- Ferrari Touts "Strong Order Book", Expects To Outperform In 2H 2020 Despite Auto Industry Implosion
Ferrari Touts “Strong Order Book”, Expects To Outperform In 2H 2020 Despite Auto Industry Implosion
If there’s one topic we have covered widely since the coronavirus pandemic started, it has been the collapse of the auto industry.
Over the last week we have detailed how used car prices will likely cripple what little interest in new cars remains, how dealers are scrambling to desperately offer incentives and how ships full of vehicles are being turned away at port cities due to a lack of space and inventory glut.
But, if there’s one silver lining to global central banks widening the wealth gap, its that the super-rich still have plenty of cash to buy exotic vehicles. While demand may be tepid from average run-of-the-mill car buyers, the wealthy have kept a bid under the price of luxury automobiles, Ferrari reported this week.
The maker of the $1.74 million Monza supercar said this week that its order book is “strong” regardless of a 7 week shutdown at its Italian plants, according to Bloomberg. The company’s CFO said on Monday that deliveries in Q1 were actually up 5% from the year prior.
Despite lowing its 2020 guide, the company is predicting a recovery in the second half of the year. The company says it could see faster revenue and profit growth than expected with the recovery as a tailwind.
Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Michael Dean said: “Evidence from the prior financial crisis suggests demand should remain robust. However, the main risk is that production will again be shuttered if there’s a second wave of Covid-19 infections in Italy.”
As Ferrari returns to work, the company may wind up asking employees to work Saturdays and shorten summer holidays in order to catch up with its order book.
Plants in Maranello and Modena will be back to full production on May 8 and Premier Giuseppe Conte is working toward a gradual re-opening of the country’s economy after an almost two month halt once it was discovered that Italy was a epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak.
Despite some cancellations, Ferrari says the numbers are “nothing that we would deem to be alarming”. The company introduced five new models in 2019 and boosted sales to more than 10,000 units per year for the first time in the company’s history. Ferrari delivered 2,728 cars in Q1.
Massimo Vecchio, an analyst for UBI Banca said the company’s results show “strong resiliency”. At the same time, automakers like Daimler and Renault have withdrawn guidance completely.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/06/2020 – 02:45 - France To Use Existing Surveillance Grid To Enforce Social Distancing, Mask Wearing; Report
France To Use Existing Surveillance Grid To Enforce Social Distancing, Mask Wearing; Report
Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,
France will use its existing network of surveillance cameras to monitor how many people are wearing masks and track how citizens are complying with social distancing after its coronavirus lockdown is eased next week, according to reports.
The BBC notes that “The resort city of Cannes on the Côte d’Azur has trialled the monitoring software, installed at outdoor markets and on buses.”
Datakalab, the French firm behind the software says its algorithms “can be incorporated into existing surveillance systems in other public spaces, such as hospitals, stations, airports and shopping centres.”
The company claims that the software being installed to work with existing cameras does not violate EU data privacy laws because “No image is stored or transmitted.”
Cannes Mayor David Lisnard said, “This technology doesn’t identify people but just gives us mathematical analysis to meet people’s needs.”
So, essentially, it’s ok to track you everywhere you go to ensure you comply, so long as they don’t keep your picture on a hard drive.
France already announced that face masks will be compulsory on public transport and in schools from next week. The country’s lockdown has been more severe than most, with anyone traveling outside their home needing papers approved by the authorities. Anyone found outside without the relevant documents is subject to a fine of €135 upwards.
The case in France highlights how the framework of surveillance that has already been in place and rapidly expanding for two decades is now being used to enforce the removal of freedoms.
We also recently highlighted how tech companies all over the world are developing more sophisticated tools that will allow law enforcement to more effectively police social distancing rules.
We are so used to surveillance now that for many it doesn’t seem that much more of a change to simply give over total compliance and acceptance of a panopticon world.
Coronavirus was just the crisis need to institute permanent societal lockdown using already existing tools, as well as new technologies that can be slotted into those systems already in place.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/06/2020 – 02:00 - Chinese Buyers Flee Hong Kong Real Estate In Major Hit To World's Priciest Property Market
Chinese Buyers Flee Hong Kong Real Estate In Major Hit To World’s Priciest Property Market
Mainland Chinese are no fools. They’re shunning commercial real estate deals in Hong Kong as a deep recession unfolds.
According to Bloomberg, citing a new CBRE Group Inc. report, there were no mainland Chinese buyers for property transactions greater than HK$77 million ($10 million) in 1Q20. This was a sharp difference from several years ago when bidding wars drove property prices higher.
“A lot of mainland buyers are taking a step back because of the economic outlook and the conflicts that made them feel unwelcome,” said Reeves Yan, head of capital markets at CBRE.
Preliminary data on Monday showed Hong Kong’s economy crashed in 1Q20, with the worst economic contraction ever, printing -8.9% YoY. The data suggest a further plunge in economic activity will be seen in 2Q as more of the lockdown was captured in the quarter.
Yan said capital controls imposed by Beijing on money flowing in and out of China had also damaged the commercial real estate market.
As shown in the chart below, there was a confluence of events that resulted in the decline of buyers:
The decline of mainland participation also resulted in a price slump, data from the Rating and Valuation Department showed. A decades-long trendline was recently broken. A peak in prices was seen about a year after the global slowdown started, and about half a year after the trade war gained momentum. In February, prices fell 8.5% from a year earlier.
Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-Po warned on Monday that a “deep recession” has made the “economic situation very challenging.”
Iris Pang, Greater China economist at ING, said there are some signs the virus spread across Asia has slowed but warned: “social distancing will continue to hurt catering and shopping.” She said the risk of more protests is increasing for “the summer holidays.”
A recovery of Hong Kong’s collapsed tourism industry could take years. Chinese tourists began to shun the city when protests erupted last summer. Then when the pandemic unfolded earlier this year, mainlanders completely abandoned the area. The decline of mainlanders means a reduction in foot traffic at the world’s most expensive shopping mall, located at Hong Kong’s Times Square in the center of Causeway Bay, reported Bloomberg. This is the area where mainlanders would come to pick up expensive watches and discounted cosmetics.
The Tiffany & Co. store at Times Square in Hong Kong. h/t Bloomberg Mainlander visitors plummeted 53% in December over the prior year, mainly because of the protest. However, the virus, which resulted in strict stay-at-home orders, is likely to show visitor data near zero for early 2020.
“Many retailers are saying it’s a disaster,” said Nicholas Bradstreet, managing director of at Savills Plc. “In the last 10 days, their sales have been down 70% to 80% week-on-week. There’s very little traffic into the shops” at retail districts like Central, Causeway Bay and Tsim Sha Tsui, he added.
