with murder, assault with a deadly weapon and several other charges.

    Dozens gathered outside the sheriff’s office Saturday afternoon to pay tribute to Gutzwiller. His wife and child stood next to a photo of him and bouquets of flowers.

    Gutzwiller’s colleagues described him as unusually patient, always smiling and cracking jokes, with a self-deprecating sense of humor. Hart said he reviewed Gutzwiller’s personnel file last night, and there hadn’t been a single complaint from the public against him in his 14 years in the department.

    A Santa Cruz native, Gutzwiller’s colleagues say he was compassionate and a major asset to law enforcement in the area, thanks to his close links to the community and a reputation as a good cop. He was a loving husband and father.

    And yet, these killings, like other killings of law enforcement and innocent bystanders over the past 2 weeks, have gone almost completely ignored by the mainstream media.

    If there was a domestic terrorist roaming around NorCal shooting cops, don’t you think, dear reader, that the public might want to hear about it?

  • Does Increased Violence Reflect An Energy Problem?
    Does Increased Violence Reflect An Energy Problem?

    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 06/07/2020 – 21:20

    Authored by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World blog,

    Why are we seeing so much violence recently? One explanation is that people are sympathizing with those in the Minneapolis area who are upset at the death of George Floyd. They believe that a white cop used excessive force in subduing Floyd, leading to his death.

    I believe that there is a much deeper story involved. As I wrote in my recent post, Understanding Our Pandemic – Economy Predicament, the problem we are facing is too many people relative to resources, particularly energy resources. This leads to a condition sometimes referred to as “overshoot and collapse.” The economy grows for a while, may stabilize for a time, and then heads in a downward direction, essentially because energy consumption per capita falls too low.

    Strangely enough, this energy crisis looks like a crisis of affordability. The young and the poor, especially, cannot afford to buy goods and services that they need, such as a home in which to raise their children and a vehicle to drive. Trying to do so leaves them with excessive debt. If the affordability problem changes for the worse, the young and the poor are likely to protest. In fact, these protests may become violent. 

    The pandemic tends to make the affordability problem worse for minorities and young people because they are disproportionately affected by job losses associated with lockdowns. In many cases, the poor catch COVID-19 more frequently because they live and/or work in crowded conditions where the disease spreads easily. In the US, blacks seem to be especially hard hit, both by COVID-19 and through the loss of jobs. These issues, plus the availability of guns, makes the situation particularly explosive in the US.

    Let me explain these issues further.

    [1] Energy is required for all aspects of the economy.

    Energy is required by governments. Energy is required to operate police cars. Energy is required to build schools and to operate their heating and lighting. Energy is needed to build and maintain roads. Tax revenue represents available funds to buy energy products and goods and services made with energy products.

    Energy is needed for any type of business. Operating a computer requires electricity, which is a form of energy. Heating or cooling a building requires energy. Growing food requires solar energy from the sun; liquid fuel is used to operate farm machinery and trucks that transport food to the locations where it is sold. Human energy is used for some of these processes. For example, human energy is used to operate computers and farm machinery. Human energy is sometimes used to pick the crops, as well.

    Wages paid by governments and businesses indirectly go to buy energy products of many kinds. Food is, of course, an energy product. The heat to cook or bake the food is also an energy product. Metals of all kinds are made using energy products, and lumber is cut and transported using energy products. With sufficient wages, it is possible to buy or rent a home, and to purchase or lease an automobile.

    Interest rates indirectly reflect the portion of goods and services produced by energy products that can be transferred to parts of the system that depend on interest earnings. For example, banks, insurance companies and those on pensions depend on interest earnings. If interest rates are high, benefits to pensioners can easily be paid and insurance companies can charge low rates for their products, because their interest earnings will help offset claim costs.

    Interest rates are now about as low as they can go, indicating a likely shortage of energy for funding these interest rates. The last time interest rates were close to current levels was during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

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    Figure 1. Ten-year and three-month US Treasury interest rates, in chart made by FRED.

    [2] When there is not enough energy to go around, the result can be low commodity prices, low wages and layoffs.

    This is not an intuitive result. Most people assume (low energy = high prices), but this is the opposite of what actually happens. The problem is that the amount workers can afford to pay for finished goods and services needs to be high enough to make to make production of the commodities used in making the finished products profitable. When affordability falls too low, the system tends to collapse.

    We are really dealing with a two-sided problem. The prices of commodities such as oil, wholesale electricity, steel, copper and food tend to fluctuate widely. Consumers need these prices to be low, in order for the price of finished goods made with these commodities to be affordable; producers need the prices of these commodities to rise ever-higher, to cover the cost of deeper wells and more batteries, to try to partially offset the intermittency of solar and wind electricity.

    Most people assume that the situation will be resolved in the direction of commodity prices rising ever higher. In fact, commodity prices did rise higher, until mid 2008. Then, something snapped; commodity prices have been falling ever-lower since mid 2008. In fact, ever-lower commodity prices have been a world-wide problem, causing huge problems for countries trying to support their economies with export revenues based on commodity production.

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    Figure 2. CRB Commodity Price Index from 1995 to June 2, 2020. Chart prepared by Trading Economics. Composition is 39% energy, 41% agriculture, 7% precious metals and 13% industrial metals.

    Even before the lockdowns, low commodity prices were leading to low wages of those working in commodity industries around the world. These low prices also led to low tax revenue, and this low tax revenue led to an inability of governments to afford the services that citizens expect, such as bus service and subsidized prices for certain essential goods/services. For example, South Africa (an exporter of coal and minerals) was experiencing public protests in September 2019, for reasons such as these. Chile is a major exporter of copper and lithium. Low prices of those commodities led to violent protests in 2019 for similar reasons.

    Now, in 2020, lockdowns have led to even lower commodity prices. At times, farmers have been plowing their crops under. Oil companies are laying off workers. The trend toward lower commodity prices had been occurring for a long time; the recent drop in prices was “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” If prices stay this low, there is a danger of falling production of commodities that we depend on, including food, metals, electricity, and oil. Businesses producing these items will fail, and governments with falling tax revenue will be unable to support them.

    [3] Historical energy consumption data shows that violence often accompanies periods when energy production is not growing fast enough to meet the needs of the growing population.

    Figure 3 shows average annual growth in world energy consumption, for 10-year periods:

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    Figure 3. Average growth in energy consumption for 10 year periods, based on Vaclav Smil estimates from Energy Transitions: History, Requirements and Prospects (Appendix) together with BP Statistical Data for 1965 and subsequent.

    Economic growth encompasses both population growth and rising standards of living. Figure 4 below takes the same information used in Figure 3 and divides it into (a) the portion underlying population growth, and (b) the portion of the energy supply growth available for improved standards of living. During most periods, increased population absorbs over half of increased energy consumption.

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    Figure 4. Figure similar to Figure 3, except that energy devoted to population growth and growth in living standards are separated. A circle is also added showing the recent growth in energy is primarily the result of China’s temporary growth in coal supplies.

    There are three dips in the Living Standards portion of Figure 4.

    The first one, came in the 10 years ended 1860, just before the US Civil War. Most of us would say that was a period of violence.

    The second one occurred in the 10 years ended 1930. This is the period when the Great Depression began. It came between World War I and World War II. This was another violent period of our history.

    The third dip came in the 10-year period ended 2000. This was not a particularly violent period; instead, it reflects the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union, leaving the member republics to continue on their own. There was a huge loss of demand (really, affordability) on the part of countries that were part of the Soviet Union or depended on the Soviet Union.

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    Figure 5. Chart showing the fall in Eastern Europe’s materials production, after the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union in 1991.

    [4] The world is facing a situation in which total energy consumption seems likely to drop by 5% per year, or perhaps more.

    If we look back at Figure 3, we see that even in very “bad” times economically, energy consumption was rising. In fact, in one 10-year period, the average increase was more than 5% per year.

    If the world economy is reaching a point in which we consumers, in the aggregate, cannot afford the goods and services made with commodities, unless commodity prices are very low, we will likely experience a huge drop in energy consumption. I don’t know exactly how much the annual change will be, but energy consumption growth and GDP growth tend to move together. We might guess that GDP growth is shifting to 5% GDP annual shrinkage, and energy consumption will be shrinking by a similar percentage.

    Clearly, shrinkage of 5% per year would be far worse than the world economy has experienced in the last 200 years. In fact, for the 10-year periods shown in Figure 3, there has never been a reduction in energy consumption. Even if I am wrong and the shrinkage in energy consumption is “only” 2% per year, this would be far worse than the experience over any 10-year period. In fact, during the Great Recession, world energy consumption only shrank in one year (2009) and then by 1.4%.

    History doesn’t give us much guidance regarding what impact a dramatic reduction in energy consumption would have on the economy, except that population reduction would likely be part of the change that takes place. If half or more of energy consumption growth goes toward rising population (Figure 4), then a shrinkage of energy consumption seems likely to reduce world population.

    [5] What the world is really facing is a competition regarding which parts of the economy can stay, and which will need to be eliminated, if there is not enough energy to go around. It should not be surprising if this competition often leads to violence.

    As I indicated in Section [1], all parts of the economy depend on energy. If there is not enough, some parts must shrink back. The big question is, “Which parts?”

    (a) Do governments, and organizations that bind governments together, collapse? If countries are doing poorly, they will not want to contribute to the World Trade Organization, the United Nations or the European Union. Governments, such as the government of Saudi Arabia, could be overthrown, or may simply stop operating. In fact, any government, when it faces insurmountable problems, could simply stop operating and leave its functions to lower levels of government, such as states, provinces, or cities.

    (b) Do pension plans stop operating? Are pensioners left “out in the cold?” How about Social Security recipients?

    (c) Can international trade be kept operating? It is a big consumer of energy. Also, competition with low-wage countries tends to keep wages in developed nations low. Without international trade, many imported goods (including imported medicines) become unavailable.

    (d) Which companies will collapse, leaving bonds holders and stockholders with $0? People who formerly had jobs with these companies will also find themselves without jobs.

    (e) If the world economy cannot support as many people as before, which ones will be left out? Is it people in rich countries who find themselves without jobs? Is it people who find themselves without imported medicines? Is it the ones who catch COVID-19? Or is it mostly citizens of very poor countries, whose income will fall so low that starvation becomes a concern?

    [6] The violent demonstrations represent an effort to try to push the problems related to the shortfall in energy, and the goods and services that energy can provide, away from the protest groups, toward other segments of the economy.

    In an ideal world:

    (a) Jobs that pay well would be available to all.

    (b) Governments would be able to afford to provide a wide range of services to all, including free health care for all and reimbursement for time off from work for being sick. They would also be able to provide adequate pensions for the elderly and low cost public transit.

    (c) Police would treat all citizens well. No group would be so poor that a life of crime would seem to be a solution.

    As indicated in Section [2], back in 2019, before COVID-19 hit, protests were already starting because of low commodity prices and the indirect impacts of low commodity prices. One reason why governments were so eager to adopt shutdowns is the fact that when people were required to stay inside because of COVID-19, the problem of protests could be stopped.

    It should be no surprise, then, that the protests are back, once that the lockdowns have ended. There are now more people out of work and more people who are concerned about not having full healthcare costs reimbursed. Social distancing requirements are making it more difficult for businesses to operate profitably, indirectly leading to fewer available jobs.

    [7] Violent protests seem to push problems fueled by an inadequate supply of affordable energy toward (a) governments and (b) insurance companies.

    In some cases, insurance companies will pay for damages caused by protesters. Eventually, costs could become too great for insurance companies. Most policies have exclusions for “acts of war.” If protests escalate, this exclusion might become applicable.

    Governments of all kinds are already being stressed by shutdowns because when citizens are not working, there is less tax revenue. If, in addition, governments have been paying COVID-19 related costs, this creates an even bigger budget mismatch. Governments find themselves less and less able to pay their everyday expenses, such as hiring teachers, policemen, and firemen. All of these issues tend to push city governments toward bankruptcy and more layoffs.

    [8] Dark skinned people living in America tend to be Vitamin D deficient, making them more prone to getting severe cases of COVID-19. Vitamin supplements may be an inexpensive way of reducing the severity of the COVID-19 epidemic and thus lessening its diversion of energy resources.

    There are a number of reports out that suggest that having adequate Vitamin D from sunlight strengthens the immune system and helps reduce the mortality of COVID-19. Adequate Vitamin C is also helpful for the immune system for people in general, not just those with dark skin.

    Dark skinned people are adapted to living near the equator. If they live in the United States or Europe, their bodies make less Vitamin D from the slanted rays available in those parts of the world than they would living near the equator. As a result, studies show that Vitamin D deficiency is more common in African Americans than other Americans.

    Recent data shows that the COVID-19 mortality rate for Black Americans is 2.4 times that of White Americans. COVID-19 hospitalization rates are no doubt higher as well. Encouraging Americans with dark skin to take Vitamin D supplements would seem to be at least a partial solution to the problem of greater disease severity for Blacks. Vitamin C supplements, or more fresh fruit, might be helpful for all people, not just those with low Vitamin D levels.

    If the COVID-19 impact can be lessened in a very inexpensive way, this would seem to be helpful for the economy in general. High-cost solutions simply divert available resources toward fighting COVID-19, making the overall resource shortfall for the rest of the economy, worse.

    [9] Much more equal wages would seem to be a solution for wage disparity, but this doesn’t bring the wages of low earning workers up enough, in practice. 

    There are a huge number of low-earning workers in many countries around the world. In order to increase commodity prices enough to make them profitable for producers, we really need wages in all countries to be much higher. For example, wages in Africa and in India need to be much higher, so that people in these parts of the world can afford goods such as cars, air conditioning and vacation travel. There is no way this can be done. Furthermore, such a change would add pollution and climate change issues.

    There is a fundamental “not enough to go around” problem that we do not have an answer for. Historically, when there hasn’t been enough to go around, the attempted solution was fighting wars over what was available. In a way, the violence seen in cities around the globe is a new version of this violence. Governments of various kinds may ultimately be casualties of these uprisings. Remaining lower-level governments will be left with the problem of starting over again, issuing new currency and trying to make new alliances. In total, the new economy will be very different; it will probably bear little resemblance to today’s world economy.

  • Police Chief Forced To Resign After Supporting Citizens Who Armed Up Amid Riots
    Police Chief Forced To Resign After Supporting Citizens Who Armed Up Amid Riots

    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 06/07/2020 – 20:55

    Lowell, Michigan Police Chief Steven Bukala was forced to resign on Thursday after 25 years with the force, after writing on Facebook in support of four young men who armed themselves against potential violent protesters.

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    Responding to phone calls that 2nd Amendment demonstrators were open carrying down Main Street, Bukala wrote on the Lowell Police Deparment’s Facebook page on Tuesday: “We are aware and no need to call us,” adding “We at the Lowell Police Department support the legally armed citizen and the Second Amendment,” according to WZZM13.

    After a flood of complaints as part of what WZZM says was a “pattern of inappropriate behavior,” the city manager told Bukala to resign by 5 p.m. on Friday or be fired at 5:01 p.m.

    A disciplinary action report from city manager Michael Burns said Bukala was directed to make the post so residents were aware of the demonstrators. But when Burns read the last line, it appeared to be a political position, “possibly escalating rhetoric.” 

    Burns asked him to remove that line, and Bukala responded with “This is a true statement.”

    The post gained some traction within the community, and Burns described the social media activity around it as “hostile.” The official Lowell Police Department Facebook page also added to the statement and defended it in the comments. 

    “People!” started one comment, which said Lowell has had open carry demonstrators in town before. “Yes people are hypersensitive due to the riots and anarchists that have come to Michigan. They are exercising their right to open carry. No one has to agree or disagree.” The comment was signed “Chief.” –WZZM

    Three days after a riot in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Bukala wrote on his personal Facebook page: “So these fine young men called me today. They wanted to exercise their Second Amendment rights and walk down Main Street. They saw what happened in Grand Rapids. They said it’s not going to happen here. We have your backs. I thanked them for letting me know they were in town and to call if they see something.”

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    A photo of four armed men, defended by Lowell Police Chief Steve Bukala, who said they wanted to defend their second amendment right and protect against protesters. (Photo posted on Facebook on June 2, 2020) via WOODTV

    On Thursday, the Lowell PD apologized on its Facebook page, writing “We have made mistakes on social media this week, starting with an ill-considered message posted on the Lowell Police Department Facebook page. We then defended this message, arguing with residents or dismissing their concerns.”

    The PD apologized, adding “we must take this opportunity to listen and learn so we can work together to defeat racism and build a more just and equitable society. We can and must do better.”

    According to the city manager, Bukala was cited for violating city policy, including “conduct unbecoming of a police officer,” adding “Personnel shall not allow personal feelings to influence their professional conduct.”

  • The Shallow Deep-State Goes Deeper As It Moves Toward Martial Law
    The Shallow Deep-State Goes Deeper As It Moves Toward Martial Law

    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 06/07/2020 – 20:30

    Authored by Edward Curtin via Off-Guardian.org,

    I am not trying to be cute and play with words. That title is meant to convey what it says, so let me explain.

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    The people who own the United States and their allies around the world have a plan. It is so simple that it is extremely devious.

    Their plan has been in operation for many years.

    It has most people bamboozled because it is Janus-faced by design, overt one day, covert the next, but both faces operate under one controlling head. Some call this head the Deep-State. Even the Deep-State calls itself the Deep-State in a double fake. It is meant to make people schizoid, which it has.

    The so-called Deep-State has been given many names over the years. I will not bore you with them, except to say that it was once called the power elite. They are the upper classes, the super wealthy who control the financial institutions, Wall Street, the intelligence agencies, the corporate media, the internet, the military, and the politicians. They are multinational.

    They are the wealthy nihilists who care not one jot for the rest of the world. They operate in secret, yet also run above-ground organizations such as the World Bank (WB), the World Health Organization (WHO), the US Agency for International Development (USAID), etc. Their bloodstream runs on war, the preparations for war, and economic exploitation of the world.

    All wealthy people are not party to their machinations, but they are almost always complicit in profiting from their crimes, unless they are very stupid. Or play stupid. Since I am talking about a great confidence game, that is quite common.

    Other people, all other classes, the poor, middle-classes, even a portion of the upper middle classes mean nothing to the power elite unless they can serve their interests. They are always waging class warfare to maintain their domination and control. Their recent version of this class war is underway in the United States and in many other countries.

    As of today, they are using race fears to create chaos and outrage to disguise their class warfare that is leading to the imposition of martial law. Soon they will shift back to the coronavirus fraud. Back and forth, in and out, now you see it, now you don’t.

    By shutting down the world’s economy, they have destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people and are creating poverty on a vast scale. Much famine and death will follow. In the United States alone, 40-45 million people have applied for unemployment insurance and job loss is the greatest since the Great Depression. The reason: a massive propaganda campaign created around Covid-19 fear porn.

    This class war is not new, but it is conducted today at warp speed since these people control the technology that has allowed them vastly increased power.

    In the USA, it is conducted as usual under the guise of Republicans versus Democrats, the two representative political factions that are the faces of the controlled “opposition,” who are actually allies in the larger confidence game. Keeping “hope” alive is central to their strategy. Mind control is what they do. Speed is their greatest ally. Race is central to their game plan. They always say they are protecting us.

    It is all a lie. A show. Nothing but a spectacle for the gullible. A shadow play.

    The current president, Donald Trump, is the choice of one faction of these psychopaths. This year, Joseph Biden, is the shaky presumptive choice of the other. Both are deranged puppets. Regular people fight over who is better or worse because they are living inside what Jim Garrison, the former District Attorney of New Orleans and the only person to ever bring a trial in the assassination of President Kennedy, long ago called “the doll’s house.”

    It is a place where illusions and delusions replace reality. It is 24/7 propaganda. It keeps people engaged. It gives them something to argue about, one team to root for. It’s a sport. It is similar to Plato’s Cave. Fire has been replaced with electronic lighting and screens, but little has changed.

    The sick system of exploitation is oiled and greased with the tantalizing bait of hope dangled for the masses. Shit slogans like “We are all in this together.”

    But there is no hope for this system.

    But when the propaganda is so slick that it creates a double-bind, people grasp at any neurotic “solution” out of frustration. As I write, huge angry crowds are out in the streets protesting the sick murder of a black man, George Floyd, by a white cop. Police infiltrators have started violent looting. Chaos reigns, as planned.

    Such killings are routine, but someone turned a switch for this one when just yesterday operation corona lockdown with its fear and fake statistics had everyone cowering behind masks at home as the economic lives of vast numbers were destroyed in a flash.

    For today, the masquerade is in the streets. Many good people are caught up in it. In a few days the scene will shift and we can expect another “bombshell.”

    These surprises will keep happening one after another for the foreseeable future. Shock and Awe for the home crowd. The war come home. The controllers know you can’t wage war against the rest of the world unless you do so at home as well.

    When one group within the deep-state won the internecine battle in 2016 and “shocked” the country with the election of the comical Trump, the other deep-state group called the Democrats, immediately set in motion a plan to try to oust him or to make it seem as if they were trying to do so.

    The naïve thought this may happen, and their deluded yearning has been stretched until the 2020 presidential election, although some probably think Trump might go before then. He won’t.

    So many people have destroyed their minds and relationships because they can’t see through the fraud.

    Early in 2017, as the outgoing front man for the CIA/warfare/Wall St. state, Barack Obama, left his time bombs for the future. The pink pussy hats were sent out marching to open the show. Russia-gate was launched; eventually impeachment was tried. The Democrats. with their media allies, went on a non-stop attack.

    It was all so obvious, so shallow in its intent, as it was meant to be. But millions who were in the doll house were outraged, obsessed, frantic with rage. They bought the con-game. Both those who hate Trump and those that love him have spent almost four years foaming at the mouth, breathless.

    Trump was cast as the personification of evil. A relentless attack on Trump began and has continued all this time. It is pure theater. Trump remains at the helm, as planned, holding the Bible aloft in a style reminiscent of a Bible thumping Klansman from The Birth of a Nation. Only the ignorant thought it might have been different.

    He knows how to perform his role. He is a fine actor. He outrages, spews idiocies, as he is supposed to do. That Mussolini style stance, that absurd hair, the pout. Just perfect for an arch-villain. It’s so obvious that it isn’t. Herein lies the trick.

    And who profits from his policies? The super-rich, of course, the power-elite.

    Who just stole 6-10 trillion dollars of public money under the hilariously named Cares Act? The super-rich, of course, the deep-state.

    It was a bi-partisan bank robbery from the public treasury carried out under the shadow of Covid-19, whose phony hyped up numbers were used to frighten the populace into lockdown mode as the Republican and Democratic bank robbers smiled in unison and announced forcefully, “We care!” We are here to protect you.

    Remember how Barack Obama “saved” us by bailing out Wall St. and the big banks to the tune of trillions in early 2009. Then waged unending wars. Left black Americans bereft. He cared, too, didn’t he. Our leaders always care.

    Obama was the black guy in the white hat. Trump is the white guy in the black hat. Hollywood on the Potomac, as Gary Wills called it when Ronald Reagan was the acting-president.

    Now Obama’s war-loving side-kick, the pale-faced, twisted talking Biden is seriously offered as an alternative to the Elvis impersonator in the White House. This is the false left/right dichotomy that has the residents of the doll’s house in its grip.

    If you can’t see what’s coming, you might want to break out of the house, take off your mask, go for a walk, and take some deep breaths. The walls are closing in.

    Knees will be on everyone’s necks in the months ahead.

  • IceCap Asset Management: The Effectiveness Of Keynesian Economic Theory Has Reached Its End
    IceCap Asset Management: The Effectiveness Of Keynesian Economic Theory Has Reached Its End

    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 06/07/2020 – 20:25

    Submitted by Keith Dicker of IceCap Asset Management, as excerpted from his latest monthly note, “The Law Of Holes”

    Since the COVID Crisis accelerated in March, we estimate aggregate global losses and capital formation destruction to be $30 Trillion. We also estimate aggregate global stimulus to be up to $8 Trillion.

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    For $8 Trillion to offset $30 Trillion, we need to see a rapid recovery dominated by an increase in the economic multiplier. A quick and rapid recovery will allow many losses to recover. A slow and sluggish recovery will cause many losses to become permanent. This leads us to ask what is reasonable to expect for a recovery period and the economic multiplier?

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    The answer lies with the chart (next page) which details exactly how fast economic activity has been swishing around. M2 Velocity of Money chart produces 2 quite important messages.

    Everything has limits

    For starters, the maximum speed achieved was during the period 1995 to 2000, when it recorded the top speed ever  recorded of 2.20. In other words, the current $8 Trillion in stimulus would swish around to the equivalent of $17.6 Trillion of stimulus for the global economy.

    Considering we have $30 Trillion in estimated losses; it may take a bit more stimulus to truly recover. And even more importantly, to prevent many of these temporary losses from becoming permanent capital impairments.

    Of course, the estimate of the multiplier is never perfect, and the estimate of stimulus and losses are indeed estimates. In other words, there are a number of moving parts which means IceCap’s perspective might be off.

    However, consider what happened to the Velocity of Money from its peak in 2000 to current reading. It has collapsed from an all-time high of 2.2 to an all-time low of 1.4.

    What we find interesting and what helps us determine our market perspective is appreciating the response by the World’s major central banks to the 2000 Technology Bubble.

    The coordinated monetary response was achieved by reducing interest rates to the lowest levels ever recorded.

    In effect, it was the first time in modern day monetary history, that central banks effectively reached the limits of  Keynesian Economic Policy.

    When this fact is overlaid with the fact that the Velocity of Money subsequently began a 20-year period of deterioration, it catches our attention.

    Put another way, once the major central banks collectively cut interest rates to the lower bound, the effectiveness of Keynesian Economic Theory had also reached its end.

    Fast forward to current day, this makes us wonder how the $8 Trillion in stimulus will be enough to prevent permanent capital losses from the COVID Crisis. Our conclusion: it won’t.

    And because the $8 Trillion will be ineffective, and because the World’s policy makers continue to embrace Keynesian Economic Theory, we should expect to see even more deficit spending and bailouts, and even lower negative rates, and even more money printing to support credit markets.

    The effectiveness of Keynesian Economic Theory has reached its end. Yet, the continuance of policy makers ignoring The Law of Holes, creates visibility and opportunity for the investment world.

    * * *

    And this is where The Law of Holes should be applied.

    At every single event in this diagram, central banks and governments responded with increasingly more aggressive stimulus in the form of interest rate cuts combined with deficit spending.

    And since each crisis was larger than the previous crisis, it meant each policy response was even larger than the previous policy response.

    Continue reading in the full slideshow below.

  • Note To Rioting Americans: Posting On Social Media After Curfew Is An Insta-Crime
    Note To Rioting Americans: Posting On Social Media After Curfew Is An Insta-Crime

    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 06/07/2020 – 20:05

    In a continuation piece of Public Service Announcements for America’s rioting class (parts one, two, and three here), this evening we are focusing on how protesters should avoid posting on social media past curfew hours because police in some cities are monitoring feeds and will issue curfew citations. 

    Milwaukee CBS 58 provided at least one example of this, after protester Demetrius Griffin received a rather odd citation in the mail last week. 

    Griffin said he was shocked when he opened up his mailbox and found a $691 citation from the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) detailing how he violated curfew. He spent the last five days marching and attending demonstrations and posted a series of images and videos on social media about what was happening on the ground, some of the postings suggested he violated Milwaukee’s 9 pm curfew. 

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    According to the citation, MPD’s “Virtual Investigation Unit” was secretly monitoring Griffin and issued him an instant-citation with him not evening knowing until he opened up his mailbox days later. 

    “Something’s not right about it, so that’s what I feel,” Griffin said, referring to the citation, and how it was issued. 

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    He went on to say the citation is a “scare tactic, they’re [MPD] trying to intimidate me.” 

    Milwaukee attorney Nicole Muller said she’s never seen a citation like this before but said others at the same rally received similar ones. 

    “We’ve received several inquiries from people who have not only received municipal ordinance violation tickets but also referrals and some criminal charges,” Muller said. 

    The citation does have Griffin’s driver’s license information and a signature by an officer, lending credibility that the citation is real, and suggests how ‘Big Brother’ is watching protesters’ every move. He said his First Amendment right was violated and trust in government is declining. 

    “They’re using stuff like this to make us shut up about our First Amendments because we are just out peacefully protesting,” said Griffin.

    Muller said any protester who received virtual curfew citations “should not pay the fine, but it is important people don’t ignore the citation, and instead take it to court.”

    “If you’re raising constitutional issues in litigating these citations, they need to be raised before your proceedings really start,” added Muller.

    Muller has another piece of advice for America’s rioting class: “Before you go out and protest, get a name and number of an attorney and write it on your arm.” 

  • Futures Jump Above 3,200; Brent Surges As Dollar Selling Accelerates
    Futures Jump Above 3,200; Brent Surges As Dollar Selling Accelerates

    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 06/07/2020 – 19:45

    The risk-on euphoria in the aftermath of Friday’s blowout payrolls report, errors and all, has continued on Sunday night – as hedge funds (net exposure at 2 year highs), joining the retail army – and S&P futures have jumped back above 3,200 and are on pace to not only take out Friday’s intraday high of 3,210.5, but to go green for the year.

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    Supporting the bullish sentiment was overnight news that China’s trade surplus surged to a record in May as exports fell less than expected, while imports tumbled driven by declining commodity prices sales. A Bloomberg report that  AstraZeneca has approached Gilead about what would be the biggest health care deal in history, will likely spark a rally among other Merger Monday candidates.

    Oil is also surging after six straight weeks of gains, as Brent rises above $43 following Saturday’s OPEC+ decision to extend oil output cuts for another month, coupled with Saudi Aramco’s decision to hike oil export prices by the most on record.

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    The dollar has continued its furious decline, with the DXY index just shy of where it started the year!

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    The EURUSD has continued its historic ascent, rising back over 1.13.

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    As Nordea writes earlier today, we have had nine days of higher highs in EUR/USD driven by a combination of reflationary vibes and increasing momentum for the “Next Generation EU” debt deal. If we get another high in the Monday session – and absent some dramatic reversal that appears inevitable –  it would be the first streak of ten consecutive higher/highs since October-2010. 

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    Investor now turn their attention to the Fed’s meeting on Wednesday, where Powell is expected to re-commit to using their “full range of tools” to support the U.S. economy during the pandemic, with some speculating that the Fed may also unveil Yield Curve Control to keep long-rates in check. At the same time, global governments are gradually easing their coronavirus lockdowns to revive growth while controlling the spread of Covid-19, even as millions of US protesters breached social distancing norms, potentially sparking a new round of infections, although good luck to anyone who tries to enforce another round of closures.

    In other news, the Minneapolis police department will soon cease to exist as the local city counsel decided to disband it, in an ominous harbinger of the chaos that may soon come to every major American city.

  • Barbarians At The Mall
    Barbarians At The Mall

    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 06/07/2020 – 19:40

    Authored by Robert Weissberg via The Unz Review,

    What can be done about the current wave of urban riots? The obvious answer is, sad to say, not much. Public officials with only a handful of exceptions are paralyzed to respond with the necessary force lest they be accused of brutality and provoke yet more rioting and violence. There is some good news, however. Evolution matters—homo sapiens have adapted and survived worse. Protecting society from chaos is far from hopeless though not immediately. Solutions are possible and need not cost a fortune or require draconian social engineering to domesticate a violent under-class.

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    Let’s start with architectural adjustments, bricks and mortar fixes to use a currently popular term, are guaranteed to perform as advertised for the simple reasons that rich people for millennia have successfully protected their property from violent rabble. We already possess formulae. Medieval castles with their moats and drawbridges, stone walls and narrow windows may not have been totally secure, but hard to imagine today’s screeching social justice warriors looting it. Urban planners of yesteryear knew how to safeguard a city—think Washington, DC and Paris–where a few well-placed troops could block unruly mobs marching on the capital. County seats in American Midwest towns typically have solid stone fortress-like, easily defended courthouses, built on hills, obviously designed to prevent debtors from seizing and then burning their mortgages (think Shays’ Rebellion).

    This anti-looter architectural style has long been visible in “diverse” neighborhoods populated by a criminally inclined clientele. The distinctive and highly functional style features bars on the windows, cashiers secure inside bullet-proof plexiglass cages, and security cameras everywhere. Signs warn patrons that they are on camera and when these businesses close for the day, they are protected by steel shutters. Potential troublemakers know full well that the counter clerk is often armed, most cash is kept in an inaccessible safe and a large German Shepard frequently keeps the clerk company. Occasional news accounts tell of clerks shooting a would-be robber, so stick-ups are relatively rare.

    If the threat of mass looting becomes commonplace, this “ghetto” defense style is easily extended to more mainstream establishments albeit with better optics. In a word, commerce would be “hardened.” Target, pharmacies and even liquor stores can build fortress-like stores with slits smash- proof glass windows and a single impenetrable steel blast front door that can be closed by remote control from company headquarters, if necessary. As with Medieval castles, employees can flee via hidden passageways and safely re-emerge blocks away. Totally secure “safe rooms” might be available if the staff and lingering customers are caught by surprise.

    The modern mall—including downtown versions–will be totally re-designed to be entirely surrounded by windowless brick or concrete walls with a small number of quickly sealable entrances. Mall stores that have past histories of attracting looters—those selling sneakers, electronics, cell phones, for example, would be segregated to one section and if a riot occurred, a steel gate would be deployed to isolate them (high-priced Michael Jordans can be displayed only one shoe at a time with the second shoe kept at a secret off-premises location). Parking lots in the suburbs would have fewer points of entry and could quickly be closed to prevent the feeding fests that occur once it became known that a looting party was in progress. Access from public transportation, often the source of troublemakers, could be re-configured so as to better control entry.

    The recent shift to e-commerce also provides major opportunities for risk management. Stores like Best Buy no longer need to have piles of self-service merchandise so alluring to the grab-and-run crowd. Stores need only display a single (securely chained) model of a TV or iPhone, and if ordered, it would be delivered same day at no charge via Amazon or FedEx. Want it now? Visit the customer fulfillment center, a bunker-like building behind a ten-foot wall a half mile distant. Going cashless could also be extended and thus reduce looter incentives to damage registers and safes while providing quicker access to customer payments.

    Upscale, super-pricey stores that wish to keep their present ambiance can adopt a scorched earth approach, a military strategy that undermines the enemy by preemptively destroying anything of value—food, vehicles, industrial resources—before the enemy arrives. So, if the looters are milling outside a Gucci boutique, and the situation looks threatening, the staff will immediately spray paint or otherwise mutilate everything. This is not as draconian as it may seems since ultra-luxury stores stock minimal inventory (this conveys “exclusivity”) and extraordinary high store mark-ups limit actual monetary loss. Less obvious, these firms—Dior, Chanel, Fendi, Burberry etc.—anyway dread their brand being “ghettoized” so destroying them prior to theft is a wise business choice. Would-be looters are not that stupid—who would steal a shredded Prada or a Louis Vuitton purse?

    This conversion is not as costly as it may initially appear. Savvy builders favoring this anti-looting style would enjoy an advantage in today’s struggling commercial real estate market. Brick and mortar stores relying on e-commerce for partial fulfillment would be smaller with and thus would pay less rent. A powerful incentive would be reduced insurance premiums and, as an added bonus, the insurance firms would research looter behavior to advise real estate developers. City ordinances can also legally require anti-riot measures (“public safety”) just as they currently demand fire doors and automatic sprinklers. Laws might be passed to limit the number of unaccompanied minors allowed into stores at any one time to prevent a critical mass of unruly teenagers.

    Meanwhile, private security would be transformed. Gone would be the ubiquitous inoffensive, elderly “mall cop” terrified of racial profiling accusations and thus unable to deter young black troublemakers. Now fight fire-with-fire: hire security whose appearances terrify young would-be hoodlums. A few well-tattooed Mexican gangbangers might make white middle class shoppers slightly uneasy, but the message would unambiguous to blacks—don’t mess! Beefy Russians with gold teeth and thick accents would also do the trick.

    Looters sense cowardice. During the 1960s a pet store in New York City’s “Spanish Harlem” (actually an Italian enclave) went absolutely untouched despite days of nearby looting and burning. Not a single parakeet was inconvenienced. Everybody knew that the store was mob-owned, and the Mafia was not easily intimidated by local punks.

    The catalogue of adaptive responses to the breakdown of civil society is far more extensive than depicted here. Elon Musk and others can surely improve upon Tasers, pepper spray and tear gas. What about jamming or frying cellphones? During the 1960s I recall research on generating extra low levels sound waves that would induce an involuntary bowel movement. Concentrated cat urine might work better than tear gas. These would slow down any mob. The Covid-19 pandemic illustrates how people can quickly re-locate to secure persona safety, and telecommuting may take root not to escape disease but also to avoid young men outraged over America’s historic structural racism and economic inequality.

    Evolution saves lives. Not even feckless politicians and race-mongers can stop adaptions to avoid mayhem. Civilized people for millennia have successfully deterred the barbarians, so we are just reawakening dormant responses. Keep in mind that the modern style professional police force is only a little more than 200 years old, so it is hardly a core requirement of civilization.

  • California Dismisses National Guard After Week-Long "Occupation"; De Blasio Plans To Shift Funds From NYPD To "Youth & Social Services"
    California Dismisses National Guard After Week-Long “Occupation”; De Blasio Plans To Shift Funds From NYPD To “Youth & Social Services”

    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 06/07/2020 – 19:22

    Update (1900ET): National Guard troops will be pulled out of California cities after a week-long deployment, according to the Associated Press.

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    As the mayors of Chicago, Atlanta, NYC & other major cities cancel curfews, incidences of rioting have been reported in Brussels, as the protests have gone global for a third day.

    “After nearly a week assisting civil authorities on the streets of California, soldiers with the California National Guard will begin transitioning back to their home armories,” the Cal Guard said in a statement, though a timeline for the pullout wasn’t provided.

    Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said some troops would begin departing Sunday evening.

    “A small number of units will be stationed nearby until June 10 to provide emergency support if needed,” he said.

    Riots spread around the world, with some incidences of violence reported in London and Brussels.

    In Iran, a street in Tehran was dedicated in George Floyd’s memory.

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    Meanwhile, a bit of levity in the UK:

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    * * *

    Update (1400ET): After years of clashing with the NYPD and the powerful police unions who hold sway over America’s largest police force, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio has just announced a new policy that we imagine he has been secretly wanting to do for a long time: The mayor is planning to shift some funding way from police and toward youth and social services.

    Critics immediately criticized the mayor for taking another step to return NYC to the bad old days.

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    De Blasio won his original dark horse campaign by promising to reform the NYPD. Instead, he has mostly stoked acrimony with the cops, while failing to convince progressives that he is doing enough to implement the reforms they demanded. The latest crisis is giving de Blasio a chance to rectify that, but despite this, the mood inside city hall is said to be “one of despondence” as the city scrambles to prepare for Monday’s reopening as many departments see their relationships with the mayor’s office coming under unprecedented strain, per WSJ.

    Meanwhile, Gov Cuomo expressed “concern” that the protests on Saturday, some of the largest yet, while few arrests were made and gatherings continued long into the night, might worsen the spread of the coronavirus as the city prepares to start its process of reopening on Monday, per BBG.

    Responding to the left’s demands to defund police, a homeland security official told BBG that it’s “absurd” to talk about defunding police departments as a remedy for racial injustice.

    Meanwhile, in the UK…

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    The man who defeated the Nazis…is now a Nazi?

    * * *

    Update (1225ET): As the battle against systemic racism goes global, demonstrators in Bristol have toppled a statute of Edward Colston, a British philanthropist who derived most of his wealth from the slave trade.

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    And just like that…racism has been destroyed.

    * * *

    Following another night of demonstrations across the US, and increasingly around the world, the NYT reported that “tens of thousands gathered in big cities like New York and Seattle and small towns like Vidor, Texas, and Marion, Ohio — in swelling crowds that have been multiethnic, spanning generations and overwhelmingly peaceful.”

    Though we’re not 100% certain about that last bit, it’s definitely notable that the protest movement has spread from Europe, Australia and New Zealand on to Asia, Africa and elsewhere, as thousands around the world support American protesters with shows of “solidarity”.

    Meanwhile, the coronavirus death toll in the US quietly surpassed 110,000 last night.

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    Though the outbreak has slowed to a crawl in many former hot spots like New York, elsewhere, signs of incipient outbreaks have begun to emerge.

    Across New York City, peaceful demonstrators defied an 8 pm curfew as the NYPD mostly stepped aside, following a week of optically-terrible videos showing cops beating on kneeling protesters, badly injuring elderly protesters, and shooting journalists with “non-lethal” rounds. The police allowed the marches to continue long into the night, and in the morning, Mayor de Blasio tweeted that he would be lifting the curfew after seeing “the very best of our city”.

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    Meanwhile, readers of the Wall Street Journal were greeting Sunday morning with a push alert heralding the results of the latest public opinion poll showing that Americans – by a 2-1 margin – are more troubled by the actions of the police in the killing of George Floyd and the ensuing protests,

    Among Democrats, an overwhelming majority (more than 80%) support police reform, while, possibly for the first time, a majority of Republicans (52%) said they are also more troubled by the actions of the police. Though the partisan divide remains stark, it shows that the demonstrators have been largely successful in their goal of swaying public opinion.

    What’s more: 80% of respondents said that – between the virus and the protests – their country is spinning out of control.

    Americans by a 2-to-1 margin are more troubled by the actions of police in the killing of George Floyd than by violence at some protests, and an overwhelming majority, 80%, feel that the country is spiraling out of control, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

    The poll also reveals striking partisan divides in how Americans view a pair of unfolding national crises, including the unrest sparked by the killing of Mr. Floyd, the black Minneapolis man who was in police custody, and the coronavirus pandemic, responsible for more than 109,000 fatalities in the U.S.

    Already, crowds have gathered in central Rome on Sunday morning for another day of demonstrations in London and other cities, as crowds chanted “Black lives matter” and “No justice, no peace,” thousands of people swelled Rome’s Piazza del Popolo, and in London, thousands gathered in several places. On Sunday morning, London Mayor Sadiq Khan praised the protesters, and denounced a “tiny minority” who resorted to violence.

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    As more members of the far-left abandon the push for police reform in favor of police abolition, President Trump has latched on to these claims and seized the opportunity to tarnish Biden using his increasing deference to the Democratic party’s progressive wing.

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    Trump also ordered the national guard to begin withdrawing from Washington DC, defying protesters who probably had hoped the president would urge an even more aggressive crackdown.

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    Meanwhile, one California man – a purported “deescalation expert” – sustained a potentially life-changing injury after police appeared to shoot him in the groin with a rubber bullet, necessitating emergency surgery.

    A California man who has worked to help improve relations between the San Jose Police Department and people of color learned that he may not be able to have children after an officer shot him with a rubber bullet during a protest.

    While attending a protest in San Jose on May 29, the man, Derrick Sanderlin, worked to prevent rising tensions and calm demonstrators and the police alike, he said in an interview this weekend.

    While the mainstream press mostly brushed them aside, this weekend’s demonstrations were unfortunately pockmarked by violence perpetrated by deranged anarchists, who attacked a children’s hospital in Houston.

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    Sometimes, peaceful protesters were on the receiving end: In one horrifying scene, a car drove into a crowd of protesters in Brooklyn.

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    Threats to burn down areas have been an unfortunate feature of many live-tv news interviews over the past 2 weeks, and Saturday night was no exception.

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    In one astonishing scene, protesters heckled Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey after he refused to commit to abolishing the Minneapolis Police Department.

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    Calls to ‘defund the police’ are spreading.

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    It wouldn’t be a nationwide protest without the antifas in Portland stirring up chaos, as usual.

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    While Philly saw another day of massive rallies, vigilantes came out to battle with demonstrators once again.

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    Then there was this dude, who showed up to a rally in Toronto in blackface.

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    He was reportedly later arrested.

  • A Bounce Is Not A Recovery
    A Bounce Is Not A Recovery

    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 06/07/2020 – 19:15

    Authored by Daniel Lacalle,

    The recent improvement in global PMIs and especially in employment in the United States have created a strong optimism in markets about the recovery.

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    However, it is important to be cautious about a V-shaped recovery when the leading indicators remain weak.

    Eurozone PMIs (Purchasing Managers’ Index) came slightly above expectations in May, but remained in deep contractions both at the composite, manufacturing and services level.

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    We must remember that a bounce like the one we have seen only means that the rate of deterioration is slowing down, not that there is a recovery. All sectors remained deep in contraction in May, but almost with slower rates of decline.

    At the global level, output indices rose from record April lows but still indicate a significant reduction in activity, led by Travel & Leisure and followed by transportation as well as Healthcare services, all showing record drops, according to Markit PMIs.

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    The United States’ job data for May was a strong positive surprise. However, the Bureau of Labor Statistics admitted it accidentally miscounted 4.9 million laid-off people as employed, bringing unemployment to 16.1%, which is still much better than the 19% figure estimated by consensus, but not as strong an improvement as the headlines suggested.

    The main reason why we should remain cautious is because we now have evidence that Chinese activity has recovered at a slow pace, particularly in those sectors that are not supported by government spending plans. We must also take the bounce figures with prudence, as it is quite likely that most leading indicators will rise from the all-time lows of April, but high levels of unemployment in developed economies and an unprecedented increase in the output gap of most economies may damp the improvement in consumption and investment that so many analysts expect.

    Unemployment will be key to regain optimism about the recovery. When we see developed economies recover the levels of job creation and employment rates seen prior to the Covid-19 crisis, we may have confidence in a stronger improvement in consumption. However, it is now clear that even in dynamic and strong economies like the United States, it will likely take between 8 to 10 months to recover the full level of employment seen in February. In The eurozone, this delay will likely be longer, up to 24 months.

    Wages and savings are also key to believe in a rapid recovery. With the recent collapse of economic capacity utilization and the rise in inventories, it is hard to believe in a capital expenditure-led boost of the economy. Most companies will likely preserve cash and devote the next year to restoring the balance sheet, making it less likely to invest and hire at the same pace of 2019. Wages are unlikely to rise in this challenging corporate environment, but real wages -deducting the impact of inflation, even if it is low- may actually weaken in the forthcoming months. One thing that may support consumption in the following months is that the savings rate of households has risen, which might help support some spending in the months of July to September.

    In the next months we will have to monitor employment as the key driver of any recovery. The only way to support a service and consumption-driven growth will be with a strong rise in hiring intentions and at least stable wage growth. It is extremely difficult to be optimistic in the current situation even considering the May data. Until September we will not be certain if the recovery is real. Most of the positive data until then may just be rises due to the base effect of a very poor April.

  • "A Police-Free Future" – Minneapolis City Council Votes To Abolish Police Department
    “A Police-Free Future” – Minneapolis City Council Votes To Abolish Police Department

    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 06/07/2020 – 18:45

    Update (2100ET): Here is the somewhat unbelievable statement from the Minneapolis City Council describing their “veto-proof majority” plans to create a utopian “police-free future”..

    1. Decades of police reform efforts have proved that the Minneapolis Police Department cannot be reformed, and will never be accountable for its actions.

    2. We are here today to begin the process of ending the Minneapolis Police Department and creating new transformative model for cultivating safety in Minneapolis.

    3. We recognize that we don’t have all the answers about what a police-free future looks like, but our community does. We’re committing to engaging with every willing community member in the City of Minneapolis over the next year to identify what safety looks like for you.

    4. We’ll be taking intermediate steps towards ending the MPD through the budget process and other policy and budget decisions over the coming weeks and months.

    We cannot help but wonder if this is anything like what the constituents actually wanted as an outcome of the current racial-bias protestations.

    As former AR Governor Mike Huckabee noted:

    “I wish I had the U-Haul franchise in Minneapolis b/c all the same people will be bugging out to a place not run by loons and I could make a fortune renting one way trucks!”

    And Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw summed things up perfectly:

    “This is dangerous, counterproductive, and deeply irrational. “Defund the police” is not a call from the fringes of the far left anymore. It has gone from a radical slogan to actual policy in a major American city, within days.”

    *  *  *

    In a stunning harbinger of things to come across the country, on Sunday afternoon, amid calls for defunding police departments countrywide, the Minneapolis City Council members went one further, and announced their intent to disband the city’s embattled police department, which has endured relentless criticism in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd.

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    “Community-led public safety” – is that like private militia for the wealthy and ____ for everyone else?

    “We are here today because George Floyd was killed by the Minneapolis Police Department. We are also here because, here in Minneapolis and in cities across the United States, it is clear that our existing system of policing and public safety isn’t working for so many of our neighbors,” Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender said in a written statement Sunday. “Our efforts at incremental reform have failed.”

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    The City Council’s decision follows those of several other high-profile partners, including Minneapolis Public Schools, and the University of Minnesota, and Minneapolis Parks and Recreationto sever longstanding ties with the MPD.

    The announcement today also arrives after several members of the Council have expressed a complete loss of confidence in the Minneapolis Police Department.

    “We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department,” tweeted Council Member Jeremiah Ellison on June 4, pledging to “dramatically rethink” the city’s approach to emergency response.

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     In a TIME op-ed published the next day, Council Member Steve Fletcher cited the MPD’s lengthy track record of misconduct and “decades-long history of violence and discrimination”—all of which are subjects of an ongoing Minnesota Department of Human Rights investigation—as compelling justifications for the department’s disbandment. “We can resolve confusion over a $20 grocery transaction without drawing a weapon or pulling out handcuffs,” Fletcher wrote. 

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    As we reported earlier, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said last night that he opposed disbanding the police department at a protest organized and led by Black Visions Collective against police violence in the city. That answer earned him a thundering chorus of boos and chants of “Shame!” and “Go home, Jacob, go home!” The New York Times  – which has become the unofficial media arm of the BLS movement, and which will certainly delighted by today’s outcome in Minneapolis – called the scene a “humiliation on a scale almost unimaginable outside of cinema or nightmare.”

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    “The last Democratic mayor, Betsy Hodges, handled the murder of Jamar [Clark] poorly. We told her she was going to lose her job. And she did,” Miski Noor, a Black Visions Collective organizer, said on Frey’s refusal to disband the Minneapolis Police Department.

    According to The Appeal, for years, “activists have argued that MPD has failed to actually keep the city safe, and City Councilmembers echoed that sentiment today during their announcement.”

    MPD’s record for solving serious crimes in the city is consistently low. For example, in 2019, Minneapolis police only cleared 56 percent of cases in which a person was killed. For rapes, the police department’s solve rate is abysmally low. In 2018, their clearance rate for rape was just 22 percent. In other words, four out of every five rapes go unsolved in Minneapolis. Further casting doubt on the department’s commitment to solving sexual assaults, MPD announced last year the discovery of 1,700 untested rape kits spanning 30 years, which officials said had been misplaced.

    While Minneapolis may be the first city to take this drastic action, it is hardly the last: the Council’s move is consistent with rapidly-shifting public opinion regarding the urgency of overhauling the American model of law enforcement. Since Floyd’s killing and the protests that ensued, officials in Los Angeles and New York City have called for making deep cuts to swollen police budgets and reallocating those funds for education, affordable housing, and other social services.

    Law enforcement officers are not equipped to be experts in responding to mental health crises, often leading to tragic results—nationally, about half of police killings involve someone living with mental illness or disability. As a result, public health experts have long advocated for dispatching medical professionals and/or social workers, not armed police, to respond to calls related to substance use and mental health. Polling from Data for Progress indicates that more than two-thirds of voters—68 percent—support the creation of such programs, versions of which are already in place in other cities such as, Eugene, Oregon; Austin, Texas; and Denver, Colorado. 

    Well, all those residents of deeply liberal cities are about to get precisely what they want:

    “Our commitment is to do what is necessary to keep every single member of our community safe and to tell the truth that the Minneapolis Police are not doing that,” Bender said Sunday. “Our commitment is to end our city’s toxic relationship with the Minneapolis Police Department, to end policing as we know it, and to recreate systems of public safety that actually keep us safe.”

    We look forward to finding out just what these “systems” are, and while we know that wealthy residents will have little trouble in obtaining their own private security squads and militia – in fact, we are certain that Minneapolis Fed president Neel Kashkari will be among the first to take advantage of security alternatives even as the Fed’s actions continue to tea apart the nation leading to even greater wealth and income inequality that has culminated in the current social collapse, we wonder just who will protect the less affluent segments of society. For the answer we will keep a close eye on downtown Minneapolis, now police free, for a glimpse into the future of America’s inner cities.

    Meanwhile watch as gun sales in Minneapolis – both legal and illegal – and in every other city across the country, explode.

  • Major Bicycle Brand Suspends Sales To Police Claiming Bikes 'Weaponized' Against Protesters
    Major Bicycle Brand Suspends Sales To Police Claiming Bikes ‘Weaponized’ Against Protesters

    Tyler Durden

    Sun, 06/07/2020 – 18:25

    The past couple weeks of George Floyd protests and unrest has produced the somewhat new phenomenon of some local restaurants and cafes in big cities like Atlanta or New York City refusing to serve police. This as a driving “anti-cop” ideology has been central in many instances where initially ‘peaceful’ demonstrations have broken out into violence and rioting.

    But one 120-year old company has now suspended all sales of police bicycles to law enforcement departments nationwide amid activist claims that officers are using them as “weapons” against protesters.

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    Police in Miami using Trek bikes during protests against the death of George Floyd, AFP/Getty.

    The North American distributor of Fuji Bicycles BikeCo, said in a weekend statement: “to hear that there are instances where bicycles have been used as a weapon against those who are vulnerable, those speaking out against the unjust treatment of people of color, and those standing alongside them advocating change, has deeply upset our community, our company and the heart of the Fuji brand.” 

    “In the last week, we have seen our bicycles used in violent tactics that we did not intend or design them to be used for,” the company said, and vowed: “In an effort to work towards real change, Bike Co. the North American distributor of Fuji Bikes is suspending the sale of police bikes.”

    However, some observers noted the Philadelphia-based company didn’t provide a single specific example of police using a Fuji bike as a weapon in the lengthy company statement.

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    One police and law enforcement industry journal commented cynically in response: 

    Well, two can play this silly game. Law enforcement certainly has the right to “suspend” all purchases of Fuji Bikes forever.

    There have been examples circulating on social media of police lines holding back large groups of protesters using bikes.

    But it’s unclear whether these particular instances involve Fuji bikes, or other popular brands like Trek. 

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Jun 07

Today’s News 7th June 2020

  • 'The Saker': The Systemic Collapse Of The US Society Has Begun
    ‘The Saker’: The Systemic Collapse Of The US Society Has Begun

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 23:30

    Authored by ‘The Saker’,

    I have lived in the United States for a total of 24 years and I have witnessed many crises over this long period, but what is taking place today is truly unique and much more serious than any previous crisis I can recall.

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    And to explain my point, I would like to begin by saying what I believe the riots we are seeing taking place in hundreds of US cities are not about. They are not about:

    1. Racism or “White privilege”

    2. Police violence

    3. Social alienation and despair

    4. Poverty

    5. Trump

    6. The liberals pouring fuel on social fires

    7. The infighting of the US elites/deep state

    They are not about any of these because they encompass all of these issues, and more.

    It is important to always keep in mind the distinction between the concepts of “cause” and “pretext”. And while it is true that all the factors listed above are real (at least to some degree, and without looking at the distinction between cause and effect), none of them are the true cause of what we are witnessing. At most, the above are pretexts, triggers if you want, but the real cause of what is taking place today is the systemic collapse of the US society.

    The next thing which we must also keep in mind is that evidence of correlation is not evidence of causality. Take, for example, this article from CNN entitled “US black-white inequality in 6 stark charts” which completely conflates the two concepts and which includes the following sentence (stress added) “Those disparities exist because of a long history of policies that excluded and exploited black Americans, said Valerie Wilson, director of the program on race, ethnicity and the economy at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning group.” The word “because” clearly point to a causality, yet absolutely nothing in the article or data support this. The US media is chock-full of such conflations of correlation and causality, yet it is rarely denounced.

    For a society, any society, to function a number of factors that make up the social contract need to be present. The exact list that make up these factors will depend on each individual country, but they would typically include some kind of social consensus, the acceptance by most people of the legitimacy of the government and its institutions, often a unifying ideology or, at least, common values, the presence of a stable middle-class, the reasonable hope for a functioning “social life”, educational institutions etc. Finally, and cynically, it always helps the ruling elites if they can provide enough circuses (TV) and bread (food) to most citizens. This is even true of so-called authoritarian/totalitarian societies which, contrary to the liberal myth, typically do enjoy the support of a large segment of the population (if only because these regimes are often more capable of providing for the basic needs of society).

    Right now, I would argue that the US government has almost completely lost its ability to deliver any of those factors, or act to repair the broken social contract. In fact, what we can observe is the exact opposite: the US society is highly divided, as is the US ruling class (which is even more important). Not only that, but ever since the election of Trump, all the vociferous Trump-haters have been undermining the legitimacy not only of Trump himself, but of the political system which made his election possible. I have been saying that for years: by saying “not my President” the Trump-haters have de-legitimized not only Trump personally, but also de-legitimized the Executive branch as such.

    This is an absolutely amazing phenomenon: while for almost four years Trump has been destroying the US Empire externally, Trump-haters spent the same four years destroying the US from the inside! If we look past the (largely fictional) differences between the Republicrats and the Demolicans we can see that they operate like a demolition tag-team of sorts and while they hate each other with a passion, they both contribute to bringing down both the Empire and the United States. For anybody who has studied dialectics this would be very predictable but, alas, dialectics are not taught anymore, hence the stunned “deer in the headlights” look on the faces of most people today.

    Finally, it is pretty clear that for all its disclaimers about supporting only the “peaceful protestors” and its condemnation of the “out of town looters”, most of the US media (as well as the alt media) is completely unable to give a moral/ethical evaluation of what is taking place. What I mean by this is the following:

    By repeating mantras about how “Black anger is legitimate” the US liberal media is basically placing a seal of approval on the violence and looting. After all, if Black “anger” is legitimate, and if “White privilege” is real, then it is quite “understandable” that this “anger” “sometimes” “boils over” and leads to “regrettable” “excesses”. Just take a look at this image of Biden kneeling down before a Black demonstrator:

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    Of course, Biden and his supporters will claim that Biden was only kneeling before a cute little girl and her peacefully protesting father, but when combined with the attacks against Trump’s “law and order” rhetoric by Biden and his supporters (including four former US Presidents!), I believe that these kinds of photo-ops are sending a very different message: keep “protesting” as we are on your side which, coming from a guy like Biden, the ultimate symbol of the 1%er elites and a perfect example of “White privilege”, just goes to show that the hypocrisy of US politicians really knows no bounds or limits.

    I have to note here that these riots also represent a potential danger for both factions of the Uniparty in power: for the Demolicans the riots probably represent the very last chance to prevent a Trump-reelection, but if the Demolicans are too obvious in support of the riots, then it could backfire against them and turn all the frightened “law and order” types against them. But if they do not support the riots, then the Demolicans will alienate their core constituency (a hodgepodge of various “minorities” pushing their narrow identity-politics agenda). Likewise, for Trump this is an opportunity to show his “law and order” credentials and promise the White people and the relatively fewer Blacks of his base that he will protect them. However, if he is too direct about this and if Trump orders what might be seen by many as unfair or excessive force (of which there has been a lot almost everywhere), then he risks pushing many moderate Republicrats over the edge and side with the Demolicans (or, at least, withhold their vote). In other words, both factions of the Uniparty feel that the riots are both an opportunity and a threat and this is why neither faction can come out and speak truthfully about the real causes of the riots.

    The exact same message of weakness and even submissive impotence is, I believe, sent every time a cop kneels when confronting even peaceful demonstrators like on this photo. While this might be intended as a message of compassion, and maybe even an apology, the only thing the rioters will see here is a powerful sign of surrender of the local authorities and I find that extremely dangerous.

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    Yes, there are plenty of racist, violent and otherwise incompetent cops in the USA. And yes, many of my Black friends reported feeling singled out and treated rudely by cops. But having extensively traveled the world, I want to assure you that the US most definitely does not have the worst cops out there. In fact, I believe that most US cops are decent people. Much more importantly, these cops are the “thin blue line” which protects society against criminals. And while I do believe that US policemen ought to be better educated, better trained, better led and better supervised, I also realize that there is also no short term alternative to them. It is all very fine to dream about educated, peaceful and non-racist cops, but if you remove the existing police force from the equation, there are no other alternatives (the national guard or the regular armed forces do not qualify and don’t have the correct training to deal with civilians anyway), especially in those states which have successfully killed the 2nd Amendment by means of what I call “death by a thousand regulatory cuts” (including NY and NJ).

    Then there is what Solzhenitsyn called the “decline of courage” in the West: the vast majority US politicians have basically lost the ability to criticize Blacks, even when it is quite obvious that many of the current problems of the Black population of the US are created by Blacks themselves: I think of the truly vulgar, obscene and overall disgusting “rap culture” with which most Black youth are now “educated” in since early childhood or how many Black youth have been brainwashed into considering gang members and street prostitutes as the measure of what “looking cool” looks like in terms of clothes, language and overall behavior. I believe that it is pretty obvious to any person who lived in the US that Blacks are very often (mostly?) the cause of their own misery: I can tell you that my Jamaican and Sub-Saharan African friends (who live in the USA) have told me many times that a) they think that US Blacks have opportunities which they would never have in Africa or Jamaica and that b) local Blacks often resent Africans and Jamaican Blacks because the latter do so much better in the US society. I can also testify to the fact that I have seen a lot of anti-Latino feelings from US Blacks. As for how Blacks often feel about Asians, all we need to do is remember the LA riots in 1992. Finally, I do believe that many (most?) people in the US know that the strongest and most frequent form of racism in the US will be anti-White, especially from politically engaged Blacks.

    I can personally attest that there is plenty of anti-White racism in the USA. Not only did I experience it myself (I lived in Washington, DC from 1986-1991), but it has been amply documented by people like Colin Flaherty whose books “White Girl Bleed A Lot: The Return of Racial Violence to America and How the Media Ignore It” and “Knockout Game a Lie?: Awww, Hell No!” are excellent primers on Black on White violence and racism. Yet, anybody daring to suggest that US Blacks themselves are at least partially responsible for their own plight will immediately be labeled a “racist”.

    To those of you who live outside the USA, I would recommend this simple thought experiment: just take 20-30 minutes and watch the footage of BOTH the “peaceful protests” AND “the violent riots” and look carefully not only at what the folks you see in the footage are wearing, but also how they speak, how they act, what they say and how they say it and ask yourself a simple question: would you want to hire any of these guys and pay them a decent salary? I very much doubt that many of you would. Frankly, most of these rioters are unhirable, and “racism” has nothing to do with this.

    The fact is that what is sometimes called the “MTV culture” is, in reality, nothing else than a systematic glorification of criminal mayhem. Forget about rap hits like the famous “Fuk Da Police” or “Kill d’White People“, I would argue that 99% of rap is a glorification of all the worst problems of Black communities in the US (drugs, violence, promiscuous sex, objectification of women, alcoholism, glorification of criminal behavior in the streets and in prisons, etc.). Yet most US politicians seem to be paralyzed and feel the need to pretend like they are absolutely charmed by this so-called “Black culture”. But it is even worse than that.

    Combine an emasculated ruling polity which does not dare to call a stone a stone and which promotes a (pretend) “culture” which glorifies violence and hatred against all non-criminals, including law abiding Black who are called “Toms” and who are also singled out as in this “beautiful” rap which includes the following “verses”: “Then you got niggas that’s blacker then the night, Running around town saying their best friends are white, Niggas like that are gonna hang up from a tree, And burn them up alive and let everybody see” (check out this “beautiful” rap here and for the full lyrics, a truly fascinating read, here). Next, throw in a completely dysfunctional state which is owned and operated by a tiny gang of obscenely rich narcissistic bastards (of all races, very much including Blacks), add to it a total absence of any real social opportunities, then toss in the COVID pandemic and the worst recession in US history with record high levels of unemployment even among those who would be employable (folks with dropped down pants, excessive tattoos, past felony convictions and a comprehensively non-professional attitude would not even get a job even if the economy was booming). Then, you get a relatively localized “spark” (like the murder of George Floyd by a gang of arrogant imbeciles in uniform) to start a fire which will instantly spread throughout the entire country, especially since there are so many other groups besides Blacks who want to “piggyback” their personal agenda on top of the one of Black Lives Matter or Antifa (I am, of course, referring to the real cornucopia of Trump-haters which never accepted his election).

    Conclusion 1: this is not the US version of the Gilets Jaunes!

    Some might be tempted to say that what we are seeing in the US is a US version of the French Gilets Jaunes. I assure you that it is not. For one thing, the Gilets Jaunes had a pretty clear political program. US rioters do not. Next, the Gilets Jaunes were mostly peaceful and much of the violence was instigated by the French police forces (including the use of fake rioters). While there are definitely peaceful protesters in the USA, neither BLM or AntiFa have truly denounced the riots (and why should they when the US media and politicians don’t have the courage to do that either?). Finally, the French ruling classes and media did not show the kind of “understanding” of the riots which did take place although Macron did pose with two “gangstas” in an effort to look “cool” (which failed):

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    Not only Biden, in Europe too…

    Conclusion 2: this is not a revolution or a civil war

    Some are now fantasizing that what we are witnessing today is either a revolution or a civil war. I believe that this is neither.

    For a revolution to take place there must be a force capable of changing not the person(s) in power, but fundamentally change the regime, the polity, itself and replacing it with another one. Declaring that “Black lives matter” or looting stores or even demanding that the police be defunded, does not have this kind of potential capability.

    For a civil war to take place you need at least two sides, each with a clearly identifiable political agenda. Since the real power in the US is hidden from the public awareness, there is no potential for a “the people vs the rulers” kind of civil war in the US. A “Right/Conservative vs Left/Liberal” civil war is also not possible, because both the US Right and the US Left are, in reality controlled by a deep state which is neither liberal nor conservative. Finally, a “rematch” between North and South is not possible either because the modern US is not really split along North/South lines anymore. In terms of geography, there is somewhat of a “Big cities vs rural USA” split, but it takes place in both the north and the south of the country. Instead, what we do observe is a social breakup of the US into “zones” some of which will be doing much better than others (big cities with a strong Black population fare the worst, mostly White small towns fare best; that is even true within the same state). In some of these zones, we will see more of this kind of acts of self-protection:

    This kind of confrontations, even if they are not violent, are yet another illustration of the state being simply unable to take charge and protect the people.

    Conclusion 3: this is an insurrection which has initiated the systemic collapse of the US society

    I call what is happening today an insurrection: a violent revolt or rebellion against the authorities as such. When you burn a police precinct you do not “protest” against the actions of a few cops, no, what you are doing is expelling the cops from your neighborhood (I know that personally. In Argentina I lived in a suburb of Buenos-Aires in which the police station was attacked so often that it closed and was never rebuilt). And since in a civilized society the state should have the monopoly on the (legal) use of force, you are basically rejecting the authority and legitimacy of the state which operates the police force. This insurrection is most unlikely to remove Trump from office (hence it is not a coup or a revolution), but the anti-Trump faction of the ruling elites have now clearly adopted the strategy of “worse is better” simply because they realize that these riots are probably their last chance to blame it all on Trump (and Russia, why not?!) and maybe, just maybe, defeat him in November.

    Right now all we see can only be called a mob-rule (technically referred to as an “ochlocracy“). But mobs, no matter how violent, rarely succeed in achieving tangible political results as they act ‘against something’ and not ‘for something’. This is why the real (behind-the-scenes) ruling classes need to instrumentalize this mob-induced insurrection to their political advantage. So far, I would say that neither the Demolicans nor the Republicrats have succeeded in this. But there is a very long and potentially extremely dangerous summer ahead and this might well change.

    Irrespective of whether either faction will succeed in instrumentalizing the riots, what we are seeing today is a systemic collapse of the US society. That is not to say that the US will disappear, not at all. But just like it took the Soviet Union a decade or more to fully collapse (roughly from 1983-1993), it will take the US many years to fully crash. And just like a New Russia eventually began taking form in 1999, there will be a New US coming out of the current collapse. Total and final collapses are very rare, mostly they just initiate a lengthy and potentially very dangerous transformation process, the outcome of which is almost impossible to predict.

    However, just as the Russian people had to stop kidding themselves with silly dreams about “democracy” and had to tackle the real problems of Russia, so will the people of the US have to find the courage to deal with their real problems, frontally and deliberately. If they fail to do that, the country will most likely simple further disintegrate into numerous and mutually hostile entities.

    Time will tell.

    *  *  *

    Support ‘The Saker’ here…

  • ‪Not Alone? Four "Mysterious Signals" Captured From Outer Space
    ‪Not Alone? Four “Mysterious Signals” Captured From Outer Space

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 23:00

    A team of scientists headed by Shivani Bhandari, an astronomer with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Australia’s federal agency responsible for scientific research, has made a breakthrough discovery by pinpointing the precise location of four fast radio bursts (FRBs). 

    FRBs are very mysterious bursts of radio waves coming from somewhere in the universe. The average pulse ranges for a few milliseconds, caused by high-energy sources, which are not entirely understood.

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    CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope in Western Australia detecting FRBs. h/t CSIRO

    Bhandari’s new research, published on June 1 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, reveals that four FRBs came from massive galaxies forming new stars. They said FRBs originated not from the center of galaxies, but rather from the outer edges. 

    “These precisely localized fast radio bursts came from the outskirts of their home galaxies, removing the possibility that they have anything to do with supermassive black holes,” said Bhandari.

    Bhandari’s team found exact locations for FRB 180924, FRB 181112, FRB 190102, and FRB 190608 by using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope in Western Australia.

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    Source of FRBs. h/t CSIRO

    Bhandari said, “This first detailed study of the galaxies that host fast radio bursts rules out several of the more extreme theories put forward to explain their origins, getting us closer to knowing their true nature.”

    Co-author of the study, CSIRO Professor Elaine Sadler said FRBs could not have come from a superluminous stellar explosion or cosmic strings.

    “Models such as mergers of compact objects like white dwarfs or neutron stars, or flares from magnetars created by such mergers, are still looking good,” Sadler said. 

    Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, an astrophysicist from Northern Ireland who co-discovered FRBs, said:

    “Positioning the sources of fast radio bursts is a huge technical achievement and moves the field on enormously. We may not yet be clear exactly what is going on, but now, at last, options are being ruled out. This is a highly significant paper, thoroughly researched, and well written,” said Burnell. 

    According to another paper (dated February 3) by a team of astrophysicists in Canada, a “mystery radio signal” was recorded as repeating based on a clearly discernible pattern. “The discovery of a 16.35-day periodicity in a repeating FRB source is an important clue to the nature of this object,” the team said. A summary of some of the key findings are as follows: 

    “Between September 16, 2018 and October 30, 2019,  detected a pattern in bursts occurring every 16.35 days. Over the course of four days, the signal would release a burst or two each hour. Then, it would go silent for another 12 days.

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    Spiral galaxy from which repeating signal originates:NSF’s Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory/ Gemini Observatory/AURA

    “…The signal is a known repeating fast radio burst, FRB 180916.J0158+65. Last year, the CHIME/FRB collaboration detected the sources of eight new repeating fast radio bursts, including this signal. The repeating signal was traced to a massive spiral galaxy around 500 million light-years away.”

    Both findings suggest astronomers are one step closer to understanding the source of these mysterious radio signals coming from deep within the universe. Could this mean we’re not alone? 

  • Racial Healer? The Media Has Conveniently Forgotten George W. Bush's Many Atrocities
    Racial Healer? The Media Has Conveniently Forgotten George W. Bush’s Many Atrocities

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 22:30

    Authored by James Bovard via The Mises Institute,

    Former president George W. Bush has returned to the spotlight to give moral guidance to America in these troubled times. In a statement released on Tuesday, Bush announced that he was “anguished” by the “brutal suffocation” of George Floyd and declared that “lasting peace in our communities requires truly equal justice. The rule of law ultimately depends on the fairness and legitimacy of the legal system. And achieving justice for all is the duty of all.”

    Bush’s declaration was greeted with thunderous applause by the usual suspects who portray him as the virtuous Republican in contrast to Trump. While the media portrays Bush’s pious piffle as a visionary triumph of principle, Americans need to vividly recall the lies and atrocities that permeated his eight years as president.

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    Via Getty Images

    In an October 2017 speech in a “national forum on liberty” at the George W. Bush Institute in New York City, Bush bemoaned that “Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication.” Coming from Bush, this had as much credibility as former president Bill Clinton bewailing the decline of chastity.

    Most media coverage of Bush nowadays either ignores the falsehoods he used to take America to war in Iraq or portrays him as a good man who received incorrect information. But Bush was lying from the get-go on Iraq and was determined to drag the nation into another Middle East war.

    From January 2003 onwards, Bush constantly portrayed the US as an innocent victim of Saddam Hussein’s imminent aggression and repeatedly claimed that war was being “forced upon us.” That was never the case. As the Center for Public Integrity reported, Bush made “232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda.” As the lies by which he sold the Iraq War unraveled, Bush resorted to vilifying critics as traitors in a 2006 speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

    Bush’s lies led to the killing of more than four thousand American troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. But since those folks are dead and gone anyhow, the media instead lauds Bush’s selection to be in a Kennedy Center art show displaying his borderline primitive oil paintings.

    Liberals and never-Trumpers rushed to embrace former President Bush this week:

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    In February 2018, Bush was paid lavishly to give a prodemocracy speech in the United Arab Emirates, ruled by a notorious Arab dictatorship. He proclaimed: “Our democracy is only as good as people trust the results.” He openly fretted about Russian “meddling” in the 2016 US election.

    But when he was president, Bush acted as if the United States were entitled to intervene in any foreign election he pleased. He boasted in 2005 that his administration had budgeted almost $5 billion “for programs to support democratic change around the world,” much of which was spent on tampering with foreign vote totals. When Iraq held elections in 2005, Bush approved a massive covert aid program for pro-American Iraqi parties.

    The Bush administration spent over $65 million to boost their favored candidate in the 2004 Ukraine election. Yet, with boundless hypocrisy, Bush proclaimed that “any (Ukrainian) election…ought to be free from any foreign influence.” US government-financed organizations helped spur coups in Venezuela in 2002 and Haiti in 2004. Both of those nations, along with Ukraine, remain political train wrecks.

    In that October 2017 New York speech, Bush proclaimed: “No democracy pretends to be a tyranny.” But ravaging the Constitution was apparently part of his job description when he was president. Shortly after 9-11, Bush turned back the clock to before 1215 (when the Magna Carta was signed), formally suspending habeas corpus and claiming a prerogative to imprison indefinitely anyone he labeled a terrorist suspect.

    In 2002, Justice Department lawyers informed Bush that the president was entitled to violate the law during wartime—and the war on terror was expected to continue indefinitely. In 2004, Bush White House counsel Alberto Gonzales formally asserted a “commander-in-chief override power” entitling presidents to ignore the Bill of Rights.

    Under Bush, the US government embraced barbaric practices which did more to destroy America’s moral credibility than all of Trump’s tweets combined. Bush’s “enhanced interrogation” regime included endless high-volume repetition of a Meow Mix cat food commercial at Guantanamo, head slapping, waterboarding, exposure to frigid temperatures, and manacling for many hours in stress positions. After the Supreme Court rebuffed some of Bush’s power grabs in 2006, he pushed through Congress a bill that retroactively legalized torture — one of the worst legislative disgraces since the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

    During his years in the White House, Bush perennially denied that he had approved torture. But in 2010, during an author tour to promote his new memoir, he bragged about approving waterboarding for terrorist suspects.

    Is Bush nominating himself to be the nation’s racial healer? When he was president, Bush inflicted more financial ruin on blacks than any president since Woodrow Wilson (who brought Jim Crow barbarities to the federal government). Bush trumpeted his plans to close the gap between black and white homeownership rates and promised in 2002 to “use the mighty muscle of the federal government” to solve the problem. Bush was determined to end the bias against people who wanted to buy a home but had no money.

    Congress passed Bush’s American Dream Downpayment Act in 2003, authorizing federal handouts to first-time homebuyers of up to $10,000 or 6 percent of the home’s purchase price. Bush also swayed Congress to permit the Federal Housing Administration to make no–down payment loans to low-income Americans. Bush proclaimed: “Core American values of individuality, thrift, responsibility, and self-reliance are embodied in homeownership.”

    In Bush’s eyes, self-reliance was so wonderful that the government should subsidize it. And it didn’t matter whether recipients were creditworthy, because politicians meant well. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign trumpeted his down payment giveaways, a shining example of “compassionate conservatism.”

    Thanks in large part to his policies, minority households saw the fastest growth in homeownership leading up to the 2007 recession. The housing collapse ravaged the net worth of black and Hispanic households. “The implosion of the subprime lending market has left a scar on the finances of black Americans—one that not only has wiped out a generation of economic progress but could leave them at a financial disadvantage for decades,” the Washington Post reported in 2012. The median net worth for Hispanic households declined by 66 percent between 2005 and 2009. That devastation was aptly described in a 2017 federal appeals court dissenting opinion as “wrecking ball benevolence” (quoting a 2004 Barron’s op-ed I wrote). But almost none of the media coverage of the ex-president reminds people of the economic carnage of this Bush vote-buying binge.

    It is possible to condemn police brutality and, even more importantly, the evil laws and judicial doctrines that enable police to tyrannize other Americans without any help from a demagogic ex-president who ravaged our rights, liberties, and peace. As I commented in an August 2003 USA Today op-ed, “Whether Bush and his appointees will be held personally liable for their [Iraq War] falsehoods is a grave test for American democracy.” The revival of Bush’s reputation vivifies how our political media system failed that test. As long as George Bush doesn’t turn himself in for committing war crimes, all of his talk about “achieving justice for all” is rubbish.

    *  *  *

    James Bovard is the author of “Attention Deficit Democracy,” “The Bush Betrayal,” “Terrorism and Tyranny,” and other books. Bovard is on the USA Today Board of Contributors. He is on Twitter at @jimbovard. His website is at www.jimbovard.com

  • Not Just Retail: Hedge Funds Flood Into Stocks; Net Leverage Highest In Over Two Years
    Not Just Retail: Hedge Funds Flood Into Stocks; Net Leverage Highest In Over Two Years

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 22:00

    On Friday we officially entered the blow-off top phase of the current meltup: between a record surge in Nasdaq volume…

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    … between a spike in equity call volumes to a decade high…

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    … and a put-to-call ratio that plunged just shy of all time lows…

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    … the message was clear: the moment of trader euphoria and buying from retail investors (who as we noted previously managed to lift bankrupt Hertz by 100% on record volumes earlier in the day) so many bulls have been saying is not here so just keep buying as retail froth is missing from the market. Well, it certainly isn’t missing any more, as “small traders are now full-bore bullish, on steroids” (thanks Fed).

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    Well, it’s not just retail investors anymore: according to Goldman’s PB desk, after holding out for months hedge funds finally capitulated and are now also flooding into stocks.

    In its latest weekly exposure report, Goldman’s prime desk notes that while overall hedge fund gross leverage fell -2.5 pts to 247.1% (96th percentile one-year), net leverage rose +1.0% to 75.0%,  the highest level in over two years.

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    This happened with hedge funds scrambling to cover even more shorts as the MSCI World Index increased +3.3%; as a result the GS Prime Brokerage Book was net bought driven by short covering outweighing long selling in a 2.4:1 ratio, confirming what Citi said recently that much if not all of the recent rally has been driven by short covering.

    Digging into the flow data reveals that all regions were net bought led by Europe and North America.   

    • North America was net bought driven by “risk off” flows – short covering and long selling. Europe’s net buying however was characterized by “bullish” flows – long buying and short covering.
    • North America’s weight vs. the MSCI decreased -0.6 pts to +2.6% O/W (91st percentile vs. past year), while Europe’s weight rose +0.4 pts to -4.0% U/W (40th percentile vs. past year).

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    At the sector level, funds again faded the rally in US Industrials even as cyclical stocks soared. The sector was the second most net sold in the US driven by “risk off” flows of long selling outweighing short covering in a 1.2:1 ratio. The sector’s weight vs. the S&P 500 fell -0.7 pts to -1.5% U/W, the lowest level since Sept 2017 according to Goldman’s prime desk.

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    While seven out of the eleven Industries were net sold driven by Aerospace & Defense and Construction & Engineering, Airlines and Commercial Svcs & Supplies were the most net bought industries (so it wasn’t just retail flooding in JETS).

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    Focusing on the short squeeze, single stock shorts decreased by -2.1% as nine out of eleven sectors were covered led by Consumer Discretionary and Industrials. Utilities and Real Estate were the only shorted sectors. Consumer Discretionary flows diverged – inflows were led by Diversified Consumer Svcs, while outflows were led by Leisure Profucts.

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    US ETF shorts decreased -2.6% and currently make up 16.5% of the US Short Book (vs. 16.9% last week).

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    ETF short outflows were driven by Fixed Income, US Listed, and Small and Large Cap ETFs.

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    Finally, at the single stock level, some of the most prominent hedge fund rotations were the following:

    • Royal Caribbean (RCL) shorts increased +17% as shares rose 12% amid the pricing of a debt offering
    • Slack Technologies Inc (WORK) shorts increased +36% as shares rose 17% amid Q1 earnings
    • Inovio Pharmaceutical (INO) shorts increased +16% as shares fell 11% amid continued Covid19 Vaccine trials

  • 2 Men From Ohio Arrested At Brooklyn Protest With Knives, Bricks, Other Weapons
    2 Men From Ohio Arrested At Brooklyn Protest With Knives, Bricks, Other Weapons

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 21:44

    Update (2130ET):  What do peaceful protesters pushing for the abolition of police do when they spot suspicious activity, like a man wielding a machete in the middle of the street? Apparently, they call the police.

