- CIA Fabricated Russiagate "Evidence", Says Former NSA Tech Chief
CIA Fabricated Russiagate "Evidence", Says Former NSA Tech Chief
Tyler Durden
Sun, 08/02/2020 – 00:00Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Duran,
An important public statement was made on July 27th by Bill Binney, the U.S. Government’s top expert on the internet, and on computer hacking. He had been the Technical Director of the NSA when he quit and became a whistleblower against that Agency while George W. Bush was the U.S. President and invaded Iraq on the basis of faked evidence.
Binney has now laid out, in this speech, the evidence that he wants to present in court against Barack Obama’s CIA, that it defrauded Americans to believe in “Russiagate” (the allegation that Russia ‘hacked’ the computers of Hillary Clinton and Democratic Party officials and fed that information to Wikileaks and other organizations). Binney cites evidence, which, if true, conclusively proves that Russiagate was actually created fraudulently by the CIA’s extensive evidence-tampering, which subsequently became covered-up by the Special Counsel Robert Mueller, in his investigations for the Democratic Party’s first (and failed) try at impeaching and removing from office U.S. President Donald J. Trump.
Here is the transcript of his 10-minute speech (and I add links to explanations of the meaning of technical phrases, and also boldface for emphasis of his key findings, and I place into [brackets] explanatory amplifications of my own), summarizing why he is convinced that the CIA (under President Barack Obama) did this frame-up against Russia, ‘Russiagate’ — it’s a case that he is seeking to present to Congress, and in court, and to debate in public, instead of to continue to be hidden from the public; he wants to show, and publicly to debate, this evidence, so that the public will be able to see it, and evaluate it, for themselves:
Basically the problem is that I can’t seem to get the forensic evidence into a court or up into the mainstream of evidence for defeating-refuting Russiagate. The point is that in the Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity we have a bunch of technical people including Kirk Wiebe and I and some others and some affiliates that were in the UK who also joined the analysis process, and we were looking at the files posted by Wikileaks, because the allegation from the beginning is that Russia hacked the DNC and gave the emails to Wikileaks to publish. So, we looked at those emails, to see if there was something there that might give us some idea of how Wikileaks got that data. Well, in all the 35,813 emails that they posted in three batches, one [batch was] downloaded according to last modified times on the 23rd of May, and another on the 25th of May, and one [other] on the 26th of August, of 2016. Now, all those files, all 35,813, had a last modified time that was rounded off [rounded up] to an even [the next-higher] second, so they all ended up in even [meaning complete or full, not fractional] seconds. Now, if you know anything about data processing and data storage and things of that nature, there is a program that was quite common in the past [including 2016] using what’s called fat file formatting file allocation, table formatting, which is a process that when doing a batch process of data and transferring it to a storage device like a thumb drive or a CD-ROM, it rounds off the last modified time to the nearest even [next-higher] second, so that’s exactly the property we found in all that data posted by Wikileaks. Now, that said very simply this data was downloaded to a storage device a CD-ROM or a thumb drive and physically transported before Wikileaks could post it, so that meant it was not a hack [since there’s no rounding off to the next-higher second, as it would be if it’s a file that’s been carried over the internet], no matter how you look at it. We’re looking at the forensic evidence that says the DNC emails were not hacked, they were downloaded and physically transported to Wikileaks.
And, then, we had the other issue, [which was] with Guccifer 2. Now, Guccifer 2 came out shortly after, you know, Julian Assange announced that he had emails on Hillary Clinton, and so on, and the DNC. Well, we looked at all the material that Guccifer 2 posted and [he] was saying here are the hacks that I did on the DNC. He claimed he did one on the fifth of July, and one on the first of September, of 2016. Well, when you start looking at that — and we looked at the files — he posted a series of files, with file names, the numbers of characters in the file, and a timestamp at the end of the file. Then, the next file number of characters and timestamp, and so on, for I don’t know how many thousands of files. So, we looked at all those files, and we ran a program to calculate the transfer rate of all that data, because all you have to do is look at between the two time stamps, the file name and the number of characters in the file, and take the difference between the times [start-time versus end-time], and that’s the transfer rate for that number of characters, so we found that the variations ran from something like 19 to 49.1 megabytes per second. Now, that means for 19 to 49 million characters per second, and [yet] the world wide web would not support that rate of transfer, not for anybody who’s just, you know, a hacker coming in across the net, trying to do it. They won’t support that kind [speed] of transfer, and some people thought we could be wrong [and] that it could be done, and so we said okay, we’re going to try it. So, we organized some hackers in Europe, to try to transfer a data set from the U.S. over to Europe, to see how fast we could get it there, and we tried it from Albania, and Serbia, a couple of places in the Netherlands, and London. Well, we got various rates, but the highest rate we got was between the data center in New Jersey and one in London, and that was [the one which had gone at] 49.1 megabytes per second, and it went at 12 megabytes per second, which is one-fourth the rate, little less than one-fourth the rate necessary to do the transfer at the highest rate that we saw in the Guccifer 2 data, which meant it didn’t go across the net, so, in fact, the file rate transfers couldn’t. We were nowhere near the maximum rate that [would have been necessary if this had been a hack]. And so we said, okay, if anybody has a way of getting it there, let us know, and we’ll help you try to get to do that, and so far no one has ever come forward to dispute either the facts on the DNC data last file, modified file times, nor the transfer rates, for the Guccifer 2.
Plus, there’s another factor with Guccifer 2, there’s actually two more with Guccifer 2 data, the first of the five July data, and the one September data, if you ignored a date and hour they could merge like you’re shuffling a deck of cards the holes in the five July data timing were filled by data from the first September, that said to us that Guccifer 2 was playing with the data, separating in the two files, saying he made two different acts and and doing a range change on the date and the hour on the one file, so this to us was also an indication of fabrication on the part of Guccifer 2. Then, there’s another factor: when Guccifer 2 put out some from files on 15 june of 2016, with the signatures of Russian saying it’s a Russian hack, our fellows in the UK looking at the data found five of those files at a minimum, I don’t know they’re through yet looking, but they found five files that Guccifer 2 posted on the 15th of June with Russian signatures saying the Russians did this because of a signature they found the same five files posted by Wikileaks from a Podesta emails and they did not have the Russian signatures, so that meant Guccifer 2 was inserting Russian signatures to make it look like the Russians did the [alleged] hack. Well, if you go back to the Vault 7 release from Wikileaks again, from CIA, and you look, they have this Marble framework program that will modify files to look like someone else did the hack, and who were the countries that they had the ability to do that, in the in the Marble framework program? Well, one was Russia, the other was China, North Korea, Iran, and Arab countries. Well, to us, then, that means that the fabrication of the insert of the Russian signatures means that somebody modified the file and made it look like it fits the Marble framework definition of doing that kind of activity, which thus says all of this boosts with two materials pointing back now to CIA, as the origin of it, that’s the basic evidence we have, and none of it points to Russia.
In fact, we can’t even find anything that points to Russia, when in fact the Mueller indictment, or the Mueller report, and that Rosenstein indictment, named some that they called trolls for the Russian government, the IRA, the Internet Research Agency, out of St. Petersburg, and Russia, they named it in a court document, and, well, the IRA over there said we are no way near, we are not in any way associated with, the Russian government, so they sent lawyers in to challenge that in the court of law here in the U.S., and the court charged the government to prove it, and they couldn’t, they couldn’t prove anything, and so the judge basically reprimanded them and said you were never to mention the IRA as in any way affiliated with the Russian government again, so their whole case was falling apart. Everything looked like the rooks were two potato, was a fabrication, the alleged hack and so on, all applications, fabrication, and even if you look at some of the testimony that came out from the Crowdstrike CEO [hired by the Democratic National Committee], I think his name was Sean Henry, he said we we had no indications of exfiltrating the data, but we had evidence that it was exfiltrated. Now, if he’s talking about the last modified times as an indication of exfiltration, which it was but it wasn’t from a hack it was from a download, so that download then is an indication it was done locally as were the Guccifer 2 data that couldn’t go across the net. It was a download locally. All that stuff happened locally. In fact, some of the data and the Guccifer 2 material had all the time stamps indicating it was done on the East Coast of the United States, we had one in Central time, and one on the West Coast, but most of them fell on the East Coast, so it implied that all this stuff [both Wikileaks and Guccifer 2] was happening on the East Coast, and that really pointed right back at CIA, as the origin of all this fabrication.
Binney wants to present this case at trial, against the CIA’s top officials under President Barack Obama.
- Car Theft Hits Record High In Los Angeles
Car Theft Hits Record High In Los Angeles
Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2020 – 23:30A COVID-19-induced recession, with exceptionally high unemployment in Los Angeles, has resulted in record-high auto thefts in 2Q20.
A new report via Crosstown LA, who examined the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) data, reveals that 5,744 vehicle thefts occurred between April and June, up 57.7% from the same period last year.
As thousands of businesses closed in the southern California city, the unemployment rate skyrocketed past 13.2%, recorded in 2010, to 19.5%, as the virus-induced recession permanently closed businesses and severely pressure household finances.
A tick up in crime is common during deep economic downturns. Months of lockdowns made vehicles susceptible to break-ins.
Crosstown also said the California Judicial Council’s passing of a new zero-dollar bail policy was another contributing factor to the surge in thefts, which meant most non-violent crimes had no bail requirements as a way to mitigate the spread of the virus in jails.
“People are seeing that they’re not going to stay in jail, especially for car theft,” said LAPD Lieutenant Siage Hosea, who works on the Task Force for Regional Auto theft Protection.
“So what’s happening is we are seeing repeat offenders.”
Crosstown describes, in one instance, a man was arrested three times in one day for stealing a car.
Hosea said criminals were stealing cars during the lockdowns for transportation.
“People are just using them for transportation. They’re taking one car here, and then drive over there,” he said. “Like an Uber.”
What could lead to even more car thefts this year is the Los Angeles City Council recently defunding the LAPD to the tune of $150 million. Fewer patrols in the liberal city could mean more crime, forcing some residents to flee to the suburbs.
And it’s just silly to think that New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently suggested crime surge in New York City is because struggling folks are forced to steal in order to “feed their child.” The streets are full of career criminals, partly due to the recession but also because liberal cities have relaxed rules for non-violent crimes.
- "Individuals With A Cervix" – Women Reduced To Body-Parts Under Transgender Orthodoxy
"Individuals With A Cervix" – Women Reduced To Body-Parts Under Transgender Orthodoxy
Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2020 – 23:00Authored by Monica Showalter via AmericanThinker.com,
Transgenderism has a way of penalizing women, and it’s not just from the entry of biological men into the realm of women’s sports.
Suddenly, women are being reduced to body parts, commodified, based on the strange contortions of recognizing men with body dysmorphia as actual women, and vice versa. To accomodate this small group of people, women are being reduced to spare parts.
Here’s what the Daily Mail reports:
The American Cancer Society has been slammed for using the phrase ‘individuals with a cervix’ in its latest pap screening advice, rather than women.
Cervical cancer screening is now recommended to start at 25, instead of 21, and HPV testing should begin at 25 rather than 30.
But in updating its advice, the ACS used ‘individuals with a cervix’, rather than ‘women’ in their guidance, because transgender, non-binary and gender-nonconforming individuals can also have a cervix.
And they might add, men with all the innate biology of men, are now in some absolute way, ‘women.’
Et tu, American Cancer Society?
To reduce women to body parts is absolutely dehumanizing – it’s what the porno industry does, it’s what butcher shops (which serve legitimate human needs) do. But now the medical industry is doing the same thing, reducing women to body parts as if they carried these parts around with them by choice in suitcases.