Times Square fronts Russell Street, where commercial real estate prices are equivalent to New York City’s and is some of the most expensive in the world. Prada, operating a store in the retail district, recently got out of its HK$9 million ($1.2 million) per month lease as the area now resembles a ghost town.
“Causeway Bay is very quiet now. It used to have a lot of traffic,” said Wong, a salesperson at a retail store in the area. “With the scarcity of face masks, people would rather not go out at all.”
Times Square in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong.
h/t BloombergThe retail downturn in Hong Kong is due to the lack of tourists from China, has stressed out landlords, and dented commercial real estate prices as we noted above.
Mall owners, including Times Square’s Wharf Real Estate Investment Co., is facing rent pressures and rising vacancies. The shares of the company have corrected about 15% since late January.
The deepening economic contraction will undoubtedly be shown in 2Q20. This will continue to pressure real estate prices as it now appears the prospects of a V-shaped recovery are fading.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/06/2020 – 01:00 - Escobar: Get Ready For The Next Game-Changer – The Gold-Backed Digital Yuan
Escobar: Get Ready For The Next Game-Changer – The Gold-Backed Digital Yuan
Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
A new, radical paradigm shift is in progress. The U.S. economy may shrink as much as 40% in the first semester of 2020. China, already the world’s largest economy by PPP for a few years now, may soon become the world’s largest economy even in exchange rate terms.
The post-Planet Lockdown world – still a hazy mirage – may well need a post-Planet Lockdown currency. And that’s where a serious candidate steps into the fray: the fiat digital yuan.
Last month, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) confirmed that a group of top banks started trials in electronic payment in four different Chinese regions using the new digital yuan. Yet there’s no timetable yet for the official launch of what is called the Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DCEP).
The man with the plan is PBOC governor Yi Gang. He has confirmed that apart from the trials in Suzhou, Xiong’an, Chengdu and Shenzhen, the PBOC is also testing hypothetical scenarios for the 2022 Winter Olympics.
While DCEP, according to Yi, “has made very good progress,” he insists the PBOC will be “cautious in terms of risk control, especially to study anti money-laundering and ‘know your customer’ requirements to incorporate in the design and system of DCEP.”
DCEP should be interpreted as the road map for China leading to an eventual, even more groundbreaking replacement of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. China is already ahead in the digital currency sweepstakes: the sooner DCEP is launched the better to convince the world, especially the Global South, to tag along.
The PBOC is developing the system with four top state-owned banks as well as payment behemoths Tencent and Ant Financial.
A mobile app developed by the Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) is already circulating on WeChat. This is in effect an interface linked to DCEP. Moreover, 19 restaurants and retail establishments including Starbucks, McDonald’s and Subway are part of the pilot testing.
China is advancing fast on the whole digital spectrum. A Blockchain Service Network (BSN) was launched not only for domestic but also for global trade purposes. A large committee is supervising BSN, including executives from the PBOC, Baidu and Tencent, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).
Backed by gold
So what does this all mean?
Well connected banking sources in Hong Kong have told me Beijing is not interested for the yuan to replace the U.S. dollar – for all the interest across the Global South in bypassing it, especially now that the petrodollar is in a coma.
The official Beijing position is that the U.S. dollar should be replaced by an IMF-approved Special Drawing Rights (SDR) basket of currencies (dollar, euro, yuan, yen). That would eliminate the heavy burden of the yuan as the sole reserve currency.
But that may be just a diversionist tactic in an environment of all-out information war. A basket of currencies under the IMF still implies U.S. control – not exactly what China wants.
The meat of the matter is that a digital, sovereign yuan may be backed by gold. That’s not confirmed – yet. Gold could serve as a direct back up; to back bonds; or just lay there as collateral. What’s certain is that once Beijing announces a digital currency backed by gold, it will be like the U.S. dollar being struck by lightning.
Under this new framework, nations won’t need to export more to China than they import so they have enough yuan to trade. And Beijing won’t have to keep printing yuan electronically – and artificially, as in the case of the U.S. dollar – to meet trade demands.
The digital yuan will be effectively backed up by the massive amount of Made in China goods and services – and not by a transoceanic Empire of 800 Bases. And the value of the digital yuan will be decided by the market – as it happens with bitcoin.
This whole process has been years in the making, part of serious discussions started already in the late 2000s inside BRICS summit meetings, especially by Russia and China – the core strategic partnership inside the BRICS.
Considering multiple strategies to progressively bypass the U.S. dollar, starting with bilateral trade in their own currencies, Russia and China, for instance, set up a Russia-Chian RMB Cooperation Fund three years ago.
Beijing’s strategy is carefully calibrated, like playing go long-term. Apart from methodically stockpiling gold in massive quantities (just like Russia) for seven years now, Beijing has been campaigning for a wider use of SDR while making sure to not position the yuan as a strategic competitor.
But now the post-Planet Lockdown environment is shaping up as ideal for Beijing to make a move. Even before the onset of the Covid-19 crisis the predominant feeling among the leadership was that China is under a full spectrum attack by the United States government. Hybrid War already reaching fever pitch implies bilateral relations will only get worse, not better.
So when we have China as the world’s largest economy by both PPP and exchange rate; still the strongest growing major economy, barring the first semester of 2020; productive, innovative, efficient and on track to reach a higher technological level with the Made in China 2025 program; and capable of winning the “people’s war” against Covid-19 in record time, all the necessary elements seem to be in place.
But then, there’s soft power. Beijing needs to have the Global South on its side. The United States government knows it very well; no wonder the current hysteria is all about demonizing China as “guilty” on all – unproved – counts of fostering and lying about Covid-19.
An “impeding arrival”
A key advantage of a sovereign digital yuan is that Beijing does not need to float a paper yuan – which by the way is being sidelined all across China itself, as virtually everyone is switching to electronic payment.
The digital yuan, using blockchain technology, will automatically float – thus bypassing the U.S.-controlled global financialized casino.
The amount of sovereign digital currency is fixed. That in itself eliminates a plague: quantitative easing (QE), as in helicopter money. And that leaves the sovereign digital currency as the preferred medium for trade, with currency transfers unimpeded by geography and, the icing on the cake, without banks charging outrageous fees as intermediaries.
Of course there will be pushback. As in non-stop demonization of neo-Orwellian China for straying away from the whole purpose of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies – which is to have freedom from a centralized structure via decentralized ownership. There will be howls of horror at the PBOC potentially capable of seizing anyone’s digital funds or turning off a wallet if the owner displeases the CCP.
China is on it, but the U.S., UK, Russia and India are also on their way to launch their own crypto-currencies. For obvious reasons, the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), the Central Bank of Central Banks, is very much aware that the future is now. Their research with over 50 Central Banks is unmistakable: we are facing an “impeding arrival”. But who will take the Biggest Prize?
