Jan 19

Today’s News 19th January 2021

  • China Imports Of Corn, Wheat Hit Record High Amid Soaring Food Prices
    China Imports Of Corn, Wheat Hit Record High Amid Soaring Food Prices

    On the same day that China published a much stronger than expected (if largely laughable as we first noted and Michael Pettis subsequently confirmed) GDP print, making China the only major economy to grow in the “year of covid”, China customs data showed that grains imports soared to record highs in 2020 after tight domestic corn supplies pushed prices to multi-year peaks, driving demand for cheaper imports.

    China, the world’s top agricultural market, bought a record 11.3 million tonnes of imported corn last year, according to General Administration of Customs data, exceeding the annual quota – which was set at 7.2 million tonnes – for the first time.

    China also imported a record 8.38 million tonnes of wheat, just shy of the max quota of 9.64 million tonnes.

    According to Reuters, in 2019 China only used 67% of its annual quota for corn and one-third of its quota for wheat. China has accelerated buying of global grains in the past year due to healthy demand from a recovering pig sector, and a domestic shortfall in corn supplies.

    The table below shows imports of China’s major agriculture products in December, according to data released on Monday. The data did not provide a breakdown on the origins of the imports. Data on soybean imports was released earlier this month.

    This is happening as grains prices have exploded by over 60% in the past 6 months…

    … prompting a very worried Albert Edwards to warn that a new and potentially much more violent “Arab Spring” revolutionary cascade could be imminent unless food prices stabilize and revert to much lower levels (see “Why Albert Edwards Is Starting To Panic About Soaring Food Prices“.)

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/19/2021 – 01:00

  • FBI Probing Allegation That Woman Stole Laptop From Pelosi’s Office To Sell It To Russia
    FBI Probing Allegation That Woman Stole Laptop From Pelosi’s Office To Sell It To Russia

    By Zachary Stieber of Epoch Times

    The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is investigating whether a woman seen in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) office on Jan. 6 stole a computer or hard drive and planned to sell it to Russia. The claim was outlined in an affidavit filed in the case against Riley June Williams, a Pennsylvania woman who authorities said stormed the U.S. Capitol earlier this month.

    In the days following the breach, a witness called the FBI’s tip line several times. The witness said he or she was a former romantic partner of Williams and saw Williams in video footage captured on Jan. 6.

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    The caller (W1) also claimed to have spoken to friends of Williams who showed him or her a video of Williams taking a computer or hard drive from Pelosi’s office during the mayhem that day.

    “W1 stated that WILLIAMS intended to send the computer device to a friend in Russia, who then planned to sell the device to SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service,” Special Agent Jonathan Lund wrote in the court filing.

    “According to W1, the transfer of the computer device to Russia fell through for unknown reasons and WILLIAMS still has the computer device or destroyed it. This matter remains under investigation.”

    Pelosi’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for Pelosi confirmed last week that a laptop was stolen from her office during the breach of the Capitol. The computer “was only used for presentations,” spokesman Drew Hammill said.

    At least one other laptop was stolen from congressional offices on Jan. 6. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said a computer was taken from his office.

    U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin told reporters in a recent briefing that people “were literally rifling through Pelosi’s office and stealing items, stealing materials, mail, and sometimes even personal mementos.”

    The new affidavit was signed by a judge on Sunday.

    Officials say Williams, 22, apparently fled. According to law enforcement officers in Harrisburg, Williams’s mother said her daughter packed a bag and left home, saying she’d be gone for a couple of weeks. Sometime after Jan. 6, Williams changed her phone number and deleted accounts on social media platforms, including Facebook, Reddit, and Parler.

    Williams was charged with illegally entering the Capitol and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds. Williams didn’t have an attorney listed as of Monday morning.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/18/2021 – 23:45

  • China Reports 100+ Cases For Sixth Day As Lockdowns Expanded To 29MM
    China Reports 100+ Cases For Sixth Day As Lockdowns Expanded To 29MM

    As the CCP scrambles to ship tens of thousands of people out of Shinjiang into designated “quarantine centers” across Hebei province, Chinese authorities have confirmed 100+ new cases of COVID-19 for the sixth straight day on Monday as infections continue to rise in Hebei, the northeastern province surrounding Beijing, where an outbreak centered around the city of Shijiazhuang, only 300 kilometers (186 miles) from Beijing, has been festering for weeks.

    Rising infection numbers in China are unsurprisingly triggering anxieties and international media coverage as the world prepares for the Lunar New Year holiday, the travel season that helped spread the virus around the world one year ago, when the CCP failed to stop citizens from Wuhan from traveling across the country, the region and the world.

    So far this year, 457 new cases have been confirmed in the region, though Beijing has long been suspected of under-reporting the numbers.

    Officials have been ratcheting up travel restrictions and other social distancing rules in cities across the region, with the new controls in the city of Gongzhuling in Jilin province, which has a population of about 1MM people, brings the total number of people under lockdown to more than 29MM.

    In other related news, as more questions arise about the efficacy of some of the Chinese COVID vaccines, Hong Kong’s government-appointed vaccine advisory panel is seeking more data from the Norwegian and German governments on the reported deaths of elderly people after they received the Pfizer-BioNTech as fears about “adverse” health reactions.

    Still, the panel recommended the shot for use in Hong Kong, though they  but would ask the government to stop administering it “as soon as we receive information that tips the balance ratio of risks and benefits”. The panel is also seeking more information on the deaths from Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical which is marketing the vaccine in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

    Circling back to the official tally, NHC Minister Ma Xiaowei said over the weekend that outbreaks in the northeast have come from travellers entering the country or contaminated frozen food imports. China is the only country to claim COVID-19 can be transmitted via cold chain imports, even though the WHO has downplayed the risks.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/18/2021 – 23:15

  • Turley On 'The No-Show' Option: Trump Could Sit Out The Senate Trial And Still Prevail
    Turley On ‘The No-Show’ Option: Trump Could Sit Out The Senate Trial And Still Prevail

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    There is a better defense: no defense…

    In a matter of days, this country will face an unprecedented Senate trial. The Senate not only will try a president for a second time but will do so after he has left office.

    Vice President-elect Kamala Harris assures us the Senate can politically “multitask” to deal with an impeachment, an incoming Biden administration and a pandemic.

    However, the threshold question is whether this is constitutionally one of those tasks — and for soon-to-be citizen Donald Trump, the best defense may be no defense at all.

    In fairness, people on both sides are struggling to deal with this novel impeachment. While I have stated that I do not wish to serve as the president’s counsel, I have spoken to members of Congress and the White House on the historical and constitutional backgrounds for a trial. From a purely strategic perspective, I believe Trump may be wise to skip any trial.

    For a notorious counterpuncher, avoiding a fight might be the most difficult decision of all, particularly because he has obvious defenses.

    First, he was denied due process when the House held an unprecedented “snap impeachment” without a hearing or inquiry even though a trial likely would not occur immediately.

    Even a one-day hearing would have allowed evidence to be discussed as well as a formal request for a response.

    Second, the impeachment article is poorly crafted and poorly conceived, built around assertions that Trump’s Jan. 6 speech to supporters was an “incitement to insurrection.” His speech raised potentially impeachable grounds; I condemned it as he gave it and opposed his challenge of electoral votes from the outset. But as I wrote previously, it would have been far better to censure him for it in a bipartisan, bicameral resolution.

    While impeachment can be based on noncriminal grounds, Trump’s speech alone did not amount to criminal incitement. Absent direct evidence of intent, a criminal charge would likely collapse in an actual trial or on appeal on First Amendment grounds. Trump expressly called for his supporters “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” He told them to go to the Capitol “to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women,” to “fight like hell” to challenge the election, and to remind unsupportive Republicans that their actions would not be forgotten. It was a reckless speech — but, in a court of law, it would constitute protected speech.

    Despite the strength of such defenses, the president must first decide whether he wants to sit for trial at all. He can legitimately argue that a private citizen cannot be impeached and that the Senate cannot remove a person from office who has already left.

    Article I, Section 4, of the Constitution states that the sole purpose of an impeachment trial is whether “the president, vice president and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office.” While the Senate can later add a disqualification from holding federal office again, that is only after removal is decided — because it is a question of the penalty, not the purpose of the proceeding.

    The Constitution refers to a present-tense status of “the president.” That status is key to other provisions bestowing official powers and privileges, which do not linger after leaving office. No one would argue that Trump could continue to exercise those powers once President-elect Biden is sworn in. Yet a Senate trial would insist that, while Trump has no continuing powers, he remains subject to continued penalties tied to the office. Moreover, the stated purpose of the impeachment trial is whether a president “shall be removed.” Thus, the only person constitutionally subject to an impeachment trial would be the sitting president, Joe Biden.

    This issue has been debated since the first impeachment in 1797, when Sen. William Blount of Tennessee faced allegations of conspiring to help Great Britain seize what is now Louisiana. Blount was expelled from the Senate before being impeached, so he insisted he was not subject to trial and refused to appear. The Senate apparently agreed and dismissed the case — just 10 years after the Constitution’s ratification, with most of the Framers still alive and some serving in Congress. (Indeed, Blount was one of its signers.)

