- "Get On With Your Lives!" – Oxford Professor Says "People Have Become Overly Frightened" Of COVID-19
“Get On With Your Lives!” – Oxford Professor Says “People Have Become Overly Frightened” Of COVID-19
Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/24/2020 – 02:45Even though BoJo’s system of localized COVID-19 measures seems to be working, the unrelenting hysteria peddled by the British press has left millions of Britons traumatized.
Now, Carl Heneghan, a professor of Evidence-based medicine at Oxford University, is calling for the government to intervene and “proactively reassure” his young students that the coronavirus won’t kill them if they contract it.
He said exaggerated fears of the virus have led to “people going about their daily lives misunderstanding and overestimating their risk,” something with which many Americans can probably empathize.
And as parts of north Manchester remain on ‘partial lockdown’, the professor said introducing local lockdowns could do more harm than good by forcing people into their homes, potentially infecting other vulnerable people who live with them, especially as the temperature drops.
Professor Heneghan’s work has led to a lowering of the official death toll after he revealed COVID-19 deaths were being counted even if someone had subsequently died of other causes.
As we learn more about the virus, the pandemic could end up no worse than a bad flu season, the professor said, with a touch of hyperbole.
The UK’s large death toll may hint at a larger number of cases left undiscovered, some have argued. Others have blamed failures in protecting the vulnerable populations living in care homes.
Heneghan’s work ‘reframing’ how COVID-19 deaths are counted could eventually lead to the world seeing far fewer deaths than were actually reported (while many still went uncounted). But as we’ve come to understand how to treat COVID-19 more effectively, society hasn’t recalibrated its fear of the virus.
“We reset how we calculate the death rates. We now need to reset how we communicate the risks of the virus.”
“I am concerned people have become overly frightened and throughout this pandemic, the fear instilled in people has been a real problem.”
“Many people misunderstand and overestimate their risk of Covid. This uncertainty is leaving them highly anxious and affecting schools, offices and how we go about our daily lives. The government needs to intervene to explain to people their true risks.”
But as the death rate has declined, it’s notable that cases and deaths have continued to decline even as society has opened up.
It’s all just one more reason to support the Swedish approach.
- New Ebola Outbreak Reported In Congo, WHO Alarmed
New Ebola Outbreak Reported In Congo, WHO Alarmed
Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/24/2020 – 02:00Authored by Jack Philips via The Epoch Times,
A new outbreak of the Ebola virus has infected 100 people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Equateur Province, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), which said several dozen people have died.
The outbreak was first declared on June 1 in the province, and a cluster was first found in Mbandaka, the capital.
“The outbreak has since spread to 11 of the province’s 17 health zones. Of the 100 cases reported so far, 96 are confirmed and four are probable,” the agency said.
Some 43 people have died from the deadly virus, which causes hemorrhagic fever.
“The outbreak presents significant logistical challenges, with affected communities spanning large distances in remote and densely-forested areas of the province, which straddles the Equator,” said WHO.
“At its widest points, the outbreak is spread across approximately 200 miles both from east to west and from north to south.”
The agency said that providing relief to affected populations can take days. Supplies and first responders have to travel areas that don’t have roads and may have to rely on river boat travel, according to WHO.
Burial workers put on their protective gear before carrying the remains of Mussa Kathembo, an Islamic scholar who had prayed over those who were sick, and his wife Asiya to their final resting place in Beni, Congo DRC, on July 14, 2019. (Jerome Delay/AP Photo)
In the same province, an outbreak of Ebola occurred in May 2018, killing at least 33 people.
“With 100 Ebola cases in less than 100 days, the outbreak in Equateur Province is evolving in a concerning way,” said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti with WHO.
“The virus is spreading across a wide and rugged terrain which requires costly interventions and with COVID-19 draining resources and attention, it is hard to scale-up operations.”
Earlier in August, Congolese Ebola health workers protested over unpaid wages.
The provincial health minister, Bruno Efoloko, said the governor had concluded negotiations with the striking workers late on Monday afternoon. They were protesting against the health ministry’s recent publication of their pay scales, which they thought were too low, and the government’s failure to pay them since the start of the new epidemic, Keita said.
“The negotiations were successful. The laboratory is now operational,” Efoloko told Reuters, adding that some lab technicians had returned to work after the talks.
“The national ministry of health promises to examine their claims,” Efoloko said. “We will continue to educate others for an effective resumption of activities.”
In June, Congo celebrated the end of a separate Ebola outbreak in the east of the country, the second-worst on record, which killed more than 2,200 people over two years.
WHO said over the weekend that the current response is indeed in need of funding.
“Without extra support the teams on the ground will find it harder to get ahead of the virus,” said Dr. Moeti.
“COVID-19 is not the only emergency needing robust support. As we know from our recent history we ignore Ebola at our peril.”
He was referring to the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.
- The Thin Veneer Of American Civilization… Has Been Blown Away
The Thin Veneer Of American Civilization… Has Been Blown Away
Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/24/2020 – 00:00Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via NationalReview.com,
In a flash, it’s been blown away, revealing the barbarism beneath. The seeds of destruction were planted long ago…
Nine months ago, New York was a thriving, though poorly governed, metropolis. It was coasting on the more or less good governance of its prior two mayors and on its ancestral role as the global nexus of finance and capital.
The city is now something out of a postmodern apocalyptic movie, reeling from the effects of a neutron bomb. Ditto in varying degrees Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco — the anti-broken-windows metropolises of America. Walking in San Francisco today reminds me of visiting Old Cairo in 1973, although the latter lacked the needles and feces of the former.
At the present increasing rate of police defunding, homeless encampments, the emptying of jails and prisons, the green-lighting of rioting and vandalism, the flight of the wealthy, the revolutionary change to Skype/Zoom tele-working, and the exodus of upper-middle-class liberal families to safe houses in the New York and New England countryside, once beautiful New York City is in danger of becoming the nation’s aneurysm. That is, after the “recovery,” it and other blue cities may be seen as permanent weak veins and arteries prone to sudden fatal hemorrhaging that could implode at any moment, and thus may become metaphorically tied off, as the country reroutes around them.
In the old days of 2019, tolerant Americans more or less accepted that finely crafted statues of sometimes less than inspiring and formerly illustrious (to some) heroes were part of our history. For example, integral to California’s rich historical culture were its missions, acknowledged by Father Serra’s numerous eponymous streets and statues. No one in his right mind believed that renaming a mall named Serra at Stanford University would help mitigate the weekend murder rate in Chicago or the endemic poverty of illegal aliens in my own neighborhood.
The same allowance for imperfection by present standards was made for Robert E. Lee, a capable though not brilliant strategist, and by the standards of his time and space considered a good man who fought for a terrible cause. His name and likeliness were reminders to Americans of the tragedy of the Civil War that saw 700,000 Americans die in the struggle to end slavery. Focusing on inner-city gun violence or abortion or integrating the public schools with the scions of the white upper class might do far more for racial relations than toppling more bronze horses and riders. But that is the point: Focus on the irrelevant misdemeanor as therapy for ignoring the existential felony.
But that idea of live and let live with the past is ancient history now — and hundreds of decapitated and defaced statues ago. A mindless mob, appeased and enabled by a terrified establishment, has systematically and with impunity been destroying as many of the referents of American history as it can.
The fools of the bipartisan elite at first believed the iconoclasm was selective, rational, and measured. It was not. The point was never to fixate on the sins of the ancient slaveholder, or the European discoverer of America, or the author of Don Quixote.
Nor was the point to topple the bad in order to commission the better to take its place. (After all, for these statue-topplers, what icon might be substituted, given the array of their progressive heroes such as Wilsonian racists, mass-murdering Maoists, thugs masquerading as revolutionaries such as Che, or liberal icons like the eugenicist Margaret Sanger, or even the interment-signer FDR?)
The point instead was to destroy and deface most all images of America, from Frederick Douglass and Ulysses S. Grant to Lincoln and World War II heroes such as Churchill. The strategy of the Left was that if they could easily wage war on the bronze and stone of the past without repercussions, then as fear and terror mounted, they could turn to the flesh-and-blood enemies of the people in the present. Anyone who with impunity burns books — including the Bible — vandalizes memorials, defaces public buildings, or topples statues at night eventually gets around to trying out such violence on real people of the present. Portland is a good example, as the spoiled of the middle class seek each night to ignite a police station to roast the officers barricaded inside. Another is Chicago, where looters target high-end boutiques mouthing slogans of social justice.
Once upon a time, trying to torch a federal courthouse would earn years in prison. And simply taking over a large chunk of a downtown to re-create Lord of the Flies was unthinkable. Not now…
Today you can go to jail for reopening a gym that requires masks, social distancing, and constant cleansing with antiseptics.
But you will not go to jail if you assemble en masse to riot, unmasked, armored with makeshift padding, umbrellas, and helmets, and you’re free to shout and spray in the faces of officers and fellow looters and rioters alike.
Yet this is the hard phase, the Jacobin moment of the Revolution.
And we have not seen the full extent of the ongoing counterrevolution that will thin out the violent in the streets and in some ways fall more heavily on those who have empowered it. There will be a counterrevolution because without one there is not much of America left. And about 250 million people liked the America prior to March 1 and finally, in extremis, won’t so easily give it up. Washington and Lincoln, after all, do not just belong to some unhinged Antifa thug mad at America because he is mostly mad at himself. To almost every Jacobin tactic, from defunding the police to violent attacks on federal property, the people are opposed. And they make no apologies for their past or present.
What will the counterrevolutionary entail in areas beyond politics?
I wager that the NBA, the NFL, and perhaps even major-league baseball will soon have a come-to-Jesus moment. Either they will continue with the kneeling, the left-wing sloganeering, the mock-heroic logos, and the finger-pointing at their audiences, and thus slowly grow shriller and more irrelevant as Americans refuse to subsidize insults to their persons and country — or they will quietly return to the pre-Kaepernick world (as the NFL, for example, had in 2019) when politics was seen as bad business in a business, for-profit sport.
If the virus, lockdown, recession, and street violence have taught us anything, it’s that Americans don’t need LeBron James offering another pro-Chinese banality, another Kaepernick ad that hails his “courage,” or another appeasing quarterback fresh out of a North-Korean-like reeducation camp, apologizing for his now incorrect honoring of the flag.
