- Brazil's Sao Paulo Pushes For Mandatory COVID Vaccinations
Brazil’s Sao Paulo Pushes For Mandatory COVID Vaccinations
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/19/2020 – 02:45In September, Brazil’s wealthiest and most populous state Sao Paulo went into contract with Chinese vaccine developer Sinovac Biotech, with the expectations to receive 46 million doses of CoronaVac. CoronaVac has been in Phase 3 testing in the South American country since July. On Friday, Sao Paulo Governor Joao Doria said if the COVID-19 vaccine is approved by the National Health Regulatory Agency (ANVISA), then mandatory vaccinations would follow, according to the Rio Times.
Doria told reporters Friday, Oct. 16, that: “In Sao Paulo, it will be mandatory, except for those with a medical note and a certificate stating that they cannot [take the vaccine].”
Just weeks ago, he told other reporters that Sao Paulo “will be one of the first places in the world to vaccinate the public.” He said his administration has already obtained 6 million CoronaVac doses for potential distribution.
Citing local media, RT News said Sao Paulo could have the CoronaVac vaccine approved as early as December. The trials are expected to be wrapped up this weekend, with results expected sometime early next week.
Doria has spent the last couple of months blasting President Jair Bolsonaro’s handling of the public health crisis – accusing him of “politicizing” the vaccine.
Bolsonaro recently responded to Doria’s comments, saying that the Health Ministry will not make vaccination mandatory. Bolsonaro also cited federal laws that determine it’s up to the federal government to decide if vaccinations are mandatory.
Bolsonaro, who routinely downplayed the pandemic, and contracted the virus in July, has been widely criticized by Doria and other critics for incompetence.
On Saturday, virus-related deaths in the South American country rose 461 to 153,675. Brazil now registers more than 5,224,362 virus cases.
Brazil leads all other BRIC countries in deaths per million inhabitants.
The South American COVID-19 hotspot is Brazil.
Virus cases worldwide, via one-week moving averages, are surging once again.
We would suspect, US vaccine makers are not thrilled with China supply COVID-19 vaccines to Brazil.
- Bashar al-Assad "Should Have Been Killed" Long Ago: Israeli Military Intel Chief
Bashar al-Assad “Should Have Been Killed” Long Ago: Israeli Military Intel Chief
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/19/2020 – 02:00An Israeli security official told a local newspaper this week that “Tel Aviv is not interested in assassinating the Secretary-General of the Lebanese Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah,” stating that “if we wanted to kill him… we would have actually killed him.”
The head of the Research Division in the Israeli Military Intelligence, Dror Shalom, said that Nasrallah is fully aware that Lebanon will lose if he opens fire on Israel. But he did in a surprising statement express that Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad should have been taken out years ago.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, file image “Iran is the source of unrest and crises in the region directly, through its nuclear project and precision missiles, and through its arms in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Gaza,” the Israeli security official said in an interview with Elaph newspaper.
Shalom said that Israel considers Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to be its enemy, considering that “he should have been killed when he used chemical weapons,” as is claimed by Israel and the US.
The security official’s comments came a week after Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad commented on the prospect of peace talks with Israel.
The Syrian President told the Sputnik Agency that he is not interested in peace talks until Israel returns the occupied Golan Heights to the Arab Republic.
Head of the IDF’s Military Intelligence Research Division Brig. Gen. Dror Shalom And separately, Assad also warned that a popular uprising will begin if US and Turkey do not leave Syria. “This is an occupation. In this case, we need to do two things: First, get rid of the pretext that they use for the occupation, that is, the terrorists in this case, ISIS,” he said.
“Most of the world knows that ISIS was created by the Americans and they support it,” he continued, stating that “therefore, eliminating terrorists in Syria is our top priority, and if the Americans and Turks do not leave after that, then of course, popular resistance will begin and this is the only way.”
“They will not be forced to leave through discussions or international law because it does not exist,” Assad said. He added that “there is no other way but resistance and this is what happened in Iraq. What drove the Americans to leave in 2007? It was the result of the Iraqi people’s resistance.”
- The Progressivism Of The Future Is Really Just The Socialism Of The Past
The Progressivism Of The Future Is Really Just The Socialism Of The Past
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/19/2020 – 00:10Authored by Anthony Mueller via The Mises Institute,
The world is currently in the midst of a newly aggressive drive to bring about a new socialist order through a powerful and “efficient” technocratic state. This new order has been labeled as “progressive,” but it is merely the latest version of the socialist impulse which we have seen before in the form of socialism and communism.
A War on Private Property
Summed up in a single sentence, the plans of the communists aim at the abolition of private property. From there, the other major demands follow, such as abolishing the family, nation, and countries, and finally, as Marx noted, “communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality.” In as much as the program of liberalism “if condensed into a single word….is private ownership of the means of production” (as described by Ludwig von Mises), the program of the communists is the abolition of private property.
A Promise of Efficiency and Expertise
Yet Marxian socialism—i.e., communism—has not found many followers in the United States. The communist appeal to justice and equality found more resonance in the old world. To have an appeal to the Americans, socialism had to be packaged differently. In the United States, the gospel of socialism appeared under the name of “progressivism” and was preached as bringing society to the highest degree of efficiency.
Under President Woodrow Wilson, progressivism attained its first peak as the dominant philosophy of the state. Society was to these socialists a single organization. The bureaucrats as public administrators found a vivid expression in the political novel Philip Dru: Administrator: A Story of Tomorrow by Edward Mandell House, who was a very close friend of Wilson and who served as the president’s most important political and diplomatic advisor.
This vision of progressivism requires:
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Government and labor representation on the board of every corporation
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Sharing the profits of public service companies
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Government ownership of the means of communication
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Government ownership of the means of transportation
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A comprehensive system of old age pension
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Government ownership of all healthcare
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Full labor protection and governmental arbitration of industrial disputes
Beyond that, other demands and programs put forth and realized by the progressive movement have included eugenics, population and birth control, family planning, prohibition, antitrust legislation, public education, central banking, and an income tax.
These echo of the planks of the Communist Manifesto, which included demands to
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Centralize the means of communications and to put the means of transport in the hand of the state
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Extend the control of the state across the factories and over all land
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Implement a heavy progressive income tax and abolish the rights of inheritance
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Centralize credit in the hands of the state and establish a central bank of an exclusive monetary monopoly
Unlike the Communist Manifesto, the progressives did not preach a proletarian revolution but spoke out in the name of efficiency and demanded the bureaucratic rule of expert public administrators. In a specific way, the progressive movement presents an even worse program than Marxism. As Murray Rothbard summarized it, the progressive movement brought about a profound transformation of the American society:
from a roughly free and laissez-faire society of the 19th century, when the economy was free, taxes were low, persons were free in their daily lives, and the government was noninterventionist at home and abroad, the new coalition managed in a short time to transform America into a welfare-warfare imperial State, where people’s daily lives were controlled and regulated to a massive degree.
Socialism in Disguise
Guiding mankind to heaven on earth by transforming society is the quintessential message of socialism, beginning with the “utopian socialism” of the nineteenth century and leading up to our time with the demand for a “concrete utopia.” Yet different from the Marxist mythology that socialism would be the unstoppable successor of capitalism, history shows that the “socialist phenomenon” has appeared time and again throughout history. Instead of being the model of the future, socialism is, de facto, a failed idea of the past.
Socialism is the attempt to create a new social order at will. Yet one cannot construct “order” to one’s wishes. The volitional realization of a socioeconomic system results in establishing society as a single state-dominated organization and as such, it is necessarily hierarchical and must be based on command and obedience instead of the free association of the people as it happens in a spontaneous order.
President Wilson failed in his plan to bring the United States into the League of Nations and establish an organization to promote a new world order in tune with the visions of the progressives. For some time, the Americans resumed the tradition of individualism and isolationism. Yet with the Great Depression and World War II the chance of transforming the society and putting bureaucratic experts at the top came back with a vengeance under the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. With the end of the world war returned the chance to establish a network of international organizations with the mission of organizing society and the economy under the auspices of bureaucratic experts. This happened with the founding of the United Nations and its several subgroups and sister organizations to become active in finance, education, development, and health.
The International Push
With the launch of the United Nations, progressivism as a program of what James Ostrowski calls “destroying America” has attained a global platform. The main seat of this philosophy has moved into the headquarters of the United Nations Organizations. From its start, the United Nations has been the light bearer of global progressivism.
The protection of the environment and “global health” proved to be the ideal pretexts to move forward the agenda of progressivism. In June 1994, the UN Agenda 2021 was initiated by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro and called for the imposition of “sustainable development” on a global scale. While Agenda 2021 was still relatively modest in its demands and nonbinding as to its full execution, the later Agenda 2030 let the cat out of the bag. The new agenda was adopted when the heads of state and government and high representatives met at the United Nations Headquarters in New York in September 2015. At this meeting, they approved the adoption of “Global Sustainable Development Goals” about comprehensive and far-reaching universal and transformative goals and targets.
The new agenda describes a program of comprehensive government takeover of almost all aspects of personal life. With no nods to human freedom and market coordination, the document lists seventeen goals that should be met through a bureaucratic takeover of society on a worldwide scale. Behind popular promises such as the end of poverty and hunger, healthy lives, equitable education, and gender equality lurks the agenda to impose global socialism. Demands such as the reduction of income inequality within and among countries, sustainable consumption and production patterns, and building inclusive societies for sustainable development, are parts of an overriding plan to do away with the market economy and to impose comprehensive state planning.
Claiming the “perpetuation of disparities between and within nations, a worsening of poverty, hunger, ill-health and illiteracy, and the continuing deterioration of the ecosystems on which we depend for our well-being” (chapter 1, preamble), the conference calls of a “global partnership for sustainable development.”
Under the heading of “program areas” the agenda stresses “the links between demographic trends and factors and sustainable development.” The growth of the world population combined with “unsustainable consumption patterns” endangers the planet, as they “affect the use of land, water, air, energy and other resources.” Under point 5.17 of its objective, the conference demands: “Full integration of population concerns into national planning, policy and decision-making processes.” Protecting the environment requires the comprehensive regulation of the world population which in turn makes it necessary to control personal behavior.
In short, the adoption of this “new world order” would mean the abolition of private property, or what Mises regarded as the liberal program—a world based on private property. If enacted, this project will fail in the end, but it will bring immense suffering in the meantime.
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- As UN Arms Embargo Expires, Iran Celebrates "Clear Reality" Of US Defeat
As UN Arms Embargo Expires, Iran Celebrates “Clear Reality” Of US Defeat
Tyler Durden
Sun, 10/18/2020 – 23:45Today the United Nations weapons embargo on Iran expires which has been in effect for 13 years but was negotiated to end on Oct.18 as a key stipulation of the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA) brokered under Obama. The Trump administration has tried to fight the expiration of the embargo tooth and nail while claiming authority to enact snap back sanctions.
Iranian officials on Sunday hailed it as a “clear reality” of the defeat of the US on this front, with the ambassador to to the UK quoted in state-run IRNA saying, “Today the international community once again expressed support for multilateralism and openly opposed to the U.S. attempt to prevent the implementation of one of the significant achievements of international diplomacy.”
He underscored that “The US has been defeated in its diplomacy and this is a clear reality.”
Weaponry exhibition in Tehran, via AFP Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif also celebrated the ‘victory’. He said on Twitter it was a “momentous day” as it marks the “normalization” of Iran’s defense cooperation with the world.
“A momentous day for the international community, which— in defiance of malign US efforts—has protected UNSC Res. 2231 and JCPOA,” Zarif wrote in a Twitter post.
“Today’s normalization of Iran’s defense cooperation with the world is a win for the cause of multilateralism and peace and security in our region,” he said.
A momentous day for the international community, which— in defiance of malign US efforts—has protected UNSC Res. 2231 and JCPOA.
Today’s normalization of Iran’s defense cooperation with the world is a win for the cause of multilateralism and peace and security in our region. pic.twitter.com/sRO6ezu4OO
— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) October 17, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of course was quick to assert this is not the reality, telling Newsweek the US stands ready to act with swift retribution against any country poised to transfer arms to Iran:
“The United States is prepared to use its domestic authorities to sanction any individual or entity that materially contributes to the supply, sale, or transfer of conventional arms to or from Iran, as well as those who provide technical training, financial support and services, and other assistance related to these arms,” he said.
In the past months both Russia and China have strongly hinted that they’ll be among the first to do weapons deals with Iran.
Given the poor state of relations between the US and both these countries, which can be argued has reached a low point in recent history with both, there appears little leverage that Washington has at this point to prevent such transfers from these two major powers eager to show their cooperative defiance.