    The second case fared little better. In 1876, former Secretary of War William Belknap was tried even though he resigned before being impeached. Almost half of the senators voted that they did not have jurisdiction, and Belknap was later acquitted, in part due to doubts over the trial’s legitimacy.

    The absence of a defendant or defense counsel might not be the only curious element in this trial. It is unclear, for example, if Chief Justice John Roberts would be called upon to preside. After all, the Constitution stipulates that when “the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside” — but the president will be Biden, not Trump.

    The failure to put on a defense is not an admission of guilt. The Senate has a duty to resolve whether there is a valid impeachment trial to be held and then whether the constitutional standard has been satisfied. If the Senate does not dismiss the case in a threshold vote, Trump can treat the proceeding as an extraconstitutional act because he is no longer subject to removal. If the Senate were to convict, he would have standing to challenge any disqualification from future federal offices. He could well prevail, and the Senate would have created a precedent against itself: history’s first judicial reversal of an impeachment verdict.

    Courts have long maintained that impeachments are left to Congress. Yet this is different. This is a question of whether a private citizen can be subjected to a proceeding that is expressly committed to the removal of officeholders. Impeachments go to the status of an officeholder, while indictments go to the status of an individual. If prosecutors believe Trump incited insurrection, they should charge him. However, the Senate must decide if it wants to hold a trial based on a legal fiction: a vote to remove someone who is no longer in office.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/18/2021 – 22:45

  • Facebook Temporarily Bans Ads For Combat Gear Following Capitol Riots 
    Facebook Temporarily Bans Ads For Combat Gear Following Capitol Riots 

    On Saturday morning, Facebook published a short update on their blog titled “Our Preparations Ahead of Inauguration Day,” explaining how the social media company would temporarily prohibit advertisements from defense firms amid the fallout from the Jan. 6 US Capitol riots.

    Facebook wrote, “we are banning ads that promote weapon accessories and protective gear in the US at least through Jan. 22, out of an abundance of caution.”

    “We already prohibit ads for weapons, ammunition, and weapon enhancements like silencers. But we will now also prohibit ads for accessories such as gun safes, vests, and gun holsters in the US,” the social media company continued. 

    The ad ban on gun safes, vests, and gun holsters on the platform comes a little more than a week after the Capitol riots. 

    What’s concerning is the ban could be permanent if Democrats have it their way. 

    Last week, three senators and four attorney generals sent letters to Facebook demanding that the platform permanently ban ads of defense products used in armed combat. 

    The senators, all Democrats (Tammy Duckworth, Richard Blumenthal, and Sherrod Brown), said the social media company must take bold action to “hold itself accountable for how domestic enemies of the United States have used the company’s products and platform to further their own illicit aims.”

    “Whether through negligence or with full knowledge, Facebook is placing profit ahead of our Nation’s democracy,” they said.

    An update on the blog on Friday said the social media company was “implementing a series of additional measures to continue preventing attempts to use our services for violence,” adding that “we are blocking the creation of any new Facebook events happening in close proximity to locations including the White House, the US Capitol building and any of the state capitol buildings through Inauguration Day.”

    Under a Biden presidency, a taste of what’s coming could be a major clamp down on the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. Biden has already said he will “defeat” the now-bankrupted NRA. 

    Last week, readers learned that New York could be the first state to ban body armor for civilians if a new bill is passed. If the bill is passed, body armor bans could sweep across blue states. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/18/2021 – 22:15

  • Tomorrow Q4 Earnings Begin In Earnest: Here's What To Expect… And Why They Don't Matter
    Tomorrow Q4 Earnings Begin In Earnest: Here’s What To Expect… And Why They Don’t Matter

    Earnings season ramps up this week as 43 companies in the S&P 500 will report –  the highlights will be Bank of America, Netflix, Charles Schwab and Goldman Sachs tomorrow, then on Wednesday, releases will come from Procter & Gamble, UnitedHealth Group, ASML Holding, Morgan Stanley and BNY Mellon. Finally on Thursday, we’ll hear from Intel, Union Pacific and IBM.

    So what to expect?

    According to BofA, the bank’s one-month Global Earnings Revision Ratio increased in December from 1.30 to 1.35 to reach a two-year high. The recovery in earnings expectations has been supported by continuing accommodative monetary and fiscal policy and the start of global distribution of multiple vaccines. In the past, when the Ratio has been near current levels, the MSCI All Country World Index has averaged 11.3% over the subsequent 12 months. And since the global earnings cycle has a 76% correlation with the Global Wave, BofA says that “the rising Global Wave suggests a sustained earnings recovery could support the next leg of an equity market rally.”

    In terms of actual quantitative expectations, Goldman’s David Kostin writes that consensus expects S&P 500 firms to report 4Q year/year EPS growth of -11% as virus restrictions hampered the growth of cyclical sectors. Excluding Energy, S&P 500 EPS is expected to fall by a more modest 8%.

    LIke earnings, margins are forecast to contract by 116 bps to 9.5%, falling in 7 of 8 sectors. In contrast, consensus estimates that sales will only fall by 1% (and rise by 2% ex-Energy).

    Beneath the surface of the market, earnings growth is expected to vary widely across sectors. In contrast with the index-level decline, Health Care will post 2% year/year EPS growth and Info Tech earnings will grow by 1%. Overall, analysts expect cyclical sectors will report the largest earnings declines. Consensus expects EPS to contract by 102% for Energy, 40% for Industrials, and 21% for Consumer Discretionary. Materials represents a notable exception; its 6% expected EPS growth for 4Q is the largest of any S&P 500 sector.

    Looking ahead, Goldman notes that risks to 4Q EPS estimates “appear tilted to the upside.” If current consensus forecasts are realized, the year/year growth rate will have decelerated from 3Q, but this to Kostin would be inconsistent with the improving trajectory of economic activity. Putting this in context, since 2003 realized S&P 500 EPS has averaged 4% greater than consensus expectations at the start of reporting season. However, in 2Q and 3Q, the aggregate S&P 500 surpassed consensus expectations by 24% and 17%, respectively.

    In both quarters, the realized decline in margins was ultimately less than expected. On the other hand, Goldman warns that the delayed passage of a fiscal stimulus deal may have constrained consumer spending and poses a downside risk to S&P 500 EPS estimates.

    The irony is that like the past few quarters, nothing that is reported will actually matter (which is why stocks have been sloshing around in a sea of liquidity with zero concerns about fundamentals). Indeed, consistent with the previous two quarters, Goldman expects “investors will look through 4Q results and focus on company commentary about the trajectory of recovery in 2021.”

    That said, as investors look to 2021, (ultra loose) policy remains a key driver for corporate profits. Joe Biden laid out his economic plan on Thursday, where he proposed a fiscal stimulus package of $1.9 trillion, designed to support the economy as it emerges from the pandemic recession. Core components of the package include direct stimulus checks of $1,400 per person, further expansion of unemployment benefits through September, $370 billion for additional state and local government aid, and $190 billion for public health funding. Biden indicated that he would seek bipartisan support for the bill (60 votes) rather than pass it via reconciliation (50 votes). In response, Goldman’s political economists increased their fiscal assumptions and now assume Congress will enact $1.1 trillion in additional stimulus, well below what BIden has proposed. But, they expect a second proposal dealing with taxes, infrastructure, and benefit programs to pass around mid-year. That should also be over a trillion dollars.

    In this context, Kostin notes that he recently revised his top-down S&P 500 EPS forecasts “to reflect the policy implications of unified Democratic control in Washington, DC.” Following the Democratic victories in the Georgia run-offs – which as a reminder as recently as two months ago was seen as bearish for markets – Goldman economists turned uber bullish, and now incorporate the likelihood of increased fiscal spending as a result lifting their 2021 real US GDP growth forecast. They also raised their 2021 S&P 500 EPS growth rate by 2 pp to +31% ($178). But at the same time they lowered their 2022 EPS growth rate by 2 pp to 10% ($196) to reflect the positive impact of greater fiscal spending but also the headwind of higher corporate taxes.

    Going back to Goldman’s 2021 EPS estimate, these remain 6% above the consensus bottom-up forecast of $168 because the bank expects upward revisions in the near future. Consensus 2021 EPS estimates for the overall S&P 500 index have risen by less than 1% since November 9 when Pfizer/BioNTechannounced the surprisingly-high efficacy of its vaccine candidate. Additionally, consensus forecasts have historically been too pessimistic coming out of recessions (e.g., in 2010). In particular, Goldman warns that analysts tend to underestimate margin rebounds in recovery periods. Instead the bank sees three sources of potential margin upside: (1) operating leverage, which currently stands at the highest in a decade, (2) moderating costs (e.g., labor, T&E), as SG&A expenses currently account for an elevated share of S&P 500 revenue, and (3) the growing weight of high margin industries in the S&P 500.

    The real story, however, will be at the sector level: here, Goldman expects 8 of the 11 sectors to surpass their 2019 EPS by the end of 2021. As vaccine rollout develops, the bank expects sectors with the highest degree of operating leverage—namely, Consumer Discretionary and Energy—to deliver some of the fastest EPS growth this year.

