- New Study Predicts Global Population As Low As 6.29 Billion By 2100, Shattering Most Climate-Alarmist Models
New Study Predicts Global Population As Low As 6.29 Billion By 2100, Shattering Most Climate-Alarmist Models
Tyler Durden
Thu, 07/30/2020 – 02:45Much of the basis for concern pushed by climate change alarmists has hinged on estimates of the global population (and its corresponding carbon footprint) expanding to between 9.4 billion and 12.7 billion by the year 2100. These estimates were based on the 2019 United Nations World Population Prospects report.
Now, a new study published in The Lancet on July 14, 2020 flips those population estimates – and the corresponding climate change alarmism – on its head. According to the study, highlighted in a WSJ op-ed called “Snooze The Climate Alarms”, the global population is now being estimated to be as low as 6.29 billion by 2100; about 33% lower than current U.N. projections.
The new study suggests that the global population will peak at 9.7 billion in 2064 and will then fall to as low as 6.29 billion, if the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals for education and contraceptive are met in full. If those goals are not met, the study suggests the population could still drop to 8.8 billion by 2100.
Even under the 8.8 billion population scenario, the difference is profound. China would fall to third in world population rankings behind India and Nigeria. Places like Japan, South Korea, Italy, Portugal and Spain could all see their populations decline 50% from their highs. America would be estimated to have a population of 336 million, only slightly more than today.
The economic growth that is expected to take place globally would be a positive in keeping the population under control, the report says, as it would drive future improvements in health care and education for women around the world – including information about contraception and urbanization – and would result in declining fertility rates.
The impact on climate emissions, from the same economic growth and population declines, would also be profound. More important, the study shows a link between economic progress and combating climate change that most parts of the “green” movement ignore.
The WSJ op-ed then talks about the importance of policy makers in realizing these links. “Conventional strategies for combating climate change are too narrowly conceived,” author Walter Mead writes. “A focused global effort to ensure that the education and contraceptive SDG targets are fully met could have a significantly greater long-term impact on emissions than more-expensive and unpopular policy choices like carbon taxes or the mandated use of expensive renewables.”
Reproduction is put into focus as one of several human behaviors that changes with greater wealth and better education. Those with access to both also are more inclined to preserve their natural surroundings, Mead says. Poor countries may be more likely to cash in on the natural resources they have available to them, but rich countries invest in repairing such damage, he argues.
Mead also argues in favor of factory farming, which often draws the ire of the “green” movement:
The transition from traditional agriculture to more-intensive “factory farms” offends green sensibilities but can achieve green goals. Factory farms produce more food on less land and are often more carbon-efficient than the small-scale organic farms beloved by hipsters. The U.S. today produces far more food than in the 19th century, but as marginal land is taken out of production, the forests return. In America, forests have been expanding for more than 50 years, and even though population has more than tripled, there is more forested land in the country today than there was in 1910. In Europe, forested land expanded by an area the size of Portugal between 1990 and 2015.
He concludes: “If economic development spreads the blessings of greater freedom and greater education to more of the world, popular demands for cleaner air, cleaner water and the protection of nature will only grow.”
- NordStream 2 Splits The Western World
NordStream 2 Splits The Western World
Tyler Durden
Thu, 07/30/2020 – 02:00If we were to paint the current situation with a broad brush, we would receive the following simplified picture.
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The European Union is split into two camps: the old and new member states.
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The West is split across the Atlantic: it is – roughly – Washington against Paris and Berlin.
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The world is split into three rivalling superpowers: the United States (strong military and strong economy), Russia (strong military, weak economy) and China (weak military, strong economy).
Western Europe gravitates more to Russia than Eastern Europe does; Eastern Europe in turn gravitates more to the United States than Western Europe does.
The state of affairs on the Old Continent is as follows.
[1] Germany wants a stable energy supply in the form of natural gas and from among a number of providers it has decided on Russia because
[2] Russia has large natural gas deposits and being in need of hard currency is willing to sell its energy resources to any bidder.
[3] Germany and Russia countries entered a commercial agreement which resulted in the construction and completion of one pipeline laid on the bottom of the Baltic: NordStream 1.
[4] Since the capacity of one pipeline was not sufficient to satisfy the needs of Germany and other West European states, another agreement was concluded to build a second pipe along the bottom of the Baltic – NordStream 2 – which is now near completion.
[5] Both pipelines sidetrack eastern European countries – Ukraine, Poland, Czechia and Slovakia – which makes them alarmed because soon Russia will be able to cut off its gas supplies to and through those countries – the Yamal (Poland, Belarus) and Brotherhood (Czechia, Slovakia, Ukraine) pipelines – while continuing the provision of gas to Western Europe, thus breaking the economic solidarity of the European Union.
[6] The United States helped Western Europe out of trouble during (a) the First World War (against Germany), (b) The Second World War (against Germany) and – (c) the Cold War (against the Soviet Union) and so feels entitled to continue in this role.
[7] The United States perceives itself as the equivalent of the ancient Roman Empire in guarding the Pax Americana (its national and imperial interests) throughout the world but especially Europe; like the Roman Empire it has its military bases (legions) deployed to many parts of the world, including Europe and in particular Germany. Washington feels threatened by Russian economic inroads in Europe.
[8] Western Europe has long striven to emancipate itself from American guardianship, while Eastern Europe (in particular Poland as of now) has been looking to the United States for protection against Russia, the successor to the Soviet Union, because some Eastern European countries have had bitter historical experiences connected with Russia and the Soviet Union: (a) Poland (where anti-Russian sentiment is the strongest) was under Russian rule throughout the 19th century and under Soviet dominance for almost half a century after the Second World War; (b) two Hungarian national uprisings were suppressed respectively by Russia in 1849 and the Soviet Union in 1956; (c) Romania lost to the Soviet Union the whole north-eastern province of Moldova (whose inhabitants are Romanians) in 1940. The United States can therefore rely on Eastern European countries and use them as bridgeheads against Western Europe (Germany in particular) and its dealings with Russia.
[9] The European Union is split over the issue of the two pipelines connecting Russia and Germany. This split resulted in passing Directive 2009/73/EC, which is aimed against Russian commercial dominance as it requires the so called ownership unbundling, which means that (a) energy generation, (b) energy supply and (c) energy transmission must belong to different legal persons. This measure is said to have been designed to (a) guard against Europe’s dependence on one external supplier of energy, (b) counteract monopoly and (c) provide European customers with a choice. The requirement of split ownership of energy generation, supply and transmission is going to make life difficult for Russia or – to be precise – Russian Gazprom.
[10] In turn the United States in a glaringly patronising way passed the Protecting Europe’s Energy Security Act, which envisages punitive sanctions against any entity taking part in the construction of NordStream 2. The act is supposed to protect Western Europe – obviously against its will – against Russian dominance and ensure for the United States customers for its natural gas.
Source: BiznesAlert.pl.
The question arises why the United States wants to defend Western Europe and especially Germany against its will? Is it possible that German leaders do not see that the two pipelines pose a threat to the independence of their country?
The answer is many-faceted.
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It may be that the German leaders prefer Russian rather than American dependence.
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It may be that they have no choice: the North Sea sources are for one reason or another not an option, nor is the gas from the Middle East.
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It may also be that the German elites are much more interested in their own income than in the condition of their country, still less their nation to which they feel little commitment. Former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, for one, was very much involved with the NordStream project.
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The German investors may view both NordStream pipelines as sources of private and corporate stable income. To this end they may be playing a double game: on the one hand encouraging Russians to continue with the construction of the pipe, while on the other shedding crocodile tears over Europe’s growing dependence on the eastern gas provider and thus allowing for the European Union to pass the said directive that will also enable them – if they create energy transmission companies that will take over some of the income from Gazprom – to draw larger benefits from the NordStream project.
Some Eastern European countries, while remaining ardent member-states of the Union, are doing their best to disrupt the German-Russian deal, which overlaps with Washington’s plans. This does not mean that we are facing any new exits from the European Union: far from it. The eastern member-states are firmly committed to their participation in it. Rather, the Union is going to be somewhat weakened because it is divided against itself, so to say. The eastern EU member-states are perhaps oversensitive when it comes to their dependence on Russia. Their leaders tend to think that it is Russia which wants to have control over them. They seem to be overlooking the fact that the NordStream deal has two parts to it: Russia and Germany. If Berlin cared about the sovereignty of the eastern member-states, it would not have entered into the agreement with Moscow. Yes, bypassing Poland, Ukraine, Czechia and Slovakia Russia can exert economic pressure on these countries by curtailing gas supplies to them without at the same time having to endanger its relations with Germany, the Netherlands or Great Britain. Yet, the two NordStream pipelines are as much an advantage to the Western members of the Union because they do without transit money that would otherwise have to be paid to Belarus, Poland, Ukraine, Slovakia and Czechia, thus making the gas cheaper and because – if the ownership unbundling principle is effected – the West may also have a larger share in the gas supply.
New member states seem to be left to their own devices by their older partners. Washington is their only hope, but Washington is merely acting in defence of its own interests, eying suspiciously Berlin and Moscow. Germany has built the present equivalent of the old project of Mitteleuropa – Middle Europe Project – which meant creating a ring of economically dependent states in Central Europe. At present Berlin to a larger degree than Moscow controls the destiny of its eastern and southern, close and farther neighbours. Germany’s agents of influence operating in Eastern Europe will make every endeavour to eventually bring to power in Warsaw, Prague, Bratislava, Budapest, Bucharest and Kiev people who will take into account German interests. American agents of influence with do the same. If Berlin prevails, then Germany will strengthen its grip on the European Union; if America prevails, then the EU is going to be weakened.
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- The Biggest Fraud Ever, Part 1: The Hocus "Science" Behind Lockdowns
The Biggest Fraud Ever, Part 1: The Hocus “Science” Behind Lockdowns
Tyler Durden
Wed, 07/29/2020 – 23:45Authored by Barry Norris via Argonaut Capital,
Fraud (from 14th century Latin) n – deceit, trickery, intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender legal rights: and art of deceiving or misrepresenting; imposter, cheat, one who is not who that person pretends to be: something that is not what it appears to be
Hoax (probable contraction of hocus, circa 1796) n – an act intended to trick or dupe: something accepted or established by fraud or fabrication; v – to trick into believing or accepting as genuine something false and often preposterous
Swindle (from Old English, coined circa 1782, “to vanish”) v – to take money or property by fraud or deceit.
– “Great Hoaxes, Swindles, Scandals, Cons, Stings and Scams” Joyce Madison, 1992
Frauds often have powerful counter-narratives.
When Wirecard went straight from a DAX-30 €12bn capitalisation to insolvency in June, we wondered not only why it had taken so long for the auditor to seek confirmation of cash balances but why so many investors had been hoodwinked for so long by its empty claims to have been a legitimate player at the epicentre of the digital payments industry. We had also long been inclined to believe that $4bn FTSE-100 member NMC Healthcare’s management had been siphoning off shareholders’ assets (and that the same was true of its smaller sister “fintech” company Finablr), but were bemused to see continued institutional demand for insider share placings and belief in faked takeover rumours, right up until the declared insolvency in March.
Whilst we think there is plentiful potential for further stock-market flops it is time to consider whether these serious corporate failings have now been dwarfed by the unnecessary damage caused by the “science” behind lockdown and the current parallel focus on a vaccine as the sole long-term COVID solution.