- The Chinese Lockdown-And-Mask Model Failed. Now Its Proponents Need Scapegoats
The Chinese Lockdown-And-Mask Model Failed. Now Its Proponents Need Scapegoats
Tyler Durden
Sun, 10/18/2020 – 23:20Authored by Daniel Greenfield via DanielGreenfield.org,
The problem isn’t just the China Virus. It’s that we adopted the China Model to fight it.
Public health experts adopted China’s draconian lockdowns without knowing how well they really worked and in a country that, fortunately, lacks the power to truly enforce them.
China’s deceptiveness and lack of transparency meant that we did not know how well anything that the Communist dictatorship did to battle the virus that it spawned actually worked. Despite that, our public health experts, and those of most free countries, adopted the China Model.
We don’t know how well the China Model worked for the People’s Republic of China, but it failed in every free country that tried it. Lockdowns eventually gave way to reopenings and new waves of infection. This was always going to happen because not even the more socialist European countries have the police state or the compliant populations of a Communist dictatorship.
Desperate, the public health experts adopted China’s compulsive mask wearing, a cultural practice that predates the virus, as if wearing a few flimsy scraps of fiber would fix everything.
It hadn’t and it didn’t.
But by then the public health experts and the media that had touted them were moving fully into the scapegoat portion of the crisis. The China Model had failed, all that was left was shifting the blame to more conservative and traditional populations, and away from the cultural elites.
In New York City that meant falsely blaming Chassidic Jews for the second wave. From Maine to San Francisco, Democrat leaders and their media blamed conservative Christian gatherings. Their national counterparts loudly blamed President Trump for not wearing a mask all the time.
A New York Times headline captured the cynical broad spectrum cultural scapegoating with, “N.Y.C. Threatens Orthodox Jewish Areas on Virus, but Trump’s Impact Is Seen.”
The uncomfortable truth was that the lockdowns had failed economically, socially, and medically.
Even blue states and cities were no longer able to carry the impossible economic burden much longer. The Black Lives Matter riots and the onset of summer broke the #StayHome taboos, and medically, the lockdowns had been useless efforts to meet a fake crisis of hospital overflows.
America, like too many other countries, put the experts in charge and they failed. Miserably.
Democrats claimed that they were superior because they were “listening to the science”. They weren’t listening to the science, which is not an oracle and does not give interviews. Instead, they were obeying a class of officials, some of them whom weren’t even medical professionals, who impressed elected officials and the public with statistical sleight of hand. And little else.
The entire lockdown to testing to reopening pipeline that we adopted wholesale was a typical bureaucratic and corporate exercise, complete with the illusion of metrics and goals, that suffered from all the typical problems of bureaucracy, academia, and corporate culture.
The system that determines reopenings and closings is an echo chamber that measures its own functioning while having little to do with the real world. Testing has become a cargo cult exercise that confuses the map with the world, and the virus with the spreadsheet. It gamifies fighting the pandemic while dragging entire countries into an imaginary world based on its invented rules.
When the media reports a rise or decrease in positive tests, it’s treated as if it’s an assessment of the virus, rather than an incomplete data point that measures its own measurements.
The daily coronavirus reports have become the equivalent of Soviet harvest reports. They sound impressive, mean absolutely nothing, and are the pet obsession of a bureaucracy that not only has no understanding of the problem, but its grip on power has made it the problem.
The smarter medical professionals understand that the theories have failed, while the administrators who put the theories into practice confused their system with science. The politicians listen to the administrators and when they tell us to trust the science, they mean the bureaucracy. The medical professionals can’t and won’t backtrack now. It’s too late.
The best and brightest spent the worst part of a year shuffling rationales like a gambler’s trick deck, wrecked the economy, and sent tens of thousands of infected patients into nursing homes to infect the residents, accounting for at least a third of the national coronavirus death toll.
Like most national leadership disasters, it was a combination of misjudgement, understandable mistakes, tragic errors, and acts of incomprehensible stupidity or unmitigated evil.
A lot of people are dead, a lot more are out of work, and the problem is far from solved. Someone will have to be blamed and they certainly don’t want it to be themselves.
The lockdown and the rule of the public health experts has become too big to fail.
Mistakes were made, as the saying goes. Projections were built based on bad and incomplete data. Everyone followed the path of least resistance by doing what China had done. And everyone in the system, from the experts to the administrators to the politicians to the media, is complicit. That makes the massive error the world has been living under too big to fail.
There are only two choices left. Admit the magnitude of the mistake or find someone to blame.
The establishment that touted the experts is blaming its political and cultural enemies, the people it has been priming the public to see as strange, selfish, irrational, and dangerous. And also the very people who have been the loudest opponents of lockdown culture.
Given a choice between admitting the system was wrong or blaming the system’s failure on its critics, the establishment has followed the same pattern as every authoritarian leftist regime.
The lockdowns didn’t fail, they were failed by conservative Christians and Jews, by President Trump, by people who were too selfish to give up their lives, businesses, and religion for the greater good. And if only they had, the coronavirus would be gone and everything would be fine.
The China Model promised something that its proponents quickly knew it couldn’t deliver. Everything since then has been a scam to cover up the original quackery and hackery. The louder they blame critics and dissenters for the failure, the more obvious the coverup becomes.
Lockdown culture needs patsies to take the fall for why it didn’t work. Like every leftist social and economic experiment, its defenders are left to argue that it was never properly tried. If only it weren’t for Trump, and for the dissenters, for the Chassidic Jews in Brooklyn, for Christian weddings in San Francisco and Maine, for gyms, bars, and beaches, it would have worked.
Yet the simple truth is that the China Model hasn’t worked in any country that isn’t China.
It doesn’t matter who the leader or the ruling party are, whether the public wore or didn’t wear masks, the resurgence is not a political phenomenon, science doesn’t speak, and the virus doesn’t listen. But of all the countries in the world, America was especially ill-fitted to adopt an authoritarian public health model. The sheer size, openness, and diversity of the country makes us unique and should have made it abundantly obvious that no such system would work.
Anyone but an expert or administrator would have understood that these plans were doomed.
But what the system failed to accomplish in battling the virus, it made up for by providing the leadership that had enacted it with a wonderful opportunity to settle its political scores.
The lockdowns don’t exist anymore as a prophylactic policy, but as a political vendetta. The more people die, the more businesses are ruined, the more everyone suffers, the more vicious the vendetta grows as it hunts for scapegoats, political and religious, for the great error of terror.
Leftist regimes turn to political terror as their policies fail. When the idealism dies, and the theories fall apart, the organizers pursue misery for the sake of misery, using fear, deprivation, and hate to maintain their grip on power while crushing the political threats to their rule.
The rule of the experts isn’t fighting the virus. It has become the virus.
- Fukushima To Dump 1 Million Tons Of Radioactive Water Into Pacific
Fukushima To Dump 1 Million Tons Of Radioactive Water Into Pacific
Tyler Durden
Sun, 10/18/2020 – 22:55Tokyo Electric Power’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station is expected to release more than one million tonnes of treated radioactive water from the destroyed nuclear power plant into the ocean after the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games, according to the Asian Nikkei Review.
More than one thousand storage tanks at the Fukushima Daiichi site are lining the property and store upwards of 1.23 million tonnes of treated radioactive water. In recent years, we’ve pointed out (see: here & here) how storage tank capacity has been running out and battles fume over the prospects of releasing the tainted water.
The water in question has had radioactive isotopes removed through a complex filtration process – except for tritium. Even with existing technology, tritium cannot be removed. In large quantities, the tritium-mixed water could pose severe risks for wildlife and humans. The expected release would occur after 2022.
The decision to end several years of debate over releasing the tritium-mixed water appears to be coming to an end. But, in 2019, South Korea raised concerns to the International Atomic Energy Agency about the planned release.
Earlier this year, a Japanese government panel contemplated multiple release strategies: the first was to dump the tritium-mixed water into the ocean; the second was to allow the water to evaporate. The decision appears to be a controlled release into the Pacific Ocean.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said Friday, without commenting directly on Fukushima’s planned release of treated radioactive water, that:
“We can’t postpone a decision on the plan to deal with the… processed water, to prevent delays in the decommission work of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant,” Kato said.
Environmental activists have not been thrilled with the upcoming release. Fisherman, farmers, and ordinary citizens have voiced concerns that releasing the tainted water could trigger an “environmental shock” and damage the surrounding ecosystem.
Nikkei notes, upon release, the tritium-mixed water would be “diluted up to about 600 times by uncontaminated water. The released water would then be well within international standards.”
Fukushima’s increasing nuclear waste dilemma was seen in 2014, when Tokyo Electric Power dumped hundreds of tonnes of radioactive water stored at the nuclear facility directly into the Pacific.
Fukushima’s nuclear waste dilemma is an eye-opener for nuclear energy being touted as a “promising form of energy production for a decarbonizing global economy,” noted Oilprice.com.
Readers may recall that Bill Gates’ nuclear power energy venture has proposed constructing miniature nuclear power stations across major metro areas to develop carbon-free electricity.
A decarbonizing global economy sounds great until the growing nuclear waste dilemma arises.
- "Americans Must Wake Up To The Ugly Reality" – China Is Now The World's Largest Economy
“Americans Must Wake Up To The Ugly Reality” – China Is Now The World’s Largest Economy
Tyler Durden
Sun, 10/18/2020 – 22:30Authored by Graham Allison via NationalInterest.org,
China has now displaced the U.S. to become the largest economy in the world. Measured by the more refined yardstick that both the IMF and CIA now judge to be the single best metric for comparing national economies, the IMF Report shows that China’s economy is one-sixth larger than America’s ($24.2 trillion versus the U.S.’s $20.8 trillion). Why can’t we admit reality? What does this mean?
This week, the IMF presented its 2020 World Economic Outlook providing an overview of the global economy and the challenges ahead. The most inconvenient fact in the Report is one Americans don’t want to hear—and even when they read it, refuse to accept: China has now displaced the U.S. to become the largest economy in the world. Measured by the more refined yardstick that both the IMF and CIA now judge to be the single best metric for comparing national economies, the IMF Report shows that China’s economy is one-sixth larger than America’s ($24.2 trillion versus the U.S.’s $20.8 trillion).
Despite this unambiguous statement from the two most authoritative sources, most of the mainstream press—with the exception of The Economist—continue reporting that the U.S. economy is No. 1. So, what’s going on?
Obviously, measuring the size of a nation’s economy is more complicated than it might appear. In addition to collecting data, it requires selecting a proper yardstick. Traditionally, economists have used a metric called MER (market exchange rates) to calculate GDP. The U.S. economy is taken as the baseline—reflecting the fact that when this method was developed in the years after World War II, the U.S. accounted for almost half of global GDP. For other nations’ economies, this method adds up all goods and services produced by their economy in their own currency and then converts that total into U.S. dollars at the current “market exchange rate.” For 2020, the value of all goods and services produced in China is projected to be 102 trillion yuan. Converted to U.S. dollars at a market rate of 7 yuan to 1 dollar, China will have an MER GDP of $14.6 trillion versus the U.S. GDP of $20.8 trillion.
But this comparison assumes that 7 yuan buy the same amount of goods in China as $1 does in the U.S. And obviously, that’s not the case. To make this point easier to understand, The Economist Magazine created the “Big Mac Index” from which the graph at the top of this piece is derived. As this index shows, for 21 yuan, a Chinese consumer can buy an entire Big Mac in Beijing. If he converted those yuan at the current exchange rate, he would have $3, which will only buy half a Big Mac in the U.S. In other words, when buying most products from burgers and smartphones, to missiles and naval bases, the Chinese get almost twice as much bang for each buck.
Recognizing this reality, over the past decade, the CIA and the IMF have developed a more appropriate yardstick for comparing national economies, which is called PPP (purchasing power parity).
As the IMF Report explains, PPP “eliminates differences in price levels between economies” and thus compares national economies in terms of how much each nation can buy with its own currency at the prices items sell for there. While MER answers how much Chinese would get at American prices, PPP answers how much Chinese do get at Chinese prices.
If the Chinese converted their yuan to dollars, bought Big Macs in the U.S., and took them home on the plane to China to consume them, comparing the Chinese and U.S. economies using the MER yardstick would be appropriate. But instead, they buy them at one of the 3300 McDonald’s locations in their home country where they cost half what Americans pay.
Explaining its decision to switch from MER to PPP in its annual assessment of national economies—which is available online in the CIA Factbook—the CIA noted that “GDP at the official exchange rate [MER GDP] substantially understates the actual level of China’s output vis-a-vis the rest of the world.” Thus, in its view, PPP “provides the best available starting point for comparisons of economic strength and wellbeing between economies.” The IMF adds further that “market rates are more volatile and using them can produce quite large swings in aggregate measures of growth even when growth rates in individual countries are stable.”
In sum, while the yardstick most Americans are accustomed to still shows that the Chinese economy is one-third smaller than the U.S., when one recognizes the fact that $1 buys nearly twice as much in China than in the U.S., the Chinese economy today is one-sixth larger than the U.S. economy.
