- The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Uprooted Millions
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Uprooted Millions
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/26/2020 – 02:45400 years ago, in August 1619, the first ship with enslaved Africans destined for the United States arrived in what was then the colony of Virginia. But, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, the cruel history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade begins much earlier.
In fact, many enslaved people lived in the English colonies in North America before that date. They came to the present-day U.S. via Spanish and Portuguese colonies, where enslaved Africans arrived as early as 1514, or were transferred as bounty from Spanish or Portuguese ships.
The United States are heavily associated with slavery and the capture and forceful relocation of Africans. Around 300,000 disembarked in the U.S. directly, while many more arrived via the inter-American slave trade from the Caribbean or Latin America. It is estimated that almost 4.5 million enslaved Africans arrived in the Caribbean and another 3.2 million in present-day Brazil.
Around 40 percent of Africans uprooted in slavery are believed to have come from Angola in Southern Africa, with another 30 percent who came from the Bay of Benin in West Africa.
You will find more infographics at Statista
The numbers taken from database project SlaveVoyages.org indicate the number of Africans disembarking. Many more died on the way because of lack of food and water and horrid conditions aboard the slave ships. Others were uprooted in the trans-Saharan, the red sea and the Indian slave trade, which partly predated the trans-Atlantic slave trade
It is estimated that close to 20 million people were forced to leave the African continent enslaved. By 1800, this had decimated the African population to half the size it would have been had slavery not occurred.
- Cambridge University Defends, Promotes Academic After 'Racist' Tweets Removed From Twitter
Cambridge University Defends, Promotes Academic After ‘Racist’ Tweets Removed From Twitter
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/26/2020 – 02:00Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,
Cambridge University reacted to one of its academics tweeting “White Lives Don’t Matter” by ignoring the backlash and promoting her to a full professorship.
As we highlighted yesterday, the controversy began when Dr Priyamvada Gopal, English academic and Churchill fellow, tweeted, “abolish whiteness” and “I’ll say it again. White Lives Don’t Matter.”
This prompted the launch of a petition to have her fired which currently has almost 15,000 signatures.
However, both the university and media outlets responded by trying to frame a narrative that Gopal was being “abused” by a hate mob, completely pardoning her for her overtly racist comments.
Despite the fact that Twitter has now removed Gopal’s original tweet for hate speech, Cambridge University itself has rewarded the academic.
“Thanks to everyone who wrote to @Twitter: the ludicrous ban has been lifted. I am therefore delighted to share with you personally, that last night Cambridge promoted me to a full Professorship,” tweeted Gopal. “The hate mails & threats are coming in non-stop but @CambridgeCops are following up.”
Thanks to everyone who wrote to @Twitter: the ludicrous ban has been lifted. I am therefore delighted to share with you personally, that last night Cambridge promoted me to a full Professorship. The hate mails & threats are coming in non-stop but @CambridgeCops are following up
— Priyamvada Gopal (@PriyamvadaGopal) June 25, 2020
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She also blamed the backlash on “people who elect the likes of Trump and (Boris) Johnson.”
Thank you again–and to all of you, stay strong. We are up against a hugely ugly edifice full of sewage and bile. These people elect the likes of Trump and Johnson. We have no choice but to persevere. A luta continua!
— Priyamvada Gopal (@PriyamvadaGopal) June 25, 2020
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Cambridge University has therefore literally rewarded Gopal for publishing racist hate speech.
Their approach to another academic, Noah Carl, was somewhat different after 500 academics signed a letter challenging Carl’s research on race and intelligence. He was swiftly dismissed.
Cambridge University also previously rescinded its offer of a visiting fellowship to Jordan Peterson after a woke mob complained about his stance on political correctness and after he appeared in a photograph with a man wearing a t-shirt that said “I’m a proud Islamophobe.”
Having formerly enjoyed a reputation as one of the most prestigious educational institutions in the world, Cambridge University is now proudly proclaiming itself to be a safe space for vile racists – and they’ll be teaching your kids!
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- What Americans Fear Most In The JFK Assassination, Part 2
What Americans Fear Most In The JFK Assassination, Part 2
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/25/2020 – 23:50Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,
Let’s now move to the autopsy that the U.S. military conducted on the President John F. Kennedy’s body on the evening of the assassination, November 22, 1963.
Texas law required the autopsy to be conducted in Texas. Dr. Earl Rose, the Dallas Medical Examiner, insisted on conducting the autopsy immediately upon Kennedy’s death. An armed team of Secret Service agents, brandishing their guns, refused to permit that to happen and forced their way out of Parkland Hospital. Operating on orders, their objective was to get the president’s body to the airport, where Vice President Lyndon Johnson was waiting for it. His objective: to put the autopsy in the hands of the U.S. military.
In the 1970s, the U.S. House of Representatives opened up a new investigation into Kennedy’s assassination. During and after those hearings, a group of Navy enlisted men came forward with a remarkable story. They stated that they had secretly carried Kennedy’s body into the morgue at Bethesda Naval Medical Center in Maryland about an hour-and-a-half before the body was officially brought into the morgue.
They also stated that they had all been sworn to secrecy immediately after the autopsy and had been threatened with severe punishment, including criminal prosecution, if they ever revealed to anyone the classified secrets about the autopsy that they had acquired.
The Boyajian Report
In the 1990s, the Assassination Records Review Board, which was formed to enforce the JFK Records Act, uncovered an official document that had been kept secret for more than 30 years. It became known as the Boyajian Report. It had been created by Marine Sergeant Roger Boyajian immediately after the autopsy. Boyajian gave a copy of the report to the ARRB. Boyajian and his report confirmed that his team carried the president’s body into the morgue in a cheap military-style shipping casket at 6:35 p.m., about 1 and 1/2 hours before 8 p.m., the time that the body was officially brought into the morgue in the expensive, ornate casket into which it had been placed in Dallas.
On the night of the autopsy, one of the autopsy physicians, Admiral James Humes, telephoned U.S. Army Colonel Pierre Finck asking him to come to the morgue and assist with the autopsy. That phone call was made at 8 p.m. During the conversation, Humes told Finck that they already had some x-rays made of the president’s head. Yet, how could they have x-rays of the president’s head, given that the president’s body was being officially brought into the morgue at 8 p.m.? Humes’s testimony inadvertently confirmed the accuracy of the Boyajian Report and the statements of the enlisted men who had secretly carried the president’s body into the morgue an hour-and-a-half before the official 8 p.m. time that the body was brought into the morgue.
The magic bullet
During the autopsy, Finck began to “dissect” the president’s neck wound, a wound that later became embroiled in what became known as the “magic bullet” controversy. As Finck began the procedure, he was ordered by some unknown figure to cease and desist and to leave the wound alone. Finck complied with the order. The order showed that the three autopsy physicians were not in charge of the autopsy and that there was a higher force within the deep state that was orchestrating and directing the overall operation.
The brain examinations
It’s worth mentioning the brain examinations that took place as part of the autopsy. In an autopsy, there is only one brain examination. In the Kennedy autopsy, there were two, the second of which involved a brain that could not possibly have belonged to the president. Rather than detail the circumstances surrounding that unusual occurrence, I’ll simply link to the following two articles that the mainstream press published about it for those who might be interested in that aspect of the autopsy:
Newly Released JFK Documents Raise Questions About Medical Evidence by Deb Riechmann in the November 9, 1998, issue of the Washington Post.
Archive Photos Not of JFK’s Brain, Concludes Aides to Review Board by George Lardner Jr. in the November 10, 1998, issue of the Washington Post.
It is also worth noting that when Congress enacted the JFK Records Act mandating that federal agencies had to release their long-secret records relating to the assassination, the law that brought the ARRB into existence to enforce the law expressly prohibited the ARRB from investigating any aspect of the assassination. It was a provision that the ARRB board strictly enforced on the ARRB staff, which thereby prevented the staff from investigating the two separate brain examinations once they were discovered or, for that matter, anything else.
Continued secrecy
It’s is also worth noting that there are still thousands of assassination-related records that the National Archives is keeping secret, owing to a request by the CIA to President Trump early in his administration to continue keeping them secret, a request that Trump granted. The CIA’s reason for the continued secrecy? The CIA told Trump that the disclosure of the 56-year-old records to the American people would endanger “national security.”
