- World Food Prices Rise For Third Consecutive Month In August
World Food Prices Rise For Third Consecutive Month In August
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/04/2020 – 02:45As global central banks continue to flood the system with money, insisting inflation is non-existent, as such, the Federal Reserve last week announced a new approach to inflation would let it run over the 2% target, food price inflation is rising this summer, according to a new report via the United Nations food agency.
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations said world food prices rose for the third consecutive month in August, led by increases in coarse grains, vegetable oils, and sugar.
FAO’s food price index, which tracks food prices monthly, averaged 96.1 in August versus 94.3 in July. The index dropped from January through April due to the virus-related recession, bottoming in May and reversing through summer.
Here’s a long-term view of FAO’s food price index.
As grains, vegetable oils and sugar prices are on the rise, the good news for consumers is that dairy and meat prices were unchanged. Readers may recall beef prices exploded in the US during the pandemic as meat plant closures led to supply chain chaos.
Here’s a breakdown of FAO’s report:
As grains, vegetable oils, and sugar prices are on the rise, the good news for consumers is that dairy and meat prices slumped were unchanged. Here’s a breakdown of FAO’s report:
The FAO Cereal Price Index rose by 1.9 percent from July, averaging 7.0 percent above its value in August 2019, with coarse grains leading the rise. Sorghum prices rose 8.6 percent – and stood at 33.4 percent above their year-ago level, mostly on the back of strong import demand by China. Maize prices rose 2.2 percent amid concerns that recent crop damages in Iowa would impact supply. International rice prices also rose, underpinned by seasonally tight availabilities and increasing African demand.
The FAO Sugar Price Index rose by 6.7 percent from the previous month, reflecting reduced production prospects due to unfavorable weather conditions in the European Union and Thailand, the world’s second-largest sugar exporter, as well as strong import demand by China.
The FAO Vegetable Oil Price Index increased by 5.9 percent, led by firmer values for palm oil especially, but also soy, sunflower, and rapeseed oils. The moves mainly reflect prospective production slowdowns in leading palm oil-producing countries amid firm global import demand.
The FAO Dairy Price Index was virtually unchanged from July, with cheese and whole milk powder quotations declining amid expectations of ample seasonal export availabilities in Oceania, while butter prices rose due to tightening export availabilities in Europe in the wake of the August heatwave reducing milk output.
The FAO Meat Price Index was also almost unchanged since July – although down 8.9 percent from August 2019 – as the effect of lower import demand for bovine, poultry, and ovine meats was offset by surging import demand for pigmeat from China. -FAO
A rise in food prices this summer is a reminder that inflation in a post-pandemic world is real, and what’s worse is that it’s disproportionately hammering poor households.
Simultaneously, worldwide economic activity is starting to sputter as surging virus cases in the US, Europe, and Southeast Asia have forced many local governments to reimpose strict public health orders, which could jeaprodize the recovery in world trade for the back half of 2020.
A faltering global recovery, with depressionary unemployment, blended with rising food price inflation is more bad news for low-income households worldwide.
So can central banks ignore food price inflation? The answer is no – as soaring food costs have the risk to incite further social unrest.
- Portland Murder Suspect Dead Afer Pulling Gun On Feds During Arrest; Admitted Guilt Hours Earlier In Vice Interview
Portland Murder Suspect Dead Afer Pulling Gun On Feds During Arrest; Admitted Guilt Hours Earlier In Vice Interview
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/04/2020 – 02:33Michael Forest Reinoehl, who appeared to admit to murdering a Trump supporter last weekend in Portland in a Thursday interview with Vice, was shot dead by law enforcement later that evening as they attempted to arrest him in Lacey, Washington, located southwest of Seattle.
(AP Photo/Ted Warren) According to Lt. Ray Brady of the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office, law enforcement was in the area looking or a homicide suspect, and that the 48-year-old Reinoehl was seen exiting an apartment and entering a vehicle, according to the New York Times.
“As they attempted to apprehend him, there was gunfire,” said Brady.
According to the Associated Press, Reinoehl pulled a gun during the incident, after a federal task force from the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service located Reinoehl.
AP Photo/Ted Warren Trevor Brown, 24, who lives in a townhouse nearby, said he heard several shots fired before he looked out the window and saw as many as four police officers in the road, who fired three or four times. He then said he saw Mr. Reinoehl lying on the ground.
Jashon Spencer, who also lives not far away, said he was at home before 7 p.m. when he heard a large number of gunshots. “I just heard a whole bunch of pops,” Mr. Spencer said. “I ducked. I thought they were shooting in my yard.”
He said that he went out and saw a bloodied man in the street, and that he captured the scene on video. Later, a law enforcement officer could be seen attempting CPR. –New York Times
A warrant was issued for the 48-year-old Reinoehl earlier Thursday.
Reinoehl, who identified over social media as “100% Antifa,” said in a Vice News interview that he had “no choice” but to murder 39-year-old Trump supporter Aaron “Jay” Danielson last weekend, as he believed Danielson was going to stab his friend.
“I could have sat there and watched them kill a friend of mine of color, but I wasn’t going to do that,” Reinoehl added.
* * *
The suspect in last weekend’s murder of Aaron “Jay” Danielson says he acted in self defense when he fired on the “Patriot Prayer” supporter.
In an interview with freelance journalist Donovan Farley provided to VICE News, 48-year-old Michael Forest Reinoehl – a former military contractor and father of two who claims to be “100% Antifa” – says he was providing “security” at Black Lives Matter protests, when he says he believes he and a friend were about to be stabbed.
“You know, lots of lawyers suggest that I shouldn’t even be saying anything, but I feel it’s important that the world at least gets a little bit of what’s really going on,” says Reinoehl.
“I had no choice — I mean, I had a choice. I could have sat there and watched them kill a friend of mine of color. But I wasn’t going to do that.“
Reinoehl has not been arrested or charged, and Portland police declined to say if he is the target of its investigation into the killing of Aaron “Jay” Danielson, who was taking part in a pro-Trump rally with an estimated 600 trucks winding through the city that night. But in a conversation with freelance journalist Donovan Farley provided to VICE News and airing in full Thursday night, Reinoehl said he believed he and a friend were about to be stabbed, and that he acted in self defense. -Vice
The full interview will air Thursday night. See preview below:
Now watch and listen to what happened:
– We’ve got one right here! We’ve got a couple of them right here!
– Right here?
Bang! Bang!
It was an execution.
The blood of this man is on the head of feckless leftist leaders like Ted Wheeler! What did he thing was going to happen after 100 days of violence and chaos?
— James M. Cain (@dmcparson) August 30, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Enhanced video of Portland shooting pic.twitter.com/nRkUAQsBo9
— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) August 30, 2020
- Novichok, Navalny, Nordstream, Nonsense
Novichok, Navalny, Nordstream, Nonsense
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/04/2020 – 02:00Once Navalny was in Berlin it was only a matter of time before it was declared that he was poisoned with Novichok.
The Russophobes are delighted…
This of course eliminates all vestiges of doubt about what happened to the Skripals, and proves that Russia must be isolated and sanctioned to death and we must spend untold billions on weapons and security services. We must also increase domestic surveillance, crack down on dissenting online opinion. It also proves that Donald Trump is a Russian puppet and Brexit is a Russian plot.
I am going to prove beyond all doubt that I am a Russian troll by asking the question Cui Bono?, brilliantly identified by the Integrity Initiative’s Ben Nimmo as a sure sign of Russian influence.
I should state that I have no difficulty at all with the notion that a powerful oligarch or an organ of the Russian state may have tried to assassinate Navalny. He is a minor irritant, rather more famous here than in Russia, but not being a major threat does not protect you against political assassination in Russia.
What I do have difficulty with is the notion that if Putin, or other very powerful Russian actors, wanted Navalny dead, and had attacked him while he was in Siberia, he would not be alive in Germany today. If Putin wanted him dead, he would be dead.
Let us first take the weapon of attack.
One thing we know about a “Novichok” for sure is that it appears not to be very good at assassination. Poor Dawn Sturgess is the only person ever to have allegedly died from “Novichok”, accidentally according to the official narrative. “Novichok” did not kill the Skripals, the actual target. If Putin wanted Navalny dead, he would try something that works. Like a bullet to the head, or an actually deadly poison.
“Novichok” is not a specific chemical. It is a class of chemical weapon designed to be improvised in the field from common domestic or industrial precursors. It makes some sense to use on foreign soil as you are not carrying around the actual nerve agent, and may be able to buy the ingredients locally. But it makes no sense at all in your own country, where the FSB or GRU can swan around with any deadly weapon they wish, to be making homemade nerve agents in the sink. Why would you do that?
Further we are expected to believe that, the Russian state having poisoned Navalny, the Russian state then allowed the airplane he was traveling in, on a domestic flight, to divert to another airport, and make an emergency landing, so he could be rushed to hospital.
If the Russian secret services had poisoned Navalny at the airport before takeoff as alleged, why would they not insist the plane stick to its original flight plan and let him die on the plane? They would have foreseen what would happen to the plane he was on.
Next, we are supposed to believe that the Russian state, having poisoned Navalny, was not able to contrive his death in the intensive care unit of a Russian state hospital.
We are supposed to believe that the evil Russian state was able to falsify all his toxicology tests and prevent doctors telling the truth about his poisoning, but the evil Russian state lacked the power to switch off the ventilator for a few minutes or slip something into his drip. In a Russian state hospital.