The universities told us that they could charge $80,000 a year for the “campus experience,” that piling up $200,000 in debt for a B.A. degree was a wise investment, and that such campus intellectuals and progressives needed to pay no attention to the Bill of Rights. Fine. But all such nonsense was predicated on the belief that their brands were worth the cost, and the experience on campus was both unique and precious.
In the past year, the curtain pulled away and the con was exposed. You can stay home and tele-learn without stepping foot on a campus — a poor substitute for live teaching, but not so poor a substitute given the cost, the debt, and the indoctrination. The advantage of a Princeton or Stanford degree is now exposed not as proof of a superior education, but simply the purchase of a cattle brand to separate one’s future career from the herd — not much different from having Michael Jordan’s name on an otherwise pedestrian pair of tennis shoes.
At some point the public will want the federal government to turn over the student-loan-guaranteeing business to the universities, which will then cut costs. Endowments of such politicized and warped institutions will soon be taxed. And America will let go of the idea that a 21st-century B.A. degree has anything to do with knowledge, inductive thinking, and learning. After all, somebody “educated” those privileged, prolonged adolescents whom we see nightly in the streets, the environmentalists who leave trash and flotsam and jetsam as their trail, the woke who shout in the face of black police and arrogantly appoint themselves the anarchist brains of BLM, the compassionate who try to burn down, blind, attack the elderly, and destroy anything they cannot themselves create.
Polls show that Americans by overwhelming numbers now believe that the media are hopelessly biased. NBC and other networks and cable outlets are laying off employees. The no-holds-barred arenas of the Internet and social media are replacing newspapers and televised news as sources of public information — not because they are more accurate or less biased, but because consumers can access their bias and inaccuracy at far cheaper prices. Woke journalists have bragged that they no longer need to be anachronistically disinterested in the age of Trump. So why pay a marquee reporter $200,000 when you can get a comparable flack to write the same stuff online for a tenth of the price?
The Sixties generation is going out as it came in: gross, loud, and cowardly, destroying the very institutions for others that it so selfishly consumed for its own benefit.
If we wish to know why America’s veneer of civilization was so thin, and this year so easily scraped away, revealing barbarism beneath, look to a generation’s architects in the university, the media, sports, corporations, and politics who long ago seeded their cultural IEDs and are now giddy they are at last going off, though terrified that the ensuing blasts are reverberating ever closer to home.
- Gun And Ammo Sales Surge As America Transforms Into Violent Mess
Gun And Ammo Sales Surge As America Transforms Into Violent Mess
Tyler Durden
Sun, 08/23/2020 – 23:30Purchasing a gun is difficult these days, especially since demand is soaring as concerned Americans are arming up as the country transforms into a violent mess.
Readers have already been briefed, on multiple occasions, of the developing ammo shortage this year.
We first shined the spotlight on surging gun and ammo demand at the start of the virus pandemic. Then found demand for weapons and bullets rose in early summer as social unrest unfolded.
Now the Financial Times sheds more color from within gun and ammo manufacturers and distributors of the unprecedented demand in the last six months.
Arizona-based Ammo Inc, an ammunition manufacturer, reported 2Q20 revenues jumped 125% to $9.7 million. Fred Wagenhals, chief executive of Ammo, said there had been an “extraordinary” demand for its retail hunting, sports shooting, and self-defense products. He said the company is working through a record $45 million backlogs in orders.
Mark Hanish, Ammo’s president of global sales and marketing, described ammo demand for semi-automatic handguns and the AR-15 as “intense.”
“In past [election] run-ups, your traditional folks who were already gun owners would purchase more. This is brand new people,” Hanish said, attributing the influx of new buyers to the confluence of the pandemic, the election and concern about “civil unrest and uncertainty.”
Hanish said the spike in gun and ammo demand is more for self-protection rather than the fear of losing gun rights. As a result, he said, “I don’t expect people to go back to being complacent” should President Trump win in November.
Gun stocks soared this summer as Americans panic hoarded guns and ammo. Weapon background checks surged to record highs, rose 79% in July year-over-year amid pandemic fears and violent social unrest gripping major metros.
Another company, Clarus Corporation’s Sierra ammunition brand, reported a 36% increase in sales in 2Q20. The company explained the rise in ammo demand is due to “social and civil uncertainties and the upcoming US elections.”
In July, Sturm, Ruger & Co. told investors gun sales were up as personal protection became popular with Americans following social unrest. The company reported a 47% increase in gun and ammo sales in 1H20.
Olin Corp, the owner of the Winchester brand, said 2Q20 ammo sales were the strongest since 2016.
Vista Outdoor, the owner of brands including Bushnell rifle scopes and Federal ammunition, said:
“We’re seeing stockpiling happening to a certain degree, but the free time has given people more opportunities to recreate in real-time,” Vista Outdoor CEO Christopher Metz told investors.
If you haven’t figured out by now, America is getting more dangerous, society is imploding under the weight of depressionary unemployment – before you know it, there’s going to be a run on a bulletproof vest.
- Conways Announcement: KellyAnne Leaving White House And George Withdrawing From The Lincoln Project
Conways Announcement: KellyAnne Leaving White House And George Withdrawing From The Lincoln Project
Tyler Durden
Sun, 08/23/2020 – 23:16Authored by Sara Carter via saraacarter.com
White House Senior Advisor KellyAnne Conway and her husband anti-Trump Lincoln Project founder and lawyer George Conway made a stunning announcement Sunday night that both were leaving their very public and divided political positions to spend more time with their children.
KellyAnne posted her announcement on Twitter in a dropbox PDF belonging to her husbands account. In her announcement, which was not written on formal White House stationary she stated that her children must come first.
“I’m leaving the White House,” KellyAnne Conway said. “Gratefully & Humbly.”
I’m Leaving the White House. Gratefully & Humbly.
Here is my statement:https://t.co/MpYxVfrY2N
God Bless You All.
— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) August 24, 2020
The past four years have allowed me blessings beyond compare as a part of history on Election Night 2016 and as Senior Counselor to the President. It’s been heady. It’s been humbling. I am deeply grateful to the President for this honor, and tothe First Lady, the Vice President and Mrs. Pence, my colleagues in the White House and the Administration, and the countless people who supported me and my work. As many convention speakers will demonstrate this week, President Trump’s leadership has hada measurable, positive impact on the peace and prosperity of the nation, and on millions of Americans who feel forgotten no more.The incredible men, women and children we’ve met along the way have reaffirmed my later-in-life experience that public service can be meaningful and consequential. For all of its political differences and cultural cleavages, this is a beautiful country filled with amazing people. The promise of America belongs to us all. I will be transitioning from the White House at the end of this month. George is also making changes. We disagree about plenty but we are united on what matters most: the kids. Our four children are teens and ‘tweens starting a new academic year, in middle school and high school, remotely from home for at least a few months. As millions of parents nationwide know, kids “doing school from home” requires a level of attention and vigilance that is as unusual as these times. This is completely my choice and my voice. In time, I will announce future plans. For now, and for my beloved children, it will be less drama, more mama.
KellyAnne’s resignation letter contained a link to her husband’s Tweet, in which George Conway announced that he would be leaving the never Trump Lincoln Project to also be with his children and family.
“So I’m withdrawing from @ProjectLincoln to devote more time to family matters,” said George Conway. “And I’ll be taking a Twitter hiatus. Needless to say, I continue to support the Lincoln Project and its mission.Passionately.”
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
So I’m withdrawing from @ProjectLincoln to devote more time to family matters. And I’ll be taking a Twitter hiatus.
Needless to say, I continue to support the Lincoln Project and its mission. Passionately.
— George Conway (@gtconway3d) August 24, 2020
Listen to The Sara Carter Show here.
- Managing The Narrative
Managing The Narrative
Tyler Durden
Sun, 08/23/2020 – 23:00Some Americans continue to believe that when they go to the internet they will get a free flow of useful information that will guide them in making decisions or coming to conclusions about the state of the world.
That conceit might have been true to an extent twenty years ago, but the growth and consolidation of corporate information management firms has instead limited access to material that it does not approve of, thereby successfully shaping the political and economic environment to conform with their own interests.
Facebook, Google and other news and social networking sites now all have advisory panels that are authorized to ban content and limit access by members.
This de facto censorship is particularly evident when using the internet information “search” sites themselves, a “service” that is dominated by Google. Ron Unz has observed how when the CEO of Google Sundar Pichai faced congressional scrutiny on July 29th together with other high-tech executives, the questioning was hardly rigorous and no one even asked how the sites are regulated to promote certain information that is approved of while suppressing views or sources that are considered to be undesirable.
The “information” sites generally get a free pass from government scrutiny because they are useful to those who run the country from Washington and Wall Street.
That the internet is a national security issue was clearly demonstrated when the Barack Obama Administration sought to develop a switch that could be used to “kill it” in the event of a national crisis. No politician or corporate chief executive wants to get on the bad side of Big Tech and find his or her name largely eliminated from online searches, or, alternatively, coming up all too frequently with negative connotations.
Google, for example, ranks the information that it displays so it can favor certain points of view and dismiss others. Generally speaking, progressive sites are favored and conservative sites are relegated to the bottom of the search with the expectation that they will not be visited. In late July, investigative journalists noted that Google was apparently testing its technical ability to blacklist conservative media on its search engine which processes more than 3.5 billion online searches every day, comprising 94 percent of internet searching. Sites targeted and made to effectively disappear from results included NewsBusters, the Washington Free Beacon, The Blaze, Townhall, The Daily Wire, PragerU, LifeNews, Project Veritas, Judicial Watch, The Resurgent, Breitbart, Drudge, Unz, the Media Research Center and CNSNews. All the sites affected are considered to be politically conservative and no progressive or liberal sites were included.
One has to suspect that the tech companies like Google are working hand-in-hand with some regulators within the Trump administration to “purge” the internet, primarily by removing foreign competition both in hardware and software from countries like China. This will give the ostensibly U.S. companies monopoly status and will also allow the government to have sufficient leverage to control the message. If this process continues, the internet itself will become nationally or regionally controlled and will inevitably cease to be a vehicle for free exchange of views. Recent steps taken by the U.S. to block Huawei 5G technology and also force the sale of sites like TikTok have been explained as “national security” issues, but they are more likely designed to control aspects of the internet.