Fraudulent autopsy photos
The ARRB also took the sworn testimony of a woman named Saundra Spencer, a U.S. Navy petty officer who served the the Navy’s photography lab in Washington, D.C. She worked closely with the White House on both classified and non-classified photographs. The ARRB summoned her to testify, and she gave a remarkable story. She testified that on the weekend of the assassination, she was asked to develop, on a top-secret basis, the official autopsy photographs in the Kennedy autopsy. When the ARRB showed her the autopsy photographs in the official record, she closely examined them and then testified directly and unequivocally that they were not the photographs she developed on the weekend of the assassination.
Fear
Given all these facts and circumstances, a question naturally arises: How can anyone with a critical mind blindly accept the official narrative surrounding the Kennedy assassination? Doing so only goes to show how a deep fear of being labeled a “conspiracy theorist” can influence people’s behavior.
* * *
For those who wish to delve into the Kennedy regime-change operation more deeply, I recommend starting with the following books and videos:
Books:
JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters by James W. Douglass
The Kennedy Autopsy by Jacob Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy 2 by Jacob Hornberger
JFK’s War with the National- Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas Horne
Regime Change: The JFK Assassination by Jacob Hornberger
CIA & JFK: The Secret Assassination Files by Jefferson Morley
The CIA, Terrorism, and the Cold War: The Evil of the National Security State by Jacob Hornberger
Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK, Volumes 1-5 by Douglas P. Horne
Videos:
Altered History: Exposing Deceit and Deception in the JFK Assassination Medical Evidence by Douglas Horne
The JFK Assassination by Jacob Hornberger
The National Security State and JFK, with Oliver Stone and others.
- Wealthy Americans Flock To Turks & Caicos During Pandemic
Wealthy Americans Flock To Turks & Caicos During Pandemic
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/25/2020 – 23:30Wealthy Americans have been selling real estate in urban areas across the country for rural communities. A new report suggests an evolving trend in this mass exodus, as these folks aren’t just moving to the countryside, but are now fleeing to the Caribbean as inner cities burn with continuing social unrest and the emergence of the virus pandemic.
Apparently, the Turks and Caicos property market saw a demand surge during the pandemic, according to Mauricio Umansky, founder and CEO of real estate firm The Agency, who spoke with FOX Business.
“We have definitely seen some extraordinary prices,” Umansky said.
Sotheby’s International Realty reported sales volume of single-family homes in Turks and Caicos in 1Q20 outpaced the same period of 2019, and condo sales outpaced two years of previous data.
Umansky said the pandemic has made wealthy Americans realize that city centers are no longer safe during public health crises and social instabilities.
“So there’s a big trend, they want to have a place to sequester and to have that second home if this happens again, and to have a home where the whole family can go, not just a little apartment that they don’t all fit in,” he said.
Turks and Caicos’ health data shows the country remained relatively unharmed by COVID-19, with just 12 cases and one death among a population of approximately 39,000.
The British Overseas Territory southeast of the Bahamas is expected to reopen on July 22 when Providenciales Airport lifts tourism restrictions.
If readers recall – we recently noted demand for luxury properties in Aspen, Colorado, and Park City, Utah, is “through the roof” as the pandemic had accelerated the trend of wealthy folks seeking shelter in rural communities.
We’ve also covered the “mad rush” of people leaving the San Francisco Bay Area for rural communities, for Marin County, Napa wine country, and south to Monterey’s Carmel Valley.
Despite a plunge in existing home sales in May – Lawrence Yun, National Association of Realtors’ chief economist, confirmed the outbound trend of migration from cities to suburbs:
“Relatively better performance of single-family homes in relation to multifamily condominium properties clearly suggests migration from the city centers to the suburbs,” Yun said.
“After witnessing several consecutive years of urban revival, the new trend looks to be in the suburbs as more companies allow greater flexibility to work from home.”
And second-home buyers surged…
Individual investors or second-home buyers, who account for many cash sales, purchased 14% of homes in May, up from 10% in April 2020 and from 13% in May 2019. All-cash sales accounted for 17% of transactions in May, up from 15% in April 2020 and down from 19% in May 2019.
Readers now know that wealthy folks aren’t just fleeing cities for rural communities – these folks are leaving the country for the Caribbean as America implodes from within.
- How To Deal With China – "Made In America"
How To Deal With China – “Made In America”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/25/2020 – 23:10Authored by Lawrence Franklin via The Gatestone Institute,
China’s Communist Party leadership was not pleased to hear a call from Australia for a global inquiry into the origin of the Covid-19 virus and China’s possible role in it.
Australia further requested that the investigation be conducted outside the purview of the World Health Organization (WHO), which had had been spreading lies and disinformation about the transmissibility of the virus. China seems to have decided that Australia’s insistence on an independent study was a violation of the spirit of their bilateral relationship. Indeed, for the past three decades, the Australian economy has been buoyed by expanding commercial ties with China. This relationship has now soured, and China has been threatening Australia with economic warfare unless it reconsiders its inquisitive foreign policy.
Making good on its threat, China slapped an 80% tariff on Australian barley and has threatened to boycott Australian wine and beef. Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne has rejected any such attempts at economic coercion.
The attacks by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on Australia’s policies and politicians have since become even more strident and personal. Chinese state-affiliated social media accounts have called Australia “gum stuck to China’s shoe” and suggested that Australia’s head of government had been kicked in the head by a kangaroo. Also, Chinese State Security agents have attempted to silence independent Chinese-language media in Australia by pressuring advertisers to withdraw their sponsorship.
Beijing’s threats to punish Australia seem to be part of an increasingly bullying, aggressive approach by Chinese officials, not only toward Australia, but also toward India, Taiwan and China’s neighbors in the Pacific. The CCP is receiving growing resistance from the Pacific nations to China’s aggressive expansionism. China will nevertheless continue to pull all the levers of its influence in Australia, and most likely elsewhere, to its advantage. China might, for instance, dispatch lobbyists to pressure Australian businessmen who have benefited from past economic cooperation with the Chinese in an effort to persuade political leaders to back off on their criticism of China for its handling of the COVID-19 virus.
China’s decision to play hardball with Australia, however, might be a miscalculation. China’s communist regime may have drawn the wrong conclusions about what they may have hoped would be Australia’s lack of desire to protect its Free World values and its belief that such values are more important than short-term economic advantage.
Australia still needs to lessen its economic vulnerability to China. Extracting itself from the web of relationships that entangle Australia can extricate itself from the claws of the dragon. Australian meat exporters could increase shipments of pork products to Japan, Vietnam, and other Southeast Asian neighbors. Australia, unlike China, enjoys warm relations with all members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). Australia might capitalize on these cordial diplomatic ties to maximize mutually beneficial trade.
Australian political leaders could also create tax incentives to facilitate greater investment by Australian business leaders in India’s enterprises, especially in defense-related industries. Australia could also divorce itself from Chinese supply lines by shifting them to other advanced economies in the region such as South Korea and Singapore. Australia could encourage wholesale imports of computer and electrical products from other East Asian manufacturers of these products. The Australians could decide no longer to export uranium to China from its own mines in the Northern Territory and elsewhere, and thereby discontinue servicing China’s plans to construct about 100 nuclear power plants by 2025. Australia might well find a willing alternative customer in India.
Australia, on June 10, sent a clear message to China by fostering enhanced defense ties with India — China’s rival for Asian leadership. Australian PM Scott Morrison and Indian PM Narendra Modi, in a video conference, announced that the two countries had formed, as a bulwark against Chinese expansionism in Asia, a comprehensive strategic partnership. Australian Minister of Defense Linda Reynolds praised the agreements, which will provide for interoperability of weapons systems and promote sharing defense technologies.
Australia is now ready to be a full partner in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD), a cooperative defense information dialogue consisting of the U.S., Japan, India, and Australia. Australia will likely also participate in the Indian-sponsored Malabar military exercise, which focuses on how India and Australia might better patrol international straits vital to commerce in the region by using military facilities on Indian and Australian off-shore islands and atolls.
China may continue to bellow, but Australia will remain bound to the West as a nation that embraces democratic political and free market economic values. Australian soldiers have fought alongside U.S. troops in every major conflict since World War I. For instance, Australian Defense Force (ADF) soldiers were among the first to deploy to Afghanistan after 9/11. Shared values between Australians and Americans — and their ability to continue existing as members of the Free world — should be a far more potent magnet than short-term profits.