    In addition to operating leverage, last week we noted that Goldman’s Commodities team brought forward their expectations for higher Brent prices, which should support Energy EPS growth. Still, sespite the cyclical rebound, Goldman expects 2021 EPS will remain below 2019 levels in three sectors: Energy, Industrials, and Financials. On the other end, Tech will continue to deliver rapid growth and represent the largest share of S&P 500 EPS given its exposure to long-term secular trends.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/18/2021 – 21:45

  • Taibbi: How Much Did "The Culture Of Narcissism" Get Right?
    Taibbi: How Much Did “The Culture Of Narcissism” Get Right?

    Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

    It is symptomatic of the underlying tenor of American life that vulgar terms for sexual intercourse also convey the sense of getting the better of someone, working him over, taking him in, imposing your will through guile, deception, or superior force.

    – Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism

    Back in 1979, social critic Christopher Lasch wasn’t buying the idea that Americans in the sex-drugs-and-disco era were actually having fun.

    “This hedonism is a fraud,” he wrote. “The pursuit of pleasure disguises a struggle for power. Americans have not really become more sociable and cooperative… they have merely become more adept at exploiting the conventions of interpersonal relations for their own benefit.”

    Lasch’s reasoning traced to the beginning of American society.

    The Puritans embraced the idea of getting rich, but “saw personal aggrandizement as incidental to social labor” and “instructed men who prospered not to lord it over neighbors.” Puritans gave way to Yankees and their Protestant work ethic, which imagined prosperity as a reward for hard work, but also for “self-discipline, the training and cultivation of God-given talents, above all the cultivation of reason.”

    A century later, the ideal of self-improvement gave way to what Lasch called a “cult of competitive industry,” as people like P.T. Barnum began to evangelize a more brutally self-interested version of the Ben Franklin Yankee ideal. The new idea was to strive for worldly success “without Franklin’s concern for the attainment of wisdom.” Instead of pursuing an abstract goal of discipline and self-denial, American society became more openly organized around competing and beating one another to the top.

    In the twentieth century, mass media promoted a new religion of self-care that stressed turning one’s whole self into an engine of such competitive ascent. People gobbled up magazine articles about “the art of conversation,” fashion, and “culture,” as the “management of interpersonal relations came to be seen as the essence of self-advancement.” New stresses on “winning friends and influencing people” now replaced the old ideals of self-discipline and thrift, leading, as Lasch put it, to a stage of history where “the pursuit of wealth lost the few shreds of moral meaning that still clung to it.”

    By the sixties and seventies, America became an intrinsically performative society, a vast population that didn’t particularly distinguish between public and private life, and for whom image was as important as inner reality. Even foreign policy was understood as an effort to manipulate how other nations perceived us. One of the creepier revelations of the Pentagon Papers was that we even waged war in places like Vietnam with an eye out for how our actions would be perceived by “relevant audiences,” e.g. the Communists, the South Vietnamese, America’s Western allies, and the American public.

    Read the rest here…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/18/2021 – 21:15

  • Goldman: Here Is What Bidencare Will Look Like
    Goldman: Here Is What Bidencare Will Look Like

    Last week, Goldman published its preview of what political life would look like for at least the next two years under a Democratic “blue sweep” of Washington. Today, in a follow up to that widely-read report, Goldman’s chief economist Jan Hatzius assesses the macroeconomic implications of Biden’s campaign proposal to modify and expand the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which Goldman’s economists believe has a good chance of enactment through the reconciliation process later this year. Below, we except from the key parts of Goldman’s report providing a preliminary view of the macroeconomic impact of Biden’s expanded healthcare platform, which Goldman calls Bidencare.

    * * *

    The Biden-Harris healthcare platform proposes to expand healthcare coverage and reduce costs, in part by providing more generous health insurance subsidies to consumers and by lowering the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 60. The proposal would boost gross government spending on healthcare by roughly $1.5tn over 10 years (0.6% of GDP).

    The most straightforward effect of the plan would be an increase in healthcare coverage, on the order of 14 million people by the mid-2020s according to the Penn-Wharton model. This expansion would be roughly half as large as the 29.6 million people who gained coverage during the ACA’s implementation from 2010 to 2015, 24 million of whom joined government-sponsored or direct-purchase programs. Accordingly, many of the macroeconomic effects of the ACA during the 2010s would likely recur on a smaller scale in the 2020s.

    To complement Goldman’s review of the academic literature studying the ACA, the bank analyzed the state-level cross section of macro outcomes in the 2010s (the ACA was passed in 2010 and for the most part implemented over 2012-2017).

    The left panel of Exhibit 1 compares states that expanded their Medicaid programs under the ACA in 2014 to those that didn’t. In expansion states on average, the publicly insured population share rose an additional 3% over five years, healthcare employment rose an additional 1.4%, and healthcare consumption rose an additional 1.6% on a nominal basis—and probably quite a bit more in real terms due to lower healthcare inflation in the MSAs of those states.

    As with the original ACA, coverage expansion in the 2020s would likely be financed by some combination of Medicare reimbursement rate cuts (lower healthcare prices paid by the government to healthcare providers), tax increases, and efficiency gains.

    In terms of labor supply effects, labor force participation fell almost everywhere during 2012-2017, but it surprisingly fell by less on average in Medicaid expansion states (-0.7pp vs. -1.1pp in non-ACA states over the full period). Similarly, the average workweek fell in most of the country, but by less so in expansion states on average (-0.1% vs. -0.5% over the full period).

    The academic literature on the healthcare sector implications of the ACA generally arrives at the same conclusions using considerably more detail in order to isolate the ACA’s causal effects. As shown in Exhibit 2, these studies generally find that the ACA lowered healthcare prices and costs, increased healthcare consumption, and generally improved quality of care, particularly for lower-income consumers. However, some studies found a reduction of physician time spent with each patient, and the potential consequences of this trend on quality of care warrant further study; meanwhile deductibles soared. Additionally, some studies suggest improvements in health outcomes or labor productivity are concentrated or skewed towards specific subgroups, such as lower-income households or minorities.

    Based on the median results of these studies, Goldman’s state cross-sectional results, and an assumption that the 2020s coverage expansion would be roughly half as large as that of the ACA itself (discussed earlier), the bank offers tentative estimates of the implications of a possible ACA expansion on these macro variables in the final row of Exhibit 2. Taken together, Biden’s proposed ACA expansion would ultimately boost healthcare consumption by at least 1%. If such legislation is partially financed by Medicare reimbursement rate cuts — as was the original ACA — it would likely lower PCE healthcare inflation by 0.25-0.5% per year for several years. These inflation effects would be additive to the continued drag from annual Medicare cuts legislated by the original ACA (worth roughly -0.5%) and to the temporary changes in healthcare price levels in 2020-22 related to the coronavirus. The literature also suggests that ACA expansion would likely improve health outcomes as well, most obviously for those gaining coverage.

    In terms of the effect on the medical sector’s financial health, Goldman writes that hospital margins actually rose during ACA implementation, despite the legislated cuts to Medicare prices paid to hospitals and negative price spillovers to private-payer reimbursement rates (e.g. what health insurance companies pay to hospitals). And both in the state cross-section and the academic literature (“Provider Finances” column of Exhibit 2), ACA implementation appeared to be neutral or even positive for the financial health of providers (190bp of margin outperformance among hospital systems in expansion states, population-weighted, based on data from the American Hospital Association).

    The outperformance of hospital margins in expansion states likely in part reflects the fact that Medicare reimbursement cuts affected providers in all states, whereas the benefits of the ACA’s Medicaid expansion (primarily increased volumes and less uncompensated care) were better enjoyed by states that participated in the program. As shown in Exhibit 3, expansion states saw slower growth of uncompensated care (relative margin impact of +0.8pp on average versus 2011), which for example includes uninsured individuals going to the emergency room and not always paying the full bill.

    Given the magnitude of the Medicare cuts, it is somewhat surprising that margins increased at all over this period. At a minimum, the absence of margin contraction in expansion states in the 2010s suggests scope for additional increases in healthcare coverage and consumption that are financed in part by lower prices—and that need not overburden the healthcare system itself.

    In terms of the impact on the labor market (first two columns, exhibit 4), the literature is more mixed, with some evidence of a boost to employment levels, but ambiguous effects on labor force participation. In the strongest evidence of a negative effect, Duggan, Goda, and Li (2020) analyze a sample of near-elderly individuals, finding that the expanded coverage options in the ACA reduced participation by 1.1% among this group (or 110k individuals exiting the labor force). Using microdata from the Current Population Survey, Goldman also finds that larger increases in insurance coverage were associated with larger participation declines among those close to retirement age (55-65 years old), both in states that expanded Medicaid and in those that had larger increases in coverage, as shown in Exhibit 5.

    Given this and the likelihood that Biden’s plan to lower the Medicare eligibility age would amplify this incentive, Goldman believes that implementation would likely reduce labor force participation — at least among the near-elderly — but this labor supply effect would only partially offset the boost to employment levels from other channels in the medium term.