Washington is also again beating the familiar drum that Russia is interfering in American politics, with an eye on the upcoming election. Last week saw the released of a 77 page report produced by the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) on Russian internet based news and opinion sources that allegedly are guilty of spreading disinformation and propaganda on behalf of the Kremlin. It is entitled “Understanding Russia’s Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem” and has a lead paragraph asserting that “Russia’s disinformation and propaganda ecosystem is the collection of official, proxy, and unattributed communication channels and platforms that Russia uses to create and amplify false narratives.”
Perhaps not surprisingly, The New York Times is hot on the trail of Russian malfeasance, describing the report and its conclusions in a lengthy article “State Dept. Traces Russian Disinformation Links” that appeared on August 5th.
The government report identifies a number of online sites that it claims are actively involved in the “disinformation” effort. The Times article focuses on one site in particular, describing how “The report states that the Strategic Culture Foundation [website] is directed by Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the S.V.R., and stands as ‘a prime example of longstanding Russian tactics to conceal direct state involvement in disinformation and propaganda outlets.’ The organization publishes a wide variety of fringe voices and conspiracy theories in English, while trying to obscure its Russian government sponsorship.” It also quotes Lea Gabrielle, the GEC Director, who explained that “The Kremlin bears direct responsibility for cultivating these tactics and platforms as part of its approach of using information and disinformation as a weapon.”
As Russia has been falsely accused of supporting the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and the existence of alternative news sites funded wholly or in part by a foreign government is not ipso facto an act of war, it is interesting to note the “evidence” that The Times provides based on its own investigation to suggest that Moscow is about to disrupt the upcoming election. It is:
“Absent from the report is any mention of how one of the writers for the Strategic Culture Foundation weighed in this spring on a Democratic primary race in New York. The writer, Michael Averko, published articles on the foundation’s website and in a local publication in Westchester County, N.Y., attacking Evelyn N. Farkas, a former Obama administration official who was running for Congress. In recent weeks, the F.B.I. questioned Mr. Averko about the Strategic Culture Foundation and its ties to Russia. While those attacks did not have a decisive effect on the election, they showed Moscow’s continuing efforts to influence votes in the United States…”
Excuse me, but someone writing for an alternative website with relatively low readership criticizing a candidate for congress does not equate to the Kremlin’s interfering in an American election. Also, the claim that the Strategic Culture Foundation is a disinformation mechanism is overwrought. Yes, the site is located in Moscow and it may have some government support but it features numerous American and European contributors in addition to Russians. I have been writing for the site for nearly three years and I know many of the other Americans who also do so. We are generally speaking antiwar and often critical of U.S. foreign policy but the contributors include conservatives like myself, libertarians and progressives and we write on all kinds of subjects.
And here is the interesting part: not one of us has ever been told what to write. Not one of us has ever even had a suggestion coming from Moscow on a good topic for an article. Not one of us has ever had an article or headline changed or altered by an editor. Putting on my ex-intelligence officer hat for a moment, that is no way to run an influencing or disinformation operation intended to subvert an election. Sure, Russia has a point of view on the upcoming election and its managed media outlets will reflect that bias but the sweeping allegations are nonsense, particularly in an election that will include billions of dollars in real disinformation coming from the Democratic and Republican parties.
Putting together what you no longer can find when you search the internet with government attempts to suppress alternative news sites one has to conclude that we Americans are in the middle of an information war.
Who controls the narrative controls the people, or so it seems. It is a dangerous development, particularly at a time when no one knows whom to trust and what to believe. How it will play out between now and the November election is anyone’s guess.
- Colorado Debuts Weed-Vending Machines
Colorado Debuts Weed-Vending Machines
Tyler Durden
Sun, 08/23/2020 – 22:30A weed vending machine, the first of its kind, recently debuted at Strawberry Fields dispensary in Pueblo, Colorado, allows Coloradans to purchase cannabis in a contactless environment, reported The Know.
Matt Frost, the founder and CEO of Anna, the company behind the vending machines, said these “tricked out vending machines” are designed for customers to purchase flower, edibles, and vape oils without interacting with humans.
Frost said Starbuds in Aurora could soon be the second site for the machines. He explains the benefits:
“There are experienced cannabis customers who don’t necessarily need that one-on-one interaction with a budtender. They know what they want before they walk in, they’re ready to go in and out. By doing this we’re giving more time back to the people who do need hand-holding and want that education from a live person,” Frost said.
He added, “with COVID and social distancing and contactless, definitely, we have an appeal there, as well.”
Anna has four vending machines operating at Strawberry Fields. Customers can quickly check in to the machine via a digital display by entering their identification information. Once the product is selected, customers pay by cash or card. The machine will then dispense the weed as a standard vending machine does; the entire transaction takes a couple of minutes.
In addition to Colorado, Frost said his vending machines could soon debut in Massachusetts. He noted his machines could end up in gas stations and retail stores selling non-psychoactive cannabis products.
“The partnership that we’re about to strike I have to keep under wraps for now, but [it’s] a very significant CBD distribution opportunity that we’re excited about,” Frost said. “I think you”ll be seeing this rollout absolutely in the fall.”
With marijuana sales surging this year, and contactless transactions are all the rage today, it wouldn’t be shocking if weed vending machines are unveiled in other states.
- Trump Announces Emergency Authorization For Blood Plasma As Treatment For COVID
Trump Announces Emergency Authorization For Blood Plasma As Treatment For COVID
Tyler Durden
Sun, 08/23/2020 – 22:23Summary: President Trump announced that a coronavirus treatment that involves blood plasma from people who’ve recovered from the disease will be expanded to many more sick Americans after the FDA approved use of the therapy. “This is a powerful therapy,” Trump said during a White House press conference moments before futures opened. “Today’s action will dramatically expand access to this treatment.”
Trump said the FDA had concluded the treatment is “safe” and “very effective” although the therapy has yet to undergo the full set of clinical trials usually required of drugs seeking FDA approval.
As Bloomberg notes, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration confirmed Sunday, just ahead of Trump’s news conference, that it had cleared what’s known as convalescent plasma for use with certain patients. The move would make it easier for patients to get the product, which Trump has promoted even though its effectiveness remains unproven.
“Convalescent plasma has been a tried-and-true therapeutic treatment in prior outbreaks,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said at the news conference, while FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said researchers had seen a 35% improvement in patients treated with the convalescent plasma.
“We dream in drug devlopment of something with a 35% mortality reduction,” Azar said. “This is a major advance in the treatment of patients.”
Cynics have said that with the election
And here is the official statement from the FDA authorizing convalescent plasma as “Potential Promising COVID–19 Treatment “
FDA Issues Emergency Use Authorization for Convalescent Plasma as Potential Promising COVID–19 Treatment, Another Achievement in Administration’s Fight Against Pandemic
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for investigational convalescent plasma for the treatment of COVID-19 in hospitalized patients as part of the agency’s ongoing efforts to fight COVID-19. Based on scientific evidence available, the FDA concluded, as outlined in its decision memorandum, this product may be effective in treating COVID-19 and that the known and potential benefits of the product outweigh the known and potential risks of the product.
Today’s action follows the FDA’s extensive review of the science and data generated over the past several months stemming from efforts to facilitate emergency access to convalescent plasma for patients as clinical trials to definitively demonstrate safety and efficacy remain ongoing.
The EUA authorizes the distribution of COVID-19 convalescent plasma in the U.S. and its administration by health care providers, as appropriate, to treat suspected or laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 in hospitalized patients with COVID-19.
Alex Azar, Health and Human Services Secretary:
“The FDA’s emergency authorization for convalescent plasma is a milestone achievement in President Trump’s efforts to save lives from COVID-19,” said Secretary Azar. “The Trump Administration recognized the potential of convalescent plasma early on. Months ago, the FDA, BARDA, and private partners began work on making this product available across the country while continuing to evaluate data through clinical trials. Our work on convalescent plasma has delivered broader access to the product than is available in any other country and reached more than 70,000 American patients so far. We are deeply grateful to Americans who have already donated and encourage individuals who have recovered from COVID-19 to consider donating convalescent plasma.”Stephen M. Hahn, M.D., FDA Commissioner:
“I am committed to releasing safe and potentially helpful treatments for COVID-19 as quickly as possible in order to save lives. We’re encouraged by the early promising data that we’ve seen about convalescent plasma. The data from studies conducted this year shows that plasma from patients who’ve recovered from COVID-19 has the potential to help treat those who are suffering from the effects of getting this terrible virus,” said Dr. Hahn. “At the same time, we will continue to work with researchers to continue randomized clinical trials to study the safety and effectiveness of convalescent plasma in treating patients infected with the novel coronavirus.”Scientific Evidence on Convalescent Plasma
Based on an evaluation of the EUA criteria and the totality of the available scientific evidence, the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research determined that the statutory criteria for issuing an EUA criteria were met.
The FDA determined that it is reasonable to believe that COVID-19 convalescent plasma may be effective in lessening the severity or shortening the length of COVID-19 illness in some hospitalized patients. The agency also determined that the known and potential benefits of the product, when used to treat COVID-19, outweigh the known and potential risks of the product and that that there are no adequate, approved, and available alternative treatments.
The EUA is not intended to replace randomized clinical trials and facilitating the enrollment of patients into any of the ongoing randomized clinical trials is critically important for the definitive demonstration of safety and efficacy of COVID-19 convalescent plasma. The FDA continues to recommend that the designs of ongoing randomized clinical trials of COVID-19 convalescent plasma and other therapeutic agents remain unaltered, as COVID-19 convalescent plasma does not yet represent a new standard of care based on the current available evidence.
Terms of EUA
The EUA requires that fact sheets providing important information about using COVID-19 convalescent plasma in treating COVID-19 be made available to health care providers and patients, including dosing instructions and potential side effects. Possible side effects of COVID-19 convalescent plasma include allergic reactions, transfusion-associated circulatory overload, and transfusion associated lung injury, as well as the potential for transfusion-transmitted infections.
Mayo Clinic Expanded Access Program
The FDA initially facilitated access to convalescent plasma for treating COVID-19 by using pathways that included traditional clinical trials and emergency single-patient investigational new drug (IND) applications.
An Expanded Access ProgramExternal Link Disclaimer for convalescent plasma was initiated in early April to fill an urgent need to provide patient access to a medical product of possible benefit during a time that the FDA was working with researchers to facilitate the initiation of randomized clinical trials to study convalescent plasma. As the number of single patient IND requests started to number in the hundreds on a daily basis, the FDA worked collaboratively with industry, academic, and government partners to implement an expanded access protocol to provide convalescent plasma to patients in need across the country via the national expanded access treatment protocol. The program was developed with funding from the HHS’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), with the Mayo Clinic serving as the lead institution. To date, the program has facilitated the infusion of over 70,000 patients with convalescent plasma.