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/06/2020 – 00:05 - California Liberals Using Corona-Crisis To Transform State
California Liberals Using Corona-Crisis To Transform State
California liberals – the majority of lawmkers, have been ‘propelled by the urgency of the coronavirus crisis’ in order to enact various facets of their agenda, according to the New York Times.
In addition to letting nearly 10,000 inmates out of overcrowded jails and prisons over the last few weeks, and eliminating cash bail for most crimes, the state has also been housing more of the homeless population, while providing laptop computers to children in poor and rural areas of the most populous state in the nation in order to facilitate distance learning.
And while the above measures are supposed to be temporary, California’s left wing is pushing to make the changes permanent – calling this the ‘new normal’ since ‘normal wasn’t working.’
In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric M. Garcetti has proposed using the crisis as a catalyst to achieve free higher education and to mitigate inequality. Invoking Franklin D. Roosevelt and the social welfare programs that he championed, Mr. Garcetti said, “the shock to our economy and our lives recalls the scale and the challenges faced by the generation who sacrificed through the Great Depression and World War II.” –New York Times
“Whether you are talking about homelessness or whether you are talking about the criminal justice system and incarceration, we are doing things today that should have been done a long time ago,” said former San Francisco DA who is now running for the same position in Los Angeles.
“The pandemic has forced a lot of things that were being talked about to actually take place at a very rapid pace,” he added. “The reset button was pushed, and I don’t see us coming back.”
Still, with the nation’s highest poverty rate some analysts have begun to question whether a ‘liberal utopia’ is possible in the face of budget shortfalls and dwindling tax revenues. As the Times notes: “Already, parts of a progressive agenda formulated months ago when California’s coffers were full — financing medical care for undocumented immigrants and providing greater access to child care are two examples — may now need to be scaled back.“
As for prison releases – advocates for ending mass incarceration have used the pandemic top push for more inmate releases – arguing that America incarcerates too many people. They’ve argued that the high costs of maintaining the prisons will come under great strain as state and local budgets collapse.
“With the safe release of a few thousand more people, and maintaining these declines permanently, California could come out of this crisis with the ability to do the previously impossible: close a prison,” wrote former SF prosecutor Lenore Anderson, president of Californians for Safety and Justice.
And in Los Angeles, thousands of homeless have been moved indoors since the pandemic began spreading in the city.
Longstanding shelters like the Union Rescue Mission, which has faced an outbreak among its residents and staff — two people have died — have had to reduce their capacity to comply with social distancing guidelines.
But a program backed by FEMA called Project Roomkey has picked up the slack, opening up thousands of motel rooms for older homeless residents. –New York Times
“It’s unfortunate it took a pandemic, but I’m thankful everyone is responding the way they are,” said Andy Bales, who runs the Union Resecue Mission in Los Angeles and has worked with the homeless for decades. “It absolutely has energized and mobilized our city, county and state in a way that we have been crying out for a long time.”
California Republicans, meanwhile, insist that the state needs to hold back spending and reopen the state – which has experienced far fewer coronavirus deaths than New York and other states on the East Coast.
Read the rest of the report here.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/05/2020 – 23:45 - Twitter's New Rules Urging Users Not To Curse Will Likely Spark Another Wave Of Censorship
Twitter’s New Rules Urging Users Not To Curse Will Likely Spark Another Wave Of Censorship
Twitter – the very same platform that suspended us permanently for accurately predicting that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was likely at the middle of the ongoing global pandemic – is now taking its censorship to ludicrous levels.
The service is now going to be asking users to “reconsider” responses to other users that include slurs, epithets or swear words, according to Bloomberg.
We are all but certain this voluntary-sounding and discretionarily-enforced infringement on free speech will eventually lead to yet another wave of bans and suspensions for anyone whose ideology doesn’t fit the far left mold that Jack Dorsey and his Silicon Valley cronies are peddling that day of the week.
The company Tweeted on Tuesday, describing a new warning it will be issuing users who choose to use such language: “When things get heated, you may say things you don’t mean. This new prompt gives you the option to revise your reply before it’s published.”
When things get heated, you may say things you don’t mean. To let you rethink a reply, we’re running a limited experiment on iOS with a prompt that gives you the option to revise your reply before it’s published if it uses language that could be harmful.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) May 5, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
And of course, the new “experiment” comes just 6 months before a national election. The experiment also serves as a stark reminder that Twitter will be scanning the replies of all of its 166 million users every time they post something.
It is the latest move in an increasingly alarming shift from the social media company to try and control the information that is posted on its platform. Not unlike what Prager U alleged against Google during their legal dispute, Twitter appears to us to want the benefits of being a public forum, while only taking on the liabilities of being a private publisher.
For now, users will still be able to send their original responses after being prompted, Bloomberg reported.
And in related news, there’s still no edit button.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/05/2020 – 23:25 - Researcher On Cusp Of COVID-19 Breakthrough Killed In Bizarre Murder-Suicide
Researcher On Cusp Of COVID-19 Breakthrough Killed In Bizarre Murder-Suicide
A University of Pittsburgh researcher working on a coronavirus project was fatally shot on Saturday at his home in Ross Township, while associate Hao Gu, 46, was found dead in a car approximately 100 yards away of what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot.
The researcher, 37-year-oild Bing Liu, was found shot multiple times in the head, neck and torso around Noon on Saturday. Nothing was stolen from the townhouse and there was no forced entry, according to the Post Gazette. He worked in the college’s department of computational and systems biology at the Pitt School of Medicine.
“Bing was on the verge of making very significant findings toward understanding the cellular mechanisms that underlie SARS-CoV-2 infection and the cellular basis of the following complications,” the department announced in a written statement, adding “We will make an effort to complete what he started in an effort to pay homage to his scientific excellence.”
Liu’s expertise was developing computational models, simulation and analysis techniques to study the dynamics of biological systems – in some cases using machine learning techniques to understand cellular processes, according to his bio.
He was described as an outstanding teacher and mentor.
“He was a very talented individual, extremely intelligent and hard-working,” said the head of his department, Ivet Bahar. “He has been contributing to several scientific projects, publishing in high-profile journals. He was someone whom we all liked very much, a very gentle, very helpful, kind person, very generous.”
“We are all shocked to learn what happened to him. This was very unexpected,” she added.
…Mr. Liu has co-authored 30-plus publications, including four in 2020. Ms. Behar said he had just begun research on the novel coronavirus.
“He was just starting to obtain interesting results,” she said. “He was sharing with us, trying to understand the mechanism of infection, so we will hopefully continue what he was doing.”’ –Post Gazette
“His loss will be felt throughout the entire scientific community,” said the university in a statement.