So what? If this were simply a contest for bragging rights, picking a measuring rod that allows Americans to feel better about ourselves has a certain logic. But in the real world, a nation’s GDP is the substructure of its global power. Over the past generation, as China has created the largest economy in the world, it has displaced the U.S. as the largest trading partner of nearly every major nation (just last year adding Germany to that list). It has become the manufacturing workshop of the world, including for face masks and other protective equipment as we are now seeing in the coronavirus crisis. Thanks to double-digit growth in its defense budget, its military forces have steadily shifted the seesaw of power in potential regional conflicts, in particular over Taiwan. And this year, China will surpass the U.S. in R&D spending, leading the U.S. to a “tipping point in R&D” and future competitiveness.
For the U.S. to meet the China challenge, Americans must wake up to the ugly fact: China has already passed us in the race to be the No. 1 economy in the world. Moreover, in 2020, China will be the only major economy that records positive growth: the only economy that will be bigger at the end of the year than it was when the year began. The consequences for American security are not difficult to predict. Diverging economic growth will embolden an ever more assertive geopolitical player on the world stage.
- China Q3 GDP Disappoints, Retail Sales Signal Domestic Rebound Alive
China Q3 GDP Disappoints, Retail Sales Signal Domestic Rebound Alive
Tyler Durden
Sun, 10/18/2020 – 22:11With China’s yuan pushing back to 27-month highs, the market has already confidently expressed its view that China will show the world tonight the recovery from COVID-19 is more than possible, as the rest of the world – which appears to be following the same mask-and-lockdown protocols that China did – are struggling with new lockdowns.
Source: Bloomberg
GDP is expected to print a healthy +5.5% YoY for Q3 helped by an unexpectedly strong rebound in global trade.
“Right now, China has basically put Covid-19 under control,” People’s Bank of China Governor Yi Gang said on Sunday in a webinar organized by the Group of 30.
Source: Bloomberg
“In general, the Chinese economy remains resilient with great potential. Continued recovery is anticipated which will benefit the global economy.”
China has so far relied on exports and manufacturing (inventory restocking by the rest of the world), but tonight’s industrial production, retail sales, investment, and unemployment will gives a clearer picture of the domestic recovery, as Bloomberg’s chief Asia economist Chang Shu notes that:
“Improving consumer sentiment and consumption likely also boosted private demand. Leading indicators indicate demand is coming back at a faster pace than production at this stage of the recovery.”
Simply put, if tonight’s data meets expectations, that’ll mean the world’s second-largest economy – and the first to suffer from the virus shock – will have regained all the ground in growth it lost in the first half.
Of course, given the lies, deception, and deceit involved with the virus, who knows what to believe in the data? As Bloomberg’s Enda Curran notes, as always, today’s numbers will be greeted by scepticism among those who argue that China’s GDP reading is smoothed for political purposes. Chinese authorities themselves have cracked down on provincial level governments for massaging the numbers. That said, most economists we speak to say the overall trend is clear: the rebound is real even if the numbers have their flaws.
So… drum roll please… here’s the data:
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China Q3 GDP YoY MISS +4.9% vs +5.5% exp vs +3.2% prior
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China Industrial Production September YTD YoY BEAT +1.2% vs +1.0% exp vs +0.4% prior
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China Retail Sales September YTD YoY BEAT -7.2% vs -7.4% exp vs -8.6% prior (+3.3% YoY)
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China Fixed Asset Investment September YTD YoY MISS +0.8% vs +0.9% exp vs -0.3% prior
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China Property Investment YTD YoY BEAT +5.6% vs +5.2% exp vs +4.6% prior
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China Surveyed Jobless Rate BEAT 5.4% vs 5.5% exp vs 5.6% prior
So, while the underlying monthly data was better than expected, China Q3 GDP notably missed expectations – something very notable in the oh-so-well-managed Chinese economy…
Source: Bloomberg
Despite the disappointing headline GDP data, everything improved sequentially…
Source: Bloomberg
The strong jump in retail sales (+3.3% YoY) suggests the long-awaited consumer recovery seems to be taking root. A breakdown shows Chinese are spending more on drinks, tobacco and alcohol, medicine, office supplies and food.
Source: Bloomberg
However, Frederic Neumann, co-head of Asia economic research at HSBC Holdings Plc in Hong Kong makes the point that because Beijing doesn’t have the same appetite for borrowing that it did in the years after the financial crisis, its stimulus will have a different impact on the rest of the world this time round.
“So while China is seemingly holding up the world, once again, the growth impulse it imparts to markets far and wide will fade more quickly this time than during the world’s last big crisis.”
So, will the world’s growth impulse rotate back to the US (post-election)?
Furthermore, as the rest of the world hopes exuberantly for a vaccine, Goldman has warned, “It’s even possible that China’s economy could be a net loser from vaccines, as the limited further boost to domestic services activity might be offset by softer goods exports and increased outbound tourism. “
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- Silver & The Epochal Maldistribution Of Wealth
Silver & The Epochal Maldistribution Of Wealth
Tyler Durden
Sun, 10/18/2020 – 22:00Authored by Egon von Greyerz via GoldSwitzerland.com,
The Founding Father and President Thomas Jefferson understood the extreme danger in handing over the issuance of the money to the bankers:
“The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution. I am an Enemy to all banks discounting bills, or notes for anything but Coin. If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.”
– Thomas Jefferson. (1743-1826).
If we look at just one example of “depriving the People of their Property” as Jefferson stated, the consequences for the ordinary man are devastating.
According to Federal Reserve Data, the richest 59 Americans have a wealth of $2 trillion which is the same as the wealth of poorest 50% or 165 million people. If we instead take the richest 1%, their wealth in Q2 2020 is $34 trillion or 17x the poorest 50%.
MALDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH
This maldistribution of wealth leads to extreme poverty as Jefferson said and eventually to social unrest or revolution. This is what we are seeing the beginning of in the US currently.
Central banks and bankers robbing the poor and favouring the rich whilst destroying the economy and the currency have been the norm in history rather than the exception. I have quoted the Jefferson contemporary, Mayer Amsel Rothschild’s (1744-1812) words numerous times:
“Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation and I care not who makes the laws.”
Jefferson clearly didn’t appreciate bankers like Rothschild.
JOHN LAW & JEKYLL ISLAND
The world is now entering the end of yet another century long era when bankers and central bankers have managed to issue and control the money in an unlimited and immoral manner. But unscrupulous bankers have existed throughout history. John Law in France and his Mississippi Company during the early 1700s comes to mind. He obtained control of the money from King Louis XV, and quickly destroyed the currency and bankrupted a lot of people.
The plans for a similar coup as Law’s was performed by a number of bankers and the US Treasury Secretary on Jekyll Island in 1910. This is where the idea of the Fed was born as a private bank, owned and controlled by private bankers with the right to issue the nation’s currency.
THE FED AND THE BANKERS CAN ONLY WIN
From the banks point of view, the Fed has been the most beautiful construction and much more robust than Law’s bank since it is a century old. As a result of the Fed’s creation, private bankers have not only been in a position to create unlimited wealth for themselves and their friends like hedge funds and private equity companies. But they have also avoided taking any losses. In 2007-09 as the financial system was on the verge of collapse, governments had to absorb $10s of trillions of losses whilst the bankers had their normal major bonuses paid out that year too. The New York Fed was in charge of $29 trillion in bailouts. Congress never approved the bailout funds nor was it aware that they existed!
Morgan Stanley was one of the biggest recipients of the bailout, receiving $2 trillion. Interestingly, Morgan Stanley’s Hedge Fund Front Point LLC also received Fed support. This was the fund featured in the book and film “The Big Short” (a must read/see). So the Fed was forced to support a hedge fund which was shorting all the banks the Fed was forced to rescue. By the end of 2007 Morgan Stanley’s leverage was nearer 40%. No wonder they had to be saved by the Fed.
PLUS ÇA CHANGE ….. THE MORE IT CHANGES, THE MORE IT STAYS THE SAME
Interestingly, the New York Fed is in the same position today and is responsible for handing out funds from a number of lending facilities to rescue many US banks which are in trouble again. As always, the names of the banks receiving support and the amounts are kept confidential.
On top of the special facilities, the Fed started Repos in September 2019. In January 2020 these Repos had reached $6 trillion. By March the Repos were at $9 trillion. According to a report by the BIS, four large banks and hedge funds were the beneficiaries of the Repo debacle.
So who are the largest shareholders of the New York Fed? Surprise, surprise, they are the same people that had to be rescued in 2008, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and Citigroup. Incidentally, these banks also have the biggest/riskiest derivative positions of all US banks.
What a wonderful position to be in. These major banks can take unlimited positions and risk, knowing that as major shareholders of the central bank, they can always rescue themselves at the expense of the government and the taxpayers. And this naturally at no cost to either their own banks and nor to the Fed that they control and own.
POWER CORRUPTS
What a marvellous construction, devised by the bankers over a century ago on Jekyll Island. They were the true descendants of Mayer Amschel Rothschild. But they did not just set up a structure so that they could control the money. They also succeeded in conning both congress and the government to hand over control of the whole caboodle to give them ultimate control and power.
Power corrupts and ultimate power even more so. And corruption eventually leads to the downfall of not just of the perpetrators but of the whole bogus edifice they have created. Unlimited money printing and credit creation will inevitably destroy the currency and the financial system as von Mises said:
“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion….”
IT IS ALL ABOUT RISK
The expertise of myself and our company is to analyse and understand risk and come up with solutions to protect wealth. We clearly don’t possess the ability or means to save the world or the financial system. Instead our passion is to advise and assist the people who are interested in preserving or insuring their assets.
We are now approaching the end of century long chapter in the world economy which will make financial history. Like most eras of excessive debts and spending combined with false markets and fake money, this one will end badly too. But the difference this time is that there is not just one nation or continent which is involved but virtually every country in the world. Thus, we have reached the end of the road and the central bankers’ safety net will not be strong enough as it only consists of worthless fake money.
The only hope is Deus ex Machina or god from the machine. This was how hopeless situations were rescued in the ancient Greek plays. A figure (god) was lowered onto the stage to solve the insoluble problem. Sadly, I doubt that this will be the case this time.
(The picture below was made for an article I wrote back in 2011.)
WEALTH PRESERVATION
I have for 18 years, in numerous articles on KWN and on our website – GoldSwitzerland.com – discussed the virtues of wealth preservation in the form of physical gold stored outside the banking system.
The acceleration of deficits and debts will further speed up money creation on a global scale, never seen before in history. This will lead to a total debasement of all currencies as they decline to their intrinsic value of ZERO. They are already down 97-99% in real terms since 1971 which means measured in gold. The death of the dollar and most major currencies is likely to take place in the next 2-5 years as governments print unlimited amounts.
Gold is the king of the metals and is the only money which has survived in history. But the crown prince of the precious metals is silver and in the next few years, silver is likely to have the most spectacular surge.
Silver was $50 in 1980 and again reached that level in 2011. At $25 today, silver is the most incredible bargain of any asset. Just as gold has been money for 5,000 years, silver has during many periods in history been the principal currency. For example the French word Argent means both silver and money.
SILVER – THE INVESTMENT OF THE DECADE
Silver is both an industrial as well as precious metal. It is used in many electric and electronic products. Also, the demand for photo-voltaic or solar panels is expected to explode in the next 5-10 years.
Out of 850 million ounces ($21 billion) of annual mine production, (27,000 tonnes), 66% is for industrial use. With a major increase in production of solar panels, that percentage is likely to grow substantially. As jewellery absorbs 25% of mine production, there is only 10% left for making coins and bars. Scrap silver makes up some of the difference but there is normally an annual shortage of silver.
As demand for gold increases, silver demand will grow substantially as we have seen in 2020. Silver has always been seen as the poor man’s gold and as gold prices will become too expensive for many investors, they will instead buy silver.
The gold silver ratio reached almost 130 in April which was an extreme. See chart. It is now down to 77 and likely to initially reach 30 where it was in 2011. Eventually we are likely to see the ratio back to the historical average of 15 or even 10 which the ratio of silver to gold in nature.
The consequence the substantial increases in industrial and investment demand will be a major increase in silver prices. My long standing target for gold reaching $10,000 in today’s money will probably be vastly exceeded. But if we assume $10,000 for gold and a gold silver ratio at 15, that would be a silver price of $666.
Interestingly it says in the bible that King Solomon received 666 talents of gold annually which would be worth $1.4 billion today.
But if we look at silver adjusted for real inflation based on ShadowStatistics, the $50 high in 1980 would equal to $950 today. So silver at between $600 and $1,000 is not an unrealistic target.
So silver has the potential to go up between 24x and 40x from today’s $25 price. A wealth protection asset with such a profit potential must be the investment of the decade.
