Today’s News 26th April 2021

• Second Turkish Crypto Exchange Collapses, Four Employees Arrested On Suspicion Of Fraud
  Second Turkish Crypto Exchange Collapses, Four Employees Arrested On Suspicion Of Fraud

  Just days after major Turkish Crypto exchange Thodex collapsed, its CEO fled with a rumored $2 billion (and was reportedly detained) and dozens of people were arrested, Turkey’s cryptocurrency investors were dealt another blow as second big exchange collapsed.

  In a statement posted late Friday on its website, Vebitcoin said it halted operations citing deteriorating financial conditions claiming that unspecified financial strain led to the decision — possibly caused by an unusually high number of withdrawals leading up to Turkey’s forthcoming cryptocurrency ban, according to CoinTelegraph.

  “We have decided to cease our activities in order to fulfill all regulations and claims,” the announcement read in part.

  Demiroren News Agency said its Chief Executive Ilker Bas and three other employees have been detained on Saturday. The Financial Crimes Investigation Board has blocked Vebitcoin’s accounts and opened a probe. Vebitcoin is – or rather was – Turkey’s fourth biggest exchange with close to $60 million in daily volumes, according to CoinGecko.com which tracks data on price, volume and market value on crypto markets. More than half of this volume came from Bitcoin, which dropped 19% this week.

  On Saturday morning, Muğla chief public prosecutor Mehmet Nadir Yağcı announced in a statement to local media that four employees have been detained by law enforcement following allegations of fraud.

  “Following the search and seizure operations carried out at the company headquarters and at some addresses, 4 people, who are company directors and employees, were detained. The investigation carried out by the Directorate of Cyber ​​Crimes Branch of the Muğla Police Department is carried out in a multifaceted and meticulous manner.”

  The collapse of Vebitcoin comes days after Thodex halted operations and its 27-year-old founder fled to Albania. Thodex had about 390,000 users according to a lawyer for the victims and losses could be as high as $2 billion, according to Turkey’s Haberturk newspaper. Police subsequently issued upwards of 75 arrest warrants and detained 62 in connection to a possible exit scam.

  This week’s rout marks the worst period for Bitcoin since it tumbled amid a wider slump in risk assets at the end of February with bitcoin sliding as low as $48,000 late on Sunday, amid broader weakness in the entire crypto space.

  

  The two exchanges were part of the cryptocurrency boom that had drawn in legions of Turks seeking to protect their savings from rampant inflation and the collapsing Turkish currency. Turkish inflation hit 16.2% in March, more than three times the central bank’s target, and the lira has weakened more than 11% against the dollar this year — its ninth consecutive year of losses – making it the year’s worst performing major currency.

  

  The boom in Turkish crypto trading which saw daily volume on local crypto markets close to $2 billion for Friday, according to data from CoinGecko.com, regulators have come knocking. In early April, Turkey’s Central Bank has banned cryptocurrencies as a form of payment from April 30, and the country has prohibited payment and electronic money institutions from mediating money transfers to cryptocurrency platforms.

  Central Bank chief Sahap Kavcioglu said more regulations are in the pipeline in a televised interview on Friday. “We are working on regulations in terms of cryptocurrency,” he said. “There are disturbing money outflows to outside of Turkey via cryptocurrencies.”

  Turkey’s crypto ban has become a hot-button issue, as opposition leaders have voiced support for crypto.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 02:45

• The Ignorant World And What to Do About It
  The Ignorant World And What to Do About It

  Authored by Joakim Book via The American Institute for Economic Research,

  A spectre is haunting the Western world – the spectre of a grossly mistaken understanding of the world. 

  

  British kids have nightmares about the climate. Half of French respondents think it likely that climate change will cause “the extinction of the human race.” American teachers coddle students who have panic attacks when wildfires rage somewhere on the planet. Eco-anxiety has clearly gripped the Western world, but what’s worse is that most people have a dismal outlook on all of humanity’s progress, not just climate change. 

  Because slow changes don’t get noticed, and because humans use mental shortcuts to understand the world, we end up with a grossly misinformed view of what is. The late Hans Rosling, the Swedish professor of international health that most of us know as the excited man on YouTube (the one who explains the progress of the world with bubbles and giant blocks), dedicated his life to dispelling these misperceptions. The Gapminder Foundation that now carries on his legacy writes

  “Our ignorance surveys have shown that the general public is misguided about many basic global facts. Reliable global statistics exist for nearly every aspect of global development, but these numbers are not transformed into popular understanding because using and teaching statistics is still too difficult.” 

  Gapminder routinely asks 12 questions (sometimes with a thirteenth question on global temperatures, which most people tend to get right) about basic, uncontroversial, changes in global development – multiple-choice questions on things like demographic change, how many girls in poor countries finish primary school, and what’s happened to extreme poverty in the last twenty years. 

  The results are terrible, but it’s not a question of ignorance. If people genuinely didn’t know, by chance alone they’d pick the right answer a third of the time: this is the chimpanzee threshold. Instead, the average human gets 2.2 answers right. The results for some questions, like global life expectancy (50, 60, or 70 years?), ought to scare us more than any dismal vision of climate change. Having more than doubled since 1900, the global improvements in the last forty years seem to have passed most smart people by. Of students and faculty at top universities less than one in five manage to get this right – even Nobel Laureates underperform the chimps. The worst-performing groups were Swedish trade unionists (10% got the answer right) and Norwegian teachers (7% correct). In one memorable lecture, Rosling animatedly exclaimed “What in the world are you teaching the kids?!”

  In that one line lies much of the problem for our continued misinformation about the world. 

  Media coverage inundates us with a constant flow of catastrophes from one part or the world or another, while overlooking the great non-events of the world. When super cyclones kill 128 people instead of the hundreds of thousands they used to or would have, we don’t even hear about them. When hundreds of thousands of people are lifted out of extreme poverty a day, every day, that’s no longer newsworthy. The result is, Gapminder notes, that “people end up carrying around a sack of outdated facts that you got in school (including knowledge that often was outdated when acquired in school).”

  Counteracting that requires information and an updated framework for thinking about the world. To embrace the notion that things gradually get better – not worse – as we solve more problems, invent better things, and bring more people into the global marketplace. The return of such an optimist mentality (Rosling prefers ‘possibilist’) requires nothing more than accepting that “facts are better than myths – especially for understanding the world.”

  Thou shalt not misinform

  To say that the world is getting better is not to be complacent about its problems. It is not to be Pollyannaish about the future or believe that from here the only way is up. It’s to say that, on net and over time, the world gets better. It’s to say that progress is hard-earned; that it’s a gradual process, with deep structural and historical roots; that the small heavens we may create in our own lives combine to make the entire world slightly less bad than it was yesterday. I work for you doing what I’m good at; you work for me doing what you’re good at – and inventors and entrepreneurs halfway around the world figure out ways to do things that make both our lives better.  

  This isn’t a predetermined path, and it most certainly isn’t always up. Last year was a setback in just about every way we know how to measure (mortality, life expectancy, poverty). The twentieth century saw some of humanity’s worst atrocities: world wars, genocide, autocrats. Sometimes progress pauses, and sometimes our past progress gives rise to new challenges we have yet to overcome – like the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere from the coal and oil we burned for (great!) use as fuel, production, and transportation. 

  While that’s a global challenge to talk seriously about with our children, we don’t have to overdo it. Imbuing them with mistaken doom-mongering helps nobody. When we do, we’re not setting up the next generation for a flourishing world, or even a factful one. 

  Nobody told these kids that wildfires destroy less area now than they used to and forests in California burned much more before Europeans arrived. Deaths from natural disasters, those like storms, hurricanes, and floods that we usually associate with worsening climate change, are massively down over almost any time frame, even though we are many more people on the planet. Child mortality is falling everywhere around the globe, and we produce more food than we ever have. None of those trends are about to suddenly stop, reverse, and undo the progress we’ve already made. 

  What is the point of studying when the world is collapsing around us?

  This is a point that many schoolchildren have raised, Greta Thunberg perhaps most prominently. The world is heading for an urgent climate disaster, so why should they study for a future they won’t have? 

  One reason would be to learn that the world isn’t collapsing, that things are getting better – even though the pandemic coverage and climate change alarmism seem to suggest otherwise. Disasters are quick and sudden; progress is slow and hard-won. We live longer, healthier, safer, better, and more fulfilling lives, with better access to almost anything you can imagine. So far, human ingenuity has outpaced anything that a hostile planet has thrown at us or a declinist mentality has conjured up.

  In all this mess, thankfully, there’s at least one thing you can do: imbue your child not with the dangers of the world, but with the factful progress of the world. This is what Tony Morley, a fellow traveler and prominent advocate for progress, is doing: Targeted at 6-to-12-year-olds, Morley is bringing together a hundred one-page stories about the forces, the people, and the astonishing history of how humans have progressed and collectively improved our global living standards. Human Progress for Beginners tries to

  “tell the dramatic history of human civilization and the jagged upward path of improved living standards in the last 250 years. Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, civilization has experienced the greatest increase in living standards, prosperity, and well-being in our species’ history. […] Human Progress for Beginners will tell the untold story of progress for young readers in a bright and engaging book, the likes of which has never been attempted.”