The motive in the shooting is unknown and the investigation is ongoing. A formal ruling from the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office regarding the cause and manner of Gu’s death is pending, according to the report.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/05/2020 – 23:05 - Scientist Whose Doomsday Models Sparked Global Lockdown Resigns After Breaking Quarantine To Bang Married Lover
Scientist Whose Doomsday Models Sparked Global Lockdown Resigns After Breaking Quarantine To Bang Married Lover
Professor Neil Ferguson – whose dire coronavirus predictions prompted worldwide lockdown measures still in place – broke his own advice on the need for strict social distancing to hook up with his married lover, according to the Telegraph.
Neil Ferguson and Antonia Staats On at least two occasions, Antonia Staats, 38, travelled across London from her home in the south of the capital to spend time with the Government scientist, nicknamed Professor Lockdown.
The 51-year-old had only just finished a two-week spell self-isolating after testing positive for coronavirus.
Prof Ferguson told the Telegraph: “I accept I made an error of judgment and took the wrong course of action. I have therefore stepped back from my involvement in Sage [the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies]. –Telegraph
“I acted in the belief that I was immune, having tested positive for coronavirus, and completely isolated myself for almost two weeks after developing symptoms,” he said, adding “I deeply regret any undermining of the clear messages around the continued need for social distancing to control this devastating epidemic. The Government guidance is unequivocal, and is there to protect all of us.”
Ferguson, who resigned from his Government advisory position on Tuesday, predicted that up to 500,000 Britons and 2.2 million in the US would die without measures. Somehow, Sweden – which enacted virtually no measures to mitigate the virus. has a lower per-capita mortality rate than the UK, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands – all of which enacted lockdown measures.
And while his computer models were flat-wrong, Ferguson – who leads the team at Imperial College London, has frequently appeared on media to support the lockdown and “very intensive social distancing” measures.
Of note, Ferguson and Staats hooked up on March 30 – the same day he gave a public warning that the one-week-old lockdown measures would need to remain in place until June.
Staats – a left-wing campaigner, visited again on April 8, despite telling friends that she thought her husband might have come down with coronavirus.
She and her husband live together with their two children in a £1.9 million home, but are understood to be in an open marriage. She has told friends about her relationship with Prof Ferguson, but does not believe their actions to be hypocritical because she considers the households to be one.
But one week before the first tryst, Dr Jenny Harries, the deputy chief medical officer, and Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, clarified during the daily Downing Street press conference that couples not living together must stay apart during lockdown. –Telegraph
“He has peculiarly breached his own guidelines, and for an intelligent man I find that very hard to believe. It risks undermining the Government’s lockdown message,” said Sir. Iain Duncan Smith.
Meanwhile, over 9,000 fines have been issued to quarantine violators in England and Wales during the lockdown – while Scotland’s chief medical officer, Dr. Catherine Calderwood, made two trips to her second home during the lockdown, resulting in her resignation.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/05/2020 – 23:01 - America Doesn't Have A Justice System Anymore
America Doesn’t Have A Justice System Anymore
Authored by Kurt Schlichter via Townhall.com,
The good news is that you might get out of future jury duty, because when you are asked under oath about your own biases during a federal criminal case jury selection you would have to answer honestly by responding, “Your Honor, I don’t trust a damn thing anyone in the FBI says.”
If the heirs of Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., were to go up on the stand and testify, the recent disgraceful revelations about how their bosses tried to frame LTG Mike Flynn mean you would be entirely correct to grant them the same credibility as the dude caught wearing a black cape, a Lone Ranger mask, and a nametag that says “Willie Sutton” while tip-toeing out of First National carrying a big sack with a dollar sign on it as the alarm goes off.
Oh, and if an FBI agent asks if he can ask you some questions, try not to burst into laughter before you reply, “No, I assert my right to remain silent” and call your lawyer.
And this sorry state of affairs is all the FBI’s fault.
Every bit of it. At one time it was the pride of American law enforcement, a symbol of integrity, honesty and incredible courage under fire. But now when we think of the FBI in “action,” we think of a couple dozen special agents decked out in full Delta Farce chic dragging an elderly gadfly out of bed in his PJs after making sure to tip-off CNN that this high-risk op was about to go down.
Way to go, guys.
The FBI had an incredible legacy of honor and respect and took a giant Schiff on it.
Much like only socialism could make an island full of Cubans poor, or the Golden State a hellhole, only the choice of the liberal FBI leadership to go all in on using the power we entrusted them with to instead do the dirty work of the Democratic establishment could wreck the legacy of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Good job. Right now, J. Edgar Hoover is wrapped in a sleek black cocktail dress, turning over in his grave.
It’s all falling apart, the result of the dogged untangling of this abomination by super-lawyer Sidney Powell and a few actual journalists who have pieced together this grotesque conspiracy.
Comey’s FBI decided that they didn’t like the American people’s choice for president so they lied and cheated to spy on him and his campaign, collaborated to spray him and his administration with a golden shower of lies that they knew were lies, and then, when all that failed, decided to try to set-up an innocent man to be fired or tossed in prison for the crime of being in the opposite political camp.
My favorite part is how those bastards were so arrogant that they wrote all this down, like a Bond villain who casually explains his entire plan to 007 because he’s positive that the spy is just moments away from being taken away and killed by his henchmen. And it worked out just as well in real life.
Until Attorney General Barr forced them too, the FBI hid the FBI document that said the FBI was trying to set him up even though the Constitution requires that any potentially exculpatory evidence be turned over to the accused. But hey, I guess laws and rules and stuff only exist to be used against the enemies of the elite and its agents. For the elite, they are mere guidelines. And, of course, when they break them it is no biggie. That looming doofus James Comey handed off classified material to his pals to leak to the media. You’d go to jail, but he gets tongue-bathed by the lib media. Andrew McCabe chooses to lie again and again in an investigation. Oh well, the IG is going to write a stinging report about his naughtiness. That’ll teach him. Telling lies under oath to the FISA court? Don’t do it again *wink wink*.
But those guys are special. You and the people who agree with you politically aren’t. That’s why the FBI leadership conspired to maneuver LTG Flynn into a crime that isn’t a crime – “perjury” is a crime only if the statement is material to an investigation of a crime and here there was admittedly no crime to investigate – and why they insist that he’s got to do time. Who cares if he is a 33-year veteran of our nation’s wars? LTG Flynn should have guaranteed himself immunity by being a skeevy bureaucratic hack or an illegal alien.
And let’s not forget the crimes of the Mueller gang, that team of consummate pros that we were dutifully informed by the rump-bussing media was made up of the bestest and the brightest of American law enforcement. It was not bad enough that they threatened to prosecute of LTG Flynn’s son on false charges to coerce a guilty plea and cooperation again Trump, et. al. No, they then hid the fact that they made this promise to LTG Flynn by not putting it in the plea agreement as mandated by law. That way, as honest ex-prosecutor Andrew McCarthy figured out, they ensured that when they put LTG Flynn up to testify against a someone from Trumpworld, maybe even the president himself, the jury would never know the real reason LTG Flynn pleaded guilty – that he was forced to protect his family from false charges. They did this intending to lie to future juries.