The very word ‘woman’ now has to be broken down into body part functions when in fact, all the characteristics that amount to being a woman or being a man are entirely integral to one’s personhood. It goes right down into the DNA and chromosomes, XX for women, XY for men. No transgender surgery can change that, and it would be insane to treat someone medically as if they held the opposite configuration.
Which explains why even the medical field has now got to balance bowing to the political correctness with actual medical treatment for particular conditions that can affect women.
This sort of thing started with ‘hormones’ as if that were the only thing that made women women, and men men — hormonal treatment was the only thing necessary for born-male athlete to compete in female sports as long as they claimed the name of ‘woman.’
But women are much more than hormones – there’s muscle, bone structure and countless things that integrate together to make women women and men men.
Now women are being reduced to ‘individuals with a cervix’ instead of recognized for their entire design.
What’s bad here is that this won’t be the end of it. If women can be reduced to body parts, it’s only a matter of time before more commodification happens. Body parts will eventually become like property, and perhaps bought and sold. And if bought and sold is the norm, then graded by quality – USDA choice, as commodities are. After that, they could also be stolen, or expropriated. Just as disgusting, a woman who’s had a double masectomy could easily be classified as ‘not a woman,’ since women are now being defined by parts.
The early feminist movement put a lot of steam into demanding that women not be commodified, reduced to body parts – and now it’s all going that direction now.
This can get very grotesque, very Orwellian. Heaven help us.
- "We're Screwed": The Worst Months For Both Renters And Landlords Still Lie Ahead
"We're Screwed": The Worst Months For Both Renters And Landlords Still Lie Ahead
Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2020 – 22:30Rent has barely trickled in across the U.S. over the last couple months as the country continues to grapple with a decimated economy as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The only reason that many landlords have not gone belly-up alongside of their respective tenants has been due to the emergency “relief” provided by the government in the form of relentlessly printing, handing out and destroying the U.S. dollar.
Now, with further emergency funding still up in the air and eviction moratoriums about to expire, an ugly picture is starting to emerge for both renters and their landlords. In fact, Bloomberg predicts that the “worst is yet to come”.
33% of renters didn’t make their full payment in the first week of July, a recent survey showed. This means that 12 million renters could face eviction over the next four months. In places like New York and Houston, more than 20% of renters say they have “no confidence” in their ability to pay rent next month.
John Pollock, staff attorney at the Public Justice Center, commented: “You’d have to go back to the Great Depression to find the kind of numbers we’re looking at right now. There’s almost no precedent for this, which is why it’s so scary.”
If he thinks the economic numbers are scary, he should look into how the Fed is trying to paper over them – that’s even scarier.
The pandemic caused layoffs across the country beginning in March and, since then, many U.S. citizens have been relying on the government dole, credit cards or digging into their savings to survive. About 11 million renters spend at least half of their income just keeping a roof over their head, Bloomberg writes.
While stimulus measures – including $1,200 checks that went out months ago and eviction moratoriums – helped the problem, the government is still struggling to extend those measures. Unemployment benefits, which were hiked by $600 per week during the pandemic, also remain an unknown.
One analysis says that landlords could wind up losing more than $22 billion in rent over the next four months as a result of the economy. Chuck Sheldon, who manages about 1,650 apartments in New Mexico has said that the $600 unemployment boost was a “huge” part of him still being able to collect most rents on time.
Mary Cunningham, vice president of the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute, said: “If Congress doesn’t do anything, I think we are in for a dark fall and winter.”
John Pawlowski, a senior analyst at real estate research firm Green Street Advisors, has a different take. He thinks there won’t be an “immediate” crash if unemployment benefits are not extended: “People still need a place to live.”
Former bartender and 33 year old Brooke Martin disagrees. She told Bloomberg that she can’t cover her $1,800 per month apartment on unemployment, after she pays off student loans and utilities.
She concluded: “As of the end of the month, we’re screwed. There’s just no two ways about it.”
- Obese People Are Twice As Likely To Die From Covid
Obese People Are Twice As Likely To Die From Covid
Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2020 – 21:58Just in case Americans – the most obese nation in the world – needed another reason to lose some weight, here it is.
In what is emerging as a perfidious Catch 22, at a time when the US population is rapidly gaining weight due to mandatory work from home regulation (hence the Covid 19 pounds) as described here and here, while a surge in domestic alcohol consumption is only making the matters worse…
… Public Health England has published a paper titled “Excess Weight and COVID-19 Insights from new evidence“, indicating that the risks of hospitalization, intensive care treatment and death increase progressively with increasing body mass index (BMI) above the healthy weight range even after adjustment for potential confounding factors, including demographic and socioeconomic factors. In other words, the fatter one is, the higher the risk that person may die from covid.
Some more details: according to the Public Health England paper, the hazard ratios of ICU admission patients who are overweight (BMI ≥25-29.9), obese (BMI ≥30-34.9) or severely obese (BMI ≥35) are 1.64, 2.59 and 4.35, respectively see figure below) relative to patients with a BMI of ≥20-24.9.
The study also showed an increasing risk of death with increasing BMI with hazard ratios of 1.05, 1.40 and 1.92 for people with a BMI of 30-34, 35-39.9 and ≥40, respectively, relative to BMI <30. In a nutshell, people who are severely obese are twice as likely to die from Covid.
Which, in a world where facts could be discussed instead of dismissed and slammed as “racist”, would mean that certain races and genders are especially at risk. However, because charts like the one below are racist, it’s best to wallow in ignorance and accuse white people for what is taking place.
Source: Public Health England And while being overweight does not seem to increase people’s chances of contracting COVID-19 according to the study, it can affect the respiratory system, and potentially immune function as well.
And since no crisis will ever be put to waste by a nanny state which after the covid pandemic will control virtually every aspect of our lives, the British government plans to initiate an anti-obesity campaign including strict rules on how junk food is advertised and sold in the UK.
- A Third Of US Museums "Not Confident" They Will Survive
A Third Of US Museums "Not Confident" They Will Survive
Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2020 – 21:30The American Alliance of Museums (AAM) recently published a survey designed to gauge the state of the US museum industry during the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey results were troubling, at least a third of directors of 760 museums reported a “significant risk” of closing permanently within 16 months.
The survey results document extreme financial distress in the museum field. One-third (33%) of respondents were not confident they would be able to survive 16 months without additional financial relief, and 16 percent felt their organization was at significant risk of permanent closure. The vast majority (87%) of museums have only 12 months or less of financial operating reserves remaining, with 56% having less than six months left to cover operations. Forty-four percent had furloughed or laid off some portion of their staff, and 41 percent anticipated reopening with reduced staff. – the survey said
AAM President and CEO Laura Lott told NPR, “there’s a large public perception that museums rely on government support when the reality is they get only a quarter of their funding from the government.”
AAM stats show US museums receive about 850 million visits per year. However, this year, because of the virus pandemic and strict social distancing rules, those numbers will dramatically be reduced, resulting in the lower ticket, gift shop, and food sales.
Of the 760 museums surveyed, 40% were history museums, historic houses, and historical societies. Others were aquariums, botanical gardens, art museums, and science centers.
AAM said museums support “726,000 direct and indirect jobs and contribute $50 billion each year to the economy,” adding that “over 40% plan to reduce staff and will need to spend additional funds to ensure their ability to reopen safely.”
To sum up, the great museum bust is dead ahead. Does that mean cheap art is about the hit auction houses and reverse lofty prices?
- The Consequences Of "Worthless Cash"
The Consequences Of "Worthless Cash"
Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2020 – 21:00Authored by Louis-Vincent Gave via Evergreen Gavekal blog,
“Lesson: In the real world, ninety-nine cents will not get you into New York City. You will need the full dollar.”
– Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run (back when people wanted to get into NYC, rather than out of it)
“The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
INTRODUCTION
Prior to the Great War, the gold standard* reigned supreme. However, when World War I broke out, most countries abandoned this standard to pay their military expenses with printed money, which devalued their currency. The United States, which was a rising world power at the time, remained off the battlefield for the first two years of the war and became an important supplier to the United Kingdom, France, and other Allied Powers. As a result, the United States became the lender of choice for those that bought US supplies in return for foreign bonds – and gold. When the Great War began in 1914, the British pound was the world’s leading reserve currency. However, five short years later, and the US dollar replaced the pound as the world’s leading reserve currency.
In the decades that followed, the United States once more supplied the Allies with weapons and other goods for World War II. The United States was again paid largely in gold, propelling it to hold the vast majority of the world’s most precious metal in its coffers. This precluded a return to the gold standard by almost all of the countries that had depleted their gold reserves. In 1944, the Bretton Woods Agreement was formulated. Pursuant to this, the Allies, who would go on to win the war the next year, determined that the world’s currencies could no longer be linked to gold, but could be linked to the US dollar, which was, in turn, linked to gold.
Fast forward to today, and more than 61% of all foreign bank reserves are denominated in U.S. dollars – either in the form of cold hard cash or U.S. treasuries. This reserve status is largely based on the strength and size of the US economy and financial markets. However, as the U.S. Treasury has continued to print U.S. dollars to stabilize the economy and markets in response to the havoc unleashed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the once-mighty U.S. dollar has come under some serious pressure.
In this week’s final installment of Louis-Vincent Gave’s three-part series on possible explanations for the recent rebound in global equity markets, Louis considers the possibility that investors are flocking into equities out of fear that the U.S. dollar could be worth a lot less in the years ahead. As you will read, two of the main beneficiaries of this tidal shift have been gold, which recently hit an all-time high, and gold miners, who have outperformed all other asset classes year-to-date.
The jury is still out on whether the dollar’s long run as the world’s leading reserve currency will be sustained in the coming years. However, as discussed in our May 1 newsletter, our bet is that the US dollar will be the major casualty in an era of unbridled monetary and fiscal stimulus.
On the flipside, those who have traded in their greenbacks for gold bars (and other precious metals) are likely to see a red-hot bull run continue to rage on, notwithstanding inevitable corrections along the way. Speaking of “way”, this bullion bull market might just go way, way above the $2,000/ounce level it has nearly attained. If it seems incomprehensible that gold might rise as high as $3,000/ounce (as some respected analysts have suggested), is it any more incredible that the Fed’s trove of treasuries, bought with its seemingly limitless bogus bucks, will soon hit $10 trillion? Never say never…especially these days.
* The gold standard is a monetary system where a country’s currency or paper money has a value directly linked to gold.
Disclosure: Louis Gave has an equity ownership in Evergreen. Louis’ views and opinions are his own, and are not necessarily the views of Evergreen. Securities highlighted or discussed in this communication are not a recommendation for or against these securities. Evergreen actively manages client portfolios and securities discussed in this communication may or may not be held in such portfolios at any given time. Please see important disclosures following this piece.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF ‘WORTHLESS CASH’ BY LOUIS-VINCENT GAVE
In the second quarter of this year, global equity markets registered their best quarterly performance in two decades. What was behind this record-breaking rebound? A number of explanations appeared possible. In the first paper of this series, I considered the possibility that markets were pricing in a return to the macro environment that prevailed in the post-2008, pre-Covid-19 world. In the second paper, I pondered the possibility that investors had simply lost their senses. In this, the third paper, I will consider the possibility that the present growth in monetary aggregates is leading investors to conclude that they have no alternative; money is being debased at such a pace that sitting on cash in a bank account is, over the long term, sheer madness.