The only real solution to China’s duplicity and aggression would be for Western nations — all 186 nations that were harmed by China’s lies during the Covid-19 pandemic — to cut all ties with China, to start a firm policy of “Made in America” or “Made Anywhere But China” to show a willing independence from a country that openly aspires to dominate the world.
China — perhaps hoping that everyone is sufficiently distracted by the virus the Chinese Communist Party unleashed on it, as well as by the “free gifts” from China that, in their trade-off for freedom, promise to be fatal — is clearly on the march. The world might remember that it would have been so much easier to stop Hitler before he crossed the Rhine.
- Two Million Restaurants Worldwide At Risk Of Collapse
Two Million Restaurants Worldwide At Risk Of Collapse
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/25/2020 – 22:50After several months of a slow recovery in restaurant dining data in the U.S. and across the globe, there is absolutely no evidence of a V-shaped recovery in the food industry and suggests millions of eateries are on the brink of collapse, consulting firm Aaron Allen & Associates told Bloomberg.
“Based on our estimates, we believe up to 10% of all restaurants globally will disappear, with 20% or more also going through a restructuring process,” said founder Aaron Allen. “This is a conservative case, in our view.”
Of the roughly 22 million restaurants worldwide, about 2.2 million are expected to shutter operations. Global restaurant traffic data via OpenTable shows little improvement in late June.
We noted, on Sunday, June 14, after months of slow improvement, restaurant traffic suddenly plunged, sliding from a -66.5% y/y decline as of June 13 to -78.8% globally. The plunge was mostly due to a sharp drop in U.S. restaurant diners, which plunged by 13% – from -65% to -78% – the biggest one day drop since the start of the shutdown in the U.S., and the second biggest one day drop on record.
Another sharp drop in U.S. restaurant traffic was noticed on Monday, June 22, due mostly because of the emergence of the second virus wave in some states, Bloomberg reports:
Cases are surging in Texas, Florida, Arizona, and in California, which on Tuesday broke its record for new cases for the fourth day in the past week. Even in New Jersey, where numbers have been falling, Governor Phil Murphy warned that the transmission rate is “beginning to creep up.”
Coronavirus cases in the U.S. increased by 35,695 from the same time Monday to 2.33 million, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg News. The 1.6% gain was higher than the average daily increase of 1.3% the past seven days. Deaths rose 0.7% to 120,913….
So with the emergence of a second virus wave in the U.S., and, in fact, cases globally are rising, slumping restaurant traffic is going to be disastrous for heavily indebted eateries betting on a reopening.
Several bankruptcies have already been seen, including Le Pain Quotidien and Garden Fresh Restaurants, the owner of Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes. Also, TGI Fridays and Cousins Subs have reduced their retail footprint.
“Weaker businesses are searching for pre-Chapter 11 solutions,” said John Gordon, principal at Pacific Management Consulting Group, an eatery consultancy. “There will be many closings, particularly independents.”
Allen said the emergence of the virus could supercharge the restaurant bankruptcy wave.
OpenTable recently warned that 25% of all U.S. restaurants would never reopen.
For restaurants with the most robust balance sheets – some are finding new ways to survive, from offering substantial discounts to outside seating to curbside pickup to selling groceries. The staff has been reduced to skeleton size, and menus have been significantly trimmed.
The survival of the fittest has transformed big chains and small restaurants’ business models to now offer selling groceries. Panera Bread and Tijuana Flats, for example, are now offering meat by the pound, milk, and veggies to customers.
“We can almost live in between this space between meal kits and online grocery delivery,” New York-based chain Just Salad’s CEO Nick Kenner said. He estimates groceries could be a quarter of sales this year.
Pacific Management’s Gordon said a recovery in restaurants could be seen in 2022.
“On the whole, most quick-service restaurant brands are in fair shape, while some fast-casual and casual dining brands are still struggling,” he said. “Fine dining brands need business travel to resume before they see traffic recovery.”
With 15.6 million workers employed in the US restaraunt industry, and tens of millions worldwide, the current state of the restaraunt industry does not suggest a V-shaped economic recovery narrative for this year.
- Senators Move To Make UFO Data Public
Senators Move To Make UFO Data Public
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/25/2020 – 22:30Authored by Benjamin Wilson via SaraACarter.com,
Lawmakers in the Senate Intelligence Committee are moving forward with a request that would order the Defense Department and U.S. Intelligence agencies to create a public, unclassified, collection of all information and data on “unidentified aerial phenomenon,” also known as unidentified flying objects, UFOs.
According to The NY Post, Senators recognized the existence of a “Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force” and the need for a comprehensive analysis of unidentified flying objects.
“In his report attached to the 2020-2021 Senate Intelligence Authorization Act, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, instructs the director of national intelligence, the secretary of defense and other agency heads to compile data on ‘unidentified aerial phenomenon,’” according to The Post.
Rubio and his committee expressed concern about not having a concentrated analysis of these objects — especially since it could pose a national security threat. The lawmakers agreed the findings should be public.
“The Committee understands that the relevant intelligence may be sensitive; nevertheless, the Committee finds that the information sharing and coordination across the Intelligence Community has been inconsistent, and this issue has lacked attention from senior leaders,” the report reads.
According to Politico, if passed, the Intelligence Agencies would have 180 days to craft a report for the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense.
This decision follows the Pentagon releasing videos of these objects two months ago.
As previously reported on this news site, The Pentagon released three unclassified videos showing the U.S. Navy’s encounters with “unidentified aerial phenomena” on April 27.
“The U.S. Navy previously acknowledged that these videos circulating in the public domain were indeed Navy videos. After a thorough review, the department has determined that the authorized release of these unclassified videos does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems, and does not impinge on any subsequent investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena,” DOD said in a statement.
The provision passed today will move to the Senate for a vote and potentially lead to greater public knowledge on UFOs.
- JPM Finds That Rising Virus Cases Are Starting To Hit Consumer Spending Again
JPM Finds That Rising Virus Cases Are Starting To Hit Consumer Spending Again
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/25/2020 – 22:10Two weeks ago, in the immediate aftermath of renewed fears that various sunbelt states are seeing growing coronavirus infections, we showed that restaurant booking as measured by Opentable seated diners posted its biggest daily drop on its path to gradual recovery since the lockdowns were imposed in March.
Since then there was a modest stabilization in the trend, until another sharp drop took place on Monday amid new concerns of rising cases in states such as Texas, Arizona, Florida and California.
That said, two one-day drops in the closely watched restaurant index hardly is confirmation that the economy is starting to shutdown again. While that may be true, according to JPMorgan’s tracker of spending on the bank’s own debit and credit card, the bank said today that it can now detect a relative slowdown in spending growth in recent weeks in states where the virus has begun to spread again, even if differences across states are fairly subtle so far. In some states like New York and New Jersey where new virus cases are flat or falling, JPM’s spending tracker has risen by more than 10%-pts over the last two weeks through June 21. However, in states like Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, and South Carolina, where the virus is spreading rapidly, the tracker is up by less than 4%-pts. Still, total spending has been increasing even in these
places thus far.JPM has also found that spending patterns from a few weeks ago have some power in predicting where the virus has spread since then. Looking across categories of card spending, the bank has found that the level of spending in restaurants three weeks ago was the strongest predictor of the rise in new virus cases over the subsequent three weeks, echoing the results last week using OpenTable data. “Card-present” restaurant spending (meaning in-person, rather than online, spending) is particularly predictive. Interestingly, higher spending in supermarkets predicts slower spread of the virus, hinting that high levels of supermarket spending are indicative of more careful social distancing in a state. For example, as of three weeks ago, supermarket spending was up 20% or more from last year’s levels in New York and New Jersey, while it was up less than 10% in Texas and Arizona.
Elsewhere in the data, JPM notes that recent rebounds in spending in states like New York have been concentrated among Millennial and Gen Z cardholders and in card-present spending, suggesting that younger generations are leading the way in returning to normal offline life.
- Fed's Balance Sheet Shrinks For Second Consecutive Week
Fed’s Balance Sheet Shrinks For Second Consecutive Week
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/25/2020 – 22:08After three months of record gains, which saw an increase of $3 trillion to $7.2 trillion, the Fed’s balance sheet has posted its second consecutive weekly decline since the start of the corona crisis according to the latest H.4.1 statement.