  Chapters span the innovations that rocked our world: the printing presses, steam power, and combustion engines; the history of living standards, of light, and of food; and the progress of literacy, peace, and pollution. 

  “Progress forward,” Morley emphasizes, “is not progress completed,” and our world certainly has room for improvement. But that’s not reason enough to despair and invoke the doom-and-gloom zeitgeist of “civilizational decline,” “apocalypse,” or “climate emergency.” Instead, we ought to celebrate our achievements, even in the areas that many of our young people now believe are irrevocably destroyed. 

  It’s a counterintuitive notion and a difficult thing to wrap one’s head around, that the world can both be better and is still in many respects bad. We do nobody any favors, least of all our children, by exaggerating one while forgetting how far we’ve come.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 02:00

• Illinoisans Overwhelmingly Oppose Racial Indoctrination Rampant In Schools, Yet They Cower In Silence
  Illinoisans Overwhelmingly Oppose Racial Indoctrination Rampant In Schools, Yet They Cower In Silence

  By Mark Glennon of Wirepoints

  Illinois’ political establishment is far out of touch with the general public on the racial dogma now forced on students from kindergarten through college. Yet a stunning two-thirds of Illinoisans say they don’t speak up, thereby ceding control to an intolerant, extremist minority.

  The proof is in a poll released last month that was mostly buried and ignored by the press. It primarily addressed what schools now teach as unquestionable truth: critical race theory, often called anti-racism or wokism.

  Illinoisans don’t like it. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, which commissioned the poll, summarized their findings this way:

  A majority  of respondents  favor equipping teachers to develop core skills and competencies over the encouragement of  progressive  political activism.  Illinoisans  also  favor  a curriculum that  focuses  on “American founding principles and . . . documents” over  one that  incorporates  key  tenets of the  New York Times’ 1619  Project.  At  the post secondary level,  strong  majorities  oppose reducing police presence on campus;  support viewpoint diversity; favor a merit-based application process;  and  prioritize  reducing the cost of tuition over expanding  diversity  and equity  programs.     

  That’s completely at odds with mandates from the state’s politicians and education officials. The Illinois State Board of Education recently approved woke teaching standards with its “Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning Standards” for K-12 education, and the state earlier made “implicit bias” training required by law for Illinois teachers.

  Among the survey’s specific findings:

  • Sixty-two percent of Illinoisans say it’s more important to expose students to a variety of perspectives, compared to just 23% who want teachers to embrace progressive viewpoints and perspectives; 15% were not sure where they stood. The view was shared by a plurality of Democrats (49.6%) as well as majorities of Republicans (78%) and Independents (69%).

  • Illinoisans reject a core piece of woke teaching, 1619 Project published by The New York Times, which aims to “reframe the country’s history” by putting slavery and its enduring consequences “at the very center of our national narrative.” Forty-eight percent of respondents favored a focus on “American founding principles and . . . documents,” compared to 38% who favored “new curriculums that teach children to understand that America is founded on slavery and remains systemically racist today.”

  • 57% of respondents said training programs should focus on making teachers better equipped to help students develop core skills and competencies, not on social justice or progressive politics. Just 34% said the priority should go toward teaching progressive viewpoints and social justice advocacy to help teachers overcome their own biases and build more inclusive classrooms

  • “A resounding 84% of respondents,” according to the poll’s sponsor, said that “all people should be treated equally on merit” when the question was posed in general terms. When asked to think about the college admissions process specifically, 63% answered that “all people should be treated equally based on merit, even if that results in less racial diversity at selective colleges and universities,” including 89% of Republicans, 62% of Independents and a plurality (47%) of Democrats.

  The polling was done by a reputable firm, Eighteen92, which surveyed 800 Illinois residents.

  That last bullet point above is particularly striking because it means Illinoisans even oppose affirmative action, and it’s affirmative action that is systemic in most of America, not racism.

  Perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising since even Californians oppose affirmative action. In November they voted overwhelmingly to retain their constitutional ban on affirmative action, which is another story that was buried. “The margin of defeat, 56 to 44 percent, was striking to students of political history, because it suggests that race neutrality is more popular now than when it was initially mandated by a 1996 ballot initiative that passed by a slightly smaller margin,” said The Atlantic, which did cover it.

  Most significant of all, however, is that over two-thirds of Illinoisans say they are afraid to speak up on these issues.

  Why?

  Because they fear the mob.

  Sixty-four percent of respondents reported that they stop themselves from expressing their opinion on controversial political and social issues “often” (30%) or “sometimes” (34%), with an additional 18% doing so “rarely,” according to the survey sponsor. No surprise there. National surveys, as the sponsor wrote, “have repeatedly shown that political correctness has silenced important discussions—among students on college campuses and in the broader marketplace of ideas.”

  Of those who reported self-censoring, 22.4% said the main reason they do so is because they are worried about unfair criticism, while 22.0% answered that they are “worried about professional or academic consequences” for saying the wrong thing.

  This must end.

  Critical race theory is perhaps the most pernicious and destructive movements our age. It is a doctrine of hatred and division designed purposefully to stoke racial division, just as countless tyrannical movements throughout history have inflamed racial division to divide and conquer.

  It expressly rejects the goals of color blindness and the melting pot, which have been among the most noble aspirations of America and most all of the Western Hemisphere. By asserting that race, not character, fundamentally defines all humans, it rejects, at its core, the most fundamental premise of our society – that all men are created equal.

  Yet it gains momentum every day. “When I say that critical race theory is becoming the operating ideology of our public institutions, I am not exaggerating, wrote a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute this week in City Journal. “[F]rom the universities to bureaucracies to K-12 school systems, critical race theory has permeated the collective intelligence and decision-making process of American government, with no sign of slowing down.”

  What the majority lacks is courage. Courage to stand one’s ground in the face of a mob. Courage to speak up to politicians, administrative officials and school boards. From that City Journal column:

  Above all, we must have courage, the fundamental virtue required in our time: courage to stand and speak the truth, courage to withstand epithets, courage to face the mob, and courage to shrug off the scorn of elites. When enough of us overcome the fear that currently prevents so many from speaking out, the hold of critical race theory will begin to slip. And courage begets courage. It’s easy to stop a lone dissenter; it’s much harder to stop 10, 20, 100, 1,000, 1 million, or more who stand up together for the principles of America. Truth and justice are on our side. If we can muster the courage, we will win.

  “I Refuse to Stand By While My Students Are Indoctrinated.” That’s the title under which a New York teacher last week published his case for why children “are afraid to challenge the repressive ideology that rules our school.”

  Read his column. Find your own way to show the courage he has. Do not stand by while our children are indoctrinated.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 23:30

• Yuan Forward Sales Surge To Highest Since 2015
  Yuan Forward Sales Surge To Highest Since 2015

  Another month, another gaping discrepancy between Chinese FX reserve data and actual yuan cross-border flows.

  In the same month that PBOC data revealed that FX reserves stood at US$3,170bn in March, $35BN lower than February (granted mostly on valuation effect, which when netted out implies that FX reserves declined by $4bn), Goldman has calculated that net FX flows were actually $34BN into the Chinese economy.

  According to Goldman’s Maggie Wei, in March, there was $2BN in net inflows via onshore outright spot transactions,and US$7BN in net inflow via freshly entered and canceled forward transactions, while a separate SAFE dataset on “cross-border RMB flows” shows that domestic banks saw net RMB receipt of $25BN from onshore to offshore. Combining the three, Goldman’s “preferred” FX flow measure suggests a total of $34BN inflows in March, which while slightly slower than February, was a mirror image of the picture implied from FX reserve data.

  

  Digging deeper into the numbers reveals that FX inflows related to the goods trade surplus remained strong at $26BN in March, even higher than the single month goods trade surplus at $14bn in March. The FX conversion ratio for net goods trade surplus in Q1 2021 stood at 81%, higher than 45% in Q4 2020. Services trade related FX outflow in March was modestly higher at $6BN, vs $2BN in February.

  FX inflows notwithstanding, China’s net foreign exchange settlement, which the US Treasury considers a more comprehensive proxy for intervention because it includes the activities of China’s state-owned banks, and surged to about $180 billion last year, remained persistently wide compared to the modest decline in PBOC FX assets. As a reminder, historically these two data series have tracked each other closely but a striking divergence emerged since last November.

  

  Commenting on China’s FX shennanigans, Bloomberg’s Ye Xie notes that yuan forward transactions surged as corporates hedged their currency exposure, with settlement data showing that yuan-forward sales surged in March to the highest since 2015 as China’s currency weakened during the period. “The increased trading of currency derivatives is a healthy development, suggesting Chinese companies have become more prudent managing their currency exposure” according to Wang Chunying, spokeswoman for the State Administration of Foreign Exchange.