This might sound like sensational fantasy targets but that is far from the case. As I have shown, the inflation adjusted price is $950 so these levels are not unrealistic, especially when the supply and demand situation is taken into account.
But investors must understand that silver is extremely volatile so the corrections will be frightening. Silver is not for the faint hearted.
Most importantly, silver should be bought for wealth preservation purposes and not for speculation. Therefore it must be held in physical form outside a fragile banking system.
Grant Williams, Ronni Stoeferle & Egon von Greyerz held the Webinar on Monday Oct 12
- Not The Onion: Fed Calls For Tougher Regulation To "Prevent Asset Bubbles"
Not The Onion: Fed Calls For Tougher Regulation To “Prevent Asset Bubbles”
Tyler Durden
Sun, 10/18/2020 – 21:35After singlehandedly creating the biggest asset bubble in history, where the global economy has avoided collapse (so far) thanks to some $20 trillion in Fed liquidity conduits, monetary stimulus and helicopter money (the Fed is now openly monetizing all the debt the Treasury issues in order to avoid collapse), we seems to have moved into the Onion (or is Babylon Bee) zone, because as the FT reports, senior Fed official are now calling for “tougher financial regulation to prevent the US central bank’s low interest-rate policies from giving rise to excessive risk-taking and asset bubbles in the markets.”
Yes, because it’s the regulators job to prevent what is the primary and according to many, only consequence of the Fed’s massive monetary generosity.
While there are countless metaphors one can use to simplify what is going on here, there best one is that this is identical to a serial arsonists demanding the fire brigade stop slacking and put out his fires, which are coming at an ever higher frequency.
The push, according to the FT, “reflects concerns that the Fed’s ultra-loose monetary policy for struggling families and businesses risks becoming a double-edge sword, encouraging behavior detrimental to economic recovery and creating pressure for additional bailouts” and also “highlights fears at the Fed that the financial system remains vulnerable to new shocks.” Well, duh. But as Howard Marks pointed out in his latest memo “by dramatically lifting the markets, the Fed may have caused some people to believe that it will always do so – that there’s a “Powell put” that can be counted on to keep things humming.”
Among those opining was Boston Fed president Eric Rosengren, who told the Financial Times that the Fed lacked sufficient tools to “stop firms and households” from taking on “excessive leverage” and called for a “rethink” on “financial stability” issues in the US.
“If you want to follow a monetary policy . . . that applies low interest rates for a long time, you want robust financial supervisory authority in order to be able to restrict the amount of excessive risk-taking occurring at the same time,” he said. “[Otherwise] you’re much more likely to get into a situation where the interest rates can be low for long but be counterproductive.”
Why thank you Eric, perhaps you should have chimed in oh… a few years ago when you and your Fed pals were injecting tens of billions of dollars daily into the market – not the economy as we explained earlier, and to do what – create the biggest asset bubble ever. The same bubble you are now warning about. So truly insightful.
Of course, in typical academic fashion, the Fed’s megabrains – most of whom have never worked one day in the private sector – decided to simply follow monetary theory (ignoring completely how it has destroyed Japan and Europe) and only after the catastrophic consequences of their actions are laid bare for all to see, do they decide that it may be time for a reassessment. Somehow we doubt that will prevent the angry, if metaphorical, mob from one day finally showing up in front of the Marriner Eccles building.
Yet while Rosengren is just a decade or so behind the curve, some of his colleagues remain as clueless as ever. Take San Fran’s Mary Daly, the first openly gay Fed president. As we reported earlier this week, she told reporters that she did not see much connection between loose monetary policy and financial risks. Which of course is false, because in the very next sentence she admitted that there is in fact an asset bubble benefiting a handful of Americans, but because the economy is now so reliant on the Fed, it simply can not afford to ease back on the pedal ever again.
“We should always watch for excess risk-taking, we should always watch for excess leverage,” she said. “But we shouldn’t regulate off the fear that could happen, and at the expense of so many millions of Americans who need the employment and the income and the access to the economy.”
We wonder, Mary, what will happen to the jobs of “so many millions of Americans” when the current bubble finally does burst resulting in an even more catastrophic destruction of the US economy. Or maybe Ms. Daly is simply hoping that by the time this happens, she will be long retired and the consequences of her idiocy will be someone else’s problem. We will see.
* * *
Although no big regulatory changes are expected in the near term, the debate over tougher financial regulation could gather pace if Democrat Joe Biden wins the White House in November, making the political environment more favorable towards action, according to the FT. The Nikkei-owned newspaper cites Michael Barr, the dean of public policy at the University of Michigan business school and a former US Treasury official under Barack Obama, said: “You want to make sure that you’re using all the tools you have on financial stability, so that you don’t put the Fed in the position of cutting off growth.”
Ironically, even as the FT writes that top Fed officials are seeking more regulation to prevent the consequences of their actions fro meterializing, the Fed’s own top “bubble watchdog”, Randy Quarles who is the vice-chair responsible for financial supervision, signalled that “he was comfortable with the central bank’s regulatory posture leading into the Covid crisis, reckoning that banks were healthy enough to survive the shock of the pandemic and support the US economy” according to the FT.
But what the FT did not mention is that Quarles also made a far more “shocking” admission, when he said that the Treasury market is now so large that the U.S. central bank may have to continue to be involved to keep it functioning properly.
Speaking at a virtual panel conversation on the future of central banking hosted by the Hoover Institute, Quarles said that “it may be that there is a simple macro fact that the Treasury market being so much larger than it was even a few years ago, much larger than it was a decade ago and now really much larger than it was even a few years ago, that the sheer volume there may have outpaced the ability of the private market infrastructure to support stress of any sort there.”
Translation: the Fed can never again step away and stop manipulating the bond market, which by extension and through the risk premium, is the market which defines every other market, including stocks, commodities, FX and so on.
The best comment, however, and by best we mean most idiotic, came from who else, but former PIMCO and Goldman banker, Neel Kashkari, who somehow became president of the Minneapolis Fed a few years ago, and who told the FT that stricter regulation was needed to stave off repeated market interventions by the central bank.
“I don’t know what the best policy solution is, but I know we can’t just keep doing what we’ve been doing,” he said. “As soon as there’s a risk that hits, everybody flees and the Federal Reserve has to step in and bail out that market, and that’s crazy. And we need to take a hard look at that.”
While we have written a lot about Neel Kashkari, we will hand the microphone to one of our readers who email us the following succinct assessment of that quote:
This guy Kashkari is full of crap and the biggest clown of all of them. He could care less and does not believe a word of what he just said and will do nothing. He is just saying that to try and sound credible, prob wants Fed chair job too. Reality is he is the single biggest money pumper of anyone on the Fed.
But we’ll give Kashkari a few points for at least being honest and admitting the he has no idea what to do now that the Fed has put itself into a dead-end position where both the market and economy demand it continues to inject $120BN (at least) per month in perpetuity.
So for all those Fed officials “worried” about bubbles, here is DB’s Aleksandar Kocic explaining just how to reduce the risk of bubbles bursting:
In a debt driven economy, the art of central banking is a technology of decelerating breakdown. By raising and lowering the primary interest rates, a central bank pursues the task of minimizing the endemic risks of a crash by adjusting to an acceptable level the stress incurred by the interest rate. Jumpstarting the economy becomes synonymous with decreasing the risk of insolvency for the units that are in debt.
And there you have it: if you want to reduce the risk of asset bubbles, just end QE and hike rates. So which Fed staffer will be the first to float this particular idea?
Yeah, that’s what we thought.
- Smoothie Robot In Walmart Signals Continued Rise Of Automated Fast Food Workers
Smoothie Robot In Walmart Signals Continued Rise Of Automated Fast Food Workers
Tyler Durden
Sun, 10/18/2020 – 21:10Authored by Danny Razor via TheMindUnleashed.com,
A robot that makes smoothies was showcased at a Walmart in California signaling the rise of automated workers.
The Mind Unleashed has previously reported on how automated robots were beginning to take over various different jobs, including flipping burgers with Miso Robotics’ Flippy. Now, Walmart has partially got involved in the trend. A new start-up company called, “Blendid” showcased its product at the Fremont Walmart in California this week opening a kiosk, Yahoo News reported.
The stall is open seven days a week and is pitched as a way for customers to place contactless orders for a smoothie. Customers place their orders for a 12-ounce delicious drink and then an autonomous robot whips it up. What’s more, the drink is made in just 3 minutes or less from the time it’s placed.
Digital Trends recently questioned the CEO Vipin Jain about how the robot works. Jain explained that customers use an app scanning a simple QR code at the kiosk or via the Blendid app to order. If that doesn’t impress you, how about artificial intelligence that remembers your taste preferences?
“Consumers use their cell phone to order by scanning a QR code at the kiosk or via the Blendid app,” Vipin Jain, Blendid’s CEO and co-founder, told Digital Trends. “They browse our menu of smoothies made from whole fruits, and vegetables. Once they select a drink, they customize it to their personal taste and health preferences, by modifying the amount of each ingredient as desired. Then they place their order, and Blendid robot gets to work preparing their drink. Once the drink is ready, they receive a text with instructions for a contactless drink pickup. The robot serves the drink to them when they confirm the pickup.”
While a robot taking over a job like making a smoothie might seem small, the fact Walmart has an automated kiosk in one of its California stores is a larger signal of the automation trend to come.
In fact, it was previously reported by Fox News in July that, Walmart was looking to remove all cashiers and standard conveyor belt lines from its stores and is testing a pilot in one of its superstores in Fayetteville, Arkansas in the short term.
CNN previously reported that grocers – big and small chains alike – are turning to robots for performing various tasks like cleaning floors, stocking shelves, and delivering groceries to shoppers. The CV crisis could even prompt online retail warehouses like Amazon to invest more into automation technology as well.
Walmart also isn’t the first business to discuss using automation. Last year international fast-food chain McDonald’s reported they would begin employing automated fryer robots throughout their different branches across the world. Former McDonald’s USA CEO Ed Rensi told Fox Business, “It’s cheaper to buy a $35,000 robotic arm than it is to hire an employee who’s inefficient making $15 an hour bagging French fries.” McDonald’s has also introduced touchscreen ordering kiosks to some of its stores.
Restaurant chains that are using automation include McDonalds, KFC, Panera, Wendys, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Arbys according to Business Insider.
Robots aren’t just taking over restaurants, a report by the McKinsey Global Institute indicates there are 800 million careers (or 30 percent of the global job force)—from doctors to accountants, lawyers to journalists—that will be lost to automation by 2030. The report concludes that hundreds of millions of people worldwide will have to find new jobs or learn new skills.
A report by the University of Oxford suggests we will face a robot job apocalypse predicting that 47 percent of U.S. jobs are at risk of being replaced by robots and Artificial Intelligence over the next fifteen to twenty years. However, with the current ongoing pandemic workers might find they are replaced quicker. Especially, any type of work that requires physical contact with a customer.
It shouldn’t be surprising for the reader that’s exactly what a report by A3, Association For Advancing Automation, detailed earlier this year. Stating all the ways that artificial intelligence and automation is being used in different industries to combat CV. Oxford Economics also published its own report warning that accelerating technological advances in automation, engineering, energy storage, artificial intelligence, and machine learning have the potential to reshape the world in 2020 through 2030s, displacing at least 20 million workers.
With CV as a catalyst to speed up the deployment of automated machines, we can probably safely say that number will be much more severe. It seems I am not the only one to share that opinion; a recent MarketWatch article written by Johannes Moenius, a professor of global business and the director of the Institute for Spatial Economic Analysis at the University of Redlands, agrees with this author’s conclusion stating “at least 50 million jobs could be automated in just essential industries.”
In fact, the Brookings Institution said in a report last month that “any CV-related recession is likely to bring about a spike in labor-replacing automation … Automation happens in bursts, concentrated especially in bad times such as in the wake of economic shocks, when humans become relatively more expensive as firms’ revenues rapidly decline.”
You can watch a video of Blendid in action below.
- An Emerging Markets "Doom Loop" Time Bomb Emerges, And Inflation Could Set It Off
An Emerging Markets “Doom Loop” Time Bomb Emerges, And Inflation Could Set It Off
Tyler Durden
Sun, 10/18/2020 – 20:45While both we – and most other analysts – have been focusing on soaring debt and QE since the covid pandemic, DB’s Jim Reid correctly points out that this has been mostly in the context Developed Markets. But how have Emerging Markets funded themselves in the pandemic? The answer, as Reid writes in his Friday “Chart of the Day” note, is “via leveraging its banking system by a combination of moral suasion, liquidity provision from central banks, steep yield curves (encouraging carry trades), regulatory policies (reserve requirement cuts and easier accounting rules), and falling loan-to-deposit ratios (higher savings/weak demand) freeing up balance sheets.”
This, according to some other analysts, is called “shadow” QE.
