Nov 15

Today’s News 15th November 2020

  • Lockdowns Haven't Brought Down COVID Mortality, But They Have Killed Millions Of Jobs
    Lockdowns Haven't Brought Down COVID Mortality, But They Have Killed Millions Of Jobs

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 11/14/2020 – 23:30

    Authored by Mitch Nemeth via The Mises Institute,

    During the early onset of covid-19 in the spring, government officials across the political spectrum widely agreed that government intervention and forced closure of many businesses was necessary to protect public health. This approach has clearly failed in the United States as it led to widespread economic devastation, including millions of jobs lost, bankruptcies, and extremely severe losses in profitability. Nor have states with strict lockdowns succeeded in bringing about fewer covid deaths per million than states that were less strict.

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    Consequently, a few months into the pandemic, some governors weighed the competing economic costs with covid-19 containment and slowly reopened their economies. Of course, these governors did not mandate businesses reopen; however, they provided businesses the option to reopen.

    Hysteria ensued as many viewed easing restrictions as akin to mass murder. The Atlantic famously dubbed Georgia governor Brian Kemp’s easing of restrictions as “human sacrifice” and referred to Georgians as being in a “case study in pandemic exceptionalism.” Instead, we should view the lockdowns as a case study in the failure of heavy-handed approaches in containing a highly infectious virus.

    Now that we are nine months into this pandemic, there is a clearer picture of how state government approaches varied widely. It is clear that “reopened” economies are faring much better overall than less “reopened” economies. “Fueled by broader, faster economic reopenings following the initial coronavirus rash, conservative-leaning red states are by and large far outpacing liberal-leaning blue states in terms of putting people back to work,” writes Carrie Sheffield. This follows logically especially when considering that human beings learn to adapt very quickly. Now, we have learned much more about treating this virus and about who is most at risk from infection.

    Not Everyone Can #StayHome

    Even so, many proponents of lockdowns still contend that every covid infection is a failure of public policy. But this position is largely a luxury of white-collar workers who can afford to work from home. Lockdowns have been described as “the worst assault on the working class in half a century.” Martin Kulldorff, a biostatistician, says, “the blue-collar class is ‘out there working, including high-risk people in their 60s.” Kulldorff’s colleague Jay Bhattacharya notes that one reason “minority populations have had higher mortality in the U.S. from the epidemic is because they don’t often have the option…to stay at home.” In effect, top-down lockdown policies are “regressive” and reflect a “monomania,” says Dr. Bhattacharya. With this in mind, it is easy to see why more affluent Americans tend to view restrictive measures as the appropriate response.

    For many Americans, prolonged periods of time without gainful employment, income, or social interaction are not only impossible but potentially deadly. Martin Kulldorff notes that covid-19 restrictions do not consider broader public health issues and create collateral damage; among the collateral damage is a “worsening incidence of cardiovascular disease and cancer and an alarming decline in immunization.” Dr. Bhattacharya correctly notes that society will be “counting the health harms from these lockdowns for a very long time.”

    Mixed Messages

    Bhattacharya emphasized the politicization of these restrictions:

    “When Black Lives Matter protests broke out in the spring, ‘1,300 epidemiologists signed a letter saying that the gatherings were consistent with good public health practice,’” while those same epidemiologists argued that “we should essentially quarantine in place.”

    Such a contradiction defies logic and undercuts arguments about the lethality of this virus. If this novel virus truly were as devastating to the broader public as advertised, then political leaders supporting mass protests and riots during a pandemic seem to be ill founded. This contradiction has been cited in countless lawsuits challenging the validity and constitutionality of covid-19 restrictions.

    Separately, these often heavy-handed restrictions have targeted constitutionally protected rights like the freedom of religion. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito criticized the Nevada governor’s restrictions saying, “that Nevada would discriminate in favor of the powerful gaming industry and its employees may not come as a surprise…We have a duty to defend the Constitution, and even a public health emergency does not absolve us of that responsibility.” This scathing criticism, however, did not gain the support of the Supreme Court as a 5–4 majority deferred to the governor’s “responsibility to protect the public in a pandemic.”

    The Worst State and Local Offenders

    Such deference may be politically beneficial for the Supreme Court, but it presents a much more significant problem for basic freedoms. For one, many of these covid restrictions have been issued by state governors or administrative agencies rather than through democratic means. Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer has been targeted for her continued sidestepping of democratic channels and for her top-down approach.

    These covid restrictions are somewhat meaningless without ample enforcement and resources, so many major American cities have created task forces for enforcing these covid restrictions. For example, Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti has threatened to shut off public utilities for those who host massive house parties. Garcetti wants to treat private gatherings similarly to the bars and nightclubs he has forced closed. Not only is this ridiculous, but it is also authoritarian; there have been few checks on his ability to weaponize public utilities this way. The New York City Sheriff’s Office recently “busted a party of more than 200 people who were flouting coronavirus restrictions.” Their crime? Deputies found around two hundred maskless individuals “dancing, drinking and smoking hookah inside.” In typical government fashion, the owner of the venue was “slapped with five summonses…for violation of emergency orders, unlicensed sale of alcohol and unlicensed warehousing of alcohol.” What would we do without the government?

    California governor Gavin Newsom has long been a part of this effort to restrict freedoms under the guise of public health. Governor Newsom and the California Department of Public Health released new “safety” guidelines for all private gatherings during the Thanksgiving holiday. According to Newsweek, “all gatherings must include no more than three households, including hosts and guests, and must be held outdoors, lasting for two hours or less.” Given Newsom’s interventionist tendencies, it is likely that these restrictions will be enforced. How will the government determine how many households are at a Thanksgiving meal and who will enforce the two-hour window? These are questions that journalists should ask.

    Meanwhile, the varying levels of economic recovery between red states and blue states demonstrate how top-down policy can be a failure. Strict lockdowns have devastated millions of families’ incomes while failing to bring success in suppressing covid mortality. This failed experiment must be brought to an end. 

  • Visualizing The Top 100 US Colleges, Ranked By Tuition
    Visualizing The Top 100 US Colleges, Ranked By Tuition

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 11/14/2020 – 23:00

    Attending a good school in the U.S. comes at a price.

    Since 1985, college tuition has risen by roughly 500%, vastly outpacing almost all other increases in the cost of living. Today, as Visual Capitalist’s Nick Routley explains, there are more than 4,000 colleges in the country, ranging from high-flying Ivy League institutions to more modest, practical schools.

    This infographic from TitleMax shows the top 100 colleges in America based on the U.S. News Best National Universities list, ranked by tuition from highest to lowest.

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    The 20 Most Expensive Top College Tuitions

    From $5,000 to over $60,000, the price of college tuition for top U.S. schools is wide-ranging.

    Columbia University, with a price tag of $61,850 takes top spot. Based in Manhattan, New York it has a rich history of graduates and instructors, including investing legends Benjamin Graham and Joel Greenblatt.

    Although Columbia has the highest tuition cost, the school covers financial need with a mix of grants and work-study, which means low-income students don’t have to take on any student loan debt. This means a student coming from a home with $60,000 or less of income won’t be expected to pay anything toward tuition. That said, getting into the school is the tricky part. Columbia only admits 6% of applicants.

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    Following Columbia is the University of Chicago. Its Booth School of Business was ranked the top MBA program in the world, with graduates averaging $135,000 in median income after graduation.

    What may be surprising is that venerated institutions such as Harvard and Princeton don’t appear in the top 20, in terms of average tuition.

    The 20 Least Expensive Top College Tuitions

    How about the other end of the tuition spectrum for top schools in the country?

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    With a tuition of $5,790 Brigham Young University (Provo) has the lowest of the top 100, by far. Based in Provo, Utah it is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The college restricts drinking coffee, alcoholic beverages, and other activities—requiring students to follow a strict honor code.

    Also found on the list is the University of Florida and Purdue. Unsurprisingly, many public schools offer the most affordable college tuitions.

  • Can The 'EmDrive' Actually Work For Space Travel?
    Can The 'EmDrive' Actually Work For Space Travel?

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 11/14/2020 – 22:30

    Authored by Paul Sutter via Space.com,

    Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at SUNY Stony Brook and the Flatiron Institute, host of Ask a Spaceman and Space Radio, and author of How to Die in Space. He contributed this article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Opinions and Insights.

    The “EmDrive” claims to make the impossible possible: a method of pushing spacecraft around without the need for – well, pushing. No propulsion. No exhaust. Just plug it in, fire it up and you can cruise to the destination of your dreams. 

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    But the EmDrive doesn’t just violate our fundamental understanding of the universe; the experiments that claim to measure an effect haven’t been replicated. When it comes to the EmDrive, keep dreaming.

    Microwaves of the future

    It goes by various names — the EmDrive, the Q-Drive, the RF Resonant Cavity, the Impossible Drive — but all the incarnations of the device claim to do the same thing: bounce some radiation around inside a closed chamber, and presto-chango you can get propulsion.

    This is a big deal, because all forms of rocketry (and indeed, all forms of motion across the entire universe) require conservation of momentum. In order to set yourself in motion, you have to push off of something. Your feet push off of the ground, airplanes push themselves off of the air, and rockets push parts of themselves (e.g., an exhaust gas) out the back end to make them go forward.

    But the EmDrive doesn’t. It’s just a box with microwaves inside it, bouncing around. And supposedly it is able to move itself.

    Explanations for how the EmDrive could possibly work go past the boundaries of known physics. Perhaps it’s somehow interacting with the quantum vacuum energy of space-time (even though the quantum vacuum energy of space-time doesn’t allow anything to push off of it). Perhaps our understanding of momentum is broken (even though there are no other examples in our entire history of experiment). Perhaps it’s some brand-new physics, heralded by the EmDrive experiments.

    Don’t play with momentum

    Let’s talk about the momentum part. Conservation of momentum is pretty straightforward: in a closed system, you can add up the momenta of all the objects in that system. Then they interact. Then you add up the momenta of all the objects again. The total momentum at the beginning must equal the total momentum at the end: momentum is conserved.

    The idea of the conservation of momentum has been with us for centuries (it’s even implied by Newton’s famous second law), but in the early 1900s it gained a new status. The brilliant mathematician Emmy Noether proved that conservation of momentum (along with other conservation laws, like conservation of energy) are a reflection of the fact that our universe has certain symmetries.

    For example, you can choose a suitable location to perform a physics experiment. You can then pick up your physics experiment, transport it to anywhere in the universe and repeat it. As long as you account for environmental differences (say, different air pressures or gravitational fields), your results will be identical.

    This is a symmetry of nature: physics doesn’t care about where experiments take place. Noether realized that this symmetry of space directly leads to conservation of momentum. You can’t have one without the other.

    So, if the EmDrive demonstrates a violation of momentum conservation (which it claims to do), then this fundamental symmetry of nature must be broken.

    But almost every single physical theory, from Newton’s laws to quantum field theory, expresses space symmetry (and momentum conservation) in their base equations. Indeed, most modern theories of physics are simply complicated restatements of momentum conservation. To find a breaking in this symmetry wouldn’t just be an extension of known physics — it would completely upend centuries of understanding of how the universe works.