Part 1 – The hocus “science” behind lockdown
When lockdown was imposed, we were told we were facing a second Spanish flu pandemic (thought to have killed up to 50 million people); that hospitals would be overrun and there would be 500,000 deaths in the UK alone. This was a powerful and emotive narrative, but it was never true. Governments and an obedient media focused exclusively on Imperial College’s now discredited doomsday scenario built on a hypothetical, badly coded model5, ignoring its author’s history of failed doomsday predictions and the different views of other scientists.
Alternative evidence-based (i.e. theories based on facts) population samples already existed: the most prominent being the Diamond Princess Cruise Ship; which at the end of February accounted for over half of all confirmed infections outside of China. “Cruise ships are like an ideal experiment of a closed population”, according to Stamford Professor of Medicine John Ioannidis. “You know exactly who is there and at risk and you can measure everyone” .
Quarantined for over a month after a virus outbreak, the entire cruise ship ‘closed population’ of 3,711 passengers and crew, with an average age of 58, were repeatedly tested. There were 705 cases (19% total infection rate) and six deaths (a Case Fatality Rate of just 1%) by the end of March (eventually 14 in total). This compared to 116 deaths that would have been predicted by the Imperial model).
Over half of the cruise ship cases were asymptomatic, at a time when the official “science” behind the lockdown, Prof. Neil Ferguson (UK), dismissed the lack of any evidence for a high proportion of cases so mild that they had no symptoms and Dr Anthony Fauci (US) had written in the New England Journal of Medicine that in the event of a high proportion of asymptomatic cases, the COVID mortality rate would ultimately be “akin to a severe seasonal influenza” (a statement which he now at least seems to have clearly forgotten in his enthusiasm for a vaccine solution).
The cruise ship deaths were exclusively amongst an over 70’s age cohort. Although the Diamond Princess sample size was small it remains the earliest and most accurate predictor of mortality, infection and asymptomatic cases. Extrapolating this data to the wider, younger population would logically lead to downward revision on the mortality risk and upwards revisions to the level of asymptomatic cases. COVID outbreaks aboard naval ships with younger populations confirmed this: only 1 death and 3 hospitalised cases out of 1,156 infections on the USS Theodore Roosevelt; zero deaths out of 1,046 confirmed cases on the Charles de Gaulle. Even in ships which could not carry out effective social distancing the virus mortality rate, whilst a serious public health risk, was certainly not the “Spanish flu”.
As more testing was carried out across population samples (and not just on the patients hospitalised) studies came to the same conclusion: the rate of infection was higher than thought with more harmless cases and therefore the ultimate mortality risk was much lower than originally claimed. Despite this empirical evidence and the contrarian opinions of other expert epidemiologists which have since proven to be much more accurate, the Imperial College virus narrative of “the worst pandemic in 100 years”(Fig. 1) did not change: governments, the media and the official “science” doubled down on the “dialogue of doom”. Ferguson then broke his own lockdown in a tryst with his married lover and justified it by claiming he had antibody immunity (which given what we now know about decaying antibodies may not have been correct).
Fig 1. COVID-19 mortality in perspective
The population mortality risk of the virus was initially estimated at 3.8% by the WHO which had arrived at this number simply by dividing the number of Chinese deaths by the number of confirmed cases, ignoring the fact that only a small proportion of likely infected people had actually been tested; that asymptomatic cases were likely to be significantly underrepresented in testing and that the more serious cases were likely highly correlated to serious symptoms. This basic statistical error of simply dividing deaths by reported infections not only exaggerated the severity of the risk but led directly to policy error on hospital capacity and care home deaths.
Media reporting also intentionally failed to acknowledge that mortality risk was highly skewed to age (median mortality age of 8229) in order to scare the entire population into observing lockdown with falsely exaggerated media reports of young and healthy people dying from the virus. Mortality risk amongst the elderly was skewed to those with existing health issues (the presence of comorbidities) with Italy reporting that 96% of virus fatalities also suffered from other illnesses, but this did not fit the desired narrative. Whereas the Spanish flu in 1918 had disproportionately killed the young and healthy – meaning that each death lost more years before predicted average mortality – COVID deaths on average occurred at or beyond average life expectancy, which was always consistent with a normal mortality risk curve, and seasonal non-pandemic coronavirus.
Fig 2. UK COVID deaths by age and presence of comorbidities
It was also originally wrongly assumed that the hospitalisation rate of the virus based on Chinese data could be as high as 20% (ten times higher than influenza) hence the focus on ensuring that hospital intensive care units were not over-burdened. The overall hospitalisation rate in New York City is reported as 25% based on reported cases but this figure comes down to just 1.5% based on predicted infections based on antibody tests (55,000 hospitalisations out of an estimated 2.7 million infected). New intensive care hospital capacity was built (but never used), non-COVID treatment cancelled with likely consequences for excess mortality far more disastrous than COVID and infected hospital patients moved to care homes with disastrous consequences. This policy mistake occurred primarily as a result of panic and the statistical error of drastically over-estimating the mortality and hospitalisation rate through under-estimation of asymptomatic cases. Whilst widespread testing was not necessarily available, public health authorities could have studied the facts of the COVID outbreaks on the boats rather than rely on Ferguson’s “rubbish-in-rubbish-out” model.
Deaths in care homes are now estimated to have accounted for half of all COVID related mortality (Fig. 3). Similar failures to isolate COVID patients in hospitals are thought to have been responsible for up to 20% of all infections in the UK and 40% in Wuhan. All of this could have been mitigated by isolation of those infected and those treating the infected which need not have been dependent on a general lockdown of the entire population. When this point was put to Ferguson he responded by dismissing the specific isolation of the “old and vulnerable” as “wishful thinking” simply because it had previously never been done, as if putting the wider economy into lockdown was simpler, with precedent of success and no unintended negative consequences. The accusation remains that lockdown was at best a sledgehammer to crack a nut: mitigating nosocomial infections never required lockdown.
Fig 3. Care Home deaths by country
New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo (who was to preside over the worst mortality rate (Fig. 6) of any US state) summed up the emotional policy response when announcing a strict lockdown in March with the justification that “if everything we do saves just one life, I’ll be happy”. There was no acknowledgment that lives were at risk from other causes of death due to lack of treatment and that this risk could be magnified by the lockdown. Did Cuomo realise that there were on average 150,000 daily deaths globally of which half were accounted for by cardiovascular diseases and cancer, which could also be mitigated if targeted by public policy with the same urgency as COVID? The 650,000 reported COVID deaths worldwide are rarely put into the perspective of 33.4 million deaths globally so far this year. Moreover, it was becoming clear that the mortality risk for most of the population from COVID, whilst not zero, was statistically lower or comparable to an average influenza season, road accidents or suicide (Fig. 4) But perhaps because COVID was a new, unknown cause of death, proportionality got lost: the mission was not to just “flatten” the infection curve but to be seen trying to prevent ALL COVID deaths.
Fig 4. UK COVID deaths by age vs. other causes of mortality
Nevertheless, Imperial College continued to argue that lockdowns had saved millions of lives (based solely on reality being radically different from their doomsday model). By now it had become clear that there was a significant element of society that enjoyed authoritarianism for its own sake and whatever the evidence to the contrary, were now inclined to believe that the withdrawal of civil liberties and economic destruction in the name of protection from COVID (but not any other source of mortality risk) was always justified and its proportionality or unintended consequences never questioned. By now Dr Fauci – who had avoided Ferguson’s personal disgrace – had become a household name in the US. He continually warned about the dangers of re-opening too quickly, but when challenged about “trade-offs” for the economy or other non-COVID health factors, of what he regarded as an “inconvenient” situation resulting from lockdown, it was clear that his advice was solely one-dimensional:
“I’m a scientist, a physician, and a public health official. I give advice, according to the best scientific evidence. There are a number of other people who come into that and give advice that are more related to the things that you spoke about, the need to get the country back open again, and economically. I don’t give advice about economic things. I don’t give advice about anything other than public health.”
The Swedish government had been unique in recognising the trade-offs between COVID public health and other factors a rational, non-panicked, responsible government might consider and had chosen to implement social distancing but not lockdown. It therefore became a dangerous experiment which could not be reported as succeeding whatever the objective truth. Whilst even Ferguson begrudgingly accepted that Swedish mortality was a fraction (6%) of his prediction of 96,000 deaths by June (he claimed because Sweden had in his view done a kind of phantom lockdown without telling the outside world), other lockdown fanatics began distorting statistics by highlighting Swedish infections (Fig. 5) on a cumulative basis or comparing to other Scandinavian countries with different situations; as Sweden had a higher initial infection rate in a larger and more densely populated country, so the outcome could never be compared as a measure of success).
Fig 5. Media reporting of Swedish COVID deaths
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More outrageously, when the leading Swedish epidemiologist admitted to “mistakes” in the management of care homes (which accounted for 75% of Sweden’s 5,500 deaths with an average age of 86) this was bizarrely and widely reported by supposedly reputable media outlets as an admission of failure of the overall policy.To put the Swedish “failure” to lockdown into further perspective, there are around 2,000 -3,000 deaths (from a 10 million population) in Sweden annually in a normal flu season. Nevertheless, for lockdown to have been justified the Swedish mortality rate should have been anomalous – it was not (Fig. 6). The control group and the experimental group produced similar mortality outcomes.
Fig 6. The Swedish Anomaly?
Not only did Ferguson’s lockdown model over-estimate Sweden’s deaths by a factor of 20 but Sweden also produced the same mortality and infection curve as the UK (and most other similarly urbanised European countries) and a significantly flatter infection and mortality curve than New York (Fig. 7) even comparing Stockholm with New York State (Fig. 8) (with Stockholm having over 2.5x more population density that NY State).
Fig 7. Sweden’s curve flattens without lockdown
Fig 8. Stockholm’s curve compared to New York State
The “shape of the curve” was unaltered by differing lockdown policy. At best the efficacy of lockdown was unproven but then there were also the unintended consequences and trade-offs that Fauci might not consider but responsible governments might . If it were a drug trial, lockdown would have been pronounced a failure and the experiment stopped.
Subsequently, a range of scientific studies have now shown that government actions had no statistically significant reductions in the number of critical cases or overall mortality. Given the economic catastrophe, social breakdown and neglect of non-COVID healthcare this was a devastating policy error. When by July (Fig. 9) the virus had all but disappeared from Sweden there was no positive acknowledgement from other governments which had implemented lockdown and no reporting from their lapdogs in the media.
Fig 9. The virus disappears from Sweden to be acknowledged by…complete silence
Just silence.
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Fully hyper-linked reference list available here
Part 2 (of 2) – “The Vaccine Swindle” will be released tomorrow
- Harvard Prof Charged With False Statements, Failing To Report Income From Wuhan University Of Technology
Harvard Prof Charged With False Statements, Failing To Report Income From Wuhan University Of Technology
Tyler Durden
Wed, 07/29/2020 – 23:25In what we’re sure is just an honest mistake and total coincidence, Harvard University professor Dr. Charles Lieber was charged yesterday “in a superseding indictment with tax offenses for failing to report income he received from Wuhan University of Technology (WUT) in Wuhan, China.”
The United States District Attorney of Massachusetts said yesterday that Lieber, who had already been arrested on January 28, 2020, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Boston on two counts of making and subscribing a false income tax return and two counts of failing to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts with the Internal Revenue Service. Then, in June 2020, Lieber was indicted on two counts of making false statements to federal authorities.
The DA alleges that Lieber served as the Principal Investigator of the Lieber Research Group at Harvard University, which received more than $15 million in federal research grants between 2008 and 2019. Unbeknownst to his employer, Harvard University, Lieber allegedly became a “Strategic Scientist” at WUT and, later, a contractual participant in China’s Thousand Talents Plan from at least 2012 through 2015.
