- How The "West Point Mafia" Runs Washington
How The “West Point Mafia” Runs Washington
Authored by Danny Sjursen via TomDispatch.com,
Every West Point class votes on an official motto. Most are then inscribed on their class rings. Hence, the pejorative West Point label “ring knocker.” (As legend has it, at military meetings a West Pointer “need only knock his large ring on the table and all Pointers present are obliged to rally to his point of view.”) Last August, the class of 2023 announced theirs: “Freedom Is Not Free.” Mine from the class of 2005 was “Keeping Freedom Alive.” Each class takes pride in its motto and, at least theoretically, aspires to live according to its sentiments, while championing the accomplishments of fellow graduates.
But some cohorts do stand out. Take the class of 1986 (“Courage Never Quits”). As it happens, both Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are members of that very class, as are a surprisingly wide range of influential leaders in Congress, corporate America, the Pentagon, the defense industry, lobbying firms, big pharma, high-end financial services, and even security-consulting firms. Still, given their striking hawkishness on the subject of American war-making, Esper and Pompeo rise above the rest. Even in a pandemic, they are as good as their class motto. When it comes to this country’s wars, neither of them ever quits.
Once upon a time, retired Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute (Class of ’75), a former US Ambassador to NATO and a senior commander in Iraq and Afghanistan, taught both Esper and Pompeo in his West Point social sciences class. However, it was Pompeo, the class of ’86 valedictorian, whom Lute singled out for praise, remembering him as “a very strong student—fastidious, deliberate.” Of course, as the Afghanistan Papers, released by The Washington Post late last year, so starkly revealed, Lute told an interviewer that, like so many US officials, he “didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking in Afghanistan.” Though at one point he was President George W. Bush’s “Afghan war czar,” the general never expressed such doubts publicly and his record of dissent is hardly an impressive one. Still, on one point at least, Lute was on target: Esper and Pompeo are smart, and that’s what worries me (as in the phrase “too smart for their own good”).
Esper, a former Raytheon lobbyist, had particularly hawkish views on Russia and China before he ever took over at the Pentagon and he wasn’t alone when it came to the urge to continue America’s wars. Pompeo, then a congressman, exhibited a striking pre–Trump era foreign policy pugnacity, particularly vis-à-vis the Islamic world. It has since solidified into a veritable obsession with toppling the Iranian regime.
Their militarized obsessions have recently taken striking form in two ways: The secretary of defense instructed US commanders to prepare plans to escalate combat against Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, an order the mission’s senior leader there, Lt. Gen. Robert “Pat” White, reportedly resisted; meanwhile, the secretary of state evidently is eager to convince President Trump to use the Covid-19 pandemic, now devastating Iran, to bomb that country and further strangle it with sanctions. Worse yet, Pompeo might be just cunning enough to convince his ill-informed, insecure boss (so open to clever flattery) that war is the answer.
The militarism of both men matters greatly, but they hardly pilot the ship of state alone, any more than Trump does (whatever he thinks). Would that it were the case. Sadly, even if voters threw them all out, the disease runs much deeper than them. Enter the rest of the illustrative class of ’86.
As it happens, Pompeo’s and Esper’s classmates permeate the deeper structure of imperial America. And let’s admit it, they are, by the numbers, an impressive crew. As another ’86 alumnus, Congressman Mark Green (R-TN), bragged on the House floor in 2019, “My class [has] produced 18 general officers…22-plus presidents and CEOs of major corporations…two state legislators…[and] three judges,” as well as “at least four deans and chancellors of universities.” He closed his remarks by exclaiming, “Courage never quits, ’86!”
However, for all his gushing, Green’s list conceals much. It illuminates neither the mechanics nor the motives of his illustrious classmates; that is, what they’re actually doing and why. Many are key players in a corporate-military machine bent on, and reliant on, endless war for profit and professional advancement. A brief look at key ’86ers offers insight into President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex in 2020—and it should take your breath away.
THE WEST POINT MAFIA
The core group of ’86 grads cheekily refer to themselves as “the West Point Mafia.” And for some, that’s an uplifting thought. Take Joe DePinto, CEO of 7-Eleven. He says that he’s “someone who sleeps better at night knowing that those guys are in the positions they’re in.” Of course, he’s an ’86 grad, too.
Back when I called the academy home, we branded such self-important cadets “toolbags.” More than a decade later, when I taught there, I found my students still using the term. Face facts, however: those “toolbags,” thick as thieves today, now run the show in Washington (and despite their busy schedules, they still find time to socialize as a group).
Given Donald Trump’s shady past—one doesn’t build an Atlantic City casino-and-hotel empire without “mobbing it up“—that “Mafia” moniker is actually fitting. So perhaps it’s worth thinking of Mike Pompeo as the president’s latest consigliere. And since gangsters rarely countenance a challenge without striking back, Lieutenant General White should watch his back after his prudent attempt to stop the further escalation of America’s wars in Iraq and Iran in the midst of a deadly global pandemic. Worse yet for him, he’s not a West Pointer (though he did, oddly enough, earn his Army commission on the very day that class of ’86 graduated). White’s once promising career is unlikely to be long for this world.
In addition to Esper and Pompeo, other Class of ’86 alums serve in key executive branch roles. They include Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Joseph Martin, the director of the Army National Guard, the commander of NATO’s Allied Land Command, the deputy commanding general of Army Forces Command, and the deputy commanding general of Army Cyber Command. Civilian-side classmates in the Pentagon serve as: deputy assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy, and environment; a civilian aide to the secretary of the Army; and the director of stabilization and peace operations policy for the secretary of defense. These Pentagon career civil servants aren’t, strictly speaking, part of the “Mafia” itself, but two Pompeo loyalists are indeed charter members.
Pompeo brought Ulrich Brechbuhl and Brian Butalao, two of his closest cadet friends, in from the corporate world. The three of them had, at one point, served as CEO, CFO, and COO of Thayer Aerospace, named for the “father” of West Point, Colonel Sylvanus Thayer, and started with Koch Industries seed money. Among other things, that corporation sold the Pentagon military aircraft components.
Brechbuhl and Butalao were given senior positions at the CIA when Pompeo was its director. Currently, Brechbuhl is the State Department’s counselor (and reportedly Pompeo’s de facto chief of staff), while Butalao serves as under secretary for management. According to his official bio, Butalao is responsible “for managing the State Department on a day-to-day basis and [serving as its] Chief Operating Officer.” Funny, that was his exact position under Pompeo at that aerospace company.
Still, this Mafia trio can’t run the show by themselves. The national security structure’s tentacles are so much longer than that. They reach all the way to K Street and Capitol Hill.
FROM CONGRESS TO K STREET: THE ENABLERS
Before Trump tapped Pompeo to head the CIA and then the State Department, he represented Wichita, Kansas, home to Koch Industries, in the House of Representatives. In fact, Pompeo rode his ample funding from the political action committee of the billionaire Koch brothers straight to the Hill. So linked was he to those fraternal right-wing energy tycoons and so protective of their interests that he was dubbed “the congressman from Koch.” The relationship was mutually beneficial. Pompeo’s selection as secretary of state solidified the previously strained relationship of the brothers with President Trump.
The ’86 Mafia’s current congressional heavyweight, however, is Mark Green. An early Trump supporter, he regularly tried to shield the president from impeachment as a minority member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee. The Tennessee representative nearly became Trump’s secretary of the Army, but ultimately withdrew his nomination because of controversies that included his sponsoring gender-discrimination bills and commenting that “transgender is a disease.”
Legislators like Green, in turn, take their foreign policy marching orders from the military’s corporate suppliers. Among those, Esper, of course, represents the gold standard when it comes to “revolving door” defense lobbying. Just before ascending the Pentagon summit, pressed by Senator Elizabeth Warren during his confirmation hearings, he patently refused to “recuse himself from all matters related to” Raytheon, his former employer and the nation’s third-largest defense contractor. (And that was even before its recent merger with United Technologies Corporation, which once employed another Esper classmate as a senior vice president.) Incidentally, one of Raytheon’s “biggest franchises” is the Patriot missile defense system, the very weapon being rushed to Iraq as I write, ostensibly as a check on Pompeo’s favored villain, Iran.
Less well known is the handiwork of another ’86 grad, longtime lobbyist and CNN paid contributor David Urban, who first met the president in 2012 and still recalls how “we clicked immediately.” The consummate Washington insider, he backed Trump “when nobody else thought he stood a chance” and in 2016 was his senior campaign adviser in the pivotal swing state of Pennsylvania.
Esper and Urban have been close for more than 30 years. As cadets, they served in the same unit during the Persian Gulf War. It was Urban who introduced Esper to his wife. Both later graced The Hill’s list of Washington’s top lobbyists. Since 2002, Urban has been a partner and is now president of a consulting giant, the American Continental Group. Among its clients: Raytheon and 7-Eleven.
It’s hard to overstate Urban’s role. He seems to have landed Pompeo and Esper their jobs in the Trump administration and was a key go-between in marrying class of ’86 backbenchers and moneymen to that bridegroom of our moment, The Donald.
GREASING THE MACHINE: THE MONEYMEN
Another ’86er also passed through that famed military-industrial revolving door. Retired Col. Dan Sauter left his position as chief of staff of the 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command for one at giant weapons maker Lockheed Martin as business developer for the very systems his old unit employed. Since May 2019, he’s directed Lockheed’s $1.5 billion Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) program in Saudi Arabia. Lockheed’s THAAD systems have streamed into that country to protect the kingdom, even as Pompeo continually threatens Iran.
If such corporate figures are doing the selling, it’s the Pentagon, naturally, that’s doing the buying. Luckily, there are ’86 alumni in key positions on the purchasing end as well, including a retired brigadier general who now serves as the Pentagon’s principal adviser to the under secretary for acquisition, technology, and logistics.
Finally, there are other key consultants linked to the military-industrial complex who are also graduates of the class of ’86. They include a senior vice president of Hillwood—a massive domestic and international real estate development company, chaired by Ross Perot Jr.—formerly a consultant to the government of the United Arab Emirates. The Emiratis are US allies in the fight against Pompeo’s Iranian nemesis and, in 2019, awarded Raytheon a $1.5 billion contract to supply key components for its Air Force missile launchers.
Another classmate is a managing partner for Patriot Strategies, which consults for corporations and the government but also separately lands hefty defense contracts itself. His previous “ventures” included “work in telecommunications in the Middle East…and technical security upgrades at U.S. embassies worldwide.”
Yet another grad, Rick Minicozzi, is the founder and CEO of Thayer Leader Development Group (TLDG), which prides itself on “building” corporate leaders. TLDG clients include: 7-Eleven, Cardinal Glass, EMCOR, and Mercedes-Benz. All either have or had ’86ers at the helm. The company’s CEO also owns the Thayer Hotel located right on West Point’s grounds, which hosts many of the company’s lectures and other events. Then there’s the retired colonel who, like me, taught on the West Point history faculty. He’s now the CEO of Battlefield Leadership, which helps corporate leaders “learn from the past” in order to “prepare for an ever-changing business landscape.”
A CLASS-WIDE CONFLICT OF INTEREST
Don’t for a moment think these are all “bad” people. That’s not faintly my point. One prominent ’86 grad, for instance, is Lt. Gen. Eric Wesley, the deputy of Army Futures Command. He was my brigade commander at Fort Riley, Kansas, in 2009 and I found him competent, exceptionally empathetic, and a decidedly decent man, which is probably true of plenty of ’86ers.