While not nearly as large as last week’s decline which was the largest since May 2009, the $12 billion weekly decline to $7.082 trillion was certainly notable in a time when virtually every asset class now is driven by the rise and fall of the Fed’s balance sheet.
The drop, however, was not due to a reversal or even slowdown in QE which continues almost every single day, with the Fed adding over $52 billion in Treasurys and MBS in the 7 days ended June 24, but due to a second consecutive decline in liquidity swap, which shrank by $77.5 billion to $275 billion, after a $92 billion decline in the week prior. The amount of outstanding repo agreements also declined for a second consecutive week by a modest $8.9 billion.
The total amount outstanding in the swap lines, designed to ease a surge in demand for U.S. currency in the participating banks’ jurisdictions during the early weeks of the crisis, was the lowest since early April.
Coupled with other indications of slackening demand for the Fed’s bevy of emergency liquidity facilities, the reduction in currency swap line usage is for many analysts a sign that global financial markets are returning to near-normal after being upended by the coronavirus outbreak in February and March. “We expect a more rapid decline over the coming months as the majority of the swaps will roll off,” Citigroup economists wrote in a note last Friday.
The flipside is that it also means that the system is once again seeing a shrinkage in the circulation of the world’s reserve currency, an explicit tightening in financial condition, and the adverse global impact of any macroshock will be substantially greater if and when one hits in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, with the S&P500 closely tracking the Fed’s balance sheet in the past three months, which has served as the primary factor behind the rebound in the market, the latest weekly drop coincides with the period of heightened volatility in the past three weeks.
The shrinkage comes at a time when the Fed’s monthly liquidity injection has been tapered to approximately $120 billion, which suggests that while the balance sheet is likely to resume growing in the next week, it will be at a more gradual pace.
It also means that for the stock market to surge from this point on – since the market is now fully disconnected from fundamentals and is simply a derivative of endogenous liquidity and fund flow – Powell will need to find another justification to expand the Fed’s QE aggressively. Something like a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic…
Finally, those keeping track of how much corporate bonds the Fed has bought, the latest total for the Fed’s Corporate Credit Facilities LLC which includes purchases of both ETFs and corporate bonds, the Fed disclosed that as of June 25, there was $8.3 billion in book value of holdings (the Fed does not break out how many actual bonds it has bought vs ETFs), and increase of $1.7 billion from the $6.6 billion a week prior. Which means that the Fed is now buying around $350MM in corporate bonds and/or ETFs every single day.
- Rail Traffic Still Down
Rail Traffic Still Down
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/25/2020 – 21:50By Andrew Corselli of Railway Age,
Total carloads for this week were 201,823 carloads, down 21.8% compared with the same week in 2019, while U.S. weekly intermodal volume was 255,455 containers and trailers, down 4.4% compared to 2019.
None of the 10 carload commodity groups posted an increase compared with the same week in 2019. Commodity groups that posted decreases compared with the same week in 2019 included commodities such as coal, down 26,340 carloads, to 52,392; metallic ores and metals, down 8,176 carloads, to 14,459; and nonmetallic minerals, down 6,839 carloads, to 29,478.
For the first 25 weeks of 2020, U.S. railroads reported cumulative volume of 5,306,511 carloads, down 15.7% from the same point last year; and 5,933,616 intermodal units, down 10.8% from last year. Total combined U.S. traffic for the first 25 weeks of 2020 was 11,240,127 carloads and intermodal units, a decrease of 13.2% compared to last year.
North American rail volume for the week ended June 20, 2020, on 12 reporting U.S., Canadian and Mexican railroads totaled 294,794 carloads, down 19.3% compared with the same week last year, and 334,884 intermodal units, down 6% compared with last year. Total combined weekly rail traffic in North America was 629,678 carloads and intermodal units, down 12.7%. North American rail volume for the first 25 weeks of 2020 was 15,545,401 carloads and intermodal units, down 11.9% compared with 2019.
Canadian railroads reported 72,171 carloads for the week, down 14.9%, and 64,537 intermodal units, down 7.7% compared with the same week in 2019. For the first 25 weeks of 2020, Canadian railroads reported cumulative rail traffic volume of 3,465,280 carloads, containers and trailers, down 8%.
Mexican railroads reported 20,800 carloads for the week, down 7% compared with the same week last year, and 14,892 intermodal units, down 21.5%. Cumulative volume on Mexican railroads for the first 25 weeks of 2020 was 839,994 carloads and intermodal containers and trailers, down 10.2% from the same point last year.
- "Hard To Build Bullish Argument" – Corn Futures Pummeled On Prospects Of Bumper Crop
“Hard To Build Bullish Argument” – Corn Futures Pummeled On Prospects Of Bumper Crop
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/25/2020 – 21:30Well, it’s that time of year when grain prices can have a quick reaction to weather forecasts and or trade data.
Chicago corn futures dipped 2% on Thursday morning after favorable crop weather in the Midwest supported the view of a big harvest this year. Disappointing weekly U.S. exports also weighed down prices.
Concerns about a second coronavirus wave worldwide have led to a slump in corn futures in the last several weeks.
r/t Reuters Commodity Desk Wet weather and moderate heat across the Midwest have eased fears among grain traders about crop stress after a recent dry streak.
FIGURE 1: Forecasted temperature anomaly pattern for July 2020. Temperatures with equal chances of being +/- 1 °F of normal are indicated by “=” signs, temperatures between 1-3 °F above normal are indicated by the “+” signs, and temperatures more than 3 °F above normal are indicated by the “++” signs. h/t Reuters 
FIGURE 2: Forecasted precipitation anomaly pattern for July 2020. Precipitation 25-75 mm below normal of normal is indicated by a “-“, precipitation within 25 mm of normal is marked by “=”, and precipitation 25-75 mm above normal is indicated by a “+.” h/t Reuters “With a bumper 400 million tonnes of U.S. corn crop coming our way, it is hard to build a bullish argument for corn,” Ole Houe, director of advisory services at agriculture brokerage IKON Commodities in Sydney, told Reuters.
Uncertainty over Sino-US relations has led to concerns about weak Chinese purchases of U.S. farm goods, including corn and soybeans.
If readers recall, we used vessel tracking software to determine a “rush hour traffic” of bulk carriers carrying soybean were flowing from Latin America to Asia/China – while very little activity was seen in North Amerca.
A US-China phase on tracker chart via the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) shows China’s monthly purchases of U.S. goods covered by the phase one deal is still way below commitments agreed upon in early 2020.
Iowa Soybean Association president Tim Bardole told NBC News that President Trump’s signing of the phase one trade deal had been a disappointment, and China’s commitments as per the trade deal will likely not be met.
“At this point, it hasn’t done near what we were hoping would happen with it,” Bardole said. “At this point, we’re kind of running out of time for it to get close to the numbers we might have hoped.”
Bardole had discussions with the House Ways and Means Committee last Wednesday, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told him that China is expected to satisfy trade deal purchase agreements – though as we’ve noted, from day one, the commitments were unrealistic targets.
- MMT: Not Modern, Not Monetary, Not A Theory
MMT: Not Modern, Not Monetary, Not A Theory
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/25/2020 – 21:10Authored by Jeff Deist via The Mises Institute,
Modern monetary theory (MMT) has a new champion, and a new bible. Stephanie Kelton, economics professor at SUNY Stony Brook, is the author of The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy. Professor Kelton was an advisor to the Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns, and her ideas increasingly find purchase with left progressives.
It is certainly possible that she has a future either in a Biden administration or even on the Federal Reserve Board, which is a testament to how quickly our political and cultural landscape has shifted toward left progressivism. And left progressivism requires a “New Economics” to provide intellectual cover for what is essentially a political argument for painless free stuff from government.
Kelton’s essential argument, first advanced by MMT guru Warren Mosler in the 1990s, is quite simple: federal spending is unconstrained by revenue. Taxes function only to regulate demand and hence inflation; federal borrowing functions only to regulate interest rates. Sovereign government treasuries can create and spend as much money as they like to stimulate growth, especially when the economy is underperforming. If inflation spikes, taxes can be imposed to take money out of the economy.
Thus the only constraints on unlimited government spending are political. Unleashing ourselves from these “self-imposed” constraints, as Mosler puts it, is purely a matter of political will. Revenue is irrelevant to how you fund a government, so why not use government to fund the economy as a whole?