For us, this would be obstruction of justice and other crimes. For them, it will be nothing. The liberal elite will celebrate their aggressive protection of the elite status quo, the garbage media will nod in approval at their innovative dissident-removal strategy, and they will never, ever be prosecuted.
Sorry folks, none of them will ever see a day in jail. I hope I am wrong. I hope William Barr and John “Mind Flayer” Durham will see that these criminals are prosecuted for these outrageous crimes. But I don’t believe it will happen. Our justice system is really two justice systems, one for them and one for us, which means that we have no justice system at all.
That’s more than just galling. It’s poisonous. A free society cannot exist like this long and remain a free society. These people, who we trusted with the most solemn of duties, betrayed their oaths and betrayed us for grubby political advantage. This was not done for some higher purpose. It was not some misguided pursuit of justice by frustrated public servants who were willing to bend some rules to right some wrongs. These people were serving only themselves and their self-interest, hoping that when they brought down the Republican administration the American people elected, they would personally benefit from the largesse of the Democratic administration that replaced it.
They are worse than the gangsters the FBI became famous chasing. These disgraces, who frame political opponents, pretended to be public servants upholding their oaths while their criminal treachery served only their cheesy ambition. At least Willie Sutton was honest enough to admit (perhaps apocryphally) that he robbed banks because “That’s where the money is.”
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/05/2020 – 22:45 - "We Ask For Help But It Never Comes": Dead Are Left To Rot, Then Buried In Mass Graves, As Coronavirus Overwhelms Brazil
“We Ask For Help But It Never Comes”: Dead Are Left To Rot, Then Buried In Mass Graves, As Coronavirus Overwhelms Brazil
Because of its size – both geographically and population-wise, as well as its economic heft – Brazil is often compared to the US. And when it comes to the progression of the coronavirus, it’s probably one of only a handful of countries (one other being perhaps India) where an apples-to-apples comparison might be most relevant.
Fortunately for Americans, President Trump has done a much more effective job at combating the virus in the US than his Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro – a former far-right Congressman known to some as “the Tropical Trump”. Bolsonaro has infamously continued to deny the virus’s severity, dismissing it as “a little flu”, while Brazil continues to post some of the lowest testing rates in the world.
This has allowed the virus to explode without much resistance, leading researchers at the University of Sao Paolo to project that more than 1.6 million Brazilians have likely already been infected (out of a population of roughly 209 million). In some of Brazil’s poorest, most remote villages, the outbreak has overwhelmed health-care systems.
Many corpses have been left inside homes for more than a day after death until they could be collected, a scenario that briefly played out in parts of Italy.
An expansive WSJ report published Monday explores the situation in Brazil, and concludes that as all of the country’s biggest cities and many of its wealthier provinces start to reopen, there’s concern that the country could single-handedly reignite the outbreak in the western hemisphere.
The report begins in the state of Manaus, a remote Amazonian province.
In the tiny, stifling home she shared with seven relatives in the Amazon, Maria Portelo de Lima began coughing, started feeling weaker and, over a week, got sicker and sicker.
Her family tried to get the 61-year-old to a hospital in Manaus, a city of 2.2 million in the heart of the rainforest. They were told no ambulances were available or hospital beds free because of a flood of coronavirus patients.
[…]
Ms. de Lima died April 26. With so many other Covid-19 victims in the city, it took 30 hours for an ambulance to pick up her body. She was buried in a mass grave, her identity marked by a wooden cross that cost $22.
In Manaus, Ms. de Lima’s death was among hundreds that have put that Amazon River city at the heart of Brazil’s coronavirus struggle. It is a place with far too few hospital beds and other health-care facilities to cope with such a disease outbreak.
Ms. de Lima’s niece, Rosa Alves, had frantically but unsuccessfully sought aid as her aunt’s condition worsened. “We feel humiliated. We pay taxes and when we need help, we ask for it and help never comes,” Ms. Alves said.
Manaus buried about 140 bodies the day Ms. de Lima died, six times the normal rate, according to its mayor, Arthur Virgilio. The mayor, a 74-year-old who described himself as stoic in the face of past tragedies, has openly wept as he watches his hometown buckle and his people suffer. On a recent night, learning of mass burials in the city, he broke down.
“I am asking for more help from Brasilia, we are at our limits,” Mr. Virgilio said. “We are heading for the peak, we need help from the federal government and the international community.”
The fast spread of the virus in Manaus, which is a hub for jungle safaris by American and European tourists, raises a note of caution for wealthy nations in the Northern Hemisphere. Hopes that coming warm weather will slow the virus clash with the mounting toll in a steamy city where the average April high was around 87 Fahrenheit.
Photos published with the report showed scenes of health-care workers overwhelmed by the profusion of cases in urban “favelas” – poor, densely packed slums offering ideal breeding conditions for the virus.
Per WSJ: “Medical workers check a man with breathing problems in the São Paulo’s favela of Paraisópolis. A scarcity of coronavirus tests in Brazil limits them to health and safety professionals, the very sick and those who died and are suspected of having the virus.”
Per WSJ: “Medical personnel disinfect rooms in a Paraisópolis sports hall used as a place to treat coronavirus patients. The virus is spreading in poor districts such as the favella, where 120,000 live in less than two square miles.”
Per WSJ: “An elderly Covid-19 patient in her house in Paraisopolis.”
In a testament to the virus’s varied effects (depending on the patient, it can be deadly, or extremely mild), Bolsonaro’s continued denials have left many Brazilians confused about who can and can’t catch the virus.
“People think the coronavirus is a rich man’s disease, that only those who travel catch it,” said Claudio Rodrigues Melo, who set up a soup kitchen for needy neighbors in one of São Paulo’s poorest areas.
Echoing Fox News’ initial denounciation of the virus as a “media conspiracy”, many in Brazil believe that it’s just a conspiracy, or only impacts the elderly.
“Or they think it only impacts the elderly, or even that it’s fake news, something made up by the Globo news network to discredit Bolsonaro,” he said.
And many supporters of the president have gathered to protest local lockdown orders at his exhortation, rallies far larger than comparable movements in the US.
Brazil boasts some of the lowest testing rates in the world, with only 1,600 tests per million residents, far below the US’s 33,000 per million rate.
Yet, despite this, Brazil has seen the number of confirmed cases balloon, alongside deaths.
A doctor from Ribeirão Preto Medical School who worked on the study projecting 1.6 million infections in Brazil claimed with little doubt that “Brazil is already the global epicenter of the coronavirus.”
