- Fiat Cuts 1,500 Jobs At Canada Minivan Plant
Fiat Cuts 1,500 Jobs At Canada Minivan Plant
If the consumer has gone cold or just silly millennials not forming families because of their limited financial mobility due to insurmountable debts, minivan demand in North America is plunging, resulting in planned production cuts and job losses at one Fiat Chrysler Automobiles plant in Canada.
Bloomberg reports Fiat will cut production output at its minivan plant in Windsor, Ontario, beginning June 29. The wind-down of the factory will result in the loss of 1,500 jobs. The Italian-American automaker is phasing out the Dodge Grand Caravan by May. The plant will continue to build Chrysler Pacifica and Voyager minivans but at lower volumes.
“This decision comes as the company works to align volumes with demand,” Fiat Chrysler spokeswoman Jodi Tinson said in an emailed statement, adding that the company “will make every effort to place indefinitely laid-off hourly employees in open full-time positions as they become available based on seniority.”
Since 1983, the company produced 12 million minivans, turning out about a half-million per year since the early 1990s. Rising demand for minivans coincided with baby boomer family formations of the 1980/90s, and their great wealth creation from soaring home and stock prices allowed for large families and McMansions. However, everything changed when millennials started dominating the workforce in the last five years. Millennials are broke, plagued with insurmountable debts, delaying family formation and homebuying – so the need for a minivan to haul a family around has become obsolete.
Fiat slashed a production shift last September, and the latest comments from local union chief Dave Cassidy is that “We will not stop. We are going to do every damn thing we can to get everyone back to work!”
“We will Not stop
We are going to do every Damn thing we can to get everyone back to work!”Dave pic.twitter.com/6ZG6NJbUwU
— Local 444 Unifor (@LOCAL444UNIFOR) February 27, 2020
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Fiat has idled several North American plants on and off in the last several years, including the Windsor plant and a Jeep Cherokee plant in Belvidere, Illinois.
On top of waning consumer demand and shifts in tastes, the auto market worldwide has been diving into recession. We have covered, at length, the collapse of auto sales not only in the U.S. but in leading global markets like China and Europe for the last 20 months.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 02/28/2020 – 01:00 - What Is The Deep State?
What Is The Deep State?
A new focus on the Deep State in undermining the national interests has become a serious thought for many citizens. Not known to many, the Deep State has its origin in the British Empire and how the Round Table infiltrated former British colonies (including India) through America.
Last year, fuel was added to this fire when internal memos were leaked from the British-run Integrity Initiative featuring a startling account of the techniques deployed by the anti-Russian British operation to infiltrate American intelligence institutions, think tanks and media.
The Integrity Initiative
For those who may not know, The Integrity Initiative is an anti-Russian propaganda outfit funded to the tune of $140 million by the British Foreign office. Throughout 2019, leaks have been released featuring documents dated to the early period of Trump’s election, demonstrating that this organization, already active across Europe promoting anti-Russian PR and smearing nationalist leaders such as Jeremy Corbyn, was intent on spreading deeply into the State Department and setting up “clusters” of anti-Trump operatives. The documents reveal high level meetings that Integrity Initiative Director Chris Donnelly had with former Trump Advisor Sebastien Gorka, McCain Foundation director Kurt Volker, Pentagon PR guru John Rendon among many others.
The exposure of the British hand behind the scenes affords us a unique glimpse into the real historical forces undermining America’s true constitutional tradition throughout the 20th century, as Mueller/the Five Eyes/Integrity Initiative are not new phenomena but actually follow a modus operandi set down for already more than a century. One of the biggest obstacles to seeing this modus operandi run by the British Empire is located in the belief in a mythology which has become embedded in the global psyche for over half a century and which we should do our best to free ourselves of.
Myth of the “American Empire”
While there has been a long-standing narrative promoted for over 70 years that the British Empire disappeared after World War II having been replaced by the “American Empire”, it is the furthest thing from the truth. America, as constitutionally represented by its greatest presidents (who can unfortunately be identified by their early deaths while serving in office), were never colonialist and were always in favor of reining in British Institutions at home while fighting British colonial thinking abroad.
Franklin Roosevelt’s thirteen year-long battle with the Deep State, which he referred to as the “economic royalists who should have left America in 1776″, was defined in clear terms by his patriotic Vice-President Henry Wallace who warned of the emergence of a new Anglo-American fascism in 1944 when he said:
“Fascism in the postwar inevitably will push steadily for Anglo-Saxon imperialism and eventually for war with Russia. Already American fascists are talking and writing about this conflict and using it as an excuse for their internal hatreds and intolerances toward certain races, creeds and classes.”
The fact is that already in 1944, a policy of Anglo-Saxon imperialism had been promoted subversively by British-run think tanks known as the Round Table Movement and Fabian Society, and the seeds had already been laid for the anti-Russian cold war by those British-run American fascists. It is not a coincidence that this fascist Cold War policy was announced in a March 5, 1946 speech in Fulton, Missouri by none other than Round Table-follower and the butcher of Bengal, Winston Churchill.
The Round Table Movement
When the Round Table Movement was created with funds from the Rhodes Trust in 1902, a new plan was laid out to create a new technocratic elite to manage the re-emergence of the new British Empire and crush the emergence of nationalism globally. This organization would be staffed by generations of Rhodes Scholars who would receive their indoctrination in Oxford before being sent back to advance a “post-nation state” agenda in their respective countries.
As this agenda largely followed the mandate set out by Cecil Rhodes in his Seventh Will who said “Why should we not form a secret society with but one object: the furtherance of the British Empire and the bringing of the whole uncivilized world under British rule, for the recovery of the United States, and for the making of the Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire?”
Q: Is @ShashiTharoor serving the RETURN OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY ecosystem? His new boss is Shoaib Bajwa, son of British spy, and from same community as Pakistan’s General Bajwa head of military.https://t.co/f74pgkDfQU
— Rajiv Malhotra (@RajivMessage) November 30, 2019
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With the help of an anglophile, racist president in America, leading figures organizing these think tanks first advanced a program to create a “League of Nations” as the solution to the “nationalist problem” which humanity was told “caused” World War One. Nationalist forces in America rejected the idea that the constitution should be rendered obsolete and the plan for global governance failed. However that did not stop the Round Table Movement from trying again. Leading Round Table controller Lord Lothian (British Ambassador to the USA) complained of the “American problem” in 1918.
There is a fundamentally different concept in regard to this question between Great Britain and the United States as to the necessity of civilized control over politically backward peoples…. The inhabitants of Africa and parts of Asia have proved unable to govern themselves…. Yet America not only has no conception of this aspect of the problem but has been led to believe that the assumption of this kind of responsibility is iniquitous imperialism.
They take an attitude towards the problem of world government exactly analogous to the one they [earlier] took toward the problem of the world war. If they are slow in learning we shall be condemned to a period of strained relations between the various parts of the English-speaking world. [We must] get into the heads of Canadians and Americans that a share in the burden of world government is just as great and glorious a responsibility as participation in the war”.
A Chinese leader of the American-inspired republican revolution of 1911 named Sun Yat-sen warned of the likes of Lord Lothian and the League of Nations in 1924 when he said:
“The nations which are employing imperialism to conquer others and which are trying to maintain their own favored positions as sovereign lords of the whole world are advocating cosmopolitanism [aka: global governance/globalization -ed] and want the world to join them… Nationalism is that precious possession by which humanity maintains its existence. If nationalism decays, then when cosmopolitanism flourishes we will be unable to survive and will be eliminated”.
Council on Foreign Relations
By 1919, the Round Table Movement changed its name to the Royal Institute for International Affairs (aka: Chatham House) with the “Round Table” name relegated to its geopolitical periodical. In Canada and Australia, branches were created in 1928 under the rubrics of “Canadian and Australian Institutes for International Affairs” (CIIA, AIIA). However in America, where knowledge of the British Empire’s subversive role was more widely known, the name “American Institute for International Affairs” was still too delicate. Instead the name “Council on Foreign Relations” was chosen and was chartered in 1921.
Rhodes Scholar William Yandall Elliot surrounded by a few of his leading disciples: Sir Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski Samuel Huntington and Pierre Trudeau
Staffed with Rhodes Scholars and Fabians, the CFR (and its International Chatham House counterparts) dubbed themselves “independent think tanks” which interfaced with Rhodes Scholars and Fabians in academia, government and the private sector alike with the mission of advancing a foreign policy agenda that was in alignment with the British Empire’s dream of an Anglo-American “special relationship”. One such Rhodes Scholar was William Yandall Elliot, who played a major role mentoring Henry Kissinger and a generation of geo-politicians from Harvard, not the least of whom include Zbigniew Brzezinski, Pierre Elliot Trudeau and Samuel (Clash of Civilizations) Huntington.
Coup Against FDR
In Canada, five leading Rhodes Scholars were busy creating the League of Social Reconstruction as a self-described “Fabian Society of Canada” in 1931 which was meant to be a fascist/technocratic answer to the chaos of “greedy nationalism” that supposedly caused the economic collapse of Black Friday in 1929. During the same time in America, a different path to fascism was taken by these networks during the early 1930s. This plan involved installing a General named Smedley Butler into power as a puppet dictator steered by the Anglo-American establishment. Luckily for America and the world, General Butler blew the whistle on the coup against Franklin Roosevelt at the last minute.
Kissinger’s British Takeover of America
Though it took a few assassinations throughout the post war years, Kissinger’s takeover of the State Department ushered in a new era of British occupation of American foreign policy, whereby the republic increasingly became the “Dumb Giant” acting as “American Brawn for the British brains” using Churchill’s words. While a nihilistic generation of youth were tuning in on LSD, and an old guard of patriots surrounding Wallace and Kennedy had fallen to the “red scare” witch hunt, geopolitical theory was fed like a sweet poison down the throat of a sleeping nation, replacing a policy of peace and “win-win cooperation” advanced by true nationalist patriots as FDR, Wallace and the Kennedys, with an imperial clone masquerading as a republic.
Sir Kissinger did nothing less than reveal his total allegiance to the British Empire on May 10, 1981 during a Chatham House conference in Britain when he described his relationship with the British Foreign office in the following terms:
“The British were so matter-of-factly helpful that they became a participant in internal American deliberations, to a degree probably never practiced between sovereign nations… In my White House incarnation then, I kept the British Foreign Office better informed and more closely engaged than I did the American State Department… It was symptomatic”.
During this period, Kissinger worked closely with CIA director George Bush Senior, who was later rewarded for his role in advancing the British-planned first war on Kuwait with a knighthood. This war set the stage for the second wave of Middle East wars beginning with the Anglo-Saudi orchestrated operation known as 9/11 and the ushering in of the new “post-nation state order” by Kissinger and Blair.
This was the era which was celebrated by both Kissinger and Bush in sundry places as “the New World Order”.
CTD Advisors – Rebuilding British Empire of Modern Times
CTD Advisors is a UK-based advisory that with insider information from its highly-placed members aims to rebuild the British Empire of modern times. The firm is founded by the son of a Pakistani British spy and heavily infested with former British intelligence chiefs advocating foreign intervention in Kashmir.
CTD Advisors is full of spies decorated as the Commanders of the British Empire.
Isn’t providing “insider knowledge” for cracking business deals to former intelligence chiefs of a foreign country by serving member of Indian Parliament a conflict of interest, if not an economic offense and an act of #espionage?
Our exclusive report 》 https://t.co/7B6EhWZXiK pic.twitter.com/h84eIO7JJM
— GreatGameIndia (@GreatGameIndia) November 22, 2019
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Chris Nickols – a Retd Air Marshal in the Royal Air Force, whose final appointment was Chief of Defence Intelligence. Prior to that he served as Assistant Chief of the Defence Staff (Operations).
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Lord Stuart Polak is the last Commander of the British Empire at CTD Advisors. A British Conservative politician and member of the House of Lords, he is the Honorary President of the Conservative Friends of Israel Group and widely known as an Israeli lobbyist.
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Theresa Mary May the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is perhaps the most high-profile member of CTD Advisors. After graduating in 1977, May worked at the Bank of England and is a member of the Church of England. In 2003 May was appointment to the Privy Council of the United Kingdom.
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Sir Mark Lyall Grant awarded the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George before being promoted to Knight Commander (KCMG).
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Shoaib Bajwa, founder of CTD Advisors and the son of a Pakistani born British spy. In his obituary, Salim Nasir Bajwa, the father of Shoaib is said to have served in British security services for almost 10 years in 1950s and was engaged in multiple entrepreneurial activities in Pakistan and abroad during his life.
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Shashi Tharoor is a serving Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, since 2009 (Mr. Tharoor has in a tweet claimed that “this is premature. They’ve been in discussions about a consultancy role but no agreement has yet been signed.”)
In an interview to the London based Asian Voice, Shoaib explains the reason for founding CTD Advisors. He says, “Since the time of the Second World War, Britain has gradually lost influence in commonwealth states and the emerging markets. It has constricted itself by the EU and kept itself tied to that region.”
He says, “western businesses severely lack insider knowledge” and through his company, he “wants to help construct new economic corridors, from within places such as Nigeria to countries and continents that are as far flung as India and Asia. Essentially, rebuilding a “Global Britain” in modern times.”
General David Petraeus – Deep State Pointman in India
Operation Timber Sycamore
The Pentagon project Operation Timber Sycamore that spawned ISIS was the brainchild of former CIA Director General David Petraeus. It is now coordinated by the investment fund KKR, established by Henry Kravis and whose military activities are led by Petraeus.
