Nov 13

Today’s News 13th November 2020

  • Austria To Ban "Political Islam" After Terror Attack
    Austria To Ban “Political Islam” After Terror Attack

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 11/13/2020 – 02:00

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    In response to a jihadist terror attack in Vienna last week, the government of Austria will pass a law making it illegal to spread “political Islam” in the country.

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    The European nation’s capital was shook when a lone gunman killed four people and injured 23 others during a rampage that began in the city’s historic quarter. The culprit, 20-year-old Kujtim Fejzullai, was an ISIS sympathizer.

    In response, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz announced new measures that would make preaching “political Islam” a criminal offense.

    “We will create a criminal offence called ‘political Islam’ in order to be able to take action against those who are not terrorists themselves, but who create the breeding ground for them,” Kurz tweeted.

    “There will be further possibilities for the closure of the places of worship, the introduction of a register of imams, and measures will be taken to drain financial flows for terrorist financing.”

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    Another measure set to be voted on by Parliament next month would see individuals convicted of terror offences kept behind bars for life.

    As we previously highlighted, despite facing a worst threat than Austria, the French government hasn’t taken similar measures.

    However, President Macron has faced global protests from the Muslim world simply for re-affirming the pre-eminence of free speech and suggesting tighter border controls.

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  • Robert Bridge: How The Democrats Weaponized A Pandemic To Beat Donald Trump
    Robert Bridge: How The Democrats Weaponized A Pandemic To Beat Donald Trump

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/12/2020 – 23:40

    Authored by Robert Bridge via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    The one question that continues to haunt political observers is ‘How was Joe Biden, 77, able to get away with such a low-energy, low-carb campaign, in what has been described as the most consequential election in U.S. history?’ Let’s be so bold as to peek into the brain of this political genius who was somehow able to upset the 5D chess grandmaster of our times, Donald J. Trump.

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    As the Republican incumbent was flying non-stop to multiple rallies around the country in the days leading up to Nov. 3, Biden preferred to remain hunkered down in his basement, leaving for the occasional ice cream cone, or photo-op at some airfield where he waved to imaginary crowds on a deserted runway. Judging by such lackadaisical behavior, it almost seemed that Biden knew he had nothing to worry about. And perhaps he didn’t.

    Trust the pandemic

    The one notable factor that has distinguished the 2020 election season from those in the past was the outbreak of coronavirus in January of this year. Now that’s not to suggest, of course, that Biden was such an evil genius that he placed an order for a biblical scourge to visit America precisely when it did. After all, only a sociopath or maybe a billionaire software developer with no medical degree would ever fantasize about the outbreak of a plague. Yet it remains doubtful that some individuals, particularly craven campaign managers and surgical mask salesmen, failed to see the short-term advantage of Covid-19 reaching America’s shores when it did. To quote the modern Machiavellian Democrat, Rahm Emanuel, one must “never let a good crisis go to waste.” And it must be said that the Democrats have played this pandemic for everything it’s worth.

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    Lock it down

    When the coronavirus began tearing through the Heartland, Democrats, as well as Republicans, began to introduce tough measures lest a single person get infected by said virus. Few political leaders, after all, wanted to stand accused of ‘killing grandma.’ But whereas the Republican states began to ease up on their restrictions over time, giving their people some breathing room, the Democrats double-downed on the lockdowns. Keeping their economies in a straitjacket, they allowed thousands of businesses to die a slow, agonizing death, while banning or severely curtailing any and all social activities, including weddings, funerals, school attendance and church services. With breathtaking cynicism, however, exceptions were made for Black Lives Matter ‘peaceful protests,’ which had a vivious tendency for applying the final coup de grace on those very businesses that were languishing.

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    Here is the Wall Street Journal describing the slaughter:

    “Nearly two-thirds of leisure and hospitality jobs in New York and New Jersey and about half in California and Illinois disappeared between February and April compared to 43% in Florida, which was among the last states to lock down and first to reopen. Florida [Republican] Gov. Ron DeSantis also provided exemptions for lower-risk businesses including contractors, manufacturers and some retailers. Four percent of construction workers in Florida lost their jobs compared to 41% in New York, 27% in New Jersey, 17% in California and 11% in Illinois.”

    Meanwhile, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Michigan – major Democratic strongholds – inexplicably required nursing homes to admit seniors who had acquired COVID-19.

    On March 25, 2020, the state of New York ordered:

    “No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to [a nursing home] solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19.”

    That was a very strange decision especially when there was no shortage of hospital beds – even at the peak of Covid cases. That much became clear in March when Trump dispatched the naval hospital ship USNS Comfort to New York City as part of the government’s response to the ongoing pandemic. Instead of sending the sick and elderly into nursing homes, New York Governor Cuomo now had the option to let these people recover aboard the vessel, where they would not have subjected hundreds of vulnerable residents to the disease. Instead, Cuomo told Trump in April that the medical ship was no longer needed.

    So who got the heat when the U.S. death rates from Covid began to climb, predominantly from deaths among the elderly? Not Governors Cuomo, Murphy, Whitmer and Wolf, that’s for sure.

    Aside from their murderous consequences, the measures put forward by the Democratic states had, and continue to have, the ‘negative’ effect of destroying much of the economic gains made during the four-year reign of the odious ‘Orange man’, thus seriously hindering his chances of reelection.

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    No failing with the mail-in?

    But by far the greatest gift that Covid could have given to the Democratic Party was the excuse to begin mail-in voting, and just in time for the Trump-Biden clash. Here is where the Biden campaign found it indispensable to have the mainstream media and Big Tech firmly in its corner. The major social media platforms, Twitter and Facebook, assumed the responsibility (which was not, it is important to emphasize, given to them under Section 230 of the Communications Act) of flagging any person, including the President of the United States, who dared to suggest that mail-in voting was loaded with a number of pitfalls and trap doors. Even the White House has provided a list of examples.

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    Was it just a coincidence that the exact scenario that Trump had been warning would happen – reported mass examples of fraud connected to mail-in ballots – eventually came to light? On election night, Trump was enjoying a comfortable lead in the critical swing states of Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Then, something that has never happened before in an American election happened: those states suddenly stopped counting their votes, saying they would continue the process the next day. So what happened in the interim? Nothing good, it appears. First, there have been multiple reports of votes being delivered to counting stations throughout the night.

    In one particular case, Connie Johnson, a poll watcher from Detroit, Michigan, provided her personal account over Facebook as to how she discovered that over 130,000 ballots had reportedly arrived at the city’s ballot-counting facility at 4 a.m. in the morning. According to Johnson, every single one of those ballots was cast for Joe Biden, which would seem to be a mathematical impossibility. Moreover, Republican poll watchers were denied access to the count because, as they were told, the permitted “capacity” inside of the hall been reached. Once again, Covid was to blame.

    Across the country, in Philadelphia, Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Guliani held a press conference where several poll watchers revealed how they were not permitted to observe the mail-in ballots that had arrived. According to Giuliani, a similar scenario played out in all of the swing states.

    Behind these possible shenanigans, it goes without saying that Joe Biden would require the full support of the mainstream media and Big Tech to pull of the greatest election heist of the century.

    Naturally, he got it, as the media not only refused to consider the possibility that the nationwide mail-in ballot scheme could result in making the United States resemble some Banana Republic, it quickly announced him president even before everything had been declared official.

    Someday in the future, assuming Biden is lifted into the Oval Office, I suspect we will hear the same tired public confessionals from media hacks as they ask themselves on air and in print – much as they did in the disastrous aftermath of the Iraq war – how they could have failed to ask more questions not only about Biden’s questionable mental state, but about the use of mail-in ballots in the most consequential U.S. presidential election of all time.

  • Pope Francis Urges Catholics To Pray For 'Ethical Robots'
    Pope Francis Urges Catholics To Pray For ‘Ethical Robots’

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/12/2020 – 23:20

    In November’s monthly prayer intention, Pope Francis called on all the good Catholics of the world to “pray that the progress of robotics and artificial intelligence may always serve humankind.”

    The pope’s monthly prayer intentions, published on the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ website, was also featured in a short video clip on YouTube via Vatican News. 

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    In his message, the pope said artificial intelligence was “at the heart of the epochal change we are experiencing,” and that robotics could empower the world if harnessed for good. He said, “if technological progress increases inequalities, it is not true progress. Future advances should be orientated towards respecting the dignity of the person.”

    The pope’s prayer for ethical robots was first reported by The Verge, which comes as the Vatican, earlier this year, released “Rome Call for AI Ethics,” a conference that, according to Reuters, discussed “principles promoting the ethical use of artificial intelligence.”

