- Norges Bank Considers Revoking Offer To Incoming Wealth Fund CEO After Left Wing Outrage Campaign
Norges Bank Considers Revoking Offer To Incoming Wealth Fund CEO After Left Wing Outrage Campaign
The scandal unfolding at Norway’s $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund, one of the largest piles of oil capital in the world, is beginning to look less like an unseemly glimpse into the incestuous world of Norway’s elite, and more like a textbook case of a cynical tabloid press emboldening critics on the far left.
On Friday, outgoing fund CEO Yngve Slyngstad’s delivered an apology that surprised even the financial press with its seeming sincerity. In it, Slyngstad mused about how one bone-headed decision had destroyed the public trust he had carefully built over two decades.
Julie Brodtkorb, chair of the supervisory council of Norges Bank, has said the central bank will decide by Tuesday whether to hold an extraordinary meeting to look into whether the executive board of the central bank followed the proper protocols in appointing Tangen. But we suspect they will find that the proper procedures were, in fact, followed, since Tangen’s explanation of how he ended up with the job has been widely corroborated, and clearly rules out a quid-pro-quo, an idea that was, as we said, pretty tenuous to begin with.
The fact is, Tangen is making an enormous financial sacrifice to accept the position to lead the sovereign wealth fund. He will take a huge pay cut, and will also be forced to pay Norway’s onermous wealth tax, something his annual salary won’t even cover. He’s essentially paying to hold the job, something Tangen – a native Norwegian – once called “a dream.”
However, the press and Norway’s political establishment are all furious at Tangen for organizing an extravagant seminar at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, where Slyngstad and several other Norwegian power players (including the country’s attorney general) attended. Slyngstad attended the seminar shortly after announcing his decision to step down from the leadership of the sovereign wealth fund, a decision that triggered a scramble by the central bank to find a successor who was as well-qualified as Slyngstad.
Details about the seminar (which included performances by Sting and Gregory Porter) were published by a Norwegian tabloid, which kicked off the scandal. Many on the left raised an eyebrow when the central bank announced that it had appointed Tangen to take over the fund. The staid Norwegian culture leaves little room for Tangen’s flashy hedge funder lifestyle. Bloomberg reported that many Norwegians might “struggle to regard Tangen as a public servant” because of the coverage.
The crux of the scandal at the central bank is that Tangen’s decision to invite Slyngstad, and then fly him back to Oslo on a private jet, a decision that he said was made to save Slyngstad the trouble of taking a train back to New York from Pennsylvania to catch a flight back to Norway, was read as a possible quid pro quo. However, that’s a pretty tenuous connection to begin with: the gift, while seemingly excessive to the common man, is merely a rounding error for Tangen.
Plus, the timeline of events, as well as the explanations supplied by Tangen and Slyngstad, appear to support their claims that there was no quid pro quo, and that Slyngstad didn’t have much, if any, role in selecting Tangen as his replacement.
Tangen said he didn’t apply for the position of leading the sovereign wealth fund; instead, he was contacted by head hunters from executive recruitment firm Russel Reynolds. That story has been corroborated by everybody involved.
In an effort to “make things right,” the Norges Bank has insisted on reimbursing Tangen for the cost of Slyngstad’s flight and seminar attendance. What we want to know is: How is sticking the Norwegian taxpayer with the tab for these extravagances supposed to quell their anger? Then again, we aren’t Norwegian, and don’t have any first-hand experience with the culture.
Still, the affair has dominated Norwegian media, thanks largely to left-wing politicians and union leaders who are now insisting that the central bank reconsider Tangen’s appointment, arguing that the ‘jetsetter’ isn’t the right candidate for Norway. Norges Bank’s Supervisory Council, the wealth fund’s watchdog, has given the central bank until April 29 to answer a list of questions surrounding the recruitment process.
These criticisms, however, fail to take several important factors into account: As we mentioned above, Tangen is making personal sacrifices in terms of his wealth just to accept the decision, which undermines the quid-pro-quo argument, since Tangen has nothing to gain – reputationally or financially – from taking the job. He says it’s a personal dream of his to run the fund. There’s no reason to doubt this.
In reality, these outraged left-wingers are hurting Norway: Knut Kjaer, the founding CEO of the wealth fund, told the FT that hiring Tangen was “a stroke of luck” for the fund. As we mentioned above, many feared that someone as qualified as Tangen wouldn’t emerge, despite the fund’s largess.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 04/27/2020 – 02:35 - Even The EU Are A Bunch Of 'Karens': Barnier Complains About Brexit Negotiations
Even The EU Are A Bunch Of ‘Karens’: Barnier Complains About Brexit Negotiations
Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,
So, this happened...
EU lead negotiator for the free trade agreement with the United Kingdom is complaining in the press again.
“The United Kingdom cannot refuse to extend the transition and at the same time slow down progress in important areas,” Barnier said, expressing concern that Britain has not presented concrete proposals for certain contentious issues, but did not name the areas, according to DPA news agency.
For once someone is treating the EU the way it treats everyone else and they don’t like it. I guess Michel should change his name to Karen.
Except the problem here is there’s no manager to talk to because Prime Minister Boris Johnson isn’t listening.
The typical EU negotiations looks like this, according to former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis.
You walk in with a well thought out proposal, present it in detail thinking it’s the beginning of a negotiation only to find they aren’t listening at all and look at you like you’ve just sung the Swedish National Anthem.
Well it looks like Boris Johnson and the Brits are treating Barnier and the EU with the same vague contempt that he and the EU treat everyone else and guess what?
Karen doesn’t like it.
Remember, the Brits have ask for an extension by June 30th to extend this transition period they are in for another two years or negotiations end on December 31st.
If no trade deal is agreed to by the two sides by then, trade between them on WTO terms commences. Given the current state of EU politics and its sinking economic conditions the likelihood of the U.K. giving Barnier even the time of day at this point is pretty low.
He’s behaved appallingly at every stage of these discussions, going back three years, treating the Brits like a bunch of wayward children and the EU the assuming the role of the abusive, distant father.
If, at this late date, Barnier is accusing the Brits of stalling and complaining about it publicly then there is no deal and Johnson is dead set on a hard Brexit.
Because while Boris may look like a buffoon, he’s as shrewd a political operator as there is.
Because we all know what the real story is here, the EU wants to soak the U.K. for the next two and a half years while making them liable for hundreds of billions of pounds to bail out the European banking system.
That’s why they are pushing for an extension. That’s why they are putting non-starter proposals on the table, if any at all.
And there’s zero political will in the U.K. to give the EU another shilling.
Moreover, with Germany ascendant within the EU at the moment, since Chancellor Angela Merkel won the latest round against the Euro-integrationists resisting the call for debt mutualization and Eurobonds, Germany needs exports to the U.K. a whole lot more than the U.K. needs exports to Germany.
And that provides the dynamic to ensure there will be no tariffs put in place in the event of a hard Brexit. Because if they do it will gut what’s left of German exports to the U.K. and its now-suffocating automobile industry.
It means the Germans will set a ruthless agenda in the second half of this year in budget talks while it has the Presidency of the European Commission.
However, it also means that Italy will have a lot of leverage since the Germans don’t want to go back to the Deutschemark anymore than Italy wants to stay in the euro under the current arrangement. A new mark would be far stronger than the euro would be without Germany in it.
And that would also crush German exports.
I have to wonder at this point whether Merkel will reverse course on all of the terrible things she’s done to the German economy in the next six months. She has to realize, with her now commanding lead in the polls, she no longer needs the Greens to govern and doesn’t need to encourage them anymore.
Because their agenda is toxic in the post-COVID-19 world economy. German industry is now severely disadvantaged in a world of $15-20 per barrel oil and $1.50 mcf Natural gas.
Today the Green energy agenda makes zero sense.
No amount of stimulus or green spending as championed by ECB President Christine Lagarde will save the European economy and political system. Moreover, the harder ball the Brits play with Barnier over a trade deal, the more they play the Swedish National Anthem game the more countries like Italy will see Brussels for the inept, dysfunctional paper tiger it is.
And everyone may just get all those funny ideas the Brits had in 2016.
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Mon, 04/27/2020 – 02:00 - A Navy Destroyer Is Heading To Port, Crippled By Another COVID-19 Outbreak At Sea
A Navy Destroyer Is Heading To Port, Crippled By Another COVID-19 Outbreak At Sea
Will yet another major US Navy warship be disabled by the coronavirus pandemic like the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier fiasco?
The Navy now reports its Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, the USS Kidd has at least 33 confirmed COVID-19 cases among the crew, nearly doubling in the last few days from an initial 18 cases reported last Thursday.
Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Kidd transits the Pacific Ocean last July, via AFP/DoD. The destroyer has a total crew of 350 and is currently off the Pacific coast of South America. Its mission is reportedly related to US counter-narcotics operations off coastal waters of South America.
At least two sailors have been medically evacuated from the ship to military hospitals in San Antonio, and the destroyer has since begun returning to port for deep a disinfecting cleaning and further testing of crew.
“The first patient transported is already improving and will self-isolate. We are taking every precaution to ensure we identify, isolate, and prevent any further spread onboard the ship,” commander US Naval Forces Southern Command and 4th Fleet, Rear Admiral Don Gabrielson, said.
The Navy also indicated all crew have donned N95 masks and other personal protective equipment in efforts to contain the spread.
Furthermore an amphibious assault ship identified as the USS Makin Island has been sent to aid the USS Kidd at sea. The Makin Island reportedly has a team of naval doctors aboard, including intensive care capacity and ventilators.
The USS Kidd plans to ramp up testing of all its crew as fears mount of another possible USS Roosevelt catastrophe. In that ongoing crisis the nuclear carrier starting late last month into April was stricken with over 850 coronavirus cases, among a crew of almost 5,000 – forcing it to dock at Guam and cut short its mission in the West Pacific.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 04/27/2020 – 01:05 - Here's "Polyamory": Multi-Partner Sexual-Rights Crusade On The Horizon
Here’s “Polyamory”: Multi-Partner Sexual-Rights Crusade On The Horizon
Authored by John Murawski via RealClearInvestigations.com,
It was only a few months ago that someone last treated Cassie Johns like a freak.
During a doctor’s office visit in February, she was asked to list her emergency contacts. Johns, a preschool teacher in Seattle, wrote down two people — Chris and Joan — and identified both as her “partners.” They are two of the four romantic interests Johns has been involved with for many years.
“‘Oh, that’s so dirty,’” Johns recalled the receptionist saying.
“And the receptionist literally stepped back from me, in a doctor’s office.”
Johns, 58, is a polyamorist. She follows a non-monogamous lifestyle in which multiple partners give each other consent to date and have sex with others. Johns’s longest polyamorous relationship has lasted 36 years, twice as long as her former marriage to a polyamorous man. She talks openly about her partners to her preschool students and others.
Scene from a recent TV episode of “House Hunters” featuring three adults searching for a home to build their polyamorous nest. Freepik/Wikimedia. Top Credit: YouTube/People TV/ HGTV
But her forthrightness has a price.
“I have lost jobs, I’ve lost an apartment, I’ve lost a car loan,” because of her lifestyle, Johns said.
“I’ve lost friendly relations with neighbors.”
Despite the acceptance of campus hook-up culture and Tinder-arranged trysts, more intentional forms of consensual non-monogamy – which can include polygamy, polyamory, open marriages, group marriages, swinging and “relationship anarchy” – are highly stigmatized. Such behavior is widely considered to be abusive, immoral, or emotionally stunted. People in such relationships not only face rudeness and public shaming, they also lack legal protections against discrimination in employment, housing and child custody disputes.
Polyamorists distinguish their lifestyle from cheating and adultery because, they say, it hinges on the consent of all parties, and can involve unmarried people. Activists say such behavior is more common than many people presume. Some studies suggest that as many as a fifth of Americans have engaged in consensual non-monogamy at some point in their lives. The studies show that at any given time, an estimated 4% to 5% of the population is in a consensually non-monogamous relationship.
While the coronavirus pandemic and social distancing are expected to put a temporary damper on polyamory, those numbers could rise if the social disincentives were removed – in part because some adulterers and cheaters could become consensual non-monogamists.
Activists are moving to dismantle the legal and social barriers, and say their goals are beginning to take shape.
They are laying the groundwork to have their cause become the next domino to fall in a long line of civil rights victories secured by trans people, gays, lesbians, women and blacks. Not too long ago, those marginalized groups were also viewed as unnatural, depraved or inferior, until negative judgments became socially unacceptable and often illegal.