It’s also a major problem: as the DB strategist explains, “if you’re looking for future potential crises this is another sovereign-bank nexus similar to that grappled with in the Euro sovereign crisis.”
In other words, a Doom Loop for emerging markets.
Of course, an EM doom loop is just the start, as they are many more serious problems for emerging markets, with inflation the most likely one. As Reid explains, “a return [of inflation] could force central banks to sharply raise front-end rates, or to withdraw cheap liquidity. This would change the incentives for shadow QE which is inherently price sensitive, unlike the central bank QE mostly used in DM countries.“
In a separately note by DB economists Mallika Sachdeva and Oli Harvey, the duo discuss the role that shadow QE has played across Asia, CEEMEA and Latam this year in helping governments to finance deficits and central banks to (mostly) avoid large official QE programs.
While CE3, Brazil & Mexico in Latam, and Malaysia in Asia stand out as countries where banks have played a particularly large role in absorbing issuance, a key condition of “shadow” QE has been muted inflation trends.
“If this changes, so could the calm in EM debt”, Reid concludes adding that “increases in debt usually bring future crises so this is an interesting development to watch.”
- The Year Of Disguises
The Year Of Disguises
Tyler Durden
Sun, 10/18/2020 – 20:20Authored by Roger Koops via The American Institute for Economic Research,
2020 is a year of disguises. Some examples include computer models/modelers disguised as “science/scientists,” Tyrants/Dictators/Totalitarians disguised as “elected officials,” propaganda machines disguised as “news sources,” brainwashing disguised as “information,” censorship disguised as “public health safeguard,” panic and fear disguised as “social responsibility.”
Even the virus itself has been disguised by humans as an “apocalypse.” But, the last part is not the doing of the virus, but the doings of a select number of humans who are responsible for many of the other disguises as well. And if you look at the totality of events in 2020, it is clear that the average citizen has been treated generally less than human, certainly not as adults in any case.
I believe we are in as great a crisis as a species as we have ever been. The crisis is not from some seasonal virus (which is a health issue), but it is from ourselves and what we have devolved into as a species (social, cultural, ideological issues).
I have debated with myself on how to approach the following essay. Under normal circumstances, it would be easy. But, the topic has been so warped and sensationalized into political and social hyperbole, it is difficult to get a handle on it. I could go at it strictly from a scientific perspective, but that would tune many people out.
After about two weeks of my own internal debate and several versions, I have decided to treat the readers of this essay as Human Adults. I will try to not get too technical but rather use rational arguments to approach the issue of a viral infection from the perspective of the virus molecule outside of the host, i.e., the natural environment.
Computer modeling is “a” tool, not “the” tool. The model is only as good as the assumptions put into the model. It has been clear from the start that the modelers have NO idea of how a virus works in the natural world. They have based their modeling on the assumption that the culprit is the human being. The human being must be controlled in order to control the virus. This is completely wrong. I hope to present arguments that illustrate the weaknesses of the modeling concepts.
Human Perception
The natural perceptive abilities, i.e. the physical senses, of human beings are quite poor. For example, we can see only a very, very small part of the electromagnetic spectrum, illustrated as follows:
Consequently, humans have difficulty understanding that which is not directly observable by their senses. Size and mass we do okay at, providing we can see it. We tend to have better abilities with larger things that we can observe. But, even size perception has its limits. For example, many people cannot grasp the scope of our universe.
Smaller things, things we cannot see we have trouble with. We live, and have always lived, in a world with things that are far smaller than our ability to detect without some instrumental aid. For example, when I tell people that their bodies are mostly empty space, they scoff. We have solid substance, they say, we can feel it. I respond that the reason we feel it is solid is because that is how our brain interprets it.
For example, neutrinos are subatomic particles with no mass. They do not interact with matter. We are bombarded by interstellar neutrinos throughout our lives. They pass right through us. It makes no difference where you live because they pass right through the Earth, too. You can live a whole lifetime and never have experienced a collision of a neutrino with a cell in your body. Think about it; is it difficult to grasp?
Yes, neutrinos are exotic and basically of interest to physicists. But we exist in a constant interaction with other not-so-exotic things.
Bacteria and fungi, at the cellular level, exist at the micron scale (see the scale diagram below). But, they have the cellular machinery to grow on their own, i.e., their cells will divide and multiply as long as they have nutrients. We cannot see them normally without a microscope. But, if they keep growing, eventually we can see them (as things such as moldy bread, or mildew on the wall), or even feel them (old vegetables that get a “slimy” feeling actually have a bacterial plaque on their surface). Both bacteria and fungi can form “spores” to protect themselves under harsh conditions. It is a form of hibernation.
We have bacteria and fungi in our bodies constantly. Our immune system usually keeps them at bay, or more accurately, keeps them in balance. However, if our immune system weakens, or if a balance is shifted towards the bacteria/fungi, the balance can tip in their favor and we can experience disease. We tend to have more difficulty with control of bacterial/fungal infections than viral infections. In fact, the most common cause of a fatal outcome due to viral infection, including coronavirus, is a bacterial infection.
The reason the second week of infection is considered the worry stage is NOT because of the virus; rather this is the time when a weakened immune system, either by exposure or by losing the balance battle cannot prevent the bacteria/fungi from taking off. Most people who die from influenza, coronavirus, even rhinovirus, do so primarily from pneumonia (bacterial infection) or some other systemic bacterial infection.
Other things, besides fighting a virus, can weaken the immune system. Aging, diabetes/obesity, liver disease, kidney disease, cancer, lung disease, other infections (viral/bacterial/fungal), stress, circulatory problems, cardiovascular disease, and several others all can cause weakened immune systems (that is why they are called “comorbidities”). Clearly, the number and degree of conditions that weaken your immune system greatly increase the risk of severe disease or death from any infectious disease (bacterial, fungal, or viral).
All of these things occur at a level where our senses cannot perceive them. Fortunately, our bodies recognize these things at the molecular level and it is our own chemistry (we call “biochemistry”) that intervenes, mainly in the form of our immune system.
The Virus: What are we dealing with?
My Doctoral degree is in “organic” chemistry, specifically, chemistry involving carbon-based compounds. Chemistry is about working with problems at a molecular level. Guess what a virus like coronavirus is? It is a complex organic molecule. Organic chemists would call it a “macromolecule” where “macro” means large. It is only considered “large” in comparison to small molecules. I am naturally inclined to look at a virus like coronavirus as an organic molecule.
Coronavirus (CV) and influenza (IF) are very similar at the molecular level. Both are ribonucleic acid (RNA) viruses and both are enveloped helical (meaning that they have a similar 3- dimensional structure with a protein outer part and the RNA inside). CV is a positive strand RNA and IF is a negative strand RNA. This means they have opposite structures much like you have a left hand and a right hand. Their viral class identification is different partly for that reason.
Both CV and IF behave almost the same outside of the body and this is due to their size, structure, and relative chemical similarities. On average, both are about the same size, ranging around 100 ±30 nanometers or nm (CV can range smaller in size than IF). For consistency purposes, I will refer to both of them at the 100 nm size, which is reasonably accurate (nm is 10-9 meter (0.000000001 meter), a micron (μm) is 10-6 meter (0.000001 meter). The meter is about 10% longer than a yard, or 39.37 inches so 1 micron is 0.00003937 inch.
I have created the following scale for a reference point using font sizes, and I hope that the fonts are reasonably accurate. Note that our eyes cannot see 5 micron, so this is enhanced.
As the chart shows, both CV and IF as a molecule outside of the body are VERY, VERY small. They are undetectable without the use of an electron microscope. We simply cannot detect it in the natural environment. The tip of your finger, maybe 1 square millimeter, can literally pick up tens of millions of virus particles and you could not see any of them.
Because of the small size, we really do not know how they truly exist in the environment. They could be floating around as individual molecules, i.e. as single CV/IF particles. They could “aggregate,” meaning that they form clumps of molecules (again, too small to detect). They could attach to any other particle in the environment. Since they are so small, they could hitch rides with dust particles, pollens, leaves, just about anything that they may have an affinity for. The list of possibilities extends to anything you could think of in the environment, including living creatures. In short, they simply could be anywhere and everywhere.
Molecules can react with other molecules (reactivity), or they can remain as they are or fall apart into smaller molecules (stability). For the purpose of this essay, I will focus mainly on stability.
Most molecules have conditions that can render them either more stable or less stable. Clearly, with an infectious disease molecule, we would want to try and break it apart, or not give it stability. Breaking it apart usually renders it inert; i.e. non-infectious.
In an outdoor environment, we know that the CV/IF molecule will start to break apart within minutes or maybe last an hour or two. The local environmental conditions will determine how fast the molecule breaks up. We know that heat and ultraviolet (UV) radiation are pretty good at breaking it up.
There are things that chemically will help break it up. For example, saline conditions, like in an ocean are good (it may be considered a “natural disinfectant”). There are man-made disinfectants such as bleach. We know that CV/IF are not stable under pH of 3 or over a pH of 10. So if the molecule encounters either natural or man-made conditions that deal with these pHs, the molecule will break up. Common soaps are good for breaking up the molecule. This is why there is the recommendation to wash with soap and water.
Likewise, there are conditions that increase the stability of the molecule. Both CV/IF survive longer under colder conditions. This is probably one reason why they tend to favor winter months and colder climates.
We know that certain types of surfaces can make it more stable. For example, CV has good stability on plastic (1/2 life of almost 8 hours) and has even been detected up to one week on surgical masks. Some types of metals, such as copper, can speed up decomposition and some metals lend stability (such as stainless steel).
Skin can actually be good at destabilizing because of not only sweat but also the natural oils and detergents that are produced in the skin can break apart these types of molecules. That is a reason that skin absorption is not considered a vector of infection. Serious breaks in the skin, however, such as from burns or injuries, could lead to infection due to the decreased natural inhibition.
So, in general, we would want to try and increase exposure of the molecule to conditions that destabilize while trying to minimize the stabilizing conditions.
The Virus in Disease Transmission
The “rationale” for lockdowns, masks, distancing, etc. all rest on the assumption that human direct transmission is the greatest risk for disease. Anyone, at any given time, in any place can pass the virus to another. It sort of reminds me of the character “Cofi” in the movie “The Green Mile.” People seem to be convinced that somehow, the only way to catch this virus is because it makes a beeline from person to person. In other words, we are the culprits.
But, is this really the case? In short, “No” and here is why.
Because of the modeler’s view, if we imprison people (“lockdown” – a term used in penal institutions when prisoners become unruly), cover their faces (“masking”), and keep them from doing what people do, i.e. socializing (“distancing”), we can stop the virus. This concept is what “wanna-be” dictators all over the world have embraced.
This is NONSENSE. Certainly, you can get infected that way but that is only one way of many ways. It may not even be the main way. It is “losing sight of the forest for the trees.”
To examine the path to infection more closely, let’s make the following assumptions (which you can see are more or less worst case assumptions):
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Assumption 1. A person has CV/IF and is shedding, i.e. releasing virus from their bodies. Further, let’s focus on the nasal/oral route for shedding as the only route, even though we know that the virus can be shed from feces.
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Assumption 2. All shed virus is infectious. This may sound like a strange assumption but we really do not know HOW infectious shedding viruses truly are. What is being shed could be combinations of fragmented virus and more intact virus. The reason it is not clear is because a main method that is used for identification of samples is PCR. PCR cannot tell whether what is being amplified is actually infectious or not.
When we exhale breath, speak, sing, laugh, cough, shout, sneeze, hiss, scoff, grunt, etc., air is expelled from our, mostly, upper respiratory tract. This air MAY or MAY NOT contain particles of moisture (mostly water). These moisture particles MAY or MAY NOT contain mucus, cellular debris, bacteria etc. from our respiratory tract. These moisture particles MAY or MAY NOT contain virus particles. In other words, there MAY be virus particles hitching a ride or there may be NONE.
There is no scientific evidence that when a person is infected that they are continually expelling virus, but that goes to a different essay. Please note, I am not referring to the playground use of the “spitball,” which is a massive collection of saliva, which may or may not contain any of the above. However, I think that we all can agree that amorous kissing when there is an infected person involved runs the highest risk of transmission. But this has more to do with direct contact. I want to deal with indirect routes of transmission.
The expelled moisture particles range in size from very, very small to much larger and for scientific purposes are divided typically into two categories: (1) aerosols, which are the very small particles usually below 1 micron, and (2) droplets, which are particles larger than 5 micron. The range between 1-5 micron is sometimes ambiguously defined either as an aerosol or a droplet but that is not really important for this discussion. You can see the whole range is involved.
Once expelled (egress) away from the nose/mouth, moisture particles will travel certain distances depending on their sizes. Larger droplets fall closer to the individual while aerosols can travel much farther or remain suspended. We have imaging techniques to see droplets using special high speed cameras, but we cannot visualize aerosols.