    The reality of experiment

    That’s certainly not impossible (scientific revolutions have happened before), but it’s going to take a lot of convincing to make that happen.

    And the experiments so far have not been all that satisfying.

    Ever since the introduction of the EmDrive concept in 2001, every few years a group claims to have measured a net force coming from its device. But these researchers are measuring an incredibly tiny effect: a force so small it couldn’t even budge a piece of paper. This leads to significant statistical uncertainty and measurement error. 

    Indeed, of all the published results, none have produced a measurement beyond “barely qualifying for publication,” let alone anything significant.

    Still, other groups have developed their own EmDrives, attempting to replicate the results, like good scientists should. Those replication attempts either fail to measure anything at all, or found some confounding variable that can easily explain the measured meager results, like the interaction of the cabling in the device with the Earth’s magnetic field.

    So that’s what we have, nearly 20 years after the initial EmDrive proposal: a bunch of experiments that haven’t really delivered, and no explanation (besides “let’s just go ahead and break all of physics, violating every other experiment of the past 100 years”) of how they could work. 

    Groundbreaking, physics-defying revolution in space travel or a pipe dream? It’s pretty clear which side Nature is on.

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    Learn more by listening to the episode “Could the “EmDrive” really work? on the Ask A Spaceman podcast, available on iTunes and on the Web at http://www.askaspaceman.com. 

  • Trump Won "Tens Of Thousands" More New York City Votes In 2020 Than In 2016
    Trump Won "Tens Of Thousands" More New York City Votes In 2020 Than In 2016

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 11/14/2020 – 22:00

    President Trump did significantly better in New York City in the 2020 election than he did in 2016, proving that Mayor Bill de Blasio is doing a great job doing everything he can to ruin the trust and loyalty of Democrats in his traditionally liberal city by pandering to far-left mobs and committing to making life as expensive as possible while the city’s economy goes to ruin due to mandatory Covid shutdowns.

    Not only did Trump do better in New York City in 2020, he fared better in the South Bronx, which is traditionally a Democratic stronghold, the New York Post noted. 

    The area is disproportionately Hispanic, meaning that the Trump’s appeal with Latino voters paid off in other areas aside from Miami-Dade county in Florida, where Trump also outperformed with Latino voters. 

    Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. said: “I don’t necessarily think it’s a pro-Trump vote as much as it is a wake-up call to Democrats.”

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    Curtis Sliwa, a Republican candidate for mayor told the Wall Street Journal: “The Democrats just assume, ‘Oh, you don’t have to worry about the Bronx. It’s just a lock.’ It’s still Democratic, but it’s starting to change.”

    Trump “more than doubled” the votes he got in three state Assembly districts in the South Bronx, according to in-person voting data compiled by CUNY’s Center for Urban Research. Trump received 76,612 more votes citywide in 2020 than he did in 2016. He also increased his totals in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. He saw a decrease in votes in Manhattan. 

    Trump saw the biggest outperformance in Staten Island’s 62nd Assembly district, where he received 44,776 votes versus the 40,776 he received in 2016. 

    GOP pollster John McLaughlin attributed Trump’s bump in numbers to his commitment to law and order. He also said that the message helped local GOP candidates: “We saw that the president was running even or ahead in a lot of these areas, and he created a foundation that was solid for these candidates.” 

    Democrat Amanda Septimo from the 84th District, which includes Melrose, Mott Haven and Hunts Point in the Bronx, said “she could feel support for Mr. Trump on the ground in the district” and that “Democrats needed to do a better job connecting with working-class communities”.

  • Election Distraction Has Taken Eyes Off Our Economic Ills
    Election Distraction Has Taken Eyes Off Our Economic Ills

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 11/14/2020 – 21:30

    Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,

    Lately it has been difficult to write about the economy because of all the noise flowing from the election and covid-19 hype. There is a growing reluctance to opine by many economic skeptics because it appears we have been wrong on recent predictions. Only time will tell if this is true due to the huge distortions now evident in the markets. Still, all this tends to diminish confidence in the ability to see what is ahead. This has forced not only me, but other economic watchers to go back and question all we hold true.

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    Unfortunately, other than moving a few pieces around the board, the recent actions by the Fed only continues to move back the day of reckoning. The “extend and pretend illusion” our economy remains on a sound footing is alive and well. One place this is evident is in the area corporate bond market where many bonds now hold an investment-grade BBB rating. If a company or bond is rated BB or lower it is known as junk grade, this means the probability the company will be able to repay its issued debt is seen as speculative. 

    In this troubling time of covid-19 where companies are being stressed and tested, we have watched the high yield option-adjusted spreads fall back towards pre-covid levels. The fact we have not seen yields rise as lending standers have tightened indicates the Fed has removed the liquidity problem. This has temporarily masked but has not solved the solvency problem. As the “lag time effect” kicks into gear expect a growing number of defaults and bankruptcies to take place.

    This will become more visible especially now that we are encountering a resurgence of the virus pandemic. The tightening of lending standards generally leads to a huge increase in interest rates but not so much today and with companies floating new bonds they are leveraging up their balance sheets as a way to stay in business. This doesn’t mean they are viable or will be in the future. It also brings about the question of whether they will be able to repay this debt especially if rates rise which at some point is very likely.

    Without a doubt, certain areas of the economy have been impacted far worse than others. Airlines, hotels, cruise-lines, and a few other sectors have been decimated. The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) published a report recently predicting that over nine million jobs could be lost in the US Travel & Tourism sector this year if barriers to global travel remain in place. The WTTC’s warning is just another latest reminder of the deep economic damage occurring due to the virus pandemic that continues to batter the economy. 

    WTTC’s research outlines between 10.8 million and 13.8 million jobs within travel and tourism remain at serious risk. According to the WTTC 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. Stimulus in this case is generally seen as government bailouts. Travel and tourism accounted for at least $1.84 trillion to the US economy and was responsible for 10.7% of all US jobs. 

    This is just one example of how much the economy has been affected. We should have no expectations that international travel or tourism will resume or return to normal in the near future. As this is being written, increased social distancing restrictions are being reimposed in Europe and the US. Companies adding to their debt load in order to survive while seeing their business erode are digging a deep hole from which they may never emerge. The ripple effect as this works its way through the economy makes this even more daunting.

    When we couple the underlying ramifications flowing from the trends above with the fact that automation and the use of robots to perform tasks that in the past have been done by humans we should be very concerned about the loss of jobs. This gives credence to the idea the Government and the Fed are holding all this mess together with simply a promise and a prayer. This creates a rather poor quality hook for which investors to hang their hats.

    Here is Jeffrey Gundlach presentation to CIEBA Financial Professionals titled “Hey Kids, Want Some Candy” on 10-20-20…

    Around 32 minutes into his presentation he hits an area that really brings home the issue we face huge problems ahead. 

  • Bay Area Food Bank Now Serves 500k Working-Poor As Demand "Doubles" 
    Bay Area Food Bank Now Serves 500k Working-Poor As Demand "Doubles" 

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 11/14/2020 – 21:00

    The virus pandemic is threatening another lost decade, similar to the Great Recession of 2007-2009, or even the Great Depression of the 1930s, for America’s working poor.

    Widespread permanent job loss and the collapse of small and medium-sized enterprises have become a severe risk to the broader recovery – as the economic fallout from the virus-induced downturn could linger for years. 

    Case in point, the San Francisco Bay Area has lost 350,000 jobs this year – leaving many households with food and housing insecurity problems ahead of the holiday season. 

    Local news station KQED offers a sobering reminder of the economic devastation left behind from the virus – and one that will likely continue to intensify as virus cases explode to new highs, forcing state officials to reimpose new social distancing restrictions. 

    KQED said, “food banks are racing to keep up with increased demand for food — and volunteers.”

    One of the top food banks in the state, called Second Harvest of Silicon Valley, has “literally doubled the amount of food we’re distributing,” said CEO Leslie Bacho. 

    Bacho continued: “We already serving a quarter-million people. Now we’re serving a half million people.” 

    She said many of the folks picking up care packages at food banks across the Bay Area are coming for the first time. “This is a testament to how the pandemic-induced economic crisis is disproportionately impacting low-wage workers,” she added. 

    “We are seeing so many people who are already just living on the edge, having to then burn through their savings,” Bacho said. “More than half the people we’re serving now have never sought food assistance before.”

    Someone named “Gabriel” sent Second Harvest of Silicon Valley a donation of around $1,300 – the letter Gabriel received from the food bank outlines the dire situation playing out in the Bay Area. 

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    With president-elect Joe Biden calling for 4 to 6-week lockdowns as coronavirus winter fast approaches, the jobless rate could soon start rising again as a double-dip recession could be nearing.  

    Despite trillions of dollars in stimulus, mainly for corporate elites and capital markets – the hundreds of thousands of San Franciscans depended on local area food banks is absolutely disturbing. 

    Readers may recall – Second Harvest has warned about nationwide food bank “meal shortages” by early Summer 2021. 

    To sum up, America’s socio-economic implosion is far from over as the second wave of the virus could result in a double-dip recession. 

  • Why GOP Loyalists And Candidates Keep Moving Left
    Why GOP Loyalists And Candidates Keep Moving Left

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 11/14/2020 – 20:30

    Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

    There is good reason to believe that the 2020 election was a repudiation of far-left social and economic policy in the United States. This interpretation at the very least has been taken to heart by many Democrats who lost seats in the US House and who now fear—with good reason—greater losses during the midterm 2022 elections. Many blame the factions who represent the most far-left elements within the party. Moreover, when we look at the US’s center-right party—i.e., the GOP—we find it made gains nationwide when both federal and state level offices are considered.

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    What is less clear, however is whether or not the usual center-left elements of the American political scene have been repudiated at all. One would be very hard pressed to make the case that this election illustrated any widespread appetite among Americans to embrace an agenda of lower government spending, cuts to social welfare, or restrained monetary policy. Although the media likes to portray Trump as a right-wing troglodyte, the fact is that Trump in 2020 did not run on a platform of overturning to any significant extent any of the Left’s victories solidified during the Obama years, including new gay marriage provisions, Obamacare, or increased social spending. Indeed, Trump increased government spending to unprecedented levels, imposed new gun controls, and did little to rein in a CDC bent on destroying the economic well-being of countless American families. 

    Americans’ Ideology Has Moved Left

    Perhaps Trump suspected that any sizable ideological turn to the right would doom him politically. If so, he was probably right to think so. Social policy related to gay marriage has become pretty much a nonstarter, and long gone is the old conservative social agenda that was arguably still popular ten years ago. Similarly, running on a platform of reining in federal spending would require outlining where a candidate plans to cut spending. Yet, federal spending on welfare programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid is consistently popular. Pledging to cut voters’ gravy train is not exactly a recipe for political success. 

    Many of Trump’s supporters—including most Republicans—appear to be fine with this. Even as it became clear the administration would generally embrace the center-left status quo—at least on domestic policy—Trump’s support among Republicans only increased over his term, rising from about 90 percent to 93 percent.