So what exactly is my point here? I’m not for a second charging conspiracy or even criminal corruption. The lion’s share of what all these figures do is perfectly legal. In reality, the way the class of ’86 has permeated the power structure only reflects the nature of the carefully crafted, distinctly undemocratic systems through which the military-industrial complex and our political world operate by design. Most of what they do couldn’t, in fact, be more legal in a world of never-ending American wars and national security budgets that eternally go through the roof. After all, if any of these figures had acted in anything but a perfectly legal fashion, they might have run into a classmate of theirs who recently led the FBI’s corruption unit in New Jersey—before, that is, he retired and became CEO of a global security consulting firm. (Sound familiar?)
And that’s my point, really. We have a system in Washington that couldn’t be more lawful and yet, by any definition, the class of ’86 represents one giant conflict of interest (and they don’t stand alone). Alums from that year are now ensconced in every level of the national security state: from the White House to the Pentagon to Congress to K Street to corporate boardrooms. And they have both power and a deep stake, financial or otherwise, in maintaining or expanding the (forever) warfare state.
They benefit from America’s permanent military mobilization, its never-ending economic war footing, and all that comes with it. Ironically, this will inevitably include the blood of future West Point graduates, doomed to serve in their hopeless crusades. Think of it all as a macabre inversion of their class motto in which it’s not their courage but that of younger graduates sent off to this country’s hopeless wars that they will never allow to “quit.”
Speaking of true courage, lately the only exemplar we’ve had of it in those wars is Gen. “Pat” White. It seems that he, at least, refused to kiss the proverbial rings of those Mafia men of ’86.
But of course, he’s not part of their “family,” is he?
* * *
Danny Sjursen is a retired U.S. Army major and former history instructor at West Point. He served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now lives in Lawrence, Kansas. He has written a memoir of the Iraq War, Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge, and his forthcoming book, Patriotic Dissent: America in the Age of Endless War, is available for pre-order. Follow him on Twitter at @SkepticalVet and check out his podcast “Fortress on a Hill.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/24/2020 – 23:55 - Clubbing Under Quarantine: People Are Paying To Log On To Zoom And Attend Virtual Concerts And Raves
Clubbing Under Quarantine: People Are Paying To Log On To Zoom And Attend Virtual Concerts And Raves
With actual clubs shut down, how are insecure ravers going to get their fix of attention, booze and music that sounds like pneumatic drills hooked up to amplifiers? Meet virtual nightlife.
Following in the lead of Asia during the outbreak, livestreaming has now made its way onto the club scene. U.S. musicians across all genres are logging on, instead of packing seats, to perform. And it isn’t just the newfound acoustic singer-songwriter you went to high school with appearing on your Facebook timeline performing. Major DJs like Diplo and A-Trak have been performing, often times to raise money for Covid-19 relief.
Eryka Badu has put on livestream concerts for $1 and $2 per person The virus has hit the nightlife and the $27.9 billion live music industry hard. For many working musicians, performing online is a way for them to raise money. But it’s not showing impressive results, according to Bloomberg. Artist and tech researcher Mat Dryhurst calls it “e-busking”. “The tech isn’t there to make it more engaging than, say, radio. Even in this charitable climate, it isn’t producing impressive financial results.”
While smaller artists may only make $50 per stream, artists like Erykah Badu have had more success. She pulled in 10,000 viewers – at $1 per person – for a performance she did on March 23 from her home. She did a second one, charging $2, to help support her and her band.
And the spillover into dance music and rave culture was inevitable. At a Zoom party called Club Quarantee, guests buy tickets for $10 or can pay $80 for a private room to party with Instagram-famous DJs and burlesque dancers. Bloomberg said: “On a recent weekend, the party is full of European models and bearded men in fedoras, dancing along to Macarena.”
Sounds like it’s definitely worth $80.
Club Quarantee’s founder said: “A bottle-service club is a symbol of exclusivity and high-quality entertainment. Of course, we can’t sell bottles, but we try to deliver this vibe.”
A former NYC celebrity hang-out host, he says he has lost about $10,000 in income since the city has shut down. His first virtual party brought in about 300 people, covering half of his costs, which included talent, a videographer and staffers. On his second try, he broke even.
“The main objective is to create a space where promoters can maintain important relationships with our clients and keep them entertained during this time. People are longing for social interactions, and we can offer an important part of the club experience: the emotional connection,” he said.
Then there’s Club Q, a “safe space” for the LGBTQ community recently called the “hottest club on Zoom”. It has 40,000 followers on Instagram. One of its founders said: “We have access to people who can’t attend clubs because they have children, social anxiety, disabilities, or live in places that don’t have clubs. We want to maintain this equality, with no elitism.”
And Club Q is starting to look into branding opportunities. Companies remain skittish in spending, however. “Without knowing how long the quarantine will be, brands don’t know if they should throw money and commit to this as something for the future,” co-founder Brad Allen said.
“There’s a learning process. At first, people were not willing to spend money on Netflix; they were used to streaming movies illegally. It takes a while to be accepted and for people to understand it’s not a scam,” Club Quarantee’s founder concluded.
The digital parties being pitched look like this:
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/24/2020 – 23:35 - A Real New Deal & Debt Jubilee Or A Green New Deal & Global Dictatorship?
A Real New Deal & Debt Jubilee Or A Green New Deal & Global Dictatorship?
Authored by Mathew Ehret via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
As scary as it is for some to admit even at this stage of the game, the current financial system sits precariously on the edge of a meltdown beyond anything ever recorded in human history. Normally, such a systemic meltdown would generate such turbulence and panic that the masses of complacent subjects would be induced to action in defense of their families and nations, however under current circumstances, the coronavirus pandemic has ensured that no such mass movement, or policy fight has taken shape.
As I wrote in a February 27th editorial Why the Coming Economic Collapse Will NOT be Caused by Coronavirus, the inevitability of the meltdown has been well known to all leading central bankers and highly placed officials in “a position to know” for a very long time. This fact was known even before the new wave of emergency bailouts were begun in September 2019 starting with $50 billion/night of overnight repo loans. It was known even before the age of bailout was created to postpone the 2008-09 collapse of the system under threat of Martial Law. It was known before Glass-Steagall was repealed in 1999 and over-the-counter derivatives were deregulated in 2001. Let’s just say it’s been a part of a very ugly plan for a very long time.
But make no mistake, you didn’t have to be a “highly placed” banker or technocratic social engineer to know this collapse was going to happen. No crystal ball was ever needed.
All a thinking person had to do was assess the observable underpinnings of the post-1971 financial order and look with unbiased eyes upon the consistent rate of collapse of the PHYSICAL economic platform that supports life while taking note of the paradoxical hyperbolic increase of monetary assets, and speculative claims in the system every year since the age of “deregulation” was ushered in (and the post WWII paradigm of industrial growth economics was thrown in the trash). Outsourcing of vital manufacturing, decay of infrastructure maintenance and improvement, privatization of public goods, and loss of machine tool powers simply resulted in the transfer of wealth into the hands of a small elite, and the stripping of nation states from the economic sovereignty they once enjoyed.
Where monetary growth used to be tied to the measurable growth of physical economic variables mentioned above, the post-1971 world order demanded that money could only grow according to debts that were ever more disassociated from reality. Instead of justifying the growth of infrastructure, and improvements in the productive powers of labor, debts became tied to mere speculative activities setting in place a time bomb in the form of a new bubble economy. Whether artificially induced or left to their own devices, bubbles by their very nature ALWAYS pop
Since the chaos of the collapse of the trans-Atlantic bubbles has not yet occurred, we still have a choice.
Hyperinflation 101: How NOT to Run an Economy
Either we can break up the banks with Glass-Steagall bank separation, and a total bankruptcy reorganization (aka: Debt Jubilees) or we can pump more money into the zombie banks in order to accelerate hyperinflation and fascism following the 1923 German model.
Sadly, up until the present moment, the playbook used was published in 1923.
In response to the collapse, and precipitated by the covid-19 pandemic which has been used to justify the shutdown of the economies of the world, the NY Federal Reserve has been converted into a giant Hedge Fund designed to purchase trillions of dollars of junk debts from private banks to the tune of $6.13 trillion as of April 13. This represents a 42% increase in only one month from the $4.31 trillion balance sheet on March 11. Most of these assets take the form of Special purchase vehicles authorized to purchase over $4.5 trillion of toxic debt under the secret supervision of Blackrock, as well as tranches of Collateralized Loan Obligations (CLOs) which are highly toxic derivatives tied to leveraged corporate junk debt to the scale of $2.2 trillion.
Former banker and author of Planet Ponzi, Mitchel Feierstein recently wrote an RT editorial on April 10 that put it succinctly: “The fed is socializing hedge fund investments gone bad placing tax payers at risk.”
Unlike too many analysts who prefer to merely opinionate about the crisis, Feierstein happily strikes the nail on the head by zeroing in on the conceptual issue of good vs false standards of value and debt. Is all debt evil? Of course not. If a farmer wishes to take out a debt to buy a better tractor which will improve his productivity then it will extinguish itself over time. If a heroine addict wishes to take out a debt to feed his addiction then that debt would obviously be destructive.
In this vein Feierstein states: “Debt is never a bad thing if it is used to create organic growth or fund infrastructure development that creates opportunities and employment. Debt is dangerous when used to develop grotesque weapons of financial destruction by structuring synthetic derivatives products that use leverage of 300 to 1 or more- meaning that $1 million can control $300 million in assets.”
The system of derivatives products and leverage referred to by Fierstein has now attained levels which “officially” amount to $700 trillion, but which most expert economists claim runs as high as $1.5 quadrillion of fictitious capital. World GDP is no greater than $80 trillion. This is the bubble that threatens to tear apart the nations of the world now.
The Importance of a Debt Jubilee
Feierstein is joined by a surge in Ibero-American voices who have loudly begun calling for a debt jubilee in the face of the oncoming blowout. Founded by Latin American leaders, including Argentina’s current president Alberto Fernandez in July 2019, the Puebla Group has now come out calling for a total write off of the unplayable IMF and World Bank debts that have held Latin America hostage for decades under the weight of conditionalities and usury. After a 3 hour conference call with its 40 members, the group published a declaration stating that “the priorities of the [existing] global model led to the abandonment of social policies, especially those related to healthcare systems” and that “health, research, and public policy cannot be subordinated to the interests of the market.” Other founders of the Pueblo Group include former presidents Fernando Lugo (Paraguay), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), Dilma Rousseff (Brazil), and former cabinet ministers, diplomats and senators.
This dovetails the March 20 call by the Latin American Center for Geopolitics (CELAG) to support a new multipolar system and a cancelation of all usurious Ibero-American debts. A director of CELAG named Alfredo Serrano wrote that “after the tsunami”, hopefully “a kind of New Deal, a new social and economic contract will emerge, in which health and other basic rights will be at the center of the economy and that the financial economy will be at the service of the real economy and not the other way around.”
While not going as far as the Pueblo Group or CELAG, Mexico’s President Lopez Obrador, made headlines on April 8 by stating the fact that the crisis will require a new system and that said system must be based upon the total rejection of neoliberalism. In his speech, Obrador stated “that the neo-liberal model is collapsing. That is what is happening; that is, the coronavirus precipitated the fall of a failed model….“How is it possible that the pandemic has such a huge effect, economically and socially? … Among other things, social investment was stopped; healthcare was privatized. There are countries today which do not have public services for the population. They are the ones worst hit.”