Over the last few months US monetary growth has broken new highs week-after-week. Today US M2 growth stands at 24.9% year-on-year, more than six times the structural growth rate of nominal GDP. So the idea that cash is in danger of becoming worthless is no delusion; this rate of money printing has never been seen before in the history of the US, or of any other G7 economy.
An uncomfortable diagnosis
Finance 101 teaches that the price of an equity is determined by a company’s future cash flows, discounted by an interest rate, to which is added a risk premium. Theoretically then, to be successful an investor should only have to formulate a view on these three variables. But is it really that simple? Consider the following:
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Future cash flows. With global economic growth much lower today and for the foreseeable future than anticipated at the start of the year, it is obvious that corporate cashflows will take a hit in 2020, most likely in 2021, and perhaps in 2022 to boot.
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Interest rates. Interest rates around the world collapsed in the early days of the Covid-19 panic, and the total return on bonds, especially long-dated bonds, went through the roof. However, since April interest rates have largely flatlined, as have total returns on long-dated bonds; in recent months, falling interest rates have stopped being a tail-wind for equities.
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Risk premiums. If cashflows are bound to disappoint and interest rates are no longer falling, then the only possible explanation for the present bull market is that risk premiums have collapsed. But if so, then why have risk premiums collapsed? The world hardly seems a less risky place than six months ago. On the contrary: every other week seems to bring a new catastrophe. So, to attribute the current bull market to a collapse in risk premiums seems an uncomfortable proposition to say the least.
Or maybe the simpler explanation is that for all the talk about the rampaging equity bull market, global equities aren’t in much of a bull market at all. In the first two papers of this series, I pointed out that the MSCI World ex-US index has flatlined since both 2007 and 2014. Perhaps even more surprising, the Valueline composite index, which is arguably the best proxy for the performance of the median US stock, stands at the same level today as in 1998 (see the chart below).
Admittedly, the Valueline is a price index, and so does not include the contribution of dividends to total returns. Nevertheless, the failure of key broad equity market benchmarks to make anything like new highs despite all the talk of a rampaging equity bull market is remarkable. So where should investors actually look to find this remarkable bull?
Finding the rampaging bull
Defining a bear market is easy enough: if the price of an asset falls by a given amount—for equity indexes, usually -20%—then it is generally accepted that the asset is in a bear market. But if it is to be useful, the definition of a bull market needs to be more complicated. The financial media usually talk about a 20% rise as a “bull market,” but that hardly seems satisfactory. Under that definition, oil, which has more than doubled from its mid-April lows, would be in a bull market. However, very few energy investors have been popping the champagne corks lately.
So, it may be more useful to propose an alternative definition: an asset class is in a bull market when its underlying price continues to make new cycle highs.
This handy definition is particularly useful today, given that markets bottomed in mid-March 2020, and have since rallied hard almost everywhere around the world. Yet within this broad rebound, some assets have gone on to make new highs for the year, while others have not. With this in mind, it is easier to argue that the assets that have made new highs are in a bull market, while those that have yet to recover their start-of-the-year levels still have a lot to prove.
Using this—admittedly self-serving—definition narrows the current bull market down greatly, and so this investigation is within manageable limits. Sticking to the “must have made new year-to-date highs” benchmark, it becomes clear that:
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The rampaging bull is no longer to be found in the world’s bond markets. From late 2018 to March 2020, bond prices continued to shoot up. However, the advance has now stalled. This is an important shift in the investment environment and a message investors should heed (see the chart below).
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The rampaging bull is no longer found in the US dollar. It increasingly looks as if the US dollar bull market may have ended with the blow-off top of March 2020. The US dollar, as measured by the DXY index, is now back trading below its two-year moving average—and this in the middle of a global crisis. Moreover, unless the US dollar rebounds sharply and quickly, the slope of the two-year moving average is soon set to roll over. This is another important shift in the investment environment.
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In a broad sense, equities have now gone nowhere for 30 months. The MSCI World index ex-dividends now stands -2% below where it stood in January 2018, and -6.2% below the levels of February 2020.
Nonetheless, behind this backdrop of flat interest rates, mild US dollar weakness and flatlining—albeit volatile—global equity markets, the rampaging bull has found a home in four different asset classes: (i) Big Tech, (ii) green investments, (iii) precious metals, and (iv) Chinese equities. And of these, precious metal miners have outperformed all other asset classes year-to-date. Let’s look at these four bull markets one-by-one.
The Big Tech bull market
Many liters of ink have been spilled over the Big Tech bull market. The subject is unavoidable, if only because Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Google now account for more than a fifth of the S&P 500. As a result, the decision either to overweight or to underweight Big Tech has made or broken many portfolio managers’ performance in recent years. And it’s likely to continue to do so for a good few years to come.
In Have Equities Become A Bubble?, I reviewed the most cogent argument against overweighting Big Tech—that the law of large numbers presents a serious hurdle to future gains. To illustrate this challenge, let me propose the following exercise. Let’s accept that:
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Over time, the S&P 500 rises by roughly 6% a year (even if this seems optimistic given current equity valuations and interest rates).
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Over the past six years, FAAMG stocks have risen by an average of 26% a year, and that investors paying up record valuations for these stocks are obviously hopeful that these returns will continue.
If we accept these two points, then, as the chart below illustrates, for the maths to “square up,” we would have to imagine the following:
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If returns for the S&P 500 ex-FAAMG were roughly -5% per annum for the next five years;
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Then by late 2024, the FAAMG would be larger than the other 494 companies in the S&P 500;
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And by 2028, at this rate the FAAMG stocks would be bigger than the entire US market, including themselves. It should go without saying that this is manifestly impossible.
As readers will have realized, there is an obvious flaw in the chart above: if the FAAMG do continue compounding at 26% over the coming decade, then as they begin to make up an ever greater share of the S&P 500, the S&P 500 as a whole would begin to compound at a faster rate. And this begs the question whether the S&P 500 can compound at a rate much higher 6%.
The first pillar on which the Big Tech bull market rests is that inflation and economic growth around the world will remain modest for as far as the eye can see. And in a world with low inflation, low growth and low interest rates, investors might as well pay up for aggressive growth stocks. In a low return world, the 15% annual profit growth delivered by Big Tech stands out so blatantly it warrants a 26% share price appreciation.
This brings me back to the challenge of big numbers and the iron law of compounding (Albert Einstein reputedly said that there is no more powerful force in the universe than compounding). This iron law faces an obvious logical challenge.
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Start with the premise that Big Tech’s share price growth can far outpace profit growth because of the lack of GDP growth around the world;
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And GDP growth around the world is weak—say 3%?;
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Then very quickly Big Tech will get too big as a share of global equity benchmarks. And as it does, the return on global equities will have to accelerate from roughly 6% per year now, to 8%, and then 10%, 12% etc;
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But can global equity returns accelerate to 8%, and on towards 12%, if global GDP growth stays weak? Probably not. Such rapid equity gains would likely trigger an economic boom of their own, with roaring animal spirits feeding greater consumption.
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And if growth accelerates, doesn’t that undermine the very first pillar on which the exceptional Big Tech bull market rests. In an accelerating global growth environment, lots of other assets would start to look attractive.
Trying to square this particular circle, investors can come to only one of two possible logical conclusions. The first is that FAAMG stocks will not be able to keep compounding at 26% a year. At some point in the future, we will look back at Microsoft on 11.5 times sales, Tesla on 10.5 times sales, and Facebook on 9.5 times sales and remember the words of Scott McNealy, the CEO of Sun Microsystems, who said of the early-2000 valuation of his company:
“At 10 times revenues, to give you a 10-year payback, I have to pay you 100% of revenues for 10 straight years in dividends… That assumes I have zero cost of goods sold, which is very hard for a computer company. That assumes zero expenses, which is really hard with 39,000 employees. That assumes I pay no taxes, which is very hard. And that assumes you pay no taxes on your dividends, which is kind of illegal. And that assumes with zero R&D for the next 10 years, I can maintain the current revenue run rate… Do you realize how ridiculous those basic assumptions are? You don’t need any transparency. You don’t need any footnotes. What were you thinking?
The second possible conclusion to square the circle of FAAMG stocks compounding at such a high rate that the broader market also compounds at an ever higher rate, against a backdrop of weak US and global GDP growth, is that the currency in which all of this is denominated becomes ever more worthless. And in an environment of rapid currency debasement, equities usually outperform bonds and cash, even in the absence of credible GDP growth. One particular example springs to mind.
This brings me to the second bull market that is unfolding: the one we might call “the rise of the green machine”.
The rise of the green machine
In the chart below, the red line tracks the performance of alternative energy stocks around the world. The blue line tracks the performance of more traditional energy providers—mostly oil producers, some natural gas, and a tiny little bit of coal. For most of the past six years, these two energy provider segments delivered roughly the same performance.
This makes sense given that, by and large, alternative energy companies and traditional energy companies sell—at bottom—the same product: energy. The one key difference is the way this energy is produced.
Suddenly, however, the difference in the method of production has become important enough to justify a massive divergence in performance between the share prices of the two groups of energy producers.
This divergence leaves investors facing a question: why should the value of alternative energy producers be climbing to new highs, even as traditional energy producers continue to be the biggest three-legged donkey in the paddock? There are three possible explanations.
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The first possible explanation is that we are currently seeing a wave of technological breakthroughs in alternative energy. And these breakthroughs are of such a magnitude that they will render carbon extraction obsolete. I have a hard time buying into this explanation.
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The second possible explanation is that investors have taken leave of their senses. Because of a desire to be seen to be doing the “right thing”, investors no longer care about long term returns on their capital, or even the long term return of their capital. Instead, what matters is the immediate priority of “virtue-signaling” at scale. Cue the current growth of “socially responsible investing,” carbon-free investment mandates, and so on. On a purely superficial and anecdotal basis, this explanation seems to fit in well with the spirit of the times, so this could well be a factor.
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Having said that, it is the third possible explanation, which I shall call the Cantillon effect at work, which really makes the most sense.
Richard Cantillon, an Irishman who spent much of his life in France, only wrote one book: Essai Sur La Nature Du Commerce En Général. It was only published after his death in the early 18th century and today is seldom studied in economics classes, even though it was a ground-breaking text in the history of political economy, and one which had a huge influence on the likes of Knut Wicksell, the economists of the Austrian school, and the great Irving Fisher.
Cantillon’s starting point was, originally for the times, the value of money. While everyone uses money to measure all the other values in the system, few economists before Cantillon had spent any time trying to understand why money has value in the first place, or just as importantly, why that value changes over time. The reason Cantillon was drawn to the subject may have been because he lived in such extraordinary times.
One of Cantillon’s contemporaries was John Law, who through his Mississippi Company ignited an epic boom and devastating bust in France, which until then had been by far the wealthiest country in Europe. It is fair to say that despite the long list of Englishmen who through history have inflicted such damage on France—Edward the Black Prince, Horatio Nelson, the Duke of Wellington, Brian Moore—none have caused as much damage as the Scotsman Law. However, at least one positive thing came out of the bust: Cantillon’s insights. And these were derived from practical experience; Cantillon was a phenomenally successful speculator, who made out like a bandit in both the South Sea and Mississippi bubbles, first on the way up, then on the way down.
Cantillon’s key insight was that when “new’” money is created, those who are closest to the source of its creation are the first to see the prices of whatever they are selling rise. By contrast, those furthest from the source of the money will be the last to see the prices of their particular wares increase. To cut a long story short, if we define inflation as an increase in the money supply, then its main impact is a change in relative prices—and not, as most people believe, a change in absolute prices.
