- COVID-Chaos Triggers Record Losses For Swiss National Bank
COVID-Chaos Triggers Record Losses For Swiss National Bank
In the first quarter of 2020, the hedge fund known as the Swiss National Bank (SNB) suffered its worst quarterly loss in over a century. The central bank posted a record loss of 38.2 billion Swiss francs (or about $39.34 billion) for the quarter on Thursday morning. It said the coronavirus outbreak “seriously impacted financial markets.”
The SNB recorded a loss of 31.9 billion francs ($32.69 billion) from its equity portfolio while suffering an exchange rate-related loss of 17.1 billion francs ($17.52 billion) as the increase in the franc reduced the value of its foreign stocks and bonds.
“The first quarter of 2020 was dominated by the global spread of coronavirus. The measures taken to contain the pandemic seriously impacted the financial markets from mid-quarter onwards, and accordingly also the SNB’s result,” SNB wrote in a press release.
Reuters said the loss was the largest decline in SNB’s history, dating back to when it was founded in 1907. UBS economists were projecting a loss of around 30 billion francs ($30.74 billion).
As market panic unfolded in the latter half of the first quarter, SNB’s losses were countered by an increase in the value of its gold holdings, which rose in value 2.8 billion francs ($2.87 billion).
SNB shares have clawed back some losses after it was nearly halved in the latest market rout.
“The scale of the adverse economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis is still difficult to assess and we would caution that we may also see further reserve build and impairments in the coming quarters,” the SNB warned.
“We are well prepared to continue to serve our clients and we believe we can maintain a resilient financial performance through this crisis.”
SNB’s 800 billion francs ($820 billion) portfolio makes it one of the largest institutional investors in the world. We noted in November, the central bank owned a record amount of US stocks, including Facebook, Apple, Netflix, and Google.
SNB’s Form 13F filing for the fourth quarter of 2019 also showed it was a seller as markets ripped to new highs before the virus pandemic.
And with global central banks printing trillions in stimulus last month, with trillions more expected this month, we suspect the SNB has become a buyer of stocks once more…
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/24/2020 – 02:35 - Iran's Ayatollahs Will Struggle To Survive The Oil Slump
Iran’s Ayatollahs Will Struggle To Survive The Oil Slump
Authored by Con Coughlin via The Gatestone Institute,
At a time when Iran’s Islamic regime is already facing unprecedented pressure over its handling of the coronavirus outbreak, as well as its disastrous handling of the economy, the global slump in oil prices could well prove to be the final straw for the ayatollahs.
Even before this week’s dramatic collapse in global oil prices, which saw the key gauge of U.S. crude prices, the West Texas Intermediate benchmark, tumble into negative territory for the first time in history, the mullahs were already under intense pressure over their catastrophic running of the country during their four decades in power.
A combination of the regime’s clumsy attempts to cover up the true extent of the coronavirus outbreak in Iran, combined with the disastrous impact the US sanctions are having on the Iranian economy, have resulted in the regime facing the most sustained period of domestic dissatisfaction since the 1979 revolution.
With the collapse in the global oil market, the pressure on the ayatollahs is set to increase even further as they risk losing a vital income stream at a time when the country’s economy is already on its knees.
According to recent estimates by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Iran needs global oil prices to reach the highly unlikely benchmark of $195 a barrel just in order to meet its budget requirements for 2020.
With current predictions suggesting oil prices are likely to remain around the $19 a barrel mark, the ayatollahs are facing the prospect of an economic Armageddon: the oil slump means there is little prospect of a revival in the country’s economic fortunes for the foreseeable future.
With inflation running at 35%, and the country facing widespread unemployment, the ayatollahs have become increasingly dependent on the country’s oil revenues to keep the economy functioning. Their ability to generate revenue from oil sales, though, has already been severely affected by the impact of US sanctions, with Iranian oil exports declining from their pre-sanctions level of two million barrels of oil per day to around 300,000 — a decline of more than 80%. Now, following this week’s slump, even that modest amount is under threat.
The scale of Iran’s deepening economic crisis is reflected in the regime’s recent decision to seek $5 billion in emergency funding from the IMF, its first request for outside help since the 1979 revolution.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has tried to put a brave face on the latest setback to hit the regime, claiming that Iran is unlikely to suffer as much as other countries from the oil price drop because it is less reliant than others on crude exports.
If that were truly the case, then Tehran would not be asking the IMF for a bailout, and Mr Rouhani, together with Javad Zarif, Iran’s Foreign Minister, would not be begging Washington to remove sanctions.
The truth of the matter is, for all the regime’s attempts to claim it has everything under control, that the country is teetering on the brink of collapse, and the ayatollahs are fast running out of options to save themselves.
One indication of the growing disconnect between the regime and ordinary Iranians is the claim by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) that it has successfully launched a military satellite into orbit for the first time, an undertaking that seems completely inappropriate for a country teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.
In times of crisis, the regime has often resorted to stirring up tensions in the Gulf, and elsewhere in the Middle East, as a means of increasing pressure on the US and its allies. To that end, Iran’s IRGC have been accused of conducting a number of confrontational operations in the Gulf this month, including the temporary seizure of a Chinese tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, which proved to be deeply embarrassing for Tehran, as China is one of the few countries still buying its oil.
There has also been an increase in Revolutionary Guard patrol boats harassing US warships operating in the Gulf, a development which has prompted U.S. President Donald Trump to order the US Navy “to shoot down and destroy” Iranian gunboats if they continue with their provocative actions.
The ayatollahs may still believe they can survive the current crisis, but the reality is that their prospects of overcoming all the obstacles they face, from coronavirus to the collapse of the Iranian economy, become more challenging by the day.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/24/2020 – 02:00 - Which States Are Most At Risk From The Economic "Reopening"
Which States Are Most At Risk From The Economic “Reopening”
Since the conventionally accepted explanation for the artificially induced shutdown of the US economy was to minimize human interaction in hopes of dramatically reducing the R0 of the coronavirus pandemic, and force social distancing during the period of potential covid incubation to prevent its spread among the population, it stands to reason that states in the US that are most at risk from a second wave of infections once the economy reopens, are those where a high level of physical contact makes social distancing difficult if not impossible.
To quantify said risk, Deutsche Bank has analyzed US states from the perspective of contact intensive occupations, and broken down the results in terms of low to high “contact” states. The results, shown in the map below, demonstrate which states have the highest risk of a new breakout (in black) and where an early reopening (light gray) may not have adverse consequences.
Putting the above map in context, here is a separate analysis from the The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, which predicts the “ideal dates” to relax social distancing.
Those worried about a second, more powerful infection wave – a la the Spanish Flu – will want to focus on the states that are dark in the first map and light in the second – that’s where the risk will be highest.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/24/2020 – 00:17 - Escobar: What Did U.S. Intel Really Know About The "Chinese" Virus?
Escobar: What Did U.S. Intel Really Know About The “Chinese” Virus?
Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog,
Hybrid War 2.0 on China, a bipartisan U.S. operation, is already reaching fever pitch.
Its 24/7 full spectrum infowar arm blames China for everything coronavirus-related – doubling as a diversionist tactic against any informed criticism of woeful American unpreparedness.
Hysteria predictably reigns. And this is just the beginning.
A deluge of lawsuits is imminent – such as the one in the Southern District of Florida entered by Berman Law Group (linked to the Democrats) and Lucas-Compton (linked to the Republicans). In a nutshell: China has to shell out tons of cash. To the tune of at least $1.2 trillion, which happens to be – by surrealist irony – the amount of U.S. Treasury bills held by Beijing, all the way to $20 trillion, claimed by a lawsuit in Texas.
The prosecution’s case, as Scott Ritter memorably reminded us, is straight out of Monty Python. It works exactly like this:
“If she weighs the same as a duck…
…she’s made of wood!”
“And therefore…”
“A witch!!!!!”
In Hybrid War 2.0 terms, the current CIA-style narrative translates as evil China never telling us, the civilized West, there was a terrible new virus around. If they did, we would have had time to prepare.
And yet they lied and cheated – by the way, trademark CIA traits, according to Mike “We Lie, We Cheat, We Steal” Pompeo himself. And they hid everything. And they censored the truth. So they wanted to infect us all. Now they have to pay for all the economic and financial damage we are suffering, and for all our dead people. It’s China’s fault.
All this sound and fury forces us to refocus back to late 2019 to check out what U.S. intel really knew then about what would later be identified as Sars-Cov-2.
“No such product exists”
The gold standard remains the ABC News report according to which intel collected in November 2019 by the National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI), a subsidiary of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), was already warning about a new virulent contagion getting out of hand in Wuhan, based on “detailed analysis of intercepted communications and satellite imagery”.
An unnamed source told ABC, “analysts concluded it could be a cataclysmic event”, adding the intel was “briefed multiple times” to the DIA, the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, and even the White House.
No wonder the Pentagon was forced to issue the proverbial denial – in Pentagonese, via one Col. R. Shane Day, the director of the DIA’s NCMI:
“In the interest of transparency during this current public health crisis, we can confirm that media reporting about the existence/release of a National Center for Medical Intelligence Coronavirus-related product/assessment in November of 2019 is not correct. No such NCMI product exists.”
Well, if such “product” existed, Pentagon head and former Raytheon lobbyist Mark Esper would be very much in the loop. He was duly questioned about it by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.
Question: “Did the Pentagon receive an intelligence assessment on COVID in China last November from the National Center for Medical Intelligence of DIA?”
Esper: “Oh, I can’t recall, George,” (…) “But, we have many people who watch this closely.”
Question: “This assessment was done in November, and it was briefed to the NSC in early December to assess the impact on military readiness, which, of course, would make it important to you, and the possible spread in the United States. So, you would have known if there was a brief to the National Security Council in December, wouldn’t you?”
Esper: “Yes (…) “I’m not aware of that.”
So “no such product exists” then? Is it a fake? Is it a Deep State/CIA concoction to trap Trump? Or are the usual suspects lying, trademark CIA style?
Let’s review some essential background.
On November 12, a married couple from Inner Mongolia was admitted to a Beijing hospital, seeking treatment for pneumonic plague.
The Chinese CDC, on Weibo – the Chinese Twitter – told public opinion that the chances of this being a new plague were “extremely low.” The couple was quarantined.
Four days later, a third case of pneumonic plague was identified: a man also from Inner Mongolia, not related to the couple. Twenty-eight people who were in close contact with the man were quarantined. None had plague symptoms. Pneumonic plague has symptoms of respiratory failure similar to pneumonia.
Even though the CDC repeated, “there is no need to worry about the risk of infection”, of course there was plenty of skepticism. The CDC may have publicly confirmed on November 12 these cases of pneumonic plague. But then Li Jifeng, a doctor at Chaoyang Hospital where the trio from Inner Mongolia was receiving treatment, published, privately, on WeChat, that they were first transported to Beijing actually on November 3.
The key point of Li Jinfeng’s post – later removed by censors – was when she wrote, “I am very familiar with diagnosing and treating the majority of respiratory diseases (…) But this time, I kept on looking but could not figure out what pathogen caused the pneumonia. I only thought it was a rare condition and did not get much information other than the patients’ history.”