China’s Thousand Talents Plan is described as “one of the most prominent Chinese talent recruitment plans designed to attract, recruit and cultivate high-level scientific talent in furtherance of China’s scientific development, economic prosperity and national security.”
He was paid a salary of up to $50,000 per month, living expenses of up to $150,000 and was awarded more than $1.5 million to establish a research lab at WUT. It is alleged that in 2018 and 2019, Lieber lied to federal authorities about his involvement in the Thousand Talents Plan and his affiliation with WUT.
He is accused of not paying taxes on money earned in 2013 and 2014 and it is alleged that he, together with WUT officials, opened a bank account at a Chinese bank during a trip to Wuhan in 2012. WUT “periodically deposited portions of Lieber’s salary into that account.”
According to the Mass. DA, “the charge of making false statements provides for a sentence of up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000. The charge of making and subscribing false income tax returns provides for a sentence of up to three years in prison, one year of supervised release and a $100,000 fine. The charge of failing to file an FBAR provides for a sentence of up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000.”
We reported on Lieber when he was arrested back in January here. We noted the two Chinese nationals he was found to be working with – one a Boston University researcher who was once a lieutenant in the People’s Liberation Army, according to prosecutors, and another who was a cancer researcher who tried to smuggle 21 vials of biological materials in his sock – allegedly.
“Lieber’s actions look like an unvarnished attempt at espionage, complete with an extremely seductive monetary reward,” we noted at the time.
- "2020 Is For All The Marbles" – Exposing America's White-Black-Nationalist Color Revolution
“2020 Is For All The Marbles” – Exposing America’s White-Black-Nationalist Color Revolution
Tyler Durden
Wed, 07/29/2020 – 23:05Authored (satirically, kinda) by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,
So, the White Black Nationalist Color Revolution (“made possible in part by GloboCap”) appears to be going extremely well. According to Foreign Policy magazine, the Trump regime is clinging to power, but it’s only a matter of time until the identitarian moderate rebels drive the Putin-backed fascists out of office and restore democracy to the Western world.
Yes, that’s right, just when it looked like the corporate-sponsored, totally organic, peaceful uprising against racism was over, and the Russo-fascist Trump regime had survived, the Global Capitalist Anarchists of Portland and other militant “Resistance” cells have launched a devastating counter-attack against assorted fascist building facades, fascist fences, and stores, and so on, and are going mano-a-mano in the streets with heavily-armed Putin-Nazi goon squads.
According to The Guardian, and other elements of the underground “Resistance” media, peaceful protesters in Portland have been attacking the fascists with rocks, bottles, improvised explosive devices, and various other peaceful anti-racist projectiles. In Oakland, they peacefully set fire to the courthouse. In Austin, Texas, a peaceful protester armed with an AK-47-style rifle was shot to death by a suspected fascist whose car was peacefully swarmed by a mob after he “tried to aggressively drive past protesters.” In Los Angeles, peaceful anti-racism protesters have been whipped up into such a frenzy of righteous anti-fascist fervor that they are performing flying tackles on the cops, who then promptly beat the snot out of them. And so on … I think you get the picture.
Portland, Oregon (where just under 6% of the population is Black) has of course been at the vanguard of the revolution, as it has since the Russians stole the election from Hillary Clinton in 2016 by “influencing” gullible African-Americans with a handful of ridiculous Facebook ads, and then installed Donald Trump and the rest of the Putin-Nazi Occupation Government in office. Not only have local Antifa militants been tirelessly fighting gangs of neo-nationalist boneheads you’ve probably never heard of more or less around the clock since then, Portland is also the headquarters of most of the militant Antifa intelligentsia (characters like Alexander Reid Ross, an anti-fascist geography lecturer who inculcates kids with his paranoid theories about the international Duginist-Red-Brown conspiracy to take over the whole world and mass-murder the Jews). So, naturally, Portland is now the epicenter of the White Black Nationalist Color Revolution.
But this isn’t just the usual Portlandia silliness. This White Black Nationalist Color Revolution has been in the works for the last four years. Since the moment Trump won the Republican nomination, the global capitalist ruling classes have been fomenting racialized polarization, Putin-Nazi paranoia, and other forms of mass hysteria, in anticipation of the events of this summer. The propaganda has remained consistent.
Both the liberal corporate media and the alternative left media have been predicting that Trump is going to go full-Hitler, impose martial law, proclaim himself Führer, and perpetrate some sort of racialized holocaust… for reasons they’ve never quite been able to explain.
He hasn’t, of course, so the global capitalist ruling classes had no choice but to unleash a shit-storm of civil unrest to goad him into overreacting … which, no surprise, he was stupid enough to do. Ordering the goon squads into the streets might delight his hardcore right-wing base, but it will alienate the majority of “normal” Americans, who aren’t especially fond of goon squads (unless they’re doing their thing in some faraway country). Most importantly, it will motivate all those non-Clinton-voting Obama voters to go out and vote for “Slappy” Joe Biden, or whichever corporate puppet the Democrats have replaced him with by November 3. That seems to be the general strategy.
Now, regardless of whether they can pull this off (and whatever your feelings about GloboCap as a de facto hegemonic empire), you have to at least admire their audacity. The part where the mayors of major cities stood down and otherwise hamstrung their cops, and let the “peaceful protesters” run amok, was particularly audacious, in my opinion. That was a serious gamble on GloboCap’s part. Trump could have resisted the urge to go totalitarian and called their bluff. He could have made a speech explaining to Americans exactly how these color revolutions work, how this one is going right by the book, and why he wasn’t going to take the bait, and left the cities in question to their own devices (until the mayors were forced to restore order themselves). But no, tactical genius that he is, he had to order in the goon squads, which, of course, is exactly what the “Resistance” wanted. Now he’s got cities like Philadelphia threatening to order their police to confront and attempt to arrest the federal agents … I assume you see where this is heading.
The other part that was particularly tricky was segueing from the original protests following the murder of George Floyd by the cops, most of which were authentic expressions of frustration and outrage by actual Black people about systemic racism and police brutality (both of which are very real, of course) to the orchestrated civil unrest that followed, most of which is being coordinated, funded, and carried out by White people. That was also an extremely bold move, but, as the generous folks at The Ford Foundation put it in July of 2016, when they announced that they would be overseeing the funneling of $100 million to organizations in the Black Lives Matter movement:
“We want to nurture bold experiments…”
Oh, and speaking of bold experiments, what better setting could there be for a White Black Nationalist Color Revolution than a fake apocalyptic plague that has wrecked the economies of most Western countries, terrorized the masses into mindless obedience, and destabilized whole societies to the point where fanatical, GloboCap-brainwashed brownshirts are macing people in the face for not wearing masks at outdoor picnics and wishing death on entire families if the mothers won’t put masks on their kids?
No, credit where credit is due to GloboCap. At this point, not only the United States, but countries throughout the global capitalist empire, are in such a state of mass hysteria, and so hopelessly politically polarized, that hardly anyone can see the textbook color revolution that is being executed, openly, right in front of our faces.
Or … OK, actually, most Trump supporters see it, but most of them, like Trump himself, have mistaken Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and the Democratic Party and their voters for the enemy, when they are merely pawns in GloboCap’s game. Most liberals and leftists cannot see it at all … literally, as in they cannot perceive it. Like Dolores in the HBO Westworld series, “it doesn’t look like anything” to them. They actually believe they are fighting fascism, that Donald Trump, a narcissistic, word-salad-spewing, former game show host, is literally the Return of Adolf Hitler, and that somehow (presumably with the help of Putin) he has staged the current civil unrest, like the Nazis staged the Reichstag fire! (The New York Times will never tire of that one, nor will their liberal and leftist readers, who have been doing battle with an endless series of imaginary Hitlers since … well, since Hitler.)
I’ve been repeating it my columns for the last four years, and I’m going to repeat it once again. What we are experiencing is not the “return of fascism.” It is the global capitalist empire restoring order, putting down the populist insurgency that took them by surprise in 2016. The White Black Nationalist Color Revolution, the fake apocalyptic plague, all the insanity of 2020 … it has been in the pipeline all along. It has been since the moment Trump won the election.
No, it is not about Trump, the man. It has never been about Trump, the man, no more than the Obama presidency was ever about Obama, the man. GloboCap needs to crush Donald Trump (and moreover, to make an example of him) not because he is a threat to the empire (he isn’t), but because he became a symbol of populist resistance to global capitalism and its increasingly aggressive “woke” ideology. It is this populist resistance to its ideology that GloboCap is determined to crush, no matter how much social chaos and destruction it unleashes in the process.
In one of my essays from last October, Trumpenstein Must Be Destroyed, I made this prediction about the year ahead:
“2020 is for all the marbles. The global capitalist ruling classes either crush this ongoing populist insurgency or God knows where we go from here. Try to see it through their eyes for a moment. Picture four more years of Trump … second-term Trump … Trump unleashed.
Do you really believe they’re going to let that happen, that they are going to permit this populist insurgency to continue for another four years? They are not. What they are going to do is use all their power to destroy the monster, not Trump the man, but Trump the symbol. They are going to drown us in impeachment minutiae, drip, drip, drip, for the next twelve months. The liberal corporate media are going to go full-Goebbels.
They are going to whip up so much mass hysteria that people won’t be able to think. They are going to pit us one against the other, and force us onto one or the other side of a simulated conflict (Democracy versus the Putin-Nazis) to keep us from perceiving the actual conflict (Global Capitalism versus Populism). They are going to bring us to the brink of civil war …”
OK, I didn’t see the fake plague coming, but, otherwise, how’s my prediction holding up?
- Unsolved Mysteries: Who Released The Toxic Plume Of Methane In Florida?
Unsolved Mysteries: Who Released The Toxic Plume Of Methane In Florida?
Tyler Durden
Wed, 07/29/2020 – 22:45A mysterious toxic plume of methane, estimated to be about 300 metric tons, was released somewhere north of Gainesville, Florida, in early May, eventually reached Jacksonville, according to Bloomberg, citing new satellite data from Bluefield Technologies Inc.
Yotam Ariel, the founder of Bluefield, said, satellites can now track climate change and aid researchers in finding out who released the plume of methane a couple of months back.
h/t Bloomberg So far, no energy or industrial company in the area has come forward about the methane discharge.
Stanford University professor Adam Brandt said the methane is likely from an “industrial facility, power plant, or gas compression or handling system,” calling it, “a significant leak.”
The Alachua County Environmental Protection Department told Bloomberg they’re “unaware of any incidents that may have contributed to methane emissions.”
Bloomberg dug around and found that Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU) requested an exemption on its air permits on April 24 to replace a steam turbine generator at its J.R. Kelly power plant, which is about 12 miles south from where the methane cloud was spotted.
GRU has yet to disclose when the turbine was replaced. Also near where the plume was detected, the utility company has at least two more power plants, one that runs on natural gas and another on coal.
In the same area, Energy Transfer LP’s Florida Gas Transmission has natural gas pipelines and compressor stations. The energy company didn’t report any planned releases or disruptions in early May.
Underneath the area of where the plume was spotted is land owned by forest products company Weyerhauser Co. Christine Berish, development review manager for Alachua County’s Department of Growth, said the forestry company “doesn’t have development projects in that area.”
How the toxic plume was released remains a mystery.
- Soros'd – The Chicago Tribune Union’s Depraved Assault On John Kass
Soros’d – The Chicago Tribune Union’s Depraved Assault On John Kass
Tyler Durden
Wed, 07/29/2020 – 22:25Authored by Mark Glennon via Wirepoints.org,
John Kass of the Chicago Tribune is one of maybe three consistently right-of-center columnists in all of Illinois, and certainly the most widely read, so it was only a matter of time before the mob tried to off him.
