- Did Xi Jinping Deliberately Sicken The World?
Did Xi Jinping Deliberately Sicken The World?
Authored by Ben Lowsen via TheDiplomat.com,
PRC moral turpitude forces us to consider the unthinkable…
We often ascribe a basic level of humanity to even the cruelest leaders, but People’s Republic of China leader Xi Jinping’s actions have forced us to rethink this assumption. Although the emergence of the novel coronavirus now known as SARS-CoV-2 was probably not due to China’s actions, the emphasis that its authoritarian system places on hiding bad news likely gave the disease a sizable head start infecting the world. But most ominously, China’s obsession with image and Machtpolitik raises serious questions about its lack of moral limits.
At some point the Chinese Communist Party learned of the epidemic and made a decision to hide its existence, hoping it went away. Exposés in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post and the Chinese mainland’s Caixin show that the information that did flow out of China early in the crisis did so only because of the courage of individual Chinese people in the face of government repression. People in the Wuhan epicenter, however, began to get wise — and scared (here and here) — by the end of December 2019, forcing their government to say something. The authorities gave the impression of a nontransmissible disease already under containment. We know now this was entirely false, likely designed more to ease civil unrest than protect the people.
The mayor of Wuhan even suggested that the central government prevented him from revealing details about the epidemic until January 20.
Considering the first public announcements came out of Wuhan on January 1, we can assume that Xi had a sense of the danger prior to that.
Clearly, downplaying the disease wasn’t working and it was time for the Party to get serious. But how serious? Would it provide full cooperation to the international community? Would being seen as the source of this virus hurt its international image? Beyond these, there was a darker dimension: the more Beijing cooperated, the less the disease stood to affect other countries. This includes countries China sees as a threat to its existence, like the United States. Why should China suffer the effects of a pandemic while others stayed safe — and increased their strength relative to China — based on China’s own costly experience?
Such a question is of course inimical to human decency. And yet we must consider that Xi Jinping has produced the greatest program of ethnic cleansing in the world today. He has curtailed freedoms in China severely and is the father of the panopticon state. His incessant military buildup threatens neighbors while using economic and other subversive means to erode the sovereignty of countries around the world. We should not assume it was beyond his imagining to withhold a degree of support from the international community to ensure that China would not suffer alone.
Strong evidence supports this idea. Hearing the World Health Organization (WHO) repeat and praise the Party line while giving short shrift to health advice until quite recently has alarmed many. Seeing Beijing sell defective wares and claim it as humanitarian aid has angered many more. Spreading disinformation during the crisis and hinting at using life-saving goods for leverage (original here) — while denying even the faintest hint of wrongdoing – I suspect have ruined China’s reputation for some time to come. In short, China’s good offices have been reserved almost entirely for burnishing its image at the world’s expense, while calling it “the greatest kindness and good deeds.”
None of this can prove whether or when Xi made a deliberate decision to withhold information in order to imperil others. However, as a long-time student and admirer of China, it is with great sadness I must concede that such a state — and its increasingly paranoid leader — might very well provide less than full cooperation to stem the pandemic of the century in the crass pursuit of its own interests. This may constitute biological warfare. But even if it doesn’t Xi should be brought to account for his other crimes against humanity.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/18/2020 – 00:00 - COVID Concerns Crush World's Oldest Profession – Demand Plunges 80%
COVID Concerns Crush World's Oldest Profession – Demand Plunges 80%
In mid-March, we pointed out how sex worker income was on the verge of collapse as states imposed social-distancing rules and enforced lockdowns amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
About a month later, the world’s oldest profession, that is prostitution, has seen an unprecedented slide in income for workers. Some reports detail how demand has dropped by 80% in a month.
AFP News interviews several sex workers who say demand for their services has slid due to fears of contracting the virus.
“Being a prostitute has always been a good option in times of crisis… until this one,” says Bruno, a sex worker who has seen his business crash under social distancing rules enforced by the government.
Bruno is a sex worker in Los Angeles, now suffering as he is drawing from savings to survive.
Despite 20,646 deaths across the country, infecting 530,830 people, Bruno said he would have to continue his services:
“I’m going to have to take the risk, it’s the only way I can make money,” he said.
He said sex demand has fallen up to 80% as there are only a handful of clients asking him for private sessions.
Bruno said his line of work leaves him at high risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases, nevertheless, now, coronavirus.
“I’m surprised that, with this virus going around, people still want to take the danger,” he said.
Molly Simmons, a New York sex worker, said her profession is not “recognized” by the government and leaves many of her colleagues “pushed into a state of financial desperation.” This is because they cannot tap into government assistance programs to supplement income when times get bad.
We noted last month that an evolving trend in the sex industry was the increase of live stream shows that have allowed sex workers to diversify their income.
Bruno said he has a friend that makes $3,000 per month doing live shows online.
“I’m not criticizing it, but I’m not getting into it,” he said. “I don’t want my financial difficulties to cost me my privacy.”
Toronto dominatrix Lady Pim told Vice last month that quarantines would drive people to pay for online sex:
“If we’re in lockdown—just by ourselves, don’t have a partner, and don’t have any sex or kink outlets—then I can 100 percent see people turning around to do a Skype session or phone session.”
It’s severe up in here. pic.twitter.com/afDZrKb1oS
— Lady Pim (@TheLadyPim1) March 9, 2020
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Lady Pim was right last month, as we noted days ago, Americans are flooding porn sites like PornHub during the quarantine.
Lingerie chain Ann Summers reported a run on dildos over the last week of March, sales surged 27% over the same period the previous year.
It remains to be seen if the sex worker income will ever recover to pre-corona levels. That is because the way people interreact with one another will change until a proven vaccine is seen.
So, in the meantime, sex worker income crashes, the ones who survive resort to online shows. And does that mean the rise of the sex doll industry is imminent?
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/17/2020 – 23:40 - The Real Reason Russia & China Teamed-Up… Here's What Comes Next For American Preeminence & The Dollar
The Real Reason Russia & China Teamed-Up… Here's What Comes Next For American Preeminence & The Dollar
Vladimir Pozner is Russia’s most influential political TV talk-show host, journalist and broadcaster.
Pozner has hosted several shows on Russian television, where he has interviewed famous figures such as Hillary Clinton, Alain Delon, President Dimitri Medvedev and Sting.
Pozner has appeared on a wide range of networks, including NBC, CBS, CNN and the BBC. He has worked as a journalist, editor (Soviet Life Magazine and Sputnik Magazine) and TV and radio commentator in a long career covering many major events in Russia.
Pozner has appeared on The Phil Donahue Show and Ted Koppel’s Nightline. He has also worked for the Institute for US and Canadian Studies, a Soviet think tank.
He co-hosted a show with Phil Donahue called Pozner/Donahue. It was the first televised bi-lateral discussion (or “spacebridge”) between audiences in the Soviet Union and the US, carried via satellite.
In 1997, he returned to Moscow as an independent journalist.
Doug Casey’s friend Mark Gould sat down with Pozner in Moscow to help us better understand the relationship between the US and Russia.
* * *
International Man: Do you see a resurging Russia and a restoration of Russian Empire, or simply a national state resurgence?
Vladimir Pozner: Certainly not. Russia is not a resurging empire. There is no way it’s ever going to be an empire again.
Empires have this universal feature of disappearing forever, whether it’s ancient Rome or whether it’s the UK or whatever. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.
It’s not going to come back, and people have to come to terms with that. Russia has been an empire since the days of Peter the Great— we’re talking about the 18th century. It is used to being an empire. The Soviet Union was an empire.
The loss of an empire is painful. It’s like when you lose a leg but have phantom pains—the leg isn’t there, but it still hurts.
Well, that’s what’s going on. Psychologically, it’s difficult to accept. So, you have a certain degree of nationalism, chauvinism—and it’s part of growing out of what you were once upon a time and becoming something else.
Is that happening in Russia? Yes.
Is it painful? Yes, it’s painful. Is there a deep divide between the older generation and the younger generation? There’s always a divide, but in this case, a very deep divide.
It’s because the older generation is a Soviet generation that was brought up in the Soviet Union, that went to Soviet schools, that was created by a society that no longer exists.
The younger generation grew up in a different kind of place. It could travel, it has the Internet, it can watch whatever movies, read, whatever books, whatever newspapers, whatever it wants. It is independent in the way it thinks, as differing from the older generation.
There‘s a real divide between the two. It‘s not until the older generation who are in power today are gone—and those who today are 18, 19, 20 come to power—that the real changes will begin to occur in this country.
It‘s a gradual, very difficult change, but nonetheless, it‘s happening. I can see it.