Even if that was the case, the key point is that the three Inner Mongolian cases seem to have been caused by a detectable bacteria. Covid-19 is caused by the Sars-Cov-2 virus, not a bacteria. The first Sars-Covid-2 case was only detected in Wuhan in mid to late December. And it was only last month that Chinese scientists were able to positively trace back the first real case of Sars-Cov-2 to November 17 – a few days after the Inner Mongolian trio.
Knowing exactly where to look
It’s out of the question that U.S. intel, in this case the NCMI, was unaware of these developments in China, considering CIA spying and the fact these discussions were in the open on Weibo and WeChat. So if the NCMI “product” is not a fake and really exists, it only found evidence, still in November, of some vague instances of pneumonic plague.
Thus the warning – to the DIA, the Pentagon, the National Security Council, and even the White House – was about that. It could not possibly have been about coronavirus.
The burning question is inevitable: how could the NCMI possibly know all about a viral pandemic, still in November, when Chinese doctors positively identified the first cases of a new type of pneumonia only on December 26?
Add to it the intriguing question of why the NCMI was so interested in this particular flu season in China in the first place – from plague cases treated in Beijing to the first signs of a “mysterious pneumonia outbreak” in Wuhan.
There may have been subtle hints of slightly increased activity at clinics in Wuhan in late November and early December. But at the time nobody – Chinese doctors, the government, not to mention U.S. intel – could have possibly known what was really happening.
China could not be “covering up” what was only identified as a new disease on December 30, duly communicated to the WHO. Then, on January 3, the head of the American CDC, Robert Redfield, called the top Chinese CDC official. Chinese doctors sequenced the virus. And only on January 8 it was determined this was Sars-Cov-2 – which provokes Covid-19.
This chain of events reopens, once again, a mighty Pandora’s box. We have the quite timely Event 201; the cozy relationship between the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the WHO, as well as the Word Economic Forum and the Johns Hopkins galaxy in Baltimore, including the Bloomberg School of Public Health; the ID2020 digital ID/vaccine combo; Dark Winter – which simulated a smallpox bio-attack on the U.S., before the 2001 anthrax attack being blamed on Iraq; U.S. Senators dumping stocks after a CDC briefing; more than 1,300 CEOs abandoning their cushy perches in 2019, “forecasting” total market collapse; the Fed pouring helicopter money already in September 2019 – as part of QE4.
And then, validating the ABC News report, Israel steps in. Israeli intel confirms U.S. intel did in fact warn them in November about a potentially catastrophic pandemic in Wuhan (once again: how could they possibly know that on the second week of November, so early in the game?) And NATO allies were warned – in November – as well.
The bottom line is explosive: the Trump administration as well as the CDC had an advance warning of no less than four months – from November to March – to be properly prepared for Covid-19 hitting the U.S. And they did nothing. The whole “China is a witch!” case is debunked.
Moreover, the Israeli disclosure supports what’s nothing less than extraordinary: U.S. intel already knew about Sars-Cov-2 roughly one month before the first confirmed cases detected by doctors in a Wuhan hospital. Talk about divine intervention.
That could only have happened if U.S. intel knew, for sure, about a previous chain of events that would necessarily lead to the “mysterious outbreak” in Wuhan. And not only that: they knew exactly where to look. Not in Inner Mongolia, not in Beijing, not in Guangdong province.
It’s never enough to repeat the question in full: how could U.S. intel have known about a contagion one month before Chinese doctors detected an unknown virus?
Mike “We Lie, We Cheat, We Steal” Pompeo may have given away the game when he said, on the record, that Covid-19 was a “live exercise”. Adding to the ABC News and Israeli reports, the only possible, logical conclusion is that the Pentagon – and the CIA – knew ahead of time a pandemic would be inevitable.
That’s the smokin’ gun. And now the full weight of the United States government is covering all bases by proactively, and retroactively, blaming China.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/23/2020 – 23:45 - SoCal Nurses Who Were Suspended For Refusing To Work Without N95 Masks Have Been Reinstated
SoCal Nurses Who Were Suspended For Refusing To Work Without N95 Masks Have Been Reinstated
Roughly 10 nurses who were suspended from their job because they demanded protective respirator masks are returning to work this week, according to the National Nurses United union. The nurses, who work at Providence St. John’s Health Center, had refused to treat coronavirus patients without N95 masks.
Along with being reinstated to work, their hospital, located in Southern California, is also supplying N95 masks to nurses working with infected patients, according to the NY Post.
It was reported last week that these nurses were place on leave after telling their managers they would not go into the rooms of patients with coronavirus without the protection.
Providence had said last week that they had a system set up to disinfect and reprocess the masks.
Not surprisingly, the hospital was unavailable for comment.
N95 masks filter out about 95% of all airborne particles, including ones that are too tiny to be blocked by other masks and face coverings. At the time, hospital administrators said they weren’t necessary and didn’t provide them.
Which is funny, because early on in this crisis, the U.S. government also told people that N95 masks would not help them at all, while at the same time urging people to donate them to healthcare workers.
Now, in many places across the U.S., facemasks are becoming mandatory, as we wrote about a week ago.
Governors of Connecticut, Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania have issued orders or recommendations that residents wear face masks while out in public, reported Reuters.
“If you are going to be in public and you cannot maintain social distancing, then have a mask, and put that mask on,” said New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/23/2020 – 23:25 - JCPenney Prepares To File For Bankruptcy
JCPenney Prepares To File For Bankruptcy
It’s finally here. After a decade of management turnover, near misses, last minute rescues, and one valeant (sic) if disastrous attempt at an activist turnaround, one of the most iconic US retailers and mall anchors, J.C. Penney, is preparping to file for bankruptcy.
According to the Journal, J.C. Penney is in advanced talks for bankruptcy funding with a group of lenders, a sign the troubled retailer about to make a visit to 1 Bowling Green. JCP is in discussions with existing lenders including Wells Fargo, Bank of America and JPMorgan for a debtor-in-possession loan that would keep the department-store chain’s operations funded during a court-supervised bankruptcy, according to people familiar with the matter.
The DIP loan would be roughly $800 million to $1 billion, with some of that money potentially including existing debt, and priming all the other unsecured creditors who will end up with a chunk of the post-petition equity, assuming of course it is not a Chapter 7.
The Journal sources said that a bankruptcy filing could take place within the next few weeks, and certainly before May 15 as JCP entered into a 30-day grace period after missing an interest payment due to bondholders on April 15. It is possible creditors enter into a forbearance agreement if the company needs additional time to iron out negotiations before filing, but the endgame is clear.
Along with Sears, J.C. Penney was one of the dominant department-store chains of the last century. But the 118-year-old company has been losing money for years. With its mall-based stores closed and unlikely to reopen any time soon, the company has been forced to put aside its latest turnaround strategy and face its creditors at the negotiating table.
While department stores were struggling before the pandemic, the coronavirus quarantine forced the closure of most U.S. stores. The result has been a deluge of imminent bankruptcy filings in the retail space, including that other stalwart, Neiman Marcus, which as we reported previously is planning to file for bankruptcy any day.
Retailers are far from alone in seeing their businesses walloped by the pandemic and the collapse of business activity. Energy companies have been pummeled in recent weeks by the combination of a market downturn and plummeting oil prices, leading several to seek restructuring advice or bankruptcy protection. A total of seven U.S. oil-and-gas drillers filed for bankruptcy in the first quarter of 2020, and more are expected to do so.
Should the shutdown of the economy last for several more months, or should a second wave of coronavirus infection strike the US, companies in all other industries are expected to follow suit.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/23/2020 – 23:17 - COVID-19 Pandemic – Another 9/11 Moment For The West
COVID-19 Pandemic – Another 9/11 Moment For The West
Authored by Richard Kemp via The Gatestone Institute,
The coronavirus pandemic is a 9/11 moment.
Al Qaida had been at war with the West for years before the destruction of the twin towers. But it took that barbarism to galvanise its largely supine prey into action.
Now we have Covid-19. Unlike 9/11 we have seen no evidence so far that China deliberately unleashed this virus on the world. There is certainly evidence, however, that it resulted from the policies of the Chinese Communist Party and that Beijing’s habitually duplicitous and criminally irresponsible actions allowed it to spread around the globe, leading to tens of thousands of deaths that could have been avoided.
Commentators and politicians today worry that the current situation might trigger a new cold war with China. They fail to understand that, in a similar but much more far-reaching pattern to the jihadist conflict, China has been fighting a cold war against the West for decades, while we have refused to recognise what is going on. The reality, in Beijing’s book, is that the cold war between China and the West, which began with the communist seizure of China in 1949, never ended. Despite the Sino-Soviet split and subsequent US-China rapprochement in the early 1970s, for the Chinese leadership the US was still the implacable enemy.
Like 9/11, Covid-19 must now force the West to wake up and fight back.
China today is by far the greatest threat to Western values, freedom, economy, industry, communications and technology. It threatens our very way of life. China’s objective is to push back against the US and become the dominant world power by 2049, a century after the creation of the People’s Republic. Dictator for life Xi Jinping has no intention of doing this through military conflict. His war is not fought on the battlefield but in the boardroom, the markets, the press, universities, cyberspace and in the darkest shadows.
Those who argue China’s right to compete with the West in free markets and on a level playing field seem not to comprehend that Beijing has no free market and no intention of playing on a level field. The world’s leading executioner, China is an incomparably ruthless dictatorship that tortures, disappears and imprisons its people at will and controls its massive population through a techno-surveillance infrastructure that it’s busy exporting around the world to extend its political and economic control to us.
For decades, China has been working on its three-pronged strategy:
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building its economy and fighting capability, including intelligence, technology, cyber and space as well as hard military power;
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developing global influence to exploit resources and secure control;
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thrusting back and dividing the US and its capitalist allies.
China has built its economy on Western money and at Western expense, by industrial-scale theft of intellectual property and technology, copyright violation, illicit data mining, cyberwar, deceit, duplicity, enslavement and uncompromising state control of industry and commerce.
It continues to expand its already immense influence through a Belt and Road Initiative that marches across the globe; massive investment in Africa, Asia, Europe, Australasia and north and south America; and direct aggression in the Pacific including the South China Sea (where Beijing’s artificial island programme has created one of the greatest ecological disasters in history).
All of this is supported by a multi-million dollar propaganda operation, in President Xi’s words: “to tell China’s story well” — in other words: to advance the ideology of the CCP everywhere. This includes buying support or silence from global media outlets, threats and coercion. Just one high profile example of this influence occurred last year when the US National Basketball Association was forced to make a grovelling public apology after the Houston Rockets’ general manager tweeted in support of pro-democracy campaigners in Hong Kong.
