- The Silent War On "Q" Continues
The Silent War On "Q" Continues
Authored by Deborah Franklin via AmericanThinker.com,
We’re living in dramatic times that are difficult to understand. One way to try to interpret them is through the cryptic clues provided by Q, which appear on an anonymous online forum and imply top-secret knowledge of upcoming events.
As I wrote in my article “An Introduction to Q,”
“Q’s followers believe that Q is a military intelligence operation, the first of its kind, whose goal is to provide the public with secret information… Q is a new weapon in the game of information warfare, bypassing a hostile media and corrupt government to communicate directly with the public.”
It’s interesting to note that shortly after my article was published here, American Thinker suffered a series of unprecedented hacking attempts. Also noteworthy is that Twitter permanently shut down the account of Zero Hedge, a popular finance blog, two weeks after it posted my article.
President Trump continues to bring attention to Q, repeatedly retweeting Q followers, featuring Q fans in his ad campaign, and making a public display of a “Q baby” at a rally. Yet the media never asks Trump the obvious question: What do you think about Q?
Instead, the media keeps ratcheting up its attacks on Q and the ever-growing worldwide movement that Q inspires. On February 9, both the AP and New York Times published blistering anti-Q articles, claiming that Q promotes baseless, debunked far right conspiracies and accusing Q of inciting violence in deranged followers. The day before this latest media ambush, a massive cyber assault temporarily brought down 8kun, the message board on which Q posts. Ron Watkins, 8kun’s administrator, tweeted,
“Attacks have been coming in all day. Very sophisticated and expensive attacks; the person paying for this likely has deep pockets.”
At the same time that 8kun was attacked, X22 Report, which covers Q postings, also was bombarded. On its Twitter feed, the site wrote it was “being attacked from 54 different countries using hundreds of different IP addresses, I have never seen anything like it.”
On February 12, in response to these events, Q posted,
“Highly sophisticated ‘State-level’ attacks [v 8kun] followed by FAKE NEWS attacks [v Q] the next day? Coordinated? Ask yourself a simple question… why? It’s time to wake up.”
In almost 4,000 posts, Q has painted a disturbing, multi-faceted portrait of a global crime syndicate that operates with impunity. In recent weeks, President Trump has grown more explicit about some of the syndicate’s crimes. Speaking to the National Governors Association, President Trump stated, in an almost casual, offhand manner, why the United States had recently upgraded its nuclear missile technology at great expense. “…we’re buying new, we have the super-fast missiles, tremendous number of the super-fast. We call them super-fast where they’re four, five, six, or even seven times faster than ordinary missiles. We need that because again, Russia has some. I won’t tell you how they got it. They got it supposedly from the Obama Administration when we weren’t doing it. And that’s too bad. It’s not good. But that’s how it happened.”
The President’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has also grown more specific in his accusations, tweeting “The Biden Family Enterprise has been selling his office for years. The corrupt media has been covering up. It was handed to me and I had the courage to reveal it knowing the Swamp would try to destroy me. I served my country. They are betraying it. I will not stop.”
Q followers were not surprised by President Trump’s remarks or Giuliani’s charges, since they have probed into Q’s numerous clues about the treachery of America’s elite. The Q Army reads the headlines through a different lens than those who rely on the mainstream media for information. For instance, Q followers expected Jussie Smollett’s recent arrest on charges related to his alleged staging of a hate crime, and they anticipate his hoax will be tied directly to two failed presidential candidates and their political strategies.
I would like to offer some Q references that may help to illuminate recent events and prepare us for future developments. With the defeat of the impeachment threat, President Trump appears to be launching significant countermoves against those he accuses of plotting a coup. Q followers anticipate that he will declassify sensitive government documents, revealing shocking crimes and collaborations. The exposed criminals are likely to respond with dangerous counterattacks, most of which are unseen by the public. As Q recently wrote, the silent war continues.
Let’s take a look at some recent events, in light of Q’s messages.
Trump Acquitted of Impeachment Charges: When Republicans lost the House of Representatives in 2018, many Q followers were dismayed. They feared the Democrats would use their new power to unleash disruptive investigations and push impeachment. Q responded several times that the Senate was the target, emphasizing that the Q team’s midterm election strategy centered on strengthening the Senate as part of a long-term plan. With President Trump emerging from the impeachment ordeal at his political zenith, Q’s confidence in the midterm election results continues to resonate.
The Best Is Yet To Come: Trump’s New Reelection Theme: President Trump ended his recent State of the Union address by declaring, “The best is yet to come.” This statement, with its inherent optimism, appears to be central to his reelection message, and he and his team have deployed it several times.
The President debuted this message on January 28 by concluding his massive rally in Wildwood, New Jersey with these exact words. However, Q followers were already familiar with the slogan, because Q had dropped it at 2:26 that same afternoon.
Trump Hints at Tarmac Meeting Deal: On June 27, 2016, Bill Clinton and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch held a supposedly impromptu meeting on her plane at Phoenix Airport, where they discussed (according to them) golf and grandchildren. Skeptics have long suspected that Clinton and Lynch were working out a deal in which Lynch agreed to drop the probe into Hillary Clinton’s email scandal in exchange for a payoff.
On January 14, at his Milwaukee rally, President Trump offered some insight into the nature of the payoff, when he suggested that Bill Clinton promised Lynch a Supreme Court appointment, which would be conferred after Hillary’s expected victory.
Q followers were already familiar with this scenario, because on February 6, 2018, Q had posted the following message about the Tarmac meeting: SC/LL deal > AS 187
Here’s how some Q followers interpreted that message: The Supreme Court/Loretta Lynch deal was connected to the purported murder of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. (Note: 187 is police code for murder. Q often uses this term when discussing alleged Deep State murders.) Scalia died suddenly at a Texas ranch on February 13, 2016, and was declared dead of natural causes over the phone. No coroner or medical examiner ever saw him and no autopsy was performed.
Trump accuses Adam Schiff of being “a very sick man.” President Trump has accused House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff of various acts of political chicanery, but in a January 26 tweet, he raised his criticism to another level: “Shifty Adam Schiff is a CORRUPT POLITICIAN, and probably a very sick man. He has not paid the price, yet, for what he has done to our Country!”
The president’s words immediately evoked one of Q’s signature phrases, which Trump himself has also said: “These people are sick.” But moving from “these people” to the specific person of “Adam Schiff” marks another phase of disclosure. On January 31, 2018, Q dropped hints that Schiff committed serious criminal acts that connected to the Standard Hotel chain. Q directed attention to a California helicopter crash that had just killed Kimberly Watzman, General Manager of the Standard Hotel in West Hollywood, and asked: “What happened @ those hotels?” Perhaps some context for these potential criminal acts may be inferred from Schiff’s close friendship with Ed Buck, a major Democratic donor who was arrested in October 2019 for killing two men with drug overdoses in his apartment and almost killing a third. Schiff has also publicly praised his friend, Dr. Bruce Hensel, the NBC medical correspondent, who was arrested in 2019 for sex charges involving a 9-year-old girl.
Q has named this extraordinary time “The Great Awakening,” in which the world moves from “dark to light.” As the darkness of horrific elite secrets gives way to the light of public scrutiny, our fortitude will be tested. But Q assures us, “You are watching the systematic destruction of the OLD GUARD.” And when the news gets too frightening, it’s worth remembering Q’s oft-repeated directive: “Pray.”
Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/17/2020 – 23:40 - "Doomed To Failure": Bolton Excoriates Trump On Iran, N.Korea In First Post-Impeachment Appearance
"Doomed To Failure": Bolton Excoriates Trump On Iran, N.Korea In First Post-Impeachment Appearance
Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton took his former boss’s foreign policy to task during comments made at Duke University Monday night — in his first public speech since the impeachment inquiry wrapped up, and at a sensitive moment his lawyers are still wrangling over the contents of his soon to published book. On this latter point, he briefly expressed simply that “I hope my book is not suppressed” and later said more sharply, “This is an effort to write history. We’ll see what comes out of censorship.”
Evaluating the success of the administration’s Iran policy, Bolton said: “I think it’s failing because i don’t think it lives up to its bumper sticker slogan of maximum pressure. I don’t think we’re applying maximum pressure to Iran.”
However, he did hail the Soleimani strike in saying the now deceased IRGC Quds Force chief “deserved exactly what he got” but added, “The only quibble I have is it should’ve happened sooner.” But he cited as among significant “failures” the administration’s response or lack thereof to the IRGC’s accidental downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752.
Image source: ABC Bolton also emphasized during the speech entitled “The National Security Challenge of 2020” his familiar theme going back to the Bush White House that “weapons of mass destruction” remain the most “severe” threat to US — especially those possessed by Iran and North Korea.
Specifically on North Korea, Bolton called the president’s attempts to bring Pyongyang in from the cold with direct negotiations “doomed to failure”.
Bolton viewed the whole initiative (for which he was largely sidelined from during the last months of his tenure as national security adviser) as having ultimately “wasted two years” and which simultaneously gave North Korea “two year pass.”
Referring to the administration’s North Korea policy, Bolton told the audience that “it was perfectly evident it was going to fail.”
“There is not a single piece of evidence that the government of North Korea has made a strategic decision to give up the pursuit of nuclear weapons,” he added
On Iran, Bolton made clear he wanted the administration to take further steps.
“I don’t think we are applying maximum pressure,” Bolton said.
He said the sanctions enacted by the Trump administration have had “a very significant effect” but made clear he would like the US to explicitly push for regime change in the country. — CNN
Image source: AFP via Getty Of course, the Duke University audience was no doubt hoping for more personal anecdotes dishing on Trump and the prospect of addressing the Ukraine angle to the prior impeachment proceedings.
As expected, Bolton spoke sparingly on this:
Asked about Trump’s tweets about him, Bolton is reported to have said he could not comment, pending a White House review of the manuscript for his forthcoming book. “He tweets, but I can’t talk about it. How fair is that?” he said, according to one reporter present.
When asked on Monday what it was like to staff Trump’s 2018 meeting with Putin in Helsinki, Bolton reportedly said: “To pursue the right policies for America, I was willing to put up with a lot.”
“I’m not asking for martyrdom,” he added. “I knew, I think I knew, what I was getting into.”
“For all the focus on Ukraine and impeachment trial: to me there are portions of the manuscript that deal with Ukraine — I view that as the sprinkles on an ice cream sundae, in terms of the book. This is an effort to write history. I did the best I can… We’ll see what happens with the censorship,” Bolton said.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/17/2020 – 23:15 - Dominos Are Falling – China Shutdown To Crush India’s Already-Crumbling Economy
Dominos Are Falling – China Shutdown To Crush India’s Already-Crumbling Economy
The supply chain shock emanating from China to other Asia Pacific countries and Europe, could become a major headache for India.
Bloomberg focuses on how an industrial shutdown of China’s economy has already had a profound effect on India’s economy and could get worse.
Pankaj R. Patel, chairman of Zydus Cadila, said prices of medicine in India have exponentially jumped in the last several weeks, thanks to much of the medicine is sourced from China.
The Indian pharmaceutical industry is experiencing massive disruptions that could face shortages starting in April if supplies aren’t replenished in the next couple weeks, Patel warned.
He said prices of paracetamol, a common analgesic, have risen 40% in India, while some antibiotic medicines have soared 70% since Covid-19 broke out in China last month.
Manufacturers in China have idled plants, and at least two-thirds of the economy is halted. Some factories came online last week with promises of full production by the end of the month, but for most factories, their resumption will likely be delayed. This will undoubtedly lead to medicine shortages in India in the coming months ahead.
A new theme is developing from all this mayhem – that is the reorganization of complex supply chains out of China to a more localized approach to avoid severing. But in the meantime, these complex supply chains in India and across the world will experience massive disruption caused by the shutdown. All of this points to ugly end of globalization:
Pankaj Mahindroo, chairman of the India Cellular and Electronics Association (ICEA), said the wrecking of supply chains in China could soon have a devastating impact on India’s smartphone production.
Mahindroo represents companies including Foxconn, Apple Inc., Micromax Informatics Ltd., and Salcomp India, warned the “impact is already visible… If things don’t improve soon, production will have to be stopped.”
Already, the production of iPhones and Airpods has been reduced in China because of factory shutdowns.
The closure of Foxconn plants in India would be absolutely devastating for Apple.