    There’s little evidence that the so-called silent majority, to the extent it exists, has any interest in scaling back social programs or taking a robust position against the policies of the Obama years. Consequently, if the GOP hopes to actually win elections, it needs to keep moving left. In other words, if the “center” keeps slowly moving leftward, then the center-right party will need to keep moving left as well.

    In a world where the Left to varying degrees controls nearly all educational and cultural institutions—as is indeed the case in the United States today—it is only natural that the ideological views of the voters will keep moving left as well. 

    Candidates Must Move Left, Too

    To win elections, political candidates will have to reflect these views. After all, winning elections involves—for the most part—a political party offering up candidates that can appeal to voters based on the voters’ preexisting ideological views. This will vary based on the jurisdiction in question, but candidates in national elections will have to appeal to the views of voters nationwide. State candidate such as governors will need to do the same with the states’ voters, and so on.

    Overall, if the ideological views held by the public are learned in colleges, high schools, and through Hollywood movies, political candidates can only be successful if they can package themselves in such a way as to appeal to these voters. If a political party can’t offer candidates and policy agendas that reflect the ideological views of at least a large minority of the voting population in the jurisdiction in question, it will simply fall into irrelevance.

    This same argument, of course, is often made by party members themselves.

    We can find examples of this from the days of George W. Bush. Bush planned to run for reelection in 2004, so his administration aggressively pushed what became the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003. This was at the time the largest expansion of the welfare state since the Great Society. It greatly expanded government spending on Medicare, especially on prescription drugs.

    The motivation, of course, was to pander to elderly voters who were quick to embrace the prospect of more “free stuff” paid by current wage earners. Naturally, libertarian elements within the Republican Party complained about this expansion of state power and state spending. But opponents of the administration’s plan were shouted down by party loyalists who insisted that expanding the welfare state in this manner would help secure a Republican majority for years to come.

    We now see similar logic being used by Trump’s supporters, and the underlying electoral philosophy has been the same in both 2005 and 2020. We’re told the candidate must be allowed to appeal to the voters in order to win reelection. And if that means abandoning all plans for cutting government spending or undoing the Left’s gains elsewhere, then that’s just what we have to do.

    Of course, embracing untrammeled growth in government spending was not always the recipe for winning an election. If we lived in the late nineteenth century, we’d find many Americans voting in favor of hard money, low tariffs, and low government spending. Indeed, Grover Cleveland was able to win the presidency twice appealing to these views. Once upon a time, it was possible to win elections by pledging to cut federal spending. 

    But this was only possible because a sizable portion of the population actually embraced laissez-faire to a significant extent. If the public has different ideological views, successful politicians will have to change accordingly. Ludwig von Mises drives home the point: 

    The Russian conservative is undoubtedly right when he points out that Russian Tsarism and the police of the Tsar was approved by the great mass of the Russian people, so that even a democratic state form could not have given Russia a different system of government.1

    Mises’s point was that if the voters want tsarism, then that’s what the voters will get. After all, “As long as the majority of the Russian people…stood behind tsardom,” Mises continued, then the Russian political class could only benefit from embracing tsardom as well. 

    Similarly, in modern America, so long as a sizable portion of the American electorate stands behind a ceaseless expansion of the size and power of the federal government, a politician will not suffer by taking the same position.

    Not surprisingly then, Trump loyalists were more than happy to either tacitly or explicitly embrace Trump’s big-spending, big-welfare agenda. Reelection required embracing the nation’s relentless ideological drift leftward. 

    What is the solution to this? Only after the direction of ideological and cultural trends change will political candidates be able to change how they appeal to voters. This requires a big change in the institutions that dictate ideological and cultural trends. However, most opponents of the Left, such as conservatives and libertarians, continue to think primarily in terms of fighting only short-term political battles. The Left, meanwhile, fights ideological, cultural, and political battles simultaneously. This is why eight years from now, GOP candidates and party activists will be embracing most everything implemented during the Biden-Harris years. It will be the only way to get elected.

  • Wall Street Bonuses "Wrecked By Pandemic" 
    Wall Street Bonuses "Wrecked By Pandemic" 

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 11/14/2020 – 20:00

    It certainly has been a chaotic year for finance professionals, many of whom have been forced to work from home or, for some, work from the Hamptons. As early as May, we outlined how Wall Street bonuses for 2020 were expected to slump. With 49 days left in the year, New York consulting firm Johnson Associates confirmed in a new report that year-end bonus payments for Wall Street would tumble. 

    Johnson Associates said third-quarter compensation analysis shows overall year-end incentives, which include cash bonuses and equity awards, will decline on the year, marking the second consecutive year of smaller awards. 

    Retail and commercial bankers are expected to be the hardest hit, with year-end incentive payments set to plunge by at least 25% to 30% compared with 2019 figures. Investment banking advisors were the next hardest hit, with their bonuses expected to decline by around 15% to 20% compared with last year. Bonuses for asset management, hedge funds, and private equity folks are expected to be slightly down, in the range between 5% to 10%. 

    “The pandemic is wreaking havoc on many parts of the U.S. economy this year, and the financial services industry is no exception,” said Alan Johnson, managing director of Johnson Associates. 

    However, while retail and commercial bankers and asset management firms are expected to see year-end compensation incentive declines, fixed income and equities traders could see large bonuses, anywhere from 20% to +45% over the previous year. 

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    Johnson expects some stabilization in 2021. He warns early projections indicate the pandemic will continue hurt the financial services sector. 

    “As compared to many sectors of the economy, select areas of financial services have rebounded. Unfortunately, as we look to 2021, even with an optimistic vaccine path, the pandemic will continue to negatively influence businesses, but perhaps to a lesser degree than in 2020. Headcount reductions will continue in the first half as companies transform and adapt. For 2021, we expect some stabilization with early projections for modest salary increases, and flat to slightly increased incentives,” he said.

    A similar trend is expected to play out in Europe, where investment banks are so deeply embroiled in reviving their failing businesses in an age of negative interest rates and unlimited quantitative easing that executive are expected to receive lower bonuses this year. 

  • The Google Election
    The Google Election

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 11/14/2020 – 19:30

    Authored by Michael Rectenwald via The Mises Institute,

    [This is the transcript of the eponymous talk presented at the Mises Institute’s Ron Paul Symposium on November 7, 2020, in Angleton, Texas.]

    “Don’t be evil” may no longer be Google’s official company motto, but it remains the last sentence of its Code of Conduct. As part of not being evil, Google maintains that “everything [it does] in connection with [its] work…will be, and should be, measured against the highest possible standards of ethical business conduct.”

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    Apparently, Google does not deem it unethical to fire an employee for expressing the research-based view that differences between the sexes/genders may include occupational proclivities. Google must not consider it unethical to blacklist conservative or otherwise nonleftist news sites, websites, and users. Google must believe that autocompleting searches with patent nonsense represents the highest ethical standards. Google maintains that factual search results representing the world as it is amounts to “algorithmic unfairness” and changing them to desired results using “Machine Learning Fairness” is highly ethical. That is, nonideological, nonaltered search results represent unfairness, while fairness is the result of informational affirmative action results manipulation—in some cases. Algorithmically ranking search results in favor of leftist or left-leaning politics and down-ranking conservative or right-wing sites is most ethical. It must consider rating the “Expertise/Authoritativeness/Trustworthiness” of websites using Wikipedia as meeting the highest ethical standards. Fact-checking only conservative or nonleftist news, often wrongly, is highly ethical. Discrimination against populist political movements and campaigns and favoring other, establishment movements and campaigns meets the highest possible standards of ethical business conduct. YouTube’s routinely demonetizing and censoring conservative or otherwise nonleftist content is ethical. Bombarding users with political ads based on their search profiles, and especially bombarding nonleftists with items having a leftist perspective, represents the highest ethics. Blatant declarations of the intent to prevent the reelection of a US presidential candidate using search rankings meets the highest standards of ethics, especially since “(1) biased search rankings can shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by 20% or more,” as Robert Epstein and Ronald E. Robertson conclude.

    In the wake of the riots across US cities over the past several months, I ran a Google search for “left-wing violence.” The top two results, from The Guardian and the New York Times, respectively, were entitled “White Supremacists behind Majority of US Domestic Terror Attacks in 2020” and “Far-Right Groups Are behind Most US Terrorist Attacks, Report Finds.” This is a highly ethical result, no doubt, especially when information on leftist violence was sought and no shortage of such articles exist. This is especially ethical, since the search analytics industry has found that the top three search results on Google drive over 70 percent of clicks. The top ten search results for the question, “Will Democrats steal the 2020 election?” included five articles about the prospect of Trump stealing the election, while all ten of the top ten results for “Will Trump steal the election?” were actually about the prospect of Trump stealing the election.

    All but leftists realize that Big Digital corporations like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and others lean left and squelch opposing views—to the point of creating an alternate reality. But few ask why they are apparently leftist, let alone satisfactorily answering the question—to my satisfaction, that is. How are we to understand the blatant and well-documented leftist bias and the censorship of nonleftist views and sites by these companies? Why leftist? Is the internet leftist merely because those in Silicon Valley have been indoctrinated into leftism?

    And should we adopt the view that since Google, Facebook, Twitter and others are private enterprises, they can be as biased and censoring as they like? After all, aren’t these private platforms and not public utilities, with no obligation to represent views with which they disagree? They are no more obliged to do so than I am obliged to allow some Antifa member into my home to spout his, her, or zir beliefs, right?

    These are the kinds of questions I address in this talk. The answers should go a long way toward explaining the disavowed yet blatant attempts on the part of Big Tech internet companies to decide the 2020 election, and much, much more. In terms of the election, they’ve interfered in the election with completely favorable coverage of one candidate and unfavorable content along with the near-complete blackout of favorable content about another. They’ve likewise made a rigged election result appear to be a credible result. Then they’ve censored or banned everyone from the president on down from talking about how the election was rigged. That’s more than an in-kind donation. They may be considered accomplices in a federal election crime. They represent a fraud on public credulity.

    1. The Governmentalization of Private Industry

    In Google Archipelago, I argue that these Big Digital goliaths, or what I call the Google Archipelago, act as appendages of the state, at the very least. They are state apparatuses, or, to use a postmodern neologism, they are “governmentalities.” In a series of lectures entitled Security, Territory, Population, the postmodern theorist Michel Foucault introduced the term “governmentality” to refer to the distribution of state power to the population, or the transmission of governance to the governed. Foucault referred to the means by which the populace comes to govern itself as it adopts and personalizes the imperatives of the state, or how the governed adopt the mentality desired by the government—govern-mentality. One might point to masking and social distancing as instances of what Foucault meant by his notion of governmentality. While Foucault’s usage has merit (yes, Foucault exhibited a few redemptive, libertarian tendencies), I adopt and amend the term to include the distribution of state power to extragovernmental agents—in particular to the extension and transfer of state power to supposedly private enterprises. This governmentalization of private enterprise, and not the privatization of governmental agencies and functions that leftists like Foucault decry, is the real problem with “neoliberalism,” as I see it.