Although military conflict is not China’s preferred strategic instrument, Beijing has not neglected fighting capabilities, spending an estimated $230 billion annually, second only to the US. Xi has been rebuilding his forces on an unprecedented scale, with particular emphasis on a naval war with America. Planned military contingency options also include moves against Taiwan and other territories it intends to control directly. China has also now become the second biggest arms seller in the world, including to countries subject to UN sanctions such as North Korea and Iran. This month, 15 armoured vehicles were delivered to Nigeria, including VT-4 main battle tanks, already in service with the Royal Thai Army and, like most of China’s defence equipment, incorporating technology stolen from the West. China’s arms exports are not motivated primarily by revenue generation, but as a means to impose influence and control, create proxies and challenge the US.
Chinese investment penetrates every corner of the United Kingdom, giving unparalleled influence here as in so many countries. Plans to allow Chinese investment and technology into our nuclear power programme and 5G network will build vulnerability into our critical national infrastructure of an order not seen in any other Western nation. Even the BBC, which receives funding from China, has produced and promoted a propaganda video supporting Huawei, to the alarm of some of its own journalists. All this despite MI5’s repeated warnings that Chinese intelligence continues to work against British interests at home and abroad.
The Chinese government has spent billions of dollars establishing Confucius Institutes around the world, mainly at universities. There are over 500 globally, including 29 in the UK and over 70 in the US. Ostensibly aimed at promoting Chinese culture, these bodies are used to infiltrate universities and high schools to indoctrinate students in communist ideology, as well as for espionage activities. More than 100,000 Chinese are studying in the UK. Last year, MI5 and GCHQ warned universities their research and computer systems are under threat from Chinese intelligence assets among these students. The Director of the FBI , Christopher Wray, said recently that China was aggressively exploiting US academic openness to steal technology, using “campus proxies” and establishing “institutes on our campuses.” More broadly he concluded that “no country poses a greater threat to the US than Communist China.”
A senior CCP official unguardedly admitted the Confucius Institutes are “an important part of China’s overseas propaganda set-up”. Increasingly reliant on foreign funding, Western universities have been pressured by Chinese officials to censor debate on politically explosive issues such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet and Tiananmen Square.
Few in the West fully recognise the threat to our own economies, security and liberty. Many who do refuse to speak out for four reasons. First, fear of coming into China’s crosshairs, provoking economic harm or character assassination. Second, fear of accusations of racism, a concern readily exploited by the Chinese state whose own egregious racism is only too obvious. Third, belief that our liberal values can change those that oppose us. The hope that Chinese exposure to free trade, including entry into the WTO in 2001, would have this effect has proven woefully misguided and served only to strengthen Beijing’s oppressive regime. Fourth, many political leaders, businessmen, academics and journalists have been bought and paid for by Beijing whether by financial incentive or blackmail.
How can the West fight back?
Although still militarily and economically inferior to the US, China is a formidable and growing economic power, interwoven with Western economies to an unprecedented degree.
We must begin to divest from and sanction China, repatriate and use alternative sources of manufacturing and technology, restrict capital investment there and curb Chinese investment here, especially in our infrastructure.
We must re-invigorate and develop our own technology, much long abandoned to the Chinese juggernaut.
We must enforce the norms of international trade and act vigorously to prevent and penalise China’s orgy of industrial theft that has gone largely unchallenged for decades.
We must push back globally against Beijing’s imperialism and propaganda wherever it occurs. We must also prepare for military conflict, with an emphasis on deterring Chinese aggression.
America will have to lead the fightback as it did previously in the cold war, but success will require Europe and our allies around the world to stand with them for the long term. This is not a party political issue, but must become a fundamental element of enduring Western grand strategies. This is the task of decades and will be high-risk and costly. The alternative is to remain on the hook and in hock to the Chinese communist state and let future generations suffer the incalculable consequences of our continued purblind inaction.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/23/2020 – 23:05 -
- "ISIS Has Nothing Over Saudi Arabia": Kingdom Reaches 800 Beheadings Under Salman
“ISIS Has Nothing Over Saudi Arabia”: Kingdom Reaches 800 Beheadings Under Salman
Another grim milestone was reached this week, but not on the COVID-19 front. Human rights monitors have recorded that Saudi Arabia has carried out its 800th execution since King Salman bin Abdulaziz (and by extension MbS) began his rule five years ago — most being in the form of the kingdom’s ‘favored’ beheadings.
The British nonprofit Reprieve said the kingdom’s rate of execution in Saudi Arabia has doubled since 2015 when King Salman took over following the death of his half-brother, King Abdullah. Of course, as Salman’s health was reportedly increasingly fragile from the start of his rule, it’s widely believed crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) has remained the true power and day-to-day decision maker.
King Salman attending a 2016 ‘sword dance’ ceremony, via Saudi Gazette. MbS was widely hailed as a ‘reformer’ – among other things promising to greatly reduce the number of annual executions, which include the ghastly methods of beheading and crucifixion. But this is nowhere near the reality.
So much for empty talk of ‘reform’, ‘modernization’ and ‘progress’ – as Middle East Eye reports of Reprieve’s findings:
By comparison, Saudi authorities executed 423 people between 2009 and 2014.
Currently, there are at least 13 juvenile defendants on death row – including Ali al-Nimr, Dawood al-Marhoon and Abdullah al-Zaher – who are “at imminent risk of execution”, Reprieve and the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights said.
Saudi Arabia executed six young men last year who were children at the time of their alleged offences, in a mass execution of 37 people.
Riyadh’s concerns no doubt now lie far elsewhere regarding the prior MbS rhetoric of reform, given the kingdom is now scrambling to bring oil prices back up after the historic global price crash this week.
Reform vs. Reality — public beheadings as a form of political suppression:
#WATCH: Saudi Arabia carried out 800 executions under King Salmanhttps://t.co/TrhQFgVPvR pic.twitter.com/2w3eHxVoFz
— Middle East Monitor (@MiddleEastMnt) April 15, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Apparently ‘Chop Chop Square’ was busy as usual even amid the more pressing crisis of the accelerating oil glut. As of only last week, Amnesty International recorded 789 executions under the king, which only days later grew to 800.
As one Newsweek headline years ago aptly observed, “when it comes to beheadings, ISIS has nothing over Saudi Arabia.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/23/2020 – 22:45 - Trump: Live By The Oil, Die By The Oil
Trump: Live By The Oil, Die By The Oil
Authored by Tom Luongo via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
From the very beginning I’ve been a staunch critic of President Trump’s “Energy Dominance” policy. And I was so for a myriad of reasons, but mostly because it was stupid.
Not just stupid, monumentally stupid. Breathtakingly stupid.
And I don’t say this as someone who hates Trump without reservation. In fact, I continue to hope he will wake up one day and stop being the Donald Trump I know and be the Donald Trump he needs to be.
I don’t have Trump Derangement Syndrome of any sort. Neither MAGApede nor Q-Tard, an Orange Man Bad cultist or NPC Soy Boy, I see Trump for what he is – a well-intentioned, if miseducated man with severe personal deficiencies which manifest themselves in occasionally brilliant but mostly disastrous behavior.
Energy Dominance was always a misguided and Quixotic endeavor. Why? Because Trump could never turn financial engineering a shale boom into a sustainable advantage over lower-cost producers like Russia and the OPEC nations.
The policy of blasting open the U.S. oil spigots to produce a production boom built on an endless supply of near-zero cost credit was always going to run into a wall of oversupply and not enough demand.
The dramatic collapse of U.S. oil prices in the futures markets which saw the May contract close on April 20th at $-40.57 per barrel is the Shale Miracle hitting the fan of low demand and leaving the producers and consumers in a state which can only happen thanks to biblical levels of government intervention.
A broken market.
The next morning, ever needing to look like the good guy, Trump tweets out:
We will never let the great U.S. Oil & Gas Industry down. I have instructed the Secretary of Energy and Secretary of the Treasury to formulate a plan which will make funds available so that these very important companies and jobs will be secured long into the future!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 21, 2020
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It’s clear from this statement that Trump is ready to throw more trillions at the oil industry to keep it and the millions of jobs from disappearing as he does what he always does when confronted with a real problem, doubles down on the behavior that caused it in the first place.
Politicians, even the best ones, are ultimately vandals. They have no other tool than to reallocate scarce capital towards their ends rather than that demanded by the market.
And the main reason why Trump was never going to win the Energy Dominance War he started was because the world doesn’t want the type and kind of oil the U.S. produces at the quantities needed to “Win!”
Ultra-light sweet crude coming from the Bakken, Eagle Ford and Permian simply isn’t that high in demand for export. It’s of limited usage. And, in the end, if the price is right enough, offering oil for sale in ‘not-dollars’ only makes that demand curve even more elastic.
The collapse in oil prices which Trump is desperate to stop won’t simply because Trump stands there like King Canute, arms outstretched. He and his terrible energy policy stand naked now that the tide has gone out.
And the reason for this is simple. There is more to the world economy than money. Money is what makes the economy work but it, in and of itself, is incapable of creating wealth. All money does is act as a means to express our needs and desires at the moment of the trade.
Trump’s vandalizing the world’s energy markets for the past three and a half years now comes back to bite him. To prop up surging U.S. production he has:
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Supported a disastrous war against the people of Yemen
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Repurposed U.S. troops clinging to positions in Syria while stealing their oil
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Nearly started a shooting war with Iran…. Twice.
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Embargoed Venezuela, stole its money, attempted a failed coup and brought even more support to President Maduro from Russia and China.
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Spent billions pointing missiles at Russia via NATO.
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Supported a vicious war to prevent the secession of the Donbass.
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Delayed the construction of Nordstream 2.
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Sowed chaos enough to set Turkey to claiming the Eastern Mediterranean while fighting a losing war in Libya.
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Started a massive trade war with China.
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Spent trillions throwing the U.S. budget deficit for 2020 out beyond 20% of the U.S.’s 2019 GDP.
I could go on, but I think you get the point. None of these acts are defensible as anything other than immoral and counterproductive.
Having antagonized literally more than three-quarters of the world with this insanity, Trump will now turn his destructive gaze on the very people he purports to serve, the American people. Saving jobs through subsidies is capital destructive. It doesn’t matter who does it, Trump, Putin, Xi or FDR.
If Trump tariffs on imports it will only keep the cost of energy for Americans higher than it should be at a time when they need it to be as cheap as possible.
The incentive to improve performance by these companies, shutter expensive wells, default on debt or shift capital away from the unproductive will not happen. The healthy cleansing of bankruptcy is averted. The vultures who profited on the way up will not go bankrupt because the bust is avoided and those that were prudent waiting for this moment will not be rewarded with the reins of the means of production.
And again, we see another one-way trade for Wall St.
All Trump will do here is entrench the very powers that he thinks he’s been fighting, destroying small businesses, nationalizing, in effect, whole swaths of the U.S. economy and setting up the day when everyone else around the world shrugs when he bark.
Because the net effect has been to see the rise in more of the oil trade conducted in currencies other than the U.S. dollar. That trend will continue in a deflating price environment where the need to service dollar-denominated debt is soaking up the supply of dollars faster than the Fed can monetize the debt issued by the U.S. Treasury.