Those who are close to the central bank get rich; those who are not get poor. As a result, investment piles into the “favored” sectors, while the rest of the economy is starved of money. Eventually, these changes lead to a misallocation of capital with the appearance of multiple false “natural rates,” while there is only one market rate. It is in this mechanism that we find the origin of the market crashes which, as night follows day, always come after major misallocations of capital.
As an example, Cantillon cited the 16th and 17th centuries’ massive increase in Latin America’s production of silver, most of which was “captured” by the King of Spain. As a result, the prices of the goods bought by the Spanish court skyrocketed immediately, while food prices took a long time to follow. And when the production of silver eventually collapsed, all the “court-linked sectors” went bankrupt.
Fast forward to today, and is it possible to imagine a sector closer to power than alternative energy? Which of today’s professional politicians does not want to be seen to be writing checks for the clean energies of the future, produced right here at home? And at the same time, is it possible to think of an industry further from the center of power today than big oil?
When former vice president Joe Biden announces a plan to spend US$2trn once he’s elected on a “green new deal,” is the motivation behind his largesse the promise of future financial returns? Or is it the desire to signal virtue? (With other people’s money, naturally; the US is already running multitrillion US dollar budget deficits, with a debt-to-GDP ratio now higher than at its World War II peak. But who’s counting?)
I would argue the latter. This implies that the performance of the alternative energy bull market is an especially strong signal of a Cantillon effect unfolding right in front of our eyes. And on the other side of a Cantillon-effect bull market always lies currency depreciation.
This brings me to the third of today’s bull markets: precious metals.
The bull market in precious metals
Year-to-date, gold and silver miners have outperformed all other major asset classes. This outperformance has come against a backdrop of steadily rising gold prices, and sharp rallies in silver prices. Gold has now made new all-time record highs in every currency except the US dollar. And when it comes to the US dollar, if you look at quarterly averages for the price of gold, then the average price in 2Q20 of US$1,780/oz was a shade above the average price of US$1,772 at the peak of the previous bull market in 3Q12.
If anything would confirm that the current bull market is driven primarily by currency debasement, it would be the outperformance of gold and silver against all other assets. As it turns out, the metals themselves are not outperforming tech. But gold and silver miners are. The question is whether this outperformance carries an important message about today’s world.
Historically, once gold bull markets get going, they tend to be long, drawn-out affairs, interrupted only by sharp tightening from the US Federal Reserve, as in 1981, or by a sustained rise in the US dollar, as in 2012. Today, neither appears to be on the cards. So, what will stop the bull market in gold?
One answer might have been a major bust in the emerging markets. Most of the physical demand for gold today comes from India, China, South East Asia and the Middle East. The Indian sub-continent weighs especially heavily in the supply and demand equation. When things go well in India, the marginal rupee tends to find its way into gold. And when things go badly, it has generally flowed out of gold. This pattern makes the current bull market all the more remarkable: gold prices have been rising even though the Indian economy has ground to a standstill.
However, even as India has hit the skids, the world’s second gold market, China, has been thriving. Or at least its stock market has been ripping higher.
The China bull market
With Covid-19 originating in China, the US-China relationship deteriorating further, China imposing a highly unpopular security law on Hong Kong, global trade collapsing, the UK banning Huawei, China and India coming to blows in the Himalayas, and the Chinese government doing far less fiscal and monetary stimulus than any other major government, who would have thought that the CSI 300 would be outperforming all other major markets year-to-date, except for the Nasdaq? Yet, that is exactly what is happening. And just as success has many fathers, there are probably several germinal forces behind the rising Chinese equity market.
The most obvious hand is that of the government. The market had been grinding slowly higher, like other markets, until an editorial on the front page of the China Securities Journal highlighted that a bull market would be most welcome at the current juncture. The army of Chinese retail investors did not need to be told twice, and the domestic Chinese equity market promptly gapped higher.
But why, following the 2015 debacle, would the Chinese government decide to take another swig from this particular chalice? Possible explanations include:
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The need to keep capital markets on an even keel as Xi Jinping “ties up loose ends” in Hong Kong. Stepping into Hong Kong was a big change of policy for Xi. Until May, the “vibe” coming out of Beijing had been that Hong Kong was a problem for Hong Kong’s government to solve. This changed once Shanghai failed to get the Alibaba secondary placement, and once US senators started tightening the conditions for Chinese corporates listing in New York. All of a sudden, with Hong Kong the only major capital market still open for Chinese business, settling the Hong Kong situation became Xi’s priority. And now that Hong Kong is Xi’s problem, he needs to make a success of it.
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The need to promote consumption, especially of bigger ticket items such as cars and household appliances. Usually, this is done through the promotion of real estate. But real estate is already buoyant, and a number of cities are back flirting with bubble territory. Promoting further real estate gains from here could lead to an even bigger hangover when the party ends than a stock market boom.
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The desire to attract foreign capital. As it becomes increasingly obvious that the US-China divorce will be messy, China needs to dedollarize its trade and its economy even faster than it anticipated. The obvious way to do this is by promoting the renminbi as a separate trade currency. But of course, foreigners are only likely to want to keep their working capital or their savings in renminbi if renminbi-denominated assets are seen as an attractive destination.
This last explanation brings me back to the thesis developed in the book that Charles and I wrote a little over a year ago: that China is now actively attempting to dedollarize pan-emerging-markets trade. This matters enormously, because should China succeed, emerging markets across Asia, Africa, Central Asia and Eastern Europe will find themselves needing far fewer US dollars. A world in which the US dollar’s share of global trade starts to shrink rapidly— still highly hypothetical—is a world which would rapidly find itself with far too many US dollars floating abroad.
A world with an overflow of US dollars would be a very different world from the one we inhabit. It would be a world in which:
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Precious metals would likely go through the roof.
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Asia, including China, would outperform meaningfully.
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The only thing to own in the US would be the businesses in which the US has a clear comparative advantage.
Now, come to think of it, isn’t this precisely what we are seeing today?
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- US Beach Towns Fear Collapse As Summer Of Pandemic Causes Havoc
US Beach Towns Fear Collapse As Summer Of Pandemic Causes Havoc
Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2020 – 20:30The executive director of the Bethany-Fenwick Chamber of Commerce, Lauren Weaver, told USA Today that “our businesses (located on the southern tip of the Delmarva Peninsula) have 12 weeks to make money to survive the rest of the year… sales for the town’s 75 or so beach-district merchants are down 40% to 70% compared with a year ago.”
Weaver warned: “A lot of them are not going to survive” this season.
Bethany-Fenwick is an upscale beach community, home to wealthy elites, such as Joe Biden.
Joe Biden’s North Shores home just north of Rehoboth Beach The virus pandemic has made it challenging for local businesses to operate, many of whom only make money during the summer months.
Down the street, about 20 minutes south, revenue for businesses in Ocean City, Maryland, is down 20% to 25%, said Susan Jones, head of the Ocean City Hotel-Motel-Restaurant Association.
Jones said the city’s decision to reopen beaches in early May despite the virus pandemic helped businesses survive. She said this year is a not a profitability story, but rather a breakeven story.
Back to Rehoboth and Dewey Beaches, which are a string of beach towns that generate more than $3.5 billion in annual revenue, according to Southern Delaware Tourism. Much of the area is dependent on travel and tourism.
It may look a bit different this year – but we’re still here! …on the beach off Garfield Parkway (beach entrance – south).
Join us at 6am every day (weather permitting) ☀️🏖🐬 pic.twitter.com/ohB2tYg6Dn
— Bethany Beach Yoga (@BethanyBchYoga) July 23, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Bethany was shut down for 2.5 months to mitigate the virus spread, reopened in early June with stores and restaurants operating at 30% capacity. Capacity has doubled to 60% in July; the recovery, however, is anything but smooth.
The reopening of eateries in Dewey has been rough. Gov. John Carney had to shut down restaurants before July 4 holiday, one of the biggest revenue days of the year for businesses in the area, after tourists tested positive for COVID-19.
The Bethany Beach Ocean Suites Hotel said the average summer rate is $799 per night, has been dramatically reduced following a rash of cancellations.
Bethany Beach Ocean Suites Hotel Alex Heidenberger, who co-owns Mango’s eatery in Bethany, said he “cried” when the governor decided to shut restaurants ahead of July 4th weekend.
Mango’s eatery in Bethany Heidenberger said, “Mango’s revenue fell by $300,000 in the weeks before and after July 4, accounting for the bulk of the $400,000 in losses the restaurant has sustained during the crisis.”
“To take two steps back, that is the worst possible scenario,” said Heidenberger.
During the good times, he said the restaurant made $200,000 per week in sales, and around $2 million in summer revenue. This summer, he said, Mango’s sales have been halved.
“It’s really devastating us,” he said. “I’m operating at a loss,” adding that, “every day is a new challenge — it’s just exhausting.”
Heidenberger said he hasn’t paid the mortgage in four months. Profitability at the restaurant has collapsed. With the beach town in crisis, he has had to serve as a lifeguard on the beach as a shortage in beach crew was due to lockdowns.
“I’m working harder than I have ever worked in my life,” he said, adding that he puts in about 80 hours a week at the two restaurants. Yet, “I have no money… This is all I think about. I don’t sleep.”
He wasn’t sure if Mango’s was going to make it through the summer:
“I don’t know what the future is going to be,” Heidenberger said, noting his family already has closed two restaurants in D.C. as a result of the pandemic. At the same time, he said, “This is all I know. This is what I love.”
A similar collapse is happening in beach communities in California, Florida, New Jersey, and Texas.
- "Peaceful Riots"? Journalism Bows To The Woke Mob
"Peaceful Riots"? Journalism Bows To The Woke Mob
Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2020 – 20:00Authored by Mark Hemingway via RealClearPolitics.com,
Just a few weeks ago the idea of “peaceful riots” would have seemed absurd, but the American media is nothing if not inventive these days.
Earlier this week, ABC News reported, “Protesters in California set fire to a courthouse, damaged a police station and assaulted officers after a peaceful demonstration intensified.” Legal scholar Eugene Volokh wonders how this terminology would work in the real world: “You are being charged with an intensified peaceful demonstration, in the second degree. How do you plead?”
Indeed, the media’s commitment to tempering their descriptions of violent riots sweeping the nation as “mostly peaceful” is relentless – that particular phrase has become a media cliché practically overnight. Of course, America’s police officers could also be accurately described as “mostly peaceful,” but any journalist who dared to give cops the same generous benefit of the doubt would likely cause a riot in their own newsroom.
That’s why it was almost shocking to read an Associated Press report earlier this week from reporter Mike Balsamo, who embedded with federal law enforcement protecting the Mark O. Hatfield courthouse in downtown Portland.
“I watched as injured officers were hauled inside. In one case, the commercial firework came over so fast the officer didn’t have time to respond. It burned through his sleeves and he had bloody gashes on both forearms. Another had a concussion from being hit in the head with a mortar,” Balsamo reported.
“The lights inside the courthouse have to be turned off for safety and the light from high-powered lasers bounced across the lobby almost all night. The fear is palpable. Three officers were struck in the last few weeks and still haven’t regained their vision.”
Despite the obvious evidence of organized violence, Balsamo’s report is about the only good-faith effort from the national press attempting to inform the public about the current plight of law enforcement. Meanwhile, the media have spent weeks going out of their way to portray rioters as unambiguous freedom fighters.