    According to Fox 8, officers with the NYPD 84th precinct arrested two men who were spotted near a rally in Brooklyn with a machete, while reportedly “acting suspiciously.”

    The two men got in to a car with Ohio license plates, and tried to drive off, but they were stopped by a team of officers. The men were taken into custody without incident, but a search of their vehicle turned up a mini arsenal, including knives, a sword, a machete, bricks (of course), two-way radios and other suspicious gear suggesting they were planning to incite violence at the evening’s rally.

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    Investigators are now working to determine whether the two men participated in any of last week’s spurts of police violence. They are also trying to figure out whether or not the men might  have orchestrated any violence at demonstrations over the past week.

    In a rare moment of levity and unity, the police “commended” the protesters for speaking up.

    “I commend the peaceful protesters that actually saw something and they said something,” Robinson told WABC. “You know we need more of that in this city, so we can come together as one. They definitely saved lives.”

    We look forward to learning whether these were members of the new armed antifa cells, or if the men will be identified as part of a right-wing movement intent on causing chaos to provoke a military takeover, according to the narrative.

    * * *

    Update (1625ET): As dinner time approaches on the east coast, protests are underway in dozens of cities across the US, with only a few isolated incidents to speak of so far. Though, if the 12th night of protests and unrest fits the pattern of last weekend, mobs typically don’t turn violent until after dark, when many of the peaceful demonstrators have gone home, and the organized criminals looking to take advantage of the situation come out.

    There’s a big protest heading down Pennsylvania Avenue.

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    In Chicago…

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    In San Francisco, that shining beacon of equality, demonstrators crossed the Goldengate bridge, stopping traffic on the way.

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    Meanwhile, a second memorial service has been held for Floyd today in North Carolina, where he was born and raised. Though he lived much of his life in Houston, and Minneapolis.

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    Hundreds of mourners are attending.

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    Twitter of course is doing everything it can to amplify the protests, though, to be fair, it’s all many of its most active users have been talking about since we all collectively forgot about the coronavirus.

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    One Twitter user called it “a day for the books” in DC.

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    Protesters take a moment for prayer at the Lincoln Memorial…

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    Protesters in Arlington marched across the Memorial Bridge to join another crowd in DC.

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    This people seem totally normal.

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    Meanwhile in Chicago, police have confiscated 14 buckets of bricks placed on the ground throughout areas where protests were planned.

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    * * *

    Update (1415ET): As the latest round of protests begins, governors in 32 states and Washington DC have activated more than 40,000 national guard soldiers, though the Secretary of Defense has asked that they keep the peace while unarmed.

    The political opponents of the prime minister spent the last week relentlessly bashing Boris for allegedly moving “recklessly” forward as he tries to restore some normalcy back to the UK, which has endured a particularly strict and trying lockdown as one of the worst-hit countries in Europe.

    But now since it’s a protest, they’ve thrown caution to the wind, and are out in the streets scrapping with police, social distancing be damned.

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    In the US, arge crowds gathered in Chicago…

    …and Philly…

    …and Washington DC, where Reuters has set up a live feed to monitor what some local officials expect may be the largest gathering of the George Floyd-inspired movement so far:

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    In Buffalo, cops applauded the two officers who were charged with felony assault on an elderly man who walked too close to a crowd of officers while they were clearing the square. An officer shoved the man, who proceeded to fall backwards and hit his head on the pavement. He immediately started bleeding, and the officers appeared to continue on as if nothing had happened, and moved on to arrest another protester.

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    Meanwhile, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Bottoms has followed Washington by scrapping the curfew in another example of political pandering to the “peaceful” protesters.

    * * *

    Update (1135ET): ~20,000 people attended racial justice protests in Sydney on Saturday “in solidarity” with Black Lives Matter and protesters in the US, according to police in New South Wales.

    Meanwhile, the Pentagon has ordered National Guard troops in the federal district not to fire on protesters (an order that presumably includes rubber bullets and bean bags) while ordering all active-duty troops that the administration had tried to amass on the outskirts of the city to return to their posts.

    According to the Washington Post, police expect between 100k and 200k protesters on Saturday, far short of the million people organizers had brought together.

    There are now more than 43,300 National Guard members actively responding to demonstrations across the US. The National Guard is typically deployed by the governor in a given state.

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    Except in Washington DC where, because it’s a federal city, the president has power to command the National Guard, which Trump has chosen to delegate to the Pentagon.

    * * *

    Following more than a week of widespread peaceful protests pockmarked by occasional homicidal violence, arson, assault and looting, activists are hoping to assemble a massive demonstration in Washington DC, with some hoping to draw a million people to the capital just one day after Mayor Muriel Bowser renamed the street leading up to Lafayette Square after ‘Black Lives Matter’.

    The bright yellow letters spelling out the words ‘Black Lives Matter’ were put in place for a reason: for what we imagine will be an extremely powerful photo op as police and national guardsmen move to disperse the crowds, revealing the message below as tyrannical Trump gazes out the window, twirls his mustache while cackling loudly.

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    Demonstrations against police brutality following George Floyd’s death are expected to continue for the 12th night on Saturday.

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    Though he didn’t give a crowd size estimate, the chief of the Washington DC police says he expects Saturday’s gathering to be one of the biggest so far.

    “We have a lot of public, open source information to suggest that the event on this upcoming Saturday may be one of the largest we’ve ever had in the city,” Washington DC Police Chief Peter Newsham told local media, adding that much of the city center would be closed to traffic from early in the day.

    Newsham did not give a crowd estimate. Local media has predicted tens of thousands of attendees.

    Demonstrators in the Washington DC area are still sore over the national guard’s decision to use tear gas and rubber bullets to clear Lafayette Square for a presidential photo-op at St. John’s Church, angering the Episcopal Church in the process.

    Further south, in North Carolina, Governor Roy Cooper is ordering all flags at state facilities to be lowered to half-staff from sunrise to sunset on Saturday to honor Floyd, who was born in Fayetteville. A televised memorial service will also be held in the city on Saturday, per USAToday.

    On Friday, marches and gatherings took place in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Miami, New York and Denver, among other places, while protesters massed again, in the rain, in front of the White House. The night-time protests were largely peaceful but tension remains high even as authorities in several places take steps to reform police procedures. Politicians and judges around the country also announced new restrictions on law enforcement powers and tactics, including a federal judge in Denver, who ordered city police to stop using tear gas, plastic bullets and other “less-than-lethal” devices such as flash grenades, claiming that too many peaceful protesters and journalists have been injured by police.

    “These are peaceful demonstrators, journalists, and medics who have been targeted with extreme tactics meant to suppress riots, not to suppress demonstrations,” U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson wrote in the ruling.

     

     

    In Minneapolis, Democratic city leaders voted to end the use of knee restraints and choke-holds, where pressure is applied to the neck.

    In California, Gov Gavin Newsom ended state police training of carotid restraints, and ordered officers not to use the tactic.

    In New York, Gov Andrew Cuomo said his state should lead the way in passing “Say Their Name” reforms, including making police disciplinary records publicly available, while also banning the chokehold (which we thought had already been banned following the killing of Eric Garner).

    “Mr Floyd’s murder was the breaking point,” Cuomo said. “People are saying ‘enough is enough’.”

    The cause of the peaceful protesters received a major boost last night from the NFL, which admitted for the first time that it was “wrong” to oppose players who kneeled.

    Once again, the demonstrators in the US expect sympathizers from around the world to join in, with more demonstrations at American embassies and consulates in Europe expected.

    Already, thousands have gathered in London’s Parliament Square “in solidarity” with their American peers.

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    The protest, which has so far proven to be entirely peaceful, according to CNN. At one point, everybody too a knee in unison.

    Once again Portland, Ore., roughly 20 adults were arrested and one juvenile was detained last night as peaceful demonstrations morphed into violent street battles into the night, as agitators threw bricks and bottles at cops.

  • The Establishment Only Dislikes Trump Because He Puts An Ugly Face On The Empire
    The Establishment Only Dislikes Trump Because He Puts An Ugly Face On The Empire

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 21:30

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    Barack Obama has given his perfunctory speech about the Black Lives Matter protests taking place in America today, and it was every bit as full of pretty words and empty of actual substance…

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    …as you’d expect from a president who spent eight years stagnating the progressive movement with empty hope narrative while advancing the same murderous oppressive agendas as his predecessors.

    The former president talked about changes that need to be made as though he wasn’t the most powerful politician in America for two full terms, praised the nation’s police officers saying “the vast majority” of them protect and serve the people, and encouraged them to continue making empty gestures of solidarity with the protesters to calm them down.

    “I want to acknowledge the folks in law enforcement that share the goals of re-imagining policing,” Obama said. “Because there are folks out there who took their oath to serve your communities to your countries [who] have a tough job, and I know you’re just as outraged about the tragedies in the recent weeks as are many of the protesters. So we’re grateful for the vast majority of you who protect and serve. I’ve been heartened to see those in law enforcement who recognize, ‘Let me march along with these protestors. Let me stand side by side and recognize that I want to be part of the solution,’ and have shown restraint and volunteered and engaged and listened because you’re a vital part of the conversation, and change is going to require everyone’s participation.”

    George W Bush also weighed in on the protests, with the “compassionate conservative” who murdered a million Iraqis sending liberals throughout the Twitterverse into fits of ecstasy with his emotional plea for “empathy, and shared commitment, and bold action, and a peace rooted in justice.”

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    Establishment narrative managers on both sides of America’s imaginary partisan divide have been saturating the mass media with gushing praise for the two former presidents and their wonderful words of healing and unity, and indeed, the words are quite nice. They will change exactly nothing, but they sound nice.

    And that is exactly what a US president’s real job is.

    Not to end police brutality and systemic racism, not to make changes which benefit the American people, and certainly not to make the world a less violent and murderous place, but to say pretty words which lull the public into a pleasant propaganda-induced coma while the sociopathic oligarchs who really run things rob them blind.

    This is not accomplished by tweeting obnoxious things about shooting “thugs” and getting censored by Twitter. It is not accomplished by threatening to implement martial law against the will of the states. It is not accomplished by using the military to brutalize protesters so you can pose in front of a burnt church with an upside-down Bible. It is not accomplished by calling the brother of George Floyd and being curt, uninterested and dismissive. It is not accomplished by first mismanaging a pandemic, then mismanaging a response to an incendiary police murder, then having nothing soothing or sympathetic to say that makes people feel like you’re listening and you care. It is not accomplished by creating an environment which allows photos to circulate of the nation’s capital burning.

    And that, right there, is the one and only reason why certain elements of the establishment do not like President Trump.

    Whenever I point out the many, many evil establishment agendas that have been advanced by the current US president, I always get Trump supporters asking me “Well if he’s serving the establishment, how come establishment media and politicians attack him so hysterically, huh?”

    This is why. At first glance it might seem strange to see Democrats and their aligned media shrieking about Trump with such an unprecedented degree of vitriol, but they aren’t doing this because Trump resists the establishment in any meaningful way on domestic or foreign policy; he provides no significant resistance to toxic establishment agendas at all. The reason there’s been such shrill, hysterical rhetoric about this president from establishment narrative managers is because unlike his predecessors, Trump puts an ugly face on the empire.

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    People who have dedicated their lives to advancing the interests of the oligarchic empire see Trump as an incompetent manager whose oafish, ham-fisted approach to his role risks drawing attention to the evil things the empire does. The US police force, for example, hasn’t gotten any more brutal or racist since Trump has been in office, he just hasn’t been able to manage events and narratives competently to keep the peasants from waking up and revolting.

    Establishment narrative managers understand how to skilfully manipulate public perception without being obvious about it, and they understand how easily an incompetent steward of empire can snap people out of their propaganda trance. They therefore dislike Trump for the same reason a new mother dislikes a noisy neighbor: they’ll wake the baby. They don’t dislike Trump because he does good things, and they certainly don’t dislike Trump because he does bad things. They dislike Trump because he does bad things in a way that startles the people out of their sleep.

    That’s the real reason the political/media class has been behaving so weird the last four years. It isn’t because Trump’s not a loyal empire lackey (he is), it isn’t because he’s a Russian secret agent (he’s not), and it isn’t because he’s a uniquely depraved president (he’s not). It’s because he allows people to see the perverse mechanics of a globe-sprawling murderous empire for the sick, evil thing that it actually is. That and nothing more.

    *  *  *

    Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics onTwitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

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  • Chaotic COVID Response Sparks Revival In Once Despised Plastics Industry 
    Chaotic COVID Response Sparks Revival In Once Despised Plastics Industry 

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 21:00

    We penned a piece last week describing how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended single-use disposable items (i.e., plasticware: plastic cups, dishes, straws, and utensils) to all restaurants across the country for reopening.

    It certainly seemed odd, and a little illogical, that, somehow, single-use food-service items would replace traditional restaurant ware, all because the government said it would limit the spread of COVID-19.

    Maybe Gov. Gavin Newsom was right when he questioned surface transmission of the virus and blamed plastic and petrochemical manufacturers for “trying to influence CDC guidelines for reopening food establishments in their favor.”

    If you’ve noticed, the use of plastics has increased during the pandemic, from restaurants to grocery stores, plastic is back in a very big way because the government says its more sanitary. 

    While COVID-19 seemingly survives on all surfaces, including plastic, plasticware at restaurants is no safer than ceramic dishware and metal utensils, which, by the way, are properly cleaned and sanitized. 

    So if that’s the case, there must be another reason why the CDC is pushing the use of plastics, using the pandemic as a cover, and the reason is simple, as Newsom said above: plastic and petrochemical manufacturers are influencing government guidelines. 

    Why would the government allow big oil to influence policy? Well, President Trump has been a cheerleader of the energy sector, pledging several months ago when crude prices crashed into negative territory for the first time in history to “never let the great U.S. Oil & Gas Industry down.”

    The energy industry’s bet on a petrochemical boom to support future sales growth has proven disastrous as an already saturated plastic market was hit by a virus demand shock. 

    Domestic and international plastic prices have been in a several-year decline, even before the pandemic, which as of recent, forced Dow Inc to idle three US plants producing polyethylene, the base material for plastic bags and bottles.

    “The petrochemicals world has been hit by a double whammy,” said Utpal Sheth, Executive Director, Chemical and Plastics Insights at data firm IHS Markit.

    “Capital investment has been slashed by all companies. This will delay the projects under construction and new projects,” Sheth said.

    A Royal Dutch Shell’s plastics project in Pennsylvania, touted by President Trump last year, is facing severe oversupply conditions as plastic prices tumble. 

    “Even before the coronavirus outbreak, we were already expecting to see various petrochemical value chains … heading into an oversupply situation,” said Catherine Tan, principal analyst at Wood Mackenzie.

    Despite the bearish outlook for the plastics industry (because there’s no V-shaped recovery in the global economy this year), the government’s recommendation for the entire restaurant industry to use plasticware to combat the virus certainly suggests big oil influenced the new guidelines. Further, it’s still debatable if wearing a mask can completely shield the wearer from COVID-19, but if you didn’t know — polypropylene is the main ingredient in surgical and 3M N95 masks. 

    The use of plastics for “personal protective equipment and takeaway food containers has boosted sales of some plastics, it is likely to be only a temporary spike,” Reuters notes. Still, weekly plastics prices in Houston are depressed: 

    Low Density Polyethylene Houston Weekly Prices (widely used for manufacturing containers, dispensing bottles, wash bottles, tubing, plastic parts for computer components, and molded laboratory equipment; Its most common use is in plastic bags) 

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Linear Low Density Polyethylene Houston Weekly Prices (widely used for high performance bags, cushioning films, tire separator films, industrial liners, elastic films, ice bags, bags for supplemental packaging and garbage bags)

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    As for the international prices of plastics, the downtrend was very well defined before the pandemic. 

    High Density Polyethylene Far East Asia Weekly Prices (widely used for the production of plastic bottles, corrosion-resistant piping, geomembranes and plastic lumber)

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Polypropylene Far East Asia Weekly Prices (widely used for packaging for consumer products, plastic parts for various industries including the automotive industry, special devices like living hinges, and textiles) 

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Polypropylene Copolymer Far East Asia Weekly Prices (widely used for packaging, textiles, healthcare, pipes, automotive, and electrical applications)

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    What could be clear is that big oil is influencing government policies in a post-corona world to increase the use of plastics since the industry has been thrown into oversupplied conditions with plunging prices. Plastic use for automobiles and consumer goods declined way before the pandemic and crashed during lockdowns. So the industry had to find new ways to boost demand — hence, unleash an ingenious psychological operation, perhaps in conjunction with the government, of how plastics will save your life through using plasticware at restaurants and grocery stores and mask-wearing. 

  • UCSB Professor Uses Religion Class To Teach About "Error" Of "American Exceptionalism"
    UCSB Professor Uses Religion Class To Teach About “Error” Of “American Exceptionalism”

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 20:30

    Authored by Clay Robinson via Campus Reform,

    A professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara who gave a lecture on the “error of American Exceptionalism,” says coronavirus is just one piece of evidence of America’s shortcomings.

    Rudy Busto teaches a course titled Asian American Studies/Religious Studies 71: Introduction to Asian American Religion. Toward the end of the spring semester, Busto posted a lecture on “American Civil Religion,” during which he proceeded to explain to the class how “history has dispelled the notion of American Exceptionalism.”

    WATCH:

    Busto’s examples as proof for this claim included “losing the Vietnam War,” the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the “ongoing, unwinnable wars in the Middle East’,” and even the United States’ coronavirus death toll and case count. 

    “The escalation of coronavirus cases and deaths in the United States, currently the most of any other country has reported, is a blow to our ego, certainly to our current administration’s ego,” Busto said during his lecture.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    According to Busto, “American Exceptionalism” is a “culturally hegemonic” idea, which seeks to “manufacture consent” by the “dominant class.”

    “Cultural hegemony,” according to Busto, is “the idea that dominant ideas and beliefs and society are promoted by the dominant class as a way to maintain control.”

    Busto suggested that the notion that “socialism is unacceptable for the United States” is a similarly culturally hegemonic idea.

    The professor goes on to compare the acceptance of “American Exceptionalism” to the way Americans once accepted slavery as a normal part of society. 

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Ethan Barcelos, a freshman studying statistical science at UCSB and a student in Busto’s class, told Campus Reform he was initially confused by Busto’s lecture content.

    “My first reaction was ‘what does this have to do with this class’. I was under the impression that I would be learning about Asian American Religions, not a litany of the wrongdoings of America,” said Barcelos.

    “ I disagree with the notion that believing that America is the best country in the world is Marxist ‘cultural hegemony,’ Barcelos added, saying  that the professor “used his claim of this being ‘important context’ as an excuse to bash America and push Marxist propaganda.”

    According to the course description of Asian American Studies/Religious Studies 71: Introduction to Asian American Religion, the class is meant to be a “survey of the major themes and issues in Asian American religious history, belief, and practice.”

    Busto is an associate professor of religious studies at UCSB. His focus is “approaching religion in North America through the lens of race,” which “allows us to uncover hidden and subjugated histories and actors in American religion.”

    His research is based on examining “how the study of religion has itself been structured and shaped by assumptions about race/ethnicity and helps explain the theoretical absence of race as a variable for critical analysis of religion.”

    Busto did not respond to Campus Reform’s request for comment in time of publication.

  • Gulf Coast Braces For Tropical Storm Cristobal To Strike On Sunday
    Gulf Coast Braces For Tropical Storm Cristobal To Strike On Sunday

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 20:00

    Tropical Storm Cristobal continues to strengthen as the storm is headed to an area of the Louisiana coast littered with offshore oil platforms.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    A 10:00 ET tropical update via the National Weather Service (NWS) warns “tropical-storm-force winds, storm surge, and heavy rainfall are expected to begin along portions of the northern Gulf Coast tonight and Sunday morning.” 

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    h/t NWS

    Ahead of impacts, here’s our reporting last week of Cristobal’s movements: 

    Cristobal is sustaining winds of 50 mph and could strengthen before making landfall along the Louisiana coast on Sunday. The center of the storm will likely strike the eastern Louisiana coastline late Sunday afternoon. 

    At least 65 Gulf of Mexico offshore oil platforms have shuttered operations, resulting in a decline of 500,000 barrels per day (BPD) of oil production. Gulf of Mexico oil platforms represents about 15% of total daily US production. 

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Cristobal’s trajectory 

    A Reuters source said crude refineries located on the Louisiana coast plan to continue operating this weekend, despite tropical threats on Sunday into Monday. Torrential rains and high winds are expected between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. 

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Cristobal’s impact zone 

    As of early Saturday afternoon, Cristobal is about 365 miles south of the mouth of the Mississippi River and traveling north at around 14 mph. 

    *Updates will follow as the storm closes in on the Louisiana coast. 

  • "Here's Your 'V'!" – No, The Market Is Not Forward-Looking
    “Here’s Your ‘V’!” – No, The Market Is Not Forward-Looking

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 19:30

    Authored by Sven Henrich via NorthmanTrader.com,

    In this week’s edition of Straight Talk Guy Adami, Dan Nathan and I are diving into the surprising jobs report, the hot topics of the widening wealth gap and social unrest, the Fed’s role in all of it, the implications of the widening rift on our society, the risks of a building record rift between asset prices and the real economy and we also offer a heartfelt discussion of the reasons of why we do what we do, offer our often contrarian and critical opinions.

    Markets closed the week at a red flag screaming 151% market cap to GDP. There is no history, none, that shows valuations above 150% market cap to GDP are sustainable. None.

    But this is what you get when you have a market that treats a phase one trade deal as something better than the trade volumes that were in place before the trade war ever started. This is what you get when a market treats phase one Covid vaccine trials as an actual vaccine already in place. This is what you get when a market prices in a perceived uptick in employment from a total collapse as an economy already having returned to full employment. This is what you get when a market perceives the injection of trillions of dollars as a substitute for actual growth in the economy.

    This is what you get:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    A financial asset bubble the likes we have never seen before. Asset bubbles happen at the end of a business cycle. Now we have one with nothing, absolutely nothing, on a extended proven growth path and the global economy still in a recession.

    What bubble do we have in store for when the economy actually emerges from the recession?

    Fact is the China US relation is frayed, the phase one trade deal in shambles in terms of actual volumes. There is no vaccine and while we’ve had a slowing of infections of wave 1 of the virus it is still ravaging in places such as Brazil and Mexico and back on the uptick in countries that have reopened their economies. The jury is still out.

    And employment?

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Companies continue to make layoff announcements and more are to come.

    There is little doubt the trillions in liquidity injections by the Fed and other central banks have juiced asset prices to levels that pretend to convey that nothing has happened.

    New all time highs on the Nasdaq in the most vertical and aggressive “V” shaped rally ever.

    $SPX back to levels last seen during the fleeting January 2020 lows when GDP growth was expected to be 2%, earnings growth deemed to be 5%-8% and unemployment at 3.5%.

    Markets pretend that nothing’s happened and things are back to normal:

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    But they aren’t. Far from it, but that’s the illusion purposefully propagated by central banks. Millions unemployed with permanent job losses on the horizon but American billionaires having increased their wealth by $565B since March 18. This is America.

    George Carlin once said:

    When you are born to this world you get a free ticket to the freak show and if you are born in America you get a front seat. Welcome to the freak show that works for fewer and fewer people.

    No, the market is not forward looking its blindly chasing liquidity and by doing so has blindly gone vertical and embraced an, in my view, unsustainable path of historical valuations overly reliant on overnight unfilled gaps:

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    A path that keeps building risks of future gap fills to come, especially in context of ever tightening price patterns not only on the market charts, but also the $VIX:

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    The building disconnects and the societal rifts are subjects dear to our hearts.

    For out latest perspectives please join please join Guy Adami, Dan Nathan and I in this week’s edition of Straight Talk:

    *  *  *

    For the latest detailed technical review on markets please see Market Videos. For the latest public analysis please visit NorthmanTrader. To subscribe to our market products please visit Services.

  • 50 State AGs Are Pushing To Breakup Google's Ad-Tech Dominance Alongside DOJ
    50 State AGs Are Pushing To Breakup Google’s Ad-Tech Dominance Alongside DOJ

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 19:00

    In what would be a monumental move — and we might ad good for independent media breaking the shackles of the mainstream’s ongoing attempts to police content and punish dissent — Google’s total dominance over online advertising could soon come to an end.

    CNBC revealed Friday that no less than 50 sate attorneys general have been investigating Google’s business practices as part of a months long probe alongside a parallel DOJ effort, and momentum is gaining toward a looming major antitrust lawsuit against the internet giant.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Source: Ad Age

    Leading the probe among the states is Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who did not comment in Friday’s CNBC report. Google, however, did respond, with a Google spokesperson rebutting with, “The facts are clear, our digital advertising products compete across a crowded industry with hundreds of rivals and technologies, and have helped lower costs for advertisers and consumers.”

    President Trump has lately put big tech in the spotlight over allegations of targeted censorship of conservative content, lately signing an executive order which seeks to reduce liability protections of major internet companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Google.

    Independent and alternative voices have also long complained of being demonetized or unfairly targeted for analysis and commentary falling outside of accepted ‘groupthink’. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    It remains that the bulk of Google’s some $161 billion in revenue comes via ad sales, with a far smaller amount coming through products the tech giant and its parent company Alphabet Inc. are traditionally known for: software and technology.

    CNBC summarizes what’s at stake as follows: 

    Critics have said that Google bundles its ad tools so that rivals can’t afford to match its offerings and that its operation of search results, YouTube, Gmail and other services to hinder ad competition. They also say that Google owns all sides of the “auction exchange” through which ads are sold and bought, giving it an unfair advantage. 

    But a key legal obstacle the courts would have to consider is the fact that Google’s ad group doesn’t function as a stand alone business, but is made up of Google Ads, Google Marketing Platform, and Google Ad Manager.

    * * *

    A prior WSJ explainer walked through how Google ad dominance works in three charts:

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Source: the company’s website, via WSJ

    If said company wants advertise on third-party websites and apps:

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    And finally, if the airline wants to advertise on YouTube:

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

     

  • The Real Looters Are The Politicians
    The Real Looters Are The Politicians

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 18:30

    Authored by James Bovard via The American Institute for Economic Research,

    The brutal killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police spurred widespread protests which have been followed by looting in dozens of American cities. CNN’s Don Lemon compared looters who plundered Neiman Marcus and other upscale stores to those at the Boston Tea Party. But far more Americans likely agreed with Quinta Caylor, a black North Carolina nurse on Twitter, who denounced the looters who “THUGGED OUT in 1 day” businesses that owners had worked long and hard to build.  

    There are not yet any solid estimates of the total damage from the looting and burning that has occurred in many cities across the nation. Total losses may range in the tens of millions of dollars or perhaps in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The pillaging has been especially ruinous to many small family-owned businesses, some of whom may not have insurance to cover their losses. 

    Many cities have responded to violent rampages by imposing curfews and other severe restrictions on movement.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Many such edicts are remarkably similar to the “shelter-in-place” COVID dictates imposed by many state governments. While the city curfews are a reflexive response to rioting, the unprecedented state-wide quarantines appear to have had scant impact in curbing the contagion.

    In Portland, Oregon, “rioters have broken into Portland’s main mall in downtown and began looting the Louis Vuitton. Youths ran out with designer bags. They shouted about expropriation,” as Andy Ngo tweeted.

    But that state suffered far more from Gov. Kate Brown’s edict that banned residents from leaving their homes except for essential work, buying food, and other narrow exemptions, and also banned all recreational travel, even though much of the state had few if any COVID cases. Almost 400,000 Oregonians have lost their jobs after Brown’s shutdown. 

    In Grand Rapids, Michigan, looters pillaged a shoe store and many other businesses.

    But the damage they inflicted was not even pocket change compared to the wreckage produced by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. She prohibited anyone from leaving their home to visit family or friends. Whitmer severely restricted what stores could sell; she prohibited purchasing seeds for spring planting in stores after she decreed that a “nonessential” activity (unlike buying state lottery tickets). Though COVID infections were concentrated in the Detroit metropolitan area, Whitmer shut down the entire state – including northern counties with near-zero infections and zero fatalities, boosting unemployment to 24% statewide. 

    In Louisville, Kentucky, looters attacked the Omni Louisville Hotel and many other businesses. 

    But that isn’t why the Bluegrass State has the nation’s highest unemployment rate – 33%. That is thanks to Gov. Andy Beshear’s shutdown order that paralyzed the state even though COVID’s impact in Kentucky “has not been worse than an average flu season,” according to Sen. Rand Paul. 

    In the District of Columbia, looters pillaged an Apple Store. “I bet this is about the [COVID] contact tracing in the latest upgrade,” quipped one wag on Twitter.

    But Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser has inflicted vastly more damage on the city with a lockdown order that helped destroy almost 100,000 jobs. 

    In Richmond, Virginia, looters pillaged many black-owned small businesses as well as torching the headquarters of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. 

    Local damage is far outweighed by Gov. Ralph Northam shutting down the state economy for more than two months– including vast swaths of the Old Dominion that had few if any COVID cases, helping destroy more than half a million jobs. 

    In Rochester, New York, looters ransacked the Villa shoe store and many other businesses and brutally beat a female store owner seeking to defend her small business. New York City also saw widespread looting. 

    But more than two million New Yorkers have lost their jobs since Gov. Andrew Cuomo effectively put almost 20 million people under house arrest – a drastic step that he said would be justified if it “saves just one life.” Most counties had only a smattering of COVID cases before Cuomo caused profound upheaval in the lives of vast numbers of his subjects. Also, unlike for Cuomo, there is no evidence tying the looters to 5,000+ deaths in nursing homes. 

    In Minneapolis, looters plundered stores and restaurants in East Lake Street, a well-known haven for Black and Latino-owned businesses, as well as burning down the nation’s oldest independent science fiction bookstore. A black former firefighter was left in tears after looters ravaged the sports bar he was planning to open. Gov.

    Timothy Walz’s statewide shutdown decree helped destroy almost 400,000 jobs, including that of George Floyd, who lost his gig as a bouncer after the governor’s order shut down the restaurant where he worked. 

    Most of the media coverage, reciting the official narrative that shutdowns were vital and justified, has ignored the human carnage of the COVID shutdowns. 

    Almost 40% of households earning less than $40,000 per year have someone who lost their job in recent months, according to the Federal Reserve. Politicians destroyed much of the economy in the name of “risk reduction.” Unprecedented restrictions on personal and economic freedom were justified in part by federal Centers for Disease Control fatality forecasts that turned out to be wildly exaggerated. 

    Some leftists on Twitter urged the looters to go after national chain stores such as Target and avoid small family-owned businesses.  Politicians issuing COVID shutdown decrees followed the opposite standard, effectively padlocking small businesses while Walmart and other large stores easily received the “essential” bureaucratic holy water and Amazon practically won the lottery. The recent riots may have destroyed hundreds of businesses. But forecasts predict that millions of businesses could be forced to close or file bankruptcy because of the pandemic disruptions.

    The people who pillaged stores in recent days deserve vigorous prosecution, and the deluge of Twitter plundering-in-progress videos could make it easier to identify culprits. It remains to be seen whether mayors will have the gumption to throw the book at the thieves. But it is even less likely that the politicians and other government officials who inflicted far greater damage on the economy will ever be held liable.

  • Anything But "Incredible": For Millennials And Women, The Jobs Report Was Catastrophic
    Anything But “Incredible”: For Millennials And Women, The Jobs Report Was Catastrophic

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 18:05

    There were clear problems with Friday’s “incredible” – as Trump put it – jobs report.

    First and foremost the BLS’ own admission there was a “survey error” which may have reduced the real unemployment rate by up to 3% as survey-takers mistakenly counted about 4.9 million temporarily laid-off people as employed, then moving through some very aggressive statistical assumption revisions to boost the “birth/death” model, the curious case of millions of “jobs” resurrected temporarily thanks to the PPP program: as recruitment firm LaSalle Network head Tom Gimbel said, today’s jobs report may offer a “false ray of light” because almost all job gains stemmed from furloughed employees kept on the books due to PPP loans (he said he was seeing real weakness in new hiring).

    But even if one accepts the report at its face, if one digs beneath the glossy veneer, the details are anything but “incredible” as described by the president.

    Start with Trump’s “incredible” V-shaped rebound: after the 2.5mm new jobs added, total US employment is basically where it was at the depth of the financial crisis, while 21 million workers find themselves unemployed – this number was 6 million just two months ago.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Putting that number in context, with roughly 133 million employed workers, there are a record 102 million Americans who are not in the labor force, of whom 92.7 million don’t even want a job.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Among those who were lucky enough to remain in the work force, millions were shifted from full to part-time.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Adding insult to injury, the only jobs created in May according to Deutsche Bank were for highly-skilled, highly-paid workers as low and medium wage jobs continue to shed millions of workers – mostly young, recent graduates – as employers shift to zoom-ing or outsourcing.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    That said, we find the above chart unlikely since a breakdown of actual jobs added by industry shows that the low-paying leisure and hospitality, education and health, and retail trade made up 3 of the top 4 sectors.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    In any case, the unemployment rate for those without a college education is around 16% (and 20% for those who never finished high school), which is why with young, unemployed people already protesting almost daily, it is shaping up as a summer of teenage/young adult discontent and violence for the ages.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    It’s not just teenagers: millennials, already facing dire labor prospects as a result of the zombie post-GFC economy, just saw their employment rate plummet to recession levels.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    The core, prime-aged segment of the workforce, those 25-54 just saw a historic collapse in their job prospects.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    Yet while millennials are fired by the millions, so are older Americans: the ratio of employment of those 65 and older to the overall population just plunged to crisis levels as well.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    And here is the catalyst for the next round of social discontent: women unemployment is now far higher than that of men after being roughly the same before covid: how long before accusation of rampant employer sexism are the next big thing?

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    What is one to do with these data? Why buy stocks of course, what else. It is “Jay’s market“, where an economic depression means +∞ for the S&P.

  • "Only Official Sources Permitted" – Amazon Censors COVID-Truther Book In Latest 'Ministry Of Truth' Moment
    “Only Official Sources Permitted” – Amazon Censors COVID-Truther Book In Latest ‘Ministry Of Truth’ Moment

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 17:40

    Authored by Mark Jeftovic via AxisOfEasy.com,

    Update #2: It’s been pointed out on Hackernews thread that the book is now available on Amazon!

    *  *  *

    Update #1: File under irony, some folks on Hackernews “flagged” this post as inappropriate, after hitting the top-10 and the front page. Article about Big Tech censorship, flagged as inappropriate.

    *  *  *

    Yesterday, author Alex Berenson reported via Twitter that Amazon had spiked his new book about COVID-19 and the lockdowns.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Berenson is a former New York Times reporter, author of other books, fiction and non-fiction, and he’s even a Twitter blue check. This morning I exchanged a few emails with him and he’s slammed with emails so he sent me his statement on the matter:

    The booklet was the first in a series of coronavirus pamphlets I plan to put out covering various aspects of the crisis. Readers of my Twitter feed encouraged me to compile information in a more comprehensive and easier-to-read format, and when I polled people on Twitter to ask if they would be willing to pay a nominal fee for such a pamphlet, the response was strong.

    Originally I only planned to write one, but I had so much information I realized that the booklet would be an awkward length – longer than a magazine article but shorter than a book. Also, doing so would take too long, and I wanted to put it out quickly. So I decided to split the booklet into pieces. Part 1 included an introduction and a discussion of death coding, death counts, and who is really dying from COVID, as well as a worst-case estimate of deaths with no mitigation efforts. It is about 6,500 words, and I planned to sell it for $2.99 on ebook or $5.99 paperback. It is called “Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns: Part 1, Introduction and Death Counts and Estimates.”

    I created covers for both yesterday and uploaded the book. I had published Kindle Singles (Amazon’s curated program for short Kindle pieces, which now focuses more on fiction from established writers), so I was relatively familiar with the drill. I briefly considered censorship but assumed I wouldn’t have a problem because of my background, because anyone who reads the booklet will realize it is impeccably sourced, nary a conspiracy theory to be found, and frankly because Amazon shouldn’t be censoring anything that doesn’t explicitly help people commit criminal behavior. (Books intended to help adults groom children for sexual relationships, for example, should be off-limits – though about 10 years ago Amazon did not agree and only backed down from selling a how-to guide for pedophiles in the face of public outrage.)

    I didn’t hear anything until this morning, when I found the note I posted to Twitter in my inbox. I will forward it to you in its entirely. Note that it does not offer any route to appeal. I have no idea if the decision was made by a person, an automated system, or a combination (i.e. the system flags anything with COVID-19 or coronavirus in the title and then a person decides on the content). I am considering my options, including making the booklet available on my Website and asking people to pay on an honor system, but that will not solve the problem of Amazon’s censorship. Amazon dominates both the electronic and physical book markets, and if it denies its readers a chance to see my work, I will lose the chance to reach the people who most need to learn the truth – those who don’t already know it.

    The text of the Amazon notice follows:

    Hello,

    We’re contacting you regarding the following book(s):

    Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns: Part 1: Introduction and Death Counts and Estimates by Alex Berenson (AUTHOR) (ID: PRI-GRW1ZENP2S2)

    Your book does not comply with our guidelines. As a result we are not offering your book for sale.

    Due to the rapidly changing nature of information around the COVID-19 virus, we are referring customers to official sources for health information about the virus. Please consider removing references to COVID-19 for this book.

    Amazon reserves the right to determine what content we offer according to our content guidelines.

    Berenson is considering releasing the book from his website, so check there for updates. But it looks like I’ll have to add a chapter to my book on surviving deplatform attacks for what to do when the world’s largest retailer (a.k.a The Company Store), refuses to sell what you have to say.

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    Is it censorship or is it free markets in action?

    It’s been an ongoing theme in our #AxisOfEasy newsletter (most recently mentioned this week) that when Big Tech insists that when it comes to coronavirus only information emanating from “official sources” is permissible, it becomes increasingly problematic for two reasons:

    1. Official sources frequently get it wrong. We saw this when CDC flip flopped on mask use, or when the WHO waited until March to declare coronavirus a pandemic. There are numerous other examples to mention.

    2. Sometimes the unofficial sources get it right and when you decide to tilt the scales of discourse in favour of the former and to squelch the latter, you are no longer a mechanical distributor and you are an arbiter of truth.

    It is inevitable that applying this template to coronavirus because we’re in some worldwide global emergency, will sooner than later be applied to adjacent realms, because, hey, emergency, and then over time, to all realms. In Berenson’s case, his material about the COVID-19 virus is being suppressed, as is his material about the lockdowns.

    The lockdowns especially, are a contentious issue. Recall the two California doctors, Dan Erickson and Artin MAssihi, who were deplatformed from Youtube for saying that the lockdowns, while initially warranted, were now becoming destructive and would lead to rampant mental health issues such as depression, spousal and child abuse, and suicide. Not only was their video dropped by Youtube, who’s stated policy is also “official sources only”, Facebook dropped their clinics page as well.

    It didn’t take long for data to emerge that, being poor statisticians aside, maybe, quite possibly, they were actually onto something.

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    Now that Big Tech has embraced an Only Official Sources Permitted (OOSP?) policy, what field of endeavour will be next?

    My audiobook shop is due to release the Incrementum guys’ book on The Zero Interest Rate Trap this month. Should we be expecting an email someday, from Amazon, telling us they’re no longer selling the book because:

    Due to the rapidly changing nature of information around low and negative interest rates, Fed and Central Bank policy, inflation and wealth inequality, we are referring customers to official sources for monetary policy. Please consider removing references to these topics from your book.

    …and from then on the only book Amazon will sell that has anything to say about the matter is Ben Bernanke’s “The Courage To Act”? Is this where we’re headed?

    Probably.

    People often argue, and libertarians are especially prone to this, that the idea of freedom of speech only applies to protection against the government, “why don’t you start your own Amazon?”. While that may be ideologically tenable, practically speaking it’s an impossible remedy. So as a libertarian, it pains me to say, I would encourage and welcome anti-trust investigations into big tech platforms such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and Apple.

    All  the aforementioned companies have formed quasi-monopolies in their respective spheres. In the cases of Google and Facebook they did so with intelligence agency seed funding. While in the case of Amazon they routinely knock-off their own retailers and they all systemically squeeze out independent competitors and pad out their cash reserves with cushy government and military contracts.

    When it comes to Big Tech platforms who were funded with QE-generated hot money and who are the primary beneficiaries of the Brave New World / “never going back to normal” reality we find ourselves in: they get to make their own rules, while everybody else has to play by the rules somebody else decrees.

  • Military Pilot Grounded After Low-Flying Helicopter Maneuvers Over D.C. Protests
    Military Pilot Grounded After Low-Flying Helicopter Maneuvers Over D.C. Protests

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 17:15

    Despite according to a prior New York Times report top Pentagon brass initially ordered that National Guard helicopters assist in dispersing protests and riots which overwhelmed streets outside the White House early this week, at least one helicopter pilot has been grounded pending an investigation over low-flying maneuvers.

    The Black Hawk helicopter presence created a huge stir among activists nationwide, as footage went viral of the pilots using gusts from the helicopter blades to deter crowds. 

    The Pentagon had described the “show of force” tactic as a menacing “persistent presence” to dissuade the below throngs amid raging Black Lives Matter protests.

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    Reporters and demonstrators alleged that in some locations where the swooping maneuver was made store windows were broken by the severe downdraft along with tree limbs, which in at least one case reportedly hurt a bystander when branches struck the person.

    Caught on film were US Army UH-72 Lakota helicopters, as well as UH-60 Black Hawks coming within as little as 100 feet over the crowds. 

    As The Hill describes Saturday:

    Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy told reporters that the helicopter crew was grounded pending results from an internal investigation, according to local CBS affiliate WUSA9. A Pentagon spokesman told the outlet that the move was standard procedure during such investigations.

    The aircraft was one of two Army National Guard helicopters that hovered between 100 and 300 feet above the streets of the District on Monday night, according to an aircraft tracker. Gusts from their helicopter blades were aimed at dispersing crowds of protesters.

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    Via The Drive/social media footage stillframes.

    And further the D.C. National Guard commander, Maj. Gen. William Walker, had indicated in a prior statement that he’d “directed an immediate investigation into the June 1 incident.”

    “I hold all members of the District of Columbia National Guard to the highest of standards,” Walker said. “We live and work in the District, and we are dedicated to the service of our nation.” 

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    No doubt, the pending investigation and grounding of the pilot is largely a political response, given not only the widespread condemnation of military armed forces being utilized for crowd and riot control on American streets, but at a moment the Pentagon and White House are increasingly at odds over the role of soldiers amid the nationwide unrest. 

    And given the controversy, we’re unlikely to see low-flying helicopters during Saturday’s protest, despite the prediction that they’ll be the biggest yet on the capitol, and potentially most dangerous given the chaos of early this week. 

    It also suggests a broader trend of lower ranking police officers and soldiers potentially being thrown under the bus when the “orders” from their higher-ups come under media scrutiny.

  • Mass Distraction And Fake "V-Shaped" Recovery Provide Cover For The Fed-Induced Crash
    Mass Distraction And Fake “V-Shaped” Recovery Provide Cover For The Fed-Induced Crash

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 16:50

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Birch Gold Group,

    The scapegoating has already started. In almost every sector of the economy that is collapsing, the claim is that “everything was fine until the pandemic happened”. From tumbling web news platforms to small businesses to major corporations, the coronavirus outbreak and the national riots will become the excuse for failure. The establishment will try to rewrite history and many people will go along with it because the truth makes them look bad.

    And what is the truth?

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    The truth is that the U.S. economy – and in some ways, the global economy – was already collapsing. The system’s dependency on ultra-low interest rates and central bank stimulus created perhaps the largest debt bubble in history – the Everything Bubble. And that bubble began imploding at the end of 2018, triggered primarily by the Federal Reserve raising rates and dumping its balance sheet into economic weakness, just like it did at the start of the Great Depression. Fed Chair Jerome Powell knew what would happen if this policy was initiated; he even warned about it in the minutes of the October 2012 Federal Open Market Committee, and yet once he became the head of the central bank, he did it anyway.

    For a year leading up to the pandemic, the Fed was struggling to maintain and suppress a repo market liquidity crisis. National debt, corporate debt and consumer debt were at all-time highs. Companies were desperate for new stimulus, and they were getting crumbs from the Fed, rather than the tens of trillions that they needed just to stay afloat. The central bank had sabotaged the economy, but they had to keep it in a state of living death until they had a perfect cover event for the collapse. The pandemic and inevitable civil unrest do the job nicely.

    What many people do not understand is that the Fed does not care about the economy. In fact, every Fed action since its inception in 1913 has led to the downfall of the U.S. The Fed is not a maintenance man trying to stave off collapse; the Fed is a suicide bomber willing to destroy everything including itself in order to serve a greater ideology.

    Total global centralization is the goal, and every new disaster is exploited to this end by the establishment. “Order out of chaos” is the motto of the global elites; in other words, in every crisis there is “opportunity”. This crisis has been no different. Suggested solutions have ranged from the creation of a cashless society operating on a digital currency system, to permanent lockdowns in the name of stopping “global warming”, to a surveillance state and medical tyranny utilizing 24/7 tracking of citizens in order to “stop the spread of the virus”. But how does the establishment plan to get people to go along with such freedom-crushing policies?

    The pandemic by itself is not enough. The George Floyd riots may be a motivator, but they might fizzle out over time. The real catalyst, as I have said for many years now, will be an ongoing economic crash. This crash, engineered in 2008, has been a long time coming. Everything that is happening today is an extension of what happened over a decade ago. That said, the current phase was set in motion in 2018, as noted above.

    The virus and the lockdowns solidified the crash, and while some people including Trump are calling for a V-shaped recovery, this is not going to happen.  Perhaps Trump is referring to stock markets artificially inflated by the Fed stimulus backstop?  Is anyone gullible enough to believe the stock market represents the real economy?  Because today’s jobs report from the BLS, despite all the hype, does not suggest V-shaped recovery to me.  The US lost 40 million jobs in the span of 6 weeks.  The BLS reports a gain of 2.5 million jobs in May as the country “reopened”.  So, we are still down nearly 38 million jobs in the past couple months yet the BLS stats are being called “stunning” and a “sign of recovery”?

    The assumption being made here I think is that job gains will now be constant each month from now on.  I think not.  I think the jobs that were gained in May are the peak, and every jobs report after today will disappoint.  Here’s why…

    The latest Fed models predict a GDP plunge of 52.8%, and the manner in which the Fed calculates GDP is actually rigged to the upside. It is difficult to predict the REAL fall in data, but we know it will likely be larger than 52%. Keep in mind that this crash is in the 2nd quarter, while the Fed pumped trillions into the system. What exactly did this money printing buy? Well, stock markets stabilized, but the rest of the economy didn’t, and stock market optimism isn’t going to last much longer either is there are renewed lockdowns.

    The primary reason we now face a second Great Depression is because the small business sector has been destroyed. Small businesses are vital to the U.S. economy, representing around 50% of the job market. The closures resulted in around 40 million job losses in the past two months. Add that to the 95 million Americans that have been out of work but not counted by the BLS as unemployed – as well as the 11 million people that are counted – and you are looking at nearly 150 million working age people not generating an income.

    The latest BLS jobs gains and the way they are being hyped by the media are suspicious to me.  It seems as if the establishment is trying to convince the public that the pandemic will have no affect on the economy and that their jobs will simply be waiting for them after every new shutdown (as long as they adhere to the rules and restriction set up by state and federal governments).

    But it’s only going to get worse from here on…

    The public doesn’t realize it yet, but many of the businesses that shut down over the past couple months are not coming back. Sure, a lot of them will try to reopen, and there will be a last gasp of activity during the next month or two, but the levels of debt attached to these ventures was already high before the pandemic hit. The recent small business bailouts seemed as if they were designed to give people false hope. According to figures out of JP Morgan, of the 300,000 clients that applied for the small business aid, only 18,000 actually received any. And, of that 18,000, many were larger corporation, not small businesses.

    Business sectors most affected include retail and service, which crashed a record 16.4% overall in April. Food service lost approximately 30% of sales. Electronics and appliances lost 60%. Clothing plunged 78%. Auto sales fell 33% in May, and the expected rebound after the reopening has been disappointing.

    The businesses most likely to die first are those that had large debt obligations before the lockdowns, as well as those that received no bailout money. Even though companies like General Electric, Verizon, IBM and Tesla all have massive debt issues, they may be kept alive by government bailouts, at least for a time. Small businesses, on the other hand, appear to be slated for destruction.

    In particular, I suspect most restaurants besides major chains will go into bankruptcy. Boutique stores and clothing outlets will run out of money fast. Movie theater chains will collapse. Car rental outlets will collapse. Tourism businesses will close en masse and tourism towns will suffer profit losses despite the “reopening” in some states. Larger companies, like airlines, will continue to decline, and they will have to diversify into other areas, such as shipping, in order to survive. The auto industry is not coming back any time soon.

    In the case of restaurants, the social distancing requirements reduce the number of customers that they can seat at any given time. Restaurants were already suffering major declines before the pandemic, and while take-out venues might have seen an uptick because of the lockdowns, this will not last as people begin to run out of cash and start cooking at home.

    The same goes for small boutique stores, which rely on consumers with expendable cash flows. Such consumers no longer exist, and notions of “extra cash” will disappear along with waning government checks. As for tourism, I think there will be some travel, as lockdown restrictions are partially lifted. Many people in the cities will try to get away for a week or two just to escape and feel normal for a little while. However, I also think mainstream economists are underestimating the number of people who will refuse to travel because of concerns about coming in contact with the coronavirus. Just as retail refuses to rebound, so will tourism profits.

    Air travel is unlikely to improve for the same reasons. Social distancing makes airplane flights a losing investment as passenger capacity is reduced. New car sales will remain stagnant because people are traveling less, and the used car market is being stocked with product as average people sell off vehicles to get extra cash to make ends meet.

    All of these factors result in long-term job losses and debt defaults for small businesses as well as some larger companies. Which means much higher poverty rates and further dependency on government welfare programs.

    The real test for the public will come when lockdowns return. I realize that there is a bit of denial in the population when it comes to this idea. I see many people operating on the assumption that the “reopening” is a long-term situation. I assure you, it is not. As I have noted in many previous articles, the establishment intends to use what I call “wave theory”, or a cycle of shutdowns and openings over the span of a year or longer. There WILL be new lockdowns, if not in the name of a resurgence in COVID infections, it will be in the name of stopping the national riots.

    The response from the American people will be critical here. Will we support further lockdowns or martial law, even though the measures would harm us economically? Or will the public resist? Will the political left embrace a second lockdown in the face of further infection spikes? Will conservatives embrace lockdowns in the face of leftist protests and riots? Both sides of the political spectrum are being tempted with the use of a totalitarian government response in order to ensure their personal “safety”.

    People must be made to understand the reality of our situation: the economy has already been undermined and this threat is far greater than either the virus or the riots. This is the danger that is being hidden by the pandemic and civil unrest distractions, and it is a threat that the government has no means or intention of saving us from. We must save ourselves, and doing that requires preparation and acceptance that the world is changed.

    *  *  *

    With global tensions spiking, thousands of Americans are moving their IRA or 401(k) into an IRA backed by physical gold. Now, thanks to a little-known IRS Tax Law, you can too. Learn how with a free info kit on gold from Birch Gold Group. It reveals how physical precious metals can protect your savings, and how to open a Gold IRA. Click here to get your free Info Kit on Gold.

  • Cornell Professor Dave Collum Publicly Shamed By His University For Defending Buffalo Police Officers
    Cornell Professor Dave Collum Publicly Shamed By His University For Defending Buffalo Police Officers

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 16:25

    In America you are now allowed to have an opinion, as long as the thought police agrees that it is the right opinion.

    That is basically what Cornell University said at the end of the week last week, after Zero Hedge contributor and longtime Cornell Organic Chemistry professor Dave Collum did nothing more than offer his opinion on the events that took place in Buffalo, where an elderly man was pushed down by riot police, leading to him fracturing his skull, and the eventual resignation of the entire police response team.

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    Professor Dave Collum

    Collum’s Tweets, collectively comprising just under 500 characters of opinion, sparked a public shaming from the Ivy League institution which was inundated with snowflakes complaining about Collum having an opinion that differed from whatever the Marxist norm of the day was. 

    When the Buffalo video first surfaced, the internet was immediately outraged. The video went viral on Thursday night and was national news on Friday.

    Perhaps naive enough to believe that “social” media was a forum express one’s opinion as in – socially – Collum took the position of defending the Buffalo police, publicly on Twitter, stating that officers across the country have had raw nerves due to the riots, looting and general chaos…

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    …and he said that he thought the man should have given the police space. He called the man’s cracked skull “self-inflicted”. 

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    An unpopular opinion in the left-wing stratosphere of social media? Sure. But an opinion nonetheless, and one shared by the 57 police officers who immediately resigned in protest of how the officers involved with the incident were being treated. 

    It was also an opinion that appeared to be backed up by Buffalo’s mayor on Saturday morning. Buffalo’s Mayor described the man involved in the video as “an agitator” who was asked to leave the area “multiple times”:

    Byron Brown, the mayor of Buffalo, N.Y., said Friday the 75-year-old man who was shoved to the ground by two cops the previous day was an “agitator” who had been asked to leave the area “numerous” times.

    …

    “There has been vandalism, there have been fires set, there have been stores broken into and looted. According to what was reported to me, that individual was a key major instigator of people engaging in those activities,” the mayor said.

    But in the world of instant outrage, there’s no time for facts. Collum’s Tweet, within minutes of being posted, had been re-tweeted by comedian and actor Kumail Nanjiani, who has more than 3 million Twitter followers.

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    Dropping this bomb onto the actor’s followers set off a nuclear reaction, with hundreds of replies and re-tweets calling for Collum to lose his job and for Cornell to punish the professor: all for just speaking his opinion.

    As a result, Collum had to lock down his Twitter account.

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    This was followed by an article in the Cornell Daily Sun – which led with the Professor’s opinions and not the actual news item itself…

    “Prof. David Collum ’77, chemistry, has come under fire from both students and administrators for a series of Thursday night tweets defending police officers that pushed and severely injured an elderly man.”

    …and Cornell itself responding in a statement on Friday, claiming that Collum’s justification of police action was “insensitive”, “deeply offensive” and “at direct odds with Cornell’s ethos”.

    The statement then said that “Professor Collum has a right to express his views in his private life”, which supposedly one should be grateful for: at least our learned institutions aren’t determining what opinions people can hold in private, at least not yet. But if someone dares to publish a contrarian opinion in public, well that’s just going too far.

    We watched the video of the events in Buffalo yesterday where police officers shoved an elderly man to the ground and walked past while he lay bleeding on the sidewalk. The behavior we saw was deplorable. We are heartened that the authorities took immediate actions and that the two police officers involved have been suspended.

    We agree with Governor Cuomo that the incident was “wholly unjustified and utterly disgraceful.” We also saw the tweets by Cornell professor David Collum justifying the actions of the police. While Professor Collum has a right to express his views in his private life, we also have a right and an obligation to call out positions that are at direct odds with Cornell’s ethos.

    Especially at a moment at which this nation is grappling with the vital need to implement reforms that end police brutality, we find Professor Collum’s comments to be not just deeply insensitive, but deeply offensive.

    In other words, Cornell has now publicly said: You can have an opinion, as long as it’s the right opinion: our opinion. Or else just keep it to yourself.

    Collum was also forced to cancel an upcoming podcast appearance. Collum’s initial Tweets were in response to a podcast host who had a difference of opinion on the matter. The two were looking forward to discussing the incident this weekend. Now, that discourse will not take place, which the podcast host called “a shame” in a video defending Collum’s right to his own opinion.

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    In the end, we agree with Collum: he is being shamed for having the “wrong opinion”.

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    And we have to ask both Cornell and the social justice warriors of the world: Isn’t shaming someone for expressing an opinion peacefully – no matter how contrarian to the current virtue signaling flood – the exact antithesis of the “diversity”, “freedom” and “justice” that everyone is currently in the midst of fighting for, and is Cornell now an institution that only encourages “thinking” and “opinions” which are only first vetted with the thought police of what was once an institution where original and free thought was actually permitted if not, gasp, encouraged?

  • Free The Liquor Stores!
    Free The Liquor Stores!

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 16:00

    Authored by Laurence Vance via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

    The Fine Wine & Good Spirits liquor stores are slowly beginning to reopen in Pennsylvania after they were all closed on March 17 in response to the spread of the coronavirus.

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    During the time when the liquor stores in Pennsylvania were all closed, Pennsylvania residents flocked to liquor stores in other states such as New Jersey, West Virginia, and Ohio.

    In April, Ohio’s governor, Mike DeWine, signed an executive order “requiring six Ohio counties near the Pennsylvania border to require proof of local residency for the purchase of alcohol.” Said the governor, “This is necessary because of repeated instances of persons from Pennsylvania coming into these counties for the sole or main purpose of purchasing liquor. Any other time, we’d love to have visitors from Pennsylvania, but right now this creates an unacceptable public health issue.”

    When the Fine Wine & Good Spirits liquor stores closed, why couldn’t residents of Pennsylvania just go to another liquor store in Pennsylvania instead of having to drive to another state? Because the Fine Wine & Good Spirits liquor stores are the only liquor stores in Pennsylvania. They are government liquor stores. No private liquor stores are allowed to exist.

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    Pennsylvania is one of seventeen “alcoholic beverage control” states where the state government controls the wholesaling, and often the retailing, of distilled spirits, and in some cases, beer and wine.

    The other states are: Alabama, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming. There are also jurisdictions in Alaska, Maryland, Minnesota, and South Dakota that control the sale of alcoholic beverages.

    According to the National Alcohol Beverage Control Association (NABCA) — the national association representing jurisdictions that directly control the distribution and sale of beverage alcohol within their borders — “control jurisdictions represent approximately 24.8% of the nation’s population and account for roughly 23% of distilled spirit sales and a significantly smaller percentage of beer and wine sales.” The mission of the NABCA is “to support member jurisdictions in their efforts to protect public health and safety and ensure responsible and efficient systems for beverage alcohol distribution and sales.”

    In 1933, the Twenty-First Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment that had, since 1920, prohibited the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all the territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” However, some states, such as Pennsylvania, instead of allowing liquor freedom, chose to institute liquor socialism and monopolize the retail sale of hard liquor.

    The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) “was created by state law on Nov. 29, 1933, at the end of Prohibition.” “The agency is governed by a three-member Board whose members are appointed by the Governor and confirmed by two-thirds of the state Senate.”

    The mission of the PLCB

    is to responsibly sell wine and spirits as a retailer and wholesaler, regulate Pennsylvania’s alcohol industry, promote alcohol education and social responsibility and maximize financial returns for the benefit of all Pennsylvanians. The PLCB regulates the manufacture, importation, sale, distribution and disposition of liquor, alcohol, and malt or brewed beverages in the commonwealth. The agency issues licenses to private individuals or entities that wish to engage in wholesale operations of beer, either as an importing distributor or as a distributor. The agency is also responsible for wholesale distribution of wine and spirits, which licensees may pick up from state-operated Fine Wine & Good Spirits stores or licensee service centers or have delivered from PLCB distribution centers.

    The PLCB operates “more than 600 Fine Wine & Good Spirits stores across Pennsylvania, including more than 90 Premium Collection stores and an e-commerce retail website.” Since 1987, Pennsylvania’s liquor code has been enforced by the Pennsylvania State Police.

    But the PLCB is not the only way that alcoholic beverages are restricted in Pennsylvania. The state also allows voters in each municipality to limit certain alcohol sales or ban the sale of alcohol altogether. According to the PLCB, “681 of 2,560 Pennsylvania municipalities are at least partially dry.” According to the Pennsylvania Liquor Code, “a local option referendum to change what alcohol sales a municipality allows or prohibits may be voted on during any election.” Thirty-two other states also allow localities to prohibit the sale of liquor. Pennsylvania is different from most states with a local option in that it applies to municipalities and not to counties.

    Why?

    Why is alcohol treated differently than any other commodity? Why are alcohol sales restricted in some way in most states on Sundays? Why is the drinking age 21, when Americans are considered legal adults at age 18? Why do some states make a distinction between alcohol consumed on-premises and alcohol purchased for consumption off-premises? Why are alcoholic beverages heavily taxed? Why in Louisiana is the sale of alcoholic beverages of any kind permitted in supermarkets, drug stores, gas stations, and convenience stores, but in other states grocery stores can sell distilled spirits only in a separate store or in an attached location that has its own entrance?

    Free the liquor stores.

    Free the liquor stores to sell what products they want, what days of the week they want, what hours they want, and to whom they want. Free the liquor stores from government regulation, oversight, licensing, and control. Free the liquor stores from government ownership. Free the liquor stores from local options that can institute dry counties or municipalities. Free the liquor stores from modern-day prohibitionists. Free the liquor stores from religious zealots.

    Now, none of this means that there are no health risks associated with alcohol abuse. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),

    Drinking too much can harm your health. Excessive alcohol use led to approximately 88,000 deaths and 2.5 million years of potential life lost (YPLL) each year in the United States from 2006 – 2010, shortening the lives of those who died by an average of 30 years. Further, excessive drinking was responsible for 1 in 10 deaths among working-age adults aged 20-64 years. The economic costs of excessive alcohol consumption in 2010 were estimated at $249 billion, or $2.05 a drink.

    But since when is it the proper function of government to discourage the drinking of alcohol, prohibit commerce in alcohol, license the sellers of alcohol, educate anyone to “make informed, smarter decisions about alcohol,” restrict the hours when alcohol can be sold or consumed, or set a minimum age to purchase, possess, or drink alcoholic beverages?

    At the bottom of the website of Pennsylvania’s Liquor Control Board, next to the seal of the state of Pennsylvania, it says, “Keystone State. Proudly founded in 1681 as a place of tolerance and freedom.” Yet, when it comes to the commodity of alcohol, there is no tolerance or freedom in Pennsylvania. Not when no one is permitted to open a private liquor store. Not when all restaurants are allowed to purchase the liquor they sell only from the PLCB. Not when business must get a license to sell alcoholic beverages. Not when the liquor stores need to be freed.

  • Goldman's Clients Are Asking What Happens If Trump Loses And Dems Take The Senate
    Goldman’s Clients Are Asking What Happens If Trump Loses And Dems Take The Senate

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 15:35

    Over the past week, a significant change has taken place in the US political world and we are not talking about the unprecedented nationwide protests, riots and looting that have prompted comparisons to 1968, or the economic collapse resulting from the covid shutdowns. We are referring to the fact that after dominating the PredictIt online betting poll for who will win in 2020, for the first time ever, Donald Trump has relinquished first place with a material margin to his challenger, Joe Biden, who last night officially clinched the democratic nomination.

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    To be sure, this dramatic reversal has not been lost on either the president – who has unleashed an all out push to demonstrate that the US economy is recovering after Friday’s surprisingly strong, some would say manufactured, jobs report to halt the downside momentum. It has also not been lost on Wall Street, because as Goldman’s chief equity strategist David Kostin writes, with markets looking ahead to the post-pandemic recovery, investor conversations have increasingly focused on the political landscape where, as noted above, prediction markets now show roughly 50% likelihoods of Democrats winning the presidency and the Senate in November. This is notable because as Kostin explains, for many Goldman clients, the most important equity market implication is the potential for higher corporate tax rates.

    Follows is an interesting admission from the Goldman strategist who writes that although the coronavirus has caused the sharpest decline in economic activity on record – this is largely affecting the poor and middle classes – while it is tax policy that represents a larger risk to earnings and consequently to equity prices, and by extension Goldman’s predominantly wealthy clients. Furthermore, with the help of record policy support and inflecting data, investors have largely looked through the coronavirus as a temporary hit to total corporate earnings according to Kostin, although as we have shown before even the most optimistic forecasts don’t show corporate earnings returning to pre-covid levels until the end of 2022 at the earliest, so it depends on one’s definition of “temporary”.

    In contrast, a shift in government policy toward higher corporate taxes would reduce expectations for the entire long-term stream of profits.

    To explain why investors are more concerned about tax policy than covid, Kostin uses an interest analogy, namely that “every company in the world is in a joint venture.” Taking this further, the JV partner is the government and its stake is represented by the effective corporate tax rate. In the case of S&P 500 constituents, companies had a 70% interest for many years that jumped above 80% following the passage of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act (“TCJA”) in December 2017.

    From a valuation perspective, the NPV of the incremental future earnings reallocated by the reduced tax rate suddenly inured to the shareholders whereas it previously benefited the government. That is what happens when the JV split goes from 70/30 to 80/20.

    But the split may change – and not to the benefit of shareholders – in 2021 depending on the outcome of the November election.

    Here it is also worth recalling that one of the main reasons for the market’s outperformance during the Trump administration is that declining tax rates have been arguably the biggest contributor to S&P 500 profit growth. Consider this:

    The TCJA effected a  number of changes in the corporate tax code, including reducing the federal statutory rate on domestic income from 35% to 21% (from 39% to 26% including state and local taxes). In practice, this reduced the effective corporate tax rate paid by the median S&P 500 company by 8 percentage points, from 27% to 19%, and boosted S&P 500 EPS in 2018 by 10%.

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    Overall, since 1990, declining effective tax rates have accounted for 200 bp of the 400 bp increase in net profit margins and 24% of total S&P 500 earnings growth, according to Goldman calculations.

    Not that this was a secret of course, and in fact in much of the world corporate taxes were far lower than in the US, which for years had an uncompetitive corporate tax regime compared with most other countries. In 2017, the 39% statutory tax rate for US firms was the highest among OECD countries, which otherwise had an average statutory rate of 24%. Several years ago, Goldman – correctly – predicted that this disparity could not exist indefinitely, and as a result in 2013, the bank created two baskets of US stocks based on their effective corporate tax rates:

    “Our belief was that legislation would be enacted to level the playing field. From an investment strategy perspective, the intuition was that firms with the highest effective tax rates would benefit the most from tax reform and that the resulting upward EPS revision would translate into relative share price outperformance. In the two months around the passage of the tax reform in late 2017, our 50-stock, sector-neutral High Tax basket outperformed our Low Tax basket by 910 bp (16.5% vs. 7.4%) and the S&P 500 by 580 bp as those firms experienced the strongest upward EPS revisions.”

    The problem for shareholders is that if Trump loses, much if not all of this would be reversed, as Joe Biden has proposed partially reversing the 2017 TCJA. In fact, according to the Tax Foundation the former Vice President’s plan would raise the statutory federal tax rate on domestic income from 21% to 28%, reversing half of the cut from 35% to 21% instituted by the TCJA.

    In addition, the plan would double the GILTI tax rate on certain foreign income, impose a minimum tax rate of 15%, and add an additional payroll tax on high earners.

    These changes would be complemented by a variety of changes to the personal tax code, including an increase in the tax rate applied to capital gains and dividends for the highest income individuals, as well as potential changes in non-tax regulatory policy that could also affect corporate earnings and equity valuations.

    Long story short, if Biden’s tax proposals are enacted, this tax reform would reduce Goldman’s S&P 500 earnings estimate for 2021 by roughly $20 per share, from $170 to $150.

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    As Kostin explains, according to a a rule of thumb, every percentage point change in the effective corporate tax rate should change S&P 500 earnings by 1.2% or $2 per share.

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    And while the Biden plan would only reverse half of the TCJA cut to the statutory domestic tax rate, along with the other proposals Goldman estimates it would lift the S&P 500 effective tax rate to 26%. Combined with a drag on US GDP of a similar magnitude to the boost that Goldman’s economists estimate the TCJA created in 2018, this would reduce the bank’s 2021 EPS estimate by roughly 12%, although it is unclear yet if Kostin will do a bifurcated S&P price forecast as he did ahead of the midterm elections, giving one target in case Trump retains the presidency and another in case of a Democratic sweep.

    What are the implications for stocks:

    At the sector level, domestic-facing cyclicals generally experienced the largest earnings boost and strongest outperformance resulting from the passage of the TCJA. Financials, Consumer Discretionary, and Comm Services experienced the largest absolute and beta-adjusted returns in the two months around the TCJA passage as earnings expectations surged. Energy and Industrials also outperformed but fared worse on a beta-adjusted basis and benefited from a rise in crude oil prices. At the other end of the distribution, Utilities and Real Estate firms declined as investors rotated to firms with more EPS exposure to tax cuts. Info Tech, which tends to pay low tax rates, also lagged. However, the GILTI and minimum tax provisions could cause some Tech firms to lag again if the Biden plan is enacted.

    At the stock level, the firms that had the highest effective tax rates benefited  most from the TCJA, and many of these companies would be particularly vulnerable to a rate hike. The next chart highlights a list of 37 stocks that experienced large reductions in tax rates relative to sector peers and outperformed following the TCJA passage.

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    These stocks lagged in March as prediction market odds of Democratic Senate victory jumped, but they have recently outperformed despite a continued shift in prediction market-implied odds. Ultimately, the precise impact of tax reform on individual stocks will depend on the details of any legislation.

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    But before investors dump their exposure to all stocks that stand to see their tax rates jump, Kostin caveats that extreme uncertainty helps explain why the performance of tax-sensitive stocks has not fully reflected the tightening election race; and after all it’s not that first time that polls showed Trump behind his challenger only for a shock outcome to emerge. Furthermore, in late 2017, Goldman reminds us that “high tax stocks outperformed sharply only once the TCJA legislation reached its final stages of Congressional ratification, despite months of negotiation and drafting beforehand.” Fast forward to today, when Goldman’s clients and investors in general not only face  uncertainty regarding the specifics of potential tax reform, but also five more months of market volatility before the resolution of a close political race that could eliminate the likelihood of tax reform altogether.

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Jun 06

Today’s News 6th June 2020

  • A Conspiracy Theorist Confesses
    A Conspiracy Theorist Confesses

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 00:00

    Authored by Iain Davis via Off-Guardian.org,

    I am what the general population, politicians and the mainstream media (MSM) would call a conspiracy theorist. While I don’t agree with their definition of the term, there’s not much point in me denying it. It is applied to me, and millions like me, whether we like it or not.

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    For those who deem conspiracy theorists to be some sort of threat to society, we are the social and political malcontents who lack reason and hate our democratic way of life. We are trolls, bots and disinformation agents on social media, probably employed by the Russians, the Chinese or Iranians.

    We are supposedly hellbent on sewing the seeds of discontent and can be found protesting against every government policy and decision. Alternatively, we are arrogant fools, both anti-science and evidence averse, who trot out crazy theories based upon little knowledge and no evidence. Apparently this is a very dangerous thing.

    Thus we come to the glaring contradiction at the heart of the concept of the loony conspiracy theorist. Conspiracy theorists are both imbeciles, who don’t have any proof to back up anything they say, while simultaneously being dangerous subversives who threaten to destabilise democracy and foment chaos.

    Which is it? It can’t be both. Unless society is so fragile it cannot withstand the opinions of idiots.

    So where does the idea that fools present a threat to “our way of life,” come from? What is it that the conspiracy theorists say that is so dangerous? Why do their opinions seemingly need to be censored? What are governments so worried about?

    WHAT IS A CONSPIRACY THEORY?

    Some definitions are required here. From the Cambridge online English dictionary we have:

    Misinformation: [noun] wrong information, or the fact that people are misinformed.

    Disinformation: [noun] false information spread in order to deceive people.

    Fake News: [noun] false stories that appear to be news, spread on the internet or using other media, usually created to influence political views or as a joke.

    Conspiracy: [noun’] the activity of secretly planning with other people to do something bad or illegal.

    Theory: [noun] a formal statement of the rules on which a subject of study is based or of ideas that are suggested to explain a fact or event.

    Conspiracy Theory: [noun] a belief that an event or situation is the result of a secret plan made by powerful people

    It is notable that Cambridge University Press have introduced the concept of “secret” into their definition. By describing something as secret you are suggesting that it is impossible to know what it is. This added notion of secrecy is not commonly found in other dictionaries.

    Nor is it present in the legal definition of conspiracy. Blacks Law Dictionary defines conspiracy as:

    Conspiracy: In criminal law. A combination or confederacy between two or more persons formed for the purpose of committing, by their joint efforts, some unlawful or criminal act.

    Obviously conspirators would like to keep their plans hidden. But that doesn’t mean they always remain so. If all conspiracies were “secrets” nobody would ever discover any of them.

    Known conspiracies, such as Operation Gladio, Iran Contra, the Lavon Affair, the 2001 anthrax letter hoax and so on, would not have been exposed had people not highlighted the evidence which proved their existence.

    The notion of the “secret conspiracy” is not one most people called conspiracy theorists would recognise. Often the whole point of our argument is that the conspiracies can be quite plainly evidenced. Most of that evidence is in the public domain and freely available.

    More often conspiracy theorists are concerned with the denial or obfuscation of the evidence. It is not that the evidence doesn’t exist, rather that it either isn’t reported at all or is hidden by labelling those who do report it conspiracy theorists.

    We can define “conspiracy theory” simply to mean: the reporting of evidence indicating a plan between two or more people to commit an illegal or nefarious act.

    We can add that a conspiracy theory is an opinion or an argument. The merit of which is solely defined by the strength or weakness of the evidence.

    However, if you read Wikipedia a very different definition is suggested. Suddenly conspiracy theory means an attempt to ignore other more plausible explanations. It is a theory based upon prejudice or insufficient evidence, it resists falsification and suffers from circular reasoning. It has left the realms of logical deduction and become a matter of faith.

    This rationale is some distance away from the dictionary and legal definitions. It relies heavily upon opinion and is highly subjective. It is a pejorative definition which claims to be based in science, though the scientific evidence is feeble to non existent.

    This depiction of the delusional conspiracy theorist, as described by Wikipedia, is the popularly accepted meaning. Perhaps we can agree, the narrative we are given about alleged conspiracy theorists broadly runs like this:

    Conspiracy theorists forward arguments that are unfounded. These are based upon limited knowledge and lack substantiating evidence. Most conspiracy theorists are simply wrong and unwittingly spread misinformation. However, prominent conspiracy theorists spread disinformation and have used their large followings on the Internet to create a dangerous phenomenon called ‘fake news.’

    Many of those with the largest followings are agents for foreign powers. They use a global network of trolls and bots to advance their dangerous political agenda. This is designed to undermine our democratic way of life and valued political institutions. Therefore all conspiracy theory is anti-democratic and must be stopped.

    It is difficult to understand how democracies, which supposedly value freedom of thought, speech and expression, can be threatened by diversity of opinion. Yet it appears many people are willing to ignore this contradiction and support government attempts to censor information and silence the voices of those it labels conspiracy theorist. Which is genuinely anti-democratic.

    Consequently it has become relatively straightforward for politicians and the media to refute evidence and undermine arguments. As long as they can get the label of conspiracy theory or theorist to stick, most people will discount their arguments without ever looking at the evidence.

    The label of conspiracy theorist is an umbrella term for a huge array of ideas and beliefs. Some are more plausible than others. However, by calling everyone who challenges accepted norms a “conspiracy theorist” it is possible to avoid addressing the evidence some offer by exploiting guilt by association.

    For example, many people labelled as conspiracy theorists, myself included, believe even the most senior elected politicians are relatively low down the pecking order when it comes to decision making. We suggest powerful global corporations, globalist think tanks and international financial institutions often have far more control over policy development than politicians. We can cite academic research to back up this identification of “Biased Pluralism.”

    We do not believe the Earth is flat or the Queen is a lizard. However, because we believe the former, politicians, mainstream academia and the media insist that we must also believe the latter.

    Psychology is often cited as evidence to prove conspiracy theorists are deranged, or at least emotionally disturbed in some way. Having looked at some of this claimed science I found it to be rather silly and anti-scientific. But that is just my opinion.

    However, unlike many of the psychologists who earn a living by writing junk science, I do not think they should be censored nor stopped from expressing their unscientific opinions. However, governments across the world are seemingly desperate to exploit the psychologist’s ‘work’ to justify the silencing of the conspiracy theorists.

    This desire to silence people who ask the wrong questions, by labelling all as conspiracy theorists, has been a common theme from our elected political leaders during the first two decades of the 21st century. But where did this idea come from?

    THE HISTORY OF THE CONSPIRACY THEORIST LABEL

    Conspiracy theory is nothing new. Nearly every single significant world event had at least one contemporary conspiracy theory attached to it. These alternative interpretations of events, which lie outside the accepted or official narratives, are found throughout history.

    In 117 CE, the Roman Emperor Trajan died only two days after adopting his successor Hadrian. All his symptoms indicated a stroke brought on by cardio vascular disease.

    Yet by the 4th century, in the questionable historical text Historia Augusta, a number of conspiracy theories surrounding Trajan’s death had emerged. These included claims that Trajan had been poisoned by Hadrian, the praetorian prefect Attianus and Trajan’s wife, Plotina.

    While we would call this a conspiracy theory today, the term was not commonly used until the late 1960’s. The earliest written reference to something approaching the modern concept of conspiracy theory appeared in the 1870’s in the Journal of Mental Science vol 16.

    “The theory of Dr Sankey as to the manner in which these injuries to the chest occurred in asylums deserved our careful attention. It was at least more plausible that the conspiracy theory of Mr Charles Beade”

    This is the first time we see an association made between “conspiracy theory” and implausibility. Throughout most of the 19th and 20th century, if used at all, it usually denoted little more than a rationale to expose a criminal plot or malevolent act by a group.

    After the Second World War colloquial use of “conspiracy theory” was rare. However, academics were beginning to lay the foundations for the interpretation which has produced the label we are familiar with today.

    The burgeoning idea was that the large numbers of people who questioned official accounts of events, or orthodox historical interpretations, were all delusional to some degree. Questioning authority, and certainly alleging that authority was responsible for criminal acts, was deemed to be an aberration of the mind.

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    Karl Popper

    In 1945 The philosopher Karl Popper alluded to this in his political work The Open Society and Its Enemies. Popper was essentially criticising historicism. He stated that historical events were vulnerable to misinterpretation by those who were predisposed to see a conspiracy behind them.

    He argued this was because historians suffered from cognitive dissonance (the uncomfortable psychological sensation of holding two opposing views simultaneously.) They could not accept that tumultuous events could just happen through the combination of error and unrelated circumstances.

    In Popper’s view, these historians were too quick to reject the possibility of random, chaotic events influencing history, preferring unsubstantiated conspiratorial explanations. Usually because they made better stories, thereby garnering more attention for their work.

    Popper identified what he called the conspiracy theory of society. This reflected Popper’s belief that social sciences should concern themselves with the study of the unintended consequences of intentional human behaviour. Speaking of the conspiracy theory perspective, he wrote:

    It is the view that an explanation of a social phenomenon consists in the discovery of the men or groups who are interested in the occurrence of this phenomenon (sometimes it is a hidden interest which has first to be revealed), and who have planned and conspired to bring it about.”

    Popper also believed that increasing secularism had led people to ascribe power to secretive groups rather than the gods:

    The gods are abandoned. But their place is filled by powerful men or groups – sinister pressure groups whose wickedness is responsible for all the evils we suffer from – such as the Learned Elders of Zion, or the monopolists, or the capitalists, or the imperialists.”

    Popper’s theory illustrates the fundamental difference between those labelled conspiracy theorists and those who, on the whole, defend the official narrative and the establishment. For conspiracy theorists the evidence shows that powerful forces have frequently conspired to shape events, control the flow of information and manipulate society. The deliberate engineering of society, suggested by the conspiracy theorists, is rejected by their opponents and critics.

    For them the conspiratorial view has some minor, limited merit, but the suggested scale and prevalence of these plots is grossly exaggerated. They see nearly all world events as the result of the unintentional collision between disparate forces and the random influence of fate.

    In general, they consider the powerful incapable of malice. Where disastrous national and global events have clearly been caused by the decisions of governments, influential groups and immensely wealthy individuals, these are invariably seen as mistakes.

    Any suggestion that the power hierarchy’s destructive decisions may have achieved their intended objectives receives blanket rejection. Even asking the question is considered “unthinkable.”

    For many people called conspiracy theorists this is a hopelessly naive world view. History is full of examples of the powerful using their influence to further their own interests at others expense. Often costing people their lives.

    For their opponents, like Popper, to reject this possibility outright, demonstrates their cognitive dissonance. They seem unable even to contemplate the possibility that the political and economic power structures they believe in could ever deliberately harm anyone. They have faith in authority and it is not shared by people they label conspiracy theorists.

    Following the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 alternative explanations proliferated, not least of all due to the apparent implausibility of the official account. Many U.S. citizens were concerned that elements within their own government had effectively staged a coup. Others, such as the prominent American historian Richard Hoftsadter, were more concerned that people doubted their government.

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    Richard Hofstadter

    Building on the work of Popper, partly as a critique of McCarthyism but also in response to the Republican nomination loss of Nelson A. Rockefeller, American historian Richard Hofstadter suggested that people’s inability to believe what they are told by government was not based upon their grasp of the evidence. Rather it was rooted in psychological need.

    He claimed much of this stemmed from their lack of education (knowledge), political disenfranchisement and an unjustified sense of self importance. He also suggested these dangerous opinions threatened to pollute the body politic.

    Like Popper, Hofstadter did not identify conspiracy theorists directly. But he did formulate the narrative underpinning the modern, widely accepted, definition. He wrote:

    I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind…It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant

    […]

    Of course, there are highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow paranoids, as there are likely to be in any political tendency. But respectable paranoid literature not only starts from certain moral commitments that can indeed be justified but also carefully and all but obsessively accumulates “evidence.”….he can accumulate evidence in order to protect his cherished convictions.