The oil trade will shift from dollars. Dollars will be used to pay off debt, the world will decouple from the dollar and all those dollars currently hoarded overseas and whose demand today will be supply tomorrow will ensure the U.S. economy suffers the worst kind of depression, one of rising commodity prices, falling asset prices and falling wages.
So, Trump will continue to be, as I put it recently, The Master of the Seen, choosing, as always, to ignore the unseen effects of propping up firms that should rightly go the way of all bad ideas, like Marxism.
The U.S. had a grenade dropped on its budget. It looks like a nuclear bomb, but that’s only because of the continued arrogance and necessity of politicians, like Trump, needing to be ‘seen’ doing something caused far more damage than it would have if they hadn’t intervened in the first place.
The adage, “never let a crisis go to waste,” is apropos here. Politicians use the cover of crisis to act. They have to be ‘seen’ acting rather than not. Trump is acutely aware of this because he truly can’t stand criticism.
A man without principles, Trump acts mostly out of his need to deflect criticism and be ‘seen’ by his base as their champion.
But no, Trump outs himself as the biggest Marxist of all time, defending the workers while robbing them of their future through the destruction of their real wealth. His policy mistakes become our real problems. And he compounded those problems by listening to the medical complex vultures about COVID-19 and now he’s trapped but everyone else will pay the price.
He is someone without the sense or the understanding that sometimes the best thing to do is admit defeat, reverse course and put down the scepter of power. But Trump doesn’t know how to do that. He doesn’t know how to actually lead.
Energy Dominance will turn into an Energy Albatross and it will weigh on Trump’s neck in his second term that will see him leave office reviled as the great destroyer of not only the U.S.’s wealth, but more importantly, its standing in the world.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/23/2020 – 22:25 -
- Unintended Consequences: The Fed's Record Liquidity Flood Has Broken Europe's Funding Markets
Unintended Consequences: The Fed’s Record Liquidity Flood Has Broken Europe’s Funding Markets
Another week, another record in the Fed’s balance sheet, which as of April 22 hit an all time high $6.573 trillion, an increase of $205 billion on the week, up $2.644 trillion compared to a year ago and well on its way to $10 trillion.
Yet while the liquidity flood unleashed by the Fed’s balance sheet, and its expanded swap lines has calmed dollar funding markets which were paralyzed as recently as a month ago, and USD Libor dropped below 1% for the first time in a month, an unintended consequence of the Fed’s monetary flood is that it now appears to be paralyzing Europe’s interbank market.
This can be seen in Europe’s version of Libor, 3-Month Euribor, or the rate at which banks borrow from one another, which jumped another 2.9 bps to a fresh four-year high on Thursday, of just above -0.20% even after the ECB tried to ease funding pressures by moderating collateral restrictions for financial institutions seeking to borrow from the central bank.
A key driver behind the Euribor spike is that, in Bloomberg’s view, the Fed has helped bring down the cost of dollars to such an extent that they’re cheaper to borrow in cross-currency markets than any major currency. As a result, opportunistic players are tapping local markets to swap into dollars, elevating domestic borrowing costs.
Others have a more nuanced view, with Bank of America pointing out that the rise in EURIBOR to its highest level since 2016 “signals stress in the euro area’s interbank market.“
According to BofA, the surge in Euribor means that the wholesale euro unsecured borrowing rate of 18 panel banks in the EU and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries has increased. As the bank explains, EURIBOR fixing submissions are based on a hybrid methodology that uses transactions to the extent possible. But eligible EURIBOR volumes are low, especially for tenors above 1W.
In February, between 48% and 66% of EURIBOR fixings were based on level 3 contributions, which are least dependent on eligible transactions.
EURIBOR’s Governance Framework states that level 3 contributions are based on additional transactions data in the underlying interest that were excluded from level 1 and level 2 contributions, and other data from a range of markets closely related to the unsecured euro money market.
The data should then be used through a combination of modeling techniques and/or the panel bank’s judgment. A particular model is not mandated by the administrator and panel banks should determine their contribution based on their own circumstances. This implies there is unlikely to be a one-size-fits-all model for level 3 contributions across panel banks and different markets could have varying influence over time.
BofA then suggests that the recent stress in key markets has impacted level 3 EURIBOR submissions via other data closely related to the unsecured euro money market. One such transmission mechanism involves the increase in bank bond yields, which could have put upward pressure on EURIBOR forwards.
It is at this point that the two narratives combine, because in picking up on Bloomberg’s story, BofA observes that the recent tightening (less negative) of the cross currency basis due to the FX swap lines established by the US Federal Reserve with central banks globally and high USD funding costs have also increased supply of, and decreased demand for, EUR-denominated bank paper swapped back into USD.
Indeed, the EUR FRA-OIS spread also increased to its highest level since 2012, which suggests the rise in bank bond yields is related to interbank stress (Chart 3). But BofA previously noted there were no liquidity concerns in the euro overnight repo market when the FRA-OIS spread first started to widen. Therefore its interpretation is that the increase in the FRA-OIS spread is driven by broad credit concerns due to developments in COVID-19 and in the oil market negatively affecting the global outlook. Furthermore, broad credit concerns may have also been reflected in the rise in non-financial CP issuance and yields (Chart 4).
Looking ahead, BofA is optimistic and believes that the ECB’s inclusion of non-financial CPs to its asset purchasing programme (APP) and Pandemic Emergency Purchasing Programme (PEPP) could act as a strong backstop for the rise in non-financial CP yields. A rebound in global oil prices would also help. But while these measures may address the negative consequences of COVID-19, they do not address the issue of COVID-19 itself. As such, the prospect of deterioration in the COVID-19 situation remains a key upside risk for EURIBOR.
Bloomberg is similarly optimistic, writing that some analysts view the latest ECB measures as helping, and Pictet’s Frederik Ducrozet who wrote that “it provides a backstop for the market not to be concerned about bank funding issues related to a shrinking collateral pool in case of rating downgrades.”
Meanwhile, early signs in the futures market already suggest Euribor will ease lower within the next couple of months. One such easing will impact dollar Libor, whose spreads over swaps are expected to tighten – as indicated by futures markets – at which point three-month cross-currency basis should drift lower to erode the funding advantage for local currencies, and reduce the incentive for opportunists to bid up the cost of funds in domestic markets, in other words, the market is confident that the ECB’s massive liquidity injection will offset a similar action by the Fed, and offset the cheapness of the dollar in cross fx.
While Euribor is soaring, US Libor appears to have gotten over its recent scare, and has been declining, falling by 2.9bps on Thursday, below 1% for the first time since the covid crisis, and driving its premium above OIS by a similar amount. As we have noted previously, some traders are even bracing for negative Libor prints as the Fed inches closer to NIRP.
Yet as the US inches to the monetary singularity of negative rates, sub-zero rates are already a reality in Japan, where the three-month euro-yen Tibor fixing dropped 6.6 bps to -0.048%, posting a negative fix for the first time ever, with Euroyen futures popping higher in response.
With yen-OIS rates steady, Bloomberg suggests that the move was unrelated to policy expectations, and instead, overseas banks could be in the driving seat, potentially a result of the same stress that is pushing Euribor higher.
Whatever the explanation behind this odd squeeze in European money market rates, one thing is clear: we have gotten to the point where overly aggressive intervention by one central bank immediately necessitates an equal and offsetting intervention by all other central banks, or else the entire domestic banking system of whichever bank isn’t debasing its current the fastest faces immediate peril. And another dire consequence: we may have gotten to the point where it is no longer possible to find an equilibrium funding level for global currencies, one which – by definition – exists in a world of positive rates; however when interest rates everywhere are negative (or expected to be), then all bets are off and every single day is a new struggle by the central bankers to keep the system from collapsing.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/23/2020 – 22:12 - Nevada Brothel Causes Stir With Stimulus Request
Nevada Brothel Causes Stir With Stimulus Request
There is an interesting controversy brewing in Nevada over stimulus money and morality.
Bella Cummins is the owner of a lawful small business who was initially refused an emergency loan under the pandemic stimulus money.
“It was interesting… that the bank… wanted to tell me that I wasn’t going to qualify and they weren’t going to send it in.”
The reason? Her business is a brothel.
The CARES Act makes no distinction between moral and immoral businesses so long as they are lawful (and such a distinction in my view would challengeable). Brothels are lawful in Nevada.
Yet, Cummins was eventually allowed to apply for the loan but there are objections to giving stimulus money to an over-stimulating business.
“It isn’t about them coming up with a decision on how they think or feel, it’s about following a federal policy,” Cummins said.
Cummins has allowed her workers to remain on the property at Bella’s Hacienda Ranch in Well, Nevada. Her business was deemed nonessential. While some might disagree, that distinction seems perfectly reasonable. However, that still leaves the fact that when she went to Nevada State Bank to apply for an emergency loan from the Small Business Administration the bank balked.
Given social distancing rules, this is one business that will face the greatest delay and downturn in recovering from the pandemic. Social distancing would seem the antithesis of the business model of a brothel.
Since applying for federal help earlier this week, the SBA has notified Cummins that her application to the Paycheck Protection Program for some $70,000 has been approved.
However, she was then told by the bank that the funds were put on hold.
It is not clear if that is based on the nature of her business or simply a pause in the program.
The question remains about the objections and whether there will be a move to limit future loans. In my view, such restrictions would be arbitrary and discriminatory. As many on this blog know, I have been a long critic of morality legislation. This is simply another variation in forcing citizens to adhere to majoritarian morals in my view if the loan is denied or the regulations changed on the basis of the business.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/23/2020 – 21:45 - 40 More Coronavirus Cases Confirmed Aboard "Costa Atlantica": Live Updates
40 More Coronavirus Cases Confirmed Aboard “Costa Atlantica”: Live Updates
Summary:
- Russia reports thousands of new cases
- Turkey becomes first country in Asia to cross 100k cases in “official” count
- Indonesia reports dozens of new deaths
- UK sees deaths slow for 2nd day
- Merkel warns “we’re still at the beginning” of the outbreak
- German leader told fellow EU leaders that fiscal package must be “huge”
- Cuomo says 14% of random sample of NYers tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies; 21.2% in NYC
- NY deaths continue to slow
- Oklahoma becomes latest state to start reopening Friday
- Trump says he “strongly disagrees” with Georgia’s plan to reopen
- 40 more crew members test positive aboard “Costa Atlantica”
- Trump says 40% of counties have seen a decline in coronavirus cases
- China pledges $30 million to WHO
- California reports 115 deaths
- Pompeo demands China permanently close all wet markets
- NJ on cusp of reporting 100k cases as state unveils new saliva test
- France’s stretch of slowing case growth hits 1 week mark
- Turkey cases top 100k
- Lagarde says relief fund needed fast
- Cuomo says McConnell’s remark about allowing states to file for bankruptcy was “dumb”
- Vietnam, Greece announce plans to start reopening
- Data shows nearly 90% of patients placed on ventilator never recover
- Some Wuhan doctors see virus reemerge in patients 70 days after negative test
- Malaysia extends lockdown for 3rd time
* * *
Update (2130ET): Last night, we reported that a new cluster of coronavirus cases has been discovered aboard an Italian cruise ship, the Costa Atlantica, currently docked in Nagasaki – where it has been sitting idle since January.