When protesters in Portland organized a “Wall of Moms” to stand between federal marshals protecting the courthouse and the rioters throwing bricks and shooting fireworks, it prompted gushing media coverage. Columnist Jonathan Alter called the Wall of Moms a “brilliant tactic that may forever change social protest,” apparently unaware that groups such as Hamas have been cynically using human shields for decades. Following their 15 minutes of fame, you will not be surprised to learn that the group has descended into “Judean People’s Front” infighting over the leader’s allegedly insufficient fealty to Black Lives Matter. In spite of media wish-casting, the Wall of Moms was never a morally serious effort.
Naturally, the big beneficiaries of this one-sided media narrative about riots are Democratic Party politicians. On Wednesday, acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf announced that the federal government had reached a deal with the city of Portland to downsize the federal law enforcement presence at the courthouse that was clashing with protesters. However, Wolf’s statement made it clear that the deal was contingent on the city stepping up its own police presence to protect the building, which was all the federal government had asked the city to do months ago.
Rather than admit the deal was a tacit acknowledgement Portland had failed its basic responsibility to maintain law and order, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown pretended it was a victory against jackbooted feds who “acted as an occupying force and brought violence.”
But Brown’s rhetoric is dishonest, as she knows better than most. There were nightly riots for weeks before the feds arrived in downtown Portland. Along with Minneapolis and Seattle, Portland holds the dubious distinction of being a city that has failed to protect its own buildings. Rioters had already burned the Multnomah County Justice Center jail and the Portland Police Bureau headquarters, just a few blocks away from the federal courthouse.
Speaking as an Oregonian and former resident of Portland, I’ll note that the city’s problems go far beyond the recent riots. Business leaders have been begging City Hall to address law and order issues for years. In 2017, the CEO of Columbia Sportswear, one of Oregon’s most beloved companies, wrote a blistering op-ed about the city’s problems.
“A few days ago, one of our employees had to run into traffic when a stranger outside our office followed her and threatened to kill her,” Tim Boyle wrote.
“On other occasions our employees have arrived at work only to be menaced by individuals camping in the doorway. And our employees have had so many car break-ins downtown that we have started referring to parking in Portland as our ‘laptop donation program.’ Given these experiences, it is a relief when the only thing we are dealing with is the garbage and human waste by our front door. Think about that for a minute. This is outrageous and unacceptable.”
Anyone who has spent time in Portland comes to understand the mutually beneficial relationship between the homeless and itinerant gutter-punks who are the main source of the city’s crime and violence and the left-wing activists whose radical agenda of decriminalization lets them control the streets. After police responded to Boyle’s plea to keep excrement out of the doorway of his business, Boyle found himself on the receiving end of organized protests, forcing him to shut down Columbia’s flagship store downtown.
The city has also been capitulating to threats of left-wing political violence for years. Also in 2017, Portland canceled its annual Rose parade after “anti-fascists” threatened violence because members of the Multnomah County Republican Party were among the many civic groups slated to march. It’s one thing to claim that violence is justified against unwanted federal officers invading your city – but threatening local residents with violence because they are Republicans?
Even then, the city rolled over and in doing so conceded that violent left-wing activists control Portland. That’s not hyperbole – taking control of the city was literally one of the threats made in the anonymous email that caused officials to cancel the parade: “You have seen how much power we have downtown and that the police cannot stop us from shutting down roads so please consider your decision wisely.”
Who exactly is in charge in Portland? Well, it’s not Mayor Ted Wheeler, who’s spent years openly disparaging and undermining his own police force even as he let antifa direct traffic in his city. You’d think this would endear Wheeler to the radicals he’s trying to appease, but when he recently made a supportive appearance at the courthouse protests downtown the crowd booed and yelled at him to resign.
At this point, it’s insulting to insist that American consumers of news can’t distinguish legitimate protest from violent rioting that has devastated Portland and dozens of other cities. Similarly, there’s plenty of room for criticism of heavy-handed federal and police tactics, while still understanding that we can’t stand by and let violent mobs burn courthouses. But if covering a story from multiple angles used to be the norm in the media, it’s not anymore.
Ultimately, members of the media have a choice to make – you can be honest about the alarming evidence of law and order breaking down in American cities. Or you can continue to torch your credibility by downplaying the nightly violence for reasons that appear overtly partisan. Please consider your decision wisely.
- America's Coin Shortage Is Getting Worse
America's Coin Shortage Is Getting Worse
Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2020 – 19:30The nation’s coin shortage, prompted by less cash circulating as a result of Covid-19 – is getting worse.
And believe it or not, cash is still being used in 49% of payments that are $10 or below, according to a recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, reported on by Bloomberg.
The irony of the situation lies in the fact that the Fed can print trillions for bonds, but can’t come up with a couple of quarters to do its laundry. Despite the Fed’s best efforts to keep money circulating, there is still a coin shortage in the U.S. The effects are being felt in places like laundromats, where coins are used to do laundry.
Brian Wallace, president and CEO of the Coin Laundry Association (we swear this is an actual organization), said: “This is just an unexpected wrench in the works that I don’t think any of us could have anticipated, finding ourselves short on quarters.”
Only about 20% of laundromats offer a card option and 27% accept credit cards. In other words, most laundromats still rely on coins to do business.
“The people that show up to the laundromat each weekend are there for a purpose. It’s an essential service. Anything that impedes that progress certainly impacts tens of millions of families that use vended laundry each week,” Wallace continued.
Coinstar, which processed $2.7 billion worth of coins last year, collects an 11.9% fee from customers. The company has said its business has decreased during the lockdown, but it is now starting to see a slight bounce back. And despite operating in Japan, Canada, Italy, and several other European countries, it hasn’t seen the same issues outside the U.S.
“There’s something unique about the U.S. that we can’t figure out why this has come to this crisis,” says Jim Gaherity, chief executive officer of Coinstar. “I don’t refer to it as a shortage, I refer to it as ‘We don’t have coin moving.’ It’s there, it’s just not in the right place.”
Jerome Powell said in June that the shortage would be temporary, while at the same time U.S. mints spool up more production.
The Fed has, in the interim, put together a “coin task force” to liaise with companies like Coinstar to help come up with solutions. Organizations like the Coin Laundry Association have suggested the Fed distributing additional coins and prioritizing to “consumer businesses in the essential critical infrastructure workforce.”
Banks and businesses are also offering premiums and deals for turning in your coins. One Wisconsin bank is offering a $5 bonus for every $100 worth of coins that are turned in. Recall, days ago, we wrote that Chick-Fil-A was giving away free food to customers who paid in coins.
- California COVID-19 Cases Top 500,000 As Global Total Nears 18 Million: Live Updates
California COVID-19 Cases Top 500,000 As Global Total Nears 18 Million: Live Updates
Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2020 – 19:08Summary:
- California cases top 500k
- Texas reports another 9k+ new cases
- New York to announce decision on schools next week
- Arizona cases slow, deaths climb
- Florida deaths top 7k
- Poland suffers 3rd record jump in COVID-19 cases
- Germany sees “R” rate hit 1.06
- Tokyo reports 472
- Russia hopes to start mass vaccinations in October
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Update (1840ET): California, the state with the largest number of COVID-19 cases in the US, has just surpassed half a million cases.
The state recorded 6,542 infections over the past 24 hours, below the rolling 14-day average, according to the state health department’s website. The death toll increased by 219 on Friday to 9,224, a 2.4% rise from the previous day.
If California were a country, it would have the 6th-largest case total in the world, leaving it between South Africa (~505k) and Mexico (~425k).
California now has 500,130 confirmed cases, run 7,886,587 diagnostic tests (an increase of 75,546 tests since Thursday), while the positivity rate over 14 days was 7.3%.
Arizona reported another 2,992 cases (+1.7%) on Saturday, which was higher than the 1.5% 7-day average. Total cases, at a time when the state has doubled testing, are 177,002.
The state reported 53 new fatalities, bringing its death toll to 3,747. The state reported 68 deaths yesterday.
Arizona’s rate of positive tests dropped again, to 12.6%, down from 15.7% reported Friday and 21.3% the day before.
ICU occupancy declined slightly to 85%.
In other news, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said he would make a decision on whether the state will be reopening schools in the coming week.
He said NYC missed a Friday deadline to submit reopening plans.
“An initial decision at this point is schools should plan on reopening,” Cuomo said during a phone briefing with reporters on Saturday. One major complicating factor is parents – who must first believe that the schools are safe, or there will be partial attendance.
“So you open a school, you will have partial attendance, which will serve no one,” he said.
New York reported 753 new virus cases, in line with the 0.2% average increase of the previous seven days. The state also reported 4 new deaths.
Texas reported 9,539 new cases on Saturday, boosting the state’s total to 430,485. Deaths increased by 268 to 6,837, the Department of State Health Services said.
Globally, the total number of confirmed cases is nearing 18 million: There were 17,987,000 confirmed/suspected cases worldwide as of Saturday evening in New York.
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For the next few days, the COVID-19 pandemic won’t be the only major disaster unfolding in the Sun Belt: Hurricane Isais is headed straight for Miami-Dade, the worst-hit county in the worst-hit state.
To be sure, as we pointed out yesterday, hospitalizations and single-day case tallies, and daily positivity percentages appear to finally be declining across the Sun Belt.
However, deaths have continued to climb. In the US, COVID-19 daily deaths topped 1,000 – another 1,353 deaths, to be exact – for the fifth consecutive day of fatalities over 1,000. for the fifth straight day, even as the shuttering of testing sites in some parts of the state has caused positivity numbers to decline.
According to the latest data published by Bloomberg and JHU on Saturday morning, the US added 66,545 new virus cases on Friday, a 1.5% increase, compared with the daily average increase of 1.6%. Total cases were 4,561,511.
On Saturday, Florida reported 179 new deaths, snapping a 4-day streak of record daily death numbers, while also pushing the state’s death toll past 7k to 7,022.
Fla also reported another 9,642 cases (+2%), lower than the 2.3% average increase over the prior week. The state’s total is now 480,028.
Governor Ron DeSantis has declared a state of emergency as the storm nears, and many state-run testing facilities have been closed.
Meanwhile, in Europe and Asia, new case numbers continued to climb.
Public health officials in Tokyo announced 472 new cases on Saturday, a new record for Japan’s capital city, according to NHK public television, which quoted Tokyo officials as saying such. The number of cases reported out of the capital megacity topped 400 for 2 days in a row.
Tokyo Gov Yuriko Koike has said Tokyo could declare its own state of emergency if the situation continues to worsen, however, the central government says there is still no need to do so nationally, despite a record spike in several cities around the nation.
As thousands of protesters gathered in Berlin to campaign against the government reimposing economically-painful COVID-19 restrictions – with some claiming the hysteria surrounding the virus, Germany recorded 864 new infections in the 24 hours through Saturday morning. A spate of smaller outbreaks has kept the infection rate above the key threshold of 1.0 for eight consecutive days. The most recent reading put the “R” rate at 1.06.
After reporting its lowest death rate in five days, Russian health officials announced Saturday that the government is preparing to start mass vaccinations against the virus, with health workers and teachers first in line for innoculation said Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said.
A vaccine has reportedly been developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute (with help from the Russian Direct Investment Fund) and has completed clinical trials and the authorities are preparing to register it with regulators. It will be used for the vaccinations.
Russia hopes to start the mass vaccination program in October. Meanwhile, below is the latest chart from JHU showing the 5-day-moving averages for the ten worst-impacted countries in the world.
Poland reported its highest number of new coronavirus cases for a third day in a row on Saturday, with 658 new cases confirmed, according to the Health Ministry. 5 new deaths were also reported. The country has reported a total of 46,346 coronavirus cases and 1,721 deaths.