I direct readers to Dr. Bob Murphy’s recent substantive review of Kelton’s book here, as Bob does a thorough and effective job of debunking MMT and providing Austrian rebuttals to her claims regarding money, debt, and deficits. But I would make three quick points of my own:
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MMT is not modern. Kings have used seigniorage and currency debasement for centuries to fund their endeavors, always at the expense of their subjects.
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MMT is not monetary. It is primarily a fiscal approach to state finance, focused on tax policy as the economic accelerator and brake. Its roots predate the US Federal Reserve Bank, and in fact predate the present notion of “monetary policy.” MMT finds origins in early twentieth-century chartalism, whose proponents opposed gold in favor of paper money issued by government and mandated as legal tender. It is also a genealogical heir to the Greenbackers of the late 1800s, who believed Congress should direct the issuance of unbacked paper currency.
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MMT is not a theory. It is accounting. In fact, it relies on an accounting subterfuge which bizarrely claims government deficits represent private (societal) surpluses. Because government is the font from which currency springs, all financial assets (denominated in that currency of issue) exist thanks to government! Thus, under “national accounting,” the more government spends, the richer we the people get. When tax revenue is $100 but government spends $120, Americans are richer by $20. And so on. This is not a theory; this is accounting gimmickry almost purposefully designed to obscure what’s really going on.
In the relentlessly circular world of MMT, government is the source of all finance and in effect all wealth. Taxpayers don’t fund government, because after all government first provides the “tokens” (currency) taxpayers need to pay their IRS bills! Government funds taxpayers, which is broadly speaking what the American left really believes. It’s a version of Obama’s “You didn’t build that” rewritten into policy.
But let’s not kid ourselves: the US federal government already finances its operations of MMT. Twenty twenty federal spending may exceed $8 trillion as Congress and the Trump administration blow the roof off the authorized $5 trillion budget with COVID relief bills. More than half of that amount, maybe as much as $4 trillion, will be “deficit financed”—a nice way of saying not financed by tax revenue. This is a first in American history, to put it mildly.
This $4 trillion will not simply issue forth from Treasury Department printing machines, as Kelton would prescribe, but the effect is the same: the Treasury issues debt to cover the shortage, which the “public” buys, implicitly understanding that the Fed will always provide a ready market for such debt. And where does the Fed get the money to buy Treasurys? It creates it from nothing, in Keltonite fashion.
Chicagoites, market monetarists, supply-siders, NDGP targeters, and other free market proponents frankly don’t have much to say about MMT. They already accept the premise of “monetary policy,” i.e., that government or central banks should issue and control money in society. They already accept treating the money supply and interest rates as forms of policy tools. They already accept deficits and taxes as methods to prime or slow the economy. So although they may object to how Ms. Kelton wants to use money politically, they can’t much object to whether money is used politically.
Kelton deserves credit for writing a book aimed at lay audiences instead of for her peers in academic economics. Unlike most of those peers, she seems genuinely interested in helping us understand how the world works. And unlike most left progressive academics, she also seems interested in helping average people improve their lot in life. Perhaps most importantly, she does not display the kind of contempt and anger toward Red State America we see from the Paul Krugmans and Noah Smiths.
It’s easy for those of a free market bent to dismiss MMT out of hand, but the impulse to create something from nothing resides deep in the human psyche, and politics is where this impulse finds expression. We should not underestimate the allure of MMT in the midst of our current upheavals, because it appears to make possible every left progressive program: unlimited public works and federal jobs, useless and uneconomic green energy schemes, reparations for black Americans, Medicare for All, free college, free housing, and a host of others. MMT is the perfect economic proposal for those who sincerely and deeply believe wealth simply exists in America, and will continue to exist, regardless of incentives. All we need to do is figure out how to more fairly divvy it up—and so why not through government spending?
The promise of something for nothing will never lose its luster. MMT should be viewed as a form of political propaganda rather than any kind of real economics or public policy. And like all propaganda, it must be fought with appeals to reality. MMT, where deficits don’t matter, is an unreal place.
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- This Map Shows How The Coronavirus Spread Across The US
This Map Shows How The Coronavirus Spread Across The US
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/25/2020 – 20:50Working with a team of researchers, the New York Times has put together a comprehensive map of how the coronavirus spread from China and Europe to the US that, ironically, helps to undermine some of the paper’s own criticisms of President Trump’s decision to close the borders to travelers from China, while confirming that the initial delays in testing caused by faulty CDC tests and what has been described as “bureaucratic arrogance” greatly contributed to the spread.
Still, the picture painted of the American response to the virus isn’t pretty. Again and again, the states just didn’t act quickly enough to stop the virus from taking root in their communities. Outside the northeast and California, most moved far too slow. And even those states just named didn’t act swiftly enough.
The NYT’s narrative starts in early February, as the first known cases arrived in Seattle and Chicago.
By mid-February, there were only 15 known coronavirus cases in the United States, all with direct links to China. It was around then that President Trump triumphantly declared that the 15 cases would soon fall back to zero.
The problem is, by mid-February, there were already thousands of infections spreading across the country.
Unfortunately, by this point, the American response was weeks behind, per the NYT, as it would take 8 more weeks for testing capacity to start ramping up, and 10 in total after that until most states achieved widespread availability for tests. Still, NYT acknowledges that the China travel ban was a “partial” success. The problem is it wasn’t enough, and Trump should have listened to several advisers who were urging him to close travel to the EU. By the time Trump imposed the restrictions on China Feb. 2, only a few cases had made it to the US. but the decision to let the EU off the hook was a mistake.
But by the end of February, the flow of infected travelers had turned into a wave, as more than 1,000 infected patients are believed to have arrived in the US by the end of February, each kicking off a mini-flareup of their own.
By March 1, the number of infections had doubled 4 times as the exponential rate of spread was in full swing.
As President Trump pressed his administration not to be too ‘alarmist’ about the outbreak, he continued to encourage Americans to go about their lives, and they did, spreading the virus across the country as millions continued to travel.
The first sign that the outbreak was badly out of control, and that “community spread” was already well under way, arrived in late February when the first patient who hadn’t traveled to China was identified as infected om Seattle. Infections from this first community spread case in Seattle eventually spread to 14 states.
By March 1, when NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio was encouraging New Yorkers to “go about their lives as normal”, there were already more than 1,000 infected people roaming around the city.
Then more than 5,000 contagious travelers had left the city by mid-March, when the ‘stay at home’ orders in the Bay Area were first handed down, inspiring the lockdowns. Traveling New Yorkers spread the virus as far as New Orleans, where that city’s outbreak, which kicked off the outbreak in Louisiana more broadly, was later tied back to NYC.
Tracking so called “signature” mutations in genetic material of viral strains isolated in sick patients has allowed scientists to assemble a rough timeline, while providing more evidence to help them trace the spread of the virus around the country. By the time Trump blocked travel from the EU by mid-March, the restrictions were mostly useless; the virus was already widespread in the US as the Louisiana outbreak helped seed infections across the South.
A man returning from a basketball tournament in Tucson Ariz introduced the virus to the Navajo Reservation, the largest in the country.
Cellphone location data shows Americans didn’t start to curtail their movements until around March 10.
For more, the rest of the NYT’s project can be found here.
- How Do You Say (Way) Off-Balance-Sheet In Chinese?
How Do You Say (Way) Off-Balance-Sheet In Chinese?
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/25/2020 – 20:30Authored by Jeffrey Snider via Alhambra Investments,
Where central banks are concerned, it’s not conspiracy theory so much as the term “off-balance sheet.” There’s a reason Enron kicked off that mass-migration into the footnotes. For monetary officials, there’s the choice to be like Montagu Norman and what he thought of good practice at central banks. Silence.
For years, the Chinese have tried it the other way. Big Mama typically left huge muddy footprints wherever its clumsy feet might land. It certainly was that way back in 2015 when Euro$ #3 was strangling CNY and thus confusing the hell out of everyone over here (and more than a few over there):
By far the most openly audacious intervention came starting in March 2015. China’s currency for reasons the mainstream just couldn’t fathom had been falling and unsteady for over a year. At the same time, the Chinese economy had shown equally unsteady signs, the accumulation of shocking weakness.
There was no way Communist authorities would allow it go any further. The PBOC intervened first in February 2015 with a “double shot”, rate and RRR cuts, followed in March by a CNY exchange rate that looked like it was purposely put under control. Many were relieved by what they saw as Big Mama very publicly and skillfully planting a green shoot at just the right time.
