- Greenland Bans Alcohol Sales To Reduce Child Abuse As Coronavirus Hits
Greenland Bans Alcohol Sales To Reduce Child Abuse As Coronavirus Hits
For several weeks after the start of the global coronavirus pandemic there was a running joke that Trump’s offer to purchase Greenland was brilliant in hindsight as the northern island appeared immune to any the covid cases. That all changed on March 16 when the territory registered its first case.
Fast forward to today when dpa reports that Greenland has banned alcohol consumption in the capital Nuuk and nearby settlements in a bid to decrease incidences of child abuse as people stay inside to avoid spreading coronavirus.
The Sunday decision from Greenland’s government bans all sales of alcoholic drinks with immediate effect in Nuuk and in the settlements of Kapisillit and Qeqertarsuatsiaat until April 15. Explaining the move, Prime Minister Kim Kielsen said the coronavirus emergency response had necessitated a lot of different responses.
“But at the heart of my decision is protecting children,” Kielsen said. “They should have a secure home.”
Perhaps due to its location where social distancing was a given long before the coronavirus emerged, Greenland has a well-documented history of sexual abuse of minors, with some studies showing one in three adults living there having experienced it as a child. Many have linked the phenomenon to increased incidences of alcohol and drug abuse, among other things.
Under the influence of alcohol, people were also less aware, increasing the risk of infection with coronavirus, Kielsen said on Sunday.
So far only ten people have tested positive for coronavirus in Greenland. No one has died.
Greenland is largely independent, but officially belongs to Denmark; Last August Trump sparked a diplomatic scandal when he suggested buying Greenland (the purchase price was never disclosedd), sparking Denmark’s fury. Around 55,000 people live on the territory, which is the largest island on earth. About a third of them live in the capital Nuuk.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 03/30/2020 – 02:35 - We Are All Totalitarians Now – COIVD-19 Brings Back Europe's Spirit Of The Polis
We Are All Totalitarians Now – COIVD-19 Brings Back Europe’s Spirit Of The Polis
Authored by Guillaume Durocher via The Unz Review,
The coronavirus epidemic has been highly instructive. In the face of a looming early death for millions of citizens, Western States have entered a genuine crisis in which the Schmittian sovereign – who was always there lying in waiting – has reemerged into the open and taken all the measures deemed necessary, liberty and law be damned.
The nations making up the European Union are highly illustrative in this respect.
For starters, there was no unified European response.
Each nation having its own police and media/consciousness, each one adopted their measures in a haphazard and uncoordinated manner, although all tended towards a gradual escalation.
Jean Quatremer, Libération’s euro-federalist correspondent in Brussels, lamented:
“Up to now, it has been every man for himself. Italy, the epicenter of the European epidemic, was abandoned; Germany and France even went so far as to forbid the export of medical equipment, with no regard for solidarity.”
Admittedly that was two weeks ago and since then the Europeans have made some progress in getting their act together.
The European Central Bank (ECB) is perhaps the EU’s only truly federal and sovereign entity, in some respects more powerful than the U.S. Federal Reserve, because there is no pan-European political counterpart to counterbalance it. A few days after making the faux pas of declaring that the Bank’s job did not involve policing interest rate spreads, ECB President Christine Lagarde reversed her position and declared her institution would lend €750 billion to stabilize the European economy.
I am always left in awe of this spectacle: while European officials and lobbyists are locked in a perpetual struggle of niggardly Kuhhandel in Brussels over the pork-laden EU budget, Lagarde can summon up five times the annual budget with a snap of her fingers.
Corona really does work miracles.
Things that were declared “impossible” have become the norm. The parks of Western European cities are finally being cleared of migrants, now that these have been declared a sanitary hazard (being a criminal one was apparently not enough).
The European Parliament’s meetings in Strasbourg – a traveling circus which costs taxpayers €100 million per years – have been suspended. The EU’s balanced-budget rulebook, which the Germans fought so hard to impose over the last decades, has been thrown out the window. Each State is to borrow as it pleases to bail out businesses and provide welfare, at least for the duration of the national lockdowns. Individual liberty has been put indefinitely on hold.
In Italy, the number of cases and dead continues to steadily rise. As of 27 March, over 9,000 have died, including almost 1,000 just in the past day. Overwhelmed medical professionals have been forced to institute the grim practice of triage, choosing to concentrate on those individuals who have the best chance of survival and leaving many of the elderly to die.
Mankind only learns the hard way: one funeral at a time. A month ago, the mayor of Florence urged his fellow citizens to “huge a Chinese” in order to fight racism and xenophobia. Now Italian mayors are verbally abusing their residents to stay indoors in classic national style.
European States have adopted genuinely totalitarian levels of social control, affecting all citizens’ daily lives. In France, you cannot go into the street without a written declaration of your particular reason for being outside. Our countries have adopted a basically Mussolinian notion of collection liberty. As the Duce himself argued in his Doctrine of Fascism:
[Fascism] is opposed to classical liberalism which arose as a reaction to absolutism and exhausted its historical function when the State became the expression of the conscience and will of the people. [. . .] And if liberty is to be the attribute of living men and not of abstract dummies invented by individualistic liberalism, then Fascism stands for liberty, and for the only liberty worth having, the liberty of the State and of the individual within the State.
And, in truth, Western Europeans have by and large embraced the new measures. Huge majorities of over 85% support the national lockdowns in Spain, Italy, France, and Britain. With a typical “rally-around-the-flag” effect, leading politicians have also regained in popularity. French President Emmanuel Macron now has a 44% approval rating, a figure not seen since July 2017, while confidence in Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe has jumped by over 10 points since the start of the crisis, reaching 51%.
Our liberal democracies found their legitimacy on the sacrosanct equality and liberty of the individual, that is to say. Such doctrines and practices certainly thrive in peacetime but as soon as there is a real threat of death – an early death for millions of elderly Westerners, in this case – these notions melt away like snow in the morning sun.
In the face of genuine danger, the natural social condition effortlessly reasserts itself. Liberty, equality, and the “rights of man” naturally give way to the imperative of collective survival: Every man at his post!
In truth, collective organization in the face of imminent danger has been the norm throughout human history. Social prescription went far beyond mere politics to being part of something much deeper: custom.
There is a curious contradiction running across Western societies today. Over the last two-and-a-half centuries, we have seen the individual rebel more and more forcefully against the formal strictures of the group, against formal inequalities and restrictions on “private” liberty (for instance, buggery, harlotry, and spinsterdom). Any attempt to take action to reverse Western nations’ decline and save their ethnic and genetic identity is considered a “human rights violation.” At the same time, in practice, our citizens tolerate and often outright expect massive curtailment of their liberties, usually in the name of security.
The fascist critique of liberal-democratic ethics basically boiled down to a denunciation of selfishness and hypocrisy. As Ezra Pound complained in 1938: “In our time the liberal has asked for almost no freedom save freedom to commit acts contrary to the general good.” Indeed, Pound noted that as people had only known “the loose waftiness of demoliberal ideology,” one needed “sharp speech” to open minds.
Many have warned of the dangers of making individual entitlement the moral yardstick of nations. Gandhi, Heinlein, Solzhenitsyn, to name only a few, all tried to make the point their own way. Here is a lesser-known example, the Romanian anti-communist Petre Țuțea, who in the first years after the fall of Ceaușescu confused his freedom-hungry interlocutors by saying:
Communist totalitarianism is a contradiction in terms. Totalitarians can only be those people who from start from the whole to go to the part – according to the Aristotelian formula. [. . .] The [Communist] Manifesto’s end is final anarchy [. . .]. By their end, communists are anarchists.
Fascists, Hitlerians, and the Catholic Church are totalitarian, because they start from the Aristotelian principle: the whole comes before the part. These are totalitarians.
A journalist told me: You can’t say that, you are confusing the youth! I can’t broadcast that if everyone considers communists to be totalitarian . . .
But me […] I cannot take it back. I cannot lie.
It’s all well and good to understand that such a thing as civic virtue exists in times of crisis: that we are all in this together and must behave accordingly. But why does such Hellenic good sense not extend to peacetime?
Already today, civic virtue is highly unevenly distributed among the “French” population. Videos are circulating on social media of Africans and Muslims in France blatantly ignoring the confinement and social-distancing measures. According to Le Canard Enchaîné newspaper, the Interior Ministry responded by instituting “confinement lite” among this decidedly sensitive population.
This crisis is also an opportunity to reflect on the slow death of the Italian nation. I was raised near Italy and frequently visited the country growing up, gaining a real fondness for Italians and Italian culture. For me, crossing the Alps was like entering a different world, a different rhythm of existence. Today of course, with the Internet and the euro, the difference does not feel so great, yet still I love every second spent in the country.
Today, over 22% of the Italian population is over 65. The fertility rate of 1.32 per woman is among the lowest in Europe and is in continuous decline. While the Italians do not practice birthright citizenship and have not made it easy for non-European migrants to settle, there is still enormous pressure on the country from a continuous flow of illegals from Africa and the Middle East. We can ask: What will be left of Italy in 100 years? Not much, it seems, and that would be a great tragedy and a great crime.