Next we are supposed to believe that Putin, having poisoned Navalny with novichok, allowed him to be flown to Germany to be saved, making it certain the novichok would be discovered. And that Putin did this because he was worried Merkel was angry, not realising she might be still more angry when she discovered Putin had poisoned him with novichok
There are a whole stream of utterly unbelievable points there, every single one of which you have to believe to go along with the western narrative.
Personally I do not buy a single one of them, but then I am a notorious Russophile traitor.
The United States is very keen indeed to stop Germany completing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which will supply Russian gas to Germany on a massive scale, sufficient for about 40% of its electricity generation. Personally I am opposed to Nord Stream 2 myself, on both environmental and strategic grounds. I would much rather Germany put its formidable industrial might into renewables and self-sufficiency. But my reasons are very different from those of the USA, which is concerned about the market for liquefied gas to Europe for US produces and for the Gulf allies of the US. Key decisions on the completion of Nord Stream 2 are now in train in Germany.
The US and Saudi Arabia have every reason to instigate a split between Germany and Russia at this time. Navalny is certainly a victim of international politics. That he is a victim of Putin I tend to doubt.
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The UK state is of course currently trying to silence one small bubble of dissent by imprisoning me, so you will not have access to another minor but informed view of world events for you to consider. Yesterday I launched a renewed appeal for funds for my legal defence in the Contempt of Court action against me for my reporting of the attempted fit-up of Alex Salmond. I should be extremely grateful if you can contribute to my defence fund, or subscribe to my blog. Click here to donate…
- The Seven Reasons We Obey Authority
The Seven Reasons We Obey Authority
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/04/2020 – 00:00Authored by Phillip Schneider via Phillipschneider.com,
Rebels are a very important part of society, but they rarely get the recognition they deserve. They help us break through old norms and keep us from falling into groupthink. However, human nature urges most of us to remain in our comfort zone even when it means less freedom or more difficult problems down the road.
Why is it the case that so many people ignore the outside world or pass it off as somebody else’s problem until it reaches their own doorstep? In a recent video, Brittany Sellner (Brittany Pettibone before she married) describes the seven reasons men obey authority, even when it is against their best interest.
#1 Habit
As everybody knows, habits are extremely difficult to break and even if we have gripes about the state of things, accepting our imperfect reality seems better to us than taking on the daunting prospect of change. Conversely… habit ceases to be a reason for obedience in times of political crisis; kind of similar to what we are experiencing now as a consequence of Covid. Despite many of us not wanting to alter our habits, our habits were forcibly altered for us.
#2 Moral Obligation
The second reason for obedience is moral obligation which is obviously a motive that is very often found in religion, but politically speaking… some see it as a moral obligation to ‘1) obey for the good of society,’ 2) ‘due to the ruler having superhuman factors such as being a supernatural being or a deity,’ which isn’t something that I think applies to too many Americans… 3) People see it as a moral obligation to obey because they ‘perceive the command as being legitimate, owing to its source an issuer’. For example, a mayor or a police officer [would be considered under this reason], and 4) People see it as a moral obligation to obey due to ‘conformity of commands to accepted norms.’ For example, most people believe that a command such as not committing murder is a moral command and therefore, they obey it.
#3 Self-Interest
The third reason for obedience is self-interest and this is perhaps one of the more common motives nowadays. For example, most big corporations are immoral and seek to piggy-back off of current social and political trends in order to gain money, status, and approval. Just look at all the corporations that suddenly became ‘champions of social justice’ after the death of George Floyd; none of them gave a crap about police brutality and Black Lives Matter until it became in their interest to care.
This self-interest can of course also extend to individuals. Famous and non-famous people have a lot to gain by falling in line, or… there is also a negative self-interest wherein the person doesn’t obey simply because they’re going to gain something but so they won’t lose everything: their reputations, jobs, social standing and future career prospects.
#4 Psychological Identification with the Ruler
The fourth reason for obedience is psychological identification with the ruler, meaning that people have a close emotional connection with the ruler, regime, or the system. I imagine you would have encountered a lot of this in, for example, Communist Russia or Nazi Germany.
#5 Zones of Indifference
The fifth reason for obedience is an extremely common one today and that is ‘zones of indifference,’ meaning that even if people are not fully satisfied with the state of things, they have a margin of indifference or a margin of tolerance for the negative aspects of their society and government.
#6 Fear of Sanctions
The sixth reason for obedience is the most obvious reason… and that is ‘fear of sanctions,’ which generally involve the threat or the use of some form of physical violence against the disobedient subject and induce obedience by power merely coercive, a power really operating on people simply through their fears.
#7 Absence of Self Confidence
Lastly, the seventh and final reason for obedience is the absence of self confidence among subjects, meaning that many people simply don’t have sufficient confidence in themselves, their judgement, and their capacities to make themselves capable of disobedience and resistance.
Thanks to the internet, I observe this motive quite often. Thousands of people decry on the daily that they’re miserable with the state of things and yet they do nothing because they have no confidence in their personal ability to lead, to organize a peaceful protest, to start a movement and so on.
Although authority can be legitimate and meaningful, resistance to unnecessary acts of violence or draconian government injustice is often better for the individual and society and shows greater character than inaction.
Although this is certainly not a comprehensive list, perhaps it will help you to better understand your own role in life and greater society.
Watch Brittany Sellner’s analysis:
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- House Will Vote On "Historic" Marijuana Decriminalization Bill In September
House Will Vote On “Historic” Marijuana Decriminalization Bill In September
Tyler Durden
Thu, 09/03/2020 – 23:40At the same time Democrats are trying to put a woman second in line for the Presidency who has a scorching record of jailing over 1,500 people for marijuana violations in barely 5 years as California DA, the U.S. House of Representatives appears to have a different outlook.
The House is now planning for a September vote on The Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment, and Expungement Act, which be be a historic bill decriminalizing marijuana at the federal level by removing it from the Controlled Substances Act, according to Fox 29. The bill would “give control to the states to determine the drug’s status and whether to vote to legalize the drug.”
Marijuana is already legal in California, Michigan, Colorado, Illinois, Alaska, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine.
The vote would mark the first time a congressional chamber has chose to remove cannabis from a prohibitive classification. It is currently a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act, along with drugs like Heroin and ecstasy, which means it is defined as having “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”
The act could also stand at stark odds with Kamala Harris’ past work as California DA, as it “requires federal courts to expunge prior marijuana-related convictions and arrests.” The bill authorizes a 5% sales tax on marijuana to create the “Opportunity Trust Fund”, which will be used to support people who “have been adversely affected by the War on Drugs.”
The bill also limits barriers to marijuana licensing and employment. It was introduced on the floor by Kamala Harris’ fellow Democrat, Jerry Nadler, in 2019. It would still need to pass the Senate.
- California's Odd Desire To Suffocate The "Gig Economy"
California’s Odd Desire To Suffocate The “Gig Economy”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 09/03/2020 – 23:20Authored by Gerard Scimeca via RealClearMarkets.com,
If our current economy were a swimmer paddling furiously against a surging tide, then California is determined to hand it an anchor. Millions of Americans who work to make ends meet through freelance work in the ‘gig’ economy were recently handed virtual pink slips through AB5, legislation signed into law last year by Governor Gavin Newsom forcing independent contractors to be treated as employees.
With other states now looking to follow suit, it’s time Congress address this atrocious assault on worker freedoms and economic innovation by enacting federal standards on independent contract work. It would be a shallow victory for our economy to rebound from Covid only to have workers tossed out of their freelance jobs by clueless politicians seeking to “protect” their rights.
It should surprise no one that AB5 set in motion a massive economic wrecking ball that already has rideshare giants Uber and Lyft packing their bags to leave the state. Requiring contract workers to be treated as full-fledged employees in California or any state will of course make dozens of similar gig platforms unprofitable, in effect deleting apps right off our phones. A court’s temporary pause of AB5 last week is now holding worker jobs by a thread, causing Uber and Lyft to temporarily suspend plans to leave the state. If the ruling doesn’t hold, over 200,000 freelance workers will be driven out of work and millions of consumers will be left on the side of the road.
It is startling that in today’s modern economy California would even attempt such a clampdown. The one-size-fits-all model of employee-employer relationship is a relic of the distant past. More than a third of the U.S. workforce is currently employed as either full or part-time freelancers. This is no longer an employment niche but a pillar of our current economy. Freelancers earn good money, often sizably more than their employee counterparts. And despite the complaints of some interventionist lawmakers, workers themselves are quite content with the freedom their work offers. In one recent survey, 71 percent claimed increased work opportunities over the previous year.
It is concerning that other states, including New Jersey, New York, and Illinois are considering similar legislation, which is why federal action is required, both to protect part-time, contract workers and set a uniform standard for their employment. The app-driven and freelance gig economy contributes $1.4 trillion in annual value to our nation, and this critical economic engine, along with the people who fuel it, require clear standards that will protect contract workers’ rights as well as set clear terms for companies that employ them.
Consider that when a person loses a job at the loading dock, or a company downsizes, there is at least some comfort that opportunity through the freelance economy has never been greater. Regardless of education or skill level, almost any person can earn income to pay the mortgage, keep the lights on, or food on the table. Smartphone apps provide almost any service one can imagine, with new offerings arising every day. The modern economy offers an entirely new model of worker freedom that is highly correlated with economic growth. In just over a decade technology has made it possible for people to create a studio quality movie with just a phone, or publish a book with just a computer. The obstacles and costly impediments to free-enterprise such as overhead, equipment, physical location, labor, and start-up capital are now gone. People are truly free to exchange their labor and their talents on their terms, to the benefit not of just themselves and their customers, but to our economic vital signs.