At this point, with states already reopening, turning around and forcing a complete shutdown probably isn’t politically feasible.
The share of people supporting social isolation in a survey taken last week fell to 52% from 60% in the first week of April, according to pollster Datafolha. And among Brazilians with smartphones that can be tracked, only 40% appear to be adhering to stay-home measures, said In Loco, a tech company focused on geolocation data.
Data from Google’s Covid-19 Community Mobility Reports show growing numbers of Brazilians out shopping and going to work in the past two weeks, while Chileans and Colombians stay home.
The state of Santa Catarina in Brazil’s affluent south was the first to reopen, a little more than a week ago. Women and children thronged an upscale shopping center in the city of Blumenau.
The mall laid out a red carpet for the shoppers. Store employees lined up outdoors to greet them, while a saxophonist played Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” All precautions were taken to protect customers, according to the mall’s owner.
But even some of the country’s most populous and economically important states are seeing hospitals being hopelessly overrun. Rio state has so many coronavirus patients that the waiting list for an ICU bed or a respirator is 360 patients long, according to the state’s health secretary Edmar Santos.
“We are on the verge of collapse,” he said. “We will quickly see chaos, not just in Rio de Janeiro, but in all of Brazil.”
Santos himself tested positive for coronavirus in April but has returned to work.
Like in the US, poorer working class workers say that if given the choice between starving and putting themselves at risk, they will gladly choose the latter.
Ryan Cesar Martins, 27, said he couldn’t afford to honor the social-isolation rules imposed by the state’s governor in March. He said a car-painting business he ran that earned him nearly $1,300 in January brought in less than $100 in April. His wife, Keila Evellin, 22, lost her off-the-books job as a saleswoman. They have maxed out their credit cards.
On Thursday, Mr. Martins went to work as an employee of another car-painting shop.
“If it’s a choice between getting the coronavirus and dying of hunger, I prefer not to die of hunger, so I’m going back to work,” Mr. Martins said.
Still, despite these horrible scenes, Brazil’s economy and social fabric have remained mostly intact, although capital flight looks to be accelerating…
When all this is said and done, we suspect Brazil’s response will be an important reference point as the world tries to evaluate the approaches espoused in Europe, the US and elsewhere.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/05/2020 – 22:25 - GOP: China Has Infiltrated US Higher Education To Impede Coronavirus Research
GOP: China Has Infiltrated US Higher Education To Impede Coronavirus Research
Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,
Congressional Republicans are accusing China of attempting to hinder US coronavirus research by infiltrating US universities and spreading communist propaganda.
Reuters reports that ranking GOP members across seven House committees have delivered a letter to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos that warns Beijing is indoctrinating American students.
The letter was signed by Congressman Jim Jordan, the ranking Republican on the House Oversight committee, as well as by members on the Homeland Security, Science, Armed Services, Education and Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees.
🚨🚨🚨 NEW: 7 top House committee Republicans announce probe into China’s infiltration of U.S. colleges
“We cannot allow a dangerous communist regime to buy access to our institutions of higher education, plain and simple” – @Jim_Jordan
More➡️ https://t.co/GwgpkDFkhn pic.twitter.com/C3JQbJIGyJ
— Oversight Committee Republicans (@GOPoversight) May 4, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
The letter requests that DeVos provide more information pertaining to the allegations against China, including all documents related to schools that have accepted funds from China, as well as details of any investigations into colleges and education officials who may have accepted “gifts” from the communist state.
“We write to seek a better understanding of the Department’s efforts to address unreported foreign direct investment into the U.S. higher education system,” the letter reads.
“We have been concerned about the potential for the Chinese government to use its strategic investments to turn American college campuses into indoctrination platforms for American students,” the congressmen further write.
“China has strategically invested in U.S. academia to attempt to steal confidential information and technology from U.S. companies, and even the U.S. government,” the lawmakers state in the letter, pointing to a 2018 report from the Hoover Institution identifying upwards of 110 Confucius Institutes operating on American colleges to facilitate China’s espionage and theft of intellectual property.
They add that “Besides China peddling money for influence in U.S. institutions of higher education (IHE), China is restricting any research regarding the origins of COVID-19 that does not comport with CCP propaganda.”
These actions “bring into question whether U.S. [institutes of higher education] receiving federal taxpayer dollars should be allowed to accept funds from China, the CCP, or other affiliated organizations,” the letter concludes.
Commenting on the letter, Rep. Jim Jordan said “We cannot allow a dangerous communist regime to buy access to our institutions of higher education, plain and simple.”
“The Chinese Communist Party’s cover-up of the early outbreak of the coronavirus immeasurably worsened this disease’s impact on the United States and the world.” Jordan urged, adding that “We owe it to the American people to hold China accountable and to prevent them from doing further harm to our country.”
The suspicions of Chinese infiltration of US higher education pre-dates the coronavirus crisis, with the Department of Education instigating an investigation into several universities last year to determine if they had failed to disclose foreign funding.
In February, the department announced it has uncovered $6.5 billion so far in undisclosed foreign funding from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, China and Russia. The investigation has since been expanded to include Harvard and Yale.
The FBI has previously issued warnings regarding China investing in American higher education to steal sensitive information, primarily via access through federal grants.
In January, the Department of Justice also arrested a professor at Harvard, as well as two Chinese nationals for reportedly acting as foreign agents.
Last year President Donald Trump signed the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act which proposed an ultimatum to universities receiving financial assistance from the Pentagon: close the Chinese propaganda center on campus or lose funding. Since that time, at least 49 schools have closed their Confucius Institute, according to Human Rights Watch.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/05/2020 – 22:05 - What's Really Driving Market Performance: A Look At Return Decomposition
What’s Really Driving Market Performance: A Look At Return Decomposition
Now that it is common knowledge that “The Market is Now Just Five Stocks” as we first put it over a month ago, with Goldman clarifying that the five largest S&P 500 stocks – MSFT, AAPL, AMZN, GOOGL, FB – accounted for 20% of index market cap, the highest concentration on record…
… which has led to a fascinating market divergence in which the 5 biggest stocks are up 10% YTD while the remaining 495 S&P500 companies are lower by a collective 13%…
… Credit Suisse’s equity strategist Jonathan Golub decided to drill down some more, and as he writes in a Tuesday morning note, looking at the ever wider disconnect between fundamentals and returns, he “found this month’s return decomposition particularly useful.”
As Golub explains, the analysis breaks down performance into its key components (revenues, margins, multiples, buybacks) for the S&P 500, Russell 1000 Value and Growth, and Russell 2000. It also contains lists of those stocks that have had the largest positive and negative impact on each benchmark. And as the strategist further notes, in a time when momentum is all that matters as fundamentals are now irrelevant, he receives “more special requests on this work than anything else we publish.”