There do not seem to be ten thousand ways of preventing the death of a nation.
Italy’s former Fascist regime fought for the country’s birthrate, power, stability, and economic independence. Emil Cioran – suspending his usual manic-depressive hyperbole – gave this qualified praise: “Overpopulation and Mussolini’s political genius have obviously raised [Italy’s] historical level [. . .]. Through Fascism, Italy suggested to itself that it become a great power. The result: she has succeeded in attracting the world’s serious interest. Nothing more.”
The citizens of the postwar Italian republic, that byword for the sleazy corruption of parliamentary politicians, have certainly enjoyed the fruits of consumerism. In the meantime, the country has steadily dwindled in significance, childless and aging, being reduced to a kind of debt colony of the European Union and international high finance.
The current polls still indicate a certain unpopularity for the Italian government, with a majority supporting a Right-wing coalition including conservatives and, especially, the nationalist parties Lega Nord and Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy).
The European financial system – that pyramid scheme of pyramid schemes – will emerge extraordinarily weakened from this crisis, as all the highly-uneven gains of recent years are lost with piling-ups of debt and reduced growth due to the coronavirus response. There are sure to be more crises.
Many globalists are afraid of what is to come. Joseph Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, is worried China’s authoritarian competence will make Europe look bad. He opined on the European External Action Service’s blog:
There is a global battle of narratives going on in which timing is a crucial factor. [. . .] China has brought down local new infections to single figures – and it is now sending equipment and doctors to Europe, as others do as well. China is aggressively pushing the message that, unlike the US, it is a responsible and reliable partner. In the battle of narratives we have also seen attempts to discredit the EU as such and some instances where Europeans have been stigmatised as if all were carriers of the virus. [. . .]
But we must be aware there is a geo-political component including a struggle for influence through spinning and the ‘politics of generosity’. Armed with facts, we need to defend Europe against its detractors.
Personally, I’m not too worried about Chinese soft power. If Westerners look bad in comparison, that is only because of their own incompetence rather than the nefariousness of the Chinese. The Chinese State wants to make deals. The globalists want something much dearer: they want to bribe you into losing your national soul, your traditional values, your fighting spirit.
This crisis may come to be seen as the moment in which a declining and incoherent liberal-globalist West was geopolitically overtaken by an confident and organized national-authoritarian China. If so, we can also expect other countries may be tempted to change their political models.
For us Westerners, I’d arguer we don’t need to go so far afield for inspiration.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 03/30/2020 – 02:00 - 'Need Our Help?' Iran's IRGC Mocks US For Now Leading World In COVID-19 Cases
‘Need Our Help?’ Iran’s IRGC Mocks US For Now Leading World In COVID-19 Cases
On the same day the United States leveled yet more sanctions against the Islamic Republic, blacklisting 20 Iran- and Iraq-based companies, officials and individuals for supporting terrorism, leaders in Tehran took to publicly mocking the US for now being the global epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic.
As of Friday evening numbers of US confirmed cases have surpassed 100,000 – soaring past China and Italy. This prompted the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Major General Hossein Salami, to mock the new situation, saying his country is fully capable of containing the virus on its own and even has enough healthcare capacities to help the American people fight the outbreak if called upon.
“We can help Americans fight coronavirus and don’t need their assistance,” the IRGC chief said tauntingly, according to state media.
Head of the IRGC, Major General Hossein Salami, file image. Ironically the remarks also came reportedly on the sidelines of Iranian biological defense drills, and in response to prior statements from the US administration that it is willing to extend a helping humanitarian hand to assist the Iranian people through the crisis.
“When Americans say they want to help the Iranian nation under these conditions, it is nothing but demagogy,” the IRGC chief commander said.
General Salami added:
“They are themselves plagued by this virus outbreak and their healthcare infrastructure cannot protect the American people against this phenomenon. If the American nation needs help, we can render assistance to them, but we do not need their help.”
On Sunday Ayatollah Khamenei similarly condemned Washington’s “offer” of assistance, dismissing the overture as “strange” given America’s own health equipment shortages and exploding numbers of cases.
The White House’s feigning to “help” appears but mere PR management more than anything else, given it’s come under growing criticism from European allies and the media, including even the UK (which on principle has agreed with the ‘maximum pressure’ campaign), for an all-encompassing sanctions regimen which will surely result in more Covid-19 deaths inside Iran as a blockade of essential supplies and medicines continues.
Iran’s official confirmed cases soared past 30,000 this week, out of a population of some 80 million; however, true numbers are considered much higher, and the Trump administration has accused the Iranians of consistently suppressing information throughout the crisis.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 03/30/2020 – 01:00 - "The Plannedemic"?
“The Plannedemic”?
A PLAN YOU CAN’T TRUST!
For the past decade, Bill gates has been warning us about an inevitable pandemic. Conditioning us. Getting us used to the idea.
Last year, he even held a summit on the matter and ran computer simulations to predict outcomes. Why did a former computer nerd and mogul become so interested in vaccination and disease?
Possibly because he’s worth over $100 billion and thinks he owns the world. He also wants to make an impact on humanity. Getting rid of excess humanity, that is. Bill’s father was once the head of Planned Parenthood. He comes from a eugenics background. Gates frets about world population growth. Is it any wonder he pushes Monsanto’s GMO food as well as harmful vaccines?
Apparently Bill’s computer simulations discovered that people would easily fold under government pressure combined with an unseen enemy. Billions of people are under lockdown right now. Half the world is shut down. Gates must marvel at how easy it was to do it. Things are going according to plan. They can’t control us physically, but he can control us mentally through fear drummed into our brains 24/7 by mass media.
The coronavirus is real, but we’ve had many waves of flu viruses throughout the years. Many thousands die each year from the flu. Our elderly and infirm are the hardest hit.
This time the deaths are being magnified by the Fear Porn Channels. Statistics are controlled and manipulated to produce panic and hysteria.
The Democrats failed with their Russia collusion lie. They failed with impeachment. They are all for this hysteria because they can blame it all on Trump.
Trish Regan was just fired from Fox Business Network because she called out concerns that the Chinese coronavirus was just another attempt to impeach President Donald Trump.
That was too close to the truth for Fox. They fired her.
We now have social distancing to further divide the human race – as if we were all some sort of disease in need of eradication. The corrupt WHO and CDC have us controlled like puppets on strings. We obey without question. Citizens are not allowed to question medical ‘authorities’ without fearing censorship or ridicule. When the time comes for a mandatory vaccine, people will already have become conditioned to obey the medical ‘authorities,’ and it’s all going according to plan.
But some plans have a way of not working out as planned.
Never take your eyes off government in a crisis.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 03/29/2020 – 23:55 - Pentagon Orders Essential Staff To Deep Underground Mountain Bunker As Pandemic Prep Escalates
Pentagon Orders Essential Staff To Deep Underground Mountain Bunker As Pandemic Prep Escalates
North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) & the US’ Northern Command (NORTHCOM) held a Facebook Live town hall meeting on Tuesday, March 24, informing the public how their essential teams in charge of homeland security are isolating at the Cheyenne Mountain bunker in Colorado amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Air Force General Terrence O’Shaughnessy, who commands NORAD and NORTHCOM, told reporters on Facebook Live last Tuesday that essential staff is being moved from Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado to the underground bunker complex that is 24 miles away in Cheyenne Mountain. The facility is more than 2,000 feet underground and can survive a 30 megaton nuclear explosion.
“To ensure that we can defend the homeland despite this pandemic, our command and control watch teams here in the headquarters split into multiple shifts and portions of our watch team began working from Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station, creating a third team at an alternate location as well,” O’Shaughnessy said.
“Our dedicated professionals of the NORAD and NORTHCOM command and control watch have left their homes, said goodbye to their families and are isolated from everyone to ensure that they can stand the watch each and every day to defend our homeland.
“It’s certainly not optimal, but it’s absolutely necessary and appropriate given the situation.”
NORAD and NORTHCOM have already used up about 30% of the underground facility, according to The Drive. O’Shaughnessy said with the increased personnel, his “primary concern was … are we going to have the space inside the mountain for everybody who wants to move in there, and I’m not at liberty to discuss who’s moving in there.”
If the staff at Cheyenne are infected, there is a third team of higher-ranking military officials operating at another facility that can remotely assume command.
With the virus crisis deepening in the US, confirmed cases have now surged over 124,000, with 2,191 deaths (as of Sunday morning). President Trump signed an executive order Friday, allowing the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to activate National Guard and reservists to battle the COVID-19 outbreak across the US.
We noted last week that the US is in the “acceleration phase” of the outbreak, which means the health crisis could get much worse in the coming weeks.
How much worse?
Well, the Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has just warned that social unrest in major Western cities could develop in the coming weeks.
The evolution of the virus crisis could be social destabilization, hence why the military is preparing.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 03/29/2020 – 23:30 - Putin Says 'The Rich Must Pay' For The COVID-19 Chaos
Putin Says ‘The Rich Must Pay’ For The COVID-19 Chaos
Authored by Mike Whitney via The Unz Review,
Vladimir Putin has decided how Russia is going to pay for the corona-virus… He’s going to tax the rich.