Clearly, independent virus particles that are NOT hitching rides are expelled as nanoparticles and go out into the environment. We cannot begin to see these. But, as nanoparticles, we should assume that they can remain air suspended for long periods of time and are taken up by the local air movement patterns.
Aerosols and droplets, after leaving the mouth/nose will quickly lose their moisture, i.e. the water base will evaporate. The smaller the particle, the quicker this will happen. With aerosols, it may be within a fraction of a second. Environmental conditions will also affect the timing. Warmer and dryer conditions will speed up evaporation while colder and more humid conditions will slow it down. Studies have indicated that under most normal temperature conditions, aerosols and droplets less than 100 micron in size evaporate before they hit the ground.
What happens to the hitchhiking virus? IT IS STILL THERE! It does not evaporate. It has lost its ride but it is still there.
What happens to it now? It can go anywhere, i.e. it can be dispersed just like the free molecule. It will last as long as it is stable. It can be carried by the wind (outdoors) or by air movements or HVAC (indoors). It can hitch a ride with other carrier things (outdoor examples such as above). It can land on surfaces, any surface, whether indoors or outdoors. Animals or even insects can carry the molecule if it lands on them. If it lands on another person, it can land on their clothes, hair, skin, etc. and be carried by them. If it happens to get sucked into the respiratory tract or absorbed on the eye, it may eventually lead to infection if it can survive the body defenses. The possibilities really are endless.
Indoors, the picture becomes even more complicated because now the vectors of movement, displacement, and contamination possibilities increase. Air handling units can redistribute the molecules to other areas far from the original source. Surface contamination is now a real consideration. Simple items can become sources of infection.
For example desk pens and pencils, office equipment, telephones, notebooks, furniture, electronic devices, cups/glasses, dishes, light switches, etc. Just look around the room that you are sitting in and remember about when you (or someone) “dusts.” At least anywhere that a “dust” can go so can a molecule like a virus. In fact, the very act of “dusting” could reintroduce the molecule back into the environment. Anything in that environment that you touch is a potential source.
It should be easy to see why a lockdown is disastrous. A single sick person can spread a virus throughout a whole building and no one would know it until too late. Clearly, air handling, sanitation, people movement, shared items, all will play a significant role in transmission risk.
Further, indoor conditions are better generally for stability and survival of the molecule. Why are meat processing/packing plants at risk? They are refrigerated facilities. There are many people so there is a lot of movement. There are many surfaces for the molecule to sit, like carcasses, that are handled often and routinely.
I think people can start to see the problem that we are dealing with and why the virus doesn’t just go away so easily.
Don’t “Masks” Make A Difference?
Before going into that question, I want to provide both some personal background and maybe a little comic relief.
The photo below was taken about 30 years ago, and yes, that is me. I was being fit tested for my own respirator. In my first position after the Ph.D., I was given charge of developing a molecule that was so lethal (yes, it is used medicinally but in very dilute solutions and under strict controls) that even the tiniest of amount contacting my skin, nose, eyes, etc., could knock me out and kill without my ever knowing it; the risks I faced were far greater than any coronavirus. I had to undergo serious Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) training as a result. When your life hangs in the balance, you learn all that you can. I was also a member of an isolator design team to develop a manufacturing unit to contain the production process.
Yes, I do know something about PPE.
The type of respirator that I am wearing in the photo is designed to protect the wearer from chemical agents, mostly, although there are biological filters available. It has unidirectional airflow. That means that the air that I would breathe in would be pulled through a series of filter cartridges (the round canisters on the sides) in order to remove the potentially offending compounds. After inhalation, a valve would close off the incoming air (ingress) and my exhaled breath would exit via another one way valve (egress), which you cannot see but it is located in the middle of the canisters directly in front of my mouth. Of course, this was used with other head and body protection since ALL physical contamination had to be guarded against.
This kind of respirator required both fit and physical certification. I had to be certified on an annual basis to show that my lungs were capable of breathing with this apparatus since the pressure differential was great. That means, I had to be able to suck in the air through the filters as well as deliver out through the valve. Lung capacity was very important; it was NOT a normal breathing experience. You also had to take periodic breaks, as well as a thorough and careful decontamination after each use. The respirator worked only as long as the filter cartridges were effective. They could reach a saturation point or a point where the cartridge was spent and beyond that there would be no protection.
The idea of “masks” on people did not suddenly appear in March of 2020. The usage of face protection with infectious diseases has been well studied, especially with influenza. Do not forget, the mechanics of these two viruses (CV/IF) are essentially the same so what works or doesn’t work for one is the same for the other.
The understanding has been that a “mask,” and that term usually refers to either a SURGICAL mask or N95 mask, has no benefit in the general population and is only useful in controlled clinical settings. Further, it has been considered a greater transmission risk than a benefit in the general population. If people still have a memory, you may recall that this was still the advice in February 2020. That understanding has not changed and I will explain why.
The term “mask” by itself means nothing. It is like saying “car.” You have to identify it more specifically because there are many different types and varieties, just like cars. So, for this essay, I will use two terms as follows:
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Face Coverings: In this category I will include homemade cloth, dust, non-fitted utility, custom stylish, and any other common “mask,” i.e. something that is intended to cover your mouth and nose and that is by and large used in the general population (because they are cheap and inexpensive).
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Mask: In this category, I am referring specifically to the SURGICAL mask and N95 mask (which is recommended for use in clinical settings by health care workers). If necessary, I will specify between them.
One of the big mistakes by modelers is the concept of a face covering or mask as a “barrier.” I see many references to so-called “experts” who make this claim. This is completely false. No face covering or mask is a barrier. Either they do not know what they are talking about or they are misleading people.
Masks and “Face Coverings” ARE:
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FILTERS, not barriers. They FILTER only the things that they are designed to filter, to a level of efficiency based upon design, usually not at 100% efficiency. For example, the N95 mask is designed and rated to filter particles greater than 300 nm at 95% efficiency (note: there are masks with greater efficiency than 95%, such as the N99 and NHEPA, but these are very expensive).
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Bidirectional, or two-way street flow (unlike my respirator above). That means the air is intended to go in and out through the same place – breathe in, breathe out. The filtering ability affects both ingress and egress, but MOST are intended to be used towards ingress, i.e. to protect the wearer (Surgical masks are the exception).
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Designed for normal breathing patterns, not exertive force (although the Surgical mask has a pressure rating). This is an important point!
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NOT designed to filter infectious agents but rather inert particulates (except the Surgical mask which is intended to preserve a sterile/sanitary operating field).
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Designed for minimal usage time. They are NOT intended to be stuck on your face for hours.
I understand the psychological crutch that people feel with something covering their mouth/nose. I am sorry, but that is a false sense of security. Perception is NOT reality, just like the neutrino. The mind says that you have some solid thing covering your mouth and nose but that is not really the case, it is porous; things get through (or go around)..
I could spend time on the viral transmission ineffectiveness of the variety of face coverings and fitted masks based upon the material, pore size, non-fit, etc., as well as the studies. I will say that there has been only ONE type of mask, the SURGICAL mask, which has shown any ability to reduce, not eliminate, virus transmission because it is actually rated to a 100 nanometer pore size AND it is rated for ingress and egress. But, the SURGICAL mask is not intended for use outside of a controlled, sterile hospital surgical field where its use and function can be controlled. It has limitations.
In Part III above, the expulsion of the virus into the environment was examined. So, what happens if a person wears a mask/face covering? There are two different views of how the mask operates depending on whether it is ingress (protecting the wearer) or egress (protecting the environment). But, both add up to more or less the same thing.
First, what happens on EGRESS. We will look at droplets because most face coverings will not stop an aerosol and the 2020 propaganda has been focused on droplets.
Assuming that a person is shedding virus and they produce droplets that contain hitchhiking virus, and assuming the face covering actually stops ALL droplets (best-case scenario), the following molecular pathway will likely occur:
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The droplet will lose its moisture. The timing may be different than just going out into the environment but moisture will be lost. However, the expelled droplets may accumulate faster than evaporation. If that happens, the facial covering starts to become saturated with moisture, mucus, cellular debris, bacteria, etc. as well as virus molecules.
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The virus molecule DOES NOT EVAPORATE and no matter what happens as far as the droplet is concerned, the virus is now on the face covering, at least initially. This means that the face covering is now contaminated and is a possible source of transmission, both contact and airborne.
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The virus is not somehow magically “glued” to the mask but can be expelled, whether or not there is still moisture. This can happen the next time a person breathes, speaks, coughs, sneezes, hisses, grunts, etc. So, the virus can be expelled out INTO THE ENVIRONMENT from the face covering.
So, the face covering acts as an intermediary in transmission. It can alter the timing of the virus getting into the environment, but it now acts as a contact source and airborne source; virus can still get into the environment. Since we know that the stability is good on most covering and mask materials, it does nothing to break down the virus until the covering is removed and either washed or discarded (appropriately).
Here is an important point, as more virus molecules accumulate, more are expelled. The face covering is not some virus black hole that sucks the virus into oblivion.
Second, what about INGRESS?
What works for egress works for ingress. So, if a person is wearing a face covering and they encounter virus, aerosols, or droplets, the virus and aerosols will likely penetrate. If the droplet is stopped, the surface is now contaminated. This means that if the surface of the covering touches the mouth or nose, you can become contaminated, i.e. infected.
This is a common sight with most face coverings, including the “stylish” coverings that people are wearing (I often see the covering moving back and forth against their mouth and nose even as they breathe, like a diaphragm), as well as with the cheaper dust masks and homemade cloth masks. If you inhale, you can become contaminated. If you touch the face covering, such as pulling it up and down, you can become contaminated.
Further, because the surface is contaminated, a person can also expel the virus back out into the environment just as with egress. This can be done by talking, breathing, coughing, etc.
Stopping a *droplet* is NOT the same as stopping the virus!
This molecular evaluation only assumed the best case contact scenario; that is, 100% contact between the face covering and any virus particle that may be encountered. I have NOT examined low efficiency coverings, inappropriate use and handling, non-fit (air will circumvent the covering and go around it since air flow follows the path of least resistance – where the air goes so does a virus). I have NOT examined the eyes or ears as entry points. I have NOT examined the other modes of molecular movement on the surface of face coverings, such as osmosis. I have NOT examined the almost 100% misuse of any covering by the population at large simply because they have not been trained and have been misinformed and are using ineffective coverings.
It boggles my mind when there is some notion that by wearing a face covering you are actually doing a “service” to your neighbor and therefore everyone has to protect everyone by this. Actually, the opposite is true. You are now becoming an additional potential source of environmental contamination. You are now becoming a transmission risk; not only are you increasing your own risk but you are also increasing the risk to others.
To better illustrate, let’s look at my respirator above. If I had been exposed to the molecule that I described, the filters would have protected my breathing function (my other protective equipment such as gowns, hoods, etc. would protect the rest of me). But, the respirator surface would have been contaminated (as would the other gown surfaces). If I had gone out into an uncontrolled environment with that respirator (and/or gown, etc.), I could have released those molecules into the environment endangering any person, possibly fatally. I had to de-gown and decontaminate, very carefully, in a controlled environment to prevent that possibility. Even though I had been protected, I was still a risk to others.
Before March 2020, the standard Good Respiratory Practice (GRP) was to cover your mouth/nose when coughing or sneezing. It is especially effective if you use a tissue or handkerchief as a receptacle and cup your hand around them. The hand now actually DOES serve more as a barrier.
Plus, you will more likely remove the potential virus molecule from the environment by proper disposal of the tissue or washing the handkerchief. That is a practice we should be getting back to. I see people now who believe the misinformation and do nothing to shield their cough or sneeze because they believe that wearing a face covering is a barrier on its own. This is not good. So, at the very least, cover your face covering with your hands if you cough or sneeze!
I cannot tell people to not wear a face covering. I chose not to wear face coverings for two reasons, the first is all of the above, and the second is that I have experienced this virus. When I see people with them, I think of virus heaven. But, I am also not afraid because this virus does not frighten me.
I cannot tell people not to erect plastic sheets. But, when I see them, I see a virus motel-check in, stay a while, and then leave. This concerns me more because of the much larger surface area that can act as a virus repository. I have actually advised some places that have done this to either disinfect regularly, or move to glass where disinfection is easier. If there is virus stuck to these surfaces, there is both contact risk and expulsion risk back into the environment.
My view of dealing with the virus is at the molecular level. Do what we can to actually deplete the molecule, not give it stability.
We cannot eliminate this or any other upper respiratory virus. Maybe someday we can advance our immunological techniques to the point that it might be possible to make it a minor player in humans, but we are not there yet. But, we can defend against it by our immune systems and by trusting those with stronger immune systems to protect the weaker. Despite the propaganda, herd immunity was the standard before March 2020; it is not a “fringe” concept.
Here are some important points to consider:
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People who have experienced this virus do NOT need to wear face coverings, period.