Apple produces iPhone XR in India. If the production of affordable smartphones is halted or reduced, the Californian based company could see full-year earnings guidance slashed.
Mohnidroo said if things don’t improve in the next couple of weeks, smartphone factories in India could start running out of “critical components like printed circuit boards, camera modules, semiconductors, resistors, and capacitors.”
A spokesperson for Xiaomi Corp.’s India unit said alternative sourcing attempts are underway to mitigate any supply chain disruption from China.
Even before all of this, India’s economy is rapidly decelerating into an economic crisis.
Former Indian Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha warned several months ago that the country is in a “very deep crisis,” witnessing “death of demand,” and the government is “befooling people” with its economic distortions of how growth is around the corner.
Supply chain disruptions are moving from East to West. It’s only a matter of time before production lines are halted in the US because sourcing of Chinese parts is offline. The disruptions of supply chains is the shock that could tilt the global economy into recession.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/17/2020 – 22:50 - US & China Lead Biggest Jump In World Defense Spending In 10 Years
US & China Lead Biggest Jump In World Defense Spending In 10 Years
Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,
New data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) has shown a roughly 4% increase in military spending for 2019, the single largest rate of growth seen in the past 10 years.
The increase is being driven in large part by the two largest military spenders in the world, the United States and China. Both nations increased their respective spending by 6.6%. The US alone increased spending $53.4 billion, which is itself almost as much as other major nations, like Britain, spend on their entire national defense budget.
Since the US is by far the biggest single spender on the military, it makes sense that their increase would drive an increase worldwide. China, though a distant second, appears to be trying to keep up with America in increasing their spending. Still, the US spends nearly three times as much as China annually.
Spending was also on the rise across Europe, up 4.2% from the previous year, and at the highest levels since before 2008. The NATO spending increases which are driving this are the result of US demands.
In this regard, the impulse to keep spending on the US front probably is not so shared in NATO, with many of the big economies in Europe, particularly Germany, resistant to surge spending to meet US expectations, with the public in such nations preferring to focus on their economy.
China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) at a military ceremony at Tiananmen Square. It’s hard to blame the public for resisting such spending increases, as most of Europe is not bordering any specific enemies, or even rivals, and has no reason to believe their military would have to engage in defensive operations.
In NATO, the more likely result of such spending is to get convinced to send more troops to the Russian frontier, and then spend more money, continuing that cycle of escalation.
President Trump demands more spending out of NATO, however, and many nations are trying to placate him with their own modest increases. Where that ends is anyone’s guess, but the US long-term goal is to get Europe to spend vastly more, with the presumption they’ll be buying US made weapons.
China’s own increases are driven primarily by tensions with the US, as the Pentagon makes much of challenging China in the South China Sea, and the surrounding area. China seems determined to deter any overt US actions, and so far the Pentagon just sends ships to make nominal challenges to Chinese claims.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/17/2020 – 22:25 - "The Situation Is Evolving" – Apple Cuts Guidance Due To Virus Disruptions
"The Situation Is Evolving" – Apple Cuts Guidance Due To Virus Disruptions
Update (1830ET): Nasdaq Futures have re-opened and are trading down around 80 points…
* * *
Surprise!
Apple has issued a press released, admitting it does “not expect to meet the revenue guidance we provided for the March quarter” due to coronavirus related issues.
In other words, the guidance we issued 19 days ago – blowing off any impact from the virus – is completely worthless.
As the public health response to COVID-19 continues, our thoughts remain with the communities and individuals most deeply affected by the disease, and with those working around the clock to contain its spread and to treat the ill. Apple® is more than doubling our previously announced donation to support this historic public health effort.
Our quarterly guidance issued on January 28, 2020 reflected the best information available at the time as well as our best estimates about the pace of return to work following the end of the extended Chinese New Year holiday on February 10. Work is starting to resume around the country, but we are experiencing a slower return to normal conditions than we had anticipated. As a result, we do not expect to meet the revenue guidance we provided for the March quarter due to two main factors.
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The first is that worldwide iPhone® supply will be temporarily constrained. While our iPhone manufacturing partner sites are located outside the Hubei province — and while all of these facilities have reopened — they are ramping up more slowly than we had anticipated. The health and well-being of every person who helps make these products possible is our paramount priority, and we are working in close consultation with our suppliers and public health experts as this ramp continues. These iPhone supply shortages will temporarily affect revenues worldwide.
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The second is that demand for our products within China has been affected. All of our stores in China and many of our partner stores have been closed. Additionally, stores that are open have been operating at reduced hours and with very low customer traffic. We are gradually reopening our retail stores and will continue to do so as steadily and safely as we can. Our corporate offices and contact centers in China are open, and our online stores have remained open throughout.
Outside of China, customer demand across our product and service categories has been strong to date and in line with our expectations.
The situation is evolving, and we will provide more information during our next earnings call in April. Apple is fundamentally strong, and this disruption to our business is only temporary. Our first priority — now and always — is the health and safety of our employees, supply chain partners, customers and the communities in which we operate. Our profound gratitude is with those on the front lines of confronting this public health emergency.
What is notable is the absence of a “but we’ll increase out share buyback program” rescue package for shareholders to rely on.
Finally we note that the timing of this statement is anything but coincidence – on a market holiday in the US – as it gives the analyst community enough time to script their narrative for why this can all be discounted… or is more than priced in already… and/or will be erased thanks to an imminent v-shaped recovery or some such completely unknowable bullshit.
Of course this is all great news for the stock – consider what happened the last time AAPL cut guidance…
The stock price doubled!
With most markets still closed, we look to USDJPY for some idea of a reaction…
And it appears, Nasdaq Futs will open lower – but not dramatically so.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/17/2020 – 22:03 -
- Beijing Cracks Down On VPNs Amid Growing Popular Backlash To CCP Censorship
Beijing Cracks Down On VPNs Amid Growing Popular Backlash To CCP Censorship
It looks like Beijing has finally grown tired of journalists like Epoch Times’ Jennifer Zeng circulating shocking videos depicting the true depth of the crisis on the ground in China – and the government’s almost unbelievably heavy handed response.
For an example, see this video which Zeng tweeted yesterday: It’s relatively mild by outbreak standards.
During #CoronavirusOutbreak, #CCP gives you very detailed instructions including whether you should sleep together with your spouse…#COVID2019 #Coronavirus #CoronavirusOutbreak #coronaviruschina
Click here for more: https://t.co/fSwmxEsPYp pic.twitter.com/AY7Uk837Xp— 曾錚 Jennifer Zeng (@jenniferatntd) February 16, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Weeks after Beijing ended its brief experiment with Internet “transparency” in the name of disseminating accurate info about the outbreak, the Financial Times reports that Beijing is once again trying to restrict its citizens’ access to the uncensored global internet.
China’s most popular VPN services, which allow foreign businesses and locals to circumvent internet censorship, have faced an avalanche of state-backed attacks in recent weeks, which is why many Chinese are finding it difficult to access sites like Google.
Beijing’s “Great Firewall” typically automatically restricts VPN usage during “politically sensitive” periods like the anniversary of the “June 4th Incident.” And right on schedule, VPN provides have reported “an uptick of restrictions” in recent weeks.
“We are aware of a new escalation in blocks in China, and our team is working around the clock to address the impact on connectivity,” according to ExpressVPN, which published a notice on its website Monday.
Following the death of whistleblower Dr. Li Wenliang, a frustrated Chinese public demanded the government ease restrictions on speech. For a brief moment, the outpouring of frustration and rage directed at the Communist Party and its thuggish local enforcers threatened to inspire a Hong Kong-style protest movement, until a few well-placed scapegoatings helped the Politburo redirect public scorn at hapless local officials.
First hand reports like this one have become increasingly rare in the Western press now that Beijing has restricted access for most western media organizations while flooding the region with 300 “journalists” dedicated to propagating the official narrative.
Still, millions of Chinese are finding workarounds: Daily traffic to GreatFire’s FreeBrowser.org, a website that allows Chinese users to read foreign news websites, has roughly doubled since Jan. 25, two days after the great lockdown of Wuhan began.
According to GreatFire’s Circumvention Central, the stability of Astrill, another big VPN service used in China, tumbled to a four-year low in January, another sign that Beijing has been increasing the pressure on VPNs.
The number of people testing their VPNs using Circumvention Central has also increased in the last month, usually a sign that VPN users are experiencing problems. Astrill did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
Of course, this is hardly the first time that China has cracked down on the use of unauthorized VPNs. Crackdowns were reported throughout the course of 2018 and 2017, according to ZDNet. Back in 2018, a crackdown crested with the removal of all VPN apps from Apple’s China App store that summer, while Beijing has ordered state-owned ISPs to “block” all VPN-related activity.
Fortunately, in this tech savvy age, motivated people can typically find a way around these restrictions. But at the same time, there are millions of Chinese who are already too brainwashed by the propaganda to care.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/17/2020 – 22:00 - IceCap Asset Management: The Invisible Zombie
IceCap Asset Management: The Invisible Zombie
Submitted by Keith Dicker of IceCap Asset Management
“I’ll show you who I am”
And with that one line – the world of invisibility was born.
The 1933 blockbuster film, “The Invisible Man” launched a genre that would span decades, producing many enjoyable and many unenjoyable movies of things and people we can’t see. Next up was “The Invisible Man Returns”, followed by “The Invisible Man’s Revenge”, “The Invisible Boy”, “The Invisible Mom”, “The Invisible Mom 2”, and let’s not forget the Chevy Chase classic “Memoirs of an Invisible Man.”
Through the humour, terror, and mystery, the one thing that was constant throughout these stories was – consistency.
The consistency was in the way the story was told, the path it took and the usual predictable ending.
Unseen and definitely unappreciated by most investors today, the global financial world is missing an important factor that is crucial to keeping the world humming along in a predictable pattern. A pattern that rewards success, punishes failure and then sets the scene to begin the cycle all over again.
This missing factor is none other than the Invisible Hand.
Unfortunately, the Invisible Hand is hard to see. It’s never discussed by the media, big banks, and certainly never discussed by the central banks – after all, they’re the ones who caused it to go missing in the first place.
As you sit back to enjoy and appreciate this latest edition of the IceCap Global Outlook, we ask you to use your vision to see and understand why today’s markets have been displaced, and what happens with the next great story – The Return of the Invisible Hand.
* * *
The Recession
Since 1967, the United States has experienced 7 different recessions. And since 1967, the Survey of Professional Forecasters collectively, have predicted exactly zero recessions.
This 0% batting average can be interpreted two ways:
1) Collectively, this group isn’t very good at their job.
2) Forecasting or predicting recessions is next to impossible.
Yet, the beat goes on.
Recessions can be measured in different ways. The Professional Forecasters focus on a collective decline in industrial production, employment, real personal income and sales. A more common definition used by the big box banks and mainstream media is two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth.
Meanwhile the most popular definition of a recession is when YOU lose your job.
What we do know, is that a normal economy moves in a cycle where there are highs and lows.
The highs are the good times. While the lows are the bad times.
Good times are followed by bad times
To illustrate the typical economic cycle, consider the below chart. What’s really neat about the business cycle is that over time, it flows in a logical and somewhat predictable direction.
When the good times roll, they really roll. Yet eventually, momentum runs out of the economy and the good times gradually slow to a point where good times turn into bad times. But then, slowly the bad times end, and a recovery and the beginning of the next good times begins again.
Of course, to be more technical, the global economy is simply a function of changes in money supply and demand for credit.
Yet, everyone who has ever studied economics eventually comes to the same realization – the economy absolutely moves in ebbs and flows, and eventually it is always guided by an invisible hand.
Now, those with an interest in economics are quick to recognize this “Invisible Hand” as the discovery by Scottish economist Adam Smith, as a way to describe how an economy will function if governments left people alone to buy and sell freely amongst themselves.
If left alone, the prices of most goods and services would be determined by what people are willing (or able ) to pay. As an example, if all pizzerias are charging $20 for a pie eventually someone will enter the market and make the equivalent quality pizza and charge $15.
This enterprising pizzeria will take customers away from everyone else, until they too decrease their prices to match the $15. Alternatively, another new pizzeria might look at this market and determine they can make a significantly better pie and charge $25. This enterprising pizzeria will take customers away from everyone else until they begin to match the higher quality.