Apparently, more than 600 members of the ship’s crew were living onboard (somehow, despite the obvious infection risk, they were not moved to less cramped quarters).
Now, Japanese broadcaster NHK reports that 40 more crew members have tested positive, bringing the total onboard to 90.
And just like that, Japan has another floating nightmare on its hands.
* * *
Update (1800ET): Kicking off tonight’s coronavirus press conference, President Trump told the accumulated press that 40% of counties in the US have seen a decline in new cases since the lockdown began. We don’t have the resources to “fact-check” this claim (we’re not the Washington Post), but it certainly sounds plausible.
* * *
Update (1600ET): As the market closes, Reuters has released its latest update on US coronavirus stats.
Reuters counted roughly 30,000 new cases reported for Wednesday (remember, the numbers are reported with a 24 hour lag), the biggest daily increase in five, though the numbers were pretty much in line of the average of 30k cases a day reported for all of April. So far this month, the US has been reporting roughly 2k deaths per day.
However, since the overall numbers have remained flat, today’s 30k increase was actually the slowest rate of growth this month, with the overall number of cases rising by 2.5% on the day.
* * *
Update (1545ET): Oklahoma governor says salons and barbershops can reopen statewide for ‘appointments only’ on this Friday, while restaurants, gyms and theaters will be allowed to reopen on May 1.
As of Thursday, the Oklahoma State Department of Health had reported 3,017 confirmed positive coronavirus cases, along with 179 people who have died. Nine more deaths were reported Thursday, with six having occurred in the past 24 hours, and the others having died between April 18-April 21.
Meanwhile, Illinois Gov JB Pritzker said his state has flattened the curve enough for some small businesses to reopen on a limited basis, and for hospitals and surgical centers to begin non-life-threatening surgeries.
Because we are bending the curve, surgi-centers & hospitals can begin non-life-threatening surgeries.
Retail stores can offer pick-up and delivery.
Some of our state parks can reopen for hiking, fishing & boating with no more than two people.
All these changes begin on May 1.
— Governor JB Pritzker (@GovPritzker) April 23, 2020
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Update (1535ET): California recorded 115 deaths from COVID-19 over the past 24 hours, making Wednesday the deadliest day so far for America’s most populous state. Meanwhile, the number of occupied hospitalizations declined, (down 4.4%) and ICU numbers fell 1.2%.
* * *
Update (1430ET): New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said Thursday that New Jersey is on the cusp of reporting its 100,000th confirmed case of the virus, as the state ramps up testing. On Thursday, the total number of COVID-19 cases in New Jersey jumped to 99,989, with more than 4,000 new cases confirmed over the last 24 hours.
“Of the nearly 100,000 total cases we’ve reported since our first positive case on March 4th, roughly 46,000 of these individuals have now exited the two-week incubation window,” Murphy said during his briefing.
At least 5,368 people have died from coronavirus-related complications with 307 more deaths reported over the past 24 hours.
Preexisting conditions like cardiovascular disease and diabetes have been extremely prevalent among those who have succumbed to the virus in the state, with as many as 60% exhibiting cardiovascular disease.
Despite the increase in deaths and cases, Murphy said that the spread has slowed. He also said that the state is going to start using new saliva tests developed by Rutgers University. That saliva-based test is going to be used starting next week at five testing centers.
“This is a total of more than 5,500 tests – more than 1,200 residents, and in excess of 4,300 staff,” Murphy said. “We are working to expand testing to other state workers and the individuals we serve,” he said. The Rutgers’ saliva test in 100% accurate compared to a traditional swab test in the nose, Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences Chancellor Dr. Brian Strom said.
Murphy believes that the state needs enough testing to start randomly testing – like New York has – before it moves ahead with reopening.
* * *
Update (1410ET): In the latest good news out of Europe, France’s coronavirus epidemic has continued to slow with the national lockdown in its sixth week. On Thursday, France reported another 311 deaths in hospitals and another 205 in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, bringing the country’s death toll to 21,856, of which 13,547 were in hospitals and 8,309 in care homes. Earlier, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said the government is shooting to reopen most small businesses on May 11.
Public-health officials also reported a drop in occupied hospital beds and ICU beds.
In Italy, Italian health officials confirmed another 2,646 new cases of the virus and another 464 new deaths, bringing the countrywide total to 189,973 cases and 25,549 deaths. PM Giuseppe Conte told reporters that EU leaders have made “great progress” that was “almost unthinkable a few weeks ago.” So far, it seems like the EU countries have agreed to establish a recovery fund, but how to finance the fund, and whether support should be doled out in the form of loans, or grants, are sources of contention between the northern and southern blocs. New cases and total hospitalizations continued to decline, though the single-day death toll ticked slightly higher.
Iran also reported 1,030 new cases of coronavirus and 90 new deaths, with a total of 87,026 cases and 5,481 deaths.
* * *
Update (1316ET): Today’s EU meeting to work out a bloc-wide rescue package ended with no agreement, as was widely expected. And as the euro comes under pressure, anonymously-sourced reports claimed that the four wealthy northern states (led by Germany) are insisting on tying the recovery aid to the next EU long-term budget. Meanwhile, the badly hit already indebted nations like Italy are demanding that the bloc agree to issue “coronabonds” to finance what will in all likelihood become a huge recovery effort.
In other news, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Turkey surpassed 100,000 on Thursday, with the death toll topping 2,491. A week ago, Turkey surpassed Iran to become the country with the worst outbreak in the Middle East, but it’s not the only country suffering: Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman and Qatar are all seeing cases and deaths climb at disturbingly high rates despite precautionary measures and travel restrictions imposed across the region.
Interestingly enough, Turkey is actually the first country in Asia to cross the 100k-case threshold (since China’s “official” count topped out around 80k). Of course, it’s widely believed that the number of cases in China was many times more. Turkey is also only the 7th country in the world to cross the threshold.
* * *
Update (1155ET): Offering his rundown of the latest stats, Cuomo said that deaths have come down (the state reported 438 on Thursday vs 474 yesterday), though not by as much as state officials would like. Cuomo also noted that the number of people ‘walking in the door’ at NY State hospitals with COVID-19 has remained “about even” at roughly 1,300 per day.
But by far the most interesting piece of information shared by Cuomo on Thursday was the outcome of a random surveillance test – the first of what’s expected to be many rounds of random testing that the state will be conducting to help aid the response. Cuomo said that out of 3,000 people tested for COVID-19 antibodies, roughly 14% tested positive.
Even more alarming, that rate rose to 21.2% positive rate in NY. If that rate is confirmed via further testing, it would suggest that roughly 2 million NYC residents have been exposed to the virus.
“It changes the theories of what the death rate is,” Cuomo explained. “It’s preliminary data”…but there are likely more unconfirmed “at home deaths” from the virus, he sad.
Of course, if these data are borne out by more studies, it would dramatically lower the virus’s mortality rate.
During Mayor de Blasio’s press briefing earlier on Thursday, Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot said that she would not be surprised if “close to a million New Yorkers” had been exposed to COVID-19. And as the city’s economy slides into a recessionary slump, De Blasio also offered a stark statistic: he expects that an additional one million residents could become food insecure under the pandemic, putting the total number of food insecure New Yorkers at around two million.
Moving on, the governor also responded to a comment by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, reportedly made during an appearance on a conservative talk show, that he would be in favor of some US states using “the bankruptcy route” to shed the onerous debt obligations they’re accruing during the outbreak.
“You will see a collapse of this national economy” if major states declare bankruptcy, predicts @NYGovCuomo.
— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) April 23, 2020
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Of course, the minute a US state files for bankruptcy, we suspect the market selloff will be even more swift than the unprecedented plunges seen just last month.
If there’s even anything left of the American economy at that point.
In other news, as the US pulls its funding from the WHO, China is stepping up with a $30 million donation, virtually guaranteeing that Beijing’s influence over the NGO – which is essentially an independent organization despite technically being an arm of the UN – will only continue to grow. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang praised the organization during a briefing, saying the WHO played “an important role” in assisting countries during the pandemic response.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned that the US “may never” restore funding to the WHO, unless major reforms are implemented. “We reformed this back in 2007, so this isn’t the first time we’ve had to deal with the shortcomings of this organization that sits inside the United Nations. We need a fix. We need a structural fix with the WHO,” Pompeo said. Trump suspended US funding for the organization, accusing it of supporting China’s “disinformation,” Reuters reports.
* * *
Update (1140ET): Andrew Cuomo said 438 New Yorkers died from COVID-19 yesterday, bringing the state’s death toll to 15,740. Cuomo is delivering his daily briefing. Hospitalizations across the state fell by more than 500 on April 22 to a total of roughly 15.
Watch the briefing below:
Holding a briefing with updates on #Coronavirus. Watch Live: https://t.co/vWhF4W6edg
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) April 23, 2020
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* * *
Update (1050ET): A recent Reuters report quoted doctors in Wuhan who say they’ve found some patients who tested negative for the virus who later tested positive, suggesting that either they were somehow reinfected (studies have shown that some recovered patients have low or no levels of antibodies needed for immunity) or that the virus simply reemerged on its own.
Uuughhh.😫 Doctors in epicenter Wuhan find patients who tested negative for #coronavirus later test positive, some up to 70 days later. Many have done so over 50-60 days. (Unclear is they are infectious but positive cases in #China get quarantined.) https://t.co/mlEtuen8lz
— Eunice Yoon (@onlyyoontv) April 23, 2020
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Its just the latest example of patients claiming they’ve suffered a relapse in symptoms, or have seen them persist for 2 months or longer.
The unusual nature of the virus, and the vastly different behavior documented in different patients, is something that has puzzled scientists, as some wonder whether the virus might linger in patients, then occasionally reemerge, like herpes or HIV.
Months ago, we reported that scientists had discovered some unusual “HIV-like” mutations that purportedly would allow the virus to more easily attach to certain receptors, allowing for easier human-to-human infection.
Of course, if the virus does behave this way, this would definitely lessen the impact of a lockdown over time, though at least lockdowns would give hospitals more time to prepare for the inevitable onslaught of infected patients.
In other news, Malaysia has extended its national lockdown for a third time: “While the figures show a positive trend, the steps we take must continue to a point where we believe the Covid-19 outbreak can be fully contained,” said Muhyiddin Yassin, Malaysia’s prime minister. The lockdown, which was supposed to end next week, will be extended to May 12.
* * *
Update (1010ET): Members of the EU are holding a virtual summit on Thursday to hammer out a rescue package to alleviate the immense financial pressure facing several of its largest member states – including Italy, Spain and France – who were particularly hard-hit by the coronavirus outbreak.
However, hope for the issue to be resolved today is gradually sinking as both sides dig in their heels.