Intervention in India
KKR where Petraeus sits as Chairman belongs to the equity partners who owns 80% stake in NXP Semiconductors who supplied chips for the Electronic Voting Machines in India – the integrity of which is being investigated by Indian agencies. Gen Petraus is also credited to have trained former United States National Security Advisor Herbert Raymond McMaster who is responsible for pulling India into the Anglo-American orbit as a “major defense partner” implemented through ‘Washington’s Man in New Delhi’.
Gen Petraeus is also the key in the ongoing plot for an Anglo-American base in #Kashmir under the trusteeship of the United Nations. The original policy drafted by Mountbatten himself. Read more here 》 Kashmir Conflict – An Anglo American Operation https://t.co/4wg0oUEKXF
— GreatGameIndia (@GreatGameIndia) September 12, 2019
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Deep State Airbase in Kashmir
Gen Petraeus is also the key player in the ongoing plot for an Anglo-American Airbase in Kashmir under the trusteeship of the United Nations – a policy drafted by Mountbatten himself. When asked about US intervention in Kashmir, then US Central Command Chief Gen Petraeus disclosed in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Kashmir: “Together with my great diplomatic wingman Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, this effort actually has started”.
As per intel with GreatGameIndia, Petraeus is the pointman for Deep State in India. In 2018, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and former CIA Director David Petraeus together formed strategies for the “dramatic transition of India in the New World Order” at a six-day Raisina Dialogue also attended by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Recently, a high-level conference was organized in London to chart our the strategies for this transition. Needless to say the key speaker for this UK-India Summit 2019 was Petraeus. The event is well known in intelligence circles to be organized by British intelligence.
It has been suggested that KKR had a role to play in Cafe Coffee Day founder V G Siddhartha’s death. But what is KKR? Who owns it? What has KKR to do with the CIA?
Here we chart a brief overview of the various covert operations of KKR in India.https://t.co/N9DYF436V8
— GreatGameIndia (@GreatGameIndia) September 14, 2019
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It were such meeting, albeit secret that took place in London in the late 90s where the blueprint for the return of East India Company was drafted. Called Vision 2020 the scheme was a brainchild of an American consultancy firm born out of US military, McKinsey and the Big Four. Fortunately the project was met with a lot of opposition and as a result was stopped in its tracks. Since then they have their eyes set on Kashmir now.
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Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/27/2020 – 23:45 -
- "Fundamentally Parasitic" – Reddit CEO Lashes Out At "Spyware" TikTok
“Fundamentally Parasitic” – Reddit CEO Lashes Out At “Spyware” TikTok
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman criticized the Chinese TikTok video app, describing it as a “parasitic” application at an event Wednesday, reported TechCrunch.
Huffman was speaking in front of a large group of tech entrepreneurs gathered at the “Social 2030” conference hosted by Lightspeed Venture Partners and former Facebook VP of Product Sam Lessin’s VC firm Slow Ventures.
“Maybe I’m going to regret this, but I can’t even get to that level of thinking with them,” Huffman said. “Because I look at that app as so fundamentally parasitic, that it’s always listening, the fingerprinting technology they use is truly terrifying, and I could not bring myself to install an app like that on my phone.”
“I actively tell people, ‘Don’t install that spyware on your phone,'” he said.
Huffman’s accuses the company and its Chinese parent company ByteDance of stealing sensitive user data.
A similar claim was made in a lawsuit filed in California federal court in December, accusing TikTok and ByteDance of stealing user data to sell targeted ads.
“TikTok’s lighthearted fun comes at a high cost,” according to the lawsuit.
As of November, the app had been downloaded more than 1.5 billion times across the world. The US government has been actively warning personnel from using the Chinese app.
The Navy and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) have been the latest agencies to ban the app, citing potential security risks.
Chuck Schumer and Tom Cotton recently penned a letter to the head of national security, asking for an investigation into the app as a counterintelligence risk.
The lawsuit also said the company had been secretly gathering biometric data on its users, including harvesting phone and social network contacts, location, IP addresses, email addresses, and other sensitive data.
Huffman’s critique of TikTok was part of a more extensive discussion at the conference on social media’s influence on society.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/27/2020 – 23:25 - Milwaukee Mass Shooter Is A Black Elizabeth Warren Supporter
Milwaukee Mass Shooter Is A Black Elizabeth Warren Supporter
Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,
The Milwaukee man who killed five co-workers at a beer company’s corporate office is a black Elizabeth Warren supporter, providing a clue as to why the mass shooting disappeared from the discussion so quickly.
51-year-old Anthony Ferrill showed up at the MillerCoors facility from where he had been fired earlier in the day wearing his uniform and carrying a silenced gun.
He proceeded to gun down five colleagues before turning the weapon on himself.
It subsequently emerged that Ferrill was an African-American Elizabeth Warren supporter (presuming that Ferrill shared the same political beliefs as his wife, who took a selfie with Warren at a rally last year).
The shooter was 51 year old Anthony Ferrill. His wife took selfies with you at a rally last year. This one is 100% on you, Liz. pic.twitter.com/Ko3BVQt8lZ
— Yim Yames (@yamesyim) February 27, 2020
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“Ferrill’s wife posted photos of her family and expressing liberal political views,” confirms Heavy.com. “In July 2019, Ferrill’s wife attended a speech by U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren at South Division High School Gym in Milwaukee. Following the speech, Ferrill’s wife took a photo with the Massachusetts senator.”
Despite being the worst mass shooting in Wisconsin’s history, the incident has largely disappeared from headlines and discussion, with online outrage noticeably dampened in comparison with other mass shootings.
“I hope it’s clear to everyone that if political capital can’t be made off a tragedy it will get memoryholed faster than the Jussie Smollett hoax,” commented one Twitter user.
I hope it’s clear to everyone that if political capital can’t be made off a tragedy it will get memoryholed faster than the Jussie Smollett hoax. https://t.co/3PJYCayOCF
— Orwell & Goode (@OrwellNGoode) February 27, 2020
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If the culprit had been white, one suspects the media and Democrat politicians would be talking about white supremacy and gun control all week, but they seem oddly reserved on this occasion.
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Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/27/2020 – 23:05 - Controversial NSA Phone Surveillance Program Led To Exactly Zero Arrests
Controversial NSA Phone Surveillance Program Led To Exactly Zero Arrests<p content="A National Security Agency (NSA) programme that analysed logs of phone calls and text messages made by Americans cost $100m and yielded one investigation and zero arrests from 2015 to 2019.” data-reactid=”16″ type=”text”>In yet more absurdity and confirmation that Edward Snowden was never an “enemy of the state” — as top intelligence officials and some congressional leaders have charged for years — it’s been revealed that the latest National Security Agency (NSA) program to analyze logs of phone calls and text messages made by Americans was an utter failure and waste, yielding exactly zero arrests from 2015 to 2019, despite having swept up some trillion US phone records.
<p content="A National Security Agency (NSA) programme that analysed logs of phone calls and text messages made by Americans cost $100m and yielded one investigation and zero arrests from 2015 to 2019.” data-reactid=”16″ type=”text”>It cost taxpayers $100 million and was reported to produce a mass amount of redundant information, revealing information that the FBI didn’t already know only twice, resulting in only one investigation which led to no charges. This according to a government watchdog group which briefed Congress last week on the matter, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB).
NSA headquarters, file photo. <p content="A National Security Agency (NSA) programme that analysed logs of phone calls and text messages made by Americans cost $100m and yielded one investigation and zero arrests from 2015 to 2019.” data-reactid=”16″ type=”text”>It was one among many broader controversial NSA programs to sweep up and analyze communications, which critics say routinely violate the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.
<p content="A National Security Agency (NSA) programme that analysed logs of phone calls and text messages made by Americans cost $100m and yielded one investigation and zero arrests from 2015 to 2019.” data-reactid=”16″ type=”text”>The NSA can still gather phone logs on Americans through other means of course, relying on other invasive programs, likely some of which still remain unknown and highly classified.
<p content="A National Security Agency (NSA) programme that analysed logs of phone calls and text messages made by Americans cost $100m and yielded one investigation and zero arrests from 2015 to 2019.” data-reactid=”16″ type=”text”>According to The Independent cited in Yahoo News:
<p content="The low success rate and high cost support the NSA’s decision to shut off the programme in 2019. Politicians must now decide whether to allow the expiration of the legislation that makes the programme possible. The USA Freedom Act of 2015 expires on March 15.” data-reactid=”18″ type=”text”>The low success rate and high cost support the NSA’s decision to shut off the program in 2019. Politicians must now decide whether to allow the expiration of the legislation that makes the program possible. The USA Freedom Act of 2015 expires on March 15.
The Trump administration is reportedly seeking to extend the life of the program, in order to provide the government’s top signals intelligence spy agency with a future option to initiate the program if deemed necessary.
Important new report on the NSA program that gathered on the order of a trillion US phone records. https://t.co/5frRQoeTOO
— Barton Gellman (@bartongellman) February 25, 2020
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The report in The Independent further said “The 2015 Act shifted responsibility for data collection from the government to telecommunications companies.”
The end result of this practice, alarmingly, was that “In some cases they would send the agency more data than they were legally allowed to collect.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/27/2020 – 22:45 - Bernie Sanders Is Funded By The Wealthiest Zip Codes In America
Bernie Sanders Is Funded By The Wealthiest Zip Codes In America
Authored by Daniel Greenfield via FrontPageMag.com,
In Los Angeles, it’s not unusual to see a Beemer streak by with a Bernie 2020 sticker on the back bumper. There’s no such thing as a poor socialist and Bernie’s backers tend to have lots of cash.
While Bernie Sanders accuses Bloomberg of trying to buy his way to the nomination, the socialist bought his surge with $50 million in spending. He raised $25 million just in January. There’s more buying to do.
And while he boasts of backing from small donors, the wealth of his donors is anything but small.
Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. Their employees are three of the top 4 Bernie donors. Apple is in fifth place. These dot coms are not exactly organizations known to employ members of the proletariat. Google software engineers have sent thousands of dollars, individually, to Bernie.
Google’s senior engineers, like the ones who have backed Bernie, make $250,000 a year.
Geographically, Bernie’s top dollar zip code is 94110 in San Francisco. The average household income in this part of the Mission District, specifically the Inner Mission, the Bernal Heights area, is $166,302. The median home value is around $1.5 million and the median rent is almost $5,000 a month.
There are no poor socialists in what was dubbed as “the hottest neighborhood in San Francisco.”
This was the area that Salon founder David Talbot blasted as the “hottest zip code in the country” overrun by “Silicon Valley movers and shakers” in “new-model Teslas, BMWs and Uber limousines”. It’s only fitting that it should also be the spigot through which so much of Bernie’s tech bros dollars flow.
The second top dollar Bernie zip code in San Francisco, 94117 or Haight-Ashbury, seems like a better fit for Bernie. But the Summer of Love has long since given way to the Winter of Trust Fund Hipsters in the Haight where the average income is $201,503 and average home values top $1.6 million.
The media has made much of Bernie’s flow of donations from Brooklyn. But the money isn’t coming from the working-class Brooklynites of Bernie’s old neighborhood, but the gentrifying areas of the borough. 11215 or Park Slope is the second biggest top dollar zip code of Bernie donors.
The neighborhood, formerly urban, known as the home of Mayor Bill de Blasio, and the Park Slope Food Co-Op and its anti-Semitic push to boycott Israel, is filled with renovated brownstones filled with wealthy hipsters. It’s a place where a three-bedroom apartment can go for $2.9 million.
To New Yorkers, Park Slope has become a curse word embodying everything wrong with the new elite.
In third place on Bernie’s donor list is 10025 or the Upper West Side of Manhattan. With an average rental price of $4,695, it’s not exactly an inexpensive place to live. The UWS is the 8th richest neighborhood with a $190,281 mean household income. And this is where Bernie’s cash comes from.
11238 or Prospect Heights, in fourth place, is a newly gentrified neighborhood in Brooklyn where the median sales price passed $1 million, and you can expect to spend $800,000 for a one-bedroom co-op. The formerly urban neighborhood has been colonized by wealthy hipsters from Park Slope, and much of what goes for Park Slope also goes for Prospect Heights. They’re the gentrifiers funding Bernie Sanders.
In fifth place is 98103, the Seattle neighborhood of Wallingford. With an average household income of $124,504, the University of Washington neighborhood with its $800,000 homes isn’t working class. Among the cheapest housing options is a $400,000 one-bedroom condo that’s a mere 757 square feet. The area is so expensive because it’s home to tech employees, including Microsoft engineers.
Microsoft employees are among Bernie’s top dollar donors.
And in seventh place is 90026. The Echo Park neighborhood in Los Angeles is a hipster haven which boasts the most expensive pizza in the city where the median price for housing is $813,000, and rents can hit $6,700 a month. Like Park Slope and Haight-Ashbury, Echo Park is full of wealthy hipsters.
That’s Bernie’s core demographic.
In eight place is the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago at zip code 60647. Logan Square is among the most expensive neighborhoods in the Windy City. A condo will set you back over half a million dollars. The rush got so bad that a garage transformed into a home was going for $2.85 million. With its hipster bars and a farmers market, it’s the perfect area for Bernie’s upscale and trendy base.
Ninth and tenth on the list of Bernie’s money neighborhoods are two expensive Manhattan areas.
10003, Union Square and Greenwich Village in downtown Manhattan, is home to NYU, once a hive of angry radicals, now stuffed full of luxury co-ops with wealthy radicals, where condos cost millions of dollars. Greenwich Village has been listed as the ninth most expensive neighborhood in New York City. So, it’s only fitting that it’s the ninth on the list of areas funding the Sanders 2020 presidential campaign.
In tenth place is 10011 or Chelsea and the West Village of Manhattan. It’s also the single most expensive zip code in New York City. Not only is it the most expensive area in New York, but it’s the 23rd most expensive area in the country with a median sale price approaching $2 million. And with average monthly rents of over $4,000, it’s the 19th most expensive rental area in the entire United States.