This movement of people making and eating pizza is being guided by an invisible hand – and it works.
Now, let’s consider what happens to the invisible hand if our dear governments saw what was happening and for whatever reason declared by law that no pizza could ever be sold for more than $10.
In this case, several things happen.
For starters, the pizzerias will have to find ways to reduce their costs to compensate for the lost revenues per pizza sold.Some will succeed but by only using even lower quality ingredients. Others will simply take a bow and close up shop.
What happens next, is similar to what is happening in the financial world today.
Now, as governments eat pizza like everyone else, eventually they realize that the quality of pizza has deteriorated and there are less pizzerias than what previously existed.
Never to let a crisis go to waste, governments next announce they’ll pay each pizzeria $10 per pizza to compensate them for the lost revenues from not being able to charge the original price of $20.
Two things have now happened.
First, government involvement in setting prices has completely distorted the pizza industry. Second, the “invisible hand” has been completely blocked out and unable to keep the market in balance.
Today, the exact same story is playing out in the world of interest rates.
When the financial world blew-up in 2008-09, governments and central banks around the world made a coordinated decision to become involved in uncountable ways to affect the monetary system.
And in its most simplest forms – central banks have decided that instead of letting Adam Smith’s invisible hand determine the correct price of money (ie. interest rates), they would set the price of money. This price of money has ranged from NEGATIVE % across Europe and Japan, to near ZERO % across everywhere else.
This crowding out effect is having two effects on our money world:
One – the economic cycle has been temporarily suspended.
Two – zombie companies and governments now roam the lands.
Recall how on page 5 we showed how a regular economic cycle weaves and bobs over time.
The interference in interest rates by central banks has completely flattened cyclical economic movements and instead has changed the economic cycle to appear as a flat line – one characterized as having no growth and no contractions.
Some might say this is a good thing. After all, it would mean steady eddy economies, one characterized by consistency in everything. Yet, a successful flat-lined economy is one that doesn’t exist now, it hasn’t existed in the past and will not exist in the future.
For those in disagreement, note that this kind of a controlled economy has been tried numerous times over the years. Those that tried include:
- The Soviet Union (Marxism-Leninism)
- Germany (Nazi National Socialism)
- China (Maoism Communism)
- Cuba (Communism)
- Venezuela (National Socialism)
Each of these failed states attempted to eliminate the invisible hand from doing what it does best – rewarding economic success, or put another way, not rewarding economic failure.
Unknown to most today, the global financial system has taken on economic characteristics of socialism/communism. And it is happening right before your eyes in the form of central banks setting interest rates at zero % and negative %, as well as their policies of printing money to help stimulate the economy.
These monetary policies have been ongoing now globally for 10 years and while the creators of these policies hail them as a resounding success – others declare the opposite has happened.
The Invisible Zombie
From an economic perspective, 10 years of zero/negative rates combined with trillions in money printing has only achieved muted economic growth.
- Europe is unable to achieve consistent growth >1.5%.
- America is unable to achieve consistent growth >2.5%.
- Japan is unable to achieve consistent growth >1%.
- China is unable to achieve consistent “official” growth >6%.
But this attempt to break the invisible hand is also having another far more devasting effect that is never discussed by the big box banks, the mainstream medias and the mutual fund salespeople – 1000s of companies and governments have turned into financial zombies.
From a corporate perspective, the lack of growth is causing many companies the inability to generate enough revenues and profits to not only pay off their debt, but to simply pay the interest on their debt. The only reason they remain alive is due to interest rates being so low, that interest owed can be met by borrowing even more. Once the invisible hand returns (it always does), interest rates will surge higher, making it impossible for most of these companies to operate with their debt loads.
And in case you’re wondering – these borrowings by these zombie companies are actually bonds.
And guess who owns these bonds from these zombie companies – many of the new bond funds like those described on page 3. Put another way, bonds from zombie companies are also known as junk bonds which are wrapped up nice and neat and sold to investors as high yield bonds.
Other forms of bonds at risk include leveraged loans, and private credit. Beware – bond market risk comes in several forms.
The absence of the invisible hand is not only setting up the most conservative investors with unrecoverable future losses, but it’s also wreaking havoc within the sharpest and brightest minds on Wall Street.
As you can imagine – the world of finance is complicated.
There are many markets, in many currencies with all trading in either public or private transactions.
And within each of these many markets, there are many factors that have either a material or immaterial impact on pricing. And to make matters even more confounding, there are times when the material factors are material and other times when these very same factors are immaterial.
However – there is always one factor that plays a significant role in helping market participants (and the invisible hand) determine an appropriate price.
This factor is interest rates.
Read the full report below.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/17/2020 – 21:35 - Over 2,000 Former DOJ Officials Call On Barr To Resign Over Roger Stone Case
Over 2,000 Former DOJ Officials Call On Barr To Resign Over Roger Stone Case
Over 2,000 former Justice Department officials have called on Attorney General William Barr to step down after he stepped in last week to rescind a sentencing recommendation of 7-9 years filed by four anti-Trump career prosecutors, resulting in their resignations.
“It is unheard of for the Department’s top leaders to overrule line prosecutors, who are following established policies, in order to give preferential treatment to a close associate of the President, as Attorney General Barr did in the Stone case,” wrote the former DOJ officials in a Sunday letter. “It is even more outrageous for the Attorney General to intervene as he did here — after the President publicly condemned the sentencing recommendation that line prosecutors had already filed in court.”
“Each of us strongly condemns President Trump’s and Attorney General Barr’s interference in the fair administration of justice,” the letter continues, adding that those actions “require Mr. Barr to resign.”
Last Tuesday, AP reported that the Justice Department would “take the extraordinary step of lowering the recommended prison time for Roger Stone, an ally of President Donald Trump, a federal official said Tuesday.”
According to a Fox News source, however, the DOJ felt the original recommendation was “extreme, excessive, and grossly disproportionate” to Stone’s crimes.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/17/2020 – 21:09 - Would We Still Have Power & Water If We Had A Massive Coronavirus Quarantine In The US?
Would We Still Have Power & Water If We Had A Massive Coronavirus Quarantine In The US?
Authored by Selco Begovic and Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,
How long do you think a pandemic quarantine could go on with power, running water, the internet, and trash pick-up continuing to run as normal?
If Covid-19 (also known as the Wuhan coronavirus or nCoV-2019) were to spread where you live as it has in China, it’s possible that extreme measures could be taken. Possibly even a China-style lockdown, where people are told to stay in their homes and where businesses are closed. I’m referring to something much more extreme than just a handful of us self-isolating.
While I certainly hope such a situation is unlikely, it’s something we should all consider a possibility and get prepared for, just in case. Considering whether or not this would be an off-grid scenario would play an extremely important part in your preparations.
Selco and I had a very interesting chat about this after I’d raised the point in a group discussion. I thought you might be interested in our thoughts. Of course, there’s no way to know exactly how this might go down, so it’s pure speculation on our part based on the research of similar situations, knowledge of our systems, and personal experiences.
Would we have utilities and services during a quarantine scenario?
Daisy’s Thoughts
A lot of things are automated, which makes me believe we could potentially have a month or two of relative normalcy with regard to utilities, even if folks aren’t going to work. Garbage pickup would be another matter.
First things first, electrical power, natural gas, water, and the internet could run a long time automatically or with just a bit of input from someone on a computer. A pandemic isn’t going to fry our circuitry like an EMP would, for example. There’s nothing general-infrastructure-wise that would immediately compromise these utilities.
But this assumes that everything besides the pandemic is smooth sailing – that we won’t have any tornadoes, any hurricanes, any blizzards, any earthquakes, unfortunate bolts of lightning, or accidents. And it also omits manmade problems like riots that damage the infrastructure or even deliberate sabotage.
In a full-on pandemic, there’s likely going to be nobody to go out there and repair potential damage. And it’s possible that even if people were willing, they might not have access to the necessary supplies or equipment if these are items that they get on a “just-in-time” basis.
As for water, it could run for a long time but it might not be safe to drink. We’d need to be alert that there’s nobody there testing the tap water and adding chemicals. I don’t love chemicals like fluoride in my water but I do love essential chemicals better than I like amoebic dysentery and shigellosis and cholera. That being said, even if the water wasn’t drinkable right from the tap, it would certainly make life easier if folks not on septic systems could still flush their toilets, and water could be purified in a multitude of different ways.
The government would want utilities to remain functional.
Also, the government is going to WANT people to have utilities in the event of any kind of quarantine. People who can zone out in front of the television or play video games are going to be a lot tamer and easier to manage than people who are detoxing from their cell phones and Facebook and 24-7 television. If there’s a way to keep the lights on, I feel fairly confident the government would prefer that.
Karl Marx once said religion was the opiate of the masses. These days, I think television and Netflix wear that crown.
It also makes it easier for them to whisper sweet nothings of propaganda into our homes. “Don’t worrrryyyyy. It’s going to be okaaayyyyy. We’re here to heeelllppp.”
Governments love stuff like that.
Garbage pick-up
Garbage pick-up is another matter, and a very worrisome one. If we’re all confined to our homes, who is going to pick up the trash? Will garbage collectors be issued protective suits? It’s even possible that the military would be called in to perform tasks like this due to the risk of trash that could spread disease.
I’d imagine that out of all things, garbage would be one of the most likely to contain infectious materials – tissues from runny noses, paper plates folks have eaten from, all the stuff possible infected people had touched.
In videos from China, I haven’t seen a lot of trash piling up, so there, it appears that particular system is still running.
However, trash pick-up is what I would expect to be the first thing to go.
Will it come to this?
This is not a question that anyone could definitively answer.
It’s just like the utilities. What are the concurrent factors? What would have to happen for this to blow up and explode across the US as it has in China? What would have to happen to stop it from doing that? What are the wild card events that could hasten the spread? (Mutation, the holidays, another illness spreading that weakens immune systems, a disaster that compromises us to the point we can’t shelter in place?)
Because of the potential for this, we should focus on being prepared. (This book is an excellent resource specific to the Wuhan coronavirus.)
Could it happen? Yes.
Will it happen? Nobody knows.
Would we have utilities and services during a quarantine scenario?
Selco’s Thoughts
A good question is what would happen with electric power and all other utilities once the SHTF.
And yes answer is not simple. It is based on type of event and severity of the event, but I think we can have some good guesses about it.
Utilities
Power, running water, communications (internet, cell phones…) and similar utilities up to waste management in all modern societies are brought to an advanced level of functioning.
All that is so “modernized” in a way that most of us usually do not notice or actually do not care how it is being delivered to us. People don’t care how these things work.
I also do not know in depth how all that works, but I know that most of the utilities today are being brought to us in a very automated and interconnected way.
So, as a result, it works good, until it does not.
I think the price for that is the fact that when ONE thing goes out soon another thing will go out too. Even if something goes out FAR from you, it may still mean it easily may go out at your home.
Maintenance
Do not forget, things (services) no matter how modernized need to be maintained, so, if there are no people around to do maintenance, services will not work.
It depends on how bad the event is, and the control the government has over the event, and the society in which the event happening. It is a question of are people gonna be there to maintain services.
As an example, if some serious event is happening, are people willing to go maintain services or they are more willing to go home and protect their loved ones? They are all just humans, do not forget.
People
Also, if there is still a system functioning, the government or some kind of system, does it have enough power to FORCE people to maintain services? People will want to go home to their families.
The important fact is: if the event happening here is serious enough to bring problems to utility services, it is probably serious enough to make other services like the police force or medical services no longer working. So, as a result, the security situation will be deteriorated, so that is another obvious reason why people would want to be more with their families instead of at their job.
A deteriorating situation with utilities will usually go with a deteriorating situation in behavior between people, so it is not like our only problem will be city services and everything else will be fine at home (and safe).
Now, this all may be different in different scenarios, I am talking about a complete or partial collapse of system.
The system
In what kind of system you are living?
Is that system going to implement very harsh measures in order to maintain “things going on”?
You can not compare a probable situation in your country with a situation happening in another country if the systems are completely different.
If you are living in a system where you were raised to trust blindly in it, without too many freedoms (or any), with very hard punishments for not obeying, it may result in a very disciplined response in hard situations, both because of mentality of people and also because of fear from punishment. China has that kind of system.