    The GDP effects of an ACA expansion are less clear cut, given so many moving parts and uncertainty around the details of the program. That said, based on the bank’s analysis and literature review, Hatzius says that he believes the GDP effects are likely to be positive over the medium term, unless they are financed by large tax increases on lower- and middle-income consumers. In summary, Goldman believes that the combined GDP boost from higher healthcare consumption, increased healthcare labor demand, and a more productive workforce could more than offset the drag from reduced labor force participation among the near-elderly.

    * * *

    Bottom line: Bidencare will be just the “virtuous wrapper” the doctor ordered so speak, to transfer $1.5 trillion in debt-funded deficit spending into the broader economy, while enabling tens if not hundreds of billions of government inefficiencies (read waste, corruption and embezzlement) along the way, while banks get to pocket their 5-10% advisory fees along the way, making everyone – except future generations of course, which will be saddled with even more insurmountable debt – better off. That last bit, by the way, was from us and not from Goldman for obvious reasons.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/18/2021 – 20:45

  • Trump Lifts Ban On Travel From EU, UK And Brazil… And Biden Immediately Reinstates It
    Trump Lifts Ban On Travel From EU, UK And Brazil… And Biden Immediately Reinstates It

    The back and forth between the outgoing and incoming administrations is approaching peak humor levels.

    Late on Monday, the Trump admin announced plans to lift airline travel bans that kept most visitors from Europe, the United Kingdom and Brazil away since last spring, when President Trump imposed bans on those countries as part of his administration’s initial response to the coronavirus pandemic.

    Under a presidential proclamation released by the White House on Monday, the change would go into effect Jan. 26, the same day as new requirements announced last week that all people flying to the U.S. from abroad test negative for Covid-19 no more than three days before their flights. Restrictions on travel from China and Iran would remain in place.

    Yet barely had potential visitors to the US cracked open a bottle of champagne, when the incoming Biden administration promptly reversed the reversal, and rejected Trump’s effort to lift bans on most travel into the U.S. Biden’s incoming White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, wrote on Twitter on Monday night that the Biden administration wouldn’t lift the travel restrictions.

    “With the pandemic worsening, and more contagious variants emerging around the world, this is not the time to be lifting restrictions on international travel,” she wrote. “On the advice of our medical team, the Administration does not intend to lift these restrictions on 1/26. In fact, we plan to strengthen public health measures around international travel in order to further mitigate the spread of Covid-19.”

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    According to the WSJ, members of Trump’s coronavirus task force had discussed lifting the restrictions, which were a core element of the administration’s early response to the pandemic, for some time, according to people familiar with the matter, acknowledging they did little to help the U.S. with the virus already circulating widely here. But clearly, the incoming Biden administration disagreed.

    Martin Cetron, who leads the CDC’s Division of Global Migration and Quarantine, said in an interview last week that the travel restrictions created collateral damage to the economy and had proved leaky. “We learned that the opening strategy of banning locations and asking about exposures and doing fever checks just didn’t cut it,” Dr. Cetron said. “We had to pivot.”

    Officials in Europe and the U.K. had also pressed the Trump administration to take steps to allow travel to resume in some form, the WSJ reported citing sources. Finally, the airlines themselves – suffering from severely depressed international travel in recent months – had also advocated lifting the restrictions in conjunction with the new testing regime.

    It’s not just the US that remains out of reach for most: many countries, including much of Europe, remain closed to most U.S. citizens. But lifting of the restrictions could set the stage for reciprocal agreements with foreign governments to allow each others’ residents to cross their borders, according to one U.S. official familiar with the matter. That, however, does not appear to be imminent under the Biden administration.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/18/2021 – 20:11

  • Major Airstrikes Rock Iran-Backed Iraqi Militias Near Baghdad, Casualties Reported
    Major Airstrikes Rock Iran-Backed Iraqi Militias Near Baghdad, Casualties Reported

    update: Moments ago US Central Command denied that the United States was involved in the reported airstrikes on Iraqi paramilitary positions south of Baghdad.

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    In what could be the start of a last-minute ‘counter Iran’ military operation which many have anticipated during President Trump’s final days in office, a major air assault on Iran-backed paramilitary units southwest of Baghdad is being reported in regional media.

    The airstrikes are also being reported in Iranian state media overnight (local time). The target was reportedly Shia militia positions in Jurf al-Sakhr, and follow last month’s rocket attack on Baghdad’s Green Zone and US Embassy, as well as multiple IED attacks on US coalition forces in various parts of the country.

    F-16 Fighting Falcon, file image: US Air Force

    “Casualties reported after airstrikes hit Iraqi forces’ positions in Jurf al-Sakhr, Babil province,” Iran’s PressTV reports. 

    Militia sources have told regional media the attack was conducted by US-F-16 jets. However, it remains that little information has been verified.

    The area is known for hosting the headquarters for Iran-backed Iraqi paramilitary units.

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    Gulf-based Al-Arabiya reports the following:

    Multiple explosions were heard south of Iraq’s capital overnight Monday in what reports suggest may have been US airstrikes on Iran-backed militias.

    The Pentagon and US Central Command (CENTCOM) have not yet responded to a request for comment.

    Though unconfirmed, militia as well as Iranian state sources are saying that at least 6 Iraqi soldiers have been killed.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/18/2021 – 19:50

  • 13,000 NY Nursing Home Residents And Nearly Half Of Staff Decline COVID-19 Vaccine
    13,000 NY Nursing Home Residents And Nearly Half Of Staff Decline COVID-19 Vaccine

    New York will be reallocating unused COVID-19 vaccines after more than ten thousand nursing home residents and nearly half of staffers declined the jab, according to Gareth Rhodes, a member of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s COVID-19 Response Task Force.

    Rhodes said that out of 70,000 nursing home residents, 57,000 have been vaccinated, while 13,000 have declined. Meanwhile, out of 89,000 nursing home staff, 41,000 have declined.

    Overall, 105,000 first-doses of the vaccine have been used so far in nursing homes, while 120,000 doses remain.

    “We’re gonna reallocate those that are used in the long-term facility program to the state program, but we’ll make sure that the residents who want to take it and the staff who want to take it, we will reserve their doses,” said Cuomo, who in July came under fire for ordering nursing homes to accept coronavirus patients from hospitals.

    The reallocation comes more than a week after New York came under scrutiny over discarded vaccines – with officials changing regulations which required that extra doses to be tossed.

    In a Monday letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, Cuomo called on the federal government to beef up vaccine supply, claiming that Azar falsely claimed that doses would be held in reserve, when they were in fact distributed to states.

    New York has received approximately 1.2 million doses, of which around 860,000 have been administered. The figure doesn’t include shots allocated to nursing homes, while the CDC claims New York has received 1.8 million doses. 

    Cuomo last week extended the shots to anyone age 65 and over, but has repeatedly insisted the state has nowhere near enough doses to cover everyone who is now eligible.

    The governor also sent a letter Monday to Pfizer chairman and CEO Albert Bourla asking him to let New York purchase COVID-19 vaccines directly from the company. –NY Post

    “My job as governor of New York is to pursue every avenue,” said Cuomo, adding “The federal government increased eligibility dramatically but never increased the supply for the dosages.”

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/18/2021 – 19:25

  • 'No Evidence Of Threats, No Issues Flagged' As MSM Stokes Fears Of Military Insider Attack At Inauguration
    ‘No Evidence Of Threats, No Issues Flagged’ As MSM Stokes Fears Of Military Insider Attack At Inauguration

    Fears of mayhem at state capitol buildings and the US Capitol complex in Washington, DC, this past weekend were widely overblown by mainstream media. Now there’s more fearmongering from mainstream outlets, this time it’s AP, who reports fears of an insider attack that have prompted the FBI to vet the 25,000 National Guard troops stationed in DC ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration. 

    AP quotes Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, who said military officers are conscious of the potential threat and warned officers to observe troops under their command for any red flags. 

    But, as usual, there’s something missing from AP’s headline. As Jack Posobiec points out, “the way read to establishment media articles is skip the headline and scroll to the middle,” while referring to the AP article titled “FBI vetting Guard troops in DC amid fears of insider attack.” 

    Despite the fearmongering of an imminent “insider attack” by Guardsmen during inauguration day, AP’s clickbait journalism is more or less another classic example of how real journalism is dead, as AP themselves admit, further down the story, past the point at which 99% of America’s short-sighted, closed-minded partisans will read, that:

    So far, however, he and other leaders say they have seen no evidence of any threats, and officials said the vetting hadn’t flagged any issues that they were aware of. 

    Commenters on Posobiec’s post were furious with AP’s reporting, calling it, “Clickbait journalism is more destructive than Trump ever could have been.” 

    Another said, “They’ve gotta pump up the time spent on the site so they can get their advertising dollars.”

    Someone else said, “Nothing new. Typical tactics for spreading BS. Getting 67K likes and 29K retweets. While maybe 2,347 actually read the article to find that it’s all a Nothing Burger.” 

    We must remind readers how Bloomberg, NBC, and CNN published headlines late last week detailing how as per a Bloomberg headline read, “Rioters Came to Capture And Assassinate Officials, US Says.” 