    Or do they amount to the same thing? We are witnessing the governmentalization of private industry, the turning of supposedly private enterprises into state apparatuses, and the growth of the state through putatively private extensions of it.

    2. Governmentalities in Action

    For clear and pertinent examples of governmentalities in this sense, consider government contractors that comprise the so-called shadow government. As depicted in the documentary Shadow Gate—which was banned from YouTube after just one day—according to two whistle-blowers who worked for military and intelligence contractors for many years, government contractors like Dynology, Global Strategies Group, Canadian Global Information (CGI), and many others engage in intelligence projects that include interactive internet activities (IIA). Such “social media psychological warfare” and “social media influence operations” rely on masses of data that social media and other sources provide and are designed to influence individuals, groups, or populations to behave in ways desired by the “deep state,” or other customers. Desired behaviors include voting for particular political candidates; supporting desired political movements and outcomes; and opposing undesired political candidates, movements, and outcomes—both at home and abroad. According to the Shadow Gate whistle-blowers, social media psychological warfare, which includes fake news, was initially developed for intelligence agencies but has been used and sold by intelligence contractors independently. They claim that social media psyops were employed in an attempt to tie Trump to Russia and discredit his campaign. The dominant narrative, of course, is that it was used by Russia to benefit Trump’s election. According to the Shadow Gate whistle-blowers, it was also used to whip up the recent “protests” after the death of George Floyd, while other sources claim that and the hype about the protests was itself fear porn whipped up by Russia-initiated psyops. Still others maintain that the protests themselves were part of a Russian psyops campaign targeting black Americans.

    What does this have to do with Google, Facebook, and other digital media companies? IIA operations use and mine their sites, apparently gaining immunity from “fake news” designations. But these platforms are more than passive participants in personal data mining, social media psychological warfare games, and social media influence operations. A brief look at their inception, funding, and histories should make this clear.

    3. State and State-Connected Funding of Google and Facebook

    First, both Google and Facebook received start-up capital—both directly and indirectly—from US intelligence agencies. In the case of Facebook, the start-up capital came through Palantir, Accel Partners, and Greylock Partners. These funding sources either received their funding from, or were heavily involved in, In-Q-Tel.

    In 1999, CIA created In-Q-Tel, its own private sector venture capital investment firm, to fund promising start-ups that might create technologies useful for intelligence agencies. As St. Paul Research analyst Jody Chudley notes, “In-Q-Tel funded Thiel’s startup firm Palantir somewhere around 2004. In 2004, Accel partner James Breyer sat on the board of directors of military defense contractor BBN with In-Q-Tel’s CEO Gilman Louie. Howard Cox, the head of Greylock, served directly on In-Q-Tel’s board of directors.”

    In the case of Google, as independent journalist and former VICE reporter Nafeez Ahmed has detailed at great length, Google’s connections with the intelligence community and military run deep. Ahmed details that relationships with DARPA officials yielded start-up funding, and direct funding from the intelligence community (IC) followed. The IC saw in the internet unprecedent potential for data collection and the upstart search engine venture represented a key to gathering it.

    In 2003, Google began customizing its search engine under special contract with CIA for its Intelink Management Office, “overseeing top-secret, secret and sensitive but unclassified intranets for CIA and other IC agencies,” according to Homeland Security Today. In 2004, Google purchased Keyhole, which was initially funded by In-Q-Tel. Using Keyhole, Google began developing Google Earth.

    Intelligence agency backers also included In-Q-Tel itself. In-Q-Tel’s investment in Google came to light in 2005, when In-Q-Tel sold its $2.2 million in Google stocks. A no-bid contract with the NSA sister agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), followed in 2010. Google’s connections with the IC and military communities also involved personnel exchanges, including the acquisition of the former head of DARPA and Highland’s Forum cochair, Regina Dugan, who left the agency in 2012 to become a senior Google executive overseeing the company’s new Advanced Technology and Projects Group.

    “From its inception, in other words,” Ahmed writes,

    Google was incubated, nurtured and financed by interests that were directly affiliated or closely aligned with the US military intelligence community, many of whom were embedded in the Pentagon Highlands Forum.

    Second, and lest I be accused of the genetic fallacy, it should be noted that Google technologies were developed largely in connection with the IC and military and thus bear the earmarks of IC and military interests. And Google’s contracts with the IC have continued. Moreover, these platforms and social media outfits fully cooperate with the IC and military, handing over data to the NSA upon demand and granting them backdoor access to user data. Google was a deep-state asset from its inception and remains one to this day.

    Furthermore, it is possible that tools developed by the IC and military have been acquired by private contractors and are being used by these platforms and social media giants to influence the behavior of users of their services. In particular, former IC contractor Patrick Bercy alleges that social media psychological warfare tools that he developed for the Defense Department were acquired, possibly illegally, by General James Jones, formerly the National Security Adviser under then president Obama. In partnership with the Atlantic Council, where Jones is now the executive chairman emeritus, Facebook, Bercy alleges, is using social media psychological warfare tools, supposedly for the purposes of “restoring election integrity worldwide,” and “to combat election-related propaganda and misinformation from proliferating on its service.” It just may be that what is deemed “fake news” by Google and social media platforms represents the truth about the fake news that the platforms themselves are proliferating.

    In short, Google, Facebook and others are not strictly private sector entities; they are governmentalities in the sense that I have given to the term. They are extensions and apparatuses of the state. Furthermore, these platforms are governmentalities with a particular interest in the growth and extension of governmentality itself. This includes championing every kind of “subordinated” and newly created identity class that they can find or create, because such “endangered” categories require state acknowledgement and protection. Thus, the state’s circumference continues to expand. Big Digital is partial to the interests and growth of the state. It not only does business with statists but also shares their values. This helps makes sense of its leftist bent and their preference for the deep state Democrats. Leftism is statism.

    4. Russia, Russia, Russia! Or Chy-na!

    This talk would be incomplete without a treatment of the “actually existing socialism” in our midst, including its most significant, official state form, namely “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” i.e., China. Much ink has been spilled and many airwaves have been congested with the “Russian interference” narrative. Nary a day goes by without multiple references to Russia’s attempts to influence or interfere in US elections using social media. Donald Trump has been consistently portrayed as Putin’s puppet, even after the “Russian collusion” narrative officially fell apart. Less has been written and spoken about possible influence and interference by the Chinese Communist Party, although one may hear about this from a few sources. The recent revelations about the business dealings of Biden & Son in China brought the issue to the fore in those few outlying media and social media outlets that didn’t seek to deep-six the story. I don’t mean to suggest that Russia does not attempt to interfere in US elections or other national concerns but rather to note that CCP influence and interference attempts go largely unremarked upon or are otherwise dismissed while having no less if not more significant implications, especially where free information exchange and expression on Google and social media platforms are concerned.

    Likewise, it is worthwhile to consider the differences between the objectives of these respective state-driven domains. As National Security scholars Michael Clarke, Jennifer S. Hunt, and Matthew Sussex argue:

    For the Russian Federation, which has emerged as the West’s chief spoiler, the goal has to been to exacerbate existing social divisions in liberal democracies, to undermine public trust in key institutions, and to boost narratives around a host of statist themes: anti-immigration movements, the “alt-right,” and trade protectionism. In this way, Moscow has played the role of a wrecker, seeking to destroy the liberal order rather than replace it. It has utilized diaspora communities, fringe media, and political activists on the margins of political discourse as proxies, and has facilitated the leaking of compromising information to promote false narratives and conspiracy theories. China, on the other hand, has pursued an arguably more sophisticated approach given that it seeks gradually to supplant the Western order rather than simply undermine it. Its efforts therefore have been geared primarily around obtaining longer-term leverage through multiple channels of influence among elites in politics, business, and society.

    Of the many tactics it uses to advance its agenda of actively shaping foreign perceptions and behaviors, China practices what Victor Cha of the Center for Strategic and International Studies called “predatory liberalism.” China “leverages the vulnerabilities of market interdependence to exert power over others in pursuit of political goals.” China flexes its economic muscle to spread its ideology and guard its reputation. Examples include pressuring Apple to remove its HKmap.live app from iPhones sold in China due to pressure by Beijing because the app enabled “illegal behavior,” as protesters used it “to target and ambush police” and to “threaten public safety,” or so China claimed. Another involved the NBA. When Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted on October 4, 2019, in support of the Hong Kong protesters, he was pressured to delete his post and apologize for “offense” caused to the Chinese people. Serving as a proxy for the CCP, the NBA in turn precluded any economic damage to its Chinese market that such a rhetorical breach might have caused.

    Big digital platforms including Google, Facebook, and Twitter not only support the extension of domestic statism, they serve the expansion of foreign state ideology and power as well. While propaganda, censorship, and surveillance have turned social media into instruments of totalitarianism in China, China has invested millions into propaganda campaigns on social media and beyond its borders to extend its influence. Buying and usurping user accounts on Twitter and creating fake accounts on Facebook, for example, China seeks to influence the perception of the regime as well as promoting its agenda. Although Google’s Project Dragonfly was canceled and it is unlikely that Google will establish a search engine operative in China any time soon, Google nevertheless maintains offices and employees in China and sells cloud, AI, and other services there.

    In accommodating their state customers and ideological sponsors, the dominant search and social media platforms have come to resemble the governments that they effectively serve and reproduce. This is especially true where China is concerned. Google, Facebook, and Twitter have adopted the CCP’s penchant for the regulation of speech, the dissemination of propaganda, and the suppression of dissident views. A few examples of direct interventions in search-related and social media control should suffice:

    • Facebook blocked posts that referenced a Chinese virologist whose research traced the SARS-2 virus to a Wuhan lab.

    • Six Chinese nationals now work on Facebook’s “Hate-Speech Engineering” team to produce algorithms that rank, and block content deemed too conservative, among other tasks.

    • Twitter purged tens of thousands of accounts critical of the Chinese government just days ahead of the thirtieth anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4, 2019.

    • Twitter employees train Chinese officials to amplify their pro-China messaging.

    • YouTube has deleted comments critical of the Chinese Communist Party due to “error.”

    • In a case of contradictory non-fact-checking, Twitter allowed over ninety thousand tweets from the beginning of April through May 2020 from two hundred diplomatic and state-run media accounts that suggested that the coronavirus originated in the US or the US military, among other claims casting doubt on its Chinese origin.

    These are but a few of the examples of influence campaigns and tactics employed by China, and they do not represent the most egregious cases of the censorship and propaganda we’re encountering. Most of the censorship and propaganda is domestically oriented and produced. My point is more about shared ideological commitments and tactics than anything else.

    5. Trump or Not-Trump

    How does all this figure into the election? It’s clear that this presidential election has not been a contest between Trump and Joe Biden per se, but between Trump and not-Trump. It has been a contest between a boorish, rambling, irreverent, and politically incorrect gatecrasher versus a corrupt veteran of the political class. The “resistance”—which includes the mainstream media, the social media and “globalist” oligarchy, the neocons, the better part of the intelligence community, and an assortment of leftist political activists and radicals—has aimed at destroying the prior and supporting the latter. The political establishment has shown its sheer cynicism by propping up an enfeebled, high-stakes influence peddler and having him taken seriously.