    Going to great lengths to focus on the “paranoid’s” tendency to highlight the evidence, as if that were a failing, like most critics of so-called conspiracy theorists, Hofstadter chose neither to address nor even mention what that evidence was. He merely asserted that it was unbelievable. The reader just had to take his word for it.

    The Warren Commission Report into the JFK assassination drew considerable criticism. The finding that Oswald acted alone contradicted numerous eye witness accounts, film, autopsy and ballistic evidence.

    Four of the seven commissioners harshly criticised the report issued in their name. Widely seen as quite ridiculous, in the absence of any sensible official account of the assassination, numerous explanatory theories inevitably sprang up.

    In response to the mounting criticism, in 1967 the CIA sent an internal dispatch to all field offices called Document 1035-960: Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report.

    Revealed by a New York Times Freedom of Information Request in 1976, the dispatch is the first written record we have of the combination of Popper’s “conspiracy theory of society” with Hofstadter’s “paranoid style” militant. It defined the modern concept of the conspiracy theorist.

    The document states:

    Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. The aim of this dispatch is to provide material countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists.”

    It can be considered as the origin of the weaponised term “conspiracy theory.” It recommends a set of techniques to be used to discredit all critics of the Warren Commission Report. Once you are familiar with them, it is obvious that these strategies are commonly deployed today to dismiss all who question official statements as “conspiracy theorists.” We can paraphrase these as follows:

    1. Deny any new evidence offered and cite only official reports stating ‘no new evidence has emerged.’

    2. Dismiss contradictory eyewitness statements and focus upon the existing, primary, official evidence such as ballistics, autopsy, and photographic evidence.

    3. Do not initiate any discussion of the evidence and suggest that large scale conspiracies are impossible to cover up in an open and free democracy.

    4. Accuse the conspiracy theorists of having an intellectual superiority complex.

    5. Suggest that theorists refuse to acknowledge their own errors.

    6. Refute any suggestion of witness assassinations by pointing out they were all deaths by natural causes.

    7. Question the quality of conspiracy research and point out that official sources are better.

    The report recommended making good use of “friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors)” and to “employ propaganda assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of the critics.”

    The CIA advocated using mainstream media feature articles to discredit people labelled conspiracy theorists.

    While the use of these methods has been refined over the years, the essential process of labelling someone a conspiracy theorist, while studiously avoiding any discussion of the evidence they highlight, is extremely common in the mainstream media today. We only need look at the reports about academics who questioned the government’s narrative about COVID19 to see the techniques in operation.

    The drive to convince the public to use only “official sources” for information has seen the rise of the fact checker.

    These organisations, invariably with the support of government and corporate funding, are offered as the reliable sources which provide real facts. The facts they provide are frequently wrong and the fact checking industry has settled legal claims from those who challenged their disinformation.

    People have been directed by the mainstream media to abandon all critical thinking. They just need to go to their government-approved fact-checker in order be told the truth.

    Providing the public believe the people labelled conspiracy theorists are crazy, ill informed or agents for a foreign powers, the mainstream media, politicians and other commentators can undermine any and all evidence they present. In keeping with the CIA’s initial recommendations, it is extremely unlikely that the evidence will ever be openly discussed but, if it is, it can be written off as “conspiracy theory.”

    However, it isn’t just the mainstream media who use the conspiracy theorist label to avoid discussing evidence. Politicians, speaking on the worlds biggest political stage, have seized the opportunity to deploy the CIA’s strategy.

    THREE SPEECHES ONE AGENDA

    Even for Prime Ministers and Presidents, addressing the General Assembly of the United Nations is a big deal. These tend to be big thematic speeches as the leader impresses their vision upon the gathered dignitaries and global media.

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    Yet, despite the fact that conspiracy theorists are supposed to be idiots who don’t know the time of day, global “leaders” have repeatedly used this auspicious occasion to single them out as one of the greatest threats to global security.

    In November 2001 George W. Bush addressed the United Nations General Assembly with the following words:

    We must speak the truth about terror. Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th; malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists, themselves, away from the guilty. To inflame ethnic hatred is to advance the cause of terror.”

    Even if you accept the official account of 9/11, and there are numerous reasons why you wouldn’t, how does questioning it suggest that you support terrorism or mark you out as a racist?

    The suggestion appears absurd but it does illustrate that the U.S. president wanted both to silence all criticism of the government account and link those questioning it to extremism and even terrorism.

    This theme was reiterated by the UK Prime Minister David Cameron in his 2014 address. He said:

    To defeat ISIL – and organisations like it we must defeat this ideology in all its forms…..it is clear that many of them were initially influenced by preachers who claim not to encourage violence, but whose world view can be used as a justification for it. We know this world view. The peddling of lies: that 9/11 was a Jewish plot or that the 7/7 London attacks were staged […] We must be clear: to defeat the ideology of extremism we need to deal with all forms of extremism – not just violent extremism. We must work together to take down illegal online material […] we must stop the so called non-violent extremists from inciting hatred and intolerance.

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    This season we will mostly be wearing anti-fear glasses

    Like Bush before him, Cameron was at pains to identify what he called non violent extremists (commonly called conspiracy theorists). According to him, all who question government accounts of major geopolitical events are, once again, tantamount to terrorists.

    Calling for online censorship to stop any questions ever being asked, it is this authoritarian need to avoid addressing evidence that led his successor, Prime Minister Theresa May, to propose wide-sweeping censorship of the Internet.

    At the time of writing, the UK is among the many nations still in so called “lockdown” following the outbreak of COVID19. When UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson addressed the U.N General Assembly in September 2019 he delivered a speech which seemed weirdly out of context. With Brexit and possible conflict with Iran high on the agenda his address, which barely touched on those issues, was received with considerable bewilderment.

    Six months later his predictive powers appear to be remarkable. It transpires that Johnson’s comments were extremely relevant. Just six months too early.

    There are today people today who are actually still anti-science […] A whole movement called the anti-Vaxxers, who refuse to acknowledge the evidence that vaccinations have eradicated smallpox […] And who by their prejudices are actually endangering the very children they want to protect […] I am profoundly optimistic about the ability of new technology to serve as a liberator and remake the world wondrously and benignly […] Together, we can vanquish killer diseases.”

    Despite the wealth of scientific evidence which justifies scepticism about some vaccines, anti-vaxxer (a variant of conspiracy theorist), is another label used to convince people not to consider evidence. The assertion is that those who question vaccines all fundamentally reject the concept of artificially inducing an immune response against a disease.

    This isn’t true but how would you know? The anti-vaxxer label alone is sufficient to convince most to turn away.

    Johnson’s speech rambled across so many seemingly irrelevant subjects there is little reason to suspect any COVID 19 foreknowledge. But given the global pandemic that would occur just a few months later, it was certainly prescient. Johnson was sufficiently concerned about the supposedly baseless questions of so called conspiracy theorists (or anti-vaxxers) to allege they killed children. A ludicrous suggestion the mainstream media strongly promoted.

    It doesn’t matter that academic research has proven that the official account of 9/11 cannot possibly be true; it makes no difference that Mossad agents admitted that they had gone to New York on the morning of 9/11 to “document the event;” studies showing that approximately 90% of the total 20th Century disease reduction in the U.S. occurred prior to the widespread use of vaccines are irrelevant.

    None of these facts need to be known by anyone and governments are going to censor all who try to tell others about them. All questions that reference them are crazy conspiracy theories. They are both stupid questions and a huge threat to both national security and the safety of the little children.

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    One of the recurring themes the people labelled conspiracy theorists discuss is that policy is made behind the closed doors of corporate boardrooms and policy think tanks. It doesn’t matter who you elect or what party you choose to rule over you, they are only capable of tinkering at the edges of the policy platform.

    The policy agenda is set at a globalist level. So the fact that, over two decades, one U.S president and two British Prime Minsters were delivering essentially the same message doesn’t surprise the conspiracy theorists.

    As we move toward a world where certain ideas are forbidden and only officially approved questions can be asked, where governments and corporations have a monopoly on the truth and everything else is a conspiracy theory, only one thing really matters. The evidence.

    Hofstadter’s believed that his paranoid style militants constant citation of evidence was merely an attempt to “protect his cherished convictions.” This could be true, but the only way to find out is to look at that evidence. The label of the conspiracy theorist has been deliberately created in order to convince you not to look at it.

    Regardless of whether or not you think someone’s opinion is a conspiracy theory, you owe it to yourself and your children to consider the evidence they cite. Perhaps you will reject it. There’s nothing wrong with that.

    But to reject it, without knowing what it is, really is crazy. Your only other option is to unquestioningly accept whatever you are told by the government, globalist think tanks, multinational corporations and their mainstream media partners.

    If you choose to believe that everyone who claims to have identified the malfeasance of officials, the crimes of government or the corruption of powerful global institutions, are all conspiracy theorists, then you have accepted that the establishment is beyond reproach.

    If you also agree the same established hierarchy can not only determine what you can or cannot know, but can also set all the policies and legislation which dictates your behaviour and defines the limits of your freedom, you have elected to be a slave and don’t value democracy in the slightest.

  • Engineering The Perfect Human? Biotech Examines Rare DNA In Himalayan People
    Engineering The Perfect Human? Biotech Examines Rare DNA In Himalayan People

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 06/05/2020 – 23:40

    Variant Bio has spent the last several years scouring the world for genetic outliers in human beings. It found a small group of “outlier humans” with special variations in their DNA that could affect disease risk and eventually be used to develop medicines to improve human life. 

    Founded in New York, the 10-person startup’s lead geneticist Stephane Castel is focusing on the DNA of Sherpa people living at high altitudes in Nepal and Himalayas. Their unique genetic characteristics allow them to live healthy lives with blood oxygen levels far below what most humans need. Most people in high altitudes suffer from hypoxia, which is the absence of enough oxygen in the tissues to sustain bodily functions. 

    “They [Sherpa people] don’t suffer any ill health effects,” Castel told Bloomberg. “It’s incredible.” 

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    Sherpa village 

    Castel’s team is betting on the sequencing of Sherpa DNA, which could lead to discoveries of new superior traits that would aid in the development of novel medicines and therapies to improve metabolism, eyesight, and immune response.

    It’s up to Variant’s software and scientific analysis to find breakthrough genetic coding in Sherpa DNA, Castel said it could take several years to develop drugs and therapies based on the results. 

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    Sherpa man

    Variant Bio recently received a capital infusion from venture firm Lux Capital for $16 million to pursue the research. 

    Josh Wolfe, the co-founder of Lux Capital, said:

     “Wouldn’t it be amazing if some secrets of human health were possessed by these small groups of people [Sherpa people], and they could ultimately benefit the rest of the world?,” Wolfe said. 

    Variant’s new CEO, Andrew Farnum, previously managed the $2 billion investment arm of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that concentrated on  global health and infectious diseases. 

    “There are huge advantages here for drug discovery,” Farnum said while referring to Variant’s research. 

     “People will see how seriously we take this and how we conduct our projects, and other populations will want to work with us,” he said. 

    Variant has held talks with Sherpa village leaders and Nepal’s research council to negotiate deals for DNA extraction with locals. 

    Keolu Fox, a genome scientist and an assistant professor at the University of California at San Diego, said Variant must compensate Sherpa people for their DNA:

    “If the people don’t get a cut, this is colonial,” Fox said. “It’s extractive capitalism.” 

    Variant has taken the approach that human genetics has the power to transform drug development. Perhaps, the startup is on to something by examining superior genes possed by Sherpa people. 

    Could this company be in the early innings of engineering perfect humans? 

  • "Unreported Truths" – This Is The COVID-19 Book That Amazon 'Quarantined'
    "Unreported Truths" – This Is The COVID-19 Book That Amazon 'Quarantined'

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 06/05/2020 – 23:20

    Via RealClearInvestigations.com,

    Former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson has developed a wide following on Twitter for detailed posts that challenge some mainstream reporting and government declarations about COVID-19. 

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    Read the full thread here.

    Thursday morning he tweeted that Amazon had refused to offer for sale his self-published book, “Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns Part 1: Introduction and Death Counts and Estimates.”

    Among those responding in outrage over what they called blatant censorship were SpaceX CEO Elon Musk (“This is insane @JeffBezos”) and journalist Glenn Greenwald. And late Thursday Berenson reported that Amazon had backed off and is now offering the book for sale on Kindle.

    Before Amazon reversed itself (calling its earlier move an “error,” according to Fox News), RealClearInvestigations asked the award-winning novelist to elaborate on his experience. Here’s his response, followed by an excerpt from the book: 

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    By Alex Berenson
    June 4, 2020

    The booklet was the first in a series of coronavirus pamphlets I plan to put out covering various aspects of the crisis. Readers of my Twitter feed encouraged me to compile information in a more comprehensive and easier-to-read format, and when I polled people on Twitter to ask if they would be willing to pay a nominal fee for such a pamphlet, the response was strong.

    Originally I only planned to write one, but I had so much information I realized that the booklet would be an awkward length – longer than a magazine article but shorter than a book.  Also, doing so would take too long, and I wanted to put it out quickly. So I decided to split the booklet into pieces. Part 1 included an introduction and a discussion of death coding, death counts, and who is really dying from COVID, as well as a worst-case estimate of deaths with no mitigation efforts.

    It is about 6,500 words, and I planned to sell it for $2.99 as an ebook or $5.99 for a paperback. It is called “Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns: Part 1, Introduction and Death Counts and Estimates.”

    I created covers for both and uploaded the book. I had published Kindle Singles (Amazon’s curated program for short Kindle pieces, which now focuses more on fiction from established writers), so I was relatively familiar with the drill. I briefly considered censorship but assumed I wouldn’t have a problem because of my background, because anyone who reads the booklet will realize it is impeccably sourced, nary a conspiracy theory to be found, and frankly because Amazon shouldn’t be censoring anything that doesn’t explicitly help people commit criminal behavior. (Books intended to help adults groom children for sexual relationships, for example, should be off-limits – though about 10 years ago Amazon did not agree and only backed down from selling a how-to guide for pedophiles in the face of public outrage.) 

    I didn’t hear anything until this morning, when I found the note I posted to Twitter in my inbox (shown below).

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    Note that it does not offer any route to appeal. I have no idea if the decision was made by a person, an automated system, or a combination (i.e. the system flags anything with COVID-19 or coronavirus in the title and then a person decides on the content). I am considering my options, including making the booklet available on my Website and asking people to pay on an honor system, but that will not solve the problem of Amazon’s censorship. Amazon dominates both the electronic and physical book markets, and if it denies its readers a chance to see my work, I will lose the chance to reach the people who most need to learn the truth – those who don’t already know it.

    Here are the first 1,000 words of Chapter 1:

    Maybe the most important questions of all:

    How lethal is SARS-COV-2?

    Whom does it kill?

    Are the death counts accurate – and, if not, are they over- or understated?

    Estimates for the lethality of the coronavirus have varied widely since January. Early Chinese data suggested the virus might have an “infection fatality rate” as high as 1.4 – 2 percent.

    A death rate in that range could mean the coronavirus might kill more than 6 million Americans, although even under the worst-case scenarios some people would not be exposed, and others might have natural immunity that would prevent them from being infected at all.

    As we have learned more about the virus, estimates of its lethality have fallen. Calculating fatality rates is complex, because despite all of our testing for COVID, we still don’t know how many people have been infected.

    Some people who are infected may have no or mild symptoms. Even those with more severe symptoms may resist going to the hospital, then recover on their own. We have a clear view of the top of the iceberg – the serious infections that require hospitalization – but at least in the early stages of the epidemic we have to guess at the mild, hidden infections.

    But to calculate the true fatality rate, we need to know the true infection rate. If 10,000 people die out of 100,000 infections, that means the virus kills 10 percent of all the people it infects – making it very, very dangerous. But if 10,000 people die from 10 million infections, the death rate is actually 0.1 percent – similar to the flu.

    Unfortunately, figuring out the real infection rate is very difficult. Probably the best way is through antibody tests, which measure how many people have already been infected and recovered – even if they never were hospitalized or even had symptoms. Studies in which many people in a city, state, or even country are tested at random to see if they are currently infected can also help. Believe it or not, so can tests of municipal sewage. (I’ll say more about all this later, in the section on transmission rates and lockdowns.)

    For now, the crucial point is this: randomized antibody tests from all over the world have repeatedly shown many more people have been infected with coronavirus than is revealed by tests for active infection. Many people who are infected with SARS-COV-2 don’t even know it.

    So the hidden part of the iceberg is huge. And in turn, scientists have repeatedly reduced their estimates for how dangerous the coronavirus might be.

    The most important estimate came on May 20, when the Centers for Disease Control reported its best estimate was that the virus would kill 0.26 percent of people it infected, or about 1 in 400 people. (The virus would kill 0.4 percent of those who developed symptoms. But about one out of three people would have no symptoms at all, the CDC said.) (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html#box.)

    Similarly, a German study in April reported a fatality rate of 0.37 percent (https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/04/09/999015/blood-tests-show-15-of-people-are-now-immune-to-covid-19-in-one-town-in-germany/). A large study in April in Los Angeles predicted a death rate in the range of 0.15 to 0.3 percent.

    Some estimates have been even lower. Others have been somewhat higher – especially in regions that experienced periods of severe stress on their health care systems. In New York City, for example, the death rates appear somewhat higher, possibly above 0.5 percent – though New York may be an outlier, both because it has counted deaths aggressively (more on this later) and because its hospitals seem to have used ventilators particularly aggressively.

    Thus the CDC’s estimate for deaths is probably the best place to begin. Using that figure along with several other papers and studies suggests the coronavirus has an infection fatality rate in the range of 0.15 percent to 0.4 percent.

    In other words, SARS-COV-2 likely kills between 1 in 250 and 1 in 650 of the people whom it infects. Again, though, not everyone who is exposed will become infected. Some people do not contract the virus, perhaps because their T-cells – which help the immune system destroy invading viruses and bacteria – have already been primed by exposure to other coronaviruses. [Several other coronaviruses exist; the most common versions usually cause minor colds in the people they infect.] An early May paper in the journal Cell suggests that as many as 60 percent of people may have some preexisting immune response, though not all will necessarily be immune. (https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(20)30610-3.pdf).

    The experience of outbreaks on large ships such as aircraft carriers and cruise liners also show that some people do not become infected. The best estimates are that the virus probably can infect somewhere between 50 to 70 percent of people. For example, on one French aircraft carrier, 60 percent of sailors were infected (none died and only two out of 1,074 infected sailors required intensive care). https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2020/05/covid-19-aboard-french-aircraft-carrier-98-of-the-crew-now-cured/

    Thus – in a worst-case scenario – if we took no steps to mitigate its spread or protect vulnerable people, a completely unchecked coronavirus might kill between 0.075 and 0.28 percent of the United States population – between 1 in 360 and 1 in 1,300 Americans.

    This is higher than the seasonal flu in most years. Influenza is usually said to have a fatality rate among symptomatic cases of 1 in 1,000 and an overall fatality rate of around 1 in 2,000. However, influenza mutates rapidly, and its dangerousness varies year by year. The coronavirus appears far less dangerous than the Spanish flu a century ago, which was commonly said to kill 1 in 50 of the people it infected.

    It appears more comparable in terms of overall mortality to the influenza epidemics of 1957 and 1968, or the British flu epidemics of the late 1990s. (Of course, the United States and United Kingdom did not only not shut down for any of those epidemics, they received little attention outside the health-care system.)

  • Iran's Nuclear Stockpile Rose By Over 50% During Three Months Of COVID Lockdown: IAEA
    Iran's Nuclear Stockpile Rose By Over 50% During Three Months Of COVID Lockdown: IAEA

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 06/05/2020 – 23:00

    Over the past three months of global lockdowns due to the coronavirus, Iran’s nuclear development has been busy, apparently. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Friday circulated a confidential report seen by Associated Press which details the Islamic Republic’s nuclear stockpile rose by a whopping over 50% in the three months prior to May 20.

    “The agency said that as of May 20, Iran’s total stockpile of low-enriched uranium amounted to 1,571.6 kilograms (1.73 tons), up from 1,020.9 kilograms (1.1 tons) on Feb. 19,” AP reports. 

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    AFP/Getty

    Tehran months ago vowed to break from its commitments under the Obama-brokered JCPOA until the biting American-led sanctions regimen is eased. Officials warned Europe that if action weren’t taken major nuclear milestones would be reached. 

    This has also included enriching uranium up to a purity of 4.5%, blowing past the 3.67% ceiling stipulated under the JCPOA. The IAEA report also noted “with serious concern that, for over four months, Iran has denied access to Agency… to two locations.”

    Recently reports suggested IAEA inspectors were being blocked in part on Iranian authorities’ concerns over the coronavirus pandemic. 

    “The [IAEA] director general calls on Iran immediately to cooperate fully with the agency, including by providing prompt access to the locations specified,” the report said, however like other warnings this is likely to fall on deaf ears, given Iran’s economy has been decimated, further at a sensitive moment a large chunk of the population and failing health system have been ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

    The report comes a mere day after President Trump suggested there could be a fresh opening with Iran to ‘negotiate a better deal’ – as he’s long sought after withdrawing from the nuclear deal in May 2018. “Thank you to Iran, it shows a deal is possible!” Trump said in a rare positive tweet regarding the Islamic Republic on the occasion of the return of Navy Veteran Michael White from an Iranian prison. 

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    But the Iranians immediately poured cold water on that prospect, given Foreign Minister Javad Zarif reminded the US president, “we had a deal when you entered office.”

    The Iranian position has been that it will never reenter negotiations until Washington removes sanctions, and returns to the 2015 deal it signed in the first place. 

  • "Somebody Cooked Up The Plot": The Hunt For The Origins Of The Russia Collusion Narrative
    "Somebody Cooked Up The Plot": The Hunt For The Origins Of The Russia Collusion Narrative

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 06/05/2020 – 22:40

    Authored by John Solomon via JustTheNews.com,

    Hollywood once gave us the Cold War thriller called “The Hunt for Red October.” And now the U.S. Senate and its Republican committee chairmen in Washington have launched a different sort of hunt made for the movies.

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    Armed with subpoenas, Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Ron Johnson, R-Wis., want to interrogate a slew of Obama-era intelligence and law enforcement officials hoping to identify who invented and sustained the bogus Russia collusion narrative that hampered Donald Trump’s early presidency.

    And while Graham and Johnson aren’t exactly Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin, they and their GOP cohorts have a theory worthy of a Tom Clancy novel-turned-movie: The Russia collusion investigation was really a plot by an outgoing administration to thwart the new president.

    “What we had was a very quiet insurrection that took place,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn, the Tennessee Republican, told Just the News on Thursday as she described the theory of Senate investigators. “And there were probably dozens of people at DOJ and FBI that knew what was going on.

    “But they hate Donald Trump so much … that they were willing to work under the cloak of law and try to use that to shield them so that they could take an action on their disgust,” she added. “They wanted to prohibit him from being president. And when he won, they wanted to render him ineffective at doing his job.”

    For much of the last two years, the exact theory that congressional Republicans held about the bungled, corrupt Russia probe — where collusion between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin was ultimately disproven and FBI misconduct was confirmed — was always evolving.

    But after explosive testimony this week from former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who openly accused the FBI of keeping him in the dark about flaws, failures and exculpatory evidence in the case, the GOP believes it may prove the Russia case was a conspiracy to use the most powerful law enforcement and intelligence tools in America to harm Trump.

    Two years of declassified memos are now in evidence that show:

    • The FBI was warned before it used Christopher Steele’s dossier as evidence to target the Trump campaign with a FISA warrant that the former British spy might be the target of Russian disinformation, that he despised Trump and that he was being paid to help Hillary Clinton’s campaign. But agents proceeded anyway.

    • The bureau was told by the CIA that its primary target, Trump adviser Carter Page, wasn’t a Russian spy but rather a CIA asset. But it hid that evidence from the DOJ and courts, even falsifying a document to keep the secret.

    • The FBI opened a case on Trump adviser George Papadopoulos on the suspicion he might arrange Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton but quickly determined he didn’t have the Russian contacts to pull it off. But the case kept going.

    • The FBI intercepted conversations between its informants and Papadopoulos and Page showing the two men made numerous statements of innocence, and kept that evidence from the DOJ and the courts.

    • The FBI investigated Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn for five months and concluded there was no derogatory evidence he committed a crime or posed an intelligence threat and recommended closing the case. But higher-ups overruled the decision and proceeded to interview Flynn.

    • The FBI and DOJ both knew by August 2017 there was no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion but allowed another 18 months of investigation to persist without announcing the president was innocent.

    That is just a handful of the key evidentiary anchors of the storyline Republicans have developed. Now they want to know who helped carry out each of these acts.

    “There are millions of Americans pretty upset about this,” Graham said this week. “There are people on our side of the aisle who believe this investigation, Crossfire Hurricane, was one of the most corrupt, biased criminal investigations in the history of the FBI. And we’d like to see something done about it.”

    Graham tried to take action to approve 50-plus subpoenas from the Senate Judiciary Committee to witnesses on Thursday but was forced to delay a week.

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    Johnson, meanwhile, successfully secured about three dozen subpoenas to get documents and interviews with key witnesses from his Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

    Evidence is growing, Johnson said, that there was not a “peaceful and cooperative” transition between the Obama and Trump administrations in 2017.

    “The conduct we know that occurred during the transition should concern everyone and absolutely warrants further investigation,” he said.

    With Rosenstein’s testimony now behind them, the senators have some lofty targets for interviews or testimony going forward, including fired FBI Director James Comey, his deputy Andrew McCabe, ex-CIA Director John Brennan, and the former chiefs of staff for President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.

    Blackburn said during an interview with the John Solomon Reports podcast that the goal of the subpoenas and witnesses was simple: to identify and punish the cast of characters who sustained a Russia collusion narrative that was never supported by the evidence.

    “Somebody cooked up the plot,” she explained.

    “Somebody gave the go-ahead to order, to implement it. Somebody did the dirty work and carried it out — and probably a lot of somebodies. And what frustrates the American people is that nobody has been held accountable.

    “Nobody has been indicted. Nobody has been charged, and they’re all getting major book deals and are profiting by what is criminal activity, if you look at the statutes that are on the book, and if you say we’re going to abide by the rule of law and be a nation of laws.”

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    For Blackburn, identifying and punishing those responsible is essential for two goals: to deter anyone in the future from abusing the FBI and FISA process again and to ensure Americans there isn’t a two-tiered system of justice in America.

    “I think when you Google [Russia collusion] in future years, you’re going to see a screenshot of this cast of characters that cooked this up, because it is the ultimate plot,” Blackburn said.

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  • The Fed Just Unleashed A Trillion In New Debt: Companies Took The Money And Spent It On Dividends While Firing Millions
    The Fed Just Unleashed A Trillion In New Debt: Companies Took The Money And Spent It On Dividends While Firing Millions

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 06/05/2020 – 22:23

    It was all the way back in 2012 when we first described in “How The Fed’s Visible Hand Is Forcing Corporate Cash Mismanagement” that the era of ultra cheap money unleashed by the Fed is encouraging corporations not to invest in capex or growth or investing in a satisfied employee base, but to rush and spend it on cheap, short-term gimmicks such as buybacks and dividends which benefit the company’s shareholders in the short term while rewarding management with by bonuses for reaching stock price milestones, vesting incentive compensation.

    We concluded by saying that this was “the most insidious way in which the Fed’s ZIRP policy is now bleeding not only the middle class dry, but is forcing companies to reallocate cash in ways that benefit corporate shareholders at the present, at the expense of investing prudently for growth 2 or 3 years down the road.”

    For years, nobody cared about what ended up being one of the most controversial aspects of capital mismanagement in a time of ZIRP/NIRP/QE, then suddenly everyone cared after the coronavirus crisis, when it emerged that instead of prudently deploying capital into rainy day funds, companies were systematically syphoning cash out (usually by selling debt) to rewards shareholders and management, confident that if a crisis struck the Fed would bail them out: after all the Fed bailed out the banks in 2008, and by 2020 US corporate debt had reached $16 trillion, or over 75% of US GDP, making it a systematic risk and virtually assuring that expectations for a Fed bailout would be validated.

    Sure enough, that’s precisely what happened.

    But while none of this should come as a surprise to anyone following events over the past decade, what came next may be a shock, because in response to creating a massive debt bubble whose proceeds were used to make shareholders extremely rich at the expense of a miserable employee base and declining corporate viability, the Fed… doubled down and virtually overnight gave companies a green light to do everything they did leading to the current disaster.

    In a Bloomberg expose written by Bob Ivry, Lisa Lee and Craig Torres, the trio of reporters show how, 12 years after we first laid out the “New Normal” capital misallocation paradigm, we are again back to square one as the Fed actions – which as even former NY Fed president Bill Dudley admits are brazen moral-hazard – have prompted a record debt binge even as corporate borrowers are firing millions of workers while using the debt to – drumroll – make shareholders richer.

    Take food-service giant Sysco, which just days after the Federal Reserve crossed the final line into centrally-planned markets on March 23 when it assured that it would make openly purchase corporate debt, Sysco sold $4 billion of debt. Then, just a few days after that, the company announced plans to cut one-third of its workforce, more than 20,000 employees, even as dividends to shareholders would continue.

    That process repeated itself in April and May as the coronavirus spread. The Fed’s promise juiced the corporate-bond market. Borrowing by top-rated companies shot to a record $1.1 trillion for the year, nearly twice the pace of 2019.

    What happened then was a case study of why Fed-endorsed moral hazard is always a catastrophic policy… for the poor, while making the rich richer:

    Companies as diverse as Sysco, Toyota Motor Corp., international marketing firm Omnicom Group Inc. and movie-theater chain Cinemark Holdings Inc. borrowed billions of dollars — and then fired workers.

    Just two weeks ago, Fed chair Powell testified before Congress, and when asked why the Fed is buying investment grade and junk bond debt, Powell responded “to preserve jobs.” That was a blatant lie, because as Bloomberg notes, the actions of the companies that benefited from the Fed’s biggest ever handout called into question the degree to which the U.S. central bank’s promise to purchase corporate debt will help preserve American jobs.

    Unlike the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program, which has incentives for employers to keep workers on the job and is only a grant if the bulk of the proceeds are used to retain workers, the taxpayer-backed facilities that the Fed and Treasury Department created for bigger companies have no such requirements. In fact, to make sure the emergency programs help fulfill one of the Fed’s mandates – maximum employment – the central bank is simply crossing its fingers that restoring order to markets will translate to saving jobs.

    Instead, what the Fed’s actions have unleashed so far is a new record debt bubble, with more than $1.1 trillion in new debt issuance in just the first five months of the year, even as companies issuing debt are quick to lay off millions!

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    “They could set conditions, say to companies, hire back your workers, maintain your payroll to at least a certain percentage of prior payroll, and we will help,” said Robert Reich, the former Secretary of Labor for President Bill Clinton who now teaches economics at the University of California, Berkeley. “It’s hardly clear that if you keep companies afloat they’ll hire employees.”

    Just don’t tell the Fed Chair: in a May 29 webinar, Jerome Powell said that it’s “really it’s all about creating a context, a climate, in which employees will have the best chance to either keep their job, or go back to their old job, or ultimately find a new job. That’s the point of this exercise.”

    The exercise has failed, because just as soon as the bailout funds expire, America will see a second wave of epic layoffs: the extra $600 a week in unemployment benefits that Congress approved in March stops on July 31, while the prohibition against firing workers in the $25 billion government rescue of U.S. airlines expires Sept. 30, and the biggest recipients have said they intend to shed employees after that date.

    But where did all the hundreds of billions in newly issued debt go? Well, dividends for one. Without provisions for employees, “the credit assistance will tend to boost financial markets, but not the broad economic well-being of the great majority of the population,” Marcus Stanley, Americans for Financial Reform’s policy director, told Bloomberg.

    Of course, when confronted with this reality, the Treasury Secretary did what he normally does: he lied.

    “Our No. 1 objective is keeping people employed,” Mnuchin said during a May 19 Senate Banking Committee hearing after Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, accused him of “boosting your Wall Street buddies” at the expense of ordinary Americans. “What we put in the Main Street facility is that we expect people to use their best efforts to support jobs,” Mnuchin said.

    The phrase “best efforts” echoes the original terms for the Main Street program, which required companies to attest they’ll make “reasonable efforts” to keep employees. The wording was subsequently changed to “commercially reasonable efforts,” which Jeremy C. Stein, chairman of the Harvard University economics department and a former Fed governor, called a welcome watering-down of expectations that the central bank would dictate employment policies to borrowers.

    And while Stein said that it was “smart of them to weaken that”, what ended up happening is that companies entirely sidestepped preserving employees and rushed to cash out – guess who – shareholders once again.

    But in keeping with the Fed’s overarching directive – that its programs are about lending, not spending in the words of Powell – once the Fed has triggered a new debt bubble with its explicit interventions in the secondary market, the Fed has no control over what companies do with the source of the virtually free funds:

    “For the Fed to second-guess a corporate survival strategy would be a step too far for them,” said Adam Tooze, a Columbia University history professor. Putting explicit conditions on program beneficiaries would make the central bank “a weird hybrid of the Federal Reserve, Treasury, BlackRock and an activist stockholder,” he added, clearly unaware that we now live in a world in which this “new normal” Frankenstein monster is precisely who is in charge of capital markets, as the helicopter money resulting from the unholy merger of the Fed and Treasury is precisely what BlackRock is frontrunning, in its own words. But heaven forbid some of the trillions in new debt are used for emplyees…

    And while tens of millions of jobs have been lost since March – today’s laughable and fabricated jobs report, in the BLS’ own admission – notwithstanding, there has been one clear beneficiary: the S&P 500 has jumped 38% since March 23, the day the Fed intervened; on Friday, the Nasdaq just hit an all time high. Observers of the stock market wonder how it could be so bullish at the same time as the country faces an avalanche of joblessness unsurpassed in its history.

    The choices companies are making – choices which we correctly predicted back in 2012 – provide an answer.

    Since selling $4 billion in debt on March 30, Sysco has amassed $6 billion of cash and available liquidity, enabling it to gobble up market share, while cutting $500 million of expenses, according to Chief Executive Officer Kevin Hourican. Sysco, which is based in Houston, will continue to pay dividends to shareholders, Chief Financial Officer Joel Grade said on a May 5 earnings call.

    Countless other companies are also splurging on debt-funded dividends, while some – such as Apple and Amazon – are now issuing debt to fund their next multi-billion buyback program.

    Of course, it’s not just investment grade debt: the Fed notoriously is also active in the junk bond space, buying billions in high yield ETFs (that now hold bonds of bankrupt Hertz).

    Movie theaters were one of the first businesses to close during the pandemic. Cinemark, which owns 554 of them, shut its U.S. locations on March 17. Three days later, the company paid a previously announced dividend. It has since said it will discontinue such distributions. Cinemark borrowed $250 million from the junk-bond market on April 13, the same day it announced the firing of 17,500 hourly workers. Managerial staff were kept on at reduced pay, according to company filings. Cinemark, which is based in Plano, Texas, said it plans to open its theaters in phases starting June 19.

    The theater chain opted to go to the bond market over seeking funding from the government because “it didn’t come with any of the strings attached that government-backed facilities can include,” CEO Mark Zoradi said on the April 15 earnings call. It “was really no more complicated than that.” And why did Cinemark find no trouble in accessing the bond market? Because with the Fed now buying both IG and HY bonds, there is no longer any credit risk, which is why spreads have collapsed back to all time lows; in effect the Fed is forcing investors to buy Cinemark’s bonds, which then uses the proceeds to pay shareholders either a dividend or to buyback stock. As for the company’s employees? Why they are expendable, and in a few month there will be millions of unemployed workers begging for work at or below minimum wage.

    Win win… for Cinemark’s management and shareholders. Lose for everyone else.

    Actually, win win for all corporations: like Cinemark, Omnicom issued $600 million in bonds in late March. In an April 28 conference call to discuss quarterly earnings, CEO John Wren said the company was letting employees go but didn’t say how many. He said the company was extending medical benefits to July 31 for employees furloughed or fired.

    Wren added: “Our liquidity, balance sheet and credit ratings remain very strong and we have no plans to change our dividend policy.”

    And once again, Dividends 1 – Employees 0, because everything will be done to prevent shareholders from dumping the stock.

    Toyota borrowed $4 billion from investors on March 27. Three days later, the Japan-based car company said it would continue paying dividends to shareholders. Eight days after that it said it would drop roughly 5,000 contract workers who helped staff its plants in North America.

    And so on, and so on, as companies issue hundreds of billions in debt without a glitch – now that the Fed has taken over the bond market – and use the proceeds to fund dividends, while laying off millions.

    In a March 24 letter, 200 academics, led by Stanford University Graduate School of Business Professor Jonathan Berk, called lending programs aimed at corporations “a huge mistake.” Better to focus help directly on people living paycheck to paycheck who lost their jobs, it said.

    “Bailing out investors who chose to take high-risk investments because they wanted the high returns undermines capitalism and makes it an unfair game,” Berk said in an interview. “If you don’t have a level playing field in capitalism, it doesn’t work.”

    Why dear, misguided Jonathan: whoever told you the US still has “capitalism”?

  • Why Does The New York Times Brazenly Deny The Obvious?
    Why Does The New York Times Brazenly Deny The Obvious?

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 06/05/2020 – 22:00

    Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The American Institute for Economic research,

    Don’t laugh derisively, as people do these days, but I’ve always admired the New York Times. First draft of history. Talent everywhere. Best production values. Even with its ideological spin, it can be scrupulous about facts. You can usually extract the truth with a decoder ring. Its outsized influence over the rest of the press makes it essential. I’ve relied on it for years. Even given everything, and I mean everything. 

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    Until now. It’s just too much. Too much unreality, manipulation, propaganda, and flat out untruths that are immediately recognizable to anyone. I can’t believe they think they can get away with this with credibility intact. I’m not speaking of the many great reporters, technicians, editors, production specialists, and the tens of thousands who make it all possible. I’m speaking of a very small coterie of people who stand guard over the paper’s editorial mission of the moment and enforce it on the whole company, with no dissent allowed. 

    Let’s get right to the offending passage. It’s not from the news or opinion section but the official editorial section and hence the official voice of the paper. The paragraph from June 2, 2020, reads as follows. 

    Healing the wounds ripped open in recent days and months will not be easy. The pandemic has made Americans fearful of their neighbors, cut them off from their communities of faith, shut their outlets for exercise and recreation and culture and learning. Worst of all, it has separated Americans from their own livelihoods.

    Can you imagine? The pandemic is the cause! 

    I would otherwise feel silly to have to point this out but for the utter absurdity of the claim. The pandemic didn’t do this. It caused a temporary and mostly media-fueled panic that distracted officials from doing what they should have done, which is protect the vulnerable and otherwise let society function and medical workers deal with disease. 

    Instead, the CDC and governors around the country, at the urging of bad computer-science models uninformed by any experience in viruses, shut down schools, churches, events, restaurants, gyms, theaters, sports, and further instructed people to stay in their homes, enforced sometimes even by SWAT teams. Jewish funerals were broken up by the police. 

    It was brutal and egregious and it threw 40 million people out of work and bankrupted countless businesses. Nothing this terrible was attempted even during the Black Death. Maximum economic damage; minimum health advantages. It’s not even possible to find evidence that the lockdowns saved lives at all. 

    But to hear the New York Times tell the story, it was not the lockdown but the pandemic that did this. That’s a level of ideological subterfuge that is almost impossible for a sane person to conjure up, simply because it is so obviously unbelievable. 

    It’s lockdown denialism. 

    Why? From February 2020 and following, the New York Times had a story and they are continuing to stick to it. The story is that we are all going to die from this pandemic unless government shuts down society. It was a drum this paper beat every day. 

    Consider what the top virus reporter Donald J. McNeil (B.A. Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley) wrote on February 28, 2020, weeks before there was any talk of shutdowns in the U.S.: 

    There are two ways to fight epidemics: the medieval and the modern.

    The modern way is to surrender to the power of the pathogens: Acknowledge that they are unstoppable and to try to soften the blow with 20th-century inventions, including new vaccines, antibiotics, hospital ventilators and thermal cameras searching for people with fevers.

    The medieval way, inherited from the era of the Black Death, is brutal: Close the borders, quarantine the ships, pen terrified citizens up inside their poisoned cities.

    For the first time in more than a century, the world has chosen to confront a new and terrifying virus with the iron fist instead of the latex glove.

    And yes, he recommends the medieval way. The article continues on to praise China’s response and Cuba’s to AIDS and says that this approach is natural to Trump and should be done in the United States. (AIER called him out on this alarming column on March 4, 20202.)

    McNeil then went on to greater fame with a series of shocking podcasts for the NYT that put a voice and even more panic to the failed modeling of Neil Ferguson of the Imperial College London. 

    This first appeared the day before his op-ed calling for global lockdown. The transcript includes this:

    I spend a lot of time thinking about whether I’m being too alarmist or whether I’m being not alarmist enough. And this is alarmist, but I think right now, it’s justified. This one reminds me of what I have read about the 1918 Spanish influenza. 

    Reminder: 675,000 Americans died in that pandemic. There were only 103 million people living in the U.S. at the time. 

    He continues:

    I’m trying to bring a sense that if things don’t change, a lot of us might die. If you have 300 relatively close friends and acquaintances, six of them would die in a 2.5 percent mortality situation.

    That’s an astonishing claim that seems to forecast 8.25 million Americans will die. So far as I know, that is the most extreme claim made by anyone, four times as high as the Imperial College model.

    What should we do to prevent this?

    You can’t leave. You can’t see your families. All the flights are canceled. All the trains are canceled. All the highways are closed. You’re going to stay in there. And you’re locked in with a deadly disease. We can do it.

    So because this coronavirus “reminds” him of one he read about, he can say on the air that four million people could soon die, and therefore life itself should be cancelled. Because a reporter is “reminded” of something. 

    This is the same newspaper that in 1957 urged people to stay calm during the Asian flu and trust medical providers – running all of one editorial on the topic. What a change! This was an amazing podcast — amazingly irresponsible. 

    McNeil was not finished yet. He was at it again on March 12, 2020, demanding that we not just close big events and schools but shut down everything and everyone “for months.” He went back on the podcast twice more, then started riding the media circuit, including NPR. It was also the same. China did it right. We need to lock down or people you know, if you are one of the lucky survivors, will die. 

    To say that the New York Times was invested in the scenario of “lock down or we die” is an understatement. It was as invested in this narrative as it was in the Russia-collaboration story or the Ukrainian-phone call impeachment, tales to which they dedicated hundreds of stories and many dozens of reporters. The virus was the third pitch to achieve their objective. 

    Once in, there was no turning back, even after it became obvious that for the vast numbers of people this was hardly a disease at all, and that most of the deaths came from one city and mostly from nursing homes that were forced by law to take in COVID-19 patients. 

    That the newspaper, a once venerable institution, has something to answer for is apparent. But instead of accepting moral culpability for having created a panic to fuel the overthrow of the American way of life, they turn on a dime to celebrate people who are not socially distancing in the streets to protest police brutality. 

    To me, the protests on the streets were a welcome relief from the vicious lockdowns. To the New York Times, it seems like the lockdowns never happened. Down the Orwellian memory hole. 

    In this paper’s consistent editorializing, nothing is the fault of the lockdowns.

    Everything instead is the fault of Trump, who “tends to see only political opportunity in public fear and anger, as in his customary manner of contributing heat rather than light to the confrontations between protesters and authority.” 

    True about Trump but let us remember that the McNeil’s first pro-lockdown article praised Trump as perfectly suited to bring about the lockdown, and the paper urged him to do just that, while only three months later washing their hands of the whole thing, as if had nothing to do with current sufferings much less the rage on the streets. 

    And the rapid turnaround of this paper on street protests was stunning to behold. A month ago, people protesting lockdowns were written about as vicious disease spreaders who were denying good science. In the blink of an eye, the protesters against police brutality (the same police who enforced the lockdown) were transmogrified into bold embracers of First Amendment rights who posed no threat to public health. 

    Not even the scary warnings about the coming “second wave” were enough to stop the paper from throwing out all its concern over “targeted layered containment” and “social distancing” in order to celebrate protests in the streets that they like. 

    And they ask themselves why people are incredulous toward mainstream media today. 

    The lockdowns wrecked the fundamentals of life in America. The New York Times today wants to pretend they either didn’t happen, happened only in a limited way, or were just minor public health measures that worked beautifully to mitigate disease. And instead of having an editorial meltdown over these absurdities, preposterous forecasts, and extreme panic mongering that contributed to vast carnage, we seen an internal revolt over the publishing of a Tom Cotton editorial, a dispute over politics not facts.

    The record is there: this paper went all in back in February to demand the most authoritarian possible response to a virus about which we already knew enough back then to observe that this was nothing like the Spanish flu of 1918. They pretended otherwise, probably for ideological reasons, most likely.

    It was not the pandemic that blew up our lives, commercial networks, and health systems. It was the response to the virus that did that. The Times needs to learn that it cannot construct a fake version of reality just to avoid responsibility for what they’ve done. Are we really supposed to believe what they write now and in the future? This time, I hope, people will be smart and learn to consider the source. 

  • "Worst-Case" Scenario – COVID Strikes Navy's New Submarine Program
    "Worst-Case" Scenario – COVID Strikes Navy's New Submarine Program

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 06/05/2020 – 21:40

    Without firing a shot, well maybe unleashing a virus pandemic across the world, China has severely disrupted US Naval operations, from shipbuilding to deployments. 

    Breaking Defense reports, the Navy’s USS Columbia nuclear missile submarine (SSBN 826) experienced months of construction delays thanks to virus-related issues.

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    A Navy depiction of the future USS Columbia nuclear missile submarine (SSBN 826). h/t Breaking Defense 

    During lockdowns, the main problem for the build were workers’ absences at a top supplier, which resulted in delayed work on missile tubes. At the moment, the service is struggling to make up for the lost time. 

    Navy and Pentagon officials have become alarmed that large-scale work on the first of twelve nuclear-powered Columbia-class submarines, set to officially start in 2021, with deliveries, beginning in 2030, could now be fraught with timeline delays.

    Rear Adm. Scott Pappano, executive program officer for the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine program, said “a hiccup” during coronavirus lockdowns led to a serious decline in workers at UK-based Babcock Marine, leading to major delays in the work schedule. 

    “There was an interruption in our ability to do work,” Pappano said, calling the several month delays a “worst-case” scenario if no additional measures were taken to speed up the work going forward. 

    “We’re analyzing the plan right now,” he added. “Prioritizing what tubes go where and then coming up with mid-term and long-term recovery plans to go deal with that.”

    The Navy is now “walking a tightrope on its Virginia and Columbia programs, and any slip on one program will affect the other,” Breaking Defense said.

    A major risk developing is that if any of the programs are delayed, it could give China and Russia a leg up in the global arms race. 

    While the virus has affected the Navy’s shipbuilding, there were deployment issues due to an outbreak of infections on several vessels. One ship, in particular, was the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which saw at least 1,000 soldiers contract the virus. The aircraft carrier had to divert from its mission in the Western Pacific to treat and isloate crew in Guam. 

    And just like that, the Chinese virus has weakened the US Navy — while China’s Navy conducts war drills in the South China Sea. 

  • Crime… Is Crime! The Age Of Chaos Has Arrived
    Crime… Is Crime! The Age Of Chaos Has Arrived

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 06/05/2020 – 21:20

    Authored by Robert Gore via Straight Line Logic blog,

    You can fool most of the people most of the time, but you can’t fool reality any of the time.

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    The reigning chaos reflects perfectly what passes for thought in millions of minds. Minds that have been taught that reality is whatever one believes it to be. That reason is a superstition and is inferior to random feelings and emotions. That observation, hypotheses, experimentation, discovery, and science itself are akin to voodoo rituals. That consumption precedes production and is morally superior to it. That anyone’s work, income and wealth are subject to anyone else’s proclaimed need. That actions have no consequences.

    Rioters and looters are faithfully adhering to the distilled essence of what our rulers and intellectual have been telling them for decades: If you need it, or just want it, it’s yours to have or destroy. They are simply eliminating the government middleman. The only surprise is that it didn’t happen long ago.

    The Age of Chaos has arrived. Violence is accomplishing what violence always accomplishes—destruction, ruin, and death. The only theoretical justification for government is that it employs force to protect its citizens from violence—invasion, violence against persons or property, and the indirect violence implicit in procuring and keeping value through fraud or extortion.

    Modern governments don’t protect their citizens from violence, they subject them to it and are its chief instigator. The latest outrage is coronavirus totalitarianism. It is nauseatingly hypocritical for politicians to ritually and halfheartedly denounce looting and destruction after they’ve spent the last three months destroying millions of businesses and jobs.

    There are other killers lurking out there: crime and mass unrest. The statistics for the former and the probability of the latter will only increase with the duration of lockdowns. Police are already reporting an uptick in crime. The death toll from a week of widespread urban rioting could easily surpass that of the entire coronavirus outbreak. There’s no mystery why President Trump has called up a million military reservists, and no assurance they will be able to prevent sporadic riots from deteriorating into total chaos and pandemonium. No mystery, either, why sales of firearms and ammo have jumped. By the way, rioters and looters don’t always social distance, so they may spread the coronavirus.

    SLL, “Surrendered Without A Shot,” April 6, 2020

    Let’s reach a conclusion that lockdown proponents will reflexively deny: the lockdowns have made the rioting worse. It’s not implausible to suggest that people stuck in their houses for three months might have joined in simply because they were going stir crazy…or were desperate and angry because they lost their jobs and can’t pay their bills.

    Government now does everything except the one thing it’s supposed to do—protect the citizenry from violence. Some of the government officials who tossed people into jail for letting their kids play in parks or opening a barbershop are now assuring rioters and looters they feel their pain and are doing little to stop them. It’s the perfect inversion: persecute the innocent, succor the criminals.

    Politics is an exercise in criminal demagoguery, the promise of something for nothing in exchange for votes and power. That something has to be stolen from someone by the government. Governments don’t protect against the criminal element because they are the criminal element. Theft, extortion, and fraud can’t produce wealth. They only redistribute and ultimately reduce or eliminate it by destroying the rights of those who produce it.

    Rioters have screamed, “Eat the Rich!” and have looted high end stores as an appetizer. To the extent that they’ve announced a program, this appears to be it: install a government that will eat the rich, and by implication anyone who produces wealth. Left open is the question: after they eat the rich and productive, where does their next meal come from?

    The present government is already devouring producers and its debt is extortion, theft, and fraud all rolled into one. The full faith and credit of the United States is the full faith and credit of its present and future producers, whose production is and will continue to be extorted and stolen under threats of fines and imprisonment. Creditors are holding debt the value of which the government will do everything to fraudulently undermine via debt monetization, inflation, and currency depreciation.

    You can fool most of the people most of the time, but you can’t fool reality any of the time. Reality never grants something for nothing, not even on credit. To get something out, you have to put something in.

    The utterly incompetent and incoherent response by government officials to the nationwide rioting, in both word and deed, was inevitable. They can neither speak nor act with intellectual, philosophical, or moral clarity given the dominant political creed—that reality can be subverted, something can be had for nothing, and the rights of some are justifiably destroyed for the benefit of others. That creed obliterates the concept of individual rights and the principles that logically flow from that concept. Yet, only the intellectual vantage point afforded by that concept and its concomitant principles offers clarity.

    A policeman in Minneapolis knelt on an already-subdued and handcuffed suspect’s neck for approximately eight minutes and the suspect died shortly thereafter. Three other police did nothing to either stop the policeman or aid the suspect. Based on the video evidence, which will probably not be the complete evidentiary record, the kneeling policeman should be charged with murder and the three other police should be charged as accomplices. All four should have the legal protections afforded all criminal defendants and receive a fair trial before either a judge or a jury. Verdicts would then be reached and any defendant who was found guilty, punished.

    Anyone enraged by the police’s behavior, or by the way police treat people or specific groups of people, or any other conduct by the government or its agents has the right to peaceably protest and take other political action, either as an individual or as a member of a group. The key word is peaceably. Nobody has the right to initiate violence against anyone else or their property. The government’s duty is to protect its citizens from such violence and destruction. When it erupts en masse, as in a riot, the government must stop it, with force if necessary, up to and including deadly force. The motivations or justifications of those engaging in the violence and destruction are irrelevant.

    Every year governments steal trillions of dollars from their productive citizens. Some of it remains with governments or their agents, some of it is bestowed as unearned largess to the politically favored. Foreign and military policy has degenerated into nonstop war whose only purpose is to feed the military-industrial-intelligence complex and enrich it’s contractors. People can be tossed in jail if they refuse to accept as legal tender a fiat-debt currency backed by nothing, one which the government’s central bank continuously debases, in part to reduce the real value of the government’s debt.

    Industry after industry has been turned into government-sponsored predatory cartels, with the military-industrial-intelligence complex and the financial-banking complex at the head of the pack and the medical-pharmaceutical-insurance complex coming on strong. Regulation is an instrument of government extortion and a means for the cartels to exclude potential competition by making entry into cartelized industries prohibitively expensive. No industry is so inconsequential that it can escape regulation; the government has its arbitrary and grasping fingers in every pie.

    Under a contradictory-on-its-face rationale of “equality,” governments have created unequal-by-law quotas, preferences, and set-asides for favored groups. Taking the next giant step towards the eradication of whatever remains of individual rights, governments have locked “unessential” people in their homes and prevented them from opening their businesses or working at their jobs. Virtually every government activity and job has been deemed “essential.” There are no individual rights when inequality is written into the law.

    Adding insult to injury, attending schools, gathering in groups, or even breathing clean air have also been prohibited in response to a dramatically and intentionally overblown medical danger. When government destroys rather than protects individual rights, its law enforcement arm inevitably does the same. Enforcement becomes a matter of caprice, whim, and the personal predilections and prejudices of its agents. The multitude of laws give law enforcement virtually unlimited power to harass, arrest, brutalize, incarcerate, and kill. The coronavirus measures only increase that power.

    There are so many laws and regulations that no person can possibly be aware of or comply with them all, yet government exempts law enforcement from even the most basic strictures against criminality. Under asset forfeiture laws, it can steal property arbitrarily deemed to be involved in the commission of a crime and it is then up to the owner to prove that it was not. Incidents like the one in Minneapolis are commonplace, but the chances the police who commit crimes will be imprisoned, or even lose their jobs, is minimal. The glaring inequity of a system in which innocent citizens are routinely treated as criminals but government exempts itself from justice has not been lost on the citizenry. It has not been lost on police forces, who have been militarized not to protect themselves and the government from criminals, but from an increasingly subjugated and enraged citizenry.

    To believe that a government that has destroyed individual rights while enshrining its own criminality can speak or act with any kind of moral authority towards criminal rioters and looters is absurd. The apex of absurdity—so far—is the Minneapolis police force’s abandonment of its own precinct station to rioters. Criminals will attack soft targets, and those who agree with them in principle are soft targets. If a government won’t protect its own property from criminals, it’s certainly not going to protect law abiding citizens’ lives or property.

    The rioting makes a mockery of arguments that the government should control or eliminate citizens’ right and access to firearms, which would make them soft targets. A government that refuses to protect individuals and their rights hasn’t a leg to stand on when it tries to restrict individuals from defending themselves. Such restrictions are clearly seen for what they are: another government destruction of individual rights.

    How long can governments that outlaw businesses, jobs, and education—in short, production—and engage in and legitimize theft, fraud, extortion, vandalism, violence, and murder—in short, destruction—survive? Reality cannot be fooled. Production is survival—for both producers and the governments they support—destruction its antithesis. The bell tolls.

    WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

    The Declaration of Independence, 1776

    Our government effects only terror and misery. To effect our Safety and Happiness, it’s past time to withdraw “the Consent of the Governed” and “to alter or to abolish” it. That is our right, enshrined in our Declaration.

  • Friday Humor: San Francisco Does "New" COVID-19 Math
    Friday Humor: San Francisco Does "New" COVID-19 Math

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 06/05/2020 – 21:00

    Just in case you hadn’t had enough of the utter hypocrisy of our ruling classes and liberal elites as they juggle unrequited support for anyone and everyone “protesting” vs the tyrannical need for groups of humans to remain locked up inside their homes, the San Francisco Bay Area just issued its new “rules” for ‘gathering’…

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    h/t @EconomPic

    Under the updated Contra Costa County health order, protests of up to 100 people will be permitted.    

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    Also allowed to reopen in Contra Costa County starting Wednesday are child care for everyone (not just children of essential workers and select others), business offices, sports team practices for up to 12 participants (but not games with other teams), Scouting-type gatherings of young people and summer camps with “cohorts” of up to 12 people each that don’t mix with other groups. 

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    And so, for the hard of ‘rithmetic, the math goes something like this:

    Our leaders and their health professionals believe 100 “Protesters” are equally ‘deadly’ and equally likely to ‘kill their granny’ as 12 “non-protesters” who stayed at home.

    This fantastic new cognitively dissonant math is “the latest step toward reopening our county is a reflection of our successful collective effort as a community to limit the spread of the virus,” county Health Officer Dr. Chris Farnitano said in a statement.

    “I know there’s a lot of frustration out there, but it’s important to  keep in mind that interventions like social distancing have saved lives.”  

    Frustration indeed Chris!

    As one wit pointed out, this would seem to also equate the contagion of 100 “protesting” Americans as being equally terrible as the contagion of 12 “non-protesting” Americans – that sounds very racist to us!!!

    #ProtestersLivesMatter(AboutOneEightOfANonProtester)

    However, in the spirit of ‘freedom’, this new ‘rule’ inspired some rather exceptional entrepreneurial ideas…

    Welcome to the Protest Bar and Grill™, Protest Child Care™, Protest Cinema™, and Protest Gym™.

    We will be first in line.

    TGIF!

  • Black Lives Matter Melbourne Tells White People: "No Selfies"
    Black Lives Matter Melbourne Tells White People: "No Selfies"

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 06/05/2020 – 20:40

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    Black Lives Matter Melbourne has issued a list of required behavior from white people attending their protest, which includes no selfies and the demand that, “If a black person tells you to do something, you do it immediately without question.”

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    Up to 40,000 people are expected to attend the demonstration in Australia, which the potential for riots high given the city’s militant left-wing nature.

    In anticipation of that, BLM Melbourne issued a lengthy list of requirements for how white people are allowed to behave during the rally.

    “DO NOT TAKE SELFIES,” states the guide. “Ask to take pictures or videos of individuals. You are there to witness only. Film the police as much as possible. Your goal is documentation to ensure that the true narrative is told.”

    The guide also instructs white people to show deference and obedience to black people at all times.

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    “FOLLOW DIRECTIONS. If a black person tells you to do something, you do it immediately without question. You respect the authority and decisions of the black protestors at all times.”

    White people are also not allowed to lead chants and will be required to stay at the back of the protest until they are called forward, with the guide telling them, “WHEN YOU ARE AT THE FRONT, YOU ARE SILENT.”

    The no selfies rule is funny because it’s likely to keep many protesters at home given they won’t be able to properly virtue signal for the purposes of their Instagram page, which for some is the most important thing.

     

    The other irony is that protest leaders are basically enforcing racial segregation by keeping the white attendees away from the main demonstrators.

    *  *  *

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  • Journalist Who Busted Illinois Governor's Wife Violating Lockdown Sues After Briefing Ban
    Journalist Who Busted Illinois Governor's Wife Violating Lockdown Sues After Briefing Ban

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 06/05/2020 – 20:20

    An Illinois journalist who broke the story that Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s wife violated the state’s “stay-at-home” order by traveling to the family’s equestrian estate in Wisconsin has sued after she was barred from Pritzker’s coronavirus press briefings.

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    On Friday, May 15, Jacobson broke the story that Pritzker’s family had traveled to their equestrian estate in Wisconsin amid Illinois’s stay-at-home order – weeks after it was reported that his family was at another estate in Florida. The news raised questions about why the stay-at-home order did not apply to the governor’s family.

    On the day of the governor’s next press briefing, Pritzker’s press secretary told Jacobson she was banned from the briefings because she had attended a rally advocating for Illinois to end its lockdown. When questioned by reporters about Jacobson’s exclusion the next day, Pritzker told the press corps that Jacobson could not attend because advocating for Illinois to end its stay-at-home order represents an “extreme position.” The governor went on to say: “That is not a reporter … once upon a time she was a reporter but she proved that she is no longer a reporter.” –AP

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    The lawsuit, filed by attorneys from the Liberty Justice Center, asks the court to take immediate action to allow Jacobson back into the press briefings. 

    “Gov. Pritzker has been in the hot seat over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, and it’s visible from his reactions to Amy Jacobson’s questions that her reporting made him uncomfortable. But what the governor appears to not understand is that Americans have a right to hold their elected officials accountable, and one of the ways they do this is through a vibrant, free press,” said Liberty Justice Center president and co-founder, Patrick Hughes.

    “It’s not up to Gov. Pritzker to pick and choose which reporters can cover him based on how much he agrees with their coverage or their points of view. And keeping reporters out of the room because he disagrees with their line of questioning or point of view is a gross violation of the First Amendment.”

    Jacobson has worked for television and radio stations nationwide for over 25 years – the last decade of which has been spent as a reporter and morning show host on Salem Media’s Chicago AM 560 The Answer.

    Jacobson has been attending the governor’s COVID-19 press briefings on behalf of the station since April. While some reporters have used the daily briefings to ask softball questions, such as how the governor is holding up, Jacobson has asked notably tough questions. –AP

    “The reason we sent Amy to these press briefings is because she is a dogged reporter with a reputation for holding public officials accountable. Over the last two months Amy has done her job well, asking the tough questions that are on the minds of so many of our listeners,” said AM 560 regional VP and general manager, Jeff Reisman. “We’re disappointed that the governor would retaliate against her and take the unprecedented step of blocking her from his press briefings. We had hoped litigation would not be necessary, but it’s imperative for Amy to get back into the room and keep doing her job.”

  • "Extreme" Looters Are Using Absolutely Crazy Tactics Never Seen Before
    "Extreme" Looters Are Using Absolutely Crazy Tactics Never Seen Before

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 06/05/2020 – 20:00

    Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

    Do you have to go to “looting school” to learn this stuff?  It is not that difficult to smash a few store windows and grab a few things, but some of the incidents that we have witnessed over the last several days have been so bizarre that it is hard to believe that they are actually real.  In fact, if they were put into a big Hollywood disaster movie at lot of people would probably dismiss them as “unrealistic”.  But it is very important to understand what is going on out there, because these looters are giving us a preview of coming attractions.  If they will sink to such depths now, what will they be willing to do once things get really, really bad in this country?

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    There are so many examples that I could share with you, but I think that I will start with the looters in Fairfield, California that decided to use a telescopic forklift to break down the doors of a Best Buy store…

    A particularly brazen attempt by looters to storm a store in Fairfield, California, has been caught on video, showing them commandeering what appears to be a telescopic forklift to force their way in.

    A video has emerged showing vandals using heavy equipment on the doors of the Best Buy store in Fairfield, a city in Solano County, located between San Francisco and Sacramento.

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    I suppose that the moral of this story is that you should never leave a telescopic forklift sitting around where looters might find it.

    Now that criminals have seen how much they can get away with, they are going to become more emboldened than ever, and the entire west coast is going to be a major danger zone for the foreseeable future.

    In the East Bay area, police say that “caravans of cars full of looters” have been roaming around systematically searching for targets.  Authorities have been trying to crack down on these caravans of looters, but that has proven to be quite difficult because many of them are heavily armed.

    Elsewhere in northern California, one group of looters just pulled off an absolutely stunning heist that is like something out of a “Fast and Furious” film…

    Police in Northern California are searching for suspects after rioters reportedly stole more than 70 premium cars from a dealership near San Francisco Sunday night.

    San Leandro Chrysler Dodge Jeep dealership owner Carlos Hidalgo said that although he blocked the exits as a precaution, the thieves “started ramming, ramming until they could get out. They took out chains and fence posts. It was a very malicious act,” FOX 2 in Oakland reported.

    This means that at least 70 looters must have descended upon that dealership simultaneously, because each of those vehicles would have required a driver.

    If you stop and try to envision what that must have looked like, it will send a chill up your spine.

    Of course it isn’t just the west coast that is dealing with such over the top criminality.  The following is how Rachel Olding described the crazy looting that we just witnessed in Midtown Manhattan…

    Hard to describe how rampant the looting was tonight in Midtown Manhattan and how lawless it was. Complete anarchy. Literally hundreds of stores up and down Broadway, Fifth Ave, Sixth Ave. Kids ruling the streets like it was a party.

    These are the stores where the Wall Street elite shop.

    If law enforcement authorities can’t even keep that area secure, do you think that any city in the entire country is truly safe at this point?

    And some of these looters are not exactly “impoverished”.  In fact, the New York Post is reporting that some of the looters were pulling up to the stores “in luxury SUVs”…

    New York City looters were caught on camera pulling up in luxury SUVs — including what was claimed to be a pricey Rolls-Royce — before apparently looting an upscale retail store in Manhattan, according to footage shared on social media.

    The video, filmed by Justine Miller and Keith Feldman, shows a group of men in masks hopping out of two cars and charging through a smashed door in Soho before running back outside carrying boxes of goods on Monday night.

    I honestly don’t know what the police in New York City were doing.

    They had to know that the luxury retail outlets in Midtown Manhattan would be prime targets, and yet this was allowed to happen anyway.

    Down in Philadelphia, the looting has been absolutely insane.  Just yesterday, I discussed the fact that looters were allowed to loot one drugstore for 15 hours straight.  Elsewhere in the city, one very ambitious looter ended up dying in a botched attempt to blow up an ATM machine…

    A looter has been killed in a botched ATM explosion in Philadelphia, that police believe was part of a ‘coordinated’ effort to raid 30 machines across the city over a series of two nights.

    Police said the 24-year-old man died early Tuesday, several hours after attempting to break into an ATM with explosives in the north of the city.

    Needless to say, bank robbery has nothing to do with justice for George Floyd.

    All over America, thousands upon thousands of criminals are using the George Floyd protests as an opportunity to commit crimes, and the fact that it is happening on such a widespread basis is extremely sobering.

    At this point, things have gotten so crazy that looters are even looting from other looters.  The U.S. is descending into madness, and many people believe that this is just the beginning.

    Of course all of this rampant lawlessness is deeply alarming millions upon millions of ordinary citizens, and a lot of people are deeply concerned that this sort of behavior could start spreading into the suburbs and beyond.  In fact, Polk County Sheriff Judd Grady has publicly acknowledged that in his county “some folks were threatening to take their criminal conduct into the neighborhoods”…

    Grady said the department “had received information on social media that some folks were threatening to take their criminal conduct into the neighborhoods.”

    “I would tell them, if you value your life, they probably shouldn’t do that in Polk County,” Grady said. “Because the people of Polk County like guns, they have guns, I encourage them to own guns, and they’re going to be in their homes tonight with their guns loaded, and if you try to break into their homes to steal, to set fires, I’m highly recommending they blow you back out of the house with their guns. So, leave the community alone.”

    Hopefully things will start to cool down at least for a while.

    But many Americans understand that it is just a matter of time before more violence erupts, and so they are preparing to defend themselves and their families.  Gun sales are absolutely soaring, and one shop owner in New York says that he has been so busy that he is literally running out of stuff to sell…

    Phones have been ringing off the hook and the line has been wrapped around the building at Coliseum Gun Traders in Uniondale, Nassau County, ever since the coronavirus pandemic began. And now with protests and rioting after the killing of George Floyd, the store has seen another enormous spike in sales. Keeping the shelves stocked has been hard, store owner Andy Chernoff said.

    “We started out this week with a fair amount of merchandise. We’re running out. Literally running out,” Chernoff said. “Never thought I’d say that.”

    Just six months ago, life in America seemed so “normal”, but now everything has changed.

    All of the anger that has been building up for years is now starting to boil over, and the upcoming election in November is just going to increase tensions even more.

    So please be very careful out there, because our society really is starting to fall apart right in front of our eyes.

  • 2 National Guardsmen Struck By Lightning During Washington DC Protest
    2 National Guardsmen Struck By Lightning During Washington DC Protest

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 06/05/2020 – 19:40

    In a freak occurrence during Wednesday night’s protests, two National Guardsmen were badly injured after being struck by lightning near the White House, officials said early Friday. The two service members were struck shortly after midnight within the Lafayette Park perimeter, where protests over the death of George Floyd continued for a seventh day (note: it was the ninth day of demonstrations in Minneapolis).

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    Both officers were taken to a nearby hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

    Video of the aftermath went viral.

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    Despite the heavy rain and flood warnings, a core group of protesters returned Thursday night despite the weather after Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser rescinded a planned curfew after there were zero arrests the night before.

    The DC area saw some pretty intense lightning during last night’s storm.

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    Probably not an ideal time to be standing outside carrying a bunch of metal.

  • Rickards: You May Never See "Normal" Again
    Rickards: You May Never See "Normal" Again

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 06/05/2020 – 19:20

    Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

    American cities are burning, there’s a lethal pandemic and we’re in a new Great Depression.

    Other than that, everything’s fine…

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    People often ask me when things will “get back to normal.” Well, the answer could be never (or at least not for a long time).

    Germany was not “normal” from 1914–54, for example. Social disorder is like a virus; it goes away eventually but not necessarily soon.

    Meanwhile, we’re now in our third month of a national lockdown, with perhaps another month to go, depending on your locality.

    Some states and cities are beginning to reopen, but they’re doing it in “phases,” so maybe your hair stylist reopened last week and your favorite restaurant will reopen next week.

    The lockdown has certainly been painful for many. Even under the best of circumstances, anxiety levels went up, patience wore thin and tempers flared at trivial things. Cabin fever is a real disease.

    Was it all worth it?

    I’ve done a deep dive on this and the answer is almost certainly no.

    The lockdown did slow the spread of the virus and did save some lives, that’s true. Yet the gains may only be temporary.

    “Flattening the curve” does not mean reducing total infections and deaths. It just means stretching them out over a longer period so the hospital system is not overwhelmed.

    There were much better solutions for this, including temporary hospitals and sending doctors and nurses from low-infection areas to those areas most in need, like New York City.

    The biggest problem with the lockdown was that everyone counted the benefits but no one calculated the costs.

    Many may have died and still could die from suicide, drug overdoses, alcoholism, domestic violence and other untreated medical conditions like cancer and heart attacks because patients were afraid to go to hospitals for fear of getting the virus.

    In short, the lockdown may end up costing more lives than were saved.

    That’s on top of trillions of dollars of lost wealth and lost economic output. That’s what happens when you put doctors in charge of the economy. Next time, it might be a good idea to let a few economic analysts into the room also.

    But don’t worry, the optimists say. We’ll see a “V”-shaped recovery once the lockdowns are fully lifted.

    You probably know the theory of a “V”-shaped recovery. The idea is that the economy fell sharply in March and April 2020 but it’s ready to bounce back with a record recovery this summer and fall.

    The crash is one side of the “V” and the recovery is the other. The result is you end up recovering all of your losses and are ready for new growth from the old levels.

    You’ll hear this a lot, but don’t believe it.

    Remember “green shoots” in 2009 and 2010? They turned out to be brown weeds. Yes, the economy eventually recovered and the stock market went on to new highs, but it was the weakest recovery in U.S. history and those stock market highs took almost seven years to appear.

    Things are much worse now.

    Yes, we will hit a bottom this summer. And yes, a recovery will begin. But it will be long and hard.

    Output may not get back to 2019 levels until 2022 or later. Unemployment will come down, but it is still expected to be higher than the worst of the 2008 crisis in 2023. The bankruptcies are just starting.

    We’ve seen J. Crew, J.C. Penney, Neiman Marcus, Pier 1 Imports and Hertz all file for bankruptcy in recent weeks. There is a long line of name-brand companies right behind them preparing to go bankrupt also.

    Not only will we not have a V-shaped recovery, but it will probably be an “L” (down and then sideways).

    The 2009–2020 recovery was an “L” where the new trend for growth was 2.2% instead of the post-1980 trend of 3.2%.

    Now the new recovery (when it begins) may have output of only 1.9% or less.

    When each recovery is weaker than the one before and debt goes up faster than growth, it’s just a matter of time before you go broke — or eventually break out in inflation.

    We probably won’t see inflation for a while because inflation has a strong psychological component and right now a deflationary mindset prevails.

    That may change — it probably will — but we’re not there at this point.

    Meanwhile, people are looking for “safe havens” right now.

    Stock and Treasury market behavior can be explained as much by “safe haven” demand as fundamentals. But what happens when the safe haven doesn’t look so safe?

    There’s still one place to go — gold.

  • NFL Condems Police Brutality And Racism, Says It Was "Wrong" Not To Support Kneeling Players
    NFL Condems Police Brutality And Racism, Says It Was "Wrong" Not To Support Kneeling Players

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 06/05/2020 – 19:11

    The NFL – in a decision that will likely be remembered as a major victory for the anti-police brutality protest movement inspired by the horrific death of George Floyd – has just announced that it was wrong to not wholeheartedly support the league’s black players who participated in the kneeling protests started by Colin Kaepernick.

    It seems like ancient history now, but the culture war over Kaepernick’s decision, which infuriated conservatives and sparked a massive backlash among many NFL fans, while activists castigated the league for appearing to blackball Kaepernick, who hasn’t played since he left the 49ers, despite remaining a competitive athlete on the field.

    In a video statement released just minutes ago, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell says the league “is listening” to protesters and their message. Goodell apologized, saying the league was “wrong”, for not supporting athletes who kneeled during the national anthem during a protest movement a couple of years back. Goodell added that “I personally am with you, and want to be part of the change in this country,” and added that “the NFL would be nothing” without black players. He added that he would be reaching out to black players for feedback on “how we can improve and go forward for a better, more united NFL family.”

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    The decision will put pressure on other sports leagues, particularly the NBA and its commissioner, Adam Silver, to speak out and offer similar assurances.

    But after the latest images of police brutality during the protests surfaced on Friday, will this be enough to quiet the unrest that’s expected to spring back into gear during rallies planned for tomorrow in Washington DC and across the US.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Instagram "Influencers" Use Floyd Protests For Photoshoots, Eliciting Furious Backlash
    Instagram "Influencers" Use Floyd Protests For Photoshoots, Eliciting Furious Backlash

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 06/05/2020 – 19:00

    As it does with everything nowadays, social media played a critical role in rousing the US, and then the world (or at least parts of wealthy western Europe), to stand up against police brutality following the murder of George Floyd while being taken into custody.

    More recently, the incessant virtue signaling by Hollywood actors, celebrities and just normal people has, at times, verged on parody, like when – earlier this week – hundreds of thousands of users posted black squares on their screens in an effort to “amplify black voices”. Minutes later, they deleted the squares after someone else said it was tantamount to a “blackout” on minority voices.

    But without a doubt the most infuriating social media phenomenon is the IG “influencer” crowd treating the protests and riots, as well as their aftermath, like it was Coachella, or some kind of massive block party, posting for highly curated photos, often obstructing the paths of others while they scream at their boyfriends to make sure they get “the perfect pic”.

    On Friday, another video of an influencer holding a cardboard sign went viral.

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    She just needed to get that “protest aesthetic”.

    In another example, a protester calls for an “influencer” to be cancelled for using the “blackout tuesday” protests as she strutted out her “assets”.

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    Kendall Jenner is probably persona non grata at any BLM event since that widely panned Pepsi commercial where she ended police brutality with a can of Pepsi. But that didn’t stop some deranged stan from photoshopping the pic below, which sent several rose emojis into a white-hot rage.

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    Meanwhile, how dare this young lady try to organize a protest without the approval of “BLM”.

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    Leftists now claiming “white women” have ruined their movement. Sounds a little misogynistic if you ask us.

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    Let’s not forget this one from earlier this week.

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    Can’t say we disagree with this one.

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    The movement to outlaw selfies at protests has begun.

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    Before we go: a heartfelt plea.

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    If they really want to pitch in, one of them should make a makeup tutorial about how to cover rubber-bullet and tear gas-related injuries.

  • Devouring Its Own: How Many On The Left Fostered The Violent Movement Now Rioting Across The Country?
    Devouring Its Own: How Many On The Left Fostered The Violent Movement Now Rioting Across The Country?

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 06/05/2020 – 18:40

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Attorney General Bill Barr acknowledged yesterday that there is a “witches’ brew” of groups fostering violations, including an anarchist group from the right. The anarchists on the left or right are opportunists who will strike at any time of unrest to seek the breakdown of order. However, police are reporting a high number of Antifa and anarchist members arrested in various states.  These are groups that are all too familiar to some of us on college and university campus.  While I have opposed efforts to declare Antifa a terrorist organization, the role of all of these groups in the recent violence should be a cautionary tale for academics and politicians alike in the tolerance shown for such anti-free speech movements.

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    Ian Fleming famously lamented that history often moves so quickly that “heroes and villains keep on changing parts.” Our media and politicians are now struggling with the same problem today, following the killing of George Floyd. As rioting and looting continue across the country, the question is who to blame for the mayhem. Ultimately, the response was strikingly familiar and telling. Maybe white supremacists were behind it. Maybe the Russians were. It could be anyone except people in the rioting communities or, worse yet, groups lionized or tolerated by the left.

    While most protesters remained peaceful, the narrative quickly spiraled glaringly out of sync with images of burning buildings in the background. Although “Today” show host Craig Melvin tweeted out a guide not to refer to them as rioters but rather as protesters, that narrative has since broken down. Indeed, news outlets have been reporting that “outsiders” have been fueling the rioting and that the destruction might be the work of nefarious groups of white supremacists or Russians.

    Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and other officials there claimed a majority of those arrested were outsiders. Walz estimated the figure at 80 percent. National Urban League President Marc Morial ratcheted up the outrage in a cable news interview. He demanded an investigation to confirm “if it is white supremacists, if it is Russians, if it is other foreign actors who have tried to exploit the pain and exploit legitimate protests.”

    It was manifestly implausible to suggest the rioting was the work of white supremacists or Russians. Arrest data showed a majority of those arrested in Minneapolis were from the city. The four people arrested in New York in fire bombing attacks were all state residents. The problem is that the most obvious culprits are all too familiar. A movement of anarchist, antifascist, and extreme left wing groups has been building for years, with violence from Washington to Berkeley. The most prominent is antifa, but there are also groups like By All Means Necessary with similar histories.

    This is a broad movement, not one group, which makes the suggested designation by President Trump of antifa as a terrorist organization both constitutionally and practically dubious. However, the growing antifascist movement has attacked conservative speakers and events for years, with far less media attention than their right wing counterparts receive. Just as many critics have accused Trump of not doing enough to denounce extreme right wing groups, many Democratic leaders have been conspicuously silent in denouncing these antifascist groups.

    Indeed, when Attorney General William Barr correctly observed that the rioting shows “antifa like tactics,” politicians and media figures both balked at the suggestion, as opposed to accepting the white supremacist or Russian option. Despite reports of antifa followers and anarchists being arrested, White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor objected that there was “no evidence” of any activity sparked by anarchists.

    Antifa, By All Means Necessary, and other militant or anarchist groups have disrupted universities across the country, including my own, for years. They have found many political and academic allies. Dartmouth Professor Mark Bray wrote a book on antifa, defining the movement as committed to the silencing of opponents and the rejection of classic concepts of free speech. The movement has since found open or passive acceptance with many on the academic left. In fairness, however, many Democratic politicians have denounced past violent attacks.

    Yet despite its violent history, some Democratic leaders have been enablers or outright supporters of the antifa movement, insisting that such groups cannot be compared to extreme right wing groups.

    While criticizing antifa members three years ago, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted the group has “been there forever” and that “some people may have infiltrated” it. This was not viewed as her Charlottesville moment of claiming there are “very fine people” in antifa. It was a commonly held view that antifascists are by definition better than fascists.

    Other Democratic leaders have been much more direct in their support, including the former deputy chair of the Democratic Party, Representative Keith Ellison. Although Germany has banned an antifa website, Ellison posed with the antifa handbook to show support at a Minneapolis bookshop and said it would “strike fear in the heart” of Trump.

    Ellison, now the Minnesota state attorney general, was under fire this week for telling protesters they should not attack the National Guard on the streets or “react to them the way you might react to the Minneapolis Police Department. Their job is to try to bring peace and calm back again.” His son Jeremiah Ellison, a Minneapolis city council member, declared support for antifa even as the city endured rioting and looting.

    Meanwhile, some media coverage has the uncomfortable feel of a new type of Russia collusion theory. Susan Rice, former national security adviser to President Obama, said that she suspects Russia is behind the effort “to hijack those protests and turn them into something very different” and that “this is right out of the Russian playbook.”

    It is likely that racist or foreign actors will try to exploit the unrest on the internet. The same was true, on a larger scale, with Russian interference in the 2016 election. While most of us denounced that Russian interference, it was never plausible that the work of a dozen internet trolls in Saint Petersburg or a dozen military hackers in Moscow had a measurable, let alone meaningful, impact on the outcome of the election.

    The same is true with these protests. The rioting began due to deep seated and legitimate anger over police brutality and the tragic death of Floyd. Young people and others did not rush to the streets because they read a posting from some skinhead on the Stormfront website. Yet the references to white supremacists or Russians continued even as reports filtered in of antifa and anarchists being arrested in various cities.

    Some politicians in the past sought to tap into the antifascist movement. Others completely avoided denouncing the group. After all, for years, the movement threatened or attacked conservatives. They were not treated as an outside element but rather as this grassroots movement outraged by Trump and his policies. However, the same tactics and likely some of the same people are now burning buildings and cars, attacking police officers and business owners, and destroying property across the country. This is why, during the French Revolution, the journalist Jacques Mallet Pan warned, “Like Saturn, the revolution devours its children.”