The EUA was issued to the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response.
The EUA remains in effect until the termination of the declaration that circumstances exist justifying the authorization of the emergency use of drugs and biologics for prevention and treatment of COVID-19. The EUA may be revised or revoked if it is determined the EUA no longer meets the statutory criteria for issuance.
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Watch Live: President Trump’s announcement is due to start at 1730ET:
“The FDA has issued an emergency use authorization … for a treatment known as convalescent plasma. This is a powerful therapy that transfuses very, very strong antibodies from the blood of recovered patients to help treat patients battling a current infection,” Trump said.
“It’s had an incredible rate of success. Today’s action will dramatically expand access to this treatment,” the president said.
Meanwhile, Axios reports citing two sources, that Peter Navarro had aggressively confronted FDA officials, saying, “You are all Deep State and you need to get on Trump Time.”
* * *
Update (2:30pm): Well, we can forget the speculation, discussed just moments ago, that Trump’s 5:30pm news conference – conveniently 30 minutes before S&P futures open for trading – in which he will deliver “very good news” involves the fast-tracking of an AstraZeneca covid vaccine as an FT article hinted earlier…
Important White House News Conference at 5:30 (sharp) today. Very good news!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 23, 2020
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… and instead both Bloomberg and StatNews report that Trump will announce that a new coronavirus treatment involving blood plasma from patients who have recovered from the disease, has received an emergency use authorization from the FDA, which is expected to clear for use with certain patients what’s known as convalescent plasma. The move, Bloomberg notes, would make it easier for patients to get the product, which Trump has touted even though its effectiveness hasn’t been proved.
Blood plasma is among a host of potential therapeutics that have been undergoing testing in clinical trials, StatNews notes adding that the hope is that infusions of antibody-rich plasma from those who have recovered from Covid-19 can be injected into ill patients, kickstarting their immune system and allowing them to fight off the virus until they can generate their own antibodies.
Trump’s decision to forge ahead is predicated by a study conducted by the Mayo Clinic and the National Institutes of Health which found that plasma treatments appeared to have a small but statistically significant impact on reducing mortality in hospitalized Covid-19 patients who received the infusions within three days of the onset of symptoms, compared with those who got plasma later.
Pouring cold water on Trump’s major announcement, however, Statnews notes that the decision, which Trump’s press secretary heralded ahead of time as a “major therapeutic breakthrough,” likely falls far short of that description, “and could generate intense controversy inside the administration and the broader scientific community.”
Convalescent plasma is neither “major” nor “breakthrough”
It has already been given to >70,000 #COVID19 patients and this EUA won’t significantly change standard of care.
Sadly we still don’t convincing RCT data that demonstrate its effectiveness after >5M cases in US… https://t.co/AqHZDhob1l
— Andy Biotech (@AndyBiotech) August 23, 2020
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Further indicating that the Trump announcement will lead to a firestorm of criticism among the scientific community, StatNews also adds that the move comes less than a week after officials at the National Institutes of Health staged a rare intervention to stop the FDA from issuing what is known as an “emergency use authorization” for blood plasma to treat Covid-19. NIH officials involved in the decision told the New York Times that more data, derived from randomized controlled trials, were needed.
The announcement also follows sustained pressure from the president on his own administration. Trump told reporters last week that U.S. officials were slow-walking clearance of blood plasma until after the November election. He also took to Twitter on Saturday to criticize the FDA for making it difficult to test vaccines and therapeutics, though he didn’t specifically mention plasma.
As Bloomberg further notes, Mark Meadows suggested part of the reason Trump tweeted about the FDA on Saturday is that he wants to make federal health agencies “feel the heat” to deliver results.
On “Fox News Sunday,” Meadows said “the announcement that’s coming today should have been made several weeks ago.”
“It was a fumble by a number of people in the federal government that should have done it differently, and having been personally involved with it, sometimes you have to make them feel the heat if they don’t see the light,” he said.
As an aside, the FDA has previously issued dozens of EUAs during the course of the coronavirus pandemic, for both diagnostic tests and some drugs, but at times has been forced to reverse course. Most notably, the FDA revoked an EUA for the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, which was personally touted by Trump as a treatment for Covid-19.
In any case, the fact that Trump’s announcement is the fast-tracking of a treatment – and not a vaccine – will not lead to a Trump popularity hit within his core base, because as we discussed earlier there is a sizable contingent within the US population – at least 36% according to a recent Gallup, most of whom Republicans – who have said they would not take a covid vaccine even if it was mandatory by law.
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Update (9:05ET): President Trump is expected to hold a press conference Sunday evening regarding a major therapeutic “breakthrough” for treating COVID-19, the White House said late Saturday night.
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany tweeted:
“News conference with President @realDonaldTrump at 6 pm tomorrow concerning a major therapeutic breakthrough on the China Virus. Secretary Azar and Dr. Hahn will be in attendance,” McEnany tweeted.
News conference with President @realDonaldTrump at 6 pm tomorrow concerning a major therapeutic breakthrough on the China Virus. Secretary Azar and Dr. Hahn will be in attendance.
— Kayleigh McEnany (@PressSec) August 23, 2020
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The press conference comes as the president on Saturday morning suggested the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was ‘deliberately’ slowing down clinical trials for therapeutics and vaccines for coronavirus.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi responded to the president’s comments, calling them “dangerous:”
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“This was a very dangerous statement on the part of the president,” Pelosi said.
“Even for him, it went beyond the pale in terms of how he would jeopardize the health and well-being of the American people.”
The FDA must approve drugs or vaccines based on their safety and effectiveness – NOT political pressure from the White House.
The President’s dangerous attempt to inject himself into the scientific decisions of @US_FDA jeopardizes the health & well-being of all Americans. https://t.co/Dt7CBVjX1D
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) August 22, 2020
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President Trump’s planned press conference this evening begins as US equity futures open for trading. Is Trump trying to jawbone markets higher? Or is this another push for HCQ?
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President Trump took a swipe at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in a pair of Saturday tweets, accusing the “deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA” of delaying human vaccine trials by “making it very difficult for drug companies to get people” (test subjects) so that trial results aren’t known until after the 2020 election.
“Must focus on speed, and saving lives!” Trump concluded, tagging FDA Commissioner Stephen Hawn, who he appointed to the role.
The deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA is making it very difficult for drug companies to get people in order to test the vaccines and therapeutics. Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after November 3rd. Must focus on speed, and saving lives! @SteveFDA
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 22, 2020
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Trump also slammed the FDA, rubbing the agency’s nose in their June decision to revoke its emergency authorization of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) for the treatment of COVID-19.
“Many doctors and studies disagree with this!” tweeted Trump – resurrecting a June 15th ‘Twitter moment’ noting the revocation.
Many doctors and studies disagree with this! https://t.co/fpLVJZMvHS
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 22, 2020
Hydroxychloroquine – used by many countries as both a front-line early treatment and a prophylactic against COVID-19 – saw sharp pushback from public health officials and Democrats after President Trump recommended it, almost as if the need to prove him wrong and push new treatments was more important than exploring whether HCQ was indeed effective if used early, particularly in conjunction with zinc and the antibiotic azithromycin.
Indeed, the first wave of studies on HCQ focused on mid-to-late stage COVID-19 infections, and found marginal improvement – or in one study, harm, from the use of the popular antimalarial drug. Since then, studies have emerged that HCQ is extremely effective when used early –
In July, the state of Ohio withdrew their ban on the use of HCQ to treat COVID-19.
he anti-HCQ push has infected Silicon Valley as well – as tech giants have been labeling pro-hydroxychloroquine content as ‘misinformation’ – most recently banishing a press conference by a group of doctors touting the drug from just about every platform.
To that end, Yale epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch has accused Dr. Anthony Fouci of waging a “misinformation campaign” against the drug – appearing on “Good Morning America” in late July where he further downplayed the drug – claiming that “the overwhelming prevailing clinical trials that have looked at the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine have indicated that it is not effective in [treating] coronavirus disease.”
Wrong.
Several new studies have shown efficacy if used early, while countries that have deployed HCQ in just that manner have significantly fewer deaths per million residents (via c19study.com, which tracks HCQ studies).
HCQ’s efficacy was known by mid-July, when the FDA removed its authorization:
It’s not perfect as HCQ was also used in Belgium and Spain and later in Italy, but the idea is that Western Europe as a whole never embraced the ‘treat early and often’ strategy. Mostly they tried it with sick patients, didn’t work..moved on
They mainly followed the WHO position
— Gummi Bear (@gummibear737) July 16, 2020
Meanwhile, over 700 physicians from all 50 states have called on President Trump to issue another Emergency Use Authorization on HCQ.
The physician signatories specialize in the following kinds of medicine:
Emergency: 47
Surgery: 74
Anesthesiology: 48
Cardiology: 20
Dentistry: 3
General/Family/Internal: 371
Neurology: 12
Pediatrician: 28
Psychiatry: 44
Radiology: 24
Women’s health: 30
Alternative: 20— Jenny Beth Martin (@jennybethm) August 22, 2020
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Dr. Fauci’s NIH is suppressing #Hydroxycholoroquine. @RealDonaldTrump should ask Dr. Fauci about NIH’s refusal to conduct or support real research on HCQ despite the likely efficacy of this safe drug as a #coronavirus treatment and preventative.
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) August 22, 2020
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- Media Deems Cashless Society A "Conspiracy Theory" (After Admonishing Cash Use)
Media Deems Cashless Society A “Conspiracy Theory” (After Admonishing Cash Use)
Tyler Durden
Sun, 08/23/2020 – 22:00Authored by Gavin Wax via HumanEvents.com,
Before there was a coin shortage, cash was under attack in the media, and ridiculously hailed as a COVID-19 hazard.
Now, it seems that news outlets have pivoted to making sure the public thinks of a looming cashless society as a “conspiracy theory.”
At the height of anxiety over the coronavirus, CNN berated the American people for using cash. “Do NOT take a bunch of cash out of the bank,” rang one headline; “Dirty money: The case against using cash during the coronavirus outbreak,” read another. CBS News similarly ran an anti-cash story at the time, as did other mainstream networks.