It’s also home to New York’s Silicon Alley, the city’s tech industry ghetto of dot com and fintech startups.
What do Bernie’s top donor zip codes have in common? Beyond wealth, Bernie’s cash flow is coming from a handful of very blue cities, almost all of them in California and New York City. Only two of the top ten zip codes are located outside San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City. That alone conveys the insular and unrepresentative nature of Bernie’s funding base compared to the rest of the country.
Bernie’s campaign is powered by the very concentrations of power and wealth that he condemns.
The unrepresentative nature of Bernie’s backers isn’t just a matter of geography, but of culture. Some of Bernie’s top dollar zip codes overlap with the tech industry. His candidacy represents another example of how the tech industry has not only distorted our economy, but also warped our politics.
Much of Bernie’s money comes from hipster hubs where wealthy young white people in major urban areas have made old neighborhoods, including Bernie’s Brooklyn, unaffordable to the working class and middle-class people who once used to live there. Bernie’s donors, especially in places like Prospect Heights and Echo Park have also played a significant role in displacing minorities and the poor.
Follow Bernie’s money and it’s easy to see his campaign for the hypocritical farce that it is.
Tech industry bros and trust fund hipsters are buying the nomination for Bernie, while displacing minority candidates, the way they bought up brownstones in Brooklyn and displaced black people.
He’s the candidate of class warfare, not on behalf of the poor, but of young wealthy people seeking more power and influence at the expense of the more established wealth of an older generation. It’s tech industry bros warring for influence with fossil fuel titans, not for the poor, but for themselves.
Bernie’s base is much less than 1%. Call it the 0.001%. A wealthy and influential young lefty elite with disproportionate influence over the internet is setting the nation’s agenda using digital media, tech dominance, and the Weekend at Bernie’s campaign of a senile socialist who barely knows where he is and won’t release his medical records after a heart attack because they will show he’s barely there.
“Not me. Us.”
That’s Bernie’s slogan. It’s true, just not how people are meant to perceive it. Bernie is little more than a puppet of the campaign pros who made him a household name in 2016 and are trying to make him more than that now. The “Us” are not Americans or even Democrats. It’s the elites of these zip codes.
0.001% of the country is using a confused elderly socialist as a proxy for imposing their will on America.
The 2020 election will be a test of wills between Americans and the 0.001% living in Park Slope, Echo Park, the Mission District, and Haight-Ashbury. After eight years of hipster rule under Obama, is the country ready to bow its heads and let a handful of wealthy young radicals run their lives again?
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/27/2020 – 22:25 - CDC Suggests Men Shave Their Beards To Protect Against Covid-19
CDC Suggests Men Shave Their Beards To Protect Against Covid-19
The rapid spread of Covid-19 across the world has prompted federal health officials this week to warn Americans that an outbreak could be imminent.
When it comes to preparing for a health crisis, good hygiene practices are needed to limit the transmission of the virus, such as mask-wearing and regularly sanitizing hands.
Nancy Messonnier, the director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said earlier this week that the virus is rapidly evolving and expanding, it’s only a matter of time before confirmed cases in the US start increasing.
Additionally, HHS Secretary Alex Azar told the Senate this week that the Trump administration is seeking upwards of $2.5 billion to stock up on masks, ventilators, and other virus-fighting tools.
About 30 million N95 masks are stockpiled, but another 300 million more are needed for healthcare workers, Azar said.
A 2017 workplace safety infographic compiled by the CDC has been circulating social media in recent days, outlining the wearer of the mask must shave beards and mustaches for a tight fit.
Any facial hair within the respirator should be fine, but “full beard,” “chin curtain,” “mutton chops,” and “extended goatee,” to name a few, are not permitted for a properly functioning mask, and must be shaved off if the wearer wants to survive a virus crisis. “Soul patch,” “pencil,” and “zorro” are mustaches that work.
For those who want to keep their mustaches but continue to wear protective gear to shield against the virus, you might have to spend a few bucks. We outlined last week that Ao Air’s Atmos Faceware is the next generation of masks to block germs up to 50 times better than traditional masks currently on the market.
The company commissioned its own study (note: the research isn’t published nor peer-reviewed) describes how Atmos Faceware is a much better solution against particulate matter than standard air filter mask certified by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
Ao Air claims Atmos Faceware is unlike traditional face masks because it doesn’t require an airtight seal to be effective, which means the wearer doesn’t have to shave.
The high-tech mask costs between $350 to $400 and could be a hot commodity among the hipster crowd, who want to keep their “van dyke” or “dali” mustaches during a possible pandemic.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/27/2020 – 22:05 - We Just Experienced The Fastest 10% Correction In S&P500 History
We Just Experienced The Fastest 10% Correction In S&P500 History
If only there were signs that the market was poised for a crash. Oh wait, there were, like the market being the most overbought and complacent ever, with every investor all-in as recently as last month:
… only to become even more overbought and even more complacent, with investors even more all-in…
… with record leverage and unprecedented “smart money” concentration in the same handful of stocks:
… and since nothing could dent the relentless Nasdaq ascent, even as Apple cut guidance due to the coronavirus…
… retail investors unleashed a never-before seen buying spree, and not just momentum stocks, but calls of momentum stocks…
… to the point where retail investors’ record levered beta helped them outperform the entire hedge fund class!
… and ushered in the “Profane, Greedy Traders of Reddit” who “Are Shaking Up the Stock Market” even as US consumers just reported the highest median current value of their market investments.
In short, everyone felt invincible, and all thanks to the Fed’s QE4 which injected $600BN in the market and made even a modest drop appear impossible.
Only… it was not meant to last, and in a market that took the express elevator up and the Wile-E Coyote anvil down, less than a week after markets hit an all time high, stocks crashed, suffering three 3%+ drops in the past week as algos suddenly realized that not even the Fed can print viral antibodies, resulting in the biggest one-day Dow Jones point drop on record (down 1,191 on “Viral Thursday”), but more importantly, the fastest 10% correction from an all-time Dow Jones high since just a few months before the start of the Great Depression.
What about S&P? Well, since that particular index wasn’t around at the time of the Great Depression, one has to look elsewhere, which is what Deutsche Bank’s Torsten Slok has done, and as he shows in the next slide, the outcome is just as stark: with just 6 trading days passing between last week’s the all-time S&P500 high and today’s 10% correction, this was the fastest correction from a peak on record.
This means that in under six trading sessions, the US stock market lost half of its massive (mostly post-QE4) gains from all of last year.
Even more amazing, is that in under a week the S&P has lost a third of all its peak gains (which hit 62% last week) since the Trump election!
The only question now is what will Trump do – besides more jawboning that the US is extremely well prepared for “whatever this thing is” – to prevent even more furious losses in the market, culminating with the fastest bear market in history.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/27/2020 – 21:45 - "Worst Thing In My Career" – US Stocks Suffer Fastest Collapse From Record Highs Since Great Depression
“Worst Thing In My Career” – US Stocks Suffer Fastest Collapse From Record Highs Since Great Depression
This didn’t age well…
Highest Stock Market In History, By Far!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 19, 2020
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A sea of red…
The Dow has collapsed from a record high into ‘correction’ in the space of just six days. As we detailed earlier, this is the fastest collapse from an all-time peak since 1928, just ahead of The Great Depression:
Source: Bloomberg
As Guggenheim’s Scott Minerd declared on Bloomberg TV:
“…this is possibly the worst thing I have seen in my career… it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which you can contain the virus threat,” adding that “Europe and China are probably already in recession and US GDP will take a 1.5-2.0% hit.”
“The stock market could be down 15-20%… and would likely force The Fed’s hand.”
Guggenheim’s Scott Minerd says the coronavirus crisis is possibly the worst thing he’s ever seen in his career: “This has the potential to reel into something extremely serious” pic.twitter.com/xLhhNm3u7t
— Bloomberg TV (@BloombergTV) February 27, 2020
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Investors are piling into safe-havens (bonds and bullion) as they dump stocks…
Source: Bloomberg
Still, could be worse…
The market is already demanding 3 rate-cuts this year…
Source: Bloomberg
With the odds of an emergency cut in March soaring…
Source: Bloomberg
And, stocks have erased most of the ‘NotQE’/Repo liquidty bailout gains…
Source: Bloomberg
From the turn down last Wednesday, all the major stock indices are in correction territory, down over 10%…
The Dow was down over 12% from its highs at the lows of the day today…
Source: Bloomberg
Today was the biggest single-day point drop in Dow history…
Source: Bloomberg
Today’s price action was stunning. Weakness overnight extended lower after the open, then a massive ramp higher (pushing Trannies and Small Caps briefly green), before it all fell apart again…
Dow futures show the action best – Futures were down almost 1000 points, extending the overnight losses through the open, that was followed by a quick 800 point ramp – which failed to take out overnight highs – and then faded back towards the lows into the close…Dow 26k seemed the Maginot Line…
S&P closed below 3,000…
Source: Bloomberg
…and broke below its 200DMA (as did the Dow and Russell 2000), Nasdaq closed below its 100DMA…
FANG Stocks have lost $350 billion in market cap in the last 6 days…
Source: Bloomberg
Bank stocks continue to bloodbath…
Source: Bloomberg
Airlines staged an epic comeback today after crashing at the open, but faded lower into the close to end red…
Source: Bloomberg
Why is everyone so surprised at the drop in the Dow, when earnings expectations have already plummeted…
Source: Bloomberg
VIX topped 36 intraday, dipped a little, then ramped back to 34 in the last hour…
VIX is also catching up to the outlook suggested by the collapsing yield curve…
Source: Bloomberg
Credit markets are crashing wider in cash and derivatives…
Source: Bloomberg
And rather stunningly, XOM’s dividend yield has exploded to its highest since Feb 1986 (as the stock price crashes)…
Source: Bloomberg
Before we move on to bonds, this is utterly insane!!! China is now dramatically outperforming US and EU stocks since the start of the virus headlines…
Source: Bloomberg
Today’s two hour panic-buying stocks, panic-selling bonds effort looked a lot like pension-rebalancing…
Source: Bloomberg
Lots of volatility in bond land today with yields crashing overnight to fresh lows, ramping back to unch after the US cash equity open, then falling back towards the record lows (down 4-5bps across the curve on the day)…
Source: Bloomberg
30Y Yields fell to a 1.74% handle!
Source: Bloomberg
The dollar tumbled today to one-week lows…
Source: Bloomberg
Cryptos bounced back today after an ugly week…
Source: Bloomberg
Gold and copper were flat today as silver and crude tumbled…
Source: Bloomberg
WTI collapsed today to a $45 handle, down a stunning 30% from the early January spike highs on Iran missile strikes…
Source: Bloomberg
And as oil prices crash, Energy credit markets are collapsing – HY Energy OAS at widest since April 2016…
Source: Bloomberg
Finally, gold was flat today as the odds of a Bernie nomination slipped modestly… but that correlation is quite stunning…
Source: Bloomberg
Partying like its the end of 1999…
Source: Bloomberg
We’re gonna need more liquidity…
Source: Bloomberg
Somebody’s got to get their boot back on the throat of global financial market volatility…
Source: Bloomberg
Seemed like the right time to bring out the deer!!
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/27/2020 – 21:35 - Bank Of America: "Nowhere To Hide"
Bank Of America: “Nowhere To Hide”
It’s not just the markets that are in freefall, so are
crushedrevised estimates of global economic growth.Overnight Bank of America has taken the axe to its GDP growth forecasts, and in a note titled “Nowhere to Hide”, the bank’s chief economist Ethan Harris, writes that “we have taken another slice out of our 2020 global GDP forecast. The downward revisions are broad based, and we now expect just 2.8% global growth this year (Table 1). This would be the first sub-3% print since the financial crisis.“
Explaining why it’s “Gloom but not doom”, Harris writes that last month he cut his 2020 China growth forecast from 5.8% to 5.6%, “but left other major economies unchanged on the expectation of a brief and contained disruption. Our previous base case now looks increasingly like a best-case scenario.” However, with the V-shaped recovery no longer looking realistic, BofA’s new forecasts “account for a more “U-shaped” growth recovery, and a greater permanent loss in output.”
Explaining further, BofA writes that the weakness in the global economy is being driven by three factors.
- The first is the lack of momentum going into the year. When we published our year-ahead report last November, we were calling for just 3.2% global growth, which was already well below trend, in our view. Since then 4Q GDP came in even weaker than expected, suggesting that trade and tech war uncertainty remained a headwind for global growth.
- The second factor, of course, is China’s aggressive response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Economic disruptions have lasted for more than a month and many migrant workers are yet to return to work, leaving factories unable to operate at full capacity. As a result we have cut our China forecast again. We expect roughly zero sequential growth in 1Q, and a more delayed recovery, pushing 2020 growth down to 5.2%.
- Last, we are now looking for large spillover effects. Extended disruptions in China should hurt global supply chains. Weak tourist flows will be another headwind for Asia. And limited outbreaks, similar to the one in Italy, are possible in many countries, leading to more quarantines and weighing on confidence. Therefore we have cut our forecasts across the board. We project just 2.2% growth outside China, also the lowest rate since 2009.
Not surprisingly, Harris cautions that “while the distribution of risks around our forecasts is now more balanced, we think the risks are still skewed to the downside.” The reason for that, is that his forecasts “do not incorporate a global pandemic that would basically shut down economic activity in many major cities. Accordingly, we are also not calling for a global recession (i.e., sub-2% global growth).” In other words, BofA’s global recession forecast will depend on whether China can reboot its economy, something it has been scrambling to do by fabricating low infection numbers and manipulating its Coronavirus statistics.