  • Daily Briefing – June 5, 2020
    Daily Briefing – June 5, 2020


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 06/05/2020 – 18:25

    Real Vision CEO Raoul Pal and senior editor Ash Bennington discuss a roaring day on Wall Street as the U.S. labor market breathed a sigh of relief. Looking at everything from tech valuations to the AUD/USD trade, Raoul and Ash dive deeper into this jam-packed news day to see whether the economy really is on the mend. In the intro, Jack Farley touches on these themes and previews Raoul’s interview with Gerard Minack.

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Jun 05

Today’s News 5th June 2020

  • Has Sweden's COVID-19 Strategy Backfired?
    Has Sweden’s COVID-19 Strategy Backfired?

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 06/05/2020 – 02:45

    Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s chief epidemiologist, has acknowledged that too many people have died in the country due to COVID-19. Tegnell was key in developing Sweden’s more relaxed strategy which saw bars, shops, cafes and gyms remain open while the rest of Europe locked down, which he criticised as being unsustainable.

    Some restrictions were indeed imposed in Sweden with schools closing for over-16s but, as Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, the public were generally trusted to remain responsible and carry out physical distancing without government enforcement.

    During a radio interview, Tegnell said that:

    “if we were to encounter the same disease again, knowing exactly what we know about it today, I think we would settle on doing something in between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world has done.”

    His comments come as figures show Sweden’s per capita death rate being the highest worldwide in the seven days to June 02.

    The government has now given in to opposition pressure and said it will launch an investigation into how COVID-19 was handled.

    So how does Sweden’s more relaxed approach to the pandemic compare with neighbouring countries?

    Infographic: Has Sweden's COVID-19 Strategy Backfired? | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    The latest data from the Johns Hopkins University shows that as of June 01, Sweden had 43.24 deaths per 100,000 of its population. That’s in stark contrast to Denmark and Finland who have recorded less than 10 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants and Norway which has had less than 5. Last week, Denmark and Norway said they would reopen tourism between their two countries from June 15 but that Sweden would continue to face restrictions.

  • Prof. Karl Friston: "80% Of Brits Not Even Susceptible To COVID-19"
    Prof. Karl Friston: “80% Of Brits Not Even Susceptible To COVID-19”

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 06/05/2020 – 02:00

    Via 21stCenturyWire.com,

    As the threat of COVID-19 quickly fades from foreground and the damage from governments’ experimental panic-driven ‘lockdown’ measures, some experts are now asking an important question: why do different countries achieved such vastly different results in terms of fatalities due to Coronavirus?

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    The answers to this question will undoubtedly destroy official claims that the COVID lockdown was somehow science-based, let alone justified.

    As it turns out, a large percentage of the population were never susceptible to this virus.

    In other words: the threat was completely overblown, and lockdown and social distancing policies have never been based in reality.

    UnHerd reports…

    Professor Karl Friston is a computer modelling expert, world-renowned for his contributions to neuroscience. He has been applying his “dynamic causal modelling” approach to the Covid-19 pandemic, and has reached some startling results.

    – The differences between countries are not primarily down to government actions, but due to ‘intrinsic’ differences in the populations

    – We don’t yet fully understand what is driving it, although there are theories ranging from levels of vitamin D to genetic differences

    – In each country, there appears to be a portion of the population that is ‘not even in the game’

    – that is, not susceptible to Covid-19. This varies hugely between countries

    – In the UK, Professor Friston estimates that portion to be at least 50%, and probably more like 80%

    – The similar mortality results between Sweden (no lockdown) and the UK (lockdown) are best explained by the fact that in reality there was no difference – the impact of the legal lockdown in Professor Friston’s models “literally goes away.”

    This is a highly informative interview with UnHerd host Freddie Sayer and Professor Karl Friston. Watch:

  • Escobar: Why America's Revolution Won't Be Televised
    Escobar: Why America’s Revolution Won’t Be Televised

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 06/05/2020 – 00:05

    Authored by Peper Escobar via The Asia Times,

    The Revolution Won’t Be Televised because this is not a revolution. At least not yet.

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    Burning and/or looting Target or Macy’s is a minor diversion. No one is aiming at the Pentagon (or even the shops at the Pentagon Mall). The FBI. The NY Federal Reserve. The Treasury Department. The CIA in Langley. Wall Street houses.

    The real looters – the ruling class – are comfortably surveying the show on their massive 4K Bravias, sipping single malt.

    This is a class war much more than a race war and should be approached as such. Yet it was hijacked from the start to unfold as a mere color revolution.

    US corporate media dropped their breathless Planet Lockdown coverage like a ton of – pre-arranged? – bricks to breathlessly cover en masse the new American “revolution.” Social distancing is not exactly conducive to a revolutionary spirit.

    There’s no question the US is mired in a convoluted civil war in progress, as serious as what happened after the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King in Memphis in April 1968.

    Yet massive cognitive dissonance is the norm across the full “strategy of tension” spectrum. Powerful factions pull no punches to control the narrative. No one is able to fully identify all the shadowplay intricacies and inconsistencies.

    Hardcore agendas mingle: an attempt at color revolution/regime change (blowback is a bitch) interacts with the Boogaloo Bois – arguably tactical allies of Black Lives Matter – while white supremacist “accelerationists” attempt to provoke a race war.

    To quote the Temptations: it’s a ball of confusion.

    Antifa is criminalized but the Boogaloo Bois get a pass (here is how Antifa’s main conceptualizer defends his ideas). Yet another tribal war, yet another – now domestic – color revolution under the sign of divide and rule, pitting Antifa anti-fascists vs. fascist white supremacists.

    Meanwhile, the policy infrastructure necessary for enacting martial law has evolved as a bipartisan project.

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    Protesters jump on a street sign near a burning barricade near the White House during a demonstration against the death of George Floyd on May 31, 2020 in Washington, DC. Photo: AFP

    We are in the middle of the proverbial, total fog of war. Those defending the US Army crushing “insurrectionists” in the streets advocate at the same time a swift ending to the American empire.

    Amidst so much sound and fury signifying perplexity and paralysis, we may be reaching a supreme moment of historical irony, where US homeland (in)security is being boomerang-hit not only by one of the key artifacts of its own Deep State making – a color revolution – but by combined elements of a perfect blowback trifecta:Operation Phoenix; Operation Jakarta; and Operation Gladio.

    But the targets this time won’t be millions across the Global South. They will be American citizens.

    Empire come home

    Quite a few progressives contend this is a spontaneous mass uprising against police repression and system oppression – and that would necessarily lead to a revolution, like the February 1917 revolution in Russia sprouting out of the scarcity of bread in Petrograd.

    So the protests against endemic police brutality would be a prelude to a Levitate the Pentagon remix – with the interregnum soon entailing a possible face-off with the US military in the streets.

    But we got a problem. The insurrection, so far purely emotional, has yielded no political structure and no credible leader to articulate myriad, complex grievances. As it stands, it amounts to an inchoate insurrection, under the sign of impoverishment and perpetual debt.

    Adding to the perplexity, Americans are now confronted with what it feels like to be in Vietnam, El Salvador, the Pakistani tribal areas or Sadr City in Baghdad.

    Iraq came to Washington DC in full regalia, with Pentagon Blackhawks doing “show of force” passes over protestors, the tried and tested dispersal technique applied in countless counter-insurgency ops across the Global South.

    And then, the Elvis moment: General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, patrolling the streets of DC. The Raytheon lobbyist now heading the Pentagon, Mark Esper, called it “dominating the battlespace.”

    Well, after they got their butts kicked in Afghanistan and Iraq, and indirectly in Syria, full spectrum dominance must dominate somewhere. So why not back home?

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    Troops gather during a demonstration on June 1, 2020 in Washington, DC. Photo: Joshua Roberts/Getty Images/AFP

    Troops from the 82nd Airborne Division, the 10th Mountain Division and the 1stInfantry Division – who lost wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and, yes, Somalia – have been deployed to Andrews Airbase near Washington.

    Super-hawk Tom Cotton even called, in a tweet, for the 82nd Airborne to do “whatever it takes to restore order. No quarter for insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters and looters.” These are certainly more amenable targets than the Russian, Chinese and Iranian militaries.

    Milley’s performance reminds me of John McCain walking around in Baghdad in 2007, macho man-style, no helmet, to prove everything was OK. Of course: he had a small army weaponized to the teeth watching his back.

    And complementing the racism angle, it’s never enough to remember that both a white president and a black president signed off on drone attacks on wedding parties in the Pakistani tribal areas.

    Esper spelled it out: an occupying army may soon be “dominating the battlespace” in the nation’s capital, and possibly elsewhere. What next? A Coalition Provisional Authority?

    Compared to similar ops across the Global South, this will not only prevent regime change but also produce the desired effect for the ruling oligarchy: a neo-fascist turning of the screws. Proving once again that when you don’t have a Martin Luther King or a Malcolm X to fight the power, then power crushes you whatever you do.

    Inverted Totalitarianism

    The late, great political theorist Sheldon Wolin had already nailed it in a book first published in 2008: this is all about Inverted Totalitarianism.

    Wolin showed how “the cruder forms of control – from militarized police to wholesale surveillance, as well as police serving as judge, jury and executioner, now a reality for the underclass – will become a reality for all of us should we begin to resist the continued funneling of power and wealth upward.

    “We are tolerated as citizens only as long as we participate in the illusion of a participatory democracy. The moment we rebel and refuse to take part in the illusion, the face of inverted totalitarianism will look like the face of past systems of totalitarianism,” he wrote.

    Sinclair Lewis (who did not say that, “when fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and waving the cross”) actually wrote, in It Can’t Happen Here (1935), that American fascists would be those “who disowned the word ‘fascism’ and preached enslavement to capitalism under the style of constitutional and traditional native American liberty.”

    So American fascism, when it happens, will walk and talk American.

    George Floyd was the spark. In a Freudian twist, the return of the repressed came out swinging, laying bare multiple wounds: how the US political economy shattered the working classes; failed miserably on Covid-19; failed to provide affordable healthcare; profits a plutocracy; and thrives on a racialized labor market, a militarized police, multi-trillion-dollar imperial wars and serial bailouts of the too big to fail.

    Instinctively at least, although in an inchoate manner, millions of Americans clearly see how, since Reaganism, the whole game is about an oligarchy/plutocracy weaponizing white supremacism for political power goals, with the extra bonus of a steady, massive, upwards transfer of wealth.

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    US President Donald Trump walks back to the White House escorted by the Secret Service after appearing outside of St John’s Episcopal church across Lafayette Park in Washington, DC, June 1, 2020. Photo: AFP/ Brendan Smialowski

    Slightly before the first, peaceful Minneapolis protests, I argued that the realpolitik perspectives post-lockdown were grim, privileging both restored neoliberalism – already in effect – and hybrid neofascism.

    President Trump’s by now iconic Bible photo op in front of St John’s church – including a citizen tear-gassing preview – took it to a whole new level. Trump wanted to send a carefully choreographed signal to his evangelical base. Mission accomplished.

    But arguably the most important (invisible) signal was the fourth man in one of the photos.

    Giorgio Agamben has already proved beyond reasonable doubt that the state of siege is now totally normalized in the West. Attorney General William Barr now is aiming to institutionalize it in the US: he’s the man with the leeway to go all out for a permanent state of emergency, a Patriot Act on steroids, complete with “show of force” Blackhawk support.

  • Searching Twitter For "Racist" Returns Donald Trump As Top Result
    Searching Twitter For “Racist” Returns Donald Trump As Top Result

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 06/04/2020 – 23:44

    For some strange reason, when one types the word “racist” into Twitter’s people search, Donald Trump is the top result – a discovery made days after Trump took action against biased social media platforms.

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    According to The Independent, Twitter search results are affected by the data they collect on you – including political leaning and your interests, however their search of the word in a private browsing session using Brave browser was the same on both iPhone and Android app.

    Other users on the social media site have reported the same result.

    It is not immediately clear why Twitter’s search algorithm promotes the result. Other results in the “People” section when searching for the word “racist” include accounts who have mentioned the word in their display names, such as the “Yes, You’re Racist” account which raises awareness of racial issues. –The Independent

    Twitter claims it’s unintentional – explaining that when an account is mentioned frequently alongside certain terms it can affect search recommendations.

    While unclear how long this has been going on, the discovery comes just days after Trump signed an executive order which chips away at the “liability shield” contained within Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which protects neutral social media companies from being sued over content posted by their users. Last week Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) told Breitbart:

    A lot of people don’t see that Facebook and Twitter … you see Twitter disadvantaging the president, they enjoy liability protections that are not enjoyed by your local newspaper or your local TV station, or Fox News, or CNN, or MSNBC. They have special benefits under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act as digital platforms because they’re not creating content for which they should be liable. They’re not making decisions about content, they’re simply saying come one, come all with your content. And as a consequence of that, they’re getting a bunch of protections. 

    This isn’t the first time Silicon Valley has deemed themselves the arbiters of information.

    After they were busted trying to help Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election – and were beside themselves after she lost, Google employees discussed whether to bury conservative media outlets in the company’s search function after Donald Trump became president, according to the Daily Caller.

    Communications obtained by TheDCNF show that internal Google discussions went beyond expressing remorse over Clinton’s loss to actually discussing ways Google could prevent Trump from winning again.

    “This was an election of false equivalencies, and Google, sadly, had a hand in it,” Google engineer Scott Byer wrote in a Nov. 9, 2016, post reviewed by TheDCNF.

    Byer falsely labeled The Daily Caller and Breitbart as “opinion blogs” and urged his coworkers to reduce their visibility in search results.

    “How many times did you see the Election now card with items from opinion blogs (Breitbart, Daily Caller) elevated next to legitimate news organizations? That’s something that can and should be fixed,” Byer wrote.

    “I think we have a responsibility to expose the quality and truthfulness of sources – because not doing so hides real information under loud noises,” he continued. 

    “Beyond that, let’s concentrate on teaching critical thinking. A little bit of that would go a long way. Let’s make sure that we reverse things in four years – demographics will be on our side.” –DCNF

    Not everyone at Google agreed with muting ideological opponents. Senior software engineer Uri Dekel – a self-described Clinton supporter, suggested that it was the wrong approach.

    “Thinking that Breitbart, Drudge, etc. are not ‘legitimate news sources’ is contrary to the beliefs of a major portion of our user base is partially what got us to this mess. MSNBC is not more legit than Drudge just because Rachel Maddow may be more educated / less deplorable / closer to our views, than, say Sean Hannity,” Dekel wrote Byer in a reply, adding “I follow a lot of right wing folks on social networks you could tell something was brewing. We laughed off Drudge’s Instant Polls and all that stuff, but in the end, people go to those sources because they believe that the media doesn’t do it’s job. I’m a Hillary supporter and let’s admit it, the media avoided dealing with the hard questions and issues, which didn’t pay off. By ranking ‘legitimacy’ you’ll just introduce more conspiracy theories.”

    Another engineer, Mike Brauwerman, suggested that the company could avoid “accusations of conspiracy or bias” by using technology to “trace information to its source, to link to critiques of these sources, and let people decide what sources they believe.” 

    If only senior leadership at Google were as interested in allowing people to find, consume, and judge content on their own.

    Meanwhile, Trump and his family still dominate Google image search results for the word “idiot.”

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  • Global Times Op-Ed: "It's Just A Matter Of Time" Before China Surpasses US In National Strength
    Global Times Op-Ed: “It’s Just A Matter Of Time” Before China Surpasses US In National Strength

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 06/04/2020 – 23:25

    At a time when Taiwan remains a crucial issue between China and the U.S., an “opinion” piece published in China’s nationalization propaganda machine, The Global Times, claims that: “It is just a matter of time before China surpasses the US in terms of comprehensive national strength.”

    “No matter what card the US plays, it cannot change the general trend of China,” The Global Times wrote.

    The piece is being published a time of heightened tensions between the U.S. and China. In addition to issuing blame for the coronavirus pandemic, there are a number of issues being grappled with by the two national superpowers: intellectual property issues, China’s seeming reluctance to hold up its end of the Phase 1 trade deal, and the latter country’s insistence of continuing to devalue the Yuan. 

    But the most current issue at bar for the two nations remains control over Taiwan. Tsai Ing-wen delivered her inaugural speech on May 20, which seems to have irked – and is likely what prompted – this “response” from the CCP propaganda machine.

    The “interview” includes Douglas Paal, Distinguished Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace of the US, and Jin Canrong, the associate dean of Renmin University of China’s School of International Studies in Beijing. Paal is a U.S. resident and directs the endowment’s Asia Program. Both were eager to push for support of China, apathy from Taiwan and skepticism toward U.S. policy. 

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    For example, when asked about the Trump administration’s obvious support of Taiwan right off the bat, Paal had no problem criticizing and undermining his own country’s handling of the situation:

    Even before the Trump administration came to power, there has been a dual faceted policy toward the island of Taiwan from him. Many in his government want to elevate US relations with Taiwan in every way possible. Some want to use Taiwan as a cudgel against the Chinese mainland and its influence. Strangely, Trump himself seems not to share this view. He seems to view Taiwan as a “small country,” small market, and maybe even tradable in negotiating business deals.

    This duality seems to have kept lower level officials from crossing really sensitive redlines in the long established ambiguities prevailing in US-Taiwan-Chinese mainland relations. I don’t think all current American officials appreciate how sensitive and explosive this issue is. In fact, I believe some think it will help bring the Chinese government down. So the situation devolving into a major crisis has low probability, but potentially high consequences.

    He claimed that Trump’s position on Taiwan policy is “unclear”, other than seeing Taiwan as an asset to help control the mainland. He also contradicted Trump’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization, making it seem as though the U.S. is “all bark and no bite” in its posturing that it would defend Taiwan. 

    “For example, in the middle of a global pandemic, the US has no interest in losing a role within the WHO, but Trump is trying to withdraw from it,” Paal said, continuing to try and undermine the President’s actions.

    “The gap between rhetoric and action is wide,” he later said, when asked if he thought the U.S. would act against China’s one-China principle.

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    Paal also encouraged Taiwan to “keep a low profile” amidst the dispute and said he thinks Tsai “is maintaining the basic official line of status quo” for the time being:

    Taiwan, in my view, should stick to advocating its own interests, including international participation and acknowledgement, autonomy at home, lessons in good governance, especially concerning epidemics, and sound economics. None of those is compatible with becoming a spear-head for America’s brooding conflict with China.

    If US officials want to send videos to Taiwan ceremonies, why would Taiwan want to reject them? If the US wants to send the 7th fleet into Taiwan’s waters, in the absence of a Chinese mainland attack, Taiwan should ask why and to what purpose?

    Jin added: “The rise of China depends on our own economic development. As long as we stay on track, no outside force can stop us from growing stronger. It is just a matter of time before China surpasses the US in terms of comprehensive national strength. From this perspective, no matter what card the US plays, it cannot change the general trend of China. So, practically speaking, the Taiwan card is useless.”

    Jin continued, trying to downplay potential U.S. effectiveness in dealing with Taiwan and asserting a reluctance to act by the U.S.:

    “The island of Taiwan has been used by Washington as a chess piece to contain China’s development. The US used to have a bottom line, but now it is becoming increasingly radical due to fears of a rising China. Washington is not as confident as it was. It once believed that it would undoubtedly win the game with China. But now it has become scared and is using all the tools at its disposal to contain China. As US elites’ hostility toward China deepens, they might possibly cross China’s bottom line.

    “Given Tsai’s intention to change the status quo, the cross-Straits situation could become increasingly risky,” Jin concluded.

    “Actually, the Chinese central government can launch attacks whenever it wants and the result will be in favor of the mainland. Within the first island chain, the Chinese mainland faces no rivals. “

  • "The Data Is Likely To Be Horrific": Previewing The Worst Jobs Report In US History
    “The Data Is Likely To Be Horrific”: Previewing The Worst Jobs Report In US History

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 06/04/2020 – 23:11

    Tomorrow’s jobs report will be one for the history books: with a record 19% Unemployment, and an additional 7 million job losses added to the 20 million from last month, the labor picture will be far worse than anything observed before in US history, eclipsing the darkest days of the Great Depression.

    Indeed, as NewsSquawk writes in its payrolls preview, “the data is likely to be horrific, although it tells us what we already know.” So will stocks close green? Probably, since the extent of the pandemic gloom has already been heavily discounted by the market which is expecting a miraculous V-shaped recovery, and instead traders’ focus is on the direction and speed of travel. Furthermore, there is little in the BLS report that will offer any forward-looking insight – that will depend on progress regarding the reopening of economies, and official support measures. With that said, a ‘solid’ ADP report which was much better than expected stoked a rally in risk assets, which resulted in significant curve steepening and equity upside along the lines of a reflation trade, offering hope that the economy may be more resilient than feared (the more likely explanation is that the ADP report was once again massively wrong).

    Meanwhile, as US data surprises have improved over the last two weeks, and risk assets seem more asymmetrically sensitive to ‘re-opening and recovery’ developments, progress on treatments, testing and tracing, as well as stimulus from global policymakers; this has underpinned the recent rally in the S&P 500 despite historically stretched p/e valuations, negative headline risk (US/China), and a limited appetite in Washington for another hefty fiscal injection.

    Here’s what Wall Street expects tomorrow, courtesy of NewsSquawk.com:

    • Nonfarm Payrolls exp. -8.25mln (range -17mln to -1.7mln), prev. -20.5mln);
    • Unemployment rate exp. 19.8% (range: 17.0-27.0%), prev. 14.7%;
    • U6 unemployment prev. 22.8%;
    • Participation prev. 60.2%;
    • Private payrolls exp. -7.5mln, prev. -19.5mln;
    • Manufacturing payrolls exp. -0.4mln, prev. -1.3mln;
    • Government payrolls prev. -0.98mln;
    • Average earnings M/M exp. +1.0%, prev. +4.7%; Average earnings Y/Y exp. +8.4%, prev. +7.9%;
    • Average workweek hours exp. 34.3hrs, prev. 34.2hrs.

    TREND RATE:

    Backward-looking non-farm payroll trend-rates offer little insight in this environment. Updates on how the US labor market is progressing will likely be seen first in the weekly jobless claims/continuing claims data, regional prints and anecdotal reports from corporations bringing workers back from furlough (uncertainty remains over how many workers will be recalled) rather than the BLS Employment Situation Report. At present, analysts are eyeing how soon weekly claims can fall below the arbitrary 1mln level (it is estimated to do so around the end of June), and then the evolution of joblessness; Fed voter Kaplan expects the unemployment rate to fall to 10-11% by the end of this year, and back beneath 7.0% by the end of 2021, assuming consumers are willing to resume activity. The Fed will make economic projections in June, and although they will be subject to large caveats, they will still be useful as a barometer to gauge how quickly progress is being made in lowering unemployment in the months ahead, and by extension, what further support the economy needs.

    UNEMPLOYMENT RATE:

    According to Morgan Stanley, the unemployment rate will move up from 14.7% to 17.0% in May, a stronger than consensus forecast, and a number which according to the bank will likely peak in unemployment rate for this cycle. In reality, as we noted last month, the shadow unemployment rate, which includes people absent from work for other reasons, is much higher (closer to 25.5% in April). There is considerable uncertainty as to how high the shadow unemployment rate could be due to compositional and categorization noise. For example, some people that were absent from work for other reasons are counted as employed, but are presumed to be unemployed. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) can re-categorize this at any time, which could lift the unemployment rate to as high as 25%, in our view.

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    PARTICIPATION RATE:

    The participation rate is expected to remain unchanged at 60.2%, after declining 2.5% in April. There is downside risk to the unemployment rate if labor force participation moves lower. For example, if participation declines 20bp to 60.0%, the unemployment rate would be 16.7% instead of 17.0%. The flows from employment to outside the labor force are higher than ever before, due to the provision under the CARES Act that does not require workers to actively seek work to qualify for unemployment insurance benefits.

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    INITIAL JOBLESS CLAIMS:

    The high frequency weekly numbers offer a mixed signal: initial jobless claims data corresponding to the BLS jobs report survey period is yet to show that the easing of lockdown measures has resulted in any large scale return to work for furloughed workers (note: the data does not count those claiming the new Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Benefits). The corresponding continuing claims report, however, surprised by falling for the first time since the pandemic, suggesting that the reopening of states was in fact pushing businesses to rehire some of the people let go when the virus hit.

    WAGES:

    The sharp rise seen in April’s earnings metrics is a quirk due to the data not adjusting for those on low incomes who lost jobs – these people are removed from the sample, resulting in a higher average wage of those that remain in employment. The sharp rise is therefore not a positive, and if unemployment remains elevated, there will be pressure on wage growth during the recovery. As MS further explains, in the April Payrolls report, job losses were broadly based across sectors but the incidence of unemployment fell most heavily on lower-wage segments of the labor market. This created a compositional bias in the data that caused a +4.7%M increase in earnings. Layoffs in May are expected to be more evenly distributed across the pay scale.

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    Consumers’ appraisal of the job market was mixed, but there were signs of stabilisation, according to the Conference Board’s gauge. Whether consumers re-emerge from the pandemic with confidence to return to work will depend on stronger testing, tracing and quarantine measures needed to give consumers confidence to engage in activity; additionally, how quickly the case count declines, how soon economies can reopen, and how soon hiring picks up. For now, consumers’ short-term earnings outlook is stable, but they will likely need – and are still expecting – more fiscal
    support over the coming 12-months.

    STIMULUS CLIFF:

    Recent government stimulus has not merely offset consumers’ lost earnings, in many cases it has exceeded them, and balances in checking accounts that had fewer than USD 5,000 of funds 12-weeks ago now have between 30-40% more money in them given minimal economic activity taking place, according to Bank of America, while BEA data last week showed the savings rate surging to a record high. Whether Americans draw savings and resume consumption in the months ahead will be a function of how confident they ultimately are that a ‘second wave’ more disruptive than the first can be avoided, particularly amid some messaging from lawmakers averse to more fiscal largesse. However, it is worth being cognizant of a potential ‘stimulus cliff’; weekly federal unemployment benefits will end in July, and there seems to be a lack of political will to extend it amid concerns of ballooning deficits. The US is still expected to follow-up with further stimulus possibly in June, likely sized around the USD 1trln mark – significantly smaller than USD 3trln in the bill that the House recently passed. And while the fiscal support might not contain another round of cheques to Americans, there could be ‘back to work bonuses’ incentivising a return to work.

    BUSINESS SURVEYS

    The manufacturing ISM report saw the employment sub-index pickup by 4.6 points to 32.1. But the ISM said employees returning to work in late May will positively impact the index in June. Meanwhile, the non-manufacturing ISM report showed employment conditions improving to 31.8 from 30.0, in contraction for the third straight month, with no industry reporting a  rise in employment. Comments from respondents include: “Furloughed as much staff as possible to reduce costs due to COVID-19” and “Terminations, furloughs, hourly reductions [and] forced vacations.”

    ADP:

    ADP reported 2.76mln jobs were lost from the US economy in May, better than the 9mln of losses that the Street was expecting; the prior was also revised up to -19.56mln from the initially stated -20.24mln. This decline would be less than has been implied by the 12.2mln initial jobless claims registered between April and May, according to Pantheon Macroeconomics, but is consistent with the 3.1mln increase in continuing claims in that window. “This suggests that the re-hiring of people in states beginning to reopen was very substantial, even though reported job postings on Indeed fell further between the two surveys,” and “presumably, most people were simply rehired by email, text or phone call.” Pantheon reminds us that the ADP measure is generated by a model which incorporates macro variables as well as official payroll data from the previous month, in addition to the information gleaned from firms which use ADP’s payroll processing services. “It’s possible that ADP’s numbers are unrepresentative for May, or that the model is unreliable given the step-shift in the state of the labour market, but the safest approach probably is to assume that Friday’s official payroll numbers will be much less bad than the current consensus, -8mln, and June payrolls likely will increase substantially.”

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    CHALLENGER JOB CUTS:

    Challenger announced US-based employers intend to cut 397,016 jobs in May (209,147 directly a result of COVID), easing from April’s total of 671,129. “Although we saw a significant drop in May over April, we are still in record territory and the cumulative number of cuts since the pandemic began is staggering,” Challenger said, “as states and cities re-open, we can expect to see these numbers decrease as more people return to work. But many lost jobs will not return soon, if ever.”

  • Students Demand Lax Grading For Black Students. University Agrees…
    Students Demand Lax Grading For Black Students. University Agrees…

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 06/04/2020 – 22:45

    Authored by Jessica Custodio via Campus Reform,

    Students at the University of Washington are demanding that black students be given leniency on finals because they are too “busy fighting for [their] rights to sit down and study.”

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    The university is advising professors to do just that.

    An online petition calls for laxed grading and accommodations, specifically for Black students. So far, the petition has amassed more than 26,000 signatures.

    “…give Black students a break! We are already DISPROPORTIONATELY impacted by this pandemic in terms of health care access and financial hardship. Now add state-sanctioned violence, how do you expect us to enter finals in this headspace?!” reads the petition.

    “You need to encourage and demand professors to accommodate their black students during this time. If UW truly understands our pain, UW will be a part of alleviating it,” the petition continues. “We can’t sit back and watch as injustices unfold before our eyes. We don’t have the privilege that white and non-black students do to ignore what’s happening and stay at home to study for finals,” the petition added.

    “We are busy fighting for our rights and for the rights of future black children and students to sit down and study. The least UW could do is demand professors to accommodate us during this time”

    “I recognize that this institution and others across the country were not built to serve marginalized students, specifically Black students. Still to this day, institutions such as UW, do not serve Black students to the same capacity that white students benefit from,” student government president Kelty Pierce told The Daily.

    A template to help professors announce these accommodations has been circulating on social media, reading “Dear Students, I am writing to you to offer accommodations for black students in this class during the end of this class and finals.”

    “Many black students are not just using this time to cope emotionally, but to fight on the front lines of these protests and actively work and take action on what has been happening to the black community.” it continues.

    Nicole McNichols, UW Psychology Professor provided Campus Reform with a copy of the email she sent to her own students. 

    “I sent this on Sunday before I knew about the petition,” McNichols said. “Obviously, I support the petition and absolutely believe the accommodations it requests should be honored by all faculty. Students need all of the support and compassion we can afford to give them right now.”

    The email sent by McNichols to her students reads, “I wanted to reach out and acknowledge the incredible grief, fear, and loneliness that I know many of you are experiencing in light of recent (and not so recent) events. These are frightening times and I know that many of you are struggling emotionally as our country suffers not only from a pandemic but also from abhorrent racism, overwhelming violence, and palpable rage. These events are terrible and it is completely understandable to feel scared and alone right now.”

    “Last, I think we all could use a break right now as these times certainly call for compassion. Given this, there will be a following change to the course policies. First, the remaining homework chapters are being put into review mode. Everyone will receive full points. Second, I have decided to drop everyone’s lowest exam score. This means that you may opt-out of taking Exam 3 if you just don’t feel up to it, (or if you [are] happy with your scores from exam 1 and 2), the email added.”

    UW Senior Director of Media Relations Victor Balta directed Campus Reform to a message that was sent to all instructors Monday asking them “to consider that while we are together as a community, some are being affected more than others.”

    “I think the statement clearly lays out a couple of examples of what instructors could provide to their students, such as extra time to finish assignments or a ‘final-examination optional’ approach,” said Balta.

    In the message, the university told professors “in these final weeks of the quarter, as assignments become due and exams are taken, to be especially responsive to the needs that your students, especially those who are members of the Black community, may have for accommodations as we conclude the school year.”

    Accommodations might include extra time to finish assignments or providing a ‘final examination optional’ pathway, for example,” the memo continued.

  • Robots And Social Distancing Will Revolutionize Restaurants In Post-COVID World  
    Robots And Social Distancing Will Revolutionize Restaurants In Post-COVID World  

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 06/04/2020 – 22:25

    Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, the trend was in place for artificial intelligence and automation to displace tens of millions of jobs over this decade. Replacing workers with robots has certainly been thrown into hyperdrive in a post-corona world.

    Strict social distancing enforced by some countries has now given way to reduced forms of distancing in daily life. This is precisely what is happening in South Korea, with some bars and restaurants reopening. 

    At Coffee Bar K in Seoul, a robo-bartender has replaced a human, can make perfect cocktails in the fraction of the time, reported Reuters. 

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    Coffee Bar K’s Robo-bartender

    The bar is encouraging customers to return, promoting its use of robots preparing drinks in a contactless environment, as a bid to attract patrons and increase sales. 

    “Since this space is usually filled with people, customers tend to feel very anxious,” human bartender Choi Won-woo said.  “I think they would feel safer if the robot makes and serves the ice rather than if we were to do it ourselves.”

    Down the street, a robot arm shakes up drinks for thirsty consumers at the Cafe Bot Bot Bot coffee bar. Manager Kim Tae-wan said customers feel much safer with robots handling their drinks than humans.

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    Cafe Bot Bot Bot’s drink robot

    A post-corona world will be filled with many challenges for bars and restaurants. The most difficult question for operators and managers is how to instill enough confidence in people to bring them back. 

    One way to do this is by automating the back and front end of the restaurant. Allowing robots to prepare drinks and food in a contactless environment in the future and will drive confidence among patrons. 

    Robots to replace bartenders, cooks, and waiters is already here: 

    Concentrating on the front end of the restaurant. Operators and managers will likely have to readjust the dining floor with social distancing plexiglass dividers at tables, ultraviolet thermal body scanner at the entrance, and increasing online delivery via food lockers. 

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    NYC Brooklyn Chop House plexiglass dividers 

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    ultraviolet thermal body scanner

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    Brooklyn Dumpling Shop food locker 

    Another way to boost sales and save the collapsing restaurant industry is to install plexiglass bubbles, called Plex’Eat, which are suspended from the ceiling and sit around a patron’s head. At the same time, they have dinner, ensuring social distancing and a reduction in virus transmission inside the facility. This is what they look like: 

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    Plex’Eat

    While robots and social distancing measures seem radical, and quite frankly absurd, they could be the new standard for restaurants and bars in a post-corona world. However, there’s a trade-off — the automation part of this will lead to permeant job loss to some degree. 

  • The June 4 Tiananmen Square Massacre: Five Truths That Still Aren't Widely Known
    The June 4 Tiananmen Square Massacre: Five Truths That Still Aren’t Widely Known

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 06/04/2020 – 22:05

    Via The Epoch Times,

    Following the sudden death of a beloved political reformer, Hu Yaobang, 200,000 students gathered at Tiananmen Square on April 22, 1989, to await the hearse carrying Hu’s body – but it never arrived. The mass of students were angered, and their burning desire for freedom could be contained no more.

    For the next few weeks, Tiananmen Square was occupied by these student protesters, who aimed at making reality their dream of ridding the country of communist tyranny and bringing democratic reform to China. Their non-violent demonstration perhaps brought a glimmer of hope … until the army moved in. Although martial law was declared on May 20 that year, what caused the army to suddenly go on a killing rampage on June 4?

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    L: Thousands of Chinese gather on June 2, 1989, in Tiananmen Square around “The Goodness of Democracy,” demanding democracy despite martial law in Beijing. (CATHERINE HENRIETTE/AFP via Getty Images). R: “The Goddess of Democracy,” a 10-meter replica of the Statue of Liberty created by students from an art institute to promote the pro-democracy protest against the Chinese government. (TOSHIO SAKAI/AFP via Getty Images)

    1. Mass-Murdered by the Chinese Regime

    At least 10,454 people were mass-murdered by the Chinese communist regime on Tiananmen Square, according to an unnamed source from the Chinese State Council. The figure is far greater than the “official” fatality count of 200.

    On June 4, 1989, students were gunned down in droves and “mown down” by tanks. “APCs (Armored personnel carriers) then ran over bodies time and time again to make ‘pie’ and remains collected by bulldozer. Remains incinerated and then hosed down drains,” reads part of a declassified statement, which was obtained by Alan Donald, Britain’s ambassador to China in 1989.

    It’s still unconfirmed how many more were massacred during and after the students’ unarmed protest.

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    Waving banners, high school students march in Beijing streets near Tiananmen Square on May 25, 1989, during a rally to support the pro-democracy protest against the Chinese regime. (CATHERINE HENRIETTE/AFP via Getty Images)

    2. The Ringleader Is Still Alive

    In addition to rolling over the students with tanks, the army fired high-explosive shells that expand on impact, also known as dum-dum bullets, (forbidden by the Geneva Convention) to kill the students in the most harm-inflicting way possible.

    The question remains—what kind of a human being would order such a brutal mass murder of freedom-seeking civilians?

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    Former leader of the Chinese Communist Party Jiang Zemin (Feng Li/Getty Images)

    Former paramount leader of the party Deng Xiaoping was impressed with Jiang Zemin’s iron-fisted proposition to use the army to crack down on the students, and promoted him from Party Chief of Shanghai to General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party days before the massacre, giving him free rein to do as he liked.

    Jiang Zemin, the mastermind behind the massacre, ordered the army to carry out his bloody strategy on June 4. The “gate of heavenly peace” was suddenly turned into hell on Earth.

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    Taken care of by others, an unidentified foreign journalist (2nd-R) is carried out from the clash site between the army and students on June 4, 1989, near Tiananmen Square. (TOMMY CHENG/AFP via Getty Images)

    3. Ruthless Abuse of Power

    The Tiananmen Square Massacre was just the start of Jiang’s ruthless abuse of power. He went on to commit the most heinous crimes that couldn’t bear the light of day. In the bloody wake of the massacre, Jiang became Deng’s ideal heir for the next Party Chief, a position Jiang secured in 1993.

    Jiang, a Marxist hardliner and ex-senior spy for the KGB’s Far-East Bureau, had only begun to show his true colors with how he dealt with the protesting students and went on to orchestrate even bloodier campaigns. In 1999, Jiang sought to “eradicate” Falun Gong—a popular spiritual practice—after the number of people practicing it rose some 100 million, outnumbering the then 70 million Party members, according to state-run reports at the time.

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    Falun Gong practitioners doing the group exercise in Guangzhou, China, in 1998. (Minghui)

    Under Jiang’s rule, an adroit misinformation campaign inundated China, turning public opinion against Falun Gong by subjecting the spiritual practice to extreme vilification—including the infamous Tiananmen Square “self-immolation” hoax, which successfully deceived the nation—paving the way for Jiang’s next phase: to forcibly “transform” or “eliminate” the meditators who refused to give up the practice.

    In response to Jiang’s genocidal policy, believed to have caused a widespread yet unascertainable amount of state-approved killings, including forced organ harvesting, over 209,000 lawsuits have since been filed against Jiang, making him the most sued dictator in history.

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    Falun Gong practitioners at a rally in front of the Chinese embassy in New York City on July 3, 2015, to support the global effort to sue Jiang Zemin. (Larry Dye/The Epoch Times)

    4. Horrifying Accounts Kept Secret

    A Blacklock’s Reporter obtained secret telex messages concerning horrifying accounts of what really happened on Tiananmen Square that day via access-to-information laws.

    “An old woman knelt in front of soldiers pleading for students; soldiers killed her,” the Canadian embassy in Beijing reported at the time.

    Blacklock’s writes: “A boy was seen trying to escape holding a woman with a 2-year old child in a stroller, and was run over by a tank”; “The tank turned around and mashed them up”; “Soldiers fired machine guns until the ammo ran out.”

    An unbelievable amount of bullets were fired on civilians at Tiananmen that “they ricocheted inside nearby houses, killing many residents.”

    “The embassy described the killings as ‘savage,’” according to Blacklock’s Reporter.

    “They are now entering a period of vicious repression during which denunciations and fear of persecution will terrorize the population,” reads another cable obtained.

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    Chinese onlookers run away as a soldier threatens them with a gun on June 5, 1989, as tanks took position at Beijing’s key intersections next to the diplomatic compound. (CATHERINE HENRIETTE/AFP via Getty Images)

    Diplomats added that some 1,000 executions took place following the massacre, but an exact figure is unconfirmed. “It was probably thought that the massacre of a few hundreds or thousands would convince the population not to pursue their protests. It seems to be working,” reads a statement by the diplomats.

    The secret British cable, obtained by news website HK01, reveals more detail about the crimes of the 27 Army of Shanxi Province on the day.

    “27 Army ordered to spare no one and shot wounded SMR soldiers. Four wounded girl students begged for their lives but were bayoneted. A 3-year-old girl was injured but her mother was shot as she went to her aid as were six others who tried.”

    “A thousand survivors were told they could escape via Zhengyi Lu but were then mown down by specially prepared M/G (machine gun) positions.”

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    Ailing student hunger strikers from Beijing University receive first aid treatment under a makeshift tent set up on May 17, 1989, at Tiananmen Square as students enter the 5th day of a marathon hunger strike as part of a mass pro-democracy protest against the Chinese government. (CATHERINE HENRIETTE/AFP via Getty Images)

    5. “June 4”: A Highly Taboo Subject in China Today

    Despite Hong Kong lighting up every evening on June 4 in an annual candlelight vigil to commemorate the victims of the massacre, Chinese mainlanders across the border are without such freedom of speech. Talking about the Tiananmen Square Massacre, or even mentioning “June 4,” or “6.4,” could have one disappear.

    In 2007, Zhang Zhongshun, a lecturer from Yantai University, showed his class a video of the massacre he obtained from an overseas website. He was subsequently jailed for three years by Laishan City Court on Feb. 28, 2008.

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    Tens of thousands of people hold candles during a vigil in Hong Kong on June 4, 2018, to mark the 29th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown in Beijing. (ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP via Getty Images)

    “I imagined that the worst case would just be that the university president would criticize me in front of my colleagues in a meeting. I would not have thought that the communist regime would imprison me,” Zhang told The Epoch Times in an interview after his release from the detention.

    “Is it illegal even if I include a historical event into my lecture?” he asked.

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    A student displays a banner with one of the slogans chanted by the crowd of some 200,000 pouring into Tiananmen Square on April 22, 1989, in Beijing in an attempt to participate in the funeral ceremony of former Chinese Communist Party leader and liberal reformer Hu Yaobang. His death in April triggered an unprecedented wave of pro-democracy demonstrations. The April-June 1989 movement was crushed by Chinese troops in June when army tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square June 4, 1989. (CATHERINE HENRIETTE/AFP via Getty Images)

    Who’d dare raise this for discussion in China knowing the consequences? This year marks the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Will the current Chinese leaders redress the issue and bring Jiang Zemin to justice for his litany of crimes? Only time will tell.

  • "It's Pretty Obvious This Will End Badly": In Historic Reversal, Grantham's GMO Goes Short US Stocks
    “It’s Pretty Obvious This Will End Badly”: In Historic Reversal, Grantham’s GMO Goes Short US Stocks

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 06/04/2020 – 21:45

    With retail investors taking over the extremely illiquid market,  resulting in crazy intraday swings where the horde of robinhood retail traders alone can send a stock soaring (and tumbling)…

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    … many veteran investors are throwing in the towel on what is emerging as the most furiously ridiculous rally in history in what is now better known as “Jay’s market” (with 73% of Wall Street claiming that the market is only up due to the artificial gimmick of the Fed’s balance sheet explosion and not due to fundamental factors). And with one after another investing legend such as Warren Buffett, Stanley Druckenmiller, David Tepper boycotting the artificial rally, and either selling or pulling out, today GMO’s Jeremy Grantham became the latest to bail on what Bank of America recently called a “fake market.”

    In a letter to GMO investors, Grantham writes that “we have never lived in a period where the future was so uncertain” and yet “the market is 10% below its previous high in January when, superficially at least, everything seemed fine in economics and finance. And if not “fine,” well, good enough. The future paths include many that could change corporate profitability, growth, and many aspects of capitalism, society, and the global political scene.” 

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    Jeremy Grantham.

    In short, the veteran value investor known for calling several of the biggest market turns of recent decades admits he has lost his faith in an upside case – unlike the retail daytrading army – and his sense of direction in a world of record uncertainty “which in some ways seems the highest in my experience” and as a result “in terms of risk and return – particularly of the worst possible outcomes compared to the best – the current market seems lost in one-sided optimism when prudence and patience seem much more appropriate.“

    Grantham also highlights the obvious: that the market and the economy have never been more disconnected, and points out that while “the current P/E on the U.S. market is in the top 10% of its history… the U.S. economy in contrast is in its worst 10%, perhaps even the worst 1%…. This is apparently one of the most impressive mismatches in history.“

    As a result of this total loss of coherence driven by trillions in central bank liquidity that have propelled a massive wedge between fundamentals and stock prices, GMO, the Boston fund manager Mr Grantham co-founded in 1977, cut its net exposure to global equities in its biggest fund from 55% to just 25%, near the lowest levels it reported during the global financial crisis, according to a separate update from GMO’s head of asset allocation, Ben Inker.

    That decision, according to the FT, slashed GMO’s Benchmark-Free Allocation Fund exposure to US equities from a net 3-4% to a net short position worth about 5% of the $7.5bn portfolio, said Inker, perhaps the first time the fund has turned net short US stocks since the crisis. This, after GMO loaded up on stocks during the sell-off but has since cut offloaded its exposure to the US market following the unprecedented 40% rally in the past 2 months.

    “The Covid-19 pandemic “should have generated enhanced respect for risk and it hasn’t. It has caused quite the reverse,” Grantham told the Financial Times. He noted that trailing price-earnings multiples in the US stock market were “in the top 10 per cent of its history” while the US economy “is in its worst 10 per cent, perhaps even the worst 1 per cent”, echoing what he said in his quarterly letter.

    And while markets seem to be taking all the negative news in stride, Grantham is worried that the wave of devastation that is coming is unlike anything experienced before:

    At GMO we dealt with three major events prior to this crisis, and rightly or wrongly, we felt “nearly certain” that sooner or later we would be right. We exited Japan 100% in 1987 at 45x and watched it go to 65x (for a second, bigger than the U.S.) before a downward readjustment of 30 years and counting. In early 1998 we fought the Tech bubble from 21x (equal to the previous record high in 1929) to 35x before a 50% decline, losing many clients and then regaining even more on the round trip. In 2007 we led our clients relatively painlessly through the housing bust. In all three we felt we were nearly certain to be right. Japan, the Tech bubbles, and 1929, which sadly I missed, were not new types of events. They were merely extreme cases akin to South Sea Bubble investor euphoria and madness. The 2008 event also was easier if you focused on the U.S. housing euphoria, which was a 3-sigma, 100-year event or, simply, unique. We calculated that a return trip to the old price trend and a typical overrun in those extreme house prices would remove $10 trillion of perceived wealth from U.S. consumers and guarantee the worst recession for decades.All these events echoed historical precedents. And from these precedents we drew confidence.

    But this event is unlike all those. It is totally new and there can be no near certainties, merely strong possibilities. This is why Ben Inker, our Head of Asset Allocation, is nervous and this is why you are nervous, or should be.

    While the uncertainties are indeed large, one can triangulate a sufficiently material dose of “certainty” about what is coming, and as Grantham explains further, it is not pretty, especially with the US economy already on the back foot heading into the crisis:

    We had U.S. and global problems looming before the virus: an increasingly disturbed climate causing global floods, droughts, and farming problems; slowing population growth, in the developed world, soon to be negative; and steadily slowing productivity gains, especially in the developed world, and therefore a slowing GDP trend. In the U.S., our 3%+ a year trend is down to, at best, 1.5% in my opinion. It is closer to a 1% maximum in Europe. We had, as mentioned, top 10% historical P/Es in the U.S. and much the highest debt level ever in the U.S. for both corporations and peacetime government. So, after a 10-year economic recovery, this would have been a perfectly normal time historically for a setback.

    And then the virus hit.

    Simultaneously, it is causing supply and demand shocks unlike anything before. Ever. It is generating a much faster economic contraction than that of the Great Depression. And unlike 1989 Japan, 2000 Tech (U.S.), and 2008 (U.S. and Europe), it is truly global. The drop in GDP and rise in unemployment in four weeks have equaled what took one to four years to reach in the Great Depression and were never reached in the other events. Rogoff & Reinhart, Harvard Professors who wrote the definitive analysis of the 2008 bust, agree that this event is indeed completely different and suggest it will take at least 5 years to regain 2019 levels of activity. But this is a guess. We really don’t know how long it will take. Nearly certain is that a V-shaped recovery looks like a lost hope. The best possible outcome would be that there will be, almost miraculously, billions of doses of effective vaccine by year-end. But most viruses have never had a useful vaccine and most useful vaccines have taken well over five years to develop and when developed have been only partially successful. Yes, this time there will be an enormous effort with unprecedented spending. But still, a leading vaccine expert says quick success would be like “drawing successfully to several inside straights in a row.” And even if all works out well with a vaccine there will remain deep economic wounds.

    Meanwhile, as the world waits for a vaccine, and buys stocks confident one is imminent, the “bankruptcies have already started (Hertz on May 22nd) and by year-end thousands of them will arrive into a peak of already existing corporate debt. It will need spectacular management, which it may get. But it may not. Throwing money – paper and electronic impulses – at the problem can help psychology and, particularly, the stock market, where extra stimulus money can end up but does not necessarily put people back to work; there will be up to 20% unemployment for at least a moment.”

    In response to this historic economic collapse, central banks’ unprecedented stimulus efforts have “temporarily overwhelmed” underlying economic realities but “it’s hard to believe that will continue.”

    And when it stops, watch out below: Grantham told the FT in an interview that after seeing markets price in “total recovery” over recent weeks, “my confidence that this will end badly is increasing.”

    Speaking as protests against police brutality and racism filled the streets of US cities, Grantham said previous outbreaks of social instability had had few lasting effects on the US economy, but “there are more things going wrong than normal“.

    However, the value investing legend’s most dire prediction was that “if you look back in two to three years and this market turns around and drops 50%, the history books will say ‘That looked like one of the great warnings of all time. It was pretty obvious it was destined to end badly,” Grantham said, adding: “If it does end badly the history books are going to be very unkind to the bulls.” For the sake of an entire generation of Robinhooders who will lose everything if there is a 50% crash, one hopes Grantham is wrong.

    Finally, Grantham also chimed in on the “most important question in finance right now”, revealing that he was proud of not having “made a fuss about inflation” in 20 years of writing his widely followed letters, but said that record amounts of monetary easing from central banks had now created the possibility of inflationary pressures.

    “With a generous stimulus program in many countries you can just about daydream about inflation for the first time in 30 years.”

    To this, all we can add is that in the very near future that daydream will become a nightmare.

  • The Staggering "Powell Bubble" In Just One Amazing Chart
    The Staggering “Powell Bubble” In Just One Amazing Chart

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 06/04/2020 – 21:44

    With three in four finance professionals convinced that Fed is behind the current rally thanks to an unprecedented firehose of liquidity which is anywhere between $8 and $12 trillion based on asset purchases, backstops, and guarantees, there is no denying that what we are experiencing now is a continuation of the bubble spawned by Bernanke in 2008, nursed by Yellen and now desperately defended by the same Powell who back on October 23, 2012 said “I think we are actually at a point of encouraging risk-taking… investors really do understand now that we will be there to prevent serious losses.”

    So how does one quantify or visualize just how big the “Powell Bubble” is? While there are many ways to represent the bubble spawned by the Fed across all asset classes which have become the receptacle of the Fed’s unlimited liquidity torrent, but a fascinating one was proposed today by Bloomberg’s Eddie van der Walt who writes that “raw material and equity prices have become severely disconnected” adding that “a correction will probably entail both lower stocks and higher commodity prices.”

    As the Bloomberg commodity analyst notes, the Nasdaq is trading at a 152x multiple of the Bloomberg Commodity Index, surpassing the highs seen during the Dot Com bubble by almost a factor of two!

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    In other words, the bulk of newly created liquidity has flooded into stocks even as commodities – which tend to be a far better representation of the overall economic state – languish. The average ratio since the end of 2001 has been nearer 37. That divergence  stems from the Nasdaq approaching record highs set earlier this year while commodities languish near pandemic-crisis lows.

    As van der Walt concludes, “And while the tech-heavy shares in the Nasdaq aren’t big consumers of industrial metals and oil, this matters because it shows just how disconnected stock prices have become from the real economy. Something has got to give.”

    He’s absolutely right, but that “something” won’t give without an existential fight from the Fed’s Powell: while we excerpted from his comments above, below is all one needs to know courtesy of the Oct 2012 FOMC Minutes, in which Powell explained precisely what is going on:

    The market in most cases will cheer us for doing more. It will never be enough for the market. Our models will always tell us that we are helping the economy, and I will probably always feel that those benefits are overestimated. And we will be able to tell ourselves that market function is not impaired and that inflation expectations are under control. What is to stop us, other than much faster economic growth, which it is probably not in our power to produce?

    I think we are actually at a point of encouraging risk-taking, and that should give us pause. Investors really do understand now that we will be there to prevent serious losses. It is not that it is easy for them to make money but that they have every incentive to take more risk, and they are doing so. Meanwhile, we look like we are blowing a fixed-income duration bubble right across the credit spectrum that will result in big losses when rates come up down the road. You can almost say that that is our strategy.

    Incidentally, for those who want to fight the Fed, well there’s your pair trade: short the Nasdaq and go long the Bloomberg commodity index.

  • NYC Pushes $1.1 Billion Cut To NYPD Budget As Ninth Night Of Demonstrations Begins
    NYC Pushes $1.1 Billion Cut To NYPD Budget As Ninth Night Of Demonstrations Begins

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 06/04/2020 – 21:34

    Update (1730ET): As the ninth night of demonstrations began, Americans gathered in Minneapolis, New York and elsewhere for what were mostly peaceful protests, as the decision to charge all the officers involved in restraining Floyd has assuaged public anger somewhat.

    Bloomberg reports that it has been largely peaceful in most cities so far. Gov Cuomo urged protesters in NYC to get tested for COVID, while the mayor urged them to protest during the day.

    Washington and Los Angeles lifted their curfews, while a bipartisan pair of lawmakers asked for a “briefing” on violence at the protests.

    NYC’s Police Commissioner Dermot Shea replied that the city “absolutely” doesn’t need the military to come help suppress the violence. 

    Asked by CNN if he thought statements by the president criticized as divisive – that the authorities needed to “dominate” protesters– were helpful, Shea said, “No, I don’t.”

    Meanwhile, the push to cut police department budgets his beginning with NYC Comptroller calling for a $1.1 billion reduction in spending on the NYPD over the next four years. Given the drop in local tax revenue, we imagine that many departments – though mostly urban departments that probably could use the manpower, while suburbs continue their longtime trend of overpolicing.

    President Trump weighed in with a tweet.

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    * * *

    Update (1315ET): Not only is Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser scrapping a curfew for Thursday night (since there were no arrests among the peaceful protesters who gathered in the city, she’s also calling for all national guard troops from other states to be withdrawn from the capital district immediately.

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    In addition to the beefed up national guard presence, Washington has seen a number of federal agents deputized to serve on the front lines.

    Yesterday, the mayor vowed to “push back” against an alleged attempt by the White House to subvert control of the Metropolitan Police Department, which reports to the Mayor of DC.

    * * *

    Update (0940ET): The AP just published new information about the officer who was attacked in Brooklyn. The officer was on an anti-looting patrol when he was attacked. The attacker was shot, as were two officers who were with the victim. The suspect is n critical condition after being “shot multiple times”.

    All three wounded officers are, fortunately, expected to survive, said Police Commissioner Dermot Shea.

    “What we know at this point and time is that it appears to be a completely, cowardly, despicable, unprovoked attack on a defenseless police officer and thank God we aren’t planning a funeral right now,” Shea said.

    It was one of several attacks on on officers in recent days, including a driver who plowed into a police sargeant trying to stop looting in the Bronx, and another cop who was hit in the head with a brick.

    * * *

    A movement inspired by another in a long line of heinous police killings in the US, and instead of walking away with a slap on the wrist, all of the officers involved with the ill-fated arrest have now all been arrested themselves, and charged with murder, or abetting murder. But still the protests won’t stop, and instead, thousands of angry Europeans have opted to join their American ‘comrades’, and in so doing vent their frustrations following months of restrictive lockdowns.

    A bunch of anarchists in Greece hurled molotov cocktails at the US embassy in Athens.

    Riots and protests over police killings started because the cops who killed Eric Garner and Michael Brown walked away with only administrative punishments, and both got to keep their badges. This time around, the movement has a different goal: abolish “white supremacy” around the world.

    Remember when an army of media pundits criticized the Occupy Wall Street movement for its ‘vague’ agenda? Well, it appears the those who continue to return to the streets night after night have only one real agenda: venting their rage on the cops, feds and national guardsmen, by pelting them with bricks and even shooting them. By the New York Times’ count, Wednesday was the ninth night of demonstrations, and while most of the major American newspapers heralded the night as ‘largely peaceful’, they mostly neglected to mention that, amid all the enthusiasm over the new charges brought by Keith Ellison, somebody walked up to a cop in Brooklyn last night without provocation and stabbed him in the neck. Two cops were also shot during a struggle with the suspect, the New York Post reported. It’s unclear whether the officer stabbed in the neck survived. The two who were shot reportedly had non-life-threatening injuries.

    The NYP said the motive for the assault remains unclear, and an investigation is ongoing.

    Elsewhere in Brooklyn, cops rejected calls from protesters at the Barclays center to “take a knee”, as hundreds chanted from behind a fence. As the NYT reported, “they were not having it.”

    AP figures put the number of arrests over the week-long spree of unrest to be over 10,000 nationwide as of Thursday morning.

    The phenomenon of deputizing all available federal officers to protect the area around the White House continued Wednesday night, as reporters claimed to encounter BoP corrections officers, DEA agents and others (we wonder if the fish and wildlife agents were out there too).

    Outside Brooklyn, where the alliance between blacks and the white middle class gentrifiers who pushed them out of their homes has proven notably toxic, violence last night was minimal, as protests remained largely peaceful. Several horses were apparently allowed to join the rally in the Mission District last night.

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    A large group of peaceful protesters sat near the intersection of 86th Street and East End Avenue, the closest they are legally allowed to assemble near Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence. For a time, the NYT said, the only sound to be heard was the birds and helicopters flying overhead.
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    Cops in midtown Manhattan enforced the city’s curfew, and loaded those captured during a “mass arrest” onto police vans for transportation.

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    This cyclist went down particularly hard.

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    Marchers in Washington DC, roused by the earlier curfew but subdued by the rainfall, were greeted by a wider perimeter around the White House, as well as more officers, though demonstrations remained largely peaceful. Somebody passed out sandwiches. Another person gave out cookies.

    The situation was very different in Portland, Ore., widely known across the US as the city with the most antifas per 100,000 residents, as all the white hipsters who populate the city’s coffee shops, accompanied, presumably, by groups of “outside agitators”, once again turned violent after dark, after a daytime rally that drew more than 10,000 people.

    “We have to collectively come together to stop those who are holding our city with violence…Every night, we are using all our resources and it is still not enough,” said Portland Police Chief Jami Resch.

    Among the many controversies to erupt this week, the NYT is facing backlash for publishing an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton calling for the US to “send in the army” to restore order to the streets. One of the NYT’s most visible reporters claimed the op-ed “puts black reporters in danger”.

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    We’d love to hear an explanation of that logic.

  • Brazil Now Home To World's Third-Largest Death Toll After Another Record Daily Jump: Virus Updates
    Brazil Now Home To World’s Third-Largest Death Toll After Another Record Daily Jump: Virus Updates

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 06/04/2020 – 21:28

    Summary:

    • Brazil passes Italy to claim world’s third-worst death toll
    • Architect of Sweden’s no-lockdown strategy says he has no regrets, and doesn’t plan to change approach
    • NY to allow drive-in, drive thru graduations
    • Italy sees more good numbers
    • Pakistan reports record jump
    • NYC won’t allow outdoor dining until next month
    • Florida reports most new cases since April for 2nd straight day
    • Global cases top 6.5 mil
    • Deaths top 485k
    • Hong Kong sees another alarming cluster
    • China allows foreign airlines to apply to return to service
    • Russia, Mexico, Brazil all see alarming jump in cases, deaths
    • Experts say Russia likely underestimating deaths in St. Petersburg by considerable margin
    • Backlash to the hydroxychloroquine backlash intensifies

    * * *

    Update (2115ET): As the bodies pile up and the prospect of a military takeover that would make Tom Cotton’s call to send in the army look like pacifism looms large over Brazilian civil society, the country’s public health officials have just confirmed that Brazil’s death toll has surpassed Italy’s.

    Brazil’s indigenous population has been particularly hard hit, as the outbreak strains health care resources in remote areas in Amazon region.

    To get a sense of how quickly the situation is deteriorating, deaths caused by the virus have climbed five-fold in the past month, according to Yahoo News.

    Many epidemiologists had hoped remote locations might protect the tribes, but the virus, which first took hold in Brazil’s cosmopolitan state capitals of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, is increasingly devastating remote areas of the country. Brazil’s coronavirus death toll climbed by 1,437 fatalities on Thursday, a new daily record, bringing Brazil’s total to 34,021. Confirmed cases surged another 30,925 to 614,941, as Brazil remains the country with the second-most confirmed cases behind the US.

    * * *

    Update (1422ET): Las Vegas has reopened, with stringent controls to prevent new infections.

    In other news, more promising data have been reported out of Italy today.

    Pakistan also reported a new record jump in cases:

    Yesterday, the architect of Sweden’s lockdown strategy, state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell,  inadvertently set off a rush by proponents of the lockdown approach to declare victory in the public debate by claiming Tegnell had admitted his approach was flawed and that he would be backing away from the strategy. But in a press briefing on Thursday, the state scientist stood by the country’s approach, and admitted that while he would have made certain adjustments if he knew at the beginning what he now knows, he has no plans to change tack, Politico reports.

    * * *

    Update (1240ET): After pulling back curfews and taking other steps to accommodate and encouraging both peaceful demonstrations (that widely violated the city’s social distancing rules) and violence and looting, Mayor de Blasio said Thursday that he likely wouldn’t allow restaurants to reopen for outdoor dining until next month, virtually guaranteeing that even more small businesses will change.

    The mayor is preparing for the June 8 start of “Phase One” reopening and said he anticipates reaching the second phase in July.

    For the restaurants that survive, at least the city’s Transportation and Planning Departments will help create “curbside restaurants” to allow eateries to convert adjacent parking spots into more seating for the first time. No permits will be needed to certify the street-side restaurants, de Blasio said.

    “The restaurant industry is the wellspring for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers,” de Blasio said. More then 184,000 of the city’s 274,000 food and beverage industry workers have lost their jobs due to the forced shutdown of the city. While de Blasio’s plan sounds nice on paper, in our experience, most NYC restaurants don’t have much – if any – space for patron parking.

    By comparison, both neighboring Connecticut and New Jersey have already OK’d restaurants to reopen for limited outdoor dining. 

    * * *

    Update (1120ET): As deaths and new cases reported in Florida over the last few days have increased, we warned that the market would eventually wake up to the uptick in new deaths and cases in certain states. The state reported its largest daily gain in six weeks yesterday as the number of cases neared 60k. Now, on Thursday, public health officials in the state have reported another multiweek high. Florida reported 1,317 new COVID-19 cases over the last day, the highest level since April 17.

    New numbers released by the Florida Department of Health officials Thursday show the state has a total of 60,183 cases, and a death toll that on Thursday climbed to 2,607. Hospitalizations across the state increased to 10,652.

    US stocks sold off a little on the news, suggesting investors are starting to worry again about a recurrence of the virus.

    More than half of the state’s cases are concentrated in Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe counties in the southern part of the state.

    Both Florida…

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    …and Georgia…

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    Source: New York Times

    …have seen cases reported Thursday at 2x the level from the day before.

    Meanwhile, in New York State, Gov Cuomo revealed that the state had expanded its testing capacity closer to its target, with the state now clocking 50k tests per day.

    Watch his press briefing below:

    The governor who helped perpetuate racist police tactics in his state by killing a push to legalize recreational marijuana – removing much of the pretext cops often use to unnecessarily stop young black and brown men also urged protesters to get tested for COVID-19, while adding that he stands with the protesters for “meaningful” reform.

    Is that going to include reforming your state’s drug laws, Governor?

    Finally, after NJ and Conn. moved to allow schools to hold graduation ceremonies starting in July, Cuomo said.

    Some couldn’t help but let out a justified groan.

    * * *

    While investors have been too distracted by the violence and unrest unfolding in the streets of the US (and now several European cities, with more unrest expected in Hong Kong) to care much about the coronavirus outbreak. We suspect this shift in focus has helped fuel the market’s astonishing rally over the last two weeks.

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    There’s no question that the US has been transfixed by the tumult sparked by the police murder of George Floyd, even as the violence and looting has mostly hurt black communities and black-owned small businesses, while the legal system has dutifully proceeded with the prosecution of all four officers involved in the killing.

    Investors ignore these developments at their own peril: because over the last few days, a surge in new cases and deaths reported in Russia, Brazil and Mexico has breathed new life into the international outbreak, even as many Americans speculate that perhaps President Trump had a point when he said the virus might run its course by the summer, lockdown or no lockdown.

    More experts cast doubt on Russia’s figures as its case total hit 441,108, as St Petersburg recorded 1,400 more deaths than average in May, according to official statistics cited by the Times of London, which which suggest that the government may have deliberately suppressed the true number of deaths. Officials say 177 people died last month of Covid-19 in St Petersburg, Russia’s second-biggest city. The majority of the “excess” deaths were likely to have been a result of pneumonia caused by coronavirus, even though many were labeled simply as pneumonia.

    Globally, coronavirus cases topped 6.5 million as of Thursday morning, while deaths neared 400k, at 386,464.

    According to figures released Thursday morning, Russia’s total number of infections passed 440,000 cases, while deaths continue to mount. The coronavirus death tolls in Brazil and Mexico have soared to new daily records, with 1,349 and 1,092 confirmed deaths reported over the past day, even as the countries begin to ease lockdown restrictions. Brazil now has more than 32,000 deaths, while Mexico ha more than 11,000.

    NBC News reports that the jump in deaths in Brazil has been driven by Brazil’s indigenous populations, through which the virus is spreading quickly, with deaths caused by the disease increasing more than five-fold in the past month.

    At least two US senators have accused China of hiding potentially critical data from the WHO, data that could have changed the course of the outbreak abroad, even as a Chinese officias deny reports about the WHO’s frustrations with prying early data from Chinese experts. 

    As backlash to the hydroxychloroquine backlash intensifies, a new study published by the NEJM claimed the drug “proved ineffective” for that purpose in a study that tested people who were “in close contact with the disease”. We’re not sure what that means. However, the Lancet’s decision to retract a warning about hydroxychloroquine elicited a triumphant editorial from WSJ, which outlines the history of how bias appears to have tinged the world’s interpretation of these studies.

    France’s Bastille Day military parade is set to be replaced by a ceremony on the Place de la Concorde square in central Paris, President Emmanuel Macron’s office announced on Thursday, angering millions of French citizens, who enthusiastically celebrate the dawn of the first French Republic every year.

    China appears to have turned the other cheek after the US officially barred the return of Chinese airlines running flights in the US, China’s aviation authority said that 95 foreign airlines that have suspended services in the country can now apply to resume flights. We’re curious to see which airlines will get the green light.

    While the UK continues to resist pressure to start reopening its borders, Spanish Tourism Minister Reyes Maroto said that all restrictions to border crossings with France and Portugal will be lifted beginning on June 22.

    Hong Kong confirmed five new cases on Thursday, all of which it claimed were imported. But that number belies the alarm that prompted the evacuation of some tenants from a Sha Tin building after six people living in the building had tested positive “preliminarily”. We’re waiting to hear more on that.

    Pakistan, meanwhile, registered its highest single-day rise in coronavirus cases for the third consecutive day on Wednesday, with 4,801 new cases taking the country’s total tally to 85,264.

  • Looters, Lockdowners, & The Law
    Looters, Lockdowners, & The Law

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 06/04/2020 – 21:25

    Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The American Institute for Economic Research,

    “Coronavirus hasn’t been a thing since Friday,” said a friend.

    “The new story is racism.”

    Following American media culture can make one’s head spin. 

    For three months, all we heard was the danger to life and civilization presented by a novel virus. Millions will die! Few will be spared! There will be unprecedented suffering unless we completely shatter the normal functioning of life. Lock down, shelter in place, and stand six feet apart – very strange exhortations never before heard in the modern history of annual viruses or any public policy in many lifetimes. 

    All of it enforced by the police power. The same police power that eventually landed on the neck of George Floyd.

    They screamed that we had to close schools, shopping centers, sports, and only allow “essential” business to function even if tens of millions lose their jobs, because lives – lives that the police power has utterly disregarded during the protests – are just that important. Lockdown required that the law change on a dime, in violation of every legal precedent, every slogan in American civic mythology, and contradicting the whole of what made America great. 

    In three days in mid-March 2020, everything we previously believed had to end because we had to implement a new experiment in social control as cobbled together by “public health officials” some 14 years ago. They sat around for a decade and a half, bored and waiting to use the new way to combat viruses. Any old virus would do so long as it was a slow news day. COVID-19 was as good an excuse as any. Out was every foundational belief in liberty, property, and free association, in the blink of an eye. 

    That was 75 days ago. People were surprisingly compliant, but what could they do? They were scared, thanks to media frenzy, and they weren’t allowed out of their houses to protest in any case. When they did defy the orders to protest in front of capitol buildings, instead of staying home and watching CNN, they were derided by CNN as disease spreaders and enemies of public health. 

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    I’m looking at the headlines today and all the news on the coronavirus is below the fold or in its own section. It’s all about the protests, riots, and looters. Racism.

    Trump is screaming for a crackdown while the media demands justice for police brutality. As for social distancing, this was absolutely yesterday’s news. Now a new ethos has taken hold: gather in the largest possible groups to demand social justice. And loot. 

    Absolute hymns to the glory of protestors and even rioters are the rule of the day, as if the public health threat of COVID-19 is so last week. “Each night, tens of thousands exercise their right to assemble in protest and millions of Americans follow along at home,” writes the New York Times rhapsodically and correctly, failing to point out that this same venue said the opposite about lockdown protestors a few weeks ago. 

    Weeks! Is it an indication of the extremely short attention span of the American public or a demonstration of the sheer cynicism of media culture? 

    Meanwhile, on the corona front – yes that still exists even if you have to dig for information on it – states are still (still!) gradually ending the lockdown with cockamamie rules: you can sit (or stand) in bars but you can’t stand (or sit). Customers can buy things but not try on clothing. People can buy perfume but not spray on samples. In daycare facilities, the kids can play together in groups of more than 10 and they must stay apart, even though there is near zero threat to the kids from the virus. 

    These states that are imposing these crazy rules are four days behind the times. You look at the protests and you see free people doing what they believe they should do in the face of injustice. Many wanted to do this months ago but they were prohibited by law. The law eventually had to acquiesce to people’s sense of their human rights. 

    Why states do not instantly and immediately end all restrictions they wrongly imposed indicates the sheer stupidity of public policy, and the myth that it can ever be scientific. Instead we get curfews, even in the city that never sleeps. 

    The same governments that were only recently controlling your movements to protect you from a virus are now blasting people with tear gas. 

    As for lockdown “science,” the Centers for Disease Control keeps lowering its infection fatality rate. It’s becoming normalized like any virus: bad but not the end of the world. Best treated by medical professionals, not politicians – as we long knew until very recently. 

    The lockdown carnage from missed cancer diagnostics and forgone elective surgeries are only now presenting themselves. Then there are the 100 thousand wrecked businesses, the 40 million unemployment, the blown budgets of every government, the scary monetary policies. SWAT teams were entering bars to arrest people — in the name of health. Churches were shuttered on Easter. No restaurants, no shopping, no sports, no theaters, no gyms, no outdoor activities. We were all treated like animals, and told to cage ourselves in our homes. And so on it went for 75 days. 

    It’s hard to imagine a better recipe for social unrest. 

    Then the protests began. They were about the death of George Floyd, an unemployed man but they were also what he represented: the overwhelming presence of state violence in all of our lives. 

    Then the looting started. That too should not be a surprise. Lockdowners and looters use the same method (violence) to destroy property and commerce. One class of criminals learns from another class of criminals. It’s copycat criminology. 

    Now, as if to take that next step on the Road to Serfdom, all major cities have curfews. 

    Based on the speed and duplicity of the news cycle, we can predict with confidence that within six months, you won’t find a single person in public life willing to defend the lockdown. And yet it was this event that laid the foundation for the rest of the tragic unfolding of events that is wrecking this country. 

    There should be justice. There should be compensation. Political heads should metaphorically roll, along with the “public health officials” who advised them. And then we need a completely new direction: one that rejects the unscientific use of state force to battle a disease, recognizes the wisdom of the Bill of Rights and freedom, and treats people with the dignity that is inherent to every human life. 

    If we understand this desperate need – if we see what went wrong these months and the right way forward – we can rebuild. If we do not, the destruction and rights violations will continue. 

  • Visualizing The Power And Frequency Of Earthquakes
    Visualizing The Power And Frequency Of Earthquakes

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 06/04/2020 – 21:05

    The surface of our planet is in a constant state of creation and destruction as the plates of the Earth collide. It is this movement of the Earth’s crust that causes earthquakes, sending tremors throughout the world.

    Today’s graphic by Visual Capitalist is inspired by a classic USGS diagram that tracks the scale and frequency of earthquakes.

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    Shifting Foundations

    Earthquakes occur because the crust of the Earth is made up of several plates. The boundaries of these plates create faults that can run into one another.

    Earthquakes describe both the mechanism that causes a sudden stress release along plate boundaries and also the ensuing ground shaking.

    They occur when stress builds up along a tectonic fault. This stress causes the two surfaces of the fault, which had previously been stuck together due to friction, to suddenly move, or slide, releasing energy in the form of seismic waves.

    Measuring an Earthquake’s Impact

    There are three factors to assess the impact of Earthquakes – magnitude, energy, and intensity.

    Magnitude is a number most commonly associated with the Richter scale, describing the size of an Earthquake on a scale from 0 to 10 – the latter of which is the maximum motion recorded by a seismograph. Each increase by one on the scale represents a tenfold increase in the amplitude. There are over a million tremors around the planet each year, but it’s not until an earthquake reaches a magnitude of 4 that humans can typically feel it.

    Another way to measure the size of an earthquake is by how much energy it releases. The amount of energy radiated by an earthquake is a measure of the potential for damage to man-made structures.

    An earthquake releases energy at various frequencies, and in order to calculate accurately, you have to include all frequencies of shaking for the entire event. Some research suggests technology could harness this energy for power generation.

    Intensity describes the severity of an earthquake with a qualitative evaluation of its effects on the Earth’s surface and on the built environment. An earthquake may have a high magnitude but if a city or landscape experiences little damage, it can be said that the intensity is low. The Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale measures this intensity.

    The World’s Largest Earthquakes by Magnitude

    Prior to the development and use of seismographs, around 1900, scientists could only estimate magnitudes, based on historical reports of the extent and severity of damage.

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    Earthquakes are a fact of life on Earth and mark distinct moments in history. One would think given our knowledge of earthquakes, that humans would avoid these locations – however, the very faults of the Earth also create its greatest advantages.

    Living with Your Faults

    It’s extremely common to find human settlements along the fault lines where earthquakes occur most frequently. Some could say that this is because these decisions were made before a complete understanding of science enabled us to know the potential risks involved.

    However, a recent scientific study reveals that there may be more to the pattern than previously thought. Tectonically active plates may have produced greater biodiversity, more food, and water for our human predecessors.

    Certain landscape features formed by tectonic processes such as cliffs, river gorges, and sedimentary valleys create environments that support access to drinking water, shelter, and an abundant food supply.

    This inherent problem reveals that humans are more connected to their environments than previously thought. It comes down to a question of how well humans can adapt their lifestyle and built environments to a dynamic planet.

    Now let’s worry about the asteroids…

  • Blain: The Tragedy Of HSBC
    Blain: The Tragedy Of HSBC

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 06/04/2020 – 20:45

    Authored by Bill Blain via MorningPorridge.com,

    “A waiter, again unbidden, brought the chessboard and the current issue of The Times, with the page turned down at the chess problem.”

    While America burns, the dollar tumbles, stock markets soar, Germany announces a massive bailout programme which dwarfs the pennies Italy desperately needs, the ECB gets ready for another money dump, and UK politicians grumble about queues… life goes on…

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    There is something deeply tragic about yesterday’s announcements from HSBC and Standard Chartered supporting the imposition of China’s Security Law in Hong Kong. We can all act shocked and damn them for supping with the devil, but neither bank had any real choice but to make the unpalatable decision to support the unsupportable. Both know their futures depend too much on China’s patronage to survive without kow-towing. 

    Yesterday, they each wrote the first lines of the final few paragraphs of their own obituaries.  

    10-years ago I wrote in the Porridge why HSBC was my top bank stock. I said something along the lines of while other banks will remain vulnerable, HSBC had the franchise, strength and depth to survive and thrive. Its dividend policy was strong and would provide dull, boring, predictable returns for the long-term. The Long-term is so over. 

    Read the comments following any article about the two Hong Kong banks this morning and are they full of earnest virtue signalling from angry clients who say they will close their accounts. I will probably switch mine.. but only because now there is zero chance the service will get any better.

    Timing is everything. I laughed out loud at a post on Linked-In from HSBC claiming leadership in ESG matters and Green funding. Really… this is not the time for HSBC to be bragging about its ethical credentials.

    The sad reality is HSBC has become a patron of the Chestnut Tree Café – the bar where the purged characters from 1984 spend their last few months in isolation, irrelevancy and waiting for the axe to fall. HSBC and Standard Chartered’ future is window dressing the new Hong Kong. HSBC has become as yesterday as Deutsche Bank. 

    It could have been so different.

    In the early 2000s HSBC’s tag line was The World’s Local Bank. The Hexagon Logo dominated airports and appeared everywhere. Its ambition was to generate one third of its profits from each of the main global markets; Asia, Europe and North America. By market capitalisation it was the largest bank on the planet. When it bought US sub-prime credit lender Household in 2002, it was a clear signal the bank was on the move with expansion plans everywhere. 

    I joined HSBC in 2002. It was a bit of a shock after 10 years at an aggressive but highly innovative US investment bank. 

    HSBC people were lovely. They were friendly, they were nice. Yet, they were fiercely tribal and regional in their mindset. There was a cadre of International Officers who’d been drilled in the HSBC tau of things since they joined straight from school. The regarded outside hires as mere hired hands. You could not argue with the IOs – they knew best. And then there were the old Hong Kong hands, trading hotshots from Hong Kong who knew even better. They’d been big fish in the small pool that was then Asia. They couldn’t grasp that Wall Street and City traders swam in much larger more aggressive oceans. The firm was naturally hierarchical in the way only a thoroughly English bank could be – even though its DNA was broadly Presbyterian Scots!  

    Yet, the bank failed to make much a mark on the global markets. It owned multiple diverse and unconnected business, united only by the logo. The way the bank’s independently minded German operation operated had nothing to do with the London hub. The Paris operation delighted in doing things differently. Asia had little interest in what New York or London were doing. It sold global clients a grand vision of access to Asia – but any second rate US firm knew more of the top Asian accounts. 

    Successive waves of hired guns were hired to enliven its sub-par investment banking activities, but without much enthusiasm from across the firm which remained siloed. The senior management were good, knew the issues and the bank– they were some of the best in the business. But they were trying to run an enormous bloated bureaucracy of dissimilar banking businesses, investment and commercial banking operations, consumer banking around the globe, an Asian franchise, while trying to grow new businesses in areas they perceived the bank understrength. They faced pushback from local fiefdoms, and became jacks of all and masters of nothing. 

    The crunch came following the global financial crisis in 2007/08. HSBC was the only UK bank that avoided disaster and bailout. (So did Barclays, but by the skin of their teeth and some dubious chicanery which Amanda Stavely will no-doubt shortly reveal in court.) Household went from being an inspired purchase to toxicity overnight – and dragged the whole North American operation down. A succession of banking scandals in Latin America followed – HSBC discovering to their shock that putting the logo on a Mexican bank did not suddenly cleanse it of endemic corruption and drug money laundering. 

    The result was a bank that was no longer managed from growth and the future, but in order to placate the regulators.  

    This is the critical lesson of HSBC. The brand was brilliant but hollow. Its’ businesses were individually good, but collectively poor. Rationalising them into a strong single force was a massive ask – and would have required more than the best banking management on the planet. But that management was totally focused on placating the regulators to avoid them purging the bank. At one time the board seriously feared the US SEC might close them down as more South American scandals came to light. 

    While US banks thrived through the 20-Teens HSBC plodded and became more bloated. Its ambitions a global bank vanished like an early morning mist. It contracted. Asia’s share of profitability – to be blunt, Hong Kong savers – rose through 80%. It became classically squeezed in its home market. The levels of dissatisfaction with its consumer banking division means it’s among the most complained about banks. 

    I figured out how bad things were a few years ago when I walked into the Premier Branch of HSBC at its Canary Wharf Global HQ a few years ago. No one greeted me. There were last week’s papers sprawled across a table, and dead pot plant in the corner coated in dust. I pressed the desk bell, and a bored looking girl sauntered out to tell me to go downstairs to the public branch because she was too busy to help. I sold all my stock soon after.

    Except that it is, it wasn’t the fault of senior management. They tried. But the bureaucracy won. Banks run to please regulators rather than customers seldom thrive. Across the bank the middle management are shuffling papers and waiting for the a long-delayed axe to fall as cuts are finally enacted. 

    It’s a shame. The Home for Scottish Bank Clerks will join the list of other banks that once were contenders…..