    With the virus pandemic catapulting the world deeper into the fourth industrial revolution, dubbed Industry 4.0 – the ongoing automation of traditional manufacturing and industrial practices, with artificial intelligence and robotics, under cover of “social distancing” has caused an unwelcoming employment crisis for the working poor, with many of their jobs displaced by robots (read: here & here). 

    The pope will likely be highly critical of the automation wave, crushing the world’s working poor; as he recently warned in the latest encyclical, Fratelli Tutti (All Brothers), unfettered capitalism is unstoppable. 

  • Florida "Anti-Mob" Bill Gives Civilians Immunity If They Shoot Looters Or Run Over Protesters
    Florida “Anti-Mob” Bill Gives Civilians Immunity If They Shoot Looters Or Run Over Protesters

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/12/2020 – 23:00

    Authored by John Vibes via TheMindUnleashed.com,

    This week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced the drafting of a new piece of legislation that would expand the state’s Stand Your Ground law. He is calling the legislation an “anti-mob” bill and it seems specifically targeted at the Black lives Matter movement and the ongoing protests against police brutality that have swept across the United States in recent months.

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    The new legislation, if it becomes law, would allow armed citizens in the state of Florida to shoot, and potentially kill anyone that they suspect of looting a home or business.

    According to the Miami Herald, the legislation is an attempt to prevent “violent and disorderly assemblies” by allowing civilians to use violence against anyone involved in the “interruption or impairment” of a business. The law specified that any burglary within 500 feet of “violent or disorderly assembly,” could be legally answered with lethal force.

    The proposed legislation has been criticized by legal experts in the state, who fear that it could give vigilantes a license to kill anyone who they deem to be a rioter, and could further increase the change of civil unrest.

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    Former Miami-Dade County prosecutor, Denise Georges, who has experience with Stand Your Ground cases in the state, told the Herald that,

    “It allows for vigilantes to justify their actions. It also allows for death to be the punishment for a property crime — and that is cruel and unusual punishment. We cannot live in a lawless society where taking a life is done so casually and recklessly.”

    The legislation also includes other measures that would give immunity to citizens who hurt or injure protesters who are blocking the road. The bill would make it a third-degree felony to block traffic and give immunity to drivers who kill or injure protesters that were blocking the road.

    There is also language in the bill that attempts to block local jurisdictions from defunding police departments, by cutting their entire budget if they decide to scale back police funding.

    Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber, a former prosecutor, and critic of the already existing Stand Your Ground law, said that DeSantis is attempting to earn favor with the Trump administration.

    “It’s clear that the Trump beauty pageant is still going on with governors and senators, who all want to be the next Trump. And the governor is clearly a very good contestant,” Gelber said.

    The proposed law remains in draft form and could not be considered until the 2021 legislative session at the earliest.

    DeSantis has been working to impose measures to crack down on protesters all year, and has promoted similar ideas in recent months, including immunity for drivers who run over protesters. Legal experts are concerned that this sends the wrong message to counter-protest groups who already perceive themselves to be vigilantes.

    This year has seen numerous cases of vigilante violence, and in many of these cases, the suspect ended up walking free because of the laws already on the books.

  • Nine Million Jobs At Risk Amid US Travel And Tourism Bust 
    Nine Million Jobs At Risk Amid US Travel And Tourism Bust 

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/12/2020 – 22:40

    No other US industry has been more severely impacted by the virus pandemic than travel and tourism.

    The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) published a report this week, protecting a “staggering 9.2 million jobs could be lost in the US Travel & Tourism sector in 2020 if barriers to global travel remain in place.” 

    WTTC’s economic modeling is the latest reminder of the deep economic scarring that could be materializing due to the virus pandemic that continues to batter the economy. 

    According to the report, 7.2 million jobs in the US have already been impacted. If restrictions on international travel aren’t lifted, and further stimulus isn’t seen, 9.2 million jobs, more than half of all jobs in the sector, could be lost.

    WTTC’s 2019 Economic Impact Report details how travel and tourism accounted for at least $1.84 trillion to the US economy and was responsible for 10.7% of all US jobs. 

    WTTC’s research outlines between 10.8 million and 13.8 million jobs within travel and tourism remain at serious risk.

    While the resumption of international travel would boost travel and tourism – at the moment, that appears not to be the case as increased social distancing restrictions are being reimposed in Europe and the US. 

    In a separate report, Goldman’s economic team uses real-time data to determine the US economy is rolling over due to the resurgence of the virus pandemic. 

    Goldman said real-time data from OpenTable through early November “show a significantly larger decline in indoor dining activity in states with higher case growth, suggesting that virus-sensitive industries could be showing early signs of a growing virus hit.”

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    According to Goldman, while indoor dining may represent only a small share of overall consumer spending, it is a particularly useful indicator because its high virus-sensitivity means it will likely be one of the first sectors to show an impact from the virus. In other words, “OpenTable data could thus provide an early indication of growing risks to broader categories of services spending, especially given its timeliness.”

    Since restaurants are major contributors to travel and tourism, their slumping activity could be a good proxy of a waning recovery in travel and tourism, nevertheless, a double-dip recession could be ahead. 

  • Michigan State Senators Request Full Election Audit Citing Voting Irregularities
    Michigan State Senators Request Full Election Audit Citing Voting Irregularities

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/12/2020 – 22:20

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

    At least two Michigan Republican state senators have requested a full election audit, asking the Michigan secretary of state’s office for a full recount before the election results are certified, according to a letter they sent to her office on Thursday.

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    State senators Lana Theis and Tom Barrett wrote that Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and canvassers that are reviewing allegations of irregularities and voter fraud made in lawsuits filed by President Donald Trump’s campaign. They are requesting a “full audit” of the election, saying it needs to be done before the state certifies the election results.

    “Every citizen deserves to have faith in the integrity of the election process and its outcome,” they said in letters.

    “It is our responsibility, as elected public servants, to assure the people of Michigan of the process’s integrity through complete transparency and the faithful investigation of any allegations of wrongdoing, fraud, or abuse.”

    Their letters made reference to allegations made by Trump’s legal team, claims of witnesses about irregularities at polls, and a glitch that switched 6,000 votes from a Republican official to a Democratic official in Antrim County that was later corrected and acknowledged by the secretary of state’s office, although the Michigan GOP said the same software – Dominion Voting Systems – was used in dozens of other counties.

    “The erroneous reporting of unofficial results from Antrim county was a result of accidental error on the part of the Antrim County Clerk. The equipment and software did not malfunction and all ballots were properly tabulated. However, the clerk accidentally did not update the software used to collect voting machine data and report unofficial results,” Benson said in a statement last week about Antrim County’s election results.

    Other allegations from the two lawmakers include ineligible ballots being counted, poll workers being told to backdate ballots, counting the same ballots several times, and other claims.

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    Trump on Thursday accused Dominion of deleting 2.7 million votes for him across the United States and cited a One America News report. Twitter flagged Trump’s claim, saying, “This claim about election fraud is disputed.” Other lawmakers have raised serious concerns about the software, although Dominion has denied such claims.

    “Dominion Voting Systems categorically denies any claims about any vote switching or alleged software issues with our voting systems,” a Dominion spokesperson said in a statement to The Denver Post.

    “Our systems continue to reliably and accurately count ballots, and state and local election authorities have publicly confirmed the integrity of the process.”

    Theis and Barrett said there are allegations about unsecured ballots arriving at the TCF Center in Detroit without a chain of custody and without any envelopes, saying it included a batch of about 40,000 ballots that came early on Nov. 4, the day after Election Day. They also said there have been reports of “illegal and official intimidation and interference” with election observers and poll watchers, including harassment of challengers, unequal treatment of challengers, refusal to record the challengers’ claims, and removal of challengers “if they politely voiced a challenge.”

    They said that more than 100 Michiganders, in sworn statements, have made the claims about interference at the polls.

    “These claims deserve our full attention and diligent investigation to ensure fairness and transparency in our election process,” said the two lawmakers.

    Michigan’s secretary of state’s office hasn’t yet responded to a request for comment about the two lawmakers’ letter.

  • Is This The End For Hedge Funds: Retail Investors Outperform "Smart Money" Ten-To-One
    Is This The End For Hedge Funds: Retail Investors Outperform “Smart Money” Ten-To-One

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/12/2020 – 22:00

    After a dismal decade for hedge funds, 2020 was the year that may have sealed the fate of the (former) masters of the universe who once upon a time collected 2 and 20 to hedge against crashes and to outperform the market but now merely collect tens of million in fees to come up creative excuses for sucking.