Now we have it, from the Chicago Tribune Guild, which is that newspaper’s union. It’s perhaps the most vicious effort to date in the cancel culture’s assault on journalism, and it’s based on a charge that’s entirely fabricated.
Kass wrote last week about the growing sense of lawlessness in urban areas, focusing on the connections between soft-on-crime prosecutors and the political donations that helped elect them from billionaire George Soros.
Yawn. Old news, you might think. Anybody following American politics has, for several years, seen a very long list of news stories and commentary in media of all political stripes across the nation about those Soros contributions, which are thoroughly documented. And Kass was hardly the first to address the obvious question about the connection between those prosecutors’ work and the surge in violent crime.
But it wasn’t lack of originality that the Tribune union alleged.
It was Kass’s “odious, anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that billionaire George Soros is a puppet master controlling America’s big cities.” Kass, the Guild wrote in a letter to all staff, “does not deserve a mainstream voice, especially at a time when hate crimes are rising.”
The Guild went on:
This column from the Tribune’s lead columnist does a disservice to our entire institution, not just the editorial board, for which he nominally works. It undermines the efforts of our newsroom to provide fair and diligent reporting to readers who, we all know, don’t always grasp the distinction between “opinion” and “news.”
We ask that the paper, and Kass separately, apologize for his indefensible invocation of the Soros tropes….
But read Kass’s column.
Read it again.
It contains nothing whatsoever that says or implies anything remotely like that.
It’s entirely about Soros’s contributions and their effect on law enforcement, which obviously are important matters to address.
Among those who have covered the topic before is Commentary, which was founded by the American Jewish Committee and has long had a central focus on “the future of the Jews, Judaism, and Jewish culture in Israel, the United States, and around the world.”
Aside from the pure cruelty to Kass and its naked contempt for diversity of opinion, the Guild’s letter is a tragedy for other reasons.
To charge anti-Semitism where there is none dilutes attention to real anti-Semitism, which there’s no shortage of. That includes false charges against Soros. Crank stories about Soros abound on the internet and they often include anti-Semitic, world conspiracy theories. Defeat those by attacking them, not columns that are entirely unrelated, or you will only inflame the conspiracy theorists.
Consider the irony that Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx is among the prosecutors whose campaign Soros funded – with a whopping $333,000. It’s not irony, actually, but consistency.
It’s Foxx who let Jussie Smollett off. What most infuriated many about that, especially blacks, was that his made-up story of bigotry detracts from real stories of bigotry. The Tribune Guild is guilty of precisely that, undermining the real fight against real bigotry by concocting a fake one. So much for the mob’s sincerity about bigotry.
Kass has now published his own response to the union’s letter.
John Kass
Standing ovation to him for dealing with the mob exactly as one should, by not giving in a single inch. From Kass’s response:
I will not apologize for writing about Soros.
I will not bow to those who’ve wrongly defamed me.
I will continue writing my column.
Kass says Tribune management has decided not to take sides on the controversy. That’s a big mistake by the Tribune if true. This is a chance to distinguish itself from the long list of formerly reputable media, from the New York Times on down, that have thrown both their own reputations and the most fundamental standards of journalism to the wind.
Most of Chicago’s beaches are wide open because of the coronavirus shutdown, so the Tribune Guild should have no trouble taking a running jump into Lake Michigan. That’s what they should be told to do.
- In Unprecedented Move, Congress Proposes Taxpayer-Funded Bailout Of $550 Billion CMBS Industry
In Unprecedented Move, Congress Proposes Taxpayer-Funded Bailout Of $550 Billion CMBS Industry
Tyler Durden
Wed, 07/29/2020 – 22:05Well, with everyone and everything else getting a bailout, may as well go all the way.
Two months after we reported that the state of California is trying to turn centuries of finance on its head by allowing businesses to walk away from commercial leases – in other words to make commercial debt non-recourse – a move the California Business Properties Association said “could cause a financial collapse”, attempts to bail out commercial lenders have reached the Federal level, with the WSJ reporting that lawmakers have introduced a bill to provide cash to struggling hotels and shopping centers that weren’t able to pause mortgage payments after the coronavirus shut down the U.S. economy.
The bill would set up a government-backed funding vehicle which companies could tap to stay current on their mortgages. It is meant in particular to help those who borrowed in the $550 billion CMBS market in which mortgages are re-packaged into bonds and sold to Wall Street. What it really represents, is a bailout of the only group of borrowers that had so far not found access to the Fed’s various generous rescue facilities: and that’s where Congress comes in.
To be sure, the commercial real estate market is imploding, and as we reported at the start of the month, some 10% of loans in commercial mortgage-backed securities were 30 or more days delinquent at the end of June, including nearly a quarter of loans tied to the hard-hit hotel industry, according to Trepp LLC.
“The numbers are getting more dire and the projections are getting more stern,” said Rep. Van Taylor (R., Texas), who is sponsoring the bill alongside Rep. Al Lawson (D., Fla.).
Van Taylor (R-Texas) is sponsoring the bill to aid hotels and shopping centers. Under the proposal, banks would extend money to help these borrowers and the facility would provide a Treasury Department guarantee that banks are repaid. The funding would come from a $454 billion pot set aside for distressed businesses in the earlier stimulus bill.
Richard Pietrafesa owns three hotels on the East Coast that were financed with CMBS loans. They have recently had occupancy of around 50% or less, which doesn’t bring in enough revenue to make mortgage payments, he said.
He said he is now two months behind on payments for one of his properties, a Fairfield Inn & Suites in Charleston, S.C. He has money set aside in a separate reserve, he said, but his special servicer hasn’t allowed him to access it to make debt payments.
“It’s like a debtor’s prison,” Mr. Pietrafesa said.
Those magic words, it would appear, is all one needs to say these days to get a government and/or Fed-sanctioned bailout. Because in a world taken over by zombies, failure is no longer an option.
While any struggling commercial borrower that was previously in good financial standing would be eligible to apply for funds to cover mortgage payments, the facility is designed specifically for CMBS borrowers.
It gets better, because not only are taxpayers ultimately on the hook via the various Fed-Treasury JVs that will fund these programs, but the new money will by default be junior to existing insolvent debt. As the Journal explains, “many of these borrowers have provisions in their initial loan documents that forbid them from taking on more debt without additional approval from their servicers. The proposed facility would instead structure the cash infusions as preferred equity, which isn’t subject to the debt restrictions.“
Yes, it’s also means that the new capital is JUNIOR to the debt, which means that if there is another economic downturn, the taxpayer funds get wiped out first while the pre-existing debt – the debt which was unreapayble to begin with – will remain on the books!
Perhaps sensing the shitstorm that this proposal would create, the WSJ admits that “the preferred equity would be considered junior to other debt but must be repaid with interest before the property owner can pull money out of the business.”
What was left completely unsaid is that the existing impaired CMBS debt will instantly become money good thanks to the junior capital infusion from – drumroll – idiot taxpayers who won’t even understand what is going on.
How did this ridiculously audacious proposal come to being? Well, Taylor led a bipartisan group of more than 100 lawmakers who last month signed a letter asking the Federal Reserve and Treasury to come up with a solution for the CMBS issues. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have indicated that this may be an issue best addressed by Congress.
In other words, while the Fed will be providing the special purpose bailout vehicle, it is ultimately a decision for Congress whether to bail out thousands of insolvent hotels and malls.
And if some in the industry have warned that an attempt to rescue the CMBS market would disproportionately benefit a handful of large real-estate owners, rather than small-business owners, it is because they are precisely right: roughly 80% of CMBS debt is held by a handful of funds who will be the ultimate beneficiaries of this unprecedented bailout; funds which have spent a lot of money lobbying Messrs Taylor and Lawson.
Of course, none of this will be revealed and instead the talking points will focus on reaching the dumbest common denominator. Taylor said the legislation is focused on – what else – saving jobs. What he didn’t say is that each job that is saved will end up getting lost just months later, and meanwhile it will cost millions of dollars “per job” just to make sure that the billionaires who hold the CMBS debt – such as Tom Barrack who recently urged a margin call moratorium in the CMBS market – come out whole.
“This started with employees in my district calling and saying ‘I lost my job’,” Taylor said, clearly hoping that he is dealing with absolute idiots.
And while it is unclear if this bill will pass – at this point there is literally money flying out of helicopters and the US deficit is exploding by hundreds of billions every month so who really gives a shit if a few more billionaires are bailed out by taxpayers – should this happen, well readers may want to close out the trade we called the “The Next Big Short“, namely CMBX 9, whose outlier exposure to hotels which had emerged as the most impacted sector from the pandemic.
Alternatively, those who wish to piggyback on this latest egregious abuse of taxpayer funds, this crucifxion of capitalism and latest glorification of moral hazard, and make some cash in the process should do the opposite of the “Next Big Short” and buy up the BBB- (or any other deeply impaired) tranche of the CMBX Series 9, which will quickly soar to par if this bailout is ever voted through.
- Beijing Professor Who Says He Was "Framed" On Prostitution Charges Takes Unheard Of Step Of Suing Police
Beijing Professor Who Says He Was “Framed” On Prostitution Charges Takes Unheard Of Step Of Suing Police
Tyler Durden
Wed, 07/29/2020 – 22:05A Chinese legal scholar who believes he’s being framed by the communist government after he wrote a series of essays criticizing President Xi Jinping’s leadership style, especially after the 2018 constitutional changes which allowed Xi to rule for life, is taking the extremely rare step of defying the party by filing a lawsuit against police.
Xu Zhangrun was until earlier this month a law professor at one of Beijing’s most prestigious universities. But that institution, Tsinghua University, fired him after police arrested him on the professionally humiliating charge of soliciting prostitution. Xu was held in detention for a week and then released with little explanation.
Via GMTV/Casino.org But despite authorities showing no evidence whatsoever – not even documents or surveillance footage to suggest he was even at a hotel with a prostitute as the police said – this was enough to get him dismissed from his prestigious teaching position.
Xu and his supporters think it hearkens back to his public essays which case the country’s leader Xi in a negative light. “Professor Xu believes there is no evidence whatsoever supporting their claim that he solicited prostitutes and believes he is being framed and entrapped,” an unnamed person involved in the case told FT.
According to The Wall Street Journal:
Mr. Xu on Tuesday engaged a pair of well-known human-rights lawyers, Mo Shaoping and Shang Baojun, to assist his efforts to overturn the solicitation charge, according to Mr. Shang. Police had accused Mr. Xu of committing the offense in the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu in December, an allegation the former professor rejected as false and “wholly nonexistent,” Mr. Shang said.
Though the country doesn’t have Miranda rights, it’s normal procedure to at least be given access to a copy of the police-detention order, which his lawyers are now working to obtain.
The 57-year-old was told by his university that not only was being terminated based on the prostitution arrest, but due to the series of political-related essays he’d authored going back to July 2018.
The WSJ notes it he was “deemed to have violated a code of conduct for teachers at tertiary institutions, according to a photo of the notice reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.”
Portrait of Chinese President Xi Jinping during a parade to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the founding of Communist China, via AP The WSJ report suggests that it may still be uncertain whether or not he and his lawyers will move forward with the lawsuit, or if they’ll simply appeal the police and university decisions and seek reinstatement. Regardless, it was a bold move to hire lawyers and seek to overturn everything in the first place.
And now given the Western media attention, if Xu was indeed framed by someone or entities high within the party, we can expect the lawsuit and story itself to quietly go away, given the nature of the Chinese system.