  • Note To Rioting Americans: A Guide To Safe & Profitable Looting
    Note To Rioting Americans: A Guide To Safe & Profitable Looting

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 06/04/2020 – 20:25

    Continuing our series of Public Service Announcements for America’s rioting class (parts one and two here), tonight we are focusing on your safety.

    Here’s Babylon Bee’s guide on being prepared for safe and profitable rioting.

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    PLEASE READ:

    1. LOOK OUT FOR SWEET LOOT. We got purses, we got cell phones, we got cheesecake, shoes, Legos…

    2. FOLLOW OTHER RIOTERS INTO STORES. If you just run into a store by yourself you might get shot.

    3. HAVE A BUDDY. Those new 4K TVs are freaking heavy man.

    4. STAY SAFE — But also throw bricks at police. 

    *  *  *

    In case you didn’t realize by now, this is humor in the face of our nation’s ugliness.

  • 'A Child Mob Is In Charge Of The NYT': Cotton Slams Paper Of Record After Op-Ed Turmoil
    ‘A Child Mob Is In Charge Of The NYT’: Cotton Slams Paper Of Record After Op-Ed Turmoil

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 06/04/2020 – 20:12

    Update (2003ET): A ‘child mob’ is in charge of the New York Times according to Senator Tom Cotton (R-AK), who appeared on Fox News to discuss the paper’s internal civil war in which young, ‘woke’ staff are revolting over Cotton’s Op-Ed calling for the military to support US police forces during civil unrest, while older NYT staff argue that divergent opinions from their own deserve a platform.

    “My Op-Ed doesn‘t meet the New York Times‘ standards,” said Cotton. “It far exceeds their standards, which are normally full of left-wing, sophomoric drivel,” he added.

    Cotton then slammed the paper’s editor and publisher for flip-flopping on their decision to stand behind publishing Cotton’s commentary, only to fold like a cheap suit “in the face of the woke mob of woke kids that are in their newsroom.”

    “The New York Times has run editorials from Vladimir Putin, Recep Erdogan, by the Taliban – no problem there. But run one editorial from Tom Cotton on a position that’s supported by 58% of the American people – that we have a duty to protect our citizens’ lives and livelihoods, well, ‘we’re gonna have to review our processes and we’re gonna cut the number of Op-Eds that we run,’ said Cotton.

    “A child mob truly is in charge at the New York Times tonight.“

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    While the New York Times self-immolates over the Tom Cotton Op-Ed – which they now say “did not meet its standards due to a rushed editorial process,” a new Morning Consult poll shows that 58% of voters – including 48% of Democrats, say they support the use of US troops to supplement city cops amid the protests.

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    Clearly the Times is far too woke for their own good.

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    A long-simmering culture war at the New York Times, once the undisputed national paper of record, has burst into public view on Thursday as a group of young “woke” staffers at the paper denounced the opinion section’s decision to publish a column penned by GOP Sen. Tom Cotton urging President Trump to call in the military to restore order in cities across the US where violence and looting have broken out.

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    By now, more police officers have been killed since George Floyd’s murder after a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck, cutting off circulation. An autopsy report blamed the officer’s decision to pin Floyd to the ground by his throat as the cause of death. The office is now facing second degree murder and manslaughter charges. But leftists continue to insist that all opposition to the looting in violence is a fascist dog whistle. Whether you think Cotton is an incorrigible fascist, or you agree with his position, the notion that a small but vocal minority of the body politic is pushing for the active suppression of political speech.

    In a twitter thread, NYT columnist Bari Weiss – who has frequently attracted the ire of the “woke”/DSA/Bernie Bro faction, which hates “neoliberals” just as much as it hates “conservatives” (aka fascists, since everybody who isn’t a “democratic” socialist is a fascist, in their view) – explains the division between the younger “woke” reporters/staffers, and the older liberals, with executive editor Dean Baquet, the paper’s first black executive editor, caught in the middle.

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    Of course, many of the NYT reporters and staffers who denounced the op-ed also denounced their colleague’s take. One reporter even said the very decision to print the op-ed put the paper’s black reporters “in danger”.

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    In a post weighing in on the debate, the Columbia Journalism Review argued that Cotton’s views shouldn’t have been published because it was “built on lies”. However, the sections of the paper that it described as lies weren’t lies at all, but descriptions of the chaos across the country, recounted with perhaps a touch of hyperbole. But leftists frequently test the bounds of what’s believable, like when they accuse crime reporters of “spreading false narratives” when they report on black-on-black crime statistics.

    The problem with this idea of the Times as an open forum for views of all stripes — no matter how abhorrent — is that by opening the door to all “operative opinion” (as a member of the Opinion section described it to me a couple of years ago), the Times becomes a platform for those who are hostile to its core values and at direct odds with the New York Times Company mission to “seek the truth and help people understand the world.”

    The core problem with Cotton’s column, it seems to me, isn’t that its arguments are painful or dangerous (though they are those things too). It’s that it’s built on lies. “This week, rioters have plunged many American cities into anarchy, recalling the widespread violence of the 1960s,” it begins, before trotting out hyperbolic (and false) phrases like “the riots were a carnival for the thrill-seeking rich as well as other criminal elements,” “orgy of violence,” and “cadres of left-wing radicals like Antifa infiltrating protest marches.”

    Recent days have been marked by looting and violence. But the violence has sometimes been prompted by the police themselves, and the incidents getting the most attention have been isolated to a few commercial districts. The areas around the protests (to say nothing of the entirety of “American cities”) have been relatively calm and peaceful. As Davey Alba, a Times reporter who covers misinformation, pointed out on Twitter, the paper’s news side has already reported how promoting claims of unbridled urban unrest is part of the “untruths, conspiracy theories, and other false information…running rampant online” and being pushed by Trump and his allies.

    Remember: These are the same people who forced their employers to describe riots as “protests” and looters as “demonstrators” leading to jarring headlines like “Violence and looting rage as George Floyd protests lead to clashes with cops in several states”.

    The notion that we can trust them to be arbiters of the truth as simply laughable.

  • Japan's Three Decades Of Depressive Stimulus Schemes
    Japan’s Three Decades Of Depressive Stimulus Schemes

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 06/04/2020 – 20:05

    Authored by Richard Salsman via The American Institute for Economic Research,

    he New York Times reports optimistically that “Japan Approves Fresh $1.1 trillion Stimulus to Combat Pandemic Pain.” As the Times elaborates, Japan’s “record stimulus of 117 trillion yen ($1.09 trillion), which will be funded partly by a second extra budget, followed another 117 trillion yen ($1.09 trillion) package rolled out last month. The new package takes Japan’s total spending to combat the virus fallout to 234 trillion yen ($2.18 trillion), or about 40% of gross domestic product.” “The packages (this year) took the size of the budget to a record 160 trillion yen, with new bond issuance making up 56.3% of annual budget revenue and raising the spectre of more bond issues later to offset falling tax income.” 

    It’s a “record stimulus,” the Times gushes. Very exciting stuff! Surely it will work!?

    But why would any of it help “combat” a “virus fallout” or “stimulate” Japan’s economy? By “economy” do we not, as economists, refer to output, the production of goods and services, to real GDP at the least? If so, how can deficit spending create wealth? There is no evidence for that.

    The “fresh” part of the Times’ headline is best translated as “recent” because for the past three decades, amid various crises, Japan has adopted literally dozens of alleged “stimulus” schemes – including not just massive deficit spending but rate-cutting, a zero-interest rate policy (ZIRP), “QE” (central bank monetization of public debts), and even direct purchases of private debt and equity securities. None of these programs has ever been proved to improve Japan’s economic-financial performance. Indeed, its performance has eroded amid the cascade of higher spending.

    Japan’s economic-financial performance peaked in 1989-1991 and periodic revivals aside, it has stagnated since, amid degeneration in public finances. The causes of the peak and subsequent “lost decades” are worth recalling. In the late 1980s the Bank of Japan (BoJ), on the advice of leading economists, interpreted the decade as artificial, a mere “bubble,” and set out to “pop” it with punitive interest-rate hikes. The BoJ inverted the yield curve, which is a recession signal in part because it makes credit intermediation (“borrowing short, lending long”) unprofitable.

    After the BoJ-authored yield curve inversion, Japan’s real GDP decelerated from growth of 9.4% in 1988 to only 4% in 1989; by 1993 GDP was contracting. Industrial production also decelerated, from 7.4% in 1988 to only 3.5% in 1989 before contracting by 13% between 1991 and 1993. Today Japan’s industrial production index remains 12% below its 1991 peak. The NIKKEI equity index also crashed after the BoJ’s policy assault, by 60% from the end of 1989 to mid-1992. The index low in 2009 was 80% below the 1989 peak; today the index remains 46% below its 1989 peak. 

    One could say the BoJ certainly “succeeded” in its mission to combat the supposed artificiality of Japan’s economic-financial performance in the 1980s; since then, Japan’s policymakers have dutifully followed the advice of Keynesians like Paul Krugman, implementing dozens of “stimulus schemes;” in effect, they’ve tried to artificially revive Japan’s economy, not by deregulating it, not by cutting tax rates or restraining growth in government but by massive public deficit spending. 

    Figure One illustrates the dramatic shift in Japan’s public finances after 1990. In the fifteen years prior to 1990, growth in public spending and tax revenues closely tracked; new debt issuance was limited and even declined between 1982 and 1990. Since then, however, spending growth has far outpaced growth in tax revenues, due mainly to tax rate hikes and a stagnant economy. Deficit spending and new debt issuance have been preferred – the genuine Keynesian prescription.

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    Decades of chronic deficit spending have boosted Japan’s public leverage (debt-to-GDP ratio). Figure Two shows debt is now 235% of GDP, up from 175% in 2010, 125% in 2000, 64% in 1990, and 50% in 1980. Having boosted its policy rate in the late 1980s to fight a “fake” prosperity, the BoJ has since cut the rate dramatically. For a quarter century the rate has been below 1%, not, it seems, to “stimulate” the economy (or lending) but to enable the Treasury to borrow more affordably. The BOJ has been politically dependent, serving mainly Japan’s deficit spenders. 

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    Surely one might expect that eventually this stupendous, multi-decade deficit-spending would “stimulate” Japan’s economy or equities. But mostly Keynesians (and some monetarists) would expect it. Adherents of Saysian economics, in contrast, would not expect it; indeed, they’d predict that vast increases in public spending and borrowing would more probably impede prosperity. 

    Table One contrasts Japan’s performance over the past three “lost decades” (1990-2020) and the prior three decades of robust growth (1960-1990). Public debt has grown 5.8% p.a. in the three decades since 1990 while public leverage has increased 4.2% p.a.; meanwhile, real GDP has grown only 1.0% p.a., the NIKKEI has risen by only 0.4% p.a., and industrial production has contracted. So much for Japan’s “stimulus.” The Keynesian prescription has been worse than useless. It’s been harmful. Yet the more it fails, the more its adherents insist on still larger doses of deficit spending.

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    In the three decades prior to 1990, before Keynesian policy advice became dominant in Japan, the nation enjoyed robust and sustainable economic growth amid fiscal rectitude. Table One makes clear that Japan’s public debt and public leverage increased by only 2.6% p.a. and 2.0% p.a., respectively, while real GDP grew 6.4% p.a., industrial output grew 7.2% p.a., and the NIKKEI advanced 5.5% p.a. In each case pre-1990 performance outpaced post-1990 performance. The difference is due mainly to the tragic suspicion of prosperity which took hold in Japan in the late 1980s, and to later adoption of so-called “stimulus” schemes, which, I argue, are depressive:

    Many economists believe public spending and money issuance create wealth or purchasing power. Not so. Our only means of obtaining real goods and services is from wealth creation — production. Under barter no one comes to market expecting to buy stuff without also offering stuff. A monetary economy does not alter this key principle. What we spend must come from income, which itself must come from producing. Say’s Law teaches that only supply constitutes demand; we must produce before we demand, spend or consume. Demand is not a mere desire to spend but desire plus purchasing power.

    Believers in “stimulus” also claim that government spending entails a magical “multiplier” effect on aggregate output, unlike most private sector spending. They tout a government’s greater “propensity to consume.” But consuming is the opposite of producing. Welfare states certainly consume and redistribute wealth. They divide it up. But math teaches that nothing – wealth included – can be multiplied by division. The so-called “multipliers” imagined by today’s economists are, in fact, divisors. Many studies have verified the principle.  

    To see why “stimulus” truly depresses, consult the basics. The creation of public money and public debt is not the creation of wealth; it is not food, clothing, shelter, energy or the like. Even privately generated money and debt, which reflect the needs of trade and lengthy production chains, represent, facilitate and circulate wealth but are not themselves wealth. Meanwhile, the savings borrowed by governments are unavailable to productive enterprises, and when a government creates fiat money beyond what money holders demand, the money loses purchasing power, which boosts the cost of living. These are not roads to prosperity.

    A tragically wrong public policy should be abandoned, not emulated. Sadly (and tragically), the U.S. since 2001 has been copying Japan’s approach, with a lag of a decade or so. What some here called “unorthodox” fiscal-monetary policy was first “normalized” in Japan. The two nations differ in some important ways, including demographically, but that does not nullify the laws of economics (or of public finance). The U.S. and Japan are old welfare states that can’t afford what they’re doing; nonetheless, their politicians can’t seem to succeed electorally without persisting in their profligacy. Japan’s history signals the likely outcome for copycats: prolonged stagnation.

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Jun 04

Today’s News 4th June 2020

  • UK Home Prices Fall At Fastest Pace In Decade 
    UK Home Prices Fall At Fastest Pace In Decade 

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 06/04/2020 – 02:45

    Britain’s housing market has taken a serious hit during coronavirus lockdowns. Home prices tumbled the most in a decade in May as consumers were severely damaged by one of the worst recessions in centuries. 

    Bloomberg reports nationwide home prices fell 1.7% in May, the largest drop since February 2009. In annual terms, prices increased by 1.8% but down from 3.8% in April, as this suggests home prices will likely slump through year-end. 

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    Britain’s government eased restrictions on lockdowns and has reopened some businesses as virus-related shutdowns resulted in the worst recession in 300 years. As for policy response, the Bank of England unleashed vast packages of financial support to cushion the economic blow.

    Read: BoE Warns Of Worst Economic Slump In 300 Years

    Despite the BoE’s rescue packages, manufacturing continued to contract in May, and consumers remained subdued. Retail sales during lockdowns fell at a record pace, along with consumer credit posted its first YoY drop since 2012. 

    In April, mortgage lenders approved the fewest home loans on record, with the number of approvals falling to 15,800, the BOE said.

    “For now, an unprecedented combination of monetary stimulus, fiscal support, and repayment holidays should cushion and prevent a precipitous and sustained drop in house prices as activity resumes. That buffer will be tested over the coming months as fiscal stimulus is wound back and repayment holidays expire,” Bloomberg analyst Niraj Shah said. 

    Samuel Tombs, an economist with Pantheon Macroeconomics, said May’s decline in home prices would likely be the start of a slump that could persist through 2020. 

    “Spending and borrowing naturally will rebound in June, when all non-essential shops will reopen,” said Tombs. “But we doubt that households will spend the cash they have accumulated during the lockdown soon, given heightened job insecurity and lingering concerns about catching the virus.”

    A distressed consumer, recession, and virus fears could have sparked the beginning chapters of a housing downturn in Britain. 

  • For Europe, Trade With China Trumps Freedom For Hong Kong
    For Europe, Trade With China Trumps Freedom For Hong Kong

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 06/04/2020 – 02:00

    Authored by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,

    The European Union has issued a predictably weak and equivocal declaration on China’s growing interference in Hong Kong. European leaders, apparently fearful of retaliation by Beijing, have signaled that economic interests will take priority over the EU’s much-trumpeted founding values of human rights, democracy and the rule of law.

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    Europe’s continued appeasement of China indicates that the EU will be a weak link in efforts by Western democracies to confront the leadership in Beijing.

    On May 29, the foreign ministers of EU member states met by video conference to discuss a common European response to China’s plans to impose a sweeping law that would ban all activities in Hong Kong that are deemed to endanger China’s national security.

    Pro-democracy activists and lawmakers say the law, aimed at crushing political dissent, would effectively end the autonomy the city enjoys from Beijing under the “One Country, Two Systems” arrangement.

    The unilateral move by China violates an international treaty — The Sino-British Joint Declaration on the Question of Hong Kong — an agreement signed in 1984 by which the United Kingdom, on July 1, 1997, transferred sovereignty of Hong Kong to China in exchange for a promise that the city would enjoy 50 years of limited autonomy under Chinese rule. Under the treaty, China is required to guarantee Hong Kong’s autonomy for another 27 years.

    On May 28, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and Canada issued a joint statement that reprimanded China over its approach to Hong Kong:

    “China’s decision to impose a new national security law on Hong Kong lies in direct conflict with its international obligations under the principles of the legally-binding, UN-registered Sino-British Joint Declaration. The proposed law would undermine the One Country, Two Systems framework. It also raises the prospect of prosecution in Hong Kong for political crimes and undermines existing commitments to protect the rights of Hong Kong people — including those set out in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.”

    The British government also announced that it was considering granting citizenship to the nearly three million residents of Hong Kong. The move infuriated China, which fears a massive brain drain from Hong Kong that would jeopardize the city’s role as a global financial and trading hub.

    On May 29, U.S. President Donald J. Trump announced sanctions on China:

    “China claims it is protecting national security. But the truth is that Hong Kong was secure and prosperous as a free society. Beijing’s decision reverses all of that. It extends the reach of China’s invasive state security apparatus into what was formerly a bastion of liberty.

    “China’s latest incursion, along with other recent developments that degraded the territory’s freedoms, makes clear that Hong Kong is no longer sufficiently autonomous to warrant the special treatment that we have afforded the territory since the handover.

    “China has replaced its promised formula of ‘one country, two systems’ with ‘one country, one system.’ Therefore, I am directing my administration to begin the process of eliminating policy exemptions that give Hong Kong different and special treatment.

    “My announcement today will affect the full range of agreements we have with Hong Kong, from our extradition treaty to our export controls on dual-use technologies and more, with few exceptions.

    “We will be revising the State Department’s travel advisory for Hong Kong to reflect the increased danger of surveillance and punishment by the Chinese state security apparatus.

    “We will take action to revoke Hong Kong’s preferential treatment as a separate customs and travel territory from the rest of China.

    “The United States will also take necessary steps to sanction PRC and Hong Kong officials directly or indirectly involved in eroding Hong Kong’s autonomy and — just if you take a look, smothering — absolutely smothering Hong Kong’s freedom. Our actions will be strong. Our actions will be meaningful.”

    Trump also announced restrictions on Chinese nationals coming to study at American universities, and measures to prevent China from stealing technology and intellectual property.

    Under U.S. law, Hong Kong enjoys special trade privileges. In November 2019, however, the U.S. Congress overwhelmingly passed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019, which places new conditions on this status. The U.S. Secretary of State is now required to certify, annually, that Hong Kong maintains autonomy from mainland China. If this cannot be certified, the U.S. Congress can revoke Hong Kong’s special trade status. This could jeopardize massive amounts of trade between Hong Kong and the United States and dissuade international investments there in the future.

    On May 27, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that “no reasonable person can assert today that Hong Kong maintains a high degree of autonomy from China, given facts on the ground.” He added:

    “After careful study of developments over the reporting period, I certified to Congress today that Hong Kong does not continue to warrant treatment under United States laws in the same manner as U.S. laws were applied to Hong Kong before July 1997.”

    In stark contrast to the measures announced by the United States and the United Kingdom, EU foreign ministers, under heavy pressure from Germany, have decided not to take any action against China. In a statement issued after the May 29 video conference of EU foreign ministers, the EU expressed “grave concern” about China’s actions in Hong Kong but added that “EU relations with China are based on mutual respect and trust.”

    EU Foreign Affairs Commissioner Josep Borrell added that the bloc has no plans for sanctions on either Beijing or Hong Kong:

    “We will continue discussing and we will continue to reach out to Beijing. Our reaction has to be commensurate with the steps that have already been taken. We will continue trying to put pressure on the Chinese authorities in order to make them aware that this issue will affect the way we deal with some of the issues of mutual interest. But there is nothing more on the agenda.”

    When asked why the EU refused to sign the UK-US joint statement, Borrell replied: “We have our own statements. We do not need to join other people’s statements.”

    German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said that the best way to influence China on the Hong Kong dispute was for the EU to maintain “dialogue” with Beijing:

    “I think the past has shown that it is, above all, important to have a dialogue with China in which the EU very cohesively brings both its issues and principles to the fore, and then we will see where this dialogue leads.”

    Germany, which takes over the six-month rotating EU presidency on July 1, has announced that it will prioritize relations with China. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is particularly determined to proceed with a major EU-China summit to be held in the German city of Leipzig in September. She is reportedly under intense pressure from German automobile manufacturers, who are concerned about maintaining their access to the Chinese market.

    The continued cowardice of European leaders is a reflection not only of Europe’s geopolitical weakness and economic overdependence on China, but also of a moral vacuum in which they refuse to stand up for Western values.

    In April, European officials caved in to pressure from China and watered down an EU report on Chinese efforts to deflect blame for the coronavirus pandemic. A few weeks later, the EU Ambassador to China, Nicolas Chapuis, allowed the Chinese government to edit an op-ed article signed by him and the 27 Ambassadors of EU member states, to mark the 45th anniversary of diplomatic relations with China.

    The EU authorized the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to remove references to the origins and the spread of the coronavirus from the article, published in China Daily, an English-language daily newspaper owned by the Communist Party of China.

    An EU spokesperson said that the EU allowed China to revise the op-ed because Brussels “considered it important to communicate EU policy priorities, notably on climate change and sustainability…” Borrell later pledged that the EU will never again give in to Chinese censorship.

    The head of the Bundestag foreign affairs committee, Norbert Röttgen, tweeted that Europe’s credibility is on the line over its response to China:

    “China aims to repress freedom, democracy & the rule of law in #HongKong. #Europe has to condemn such acts of wrongdoing & stand up for the freedoms of Hong Kong’s citizens. It would be disastrous & a huge blow for Europe’s credibility, if #China could rely on us keeping silent.”

    Noah Barkin, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Berlin, said that the EU should better use the leverage that it has over China:

    “Europe can and should respond more forcefully than it has so far. German Greens co-leader Annalena Baerbock has suggested that the EU—and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the host—cancel its looming summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Leipzig in September 2020 unless Beijing withdraws its national security legislation.

    “That would send a strong signal that it will not be business as usual as long as China is violating the spirit of ‘one country, two systems’ in Hong Kong.

    “Another step, which is reportedly being considered by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, is to grant Hong Kong residents asylum in Europe. Germany welcomed two Hong Kong pro-democracy activists in 2019, so such a step would not be unprecedented.

    “In an environment where the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) faces global outcry over its handling of the new coronavirus, is under acute political and economic pressure from Washington, and needs foreign investors to help revive its suddenly sputtering economy, the EU has more leverage with Beijing than it has had in quite a while. Using it would help counter the narrative—following two embarrassing recent incidents of self-censorship in the face of pressure from Beijing—that Europe is impotent and weak when it comes to China.”

    Theresa Fallon, Director of the Brussels-based Center for Russia Europe Asia Studies, added:

    “The uncomfortable truth is that business elites, European bureaucrats, and many European politicians are out of touch with the public’s sentiment on Hong Kong.

    “The EU’s anemic statement on Hong Kong is not going to keep anyone at Zhongnanhai, the seat of China’s leadership, awake at night. EU High Representative Josep Borrell didn’t even bother to tweet it. Beijing has taken Brussels’s measure and does not fear their statements, which declare that they ‘will continue to follow developments closely.’

    “There has been a concerning culture of complacency and self-censorship in EU diplomacy with the People’s Republic of China which has left the EU neutralized since 2016. If we turn to EU member states, the story is not much better. Merkel embraced trade with China in the hope that it would change China. But the reality is that contact with Beijing has eroded European values.

    “Beijing understands that economic issues are paramount. Few European leaders pretend to even care about basic human rights in Hong Kong, and it will be difficult to get unanimity on this issue across Europe due to Beijing’s economic statecraft.

    “To paraphrase Edmund Burke, all that is needed for Hong Kong’s ‘one country, two systems’ principle to perish is for good people to do nothing.”

    Andreas Fulda, a senior fellow at the University of Nottingham’s Asia Research Institute, launched a petition calling for an end to Germany’s appeasement of China. The petition, titled, “Europe can no longer afford Germany’s failed China policy of ‘change through trade,'” states:

    “We need to talk about Germany. Let’s start with an inconvenient truth: German governments, both past and present, have consistently prioritized trade with China over other enlightened German national interests, for example democracy and human rights. Such a commercially-driven China engagement, however, is not a value-free proposition.

    “Whether it is the incarceration of 1.5 million Uyghurs and Kazakhs in mainland Chinese internment and labor camps, the suppression of Hong Kong’s democracy movement, or the cover-up of Covid-19: German Chancellor Merkel does not seem to fully appreciate how continued Communist Party rule endangers peace, security and public health, not just in China, but around the world.

    “On Monday, May 25, 2020, Europe’s top diplomat Josep Borrell addressed a gathering of German Ambassadors. He told them that the European Union and its member states need to develop a ‘more robust strategy’ toward China. It is self-evident that the EU will struggle to develop a more assertive European China policy without the backing of Germany.

    “But how can German diplomats change tack if Chancellor Merkel is unwilling to give directions? It is understandable that a nation which is guilty of the horrors of the Holocaust is wary of playing an assertive global leadership role. But there is also a real danger of an ‘oblivion of power,’ where Germany in fact underutilizes existing leverage in global affairs.

    “Germany is often praised for facing up to its Nazi past. Never again has long been a guiding principle of an ethical German foreign policy. But how then can the German government remain silent when Uyghurs and Kazakhs are incarcerated, Hong Kongers have their civil and political liberties stripped away and Taiwanese are threatened with military annexation?

    “China under General Secretary Xi Jinping is regressing on all fronts: human rights violations are now systemic and endemic, even criticism by Chinese academics are no longer tolerated, and the Chinese Communist Party is increasingly aping Russian disinformation strategies in Europe. Germany must now ask if it will continue to actively support such a regime.

    “So far Chancellor Merkel has failed to answer this question. She has been unable to articulate what enlightened German ideational and material national interests look like beyond trade and investment. This is a serious shortcoming which not only undermines German foreign policy towards China but also makes it harder to develop a new European strategy towards China.

    “At a time of heightened geopolitical tensions between the United States and Communist Party-led China, Europe can no longer afford Germany’s unprincipled and failed China policy of ‘change through trade.’ In 2020 it is abundantly clear that China didn’t liberalize and democratize as a result of German car manufacturers enriching themselves by selling cars to China.

    “We need a Europe-wide approach which repositions the EU in light of Xi’s increasing totalitarianism. While trade clearly matters, European values need to be defended, too. I ask you to sign this petition to put pressure on the German government. Chancellor Merkel should abandon her failed China policy and join Europe’s search for a more principled approach towards China.”

    Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer, Europe’s largest publishing company, recently argued that the time has come for Europe to reevaluate its relationship with China:

    “Economic relations with China might seem harmless to many Europeans today, but they could soon lead to political dependence and ultimately to the end of a free and liberal Europe. The European Union has the choice. But above all Germany, Europe’s economic motor, has the choice.

    “Should we make a pact with an authoritarian regime or should we work to strengthen a community of free, constitutionally governed market economies with liberal societies? It is remarkable that German politics, with its love of moralizing, seems to throw its values out the window when dealing with China. What is at stake here is nothing less than what kind of society we want to live in and our concept of humanity….

    “If current European and, above all, German policy on China continues, this will lead to a gradual decoupling from America and a step-by-step infiltration and subjugation by China. Economic dependence will only be the first step. Political influence will follow.

    “In the end, it is quite simple. What kind of future do we want for Europe? An alliance with an imperfect democracy or with a perfect dictatorship? It should be an easy decision for us to make. It is about more than just money. It is about our freedom, about Article 1 of Germany’s Basic Law, the greatest legal term that ever existed: human dignity.”

     

  • Civil Unrest Was Inevitable – Here's How It Will Be Exploited To Bring In Tyranny
    Civil Unrest Was Inevitable – Here’s How It Will Be Exploited To Bring In Tyranny

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/03/2020 – 23:40

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

    Mass civil unrest is a cumbersome weapon for societal change; like an oversized caveman club made of oak. You can barely swing it, and when you do you might destroy an enemy with it but you could also unwittingly destroy innocent people at the same time. Once the weapon is in motion adjusting its direction or momentum becomes difficult.

    I prefer the scalpel approach – Find the cancer and cut it out directly, rather than bashing at the whole body just to get at one tumor.

    Another problem with protests and riots is that they often have no discernible goals, or they lose track of their goals almost immediately. When the initial protests started, they targeted the police precinct in Minneapolis which was home to the officers that killed George Floyd. In my view this was perfectly acceptable. At this stage a majority of Americans were on their side. Many conservatives and law enforcement officers even came out in support of these measures and admonished the actions that violated common police procedure and led to unnecessary death.

    But now, the situation has turned into something far beyond the killing of George Floyd. It has become a vehicle for agendas and not surprisingly the establishment benefits most; the very establishment the protesters think they are fighting against.

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    The riots have been co-opted. Where whites and blacks, conservatives and liberals alike were mostly in agreement, now there are attempts at racial division. Why is the death of Floyd being presented as a race issue in the first place? Why is it not being presented as a psychopath issue?  There are psychopaths in every race in equal numbers, and this should be people’s focus. In other words, psychopaths must be removed from society, whether they be police, politicians, business leaders, “caretakers”, etc. How about some examples…

    In Mesa, Arizona in 2017, a white man named Daniel Shaver was murdered by officer Phillip Brailsford after an anonymous tip told police he had a rifle in his hotel room. Though it is not illegal to own a rifle in Arizona and certainly not illegal to bring one into a hotel, a team of officers was sent armed with AR-15s to approach and arrest Shaver. Brailsford ordered the frightened Shaver to crawl across the floor instead of asking him to lay on the ground with his hands and feet spread as is normal police procedure. The man, sobbing in terror, reached to pull up his shorts which were falling off, and was riddled with bullets by Brailsford.

    Watching the video, it is clear that Brailsford created a situation in which Shaver could easily “make a mistake” and thereby create an excuse for the officer to kill him in cold blood. As it turned out, the rifle Shaver had in his room was a BB gun. A jury later acquitted Brailsford of any wrongdoing on the grounds that they could not determine “his thoughts and feelings” at the time of the shooting. This sounds strange to me and I don’t think most people on trial for murder get anywhere near the same latitude with so much evidence on hand.

    On the same day in North Carolina an officer was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the murder of an unarmed motorist. The difference? The motorist in South Carolina was black.

    The point is, psychopathic cops kill people regardless of their skin color. White people are at risk as much as black people. But at least when a black person is wrongly killed, the public and the media might take serious notice. There were no nationwide protests or riots for Daniel Shaver. The establishment works in favor of psychopaths, not white people. In fact, Phillip Brailsford was fired and then REHIRED for a short time by the Mesa Police so that he could still apply for his pension.

    What about psychopaths that aren’t white cops? Oh, there are plenty of them, too. How about Mohamed Noor, a BLACK Minneapolis police officer that killed an unarmed white woman, Justine Ruszczyk, in 2017 while responding to her 911 call? Leftist activists including those at the NAACP at the time claimed that Noor was being “unfairly targeted” because he was black. There were no protests or riots for Justine Ruszczyk. Though, luckily, Mohamed Noor did go to jail for his crime.

    And if we are going to continue following the thread of violence and psychopathy vs. race, I can’t leave out the black nurse in Detroit that filmed himself torturing elderly patients by beating them repeatedly in their beds, completely unable to defend themselves. The man has been arrested, but again, no riots yet over this horror show.

    There are evil people of every race and ethnicity in this world that do terrible things, however, the worst people are those that exploit the tensions that these evil people create in order to turn crisis into opportunity. The reason there are riots happening globally now in the wake of the death of George Floyd is because people are angry, but also, people are malleable and easy to manipulate when they are angry.

    The country has just partially “reopened” from the pandemic lockdowns, and more lockdowns are likely before the year is out. Over 40 million people lost their jobs during the economic shutdown and the government checks are not going to sustain the public much longer. Only 13% to 18% of small businesses that requested aid actually received money from the small business bailout, and most of those that did not get money are facing closure. Government restrictions have been accelerating, and people are already on edge. Riots are now an inevitable part of daily life in America.

    But with events like the death of George Floyd, the riots can be manipulated.

    The rage of the masses can be directed on false issues of race and shallow left/right politics instead of being directed at corrupt government and the elites that created the economic mess we now see before us. The protests over George Floyd started out by raising questions on abuse of power by police, a legitimate cause.  Now they have been poisoned by race politics and outsiders seeking to create useful chaos.

    Provocateurs have infiltrated the protests and are attempting to trigger indiscriminate violence. Pre-staged weapons such as piles of bricks, bottles and other items have been appearing magically in protest zones. Property is being destroyed by people not connected to the main protest groups. Odd occurrences are popping up everywhere.

    Here is where this is all headed…

    As I predicted in 2016 just after the election of Donald Trump, it appears the goal of the establishment is to produce extreme division among the American public and then exploit the hard-left as a weapon to frighten conservatives into supporting martial law. In my article ‘Order Out Of Chaos: Defeat Of The Left Comes With A Cost’, I stated:

    “With Trump and conservatives taking near-total power after the Left had assumed they would never lose again, their reaction has been to transform. They are stepping away from the normal activities and mindset of cultural Marxism and evolving into full blown communists. Instead of admitting that their ideology is a failure in every respect, they are doubling down.

    When this evolution is complete, the Left WILL resort to direct violent action on a larger scale, and they will do so with a clear conscience because, in their minds, they are fighting fascism. Ironically, it will be this behavior by leftists that may actually push conservatives towards a fascist model. Conservatives might decide to fight crazy with more crazy.”

    Donald Trump has consistently discussed the use of the National Guard in response to the pandemic and the protests. And now, he is apparently considering using the Insurrection Act to deploy heavily armed military forces to US soil.

    Is it just a coincidence that conservatives were the most opposed to medical martial law only a week ago in the face of the pandemic, and now they are considering the merits of martial law in the face of the leftist influenced riots? And who actually benefits from this? Perhaps the elitist establishment that’s been calling for martial law measures from the very beginning?

    I have been hearing the narrative everywhere in liberty movement circles that “civil war is here” and “we have to support Trump and martial law to stop it”.   Firstly, I have been warning for years that Trump is controlled opposition.  His cabinet is overflowing with the same banking elites and globalists that the liberty movement stands against. Giving Trump martial law powers is no different than giving the elites around him martial law powers.  If you support martial law and overarching government, then you are NOT a conservative you are a statist, and statists must be opposed by all who value freedom.

    These people also don’t understand what “civil war” actually is.  Groups of people protesting is not a war.  What I see primarily is a bunch of ignorant children posing for Instagram photos and pretending they are activists.  And if as the evidence suggests there is a provocateur element infiltrating these protests to stir up violence, then isn’t it possible that their goal is to get us to back martial law policies?

    If the infiltrators are extremist communist organizations like Antifa or Black Lives Matter that receive funding from elites like George Soros and his Open Society Foundation, then we should consider the possibility that the intention is not just to influence the protests, but to also influence conservatives to react by supporting violent government power.  If they can trick conservatives into suddenly supporting the lockdowns, curfews, and a national guard/military presence to stop the protests, then they will have defeated us without firing a shot. We will have defeated ourselves and our own constitutional principles.

    The bottom line? More government power is NEVER the solution to any problem. Totalitarianism is never the answer.  There will now be endless excuses to declare martial law.  When the George Floyd riots fizzle out, there will be some other trigger event.  In fact, these riots are probably just a precursor to the riots that will rage when the public realizes the US economy is not coming back from the pandemic, and that more lockdowns are coming.  I would not be surprised if the Floyd riots are even blamed for a resurgence of Covid infections, which would give the government a rationale for more lockdowns.  Beware anyone that uses martial law as the go to answer to these crisis events.

    The solution in this case is to prosecute the police involved in the murder of George Floyd to the fullest extent of the law, point out that this is a problem of abuse of power and psychopathy, not a problem of race, and to stop outside interests from busing in provocateurs to trigger riots. 

    This is being done in some cases by the protestors themselves, who are exposing provocateurs within their ranks and filming them in the act.

    The next best step is for businesses to secure and defend their own properties.  We have seen it time and time again; the buildings that have armed personnel on hand to guard them do not get torched.  Of course, right now a number of companies that have property damage due to rioters and looters are actually SUPPORTING the rioters and looters!  Corporations are falling all over themselves to praise the protests and even the riots based on race politics.  They are also pouring millions in cash into “social justice” groups.  We’re supposed to declare martial law and bring in the military to defend the property of companies that are vocal in their solidarity with the looters?  What kind of idiocy is that?  Just let them be looted if they are going to double-down on this hard-left madness.

    If this current trend continues it would not surprise me at all if George Floyd becomes a forgotten footnote in the riots that were started in his name. If certain elites get their way, Americans will continue to riot without even knowing why, and those riots will never be aimed at the people that actually deserve it.  In the meantime, the establishment wants at least one side of the political spectrum, at least one half of the population, to support totalitarian measures, and they are clearly targeting conservatives with fear tactics in order to get us on board.

    *  *  *

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  • Nuclear Brinkmanship Is Back: Putin OKs Using Nukes In Response To Conventional Attacks
    Nuclear Brinkmanship Is Back: Putin OKs Using Nukes In Response To Conventional Attacks

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/03/2020 – 23:20

    For over the past year it seems every month has witnessed Washington and Moscow upping the ante on nuclear weapons rhetoric, which has been accompanied by the breakdown of key treaties, including recently the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) and more lately ‘Open Skies’ — now with even New START on the chopping block.

    Russia has vowed that for each time Washington moved the goal posts in terms of backing off of prior policies of nuclear weapons restraint, it would respond in kind. This also as the Trump administration has gone so far as to reportedly seriously consider restarting nuclear tests, which hasn’t been done in three decades. 

    Putin appears to now be making good on ‘reciprocal’ threats, on Tuesday signing into effect a new nuclear policy allowing Russia to use nukes in response to conventional arms attacks.  

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    It’s essentially a clear rejection of a “no first use” policy which escalated nuclear tensions to frightening levels during the Cold War, which a number of world powers have since long fought to implement globally. 

    But now the Kremlin policy will mirror the United States official nuclear doctrine, which even includes allowance of deploying a nuke if “reliable information” of a direct threat of ballistic missile attack is confirmed.

    As the AP underscored, it sends a direct message and warning to the United States:

    In line with Russian military doctrine, the new document reaffirms that the country could use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack or an aggression involving conventional weapons that “threatens the very existence of the state.”

    But the policy document now also offers a detailed description of situations that could trigger the use of nuclear weapons. They include the use of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction against Russia or its allies and an enemy attack with conventional weapons that threatens the country’s existence.

    The shift in deterrent policy also appears to preempt the US placing missiles in Europe, a serious fear after the breakdown of the INF.

    Needless to say US-Russia relations at their lowest point in post-Cold War modern history, now dangerously close to a nuclear brinkmanship scenario which once witnessed Americans having to huddle into bomb shelters on fears of ‘imminent’ apocalyptic nuclear destruction. 

    Perhaps at some point soon we’ll witness a return to the 20th century phenomenon of rapidly construction bomb and fallout shelters across the nation? 

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    And as a reminder amid this extremely dangerous escalation with apparently “no off ramp” – we were assured for years by Russiagate advocates that Trump is some kind of Russian puppet in the White House, yet at every step he’s in reality worsened relations with Moscow.

  • Trump's Distractions Or Is The Empire In Retreat?
    Trump’s Distractions Or Is The Empire In Retreat?

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/03/2020 – 23:00

    Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

    Things continue to spiral out of control in the U.S. as the myth of policing fails and anti-civilizational forces move into the power vacuum.

    And while I’m still completely committed to the end of the U.S. empire and its imperial edicts, It’s also not lost on me what’s happening, who’s making it happen and how they are taking advantage of this.

    I warned you President Trump’s near atavistic pursuit of U.S. ‘enemies’ in places like Syria, Iraq, Iran and Venezuela would turn the world against us. Look at the protests for George Floyd across Europe and tell me things haven’t changed.

    The empire is the problem. It’s a lesson Justin Raimondo taught me at Antiwar.com twenty years ago. And it’s only now that that idea has reached any kind of critical mass.

    Are we going to dismantle the empire in an orderly fashion or a chaotic one? The animals on the streets have cast their vote. What’s yours?

    And while Trump has made a hash of foreign policy in so many ways, I also told you that he was smart enough to only play the crazy Ivan role up the to point of actually starting a shooting war.

    This is his greatest accomplishment as President. Sadly, it shouldn’t be that great an accomplishment.

    And all detractors need to remember this, including me. He hasn’t ended existing wars, but he hasn’t started any new ones. And the U.S. political apparatchiks in D.C. have been braying for wars for nearly four years.

    Trump’s failure, however, is in not understanding that sanctions, tariffs, and diplomatic strong-arming are acts of war.

    They may be a real part of realpolitik but his failure to grasp the nuances of that have led to the present situation internationally where he is effectively being ignored in every way that matters.

    At the same time he’s dealing with a domestic insurrection that is both organic and organized, free-spirited and feral.

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    Here are a list of major incidents over the past week that support the thesis of the failure of the U.S. empire.

    They are all significant.

    The first is Iran successfully staring down U.S naval blockade threats to deliver refined petroleum and replacement parts to Venezuela. All five tankers made it safely into port and expect another five in the future.

    Like with last year’s drone incident and this January’s missile attack on our bases, Iran called Trump’s bluff when push came to shove. As Yra Harris said to me in my recent podcast, do you think the U.S. will go to nuclear war over Turkey? No.

    We didn’t do it in 1972 over Taiwan when Nixon sat down with Mao. We’re not doing it today with Iran, China or Russia. Iran understands this. Russia understands this. And China understands this.

    So, all Trump has as an effective weapon is excising people from the dollar system, itself the source of most of the U.S.’s real strength, because the military truly can’t be used anymore like it was in the past.

    And that weapon is being easily countered.

    That is only accelerating the resistance to the U.S.’s hegemony in the long run.

    Next up is the completion of Nordstream 2. It’s happening. Yes, Trump and his idiotic sanctions delayed it for a year or so, but that delay forced Ukraine’s hand to sign a terrible gas transit deal with Gazprom which will ensure in five years there will be no gas transiting across Ukraine.

    So, does that change the dynamic in Ukraine? Ukraine was the project of Obama, Clinton, Biden, McCain and Nuland. Why on earth would he continue it today?

    End the sanctions. End support of Ukraine. The Democrats will scream Russia into a vacuum.

    The Russian pipe-laying vessel is in Danish waters doing the work and all Trump accomplished is ticking off the Swiss. None of the legal arm-twisting worked.

    More sanctions won’t stop it.

    The pipeline will be finished by the end of the year.

    The EU gas directive which forces un-bundling of the ownership of the pipeline from the gas going through it was nullified by German courts.

    Was anyone surprised by this? Germany gets to become the energy distribution hub for Europe, tying them to Russia. Why would they vote against that?

    All the time, money and political capital spent to stop Nordstream 2 which was never going to be stopped because of the economic and political advantages to Germany, have come to naught.

    Pipelines are important. They are the seams that bind countries together. Trump knows this but he can’t stop it.

    Putin and Russia now have major energy pipelines connecting them to two major NATO countries, Turkey and Germany. All because the Obama administration decided to stop South Stream going through Bulgaria.

    So instead of Russia gaining the long-term relationship with and loyalty of Bulgaria, it has gained even stronger relationships with Turkey and Germany. If this isn’t a foreign policy own goal of epic proportions nothing is.

    And that’s on Obama, not Trump.

    This solidifies Russia’s hold over the Black Sea and gives Russia the ability to support kicking the U.S. influence out of the Eastern Mediterranean. It also ensures that Turkey’s adventurism in the Mediterranean is tempered by Putin, not Erdogan in the end.

    When Turkey gets uppity to the point of needing a smack down, Trump won’t hold the hammer, Putin will. And Trump will need Putin to deliver that blow to protect Greece and/or Israel and what happens then?

    Still think the Empire needs to be kicked in the nuts by attacking it from within? It’s doing a fine job of self-flagellation from my seat in the bleachers.

    The war in Syria is, effectively, over. So is Iraq. Trump understands this dynamic but won’t admit it publicly. In reality, he knows there is little left to do except pull out of the region now. Hence he’s quietly, for him, drawing down troops in Afghanistan at a far faster rate than has been officially recognized.

    The Pentagon says that the goal has been for 8,600 troops to be left in the country by mid-July, and they are so ahead of schedule they say they’ll meet that number in June, which is just a few days away. The White House, by contrast, suggested that the US has somewhere in the realm of 7,000 troops left in Afghanistan and that this is set to drop even further.

    Afghanistan first. Then Iraq. Then Syria. If reports of Bibi Netanyahu’s pet traitor Jared Kushner’s days in the White House being numbered are true, that timetable could accelerate quickly in the next couple of months as we approach the election.

    The big issue surrounding the domestic insurrection today is the ruthlessness of the Empire abroad and at home.

    Trump has a chance here to ‘win bigly’ as Scott Adams puts it, by reversing his worst foreign policy excesses, lifting some of the sanctions on places like Iran and Venezuela and reining in the lawlessness of both the jackals in D.C. and on the streets across the U.S.

    But he can’t do that if people pile on the side of the vandals fomenting insurrection to cover up their crimes.

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    Join my Patreon if you want help navigating the end of the empire. Install the Brave Browser if you want to stop Google preventing you from being informed about it.

  • ECB Preview: Another Massive QE Expansion Coming
    ECB Preview: Another Massive QE Expansion Coming

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/03/2020 – 22:40

    As the Eurozone continues to battle with the fallout from the COVID-19 crisis, market participants continue to expect the ECB to unveil further support measures on top of the wave of stimulus announced since March.

    As NewsSquawk writes in its ECB preview, with rates set to be left on hold, focus will be placed on any expansion to the Bank’s Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP) whose purchases the ECB revealed for the first time this week. The PEPP currently has a total size of EUR 750bln, however, consensus expects this to be increased at some point. Most analysts expect a EUR 500bln increase this week as part of a pro-active strategy. Others suggest that it could be more prudent for the ECB to hold fire for now, although with an expansion largely priced in any lack of action by the central bank will likely have an adverse market impact. Other potential policy measures include extending the duration of PEPP into next year, purchases of “fallen angels” bonds and expanding the current tiering exemption multiplier of 6x.

    PRIOR MEETING: The latest policy announcement from the ECB saw policymakers opt to stand pat on rates once again. Instead, the Governing Council decided to sweeten the terms of the existing TLTROIII operations and launch a new series of non-targeted pandemic emergency longer-term refinancing operations (PELTROs). Those hoping for an expansion of the pandemic emergency purchase programme (PEPP) were left somewhat disappointed with the current envelope left at a size of EUR 750bln, whilst the asset purchase programme (APP) will continue to run at a monthly pace of EUR 20bln. That said, the Governing Council was explicit in informing market participants that it “is fully prepared to increase the size of the PEPP and adjust its composition, by as much as necessary and for as long as needed”. At the accompanying press conference, Lagarde provided a relatively cautious introductory statement, as expected, whilst stopping short of specific forecasts on the macro outlook. Heading into the announcement some desks had speculated about the possibility of yield curve control (YCC), on which, Lagarde stated, the combination of tools the ECB is currently using enables it to operate across the entire curve; but noted the ECB will use all the flexibility that it has.

    FISCAL EFFORTS: A key theme of the Lagarde Presidency has been calling for greater support from fiscal authorities. Last week saw news that the European Commission is to mobilize EUR 750bln for the European Recovery Fund, comprising EUR 500bln in grants and EUR 250bln in loans, and the European Commission is to propose an EU budget worth 1.1tln along with the Recovery Fund. Judgement from the ECB at this stage will likely be reserved given that the proposal is yet to be signed off by EU leaders, with leaders from the “Frugal Four” (Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Denmark) set to seek negotiations on key aspects of the plan, particularly the grants/loans component. That said, President Lagarde will likely take note of the proposal and thank the Commission for its efforts, noting that such a fiscal initiative is required in order to kickstart the EU recovery.

    RECENT DATA: The May CPI release saw Y/Y CPI fall to 0.1% from 0.3% which marked the smallest increase in price growth since June 2016. The headline was largely suppressed by declines in energy prices with core and super-core readings showing more resilience, residing at 1.1% and 0.9% respectively. Elsewhere, given the fluidity of the current situation, timelier “soft” indicators have been of greater focus for the market. May’s Flash EZ Composite reading rose to 30.5 from 13.6 (Exp. 25.0), which, although was an increase from the prior, remained firmly in contractionary territory and prompted Markit to forecast a Q2 GDP contraction of around 10% vs. Q1. Other sentiment indicators have seen EZ Consumer Confidence at -18.8 in May with Economic Sentiment at -67.5 and services falling to -43.6 despite the easing of some lockdown measures across the bloc.

    RECENT COMMUNICATIONS: Notable interjections from the central bank have included recent comments from President Lagarde who cautioned that the Bank’s ‘mild’ growth scenario that looked for a 5% contraction in GDP this year has become outdated. Lagarde added that growth is likely in the range of the medium and severe scenarios which look for an 8% and 12% contraction respectively. Earlier in May, the President stated that the Bank will play its full part within its mandate and emphasized that there should be no undue constraints on ECB policy. Last week, Bank of France Governor Villeroy was explicit in his support for further easing, suggesting that the ECB has room to act “rapidly and powerfully”, adding that the Bank can be even more open regarding the flexibility of its PEPP. Elsewhere, Germany’s Schnabel left the door open to further easing by stating that ““If we judge that further stimulus is needed, the ECB will be ready to expand any of its tools in order to achieve its price stability objective”.

    GERMAN CONSTITUTIONAL COURT RULING: On May 5th, the German Constitutional Court found that the ECB’s Public Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP) did not violate the prohibition on monetary financing but did rule that the programme did not respect the “principle of proportionality”, suggesting it went too far with its mandate – thus violating German law. As such, the court issued a three-month ultimatum to the ECB to demonstrate proportionality or the Bundesbank “may no longer participate in the implementation and execution of the ECB decisions at issue”. In response, the ECB stated that it takes note of the German court ruling and remains fully committed to its mandate, adding that the EU Court of Justice ruled in December 2018 that it was acting within its price stability mandate. Since then, ECB policymakers have been resolute in their stance, with Germany’s Schnabel stating that she does not think it will come to the situation whereby the Bundesbank will be ordered to stop purchasing German bonds. That said, source reports last week indicated that the Bank is working on a contingency plan to carry out PSPP even without the Bundesbank.

    RATES: From a rates perspective, consensus looks for the Bank to stand pat on the deposit, main refi and marginal lending rates of -0.5%, 0.0% and 0.25% respectively. At the March meeting, officials resisted market expectations that had priced in a 100% chance of a 10bps reduction to the deposit rate and since that meeting, rhetoric from the Bank has done nothing to indicate that a further adjustment lower could be on the cards. As a guide, markets currently have around 5bps of further loosening priced in by year end.

    BALANCE SHEET: With rates expected to be held at current levels, focus will be on any tweaks to the Bank’s bond-buying remit with the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP) currently amounting to a total size of EUR 750bln. Desks are broadly in agreement that the size of the programme will need to be expanded at some stage, however, the timing of any potential adjustment remains a sticking point. Analysts at ING look for a EUR 500bln increase in the PEPP this week on the basis that a pre-emptive move could dent unwarranted speculation in markets, as well as “the German Constitutional Court gives the ECB freedom in any tailor-made or event-related action”, something which the Dutch Bank suggests could make the PEPP more attractive for the ECB given the questions surrounding its traditional APP. Additionally, ING posits about the possibility of the inclusion of “fallen angels” in the PEPP. Morgan Stanley also look for a EUR 500bln increase this week, whilst suggesting that if the ECB are looking for a further EUR 500bln increase at the end of the year (in the event that the PEPP is extended for another year), there is a chance that they could “go the whole hog now” and come to market with a EUR 1trl increase this week. Taking a differing view, analysts at UBS believe that policymakers will wait until the July 16th meeting, at which point the programme will be expanded to a total size of EUR 1trl, with the ECB also having to provide details over its reinvestment policy at some stage. UBS notes that the ECB will likely hold fire for now on the PEPP on the basis that purchases currently amount to EUR 240bln of the EUR 750bln and thus the programme still has some room to run. Furthermore, in the absence of the Bundesbank issuing its “proportionality” report by the time of the June meeting, the ECB will wish to avoid the impression that it is forcing the German central bank to defy the German court ruling. Additionally, policymakers could also wish to buy time and wait for the outcome of negotiations on the EU recovery fund with the so-called “frugal four” likely to oppose elements of the EUR 750bln proposal. Another aspect to consider is the ECB’s reinvestment policy for PEPP, however, Morgan Stanley believes that on balance, it is too early to clarify the exit strategy at this stage, albeit MS ultimately expects full reinvestment at least for an extended period after the programme ends.

    ECONOMIC ASSESSMENT: This week’s meeting will also be accompanied by the latest round of macro projections from the Bank which will inevitably see a downgrade to the current 0.8% GDP forecast for 2020; note, the ECB appear to be guiding for a contraction of between 8 and 12%. Greater focus instead could be placed upon the 2021 and 2022 expansions for insight into how quickly the ECB expects the EZ economy to recover; forecasts currently stand at 1.3% and 1.4% respectively. UBS suggests that 2021 could get an upgrade to 4.6% and 2022 be raised to 2.9%. Inflation forecasts are set to be downgraded from 2020 through 2022 with UBS providing the following expectations: 2020 lowered to 0.4% from 1.1%, 2021 cut to 1.0% from 1.4% and 2022 reduced to 1.4% from 1.6%. Note, the ECB could opt to publish various economic scenarios, rather than its traditional specific yearly forecasts.

    Below we share the always insightful ECB cheat sheet from ING Economics, whose base case is also an increase in the PEPP by €500BN to €1.25 trillion.

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    In his preview of the ECB’s latest policy action, Saxo Bank’s head of macro analysis, Christopher Dembik writes that he is onside with consensus in expecting an increase of the PEPP of EUR 500bn and its extension until 2021. The ECB is also likely to take note of the most recent data and downgrade its macroeconomic projections for this year. Any explicit reference to long term deviation from capital keys would be very welcome by market participants as it would signal that the ECB is ready to show flexibility over time to help countries most affected by the crisis and to avoid a widening of sovereign spreads.

    The ECB systemic stress indicator initially developed by Hollo, Kremer and Lo Duca in 2012, and based on fifteen financial stress measures, points out that further support from the ECB is needed to limit financial issues that could slow down the recovery. Though it has receded from its annual peak reached in mid-March, it remains in risk-zone territory at 0.25. To address ongoing tensions and absorb all the new coronavirus debt issued by euro area countries, we expect the ECB to increase the size of its new Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP) from EUR 750bn to EUR 1.25tr and extend it beyond 2020, at least until June/September 2021.

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    Following the release of the worst euro area GDP figure on record in Q1 (at minus 3.8% QoQ) and given the second quarter print will be even worse due to the impact of strict lockdown, the ECB is likely to downward its macroeconomic projections for 2020. One month ago, the ECB presented different growth scenarios, with GDP contraction reaching -5% to -12% before a rebound in 2021 between +4% to +6%. We think the baseline growth forecast should be close to the most severe scenario, around -10% this year. The amplitude of the rebound in 2021 will be highly dependent on fiscal policy and the steady implementation of the EU recovery fund worth EUR 750bn presented last week by the EC. In this regard, uncertainty remains since the political bargaining between member states has just started. Thought it is a positive step forward, this is not the “Hamilton moment” expected by many European enthusiasts. It is ill-timed – the peak of the stimulus package will be reached only in 2024! – and it is insufficient in terms of amounts allocated to cope with the economic disaster, especially in countries most hit.

    During the press conference, any explicit reference to long term deviation from capital keys could be bullish for the market. It would constitute a clear signal that the ECB is eager to show flexibility in running its PEPP and is committed to do whatever it takes to avoid a widening of euro area sovereign spreads.

    We cannot exclude the possibility the ECB could give indications of increase in supranational bonds purchases, whenever it will be the right time, in order to absorb debt issuance linked to the EU recovery fund. It would also have the advantage of mitigating issuer limit since the relative share of sovereign bonds would automatically decrease.

    Finally, as it clearly appears the initial shock from the COVID-19 outbreak is mostly deflationary, the ECB could put back on the table the topic of the inflation target that is initially part of its strategy review. A more symmetrical inflation target of, say, 1.5-2.5% in the medium run with a goal to average 2% in the long run, could be clearer and simpler than the current definition. It would also substantially reinforce the credibility of the ECB’s forward guidance in order to address growing deflationary risks.

    ECB Post-pandemic policy options:

    In case further monetary policy easing would be needed in the long run, the ECB is not running out of ammunition. Below, we have ranked the potential new measures from most likely to least likely to occur:

    Lower TLTRO rate: TLTRO is one of the most powerful tools in the ECB toolbox. It is the least politically sensitive – the latest ECB minutes showed broad support to TLTRO – with the biggest positive economic impact and little or no stigma attached. Further TLTRO cut is on the top of the agenda if the ECB needs to act further.

    Bank loans purchases: The ECB can also decide to buy private assets. Purchase of bank loans (corporate loans), as the Federal Reserve is doing with the Main Street Lending Facility, could be one option to encourage banks to give money more freely to businesses in need of a loan and free them of most of the associated risk.

    HY purchases: The ECB might need to include HY bonds in its PEPP, focusing primarily on fallen angels, if the euro area faces a wave of credit downgrade in the coming months as the real impact of the crisis will be more visible.

    More negative rates: Unlikely due to the negative consequences on banks’ profitability.

    Yield Curve Control: It is mostly an exit strategy in case the ECB would like to run the economy hot when the recovery will materialize while preventing yields from rising too fast. The incremental approach could consist in targeting front-end yields (i.e. up to two years) to make sure borrowing costs would remain low. However, it faces both technical and legal constraints. YCC can work fine in true monetary unions, like the U.S. or Japan, but in the euro area it would imply that the ECB targets several yield curve simultaneously  – which would seriously complicate the task. On the top of that, the ECB is legally bounded to buy assets provided that it respects principle of proportionality – which would not be the case with YCC.

    OMT programme: It is still part of the toolbox, but it is a last-resort measure that could be activated only in case of an unexpected and sudden credit crunch that would limit member states’ access to public markets.

  • "Everything Is Telling You "No, It's Not OK", And Then You Look At The S&P 500 – It Keeps Going Up"
    “Everything Is Telling You “No, It’s Not OK”, And Then You Look At The S&P 500 – It Keeps Going Up”

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/03/2020 – 22:26

    There’s a lot of confused traders out there.

    That’s the conclusion from reading some of the trader quotes in Bloomberg’s article about how “The Things That Used to Matter to Stock Investors Don’t Anymore” and which, as the title suggests, explains that “neither rising earnings, nor economic growth, nor bargains matter” in the rally that has swept markets since March.

    We find all of that surprising, because while Bloomberg is right and neither earnings, nor economics, nor valuation matter, what does matter is what Bill Dudley finally admitted to today, namely that the Fed is “basically creating a little bit of moral hazard” and since moral hazard is a binary condition – it is either there or it isn’t – what happened is that as Scott Minerd said, the Fed “sent the world a buy signal“ and the world responded as requested.

    But don’t take our word for it – look at what the companies themselves are doing. Having drastically slashed buybacks and takeovers to just $12 billion last month, the second-lowest level in the past decade, according to TrimTabs, corporations have unleashed a record stock selling spree, pushing the total to a record $94 billion.

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    Cash-strapped, some would say insolvent, firms from airlines to cruise lines rushed to take advantage of the euphoria and sell shares to shore up their balance sheets. Companies including Warner Music Group and ZoomInfo Technologies launched IPOs, seeking to raise money and take advantage of a market multiple that’s expanded to a record high. As a result, equity sales in May more than tripled the 12-month average, according to TrimTabs.

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    Yet this clearest sign of a top – after all who knows their own stock prospects better than the companies themselves and they are dumping to sell – has been completely ignored, as retail daytraders and systematic funds have continued to chase momentum in a market where according to Bloomberg calculations, $9 trillion was added to equity values in 10 weeks, with the Nasdaq 100 surging 38% since its March low and briefly eclipsed its all-time closing high on Wednesday.

    Yet while it all makes sense if one just accepts that only the Fed matters, some traders still seek strands of logic and reason in a market that disconnected with underlying data a decade ago:

    “All those things are telling you everything is not OK, and then you look at the S&P 500 – it keeps going up,” said Jerry Braakman, chief investment officer of First American Trust in Santa Ana, California. “The market doesn’t care about valuations. With the Fed continuing to step in, the right bet has been to bet with the Fed. The trends are your friends right now, just keep riding it higher and it’s almost a little bit like, stick your head in the sand.“

    Yes Jerry, that’s right, just stick your head in the sand and buy: the Fed’s got your back, so what can possibly go wrong?

    Well, for one, the euphoria eventually dry up and companies may no longer be able to “distribute” their shares to gullible momentum chasers.

    “The staggering volume of new offerings should be of concern to market participants,” said Winston Chua, an analyst with TrimTabs. “The more shares in the marketplace, the harder it is for existing shares to move higher, all else being equal.”

    The risk, as we laid out two weeks ago in “Companies Call The Market Top With Most Stock Sales In Eight Years“, is that sooner or later, investors will reverse their stance to join corporations in unloading stocks, as Goldman warned recently when it said that with buybacks fizzling, the market is vulnerable to shocks, unlike years past when companies helped keep equity losses from snowballing by launching massive buybacks at inflection points. To wit, the market’s bottom in February 2018 came in a week when Goldman Sachs’s corporate-trading desk saw the busiest buyback orders ever.

    And while a top is certain, the question is when.

    For now, it’s just the opposite as investors appear to have run out of “safe” megacaps and are chasing increasingly riskier exposure, snapping up banks and small caps, companies seen benefiting most from an economic rebound (how ironic, considering that an economic rebound is the worst possible outcome for traders as it would mean an end to the Fed’s massive stimulus). No surprise that Citigroup’s sentiment model, which tracks factors such as fund flows and options trading, is pointing to a state of euphoria among investors.

    Why? The answer is simple: the Fed has created the biggest legalized casino in the world, and with everyone winning who would want to leave when the fun is just starting.

    “The talks from Federal Reserve officials and other government officials that basically they’re willing to take whatever it takes to make sure the economy can get back on track gives investors the feeling that there is really no significant risk in stocks,” said Michael Ball, managing director of Denver-based Weatherstone Capital Management. “Things like fundamentals and buybacks don’t matter until they matter, and people over-correct for that.”

    * * *

    Yet while everyone is confused as to why the Fed can continue doing what it does (as Eric Peters said over the weekend, “Stocks Are Going Parabolic For All The Wrong Reasons: The Fed Made A Massive Mistake“), including professional investors, there do occasionally emerge nuggets of clear insight such as the following excerpt from Benjamin Bowler:

    “Perception can become reality, as investors heavily trained since the GFC to not fight the trend, feel forced to chase.  A risk then is succumbing to reflexivity – that is inferring fundamentals from prices and believing markets are correctly forecasting a rosy future, despite much needing to go right for that to be the case… Hence, the key in our view is appreciating the more likely drivers of markets here (a feedback loop fuelled by the perception of quant + promise of policy + the fear of missing out) rather than letting buoyant prices seed overconfidence that markets can truly shrug off the worst recession since the great depression (something not seen in 90yrs).”

  • The Controlled Burn Rages Out Of Control
    The Controlled Burn Rages Out Of Control

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/03/2020 – 22:20

    Authored by Ben Shaprio via RealClearPolitics.com,

    In the wake of riots that have spread across America, leaving shattered businesses and wounded communities in their wake, it feels as though our nation is collapsing around us. That’s bizarre, considering that virtually all Americans agree with the following two propositions:

    first, that it is evil for a police officer to place his knee on the neck of a prone suspect struggling to breathe for eight long minutes;

    second, that breaking store windows; stealing televisions and shoes; beating business owners; and attacking police officers is wrong.

    That seeming unanimity should mean unity in the face of police brutality and rioting and looting.

    It doesn’t.

    It doesn’t because members of our political class have decided that instead of rallying against obvious evil, Americans must be categorized as enlightened or benighted based on their answer to one question:

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    Was America and is America rooted in racism and bigotry?

    • If you answer in the negative, you are complicit in racism and bigotry, say our media, academic leaders and high-ranking members of the Democratic Party.

    • If you answer in the affirmative, you may be categorized among the woke, the aware, the sensitive and the decent.

    This is a nonsensical and dangerous game. But it’s a game pressed forward by the most powerful messaging institutions in our society: our media, who award Pulitzer Prizes to faux history like The 1619 Project, which argues that every American institution has been fatally corrupted by America’s original sin, slavery, and that every inequality of today can find its root in inequities of the past; our celebrities, who proudly proclaim that rights to free speech, property ownership and due process are merely facades for the continuing and malign maintenance of structural inequalities; and too many of our politicians, who casually attribute every instance of police brutality to deep-seated American racism.

    These are lies. America’s history is replete with racism and oppression, but that’s because America didn’t hold true to her founding ideals; America’s philosophy is good and true, and her flaws are thanks to her failures to follow that philosophy. It is a lie to attack Americans’ fundamental rights as outgrowths of persecution. And it’s a damnable calumny to liken the treatment of black Americans in 2020 to the treatment of black Americans in 1960, let alone 1860. Yet we are told by our institutional elites that to point out these lies is to refuse responsibility, to provide cover for racism.

    Declaring America’s most fundamental structures corrupt and cancer-ridden is deeply dangerous. Once a structure has been condemned, its foundations declared unstable, it can only be destroyed. There is no way to argue that fealty to a particular political program inside that supposedly corrupt structure can fix the problem. Former President Barack Obama, who declares that discrimination exists in “almost every institution of our lives,” and that “the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow … that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on,” says that voting for local officials is the solution to police brutality and individual instances of racism. Somehow, so long as we vote for the same Democratic politicians who have governed nearly every major American city for decades, America’s founding sins can be extirpated. Is anyone expected to believe this? Our elites cannot set fire to the fundamentals of America and then hope to contain that fire to occasional trips to the voting booth.

    So Americans are left with a choice.

    • We can either think of one another with charity and accuracy, acknowledging the sins of America’s past while recognizing that America remains a beacon of freedom and decency.

    • Or we can continue to follow the path of those who would tear us apart.

    To follow the latter course isn’t sensitive or moral.

    It places the very existence of our common republic at risk.

  • Brands Cut Ties With Popular 'Mommy' Influencer Who "Re-Homed" Disabled Toddler
    Brands Cut Ties With Popular ‘Mommy’ Influencer Who “Re-Homed” Disabled Toddler

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/03/2020 – 22:00

    Brands are cutting ties with a popular Mommy YouTuber after she and her husband admitted they “re-homed” their adopted son, Huxley, a 4-year-old Chinese-born baby suffering from a sensory disability and severe autism.

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    During a video, the pair decided to address questions about why their son was no longer appearing in videos with them. The pair admitted that Huxley had been given to a “new mommy” who is “much better equipped” to take care of him in his new “forever home”, including being a trained medical professional.

    The pair didn’t offer any additional information about the child’s whereabouts, and apparently the fact that they were using terms typically applied to rescue animals  – and the offense this might cause – were lost on the two parents.

    “As an adoptee, the term ‘rehoming’ is offensive, because it’s traditionally used with rescue and shelter animals as if they weren’t the initial right fit. In adoptions of children, the term can be associated with placing children in new homes and, if not researched, that can (and has) put children in danger,” said Lisa Cleary, author of “How to Survive a Breakup: When All of Your Friends are Birthing Their Second Child.”
    John DeGarmo, director of The Foster Care Institute and a foster care expert, said his initial reaction was, “Oh my goodness. Not again.”

    “I have experienced this in my own home. I had a child come to my home who was adopted by three different families,” he told TODAY Parents.

    Of course, Influencers have come in for special scorn this week, as several viral videos showed influencers pretending to help with the cleanup…

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    ….or pretending to sympathize with the protesters…

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    …and we’re likely to see more of this, since Coachella was cancelled this year…and Burning Man will likely see the same fate.

  • Bricks, Fires, Frozen Bottle Projectiles: The Organized Tactics Of America's Violent Rioters
    Bricks, Fires, Frozen Bottle Projectiles: The Organized Tactics Of America’s Violent Rioters

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/03/2020 – 21:40

    Authored by Christine Dolan and John Solomon via JustTheNews.com,

    Law enforcement officials across the country say the anarchists who are inflaming peaceful demonstrations honoring George Floyd and transforming them into violent riots are more organized, better coordinated and supplied than any militants seen in civil discord in years.

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    Police intelligence units have uncovered encrypted and walkie-talkie communications as well as social media postings that coordinate the delivery and hiding of weapons and projectiles and the direction of anarchists to specific locations at specific times.

    In essence, these professional rioters have created command-and-control apparatus as well as supply chains unseen in prior riots that followed the deaths of Michael Brown (Ferguson, Mo.) and Freddie Grey (Baltimore) and the verdict in the case of those officers who beat Rodney King (Los Angeles).

    One federal law enforcement official told Just the News, “The anarchists have upped their game.” 

    U.S. Park Police Acting Chief Gregory T. Monahan said Tuesday one of the most troubling tactics seen near the White House is anarchists trying to grab police weapons during clashes. Other weaponry, he said, was being hidden in areas for perpetrators to pick up to use against officers.

    “Intelligence had revealed calls for violence against the police, and officers found caches of glass bottles, baseball bats and metal poles hidden along the street,” he said.

    In other cities, stacks of bricks have been discovered in staging areas that end up being slammed against store windows by looters. 

    In New York City, rioters appear to have developed a scouting system to pick targets for fires and looting or to exploit holes in police protection. In the Big Apple, two lawyers were arrested after tossing a molotov cocktail into a police van. 

    The anarchists have “developed a complex network of bicycle scouts to move ahead of demonstrators in different directions of where police were and where police were not for purposes of being able to direct groups from the larger group to places where they could commit acts of vandalism including the torching of police vehicles and Molotov cocktails where they thought officers would not be,” John Miller, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for terrorism, disclosed this week.

    Miller added that pre-planning by the anarchists included the preparation of supply lines for such items as gasoline, bottles and rocks as well as medics who could care for injured rioters.

    “Before the protests began, organizers of certain anarchist groups set out to raise bail money and people who would be responsible to be raising bail money, they set out to recruit medics and medical teams with gear to deploy in anticipation of violent interactions with police,” he said.

    The most intense instigators share similar language, blaming capitalism, globalism, chauvinism, oppression, and America overall, police officials said.

    Spray painted graffiti messages, signs and chants commonly seen by the cops range from “F**k Capitalism” to “Death to America.”

    “This time they are more organized, more strategic, even angrier,” said one Midwest law enforcement official, “and this is beyond criminal justice.”

    “Now, we have older local citizens who have protested peacefully for decades calling us and telling us, ‘I am not going out there because there is going to be violence.’ That is where this has gone.” 

    In local meetings where demonstrators strategize their objectives, which is a normal demonstration plan, the outsiders are hijacking the peaceful demonstrators’ objectives with little to no regard for the local communities, emphasizing a call for a violent revolution, officials said. 

    The goal of the anarchists appears to be to instigate large numbers of locals to create chaos and additional violence and looting. About one out of every seven people arrested by the NYPD were outsiders aligned to such anarchist groups, officials have said.

    Law enforcement officials told Just the News that anarchists are dispersing among the crowds in two or threes, draped with backpacks, hoodies, walkie-talkies with telltale signs of instigating violence or panic.

    Former Ferguson, Mo., police chief Tom Jackson, who lost his job after the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown and subsequent rioting, said the anarchists’ tactics in 2020 appear more organized and more widespread than what he experienced in Ferguson. Brown’s death was ultimately ruled justified.

    “What it seems like is organized anarchy,” Jackson told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Tuesday.

    “These folks seem to be well-coordinated and well-funded. I think there is some sort of logistics support. This has really evolved into a sort of an insurgency that is hiding behind protesters and people exercising their rights.”

    Jackson said police will need to adapt their tactics to mirror those used by the military during wartime insurgencies overseas, particularly psychological and communications operations on social media.

    “We had no idea the power of social media. We do now. It is how these folks are communicating in these riots,” he said

    The challenge is most police departments, especially smaller ones, don’t have the resources to staff a full-time social media operations team, he said.

    So instead, Jackson is recommending a special reserve unit be created — from paid to volunteer — to parachute in or be activated when rioting crises occur.

    “What I was kind of recommending is having a major case squad of social media people, who could be called up as volunteers or otherwise who can attack the social media attacks on the police so for everything the streamers are putting out the police department is putting out the truth and its own story line so you can at least fight back,” he said.

  • A Third Of Americans Who Lost Their Job Due To COVID Still Waiting For Unemployment Benefits To Arrive
    A Third Of Americans Who Lost Their Job Due To COVID Still Waiting For Unemployment Benefits To Arrive

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/03/2020 – 21:20

    Almost 33% of unemployment benefits that have been applied for as a result of coronavirus-related job losses have still not been paid. This is despite the fact that the Treasury has disbursed $146 billion in benefits in three months through May, which is more than all of 2009.

    Recall, policymakers responded to the virus outbreak by offering $600 per week more in unemployment than usual. The goal was to keep people home and prevent the virus from spreading. 

    But this number still isn’t enough: the total amount owed to Americans during the same period was $214 billion, according to Bloomberg: 

    The Treasury reports its unemployment disbursements daily. Bloomberg’s calculation of what should have been paid is based on continuing claims for benefits, including those filed under a special program that widened the safety net to include contractors and gig workers. (It assumes filings for missing weeks in May will be in line with the average in preceding weeks).

    Those claims were multiplied by the weekly unemployment benefit, using the $378 state average plus the $600 boost that’s due to expire at the end of July.

    The $67 billion difference is proof positive that emergency efforts to boost and disburse payments are falling short. 

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    Jay Shambaugh, an economist at Brookings Institution, said: “There’s a lot more money that should have gone out that has not gone out.”

    More than 40 million people have filed for unemployment amidst the economic shutdown. This includes 7.8 million people claiming under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program for independent contractors. And the lack of payments are coming at the worst possible time, as racial tensions have gripped the nation and widespread rioting and looting is taking place. 

    At the same time, economists believe another 1.8 million people filed for unemployment last week and that Friday’s numbers will show a jobless rate of 19.5%, the highest since the Great Depression.

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    Bob Radcliffe, who lives in Morristown, New Jersey filed for unemployment in March and is now owed almost $15,000. He has four children under eight and says he hasn’t received any benefits yet. He is taking his bank up on a three-month mortgage forbearance to survive. 

    “I’ve had money to live. I’m not a desperate case. But I’m running out,” he said. 

    The Labor Department dispute’s Bloomberg’s use of its weekly claims report to extrapolate its data, stating: “It is also challenging to use these numbers because states are struggling to keep up with demand and some have backlogs they are working through.”

    Meanwhile, Bloomberg thinks it has underestimated the amount owed to Americans. 

    Texas, for example, has a backlog of 650,000 claims. The state has seen more than 2.6 million claims filed since March. The state has added to its staffing by redeploying other workers, but attention has also been drawn to helping people find jobs and re-opening the state. 20% of workers in the state’s oil and gas industry have filed for unemployment. 

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    And a failure to extend benefits nationwide could prolong the crisis, according to Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton LLP. While the $1,200 benefits have momentarily helped families pay for rent or initial food bills, it also amounts to a little more than a week’s pay for many. 

    Swonk said: “We’re really talking about an economy that is going to be operating at a fraction of its capacity for a long period of time.”

    Ernie Tedeschi, a former U.S. Treasury economist now at Evercore ISI concluded: “On paper the U.S. strategy is very generous. But that generosity on paper is meaningless if it doesn’t translate into actual money in people’s pockets when they need it.”

  • Three Ways Lockdowns Paved The Way For These Riots
    Three Ways Lockdowns Paved The Way For These Riots

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/03/2020 – 21:00

    Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

    There were many reasons to oppose the COVID-19 lockdowns.

    They cost human lives in terms of deferred medical treatment. They cost human lives in terms of greater suicide and drug overdoses. Domestic abuse and child abuse have increased. There is also good reason to believe that lockdowns don’t actually work. The lockdown activists capitalized on media-stoked fear to push their authoritarian agenda based not on science, but on the whims of a handful of experts who insisted that they need not present any actual evidence that their bizarre, draconian, and extreme scheme was worth the danger posed to human rights, health, and the economic well-being of billions of human beings.

    Those who lacked the obsessive and irresponsible tunnel vision of the pro-lockdown people warned that there were other dangers as well, in terms of social and political conflict.

    It didn’t require an especially clear crystal ball to see that destroying the livelihoods of countless millions while empowering a police state to harass and arrest law-abiding citizens would create a situation that maybe—just maybe—could lead to greater social and political conflict.

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    Specifically, there are three ways in which the lockdowns laid the groundwork for our current state of unrest.

    The Lockdowns Created an Economic Disaster

    The COVID-19 stay-at-home orders, business closures, and other forms of coerced social distancing have so far led to job losses for well over 30 million Americans. The unemployment rate has risen to levels not seen since the Great Depression. Food banks are under strain as Americans line up for free food. Thanks to government moratoria on evictions in many areas, it is still unknown to what extent homeowners and renters are unable to pay mortgages and rents, but a wave of delinquencies is almost certainly coming.

    To advocates of lockdowns, this is all “worth it” even though these sorts of economic stresses often lead to suicide, stress-induced disease, and death. But impoverishment, unemployment, and financial ruin are all merely “inconvenient,” as described by head lockdown advocate Anthony Fauci.

    To someone who isn’t enamored of lockdowns, however, it is clear that millions of job losses are likely to worsen a variety of social ills, sometimes even resulting in violence. Moreover, the current job losses appear to be affecting the young and those who earn lower incomes most.

    Lockdown advocates have attempted to avoid responsibility for all this by claiming that it is the pandemic itself that has caused the current economic disaster, and not the lockdowns. This is a baseless assertion. As has been shown, neither the pandemics of 1918 or 1958 led to the sorts of job losses and decline in economic growth that we’re now seeing.

    The Lockdowns Destroyed Social Institutions

    Another outcome of the lockdowns has been the destruction of American social institutions. These institutions include schools (both public and private), churches, coffee shops, bars, libraries, barbershops, and many others.

    Lockdown advocates continue to claim that this is no big deal and insist that people just sit at home and “binge watch” television shows. But researchers have long pointed to the importance of these institutions in preserving peace and as a means of defusing social tensions and problems.

    As much as lockdown advocates may wish that human beings could be reduced to creatures that do nothing more than work all day and watch television all night, the fact is that no society can long endure such conditions.

    Human beings need what are known as “third places.” In a 2016 report, the Brookings Institution described what these places are:

    the most effective ones for building real community seem to be physical places where people can easily and routinely connect with each other: churches, parks, recreation centers, hairdressers, gyms and even fast-food restaurants. A recent newspaper article on McDonald’s found that for lower-income Americans, the twin arches are becoming almost the equivalent of the English “pub,” which after all is short for “public house”: groups of retirees meeting for coffee and talk, they might hold regular Bible study meetings there, and people treat the restaurant as an inexpensive hangout.

    Third places have a number of important community-building attributes. Depending on their location, social classes and backgrounds can be “leveled-out” in ways that are unfortunately rare these days, with people feeling they are treated as social equals. Informal conversation is the main activity and most important linking function. One commentator refers to third places as the “living room” of society.

    The lockdown advocates, in a matter of a few days, cut people off from their third places and insisted, in many cases, that this would be the “new normal” for a year or more.

    Yet, these third places cannot simply be shut down—and the public told to just forget about them indefinitely—without creating the potential for violence and other antisocial behavior.

    Indeed, third places act as institutions that provide a type of social control that is key to a well-functioning society. In his trenchant book The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy, historian and social critic Christopher Lasch described the importance of third places in communicating political and social values and conventions to young people, and in setting the bounds of acceptable behavior within the community. Lasch notes that these institutions are also important in defusing violent impulses among the young. Also of great importance is the fact that third places provide a means of social control that is voluntary and not a form of state coercion.

    Writing in the 1990s, Lasch was lamenting the decline of third places, although he emphasized their importance even in their modern reduced form. Thanks to the lockdowns, however, these places have been crippled far beyond what Lasch might ever have imagined.

    The Lockdowns Empowered the Police State

    The lockdowns have created a situation in which millions of law-abiding citizens have been deemed criminals merely for seeking to make a living, leave their homes, or engage in peaceful trade.

    In many areas, violations of the lockdown orders have been—or even still are, in many places—treated as criminal acts by police. This has greatly increased negative interactions between police and citizens who by no moral definition are criminals of any sort.

    Many have already seen the stories: police arresting mothers for using playground equipment, police arresting business owners for using their own property, police beating people for the “crime” of standing on a sidewalk.

    Complicating the issue is the apparent fact that police have not enforced social distancing edicts “uniformly.” Some have alleged, for example, that the NYPD has lopsidedly targeted nonwhites in enforcement:

    of the 40 people arrested [for social distancing violations in Brooklyn between March 17 and May 4], 35 were African American, 4 were Hispanic and 1 was white. The arrests were made in neighborhoods—Brownsville, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Cypress Hills and East New York—which have large concentrations of blacks and Latinos.