    I’ve considered the possibility that the anti-Trump fervor has been based largely on aesthetic revulsion. Indeed, aesthetic revulsion has been cultivated and promoted by the sponsors of the resistance. But the sponsors of the resistance don’t hate Trump merely because he fails to reflect the image of the effete intelligentsia. After all, look at how they’ve rehabilitated George W. Bush. No, there’s more to it.

    Trump is a rogue parvenu who threatens (or threatened) the political establishment, not because he has [or had the potential to “drain the swamp,” an insurmountable task for any president or administration, but rather because he is unpredictable and might have stumbled upon and exposed “deep state” secrets and crimes. Trump has been an interloper, a nuisance, a thorn in the side of an elite cozy with elements that Trump has deemed inimical to American interests.

    Further, Trump’s brand of nationalism interferes (or interfered) with the global interests of those who do business with our new Cold War opposition, and not only the kind we saw recently exposed in the case of the Joe Biden Swindling Company.

    Finally, and most importantly, Trump has represented a line of defense, however tenuous and thin, of American liberties, liberties that stand in the way of a global governmental and extragovernmental order that thrives on lockdowns, masking, muzzling, banning, blacklisting, down ranking, memory holing, gaslighting, deleting, canceling, censoring, precensoring, and obliterating dissent and dissenters.

    Concluding Remarks

    Regardless of the election outcome, however, repressive and propagandistic governmentalities—including academia, cultural institutions, culture industries, information and intelligence technologies, mass media, political movements, social media, woke corporations, and more—are combining to effect a totalitarian creep under which its subjects are complicit in their own subjugation and hellbent to impose it on others.

    Whether Trump or not-Trump is finally declared the winner of the 2020 US presidential election, we are in for the battle of our lives. A constellation of state and state-extended apparatuses has openly declared war on liberty, on us. We are all thought criminals now. Risk aversion will not do. What we risk by being risk averse is everything that makes human life worth living. In the face of an enemy that brazenly revels in its totalitarian character, it is time to put everything on the line for liberty.

  • BLM/Antifa Thugs Attack Trump Supporters, Including Children, After D.C. "Million MAGA March"
    BLM/Antifa Thugs Attack Trump Supporters, Including Children, After D.C. "Million MAGA March"

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 11/14/2020 – 19:20

    Update (2130ET): As the evening has progressed, so has the violence – almost entirely committed by leftist thugs against conservatives.

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    What was that about unity?

    *  *  *

    Massive crowds of people converged at Freedom Plaza in Washington on Saturday, joining other rallies around the country to show support for President Donald Trump and ask for fairness in the election process.

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    As The Epoch Times’ Allen Zhong reports, the participants marched to the U.S. Supreme Court holding signs that read “Stop the Steal,” “Make America Fair Again,” and “Trump 2020.” Before the start of the march, the crowd heard speeches from prominent Trump supporters including Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and My Pillow founder Mike Lindell. Several other prominent figures including Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) and former Trump advisor Sebastian Gorka were also on the speaking list.

    Participants chanted slogans calling to “stop the steal,” which is also the name of the grassroots movement organizing the event in part. Organizer Ali Alexander told The Epoch Times in a previous interview that the events are a grassroots effort by a coalition of about a hundred activists and influencers to show “support for President Trump and fair elections and transparent counting.”

    Similar events, although smaller in scale, were organized in around 50 other states on the same day.

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    Everything was very peaceful (not just mostly peaceful) until the crowds started to disperse and groups of BLM and Antifa activists began to appear, agitating attendees, and eventually turning to violence… even against children.

    As The Post Millennial reports, some footage is very disturbing and depicts a little girl being assaulted.

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    All out violence did not occur until people began dispersing. Some footage depicts a man physically assaulted, resulted in a head wound.

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    Other footage shows a young Trump supporter fleeing for safety as he is stalked by Antifa. He eventually sees police and yells for help.

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    The most disturbing piece of footage depicts a family being attacked by Antifa. A mother is seen attempting to flee the area with her small daughter. He daughter is eventually thrown to the ground in the middle of a fight.

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    More footage depicts Antifa stomping on a mans head.

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    Some footage shows people crying in fear as they are pursued by the militants.

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    It remains unknown how many individuals have been arrested but some footage depicts the police arresting people.

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    Developing…

    So – when will the media admit that the boarding up of stores/businesses/homes ahead of the election was not out of fear of a Biden victory, but a Trump win and the inevitable mostly-non-peaceful attacks and looting that would inevitably follow.

    Perhaps this is why Floridian Norma Scott says she will support Trump until the end…

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    Norma had been vocal about her support for President Donald Trump before the election, and sees no reason to stop now. “I’m supporting Trump right up until the very end,” Scott said in her Trump shirt and buttons, carrying a flag.

  • Goldman Pinpoints Temperature Below Which COVID-19 Outbreaks Start To Accelerate
    Goldman Pinpoints Temperature Below Which COVID-19 Outbreaks Start To Accelerate

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 11/14/2020 – 19:00

    In a recent note to clients, a team of researchers at Goldman Sachs took a close look at temperatures and studied whether there was a correlation with temperatures. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the team found a strong negative correlation between confirmed cases and temperature, with the number of the former going up while the number for the latter goes down.

    As the regression modeled by Goldman shows, the further temperatures drop with a modest lag between the summer and the winter, the more extreme the surge in COVID-19 cases. This applies in both the US and Europe.

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    Using fixed effects modeling, the Goldman team then tried to strip out other factors to try and isolate and expose the influence of temperature on case growth.

    Interestingly enough, the analysts analysis found that no matter the difference in statewide policies and enforcement, cases appeared to wax and wane along with changes in temperature, appearing to resist most efforts to control the virus.

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    This notion isn’t all that surprising. Most other coronaviruses (ie the common cold), along with various influenza strains, are heavily influenced by temperature and seasonal effects (hence “flu season”.

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    Medical literature cited by Goldman explains the seasonality trend in two key ways: Increase indoor social activity for “hosts”, which increases exposure, along with the cold weather’s impact on the immune system and general health (making individuals more vulnerable).

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    Armed with these models, Goldman’s team of analysts produced a set of projections showing that the economies of the US and Europe will likely slow significantly during Q1 and Q4, followed by a springtime thaw as new case numbers start to recede.

  • Colorado Professor Compares Questioning Voting Results To Holocaust Denial
    Colorado Professor Compares Questioning Voting Results To Holocaust Denial

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 11/14/2020 – 18:30

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    We have been discussing how the celebration of Joe Biden’s election as a “unifying” and “healing” moment has been lost on many who are calling for blacklists and retaliatory actions against anyone viewed as “complicit” in the Trump period.  Indeed, for years, I have been writing about a rising McCarthyism in our country  and the growing threat to both free speech and academic freedom. This hateful or unhinged rhetoric has on occasion come from law professors, but most academics have retained a modicum of restraint and tolerance.  For that reason, it was disappointing to read a bizarre attack from University of Colorado Professor Paul Campus who compared my discussion of possible voting irregularities to Holocaust denial.

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    Professor Campus writes for a legal site called Lawyers, Guns and Money and clearly took umbrage over my discussion of recent challenges filed over the 2020 presidential election this morning. The segment addressed the recent ruling in Pennsylvania that the Secretary of State violated the law in extending a deadline.  I also addressed President Obama’s comments about how these challenges may be undermining democracy. I noted that confirming the vote count only reinforces democracy, particularly in identifying problems for future elections.

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    My comments on a computer glitch in Michigan was the focus of the posting and generally my statement that we need to review the actual evidence that emerges from these cases. I have repeatedly stated that I do not believe that the current challenges are likely to overturn the election of Biden as the president-elect. However, I have stated that there is no reason why these challenges should not be considered and problems addressed. There have been irregularities ranging from the improper order n Pennsylvania to deceased voters in Nevada to wrongly awarded votes in Michigan.  Again, I have emphasized that these remain localized problems and there remains no evidence of systemic problems that would overturn the results in various states.

    Campus however ignores the very interview that he references and falsely claims that I am “going on national TV telling lies to promote a paranoid conspiracy theory believed by tens of millions of Americans: that the presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump by massive amounts of voter fraud.”

    Every interview that I have given has included a statement that there is no such evidence and that it is unlikely that such evidence will emerge.  However, while some were claiming the absence of serious irregularities within 24 hours of the race being called for Biden, I have noted that we are still waiting to see any underlying evidence in these cases.  At the same time, I have criticized the Trump legal team (in the very interview Campos references) and said that it was time for the team to produce claimed evidence. I have also criticized President Trump for his rhetoric.  Indeed, liberal sites have cited my interviews as expressing doubt over the evidence of widespread fraud.

    Yet, Campos declared that this commentary amounts to Holocaust denial. (By the way, he includes a tweet from a person falsely suggesting that I failed to reveal that the software in Michigan may actually have been the result of human error. I actually said repeatedly in the interview that it appeared to be human error and that there was no evidence of any nefarious purpose. I argued that it would be useful, regardless of the findings, to look at the performance of new systems and software:

    “What I don’t understand about this rush to end all challenges is what is being achieved here? People treating the president-elect as the president-elect. Most of us are supporting his going forward with the transition.

    But we also don’t see the great harm to democracy in guaranteeing that votes were counted. If nothing else, not just for his election but for future elections. This is a very different election. We used new systems, new software; shouldn’t we take a look at that and resolve these questions?”

    Campos however called for my termination for stating such views:

    Should a history department continue to employ a Holocaust denier? Let me sharpen that up a bit: Should a history department continue to employ a Holocaust denier whose academic speciality is the Holocaust?…

    To pursue this analogy further, Turley is the kind of mendacious troll who would just ask questions about whether the gas chambers and the death camps really existed, while of course acknowledging that many Jews — maybe even hundreds of thousands! — died because of “harsh conditions” in the concentration camps etc. etc. so you’re actually libeling him by calling him a Holocaust denier etc. etc. (BTW before anybody gets to that I don’t know or care whether Turley himself is Jewish, or whether he lost family in the Holcaust [sic] etc. etc. because the analogy is valid in any case m’kay snowflakes?).

    Campos goes on to call for my shunning by my faculty and professors everywhere.  He also notes that I would ideally be fired for such an interview:

    “If Turley were a contract faculty member it would be appropriate to fire him immediately for promoting paranoid conspiracy theories directly related to his area of purported professional competence…. It’s s tricky question, but it’s a real one, and Turley should at a minimum be excoriated and shunned by anyone in legal academia in possession of a brain and a conscience.”

    We have been discussing efforts to fire professors who voice dissenting views of the basis or demands of recent protests, including an effort to oust a leading economist from the University of Chicago as well as a leading linguistics professor at Harvard.  It is part of a wave of intolerance sweeping over our colleges and our newsrooms.

    It is therefore an ironic moment as someone who has been writing about the growing intolerance of dissenting views on our campuses and efforts to fire academic.  Some have been targeted for engaging in what is called “both sides rhetoric” rather than supporting a preferred narrative or viewpoint.