It’s a remedy that most Americans would support if they were given the choice, but they weren’t asked. Instead, Congress passed a $2 trillion stimulus package for which the American taxpayer will be held entirely responsible. Even worse, the new legislation contains a $500 billion allocation (another corporate giveaway) that the Federal Reserve will use as a capital base for borrowing $4.5 trillion. That massive sum of money will be used to buy toxic bonds in the corporate bond market. Just as Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) were used to fleece millions of investors out of their hard-earned savings in the run-up to the 2008 Financial Crisis, so too, “toxic” corporate bonds were the weapon of choice that was used to pilfer trillions of dollars from investors in the run-up to today’s crisis. (Same scam, different instrument) The virus was merely the proximate cause that tipped the sector into meltdown. The problem had been festering for years and everyone in the financial community (Including the Fed, the BIS and the IMF) knew that it was only a matter of time before the market would blow sky-high. Which it did.
What every American needs to know is that our crooked bought-and-paid-for Congress just passed a bill that transfers the credit risk for $4.5 trillion of corporate sludge onto the National Debt. A bailout of this magnitude could impact the nation’s credit rating (Fitch has already issued a warning), send interest rates to the moon, dampen economic activity for years to come, and pave the way for a long and painful slump. The much ballyhooed $1,200 checks for unemployed workers are merely a tactical diversion that’s being used to conceal the giant ripoff that is taking place right under our noses.
In contrast, Putin has settled on a more rational and compassionate plan. He’s going to launch a relief program that actually focuses on the people who need it the most. Then, he’s going to cover the costs by taxing the people who are most capable of shouldering the burden. His intention is not to “soak the rich” or to redistribute wealth. He simply wants to find the most equitable way to share the costs for this completely unexpected crisis. In short, Putin was presented with two very bad options:
1– Let the Russian people huddle in their homes (“shelter in place”) until the food runs out and the bills pile up to the ceiling.
2–Or tap into a temporary source of revenue that will help the country get through the hard times.
He wisely chose the latter option not because he’s a fiery leftist who hates the “free market”, but because he realizes that in a time of national crisis, the people who are more able to pay, should pay. It’s a question of fairness.
And who are the people who will benefit from Putin’s plan? Well, he named them in a speech he delivered to the nation just last week. Here’s a clip:
“We also need to take additional steps, primarily to ensure the social protection of our people, their incomes and jobs, as well as support for small and medium-sized businesses, which employ millions of people….
First, all social protection benefits that our citizens are entitled to, should be renewed automatically over the next six months… if a family is entitled to subsidized housing and utility payments, they will not need to regularly confirm their per capita income to continue receiving this state support…all payments to war veterans and home-front workers timed to the 75th anniversary of the Great Victory, 75,000 and 50,000 rubles, respectively, should be made before the May holidays…
Second, it is essential to support families with children……..Third, we need to support those on sick leave and people who have lost their jobs.” (Putin’s Address to the Nation)
See? No big payouts to failing corporations, no welfare checks for Wall Street, and no tax breaks for fatcat bankers and their crooked friends. Just money for the people who desperately need it: Families with children, veterans, home-front workers, the sick, the unemployed, and the homeless. Simple and fair.
The strategy is aimed at everyone who is impacted by the virus, not just the people who filed taxes last year like the Trump Plan, but anyone who needs public assistance. At the same time, financial support will be provided for small and medium-sized businesses, incomes will be protected, jobs will be guaranteed. and mortgage payments will be suspended. It’s not a perfect plan, but it’s fairly comprehensive and targets the people that are most vulnerable. It also underscores the primary responsibility of government during times of crisis, that is, to ensure the health, safety and security of its people. That is Job 1.
The Putin plan also provides support for medical personnel, doctors, nurses, emergency staff, hospital employees, health care workers and first-responders. Here’s Putin:
“We have mobilized all the capabilities and resources for deploying a system of timely prevention and treatment. I would like to specially address doctors, paramedics, nurses, staff at hospitals, outpatient clinics, rural paramedic centers, ambulance services, and researchers: you are at the forefront of dealing with this situation. My heartfelt gratitude to you for your dedicated efforts.”
Will Putin and his advisors make mistakes in containing the virus and ending the contagion as swiftly as possible?
Probably, but it certainly looks like they’ve got their priorities right. Putin seems to understand that the health and welfare of the Russian people has to be put before the stock market, finance capital or the voracious corporate kingpins. In contrast, Trump wants to put more people at risk of infection by sending them back to work after Easter. That’s just not the way responsible leaders behave, not if they really care about the health of their people. Here’s more from Putin:
“There are two more measures I would like to suggest. First, all interest and dividend income that flows from Russia and is transferred abroad into offshore jurisdictions must be taxed properly….I suggest that those expatriating their income as dividends to foreign accounts should pay a 15 percent tax on these dividends….
Second, many countries levy income tax on interest earned by individuals from their bank deposits and investments in securities, while Russia does not tax this income at all. I propose that people with over 1 million rubles in bank deposits and debt securities pay a 13 percent tax on this income…. I propose using the budget revenue from these two measures to fund initiatives to support families with children and help people who are unemployed or on sick leave.”
What does it mean?
It means that Putin is closing tax havens and tax loopholes so he can get the money he needs to pay for the epidemic. It means he’s taking on the wealthiest and most powerful people in Russia so he can provide relief for the people who are stuck in their homes trying to survive. It means he’s risking his own political future in order to do the right thing. Here’s Putin:
“People of Russia, we need the state, society and the people to work together.. We have to be mindful that we bear personal responsibility for our close ones, for those who live near us, and who need our help and support….It is our sense of solidarity that underpins the resilience of our society, as well as an unwavering commitment to mutual assistance and the effectiveness of the response we come up with to overcome the challenge we are facing.”
Shared sacrifice, solidarity and brotherly love. That’s what he’s talking about, isn’t it? The threads that bind a disparate group of people into a sovereign nation.
In America, we make the working poor pay for the excesses of the crooked rich, while in Russia, the wealthy are asked to make sacrifices for the sake of the country. Which approach do you think is better?
Tyler Durden
Sun, 03/29/2020 – 23:05 - As States Shutter Gun Stores Amid Surging Demand, Rights Activist Launches "Netflix For 3-D Guns"
As States Shutter Gun Stores Amid Surging Demand, Rights Activist Launches “Netflix For 3-D Guns”
Cody Wilson, the self-described anarchist and leader of the 3D-printed gun movement, is absolutely bat sh*t crazy. He released a new promo video, highlighting several ghost guns, himself wearing a 3M N-95 virus mask, and at the end of the video, Wilson takes a bow at the Fannin Memorial Monument in Texas.
Wilson has pioneered the technology and know-how behind developing plastic guns with three-dimensional printers, something gun-control advocates and the US government are absolutely terrified about.
He is the founder of “Defense Distributed” and “Defcad,” which have had many legal disputes with the federal government over not just the production of the 3D printed weapon parts, but also the right to share the blueprints online.
For the third time, Wilson has released 3D weapon blueprints to the public:
“This was the third time he [Wilson] has released such files, but the first time he has abided by US foreign export controls online, using what he said are digital verification tools to ensure legal file downloads,” The Wall Street Journal said.
Wilson told The Journal that the latest release of blueprints for 3-D weapons would be “impervious” to legal challenge and would allow the public to access the files for a small fee.
For a yearly subscription fee of $50, or about $4.16 per month, anyone can have access to the “Netflix for 3-D guns” service. This means anyone with a 3-D printer can print a weapon in their garage.
The debut of Wilson’s “Netflix for 3-D guns” service comes as gun stores across the country are seeing a massive influx of people who want guns and ammunition amid a pandemic that is worsening by the day. Reports have indicated that specific weapons and a wide range of ammo have sold out as states are shuttering stores.
Gun advocates have denounced Wilson’s latest move, saying it will lead to the proliferation of 3-D printed weapons. Guns that are printed don’t have a serial number and are considered “ghost guns,” mostly because the government cannot track them.
“The biggest concern with 3-D-printed guns and the technical data for them is that they’re not traceable,” said Kelly Sampson, counsel at Brady: United Against Gun Violence, a gun-control group. “It’s a huge loophole and opportunity for people who would otherwise be unable to access firearms to be able to do so.”
Wilson said he’s fighting the government’s attempt to limit freedoms of Americans and expects anyone that agrees with him to download weapon blueprints not necessarily to print the guns, but “as a form of internal resistance.”
“For me, this is a political battle,” he said.
Wilson has been in a protracted legal battle with the federal government, and in 2018 won the case when the State Department authorized him to distribute 3-D weapon blueprints online by issuing Defense Distributed a license to do so.
Another lawsuit was brought against Wilson by the Seattle federal court last year, which recently forced Defense Distributed to offer the blueprints behind “four levels of security, including IP geolocation and proxy detection and technology developed for credit bureaus and anti-money-laundering specialists” on the website, the Journal noted.