- Chinese Banks Bar Clients From Buying Precious Metals
Chinese Banks Bar Clients From Buying Precious Metals
Tyler Durden
Wed, 07/29/2020 – 21:47In an attempt to avoid another retail-driven momentum meltup similar to what happened with Chinese stocks earlier this month when government-media first encouraged Chinese investors to buy stocks only to backtrack days later when local markets soared sparking fears of another stock bubble on the mainland, Reuters reported that Chinese regulators and major banks have been rushing to curb precious metal trading by domestic investors to temper speculation that could send prices explosively higher, something we hinted at just last week.
All gold needs to hit 2,500 is for China’s momentum maniacs or the Robinhooders to start chasing it
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) July 22, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
The scramble to limit risks comes as gold prices hit record highs this week, spurred by investors hunting for safe haven assets in markets rattled by worries of rising coronavirus cases, lofty equity valuations, and a plunge in the U.S. dollar which prompted Goldman to contemplate if the days of the world’s reserve currency are numbered.
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the country’s largest bank said on Wednesday it would bar its clients from opening new trading positions for platinum, palladium and index products linked to precious metal from Friday. That directive, according to the lender’s customer service department, was in response to “violent price volatility” and “the need to control risks.” The reality? It is neither in China’s, nor any other government’s interest, to see gold prices soaring as they likely would if tens of millions of Chinese speculators rushed to bid up the precious metal.
Similarly, Agricultural Bank of China said it had recently suspended new businesses related to gold, while Bank of China also said it halted new account openings for platinum and palladium trading.
Meanwhile, the Shanghai Gold Exchange said on Tuesday that gold and silver holdings were high, and it would take risk-control measures if warranted to protect investors.
It’s odd how investors are never “protected” when stock prices soar… but only when gold and silver do.
The Shanghai Futures Exchange, where gold and silver futures contracts are traded, also urged its members to strengthen risk-management efforts and invest rationally.
“Gold remains a niche investment in China due to limited investment channels,” said Frank Hao, an analyst at Hywin Wealth Management in Shanghai. “Investors mainly rely on purchasing paper gold products at commercial banks as a way to counteract risks.”
Chinese investors have also been actively buying up gold ETFs, whose turnover has jumped in recent weeks. Huaan Gold ETF, Asia’s biggest gold exchange-traded fund, has seen its assets under management soar more than 68% to over 11.8 billion yuan ($1.69 billion) since end-2019.
Hao said any further gains in gold may spur more speculation, despite regulatory attempts to tamp it down.
“If the gold price rises past $2,000, some more hot money will certainly flow into the market, and some investors will divert their stock investments to gold,” he said.
Which really says all one needs to know: when it comes to stocks, nobody is worried about the “hot money” flowing into the market, in fact it is encouraged. But when gold explodes higher and it may “divert” stock investment to gold the authorities start to panic and do everything in their power to limit its ascent.
- Paying People Not To Work Is Not An Economic Stimulus
Paying People Not To Work Is Not An Economic Stimulus
Tyler Durden
Wed, 07/29/2020 – 21:45Authored by Stephen Moore via RealClearPolitics.com,
Back in 2009, Nancy Pelosi infamously declared the best way to revive the economy was to dole out ever more generous food stamps and unemployment benefits. The more people collecting welfare the better.
At the time, this notion seemed laughable. Now this economic illiteracy seems to have become a conventional wisdom.
This was a headline in the New York Times recently: “End of $600 Unemployment Bonus Could Push Millions Past the Brink.”
Here was the lead on the “news” piece:
“When millions of Americans began losing their jobs in March, the federal government stepped in with a life preserver: $600 a week in extra unemployment benefits to allow workers to pay rent and buy groceries, and to cushion the economy.
“With economic conditions again deteriorating, that life preserver will disappear within days if Congress doesn’t act to extend it. That could prompt a wave of evictions and inflict more financial harm on millions of Americans while further damaging the economy.”
These benefits are not a “life preserver,” but a job-killer. A study for the Committee to Unleash Prosperity by University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan estimated 10 million fewer Americans working by the end of the year, thus killing any chance of a “V-shaped recovery.”
Perhaps that’s why Pelosi is so adamant about the policy remaining in place. This would mean a high unemployment rate in November when voters go to the polls. How convenient for Pelosi and Joe Biden.
Incidentally, there are now some 5 million unfilled jobs in the U.S. today — near an all-time high. This is a weird predicament we are in. Even with some 25 million unemployed Americans, employers are hanging “Help Wanted” signs in the windows.
Here’s why.
Under the Pelosi policy, 5 out of 6 unemployed workers are getting paid more NOT to work than to return to the job, according to the Congressional Budget Office. We estimate that most workers who earn $30 or less are financially better off staying off the job — even as the economy improves. Many workers can get twice as much for staying unemployed. Workers are supposed to lose unemployment benefits if they are offered a job and don’t take it. But workers know how to game the system. They can pretend to be sick, and employers are loath to bring a contagious worker back in the office or factory.
Employers are now telling me that to get workers back on a construction crew, on a factory line or in a restaurant, they won’t work unless they get paid cash of, say, $100 or $200 a shift so they can still collect the unemployment benefits. The Economist magazine recently wrote that the extra unemployment benefits are doing more harm than good. Liberal groups are marching in the streets for another six months of these payments.
This policy is what I have long-called economic bimboism. Somehow, magically, if I pay my kid who gets up, mows lawns and works hard 40 hours a week, and I pay my other son even more money for staying home and playing computer games, this strategy is going to lead to more work effort in the Moore household. I assure you it won’t.
Paying people not to work is no way to expand economic output, more jobs and more prosperity. By this warped logic, we should start paying unemployed workers $5,000 a week, and we will really have a rip-roaring recovery.
This is not just lousy economics; it also violates basic principles of fairness. Think of a construction company with 100 employees laid off. They are all offered their jobs back a month later, but only 50 come back to work. Under the Pelosi scheme, the 50 that work hard get less money than the ones who stay home and watch TV. The suckers here are the ones who return to the job.
The only way politicians can “stimulate” the economy and lower unemployment is by incentivizing more economic production. This is why a payroll tax cut makes a lot of sense, and let us hope President Donald Trump, who favors the idea, doesn’t give up on it. Every worker — the heroes of our economy, including nurses, technicians, sanitation workers, truckers and nursing home care givers — would get a 7.5% pay raise starting on or around Aug. 1. Every small business would see their payroll costs shrink by 7.5%. By a 2-to-1 margin, workers love the payroll tax cut.
Skeptics complain that the payroll tax cut only helps people with a job, not the unemployed. Wrong. The best way to help the unemployed, Nancy Pelosi, is not by passing out food stamps and unemployment benefits. It is getting people a job, a paycheck and a step on the economic ladder. And there is one other thing that liberals seem to have forgotten: there is dignity and educational value in working rather than getting a welfare check paid for by someone else.
- Chinese Banks Urged To Switch From SWIFT And Drop USD In Anticipation Of US Sanctions
Chinese Banks Urged To Switch From SWIFT And Drop USD In Anticipation Of US Sanctions
Tyler Durden
Wed, 07/29/2020 – 21:25Even as the market does its best to ignore the unprecedented upheavals in US-Sino relations in everything from trade, to diplomacy, to financial relations, the truth is that there are tectonic shifts tearing apart decades of established norms between the two superpowers, and one doesn’t even have to dig too deep to see it.
Consider this: one month ago, we reported that Guo Shuqing, chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, delivered a strong warning on the US currency, frontrunning Goldman by about a month in cautioning that the greenback’s reserve status may be ending.
Speaking at the Lujiazhui Forum in Shanghai, Guo made four points:
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The Fed is the de facto central bank of the world. When its policy targets its own economy without considering the spillover effect, the Fed is “very likely to overdraft the credit of the dollar and the U.S.”
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The pandemic may persist for a long period of time, and countries keep throwing money at the problem with a diminished impact. “It is recommended that you think twice and reserve some policy space for the future.”
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There is no free lunch. Watch out for inflation.
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Financial markets are disconnected from the real economy, and such distortions are “unprecedented.” It’s going to be “really painful,” when the policy withdrawal starts.
“Some people say: ‘Domestic debt is not debt, but external debt is debt. For the United States, even external debt is not debt. This seems to have been the case for quite some time in the past, but can it really last for a long time in the future?”
So what will China do? “China cherishes the conventional monetary and fiscal policies very much. We will not engage in flooding the system, nor will we engage in deficit monetization and negative interest rates.”
It’s not the first time China vented frustration against the “exorbitant privilege” of the dollar. After the financial crisis, then-PBOC Governor Zhou Xiaochuan proposed using the SDR to replace the dollar as the main reserve currency. For the most part these warnings were ignored, but one thing was clear: China is all too aware that the US is not only ready but also willing to weaponize the dollar and use it to its advantage in the recently launched cold with China.
So fast forward to today, when according to Reuters, a report from the investment banking unit of Bank of China warned that China should prepare for potential US sanctions by switching away from the Dollar-centric SWIFT system, and increasing use of its own financial messaging network for cross-border transactions in the mainland, Hong Kong and Macau.
According to the BOC report, which was co-authored by a former foreign exchange regulator, greater use of the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) instead of the Belgium based SWIFT system would also reduce exposure of China’s global payments data to the United States. The bank’s chief economist Guan Tao was previously a director of the international payments department of State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE).
The report looked at potential measures the United States could take against Chinese banks, including cutting off their access to the SWIFT financial messaging service, the primary network used by banks globally to make financial transactions.
“A good punch to the enemy will save yourself from hundreds of punches from your enemies,” the report wrote, amid deteriorating relating between the world’s two largest economies. “We need to get prepared in advance, mentally and practically.”
The report said that if the United States were to take the extreme action of cutting off some Chinese banks’ access to dollar settlements, China should also consider stopping using the U.S. dollar as the anchor currency for its foreign exchange controls.
Chinese state banks have been implementing contingency plans in anticipation of US legislation that will penalize banks for serving officials who implement the new national security for Hong Kong, Reuters reported earlier this month.
China launched the CIPS clearing and settlement services system in 2015 as its alternative to SWIFT and in hopes to internationalise use of the yuan. So far, uptake has been negligible: supervised by the central bank, CIPS said it processed a mere 135.7 billion yuan ($19.4 billion) a day in 2019, with participation from 96 countries and regions.
The BOC also recommended that China develop legislation similar to the European Union’s Blocking Statute, which allowed the EU to sustain trade and economic relations with Iran, a country targeted by U.S. sanctions, although as has emerged in the past two years, Europe’s attempt to launch its own SWIFT-equivalent via Instex has been a failure, as virtually nobody is willing to risk alienation from the US Dollar by endorsing a European alternative. In fact, only when push comes to shove, and correspondent nations have no choice but to launch their own non-dollar transfer systems, will SWIFT’s supremacy finally be but to the test… as will the reserve status of the dollar.
Finally, confirming that this time China will have no choice but to proceed with “Plan B”, the SCMP reported overnight that the top adviser to Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, confirmed that his account at a US bank was closed earlier this year, as a result of Washington’s push to sanction Chinese and local officials over the city’s national security law.
Bernard Chan, convenor of the Executive Council, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s de facto cabinet, told the Post on Tuesday he believed it was because he was deemed to be a “politically exposed person”.
He had opened the account at the bank, which has so far been unnamed and which also has branches in Hong Kong, more than a year ago. But it was closed by the institution, and he got his money back in April.