Italian PM Giuseppe Conte has threatened to veto any conclusions reached by his colleagues that doesn’t fit with the “coronabonds” plan that Rome believes is 100% essential to stave off a devastating economic collapse. Conte also demanded that the costs borne by Italy and Spain be borne in part by their neighbors, since Brussels initially advised against lockdowns and border closures, hampering the continent’s response to the virus.
Curiously, as the summit begins, Chancellor Angela Merkel had some interesting words for her colleagues. Merkel’s Germany has opposed the ‘coronabonds’ plan in favor of routing money through one of Europe’s many existing mechanisms for pumping ‘liquidity’ into failing states.
Earlier in the day, Merkel made headlines during a speech where she chastised Germans for pushing to reopen the German economy too quickly by warning that we’re “still at the beginning” of the crisis.
“Nobody likes to hear this but it is the truth. We are not living through the final phase of this crisis, we are still at its beginning. We will still have to live with this virus for a long time.”
Despite Merkel’s words of caution, Germany has continued to move ahead with its plan to gradually reopen the country, making Merkel, in at least one sense, the anti-Trump: Trump pushes to reopen more quickly while officially advocating a gradual reopening, while Merkel is doing the opposite.
“Nobody likes to hear it, but it is the truth. We will have to live with the virus for a long time.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel urges caution during the coronavirus crisis – saying some regions of Germany were moving too quickly in relaxing restrictions. pic.twitter.com/zkE8X20lc2
— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) April 23, 2020
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Now, Merkel is advising her colleagues that the response to the crisis must be “huge enough” to save Europe, as the leaders of both France and Italy have warned that failure to meet member states’ needs during this critical crisis could result in the end of the ‘European project’.
🇩🇪 🇪🇺 *MERKEL SAID TO TELL #EU LEADERS VIRUS RESPONSE MUST BE HUGE – BBG
— Christophe Barraud🛢 (@C_Barraud) April 23, 2020
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Maybe she was talking about Germany’s fiscal response?
In other European news, the UK reported its latest numbers, showing a modest slowdown in deaths for a second day.
- REPORTS 616 NEW CORONAVIRUS DEATHS, TOTAL RISES TO 18,738
- U.K. DAILY CORONAVIRUS DEATHS DECREASE FOR SECOND DAY
Meanwhile, Christine Lagarde kept up her pressure for governments to do more, saying a “strong and flexible” recovery fund is needed, and fast.
* * *
Just 48 hours before Georgia was set to become the first state in the country to start reopening its economy, President Trump revealed in what sounded like an offhanded answer to a reporter’s question that he “strongly disagrees” with Gov Kemp’s decision because it didn’t follow the federal guidelines.
Trump’s u-turn outraged some supporters who believe the lockdown “cure” is worse than the viral “disease”, just in time for the latest reminder of how many jobs have been destroyed by the pandemic so far. Before blaming them as “covidiots”, it’s worth remembering that many red states haven’t been hit nearly as badly as most other states. Even the outbreak at the Smithfield Food’s processing plant in South Dakota – an incident that the MSM labeled “the biggest outbreak in the country” and cited as evidence of GOP Gov. Kirsti Noem’s “anti-science” agenda – has already subsided, and the rate of new cases has slowed, and the state has only recorded 9 deaths.
Millions of people around the world are beginning to question the wisdom of strict lockdown strategies. Sweden, a country that was once routinely bashed by conservatives for refusing to close its economy and borders, has found that its approach appears to be working. As once doctor who appeared on CNBC Thursday morning pointed out, the number of deaths and cases per capita in Sweden is higher than its neighbors. But not by much. For the record, Sweden has left its schools, gyms, cafes, bars and restaurants open throughout the spread of the pandemic. Instead, the government has urged citizens to act responsibly and follow social distancing guidelines. The country has suffered fewer than 2,000 deaths, and has only confirmed 16k cases, and the strategy has proved broadly popular: Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven is now one of the most popular leaders in the modern history of Sweden.
To be sure, even Lofven has admitted that Sweden made mistakes – for example, authorities should have invested more resources in protecting the elderly – and when deaths and cases started to spike a few weeks ago, there were a few uncomfortable days when he faced a hail of doubt and criticism. But he stayed the course, and the country appears to be emerging from the pandemic relatively unscathed. In what is perhaps the country’s biggest sign of renewal, Volvo, which was forced to halt production across Europe and furlough about 20,000 Swedish employees, will resume production at its Swedish plants on Monday.
Earlier this week, the mainstream press flew into a tizzy following a report that a leading American vaccine expert named Rick Bright had been ousted as director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, allegedly for resisting efforts to join President Trump in pushing hydroxychloroquine. A recent small-scale VA study recently found the drug to be ineffective, news that liberals have weaponized to bash the president, after dismissing virtually every other study suggesting the opposite (particularly when the drug is taken in combination with a Z-Pak).
As it turns out, Bright’s claim that his ouster was an act of retaliation for not “toeing the line” turned out to be somewhat embellished.
Possible for several things to be true:
— Trump’s push on malaria drugs was inappropriate
— That push alarmed health officials like Bright
— But some of those officials sent mixed messages about it
— Efforts to oust Bright predated Covid-19, as officials told me months ago
— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) April 23, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
In the UK, where daily death numbers have remained stubbornly, the government’s top medic said Thursday that restrictions on everyday life in Britain will likely remain in place in one form or another until the “next calendar year” due to the time needed to develop and roll out vaccines or find a cure, the country’s top medic said on Wednesday.
South Korea, meanwhile, is already preparing for a second wave of the virus in the fall and winter, according Yoon Tae-ho, director general of health ministry, who announced the plans during a press briefing. Many public health experts – including FDA Director Dr. Stephen Hahn, before he “clarified” his statement the other day – have warned that the virus could come roaring back in the fall, combining with the seasonal flu to overwhelm hospitals once again.
The country also plans to secure more medical resources in the event of a bigger outbreak than what it experienced in Daegu, the city at the epicenter of the crisis. SK will continue to remain “on alert” until a vaccine is available.
Indonesia reported 357 new cases of the virus, bringing its total to 7,775. The country has reported a total of 647 deaths and 950 recovered cases, numbers that experts say are likely well short of the totals for both cases and deaths.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on China to permanently close all wet markets and other illegal markets selling wildlife for human consumption – something that China has already technically outlawed, just like they ‘outlawed’ the production of black-market fentanyl.
As more countries begin rolling back lockdown measures, tiny Vietnam, which has reported fewer than 300 cases of coronavirus and no deaths since the first infections were detected in January, said on Wednesday it would start lifting tough movement restrictions, according to Reuters, even as many of its neighbors remain on lockdown. Greece extended its lockdown until May 4, but said some small businesses will start reopening after that date, per the FT. A spokesman for the Greek government warned that “at each stage the impact on public health will be assessed. We’re going to take it week by week,” he added. A detailed timetable for re-starting the economy will be announced next week.”
More countries appear to be reopening as millions confront the undeniable reality that, when faced with the choice of sacrificing their livelihoods or risking infection, most people would opt for the second, even as the WHO’s Dr. Tedros warned during a press briefing on Wednesday that the rolling back the quarantines too soon might cause the virus to reignite.
The situation in Russia, which took early steps to keep foreigners out yet never followed up with widespread testing and surveillance, continued to worsen as the country reported 4,774 new cases of coronavirus and 42 new deaths, another record number of new cases, bringing the country’s total of 62,773 cases and 555 deaths.
Perhaps the biggest news overnight came out of Australian, where PM Scott Morrison called on all member states of the WHO to support an “independent review” of the origins of the novel coronavirus outbreak, further jeopardizing what has been an incredibly prosperous economic relationship with China that had helped the Aussie economy achieve an unprecedented 30-year stretch of growth.
Finally, the Washington Post reports that new data from New York’s largest hospital system showed that survival rates for patients placed on ventilators are even lower than previously believed. The data showed that a staggering 88% of coronavirus patients who were placed on ventilators in the state’s hospitals didn’t survive. Doctors, meanwhile, are also seeing more strange complications from the disease involving blood clots and the cardiovascular system. One doctor in China who barely survived his struggle with the virus experienced an extremely strange shift in skin pigmentation.
This news follows yesterday’s report which found more than 10,000 nursing home residents in 35 states have succumbed to the virus, representing roughly one-fifth of all deaths in the US.
The number of confirmed deaths from the virus around the world is approaching 200k, while the number of confirmed cases has surpassed 2,645,000.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/23/2020 – 21:44 - UN Calls For Trillion Dollar Debt Jubilee For Poorest Countries
UN Calls For Trillion Dollar Debt Jubilee For Poorest Countries
For weeks, the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank have stated the only solution for emerging market economies severely damaged by the coronavirus outbreak is a “debt jubilee.”
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) published a note on Thursday morning that said about $1 trillion in debt owed by developing countries should be canceled to avoid an emerging market debt crisis.
“This is a world where defaults by developing nations on their debt is inevitable,” warned Richard Kozul-Wright, director of UNCTAD’s Division on Globalization and Development Strategies.
UNCTAD’s report calls for a global debt relief deal for emerging market economies. It indicates “the vital need for decisive action to provide substantive debt relief to developing countries to free up sorely needed resources to respond to the raging pandemic.”
Last month, UNCTAD called for an international effort to create an economic relief package for emerging market economies that would amount to at least $2.5 trillion. It said even before the virus pandemic, many of these developing countries had insurmountable dollar debts.
“The international community should urgently take more steps to relieve the mounting financial pressure that debt payments are exerting on developing countries as they get to grips with the economic shock of COVID-19,” said UNCTAD Secretary-General Mukhisa Kituyi.
Here are some of the countries that have unsustainable debt burdens:
UNCTAD said developing countries “now face a wall of debt service repayments throughout the 2020s. In 2020 and 2021 alone, repayments on their public external debt are estimated at nearly $3.4 trillion – between $2 trillion and $2.3 trillion in high-income developing countries and between $666 billion and $1.06 trillion in the middle- and low-income countries.”
With the pandemic still raging across the world, emerging market economies battered, commodities crashed, and the global economy shifting into a deep depression, it now appears the end game has finally arrived and the need to rescue the world from a prolonged depression will likely be through a debt jubilee.
For some color on the current global situation. Raoul Pal, the former hedge-fund manager who founded Real Vision, recently had this to say: “The whole world’s f**ked.”
Pal’s most recent thoughts on dollar debts and a debt jubilee can be found below:
Less available dollars, in a world of a massive dollar shortage, drives up the dollar creating a shortage both home and abroad. Money printing does not make the dollars available. They get stuck in the financial system and hoarded.
Money for the banks, no money for the debtors…
The domestic shortage of dollars means that money gets hoarded while defaults rise. And the shortage abroad means that $13tn of debt scrambles for the available dollars as world growth slows and banks are less free with capital.
Don’t forget – the $13tn short dollar positions (foreign dollar debt held mainly by foreign corporation and investment vehicles) is the largest position ever taken in the history of global financial markets.
It can only mean a massive, uncontrolled dollar rally.