The aspirations of non-monogamists don’t sound like such a moonshot in an increasingly tolerant society where a transgender man can menstruate and experience childbirth, and Pete Buttigieg, a gay man married to another man, can make a serious run for U.S. president.
As the topic breaks into the mainstream, some churches are beginning to grapple with the issue, and polyamorous students are forming university clubs and organizing events. Last fall polyamory got attention, some of it sympathetic, when California Rep. Katie Hill, was forced to resign over allegations she was having an affair with a campaign staffer in a “throuple” with her then-husband. A recent TV episode of “House Hunters” featured three adults searching for a home to build their polyamorous nest, and Hollywood celebrities are opening up about their polyamorous lifestyles as well.
“There is plenty of evidence that consensual non-monogamy is an emerging civil rights movement,” said Heath Schechinger, a counseling psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-chair of the Consensual Non-Monogamy Task Force, recently created within the American Psychological Association.
“I’ve heard from a number of people advocating for relationship structure diversity over the past 20 years who are elated about this issue finally gaining traction.”
Activists are already working with elected officials in more than a dozen local governments, especially in California, to expand local anti-discrimination ordinances to include a new protected class, “relationship structure,” said Berkeley psychologist and poly activist Dave Doleshal.
Most efforts are at the informal stage but the city of Berkeley did consider a formal proposal to extend protections in housing, employment, business practices, city facilities or education to swingers, polyamorists and other non-monogamists. The proposal stalled last year amid concerns that it would have required employers to provide health insurance to numerous sexual and romantic partners outside of marriage.
Pro-polyamory marchers in San Francisco in 2004. Especially in California, there are moves afoot to expand local anti-discrimination ordinances to include a new protected class: “relationship structure.” Pretzelpaws/Wikimedia
Undaunted by that setback, advocates continue to generate a body of ideas and theories that normalize non-monogamy as a form of positive sexuality — and possibly an identity — following a script followed by other marginalized groups. Their efforts have led to reassessments of non-monogamy in the psychological and legal fields, contending the relationships are emotionally healthy and ethical, and thus forging a social movement with a shared identity, shared vocabulary, shared history and a shared desire for full recognition.
And, yes, there is already a polyamory pride flag.
Over the past two decades, nearly 600 academic papers have been written on the subject of non-monogamy, according to one count, including an assessment of the benefits to children in polyamorous families. Such research creates a body of scholarship to counteract ingrained social attitudes that poly advocates call prejudices and misconceptions. At the same time, the field has spawned more than 50 books, mostly written by women, said Kenneth Haslam, 85, a retired anesthesiologist and polyamorist in Durham, N.C., who helped create the polyamory history archive at the Kinsey Institute in Bloomington, Ind.
Brian Watson, author of “Annals of Pornographie: How Porn Became ‘Bad’” (2016), is co-authoring a book on non-monogamy throughout history. He said it will feature 50 to 100 prominent figures, such as Victor Hugo and Virginia Woolf, and is deliberately modeled on earlier works about famous gay people.
Just as women’s rights grew from feminist legal theory and LGBTQ rights from queer theory, non-monogamy is also developing its own historiography, scholarship and theoretical frameworks.
Still, it’s not easy to pinpoint a polyamorist profile. They are less likely to identify as heterosexual or to conform to gender norms, but academic studies and anecdotal evidence don’t tell a single story. While some non-monogamists consider themselves neo-pagans, anarchists or socialists, others are libertarians or outwardly conventional suburbanites. Some studies say the lifestyle attracts more men, others say more women; some say it appeals to affluent whites, others say a polyamorist’s average annual income is under $40,000.
In the legal arena, sympathetic scholars are arguing for the extension of legal reforms adopted in family law in recent decades in response to the continued erosion of the nuclear family, which is no longer America’s dominant family structure.
At least a dozen states now recognize or allow for the possibility of a child having more than two parents, an accommodation for surrogate parents, grandparents, stepparents and other nontraditional families, according to a February legal article by Edward Stein, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York.
These expansions of the legal concept of family are potential pathways for non-monogamous families to win legal rights of their own, Stein said. Another potential legal opening could be the existing precedents in domestic partnerships and civil unions that were set up locally for gays and lesbians before same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide in 2015. In both cases, legal victories for one group could be extended to another group, a common way that legal developments happen, he said.
The first steps would likely have to be decriminalizing of adultery in the 38 states that don’t distinguish between consensual and non-consensual non-monogamy. The prohibition of adultery is comparable to anti-sodomy laws whose repeal by the Supreme Court in 2003 cleared an obstacle for recognizing gay marriage, Stein said.
“I think what we will see is a lot of chipping away at the edges of some of the restrictions we put on what a family is and what a family does,” said Janet W. Hardy, who has written on polyamory for more than 20 years.
“When the legal challenge comes – and it will – I don’t think it will be from people who identify themselves as poly. I think it will come from blended families and some of the other ways that we are reforming around the idea of family that are legally challenging.”
One such example was a recent effort by Hartford, Conn., authorities to evict eight adults and three children living as a single family in a 6,000-square-foot mansion.
The combined family was not polyamorous, said their lawyer, Peter Goselin, but shared financial, domestic and child-rearing responsibilities. In 2014 the city alleged a violation of its zoning rules for single-family homes, but after two years of litigation, the city dropped its case.
The joint owners and residents of the home claimed a constitutional right to define a family. The octet’s lawsuit against the city includes a brief history of communal family living, from Iroquois longhouses, which housed up to 20 family units, to the communes, cooperatives and collective households of the 19th and 20th centuries.
“They saw the implications of it,” Goselin said. “Privately they said to me we know this would be encouraging to a lot of people who are in polyamorous relationships.”
Advocates say that the warnings against the perils of non-monogamy echo the now-debunked concerns about same-sex marriage.
“All of the well-known objections made against multi-person intimate relationships can be made against same- or opposite-sex monogamy as well, resulting in an indefensible double standard,” Ronald C. Den Otter, a political science professor at California Polytechnic Institute wrote in a 2015 article in the Emory Law Review.
“Sadly, many two-person intimate relationships are dysfunctional, and a closer, more brutally honest look at them should not inspire confidence in their superiority.”
Once changes get under way, things can move quickly. The rise of the modern gay rights movement in the mid-20th century led to a decision by the American Psychiatric Association in 1973 to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders (gender dysphoria was de-pathologized in 2012). Those medical reversals are seen as analogous to the American Psychological Association’s creation last year of its Consensual Non-Monogamy Task Force, formed to destigmatize such relationships and explore changes in public policy.
Schechinger, the task force co-chair, said it’s much easier to stereotype and hate a marginalized group when people in the normative majority operate by stereotypes and misinformation.
“That’s part of what the task force is seeking to accomplish – to gather empirical data, promote accurate information about CNM relationships, and ask if these relationships are causing harm or are not,” he said. “And what are the implications on society for promoting a one-size-fits-all model versus promoting people being in touch with what’s the good fit for them.”
As with the debates over human nature during the gay rights struggle, non-monogamy advocates are also raising the possibility that desiring multiple sexual partners is less a lifestyle choice and more of a sexual orientation. But there can be little doubt that non-monogamy, the norm in the animal kingdom, is natural, and that monogamy is a cultural ideal that developed in humans.
But the yen for sexual variety and adventure competes with an equally insistent bugbear: jealousy. And some believe that “green-eyed monster of jealousy” is the more powerful force, making it unlikely that most people could tolerate consensual non-monogamy for their partners and accept it is a social norm.
“In the long run there’s going to be some resistance because it’s threatening to everybody else, because they recognize the desire for multiple partners is something they have, too,” said David Barash, a zoologist and a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle, and author of “The Myth of Monogamy: Fidelity and Infidelity in Animals and People” (2001).
“They recognize it touches something within themselves that they’d rather keep hidden. And something in their partner that they don’t want to acknowledge, either.”
Kay Hymowitz, a scholar at the conservative Manhattan Institute, is also skeptical. Her concern is the unintended harmful consequences of disrupting long-established social norms developed to ensure that men commit to rearing their own children, and that powerful, wealthy men don’t hoard women and create a deficit of available options for other males. “Normalizing consensual non-monogamy will become yet another way to ‘privilege’ male desire,” she said. “I know, I know: There are women who believe strongly in consensual non-monogamy [and who] may truly be happier in those relationships than they would be in vanilla relationships. Good for them. But they are a small minority.”
Hymowitz said that the individual rights of polyamorists, swingers and commune members have to be weighed against the greater social interest, and that case has yet to be made.
“You’re creating one more arrangement that will be less stable for children and less permanent,” she said. We have enough problems as it is keeping couples together.”
Nonetheless, longer life expectancies, greater personal freedoms for women, dating apps and the internet are transforming sexual expectations and sexual opportunities, said Elisabeth “Eli” Sheff, CEO of Sheff Consulting in Chattanooga, Tenn., which specializes in sex and gender minorities, and provides expert witness services and relationship coaching. She’s also the author of the 2014 book, “The Polyamorists Next Door: Inside Multiple-Partner Relationships and Families,” based on a longitudinal study of more than 500 polyamorists.
“We don’t live in a monogamous society. We live in a society in which people pretend monogamy is the norm,” said Johns, the Seattle polyamorist who offered the poly mantra that it’s possible to romantically love more than one friend just as it’s possible to love more than one child.
Non-monogamy has a long history, more ancient than King David’s multiple wives and concubines in the Old Testament. Today’s non-monogamists often cite as their inspiration novelist Robert Heinlein’s treatment of the subject in his 1961 sci-fi classic “Stranger in a Strange Land.” Gay men are sometimes hailed as trend setters because they are accustomed to flexible “monogamish” marital arrangements that allow for outside dalliances.
One of the primary texts associated with the contemporary movement is Janet W. Hardy and Dossie Easton’s 1997 “The Ethical Slut” which lays out the best practices for what advocates hold up as consensual, ethical and responsible non-monogamy.
“I don’t think it has ever had the groundswell that it has now,” said Hardy, who now is running into polyamorous adults brought up by polyamorous parents. “A lot of us are second-generation now.”
Poly activists point to many parallels between earlier movements that were born underground and operated under the radar: secret clubs, insider argot, referral networks for poly-friendly therapists, doctors and lawyers. The National Coalition for Sexual Freedom‘s Kink and Poly Aware Professionals referral list includes about 300 lawyers, said Susan Wright, the Baltimore-based organization’s executive director.
The world of polyamory overlaps with the subculture of kink and BDSM, which refers to the erotic practices of bondage, domination, submission and sadomasochism. As a sign of the movement’s maturation, some now embrace the kind of middle-class respectability that made gay marriage palatable to mainstream society.
“We’re a very boring and respectable couple!” polyamorist Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins beamed to The Chronicle of Higher Education in 2017. Jenkins, a University of British Columbia philosophy professor, has a husband and a boyfriend, both of whom teach at UBC. The Chronicle article paints a portrait of the polyamorous triad in domestic hues befitting Norman Rockwell: “On the wall hang sepia-toned photographs of someone’s relatives. On the front porch are a swing and a coffee table with an ashtray on it.”
The civil rights concerns of the non-monogamous and other minorities are dissimilar in some ways. Unlike earlier civil rights movements, non-monogamy has the potential of affecting a majority of the population, since membership in the group is theoretically open to everyone.
“In a way, poly is a deeper threat to the dominant culture than gay culture,” said Geoffrey Miller, a polyamorist in an open marriage and a psychology professor at the University of New Mexico.
Miller, a member of the APA task force, compares the state of non-monogamy movement to gay rights in 1966, in the calm before the storm of the Stonewall Riots, the 1969 protests that launched the modern gay rights movement. The closeted movement had about 50 organizations in the late 1960s but exploded to 1,000 by the mid-1970s, said John D’Emilio, a retired professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, who taught on the history of sexuality and the LGBTQ movement, and is co-author of “Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America” (1988).
Conservatives had long warned that redefining marriage to allow same-sex unions would throw open the door to allowing any kind of marriage, from polygamy to incest. Those arguments reached a crescendo when gay marriage was winding its way through the legal system, en route to the 2015 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage. In that 5-4 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote a dissenting opinion warning of what was to come.
“It is striking how much of the majority’s reasoning would apply with equal force to the claim of a fundamental right to plural marriage,” Roberts wrote.
“Why would there be any less dignity in the bond between three people who, in exercising their autonomy, seek to make the profound choice to marry?”