“The internet is not an airtight, hack-proof system,” Sampson said. “Even some of our most secure databases are vulnerable. It’s not quite living in reality to assume that you can 100% secure information that’s online.”
Wilson said his new “Netflix for 3-D guns” service is “complaint” with the federal government but can’t prevent people who downloaded blueprints from sharing them online. “I can only tell them that it’s against the law to do so,” he added.
On Wilson’s Defcad website, 5,872 files have been made available, with over 30,585 downloads from 14,016 users.
One weapon that a millennial in their parent’s basement can print is called the FGC-9. The gun is a “9x19mm pistol caliber carbine that is made mostly out of 3D-printed components, utilizes an AR-15 or airsoft M4 rifle fire control group, is compatible with Glock magazines and offers a truly effective, simple to build and reliable tactical option for self-defense and more,” the website said.
Another weapon to print is the M4A1 Carbine.
The next big trend that could soon be underway in a pandemic is people printing guns at home.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 03/29/2020 – 22:40 - "I'm Terrified" – New York Turns Into "War Zone" As City's 911 System Faces Overwhelming Onslaught
“I’m Terrified” – New York Turns Into “War Zone” As City’s 911 System Faces Overwhelming Onslaught
As New York deals with its worsening coronavirus outbreak in real time, “terrified” 911 operators find themselves having to make life-or-death decisions on a whim, on a daily basis.
“It’s all a war zone,” one paramedic said.
“I’m terrified. I honestly don’t know if I’m going to survive. I’m terrified of what I’ve already possibly brought home,” Phil Suarez, an Iraq war vet who is a paramedic, added.
In fact, some patients are being left behind in their homes as the healthcare system becomes overwhelmed with calls relating to the virus, according to the New York Times.
The 911 system that generally fields about 4,000 calls per day was swamped with over 7,000 calls last Thursday. It is a volume of calls that the city hasn’t seen since September 11, 2001.
The volume has put Emergency Medical Personnel in the position of having to determine which cases should receive time-consuming medical measures, like CPR and intubation, and which cases are “too far gone”.
Phil Suarez/Photo source: NY Times And many of these workers are doing it without the proper protection. Meanwhile, New York remains on a trajectory to pass Wuhan in terms of the severity of its outbreak, assuming you take China’s numbers at face value.
One paramedic told the New York Times that a woman had “drank a liter of vodka” to try and commit suicide after her cancer treatments were delayed because hospital beds were being occupied by coronavirus patients. Another paramedic said that the battery on her defibrillator died from responding to so many cardiac arrests on one shift.
The paramedic said:
“It does not matter where you are. It doesn’t matter how much money you have. This virus is treating everyone equally.”
Frank Dwyer, a Fire Department spokesman, commented:
“Our E.M.T.s and paramedics are on the front line during an unprecedented time in the department’s history. They’re doing it professionally, and they’re doing it because they care about their patients. They care about this city.”
The department has said that it is rationing protective gear to try and prevent shortages.
“The department is carefully managing and monitoring usage of personal protective equipment and critical supplies to ensure we have what’s needed for this long-term operation,” Dwyer continued.
Responding to a call in Harlem/Photo source: NY Times Paramedics said that weeks ago, coronavirus calls were mostly for respiratory distress or fever. Now many of these same patients are dealing with organ failure and cardiac arrest after being sent home from the hospital.
One Brooklyn paramedic said:
“We’re getting them at the point where they’re starting to decompensate. The way that it wreaks havoc in the body is almost flying in the face of everything that we know.”
Another paramedic who had previously helped a 65 year old patient in Brooklyn was forced to tell them to stay home and call a doctor. A separate paramedic said that amidst a shortage of protective gear, they had been using the same N95 mask for days.
And people are doing their best to try and help. The same paramedic said that after leaving a building with her partner after tending to one of its tenants, “the building’s supervisor — noticing the pair’s worn equipment — met them downstairs and shoved new N95 masks and a can of Lysol into their arms.”
Many healthcare workers are scared they have already been infected and have brought the virus home to their families. On March 18, three members of the Fire Department tested positive for the virus. On Friday, that number had grown to 206 people.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 03/29/2020 – 22:15 - "It's Super Painful" – Bill Gates Urges 10-Week Nationwide Lockdown
“It’s Super Painful” – Bill Gates Urges 10-Week Nationwide Lockdown
Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates was heard on CNN Global Town Hall on Thursday (March 26) as saying six to ten weeks of lockdowns across the country is now necessary to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
“It is super painful to drive this very high degree of social isolation I call shutdown. The middle course really isn’t there because it’s hard to say, oh, go back to the theater for a week maybe or maybe not you’ll be infected or infecting people,” Gates said.
“Until we get the certainty we’ve hit these low numbers, you know, I doubt even if you told people that they should be buying new houses and cars and hanging out in restaurants, I doubt they’re going to want to do that. People want to protect older people,” he said.
“This is kind of the nightmare scenario,” he said as to what is currently unfolding across the US. As of Saturday morning, there are 105,000 confirmed virus cases and 1,711 deaths. The epicenter of the breakout is New York, with more than 46,000 cases.
Gates said the response in the US was slow and chaotic. He said if the government would have “behaved a little bit like the countries that have done the best on this one” – then maybe the spread could have been suppressed.
He warned that the “peak” in cases and deaths is not close, indicating that further lockdowns will be needed to flatten the curve and slowdown infections to avoid hospital systems from being overwhelmed.
“This is kind of the nightmare scenario,” says Bill Gates, who warned about the dangers of a pandemic in 2015. “[I] talked about how we needed to invest in new platforms so that we could quickly make diagnostics, make drugs and make vaccines to stop an epidemic.” #CNNTownHall pic.twitter.com/xPW182yCSR
— CNN (@CNN) March 27, 2020
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“Basically, the whole country needs to do what was done in the part of China where they had these infections,” he added.
And to Gate’s point about where the US is in the virus cycle. We noted last week that the US is in the acceleration period.
Gates has been warning about a pandemic for years. Back in 2015, he told the audience at a TED Talk that his greatest fear wasn’t World War III, but rather a fast-spreading virus that would consume the world.
Gates was a part of The Event 201 scenario in October (months before Covid-19) that modeled an outbreak of coronavirus across the world, killing 65 million people by month 18.
His foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has been pouring millions of dollars into developing and distributing at-home testing kits for COVID-19.
So what do we expect after the nationwide lockdown? Well, Harvard researchers believe “intermittent lockdowns” and “widespread surveillance” of Americans could become the norm through 2022.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 03/29/2020 – 21:50 - Canada Bans Passengers Showing Virus Symptoms From Domestic Flights & Trains
Canada Bans Passengers Showing Virus Symptoms From Domestic Flights & Trains
Canada has over 6,243 confirmed coronvirus cases, including 64 deaths as of Sunday, which compared to the United States – at over 135,000 cases and rapidly growing – appears to be doing a much better job at fighting the spread.
Though nationwide transport systems, including flights and trains, are still active, Canada announced Sunday that starting Monday any passengers showing symptoms related to Covid-19 will be banned from domestic flights and trains.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the new nation-wide rule from his residence in a press briefing, which reads “people showing any signs whatsoever of Covid-19 will be denied boarding on all domestic flights and intercity passenger trains,” according to Politico.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau briefing reporters at his residence while working in quarantine. Trudea said that measures to contain the disease are “beginning to work” but still said individuals “need to continue to do what is necessary to prevent the spread of Covid-19.”
The new measures will likely involve more invasive temperature scans and symptom monitoring checks by authorities at transport hubs. But the language of the new order puts the onus on the train and airline companies to monitor and enforce the mandate among their passengers.
Thus far Canadians who are returning from travel abroad are under legal mandate to self-isolate for 14 days upon return.
Toronto Pearson International Airport, via Reuters. Trudea’s own wife previously tested positive for coronavirus after a trip to London, and has since been in self-isolation for two weeks, but recently announced her doctor said she was in the clear.
Neither Trudea nor their children have shown symptoms, but over the weekend he indicated he may continue to work in a state of isolation to “set an example” for Canadians.
Currently Quebec is maintaining police checkpoints around the province’s major cities in order to monitor unnecessary travel, and to tell outside travelers returning to Quebec to self-quarantine upon return to their homes. Quebec has further banned gatherings of 5 people or more in order to mitigate the spread of the virus.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 03/29/2020 – 21:25 - The Great Madness
The Great Madness
Has the world gone mad? It certainly seems that way to some of us. Even the most cynical never imagined the government shutting down the country for fear of a virus, but it has suddenly become the new normal. The cynical, if they thought of it at all, would have thought the opposite. Instead of a great lock down, the response would have been for the beautiful people to insulate themselves from harm, while abandoning the rest of us to the plague. Instead, we have all gone mad together.
Not everyone has got the fever, that is this panic fever, not the one caused by the Chinese coronavirus.
Our world is now firmly divided into two camps.
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There are those fully invested in the great panic over the virus and
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there are those who look at the other camp, gobsmacked by what appears to be a general madness.