The risk, of course, is that in its panicked scramble to restart the economy, Beijing launches a second wave of infections, destroys what little confidence the people have in the communist party, and terminally cripples its – and the global – economy.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/27/2020 – 21:25 - Is It Racist? NYPost Journalist Busted Mocking Indian Reporter During White House Presser
Is It Racist? NYPost Journalist Busted Mocking Indian Reporter During White House Presser
Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,
A New York Post journalist who once wrote about casual racism being widespread was caught on camera mocking an Indian reporter behind his back during a White House press conference.
The clip shows Ebony Bowden pulling strange faces and asking another journalist sat next to her “who is this guy?” as the Indian expresses his best wishes that the Trump administration will “keep America safe” from coronavirus.
Bowden then appears to look at another journalist to her right and bursts out in laughter before shaking her head.
Who is that reporter in the green mocking an Indian reporter? I bet she thinks Trump is racist. pic.twitter.com/YtGv32XOUe
— Damon imani (@damonimani) February 27, 2020
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She then scowls as if trying to understand the Indian reporter’s accent before raising her eyebrow.
The Twitter user who posted the video remarked, “Who is that reporter in the green mocking an Indian reporter? I bet she thinks Trump is racist..”
He then posted a link to an article Bowden had written in which she asserts that “casual racism” is “widespread” in Australia.
She has written an article on ‘casual racism’. Her own words.https://t.co/2Po0sXnZcl
— Damon imani (@damonimani) February 27, 2020
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The Indian reporter in question, Raghubir Goyal, has been a White House reporter since the days of President Carter, so it’s unlikely that Bowden hasn’t seen or heard him before.
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/27/2020 – 21:05 - It Begins: Hawaii Stores Empty Out On Coronavirus "Panic Buying"
It Begins: Hawaii Stores Empty Out On Coronavirus “Panic Buying”
Hawaii is urging residents to prepare for a potential breakout of Covid-19 amid new warnings earlier this week from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that the deadly virus quickly spreading across the world could cause a “significant disruption” to American life.
Although there are no confirmed virus cases in Hawaii (the state Health Department says 80 people are self-monitoring for the coronavirus in Hawaii after recent travel to China), the CDC’s warning sparked a buying frenzy among residents this week as they emptied store shelves of food and supplies.
Twitter handle @zoeywoeyzoey said, “Hawaii Sam’s club is sold out of toilet paper hand sanitizer alcohol.”
Hawaii Sam’s club is sold out of toilet paper hand sanitizer alcohol pic.twitter.com/07f94Tx5BS
— Zoey has crazzzyyy eyes 💞 (@zoeywoeyzoey) February 26, 2020
KHON Honolulu said flatbed carts “were overflowing with boxes of canned goods, bottled water, toilet paper, and paper towels” at Costco’s Iwilei location.
“The essentials toilet paper, paper towels, bottles of water, soap, a lot of Clorox stuff, cleaning supplies… I figure with all the coronavirus scare and everything, it’s better to be safe than sorry,” said Honolulu resident Keane Zakimi.
Hawaii Foodbank told KHON that residents are panic buying non-perishable foods and medical masks. They said the same fear that is seen in Asia has now spread to Hawaii.
“If there’s no inventory at the store, then there’s very little for stores to donate to the Foodbank and also at home if you’re stocking up and hoarding for your family, the last thing you’re thinking about is making a donation. It impacts us in a very great way,” said Hawaii Foodbank President Ron Mizutani.
Honolulu Star-Advertiser said retailers across the state are experiencing shortages of 3M N95 masks. We noted last month that masks were selling out across the US. Prices of the masks have doubled or tripled since mid-January.
It’s only a matter of time before a virus case is confirmed in the state, and this could lead to an epic bust of its top industry: tourism, resulting in a recession for the island economy.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/27/2020 – 20:45 - Retail Investors Just Got Nuked: Here Are The Stocks They Are Puking
Retail Investors Just Got Nuked: Here Are The Stocks They Are Puking
Stocks typically take the escalator up and elevator down. However, over the past three months, it seemed the most popular retail stocks were taking the express elevator to the top floor (in part thanks to a record surge in call buying among a certain group of reddit “investors”).
As a result, just this weekend we observed that in this “bizarro market”, retail investors had managed to outperform hedge funds YTD, a divergence which we said we “doubt divergence will last long”.
We didn’t have long to wait, and with stocks now skipping the elevator altogether and going the gravitational freefall route and crashing back to earth with the Dow entering the fastest correction from an all time high since just months before the Great Depression…
… the Goldman Sachs Retail Favorite basket, after returning more than 16% YTD just last week, is now down for the year (curiously, it is still outperforming the GS Hedge Fund VIP basket which as of this morning is down more than 3% in 2020.)
And while we pointed out that retail momo darling Tesla has gotten crushed, it’s just one of the 50 or so retail favorite stocks that make up the Goldman basket. So for those wondering which stocks they should short if this is indeed the long-awaited retail capitulation, the answer is below: these are all the 50 stocks that make up the Goldman Retail Favorites list.
Meanwhile, a quick look at the r/wallstreetbets forum on reddit, where the world’s biggest momentum chasers have now gathered (even making it to Bloomberg in the process), and where a lot of millennials got very rich, very fast, well… they are probably not quite as rich any more.
WE CROSS LIVE TO REDDIT: https://t.co/yzcF5z0YxU pic.twitter.com/7kHACr52Hs
— RANsquawk (@RANsquawk) February 27, 2020
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/27/2020 – 20:44 - The 2020 Democratic Primary Is Already The Most Expensive In History
The 2020 Democratic Primary Is Already The Most Expensive In History
Authored by Karl Evers-Hillstrom via OpenSecrets.org
With only a sprinkling of delegates pledged to presidential contenders, the 2020 Democratic primary is already the most expensive. Candidates vying for the Democratic nomination have spent more than $1.2 billion, more than they shelled out throughout 2008 or 2016.
At this point in the highly competitive 2008 Democratic primary, candidates spent a combined $313 million, or $382 million when adjusting for inflation. The 2020 primary is roughly six times more expensive than the 2016 race was at this point in the cycle.
Source: Ethan Miller/Getty Images Two billionaires, Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, are driving the spending record by self-funding their campaigns at unprecedented levels. They account for more than half of the total spending by primary candidates. But even when excluding the two billionaires, the 2020 Democratic primary is still the most expensive of its kind at this point in the cycle.
The 2020 primary includes more competitive candidates than previous races, and those candidates are unwilling to drop out of the race before Super Tuesday. That comes as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) increasingly becomes the favorite to win the nomination while the more moderate candidates split votes.
Bloomberg, who based his expensive strategy around Super Tuesday, has urged his primary opponents to drop out or risk giving Sanders the nomination. The 2020 Democrats didn’t go along with that plan. Instead, they told Bloomberg to drop out.
That stubbornness is driving up campaign spending. And it’s one aspect that separates the 2020 race from past contests. In 2008, the primary featured two fundraising giants, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and well-funded contenders like Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. However, each of those low-polling candidates ended their campaigns before Super Tuesday.
This time around, the Democratic candidates trailing Sanders still believe they can win despite facing odds that become less favorable with each primary result. Former Vice President Joe Biden says his campaign will rebound with a win in South Carolina. Former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg launched a massive Super Tuesday fundraising push last week. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) embraced a super PAC that is supporting her cash-poor campaign ahead of the March contest.
Six Democratic candidates spent north of $60 million through January, according to the most recent filings. Meanwhile, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), a late riser in the field, spent nearly $31 million.
At its peak last year, the Democratic field included two dozen candidates, each of whom were focused on earning a spot in national debates. The Democratic National Committee required candidates to reach polling and individual donor thresholds to participate in the debates. Those rules forced candidates to spend big on social media advertisements and email lists to attract small-dollar donors, even though they were sure to lose money on those transactions. Steyer spent millions of dollars on Facebook ads that urged users to give just $1.
Sources: Metrocosm, Federal Election Commission, New York Magazine The DNC scrapped those rules late last month in exchange for stricter polling thresholds and guaranteed spots for those who had already won delegates. That opened the door for Bloomberg — a recent six-figure donor to the committee — to make the debates. The decision was criticized by current and former candidates who had crafted their strategy around the DNC rules. Bloomberg’s campaign, which is entirely funded by the New York billionaire himself, is spending $6 million per day.
Still, it’s the third highest spender in the race who has the best shot at the Democratic nomination. With his dominant win in Nevada, Sanders secured his third popular vote victory in three contests. Sanders’ fundraising haul of $133 million is on par with Hillary Clinton’s $130 million total at this point in 2016, and he has nearly $17 million cash on hand compared to $19 million combined for the rest of the non-billionaires.
Researcher Doug Weber contributed to this report.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/27/2020 – 20:25 - 2 California Community College Students Exposed To Mystery Coronavirus Patient; S.Korea Nears 1,000 New Cases In 48 Hours: Live Updates
2 California Community College Students Exposed To Mystery Coronavirus Patient; S.Korea Nears 1,000 New Cases In 48 Hours: Live Updates
Summary:
- Nigeria confirms first case
- South Korea reports 256 new cases
- WHO says outbreak in Iran likely worse than official numbers suggest; outbreak could go in “any direction”
- Cali monitoring 8400, 28 cases in the state
- China reports 327 new cases and 44 new deaths on Thursday
- Dozens of hospital staffers who treated US coronavirus patient with ‘unknown’ origin being ‘monitored’
- Facebook cancels annual ‘F8′ developers’ conference
- 700 in New York asked to ‘self-isolate’
- Iran confirms 26 deaths, vice president for women and family affairs infected
- The Netherlands has confirmed its first case
- Northern Ireland confirms first case
- Norway confirms three new cases
- Germany confirms 14 new cases
- Lagarde: Not yet time for ECB to intervene to fight economic backlash of outbreak
- HHS says risk to public remains “low”
- Italy reports 3 more deaths, bringing total to 17; total cases hit 650
- Pence, Azar appoint Mnuchin, Kudlow & Surgeon General Adams to Coronavirus Task Force
- Starbucks says it has reopened 85% of Chinese restaurants
- Azar: Sonoma case might be ‘community transmission’
- Salvini meets with Italian president amid national unity government speculation
- South Korean new cases surpass China’s new cases as SK confirms 505 new cases
- China, Japan close school nationwide
- CDC fears ‘community outbreak’ in Sonoma County after discovering first US case of “unknown origin”
- CDC says patient from Solano county
- Saudi Arabia suspends pilgrimages to Holy Sites
- Hawaiian Airlines suspends service to South Korea
- Brazil’s neighbors take steps to keep virus out
* * *
Update (2008): South Korea reported 256 newly confirmed cases in its first update of the day on Friday (this week, health officials have been updating the count every 12 hours or so). The new batch brings the small East Asian country’s total to 2,022, and also puts South Korea on track to confirm more than 1,000 new cases in 48 hours.
There have been a flurry of other interesting developments in the global coronavirus outbreak over the last hour or so:
-Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa with 200M people and a population density of 212.04 individuals per sq km, has confirmed its first coronavirus case.
-Following the hysteria in California, Hawaii health officials said they will ‘soon’ begin testing for the virus, and the state already has 80 people on ‘self-monitoring’
-Obama’s Ebola Czar has lashed out at the Trump administration following an unflattering NYT story
I was the WH Ebola Response Coordinator in 2014-15. We never told @CDCgov or @NIH what they could say, or ever censored their medical statements. If the WH is doing that now, it is a danger to public health. https://t.co/uVikNASztD
— Ronald Klain (@RonaldKlain) February 27, 2020
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On another note: Check out the front page of “The Australian”, the Murdoch-controlled broadsheet that is Australia’s only nationally distributed general-interest newspaper:
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Update (1945): Japanese Health Minister Katsunobu Kato said Friday morning in Tokyo that he wouldn’t rule out the possibility that that the schools might be shut down longer than 1-2 weeks, as the government presently hopes. He said it will depend on developments with the outbreak.
* * *
Update (1915T): Fox 40 Sacramento is reporting that students at two Los Rios community colleges briefly came into contact with the 60th American coronavirus patient – the one whose case might be the first harbinger of a “community outbreak” inside the US.
According to a statement from the Los Rios Community College District, two students – one who attends American River College and one who attends Cosumnes River College – both came into contact with the patient in their roles as ‘medical professionals’.
The exposure happened last week.
Sacramento County’s public health department said there doesn’t appear to be a risk of potential exposure. Both students were told to self-quarantine.
The school has no plans to cancel classes.
Please see the graphic below for a statement from the @LosRiosColleges regarding coronavirus (COVID-19). If anyone has any questions the coronavirus, they should visit the Sacramento County Department of Health Services’ website: https://t.co/CPaYQQPWs9 pic.twitter.com/6kXxK2APW0
— Los Rios Colleges (@LosRiosColleges) February 27, 2020
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The health & safety of our students, faculty & staff is paramount. Upon confirmation today that two students were exposed off-campus to an individual who has since tested positive for the coronavirus, we quickly communicated to the entire district.
— Los Rios Colleges (@LosRiosColleges) February 27, 2020
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We understand that there is great uncertainty & concern among the community. We are taking all appropriate measures & following guidance of @CAPublicHealth & county agencies. We do not plan to cancel classes or suspend operations at this time.
— Los Rios Colleges (@LosRiosColleges) February 27, 2020
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Sure, the schools may not have cancelled classes. But they can’t force the students to attend, either.
* * *
Update (1900ET): Chinese health officials have released the latest numbers, and once again, demonstrated a sharp drop. Once again, it appears the latest number of new cases – 327 for the whole country – is the lowest daily report since the crisis began. Notably, officials only reported 14 new cases outside of Wuhan.