I travel a lot around Russia, and when I speak the places are packed, and most of the people, much to my surprise and gratification, are under 30. To put it bluntly, I‘m not young, and yet about 80% are young people.
When I‘ve asked myself, why is it? What do I say that attracts them?
What I think it is, they see that I tell the truth.
I don‘t beat around the bush, and I ask questions to make them think, not to accept. I always say, “Don’t accept what you’re told. Think about it; doubt it”; that kind of thing.
International Man: How do Russia’s actions, say in the Middle East, reflect this, for instance in Syria or the theoretical pulling of American troops out of the Middle East?
How do you see Russia vis-à-vis Iran and China? Are the days of Pax Americana, indeed, coming to a close?
Vladimir Pozner: For me, the problem is this: If you have a country like Iraq or Syria, you have local people living there. What goes on in that country, in my opinion, is strictly their business.
It would be a good thing if no other country felt the need to interfere in the business of another country. However, that’s not the case. Certain countries have so-called global interests.
The Soviet Union had its global interest. It had a lot of influence in the Middle East and the surrounding area—which is much closer to it than the United States.
When the Soviet Union disappeared, there was a vacuum. The United States immediately moved into that area because it had its global interest.
When Russia started coming back in—in the case of Syria—first, the Americans went in supporting the opposition to Bashar Al Assad, and then the Russians came in supporting Assad.
So, what you have is these two countries—plus China, in a different way—trying to further what they consider to be their global interests at the cost of local people. The local people never asked them to come in the first place.
I totally disagree with the foreign policy of Russia, and in that respect, the foreign policy of the United States as well. My view would be to keep out. It’s none of your goddamn business. It’s their country.
The only reason you go in is that you’re stronger than they are.
You don’t go into China, for instance, because you don’t like the system, and you don’t even go into North Korea for a very good reason because you’re afraid you’ll get a bomb on your capital or something.
This whole idea of global interests, to me, is a profoundly provocative and dangerous idea that can lead to serious military conflict.
The United States is finally getting out of Afghanistan. The only reason the US is getting out of Afghanistan is that it didn’t succeed in doing anything there. The Taliban is back.
The Russians fought there for a while, and they also had to get out. Isn’t that a lesson?
How many times does this have to happen before you understand that well, we may not like what’s going on in that country, but it’s just none of our business.
There can be very specific, rare cases when the United Nations might say we must interfere. For example, when there is some kind of genocide. That has to be a decision of the UN, not of the United States or the Russian Federation or the Chinese People’s Republic.
It has to be the United Nations—all together unanimously says, yes, we must interfere.
That’s legitimate; otherwise there should be no such things as global interests.
International Man: Russia has been building alternatives to Western-dominated systems. This includes measures to protect itself from sanctions involving the US financial system, an alternative to the SWIFT system, alternative trade deals with other BRICS countries, the Eurasian Economic Union, and integration with China’s New Silk Road program.
What are the implications for this?
Vladimir Pozner: I’m not an economist, and so I prefer not to discuss issues that I don’t really know very well.
One thing I will tell you, the turning of Russia towards the East, towards China, is not something that was done voluntarily. It is something that is the result of, first and foremost, the United States making clear that it would not agree to trade with Russia on an equal basis—it would not regard Russia as an equal partner.
In fact, it would employ sanctions to punish Russia. In a way, it kind of forced Russia to look the other way.
Ultimately, this could lead to some very profound changes in the world situation because if you have a trading block that consists of Russia, China, India, and the Arab nations, you’re really changing the status of the world.
I’m very hesitant at this because, after all, I do believe in the importance of the similarities of culture, the similarities of religion.
Although I’m an atheist, but nonetheless, I fully understand the implications of coming from a Judeo-Christian past heritage, which is very different from what you will find in the East, be it Confucianism or Muslim or Buddhism or whatever.
I don’t think that there can ever really be the kind of deep understanding.
I put it somewhat vaguely, West and East—after all, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.
In that sense, I think Kipling had an important point. I don’t know where this is going to lead. I’m not particularly fond of that, but again, I place it squarely at the doorstep of the United States.
It’s a forced move because if you’re told, “Well, we were not going to deal with you.” Then where do you go?
International Man: Amid the poor relations with the US, Russia has strengthened its relationship with China. The two countries have increased their economic, military and political ties. How does this impact US hegemony in the world?
Vladimir Pozner: I think that the leading factor here is China, not Russia.
China sees itself historically at the center of the world. Today, it views itself as the fastest-growing powerful nation that, by the middle of this century, will be number one in every possible respect: militarily, economically, etc.
Russia has a much closer relationship with China, historically, than does the United States.
Russia has a huge border with China, and it is much more dependent on China than the United States is.
I think that the Russian leadership understands the need to create as many positive relations with China as possible, looking down the road as to what’s going to happen.
There could have been a US-Russian entente, if you will. That would have stood in the way of Chinese hegemony, but that is not happening.
In the long run, I think what’s going to happen is that the big winner is going to be China. The big losers are going to be Russia and the United States, but perhaps the United States even more than Russia because the Russians are doing a lot to improve relations with China. The United States is continuously opposing China economically, so on and so forth.
The Chinese have a very long memory, and they’re not forgetting who was doing what. I would say that what the United States is doing is very shortsighted vis-a-vis China.
International Man: In a number of your talks or discussions over the past several years, you’ve stated your purpose as a journalist of bringing about more understanding between the 2 countries.
Considering the tensions that have arisen in the past 6 years, is there actually a path towards better understanding?
Vladimir Pozner: I think it’s possible, but it’s hard to imagine that happening in the short term, because for that to happen, there has to be an understanding on both sides—that this is necessary and in the national interest of both countries.
Without that understanding, it’s very difficult to achieve anything. Should that understanding, through a new president let’s say, then there are ways to make this happen and to make the attitudes change as rapidly.
One of the grand ideas of course, is for instance, on a yearly basis to exchange, say 10,000 kids between the ages of 9 and 12 to live in the homes of each other—and to go to the schools of each other just for one year, and then go back home.
That in itself would play a stupendous role in changing outlooks or even informing outlooks. If you did that for 10 years, you’d have 100,000 of those, and those are the people who would be able occupy important posts in the future.
Certainly, things like space bridges are quite possible.
Today, I know for a fact that the Russians are open to it, the Americans are not.
I proposed this to Channel 1, they said, if the Americans are willing to, we’ll do it.
ABC, NBC, CBS – nobody’s interested.
This face to face contact is extremely important in changing attitudes. We saw that happen back in 1985. It could happen again, but the basic underlying thing is an understanding on the part of both sides that this is something we need. It’s good for us. It’s good for others too, but we’re not talking about others.
We’re egoists, it’s good for us.
What I’m waiting for, and I don’t know whether I’ll live long enough for this to happen is for the leadership on both sides to come to this conclusion.
It doesn’t mean we’re going to fall in love with each other. It doesn’t mean we’re going to be close friends. It means we’re going to have, normal relations. We’ll have our differences, but we won’t have the prejudice, the fear, and sometimes the hatred that we harbor.
Therefore, the danger, of being misunderstood and of firing off a few missiles – the atomic clock will no longer be at two minutes to midnight but maybe at 15 minutes to midnight. That’s basically a huge triumph.
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/17/2020 – 23:20 - Watch: Failed Israeli Drone Strike On Top Hezbollah Official Caught In Rare Video
Watch: Failed Israeli Drone Strike On Top Hezbollah Official Caught In Rare Video
Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have once again ramped up operations along the southern Lebanese border at a moment Hezbollah leadership has declared it is “fully prepared for war with Israel”.
The latest escalation came Wednesday when an Israeli drone targeted a car full of Hezbollah operatives just inside Syria near the border with Lebanon. The Shia resistance organization said all escaped alive and without injury in what’s become an increasingly common IDF tactic – assassination attempt by drone.
However, it’s extremely rare that such an assassination attempt be caught on video. But on Friday CCTV footage emerged capturing the moment of the strike, appearing in Arabic and Israeli media:
CCTV footage from the alleged IDF drone strike 2 days ago on the Hezbollah vehicle on the Syrian-Lebanese border. pic.twitter.com/1SoH0X5XBy
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) April 17, 2020
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It’s being widely reported that there was initial strike – either a missed strike or possibly a ‘warning’ – followed by a missile which destroyed the vehicle.
An eyewitness told AFP “An Israeli drone first struck near a car transporting Hezbollah members,” but indicated “The passengers got out before it was then directly hit in a second strike” – leaving no casualties.
File image via Middle East Monitor Syria’s state SANA news service also confirmed the attack and breach of its sovereign territory in the IDF operation.