In the end, I do not have a clue how long utilities would last in your case wherever you are. I know in my case, the system and utilities would fall apart in a matter of a few weeks, and people would simply go home to their families because through experience, they know our system is fragile. They know it does not care for people, and it can turn against us very fast. And also people are kinda ready to survive without the help of the system. Or at least they are ready to try.
You alone can figure that how things would work in your case.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/17/2020 – 20:45 - Pier 1 Files For Bankruptcy After Last-Ditch Effort To Cut Costs Fails
Pier 1 Files For Bankruptcy After Last-Ditch Effort To Cut Costs Fails
Another retailer has failed in the “greatest economy ever,” as more than 12,000 stores closed in 2019, and mall vacancy rates across the country hit 8-year highs.
Home decor and furniture retailer Pier 1 Imports closed 450 out of 942 stores last month, a last-ditch effort to save itself from collapse. Fast forward one month, the retailer has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and has prepared for a sale.
The retailer has struggled to adapt to an evolving retail market with new dominance seen by e-commerce giants Amazon and Wayfair. A weakening consumer base with insurmountable debts has weighed on home goods purchases.
Pier 1 CEO and CFO Robert Riesbeck said in a statement released on Monday that the decision to file for Chapter 11 will give the company “time and financial flexibility” to prepare the company for a sale.
“We are moving ahead in this process with the support of our lenders and are pleased with the initial interest as we engage in discussions with potential buyers,” Riesbeck said.
Pier 1 intends to have a “court-supervised sale process and complete the sale through a Chapter 11 plan” by March 23.
Pier 1 listed assets and liabilities of about $500 million and has secured $256 million of debtor-in-possession financing from Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., and Pathlight Capital LP.
The retail apocalypse is expected to gain momentum in 2020 as mall vacancy rates are already at 8-year highs. Last year, retailers shuttered a record number of stores, nearly 12,000 by 4Q.
Mapping out the retail chain chapter 11 filings in terms of aggregate liabilities for 2019, one can see how bankruptcies soared in 1Q and then erupted again in the back half of the year (data via Reorg First Day).
Retail bankrupticies over the last half decade have been nothing short of astonishing.
Talking points from the Trump administration have said since unemployment is low, the consumer is healthy, and this means the economy is roaring. But we all know the consumer is taking on record amounts of debt at a time when the economy is quickly decelerating. The jobs market is slowing, and consumer trends suggest a period of weakness is ahead.
To sum up, the retail apocalypse has yet to peak, store closings and bankruptcies are expected to continue through the year.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/17/2020 – 20:20 - US Operational Weather Prediction Is Crippled By Inadequate Computer Resources
US Operational Weather Prediction Is Crippled By Inadequate Computer Resources
U.S. global numerical weather prediction has now fallen into fourth place, with national and regional prediction capabilities a shadow of what they could be.
There are several reasons for these lagging numerical weather prediction capabilities, including lack of strategic planning, inadequate cooperation between the research and operational communities, and too many sub-optimal prediction efforts.
But there is another reason of equal importance: a profound lack of computer resources dedicated to numerical weather prediction, both for operations and research.
The bottom line: U.S. operational numerical weather prediction resources used by the National Weather Service must be increased 10 times to catch up with leading efforts around the world and 100 times to reach state of the science.
Why does the National Weather Service require very large computer resources to provide the nation with world-leading weather prediction?
Immense computer resources are required for modern numerical weather prediction. For example, NOAA/NWS TODAY is responsible for running:
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A global atmospheric model (the GFS/FV-3) running at 13-km resolution out to 384 hours.
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Global ensembles (GEFS) of many (21 forecasts) forecasts at 35 km resolution
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The high-resolution Rapid Refresh and RAP models out 36 h.
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The atmosphere/ocean Climate Forecast System model out 9 month.s
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The National Water Model (combined WRF and hydrological modeling)
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Hurricane models during the season
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Reanalysis runs (rerunning past decades to provide calibration information)
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Running the North American mesoscale model (NAM)
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Running the Short-Range Ensemble Forecast System (SREF)
This is not a comprehensive list. And then there is the need for research runs to support development of the next generation systems. As suggested by the world-leading European Center for Medium Range Weather Prediction, research computer resources should be at least five times greater than the operational requirements to be effective.
NY Times Magazine: 10/23/2016
How Lack of Computing Resources is Undermining NWS Numerical Weather Prediction
The current modeling systems (some described above) used by the National Weather Service are generally less capable then they should be because of insufficient computer resources. Some examples.
1. Data Assimilation. The key reason the U.S. global model is behind the European Center and the other leaders is because they use an approach called 4DVAR, a resource-demanding technique that involves running the modeling systems forward and backward in time multiple times. Inadequate computer resources has prevented the NWS from doing this.
2. High-resolution ensembles. One National Academy report after another, one national workshop committee after another, and one advisory committee after another has told NWS management that the U.S. must have a large high-resolution ensemble system (at least 4-km grid spacing, 30-50 members) to deal with convection (e.g., thunderstorms) and other high-resolution weather features. But the necessary computer power is not available.
European Center Supercomputer
3. Global ensembles. A key capability of any first-rate global prediction center is to run a large global ensemble (50 members at more), with sufficient resolution to realistically simulate storms and the major impacts of terrain (20 km grid spacing or better). The European Center has a 52 members ensemble run at 18-km grid spacing. The U.S. National Weather Service? 21 members at 35-km resolution. Not in the same league.
I spend a lot of time with NOAA and National Weather Service model developers and group leaders. They complain continuously how they lack computer resources for development and testing. They tell me that such resource deficiency prevents them from doing the job they know they could. These are good people, who want to do a state-of-the-art job, but they can’t do to inadequate computer resources.
NOAA/NWS computer resources are so limited that university researchers with good ideas cannot test them on NOAA computers or in facsimiles of the operational computing environment. NOAA grant proposal documents make it clear: NOAA/NWS cannot supply the critical computer resources university investigators need to test their innovations (below is quote from a recent NOAA grant document):
So if a researcher has a good idea that could improve U.S. operational weather prediction, they are out of luck: NOAA/NWS doesn’t have the computer resources to help. Just sad.
U.S. Weather Prediction Computer Resources Stagnate While the European Center Zooms Ahead
The NOAA/NWS computer resources available for operational weather prediction is limited to roughly 5 petaflops (pflops). Until Hurricane Sandy (2010), National Weather Service management was content to possess one tenth of the computer resources of the European Center, but after the scandalous situation went public after that storm (including coverage on the NBC nightly news), NOAA/NWS management managed to get a major increment to the current level–which is just under what is available to the European Center.
Image courtesy of Rebecca Cosgrove, NCEP Central Operations
But the situation is actually much worse than it appears. The NWS computer resources are split between operational and backup machines and is dependent on an inefficient collection of machines of differing architectures (Dell, IBM, and Cray). There is a bottleneck of I/O (input/output) from these machines (which means they can’t get information into and out of them efficiently), and storage capabilities are inadequate.
There is no real plan for seriously upgrading these machines, other than a 10-20% enhancement over the next few years.
In contrast, the European Center now has two machines with a total of roughly 10 pflop peak performance, with far more storage, and better communication channels into and out of the machine.
And keep in mind that ECMWP computers have far few responsibilities than the NCEP machines. NCEP computers have to do EVERYTHING from global to local modeling, for hydrological prediction to seasonal time scales. The ECMWF computers only have to deal with global model computing.
To make things even more lopsided, the European Center is now building a new computer center in Italy and they recently signed an agreement to purchase a new computer system FIVE TIMES as capable as their current one.
They are going to leave NOAA/NWS weather prediction capabilities in the dust. And it did not have to happen.
Fixing the Problem
Past NOAA/NWS management bear substantial responsibility for this disaster, with Congress sharing some blame for not being attentive to this failure. Congress has supplied substantial funding to NOAA/NWS in the past for model development, but such funding has not been used effectively.
Importantly, there IS bipartisan support in Congress to improve weather prediction, something that was obvious when I testified at a hearing for the House Environment Subcommittee last November. They know there is a problem and want to help.
There is bipartisan support in Congress for better weather modeling
A major positive is that NOAA is now led by two individuals (Neil Jacobs and Tim Gallaudet), who understand the problem and want to fix it. And the President’s Science Adviser, Kelvin Droegemeier, is a weather modeler, who understands the problem.
So what must be done now?
(1) U.S. numerical prediction modeling must be reorganized, since it is clear that the legacy structure, which inefficiently spreads responsibility and support activities, does not work. The proposal of NOAA administrator Neal Jacobs to build a new EPIC center to be the centerpiece of U.S. model development should be followed (see my blog on EPIC here).
(2) NOAA/NWS must develop a detailed strategic plan that not only makes the case for more computer resources, but demonstrates how such resources will improve weather prediction. Amazingly, they have never done this. In fact, NOAA/NWS does not even have a document describing in detail the computer resources they have now (I know, I asked a number of NOAA/NWS managers for it–they admitted to me it doesn’t exist).
(3) With such a plan Congress should invest in the kind of computer resources that would enable U.S. weather prediction to become first rate. Ten times the computer resources (costing about 100 million dollars) would bring us up to parity, 100 times would allow us to be state of the science (including such things as running global models at convection-permitting resolution, something I have been working on in my research).
Keep in mind that a new weather prediction computer system would be no more expensive that a single, high tech jet fighter. Which do you think would provide more benefit to U.S. citizens? And remember, excellent weather prediction is the first line of defense from severe weather that might be produced by global warming.
82 million dollars a piece
(4) Future computer resources should divided between high-demand operational forecasting, which requires dedicated large machines, and less time-sensitive research/development runs, which could make use of cloud computing. Thus, future NOAA computer resources will be a hybrid.
(5) Current operational numerical prediction in the National Weather Service has been completed at the NCEP Central Operations Center. This center has not been effective, has unnecessarily slowed the transition to operations of important changes, and must be reorganized or replaced with more facile, responsive entity.
U.S. citizens can enjoy far better weather forecasts, saving many lives and tens of billions of dollars per year. But to do so will require that NOAA/NWS secure vastly increased computer resources, and reorganize weather model development and operations to take advantage of them.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/17/2020 – 19:55 -
- China's Latest Data Fabrication: Home Prices "Increased" Even As Largest Home Developer Offers 25% Discounts
China's Latest Data Fabrication: Home Prices "Increased" Even As Largest Home Developer Offers 25% Discounts
There has been a slew of openly bizarre, if not outright ridiculously manipulated and fabricated data out of China in the past month – which is to be expected by an authoritarian regime that for much of January arrested anyone who “leaked” the facts about the deadly coronavirus pandemic which Beijing was hoping to cover up until it simply became far too big – but the latest house price “data” may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Overnight, the National Bureau of Statistics reported that the latest 70-city housing price data showed that in January, the average home price appreciation in the primary market was 0.4% in January, the identical same pace as December, despite tens of millions of Chinese citizens living under quarantine or some form of lock down. Even more surreal, the number of cities with housing price increases was higher in January – which China’s economy ground to a halt ahead of both the Lunar New Year and the subsequent coronavirus chaos – than in December.
Here are the details according to Beijing: Commercial housing prices in the primary market in the 70 cities tracked by China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) (weighted by population) rose 0.4% month-over-month in January after seasonal adjustment, same as December. Property price appreciation was faster in tier 1 cities and unchanged in tier 2/3 cities, while price declines narrowed in tier 4 cities.
It gets better: out of the 70 cities monitored, 60 cities saw seasonally adjusted housing prices increase in January (53 cities saw price increase in December last year.) On a year-over-year, population-weighted basis, in the primary market, housing price appreciation was 6.2% in January in the 70 cities, slower than 6.5% in December.
That, in a nutshell, is the official version.
Meanwhile, in the real world outside of Beijing’s excel spreadsheets and goalseek models (as a reminder, and as we wrote three years ago, “the Fate Of The World Economy Is In The Hands Of China’s Housing Bubble“, as the bulk of China’s net worth is not in the financial market but in real estate), China’s biggest property developer Evergrande Group announced on Sunday that amid tumbling demand, it would launch “great incentives” to lure domestic consumers via online subscriptions starting Tuesday, a “self-rescue” promotion which analysts said would help shore up the sluggish domestic housing market in February amid the novel coronavirus outbreak.