Although he did not explicitly state that a debt cancellation must occur, Obrador called for a New Deal solution to the crisis asking:
“What did President Roosevelt do in a situation like this? Reactivate the economy with investment; employment for everyone; a minimum salary for everyone, especially the youth. Reactivate the construction industry. That is how he lifted up the United States and returned tranquility, happiness to his people…. So, why not do the same thing today?”
Real New Deal NOT Green New Deal
As I wrote in my previous paper How to Crush a Bankers’ Dictatorship: A Lesson from 1933, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was NOTHING like the “Green New Deal” which many leading central bankers have been promoting as a replacement to the dying neo-liberal order. When Sir Michael Bloomberg (yes he was made a knight of the British Empire in 2014) or the Bank of England’s Mark Carney, or some other Malthusian technocrat call for a Global Green New Deal it is important to recognize that this is a trap and similar to the original in name only. Since this fact is still not widely known, a few words on this must be stated.
Carbon taxes, cap and trade schemes, biofuels (to burn the food supplies), or inefficient windmill and solar energy infrastructure may create a momentary spike in jobs that would satisfy Keynesian economists who think economic progress comes from individual “bottom up” purchasing power, but the longer term EFFECT will be the opposite of that attained during the New Deal of the 1930s and the needed remedies to support today’s nearly 8 billion people.
Rather than increasing industrial activity, large scale infrastructure and ultimately sustain social safety nets the way FDR achieved, the Green New Deal will crush nations’ abilities to produce for themselves, sustain their people or even maintain global populations at current levels which this author developed in a 2014 lecture entitled “The Imperial Fraud of Entropy” featured below. As sick a fact as this is, depopulation is considered a “utilitarian necessity” for certain oligarchical social engineers attempting to manage humanity as a system from the top.
The real New Deal, as Obrador desires, or as China, Russia and other pro-Belt and Road nations demand, must be anti-Malthusian as well as anti-neoliberal. It must be based upon activities that increase human life both quantitatively as well as qualitatively on every level: material, intellectual and spiritual. Long term infrastructure projects funded by low interest/conditionality-free loans made the original New Deal work and it would have ended colonialism if FDR hadn’t died pre-maturely months into his fourth term under conditions which Stalin stated in an interview with FDR’s son Elliot, was the effect of poisoning by “Churchill’s gang”.
These principles worked then, and they continue to work today as China and 135 nations working together under the Belt and Road Initiative framework have demonstrated beautifully.
This growth of humanity as a species made in the image of a Creator is what the Malthusian technocrats hate and fear, and this is why the Trump-Putin-Xi commitment to asteroid defense, lunar, mars and asteroid mining and cooperation on space exploration more generally is so necessary to fuel the sort of anti-Malthusian, open system discussion for a genuine Global New Deal which must govern the transition from the age of parasitic globalization and empire to a new Multipolar age of cooperation and creative reason.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/24/2020 – 23:15 - Will Coronavirus Wreck The Classic Car Market?
Will Coronavirus Wreck The Classic Car Market?
In August 2019, we suggested how it might be a good time to thin out the classic car collection. Now vintage automobile prices are moving lower, which could result in a sharp correction.
With an economic depression unfolding in the second quarter, the classic car market could see downward pressure. Understanding how deep a correction would be is anyone’s guess at the moment, but what is evident is that a record number of Americans were just laid off and will need to sell assets to build cash. Some of those assets include, as this piece is centered around, classic cars, as well as art, wine, etc…
To show automobile prices, we are sourcing Hagerty Market Rating, which provides a variety of classic car indexes.
Hagerty’s Muscle Car Index appears to have “recorded the largest drop” of any automobile index for the “second time in a row, falling 7 percent to a five-year low” in January, said Hagerty valuation editor Andrew Newton.
“While more than three-quarters of the index’s component cars recorded no change at all, another large drop for the 1970 Hemi Cuda convertible (among the most valuable muscle cars of all) and a 4 percent decrease for the 1964 Impala SS were more than enough to pull the overall score down,” Newton said.
Next is 1950s American Hagerty Index that slumped 5% in 2019, and now sits at a 5-year low in January.
“The 1950s American Index continued its slide to close out 2019 with a 5 percent drop, and now sits at a 5-year low. While the 1954 Buick Skylark notched a significant gain of 5 percent, more than half the index’s component cars recorded a serious loss. The 1955 Packard Caribbean took an especially serious blow with a 21 percent drop. The index’s most expensive car, the 1953 Cadillac Eldorado, dropped 13 percent,” Newton said.
Hagerty’s British Car Index remains at an all-time high but has hit resistance over the last several years.
“Half of this group’s component cars recorded a loss over the past four months, and just one car—the 1972 Triumph TR6—recorded a gain. That increase was a minor 1 percent,” Newton said.
Hagerty’s German Car Index remains slightly off the all-time high.
“Nearly three-quarters of the component cars recorded no movement at all. Three of them dropped, including previously red-hot Porsches like the 1973 911 Carrera RS Touring (one of the more expensive cars in the index) with a 12 percent decrease and the 1979 930, which continued its gradual slide with a 6 percent decrease. The only serious gain of any car in the index this past period was for the Mercedes-Benz 280SL, which bounced back with a 17 percent surge after two years of continuous drops,” Newton said.
Hagerty’s Blue Chip Index, consisting of the top 25 most sought-after post-war era cars in the world, was down 6% in January over the prior 12 months, one of the most significant slides since January 2010.
“Upper echelon cars have faced headwinds for the last four years, and buyers at this level are increasingly selective with their purchases. Seven-figure cars with excellent history and specifications that are carefully represented are still achieving steady prices, but any car with less than the best story is a tough sell at the moment. Several years in, owners are still coming to terms with this dynamic.”
“Five Blue Chip component cars fell more than 10 percent since September 2019, including the Aston Martin DB5, the Ferrari 275 GTB/4, the Jaguar D-Type, the Plymouth Hemi Cuda convertible, and the 1973 Porsche 911 Carrera RS. The Cuda excluded, most of these cars have historically seen strong interest among European buyers, and many of those buyers are hesitating due to unfavorable currency exchange rates and other macro-economic concerns,” said Hagerty valuation editor Brian Rabold.
Hagerty’s Ferrari Index “fell 3 percent to close out 2019. This slip leaves the group 6 percent down year over year. More importantly, the index is now 2 percent below where it was five years ago, effectively rolling prices back to 2014 levels. Ferrari Index,” Rabold said.
“The biggest culprits in this period’s change are the 250 GT SWB, which dropped 15 percent, and the 275 GTB/4, which fell 13 percent. Meanwhile, Daytona coupes and 246 Dinos both seem to have stabilized with two consecutive periods of unchanged prices,” he said.
With classic car auctions, shows, and meets canceled for the first half of the year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, this is an unprecedented period to own classic cars as the global economy stumbles into a recession, if not depression, which could result in a sharp correction in the overall classic car market in 2020.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/24/2020 – 22:55 - A Handful Of Cops Are Standing Up To Tyranny With The People
A Handful Of Cops Are Standing Up To Tyranny With The People
Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,
Some police officers have awoken to the world they are leaving for their children and are standing with the people against tyranny. While these instances are still few and far between, it’s a good sign that at least a few may be realizing what kind of world they are enforcing at this point in human history.
For a long time, police officers and the military have done nothing more than blindly obey the commands of politicians and enforce even the most immoral of laws on the public. That seems to be changing, and we can always hope it will change more rapidly in the coming days.
According to a report from the Federalist, police chiefs from Texas to Washington are standing up against the draconian orders from local power-hunger tyrants demanding strict adherence to extreme social distancing measures to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. Even with manipulated statics designed to strike fear into the masses being blasted all over the news, there is no excuse for the tyranny we are seeing spread all over the planet at a much more rapid rate than this virus could ever hope to achieve. People, by and large, have started looking beyond the falsified “facts” provided by those who don’t care about your health, only about controlling you.
The following are examples of police standing against tyranny:
The Houston Police Officers’ Union declared Wednesday that its members would refrain from enforcing local County Judge Lina Hidalgo’s ruling deeming it mandatory for any individual over the age of 10 to wear a mask in public.
In Washington, Snohomish County Sheriff Adam Fortney announced Tuesday that his officers would also abstain from enforcement of lockdown orders, joining Franklin County Sheriff J.D. Raymond who said he would not stop churches and business from opening with reasonable distancing measures in place.
Further east in Michigan, four sheriffs in the northwest part of the mitten also announced last week that they would refuse to enforce Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s lockdown orders which have been the most extreme in the country.
For every one story about cops defying the orders to enforce tyranny, there are ten about cops following the commands of tyrants and arresting peaceful people. The mainstream media has quickly done an about-face when it comes to their views of the police. Force and violence used against “anti-vaxxers” and those who value freedom more than security are fine. Police brutality before COVID-19, however, was bad. The hypocrisy is unbelievable. It’s apparent that the media is working hard to keep your mind locked in the fearful slave mentality.
We need more order followers to just stop at this point. There is a big wall of violence created by the police state and the huge military that can be used to forcibly “keep people in line.” Once that dissolves, the elitists have no way to control the public any longer. True justice, peace, and freedom is within our reach if more and more police officers and service members wake up to realize what kind of a world they are enforcing.
Just because it’s legal, it isn’t necessarily right, and just because it’s right doesn’t necessarily mean it’s legal. It appears that even a few police officers have figured it out at this point. Perhaps they know people are standing up and they don’t want to be on the wrong side of history, or perhaps they really do care about the kind of world they are enforcing and leaving to their children.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/24/2020 – 22:35 - Surprise Cruise Ship Outbreak In Nagasaki Exposes Staggering Negligence
Surprise Cruise Ship Outbreak In Nagasaki Exposes Staggering Negligence
The story of the outbreak aboard the “Costa Atlantica” has left many readers amazed by the staggering negligence of both local officials in Nagasaki, as well as the Japanese and Italian governments. After the dozens of deaths and thousands of infections reported aboard cruise ships around the world, the notion that more than 600 crewmembers were left to live on-board this ship for months while it was being repaired is simply mind-blowing, given the obvious risk.
Then again, governments around the world from Europe to the US to Asia have largely failed to protect the most vulnerable in society, that being, in this case, patients in nursing homes. But as Bloomberg pointed out in a Friday update on the situation, there’s another familiar player involved – one that really has no excuse for allowing this to happen.
That’s right. Somehow, the “Costa Atlantica” is a Carnival Corp ship (owned by a subsidiary). Carnival has been far and away the worst offender in the travel and leisure industry in terms of its management of the many crises and outbreaks that have unfolded aboard its cruises. It failed to act fast enough to shut down operations, and even after it did, the company and personnel made many decisions which suggested they blithely placed the company’s bottom line before the well-being of customers.
Australia has already launched a criminal investigation into Carnival over the “Ruby Princess” fiasco…
The number of confirmed Covid-19 infections on the Costa Atlantica had climbed to 91 as of Thursday from 48 a day earlier, the Nagasaki prefecture said.
The Atlantica is operated by CSSC Carnival Cruise Shipping, a partnership between Carnival Corp. and state-owned China State Shipbuilding Corp. The Chinese entity is the majority owner.