At its heart the gig economy is a repudiation of government interventionism and a corporate structure where companies held all the power. Turning freelance workers into employees erases all the gains workers have made with regard to their freedom to contract and puts them squarely back in the proverbial corporate cubicle.
And the economic harm of these ludicrous laws goes far beyond the gig economy itself. Consider a young family contemplating a new auto purchase. The car may be financially out of reach given their nine-to-five salaries, but the payments quickly become affordable when the buyers supplement their income through freelance rideshare work. Similar transactions multiplied throughout the economy are critical to our recovery. Further, who will develop the “killer apps” of tomorrow if developers know workers will be priced out of the market? A hit to our tech sector is yet another broadside America cannot afford.
Despite what California or any state may claim, these laws don’t help the “little guy,” they hurt average workers, they hurt consumers, and they hurt our economy when all of us can least afford it. A tremendous engine of growth, the rapidly growing app and gig economy will be taxed to its knees if these employee mandates spread throughout the country, a fact that should concern us all. Who knows what apps that are now part of our daily lives would never have seen the light of day had these crippling rules been in place years ago? It’s time for federal legislation to protect us from rogue lawmakers who will turn back the clock on consumer freedoms and worker rights, and force America to hitchhike to economic recovery.
- Payrolls Preview: On The Edge Of A Slowdown
Payrolls Preview: On The Edge Of A Slowdown
Tyler Durden
Thu, 09/03/2020 – 23:04The Street expects 1.4 million nonfarm payrolls to be added to the US economy in August, which would be the weakest pace of payroll additions since the -20.8 million reading in April; according to NewsSquawk, that might signal that labor market progress is stalling.
The government payrolls metric will also matter because as noted previously it will be buoyed by the ramp-up in Census hiring. Both initial jobless claims and continuing claims continue to edge lower, although disappointed expectations in the payroll survey period, albeit the former might be a function of the reinstating of some enhanced jobless benefits, while the latter may have been restricted by the bi-weekly nature of claims being filed in certain states. ADP payrolls gauge also disappointed, and while some point out the weak link between ADP and BLS data, the gap has been narrowing in recent months; the report did show that most of the gains were concentrated in minimum wage sectors, and that might weigh on the AHE metrics in August. Survey data, meanwhile, shows that while the labor market is making progress, it is slow, and not keeping up with the pace of other activity indices.
At the same time, Goldman notes that the resurgence of the coronavirus did not produce a meaningful increase in layoffs in the Sun Belt based on jobless claims data, and high-frequency surveys replicating the BLS approach indicate robust August job gains. Additionally, because of measurement issues with the BLS birth-death model, the establishment survey will better capture business reopenings and gross hiring than the mid-summer business closures resulting from the virus.
Finally, yesterday BMO said that it expects “the August data to be more market moving than the last few releases” in keeping with Powell’s comments on ‘the passage of time’ creating more economic clarity. The reason: the US economy is now far enough into the pandemic and expectations for the coming quarters are sufficiently refined that it follows intuitively that the pace of job creation (revival) seeing during Aug-Nov will level-set forecasts going into the final months of the year.
Below is a summary of expectations, courtesy of NewsSqawk:
EXPECTATIONS:
- Nonfarm Payrolls exp. 1.4mln (range -100k to +2.38mln, prev. +1.76mln);
- Private payrolls exp. +1.25mln (prev. 1.46mln);
- Manufacturing payrolls exp. +50k (prev. +26k);
- Government payrolls (prev. +301k);
- U3 Unemployment rate exp. 9.8% (range: 8.5-11.0%, prev. 10.2% (Fed sees the unemployment rate at 9.3% by end-2020); U6 unemployment (prev. 16.5%); Participation (prev. 61.4%);
- Average earnings m/m exp. 0.0% (prev. +0.2%); Average earnings y/y exp. +4.5% (prev. +4.8%);
- Average workweek hours exp. 34.5hrs (prev. 34.5hrs).
WEEKLY CLAIMS: The initial jobless claims data that coincides with the August jobs report disappointed expectations (it printed 1.1mln vs the consensus view for a fall to 925k). Some analysts argued that it may show that the recent fall in claims could have been underpinned by the expiry of enhanced jobless benefits, which rolled off at the end of July, and the tick-up in claims might have therefore been more to do with the partial restoration of those benefits (note: seven states approved additional benefits, retroactive to the 1st August). Continuing claims for the BLS jobs report survey week fell to 14.535mln from 14.758mln, not quite to the 14.45mln level that the Street was modelling. Analysts said the decline was restricted by the nature of bi-weekly filings in some key states (California, Pennsylvania and Texas), with the data coinciding with the ‘off’ week’ some estimates suggest that the rate of continuing claims decay is currently running at around -575k per week, slower than the – 800k approximate weekly pace seen in the early part of July.
ADP: The ADP reported 428k nonfarm payrolls were added in August, missing the consensus of +950k; the prior, however, was revised up from 167k to 212k. The accompanying commentary from the ADP was glum, with the payroll processor stating that job gains were minimal, and businesses across all sizes and sectors have yet to come close to their pre-COVID-19 employment levels. From a traders point of view, Pantheon Macroeconomics notes that it was the fourth straight month where the ADP print was very close to the number implied by the Homebase employment data, while the ADP gauge has fallen short of the official BLS nonfarm payrolls number, although the magnitude has narrowed in June and July. Pantheon says that assuming a further narrowing of the gap in August, it looks for the BLS data to show around +750k jobs were added (currently, the consensus looks for +1.4mln). With regards to wage growth, some analysts noted that most of the employment gains in the ADP data were within minimum wage categories – if we see this dynamic in the BLS data, it may result in wage growth falling; recall, the spike in wage growth in the BLS metrics since the pandemic began were more a function of low wage workers losing their jobs, and accordingly, falling out of the wage data sample; were minimum wage jobs to return, some suggest the average wage metrics may also edge lower. Elsewhere, and looking ahead, Pantheon says that the outright decline in small business employment in the Homebase data points to a dip in the September ADP report, and perhaps even the official BLS data too. “Even if the August pace of ADP job growth is sustained, it would take more than two years for the level of ADP employment to return to the pre-COVID peak.”
MANUFACTURING ISM: The manufacturing ISM report was generally quite solid, however, analysts did highlight that the pace of gains in the employment sub-index was lagging versus other activity subindices. The employment index itself rose by 2.1 points to 46.4 in August, the first full month of operations after supply chains restarted and adjustments were made for employees to return to work. Additionally, it remains under 50.0, and accordingly, manufacturing employment saw the thirteenth consecutive month of employment contraction, although it is worth noting that the index has improved for four straight months. Long-term labour market growth remains uncertain, but strong new-order levels and an expanding backlog signify potential strength for the rest of Q3, ISM said; respondent comments indicated that more companies were hiring, or attempting to hire, compared to actively and passively reducing their labour forces.
NON-MANUFACTURING ISM: There was a larger jump in the non-manufacturing ISM’s employment sub-index, which moved from 42.1 to 47.9, though like its manufacturing counterpart, remains under the 50.0 mark. That means the service sector employment has been contracting for six months on the trot. Respondents noted that “attrition has taken employees; hiring is authorized, but slow to materialize” and “the need for employees is greater, but we are having a difficult time filling open positions.”
GOVERNMENT PAYROLLS: Analysts will be keeping an eye on government payrolls, which are expected to pick up due to the hiring of employees to conduct the US Census; Oxford Economics explains that during Census survey years, federal employment has traditionally risen sharply in May, reflecting the hiring of temporary field staff. However, this year, the pandemic has resulted in the suspension of all field operations, but as the economy begins reopening, hiring is ramping up. The Census Bureau has said that 288k workers were paid during the August BLS survey period vs 50k during the July survey period, implying Census related hiring picked up by some 238k in the month. “This should be partly offset by weaker employment at the state and local level as governments budgets remain squeezed,” OxEco writes, “with revenues plummeting and spending increasing to cope with massive rises in unemployment and a public health emergency, state and local governments were likely forced to cut their workforce significantly to balance their budgets.”
JOB CUTS: Data from Challenger showed announced job cuts rose to just under 116k in August (+116% y/y, although -56% m/m), for the highest total August reading since 2002. YTD, employers have announced just under 2mln job cuts (+231% vs the same period in 2019), with around half of those cuts being attributed to COVID. In August, transport sectors saw the biggest job cuts, followed by entertainment/leisure companies. Challenger said that market conditions caused around 45k of the announced cuts in August, around 30k was due to the demand downturn, and around 23k due to costcutting. COVID-19 is the reason cited for 1,083,394 cuts so far this year. Challenger said that the employment landscape was dealing with a host of burdens that reach beyond job cuts; COVID and the recession continue to cause volatile conditions in many industries. It also said that both companies and workers were grappling with increasing uncertainty due to stalled economic relief, the approaching election, and child care and education concerns. “Many employees hesitate to return to the job force out of fear of exposure to COVID,” it wrote. “parents are trying to determine if they can safely send their children back to school or daycare, or if they need to facilitate remote learning. In some cases, working parents do not have a choice.”