    Case in point: at the start of the year, the so-called “smart money” was massively long the same handful of stocks, only to watch mortified as their portfolios exploded in March with hedge funds forgetting to actually “hedge”, and getting swept away with the market carnage. Then just as everyone flipped short in late March, the Fed launched the most batshit insane rescue of capital markets, which included injecting trillions in liquidity every single day and even buying junk bonds. Needless the say, the market ripped just as the hedge fund crew was short, leading to even more losses. Then around September, when hedge funds were doing what they do best – all jumping into the same handful of stocks – the rug was pulled from under them as the Nasdaq tumbled, quickly accumulating even more losses, and then, just two months later, the last nail in the coffin was hammered when momentum stocks – a perennial darling of those who supposedly collect millions to conduct in depth and extensive fundamental analysis but merely copycat each other’s trades – suffered a 15 sigma crash, obliterating what little alpha hedge funds had generated in 2020.

    Unfortunately it wasn’t much, because after all that, with the S&P managing to eek out a modest 10% return this year as the Fed threw everything at the market in hopes of propping it up and pushing it higher, the HFR hedge fund index is just barely above 0.

    Yet not everyone is sucking this year. The winners? Those who clearly got to benefit from a market that long ago stopped making any sense thanks to the Fed flipping fundamentals on their head, and actively buying risk assets and who knows what else in the open market.

    Yes, we are talking about retail investors who are having the time of their life: as shown in the chart below, while the S&P is up 10%, and the average hedge fund is barely in the green, a basket of 50 most popular stocks held by the retail investing community is up a whopping 55% YTD.  This means that retail investors – some as young as 16 years old on Robinhood – are outperforming the best paid investors in the world ten to one!

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    And while retail investors may be delirious with their market profits this year, for hedge funds – especially those who are struggling to catch up to the S&P500 or worse, to turn green for the year – the drumbeat of death has never beat louder.

    Why? Because in a year when volatility averaged well over 20, an amazing environment for professional traders, coupled with record wide dispersion between growth and value returns, hedge funds should be printing making money. Clearly, however, they are not and as Bloomberg reports, what few hedge fund clients remain are losing patience.

    “This year separates the adults from the children,” said Tim Ng, chief investment officer of Clearbrook Global Advisors, which invests in hedge funds. “If you are a fundamentally driven, bottoms-up securities manager across any asset class, this should have been the year when you did well. Everything you’ve wanted for years exists.”

    To be sure, there are the occasional winners, such as mega macro fund Brevan Howard Asset Management, tech-focused Coatue Management, and Boaz Weinstein’s remarkable Saba Capital. But it is the losers such as Ray Dalio – who these days spends more time spewing trivial bullshit on twitter than investing – whose Bridgewater flagship fund fell 19% through Nov. 5, that are forcing investors to ask: If they couldn’t make money before and still can’t now, why keep them?

    “It’s getting harder to have conviction in hedge funds,” said Adam Taback, chief investment officer of Wells Fargo Private Wealth Management, another allocator. “Many have not protected enough on the downside and others haven’t provided enough upside.”

    In short instead of hedging, “hedge funds” are doing precisely the opposite: they are losing money when stocks drop and barely making it when stocks surge. Then again, antihedge funds does not have quite that “fast-track to riches” sound to it, so we doubt it will be adopted.

    “It’s survival of the fittest -a culling of the herd,” Ng said of the industry that counts more than 8,000 funds, and is about to be hit with a historic volley of redemption requests ahead of the new year.

    Neil Datta, who runs the $10 billion multifamily office Forbes Family Trust, asks a question we have been asking since 2010: “Why pay 2-and-20 when they can’t produce returns when markets are volatile?” he said of the industry’s longtime fee standard, roughly 2% for management plus 20% of profits.

    To this we would add what we first said in 2011: why pay any money manager when the Fed is now so deeply enmeshed with stocks, and so all-in risk assets, it has no choice but to step and bail out markets any time there is a modest correction.

    And it does it for free, which is also why retail investors continue to blow out the “smart money.”

    Meanwhile, after complaining for a decade that either volatility or stock dispersion was too low, and that shorting was impossible in a market that only went up, hedge funds got just the environment they desired… and they imploded so spectacularly, when instead of single digit VIX, the “fear gauge” soared to Lehman levels. And a generation of millennial “traders” that had never seen a VIX above 20 was petrified, frozen for weeks, unsure what to do. Well, they won’t have to worry much longer: soon they too will be out of a job.

    That said, there is still some optimism for the hedge fund industry ahead, but it’s tempered: and hedge funds really need at least one year of outperforming the S&P unless they collectively throw in the towel on what has been the worst investment choice ever since this website triggered the expert network crackdown back in 2010.

    “You should be moving back to a more security-selection-driven and less beta-driven environment,” said Taback, who expects the market tumult to persist. “It’s just hard because we all said the same thing last year and the year before that.”

    And while we wait (and wait, and wait) for hedge funds to prove they still need to exist in a centrally-planned, micromanaged world (and collected massive fees), here is the latest HSBC breakdown of the year’s best (yes, there are still some) and worst performing hedge funds.

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  • The Madness Of Crowds, The Sanity Of Gold
    The Madness Of Crowds, The Sanity Of Gold

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/12/2020 – 21:40

    Authored by Matt Piepenburg via GoldSwitzerland.com,

    Crowds, like sheep, are only as safe as the shepherds who guide them.

    If the shepherd is mad, so too is the crowd.

    Today, central bank shepherds are leading the vast majority of investors over a currency cliff. This is easy to predict, despite the fact that most forecasting models are woefully flawed.

    THE FAILURE OF PREDICTIVE MODELS

    Whatever one’s views of the recent Presidential election in the U.S., for example, we can all agree that the professional pollsters and their advanced algorithms got the “blue wave” of an easy Democratic landslide completely, well…

    Wrong.

    Whether predicting viral death rates, political elections, GDP growth, budgets, tax revenues or market direction, the experts and their analytics have been consistently poor in mapping out the near future.

    The World Bank, for example, is projecting global GDP to increase in 2021 by 4%, despite the obvious damage COVID lockdowns have already done to global economies.

    That same World Bank has also confessed to a global debt tally of $260 trillion. This means global debt to GDP is now greater than 3:1, which makes such growth projections openly comical.

    THE FANTASY OF CENTRAL BANK MESSAGING

    As for central banks who print money out of thin air to buy unwanted sovereign debts, they too are projecting miraculous solutions to otherwise staggering debt problems based on, you guessed it: Creating more debt.

    And how will this debt be paid? Easy—with money created by a mouse click at a central bank near you.

    Seem a little bit too good to be true for the economic future?

    Well, the U.S. Fed’s track record for forecasting recessions is 0 in 10, but that has never stopped them from making inaccurate and contradictory projections which resemble a kind of open madness:

    “You will never see another financial crisis in your lifetime.”
    -Janet Yellen, spring 2018

    “I do worry that we could have another financial crisis. ″
    -Janet Yellen, fall 2018

    “There’s no reason to think this (bullish) cycle can’t continue for quite some time, effectively indefinitely.”
    -Jerome Powell –2018

    “The US is on an unsustainable fiscal path; there’s no hiding from it.”
    -Jerome Powell–2019

    In the post-08 “new abnormal” of deficits without tears and embarrassing new theories which argue that unlimited money creation can never lead to inflation , the fantasy forecasters have been quite busy replacing reason with madness.

    PREDICTING THE END?

    But can economies, as well as near-term price actions in markets, truly be forecasted with results better than a coin toss?

    My answer is a clear “yes” and a clear “no.”

    Why?

    Because some things, like the complex movement of a Swiss watch can in fact be trusted, and hence predicted; while other phenomena, like the madness of crowds and their preference for fantasy, cannot.

    TRUST CAN NOT BE FORECASTED

    The vast majority of investors, for example, have an almost blind faith in central banks housed in impressive buildings with fancy folks running them.

    Measuring that faith, as well as the inevitable loss of that faith, is harder than a Rolex repair. In fact, it’s impossible to time, even when objective evidence suggests that the experts are indulging in madness.

    Since 2009, central banks and policy makers have done nothing but put lipstick on an economic pig by using artificial money to buy unwanted IOU’s and then telegraphing the result as “free market capitalism,” or even worse, a “recovery.”

    To ignore such madness in favor of blind faith is itself a kind of madness, and madness, like COVID-19, spreads best in crowds.

    Today, the vast majority of the world has gone financially mad, and most don’t even know it.

    SOME MARKET FORCES CAN BE FORECASTED

    Informed investors, as well as students of history, math and common sense, however, have long since stood outside of the crowd.

    They accept that market laws, like laws of physics, are in fact quite predictive.

    For example, not once in the history of nations, markets or exchanges, has any empire, system or market ever successfully prevented an economic, currency or market collapse by printing gobs and gobs of fake money.