QE will not fix this. Swap lines will not fix this. A debt jubilee would fix this or multiple trillions of dollars in write-downs and defaults.
It is the dollar strength that brings to world to its nadir (just like the 1930s). It is the dollar system that is the really big problem.
The dollar has eaten all of its competitors and now it is going to eat itself.
And after decades of “kicking the can down the road” – it appears the end game has finally arrived for countries with insurmountable dollar debts: debt jubilee.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/23/2020 – 21:25 - China Denies US Request For Access To Wuhan Lab Which May Be Source Of Coronavirus Pandemic
China Denies US Request For Access To Wuhan Lab Which May Be Source Of Coronavirus Pandemic
China has denied a request by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to grant international inspectors access to labs in order to assess whether dangerous pathogens might be accidentally released, according to Fox News.
The request comes amid a US investigation into whether the Wuhan coronavirus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where they were conducting a host of experiments on bat coronavirus – and had collected bats in a cave over 1,000 miles away in Yunnan which carried COVID-19.
“There are multiple labs inside of China that are handling these things,” Pompeo said on Wednesday at the State Department. “It’s important that those materials are being handled in a safe and secure way such that there isn’t accidental release.”
“We have to make sure that the Chinese Government is handling those materials in an appropriate way not only in the Wuhan Institute of Virology but elsewhere,” Pompeo added, according to the report.
“Any objective person will see that some U.S. politicians have been peddling lies that discredit China’s anti-epidemic efforts to fuddle people’s minds and deflect attention from the fact that they fell short of fulfilling their own anti-epidemic responsibilities,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang on Thursday in response to Pompeo’s call for inspections at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other Chinese labs studying coronaviruses and other pathogens.
Beijing has refuted claims that COVID-19 originated in a laboratory. Intelligence operatives have begun gathering information about the Wuhan lab and are piecing together a timeline of the events following the outbreak.
U.S. officials told Fox News they have ruled out the possibility of a man-made coronavirus to be used as a bioweapon. Instead, they believe it was part of China’s attempt to demonstrate that its efforts to identify and combat viruses are equal to or greater than the capabilities of the United States,
Some officials believe China purposefully covered up the virus and that the World Health Organization (WHO) is complicit. President Trump took aim at the WHO over its role in the crisis and announced last week that the U.S. will halt all funding to the group, saying it had put “political correctness over lifesaving measures.” –Fox News
On Wednesday, Pompeo told “The Ingraham Angle” that the World Health Organization (WHO) had dropped the ball in helping the United States gather critical data from China.
“Look, we know it began at one [lab], but we need to figure this out,” he said, adding “There’s an ongoing pandemic. We still don’t have the transparency and openness we need in China.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/23/2020 – 21:12 - The Seven-Step Path From Pandemic To Totalitarianism
The Seven-Step Path From Pandemic To Totalitarianism
Authored by Rosemary Frei via Off-Guardian.org,
There are just seven steps from pandemic declaration to permanent totalitarianism – and many jurisdictions are about to start Step 5…
As if it was planned in advance, billions of people around the globe are being forced step by rapid step into a radically different way of life, one that involves far less personal, physical and financial freedom and agency
Here is the template for rolling this out.
STEP 1
A new virus starts to spread around the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) declares a pandemic.
International agencies, public-health officials, politicians, media and other influential voices fan fear by focusing almost exclusively on the contagiousness of the virus and the rising numbers of cases, and by characterizing the virus as extremely dangerous.
Within a few days governments at national and local levels also declare states of emergency. At lightning speed they impose lock-down measures that confine most people to their homes – starting with closing schools – and shut down much of the global economy. World markets implode.
The stunned, fearful and credulous public – convinced over the previous few years that their bodies do not have the natural ability to react to pathogens by producing antibodies that confer long-lasting immunity – largely complies willingly.
The first weekly virtual class on local emergency and crisis responses to COVID19 is held for mayors and other city officials around the world. Coordinated by a handful of American organizations in the academic, medical, financial, political and transportation spheres, the classes feature guests ranging from Barack Obama to Bill Gates.
STEP 2
National, state/provincial and municipal leaders, as well as public-health officials, start daily press briefings. They use them to pump out frightening statistics and modelling asserting the virus has the potential to kill many millions.
Most of this information is hard to decipher and sheds little real light on the natural course of the virus’s spread through each geographic area.
Officials and media downplay or distort inconveniently low death tolls from the virus and instead focus on alarming statistics produced by compliant academics, social-media influencers and high-profile organizations.
The main message is that this is a war and many lives are at stake unless virtually everybody stays at home. Mainstream media amplify the trope that the world is at the mercy of the virus.
Simultaneously, central banks and governments hand out massive amounts of cash largely to benefit the big banks. And they bring in giant private-sector financial firms to manage the process despite these global companies’ very poor track record in the 2008-2009 crash. Governments also rapidly start to create trillions of pounds’ worth of programs that include compensating businesses and workers for their shutdown-related losses.
STEP 3
There is a concerted effort by all levels of government and public health to very rapidly ramp up testing for viral RNA, along with production of personal protective equipment.
They push aside the need for regulation, including quality standards and independent verification of tests’ rates of accuracy, by insisting that fast approval and roll-out are imperative for saving lives.
Models are released that predict snowballing of numbers of cases, hospitalizations and deaths even under best-case scenarios.
At about the same time, public-health officials significantly loosen the criteria for viral infections, outbreaks and deaths, particularly in the oldest members of society. That increases the numbers of cases and deaths ascribed to the new pathogen.
The media continue to clamour for more testing and for severe punishment of people who aren’t completely compliant with the lock-down measures.
As a result, there’s little backlash as police and military with sweeping new powers enforce these measures and give stiff penalties or even jail terms to those who disobey orders. States also monitor with impunity massive numbers of people’s movements via their cellphones.
Vast human resources are focused on tracking down people who have had contact with a virus-positive individual and confining them to their homes. Thus the portion of the public exposed to the virus remains relatively small.
It also contributes to social isolation. Among many effects, this enables those in control to even further erase individual and collective choices, voices and power.
STEP 4
When the numbers of cases and deaths start to plateau, local officials claim it’s too early to tell whether the virus has finished passing through their population and therefore, restrictive measures must continue.
An alternative narrative is that if such measures aren’t kept in place there will be a resurgence of cases and deaths. Yet another is that the continuing climb in elderly persons’ deaths means all bets are off for the time being.
They admit that initial models incorrectly predicted there would be a tsunami of cases, ICU admissions and deaths. However, they assert more time is needed before it can be determined whether it’s safe to loosen some of the restrictions and let children return to school or adults go back to work.
Officials do not try to calculate the overall skyrocketing cost to their populations and economies of the shut-downs and other measures against, nor do they discuss what cost level may be too high.
They and powerful media organizations also push for the massive virus-testing over-capacity to be used to surveil the general population for viral DNA in their bodies. At the same time, the roll-out begins of widespread blood testing for antibodies to the virus.
Meanwhile, new data are published showing the virus has a high capacity to mutate. Scientists and officials interpret this as meaning a larger medical arsenal will be needed to combat it.
Image source: The Spectator
STEP 5
About two or three weeks later, the dramatic increase in testing for viral DNA produces the desired goal of a significant upsurge in the number of people found positive for the virus.
Public-health officials add jet fuel to the surge by adding to their case and death tallies the large number of people who are only suspected – and not lab-test-confirmed – to have had an infection. Politicians and public-health officials tell the populace this means they cannot return to their jobs or other activities outside the home for the time being.
Governments work with public-health agencies, academics, industry, the WHO and other organizations to start to design and implement immunity-passport systems for using the results of the widespread antibody testing to determine who can be released from the lock-downs. This is one of many goals of the seven steps.
Meanwhile, government leaders continue to highlight the importance of vaccines for besting the virus.
STEP 6
Large-scale human testing of many different types of antivirals and vaccines begins, thanks to a concerted push from the WHO, Bill Gates and his collaborators, pharmaceutical and biotech companies, governments and universities.
Large swaths of the population don’t have the antibodies to the virus because they’ve been kept from being exposed to it; they eagerly accept these medications even though they’ve been rushed to market with inadequate safety testing. They believe these medical products offer the only hope for escaping the virus’s clutches.
STEP 7
Soon the new virus starts another cycle around the globe – just as influenza and other viruses have every year for millennia. Officials again fan the flames of fear by positing the potential for millions of deaths among people not yet protected from the virus.
They rapidly roll out virus and antibody testing again, while companies sell billions more doses of antivirals and booster vaccines.
Governments simultaneously cede control of all remaining public assets to global companies. This is because local and national governments’ tax bases were decimated during Step 1 and they’re virtually bankrupt from their unprecedented spending in the war against the virus in the other steps.
The overall result is complete medicalization of the response to the virus, which on a population level is no more harmful than influenza.
This is coupled with the creation of permanent totalitarianism controlled by global companies and a 24/7 invasive-surveillance police state supported by widespread blossoming of ‘smart’ technology.
The key players repeat the cycle of hysteria and massive administration of antivirals and booster shots every few months.
And they implement a variation of steps 1 to 7 when another new pathogen appears on the planet.
Sounds far-fetched? Unfortunately, it’s not.
With the arrival of COVID19 many countries quickly completed Steps 1, 2 and 3.
Step 4 is well under way in a large number of jurisdictions.
Step 5 is on track to start in early May.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/23/2020 – 21:05 - Debt-Stricken Lebanon Becomes First Arab Country To Legalize Cannabis Growth
Debt-Stricken Lebanon Becomes First Arab Country To Legalize Cannabis Growth
Lebanon, the tiny Mediterranean country with hugely outsized debt, has become the first country in the Middle East to legalize the growing of cannabis in an unlikely precedent.
The Lebanese Parliament approved a law on Tuesday which allows its growth for medicinal and industrial use, which ironically enough was strongly recommended by economic advisers as a way to boost the country’s troubled economy by regulating what was reportedly already a booming but illicit trade, especially in the Bekaa Valley.
Cannabis plantation in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley. AFP via Getty Lebanon’s national newspaper The Daily Star linked the move directly to the country’s recent debt woes:
Although it is illegal, Lebanon has long been one of the world’s biggest producers of hashish.
Lawmakers have long been trying to legalize cannabis production for medical use. They argue it would pump revenue into the struggling economy, currently in its worst crisis since the 1975-90 civil war.
In March, Lebanon announced it would suspend payments of all the maturing Eurobonds in foreign currency in order to safeguard its foreign currency reserves.
Raed Khoury, Lebanon’s former caretaker minister for economy and trade, went so far as to brag in a July 2018 interview with Bloomberg that Lebanese marijuana “is one of the best in the world” in terms of quality.
Crucially, the legislation does not allow for recreational use of marijuana among citizens, but brings its cultivation under the regulation of the state, primarily for medicinal exports, CBD oils, and pharmaceutical and industrial purposes.
Firas Maksad, a foreign policy analyst and professor at George Washington University, told UAE’s The National of cannabis growth’s legalization: “If regulated and taxed properly, this is a net positive for Lebanon.”