Arguing for a better-than-expected report (via Goldman):
- Big Data. High frequency data on the labor market were mixed in August (seen Exhibit 2), however all six measures we track indicated continued job gains.Furthermore, we note that the weakest two measures (Google, ADP) do not directly track the discrete impact of workers returning to their previous employers (the establishment survey counts an individual as employed provided that they work atleast 1 hour during the reference period).
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- Jobless claims. While still elevated, initial jobless claims declined significantly during the August payroll month (averaging 1.2mn per week vs. 1.4mn in July). Additionally, continuing claims declined by 2.3mn from survey week to survey week(after adjusting for biweekly filing schedules in Florida and California). Notably, both measures also declined on net in the Sun Belt states most affected by the second wave of coronavirus infection (see Exhibit 2).
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- Census hiring. Census temporary workers are set to boost nonfarm job growth byn255k in August, as additional field staff were hired to conduct interviews.
- Employer surveys. Business activity surveys improved on net in August, as did the employment components of our survey trackers (non-manufacturing +3.0pt to 46.3;manufacturing +2.6pt to 51.4).
- Job cuts. Announced layoffs reported by Challenger, Gray & Christmas fell 65% in August to 116k after rising 68% in July and falling 43% in June (mom, sa by GS).They remain 114% above their August 2019 levels.
Arguing for a weaker-than-expected report:
- Second Wave. The US experienced a dramatic resurgence of coronavirus during the second half of June—particularly in the Sun Belt states—and by the July Fourth holiday, nearly two-thirds of the country had paused or reversed their reopening plans. However, job growth remained firm in the July payroll report despite a pause in the Sun Belt leisure and hospitality recovery (+37k in July after +813k in June). Given the further decline in jobless claims in this region (and nationally), and the fact that the establishment survey measures reopenings and expansions more accurately than business closures, we do not expect the second wave to prevent a sizeable gain in August payrolls in tomorrow’s report.
- Seasonality. Payrolls have exhibited a tendency toward weak August first prints, which may reflect a recurring seasonal bias in the first vintages of the data. August job growth has missed consensus in 7 of the last 10 years, and on average the first vintage is 41k below the final. While a negative factor, the unprecedented scale of labor market changes from the coronacrisis renders residual seasonality a relatively marginal factor in tomorrow’s report.
- ADP. Private sector employment in the ADP report rose by 428k in August, well below consensus. We view the ADP miss as incrementally negative information;however, major differences between ADP and BLS nonfarm payrolls in terms of methodology and source data suggest scope for another divergence this month.
- Job availability. The Conference Board labor differential—the difference between the percent of respondents saying jobs are plentiful and those saying jobs are hard to get—fell into contractionary territory (-3.7 in August from +2.2 in July and -2.8 in June).
- Nonfarm Payrolls exp. 1.4mln (range -100k to +2.38mln, prev. +1.76mln);
- Millennials Have Moved Out Of Mom's Basement And Are On The Forefront Of The Housing Boom
Millennials Have Moved Out Of Mom’s Basement And Are On The Forefront Of The Housing Boom
Tyler Durden
Thu, 09/03/2020 – 23:00We never thought the day would come: millennials are finally starting to move out of mom and dad’s basement and are now actually powering the unexpected rebound in the housing market. Well, OK, millennials and the Fed, who is providing them with their down payments in the form of PPP loans.
Regardless, housing demand from millennials made up 38% of home buyers for the year ending June 2019. This is up from 32% in 2015, according to the Wall Street Journal and the National Association of Realtors. They also accounted for more than half of all new home loans early last year and they “consistently held above that level in the first months of this year.”
Millennials also passed baby boomers as the biggest living adult generation in the U.S. last year. Soon, a majority of those millennials, born in the 90s, will enter into their 30s. Odeta Kushi, deputy chief economist at First American Financial Corp., said: “We anticipate as they turn 31 and 32, we’ll just see homebuying demand grow.”
The data flies in the face of assumptions that millennials would forever be renters. However, it may not be the beacon of economic good news that many believe. The WSJ makes it seem as though millennials are no longer hampered by student debt and broke – but the assumption they have built nest eggs somehow likely belies the real mechanics of millennials becoming home owners: free government money and rigged 0% interest rates.
For example, 32 year old Sandra Martinez-Gonzalez told the WSJ that “when she started looking for a new place to rent at the beginning of the year, she realized buying would be cheaper than renting in her neighborhood”.
Of course, the entire generation moving closer to home-buying age also helps. Rick Arvielo, chief executive of mortgage lender New American Funding asserts: “Millennials, they’re roaring into homebuying age. What the industry’s been talking about for a decade is whether they’re going to follow their predecessor generations in terms of their desire to own homes. Yeah, they do—they have the same desires.”
Sales of previously owned homes were up almost 25% in July – the highest SAAR since December 2006. Additionally, first time buyers made up 34% of all sales in July. This is up from 32% a year prior.
Home buying is also being attributed to many of the younger generation moving out of cities – as a product of not only the coronavirus pandemic, but now the growing unrest in major cities across the nation. But while housing prices soar and demand is steady, a reality check may still loom as a result of the collapsing underlying economy.
But, for now at least, it is once again Fed-induced sunshine and rainbows. Martinez-Gonzalez concluded: “It feels amazing. Now that we have a home it kind of feels like: Why didn’t we do this sooner?”
- "They Only Serve Themselves…"
“They Only Serve Themselves…”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 09/03/2020 – 22:40Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,
“The Kremlin” poisoned their “fierce rival” Navalny with the infamous deadly agent novichok.
That is the headline.
Only, the German accusation in that direction doesn’t say novichok, its says a “cholinesterase inhibitor”, of which novichok is just one example, was used. The news outlets must be thinking that at least after the Skripal case, enough people will recognize the term, and let’s not confuse them.
The Germans claim they have “unequivocal proof” (eindeutiger Beweis) for this.
While the Russian doctors who initially treated Navalny after he fell ill on a flight from Tomsk to Omsk (or was that the other way around?!) said he showed zero signs of poisoning. But yeah, they’re Russians, so they can’t be trusted, right? They all squander their Hippocratic oaths at the feet of the great malevolent dictator
TrumpPutin. You’re familiar with the parable about “all Cretans lie”?“Merkel spokesman Seibert said the German government will inform its partners in the European Union and NATO about the test results..”
NATO? What do they have to do with anything? How does the alleged poisoning of a two-bit (2% in the polls) Russian “politician” link to NATO? Is Navalny himself linked to NATO? Where does NATO come in to the conversation? How much does the CIA pay Navalny anyway?
The thing, the problem, is that it makes no difference anymore even if this particular instance has a kernel of truth in it.
Because there have been so many of them, and they’re all “based” on non-evidence, circumstantial “evidence”, stuff that you wouldn’t get a conviction on in any western court. For good reason.
In the Skripal case, a pair of vague Russians were presented in the UK media who supposedly had been in the area where the alleged poisoning took place, where the head of all UK nurses “just happened” to deliver first aid, but the story still never made sense. Now I read in a Dutch news outlet that the two Skripals were moved to New Zealand to start a new life, but the fact remains that no-one has heard from them since that alleged incident. Almost as if someone doesn’t want to provide any proof, just the narrative.
In the MH17 case, another RussiaRussia story, they threw all credibility out from the start by appointing main victim the Netherlands (2/3 of deaths) the main prosecutor, but even more by allowing one of the main potential perpetrators, Ukraine, not just a role in the investigation, but handing them a veto right over whatever info could be shared with the outside world. I think we call that lock stock and barrel.
It is of vital importance for two parties -which might as well be one- in the west to keep accusing Russia of all manner of issues, while knowing full well they will never answer (though, remember Concord Asset Management, Robert Mueller III?), which means you can say whatever you want. It’s a free for all. The two parties are intelligence and NATO.
Western nations, and that means all of them, all the self-congratulating “democracies”, are being blackmailed by their own -secret- intelligence services, which most often pose as “national security services”, and they find they have no way out. In most countries, the best before date of a politician, even the political system itself, is way shorter than that of an intelligence agency’s agenda. The only thing a newly elected politician can do is accept a secret service’s word at face value, and define policy accordingly.
Be it domestic, bi-lateral vs particular countries, or global. The policies have already been defined years ago, and they have been defined by unelected “spooks”, not elected representatives of the people. This is incredibly (and I don’t use that word lightly) damaging to all of our societies, and we need to call a halt to it. But how do you do that? When they are the ones making policy, and not the people we vote into office to do that for us? It’s certainly not an easy task, but we can’t let them continue either. That would only mean assured destruction, economic depression and, ultimately, war.
That’s how and why we get the Navalny and Skripal stories. This goes back to at least WWII. US intelligence and the Wolfowitz/Brzezinski/Leo Strauss/Kissinger neocon cabal have severely compromised US national security for decades, only to funnel trillions towards US arms manufacturers, who today produce second rate weapons to boot. It is high time to stop this. Security is much better served by dialogue. Or should I say ”arguably?”
What the Navalny story, lacking evidence as much as so many other narratives, should tell us is that we are sort of hostages to a Ghost of Christmas past. We are being blackmailed as we speak by secret agents in cohort with the very military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned about, because they all need to keep a long lost dream alive in order to still appear relevant and chuck trillions out of our pockets.
It’s a scam, it’s blackmail. Russia is not about to attack you. They may have much better weaponry by now than we do (they do, check hypersonic), but they still won’t attack you, because A) they don’t want to, and B) they don’t have the numbers. They don’t have the manpower, they don’t have the money, they just want to be left alone, and we won’t leave them alone.