More recent stories, however, have pivoted to feign concern about the growing suspicion of an impending digital coup against paper and coined money. (It’s always fascinating to see how the media manipulates emotions, giving us something to be outraged about one day, and trying to calm us down the next day by trying to convince us we’re outraged about the wrong thing.)
“It’s a concern of some that all money would become traceable, which could be the case, but also could be avoided if systems were designed to provide privacy,” USA Today reported. That’s a big if. In fact, that’s the entire issue at stake, because, as I’ll explain, high profile promoters of cashlessness have an interest in gathering private information en masse.
The Associated Press similarly pounced on Facebook posts that reportedly suggested a “conspiracy” was afoot. “Posts circulating widely on Facebook are suggesting that the shortage of coins in the U.S. is a hoax because it doesn’t make sense for the currency to have ‘disappeared,’” the AP reported. (The literal interpretation of the word “disappeared” was the crux of this supposed fact check. It’s possible the journalists writing articles like those are genuinely concerned about the spread of misinformation, but the condescension is palpable and just feels paternalistic.)
Of course, Americans should be concerned about moves away from cash, and there is nothing wrong about questioning who would benefit and who would lose in a cashless society. If that makes you a conspiracy theorist in the eyes of the average journalist, so be it.
For one thing, big banks and financial institutions would reap obvious benefits, beyond saving on the costs of transacting in coins and paper as well as transporting them. A cashless world would also give these institutions a new resource to exploit: they would have that much more data to collect in bulk on their customers. It was just last year that Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said, “We want a cashless society.”
For another, there’s the intensity through which cashlessness is being defended. There is no downside to a cashless society for its fiercest proponents. They aren’t worried about finding a side hustle or working for tips. They aren’t kids trying to mow a lawn or who are otherwise priced out or regulated out of the market by minimum wage and child labor laws. The big players thrive in heavily top-down regulatory regimes. The smaller ones, who might moderately improve their standing (like freelancers or startup entrepreneurs), are often reliant on the freedom that cash provides.
Unfortunately, some leftist progressives are enthusiastically spearheading efforts to “help” people in lower economic strata enroll in the post-cash digital system. These initiatives entail subsidizing free checking accounts or other special access to the financial system. (At last, inclusiveness and equality will be guaranteed once that fascist cash is out of the way. The campaign slogan will go something like that).
Instead of policing social media posts for falsehoods (or, more accurately, words that imply falsehoods), journalists could provide more value for their readers by showing what’s valid about their reader’s concerns. There’s a cultural context, an economic context, and a political one too, that inform how a person may or may not feel about the coming cashless society. Each of these narratives, in fact, is more interesting than a “gotcha” fact-check—but they may not come with the sense of relief (or clout) one feels at discrediting a challenge to the prevailing narrative.
TO ELITES, IT’S CONSPIRATORIAL IF ANYONE BUT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT IT
There are more downsides to a cashless society.
In the era of Cancel Culture, other more nightmarish consequences are all too easy to fathom. The difference between being banned from social platforms and financial platforms is a matter of degree, and the latter is already happening.
Nevertheless, the advocates continue to drum up support for fintech adoption. For instance, many anti-cash advocates also tend to favor negative interest rates and much freer reign for central banks. Such policies are easier to enact without physical forms of legal tender.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has expressed his aversion to negative interest rates “for now” back in May, but President Donald Trump and other monetary theorists support the idea. Negative interest rates mean an end to traditional savings because, what’s not spent from your bank account, will decrease in value according to the newest negative rate. Thus, consumerism becomes all-encompassing and of far greater importance for economic activity. The permanent stimulus of an always-consuming market would become a compulsory force, rather than a relief amid a downturn.
So, the threat of a cashless society is real. It’s not just concocted out of fringe viral Facebook posts, but actually, a topic of ongoing and current discussion among the financial elite. Of course, how urgent the threat is in today’s fast-paced and unpredictable environment, people will have to decide for themselves. But just because people grew concerned about something that wasn’t media-generated doesn’t make it a conspiracy theory.
FROM COMMON USE TO MUSEUM ARTIFACTS—UNLESS WE DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT
The coin shortage, which is very real, does have a reasonable explanation though, given the lockdown and social distancing orders over the past six months. Smaller businesses are losing out to the likes of Amazon and other online retailers, so coins are being used much less. E-commerce is thriving under COVID-19.
“I think most merchants, especially small merchants and small-transaction merchants, would still prefer to take cash,” said K. Craig Wildfang in an interview with Axios. He is with the law firm Robins Kaplan, which is suing on behalf of retailers against card swipe fees.
Considering that over 90% of companies fail within two years of a disaster according to the US Small Business Administration (anything from political coups to hurricanes and, of course, pandemics), it is all but guaranteed that there will be fewer businesses around to fight for cash as an option, as long as COVID-19 lockdowns and related emergency orders carry on. Even larger chains, like CVS, Kroger, Walmart, are refusing to give physical change, instead choosing to donate the extra cents to charity or otherwise digitize the value for the customer for their next shopping trip.
More and more, physical coins are becoming legacy artifacts. As Clifford Thies at the American Institute for Economic Research explains, pennies cost more than their worth to produce. The time lost in counting them in transactions and transporting them also add to the total cost of using pennies. Thies estimates the use of pennies to cost up to $500 million per year, which may be more costly than simply rounding off prices to the nearest nickel, or dollar.
Thanks to monetary inflation, those same dynamics have an effect on nickels, dimes, and quarters, which are all produced with much cheaper metals than their original form required.
Meanwhile, note the record high prices of gold and silver. The US dollar is being (digitally) printed into oblivion, along with trillions upon trillions of dollars being summoned by the Congress to fund multiple COVID-19 relief bills. Cash may be the last bastion of value, as it retains some scarcity in relation to digitized dollars. And it’s important for people’s livelihood and freedom that it be defended vigilantly.
Don’t let the media shame you into complacence regarding a cashless society. It’s only crazy not to question such a system that clearly some have no qualms about forcing on us all.
- US Default Bomb Goes Off: 2020 Will Have A Record Number Of Large Corporate Bankruptcies
US Default Bomb Goes Off: 2020 Will Have A Record Number Of Large Corporate Bankruptcies
Tyler Durden
Sun, 08/23/2020 – 21:30The disconnect between the all time highs in the stock market and the broader economy has never been greater (with even Janet Yellen, one of the main architects of this disconnect, agreeing), and one of the places where this chasm is most glaring, is in the staggering number of major corporations filing for bankruptcy in 2020. Indeed, this year large US corporate bankruptcy filings are running at a record pace and are set to surpass levels reached during the financial crisis in 2009 (when the S&P was far from an all time high).
According to FT calculations, as of August 17, a record 45 companies each with more than $1 billion in assets has filed for Chapter 11 this year; this compares with 38 for the same period of 2009 during the depths of the financial crisis and is more than double last year’s figure of 18 over the comparable period.
In total, 157 companies with liabilities over $50 million have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this year and as we warned several months ago, many more are coming.
“We are in the first innings of this bankruptcy cycle. It will spread far across industries as we get deeper into the crisis. It’s going to be a bumpy ride,” said Ben Schlafman, chief operating officer at New Generation Research.
The spike in bankruptcies comes despite trillions of dollars in government aid to mitigate the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic on businesses, highlighting the catastrophic and lasting impact Covid-19 is having on the US economy. Or perhaps those trillions in government aid are going to the wrong recipients, and as a result companies that stand to benefit from mass defaults are now sporting record market caps. In fact, the irony is that in its pursuit to crush monopolies such as Amazon and Google, the government has made them bigger and stronger than they have ever been.
Meanwhile, with the US economy driving right over the fiscal cliff as Congress failed to extend emergency covid benefits, sending spending by those receiving Unemployment Insurance sharply lower…
… and millions of Americans about to lose their job (again), a new default wave is just waiting to be unleashed.
“Ending the $600 per week federal unemployment benefits will push tens of millions of Americans into, or uncomfortably close to, poverty. They won’t have the money to buy billions of dollars worth of goods and services. As a result, the entire economy will suffer. Small businesses will continue to suffer the most because they’re already precarious,” said Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s labor secretary.
For now, the brunt of the default wave has been felt by oil and gas companies as low (and on one historic occasion, negative) crude prices crippled dozens of businesses. There have been 33 filings to date according to the Oil Patch Bankruptcy Monitor from Haynes and Boone, including Chesapeake, Whiting Petroleum and Diamond Offshore Drilling. There were only 14 last year.
While not quite as bad as the E&P sector, retail businesses with assets of more than $50MM have also been severely affected with 24 filing for bankruptcy, a three-fold jump from last year. They have been among the hardest hit by the government-mandated lockdowns, which prevented stores from opening and drove consumers to online retailers such as Amazon. Burdened by debts, some of which were built up under private equity ownership, several prominent retailers have been forced to file for Chapter 11.
Some of the most iconic names that have filed this year include Neiman Marcus, which struggled for years with a heavy debt burden from its 2005 leveraged buyout by TPG and Warburg Pincus, and which finally filed for bankruptcy in May with liabilities of $6.7bn. JCPenney, also saddled with billions in debt, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May. Brooks Brothers, the venerable suit retailer that once counted Abraham Lincoln and John F Kennedy among its clients, did the same in July.
“The Covid-19 pandemic is reshaping consumer buying habits. Therefore, we will continue to see large retail, energy, and transportation businesses taking advantage of the tools provided by a formal bankruptcy to restructure to be more profitable and competitive in the long term,” said Deirdre O’Connor, managing director of corporate restructuring at legal services group Epiq.
And while several businesses tried to reopen in late May and June (and some amusingly tried to unfile for bankruptcy just so they were eligible for bailout loans), a recent flare-up in coronavirus cases and deaths in several US states choked the recovery, forcing many business owners to close again.
“It pains me to say this, but bankruptcy is a growth industry in America,” New Generation’s Schlafman dismally concluded.
- New York City Is Dead And It's "Only Going To Get Worse"
New York City Is Dead And It’s “Only Going To Get Worse”
Tyler Durden
Sun, 08/23/2020 – 21:00Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,
Former hedge fund manager and entrepreneur James Altucher says New York City is dead and it’s not coming back.
Born and bred in New York, Altucher took his family and fled to Florida after the Black Lives Matter riots in June when someone tried to break into his apartment.
Since then, the city has continued to suffer a huge surge in shootings and violent crime as well as an anemic financial recovery from the coronavirus lockdown.