Paradoxically, even as Beijing reports a sequential increase in home prices, Evergrande will offer a 25 percent discount for consumers who purchase housing units, including apartments and office buildings, from Tuesday to February 29. The discounts will continue and be adjusted to 22% off from March 1 to 31.
Putting the move in context, “it will be the largest incentives the firm has offered in its business history, Liu Xuefei, vice president in charge of sales with Evergrande, told an online meeting on Sunday”, according to the Global Times.
But why offer the biggest incentive in firm history if the housing market is firing on all cylinders as China’s NBS reported, even as tens of millions of people are threatened with arrest if they so much as exit their apartments?
Don’t answer: that’s rhetorical.
Some more details on Evergrande’s panicked sales promotion via the Global Times:
Since Evergrande started online sales promotion Thursday amid the novel coronavirus outbreak, the number of apartments subscribed online was 47,500 units from more than 600 housing projects the company has nationwide, worth 58 billion yuan ($8.3 billion), according to the company.
Consumers who pay 5,000 yuan ($715.6) down payments and sign subscription books on the company’s online platform Hengfangtong, can preorder housing resources from projects the company has across the country, said Evergrande.
From the day that consumers sign contracts until May 10, they can enjoy a right to buy at the lowest price – if the price on the home they buy goes down, they can obtain the difference and can return the apartment.
“Online promotions by real estate companies do not affect the domestic housing market that much, but if one can preorder an apartment with a 5,000-yuan down payment, the stimulus will be quite large and will attract many first home buyers who have rigid demand,” Yan Yuejin, research director at Shanghai-based E-house China R&D Institute, told the Global Times on Sunday.
“I found Evergrande’s promotion ad on WeChat moments and the incentives are quite attractive. I cannot remember such large discounts a Chinese developer offered in recent years,” a Beijing resident surnamed Lei in her 30s told the Global Times on Sunday.
One would almost think that Evergrande would not be offering such a giant discount if the housing market was doing as well as China’s official indicated. Almost.
As the Global Times concludes, Evergrande’s incentives “will help it drive sales volume and many other domestic housing developers are more likely to follow suit, experts said.”
Of course, the communist party’s populist mouthpiece is correct, but a familiar question emerges: just what will be the full extent of the coronavirus damage on China’s housing market, when as even Goldman admits, “the outbreak of coronavirus suppressed property transaction volumes in February” and “daily property transaction volume remained low in top tier cities in the first half of February, and total transaction volume in 30 major cities were less than 10% of what the usual seasonal pattern would suggest after the Chinese New Year.”
Speaking to the Global Times, Yan Yuejin, research director at Shanghai-based E-house China R&D Institute, who described Evergrande’s new policy as “self rescuing,” noted that instead of waiting for government support policies, domestic real estate companies should take the initiative to actively reduce housing inventories and stabilize their cash flow.
Is that a tacit admission that China will not be bailing out the housing market this time around?
In any case, in light of the above data one can see why Beijing is in such a rush to force the country’s 1.4 billion residents and countless (zombie) businesses to pretend that the epidemic is over (which ifs one believes China’s fake infection data, it almost is) and for people to get back to business as usual. The alternative is not only banks being flooded with trillions in bad loans, but China’s biggest household asset, real estate, getting a crash course in price discovery under a severe crisis. We already know that with the Chinese economy on lock down for two weeks after the Lunar new year, the clearing price is now roughly 25% below where it was just a month ago (and a far cry from the 0.4% sequential increase according to the NBS). Will it be 50% in another two weeks, then 75% two more weeks after that, and so on?
For the sake of Xi Jinping’s dictatorship, one can only hope that if the coronavirus epidemic persists – and any fake news that the virus is no longer a threat will be promptly refuted as new cases break out in work places across the country – that Beijing can find the tens of trillions in dollars, yuan or both it will need to bail out not only China’s banking system, but the country’s housing market as well.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/17/2020 – 19:30 - US Breaks Cruise Ship Quarantine, Flies 13 Infected Americans To Omaha Facility
US Breaks Cruise Ship Quarantine, Flies 13 Infected Americans To Omaha Facility
While China does everything in its power do demonstrate that the number of new cases in both Hubei province where the coronavirus epicenter of Wuhan is located, and across China, is declining with every passing day in a sign that the epidemic is being ringfenced and is gradually coming under control – whether people on the ground actually believe the government which for at least the first three weeks of the breakout was lying and arresting anyone who spread facts about the deadly disease is a different matter entirely and will manifest itself in how quickly China can return to normal – attention has gradually moved to the spread of the virus offshore, where the number of new cases is starting to turn exponential.
As the chart below shows, after growing at a modest pace, the number of people infected outside of the mainland is now accelerating at an alarming pace.
But one rather stunning fact when analyzing the offshore progression of the disease, is that there are now more cumulative coronavirus cases on just one cruise ship – the infamous Diamond Princess which has been quarantined in Japan for the past two weeks – then there are in all other localities outside of China (which begs the question just how many people are infected around the globe and have so far avoided detection).
As a reminder, the Princess Cruises ship was carrying 2,666 guests and 1,045 crew when it set sail and was quarantined after 10 cases of coronavirus were reported Feb. 4. Since then the number of cases on board has exploded, and on Monday alone, Japan announced an additional 99 infections on the Diamond Princess, raising the ship’s total number of cases to 454. And since most of the people on the ship have yet to be tested, the real number of infections may not be known for days.
Where things gets problematic, is that whereas until now most of those on board the cruise ship had remained in isolation, the self-imposed quarantine is now over, and on Sunday, fourteen evacuees from the Diamond Princess were allowed to fly back to the United States Sunday despite testing positive for coronavirus, the U.S. State Department and Health and Human Services said in a joint statement. Why were they released? Because supposedly they were not symptomatic, and in a very ominous twist, they had tested negative initially!
“These individuals were moved in the most expeditious and safe manner to a specialized containment area on the evacuation aircraft to isolate them in accordance with standard protocols,” the statement, published Sunday, read.
The State Department was unaware the individuals had coronavirus when they were being removed from the ship; they had tested negative just a few days before, Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, said on a phone call with reporters.
“If those results had come back four hours earlier before we’d started to disembark the ship and before these people were evacuees within an evacuation system, then it would’ve been a different discussion.” Dr. William Walters, director of operational medicine at the U.S. Department of State, said on the call.
In other words, the quarantine that had isolated the biggest incubator of coronavirus cases outside of Wuhan was broken simply because an initial test had given a false negative, and subsequents test confirmed that at least 14 indeed had the coronavirus.
Kadlec said that individuals received multiple screenings when moving from ship to bus to plane and a more extensive medical assessment upon arrival.
In any case, the Diamond Princess quarantine is now broken, and two charter flights carrying at least 14 infected passengers landed at military bases in California and Texas overnight, starting the clock on a 14-day quarantine period to ensure those passengers don’t have coronavirus. In total, approximately 380 Americans were on board the Diamond Princess ship for the duration of the cruise and quarantine at sea.
One plane carrying American passengers touched down at Travis Air Force Base in northern California just before 11:30 p.m. Sunday local time. A second flight arrived at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas around 2½ hours later, early Monday.
The California flight had 177 people on it, seven of whom tested positive for coronavirus, Walters said. An additional three people were isolated during the flight for fever. Upon arrival, 171 stayed in Travis while six traveled to Omaha.
The Texas flight had 151 people board and included the other seven who tested positive for coronavirus. Two additional passengers were isolated on account of fever. All passengers who tested positive for coronavirus then moved on to Omaha.
How did all those Americans who were flying alongside the infected feel? Well, according to USA Today, “the aircraft design allowed passengers to sit in isolation thanks to a plastic divider at the tail of the aircraft.” We can only hope that “plastic divider” was enough to keep the virus confined to its own class aboard the aircraft.
* * *
Anyway, now that hundreds of passengers were locked up in that ship for almost two weeks for nothing with the US rushing to break quarantine without waiting to verify the initial “all clear” test, officials from the University of Nebraska Medical Center and Nebraska Medicine confirmed that they are assessing 13 adults at their quarantine and biocontainment facility in Omaha.
“Late last night at about 2 or 3 a.m., we were asked to bring some individuals here who had either tested positive or had a high likelihood of testing positive because of symptoms they were exhibiting,” said Dr. Chris Kratochvil, the executive director at the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s Global Center for Health Security.
The Nebraska Medical Center’s Global Center for Health Security Twelve of them are housed in the quarantine center while one man was transferred to the hospital’s biocontainment unit for testing and observation because of symptoms including cough, fever, shortness of breath, lightheadedness and an undisclosed chronic condition that would make him particularly vulnerable to the COVID-19 virus, the USA Today reported.
“He is doing good and in stable condition at this time,” reported Shelly Schwedhelm, Nebraska Medicine’s executive director of emergency management and biopreparedness. She went on to note that “the folks in the quarantine center have all been tested, and we’re waiting for those results.” She added that the other 12 are isolated in “very nice rooms with WiFi, TV and a small refrigerator – a lot of the amenities at hotels but with engineering controls” to prevent contaminated air from escaping.
Inside the Nebraska Medical Center’s Global Center for Health Security Their test results, which are due back any moment (Monday afternoon), will determine whether the patients will be allowed to see their spouses or leave their rooms. Regardless of whether they test positive or negative, all of the new arrivals will spend at least 14 days in the facility, and any who test positive will likely stay longer, said Dr. Mike Wadman, the co-medical director of the National Quarantine Unit without a trace of irony.
Kratochvil says it’s possible that they may be asked to take more patients should more of the Diamond Princess passengers now in quarantine at the airbases test positive.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, told the USA TODAY editorial board and reporters Monday that the original idea to keep people safely quarantined on the ship wasn’t unreasonable. Yet where the entire story falls on its face is that even with the quarantine process on the ship, virus transmission still occurred. One can only hope that there are proper precaution pathways in place to prevent transmission now that at least 13 infected cruise passengers are now on US soil.
“The quarantine process failed,” Fauci said. “I’d like to sugarcoat it and try to be diplomatic about it, but it failed. People were getting infected on that ship. Something went awry in the process of the quarantining on that ship. I don’t know what it was, but a lot of people got infected on that ship.”
What might have gotten awry is that the virus is airborne and spread via the air conditioning system. But before we get banned from another social network, we will wait for someone “more credible” to make that claim.
Unfortunately, since the Diamond Princess was the single biggest incubator of coronavirus cases outside of Wuhan, and since nobody still seems to have a full grasp on how to contain the infection, we have a nagging feeling that this breach of quarantine will come back to haunt the US.
* * *
Separately, Holland America said that 255 passengers and 747 crew members remained on the MS Westerdam, which docked in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, Friday, after being turned away from ports in Japan, Thailand and Guam. One female American passenger tested positive for coronavirus at a Malaysian hospital over the weekend. She remains stable, and her travel companion tested negative, the cruise line said.
It was unclear if quarantine on that cruise ship had also been broken, as the cruise line stated that at least some passengers had been transported to a local hotel: the cruise line said Cambodian health officials tested those on board Monday, a process expected to last several more days.
“Guests at a hotel in Phnom Penh have all completed the COVID-19 screening,” the cruise line said. “Results are being returned when completed, with the first batch of 406 all being negative. Cleared guests may travel home, and arrangements are being made for those guests. Guests in both locations are being very well cared for, including assisting with any medications needed.”
* * *
Finally, some good news: in keeping with its daily attempts to minimize the threat from the coronavirus pandemic, JPMorgan’s inhouse
virologistinsurance strategist, MW Kim, said that even as attention shifts to cases outside of China, “at this stage, we see the virus contagion risk remaining relatively small, considering hospital capacity and strong local efforts to minimize the outbreak.” Yet even here, the bank sounded decidedly unsure of its cheerful prediction (this is the same bank whose credibility was shattered last week when China unexpectedly hiked the total number of cases by 15,000 in one day, crushing JPMorgan’s “epidemiological model”), to wit:Mapping the virus spread scenario outside China. Our epidemiology model forecasts the virus outbreak in mainland China. However, we are observing early signs of community spread, as local infected toll without travel history to China is growing in Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and a few European countries. We intend to add mini-epidemic scenarios for each country once the infected toll exceeds the 100-200 level (depending on population/density).