    This may or may not reflect the reality of the general situation, but the fact is that the lockdowns created the perception among many that this is just yet another case of law enforcement targeting certain populations over small-time violations.

    Moreover, it is quite plausible that lower-income populations have more often been on the receiving end of state harassment in the name of social distancing. After all, compliance with lockdowns is something of a luxury reserved for higher-income, white-collar residents who can work from home and remain comfortable for long periods in their roomy houses. Working-class people and those with fewer resources are far more likely to need to find income and venture outside during lockdowns. This attracts the attention of police.

    Lockdown advocates, apparently in their usual state of extreme naïvete, perhaps believed that further empowering police to violently enforce government decrees against petty infractions would not lead to any unfortunate side effects down the road. Yet criminalizing millions of Americans and subjecting them to heightened police harassment is not a recipe for social tranquility.

    Worsening a Volatile Situation

    Of course, my comments here should not be interpreted as making excuses for rioters. Smashing up the property of innocent small business owners—or worse, physically harming innocent people—is reprehensible in all circumstances. But this isn’t about making excuses. We’re talking about avoiding extreme and immoral government policies (i.e., police-enforced lockdowns) that remove those institutions and conditions which are important in helping minimize conflict.

    Some may insist that the riots would have occurred no matter what, but it’s easy to see how the lockdowns made a bad situation worse. Yes, some of the rioters are lifelong thugs who are always on the lookout for new opportunities to steal and maim. But experience suggests that the pool of people willing to engage in riots is often larger during periods of mass unemployment than during other periods. In addition, those people who exist on the margins of criminality—the sorts of people for whom third places serve an important role in moderating their more antisocial tendencies—are more likely to be swept up in these events when third places are abolished. And, as we have seen, lockdowns also create more opportunities for police abuse that ignite riots of the sort we’ve seen in recent days.

    It’s true the responsibility for the riots lies primarily with the rioters. But we cannot deny that policymakers fuel the flames of conflict when they outlaw jobs and destroy people’s social support systems by cutting them off from their communities. It’s also wise to not provoke people by pushing for widespread human rights violations and additional police harassment. But this is what lockdown advocates have done, and their imprudence should not be forgotten.

  • Talkspace Pulls Out Of Facebook Partnership, Says The Platform "Incites Racism, Violence And Lies"
    Talkspace Pulls Out Of Facebook Partnership, Says The Platform “Incites Racism, Violence And Lies”

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/03/2020 – 20:40

    Online therapy company Talkspace is pulling out of a partnership with Facebook because the social media platform has failed to moderate posts from President Trump. 

    After the president Tweeted “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” in response to nationwide riots several days ago, Talkspace’s CEO made the announcement on Twitter, saying “We will not support a platform that incites violence, racism and lies.”

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    Frank told CNBC that the deal between the two companies was as content partners, with Facebook being able to use Talkspace to provide free therapy to certain audiences. When the two companies first started talking, Frank said, they were focusing their efforts on students. 

    Talkspace’s blog gets about a million views per month and the deal would have involved Talkspace generating content for Facebook. Frank said the deal would have paid his company six figures. 

    Frank told CNBC: “It’s a huge potential opportunity and a relationship with the largest media company in the world. I don’t think they are evil people, but do think they turned out to be an evil company.”

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    Facebook has taken a turn toward mental health in the last few years. Both Facebook and Instagram have caught some of the blame for increasing people’s anxiety because of time spent on the social networks.

    Frank has been a long-time critic of Facebook, even describing social media as the “new cigarettes” in 2016. 

    Frank said the deal was in its final stages and he canceled it after reading the news this weekend.

    Facebook employees, meanwhile, staged a “virtual walkout” to protest the President’s statements last Thursday. Facebook, as a platform, did not regulate Trump’s post. Twitter, on the other hand, placed a warning on Trump’s statement late last week. 

    “We encourage employees to speak openly when they disagree with leadership. As we face additional difficult decisions around content ahead, we’ll continue seeking their honest feedback,” Facebook concluded.

  • The State's Priority Is Protecting Itself, Not You
    The State’s Priority Is Protecting Itself, Not You

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/03/2020 – 20:20

    Authored by Bradley Thomas via The Libertarian Institute,

    Murray Rothbard pointed out in his book Anatomy of the State how the state is far more punitive against those that threaten the comfort and authority of government institutions and workers than they are against crimes against citizens.

    This, according to Rothbard, exposed as a myth the notion that the state exists to protect its citizens.

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    “We may test the hypothesis that the State is largely interested in protecting itself rather than its subjects by asking: which category of crimes does the State pursue and punish most intensely—those against private citizens or those against itself?” Rothbard wrote.

    “The gravest crimes in the State’s lexicon are almost invariably not invasions of private person or property, but dangers to its own contentment, for example, treason, desertion of a soldier to the enemy, failure to register for the draft, subversion and subversive conspiracy, assassination of rulers and such economic crimes against the State as counterfeiting its money or evasion of its income tax.”

    Boy how recent events have proven Rothbard right.

    For weeks, we saw police aggressively pursuing and punishing peaceful people merely violating arbitrary lockdown orders to go surfing, cut hair, or host a child’s play date.

    But in the first nights of the George Floyd protests, police allowed rioters to run amok destroying property, with political leaders dismissing the damage as unimportant.

    This stark contrast in police responses dramatically underscores Rothbard’s point.

    Take the first nights of rioting in Minneapolis. As reported by the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, the source of the “police stand-down order that allowed his own city to burn,” merely “shrugged off responsibility and minimized the damage.” Moreover, according to the report, “Frey kept repeating that the destruction was ‘just brick and mortar.’”

    And consider the example of Raleigh, North Carolina Police Chief Cassandra Deck-Brown, who said:

    When the greater risk is of injury to the officer, and I had five injured last night – a building? A window? A door? The property that was in it can easily be replaced. But for a person who has had officers shot. And more recently than not, I will not put an officer in harm’s way to protect the property inside of a building. Because insurance is most likely going to cover that as well but that officer’s safety is of the utmost importance.

    Got that? The officer’s safety is the primary concern, not the property of citizens. Agents of the state whose sole job is supposedly to protect the people and their property instead refuse to do their job at the first hint of danger.

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    Worse still, as Ryan McMaken pointed out in a recent article at Mises.org, “A failure to protect taxpaying citizens from violence and crime in a wide variety of situations is standard operating procedure for police departments that are under no legal obligation to protect anyone, and where ‘officer safety’ is the number one priority.”

    McMaken further notes that it is “now a well-established legal principle in the United States that police officers and police departments are not legally responsible for refusing to intervene in cases where private citizens are in imminent danger or even in the process of being victimized.”

    Police absence during riots is nothing new. As McMaken wrote: “During the 2014 riots that followed the police killing of Michael Brown, for example, shopkeepers were forced to hire private security, and many had to rely on armed volunteers for protection from looters. ‘There’s no police,’ one Ferguson shopkeeper told Fox News at the time. ‘We trusted the police to keep it peaceful; they didn’t do their job.”’

    As the violence of the riots intensified, mayors instructed police forces in cities across the nation to step up their presence.

    But their initial reactions are the most telling.

    The contrast between police actions against peaceful lockdown “violators” and the rioters is striking. The instincts of the political class was to haul mothers in parks and hair stylists away in handcuffs, while standing down and allowing private property owned by citizens to burn.

    The former involved disobeying a government order, an act which would threaten the perceived authority, no matter how arbitrary, of the state. The latter involved violation and destruction of citizens’ property.

    As Rothbard would have predicted, the state was far more interested in preserving the illusion of its authority than the property of its citizens.

    Putting a tragic, but fine, point to Rothbard’s point: George Floyd was choked to death by a police officer sent to detain him for the “crime” of using a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes.

    The state is not us. It does not exist to protect our person or property. It exists first and foremost for its own benefit and to exert power and control over its subjects.

    Events of the past several weeks should make this crystal clear.

    Bradley Thomas is creator of the website Erasethestate.com and is a libertarian activist who enjoys researching and writing on the freedom philosophy and Austrian economics. Follow him on twitter, @erasestate. 

  • "They Sent The World A Buy Signal": Minerd Says Fed Faces "Day Of Reckoning" For Unleashing The Final Bubble
    “They Sent The World A Buy Signal”: Minerd Says Fed Faces “Day Of Reckoning” For Unleashing The Final Bubble

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/03/2020 – 20:00

    Just hours after Former NY Fed president Bill Dudley made the stunning admission that “the Fed is basically creating a little bit of moral hazard“, stunning not because he said what everyone already knew, but because as a former member of the Fed he himself admitted that the Fed has now terminally corrupted capitalism (it should go without saying that there is no such thing as “a little bit” of moral hazard – it’s either there, or it isn’t, Guggenheim CIO Scott Minerd, who in recent months has emerged as one of the most outspoken financial establishment anti-Fed talking heads (read “We Will Never Return To Free Market Capitalism”: Guggenheim’s Minerd Warns Fed Is Pushing US Toward A Populist Revolt” for the answer why), appeared on Bloomberg TV and in a tour de force interview explained why the Fed’s efforts to stabilize the economy will encourage companies to take on too much risk, inflate a corporate-bond bubble, and ultimately result in a “day of reckoning” for the Fed which will be forced to decide if the US can ever return to its capitalist roots, or will bail out insolvent enterprises in perpetuity, in the process destroying capital markets, price discovery, and laying the foundations for a regime that is anything but capitalist (we leave it up to readers to insert their most hated ideology here).

    “It’s going to allow the excessive leverage – which had already been building up into the system coming into this – to continue, and to levels that are completely unprecedented in our history,” Minerd said at a virtual insurance conference Wednesday discussing the Fed’s most recent decision to purchase corporate bonds. As a result of the Fed’s visible hand, intervention, the risk a bubble in corporate bond markets “will just be extended and become more extreme.”

    Below are the key excerpts from Minerd’s interview which we hope everyone in the Fed and Washington listens to, but we know nobody will:

    “We already were at record levels of debt when we got into January of this year. One of my concerns was that when we have a downturn, this highly levered economy of ours was going to lead to more severe pressures on the economy. But now the Federal Reserve has basically eliminated the downside in corporate debt, they’ve sent the world a ‘Buy signal’ and we’re now putting on record amounts of corporate debt. The leverage is getting even more exacerbated. So the Fed is ultimately going to find itself in a position where it tries to fade out these problems of support for corporate debt it will be a lot like what happened in 2013 when Ben Bernanke first talked about ending QE: there was a tantrum. It’s quite likely that the Fed will face that day of reckoning when it tries to slow down asset purchases of corporate debt. And the market will then challenge the Fed where the put is, and I think this is now a permanent feature of the market.“

    After quoting Milton Friedman who once said that “nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program”, Minerd warned that “corporate America is going to become addicted to the Fed providing support. Corporations will take greater risk, that if you don’t have a highly levered balance sheet relative to your competitors your equity returns will be punished during business expansions, and so pressures will be on CEOs to continue to increase the amount of leverage especially when the Fed has got a policy of maintaining low rates for extended period of time. So I think that ultimately the Fed will be faced the challenge of whether they allow a day of reckoning, or whether they decide that they just have to continue to provide liquidity to the system until inflation rates pick up to levels that probably will be viewed as unacceptable by most participants in the Fed today.”

    The Guggenheim CIO then said he expects $1 trillion in bond “fallen angel” downgrades, but pointed out that since the Fed is effectively forcing liquidity, “it removes one of the major causes of default which is the inability to roll debt maturities over. So you have to think that at some point the rating agencies are going to start factoring the implicit support of the Federal Reserve and it will in the longer-run reduce downgrades.”

    Minerd then addressed the proliferation of zombie companies that the Fed’s actions will create, saying that “ultimately it will reduce productivity.” And while there may be a side benefit, as the Fed’s actions expand the number of jobs “in the short run” but the long-run implication is that it should also cause a period of stagflation, “which we probably won’t see the consequences of for another decade or so.”

    The interview then shifted gears and the Guggenheim CIO address the protests and rioting we are seeing in the streets, a direct byproduct of the unprecedented divide observed in America over the past decade across wealth, income, racial, religious and ideological lines, which just happens to coincide with the Fed’s takeover of capital markets as it adopted a “stock markets above all” vision, a perpetuation of the status quo which has led to even greater gains for the 0.1% and which has resulted in catastrophic consequences for everyone else. As Minerd admits, “most of the Fed support is going to major corporations. But the majority of people in our country work for small business and we’re going to have a large amount of business failures so as the economy recovery these businesses are not going to be there to create jobs, which will put more pressure more pressure on Congress and policymakers to come up with ways to encourage people to get back to work, to encourage businesses to reopen. Some of these businesses will never come back. In retail for instance, the amount of square footage in the US is about 5 times that of the UK..

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    … and so the fact that we’ve had such a glut in some categories like retailing, a lot of that is never coming back and the jobs that are attached to that are not coming back, and we’re going to have to retool workers and that is going to be a major policy issues.”

    When asked at “what point do debt levels matter”, or “how far the US can push the US debt capacity”, Minerd responded that the “dirty little secret of central banking ultimately the role of the central bank is to finance the government. And so this open-ended financing from the Fed will continue and is going to give a lot of flexibility to Congress to pass additional support programs and some of them may end up being highly disruptive to the capitalist system. I believe we are in the process of altering capitalism in the United States and the free enterprise system has a number of threats on a number of fronts.”

    Asked to explain what he means by “different capitalism”, Minerd said that inequality of all types – racial, income, wealth – all of these are the result of poor planning and programs out of Washington.” At this point the Guggenheim CIO struck on the true answer, one which we have been pounding the table on for over a decade, saying that in addition to Washington, inequality has been exacerbated by quantitative easing:

    “if you came out of the financial crisis and you had money or assets, the returns you got over the next ten years even exacerbated further the inequality among people who didn’t have assets coming out of that crisis. These policies have been fundamentally flawed – they have failed to address the broader issues that Americans face and this is going to result in changes to policies coming out of Washington.”

    The real question, according to Minerd, is “will the policy changes that are coming out be done in a way that encourages increases in productivity, output and living standards for all Americans, or will it just become a fight for the pie. That is, we need to cut up the pie again and we need to transfer wealth in some mechanism, whether through income or taxation or expropriation. Those sorts of policies have proven not to be very productive and to actually lower living standards over long periods of time.”

    One look at the streets of America today should give us the answer which of these two futures the country is facing.

    As for Minerd, one year ago he admitted that he “had discussions about joining the Fed.” Alas, after such blistering – and accurate – insight into why the Fed is at the very root of most of society’s problems, we can guarantee the Guggenheim CIO that he will never be allowed into the Marriner Eccles building for as long as the Fed exists.

    His full interview is below.

  • Swarm Of Earthquakes In Yellowstone Renews Fears Of Supervolcano Eruption
    Swarm Of Earthquakes In Yellowstone Renews Fears Of Supervolcano Eruption

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/03/2020 – 19:40

    Authored by Jake Anderson via TheMindUnleashed.com,

    The US Geological Survey says it is monitoring the area near Yellowstone National Park where a swarm of earthquakes has caused renewed concern over the area’s underground supervolcano. Although statistically unlikely, a supervolcano eruption would release the equivalent of 1,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs and wreak unprecedented destruction.

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    The area, West Yellowstone in Montana, reported around eleven earthquakes on Friday and a total of 34 in the last month. Though considered low-magnitude quakes, the tremors extended three miles underground.

    According to Yellowstone National Park’s website:

    “Yellowstone is one of the most seismically active areas in the United States…

    Approximately 700 to 3,000 earthquakes occur each year in the Yellowstone area; most are not felt. They result from the extensive network of faults associated with the volcano and surrounding tectonic features.”

    Situated in northwest Wyoming, Yellowstone National Park brings in millions of annual tourists, who marvel at the geysers, steam vents, and bubbling eddies of geothermally heated water.

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    Park officials say that earthquakes there are caused by volcanic fluids entering shallow rock fractures.

    Yellowstone sits atop one of only two supervolcanos in the US. Contained within three overlapping calderas that represent past eruptions from hundreds of thousands and even millions of years ago, scientists say the Yellowstone volcano is roughly 34 by 45 miles wide and only three miles below the surface. Its last eruption was 640,000 years ago when it is estimated to have dumped over 2,000 times the amount of ash as the Mount St. Helens eruption.

    Swarms of earthquakes are not unusual in the area. In 2018, the park recorded a swarm of 153 quakes. The US Geological Survey says the odds are only one in 730,000 that the Yellowstone supervolcano will erupt this year.

    However, the supervolcano eruption threat has become a predictable meme in recent years, usually resurfacing during earthquakes swarms. The reason is that if the supervolcano did go off, it would definitely be a game-changer. A BBC feature on supervolcanos described the aftermath:

    “The sky will darken, black rain will fall, and the Earth will be plunged into the equivalent of a nuclear winter.”

    Volcanologists insist there is no imminent threat of a supervolcano eruption at the moment but larger earthquakes and hydrothermal blasts could present a real danger to tourists. Over the years, over 300 people have died at Yellowstone, in accidents ranging from driving off of 800-foot cliffs to unknowingly diving into 200-degree boiling water and succumbing to the fumes emitted by hydrothermal vents.

    In 2016, a 23-year-old man fell off a boardwalk overlooking the Norris Geyser Basin and was incinerated in the high-temperature, acidic geyser below.

    So while this summer’s tourists probably don’t have to worry about the earthquakes representing the eruption of the supervolcano, Yellowstone National Park visitors should bring a healthy respect for the powers of nature.

  • Senate Passes Bill Allowing Small Businesses More Time To Repay Relief Loans
    Senate Passes Bill Allowing Small Businesses More Time To Repay Relief Loans

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/03/2020 – 19:28

    After small businesses left more than $140 billion in the expanded ‘PPP’ program tank (underlining how the Democrats’ calls for a $3 trillion stimulus package was a calculated, political tactic), the Senate on Wednesday voted to pass a bill allowing for more flexibility in how companies spend their money.

    The bill was the product of a bipartisan deal that finally cleared the hurdle after Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin finally relented on several changes.

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    Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York had asked for unanimous consent to pass the legislation earlier on Wednesday, but Johnson objected at the time.

    “I’m not disagreeing with the fact that we have to do something. I want to do something as well. I just want to make sure that if we do put more money into this thing it’s not going to be flowing to businesses that don’t need it…We’ve been working in good faith with the sponsors of the House bill, with Republican leadership. I reached out to Democrat leaders saying we’re very close. I think we’ll probably be able to pass the House bill with assurances, by unanimous consent, just not at this moment.”

    The bill purports to respond to complaints from actual small business owners, and changes the thresholds for how much of the program’s relief money can be spent on payroll, as well as the qualifications for a loan to transition into a grant.

    The House overwhelmingly approved the bipartisan bill, which would give small businesses 24 weeks to use the emergency loans,  and permits them to spend as low as 60% instead of the loans on payroll, down from 75%.

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    Trump is expected to sign the bill.

    It’s just the latest reminder that while the stock market is chugging along, small businesses are largely still figuring out how they’re going to keep the lights on for the next few months until things start to go back to normal.

  • HSBC Bends The Knee To Beijing, Says It Will "Respect & Support" Security Law
    HSBC Bends The Knee To Beijing, Says It Will “Respect & Support” Security Law

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/03/2020 – 19:20

    Roughly a week after a former top CCP bureaucrat in Hong Kong hinted that it was time for HSBC to bend the knee and endorse the new “National Security” law imposed on HK by Beijing, the colonial-era bank has done just that, releasing a statement on Wednesday welcoming the new law, while continuing to

    “We reiterate that we respect and support laws and regulations that will enable Hong Kong to recover and rebuild the economy and, at the same time, maintain the principle of ‘one country two systems'” HSBC said in a statement published online.

    But the city’s oldest and largest bank, which is officially based in London, but derives the majority of its profits from the Hong Kong market, isn’t the only colonial-era corporate power in HK to kowtow to Beijing. Swire and Jardine Matheson, two other prominent British-based but Asia-focused companies, have already released statements of their own, with Jardine going as far as taking out an ad in a pro-Beijing newspaper.

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    Swire said the law “will be beneficial for the long-term future of Hong Kong as a world-leading business and financial center.”

    This isn’t the first time HSBC has caved to Beijing: The bank stoked controversy by closing accounts linked to HK’s protest movement, and has persistently supported the regime, and opposed the pro-democracy movement in the past.

    Analysts at some shops fear this stance, which is wildly unpopular in HK, could impact the bank’s business as locals turn elsewhere for their financing needs.

    Hugh Young, managing director at Aberdeen Asset Management Asia, a large shareholder in the bank, said HSBC was “between a rock and a hard place.”

    While Hong Kong will stay its biggest revenue generator, over time it could risk losing market share to Chinese banks, he added.

    The position is also notably at odds with the stance taken by the UK’s conservative government, which has decried China’s encroachment on “one country, two systems”.

    The irony is, no matter what HSBC says, once Beijing cements its control over HK and its economy, it will almost certainly be muscled out by Chinese rivals, which benefit from a home field advantage, and – of course – generous state backing.

  • Johnstone: We Are Watching The Story Of America Crash Headlong Into The Reality Of America
    Johnstone: We Are Watching The Story Of America Crash Headlong Into The Reality Of America

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/03/2020 – 19:00

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    I have a bedtime story for you.

    Once upon a time a brave nation liberated itself from the tyranny of the British empire and birthed freedom and democracy into the world. With the help of heroes like the abolitionists, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X it overcame systemic racial inequality, and now it is a shining exemplar of human rights, the respected friend of free democracies around the world and the hated foe of all tyrannical regimes. It is not without its faults and its past mistakes, but it is the best leader and protector of the liberal world order that we could possibly hope to have.

    I also have a waking up story for you.

    Once upon a time a nation rose to prominence after emerging unscathed from two world wars which damaged the infrastructure of its competitors. The world’s major power players quickly coalesced around this new superpower and began maneuvering other nations into a tight empire-like alliance with it. After a long and gruelling cold war, this empire succeeded in toppling the world’s only other superpower and began working to absorb all other nations into alliance with it. If nations resisted, they were subverted, sabotaged and attacked until they either collapsed or allowed themselves to be absorbed into the imperial blob.

    World-spanning power structures are now centralized around this nation, which is home to the largest population of billionaires on the planet and the mightiest military force in the history of civilization. An unfathomable amount of power revolves around this nation, so mechanisms have been put in place to ensure the stability of its status quo. These mechanisms include the most sophisticated system of propaganda ever devised, an Orwellian network of domestic espionage, increasing internet censorship, and, above all, a highly militarized police force.

    The operators of this globe-spanning empire have always been acutely aware that the weakest point in their machine is the possibility that the hundreds of millions of people who live in this nation may one day decide that the imperial status quo is not serving them, and that they do not want to be ruled anymore. They know that the last line of defense against this happening is their ability to use extreme violence upon the population until they stop revolting, so they have no intention of ever giving up this ability. An entire planetary empire depends on it.

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    Now, if you’d been hearing the bedtime story your whole life but not the waking up story, you would naturally assume that demanding an end to police brutality was the most reasonable thing in the world.

    You would naturally expect that if a police officer was caught on video deliberately strangling a man to death and then was not immediately arrested and prosecuted for murder, people would be understandably outraged and drastic systemic changes would be swiftly implemented to appease their anger. You would naturally expect the shining city on the hill to side with the people over a police force’s murderous tendencies.

    If you’ve heard the waking up story, you would expect no such thing.

    You would understand that racial disparities never left the nation in question, and that the establishment which still keeps J Edgar Hoover’s name on the FBI building has no intention of doing anything about the police force’s role in it. You would understand that the role of the police is not to protect and serve the people but to protect and serve the empire, in the exact same way that this is the role of the military. You would understand that the empire is no more likely to voluntarily dispense with the violent tactics of its increasingly militarized police force than it is to dispense with its air force or nuclear warheads.

    They’ll supply all the empty words and take-a-knee photo ops you like, but actually voluntarily disarming themselves against their subjects is not something they’re planning on doing.

    This does not mean that those demanding these changes are being silly or unreasonable; demanding that the police not murder you is the most sane and reasonable thing in the world, per what the police force purports to be and per what America purports to be. It’s just that neither the police force nor America are what they purport to be. The bedtime story and the waking up story could not possibly be more different.

    That is what we are witnessing here. We are witnessing the head-on collision between the story America’s political, media and educational institutions tell Americans about what their country is, and the reality of what their country actually is. The disparity between the bedtime story and the waking up story has finally been stretched to a breaking point, and now the mask of free liberal democracy is coming off in front of everyone.

    We are watching a population besieged by institutional racism, economic hardship and a pandemic virus finally pushed past the breaking point, and finding themselves crashing headlong into the most unyielding part of a planet-sprawling empire. The stories are slowly clearing from the air like tear gas, and the cold, hard reality is becoming exposed to a greater and greater segment of mainstream America.

    And now the leader of this nation is openly threatening martial law and trying to designate black bloc protesters as “terrorists”. Video footage of police brutality is saturating social media faster than people can watch it, First Amendment violations are sweeping from coast to coast as police chiefs, mayors and governors try to see how far they down can squeeze freedom of assembly laws, and mysterious armed men in fatigues who refuse to say who they’re with are patrolling the nation’s capital. Prison riot specialists are being recruited as expert consultants because, in the eyes of the empire, the prisoners are rioting.

    We are all watching from around the world as the citizens of the hub of the empire confront their oppressors in an increasingly violent battle of wills. The violence rips apart the thin veneer of narrative that was keeping the bedtime story intact all this time. We all watch as the tattered ribbons slowly fall to the floor.

    Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. The empire is losing control of the narrative. In the long run, this can only be a good thing. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and truth is always superior to fiction.

    *  *  *

    Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics onTwitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

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Jun 03

Today’s News 3rd June 2020

  • Two Hour Lines In The UK At McDonald's As Drive-Thrus Reopen
    Two Hour Lines In The UK At McDonald’s As Drive-Thrus Reopen

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/03/2020 – 02:45

    McDonald’s has started to reopen 924 drive-through restaurants in the UK and Ireland. The process will take three days, but by the end of the week, about 64% of McDonald’s restaurants will be serving Big Macs to hungry customers.

    Each branch will have a slimmed-down menu and limited operating hours, between 11 am-10 pm until further notice. Reduced operating hours means there is no breakfast food. Dining areas of all restaurants will remain closed to the public. 

    Limited hours and no breakfast have likely caused a stir among some customers, who will also learn this week that a new spending cap of £25 ($31.30) will be applied on all drive-through orders. 

    Limited Menu

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    h/t MCD 

    The reopenings come after several months of closures following strict lockdown orders enforced by the government to flatten the pandemic curve. COVID-19 devastated the UK with 277,738 confirmed cases, and 39,127 deaths, and 25,062 confirmed cases and 1,650 deaths in Ireland, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins (June 2). 

    About 168 McDonald’s drive-thrus opened on Tuesday, along with two dozen locations opened for at-home delivery orders only.

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    The Daily Mail reports today’s opening was an absolute madhouse for many locations, which saw a flood of people who wanted to get their hands on Big Macs and McNuggets. Some people waited upwards of two hours to get their hands on a burger — with police managing traffic around several places as lines poured onto the streets.  

    After consulting with police, managers at McDonald’s in Newbridge, near Edinburgh, have decided to close the drive thru lane temporarily to traffic amid unprecedented demand today. – Daily Mail

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    h/t Daily Mail

    Two drive-thru lanes are packed with cars at Livingston’s McDonald’s, which reopened at 11 am with new social distancing measures in place. – Daily Mail

    Over 70 cars are queuing for up to two hours this afternoon to get a McDonalds Drive Thru on the Middlebrook Retail Park in Bolton, Gtr Manchester, with the line snaking around the car park. – Daily Mail

    Marshalls direct the queue of cars waiting to get their McDonald’s fix today in Astley Bridge, Bolton. – Daily Mail

    Drive-thru lanes were packed in Dunstable as McDonald’s reopened at 11 am on Tuesday, but customers can only order up to £25 worth of food at a time. – Daily Mail 

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    h/t Daily Mail

    Peace and calm were widely seen as McDonald’s reopened some European locations, unlike the US, rioters are burning down shops in a fit of rage. 

  • Will Italy Be The Next Country To Leave The EU?
    Will Italy Be The Next Country To Leave The EU?

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/03/2020 – 02:00

    Authored by Paul Antonopoulos via InfoBrics,

    On May 27, the political movement Italia Libera submitted a constitutional bill to the Supreme Court of Cassation demanding a referendum for Italy to leave the EU. After years of discussions, the foundation stone was laid for Italians to debate whether they want to remain in the EU or follow the United Kingdom out of the bloc. The draft bill presented by Italia Libera to the Supreme Court of Cassation is entitled “Call for a referendum on the withdrawal of the state from the European Union.”

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    Effectively, Italia Libera has demonstrated that it is possible to follow an institutional path to allow citizens to decide whether they want to remain in the EU or not – and for those who want to leave, now is the best time considering the massive decline in popularity for the bloc after their abandonment of Italy when it was at the peak of the coronavirus pandemic. 

    Gian Luca Proietti Toppi, a lawyer involved in the bill, said that it is necessary to reach ordinary Italians and “open their eyes to the harmful effects of participating in a Union without a soul and based only on finance. It is clear that with the filing of the 50,000 signatures necessary to start the parliamentary process of the proposal, a broad debate will open on the opportunity to exit the cage of the EU and the Euro.”

    He continued to explain that “the effects of liberating the old continent from this bureaucratic and oppressive superstructure will certainly be complex to manage. However, Italia Libera, who is the first promoter of the Committee that collected the signatures needed, has already put experts and academics to work to draw up a plan that will secure the savings of Italians and from the debt.”

    Although he did not mention the EU’s abandonment of Italy during the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, he did emphasize how the bloc financially exploits Italy, just as it does to all of Mediterranean Europe with the exception of France.

    There are many positive aspects to the EU, most notably the free movement of people and a coordinated effort to fight crime through Europol, but these multilateral agreements can exist without a European Parliament and domineering institutions based in Brussels and Strasbourg. As Toppi explained, Italy imagined the EU to be “a community of peoples and not of bankers.” It is for this reason that they announced the bill on the same day an unprecedented European Union Recovery Fund became official. This fund was only established because of the backlash received due to the bloc’s initial disinterest in assisting already struggling economies of the EU that were being further devastated financially by the pandemic.

    With widespread southern European dissatisfaction with how the EU abandoned its supposed liberal ideals, particularly Germany, in favour of serving inward self-interests, bloc leaders are now playing catch up. President of the European Commission and Angela Merkel’s right-hand man in previous German governments, Ursula Von Der Leyen, and the President of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, who was also a former member of the Troika of bankers, announced the unprecedented measures to assist Europe through its financial woes. This time they promised real aid that would not completely decimate state structures and entire economies like what happened to Greece, Spain, Portugal, and to a lesser extent Italy, for the entirety of the 2010’s. The Governor of the Bank of Italy expects a 13% drop in GDP in 2020, and for this reason Toppi emphasized that Italy does not need any further indebtedness which will increasingly put Italy in the hands of international speculators.

    However, Italians remember that Lagarde announced on March 13, just as coronavirus was truly beginning to overwhelm hospitals, that the pandemic was an Italian problem only. This was the catalyst that saw ordinary Italians begin to remove EU flags from public display and replace them with Russian and Chinese flags in gratitude to the significant assistance that these two countries gave to Italy when it was abandoned by Brussels and Berlin.

    An “Italexit” would be a bigger blow to the prestige of the EU then Brexit. Italy, as a G20 country, uses the Eurodollar unlike Britain which maintained currency sovereignty and continued to use the pound. Therefore, to prevent the strong possibility that Italy in the coming years could leave the EU, Brussels and Berlin must take note of its political failures and work to design a new community that has respect for national sovereignty and identity, and on the basis of reciprocity. It is not acceptable that Germany remains the dominant country of the EU and effectively rules over the European Commission, the European Central Banks, the European Court of Justice and the European Parliament.

    A Europe free of unscrupulous bankers, self-referential bureaucrats and inadequate politicians is at the forefront of those pushing for their respective countries to exit the EU or call for its reformation. However, for this to be achieved, a major state must lead the charge, and it appears that Italy will take on this mantle and could very well be the first Eurodollar state to leave the EU if drastic reformations are not made. And Italian exit will surely have a domino effect felt all across Europe.

  • Gordon Chang On China: What We Must Do, & What We Must Not Do
    Gordon Chang On China: What We Must Do, & What We Must Not Do

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 06/03/2020 – 00:05

    Authored by Gordon Chang via The Gatestone Institute,

    China has attacked America with coronavirus. At this moment, more than 100,000 Americans have been killed. We brace ourselves for the deaths to come.

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    Today, I’ll do two things. First, I’ll talk about the nature of that attack. The second thing, what we must do to protect ourselves.

    First of all, China is not, as many people will tell you, just a competitor. It is an enemy. China is trying to overthrow the international system, and in that process, it is trying to make you subject to modern-day Chinese emperors.

    I know this sounds as if it cannot be true, but we must listen to what Chinese leaders say. When we do that, we realize that to defend the American republic and defend our way of life, we are going to have to decouple from China.

    On May 6, President Donald J. Trump said that China’s attack was worse than Pearl Harbor, worse than the World Trade Center. “There’s never been an attack like this,” he said, and he is right.

    Most critically, Chinese leaders publicly admitted that the novel coronavirus, the pathogen causing COVID-19, could be transmitted from one human to another on January 20.

    Yet doctors in Wuhan, the epicenter, were noticing the contagiousness of this virus no later than the second week in December. Beijing knew a few days after that. If Chinese leaders had said nothing during that five‑week period, that would have been grossly irresponsible.

    What they tried to do, however, was deceive the world into believing that this was not transmissible human-to-human. As a result of that campaign, the World Health Organization (WHO) propagated China’s false narrative, especially with that infamous January 14 tweet:

    “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China.”

    At the same time, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China since 2012, pressured countries not to impose travel restrictions or quarantines on arrivals from China. Again, WHO helped China, this time with its January 10 statement opposing these restrictions.

    What happened was arrivals from China — when Chinese officials knew this virus was human-to human-transmissible — turned what should have been an epidemic contained to China into a global pandemic.

    I don’t know what Xi Jinping, the Chinese ruler, was thinking, but if after having seen what the coronavirus did to cripple China, he decided to cripple other societies to get even, he would have done exactly what in fact he did do.

    That means there is only one inescapable conclusion. This conclusion is that China maliciously spread this virus around the world, sickening people, killing others.

    This is the first time in history that one nation has attacked all the others.

    That is not all. After admitting the human-to-human contagiousness of this disease, Beijing then downplayed it.

    On January 21, the day after formally admitting the disease’s human-to-human transmissibility, Beijing got its propaganda machine in full gear to tell the world that this was less dangerous than SARS.

    SARS is the 2002‑2003 epidemic that according to the World Health Organization infected 8,096 people across the world, killing 744. By then, on January 21, Chinese officials knew it was much worse than SARS.

    According to Der Spiegel, Germany’s intelligence agency, the BND, believes that on January 21 ‑‑ this is the day after China formally admitted human‑to‑human transmissibility of the disease ‑‑ Xi Jinping spoke to Dr. Tedros, the director-general of WHO, and tried to get the organization to hold back information on human‑to‑human transmissibility, as well as to delay declaring a pandemic.

    Now, WHO denies that this phone conversation between Xi and Tedros took place, but it fits known facts. It also fits what the US intelligence community has been saying, according to various reports.

    China’s actions had consequences. Beijing lulled public health officials around the world, including those in the United States, into not taking actions that they otherwise would have adopted.

    Democrats and Chinese communists have criticized President Trump for acting too slowly after he imposed the travel restrictions on China on January 31. If that is true, it is only because people on his coronavirus task force were actually listening to what Beijing was saying and making judgments on what they had heard.

    For instance, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator, in her March 31 press briefing said she had seen the data from China and decided that this was no more dangerous than SARS, but realized, after the infections ripped through both Italy and Spain, that she had been deceived by the Chinese. She is not the only one. Dr. Anthony Fauci has also talked in public about how the Chinese misled him.

    We must impose costs on China. We must impose costs because, first of all, what China did was a crime against all of humanity. We must also impose costs because we need to deter China. This is not going to be the last pathogen generated on Chinese soil. We got to make sure the Chinese leaders do not believe that they can maliciously spread another disease.

    This means there is going to be friction between China and the United States as we Americans take steps to protect ourselves in the future. Those steps are going to cause arrogant and belligerent Chinese to move against us.

    We should take a look about how the arrogant and belligerent Chinese indeed view the international system, how they view the world order. You will hear many analysts say that the friction between the United States and China is just another one of these boys-will-be-boys contests in history.

    The notion is that the United States is jealously protecting its position in the international system fits in with Beijing’s narrative that their rise is inevitable and that we are in terminal decline.

    The truth is that the United States is defending more than just its position in the international system. We are defending the international system itself, the system of treaties, conventions, rules, and norms.

    Unfortunately, Xi Jinping, the Chinese ruler, does not believe in that system. He is trying to impose China’s imperial‑era notions of the world. In other words, he believes that everyone around the world must acknowledge Chinese rule.

    In short, Chinese rulers believed that they had the mandate of heaven over tianxia, meaning “all under heaven.” Xi Jinping has used tianxia‑like language for more than a decade. Recently, his pronouncements have become unmistakable.

    For instance, in his 2017 New Year’s message he said, and I quote, “The Chinese have always held that the world is united and all under heaven” — all under heaven — “are one family.”

    If this were not enough, his foreign minister, Wang Yi, in September of 2017 wrote an article in Study Times, the Central Party School’s influential newspaper. Wang Yi wrote that “Xi Jinping thought” ‑‑ “thought” in Communist Party lingo is an important body of ideological work — “made innovations on and transcended the traditional Western theories of international relations for the past 300 years.”

    If you take 2017 and subtract 300 years, you almost get to 1648. Wang, with his time reference of 300 years, was almost certainly pointing to the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, which established the current international system. That system recognizes the sovereignty of different states.

    Also, when Wang Yi used the word “transcended,” he was saying that Xi Jinping does not believe that there should be sovereign states, or at least no more sovereign states than China itself. The trend of Xi Jinping’s recent comments is that he doesn’t want to live within the international system. He does not even want to adjust it. He wants to overthrow it altogether.

    This means China once again is a revolutionary state. Now, Xi Jinping, of course, has not had the power to compel others to accept this audacious vision of worldwide Chinese rule.

    Nonetheless, in the last few months, he has seen an historic opportunity because the United States has been stricken by the disease that China itself has pushed out beyond its borders.

    What must we do? First, let us talk about what we must not do.

    We must not save Chinese communism again. In the past, American presidents, when China had been stressed, have ridden to the rescue of the Chinese state. In 1972, for instance, Richard Nixon went to a Beijing that had been weakened by more than a half decade of the Cultural Revolution, signaling America’s support for China’s communism. That is how people in China took that visit.

    The second time, 1989, George H. W. Bush sent Brent Scowcroft, his secret emissary, to Deng Xiaoping in the wake of the Tiananmen massacre. Again, America was telling the Chinese, “Don’t worry about American sanctions, don’t worry about what we say in public, we have your back.”

    The third time, 1999, President William Jefferson Clinton signed a trade deal with China – at a time when the Chinese economy, in reality, was contracting. Certainly, China was suffering geopolitical setbacks. That deal was the basis of China’s entry into the World Trade Organization.

    Despite all these saves of Chinese communism, China’s communist leaders have remained hostile. We have seen this hostility, especially since the first week of February of this year when the Global Times, which is a Communist Party newspaper, and the Chinese foreign ministry have engaged in an inflammatory disinformation campaign against the United States in an attempt to tar the US with all sorts of disease‑related sins.

    This campaign culminated, reached a high point — although this campaign is still continuing today — on March 12th when the foreign ministry went on a Twitter storm. As a part of that Twitter storm, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said that coronavirus patient zero was in the United States.

    In other words, the disease started here. He also suggested that the US Army carried the disease to Wuhan. We were seeing daily stories about how the United States had been spreading the disease around the world.

    Now, Americans, of course, were taken by surprise by this Twitter storm, but we really should not be — because on May 13 of last year Beijing declared a “people’s war” on the United States. This means the contest with China is existential. There is going to be one survivor. It is going to be either the Peoples’ Republic of China or the United States of America, not both.

    We have just heard about what we should not be doing. We should not be rescuing Chinese communism.

    What should we do? In my call for action, there are eight items.

    First, we need to cut off trade with China. Now, I know a lot of people think we should not do this, or this would be unfortunate.

    Yes, this is unfortunate, but the point is that China’s communism cannot be reformed, so the only way we can protect American society and Americans is to reduce our exposure to China and our great exposure, of course, is trade. In any event, we should not be enriching a hostile state with the proceeds of commerce with the United States.

    This means, of course, that we need to get our factories off Chinese soil, but especially our pharmaceutical factories. China has been threatening to throw the United States into what it calls “a mighty sea of coronavirus,” and it has not been kidding.

    For instance, we know the Chinese have turned around at least one ship carrying personal protective equipment — masks, gowns, gloves — that were on their way to New York hospitals. Moreover, Peter Navarro has said China has even nationalized one American factory in China producing those N‑95 masks.

    China’s leadership always talks about how it is not possible for the US and China to “decouple.” Now, it is possible. Our job is to make it inevitable.

    Second thing that we need to do: The administration is well on the way to making sure federal pension money is not invested in China’s markets. We also need to make sure that state pension money, and money from individuals, is not put into China’s markets. We should not be enriching China with our investments into its equity markets.

    Third thing, we need to make China pay. Now, many people have sued the Chinese central government. There are class‑action suits in the federal district courts in Florida, Texas, and Nevada. Of course, the Chinese Central Government has sovereign immunity, but there are a number of bills in Congress, including one sponsored by Senator Blackburn and Representative Lance Gooden.

    There is also another bill sponsored by Tom Cotton and Dan Crenshaw, and these would strip China of sovereign immunity. I believe Josh Hawley, the Senator from Missouri, also has a bill.

    The State of Missouri, by the way, has sued the Communist Party of China, which is far more important and far richer than the Chinese central government. Guess what? China’s Communist Party does not have sovereign immunity.

    People have also been talking about seizing China’s holdings of US Treasury obligations. According to official records, it holds more than a trillion dollars. In reality, it is probably a bit higher than that because China holds US Treasuries through nominees.

    Of course, China would engage in a vociferous propaganda campaign if we did that. Beijing would say we are repudiating our debt. They would also say we are not responsible members and stewards of the global financial system. They would be wrong, they would be incorrect, but the US might suffer reputational damage.

    That is why I think we should seize Treasuries, but we should be doing this in connection with the holders and issuers of other major currencies. For instance, the Canadian dollar, the British pound, the European Union’s euro, the Swiss franc, the Japanese yen, maybe the Singapore dollar

    When we act with others, this becomes not a China-versus-US issue but an issue of China versus the world. No one country is going to suffer reputational damage.

    Of course, Beijing could nationalize American factories in China, but I’m not so sure they’re going to do that because China would be hurt far more than we would by that.

    Remember that China’s economy is still in a contraction phase and it is still export‑dominated, which means it needs those factories on its soil.

    Fourth, with the possibility of the coronavirus escaping from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, we are now thinking about whether China has a biological weapons program in contravention of its obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention.

    Right now, we have seen all sorts of circumstantial evidence suggesting lab leak, and we have seen all sorts of circumstantial evidence that the Chinese military has been involved in the cleanup.

    The Biological Weapons Convention does not have an inspections regime.

    The item on my action list is that the United States should insist on inspections of China’s labs, and if we cannot get inspections we should withdraw from the Convention. I am not saying that the novel coronavirus was a biological weapon. We really do not know.

    The one thing we do know is that in China’s labs, they have been engineering coronaviruses in the past. They have issued scientific papers on this, and what they are doing is extremely risky.

    Fifth, we should make sure that China does not mess in our elections. China was extremely active in the 2018 midterms. They were concerned about President Trump’s tariffs, and they actually did have an effect in electing Democrats to the House of Representatives.

    We know they are going to do that, or something like that, this time. The New York Times a few weeks ago said they are trying to sow chaos in the American public square by disseminating false rumors.

    Sixth, we need to stop China from using its nationals to systematically gather information on our soil. Unfortunately, we have had a series of American presidents who have, for various reasons, either done nothing about China’s intelligence operations here, or the actions they took were deliberately ineffective.

    We know that China’s diplomats operate on our soil, sometimes spying, other times in a manner inconsistent with the diplomatic status they have. Also, China’s Ministry of State Security agents operate here, freely.

    We need to “rip and replace” all the equipment in our telecom backbone that has been supplied by Huawei Technologies, China’s telecom equipment manufacturer. China has been using that company’s equipment to spy on others. We should have no Huawei equipment in our backbone.

    Also, we should be turfing out even more Chinese journalists. Those “journalists,” we know, work for China’s intelligence services. We have allowed them to stay on our soil for far too long. Secretary of State Pompeo has expelled many of them, and we need to complete the job.

    We have to remember that China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law requires every Chinese citizen and every Chinese entity to spy if demanded, which means that Chinese nationals on our soil can be under a compulsion to engage in intelligence collection.

    Seventh, let’s remove China from our cable networks and our newsstands. We should not be allowing China to exploit the openness of our system to try to end it.

    Eighth, and the last, we have to deter China, which right now is engaging in what people in Beijing call “wolf warrior” diplomacy. For instance, we see Xi Jinping, with these threats to invade Taiwan.

    Since the middle of February, there have been these boat-bumping and other provocative engagements in the South China and East China Seas against almost all of China’s sea neighbors. A Chinese diplomat laid the groundwork for taking over Kazakhstan, in Central Asia, and also China has moved to end the autonomy in Hong Kong.

    China is lashing out, challenging everybody at the same time. This is a Maoist tactic, and it suggests problems inside the Chinese political system. In any event, we know that this is an incredibly dangerous moment for everyone.

    One final note. Pushed by China, the Trump Administration is moving to an historic rupture with the People’s Republic of China. Because of this, we are seeing changes in the five‑decade‑old engagement policy.

    Those changes are absolutely essential for us because, without them, we cannot be self‑reliant.

    *  *  *

    Q: As an attorney, do you feel there is any way to hold China accountable, liable for financial compensation to devastated nations ravaged by their actions?

    If so, as a practical matter, exactly how? Are there US companies that were collaborating with Wuhan labs via research responsible for this corona strain?

    Chang: Great. I should say I haven’t practiced law for two decades, and I’ve given up my bar memberships. I’m more than happy to answer that question, however. First of all, as I mentioned, China does have sovereign immunity.

    Now, a lot of people will tell you, and this is not an unreasonable argument, that sovereign immunity benefits the US more than any other nation. I do believe the fight with China is existential. To me, it’s important that we make China pay.

    As I said, we can avoid this sovereign immunity issue ‑‑ and which would have some blowback for the US ‑‑ if the plaintiffs sue the Communist Party. Because the Communist Party is not sovereign.

    In China, there’s a clear distinction between the party and the state. The state has sovereign immunity like other countries and other states have, but the party does not. We can go after the party.

    By the way, the party actually has more control over China’s enterprises, which means it should be considered to be the owner of those enterprises. So, it has assets to seize.

    We talk about China’s military. Actually, it is not a state army. It is an army of the Communist Party, which means that if we can find a Chinese plane, or a ship, or whatever, that would be subject to a successful suit in US Court because there’s no sovereign immunity and it’s a party army.

    Having said all that, I think where we are going to seize assets will be the Treasuries. We should be working, as mentioned, with our allies and friends so that all countries in the world seize China’s assets. That, I think, will work.

    Q. Are there US companies that were collaborating with Wuhan labs via research responsible for this corona strain?

    Chang: I don’t think so. The Wuhan Institute of Virology was built with French companies, not American, as far as I know. Of course, the issue here is not corporate support but is US government support.

    The US has chipped in, most famously, $3.7 million to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for research on bats. Many people think that the novel coronavirus is derived from a bat. I think part of the reason for the contribution is that the United States thought that experimenting on bat viruses was really too risky to be done in the US, so it decided to let the Chinese do it.

    That is crazy. If it is too dangerous for us to do it, it’s too dangerous for the Chinese to do it, especially because we know that in China’s labs ‑‑ although the Wuhan Institute of Virology has a P4 biosafety lab, that is the highest level of safety standards ‑‑ we know that the Chinese do not adhere to those standards.

    In 2018, State Department teams that visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology came away appalled — actually I should say alarmed — because they saw that Chinese technicians were not adhering to safety standards and protocols.

    Also, we had those China Daily pictures. China Daily is an official state media publication. They tried to convince the world how safe the Wuhan Institute was so they posted these pictures, and those pictures actually documented broken or bent seals on refrigerators, a real safety problem.

    We know that that lab was a walking disaster and something was going to happen. Unfortunately, it looks as if it did. Probably the coronavirus was an accidental lab release.

    Q: How would you advise key US allies?

    Chang: I advise every country to cut their trade relations with China because of the danger China poses.

    The general view I have is that the world just needs to cut relations with China. If it were possible to reform Chinese communism, maybe that would be a worthwhile experiment, but we Americans have tried that for almost a half‑century and it has not worked.

    As a matter of fact, our engagement of China has produced the opposite of what we wanted. We now have a richer and stronger China, more belligerent, more provocative, more aggressive, and much more dangerous. We have got to reverse what was clearly then, and is certainly clearly now, a misguided policy.

    Q: What can we do now to try and protect us from more of these viral attacks?

    Chang: The less trade and travel we have with China, then the better we are going to be. If there is no Chinese traveler, there would be no global pandemic. There would be no infections outside China. What we are going to have to do is to severely restrict travel from China.

    We have to do this at least until we get our hands around this issue. Clearly, we have not been able to manage this. We have this notion, and everybody accepts it, at least implicitly, about globalization, comparative advantage, all of these things that have underpinned our modern world.

    Unfortunately, China does not believe in comparative advantage, it does not believe in being a responsible member of the international community. Unfortunately, the only thing we can do is what many people think is unthinkable, and that is to cut our ties with China.

    We cut our ties until we feel comfortable dealing with China, which in my mind means that the Communist Party no longer rules, that the Chinese people govern themselves, and then we can get along with them. I believe the Chinese people eventually will get this right.

    At least at the moment, until they get it right, we have an obligation to our own citizens to cut those links. Because without those links, we are not going to have the next disease. Remember, China produces, especially in southern China, a lot of disease. Most of the world’s diseases do come from southern China.

    This is not some academic question. Unfortunately, the remedy is severe, but I do not know how else we do this because you just cannot cooperate with China. You have got to cut your links.

    Q: What might be possible in the way of the US government exposing details on high‑ranking members of the CCP’s overseas bank accounts, family dealings, and for instance, how Xi, on a government salary, paid for his daughter’s attendance at Harvard.

    The press has covered some of these things, but that is different from official confirmation and surely greater access to such things as bank records.

    Chang: I think we should just publicize it, and seize the assets of Chinese leaders in the United States. We have the Global Magnitsky Act.

    These guys, even before the coronavirus episode, were engaging in a crime against humanity with the detention of somewhere between 1.3 and 3 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other peoples of Turkic backgrounds in what China calls Xinjiang, the northwestern part of China.

    We know that people were dying in those camps because China has been building crematoria. We know that this is an attempt to eliminate a religion, to eliminate ethnic identity. This is very close to genocide. If it is not genocide, it is as bad as what the Third Reich did before the mass extermination of what, 1941?

    That alone should give us justification for applying the Global Magnitsky Act and just seizing all their assets in this country. As I mentioned, I believe this was a deliberate spread of the coronavirus. More than 100,000 Americans have died. We have the right to do everything we can within our power to protect ourselves and to punish wrongdoers.

    We may not be able to bring Xi Jinping to The Hague. We may not be able to put him in that prison we have in Florence, Colorado, otherwise known as the Supermax. We may not be able to put him in Guantanamo, but we sure can seize his assets.

    Q: Please discuss what we need to do to regain the technology commanding heights, national industrial plan, whole of government, whole of economy, society, Sputnik‑like program.

    Chang: It is a whole-of-society approach. You go back maybe 10 years, China was not considered to be a tech competitor. Right now, it is ahead in crucial technologies such as, for instance, 5G, the fifth generation of wireless communications, and in quantum communications it has at least a half‑decade lead on us.

    This is really stunning because this whole theoretical notion of quantum communications was developed by an American, Albert Einstein. For us, this is just Americans not paying attention.

    It is also, of course, China’s stealing. China steals somewhere between $150 to $600 billion of US intellectual property each year, and now, the FBI is warning that it is trying to steal vaccines and medical‑related information.

    What China has been able to do, and it is more than just that, it has had determined programs to develop technology. For instance, China has its 13th Five‑Year Plan, which is just about finished. It has the Made in China 2025 Initiative, where medicines and medical equipment comprise one of the 10 sectors that China wants to dominate by the year 2025.

    These are, for China, a whole-of-society approach toward developing technology. We really need to do the same thing, and we can do it. President John F. Kennedy went to Rice University and said, “We are going to go to the moon.” That was a time when the Soviets were well ahead of us.

    Through federal programs, through cooperation with business, just through everything, we were able to put the first man on the moon. By the way, no other country has left earth orbit, but the Chinese probably are ahead of us in the race to get back to the moon.

    For us, I think what we are going to have to adopt the whole-of-society approach. The one thing that we should focus on is our universities. We have Chinese students and others taking in ways which are sometimes violative of federal law, sometimes just inconsistent with their status on campus.

    They have been stealing, downloading entire databases, doing all the rest of this. We need to stop that. I know Chinese students, Chinese professors play a large role in our campuses, but they have also been taking US technology. We need to end that.

    For me, it means a renewed approach. One of the ways we can stop this is, we have allowed Chinese diplomats and Ministry of State Security agents to surveil Chinese students on campus. That means Chinese students feel really under a compulsion to do what Beijing wants.

    We are Americans. This is our country. We can get those diplomats out of those campuses, get the Chinese agents off our soil. That is up to us. To me, this is important of course. I’m here because my dad came here as a student in 1945, just before the end of the war.

    I think we have got a long way to go, to solving what I think is actually the most complex issue we face: what do you do with Chinese students on American campuses? There are no easy solutions, but we need to address this in a much more rigorous way than we have been. We must do all of those things, that means we have a whole-of-society approach.

    Q: Pharmaceuticals, how can we best replace the Chinese market? And rare earth strategic elements. Does the US have adequate resources to produce our own? How can we best disconnect from the dependence on the Chinese market?

    Chang: On rare earths, we have rare earths in our country and our allies’ — most notably, Canada and Australia — have a lot of rare earths. What we do not have is the refining capacity. Stuff mined in countries other than China is actually shipped to China to be refined.

    That has occurred because we do not want to suffer the environmental damage caused by refining rare earths, which in the past has really been awful. New technologies, and those that are coming on-stream now, mitigate much of the environmental impact. I think we need to start refining rare earths in North America.

    If not here, then in Canada, which has huge deposits of many of the rare earths. It is a political decision for us to make, that we decide not to be dependent on China.

    With regard to pharmaceuticals, Peter Navarro, President Trump’s trade adviser, has been talking for weeks about an executive order that would require the federal government to not buy pharmaceuticals from China. That EO has yet to be signed.

    I think there is intense fighting at the top of the administration: trade groups and pharmaceutical companies have been fighting that executive order. This is something the President needs to do. It is in his power.

    He can wake up one morning and say to the pharmaceutical companies, “I don’t care what you think. This is a national security issue.” You remember that on July 21, 2017, President Trump signed that executive order on supply chain robustness.

    We know on March 24 of this year he talked about what is now called his American independence agenda, which is Americans making things for Americans.

    Remember, he has the power under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 to do a lot of stuff, including getting pharmaceutical companies out of China. It’s up to him. We should be, I hope, putting pressure on the White House to do what should be done because he is getting a lot of pressure on the other side. President Trump can do this.

    Now, one other note. I do not do domestic politics, but I have noticed that there is an election this year. That is probably going to slow down the reaction of the president to many of the initiatives I think should be taken, but nonetheless, this is a really critical one. We cannot allow China to make our pharmaceuticals.

    We should not be relying on any single country to the extent that we are relying on China, but certainly not a hostile regime that threatens to cut off products. Again, this is a question of American political will.

    Q: How do we get other countries to join us in this effort? They are already getting blackmailed by China. If they criticize China, it punishes them over trade. Australia dared to join 100 countries asking for an investigation into coronavirus origin.

    China responded by imposing 80% tariffs on Australian agricultural imports. How can we help other countries to stand up to China?

    Chang: At the World Health Assembly, which just concluded, the resolution for an independent investigation of the origins of the coronavirus actually was sponsored by 144 countries. It passed without objection.

    This is an investigation which China does not want, although China eventually saw the handwriting on the wall and decided not to oppose it. I think we get to this is a couple of ways. One of them is, the intelligence community, our intelligence community, has a lot of information which is going to throw a light on what China actually did, in terms of spreading the coronavirus.

    I know that the intelligence community does not like disclosing a lot of this stuff because it compromises sources and methods. Every once in a while, you get an intelligence issue which is so critical to the future of our country.

    I think that this is one of those where disclosure of information really is important. Once countries know what China did in terms of deliberately spreading this coronavirus, I think it is over for China.

    With regard to Australia, because Australia was the second country to propose this investigation after we did, China has decided to punish Australia more than any other country, especially with those tariffs on barley.

    This is one of those cases where we Americans should start buying Australian barley. We have got to show Beijing that we can out-muscle them. Remember, China looks fearsome because it has had economic growth.

    China right now is in a contraction phase, and it has also got one other huge problem, and that is a lot of its Belt and Road loans to other countries are coming due this year. These countries cannot pay China back, which means China’s debt‑trap diplomacy is trapping not just the debtors, but it’s trapping China itself.

    What we should be doing is making sure these countries do not pay back, because this is one way to starve the beast. There are many different ways to do it, cutting off trade, cutting off investments.

    Those are things we can do, and we can be working with our allies, our friends, and countries that normally are not our friends. They now have an interest in opposing China, so we should be working with them.

    Q: To what extent do you consider Xi’s position as head of the CCP to be precarious? Might concerns about his own vulnerability have anything to do with his renewed aggressiveness?

    Chang: That’s the question I wish I knew the answer to. There are a number of things that can be said. Of course, China’s political system is not transparent. Especially at moments like this, it can be very opaque. I think this is one of those do-or-die moments for Xi Jinping. I mean that literally.

    You have got to remember, Xi has changed the nature of the Chinese political system. Under Hu Jintao, his predecessor, it was collective, which means a Chinese leader really did not get blamed for things that went wrong.

    Also, he did not get that much credit: all decisions were essentially made by consensus, especially at the Politburo Standing Committee, but even in the wider Politburo. The Chinese leader did not worry too much about things going bad.

    Xi Jinping, of course, has taken that consensus system that he inherited at the end of 2012, and he has made it more or less into a one‑person system where he is the one person. Which means, of course, he has the greater accountability that goes along with that great power.

    Xi Jinping, even before the coronavirus, was having a pretty bad year, in 2019, because he had a stumbling economy. He had problems in Hong Kong. He had some pretty unhappy people in China.

    What Xi has done is run roughshod over everybody. As long as he can do that, he is safe. You have got to remember, though: people have not forgotten what Xi Jinping has done to them in terms of taking away their power, putting their family members in jail, all the rest of this.

    They are sort of waiting on the sidelines for an opportunity to strike back. When Xi Jinping stumbles, they will strike back. This is a particularly important time for Xi because what he is trying to do is intimidate the world with this “wolf warrior” diplomacy.

    If he succeeds, he is golden. If he does not succeed, if the world starts to contain China, starts to reduce relations with Beijing, all the rest of it, he is gone. By gone, I mean, he not only loses his position, he also loses perhaps his freedom, his assets, and maybe even his life.

    He has taken what was a consensus-driven system and made it like the Maoist political system of the first years of the People’s Republic. When people lost political struggles, they not only lost power, they sometimes were executed.

    Xi Jinping knows what is at stake right now. There are rumors ‑‑ I don’t know how much weight to give them ‑‑ that he is not going to get a third term as general secretary at the next Communist Party Congress in 2022. I tend to believe them, but I think that has not yet been determined.

    What is interesting is that people in Beijing are talking about that. Which means that it probably is an option for the party to ditch Xi Jinping at the next opportunity. We shall see.

    Q: Can we analyze some of the pharmaceuticals or even vitamins that come in that possibly show pathogens because of their poor oversight and loose regulations?

    Chang: The answer is yes. We have had in the past medicines coming from China that have been adulterated. For instance, in the middle of this decade, maybe even earlier, Heparin, the blood thinner, was adulterated.

    I do not think China would intentionally try to adulterate their vaccines and stuff. Nonetheless, they have had these fake vaccines scandals periodically in China. One not too long ago. We have got to be very concerned.

    China can actually get to a vaccine before anybody else does if for no other reason that they are willing to cut corners. It is important for us to make sure that whatever China comes up with is not only effective but also safe.

    Xi Jinping at the World Health Assembly address that he gave a couple of days ago, said he was going to share the vaccine with the world. I am happy if that is the case, but we have to be concerned that what they come up with is probably going to be ineffective or dangerous.

    The Chinese are not going to test. They are not going to adhere to the same safety protocols that the rest of the world will. We need to be really concerned about what comes out of China in terms of a vaccine.

  • Already-Obese Average Americans Have Drunk & Eaten Their Way To An Extra 5lbs During Lockdown
    Already-Obese Average Americans Have Drunk & Eaten Their Way To An Extra 5lbs During Lockdown

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/02/2020 – 23:45

    Months of coronavirus lockdowns have resulted in the average American body weight to increase by about five extra pounds, a new survey found. 

    With gyms, yoga and spin studios, and recreational facilities closed in most parts of the country; many were forced to “Netflix and quarantine” for several months. 

    The study, commissioned by Naked Nutrition, a firm that sells dietary supplements, surveyed 2,000 Americans and found at least half who said they would never get their pre-corona body back.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

    At least 65% said they had “let themselves go a bit” during the lockdowns. Respondents said it would take several months of intense workouts to revert to their pre-corona weight. 

    About three weeks into the lockdown (in early April), Americans resorted to watching porn, drinking beer, smoking pot, and devouring chocolate to cope with quarantine stress and job loss. 

    The survey found many folks developed unhealthy habits; a third said the consumption of alcohol surged during lockdowns, and more than 50% said their carbohydrate-loading increased. A little more than half (54%) said they increased vegetable intake, and 46% said they increased protein intake. 

    Bloomberg’s Michael McDonough shows an exponential jump in US beer, wine, and spirits consumption during the lockdowns. 

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    h/t BBG 

    Read: ‘We Have To Adjust To New Reality’ – Pandemic Leads To Surge In Americans Drinking At Home

    Nearly 64% of respondents said lockdowns made them unhealthy. Two-thirds of respondents said they turned to an in-home exercise routine to counter weight gain. 

    When it came to exercise, half bought gym equipment for the home. The top five purchases were yoga mats (45%), a stationary bike (41%), chairs (39%), and ankle weights (39%).

    As gyms were forced to close, many went bankrupt, resulting in Americans purchasing Peloton bikes for their home. 

    “The COVID-19 has been a stressful time for many, but maintaining a healthy lifestyle can support a person’s overall health and should remain a priority. This data highlights the importance of finding simple solutions for people to be able to maintain a healthy lifestyle while in isolation,” said Registered Dietitian Nutritionist Lauren Manaker in a statement.

    The study also said 50% of respondents had added dietary supplements to their daily routine, 44% have started eating protein bars, and 43% have added protein powder to their diet.

    Months of lockdowns have made Americans more obese but with mass social unrest across the country, some will clearly burn the excess weight as they run from National Guard troops. 

  • This Is Not A Revolution. It's A Blueprint For Locking Down The Nation
    This Is Not A Revolution. It’s A Blueprint For Locking Down The Nation

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/02/2020 – 23:25

    Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you—pull your beard, flick your face—to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you.”

    – John Lennon

    Brace yourselves.

    There is something being concocted in the dens of power, far beyond the public eye, and it doesn’t bode well for the future of this country.

    Anytime you have an entire nation so mesmerized by political theater and public spectacle that they are oblivious to all else, you’d better beware.

    Anytime you have a government that operates in the shadows, speaks in a language of force, and rules by fiat, you’d better beware.

    And anytime you have a government so far removed from its people as to ensure that they are never seen, heard or heeded by those elected to represent them, you’d better beware.

    What is unfolding before us is not a revolution.

    The looting, the burning, the rioting, the violence: this is an anti-revolution.

    The protesters are playing right into the government’s hands, because the powers-that-be want this. They want an excuse to lockdown the nation and throw the switch to all-out martial law. They want a reason to make the police state stronger.

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    It’s happening faster than we can keep up.

    The Justice Department is deploying federal prison riot teams to various cities. More than half of the nation’s governors are calling on the National Guard to quell civil unrest. Growing numbers of cities, having just barely emerged from a coronavirus lockdown, are once again being locked down, this time in response to the growing upheaval.

    This is how it begins.

    It’s that dystopian 2030 Pentagon training video all over again, which anticipates the need for the government to institute martial law (use armed forces to solve domestic political and social problems) in order to navigate a world bedeviled by “criminal networks,” “substandard infrastructure,” “religious and ethnic tensions,” “impoverishment, slums,” “open landfills, over-burdened sewers,” a “growing mass of unemployed,” and an urban landscape in which the prosperous economic elite must be protected from the impoverishment of the have nots.

    We’re way ahead of schedule.

    The architects of the police state have us exactly where they want us: under their stamping boot, gasping for breath, desperate for freedom, grappling for some semblance of a future that does not resemble the totalitarian prison being erected around us.

    This way lies certain tyranny.

    For just one fleeting moment, “we the people” seemed united in our outrage over this latest killing of an unarmed man by a cop hyped up on his own authority and the power of his uniform.

    That unity didn’t last.

    Indeed, it didn’t take long—no surprise there—for us to quickly become divided again, polarized by the misguided fury and senseless violence of mobs taking to the streets, reeking of madness and mayhem.

    Deliberately or not, the rioters have directed our attention away from the government’s crimes and onto their own.

    This is a distraction.

    Don’t allow yourself to be so distracted.

    Let’s not lose sight of what started all of this in the first place: the U.S. government.

    More than terrorism, more than domestic extremism, more than gun violence and organized crime, the systemic violence being perpetrated by agents of the government constitutes a greater menace to the life, liberty and property of its citizens than any of the so-called dangers from which the government claims to protect us.

    Case in point: George Floyd died at the hands of the American police state.

    The callous, cold-blooded murder of the unarmed, 46-year-old black man by police is nothing new: for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, police knelt on Floyd’s neck while the man pleaded for his life, struggled to breathe, cried out for his dead mother, and finally passed out and died.

    Floyd is yet another victim of a broken system of policing that has placed “we the people” at the mercy of militarized cops who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to “serve and protect.”

    Daily, Americans are being shot, stripped, searched, choked, beaten and tasered by police for little more than daring to frown, smile, question, challenge an order or just exist.

    I’m talking about the growing numbers of unarmed people are who being shot and killed for just standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety.

    Killed by police for standing in a “shooting stance.” Killed for holding a cell phone. Killed for holding a baseball bat. Killed for opening the front door. Killed for being a child in a car pursued by police. Killed for approaching police while holding a metal spoon. Killed for running in an aggressive manner while holding a tree branch. Killed for crawling around naked. Killed for hunching over in a defensive posture. Killed because a police officer accidentally fired his gun instead of his taser. Killed for wearing dark pants and a basketball jersey. Killed for reaching for his license and registration during a traffic stop. Killed for driving while deaf. Killed for being homeless. Killed for brandishing a shoehorn. Killed for peeing outdoors. Killed for having his car break down on the road. Killed for holding a garden hose.

    Now you can make all kinds of excuses to justify these shootings, and in fact that’s exactly what you’ll hear from politicians, police unions, law enforcement officials and individuals who are more than happy to march in lockstep with the police. However, as these incidents make clear, the only truly compliant, submissive and obedient citizen in a police state is a dead one.

    Sad, isn’t it, how quickly we have gone from a nation of laws—where the least among us had just as much right to be treated with dignity and respect as the next person (in principle, at least)—to a nation of law enforcers (revenue collectors with weapons) who treat us all like suspects and criminals?

    This is not how you keep the peace.

    This is not justice. This is not even law and order.

    This is certainly not freedom. This is the illusion of freedom.

    Unfortunately, we are now being ruled by a government of psychopaths, scoundrels, spies, thugs, thieves, gangsters, ruffians, rapists, extortionists, bounty hunters, battle-ready warriors and cold-blooded killers who communicate using a language of force and oppression.

    The facts speak for themselves.

    We’re being ravaged by a government of ruffians, rapists and killers. It’s not just the police shootings of unarmed citizens that are worrisome. It’s the SWAT team raids gone wrong that are leaving innocent citizens wounded, children terrorized and family pets killed. It’s the roadside strip searches—in some cases, cavity searches of men and women alike carried out in full view of the public—in pursuit of drugs that are never found. It’s the potentially lethal—and unwarranted—use of so-called “nonlethal” weapons such as tasers on children for “mouthing off to a police officer. For trying to run from the principal’s office. For, at the age of 12, getting into a fight with another girl.”

    We’re being held at gunpoint by a government of soldiers—a standing army. While Americans are being made to jump through an increasing number of hoops in order to exercise their Second Amendment right to own a gun, the government is arming its own civilian employees to the hilt with guns, ammunition and military-style equipment, authorizing them to make arrests, and training them in military tactics. Among the agencies being supplied with night-vision equipment, body armor, hollow-point bullets, shotguns, drones, assault rifles and LP gas cannons are the Smithsonian, U.S. Mint, Health and Human Services, IRS, FDA, Small Business Administration, Social Security Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Education Department, Energy Department, Bureau of Engraving and Printing and an assortment of public universities. There are now reportedly more bureaucratic (non-military) government civilians armed with high-tech, deadly weapons than U.S. Marines. That doesn’t even begin to touch on the government’s arsenal, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, and the speed with which the nation could be locked down under martial law depending on the circumstances. Clearly, the government is preparing for war—and a civil war, at that—and “we the people” are the perceived enemy.

    We’re being taken advantage of by a government of scoundrels, idiots and cowards. American satirist H.L. Mencken calculated that “Congress consists of one-third, more or less, scoundrels; two-thirds, more or less, idiots; and three-thirds, more or less, poltroons.” By and large, Americans seem to agree. When you’ve got government representatives who spend a large chunk of their work hours fundraising, being feted by lobbyists, shuffling through a lucrative revolving door between public service and lobbying, and making themselves available to anyone with enough money to secure access to a congressional office, you’re in the clutches of a corrupt oligarchy. Mind you, these same elected officials rarely read the legislation they’re enacting, nor do they seem capable of enacting much legislation that actually helps rather than hinders the plight of the American citizen.

    We’re being locked up by a government of greedy jailers. We have become a carceral state, spending three times more on our prisons than on our schools and imprisoning close to a quarter of the world’s prisoners, despite the fact that crime is at an all-time low and the U.S. makes up only 5% of the world’s population. The rise of overcriminalization and profit-driven private prisons provides even greater incentives for locking up American citizens for such non-violent “crimes” as having an overgrown lawn.  As the Boston Review points out, “America’s contemporary system of policing, courts, imprisonment, and parole … makes money through asset forfeiture, lucrative public contracts from private service providers, and by directly extracting revenue and unpaid labor from populations of color and the poor. In states and municipalities throughout the country, the criminal justice system defrays costs by forcing prisoners and their families to pay for punishment. It also allows private service providers to charge outrageous fees for everyday needs such as telephone calls. As a result people facing even minor criminal charges can easily find themselves trapped in a self-perpetuating cycle of debt, criminalization, and incarceration.”

    We’re being spied on by a government of Peeping Toms. The government, aided by its corporate allies, is watching everything you do, reading everything you write, listening to everything you say, and monitoring everything you spend. Omnipresent surveillance is paving the way for government programs that profile citizens, document their behavior and attempt to predict what they might do in the future, whether it’s what they might buy, what politician they might support, or what kinds of crimes they might commit. The impact of this far-reaching surveillance, according to Psychology Today, is “reduced trust, increased conformity, and even diminished civic participation.” As technology analyst Jillian C. York concludes, “Mass surveillance without due process—whether undertaken by the government of Bahrain, Russia, the US, or anywhere in between—threatens to stifle and smother that dissent, leaving in its wake a populace cowed by fear.”

    We’re being forced to surrender our freedoms—and those of our children—to a government of extortionists, money launderers and professional pirates. The American people have been repeatedly sold a bill of goods about how the government needs more money, more expansive powers, and more secrecy (secret courts, secret budgets, secret military campaigns, secret surveillance) in order to keep us safe. Under the guise of fighting its wars on terror, drugs, domestic extremism, pandemics and civil unrest, the government has spent billions in taxpayer dollars on endless wars that have sown the seeds of blowback, surveillance programs that have subjected all Americans to a surveillance society, and militarized police that have turned communities into warzones.

    We’re being robbed blind by a government of thieves. Americans no longer have any real protection against government agents empowered to seize private property at will. For instance, police agencies under the guise of asset forfeiture laws are taking property based on little more than a suspicion of criminal activity.

    And we’re being forced to live in a perpetual state of emergency. From 9/11 through the COVID-19 lockdowns and now the threat of martial law in the face of growing civil unrest, we have witnessed the rise of an “emergency state” that justifies all manner of government tyranny and power grabs in the so-called name of national security.

    Whatever else it may be—a danger, a menace, a threat—the U.S. government is certainly not looking out for our best interests, nor is it in any way a friend to freedom.

    When the government views itself as superior to the citizenry, when it no longer operates for the benefit of the people, when the people are no longer able to peacefully reform their government, when government officials cease to act like public servants, when elected officials no longer represent the will of the people, when the government routinely violates the rights of the people and perpetrates more violence against the citizenry than the criminal class, when government spending is unaccountable and unaccounted for, when the judiciary act as courts of order rather than justice, and when the government is no longer bound by the laws of the Constitution, then you no longer have a government “of the people, by the people and for the people.”

    What we have is a government of wolves.

    Our backs are against the proverbial wall.

    The government and its cohorts have conspired to ensure that the only real recourse the American people have to express their displeasure with the government is through voting, which is no real recourse at all.

    The penalties for civil disobedience, whistleblowing and rebellion are severe. If you refuse to pay taxes for government programs you believe to be immoral or illegal, you will go to jail. If you attempt to overthrow the government—or any agency thereof—because you believe it has overstepped its reach, you will go to jail. If you attempt to blow the whistle on government misconduct, there’s a pretty good chance you will go to jail.

    For too long, the American people have obeyed the government’s dictates, no matter now extreme. We have paid its taxes, penalties and fines, no matter how outrageous. We have tolerated its indignities, insults and abuses, no matter how egregious. We have turned a blind eye to its indiscretions and incompetence, no matter how imprudent. We have held our silence in the face of its lawlessness, licentiousness and corruption, no matter how illicit.

    We have suffered.

    How long we will continue to suffer depends on how much we’re willing to give up for the sake of freedom.

    America’s founders provided us with a very specific explanation about the purpose of government and a roadmap for what to do when the government abuses its authority, ignores our objections, and establishes itself as a tyrant.

    We must choose between peaceful slavery (in other words, maintaining the status quo in servitude to the police state) and dangerous freedom. That will mean carving out a path in which we begin to take ownership of our government, starting at the local level, challenging the status quo, and raising hell—nonviolently—whenever a government official steps out of line.

    We can no longer maintain the illusion of freedom.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we are at our most vulnerable right now.

  • Idaho Town Taken Over By Armed 'Patriot' Patrols Amid Rumors Antifa Headed There
    Idaho Town Taken Over By Armed ‘Patriot’ Patrols Amid Rumors Antifa Headed There

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/02/2020 – 23:05

    Amid rumors of mass protests and riots in the northwest Idaho city of Coeur d’Alene, some locals weren’t having it, and armed themselves to patrol city streets lined with small businesses. 

    It’s a trend giving rise to fears that violent armed clashes between different American factions are imminent. Already videos from cities across the nation have depicted counter-demonstrators taking matters into their own hands as police retreat. 

    “Reports and rumors that groups bent on rioting and violence in Coeur d’Alene brought out men and women with guns on Monday determined to stop them if they arrive,” local Idaho media reported.

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    Image source: Coer d’Alene/Post Falls Press

    “Dan Carson was patrolling Sherman Avenue with an AR-12 automatic 12-gauge across his chest, an AR-15 strapped to his back, two 9mm handguns holstered and a .38 special, too,” the report continued.

    Groups of loosely affiliated ‘Proud Boys’ and armed ‘patriots’ began lining the streets of downtown Coeur d’Alene over reports left wing militants and Antifa anarchists were planning to cause mayhem in the area:

    Soon, more armed men, self-described as a loosely formed group of patriots, arrived. They took up posts at corners on both sides of Sherman Avenue.

    Later, they were joined by hundreds of citizens packing rifles, semi-automatic weapons, handguns, and bows and arrows.

    The sidewalks were packed with people walking up and down Sherman Avenue, firearms proudly displayed for all to see.

    They carried guns, had them holstered around their hips and had them strapped across their backs.

    As it turns out, a group of Black Lives Matter protesters did in parts of the city briefly face off with the ‘protect Idaho’ group of armed locals, however, the scene stayed peaceful and without incident, dispersing relatively early into the evening as the police monitored the situation. 

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    Image source: Coer d’Alene/Post Falls Press

    Ultimately it appeared that in the downtown area it was only the armed patriot group which was out in force, unopposed. But the armed citizens patrols were in such large numbers they effectively took over the streets.

    It’s a scene that’s also played out in places like Texas, where smaller towns and rural areas have vowed to keep rioters far away, also as individual citizens practice ‘open carry’ in states where it’s permissible. 

    Armed citizen warns outsider in live stream (below):

    “I’m telling you… if you guys are thinking about coming to Coeur d’Alene to riot or loot, you better fuckin think again, because we ain’t havin it over here.”

    “Everybody’s out and strapped… getting ready for the so-called invasion.”

    WATCH:

    But the trend suggests it could take a single ‘incident’ to spark a deadly encounter between such armed ‘citizens patrol’ groups and Antifa, BLM, or left-wing militants in locations across the nation.

    Meanwhile, in San Bernardino County, California an armed clash between rival demonstrators nearly erupted:

    Given that local and state police can barely handle the growing riots and random destruction as it is, such a scenario would send things escalating to far more violent proportions at flashpoints across the US. 

    During the early momentum of riots taking over Minnesota’s twin cities – ground zero for the initial George Floyd protests that began late last week – local and state police came under intense criticism as they retreated from riot-hit parts of the city, leaving business owners to watch helplessly as their stores and in some cases homes burned the ground.

    This and other scenes of lawlessness have resulted in a growing trend this week of armed ‘citizen patrols’ – adding to a potentially deadly combustible mix amid increasingly chaotic unpredictable scenarios on American city streets.

  • The Senate Should Focus On What The Flynn Transcripts Do Not Contain… Starting With A Crime
    The Senate Should Focus On What The Flynn Transcripts Do Not Contain… Starting With A Crime

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/02/2020 – 22:45

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Yesterday, the attorney hired by Judge Emmet Sullivan responded on his behalf to defend his controversial orders in the case to invite third parties to argue the merits of the motion to dismiss as well as raising his option to substitute his own criminal charge of perjury against Flynn.  The Justice Department responded with a 45-page filing to a three-judge appeals court panel.

    The attention will now focus on the appearance tomorrow of former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in the Senate.  For me, the most pertinent question is why this investigation continued past December and seemed to become to a search for a crime rather than the investigation of any crime or collusion with Russia.

    “Remember … Ambassador, you’re not talking to a diplomat, you’re talking to a soldier.”

    When President Trump’s incoming national security adviser, Michael Flynn, said those words to then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, he also spoke to American intelligence agents listening in on the call. For three years, congressional Democrats have assured us Flynn’s calls to Kislyak were so disturbing that they set off alarms in the closing days of the Obama administration.

    They were right. The newly released transcripts of Flynn’s calls are deeply disturbing — not for their evidence of criminality or collusion but for the total absence of such evidence. The transcripts, declassified Friday, strongly support new investigations by both the Justice Department and by Congress, starting with next week’s Senate testimony by former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

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    It turns out Flynn’s calls are not just predictable but even commendable at points. When the Obama administration hit the Russians with sanctions just before leaving office, the incoming Trump administration sought to avoid a major conflict at the very start of its term. Flynn asked the Russian to focus on “common enemies” in order to seek cooperation in the Middle East. The calls covered a variety of issues, including the sanctions.

    What was not discussed was any quid pro quo or anything untoward or unlawful. Flynn stated what was already known to be Trump policy in seeking a new path with Russia. Flynn did not offer to remove sanctions but, rather, encouraged the Russians to respond in a reciprocal, commensurate manner if they felt they had to respond.

    The calls, and Flynn’s identity, were leaked by as many as nine officials as the Obama administration left office — a serious federal crime, given their classified status. The most chilling aspect of the transcripts, however, is the lack of anything chilling in the calls themselves. Flynn is direct with Kislyak in trying to tone down the rhetoric and avoid retaliatory moves. He told Kislyak, “l am a very practical guy, and it’s about solutions. It’s about very practical solutions that we’re — that we need to come up with here.” Flynn said he understood the Russians might wish to retaliate for the Obama sanctions but encouraged them not to escalate the conflict just as the Trump administration took office.