“It is important to note that Lebanon spent many millions of foreign assistance dollars in the nineties to fight cannabis farming in the Bekaa,” Maksad added, explaining that Hezbollah’s opposition to legalization stemmed from wanting to maintain control of trafficking.
The Shia political movement and paramilitary organization essentially runs things in the Bekaa, and publicly opposed the legislation of Islamic grounds.
And Lebanon’s deputy parliament speaker Elie Ferzli recently told Al-Monitor: “The global consultancy firm McKinsey suggested, in a study about setting a vision for Lebanon’s economy to grow its GDP and create jobs through selecting productive sectors, that legalizing the cultivation of cannabis would bring in up to $1 billion per year in revenue for the government.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/23/2020 – 20:45 - Live Webcast With Mohamed El-Erian: Ask Questions On Markets, The Economy And Covid-19
Live Webcast With Mohamed El-Erian: Ask Questions On Markets, The Economy And Covid-19
Join Mohamed El-Erian for a deep dive into the future of the global economy after COVID19 in this live webcast courtesy of the Munk Dialogues, who will also be taking readers questions live during the broadcast on its Facebook page .
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/23/2020 – 20:29 - COVID-19 Is Not Like The Flu At All
COVID-19 Is Not Like The Flu At All
Authored by Ari Schulman, Brendan Foht, Samuel Matlack via The New Atlantis,
How deadly is Covid-19 compared to seasonal flu, past pandemics, or car crashes? It’s about the spike…
To offer context, we have produced two charts showing coronavirus deaths along with deaths from other common causes in the past to which the disease has recently been compared. One chart shows deaths for the United States, the other for New York, the state hardest hit.
Note that the data sets begin at different points in the year (as marked on the left). Also note that the figures shown here are for new deaths each week, not for cumulative deaths.
United States
The chart shows deaths per capita to allow for comparison of data from different years. Deaths are shown from:
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Covid-19, starting from February 17. (Covid Tracking Project)
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The 2017-18 flu season: This was the deadliest recent flu season. The chart shows one line for deaths attributed directly to flu, and another for deaths attributed to either flu or pneumonia. The smaller line is an undercount of flu-caused deaths, the larger is an overcount, with the real number lying somewhere in between. (More on this below.) The data begin on October 1, 2017, which the CDC considered the first week of that flu season. (CDC)
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Heart disease and cancer: The first and second leading causes of death in the United States. The chart shows total 2017 deaths averaged per week. (CDC)
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Car crashes: Weekly deaths beginning from January 1, 2018. (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration)
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1957-58 Asian flu pandemic: Weekly influenza and pneumonia deaths beginning from August 24, 1957. These data come from a contemporary CDC program that surveilled 108 American cities with a total population of about 50 million people. We have used that figure, rather than the total U.S. population at the time, to calculate deaths per million. (CDC)
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New York State
Because the number of weekly Covid-19 deaths in New York is now larger than the typical number of weekly deaths from all causes, we are omitting most of the individual causes from the chart. And because the state’s population has been highly stable over the time periods considered — decreasing by just 0.7 percent since 2017, according to the latest Census Bureau estimates — we have chosen to show both absolute deaths and deaths per capita. The causes shown are:
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Covid-19 deaths, starting from March 2. (Covid Tracking Project)
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The 2017-18 flu season, with week 1 beginning on October 1, 2017. (CDC)
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All deaths from all causes for the same period as the 2017-18 flu season. (CDC)
Note the markedly larger scale of deaths per million on the New York chart as compared to the United States — indicating how much harder Covid-19 has hit that state than the country as a whole.
Uncertainty about Flu and Covid-19 Deaths
There is considerably more uncertainty about how many deaths are caused by the flu than public discussion might suggest. Determining this number is not as simple as counting up death certificates listing influenza as the cause.
Many deaths have multiple causes. The flu can cause other illnesses, such as pneumonia, which in turn can cause death. The CDC thus includes “influenza-associated deaths” in its estimate of the toll of the flu. Conventionally, statistics often group together deaths from influenza and pneumonia. Furthermore, many estimates try to account for under-reporting of flu deaths: Not everyone who dies of an influenza-associated illness has been tested for the flu.
In short, the number of flu deaths as reported by the CDC and often cited in public discussions — between 24,000 and 62,000 deaths for this past season — is a rough estimate of how many people had the flu and died of illnesses that were likely associated with it, whether or not directly caused.
Instead of using estimates, on our U.S. chart, we have shown one line for deaths in which influenza was listed as a cause (which undercounts influenza-associated deaths); and another line showing deaths in which influenza or pneumonia was a cause (which overcounts flu deaths, as many pneumonia cases are not caused by flu).
With Covid-19, there are similar difficulties in arriving at the true number of deaths caused by the virus. Skeptics of the reported death counts have argued that most people who die with the virus don’t die of the virus. This is surely true in some cases, as it is with the flu. In many deaths, webs of causation are tangled.
However, in addition to some possible overcounting, there may also be significant undercounting. Reports from Northern Italy and New York suggest that far more people are dying in outbreak areas than are being reported:
In the first five days of April, 1,125 people were pronounced dead in their homes or on the street in New York City, more than eight times the deaths recorded during the same period in 2019, according to the Fire Department.
Many of these people — as well as many who die in hospitals — are not being tested for the virus, and therefore are not included in the official death counts.
The Deaths in Context
Even with the limits of the available data, we can still draw some reasonable conclusions about how Covid-19 compares to other causes of death — and about what these comparisons often miss:
Different time scales: We are still early in this pandemic. It has only been a few weeks since the first reported U.S. deaths. Comparing these deaths to, say, an entire year of deaths from car crashes or influenza is not meaningful.
A spike: Perhaps the most noticeable feature of both graphs is the Covid-19 spike — the rapid growth in deaths since the pandemic began. Car crashes, by contrast, show little variation week to week. And even compared to past flu seasons or pandemics, the rate of increase in Covid-19 deaths is markedly faster.
The number of new deaths reported in the U.S. in the week beginning March 16 was 678 percent higher than the previous week. In New York State, the number grew thirty-six-fold the same week. By comparison, the worst one-week increase in new flu and pneumonia deaths during the 2017-18 flu season was 26 percent, and during the 1957-58 Asian flu was 48 percent. Although the growth in Covid-19 deaths is now slowing, the number of new deaths for the week ending on April 5 was still more than double that of the week before.
A leading cause of death in the United States: Several weeks ago, coronavirus deaths were few in comparison with other causes. But last week, reported U.S. Covid-19 deaths were just shy of the normal rate from heart disease, usually the leading cause of death.
More than all typical deaths in New York: Strikingly, in the state of New York, the number of people who died with coronavirus last week was more than any other cause of death — in fact, 76 percent more than the average number who die in a week from all causes combined.
In the worst week of the 2017-18 flu season, New York saw 445 deaths from flu and pneumonia and 3,481 total from all causes. Last week, the state saw 4,694 reported Covid-19 deaths alone. These figures must put to rest the “dying with but not of” line of skepticism. The idea that this many people would have died anyway even without Covid-19 is simply not credible.
Any serious attempt to put coronavirus deaths in context by comparing it to some other cause of death in a previous year must acknowledge the marked differences in the Covid-19 trend — most notably, the rapid spike in deaths that is still underway, and the wide range of uncertainty about when it will peak, how high it will peak, and whether it will peak only once. As long as the pandemic is rapidly spreading, these comparisons will be fraught.
Perhaps a better way to state the danger posed by the coronavirus is just that we cannot easily compare it to any precedent in recent history. Nor do we need to dispute projections about future deaths to recognize what has happened already. Amid the statistical noise is a powerful signal. The question is whether we choose to see it.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/23/2020 – 20:25 -
- Credit Card Companies Are Cutting Limits For Riskier Customers As Millions Of Jobs Evaporate
Credit Card Companies Are Cutting Limits For Riskier Customers As Millions Of Jobs Evaporate
Many large and public companies have already hoovered up much of the ’emergency liquidity’ loans that were supposed to flow to small businesses, leaving small business owners with only one real option to salvage their livelihoods: putting it on the card.
Thanks to the American consumers’ insatiable love for debt, credit-card businesses endured boom year after boom year in the aftermath of the last crash, earning healthy margins from clients who like to carry a balance. Naturally, insurers and other large institutions (pension funds etc) bought up the bonds backed by these revenue streams like hotcacks. It was a good business.
However, even during the pre-corona “Before Time”, analysts covering those bonds warned that lending standards were growing too lax. In the event of an economic downturn, the bonds could be vulnerable.
Many consumers probably still remember how credit card lenders suddenly reined in credit limits for some riskier borrowers during the depths of the crash and its aftermath, leaving some customers, already scrambling to try and save their homes, with one fewer option.
Are we already seeing a repeat of this behavior?
Bloomberg reports that several major credit-card issuers have acknowledged reining in credit limits on riskier borrowers – some have indicated these might apply to existing customers, while others said only for new applicants – or making other adjustments to try to mitigate the risk of a mountain of balances drifting toward that 90-day-past-due territory like the Titanic toward an iceberg. Some banks even made a habit of stockpiling riskier bonds on their balance sheets in recent years due to shifting customer tastes (though overall, bank balance sheets are much stronger than they were during the runup to the crisis, some weak spots remain).
Discover Financial Services just became the largest lender yet to acknowledge it’s begun reining in lines of credit for new customers. In a regulatory filing late Wednesday, the firm said it’s also easing off efforts to sign up consumers and that it expects to take a hit from programs letting existing borrowers skip payments or delay the accrual of interest.
“As the number of loans enrolled in these programs increases, our financial results will be adversely impacted in the short term due to forgone interest,” Discover said.
The announcement came a day after Synchrony Financial, the company behind cards for J.C. Penney Co., Gap Inc. and American Eagle Outfitters Inc., said it will try to stem losses by closely managing customers’ accounts. In a conference call with analysts Tuesday, Chief Financial Officer Brian Wenzel said the firm is using its own vast trove of data, as well as information from credit bureaus, to “dynamically reevaluate a customer’s creditworthiness.” That means some may be allowed to spend more, but others less.
The defensive moves are a pivot for both companies, which more often give updates on marketing campaigns and their progress in building up interest-bearing balances. On a conference call with analysts Thursday morning, Discover Chief Executive Officer Roger Hochschild said efforts to curtail risk since the crisis began include conducting additional verification of employment and setting lower limits for new accounts, while offering fewer increases to existing cardholders.
“As part of our credit response to Covid-19, we haven’t made any changes in terms of closing inactive accounts or doing more line decreases,” Hochschild said in a separate interview Thursday. “We think it’s very challenging to do those now. Pulling away credit when they need it most can have tremendously adverse impacts.”
Angela Merkel made the point earlier that the coronavirus crisis is only just beginning. In all likelihood, we will be living with the virus, and its economic consequences, for a long time.
Americans might need to start getting used to the idea of living within their means – or at least closer to it. Unfortunately, for many, there aren’t any obvious alternatives.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/23/2020 – 20:05
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