The following table from JPM lists the number of international cases, excluding the 454 infected on the Diamond Princess, and excluding the 60 cases reported in Hong Kong. Expect the numbers to surge as more thorough testing reveals just how extensively the virus has spread.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/17/2020 – 19:07 - No One Gets Out Of Here Alive
No One Gets Out Of Here Alive
Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,
“The seasons of time offer no guarantees. For modern societies, no less than for all forms of life, transformative change is discontinuous. For what seems an eternity, history goes nowhere – and then it suddenly flings us forward across some vast chaos that defies any mortal effort to plan our way there. The Fourth Turning will try our souls – and the saecular rhythm tells us that much will depend on how we face up to that trial. The saeculum does not reveal whether the story will have a happy ending, but it does tell us how and when our choices will make a difference.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning
As we wander through the fog of history in the making, unsure who is lying and who is telling the truth, seemingly blind to what comes next, I look to previous Fourth Turnings for a map of what might materialize during the 2nd half of this current Fourth Turning. After a tumultuous, harrowing inception to this Crisis in 2008/2009, we have been told all is well and are in the midst of an eleven-year economic expansion, with the stock market hitting all-time highs.
History seemed to stop and we’ve been treading water for over a decade. Outwardly, the establishment has convinced the masses, through propaganda and money printing, the world has returned to normal and the future is bright. I haven’t bought into this provable falsehood. Looking back to the Great Depression, we can get some perspective on our current position historically.
The Dow is up 450% since its 2009 low, which is the metric used by the establishment to prove their money printing solutions have succeeded in lifting the country from the depths of despair and depression. The narrative peddled to the plebs by the lords of the manor through their fake news media mouthpieces for the past decade is one of solid recovery, as the cancer of debt proliferates through the global intestines, thrusting the patient towards a terminal fate.
Looking back to the previous Fourth Turning it seems the Dow went up 450% from its 1932 low in just five years, making this bull market look like a calf. It seems the ruling class did quite well in the midst of the Great Depression, while the masses lined up in soup lines. History may not repeat, but it certainly seems to be rhyming during this Fourth Turning, as the Wall Street cabal have been enriched while senior citizens have been impoverished by the Federal Reserve ZIRP and QE to infinity. This is proof depressionary conditions can prevail for the majority even as the stock market skyrockets to new heights.
Trump consistently touts our economy as the best ever. Obama crowed about bringing the country out of the depths of recession. How many of today’s historically challenged iGadget addicted morons know GDP grew by 63% between 1933 and 1937, in the midst of the Great Depression? Meanwhile, GDP has only grown by 48% since the 2009 low, over a ten-year period. And this has only been achieved through a 100% increase in the national debt, a 450% increase in the Federal Reserve balance sheet, a decade of zero interest rates, and trillion-dollar annual deficits.
The blizzard of lies obfuscating the reality of our economic decline has been so persistent, critical thinking Americans have lost all trust in the existing social order. The fabric of our nation has been torn asunder through the machinations and criminality of the Deep State players and their apparatchiks disseminated throughout our political, financial, government and media structures.
I do contemplate what future historians (if our egomaniacal leaders don’t blow up the planet) will write about this profoundly abnormal period in world history. Rational sober minded people will wonder “what were they thinking?”. How did mass delusion sweep across the globe and convince hundreds of millions to believe debt equaled wealth and prosperity could be generated by central bankers printing money at hyper-speed. How could supposedly highly educated financial professionals convince themselves it was rational to pay $900 per share for a company losing hundreds of millions per year?
The irrational exuberance exhibited by the big swinging dicks on Wall Street during the dot.com bubble, the subprime mortgage induced bubble, and the current everything bubble has been encouraged and inspired by the reckless actions of the Federal Reserve and their fellow feckless central bank heroine dealers around the world. Their arrogance is only exceeded by their greed and myopia. Their grasp of history reaches to last Wednesday. No one is heeding the wisdom of great men. That’s why they will be blind-sided by the coming total catastrophe, once again.
“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.” – Ludwig von Mises, Human Action [1949]
I spent countless hours during the Obama administration poking holes in the false narrative of the unemployment figures produced by the BLS and GDP numbers produced by the BEA. The Obama haters were completely onboard with my counter-factual arguments, backed up with rational arguments that these government drones were doing nothing more than peddling lies to keep the serfs in the dark.
Even Donald Trump openly scorned and ridiculed the fake data pumped out month after month. But it seems Donald now believes every economic data point his governmental agencies produce on a monthly basis. The recent jobs report was a perfect example. The mainstream media all blasted the same headline that 225,000 jobs were added in January, much higher than expected. This proved the economy is doing wonderfully, in their eyes.
It’s funny, but the Trump acolytes ignored the 520,000 downward revision of jobs created in the prior year, making his State of the Union boasts provably false. I’ve trashed the birth/death adjustments made by the BLS for years, but now Trump and his supporters ignore its falsity. The 225,000 increase in jobs came from the establishment survey. I heard no one point out the household survey showed the number of employed Americans fell by 89,000 in January and the number of unemployed jumped by 139,000. There are still almost 101,000 million working age Americans not working, the same number not working at this point in Obama’s presidency.
The overall employment situation has improved in the last three years, but Trump touting this as a blue-collar recovery is laughable. Real median weekly earnings for full-time workers is $362 ($18,824 annually), up a phenomenal 2.8% over the 3 years of Trump’s presidency. Real wages did fall 2.9% over the first three years of Obama’s presidency, but let’s not get carried away with less than 1% real wage growth per year under Trump. And remember, using a true inflation figure north of 5% would show real wages are actually in decline.
None of the current narrative fanboys pointed out only 1.93 million private industry jobs were created in 2019, the lowest level since 2010. Not exactly robust. And not consistent with the “greatest economy ever” narrative being promoted to the masses. The Fed reporting consumer debt soaring by $22 billion in December, with credit card debt growing by the most in over two decades (just prior to the dot.com debacle), is surely a sign of a healthy consumer. Right?
Consumer credit as a percentage of GDP reaching all-time highs as their real wages are stagnant isn’t a sign of middle-class desperation. Right? We also know 40% of American adults don’t have $400 of savings to cover an emergency expense, like a normal car repair or medical expense. It is clear to any critical thinking individual that credit card debt has risen to new all-time highs because the average family is treading water by paying utilities, rent, taxes, food and medical bills with their credit cards.
The foolishness of consumers, corporations, politicians and government bureaucrats is borne out in the chart below. The Federal Reserve created loose monetary policy, started under Greenspan in the 1980s, has convinced Wall Street titans the Fed will always have their back, bailing them out after they take excessive risks and push the financial system to the brink of collapse. The hubris of the ruling oligarchs, exhibited by issuing debt at hyper-speed to “solve” a crisis caused by excessive debt, knows no bounds.
Just the leveling off of debt in 2008/2009 threatened to bring the house of cards down. The issuance of another $17 trillion of debt, a 30% increase in ten years, has barely budged GDP. The fallacy that debt doesn’t matter because we owe it to ourselves has been proven false time and again. Consumers and corporations have to service their immense debt or go bankrupt. Interest on the national debt is already crowding out spending on real priorities like our infrastructure. Borrowing to pay interest on the debt is a pathway to destruction. An unsustainable trend will not be sustained. It’s just a matter of time.
So, who benefits from this hyperbolic increase in debt? Certainly not the average working stiff who has been propagandized into buying shit they don’t need with pretend money (debt) they don’t have, in order to keep up with the Joneses. As clearly demonstrated over the last decade, the beneficiaries of this stratospheric issuance of debt have been Wall Street shysters, mega-corporation executives, corrupt politicians, billionaire oligarchs, media titans, the military industrial complex, and the Deep State.
Why is it that Wall Street bankers were able to borrow for free from the Federal Reserve for a decade, while paying .15% to senior citizens and reaping billions in ill-gotten profits? As the Federal Reserve chairman lies that keeping interest rates low is to benefit the average American, why are interest rates on credit cards at an all-time high? I wonder who is benefitting from this interesting development. If the average American hasn’t figured out ZIRP, QE to infinity, and trillion-dollar deficits aren’t for their benefit, then they are just willfully ignorant or plain stupid.
After what has seemed an eternity with this Fourth Turning not appearing to intensify, the last few months, and particularly since the start of 2020, it seems like we are about to be flung forward into a coming storm of chaos, with no way to plan for the challenges awaiting. The ruling oligarchs recognized their attempt to try and normalize our economic system by slowly weaning it from ever expanding debt during 2019 was headed towards a cliff.
Their actions over the last six or so months reveal an air of desperation. The sudden reversal from methodically slow interest rate increases to three cuts in succession exposes the Fed as being trapped, with no way out. Normalization is impossible. Then the repo market began to implode, with overnight rates soaring to 10%. The ongoing hundreds of billions in funding provided by the Fed every day divulges the rot underlying the financial system, requiring never ending emergency measures to keep it alive.
“The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.” ― Ludwig von Mises
The masses have been trained through decades in government gulags (aka public schools) to worship the state and propagandized through the corporate media to believe government and the politicians picked for us by men in backrooms are working on our behalf. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Deep State is inhabited by a myriad of corrupt, vile men who are the source of the mischief and disasters being inflicted on honest hard-working people across the land.
Central bankers and their Wall Street puppet masters have been making billions as they blow bubbles, then use their power and control over politicians to shift their losses to the ignorant masses when their bubbles burst. When it happens over and over again, it clearly isn’t due to mistakes or misunderstandings. The pillaging of your wealth, rigged markets, fraud, and buying off the regulatory system is now the standard operating procedure in our outlaw surveillance state.
In Part Two of this article I will examine the earth moving events which have already happened in 2020 and ponder what will catalyze the rest of this year and the second half of this ongoing Fourth Turning.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/17/2020 – 19:05 - Los Alamos Experts Warn Covid-19 "Almost Certainly Cannot Be Contained", Project Up To 4.4 Million Dead
Los Alamos Experts Warn Covid-19 "Almost Certainly Cannot Be Contained", Project Up To 4.4 Million Dead
Authored by Sharon Begley via StatNews.com,
At least 550,000 cases. Maybe 4.4 million. Or something in between.
Like weather forecasters, researchers who use mathematical equations to project how bad a disease outbreak might become are used to uncertainties and incomplete data, and Covid-19, the disease caused by the new-to-humans coronavirus that began circulating in Wuhan, China, late last year, has those everywhere you look. That can make the mathematical models of outbreaks, with their wide range of forecasts, seem like guesswork gussied up with differential equations; the eightfold difference in projected Covid-19 cases in Wuhan, calculated by a team from the U.S. and Canada, isn’t unusual for the early weeks of an outbreak of a never-before-seen illness.
But infectious-disease models have been approximating reality better and better in recent years, thanks to a better understanding of everything from how germs behave to how much time people spend on buses.
“Year by year there have been improvements in forecasting models and the way they are combined to provide forecasts,” said physicist Alessandro Vespignani of Northeastern University, a leading infectious-disease modeler.
That’s not to say there’s not room for improvement. The key variables of most models are mostly the same ones epidemiologists have used for decades to predict the course of outbreaks. But with greater computer power now at their disposal, modelers are incorporating more fine-grained data to better reflect the reality of how people live their lives and interact in the modern world — from commuting to work to jetting around the world. These more detailed models can take weeks to spit out their conclusions, but they can better inform public health officials on the likely impact of disease-control measures.
Models are not intended to be scare machines, projecting worst-case possibilities. (Modelers prefer “project” to “predict,” to indicate that the outcomes they describe are predicated on numerous assumptions.) The idea is to calculate numerous what-ifs: What if schools and workplaces closed? What if public transit stopped? What if there were a 90% effective vaccine and half the population received it in a month?
“Our overarching goal is to minimize the spread and burden of infectious disease,” said Sara Del Valle, an applied mathematician and disease modeler at Los Alamos National Laboratory. By calculating the effects of countermeasures such as social isolation, travel bans, vaccination, and using face masks, modelers can “understand what’s going on and inform policymakers,” she said.
For instance, although many face masks are too porous to keep viral particles out (or in), their message of possible contagion here! “keeps people away from you” and reduces disease spread, Del Valle said. “I’m a fan of face masks.”
The clearest sign of the progress in modeling comes from flu forecasts in the U.S. Every year, about two dozen labs try to model the flu season, and have been coming ever closer to accurately forecasting its timing, peak, and short-term intensity. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determines which model did the best; for 2018-2019, it was one from Los Alamos.