    Not once. Not ever.

    The Austrian school of economics, unlike Keynesian debt madness taken too far, long ago understood that an economic party sustained by debt ends with a brutal hangover caused by that same debt.

    Just as physicists long ago understood that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction (F=MA), Austrian economists like von Mises similarly understood that market forces are no different.

    For every debt rise there is an equal and opposite debt fall.

    Given that today’s global economy is supported exclusively by the greatest debt levels ever recorded in the history of capital markets, should we not therefore be confident in “forecasting” one helluva a day of reckoning for our global markets, economies and currencies?

    Or as von Mises so bluntly warned:

    “There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.”

    The short answer, then is yes, some things are foreseeable. 1+1 still equals 2, and debt-based “recoveries” always fail, along with their inflated currencies.

    Despite such cold facts, the current fantasy being pushed by the MMT crowd as well as politicians and central bankers from Japan to the U.S., is that such economic reckonings (including inflation) can be outlawed by a money printer.

    Folks: That’s madness in a nutshell.

    Such short-term fantasy explains how economies right outside your front door are tanking while stock markets (enjoying artificial, low-rate debt rollovers) in the U.S. and elsewhere are approaching new highs.

    Those highs are quantifiably correlated to global money printing like this:

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    Printed, fiat currencies are used to push bond prices so high that bond yields (which move inversely to price) have been so thoroughly distorted that for the first time in market history, we are seeing negative yielding bonds across the globe like this:

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    That too is, well…Madness.

    Such objective charts are staggering, and ought to be a universal wake-up call to any sane observer of global markets.

    Again, to believe otherwise, frankly, smacks of a kind of madness.

    But as Mark Twain warned, crowds often prefer a comforting fantasy over a hard fact, and are thus easy to fool.

    Hence, economic policy makers continue to lead a crowd of sheep over a cliff of unsustainable debt paid for with diluted currencies that destroys their hard-earned wealth.

    The inherent purchasing power of all major currencies are now tanking by the second when compared against timeless measurements of value like gold.

    The following graph is perhaps the most important one you will ever see:

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    In short, global currencies are among the first dominos to fall in an artificial global economy sustained by grotesque levels of debt paid for by equally grotesque levels of fiat money creation.

    Inevitably, economies and markets fall in succession with their currencies. The historical cure for such currency madness is a gold, which far from being a “barbarous relic” of the past, is a timeless solution for the future.

    Again: This is predictable. This is forecastable.

    To consider such evidence yet burry one’s head is a form of madness. To ignore the evidence, or worse yet, hide or downplay the evidence, is even more maddening.

    Most “financial journalists,” for example, studied marketing rather than markets and are hardly reliable “warning bells.”

    They understand click-bait techniques and key words, and get their research from a Google search rather than a basic understanding of economic forces.

    Not 1 in 10 of average investors (or 1 in 100 of average “financial journalists”) have ever paused to consider simple charts like those above.

    That, alas, explains the spread of fantasy as well as the madness of crowds who feel their currencies, stocks, and bonds are in the safe hands of the experts.

    Folks, those experts are paper tigers, not financial lions. For now, however, mad faith in their mad policies continues.

    TIMING THE IMPOSSIBLE, PREPARING FOR THE INEVITABLE

    But for how long?

    Timing human emotion, blind faith or even collective madness is a fool’s errand.

    The emotional element of the global economy is too complex for easy modeling, and right now, the vast majority of market participants still trust the “experts” in general and the central banks in particular, to save them.

    Comforting speeches from the FOMC and empty headlines from the sell-side on the latest tech stock have replaced basic economics, math and history.

    Stated more simply: Fantasy has replaced facts.

    Neither I nor you can time the expiration date of this misguided yet ephemeral trust in using counterfeit money to pay for record-breaking debt levels and historically unmatched asset bubbles.

    But as both history and natural market forces confirm, that trust ends once currencies lose their value and the madness of crowd faith in fantasy is replaced by a mad crowd of broke investors.

    Those who confront facts rather than fantasy, however, can prepare for the unfolding of history and math without having to worry about the precise “timing” of what is otherwise inevitable.

    Toward that end, the historical remedy for the current wave of policy madness has always been the same: Precious Metals.

  • Xi's Forbearance Mode Ends With Rising SOE Defaults
    Xi’s Forbearance Mode Ends With Rising SOE Defaults

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/12/2020 – 21:00

    By Ye Xie, macro commentator at Bloomberg

    Beijing is moving away from its implicit support for state-owned enterprises in the bond market.

    Yongcheng Coal & Electricity’s default this week sent a shock wave through the market, causing dollar bonds of several other Chinese state-owned enterprises to tumble.

    Over the past two months, three of the five onshore bond defaults came from SOEs, according to Goldman Sachs. That brought the total number of SOE defaults this year to six, making 2020 one of the most-active years for defaults in the sector. The 93 billion yuan ($14 billion) in domestic bonds outstanding at the time of default represented 0.46% of all SOE bonds at the start of the year, compared with 0.04% in 2019.

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    Beyond the SOEs, policy makers also seem to be attempting to shake off the moral hazard of “too big to fail.” While the number of total defaults has declined, the size of the non-payments has increased considerably. The 19 domestic bond defaults this year affect 163 billion yuan outstanding, surpassing the 131 billion yuan from 36 non-payments in 2019.

    Make no mistake — systemically important companies are likely to be rescued when push comes to shove. Still, the message is loud and clear: Now that the economy has recovered, China has moved to credit clean-up mode from forbearance mode.

    “This will likely mean defaults will pick up” next year, and there will continue to be a “fat tail” among China’s high-yield bonds, Goldman Sachs analysts Kenneth Ho and Chakki Ting wrote.

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    The U.S. trading session Thursday was dominated by concerns about the pandemic as Chicago issued an advisory urging residents to avoid leaving home. Bonds gained and stocks fell. Before the vaccine potentially brings life back to somewhat normal next year, investors have to face the reality that the virus resurgence may slow the economy in coming months and stimulus is nowhere to be seen during a lame-luck period on Capitol Hill.

    It’s going to be tricky winter.

  • Black Hawk Helicopter Crash In Sinai Kills 8, Mostly Americans
    Black Hawk Helicopter Crash In Sinai Kills 8, Mostly Americans

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/12/2020 – 20:40

    On Thursday a multinational peacekeeping force operating in Egypt suffered disaster when a Black Hawk helicopter went down in the Sinai Peninsula.

    In total eight were killed, including six Americans, one French and one Czech national, according to a military coalition statement. 

    Acting US Defense Secretary Christopher Miller also confirmed the deaths of the Americans and said the Defense Department is “saddened” by their loss. 

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    UH-60 Black Hawk file, Getty Images

    One American reportedly survived the crash and was evacuated to an Israeli hospital for treatment, according to international reports. 

    “During a routine mission in the vicinity of Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, nine members of the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) were involved in a helicopter crash,” reads a statement from MFO. “We are deeply saddened to report that eight uniformed MFO members were killed; six U.S. citizens, one French, and one Czech. One U.S. MFO Member survived and was medically evacuated. Names are being withheld pending notification of next of kin.”

    The MFO has been deployed in Sinai since the 1980s in order to monitor Egypt’s 1979 peace deal with Israel.  

    Subsequent statements out of the Czech Defense Ministry, which was closely involved in the peacekeeping operations, described the deadly crash as “caused by technical issues” which happened in the area of Sharm el-Sheikh.

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    Via CNN

    The restive Sinai region has in the past years seen a significant uptick in terrorist activity, including the presence of ISIS, given it is easy to hide deep in the mountainous terrain and within difficult to access areas for the Egyptian military.

    The US military upped its presence in coordination with Egypt after a string of deadly ISIS terror attacks in 2016 and after, and has tried to rely on advanced technology to monitor the vast wilderness terrain which some reports have called “lawless”. 

  • Official Overseeing Arizona Vote-Count Process Previously Tweeted About Trump's "Neo-Nazi Base"
    Official Overseeing Arizona Vote-Count Process Previously Tweeted About Trump’s “Neo-Nazi Base”

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/12/2020 – 20:20

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who is overseeing the vote counting process in the swing state, previously tweeted about President Trump pandering to his “neo-nazi base.”

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    In an August 2017 tweet that is receiving fresh attention, Hobbs asserted, “.@realDonaldTrump has made it abundantly clear he’s more interested in pandering to his neo-nazi base than being @POTUS for all Americans.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    That wouldn’t be much of a shock for someone who lists her pronouns in her Twitter bio along with her support for Black Lives Matter, but given that Hobbs is now instrumental in the Arizona voting process, Trump supporters are understandably concerned.