Since the beginning of the nine-year long proxy war in Syria, Israel has attacked inside Syria hundreds of times and over the past years has vowed to roll back Iran’s presence inside the country – there at the invitation of the Assad government.
Screenshot of UAV attack aftermath, via “Arab News”. Late Friday the IDF reported fence damage along the Isreali-Lebanese border. “This is a severe event. We hold the Lebanese government responsible for actions from its territory,” the IDF said in a statement.
It’s unclear who among Hezbollah’s ranks was the intended target of Wednesday’s UAV strike, however, regional media reporting indicated a “top Hezbollah security official” was in the car and escaped.
There’s been no confirmation of who exactly was in the car, but they were likely on their way to Damascus for high level meetings.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/17/2020 – 23:00 - How The Military-Industrial Complex Is Using The Coronavirus
How The Military-Industrial Complex Is Using The Coronavirus
Authored by William Hartung and Ben Freeman via TheNation.com,
Arms industry lobbyists are addressing this pandemic and preparing for the next by pushing weapons sales…
There’s a battle brewing for the future of national security spending.
On one side, there’s a growing bipartisan consensus that the coronavirus has fundamentally changed the way we should think about national security. Ben Rhodes, former deputy national security adviser in the Obama White House, recently argued in The Atlantic that we have to rethink the orientation and priorities of our government, and “it makes no sense that the Pentagon budget is 13 times larger than the entire international-affairs budget, which funds the State Department, USAID, and global programs at other agencies.”
Kori Schake, the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said the bottom line is that “we’re going to see enormous downward pressure on defense spending because of other urgent American national needs like health care.”
Even conservative commentators like Max Boot, who less than two years ago wrote, “the United States is losing the ability to defend itself,” recently wrote that “Instead of simply pouring more money into the Pentagon, we need to develop new capacities to combat foreign disinformation, transition away from carbon fuels and stop the spread of pandemics.”
On the other side, despite this support from across the political spectrum to reduce the Pentagon’s budget and focus more on non-military threats to national security – an argument the Center for International Policy’s Sustainable Defense Task Force made long before the coronavirus pandemic – there stands one of the most powerful players in American politics: the military-industrial complex.
If history is any indication, the military-industrial complex isn’t going down without a fight, nor is the Pentagon budget. Through their droves of lobbyists, the revolving door between the Pentagon, contractors, and Congress, and the promise of providing jobs to every Congressional district, Pentagon contractors have kept the defense budget artificially inflated for years at the expense of funding for things like the Centers for Disease Control and other agencies that can help fight disease outbreaks. And, in this new coronavirus era, they’re using the same playbook once again.
The power of the military-industrial complex to keep the defense budget artificially high has perhaps never been more apparent than in the last nine years when the Pentagon budget was under perpetual threat of being reduced after passage of the Budget Control Act in 2011 (BCA). While Pentagon contractors decry the damage wreaked by the BCA, their lobbyists and advocates omit one key fact: The defense budget has actually increased under the BCA to roughly $750 billion per year, well above the levels reached during the Vietnam or Korean Wars.
After the BCA was enacted, military spending was to be capped at an ample $5.4 trillion over 10 years, but over that same time period the US actually spent $5.7 trillion on the military. This was largely because Congress and presidents Obama and Trump consistently agreed to lift the caps on defense spending in addition to using the Overseas Contingency Operations account—which has been described as a slush fund—to dodge the spending caps.
The arms lobby is well-positioned to exert influence over Pentagon spending going forward. Hundreds of former senior government officials—645 in 2018 alone, according to the Project on Government Oversight—have gone through the “revolving door’ to work for the defense industry as lobbyists, executives, consultants, or board members. This gives them an inside track on debates over budget priorities. And, the revolving door swings both ways.
The last three secretaries of defense have been a former board member of General Dynamics, a former Boeing executive, and the former chief lobbyist for Raytheon, respectively. Most importantly of all, President Trump has been the greatest champion of the arms industry, touting (and exaggerating) the number of jobs created by arms sales to countries like Saudi Arabia.
This massive influence operation has already led to early wins for the arms makers in the coronavirus era. Boeing successfully pushed for billions in aid to the arms industry in the $2 trillion stimulus bill, and arms industry lobbyists successfully pushed to get weapons makers deemed “essential” businesses during the coronavirus pandemic.
While the battle to defeat this pandemic rages, the battle to defeat the next one has already begun, and so far, arms industry lobbyists are winning. They’re making sure that Pentagon contractors continue to thrive, even as much more pressing priorities than bomb making demand our attention. Instead of protecting contractor profits, Congress must choose to protect the American people from the very real threats that are killing thousands of Americans as we speak.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/17/2020 – 22:40 - New Footage Shows Chinese Soldiers Firing Next-Generation Assault Rifle
New Footage Shows Chinese Soldiers Firing Next-Generation Assault Rifle
New footage of China’s next-generation assault rifle, called the QBZ-191, recently appeared on state-owned broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV), reported Defense Blog.
Chinese troops firing the QBZ-191 QBZ-191 chambers a 5.8 × 42 mm round, which will replace the QBZ-95 assault rifle in service with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). CCTV says the new lightweight assault rifle was developed by the No. 208 Research Institute of China Ordnance Industries.
“According to sources, the new rifle is chambered in the standard 5.8x42mm caliber using a new type of rounds that have better performance on medium to long-range. It has an effective firing range of 300 m for the carbine version and 400 m for the assault rifle version with a rate of fire of 750 rpm (Rounds Per Minute),” Defense Blog said.
QBZ-191’s design is very similar to modern bullpup-style rifles designed in Europe and the US with a top Picatinny rail for attachments. The weapon is outfitted with a new optical device, presumably a red dot sight.
QBZ-191 revealed at Beijing’s 70th-anniversary parade in 2019 The PLA has been on the hunt for several years to replace its legacy QBZ-95 assault rifle. It wasn’t until the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China in 2019, that a military parade via the PLA revealed the new weapon.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/17/2020 – 22:20 - Is The Russia-Saudi Oil-Price War A Fraud And A Farce?
Is The Russia-Saudi Oil-Price War A Fraud And A Farce?
Authored by Mike Whitney via The Unz Review,
The Russia-Saudi oil-price war is a fabrication concocted by the media. There’s not a word of truth to any of it. Yes, there was a dust up at an OPEC meeting in early March that led to production increases and plunging prices. That part is true.
But Saudi Arabia’s oil-dumping strategy wasn’t aimed at Russia, it was aimed at US shale oil producers. But not for the reasons you’ve read about in the media.
The Saudis aren’t trying to destroy the US shale oil business. That’s another fiction. They just want US producers to play by the rules and pitch in when prices need support. That might seem like a stretch, but it’s true.
You see, US oil producers are not what-you’d-call “team players”. They don’t cooperate with foreign producers, they’re not willing to share the costs of flagging demand, and they never lift a finger to support prices. US oil producers are the next-door-neighbor that parks his beat-up Plymouth on the front lawn and then surrounds it with rusty appliances. They don’t care about anyone but themselves.
What Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman want is for US producers to share the pain of oil production cuts in order to stabilize prices. It’s an entirely reasonable request. Here’s a clip from an article at oilprice.com that helps to explain what’s really going on:
“… there was a sliver of hope that oil prices may rebound after Reuters reported that Saudi Arabia, Russia and allied oil producers will agree to deep cuts to their crude output at talks this week but only if the United States and several others join in with curbs to help prop up prices that have been hammered by the coronavirus crisis. However, in an attempt to have its cake and eat it too, the U.S. DOE said on Tuesday that U.S. output is already falling without government action, in line with the White House’s insistence that it would not intervene in the private markets….
… OPEC+ will require the United States to make cuts in order to come to an agreement: The EIA report today demonstrates that there are already projected cuts of 2 (million bpd), without any intervention from the federal government,” the U.S. Energy Department said.
That is not enough for OPEC+ however, and certainly not Russia, which on Wednesday made clear that market-driven declines in oil production shouldn’t be considered as cuts intended to stabilize the market, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov tells reporters on conference call.
“These are completely different cuts. You are comparing the overall demand drop with cuts to stabilize global markets. It’s like comparing length and width,” Peskov said…..Moscow’s participation is highly contingent on the US, and is unlikely to agree to output cuts if the US does not join the effort.” (“Historic Oil Deal On The Verge Of Collapse As Russia Balks At U.S. ‘Cuts’”, oilprice.com)
Putin is being reasonable and fair. If everyone else is forced to cut supply, then US oil producers should have to cut supply too. But they don’t want to share the pain, so they’ve settled on a strategy for weaseling out of it. They want their reductions in output (from weak demand during the pandemic) to count as “production cuts”. They even have a name for this swindle, they call it “organic production cuts”, which means no cuts at all. This is the way hucksters do business not responsible adults.