Los Alamos also nailed the course of the 2003 outbreak of SARS in Toronto, including when it would peak. “And it was spot on in the number of people who would be infected,” said Del Valle: just under 400 in that city, of a global total of about 8,000.
The Covid-19 outbreak in China is quickly spreading worldwide, sparking quick calculations on how deadly this new disease is. One measure is called a case fatality rate. While the formula is simple, it’s difficult to get a precise answer.HYACINTH EMPINADO/STAT
The computers that run disease models grind through calculations that reflect researchers’ best estimates of factors that two Scottish researchers identified a century ago as shaping the course of an outbreak: how many people are susceptible, how many are infectious, and how many are recovered (or dead) and presumably immune.
That sounds simple, but errors in any of those estimates can send a model wildly off course. In the autumn of 2014, modelers at CDC projected that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa could reach 550,000 to 1.4 million cases in Liberia and Sierra Leone by late January if nothing changed. As it happened, heroic efforts to isolate patients, trace contacts, and stop unsafe burial practices kept the number of cases to 28,600 (and 11,325 deaths).
To calculate how people move from “susceptible” to “infectious” to “recovered,” modelers write equations that include such factors as the number of secondary infections each infected person typically causes and how long it takes from when one person gets sick to when the people she infects does. “These two numbers define the growth rate of an epidemic,” Vespignani said.
The first number is called the basic reproduction number. Written R0 (“R naught”), it varies by virus; a strain that spreads more easily through the air, as by aerosols rather than heavier droplets released when an infected person sneezes or coughs, has a higher R0. It has been a central focus of infectious disease experts in the current outbreak because a value above 1 portends sustained transmission. When the R0 of Covid-19 was estimated several weeks ago to be above 2, social media exploded with “pandemic is coming!” hysteria.
But while important, worshipping at the shrine of R0 “belies the complexity that two different pathogens can exhibit, even when they have the same R0,” the Canadian-U.S. team argues in a paper posted to the preprint site medRxiv. Said senior author Antoine Allard of Laval University in Quebec, “the relation between R0, the risk of an epidemic, and its potential size becomes less straightforward, and sometimes counterintuitive in more realistic models.”
To make models more realistic, he and his colleagues argue, they should abandon the simplistic assumption that everyone has the same likelihood of getting sick from Covid-19 after coming in contact with someone already infected. For SARS, for instance, that likelihood clearly varied.
“Bodies may react differently to an infection, which in turn can facilitate or inhibit the transmission of the pathogen to others,” Allard said.
“The behavioral component is also very important. Can you afford to stay at home a few days or do you go to work even if you are sick? How many people do you meet every day? Do you live alone? Do you commute by car or public transportation?”
When people’s chances of becoming infected vary, an outbreak is more likely to be eventually contained (by tracing contacts and isolating cases); it might reach a cumulative 550,000 cases in Wuhan, Allard and his colleagues concluded. If everyone has the same chance, as with flu (absent vaccination), the probability of containment is significantly lower and could reach 4.4 million there.
Or as the researchers warn, “the outbreak almost certainly cannot be contained and we must prepare for a pandemic ….”
Modelers are also incorporating the time between when one person becomes ill and someone she infects does. If every case infects two people and that takes two days, then the epidemic doubles every two days. If every case infects two people and they get sick four days after the first, then the epidemic doubles every four days.
This “serial time” is related to how quickly a virus multiplies, and it can have a big effect. For a study published this month in Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers at the University of Toronto created an interactive tool that instantly updates projections based on different values of R0 and serial interval.
Using an R0 of 2.3 and serial interval of seven days, they project 300,000 cases by next week. If the serial interval is even one day less, the number of cases blasts past 1.5 million by then. But if the countermeasures that China introduced in January, including isolating patients, encouraging people to wear face masks, and of course quarantining Wuhan, reduce the effective reproduction number, as has almost certainly happened, those astronomical numbers would plummet: to 100,000 and 350,000 cases, respectively.
Just as public health officials care how long someone can be infected without showing symptoms (so they know how long to monitor people), so do modelers. “When people are exposed but not infected, they tend to travel and can’t be detected,” Vespignani said. “The more realistic you want your model to be, the more you should incorporate” the exposed-but-not-ill population. This “E” has lately become a fourth category in disease models, joining susceptible, infectious, and recovered.
At Los Alamos, Del Valle and her colleagues are using alternatives to the century-old susceptible/infectious/recovered models in hopes of getting a more realistic picture of an outbreak’s likely course. A bedrock assumption of the traditional models is “homogeneous mixing,” Del Valle said, meaning everyone has an equal chance of encountering anyone. That isn’t what happens in the real world, where people are more likely to encounter others of similar income, education, age, and even religion (church pews can get crowded).
“Ideally, you’d break the population into many groups” and estimate the likelihood of each one’s members interacting with each other and with every kind of outsider, Del Valle said.
“Your model would become more accurate.”
Called “agent-based models,” they simulate hypothetical individuals, sometimes tens of millions of them, as they go about their day. That requires knowing things like how many people commute from where to where for work or school, how they travel, where and how often they shop, whether it’s customary to visit the sick, and other key details. Computers then simulate everyone’s movements and interactions, for instance by starting with one infected person leaving home in the morning, chatting with other parents at school drop-off, continuing to work on a bus, standing 2 feet from customers and colleagues, and visiting a pharmacy for her migraine prescription.
The models keep track of people second by second, said Los Alamos computer scientist Geoff Fairchild, “and let you assess the impact of different decisions, like closing schools during flu season.” (Some research shows that can dampen an outbreak.) Although “agent-based models can simulate reality better,” he said, they are less widely used because they require enormous computing power. Even on the Los Alamos supercomputer, a single run of a complicated model can take days or even weeks — not counting the weeks of work modelers spend writing equations to feed the computer.
The Los Alamos researchers are still wrestling with their Covid-19 model, which is showing – incorrectly – the outbreak “exploding quite quickly in China,” Del Valle said. It is overestimating how many susceptible people become infected, probably because it’s not accurately accounting for social isolation and other countermeasures. Those seem to have reduced R0 toward the lower range of 2-to-5 that most modelers are using, she said.
In the current outbreak, researchers are building models not only to peek into the future but also to reality-check the present. Working backwards from confirmed infections in countries other than mainland China, researchers at Imperial College London who advise the World Health Organization estimated that Wuhan had 1,000 to 9,700 symptomatic cases as of Jan. 18. Three days later, all of mainland China had officially reported 440 cases, supporting the concerns of global health officials that China was undercounting.
In a more recent model run, Jonathan Read of England’s University of Lancaster and his colleagues estimated “that only about 1 in 20 infections were being detected” in late January, Read said: There were probably 11,090 to 33,490 infections in Wuhan as of Jan. 22, when China reported 547 cases.
“It highlights how difficult it is to track down and identify this virus,” Read said, especially with residents of quarantined Wuhan being turned away from overwhelmed hospitals and clinics without being tested for the virus. Using a similar approach, modelers led by Dr. Wai-Kit Ming of Jinan University in Guangzhou estimated that through Jan. 31, China probably had 88,000 cases, not the 11,200 reported.
Read’s group is updating its model to estimate the fraction of true cases in February; China’s cumulative cases topped 60,000 on Thursday.
For modelers, a huge undercount can corrupt the data they base their equations on. But even with that disadvantage the Covid-19 models “are doing quite well, despite a lot of complicated dynamics on the ground,” said Los Alamos’s Fairchild. While it’s not clear yet if they’ve nailed the true numbers of cases, they are correctly projecting the outbreak’s basic shape: increasing exponentially, the number of cases growing more quickly the more cases there are.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/17/2020 – 18:55 - Chicago Records Coldest Valentine's Day In Half A Century; The Brunt Of Winter Is Likely Over – Hello Spring?
Chicago Records Coldest Valentine's Day In Half A Century; The Brunt Of Winter Is Likely Over – Hello Spring?
Last week’s Arctic blast was very noticeable in Chicago. Residents woke up to subzero temperatures on Valentine’s Day, one of the coldest days in nearly five decades.
O’Hare International Airport recorded minus 2 degrees on Feb 14, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).
The cold spell last Friday was one degree shy of minus 3 degrees recorded in 1943. Still 5 degrees from the coldest low ever recorded of minus 8 degrees in 1905.
A look back at the love, or lack thereof, that Mother Nature has shown Chicago over the years on February 14. 💕
This includes this morning being the coldest Valentines temperature in the Windy City in 77 years!
For more: https://t.co/vPy9fWASrM
Happy Valentines Day!#ILwx pic.twitter.com/ZJyQWcjF3Z
— NWS Chicago (@NWSChicago) February 14, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Minus 2 degrees was undoubtedly the coldest day in the city so far this year, considering much of North America has had a relatively mild 2019-20 winter season.
The risk of another Arctic blast for the Midwest for the next 10-15 days appears to be low, and temperatures should recover.
Midwest Heating degree day (HDD) trends will be elevated through the end of the month but are expected to decline into March, suggesting that the brunt of winter could be coming to a close.
US-Lower 48 HDD also shows elevated reading through the end of the month with a drop off through March.
And considering the US is the only country in the world that uses a groundhog to time cyclical trends in seasonal shifts – maybe this unorthodox way in weather prediction is right this year, as Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow several weeks ago, indicating that an early spring is coming.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/17/2020 – 18:40 - Why You Shouldn't Borrow Too Much Money, China Edition
Why You Shouldn't Borrow Too Much Money, China Edition
Authored by John Rubino via DollarCollapse.com,
When the US housing bubble burst in 2007, most observers were focused on the threat to Wall Street banks and their massive derivative books. This was a legitimate fear, since the worst case scenarios involved the death of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase, with all the stock market carnage that that implied.
But for China the stakes were a lot higher – picture half a billion people taking to the streets and demanding an end to a government whose only claim to legitimacy was its ability to provide millions of ever-more-lucrative jobs.
So while the US was bailing out every bank in sight with lower interest rates and loan guarantees, China upped the ante by ordering pretty much every sector if its economy start building things with borrowed money. The result was the biggest infrastructure binge in history, in which roads, bridges, airports, and — hey, why not — entire new cities sprang up in just a few years, providing jobs for millions of would-be rioters and a torrent of cash flow for foreign suppliers of iron ore, copper, cement, steel, lumber, and pretty much every other industrial commodity you can name.
China boomed, the rest of the world recovered, and today’s longest-ever economic expansion was born. And Chinese debt-to-GDP soared to record-high levels.
Now dial back the perspective to that of a single hypothetical family. Say one of the breadwinners loses their job and the family’s income is cut in half. They can chose to scale back their spending to match their newly-diminished circumstances and accept the resulting turmoil of fewer cars, smaller house, public rather than private schools, etc. Or they can max out a series of credit cards and just go on as before, avoiding stress in the moment at the cost of bigger bills — and greater fragility — in the future.
The second strategy will work if the unemployed breadwinner gets a new job reasonably soon and — crucially — if no other crisis pops up that requires (now nonexistent) resources. No illness, no new job loss, no leaky roof, no wrecked car … and things might work out.
Now zoom back out to China, which chose strategy number two and is currently “rich” but also way too leveraged to handle another shock to the system. Just in time for a pandemic that shuts down half the country. From today’s South China Morning Post:
Forget Sars, the new coronavirus threatens a meltdown in China’s economy
Never before has China paid such an economic price for an epidemic as it has done already with the coronavirus, which originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan and causes the disease now officially known as Covid-19. And the damage is spreading.
It is obvious that the economic impact of Covid-19 will be far more severe than that of Sars, or any other previous epidemic.
Whole cities have been locked down, effectively grinding some local economies to a halt since Beijing declared all-out war on January 23. Currently, 30 of China’s 31 provinces have declared a top-level public health emergency, with all major cities and economic hubs effectively shut for weeks. The government has locked down 56 million people in quarantine in Hubei, banned tens of millions more from travelling across the nation, and imposed restrictions on activities in most urban areas. The Lunar New Year holiday has been extended for one or two weeks for most of the country. At the peak, provinces accounting for almost 69 per cent of China’s GDP were closed for business, according to Bloomberg Economics.