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In the open environment, no one should be wearing face coverings. This is the one place where we can get an assist from nature to help reduce the virus molecules. Considering that less than 5% of transmissions have been associated with open environments (and identifiable activities not random encounters), the risk is truly small.
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A face covering may be useful when visiting an at-risk elderly person or in a controlled health care setting such as a hospital or nursing home. But, I think that these should be dispensed by trained personnel and should be focused on using Surgical masks wherever possible. The protection is not so much from viruses but face coverings may be more effective in preventing the spread of bacteria and fungi.
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Children should not be wearing face coverings. We all need constant interaction with our environments and that is especially true for children. This is how their immune system develops. They are the lowest of the low risk groups. Let them be kids and let them develop their immune systems..
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The “Mask Mandate” idea is a truly ridiculous, knee-jerk reaction and needs to be withdrawn and thrown in the waste bin of disastrous policy, along with lockdowns and school closures. You can vote for a person without blindly supporting all of their proposals!
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There may be other health risks associated with continued use of face coverings. While this is anecdotal, I have many physician acquaintances and they are all reporting increases in conditions that may be associated with face coverings, such as facial skin infections, nose/throat and sinus infections, even anxiety conditions. An area of concern is the change in breathing patterns that can be directly associated with face coverings. I train regularly. The only time that I wear a face covering is to gain entrance to the public gymnasium where I train (because it is required). The mask is discarded immediately when I start training, as most other people also do. The staff members do not make a fuss because they understand the dangers of doing exertion with a face covering.
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We also do not know enough about the possible consequences of forcing whole populations to adopt face coverings for extended periods. There may be both health and social consequences that we cannot consider at this time. Humans have developed as creatures whereby we interact with our environment. Our whole upper respiratory tract has developed immense defensive systems because of that. I am worried personally about “unnatural selection.” This is when human actions force a direction of evolution that would not otherwise occur. Often, the result is not good. But that is a whole different subject that needs to be considered.
I think that people can see how truly complex and difficult it is to deal with a nanoparticle. It is something too complex for modeling, at least on the environmental scale. It should be clear that humans are only a small part of the equation.
Stopping humans from being human will not stop the virus from being a virus!
We certainly should not have let modeling be experimented with on a worldwide scale directing policy that we had no idea of the outcome; but we did. It should be readily apparent by this time that all of the lockdowns, masking, distancing, closures, etc. have had no effect on the virus. It is time to reverse course.
Modeling could be useful in evaluating conditions in very limited and controlled settings. For example, it could be helpful to design infectious disease care units in hospitals. We could use modeling to examine our knowledge and use of air-handling, people movement and interactions in combination with molecule destruction, PPE, etc. to maybe develop better procedures to protect health care workers but also help reduce viral loads of patients.
For example, would a simply designed, single pass individual exhaust unit that carries the expired air from a patient to a chemical scrubber help reduce the viral load of the environment? Could it also help the patient by reducing the local viral and bacterial load? Could it help reduce or eliminate the molecule from those environments? These and others are questions that can be modeled and then tested. Then, maybe it can be tried on a pilot scale. If that works, maybe we can expand the scale, fine tuning as we go, and maybe reach a point where it works well and it can be used on a larger scale. That is how science works. Start small, gain understanding, finetune, and expand. You do NOT use the whole world as a laboratory on the first shot!
It is time for human beings to be human beings again. Stop trying to lay blame and guilt on people for a natural virus.
If governments want to be helpful in reducing severe disease and deaths, imposing more laws and restrictions is not the answer. Rather, focus on educating people on how to better maintain their immune systems. Encourage healthier lifestyles through education and wellness programs, especially in the less fortunate of our society. Provide or encourage businesses to consider better sick leave alternatives for people in ALL jobs/vocations so that people are not driven by the choice of work to live or stay home and be sick.
The healthy people in our society should not be punished for being healthy, which is exactly what lockdowns, distancing, mask mandates, etc. do. This goes completely against the principles on which the United States of America was founded. We have lost the meaning of “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave” to “Land of the Imprisoned, Home of the Afraid.”
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- Hong Kong Sees "Alarming Rise" In Suicide And Depression Among Young People
Hong Kong Sees “Alarming Rise” In Suicide And Depression Among Young People
Tyler Durden
Sun, 10/18/2020 – 19:55While projections about millions of confirmed COVID-19 deaths piling up in the US, Europe and elsewhere have proven to be wildly off, doctors warnings that lockdowns would cause severe trauma to the entire population, portending a spike in suicides and other so-called “deaths of despair”, as a group of scientists warned in an open letter published months ago.
But although deaths from COVID-19 have remained roughly stable even as cases and hospitalizations have returned to, or exceeded, their highs from the spring, suicides, drug overdoses and not to mention deaths from untreated underlying medical conditions are all on the rise.
Now, the SCMP reports that Hong Kong is in the grip of an alarming rise in the number of young people struggling with emotional distress and suicidal ideation, while a rise in the suicide rate that predated COVID-19 appears to have worsened. The paper (infamously controlled by a Communist Party member and billionaire Chinese tech entrepreneur) attributed these conditions to the pandemic, but we suspect that Beijing’s brutal crackdown on dissent with its new national security law has contributed to general feelings of malaise in the tiny, but densely populated metropolitan area.
Whatever the cause, three health organizations in the territory warned that they were seeing a wave of young adults struggling with severe depression accessing their services. The Samaritans, a suicide prevention charity, said more than 70% of those using its email services were students, ranging from primary school to university level.
According to their internal data, the number of hotline users reporting suicidal thoughts doubled between June and September.
Many students cited school closures and a sense of isolation and uncertainty about the future as contributing factors to their depression. As families hunkered down during quarantine, relationships between parents and children became strained. Obviously, the impact on the economy has left many once-secure individuals dependent on government benefits to survive, wondering whether they’ll be able to make it through to the spring, or whenever industries like tourism and hospitality finally recover.
“It is a matter of concern, because early intervention and talking to people is the first step to preventing a suicidal act,” said Karman Leung, chief executive of The Samaritans in Hong Kong.
One 24-hour text platform called “Open Up” (it’s aimed at those aged between 12 and 29) also reported an increase in young people contacting them due to emotional distress. It said the cases went up from 86 per day in February to 110 a day in September, an increase of 28%.
Like the US, suicide rates were rising in Hong Kong even before the pandemic. In 2019, the suicide rate climbed to 13% from 12.3%, though of course that’s just one year.
But all of the evidence seen so far seems to suggest that the rate in 2020 will be significantly higher.
- CIO: "US And China Are Engaged In Full-Blown Financial War… And China Will Fake Prosperity & Growth To Attract Foreign Capital"
CIO: “US And China Are Engaged In Full-Blown Financial War… And China Will Fake Prosperity & Growth To Attract Foreign Capital”
Tyler Durden
Sun, 10/18/2020 – 19:30By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management
“In the early 2000s, mainland China was perhaps 5-10% of the Asian capital markets, and China appeared likely to grow in a symbiotic way with the US,” said the CIO from Asia. “That path is now gone, and the possible scenarios are not nearly as hopeful as back then,” continued one of the region’s leading investors. “But knowing that the future is not as bright is different from knowing how it will unfold,” he said. “So, for that, we break the future into a number of possibilities, then watch for signs that tilt the odds toward one or the other.”
“China is highly indebted and leveraged, so Xi is attempting to open up because he needs to attract foreign capital,” added the same Asian CIO. “He’s playing a confidence game, and it is vital for his survival that he win it,” he said. “In less than 20yrs China has come to represent 70% of Asia’s capital markets.” With such dominance, any investment decision in the region has become a call on whether you want to be long China. “Xi is looking to attract $5trln of foreign capital to plug holes, levering it 10x-15x through the state banking system.”
“The bullish China case is that Xi gets his $5trln, levers it, and uses excess capital to secure dominance in the industries of the future,” explained the CIO, referencing artificial intelligence, biotech, microchips. “Along that road, Xi will leverage all the industries that China already dominates to secure advantage.” Solar, batteries, LCD panel production. “And while the US may draw away, the Germans and French are ultimately commercial and if China can produce the best products, and consume European luxury exports, Beijing may just win.”
“The bear US case is a derivative of China’s bull case,” he explained. “The US net international investment position is -$13trln.” To maintain its economic dominance, it needs to continue to attract enormous capital inflows. “What allowed the US to sustain this imbalance is global confidence in its legal/political systems alongside an incentive structure that rewards entrepreneurship, but if the nation swings between Trumpism and Sanderism in the decade ahead, that confidence is undermined. And investors will seek to diversify away from America.”
“The bear case for China is that Xi is clearly an authoritarian,” said the Asian CIO. “He imposes so much control over Chinese companies – which he already has – that the rest of the world refuses to use Chinese IOT (internet-of-things) technology.” Fear that Beijing will ultimately have access to all our data is seen as unacceptable. “This then kills so many of China’s talented entrepreneurs.” Leaving them unable to expand beyond their domestic market. “They can only be as big as the economy is successful – and so China fails to attract the $5trln.”
Anecdote:“China is now fully engaged in a financial war with the United States,” said the CIO from Asia. “And this view rises all the way to the top of the power structure in Beijing,” continued one of the region’s leading investors.
“Whatever can attract foreign capital to China is seen by Beijing as being in the national interest,” he said. “So if it is in the national interest for a leading Chinese technology company to fabricate flattering financial results, the government might be fine with that.”
In times of war, rules shift to meet national needs. In a world where capital is desperate for evidence of growth, fabricating the latter to attract the former is a rational strategy. Failing to attract capital is unacceptable for a nation with an inflating property bubble which simultaneously supports tax revenue, employment and domestic consumption. US pressure to re-engineer global supply chains could not come at a worse time for the Beijing Acrobats, their plates spinning, slowing.
And this amplifies the pressure to maintain an appearance of prosperity so that the foreign capital continues to flow in.
“We have always had to be somewhat skeptical of economic statistics and corporate figures coming out of China, but in a time of financial war we may see distortions on a scale never before seen,” he said. “For the time being, western money is flowing in even as capital controls are tightening for locals. Foreign pensions, endowments, they’re seeking greater diversification for their portfolios.”
And if this doesn’t work, the Chinese may choose to become more assertive regionally, and coopt the sources of capital surplus that fund US deficits – HK, Taiwan, Korea, Japan. Under Biden both the Saudis and Russians will surely be more allied to Beijing.
“But the foundation for investing so much money in China is unstable,” said the CIO. “One must invest very carefully in China and be skeptical of all the numbers that are presented.”
- Howard Marks Interviewed: What If The Fed's Master Plan Is To Kill The Business Cycle
Howard Marks Interviewed: What If The Fed’s Master Plan Is To Kill The Business Cycle
Tyler Durden
Sun, 10/18/2020 – 19:05There was a brief period when in the days just after the covid crash, Oaktree’s iconic founder Howard Marks – perhaps due to lack of more productive outlets – was publishing memos faster than people could read them. Then, he kinda faded away – perhaps because he was too busy cramming down his fellow investors in creditors fights involving covenant-lite loans – but re-emerged again last week when his latest memo “Coming into Focus” was published after a two months hiatus from writing.
We won’t do a book report – to be fair, the note wasn’t original at all and was largely a repeat of what Marks has said in the past, as his view is increasingly convergent with that of this website and other skeptics who warn that there won’t be a happy ending (he himself admits so in the conclusion, saying “the odds aren’t on the investor’s side, and the market is vulnerable to negative surprises. This is how I described the prior years, and I’m back to saying it again”) – but we do want to highlight the one section in which Marks talks about the ramification of the economic and markets rescue that was unleashed by the Fed and Treasury, and their implications: as Marks writes, “by dramatically lifting the markets, the Fed may have caused some people to believe that it will always do so – that there’s a “Powell put” that can be counted on to keep things humming.”
Marks concludes, “if investors believe the Fed can always be counted on to keep the markets aloft, that will encourage dangerous behavior. And, anyway, it seems like an impossible task and, in my opinion, a questionable goal for the Fed.“
He is, of course, correct in his assessment that traders now believe that even a small dip in stocks will bring out the Fed – which is why there have barely been any dips since March, and he is also correct that this is an “impossible task”… but it won’t stop the Fed from trying.
In any case, the question of the Powell Put was also the topic of a recent interview between Marks and Bloomberg’s Erik Shatzker, in which the Bloomberg anchor asked the Oaktree investor if “what is that is Jay Powell’s master plan: no more cycles.”