“I’m sure they closed it because they found out I’m a PEP, politically exposed person,” Chan said. “I have other bank accounts in the United States which still function normally.”
Chan previously told the Financial Times that senior members of the city’s government were finding it increasingly difficult to bank with foreign institutions, as tensions mount between China and the US over the city’s future.
In retaliation for Beijing’s decision to impose a national security legislation on Hong Kong, President Trump signed a law and issued an executive order on July 15 to sanction individuals and banks deemed to have aided the erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy. He also put forth an executive order ending the city’s preferential trading and other privileges.
Foreign individuals or entities determined by the US secretary of state to fall into this category will be blocked from investing, transferring, exporting, withdrawing or dealing with any property or interests in property in the US.
In other words, while markets may be oblivious to these latest developments, the financial war between Washington and DC has officially begun and from this point on it will only accelerate as both countries progress in tit-for-tat retaliation to each and every move they find provocative.
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- The "Government Put" Is A Tailwind For Gold
The “Government Put” Is A Tailwind For Gold
Tyler Durden
Wed, 07/29/2020 – 21:05Authored by Addison Wiggin via The Daily Reckoning,
Gold recently crested $1950, where it is today as of this writing. For some, the $1900 price level is an important indicator of momentum building. I’ll share with you some advice on the gold price offered by my zoom interview this week, George Gammon, Rebel Capitalist, below.
In an effort to help you sort things out, I’ve invited George to help us put the macro picture into perspective given the pandemic, shutdown of the economy, a bizarrely resilient stock market and prospects for your investments now and in the future.
Gammon’s own story – from serial entrepreneur to global real estate developer to macroeconomic guru – uniquely positions him to help put the current state of affairs into perspective. On top of that he’s a heckuva good guy, entertaining, approachable; he has a talent for making complex ideas easy to understand.
He’s well versed in my late obsession with collectivism, which I’ve been exploring deeply since the protests started. He also explains how the Fed will monetize the $26.5 trillion in debt racked up during the crisis; the secret vehicle the Treasury will use if Fed efforts fail; how and why the dollar remains strong; what shenanigans the data wonks to white wash important economic data.
We further discussed prospects for reopening of the economy; why the economy and the stock market have diverged so dramatically; what signs to look for in the capitalist endgame; where the heck all that stimulus money is going; and more.
Frankly, my conversation with George was one of the more interesting, informative and entertaining I’ve done since starting the Surviving and Thriving series for Agora Financial Platinum Reserve members.
You’ll definitely want to see the “lightning round” at the end where we cover his thoughts on real estate, stocks, tech, commodities, bitcoin, gold, silver and precious metals; including a look under the hood at some of his own investments. Go here for a full transcript of our interview.
Now, let’s play with a hypothetical…
Let’s say we have another wave of lockdowns in various geographic locales in the economy. Here in Baltimore the mayor is about to close restaurants again, for example. The restaurants close. Bars close. Gyms close. Schools don’t reopen… yada, yada.
Institutional traders get spooked, again – still speaking hypothetically – and start selling stocks. The hoi polloi see the numbers tanking in their 401(k)s. And so on. We know what happened during the initial lockdown. February and March of 2020 account for 8 out of 10 of the largest single day point losses in the Dow Jones’ ever.
Source: Standard and Poors
By March 11 the Dow had lost 6,004 points – down 20.3% from the Feb. 12 high. What if bad news causes this, still jittery, market to drop 20% again?
“The whole U.S. economy is so tied to asset prices,” George Gammon suggests, “I just cannot see the Fed and or Treasury not stepping in and trying to prop up the market. Fact is, they have to step in and try to do something.”
I can’t argue with that.
“When you trap people in a system of debt,” said lefty linguist Noam Chomsky, “they can’t afford the time to think.”
I’m not sure I’d agree with Chomsky on too many things, but I think he nails that one.
For the first time since WWII the interest on the debt — which grows daily — is higher than the nation’s GDP. If that isn’t a trap, I can’t think of what would be… and so much of the hole the country is digging itself into is entirely out of your hands.
What’s an individual investor to do?
Back in the Crisis of ‘08 I often referred to the “Fed Put” — a friendly colloquial term describing the Fed practice of buying mortgage backed securities to put a floor in the market. So many banks were leveraged into those moribund financial instruments, without the Fed Put, the entire global system would have been kaput.
Fast forward 12 years and a fully re-inflated bubble, The ‘Fed Put’ may have expired. “If you want to think that one through,” George explains:
Remember when the Fed had that emergency meeting in March, where they were going to meet on Wednesday to decide the interest rate policy, but they had that emergency meeting on Sunday where they dropped interest rates by 100 basis points, took it down to zero and they announced QE Infinity and they’re committing a trillion a day to the repo market.
Monday, the market opens, it does go higher for maybe three or four hours, but then it just tanks, drops out of bed. Even though the Fed throws everything at it but the kitchen sink. And then the government comes in and announces all these stimulus programs. Then at that point, the market started to go back up a few days later.
So it seems like maybe, just maybe the Fed Put has expired and has been replaced by a government put. So now the only entity to prop up the market is going to be straight government spending.
What that means is not just bank reserves, but that means a direct M2 money supply — cash to folks like you and me — and an increase in velocity, the speed at which “getting and spending” happens.
Whether it will continue to work, or not, is anybody’s guess.
The “Government Put” could be the butterfly that unleashes a hurricane on the other side of the planet.
So… what should you buy? How about gold? And when should you buy it?
“I don’t even worry about the price of gold,” Mr. Gammon answers.
“I don’t even look at the price. When I get an extra hundred grand, bam, 10,000 goes into gold.”
“As far as silver, I look at that more like a speculation, more like Bitcoin. But the ultimate speculation right now are the gold miners. And I was fortunate enough to buy a lot of those back in March as well. And they’ve had a good run, but again, I’m not planning on selling them at all. And if they go back down even further, I’ll buy more.”
“I think if you look at everything we’ve talked about in this interview, and the M2 money supply, the velocity, the deficits, not only that, but you’ve got oil that’s very low, which definitely helps the P&L for the gold miners because a lot of their expenses are energy.”
“Cheap oil benefits them tremendously. And with the Government Put there is already a huge tailwind for gold in general. They could go down. But if they do go down, I’ll happily buy more and just wait until I think they’re expensive, which probably is going to be a long bull run from now.”
Buy gold (and gold miners)… and enjoy the ride.
- Junkies Transform Part Of NYC's Midtown Into A "Shooting Gallery"
Junkies Transform Part Of NYC’s Midtown Into A “Shooting Gallery”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 07/29/2020 – 20:45A band of junkies has transformed Broadway in Midtown Manhattan into “shooting gallery, injecting drugs unhampered in broad daylight and then shuffling around in a zonked-out stupor, seemingly oblivious to the Midtown bustle around them,” the New York Post reports.
Reporters from The Post snapped several pictures of junkies shooting up at a pedestrian plaza at Broadway and West 40th Street. They found syringes on the ground and called the area “mini needle park.”
“They’ve taken over the tables, blatantly using needles and shooting up heroin all day long,” said a city worker who asked only to be identified as James. “There’s no police action, there’s no reach-out. There’s nobody preventing this, and you know we’ve had multiple calls to 311 but nobody really responds. It’s becoming a real problem.”
Edgar Rivera, a construction worker in the area, said the junkies sleep on the ground and occasional ambulance visits are seen; he noted the same group of junkies congregate daily and shoot up heroin in broad daylight.
Apparent junkies turn stretch of NYC’s Midtown into a shooting gallery https://t.co/rmT7Rzwibo pic.twitter.com/NRcnLtdK0r
— New York Post (@nypost) July 28, 2020
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@NYPDPSA8 one of many heroin addicts leaning and swaying in front of @NYCHA 5360 Broadway, awaiting a dealer on a beautiful Saturday morning. Open market sales and @NYPD50Pct non-existence left a vacuum. This is @ydanis @galeabrewer district. Where’s @NYCMayor @NYCMayorsOffice? pic.twitter.com/l6uzeiPjar
— ThisIsNYCHA (@ThisIsNYCHA) June 16, 2020
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Another city employee said the situation has gotten worse over the years:
“Disappointing the way they discard all the syringes. It’s not the safest,” the man said who didn’t want to be identified. “In the last year, it’s gotten really bad. I’ve been seeing more syringes, discarded syringes, ever since they started coming in.”
As junkies takeover Midtown Manhattan, we’ve outlined in a series of reports, over the last couple of weeks, the area is a ghost town. Unemployment is high in the city, which can influence illegal drug use due to psychological distress.
Here’s another liberal utopia city, San Francisco, imploding under the weight of “crack and heroin everwhere.”
Welcome to San Francisco. pic.twitter.com/ltK9dRFqgm
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) July 27, 2020
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With that being said, a crushing recession and high unemployment in Midtown and across the entire country, well, it’s entirely possible drug usage continues to soar as America implodes from within.
- Why Texas Is In Trouble
Why Texas Is In Trouble
Tyler Durden
Wed, 07/29/2020 – 20:35Submitted by Adam Andrzejewski, from OpenTheBooks.com
Why Texas Is In Trouble—78,064 Public Employees With $100,000+ Paychecks Cost Taxpayers $12 Billion
Everything is bigger in Texas—including the supersized salaries of its city managers, school superintendents, state staffers, and other public servants. Last year, 78,064 state and local government employees made more than $100,000 each, and 18,600 of them out-earned Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who made $153,750.
Our auditors at OpentheBooks.com found the speech writers for university presidents making up to $140,000; library directors booking $202,875; community college presidents making up to $505,000; and city managers raking in an eye-popping $1.85 million over the last three-years.
We also found 19,519 federal bureaucrats based in Texas who earned six figures or more. Collectively, these employees cost taxpayers $2.5 billion in 2018, the last year available.
Using our interactive mapping tool, quickly review (by ZIP code) the highly compensated public employees earning more than $100,000 annually from local, state, and federal governments. Just click a pin and scroll down to see the results rendered in the chart beneath the map.
Auditing Texas’ largest local and state pay systems:
Municipalities (22,656 employees who made $100,000+) – Texas is home to some of the most highly compensated city managers in the nation.
In 2018, Sheryl Sculley ($574,594), the then-city manager in San Antonio, ranked number one. Her base salary was $467,789 plus a $106,805 bonus. Six deputy and assistant city managers also made between $231,544 and $270,125. The library director made $202,875— and outearned all federal bureaucrats employed at the National Archive and Smithsonian Institution ($201,400).
In 2019, frustrated voters in San Antonio capped city manager pay and term-limited employment to eight-years by passing a referendum.
This hasn’t happened in other Texas towns.
In the past three-years, Laredo poured $1.85 million into their city manager position (2017-2019). Horacio De Leon earned $880,486 in 2019 and $314,556 in 2018. In 2017, the previous city manager, Jesus Olivares, received $651,867 – including $278,028 in severance.
We reached out to Laredo and all the other cities with highly compensated employees for comment. We will update the piece if they respond.
Top-paid city managers included Peter Vargas ($433,842 Allen); T.C. Broadnax ($410,692 Dallas); Spencer Cronk ($378,071 Austin); Bruce Glasscock ($374,537 Plano); Daniel Johnson ($357,744 Richardson); David Cooke ($348,730 Fort Worth); Tomas Gonzalez ($340,746 El Paso); and Robert Wood ($319,946 West Lake Hills).
The city of Plano responded to our comment request:
“Mr. Glasscock’s salary included his retirement payout of benefits since it was 2019 and he retired in April of that year. His actual annual salary was lower than that.”