Our spooks invent Skripal and MH17 and Navalny and Russia collusion and prostitutes peeing on beds in Moscow. Because that’s how they justify -literally- endless streams of money towards their operations, and those of their Siamese twin NATO. All that money goes towards the 1950’s though, we’re paying through the nose for a long discredited notion and a long passed… past.
But as soon as anyone mentions Russia, you know there’s never going to be any checks and balances, as long as there are still enough people who buy into the Putin=”Bogeyman who eats little children” thing, in the same way that they believe Putin controls Donald Trump’s mind and policies. It’s a numbers thing: as long as enough people buy it, the narrative will continue to be sold.
You’re essentially stuck in your grandparents’ mindframe. No kidding. As we go through our 2020 crisis, which seems real enough, we spend extraordinary amounts of money on long outdates ideas maintained only to maintain the CIA and the army. Say what you will, but there’s nothing smart about that. It’s only very stupid.
Because, for one thing, suppose there are real threats lurking today, how can we face those while we’re still focusing on things that ceased being threats decades ago? Shouldn’t we perhaps replace our “intelligence” with something more intelligent? And fit not for the 1950’s but for the 2020’s?
Our “security services”, and NATO very much as well, make us less secure, safe, not more, because that’s the only way they know to justify their continued existence. Yes, there’s a paradox hidden in there somewhere. They don’t serve us, they only serve themselves.
* * *
- Former Aussie PM Slams "Health Dictatorship" Prolonging Pain Amid First Recession In 30 Years
Former Aussie PM Slams “Health Dictatorship” Prolonging Pain Amid First Recession In 30 Years
Tyler Durden
Thu, 09/03/2020 – 22:20Australia is officially in recession, the first time in 30 years, as it suffers from a disastrous economic fallout of the virus pandemic.
Tony Abbott, the former Australian prime minister, warned Tuesday, in a speech to the UK think tank Policy Exchange, that virus “hysteria” and draconian lockdowns are perpetuating the economic slowdown and have created a “something for nothing mindset” among younger generations living on furlough.
He said, “much of the media has indulged virus-hysteria with the occasional virus-linked death of a younger person highlighted to show that deadly threat isn’t confined to the very old or the already-very-sick or those exposed to massive viral loads.”
Abbott accused Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews of being a ‘health dictator’ by placing five million Melburnians under “house arrest.” He said politicians need to stop acting like “trauma doctors” and start adopting the mindset of “health economists” – as reckless money printing to sustain the country’s economy during lockdowns isn’t sustainable
“From a health perspective, this pandemic has been serious. From an economic perspective, it’s been disastrous,” Abbott said. “But I suspect that it’s from an overall wellbeing perspective that it will turn out worst of all.”
“At some point, we just have to learn to live with this virus in ways that can be kept up more or less indefinitely,” Abbott said.
He called for an end to “magic pudding economics” – the endless money-printing that has allowed governments to pay the wages of shut-down businesses, freeze rents and mortgages, and keep up unemployment payments without running out of funds.
This “something for nothing mindset,” he argued, risks congealing into a “new normal” – during a “people once sturdily self-reliant” into giving up personal responsibility in return for being taken care of by Big Brother.
– RT News
The former PM blamed local governments for panicking into “crisis mode,” now trapped in an emergency as the “crisis adds to their authority or boosts their standing.”
Abbott said curfews in Victoria and travel bans of more than 3 miles were the most severe in the world outside of Wuhan, China, the alleged epicenter of the virus pandemic.
He said, “the fear of falling sick is stopping us from being fully alive.” In other words, virus hysteria has prolonged the downturn and produced deep economic scarring.
- Goya CEO Is Back, Warning Dems The "Hatred & Destruction" Is Moving Latinos To Trump
Goya CEO Is Back, Warning Dems The “Hatred & Destruction” Is Moving Latinos To Trump
Tyler Durden
Thu, 09/03/2020 – 22:00Authored by Monica Showalter via AmericanThinker.com,
Just when the Democrats thought it was safe to go back into the leftist Latinx narrative, out comes the Goya CEO, Bob Unamue, and he’s warning that “hatred and destruction” from the riotous destruction of small businesses are driving Latino voters to President Trump. He has that way of reading the reality.
Unamue spoke with JustTheNews’s John Solomon, and painted Democrats an ugly, if real picture:
The rise in support for Trump is due to “fatigue over all the destruction and hatred, tearing down businesses, by people — a lot of people that are from outside the community — because if you’re within the community, you’re building it, you don’t want to tear down what you just built,” Robert Unanue, President and CEO, Goya Foods, told Just the News in a video interview.
“And this is organized. People coming in from the outside to destroy. And so you know, we have two paths to take: Love and build, hate and destroy. We need to take the path of loving and building. And that’s why we’re looking at prosperity. How do we get our country back on our feet, and prosper in all aspects. So let’s love. Let’s build.”
That “outside the community” dynamic is very well known in much of the Latino community, with Cubans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans familiar with politically organized “turba” repudiation mobs, sent in by communist rulers from outside the community to attack dissidents in their homes, as well as foreign “Sandalista” influences on domestic communist regimes. That would be the same Sandalistas so beloved of Bernie Sanders and Bill de Blasio, with the latter having actual experience as a bona fide Sandalista supporting the oppressive communist regime in Nicaragua in the 1980s and 1990s. To Latinos who have fled such hellholes, and who are now overrepresented in the entrepreneurial and startup communities here, this is a familiar memory, this is something that truly disgusts them. Goya itself was the target of this vile leftist mob, vowing to boycott the entire brand based on Unamue’s kind words to President Trump at a White House event in July, a courtesy he also extended to President Obama earlier. Unamue refused to back down and the boycott bombed, with boycott loudmouth celebrity Chrissie Teigen last seen using Goya products anyway. Boycott for thee but not for me.
And Unamue’s completely right that these voters are moving to Trump. Solomon cites a two-point rise in pan-Latino favorability to 32%, according to a new Hill-HarrisX poll, a steady rise from far lower numbers in the past, particularly with past Republican leaders and presidential candidates. The trend keeps rising.
And even a Latinx-type polling activist group shows very poor numbers for Joe Biden to start with – take a look at this meager offering from UnidosUS for Joe here.
It’s more than just riots driving Latinos to Trump. The stellar Trump economy, with its tax cuts and deregulation led to record-low Latino unemployment which has to be a plus.
Here’s another thing: The Latino community was hit harder than others by the COVID shutdowns, with huge job losses. Who’s trying to open the economy and who’s trying to obey “science” and “the experts.” More points for Trump.
Here’s a third thing: President Trump has made life either difficult or else hellish for Marxist forces in Latin America, where many Latinos still have ties.
Venezuelan-American voters, known as “MAGAzolanos” in Miami and Doral, Florida are speaking out and making ads. Cuban-Americans are very strong Trump supporters. Puerto Ricans on the mainland have reason to like President Trump too, given his criticism of their corrupt and incompetent socialists back on the island. And Colombian-American voters have been gratified to have seen Vice President Mike Pence and other administration officials speak out against the travesty of FARC Marxist narcoterrorists walking around free under the travesty “peace” deal, while the great liberator of their country, former President Alvaro Uribe, languishes under house arrest. It’s sickening and little known to the press coverage here, it’s been noted with favorability in the Colombian-American community.
With factors like these, and with Democrats still strongly allied with Sandalistas such as Sanders and De Blasio who have praised Latin American hellhole regimes and their filthy corrupt Marxist dictators, how can the numbers not rise?
The Goya CEO knew firsthand that the boycott against his company was going to be a dud, and now he’s saying Latinos are moving favorably toward Trump. He didn’t build his tiny kitchen-table business into a global behemoth by being stupid, woke, and naive. He knows the score. And he’s just handed the Democrats some very sour news compared to their ‘take-’em-for-granted’ expectations.
- Secret Service Admits To Destroying Records In Alleged Biden Breast-Grabbing Incident
Secret Service Admits To Destroying Records In Alleged Biden Breast-Grabbing Incident
Tyler Durden
Thu, 09/03/2020 – 21:54In 2017, the Gateway Pundit‘s Cassandra Fairbanks published a claim from an anonymous former Secret Service agent who said that they had to protect female agents from Joe Biden due to “Weinstein level stuff,” referring to notable rapist and Democrat, Harvey Weinstein.
“We had to cancel the VP Christmas get together at the Vice President’s house because Biden would grope all of our wives and girlfriend’s asses,” said the former agent, adding “He would mess with every single woman or teen. It was horrible.”
The agent also claimed Biden would walk around naked in the VP residence.
“I mean, Stark naked… Weinstein level stuff.”
“According to the source, a Secret Service agent once got suspended for a week in 2009 for shoving Biden after he cupped his girlfriend’s breast while the couple was taking a photo with him. The situation got so heated, the source told Cassandra Fairbanks, that others had to step in to prevent the agent from hitting the then-Vice President.”
Here’s why you’re reading this now…
While the MSM simply ignored the alleged breast-grabbing incident, Judicial Watch filed a FOIA request...
…and were told the file was destroyed.
In other words, something happened, and the Secret Service just confirmed it.
Via Judicial Watch:
Judicial Watch’s FOIA request, made on May 12, 2020, sought:
All records related to a reported incident in 2009 in which a United States Secret Service Agent reportedly was involved in an altercation with, or attempted to strike, then Vice President Joe Biden during a photo opportunity.