Poland’s prime minister hasn’t ruled out tightening some social distancing restrictions if the situation continues to worsen.
- Syrian Army Uncovers Organ Trading Hub Of Turkish-Backed Militants In Southern Idlib
Syrian Army Uncovers Organ Trading Hub Of Turkish-Backed Militants In Southern Idlib
Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2020 – 19:00Submitted by South Front,
The joint Russian-Turkish patrol set to be held in southern Idlib on July 29 was delayed due to increased military tensions and the inability of Ankara to ensure the security of the patrol in its area of responsibility. And the situation does not seem to be improving.
According to pro-militant sources, on the evening of July 29th and morning of July 30th, the Syrian Army launched over 500 shells at militants’ positions in the Zawiya Mount area, including Kansafra, al-Bara, Kafar Aweed, Fatterah and Erinah. In response, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its allies struck Syrian Army checkpoints at Kafr Nabl, As Safa, Hakoura and in nearby areas.
In the last few days, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the Turkistan Islamic Party reinforced their positions on the contact line with the Syrian Army, south of the M4 highway. Their forces reportedly remain on high alert. Pro-government sources say that the inability of Ankara to secure another joint patrol in southern Idlib is a signal that the militants are preparing for offensive actions there.
Meanwhile, the Syrian Army uncovered a hideout that had been used by militants working as organ traders in the village of al-Ghadfah in southern Idlib. According to Syria’s state-run news agency SANA, government forces found human organs, including hearts, livers and heads in the hideout. The organs were preserved in jars with chloroform. The jars carried the names of the victims. Personal IDs of the victims, men and women, were also found in the hideout.
The hideout included a room designated for religious studies with radical ideological publications. This indicates that the site had belonged to one of the multiple militant groups that still operate in Greater Idlib thanks to the Turkish opposition to counter-terrorism operations there.
Al-Ghadfah is located in the vicinity of the city of Maarat al-Numan and for a long time it has been controlled by Turkey’s main partner in Idlib – Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. The town was liberated by the Syrian Army and its allies in January 2020.
Lt. Sharif al-Nazzal of the Syrian Military Intelligence Directorate (MID) was assassinated in the town of Sahem al-Golan in western Daraa on July 29. The lieutenant was with another intelligence officer known as “Abu Haider”, when they were attacked by unidentified gunmen. Both officers were shot dead on the spot.
Opposition sources claimed that al-Nazzal, a native of Sahem al-Golan, was close to Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iranian forces. The officer headed a detachment of the MID in the western Daraa countryside. No group has claimed responsibility for the assassination. Nonetheless, in previous stages of the conflict Israel was extensively supporting militant groups in southern Syria. It is possible that Tel Aviv may have access to cells of these groups for support with particular operations.
Two members of the US-backed Revolutionary Commando Army militant group based in al-Tanf were detained by the Syrian Army near the US-controlled zone. The detained persons were moving on a motorcycle and possessed assault rifles and night-vision goggles. They were reportedly involved in an information gathering operation about civilian and military facilities in the Homs desert.
In the past, Damascus has repeatedly claimed that the US was planning to use its proxies in al-Tanf for destabilizing operations in the government-controlled area.
- Communism Secured: Musk Calls Chinese "Smart, Hard-Working", Says Americans Are "Entitled, Complacent"
Communism Secured: Musk Calls Chinese "Smart, Hard-Working", Says Americans Are "Entitled, Complacent"
Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2020 – 18:30Elon Musk’s distaste for the U.S. is starting to become palpable – and U.S. citizens should not take to it kindly.
The Tesla CEO – who has made himself billions off the back of U.S. government subsidies and the U.S. taxpayer – took to the “Daily Drive” podcast on Friday to make it clear exactly what country his allegiances lie with.
On the podcast, reported by CNBC, he called the people of China “smart” and “hard working” while at the same time calling U.S. citizens “entitled” and “complacent”. He specifically called out both New York and California, states whose taxpayers have literally funded Tesla’s business with massive tax breaks amounting to billions.
When asked about China as an EV strategy leader worldwide, Musk responded: “China rocks in my opinion. The energy in China is great. People there – there’s like a lot of smart, hard working people. And they’re really — they’re not entitled, they’re not complacent, whereas I see in the United States increasingly much more complacency and entitlement especially in places like the Bay Area, and L.A. and New York.”
He then compared the U.S. to losing sports teams: “When you’ve been winning for too long you sort of take things for granted. The United States, and especially like California and New York, you’ve been winning for too long. When you’ve been winning too long you take things for granted. So, just like some pro sports team they win a championship you know a bunch of times in a row, they get complacent and they start losing.”
Recall, Tesla secured $1.6 billion in loans from the Chinese government to help build its Shanghai factory, which helped the company resume normal operations post-Covid this year.
Musk – apparently completely devoid of any humility to the amount of money he has received from the U.S. taxpayer – defended his company by say it hadn’t received as much government support from the Chinese government as most competitors: “They have been supportive. But it would be weird if they were more supportive to a non-Chinese company. They’re not.”
Tesla’s total government assistance in the U.S. has surpassed $4.9 billion, according to CNBC.
When asked about his company’s stock, Musk responded: “It’s not worth trying to massage the stock market or manage investor expectations. It’s just. You know? At the end of the day, if you make great cars and the company’s healthy and making great products investors will be happy…If you make lousy products your customers will be unhappy and then your investors will be unhappy.”
Musk then, seemingly unaware that bumpers are falling off of Model 3s as we speak, encouraged entrepreneurs to “focus on the product” when making something new: “My advice, you know, to corporate America or companies worldwide is spend less time on marketing presentations and more time on your product. Honestly that should be the number one thing taught in business schools. Put down that spreadsheet and that PowerPoint presentation and go and make your product better.”
Recall, we have often brought up Musk’s ties to China here on Zero Hedge. We even asked back in April whether or not Musk risks becoming a Chinese asset. The automaker’s quick move to Shanghai and willingness to cozy up to the Chinese government has certainly raised some interest amidst skeptics and short sellers.
Regardless, we have a couple questions for Uncle Sam: why sit idly by and allow this public company CEO to not only spit in the SEC’s face by committing securities fraud and telling them to s*ck his c*** – but also rip off the American taxpayer at the same time. At what point does enough become enough?
Move to China then you twat https://t.co/4PaWqWG9Ha
— Quoth the Raven (@QTRResearch) July 31, 2020
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- ByteDance, Microsoft Break Off TikTok Deal Talks
ByteDance, Microsoft Break Off TikTok Deal Talks
Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2020 – 18:11Update (1800ET): Bytedance has apparently gotten the “tap on the shoulder” from the CCP bigwigs who apparently aren’t super thrilled about the optics of a mighty Chinese conglomerate kowtowing to the Trump Administration.
Earlier today, it appeared that President Trump’s late-night threat about banning TikTok had motivated ByteDance and Microsoft to speed up their talks.
But as the New York afternoon wore on, a Dow Jones headline proclaimed that Microsoft and ByteDance had decided to abruptly stop negotiations.
Microsoft Corp. and Bytedance Ltd. have put acquisition talks for TikTok on hold after President Donald Trump said Friday he would oppose the deal, Dow Jones reported, citing people familiar with the matter who weren’t identified.
Trump’s comments prompted TikTok to make additional concessions, including agreeing to add as many as 10,000 jobs in the U.S. over the next three years, according to the report.
Microsoft was exploring an acquisition of TikTok’s operations in the U.S., people familiar with the matter said Friday. A deal would give the software company a popular social-media service and relieve U.S. government pressure on the Chinese owner of the video-sharing app.
With the way things are going, TikTok could become the next Huawei (Senate Republicans have already passed a bill to bar TikTok from devices used by federal employees in a work capacity), and Microsoft and the other American suitors who were so eager to take the company of BD’s hands might decide it’s no longer worth the trouble.
Meanwhile, BBG reports that the Trump administration is poised to announce a decision on Chinese-owned TikTok, potentially preventing the popular music-video app from operating in the US and escalating the administration’s clash with China.
The decision may reportedly come within hours, according to BBG’s source.
* * *
President Trump’s insistence that the White House will ban the social-media app TikTok from the US triggered a wave of hysteria among users of the app: whatever will the American teens who built enormously valuable brands sharing dance videos on the app do now? They were just hanging out wit the Kardashians! What are they supposed to do now?!
TikTok influencers pulling up at McDonalds for job interviews after the ban #tiktokban #RIPtiktok pic.twitter.com/pssVP4xj78
— KØDEX (@MoreKODEX) August 1, 2020
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China’s still-largely-state-controlled corporate sector has enough exposure to the vicissitudes of survival in the ultra-competitive, heavily scrutinized, anti-trust addled world of big tech that the leaders of Bytedance know that this kind of pressure is simply untenable. For TikTok to survive, ByteDance would need to play the administration’s game.
Earlier this week, reports about a group of VCs bidding as much as $50 billion for the non-China business had emerged. Then Friday afternoon, Fox Business – and then the New York Times, and a gaggle of other media orgs – confirmed that Microsoft was in talks to buy the social media platform.
In an age of burgeoning anti-trust sentiment, such a deal seemingly made little sense for Microsoft, but such a takeover would seemingly ameliorate the administration’s national security concerns, at the very least. Which is probably why what came next triggered such an intense response.
Late last night, President Trump told the White House press corp during an impromptu briefing aboard Air Force One that “we’re banning [TikTok]”.
“As far as TikTok is concerned, we’re banning them from the United States,” Trump told the reporters, adding that he could use emergency economic powers or an executive order.
Was it a glaring example of Trump trying to deliberately undermine Microsoft, perhaps in retaliation against Bill Gates for his support for the WHO (and criticism of Trump)?
Many of the president’s critics probably felt inclined to suspect such foul play. But as it turns out, it looks like Trump’s threats have had the desired effect, and ByteDance is now reportedly ready to let go of TikTok, passing 100% control to Microsoft in a deal that would see the app brought completely under the control of the American tech giant.
Here’s more from Reuters:
China’s ByteDance has agreed to divest the U.S. operations of TikTok completely in a bid to save a deal with the White House, after President Donald Trump said on Friday he had decided to ban the popular short-video app, two people familiar with the matter said on Saturday.
ByteDance was previously seeking to keep a minority stake in the U.S. business of TikTok, which the White House had rejected. Under the new proposed deal, ByteDance would exit completely and Microsoft Corp would take over TikTok in the United States, the sources said.
Some ByteDance investors that are based in the United States may be given the opportunity to take minority stakes in the business, the sources added.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on whether Trump would accept ByteDance’s concession. ByteDance in Beijing did not respond to a request for comment.
Under ByteDance’s new proposal, Microsoft will be in charge of protecting all U.S. user data, the sources said.
The plan allows for another U.S. company other than Microsoft to take over TikTok in the United States, the sources added.
Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment.
In the end, it looks like Trump was simply using the bully pulpit to ensure America’s national security priorities are respected by the market.
- The Great COVID-Con: Exposing Journalistic Malpractice
The Great COVID-Con: Exposing Journalistic Malpractice
Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2020 – 18:00Authored by Vasko Kohlmayer via LewRockwell.com,
On July 5th of this year – following weeks of steady decline – the United States recorded 263 deaths from COVID-19. This was the lowest daily toll in nearly three and half months. The July 5th figure represented a 90 percent drop from the peak which occurred April 21st. On that day there were 2748 deaths from COVID-19 (see worldometers.info for data).
The sharp decrease in COVID deaths was obviously a most welcome development. One would expect it would have quickly generated a spate of celebratory headlines.