Those in panic look at the rest of us the same way preppers look at normal people. They just assume the gods will strike us down for doubting the virus.
Of course, the people in the skeptic camp could be the ones suffering from some form of madness that prevents them from seeing the threat. The trouble is, the great plague is not exactly lighting up the scoreboard. America has tested over 600,000 people suspected of having the virus. Over 500,000 tested negative. Of the positives, 12,000 needed hospital care. In a country of over 320 million people with 200,000 empty hospital beds at any one time, that’s not much of a crisis.
Yet, despite the numbers, formerly sober-minded people continue to carry on as if there are bodies in the streets. Steve Sailer, a man not known for excitability, is calling this virus a great adversary of the human race. Greg Cochran has completely lost his marbles over this thing. Geneticist and HBD enthusiast Razib Khan is in hiding, convinced the end times are upon us. In fact, the whole HBD community is a click away from fleeing to Antarctica to wait out the end of civilization.
Of course, part of the panic, a symptom of that particular virus, is a set of abracadabra phrases that have become so common they seem like something from a secret society, understood only by the initiates. The duller sorts chant about “exponential growth” while others talk about “the hospitals being overwhelmed.” That’s why we have to “flatten the curve” and “slow the spread.” These incantations are to chase away doubt and reinforce the belief that people are dying in the streets.
The dying in the streets bit is not much of an exaggeration. A popular bit of folklore now among the panicked is some version of the anonymous ER doctor or nurse relaying how they are overwhelmed and letting people die in the hallways. This urban legend turned up in China, Washington, Italy, New York and now New Orleans. Formerly sensible people now pass these whoppers around on-line, never bothering to think that maybe they are being fed a just-so story by people seeking attention.
One emerging aspect to the madness is the moral dimension. The Human Biodiversity (HBD) crowd seems to have been hardest hit. They spend a lot of time contemplating nature and their fellow man’s refusal to respect it. Part of what is driving them now is a sense that nature is going to finally exact some revenge. In other words, this panic is part of a strange revenge fantasy, where they are finally vindicated by biological reality. This sudden sense of moral purpose has made them immune to reason.
Another aspect to this general panic, unrelated to the virus itself, is a different type of revenge fantasy. Many people are cheering the collapse of the economy and civil life on the mistaken belief that what emerges from the rubble will have them at the top of the social hierarchy. This is a phenomenon shared across the political spectrum. It seems to be most popular with young people unhappy with the status quo and far too caught up in purge fantasies to be reached with facts and reason.
Probably the most salient aspect to this panic is the role of women. As has been noted too many times to count, the West is now a gynocracy. It is not a matriarchy, as women have stopped bearing children and stopped caring about children. Look around and you see childless women in positions of authority all over the West. In fact, these are women who reached their status by rejecting every aspect of womanhood. The West is now a world run by middle-aged childless women.
Anyone who has been around women in a crisis has observed a strange phenomenon among childless adult females. Some switch gets flipped in a crisis where their protective instincts get misdirected at the adults in the room. This part of their nature was never allowed to mature in the raising of children, so it comes bursting forth in an incoherent desire to help when their help is not needed. They become like mother ducks loudly herding the brood to safety.
For a society run by such women, every crisis is met with demands that everyone shelter in place. Notice how over the last few decades that public officials no longer call for volunteers or tell people to pitch in and work together. Such independent action violates the frightened female’s sense of duty to her brood. Instead, mild weather events now close the schools and force people to work from home. This virus scare is every middle-aged women’s Hunger Games moment.
Mass panics are a known phenomenon.
The general panic that took place in France between July 22 and August 6 1789 is known as The Great Fear. It was a period of rural unrest, driven by both a grain shortage and rumors of an aristocrats’ “famine plot” to starve the peasants. The exact reason for this panic is in dispute. Ergotism is a favorite reason for those with a certain sense of humor, but most historians consider it one of the primary causes of the French Revolution.
At some point, the bloom comes off this lock-down rose once people start to feel the real cost of listening to madmen. People will remember that the same folks who swore Boris and Natasha had used their mind control devise to install Trump in the White House are the many of the same people peddling this panic. Necessity will force a lot of people to stop going along with what they have suspected from the start is nothing more than a mass panic. Soon, this all comes to an end.
Like the Great Fear, the Great Madness will leave a mark, or at least it should leave a mark on our society. You never can be sure about these things, as the West seems to be unusually immune to learning from these events. Two centuries ago The Great Fear meant the end of the feudal order and eventually a revolution. It was not the sole cause of the revolution, maybe not the main cause. It was certainly an example of how the old order was no longer able to maintain order.
It is too soon to know what this panic means for us. Perhaps it further undermines the legitimacy of the system and the people that profit from it. Perhaps it sets off social changes that slowly transform our society in ways we have yet to imagine. Maybe the fever breaks and this event, like the Russian hoax, gets forgotten.
Given what most likely awaits on the other side of the lock-down, it is hard to imagine this great madness being forgotten. There’s always a price to be paid for following madmen.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 03/29/2020 – 21:00 -
- CFTC Quietly Bails Out Capital One
CFTC Quietly Bails Out Capital One
Last Friday, around the time of the quad-witching collapse which sent the S&P to levels not seen since Trump’s inauguration, amid the flurry of headlines bombarding shell-shocked traders, was one that was particularly ominous if bizarrely incomplete. Shortly after the close, Bloomberg blasted the following headline:
- CFTC PROVIDING RELIEF TO LARGE U.S. BANK ACTIVE IN OIL, GAS
There was little additional information to go with the report, aside from the CFTC saying it would temporarily exempt a U.S. bank from a requirement to register as a “Major Swap Participant” even though its growing energy swaps exposure would technically require it to do so by the end of the next quarter, and since the bank was not named, traders’ attention quickly shifted to whatever the next crisis du jour, or rather du minute was.
However, late last week, Reuters reported citing two sources, that the bank in question was Virginia-based Capital One, best known for questionable retail lending and cheesy credit card commercials starting Samuel L Jackson.
So what exactly happened? According to a spokesman for the CFTC, the commodities regulator issued a waiver to protect the bank and its energy clients from “undue disruption,” given the unprecedented market conditions over the past month amid the coronavirus outbreak.
“We have actively encouraged all market participants to identify regulatory relief or other assistance that may be needed to help support robust, orderly and liquid markets in the face of this pandemic,” the spokesman said, implicitly admitting that the CFTC intervention amounted to what was an effective bailout of the bank.
At the core of the issue were plunging oil prices, which ended up having a margin call effect on the bank’s swaps exposure; and since Capital One’s waiver lasts until Sept. 30, if energy prices remain low or the bank’s exposure remains above the threshold, it will register as a swap participant or make business adjustments, the CFTC said on Friday.
And here is why anyone who currently has a deposit account at CapitalOne may consider quietly moving the money elsewhere: according to Reuters, the CFTC designation entails a number of complex and costly reporting and compliance obligations, which the CFTC spokesman said could hurt the institution’s ability to keep lending.
In short, CapitalOne made a terrible trade, betting via derivatives that oil would not plunge to where it is now – at 17 year lows – and only CFTC intervention prevented a margin call of unknown magnitude from being sent to Capital One’s corner office. Which is surprising considering that the bank is a relatively small player in the energy lending and financing business, with energy loans accounting for just 1.4% of its total loan book, according to its filings.
As part of that business, Capital One enters into commodity swaps with its commercial oil and gas clients to help them mitigate the risk of energy price swings and the related borrowing risks. Typically, those trades do not bring Capital One’s swaps exposure anywhere close to the CFTC’s registration threshold, according to the CFTC’s Friday notice.
But the 50% plunge in crude oil prices caused by the coronavirus and a flood of supply by top producers has seen its exposure on those swaps balloon, putting it on course to hit the threshold by the end of this month, the CFTC said.
As Reuters details, the threshold kicks in if a bank has $1 billion in daily average aggregate commodity swap exposure that is not secured by collateral, such as cash margin. Which, it appears, was the case with CapitalOne.
Following the 2007-2009 financial crisis during which several major institutions were toppled by their derivatives exposure, Congress created a slew of swap trading laws to reduce systemic risk and increase the visibility of the market. However, the ad hoc decision to grant a waiver in this case has sparked worries that regulators are going too easy on banks in a bid to prop up lending, exposing them to more risk down the road if energy prices do not rebound.
In effect, the CFTC allowed CapitalOne to incur even greater ongoing losses, while buying it a quarter’s worth of time, in hopes that oil rebounds. But what happens if instead of rebounding, oil keeps grinding lower and, as we warned earlier today, actually goes negative as oil storage space runs out? The cumulative exposure facing CapitalOne would be many billions, and could potentially render the bank insolvent.
That said, COF is not the only one: across the board, regulators have scrambled to grant regulatory relief, worried banks will pull back from lending and exacerbate corporate liquidity stress.
“The priority of the CFTC is not to prop up an ailing sector. It’s to ensure that the market is protected from risks,” said Tyson Slocum, a director at government watchdog group Public Citizen and a member of the CFTC’s Energy and Environmental Markets Advisory Committee.