Princeton professor of jurisprudence Robert George was among those who warned of the slippery slope. In a 2015 article, he predicted that the civil rights challenges were inevitable, but initially judges would “swat away on procedural grounds the first few constitutional challenges to marriage laws.” Gradually the legal objections will give way to the force of logical consistency.
He told RealClearInvestigations in an email that this process is often characterized by indignant dismissal of the logical implications, followed by total capitulation.
“Of course, advocates of revising the law denounced us not only as ‘bigots’ but as ‘scare-mongers,’” George said.
“There was, they insisted, no ‘slippery slope’ from same-sex marriage to polyamory. The two concepts had nothing to do with each other.
“I could see that this was nonsense — often disingenuous nonsense,” George said. “So I am not in the least surprised to see what is happening now. We have quickly gone from, ‘It will never happen,’ to ‘You’re a bigot for thinking there is anything wrong with it.’”
Tyler Durden
Mon, 04/27/2020 – 00:15 - Japan Printer Go Brrr As BOJ Launches Unlimited QE, Expands Corporate Bond Buying
Japan Printer Go Brrr As BOJ Launches Unlimited QE, Expands Corporate Bond Buying
As was purposefully leaked last week to avoid any chance of market surprise, that giant monetary chemistry lab that is the Bank of Japan did precisely as had been reported, and on Monday morning the BOJ joined the Fed’s and announced it would launch unlimited QE, or rather that it would purchase “a necessary amount of JGBs without setting an upper limit so that 10-year JGB yields will remain at around zero percent.” Previously, the BOJ’s guideline on government debt was to increase holdings by around 80 trillion yen ($743 billion) per year, which is ironic as the BOJ was having trouble monetizing a far smaller percentage of this amount.
While we wish Kuroda the best of luck in overtaking the Fed and ECB in nationalizing the market, we will remind the central banker that it is not an issue of monetization demand, but rather supply, that has shrank the impact of Japan’s QE on devaluing the Japanese Yen, with the annual amount of bonds purchased by the central bank declining consistently every year as there are simply not enough bonds available in the open market for the central bank to buy, and is also one of the reasons why Japan has been urged by various entities to boost its fiscal stimulus to provide the BOJ with the “helicopter money” ammo it so desperately needs to keep the Japanese economy running.
Monday’s decision signals that the BOJ’s concern over the pandemic has intensified quickly with Bloomberg reporting that “unlimited bond buying was not an ideal option to take, in the view of some officials, as it further narrows bank’s policy choices at a time of heightened uncertainty.” On the other hand, it underscores that central banks are now fresh out of any original ideas and will keep doubling down on policies that crashed the system until the entire fiat edifice crashes.
As was also leaked before, the central bank also increased its scope for buying corporate bond and commercial paper by raising its ceiling on holdings to 20 trillion yen, according to its statement Monday in Tokyo.
In keeping with the now default gibberish of the past few years, Kuroda’s central bank said it will “conduct further active purchases of both JGBs and T-Bills for the time being, with a view to maintaining stability in the bond market and stabilizing the entire yield curve at a low level.”
The BOJ said that it would keep negative rate and yield target for 10-year JGB unchanged, and added that it will continue to closely monitor the impact of coronavirus and won’t hesitate to take additional easing measures if necessary although what the BOJ can do after launching unlimited QE while it is also massively monetizing the entire stock market- short of actively starting short squeezes – was unclear.
As Bloomberg notes, a return to relative stability in stock markets and reduced concern over the possibility of a sudden strengthening of the yen have given the BOJ some breathing space to leave its main interest rate policy levers untouched. Furthermore, the BOJ also likely saw a need to take action before the Fed and the European Central Bank meet later this week, so as not to be seen lagging behind its peers, which too have become deranged chemical labs.
The bank had come under increasing pressure to take more action as the declaration of a nationwide state of emergency this month brought more shutdowns and a growing need for financial support.
The central bank also said it “expects short- and long-term policy interest rates to remain at their present or lower levels,” removing a reference to a need to “pay close attention to the possibility that the momentum toward achieving the price stability target will be lost.”
In short, the BOJ isn’t even pretending any more that it is pursuing a “stable” 2% inflation, a goal which is now – for all intents and purposes until the arrival of currency collapse and hyperinflation – impossible to achieve. Instead the only goal now is spraying helicopter money on as much of the population as possible.
The additional measures announced by Governor Haruhiko Kuroda also show a greater degree of fiscal-monetary policy coordination, with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe unveiling more than $1 trillion in stimulus this month and an accompanying plan to issue more bonds.
“The BOJ must be aggressive as Japan’s virus situation is getting worse,” Yoshimasa Maruyama, chief market economist at SMBC Nikko Securities, said before today’s decision. “The BOJ will continue to be walking on a tight rope with few tools left.”
And speaking of few tools, with the BOJ decision leaked so far in advance today’s announcement was just a formality, there wasn’t even a trace of a reaction in the market.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 04/27/2020 – 00:14 - "Driving The Gringos In The White House Crazy": Iran & Venezuela Deepen Sanctions-Busting Cooperation
“Driving The Gringos In The White House Crazy”: Iran & Venezuela Deepen Sanctions-Busting Cooperation
Two so-called ‘rogue states’ recently targeted for US-imposed regime change are helping each other fight coronavirus as well as Washington-led sanctions.
Late last week it was revealed Venezuela received a huge boost in the form of oil refinery materials and chemicals to fix the catalytic cracking unit at the 310,000 barrels-per-day Cardon refinery, essential to the nation’s gas supply.
This as a fuel and food shortage crisis has driven protests and clashes with police, especially in hard-hit rural areas, over the past month.
Iran’s Mahan Air jet previously seen at Simon Bolivar International Airport, Reuters/VOA. “Thanks to the support of our allies in the Islamic Republic of Iran… We will overcome our difficulties,” Erling Rojas, vice minister for refining and petrochemicals in Venezuela’s Oil Ministry, stated when the much-needed refinery parts arrived last Thursday.
He further underscored in colorfully provocative rhetoric that Iran’s support is “driving the gringos in the White House crazy.”
It’s expected such sanctions-busting cooperation will continue between the two countries, as there’s also been an uptick in planes flying directly between capitals, as Reuters reported:
Planes flying from Tehran landed at the Las Piedras airport on the Paraguana peninsula in western Venezuela, where Cardon is located, on Wednesday and Thursday, according to data on flight-tracking service FlightRadar24 reviewed by Reuters. The planes were operated by private Iranian airline Mahan Air.
Washington imposed sanctions on Mahan Air in 2011, saying it provided financial and other support to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards.
Venezuela is also busy attempting to restore operations at the 146,000-barrels-per-day El Palito refinery in central Venezuela as well.
The two sides are further said to be deepening cooperation in terms of response to the coronavirus pandemic. It’s hit the Islamic Republic far worse over the past months, while Venezuela’s numbers are deeply uncertain given what’s attributed to lack of widespread testing and transparency.
The Amuay-Cardon refinery in Paraguana, located about 350 miles West of Caracas, has in recent years suffered repeat power outages, major explosion accidents, and inability to update operational equipment due to US sanctions. Image via AFP/PRI. Iranian state media described a major conference call between top Iranian and Venezuelean health officials where the two sides “exchanged experiences, clinical protocols and COVID-19 preventive measures in the context of the World Health Organization’s recommendations.” It followed agreements for deepening ties amid the crisis made between Presidents Hassan Rouhani and Nicolás Maduro during an April 13 phone call.
Iran’s COVID-19 count is a over 90,000 confirmed cases, including nearly 6,000 deaths, while Venezulea officially has 323 confirmed cases and ten deaths.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 04/26/2020 – 23:50 - COVID-19 Color-Revolution: California Declares Nation Statehood As Trump Moves To Quell 'Mutiny'
COVID-19 Color-Revolution: California Declares Nation Statehood As Trump Moves To Quell ‘Mutiny’
Authored by Joaquin Flores via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
Bloomberg published a stunning piece on April 9th promoting the secession of California from the U.S., in an op-ed by Francis Wilkinson titled Gavin Newsom Declares California a ‘Nation-State’, which resurrected John C. Calhoun in a neo-confederate argument favoring nullification.
Bloomberg is part a strategy to prevent Trump from a second term by way of legal means (election), and has now brought to the fore the spectre of secession or nullification. This does not mean we should normally expect some announcement by Governor Newsom that ‘The California Republic is an independent nation-state ’. Yet amazingly, it has been almost verbatim said in this way.
The Bloomberg article details how California Governor Newsom has begun using that term and also related legal constructions in discussing how California will manage the coronavirus response on its own.
Imagine an alternate timeline where Trump denied there was a significant threat posed by the coronavirus and adjusted policy to reflect that. After all, the mortality rate appeared very low compared to the infection rate. Then imagine that governors Cuomo and Newsom behaved similarly to how we’ve seen them perform over the past month or so. In fact, their behavior makes even more sense in our hypothetical, alternate reality. But imagine if their punches could land because there was some semblance of a reality that could support the barrage.
As we have made the point to communicate numerous times, 25% of Americans would like their state to secede from the United States peacefully.
In the Event 201 exercise which appears to have been made public on YouTube, the situation of Arab Springs being a result of political blow-back from coronavirus measures, is discussed briefly using the precise phrase ‘Arab Spring’. Dealing with destabilization and messaging in that context, consumes most of the last several stages of the simulation conducted in October 2019.
Those already familiar with the Arab Spring phenomenon as intentionally created ‘Color Revolutions’, will understand the connection between what appear as ‘bottom-up’ or grass-roots activism being coordinated covertly with dual-power structures within a country which is being targeted for regime-change. Given that the original Arab Spring was not only a Color Revolution, but used the ‘too-big-to-fail’ bailout money in 2008 to corner a market on perishable goods – prices affecting targeted countries were jacked-up, causing bread-riots and public protests. Regime-change was rarely a demand of protests, rather these related to the price of food. Foreign media like CNN and Al-Jazeera appeared to put words in the mouths of protestors and talked of revolution.
The take-away point here is that the ‘original’ Arab Spring was a concocted development, and so references to these in what many see in Event 201 as a descriptor of allegedly ‘concocted’ events now underway, as Mike Pompeo quipped is a ‘live exercise’, are quite apt. Because these are not simply matters of what we might read into the Event 201 proceedings, but how those involved in the event understood themselves and each other.
Having seen the repeated attempts to nullify the outcome of the 2016 election raises serious questions about the scope of the aims of the current presidency. The current president seems to provoke a highly unusual, extra-partisan and extra-political conflict that occurs no more than two or three times in a century, where it seems that sacrosanct geopolitical allegiances and long-reaching security policies risk being overturned. In our alternate time-line, we may see California moving further on the secession road and Joe Biden ‘talking sense and unity’ to California ‘President’ Newsom.
Bloomberg Hails Calhoun’s Nullification Argument
Here are some of the key fragments from the article which are particularly revealing:
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We could also point to either the daily coronavirus press conferences headed by New York Governor Cuomo which have been broadcast nationally – positioning Cuomo as a sort of ‘anti-Trump’ or ‘alternate president’ – or we could point to the Atlantic’s fair treatment of the Texas secession movement in December of 2019. That piece deserves our attention, because it pins both the Texas and California secession movements as having had some Russian attention. The leader of the Texas movement makes an apology for having gone to Russia and attended a conference relating to Texas secession.
That part is critical in terms of a broader strategy being used now against the American president. This is one where ostensibly foreign tactics used in fourth-generation warfare (4GW) to destabilize power in the U.S., or alternatively, 4GW tactics used by the U.S. to destabilize a foreign power – can be used also by a power-structure from within the U.S. to destabilize a particular and opposing other vector in the same country – in this case, the presidency.
In a piece I authored at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace when such a tactic was tried and failed in Armenia, in what was called the ‘Electric Yerevan’, we explain how 4GW uses thousands of years-old hybrid warfare tactics combined with Baudrillardian hyper-reality simulation, and Freudian psychoanalysis to manipulate mass psychology. These are adapted to Gene Sharp and his student Srdjan Popovic’s developments on some of the ideas of Saul Alinksy on Color Revolution. With a federal government unresponsive to a public which is increasingly panicked over life and death questions, such as for example Covid-19, then a combination of conscious and subconscious themes are visible, leading towards destabilization and, in this case, secession.
But how could such a potentially foreign-backed project like California (or Texas) seceding from the United States operate under the radar screen of the NSA?