  

  As Xie summarizes the above, hedging activities soared since October when regulators cut the reserve requirement to make it less costly to sell the yuan in forwards. It may have helped lower currency volatility. Separately, the settlement data showed net foreign currency inflows continued last month, albeit at a slower pace, as strong exports offset small bond outflows.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 23:00

• Here's What Data Says About The Myth Of "Racism" In Police Killings
  Here’s What Data Says About The Myth Of “Racism” In Police Killings

  Authored by John Lott Jr. via RealClearPolitics.com,

  President Biden claimed that Derek Chauvin’s conviction on Tuesday “ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see the systemic racism” of police. With the police shooting that same day of 16-year-old girl in Columbus, Ohio, the White House again pushed the racism claim, noting that this was just another example of how “police violence disproportionately impacts Black and Latino people.”

  But where is the evidence for these claims? In Chauvin’s trial, the prosecution never once mentioned evidence that the now-former officer is racist. A day after the verdict, the Biden administration announced plans for a pattern-or-practice investigation of the Minneapolis Police Department to determine if there is such racism, but the administration’s comments sure sound as if they have already determined the study’s outcome.

  In the other case, body camera footage released by police revealed that Ma’Khia Bryant was fatally shot as she charged another girl with a knife. The officer shot one black girl in an attempt to save what appears to be another black girl from being stabbed.

  Politicians such as Biden as well as the media have helped create a biased perception that is far from the reality of shootings by police.

  

  In a study, the Crime Prevention Research Center (where I serve as president) found that when a white officer kills a suspect, the media usually mention the officer’s race. When the officer is black, news coverage rarely mentions that detail.

  And there’s evidence that blacks aren’t all that fed up with the police. A July 2017 Quinnipiac University poll in New York City found that blacks strongly support the cops in their neighborhoods — 62% approved compared to just 35% who disapproved. That approval rating was 11 percentage points higher than for the New York City Police Department as a whole. It makes sense that people only know their local cops, and rely on media reports to form impressions about other areas they are less familiar with. A 2020 Monmouth University poll found that 72% of both blacks and whites are satisfied with their local police.

  There is other evidence. If blacks don’t trust the police, they presumably won’t turn to them as frequently as whites when a crime occurs. Yet, blacks report violent crime to police at a higher rate than either whites or Hispanics, even when controlling for income levels. Low- and middle-income blacks are about 11 percentage points more likely to report violent crimes to police.

  Through extensive research, we found 2,699 police shootings across the nation from 2013-2015. That’s far more than the FBI found, since its data is limited to only 1,366 cases voluntarily provided by police departments. The FBI data has other shortcomings, too: It disproportionately includes cases from heavily minority areas, giving a misleading picture of the frequency at which blacks are shot.

  Our database keeps track of characteristics of both the suspect and the officer involved in each shooting, local violent crime rates, demographics of the city and police department, and many other factors that help determine what causes police shootings.

  Officers kill blacks at a higher rate than their share of the population: 25% of the suspects killed were black, 45% white, and 16% Hispanic. As for where the deaths are occurring, black suspects tend to die in heavily black larger cities with populations averaging over 600,000, while whites are killed in smaller cities with an average population of 250,000. 

  White suspects were slightly more likely to be holding a firearm than blacks (63% to 61%). Black and white suspects were both equally likely to be involved in violent crime when they lose their lives at an officer’s hands, though blacks who died were more likely to be involved in drug or property offenses. But police generally have more challenging jobs in cities where blacks are killed. The average city where blacks are killed had a 61% higher violent crime rate and 126% higher murder rate than where the average white was killed.

  After accounting for these and other factors, including averaged cultural differences in police departments, we found that black officers were at least as likely as their white peers to kill black suspects, but that black officers were more likely to kill unarmed blacks than were white officers.

  The data offered some clues for how to reduce these fatal incidents. It can’t explain all instances, such as George Floyd’s case where Floyd resisted arrest by four officers, or possibly the Columbus case where an attack by a knife-wielding suspect was already in process. But, usually, when more police are present at the scene of a confrontation with a suspect, the odds of a fatality decline. There is about a 14% to 18% reduction in the suspect’s chances of being killed for each additional officer present. Officers feel more vulnerable if they are alone at the scene, making them more likely to use deadly force. Also, suspects may be emboldened and resist arrest when fewer officers are present.  

  It is a dangerous fiction that prejudiced white officers are going out and disproportionately killing black men.

  But that doesn’t mean that measures can’t be taken to reduce shootings by police. The most obvious step would be to increase the number of officers responding to a call, to avoid forcing lone, vulnerable officers to make life-or-death decisions.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 22:30

• "It's Like Hand To Hand Combat" – Doctors Mull Strategies For Boosting Vaccine Demand Amid Fears 'Herd Immunity' Now Out Of Reach
  “It’s Like Hand To Hand Combat” – Doctors Mull Strategies For Boosting Vaccine Demand Amid Fears ‘Herd Immunity’ Now Out Of Reach

  Now that President Biden has reached his goal of 200M COVID-19 jabs administered across the US, Americans should expect fewer updates about the vaccination effort. Why? Because from here on out, the pace of new vaccinations is expected to slow substantially now that the vaccine rollout has hit a critical inflection point. As former FDA Director (and current Pfizer board member) Dr. Scott Gottlieb predicted a few weeks back, the US will “struggle” to reach herd immunity.

  Since then, mass vaccination centers have been shut down in states across the US. Even in wealthy, deep-blue states like Connecticut, local officials are warning that demand for the new jabs is waning. In many states, unused vaccines are beginning to pile up, leaving thousands of jabs to spoil, while more than 100 countries have yet to receive even a single jab.

  

  In CT, the New Haven Register carried a warning from a top doctor from the Yale University health-care system. Dr. Thomas Balcezak, the chief clinical officer at Yale-New Haven, warned that CT might not reach herd immunity.

  He spoke about the slackening in demand:  “Right around 55 percent of the state vaccinated: half is there and half has not yet been vaccinated.”

  “A slack in that demand tells us the second half of the state isn’t seeking vaccinations with the same ferocity as the first half did. I hope that trend changes,” Balcezak said.

  And that’s a problem, Dr. Balcezak added, because the expectations for herd immunity require between 70% and 80% of the adult population to be vaccinated. And if that level isn’t achieved quickly enough, mutant strains of the virus might be able to get the upper hand, as more vaccinated individuals fall ill despite being – in theory – immune to “severe” effects of the illness.

  Over the weekend, the New York Times published a story warning that the federal government is already considering new tactics to encourage more people to accept the vaccines, including allowing people to receive the jabs directly from their own doctors. Unfortunately, for these new strategies to be implemented country-wide, a new logistical obstacle will need to be overcome: vaccines will need to be shipped in much smaller batches.

  “If you think of this as a war,” said Michael Carney, the senior vice president for emerging issues at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, “we’re about to enter the hand-to-hand combat phase of the war.”

  However Pfizer, Moderna and J&J – which just received permission to continue doling out the shots despite concerns about rare and deadly blood clots – decide to tackle these problems, it has become clear that the timeline for “herd immunity” sketched out below looks almost impossibly optimistic.

  

  To try and make it easier for adults hoping to get vaccinated, President Biden this week urged employers to allow their workers paid time off, if necessary, to allow them to get vaccinated.

  

  Whether these new targeted methods will make a difference in vaccination rates is unclear. As the NYT pointed out, vaccination rates vary widely at the state level.

  But the distribution is uneven: While New Hampshire has given at least one shot to 59 percent of its citizens (that figure includes children, most of whom are not yet eligible), Mississippi and Alabama are languishing at 30 percent.

  The laggards are trying to adjust. In Louisiana, where 40 percent of the adult population has had one shot even though all adults have been eligible since March, officials are delivering doses to commercial fishermen near the docks and running pop-up clinics at a Buddhist temple, homeless shelters and truck stops. Civic groups are conducting door-to-door visits, akin to a get-out-the-vote effort, in neighborhoods with low vaccination rates.

  Some southern doctors are directly emailing patients to encourage them to get vaccinated.

  In Alabama, Dr. Scott Harris, the state health officer, is trying to reach rural white residents, who are mistrustful of politicians and the news media. Dr. Harris is asking doctors to record cellphone videos, with a plea: “Please email them to your patients, saying, ‘This is why I think you ought to take the vaccine.’”

  According to the NYT, those in charge of the vaccine rollout have started to compare this late-stage of the adult vaccination rollout to the “ground game” seen in the final phase of a hard-fought political campaign.

  White House and state health officials are calling this next phase of the vaccination campaign “the ground game,” and are likening it to a get-out-the-vote effort. The work will be labor intensive – much of it may fall on private employers – but the risk is clear: If it takes too long to reach “herd immunity,” the point at which the spread of the virus slows, worrisome new variants could emerge that evade the vaccine.

  “If you think of this as a war,” said Michael Carney, the senior vice president for emerging issues at the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation, “we’re about to enter the hand-to-hand combat phase of the war.”