Coronavirus cases at sea forced the industry to suspend new sailings in mid-March. Many ships were caught mid-voyage, leading to weeks of drama as companies hustled to get passengers to ports.
Even now, ships around the world still have crew on board.
The episode has captured the attention of Japan’s government, which already faced widespread Covid-19 on Carnival’s Diamond Princess, at one point the largest concentration of coronavirus outside of mainland China.
Japan’s Health Minister Katsunobu Kato said Thursday that all crew will now be tested on the Costa Atlantica.
Since the first case was confirmed on Monday, authorities have been investigating how the outbreak began, since the ship has been at port without passengers for weeks, and crew members weren’t supposed to have left the vessel.
Kato said some of the crew apparently got off the vessel at some point.
…will Japan, or perhaps Italy, be next to join in?
And yet, somehow, hundreds maybe thousands of crew members continue to live onboard hastily recalled cruise ships all around the world, apparently.
Let’s hope they’re at least getting some hazard pay.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/24/2020 – 22:15 - Here Is The Missing Manual For Defending Yourself Against Deplatforming And Cancel Culture
Here Is The Missing Manual For Defending Yourself Against Deplatforming And Cancel Culture
Submitted by Mark Jeftovic of Guerrilla-Capitalism; co-founder & CEO, easyDNS Technologies Inc. and author of Unassailable: Protect Yourself From Deplatform Attacks and Cancel Culture
Things are moving quickly.
In the old adage “Never let a crisis go to waste”, governments everywhere are using the pandemic opportunity to:
- Rule by decree
- Stifle freedoms guaranteed under various rights and charters
- Enact mandatory surveillance
- Silence dissenting speech
Their enablers in this are the mainstream media and Big Tech, who have formed an ideological simpatico to form and control public opinion. You may have heard the expression Overton Window, which defines the allowable spectrum of opinion and the limits beyond which public discourse is not permissible. When the institutional scaffolding of a system begins to buckle, and when the credibility of traditional sources of mainstream news go into secular decline, the Overton Window constricts.
Of the Government / Mainstream Media / Big Tech triumvirate, only Big Tech is on the ascendency. It seeks to carve out an indispensable role of one manner or another in the next world order which has been emerging for over a decade, and is now accelerating amid the pandemic.
The components of The Triumvirate do understand viscerally, what has been known by those who seek to retain power since Edward Bernays wrote his blueprints for controlling the public mind back in 1920s (those were “Propaganda”, “Public Relations” and “Crystallizing Public Opinion“)
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.
This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
– Propaganda, Chapter 1: Ordering ChaosNot to put too fine a point on it,
There are invisible rulers who control the destinies of millions. It is not generally realized to what extent the words and actions of our most influential public men are dictated by shrewd persons operating behind the scenes.
Now, what is still more important, to the extent to which our thoughts and habits are modified by authorities.
In departments of our daily life, in which we imagine ourselves free agents, we are ruled by dictators exercising great power”.
— Propaganda, Chapter 3: The New Propagandists
The narrative must be controlled, it must be shaped and deviations from it must be curtailed and marginalized. As I say in my book, Unassailable (now free, see below),
“The ramifications of successfully asserting one [narrative] trajectory over any other challengers may never be fully grasped by the public at large.”
This occurs through repeated accusations of the “conspiracy theory” monicker, or blaming everything that goes wrong on Russian meddling, white nationalists and the like. It even looks like narrative enforcers even go so far as to cherry pick the most absurd elements and participants out of a given area of concern and amplify those, so as to “poison the well’, so to speak against an entire stream of debate around a given concern:
Via The Guardian
Via a Media Matters article about Coronavirus 5G conspiracy theories
Thus, nobody respectable will ever take a serious look at possible concerns around any debatable aspects of COVID-19, 5G, or anything that doesn’t originate from an official source like the WHO. Because from here on in if you even talk about an “off-limits” topic you will have your name linked to the most reviled and ostracized elements of society via negative branding:
“One of the most favored propaganda tactics of establishment elites and [those] they employ … is to relabel or redefine an opponent before they can solidly define themselves. In other words, elites [and their media] will seek to “brand” you (just as corporations use branding) in the minds of the masses so that they can take away your ability to define yourself as anything else.” (emphasis added)
— Brandon Smith, Alt-Market.
We see a similar dynamic among evangelical environmentalists, where anybody who expresses any skepticism toward computer models that are put forward as incontrovertible truths, or that the “New Green Deal”-style remedies proffered are the only possible course of action are labeled “deniers” and witch-hunted. (If you’re curious as to what a New Green Deal, Greta Thunberg-style radical decarbonization program looks like, what is happening now is just a modest hint of what that would be like. I would recommend Alex Epstein’s “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels” to get an example of alternative approaches around how to think about environmental issues. I say this as someone who believes the medium-to-long-term trajectory of humanity is away from fossil fuels. Paradoxically, one of the most viable near term substitutes available to us, nuclear and thorium energy, is also off limits for serious discussion).
If the marginalization doesn’t work, if the public seems resistant to mainstream media gaslighting, if the construct of hypernormalisation is in danger of being challenged or outright debunked, then matters get taken to the next level.
That’s when deplatforming and cancel culture come into play
As I mentioned in Unassailable,
propaganda comprises techniques and strategies to push elite approved narratives into the public mind and to have them accepted. Bernays deemed this a necessity of a smooth operating society. The other side of controlling the narrative necessitates the suppression of any contending streams of thought. That’s where deplatforming comes in.
As I’ve said elsewhere, and I’ll say it again here:
It doesn’t matter if you believe Coronavirus is real, fake, caused by 5G, a full moon, in a lab or eating batshit sandwiches, you should be able to believe any of those things and still behave civilly without disturbing anyone. What your beliefs induce you to do in the real world brings their own consequences and you should be prepared to deal with that.
But what anybody says online has to be sacrosanct. If you really want to protect the world from bad conspiracy theories then write a crash course in developing critical thinking skills and personal responsibility. Then give that away far and wide.
The fact is the internet is a type of gas release valve. People discharge angst, frustration, fear and sexual tension out through the internet because they think it’s a safe release. And it should be.
There are too many initiatives seeking to control that release and infringe upon real world liberties.
Right now things are extraordinarily tense and brittle. The global economy has all but ceased operating, essentially by decree. Millions of people have lost their jobs, countless businesses have shut down, many to never reopen.
To now step into the open forum of discourse and into the marketplace of ideas and tell people what is and isn’t permissible to believe and think is just adding more fuel to an already building pressure cooker that is primed to foment social unrest.
Unassailable: The anti-dote to Cancel-Culture and Deplatforming is now free
After being contacted earlier this week on behalf people who were deplatformed from Facebook who are trying to organize anti-lockdown protests and online dissent, I’ve decided to make my latest book, Unassailable: Defend Yourself from Deplatform Attacks, Cancel-Culture and Other Online Disasters free for download, for anybody.
This book is the missing manual for defending your content and your free speech online. It will step you through each component of your online presence: from web hosting, email, e-commerce models, social media and domain names and show you where your weak spots are and how to fortify them against the ideological pronouncements of other people. The foreword is by Charles Hugh Smith, and part one looks at the ideological and philosophical underpinnings of cancel culture.
I bent my own rule a bit and set it up on BookFunnel, the download link can be accessed here.
If you don’t want the book and just want to get on the AxisOfEasy mailing list, sign up here, or follow the Axis on Mastodon or (if you’re woke), on Twitter.
I also write more about economics and business from Guerrilla Capitalism which you can join here.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/24/2020 – 22:09 - "The Ripple-Effects Of The Government Lockdown Are Only Starting To Take Shape…"
“The Ripple-Effects Of The Government Lockdown Are Only Starting To Take Shape…”
Via Doug Casey’s InternationalMan.com,
David Stockman on the Real Reason Why the Government Shutdown Caused an Economic Collapse
International Man: Is the government’s reaction to COVID-19 worse than the virus itself? What are your thoughts?
David Stockman: I think for once, Donald Trump was right when he worried out loud the other day that the cure may be far worse than the disease.
Governors – mostly Democratic governors and mayors of major areas of the country – have imposed Lockdown Nation. It’s a complete economic disaster.
It’s a wrong policy from a public health point of view and an economic point of view.
It is hitting, like a ton of bricks, a highly fragile and vulnerable economy that was living hand to mouth anyway because of the kind of highly counterproductive monetary and fiscal policies and debt build-up we’ve had over the last 30 years.
If you look at the data for New York—which is the epicenter of the whole COVID-19 pandemic—it is abundantly clear that COVID is not some kind of latter-day Black Death plague that takes down the young, the old, the healthy, the sick, and everyone in between.
It is a kind of super winter flu that strikes fatally, almost entirely, the elderly population that is already afflicted with many life-threatening medical conditions—or what the technicians call comorbidities.
The shutdown, which I call the “plenary lockdown policy,” is wrong. Closing all the businesses except a tiny, arbitrary set of essential operations is courting disaster for no good reason.
Here’s what the New York data showed us recently.
New York is ground zero and the epicenter. But if you look at the breakdown of that number by age and by medical condition, it’s startling.
For those under 50 years of age in the state of New York, the death rate is slightly under 5 per 100,000.
That isn’t a disaster. That isn’t a plague or a calamity.
Five per 100,000 is half the rate of suicides per 100,000 annually among the 50 and under population. It is a small fraction of the 90 deaths per 100,000 annually that occur for all kinds of reasons: accidents and illnesses—including suicide.
You would not, in the slightest, in any kind of sane world, shut down an entire economy and lock down everything when you have a 5 per 100,000 death rate for the overwhelming share of the population.
On the other hand, if you look at the population 80 years and older in New York state—the death rate is 1,086 deaths per 100,000. In other words, it’s night and day.
The virus is not a fatal problem for the overwhelming share of the population.
Lots of people get infected. Most are asymptomatic. Some get sick and stay in bed for a couple of days, and they recover. A tiny fraction of the under-50-years population gets seriously ill and is hospitalized for treatment, and an infinitesimal number end up as fatalities. That’s the case for the healthy population under 50.
It’s in the over-70 age group, and especially in the over-80 age group, that the overwhelming share of these severe cases has developed.
The strategy shouldn’t be a plenary lockdown. The right approach is to trace, identify, isolate, support, and treat the vulnerable population that already has many illnesses.
If we look at New York again, of those deaths among the elderly population, 60% had hypertension or high blood pressure, 31% had diabetes, etc. All of them, almost overwhelmingly, had one, two, or three comorbidities.
We don’t need Governor Cuomo to shut down the state. We need Governor Cuomo to tell the health department to mobilize the doctors and the healthcare apparatus of New York to identify the vulnerable elderly population. This population is already being treated in many cases for serious respiratory problems, heart ailments, and other diseases—and we are making sure that they’re as isolated and protected from this bad winter flu as they possibly can be.
It’s not merely a matter of degree. It’s that they’ve got it ass-backward.
You don’t lock down the population. You target the sub-population, the small minority of very vulnerable people, and do everything you can to shield them from this virus until it passes into the summer temperatures and the normal herd immunity that eventually will make it go away.
International Man: Those are excellent points. That’s not to mention that in the US, two out of three Americans are overweight or obese and have a pre-chronic or chronic condition. And of those people, the risk goes up substantially for those who have two or more conditions. It puts them at higher risk for something like COVID-19 to take them down.