In short: insulating a country from foreign destabilization campaigns would reasonably involve taking over leadership of those campaigns. This means that intelligence would involve more than observation and intel gathering, but would also involve leading the organization – assumedly to frustration. But such an endeavor would equally well serve as a cover for actually operating the secession campaign towards success, if the aim was for the operating power-structure to leverage it against an opposing other vector such as the Trump presidency.
This is how the U.S. intel was able to explain-away organizing, recruiting, and administering aspects of the Al Qaeda/ISIS project when journalists or intel officers without a need to know, would encounter evidence that this was indeed occurring.
What we can understand from this Bloomberg piece in the broader context to be discussed in brief, is that this secessionist article is a fragment or artifact of another possible reality that appears to have been planned.
Trump’s Counter-Strategy
Trump showed signs as late as the end of February that he would continue to deny the reality of Covid-19 by calling some aspect of the public hype around it a DNC hoax, as we already h ad. In so doing, his political line was apparently predicted by the Deep State actors whom we may call team nullification. It seemed that Prime Minister Johnson’s ‘herd immunity’ approach and Brazil’s Bolsonaro’s ‘hands-off’ attitude would soon be mirrored by Russia. Given that Russia now has just 47,000 cases and just three-hundred and sixty related deaths, and this is following a variation of the ‘internationally accepted’, symptoms-only method of determining Covid-19 (without an anti-bodies test), it would have made sense back then that Russia would down-play coronavirus following more realistic projections, if it would have the adverse effect of compounding economic woes and create problems for Putin.
Just as the tanking of the economy would work against Trump, the coronavirus pandemic appeared a ‘lose-lose’ scenario for him provided that the public had a restored confidence in mainstream media reporting, stemming from its handling of the epidemic, which could be weaponized against Trump. In other words, Americans would listen to the media and what the WHO said, as orchestrated by team nullification, and lay serious blame on the ‘science-denying right-wing’ of Trump, Bolsonaro, Johnson, and Putin.
That’s why the pre-coronavirus attacks on Trump as a ‘science-denier’ had much farther reaching designs than simply a manufactured public debate with Greta Thunberg over global warming. Remember that in the film Contagion it is deforestation that causes a bat to take residence at a pig-farm, where the novel coronavirus is born.
What happened as things played out?
Bolsonaro stayed with his version, and was ultimately removed from actual power by the military. This serves as a critical reminder by itself of what our ‘alternate timeline’ may have had in store for Trump, if we consider the ramifications of California making bolder moves to secede.
Boris Johnson apparently became so ill that he ‘saw the light’ and changed UK policy towards a strict quarantine.
Putin, however, never went for the predicted script and instead used the very low numbers relating to covid-19 to nevertheless issue a quarantine. This was a policy that somehow dovetailed with Trump’s, and was interestingly reinforced in the aftermath of their widely discussed phone call.
History as told through FOIA may someday reveal what team nullification, pairing up with never-Trumper Bill Gates, may have tried to pull off. It really brings us back to Pompeo’s statement. More to the point what he knew – when he knew it was a live exercise, and under what conditions it was discovered, planned, or allowed to play out – and to what degree. ‘Deep State’ Department Mike is an interesting being who can appear to act as a diplomat and consensus builder on policy between the Deep State and Trump.
Trump bucked the probable response model that team nullification planned around.
Instead he was very available to the needs of New York and California, and he approached his media strategy with three precise attacks.
One, he made a commercial showing various state leaders including Cuomo and Newsom thanking the president for his availability and the scope of his response. This is shown in contrast with recent attacks disputing that the president has the authority to ‘open the country’.
Two, he made a press-conference video showing how it was the WHO themselves who initially down-played the threat. This particular part shines in brilliance because leading up to and after Easter weekend, the vast majority of Trump supporters are what the mainstream media will no doubt soon be calling ‘covid-deniers’. This seemed to be leading up to some big announcement right after Easter from Trump that Covid-19 was a hoax, and attack WHO and defund it. But instead he was able to justify defunding WHO and bucking their predictive model, by showing how they underestimated the impact of the novel coronavirus.
Three, he took to twitter and openly called out the Newsom/Cuomo ‘mutiny’.
Tell the Democrat Governors that “Mutiny On The Bounty” was one of my all time favorite movies. A good old fashioned mutiny every now and then is an exciting and invigorating thing to watch, especially when the mutineers need so much from the Captain. Too easy!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 14, 2020
None of these three moves happened randomly the week after Easter, but rather were aimed at countering moves on team nullification and on the part of Newsom and Cuomo, to declare that the president did not have authority over the states.
This all happened immediately during the week of April 13th, and so the timing of the April 9th Bloomberg piece preparing the public for pro-secessionist talking points, was not random. Almost nothing is random.
While we enter May with an in-tact government, future transpiring events will no doubt become ‘interestinger and interestinger’ as we venture further down the rabbit hole.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 04/26/2020 – 23:25 - Goldman Sees Imminent "Momentum" Crash As All S&P Gains Come From Just 5 Stocks
Goldman Sees Imminent “Momentum” Crash As All S&P Gains Come From Just 5 Stocks
With a third of companies having reported Q1 results so far, earnings season has proven to be neither a spoiler nor a catalyst, with modest market reaction to some truly horrific numbers as investors are now ready to ignore earnings until well into 2021 when a V or U-shaped recovery is expected to kick in.
That said, the numbers have been mixed, for anyone monitoring rather than looking through them because they are the fuzziest figures since Q1 2009 just after Lehman’s bankruptcy. While 65% of US companies that have reported beat estimates (vs 50% in Europe and Japan), this represents the worst margin in a decade.
Meanwhile, those hoping for some guidance will have to keep waiting as visibility from the C-suite is so poor that almost 90% of reporting companies have withdrawn guidance. Worse, the actual numbers for Q1 which caught the tail end of March as much of corporate America shut down, are coming in horrendous with US EPS of -24% yoy is coming in some 9% lower than consensus expectations, which raises questions about whether a prevailing view for rapid earnings recovery in H2 are too optimistic, as JPM cautions. On a rolling four-quarter basis, the consensus has S&P earnings surpassing pre-crisis levels by Q4 2020, which would be tough to reconcile with the JPM Economics view that GDP will not return to pre-crisis levels until after 2021, even though JPM’s Marko Kolanovic now expects new S&P500 all time highs in the first half of 2021 (using a rather ornate DCF of the entire S&P500 to justify his view).
Which in turn brings us to something we showed two weeks ago when we noted that the “the S&P is now just a handful of mega stocks, because as the chart below shows the largest 5 stocks in S&P500 now account for 22% of market cap, even higher than during the dot com bubble.”
Picking up on this observation, Goldman’s David Kostin in his latest Weekly Kickstart writes that the fundamental volatility captured in 1Q earnings reports explains why stock return dispersion has jumped to the highest level since the Financial Crisis. According to the Goldman strategist, “the gap between the three month returns of the S&P 500 stock one standard deviation above the average vs. one standard deviation below the average has registered 40%, nearly twice the 10-year average of 23%.”
What is bizarre, is that this split in the market has occurred despite average stock correlations reaching the highest levels on record, a dynamic that would normally reduce return dispersion. One explanation for this paradoxical confluence is that record correlations have been outweighed by extreme price volatility and a wide gap between the outlooks for stocks perceived to be most vulnerable to the current economic shock (virtually all stocks except the 10 biggest ones) and those with the most resilient balance sheets and business models (mostly Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Facebook).
To validate this observation, Kostin notes that Goldman’s Strong Balance Sheet basket has returned -5% YTD while the Weak Balance Sheet basket has returned -27%.
More confounding for so-called “stock pickers” is that not only did return dispersion rise during the market sell-off, but it has also increased during the market rebound. AS a result, many stocks that outperformed during the market sell-off have continued to outperform even with the S&P 500 retracing half of its drawdown, and nowhere is this more obvious than in the steamrolling of value stocks by “growth” names…
… and also of large-caps over small-caps…
where the divergence is now unprecedented.
Indeed, as shown above, as the market swooned in late February and March, investors rotated to strong balance sheets, large-caps, Technology companies, and other “quality” stocks viewed as safe havens. These stocks lagged during the first two weeks of the market rebound following its March 23 bottom but have resumed their outperformance more recently as investors remain concerned about the outlook for corporate earnings despite the boost to valuations from extraordinary policy support.
Which brings us to what is the one concern more often cited among Goldman clients. According to Kostin, the persistent outperformance of a handful of mega-cap stocks has supported the level of the S&P 500 index but raised investor concerns about narrow market breadth.
As Kostin puts it, “many market participants – ourselves included – have expressed incredulity at the fact that the S&P 500 trades just 17% below its all-time high amid the largest economic shock in nearly a century.”
However, below the surface of the market, the median S&P 500 constituent trades 28% below its record high. This 11
percentage point gap is one measure of market breadth…… which now stands roughly a standard deviation below its historical average.
Going back to our thesis that “The Market Is Now Just 5 Stocks“, Kostin next notes that because many of the recent outperformers had also been market leaders prior to the coronacrisis, their recent gains have led to a surge in already- elevated market concentration. While coming into 2020, the five largest S&P 500 stocks accounted for 18% of index market cap, matching the share at the peak of the Tech Bubble in March 2000, since then, those stocks (MSFT, AAPL, AMZN, GOOGL, FB) have risen to account for 20% of market cap, representing the highest concentration on record.
Which brings us to Goldman’s ominous warning #1: “We opined in January that the earnings power and valuations of the top five stocks suggested they could avoid the fate of the top stocks in 2000. However, the further market concentration rises, the harder it will be for the S&P 500 index to keep rising without more broad-based participation.” In other words, if the dispersion continues to soar, and if the entire upside in the S&P500 is thanks to just five stocks, not even Goldman can see a happy ending.
If that wasn’t enough, Goldman also has an ominous warning #2, namely that sharp declines in market breadth in the past, of the kind we see now, have often signaled large market drawdowns. For example, in addition to the Tech Bubble, breadth narrowed ahead of the recessions in 1990 and 2008 and the economic slowdowns of 2011 and 2016. This is also observed empirically, as historically sharply narrowing breadth has signaled below-average 1-, 3-, and 6-month S&P 500 returns as well as larger-than-average prospective drawdowns.
That said, Goldman refuses to put a timeline to its dour outlook, and notes that periods of narrow market breadth can last for extended periods. Since 1980, the breadth measure charted in Exhibit 2 has indicated 14 episodes of breadth narrowing more than one standard deviation, as it does today. The median episode persisted for three months, with the longest lasting 27 months from 1998-2000.
However, eventually, “narrow market breadth is always resolved the same way. Often, narrow rallies lead to large drawdowns as the handful of market leaders ultimately fail to generate enough fundamental earnings strength to justify elevated valuations and investor crowding. In these cases, the market leaders “catch down” to weaker peers.” This is the scenario laid out by Nomura last week in our post “Spectacular Momentum Crash” Imminent As Record Human Hedge Fund Selling Meets Furious Robot CTAs Buying.” In other cases, an improving economic outlook and strengthening investor sentiment help laggards “catch up” to the market leaders, which also results in a violent drawdown as the leaders get repriced sharply lower.
The bottom line, however, is that in both cases, “on a relative basis the outperformance of market leaders eventually gives way to underperformance.”
What does this mean in practical terms? As Goldman concludes, since 1980, its long/short Momentum factor has generated a median unconditional 12-month return of +400 bp “but a 12-month return of -300 bp following periods of narrow market breadth like today.” In short, while it may not necessarily be “spectacular”, Goldman agrees with Nomura that a momentum crash is dead ahead. And with that pessimistic view, Goldman – which just two weeks ago called the “bottom” in the S&P500, has joined Morgan Stanley’s “notorious bear-turned-bull” Michael Wilson in warning that stocks are now overbought and that a “correction will begin soon.”
Finally, Goldman has a word of hope for all those who have been crushed by the growth-over-value and large-over-small cap steamrolling: first, small-caps and laggards have outperformed coming out of every bear market and major market correction during the last 40 year. Furthermore, “in the past, wide valuation dispersion has been a strong signal for value stock outperformance over 2- and 3-year horizons but has been a much weaker indicator for short-term returns.”
Now if only we had the same level of comfort as Goldman, that we are coming out of a major market correction instead of just enjoying a record bear market rally as shown in this chart from Deutsche Bank…
… before we enter the next one.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 04/26/2020 – 23:20 - "We Haven't Had A Crisis Like This": Tom Barrack Says US Property Market Is In "Chaos"
“We Haven’t Had A Crisis Like This”: Tom Barrack Says US Property Market Is In “Chaos”
If there is one person who knows real estate, it’s Tom Barrack, and if what Tom Barrack sees in the US real estate market is accurate, a real estate crash worse than 2008 is coming.