Marks’ response is that “this can’t be achieved” and that he doubts that Powell “believes that he can eliminate cycles.” To this, Shatzker’s response cuts to the chase for the distressed investor who has benefited greatly from the Fed’s generosity, and points out that while United Airlines’ debt should trade at 60 cents, Shatzker observes that “thanks to the Fed it’s trading close to par”, and asks if it is possible “that the Fed will never allow any investment grade debt to trade down to 60 cents ever again.“
A meandering response from Marks followed, during which he recalled that Obama allowed GM and Chrysler to file for bankruptcy in 2009 – although one can counter that it did so by flipping the waterfall priority of bankruptcy claims on its head, as creditors were hit while labor unions came out relatively unscathed, the point being the very concept of bankruptcy is no longer applicable when an entire sector – such as airlines – is seen as too big to fail (something we know very well is already the case with banks courtesy of the 2008 financial crisis). Marks did concede that airlines (and cruise lines) could be smaller, and that since bankruptcy is one way of discharging owners contracts, this is one way of radically shrinking the sector. And yet, with the Fed refusing to even consider this possibility, it remains unclear just how the US economy can ever right-size itself, and we may have a paradox where completely worthless companies have their bonds trading at par even as the companies themselves go insolvent.
The interview then veered into the topic we discussed two weeks ago when we pointed out how the surge in covenant-lite deals over the past decade have now lead to a “leveraged loan panic” and where Oaktree has emerged as one of the biggest players of the “open warfare” in pre-bankruptcy restructurings of cov-lite loans (which usually involves cram downs of other distressed investors). Addressing this issue, Marks said that investment firms have a duty to their clients to stick up for their interests and maximize returns, so they can’t “go easy” on other creditors in distressed negotiations.
Echoing exactly what we said two weeks ago, Marks said that amid the scramble for yields, issuers removed virtually all covenant protections, and thus creditor defenses, which has made it “easier for aggressive people to pursue recoveries for themselves at the expense of other people.” Aggressive people like Oaktree, which as we noted previously had primed other creditors in the case of Trimark and Boardriders.
There is more in the full interview…
… While Marks’ full note is below (pdf link) and worth the read:
- Morgan Stanley: The Soaring US Current Account Deficit Will Act As A Global Reflationary Impulse
Morgan Stanley: The Soaring US Current Account Deficit Will Act As A Global Reflationary Impulse
Tyler Durden
Sun, 10/18/2020 – 18:40By Chetan Ahya, global head of economics at Morgan Stanley
Mind the Gap
The extraordinary policy response to the exogenous COVID-19 shock is one of the key reasons why we expect a V-shaped recovery and a return of inflation in this cycle. But that is not all. This policy response will also bring about a remarkable shift in the trend in the US saving-investment gap (or the current account deficit), widening beyond the stable range of 2-3% of GDP that it has been in over the past nine years. The US policy response and its transmission to the rest of the world via the current account deficit plays an important role in global reflation and supports our call for a synchronous recovery in 2021.
The large, ongoing fiscal expansion has led to a further decline in US public saving. The nature of the shock and the underlying income inequality issues have prompted policy-makers to opt for a policy response that is tilted towards transfers to households and measures to boost consumption. To contextualize how large these transfers were from the CARES Act, a University of Chicago study found that 76% of workers received more from claiming unemployment insurance than they would have gotten in wage compensation, with the median worker receiving at least 45% more.
Aided by both the faster reopening of the economy and the unprecedented fiscal stimulus, consumer demand has rebounded sharply, with personal consumption expenditures expected to climb to 97.5% of pre-COVID-19 levels in September. With this V-shaped recovery, we expect a very different inflation outcome in this cycle too, which we peg as core PCE inflation moving through 2%Y on a sustained basis starting in 2022.
In the last cycle, the Fed started to tighten monetary policy well before inflation rose to 2%Y and kept tightening even though inflation had not sustainably reached 2%Y. But this time around, the Fed has already telegraphed its shift to an average inflation targeting framework. As it aims for an overshoot of inflation, we are getting greater assurance that monetary policy will remain accommodative for some time.
How will these policy responses shape the outlook for the saving and investment trends? Typically following recessions, public saving will decline but private saving rises as an offset, given the inherent uncertainty at the start of a downturn. The consensus view is that the deleveraging pressures will be intense in this cycle and hence we will most likely see a repeat of the post-2008 experience in which private saving will remain elevated for some time.
But we view things differently. We have consistently argued that the state of the private sector balance sheets were healthier coming into the recession. Private debt/GDP levels had remained stable for some time and US households had completed their deleveraging cycle. A Fed that is committed to its average inflation goal will keep real rates lower for longer too in this cycle, which will provide greater incentives for the private sector to dis-save. We think that the trend of broad-based declines in saving has been set in motion, but how far it will go depends on how expansionary fiscal policy will be.
Additional fiscal stimulus post the elections, which our US public policy analyst highlighted in last week’s Sunday Start, is a possibility in three of the four post-election party configurations. COVID-19 has exacerbated the pre-existing income inequality trends in the US. Policy-makers will continue to focus their efforts on helping low-income households, suggesting that they will err on the side of running expansionary fiscal policy for longer.
If more fiscal stimulus arrives, it will impart upside risks to the growth and inflation outlook and consequently lead to a further and more rapid widening in the current account deficit, particularly if the fiscal policy mix remains tilted towards transfers to households.
The widening current account deficit will be another factor in driving USD weaker, as our global macro strategy team forecasts. We believe that this set-up of continued low real rates and a widening current account deficit in the US will act as a reflationary impulse for the rest of the world, especially EMs, setting the global economy on a path towards a synchronous recovery in 2021.
- "Die In A Fire": "Professional, Objective" Twitter Employees' Hatred Of Trump Exposed
“Die In A Fire”: “Professional, Objective” Twitter Employees’ Hatred Of Trump Exposed
Tyler Durden
Sun, 10/18/2020 – 18:15Authored by Rick Moran via PJMedia.com,
The controversy over Twitter trying to suppress the story about Hunter Biden’s emails showing that Joe Biden used the influence of the office of the vice president to assist his son’s business dealings is still raging. The social media platform continues to suspend the New York Post’s account and has told the paper that it won’t be restored until they delete the offending story.
But the war between Twitter and Trump has been ongoing and vicious. Employees of the company haven’t been shy about posting their hysterical hatred of the president and his supporters.
“GET HIM OUT,” posted a senior site reliability engineer on Aug. 18. “What a f–king baboon.”
One manager with almost nine years on the job said he was quite keen to watch Biden “crush [Trump] in the election” and that he hoped the president would “be utterly humiliated while also suffering greatly from #COVID19.”
In another post he fantasized about the president being put on a ventilator.
He calls Trump “a f–king idiot” and the voters who elected him — “hysterically f–king stupid people.”
It’s not just ignorant, incoherent criticism. Some employees have actually wished harm to the president — in direct violation of company posting policy.
One Twitter engineering manager said Trump should “die in a fire” in a January 2017 tweet.
A year later, he rang in the new year by saying “Happy 2018! Donald Trump is dead!”
None of these comments have ever been flagged by Twitter or been subject to any other form of official sanction, even as the social-media giant dishes out discipline to others for sharing legitimate news stories that might hurt Biden. The company finally ordered the vicious tweet to be deleted on May 29 — years after being posted.
Also against company policy is spreading unsubstantiated rumors, like the employee who wondered why the rest of the media wasn’t looking into the story that Melania Trump used to be a sex worker. The first lady successfully sued over that allegation, which may be one reason Twitter decided not to promote it.
Twitter’s “head of integrity” Yoel Roth was infamously busted over a series of old tweets revealing him to be a die-hard Trump hater.
In his posts, Roth — who helped author the policy update used by the company to flag and label posts from President Trump — compared White House officials to Nazis and Trump to a “racist tangerine.”
The fact is, Twitter selectively enforces its rules about content. There has been plenty of anti-Trump content of questionable veracity that somehow or other managed to slip by the Twitter’s censors.
But Twitter swears that doesn’t mean they’re biased in any way. Really.
Twitter’s Chief Human Resources Officer Jennifer Christie said in a statement to The Post.
“Our employees are professionals, and we require them to bring objectivity to their work regardless of their personal views. We will not be dissuaded from continuing to work to fairly and impartially enforce our rules.”
Who’s trying to “dissuade” you from being fair? Sheesh.
- 2020: Year Of The Black GOP Renaissance, Thanks To Trump
2020: Year Of The Black GOP Renaissance, Thanks To Trump
Tyler Durden
Sun, 10/18/2020 – 17:50Authored by Paris Dennard via RealClearPolitics.com,
Twenty-seven Black Republican candidates are running for Congress this election, and that is a good thing for the Republican Party, our political system, and our entire country.
In 2016, when Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel headed the Michigan GOP, all the political pundits and pollsters wrote off the state as fly-over country and certainly did not think a Republican could do well there. And yet Donald J. Trump beat Hillary Clinton and won that diverse state. The investments and effective campaigning laid the foundation for 2020.
The RNC, in addition to running print ads in Black newspapers and hosting GOTV events from our Black Voices for Trump Community Centers, just launched a new seven-figure voter-contact initiative to directly target and engage with Black voters in urban communities all over the country, safely knocking on doors to get out the vote for President Trump.
Today in Michigan, veteran businessman and rising GOP star John James is running to be the next U.S. senator from that state. After serving in the military for eight years and earning a Combat Action Badge and two Air Medals, James went on to become president of James Group International, growing the family business into a major trading partner in the Michigan auto industry. He knows what it takes to achieve the great American comeback for his state. John James and President Trump are two leaders made in the USA for this moment.
While James hopes to join South Carolina’s Tim Scott (pictured above) in the Senate, 26 Black Americans are running as Republican nominees to make history in the House of Representatives. Can you imagine how courageous you have to be to run in 2020 as a Black Republican, with all of the vitriol and cancel culture attempts from the radical liberal left?
Whether it is Joe Biden saying “You ain’t black,” or MSNBC calling Black Republican candidates Burgess Owens and Kimberly Klacik part of a “modern day minstrel show,” these men and women are leaders who care, and who are inspired by another leader – a man who took the opposition head on, ignored pundits and pollsters who doubted him, and won. That leader is President Trump.
Hopefully, the mainstream media will report on these candidates as fairly and respectfully as they did the candidates who became known as “The Squad,” making them household names as well.
Why not tell a different narrative, show there are Black Americans who think for themselves, care about their communities and are proud Republicans?
The following Black candidates are standing up for their values, standing up for their families, and deserve to be heard and not silenced or canceled because they are not running as radical liberals: Tamika Hamilton, Ronda Baldwin-Kennedy, Errol Webber, Aja Smith, and Joe Collins in California; Casper Stockham in Colorado; Byron Donalds, Carla Spalding, Vennia Francois, and Lavern Spicer in Florida; Angela Stanton-King in Georgia; Philanise White and Craig Cameron in Illinois; Rayla Campbell in Massachusetts; Kimberly Klacik in Maryland; John James in Michigan; Kendall Qualls and Lacy Johnson in Minnesota; Billy Prempeh in New Jersey; Laverne Gore in Ohio; Kathy Barnette in Pennsylvania; Charlotte Bergmann in Tennessee; Wesley Hunt, Wendell Champion, and Tre Pennie in Texas; Burgess Owens in Utah; and Leon Benjamin in Virginia.
At the recent unveiling of his plan for Black economic empowerment known as the “Platinum Plan” in Atlanta, President Trump singled out these candidates running to join him in Washington to implement many aspects of this holistic plan for the Black community to help Make America Great Again, again!
In Florida, GOP Rep. Byron Donalds said, “I’m everything the fake news media tells you doesn’t exist: A strong, Trump-supporting, gun-owning, liberty-loving, pro-life, politically incorrect Black man.” Raised in a single parent household in New York, he worked hard, earned a college degree in finance and marketing, and launched a career in the banking industry in Florida. The call to public service led him to the Florida State House, where voters got to know him and appreciate his conservative values. Donalds sits on five committees and chairs a subcommittee on insurance and banking. If there was ever a time to have someone in Congress who understands our economy and has earned the trust of his community, it is today.
This election, political elites will be reminded that the Republican Party is the original home of Black Americans and Black Republican congressmen. Remember, the first Black American to serve in the U.S. Senate was a Republican, Sen. Hiram Revels of Mississippi. From 1870 to 1935, the Black men who served in the House of Representatives were all Republicans.
Under President Trump the GOP is expanding and attracting more unlikely supporters in what we call “the silent majority.” The GOP is an open tent party, the party of Abraham Lincoln, the party of freedom, opportunity, justice and civil rights. We are a diverse party and President Trump welcomes everyone because he understands that leadership knows no color, and success knows no ethnic background.
Joe Biden believes Blacks are devoid of diversity so it would be hard, with his bigoted worldview, to understand that the 27 Black Americans running for Congress are doing so because they want to put America first; they want the Platinum Plan in place; they want to keep taxes low and expand opportunity zones; and they reject illegal immigration, open borders, and the Green New Deal.
These 27 incredible candidates want to help usher in the Great American comeback with their election and the reelection of Donald Trump.
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