For the millions of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in China, the nightmare may be just beginning. Many small manufacturers fear foreign customers will shift orders to other countries due to disruptions in production and delivery. In a survey of 995 SMEs by academics from Tsinghua and Peking universities, 85 per cent said they would be unable to survive for more than three months under the current conditions. If the disruption goes on long enough, it could trigger a wave of bankruptcy among SMEs, which contribute more than 60 per cent of China’s GDP, 70 per cent of its patents and account for 80 per cent of jobs nationwide.
A financially solid country might be able to weather this kind of crisis by drawing down reserves and using its stellar credit to take on new, temporary debt. But an already over-leveraged system may not have those options.
As for what part of China’s economy blows up first, check out the repayment schedule of municipal debt. These are the cities and states that borrowed immense amounts of money — much of it in US dollars — to build the previously mentioned roads, bridges, etc. Much of this infrastructure was already failing to generate cash flow sufficient to cover the related debt. Now those cash flows are drying up.
China, in short, is providing a life lesson for the rest of us in how to respond to a crisis. Remember it next time you think about maxing out a credit card.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/17/2020 – 18:15 - Hubei Reports 1,807 New Coronavirus Cases, And 93 Deaths
Hubei Reports 1,807 New Coronavirus Cases, And 93 Deaths
Summary:
- China finally allows US experts inside
- Hubei reports 1,807 new cases, and 93 deaths
- Singapore reports 3 new cases, DP reports 90
- Hubei reports new cases fall for the
- Beijing weighs postponing National Congress
- Japan delays Tokyo Marathon, raising concerns about the Olympics
- 14 Americans aboard evacuation flight found to have virus
- 5 virus-linked deaths rumored in Tibet
- WHO reiterates that signs of slowdown in new China cases doesn’t mean outbreak is slowing
- Wuhan hospital boss dies
* * *
Update (1800ET): According to the latest data released by Hubei health officials, the number of confirmed cases and deaths in Hubei Province has declined again on Feb. 17.
- HUBEI REPORTS 1,807 NEW CORONAVIRUS CASES, 93 DEATHS FEB. 17
According to Live Squawk’s calculations, deaths from the virus in Hubei rose 5.5.% on the day, compared with a 6.3% increase yesterday.
Another 1,223 patients were released from the hospital on Feb. 17.
The total number of confirmed cases in the province – including those who have recovered – now stands at 59,989.
But for anybody who believes that the outbreak is slowing or that Hubei’s new provincial governor is easing up, keep in mind: The Province ordered 58 million people to stay inside on Sunday, part of the province’s wartime lockdown.
Even more alarming: Chinese media reported one patient was diagnosed with COVID-19 42 days after returning home from Wuhan. “Such a long incubation period would undoubtedly present a larger challenge to the whole public health effort,” Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist, said.
Whatever they say is going on in Hubei, the pace of confirmations ex-china accelerating…
Meanwhile, there’s an update on the condition of the American evacuees from the ‘Diamond Princess’ who arrived back in the US earlier today, courtesy of USA Today, which reported that six of the arrivals have been moved to Omaha, while 171 stayed in Travis, Texas.
An additional three people were isolated during the flight for fever. Upon arrival, 171 stayed in Travis while six traveled to Omaha.
The Texas flight had 151 people board and included the other seven who tested positive for coronavirus. Two additional passengers were isolated on account of fever. All passengers who tested positive for coronavirus then moved on to Omaha.
* * *
Update (1715ET): Just one of many rumors floating around the Internet…but one we felt obliged to share.
Florida have stated they are unable to give the public info about #coronavirus cases they are dealing with. Confirmed or Unconfirmed all cases are confidential in FL. pic.twitter.com/2aS07smUPF
— 24/7 Crisis News LIVE ☢ (@livecrisisnews) February 17, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
It’s easy to be suspicious.
* * *
Update (1515ET): State media reports have confirmed that Liu Zhiming, the boss of one of the Wuhan hospitals battling the coronavirus, has died.
Breaking: Liu Zhiming, head of Wuchang Hospital, a designated hospital in #Wuhan, died just now from pneumonia caused by #COVID19. Mourning goes to the FIRST hospital director who died on the battlefield against the virus. pic.twitter.com/wHbvMm3Lsp
— Secret Beijing (@Secret_Beijing) February 17, 2020
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It’s the first death of a major figure on the front lines of the epidemic since Dr. Li Wanliang succumbed to the virus last week.
* * *
Update (1030ET): For what seemed like weeks after the outbreak began, Tibet repeatedly reported that it had zero confirmed cases of the virus, even after it had spread to every other Chinese province (there are 31 in total).
Now, online rumors might shed some light on why: It’s not that the virus hadn’t arrived, it’s that party leaders in Tibet – for whatever reason (lack of resources, a motivation to impress Beijing) – didn’t report the full breadth of the problem.
Unconfirmed reports claim 5 have died in Tibet from the virus.
Over 850 confirmed cases, 5 deaths due to COVID-19 in Tibet
— Russian Market (@russian_market) February 17, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
It’s just another reminder that…
“When agents of the state fear no external checks and balances, it is rational for them to bury bad news, right up until a crisis becomes too big to hide: a dynamic that builds instability into the way China is run.”
Smart words from @DSORennie this week: https://t.co/zEimI595Kl— Simon Rabinovitch (@S_Rabinovitch) February 15, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
We wonder what the ‘real’ North Korea numbers are looking like?
Meanwhile, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros reiterated on Monday a sentiment he first expressed over the weekend: That though Chinese data appear to show a decline in the number of new cases, this isn’t necessarily a guarantee that the virus is slowing: “Every scenario is still on the table.”
* * *
Update (1000ET): As the velocity of the outbreak moves toward ‘exponential’ territory – it’s doubling every six days…
…here are some updates on the latest cases confirmed outside of China.
First, we’d just like to comment on the numbers above and explain why we think they’re important for investors and the general public to keep in mind.
Though deaths and confirmed cases outside China are still far below the number confirmed inside China, since nobody trust’s China’s numbers given the current state of the economy (why would so many people – 760 million – need to be on lockdown for a problem that’s mostly localized to Hubei?) the trajectory of these numbers is probably the best barometer for how the outbreak is going.
It’s just the latest sign that it will be up to the international community to ascertain how bad this outbreak could really get, despite the WHO’s praises of China, which – surprise, surprise – likely were motivated by an “ulterior motive” (like China’s enormous contribution to the annual WHO budget).
Tedros got paid https://t.co/w5xo5DwkVj
— FXHedge (@Fxhedgers) February 17, 2020
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Singapore has reported two additional confirmed cases, taking the country’s total to 77.
Japan says 454 passengers and crew from the ‘Diamond Princess’ have been confirmed infected – that’s another 90 cases.
Last night, Reuters reported that police across China have carried out raids on homes, restaurants and makeshift markets and arrested more than 700 people accused of violating the nationwide ban on the selling or consumption of wild animals. This is part of the reason why Beijing wants to reconsider its regulations on the trade and consumption of wildlife.
Though leftists denounced criticisms of food items like “bat soup” and “three squeaks” as racist, the Chinese government and the bulk of the Chinese people now view the consumption of animals like reptiles, civet cats and hedgehogs as “fundamentally unsafe,” per the NYT.
Beijing is considering postponing its annual meeting of top Communist Party officials, sources said.
In Cambodia, health authorities have stopped more passengers from disembarking from the Westerdam cruise ship after one elderly passenger was found to be infected with the virus.
The Politburo Standing Committee, the highest authority in the country, will meet on Feb. 24 to discuss whether to delay the National People’s Congress, an annual meeting of 3,000 party leaders from across the country descend on Beijing to pass new laws and discuss government plans and the national budget. The meeting typically takes place in early March “like clockwork” and postponing it would be a gesture packed with symbolism for the Chinese people. The NYT said the delay is now “virtually certain.”
After a host of unsettling outbreak-related developments, the PBOC swooped in to rescue markets on Monday by cutting a key medium-term lending rate as it attempts to prop up the economy. China’s yuan climbed on the news for the first time in four sessions.
Finally, the SCMP reports that a WHO team of medical experts set to depart for China to assist in research and response to the crisis will include several Americans, though no exact numbers were given.
Many suspected that Beijing’s refusal to allow Americans to help with the epidemic was a sign that the government was hiding something about the virus, probably the true number of cases and deaths, which many feared might be much higher than the official numbers.
Here’s the latest count on global cases/deaths from the SCMP:
* * *
It’s like the ‘Alien’ franchise: The evacuation ship always carries the monster.
Unfortunately, in this instance, the monster is an invisible, inaudible yet highly infectious virus. And instead of the Nostromo, we have two chartered Boeing 747s.
According to the New York Post, 14 Americans among the more than 300 US citizen passengers being evacuated from the cruise ship ‘Diamond Princess’ after nearly two weeks of quarantine have tested positive for the virus. Officials said they didn’t learn of the positive tests until the flight was about to take off.
Ahead of the flight, the State Department said that 40 Americans who had tested positive wouldn’t be eligible for the evacuation flight, and would instead be entrusted to Japanese authorities. Of course, all of the Americans who traveled on the evacuation flights had to agree to a two week quarantine after returning to the US.
The sick individuals were reportedly “isolated” during the flight (but in a closed environment like an airplane during flight, how secure could they possibly be?).
“These individuals were moved in the most expeditious and safe manner to a specialized containment area on the evacuation aircraft to isolate them in accordance with standard protocols,” the statement said. “During the flights, these individuals will continue to be isolated from the other passengers.”
One of the evacuation flights is headed to Travis Air Force Base in California, and another for Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. At this time, it’s unclear which plane the infected are traveling on, where they are going, or where they’ll be treated.
In other news, Japanese health authorities have decided to cancel a major public sporting event despite there only being 65 confirmed cases of the virus in Japan (outside the Diamond Princess): The Tokyo Marathon, which was set to begin later this month, has been cancelled
The annual event attracts hundreds of thousands of spectators to watch more than 20,000 runners compete in one of the six ‘World Marathon Majors’.
Many international events and trade shows have been cancelled because of the outbreak, including events like the Mobile world Conference in Barcelona, an area with zero confirmed COVID-19 infections, and the Beijing Autoshow, which was cancelled Monday morning, according to Reuters.
But the Tokyo Marathon is an important attraction for Tokyo’s tourism industry. Furthermore, it doesn’t bode well for another high-profile sporting event: The 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
At this point, we suspect the biggest tail risk for global markets involving Japan would be a decision to cancel or postpone the Olympics (it’s not like they can simply pick another venue). That would ignite a wave of hysteria and uproar that even these Fed-assisted markets likely wouldn’t be able to withstand.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/17/2020 – 18:11 - 'Black And Latino Males Don't Know How To Behave In The Workplace': Bloomberg Flashback
'Black And Latino Males Don't Know How To Behave In The Workplace': Bloomberg Flashback
Another Mike Bloomberg sound byte is coming back to haunt the Democratic presidential candidate after a 2011 clip from when he was mayor of New York City has resurfaced in which he said “enormous cohorts” of young black and Latino men “don’t know how to behave in the workplace where they have to work collaboratively and collectively.”
Bloomberg on Black and Latino males between 16-25: pic.twitter.com/kaJpr46Tro
— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) February 17, 2020
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Presciently, The Onion joked that Bloomberg was “tracking poorly among 18- to 25-year-old African Americans,” and “
hired thousands of canvassers Friday to stop black men on the street and force them to hear his campaign pitch.”
Meanwhile, this isn’t the first time Bloomberg’s past words have come back to haunt him.
Last week, the out-of-touch billionaire apologized to a black megachurch for his controversial “stop-and-frisk” program, saying “I was wrong. And I am sorry.” The program was successful at reducing crime, however opponents felt it violated the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches despite a 1968 Supreme Court ruling that it does not.
On Friday, a former Bloomberg employee corroborated an accusation that he told a woman to “kill it” when she announced her pregnancy, according to the Washington Post.
And in a 2016 speech at Oxford University, Bloomberg framed farmers as primitive idiots whose job he could teach just about anybody.
Billionaire Bloomberg claims he “could teach anybody to be a farmer,” even implying that farmers don’t have the same level of “skillset” or “grey matter” as folks in tech jobs.
So demeaning, elitist, and out-of-touch it’s appalling. pic.twitter.com/Auplmdq56m
— Anna Kelly (@AnnaKellyWI) February 17, 2020
Maybe this is why ol’ Mike doesn’t want to debate?
Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/17/2020 – 17:50
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