Appearing on Fox News Business, Altucher referred to images that were broadcast during the interview showing 6th avenue to be virtually empty.
“We have something like 30 to 50 per cent of the restaurants in New York City are probably already out of business and they’re not coming back,” he pointed out.
Altucher said that despite offices in midtown being allowed to be open, they’re still largely empty because companies like Citigroup, JP Morgan, Google, Twitter and Facebook are encouraging their employees to work remotely from home “for years or maybe permanently.”
“This completely damages not only the economic eco-system of New York City…but what happens to your tax base when all of your workers can now live anywhere they want to in the country?” asked the entrepreneur, noting that many were fleeing to places that are cheaper to live like Nashville, Austin, Miami and Denver.
Warning that the situation was “only going to get worse,” Altucher said that the old New York was not coming back and that creative and business opportunities would now be dispersed throughout the entire country.
“What makes this different now is bandwidth is ten times faster than it was in 2008 so people can work remotely now and have an increase in productivity,” he added.
As we document in the video below, the blame for all this lies firmly at the feet of two people, Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio.
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- Four Reasons Why Morgan Stanley Believes The Covid Recession Triggered A Structural Shift Toward Higher Inflation
Four Reasons Why Morgan Stanley Believes The Covid Recession Triggered A Structural Shift Toward Higher Inflation
Tyler Durden
Sun, 08/23/2020 – 20:35In a time when the most important question in all of finance is whether “what comes next” is inflationary or deflationary, earlier today we posted an eloquent twitter thread in which the author presented a case why despite the Fed’s printers working overtime, the conditions for a sustained inflationary impulse are simply not there (read the full thing here).
That said, Morgan Stanley – whose bullish stock market outlook has been anchored on a reflationary view – vehemently disagrees.
As the bank’s chief economist Chetan Ahya writes, explaining why the Great Covid-19 Recession (GCR) left an “indelible mark” on the global economy which has resulted in a structural shift in inflation dynamics, “in the case of the GCR, the consensus is of the view that it will be an amplified version of 2008, where deleveraging dynamics took hold and the rebuilding of saving across balance sheets meant that it resulted in weak aggregate demand and persistent disinflationary pressures. Moreover, considering the magnitude of the shock, they also perceive that it will be a long time before we get back to the pre-crisis levels of output.” In contrast, Ahya – and Morgan Stanley in general, including Michael Wilson – has been arguing since early on as this crisis unfolded, that “the most important structural change is the return of inflation – specifically that inflation could rise above DM central banks’ targets, especially in the US.”
There are “four pillars” to the bank’s inflation thesis:
#1 – The V-shaped recovery: A key part of why MS expects inflation to emerge is because it anticipates a sharper but shorter recession. At its core, this recession was triggered by an exogenous shock in the form of a public health crisis. Coming into 2020, there wasn’t an excessive leverage build-up in the private sector and the banking system was in better shape than it was in 2007. This means that deleveraging pressures are more moderate and the financial system can still play its role as a key intermediary, unlike post-2008. Morgan Stanley therefore expects global and DM output levels to reach pre-COVID-19 levels by 4Q20 and 4Q21, respectively.
#2 – The policy response is very different… According to Morgan Stanley, “the policy response also matters in shaping the growth and inflation outlook and it has been timely, sizeable and coordinated (both monetary and fiscal easing).” The fiscal response in particular has been far more aggressive and quicker because, as the chief economist amusingly puts it “the recession is nobody’s fault” (and what if it had been, would the response be any different). A large fiscal response is important because monetary stimulus, expansionary as it is, would not be adequate to lift aggregate demand on its own. Interestingly, the recognition of this issue was growing before 2020. Hence, policy-makers knew that they had to act quickly on fiscal policy (almost as if they welcomed the covid shock). Moreover – and just to repeat the most amusing aspect of this entire argument – Ahya once again notes that “this time around, there were also lesser moral hazard concerns simply because the shock was exogenous.”
…and the use of active fiscal policy is here to stay: Next, the MS economist writes that “policy-makers were increasingly concerned about rising inequality and they recognised that monetary policy was a blunt tool which is not able to address the distributional effects”, if only they could recognize that their policies actually accelerated this rising inequality. The GCR exacerbated these concerns and left a deep scar on lower-income households. At the peak of the COVID-19 shock, 70% of the job losses in the US were in the low-income segments. Hence, the focus on unemployment and impact on lower-income households will mean that expansionary policies will remain in place for longer. Policy efforts to address inequality, and this we do not disagree with “will impart an inflationary impulse, particularly if the mix is skewed towards transfers to households.”
#3 – Risk of scrutiny of the interplay between tech, trade and titans will persist: Policy-makers’ “focus on inequality” will also mean that efforts to restrain trade could continue while there are risks of increased scrutiny of tech and titans. Trade tension is one such example, in which policy-makers had already begun to check the impact of globalization on inequality. However, as the interplay between this trio of tech, trade and titans has been a key driving force of disinflation in the past 30 years, disentangling them will also lead to a shift in the inflation dynamics.
#4 – Central banks are doubling down: At the same time, central banks – which supposedly are so very concerned about rising inequality (which their actions have caused) “have doubled down on their commitment to achieving their inflation goals.” The Fed is already emphasizing the symmetry of its 2%Y inflation goal (meaning after its September review, the Fed will go all-in on further debasing the dollar). Market-based real rates have already declined significantly, and a shift in strategy will allow the Fed to provide more accommodation.
As Ahya summarizes, “this confluence of factors has already led to a very different outcome for US inflation breakevens. They did not decline to the levels seen post the GFC and have also rebounded in a quicker manner to pre-COVID-19 levels.” Of course, one can argue – as we did – that as a placeholder between nominal and real rates, they are merely reflecting the record chasm that has emerged as traders fear to push nominal yields below zero in a time of YCC, but face no such constraints when it comes to real rates, but we’ll leave this argument for another day.
In any event, Morgan Stanley still – correctly – expects additional fiscal accommodation in the form of another fiscal package (especially since the current one has already ended and the result is a sharp drop in spending by those on UI). On monetary policy, the bank’s chief US economist Ellen Zentner expects the FOMC to codify this and update its framework at the September FOMC meeting, which then lays the groundwork for the FOMC to adopt forward guidance in the FOMC statement at the December meeting. “Both these factors should further bolster the case for inflation” according to Ahya.
And here is Morgan Stanley’s conclusion:
Just as the effects of deleveraging were underappreciated post-2008, we think that the effects that this Great COVID-19 recession will have on inflation dynamics are also not as well understood, with most investors still very much in the disinflation camp. But when we look back at 2020, it may well be that the most important structural change that COVID-19 gave rise to from a macro perspective will be this structural shift towards higher inflation.
To be sure, none of that should come as a surprise: after all the Fed has made it abundantly clear that its endgame goal is (asymmetric) inflation, and one way or another – with trillions more in QE or with direct payments to US households – it will achieve it. Now, whether readers agree with this is unclear, and with adherents of both the reflation and deflation thesis battling it out in the market every day, is why back in June we said that whether what comes next is inflation or deflation was, and remains, the most important question in all of finance.
- The Big Lie & The Robinhood Rally
The Big Lie & The Robinhood Rally
Tyler Durden
Sun, 08/23/2020 – 20:10Authored by Kevin Duffy via LewRockwell.com,
As cities burn and statues topple, the Nasdaq races to all-time highs. As unemployment explodes to levels not seen since the 1930s, gambling on dicey stocks soars. As private property becomes less secure, titles to property are bid higher. As businesses struggle to reopen, it’s business as usual for the great bull market in financial assets.
If the statisticians at the CDC are to be believed, 0.01% of the U.S. civilian labor force has died of the coronavirus in 2020. For a risk that compares to driving an automobile, much of the population was scared out of their wits and a third of the economy put on life support.
The Big Lie
Official narratives have proven far more contagious (and lethal) this year than any virus, and the supporting lies keep getting bigger.
Upon arrival of an unknown health risk in late February, the authorities promoted a top-down one-size-fits-all solution of universal isolation. The centralization of knowledge was assumed and market solutions not even considered. As “non-essential” businesses were shut down, corporate debt markets locked up and stocks lost one-third of their value.
To deal with the economic mess, only top-down government solutions saw the light of day, this time at a price tag of over $5 trillion in borrowed and printed money (with plenty more on the way).
With the death of George Floyd on May 25, caught on video for the world to see, the narrative shifted overnight from gray lives matter and “shelter in place” to “black lives matter” and protest in public. Never mind that Floyd had enough fentanyl in his body to kill him and that the officers on the scene may have acted to save him.
The mainstream media went into overdrive, promoting the well-rehearsed narrative of systemic racism. Keep in mind, 30% of the top 30 highest-paying celebrity endorsements last year went to blacks (even though they account for 13% of the population). Consumers generally don’t buy products endorsed by people they hate.
The third act in this play, reopening the economy, was met with fearmongering over spiking cases, despite evidence that this was due largely to increased testing and inflated by false positives.
(Apparently crowds looting and setting cars on fire were not a factor.)
Meanwhile, the weekly death rate has dropped 60% from its peak in April.
(Over the past week, there were 7,200 official deaths vs. 250,000 recoveries.)
All three deceptions are wrapped in the biggest of lies, that government has a magic printing press that will suspend the laws of economics and make it all go away.
Day trading madness
As it turns out, a fair amount of the stimulus money found its way into the financial markets. Evidently, the government’s economic advisors failed to consider the possibility that shutting down casinos while ordering people to remain home and mailing them $1,200 checks might give the green light to pile into the only casino still open: the stock market.
August 15, 2020
Speculation took off, especially among younger investors. Robinhood, favored by millennials, added 3 million accounts in the first quarter alone. (Charles Schwab has 14 million accounts in total.) According to CNBC,
Robinhood traders lived up to their outlaw name during the coronavirus market downturn. The young investors booked profits – trading stocks with some of the best returns in the past two months – while other Wall Street veterans were left scratching their heads.
Tempting the investment gods, CNBC flattered youth and mocked experience:
Young investors… appeared to have a prescient understanding of the market, unlike the billionaire hedge fund managers who said stocks would retest their lows. Longtime investor Stanley Druckenmiller – who misjudged equities’ comeback – said Monday that the market’s strong performance over the last three weeks has “humbled” him and that he underestimated the power of the Federal Reserve. Even legendary investor Warren Buffett sold his stake in airlines during the pandemic.