However, this is not what happened that day.
Below is a collection of links to some of the news items put forward by US media on July 5:
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MORE COVID PEAK: Florida infected rise by record 11,458 on Saturday…
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Once lauded, Texas now grapples with one of country’s worst outbreaks…
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‘You started the corona!’ Anti-Asian hate incidents explode…
It is quite astonishing that among these headlines there is no mention of the 90 percent drop in the daily death toll. Reading through them, one would have no idea that there has been such a dramatic improvement. Quite on the contrary, the impression is that things are as dire as ever.
Neither are these items an inaccurate sampling of the kind of material put out by mainstream media outlets that day. The links above have been copied from Drudge Report, America’s leading news aggregator. Having begun with libertarian and conservative leanings, Drudge Report has gone to the other side and became in many ways the mouthpiece for the left-leaning media. This is especially true as far as Drudge’s coverage of Donald Trump and the coronavirus are concerned.
You may think that we are being unfair to America’s journalists. Perhaps they just did not have enough time to write their celebratory pieces the same day. Surely, one would think, the news must have been announced to fanfare in the next news cycle. Let us, then, look at the Drudge headlines from July 6, 2020:
Once again, there is no mention of the great improvement on the COVID front. Looking at the headlines, one would, in fact, get the opposite feeling: the situation is as bad as ever, if not worse. The journalists writing these stories must have been well aware of the steadily improving state of affairs and the record low daily death tolls. There can be no question that this is a concerted and deliberate effort by media outlets to make their readers believe that things are diametrically different from the actual situation on the ground.
What we are looking at here is nothing other than a gross case of journalistic malfeasance whereby mainstream journalists simply refuse to report the truth about the situation. Whenever there is bad news they eagerly amplify and exaggerate while completely ignoring any positive news or developments. To be sure, the shrewd consumer of the news should always be prepared to make allowances for bias and misrepresentation, but the level of cynicism and conniving in this instance is truly remarkable.
There are several reasons for this. To begin with, for journalists every crisis is a boon. Crises make for more dramatic reporting and increased readership. When nothing dramatic is happening, the demand for news naturally drops. In other words, crises are good news and good business for those in the news business. Journalists, therefore, suffer from a natural inclination to increase drama and create the impression of a crisis whenever possible. And the more dire the crisis, the better.
But there is an added political reason why mainstream journalists are so invested in lying about this epidemic. The more people believe that we are in a life-and-death crisis, the easier it becomes to impose lockdowns and quarantines. These in turn wreak disorder and havoc in almost every aspect of our personal and societal life: the economy, commerce, education, finances, family life, interpersonal relationships, etc. The prolonged doom-mongering and shutdowns have also inflicted psychological damage as people suffer from the loss of employment, interruption of schooling and disruption of everyday activities, routines and interactions. Increased rates of anxiety, depression, addiction, relationship abuse and other ills are the inevitable consequence.
The journalists do not seem to mind, since the multiprong mayhem will they helped to unleash will inevitably damage the reelection prospects of Donald Trump for whom the Left harbors a virulent dislike. The antipathy is due to a host of reasons, one of which is Trump’s irritating propensity to occasionally tell the truth. This poses a serious problem for devoted leftists for whom the truth has always been a grave threat, whether they be the communist totalitarians of the past or the woke snowflakes of today. It is not difficult to see why. Even though leftist ideologies may vary in their emphasis and orientation from place to place and from one historical period to another, what they invariably share is their commitment to untruths and wrong assumptions.
Today, for example, the progressives claim with a straight face that someone who is obviously a man – someone who has XY chromosomes and male genitals – is actually a woman. Then they insist that we affirm this absurdity, which is rather difficult for anyone with a modicum of sanity or common sense. Pointing out the obvious pulls the rug from under their ideological enterprise, which is why committed leftists of all stripes are so set on suppressing the truth and destroying its bearers. The cancel culture is a present-day incarnation of this tendency. As someone who is occasionally willing to call them out on their balderdash, Trump is a thorn in their side and the prime target for destruction. True to form, leftwing journalists have shown themselves more than willing to wreck American society by spreading lies and untruths about the coronavirus (among other things) to achieve this goal.
But the good news is that there has been a considerable improvement in the corona situation. Here is a chart taken from worldometers tracing the decline in the daily death rate from the epidemic’s peak which occurred in the last third of April.
We have already pointed out the unreported 90 percent drop from April 21 to July 5. You will also note that even in the current spike, the death toll for the last day for which data was available at the time of writing – 908 on July 25 – is 67 percent lower than it was at the peak.
A headline which would honestly summarize this state of affairs would run something like this:
“Despite a recent spike, the COVID daily death rate remains nearly 70 percent below the spring high.”
But this is not what we get. Instead Drudge offers the following:
Notice the death count at the top of the offering. The media have only resumed reporting this item in the last few weeks which saw an increase in this metric. In the weeks prior, when the death count was falling precipitously, they only kept reporting – to maintain the impression of an ever-worsening crisis – the rising case numbers which were largely due to expanded testing. Thus, the media corona template runs as follows: Report mounting death toll in the early stages, case numbers in the decline stage, and death toll again at the spikes. The net result of this selective reporting is that any good news on the ground never makes it to the stories.
Also revealing is the last headline “Health anxiety Soars.” This, of course, is not surprising given all the doom and gloom coverage of the last four months. Through their selective and dishonest reporting, the journalists have managed to con people into believing that the virus is far more dangerous than it really is. The fact remains, however, that the vast majority of those infected exhibit moderate or no symptoms and recover without any great difficulties.
We have recently conducted our own analysis of the data. The breakdown showed the death rates for various age brackets and the results were eye-opening. For individuals under the age of forty the risk is so minuscule as to be negligible. For healthy people aged 40 to 49 the chances of dying are 60 out of 100,000 which is less than one’s yearly chances of dying of an injury.
Even though I had suspected at the outset that the numbers would be low, I did not expect them to come out this low. After obtaining the initial results, I thought that a mistake must have crept into my calculations. I repeated the process several times and then had the figures checked by a math savvy person. The low numbers were, indeed, correct.
The relatively lows risk that the novel coronavirus poses to most people has been pointed out by Dr. John Ioannidis of Stanford University. Doctor Ioannidis is a widely-cited expert on evidence-based medicine, epidemiology, and clinical research. This is what he had to say last month in an interview with a Greek journalist: “For people younger than 45, the infection fatality rate is almost 0%.” The interview and the statement went largely unreported. Dr Ioannidis is not the only world class epidemiologist who has been censored from mainstream news for his data-based conclusions. Rather than consulting these serious scientists, the media’s favorite go to person for all questions corona has been the camera-hungry but otherwise hapless Dr. Fauci who has made a number of statements and predictions that have turned out to be spectacularly incorrect.
The failure of major media to report truthfully is inexcusable, since accurate information would enable our society to deal with this crisis in a more reasonable manner. But this is apparently not something the leftist journalists wish us to do. Instead they try their best to keep us ignorant and frightened in order to wreak havoc in America, hoping to sink Trump. And if American society should be ruined in the process, so be it.
It is difficult to recall any period in living memory in which manipulation of information by major news organizations reached such levels of cynicism. What we are witnessing these days is a most severe case of journalistic malpractice.
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- JPMorgan Finds That Shorts Across The Globe Have Capitulated
JPMorgan Finds That Shorts Across The Globe Have Capitulated
Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2020 – 17:30Three months ago, shortly after the March crash bottom, JPMorgan’s strategist Nikolas Panigirtzoglou predicted that stocks would rise, among other things, because there was a massive short overhang, one which would squeeze prices higher as the Fed injected liquidity, providing a secondary thrust to the market.
Then, one month ago, in the June 16th version of Flows and Liquidity, the JPM quant doubled down by asking if there is a regional bias to the shorting activcity, namely “how much higher is the short base outside US equities?”, arguing that the regional short base backdrop favored non-US equities, in particular European stocks, something which subsequent price action confirmed.
The argument at the time was that while the post-virus short base in individual US stocks had been largely covered, short covering had looked a lot less advanced outside US stocks. In particular, less than a third of the previous short base that had opened up on Euro area and UK stocks during Feb/Mar had been unwound by mid-June. Across EM stocks, around half of the previous short base had been unwound by mid-June.
However, in his latest observation on this topic, Panigirtzoglou writes in his latest weekly F&W report that “this previous advantage for non-US stocks appears to have been diminished as short covering advanced.”
Indeed, as the following four charts show, the bulk of the previous short base that had opened up during Feb/Mar across Euro area, UK and Japanese stocks has been largely normalized. It is only in EM stocks that there is some remaining short base, around 20% of that opening up during Feb/Mar, left to be covered.
To JPM, this raises the chance that the past two months outperformance of non-US vs. US equities is close to being exhausted “and that going forward US stocks are more likely to resume their outperformance trend.” Why the pro-US bias? Because as the JPM strategist noted before, there is a modest remaining short base to be covered in US stocks at an index level even as the previous short base at individual stock level has been more than fully covered. For example, the short base in important US equity ETFs such as the SPY ETF remains above previrus despite recent declines as shown in the chart on the left…
… while the right and final chart shows that the positions of asset managers and leveraged funds in US equity futures remain low and well below pre-virus levels.
- What Happens To Outdoor Dining In Fall And Winter?
What Happens To Outdoor Dining In Fall And Winter?
Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2020 – 17:00Authored by Heather Lalley of Restaurant Business
Natale Servino, whose family has run Servino Ristorante in Tiburon, Calif., for 42 years, is hoping for a pleasant fall that transitions into a very mild winter.
Servino’s recent intense interest in weather patterns is driven by the newfound vitalness of outdoor dining at his restaurant. He’s currently hard at work, making his operation’s outdoor area even more hospitable to diners, while trying to find ways to use the space even in inclement weather.
“We’re hoping to carry this as far into winter as we can go,” he said. “[Outdoor dining] was on our radar but we never made the full investment because outdoor seating was just a small segment of our dining.”
Now, though, Servino and other operators are counting on outdoor business to bring in almost all, if not all, of a restaurant’s sales during the pandemic. So, they’re coming up with creative ways to keep those outdoor spaces inviting even as the weather in many parts of the country turns less-than-picnic-perfect.
Servino Ristorante, which sits on the waterfront just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, has two patios decked out with built-in heating systems. Since then, though, the restaurant has added other enhancements to keep diners comfortable in cooler weather, Servino said:
- Replacing metal outdoor furniture with tables and chairs made from materials that feel warmer to the touch
- Adding greenery and shrubbery to not only help provide physical distance between tables but to also serve as a shield from wind whipping in off the water
- Offering blankets that are laundered between each use
Even the menu is getting a remodel, to better accommodate outdoor diners, he said.
The restaurant will introduce its fall-focused offerings a bit earlier than normal, in case guests want to warm up with slow-cooked meats and braises or even warm cocktails.
“It might be something we do a little bit earlier as people sit outside,” he said. “We want to make sure the dish shows well and is appropriate for the environment.”
Servino is also working on ways to communicate with guests about whether they’d prefer a leisurely dining experience or would rather get in-and-out—especially as the weather turns.
In Washington, D.C., Southern Mexican restaurant Espirta worked with its designer to add an awning as well as two glass panels to its patio seating. Before the pandemic, the restaurant could use drop-down plastic walls to fully enclose the area, effectively doubling the size of its operation.
The restaurant has seven electric heaters installed about tables as well as four portable gas heaters.
Co-owner Kelly Phillips estimates the restaurant has spent about $30,000 over the last four years working on the patio so it can be usable in more types of weather.