So without further ado, here is the Credit Suisse Return Decomposition Summary:
Total Returns
S&P 500 Return Decomposition – YTD
S&P 500 Return Decomposition – YoY
Russell 1000 Value Return Decomposition – YTD
Russell 1000 Value Return Decomposition – YoY
Russell 1000 Growth Return Decomposition – YTD
Russell 1000 Growth Return Decomposition – YoY
Russell 2000 Return Decomposition – YTD
Russell 2000 Return Decomposition – YoY
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/05/2020 – 22:04 - "Bracing For The Worst Crash Of Their Careers": A Quarter Of All Outstanding CMBS Debt Is On Verge Of Default
“Bracing For The Worst Crash Of Their Careers”: A Quarter Of All Outstanding CMBS Debt Is On Verge Of Default
Last week we reported that according to the latest TREPP remittance data compiled by Morgan Stanley, a record 66 CMBS loans totaling $1.0bn became newly delinquent in April, which was the greatest month-over-month change on record. In total, 324 loans with a total balance of $4.8bn are currently delinquent, which is also an all time high.
What was more troubling than the plain vanilla surge in delinquencies, is the coming deluge of defaults. Recall that a CMBS loan becomes delinquent after it misses two consecutive payments. Loans that have missed just one month of interest are classified as “late but within grace period” or “late beyond grace period”. It is this measure that spiked a record 600bp MoM to ~8.5%.
Yet it now appears that this data was not only somewhat stale but also dramatically underestimated the full severity of the commercial real state catastrophe over the last weeks of April, because according to Fitch data, borrowers with mortgages representing almost $150 billion in CMBS, accounting for 26% of the outstanding debt, have asked about suspending payments in recent weeks – an unprecedented surge in requests for payment relief on CMBS, and an early sign of the severity of the pandemic-induced real estate crisis. Putting this number in context, after the last financial crisis, delinquencies and foreclosures on the debt peaked at 9% in July 2011. So here we are, barely a month into the corona crisis, and the number is already three times greater!
While not all of the borrowers who have requested forbearance will be delinquent or enter foreclosure, Fitch estimates that the $584 billion industry could near the 2011 peak as soon as the third quarter of this year.
With a deluge of default on deck, the special servicers who handle vulnerable CMBS loans, are bracing for what Bloomberg called “the worst crash of their careers”, by which of course it meant best, because the more the default, the greater the payday for the special servicers. They’re staffing up following years of downsizing to handle a wave of defaults, modification requests and other workouts, including potential foreclosures.
“Everything is happening at once,” said James Shevlin, president of CWCapital, a unit of private equity firm Fortress Investment Group and one of the largest special servicers. “It’s kind of exciting times. I mean, this is what you live for.”
AS discussed last week, unlike the last financial crisis which was ignited by a surge in residential foreclosures as the housing market was one giant bubble, now commercial real estate is getting hit not because of outsized valuation but because of collapsing cash flows with the economic shutdown shuttering stores and putting travel on ice.
Making matters worse is that unlike residential real estate, there’s no bailout relief plan for commercial real estate, and while bankers usually have leeway to negotiate payment plans on commercial property, options for borrowers and lenders are limited for CMBS and foreclosure is usually a quick end to any delinquency or default.
Meanwhile, as we reported last week, the debt transferred to special servicers from master servicers, mostly banks that handle payment collections, is already swelling. Unpaid principal in workouts jumped to $22 billion in April, up 56% from a month earlier, according to the data firm Trepp.
Similar to the mob, special servicers make money by collecting outstanding debt and charging fees based on the unpaid principal on the loans they manage. Most are units of larger finance companies. Midland Financial, named as special servicer on approximately $200 billion of CMBS debt, is a unit of PNC. Rialto Capital, owned by private equity firm Stone Point Capital, was a named special servicer on about $100 billion of CMBS loans. LNR Partners, which finished 2019 with the largest active special-servicer portfolio, is owned by Starwood Property Trust, a real estate firm founded by Barry Sternlicht.
Quoted by Bloomberg, Sternlicht said during a conference call on Monday that special servicers don’t “get paid a ton money” for granting forbearance.
“Where the servicer begins to make a lot of money is when the loans default,” he said. “They have to work them out and they ultimately have to resolve the loan and sell it or take back the asset.”
In other words, special servicers are about to make a killing.
And again, just like the mob which thrives in times when other sources of funding are scarce, special servicers often play hardball, demanding personal guarantees, coverage of legal costs and complete repayment of deferred installments, according to Ann Hambly, chief executive officer of 1st Service Solutions, which works for about 250 borrowers who’ve sought debt relief in the current crisis.
“They’re at the mercy of this handful of special servicers that are run by hedge funds and, arguably, have an ulterior motive,” said Hambly, who started working for loan servicers in 1985 before switching sides to represent borrowers.
On the other hand, perhaps comparisons to the mafia are a bit exaggerated: fears about self-dealing are overblown according to Fitch’s Adam Fox, whose research after the 2008 crisis concluded most special servicers abide by their obligations to protect the interests of bondholders: “There were some concerns that servicers were pillaging the trust and picking up assets on the cheap,” he said. “We just didn’t find it.”
Maybe Fitch just didn’t look hard enough. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time that a rating agency has missed something rather big starting it right in the face.
Mob or not, it’s time for special servicers to party because after nearly a decade of downsizing where anyone could obtain or refi a loan on even cheaper terms, it’s jackpot time. Also unlike the last crisis, this time the spoils will be shared by far fewer: the seven largest firms employed 385 people at the end of 2019, less than half their headcount at the peak of the last crisis.
The good news is that once a debt collected, always a debt collected, and Miami-based LNR, where headcount ended last year down 40% from its 2013 level, is calling back veterans from other duties at Starwood and looking at resumes. CWCapital, which reduced staff by almost 75% from its 2011 peak, is drafting Fortress workers from other duties and recruiting new talent, while relying on technology upgrades to help manage the incoming wave more efficiently.
“It’s going to be a very different crisis,” said Shevlin, who has been in the industry for more than 20 years. And while commercial real estate borrowers are bracing for the “worst crash of their careers”, the special servicers – and other debt collectors – are about to enjoy the biggest bonanza they have ever seen.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/05/2020 – 21:45 - 80% Of Employees At Bank Of Montreal May Shift To Hybrid Telecommuting Post-Pandemic
80% Of Employees At Bank Of Montreal May Shift To Hybrid Telecommuting Post-Pandemic
Up to 80% of employees at the Bank of Montreal, or about 36,000 of its staff, may shift to flexible arrangements once the COVID-19 pandemic subsides which would blend working from home with time in the office, according to Bloomberg.