- MAINLAND CHINA REPORTS 327 NEW CONFIRMED CASES OF CORONAVIRUS ON FEB 27 VS 433 ON FEB 26
- CHINA’S HUBEI PROVINCE, EPICENTRE OF CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK, REPORTS 318 NEW CASES ON FEB 27 VS 409 ON FEB 26
- MAINLAND CHINA’S TOTAL NUMBER OF CONFIRMED CORONAVIRUS CASES HITS 78,824 AS OF END-FEB 27
- CHINA’S HUBEI PROVINCE, EPICENTRE OF CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK, REPORTS 41 NEW DEATHS ON FEB 27 VS 26 ON FEB 26
- MAINLAND CHINA’S TOTAL NUMBER OF CORONAVIRUS DEATHS REACHES 2,788 AS OF END-FEB 27
- DEATH TOLL FROM CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK IN CHINA’S HUBEI AT 2,682 AS OF END-FEB 27
Here’s the NHC press release, translated via Google:
At 04:00 on February 27, 31 provinces (autonomous regions, municipalities) and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps reported 327 new confirmed cases and 44 new deaths (41 in Hubei, 2 in Beijing, and Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps 1 Cases), newly added 452 suspected cases.
On the same day, 3,622 cases of discharged patients were cured, 10,525 close contacts were released from medical observation, and 394 severe cases were reduced.
As of 24:00 on February 27, according to reports from 31 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, there were 39,919 confirmed cases (among which 7,952 were severe cases), 36,117 cases were discharged from the hospital, and 2,788 were dead cases A total of 78824 confirmed cases were reported, and 2308 suspected cases were reported. A total of 656,054 close contacts were traced, and 65,225 close contacts were still in medical observation.
There were 318 newly confirmed cases in Hubei (313 in Wuhan), 3203 cases of cured discharges (2498 in Wuhan), 41 deaths (28 in Wuhan), and 36,829 confirmed cases (30,179 in Wuhan). Among them, 7633 cases were severe cases (6775 cases in Wuhan). A total of 26403 discharged patients were cured (15826 in Wuhan), a total of 2682 deaths (2132 in Wuhan), and 65914 confirmed cases (48137 in Wuhan). There were 332 new suspected cases (295 in Wuhan) and 1989 suspected cases (1488 in Wuhan).
A total of 135 confirmed cases were reported from Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan: 93 cases in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (26 cases discharged, 2 deaths), 10 cases in the Macau Special Administrative Region (8 cases discharged), and 32 cases in Taiwan (6 cases discharged, 1 case died).
* * *
Update (1655ET): More comments from CDC Director Redfield are hitting the tape. His focus: the virus’s ability to survive on surfaces.
- CDC DIRECTOR REDFIELD SAYS WE ARE AGGRESSIVELY EVALUATING HOW LONG CORONAVIRUS CAN SURVIVE AND BE INFECTIOUS ON SURFACES
- CDC DIRECTOR REDFIELD SAYS CORONAVIRUS SURVIVAL TIME ON COPPER AND STEEL SURFACES IS “PRETTY TYPICAL… ABOUT 2 HOURS”, OTHER SURFACES LIKE CARDBOARD OR PLASTIC IS LONGER
- CDC DIRECTOR REDFIELD SAYS CORONAVIRUS SURVIVAL ON SURFACES MAY HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO OUTBREAK ON DIAMOND PRINCESS CRUISE
- CDC DIRECTOR REDFIELD SAYS CORONAVIRUS SURVIVAL ON SURFACES MAY HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO OUTBREAK ON DIAMOND PRINCESS CRUISE
* * *
Update (1640ET): It looks like the CDC is responding to a critical NYT story published late Wednesday that exposed the agency for waiting days to test the California patient whose coronavirus infection seemingly has no ties to China, or any other cases, which means she may have contracted the virus domestically from an unknown source.
The CDC said Thursday evening that they will start testing people with unexplained, severe symptoms. The patient in question was reportedly already on a ventilator when she arrived at UC Davis, where they are currently being kept in isolation.
Moving away from China, it looks like the number of new cases ex-China will once again surpass the number of mainland cases on Thursday.
* * *
Update (1535ET): Robert Redfield told Congress on Thursday that the CDC revised its definition for “persons under investigation”. In other words, the US is possibly taking a play out of China’s playbook to limit the numbers of people declared to be ‘under surveillance’.
- CDC DIRECTOR REDFIELD TELLS CONGRESS THAT CDC REVISED ITS CASE DEFINITION FOR “PERSONS UNDER INVESTIGATION” FOR CORONAVIRUS
This comes after the NYT reported earlier on Thursday that the patient in California with the case of “unknown origin” wasn’t tested for days because of restrictive federal criteria.
Photo of coronavirus testing kit
* * *
Update (1520ET): The Netherlands has confirmed its first case.
* * *
Update (1515ET): Mike Pence, the new captain of Trump’s virus-response team, said that according to the government’s “best estimate”, the virus threat remains low.
If you keep saying it, it will come true.
* * *
Update (1450ET): 700 people in New York have been asked to ‘self-isolate’ for two weeks because of coronavirus fears, according to the New York State Health Department.
Over in Italy, Angelo Borelli, the head of the Italian Civil Protection, said 650 people have now tested positive for the virus as total cases increased by roughly 50% on Thursday.
Explaining the sudden jump, Borelli blamed Lombardy for not “properly updating” the Italian Civil Protection Agency – in effect, confirming that local officials were hiding or concealing cases, whether deliberately or inadvertently.
“The big jump from yesterday (Wednesday) is because yesterday we didn’t have the latest numbers from Lombardy,” he said.
Some 35,000 masks have been sent to the affected areas, he added.
* * *
Update (1430ET): The Modesto Bee reports that UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, the hospital where the mysterious coronavirus patient with no link to China is being treated, has told several workers exposed to the virus to stay home and watch for symptoms.
Below, we reported some of the comments from Gov. Newsom’s 11 am PT presser. He also insisted that the chances of an outbreak in California are “extremely low”, and that the state is not planning on making an emergency declaration.
“Right now, I don’t think it’s necessary,” he said.
Otherwise, the paper added, it’s just “business as usual” at the UC Davis Medial Center (we’re sure the thousands of freaked-out patients and staff would agree).
The hospital first became entangled in the crisis after local and federal health officials confirmed that the facility on Stockton Boulevard was treating the first US case of COVID-19 from an unknown origin.
* * *
Update (1405ET): France has reported its 38th case, as 20 new confirmations are announced.
- FRANCE NOW HAS 38 CONFIRMED CASES OF CORONAVIRUS – FRENCH HEALTH MINISTER
* * *
Update (1355ET): Norway has confirmed three more cases as the flow of coronavirus news accelerates dramatically.
Finally, some good news on Thursday: Apple CEO Tim Cook says he believes China is getting the coronavirus outbreak under control: “It feels to me that China is getting the coronavirus under control” during interview with Fox Business Network’s Susan Li.
* * *
Update (1250ET): Minutes after Newsom’s disturbing confirmation, the Trump Administration, in an obvious attempt to pump the market, leaked their plans to use the ‘Defense Production Act’ to force American companies to start manufacturing protective masks and other medical supplies.
When those kits are available (hopefully within a few days) we’ll likely see HUNDREDS of newly confirmed coronavirus cases, and scores more daily.
Before you “bargain hunt” just 10% off an all-time bubble high, think about what THAT will do to stocks.$SPY $QQQ https://t.co/oooWsIkmZR
— Mark B. Spiegel (@markbspiegel) February 27, 2020
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This is critical since the supply chains across China have collapsed.
- EXCLUSIVE-TRUMP ADMINISTRATION DISCUSSING USING DEFENSE PRODUCTION ACT TO COMPEL COMPANIES TO RAMP UP MANUFACTURING OF CORONAVIRUS PROTECTIVE MASKS AND CLOTHING -OFFICIALS
Meanwhile, health officials have just confirmed the first case in Northern Ireland, bringing the UK total to 16.
* * *
Update (1345ET): As the hysteria surrounding the mysterious coronavirus case in California with no obvious connection to China mounts, California Gov. Gavin Newsom just confirmed that the state is ‘monitoring’ 8,400 people. Given the lack of context, the market is clearly assuming the worst, as stocks puke.
He also confirmed that there are 28 people infected in the state. All told 33 people tested positive in the state, but 5 have been moved out-of-state. Whether this includes any new cases is unclear.
Newsom assured the state that the CDC promised to speed processing of coronavirus tests.
He also warned that the state has an “inadequate” supply of testing kits.
“We have just a few hundred testing kits in the state of California … That is simply inadequate,” Gov. Newsom said.
Stocks have puked, spoiling the intraday rally.
Cali’s HHS Secretary assured the public that, other than the shortage of tests, the state is ‘well-prepared’.
“It’s natural to feel concerned about the novel coronavirus, but I want Californians to know that we have rigorously planned for this public health event,” says CA Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly.
If Californians are freaked out, can’t say we blame them.
* * *
Update (1330ET): The German state of North Rhine-Westphalia has confirmed 14 new cases of the virus in the Heinsberg Area, bringing Germany’s total to 26.
Here’s what Johns Hopkins map and register of confirmed cases looked like at 1:30ET:
Goldman is also asking some to skip a conference over the virus, Reuters confirms.
* * *
Update (1315ET): Facebook is the latest major tech firm to cancel a conference or employee event. The social media giant said Thursday that it’s cancelling its annual F8 developer conference, the biggest FB event of the year, over coronavirus concerns, according to CNET.
The cancellation will be a major hit for San Jose, where the conference was scheduled to take place at the McEnery Convention Center on May 5 and 6. Last year, the event attracted more than 5,000 developers, creators and entrepreneurs from all over the world.
Zuckerberg typically delivers a widely covered keynote speech at the conference. With all of the scrutiny the company is facing during this election season, Zuck is passing up an opportunity to potentially take a swing at his critics, or show them up.
The company said it’s planning to bring developers together at locally hosted events, videos and live streamed content.
* * *
Update (1300ET): Dozens of staffers at the California Hospital – believed to be UC Davis Medical Center – who treated the coronavirus patient with the untraceable coronavirus case are reportedly being ‘monitored’ for symptoms, according to media reports.
We suspect this is part of the CDC and Cali health authorities efforts to prevent the forewarned “community outbreak.”
* * *
Update (1245ET): Italian health officials have reported another three deaths in Northern Italy, bringing the death toll to 17, Reuters reports.
- THREE FURTHER DEATHS IN CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK IN NORTHERN ITALY, BRINGING DEATH TOLL TO 17
As one twitter user points out…
Today might be the first day since the coronavirus epidemic emerged when the main global story on the subject does not have a BEIJING or SHANGHAI dateline.
— Vincent Lee (@Rover829) February 27, 2020
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Meanwhile, Vice President Mike Pence has added Larry Kudlow, Steve Mnuchin and Surgeon General Jerry Adams to the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force.
Treasury Sec. Steve Mnuchin, NEC Director Larry Kudlow and Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams added time the Coronavirus Task Force pic.twitter.com/0zaHB5ByGw
— Phil Mattingly (@Phil_Mattingly) February 27, 2020
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Notice how the press release headline includes Pence and Secretary Azar, following all the press questions about Trump being disappointed with Azar’s performance, as the former pharmaceutical lobbyist has been criticized for being unfamiliar with key details and slow on his feet during yesterdays’ Congressional subcommittee hearing.
Also, it looks like economic concerns will be well-represented during these task force meetings.
OK, I get the Surgeon General.
But Mnuchin?? KUDLOW?????
*PENCE ADDS MNUCHIN, ADAMS, KUDLOW TO VIRUS TASK FORCE
— Brian Chappatta (@BChappatta) February 27, 2020
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* * *
Update (1220ET): An update on the case of “unknown origin” in the US, since it has caused some confusion.
Last night, the Washington Post reported that the case was isolated in Sonoma County. The CDC later warned about the possibility of a community outbreak in the county.
On Thursday, the CDC confirmed that the patient is from Solano County, according to local media reports and a statement from the CDC.
.@CAPublicHealth says the first possible community transmission of coronavirus in California involved an individual who lives in Solano County in the Bay Area.
“The individual had no known exposure to the virus through travel or close contact with a known infected individual.” pic.twitter.com/w1I8ibI1OS
— Stephanie K. Baer (@skbaer) February 27, 2020
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* * *
Update (1150ET): A rare glimpse of bullish economic news out of China: Starbucks says it has reopened 85% of its stores in China, its “second home market,” according to a company statement to CNBC.
.@Starbucks now says 85% of stores in China are open– important as this is its “Second home market” and one where the company continues to focus its growth efforts on. More than half of its stores there had been closed as of its latest earnings report last month: https://t.co/HpZxVfbIkd
— Kate Rogers (@katerogers) February 27, 2020
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* * *
Update (1120ET): After cheering reports of German fiscal stimulus yesterday, the ECB’s Christine Lagarde said the outbreak isn’t yet at the stage to justify ECB intervention as investors in the US, and President Trump, look to Powell for a rate cut at the next meeting.
Of course, Lagarde is probably only saying this because she knows there’s nothing she can do to salve the European economy from a ‘supply-side’ shock, which is why she’s picking up where Mario Draghi left off and calling on EU governments to spend more to keep the Continental economy from sliding off a cliff.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that the CDC is allowing states to “modify” old test kits to use them on any suspected coronavirus patients.
Hopefully, these tests aren’t sacrificing accuracy for availability.
U.S. health officials will let state and local health labs modify a test for the coronavirus that has been plagued by weeks of delays because of inconclusive results, said the head of the trade group for public-health testing labs.
Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration held a conference call Wednesday in which they gave permission for state and local labs to drop a troublesome step in the tests that stopped them from being used, said Scott Becker, CEO of the Association of Public Health Laboratories. Becker’s group represents state and local testing labs.