    It was later noted that the top federal prosecutor in Washington, DC said there was no “direct evidence” that suggested rioters who stormed the US Capitol had formed “kill capture teams.”

    Again, more evidence of mainstream media’s Alinsky-ite news-cycle of misinformation.

    However, as Southfront reported last week, this narrative of looking inside the military for issues  is nothing new. The administration of US President-elect Joe Biden has not entered power yet, but its allies within the country’s highest government bodies have already launched an advance on the vestiges of symbols that do not fit the new trend of the total dominance of neo-liberal and globalist values.

    The purge of sources of the ‘wrong ideology’ took place not only in social media, where accounts of the acting US President Donald Trump and his supporters were targeted, but also in the US military.

    Commanders of the US Air Force have been ordered to review their unit emblems, morale patches, mottos, nicknames, coins and other forms of unit recognition in order to eliminate ‘potentially offensive images’.

    “Their continued use (of derogatory symbols and language) ostracizes our teammates undermining unit cohesion and impeding our mission readiness and success … Our diversity of experience, culture, demographics and perspectives is a force multiplier and essential to our success in this dynamic global environment … We must ensure all our Airmen and Guardians are valued and respected,” the memo emphasized.

    This move comes directly from the ongoing push to rewrite the US history and remove & cancel all historical figures and symbols that may be described as ‘offensive’ for the globalists, neo-liberals and various minorities that dominate in the US public politics and media. For the US military, the push started with the removal of Confederate imagery on military property and the names of its installations.

    Taking into account the existing trend, it would take little time to fully rebrand the US armed forces, including the Air Force and the Navy, to new the neo-liberal force. In the previous year, the US administrations were providing their policies under the moto of defending democracy. Now, military interventions and other active actions of the US foreign policy will likely be justified by the need to fight ‘oppressors’ and create a minorities-friendly environment.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/18/2021 – 19:00

  • Peter Schiff: Economic "Rescue" Plan Like Throwing A Drowning Man An Anchor
    Peter Schiff: Economic “Rescue” Plan Like Throwing A Drowning Man An Anchor

    Via SchiffGold.com,

    President-elect Joe Biden unveiled his massive stimulus plan last week touted as the “American Rescue Plan.” In his podcast, Peter Schiff said it was more like throwing a drowning man an anchor.

    Before Biden announced his stimulus plan, Jerome Powell spoke and reassured everybody that the Fed will continue with its loose monetary policy. He emphasized that the central bank will hike interest rates “no time soon.” He also pushed back against some of the other Fed presidents, particularly Atlanta Federal Reserve President Raphael Bostic, who hinted the central bank might consider “pulling back” on asset purchases in the near future. Powell said, “Be careful not to exit too early,” adding “by the way, try not to talk about exit if you’re sending that signal because markets are listening.”

    Powell seems to sincerely believe that the Fed can stimulate economic growth and create jobs by printing money. Peter said Powell lecturing about economics is “the blind leading the blind.”

    He knows nothing about economics and he’s talking to people who know nothing about it. But what’s worse  — it’s not just he doesn’t know anything — it’s that he thinks he knows something. And what he thinks he knows is wrong. And that is the real danger. You know, you have all this power in the hands of somebody that has no idea what they’re doing. Power and ignorance is a dangerous combination, especially when you’re the chairman of the Federal Reserve. You have the power to print all this money and you think that if you exercise that power you’re doing good. But you’re actually doing harm.”

    Powell talked about how much the government is helping during the pandemic. Peter said if the government really wants to help, it should get out of the way.

    The government needs to lighten the burden that it places on the economy. … It should be cutting spending. Instead, it’s doing the opposite and it’s adding an inflationary problem to the health problem, so we’re in much worse shape.”

    It’s difficult to overstate the level of spending. The US government set an all-time record high December budget deficit of $143.6 billion last month. In just the first quarter of fiscal 2021, the federal government spent $1.3 trillion. And the spending isn’t about to slow down. In fact, it will likely accelerate.

    Last week, Joe Biden unveiled plans for a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill. It’s called the

    First of all, this is not going to stimulate the economy. This is going to sedate the economy. So, it’s not a stimulus. It is a sedative.”

    In a nutshell, Biden wants to “stimulate” the economy with a bunch of government spending paid for by more Federal Reserve money printing. Here are just a few highlights.

    • Direct payments of $1,400 to most Americans

    • Increasing the federal, per-week unemployment benefit to $400 and extending it through the end of September

    • $350 billion in state and local government aid

    • $170 billion for K-12 schools and institutions of higher education

    • $50 billion toward Covid-19 testing

    • $20 billion toward a national vaccine program in partnership with states, localities and tribes

    Biden said the expanded and extended unemployment benefits would help people make ends meet while they look for a job. Peter said it will just let them put off their job search.

    They don’t have to start looking for jobs because they got a better deal on unemployment than anything they can hope for in the employment market.”

    Biden also included a proposal to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. Peter said that will make the unemployment benefits an even bigger deal.

    The higher minimum wage is going to make it a lot harder for the low-skilled workers to get jobs. Because if they can’t convince an employer to pay them $15 an hour, they’re out of luck. They have no choice.”

    Biden’s plan is effectively to incentivize people not to work by paying them more money to stay at home, and to make it more difficult for them if they actually do want to go back to work by making it harder for people with low skills to get a job because they’re not legally employable given their relatively low productivity.

    So, Biden’s plan to revive employment is going to achieve the opposite result. It’s going to further incentivize people not to work and then make it a lot more difficult for the people who want to work to actually get a job.”

    All of this stimulus spending will be almost entirely financed by the Federal Reserve. There may be some tax hikes on “the rich” down the road, but that won’t come anywhere close to closing the spending gap.

    All this money – the $1.9 trillion – is going to be printed and spent into circulation. And that is the inflation that is driving commodity prices. It’s the anticipation of that inflation.”

    This isn’t a rescue plan. It’s basically the equivalent of throwing a drowning man an anchor.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/18/2021 – 18:35

  • Greenwald Explains How Biden's Neoliberal Policies To Fuel Rise Of A "Smarter, More Stable Donald Trump"
    Greenwald Explains How Biden’s Neoliberal Policies To Fuel Rise Of A “Smarter, More Stable Donald Trump”

    Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, formerly of The Intercept, gave his broad assessment and predictions of the incoming Joe Biden administration during Chris Hedges’ Sunday show On Contact.

    “I don’t think it’s particularly difficult… to know what to expect from the Biden administration,” Greenwald told Hedges early in the interview, which focused on both the growing immense power of Silicon Valley as well as an expected return to disastrous foreign policy thinking under Obama.

    Biden is “somebody who has repeatedly supported militarism and imperialism” given also he was “one of the crucial leading advocates of the invasion of Iraq,” Greenwald said. At the same time Biden is “a loyal servant of the credit card and banking industry” on the domestic front.

    Greenwald has long been a thorn in the side of Liberals, given his politics are Left yet he’s a foremost fierce critic of the Democratic establishment, unwilling to buy into the blind hyperpartisanism that often defines public discourse in America.

    As an example of his willingness to be radically independent and buck the simplistic discourse, he again went after those among Democrats feigning progressive politics while imposing censorship in the name of anti-Trumpism.

    Greenwald told Hedges in this fresh interview:

    “The most disturbing event yet beyond as we discussed earlier, Facebook and Twitter’s unity in blocking the New York Post reporting [on Hunter Biden], is the fact that Amazon, Apple, and Google, three of the four companies that a Democratic House Subcommittee, just three months ago, declared to be dangerous, monopolist, and illegal anti-trust, anti-competitors in a really comprehensive report that they issued, united to remove from the internet a competitor to Twitter, and Facebook, and Instagram that had become the most popular app downloaded on the Apple Store, which is Parler, on the grounds that Parler played a role in inciting or agitating for the capital breach and the riot that occurred on January 6th, even though it was their own properties like Google’s YouTube and Facebook that played a much, much bigger role.  They simply destroyed a competing platform at the urging of people like Congressman Ro Khanna, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They issued demands for it on Twitter, and within 72-hours, Parler was gone from the internet.“

    And here’s more on what to expect of President-Elect Biden, set to enter the White House January 20, based on the RT interview with Glenn Greenwald…

    Glenn Greenwald, via ZUMA Press/Newscom

    On Militarism, Imperialism, Corporatism

    Greenwald: “Joe Biden has been at the national political level since 1972.  So we’re talking about essentially 50 years.  He has a very clear record of who he is, somebody who has repeatedly supported militarism and imperialism.  He obviously was one of the crucial leading advocate in the invasion of Iraq as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2002.  He, coming from Delaware, has been a very loyal servant of the credit card and banking industry, architecting the bill that Elizabeth Warren said made her so angry that she entered politics, which was the bill that made it much more difficult for consumers to discharge debt and bankruptcy.  Obviously, he is the architect of the 1994 Crime Bill, which is so ironic in a year when we had months and months of protests, largely from the Left against the police state and against racist police abuses, that the person who is probably more responsible than any other single person for that became the person behind whom they rallied.”  