In the Twittersphere, the day trading parade is led by Dave Portnoy with 1.6 million followers:
I play the stock market like I play Monopoly. If I land on it, I’m buying it. I don’t care if it’s Baltic, I don’t care if it’s Park Ave… When I land on “Pass Go,” I try to buy Go. When I land in jail, I’m like, can I buy jail?… I just buy, buy, buy. That’s how I do stock market, that’s how I play Monopoly.
It’s hard not to laugh, but also to know what passes for parody and actual investment advice these days. Davey Day Trader, #DDTG, was recently invited to spend 20 minutes interviewing President Trump at the White House as both celebrated buying the dip in March. You can’t make this up.
How to wreck an economy
2020 has been a textbook example of how to inflict maximum economic damage.
Let’s review:
1) The media incites a panic over a severe novel case of the flu. Have state governors use this as a pretext to shut down a third of the economy.
2) With the social fabric frayed, the media segues to racial protests. Allow bad apples to destroy property and have the police stand down while the mob takes over.
3) Pass trillions in money printing and stimulus, preventing the market from adjusting to rapidly changing events. Incentivize unemployment by paying people an extra $600 a week to sit at home and day trade.
4) Unwittingly turn speculators loose, sending false signals to economic actors.
5) After you’ve crippled many small businesses with #1-4, regulate them to death, adding costs they can’t afford and inconveniences their customers don’t want.
Déjà vu all over again
Anyone who experienced the tech bubble of the late 1990s must be feeling a profound sense of déjà vu. The internet was a paradigm shift creating a New Economy in which enlightened central bankers would prevent any serious downturn. Silicon Valley was booming. Wall Street was cranking out hot IPOs (initial public offerings) and repackaging companies by adding “.com” to the name in order to keep up with seemingly insatiable demand from the public.
The prevailing mood among investors was that making money was easy. Youth was elevated and wisdom discarded. Profits didn’t matter. What mattered was “first mover advantage” and “eyeballs.” Those who were too old to grasp the new rules just didn’t “get it.” They were stuck in the Old Economy.
February 22, 1999
I remember when the late Ed Bradley of 60 Minutes did a story about the dot-com mania. The young entrepreneurs he interviewed had a religious zeal, like they had been chosen for a higher calling. One even had the audacity to tell Bradley he was a dinosaur and that his job was targeted for extinction.
It is hard to escape the parallels with today’s mania for technology stocks, venture capital, day trading, hot IPOs and youthful exuberance. There are two critical differences: the backdrop for the 2000 vintage was a booming economy and the dollar amounts were much lower. In 2000, Microsoft, GE and Cisco Systems broke the $500 billion barrier for market capitalization. On August 13, Apple hit $2 trillion.
Perhaps it is a rite of passage that every generation must take part in some sort of speculative madness. Today’s millennials seem ideologically wired to believe in the upward slope of technological progress, conflate virtue signaling with investing, underestimate the economic damage from trillions of dollars of stimulus, and place their unswerving faith in the Fed.
Tesla has become the poster child of the millennial bubble, p.c. bubble, EV bubble and VC bubble. Its stock commands a market value of $412 billion, more than BMW, Daimler, Volkswagen, Toyota and General Motors combined. Believe it or not, some traders are actually confusing Tesla (symbol “TSLA”) with micro-cap Tiziana Life Sciences (symbol “TLSA”).
Of course, amateur hour at the casino has a silver lining. Experienced poker players salivate when the patsies show up.
(This article was excerpted from the latest issue of The Coffee Can Portfolio.)
- US Bill Seeks To Ban Title "President" For China's Xi Jinping
US Bill Seeks To Ban Title “President” For China’s Xi Jinping
Tyler Durden
Sun, 08/23/2020 – 19:45A new bill introduced in Washington seeks to change the way the federal government refers to the leader of China, prohibiting the use of the term “president”, and will – if passed – lead to a dramatic escalation in already tense relations between the two superpowers. According to the SCMP, the “Name the Enemy Act” would require that official US government documents instead refer to the head of state according to his or her role as head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, holds three official titles, none of which is “president”: head of state (guojia zhuxi, literally “state chairman”); chairman of the central military commission; and general secretary of the CCP. However, in the English-speaking world, Xi has generally opted for “president”, which critics say “offers unwarranted legitimacy” to an unelected leader.
Introduced by Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, the House bill would prohibit the use of federal funds for the “creation or dissemination” of official documents and communications that refer to the China’s leader as “president”. A spokesperson for Perry, who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, did not respond to a SCMP request for comment on the extent to which “communications” would include public statements and remarks by US officials.
“Addressing the head of state of the People’s Republic of China as a “president” grants the incorrect assumption that the people of the state, via democratic means, have readily legitimised the leader who rules them,” the legislation states.
The bill singles out China, despite the fact that presidents in numerous countries are either unelected or in power resulting from elections that are not considered free and fair.
The legislation comes as top cabinet officials, led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have begun abandoning the term “president” in favor of “general secretary.” A White House report in May outlining Washington’s strategic approach to China used Xi’s party title exclusively.
The bill “formalises something that we’ve been taking note of in administration statements,” said Anna Ashton, head of government affairs at the US-China Business Council.
While Trump has not followed suit, he has stopped referring to Xi as a “friend” as relations between the two countries continue to sour. “I don’t want to talk to China right now,” he said last Tuesday.
Perry’s bill comes amid strategic efforts by the Republican Party to increase criticism of the Chinese government. In recent months, Perry has introduced a flurry of aggressive and somewhat unlikely bills related to China, including legislation that would cut US funding to the United Nations until the body expels China and recognizes Taiwan, and bills that would authorize the US president to recognize Hong Kong and Tibet as countries independent from China. Those bills have languished upon introduction, failing to gain support from any of Perry’s colleagues.
To be sure, the bill faces an uphill battle in the few months left to this congressional session, with legislative efforts related to the coronavirus pandemic and the November elections looming large on lawmakers’ agendas.
“I can’t imagine it will move this session,” one Democratic House aide, not authorized to speak publicly, said of the Name the Enemy Act. Any bill that has not reached the president’s desk by the session’s close in early January is wiped off the docket, and must be reintroduced the following session.
Ashton said that Perry’s bill was less likely to “gain steam” than China-related bills tackling other, more weighty subjects, such as forced labour, supply chains, and regulation of Chinese companies listed on US exchanges.
- Oregon May Soon Decriminalize Low-Level Possession Of All Drugs, Massively Reducing Arrests
Oregon May Soon Decriminalize Low-Level Possession Of All Drugs, Massively Reducing Arrests
Tyler Durden
Sun, 08/23/2020 – 19:20Authored by Elias Marat via TheMindUnleashed.com,
With opinions changing across the country over the need for urgent criminal justice reform, there’s no time like the present to enact a much-needed overhaul of laws that criminalize poverty and social ills such as drug use. And this November, voters in Oregon will have an opportunity to decriminalize the low-level possession of all drugs.
Under the proposed Measure 110, or the Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act, the low-level possession of illegal substances would be reclassified from a misdemeanor to a violation, punishable by either a $100 fine or a health assessment.
Drug trafficking would remain a felony offense, while substantial possession of drugs would be reduced to a felony. Rehabilitation services would be expanded under the measure, and 24-hour Addiction Recovery Centers would also be opened.
By effectively decriminalizing the small-scale possession of drugs, the proposed measure would effectively halt one of the most pernicious means by which the “War on Drugs” has adversely impacted communities of color and poor communities that have suffered disproportionate over-policing and mass incarceration.
According to the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission, the reclassifications proposed by the measure would see roughly 1,800 fewer Oregon residents facing conviction for felony possession of a controlled substance annually – leading to a mammoth 95-percent drop from current conviction rates.
The report from the commission also found that Measure 110 would be of particular benefit for communities of color, with racial disparities in arrests and convictions falling “substantially.” However, the benefits would also cut across the board – with Black people seeing a fall in arrests by 93.7 percent and an 82.9-percent fall for Asians, 86.5 for Hispanics, 94.2 for Native Americans, and 91.1 for whites.
The report also notes that “inequities [may] exist in police stops, jail bookings, bail, pretrial detention, or other areas” but there is not “sufficient or appropriate data to examine those stages.”
The state would fund Measure 110’s addiction programs, which are expected to cost $57 million yearly, entirely through excess taxes collected on cannabis sales. Current tax revenue from cannabis sales are expected to yield $182.4 million from 2021 to 2023. And as tax revenues increase and decriminalization incurs further savings for the state, petitioners for the Yes for 110 Campaign predict that even more funds can be reallocated to help treat and rehabilitate drug addicts.
Supporters of the measure have been enthusiastically organizing online, and have found that many Oregonians are on the same page with them over the need to end the failed “War on Drugs” and pursue an alternative course to tackle widespread drug addiction.
“There’s no playbook for how to campaign in a pandemic,” said Anthony Johnson, one of the chief petitioners for the campaign. However, he’s confident that the measure has “a really good chance of winning” come November.
“Our communications with voters all across the state shows that voters understand that the status quo is not working,” Johnson added. “We’re clearly not going to arrest our way out of addiction.”
A large number of prominent groups and individuals have backed the measure. This includes trade unions, faith groups and churches, groups representing Asian, Black, Indigenous and Latino communities, human rights organizations, several county district attorneys, and even drug policy reform advocates from the ranks of police.
Oregon is no stranger to blazing new trails in drug policy and criminal justice reforms. In 2014, the state legalized cannabis through a 2014 ballot measure, while a 2017 law drastically reduced the penalty for possessing small quantities of cocaine, LSD, and other substances. This November, Oregonians will also have the opportunity to end the prohibition of psilocybin or “magic” mushrooms and establish a new statewide framework for licensed psilocybin therapy treatment centers.
- Another NYC 'War Zone' Weekend: Over 30 Shot, Many Of Them Bystanders, In Violence Reminiscent Of 1980s
Another NYC ‘War Zone’ Weekend: Over 30 Shot, Many Of Them Bystanders, In Violence Reminiscent Of 1980s
Tyler Durden
Sun, 08/23/2020 – 18:55Last weekend we detailed how over a mere three day period from Aug.13 through Aug.15, a whopping 49 people were shot, which was five times more than the eight who were shot during the same 72 hours last year, according to data in the Washington Examiner.
And tragically the trend appears not some aberration but signals the city is fast becoming a war zone now with another deadly subsequent weekend. NYPD sources and local media already count more than 30 people shot so far this weekend.