The change should speed testing and allow state and local labs to start using hundreds of test kits that were sent out earlier this month, rather than having to wait for an improved, new version of the test to be sent by federal health authorities.
“In the next week we are going to have much more testing,” Becker said in a phone interview. “It is going to increase capacity across the country.”
Source: Bloomberg
Over on Capitol Hill, Nancy Pelosi said she spoke to Trump’s “Coronavirus Czar” Mike Pence about the emergency spending bill.
* * *
Update (1100ET): Azar admits that the case in a Sonoma County hospital might signal the start of “community transmission” as the CDC warned.
- AZAR: CASE IN CALIF. COULD BE POTENTIAL FIRST COMMUNITY SPREAD
* * *
Update (1030ET): With US stocks deep in the red one again, HHS Secretary Alex Azar said at least 40 public health labs in the US should now be able to test for the coronavirus using “modified existing CDC kits”.
- IMMEDIATE U.S. CORONAVIRUS RISK REMAINS LOW, AZAR SAYS
- HHS SECRETARY AZAR SAYS AT LEAST 40 PUBLIC HEALTH LABS IN U.S. SHOULD NOW BE ABLE TO TEST FOR CORONAVIRUS USING MODIFIED EXISTING CDC KITS
in the US, investors are worried about the first case of unknown origin, which the CDC confirmed last night. This comes as critics slam Azar for refusing to guarantee that the coronavirus vaccine would be “affordable to all”.
Here’s the clip of Azar not assuring Rep. Schakowsky a covid-19 vaccine will be affordable to all. pic.twitter.com/Z8aNd4wLWj
— Michael McAuliff (@mmcauliff) February 26, 2020
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The IMF said Thursday that it’s likely to downgrade its global growth outlook in the next world economic outlook, which is due in the spring.
Switzerland has become the latest country to cancel games and events over the outbreak, with the Engadin Ski Marathon, said to be the tiny Alpine country’s largest annual sporting event.
Over on Wall Street, US stocks are on track for their worst week since the financial crisis.
Pakistan, meanwhile, has become the latest country to suspend all flights to Iran.
* * *
Update (0920ET): WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Thursday during the organization’s daily press briefing that “we are at a decisive point” in the epidemic, while others warned it could go “in any direction.”
WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION (WHO) TEDROS SAYS “WE ARE AT A DECISIVE POINT” IN CORONAVIRUS EPIDEMIC
This guy has been 6 weeks behind this whole time
— Quoth the Raven (@QTRResearch) February 27, 2020
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Iran has confirmed 26 deaths and more than 140 cases, including a vice president who was the third senior official to catch the virus. But many fear the full extent of the outbreak is much broader. During the press conference, another WHO official singled out Iran, claiming the virus had crept into the country “undetected”, before adding that the WHO fears the outbreak inside the country is even worse than the government claims.
“The outbreak can go in any direction based on how we handle it,” Dr. Tedros said during the group’s daily briefing in Geneva.
Iran “has a very high clinical capacity”, said Dr. Mike Ryan, the executive director of the WHO’s health emergency program. The 10% death rate probably has more to do with the fact that many cases have gone undiagnosed, he said. The country has gone so far as to cancel Friday prayers in Tehran, after the Saudis told pilgrims they wouldn’t be allowed in to the Muslim Holy Sites.
Following European stocks dive into correction territory, in the US, the Dow is on the cusp of falling into correction territory intraday for the first time since December 2018 (remember when?).
As traders digest the implications of the new case in Sonoma County that could be evidence of the first case of “community transmission” in the country, as well as President Trump’s rambling press conference on Wednesday, the focus has shifted back to Europe, where in Italy, cases climbed above 500.
According to the FT, Matteo Salvini, the leader of the League, the head of the parliamentary opposition, has met with President Sergio Mattarella as speculation mounts about the prospects for a national unity government to deal with the crisis, following several political missteps by PM Conte.
* * *
Update (0735ET): After yesterday’s rally fizzled, Germany is giving the ‘fiscal stimulus’ tape bomb one more go.
- GERMAN GOVERNMENT CONSIDERING POSSIBLE STIMULUS PROGRAMME IN CASE CORONAVIRUS EPIDEMIC HITS GERMAN ECONOMY HARD – HANDELSBLATT
Yesterday, a German lawmaker poured cold water on reports that Germany might ditch its constitutional ‘debt break’ to boost spending in response to the economy-killing outbreak.
* * *
Update (0715ET): with the country’s third election in a year just days away, Israel is taking serious pains to avoid acknowledging the coronavirus cases that have been confirmed in the country by blaming them on Italy and South Korea (each case involved a traveler who had recently returned from one of those two countries).
The country said Thursday it would bar non-Israelis who had recently visited Italy after confirming that a man who had recently visited the country had tested positive for the virus, according to Reuters.
* * *
US equity futures are pointing to yet another lower open on Thursday morning after WaPo interrupted President Trump’s press conference last night to reports the first COVID-19 case “of unknown origin,” which the CDC later confirmed was in Sonoma County, and could be the epicenter of America’s first “community outbreak.” Shortly after, South Korea reported its largest number of new coronavirus cases in a single day, as the number of new cases reported outside China once again surpassed the number inside China. Brazil confirmed the first case in South America yesterday, bringing the virus to every continent except Antarctica.
A few hours later, and South Korea has reported another 171 cases, bringing the total cases confirmed on Thursday to 505 – surpassing China’s daily total (433) for the first time, as Bloomberg pointed out. So far, South Korea has confirmed 1,766 cases, along with 13 deaths, in the 38 days since the first case was reported on Jan. 20. The US and South Korea have cancelled planned military exercises after a US soldier caught the virus in Korea.
Over in Hawaii, Hawaiian Air has suspended service to South Korea starting March 2 through April 30, while Delta reduces flights as the outbreak in South Korea intensifies (Hawaii has already had one COVID-19 scare involving a Japanese tourist; we suspect the state wants to avoid a similar episode involving South Korea). Congresswoman and presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard requesting a suspension of flights from South Korea and Japan as the outbreak in the US worsens.
Fearing the sudden breakout in the Middle East might spread inside its borders, Saudi Arabia has halted pilgrimages to Islam’s holy sites – known as the Hajj – that are a mandatory practice for Muslims, an unprecedented decision that is likely to spark controversy across the Muslim world. Across the Persian Gulf, Iran has now confirmed 26 deaths 245 cases. But given the virus’s rapid spread throughout the Islamic Republic, many suspect that the real number of cases is far higher (earlier in the week, a local lawmaker said 50 people had died in the city of Qom alone).
Iran Health Ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said the large number of new cases is due to more labs handling virus tests. He warned that the public should expect more cases in the future.
Yesterday, Greece was one of eight countries – Brazil, Pakistan, North Macedonia, of course Greece, Georgia, Algeria, Norway and Romania – to confirm their first cases. On Thursday, Greece confirmed two more cases, one of them in its capital city of Athens. The initial case was found in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second city.
At last count, coronavirus has infected more than 80,000 people around the world and caused more than 2,700 deaths since the outbreak began in Wuhan back in December.
Following Brazil’s confirmation overnight, its Latin American neighbors are taking steps to stop the virus from spreading across their borders. According to the AP, Peru is keeping a team of specialists working 24/7 at Jorge Chávez International Airport. Argentina has asked citizens to report any flu-like symptom. Puerto Rico has established a task force to prepare for an outbreak in Puerto Rico. And Chile has announced a health emergency and purchased millions of masks and protective outfits for health workers.
But perhaps the biggest story overnight came out of Japan, where the government swore yesterday that the Tokyo Games would take place as scheduled this summer, after an IOC member speculated that if the virus wasn’t cleared up by late May, Japan might be forced to cancel the Olympics.
PM Shinzo Abe asked all schools in Japan to remain closed until the spring holidays begin late next month to try and contain the virus. Abe’s decision follows a rash of new cases reported in the north of Japan, including the first cases in Hokkaido, with no discernible path of origin, Nikkei reports.
As of Thursday, 175 cases have been confirmed across 19 of Japan’s prefectures, including Hokkaido, Tokyo, Aichi, and Chiba. Earlier on Thursday, Hokkaido instituted a weeklong closure of all 1,600 public elementary and junior high schools. Abe made the announcement during a meeting of the government’s headquarters.
Schools must now decide whether to abide by the PM’s non-binding ask, though it’s expected that nearly all schools will comply.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, President Xi’s ‘point-man’ in charge of the coronavirus response, said that China will extend its school closures for another month because of the virus, according to CCTV.
Earlier this week, we noted that WHO’s team of researchers claimed they found no evidence that the virus had ‘mutated’ during their study of 100+ strains isolated from patients. Well, another group of scientists have done some research that appears to conflict with this.
In Australia, which confirmed a handful of cases during the early days of the outbreak, but has since gone quiet, PM Scott Morrison said Thursday in what some might describe as a ‘fearmongering’ speech that “there is every indication that the world will soon enter a pandemic phase of the coronavirus.”
“As a result, we have initiated the implementation of the coronavirus emergency response plan. While the WHO is yet to declare the nature of the coronavirus and its move toward a pandemic phase, we believe that the risk of a global pandemic is very much upon us and as a result, as a government, we need to take steps to prepare.”
WHO’s Dr. Tedros, who yesterday asked officials not to use the word ‘pandemic’, must have been thrilled to hear Morrison’s screed.
Morrison said Australians can still go “to the football match, or the concert” because Australia has “stayed ahead” of the virus. But now it’s time to move onto the next phase, which includes “preparation for the possibility of a much more significant event.”
‘There is every indication that the world will soon enter a pandemic phase of the coronavirus,’ Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said. Governments around the world are ramping up measures to battle a looming pandemic https://t.co/yHNaDgy54y pic.twitter.com/K9SXjTcq85
— Reuters (@Reuters) February 27, 2020
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Over in France, French President Emmanuel Macron said “we have a crisis before us. An epidemic is on its way” during a visit to a Paris hospital where coronavirus patients are being treated. His statement followed reports that 2 have died in France, an elderly Christian tourist and a 60-year-old French national. The Frenchman died earlier this week in Paris at the hospital Macron visited Thursday. The total number of cases in France reached 18 on Wednesday, roughly the same number as neighboring Germany.
Spain detected two more cases on Thursday, bringing the total this week to 14. Neither was connected to Italy, health authorities said. Switzerland confirmed 3 more cases, bringing its total to 4, though Swiss authorities said they’re testing 66 others. In Italy, the number of confirmed cases climbed to 528. Of those, 278 are self-isolating at home, 159 recovered with symptoms in hospital and 37 are in intensive care.
As the AP reminds us, Germany’s health minister said Wednesday that the country was “at the beginning of an epidemic” as authorities in the west tested dozens of people. New cases on Thursday brought Germany’s total to 21.
Two new cases confirmed in the UK on Thursday raised the total to 15. A primary school in Buxton was forced to close for “a deep clean” after a parent of one of the students tested positive for the virus.
The EU Commission doubled-down on its anti-border-closure position, saying no EU country wants to close internal borders. Meanwhile, the FT reports that EU officials are weighing the risks of clusters of Italian-style outbreaks surface across the continent.
What will it take for the EU to acknowledge that border closures might be necessary?
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/27/2020 – 20:21 - Whistleblower Claims 'Corrupt Cover-Up' Of Dangerous Coronavirus Quarantines
Whistleblower Claims ‘Corrupt Cover-Up’ Of Dangerous Coronavirus Quarantines
A complaint filed with Health and Human Services (HHS) and promptly leaked to the New York Times alleges that federal health employees interacted with Americans quarantined for possible coronavirus exposure without proper medical training or protective gear, and that health agency leaders engaged in a ‘corrupt cover-up‘ when staff members complained, according to the Times.
Filed with the Office of the Special Counsel, a whistleblower described as a ‘senior leader’ at HHS said the team was “improperly deployed” to two California military bases to assist with processing American evacuees from coronavirus hot zones in China and elsewhere.
The staff members were sent to Travis Air Force Base and March Air Reserve Base and were ordered to enter quarantined areas, including a hangar where coronavirus evacuees were being received. They were not provided training in safety protocols until five days later, the person said.
Without proper training or equipment, some of the exposed staff members moved freely around and off the bases, with at least one person staying in a nearby hotel and leaving California on a commercial flight. Many were unaware of the need to test their temperature three times a day. –New York Times
“I soon began to field panicked calls from my leadership team and deployed staff members expressing concerns with the lack of H.H.S. communication and coordination, staff being sent into quarantined areas without personal protective equipment, training or experience in managing public health emergencies, safety protocols and the potential danger to both themselves and members of the public they come into contact with,” reads the complaint, which HHS has acknowledged receiving.
“We take all whistle-blower complaints very seriously and are providing the complainant all appropriate protections under the Whistleblower Protection Act,” said deputy assistant secretary Caitlin B. Oakley, who is also the department’s national spokeswoman for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs. “We are evaluating the complaint and have nothing further to add at this time.”
The Times notes that the complaint comes right after President Trump began to downplay the risks of coronavirus on US soil “amid bipartisan concern about a sluggish and disjointed response by the administration to an illness that public health officials have said is likely to spread through the United States.”
In other words, the coronavirus response officially an election issue now.
The whistle-blower’s account raised questions about whether the Trump administration has taken adequate precautions in its handling of the virus to date, and whether Mr. Trump’s minimization of the risks has been mirrored by other top officials when confronted with potentially disturbing developments. –New York Times
The first American case of coronavirus emerged neary Travis Air Force Base this week in an American patient with no known contact with hot zones or other coronavirus patients.
The Times also reports that similar incidents ‘appear to have happened elsewhere,’ pointing to HHS employees were also dispatched to Marine Corps Air Station Miramar to help evacuees from Wuhan, China “someone with direct knowledge of the effort” leaked.