What does Putin want from this deal?
Price stability. Yes, he’d like to see prices settle somewhere north of $45 per barrel but that’s not going to happen for a while. The combination of a weaker demand (due to the coronavirus) and oversupply (from the Saudis flooding the market) have ensured that prices will remain low for the foreseeable future. Even so, Putin understood what the Saudis were doing by flooding the market, and he knew it wasn’t directed at Russia. The Saudis were trying to persuade US oil producers to stop freeloading and cut production like everyone else. That’s the long and short of it. Check out this excerpt from an article by oil expert, Simon Watkins at oilprice.com:
“Saudi Arabia was continually peeved …(because) its efforts to keep oil prices up through various OPEC and OPEC+ agreements were allowing these very shale producers to make a lot more money than the Saudis, relatively speaking. The reason for this was that U.S. shale producers…. were not bound in to the OPEC/OPEC+ production quotas so could fill the output gaps created by OPEC producers.” (“The Sad Truth About The OPEC+ Production Cut”, Simon Watkins, oilprice.com)
This is what the media fails to tell their readers, that US oil producers– who don’t participate in any collective effort to stabilize prices– have been exploiting OPEC production quotas in order to fatten the bottom line at the expense of others. US producers figured out how to game the system and make a bundle in the process. Is it any wonder why the Saudis were pissed?? Here’s more from the same article:
“This allowed the U.S. a rolling 3-4 million bpd advantage over Saudi in the oil exports game, meaning that it quickly became the world’s number one oil producer…. Hence, Saudi Arabia decided initially to unilaterally announce its intention for the last OPEC+ deal to be much bigger than that which it had pre-agreed with Russia, hoping to ambush the Russians into agreeing. Russia, however, turned around and told Saudi Arabia to figuratively go and reproduce with itself. MbS,… then decided to launch an all-out price war.” (oilprice.com)
So you can see that this really had nothing to do with Russian at all. The Crown Prince was simply frustrated at the way US oil producers were gaming the system, which is why he felt like he had to respond by flooding the market. The obvious target was the US shale oil industry that was taking advantage of the quotas, refusing to cooperate with fellow oil producers and generally freeloading off the existing quota system.
And what’s funny, is that as soon as the Saudis started putting the screws to the US fracking gang, they all scampered off to Washington en masse to beg for help from Papa Trump. Which is why Trump decided to make emergency calls to Moscow and Riyadh to see if he could hash out a deal.
It’s worth noting that domestic oil producers have been involved in other dodgy activities in the past. Check out this excerpt from an article in the Guardian in 2014, the last time oil prices crashed:
“After standing at well over $110 a barrel in the summer, the cost of crude has collapsed. Prices are down by a quarter in the past three months….
Think about how the Obama administration sees the state of the world. It wants Tehran to come to heel over its nuclear programme. It wants Vladimir Putin to back off in eastern Ukraine. But after recent experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, the White House has no desire to put American boots on the ground. Instead, with the help of its Saudi ally, Washington is trying to drive down the oil price by flooding an already weak market with crude. As the Russians and the Iranians are heavily dependent on oil exports, the assumption is that they will become easier to deal with…
The Saudis did something similar in the mid-1980s. Then, the geopolitical motivation for a move that sent the oil price to below $10 a barrel was to destabilize Saddam Hussein’s regime….
Washington’s willingness to play the oil card stems from the belief that domestic supplies of energy from fracking make it possible for the US to become the world’s biggest oil producer. In a speech last year, Tom Donilon, then Barack Obama’s national security adviser, said the US was now less vulnerable to global oil shocks. The cushion provided by shale oil and gas “affords us a stronger hand in pursuing and implementing our national security goals”. (“Stakes are high as US plays the oil card against Iran and Russia”, The Guardian)
This excerpt shows that Washington is more than willing to use the “oil card” if it helps to achieve its geopolitical objectives. Not surprisingly, good buddy, Saudi Arabia, has historically played a key role in helping to promote those goals. The current incident, however, is the exact opposite. The Saudis aren’t helping the US achieve its objectives, quite the contrary, they’re lashing out in frustration. They feel like they’re being squeezed by Washington (and US producers) and they want to prove that they have the means to fight back. Flooding the market was just MBS’s way of “letting off steam”.
Trump understands this, but he also understands who ultimately calls the shots, which is why he took the unusual step of explicitly warning the Saudis that they’d better shape up and step in line or there’d be hell to pay. Here’s a little background that will help to connect the dots:
“..the deal made in 1945 between the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Saudi King at the time, Abdulaziz, that has defined the relationship between the two countries ever since… the deal that was struck between the two men on board the U.S. Navy cruiser Quincy… was that the U.S. would receive all of the oil supplies it needed for as long as Saudi Arabia had oil in place, in return for which the U.S. would guarantee the security of the ruling House of Saud. The deal has altered slightly ever since the rise of the U.S. shale oil industry and Saudi Arabia’s attempt to destroy it from 2014 to 2016, in that the U.S. still guarantees the security of the House of Saud but it also expects Saudi Arabia not only to supply the U.S. with whatever oil it needs for as long as it can but also – and this is key to everything that has followed – it also allows the U.S. shale industry to continue to function and to grow.
As far as the U.S. is concerned, if t his means that the Saudis lose out to U.S. shale producers by keeping oil prices up but losing out on export opportunities to these U.S. firms then tough..
As U.S. President Donald Trump has made clear whenever he has sensed a lack of understanding on the part of Saudi Arabia for the huge benefit that the U.S. is doing the ruling family: “He [Saudi King Salman] would not last in power for two weeks without the backing of the U.S. military.” (“The Sad Truth About The OPEC+ Production Cut”, Simon Watkins, Oil Price)
Trump felt like he had to remind the Saudis how the system actually works: Washington gives the orders and the Saudi’s obey. Simple, right? In fact, the Crown Prince has already slashed oil production dramatically and is fully complying with Trump’s directives, because he knows if he doesn’t, he’s going to wind up like Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi.
Meanwhile, US shale oil producers won’t be required to make any cuts at all or, as the New York Times puts it: “It was not immediately clear if the Trump administration made a formal commitment to cut production in the United States.”
Got that? So everyone else cuts production, everyone else sees their revenues shrink, and everyone else pitches-in to put a floor under prices. Everyone except the “exceptional” American oil producers from the exceptional United States. They don’t have to do a damn thing.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/17/2020 – 22:00 - After 86 Million Miles In Space, NASA Astronauts Forced To Take 186 Mile COVID-19-Detour On Return To Earth
After 86 Million Miles In Space, NASA Astronauts Forced To Take 186 Mile COVID-19-Detour On Return To Earth
You know the coronavirus restrictions in place globally are serious when its easier to get back to Earth from the International Space Station than it is to get home once you’ve touched back down on the blue planet.
NASA astronauts Andrew Morgan and Jessica Meir are being forced to take a major detour on their way home from the Kazakh steppe, where they landed early Friday morning. After 205 days in space, more than 3200 orbits around the Earth and a trip of 86.9 million miles, the astronauts still have to take a 186 mile detour before boarding a flight back to the U.S.
The astronaut’s Soyuz MS-15 capsule touched down southeast of the Kazakh town of Dzhezkazgan at 1117 local time, according to Reuters, as was planned.
But all of Kazakhstan’s provinces are in lockdown as a result of coronavirus quarantines, so search and rescue teams were unable to set up a base in Dzhezkazgan for the astronauts.
According to Vyacheslav Rogozhnikov, the deputy head of Russia’s Federal Medical Biological Agency, the Baikonur cosmodrome spaceport, which is rented by Russia despite being in Kazakhstan, was instead being used as a base for the crew.
The U.S. astronauts will then have to endure a 186 mile drive to Kzylorda, where they will then board a NASA aircraft that will finally wind up taking them home.
You can watch the livestream of the landing, as it happened early Friday morning, here:
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/17/2020 – 21:40 - 14 Ways To Improve Mental Health During The World's Biggest Psychological Experiment
14 Ways To Improve Mental Health During The World's Biggest Psychological Experiment
Authored by Natalia Braun via TheMindUnleashed.com,
What we were warned about but turned a blind eye to and did not expect in the Western world to this extent, happened: we found ourselves in the midst of a pandemic.