  But the executive director of another national health organization said these efforts might not amount to much. At the end of the day, the people who want the vaccine have had every opportunity to seek it out. What’s left are people who are more skeptical of the vaccine. And the recent issues surrounding rare side effects tied to the J&J jab probably haven’t helped to dissuade them.

  “There are states where they feel they have hit the wall,” said Michael Fraser, the executive director of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. “The folks that wanted it have found it. The folks that don’t want it are not bothering to find it.”

  Circling back to the situation in Connecticut, Dr. Balcezak pointed out that rumors about patients who suffered severe COVID-19 symptoms – or even succumbed to the virus – despite being fully vaccinated have also hurt the prospects for the rollout: there have been about a dozen cases across Connecticut where people who were fully vaccinated who nevertheless were hospitalized for COVID-19. Balcezak said one of those people later died, although the patient had “underlying respiratory illnesses.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 22:00

• GOP Lawmaker Urges FBI To Reassess Decision Concluding 2017 Baseball Shooting Was "Suicide By Cop"
  GOP Lawmaker Urges FBI To Reassess Decision Concluding 2017 Baseball Shooting Was “Suicide By Cop”

  Authored by Samuel Allegri via The Epoch Times,

  Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) is asking the FBI to reassess their decision to classify the June 14, 2017 baseball field shooting outside of Washington as “suicide by cop” rather than a domestic terrorism case.

  

  Wenstrup was present when the Republican legislators were targeted by left-wing extremist James Hodgkinson, who fired over 100 rounds at them and other staff, severely injuring House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), who was hit on the hip and recovered after many surgeries.

  The letter, (pdf) which protests and asks for a reassessment, was addressed to FBI Director Christopher Wray last week and made available to reporters on Wednesday.

  The shooter is known to have posted angry messages about then-president Donald Trump and other Republicans. He was wounded during gunfire exchange with Capitol Police and later died at the scene.

  “According to FBI Special Agents, the attacker’s motivation was ‘suicide by cop,’” Wenstrup wrote.

  “This conclusion defies logic and contradicts the publicly known facts about the perpetrator and the attack. The shooter had an extensive social media record highlighting his hatred of President Trump and Republicans. He had a list of names—including Republican Members of Congress—in his possession. Before carrying out his attack, he asked if the Members at the baseball field were Republicans or Democrats,” Wenstrup wrote.

  “He was heavily armed, sought cover during the shooting, well over 100 rounds were fired, and the attacker could not have known that then-Majority Whip Steve Scalise’s security detail was present given that they were in an undercover vehicle and in plain clothes. All these facts are inconsistent with a designation of ‘suicide by cop.’”

  He then expresses his frustration, saying that the FBI didn’t conduct thorough interviews at the outset of the investigation, claiming that neither he nor his colleagues were interviewed as witnesses.

  “As a member who was present during the attack and the November 2017 briefing, and as a senior member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, I request that the FBI Counterterrorism Division promptly review the investigative findings, interview all relevant witnesses, and update, as appropriate, the investigative conclusions—including an internal investigation of how the FBI reached its ‘suicide by cop’ conclusion,” Wenstrup wrote in conclusion.

  Wenstrup pointed out that the  Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence recognized the incident as an act of domestic violent extremism, where the shooter was politically motivated and deliberately targeted GOP members.

  The appeal to reassess also drew support from Democrats.

  “I actually would like to associate my—your comments with my interest in wanting to pursue that as well, Dr. Wenstrup,” Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), said, according to Politico.

  “I’d like to second Dr. Wenstrup’s questions on the near massacre of our colleagues in 2017,” Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) said. “So I, like my colleague, Jackie Speier, have a particular interest in that.”

  

  House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) uses crutches after returning to Capitol Hill for the first time after being shot in June at a congressional baseball team practice in Alexandria, Va., in Washington on Sept. 28, 2017. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

  Scalise asserted strongly that the incident was evaluated wrongly by the FBI.

  “I was shot by a deranged Leftist who came to the baseball field with a list of Congressional Republicans to kill,” he wrote on Twitter.

  “This was NOT ‘suicide by cop.’ End of story.”

  I was shot by a deranged Leftist who came to the baseball field with a list of Congressional Republicans to kill.

  This was NOT “suicide by cop.”

  End of story. https://t.co/cSGYZeQO3I

  — Steve Scalise (@SteveScalise) April 21, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  The Epoch Times reached out to the FBI for comment.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 21:30

• The Catalyst For The Next Leg Higher: Buyback Blackout Period Just Ended
  The Catalyst For The Next Leg Higher: Buyback Blackout Period Just Ended

  Now that even Wall Street’s perennial permabull, JPMorgan, has joined most other major banks including Goldman, Deutsche and Morgan Stanley in warning that the coming weeks and months could be treacherous for stocks (DB went so far as predicting a 10%+ correction in the next three months), and saying on Friday that “easy equity gains for the broad market are likely behind us” and as a result its “bullish conviction is now lower”, a caution which spooked retail and hedge fund investors alike, with Goldman Prime reported on Friday that its book “saw the largest net selling in 5 weeks (-2.1 SDs), driven by short sales and long sales (4 to 1) and equally by Single Names and Macro Products.”

  Yet despite the selling stocks have continued to confound everyone, thanks to what we said would be yet another short squeeze, and rose back to all time highs amid mounting bearish sentiment.

  And just to add to the confusion, a new catalyst has emerged which is almost assured to push the S&P decisively into record territory.

  According to Goldman’s John Flood, the Buyback blackout period ended on Friday, with the strategist noting what we previously discussed, namely that buyback authorizations “are already up meaningfully vs prior year YTD values.” To wit, “2021 YTD authorizations are +75% vs 2020 YTD auths, +24% vs 2019 auths, and +26% vs 2018 auths (reminder, 2018 was a record buyback year).”

  Of course, we already knew this as we reported last month that “Stock Buybacks Soar To All Time High”…

  

  … a reminder of just how short collective memory is, as barely a year ago, the media, Congress and the broader public all rightfully slammed US corporations for having spent the bulk of their cash in the past decade on stock buybacks, and not on building a rainy day fund… which is why everyone demanded a government bailout in the immediate aftermath of the covid crisis.

  

  And since nothing ever changes on Wall Street, expect another burst in buybacks in the coming weeks – much of it funded by the trillions in new corporate debt issued over the past year – not only propping up risk but pushing it to a new all time high.

  How high? Here are the details in terms of Goldman desk flows: “we are currently running 1.6x vs 2020 FY ADTV, 1.0x vs 2019 FY ADTV, and 0.9x vs 2018 FY ADTV and we expect this to continue to pick up as we move into open window starting next week. So in other words, 2021 has more authorizations than 2018 (record buyback year), but is only pacing .9x the ADTV (actual purchases) of 2018 so far. That could suggest more purchases to come, or corporates saving their ammo.“

  What could they be saving their ammo for? Why the next 5-10% pullback of course, at which point they will instruct their banks – such as Goldman – to lift every offer, quickly recovering all losses and pushing the  market to its next all time high.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 21:00

• No, Dogecoin Does Not Compete With Bitcoin
  No, Dogecoin Does Not Compete With Bitcoin

  Authored by Peter St.Onge via CryptoEconomy substack,

  Elon Musk’s dogecoin tweets have given the coin a nice run, sending its price from fractions of a penny – where it traded for roughly 8 years – to 40 cents on April 20th before falling back. It was enough to yank bitcoin skeptic Peter Schiff from watching his gold portfolio do nothing – also for roughly 8 years – to crow that “dogecoin is eating bitcoin” and begging dogecoiners to put laser beams on their nose.

  

  So what’s the story, is dogecoin set to overtake bitcoin and then USD to become the world’s reserve currency?

  Very wow, but no.

  The short answer is because dogecoin and bitcoin serve fundamentally different purposes: at best, dogecoin is one of many medium of exchange (MOE) coins, while bitcoin stands alone as a stable and secure store of value (SOV) where people park their life savings. In other words, dogecoin doesn’t compete with bitcoin any more than your dinner plates compete with your refrigerator, pantry, or freezer.

  Let’s first get out of the way that dogecoin was started as a joke. Critics use this to variously criticize dogecoin itself or to criticize bitcoin as joke-by-contagion. Alas, the universe does not care why you invented something. Gunpowder was invented for fireworks, not war, and coca cola was invented to get high, not for kids to enjoy with a Happy Meal. Twitter was invented as a podcasting platform, Facebook as a knock-off Hot or Not, and Wikipedia as the most authoritative source of human knowledge. The universe does not care why you invented something, users decide.

  So, with that, what is dogecoin? Like bitcoin, it’s a POW (“proof of work”) coin where transaction processors vote on the rules of the game including how new coins are produced. There are 129 billion dogecoins in existence, with 5 billion new coins issued per year, for 3.9% annual supply inflation. The 5 billion is constant, meaning dogecoin’s inflation rate gets lower and lower as new coins add to a larger base—in 4 years, it falls to 3.3%. 