    Campos is arguing that it “would be appropriate to fire” any professor who stated that we should allow these challenges to be heard even though they have not and are unlikely to produce evidence of systemic fraud to overturn these results.  That is now a common view of academic freedom and viewpoint tolerance in academia.

    In the end, I would defend Campos in his posting such views. Unlike Professor Campos, I do not believe that he should be fired for holding opposing views or even calling for others to be fired. That is the cost of free speech. Indeed, Professor Campos is the cost of free speech.

  • Shorting The Robinhood "Herd" Can Produce Consistent Returns, New Paper Finds
    Shorting The Robinhood "Herd" Can Produce Consistent Returns, New Paper Finds

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 11/14/2020 – 18:00

    We previously reported that one of the most profitable strategies on Wall Street was taking the other side of whatever the hedge fund consensus has been.

    We have also bore witness to a market so insanely rigged by the Federal Reserve that retail investors conditioned to “buy the dips” at all costs have routinely outperformed hedge funds, who, unlike retail investors, probably still stop for at least half a second to consider the notion of an iota of risk, which of course no longer exists and immediately puts hedge funds at a disadvantage now – as we noted back in May.

    And while hedge funds continue – err, sucking, to use the technical term – it looks like the replacement strategy is now fading whatever positions are popular among the Robinhood retail “herd”, according to Bloomberg.

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    The herd mentality of Robinhood users results in excess returns of 14% on average when traders first pile in, but then eventually leads to a reversal of over 5% the next month, according to a new study. 

    The reasoning is simple: the app’s simple interface appeals to simple traders, who are easily wowed by the most “attention grabbing” names – all together. Users are more likely to buy securities on the app’s “Top Mover” list more aggressively than other names, the researchers noted. 

    Behavioral finance pioneer Terrance Odean, who helped author the study, said: “Robinhood users are more subject to attention biases. The combination of naïve investors and the simplification of information is associated with herding episodes.”

    The paper concluded that selling a security after a “herding event” and then buying it back five days later would deliver a 3.5% return consistently. For securities where the “herding event” was more extreme, the returns were “nearly double”.

     

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    Researchers believe that hedge funds are using similar strategies, as they noted a spike in short interest in names where Robinhood “herding events” had taken place. Perhaps this is why Point72 and other funds were scrambling to get Robinhood user data after the site decided it would prevent tracking sites and hedge funds from accessing data about how many users owned particular stocks on its platform. 

    Cohen’s firm reached out to other platforms “just hours” after Robinhood restricted access to its API, we noted. Additionally, the owner of Robintrack.net, the website that aggregated data from Robinhood, told Business Insider he had “seen evidence that Point72 and quant hedge fund D.E. Shaw” were trying to scrape the site’s data. 

    The study concluded: “How information is displayed can both help and hurt investors. The simplified user interface influences investors decision.”

  • Donald Trump's Likeliest Path To Staying In Office
    Donald Trump's Likeliest Path To Staying In Office

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 11/14/2020 – 17:35

    Authored by Paul du Quenoy via TheCritic.co.uk,

    As Joe Biden tentatively plans his transition to presidential office, national obsession revolves around incumbent President Donald Trump’s audacious attempts to remain in the White House.

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    Backed by almost all Republicans – the exceptions being a handful of moderates, contrarians, and some who bear major personal grudges against him – Trump has refused to accept that Biden won and has not conceded. Legal challenges are in process. The state of Georgia, and probably other states with close votes, will conduct laborious recounts. The Justice Department and Senate Judiciary Committee have opened investigations. Evidence of possible voter fraud and other irregularities continue to percolate, even while rumours, generally based on “anonymous sources” that may not prove terribly reliable, suggest that Trump’s team, and possibly even Trump himself, are doubtful of a favourable outcome.

    Critical government departments and agencies, including some dealing with national security, are refusing to facilitate Biden’s transition. Just days after Trump’s proclaimed loss, and in an unusual move for a president expected to leave office only ten weeks hence, he replaced much of the leadership of the US Defence Department with loyalists and is similarly expected to purge the leadership of the intelligence agencies and other important bodies whose current leaders no longer enjoy his confidence.

    Legal challenges on a range of relevant issues will almost certainly continue until at least 14 December, when the decisive Electoral College will meet to cast the final votes that will determine the winner of the election. That constitutional body, which is designed to balance brut majority rule with America’s federal system, comprises electors chosen by each state in numbers equal to the state’s number of legislators in Congress: two Senators per state plus a variable number of Representatives proportional to state population size. Each elector in fact casts two votes: one for president and one for vice president, even though in practice presidential and vice-presidential candidates appear together as “running mates” on a campaign “ticket” that voters nominally chose in one ballot.

    Debate rages about whether the various recounts and lawsuits can overturn a sufficient number of votes to matter. Trump is expected to continue legal filings aimed at disqualifying enough ballots to reverse the results in several crucial states where he is projected to lose. The maximalist anti-Trump position holds that little or no movement is warranted or even possible on the scale the president would need to overturn the projected results, and that he is deluding himself and embarrassing the country by refusing to acknowledge Biden’s victory.

    Some left-wing commentators have tried to coax Trump into conceding with misplaced appeals to the sanctity of American democracy and practical suggestions that accepting defeat graciously now might enable Trump to stage a comeback in 2024 or at least save the Republican Senate majority, which depends on winning at least one of two runoff elections in Georgia.

    The pro-Trump position suggests that claimed legal violations, either in invalid ballots or procedural errors, could disqualify hundreds of thousands of votes and award the president a second term. The most steadfast partisans of this view, including the entire Republican Congressional leadership and party apparatus, hold that conceding before these matters are settled would betray American democracy, imperil the integrity of the electoral system, and possibly create a situation in which Republicans could be barred from ever again winning the presidency. They look with hope to the federal judiciary, much of which was appointed by Trump, and especially to the Supreme Court, which has a six-to-three Republican supermajority of Justices, half of whom Trump appointed.

    Thus constituted, the Supreme Court could easily rule in his favour in a strictly partisan vote, just as it did for George W. Bush with a slimmer and less conservative majority in the 2000 election, in a ruling with no significant precedent that the sharpest legal minds in the land did not think would go as it did. On the Saturday before Election Day, Trump himself mused – perhaps not facetiously – about winning re-election in this very way, parenthetically thanking the Supreme Court in advance during a Pennsylvania rally speech.

    So far, the media debate revolves almost entirely around the final tabulation of votes. If enough evidence of fraud surfaces, and if court rulings based on that evidence favour Trump decisively, it is possible that he could win by court decision.

    Another scenario, however, lies in the recesses of the American Constitution. A significant part of Trump’s legal strategy is oriented toward preventing crucial states from certifying results that would be averse to him. All states require vote certification before electors are dispatched. Two states, Maine and Nebraska, allow slates of electors to be split in their support of candidates, but neither is among the states in contention. If Trump can throw sufficient dirt on the electoral process to convince the courts to issue injunctions against certification in just enough states, neither candidate would win the majority of 270 electoral votes needed to triumph in the Electoral College.

    In that scenario, Article Two of the US Constitution, as modified by the Twelfth Amendment, provides for a “contingent election” in which the president is chosen by the House of Representatives from among the top three electoral vote winners, while the vice president is chosen by the Senate (recall that the electoral voting for president and vice president are separate).

    A “contingent election” provides for the vice president to be elected by a simple majority of votes cast by individual Senators. With a Republican Senate majority in the current Congress, Mike Pence would presumably win re-election as vice president. In the bigger contest, however, the House’s vote for president is not by individual ballot, but rather by state delegation en bloc. That means that all the Representatives from each state would cast one collective vote for president. In the current Congress, 26 out of the 50 state delegations are majority Republican. Assuming they deliver strict party-line votes, Trump would win the contingent election and be constitutionally re-elected.

    This procedure is obscure, but not unprecedented in choosing American presidents. Thomas Jefferson was elected president in a contingent election in 1801, when the electoral vote in the previous year’s election resulted in a tie between him and incumbent president John Adams. In 1825, Adams’s son John Quincy Adams also won the presidency in a contingent election, in which four candidates split the Electoral College vote that resulted from the election of 1824. The younger Adams prevailed over Andrew Jackson, who had won large pluralities in both the popular and electoral votes. Neither of the losers in those elections was happy, but the winners’ presidencies, though controversial in other ways, were untarnished by the circumstances of their elections, firmly founded, as they were, in constitutional law. In 1836, a third contingent election took place when all of Virginia’s electors declined to vote for Millard Fillmore’s unpopular vice-presidential running mate, Richard Mentor Johnson. Depriving Johnson of an Electoral College majority in the vice-presidential vote, the constitutionally required Senate vote was duly held and elected Johnson contingently, again with no ill effect on his valid, if obscure, tenure.

    Times have changed since then, and explaining this procedure to average Americans of today, a large percentage of whom have no idea what the Electoral College is or does, disapprove of it if they do, and would rather tear down a statue of Jefferson than learn about how he was elected president, will add layers of confusion and strife in an already tortured election year. It is, of course, only one possible way in which the brewing crisis could be resolved, but no matter which candidate ultimately prevails, half the country will be absolutely convinced that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. A contingent election, however, would provide at least a patina of respectable constitutionalism.

  • Lori Lightfoot Tells Chicago: Cancel Thanksgiving, Avoid Family, Days After Hosting Crowded Biden Street Party
    Lori Lightfoot Tells Chicago: Cancel Thanksgiving, Avoid Family, Days After Hosting Crowded Biden Street Party

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 11/14/2020 – 17:10

    Chicago mayor and “woke” intellectual giant Lori Lightfoot, who has let her city go to complete hell in a handbasket over the course of the last 6 months, has defended her call for Chicago residents to cancel their “traditional” Thanksgiving plans in a display that the arrogance of liberal politicians knows no bounds. 

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    Her decision comes not even a week after she was seen amidst a large crowd on Chicago streets partying on the heels of a Joe Biden Presidential victory. 

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    Lightfoot issued a “Stay-at-Home Advisory for Chicago” which goes into effect November 16, 2020 at 6:00AM last week.

    She told residents to “stay home unless for essential reasons”, to “stop having guests over – including family members” and to “cancel traditional Thanksgiving plans”. 

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    She was asked about the hypocrisy of shutting down her city days after rallying large crowds by MSNBC’s Steph Ruhle last week. 

    Ruhle asked: “One of the reasons people feel frustrated or skeptical is they are getting a lot of mixed messages. What do you say to those who are criticizing you were less than a week ago you went out and stood before a massive crowd who was celebrating Joe Biden’s victory and now you’re saying your city has to shut down? How do you have one and not the other?” 

  • Is Another "Crisis" Imminent: The Fed Must Double QE In 2021 But It Needs A Catalyst
    Is Another "Crisis" Imminent: The Fed Must Double QE In 2021 But It Needs A Catalyst

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 11/14/2020 – 16:55

    One certainly can’t blame the Fed for not doing enough to stabilize markets during the covid crisis: having expanded its balance sheet by over $3 trillion this year alone and injecting $120 billion in liquidity every month, the US central bank – which is also buying corporate bonds and junk bond ETFs – remains the first and last line of defense for any equity drawdown.