No dice; the whole thing blew up later that summer, making August 2015 memorable for all the wrong reasons (and people today still call falling currencies “stimulus”).
Here’s the thing, though. While that was taking place, you could tell the PBOC was involved because of its own balance sheet figures. Each month SAFE would first report lower levels of foreign “reserves” which then got confirmed by the PBOC’s balance sheet lines, a central bank system which begins and often ends at the number for forex.
What’s going on now is a mockery – or an intentional shift in programming. Both SAFE and the PBOC report that foreign assets have been stable; in terms of the monetary base of the latter, suspiciously stable. I mean, hardly any variation month to month, a trend that’s gone on so long now it’s really year to year.
That can’t be an organic result, not in a dynamic world particularly the one we inhabit being ravaged by any number of potentially titanic forces that so often seem to get their start in this very country. What I’m saying is that there is almost certainly effort to the straight line (not the first time, either).
But what, exactly, is going on isn’t showing up anywhere. Not even on the one or two lines where in the past we could link them to hypothetical backdoor activities (the ubiquitous and useful “other”).
The ticking clocks became too noticeable and obvious? I think so; as did the decline in visible “reserves” which created the opposite effect of what was intended, amplifying negative monetary pressures market-wide (the nightmare scenario). The PBOC, unlike Western Economists, may just have found out that following the orthodox textbook where these things (the basics like money and dollars) are concerned will get your economy killed.
Reserves aren’t insurance against a dollar shortage, they are confirmation you’re the big target. Maybe better not to so blatantly advertise your dollar struggle?
Purposefully or not, a straight line isn’t expansion, either. And that still means the same thing in China: very little room for monetary growth. In what to me looks like more Xi vs. Li, currency growth has been bumped up for COVID-19 and the shutdown depression; bank reserves have not.
Quality growth in the real economy as opposed to quantity growth led by flooding banks.
Eurodollar University’s Making Sense; Episode 14: LI V XI II (Li versus Xi, The Rematch)
Though it may be more difficult to see it as it unfolds because of the PBOC’s sideways baseline, what I wrote in the middle of 2015 might still apply today especially where CNY remains concerned:
Even the Chinese yuan has become far more stable despite the rash of nasty economic indications and even more uncertainty about what the PBOC might or might not do about it. In other words, forget what is happening in China, the yuan is all about the “dollar” in the purest financial sense.
Especially when there are, curiously, no more muddy footprints at all.
- "Big News!!" – LeBron James Raises $100 Million To Build Media Empire
“Big News!!” – LeBron James Raises $100 Million To Build Media Empire
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/25/2020 – 20:10NBA star LeBron James and his business partner Maverick Carter have raised $100 million for their newly created entertainment firm, The SpringHill Company.
Bloomberg reported James and Carter received a cash infusion from global investment and financial services firm Guggenheim Partners LLC, UC Investments, News Corp. heir Elisabeth Murdoch, and SC.Holdings, the investment fund managed by entrepreneur Jason Stein.
The firm’s board consists of Carter, Serena Williams, Murdoch, Marc Rowan, co-founder of private equity firm Apollo Global Management, Live Nation Entertainment CEO Michael Rapino, Minerd, Paul Wachter, who is James’ wealth manager, and Tom Werner, chairman of the Boston Red Sox and English soccer club Liverpool.
The SpringHill Company is a consolidation of James’ marketing firm Robot Co. and several entertainment companies, including SpringHill Entertainment and Uninterrupted LLC. SpringHill Entertainment is the company behind the production of the upcoming sequel to “Space Jam.”
The company is described “as a media company with an unapologetic agenda: a maker and distributor of all kinds of content that will give a voice to creators and consumers who’ve been pandered to, ignored, or underserved,” Bloomberg noted.
“Big news‼️ Announcing the next chapter as THE SPRINGHILL COMPANY: a media company with an unapologetic agenda – a maker and distributor of all kinds of content that will give a voice to creators and consumers who’ve been pandered to, ignored, or underserved,” The SpringHill Company’s Instagram wrote.
Bloomberg didn’t elaborate on the deal structure or the sizes of each investors’ stake, but it was mentioned James and Carter formed the company at the start of the coronavirus pandemic in March.
“When we talk about storytelling, we want to be able to hit home, to hit a lot of homes where they feel like they can be a part of that story. And they feel like, Oh, you know what? I can relate to that. It’s very organic to our upbringing,” James told Bloomberg.
“When you grow up in a place like where we were, no matter how talented you are, if you don’t even know that other things exist, there’s no way for you to ever feel empowered because you’re like, I’m confined to this small world. That’s our duty. A lot of exposure,” Carter added.
The pair recently signed a TV production deal with Walt Disney Co and is working with Netflix on a basketball-themed movie.
- Media-Induced Fear Of COVID-19 Is Starting To Cause A Second-Wave Of Severe Economic Panic
Media-Induced Fear Of COVID-19 Is Starting To Cause A Second-Wave Of Severe Economic Panic
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/25/2020 – 19:50Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,
Fear of COVID-19 absolutely crippled the U.S. economy during the first half of this year, and now it appears that there are some people that are pushing for that to happen again during the second half of 2020.
Earlier this evening, I came across a headline that boldly declared that there will be “180,000 U.S. deaths of COVID-19 by October”, and right now just about every mainstream news outlet is running stories about how the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. is surging. And it is definitely true that we are seeing an alarming rise in the number of confirmed cases. In fact, the number of new cases in the U.S. on Wednesday set a new record…
The U.S. broke its record for the highest coronavirus cases recorded in a single day, with 36,358 new positives reported on Wednesday, according to a tally by NBC News.
Wednesday’s cases top the previous highest day count from April 26 — the first peak of the pandemic in the U.S. — by 73 cases, according to NBC News tracking data. The World Health Organization saw its single-day record on Sunday with more 183,000 cases worldwide.
The mainstream media is treating this as some sort of a big shock, but of course the truth is that this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.
[ZH: we do note that while cases are surging, deaths are falling as the median age of positive infections falls dramatically and people recover]
For months, I have been telling my readers that the lockdowns would “flatten the curve” for a while and that the number of cases would start to spike again once the lockdowns ended. That is exactly what has happened, but anyone with even a little bit of common sense could have anticipated this.
Earlier this year, states in the northeastern portion of the nation were the epicenter for the outbreak in this country, but now it is states in the southern and western sections of the nation that have become the most prominent hotspots…
Arizona, California, Texas, Florida, Oklahoma and South Carolina reported record-high new daily coronavirus cases during this week, as case counts continue to rise in more than half of U.S. states.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott said the state is facing a massive outbreak with another 5,000 cases reported Wednesday. California Gov. Gavin Newsom reported Wednesday 7,149 tested positive, a record number for the nation’s largest state. Both states this week surpassed the entire European Union on the average number of daily cases.
Things are particularly bad in California. Over the past two days, we have seen a 69 percent increase in the number of newly confirmed cases…
The California Department of Public Health reported its second straight record jump in coronavirus cases on Wednesday as the state joins a handful of others with growing case numbers.
California reported an additional 7,149 Covid-19 cases since Tuesday, a 69% increase in two days, bringing the state’s total to 190,222 cases, according to the state’s health department. The previous highest day jump was reported on Tuesday when the state recorded 5,019 additional new cases.
Needless to say, the snowflake politicians in California are going to be even less eager to return to business as usual than they were before. And since the state of California accounts for more economic activity than any other U.S. state does, this is going to be a major drag on the U.S. economy as a whole.
If this pandemic keeps dragging on for a couple more years, what are states like California going to do? Many had anticipated that life would be getting back to normal by now, but instead we are starting to see things go in reverse. In fact, we just learned that the reopening of Disneyland has been postponed indefinitely…
Disney is delaying the phased reopening of Disneyland and Disney California Adventure, the company’s flagship theme parks in California, the company said on Wednesday.
The resort, located in Anaheim, California, was set to welcome back guests on July 17 after being closed for months because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Other very large corporations are making similar moves. For example, Apple just shut down a whole bunch of their stores because of this new surge in coronavirus cases…
On Friday, stocks slumped as second wave fears were reignited following a report that Apple would temporarily shutter 11 U.S. retail stores across Florida, Arizona, North Carolina and South Carolina.”Due to current COVID-19 conditions in some of the communities we serve, we are temporarily closing stores in these areas,” an Apple spokesman said in a statement.“We take this step with an abundance of caution as we closely monitor the situation and we look forward to having our teams and customers back as soon as possible.”