  For comparison, there are 18.6 million bitcoins in existence, growing at 330,000 per year, for annual supply inflation of 1.7% per year. Bitcoin’s supply inflation also declines, halving every four years, so in 2024 supply inflation falls under 1% per year when it will be lower than gold’s supply inflation of about 1.5% per year.

  Next up, speed and fees. While bitcoin creates a new block of transaction records every 10 minutes, dogecoin creates one every 1 minute. However, given dogecoin’s smaller ecosystem (market capitalization, miners) you’d want to wait for multiple block confirmations to be sure. The crypto exchange Kraken, for example, requires 40 dogecoin blocks—40 minutes—before considering a deposit valid, the same time they require for bitcoin. So it’s a functional tie on speed.

  Next, fees. Dogecoin has been very cheap until recently; a year ago it cost a fifth of a penny to send a transaction. It does have slightly more capacity than bitcoin, but the main reason was almost nobody was using dogecoin, so it was like buying space on an empty cargo ship. Alas, now that Elon’s tweets have lifted dogecoin from the muck, those fees are rising, today at $1.09. More on this later, since it goes to dogecoin’s long term prospects as an MOE.

  So far, a Peter Schiff might say “sure, it all sounds like a bitcoin clone.” And that brings us to the important question: how people use it. We can read this directly off valuation as a ratio of usage. This tells us, fundamentally, if people are using dogecoin to store savings like they do in bitcoin, or if they’re simply using dogecoin for transactions. 

  On that count, dogecoin today is going for 35c, making those 129 billion coins worth $45 billion. While bitcoin’s 18.6 million coins are currently worth $1 trillion. Meanwhile, CoinMarketCap says 66 billion dogecoins are currently traded daily, worth about $23 billion, and 1 million bitcoins are traded daily, worth about $55 billion. Divide the two and you get a market value of bitcoin at 20x daily volume, but just 2x for dogecoin. This is telling us, loud and clear, that dogecoin is not a store of value. It may not even be a very good medium of exchange, since pure MOE coins like monero or dash trade around 4x daily volume.

  Why does the market think dogecoin’s a lousy place to park your life savings? We can speculate that, given it was essentially abandoned for 8 years and is populated by charming but low-commitment users, it cannot begin to compete with bitcoin’s social layer, network effects, brand trust and loyalty, holder dedication and stability, and even bitcoin’s enormous energy use that increases security by increasing the cost of an attack. This last point is important considering that sovereign attack has been the final battle that has killed every previous private money in history.

  So, if dogecoin isn’t seen as an SOV for solid reasons, it means it doesn’t even compete with bitcoin. Any more than your dinner plates compete with your fridge. Both are inputs to eating food, yes, but they involve different stages with negligible overlap. For example, if you buy a nicer set of plates you don’t empty out the fridge, and if you buy a bigger fridge or move it where you can reach it easier, you don’t feel the need to go buy smaller plates. And, germane to market capitalization, the vast majority of the food you own is in your fridge or even freezer (“cold storage”), not sitting on a plate at any given moment. Just as the vast majority of people’s life savings are in a bank, house, or stocks, not sitting in their pants pocket to be whipped out at 7/11.

  It’ll have to be a separate article, but the wider lesson here – beyond dashing Peter Schiff’s dreams of a Dogecoin Standard – is that bitcoin skeptics are way off when they complain about bitcoin fees or 10 minute blocks. Bitcoin doesn’t pretend to be a medium of exchange, and it hasn’t for years. Users hold it to be a store of value, and it turns out it’s a damn fine one. Nothing else comes close, and certainly not dogecoin.

  So if dogecoin doesn’t compete with bitcoin, who does it compete with? Simple: MOE coins and exchanges. Considering these solutions work in seconds and have fees even lower than dogecoin’s pre-Elon days, it’s not clear why one would bother. In which case dogecoin would be, not even an MOE, but that streetwalker among cryptocurrencies: a speculative coin. One whose life’s purpose is, in practice, speculating on Elon Musk joke tweets and then, like a cicada, going dormant for 8 years. 

  Can dogecoin still go up? Sure, speculative assets are the Rule 34 of the financial world – they can do anything. But the fundamentals aren’t there to sustain durable demand for dogecoin, certainly not as a store of value and, I think, not even as a medium of exchange.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 20:30

• NYC Unleashing Army Of 10,000 'Cleanup Corps' As Trash, Rodent Complaints Soar
  NYC Unleashing Army Of 10,000 ‘Cleanup Corps’ As Trash, Rodent Complaints Soar

  New York City is in the process of hiring and deploying 10,00 workers for a newly created “City Cleanup Corps” after complaints over filthy conditions surged 150% between March and August 2020, and rodent complaints spiked as well according to Bloomberg, citing data from the city’s 311 service request line.

  

  The push to restore some of the city’s pandemic related cuts to the sanitation budget comes as Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a $30 million tourism push this week. With de Blasio departing City Hall later this year due to term limits, the cleanup job will have to be completed by his successor.

  Among the more than a dozen candidates in the June 22 Democratic primary, perhaps no one has a more detailed plan to address the trash problem and beautify streets than former sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia. She’s pledged to increase funding to public spaces, parks and gardens, restart recycling programs and send zero waste to landfills by 2030. “When we see dirty streets, people intuitively think either government isn’t doing its job or things are really bad,” Garcia said in an interview with Bloomberg News editors and reporters. “When you cut the sanitation budget by more than $100 million, you have to understand the implications of that.”

  Sanitation intersects with climate, public health, safety, transportation and the city’s economic recovery. Cleaning the streets will reinvigorate the culture and tourism that keeps money flowing into New York, said Margaret Chin, a City Council representative for Lower Manhattan and a member of its sanitation committee. -Bloomberg

  According to the report, trash levels are now higher than last year’s peaks as people return to the city, while online deliveries have generated massive amounts of waste. By the end of March, waste tonnage had risen approximately 15% vs. the first few months of the pandemic, city data reveal.

  “People may not think that’s a priority, but it’s very important for businesses, tourists, community residents to have their neighborhoods clean,” said Chin, adding “It just makes people feel better when you walk down the street and it’s not full of garbage.”

   

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 20:00

• "Ethereum About To Make An Epic Breakout Over Bitcoin"
  “Ethereum About To Make An Epic Breakout Over Bitcoin”

  From Larry McDonald, author of the Bear Traps report

  This week’s 20 year note auction was well received with dealers taking less than the last time. That suggests there was good end investor demand, for now. Since the reopening of 20-year issuance, it has been up and down. It is always a relief to get through an auction. But macro hedge clients we RESPECT point to the “undeniable” bid to cover (PROBLEM) trend across the breadth of 2021-2022 US Treasury bond auctions. Above all, the path ahead is in a clear and present DOWN trend (poor bid to cover trend path).

  

  ACG in Washington reminds us, this is on Janet Yellen’s mind every morning at breakfast. This week in Miami, conversations at the Four Season Brickell with institutional investors, we are consistently reminded of the US Treasuries Refunding schedule juices HIGHER in the month of May again. As the bid to cover decay marches forward in 2021, bond sales overpower global bond buyers – the Fed MUST step in as the buyer of last resort. Biden – Yellen – Reconciliation will literally force the Fed into action later this year. We have a social justice Fed and US Treasury (far more U-6 unemployment focus, near 11%) now with an enhanced power of reconciliation in their back pocket, a game-changer for metals.

  

  We think a growing forward trend is a combination of pressure on crypto-currencies, particularly Bitcoin (more and more clients point out – Ethereum has software applications that work and becoming more popular so isn’t just a one-trick pony like Bitcoin) with some of that flowing into precious metals, particularly silver.

  Why? If in fact there has been a crypto-currency substitution for precious metals to some non-quantifiable and therefore non-verifiable extent, then that certainly allows for reverse substitution on a crypto drawdown on a similar scale. There have been three 70% crashes in crypto in recent years. As Aristotle said in his Metaphysics, “If it happened before, it can happen again.” So surely if something has happened three times, it can happen a fourth time.

  If crypto represents a flight from fiat currency, then a move out of crypto should lead into the ultimate non-fiat currency: gold (and gold’s playmate, silver). Remember – Gold and silver are not substitutes for fiat currencies. Fiat currencies are substitutes for gold and silver. As readers know, we like precious metals and we like copper (see our bull case here. Palladium made a new high the other day. Between deficit spending, upcoming yield curve control, opening up of the economy, and the US infrastructure spend, inflation havens should work, to gold and silver’s benefit. Furthermore, because of electric vehicle and solar panel production growth, silver has additional demand drivers that should push it to new recovery highs. So, now we see an additional reason to play long precious metals: a potential kick in the pants for Bitcoin.

  Ethereum > Bitcoin:

  “Larry, pay attention – ETH/BTC about to make an epic breakout. I think Ethereum is the world’s most interesting trade right now. That NFT company we told u about, Yat; going to do 20-25mm in very high margin revenue this quarter (1st revenue quarter). The alpha male trade now is ETH over BTC.”