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    As an aside, and for those asking why the Fed continues to “confuse” markets with the economy, the answer is simple: since the value of financial assets in the US economy at a record 620%+ of GDP, for the Fed capital markets are the functional equivalent of the economy since a market crash would destroy the highly financialized US economy, and thus can never be allowed.

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    There is just one problem: after a year in which the US budget deficit hit a record $3.1 trillion, and with the US facing a deluge in new debt issuance in 2021 which has already led to the biggest October deficit on record and which at $284 billion suggests another full-year deficit of well over $3 trillion (assuming no further lockdowns)…

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    … the Fed’s current rate of debt monetization – read QE – is simply not enough.

    As Bank of America’s Michael Hartnett calculated in his latest Flow Show report published on Friday, over the next year, “Treasury supply will significantly outstrip Fed purchases in Q4 & Q1“, and this is even without factoring in the possibility of another major fiscal stimulus.

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    The problem: while the Treasury faces net Treasury issuance of roughly $2.4 trillion, the Fed is expect to monetize less than half of this total, or $960 billion. Considering that in 2020 under the auspices of “helicopter money” (from which we remind readers there is simply no coming back) the Fed will have monetized virtually every dollar of net issuance, this is a huge cliff and one which could lead to a shock drop in Treasury prices if the market reprices (lower) its expectations for Fed monetizations.

    In short: the Fed needs to more than double its scheduled monthly QE in 2021 just to catch up to where it was in 2020.

    Of course, other central banks are facing the same challenge of insufficient monetization and some have already taken appropriate steps: recently both the RBA and BoE announced an expansion in their QE.

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    Just next month, the ECB is also expected to announce a dramatic expansion of its QE operations and as Variant Perception writes, the central bank “may end up absorbing all government supply in 2021″:

    The ECB has provided a clear indication that additional stimulus will come in December. A further expansion of PEPP could result in the ECB purchasing most, if not all, of the EGB supply in 2021.

    Although the ECB left the monetary stance unchanged at their last Governing Council meeting, the press statement indicated that policy instruments will be recalibrated in line with new economic forecasts published in December – providing strong indication that fresh stimulus will be rolled out by year-end.

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    Given the slowdown in the rate of PEPP purchases over the summer (in part reflecting seasonal effects), there is still more than half of the existing capacity remaining in the current expanded envelope. As such, adding further capacity to the PEPP facility could result in the ECB absorbing all of the EGB supply in 2021.

    According to VP, “so far the ECB has purchased €617BN through the PEPP facility, leaving €733BN for future purchases” and adds that it assumes “that the ECB expands the envelope in December by €500BN (a lower amount would not be material, while a higher amount would perhaps not be justified for now given the existing capacity) and extends the purchasing window by six months to end-2021.”

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    Putting this number in context, Eurozone governments have issued around €1.1 trillion of bonds YTD (including syndications), and even assuming a similar volume of issuance in 2021, this would fall in the ECB’s expanded PEPP envelope (at the current run rate, there would be €750bn in PEPP holdings by December, with a €500bn envelope expansion taking remaining capacity to ~ €1.1trn). d

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    And now that German opposition to out of control debt-funded stimulus has effectively been neutered, it is only a matter of time before Lagarde announces an expansion to QE which will ensure that the ECB monetizes 100% (if not more) of all net issuance in Europe (one caveat made by Variant Perception here is that “the ECB has had to repeatedly fend off recent criticism from some quarters that it is engaged in monetary financing. This argument will become more difficult to make if the ECB finds itself buying up all of the EGB supply that comes to market” although we doubt this will be a major hindrance if Lagarde can sell the alternative as a doomsday scenario, something central bankers are quite good at).

    Which brings us back to the Fed: with the RBA, BOE and ECB all set to monetize 100% of domestic net issuance – in other words, central banks will henceforth fund the entire sovereign budget deficit which is what MMT and helicopter money is all about – it’s only a matter of time before Jerome Powell will join the club, and we expect that at some point in the next 3-4 months, the Fed will announce it too will double its monthly rate of debt purchases.

    The only question is what crisis will be used as a scapegoat for the next massive QE expansion: as a reminder, the covid pandemic emerged in at a very convenient time for the central bank – just as the business cycle was set to go into contraction, with the Fed having launched “Not QE”, and with rates at a tiny 1.50 (which are now back to zero). And thanks to the $3 trillion “covid” liquidity injection, the Fed has effectively reset the business cycle for the foreseeable future. It just needs to do so again, and we are completely confident that Powell and company will be completely successful in finding the right crisis to blame it on.

    Furthermore, now that we have Congressional gridlock for at least 2 more years (absent a dramatic victory for Democrats in the Georgia Senate race runoffs in January), the Fed’s much desired multi-trillion fiscal stimulus will simply not come, leaving it as the only source of potential stimulus for the foreseeable future, effectively ensuring that (much) more QE is just a matter of when not if.

    In fact, one can argue that the creeping economic shutdowns, first at the state level and soon at the Federal, have just one purpose: to catalyze the next crash… and next bailout by the Fed.

  • Biden, Bitcoin, & The Right-To-Privacy Coins
    Biden, Bitcoin, & The Right-To-Privacy Coins

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 11/14/2020 – 16:45

    Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

    As the coup against We The People progresses through the predicable stages of color revolution, it’s time to assess what the markets truly think about all of this.

    Where oh where is capital flowing to and why?

    Because if you answer that question you’ll get an idea of where things are truly headed.

    And the big news of this week isn’t the 1500 point gap up on Monday’s open on the Dow Jones Industrials because Pfizer was given free air time to feed the algorithms.

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    That is especially true with the lack of sustained follow through all week, leaving a massive gap to be filled regardless of day’s bullish open.

    That isn’t to say the Dow Jones isn’t in a bullish position. It is. But it is for far different reasons than, “Yay! COVID is over.” COVID’s not over, folks.

    They are only getting started with the next round of fear mongering and intimidation to lock the country down again. You know, Dark Winter, and all that.

    President-select Joe Biden between bites of jello and sips of Ensure is echoing the line coming from Europe — national mask mandates, lockdowns, mandatory vaccination.

    They’ve already done all this having locked down their populations over the dreaded ‘second wave’ which they created by not fighting the virus naturally but rather trying to hide from it.

    That said, while this week is sketchy, leaving a gap to be filled on the chart, the Dow is in a good position in the larger picture, from last week’s set up.

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    But is that because of happy days returning or people fleeing Europe and chaos?

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    And that brings me to this week’s thesis: Bitcoin’s move above $14,000 is the most significant move by any market in the world. Period.

    As a proxy for the entire cryptocurrency space, Bitcoin represents, alongside U.S. equities, the best option for normal people to maintain their wealth if they need to have it cross political borders.

    As Martin Armstrong talks about all the time, it is the subtle shifts in capital flow which reveal what’s about to happen next in markets. That’s why I don’t use any complex tools when charting. I took at the bars in relation to each other and through time frames to get an idea of what the larger picture is.

    Anything more complex, for me, creates analysis paralysis.

    So, this is why bitcoin, in conjunction with the big move into stocks, is signaling the move of market players away from assets with higher counter-party risk towards assets with lower, effectively, default risk.

    There are other signs, but given the significance of this week’s price action, I think these are your best signs.

    Gold’s bounce off support near $1850 back toward $1900 today is a subtle sign. You can’t create the fiction of a Biden victory being good for markets without also fanning the flames of inflation and lack of faith in the government’s ability to service its debt.

    Trump is refusing to concede and the Democrats’ rule in the House under severe challenge with the Republicans having flipped, so far, 10 seats. That number should rise once the vote challenges worm their way through the courts.

    If Michigan’s vote is successfully fought, John James will win there and Mitt Romney’s impending defection won’t matter.

    In any case there is no real resolution to this election that screams anything other than an MMA cage fight crossed with outtakes from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.

    Personally I think seeing Kevin McCarthy chasing Nancy Pelosi around with a chainsaw would be good for cable ratings. Gods know, AT&T could use the revenue boost.

    None of this is instilling confidence in anyone with any sense. There will not be stable government in D.C. regardless of what happens between now and when the Electoral College votes.

    It’s either the most vicious kind of gridlock or draconian power plays which result in a collapse of the union into the 2022 elections.

    But what we can say is that capital is making its plans now. Chinese stocks are flying. Russian stocks are as well. Commodity prices are rising in structurally important places — copper, soybeans, corn, wheat, nickel, lead, meat.

    And the promise from the elites Biden is a mouthpiece for is for more supply chain destruction. More fear. More liquidation of the middle class forced into submission through deliberate policy decisions in Washington, Albany, Sacramento, Lansing and Springfield.

    That’s why bitcoin’s move above $14,000 is so important. Not only is this the highest weekly close in nearly four years, it signals a breakout from the broad consolidation pattern in place since it went parabolic in January 2018.

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    If history holds to supply and demand patterns after each of bitcoin’s previous reward pool halvings, we should see it skyrocket from here. All the fundamentals are there and they are all lining up perfectly.

    But bitcoin isn’t the end all/be all of the crypto-space, bitcoin maximalist protests notwithstanding.

    I’ve been chastised, mildly, by readers recently about my silence on other matters, such as the strong support privacy coins are starting to receive in the marketplace.

    What I’ll say is this. I’ve been waiting for months to see the technical signal thrown by bitcoin before I would broaden my discussion of crypto.

    If bitcoin wasn’t breaking out, if it was still being tossed around like gold through off-chain, cash-settled futures action on the CRIMEX, then there was no real hope of momentum driving into the alt-coin space.

    And I’ve been right in that call. With the exception of Monero (XMR), most privacy-oriented coins have languished as Ethereum (ETH) and DeFi have dominated the crypto-talk along with bitcoin’s emergence as a store-of-value monetary asset.

    And even Monero’s price action isn’t anywhere close to as strong as bitcoin’s (see chart below).

    Now that the coup is in process to fully transform the U.S. into a technocratic police state nearly indistinguishable from Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report, having the discussion about privacy coins is appropriate.

    Because the reality is that whether governments like it or not, capital flows to where it is treated best. And if the attacks on personal and financial privacy are going to accelerate into the Great Reset then those cryptocurrencies which offer not only good store-of-value propositions but also complete transaction anonymity will see a lot of inflows.

    The reason Monero took off earlier in the year was it finally making privacy mandatory, rather than a user option. You have to opt-out of privacy when using Monero. This strengthens the privacy protocol by ensuring more input transactions to mix up to spit out clean outputs.

    Other coins that have nods to privacy, some of which I like, aren’t as strong, ultimately.

    This is simply the best way to ensure a user can take their coins and break the chain-of-custody from the perspective of outside observers.

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    Monero’s chart is similar to, but not as technically strong as bitcoin’s. That said, the October close above the 2019 high was a strong signal that the rally in Monero is just beginning.