The records sought shall include, but not be limited to, witness statements, the Agent’s statement, victim’s statement, alleged perpetrator’s statement, incident reports, investigative reports, communications among USSS personnel regarding the incident, and disciplinary records related to the incident for the Agent in question.
In a July 13, 2020 response to Judicial Watch’s request, the Secret Service appeared to confirm that a file on the alleged incident existed at some point, asserting, “[T]here are no responsive records or documents pertaining to your request in our files,” because “the above mentioned file(s) has been destroyed” due to “retention standards.” The Secret Service added that, “[n]o additional information is available.” It did not deny the incident had occurred. In its lawsuit, Judicial Watch intends to test the Secret Service’s assertion that it destroyed all records about the incident.
“We had not been able to confirm whether the report about the alleged altercation might be true until the Secret Service itself suggested it destroyed records about the incident,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
* * *
- China To "Gradually" Sell 20% Of Its US Treasury Holdings, May Dump It All In Case Of "Military Conflict": State Media
China To “Gradually” Sell 20% Of Its US Treasury Holdings, May Dump It All In Case Of “Military Conflict”: State Media
Tyler Durden
Thu, 09/03/2020 – 21:44Ever since the early stages of the US-China trade/tech/virus/cold war four years ago, there were frequent rumors – which eventually gave way to increasingly legitimate chatter – that China was looking to go full “nuclear option” by selling some or all of its $1+ trillion of US Treasury securities, which incidentally has not been too far off the mark: as the chart below shows, after peaking in 2013, Chinese holdings of US debt have been steadily declining (and not so steadily in the aftermath of the Chinese devaluation), and are currently near the lowest level in 8 years.
In any case, while Beijing has been gradually reducing its Treasury holdings it has never shocked the market with a major liquidation; and yet this ultimate threat has now found its way into China’s premier state-run English language news source Global Times.
And while not official policy, the fact that GT on Thursday has made a US Treasury dump front page news, citing top “state-linked experts”, is cause for concern (and certainly suggests that the Fed may soon have to step in with another massive QE to purchase whatever China has to sell).
The Beijing-backed publication writes today that “China may gradually reduce its holdings of US Treasury bonds to about $800 billion from the current level of more than $1 trillion, as the ballooning US federal deficit increases default risks and the Trump administration continues its blistering attack on China” citing unnamed experts.
The facts are familiar to anyone who has been following the Sino-US trade war amid the US descent into fiscal hell, which as we noted earlier this week will result in the US budget deficit hitting a record $3.3 trillion and a record 107% debt/GDP in just 2-3 years: as the Global Times reviews, in the first six months of this year alone the world’s second-largest holder of US debts dumped some $106 billion worth of US Treasury bonds (annualized), and is looking to continue trimming its holdings “systematically” – the publication states.
A key reason stated for the liquidation is that China is anxious over risks associated with the surging debt level in the US, which is expected to actually exceed the size of the economy in 2021, which would be a first since the end of World War II. What’s worse is that as the CBO has shown, what happens over the next 3 decades is even more insane.
One expert cited in the GT report, professor at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics Xi Junyang, emphasized that “China will gradually decrease its holdings of US debt to about $800 billion under normal circumstances.”
He added in what appears the most interesting and “dire scenario” quote in the article (or we’re perhaps meant to take it as a veiled threat under the guise of a mere aside):
“But of course, China might sell all of its US bonds in an extreme case, like a military conflict.”
But as we detailed previously, such a “nuclear option” may not be that nuclear after all, since the Fed has monetized three times as much debt as China holds in the past 3 months without a glitch – meanwhile, even though dumping its US paper would result in some brief dramatic headlines, not only would it not affect the US, but would prove too self-destructive for Beijing to pursue outright (which currently calibrates and fine-tunes its exchange ratio with the help of its trillions in US reserves). Still, the fact that Beijing views such as an option as an alternative if not bargaining chip, enough to mention it again in the state-owned media, suggests that the possibility of a full-blown capital war is now at hand.
Should China proceed with this highly symbolic if largely innocuous escalation, one can only imagine what the US retaliation would be.
- It's Not "Just Property": How Looting Destroys Lives And Low-Income Neighborhoods
It’s Not “Just Property”: How Looting Destroys Lives And Low-Income Neighborhoods
Tyler Durden
Thu, 09/03/2020 – 21:20Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
It’s now become fashionable on the Left to defend looting as a means of redistributing wealth from allegedly unworthy business owners to the more-deserving looters themselves.
“It’s just property!” is the refrain, with the implication being that property owners should not defend their property with coercive means – such as calling in the police or using privately-owned weapons against looters.1
This is the philosophy behind a recent declaration from a Black Lives Matter organizer. As the New York Post reported on August 11 :
“I don’t care if somebody decides to loot a Gucci’s or a Macy’s or a Nike because that makes sure that that person eats. That makes sure that that person has clothes,” [BLM organizer] Ariel Atkins said at a rally outside the South Loop police station Monday, local outlets reported. …“That’s a reparation,” Atkins said.
A more full apologia for looting now comes in the form of a new book titled In Defense of Looting by Vicky Osterweil, who identifies herself as “a writer, editor, and agitator based in Philadelphia.”
In an interview with National Public Radio, Osterweil states :
When I use the word looting, I mean the mass expropriation of property, mass shoplifting during a moment of upheaval or riot …
…It tends to be an attack on a business, a commercial space, maybe a government building—taking those things that would otherwise be commodified and controlled and sharing them for free.
Osterweil then goes on to assert that looting is basically a poverty relief program, and it liberates the looters from having to work for a living:
It gets people what they need for free immediately, which means that they are capable of living and reproducing their lives without having to rely on jobs or a wage…
And most fundamentally of all, looting is an attack on private property itself. If only there were more looting, we could all “have things for free”:
[Looting] attacks the idea of property, and it attacks the idea that in order for someone to have a roof over their head or have a meal ticket, they have to work for a boss, in order to buy things that people just like them somewhere else in the world had to make under the same conditions. It points to the way in which that’s unjust. And the reason that the world is organized that way, obviously, is for the profit of the people who own the stores and the factories. So you get to the heart of that property relation, and demonstrate that without police and without state oppression, we can have things for free…
This sort of thing may seem convincing to those who prefer to live in the realm of pure theory. Big words like “commodify” and “oppression” might strike beginner-level dissidents as impressive. But once we start to look at the real-world details of how looting works, we quickly find that looting your local auto parts store or Nike outlet isn’t going to bring down Wall Street hedge funders any time soon. What it will do is hurt ordinary people who own businesses and work in shops that are targeted by looters. Moreover, once the smoke has cleared, we’ll find that low-income neighborhoods will suffer the most.
Specifically, there are three reasons why looting will only serve to hurt exactly the ordinary people for whom pro-looting advocates pretend to be champions.
One: Regular People Work at Looted Businesses
Retail stores provide jobs to ordinary working people, including those who lack formal education. What’s more, these jobs are often desirable jobs, offering a workplace that’s air conditioned, clean, and far safer that more dangerous jobs like driving a bus or working construction. This is especially true of high-end retail shops. But selling handbags and gadgets to rich clients doesn’t make the salesperson wealthy, even if it can provide a decent living.
When looters destroy these stores and remove their merchandise, among those most impacted are the ordinary staff members. Without any merchandise there’s nothing to sell. And with nothing to sell there’s no revenue that can be used to support a wage for the sales staff.
Looters may pat themselves on the back for “liberating” these workers from their “wage slavery,” but it’s unlikely the newly unemployed workers see things this way when they show up in the morning and find their place of employment torched and ransacked.
Two: Looting Victimizes Immigrant Families and Others Who Aren’t Exactly Members of the Ruling Class
Although many news stories about looting in recent weeks have focused on looting of high-end retail outlets in places like Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, the fact is looting more often occurs in neighborhoods where residents are working class or low-income.
And in these neighborhoods, the owners of the local shops and small businesses tend to be immigrant families and other ordinary small-time entrepreneurs who are hardly members of the Wall Street elite. According to a report on entrepreneurship in low-income areas by the Small Business Administration, self-employed workers in low-income areas are “less likely to be U.S. citizens and English speakers” relative to other areas, and have less formal education. Higher proportions of the self-employed are black and Hispanic relative to other areas, as well. Moreover, “The vast majority of self-employed workers in low-income areas operate a business in their area of residence.”2 These business owners tend to face hardship themselves. Part of the reason they live and work in a low-income neighborhood is because they have relatively less access to working capital and business loans than people in higher-income neighborhoods.
Lower-income neighborhoods are not entirely without advantages. Competition is often less robust in lower-income neighborhoods, as many larger firms prefer to not take on the added risk of placing their offices and stores in these areas. This leaves more room for smaller independent firms where owners are more willing to take on the risk in exchange for lower rents, and lower up-front operating costs. The downside comes from the higher potential for crime, including robberies, looting, and vandalism. But because they have few other choices, many entrepreneurs in these areas choose to take their chances. When they are successful, they bring to their neighborhoods more employment, and greater access to goods and services for residents.
But it is precisely these immigrant-owned, minority-owned and family businesses that tend to be most victimized by looters.