David Stockman: I think that’s true, but even if you look at the New York data, again, it’s startling.
For the under-50-year-old population, I can’t emphasize it enough—it’s 5 per 100,000. That’s a rounding error in the scheme of things.
You can’t run a society based on the risk of 5 out of 100,000 people.
So, I think you’re hitting it right on the head.
What we need to think about is how much longer—and we’re not talking about months and quarters, we’re talking about days and weeks—we can possibly stand a shutdown that has already put 22 million people on unemployment claims in four weeks.
Let’s compare this to the worst four weeks of the Great Recession, which is the worst economic calamity that we’ve had since the Great Depression.
During the worst three-week period in the winter of 2008/2009, the cumulative new unemployment claims were 2.7 million, not 22 million. So, this is eight times worse.
We might add that it’s going to be 30 million, or close to that, very soon.
We have an economy that’s in free fall, unlike anything we’ve ever seen before, and we have a government that’s in total hysteria, trying to compensate for the economic collapse that is being ordered by the government itself.
What I’m talking about is the Everything Bailout that was signed without a record vote in the house, with no hearings—$2.2 trillion, on top of two or three other bills that had passed earlier. There’s another trillion that they’re talking about in the pipeline as a sort of a replenishment bill.
Even beyond that, then they’re talking about a stimulus and infrastructure bill, where the bidding starts at $2 billion. It is insanity.
Let’s just look at what’s happening in the here and now.
What the government is trying to do is hold everyone in America harmless, and every business in America harmless, for the massive dislocation, disruption of business cash flow, and interruption of paychecks that have resulted from these lockdown orders.
Where is it taking us?
This year alone—and these are not my numbers; they come from the most credible Washington DC agency, which I’m a part of, The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. That’s kind of an oxymoron, but it exists.
They had projected that during the fiscal year underway—which was half over before the whole COVID lockdown even got started—that the deficit is going to total $3.8 trillion.
I’m not talking about total spending. I’m talking about just the deficit. It’s roughly 19% of GDP.
It’s a deficit in the same order of magnitude as we had during the darkest days of World War II. During that time, the whole economy was producing military material and weapons, and nobody could spend any money on anything except necessities because everything else was rationed or wasn’t being produced. So they bought a lot of government war bonds.
So where we are right now, suddenly, overnight, is in a disastrous fiscal situation.
This self-inflicted shock has transformed the Trump-Republican trillion dollar per year deficits at the top of the business cycle.
It has transformed a terrible situation into a catastrophic situation, where they’re going to borrow $3.8 trillion this year alone. The number for fiscal 2021—which starts in October—is going to be another $2.5 trillion at minimum, or probably more.
Now the reason I bring this up is because we’re looking at a two-year period in which the combined deficits are likely to exceed $6 trillion in two years. These numbers are so humongous that they’re almost impossible for ordinary people—or even people who study this subject regularly—to grasp.
I think the best way to look at it is to see that $6 trillion of new debt in two years is equivalent to what it took 213 years and 43 presidents to produce—that’s how long it took to get to the first $6 trillion of public debt.
That’s how bad this has gotten, and it will destroy any remaining semblance of market capitalism we have in this country.
When you have a coast-to-coast soup line, with the government underwriting 100% of what everybody was getting in January 2020 by merely piling it onto the public debt, and then having the Fed printing money to fund it, you’re asking for a calamity—a financial and economic disaster of biblical proportions.
* * *
The ripple effects of the government lock down are only stating to take shape. That’s not to mention the unprecedented amount of money the that is being pumped into every corner of the economy by the Federal Reserve. The consequences of which could be crippling to the the average person. That’s exactly why Legendary speculator Doug Casey and David Stockman have just released this urgent new video which outlines exactly what’s happening and how it will impact retirees, savers, and investors. It reveals what you could do to prevent becoming financial roadkill. Click here to watch it now.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/24/2020 – 21:55 - Japanese Mayor: Men Should Do Shopping Since Women Are 'Indecisive And Take Forever'
Japanese Mayor: Men Should Do Shopping Since Women Are ‘Indecisive And Take Forever’
The mayor of Osaka, Japan is taking heat after suggesting that men should do the grocery shopping amid the coronavirus pandemic because women are indecisive and “take a long time.”
Residents in certain parts of the island nation have been asked to shop less frequently and only send one family member to the store for supplies in order to to minimize the spread of COVID-19, according to CNA.
Osaka Mayor Ichiro Matsui told reporters on Thursday (Apr 23) that men should be entrusted with grocery runs because women “take a long time as they browse around and hesitate about this and that”, Kyodo news agency reported.
“Men can snap up things they are told (to buy) and go, so I think it’s good that they go shopping, avoiding human contact,” the 56-year-old added.
When challenged by a reporter, he acknowledged his remarks might be viewed as out-of-touch, but said they were true in his family.
As one might expect, the mayor is now the focus of angry feminists, as Twitter users called him ‘full of prejudice against women,’ and ‘disrespectful to women and men.’
Osaka Mayor Ichiro Matsui “There are indecisive men and nimble and sharp women,” said one user.
“Does he think (shoppers) like to take time?” added a third. “They are thinking about menus and prices.”
Others, perhaps those who have lived with a woman, supported the mayor.
“That’s right. Elderly women, in particular, are always chatting away, unconcerned about shopping,” wrote another user.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/24/2020 – 21:35 - Stop Thinking!!! The Russians & Chinese Are Your Enemy
Stop Thinking!!! The Russians & Chinese Are Your Enemy
Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,
The Russians and the Chinese are your enemy.
Not the oligarchic class in your own country that has been exploiting, propagandizing, deceiving, oppressing and robbing you every moment of your life since you were born.
The Russians and the Chinese.The Russians and the Chinese are your enemy.
Not the people who have been engineering and advancing endless bloodbaths around the world at no benefit to you using your money and your resources and your political energy.
The Russians and the Chinese.The Russians and the Chinese are your enemy.
Not the political/media class and their plutocratic puppeteers who’ve been manipulating your mind to accept omnicide, ecocide, austerity and increasingly Orwellian dystopia as normal and not to be opposed.
The Russians and the Chinese.The Russians and the Chinese are your enemy.
Not the sociopathic manipulators who give you two thieving, warmongering, power-worshipping sock puppets to choose from in fake election after fake election to give you the illusion of control.
The Russians and the Chinese.The Russians and the Chinese are your enemy.
Not the people who pour vast troves of treasure into convincing your countrymen that it’d be evil and insane to demand the same social safety nets afforded to everyone else in every major country on earth.
The Russians and the Chinese.The Russians and the Chinese are your enemy.
Not the people who could have paid you a living wage to stay home safely but instead chose to give you $1200 and tell you to fuck off while transferring trillions to the plutocratic class.
The Russians and the Chinese.The Russians and the Chinese are your enemy.
Not the war profiteers and ecocidal devourers who are destroying your ecosystem and endangering the life of every organism on this planet.
The Russians and the Chinese.The Russians and the Chinese are your enemy.
Not the billionaire class who has a vested interest in making sure you stay poor in a system where money equals power and power is relative.
The Russians and the Chinese.The Russians and the Chinese are your enemy.
Not the people who are doing everything they can to roll out systems of internet censorship, surveillance and police militarization as quickly as possible in your own country.
The Russians and the Chinese.The Russians and the Chinese are your enemy.
Not the authoritarian rulers who demand complete control over what substances you put in your body while creating the largest prison population in the history of human civilization.
The Russians and the Chinese.The Russians and the Chinese are your enemy.
Not the two-headed one-party system which repeatedly threatens to destroy the rights and lives of marginalized groups if you don’t give at least one of those heads your full unbridled support.
The Russians and the Chinese.The Russians and the Chinese are your enemy.
Not the nationless alliance of oligarchs who use your resources to encircle the planet with military bases, wage countless undeclared wars and destroy any nation which refuses to bow to their empire.
The Russians and the Chinese.The Russians and the Chinese are your enemy.
Not the people who infiltrate, undermine, sabotage and smear any political movement which tries to help ordinary people the moment it begins gaining any traction.
The Russians and the Chinese.The Russians and the Chinese are your enemy.
Not the people who are working to normalize the extradition and life imprisonment of any journalist anywhere in the world who exposes the war crimes of your government.
The Russians and the Chinese.The Russians and the Chinese are your enemy.
Not the thugs who demand the unthinking loyalty of not just you and your countrymen but everyone in the world on pain of violent retribution.
The Russians and the Chinese.The Russians and the Chinese are your enemy.
Not the media-owning class who uses their unrivaled narrative control to sow division among your brothers and sisters at home and around the world so you don’t realize who’s really been fucking you over.
The Russians and the Chinese.* * *
Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics onTwitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.
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Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/24/2020 – 21:15 - China Sent Medical Expert Team To Attend To North Korea's Kim Jong Un
China Sent Medical Expert Team To Attend To North Korea’s Kim Jong Un
Update: Following an earlier report that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un may have been evacuated from Pyongyang (as he was nowhere to be seen during the national holiday celebration of his grandfather’s birthday on April 15) amid speculation about his failing health following a report from a Seoul-based website that Kim was recovering after undergoing a cardiovascular procedure on April 12, late on Friday Reuters reported that China has “dispatched a team to North Korea including medical experts to advise on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.”
Citing “three people familiar with the situation”, Reuters writes that a delegation led by a senior member of the Chinese Communist Party’s International Liaison Department – which is the main Chinese body dealing with North Korea – left Beijing for North Korea on Thursday.
Meanwhile, both South Korean government officials and a Chinese official with the Liaison Department challenged subsequent reports suggesting that Kim was in grave danger after surgery, while South Korean officials said they had detected no signs of unusual activity in North Korea. On Thursday, President Donald Trump also downplayed earlier reports that Kim was gravely ill. “I think the report was incorrect,” Trump told reporters, but he declined to say if he had been in touch with North Korean officials.
One day later, on Friday, a South Korean source told Reuters their intelligence was that Kim was alive and would likely make an appearance soon. The person said he did not have any comment on Kim’s current condition or any Chinese involvement. An official familiar with U.S. intelligence said that Kim was known to have health problems but they had no reason to conclude he was seriously ill or unable eventually to reappear in public.
Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, when asked about Kim’s health on Fox News after Trump spoke said, “I don’t have anything I can share with you tonight, but the American people should know we’re watching the situation very keenly.”
The last time North Korea’s state media reported on Kim’s whereabouts was when he presided over a meeting on April 11. However, as noted above, state media did not report that he was in attendance at an event to mark the birthday of his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, on April 15, an important anniversary in North Korea.
Kim, believed to be 36, has disappeared from coverage in North Korean state media before. In 2014, he vanished for more than a month and North Korean state TV later showed him walking with a limp. Speculation about his health has been fanned by his heavy smoking, apparent weight gain since taking power and family history of cardiovascular problems.
When Kim Jong Un’s father, Kim Jong Il, suffered a stroke in 2008, South Korean media reported at the time that Chinese doctors were involved in his treatment along with French physicians.
Earlier:
Kim Jong Un was last seen publicly on the weekend of April 11th, but after he was nowhere in sight during the national holiday celebration of his grandfather’s birthday on April 15 — highly unusual for the important “Day of the Sun” commemorations, this triggered multiple unconfirmed reports that the North Korean leader was in critical condition after receiving heart surgery.