“Every year we would add on another phase,” Phillips said. “We were just lucky to have done that.”
Outdoor dining guidelines vary by state and even city, so operators should check on their local rules before adding any kinds of temporary walls to outside seating.
In the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, known for especially brutal winters, multi-concept operator Brent Frederick of Jester Concepts is instead trying to make his indoor dining room as safe as possible since patios sound like an unsustainable revenue stream as the temperature drops.
Frederick has spent close to $10,000 on ionization systems for his restaurant’s HVAC systems, which he says is designed to clear most viruses from the air. His team is currently working on the best way to communicate the existence of the air-cleaning system to customers (and potential customers), he said.
“It’s not a fix-all situation,” he said. “But we felt like it was worth the investment. Anything that gives the consumer confidence to come into our store.”
- Shares Of China-Based Tesla Competitor Li Auto Surge In Nasdaq Trading Debut
Shares Of China-Based Tesla Competitor Li Auto Surge In Nasdaq Trading Debut
Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2020 – 16:35Make no mistake about it, there has been non-stop hype in EV stocks for the better part of the last several years. But over the last few months, that momentum has picked up. We just noted days ago that many EV-makers in China were going public just to stave off bankruptcy, showcasing the market’s appetite for such names.
Stocks in the U.S. like Kandi Technologies, Nio and Workhorse have all had recent runs on the back of continued EV hype.
And new Chinese startup Li Auto just saw major success upon listing its shares on the NASDAQ, proving that: a) the EV hype is still alive and b) U.S. investors have learned precisely nothing from watching one China-based fraud implode after another. Li Auto is backed by TikTok owner Bytedance and ecommerce company Meituan Dianping.
Li Auto’s SUV The company’s shares popped 43% on its first day of trading on the Nasdaq last Thursday, before pulling back 3% on Friday. The company’s IPO raised about $1.5 billion. Li Auto has a market cap of about $14 billion, compared to Tesla’s $270 billion. Li Auto has only sold “a few thousands” automobiles.
Tu Le, founder of Sino Auto Insights, told FT: “The US market clearly still has a large appetite for electric vehicles, but it’s frothy and there is probably a bubble.”
“Fundamentally Li Auto only has a record of a few months selling cars. You have to ask; are we even comparing apples to apples when we compare Tesla to these other Chinese automakers?” he added.
The company was founded in 2015 and sold 10,400 of its six seater SUV hybrid vehicle that use both a battery and a combustion engine by June of this year. The company – as we noted in our above linked article – faces significant competition from a growing field of EV names coming out of China.
Peer Nio has “racked up huge debts” since listing in the U.S. and nearly needed to be bailed out with a $1 billion cash injection recently. The company’s stock has still rallied, however, showing the appetite for EV stocks in the U.S. market. Despite this, China’s EV market continues to both slow and thin out, weeding out smaller players.
Sales of EVs are down 35% year over year in June. Mingming Huang, founder of Future Capital literally has said this time it’s different: “I know it’s easy for people to compare Li Auto to Nio, but we are very different.”
As many wonder why frauds like Luckin Coffee are able to continue on U.S. markets, they need to look no further than the appetite for the Li Auto deal. As long as those in the pecking order (exchanges, auditors, institutions) are making money on the listing, the only “safeguard” left becomes individual investors and the SEC – both of which are useless.
- Amazon, Jeff Bezos, And The Influential Washington Post
Amazon, Jeff Bezos, And The Influential Washington Post
Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2020 – 16:10Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,
After Jeff Bezos and several other CEOs testified before the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee over anti-competitive conduct the following article has taken a huge leap in importance. The Washington Post is an influencer with great power. What is the definition of an influencer? The definition of an influencer is a person or entity that exerts influence. An influencer inspires or guides the actions of others The old theme of laziness and mellowness runs counter to today’s influencers, who are business-people and upscale inspirational promoters. During recent years several of the tech giants have come under fire for skewing and manipulating public opinion but sliding below the radar is the Washington Post. This means few people question the newspaper’s findings, stories, articles, or opinions.
Influence and Power Wrongly Placed!
The Washington Post is by far the most influential newspaper in America. Its subtle ability to influence, shape, and mold the opinion of Americans cannot be overestimated. Day after day those working for the Washington Post are quoted time and time again as experts and authorities as they appear on talk-shows and news-feeds spreading their message. Much in the way a stone hitting the water sends out ripples, this amplifies their spin and in many ways determines the focus and direction in how we view issues. The Washington Post’s power goes far beyond just reporting the news but it has the ability to plant an idea like you would a seed. It then shapes public opinion utilizing various tools and even coordinating the timing to maximize their impact.
Power Corrupts
Almost as frightening as the concentrated power held by companies such as Facebook and Google is the fact Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and the world’s richest man, is the person who owns and controls the Washington Post. It is silly to think Jeff Bezos purchased the Washington Post in 2013 because he expected newspapers to make a lucrative resurgence. It is more likely he purchased the long-trusted U.S. newspaper for the power it would ensure him in Washington when wielded as a propaganda mouthpiece to extend his ability to both shape and control public opinion.
To be blunt, the Washington Post controls much of the narrative put before the American people. Jeff Bezos, the epitome of a person who rises to the top in unregulated capitalist systems where money rewards people who are comfortable with exploiting and harming others should not be wielding such power. The fact is, when you couple the voice of the Washington Post with Amazon, a company so deeply involved with discovering and archiving detailed files and information about individuals and politicians across America you command far too much muscle and clout.
It is not a coincidence that the Washington Post has broken many big stories that move the needle of public opinion in huge ways. This is done over the years with a cumulative effect, meaning that while many of these stories don’t immediately wow us they seem to rapidly spread throughout the mainstream media taking on a life of their own and eventually have huge ramifications that can be so subtle they go unnoticed by the average American. The propaganda they dish out can be very seductive, they simply add in a few gentle jabs to embarrass their enemies and then stir the power of suggestion.
Many people do not realize it but the Washington Post cloaking itself as a pro-establishment mainstream publication can defend establishment narratives but actively attack anyone who challenges them. By this I mean it serves the wealthy and the powerful which can only exist with nonstop advertising to convince the American public that the “overall status quo” is in their best interest. The Washington Post is used to manufacture consent for that system; for the economic system, for the wars which prop it up, for the politicians which the plutocrats own and operate, for the political system which wealthy insiders have infiltrated every level.
An example of this is how a story about Roy Moore published in the Washington Post on November 9, 2017, resulted in him losing the election. WaPo reported that Moore had initiated a sexual encounter with a young girl in 1979 when she was 14 and he was 32 years old. The allegations of sexual misconduct dumped out a month before the election while never proven spread like wildfire as the term “pedophile” went viral causing Moore to lose to Democratic candidate Doug Jones.
This brings us to the question of whether The Washington Post is “that good” at uncovering and reporting the truth or simply maximizing its influence to alter and control public opinion? Even when not breaking a big story WaPo is not averse to stirring the pot and increasing outrage that can later be directed towards their target. Whether we are talking about the “Me Too” movement or just recently, the idea that record gun sales for protection because people are afraid of growing crime, will result in countless deaths.
In recent months, according to the firearm industry’s trade group National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), Americans have purchased millions of guns. These gun sales have occurred during the government-mandated lockdowns and riots erupted after the killing of George Floyd. An article authored by Ryan McMaken of The Mises Institute looks into how the Washington Post is trying to turn the soaring gun sales narrative around. A recent WaPo article claims people aren’t buying guns as a reaction to violence and social disarray but insists those new gun purchases are the cause of the violence in the first place. The piece even goes as far as attempting to tie the purchases to “state-level racism” using a study about data on Google searches for the n-word, an approach used by social scientists in the past.
Circling back to the crux of this article, being manipulated by biased reporting claiming to be fair and balanced is real and dangerous. This needs to be exposed and curtailed or society will be lead down a path designed to enhance the power of those in control. We must never forget that Amazon is a job-killing exploiter and the company is no stranger to sweetheart deals and has lined the pockets of its CEO, Jeff Bezos, at taxpayer expense. Many of the options Bezos employs to expand Amazon are available to him only because of the many areas his various companies engage in, this is the crux of growing antitrust talk surrounding Amazon which has become a threat to our democracy and capitalism.
Subtle but constant jabs take their toll over time and add fuel to an atmosphere that constantly warps our perception of reality. Adding to its importance is this is an election year and because our nation is so polarized the direction we take going forward matters a great deal. While Trump may not be God’s gift to mankind he does represent an effort to turn back economic forces and a deep state that has become too strong. Influencers such as WaPo by effectively undermining President Trump are much more dangerous at altering the results of the election than countries like Russia or China. Little things such as reminding the electorate and women especially that Trump “does not respect women” resulted in flipping a very valuable vote in an evenly split Senate, this matters.
When WaPo helped to fuel the “MeToo” movement that was raging due to high profile revelations relating to Harvey Weinstein and other powerful men acting like pigs they shifted votes. In an article titled, “The Marginalized Voices Of The #MeToo Movement” the Post took a victory lap of sorts on December 7, 2017, by pointing out that when Time magazine recognized the #MeToo movement as its Person of the Year, it solidified just how much of a cultural moment we are in when dealing with sexual harassment and assault allegations against powerful men. Unstated was how the growth of the movement has further polarized our divided nation. Even the mention of this movement in a negative light has resulted in people being cast off a show or dis-invited to an event.
All this adds fuel to an atmosphere that constantly warps our perception of the Trump administration. This is then coupled with a constant barrage of headlines such as “Trump Decides To remove National Security Advisor And Others May Follow” or, “Trump To Fire McMaster As National Security Advisor, WaPo Reports But White House Denies.” These often well-laundered stories tend to repeat vague rumors and innuendos which feed into the narrative of a White House in chaos. Most of these articles tend to loop back on themselves, while described as news they are designed to continually jolt the emotions of both those on the left and the right reinforcing the polarization that grips our nation but leaving nobody to blame.
This type of reporting does not stop at attacking Trump but extends into our feelings about the world including our view of Russia, North Korea, Iran, and even issues like trade. It all seems a bit ironic that it was the Washington Post which was the first to print these stories that you would normally expect to flow from a source closer to home such as a newspaper in the city or state where the event took place or the accuser lived. While this is inconclusive in proving that they were prefabricated of wrongdoing. it can be taken as proof of the power the Post wields.
One of the best descriptions I have ever read of Jeff Bezos calls him the most crafty plutocrat alive and stated he purchased the Washington Post so he could shape America’s agenda. The neo-liberal Orwellian establishment that Bezos is building his empire upon has been greatly enhanced by using the long-trusted US newspaper as a propaganda mouthpiece to propel his agenda forward. Very troubling is the fact Jeff Bezos is also a contractor with the CIA and sits on a Pentagon advisory board all part of doing everything he can to cozy up and ingratiate himself to the establishment on which his empire is built. This includes kicking WikiLeaks off Amazon servers in 2010 and dovetails in a creepy way with Amazon’s involvement in surveillance systems and digital “assistance” devices like Alexa.
It amazes me that average Americans still have a difficult time internalizing the fact businesses are dying and workers are getting poorer as Bezo’s empire continues to grow. Bezos is happily collaborating with depraved intelligence agencies, manipulating and propagandizing Americans, and expanding the gulf between the rich and the poor all in his effort to garner more wealth. In our system where money rewards sociopaths and money equals power the plutocrats that form alliances with each other and with defense and intelligence agencies to ensure the continuation and expansion of their empires have little concern for the average American.
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