The levels of protection varied even while he was at Miramar, he said. Standards were more lax at first, but once people arrived who appeared to be sick, workers began donning personal protective equipment. He is now back at work, and has yet to be tested for coronavirus exposure.
In the complaint, the whistle-blower painted a grim portrait of agency staff members who found themselves on the front lines of a frantic federal effort to confront the coronavirus in the United States without any preparation or training, and whose own health concerns were dismissed by senior administration officials as detrimental to staff “morale.” They were “admonished,” the complaint said, and “accused of not being team players,” and had their “mental health and emotional stability questioned.”
After a phone call with health agency leaders to raise their fears about exposure to the virus, the staff members described a “whitewashing” of the situation, characterizing the response as “corrupt” and a “cover-up,” according to the complaint, and telling the whistle-blower that senior officials had treated them as a “nuisance” and did not want to hear their worries about health and safety. –New York Times
California Democratic Rep. Jimmy Gomez, whose office received the complaint, appeared to reference it during a Thursday morning hearing with HHS secretary Alex M. Azar in the House Ways and Means Committee. Gomez was contacted by the whistleblower, who he had met before entering Congress, due in part because his committee has jurisdiction over HHS.
Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) “To your knowledge, were any of the ACF employees exposed to high-risk evacuees from China?” Gomez asked Azar during a tense exchange.
“They should never have been, without appropriate PPE,” Azar responded – referring to ‘personal protective equipment’ used to protect workers from disease. “If you were anyone in quarantine, to maintain quarantine, that should be the case.”
Gomez claimed that the teams sent to March and Travis air bases dealt with a “chaotic” situation.
“I would not accept your proposition that it was chaotic at all times,” Azar responded. “I am not aware of any violation of quarantine or isolation protocols.”
“Do you think that breaking basic protocols and exposing untrained human service employees to the coronavirus before allowing them to be dispersed around the country could have endangered the employees and other Americans?” Gomez asked.
“I don’t believe that has taken place,” replied Azar.
The complaint, which was reported by The Washington Post, surfaced the day after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the first known instance of a person testing positive without exposure to anyone known to be infected with the coronavirus, also known as Covid-19, or recent travels to any of the countries where it is circulating. The C.D.C. said that it was possible the patient, who is a resident of Solano County, Calif. — home to Travis Air Force Base — could have been exposed to a returning traveler who was infected.
March Air Reserve Base in Riverside, Calif., housed 195 people evacuated from Wuhan, China, for 14 days beginning in late January, while Travis in Northern California has housed a number of quarantined people in recent weeks, including some of the approximately 400 Americans on the Diamond Princess cruise ship that had docked in Japan. –New York Times
The whistleblower claims that the staff members, who had some experience with emergency management, were not properly prepared for the task at hand.
“They were not properly trained or equipped to operate in a public health emergency situation,” wrote the official. “They were potentially exposed to coronavirus; appropriate measures were not taken to protect the staff from potential infection; and appropriate steps were not taken to quarantine, monitor or test them during their deployment and upon their return home.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/27/2020 – 20:05 - Is The Coronavirus Pandemic About To Become Another Spanish Flu
Is The Coronavirus Pandemic About To Become Another Spanish Flu
Authored by Michael Every of Rabobank
COVID-19 vs The Spanish Flu
Summary
- In light of the recent outbreak in Europe, it appears a question of when –rather than whether– the COVID-19 epidemic will be declared a global pandemic
- Countermeasures such as quarantine or travel bans remain necessary to contain the virus’ spread. This will continue to cause disruption, as policy makers chase a moving target
- There is an increasing interest in the 1918-19 Spanish flu, and there are indeed some similarities in terms of virulence, infectiousness, and the potential attack rate.
- Anecdotal evidence suggests a similar economic impact both despite and because of changes in society.
- The key lesson from COVID-19 is the same as with the financial sector: complex interconnected systems greatly increase underlying risks, which are multiplicative and exponential, rather than additive and linear.
Chasing a moving target
Since the middle of January, the number-one worry for businesses, policy makers and market participants has been the outbreak of a new coronavirus known as COVID-19. In an effort to gauge its potential impact, analysts initially resorted to comparisons with the outbreak of SARS and MERS, two previous diseases resulting from coronaviruses. But we are now already way past this. It appears a question of when –rather than whether– this epidemic will be declared a global pandemic.
This is why there has been an increase in interest in previous pandemics. In particular, we have noticed a lot of comparisons with the ‘Spanish flu’, which originated in the final year of the First World War, spread rapidly, and resulted in an estimated 50-100 million deaths worldwide. So far, COVID-19 has led to more than 80,000 illnesses and 2,700 deaths, predominantly in China’s Hubei province, but more recently also in places such as South Korea, Iran, and Italy.
At the same time, we have also heard plenty of comparisons with another viral epidemic: the seasonal flu. In the US alone, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that so far this season there have been at least 26 million flu illnesses, 250,000 hospitalizations and 14,000 deaths. It is then argued that COVID-19 isn’t much of a big deal compared with seasonal flu, and that ‘business as usual’-conditions should return as soon as possible.
This is too complacent. Virologists have studied seasonal flu for decades. Despite the high number of illnesses, we generally have a good idea on what to expect. As the Northern Hemisphere moves towards spring, it is certain that flu cases will go down. In contrast, very little is known about COVID-19. Its basic reproduction number is also unknown, but the explosive rise in cases signal that it’s significantly higher than 1. Therefore, countermeasures such as quarantine or travel bans remain necessary to contain the virus’ spread.
The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once wrote that “life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards”. Indeed, COVID-19 appears to be a wild card in terms of how far it will spread, how many deaths it will cause, and how severe the demand and supply shock is going to be. Let’s find out whether the Spanish flu could provide us with some pointers.
La gripe Española
The Spanish flu was a strain of avian influenza. Starting in late 1917, the virus spread across Europe, North America and Asia. Initially, it resembled seasonal flu, and those most at risk were the sick and the elderly. But around August 1918, the virus mutated to a much deadlier form, and deaths peaked between September and November 1918, eventually culminating in an estimated 500 million infections and 50-100 million fatalities. The Spanish flu is therefore the deadliest pandemic in human history, claiming many more lives than the First World War itself.
Whereas infectious diseases prior to the Spanish flu had mostly spread along trade routes (the 14th century Black Death is a good example of how intensified contact along dense networks increases a disease’s potential), the global context of the First World War appeared to enable the great spread of this flu. There was a lot of movement and interaction between people –with and without guns– and transmission was facilitated by extremely poor sanitary and health conditions.
The pandemic occurred in three waves with different characteristics. The first originated in early March 1918, and was a relatively mild one. The second wave was extremely deadly and came in the autumn of 1918. The third and final wave took place in the winter of 1919. Virologists have proposed several mechanisms to explain why this flu came in waves, including viral evolution (e.g. mutations), environmental changes (e.g. the weather) and behavioral changes in response to the pandemic (e.g. containment efforts), but there appears no real consensus of the interactions of these factors. This is partially due to data limitations and a lack of expertise at that time.
It has also been hypothesized that the unique circumstances of the First World War altered the virus’s natural selection process. Typically, the dangerous strains make their hosts very sick, who then recognize their symptoms relatively easily and move either into quarantine or pass away rapidly. These strains tend to die out relatively quickly – even if it is with their hosts, in the case of Ebola, for example. Milder strains, on the other hand, make people only mildly ill. Their hosts will have a stronger tendency to remain active in public life, and to expose others with these milder strains. One benefit of this is that it (partially) improves immunity to the more aggressive strains. In the First World War, however, very sick soldiers were sent on very crowded trains to even more overcrowded field hospitals, while the mildly ill remained at the front. This eventually helped spread deadlier strains in the second half of 1918, wreaking havoc in those parts of the world were the milder strains hadn’t presented themselves yet.
Comparisons with COVID-19
A rather similar epidemic?
As it stands now, COVID-19 seems to be a virus with relatively modest virulence: the case fatality rate being estimated to be around 2%, much lower than SARS or MERS. However, it has relatively high infectiousness. with the initial estimates of R0 –the basic reproduction number– are around 2.5. Simply put, this means that each case can generate 2.5 other cases. This may change over time, as people adjust their behavior, yet the relatively long incubation period for COVID-19 (perhaps up to 27 days) ensures that people can carry and transmit the virus without showing any symptoms.
The Spanish flu had a case-fatality rate of more than 2.5%, although estimates vary, and a reproduction number in the range of 2.0–3.0 in cities (which is what we should look at now, given the population shift from rural areas to urban areas). In other words, if countermeasures are as ineffective in containing the virus as they were in 1918-1919, when they were arguably non-existent, it could be argued that the current virus has a potential attack rate of 60-80%. We can therefore learn from the Spanish flu that as long as this virus remains transmissible but relatively mild, it has the potential to spread rapidly around the world. This pessimistic theoretical approach has been backed up by the Harvard University epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch.
What’s in a name? The rose still stinks regardless
The origins of the Spanish flu remain shrouded in mystery, even though it is generally accepted that there was very little Spanish about it. Instead, Spain was a neutral country in the war and the freedom of its press was greater than in the warring nations. As a consequence, there were lots of reports about the virus’ devastating effects in Spain, while in most other European countries any information that was likely to impact morale or indicate weakness was strongly censored.
We can draw a parallel here. Even though China has now taken extreme precautionary measures to limit the spread of COVID-19, they were rather late in their response. The authorities have also acknowledged this recently. But as the Chinese government continues to control the flow of information it is likely that a wide distrust in the officially published data on cases and fatalities will remain. The same holds true in Iran, for example, while many other countries, even the US, are not really testing their populations to any real extent: no tests means no cases – but it does not mean no virus is present.
But does that still matter at this point? While the lack of good and timely information potentially contributed to the initial spread of the virus, the genie is now out of the bottle. Moreover, whether the virus is or is not present does not seem to be altering the pattern of public behavior much. With full transparency of the risks people generally go into panic-buying mode and then into a voluntary lockdown almost as aggressively as they do under a state-imposed quarantine: for example, Chinese restaurants are deserted, even in areas of countries with no reported virus links.
The public reaction in some countries to date already seems to echo the panic seen in 1918-19.
Not W-shaped, but J-shaped
The curve of influenza deaths by age has historically been U-shaped, but the Spanish flu had a W-shaped curve. It was extremely deadly for those in the 19-40 age cohort, who are usually least vulnerable to viruses. This is in stark contrast to the mortality rates for COVID-19, which seems to have the worst impact on those aged over 65 and/or with co-morbidity factors such as diabetes, lung and/or heart conditions. This would then be a J-shaped curve.
The figures below are based on a study that examined data from 72,314 patients and was carried out by a group of experts at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. This would seem to argue for COVID-19 to present a much less significant threat to the global economy than its predecessor a century ago. However, we would argue that this overlooks some mitigating factors.
Notably, the population profile of developed countries today, where the most economic damage could be done, skews significantly higher than it did back in 1918-19 in its own J-shape. This means that while younger people have less to worry about with COVID-19 than with Spanish flu, there are more of those who are potentially most vulnerable to the current virus. For example, the average life expectancy in the US was around 56 years in 1919, well below the 65+ band where COVID-19 seems to do the most damage today. Moreover, more than 16% of the US is aged over 65, and so most at risk from the virus, and that rises to 27% in Japan, 23% in Italy, 22% in Portugal, 21% in Germany, and 20% in France.
Second, although healthcare today is vastly superior to that of the early 20th century in almost all locations, which is a huge comfort, it is also much more expensive than the relatively simple treatments available in 1918-19, and hence more rationed. While a fully-equipped ICU may ensure a better and faster recovery from a virus, how many ICU beds would be available to patients if the elderly demographic were to fall victim to COVID-19 en masse in each country? They would be overwhelmed, as we already see from normal seasonal flu epidemics in the UK, and currently in China, a country which despite aging rapidly still only has around 12% of its citizens aged over 65. Meanwhile, in emerging economies with a much younger demographic, which is a positive, the public healthcare systems are generally far weaker and less prepared, meaning that the virus can again potentially still wreak havoc.
In short, COVID-19 could still potentially compare with the Spanish flu – in a worst-case scenario.
Fear and trembling, indeed
From a purely economic perspective, there isn’t a lot of data which we can use to examine the impact of the Spanish flu with any sort of precision given the absence of detailed national accounts data in most countries. Clearly, however, 1918-19 was a totally different structure for a virus to hit. Agriculture still accounted for a far larger share of GDP than today, and rural economies were still relatively more important: in those areas, the virus spread less rapidly due to lower population density.
By contrast, the bulk of today’s economy is about the urban environment and services, the former the prime environment for virus transmission. Moreover, both cities and services are hit hardest by any virus lockdown, making the modern economy arguably even more susceptible than in 1918-19 despite our advances in technology and communications. For example, a 2009 UK study found that even in a mild pandemic scenario the economic cost would be 0.5-1.0% of GDP, rising to 4.3% of GDP, and potentially even higher, in the case of a severe “high fatality” scenario. (Please see our recent special report on the potential global economic impact of the virus.)
Clearly, however, there are already some worrying parallels between Spanish flu and COVID-19. For example, this paper published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis contains some anecdotes that any person who reads today’s business news might very well recognize. We’ve picked just three:
- “Merchants in Little Rock, Arkansas say their business has declined 40%. Others estimate the decrease at 70%.”
- “The only business in Little Rock in which there has been an increase in activity is the drug store.”
- “Physicians report they are kept too busy combating the disease to report the number of their patients and have little time to devote to other matters.”