First, it should be noted that the Western mainstream press often gets North Korea completely wrong — and in the case of the latest speculation a high degree of critical skepticism is warranted further given the initial source for the heart surgery claims was a US state-funded media outlet based in South Korea, the Daily NK website.
South Korean officials also downplayed the news, which had initially riled markets at the start of the week, suggesting he was “touring provincial areas”. President Trump also during the regular White House briefing Thursday evening called rumors of Kim’s ill health “fake news”.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, via KCNA. While there’s been lots of questions and speculation, it still remains no satisfactory answers have been given.
Instead, more contradictory reports out of Seoul based on intelligence sources, which suggest he’s been “evacuated” from Pyongyang to a coastal city. The new reports say he’s on the move and out of the public eye primarily due to COVID-19 outbreaks among key sectors of the country, also which Pyongyang officials have sought to downplay.
UPI outlines the latest reports as follows:
Kim may have been evacuated to the coastal city of Wonsan, Kangwon Province, where he may have been providing field guidance at a resort construction site, South Korean news service Newsis reported Friday, citing Seoul’s national intelligence sources.
According to Newsis, movement has been observed among “dedicated vehicles” for Kim that suggest he may have been evacuated from Pyongyang. A special train for Kim’s use was stationed in Wonsan, but Kim’s private plane remained in Pyongyang, the report says.
And further, “In the new location, Kim may be carrying out field guidance activities, at Tanchon Hydroelectric Power Plant, or visiting a North Korean artillery unit in Sondok, where short-range projectiles were fired in March,” the report speculates based on official sources.
Amid rumours about his health, the North Korean leader has not been seen for days. https://t.co/a05NZ90WVF
— New Statesman (@NewStatesman) April 24, 2020
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If he does make an appearance anytime soon, it’s likely to be related to North Korea’s Military Foundation Day events on Saturday, though reports and official photographs could still take days to be released.
Assuming he is rapidly moving to different locations of the country, it’s unlikely his condition would be “gravely ill” as the initial dire headlines speculated. US intelligence is said to be monitoring the situation.
Meanwhile, joint US-South Korea military drills have just wrapped up. The five-day long regularly scheduled air exercise came following the North launching at least five missile tests so far this year, and as Pyongyang’s anger and frustration over stalled nuclear talks with Washington is increasingly on display.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/24/2020 – 21:00 - Violent Food & Fuel Shortage Riots Grip Venezuela Amid COVID-19 Lockdown
Violent Food & Fuel Shortage Riots Grip Venezuela Amid COVID-19 Lockdown
Despite a six week mandated nationwide coronavirus lockdown, broad protests have once again gripped parts of Venezuela amid crippling food and fuel shortages. Citizens are being asked to stay home, yet can’t get enough food to survive.
New reporting by Bloomberg counts at least 500 protests across 15 states so far this month, which has included multiple killed and scores wounded and arrested in often violent clashes with police, also as protests turn to looting.
Riot and looting scene in Venezuela this week. Riots have also reportedly erupted in some instances over police attempting to enforce quarantine rules, such as the wearing of masks being enforced in all public spaces. This as only 311 cases of coronavirus and 10 deaths have been reported nationwide according to official government figures.
However, in part thanks to US-led sanctions, what little personal protective gear was available flew off the shelves last month, with few options available for most citizens other than sewing their own masks.
#23Abr “Queremos comida… No se puede comprar nada”.
Este es el grito de protesta exigiendo gasolina y la garantía del derecho a la alimentación.
Foto: @prensakike Guanare #Portuguesa #OVCS pic.twitter.com/kiIy4aU4Kw
— Observatorio de Conflictos (@OVCSocial) April 23, 2020
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While most families in North America have Amazon and Walmart deliveries of food and vital items coming to their door, also amid an abundance of cheap gas, Venezuleans are forced to venture out of self-isolation seeking out needed resources to survive.
“Stocking up and hunkering down isn’t an option for many people who are too poor to buy enough food in advance,” as Bloomberg notes.
Saqueos en Maturin Monagas pic.twitter.com/e3afDcjLuI
— Cupos en La Haya (@jcajias) April 24, 2020
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Bloomberg further emphasizes the situation is only set to continue spiraling downward, possibly into political unrest:
Vast gasoline shortages are taking a toll on already fragile supply chains, disrupting food deliveries and public transportation everywhere. The situation is likely to continue: there are few signs of long-term relief for local refineries. In the meantime, crops in rural states have gone to waste as farmers are unable to collect fruit and grains on empty tanks.
Dozens of Venezuelans clashed with police forces in the countryside of southern Bolivar state on Thursday.
Looting has also been observed as the poor get desperate. They find themselves in a dangerous Catch-22: on the one hand risking arrest for going outside in town streets, but on the other risking their family’s starvation if they don’t venture far out for food and vital supplies.
Protests and looting over food shortages in Rio Caribe today ended with police and GNB shooting at an unarmed crowd. Similar protests and looting is starting to appear in towns across Venezuela #Venezuela pic.twitter.com/pKouhcnxvQ
— CNW (@ConflictsW) April 24, 2020
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The food and fuel crises are directly intertwined, exacerbated by American sanctions which especially seek to choke Venezuelan oil exports, refining and operations, as Reuters describes:
Irrigation systems are halted in the western Andean highlands and laborers cannot get to fields for harvest. The fuel shortages have worsened in recent weeks as Washington has tightened sanctions on the socialist government of President Nicolas Maduro.
Even before the coronavirus crisis, some 9 million Venezuelans already were suffering from malnutrition, according to the U.N. World Food Programme, and the latest developments may make it increasingly difficult to keep the country in quarantine.
Simply put, vast stores of food are rotting as producers lack the means to get them to market.
#Venezuela #Petare in the streets during regime quarantine because no food is arriving during gasoline shortages. #NoFood #SinComida
pic.twitter.com/jAn2JjoAui— Michael Welling (@WellingMichael) April 24, 2020
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It was a crisis already in the making, sent hurling over the edge by Caracas’ stay-at-home orders. As Reuters details further:
The OPEC country’s decrepit refineries are in near collapse and the U.S. State Department has pressured companies not to sell gasoline to Venezuela, according to sources, creating long lines at service stations around the country.
Maduro blames the fuel shortages and the economic problems on U.S. sanctions.
Venezuela’s heavy fuel subsidies have made it so cheap that drivers rarely bother paying for it when they fill up at PDVSA service stations.
“This is what humanitarian activists hoped to never see: a sanitary crisis on top of a nutritional crisis,” a Venezuelan health expert, Susana Raffalli, said of the accelerating crisis.
In the town of Calabozo this week, a local police station was attacked reportedly after mass arrests over violating the mask mandate and ‘stay at home’ orders. Angry crowds could be seen attempting to break in to the police station to free relatives.
“It hits us as the country does not have gasoline, protective equipment or a clear response to COVID-19,” Raffalli added.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/24/2020 – 20:55 - Reopen The Economy While Protecting Those Truly At Risk… Or Risk Another Great Depression
Reopen The Economy While Protecting Those Truly At Risk… Or Risk Another Great Depression
Authored by Mark Glennon via Wirepoints.org,
Please, please, wake up. A calamity far worse than COVID-19 itself is at hand.
Frightening as the death toll from the virus is, a more terrifying consequence looms: a depression, and a major one.
If you think that’s exaggeration, it’s because expert opinion and news on the economy is drowned out by “frightening, click-bait headlines” that are “not useful” on meaningless numbers.
The assessments from sources of all political stripes are everywhere, though you won’t see them mentioned by politicians or most of the media the general public reads. Here are a few:
“We are experiencing an economic contraction that is faster and deeper than anything we have seen in the past century, or possibly several centuries,” Bank of England interest-rate setter Jan Vlieghe said. [Emphasis added.]
The coronavirus collapse has the ingredients to surpass the disaster of the 1930s…. Let’s hope this depression won’t last a decade, but an unprecedented slump followed by years of pain seems inevitable, said a Bloomberg commentary.
From economist Nouriel Roubini: “The best economic outcome that anyone can hope for is a recession deeper than that following the 2008 financial crisis. But given the flailing policy response so far, the chances of a far worse outcome are increasing by the day.”
“Forget recession, this is a depression,” says the left wing Guardian.
The coronavirus pandemic will push the global economy into the deepest recession since the Great Depression, with the world’s poorest countries suffering the most, the head of the International Monetary Fund said Thursday.
“The expectation of market participants is that we’re in the Great Depression and that in a sense, the news can’t get much worse,” said BNY Mellon chief strategist Alicia Levine.
“At this point it would take a miracle to keep this recession from turning into the Great Depression II,” says Chris Rupkey, of Mitsubishi’s economic unit.
We are fighting the last war. Politicians and most of the press talk incessantly about “the curve” on virus infections, the point of which was to ensure that hospital capacity wasn’t exceeded. But we already won that, having excess capacity that is growing every day.
It’s time to bend different, more terrifying curves. Here’s one. It’s unemployment claims, from the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank:
Unemployment is likely already at Great Depression-era highs.
And take no solace from the stock market, which has held up quite well. It’s artificially pumped up by Federal Reserve Bank stimulants. The reality for most Americans is very different, which was captured beautifully on a screenshot from earlier this month showing the market soaring while unemployment surged:
To contain or head off the looming depression, our policy on the Wuhan Virus must change immediately. Two Stanford experts summarized the right approach as follows:
The appropriate policy, based on fundamental biology and the evidence already in hand, is to institute a more focused strategy like some outlined in the first place: Strictly protect the known vulnerable, self-isolate the mildly sick and open most workplaces and small businesses with some prudent large-group precautions. This would allow the essential socializing to generate immunity among those with minimal risk of serious consequence, while saving lives, preventing overcrowding of hospitals and limiting the enormous harms compounded by continued total isolation. Let’s stop underemphasizing empirical evidence while instead doubling down on hypothetical models. Facts matter.
Please, please wake up.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/24/2020 – 20:35 - EU Leaders Rewrite Document On Government Coronavirus Disinfo After China's Government Freaks Out
EU Leaders Rewrite Document On Government Coronavirus Disinfo After China’s Government Freaks Out
EU leaders bowed to China this week, softening their criticism of the communist regime in a report documenting how governments have pushed disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic.
Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios “China has continued to run a global disinformation campaign to deflect blame for the outbreak of the pandemic and improve its international image,” read the initial report, according to a copy seen by the New York Times. “Both overt and covert tactics have been observed.”
It cited Beijing’s efforts to curtail mentions of the virus’s origins in China, in part by blaming the United States for spreading the disease internationally. It noted that Beijing had criticized France as slow to respond to the pandemic and had pushed false accusations that French politicians used racist slurs against the head of the World Health Organization. The report also highlighted Russian efforts to promote false health information and sow distrust in Western institutions. –NYT
But after China ‘moved quickly to block the document’s release,’ European officials immediately delayed – and then rewrote the document which “diluted the focus on China, a vital trading partner.“
“The Chinese are already threatening with reactions if the report comes out,” said EU diplomat Lutz Güllner in a Tuesday email seen by The Times.
The original report said that European analysts had assessed a “continued and coordinated push by official Chinese sources to deflect any blame.” That wording now says: “We see continued and coordinated push by some actors, including Chinese sources, to deflect any blame.” –NYT
Notably, the sentence about China’s “global disinformation” campaign was shelved, as well as the claims made against France, along with other language.