Fast forward to today, when with stocks already sliding on renewed virus of a second wave of virus infections, moments ago Apple reported that it would re-close another 7 stores in Houston and Texas due to the coronavirus spike.
According to the optimists, this wasn’t supposed to happen. The worst part of this pandemic was supposed to be over, and it was supposed to be all downhill from here.
But instead it has become exceedingly clear that this virus will be with us for a long time to come. New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have all announced that those traveling in from nine different states where COVID-19 is out of control will be forced into mandatory quarantine for 14 days, and police in New York will actually be actively searching for vehicles that have license plates from those particular states…
In New York, cops will stop cars with license plates from the affected states to ask the person why they are not quarantining and how long they have been in the state for.
The quarantine applies to any state with infection rate of 10 infections per 100,000 people on a seven day rolling average or 10 percent of the total population testing positive.
Speaking of New York, this pandemic has already had a much larger financial impact than most observers had anticipated.
In particular, New York City is facing a nine billion dollar reduction in tax revenue, and Mayor Bill de Blasio says that the city may be forced to let 22,000 workers go…
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city is considering 22,000 layoffs and furloughs among its 326,000 employees to cut $1 billion of expenses after lockdown-related revenue losses.
De Blasio has projected a $9 billion loss in tax revenue over the next two years because of the pandemic.
Sadly, a whole lot more government workers will be fired across the country before this crisis is over.
Of course things are even worse for the private sector, and we continue to get more examples of this every single day. On Tuesday, we learned that GNC has decided to declare bankruptcy…
GNC Holdings Inc., which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection late Tuesday, has released an initial list of stores that will close.
The list posted at the Pittsburgh-based chain’s site, GNCevolution.com, includes 248 closing stores, including 219 U.S. locations and 29 in Canada.
And we have also just learned that the end may be near for Chuck E. Cheese…
The coronavirus pandemic could spell the end of Chuck E. Cheese. The popular kid’s restaurant had to close its 610 locations nationwide during the outbreak. Now, $1 billion in debt has Chuck E. Cheese’s parent company, CEC Entertainment, approaching bankruptcy.
The Wall Street Journal reports that CEC is asking lenders for a $200 million to keep its business going.
I haven’t been to a Chuck E. Cheese in many years, but when I was a kid I absolutely loved to eat there.
As a youngster, it seemed like such a magical place, and now it deeply saddens me to hear that the company may not survive.
In the end, a lot more iconic companies will go under as America plunges even deeper into this new economic depression.
Fear of a virus has turned our economy completely upside down, and thanks to the mainstream media much of the population is going to remain deathly afraid of this virus for the foreseeable future.
- "One-Third Of NYC Hotels Could Go Bankrupt" Due To COVID-19, Riots, Starwood Owner Warns
“One-Third Of NYC Hotels Could Go Bankrupt” Due To COVID-19, Riots, Starwood Owner Warns
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/25/2020 – 19:30Seemingly every major real-estate broker in the tri-state area has appeared on CNBC over the past 3 weeks to talk about how their phone has been ringing off the hook with Brooklyn-based millennial couples looking to get the hell out of New York City.
Most are looking into the first-ring suburbs around the city, stretching as far as Connecticut’s Fairfield County (and even parts of southern Litchfield), while all of North Jersey is potentially accessible for office workers who will likely never return to the daily commute. Meanwhile, brokers in NYC, who enjoyed a decade-long post-crisis, are assuring their TV audience that the city’s real estate market will always bounce back, just like it did after 9/11.
Not everyone is so optimistic, especially when it comes to New York City. Even before the pandemic, the city was struggling with a crumbling subway, surging homelessness. Taxes have been raised, while city services have deteriorated. And as the NYPD pulls hundreds of undercover officers off the street, virtually guaranteeing that the open air drug markets of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s will make a comeback, along with myriad other quality of life problems, some of the city’s most successful real estate investors think young people are probably better off staying in the suburbs, or moving to some other smaller, better-run city.
During a wide-ranging Bloomberg interview, Barry Sternlicht, the billionaire founder of Starwood Capital Group, shared a vision for NYC that sounded like the beginning of a disaster movie: office buildings in the city will lose 40% of their value – putting unprecedented pressure on the family businesses of the president and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner – one-third of all hotels in the city will go bankrupt, and – most importantly – residential rents will plummet as the wave of gentrification that priced out many minorities from the neighborhoods in which they grew up happens in reverse.
While the looting and the violence witnessed during the protests over George Floyd’s murder didn’t help, the protests and the virus aren’t the City’s only problem. In fact, some of the forces driving this trend have nothing to do with the virus, Sternlicht said. Instead, he blamed a “blue-state mentality” that has brought the city to its present “tipping point”.
Democrats see upping taxation as the best way to close state budget gaps. When taxes on the wealthiest rise substantially, many of those people leave, creating even bigger holes in the state’s revenue stream. Sternlicht isn’t the only NYC financier to relocate to Miami in recent years.
As the tax base shrinks, services deteriorate, and taxes rise on those who are increasingly unable, or unwilling, to pay them. People leave, setting off a vicious cycle.
“If they raise taxes, more people leave and the social burden of those that are less fortunate falls on an ever-smaller revenue base,” he said. “The services of the city get worse, the city gets dirtier, the police show up less often. It’s a negative cycle.”
So long as there’s no COVID-19 vaccine and the virus continues to spread, big city tourism, sports and conventions – a major source of revenue for city businesses and tax revenue for city and state government – will remain largely on hold. While Sternlicht’s Starwood, which has some $60 billion in assets, can withstand the hit to its 1 Hotel locations near Central Park and on the Brooklyn waterfront, as well as to its Baccarat Hotel New York in midtown Manhattan, others won’t be so lucky. In the end, one-third of hotels will go bankrupt.
“I think a quarter, a third of hotels in New York City could go bankrupt,” Sternlicht said. “It’s going to be ugly. You tell me when big businesses are going to force their clients or customers or employees to go to a group meeting in Vegas or in New Orleans or in Orlando.”
Outside NYC, Sternlicht says, his company’s properties are faring much better. Hotel bookings in markets like Miami are still happening. But NYC’s top retail corridors – like Fifth Avenue and SoHo – will be hard pressed to convince shoppers to return, as more Americans have come to rely on Amazon. This could take a sledgehammer to retail rents in the city, which started showing weakness as far back as 2018.
As fewer young people are willing to move to the city, big tech companies that signed huge leases in Manhattan or Brooklyn office buildings will simply walk away.
WeWork, still the city’s biggest corporate landlord, is on track to substantially shrink its footprint, if the company doesn’t collapse outright. Tech firms like Facebook and Google are planning to allow far more workers to work remotely. Even on Wall Street, banking executives are talking about needing less overall space. With all of this factors hitting at once, NYC is bound to become the toughest commercial real estate market in the country.
All told, the result may be the city’s biggest real estate slump in at least three decades. According to Cushman & Wakefield data going back to 1990, Manhattan rents haven’t fallen by more than 20% in a single year. “Rents could drop 25% in New York – office rents. I think expenses could go up 25%. You could see office values drop 40% because of that,” Sternlicht said. “It’s probably going to be the toughest office market in the country.” Read more: Gorman sees Morgan Stanley future with ‘much less real estate’ And if jobs move elsewhere, the residential market will collapse too. landlords are “desperate” to retain young tenants and increasingly willing to cut apartment rents by as much as 25%, Sternlicht said.
In summary, Sternlicht’s “negative cycle” theory is pretty simple: first, the income base erodes. That puts strain on city services and infrastructure, that causes quality of life to deteriorate while cost of living rises, prompting more wealthier residents to leave.
Put another way: New York City’s drain is the sunbelt’s gain (that is, if the coronavirus outbreak doesn’t swallow up the entire region).
Starwood Capital has been investing in so-called red states with Republican governors, such as Florida, Texas and Tennessee, Sternlicht said, because they have growing populations, companies are relocating there and the non-union construction costs are much lower than in blue states run by Democrats. “I don’t think you can make New York miserable for the affluent and expect it to be successful for everyone,” Sternlicht said. “There are other incredible places in the country – or they will be incredible when all the New Yorkers populate them.”