  From the live Bloomberg chat, Billionaire VC client in the valley keeps making this point, 8 weeks now.

  

  And once the recent high is taken out, there is much more room to go…

  

  In fact, should ETHBTC hit its historical high, Ethereum would be above $5,000.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 19:30

• QQQ ETF Sees Biggest Outflows Since Bursting Of Dot Com Bubble
  QQQ ETF Sees Biggest Outflows Since Bursting Of Dot Com Bubble

  The recent surge in hedge fund selling (as discussed last week in “Goldman Prime: Hedge Funds Sell Stocks 7 Of The Last 8 Days; Short Squeeze Coming“) appears to be accelerating, reinvigorated by last week’s dismal Netflix earnings and guidance, and as Bloomberg first pointed out has spilled over to the broader tech sector resulting in a broad liquidation before the sector’s heavyweights report this week.

  The $161 billion QQQ ETF – a Nasdaq proxy darling of retail and institutional investors alike – has bled nearly $6 billion over the past five days in its worst stretch since the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It helped drag QQQ to its first weekly drop in over a month.

  

  To be fair, with the exception of the ugly NFLX results, earnings season has hardly been disappointing for tech, with the few tech companies that have already reported surprising on earnings by 18% on average. And yet, as we warned, their stock prices have barely moved higher in the following 24 hours, as they were already priced to absolute perfection following the recent surge. It’s also why the pressure is on the rest of the FAAMG megacaps to deliver, including Amazon.com, Apple and Microsoft, which are all scheduled to report earnings next week.

  “With earning season starting to heat up, especially for the tech sector next week, it is likely that the expectations for technology companies may be too high,” said James Pillow, managing director at Moors & Cabot, echoing precisely what we said two weeks ago. “It’s early still, but just look where the earnings surprises are coming from: materials, energy, and financials, all about 80% or higher. Money will follow performance — and the performance is coming from those sectors.”

  ETF flows have already been reflect the shift, with financials-tracking ETFs attracting $15.7 billion in inflows so far in 2021, while energy and materials funds have absorbed $14.4 billion and $4.9 billion, respectively according to Bloomberg. Meanwhile, tech ETFs have posted inflows of just $3.9 billion year-to-date, after QQQ alone took in $16.7 billion in 2020 – the most since 2000. Much of that inflow is now reversing as investors are looking for the next catalyst to push tech stocks higher… or failing that, the next greater fool.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 19:05

• Fed-Induced Inflation Has Resulted In Collapsed US Births… Twice
  Fed-Induced Inflation Has Resulted In Collapsed US Births… Twice

  Authored by Chris Hamilton via Econimica blog,

  Total US births are collapsing and likely to continue falling significantly further over the coming decade(s). However, this isn’t our first rodeo…as total births collapsed during the 1960’s ’til early ’80’s…almost inexplicably against a fast growing childbearing population. And now, since 2007 (and not just a C-virus one off), total births have again collapsed against a growing childbearing population. I will make the case that much of this comes back to the Federal Reserve’s policies to foment stagflation/inflation which have created the birth dearth(s). Young adults (potential parents), like the canary in the coalmine, are among the most economically vulnerable to the Fed fueled asset inflation (with lagging pay increases and little to no assets to offset the rising costs of living). Their determination to delay marriage and children is the ultimate barometer of the US economic wellbeing.

  The chart below (1950 through 2040) shows annual US births (blue columns…regardless parents legal/illegal status plus Census ’00/’08 birth projections through 2040), actual births (blue dashed line…including my projection from 2020 through 2040), 20 to 35 year old female childbearing population (pink line…representing roughly 80% of births among 15 to 45 year old total female childbearing population), and soaring 45+ year old post-childbearing female population (yellow line).

  Looking at the US childbearing female population, there is no growth anticipated through 2040, while fertility rates continue tanking due to a slew of economic / pandemic / environmental / overpopulation concerns. The Census continued projections for rising fertility rates and total births is poorly founded.

  

  Viewing the year-over-year change in 20 to 35 year-old childbearing females (pink columns), annual births (dashed blue line), and Federal Reserve set Fed Funds rate % (black line). We are looking at two periods of collapsed births in the US since 1950…both in conjunction with significantly increasing female childbearing populations (which of and by itself, should have resulted in flat to rising births). Instead, upon the initiation and continuation of major stagflationary/inflationary interest rate policy changes, fertility rates and total births fell precipitously.

  

  Below, take a gander at US fertility rate (children per females) vs. Federal Funds Rate %. While other segments of the population fared far better thanks to offsetting asset inflation, young adults were not so lucky and chose to delay/refrain from marriage, family formation, and having children.

  

  The age of first marriage for both males and females has soared by almost a decade (chart below), while the 30 year’ish window of fertility has not really changed. Females of most species can give birth during 80%+/- of their lifespans. Our species is capable of childbearing during only about 40% of the lifespan (females typically reach menopause by age 50). At age 30, 75% will be pregnant within one year of attempting to do so. By age 40, the odds drop to 40%. Also, risks of adverse outcomes for the child/mother rise dramatically as the mothers age increases. At age 20, 1 in 1,441 births will result in Down Syndrome…by age 45, 1 in 32. Simply put, women are more fertile and births are less challenging on mother and child while women are in their prime childbearing years from 20 to 30…but the current economic system simply doesn’t support this option.

  

  Due to economic / financial pressure, dual-income households have become the norm. The percentage of childbearing age females in the labor force now is nearly double the post WWII situation. Since 2000, females have fluctuated between 65% to 70% labor force participation…well above the 40% seen in 1960 (white line below is raw female 15 to 54 year old employed / population ratio).

  

  In order to achieve financial strength / independence, the number of women getting secondary educations has soared. As of 2019, a greater percentage of females (36.6%) have four-year or greater college degrees than males (35.4%)…compare that to the pre-war situation of 1940, with 3.8% & 5.5%, respectively. Obviously, the 4+ years of education plus the associated soaring student loan debt has pushed marriage, homeownership, and children to the latest on record.

  The average age that a female first marries has soared from 20 in the 1950’s to somewhere beyond 28 years old in 2021. Consider…

  • The average age of a mother at first childbirth is now over 26 years old

  • The average age of a married mother at first childbirth is now over 29 years old…versus unmarried mothers closer to 24.

  • Women with a college education (heavily impacting financial capability of supporting a family) are now approaching 31 years of age before first childbirth versus 24 w/out a college degree.

  It’s also important to note that the decline in births is not due to abortion. Total abortions and abortions to live-birth ratio continue to decline from the 1980’s, early 90’s peak. Total abortions are down 50% since peak, and abortion to live-birth ratio is at record low levels since Roe v. Wade in 1973. Still, as of 2018, abortion to live-birth ratio was 189 abortions per 1000 live births…still significant (& massively contentious), but my point is it is a decelerating impact on total births.

  Below are the Census projections for births, going back to ’00, ’08, ’12, ’14, and 2017. As can be seen, births continue to massively undershoot the Census projections. Much of the miss can be attributed to bad assumptions regarding Latino immigration rates and fertility rates…which have both been far lower than projected by the Census. The Latino population has normalized to the much lower fertility rates and economic situation than the Census could conceive.

  

  From 2009 through 2020, there were 6.6 million fewer births (-12.5%) in the US (regardless legal/illegal status of the parents) than the Census projected there would be, in both it’s 2000 and 2008 projections. Given the flat childbearing female population, soaring average age at first marriage, and collapsing fertility rates, I’m projecting nearly 15 million fewer births (-30%) over the next decade than the ’00/’08 Census projections.

  So What? Ultimately, the most inflationary thing in an economy is population growth and family formation. But the Fed’s policies, although advocating inflation via substituting currency dilution, interest rate mismanagement, quantitative easing, etc., is actually the basis of long term deflation. The merits of a financial system requiring infinite growth against an economic system meant to supply the finite needs of a population (with little to no population growth) should have been debated long ago. Now the economic system is being poked and prodded with stimulus, ZIRP, QE, untold leverage, etc. to synthetically produce growth for a financial system that can be called nothing more than a Ponzi scheme. The faster the substitution of these synthetic proxies (and their asset inflation impacts), the faster the decline in births will be. All of the trends in place to push births lower are accelerating. Whether this is intentional or de facto, I can’t say…but the outcome of collapsing US (and worldwide) births is clear.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 18:40

• Musk On Mars: "A Bunch Of People Will Probably Die, But It's A Glorious Adventure"
  Musk On Mars: “A Bunch Of People Will Probably Die, But It’s A Glorious Adventure”

  “A bunch of people will probably die in the beginning,” is how Elon Musk characterized his plans of colonizing Mars last week.

  Musk made the comments while speaking with Dr. Peter Diamandis on Thursday in Cape Canaveral, Florida for an event to announce a $100 million carbon removal project “aimed at helping to keep the Earth habitable while humanity seeks to become an interplanetary species,” RT reported. 

  The conversation on the live stream quickly turned to Musk’s “plans” to colonize the red planet.