El Paso gave a lengthy defense of their pay scale. Nevertheless, Tomas Gonzalez $340,746), their city manager, outearned every four-star general in the U.S. military ($268,332) last year.
Other highly compensated workers included the general manager of Austin Energy, Jacqueline Sargent, earned $419,942. Two employees of Garland Power & Light made more than $412,000 last year.
In Dallas, top executives received hefty pay hikes. For example, in 2011, the Dallas city manager made $265,617, which increased to $410,692 last year (a 53 percent bump). The top assistant city manager in 2011 made $198,048, but that position earned $289,001 last year (a 46-percent increase).
“Dallas pays city executives equitably to close gender and cultural compensation gaps. Executive compensation is commensurate with experience to attract and retain the talent needed to provide excellent, equitable, ethical, and empathetic service to our residents and stakeholders.” Catherine Cuellar, City of Dallas spokesperson.
Public Schools (8,975 employees who made $100,000+) – Nearly 9,000 Texas public school administrators, athletic directors, teachers, and other employees pulled down six-figure salaries in 2019 and cost taxpayers $1.1 billion. Nearly 1,000 teachers and administrators out-earned the governor ($153,750).
The $400,000 Club (2019) included six superintendents: David Faltys ($452,014 Carroll); Donald Stockton ($447,879 Conroe); John Henry ($442,917 Cypress-Fairbanks); Susan Simpson ($429,795 Grand Prairie); Bradford Lancaster ($411,148 Lake Travis); and Lawrence Anthony Hindt ($407,787 Katy).
The Dallas Independent School District (DSD) accumulated $3.8 billion in voter-approved debt as of 2018. But DSD still employed the second highest number of six-figure educators (349) which cost taxpayers $44.1 million. Only the district in Houston employed more (367). In 2017, Dallas paid 274 employees more than $100,000 for a total cash compensation of $34 million.
Fort Bend Independent paid their superintendent Charles Dupre $368,852 last year and responded to our request for comment:
“With more than 11,000 employees and a budget that exceeds $1 billion, Fort Bend ISD is the largest employer in Fort Bend County.”
For context, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education made $199,700 last year – a cabinet level position.
State Government (8,310 employees with $100,000+ salaries) – The state governments 8,310 highly compensated six-figure employees made a collective $1.1 billion last year. James McCall earned $1.1 million as chancellor of the Texas State University System and was one of the most highly compensated state employees.
Other state government executives also made a lot of money: Jerry Albright, CIO, ($800,175) and Eric Lang, Sr. Managing Director of Private Markets, ($750,540) at Teacher Retirement System; Paul Ballard, CEO, ($703,692) at Texas Treasury Safekeeping Trust Co.; Barney Timmins III, CIO, ($640,163) at Texas Education Agency; and Charles Tom Tull, CIO, ($577,981) at the Employees Retirement System of Texas.
The Texas Education Agency responded to our comment request by providing FY2020 estimated compensation for Barney Timmins III – who received another pay increase from $640,163 to $685,308.
In the Office of the Governor alone, 48 employees earned six-figure salaries and eleven out-earned their boss ($153,750). This included four deputy directors who made $265,000 each. In addition, ranked against the 50 states, the Texas governor’s office has the largest staff at a headcount of 277.
However, it’s important to note that the Texas governor’s office includes up to 30 departments and these departments operate independently in other states.
“The Texas Legislature appropriates a set amount for staff salaries within the Office of the Governor, and we are currently operating well under budget. In fact, the Office of the Governor has operated under budget since Governor Abbott first took office in 2015.” Read the full statement here. Nan Tolson, Deputy Press Secretary, Office of the Governor
Colleges and Universities (16,981 employees with $100,000+ salaries) –
Football is king in Texas, and head coaches made the largest incomes: Jimbo Fisher ($5.15 million Texas A&M); Tom Herman ($4.72 million University of Texas (UT)); Dana Holgorsen ($3.7 million University of Houston).
The Austin campus at UT employed 3,441 six-figure employees for $618 million in cash compensation. High earners in rank-and-file positions included Matthew Kivel, the president’s speech writer ($140,105); Gary Susswien, chief communications officer ($251,913); and Edmund Gordon, a diversity provost ($280,532).
Not only does UT pay hefty salaries, it also has one of the largest endowments in the nation: $31 billion. However, in March, the UT system took home $173 million in coronavirus relief funds as part of the CARES Act. This doesn’t even include amounts for the M.D. Anderson Medical Center at UT, which had 6,400 employees making between $100,000 and $3.8 million last year.
The Texas A&M University system employed 3,902 six-figure employees for $626 million in cash compensation last year. The university received $82 million in coronavirus bailout funds through the CARES Act despite their $13.5 billion endowment.
A Texas A&M spokesperson responded to our request for comment:
“Even with the CARES Act money, the Texas A&M System to date is experiencing almost $160 million in revenue losses, future cuts in state appropriations and the cost of testing our students, faculty and staff for COVID-19 so we can reopen safely.”
Overall, Texas state government is drowning in $99 billion dollars in debt, according to Truth in Accounting. It amounts to $3,413 per man, woman, and child. By contrast, Florida has only $12 billion in debt and a $600 per-person liability.
To their credit, most of Texas isn’t begging for a coronavirus bailout like many other states. However, Nancy Pelosi’s $3 trillion HEROES Act would deliver an extra $34.3 billion to the Lone Star State over the next two years.
However, critics say that Texas – at every level of state and local government – should tighten its own belt first.
- Visualizing The World's Most Heavily Indebted Companies
Visualizing The World’s Most Heavily Indebted Companies
Tyler Durden
Wed, 07/29/2020 – 20:25Submitted by KryptoSzene
With a debt burden of $192 billion US, Germany’s auto giant Volkswagen Group is the most heavily indebted enterprise in the world. This can be seen in a new infographic from Kryptoszene.de. Their mountain of debt is comparable to that of entire nations such as South Africa or Hungary. All of this despite the fact that the Wolfsburg-based company is highly profitable and has the second-highest EBIT margin of any automotive group.
As the “Corporate Debt Index” data show, two other German groups, in addition to Volkswagen, are among the ten companies with the highest debt burden: Daimler and BMW have debt of $151 and $114 billion US respectively. An analysis of financial data from the 900 largest companies by market capitalization reveals that US companies carry the largest debt burden overall, while Germany and companies based there rank second.
The infographic shows that Volkswagen distinguishes itself in other respects as well. According to a ranking by the “Center of Automotive Management”, Volkswagen is also the most innovative automotive group. This ranking is put together based on number of innovations and world firsts in various areas of technology.
Volkswagen also occupies a leading position in terms of profitability. Its EBIT margin last year was 7.3%. Only Toyota had a higher figure at 8.4%.
However, a glance at Google data shows that demand for Volkswagen shares is currently weak. The Google Trend Score, which indicates relative search volume, currently stands at 13, with a score of 100 representing the highest possible search volume.
- HVAC Business Is Booming Amid "Huge Demand" For Medical-Grade Ventilation Systems
HVAC Business Is Booming Amid “Huge Demand” For Medical-Grade Ventilation Systems
Tyler Durden
Wed, 07/29/2020 – 20:05While most restaurants and retailers have stocked up on gallons of Purell and sanitizing wipes, masks, gloves, toilet paper and other supplies, a growing body of evidence gleaned from scientific studies has shown that the virus’s propensity to spread via airborne transmission is much greater than the WHO had initially believed.
Increasingly, scientists from around the world are pressuring the WHO to change its guidelines to account for this shift in understanding. But the international public health body has, bizarrely, resisted this pressure, inviting even more criticism about the WHO spreading misinformation, like the time one of its top officials said instances of viral transmission involving asymptomatic individuals are “rare”.
Now that our understanding of the virus has matured, and the resurgence in the Sun Belt has prompted cautious business owners to accept that the virus, even once under control, likely won’t be going away any time soon, restaurants and other businesses are paying big money for advanced HVAC systems that use UV light and other advanced techniques to cleanse air of potentially infectious particles.
Bloomberg interviewed a few restaurant owners and others in the hospitality and retail spaces about what they’re buying, and why.
Building specialists are poring over how well heavy-duty filters block microbes and considering whether to install systems that use ultraviolet light or electrically charged particles in the ductwork to kill the virus. Companies including Honeywell International Inc., Carrier Global Corp. and Trane Technologies Plc are benefiting from the surge in demand, offering everything from air-monitoring sensors to portable filter machines to help make up for deficiencies in ventilation.
“Every building is going to have some kind of solution. Is it going to be 100%? No,” said Hani Salama, head of the New York chapter of the Building Owners and Managers Association. “But it’s going to be better than what they have now, and will help mitigate some of these airborne transmission issues that everybody is afraid of.”
This trend isn’t spreading quickly enough. Especially as more studies appear to confirm the findings of one University of Oregon study which found virus particles in the HVAC systems of 25% of hospitals that had treated COVID-19 patients. Even scientists who are skeptical of these findings still think poorly ventilated environments could be dangerous breeding grounds for COVID-19.
Unsurprisingly, industrial giants like Honeywell are cashing in, selling filters designed for medical environments, but retrofitted for modern business settings like restaurants and other facilities.
However, the larger energy costs could create problems, particularly for Democrats who try to justify the cost of AOC’s “Green New Deal”, which requires buildings in cities like NYC to become far more energy efficient, something that would be virtually impossible given all the additional demand for power.
For building owners, the trade-offs abound. It’s best to let in more fresh air, but that puts a strain on cooling or heating. Dense filters that trap more microbes are coveted, yet can choke off airflow and worsen ventilation if a building’s fans aren’t powerful enough. And most solutions require more energy consumption. Building-safety products are proving to be a bright spot for sales at companies like Honeywell, which has technology for “frictionless entry,” automatic temperature-taking and sensors that monitor air quality.
Carrier, which specializes in HVAC and reports earnings this week, has seen its stock more than double since its separation in March from the former United Technologies Corp.
“We’re seeing a very huge demand,” said Manish Sharma, chief technology officer for Honeywell’s building technologies unit. “Everyone wants to see how you can get back to business.”
One owner of a theater chain said he shelled out and purchased new state of the art UV light filters for all of his 80+ theaters across the Southwest..
He said he was convinced by a study showing the filter was “99% effective”. He says he hasn’t heard of anyone getting sick at his establishments.
Allan Reagan, chief executive officer of Flix Brewhouse, adopted elaborate protocols for sanitizing and creating social distancing at his 10 dine-in movie houses. As the risk of airborne spread drew more attention, he hired Trane Technologies to install bipolar ionization for all 87 of the company’s screening auditoriums, at $1,500 a piece.
A study showing the system kills as much as 99% of pathogens won Reagan over, and Flix Brewhouse opened in San Antonio to the public for two weeks to try the system. He said the venue had about 700 visitors, including 50 employees, and he hasn’t heard of any Covid cases that arose.
All of Flix’s theaters are closed for now, mainly because of a lack of new films from Hollywood, he said.
“We tried it out, declared victory, and we’ll come back when we have some good content,” Reagan said. “In the meantime, we’ll be retrofitting our other theaters. So when they reopen we’ll have this technology across the circuit.”
For many years, running a small HVAC business was a reliable means to earn a solid blue-collar living. Maybe some of the unemployed who are about to see their benefits cut should consider a career change, especially all those servers who probably won’t see tips return to normal levels for some time.