Speaking to Bloomberg TV, Barrack – whose Colony Capital owns a $50 billion real estate portfolio – said the US property market is in “chaos” and still on the verge of collapse because the federal government and local authorities are allowing renters and homeowners to skip payments because of the coronavirus.
“We haven’t had a crisis like this,” Barrack said in an interview Friday on Bloomberg Television. “We’ve never had one where we just have a government taking of revenue.”
In a move that prompted Moody’s to predict that up to 30% of all mortgages will default in the near future – one which we said presages the next crisis – the stimulus bill passed by Congress last month included a provision allowing borrowers to defer payments for as long as a year without penalty on federally backed mortgages. Meanwhile, cash flows have further collapsed as cities and states throughout the country have suspended evictions and foreclosures to help the tens of millions of Americans who’ve lost their jobs in the past 5 weeks.
While lenders and landlords can normally use the legal system to enforce rent and interest obligations, “all those options are out the window”, Barrack said. One month ago, the Colony CEO was the first big real estate investor to warn publicly about the perilous state of the industry and to call for government intervention. He proposed an orchestrated forbearance, a “time out” in which any payments could be accrued onto leases and loans.
And now that got much of what he was expecting, Barrack is suddenly getting second thoughts.
Many of the measures he sought then, including market liquidity from the Federal Reserve and delays in new accounting rules, were adopted. Others, such as a halt on margin calls by banks and a suspension of mark-to-market requirements on financing arrangements, weren’t. One can imagine which ones were far more important to Colony Capital, whose portfolio – when marked to market – is imploding as a result of the sudden halt in inbound cash.
Federal efforts such as the Paycheck Protection Program and Main Street Lending Program are “difficult to utilize” for companies like Colony, which is structured as a real estate investment trust, Barrack said. “We’re not using those,” he said. “We’re encouraging many of our borrowers and our users to rely on whatever subsidies they can get to continue to make their payments.”
Looking at Colony’s real-estate portfolio, Barrack said its digital infrastructure investments – cell towers, data-storage facilities and fiber-optic networks – are holding up best. Retail and hospitality assets are the worst performers.
Somewhat paradoxically, and refuting Barrack’s apocalyptic outlook, in April the number of Colony tenants who made rent payments was “amazingly good,” dropping only 3% to 5% from normal levels, Barrack said. But he expects fewer will remain current next month.
Barrack, who first saw property prices collapse during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, predicted that big companies like Colony, which he said still has “plenty of liquidity,” will survive the recession and real estate shakeout.
“The people who’ll be crushed are the people who own the equity, the people who own bonds and debt, the pensioners,” he said. But it was his gloomy conclusion that was most jarring:
“At the end of the day, the government is going to have to step in and subsidize it all if people don’t go back to work.”
In other words, just like the government re-nationalized the housing sector in 2008 when it took over Fannie and Freddie, this time the government will have to do the same.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 04/26/2020 – 23:00 - Pandemic Opportunities Arise For Trump But Will He Take Them?
Pandemic Opportunities Arise For Trump But Will He Take Them?
Authored by Tim Kriby via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
The Coronavirus Pandemic much like any crisis, in a political sense, opens the doors for new opportunities. It seems as though governments cannot make major changes without a strong boot in the rear from some set of rough circumstances. Like it or not, political action requires a catalyst. Trump, the man who dreamt of Making America Great Again now has the big overarching excuse he needs to push his agenda onto the nation, but the question is just how can the President of the United States use this pandemic to his advantage?
Firstly, it is important to note that there is nothing inherently morally evil in exploiting a crisis for political gains, unless you were the one who created the crisis in the first place. Again it cannot be understated, crisis is the catalyst for sweeping political action, and we shouldn’t blame anyone for striking while the iron is hot. Most people who do all the loud virtue signaling about tragedies being exploited by politicians seem to always go silent when the exploitation serves their interest.
Let’s all put on our big boy pants and accept that politicians, can, will and probably should use opportunities from dark days so long as they were not the ones who darkened them in the first place.
A Borderful World
The same people who yesterday argued for an open world with no borders are the same ones who will beg for totalitarian levels of protection to “save” their lives from even the most minor of threats. This is probably why the heavy restrictions on international travel that are being put into place have so far met little to no resistance. 2020 feels like a trip back in time to a far less globalized and more local world that seems to have arisen at least semi-willingly. In this context, now is the perfect time for Trump to attack illegal immigration and migrant workers.
Migrant labor is often very damaging to the host country, and is more often than not, also bad for the migrants themselves. It undercuts the cost of labor making locals lose their jobs only to have them given to an exploitable/expendable group of people to do them like slaves. This also allows the governments of the nations they came from to continue their sloth and ineptitude as their young/active populace has a means of finding work elsewhere and not fighting for change at home. This a lose/lose situation and Trump knows it.
However, there is a persistent belief on the Left, that migrant labor is some kind of necessity and cannot be avoided. Some of the most extreme Liberals in America fear that the U.S. might starve without migrant labor helping out down on the farm, but is this really the case? Can America really starve to death in the 21st century without exploitable semi-slave labor?
Apparently not, as about half of people who work on U.S. farms are still surprisingly American-born. Upping salaries to attract U.S. citizen farm hands would probably not drive up food costs anywhere near what the pro-migrant crowd would suggest. Modern farming does not require hordes of hands to get the corn on store shelves. Paying Americans a lot more to do the same job would seem to some to be non-viable under normal economic conditions, but this is a crisis, so the normal rules go out the window.
Trump right now (especially with extremely cheap oil to compensate for labor cost increases) can prove that migrant workers were never really needed. Foreign, mostly illegal grunt workers, used to be a victim in the public’s eyes, but now they are plague carriers that can be removed with the free hand of a regulated market forcing Americans into their stead. A large part of Making America Great Again is a Living Wage and paying U.S. citizens $20 an hour to deal with beets would sure help move the country back towards greatness.
Additionally, due to this panic, Trump could attack those who are trying to give birth to anchor babies, and increase the severity of travel bans from countries he doesn’t like. Both of these options are on the table at the moment while the virus is hot. Migrant labor was a key focus of Trump’s campaign, but there are many other aspects to closed borders that he could work with right now. A globalized America seems to be a much poorer and weaker one, this is the chance for Trump to put up the right economic “walls” to restore the country.
Photo: Pen strokes are much more powerful and easy to do during a national crisis.
In Case of Fire Break China
Trump blamed “Chy-nuh” for the virus outbreak, and he can thus blame them for America’s economic downturn, which means he is justified by bureaucratic logic to do anything he can to rid of American dependence on China. Trump has wanted to do this from day one of his presidential campaign but only now does he really have the political inertia.
Trump says America is “winning (the) war” on the Coronavirus, which really doesn’t make any sense. How do you wage war on a virus? Then again, let him call it whatever he wants if it is going to be an excuse to re-industrialize America as if a real war was going on. Eliminating dependence on China is good for the U.S. if the virus provides the catalyst to start this process then so be it.
It Isn’t “Welfare” If You Are Responsible For It
Trump has already stolen some of Andrew Yang’s thunder by deciding to give money back to the taxpayers to help them survive the Covid-19 Crisis. For Conservatives, like the kind Trump claims to be, handouts and Roosevelt Era Welfare policies are seen as the devil. But, if the President were to shove Universal Basic Income down the throats of the nation it would be a massive win for the Right as it would absolve the government of many of its duties and pointless programs, and be a fantastic excuse for “small government” to be ushered in.
If everyone gets back a $1000 or so from the government per month, then it can be legally/logically assumed that as long as the person receiving the money is sane then they have the means to take care of themselves without the State being involved. This strategy could eliminate the need for all sorts of bulky inefficient bureaucratic monstrosities like food stamps, vouchers and various forms of “assistance”. This would allow the government to vastly reduce its size as it would just throw monthly checks at the populace and let them deal with their own problems themselves, which just so happens to be part of the American Way – Personal Responsibility. And for those who waste their money, well too bad, you had your chance, the government gave you the bootstraps, you chose not to pull yourself up.
Celebrities are Non-Essential
Many of the media elites who hate Trump for reasons that they cannot put into cohesive arguments have found themselves to be “Non-Essential” during the crisis and have to stay home. Furthermore, the Coronavirus has helped remind society that doctors and the guys who work at grocery stores do more for society than rappers with the prefix “lil” in front of their names.
This new glaring divide between Essential and Non-Essential labor could be very exploitable by Trump as a means to focus positive government attention on the Essentials as the backbone of his MAGA vision. It would not be surprising at all for them to receive some support from the President in the near future, especially in an election year. Two new dividing groups in American society have emerged due to the pandemic and this divide, like all divides, is exploitable and will surely be exploited by politicians.
Taxation Is Theft Says Robin Trump
Trump and the Republican Right hate taxes and blame them for economic stagnation. Well, the economy of the U.S. is stagnating due to the Coronavirus, so Trump really has carte blanche to go on an executive order tax slaying spree or at least propose one to his boys in Congress for them to fight for in a more constitutional way.
It is very surprising that Trump hasn’t jumped on the “taxation is theft” mantra, but now would be a good time, any excuse to ease bureaucracy and keep Americans’ money in their pockets is urgent and justified thanks to the pandemic. Trump has the justification to kill pretty much any taxation that he sees fit.
MAGA Time Is Now
Obviously, real human lives have been lost to this disease internationally and that is a tragedy. No one wants their life, or the lives of their friends and family to be cut short. But the situation the world is in has the potential to create some very MAGA-ish transformations in American society if Trump is actually willing to jump on the wave and ride it out. Right now the crisis is glowing hot, the economy needs help/action, borders are now trendy again, and despite it all the U.S. is still the most powerful nation on Earth. Oh, what a lovely time it is for a charismatic President to push forward some pro-American objectives.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 04/26/2020 – 22:35 - Gov. Newsom Urges "Stay Home" As Heatwave Sends Desperate Californians To Open Beaches
Gov. Newsom Urges “Stay Home” As Heatwave Sends Desperate Californians To Open Beaches
Tens of thousands of people flooded beaches in Southern California over the weekend as the first major heatwave of the year strikes, even as Gov. Gavin Newsom pleaded with everyone to stay home to flatten the pandemic curve.
Newsom tweeted Friday: “It’s going to be nice outside this weekend. You might be feeling cooped up. Ready for life to go back to “normal.” But can’t stress this enough: CA can only keep flattening the curve if we stay home and practice physical distancing. You have the power to literally save lives.”
It’s going to be nice outside this weekend. You might be feeling cooped up. Ready for life to go back to “normal.”
But can’t stress this enough:
CA can only keep flattening the curve if we stay home and practice physical distancing.
You have the power to literally save lives.
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) April 24, 2020
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Photos and videos emerged on social media over the weekend showing Huntington Beach and Newport Beach packed with thousands of people, many of whom were ignoring social distancing rules. AP News reported at least 40,000 people visited Newport Beach on Friday alone.
Today in Newport Beach. Wow.
Via @GettyImagesNews pic.twitter.com/eo0WMmQ3eg
— Liz Kreutz (@ABCLiz) April 26, 2020
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Newport Beach appears to be pretty crowded, as Southern California is hit by a heat wave. https://t.co/abDlBmkZo0 pic.twitter.com/1DDSjvPhT5
— NBC Los Angeles (@NBCLA) April 25, 2020
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RIGHT NOW: This is the scene from #Air7HD in Newport Beach, CA as the #COVID19 death toll surges in Southern California @ABC7 #LosAngeles pic.twitter.com/Nmta8hU69H
— Chris Cristi (@abc7chriscristi) April 24, 2020
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The influx of beachgoers comes at a time when beaches remained closed in Los Angeles and San Diego counties. Mandatory stay-at-home orders have been in place since March 19.
Orange Country reopened its beaches with no access to parking lots and piers amid the influx of tourists rushing to resort towns. Ventura County, about 70 miles north of Los Angeles, recently reopened beaches with no access to parking lots.
Brian O’Rourke, a lifeguard chief at Newport Beach, told NBC News the beach was extremely crowded this weekend.
“We haven’t had too many issues with [social distancing] as lifeguards. Our primary mission is watching the water. We’ve had dozens of ocean rescues and hundreds of preventative actions.”
According to a tweet from the Los Angeles Police Department Chief Michel Moore, Malibu, Santa Monica, Venice, and Dockweiler beaches were absent of people on Saturday as police enforced strict closure rules.