Social distancing, quarantine and hygienic practices are essential behavioural methods in such times to reduce spreading of the new virus and mortality. But these precautionary measures, whether imposed or consciously chosen to protect ourselves and the persons at risk against the coronavirus, could be challenging for us humans as we are social beings. They can be particularly tough to those who are prone to anxiety and depression.
Still, solitude should not mean loneliness and has also its positive sides. Here is some practical advice on how to cope with the challenges we may face during quarantine or a lockdown and what we can proactively do for our mental health. In the present distress, some of these things we used to take for granted might sink into oblivion.
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Follow recommendations for protecting yourself.
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Stop following every news on the virus. Read only serious, respected media, arrange a limited time for that and stick to it.
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Stay in touch with your loved ones and friends via telephone and virtual forms of communication.
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Avoid making major life decisions as far as possible. This is not the right time for that: too much unpredictability and uncertainty for the long-term future, too many emotions might mislead you and cause problems in the future.
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Clean up your home place: cleaning up your living space has an effect of cleaning up and sorting out your mind and soul. You could certainly find a wardrobe, a box or a bookshelf you’ve always wanted to sort out or rearrange but never got around to it. Now it’s a good time to do that.
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Exercise every day. Physical health plays a major role in maintaining good mental health. Exercise releases chemicals like endorphins and serotonin that improve your mood and reduce stress and the symptoms of anxiety and depression. You may try yoga (five simple but very effective exercises that activate your whole body – and mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71jaJu0dc98) or put on some rhythmic music and dance (simple movements that are fun and very effective, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p1ubjp_VtA. For the fans of Latin music and dance among us, there is a wonderful way to dance alone, too: try salsa suelta, a solo form of Cuban salsa. It will not only bring in motion your whole body, but boost your energy, mood and zest for life. More on salsa suelta with a great video: http://www.mivida.com.au/portfolio/salsa-suelta/. As my research shows, dance improves health and wellbeing and is an effective stress coping mechanism.
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Try some further forms of creative arts, they are powerful in stress reduction. There is lots of evidence that making art significantly lowers stress-related hormone cortisol. Art-making is being experienced as relaxing, enjoyable, helpful for learning about new aspects of self, and freeing from constraints. As Picasso said: “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” Besides dancing, it could be painting, drawing, playing piano or some other instrument. But also pottery, baking and knitting are very creative and relaxing activities that additionally involve tactile sensations, important in countering loneliness.
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If you have indoor plants, a balcony or a terrace, you might engage into some kind of gardening and reconcile with nature. Gardening has a positive effect on our mental health, which includes relaxation, positive feelings, staying in the present moment, coping with difficult emotions, and feeling in control. Spending some time in the sun boosts your vitamin D balance which is important for maintaining healthy bones.
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Keep a diary. Writing down your feelings and thoughts may help sort them out and calm down. You may even want to try poetry writing – you never know what hidden talents you may have.
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Try relaxation techniques like meditation, diaphragmatic breathing or progressive muscle relaxation: tightening an individual muscle group, holding it for a while and then relaxing it.
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As our mind and body are deeply interconnected, eat healthy: choose nutrition rich foods, especially those that strengthen your immune system. Food supplements like L-arginine and reishi mushroom would additionally boost your immune system.
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Get enough sleep. Good sleep is crucial for countering anxious and depressive mood and overall for good mental and physical health. Try to wake up and go to bed at more or less the same time and get at least 8 hours of sleep. Don’t look at your phone or tablet (which you are hopefully disinfecting regularly) at least an hour before going to bed, don’t read, listen or watch any news. Read a good, relaxing book instead. Make power naps in the afternoons.
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All that being said, maintain daily routine. Make a schedule and try to stick to it.
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But first and foremost – try to live in the moment and enjoy whatever you do, also if it’s just doing nothing. You don’t have to achieve anything nor prove yourself. You are ok as you are.
We are living in trying times, which to a considerable degree are brought about by ourselves. A number of researchers today think that it is actually humanity’s destruction of biodiversity that creates the conditions for new viruses and diseases such as Covid-19 to arise. Nobody knows when we’ll return to “normality” and what kind of “normality” it will be. But all things pass and this pandemic will pass, too, even if in the long term we most probably will often deal with the outbreaks of infectious diseases. Let’s take it as an opportunity to learn out of it and reflect. We took lots of things for granted and learn to appreciate and cherish them now. In our rush for achievement, we forgot to pay attention – to these small but important things, to our environment, to those around us, to ourselves.
Try to stay mindful, fully present in the here-and-now, and enjoy the silence. For this, too, will pass.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/17/2020 – 21:20 -
- FBI Says Foreign States Hacked US Research Centers Seeking COVID-19 Breakthroughs
FBI Says Foreign States Hacked US Research Centers Seeking COVID-19 Breakthroughs
A top FBI official has warned that foreign governments are seeking to break into American companies’ cyber systems where crucial coronavirus research data is stored.
“We certainly have seen reconnaissance activity, and some intrusions, into some of those institutions, especially those that have publicly identified themselves as working on COVID-related research,” FBI Deputy Assistant Director for the FBI Cyber Division Tonya Ugoretz told an Aspen Institute online panel discussion.
Coronavirus research at US Army Medical Research and Development Command at Fort Detrick in Frederick, MD. Image source: AP The FBI official described the spike in state-backed hacking cases comes as several Western bio-research companies could be on the cusp of developing breakthrough treatments and potentially a vaccine related to the ongoing pandemic, which over the past weeks has been ravaging the United States as the new global epicenter.
The flipside to companies publicizing their research, Ugoretz said in her comments this week, “is that it kind of makes them a mark for other nation-states that are interested in gleaning details about what exactly they’re doing and maybe even stealing proprietary information that those institutions have.”
“For example, if we see that a secure institution is a victim or has been targeted, we, of course, go out and work with them,” Ugoretz continued. “Ideally, what we are doing is talking to healthcare institutions and research institutions before they have been a victim so that we can use the intelligence we have to identify the trends and identify who else is in the same category of the victims.”
She noted the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center currently receives some 3,000 to 4,000 calls per day. Prior to the pandemic crisis hitting North America this figure was at 1,000.
Tonya Ugoretz, deputy assistant director for the FBI Cyber Division, via BankInfoSecurity/Twitter. The official did not name specific countries or bad actors; however, it follows a report from the WHO earlier this month, which described “a sustained digital bombardment” by hackers described as seeking internal information on the deadly coronavirus, further said to be “more than doubled” amid the pandemic crisis.
Western intelligence sources in early April fingered Iran as being behind the bulk of recent alleged hacks of international health organizations, including the UN.
Bill Evanina, Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, was cited by Reuters in the latest report as saying:
“Medical research organizations and those who work for them should be vigilant against threat actors seeking to steal intellectual property or other sensitive data related to America’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“Now is the time to protect the critical research you’re conducting,” he added.
The FBI further declined to comment on specific pending investigations. It’s unclear whether the message was intended as purely a warning against potential future hacks, or the degree to which US companies have already experienced data thefts. The FBI’s Ugoretz did say there were confirmed “intrusions” into “some” research institutions, however.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/17/2020 – 21:00 - These 10 Colleges Are Receiving The Most Federal Bailout Money
These 10 Colleges Are Receiving The Most Federal Bailout Money
Authored by Jon Street via Campus Reform,
Thousands of colleges across the country are being infused with billions of dollars in cash after they were forced to close their campuses and move classes online amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund is part of the $2 trillion CARES Act that was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump. The fund contains a total of about $14.2 billion for both private and public colleges and universities across the U.S.
In a letter to college presidents dated April 9, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos wrote that “the most significant portion of that funding allocation provides that $12.56 billion will be distributed to institutions using a formula based on student enrollment,” adding that at least 50 percent of the money to each institution “must be reserved to provide students with emergency financial aid grants to help cover expenses related to the disruption of campus operations due to coronavirus.”
The most money any university is receiving is about $63.5 million while $291 was the least amount received by any academic institution.
Campus Reform identified the ten universities receiving the most money from the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund, courtesy of the American taxpayer.
1. Arizona State University- $63.5 million
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2. Pennsylvania State University- $54.9 million
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3. Rutgers University- $54.1 million
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4. University of Central Florida- $51 million
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5. Miami Dade College- $49 million
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6. Georgia State University- $45.2 million
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7. California State University-Northridge- $44.6 million
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8. The Ohio State University- $42.8 million
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9. California State University- Long Beach- $41.7 million
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10. California State University- Fullerton- $41 million
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Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/17/2020 – 20:40 - Oil Stored At Sea Hits A Record 160 Million Barrels, Doubling In Two Weeks
Oil Stored At Sea Hits A Record 160 Million Barrels, Doubling In Two Weeks
The historic OPEC+ “Mexican Standoff” production cut came and went, and after a very short kneejerk spike higher oil has continued to plunge to historic lows for the two reasons we laid out previously: i) the production cut was not nearly enough to offset the demand collapse of as much as 36 million barrels, and ii) every day that tens of millions of excess barrels are produced brings us one day closer to that catastrophic D-day when oil storage runs out.