But then, in an surprising and sobering admission that the CFTC did in fact participate in a quiet bailout of CapitalOne – because had the bank announced it was facing a $1+ billion margin call one can imagine what its depositors would do – Slocum added he was worried the agency would give exemptions to other banks caught flatfooted by the market turmoil.
“I’ve got concerns with over-leveraged banks in the oil and gas sector. I don’t want this to spread across the financial sector.”
Dear Tyson: by letting CapitalOne get away with it, you have once again propagated moral hazard and guaranteed that this will spread across the financial sector, as bank after bank comes begging for a similar stealthy bailout, all the while doing nothing but praying that oil miraculously rebounds in the next three months. But what if it doesn’t, and who will tell CapitalOne’s depositors that they are now sitting on a ticking time bomb? This guy?
Tyler Durden
Sun, 03/29/2020 – 20:37 - Gold Is Now "Unobtanium"
Gold Is Now “Unobtanium”
By now it becoming clear to many that demand for precious metals, as the world ‘turns’, is far outpacing supply as major gold suppliers and sellers exclaim “there is no gold.”
One glance at APMEX pages and two things are immediately clear:
1) There is no gold or silver….
2) And if there is, the premium for physical gold and silver over paper is massive…
Put in context, this 100% premium for silver is shocking (h/t @JanGold_)
And the mainstream media is starting to notice as DollarCollapse.com’s John Rubino points out, The Wall Street Journal just published the kind of article gold bugs dream of… Here’s an excerpt:
Coronavirus Sparks a Global Gold Rush
Epic shortage spooks doomsday preppers and bankers alike; ‘Unaffordium and unobtanium.’
It’s an honest-to-God doomsday scenario and the ultimate doomsday-prepper market is a mess.
As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, investors and bankers are encountering severe shortages of gold bars and coins. Dealers are sold out or closed for the duration. Credit Suisse Group AG, which has minted its own bars since 1856, told clients this week not to bother asking. In London, bankers are chartering private jets and trying to finagle military cargo planes to get their bullion to New York exchanges.
It’s getting so bad that Wall Street bankers are asking Canada for help. The Royal Canadian Mint has been swamped with requests to ramp up production of gold bars that could be taken down to New York.
The price of gold futures rose about 9% to roughly $1,620 a troy ounce this week and neared a seven-year high. Only on a handful of occasions since 2000 have gold prices risen more in a single week, including immediately after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in September 2008.
“When people think they can’t get something, they want it even more,” says George Gero, 83, who’s been trading gold for more than 50 years, now at RBC Wealth Management in New York. “Look at toilet paper.”
Worth its weight in Purell
Gold has been prized for thousands of years and today goes into items ranging from jewelry to dental crowns to electronics. For decades, the value of paper money was pinned to gold; tons of it sat in Fort Knox to reassure Americans their dollars were worth something. Today they just have to trust. President Nixon unpegged the dollar from gold in 1971.
Gold is popular with survivalists and conspiracy theorists but it is also a sensible addition to investment portfolios because its price tends to be relatively stable. It is especially in-demand during economic crises as a shield against inflation. When the Federal Reserve floods the economy with cash, like it is doing now, dollars can get less valuable.
“Gold is the one money that can’t be printed,” said Roy Sebag, CEO of Goldmoney Inc., which has one of the world’s largest private stashes, worth about $2 billion.
The disruptions this week pushed the gold futures price, on the New York exchange, as much as $70 an ounce above the price of physical gold in London. Typically, the two trade within a few dollars of each other.
That gulf sparked a high-stakes game of chicken in the New York futures market this week. Sharp-eyed traders started snapping up physical delivery contracts, figuring banks would have trouble finding enough gold to make good and they would be able to squeeze them for cash. That set off a scramble by banks.
Goldmoney’s Mr. Sebag said bankers were offering him $100 or more per ounce over the London price to get their hands on some of his New York gold.
What’s more, there is limited new supply. Mines in countries such as Peru and South Africa are shut down because of the coronavirus. Once-busy Swiss refineries that turn raw metal into gold bars closed earlier this week as the country’s coronavirus cases neared 10,000.
David Smith owns a wristwatch business in northern England and said Tuesday his bullion dealers weren’t taking any more orders. He has been scouring social media for individuals who might sell to him.
“You can’t really get physical gold and silver anywhere at the moment,” he said.
He began investing personally in metals a few years ago after watching videos from Mike Maloney, creator of the website goldsilver.com. Like other online dealers, the site currently has a notice saying products are back-ordered up to 12 weeks and that there is a $1,000 delivery order minimum.
The title of Mr. Maloney’s latest podcast: “Unaffordium and unobtanium.” (The latter has popped up in the plots of science fiction movies).
To sum up:
A pillar of the mainstream financial media just acknowledged gold’s multi-millennia role as a store of value, quoted someone calling it “money,” and noted that since the world left the gold standard, we “just have to trust” governments to maintain their currencies.
The article quotes the CEO of GoldMoney and GoldSilver’s Mike Maloney, and calls gold “a sensible addition to investment portfolios.”
It mentions the divergence between paper and physical prices and attributes it to the same kind of buying panic that has emptied stores of toilet paper. “When people think they can’t get something, they want it even more.”
Now pretend you’re an editor at a city newspaper or regional magazine and you’ve just finished reading the above article. What do you do? You immediately call in one of your finance reporters and tell them to look into this “gold shortage” thing.
So prepare for millions of anxious people to get their first exposure to the gold story, just as the supply dries up.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 03/29/2020 – 20:35 - "The Scope For Pain Is Immense" – China's Consumer Default Tsunami Has Started
“The Scope For Pain Is Immense” – China’s Consumer Default Tsunami Has Started
One month ago we reported that “China Faces Financial Armageddon With 85% Of Businesses Set To Run Out Of Cash In 3 Months“, in which we explained that while China’s giant state-owned SOEs will likely have enough of a liquidity lifeblood to last them for 2-3 quarters, it is the country’s small businesses that are facing a head on collision with an iceberg, because according to the Nikkei, over 85% of small businesses – which employ 80% of China’s population – expect to run out of cash within three months, and a third expect the cash to be all gone within a month.
To be sure, the stakes could not be higher: These smaller employers account for 99.8% of registered companies in China and employ 79.4% of workers. They contribute more than 60% of gross domestic product and, for the government, more than 50% of tax revenue. In short: they are the beating heart of China’s economy.
In short, should this default tsunami start, not only will China’s economy collapse, but China’s $40 trillion financial system will disintegrate, as it is suddenly flooded with trillions in bad loans.
* * *
Well, it is now one month later, and as we feared, and as the SCMP reports, “a global consumer default wave is just getting started in China” as overdue credit-card debt in China has soared by about 50% in February, while researchers at the Peterson Institute warn (as we did in February) that what is happening now in China is “a preview of what we should expect throughout the world.”
Take the case of Zhang Chunzi – like millions of people around the world, she borrowed money she thought she would be able to repay before the coronavirus changed everything. Now laid off from her job at an apparel exporter in Hangzhou, the prosperous capital of east China’s Zhejiang province, the 23-year-old is missing payments on 12,000 yuan (US$1,700) of debt on her credit card and an online lending platform operated by Ant Financial.
“I’m late on all the bills and there’s no way I can pay my debt in full,” Zhang said.
Zhang’s story is playing out in similar ways across China (and soon, across the world), where the virus outbreak has been taking lives and ravaging the economy for more than three months. As Covid-19 works its way through the rest of Asia, Europe and the Americas – forcing countries into lockdown, driving up unemployment and pummeling small-business owners – analysts say it is only a matter of time before stretched households globally start to default on their loans.
To be sure, the early indicators from China are not pretty. Overdue credit-card debt in February rose by about 50% from a year earlier, according to executives at two banks who asked not to be named. Qudian, a Beijing-based online lender, said its delinquency ratio jumped to a staggering 20% in February, from 13% at the end of last year.
For some the shock from the economic slowdown is so big, they have had no choice but to hit pause. China Merchants Bank, one of the country’s biggest providers of consumer credit, said this month that it “pressed the pause button” on its credit-card business after a significant increase in past-due loans as an estimated 8 million people in China lost their jobs in February.
“These issues in China are a preview of what we should expect throughout the world,” said Peterson Institute for International Economics research fellow Martin Chorzempa.
And while the extent of the squeeze on consumers and their lenders will depend on the effectiveness of government efforts to contain the virus and shore up economies, “the scope for pain is immense” the SCMP warns ominously.
Needless to say, what is coming across the globe is unprecedented: household debt-to-GDP ratios in countries including France, Switzerland, New Zealand and Nigeria have never been higher, according to a January report from the Institute of International Finance. In Australia, which has the highest household debt levels among G20 nations, the country’s largest lender said on Thursday that its financial assistance lines were receiving eight times the normal call volume.
A similar surge in queries has flooded lenders in the United States, where credit-card balances rose to an unprecedented US$930 billion last year and almost 3.3 million people filed for jobless benefits during the week ended March 21 – quadruple the previous record.