My compliments to our community for staying away from the beaches in LA. From Malibu, Santa Monica, Venice, to Dockweiler – All Clear!! Safer at Home will get us there sooner. pic.twitter.com/wZeJ8G8pDR
— Chief Michel Moore (@LAPDChiefMoore) April 25, 2020
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San Diego County officials said beaches would reopen Monday to swimming, surfing, paddleboarding, and kayaking. Strict social distancing rules will be enforced, which means no sitting or lying down on the beach.
All other beaches operated by the state will remain closed.
Newsom has yet to issue any plan on reopening the state’s economy and or lifting lockdown measures.
We noted not too long ago that resort towns in Italy could implement “plexiglass cages” on the beaches to enforce social distancing.
Californians are fed up with Newsom’s plea to stay during the pandemic as the season’s first heatwave strikes. Could this be the makings of the second coronavirus wave?
Tyler Durden
Sun, 04/26/2020 – 22:10 - Diamond Offshore Files For Bankruptcy
Diamond Offshore Files For Bankruptcy
Once upon a time, it was the most admired offshore drilling company in the US, and a perennial LBO candidate due to its rock-solid cashflows. A little over a decade later, the cashflows are gone, and Houston’s Diamond Offshore Drilling has just filed for bankruptcy listing debts of more than $2.6 billion, blaming the “unprecedented” impact of an oil price war and the coronavirus pandemic. It joins a list of other companies that have cited the coronavirus in recent chapter 11s filings.
Coronavirus-related challenges have been cited in recent chapter 11s filed by companies in the retail, medical device and coal production industries: pic.twitter.com/Bv8aYrXF8Y
— First Day by Reorg (@ReorgFirstDay) March 11, 2020
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The implosion of the company comes 10 days after it missed an interest payment on $500 million worth of bonds and said it was working with advisers on various options for its future.
In its Chapter 11 filing filed with Houston’s bankruptcy court, the company listed $5.8 billion of assets and $2.6 billion of debt, as well as $434.9 million of cash on hand. Diamond said conditions in its “highly competitive and cyclical industry” had “worsened precipitously in recent months” and while the company had taken “various actions” to shore up its finances, including borrowing $400MM under a revolving credit facility in March, Chapter 11 bankruptcy represented the best return to stakeholders.
Well, maybe the bondholders, as we somehow doubt the equity, which last traded at 93 cents will be delighted. Major equity holders include NYSE-listed Loews Corporation, which owns 53% of Diamond, 2,500 staff who work there, and bondholders who are owed more than $2BN.
Diamond owns deepwater rigs that can drill in water more than two miles deep. But offshore oil is among the most expensive to produce, putting the company at a disadvantage when prices plunged to less than $30 a barrel. While newer deepwater projects are less expensive, they still take longer to develop than shale wells and they still can’t compete on costs.
In an April 16 note downgrading Diamond’s debt to the deep junky Ca2, Moody’s said the oilfield services sector would be “one of the sectors most significantly affected” by the “severe and extensive” shock from the coronavirus pandemic, falling oil pries and asset price declines.
“There is a high likelihood that the company restructures its debts, either through an out-of-court settlement with its creditors or through the bankruptcy process,” Moody’s analysts stressed and they were right. S&P also downgraded the company on the same day, citing “the strong likelihood the outcome will result in a selective default or Chapter 11 bankruptcy.”
Diamond Offshore adds to the more than 200 oilpatch bankruptcies dating from 2015, according to a tally by the Haynes & Boone law firm.
About 2,500 jobs could be at stake at Diamond. The case is Diamond Offshore Drilling Inc., 20-32307, U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas (Houston).
Tyler Durden
Sun, 04/26/2020 – 21:50 - Kadish: The US Needs To "Stop Playing The Chump"
Kadish: The US Needs To “Stop Playing The Chump”
Authored by Lawrence Kadish via The Gatestone Institute,
The United States needs to stop playing the chump… For generations America has fattened up the very nations that would seek to destroy us.
Prior to Tokyo’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Americans bought Japanese goods, helping pay for the bombs and torpedoes that would sink the American fleet at anchor on December 7th, 1941. Japan’s sneak attack would be paid back with two nuclear strikes on Japanese cities four years later.
Our addiction to Middle East oil helped fund the terrorists who would hijack airliners, turning them into flying missiles on the morning of September 11th. Our nation’s smart use of fracking to access enormous reserves of oil hidden under our own feet finally broke that stranglehold.
Despite these hard won lessons, over the last twenty years America has handed China hundreds of billions of dollars every year to buy cheap goods, watched American firms ship their jobs and factories to China, and provided the Chinese with the means to create technology that threatens to eclipse our future. In the meantime, the money we sent there is allowing the Chinese to grow their nuclear arsenal and strengthen their military. In return, China has shipped us Covid-19.
But the people of the United States are beginning to catch on to the Chinese ploy of using our money to buy their global dominance.
A national poll finds the vast majority of Americans no longer trust Beijing. Seventy percent (70%) think the Chinese kept their Coronavirus data a secret from international healthcare professionals. In addition, 6 of 10 voters, or 59%, agree “As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, America should withdraw its manufacturing presence from China”. One-third of all voters, 31%, “strongly agree” with this statement. Only 10% “strongly disagree
What this means is that Covid-19 has alerted Americans to the threat that faces our nation and our economic recovery. We need to suspend imports from Civilization Abusers and all enemies of democracy. We need to become and remain self- sufficient – from technology to medical supplies — so that we are never again dependent on nations that would seek to destroy us.
It is time to stop playing the chump.
* * *
Lawrence Kadish is a real estate developer, entrepreneur, and founder and president of the Museum of American Armor.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 04/26/2020 – 21:45 - US Beefs Up Gunship Presence In Gulf Ready To Back Trump's Iran 'Red Line'
US Beefs Up Gunship Presence In Gulf Ready To Back Trump’s Iran ‘Red Line’
American forces in the Persian Gulf have greatly bolstered their ability to respond to Iran at a moment President Trump has renewed trading threats and barbs with the Islamic Republic, ordering the US Navy “to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea.”
This includes the Pentagon bolstering its AC-130 gunships and Apache attack helicopters to target and destroy small surface threats in the Arabian Sea. Tehran has meanwhile responded with its own threats to ‘destroy’ American vessels of course.
Air Force AC-130W Stinger II. Image source: US Air Force It was apparently this beefed up presence that led to the April 15 confrontation about which Trump was responding by ordering destruction of boats that “harass” American vessels.
Bloomberg explains that while the Pentagon has been closely monitoring Iran’s growing fleet of over 1,000 small boats in the gulf and Hormuz Strait, the US has in turn been provocatively beefing up its own presence. March and April US Navy exercises didn’t go unnoticed by Iran, however:
The live-fire gunship exercises began in March as a first-time effort at coordination between Navy patrol coastal ships, the service’s P-8A Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft and the Air Force’s special operations AC-130 gunships, which are capable of nighttime attacks. Armed with a 30mm Gatling gun and precision-guided munitions, the famed gunships have been used to attack ground targets — but not naval targets — from Vietnam to Grenada, Panama, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan.
The US Navy is further deploying what it dubs a ‘Lily Pad’ approach, in order to better go on the attack against Iran’s expanding fleet of fast boats:
Under the new approach, the Apaches can be stationed on the Puller, the Navy’s first specially designed floating sea base. The Puller, a destroyer and other, smaller U.S. vessels were practicing spotting targets for the Apaches and transmitting the information. The exercises continued through April 19.
Army AH-64 Apache helicopter during an exercise in the Persian Gulf, US Navy file image. One military analyst and former special assistant to naval operations, the Hudson Institute’s Bryan Clark, told Bloomberg the approach is specifically designed to “to go on the offensive against Iranian small boats, rather than simply defending against them.”
This is as opposed to the former preferred by less effective strategy of relying purely on “deck guns and onboard helicopters, which can be overwhelmed by a large boat swarm.”
Typically such US assets are deployed against land targets in offensive operations, but will now be used to pick off smaller targets in the contested gulf region.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 04/26/2020 – 21:20 - "Coronacide"
“Coronacide”
Authored by Robert Gore via Straight Line Logic,
Grasping the obvious… this was all planned beforehand.
As the totalitarian horror unfolds before our eyes, only the willfully blind will ignore it. Only those who refuse to think will fail to grasp its implications. Only the irretrievably corrupt will embrace it.
“The Last Gasp,” Straight Line Logic, 3/24/20
There are a lot of blind, unthinking, and corrupt people out there. Start with virus basics.
Viruses typically show exponential growth early on, but that cannot continue or eventually the virus would take over the entire planet and then the entire universe.
“Basic Math,” Straight Line Logic, 3/25/20
The Experts offered projections based on exponential growth even as their own statistics showed that growth curves were becoming non-exponential.
Which means that many of the projections both globally and for the US, based as they are on exponential growth that no longer exists, will be off the mark by orders of magnitude. As this becomes clearer, the dictatorial types will panic and try to enact still more dictatorial measures.
It looks like it will be two orders of magnitude—globally from tens of millions of deaths down to hundreds of thousands and in the US from millions of deaths down to tens of thousands. If you were charitably inclined toward the Ruling Caste, you could offer the excuse that they realized their own mathematical and scientific ignorance and illiteracy and so accepted the Expert projections.
That is not just misplaced charity; it’s downright delusional. The Ruling Caste accepted the projections because they were the avenue to what they wanted, those “dictatorial measures.”
So now we’re supposed to believe that the powers are regretfully eliminating what’s left of our freedoms and destroying our economy to protect us from this scourge that might kill five one-hundredths of 1 percent of our population? The notion is idiotic on its face, and could only work on a docile, emasculated, and brain-dead populace who yearns for the sterile safety of a rubber room, straight jacket, and ball gag, removed three times a day when the nice nurse spoons them their gruel. They’ll be free of want and fear…and everything else.
***
The powers want absolute power, period. Their panic and police states are designed to instill and further the want and fear they say they deplore. Their stocks in trade are want and fear; they’d never eliminate them even if they could….
Mission accomplished—they have certainly instilled and furthered want and fear, allowing them to consolidate and extend their power.
From fearful, compliant automatons the silence was deafening. Even much of the alternative media failed to ask the most basic questions, working off of medical establishment, government, and mainstream media assumptions, projections, and scare tactics.
Perhaps the most distressing aspect of this whole ordeal is that Americans have surrendered to panic and propaganda without a shot.
“Surrendered Without A Shot,” Straight Line Logic, 4/6/20
The strongest and most cogent objections came from a few doctors and epidemiologists. Stanford epidemiologist John P.A. Ionnidis was one of the first. Dr. Ron Paul early on called out the coronavirus hoax.
Unfortunately, doctors and epidemiologists also were responsible for many of the scariest projections and much of the agitation for police state measures. It’s as if the world’s auto mechanics decided that cars’ useful lives would be meaningfully extended and public safety enhanced if everyone was forced to drive 25 mph. Probably true, but think of the costs in time and money if we had to drive that slowly. The mechanics have their perspective, and doctors and epidemiologists have theirs. What’s been lacking is broader perspectives that reckon, or even acknowledge the response’s staggering costs to liberty and the economy.
Fast forward to now. If you predict that governments’ response to the coronavirus outbreak will reveal not so hidden agendas of globalist power and domination (Why do you think they keep saying, “The world will never go back to the way it was”?), terminate the last vestiges of freedom, destroy the economy and financial markets, kill far more people than the virus itself, and set precedents for everything from enforced confinement to martial law to mandatory vaccinations to electronic money to compelled microchipped identification and surveillance whenever a group of experts makes scary projections about lethal microbes—which from now on will be almost always—you’re well on your way to being proved right on all counts.
If you still doubt that coronavirus response is intended to “terminate the last vestiges of freedom,” check out “Techno-Tyranny: How The US National Security Is Using Coronavirus To Fulfill An Orwellian Vision” by Whitney Webb.
The tide has turned on coronavirus projections and the officially ginned up numbers. Unfortunately, it’s just going out on the economic damage from the response to the coronavirus. There’s a widespread propaganda ploy when the media refers to the carnage: they attribute it to the coronavirus and not the draconian measures enacted to address the coronavirus. So 26.5 million Americans filing jobless claims in five weeks is due to the coronavirus and not the decrees destroying the economy, closing businesses, and putting millions under house arrest. As if 26.5 million Americans are out sick rather than forcibly prevented from earning a living.