    It has a long way to go to best the mania high of 2018 and won’t likely get there until bitcoin is much, much higher. And I’m seeing firming like this across the entire privacy space in coins like Zcash (ZEC) and DASH, though DASH is less privacy-focused and more normie-space medium-of-exchange focused.

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    The test for DASH this week is a close above $77.83. That should set up a trending move sympathetic with Bitcoin back towards the high above $100 from the summer.

    From a tax perspective all the government can do is trace up to the point the money ‘disappeared’ and tax the transactions to that point. With most of the on-ramps to crypto, especially for Americans, KYC/AML compliant any initial capital gains taxes will be visible.

    But after that it becomes a question of enforcement and diminishing returns for effort expended on the part of taxhounds. And from that perspective, the burgeoning DeFi sector is important because it is opening up the use-case arguments for cryptocurrencies expanding the potential pool of adopters overall, thereby making widespread enforcement that much harder to implement.

    With Millennials looking at crypto far more favorably than my generation and especially the Boomers, draconian enforcement of tyrannical tax policy won’t last for long.

    Moreover, if Biden thinks he’s going to raise the upper end tax rate to 70+% and not expect people to flood into crypto to avoid that kind of confiscatory taxation he’s insane.

    From Maria Bartiromo’s Parler feed.

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    The article Maria links to?

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    That’s what a Biden presidency will look like for every major city in America. Trump started this process with the tax cuts back in 2017, which I called the most politically significant piece of legislation since the New Deal when it was passed.

    I was right. That’s why the Democrats had to cheat so badly last week. Their Blue Wall strategy was crumbling.

    That’s precisely why Trump will fight the fraud as much as he can. Otherwise capital in the U.S. will be caught between the Scylla of the commies nationalizing all the wealth in the U.S. and the Charybdis of the commies nationalizing all the wealth in Europe.

    Where do you think that money will flow? China? A lot of it. But also into crypto. And if the governments do what Martin Armstrong is convinced they’ll do, track us all down and beat us for our private keys?

    It’ll ensure there’s nothing left of us to fight the Chinese century with.

    The question now is whether enough people are willing to fight against this disruption or not. The fourth amendment guarantees a right to privacy. The financial industry has written the laws to curtail that right as it pertains to money. FATCA, CAATSA, AML and KYC laws are all fundamentally unconstitutional especially as it pertains to purely private assets, like bitcoin.

    Unfortunately, that argument was lost legally ages ago and we’ll see over the next few years where the practical limits of that kind of legal power lies in the face of simple-to-deploy technology that is nigh-impossible to shut down through a bureaucratic edict.

    As things look today, the early signs of a flood of capital into cryptocurrencies is happening. Those who wait too long to diversify their savings there risk a complete wipe out.

    I don’t think Tom Paine said, “Give me Privacy or Give me UBI?!”

    *  *  *

    Join my Patreon if you want help navigating the privacy coin space. Install the Brave Browser to siphon capital from Google’s wealth vacuum.

    Donate via crypto

    LTC: LgJuSsDUnA9MMhjpsgQ1essaLSCnEosro3
    BTC: 3HeY4RiFEauCU3i1hcxqVEbg9wheT21vhx
    DASH: XpqS5Ug1hrgRhb82k3bZi1mNg15DsyTyio
    Monero: 48Whbhyg8TNXiNV2LNkjeuJJU55CNt5m1XDtP3jWZK2xf5GNsbU2ZwHLDJTQ5oTU3uaJPN8oQooRpSQ2CPMJvX8pVTqthmu

  • NJ Reports New Record Jump In Daily COVID-19 Cases: Live Updates
    NJ Reports New Record Jump In Daily COVID-19 Cases: Live Updates

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 11/14/2020 – 16:33

    Summary:

    • New Jersey reports daily case record
    • Six governors hold emergency meetings
    • US tops 170k new cases for first time
    • Total cases in US top 10.75 million
    • Istanbul mayor proposes lockdown
    • Latest outbreak impacting all states, regions
    • South Korea sees more new cases since September
    • Australia’s Victoria state goes 15th day virus free

    * * *

    Update (1620ET): As the US heads toward another daily record number of new cases, New Jersey just reported the most infections in a day since the start of the pandemic. 4,395 new cases were reported in the Garden State over the past 24 hours, a number that Gov. Murphy said was “concerning and alarming.”

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    Meanwhile, now that Vermont is seeing viral spread again, meaning that all 50 states are back to seeing “R” rates – that is, the rate of viral spread – back above 1, the governors of 6 eastern and northeastern states (CT, NY, NJ, VT, PA, MA) are holding an emergency briefing to decide on potential new restrictions as the Thanksgiving holiday draws nearer.

    Austria announced tighter lockdown measures, while Greece canceled school and Moscow closed bars and restaurants. Tehran, meanwhile, will close all non-essential businesses as viral cases and deaths soar.

    Just days after Beijing pushed out the last of the pro-democracy opposition in Hong Kong’s LegCo, the government has announced a mandatory testing regimen and new social distancing restrictions.

    * * *

    New US cases topped 170k for the first time on Friday as the coronavirus outbreak intensifies across all 50 states. According to data provided by the Coronavirus Tracking Project, hospitalizations are right around 70k, also a new record high since the start of the pandemic, while tests have also reached new record highs.

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    With Elon Musk and others questioning the rate of false positives, rising deaths and hospitalizations nevertheless suggest that the outbreak is spreading rapidly and worsening. Scientists and researchers have more or less determined that colder temperatures and spending more time indoors lead to increased infection risk, since the virus spreads fastest in poorly ventilated places.

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    While all states are seeing numbers rise, the Midwest is getting hit particularly hard right now.

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    Two states, Texas and Illinois, reported more than 10k new cases yesterday, with Illinois seeing its daily number top 15k for the first time.

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    So far, the US has reported more than 10.75 million COVID-19 cases; of those, roughly 245k have died. Worldwide, more than 53.5 million cases have been confirmed, with more than 1.3 million deaths.

    Interestingly, Charlie Bilello, the founder and CEO of Compound Capital Advisors, has created a model seeking to adjust the severity of America’s COVID outbreak for factors like increased testing. So far, his model has found that we’re currently seeing the highest rate of spread yet. That’s true for the US, and it’s true for most of Europe, too.

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    Over the past couple of days, Biden’s COVID advisors have walked back talk of a 4-6 week lockdown, as California and its northwestern neighbors Oregon and Washington urge residents not to leave their state unless they absolutely need to. Even some more red states have started to tighten restrictions, with North Dakota becoming the latest state to mandate mask wearing in indoor public places. ND Gov. Doug Burgum’s office released a series of mitigation measures that will go into effect on Monday.

    Meanwhile, in California, public health officials have affirmed that another strict lockdown probably wouldn’t be the best course of action due to “lockdown fatigue”. California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said a strict mandate was ruled out over concerns that “COVID fatigue” might spark a backlash, leading people to behave in ways that are less safe.

    As the world waits for the next update on the vaccine process, Bloomberg has pointed out that more comprehensive data from Pfizer, released as part of its application for emergency approval, is expected to be released.

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

    A shutdown of two to three weeks should be implemented in Istanbul as the city accounts for more than 50% of the coronavirus cases in Turkey, Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu said. Imamoglu, who recently recovered from coronavirus himself, said that the city’s Science Advisory Board is recommending a shutdown followed by a controlled re-opening (Source: Bloomberg).

    South Korea reports 205 cases as of Friday midnight — topping 200 for the first time since September — of which 166 were domestic and 39 imported. More than 65% of locally transmitted cases were from Seoul and Gyeonggi Province, a densely populated area surrounding the capital (Source: Nikkei).

    Australia’s state of Victoria, an epicenter of the virus surge in recent months, records its 15th consecutive day of no new infections and no related deaths — two weeks after it eased one of the world’s longest and strictest lockdowns (Source: Nikkei).

    China reports 18 cases for Friday, up from eight a day earlier. All new infections were from overseas (Source: Nikkei).

  • NYTimes Exposed "Massive Scheme" By Democrats In Pennsylvania's Election System… In 1994
    NYTimes Exposed "Massive Scheme" By Democrats In Pennsylvania's Election System… In 1994

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 11/14/2020 – 16:20

    As Trump’s solid lead on election night in Pennsylvania leaked away overnight (in mysterious and allegedly nefarious ways), many were left wondering just what happened. Well, there was no fraud, that’s for sure, according to the establishment leftists and rightists and the media… it’s all a vast right wing conspiracy.

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    Headline-writers and talking-heads were quick to dismiss any allegations, 100s of affadavits, and video evidence of fraud, proclaiming any and all suggestions of fraud are “baseless claims” and an “unprecedented” attack on Democracy… etc…

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    However, this kind of systemic fraud is anything but unprecedented in Pennsylvania. As none other than The New York Times wrote in February 1994…

    “Saying Philadelphia’s election system had collapsed under “a massive scheme” by Democrats to steal a State Senate election in November, a Federal judge today took the rare step of invalidating the vote and ordered the seat filled by the Republican candidate.”

    Judge Newcomer ruled that the Democratic campaign of William G. Stinson had stolen the election from Bruce S. Marks in North Philadelphia’s Second Senatorial District through an elaborate fraud in which hundreds of residents were encouraged to vote by absentee ballot even though they had no legal reason — like a physical disability or a scheduled trip outside the city — to do so… (emphasis ours)

    In many instances, according to Republicans who testified during a four-day civil trial last week, Democratic campaign workers forged absentee ballots. On many of the ballots, they used the names of people who were living in Puerto Rico or serving time in prison, and in one case, the voter had been dead for some time.

    “Substantial evidence was presented establishing massive absentee ballot fraud, deception, intimidation, harassment and forgery,” Judge Newcomer wrote in a decision made public today.

    The district, which includes white, black and Hispanic neighborhoods, is overwhelmingly Democratic by registration. Nonetheless, campaign workers testified that widespread voter apathy had prompted them to promote a “new way to vote” to insure a victory.

    …

    Indeed, the two Democrats on the three-member board of elections, an elected body, testified that they were aware of the voter fraud, had intentionally failed to enforce the election law and had later tried to conceal their activities by hurriedly certifying the Democratic candidate as the winner.

    …

    Judge Newcomer ordered that Mr. Stinson, a 49-year-old former assistant deputy mayor of Philadelphia, be removed from his State Senate office and that Mr. Marks, a 36-year-old lawyer and former aide to United States Senator Arlen Specter, be certified the winner within 72 hours.

    “This is extraordinary relief,” Judge Newcomer wrote. “However, it is appropriate because extraordinary conduct by the Stinson campaign and the board tainted the entirety of the absentee ballots.”

    … some election experts noted today that there have been many larger cases of voter fraud in Chicago and Louisiana in the 1970’s and Alabama in the 1980’s.

    The case involving the Philadelphia seat, however, may be the largest example involving fraudulent absentee ballots.

    Read more here…

    So, is this where the Democrats got the idea to swamp the nation with mail-in ballots? It worked (for a while) in 1994, why not try it again now… and this time, Dems have the entire media at their behest to whitewash/censor/ban any dissent of a free- and fair-election.

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