Of course, Sternlicht’s businesses are feeling substantial strain from the coronavirus pandemic. While he insists Starwood’s hotels business will make it through relatively unscathed, its malls business is defaulting on its debts.
- The Blue State Jobs Depression
The Blue State Jobs Depression
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/25/2020 – 19:10Authored by Stephen Moore via RealClearPolitics.com,
The latest Department of Labor employment data confirm that when it comes to the economy, America is two nations: red and blue. As the post-coronavirus shutdown era begins, blue states are losing jobs at record paces and red states are starting to gain them.
Here is what the data is telling us: 10 states had unemployment rates in May above 15%. They are all states with Democratic governors, with the exception of deep-blue Massachusetts with its liberal Republican governor, Charlie Baker.
Ranked from highest to lowest they are Nevada (25.3%), Hawaii (22.6%), Michigan (21.2%), California (16.3%), Rhode Island (16.3%), Massachusetts (16.3%), Delaware (15.8%), Illinois (15.2%), New Jersey (15.2%), Washington (15.1%).
The five states with the lowest unemployment rates are all red states – most of which never shut down at all. These are Nebraska (5.2%), Utah (8.5 %), Wyoming (8.8%), Arizona (8.9%), and Idaho (8.9%).
This is exactly as Arthur Laffer and I predicted in a study we conducted back in March on the economic effects of lockdowns. States with very strict business shutdown and stay-at-home orders would be facing a much tougher recovery period than states that never shut down, like Utah and Wyoming, and states that rapidly reopened, such as Arizona. This would be a bifurcated red state, blue state recovery – and so it is, so far.
This is not a coronavirus recession. It is a blue state lockdown recession. Democrats say they have shut down their economies to maintain the safety of their citizens. But that is a stretch. Studies are now finding that the negative health effects from the lockdown (suicide, delayed treatments for cancer and heart problems, depression, spousal abuse, alcohol and drug overdoses, to name a few) could easily match the saving of lives from lockdowns.
But there is a much bigger problem with this argument. It is factually untrue that blue states did a better job than red states in keeping their citizens safe. They didn’t. The 10 states with the highest death rates from coronavirus (as a percentage of the state population) are all states with Democratic governors. A blue state resident was twice as likely to die from the virus as a red state resident even though the red states were not heavy-handed in locking down their economies. (Population density likely factored in as well.)
The tragedy for blue state America is that these states – especially in the Northeast and Midwest – were already seeing major outmigration of families, businesses, and capital before the pandemic. The blue state governors’ mishandling of the crisis has only put these states in deeper holes.
Of course, the Democrats are now saying that the caseloads are climbing in the red states. That’s true, but caseloads don’t tell us much of anything. If going outside and gathering in public while ignoring social distancing orders is the reason for the increase in cases (and in some cases hospitalization rates) then we would expect to see a surge in cases in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, and Washington, D.C. That is where the largest, and most prolonged, George Floyd protests took place.
So the blue states have not only failed to keep their citizens safe, they’ve ruined their economies as well. Democrats are promising to make America look more like New Jersey, Washington, and California. God forbid. The latest annual data from United Van Lines shows that the seven states with the most outbound traffic were:
1) New Jersey, blue
2) Illinois, blue
3) New York, blue
4) Connecticut, blue
5) Kansas, blue
6) Ohio, red
7) California, blue
The toxic combination of coronavirus, lockdowns, riots, poor city and state leadership, and massive budget deficits are making the blue states bleed red.
- Illinois Gun Permit Applications Soar 500% As Frightened Liberals Embrace 2nd Amendment
Illinois Gun Permit Applications Soar 500% As Frightened Liberals Embrace 2nd Amendment
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/25/2020 – 18:50Over 40,000 Illinois residents applied for a gun permit over a two-week period this month, a jump of more than 500% over this time last year according to Illinois State Police.
“Take a full glass of coronavirus, shake in a shot of riots and another of this defund police notion, and everything goes crazy,” gun shop owner Mark Glavin told the Chicago Tribune. “Not to mention the backlog on background checks.”
The state’s mandatory 72-hour background check has stretched to more than a week for some of Glavin’s customers, putting Illinois residents in the same boat as Californians – who have a 10-day wait before they can take possession of recently bought firearms.
The firearms services bureau of the Illinois State Police is taking an average of 94 business hours — not counting holidays, weekends, the day the gun is purchased, or the day the sale is approved or denied — to process background checks, roughly a day longer than usual, according to state police spokeswoman Beth Hundsdorfer.
The bureau is responsible for issuing firearm owner’s identification cards and concealed carry licenses, as well as conducting background checks for licensed gun dealers when a sale is made. Its work started to pick up in March and has spiked in June, Hundsdorfer said. –Chicago Tribune
Between June 1 and June 17, there were over 42,089 applications for FOID cards vs. just 7,000 during the same period last year – an increase of 501%. Putting that into further context, there were 48,194 applications between December, January and February combined.
“We know that traditionally there’s an uptick in gun purchases around elections and major tragedies,” said DePaul University associate professor of social work, Noam Ostrander.
“There’s two big predictors of gun ownership — not sport-type rifle owners — but among new gun owners usually, and that is perceived risk of victimization and then a belief that the world is a dangerous place,” Ostrander continued. “And if we dig into that second one, right, the world does look like a dangerous place right now.”
Des Plaines gun store and range owner Dan Eldridge says that half of the customers scrambling to arm up are first-time buyers.
“The numbers I saw from the National Shooting Sports Foundation … said 40% of respondents to (store) surveys were new, first-time buyers. And of those, 40% are female — 40% of the 40%,” said Eldridge. “We’re tracking 150% of a typical May in firearms sales … and that’s with being open by appointment only.”
Eldridge also noted that sales of defensive ammunition, such as hollow-point bullets, were 10x as high.
“What is significant is a whole lot of people who have firearms for their house or self-defense are saying, ‘I’d better have some ammunition for this thing or it’s not going to do me any good.’” he added.
Liberals embracing the 2nd Amendment
University of Illinois at Chicago associate professor of Political Science, Alexandra Filindra, says that there’s plenty of research and anecdotal evidence that many of the white, first-time gun buyers identify as politically progressive.
“It’s not so much a security concern, though they may tend to want to misidentify it as fear,” said Filindra. “But typically people who are highly anxious and afraid tend to be more supportive of gun control.”
A 38-year-old man from Dixon — who didn’t want his name used, citing employment reasons — described himself as “a very liberal Democrat” who for decades has been “for most forms of gun control politically.” But since March, he’s been waiting for his first gun permit to arrive so he can keep his family safe, he said.
“My views have recently changed, and I have accepted that the Second Amendment provides for the personal ownership and use of a firearm,” he said in an email. “The recent social unrest of a divisive president, the pandemic and dramatic rise in unemployment, and the more recent social unrest because of the way we police in this country have all been reasons that have prompted my recent application.” –Chicago Tribune
Concealed Carry gun instructor and owner of Safer USA, David Lombardo, says he’s had several callers recently who have disclosed their political beliefs while asking him for private one-on-one training because “they don’t want anyone to know they’re doing the training, let alone going to buy a firearm.”
“I have seen the emergence of a new class of students seeking training: anti-Second Amendment liberals,” he said.
Carrie Lightfoot, founder of the popular shooting blog The Well Armed Woman, said there’s nothing hypocritical about changing your views when the world around you is changing. And she’s not surprised women make up a good portion of these new gun buyers.
Women have always understood they are at a disadvantage when it comes to a male aggressor who will likely be taller, heavier and stronger. Now we are “all shaken to our core” by world events, which is why “it is only natural” women are arming themselves, she said.
“I am seeing women come to gun ownership who literally just weeks or months ago were opposed to people owning guns personally,” Lightfoot said. “Sometimes, it is in moments of personal need and through our personal concerns that our life’s context changes.” –Chicago Tribune
Lots of guns, not a lot of training
DePaul’s Ostrander points out what few are saying; first-time gun owners are eight-times more likely to accidentally shoot themselves vs. those in gun-free homes, because they lack training.
“If they feel safer having 5 pounds of metal in their home, then at least let’s try to get some basic instruction going. Some standard gun safety,” he said.
Read the rest of the report here.
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