    “And then you add on to that eight years of the Obama administration of which Biden was a crucial part of that, as you said, which he’s clearly attempting consciously to replicate.  I think people have forgotten what the Obama administration is like.  The Democrats are very good at creating a brand that is radically different than the reality.  But essentially the Democratic Party serves militarism, imperialism, and corporatism. That’s who funds them. That’s what they believe in.  It’s why you see neocons migrating so comfortably back to the Democratic Party, why you see… operatives cheering for Joe Biden, why Wall Street celebrated when he picked Kamala Harris, who of course has her own background as a harsh prosecutor.  I think it’s very easy to see exactly who they are.”

    Biden’s Neoliberal Policies to Fuel Rise Of a “Smarter more stable version of Donald Trump”

    Greenwald: “I think you see the dangers of–that neoliberal mentality, that neoliberal ideology in not just United States but entirely–basically throughout the democratic world.  Here in Brazil where I live, people always ask me how is it possible that a country that elected a center-left Workers Party from 2002 until 2014, so essentially four consecutive national elections, suddenly lurched to this far-right extremism in Jair Bolsonaro, and the answer is it’s because the system failed them, they know the system failed them, and then they rallied behind whoever it was who seem to be the most virile adversary of that political order.  Obviously, the same was true with Brexit in the United Kingdom with the rise of far-right parties in Western Europe, places we never expected to see them.  And it’s not a coincidence that after eight years of Obama and Biden, we got Donald Trump.  And, obviously, if you go back and do exactly the same thing that the O’Biden administration did for eight years, which is what Biden is preparing to do, any rational person has to expect the same outcome.“

    “The same outcome being the middle class continues to be destroyed, companies that have no allegiance to the United States that will take as many jobs as possible and shift them to places where they can pay slave labor will continue to do so, communities will continue to be ravaged with unemployment, crisis with drug addiction, with suicide, with depression, all the things that are dominating small American towns, rural towns, and increasingly even larger ones.  And that anger and dissatisfaction is going to only continue to grow so that when you have a smarter more stable version of Donald Trump tapping into that populace anger, promising them to close the United States, to give them better lives, it’s going to be even more appealing this time around.“

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    Big Tech Censorship and Russia, Russia, Russia!

    Greenwald: “I mean, one of the big causes of the Left during the 2020 election, it was one that I supported, was working to help Ed Markey, the long-time congressman, now senator from Massachusetts defeat a primary challenge nominally from his Right on the part of Congressman Joe Kennedy III.  He became a hero of the Left.  And right after he won, his primary and general election, there was a hearing convened where they called Silicon Valley leaders, including Mark Zuckerberg to testify before a committee on which Senator Markey sits and he told Mark Zuckerberg, Unlike my Republican colleagues who are complaining about censorship, we don’t believe that the problem is that you’re censoring too much.  We believe the problem is you’re not censoring enough.  And then proceeded to show him a bunch of content on Facebook that Markey thinks is dangerous or extremist speech that he demanded be censored.  Obama delivered a speech a couple months before the election in which he says he believes the internet is the greatest threat to American democracy because of the role it’s playing in disseminating misinformation.”  

    “So the Democratic Party, including its Liberal wing and its Left-wing, are very much on board with idea that we cannot have free speech in this age of, whatever they want to call it, White supremacy, domestic terrorism, right-wing extremism, because it simply too dangerous.  And not only should the free speech be restricted by laws and acted by Congress, which presumably would have to mean amending the First Amendment, but until then they’re on their knees pleading with billionaires, and oligarchs, and monopolists, and Silicon Valley to censor in the way that they believe is politically advantageous.  And this was true, as you said, even before the election.  I honestly think, Chris, that one of the most momentous moments of the last five or six years was when the New York Post started reporting on documents that, to this day, everyone acknowledges are completely authentic.  And the intelligence community invented a lie that it was Russian disinformation, which immediately pressured or gave the pretext to Twitter and Facebook to ban report it.” 

    Banning Content in the Name of Protecting ‘Biden Brand’

    “If you wanted to go on Twitter and post a link to the New York Post reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop, which contain a lot of information about what Joe Biden was doing in Ukraine, what he was doing in China when he was the presidential frontrunner, you couldn’t even post the link.  They had banned it.  Facebook algorithmically announced through a long-time Democratic Party operative networks at Facebook that they were going to suppress the spread of that story.  That was stunning intervention on the part of Silicon Valley in the ability to do journalism, in the election on behalf of a candidate that Silicon Valley overwhelmingly was supporting.  And since the Democrats won, every time the Democrats call on Apple, or Google, or Facebook, or Twitter to censor, those companies comply because they’re in debt together.  There is an alliance between Silicon Valley billionaires, and oligarchs, and monopolist on the one hand and the Democratic party on the other.  And it’s now all about to merge with the power of the state.”

    “I found it really interesting that numerous world leaders, including ones who have famously acrimonious relationship with President Trump stood up and very vehemently denounced Twitter’s decision and Facebook’s decision to ban President Trump from the platform, that includes Chancellor Angela Merkel, who’s a center-right politician with whom Trump has argued and bickered almost his entire presidency.  It includes President Lopez Obrador in Mexico, who’s a leftist president, who very eloquently and vehemently warned that Silicon Valley is becoming essentially a world media leader.  Something greater than nation states, because–and ministers high up in the Macron government in France, obviously who also don’t love Donald Trump, denounced it in similar terms.  Why?  Because they’re extremely concerned that these private tech monopolists who they cannot battle–the EU has been trying to break up Google and break up Facebook for years, and they simply can’t because they’re too powerful, are also coming for their democracies.”

    The Biden-MSM Nexus will try to Destroy Independent Media

    Greenwald: “I think absolutely they are very committed to the destruction of any outlets that permit independent voices of dissent.  Already you could just pick up a New York Times this morning, and there was an article about how people who were using Parler but now can no longer because it was removed from the internet by Amazon, Google, and Apple are migrating to platforms like Telegram and Signal.  And there was a New York Times article, Laying the Groundwork, for saying, Look, Telegram and Signal are now the venues for this right-wing extremism that has become a dangerous.  It’s only a matter of time as Substack grows before these groups of journalists that the–that NBC and the New York Times and the CNN employ whose only function is to demand censorship, start turning their guns on platforms like Substack or Patreon and saying, Look at the extremism that they’re hosting.  Why aren’t they removing this content that’s extremist and radicalizing people, and is so dangerous. 

    “They want to maintain a monopoly over the dissemination of information, and they’re not–and the most shocking part of it is the people who are leading this crusade, this censorship crusade are journalists, are the people who work at the large corporate media outlets. They are the biggest and the most vocal cheerleaders for corporate censorship of anybody because they don’t want any other voices competing with their own.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/18/2021 – 18:10

  • In Today's America, The Wise Person Willfully Suspends Belief
    In Today’s America, The Wise Person Willfully Suspends Belief

    Authored by Frank Liberato via AmericanThinker.com,

    In 2007, then-Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton deemed it necessary to “willfully suspend disbelief” to accept General David Petraeus’ progress report on the Iraq war.

    In 2021, it seems necessary for the American people to willfully suspend belief in our government institutions, the media, and their corporate overlords. 

    The body politic is putrid and lashing out with the most disgusting displays of immorality, deceit, and coercion. Entertainment, education, social media, and the MSM ‘watchdogs of democracy’ are now the defenders, recruiters, and propagandists for this sick, bloated, and festering bureaucracy. 

    Twenty years ago, I believed most of what came over the nation’s airwaves. Ten years ago, I was becoming quite the skeptic. Today, after years of unrelenting attacks on the President, I don’t believe any of it.

    It’s all lies, half-truths, and misinformation, designed to influence elections and steer the collective mentality toward accepting the loss of freedom, the loss of constitutional rights and, eventually, to embrace communist ideas and authoritarian policies. I’m not sure when it all went south, but I think it was probably long before I first became aware that there was a problem.

    Fifty years ago, it seemed outrageous that the government would create laws requiring people to wear seat belts or to purchase auto insurance to be able to drive. Today, the debate is about forcing people to stay in their homes, wear masks, and allowing the government to inject them with “vaccines.” Where is the outrage? Oh, it’s all for “our protection.” Well, OK then. 

    To stay out of jail, I’ll wear the mask where it’s required but I won’t be getting the vaccine and Joe Biden is not my President.

    Anyone who stayed up to watch the election results on November 3rd knows that this election was a fraud. The counting stopped around midnight with the President enjoying seemingly insurmountable leads in all key states. We waited hours for a victory declaration or for the counting to resume. When neither was forthcoming, we called it a night.

    We woke before sunrise to discover that all leads were gone and that Trump was losing in Michigan and Wisconsin. How is this possible? It’s not.

    People ask me where is the evidence of fraud? I watched the fraud happen on the night of the election. I don’t need any more evidence, but it has been pouring in for weeks for those willing to look.

    To this day, the President has not been granted a venue where he can present all the evidence. Is it any wonder that upwards of half-a-million people gathered in the capital to peacefully protest? They don’t need the President to tell them this was a fraud. They watched it happen.