It’s near-universal knowledge (outside of China) that the CCP muzzled doctors and journalists who were reporting facts about the Wuhan coronavirus as the virus began to spread out of control late last year – while the Trump administration has consistently blamed China for their poor handling of the outbreak, as well as spreading false information about the disease, such as whether it was transmissible between humans.
President Trump said last week that his government was trying to figure out whether the virus came from a Chinese lab, while China has accused the American government of trying to distract the public from its own mistakes. –NYT
The European Union, meanwhile, was set to issue its report on Tuesday – until Chinese officials “quickly contacted the European Union’s representatives in Beijing to try to kill the report,” according to two diplomats.
The Times notes that the report’s alteration comes at a time when the EU is trying to get better treatment for its companies in China, with two-way trade estimated at over $1.6 billion per day before the pandemic. Both German automakers and French farmers are among the EU industries which heavily rely on Chinese exports, according to the report.
EU spokesman Peter Stano said on Friday that the report hadn’t been delayed, saying “It is ready once it is complete, cleared in an editorial process and ready to be uploaded.”
Except on Tuesday morning, an email which circulated within the disinformation task force with the subject line: “READY for publication.” The report was reportedly approved and a summary was moments away from publication after it was ordered held by Esther Osorio – a senior adviser to the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, according to the Journal, citing an email.
Esther Osorio (Twitter profile)
Central and Eastern Europe, in particular, are a hotbed for disinformation tactics, diplomats say. “Poland is the petri dish for Russia and China to try out their disinformation, their trolls and bots,” the American ambassador in Poland, Georgette Mosbacher, said in an interview on Thursday.
As officials in Brussels delayed publishing their report, Chinese officials in Beijing kept up the pressure with at least two high-level calls to the European representatives there, according to emails and interviews with diplomats. Chinese officials expressed alarm at the news of a coming report and urged the bloc not to release the document. –NYT
According to the report, Osorio asked analysts to revise the document and lighten up on China and Russia to avoid accusations of bias – making sure they differentiated between ‘pushing disinformation and aggressively pushing a narrative.’
“Such appeasement will set a terrible precedent and encourage similar coercion in the future,” said analyst Monika Richter, adding that EU diplomats are “self-censoring to appease the Chinese Communist Party.“
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/24/2020 – 20:15 - Daily Briefing – April 24, 2020
- "It Will All End Badly" – The Coming Economic End-Game
“It Will All End Badly” – The Coming Economic End-Game
Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,
The wonderful thing about numbers is that when they are not jockeyed, jerked around, and falsified they tend to tell the truth. Continuing on this thought looking down the road the numbers do not work. This is where the late, Allen Meltzer, recognized for his wisdom and achievements in economics, enters the story. Meltzer was a professor of political economy at Carnegie Mellon University and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.
He authored the three-volume “A History of the Federal Reserve” and for over 25 years he chaired the Shadow Open Market Committee, a group that meets regularly to discuss the policy of the Federal Reserve.
To say Meltzer was not a fan of the economic policies that have unfolded since 2008 is an understatement.
“We’re in the biggest mess we’ve been in since the 1930s,” he has been quoted as saying, before he went on to claim that, “We’ve never had a more problematic future.”
This is about a person born in 1928 that while viewed by many economists as America’s foremost expert in monetary policy is little known by the masses. Meltzer was not been a fan of recent economic policy.
In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece on June 30, 2010, titled “Why Obamanomics Has Failed” Meltzer wrote about how uncertainty about future taxes and regulations was the biggest enemy facing future economic growth. He goes on to say that the administration’s stimulus program failed. Two overreaching reasons explain the failure of Obamanomics.
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First, administration economists and their outside supporters neglected the longer-term costs and consequences of their actions.
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Second, the administration and Congress have through their deeds and words heightened uncertainty about the economic future.
Meltzer said most of the earlier spending was a very short-term response to long-term problems. Part of the money financed temporary tax cuts, this was a mistake because it ignores the role of expectations in the economy. Unless tax cuts are expected to last, consumers save the proceeds and pay down debt. Another large part of the stimulus went to relieve state and local governments of their budget deficits. Transferring a deficit from the state to the federal government changes very little. Some teachers and police got an additional year of employment, but their gain is temporary. Any benefits to them must be balanced against the negative effect of the increased public debt and the temporary nature of the transfer.
Soaring National Debt
This seems to coincide with what Peter Schiff says, printing money is to the economy what taking drugs is to a drug addict. In the short term, it makes the economy feel good, but in the long run, it is much worse off. What was once the “long-run” or “distant future” may be getting very near. Soon the dollar and the American economy will be nearly dead. I recently reviewed a book I read years ago, in his book “A Time For Action” written in 1980 William Simon, a former Secretary of the Treasury tells how he was “frightened and angry”. In short, he was sounding the trumpet about how he saw the country was heading down the wrong path. Looking back, it is hard to imagine how we have made it this long without addressing the concerns that Simon wrote about so many years ago. Back then it was about billions of dollars of debt, today it is about trillions of dollars.
People have been forced into riskier assets because of low-interest rates. When interest rates rise, as they will at some point, the value of these risky investments will decline, and these investors will be hurt. Making things worse is the fact that interest payments on the public debt will rise increasing the budget deficit which has grown massively in past years. It is clear that prices in some sectors of the economy have been rising rapidly and major distortions exist within the marketplace. When the large “too big to fail” banks like Goldman and Bank of America report they made profits in the market on roughly 95% of trading days in 2012 we have to raise an eyebrow. This is an indication that the game is manipulated as no trader is that good.
Returning to Allen Meltzer he penned a piece that appeared in the Wall Street Journal in May of 2014, in the article Meltzer gives his take on where the economy is headed. I highly value his opinion, not only because it is based on his long developed work and studies, but he seems to have far less motivation to lie than many of those currently involved in forming policies today. Meltzer wrote;
The U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts that food prices will rise as much as 3.5% this year, the biggest annual increase in three years. Over the past 12 months from March, the consumer-price index increased 1.5% before seasonal adjustment. These are warnings. Never in history has a country that financed big budget deficits with large amounts of central-bank money avoided inflation. Yet the U.S. has been printing money—and in a reckless fashion—for years.
The Obama administration has run huge budget deficits every year, which, together with the Bush administration, has amounted to $6.7 trillion from 2006 to 2013. The Federal Reserve financed almost $3 trillion of these deficits by purchasing Treasury bonds and notes. The Fed has also purchased massive amounts of mortgage-backed securities. Today, with more than $2.5 trillion of idle reserves on bank balance sheets, there is enormous fuel for greater inflation once lending and money growth rises
To avoid the kind of damaging inflation the U.S. experienced in the 1970s and early ’80s, the Fed could raise interest rates, including the interest it pays banks on reserves, inducing banks to hold most of the $2.5 trillion of reserves idle. But interest rates high enough to discourage borrowing and lending would likely send the economy into another damaging recession
Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen recently admitted that the central bank doesn’t have a good model of inflation. It relies on the Phillips Curve, which charts what economist Alban William Phillips in the late 1950s saw as a tendency for inflation to rise when unemployment is low and to fall when unemployment is high. Two of the most successful Fed chairmen, Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan, considered the Phillips Curve unreliable. The Fed’s forecasts of inflation ignore Milton Friedman’s dictum that “inflation is always and everywhere” a result of excessive money growth relative to the growth of real output.
The Fed focuses far too much attention on distracting monthly and quarterly data while ignoring the longer-term effects of money growth. The country’s present dilemma originated in 2008 when the Fed properly and forcefully prevented a collapse of the payments system. But long before idle reserves reached $2.5 trillion, the Fed didn’t ask itself: What can we do by adding more reserves that banks cannot do by using their massive idle reserves? The fact that the reserves sat idle to earn one-quarter of a percent a year should have been a clear signal that banks didn’t see demand to borrow by prudent borrowers.
The Fed’s unprecedented quantitative easing since 2008 failed to lead to a robust recovery. The unemployment rate has gradually declined, but the main reason is that workers have withdrawn from the labor force. The stock market boomed, bringing support from traders, but the rise in asset prices of equities didn’t stimulate growth by inducing investment in new capital. Investment continues to be sluggish.
And some side effects of the Fed policies have had ugly consequences. One of the worst is that ultra-low interest rates induced retired citizens to take substantially greater risk than the bank CDs that many of them relied on in the past. Decisions of this kind end in tears. Another is the loss that bondholders cannot avoid when interest rates rise, as they have started to do.
Accumulating data from the sluggish loan market and the weak responses of employment and investment should have alerted the Fed that the growth of reserves and the low interest rates haven’t been achieving much. Similarly, the Fed should have noticed in recent years that instead of a strong housing-market recovery, not many individuals were taking out first mortgages. Many of the sales were to real-estate speculators who financed their purchases without mortgages and are now renting the houses, planning to resell them later.
Most of all the Fed years ago should have recognized that the country’s economic problems weren’t arising from monetary factors. Instead of keeping interest rates low to finance deficits, the Fed should have explained that costly regulation, increased health-care costs, wasteful spending and repeated threats to raise tax rates were holding back the recovery.
Broadly speaking, the Obama administration has pursued a course the opposite of that taken by the Kennedy and Johnson administrations in the 1960s (and the Reagan administration in the 1980s). Kennedy-Johnson enacted across-the-board tax cuts: Promoting growth came first, redistribution later. By putting redistribution first and sacrificing growth, the Obama administration got neither.
Ironically, despite often repeated demands for increased redistribution to favor middle- and lower-income groups, the policies pursued by the Obama administration and supported by the Federal Reserve have accomplished the opposite.
When the president campaigns in the midterm election, he will talk about the relative gains by the 1%. Voters should recognize that goosing the stock market through very low interest rates, not to mention the subsidies and handouts to cronies, have contributed to that result. We are now left with the overhang. Inflation is in our future. Food prices are leading off, as they did in the mid-1960s before the “stagflation” of the 1970s. Other prices will follow.
The point of this post is to clarify that just because we have muddled along putting band-aids on our economy does not mean that we have accomplished a great deal. The Trump economy has been a continuation of deficit spending. We have postponed the day of reckoning but most likely made it far worse. Allen Meltzer was a true old school economist that understood this. The time the Federal Reserve has bought for the country to come to terms with its many problems has been squandered at a great cost. While many people claim the American economy was great before covid-19 hit, others like me who work on Main Street beg to differ. For years, an ugly reality has been masked by easy money and deficit spending. While it is difficult to time when our false economy will finally give up the ghost, it is clear this will all end badly.
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This has become a two-part article because of its length. The second part which focuses on where all the is likely to lead will be published soon.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/24/2020 – 19:55 -
- Goldman CEO David "DJ D-Sol" Solomon Will Appear In Upcoming Season Of "Billions"
Goldman CEO David “DJ D-Sol” Solomon Will Appear In Upcoming Season Of “Billions”
Goldman CEO David Solomon was called a Wall Street “trendsetter” for embracing his favorite hobby, DJing under the stagename “DJ D-Sol.”
Now, Solomon has once again found himself a step ahead of the curve: While millions of Americans open LetGo accounts, sign up for ride-share apps amid a desperate scramble to compensate for hours/wages lost during the shutdown, Solomon is taking up another another side-hustle, too.