It’s not like these measures even work. There is not an inverse relationship between the severity of isolation policies and severity of the disease. Keeping those with the disease isolated (the true definition of quarantine) makes sense, house arrest (the true definition of lockdown) doesn’t. Some countries that do not house arrest have death rates per million far lower than countries that do. Confining people to their homes keeps them away from sunlight and fresh air, whose therapeutic benefits have been known since the Spanish flu a century ago and were used to fight it. House arrest also makes it more difficult to exercise, another proven immune system and health builder.
Isolation of the healthy also slows the development of herd immunity. Most people who are infected by the coronavirus will have few or no symptoms and will develop antibodies to it. To the extent home confinement actually prevents exposure, it also prevents herd immunity, potentially setting up a second wave of new cases during next autumn and winter’s flu season. The coronavirus will be a gift that keeps on giving to the Ruling Caste.
For every thousand mentions of vaccines and potential vaccines against the coronavirus in the media, there is one mention of nature’s most potent defenses against viruses—the immune system and naturally acquired immunity. There’s only the tangential reference when they note that a disproportionate number of coronavirus deaths befall people with compromised immune systems.
The logical, albeit unstated inference is that bolstering your immune system may be a more effective strategy for dealing with the coronavirus than trying to hide from it. Vitamins C and D, zinc, sunlight, fresh air, exercise, a healthy diet, and sleep are all proven immunity boosters, but there’s not much money in promoting them. The voices in the alternative media boosting those boosters—Bill Sardi, Dr. David Brownstein, Dr. Joseph Mercola—do far more good than the mainstream’s endless admonitions to stay indoors, wear face masks, and socially distance until Bill and Melinda find a profitable vaccine. Too bad the former don’t get a tenth of the attention the latter does.
Now that the global numbers are headed the right direction, there are fewer stories reporting, analyzing, or putting them in any kind of context. Instead, we get personal interest stories to divert attention—patients and their loved ones struggling with the disease, medical heroes, and how celebrities are coping with enforced isolation and idleness. Most of the numbers stories are about spikes up in new cases or deaths in various localities and countries. There are few personal interest stories about the newly unemployed, food line standees, or the heroes trying to keep their small businesses afloat.
The coronavirus response is infecting a global economy whose immune system is severely compromised by its addiction to debt. Like many of the coronavirus victims before infection, the economy was already on death’s door. The apparent economic growth during the recovery since the 2008-2009 financial crisis was bought with huge expansions of government, business, and personal debt, facilitated by all manner of central bank sleight of hand—quantitative easing, low or negative interests rates, and monetizing government debt. Its akin to a terminal patient kept alive by a constant drip feed of drugs.
Interest compounds exponentially, leaving aside the central-bank created abomination of negative interest rates. Debt must be paid back or rolled over, it’s the debtor’s liability and the creditor’s asset, and it’s ultimately a claim on, and is often secured by, real assets and production. World debt is over 2.8 times world GDP. That number has been on a steady ascent, so the world is well past the point where additional debt buys growth greater than the debt. Most debt has funded consumption, which generates no economic return. Debt service was exacting its ever-increasing toll on a slowing global economy before the coronavirus made its appearance.
And let’s not forget derivatives. The Bank of International Settlements puts the notional amount at $640 trillion—a conservative estimates, others are much higher—as of last June, or over 7.2 times world GDP. It’s often claimed that the true picture is nowhere as worrisome as suggested by the notional amount because many derivatives are offset by opposite positions. Netted out derivatives exposure is much less, more than 90 percent less. That’s all well and good until major counterparties start failing, as they did in the 2008-2009 financial crisis. Positions that were supposedly offset no longer are, and all hell breaks loose. The risk is then measured by the notional, not the netted, total, the one that’s at least 7.2 times world GDP.
The impending financial and economic collapse as the debt and derivative daisy chains break is both obvious and inevitable. There will be no quick bounce back when we’re paroled from our pandemic prisons. The world needs all the production it can get simply to pay debt service, but the global production shut down and piles of new debt put us that much deeper in the hole. The Ruling Caste knows that debt and bailouts of parasitic but politically connected individuals and corporations make the collapse that much worse, but that’s part of the plan.
In the Ruling Caste’s perfect world, there are two castes: theirs and everybody else—call it the untouchables, or better yet, the deplorables—impoverished, dependent, and subservient. A thriving, independent middle class—one of capitalism’s greatest creations—simply has no right to exist. It doesn’t need a Ruling Caste—reason enough to hate it—and must be eliminated. The global depression will eliminate it, as well as many of its former members. That a slave society may not be much fun for the masters has seemingly not entered into Ruling Caste calculations.
The Ruling Caste has fine-tuned fear. It worked well with 9/11, but nineteen years later it’s obvious there aren’t terrorists under every bed. They couldn’t get what they wanted from their global warming doomsday scenarios and garbage science. Their models kept yielding erroneous predictions and they had to keep shoving the dire consequences farther into the future. The integrity of the research was severely compromised by committee science and so-called consensus conclusions, ad hoc and unexplained data adjustments, opacity where transparency was required, and private communications that undercut public pronouncements. Global warning just hasn’t lit any fires.
Ah, but tell the public they’re at risk from an unseen virus, even if the risk of death is comparable to other viruses and is smaller for healthy people than risks we run everyday, and there you have something. They’ll let you: confine them to their houses, close their businesses, eliminate their jobs, prevent contact and communication with other people, encourage them to spy on and report their neighbors, stop them from going to church and other gatherings, and mandate social distancing and mask-wearing.
One thing global warming has taught the Ruling Caste: confer payola, positions, and prestige on the Scientific Caste and you can get whatever Science you want. So roll out scary pandemic predictions from bought and paid for Experts and Voilà! people will hand you their livelihoods and their freedom. In that Ruling Caste perfect world, we’d grant them permission to execute us if the Experts recommended it, docilely lining up for the firing squad or gas chamber. Who are we to argue with the Experts?
The coronavirus will fade, not even within field goal range (remember football?) of its advance billing. Expect no embarrassment from the Ruling Caste or its Experts. This is another giant step in their project to “Make the Truth Irrelevant.” They’ve found a special kind of fear. By vastly inflating a health risk, you can make people so afraid for their own safety that they’ll ignore skepticism, pertinent questions, contrary facts, any nonconforming science, other obvious truths, and their own imprisonment and ruin. All the precedents are now in place, and the Ruling Caste just has to make sure the next virus is more lethal than this one (but of course not so lethal or resistant to vaccination that it poses a danger to the Ruling Caste).
When you can’t love, you hate. When you can’t build, you destroy. When you’re ignored, you scream. When you can’t tell the truth, you lie. When you can’t reason, you panic. When no one will follow you out of admiration or respect, you compel. When you can’t live, you kill.
As a general rule, the earlier you recognize someone is trying to kill you, the better off you’ll be.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 04/26/2020 – 20:55 - "We'll Pay You To Leave" – Hawaii Wants Visitors Gone As COVID Cases Mount
“We’ll Pay You To Leave” – Hawaii Wants Visitors Gone As COVID Cases Mount
Over the last 4-6 weeks, Hawaiians have become increasingly frustrated with tourists visiting the islands during the pandemic. Many visitors are ignoring quarantine rules and have put locals at risk of contracting COVID-19.
Some residents have already organized protests near the Maui airport, holding signs that said: “TOURIST GO HOME,” “LEAVE OUR AINA!,” “TIME TO GO,” and “GO HOME.”
Now the Hawaii Tourism Authority has issued a $25,000 grant to nonprofit Visitor Aloha Society of Hawaii (VASH) to fund a program that will pay tourists who violate quarantine rules with a one-way ticket back to their home airport, reported The New York Times.
Since the start of April, VASH has provided 20 tourists with one-way tickets away from Hawaii, sending travelers back to Guam, Alabama, and Colorado. Many of these folks were violating quarantine rules.
“The majority of travelers we have sent back, in my opinion, have been irresponsible in traveling to Hawaii during the Covid-19 pandemic when they know we are trying to keep Hawaii safe from the spread of this disease,” said Jessica Lani Rich, the president and chief executive of VASH.
With beaches closed and the tourism industry ground to a halt, new tourist arrivals have plunged 99%. Many locals are riding out the virus storm at their homes while tourists are playing on beaches and hiking trails.
“They either don’t get or are ignoring the message,” Lynne Matusow, a Honolulu resident told The Times. “We have locals, in masks, scolding them for sitting on beaches, with towels, umbrellas, coolers, etc. That is forbidden.”
Before crowds and After Empty; Coronavirus 2020 #hawaii #oahu #waikiki #covid19hawaii #diamondhead pic.twitter.com/w8OQaSEm6p
— hawaii isla 808 (@hawaii_isla808) April 25, 2020
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Rich said many of those who VASH returned home were taking advantage of pandemic pricing for airfare that was super cheap. She said a roundtrip ticket from Oakland, California, to Honolulu was around $238.
“I see maybe one or two tourists a day,” said Ryan Houser, a restaurant “fish sommelier” and Waikiki resident, saying, “it’s a little offensive” when tourists go on the beach and ignore social distancing rules while locals stay at home.
“Our residents had to close their businesses and have financial hardships and to have people come here right now and want to vacation, it is reckless,” said Rich.
Hawaii’s economy collapsed when the tourism industry shut down on March 17 to mitigate the spread of the virus. On Saturday, quarantines in Hawaii were extended through the end of May.
Strict social distancing rules in the state have kept cases lower versus other states. On Sunday, there were 604 cases with 14 death.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 04/26/2020 – 20:30 - "China Did A Lot Of Things Right": Bill Gates Defends CCP, Slams America Over Handling Of Coronavirus
“China Did A Lot Of Things Right”: Bill Gates Defends CCP, Slams America Over Handling Of Coronavirus
Bill Gates vehemently defended China’s initial response to the coronavirus outbreak on Sunday, telling CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that the communist country – which silenced whistleblowers and lied about transmissibility – “did a lot of things right.”
“How would you respond to the charge that hte Chinese covered this up. They’ve essentially deceived the rest of the world, and as a result, they should be held in some way responsible for this?” asked Zakaria.
To which Gates responded: “Well, I don’t think that’s a timely thing because it doesn’t affect how we act today. You know, China did a lot of things right. At the beginning, like any country where a virus first shows up, they can look back and say that they missed some things,” Gates said, adding “Some countries did respond very quickly and get their testing in place, and they avoided the incredible economic pain – and it’s sad that even the US that you would have expected to do this well, did it particularly poorly – but it’s not time to talk about that.“
Gates then suggested that this is the time “to take the great science we have, the fact that we’re in this together, fix testing and treatments and get that vaccine, and minimize the trillions in dollars and many things that you can’t even dimensionalize in economic terms that are awful about the situation that we’re in.
“That’s a distraction,” Gates added, regarding placing the blame on China. “I think there’s a lot of incorrect and unfair things said.“
Watch:
Bill Gates claims that criticisms of how China lied and covered up the coronavirus is a “distraction”: “China did a lot of things right at the beginning … they avoided the incredible economic pain … I think there’s a lot of incorrect and unfair things said”
This is all a lie pic.twitter.com/RlbwV0fUcA
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) April 26, 2020
We wonder why Bill Gates – one of the largest donors to the World Health Organization – is similarly defending China, which is also one of the WHO’s largest contributors.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 04/26/2020 – 20:21 - "We Are Moving Into The End-Game": 27 Tankers Anchored Off California, Hundreds Off Singapore As Oil Industry Shuts Down
“We Are Moving Into The End-Game”: 27 Tankers Anchored Off California, Hundreds Off Singapore As Oil Industry Shuts Down
Back in the late fall of 2014, when Saudi Arabia broke up OPEC for the first time and unleashed a torrent of crude oil on the world despite the protests of its fellow cartel members, oil prices crashed as a result of what then seemed to be a “calculated” move by Riyadh which hoped to put US shale out of business amid a flawed gamble betting that shale breakeven prices were around $60-80. They, however, turned out to be much lower, which coupled with Saudi misreading of the willingness of junk bond investors to keep funding US shale producers, meant that despite a 3 years stretch of low oil prices, US shale emerged stronger than ever before, with the US eventually eclipsing both Saudi Arabia and Russia as the world’s biggest crude oil producer.
Fast forward to March 2020, when Saudi Arabia doubled down in its attempt to crush shale, only to avoid angering long-time ally Donald Trump, the Crown Prince pretended that the latest flood of oil was an oil price war aimed at Moscow not Midland. And this time, unlike 2014, with the benefit of the global economic shutdown resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, the Saudis may have finally lucked out in the ongoing crusade against US oil, because as Bloomberg writes with “negative oil prices, ships dawdling at sea with unwanted cargoes, and traders getting creative about where to stash oil”, the next chapter in the oil crisis is now inevitable: “great swathes of the petroleum industry are about to start shutting down.”