    “Anyone think we could possibly get a fair shake in front of this activist???” asked Donald Trump Jr.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The Secretary of State has already exercised her power to prevent an inquiry into Arizona’s voting machines.

    “In recent days, the President of Arizona’s State Senate, Karen Fann, called on Hobbs’ office to authorize an independent review of the state’s voting machines. A call that Hobbs immediately shot down,” reports National File.

    “It is patently unreasonable to suggest that, despite there being zero credible evidence of any impropriety or widespread irregularities, election officials nonetheless have a responsibility to prove a negative,” Hobbs wrote in response.

    *  *  *

    New limited edition merch now available! Click here.

    In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Also, I urgently need your financial support here.

  • Ticketmaster Unveils Plan To Verify Vaccination Status
    Ticketmaster Unveils Plan To Verify Vaccination Status

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/12/2020 – 20:00

    With several COVID-19 vaccines reportedly just around the corner, Ticketmaster will be verifying concert fans’ vaccination status, or whether they’ve tested negative for the coronavirus within a 24 to 72-hour window, according to Billboard.

    As we’ve noted several times over the past few months, immunity passports are the future of COVID-19.

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    The plan, still in development phase, will employ three prongs; the Ticketmaster digital app, third-party health status providers such as CLEAR Health Pass or IBM’s Digital Health Pass, and testing / vaccine distribution providers such as CVS Minute Clinic and Labcorp.

    Here’s how it would work, if approved: After purchasing a ticket for a concert, fans would need to verify that they have already been vaccinated (which would provide approximately one year of COVID-19 protection [ZH: really?]) or test negative for coronavirus approximately 24 to 72 hours prior to the concert. The length of coverage a test would provide would be governed by regional health authorities — if attendees of a Friday night concert had to be tested 48 hours in advance, most could start the testing process the day before the event. If it was a 24-hour window, most people would likely be tested the same day of the event at a lab or a health clinic.

    Once the test was complete, the fan would instruct the lab to deliver the results to their health pass company, like CLEAR or IBM. If the tests were negative, or the fan was vaccinated, the health pass company would verify the attendee’s COVID-19 status to Ticketmaster, which would then issue the fan the credentials needed to access the event. If a fan tested positive or didn’t take a test to verify their status, they would not be granted access to the event. –Billboard

    According to the report, Ticketmaster will not store or have access to fans’ medical records, and will only receive ‘green light or red light’ on whether a fan is cleared to attend an event.

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    At present, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has yet to approve third-party health information providers for real-time verification, however Ticketmaster president Mark Yovich is confident that demand for such screening services will be in heavy demand for multiple applications such as air travel, employment verification and theme park entry.

    “We’re already seeing many third-party health care providers prepare to handle the vetting — whether that is getting a vaccine, taking a test, or other methods of review and approval – which could then be linked via a digital ticket so everyone entering the event is verified,” Yovich told Billboard. “Ticketmaster’s goal is to provide enough flexibility and options that venues and fans have multiple paths to return to events, and is working to create integrations to our API and leading digital ticketing technology as we will look to tap into the top solutions based on what’s green-lit by officials and desired by clients.”

    For Ticketmaster, two new technologies at the companies will help its clients scale the program. The first is digital ticketing that’s linked to a fan’s identity, eliminates paper tickets and can be restricted from being transferred or resold. Ticketmaster also plans to deploy its new SmartEvent system, which helps event organizers and fans manage social distancing, delayed entry and provide possible opportunities for contact tracing. Many of the safety parameters will be set by regional health officials and event organizers. Event organizers also have the ability to set their own prevention protocols, like sanitation, mask compliance and social distancing. –Billboard

    According to the report, implementing this COVID-19 verification plan will be key to the survival of the live entertainment industry during the pandemic. 

    “In order for live events to return, technology and science are going to play huge roles in establishing integrated protocols so that fans, artists, and employees feel safe returning to venues,” says Marianne Herman, co-founder and principal reBUILD20, which focuses on helping entertainment and live events companies develop COVID-19 strategies (per Billboard).

    “Integrating ticketing platforms with the guests verified testing results is one key way to reimagine how we’re going to get fans back to live events. The experience of attending live events will look completely different, but innovation married with consistent implementation will provide a framework to get the live sports and event industry back to work.”

  • Gold Is A Lifeline For Many Indians During Pandemic
    Gold Is A Lifeline For Many Indians During Pandemic

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/12/2020 – 19:40

    Via SchiffGold.com,

    Gold has helped Indians weather the economic storm caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

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    The government response to COVID-19 has ravaged the Indian economy. As a result, many banks are reluctant to extend credit due to fear of defaults. In this tight lending environment, many Indians are using their stashes of gold to secure loans.

    Using gold as collateral for loans has a long history in India. For generations, farming communities and rural households used gold as a means of financing, often pledging it as collateral to raise funds to plant the following year’s crops. Today, Indians in urban settings often use gold loans to meet expenditures for healthcare, business, education, and marriage.

    According to a recent report by the World Gold Council, demand for gold loans, both through banks and non-banking financial companies (NBFC) has grown in response to the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Organized lending backed by gold is expected to grow from $47 billion in fiscal 2020 to $55.2 billion in FY2021. This doesn’t account for the massive informal gold lending market driven by pawnbrokers and private moneylenders, along with the robust grey market economy prevalent in rural parts of the country.

    Somasundaram P.R., head of the World Gold Council’s Indian operations, told Reuters gold will continue to serve as a vital lifeline as credit shrinks.

    As banks could exhibit greater risk aversion in the current context, gold loans would be a convenient route for many customers to raise liquidity and working capital.”

    For many Indians, gold is a lifesaver, providing liquidity that they otherwise wouldn’t have.

    Indians traditionally buy and hold gold. Collectively, Indian households own an estimated 25,000 tons of gold and that number may be higher given the large black market in the country. The yellow metal is interwoven into the country’s marriage ceremonies and cultural rites. Indians also value gold as a store of wealth, especially in poor rural regions. Two-thirds of India’s gold demand comes from these areas, where the vast majority of people live outside the official tax system.

    Gold is not just a luxury in India. Even poor people buy gold in the Asian nation. According to an ICE 360 survey in 2018, one in every two households in India purchased gold within the last five years. Overall, 87% of households in the country own some amount of the yellow metal. Even households at the lowest income levels in India own some gold. According to the survey, more than 75% of families in the bottom 10% had managed to buy gold.

    Gold was also a major source of liquidity in 2016 when the Indian government launched a demonetization scheme. In November of that year, the Indian government declared that 1,000 and 500 rupee notes would no longer be valid. They gave the public just four hours notice. The 1,000 and 500 rupee notes made up 86 % of the currency in circulation in the country. With a single pronouncement, the Indian government made virtually all of the cash in India valueless. Many Indians have thwarted a government policy to bring the underground economy out of the shadows by converting their “black money” into gold.

    Indians understand that gold tends to store value, and that in the end, gold is money. If they have gold, they know they will be able to get the goods and services they need – even in the event of an economic meltdown. And while westerners may not embrace the cultural and religious aspects of the Indian love affair with gold, the economic reasons for their devotion to the yellow metal are every bit as applicable in places like the US.

  • How Quibi's Boomer Execs Sabotaged A $2BN Company By Being Completely Out Of Touch
    How Quibi’s Boomer Execs Sabotaged A $2BN Company By Being Completely Out Of Touch

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/12/2020 – 19:20

    the downfall of Quibi has created an interesting counterpoint to the fall of Theranos. Though the companies were situated in very different industries, the Theranos story centers around a young woman who treacherously conned investors, journalists and even some of her own employees, before a small group of rebels gave the story up to the Wall Street Journal, which brough the whole sham crashing down.

    On the other hand, Quibi wasn’t an illegal scheme; it remains an obviously legitimate business, and it’s certainly possible that a rival like Netflix or Hulu might scoop up some of the assets Quibi might be selling after Jeffrey Katzenberg announced plans to shut it down after an abysmal rollout during the pandemic that made the company into a laughingstock. Customers who signed up for Quibi’s free trial quickly discovered, much to their eventual disappointment, that there was no way to watch the shows on their laptop, or a TV. Quibi’s founders effectively engaged in an act of self-sabotage by ensuring that the smartphone app was the only venue in which their content – the quick “bites” from which Quibi’s name is (again, confusingly) derived – could be consumed.

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    Many seemingly bone-headed decisions about the product, programming and the rollout have been documented by Bloomberg and WSJ (we’ve added our two cents’ worth here and here), but since announcing plans to shut down, Katzenberg and Whitman, who have both been saddled with massive personal losses from the venture, have tried their hardest to project an air of humility and graciousness.