More broadly, the authors also surveyed economic research and conclude that most of the evidence indicates that the effects of the 1918-19 pandemic were short-term. Then again, there was a lot of euphoric post-war reconstruction that needed to be done in 1919 in Europe at least, which flowed through to the US economy to some extent. Today’s businesses seem to find it hard to locate profitable investment opportunities despite ultra-low rates, and a further sharp drop in global demand is all that they need.
The Fed also found that back in 1918-19 “a decrease in the supply of manufacturing workers that resulted from influenza mortalities would have had the initial effect of reducing manufacturing labor supply, increasing the marginal product of labor and capital per worker, and thus increasing real wages”. Yet another study on the impact of the 1918 pandemic on Swedish economic performance found robust evidence that “the influenza had no discernible effect on earnings” but that it instead led to “a significant increase in poverty rates” – obviously as the state played a much smaller counter-cyclical role in 1919 than it does in 2020.
In today’s economic environment, where wage growth has proved almost universally sticky to the downside, we find it very hard to believe that COVID-19 will lead to an increase in real wages – at least near term. Rather, for developed economies with ever more ‘gig’ workers and self-employed, even in developed economies, an increase in poverty appears far more likely, ceteris paribus.
In short, the 1918-19 Spanish Flu massively disrupted a global economy already shattered by the First World War (1914-18). COVID-19, while so far much less virulent in some key respects, also looks potentially able to do a huge amount of damage to a modern global economy with its own pre-existing health conditions.‘Stating’ the obvious
However, unlike in 1918-19, the state will almost certainly step in: populations, and markets, will demand it. Fiscal spending will accelerate hugely, with little concern over deficits, just as would be the case in a war. Even traditionally-prudent Hong Kong, hard hit by both political unrest and now COVID-19, has just announced a HKD10,000 (USD1,274) fiscal transfer for each adult permanent resident to try to jump-start the economy. Yet can a virus-hit emerging market do the same? That seems highly unlikely. Indeed, some emerging markets are incapable of testing for COVID-19 and others are charging for doing so (and for treating it), which ensures the poor will try to avoid reporting any illness. As such, the virus could have a ‘home base’ to linger in and spread from.
Even in richer economies physical bottle-necks, e.g., ICU beds, would remain for a long time. No other country can build a new hospital in just a few days as China just has (though the finished product is of questionable quality according to some reports). Imagine a global pandemic with a shortage of key inputs, such as masks: even China, the world’s workshop, experienced this recently. In the worst case we would see shortages of masks, and drugs, and beds, and nurses and doctors. Naturally, the public cry for wider and better healthcare would grow the deeper COVID-19 bites. As such, the potential flow-on effects from a worst-case virus scenario may be as socio-economically substantial as the revolutionary European social reforms that followed the end of World War 1.
Conclusion: just a passing fever?
Indeed, having considered “sick-stemic risk” stemming from COVID-19, we also need to consider the following: against a political tailwind blowing towards right-wing populism anyway, as explored in last year’s The Age of Rage; with businesses already rethinking their global strategies in the wake of the US-China trade war; and with a health-scare now seeing voters panic and look for answers, will we see a more pronounced shift towards anti-globalization movements in the wake of the virus?
The prevailing political trend of “national security” will likely also come into play: “How can it be,” populations will ask, “that we have no local production of virus masks, or drugs? Surely we need to keep them for ourselves first! Why are we allowing foreigners in when they might be infected? Let’s prioritize health and not markets!”
Deglobalization will arguably accelerate – and that is before we address the issue of how states will be able to pay for the higher healthcare spending that populations will demand, which does not sit alongside a small-government, free-trade globalization that we have grown accustomed to.
For now we can see that in the short-term there will undoubtedly be far less global travel and much less trade: we already see that. In the long-term it all depends on how COVID-19 plays out.
If it passes quickly, then just as in 2008-09 the key structural lessons on systemic risk of globalization will arguably be ignored in favour of the obvious near-term benefits, while lip-service is paid to the risks in public. However, should COVID-19 spread and linger, meaning that each new journey, each new encounter means a risk of infection with a 1 in 5 chance of serious illness and a 1 in 50 chance of death (based on data so far), then things may change very significantly on many socio-economic fronts. After all, the word “quarantine” emerged from the established practice in Venice of holding visiting sailors off its coast for 40 days to ensure they did not carry any disease.
To repeat, the lessons of COVID-19 are far older than the century-old Spanish flu: complex interconnected systems may produce what look like superior outcomes/returns in the short-term, but they also greatly increase underlying risks that will eventually emerge at far greater cost. These are multiplicative and exponential rather than additive and linear. Markets still aren’t pricing such outcomes, even after the recent equity sell-off.
Let’s conclude with Søren Kierkegaard again: his seminal work was titled “Fear and Trembling”, which seems appropriate enough today looking at COVID-19 vs. Spanish flu. However, he also argues for a leap of faith and states that “Hope is a passion for the possible.” Indeed.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/27/2020 – 19:45 - Why Is Tesla Quietly Moving Crates & Loaded Pallets Out Of Gigafactory 2?
Why Is Tesla Quietly Moving Crates & Loaded Pallets Out Of Gigafactory 2?
WGRZ Buffalo reported Tesla is “quietly” moving “a large number of crates and loaded pallets” out of its taxpayer-funded factory in Buffalo, New York.
This comes one day after we reported Tesla ended its partnership with Panasonic to produce solar panels at the factory, also known as Gigafatory 2.
Panasonic is expected to stop production in May and be completely moved out of the factory by September.
As we noted, Tesla continues “continues to
lietell NY state officials that it’s going to continue to produce its solar roof in Buffalo and that the company is exceeding its required job counts by the state, which was a condition of the deal for the company to receive an insane $959 million in taxpayer money to build its factory.”WGRZ said the crates and loaded pallets are being hauled to a warehouse in Wheatfield Business Park, once the home to Bell Aerospace.
Why are there crates of unused @telsa manufacturing equipment sitting in a Wheatfield warehouse? @WGRZ_SteveBrown tries to get answers but neither Tesla or @EmpireStateDev will respond. https://t.co/R2XRW9qbgW
— WGRZ (@WGRZ) February 27, 2020
Tesla’s landlord at Gigafatory 2 is the state of New York, also known as Empire State Development (ESD). Tesla famously started operations at Buffalo in 2018 after getting a sweetheart deal to lease the facility from ESD for $1 per year and pledged to commit $5 billion in investments. Tesla faces a monster $41.2 million fine if it doesn’t keep operations open or have a headcount above 1,500.
Reuters and Bloomberg both reported in 2018 that crates and pallets of machinery were sitting in the factory. WGRZ provided no further details of what exactly was shipped out.
Considering the events this week, it couldn’t get any worse for Tesla – it remains to be seen if Gigafatory 2 will still be operating in the quarters ahead. Maybe ESD is about to evict Musk?…
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/27/2020 – 19:25 - Anonymous Sources & Iraq War Enablers Are Now Claiming The Kremlin Is At It Again
Anonymous Sources & Iraq War Enablers Are Now Claiming The Kremlin Is At It Again
Authored by Philip Giraldi via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
Those hapless individuals who run the United States are again slipping into a fantasy world where Americans are besieged by imaginary threats coming from both inside and outside the country. Of course, it is particularly convenient to warn of foreign threats, as it makes the people in government seem relevant and needed, but one might recommend that the tune be changed as it is getting a bit boring. After all, there are only so many hours in the day and Russian President Vladimir Putin must pause occasionally to eat or sleep, so the plotting to destroy American democracy must be on hold at least some of the time.
Yes, anonymous sources and the guys and gals who made the Iraq war a reality are now claiming that the Kremlin is at it again! Hints over the past year that Putin might try to replay 2016 in 2020 only do it better this time have now been confirmed! Per one news report the enemy is already at the gates: “U.S. intelligence officials told lawmakers last week that Russia is interfering in the 2020 election campaign by aiming to cast doubt on the integrity of the vote and boost President Donald Trump’s re-election.”
And there’s more! In a New York Times article headlined “Same Goal, Different Playbook: Why Russia Would Support Trump and Sanders: Vladimir Putin is eager both to take the sheen off U.S. democracy and for a counterpart who is less likely to challenge his territorial and nuclear ambitions,” it was revealed that the Kremlin is intending to also help Bernie Sanders, so whichever way the election goes they win.
According to the Times Bernie has been “warn[ed]… of evidence that he is the Russian president’s favorite Democrat.” The article then goes on to explain, relying on its anonymous sources, that “…to the intelligence analysts and outside experts who have spent the past three years dissecting Russian motives in the 2016 election, and who tried to limit the effect of Moscow’s meddling in the 2018 midterms, what is unfolding in 2020 makes perfect sense. Mr. Trump and Mr. Sanders represent the most divergent ends of their respective parties, and both are backed by supporters known more for their passion than their policy rigor, which makes them ripe for exploitation by Russian trolls, disinformation specialists and hackers for hire seeking to widen divisions in American society.”
The Times article was written by David Sanger, the paper’s venerable national security correspondent. He is reliably wedded to Establishment views of the Russian threat, as is his newspaper, and strikes rock bottom in his assessment when he cites none other than “Victoria Nuland, who in a long diplomatic career had served both Republican and Democratic administrations, and had her phone calls intercepted and broadcast by Russian intelligence services.” Nuland, clearly the victim of a nefarious Russian intelligence operation that recorded her saying “fuck the EU,” opined that “Any figures that radicalize politics and do harm to center views and unity in the United States are good for Putin’s Russia.” Nuland is perhaps best known for her role in spending $5 billion in U.S. taxpayer money to overthrow the legitimate government of Ukraine. She is married to leading neoconservative Robert Kagan, which Sanger fails to mention, and is currently a nonresident fellow at the liberal interventionist Brookings Institution. She also works at former Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s consultancy, presumably for the Benjamins. Albright, one might recall, thought that killing 500,000 Iraqi children through U.S. sanctions was “worth it.”
Given the fact that Russia will have very limited resources in their effort to corrupt American democracy, which is, by the way, doing a very good job of self-destruction without any outside help, how exactly will they do it? Sanger explains:
“As they focus on evading more vigilant government agencies and technology companies trying to identify and counter malicious online activity, the Russians are boring into Iranian cyberoffense units, apparently so that they can initiate attacks that look as if they originate in Iran — which itself has shown interest in messing with the American electoral process… And, in one of the most effective twists, they are feeding disinformation to unsuspecting Americans on Facebook and other social media. By seeding conspiracy theories and baseless claims on the platforms, Russians hope everyday Americans will retransmit those falsehoods from their own accounts. That is an attempt to elude Facebook’s efforts to remove disinformation, which it can do more easily when it flags ‘inauthentic activity,’ like Russians posing as Americans. It is much harder to ban the words of real Americans, who may be parroting a Russian story line, even unintentionally.”
So those wily Russians are making themselves look like Iranians and they are planning on “feeding disinformation” to “unsuspecting Americans” consisting of “conspiracy theories” and “baseless claims.” Sounds like a plan to me as the various occupants of the White House and Congress have been doing exactly that for the past twenty years. That we had a national election in 2016 in which a reality television personality ran against an unindicted criminal would seem to indicate that the effort to brainwash the American people has already been successful.
The usual bottom feeders are also piling on to the Russian interference story. Jane Harman, former congresswoman who once colluded with Israeli intelligence to lobby the Department of Justice to drop criminal charges against two employees of AIPAC in exchange for Israel’s support to make her chair of the House Intelligence Committee, warns “How dangerous it would be if we lose the tip of the spear against those who would destroy us.”
Former CIA Director John Brennan also has something to say. He is “very disturbed” by his conviction that Russia is actively meddling in the 2020 campaign in support of President Trump. He said “We are now in a full-blown national security crisis. By trying to prevent the flow of intelligence to Congress, Trump is abetting a Russian covert operation to keep him in office for Moscow’s interests, not America’s.” Brennan is best known for having orchestrated the illegal campaign to vilify Trump and his associates prior to, during and after the 2016 election. He also participated in a weekly meeting with Barack Obama where he and the president would add and remove names from a “kill list” of U.S. citizens residing overseas. He and his boss should both be in prison, but they are instead fêted as American patriots. Go figure.
Time to take a step back from the developing panic. As usual, the U.S. government intelligence agencies have produced no actual evidence that Moscow is up to anything, and there are already reports that the Office of National Intelligence briefer “overstated” her case against the Kremlin in her briefing of the House Intelligence Committee. Sure, the Russians have an interest in an American election and will favor candidates like Trump and Sanders that are not outright hostile to them, but to claim as the NY Times does that Russia has incompatible “territorial and nuclear interests” is a stretch. And yes, Moscow will definitely use its available intelligence resources to monitor the nomination and election process while also clandestinely doing what it can to improve the chances of those individuals they approve of. That is what intelligence agencies do.
In American Establishment groupthink there is one standard for what Washington does and quite a different standard for everyone else. Does it shock any American to know that the United States has interfered in scores of elections all over the world ever since the Second World War, to include those in places like France and Italy well into the 1980s? And in somewhat more kinetic covert actions, actually removing Mohammed Mossadeq in Iran, Salvador Allende in Chile, Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala and Mohamed Morsi in Egypt just for starters, not even considering the multiple plots to kill Fidel Castro. And it continues to do so today openly in places like Iran and Venezuela while also claiming hypocritically that the U.S. is “exceptional” and also a “force for good.” That anyone should be genuinely worrying about Russian proxies buying and distributing a couple of hundred thousands of dollars’ worth of ads in an election in which many billions of dollars’ worth of propaganda will be on the table is ridiculous.
It is time to stop blaming Russia for the failure of America’s ruling class to provide an honest and accountable government and one that does not go around the world looking for trouble.
That is what the 2020 election should really be all about.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/27/2020 – 19:05
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