Of course, just like not all oil producers are equal – recall Goldman recently predicted that landlocked producers may see oil prices go negative, as they run out of buyers or places where to store the oil, while tanker access to most Brent exporters means that the price of Brent will not drop materially below $20 – not all storage is equal either, and while Cushing and ARA commercial storage is expected to hit full in just a few months at the current rate of net supply, many producers are using water storage as a flexible alternative.
As a result, traders are now storing an estimated record 160 million barrels of oil on ships – double the level from two weeks ago as they seek to tackle a glut of stocks, Reuters reportsas traders have rushed to find storage on land and at sea in what is believed to be the biggest oil glut in history.
The surge in water storage, which started with Saudi Arabia unleashing an armada of tankers last month to flood the world with cheap oil…
… has swept the globe and shipping sources say oil held in floating storage on tankers had reached at least 160 million barrels including 60 supertankers, aka very large crude carriers (VLCCs), which can each hold 2 million barrels. This compared with just 25 to 40 VLCCs already chartered with storage options at the start of April and fewer than 10 VLCCs in February, the sources said adding that smaller tankers were also being used, which was also boosting volumes being held at anchor.
The last time floating storage reached levels close to this was in 2009, when traders stored over 100 million barrels at sea before offloading stocks; the plunge in oil prices then prompted one of our very first posts in January 2009 “Risk-Free Profit Idea of the Day” in which we explained how to benefit from $25 contango.
Putting naval oil infrastructure in context, the red dots show oil-tankers transporting over 100 million barrels each day. Now add another 60 million barrels to begin..
“This is an unprecedented time in the history of tankers and while VLCC tanker storage is garnering the headlines, smaller crude and product tankers are also being used for storage,” said BTIG shipping analyst Gregory Lewis.
Locations typically include the U.S. Gulf and Singapore, where major oil hubs are situated. A supercontango that briefly emerged in 2016 when oil prices also crashed for a period of time, resulted in the following stunning navel map of tankers parked off Singapore.
As mentioned above, the crude market is currently trading in deep contango, where forward prices are higher (in some cases much higher)than immediate prices.
The ability to buy a barrel of oil cheap today and lock in a profit by selling it in the future, encourages traders to park barrels in storage in the hopes of selling them for a profit later.
And with the contango barely budging, analysts – who notes that there are over 770 VLCCs in the world – estimate that as many as 100 to 200 supertankers could be deployed for floating storage in coming months.
“The eventual wind down of this inventory glut will be most painful to tanker demand, but in the meantime floating storage remains the only outlet for a mismatched production and consumption backdrop,” said Jonathan Chappell with investment banking advisory Evercore ISI
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/17/2020 – 20:36 - Landlords Are Reportedly Asking Broke Tenants To 'Pay' Rent With Sex
Landlords Are Reportedly Asking Broke Tenants To 'Pay' Rent With Sex
Desperate times call for desperate measures. And with the Fed in the process of destroying the monetary system as we know, we can’t say we were surprised to hear that some landlords were attempting to use the age-old system of barter to accept payments.
The problem? They’re reportedly asking their broke tenants for sex, according to BuzzFeed.
Citing the Hawaii State Commission on the Status of Women, the report details several complaints of sexual harassment since the coronavirus outbreak began.
One woman says when she texted her landlord about a more affordable property after being unable to pay her April rent, “he responded with a dick pic.” A different woman claimed that her landlord told her she could come over and “spoon him” instead of paying her April rent.
Khara Jabola-Carolus, the executive director of the commission said: “We’ve received more cases at our office in the last two days than we have in the last two years.”
She thinks the cases are becoming more egregious as tenants become unemployed, broke and more vulnerable. “Of course that’s not the root cause of why it’s happening, but it makes it easier because now [landlords] have access to people at their fingertips,” she said.
Sheryl Ring, the legal director at Open Communities, a legal aid and fair housing agency just north of Chicago said: “We have seen an uptick in sexual harassment. Since this started, they [landlords] have been taking advantage of the financial hardships many of their tenants have in order to coerce their tenants into a sex-for-rent agreement — which is absolutely illegal.”
She says sexual harassment complaints related to housing are up threefold in the last month. Ring was already working on six cases before the epidemic began and says that women of color and trans women are the most likely to be targeted. Ring advises women not to give in to trying to negotiate with landlords at all if the topic comes up.
“You can’t really negotiate how much illegality the landlord is willing to do,” she said. “We’ve heard some landlords are attempting to use the situation where a tenant falls behind to pressure a tenant into exchanging sex for rent,” she continued.
“It’s important to know what your rights are as quickly as possible. Even now, just because courts are closed to most things, it doesn’t mean you do not have recourse right now and can’t be protected,” Ring concluded.
“The conditions are ripe for sexual exploitation,” said Jabola-Carolus, noting that since Hawaii’s tourism industry has fallen apart, many immigrant and native Hawaiians are out of work.
Jabola-Carolus concluded: “The power dynamic goes without saying. All of us feel intimidated by our landlords because shelter is so critical.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/17/2020 – 20:20 - The Paper Of Record Says Feel Sorry For Bill Gates, Who's Been Targeted With Conspiracy Theories
The Paper Of Record Says Feel Sorry For Bill Gates, Who's Been Targeted With Conspiracy Theories
The Wall Street Journal‘s Deepa Seetharaman wants us to know that while poor billionaire Bill Gates has ‘long been a target for online trolls,’ that ‘the social-media attacks have intensified’ as the Micrrosoft co-founder and World Health Organization (WHO) benefactor has become the left’s de-facto coronavirus czar.
Seetharaman suggests that the attacks have increased due to Gates’s angry criticism towards President Trump, who halted funding to the WHO due to the organization’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and its allegiance to China.
In the 24 hours after Mr. Gates’s comments, his Twitter account was mentioned at least 270,000 times—more than 30 times more than average—mainly by angry supporters of President Trump, according to Clemson University researchers. Mr. Gates’s Instagram post from April 5 drew an additional 45,000 comments in that same 24-hour period. The post now has more than 225,000 comments. –WSJ
Perhaps the ‘conspiracy theorists’ are having a little trouble digesting the fact that Gates – whose vaccine efforts in India were blamed for a devastating non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP) epidemic that paralyzed 490,000 children – coincidentally hosted an October, 2019 high-level ‘pandemic simulation’ in New York called Event 201 which specifically focused on coronavirus and projected over 65 million deaths worldwide.
Combine that with Gates’ recent comments about mass vaccination and biometric identification in order to ‘open up’ the country and allow people to attend mass gatherings – an idea which Dr. Anthony Fauci said “has merit,” and so-called conspiracy theorists have plenty of dots to connect.
In a new interview, Bill Gates authoritatively states that mass public gatherings will not come back “at all” until we have mass vaccination. Who made him king of the world? https://t.co/siW7bZ9yGc … pic.twitter.com/ivaCI8eAEl
— Alternative News (@NewsAlternative) April 4, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
MIT is working on a “quantum tattoo” that will mark you with an invisible identifier while also delivering a vaccine. Can you guess who is the premiere donor of the project? https://t.co/ZEWqCUVGwI pic.twitter.com/jFVip4DaqZ
— Roosh (@rooshv) April 4, 2020
According to the Journal, “social-media platforms remain fertile ground for virus-related conspiracies and online harassment, despite repeated pledges by the companies to crack down on such activity.”
So – Gates is being harassed and nobody is stopping these thought criminals with their menacing opinions. And of course, ‘bots’ are also being blameed for amplifying ‘conspiracy claims’ – since there can’t be that many real humans with bad things to say about Mr. Gates.
“I’ve never seen a time where more mis- and disinformation has flowed than this coronavirus period,” said Univsity of Texas assistant professor Sam Woolley, who has ‘studied disinformation for nearly a decade.’
Some antivaccine activists and conspiracy-minded posters encouraged their followers across social media to attack Mr. Gates on Instagram, a form of harassment called “brigading” in which people coordinate attacks and hijack conversations online, according to a review of accounts. This week, one Instagram account told its 52,000 followers that “it wouldn’t be a bad thing for all of us to go visit Bill Gates Instagram and let him know what you think.” A spokeswoman for the Gates Foundation declined to comment. –WSJ
According to the report, Facebook is now “looking at this behavior carefully to determine whether it violates our policies. People on our services are allowed to speak freely, and do so in an organized way, but we remove accounts that are fake or designed to mislead,” and will begin notifying users who have engaged with what they deem misinformation that they’ve been hoodwinked by bad actors in cyberspace.