    The violence in the capital was a setup. Just as the Obama administration took extraordinary, and illegal measures to try to cripple or oust the incoming President, so too has the Deep State devised a plan to deface Trump’s legacy while simultaneously reducing all his followers to the status of domestic terrorists. It was brilliantly planned and executed, and altogether evil.

    I would not have believed it possible four years ago, but after seeing the Russian collusion fiasco unravel with its illegal unmasking, spying, and politically motivated prosecutions, all orchestrated by the deep state and the opposition political party, and then to see all the actors that were caught red-handed walk away virtually unscathed, I can easily believe that political operatives with no scruples and nothing much else to do, could come up with this plan without any fear of being held responsible.

    The Capitol scheme is already starting to unravel, with timelines not matching up and evidence of a preplanned attack coming to light. In the coming weeks and months, we should see a great deal more exposed, but the President is already impeached, and he and his followers are being banned from social media.

    It’s very convenient that all the tech giants were ready to pounce. They were just waiting for the go signal from the deep state and now the media will run cover for all of them. If we do learn who was behind it all, I’m sure a never-ending investigation will be put to bed after a few years when everyone has fallen asleep. 

    If not for President Trump’s pardons, General Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Roger Stone would be languishing in prison for the rest of their lives. Their crime was having a relationship with Donald Trump. None of them would have faced any prosecution had they not tried to help the President in some way. 

    Comey, McCabe, Brennan, Clapper, Strzok, Page, Clinton, Joe Biden, and many others have committed real crimes. Many of them are on tape and documented, but it looks like they will all skate. 

    If we continue to accept the swamp narrative, we’ll never get this ship turned around. I no longer believe anything that comes out of that den of thieves. I’m willfully suspending belief. We all should.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/18/2021 – 17:45

  • California Halts COVID Vaccinations From Moderna Batch Linked To "Unusually High Number" Of Adverse Reactions
    California Halts COVID Vaccinations From Moderna Batch Linked To “Unusually High Number” Of Adverse Reactions

    As the suspected death toll attributed to COVID-19 vaccines rises around the world, with dozens already reported in the US and Norway, California health officials have asked health-care providers in the state to immediately stop administering a batch of Moderna COVID-19 jabs after an “unusually high number” of adverse reactions were linked to it, according to RT.

    On order of State epidemiologist Dr. Erica S. Pan and the California Department of Public Health, the vaccines should be shelved until a proper investigation can be conducted. The lot in question is Moderna Lot 041L20A.

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    More than 330,000 doses from this lot have been distributed to 287 providers across the state.

    The shipments arrived in California between Jan. 5 and 12.

    All of the reactions appear to be tied to a single community clinic that was administering the batch. The clinic reportedly closed for several hours after a string of adverse reactions occurred.

    California has confirmed nearly 3MM COVID cases as of Monday morning,

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    Officials on Wednesday announced a major expansion of vaccination eligibility guidelines, allowing all residents 65 and older to more quickly qualify for COVID-19 vaccinations. As far as numbers go, more than 330K doses from the same Moderna vaccine batch have been distributed to 287 providers across the state, but this is the first time that health authorities have received reports detailing adverse reactions associated with the lot.

    While acknowledging that “less data exists on adverse reactions related to the Moderna vaccine,” the state epidemiologist insisted that it’s still rare for vaccines to trigger serious side effects. Moderna, the CDC, and the FDA are reviewing the batch and all relevant medical data.

    The COVID-19 jab has been linked to other cases of serious medical emergencies, not just in the US, but in Europe and elsewhere around the world.

    In December, a physician in Boston said he suffered one of the worst allergic reactions he’s ever experienced after receiving Moderna’s vaccine, describing the episode as potentially life-threatening, while a doctor in Miami actually died due to a reaction from the vaccine.

    Similar cases linked to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine have been referred to the CDC and FDA for review. According to other reports, Hong Kong’s government-appointed vaccine advisory panel is seeking more data from the Norwegian and German governments on the reported deaths of elderly people after they received.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/18/2021 – 17:25

  • Trump Plans 100 Pardons For Tuesday – Will Assange Be Among Them?
    Trump Plans 100 Pardons For Tuesday – Will Assange Be Among Them?

    President Trump is expected to issue a long list of pardons and commutations on Tuesday, according to several sources who spoke to CNN:

    President Donald Trump is preparing to issue around 100 pardons and commutations on his final full day in office Tuesday, according to three people familiar with the matter, a major batch of clemency actions that includes white collar criminals, high-profile rappers and others but — as of now — is not expected to include Trump himself. The White House held a meeting on Sunday to finalize the list of pardons, two sources said.

    The president had issued a number of pardons prior to Christmas, but this final large list is said to have been finalized in a White House meeting on Sunday.

    Some of them may be controversial to say the least – for example Steve Bannon. But currently still dominating the news are those arrested in the wake of the Capitol Hill mayhem of last week.

    Sen. Lindsey Graham addressed this on a Sunday news show, telling Fox “There are a lot of people urging the President to pardon the folks” involved in the rioting. “To seek a pardon of these people would be wrong.”

    But the biggest name said to be under possible consideration is WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, subject of a major independent and social media campaign to lobby for his full pardon and release from a London jail where extradition proceedings are still ongoing. Will President Trump pardon Assange?

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    Even if Assange’s name isn’t among the current list of one hundred expected to be pardoned, it’s theoretically possible Trump could do so even on the morning of January 20 just ahead of Biden being formally sworn in as president.

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    “Still, Trump is expected to leave the White House on January 20 and could issue pardons up until noon on Inauguration Day,” according to CNN.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/18/2021 – 17:20

  • "It Was A Non-Event" – MSM Forced To Admit Nationwide Pro-Trump Protest Panic Was Overblown
    “It Was A Non-Event” – MSM Forced To Admit Nationwide Pro-Trump Protest Panic Was Overblown

    “It was a non-event today and we are glad it was.”

    That’s how Troy Thompson, spokesman for the Department of General Services – the agency that protects the Pennsylvania Capitol in Harrisburg, described yesterday’s mass national armed protest “domestic terrorism” event that the mainstream media (and various government agencies) has been “warning” ‘good’ Americans about all week.

    As we reported in detail yesterday – avoiding the mainstream media’s jump to a pre-conceived narrative conclusion – armed protesters did indeed appear at multiple state capitol complexes across the country Sunday morning.

    This followed a special bulletin from the FBI last week that warned: “armed protests” were being planned at 50 state capitols and the US Capitol in Washington, DC, ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20. This was immediately picked up by the media and amplified dramatically…

    However, as Reuters reports, only small gatherings of demonstrators had taken to the streets alongside much larger crowds of law-enforcement officers and media personnel.

    Even worse, they decried violence! Doesn’t sound very “terrorist”-y or “coup”-y or “insurrection”-y:

    “I am not here to be violent and I hope no one shows up to be violent,” said one man standing on the lawn in front of the capitol.

    The man, who refused to give his name, wore a “Make America Great Again” hat and waving a “Don’t tread on me” flag.

    And furthermore, as we detailed previously, while the protesters are being identified across various platforms as members of a so-called “boogaloo” movement, they largely appear to be generic anti-government anarchists – some of whom call themselves “liberty boys,” and others who oppose the conservative Proud Boys. Their sudden emergence surrounding the inauguration is curious, to say the least.

    Even The Guardian was forced to admit:

    “At heavily fortified state capitals across USA on Sunday, law enforcement & media outnumbered protesters, with only a handful of armed men showing up to planned demonstrations.”

     Some local news agencies flipped the narrative, proclaiming that the lack of turnout of “domestic terrorists” was due to the outsize presence of National Guardsmen nationwide.

    We suspect otherwise, as we have already seen numerous walkbacks of hyperbolic headlines and statements from various deep-state-loyal agencies:

    • After FBI Director Christopher Wray told Vice President Mike Pence in a briefing on Thursday that the bureau was seeing an “extensive amount of concerning online chatter” of potential threats before and during the inauguration, Ken Cuccinelli, acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said on CNN’s “New Day,” that “there’s no specific credible threats at this point in time. There’s just this raised level of tension. And so we’re raising our security level. And we’re doing it across the country,”

    • After local Federal prosecutors claimed “Strong evidence, including Chansley’s own words and actions at the Capitol, supports that the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and assassinate elected officials in the United States government,”…the top federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C. said on Friday there is no “direct evidence” to suggest that rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol had formed “kill capture teams.”

    So who could blame Americans for not trusting the media or the government?

    As Jordan Schachtel concludes, the FBI seems to be grossly exaggerating the capabilities of a fringe network of activists that does not have the capacity to mobilize significant numbers of people. Certainly, they do not present a threat of “insurrection,” or anything close. In leaking these bulletins to the media, it appears that the Bureau is once again, after four years of “Trump-Russia” madness, engaged in unsavory activism and attempts to manufacture a political narrative.

    However, given this embarrassing propaganda-rife exaggeration of threats, and the FBI ‘lies’ and these local prosecutors’ ‘lies’, the chances of a ‘false-flag’ event are rising rapidly as one might just get the impression that fear is being ratcheted up for political gain and to enable Patriot Act II’s crackdown on “domestic terrorism” to more easily slide between the cheeks of an anxious American public desperate to be saved from this terror – to hell with liberty, just do something!