Three: Looting Hurts Low-Income Neighborhoods the Most
Naturally, at the level of the independent business, looting can be disastrous for a business owners. The notion that looting is “no big deal” because businesses often have insurance is tone deaf to the point of being laughable. Most businesses in lower-income areas can barely afford the premiums necessary to cover the replacement value of their businesses — if they can afford it at all. Many businesses are under-insured. Nor is the recovery process effortless. Months after businesses were torched in Minneapolis’ riots, “Just 20% of all riot-related insurance claims have been paid so far.” Moreover, insurance premiums are higher in areas where there is high risk of crime and looting. Now, premiums will be even higher following the latest round of riots and looting.
This, is why businesses often tend to shut down and leave riot-affected neighborhoods after being looted. Insurance doesn’t just make a business owner’s problems go away. Looting and rioting also signals to other businesses to stay away.
Over time, this means fewer businesses, fewer employers, and more urban blight. It’s why after the 1977 blackout and looting in New York City countless businesses packed up shop and never returned. These areas remained economically depressed for decades afterward.
Put another way, looting and riots lead to “divestment” in lower-income neighborhoods.
Needless to say, looting doesn’t help the situation. And it only makes poverty worse for those who think they’re liberating themselves and others by ripping off iPhones and athletic shoes.
This goes beyond just the neighborhood level as well. The recent looting in Chicago—even the looting in posh business districts—only serves to cut city-wide tax revenues:
“This downtown base of residents and business generates almost $2 billion for the City of Chicago,” [Magnificent Mile Association spokesman Adam] Skaf said. “If those types of retailers leave in the future, that leaves a huge hole in our tax base downtown and that affects the whole city.”
Those business don’t need to have locations in Chicago. There are plenty of other markets in America where looting is much more rare or even non-existent. So, many business may simply leave, and this means less tax revenue for spending on infrastructure, public transportation, and social services. In other words, it means less spending on just the sorts of programs and amenities that defenders of looting tend to want.
No, looting stores is not something about which we just shrug our shoulders and say “golly gee, it’s just property. No one got hurt. Lighten up!” Looting hurts lots of people: especially the poor, and especially those who do the most to bring capital, employment, and prosperity to lower-income neighborhoods.
- Trump Vaccine Czar Says COVID-19 Vaccine By Election Day "Very, Very Unlikely"
Trump Vaccine Czar Says COVID-19 Vaccine By Election Day “Very, Very Unlikely”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 09/03/2020 – 20:59After Dr. Fauci poured cold water on President Trump’s hopes for a COVID-19 vaccine “October surprise”, the White House vaccine czar in an interview with National Public Radio, joined the pile on.
Head of the White House’s vaccine program Moncef Slaoui, the chief adviser for the White House vaccine program, said Thursday that it was “extremely unlikely but not impossible” that a vaccine could be available by All Saint’s Day.
We have every reason to take Slaoui’s view seriously. After all, he’s not just the coordinator of the White House Program: He is (was?) also a Moderna shareholder.
While Slaoui, who is in charge of “Operation Warp Speed” the collaboration between the White House and the top private vaccine groups, said the administration’s guidance to states to prepare to distribute vaccine courses by early November was “the right thing to do” in case a vaccine was ready by that time, there’s a “very, very low chance.”
“It would be irresponsible not to be ready if that was the case,” he said.
As the NYT pointed out, Slaoui’s assertions “ran counter to the optimistic assertions in recent days from the White House that a vaccine could be ready for distribution before Election Day in November.”
During his nomination speech at the RNC, President Trump said a vaccine could be ready “before the end of the year or maybe even sooner.” And he and others have tried to project confidence in a quick victory.
Slaoui, meanwhile, confirmed that the two main candidates in “OWS” – referred to as Vaccine A and Vaccine B – are the candidates being developed by Pfizer and Moderna. Defending FDA chief Dr. Stephen Hahn’s claim that the FDA would be open to approve a vaccine for emergency use before all the Phase 3 trial data were in, Slaoui said there was “no intent” to introduce a vaccine before clinical trials were completed, and that an independent safety board would need to sign off on before any approvals, even emergency approvals, are given.
Pressed about claims that the quest for a vaccine had become “politicized”, Dr. Slaoui responded that “for us there is absolutely nothing to do with politics…Many of us may or may not be supportive of this administration. It’s irrelevant, frankly.”
- "We Should Be Concerned" – Fed Spooked By Biggest Market Crash Since March
“We Should Be Concerned” – Fed Spooked By Biggest Market Crash Since March
Tyler Durden
Thu, 09/03/2020 – 20:45US equity market crashed most since March today (Nasdaq down 6% at its worst and The Dow down over 1000pts at its nadir)…
The S&P 500’s longest streak of intraday all-time-highs since 1998 is now over…
Biggeset sell programs since June…
Source: Bloomberg
The Dow is back in the red YTD and Small Caps are back at one-month lows…
Source: Bloomberg
And VIX exploded to its highest since June…
Newly-minted options gurus suddenly flipped from gorging on calls to panic-buying puts…
Source: Bloomberg
As FANGs were fucked…
Source: Bloomberg
Apple cooked…
AAPL is once again smaller than the entire Russell 2000…
Source: Bloomberg
And Tesla twatted (into a bear market from the highs)…
We suspect this is the scene in more than a few home offices this evening:
But hey, don’t worry, CNBC had some words of advice sprinkled in throughout the session:
“…today’s pullback is a drop in the bucket”
“…what we’ve been waiting for – a healthy pause that refreshes”
“…the damage today is really not as bad as it looks”
– Bob Pisani
The Fed’s speakers didn’t help:
-
1215ET *BOSTIC: WE SHOULD BE CONCERNED ABOUT THE RISK OF ASSET BUBBLES
-
1340ET *EVANS: “I MARVEL” AT STOCK MARKET RISE DESPITE UNCERTAINTY
Are they trying to send a signal to the markets?
Credit was weaker but has been signaling an end to the exuberant bounce for over a month…
Source: Bloomberg
It appears bonds were right after all…
Source: Bloomberg
Bonds were bid with 10Y Yields plunging back to 60bps…
Source: Bloomberg
The Dollar managed to hold gains today but was very uninterested in the chaos underway in stocks…
Source: Bloomberg
Cryptos were also dumped today with Bitcoin extending its slide…
Source: Bloomberg
And Ethereum was clubbed back below $400…
Source: Bloomberg
Nothing escaped the selling (apart from bonds of course) as gold was hit (but tried to bounce back)…
And silver was hit harder…
Oil also tanked, but tried to bounce back…
And another high-flyer – Lumber – was chopped…
Source: Bloomberg
And finally, don’t say you weren’t warned that time was up…
Source: Bloomberg
As Sven Henrich points out:
“September 3rd marked the top in 1929 following a furious rally fueled by wild optimism, excessive retail speculative behavior and markets disconnecting far above the fundamentals of the economy.”
More to come?
Source: Bloomberg
-
- Pandemic Puts NYC Subway Shops On Express Track To Closure
Pandemic Puts NYC Subway Shops On Express Track To Closure
Tyler Durden
Thu, 09/03/2020 – 20:40By Jose Martinez of TheCity.nyc
As riders slowly return to the subway, they may notice more missing from station platforms and passageways than swarms of straphangers.
Many of the retail spaces scattered about hundreds of stations — from a music store famed for its Latin music collection to a tiny storefront where you could buy a pair of cheap sunglasses before walking to the beach — have closed since the onset of the pandemic in March, according to the MTA.
“I just couldn’t see hanging on,” said Lou Moskowitz, 53, whose Record Mart in the Times Square-42nd Street complex shuttered for good in June.
The MTA said that 35 of the 215 retail spaces in the subway — more than 16% of all storefronts in the system — have gone out of business in the last five-plus months. The exodus has further wrecked the finances of a transit agency suffering from a massive pandemic-driven collapse in revenue from fares, tolls and subsidies.
The late Jesse Moskowitz (right), who established Record Mart in 1958, sits with son, Lou, in an undated photo. Courtesy of Lou Moskowitz The demise of Record Mart marked the end of a business that billed itself as “the oldest record store in Manhattan” and whose subway roots dated to 1958, when Jesse Moskowitz and Bob Stack established the shop inside the 14th Street-Union Square station.
“We were holding on, and I was planning on going as long as I could,” said Lou Moskowitz, the son of Record Mart’s co-founder. “But with this pandemic, I knew we had no chance.”
It’s been a similar refrain among shopkeepers throughout the subway system. Shops have closed at the Fordham Road stop along the No. 4 line in The Bronx, at the Delancey Street/Essex Street complex on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and at Jay Street-MetroTech in Downtown Brooklyn.
At Brooklyn’s Stillwell Avenue terminal, which is set to undergo an extensive retail makeover, the Coney Island Beach Shop — which sold T-shirts, sunglasses and suntan lotion — was among those that closed.
MTA Offers REnt Breaks
Andrei Berman, an MTA spokesperson, said the agency has implemented a rent-deferral program for tenants during the “immensely challenging” coronavirus crisis.
“In the months ahead, we will work to advance a wide range of policies aimed at bringing back tenants to some of the locations in question,” he said. “[We] expect that vacancy rates will decline as customers continue to return to the system in greater numbers.”
The increase in subway storefront closures followed recent efforts by the MTA to modernize retail in the transit system in the face of declining demand for everything from newspapers to candy bars.
Berman said the push to bring in new tenants has been complicated by a pandemic that, at one point, sunk subway ridership in April by more than 93% from that month the previous year.