How nice! Maybe Facebook will hire someone from the Gates foundation to do their fact checking?
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/17/2020 – 20:20 - The "Iron Law" Of Oligarchy – Always Pick The Policy-Makers
The "Iron Law" Of Oligarchy – Always Pick The Policy-Makers
“The iron law of oligarchy” is a political theory, first developed by the German sociologist Robert Michels in his 1911 book, Political Parties.
It asserts that rule by an elite, or oligarchy, is inevitable as an “iron law” within any democratic organization as part of the “tactical and technical necessities” of an organization.
Michels’ theory states that all complex organizations, regardless of how democratic they are when started, eventually develop into oligarchies. Michels observed that since no sufficiently large and complex organization can function purely as a direct democracy, power within an organization will always get delegated to individuals within that group, elected or otherwise.
Michels argues that democratic attempts to hold leadership positions accountable are prone to fail, since with power comes the ability to reward loyalty, the ability to control information about the organization, and the ability to control what procedures the organization follows when making decisions.
All of these mechanisms can be used to strongly influence the outcome of any decisions made ‘democratically’ by members.
Michels stated that the official goal of representative democracy of eliminating elite rule was impossible, that representative democracy is a façade legitimizing the rule of a particular elite, and that elite rule, which he refers to as oligarchy, is inevitable.” (sourced from Wikipedia)
Stiegler refines the Iron Law of Oligarchy, in his Theory of Economic Regulation, also suggesting that the big guys will always win and the little guys will always lose. He bases this conclusion on the following premises:
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The fundamental asset controlled by the state is the power to coerce. Any group that can control how this power is used can profit.
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Since we are self-interested actors, we will seek to get the state’s coercive power to support our interests. Efforts to do so, however, are costly.
Large firms win because:
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Large firms have high benefits from mobilizing (the stakes our high). Since they are a small group, and since they are fairly homogeneous, they have no difficulty with collective action problems (they can lobby efficiently).
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Small firms don’t organize for political reasons because of collective action problems (very high coordination costs).
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Consumers don’t organize because the costs of doing so are high compared to the benefits (very high coordination costs).
This is made crystal clear in the financial crisis of 2008 and the current economic collapse. In 2008 the perpetrators of the reckoning were provided with cheap loans that negated free market forces while rewarding excessive risk taking. This free flow of cheap money continued for the next decade. Financial markets as an efficient pricing mechanism of the productive allocation of finite resources died in 2008. What we were left with was a clear display of The Iron Law of Oligarchy.
Millions of young Americans were inundated with loans that could not be absolved even through bankruptcy. While they took these loans of their own free will, they were entering adult life during the greatest economic failure of all time and so most were left with very few viable alternatives. The $1.8 trillion in student loans provided a huge boost to corporate earnings as about only half of borrowing goes to tuition. So about $900 billion was spent at Walmart, Target, etc., and lots of consumer goods were consumed. That consumption transferred cash to the top line of S&P 500 income statements. And while the cash from the loan was transferred to corporations, the obligation remained with America’s youth.
In today’s crisis we see that financial markets received enough support to prop market capital within short reach of all time highs despite the economy seeing 22 million working Americans filing for unemployment. Policy makers first response to the crisis was to quickly allocate $5 trillion to a relatively few financial firms in order to prevent them from having to take losses on their speculative trades. These firms used the cash to re-inflate market prices, which created profits, from which they paid back the loan via the repo market.
On the other hand, it took several weeks for policy makers to allocate only $350 billion to support the government forced closure of around 20 million small businesses. This relatively small funding allocation ran out after 1.5 million small businesses received assistance.
Policy makers are yet to agree on a second bill to increase funding while many small business owners are left with $0 in the bank to feed their kids, pay their bills and wonder how they are going to recover. Imagine the stress. No seriously, pause and imagine the soul crushing stress they are living with every minute of every day. Yet policy makers are choosing to remain on break until early May. You can be certain if the banks or hedge funds were in trouble a bill would be passed immediately.
Stiegler argues:
“the first purpose of empirical studies of regulatory policy is to identify the purpose of the legislation! The announced goals of a policy are often unrelated or perversely related to its actual effects and the truly intended effects should be deduced from the actual effects [over time].”
That is, don’t listen to the stated objectives of policy makers but study the actual results of their policies over time; the results over time are the intended effects. If we look at the actual effects of economic policies over the past 30 years it should provide us a strong indication of the intended effects.
Market capital driven wealth of the S&P 500 has increased by 1500% since 1988 while median weekly incomes have increased by 113%. For some perspective, rents of primary residence for Americans has increased 269.7% over that same time period.
It doesn’t matter to me what profession you chose or how proficient you are in finance, the notion that the system is designed to enrich a few and enslave many has never been more clear. You may be one of those still receiving an income but at some point you will be on the other side. That is guaranteed. Because the Oligarchs don’t want to be wealthy they want to have all the wealth. That is the way our system works. Slowly, over time, policies will allocate all wealth to those that can coerce the policies.
Jeff Bezos’s wealth has increased by $24 Billion since the crisis began. That is due to market share capture from millions of small businesses. Policy makers pick winners and losers. Oligarchs pick policy makers.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/17/2020 – 20:00 -
- Daily Briefing – April 17, 2020
- Rural Communities Are Not Safe From COVID-19, Researchers Warn
Rural Communities Are Not Safe From COVID-19, Researchers Warn
Princeton researchers have determined that rural counties concentrated in the western U.S., the northern Midwest, Florida, and northern New England have elderly populations that could be the most vulnerable to COVID-19.
The new report titled “Mapping the Burden of COVID-19 in the United States” suggests that rural communities with high concentrations of baby boomers (people over 60) and limited access to health care facilities could “eventually be among the hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic.”
“The burden is still going to be high in urban areas and the absolute number of cases will be highest in cities, but we could see rural areas have a higher per capita burden and a higher ratio of cases to hospital beds,” said author Ian Miller, who is a graduate student in ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton.
Miller and co-author Alexander Becker, another graduate student at the university, said intensive care units are lacking in many rural communities that are critical medical devices to save lives during the pandemic.
“We’re hoping that our study will prompt state and public health officials to keep an extremely close eye on rural areas,” said Miller, who has been talking with state governments about vulnerable counties.
“If they know where the vulnerable counties are, they can allocate resources to those counties, or try to help direct cases originating in those counties to health systems with more adequate capacity,” he said.
Researchers used a combination of the American Hospital Association and Census data to determine where the most at-risk population in rural communities resided.
“The researchers conducted an epidemiological simulation that compared how many hospital and ICU beds each county currently has — according to the American Hospital Association — to the number of coronavirus cases they would experience if the infection rate reaches 20% of the county’s population.
Using 2018 demographic data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the researchers broke down each county’s population by age group, starting at 0-9 and continuing every 10 years through the final designation of 70-plus. Their model then factored in the proportion of each age group that has been likely to become severely ill, with people over 60 being the most vulnerable.”
Miller and his team developed two disease transmission models, one slow and one fast, that determined the western U.S., the northern Midwest, Florida, and northern New England emerged as the most at risk.
“In the “optimistic” scenario, disease transmission was relatively slow, people had contact mostly with those within their age group, and people presenting symptoms of coronavirus were effectively quarantined. In contrast, the “pessimistic” scenario was characterized by a high transmission rate, homogenous contact between different age groups, and people showing signs of infection being quarantined too late or not at all.
The counties that became overwhelmed in both the optimistic and the pessimistic scenarios are those that the study authors identified as most vulnerable to the current outbreak.”
The study comes as the US reports 671,273 confirmed cases and 33,286 deaths on Friday (April 17).
Becker said rural communities are not immune to the virus.
“Because people’s needs are so different within a state, that motivated us to look at the county level to get as high a resolution as we could,” he said. “Maybe these results can be used as a preparation guide for officials in counties that are at risk, especially if there’s a large distance between a rural area and an urban area with greater access to health care.”
“We’re not trying to tell public health officials to focus only on rural areas or only on urban areas,” Miller said. “We’re trying to give them a holistic picture of the burden all of the different parts of their state might face so they can try to provide equitable care.”
While everyone is focused on the pandemic sweeping across major metro areas, could the next big health crisis be rural America?