    Kislyak later spoke with Flynn again and confirmed that Moscow agreed to tone down the conflict in the practical approach laid out by Flynn. The media has focused on Flynn’s later denial of discussing sanctions; the transcripts confirm he did indeed discuss sanctions. However, the Justice Department has not sought to dismiss criminal charges against him because he told the truth but because his statements did not meet a key element of materiality for the crime and were the result of troubling actions by high-ranking officials.

    The real question is why the FBI continued to investigate Flynn in the absence of any crime or evidence of collusion. In December 2016, investigators had found no evidence of any crime by Flynn. They wanted to shut down the investigation; they were overruled by superiors, including FBI special agent Peter Strzok, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and Director James Comey. Strzok told the investigators to keep the case alive, and McCabe is described as “cutting off” another high-ranking official who questioned the basis for continuing to investigate Flynn. All three officials were later fired, and all three were later found by career officials to have engaged in serious misconduct as part of the Russia investigation.

    Recently disclosed information revealed that Comey and President Obama discussed using the Logan Act as a pretense for a criminal charge. The Logan Act criminalizes private negotiations with foreign governments; it is widely viewed as unconstitutional and has never been used successfully against any U.S. citizen since the earliest days of the Republic. Its use against the incoming national security adviser would have been absurd. Yet, that unconstitutional crime was the only crime Comey could come up with, long before there was a false statement by Flynn regarding his calls.

    Not until February 2017 did Comey circumvent long-standing protocols and order an interview with Flynn. Comey later bragged that he “probably wouldn’t have … gotten away with it” in other administrations, but he sent “a couple guys over” to question Flynn, who was settling into his new office as national security adviser. We learned recently that Strzok discussed trying to get Flynn to give false or misleading information in that interview, to enable a criminal charge, and that FBI lawyer Lisa Page suggested agents “just casually slip” in a reference to the criminal provision for lying and then get Flynn to slip up on the details.

    Flynn did slip up. While investigators said they were not convinced he intentionally lied, he gave a false statement. Later, special counsel Robert Mueller charged Flynn with that false statement, to pressure him into cooperating; Flynn fought the case into virtual bankruptcy but agreed to plead guilty when Mueller threatened to prosecute his son, too.

    The newly released transcripts reveal the lack of a foundation for that charge. Courts have held that the materiality requirement for such a charge requires that misstatements be linked to the particular “subject of the investigation.” The Justice Department found that the false statement in February 2017 was not material “to any viable counterintelligence investigation — or any investigation, for that matter — initiated by the FBI.” In other words, by that time, these FBI officials had no crime under investigation but were, instead, looking for a crime. The question is: Why?

    So the transcripts confirm there never was a scintilla of criminal conduct or evidence of collusion against Flynn before or during these calls. Indeed, there was no viable criminal investigation to speak of when Comey sent “a couple guys over” to entrap Flynn; they already had the transcripts and the knowledge that Flynn had done nothing wrong. Nevertheless, facing the release of these transcripts, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) bizarrely maintained that “Flynn posed a severe counterintelligence risk” because he could be blackmailed over his false statement.

    Putting aside the lack of prior evidence of criminality, Schiff ignores that there were transcripts to prevent such blackmail. Indeed, in the interview, Flynn indicated he assumed there was a transcript, and leaked media reports indicated that various officials were familiar with the content of the calls. The key to blackmail would have been for the Russians to have information that others did not have.

    Ironically, in his calls with Kislyak, Flynn expressly sought a more frank, honest relationship with Russia. He told Kislyak “we have to stop talking past each other on — so that means that we have to understand exactly what it is that we want to try to achieve, okay?” That is a question that should now be directed at the FBI, to understand what it was trying to achieve by continuing an investigation long after it ran out of crimes to investigate.

  • Pentagon Says 1,600 Army Troops Have Moved To Joint Base Andrews Outside Washington DC To "Support Civil Authorities"
    Pentagon Says 1,600 Army Troops Have Moved To Joint Base Andrews Outside Washington DC To “Support Civil Authorities”

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/02/2020 – 22:30

    One day after Trump warned he may call in the army if the situation in Washington D.C. does not normalize, sparking outrage in liberal circles who called this a de facto preparation for civil war, moments ago Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said that 1,600 active duty troops have moved from Fort Bragg and Fort Drum, to the National Capitol region, “but are not in Washington” – technically they are now located in Joint Base Andrews, which is just on the outskirts of Washington DC).

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    The Pentagon also said that the troops are on “heightened alert status but remain under Title X authority and are not participating in defense support to civil authority operations”, at least not yet.

    The full Pentagon statement is below.

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  • Two Doctors Explain Why COVID-19 Was Likely Lab Experiment
    Two Doctors Explain Why COVID-19 Was Likely Lab Experiment

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/02/2020 – 22:05

    Authored by Jonathan Latham, PhD and Allison Wilson, PhD via Independent Science News  (emphasis ours)

    The Case Is Building That COVID-19 Had a Lab Origin

    If the public has learned a lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic it is that science does not generate certainty. Do homemade face masks work? What is the death rate of COVID-19? How accurate are the tests? How many people have no symptoms? And so on. Practically the lone undisputed assertion made so far is that all the nearest known genetic relatives of its cause, the Sars-CoV-2 virus, are found in horseshoe bats (Zhou et al., 2020). Therefore, the likely viral reservoir was a bat.

    However, most of these ancestor-like bat coronaviruses cannot infect humans (Ge et al., 2013). In consequence, from its beginning, a key question hanging over the pandemic has been: How did a bat RNA virus evolve into a human pathogen that is both virulent and deadly?

    The answer almost universally seized upon is that there was an intermediate species. Some animal, perhaps a snake, perhaps a palm civet, perhaps a pangolin, served as a temporary host. This bridging animal would probably have had an ACE2 cellular receptor (the molecule which allows cellular entry of the virus) intermediate in protein sequence (or at least structure) between the bat and the human one (Wan et al., 2020).

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    In the press and in the scientific literature, scenarios by which this natural zoonotic transfer might have occurred have been endlessly mulled. Most were fuelled by early findings that many of the earliest COVID-19 cases seem to have occurred in and around Wuhan’s Huanan live animal market. [The latest data are that 14 of the 41 earliest cases, including the first, had no connection to the animal market (Huang et al. 2020)].

    Since the two previous coronavirus near-pandemics of SARS (2002-3) and MERS (2012) both probably came from bats and both are thought (but not proven) to have transitioned to humans via intermediate animals (civets and dromedaries respectively), a natural zoonotic pathway is a reasonable first assumption (Andersen et al., 2020).

    The idea, as it applied to the original (2002) SARS outbreak, is that the original bat virus infected a civet. The virus then evolved briefly in this animal species, but not enough to cause a civet pandemic, and then was picked up by a human before it died out in civets. In this first human (patient zero) the virus survived, perhaps only barely, but was passed on, marking the first case of human to human transmission. As it was successively passed on in its first few human hosts the virus rapidly evolved, adapting to better infect its new hosts. After a few such tentative transmissions the pandemic proper began.

    Perhaps this scenario is approximately how the current COVID-19 pandemic began.

    But one other troubling possibility must be dispensed with. It follows from the fact that the epicentre city, Wuhan (pop. 11 million), happens to be the global epicentre of bat coronavirus research (e.g. Hu et al., 2017).

    Prompted by this proximity, various researchers and news media, prominently the Washington Post, and with much more data Newsweek, have drawn up a prima facie case that a laboratory origin is a strong possibility (Zhan et al., 2020; Piplani et al., 2020). That is, one of the two labs in Wuhan that has worked on coronaviruses accidentally let a natural virus escape; or, the lab was genetically engineering (or otherwise manipulating) a Sars-CoV-2-like virus which then escaped.

    Unfortunately, in the US at least, the question of the pandemic’s origin has become a political football; either an opportunity for Sinophobia or a partisan “blame game“.

    But the potential of a catastrophic lab release is not a game and systemic problems of competence and opacity are certainly not limited to China (Lipsitch, 2018). The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is currently constructing a new and expanded national Bio and Agro-defense facility in Manhattan, Kansas. DHS has estimated that the 50-year risk (defined as having an economic impact of $9-50 billion) of a release from its lab at 70%.

    When a National Research Council committee inspected these DHS estimates they concluded “The committee finds that the risks and costs could well be significantly higher than that“.

    A subsequent committee report (NAP, 2012) continued:

    “the committee was instructed to judge the adequacy and validity of the uSSRA [updated Site-Specific Risk Assessment]. The committee has identified serious concerns about (1) the misapplication of methods used to assess risk, (2) the failure to make clear whether and how the evidence used to support risk assessment assumptions had been thoroughly reviewed and adequately evaluated, (3) the limited breadth of literature cited and the misinterpretation of some of the significant supporting literature, (4) the failure to explain the criteria used to select assumptions when supporting literature is conflicting, (5) the failure to consider important risk pathways, and (6) the inadequate treatment of uncertainty. Those deficiencies are not equally problematic, but they occur with sufficient frequency to raise doubts about the adequacy and validity of the risk results presented. In most instances (e.g., operational activities at the NBAF), the identified problems lead to an underestimation of risk; in other instances (e.g., catastrophic natural hazards), the risks may be overestimated. As a result, the committee concludes that the uSSRA is technically inadequate in critical respects and is an insufficient basis on which to judge the risks associated with the proposed NBAF in Manhattan, Kansas.”

    China, meanwhile, having opened its first in Wuhan in 2018, is planning to roll out a national network of BSL-4 labs (Zhiming, 2019). Like many other countries, it is investing significantly in disease surveillance and collection of viruses from wild animal populations and in high-risk recombinant virus research with Potential Pandemic Pathogens (PPPs).

    On May 4th, nations and global philanthropies, meeting in Brussels, committed $7.4 billion to future pandemic preparedness. But the question hanging over all such investments is this: the remit of the Wuhan lab at the centre of the accidental release claims is pandemic preparedness. If the COVID-19 pandemic began there then we need to radically rethink current ideas for pandemic preparation globally. Many researchers already believe we should, for the sake of both safety and effectiveness (Lipsitch and Galvani, 2014; Weiss et al., 2015; Lipsitch, 2018). The worst possible outcome would be for those donated billions to accelerate the arrival of the next pandemic.

    Historical lab releases, a brief history

    An accidental lab release is not merely a theoretical possibility. In 1977 a laboratory in Russia (or possibly China), most likely while developing a flu vaccine, accidentally released the extinct H1N1 influenza virus (Nakajima et al., 1978). H1N1 went on to become a global pandemic virus. A large proportion of the global population became infected. In this case, deaths were few because the population aged over 20 yrs old had historic immunity to the virus. This episode is not widely known because only recently has this conclusion been formally acknowledged in the scientific literature and the virology community has been reluctant to discuss such incidents (Zimmer and Burke, 2009; Wertheim, 2010). Still, laboratory pathogen escapes leading to human and animal deaths (e.g. smallpox in Britain; equine encephalitis in South America) are common enough that they ought to be much better known (summarised in Furmanski, 2014). Only rarely have these broken out into actual pandemics on the scale of H1N1, which, incidentally, broke out again in 2009/2010 as “Swine flu” causing 3,000 or so deaths on that occasion (Duggal et al., 2016).

    Many scientists have warned that experiments with PPPs, like the smallpox and Ebola and influenza viruses, are inherently dangerous and should be subject to strict limits and oversight (Lipsitch and Galvani, 2014; Klotz and Sylvester, 2014). Even in the limited case of SARS-like coronaviruses, since the quelling of the original SARS outbreak in 2003, there have been six documented SARS disease outbreaks originating from research laboratories, including four in China. These outbreaks caused 13 individual infections and one death (Furmanski, 2014). In response to such concerns the US banned certain classes of experiments, called gain of function (GOF) experiments, with PPPs in 2014, but the ban (actually a funding moratoriumactually a funding moratorium) was lifted in 2017.

    For these reasons, and also to ensure the effectiveness of future pandemic preparedness efforts­, it is a matter of vital international importance to establish whether the laboratory escape hypothesis has credible evidence to support it. This must be done regardless of the problem–in the US–of toxic partisan politics and nationalism.

    The COVID-19 Wuhan lab escape thesis

    The essence of the lab escape theory is that Wuhan is the site of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), China’s first and only Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) facility. (BSL-4 is the highest pathogen security level). The WIV, which added a BSL-4 lab only in 2018, has been collecting large numbers of coronaviruses from bat samples ever since the original SARS outbreak of 2002-2003; including collecting more in 2016 (Hu, et al., 2017; Zhou et al., 2018).

    Led by researcher Zheng-Li Shi, WIV scientists have also published experiments in which live bat coronaviruses were introduced into human cells (Hu et al., 2017). Moreover, according to an April 14 article in the Washington Post, US Embassy staff visited the WIV in 2018 and “had grave safety concerns” about biosecurity there. The WIV is just eight miles from the Huanan live animal market that was initially thought to be the site of origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Wuhan is also home to a lab called the Wuhan Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (WCDPC). It is a BSL-2 lab that is just 250 metres away from the Huanan market. Bat coronaviruses have in the past been kept at the Wuhan WCDPC lab.

    Thus the lab escape theory is that researchers from one or both of these labs may have picked up a Sars-CoV-2-like bat coronavirus on one of their many collecting (aka ‘”virus surveillance”) trips. Or, alternatively, a virus they were studying, passaging, engineering, or otherwise manipulating, escaped.

    Scientific assessments of the lab escape theory

    On April 17 the Australian Science Media Centre asked four Australian virologists: “Did COVID-19 come from a lab in Wuhan?“

    Three (Edward Holmes, Nigel McMillan and Hassan Vally) dismissed the lab escape suggestion and Vally simply labeled it, without elaboration, a “conspiracy”.

    The fourth virologist interviewed was Nikolai Petrovsky of Flinders University. Petrovsky first addressed the question of whether the natural zoonosis pathway was viable. He told the Media Centre:

    “no natural virus matching to COVID-19 has been found in nature despite an intensive search to find its origins.”

    That is to say, the idea of an animal intermediate is speculation. Indeed, no credible viral or animal host intermediaries, either in the form of a confirmed animal host or a plausible virus intermediate, has to-date emerged to explain the natural zoonotic transfer of Sars-CoV-2 to humans (e.g. Zhan et al., 2020).

    In addition to Petrovsky’s point, there are two further difficulties with the natural zoonotic transfer thesis (apart from the weak epidemiological association between early cases and the Huanan “wet” market).

    The first is that researchers from the Wuhan lab travelled to caves in Yunnan (1,500 Km away) to find horseshoe bats containing SARS-like coronaviruses. To-date, the closest living relative of Sars-CoV-2 yet found comes from Yunnan (Ge et al., 2016). Why would an outbreak of a bat virus therefore occur in Wuhan?

    Moreover, China has a population of 1.3 billion. If spillover from the wildlife trade was the explanation, then, other things being equal, the probability of a pandemic starting in Wuhan (pop. 11 million) is less than 1%.

    Zheng-Li Shi, the head of bat coronavirus research at WIV, told Scientific American as much:

    “I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals—particularly bats, a known reservoir. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “Could they have come from our lab?”

    Wuhan, in short, is a rather unlikely epicentre for a natural zoonotic transfer. In contrast, to suspect that Sars-CoV-2 might have come from the WIV is both reasonable and obvious.

    Was Sars-CoV-2 created in a lab?

    In his statement, Petrovsky goes on to describe the kind of experiment that, in principle, if done in a lab, would obtain the same result as the hypothesised natural zoonotic transfer–rapid adaptation of a bat coronavirus to a human host.

    “Take a bat coronavirus that is not infectious to humans, and force its selection by culturing it with cells that express human ACE2 receptor, such cells having been created many years ago to culture SARS coronaviruses and you can force the bat virus to adapt to infect human cells via mutations in its spike protein, which would have the effect of increasing the strength of its binding to human ACE2, and inevitably reducing the strength of its binding to bat ACE2.

    Viruses in prolonged culture will also develop other random mutations that do not affect its function. The result of these experiments is a virus that is highly virulent in humans but is sufficiently different that it no longer resembles the original bat virus. Because the mutations are acquired randomly by selection there is no signature of a human gene jockey, but this is clearly a virus still created by human intervention.”

    In other words, Petrovsky believes that current experimental methods could have led to an altered virus that escaped.

    Passaging, GOF research, and lab escapes

    The experiment mentioned by Petrovsky represents a class of experiments called passaging. Passaging is the placing of a live virus into an animal or cell culture to which it is not adapted and then, before the virus dies out, transferring it to another animal or cell of the same type. Passaging is often done iteratively. The theory is that the virus will rapidly evolve (since viruses have high mutation rates) and become adapted to the new animal or cell type. Passaging a virus, by allowing it to become adapted to its new situation, creates a new pathogen.

    The most famous such experiment was conducted in the lab of Dutch researcher Ron Fouchier. Fouchier took an avian influenza virus (H5N1) that did not infect ferrets (or other mammals) and serially passaged it in ferrets. The intention of the experiment was specifically to evolve a PPP. After ten passages the researchers found that the virus had indeed evolved, to not only infect ferrets but to transmit to others in neighbouring cages (Herfst et al., 2012). They had created an airborne ferret virus, a Potential Pandemic Pathogen, and a storm in the international scientific community.

    The second class of experiments that have frequently been the recipients of criticism are GOF experiments. In GOF research, a novel virus is deliberately created, either by in vitro mutation or by cutting and pasting together two (or more) viruses. The intention of such reconfigurations is to make viruses more infectious by adding new functions such as increased infectivity or pathogenicity. These novel viruses are then experimented on, either in cell cultures or in whole animals. These are the class of experiments banned in the US from 2014 to 2017.

    Some researchers have even combined GOF and passaging experiments by using recombinant viruses in passaging experiments (e.g. Sheahan et al., 2008).

    Such experiments all require recombinant DNA techniques and animal or cell culture experiments. But the very simplest hypothesis of how Sars-CoV-2 might have been caused by research is simply to suppose that a researcher from the WIV or the WCDCP became infected during a collecting expedition and passed their bat virus on to their colleagues or family. The natural virus then evolved, in these early cases, into Sars-CoV-2. For this reason, even collecting trips have their critics. Epidemiologist Richard Ebright called them “the definition of insanity“. Handling animals and samples exposes collectors to multiple pathogens and returning to their labs then brings those pathogens back to densely crowded locations.

    Was the WIV doing experiments that might release PPPs?

    Since 2004, shortly after the original SARS outbreak, researchers from the WIV have been collecting bat coronaviruses in an intensive search for SARS-like pathogens (Li et al., 2005). Since the original collecting trip, many more have been conducted (Ge et al., 2013; Ge et al., 2016; Hu et al., 2017; Zhou et al., 2018).

    Petrovsky does not mention it but Zheng-Li Shi’s group at the WIV has already performed experiments very similar to those he describes, using those collected viruses. In 2013 the Shi lab reported isolating an infectious clone of a bat coronavirus that they called WIV-1 (Ge et al., 2013). WIV-1 was obtained by introducing a bat coronavirus into monkey cells, passaging it, and then testing its infectivity in human (HeLa) cell lines engineered to express the human ACE2 receptor (Ge et al., 2013).

    In 2014, just before the US GOF research ban went into effect, Zheng-Li Shi of WIV co-authored a paper with the lab of Ralph Baric in North Carolina that performed GOF research on bat coronaviruses (Menachery et al., 2015).

    In this particular set of experiments the researchers combined “the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone” into a single engineered live virus. The spike was supplied by the Shi lab. They put this bat/human/mouse virus into cultured human airway cells and also into live mice. The researchers observed “notable pathogenesis” in the infected mice (Menachery et al. 2015). The mouse-adapted part of this virus comes from a 2007 experiment in which the Baric lab created a virus called rMA15 through passaging (Roberts et al., 2007). This rMA15 was “highly virulent and lethal” to the mice. According to this paper, mice succumbed to “overwhelming viral infection”.

    In 2017, again with the intent of identifying bat viruses with ACE2 binding capabilities, the Shi lab at WIV reported successfully infecting human (HeLa) cell lines engineered to express the human ACE2 receptor with four different bat coronaviruses. Two of these were lab-made recombinant (chimaeric) bat viruses. Both the wild and the recombinant viruses were briefly passaged in monkey cells (Hu et al., 2017).

    Together, what these papers show is that: 1) The Shi lab collected numerous bat samples with an emphasis on collecting SARS-like coronavirus strains, 2) they cultured live viruses and conducted passaging experiments on them, 3) members of Zheng-Li Shi’s laboratory participated in GOF experiments carried out in North Carolina on bat coronaviruses, 4) the Shi laboratory produced recombinant bat coronaviruses and placed these in human cells and monkey cells. All these experiments were conducted in cells containing human or monkey ACE2 receptors.

    The overarching purpose of such work was to see whether an enhanced pathogen could emerge from the wild by creating one in the lab. (For a very informative technical summary of WIV research into bat coronaviruses and that of their collaborators we recommend this post, written by biotech entrepreneur Yuri Deigin).

    It also seems that the Shi lab at WIV intended to do more of such research. In 2013 and again in 2017 Zheng-Li Shi (with the assistance of a non-profit called the EcoHealth Alliance) obtained a grant from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). The most recent such grant proposed that:

    “host range (i.e. emergence potential) will be tested experimentally using reverse genetics, pseudovirus and receptor binding assays, and virus infection experiments across a range of cell cultures from different species and humanized mice” (NIH project #5R01Al110964-04).

    It is hard to overemphasize that the central logic of this grant was to test the pandemic potential of SARS-related bat coronaviruses by making ones with pandemic potential, either through genetic engineering or passaging, or both.

    Apart from descriptions in their publications we do not yet know exactly which viruses the WIV was experimenting with but it is certainly intriguing that numerous publications since Sars-CoV-2 first appeared have puzzled over the fact that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein binds with exceptionally high affinity to the human ACE2 receptor “at least ten times more tightly” than the original SARS (Zhou et al., 2020; Wrapp et al., 2020; Wan et al., 2020; Walls et al., 2020; Letko et al., 2020).

    This affinity is all the more remarkable because of the relative lack of fit in modelling studies of the SARS-CoV-2 spike to other species, including the postulated intermediates like snakes, civets and pangolins (Piplani et al., 2020). In this preprint these modellers concluded “This indicates that SARS-CoV-2 is a highly adapted human pathogen”.

    Given the research and collection history of the Shi lab at WIV it is therefore entirely plausible that a bat SARS-like cornavirus ancestor of Sars-CoV-2 was trained up on the human ACE2 receptor by passaging it in cells expressing that receptor.

    How do viruses escape from high security laboratories?

    Pathogen lab escapes take various forms. According to the US Government Accountability Office, a US defense Department laboratory once “inadvertently sent live Bacillus anthracis, the bacterium that causes anthrax, to almost 200 laboratories worldwide over the course of 12 years. The laboratory believed that the samples had been inactivated.” In 2007, Britain experienced a foot and mouth disease outbreak. Its’ origin was a malfunctioning waste disposal system of a BSL-4 laboratory leaking into a stream from which neighbouring cows drank. The disposal system had not been properly maintained (Furmanski, 2014). In 2004 an outbreak of SARS originating from the National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Beijing, China, began, again, with the inadequate inactivation of a viral sample that was then distributed to non-secure parts of the building (Weiss et al., 2015).

    Writing for the Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists in February 2019, Lynn Klotz concluded that human error was behind most laboratory incidents causing exposures to pathogens in US high security laboratories. While equipment failure was also a factor, of the 749 incidents reported to the US Federal Select Agent Programme between 2009-2015, Klotz concluded that 79% resulted from human error.

    But arguably the biggest worry is incidents that go entirely unreported because escape of the pathogen goes undetected. It is truly alarming that a significant number of pathogen escape events were uncovered only because investigators were in the process of examining a completely different incident (Furmanski, 2014). Such discoveries represent strong evidence that pathogen escapes are under-reported and that important lessons still need to be learned (Weiss et al., 2015).

    The safety record of the WIV

    The final important data point is the biosafety history of the WIV. The WIV was built in 2015 and became a commissioned BSL-4 lab in 2018. According to Josh Rogin of the Washington Post, US embassy officials visited the WIV in 2018. They subsequently warned their superiors in Washington of a “serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory”.

    And according to VOA News, a year before the outbreak, “a security review conducted by a Chinese national team found the lab did not meet national standards in five categories.”

    Credible reports from within China also question lab biosafety and its management. In 2019, Yuan Zhiming, biosecurity specialist at the WIV, cited the “challenges” of biosafety in China. According to Zhiming: “several high-level BSLs have insufficient operational funds for routine yet vital processes” and “Currently, most laboratories lack specialized biosafety managers and engineers.” He recommends that “We should promptly revise the existing regulations, guidelines, norms, and standards of biosafety and biosecurity”. Nevertheless, he also notes that China intends to soon build “5-7” more BSL-4 laboratories (Zhiming, 2019).

    And in February 2020, Scientific American interviewed Zheng-Li Shi. Accompanying the interview was a photograph of her releasing a captured bat. In the photo she is wearing a casual pink unzipped top layer, thin gloves, and no face mask or other protection. Yet this is the same researcher whose talks give “chilling” warnings about the dire risks of human contact with bats.

    All of which tends to confirm the original State Department assessment. As one anonymous “senior administration official” told Rogin:

    “The idea that it was just a totally natural occurrence is circumstantial. The evidence it leaked from a lab is circumstantial. Right now, the ledger on the side of it leaking from the lab is packed with bullet points and there’s almost nothing on the other side.”

    The leading hypothesis is a lab outbreak

    For all these reasons, a lab escape is by far the leading hypothesis to explain the origins of Sars-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 pandemic. The sheer proximity of the WIV and WCDCP labs to the outbreak and the nature of their work represents evidence that can hardly be ignored. The long international history of lab escapes and the biosafety concerns from all directions about the labs in Wuhan greatly strengthen the case. Especially since evidence for the alternative hypothesis, in the form of a link to wild animal exposure or the wildlife trade, remains extremely weak, being based primarily on analogy with SARS one (Bell et al,. 2004; Andersen et al., 2020).

    Nevertheless, on April 16th Peter Daszak, who is the President of the EcoHealth Alliance, told Democracy Now! in a lengthy interview that the lab escape thesis was “Pure baloney”. He told listeners:

    “There was no viral isolate in the lab. There was no cultured virus that’s anything related to SARS coronavirus 2. So it’s just not possible.”

    Daszak made very similar claims on CNN’s Sixty Minutes: “There is zero evidence that this virus came out of a lab in China.” Instead, Daszak encouraged viewers to blame “hunting and eating wildlife”.

    Daszak’s certainty is highly problematic on several counts. The closest related known coronaviruses to Sars-CoV-2 are to be found at the WIV so a lot depends on what he means by “related to”. But it is also dishonest in the sense that Daszak must know that culturing in the lab is not the only way that WIV researchers could have caused an outbreak. Third, and this is not Daszak’s fault, the media are asking the right question to the wrong person.

    As alluded to above, Daszak is the named principal investigator on multiple US grants that went to the Shi lab at WIV. He is also a co-author on numerous papers with Zheng-Li Shi, including the 2013 Nature paper announcing the isolation of coronavirus WIV-1 through passaging (Ge et al., 2013). One of his co-authorships is on the collecting paper in which his WIV colleagues placed the four fully functional bat coronaviruses into human cells containing the ACE2 receptor (Hu et al. 2017). That is, Daszak and Shi together are collaborators and co-responsible for most of the published high-risk collecting and experimentation at the WIV.

    An investigation is needed, but who will do it?

    If the Shi lab has anything to hide, it is not only the Chinese Government that will be reluctant to see an impartial investigation proceed. Much of the work was funded by the US taxpayer, channeled there by Peter Daszak and the EcoHealth Alliance. Virtually every credible international organisation that might in principle carry out such an investigation, the WHO, the US CDC, the FAO, the US NIH, including the Gates Foundation, is either an advisor to, or a partner of, the EcoHealth Alliance. If the Sars-CoV-2 outbreak originated from the bat coronavirus work at the WIV then just about every major institution in the global public health community is implicated.

    But to solve many of these questions does not necessarily require an expensive investigation. It would probably be enough to inspect the lab notebooks of WIV researchers. All research scientists keep detailed notes, for intellectual property and other reasons, but especially in BSL-4 labs. As Yuan Zhiming told Nature magazine in an article marking the opening of the facility in Wuhan: “We tell them [staff] the most important thing is that they report what they have or haven’t done.”

    Meticulous lab records plus staff health records and incident reports of accidents and near-accidents are all essential components (or should be) of BSL work. Their main purpose is to enable the tracking of actual incidents. Much speculation could be ended with the public release of that information. But the WIV has not provided it.

    This is puzzling since the Chinese government has a very strong incentive to produce those records. Complete transparency would potentially dispel the gales of blame coming its way; especially on the question of whether Sars-CoV-2 has an engineered or passaged origin. If Zheng-Li Shi and Peter Daszak are correct that nothing similar to Sars-CoV-2 was being studied there, then those notebooks should definitively exonerate the lab from having knowingly made an Actual Pandemic Pathogen.

    Given the simplicity and utility of this step this lack of transparency suggests that there is something to hide. If so, it must be important. But then the question is: What?

    A thorough investigation of the WIV and its bat coronavirus research is an important first step. But the true questions are not the specific mishaps and dissemblings of Drs Shi or Daszak, nor of the WIV, nor even of the Chinese government.

    Rather, the bigger question concerns the current philosophy of pandemic prediction and prevention. Deep enquiries should be made about the overarching wisdom of plucking and counting viruses from the wild and then performing dangerous ‘what if’ recombinant research in high tech but fallible biosafety labs. This is a reductionistic approach, we also note, that has so far failed to predict pandemics and may never do so.

    If this article was useful to you please consider sharing it with your networks.

    Jonathan R. Latham PhD is co-founder and Executive Director of the Bioscience Resource Project and the Editor of Independent Science News. He holds a PhD in Virology and was a postdoctoral research associate in the University of Wisconsin Department of Genetics.

    Allison K. Wilson, PhD is co-founder and Science Director of the the Bioscience Resource Project; Editor of the Bioscience Resource Project website; Assistant Editor of Independent Science News; and a contributor to the Poison Papers project. She holds a BA in Biology from Cornell University, a doctorate in Molecular Biology and Genetics from Indiana University, Bloomington, and was formerly a postdoctoral research associate at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle and the John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK.

  • GLJ Research: This Is Shaping Up As One Of The Worst Quarters In Tesla History
    GLJ Research: This Is Shaping Up As One Of The Worst Quarters In Tesla History

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/02/2020 – 21:54

    Submitted by Gordon Johnson of GLJ Research

    After rising 449% m/m in China in March following China’s COVID-19 lockdowns ending, TSLA’s sales of cars in China in April fell -34.8% m/m (this came as a disappointment to many TSLA bulls as the competition gained materially on TSLA in the moth of April – link).

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    Aggregate EU Registrations: For the six EU countries that have reported May 2020 registrations, TSLA saw numbers for all cars “sold” fall -13.9% m/m and -67.8% y/y; through the first two months combined of 2Q20 (i.e., 2Q20 QTD) in these six EU countries, registrations are down -22.8% q/q and -67.8% y/y.

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    Aggregate EU EV Market Share: TSLA’s aggregated EU market share fell from 37.2% in 4Q19 to 25.3% in 1Q20.

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    NO + NL + SP Registrations: 2Q20 QTD, TSLA’s market share is down to 3.8%, vs. 7.7% in 1Q20 and 35.6% in 4Q19. Stated differently, TSLA has lost significant market share in the three key EU markets it… once… dominated.

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    NO + NL + SP Registrations (more detailed look): Through the first 63 days of 2Q20, sales in these three countries, combined, are down -34.7% q/q and -68.8% y/y.

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    Model 3 Tracker: Using TroyTeslike’s Model 3 tracker, through the first 63 days of 2Q20, Model 3 configurations are down -87.3% q/q and -86.7% y/y.

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    Model Y Tracker: Using TroyTeslike’s Model Y tracker, through the first 63 days of 2Q20, deliveries are running at 69 cars. By comparison, in the first full month the Model 3 tracker was collecting data on Model 3 sales, it reached 709 cars by quarter’s end. This may be why TSLA, recently, drastically reduced the lead times from when you order a Model Y in the USA to when you get it – i.e., to 4-8 weeks vs. 8-12 weeks prior (link) – this followed the sharp price cuts taken by TSLA last week due to weaker-than-expected demand globally.

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    New York State Data: While the data does not look bad, it’s important to remember that in NY State, registrations lag sales. So the April data below is from sales made in March. This means we won’t see the April/May COVID-19 sales impact in NYS until May/June data is out (i.e., later this week).

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    Colorado, USA: In Colorado, USA, through the 8th week of 2Q20, sales are trending down -22.3% q/q and -76.1% y/y.

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    RORO Boat Data: Looking at days boats loaded for TSLA cars, volumes are down -82.2% q/q and -78.1% y/y. The first boat of 2Q20 was sent to S. Korea; there is another boat that will arrive in Europe with roughly 3-4K cars (by our est.) before the end of 2Q20; finally, there is another RORO boat that is still moored, but we est. will arrive in Asia before the end of 2Q20 (it will be close, however).

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    CONCLUSION: Observing the publicly available data, and also observing a recent initiation on TSLA, in which the headline “Tesla (ticker: TSLA) is on the cusp of replicating its success in the U.S. EV market to potentially larger markets in China and Europe” (link) was published on a number of widely-followed financial media sites, as analysts are forced to revert back to TSLA’s actual fundamentals (which remain publicly available for anyone who wants it) – which include market share losses in both the EU and China – sentiment could be set to shift lower.

  • Pandemic, Economic Crash, Social Unrest, And Now Four Asteroids?
    Pandemic, Economic Crash, Social Unrest, And Now Four Asteroids?

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/02/2020 – 21:45

    This year has been nothing short of astonishing. In the last five months, the US has been inundated with a virus pandemic, triggering an economic crash and 40 million unemployed, and now worsening social unrest in major metros. But what’s happening on the ground might be the least of our worries on Tuesday, as four asteroids are about to pass the planet.

    NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) has detected “four near-Earth objects that will fly past” the planet on Tuesday, reported International Business Times.

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    h/t The Sun

    CNEOS’ data showed the first asteroid, identified as 2020 KK7, measures about 108 feet wide and traveling at 34,000 mph, will pass the planet on Tuesday at a distance of 0.00343 astronomical units or approximately 319,000 miles. To put this in perspective, this means the giant space rock will pass Earth at a distance that is about from here to the Moon. 

    The second asteroid to pass Earth is called 2020 KD4. The rock measures about 115 feet wide and is traveling at 12,000 mph, will pass the planet at a distance of about 0.02680 astronomical units or around 2.5 million miles away. 

    The third asteroid to pass Earth is called 2020 KF, which has an estimated diameter of 144 feet, is the largest asteroid to approach the planet, and is traveling at about 24,000 mph. It’s expected to pass the planet at a distance of about 0.03102 astronomical units or 2.9 million miles.

    And the fourth asteroid to pass Earth on Tuesday is called 2020 KJ1, has an estimated diameter of about 105 feet, and is moving at 11,000 mph, will pass the planet at about 0.01403 astronomical units or 1.3 million miles.

    Amid the social-economic collapse of America, political commentator Katie Hopkins’ prayers could be answered… 

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  • Former Antifa Member Admits Group's Acts Are "Very Definition Of Domestic Terrorism"
    Former Antifa Member Admits Group’s Acts Are “Very Definition Of Domestic Terrorism”

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/02/2020 – 21:25

    Authored by Jon Street via Campus Reform,

    Former Antifa member Gabriel Nadales praised President Donald Trump for his tweet saying that he intends to designate Antifa a domestic terror organization after several nights of violent riots and looting in dozens of major American cities. 

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    Nadales, who is an employee of Campus Reform‘s parent organization,  the Leadership Institute, joined Stuart Varney on Fox Business Network on Monday to discuss the recent riots that arose out of protests to the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man killed while in Minneapolis police custody.

    Nadales was among the first to call for Antifa to be labeled a terror organization in 2019. Trump said at the time he was considering labeling the group a terror organization. Now, it appears the president has made up his mind. 

    “The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization,” Trump tweeted Sunday. 

    Nadales reacted to the news Monday, telling Varney, “Antifa’s acts are the very definition of domestic terrorism.” 

    “If you look at some of the violence, it’s being instigated by anarchists and Antifa activists,” Nadales, the former Antifa member said, “not by the peaceful protesters who are rightfully angered by what happened.”

    WATCH:

  • 77-Year-Old Retired Police Captain Murdered By Looters
    77-Year-Old Retired Police Captain Murdered By Looters

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/02/2020 – 21:05

    A retired St. Louis City police captain was shot and killed overnight trying to stop looters outside a North City pawn shop, according to KMOV4.

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    77-year-old David Dorn was found at approximately 2:30 a.m. Tuesday on the 4100 block of Martin Luther King Dr.

    “He was murdered by looters at a pawnshop. He was the type of brother that would’ve given his life to save them if he had to. Violence is not the answer, whether it’s a citizen or officer,” wrote the St. Louis Ethical Society of Police of Dorn, whose wife is a sergeant with the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.

    St. Louis Police Chief John Hayden said Dorn was murdered during a looting while “exercising law enforcement training.”

    “David Dorn was a fine captain, many of us young officers looked up to him,” Chief Hayden said.

    Chief Hayden said officers will wear their mourning badges in response to Dorn’s death. –KMOV4

    Graphic:

    According to the report, Dorn was with the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department for 38 years before becoming the police chief in Moline Acres. He joined the police academy in November 1969, graduating in May 1970. After his retirement he joined Patrol Support in October 2007. 

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    Due to his history in law enforcement, Dorn helped out the owners of Lee’s Pawn and Jewelry – checking on it when the alarm would go off, which is what he was doing Tuesday when he was shot and killed.

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    CrimeStoppers is offering a $10,000 reward for any information leading to an arrest in the case (866-371-8477).

    Meanwhile, about the only mainstream coverage given to Dorn’s death has come from Fox News’ Tucker Carlson.

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  • This Treasury Official Is Running The Bailout And It's Been Great For His Family…
    This Treasury Official Is Running The Bailout And It’s Been Great For His Family…

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/02/2020 – 20:45

    Authored by Justin Elliott, Lydia DePillis and Robert Faturechi via ProPublica.org,

    Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have become the public faces of the $3 trillion federal coronavirus bailout. Behind the scenes, however, the Treasury’s responsibilities have fallen largely to the 42-year-old deputy secretary, Justin Muzinich.

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    A major beneficiary of that bailout so far: Muzinich & Co., the asset manager founded by his father where Justin served as president before joining the administration. He reported owning a stake worth at least $60 million when he entered government in 2017.

    Today, Muzinich retains financial ties to the firm through an opaque transaction in which he transferred his shares in the privately held company to his father. Ethics experts say the arrangement is troubling because his father received the shares for no money up front, and it appears possible that Muzinich can simply get his stake back after leaving government.

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    Justin Muzinich, deputy Treasury secretary, in 2019. (Wolfgang Kumm/Picture Alliance via Getty Images)

    When lockdowns crippled the economy in March, the Treasury and the Fed launched an unprecedented effort to buy up corporate debt to avert a freeze in lending at the exact moment businesses needed to borrow to keep running. That effort has succeeded, at least temporarily, with credit continuing to flow to companies over the last several weeks. This policy also allowed those who were heavily invested in corporate loans to recoup huge losses.

    Muzinich & Co. has long specialized in precisely this market, managing approximately $38 billion of clients’ money, including in riskier instruments known as junk, or high-yield, bonds. Since the Fed and the Treasury’s actions in late March, the bond market has roared back. Muzinich & Co. has reversed billions in losses, according to a review of its holdings, with 28 of the 29 funds tracked by the investor research service Morningstar Direct rising in that period. The firm doesn’t publicly detail all of its holdings, so a precise figure can’t be calculated.

    The Treasury is understaffed, and Muzinich was overseeing two-thirds of the department before the crisis hit. He spent his first year as the Trump administration’s point man on its only major legislative achievement, the landmark $1.9 trillion tax cut that mainly benefited the wealthy and corporations.

    As the markets panicked about the economic impact of the coronavirus, Muzinich’s responsibilities expanded. The Treasury worked with the Fed on the emergency lending programs, and the agency has ultimate power to sign off. Muzinich was personally involved in crafting the programs, including the effort to bail out the junk bond market, The Wall Street Journal reported in April. He communicates with Fed officials daily by phone, email or text, the paper said.

    That effort has many skeptics. The Fed has never bought corporate debt in its more than 100 years of existence, much less that of the indebted and fragile companies that raise money through the sale of junk bonds. Private equity firms, hedge funds and specialty investment firms like Muzinich & Co. dominate the market for junk-rated debt. In effect, the Fed has swooped in to protect the most sophisticated investors from losses on some of their riskiest bets.

    Muzinich & Co. Profited From the Government’s Actions

    Muzinich & Co.’s largest fund, with over $10 billion in assets, jumped in value when the Treasury and the Federal Reserve announced plans to buy bonds

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    Data from Morningstar Direct for the Muzinich Enhanced Yield Short-Term Fund

    Justin Muzinich’s ongoing ties to the family firm present a thicket of potential conflicts of interest, ethics lawyers said. Instead of immediately divesting his stake in the firm when he joined the Trump administration in early 2017, Muzinich retained it until the end of that year. But even then, he did not sell his stake and use the proceeds to buy broad-based securities such as index funds, as is common practice. Instead, he transferred his piece of the company to his father, who owns Muzinich & Co. In exchange, he received what amounts to an IOU — a written agreement in which his father agreed to pay him for the shares, with interest, but with no principal due for nine years.

    “This is something akin to a fake divestiture,” said Kathleen Clark, a law professor and ethics specialist at Washington University in St. Louis.

    “It sure looks like he is simply parking this asset with a relative, and he will likely get it back after he leaves the government.”

    A Treasury spokeswoman declined to say whether Muzinich has pledged not to take back the stake in the family firm once his public service ends. Muzinich “takes his ethics obligations very seriously” and “any suggestion to the contrary is completely baseless,” she said.

    She added the arrangement with his family firm was approved by the Office of Government Ethics and agency ethics lawyers, who recently reexamined the setup given Muzinich’s role in the economic crisis response. They concluded that there is no currently envisaged scenario in which Muzinich would make decisions as a government official that would affect his father’s ability to repay the money he owes under the IOU.

    “Treasury’s career Designated Agency Ethics Official has determined that there is no such conflict of interest, as there are no current or reasonably anticipated matters in which Deputy Secretary Muzinich would participate that would affect the note obligor’s ability or willingness to satisfy its financial obligations under the note,” she said in a statement. (The note obligor is Muzinich’s father.)

    Muzinich & Co. did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

    Muzinich’s relationship with the family firm also creates potential conflicts related to Muzinich & Co.’s clients. The firm makes money by charging investment management fees to several dozen wealthy individuals, insurance companies, pension funds, as well as what filings describe as a “quasi foreign government corporation.” The client list is not public and it’s unclear whether Muzinich would know about clients that came on board since he left. But any large investor has much to gain, or lose, from decisions being made by the Treasury about the bailout policies.

    “The clients of this firm, I imagine, must be thrilled that Muzinich has this vitally important, powerful position with a huge amount of discretion and authority,” Clark said.

    The Treasury spokeswoman declined to answer a question about the firm’s clients.

    Even as Justin Muzinich has presided over bailout policies criticized by some observers, Muzinich & Co. executives have praised the government’s actions in recent briefings for investors. One described the interventions “as providing somewhat of a floor underneath the high yield market.”

    Another Muzinich executive, David Bowen, who manages one of the firm’s high-yield bond portfolios, said during a May 20 webinar, “The Fed has been about as supportive, helpful, accommodative — whatever word you want to use — as anyone could imagine.”

    Untangling the Financial Relationship

    When Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin hired Justin Muzinich as counselor in early 2017, in many ways he was selecting a younger version of himself.

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    Justin Muzinich, center left, then a top adviser to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, center, on Capitol Hill on Sept. 12, 2017. (Al Drago/The New York Times/Redux)

    Like Mnuchin, Muzinich grew up in New York City, the son of a wealthy finance executive. Also like his boss, Muzinich spent years collecting a series of elite credentials: He attended Groton and holds degrees from Harvard College, the London School of Economics, Yale Law School and Harvard Business School. He worked at Morgan Stanley and spent a few months at a hedge fund associated with billionaire Steven A. Cohen, followed by a few years at EMS Capital, which invests the money of the wealthy Safra family.

    Colleagues praise Muzinich as hardworking and serious, and Democrats have expressed relief that he isn’t as inflammatory as many other Trump appointees. Powell, the Fed chair, called Muzinich “creative and extremely capable” in a statement to The Wall Street Journal in April.

    In 2010, he joined the family firm and became its president. His father, George, founded the company in 1988, specializing in handling portfolios of American high-yield bonds for European pension funds. The company expanded to offer funds to other institutional investors and wealthy individuals, but it stuck to its focus on corporate credit — particularly the riskier type that pays higher interest rates. Headquartered in New York and London, the firm has eight offices across Europe and one in Singapore.

    “Talking about credit all the time might sound boring, I’m sure it does,” Justin Muzinich said in a 2014 interview, “but that is what makes you good.”

    As he rose in the family business, Muzinich also launched himself into GOP policy circles, advising the presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney in 2012 and Jeb Bush in 2016. He owns a $20 million ultramodern beachfront house in the Hamptons and a $4.5 million Park Avenue apartment and commutes from New York City to work in Washington.

    When Muzinich entered the Trump administration, he reported owning stock and stock options in the family firm collectively worth at least $60 million. The true value could be much higher, but disclosure rules don’t require officials to give a specific figure for any asset worth more than $50 million.

    The Treasury’s ethics officers are frequently called on to rule on complex questions, given that the department tends to attract people from careers on Wall Street who have large, complicated financial holdings — from ex-Goldman Sachs Chairman Hank Paulson to banker and Hollywood financier Mnuchin.

    Stakes in individual companies can create conflicts of interest. So incoming Treasury officials typically sell those stocks and invest in broad-based options like mutual funds. Ownership in private investment funds can be particularly thorny because ethics rules treat each of the fund’s investments in specific companies as sources of potential conflicts. Sarah Bloom Raskin, who preceded Muzinich as deputy secretary in the Obama administration, reported holding only a collection of index and mutual funds that either track the whole stock market or a large basket of companies.

    But government ethics officials did not require Muzinich to sell his stake in the family firm through his first year in office as counselor to Mnuchin.

    According to ethics filings, Muzinich said that he did not divest it until December 2017, the month the tax law was signed. (Several months later, in April 2018, Trump nominated him to be deputy secretary.)

    Muzinich did not receive cash for most of his stake in the family firm. Instead, his more recent financial disclosures show that the stake, held in a family trust, was replaced with an opaque asset described as a “receivable from family,” valued at over $50 million.

    Muzinich’s disclosure filings don’t reveal much about this asset at all. They don’t say who the family member is or explain the arrangement. They don’t say how the terms were negotiated, or even if the valuation of the deal was vetted by an independent third party.

    It turns out that Muzinich transferred his stake to his father. But his father didn’t have to pay him right away. According to a Senate Finance Committee memo obtained by ProPublica, Justin received two promissory notes from his father in return for the shares. The notes pay Justin between $1 million and $5 million in interest over a year, at a rate of 2.11%. Moreover, his father does not have to pay any principal on the loan for nine years.

    Neither the financial disclosure forms nor the Senate memo say how long the agreement is supposed to last. Neither addresses the possibility of his getting the shares back after he leaves the government. The Treasury says the transaction is “not reversible” but did not elaborate.

    In other words, Justin still has an ongoing long-term stake in the financial well-being of Muzinich & Co., since his father now owes him more than $50 million. If the company were to plummet in value or even go under, it could cost Justin. Actions the Treasury and the Fed take can either enhance the chances he gets his money back or lower them.

    The Treasury defended the IOU transaction as an appropriate remedy for any conflicts of interest. The agency provided a statement from Elizabeth Horton, an ethics attorney who left the agency in 2019 and who worked with Muzinich on the divestiture from his family business. Horton said that when Muzinich first joined the agency, “the Treasury ethics office correctly advised him that he did not need to divest his holdings in his family business because of the generalized nature of his work on tax reform legislation.” She said that when his duties changed, “I advised Mr. Muzinich that an exchange for a fixed value note was an appropriate way to divest.”

    Horton said that advice was “consistent with practice in previous administrations” — though the Treasury declined to cite similar cases. “Muzinich worked very closely with the ethics office and was extremely attentive to his ethics obligations,” Horton said.

    ProPublica reached out to four ethics officials, including two former Treasury ethics lawyers. None could recall a similar divestment transaction. Three of the four disagreed that it resolved Muzinich’s conflicts, while one said that turning it into an asset with a value that doesn’t fluctuate with future developments should shield him from any allegations of impropriety.

    The deal does not look like an arms-length transaction, said Virginia Canter, who served as a career ethics attorney at Treasury during the George W. Bush administration and is now at the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

    “The terms of the loan suggest something less than a bona fide transaction,” she said. “Once he leaves office, nothing in the arrangement appears to preclude Muzinich from forgiving the debt owed to him by his father so they can amicably agree on returning to Muzinich the interest in the Muzinich family business.”

    As ranking member of the Finance Committee, Sen. Ron Wyden opposed Muzinich’s nomination as deputy secretary because of his role in crafting the tax bill. Although he would have preferred a cash sale of the Muzinich & Co. stock, Wyden said in a statement that in July 2018 Muzinich had agreed to “strengthen his recusal commitments to include matters where his family’s company is a party.”

    That satisfied Wyden at the time, but it is a very narrow restriction. A vast range of issues before the Treasury could affect Muzinich & Co. regardless of whether the firm was directly a party to any of them.

    How Justin Muzinich treated the transaction for tax purposes could reveal whether it was a true and final sale or not.

    Ordinarily, a sale of an asset such as equity in a company would trigger a capital gains tax bill. In Muzinich’s case, that could run into the tens of millions of dollars, even though his father paid him no cash upfront. But there is an exception if the asset in question is merely transferred with a commitment to have it returned, said Steve Rosenthal, a tax law expert at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

    “If you are merely parking or pledging securities, and you are going to get them back, that’s not viewed as a taxable transaction,” he said.

    It is not clear how he reported the transaction to the IRS, and whether he was left with a huge tax bill. The Treasury declined to comment on the tax issues.

    Tax Reform — for Friends and Family

    Through his first year in the administration, even as Muzinich continued to own his stake in the family firm, he met with a wide range of business executives to hash out major tax provisions that would affect them, according to his 2017 calendars that ProPublica obtained after suing the Treasury last year under the Freedom of Information Act. Others were obtained by the watchdog group American Oversight. The Treasury redacted large sections of the calendars, saying that they required consultation with the White House before they could be released.

    One of the most important principles in the federal government ethics rules covers whether an official is dealing with a “particular matter” that would affect a discrete group of people with specific interests or a “general matter” that affects a larger and more diverse group.

    The Treasury spokeswoman said the tax reform bill was to affect a very large and diverse group, so ethics rules did not prevent Muzinich from working on it. He was allowed to keep his equity in the company while working on the tax bill because his “duties did not include particular matters that required divestiture of certain assets.”

    But many industries had specific interests in the tax bill that they lobbied on — industries that may include clients of Muzinich & Co. Insurance companies, for example, featured prominently. Muzinich met with trade groups representing insurers as well as Liberty Mutual, The Hartford, Zurich and Blue Cross Blue Shield. In the final tax bill, property and casualty insurers fared particularly well by dodging new limitations on deductions that applied to other companies.

    Insurance companies invest their premiums in order to increase their profits. In its regulatory filings, Muzinich & Co. reports that 17 of its 89 clients are insurance companies, which have given the firm more than $1.4 billion to invest. Muzinich & Co. did not provide a list of its clients.

    Some of the companies Muzinich & Co. has stakes in also have been lobbying the Treasury on their own behalf. For example, Muzinich & Co. helps its clients invest in business development companies, a type of investment fund that enjoys lower taxes in exchange for providing capital to medium-sized companies. The firm itself owns stock in BDCs, many of them run by private equity companies such as Ares Capital Corporation, which has paid millions of dollars to lobby for looser rules governing the BDC industry.

    Even beyond any overlap with the family firm’s interests, Muzinich’s calendars, which cover the period from February to September of 2017, reflect the administration’s priorities in negotiating the tax deal. Muzinich spent long days in meetings with private equity titans, energy company CEOs and heavy-hitting interest groups like the Business Roundtable and the anti-tax group Americans for Prosperity. His calendar shows no meetings with labor unions or progressive groups.

    Muzinich did meet often with the Treasury’s in-house tax experts but frequently didn’t follow their recommendations. Richard Prisinzano, who served in the agency’s tax analysis office until August 2017, recalled trying to tell Mnuchin and Muzinich that drastically lowering corporate tax rates would likely prompt businesses to transform into C corporations, which often pay lower rates under the new law.

    He argued that such a change would further reduce tax revenues. Muzinich disagreed, Prisinzano said, protesting that businesses wouldn’t change their corporate form just to lower their taxes. “He really pushed back,” Prisinzano recalled. “He said to me, ‘The secretary is a numbers person, and the numbers don’t make sense to him.’”

    “‘I’m a numbers person, and they make perfect sense to me,’” Prisinzano said he responded. “That was not an answer that they liked.”

    In the following two years, many large businesses did indeed convert into C corporations, including private equity giants Ares, Blackstone and KKR. The government hasn’t produced an estimate of how big a hit taxpayers took from these conversions.

    During his confirmation hearing as deputy secretary in July 2018, Democratic senators pressed Muzinich on whether he agreed with the White House that the tax bill would “pay for itself,” despite the dire projections of independent forecasters such as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. “Yes,” Muzinich responded.

    It has not come close, as corporate tax collections plunged and left the national debt at historic levels on the eve of the pandemic.

    Muzinich Takes on the COVID-19 Crisis

    As the economic response to the novel coronavirus consumed Washington in March, Mnuchin turned again to Muzinich to negotiate with Congress over the shape of a bailout intended to sustain companies as they weathered the worst part of the crisis.

    Ultimately, Trump administration officials and lawmakers settled on a package worth more than $2 trillion, divided into aid regimens for different sectors of the economy. While setting general parameters, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act gives the Treasury wide latitude over how the money is to be distributed. It calls for $50 billion in grants and loans for the airline industry, for example, with few rules on who should get what. (In another potential intersection with Muzinich’s Treasury work, Muzinich & Co. started a new business line to loan money to airlines to buy planes in February.)

    Perhaps the greatest power the Treasury now has is the authority to sign off on Fed loan programs funded with CARES Act money. The Fed has said it will leverage that money to lend up to several trillion dollars.

    Among their biggest decisions: Which firms to include in the $600 billion Main Street Lending Program, which will lend directly to mid-sized businesses, and how to structure two programs that will purchase up to $750 billion in corporate bonds.

    The Main Street program, which has yet to launch, changed substantially after it was first announced to sweep in bigger companies and those with heavier debt loads. Offering a glimpse into how the Treasury directly shaped the Fed programs, Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette told Bloomberg the change was made in part to make sure beleaguered oil companies had access to the program’s favorable terms. Muzinich & Co.’s U.S.-based funds include dozens of energy companies.

    Mnuchin also deputized Muzinich to fix problems that arose during the first round of funding for the Paycheck Protection Program, which offers forgivable loans to small businesses. The government hasn’t said who got money through the program, but Muzinich & Co.’s portfolio includes many companies that are small enough to be eligible.

    The Fed’s bond purchasing programs will go even further to help companies with poorly rated credit.

    On March 23, the Fed and the Treasury announced a sweeping stimulus program that would involve buying hundreds of billions of dollars of investment-grade bonds. Selling bonds is a way for large companies like Boeing or PepsiCo to raise money for new investments, to fund day-to-day operations or to pay back older loans. Companies that are strong and profitable are expected to be able to pay back the borrowed money. Their bonds are deemed “investment grade” and come with lower interest rates. The news of the Fed program on its own heralded a dramatic recovery in the bond market, which in three weeks recovered nearly all of the 13.6% it had lost since the plunge began on March 6, according to one index.

    Then, on April 9, the Fed announced, with the Treasury’s approval, that it would expand its efforts to buy some junk bonds. These carry higher interest rates because the borrowing companies are viewed as riskier and may already be heavily in debt. One index tracking that market segment surged nearly 8% on the news, the most in a decade. This risker category of bonds has expanded dramatically in recent years as companies took on higher debt burdens to do things like acquire competitors and buy back stock. These are the bonds in which Muzinich & Co. has long specialized.

    At the end of 2019, Muzinich & Co. reported it had $2.8 billion of assets under management in its U.S. high-yield bond strategy. A Muzinich fund that focuses specifically on those bonds took significant losses in March, as companies like oilfield services provider Targa Resources and Caesars Entertainment saw the price of their bonds fall 30% and 35% respectively.

    The government’s announcement buoyed Muzinich & Co.’s high-yield holdings along with everyone else’s. The portfolio manager for the firm’s U.S. high-yield offering also praised CARES Act’s tax provisions that would “help high yield companies.”

    In a separate development in May, the Fed expanded another Treasury-backed lending program in a way that could help Muzinich & Co.’s portfolio. The central bank said May 12 it would support “syndicated loans,” another form of corporate debt often in which riskier firms borrow money from multiple lenders. Muzinich & Co. had more than $3 billion in assets under management in U.S. and European syndicated loans at the end of last year.

    The good news for Muzinich & Co. keeps coming. As the firm’s head of investment strategy, Erick Muller, told investors in a May 13 webcast about the junk bond market: “The recovery is pretty spectacular.”

  • Unprecedented Surge In New CMBS Delinquencies Heralds Commercial Real Estate Disaster
    Unprecedented Surge In New CMBS Delinquencies Heralds Commercial Real Estate Disaster

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/02/2020 – 20:25

    One month ago, we thought that the unprecedented implosion in US commercial real estate in the month of April following the near-uniform economic shutdown following the coronavius pandemic, manifesting in the surge in newly delinquent CMBS loans would be one for the ages, even though as we predicted May would likely be worse as a result of the spike in specially services loans. 

    And indeed while April was catastrophic, May was even worse.

    According to the latest remittance data by Trepp, the surge in CMBS delinquencies that most industry watchers were anticipating came through in May. After Trepp’s CMBS Delinquency Rate registered at 2.29% in April, in May the Delinquency Rate logged its largest increase in the history of this metric since 2009. The May reading was 7.15%, a jump of 481 basis points over the April number. Almost 5% of that number is represented by loans in the 30-day delinquent bucket.

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    There was some good news: given that about 8% of loans had missed payments for the April remittance cycle (in the grace period), the fact that delinquencies went up less than 5% has to be viewed as a small “win.” That, or simply the backlog of delinquencies has prevented the proper accounting of all deals.

    Alas, that “win” won’t last, and will be reversed next month, when the delinquency rate will hits double digits as about 7.61% of loans by balance missed the May payment but remained less than 30 days delinquent (i.e., within the grace period).

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    On the other hand, as more forbearances receive approval, some delinquent loans could revert to current status based on expectations of how loan statuses will be reported in servicer data going forward, if reported correctly. For instance, if a loan’s last payment was made in March, it would not show up as 60 days delinquent in June if a forbearance had been granted. Of course, this step merely delayed the inevitable, and once forbearances are exhausted, all those loans which are classified as current will all slide right into the default bucket without passing go.

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    Some other overall statistics:

    The percentage of loans in special servicing rose from 4.39% in April to 6.07% in May. According to May servicer data, 16.2% of all lodging loans were in special servicing, up from 11.4% in April. In addition, 9.3% of retail loans are with the special servicer, up from about 6% the month prior.  The percentage of loans on servicer watchlist in May was 19.9%.

    The Overall Numbers

    • The overall US CMBS delinquency rate climbed 481 basis points in May to 7.15%. The all-time high on this basis was 10.34% registered in July 2012. We expect this number will be surpassed in the June update.
    • The percentage of A/B loans (i.e. loans in “grace period” or “beyond grace” period) was 7.61% in May.
    • Year-to-date, the overall US CMBS delinquency rate is up 449 basis points.
    • The percentage of loans that are seriously delinquent (60+ days delinquent, in foreclosure, REO, or nonperforming balloons) is now 2.17%, up six basis points for the month. (As noted above, the largest increase this month was seen in the 30-day delinquency category; expect the percentages for 60+ day delinquencies to move higher in June.)
    • If defeased loans were taken out of the equation, the overall 30-day delinquency rate would be 7.56%, up 515 basis points from April.
    • One year ago, the US CMBS delinquency rate was 2.66%.
    • Six months ago, the US CMBS delinquency rate was 2.34%

    The CMBS 2.0+ Numbers

    • The CMBS 2.0+ delinquency rate jumped 503 basis points to 6.19% in May. The rate is up 545 basis points year over year.
    • The percentage of CMBS 2.0+ loans that are seriously delinquent is now 1.10%, which is up 12 basis points from April.
    • If defeased loans were taken out of the equation, the overall CMBS 2.0+ delinquency rate would be 6.54%, up 531 basis points for the month.

    The CMBS 1.0 Numbers

    • Note: With CMBS 1.0 loans outstanding dwindling, we plan to retire this statistic beginning in Q3 2020.
    • The CMBS 1.0 delinquency rate rose 110 basis points to 41.74 % in May.
    • The percentage of CMBS 1.0 debt that is seriously delinquent rose 24 basis points to 40.89% last month.
    • If defeased loans were taken out of the equation, the overall CMBS 1.0 delinquency rate would be 47.04%

    Overall Property Type Analysis (CMBS 1.0 and 2.0+) 

    • The industrial delinquency rate climbed 46 basis points to 1.82%
      • The amount of industrial loans categorized as A/B: 2.41% in May
    • The lodging delinquency rate jumped 1642 basis points to 19.13%.
      • The amount of lodging loans categorized as A/B: 14.08% in May
    • The multifamily delinquency rate rose 133 basis points to 3.25%.
      • The amount of multifamily loans categorized as A/B: 2.78% in May
    • The office delinquency rate moved up 48 basis points to 2.40%.
      • The amount of office loans categorized as A/B: 2.72% in May
    • The retail delinquency rate spiked 647 basis points to 10.14%.
      • The amount of retail loans categorized as A/B: 12.53% in May

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  • Shocking Evidence Suggests Coordinated Effort To Orchestrate An Uprising Inside The United States
    Shocking Evidence Suggests Coordinated Effort To Orchestrate An Uprising Inside The United States

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/02/2020 – 20:22

    Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

    Violence has erupted in major cities all over America yet again today, and we are being told to brace ourselves for more rioting, looting and civil unrest in the days ahead.  The death of George Floyd was a great tragedy, and the vast majority of Americans agree that we do not want to see that sort of police brutality in our nation, and so this should actually be a moment that brings our country together.  But instead, America is being torn apart.  The protests against police brutality have been hijacked by sinister forces, and they are attempting to channel the outrage over George Floyd’s death in a very violent direction.  As you will see below, law enforcement authorities all over the U.S. are telling us that they have identified a highly organized effort to orchestrate violence, and this appears to be happening on a nationwide basis.

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    Let’s start by looking at what is happening in New York.  According to the top terrorism official in the entire city, “certain anarchist groups”  were making preparations for “violent interactions with police” before protests in the city even began…

    On Sunday night, New York’s top terrorism cop, Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller, detailed his office’s analysis and investigation into why the New York City protests have become so violent and damaging at times.

    “No. 1, before the protests began,” Miller said, “organizers of certain anarchist groups set out to raise bail money and people who would be responsible to be raising bail money, they set out to recruit medics and medical teams with gear to deploy in anticipation of violent interactions with police.”

    And once the protests started, these groups used “a complex network of bicycle scouts” to direct rioters to locations where police officers would not be present…

    “And they developed a complex network of bicycle scouts to move ahead of demonstrators in different directions of where police were and where police were not for purposes of being able to direct groups from the larger group to places where they could commit acts of vandalism including the torching of police vehicles and Molotov cocktails where they thought officers would not be.”

    These are not just mindless angry mobs.  They are being directed with a purpose, and that is very alarming.

    In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot has publicly acknowledged that there has been “an organized effort” to turn the protests over George Floyd’s death “into something violent” in her city…

    Speaking at an afternoon news conference today with other officials, Lightfoot didn’t say whether the groups are out-of-state left-wing anti-fascist organizations generally known as Antifa, right-wing agitators, local street gangs or something else. She said she’s asked three federal agencies—the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms & Explosives and the U.S. Attorney’s office—for help, with a focus on AFT’s bomb and arson unit.

    “There is no doubt. This was an organized effort last night,” she said. “There were clearly efforts to subvert the peaceful process and make it into something violent.”

    Lightfoot did not really elaborate on why she believes there has been “an organized effort”, but officials in other cities have been willing to give the public more specifics.

    For example, law enforcement authorities in Minnesota have discovered “several caches of flammable materials” that were obviously intended to be used for rioting…

    Earlier Sunday, state officials said several caches of flammable materials were found both in neighborhoods where there have already been fires and “in cars we’ve stopped as recently as this morning,” said John Harrington, state public safety commissioner. Some of the caches look like they may have been planted days ago and some only in the last 24 hours or so, he said.

    Police are also finding stolen vehicles with plates removed that are being used to transport the flammable materials. Looted goods and weapons also have been found in the stolen cars, he said.

    And in several other cities around the nation, law enforcement authorities have found bricks staged at or near protest sites.

    On Sunday, police in Kansas City announced that they had found “stashes of bricks and rocks in & around the Plaza and Westport to be used during a riot”…

    Kansas City police officers found bricks and rocks staged near protest sites around the city, stoking concerns that individuals or groups had pre-planned looting and destruction that hit the city over the weekend, the department said Sunday.

    “We have learned of & discovered stashes of bricks and rocks in & around the Plaza and Westport to be used during a riot,” the department said in a tweet on Sunday.

    And in Baltimore, law enforcement officials were racing to dismantle “mounds of bricks and bottles” that had been staged in downtown Baltimore…

    According to sources, mounds of bricks and bottles have been found in Downtown Baltimore.

    Baltimore Police confirmed they are working with law enforcement partners to sweep the area.

    There are several demonstrations planned for Monday evening. Sources told Fox 45 officers are being briefed on the situation during roll call.

    In New York, a “cache of bricks” just happened to be sitting directly in the path of rioters on Sunday evening…

    Similarly, in New York City, video captured the moment rioters in Manhattan chanced upon a cache of bricks between St. Marks Place and Seventh Street in the East Village on Sunday evening, though no construction site appeared to be nearby.

    Even down in Texas, “a large pile of bricks” was stacked up in front of the courthouse in Dallas and huge stacks of bricks were pre-staged right along a path that protesters would be taking in Frisco.

    I don’t know about you, but I have a very hard time believing that all of this is just a giant coincidence.

    The fact that huge piles of pre-staged bricks are suddenly showing up at protest locations all over America indicates a level of planning and coordination at a very high level.

    Obviously we are dealing with something that is far more complex than just a few thousand angry people letting off some steam.

    With the U.S. economy in deep disarray and with a presidential election coming up in November, anger and frustration are likely to remain at very high levels in the U.S. throughout the summer, and that will give those that are organizing these efforts more opportunities to promote violence.

    Needless to say, the lawlessness that we are witnessing in the streets of our major cities is greatly alarming millions of ordinary Americans, and gun sales are going through the roof…

    Gun sales surged in May as shops reported an uptick in interest and demand as the coronavirus pandemic continued and amid national protests after the Memorial Day killing of George Floyd.

    “Almost, you couldn’t even keep up with it – that’s how crazy it was,” said Joe Hawk, owner of Guns & Roses in New Jersey. “After Memorial Day, it spiked again – it just went crazy again.”

    Small Arms Analytics & Forecasting, a private research firm, estimated that there were more than 1.7 million gun sales in May – an 80% jump from May 2019.

    The thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted on a daily basis is disappearing, and a lot of people believe that a lot more civil unrest is ahead.

    Our nation is more deeply divided than it has ever been in my entire lifetime, and that is not likely to change any time soon.

    So I would very much encourage you to do whatever you need to do to get yourself and your family prepared for what is coming, because America appears to be on the precipice of complete and utter chaos.

  • Taibbi: Where Did Policing Go Wrong?
    Taibbi: Where Did Policing Go Wrong?

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/02/2020 – 20:05

    Authored by Matt Taibbi,

    Crime has been down for decades, but incarceration is still sky-high and brutality cases keep tearing the country apart. Does policing in America need a fundamental re-think?

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    Watching all the terrible news in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, it’s been hard not to think about Eric Garner. The cases have so many similarities. Once again, an unarmed African-American man in his forties has been asphyxiated in broad daylight by a police officer with a history of abuse complaints. He and his fellow officers ignore cries of “I can’t breathe,” and keep subduing their target even after he stops moving, unconcerned that he’s being filmed.

    Five years ago, while sketching the outline for a book about the Garner case called I Can’t Breathe, my editor suggested I take on a larger question.

    Why, he asked, do we even have police? After all, the history of policing in our country, especially as it pertains to minority neighborhoods, has always rested upon dubious justifications. The early American police forces evolved out of slave patrols in the South, and “progressed” to enforce the Black Codes from the Civil War period and beyond, on to Jim Crow through the late sixties if not longer.

    In an explicit way, American policing has almost always been concerned on some level with enforcing racial separatism. Because Jim Crow police were upholding a way of life, the actual laws they were given to enforce were deliberately vague, designed to be easily used as pretexts for controlling the movements of black people. They were charged with punishing “idleness” or “impudence,” and encouraged to enforce a range of vagrancy laws, including such offenses as “rambling without a job” and “leading an idle, profligate, or immoral course of life.”

    I ended up not taking on that question, focusing on the hard-enough question of what had led two young, amped-up policemen to choke the life out of a harmless father and street character like Garner. I was more interested in those police than all police, and part of me – the white part, probably – thought the answer to the question of why we need police at all was at least somewhat self-evident.

    But the Garner story ended up graphically revealing the way modern “Broken Windows” policing had evolved to fit the tactics of those centuries of racial enforcement. I learned that “vagrancy” laws had been replaced in cities like New York with essentially identical offenses like “obstructing pedestrian traffic” and “obstructing government administration.”

    In Staten Island, a borough that to this day remains very segregated – white and black residents alike refer to the Staten Island Expressway that bisects black neighborhoods to the north and white neighborhoods to the south as the “Mason-Dixon line” – the young black men who lived in and around the Tompkinsville area where Garner was killed told stories of being stopped and ticketed whenever they crossed into the wrong neighborhoods.

    The new strategies rely upon extremely high numbers of contacts between police and subject populations, who are stopped for every conceivable minor offense – public intoxication, public urination, riding bicycles the wrong way down a sidewalk, refusing to obey police orders, jumping subway turnstiles, and, in Garner’s case, selling loose cigarettes.

    This idea of high-engagement policing was born in the mind of a Midwestern academic/corrections official named George Kelling. Kelling conducted a number of studies for think tanks like the Police Foundation and eventually co-authored a hugely influential 1982 article in the Atlantic called Broken Windows.

    Kelling in his research found that while people may not actually be safer, they feel safer when there is less visible “disorder” in their neighborhoods, e.g. panhandling, litter, graffiti, etc. Also, research suggested such disorder was incentive to further disorder: as Stanford researcher Philip Zimbardo put it, “If a window in a building is broken and left unrepaired, all of the rest of the windows will soon be broken.”

    “Broken Windows” revolutionized policing, changing it from a business of fighting crime to doing what Kelling described as “order maintenance.” If earlier police theorists like Orlando “O.W.” Wilson hoped to defeat crime by putting officers in squad cars and giving them advanced tools to react more quickly to offenses, the new strategy stressed stopping crime before it got started, by building and maintaining something not defined in law books – “order.”

    Once again, police were charged with enforcing not rules but a way of life, and were asked again to view the law as more of a tool than an end in itself. The famous “Broken Windows” article spoke approvingly of officers in Chicago who read between the lines of the law to chase gang members out of a project: “In the words of one officer, ‘We kick ass.’”

    The Kelling revolution was credited with early successes, like the cleaning up of the New York City subway. Soon the “Broken Windows” strategy (sometimes euphemistically called “community policing”) was the norm in big cities. Mass stops and arrests led to amazing numbers, like Baltimore under Mayor Martin O’Malley arresting 100,000 people in 2004 alone, or the city of Chicago stopping 250,000 people in 2014, a stop rate four times higher than New York in the peak years of “stop-and-frisk.”

    When such policing became hot in the nineties, as advocates like Bill Bratton became national celebrities (here he is on the cover of Time in 1996 under the headline, “Finally, we’re winning the war against crime. Here’s why”), police departments became infected by a corporate-like mania for “goal-setting” and “deliverables.” There was no numerical way to impress politicians if police just worked cases as they came: to show progress, Bratton believed, one had to order police to produce concrete quantities of stops, searches, arrests.

    Commissioners demanded captains deliver numbers and captains began browbeating lesser officers, who in turn pushed quotas on patrol cops, for reasons that often had nothing to do with crime. As depicted in the The Wire, in the stats revolution, “shit always rolls downhill.” The point was to get lieutenants promoted to captain, to get mayors re-elected, and help provide the rationale for the prison jobs state legislators were bringing home to suburban districts. All of this was greased by the lobbying money of construction firms, prison vendors, even private prison corporations – a great business for all, and all that was needed to keep it going was an endless stream of jailable people.

    This is why, even as rates of both violent crime and property crime have been decreasing steadily since the early nineties, rates of incarceration have been exploding in the other direction. For most of the 20th century the rate of incarceration in America was roughly 110 per 100,000 people. As of last year, the number was 655 per 100,000. Although the numbers have dipped slightly in recent years, down from a high of about 760 per 100,000 in 2013, the quantity of prisoners in America remains absurdly high.

    Such aggressive, military-style policing would be not be tolerated by voters if it were taking place everywhere. It’s popular, and continues to be embraced by politicians in both parties, because it’s only happening in “those” neighborhoods (or, as Mike Bloomberg once put it, “where the crime is”). Even during the Covid-19 crisis, 80% of the summonses for social distancing violations are given out to blacks and Hispanics. Does anyone really think that minorities account for that massive a percentage of those violations? Do they think black people really commit 3.73 times as many marijuana offenses as white people?

    Basically we have two systems of enforcement in America, a minimalist one for people with political clout, and an intrusive one for everyone else. In the same way our army in Vietnam got in trouble when it started searching for ways to quantify the success of its occupation, choosing sociopathic metrics like “body counts” and “truck kills,” modern big-city policing has been corrupted by its lust for summonses, stops, and arrests. It’s made monsters where none needed to exist.

    Because they’re constantly throwing those people against walls, writing them nuisance tickets, and violating their space with humiliating searches (New York in 2010 paid $33 million to a staggering 100,000 people strip-searched after misdemeanor charges), modern cops correctly perceive that they’re hated. As a result, many embrace a “warrior” ethos that teaches them to view themselves as under constant threat.  

    This is why you see so many knees on heads and necks, guns drawn on unarmed motorists, chokeholds by the thousand, and patterns of massive overkill everywhere – 41 shots fired at Amadou Diallo, 50 at Sean Bell, 137 at Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams in Cleveland, and homicides over twenty bucks or a loose cigarette.

    Police are trained to behave like occupiers, which is why they increasingly dress like they’ve been sent to clear houses in Mosul and treat random motorists like potential car-bombers – think of poor Philando Castile, shot seven times by a police officer who leaped back firing in panic like he was being attacked by Freddy Krueger, instead of a calm, compliant, educated young man. Officers with histories of abuse complaints like Daniel Pantaleo and Derek Chauvin are kept on the force because senior officers value police who make numbers more than they fear outrage from residents in their districts. The incentives in this system are wrong in every direction.

    The current protests are likely to inspire politicians to think the other way, but it’s probably time to reconsider what we’re trying to accomplish with this kind of policing. In upscale white America drug use is effectively decriminalized, and Terry stops, strip searches, and “quality of life” arrests are unknowns. The country isn’t going to heal as long as everyone else gets a knee in the neck.

  • Lancet Issues Major Disclaimer On Anti-HCQ Study, As Manufactured Disinformation Foments Hysterics
    Lancet Issues Major Disclaimer On Anti-HCQ Study, As Manufactured Disinformation Foments Hysterics

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/02/2020 – 19:45

    The Lancet has issued a major disclaimer regarding a study which prompted the World Health Organization to halt global trials of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), an anti-Malaria drug currently being used around the world to treat COVID-19.

    As we noted last week, major data discrepancies have called the entire study into question – though the lead author says it does not change the study’s findings that patients who received HCQ died at higher rates and experienced more cardiac complications than without.

    Until the data has been audited, The Lancet issued the following “expression of concern” regarding the study.

    “Important scientific questions have been raised about data reported in the paper by Mandeep Mehra et al,” reads the “expression of concern” from The Lancet.

    “Although an independent audit of the provenance and validity of the data has been commissioned by the authors not affiliated with Surgisphere and is ongoing, with results expected very shortly, we are issuing an Expression of Concern to alert readers to the fact that serious scientific questions have been brought to our attention. We will update this notice as soon as we have further information.”

    -The Lancet

    Of course, this is yet more evidence of the manufactured disinformation surrounding HCQ that Richard Moss, MD, (via AmericanThinker.com)  exposes below…

    I took hydroxychloroquine for two years.  A long time ago as a visiting cancer surgeon in Asia, in Thailand, Nepal, India, and Bangladesh.  From 1987 to 1990.  Malaria is rife there.  I took it for prophylaxis, 400 milligrams once a week for two years.  Never had any trouble.  It was inexpensive and effective. 

    I started it two weeks before and was supposed to continue it through my stay and four weeks after returning.  But I stopped it after two years.  I was worried about potential side effects of which there are many, as with all drugs right down to Tylenol and aspirin.  These, however, are rare.  At a certain point, I was prepared to take my chances with mosquitoes and plasmodium, and so I stopped. 

    Chloroquine, the precursor of HCQ, was invented by Bayer in 1934.  Hydroxychloroquine was developed during World War II as a safer, synthetic alternative and approved for medical use in the U.S. in 1955. 

    The World Health Organization considers it an essential medicine, among the safest and most effective medicines, a staple of any healthcare system.  In 2017, US doctors prescribed it 5 million times, the 128th most commonly prescribed drug in the country.  There have been hundreds of millions of prescriptions worldwide since its inception.  It is one of the cheapest and best drugs in the world and has saved millions of lives.  Doctors also prescribe it for Lupus and Rheumatoid arthritis patients who may consume it for their lifetimes with few or no ill effects. 

    Then something happened to this wonder drug. 

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    From savior of the multitudes, redeemer and benefactor of hundreds of millions, it transformed into something else: a purveyor of doom, despair, and unspeakable carnage. 

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    It began when President Trump discussed it as a possible treatment for COVID-19 on March 19, 2020.  The gates of hell burst forth on May 18 when Trump casually announced that he was taking it, prescribed by his physician. 

    Attacks on Trump and this otherwise harmless little molecule poured in.  The heretofore respected, commonly used, and highly effective medicinal became a major threat to life, a nefarious and wicked chemical that could alter critical heart rhythms, resulting in sudden cataclysmic death for unsuspecting innocents.  Trump, more than irresponsible, was evil incarnate for daring to even mention it.  While at it, the salivating media trotted out the canard about Trump’s nonrecommendation for injecting Clorox and Lysol or drinking fish-tank cleaner to combat COVID.  It was Charlottesville all over again. 

    Before a nation of non-cardiologists, the media agonized over, of all things, the prolongation of the now infamous “QT interval,” and the risk of sudden cardiac death.  The FDA and NIH piled on, piously demanding randomized, controlled, double-blind studies before physicians prescribed HCQ.  No one mentioned that the risk of cardiac arrest was far higher from watching the Superbowl. Nor did the media declare that HCQ and chloroquine have been used throughout the world for half a century, making them among the most widely prescribed drugs in history with not a single reported case of “arrhythmic death” according to the sainted WHO and the American College of Cardiology.  Or that physicians in the field, on the frontlines, so to speak, based on empirical evidence, have found benefit in treating patients with a variety of agents including HCQ, Zinc, Azithromycin, Quercetin, Elderberry supplements, Vitamins D and C with few if any complications.  Or that while such regimens may not cure, they may help and carry little or no risk. 

    And so, the world was aflame once again with a nonstory driven by the COVID media.  The HCQ divide within the nation is only a continuation of innumerable divides that have surfaced since the pandemic began — and before.  One will know the politics of an individual based on his position on any number of pandemic issues: lockdowns, sheltering in place, face masks, social distancing, “elective surgery,” and “essential businesses.”  The closing of schools and colleges.  Blue states and Red states.  Governor Cuomo or Governor DeSantis.  Nationwide injunctions or federalism.  The WHO and Red China.  Or, pre-pandemic, Brexit, open borders, DACA, and amnesty.  CBD oil, turmeric, and legalizing marijuana.  Russia Collusion, Trump’s taxes, the 25th amendment, Stormy Daniels, the Ukraine non-scandal, and impeachment. Or Obamagate. And now HCQ. 

    HCQ is only another bellwether.  It represents the latest nonevent in a long string of fabricated media nonscandals.  If a nation can be divided over HCQ it can be divided over anything.  It shows neatly, as many of the other non-issues did, whether one embraces the U.S., our history, culture, and constitutional system, or rejects it.  Whether one believes in Americanism or despises it.  It is part of the ongoing civil war, thus far cold, but who knows?  The passions today are no less jarring than they were in 1860.  One would have thought that a man taking a medicine prescribed by his physician, even a President, would be a private matter.  But no.  Not today. 