As the recent OPEC summit so vividly demonstrated, the marginal price of oil is no longer determined by supply or cuts thereof (such as the recently announced agreement by OPEC+ for a 9.7mmb/d output cut), but rather by demand, or the lack thereof, which according to some estimate is as much as 36mmb/d lower, or roughly a third of the global oil market every day, as billions of people are stuck at home instead of driving, while major corporations mothball production in a world where major economies have ground to a halt.
The economic impact of the coronavirus has ripped through the oil industry in dramatic phases, Bloomberg’s Javier Blas writes. First it destroyed demand as lockdowns shut factories and kept drivers at home. Then storage started filling up and traders resorted to ocean-going tankers to store crude in the hope of better prices ahead.
Now shipping prices are surging to stratospheric levels as the industry runs out of tankers, a sign of just how distorted the market has become.
Ironically, in its latest attempt to kill off shale, Saudi Arabia may have gone a step too far, as “the specter of production shut-downs – and the impact they will have on jobs, companies, their banks, and local economies – was one of the reasons that spurred world leaders to join forces to cut production in an orderly way. But as the scale of the crisis dwarfed their efforts, failing to stop prices diving below zero last week, shut-downs are now a reality. It’s the worst-case scenario for producers and refiners.“
In short, the entire oil production industry is shutting down, not because it wants to – of course – but because it has no choice. According to Goldman, in as little as three weeks there will be literally no place left on earth to store oil, and unless oil producers want to pay “buyers” to hold the oil as happened on that historic date of April 20, they have no choice but to shut in output.
“We are moving into the end-game,” said Torbjorn Tornqvist, head of commodity trading giant Gunvor Group. “Early-to-mid May could be the peak. We are weeks, not months, away from it.”
Which brings us back to why in 2020 Riyadh has succeeded where it failed in 2014: as Bloomberg writes “in theory, the first oil output cuts should have come from the OPEC+ alliance, which earlier this month agreed to reduce production from May 1. Yet after the catastrophic price plunge on Monday, when West Texas Intermediate fell to -$40 a barrel, it’s the U.S. shale patch that is leading”
The best indicator of how the shale industry is reacting is the sudden collapse in the number of oil rigs in operation, which last week fell to a four-year low: “Before the coronavirus crisis hit, oil companies ran about 650 rigs in the US. By Friday, more than 40% of them had stopped working, with only 378 left.”
And while there is a delay between total US oil production and the rig count, it is now obvious that US production is set to collapse next:
“Monday really focused people’s minds that production needs to slow down,” said the co-head of oil trading at commodity merchant Trafigura. “It’s the smack in the face the market needed to realize this is serious.” Incidentally, Trafigura, one of the largest exporters of US crude from the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, believes that output in Texas, New Mexico, North Dakota and other states will now fall much faster than expected as companies react to negative prices…
… evidence US commercial storage space for physical at Cushing has run out with what inventory is left having been called for – which have persisted for several days last week in the physical market.
Until prices collapsed on Monday, the consensus was that output would drop by about 1.5MM barrels a day by December. Now market watchers see that loss by late June. “The severity of the price pressure is likely to act as a catalyst for the immediate turndown in activity and shut-ins,” said Roger Diwan, oil analyst at consultant IHS Markit Ltd.
As detailed last week, this price shock has been especially acute in the physical market where producers of crude streams such as South Texas Sour and Eastern Kansas Common had to pay more than $50 a barrel to offload their output last week.
And so the US industry is finally shutting down as ConocoPhillips and shale producer Continental Resources have all announced plans to shut in output. Regulators in Oklahoma voted to allow oil drillers to shut wells without losing leases; New Mexico made a similar decision. Even North Dakota, which for years was synonymous with the U.S. shale revolution, is witnessing a rapid retrenchment, as Bloomberg notes that “oil producers have already closed more than 6,000 wells, curtailing about 405,000 barrels a day in production, or about 30% of the state’s total.”
However, it won’t be just the US: output cuts can be seen from Chad, a poor and landlocked country in Africa, to Vietnam and Brazil, producers are now either reducing output or making plans to do so. “I wouldn’t want to get sensational about it but yes, clearly there must be a risk of shut-ins,” Mitch Flegg, the head of North Sea oil company Serica Energy, said in an interview. “In certain parts of the world it is a real and present risk.”
In emergency board meetings last week, oil companies small and large discussed an outlook that’s the most somber any oil executive has ever witnessed. For the small firms, the next few weeks will be all about staying afloat. But even for the bigger ones, like Exxon Mobil Corp. and BP Plc, it’s a challenge. Big Oil will offer an insight into the crisis when companies report earnings this week.
Then on Friday, May 1, Saudi Arabia, Russia and the rest of OPEC+ will join the output cuts, slashing their output by 23%, or 9.7 million barrels a day. Saudi Aramco, the state-owned company has already cut production, and Russian oil companies have announced exports of their flagship Urals crude would drop in May to a 10-year low.
And yet, as warned here repeatedly, it may still not be enough, as every week, another 50 million barrels of crude are going into storage, enough to fuel Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the U.K. combined, with estimates that the world will run out of land-based storage some time in late May or early June. Meanwhile, what’s not stored onshore, is stashed in tankers. As Bloomberg’s Blas points out, the U.S. Coast Guard on Friday said there were so many tankers at anchor off California that it was keeping an eye on the situation.
VIDEO: US Coast Guard says it’s keeping an eye on 27 oil tankers anchored off the coast of Southern California. Another great example of floating storage build-up as demand for oil and refined products plunge | #OOTT #Contango video via @USCGLosAngeles pic.twitter.com/B7pjWIsdnp
— Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) April 24, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
But if the two dozen or so tankers piled up off the coast of California is bad…
… and those next to Galveston, TX is worse…
… what is going on in that tanker parking lot off of Singapore is absolutely insane.
There is some good news: oil traders say after plunging by a third, US oil consumption has probably hit a bottom, and will start a very gentle recovery, although that also depends on how fast the US economy can reopen from the coronavirus coma.
But before even a modest recovery takes hold, the great shutdown will spread through oil refining too. Over the past week, Marathon Petroleum, one of the biggest U.S. refiners, announced it would stop production at a plant near San Francisco. Royal Dutch Shell has idled several units in three U.S. refineries in Alabama and Louisiana. And across Europe and Asia, many refineries are running at half rate. U.S. oil refiners processed just 12.45 million barrels a day on the week to April 17, the lowest amount in at least 30 years, except for hurricane-related closures.
The closures have already sent thousands packing: the oil and gas industry shed nearly 51,000 drilling and refining jobs in March, a 9% reduction that will only get worse in April. March’s job losses rise by 15,000 when ancillary jobs such as construction, manufacturing of drilling equipment and shipping are included, according to BW Research Partnership, a research consultancy, which analyzed Department of Labor data combined with the firm’s own survey data of about 30,000 energy companies.
“We’re looking at anywhere between five and seven years of job growth wiped out in a month,” Philip Jordan, the company’s vice president said in an interview. “What makes it sort of scary is this really is just the beginning. April is not looking good for oil and gas.”
And so, as the oil industry shuts down – at least for a few weeks (or perhaps months) – more refinery shutdowns are coming, oil traders and consultants said, particularly in the U.S. where lockdowns started later than in Europe and demand is still contracting. Steve Sawyer, director of refining at Facts Global Energy, said that global refineries could halt as much as 25% of total capacity in May.
“No one is going to be able to dodge this bullet.”
Tyler Durden
Sun, 04/26/2020 – 20:05 - Coronavirus Deaths Likely 60% Higher Than Official Numbers Reflect, FT Finds
Coronavirus Deaths Likely 60% Higher Than Official Numbers Reflect, FT Finds
As experts try to model the true number of coronavirus deaths, and some random ‘surveillance’ studies have suggested that – at least in some badly hit areas – the number of confirmed coronavirus cases might be many multiples of the official count, the FT has published its latest attempt at trying to ‘model’ the true coronavirus death toll.
The FT used a fairly straightforward methodology: the paper took data on national death tolls over a certain stretch of time going back five years, calculated the mean for each country, then compared that figure to the number of deaths reported during the same time period in 2020.
To calculate excess deaths, the FT has compared deaths from all causes in the weeks of a location’s outbreak in March and April 2020 to the average for the same period between 2015 and 2019. The total of 122,000 amounts to a 50 per cent rise in overall mortality relative to the historical average for the locations studied.
The difference between the average from the past five years and the 2020 number is, roughly, the number of deaths caused by the coronavirus (by far the biggest differentiating factor). Across countries in the developed world, the FT found 122,000 deaths ‘in excess’ of normal levels. That’s compared with ~77k reported coronavirus deaths. If the FT’s methodolgy checks out, that would mean coronavirus deaths have been 60% higher than official statics reflect – at least in the developed world.
The death toll from coronavirus may be almost 60 per cent higher than reported in official counts, according to an FT analysis of overall fatalities during the pandemic in 14 countries. Mortality statistics show 122,000 deaths in excess of normal levels across these locations, considerably higher than the 77,000 official Covid-19 deaths reported for the same places and time periods. If the same level of underreporting observed in these countries was happening worldwide, the global Covid-19 death toll would rise from the current official total of 201,000 to as high as 318,000.
The only country that showed almost now deviation between ‘excess deaths’ and the number of confirmed coronavirus cases was Denmark.
Source: FT
The gulf between the ‘official’ coronavirus death toll and the ‘excess mortality’ rate tabulated by the FT. was widest in the emerging world. In some places, the difference was ~100x (that’s 100x not 100%). Officials reported roughly 250 deaths due to the virus, but the number of ‘excess’ deaths was 10,200 in Ecuador’s Guayas Province.
In Ecuador’s Guayas province, just 245 official COVID-19-related deaths were reported between March 1 and April 15, but data on total deaths show that about 10,200 more people died during this period than in a typical year – an increase of 350 per cent.
If we assume that every single ‘excess’ case calculated by the FT is representative of a single case of COVID-19 (not exactly a scientific assumption, but fair enough for an estimate…), then we can compare which provinces, states and countries were most badly impacted. According to the FT, the region surrounding the Italian city of Bergamo suffered a much more severe outbreak than New York State.
In the northern Italian region of Lombardy, the heart of Europe’s worst outbreak, there are more than 13,000 excess deaths in the official statistics for the nearly 1,700 municipalities for which data is available. This is an uptick of 155 per cent on the historical average and far higher than the 4,348 reported Covid deaths in the region. The region surrounding the Italian city of Bergamo registered the worst increase internationally with a 464 per cent rise in deaths above normal levels, followed by New York City with a 200 per cent increase, and Madrid, Spain, with a 161 per cent increase.
The FT isn’t the only financial news organization to try and determine by how much some countries are underreporting cases and deaths linked to the novel coronavirus.
Source: FT
Bloomberg on Sunday reported that the number of severe respiratory infections reported in Mexico over the past two months, coinciding with the end of flu season, were up more than 50% compared with last year. Experts working for the Mexican government quietly told Bloomberg that the increase is likely 100% attributable to the virus.
Severe acute respiratory infections in Mexico spiked 50% this season compared with a year ago, almost certainly all due to coronavirus, suggesting that government figures on Covid-19 cases are far too low.
In the most recent week, health ministry data show, Mexico registered 12,000 new cases of such respiratory infections, versus 671 in the same period a year ago.
“Of course that jump in cases is Covid-19, because influenza is on its way out this time of year,” said Alejandro Macías, the former national commissioner for influenza in Mexico during the H1N1 outbreak. “There’s no doubt.”
To be sure, the FT doesn’t question the general trends displayed in global data – well, at least not in developed countries like the US and Italy. But it’s just the latest reminder that armchair experts claiming that the true mortality rate for the virus is actually a small fraction of a percent are likely also gravely underestimating the total number of deaths that have gone underreported.
This just means that the grainy videos released by brave Wuhanese during the early days of the outbreak remain the most reliable indicators of what the novel coronavirus is capable of if left unchecked.
Though they’ve been wiped from the Chinese Internet, millions around the world witnessed the videos of dead bodies of the elderly in the streets, hospital hallways packed with the doomed, pandemonium, chaos – and Party officials firing up the crematorium out back.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 04/26/2020 – 19:40
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