  

  Musk, apparently already dubbing himself reining emperor of the red planet, said that Mars wouldn’t just be an “escape hatch for rich people.”

  “It’s going to be uncomfortable and you probably won’t have good food, and all these things, you know,” he said. He noted that colonizing Mars would be “dangerous… uncomfortable…  a long journey, you might not come back alive, but it’s a glorious adventure and it’ll be an amazing experience.”

  He added: “If an arduous and dangerous journey where you might not come back alive, but it’s a glorious adventure, sounds appealing, Mars is the place. That’s the ad for Mars.”

  If we make life multiplanetary, there may come a day when some plants & animals die out on Earth, but are still alive on Mars

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 17, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Despite this, Musk didn’t think he would have any trouble finding volunteers. “Honestly, a bunch of people probably will die in the beginning. It’s tough sledging over there, you know. We don’t make anyone go,” he added about a colonization project that doesn’t really even exist. “It’s volunteers only.”

  “If we make life multiplanetary, there may come a day when some plants and animals die out on Earth, but are still alive on Mars,” Musk wrote on Twitter last week. 

  We wonder if it’s more “arduous and dangerous” than being a Tesla owner…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 18:15

• Morgan Stanley Is Planning Ahead For A "Harder Summer"
  Morgan Stanley Is Planning Ahead For A “Harder Summer”

  By Andrew Sheets, chief cross-asset strategist at Morgan Stanley

  The weather in London has been unseasonably good and, together with the easing of some local restrictions, this opens the door to that most elusive of feelings: normality. Our economists forecast a strong rebound in UK GDP for 2Q, and when navigating the crowds that have now appeared, this feels about right.

  The catch, however, is that more normality also portends a more difficult summer for the markets. Some of the problem is fundamental, some psychological, and some a function of what’s now in the price.

  Let’s start with the three fundamental challenges.

  • First, our global economics team has consistently argued that this will be a strong, ‘V-shaped’ recovery, a view that underpinned our strategy preference for early-cycle winners. But following the arrival of better data, not to mention the US$1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, better growth is now more widely expected. Meanwhile, the rate of change for that growth will soon peak, given that we’re passing the one-year anniversary of the largest global economic drawdown on record.
  • The second fundamental challenge lies in inflation. Our economists forecast US core PCE to hit ~2.5%Y next month, and stay at 2.0%Y or higher for the rest of the year. If that’s correct, inflation will switch from being a far-off concept to something appearing regularly in the monthly data. While we don’t think we’re on the verge of runaway prices, markets are forward-looking, and cyclical, early-cycle winners historically underperform when inflation moves back above trend. My colleague Mike Wilson has been vocal about starting this shift out of early-cycle cyclicality, and increasing quality in the portfolio.
  • Then there is the virus. My colleague Matthew Harrison thinks that vaccinations will allow the US to achieve herd immunity by summer, maybe as early as June. While this is clearly a public health milestone to be celebrated, the implications for markets could be more complicated.

  

  Low inflation and a terrible pandemic gave the Federal Reserve two powerful arguments to keep accommodation flowing even as financial conditions improved. Can the Fed sustain this accommodation if the US hits herd immunity and realized inflation is above 2.0%Y this summer? Certainly, and this remains our expectation. But is that a trickier message for the Fed to manage? It sure seems that way.

  There are also some softer, market psychology risks that may be relevant.

  Seasonality is good in April but gets worse in May through September, offering a convenient excuse to reduce exposure. Then there’s the unprecedented build-up of unused time off and desire to take advantage of it. This is not a cry for sympathy; our industry is well compensated and has been able to work remotely more easily than many others. But with only slight exaggeration, one of the bigger risk-management challenges this summer might be keeping desks properly staffed.

  The real crux of the issue, however, is what’s in the price. The year-to-date rally has increasingly eliminated upside to our targets.

  Across four major global equity markets (the US, Europe, Japan and emerging markets), only Japan is currently below our end-2021 strategy forecast. In bond markets, US 10-year rates are near the year-end expectations of my colleague Guneet Dhingra, who also thinks that US inflation breakevens now price in the rise of inflation our economists forecast. Oil and credit spreads are also near our year-end targets, and mortgage valuations have compressed so much that, as my colleague Jay Bacow notes, shorting MBS against US 5-year Treasuries is a positive carry, positively convex trade.

  We’ll be sitting down soon for our semi-annual outlook process, so it’s possible that these longer-term forecasts will change. But based on our current expectations, there just isn’t much milk left in the carton.

  There are a few exceptions. EM local bonds have been big underperformers this year, and James Lord and our emerging market strategy team are out with a recommendation to buy them (FX-hedged). Their underperformance relative to other assets, our expectation for more stability in US yields and a historically low cost of removing currency risk all make a compelling case.

  Like EM local bonds, CLOs are a less liquid corner of the market that has lagged the rally, and thus still offer value. With confidence in the global recovery, my colleagues Charlie Wu and Vasundhara Goel like taking default risk in US CLOs at current prices, and see good returns in junior parts of the capital structure in EU CLOs, respectively.

  Growth is still improving and liquidity is still abundant. The bull market remains intact, and I struggle to see the type of calamity that defined the summers of 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2015. But a harder, choppier, more range-bound summer does seem likely. Increase quality within equity portfolios, trim CCCs and long-dated corporates, sell MBS against Treasuries, and buy a few EM local bonds.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 17:50

• Home Prices Soar 18% To An All Time High; A Record 58% Of Houses Sell Within Two Weeks Of Listing
  Home Prices Soar 18% To An All Time High; A Record 58% Of Houses Sell Within Two Weeks Of Listing

  As if the official government data on soaring home prices wasn’t crazy enough, the latest monthly data from RedFin shows that in April, homes sold at their fastest pace on record with nearly half off-market within one week.

  “There has been an ongoing debate at Redfin about whether fear of coronavirus infection was keeping homeowners from selling. With a third of American adults now fully vaccinated and still hardly any homes being listed for sale, we’re close to settling that debate,” said Redfin Chief Economist Daryl Fairweather.

  (A quick note on the base effect in the housing market: at this time last year, pandemic stay-at-home orders halted homebuying and selling, which makes year-over-year comparisons unreliable for select housing metrics. As such, this report has been broken into two sections: metrics that are OK to compare to the same period in 2020, and metrics for which it makes more sense to compare to the same period in 2019.)

  Metrics to compare to 2020:

  • The median home-sale price increased 18% year over year to $344,625, an all-time high. Asking prices reached an all-time high of $356,175.

  

  • Homes that sold during the period were on the market for a median of 21 days, the shortest time on market since 2012. This was 16 days fewer than the same period in 2020.
  • 45% of homes sold for more than their list price, an all-time high. This was 18 percentage points higher than the same period a year earlier.

  

  • The average sale-to-list price ratio, which measures how close homes are selling to their asking prices, increased 2.3 percentage points year over year to an all-time high of 101.0%, meaning the average home sold for 1% more than its asking price.

  

  • 58% of homes that went under contract had an accepted offer within the first two weeks on the market. This was a new all-time high (Redfin’s data for this measure goes back to 2012).

  

  • 46% of homes that went under contract had an accepted offer within one week of hitting the market, an all-time high.

  

  • Meanwhile, with supply at record lows, demand remains near record highs thanks to fiscal stimulus, an exodus from rental units and near-record low mortgage rates.

  

  Metrics to compare to 2019:

  • Pending home sales were up 23% from the same period in 2019.

  

  • New listings of homes for sale were down 10% from the same period in 2019.

  

  • Active listings (the number of homes listed for sale at any point during the period) fell 47% from the same period in 2019 to a new all-time low.

  

  Fairweather’s conclusion: “Homeowners are staying put because if they move and buy another home they will face a very competitive housing market as buyers, and they don’t need to sell to take advantage of record low mortgage rates. They can just refinance their current home. On top of that, builders are struggling to construct new homes given an ongoing lumber shortage. Without more homeowners listing, buyers are scrambling to compete for the limited number of homes on the market, which continues to drive prices up to new heights.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 17:25

• MIT Study Suggests Six Foot Social Distancing, Limited Occupancy Rules Are Completely Pointless
  MIT Study Suggests Six Foot Social Distancing, Limited Occupancy Rules Are Completely Pointless

  Authored by Tom Pappert via NationalFile.com,

  A new study conducted by MIT scientists and released this week reveals that the six foot social distancing and limited occupancy guidelines made law in most of the civilized world have done little to slow the spread of COVID-19, and suggests the only way to reduce the spread of COVID-19 is to limit exposure to highly populated areas and areas where people are physically exerting themselves, such as gyms, or areas where people are singing or speaking, such as churches.

  

  The study reveals that the social distancing guidelines employed throughout much of the world for over a year have done nothing to limit the spread of COVID-19, suggesting that the adaption of the guidelines did not stop the spread of the of the China-originated virus, and it can only be slowed with the employment of severe lockdowns. Paradoxically, states and cities that have engaged in severe lockdowns have seen the largest spikes of COVID-19.