- Big Tech Firms Enjoy "Monopoly Power", Should Be "Heavily Regulated": House Judiciary Chair
Big Tech Firms Enjoy “Monopoly Power”, Should Be “Heavily Regulated”: House Judiciary Chair
Tyler Durden
Wed, 07/29/2020 – 19:59Big tech CEOs took a beating from both sides on Wednesday, with Democrats on the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee hammering the heads of Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple over anti-competitive conduct, and Republicans on the committee focusing on bias against conservatives.
Representative David Cicilline, the chairman of the antitrust subcommittee, grilled Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, about how Google steers traffic to its own search pages and products. Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York asked Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s top executive, about emails he wrote describing Instagram as a potentially disruptive competitor before the company acquired the firm. And Representative Hank Johnson of Georgia pushed Tim Cook of Apple on whether his company exerts unfair dominance over app developers in its app store. –NYT
Wrapping up the five-plus hour session, Chairman Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) said during his closing statements that all four companies are monopolies, saying “These companies, as they exist today, all have monopoly power,” adding “Some need to be broken up” and “heavily regulated.”
“Their control of the marketplace allows them to do whatever it takes to crush independent businesses and expand their own power,” Cicilline added.
“They’re engaged in behavior that’s anticompetitive, which favors their own products and services, which monetizes and weaponizes data, which compromises the privacy of their users and which creates a competitive disadvantage for companies attempting to enter the marketplace.”
Representative David Cicilline said the House antitrust subcommittee had observed ‘common patterns and competition problems’ at four of America’s largest tech firms during a congressional hearing in which the CEOs of those companies testified https://t.co/0UwEkKbcS2 pic.twitter.com/QmJhf3lgHZ
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 29, 2020
Republicans on the committee – particularly Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), grilled the CEOs over political bias.
Jordan accused the companies of being “out to get conservatives.”
“I’ll just cut to the chase,” said Jordan during opening remarks. “Big Tech is out to get conservatives. That’s not a suspicion, that’s not a hunch — that’s a fact.”
“We’re 97 days before an election, and the power … these companies have to impact what happens during an election, what American citizens get to see before their voting, is pretty darn important,” said Jordan.
Later in the hearing, Jordan dug into Pichai, repeatedly demanding assurances that Google would not tip the scales for the Democrats in November.
“Can you assure Americans today you won’t tailor your features to help Joe Biden in the upcoming election?” asked Jordan, who mentioned reports of a “silent donation” the company made to the Clinton campaign in the 2016 election cycle.
Jordan had to repeat the question several times during his allotted five minutes before Pichai finally uttered, “You have my commitment.”
Jordan’s grievances notwithstanding, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle were united in holding the tech titans’ feet to the fire, amid bipartisan concerns that they’ve developed a stranglehold on the internet and American life. –NY Post
Rep. @Jim_Jordan: “Is Google going to tailor its features to help Joe Biden in the 2020 election?”
Watch @Google CEO Sundar Pichai response here. pic.twitter.com/faM2AtVqOY
— CSPAN (@cspan) July 29, 2020
The CEOs defended their businesses, with Bezos arguing that ” Every day, Amazon competes against large, established players like Target, Costco, Kroger and, of course, Walmart — a company more than twice Amazon’s size.”
Mark Zuckerberg painted Facebook as an “American success story” and an underdog compared to his competitors.
“[The] most popular messaging service in the US is [Apple’s] iMessage,” he said. “The most popular app for video is [Google’s] YouTube. The fastest-growing ads platform is Amazon, the largest ads platform is Google. And for every dollar spent on advertising in the US, less than 10 cents is spent with us,” he said.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal rejected Zuck’s framing, firing back “When the dominant platform threatens its potential rivals, that should not be a normal business practice.”
“Facebook is a case study, in my opinion, in monopoly power, because your company harvests and monetizes our data, and then your company uses that data to spy on competitors and to copy, acquire and kill rivals. Facebook’s very model makes it impossible for new companies to flourish separately, and that harms our democracy, it harms mom-and-pop businesses and it harms consumers.”
Tim Cook defended Apple’s App Store amid accusations that the company has unfairly blocked apps which rival its in-house products, along with the 30% cut the company takes from in-store purchases.
“I’m here today because scrutiny is reasonable and appropriate,” he said, adding “If Apple is a gatekeeper, what we’ve done is open the gate wider.”
But, as the Post explains, “It was the frequently evasive Pichai, however — defending Google’s far-reaching online ad business — who seemed to catch most of the flak.”
Cicilline charged that Google has “evolved from a turnstile to the rest of the Web, to a walled garden that increasingly keeps users within its sites.
“It used its surveillance over Web traffic to identify competitive threats and crush them,” continued Cicilline. “It has dampened innovation and business growth … virtually ensuring that any business that wants to be found on the Web paid Google a tax.” –NY Post
“Our founders would not bow before a king,” said Cicilline. “Nor should we bow before the emperors of the online economy.”
Update (1615ET):
In an interesting exchange, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) read an email which Amazon’s Jeff Bezos sent to his staff saying “We’re buying market position, not technology.”
Jeff Bezos email on buying Ring: “We’re buying market position not technology.” Wow. #BigTechBarons
Wow, Bezos says the most common reason to buy a company is “Market position.” That’s the whole ball game.
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) July 29, 2020
Bezos will not say if Alexa is trained to favor Amazon products over other products, says “it’s possible.”
— Kari Paul (@kari_paul) July 29, 2020
* * *
Update (1445ET):
While the tech titans mostly stuck to their prepared remarks at the beginning of today’s testimony, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg veered off script – pointing out that Google is the largest online advertising platform in the world, while Amazon is growing the fastest.
“In many areas, we are behind our competitors,” he said. “The most popular messaging service in the U.S. is iMessage. The fastest growing app is TikTok. The most popular app for video is YouTube. The fastest growing ads platform is Amazon. The largest ads platform is Google. And for every dollar spent on advertising in the U.S., less than ten cents is spent with us.”
Translation: Facebook couldn’t possibly commit antitrust violations with these advertising behemoths at the head of the pack.
“Zuckerberg isn’t hesitating to use some sharp elbows, pointing out that Amazon is the fastest-growing advertising platform and Google is the biggest,” says @atbwebb https://t.co/oLvzbiaL6e pic.twitter.com/eozgX71Wx4
— Bloomberg Opinion (@bopinion) July 29, 2020
* * *
Update (1155ET): The Big-Tech hearing has been delayed until 1230-1300ET as the Judiciary Committee attempted to complete another hearing on immigration.
* * *
The CEOs of Amazon, Google, Apple and Facebook will testify before House lawmakers over allegations of anti-competitive practices. For members of the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, it will be their sixth hearing in their investigation into Silicon Valley antitrust accusations.
Watch Live (the ‘virtual’ hearing is due to start at 1200ET):
* * *
The four CEOs have now released their prepared remarks.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos:
Apple CEO Tim Cook:
Google CEO Sundar Pichai:
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg:
* * *
Composite photo via Business Insider As Politico notes, “The session also arrives as scrutiny of the behemoths is surging across the globe, including an expected Justice Department antitrust case against Google and the recent launch of two European probes of potential anticompetitive behavior by Apple.”
It will also mark the first time Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest person, has offered testimony before Congress – albeit via videoconference, while House Judiciary lawmakers will attend both virtually and in-person in a hybrid format, according to the report.
That said, today’s ‘showdown’ could go one of two ways; fireworks, or snoozefest. If House Democrats jump off script from antitrust issues and press the CEOs over online hate speech, or if GOP members drill them on anti-conservative bias, things could get interesting.
Even the format of the questioning – four elite CEOs, all appearing by videoconference because of the coronavirus pandemic – could make it harder for the members to land a glove on the companies’ varied issues, ranging from Google’s and Facebook’s command of digital ad revenue to Apple’s control of its App Store and questions about whether Amazon misled Congress. –Politico
“The discussion will go well beyond antitrust,” said Carl Szabo, VP and General Counsel of NetChoice, a tech trade group which counts Google, Amazon and Facebook as members. “It will go into issues of election interference, or conservative bias, or any of the other issues de jour on which we like to saddle tech.”
As we detailed previously, here’s what to expect assuming things go according to plan:
Lawmakers will likely question Bezos about whether an Amazon lawyer misled the Judiciary Committee last summer by claiming the company doesn’t use data collected from third-party vendors to launch competing products of its own.
In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, Amazon employees did just that – which prompted Judiciary leaders to question whether a criminal referral was appropriate for perjury charges. The company disputed WSJ‘s report, and said it did not ‘intentionally mislead’ the Committee – while also promising to conduct an internal investigation.
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg will likely face questions over acquisitions of former rivals WhatsApp and Instagram, while Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and others have called for regulators to break up the social media giant.
Other items of inquiry will include how Facebook handles its trove of data collected from more than 2 billion users, including whether it is for anticompetitive purposes.
“There’s a real fear that no other competitor could ever successfully launch a social media platform because it could never match Facebook’s troves of data, which, given their record, it’s a serious threat to users,” Rep. Joe Neguse (D-CO) told Politico.
Google’s Sundar Pichai will have to answer for whether the company amplifies its own search services to the detriment of competitors and consumers seeking maps, videos or other services.
Separately, questions will be asked over whether their domination of online advertising has harmed smaller businesses as well as news outlets.
The committee has also accused the company of being less than forthright in its past testimony, including on questions such as what percentage of searches on the company’s engine lead to website referrals not on Google.
Google has separately been a frequent target of Republican allegations of anti-conservative bias on its video sharing platform YouTube, a topic that is expected to come up again at Monday’s hearing. Google and other major tech platforms deny those charges. Democrats, meanwhile, have taken issue with the company’s handling of hate speech and misinformation on YouTube. –Politico
Lastly, Apple CEO Tim Cook will face questions over how the company has handled its app store.
“Because of the market power that Apple has, it is charging exorbitant rents — highway robbery, basically — bullying people to pay 30 percent or denying access to their market,” Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) told The Verge in June. “It’s crushing small developers who simply can’t survive with those kinds of payments. If there were real competition in this marketplace, this wouldn’t happen.“
- Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg Hospitalized For "Minimally-Invasive" Surgery
Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg Hospitalized For “Minimally-Invasive” Surgery
Tyler Durden
Wed, 07/29/2020 – 19:57Less than two weeks after her previous hospitalization, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is back in Sloan Kettering for a procedure to revise a bile-duct stent. She is expected to be released by the end of the week.
Full Statement:
Justice Ginsburg underwent a minimally invasive non-surgical procedure today at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City to revise a bile duct scent that was originally placed at Sloan Kettering in August 2019.
According to her doctors, stent revisions are common occurrences and the procedure, performed using endoscopy and medical imaging guidance, was done to minimize the risk of future infection.
The Justice is resting comfortably and expects to be released from the hospital by the end of the week.
Tow weeks ago, she confirmed that was living with a recurrence of liver cancer.
On May 19, I began a course of chemotherapy (gemcitabine) to treat a recurrence of cancer. A periodic scan in February followed by a biopsy revealed lesions on my liver. My recent hospitalizations to remove gall stones and treat an infection were unrelated to this recurrence.
Immunotherapy first essayed proved unsuccessful. The chemotherapy course, however, is yielding positive results. Satisfied that my treatment course is now clear, I am providing this information.
My most recent scan on July 7 indicated significant reduction of the liver lesions and no new disease. I am tolerating chemotherapy well and am encouraged by the success of my current treatment. I will continue bi-weekly chemotherapy to keep my cancer at bay, and am able to maintain an active daily routine. Throughout, I have kept up with opinion writing and all other Court work.
I have often said I would remain a member of the Court as long as I can do the job full steam. I remain fully able to do that.
At 87, Ginsburg is the oldest member of the U.S. Supreme Court, and a stalwart of its liberal wing.
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