This brings NYC to more than 1,000 total shooting incidents across the city year to date, already double all of last year, and the summer is not even over — a summer which ironically has witnessed a supposed heightened consciousness and awareness of police shootings of black Americans given the ongoing George Floyd and Black Lives Matters protests.
Image source: NY Daily News But in the case of New York City’s explosion of gun violence, people are being killed with the police far away from the scene, though in one instance over a week ago, it was a black police officer shot in Queens while looking for a parking spot merely a mile from his home.
And this weekend, according to local PIX11 News:
Citywide, there were at least 25 shootings that injured 31 people on Friday and Saturday, police said. Officers responded to 16 shootings on Saturday and nine on Sunday.
At least three of those shootings happened within just blocks of each other in Coney Island, according to police.
Among these, there were seven deaths between Friday and Sunday morning, according the NYPD, including a 25-year-old mother of three children.
Priscilla Vasquez was described in local reports as shot in the back of the head by an unknown gunman in the early morning hours of Saturday while standing on a sidewalk in front of a public school, just around the corner from her Bronx home.
Underscoring the senseless and often random nature of much of the violence, her friends and family don’t think she was the intended targeted, also given the gunman appeared to fire wildly and haphazardly.
🚨WANTED for HOMICIDE: Do you know this person? On 8/22 at approximately 5:20 AM, in front of 335 East 152nd St in the Bronx, a 25-year-old female was shot, causing her death. Call 800-577-TIPS, or DM @NYPDTips with any info. All calls are anonymous. pic.twitter.com/UkuthtAHYi
— NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) August 23, 2020
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In another incident, a man in Queens was shot and killed while simply playing in a basketball tournament that was also part of a barbecue at a local park. Interestingly, news reports accompanying the tragic death actually blame lack of police presence for the violence there. Local residents are reportedly angry that police routinely “stay away” — something, it should be noted, that national BLM protests have demanded all along.
“We’ve been complaining about that park forever. It’s always dark,” said nearby resident Elaine Bailey. “That park is notorious. It’s been like that for years. It’s a known drug location,” she said of the site near 207 St. and Hillside Ave. in Hollis. “We complain about the drug dealing. Nobody does anything. This was bound to happen. If you’re going to commit a crime, it’s the best place to commit a crime.”
And one of the largest single shootings involved four victims shot in Coney Island Sunday morning, with the youngest victim, a 27-year old man, dying of his injuries.
Gang member carries out three shootings after being freed without bail: prosecutors https://t.co/GN1VUSWsv0 via @nypmetro
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) August 5, 2020
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Meanwhile, as even The Washington Post has observed, the latest nixing of frontline crime fighting units doesn’t seem to be going so well:
“In June, the New York Police Department disbanded its controversial anti-crime unit — the plainclothes officers whose mission, to rid the streets of guns, once relied on a practice known as ‘stop and frisk’ later exposed to have disproportionately targeted innocent Blacks and Latinos.”
Instead this was substituted with more “community engagement” initiatives, though the criminals with guns don’t appear to have gotten the memo — or more cynically perhaps they’ve simply interpreted the lessened law enforcement presence as a license to kill.
On that note, FT published the below chart in mid-July, which covers the period which saw the fiercest protests in major American cities against the police killing of George Floyd.
Pressure has remained on city councils across the country to either shut down whole police departments or at least specific anti-crime units.
The result is that (at minimum it shouldn’t be hard to see correlation if not causation), as WaPo wrote, “The gun violence plaguing New York is reminiscent of the 1980s and ’90s. Authorities have recorded about 900 shootings so far this year, up from around 500 through the beginning of August 2019.”
- A Love Letter To The Fed From The Adoring Stock Market
A Love Letter To The Fed From The Adoring Stock Market
Tyler Durden
Sun, 08/23/2020 – 18:30Authored by Michael Regan via Bloomberg (emphasis ours),
Dear Fed,
Hey there! It’s me, the stock market. I know it’s weird to write you like this, but I felt like I needed to drop a quick thank-you note for everything you’ve done for me this year. I mean, your big ol’ balance sheet is almost $3 trillion larger since early March! You’re backing up the truck and loading it with Treasuries and corporate bonds and bond ETFs, all to keep the competition to stocks from fixed-income yields as limited as Jim Cramer’s understanding of me. It’s been a dream come true, honestly. I mean, fess up: Have you been reading my diary?!
Maybe you’ve noticed, but everything else is a royal mess. Covid-19 is still killing people. Parents are dreading the beginning of “school.” U.S. unemployment is still above 10%, higher than it’s been since the 1980s. The country is facing the biggest economic contraction in its history. Corporate profits are plunging. The recession is forecast to continue at least through the first quarter of next year. And me? I’m soaring! Have you seen these record highs I’ve been setting?
To be honest with you, it’s getting kind of wild – and I’ve seen plenty of weirdness before. I’m more popular with sports fans than March Madness! Of course, there was no March Madness this year, so that’s not really a fair comparison – kind of like comparing my dividend payouts to yields in the bond market. Amirite, or amirite? LOL!
But I’m not kidding when I say things are getting REALLY weird. Have you heard of Dave Portnoy, aka Davey Day Trader, yet? He was just some middling internet celebrity until suddenly he’s going viral for using Scrabble tiles to pick stock ticker symbols. The Robinhood set thinks he’s smarter than Warren Buffett! This probably isn’t going to end well, I’ll tell you that much.
Speaking of Robinhood, that whole Hertz saga was about as weird as it gets. A rental car company was trying to sell new shares while in bankruptcy court, because its stock price was on a tear? Let me repeat that: Hertz. Sold. Shares. While. In. Bankruptcy. I can’t even! You’re sure keeping your pals over at the SEC busy! I mean, it’s so weird out there, Bloomberg Businessweek is resorting to cringeworthy satire to make sense of it all.
Speaking of cringey, what was up with the minutes from your last meeting? Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t actually read them. If I had the attention span for that type of stuff, you’d call me the bond market. Of course, the bond market did read the minutes, and it thinks you’re being a little rude for not wanting to keep the party going. Look, I learned this lesson the hard way—and I sort of thought you did, too—so it bears repeating: Just do whatever the bond market says, OK? It’s bigger, better educated, and a sharper dresser than the both of us.
So please do me a solid and keep this thank-you note in mind when you host your virtual Jackson Hole summit. No cowboy stuff, OK? If I hear anybody mutter something about “irrational exuberance,” I swear I’m gonna blow my top and hurt a few of these Robinhood types, you got that? The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. It’s what I do—and I’m good at it! But right now, this is still a lot of fun for me…
… and when I do end up burning folks, do you really want to be the one who gets thrown under the bus?
I mean, you know you’re going to catch all the blame, right?
C’mon, Fed. We both know you’re smarter than that. What’s another few trillion?
With sincere and deepest gratitude,
The Stock Market
- "Where's Our Fu*kin' Bailout?": Ice Cube Slams Democrats For Abandoning Blacks
“Where’s Our Fu*kin’ Bailout?”: Ice Cube Slams Democrats For Abandoning Blacks
Tyler Durden
Sun, 08/23/2020 – 18:25Rapper Ice Cube has cooled on the Democratic party, complaining in a Saturday rant that the DNC has financially abandoned the black community, and that even if Trump is voted out of office – “then what?”
Translation: where’s our money Nancy?
The 50-year-old entertainer, whose real name is O’Shea Jackson, added that Black small business owners were shut out of the trillions allocated by Congress into the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).
According to the New York Times, businesses owned by blacks had a harder time receiving federal aid, for which they can thank the banks which issued the loans.
“Where’s our fucking bailout?” asked the rapper, who’s launched a COVID-19 fundraiser and a charity clothing line to support Autism, but not blacks.
But what’s in it for us? pic.twitter.com/GOvptKnoF1
— Ice Cube (@icecube) August 22, 2020
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“A lot of people getting up [at the DNC] talking and everybody really eating it up, throwing their hands in the air like they just don’t care — but what I didn’t hear was: what’s in it for us?” he said, adding “What’s in it for the Black community? Besides the same old thing we’ve been getting from these parties. What’s in it for us, for real?“
“I didn’t hear anybody mention a contract with Black America — and I don’t know why because it’s one of the most comprehensive reform documents that’s come about in a long time that could really address the problem. But the way it looks, they don’t have a plan,” he continued.
“They just pulled three trillion dollars out they ass and gave it to they friends.”
It’s almost as if Democrats went from slave ownership and segregation to promising blacks handouts for six decades in order to maintain power.
- Uber Eats Found To Be Underpaying Drivers On 30% Of Trips, Programming Sleuth Finds
Uber Eats Found To Be Underpaying Drivers On 30% Of Trips, Programming Sleuth Finds
Tyler Durden
Sun, 08/23/2020 – 18:05As the controversy of how Uber classifies its employees in California drags on, Uber Eats could find itself dealing with another set of very real legal problems – very soon. That’s because a programmer and Uber Eats driver says he has built a tool that provides evidence that the service has been “consistently underpaying employees”, according to Business Insider.
And based on the company’s reaction to his findings, it appears his evidence is spot on.
Computer scientist Armin Samii, who also has worked part time as an Uber Eats driver, built a Chrome browser extension called “UberCheats” that helps drivers track their trips and pay. The extension seems to show Uber shorting drivers on between 25% to 30% of trips.
Drivers are paid per-mile and Samii says that, on average, Uber was not paying drivers for 2.5 miles per delivery. For example, it would pay drivers for 1 mile on a 3.5 mile trip.
Samii said he had multiple “back and forths” with Uber customer service who admitted it was a bug and paid him the money he was owned based on his own data.
Samii said:
“This is pretty widespread and pretty egregious. And I don’t think Uber has any plans to fix it.”
Uber had also been accused in the past of making changes to its Uber Eats pay structure and software that resulted in pay reductions for drivers by luring them into taking less profitable trips.
The allegations couldn’t come at a worse time for Uber – or its drivers. The company has been dealing with anti-freelancing laws in California that have all but threatened to shut down their business in the state. Meanwhile, drivers like Samii are turning to Uber after losing their full time jobs as a result of the pandemic, and existing drivers arguably need the pay now more than ever.
Meanwhile, drivers continue to take significant healthcare risks by driving in the midst of the pandemic without access to healthcare, sick pay or paid time off. Perhaps a karmic rebalancing for Uber is in order after all…
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