    However, that task just got a lot harder, as Bloomberg’s Businessweek earlier today published a deeply sourced piece elaborating on the many flaws and failures in Katzenberg’s initial vision for the product. Those problems were only exacerbated by the out-of-touch arrogance exhibited by Katzenberg and his partner, Whitman, whom he recruited to the project, according to reports. Viewers who watched Whitman’s early CNBC interviews pitching Quibi probably remember cringe-worthy moments, like when she reveals that the company’s name is derived from the phrase “Quick Bites”, or when she described Quibi as a revolutionary new medium, seemingly without realizing that hilarious short videos, sometimes with scripted plots, have been posted to YouTube for free since the mid-aughts.

    Between shelling out $6 million to Reese Witherspoon to do a voice-over for an animal TV program that nobody watched, to Whitman awkwardly placing her newly purchased LA condo back on the market without saying a word to anyone at the company, Bloomberg chronicles many details from a company that was driven into the ground by two stubborn, know-it-all boomer executives who thought their focus-group-backed wisdom was simply beyond reproach.

    The Condo Incident

    Whitman, one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful women, had moved to L.A. to work with people like that. She’d been recruited a year earlier by Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood megaproducer who co-founded DreamWorks Animation, who was betting that the future of entertainment was short-form videos with old-school studio production values. Whitman was to be the CEO of a streaming service with episodic programming that aimed to wow a generation raised on YouTube.

    But the service, called Quibi, premiered this past spring to crickets and jeers. Over the summer, Whitman talked her team through a retooling plan and acted as though she planned to remain in L.A. for a good, long while. But in early August, less than two years after she bought the Sierra Towers condo, she put it back on the market.

    Her staffers noticed. Several circulated the real estate listing, spurring a wave of quiet searches for employment elsewhere. More than one marks that as the beginning of the end for Quibi. “When your CEO puts their L.A. home up for sale less than two years after buying it, that’s when you know the writing is on the wall,” says one former Quibi employee, who, like most of the 24 current and former staffers interviewed for this story, spoke on condition of anonymity to protect future job prospects.

    That Song From ‘Trolls’

    When Katzenberg and Whitman finally broke news of the shutdown to employees, an unexpectedly swift death for a company that had launched its product just 7 months before. As misty eyes filled the room, Katzenberg reportedly encouraged his team to listen to a song from the animated feature film “Trolls” (one of Katzenberg’s former projects) to help lift their spirits.

    Toward the end of October, Quibi’s seventh month in the crowded streaming market, Whitman and Katzenberg assembled their employees on a video call to tell them the company would be shutting down around Dec. 1. A misty-eyed, apologetic Katzenberg encouraged employees to comfort themselves by playing the song Get Back Up Again from the DreamWorks movie Trolls.

    TV On The Internet

    In particular, several staffers told Bloomberg that Whitman and Katzenberg insisted on recruiting the most expensive Hollywood talent, instead of relying on cheaper social media stars with established followings among a younger audience that Quibi and its rivals covet. This was perhaps one of the biggest reasons why the company failed so quickly, as it blew its load by paying $6 million for Reese Witherspoon to do a voice-over for an animal show that nobody watched.

    Bloomberg apparently saw a pitch-deck slide breaking down salaries paid for some of these “lighthouse” shows and…well…

    Several current and former Quibi employees say Katzenberg built himself a punishing schedule. In the weeks after Quibi went live, he’d rise by 3:30 each morning, work out while reading the news from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m., and conduct as many as 20 FaceTime meetings a day, turning most any interaction along the way into an impromptu meeting about the company. He divided show ideas into three categories: the titular “quick bites” (short, one-off videos), “daily essentials” (news programs), and “lighthouse” shows (projects involving A-listers). The latter ate up most of the budget. According to a Quibi pitch deck seen by Bloomberg Businessweek, lighthouse shows generally cost $20,000 to $125,000 a minute, compared with roughly $10,000 a minute for daily essentials. Fuqua’s series, #FreeRayshawn, which stars Laurence Fishburne and Stephan James, cost $15 million for 15 episodes of 10 minutes each, a competitive budget for today’s streaming services. Netflix Inc.’s Stranger Things costs $6 million to $8 million for episodes that typically run for 45 minutes to an hour, and Disney+ is expected to spend as much as $25 million an episode on Marvel shows such as Hawkeye and WandaVision. But in another respect, Quibi sweetened the deals far beyond what other streaming services were willing to offer. Two years in, creators would be free to edit their Quibi shows together into an extended work and sell the longer version somewhere else. After seven years the company’s rights to the short-form versions would expire.

    Katzenberg also applied his decades of development experience, something current and former employees say was part of the problem. The 69-year-old former wunderkind often insisted that he weigh in on everything from casting to wardrobe to graphic design, frequently via FaceTime with printouts of his notes next to him. He invested aggressively in somewhat out-there series with recognizable names attached, such as Most Dangerous Game, starring Liam Hemsworth and Christoph Waltz; Dummy, starring Anna Kendrick; and Thanks a Million, a giveaway reality show produced by Jennifer Lopez. To narrate voiceover for Fierce Queens, a wildlife program produced by BBC Studios, Quibi paid Reese Witherspoon $6 million. (Her husband, Jim Toth, was Quibi’s head of content acquisitions.)

    What’s Next?

    Though SJW reporters would like to have the world believe that only men are capable of ‘failing up’, Whitman just might be moving on from Quibi with a job in the Biden administration, despite her history of…running for office (albeit, in California) as a Republican.

    Whitman is an early contender for several cabinet-level positions in President-elect Joe Biden’s administration, according to three people familiar with the matter. Weeks after she put her L.A. condo up for sale, the former Republican gubernatorial candidate appeared during the Democratic National Convention to endorse Biden on national TV. “For me, the choice is simple,” Whitman said. “I’m with Joe.” It’s unclear what Katzenberg will do next, but the producer seems less likely to leave the entertainment industry behind. “One might wonder why sailing off into the sunset on a boat in the Caribbean isn’t an option for Jeffrey,” says Shapiro, the producer of Let’s Go, Atsuko! “But I don’t get the sense he’ll want this to be the last chapter of his storied career.”

    It’s worth noting that Katzenberg is also a major Democratic bundler, one of the biggest in Hollywood.

    Many of her former employees weren’t so lucky. Several complained to Bloomberg about feeling ‘blindsided’ by the shutdown, as Whitman and Katzenberg apparently kept the true enormity of the company’s fiscal recklessness from the rest of the staff. In the end, many employees credited Katzenberg and his enormously over-inflated self-confidence, and his micromanaging style, for doing far more harm than good.

    In the end, some $2 billion of investors’ money was wasted. But at least Reese Witherspoon managed to secure a pretty generous payday.

  • Beijing Faces Extreme Pressure To Publish Promising COVID-19 Vaccine Data
    Beijing Faces Extreme Pressure To Publish Promising COVID-19 Vaccine Data

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/12/2020 – 19:00

    News about Brazilian regulators’ decision to halt a Phase 3 Sinovac trial amid rumors that a patient had died under questionable circumstances heaped more humiliation on Beijing this month, adding insult to injury after Pfizer unveiled the first “extremely promising” headline immunity data for its mRNA vaccine, snagging a “win” in the race for the West.

    Just weeks ago, Beijing may have indulged in some schadenfraude as AstraZeneca’s partnership with Oxford finally got its trial in the US back up and running after a month-plus delay. But now the shoe was on the other foot.

    Though the Brazil trial was reinstated within two days, it allowed Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to declare “victory” by appearing to validate his persistent questioning of the Chinese vaccination effort. His comments have no doubt become a problem for Beijing, which must secure the trust of partner nations in the developing world to develop markets for the vaccines its producing for the virus it helped to unleash.

    Even Russia has produced data showing the Gameleya Institute vaccine is “92% effective”. As Reuters pointed out in a piece published Thursday, Beijing needs a win on the vaccine front.

    “As China continues to push its own vaccines through the final stage of clinical trial in the midst of Pfizer’s announcement, the need for Beijing to address public perception about its vaccine safety issues is more pressing now than ever,” said Xiaoqing Lu Boynton, a consultant at Albright Stonebridge Group who focuses on health care and life sciences.

    Reporters for Reuters have detailed a “”vaccine web” illustrating various markets where Chinese vaccine makers have agreements to test, and market, their vaccines, provided they’re approved by domestic regulators.

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    There’s little question, according to other experts who spoke with Reuters, that the US’s wins on the vaccine front threaten China’s “vaccine diplomacy” plans, since Beijing has now transformed the race for a vaccine into an opportunity to exhibit China’s technological superiority to the world.