    We swim in an ocean of manufactured disinformation created by a radical COVID media, our fifth column.  They inflame the nation one way or another based on political whims.  The propaganda arm of the Left, they seek victory at all costs including dismantling the economy, culture, and our governing system.  Is there a curative for the COVID media and their Democrat allies who would destroy a nation to destroy Trump?  He is all that stands between us and them.  Is there an antiviral for this, the communist virus that has infected the nation, metastasized throughout its corpus, and now threatens the republic?

    *  *  *

    Dr. Moss is a practicing Ear Nose and Throat Surgeon, author, and columnist, residing in Jasper, IN.  He has written A Surgeon’s Odyssey and Matilda’s Triumph available on amazon.com.  Find more of his essays at richardmossmd.com. 

  • The Property Tax Assessment Nationwide RICO Scam
    The Property Tax Assessment Nationwide RICO Scam

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/02/2020 – 19:25

    Submitted by George Wuenschel, Missoula, Montana.

    I am a retired California real estate broker living in Montana. I am not an appraiser but I went beyond mere brokerage and was an expert witness for many law firms and have been trusted as an expert on valuation in several cases in state and federal trials. I was active in the support of California’s Prop 13 to limit property tax.

    Recently I have found a serious nationwide injustice in the determination of assessed value for property taxation. There was a time when price and value could, in most cases, be considered synonymous. Those days are long gone.

    There exists a balancing effect between price and financing terms which is precisely determinable mathematically. If an unusually low interest rate is available to a particular home (i.e. seller financing, assumable loan) a buyer can and will pay more for the property.

    Property tax appraisers are required to make a “cash value” appraisal for real estate. They must make adjustments to value for every influence upon price that is not really part of the value of the real estate itself. An example would be a $700K sale price that included a Ferrari in the garage. The home’s cash value is less than its stated sale price. Cash equivalency adjustments must also be made for any influence upon price caused by financing to the extent such financing has a positive or negative annuity value.

    In order to determine the value of favorable financing, it must be contrasted against some other financing package as a benchmark. Tax assessors have always presumed that no cash equivalency adjustments were necessary for financing if the terms a buyer received were substantially the same as those terms quoted by common financial institutions, or “street terms”. That was plausible as long as street terms resulted from free and open competition between borrowers and savers, as it was when real estate taxes were implemented.

    That was the purpose of Fannie Mae. Investors would purchase FNMA bonds and that competitive market influenced interest rates on current loans. Interest rates are now merely set by the same entity that creates money; the Federal Reserve Bank.

    Borrowers are no longer borrowing from savers using banks and marketplaces as an intermediary. The Federal Reserve Bank actually creates the money for borrowers, then the note executed by the borrower, through a circuitous route, eventually winds up on the Fed’s balance sheet as ‘backing’ for the money created. This is the only way that home mortgages could be made available today at 3.5% in a 10% inflationary environment. Consequently, the price of a home is considerably higher than its cash value.

    This artificially-low interest rate loan has a current cash value that adds to the price of every real estate transaction in the US, but that added value doesn’t come from the property itself. It is akin to the Ferrari in the garage. In those rare cases where a buyer actually pays cash for a home, that buyer must compete with borrowing buyers. The seller wants the  financial benefit of getting the highest price, so there is no discount for the cash buyer who declines this contribution to price from the FRB. Consequently, it is the mere availability of an artificially-low interest rate loan that adds to the price paid for real estate, but does not add to its true value. Should anyone doubt this dynamic, just remove the artificially-low interest rate and watch what happens to the price.

    In order to determine the value of an artificially-low interest rate loan, it must be contrasted against a true market-based loan. That requires speculation about what the interest rates would be if based upon free and open competition between borrowers and savers. Since nobody can possibly make such loans in competition with the FRB’s member banks, there is no  lending operations to obtain such figures. All we can determine is the floor or minimum interest rate required just to break even by starting with the real inflation rate that affects the US dollar.

    The well-respected Chapwood index (chapwoodindex.com) and economist John Williams index (shadowstats.com) both show a loss of purchasing power in the US Dollar of about 10% annually. Lenders will always compute a real rate of return (note rate minus inflation). The first 10% interest they receive is really not a profit at all. It only offsets the decline in purchasing power of the dollars the lender has tied up in the loan. Since lenders will be taxed on interest income from nominal dollars, the lender additionally needs to recover those taxes from the interest rate. Then there are loan servicing costs, loan origination costs, and finally, profit.

    There is no way interest rates could be less than 12% today if such rates had to be determined by free and open competition between borrowers and savers unless we expect such lenders to systematically lose wealth in order to make loans. They only way to circumvent that reality is to have the entity that creates money also be the ultimate funding source behind the loans. The injustice here is that appraisers contrast the street interest rate against the actual rate the borrower received resulting in no needed equivalency adjustment to arrive at the cash value of the real estate.

    I contend they should be contrasting that artificially-low rate loan against the rate that would be required if determined from free and open competition between borrowers and savers. Remember, the purpose of the adjustment is to separate the value of the home from the value of extraneous elements of price that do not come from the home itself.

    Why doesn’t a proposed real estate lender’s appraiser make such adjustments? All appraisals have a purpose. The purpose of a proposed lender’s appraisal is to protect their security interest so they don’t get over-extended. They must be confident that, if they need to foreclose, the property will sell for enough to satisfy the lender’s loan. A lender is unconcerned about the components that make up price. They are only concerned about price itself because that is what will protect their loan. But tax appraisers must determine cash value, which is very different than price in this artificial environment. And why do savers and bond purchasers routinely accept less than a 2% risk-adjusted yield on their investments in a 10% inflationary environment? Certainly not in pursuit of profit. They do it to mitigate the losses of staying liquid in cash because its the best that can be done in an artificial environment where the free market and price discovery is totally corrupted.

    For property tax purposes, all real estate is overvalued by 30% to 35% for ad valorem taxation (tax based upon value) because of this valuation scam. About 2/3 of a typical property tax bill is based upon the value of the property while the remaining 1/3 is a tax on the value of an annuity injected into every sale transaction by the Federal Reserve system. All sale transactions become a historic comparable sale used to determine the value of all other homes for tax purposes. Each and every one of those comparable sales reflect an erroneous inflated value unless they are adjusted to cash equivalency – and they are never adjusted.

    One way to understand the need for cash-equivalency adjustments is to consider the effect on price if home mortgage interest rates go negative, as they did in Denmark. A negative interest rate loan is actually an income instrument to the borrower. A negative interest rate loan will eventually amortize to a $0 balance without any payments ever being made. In such a case, the price of the secured real estate should go to infinity because price doesn’t matter. If cash equivalency adjustments were still not made for such financing, the property tax bill must likewise go to infinity. Can rates go negative in the US? Measuring from 12% rates, we have traversed three quarters of that distance. We are already deep into artificially high real estate valuations and very close to infinite valuations.

    Having spoken informally to two lawyers about this matter, including a former US Assistant Prosecutor, they recommended a 42 US Code Section 1983 Civil Rights case. However, there are several prevailing facts that increase the severity of this tax injustice.

    There are multiple government entities involved in the conspiracy: state appraisers, county tax assessors, county tax collectors, county recorder’s office, and sometimes even the state court when they induce a forced tax sale. There is an ever-present threat that if the inflated tax bill isn’t paid, the property will be involuntarily sold out from under the owner. There are government officials operating under the color of doing their job. So why isn’t this a violation of The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 18 US Code Chapter 96 (RICO)?

    It is RICO, but a nightmare of a case. Nonetheless, I have made a RICO complaint to the US Department of Justice. In my state of Montana, a state appraiser admitted they are not making such cash-equivalency adjustments and the Governor’s office will not respond. Its time for homeowners to get vocal.

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Today’s News 2nd June 2020

  • "Unmatched Performance" – German Army Test-Fires New Light Machine Gun
    “Unmatched Performance” – German Army Test-Fires New Light Machine Gun

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/02/2020 – 02:45

    As tensions boil between the US and Russia, Germany’s armed forces have recently test-fired a new lightweight, compact machine gun with high firepower. 

    According to Defense Blog, German Federal Office of Bundeswehr Equipment, Information Technology and In-Service Support (BAAINBw) have tested the MG4 A3 light machine gun, manufactured by German firearm company Heckler & Koch. 

    The advanced version of MG4 is expected to replace MG3 machine guns currently in field service with Bundeswehr soldiers. 

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    Three-week test trials were recently completed with soldiers from the 26th Airborne Brigade based in Zweibrücken, a NATO military air base in West Germany. 

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    The machine gun chambers a 5.56×45 mm NATO round and offers a fully automatic shooting opportunity with a rotating bolt gas mechanism. A new paint coating and optical sight upgrades make this model even more lethal. The weapon has less recoil than before and is much lighter, which improves firing accuracy.

    “It provides unmatched performance characteristics: Owing to its low recoil, the shot is readily controllable, giving high target precision. Its great combat effectiveness and range, the optimal rate of fire, and simple handling make it a weapon unlike any other,” Defense Blog said. 

    Germany is not the only country in the process of upgrading service weapons among its armed forces. We’ve noted in the last several years, there’s been a big push by the Trump administration to upgrade service weapons in the US Army. 

    Several months ago, the Pentagon doubled its purchase of a new anti-personnel precision rifle.

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    In January, Special Operation Command granted Sig Sauer with a safety certification for the new MG 338 Machine Gun, 338 Norma Mag Ammunition, and Next Generation Suppressors, which means US Special Forces are about to receive a badass advanced machine gun. 

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    Late last year, Textron Systems’ AAI Corporation delivered their next-generation machine gun to the Army that chambers a telescoped round between 6.5 mm and 6.8 mm and is expected to be the future replacement for the M16 rifle, M4 carbine, and M249 light machine gun.

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    It just so happens countries in the Western world are beefing up their military forces as the global economy plunges into economic depression. Is a military conflict ahead?  

  • Europe's Non-Hamiltonian Muddle
    Europe’s Non-Hamiltonian Muddle

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/02/2020 – 02:00

    Authored by Nouriel Roubini and Brunello Rosa via Project Syndicate,

    Although any joint EU action should be welcomed, the current COVID-19 response plan hardly amounts to a radical break with business as usual. Far from a long-awaited embrace of debt mutualization, the newly proposed European recovery fund risks being both politically unpalatable and economically inadequate.

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    This past week, the European Commission unveiled a plan to help European countries manage the Great Depression-scale shock from COVID-19. Building on a recent Franco-German proposal, the Commission is calling for a €750 billion ($834 billion) recovery fund (€500 billion of which would be distributed as grants, and €250 billion as loans).

    The money issued through this so-called “Next Generation EU” plan will flow through European Union programs, in order to achieve the Commission’s goals, including its green and digital economy agenda. The Commission will raise funds in the market by issuing long-term bonds, and their efforts will be backed by a suggested increase in new taxes, such as those on greenhouse-gas emissions, digital services, and other areas of supranational commerce.

    Though we are among the few commentators who anticipated that the EU would offer a plan much larger than what most market participants and pundits expected, we also would advise European policymakers to remain realistic about what can be achieved at the moment. Celebrations of the EU’s long-awaited “Hamiltonian moment” of debt mutualization are premature.

    As matters stand, the EU is still an incomplete transfer union in which resources (human, physical, financial) so far move from the periphery to the center – which is to say, to the United Kingdom or Germany. Ironically, one of these poles of attraction, the UK, has decided to leave the EU, ostensibly to end the flow of migrants into its economy. With Brexit, which officially occurred on January 31, the EU has already literally begun to disintegrate.

    Optimists believe that, with the UK out, a more cohesive EU can finally emerge. But this prediction seems too rosy. After all, the UK wasn’t so much a hurdle to integration as an excuse for other reluctant member states to avoid closer ties. For example, the UK hasn’t been the one blocking the European Deposit Insurance Scheme, which is needed to complete the eurozone banking union; that honor falls to Germany.

    With the rise of populist parties across Europe, it has long been clear that the next major crisis would constitute an existential threat to the EU. The EU now must demonstrate that it is up to the challenge of completing its integration process. Otherwise, it could confront a “Jeffersonian moment” that returns it to some form of confederation with only limited shared sovereignty.

    Facing the abyss, France and Germany have devised a plan to mitigate the pandemic’s devastating economic fallout. But while their proposal has its merits, Alexander Hamilton would be unsatisfied – and rightly so. For starters, the envisaged bond issuance would not come with a “joint and several guarantee,” and thus would not constitute genuine debt mutualization. Financier George Soros’s proposal for EU perpetual bonds, or Consols, would alleviate this problem, but it would not solve it. And, in any case, if the funds do not become available by this summer, it may already be too late for hard-hit countries such as Italy, Greece, and Spain, which will be facing a dreadful tourist season on top of it all.

    More to the point, the distrust between the EU’s “frugal four” (Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden) and the allegedly “profligate” southern countries (including Italy, Spain, and Greece) remains so deep that it is frankly difficult to imagine any long-term solution being adopted. A recent ruling by Germany’s own constitutional court sent a powerful signal to European institutions about what to expect on the road ahead. Though the decision eventually will be overruled by the European Court of Justice and ignored by the European Central Bank, the ECB nonetheless faces political limits to its actions.

    Germany will either have to offer a partial EU fiscal backstop with its own taxpayers’ money or allow EU institutions to provide a sufficient mutual backstop (starting with the eurozone budget) for the entire monetary union. If the proposed EU recovery fund were capable of revitalizing the eurozone budget – particularly its never-agreed stabilization function – that by itself would represent a significant achievement.

    In signing on to a joint plan with France, Germany presumably realized that it could not simply say “nein” to both a monetary and a fiscal backstop (that is, the budding fiscal and transfer union). Both are needed for the euro to survive. But even with backstops in place, critical questions would remain unresolved, not least the sustainability of Italy’s surging public debt. Italy would have to make massive strides to restore growth and competitiveness now that its comparative advantage in tourism has been so severely compromised.

    Overall, although any common European approach to the COVID-19 crisis is a step in the right direction (and certainly better than no action), there is little reason to expect the EU to break from its long tradition of merely muddling through. If European leaders can prevent an immediate breakdown of the EU and euro projects, they at least will have averted the enormous economic, social, and political costs that would come from further rapid disintegration. But a net response that reflects the old inertia will leave Europe unequipped for the post-COVID world, where other major continental economies – the United States, China, and India – will make the most important geo-strategic and economic decisions.

  • CJ Hopkins: Mainstream Media Has Been Conditioning You For This Uprising For Four Years
    CJ Hopkins: Mainstream Media Has Been Conditioning You For This Uprising For Four Years

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 06/02/2020 – 00:10

    Authored by CJ Hokpins via The Consent Factory,

    The Minneapolis Putsch

    Well, it looks like the Resistance’s long-anticipated “Second Civil War” has finally begun … more or less exactly on cue. Rioting has broken out across the nation. People are looting and burning stores and attacking each other in the streets. Robocops are beating, tear-gassing, and shooting people with non-lethal projectiles. State National Guards have been deployed, curfews imposed, “emergencies” declared. Secret Servicemen are fighting back angry hordes attempting to storm the White House. Trump is tweeting from an “underground bunker.” Opportunist social media pundits on both sides of the political spectrum are whipping people up into white-eyed frenzies. Americans are at each other’s throats, divided by identity politics, consumed by rage, hatred, and fear.

    Things couldn’t be going better for the Resistance if they had scripted it themselves.

    Actually, they did kind of script it themselves. Not the murder of poor George Floyd, of course. Racist police have been murdering Black people for as long as there have been racist police. No, the Resistance didn’t manufacture racism. They just spent the majority of the last four years creating and promoting an official narrative which casts most Americans as “white supremacists” who literally elected Hitler president, and who want to turn the country into a racist dictatorship.

    According to this official narrative, which has been relentlessly disseminated by the corporate media, the neoliberal intelligentsia, the culture industry, and countless hysterical, Trump-hating loonies, the Russians put Donald Trump in office with those DNC emails they never hacked and some division-sowing Facebook ads that supposedly hypnotized Black Americans into refusing to come out and vote for Clinton. Putin purportedly ordered this personally, as part of his plot to “destroy democracy.” The plan was always for President Hitler to embolden his white-supremacist followers into launching the “RaHoWa,” or the “Boogaloo,” after which Trump would declare martial law, dissolve the legislature, and pronounce himself Führer. Then they would start rounding up and murdering the Jews, and the Blacks, and Mexicans, and other minorities, according to this twisted liberal fantasy.

    I’ve been covering the roll-out and dissemination of this official narrative since 2016, and have documented much of it in my essays, so I won’t reiterate all that here. Let’s just say, I’m not exaggerating, much. After four years of more or less constant conditioning, millions of Americans believe this fairy tale, despite the fact that there is absolutely zero evidence whatsoever to support it. Which is not exactly a mystery or anything. It would be rather surprising if they didn’t believe it. We’re talking about the most formidable official propaganda machine in the history of official propaganda machines.

    And now the propaganda is paying off. The protesting and rioting that typically follows the murder of an unarmed Black person by the cops has mushroomed into “an international uprising” cheered on by the corporate media, corporations, and the liberal establishment, who don’t normally tend to support such uprisings, but they’ve all had a sudden change of heart, or spiritual or political awakening, and are down for some serious property damage, and looting, and preventative self-defense, if that’s what it takes to bring about justice, and to restore America to the peaceful, prosperous, non-white-supremacist paradise it was until the Russians put Donald Trump in office.

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    In any event, the Resistance media have now dropped their breathless coverage of the non-existent Corona-Holocaust to breathlessly cover the “revolution.” The American police, who just last week were national heroes for risking their lives to beat up, arrest, and generally intimidate mask-less “lockdown violators” are now the fascist foot soldiers of the Trumpian Reich. The Nike corporation produced a commercial urging people to smash the windows of their Nike stores and steal their sneakers. Liberal journalists took to Twitter, calling on rioters to “burn that shit down!” … until the rioters reached their gated community and started burning down their local Starbucks. Hollywood celebrities are masking up and going full-black bloc, and doing legal support. Chelsea Clinton is teaching children about David and the Racist Goliath. John Cusack’s bicycle was attacked by the pigs. I haven’t checked on Rob Reiner yet, but I assume he is assembling Molotov cocktails in the basement of a Resistance safe house somewhere in Hollywood Hills.

    Look, I’m not saying the neoliberal Resistance orchestrated or staged these riots, or “denying the agency” of the folks in the streets. Whatever else is happening out there, a lot of very angry Black people are taking their frustration out on the cops, and on anyone and anything else that represents racism and injustice to them.

    This happens in America from time to time. America is still a racist society. Most African-Americans are descended from slaves. Legal racial discrimination was not abolished until the 1960s, which isn’t that long ago in historical terms. I was born in the segregated American South, with the segregated schools, and all the rest of it. I don’t remember it — I was born in 1961 — but I do remember the years right after it. The South didn’t magically change overnight in July of 1964. Nor did the North’s variety of racism, which, yes, is subtler, but no less racist.

    So I have no illusions about racism in America. But I’m not really talking about racism in America. I’m talking about how racism in America has been cynically instrumentalized, not by the Russians, but by the so-called Resistance, in order to delegitimize Trump and, more importantly, everyone who voted for him, as a bunch of white supremacists and racists.

    Fomenting racial division has been the Resistance’s strategy from the beginning.

    A quote attributed to Joseph Goebbels, “accuse the other side of that which you are guilty,” is particularly apropos in this case. From the moment Trump won the Republican nomination, the corporate media and the rest of the Resistance have been telling us the man is literally Hitler, and that his plan is to foment racial hatred among his “white supremacist base,” and eventually stage some “Reichstag” event, declare martial law and pronounce himself dictator. They’ve been telling us this story over and over, on television, in the liberal press, on social media, in books, movies, and everywhere else they could possibly tell it.

    So, before you go out and join the “uprising,” take a look at the headlines today, turn on CNN or MSNBC, and think about that for just a minute. I don’t mean to spoil the party, but they’ve preparing you for this for the last four years.

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    Not you Black folks. I’m not talking to you. I wouldn’t presume to tell you what to do. I’m talking to white folks like myself, who are cheering on the rioting and looting, and are coming out to “help” you with it, but who will be back home in their gated communities when the ashes have cooled, and the corporate media are gone, and the cops return to “police” your neighborhoods.

    OK, and this is where I have to restate (for the benefit of my partisan readers) that I’m not a fan of Donald Trump, and that I think he’s a narcissistic ass clown, and a glorified con man, and … blah blah blah, because so many people have been so polarized by insane propaganda and mass hysteria that they can’t even read or think anymore, and so just scan whatever articles they encounter to see whose “side” the author is on and then mindlessly celebrate or excoriate it.

    If you’re doing that, let me help you out … whichever side you’re on, I’m not on it.

    I realize that’s extremely difficult for a lot of folks to comprehend these days, which is part of the point I’ve been trying to make. I’ll try again, as plainly as I can.

    America is still a racist country, but America is no more racist today than it was when Barack Obama was president. A lot of American police are brutal, but no more brutal than when Obama was president. America didn’t radically change the day Donald Trump was sworn into office. All that has changed is the official narrative. And it will change back as soon as Trump is gone and the ruling classes have no further use for it.

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    And that will be the end of the War on Populism, and we will switch back to the War on Terror, or maybe the Brave New Pathologized Normal … or whatever Orwellian official narrative the folks at GloboCap have in store for us.

  • 37% Of Americans Say They Would Give Up Porn For Better Sleep During COVID Crisis
    37% Of Americans Say They Would Give Up Porn For Better Sleep During COVID Crisis

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/01/2020 – 23:50

    Perhaps the most widely-discussed psychological phenomenon of the coronavirus crisis is the stress and lack of sleep that have led to, among other consequences, a surfeit of suicides. Millions of Americans have also self-reported experiencing vivid “stress dreams”. Among them is host of CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Joe Kernan.

    As brands and marketing strategists parse what this means for consumer attitudes, one recent survey answered by 1,000 American adults during the month of May, more than a month into the lockdown, found that products claiming to help with sleep might soon experience a mini-boom, as millions of Americans struggle to develop the discipline often required to successfully work from home.

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    The study mentioned above asked respondents what they would give up for a year of good sleep; some of the answers might surprise you.

    For example…the survey by SleepStandards found:

    • 37% of Americans would give up sex or porn
    • 41% of Americans would give up social media
    • 40% of Americans would give up alcohol and smoking
    • 39% would give up video games
    • 26% would give up steaming services such as Netflix or Hulu
    • 21.5% would become a vegetarian for a year

    Some key findings from the survey: the premium Americans would be willing to pay for a perfect night’s sleep has risen.

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    Ironically, 41% say they would give up social media, and 26% say they would give up Netflix; many sleep specialists recommend that giving up both activities – at least in the hours before bedtime – actually would help with their sleep.

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    The average American only sleeps 6.6 hours a night…

     

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    …and as productivity continues to stagnate, we suspect products aiming to boost sleep “efficiency” – that is, helping people feel well-rested, despite getting fewer than 7 full hours of sleep – or products that simply promote good sleep hygiene, will soon be all the rage.

  • Ready For War? Largest Chinese Base Has Full-Scale Model Of Taiwan's Presidential Palace
    Ready For War? Largest Chinese Base Has Full-Scale Model Of Taiwan’s Presidential Palace

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/01/2020 – 23:30

    Via AlMasdarNews.com,

    Satellite photos released over the weekend revealed the presence of a full-scale model of the Taiwanese presidential palace at a Chinese military base, The Drive reported.

    In the satellite photos, the images revealed that China’s Zhurihe Combined Tactics Training Base, which is the largest of its kind, has a replica of Taiwan’s presidential palace so that the soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could conduct storming exercises.

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    Mock Taipei Presidential Office Building as previously seen in Chinese state media. 

    While conducting urban warfare in mock towns is standard procedure for most militaries, the replica of the Taiwanese presidential palace appears to have a more nationalistic twist, as tensions remain high between Beijing and Taipei.

    The model of the of the presidential palace even has the red and white facade of the building from which Taiwanese President Tsai Ing Wen runs the autonomous island.

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    The real Presidential Office building in Taipei, via Wiki Commons.

    The front of the mock-up can also be seen very briefly in the below promotional video from 2015 which, according to The War Zone, would have been two years after the structure was built.

    Here’s the prior archived state media footage:

    Since the election of Tsai in 2016, the Taiwanese government has drifted further away from any potential reunification between Taiwan and China.

    This has culminated in strained ties between the two governments, with Taiwan increasing its military capabilities, thanks in large part to the United States.

    Satellite photos recently captured by Planet Labs and republished in The Drive:

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    At the start of 2020, the Taiwanese military carried out a large-scale exercise on island against a potential Chinese invasion force.

    This exercise sent a message to Beijing that Taipei is prepared for a potential war with China, should diplomatic efforts collapse.

  • Horrific Scene As Car Plows Into Dozens Of Police Amid Rioting In Buffalo, New York
    Horrific Scene As Car Plows Into Dozens Of Police Amid Rioting In Buffalo, New York

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/01/2020 – 23:11

    A shocking scene has unfolded Monday night from the streets of Buffalo, New York as police attempted to clear rioters and presumably looters from a city street. 

    Video captured from a protest live feed shows a car plowing into a large group of police and what appear to be state troopers, and SWAT or possibly national guard soldiers.  

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    The group of police are seen initially clearing the street with weapons drawn, and gunshots are heard in the background in an intensifying situation. 

    Suddenly the group of police attempt to jump out of the way as what appears an older model SUV rushes straight into the group. 

    Another angle to the attack shows the car gaining speed as officers realize it’s headed straight for them, most dashing out of the way at the last moment:

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    At least one officer is directly crushed under the vehicle in the graphic footage, and it appears multiple are down, with others rushing to aid and pull them from the street. 

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    AP has confirmed the video, with White House correspondent Zeke Miller writing, “Video shows SUV plowing into officers at Floyd protest in Buffalo, New York, running over at least 1, then speeding away.”

    The group of clearly rattled police then attempt return fire as the vehicle rushes away from the scene. It’s unclear if the driver was apprehended.

    Though there was no initial confirmation of the horrific and clearly intentional attack on police via Buffalo Police social media accounts, the footage is now going viral.

    The man who took the original video from a nearby balcony, who appears to be Yemeni-American based on the Facebook page hosting the live feed, expresses disbelief in Arabic and utters a prayer. 

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    The attack happened at the corner of Decker Street and Bailey, across from an Autozone which is partially seen in the video.

    It comes as attacks on police become more brazen and violent nationwide, and as the mayhem spirals out of control – further as President Trump has threatened military deployments to American streets to quell the violence. 

  • Which Industries Are Suffering The Biggest Job Losses?
    Which Industries Are Suffering The Biggest Job Losses?

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/01/2020 – 23:10

    With trader attention turning to Friday’s May jobs report, where consensus expects an 8 million increase in unemployment after April’s record 20 million, we took a closer look at which industries are set to report the biggest job losses.

    To do that, we looked at the weekly initial jobless claims report where many states release claims on an industry level, which as BofA writes, can be used to think about how national payrolls will evolve. While initial claims only reflect outflows, they are still a crucial component for the net job growth trajectory and therefore useful as a leading signal according to BofA’s economists. As a result, collecting and aggregating these data allows to create proxies that provide a read on national conditions.

    To extrapolate the bigger picture, the bank calculates the % change in cumulative initial claims for each industry during the relevant weeks for the April and May jobs reports, apply that to April payroll growth, and then scales to the total NFP forecast of -8.0 million. The exercise suggests that job losses in accommodation & food services-the most pandemic-sensitive sector-could be in the 2.5mn range in May, bringing three month total losses to 9.3mn. Meanwhile, we could see more than 500k job losses in each of the retail trade, healthcare / social assistance, administrative/support services, arts/entertainment/recreation, and public administration sectors. While not scientific, as these remain rough estimates, the table below helps give a sense of the magnitude of the pain that each sector could experience in Friday’s report.

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    In addition to the aggregate level data, the weekly trajectory of these industry claims data are also insightful.

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    For most of the sectors, initial claims follow the broad trend of a peaking in early April followed by a gradual decline. However, initial claims are trending sideways in professional /scientific / technical services and management of companies/enterprises – two of the major sub-sectors of professional/business services. Even worse, initial claims are rising and reaching new highs in the educational services, information, finance / insurance, and public administration sectors. Thus, in several sectors we are not seeing improvement, which according to BofA “argues for more persistent labor pain and a more delayed recovery.”

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    So what will the recovery look like?

    According to BofA’s Alex Lin, as states are gradually re-opening, focus is shifting towards what kind of recovery we can expect. A key question will be how many laid off workers will be rehired? At this stage, consumer expectations remain optimistic- an April 27-May 4 Washington Post/Ipsos poll found that 77% of laid off workers expect to hired back to their old job. However, the reality may prove grimmer given such an uncertain outlook. A vaccine for the virus may still be two years away, and businesses cannot discount the risk of another wave of infections as the economy reopens, which would slow the economy.  Meanwhile, a recent paper by Barrero, Bloom, and Davis argue that 42% of jobs lost will be permanent which would be a concerning outcome.

  • New Ebola Outbreak Kills Four In West Congo
    New Ebola Outbreak Kills Four In West Congo

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/01/2020 – 23:01

    Health officials have confirmed a second Ebola outbreak in Congo, the World Health Organization said Monday, adding yet another health crisis for a country already battling COVID-19 and the world’s largest measles outbreak, according to the AP. Congo also has yet to declare an official end to Ebola in its troubled east, where at least 2,243 people have died since an epidemic began there in August 2018.

    The United Nations Children’s Fund said that five people, including a 15-year-old girl, have died of Ebola in a fresh outbreak of the virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo; a total of nine cases total have been reported.

    “Four additional people who contracted the virus – all contacts of the deceased and including the child of one of the fatal cases – are being treated in an isolation unit at the Wangata Hospital in Mbandaka,” UNICEF said in a statement. “The deaths occurred between the 18th and 30th of May but they were only confirmed as Ebola-related yesterday.”

    The country’s Health Minister Eteni Longondo confirmed that “There are already four deaths and four suspected cases” who are still alive.

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    An Ebola health worker is shown at a treatment center in Beni, Eastern Congo on April 16, 2019; Photo: AP.

    Earlier on Monday, embattled WHO Director-General and and Chinese PR spin guru Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tweeted news that six cases had been reported in Mbandaka, in the country’s northwest Equateur province. It’s the country’s 11th outbreak of the potentially deadly virus, which is passed by bodily fluids and has a fatality rate of anywhere between 25% and 90%, depending on the outbreak.

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    The Democratic Republic of Congo has still been struggling to end an outbreak that started in 2018 in the eastern part of the country, in which 3,406 cases have been reported, with 2,243 deaths, according to WHO. There has not been a new case in the past 21 days in that outbreak and since Ebola has a 21-day incubation period, that particular outbreak may be under control but WHO waits for two full incubation periods, or 42 days, to be sure before determining that an outbreak has ended.

    “The announcement comes as a long, difficult and complex Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo is in its final phase, while the country also battles COVID-19 and the world’s largest measles outbreak,” WHO said in a statement. The central African country has reported 3,195 cases of coronavirus and 72 deaths. By far the worst epidemic affecting the DRC is measles, which has infected nearly 370,000 people and killed 6,779 since 2019.

    The Ebola virus lives in bats, and WHO says new outbreaks can be expected in the Democratic Republic of Congo. By far the largest epidemic of Ebola was in 2014-2016 in the West African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. More than 28,000 people were infected in that epidemic and more than 11,000 of them died.

    If that wasn’t enough, Covid-19 already has touched 7 of Congo’s 25 provinces, with more than 3,000 confirmed cases and 72 deaths. However, like many African countries Congo has conducted extremely limited testing, and observers fear the true toll may be far higher.

    There’s more: while Ebola and COVID-19 have drawn far more international attention, measles has killed more Congolese than those diseases combined. WHO said there have been 369,520 measles cases and 6,779 deaths since 2019.

    “This quadruple threat could prove lethal for millions of children and their families,” said Anne-Marie Connor, national director in Congo for the aid organization World Vision.

  • Exposing The Media's "Distraction" Deception
    Exposing The Media’s “Distraction” Deception

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/01/2020 – 22:50

    Authored by Tom Bevan via RealClearPolitics.com,

    I’ve been in the news business for over 20 years now, and among the many things I’ve learned about how the media complex operates is this: One of the favorite tricks journalists and politicians use to control the focus of viewers and push the media’s preferred narrative is to label other stories as “distractions.”

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    This is especially true when it comes to President Trump. In the recent past, most mainstream media outlets have been obsessed with the pandemic, and his leadership during this crisis. That is certainly understandable. In some ways, it’s the biggest news story in a generation, with a large death toll and global implications about governmental control over the economy, international relations, and the very idea of life-sustaining social interactions between human beings.

    But it’s not the only story. And this is where the sleight of hand comes in. Among Democrats and many liberal journalists, it is an article of faith that Trump’s handling of the pandemic has been a disaster. Keeping the focus on Trump’s failures has become a priority. In this framework, anything the president does or says that is not related to the pandemic is labeled a “distraction.”

    Nancy Pelosi played this card yesterday, responding to a question about Trump’s proposed crackdown on social media companies.

    “I think it’s just typical President Trump,” said the House speaker.

    “A distraction. More than 100,000 people have died from the coronavirus. This administration has been a failure in terms of what we’re doing testing, tracing, treating and isolating people. The president has been a terrible example of not wearing a mask, and belittling those who do. So anything he does is a distraction from the problem at hand.”

    Just a few weeks ago, any discussion of the troubling Justice Department treatment  of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn was declared a “distraction” by a flurry of reporters and media outlets. CNN has been particularly fond of the “distraction” theme in recent weeks, as you can see from the following headlines:

    “10 things Trump would like to distract you from focusing on” 

    “Trump and right-wing media distract from bad virus news with alternate reality” 

    “Trump goes on wild tweetstorm to distract from Fauci testimony”  

    Notice that when Trump tweets or comments about a subject or story that the media approves of, such as he did with the George Floyd case Thursday, it’s never labeled a distraction. Only stories on subjects in which the press disagrees with the administration earn the “distraction” distinction.  

    If this feels familiar, that’s because it’s been going on since the day Trump took office. From the beginning of his presidency, as the Russia collusion stories began peppering the landscape, journalists and Democrats used the technique to make sure audiences stayed focused on what they believed was the most important story in history: the Trump campaign’s supposed collusion with Vladimir Putin. 

    Over the last three years media outlets have dismissed dozens of presidential statements and initiatives as efforts by Trump to distract the public from the Russia collusion story or special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation, including tweeting about Iran, pulling John Brennan’s security clearance, starting a cold war with China, meeting with Kim Jong-Un, and even slapping tariffs on Mexico.  

    The collusion story turned out to be false. So what exactly was Trump trying to distract you from? The answer is he wasn’t.  

    Donald Trump is, by his very nature, an outrageous, impulsive, torrential news-making machine. He seemingly tweets about every thought that enters his head, from consequential policy pronouncements to strange conspiracy theories and petty schoolyard taunts. But it’s up to you, the citizens and voters, and not the media gatekeepers, to decide what is a “distraction” and what isn’t.  

  • COVID-19 Exposed The Truth: Laws, Rules, & Regulations Are Futile, Humans Were Born Free
    COVID-19 Exposed The Truth: Laws, Rules, & Regulations Are Futile, Humans Were Born Free

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/01/2020 – 22:10

    Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

    The one good thing to come out of the COVID-19 panic is the increasing awareness of the general public.  The scamdemic has exposed the futility of most rules, laws, and regulations, as people have found out they don’t have to obey any ruler or politician because they were born free.

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    Regulations that needlessly restrict liberty, reduce innovation, and reduce Americans’ access to care are being suspended all over the country, and not because politicians woke up and decided to cede some power.  Instead, Americans have decided to disobey the laws into nonexistence. People are finally figuring out that ink on paper cannot control them useless they allow it to.  Since March, Isabelle Morales of Townhall has compiled over500 such examples of regulations that are nothing more than commands to the people the government wants to enslave. These regulations are being suspended in order to provide relief for care providers, hospitals, businesses, and citizens during the coronavirus plandemic.

    Governors and other politicians recognize that the mere enforcement of these rules and laws places a heavy burden on some of the most important markets in the United States. Hence, their suspension is deemed necessary in these times of hardship. Ultimately, none of these regulations should have been created in the first place. Under other circumstances, the effects of these regulations go unnoticed because the strength of the market covers the government’s tracks. –Isabelle Morales of Townhall

    Often, the markets will survive in spite of regulations, however, people are beginning to realize these rules were not created in their best interest, but in the interest of the state. Once people disobey in larger numbers, they will fully awaken to the fact that they’ve been controlled for their entire lives.  The fact that these regulations should have never been created in the first place, is a moot point. What’s important is that people are finally realizing that the government isn’t there to help them and protect them. It’s there to control and manipulate them, with the help of the mainstream media, of course.

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    The only way out of this has always been, and will always be civil disobedience. It doesn’t matter how many rules, laws, or regulations, the government creates or eliminates because free people operate solely on their own morality. Free people already know they have no obligation to obey a command, especially ones that violate their individual God-given human rights.

  • More Hedge Funds Move To Outsource Trading As COVID-19 Crisis Revives 2-Way Market Swings
    More Hedge Funds Move To Outsource Trading As COVID-19 Crisis Revives 2-Way Market Swings

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/01/2020 – 21:50

    Most people who haven’t worked in the financial services industry probably wouldn’t understand the distinction between being a ‘hedge fund analyst’ and a ‘hedge fund trader’. But the two rolls are completely different. And while one of them – the analyst – might benefit from a shift in skill-set preferences and the ongoing retrenchment in sell-side research shops, the other – the trader – is increasingly seeing their jobs outsourced to a handful of major sell-side players who are offering a new service effectively allowing clients (ie counterparties whom these banks are also trading against) to outsource trading operations.

    And according to a Monday report published by Bloomberg, the coronavirus outbrek is reportedly accelerating this shift toward ‘outsourced’ trading roles in the hedge fund world.

    At this point, only the largest hedge funds even bother to build their own in-house operations. Staffing at smaller and boutique shops is typically no frills: limited to only a small team of analysts and maybe some researchers, led by a portfolio manager or two (or more). This is intentional: it allows star PMs to hog those juicy fees.

    But in the age of COVID, even the bigger shops are outsourcing, and smaller firms are expanding their use of these services, as wealthy investors demand that money managers keep one eye on the exit at all times. Recent crashes of retail platforms like Robinhood and Charles Schwab are worrying reminders about what can happen to retail investors when a real market panic gets going.

    Here’s more on the trend from BBG:

    As the pandemic unleashes unprecedented operational risks, asset managers are joining peers who have flocked to these services in recent years to keep up with new technologies and to cut costs — while liquidity gets ever-more fragmented.

    Among the more established names, Outset Global LLP says its client list has grown 45% in the year through April. Tora Trading Services Ltd. says sales increased 105% in the first three months of the year from the prior period, as existing clients expanded usage and new ones signed on. Tourmaline Partners LLC, an outsourcing firm based in Stamford, Connecticut, just clinched a majority investment from a private equity firm that will help expansion plans.

    While smaller firms often outsource all of these responsibilities to their prime brokers, larger firms with in-house operations are increasingly outsourcing more to these upstart shops and established players.

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    At this point, some of you might be wondering: what’s the difference between offering prime brokerage services, and trading services? These trading operations don’t just execute buy and sell orders; the services they offer are often so comprehensive, they can allow clients to “set it and forget it” – leaving specific instructions with traders to execute in Asian or European hours while traders in New York are asleep – or vice versa.

    It’s part of a broader shift in trading that has allowed greater levels of automation to creep into the market. Even if you’re skilled enough to program your own trading algorithms, wouldn’t you sleep better knowing a human was somewhere nearby, keeping one eye on the tape?

    While some smaller funds opt to outsource entirely, many larger managers use such services to supplement their own operations, like buying and selling Asian stocks when their traders in New York are asleep.

    Unlike agency or prime broking, outsourced players conduct relationships with the sell side on behalf of the client and offer more comprehensive services including monitoring exposures and providing market color.

    “It does appear there has been increased interest in outsourced trading,” said Shane Swanson, an analyst at consultancy Greenwich Associates. “That does go hand-in-hand with the explosion in technology we’ve seen across the past 10, 15 years — in particular in how that has been utilized as part of this response to the Covid crisis.”

    He calls the recent turmoil a “proof of concept” for outsourcing for a host of new managers.

    Market analytics firms told BBG that some of the biggest players in this space – Cantor Fitzgerald and Jeffries – have seen their trading businesses expand by more than 45% over the last year.

    Outsourced traders essentially act as a middleman between the buy side and sell side in handling trading flows. Some outsourced trading divisions are run inside bigger financial services firms, like Jefferies Financial Group Inc., while others operate as small, standalone shops. Their pitch to asset managers: Ensuring best execution with an extensive network of brokerages and high-speed technology, which can be expensive for smaller funds to maintain on their own.

    “We’ve seen folks add our outsourced trading team just to be able to say that they have systems in place and a set-up in place should their traders get sick with Covid,” said Bobby Croswell, head of U.S. outsourced trading at Cowen Inc. The firm’s outsourcing revenue more than doubled in the first quarter compared with the same period in 2019.

    Volatility has undoubtedly accelerated this trend, which is widely expected to continue.

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    On the subject of whether this trend is a waste of money, or an overreaction to the recent shock selloff, we suspect all the 20- and 30-something year-old traders running the market these days could probably use a little hand-holding. As far as market stability is concerned, it’s probably not a bad thing.

    In other new, Bloomberg says, stock market participants want a reduction in the world’s longest trading hours, which they say can improve liquidity and industry diversity, according to the results of a London Stock Exchange survey.

  • Crypto Analyst Releases Stock-To-Flow Model Indicator For Bitcoin Bull Run
    Crypto Analyst Releases Stock-To-Flow Model Indicator For Bitcoin Bull Run

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/01/2020 – 21:30

    Authored by Turner Wright via CoinTelegraph.com,

    Updating its popular BTC price model, crypto analyst PlanB predicts the cryptocurrency could see a rally to $100K by 2021.

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    image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

    Crypto analyst PlanB released a key indicator for its stock-to-flow price prediction model which could signal a Bitcoin bull run to $100,000 by 2021 has just begun.

    PlanB confirmed on Twitter on May 31 that the red dot — indicating a price increase — was now present in its stock-to-flow (S2F) model, a price prediction model for Bitcoin (BTC).

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    The S2F model treats BTC as a commodity like gold or silver, evaluating the existing supply of the cryptocurrency against the amount mined. 

    Though many have predicted BTC bullish behavior in the wake of the May 11 rewards halving, PlanB’s model marks when a run would occur with a red dot. Under this model, the chart shows a BTC price of $100,000 by the end of 2021. 

    Stock-to-flow model

    Cointelegraph reported in April that PlanB had used its new cross-asset S2F model — S2FX — to predict a BTC price of $288,000 by 2024. Crypto analyst Harold Christopher Burger used the same data to forecast a rally to $1 million by 2025.

    The S2F model does have its detractors. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has expressed some reservations about stock-to-flow, calling it part of the 95% of crypto articles that are “post-hoc rationalized bullshit.”

    As of this writing, BTC is priced in the $9,400s, having fallen 2% in the last 24 hours.

  • Looting Breaks Out In LA, NYC As Trump Threatens To Call In "1000s Of Heavily-Armed Soldiers"
    Looting Breaks Out In LA, NYC As Trump Threatens To Call In “1000s Of Heavily-Armed Soldiers”

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/01/2020 – 21:28

    Protest/Riot/Looting Feed here:

    Summary

    • Trump threatens to mobilize US troops if Governors do not get control

    • Curfews enacted across all major cities

    • Protests/Riots spreading to suburbs

    • Looting has begun in LA/NYC

    *  *  *

    Update (2130ET): Looting has begun in NYC and LA as curfew nears and protests/looting has spread to the suburbs around the nation.

    High-end stores like Bloomingdales, Gucci, Nike Soho, Chanel, Tory Burch, Kate Spade were all vandalized. Best Buy in Union Square and several drug stores were also hit.

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    It appears Nike’s virtue-signaling ad failed to stop their store getting looted…

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    New York’s luxury shopping area is all boarded up…

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    And some looters actually faced consequences…

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    This is what police are facing (watch the first few seconds carefully):

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    The looting and protesting has reached various suburbs including Walnut Creek, CA (around 20 miles from Oakland)…

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    *  *  *

    Update (2100ET): Trump is facing flack from his critics for allegedly deploying militarized police to clear out peaceful demonstrators from a church near the white house so he could hold a photo op with a bible.

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    The bishop the DC Episcopal Church just told WaPo that she’s furious with the White House – apparently the church wasn’t told about that they would be gassing demonstrators. Or, at least that’s what they’re telling the press.

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    Footage from the scene outside.

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    Trump’s political opponents are jumping on the outrage bandwagon.

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    To top it off: The top of “The Huffington Post”…

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    But at least the press was there to ask the tough questions.

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    Meanwhile, millions of iPhones across NYC just buzzed with the following alert message…

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    …awhat looks to be a fourth straight night of violence begins with looting and violence in LA and New York.

    As the sun set, the looting started once again as protests entered their fifth day in NYC, and fourth day of protracted violence and looting.

    Businesses on 5th and Madison avenues were spotted quickly throwing up plywood to prevent looting on Monday night.

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    In a memorable scene, an emotional member of the NYPD brass insisted that “agitators” were taking a “peaceful movement” and destroying it from the inside out. He also took a knee with peaceful demonstrators in brooklyn after they worked to “deescalate a standoff”.

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    High-end stores like Bloomingdales, Gucci, Nike Soho, Chanel, Tory Burch, Kate Spade were all vandalized. Best Buy in Union Square and several drug stores were also hit.

    Attempted looters clashed with police as vandals smashed into a boutique tea shop in the middle of Rockefeller Center.

    In Hollywood, reporters claimed the LAPD response to what appeared to be “organized” looting was “much quicker” – following excessive press coverage of looting that went virtually unchallenged.

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    That’s almost ironic, since Hollywood celebrities are the ones donating money to help bail vandals and rioters out of jail indiscriminately with more peaceful demonstrators arrested for civil disobedience. We doubt small business owners in the city have the same level of sympathy after last night.

    In Philly, a radio producer documented a scene at a pro-cop anti-looter “protest” that was on the verge of turning into a vigilante posse, while a crowd of “I can’t breath”-shouting demonstrators formed opposite them. Throwing of projectiles ensued, and several arrests were made.

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    A Reuters reporter was attacked in DC.

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    By the looks of it, the agitators are back on the streets and getting ready to push Trump to make good on his threat.

    * * *

    Update (19000ET):  President Trump announced from the White House Rose Garden Monday evening that he planned to mobilize “all available federal resources, civilian and military” to put an end to violent protests across the country, while blaming the outbursts on “professional anarchists, looters, criminals, antifa” whom he described as “domestic terrorists” bringing widespread harm to the nation.

    As expected following remarks from Press Sec McEnany earlier, President Trump insisted during a brief speech that he would send in military personnel to quell violence and looting if governors failed to act. He also insisted that his administration was committed to justice for Floyd and his family, and that Trump’s administration is “an ally” of peaceful protesters.

    “I am dispatching thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers,” Trump said Monday at the White House, clearly seeking to reassure terrified business owners and members of the community in areas hard-hit by the coronavirus and the riots that he would uphold his duty to maintain order.

    Trump insisted his heavy handed response had nothing to do with suppressing the right to peacefully protest.

    “We cannot allow an ‘angry mob” drown out peaceful protesters,” Trump said, describing the looting and attacks on journalists and bystanders as “acts of domestic terrorism”.

    In an implicit reference to New York, Trump said he would send in federal troops if cities failed to deal with any violent uprisings. “If cities refuse…I will deploy the united states military and quickly solve the problem for them,” Trump said.

    “We are ending the riots and lawlessness, that has spread throughout our country. We will end it now,” Trump said.

    He finished his remarks just before a 7pmET curfew took effect in the capital city.

    According to the FT, insiders said Trump aides had debated whether the president should address the nation. Some argued that he needed to try to bring the country together, while others said he would achieve little and would end up looking weak if the violence continued – meaning that Trump likely means what he says. After all, in his mind, his reelection prospects might depend on how “tough” he looks this week.

    * * *

    Update (1815ET): After President Trump announced plans for an impromptu address to the nation, caving to Republican lawmakers and Fox News hosts who had been pushing him to deliver a presidential address to the nation from the Oval Office like his predecessor George HW Bush did after the Rodney King riots.

    Meanwhile, the Pentagon just announced that more troops are on standby ahead of what’s expected to be another night of chaos in DC.

    • PENTAGON: ADDITIONAL FORCES ON ALERT STATUS FOR DC DEPLOYMENT
    • DEFENSE OFFICIAL SAYS FORCES NOT CURRENTLY BEING DEPLOYED TO DC
    • NATIONAL GUARD TO PROTECT MONUMENTS, WHITE HOUSE: PENTAGON
    • PENTAGON: TOTAL OF 600-800 NATIONAL GUARD BEING SENT TO D.C.

    Federal agents from the DEA and other agencies have been deputized, and are reportedly stopping traffic heading into downtown DC.

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    Journalists decried President Trump’s latest calls for an escalation of force in DC.

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    In New York, the NYPD just released photos of the suspects who allegedly defaced St Patrick’s Cathedral last night.

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    After days of protests, the brother of George Floyd is leading a peaceful vigil in Minneapolis.

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    At a rally in Hartford, Conn., police adhered to a ‘community policing’ approach which has grown in popularity across the state in recent years.

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    In a report published a few hours ago, the LA Times quotes several small business owners in Santa Monica and elsewhere round LA County who claimed that police didn’t even bother to take on the looters, and instead deliberately focused their militarized weaponry on mostly peaceful protesters, who skirmished with police when provoked.

    “Where are the police? They’re nowhere. There’s not a policeman in sight. It’s just like a free-for-all,” Landy remembered thinking. “It was just shocking. I was outraged.”

    He wasn’t alone. From the Grove shopping mall and Santa Monica’s business district to downtown Long Beach, television beamed live images all weekend of looters breaking into stores and stealing merchandise – often without officers in sight.

    The mass protests over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody have proved a vexing challenge for law enforcement agencies. They have been encouraging peaceful demonstrations, but in recent days watched them devolve as looters and vandals broke off from the peaceful protesters, stealing and setting fires.

    This probably wouldn’t be a bad time to remind the world that tear gas is actually a chemical weapon that’s banned in warfare under international conventions – but is still somehow used by law enforcement from Venezuela, to Hong Kong, to the US.

    * * *

    Update (1605ET): After raising doubts about its efficacy, NY Gov. Cuomo said Monday afternoon that he would impose an 11pm curfew in NYC effective Monday evening until 5am. Mayor de Blasio announced the news after talking it over with Cuomo.

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    During Monday’s COVID presser, Cuomo said that it was possible for a well-intentioned protest movement to be “hijacked” by criminals. “Can you have a legitimate protest movement hijacked? Yes you can,” Gov. Cuomo says. “There is no doubt there are outside groups that come in to disrupt.”

    However, he added “I don’t even believe it’s the protesters. I believe there are people using the protests for their own purpose. There are people who want to sow the seeds of anarchy. Who want to disrupt.”

    Earlier, the SBA, the Sargeants Benevolent Association, one of the NYPD’s most powerful unions, criticized de Blasio for not allowing cops to do their jobs, and called on the mayor to impose a curfew and allow mounted patrols (cops on horseback).

    Around the time that Cuomo announced the news during a radio interview Monday afternoon, the SBA’s twitter account tweeted a message that was quickly taken down by twitter.

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    The governor’s office released a statement on the decision. Read it below:

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    * * *

    Update (1135ET): After Washington DC and NYC bizarrely refused to impose curfews this weekend while nearly 3 dozen other major cities set curfews beginning as early as 4pmET on Sunday, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser is planning to implement a curfew starting tonight at 7pmET (and again tomorrow), while de Blasio tries to save face by saying he’s “strongly considering” a curfew after mobs plunder stores, set fires following day of protests.

    President Trump, meanwhile, reportedly told governors, mayors and law enforcement officials during a video meeting that their response to the unrest was “weak”, and pressured them to allow cops to take more violent measures to contain these crowds during a hastily scheduled phone call to discuss “security measures” Monday morning. Trump also reportedly threatened to “activate” AG Barr if the unrest continues which sounds…more ridiculous than he probably intended.

    Comments reported a few hours after the meeting ended claimed Trump threatened to send the national guard into NYC (which already boasts its own private army, the NYPD).

    * * *

    Update (1100ET): The Global Times is capitalizing on the unrest in the US, and exploiting it for maximum propaganda benefit.

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    * * *

    Update (1045ET): As NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio surveys the wreckage from last night, and reckons with the PR embarrassment of having his daughter arrested with dozens of other demonstrators, the mayor said some “late evening protests” were not acceptable.

    You mean the demonstrations that happened after your daughter was arrested?

    Or the “demonstrations” like this one?

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    Addressing an incident from last night where an NYPD officer drew his gun, and another where two NYPD vehicles “surged” into a crowd of “protesters” blocking the road as they tried to get by, Mayor de Blasio said the cops “shouldn’t have done” what they did (after saying last night that the demonstrators were in the wrong), and also said the cop who drew his gun should have his badge taken, and that the vehicle incident would face an internal inspection.

    * * *

    Following what was either the third or the sixth night (depending on who you read) of chaos to sweep across America following the death of George Floyd a week ago, Americans surveying the wreckage are being met by staggering totals. After tens of thousands of peaceful demonstrators, violent anarchists and opportunistic looters commingled for another night of chaos in cities from California to New York, and from Seattle to South Florida.

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    Reports published late Sunday/early Monday revealed that President Trump spent part of Friday in an underground bunker under the White House as secret service fired rubber bullets into crowds of violent and non- violent demonstrators. Over the entire three nights of chaos, at least 4,400 people have been arrested, according to a tally compiled by The Associated Press. Arrests ranged from stealing and blocking highways to breaking the dozens of curfews imposed by cities around the country on Saturday and Sunday as the violence spread, the AP reports.

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    Source: AP

    Curfews were imposed in more than 30 major cities around the U.S., including Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. About 5,000 National Guard soldiers and airmen were activated in 15 states and Washington, D.C.

    In Indianapolis, two people were reported dead in bursts of downtown violence this weekend, adding to deaths reported in Detroit and Minneapolis in recent days. In Oakland, two federal agents were shot Friday night; one was killed.

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    One man was shot and killed when police and the National Guard opened fire on a crowd that had reportedly turned violent in Louisville, the city where Breonna Taylor was killed. WaPo reports Metro Police Chief Steve Conrad confirming the Kentucky National Guard and Louisville police were dispatched to the parking lot at Dino’s Food Mart around 12:15 a.m., where a large crowd had gathered, and that as they tried to disperse the crowd, somebody opened fire at an officer.

    Minneapolis and St. Paul were largely spared on Sunday evening following early marches that were largely peaceful. Though there was one high profile incident involving a tanker driving into a crowd of marchers on a highway (the driver of the truck was later arrested), the widespread violence that plagued other areas didn’t materialize. As WaPo reports, the city on Monday morning looked like a “ghost town”.

    But this relative peace came at a high cost, as the national guard moved to forcefully enforce curfews, even going so far as to fire paint cannisters and rubber bullets at people sitting on porches who ignored shouts to “get inside.”

    The gas stations are closed. The grocery stores are dark. And along Hiawatha Avenue in South Minneapolis, one of the only restaurants serving is a McDonald’s, where every inch of the building’s windows are boarded up except for two small holes at the drive-through just big enough to pass along food.

    After nearly a week of unrest in response to the death of George Floyd, city and state officials were optimistic Sunday after a night passed without the dangerous fires, looting and violence that have cut a wide swath of devastation through the heart of this Midwestern city.

    But it came with a new reality: Thousands of National Guard troops and state and city police officers moving to aggressively – and sometimes violently – regain control of the streets, and a lockdown that has residents under curfew and has closed the major highways at night.

    In some neighborhoods, residents stand outside their homes and businesses with guns, fueling a sense of lawlessness, while medical students descend on the scene with supplies to assist those in need, adding to what increasingly feels like a domestic war zone.

    Minnesota’s Democratic governor, who has been criticized for not responding forcefully enough in the beginning. Now, he says, his approach might be remembered as heavy-handed – but he doesn’t care.

    “There will be critiques of me that this is excessive. Why are you keeping forces on the ground?” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) said Sunday. It would be “irresponsible” to dial back the state’s response, amid rumors of outside agitators that he and other officials say have come into the city to sow chaos, he said.

    In particular, a video of cops and national guard firing at a woman standing peacefully on her porch went viral, eliciting a torrent of criticism. State police leaders defended it

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    On Monday, Gov. Andy Beshear said in a statement that he had authorized the Kentucky State Police to independently investigate the fatal shooting in Louisville “given the seriousness of the situation.”

    But the man in Louisville wasn’t the only casualty of the unrest. As governors in 26 states called in the National Guard and Secret Service agents again clashed with demonstrators outside the White House, media reported that at least six people had been killed in violence across the US, as gunfire rang out from Detroit to Indianapolis to Chicago to Omaha, notably correlating with the sites of notorious police killings.

    While journalists, pundits, celebrities etc joined together to discuss the importance of ensuring that black voices are heard, it appears that many of the “antifascist” protesters were too busy fighting racism by lighting black communities on fire to listen to a handful of community leaders in Portland, Oregon last night.

    Ron Herndon, the longtime director of the Portland-based Albina Head Start, held a peaceful event Sunday night at his organizations, a staple of black life in the city for years, according to the Oregonian.

    “It appears most of the young folks tearing up the city are younger white people,” he said. “If somehow you think that tearing up (downtown) is going to help black people, you are sadly mistaken. Please don’t think you are doing any of us any favors by tearing stuff up.”

    The “nonpartisan, politically neutral” mainstream press has decided to unilaterally give those looting and provoking violence and destruction a pass. Just because they’re telling you that is the “morally correct” position, doesn’t mean they’re right.

    As officials in California deal with the aftermath on Monday, California state government buildings “in downtown city areas” will be closed Monday, officials said, as authorities worry about the prospect of more violence. And while a brief number of international protests were planned in solidarity, many, including a march in Sydney, Australia, have been canceled due to COVID-19-linked concerns.

  • Auto Sales Plunge 33% In May, Set For Worst Year Since 2009
    Auto Sales Plunge 33% In May, Set For Worst Year Since 2009

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/01/2020 – 21:10

    US auto sales are expected to continue their historic plunge in May, further pressuring an industry that is on the brink of all out collapse due to the pandemic lockdowns, plunging used car prices and suffering from a pre-virus recessionary environment.

    Sales figures for May are expected to fall 33% to just 1.05 million units, according to Cox Automotive and CNBC. Even worse, data from Bank of America indicates that demand for new vehicles could be dropping off a cliff at the same time the industry is getting ready to ramp up production again. 

    The numbers show a sequential improvement from April, but still offer an ominous outlook for the auto industry heading into the second half of 2020. Cox Automotive estimates the pace for U.S. car sales to be about 11.4 million units sold by the end of the year, which would make 2020 the worst year for car sales since 2009. These numbers compare to 17.4 million cars sold in 2019. 

    And it may not be because drivers are staying home anymore. Bank of America data from gas stations shows that drivers are back on the road again. “We estimate that gas consumption (in gallons) was still down about 30% YoY in April, but improved to -14% for the week ending May 23rd (latest available),” the bank wrote in a May 29 note. 

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    May’s numbers are in focus since the month kicks off summer sales season, traditionally the point in the year when dealers try to move inventory to make room for new models. Last weekend, some dealers offered incentives like 0% financing and 84 month financing offers to try and entice buyers into showrooms. 

    Some of the most generous incentives, offered around the time the virus started, are already being roped in as sales dead-cat bounce off their 2020 monthly lows. Auto analysts are blaming a lack of readily available inventory for the drop in sales, which is hilarious since the country is suffering from an unprecedented glut. 

    “At a minimum, selection may become more limited as the desired model may be in stock but not in the consumer’s preferred color or trim, potentially resulting in the consumer delaying purchase, switching brands, or moving into the used-vehicle market,” Cox Automotive explains.

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    Jessica Caldwell, Edmunds’ executive director of insights, said: “We can safely say that April was the bottom for auto sales during the coronavirus pandemic. There’s still a long road to recovery ahead, but May auto sales are a really encouraging sign for the industry.”

    But experts that are sure the bottom is in are focused on manufacturing without any regard as to whether or not demand is going to pick up. 

    Thomas King, president of the data and analytics division and chief product officer at J.D. Power, said Thursday: “The good news is that in general manufacturing is restarting. Even with our diminished sales pace, we are still in an environment where the industry is selling more vehicles than it produces.”

    With manufacturing picking up, we’ll see how long that lasts. Meanwhile, Bank of America notes that spending in auto parts is ramping up, indicating that OEM demand could be slipping as car owners may be more inclined to fix their current cars instead of buying new ones. 

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    The bank thinks that many Americans spend their stimulus checks on fixing their cars:

    “This data remained weak in the first two weeks of April, but took a sharp uptick in mid-April as stimulus checks began to reach US consumers. This benefit has lingered since mid-April, and auto parts demand now has additional support from increased driving activity as US markets begin to reopen for business. Daily auto parts spending was up approximately 23% YoY on average during the week ending May 23rd (latest available) according to the aggregated card data.”

    The industry is expected to have a lost a total of 1.2 million to 1.6 million total sales as a result of the pandemic. 

    King concluded: “Many of those will be recovered in the future, but some of them will be lost. Many consumers have lost the accountability to purchase a new vehicle or no longer need one because they no longer commuting to work.” 

    We’ll take the “under”…

  • "To Whom Will We Entrust The Truth Now That It No Longer Exists?"
    “To Whom Will We Entrust The Truth Now That It No Longer Exists?”

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/01/2020 – 21:03

    Authored by Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

    “Protests are being manipulated by domestic terrorists and international forces trying to destabilize the nation,” declared Minnesota Governor Waltz, calling out the National Guard. George Floyd’s video raced through social media, and for an instant, America mourned in collective outrage.

    But no sooner had protests begun, then violence started. Waltz said white supremacists and drug cartels were responsible. Many believe that’s true.

    Trump tweeted, “It’s Antifa and the Radical Left.” Others believe that’s true. Some believe both. A few believe none of it.

    There are as many truths today as there are tribes. “Everything we do is focused on creating an environment in which people will have their best chance to keep their job or maybe get a new one,” explained Jerome Powell.

    “Fed policies absolutely don’t add to inequality,” continued the Chairman. And some think that’s true. Many others believe the opposite. And each tribe finds ample supporting studies to support their respective realities, while unemployment claims surpassed 40mm (1-in-4 workers) and the S&P 500 completed a 36% rally from the lows.

    “Mr. President don’t hide behind the Secret Service. Go talk to demonstrators seriously. Negotiate with them, just like you urged Beijing to talk to Hong Kong rioters,” taunted Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief for the Global Times, a Chinese government-controlled paper.

    Some of China’s 1.4bln citizens see a moral equivalent between HK/US protestors, while others just as clearly don’t. And as images of American riots captivated the world, Beijing imposed a national security law on Hong Kong, protests erupted, hundreds were arrested.

    China denounced Taiwan’s offer to resettle HK citizens, saying it was seeking to “loot a burning house” and sow discord. “Bringing black, violent forces into Taiwan will bring disaster to Taiwan’s people,” warned Beijing. And as Xi Jinping told his military officers “to step up preparations for armed combat,” some thought this was true.

    * * *

    Anecdote

    “Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change,” wrote Mary Shelley in 1818, exploring our humanity through her hideous creation, Frankenstein. And ever since, we’ve leapt from one change to the next, those periods in between marked by an eerie calm that we desperately embrace, mistaking stability for reality.

    “We’ll continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally, and we will admit to and own any mistakes we make,” declared Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO, tormented by the staggering consequences of his creation. Social media has emerged as the principal battleground for what will surely be the most bitterly contested presidential election in modern American history. And this will likely be followed by a constitutional crisis in a devastatingly divided nation.

    Misunderstanding our own nature, we convinced ourselves the internet would be a force for unambiguous good, connecting humanity to a singular truth, inoculating us from our lies. But instead, our reality splintered into a million dimensions.

    Truth has died, replaced by a widening range of alternative realities, each one as vivid as the next to its inhabitants. So Dorsey is in search of something that no longer lives. His reality is another’s fantasy, as sure as the sky is blue, and those who would defend one, by definition, threaten the other.

    “Internet platforms are not arbiters of truth,” declared Mark Zuckerberg, defending his hideous creature from the villagers, their pitchforks. And no doubt, few would want to inhabit a world where Zuckerberg defined reality.

    “I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other,” warned Frankenstein, Shelley’s eternal monster, alive within us all. And we are left to ponder a paradox as the consequences of this great and sudden change become manifest. To whom will we entrust the truth now that it no longer exists?

  • What 'Academic' Antifa Wants
    What ‘Academic’ Antifa Wants

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/01/2020 – 20:50

    Update (2000ET): Right on cue, as Andy Ngo reports below, the mainstream media joins the #DefendAntifa narrative against Trump’s orders with an op-ed in The Washington Post from none other than Mark Bray:

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    Authored by Alexander Riley via Campus Reform,

    In a fully sane culture, the category ‘Antifa professor’ would be a contradiction in terms. The calling of the college professor entails a deep commitment to the power of facts and arguments to change minds. Antifa, on the other hand, is a loose collection of half-educated malcontents who entirely reject the logic of intellectual debate. They aim not to change the minds but rather to crush the skulls of those with whom they disagree, in the manner of sociopathic criminals throughout human history. 

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    Yet contemporary American higher education has produced a number of ‘Antifa professors’ who are currently holders of academic positions. They are engaged in the paradoxical business of making what they purport is an intellectual case for a thuggishly anti-intellectual movement. They include such figures as Michael “Dead cops are good” Isaacson and George “All I want for Christmas is White Genocide” Ciccariello-Maher. 

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    Among this cast, Mark Bray distinguishes himself as the only one who has produced an Antifa handbook. (As a matter of principle, I will not link to the book–the entire text can be found for free online, should you want a look without having to put any money in Bray’s pocket). He has appeared on “Meet the Press” and been written about in The Chronicle of Higher Education, in both cases with significant coddling.

    I had not paid any attention to him until he was recently invited to speak at Bucknell University, where I teach, by the Humanities Center. This gave me the excuse to look closely at his book on Antifa. I am glad to have done so, for it provides a useful blueprint for the whole movement of “academic Antifa,” and now I have a much firmer sense of just how dangerous that movement is. 

    The task to which the “Antifa professors” have set themselves is the same one the Communist International took up in the 1930s when it advanced the ideological line that essentially all parties and ideologies to the right of Marxism-Leninism were de facto fascist because, like the fascists, they opposed the coming to power of Marxist communist regimes. Clearly, some chicanery is required to make a case that not x=x, that is, non-fascists are fascists, with the goal of justifying treating both groups equally, that is, violently. Here’s how Bray eliminates the boundary between real fascists and assorted individuals and groups he dislikes that show absolutely no discernible connection to fascism:

    “From Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan…to Indiana Jones, nothing seems to delight American moviegoers more than killing Nazis…But would those same moviegoers consider it just as heroic to fight Nazis before… Hitler even took power in 1933? How would America respond to a cinematic depiction of communist…organizations…when they fought the Nazi[s]…in the 1920s and ‘30s? I like to imagine most Americans would sympathize with these militant formations because they know that the story ultimately ends in the gas chambers. So why then are so many Americans allergic to…the prospect of physically confronting fascists and white supremacists…?…Antifa argue that we should always remember that few took seriously the small bands of followers around Mussolini and Hitler when they started their ascent, and therefore we should remain vigilant against any and every manifestation of fascistic politics.” (Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, pp. 170-171, 172)

    Did you get that? Anyone who agrees that the killing of Nazis by soldiers in a war is justified ought to understand “physically confronting fascists and white supremacists,” e.g., at college campuses as an equivalent moral imperative.  What precisely is meant by “physically confronting,” we are not told. Should fascists and white supremacists merely be physically prevented from speaking? Should they be beaten? What if they insist on speaking despite efforts to prevent them from speaking, or defend themselves against Antifa beatings? How much is Antifa morally permitted to amplify “physical confront[ation]” in such cases? All of this is left conveniently unclear by Mr. Bray.

    Something even more crucial is left just as unclear here. How is it to be determined that the individuals Antifa desires to “physically confront” are indeed “fascists and white supremacists”? If they are actual Nazis, wearing swastikas and overtly announcing their violent and racist desires to expel “racial enemies,” the work is easy. But this is an infinitesimally small group, perhaps a few thousand in a country of 320 million (around 0.003%), and Mr. Bray is in no way content to restrict the category nearly so significantly:  

    “[W]e must recognize the relationship between two…registers of anti-fascism: analytical and moral. The analytical…consists of mobilizing historically informed definitions…of fascism to craft anti-fascist strategy [for]…facing ideologically fascist groups…The moral register developed out of the rhetorical power of…calling someone or something fascist…[Here] the anti-fascist lens is applied to phenomena that may not be fascist, technically speaking, but are fascistic. For example, were the Black Panthers wrong to call cops who killed black people with impunity “fascist pigs” if they did not personally hold fascist beliefs or if the American government was not literally fascist? At a Madrid Antifa demonstration, I saw a rainbow flag with the slogan “homophobia is fascism.” Does the existence of non-fascist homophobes invalidate the argument?…[T]he moral register of anti-fascism understands how ‘fascism’ has become a moral signifier that those struggling against a variety of oppressions have utilized to highlight the ferocity of the political foes they have faced and the elements of continuity they share with actual fascism…The challenges of defining fascism make the line between these two registers blurry…a key component of anti-fascism is to organize against both fascist and fascistic politics in solidarity with all those who suffer and struggle” (Antifa, pp. 134, 135)

    And a few pages along, Bray elaborates further:

    “[M]ilitant anti-fascism is but one facet of a larger revolutionary project. Many Antifa groups organize not only against fascism, but aim to combat all forms of oppression such as homophobia, capitalism, patriarchy, and so on. In that way, they see fascism as only the most acute versions of larger systemic threats. When I spoke with members of Pavé Brûlant [Burning Pavement] in Bordeaux, they continually stressed that all major political parties…manifested fascistic traits… It’s surreal to watch liberal pundits lambast anti-fascists for disrupting a fascist speech, when their revolutionary socialist ideology advocates the global expropriation of the capitalist ruling class and the destruction…of all existing states by means of an international popular uprising that most believe will necessitate violent confrontation with state forces. If they are critical of ‘no platforming,’ wait ‘til they hear about class war” (Antifa, pp. 158, 159).

    It is not then only “fascists and white supremacists” who can be legitimately met with Antifa violence. It is also individuals or groups Antifa has defined as “homophobes,” supporters of “patriarchy,” capitalism, and the police, finally, all those who participate in unnamed “variet[ies] of oppression” and thereby oppose “all those who suffer and struggle.” All these categories of potential targets, I remind you, are to be defined and determined by the members of Antifa. Mark Bray does not define them anywhere in his book with any precision at all. 

    Can you imagine why he might abstain from doing this?  

    I can.

    It’s because “academic Antifa” wants the answer to the question “Who is a fascist?” to be “Anyone Antifa says is a fascist, that’s who.”

    Bray’s invocation of the Black Panthers is particularly telling.  We should recall that by the early ’70s, factions of the Panthers were openly calling for armed struggle by blacks against the American government. One offshoot of the Black Panthers, the Black Liberation Army, orchestrated perhaps as many as thirteen carefully planned assassinations of police officers. These are Mark Bray’s ideological heroes and models.   

    One last bit from Bray, just to make crystal clear where the noxious teaching of “academic Antifa”is intended to leave us:

    “Our goal should be that in twenty years those who voted for Trump are too uncomfortable to share that fact in public. We may not always be able to change someone’s beliefs, but we sure as hell can make it politically, socially, economically, and sometimes physically costly to articulate them” (Antifa, p. 206)

    This rather lets the cat completely out of the bag, no? If you exercise your right to vote in a way that does not meet Antifa approval, then you are a legitimate target of criminal violence. The ranks of the “fascistic” have now swollen to around 63 million, which is the number of votes Trump received in 2016.  

    Those “academic Antifa” actively professing such ideas are still, at this point, a small minority in American higher education—though the fraction of the college professoriate they represent could easily be higher than the fraction of the American population that consists of white supremacists and Nazis. There are however many more working in colleges and universities who help give these ideas oxygen—by assigning books like Antifa, by inviting people like Mark Bray to speak on their campuses, by pretending that antifa are about something more sophisticated or noble than the desire for the violent destruction of the American civil sphere. 

    An important step in challenging this drift in the direction of “academic Antifa” is simply to report, accurately and in detail, on what these people say, write, and believe. Virulent ideas should be exposed to clean air and bright light. Among other positive effects, this allows the people who are largely paying the salaries of individuals like Mark Bray and his professorial supporters at Dartmouth and elsewhere, that is, the parents of college students and donors to institutions of higher education, to see precisely how their money is being spent.

  • Watch: Hundreds Of Handcuffed Perps Lined Up Outside NYC Bookings
    Watch: Hundreds Of Handcuffed Perps Lined Up Outside NYC Bookings

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/01/2020 – 20:30

    As Andrew Cuomo delivers his first daily update on the coronavirus situation in his state following the riots we saw across the nation over the weekend, videos of the processing line outside a police precinct in Manhattan on Monday morning show just how many people were arrested in NYC alone, during a weekend where – according to the AP – more than 4,000 were arrested around the country on charges stemming from unlawful assembly to murder.

    Police are likely still arresting individuals based on surveillance footage and other next-level surveillance techniques that the NYPD can bring to bear when it wants to arrest a given subject. Additionally, many of the thousands who were arrested across NYC over the

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    The Twitter account belonging to one of the NYPD’s most powerful unions, the SBA, released an internal arrest report for Mayor de Blasio’s daughter, Chiara, who was booked for “unlawful assembly” and “object throwing” – though only the first charge was initially released to the media. The account slammed the mayor for his decision to not allow cops to use “mounted units” and other tactics, according to TPM.

    But as media pundits continue to spin a narrative where all the unrest can be pinned on “foreign enemies” like Moscow and Beijing, we can’t help but ask: do these look like Russian sleeper agents – or white supremacists – to you?

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    Others joked that the line was longer than the toilet paper line at Costco.

  • Greenfield: How To Make Your Own Race Riot
    Greenfield: How To Make Your Own Race Riot

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/01/2020 – 20:10

    Authored by Daniel Greenfield via Sultan Knish blog,

    The angry rioter is a sacred figure in the progressive pantheon of social justice. But the saint of the looted convenience store is as mythical a figure as the selfless community organizer.

    The race riot isn’t a bubbling stew of outrage out of which wounded souls emerge to cry out for justice. It’s a complicated criminal conspiracy in which the perpetrators rarely suffer any consequences.

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    Here’s how a race riot is actually put together.

    3. Riots aren’t fed by outrage, but by opportunism

    The rioters aren’t outraged, they’re usually bored young men, frustrated and lacking in empathy. Many of them have gang ties or a criminal record stretching back to kindergarten.

    They’re the same people who commit crimes in any other non-outraged context.

    The rest are there to get some attention while providing them with protective coloration. 9 out of 10 people screaming frenziedly while holding up “Black Lives Matter” signs would eagerly scream and hold up “Tiger King 4 President” or “Minneapolis Loves the KKK” signs if it got them positive attention and a shot at being on television.

    Everything else you need to do know about why riots happen out can be read on a thermometer. Weather breaks up a riot faster than appeasement. It’s hard to riot when your teeth are chattering. There’s a reason that riots usually happen in the summer. The same viral video that sets a nation on fire would have been met with shrugs in the winter.

    The riots didn’t happen because of outrage, but because the gathering mobs were told by everyone from CNN right up to their local Democrat politicians that angry protests were expected and would be tolerated. That was as good as throwing a match into a spreading pool of gasoline.

    No one was stealing beauty supplies or starting fires in Walgreens because they were upset about George Floyd They were stealing because they believed that they could get away with it.

    2. The rioters and looters aren’t burning their own community

    A riot has two components. There are the bored and irritated locals who begin swarming streets because they have no jobs, it’s hot outside and there’s nothing good on television. They will loosely agree with whatever issue is on the table, but they aren’t all that worked up about it.

    And then there are the outsiders.

    Before the riot, community organizers, citizen reporters and assorted activists show up to coordinate, spread slogans and justify the coming violence. They want violence far more than the locals do and they taunt police and try to create incidents, but they ofte avoid personally engaging in violence.

    In the early twentieth century the group stirring up riots was usually some arm of the Communist Party. Later a variety of leftist groups, like Antifa, many closely entangled with the Democratic Party took over. Most of the damage is done by looters and rioters from other areas looking for an opportunity to burn and steal. Some locals will tag after them, but they are usually responsible for the worst of the violence. Some of the looters are from out of state, others from different neighborhoods.

    Being outsiders they’re unknown to the police and rarely have to worry about being identified afterwards. And they don’t care about burning down someone else’s community.

    The media usually sticks to its narrative of an outraged community that engages in excesses, especially when it can’t tell apart the locals from the outsiders. Local cops can, but no one in the media listens to them. Arrest records often show that most of those charged in the more violent crimes aren’t locals, but the media remains immune to facts that conflict with a favorite narrative.

    1. Riots are about power, not for the rioters, but for the establishment

    “We must not reprimand our children for outrage when it is the outrage that was put in them by an oppressive system,” Al Sharpton had said, in the aftermath of the murder of a Jewish student by an angry black mob.

    This same rhetoric was used by the inciters of the violence around the country and has been used in similar riots going back generations. Its major theme is that the rioters are free to do whatever they want. They carry no moral responsibility for their actions.

    And what they want is to smash and steal anything they can get their hands on. This isn’t outrage. It’s textbook amoral behavior. The riot doesn’t release anger; it frees the perpetrators of their morality.

    The real purpose of a riot isn’t to benefit the rioters. It’s to benefit those who incite the riot. The rioters and looters react in response to riot-friendly conditions created from above. If you build the political infrastructure for a riot, the rioters and looters will come.

    Sharpton’s riots weren’t about helping anyone except himself. By associating himself with violence, he sold the idea that he was an influential figure in the black community. Whether or not Sharpton was actually popular, his rise to the top of the political establishment became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

    Riots are about perception, not reality. The ringleader tries to keep his hands clean while convincing the establishment that he can turn the violence on or off any time he wants to.

    The last decade of riots are the product of a new generation of Sharptons, ambitious activists feeding hate, of the New Black Panther Party’s obsession with becoming relevant, of the ragged hipster ends of Occupy Wall Street drifting from occupation to occupation, of radical white lefties and groups like Black Lives Matter that exist to suck up funding and sympathy from their white lefty allies.

    It’s an old and cynical game that has been played in and around the Democratic Party for too long.

    The answers to the rioting can’t be found in its streets. The problem didn’t come from there. It came from a corrupt political establishment that lights the fuse for its own power and profit.

  • India's Electricity Generation Plunges As Worst Economic Downturn In Decades Unfolds 
    India’s Electricity Generation Plunges As Worst Economic Downturn In Decades Unfolds 

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 06/01/2020 – 19:50

    India has announced plans to ease a strict national lockdown even as the spread of COVID-19 shows no signs of abating. Restaurants, hotels, malls, and places of worship could reopen in the near term. Despite reopening plans, India’s economy is rapidly deteriorating, which has led to a significant decline in electricity generation. 

    Even before the two-month lockdown, India’s economy was decelerating and now faces the worst recession in four decades. The country’s economy could contract by at least 5% this fiscal year.  

    Economic paralysis has led to a collapse in electricity generation across the country, plunging 14.3% in May, compared with a 24% decline in April, a new Reuters analysis of government data showed. 

    The report said electricity demand was higher among households, as consumption among industries and commercial places was still widely depressed. Factories account for 50% of India’s annual electricity demand, which suggests operating capacity is still low.

    India’s economic downturn will result in a decline in the country’s electricity demand for the next several years. Global rating and research agency CRISIL recently said it could take upwards of three years for the economy to get back to growth activity seen in 2019. This means India will not see a V-shaped economic recovery, but rather one that is more of a U or L-shaped. 

    CRISIL believes India’s economy will suffer a 10% permanent loss to real GDP thanks to the pandemic-induced downturn. 

    India will need fiscal support from the government this year to counter the recession. If policy support is limited, it means the downturn will increasingly get worse in the back half of 2020. 

    Here’s what a recent UBS note said about India’s troubling situation:  

    “While there is no doubt that India is facing a significant economic shock, the pace of recovery, if any, will be determined by the economic policy choices taken to ensure that the significant secondary impacts (job losses, reduced income levels, corporate defaults, rising NPLs (non-performing loans), rating downgrade, etc.,) can be contained,” UBS said in a report.

    A few months before the virus outbreak spread across the world, we noted in late 2019 that India’s economy was collapsing in a piece titled “India In “Very Deep Crisis,” Witnessing “Death Of Demand,” Warns Former Indian FM.” 

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    It just so happens that the global economy was slowing before the pandemic began — which has allowed governments and central banks to scapegoat the virus and deflect any attention from their failed policies to boost economic growth. 

     

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