  “We argue there really isn’t much of a benefit to the 6-foot rule, especially when people are wearing masks,” MIT professor Martin Z. Bazant said, as reported by NBC.

  “It really has no physical basis because the air a person is breathing while wearing a mask tends to rise and comes down elsewhere in the room so you’re more exposed to the average background than you are to a person at a distance.”

  In other words, widespread mask wearing may simply change the physical vectors of transmission within a given room rather than stop it, effectively making six foot distancing rules pointless.

  In their study, Bazant and the other researchers declare, “Adherence to the Six-Foot Rule would limit large-drop transmission, and adherence to our guideline, [of limiting time spent in densely populated areas], would limit long-range airborne transmission.”

  In the guideline, the researchers write, “To minimize risk of infection, one should avoid spending extended periods in highly populated areas. One is safer in rooms with large volume and high ventilation rates. One is at greater risk in rooms where people are exerting themselves in such a way as to increase their respiration rate and pathogen output, for example, by exercising, singing, or shouting.”

  

  Bazant also told the media, “What our analysis continues to show is that many spaces that have been shut down in fact don’t need to be. Often times the space is large enough, the ventilation is good enough, the amount of time people spend together is such that those spaces can be safely operated even at full capacity and the scientific support for reduced capacity in those spaces is really not very good.” He added, “I think if you run the numbers, even right now for many types of spaces you’d find that there is not a need for occupancy restrictions.”

  This comes on the heels of a study that suggests the Pfizer vaccine could cause severe neurodegenerative diseases caused by brain prions created by the mRNA-style vaccine. National File reported, “‘The current RNA based SARSCoV-2 vaccines were approved in the US using an emergency order without extensive long term safety testing,’ the report declares. ‘In this paper the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine was evaluated for the potential to induce prion-based disease in vaccine recipients.’ Prion-based diseases are, according to the CDC, a form of neurodegenerative diseases, meaning that the Pfizer vaccine is potentially likely to cause long term damage and negative health effects with regards to the brain.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 17:00

• Fund Manager Arrested, Charged With Fraud, After Using Client Funds For His "Race Car Hobby"
  Fund Manager Arrested, Charged With Fraud, After Using Client Funds For His “Race Car Hobby”

  Stop us if you’ve head this one before: a hedge fund manager was arrested and charged with fraud for spending client funds to keep up with his own personal habits and live a lavish lifestyle.

  Are you stunned? Haven’t heard anything like this in…months? Days? Need the dirty details of yet another story about fraud on Wall Street? Well, here they are.

  44 year old Andrew Franzone was charged last week with defrauding investors of almost $40 million, some of which he diverted to buy an aircraft hangar for his private race car collection. He was arrested in Fort Lauderdale on Thursday, according to a U.S. Department of Justice release. 

  The release says he touted his fund as a “multi-strategy investment program … focus[ed] on three unique asset classes: the preferred stock market, the option market, and the private investment portfolio” and that he “assured investors that FF Fund was focused on trading in the preferred securities and options markets, which afforded its investors access to quarterly liquidity, and that FF Fund had a track record of consistent positive trading returns since its inception in August 2010.”

  

  The DOJ alleges his representations about the fund’s liquidity and strategy were “largely fabricated”:

  Instead of engaging primarily in preferred securities and options trading that ensured the FF Fund’s liquidity, FRANZONE instead diverted more than 80% of FF Fund’s capital to high-risk, illiquid private investments, many of which were either worthless or significantly impaired. FRANZONE also misappropriated FF Fund’s assets to fund his own personal business interests, including the purchase of an airplane hangar, and lied to investors about FF Fund’s performance and assets under management.

  Through these and other fraudulent misrepresentations and omissions, FRANZONE induced over 100 investors to invest more than $40 million in FF Fund.  Despite showing investors positive trading returns as late as 2019, FF Fund was unable to fulfill redemption requests in early 2019 and is currently in the process of being liquidated.

  Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said:  “Andrew Franzone allegedly promised his clients access to his successful liquid trading strategy and consistent, positive trading returns.  As alleged, those promises were lies.  Franzone lied about his fund’s investments and performance, and he lied in promising clients that they had could readily access their invested capital.  While his investors lost money, Franzone enriched himself.  We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to protect investors from these types of deceptive practices.”

  USPIS Inspector-in-Charge Philip R. Bartlett said:  “Mr. Franzone allegedly misled investors to believe his fund was liquid and he could cover their redemption requests, in a scheme to lure them in to investing in his hedge fund. This should be a reminder that greed has no boundaries and does not care about a favorable portfolio. Postal Inspectors remind all investors to thoroughly check offers, and if they sound too good to be true, keep your money in the bank.”

  Franzone’s affinity for racing was even featured in the Wall Street Journal back in 2016. 

  He has been charged with “one count of securities fraud, which carries a maximum potential sentence of 20 years in prison, and one count of wire fraud, which carries a maximum potential sentence of 20 years in prison.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 16:35

• How Easy Is It To Escape Taxes By Moving Offshore Or To Puerto Rico?
  How Easy Is It To Escape Taxes By Moving Offshore Or To Puerto Rico?

  Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

  Unhappy with Biden’s tax proposals? So are many others. Let’s discuss moving offshore.

  

  Puerto Rico Too Good to Be True?

  That’s the question of the day. And the answer is “it depends”. 

  If you are willing to live in Puerto Rico and can do business there, then the short answer is yes, go for it.

  If you think you can escape capital gains taxes just by moving, the answer is a lot more complex.

  Slash Your Taxes To Zero? Not Exactly

  Robert Wood a tax contributor to Forbes addresses the above questions in Move To Puerto Rico, Slash Your Taxes To Zero? Not Exactly

  Puerto Rico hopes to lure American mainlanders with an income tax of only 4%. Legally avoiding the 37% federal rate and the 13.3% California (or other state) rate sounds pretty good. What’s more, there is no tax on dividends, and no capital gain tax in Puerto Rico.

  However, some big cautions are in order. First, forget about easily avoiding U.S. tax on the appreciation in your assets before you move. If you move with appreciated stock, bitcoin or other property, and then sell, all that pre-move appreciation is still subject to U.S. tax. Only your post-move appreciation will be subject to the special tax rules in Puerto Rico. In fact, to escape U.S. tax on all of the pre-move appreciation, you generally must wait a full ten years after you move. That is hardly a quick fix. What about selling your U.S. real estate? That will always be U.S. source income. That means it is fully taxed in the U.S., even if you move to Puerto Rico and wait ten years before selling.

  There are other fundamentals about the rules too. First, as with any move, you have to actually move! Your tax home—your real home—must be in Puerto Rico. Remember, just like any move from one state to another, it has to be real. Try to avoid messy facts that don’t look like a permanent move. If possible, sell your home, move your family, sever connections to your old local clubs, and so on. After all, if you are later ruled not to be a Puerto Rico resident, the IRS is back in the picture asking for back taxes, penalties and interest.

  Puerto Rico Is Perfect For Whom?

  If you are willing to move to Puerto Rico, and live there at least 183 days a year, then it is a very good solution for financial professionals, stock traders and anyone else who can conduct business online or over the phone.

  One would not have to renounce citizenship or do anything else drastic.

  I know prominent people, one whose name nearly all my readers would instantly recognize who did exactly that.

  I believe he has been there for 10 years now which means all accumulated capital gains are now at a 5% long-term rate. 

  Not a Quick Capital Gains Fix

  For those seeking to avoid capital gains, current long-term capital gains are 0% but only after the move.

  Also consider even more detailed information by DC Tax attorney Peter Palsen in Tax-Weary Americans Find Haven in Puerto Rico.

  New qualifying residents have 100% tax exemption from Puerto Rico taxes on all dividend and interest income and long-term capital gains accrued after becoming a qualifying new resident.

  As for prior unrealized capital gains, the statute provides that:

  The total net long-term capital gain generated by a resident individual investor related to the appreciation of the securities owned by such resident individual investor before becoming a resident of Puerto Rico, which appreciation is recognized ten (10) years after he/she became a resident of Puerto Rico and before January 1st, 2036, shall be subject to a five percent (5%) tax, in lieu of any other tax imposed under the Code.

  Palsen provides examples in his article and even a phone number if you wish to contact him. 

  Whether or not one can escape taxes by moving to Puerto depends on your purpose, current income, and for capital gains avoidance, how long you are willing to commit to living there.

  Puerto Rico a State?

  This tax haven dies on the vine as soon as Puerto Rico becomes a state. 

  Democrats desperately want to make Puerto Rico a state, not for the benefit of Puerto Rico, rather to pick up two more Senate Seats.

  For investment purposes, Puerto Rico is doing what it is doing on purpose. Those are the competing forces.

  Net Capital Gains Tax Would Approach a Whopping 60% Under Biden’s Proposal

  In case you missed it, please consider the post on which this one is based: Net Capital Gains Tax Would Approach a Whopping 60% Under Biden’s Proposal

  I am pleased to help any way I can those who wish to avoid such taxes.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 04/25/2021 – 16:10

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