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/17/2020 – 19:40 - The "Best" Economy Ever? Neither Before, Nor After Coronavirus
The "Best" Economy Ever? Neither Before, Nor After Coronavirus
Submitted by Joe Carson, former chief economist at Alliance Bernstein,
The strong rebound in equity prices since mid-March suggests investors are banking on a fast rebound in the economy once government eases the restrictions on work-life, travel and social and recreational gatherings. Reopening regions or sectors of the economy will undoubtedly produce a statistically powerful rebound; triggering a race among analysts to revise up growth estimates as fast as they raced to reduce them.
But “boomerang” statistics on jobs and GDP does not mean a return to the “best” economy for the simple it was not the best before. Here’s why.
Corporate Profits: In 2019, operating profits for US companies totaled $2.075 trillion, essentially unchanged from the prior year. That flat performance represents the fifth consecutive year of no growth in corporate profits. It would be flat out wrong to characterize the economy’s recent performance as the “best” when corporate profitability has stalled for 5 consecutive years.
Even if the current recession proves to be short in time, it still will be historic in terms of the scale of decline in operating profits.
The peak to trough decline in operating profits during the Great Financial Recession was 40%. But that drop in operating profits occurred against a 3% peak to trough decline in Nominal GDP.
Currently, consensus economic forecasts point to a decline in Nominal GDP two or three times greater than what took place in 2008/09. Accordingly, investors should brace for a 60% to 70% decline in operating profits, and a long road back to pre-recession earning levels.
Corporate Debt: At the end of 2019, nonfinancial corporations had outstanding debt and loans of $10.1 trillion, nearly double what these firms on their balance sheet at the start of the last decade. A relatively large part of the debt binge was used for financial engineering (i.e. stock buybacks) instead of engineering for innovation and making things.
In recent weeks, commercial and industrial loans have increased nearly $500 billion as firms drew down credit lines to increase cash and liquidity levels. Also, Congress gave the federal government and the Federal Reserve the authority to initiate a new lending program for small and mid-sized companies. So the level of corporate indebtedness will continue to increase further even as the economy nosedives.
The road from recession to recovery is based on “reliquification, or the process of freeing up of cash flow by refinancing existing debt obligations for lower interest payments, longer terms or by paying down debt.
Extending more debt to companies is the exact opposite of the practices that were employed in the past to help the economy escape recession. Enabling companies to stay afloat by adding to existing debt levels might stop the economic bleeding in the short run, but it does not make the economy stronger or better. The payback will be weak growth as firms struggle with record debt levels.
Finance vs. Economy: The last decade saw the greatest divide ever between finance and the economy. At the end of 2019, household holdings of equities stood 2 times the level of disposable personal income, an all-time high. Also, the market value of domestic companies to Nominal GDP stood at a record 1.9 times, exceeding the prior record high of 2000.
The divergence between the stock market and the real economy was fueled by easy money. To be sure, policymakers kept official rates near zero for roughly half of the record 130-month economic expansion.
Also, the cycle high of 2.37% in the federal funds rate represented the lowest nominal peak rate in the post-war period, and only for a short 6-month span in early 2019, did the fed funds exceed the core rate of consumer price inflation.
Never before in any business cycle has official rates remained below the inflation rate for almost the entire growth cycle.
In the end, monetary policy stimulated finance over the economy and in the process created an equity market that was “too big to fail”; and its fall deepens the recession and slows the recovery.
The US economy has the potential to be the “best”. But to be the “best” it needs to clean up corporate balance sheets and follow best policies and best practices.
Best policies means the capital markets fairly and freely price and allocate credit and capital. Best practices means firms focus on innovation and making things.
“Are we there yet?” Unfortunately, from a public policy and business practice perspective the US is moving in the wrong direction.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/17/2020 – 19:20 - No "Buy American" This Time: Munger Warns Berkshire "Will Shutter Some Businesses"
No "Buy American" This Time: Munger Warns Berkshire "Will Shutter Some Businesses"
On Oct 16, 2008, in what seemed America’s darkest hour at least until a Chinese manmade virus escaped a Wuhan lab and killed thousands of Americans, forcing the Fed to nationalize capital markets and preserve social order by artificially inflating stock prices to idiotic levels based on the complete collapse in earnings, Warren Buffett came to America’s rescue by frontrunning a multi-trillion taxpayer bailout of US banks when he penned a NYT Op-ed “Buy American. I am” in which he wrote “The financial world is a mess, both in the United States and abroad….So, I’ve been buying American stocks.” And sure enough, Berkshire spent tens of billions of dollars investing in General Electric, Goldman Sachs Group, and many others as well as buying Burlington Northern Santa Fe outright.
And yet, for all his pompous poseur patriotism, the Omaha billionaire knew he was exposed to zero risk as US taxpayers would bail out the companies he was buying if it all came crashing down. In other words, what Buffett did not say at the time, is that he only “bought stocks” because he was frontrunning the largest bailout in US history.
Until now… when a newly merged Fed and Treasury have unleashed helicopter money which will amount to tens of trillions in “bailout” funds and liquidity injections, which are really meant to spark hyperinflation and inflate away the world’s record amount of debt.
So will Berkshire step up now to “Buy American” again in a repeat attempt to spark a wave of patriotic buying by retail investors? Don’t count on it.
In an interview with the WSJ’s Jason Zweig, best known for calling gold – whose price is now just shy of all time highs – a “pet rock” in 2015, Buffett’s right hand man, Charlie Munger explained that Berkshire’s patriotic buying would be far more muted this time… if at all:
“I would say basically we’re like the captain of a ship when the worst typhoon that’s ever happened comes. We just want to get through the typhoon, and we’d rather come out of it with a whole lot of liquidity. We’re not playing, ‘Oh goody, goody, everything’s going to hell, let’s plunge 100% of the reserves [into buying businesses].’”
He added, “Warren wants to keep Berkshire safe for people who have 90% of their net worth invested in it. We’re always going to be on the safe side. That doesn’t mean we couldn’t do something pretty aggressive or seize some opportunity. But basically we will be fairly conservative. And we’ll emerge on the other side very strong.”
Something else odd: unlike 2008 when every CEO was begging Buffett for a bailout, this time executives have learned that they can just go to the Fed. Asked if “hordes of corporate executives” are calling Berkshire begging for capital, Munger said “No, they aren’t. The typical reaction is that people are frozen. Take the airlines. They don’t know what the hell’s doing. They’re all negotiating with the government, but they’re not calling Warren. They’re frozen. They’ve never seen anything like it. Their playbook does not have this as a possibility.”
He repeated for emphasis, “Everybody’s just frozen. And the phone is not ringing off the hook. Everybody’s just frozen in the position they’re in.”
As Zweig correctly (this time) notes, “with Berkshire’s vast holdings in railroads, real estate, utilities, insurance and other industries, Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger may have more and better data on U.S. economic activity than anyone else, with the possible exception of the Federal Reserve. But Mr. Munger wouldn’t even hazard a guess as to how long the downturn might last or how bad it could get.”
“Nobody in America’s ever seen anything else like this,” said Munger. “This thing is different. Everybody talks as if they know what’s going to happen, and nobody knows what’s going to happen.”
Which is an interesting – if hypocritical – observation since if “nobody knows what’s going to happen” how is everyone also saying it won’t be a depression, Munger included?
“Of course we’re having a recession,” said Mr. Munger. “The only question is how big it’s going to be and how long it’s going to last. I think we do know that this will pass. But how much damage, and how much recession, and how long it will last, nobody knows.”
He added, “I don’t think we’ll have a long-lasting Great Depression. I think government will be so active that we won’t have one like that. But we may have a different kind of a mess. All this money-printing may start bothering us.”
Finally, can the government reduce its role in the economy once the virus is under control?
“I don’t think we know exactly what the macroeconomic consequences are going to be,” said Mr. Munger. “I do think, sooner or later, we’ll have an economy back, which will be a moderate economy. It’s quite possible that never again—not again in a long time—will we have a level of employment again like we just lost. We may never get that back for all practical purposes. I don’t know.”
Munger may not know, but Buffett does and explains why this time he will not only not be buying, but in fact shuttering:
“This will cause us to shutter some businesses,” Munger said. “We have a few bad businesses that…we could be tolerant of as members of the family. Somebody else would have already shut them down. We’ve got a few businesses, small ones, we won’t reopen when this is over.”
Finally, here is what Berkshire thinks stocks will do in the future. “I don’t have the faintest idea whether the stock market is going to go lower than the old lows or whether it’s not.” The coronavirus shutdown is “something we have to live through,” letting the chips fall where they may, he said. “What else can you do?”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/17/2020 – 19:15
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