Commuters walk by a shuttered newsstand at the Fordham Road 4 train station in The Bronx, Aug. 31, 2020. Jose Martinez/THE CITY The latest MTA weekday ridership figures, from Aug. 31, show that just over 1.4 million people rode the subway that day — down nearly 75% from 2019.
Retail revenue amounts to a fraction of income for the MTA, which is now seeking $12 billion in emergency federal aid. Without another influx of funds from Washington, officials have warned, they will be forced into 40% cuts to bus and subway service, layoffs and postponements to needed capital upgrades.
“What they make from retail is really nothing when you look at it,” Moskowitz said. “But still, it’s something.”
At the sprawling complex that was traditionally the system’s busiest busiest — Times Square-42nd Street/Port Authority Bus Terminal logged more than 65 million riders last year — Record Mart’s seven employees watched as the ranks of straphangers dwindled.
“By May, I knew we couldn’t reopen,” Moskowitz said. “We really had no choice, because we really had no traffic.”
‘A Good Run’
Moskowitz, who declined to reveal how much he paid for Record Mart’s month-to-month lease, said MTA officials tried to get him to stay. But he couldn’t be convinced.
“I know my dad, he would have been, ‘Just shut it down,’” he said of his father, who died in 2012. “As much as it’s a legacy, I do feel bad about it. But we had a good run.”
Record Mart reopened in 2007 after closing in 1999 for a renovation of the Times Square subway complex. The shop remained popular with fans of Latin music and vinyl, though Moskowitz said business had been shrinking for years.
In 2019, he started Record Mart Hi-Fi, an online offshoot specializing in high-end audio devices. A letter thanking customers “for the privilege of serving our fellow New Yorkers” is posted in the window of the now-vacant Times Square shop.
Moskowitz said he stopped by the storefront a few weeks ago and “saw maybe 40, 50 people” passing on the way to and from the 42nd Street Shuttle at about 1 p.m.
“It’s eerie,” he said. “You realize how fragile things are.”
- China Passenger Vehicle And Heavy Duty Car Sales Rebound Sharply In August
China Passenger Vehicle And Heavy Duty Car Sales Rebound Sharply In August
Tyler Durden
Thu, 09/03/2020 – 20:20The world’s biggest auto market looks as though it is finally on the mends. Or, at least, that’s what the numbers say.
China posted a sharp rebound in both total vehicles and heavy duty vehicles for August after sales were mired throughout the end of Q1 and the beginning of Q2 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Shockwaves from the pandemic continued throughout the global market, where sales fell off sharply in almost every major market.
If China is truly the leading indicator, a V-shaped recovery could be in store for the rest of the world in coming months. China’s vehicle sales rose to 2.18 million units in August, according to preliminary data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers and Bloomberg.
This marks a 11.3% year over year gain and follows a 16.4% rise for auto sales in July. Still, passenger vehicles are down 9.7% for the year to 14.5 million units.
And it looks as though the recovery may not be over just yet: the CAAM has said it “expects auto sales to rebound in Sept. as boosted by Beijing International Automotive Exhibition to be held late Sept.”
Sales of heavy duty cars were also up 75% year over year in August to 128,000 units. This puts 2020’s sales at 1.1 million units which is – unbelievably – higher than the same period for any year in the past.
Of course, this shouldn’t be too big of a surprise. China has been literally using heavy machinery since the beginning of its quarantine to physically wall in its citizens and take measures like filling tunnels in and out of Wuhan with dirt.
Regardless, the news caused a sharp rise in many China-based vehicle and machinery names overnight. Jefferies analysts had raised their price target on Sinotruk by 11% on Tuesday following the company’s earnings report, citing not only its good quarter, but a tailwind from the country’s continued infrastructure investments.
Here are some of the other names in China that popped last night, according to figures from Bloomberg:
- Dongfeng Motor rises as much as 1.5% in Hong Kong
- Sany Heavy +5.1% in Shanghai to all-time high
- Sinotruk gains as much as 8.9% in Hong Kong
- Liugong Machinery +1.6% in Shenzhen
- Weichai Power +2.2% in Shenzhen and +1.5% in Hong Kong
- Zoomlion-A +4.5% in Shenzhen and H shares +3.3%
- Why We Need Landlords
Why We Need Landlords
Tyler Durden
Thu, 09/03/2020 – 20:00By Bradley Thomas of Mises.org,
A tweet by the widely followed “Existential Comics” account recently made the rounds. It might be easy to dismiss, but with more than 345,000 followers, the account apparently appeals to a lot of like-minded people.
The tweet caught my eye in large part because of how many people liked what amounts to a very economically ignorant and naïve “pop quiz.”
The point of the sarcasm, of course, was to demonize any greedy people who believe in private ownership of housing. How coldhearted you must be to support landlord ownership of housing! Don’t you know greedy landlords will just rent to the richest and leave the poor homeless? That’s what the profit motive does!
The only acceptable answer for any decent person, of course, would be for the housing to be “distributed” in a more equitable manner. Apparently, we are not supposed to think about the great inequality between the rulers granted the power to distribute such important resources like housing and those reliant on the whims of the rulers for their housing.
Nevertheless, the profit motive is clearly the villain in this story, under the belief that a more equitable means of distribution is desirable.
Below are three main points demonstrating the fallacies contained in this tweet.
It Begins at the Ending
The most obvious problem with this “pop quiz” is that the starting point is one in which 100 houses already exist. But houses don’t just exist in a state of nature. They need to be produced, using scarce resources like labor, land, lumber, sheetrock, and many others.
The houses must be produced before they can be “distributed.” The pop quiz ignores this, instead just assuming the houses exist with no recognition of how they got there in the first place.
Moreover, isn’t it convenient that the “quiz” also assumes a hundred houses on an island of a hundred people?
Why did the builders choose to build a hundred houses? The easy answer is that there are a hundred people on the island.
But so what?
Not everybody wants to live in a house by themselves. Suppose that the hundred people on the island consist of twenty families of four. In that case, twenty houses would have been sufficient, and the other seventy-five would be sitting empty.
There must be some coordination process involved in communicating to the builders how many houses the island’s inhabitants desire. This process is also just assumed away in the pop quiz.
The Coordination and Economic Calculation Problems
This leads us to the next major issues of the “pop quiz,” namely its ignorance of the coordination and economic calculation problems.
As stated above, why would builders choose to build one hundred houses? What if instead twenty-five or fifty would be more in line with consumer preferences? Without a profit motive incentivizing the efficient use of scarce resources with alternative uses, combined with a price system based on private ownership of property, there is no way for producers to coordinate their plans to align with the preferences of consumers.
Prices will communicate to producers where scarce resources are most urgently demanded by consumers, while the profit motive encourages the most efficient uses of resources to meet that demand. If too many houses are being built, prices will fall and incentivize producers to invest in other lines of production. If too few houses are being built, prices will be bid up and encourage more home building. That’s the profit motive at work.
Without this process of coordination, how are the preferences of consumers to be determined? This is among the questions Existential Comics (EC) doesn’t want you to ask.
Even if the problem of coordinating the right number of houses to be built can be overcome, what about how to build those houses? Technologically, houses can be built with any number of materials. But without markets in the means of production, how can the home builders economize on their construction?
In other words, they can choose from bricks, lumber, aluminum or vinyl siding, any number of metals or PVC for plumbing, etc. Without prices in the means of production, builders might, say, choose titanium or platinum for the plumbing in the homes. This would divert those scarce materials away from more highly valued uses such as life-saving medical devices.
Society would be deprived of a far more valued use of these materials, because they would be used up in the construction of the housing, when cheaper and more abundant steel or iron would have been sufficient.
It’s the very efficiency in the pursuit of profit that EC demonizes that helps minimize opportunity costs and therefore ensures that society is not being deprived of goods it more urgently needs.
Which System of Distribution?
All economic goods are by definition scarce and must be distributed according to some system.
From his “pop quiz,” we can reasonably infer that EC proposes empowering a dictator or other ruling body to evenly distribute resources. He somehow feels this is more fair and just than a system based upon private property, exchange, and the profit motive.
But how is that fair? Those with relationships closest to the rulers would leverage those crony relations, while others would bribe the decision-maker to get preferential treatment. One hopes that EC is not so naïve as to think that granting individuals such broad powers would not corrupt them. After all, if he thinks capitalist landlords are greedy and cannot be trusted, what makes him think that planning bureau chiefs will not also game the system for personal gain?
Furthermore, as Hayek taught us, such positions of power would be sought out by the very people who desire that kind of power over others. Whether it’s corrupt people seeking those positions of power or people being corrupted by them, it surely won’t be long before such power would be abused.
Society and the economy are not so simple that there is always a perfect match between available resources and consumer needs, as in EC’s overly simplistic pop quiz. The planning boards would have to make decisions distributing scarce resources that favor some and leave others out. This is the perfect recipe for corruption, and not more just in any sense of the word than a system of production and exchange based on private property.
Conclusion
The profit motive is a popular target of progressives and socialists. But the criticisms are often based on misunderstandings of how a market economy based on private property works. One cannot just decree an even “distribution” of scarce resources like housing without considering how those houses were produced in the first place.
Moreover, market economies based on production and exchange of private property have proven to be the best creator of wealth and the greatest enemy of poverty the world has ever known. Efficiencies driven by the profit motive are what is responsible for the massive eradication of poverty and astonishing improvements in our standard of living and quality of life.
People like Existential Comics do us a grave disservice by taking it for granted.
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