However, not even the US has seen as big a jump in consumer borrowing in recent years than China, where household debt including mortgages soared to a record 55 trillion yuan (almost $8 trillion) last year. That figure has nearly doubled since 2015, thanks to a housing boom and the rise of online lenders like Ant Financial. While the firm’s risk models rely on reams of payments data, they have yet to be tested by a major economic downturn. Many consumers who take out these short-term, high-interest loans – typically funded by banks through Ant’s Alipay smartphone app – have minimal income and virtually no credit history.
“Since 2015, banks have kept lowering their criteria to compete,” said Zhang Shuaishuai, an analyst at China International Capital. “The virus outbreak accelerated their exposure to risks. It will only get worse if unemployment climbs further.”
Meanwhile, consumer default rates at some banks have already increased to as high as 4%, from about 1% before the outbreak, according to Zhao Jian, head of Atlantis Financial Research, who cited a survey of lenders. An executive at a major Chinese bank said his firm was taking steps to tighten credit card loans or even drop some clients after seeing a rapid increase in overdue payments.
With corporate delinquencies rising as well, banks could face a 5.2 trillion yuan surge in total non-performing loans and an unprecedented 39 per cent slump in profits this year, according to a worst-case scenario outlined by UBS. As reported last week, China’s industrial profits just crashed the most on record, plunging -38.3% Y/Y, and far worse from the -6.3%Y/Y decline in December.
Some hope that massive government stimulus will help ease the blow. Most countries have announced plans for economic support measures in recent months, including a US$2 trillion package in the US that will provide direct payments to lower- and middle-income Americans. Some of the biggest US lenders have pledged to offer grace periods for mortgage borrowers affected by the crisis.
In China, authorities have flooded the financial system with liquidity and encouraged banks to step up their lending to small businesses that employ about 80 per cent of the nation’s workforce. While most banks have yet to offer debt relief to consumers outside those living in cities like Wuhan that were hit especially hard by the virus, UBS predicts China’s government will do more if needed to help people find jobs and pay their bills. Bloomberg Economics estimates that about 85 per cent of the economy was back online in the week ending March 20, excluding the original virus epicentre in Hubei province, although we believe those numbers are strongly gamed to represent to the world that the economy has rebounded when the reality is a mirror image.
That said, as UBS analyst May Yan correctly notes, “a large scale increase in unemployment, and resulting high delinquencies on retail loans won’t be tolerated by authorities as social stability is their bottom line,” although it is unclear what it can do to preserve stability if tens of millions lost their jobs.
Of course, stimulus is unlikely to tide over everyone, particularly in places like China where household finances are stretched like never before. The country’s consumer debt-to-income ratio surged to 92% at the end of 2018, from 30% a decade ago, surpassing that of Germany and closing in on levels in the US and Japan, according to IIF.
The risk is that a prolonged economic slump and weak real estate market will force more people to renege on their loans.
That moment has already arrived for Yin Weijun, a 27-year-old who recently lost his job as a hotel chef in Wenzhou, in Zhejiang.“I’m like a refugee from debt,” he said. “I had never missed a payment in my life, but the virus left me with no choice. Even if they give me an extra one or two months, I still can’t pay.”
Tyler Durden
Sun, 03/29/2020 – 20:15 - COVID-19 Is Saving Lives
COVID-19 Is Saving Lives
Authored by Prasanthi Ramakrishnan, Siddhartha Sanghi, David Schwartzman and Hayley Wabiszewski
The United States death toll from the novel coronavirus has steadily increased in the last few days, with over 2, 200 COVID- 19 deaths, and more than half of the deaths in the last three days alone. The death toll is expected to only get worse in the coming weeks as cases increase and the capacity of the health care system is stretched. However, one silver lining might be that the death toll could be lower than anticipated due to individuals changing their behavior during the coronavirus pandemic. We use CDC data (detailed below) to analyze weekly US deaths over the last five years (as accessed on March 28 , 2020 ). Figure 1 shows weekly deaths for all ages. For the year 2020, we have data through week 10, or through the week of March 7, 2020.
There is a clear strong downward sloping trend in the number of deaths at all ages for the current year as compared to the previous 5 years. Moreover, the current year appears to be a break in trend from the previous 5 years. Comparing the difference of the previous 5 -year average with 2020 deaths through March 7 and we find that for week 10, there were close to 9000 fewer deaths – this is nearly a 20 percent decrease in the number of the deaths! The decrease is most evident after week 7 (week ending February 15 , 2020 ).
Weekly deaths in the US down by 7,000 – 10,000 for the week ending March 7 2020! Silver lining with people changing their behaviors during COVID-19? Raw weekly death numbers taken from @CDCgov: pic.twitter.com/Y7tzG5TSTU
— Siddhartha Sanghi (@SidSanghi) March 29, 2020
Since coronavirus concerns have increased as US spread has become more evident, the decline in deaths in recent weeks suggests that the fall in deaths might be an ‘un-intended’ consequence of the COVID- 19 due to people adjusting their behavior to avoid getting and spreading COVID- 19. Comparing the deviation with the COVID- 19 confirmed cases in the US, we see a high negative correlation of 0.9271. One suggestive mechanism is that as people stay at home more, crime and accidental deaths may decrease. As the CDC continues to update the data, the data for the week ending March 14 and March 21, 2020 will be useful in understanding this behavioral aspect – however, after that, the behavioral effect may be harder to disentangle, as deaths due to coronavirus will become more prominent in the aggregate data.
It correlates well at the national number of COVID-19 cases: pic.twitter.com/8nlOOFreU8
— Siddhartha Sanghi (@SidSanghi) March 29, 2020
The mechanism we propose should primarily affect the younger population, as the younger population tends to be more mobile, and the older population is more likely to die of other natural causes. This is exactly what we observe when breaking up these trends by age group. We see that the deviation from the trend is the starkest for children ( < 18 years) – there is a decline of 297 deaths, which is a 76 percent decrease! At the point through which data is available, most schools had not yet shut down and even so, we observe this large decrease. We observe a similar but smaller decline of 27 percent in the age group of 18 to 65. This is suggestive of the possibility that as coronavirus mitigation measures become more widespread, non-coronavirus deaths may decrease further.
Particularly stark for Ages 0-18 where the data suggests 300 fewer deaths compared to previous years! pic.twitter.com/B0H4uWPI0F
— Siddhartha Sanghi (@SidSanghi) March 29, 2020
Data Sources
We take total weekly deaths in the US by three age groups from CDC FluView data 1 . The data provides weekly total national deaths and the deaths caused by Pneumonia and Influenza. We take the national data from 2015 week 1 to 2020 week 10 , i.e. the week ending March 7 2020 , since week 11 numbers were not complete at the time of our access. National deaths can be sliced into three age groups: 0 – 18 , 18 – 65 and 65 +. The dataset also has state-level deaths, but state data was not available for week 8 – 10 , so we were unable to use that for our analysis 2 . We plan to include state-level deaths and data for later weeks as this becomes available. We also use total number of COVID- 19 cases reported by Johns Hopkins for our analysis.
Ongoing Work
We will be updating the figures as more data becomes available. In ongoing work, we are exploring ways to de-compose reductions in mortality attributed to lower accident and crime rates as well as other ‘un-intended consequences’.
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Tyler Durden
Sun, 03/29/2020 – 19:55 - WHO Issues Statement On Taiwan After Rude Official Shills For China
WHO Issues Statement On Taiwan After Rude Official Shills For China
Since the very beginning of the Chinese coronavirus epidemic, the World Health Organization has been shilling for Beijing.
From WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus showering the CCP with praise for their early handling of the disease (by hunting down doctors who told the truth, and outright lying about its transmissibility), the WHO has proven themselves to be loyal lapdogs to the communist regime – spreading uncorrected Chinese propaganda (which Twitter is just fine with). Read more about WHO and China here.
Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China🇨🇳. pic.twitter.com/Fnl5P877VG
— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) January 14, 2020
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To that end, a journalist with Hong Kong broadcaster RTHK was rudely hung-up on after asking WHO official Bruce Aylward – who led a mission to Wuhan – if the organization might give Taiwan a membership.
First, Aylward said he couldn’t hear the question – asking the reporter to move on. Then, he disconnected the line after she said she wanted to hear more about Taiwan.
When they were reconnected, Aylward dodged another direct question about Taiwan – taking China’s stance with his answer while complimenting Beijing and withing Hong Kong good luck.
In response, Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu highlighted Aylward’s shilling in a now-viral tweet.
Wow, can’t even utter “Taiwan” in the WHO? You should set politics aside in dealing with a pandemic. FYI @WHO, 450+ news reports from 40+ countries so far positively covered #Taiwan’s handling of #COVID19. These reports do not mistake us as part of China & #TaiwanCanHelp. JW https://t.co/KbupbUb7NG
— 外交部 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ROC (Taiwan) 🇹🇼 (@MOFA_Taiwan) March 29, 2020
After millions of views, the WHO issued a statement clarifying that WHO membership is up to WHO states, not the staff – and that Taiwan has kept COVID-19 numbers relatively low, and should be learned from.