The longtime Goldman executive, whose bank recently settled the 1MDB case with the DoJ in what some might all a ‘sweetheart’ deal, will make a cameo appearance during the upcoming season of the Showtime hit “Billions”, a taught, sexy corporate thriller about a hero hedge fund manager’s unsolicited oppression at the hands of a federal prosecutor/pisspig.
The Goldman Sachs CEO filmed a guest appearance for the latest season of “Billions” – the Showtime series chronicling fictional hedge fund outlaw Bobby Axelrod that’s drawn a cult viewership in the real industry. Solomon was roped into the gig at the end of last year and shot his cameo, playing himself, in early March.
It’s another way the 58-year-old is striking an unusually public persona atop the historically staid investment bank. Predecessors for generations have tried to separate themselves from Wall Street’s flashier impulses. Solomon, in contrast, is famous for his side-gigs as DJ D-Sol, finding himself at a ritzy Super Bowl party in February on a lineup alongside the Black Eyed Peas, Marshmello, and the rapper DaBaby.
“Billions” is known for its Wall Street cameos, including the likes of Omeed Malik, Marc Lasry and Mark Cuban. The next season premieres in May. Showtime wouldn’t confirm or deny Solomon’s part. And in showbiz, there’s always a chance he might not make the final cut.
Solomon has a relatively low-stress role for his first turn in front of the camera: he will be playing a fictionalized version of himself. But given Solomon’s relatively low public profile relative to his successor, we can’t help but wonder if the producers tried to phone in a favor with the former ‘most powerful man on Wall Street’.
We’d imagine Lloyd was probably too busy hanging out on David Geffen’s yacht to give a shit.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/24/2020 – 19:35 - 6 Obnoxious Spending Habits Of The 'Sheltering In Place' Rich & Famous
6 Obnoxious Spending Habits Of The ‘Sheltering In Place’ Rich & Famous
Authored by Josh Owens via SafeHaven.com,
In the American economic shutdown, the poor are suffering loss of jobs because they’re not benefitting from wealthy spending sprees amid COVID-19, while the rich… well, they’re just on an extended vacation.
Celebrities are making fools of themselves as they try to play the everyman, and the non-celebrity wealthy are obnoxiously bingeing on things that will make the not-so-wealthy cringe at a time when hard-working people are wondering how much longer they can hold out.
They don’t necessarily want hand-outs, and there’s no place in their world for sushi-to-go that costs nearly as much as rent, nor do they have the option of buying their own private island to wait it out.
Here’s the SafeHaven.com list of top wealthy buys on their COVID-19 vacations:
#1 Private Chefs for an Expensive One-Off Meal
The wealthy are under quarantine like everybody else, but it seems they’ve realized they are not cut for cooking, even if their long-lost inner baker is calling them.
During the pandemic, inquiries to hire in-house chefs have surged and several new companies have emerged as a result across New York City and California, connecting prospective clients with private, recently unemployed, home chefs.
For instance, the private cooking company the Culinistas charges as much as $250 a meal, not including the cost of groceries. The chefs procure the necessary groceries and bring them to cook in the client’s kitchen, and they clean up afterwards, too.
#2 We’re All In Food Delivery Together (Not Really)
“We’re all in this together,” many marketers and celebrities are telling on TV. But it is clear that we are “togethering” in a different way. Since the start of the pandemic, food delivery services and apps are experiencing a surge in demand, but the super-rich are doing it differently.
Those quarantined are reporting weeks-long waits on Instacart, Shipt and other leading platforms as demand is far outpacing supply. But for the wealthy, the wait is much shorter. That’s primarily because they use special grocery delivery services that cater specifically to the rich.
For instance, with orders of $275 or more, Regalis Foods will throw in a free ounce of caviar. The company, which catered upscale restaurants before the pandemic, is now delivering to peoples’ homes, and it’s not just when you run out of flour or toilet paper: They’ll even deliver live king crab for $395.
Sushi eatery Masa, one of the priciest restaurants in the country, which was closed down in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, has begun selling takeout meals for the price of $800. Only 20 box-sets are available per week.
The price appears to be a bargain, as the restaurant explained that it box feeds up to four people, making it about $200 per person, compared to the regular price which runs for $595 per person.
#3 Can’t Travel Safely? Book An Entire Hotel/Motel
Vacation rental platforms have seen the majority of their bookings canceled in a trend that has already been dubbed “AirBnB Apocalypse”. Several cities in the US and Canada have also banned short-term rentals. However, there are few lucky hosts who have managed to lure in the wealthy by renting out their entire complex.
While overall reservations have dropped between 50% and 60% a week since the outbreak, reservations in more remote areas have still been consistent.
CNN Travel reported that wealthy families are booking out entire hotels to wait out the quarantine. One of them is the Blantyre Country Resort, available for a small group or a single family for $38,000 a day. Several other hotels and inns across the country are offering unique packages for families.
#4 Private Islands, Why Not?
In the last two months, upscale real estate agencies have been reporting a massive increase in inquiries for private islands for sale or rent in the Caribbean.
One agency reported receiving a lot of “desperate” inquiries from people on yachts, who after being “stranded” offshore for weeks, are circling islands “trying to find a safe place to go and are willing to pay a premium”.
#5 Survival Condos for Wealthy
The rich are literally hunkering down.
Bunker and bomb shelter manufacturers have seen business increase fourfold compared to the same period last year. U.S.-based bunker maker Survival Condo offers several models and the unit prices range from around $500,000 to $2.4 million and include facilities such as indoor pools, gyms and even rock climbing walls.
#6 The Travel Bag You Simply Must Have
Hand sanitizer is in short supply. People are piling toilet paper even if they aren’t sure why. And every household should have an air purifier. But hunkering down and isolation is nothing without the ultimate survival bag.
Anyone with an extra $5000 can now bug out in style. Emergency kit maker Preppi, whose sales increased 5,000% last month, is offering a bag that includes a satellite phone, night vision glasses, sleeping bags…and a Caviar Cooler Case and serving set. The basic model costs only $445.
For a more sober take, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends having at least one gallon of water per person per day, and a three-day supply of food–no caviar necessary.
Earlier this week, the CDC warned that the novel coronavirus could have a second wave – which could be even more catastrophic than the last. According to historians, the 1918 pandemic also came in two waves. The first wave hits the poor, the second wave hits the rich, according to the academic research.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/24/2020 – 19:15 - The Data Is In… Stop The Panic & End The Total Isolation
The Data Is In… Stop The Panic & End The Total Isolation
Authored by Scott Atlas, M.D., op-ed via The Hill,
The tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be entering the containment phase. Tens of thousands of Americans have died, and Americans are now desperate for sensible policymakers who have the courage to ignore the panic and rely on facts. Leaders must examine accumulated data to see what has actually happened, rather than keep emphasizing hypothetical projections; combine that empirical evidence with fundamental principles of biology established for decades; and then thoughtfully restore the country to function.
Five key facts are being ignored by those calling for continuing the near-total lockdown.
Fact 1: The overwhelming majority of people do not have any significant risk of dying from COVID-19.
The recent Stanford University antibody study now estimates that the fatality rate if infected is likely 0.1 to 0.2 percent, a risk far lower than previous World Health Organization estimates that were 20 to 30 times higher and that motivated isolation policies.
In New York City, an epicenter of the pandemic with more than one-third of all U.S. deaths, the rate of death for people 18 to 45 years old is 0.01 percent, or 11 per 100,000 in the population. On the other hand, people aged 75 and over have a death rate 80 times that. For people under 18 years old, the rate of death is zero per 100,000.
Of all fatal cases in New York state, two-thirds were in patients over 70 years of age; more than 95 percent were over 50 years of age; and about 90 percent of all fatal cases had an underlying illness. Of 6,570 confirmed COVID-19 deaths fully investigated for underlying conditions to date, 6,520, or 99.2 percent, had an underlying illness. If you do not already have an underlying chronic condition, your chances of dying are small, regardless of age. And young adults and children in normal health have almost no risk of any serious illness from COVID-19.
Fact 2: Protecting older, at-risk people eliminates hospital overcrowding.
We can learn about hospital utilization from data from New York City, the hotbed of COVID-19 with more than 34,600 hospitalizations to date. For those under 18 years of age, hospitalization from the virus is 0.01 percent per 100,000 people; for those 18 to 44 years old, hospitalization is 0.1 percent per 100,000. Even for people ages 65 to 74, only 1.7 percent were hospitalized. Of 4,103 confirmed COVID-19 patients with symptoms bad enough to seek medical care, Dr. Leora Horwitz of NYU Medical Center concluded “age is far and away the strongest risk factor for hospitalization.” Even early WHO reports noted that 80 percent of all cases were mild, and more recent studies show a far more widespread rate of infection and lower rate of serious illness. Half of all people testing positive for infection have no symptoms at all. The vast majority of younger, otherwise healthy people do not need significant medical care if they catch this infection.
Fact 3: Vital population immunity is prevented by total isolation policies, prolonging the problem.
We know from decades of medical science that infection itself allows people to generate an immune response — antibodies — so that the infection is controlled throughout the population by “herd immunity.” Indeed, that is the main purpose of widespread immunization in other viral diseases — to assist with population immunity. In this virus, we know that medical care is not even necessary for the vast majority of people who are infected. It is so mild that half of infected people are asymptomatic, shown in early data from the Diamond Princess ship, and then in Iceland and Italy. That has been falsely portrayed as a problem requiring mass isolation. In fact, infected people without severe illness are the immediately available vehicle for establishing widespread immunity. By transmitting the virus to others in the low-risk group who then generate antibodies, they block the network of pathways toward the most vulnerable people, ultimately ending the threat. Extending whole-population isolation would directly prevent that widespread immunity from developing.
Fact 4: People are dying because other medical care is not getting done due to hypothetical projections.
Critical health care for millions of Americans is being ignored and people are dying to accommodate “potential” COVID-19 patients and for fear of spreading the disease. Most states and many hospitals abruptly stopped “nonessential” procedures and surgery. That prevented diagnoses of life-threatening diseases, like cancer screening, biopsies of tumors now undiscovered and potentially deadly brain aneurysms. Treatments, including emergency care, for the most serious illnesses were also missed. Cancer patients deferred chemotherapy. An estimated 80 percent of brain surgery cases were skipped. Acute stroke and heart attack patients missed their only chances for treatment, some dying and many now facing permanent disability.
Fact 5: We have a clearly defined population at risk who can be protected with targeted measures.
The overwhelming evidence all over the world consistently shows that a clearly defined group — older people and others with underlying conditions — is more likely to have a serious illness requiring hospitalization and more likely to die from COVID-19. Knowing that, it is a commonsense, achievable goal to target isolation policy to that group, including strictly monitoring those who interact with them. Nursing home residents, the highest risk, should be the most straightforward to systematically protect from infected people, given that they already live in confined places with highly restricted entry.
The appropriate policy, based on fundamental biology and the evidence already in hand, is to institute a more focused strategy like some outlined in the first place:
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Strictly protect the known vulnerable,
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self-isolate the mildly sick, and
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open most workplaces and small businesses with some prudent large-group precautions.
This would allow the essential socializing to generate immunity among those with minimal risk of serious consequence, while saving lives, preventing overcrowding of hospitals and limiting the enormous harms compounded by continued total isolation. Let’s stop underemphasizing empirical evidence while instead doubling down on hypothetical models. Facts matter.
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Scott W. Atlas, MD, is the David and Joan Traitel Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and the former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/24/2020 – 18:55 -
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