    The “problem for me is global public good or China public good — it’s two different notions,” said Nicolas Chapuis, the European Union’s ambassador to China. While he praised China’s decision to join the WHO-backed vaccine program, he said many questions remain on distribution, price and international certification.“To be certified samples have to be given,” he said. “Samples have not been given.”

    China has promised to prioritize providing doses for more than 60 countries, including governments that have received infrastructure loans under Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative. Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Morocco have formal agreements with China’s major vaccine manufacturers, and countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have been promised a $1 billion loan to purchase doses from them.

    Still, China’s setback in Brazil combined with Pfizer’s breakthrough “puts China’s vaccine diplomacy in jeopardy,” said Yongwook Ryu, assistant professor of East Asian international relations at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

    But before China can start swapping vaccines for favorable RBI deal terms, Beijing needs to curry trust. And although China has already started using SinoVac’s vaccine on hundreds, if not thousands, of people under a wide-ranging emergency program, that approach might not be enough. China’s biotech leaders need to provide real transparency, experts said.

    “The issue is the lack of transparency,” Ryu said. “So the right thing for the Chinese government to do is to make its trial results and related information public, so that experts can scrutinize them.”

    China has already administered the vaccine, including the one from Sinovac Biotech Ltd. whose trial was just paused in Brazil, to hundreds of thousands of people under an expansive emergency use program. But none of the Chinese frontrunners have published any preliminary data from Phase 3 trials as Pfizer has done.

    Reuters points out that even if China ultimately lags in the vaccine race, it could still emerge as a global leader in distributing the vaccines. A Chinese company already has a deal to distribute the Pfizer vaccine in China. Yet, somehow, we imagine Beijing won’t be satisfied with simply leading on the distribution end.

  • US Tops 150k Daily COVID-19 Cases For First Time: Live Updates
    US Tops 150k Daily COVID-19 Cases For First Time: Live Updates

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/12/2020 – 18:44

    Summary:

    • US cases hit new daily record
    • NJ positivity rate surges
    • Chicago issues stay at home order
    • Georgia Secretary of State to quarantine after announcing hand recount
    • French ICU occupancy up to 96.6%
    • Detroit returns to remote learning
    • CDC releases guidance reminding users that masks also help protect wearers
    • Austria sees new daily record in cases
    • UK outbreak may finally be starting to slow
    • Global cases see new record
    • Global deaths top 12k for first time
    • Cases rising in all 50 states for first time
    • New cases finally starting to weaken in Europe
    • Moderna says vaccine data incoming
    • Turkey bans smoking on crowded streets
    • Japan suffers biggest daily jump in cases yet
    • Hungary strikes deal for Russian vaccine

    * * *

    Update (1830ET): For the first time, the US has reported more than 150k coronavirus cases in a single day, marking the latest in a series of disturbing national records.

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    As the chart above shows, the number of deaths has continued to climb, producing more alarming and leading to governors around the country tightening restrictions this week.

    * * *

    Update (1500ET): Just like the rest of the country, New Jersey is seeing the virus come roaring back as officials confirmed Thursday that the Garden State has seen more than 10,000 new cases since Monday, and that the positivity rate in the state has soared to 12% (neighboring PA, by comparison, is at 18.3%. NY, by contrast, has a positivity rate that’s still much, much lower, by comparison.

    Still, officials in New York are worried that worsening numbers in NJ could trigger a bigger outbreak across the Hudson.

    “We have to get back to the mindset that saw us crush the curve throughout the spring,” Murphy said in another tweet amid signs that exhaustion with social distancing in lockdowns was leading to lax compliance.

    * * *

    * * *

    Update (1410ET): As new cases and hospitalizations in Illinois hit new records, the city of Chicago, the country’s third-largest, has just issued an “advisory” asking residents to call off Thanksgiving, and engage in only “essential” trips, like to school, work or the store, for the next 30 days.

    • CHICAGO ADVISORY INCLUDES LEAVING FOR WORK, SCHOOL
    • CHICAGO RECOMMENDS CALLING OFF THANKSGIVING GATHERINGS
    • CHICAGO ADVISORY TO STAY IN PLACE FOR 30 DAYS UNLESS CHANGED

    The advisory takes effect Monday, with Mayor Lori Lightfoot warning that deaths in the city could surpass 1,000 by the end of the year if the virus continues on its trajectory

    In other news, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has said he will quarantine after his wife tested positive for COVID-19, raising the question: Who will count the votes?

    * * *

    Update (1310ET): After the government affirmed that France’s lockdown-lite measures would stay in place for at least another two weeks, official data showed that French ICU occupancy, one of the most closely watched indicators in Europe, has risen again to 96.6%, a new post-springtime high.

    “We count in #France in recent days a hospitalization every 30 seconds and an admission to intensive care every 3 minutes,” PM Jean Castex warned.

    In total, France has some 4,803 COVID-19 patients in its ICUs (with 40% of them under 65). Presently, 25% of all deaths in France right now are due to COVID-19

    Over the past 2 weeks, 72,279 fines have been handed out for COVID-19 related infractions, according to Castex, the government’s pointman.

    Over in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel just raised the possibility of extending that country’s COVID-19 restrictions through the Christmas holiday. Though the pace of the outbreak has slowed, Merkel said the levels of spread are still too high, with Germany looking to reduce cases to 50 per 100,000, from 138 as of Thursday.

    Also, in case you forgot, the CDC has released new guidance reminding Americans that masks offer protection benefits to wearers (as opposed to, well, everybody else).

    * * *

    Update (0945ET): As the US heads closer to the Biden lockdown, the Detroit Free Press is reporting that Detroit schools are about to halt face-to-face learning because of rising COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.

    Per the report, Detroit Public Schools are halting in-person learning through Jan. 11, as COVID-19, meaning the city’s 50k students likely won’t return to classrooms until next semester.

    “All classes will be held online starting Monday, November 16 due to the rapid increase in the COVID-19 infection rate in Detroit,” the district said in an announcement. “Face-to-face learning and learning centers will remain open this Thursday and Friday to provide families time to rearrange educational support for students.”

    Other nearby Michigan districts that have reverted to online learning in recent days include: Grosse Pointe, Holly, Huron Valley, Pontiac, Rochester and Utica.

    Meanwhile, Austria has become the latest EU member to report a new daily record, even after tightening restrictions on nonessential businesses last week. The country reported 9,262 new cases, and 44 deaths.

    In a rare bit of good news, a recent UK symptoms study has put the COVID-19 rate of spread below 1, indicating that the outbreak is finally starting to slow.

    * * *

    Around the world, the number of new COVID-19 deaths recorded over the 24 hours to Wednesday topped 12k for the first time, a new daily record, as the global coronavirus pandemic places unprecedented pressure on health-care systems from Paris to the Mountain West.

    Cases are also rising in all 50 states for the first time since the pandemic began.

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    To be sure, over the past week, the number of new cases has finally started to plateau, or decline, in the UK, Germany and France. Meanwhile, hard-hit neighbors like Belgium, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic have seen significant declines in infection rates as well, as the chart below shows.

    But the number of hospitalized patients is still growing: In the US, new national records north of 60k have been reached, while France, Italy and the UK have reached their highest levels since the springtime. Governors from New York to California have imposed new restrictions on businesses, social gatherings and movement this week.

    By now, all of these countries have enacted at least some restrictions, including closing bars and restaurants, or at least limiting their indoor service capacity, closing non-essential shops, or barring alcohol sales after 2200, like Sweden just did.

    In Germany, the Robert Koch Institute revealed that officials had counted another 21,866 new cases over the past 24 hours, bringing the country’s total number to 727,553. Germany has also recorded 11,982 deaths. Since the country imposed its “lockdown lite” earlier this month, the curve has flattening ever-so-slightly, a sign that “we are not completely at the mercy of this virus,” Germany’s Lothar Wieler, the head of the RKI, said.

    The number of confirmed cases worldwide has now topped 52 million, after Johns Hopkins reported the first new daily record for new confirmed cases worldwide yesterday, with 666,955 new cases yesterday.

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    With vaccine news dominating the headlines this week, Hungary has reportedly agreed to buy its first doses of the Russian-made “Sputnik 5” COVID-19 vaccine after authorities in the country revealed that it was 92% effective at preventing infection, according to initial data from the final stage trial.

    Even more importantly: In the US, Moderna – a company working on a vaccine with the same mRNA technology as the Pfizer vaccine – said that it finally has enough data for an “interim analysis” of the late-stage experimental trial. The company confirmed that the threshold of 53 patients sickened has been reached, meaning the data analysis on the results will soon be ready.The news predictably sent Moderna shares rocketed 5.3% in premarket trade.