“WHO is taking lessons learned from all areas, including Taiwanese health authorities, to share best practices globally,” said WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic in an email to Bloomberg.
The WHO has a point of contact with Taiwan to receive information, and the country is involved in epidemiology training. Two Taiwanese public health experts took part in a research forum the WHO organized in February.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has repeatedly backed China, even as Beijing was criticized by other countries and organizations for being slow to respond initially to the outbreak there, and for resisting cooperation with international disease-trackers. After weeks of wrangling, Aylward’s WHO response team gained access to Hubei province, where the virus first erupted. –Bloomberg
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In February, Aylward said “China was the first line of defense to prevent the international spread of this virus, because they feared and felt the responsibility to protect the world from this virus,” adding “Other countries should think about whether they apply something, not necessarily through lockdowns, but the same rigorous approach.”
Could these people be any more transparent?
WHO flat-out lying. Again. https://t.co/SIYYvtkoTW
— PEG (@pegobry) March 26, 2020
Tyler Durden
Sun, 03/29/2020 – 19:35 - Goldman's Buyback Desk: Companies Representing $190BN In Buybacks, 25% Of Total, Have Already Suspended Repurchases
Goldman’s Buyback Desk: Companies Representing $190BN In Buybacks, 25% Of Total, Have Already Suspended Repurchases
As discussed last weekend, 2018 and 2019 were record years for buybacks, for one main reason: Trump’s tax reform allowed companies to repatriate over a trillion dollars parked offshore at nominal tax rates, which were then used to repurchase stocks, resulting in the bizarre market condundrum of record outflows even as the S&P hit all time highs, as all investor outflows were offset by companies buying back their own stock.
However, even before the coronacrisis, we warned that buybacks had sharply slowed down at the start of the year even as all investors how plowed all in stocks.
But if buybacks were merely slowing at the start of the year, after the recent collapse in the market, buybacks are effectively dead as a driver of stock prices for the foreseeable future.
As Goldman’s David Kostinw writes in his latest weekly kickstart, according to Goldman’s Buyback Desk, “nearly 50 US companies have suspended existing share repurchase authorizations in the past two weeks, representing $190 billion of buybacks or nearly 25% of the 2019 total.”
Worse, as Kostin warns, reduced cash flows and select restrictions mandated as part of the Phase 3 fiscal legislation “suggest more suspensions are likely.” And since buybacks have represented the single largest source of US equity demand in each of the last several years…
… Goldman believes “higher volatility and lower equity valuations are among the likely consequences of reduced buybacks.”
Which brings us to the $64 trillion question: can buybacks still provide support to equities?
According to Goldman, with corporate fundamentals deteriorating, share repurchases are likely to be reduced this year, providing less support to equity demand:
Our US strategy team has found the fluctuations in profit growth are a key driver of buyback growth (Exhibit 13). Our strategists expect S&P 500 EPS to decline 33% in 2020 (with a -123% YoY growth in Q2) and 45% in Europe. Dividends, which are usually less volatile than buybacks, are already pricing large cuts for this year. Dividend swaps are pricing a 17% and 21% S&P 500 cut, and a 38% and 18% EURO STOXX 50 cut for 2020 and 2021 respectively
In short: the buyback bonanza is over for the foreseeable future.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 03/29/2020 – 19:15 - White House Extends Coronavirus Guidelines Until April 30, Trump Expects "Peak" In About 2 Weeks
White House Extends Coronavirus Guidelines Until April 30, Trump Expects “Peak” In About 2 Weeks
Update (1855T): Trump’s press conference continued well into the evening, with the president feuding in classic Trump style with CNN reporters asking him questions about a rumor that Trump had withheld aid to certain governors who didn’t show him sufficient respect.
After a few minutes of jousting, Trump slammed CNN as “fake news”, to which a reporter replied “we’re not fake news”, prompting Trump to spout “yes you are, sit down.”
It was an amusing episode.
Asked about the news networks not wanting to cover Trump’s daily press briefings, Trump scoffed, and slammed the media “we’re getting the word about it…and a lot of people aren’t…they should be happy about it but they’re not.” Trump then praised Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx. “They’ve been fighting this stuff their whole lives…they don’t want to be stars…the American public they should be the decider…we have Monday Night Football-type ratings…and that’s from the New York Times…and they’re not honest people but that’s okay…that’s what they said.”
“When they don’t want the president of the United States to have a voice…you’re not talking about Democracy any longer.”
* * *
Update (1824ET): Trump has offered a few more thoughts on why he isn’t releasing some 10,000 ventilators to states like New York and Louisiana (states that, Trump’s critics complain, are governed by Democrats). Trump said the government is only holding on to the ventilators for now until the crisis arrives, That apparently leaves room for the government to dole them out to the states that need them in the coming days.
And of course, Trump said he spoke with some of the most respected restaurateurs in the country, and they apparently reminded him that they can’t stay closed forever without significantly more help from the government – or they’re all going to go out of business. As Trump said, he wants to make sure these restaurants “get moving”…but not until after April 30.
Trump also claimed that Humana and Cigna agreed to waive all costs – including copays – for coronavirus-related treatments. “It’s a lot of money they’re waiving,” Trump said, during the Q&A, and said “yeah, I do” when asked if he was calling on other insurers to do the same thing. “This is about death,” Trump said. “I want to thank Cigna and Humana.”
Trump also repeatedly insisted that he now believes the “peak” of the US outbreak will arrive in two weeks which, at the current rate, means millions of cases will have been diagnosed by then.
When asked about why he “threatened” to quarantine New York, Connecticut and New Jersey yesterday, Trump responded with an aggravated denial, with Trump claiming that professionals brought the idea to him, and that he ultimately decided not to do it. “Now we did an advisory, it’s a strong advisory…I think we did a great thing…all I did yesterday was I said we were looking in to it and by the end of the evening I said ‘we’ve decided to go with the advisory’.” Trump said.
“I don’t want to have to give them out then take them back and move them someplace else…we need to move them quickly,” Trump said.
When asked why Florida has had more of its requests for ventilators approved than states like Massachusetts and New York, Trump responded that all states have been taken care of “Florida has been taken care of, Michigan has been taken care of”…Trump said, even though he has had a high-profile feud with the Democratic female governor of Michigan. Massachusetts, meanwhile, is governed by a moderate Republican.
Trump then went on a tirade about how most states have been “very happy” with the White House’s handling and will be “amazed at what they will be able to get” even citing his relationship with John Bel Edwards, “a Democrat if that’s what you’re getting at” in Louisiana and other governors from the south to the northeast. Trump added the deployment of the hospital ships and the Army Corp of Engineers and the National Guard are doing a lot, like opening a hospital in New York City at the Javits Center.
* * *
Update (1815ET): President Trump assured the public that his administration would undo a provision in his tax reform law eliminating writeoffs for entertainment, allowing, as Trump put it, “companies to send people back to restaurants”. It’s unclear how this would help, exactly, and when it would happen.
More importantly, Trump seemed to back away from his push to bring the country back on-line by Easter by saying he would extend the guideline through April 30, the end of April, and roughly three weeks later than the April 12 Easter guideline,
Trump also said the US has ordered dozens of new ventilators, but he also said the federal government still has 10,000 ventilators that it needs to keep on hand for an emergency in case, for example, Louisiana has a terrible problem (which it does, as Trump acknowledged). We suspect this nonsensical remarks where Trump offers no explanation for withholding these ventilators from the states, which could place lives at risk.
* * *
Update (1715ET): Trump just bumped the start time to 530pmET, in typical Trump fashion.
Will be starting The White House news conference at 5:30 P.M. Eastern.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2020
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* * *
With the number of new cases and deaths ballooning at a surprisingly rapid pace across the US (but especially in New York, the nation’s biggest hot spot), President Trump and the White House task force (led by VP Mike Pence DHHS Secretary Alex Azar, Dr. Birx, Dr. Fauci, Dr. Adams and the rest) are holding their daily press briefing at 5pmET, just an hour before futures open.
The event will reportedly take place in the White House Rose Garden.
Watch live below:
Tyler Durden
Sun, 03/29/2020 – 19:14 - Oil +Crashes Below $20, Stocks Drop, Gold Pops As Trump Extends Lockdown
Oil +Crashes Below $20, Stocks Drop, Gold Pops As Trump Extends Lockdown
After plunging into Friday’s close, US equity futures markets are extending losses at the open after President Trump extended the virus guidelines (lockdown) until April 30th.
Dow futures have erased most of Thursday’s surge gains…
But oil was the big mover as WTI plunged as much as 7.5% to a $19 handle…
That is the lowest since early 2002…
The kingdom said on Friday that it hadn’t had any contact with Moscow about output cuts or on enlarging the OPEC+ alliance of producers. Russia also doubled down, with Deputy Energy Minister Pavel Sorokin saying oil at $25 a barrel is unpleasant, but not a catastrophe for Moscow.
Bonds are bid…
And gold is rallying modestly…
We’re gonna need more Fed largesse… stat
Tyler Durden
Sun, 03/29/2020 – 19:01
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