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/18/2021 – 16:55

  • COVID Lockdowns Will Result In 1 Million Excess Deaths Over Next 15 Years, Scientists Find
    COVID Lockdowns Will Result In 1 Million Excess Deaths Over Next 15 Years, Scientists Find

    Back in the summer of 2020, a critical discussion almost broke out between progressives on one hand, who were adamant that if “just one life” could be saved with pervasive, widespread economic lockdowns that it was everyone’s imperative to bring the economy to a crawl, and pragmatic, rational thinkers who argued that the economic cost of such lockdowns would end up being far greater than the immediate human cost in terms of lives lost, especially since the impacted lives would be far younger than potential covid vicitms most of whom are in their 70s and 80s. Deutsche Bank credit strategist Jim Reid summarized it best as follows:

    … while the coronavirus has lead to virtually no excess deaths in younger age cohorts, it is the younger strata of society that are the most impact by the economic shutdowns that have resulted in tens of millions of unemployed Millennials.

    Reid then argued that since “younger people will be suffering most from the economic impact of Covid-19 for many years to come, we wonder how history will judge the global response.” To this, however, we countered that since the economic crisis resulting from Covid-19 helped crush Donald Trump’s chances for re-election and also unleashed full-blown helicopter money as well as the biggest round of corporate bailouts of insolvent and zombie companies in history, “we are confident that the tsunami of global moral hazard – which will leave tens of millions of young workers without a job – will allow central bankers to sleep soundly at night.”

    Unfortunately as we said at the top, this discussion “almost” happened, although in the end it did not because any time an attempt for rational discourse emerged it would be promptly and violently shouted down by the armies of virtue signalers who were also monetarily incentivized in maintaining the lockdown status quo (such as bankers, pharma and online payment companies, politicians, the media and so on) and who would instantly defer to the “scientists” as the only expert class worth opining on the critical debate of “excess covid deaths now” vs “excess deaths from economic shutdowns later.”

    Well, with a roughly one year delay, scientists from Duke, Harvard, and Johns Hopkins finally wrote a paper which may come as a shock to all the virtue-signaling progs out there, because its conclusion is stunning: in a nutshell, the NBER working paper (“The Long-Term Impact Of The Covid-19 Unemployment Shock On life Expectancy And Mortality Rates“) finds that while there have been roughly 400,000 covid-linked deaths so far (amid extensive debate of just what is a “covid-linked death” since even crash victims are counted as covid casualties, not to mention tens of thousands of others with terminal co-morbidities), the long-term economic implications from covid-related lockdowns are dire, resulting in COVID-19-related unemployment  “which is between 2 and 5 times larger than the typical unemployment shock” and resulting in a “3.0% increase in mortality rate and a 0.5%  drop in life expectancy over the next 15 years for the overall American population.”

    The bottom line, as scientists Bianchi, Bianchi and Song find is that…

    For the overall population, the increase in the death rate following the COVID-19 pandemic implies a staggering 0.89 and 1.37 million excess deaths over the next 15 and 20 years, respectively

    That’s bad; where it gets even worse for the world’s progressives is the report’s finding that the “shock will disproportionately affect” women, particularly of Hispanic heritage; African Americans; foreign born individuals; less educated adults and individuals age 16-24 – in short all those racial and social classes that are of primary concern to the “progressives” – while “white men might suffer large consequences over longer horizons” (we doubt progs will care too much about this).

    In short, everyone will be hit by the covid-lockdowns, with blacks, Hispanics and women first, and white men next for a far longer period of time. And, in the process, nearly 1 million excess deaths will take place that wouldn’t have taken place otherwise.

    We wonder how those same progressives, who demanded wholesale economic lockdowns – because that’s the only way to save even one life – will feel now that scientists explicitly state that their preferred policies will lead to nearly a million excess deaths simply from the economic shutdowns. Or, as Reid warned all the way back in July 2020 – when nobody bothered to listen – “younger people will be suffering most from the economic impact of Covid-19 for many years to come, we wonder how history will judge the global response.”

    Here are some more details from the NBER paper:

    While the trade-off between containing  the  COVID-19  pandemic and economic activity has been analyzed in the short-term,  there is currently no analysis regarding the long-term impact of the COVID-19-related economic recession on public health. What is more, most of  the papers interested in the relation between the COVID-19 pandemic and economic activity argue, correctly, that lockdowns can save lives at the cost of reducing economic activity, but they do not consider the possibility that severe economic distress might also have important consequences  on  human  well-being  (Gordon  and  Sommers  (2016)  and  Ruhm (2015)). This shortcoming is arguably explained by the fact that current macroeconomic models do not allow for the  possibility that economic activity might affect mortality rates of the agents in the economy.

    Which merely goes to show just how idiotic macroeconomics as a so-called “science” truly is, because if economists are truly baffled by this “shortcoming”, maybe they should take a look at the millions of small businesses and unemployed service workers to emerge from the covid crisis. Anyway, continuing with the paper:

    Between  late  March-early April, most U.S. states imposed stay-at-home orders and lockdowns, resulting in widespread shut down of business. Unemployment rate rose from 3.8% in February 2020 to 14.7% in April 2020 with 23.1 million unemployed Americans.  Despite a decline to 6.7% in November 2020,the average unemployment rate over the year is comparable with the 10% unemployment rate at  the peak of the 2007-2009 Great Recession and it is near the post-World War II historical maximum reached in the early 1980s (10.8%). Importantly, COVID-19 related job losses disproportionately affect women, particularly of Hispanic heritage; African Americans; foreign born individuals; less educated adults and individuals age 16-24.  In fact, the unemployment rate underestimates the extent of the economic contraction as many potential workers have abandoned the workforce (especially women).

    We fast-forward to the conclusion:

    The long-term effects of the COVID-19 related unemployment surge on the US mortality rate have not been characterized in the literature. Thus, as a last step, we compute an estimate of  the excess deaths associated with the COVID-19 unemployment shock.   This corresponds to the difference between the number of deaths predicted by the model with and without the unemployment shock observed in 2020. For the overall population, the increase in the death rate following the COVID-19 pandemic implies a staggering 0.89 and 1.37 million excess deaths over the next 15 and 20 years, respectively. 

    These numbers correspond to 0.24% and 0.37%of  the  projected  US  population  at  the  15-  and  20-year  horizons,  respectively.   For  African-Americans, we estimate 180 thousand and 270 thousand excess deaths over the next 15 and 20years, respectively.  These numbers correspond to 0.34% and 0.49% of the projected African-American population at the 15- and 20-year horizons,  respectively. For Whites, we estimate 0.82 and 1.21 million excess deaths over the next 15 and 20 years, respectively. These numbers correspond  to  0.30%  and  0.44% of the projected White population at the 15- and 20-year horizons, respectively. These numbers are roughly equally split between men and women.

    And the damning piece de resistance which every virtue signaler will rush to burn before reading

    Overall, our results indicate that, based on the historical evidence, the COVID-19 pandemic might have long-lasting consequences on human health through its impact on economic activity. We interpret these results as a strong indication that policymakers should take into consideration the severe, long-run implications of such a large economic recession on people’s lives when deliberating on COVID-19 recovery and containment measures. Without any doubt, lockdowns save lives, but they also contribute to the decline in real activity that can have severe consequences on health. Policy-makers should therefore consider combining lockdowns with policy interventions meant to reduce economic distress, guarantee access to health care, and facilitate effective economic reopening under health care policies to limit SARS-CoV-19 spread.

    Needless to say, the longer the lockdowns continue, the death toll will only grow bigger across all races and social classes.

    But wait, there’s even more!

    As we reported last week, a new peer reviewed study out of Stanford has questioned the effectiveness of lockdowns and stay-at-home orders (which it calls NPIs, or non-pharmaceutical interventions) to combat Covid-19. The study’s lead author (an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at Stanford), found that “the study did not find evidence to support that NPIs were effective in preventing the spread” and that “we fail to find strong evidence supporting a role for more restrictive NPIs in the control of COVID in early 2020.”

    So, did left-leaning states’ rushed policies in response to the pandemic – to unleash broad lockdowns, crush economies, and spark mass unemployment and poverty leading to increasing deaths of despair actually achieve anything? The short answer is no…

    … while the longer answer we now know thanks to the NBER report, is yes: they made the situation for African Americans, Hispanics and women (and yes, even white men) considerably worse for at least the next two decades.

    In other words, while lockdowns may not have even led to a tangible improvement in halting the spread of covid, what they will certainly do is lead to hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, in excess deaths over the next decade.

    Which begs the question: now that “respected scientists” have finally quantified the “staggering” excess death toll resulting from covid lockdowns, is it time to finally have the discussion – which nobody has dared to have since about a year ago – about the cost-benefit analysis between widespread economic lockdowns, which will lead over a million early deaths, and locking down the economy every time there is even a modest rebound in covid cases…

    … as per the covid we created several months ago, and which may have zero positive impact on actually halting the spread of covid?

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/18/2021 – 16:55

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