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    BMO Capital Markets analyst George Farmer (outperform) said the announcement indicates first interim results could be “coming any day”, and that it has a greater than 95% chance of coming in positive. Jefferies analysts led by Michael J. Yee said they expect the results will be positive, with an efficacy rate around the 90% level seen in the Pfizer vaccine, and that we “could hear back soon”.

    Finally, Turkey has banned smoking in some public places to try and stamp out a surge in infections. The country’s interior minister decreed late Wednesday that smoking would be banned on busy streets, at bus stops and in public squares. The ban was enacted after the country determined that Turks were “incorrectly using their masks by lowering them below their chins to smoke cigarettes.” Roughly one-third of Turks smoke, according to WHO data.

    Here’s some more news from Thursday morning and overnight:

    Japan hit a new daily record of coronavirus infections Thursday as authorities began hinting they may take stronger measures to arrest the increase. At least 1,634 cases were recorded nationwide, according to a tally by national broadcaster NHK, topping the previous high set during a surge in August. While numbers are low in absolute terms compared to many other countries, a spike in northern Japan is leading to concerns cases could spread as winter sets in (Source: Bloomberg).

    Some regions in China might see clusters of infections during the winter season, Li Bin, the deputy director of National Health Commission, said at a briefing. China will enhance testing capacity, improve monitoring and increase testing on imported frozen food (Source: Bloomberg).

    India’s medical research body and the Serum Institute completed the enrollment for phase 3 trial of the Oxford University AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, while the Serum Institute has produced 40mln doses of the vaccine and the medical research body stated that it was the most advanced vaccine in human testing in India. Furthermore, it was also reported that the Serum Institute received bulk COVID-19 vaccine from Novavax which it will soon fill and finish them in vials, while it is to test the Novavax vaccine in a phase 3 trial in India (Source: Newswires).

    Belgium reported fewer Covid-19 patients in intensive care for a second straight day, providing further evidence the peak in hospitalizations may have passed. There are now 1,463 patients in ICU, down 7 from the day before and 11 fewer than the record 1,474 of Nov. 9. Belgium has a total capacity of about 2,000 ICU beds. Hospital admissions fell to 542 from 609 the prior day, with the total number of hospitals beds taken dropping to less than 7,000 again (Source: Bloomberg).

    New Zealand health officials are asking people who work in downtown Auckland to stay home Friday while they trace the movements of a person who may have contracted coronavirus from within the community. New Zealand earlier this year succeeded in eliminating community transmission of the coronavirus by imposing a strict nationwide lockdown (Source: Bloomberg).

  • Biden Administration Expected To Revamp Focus On White Collar Crime
    Biden Administration Expected To Revamp Focus On White Collar Crime

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/12/2020 – 18:40

    With an incoming President-elect Biden, it’s looking like the party for Wall Street – and the white collar fraud that it brings with it – could be coming to an end.

    While during the Trump administration fines and prosecutions related to white collar crime fell, lawyers anticipate it “ramping up” under a Biden administration. White collar defense attorney Robert Anello told Bloomberg that his practice “ground to a halt” during the Trump administration. 

    In addition to prosecuting white collar crime on Wall Street, tax cheats and foreign bribes will also be in focus under a Biden administration, Anello said. There will also be plenty of interest in the government funding provided as part of the Paycheck Protection Program, he said. 

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    Brandon Garrett, professor of law at Duke University, said the change under the Biden administration may not be noticeable right away, as white collar cases take time to assemble. But he expects more cases overall, including insider trading and accounting scams. We have a few suggestions as to where they could get started…

    Garrett said: “There’s often kind of a life cycle to fraud. If we have lax enforcement for a number of years, there will be a lot of serious misconduct and fraud that will have been brushed under the rug and so I would expect a serious backlog of cases of all types.”

    The Trump administration, trying to present itself as “pro-business”, has overseen a large decline in enforcement. Prosecution of white collar crime has hit record lows, helped along by the slowing of the courts as a result of Covid-19. Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse shows a 30% drop in annual prosecutions since the Obama administration. 

    Corporate fines were down 76% in Trump’s first 20 months in office, compared to the 20 final months during Obama’s administration. During the same time, corporate penalties totaled $3.4 billion, spread out between 17 financial institutions and 13 public companies, compared to $14.15 billion, 71 financial institutions and 34 public companies during Obama’s administration. 

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    Cheryl Bader, a professor at Fordham Law School in New York, said: “Anything would be a step up from Trump’s complete neglect of white-collar crime. He wants to see himself as the business-friendly president.”

    “When Trump talks about law and order, he’s not talking about law and order as relates to white-collar crime. He’s talking about law and order, frankly in terms of minority people,” said Joel Cohen, a former federal prosecutor in New York now in private practice.

    The Trump administration did, however, oversee a $2.9 billion penalty for Goldman Sachs’ Malaysia unit and felony charges lodged against Purdue Pharma LP, over the last four years. 

    A. Brian Albritton, who served as the top federal prosecutor in central Florida under Presidents George W. Bush and Obama, said Trump was more focused on violent crime: “Violent crime has been a priority for the Trump administration. I would anticipate fewer resources devoted to immigration crimes.”

  • Daily Briefing – November 12, 2020
    Daily Briefing – November 12, 2020


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/12/2020 – 18:25

    Real Vision managing editor, Ed Harrison, is joined by editor, Jack Farley, to break down a day of heavy selling across sectors as COVID-19 cases surge to unseen levels. Ed interprets what the Citigroup Economic Surprise Index means and shares his views on how, shutdown or not, the rise of coronavirus will likely depress economic activity. Ed and Jack discuss the flattening of the U.S. Treasury yield and the heavy selling of value equities, with Jack asking Ed whether the rotation into value will resurge or is in fact over. After quickly reviewing price action in volatility markets, Ed and Jack give a sneak peek of the “Paradigm Shift: Investment Ideas for a World in Flux” featuring Jim Chanos, Mike Green, Chamath Palihapitiya, Hugh Hendry, Kyle Bass, Jeremy Grantham, Jim Grant, William White, and many other legends of the investment world. In the intro, Peter Cooper explores the current state of the coronavirus epidemic in the States and reviews the jobless claims report that came out today. For the charts that Ed and Jack discuss, click here: https://rvtv.io/3lrQLY0.

  • Trump Campaign Highlights Alleged Dead Voters Casting Ballots In Pennsylvania
    Trump Campaign Highlights Alleged Dead Voters Casting Ballots In Pennsylvania

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/12/2020 – 18:20

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

    President Donald Trump’s campaign on late Wednesday highlighted several alleged cases of deceased people voting during last week’s presidential election in the key state of Pennsylvania.

    “Voter records show someone used the identity of John H. Granahan of Allentown, Pennsylvania to vote in the recent election, even though Granahan died in May 2019,” the campaign said. “The Dusckas Martin Funeral Home and Crematory ran an obituary of Granahan’s death when he passed away.”

    The campaign noted that Judy Presto of Southpark, Pennsylvania, died in 2013, adding that “someone registered her to vote in September 2020 and cast a ballot under her name in last week’s election.” It also included an obituary of Presto published by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at the time.

    “Elizabeth Bartman of Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania is shown as having registered to vote in September 2020 and cast a ballot in last week’s election, even though she died in 2008,” Trump’s campaign also said. Her obituary was published by the Philadelphia Inquirer 12 years ago.

    The office of Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State hasn’t yet responded to a request for comment as of Thursday morning and has not issued a public response to the campaign’s latest claims in other news outlets.

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    The campaign, hours before sending out that news release, asserted that deceased voters cast ballots in Georgia as well. Georgia is also considered a key swing state. The campaign also noted that obituaries for the alleged deceased voters were published in local news outlets such as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

    The Georgia Secretary of State’s office, which handles elections, had not responded to a request for comment on Wednesday.

    Both Pennsylvania and Georgia were called for Democratic candidate Joe Biden by major news outlets. The Epoch Times has not declared either Biden or Trump a winner in either state pending the outcome of investigations, legal challenges, and the Electoral College rendering the final say on the presidential race.

    Biden currently leads Trump by about 50,000 votes in Pennsylvania and by approximately 24,000 votes in Georgia, according to data from each respective state’s election agencies. Trump’s team has filed a number of lawsuits in both states, as well as in Nevada, Arizona, and Michigan. They have also requested recounts in Georgia and Wisconsin.

    Counting in Pennsylvania is still ongoing. York, Bucks, and Chester counties were not able to finish sorting out a combined figure of about 16,000 provisional ballots on Wednesday, county officials said. About 10,000 mail-in ballots that were received by counties three days after Election Day ended are part of a GOP challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court that includes several attorneys general from Republican-led states.

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