The Toronto-based bank has conducted a broad revamp of its workplace policies in light of the outbreak, according to chief HR office Mona Malone, who says that the lender expects between 30% and 80% of employees to continue to work from home at least some of the time.
“We’ve been able to maintain continuity of banking services with far more people working outside the office than we ever thought possible,” Malone said in a Monday interview. “We thought it was critical that we were in the office to make something happen, and what we’ve proven through this is that’s actually not the case.”
According to CEO Darryl White, a “2.0 version” of the workplace may include blended home-office schedules amid a global restructuring of how offices and routines. Malone, meanwhile, says that employees at Canadian and US branches have “by and large” been going into the office during the crisis, along with a “small amount” of IT and operations employees. 95% of those in office towers have been telecommuting.
“It’s a blended approach of thinking about productivity and flexibility and for us not a return to the way it used to be,” said Malone who said the post-pandemic plan calls for more workers at home, and “a ton” of employees with hybrid schedules.
“It’s about an evolution in the way that we work,” she added.
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in drastic changes at Canada’s fourth-largest bank – which shifted half of its Canadian call-center agents and 80% of US agents to home offices.
According to Malone, “That’s not a temporary thing.”
“We don’t have to think about contact centers as just these geographical hubs, and we can use this remote way of working,” she said, noting that the ‘new normal’ keeps employees safe – as opposed to crowding workers into offices after taking mass transit and elevators to get there.
“It allows us to look for new talent in locations where maybe we haven’t before, and tap into talent pools across the country,” Malone added.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/05/2020 – 21:25 - YouTube's Chief Product Officer Insults His Own Users As Basement-Dwelling Idiots
YouTube’s Chief Product Officer Insults His Own Users As Basement-Dwelling Idiots
Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,
YouTube’s Chief Product Officer has insulted his own users as basement-dwellers who deserve to be relegated by the algorithm in favor of “authoritative” mainstream sources.
Neil Mohan made the remarks during an interview with Protocol’s editor at large David Pierce after he was asked if YouTube had to switch its approach to moderating content given the ever changing advice of health authorities in relation to the coronavirus.
Mohan said that this was the reason YouTube was “raising up authoritative voices,” which is a euphemism for suppressing voices that aren’t part of the mainstream media, despite the fact that the public’s trust in the media during the coronavirus pandemic has plummeted even further.
He then went on to insult his own user base as basement-dwelling idiots.
“As opposed to, you know, it’s somebody espousing their opinions about a mask, you know, in their basement,” said Mohan.
“This is coming from an authoritative channel, a news source, a medical professional, and if that’s the case, we think there’s going to be some context that’s provided around the question of masks. And even if that guidance changes, it will be reflected in sort of how an authoritative voice or channel talks about it.”
Mohan then made it clear how non-mainstream channels are algorithmically shadow banned by “removing or reducing views of the videos where that same level of authority hasn’t been established.”
Of course, the only reason why so-called “authoritative” sources are now doing so well on YouTube is because the company rigged its own algorithm to heavily favor them while dumping the very people who helped build YouTube on the trash heap.
Last month, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki recently said that information which challenged the World Health Organization would be removed, despite the fact that the WHO was directly complicit in helping China cover-up the severity of coronavirus in its early stages and despite the fact the organization gave harmful advice in ordering countries not to close their borders early on.
“Mohan’s comments exemplify how the changes YouTube has made in relation to the coronavirus and news coverage have made it almost impossible for independent creators to cover current events, even when the mainstream media outlets that are being raised up have a track record of getting it wrong,” writes Tom Parker.
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/05/2020 – 21:05 - Most Americans Have Serious Doubts About The Official COVID Death Count: Axios-Ipsos Poll
Most Americans Have Serious Doubts About The Official COVID Death Count: Axios-Ipsos Poll
Since the start of state-wide lockdowns after the coronavirus pandemic hit the United States, poll after poll has demonstrated that Americans remain by and large deeply distrustful of both politicians and mainstream media reporting on the virus.
Getty Images And naturally, given the extent of unemployment, economic devastation across various industries, and also simply the radical change in the way people conduct their daily lives, Americans are right to question whether lockdown and social distancing protocols have gone ‘too far’.
This all hinged on the following question from the start: is the virus as dangerous and deadly as alarming early health reports indicated? A number of studies from the heart of the scientific establishment suggest that no, it’s not as deadly as most believed early on, but still may be more pervasive across society in terms of asymptomatic carriers.
And yet current deaths from the disease could still be significantly higher than what’s being reported, given a general shortage testing which has been reported by hospitals, clinics, and even institutions of vast means like the US military. As of Tuesday COVID-19 deaths in the United States are nearing 70,000.
From the start, health officials have warned there’s a likelihood of under-reporting of deaths, given that many have died of complications that sprung from the disease. In these cases deaths would then be listed as complications other than COVID-19, unless an autopsy were performed.
A new Axios-Ipsos poll reflects the growing anxiety among the public of uncounted COVID-19 deaths.
44% of those polled believe people dying from the disease in the US is actually higher than has been officially reported.
Via Axios Below are the poll results, released Tuesday, in summary break down:
- Only 24 percent of Republicans say the number of coronavirus deaths are more than what has been reported. 36% say it is about the same, while 40% say it is less.
- 63% of Democrats believe the number of deaths is more. 29% say it is about the same, compared to just 7% who say it is less.
- 45% of independents say it is more, compared to 31% who say it is about the same. 24% say it is less.
- 26% say they visited friends or relatives in the last week – up from 19% in a mid-April poll.
- 47% say they’ve canceled summer plans, such as camp or vacation rentals.
- 63% say they’re concerned that the next month could bring food shortages.
- 58% say they are concerned that schools are not going to reopen in the fall.
And yet, even if more Americans believe death numbers could be higher than what’s officially reported, they are still ready and willing to take increased steps to return to normal life and daily routines.
As Axios observes: “At the same time, there’s some softening around how much risk Americans are attaching to various activities and how much risk they’re willing to take.”
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/05/2020 – 20:45 - "Just Like There Were No WMDs, There's No 'Virus Of Mass Destruction'…"
“Just Like There Were No WMDs, There’s No ‘Virus Of Mass Destruction’…”
Authored (satirically) by C.J.Hopkins via ConsentFactory.,org,
There comes a point in the introduction of every new official narrative when people no longer remember how it started. Or, rather, they remember how it started, but not the propaganda that started it. Or, rather, they remember all that (or are able to, if you press them on it), but it doesn’t make any difference anymore, because the official narrative has supplanted reality.
You’ll remember this point from the War on Terror, and specifically the occupation of Iraq. By the latter half of 2004, most Westerners had completely forgotten the propaganda that launched the invasion, and thus regarded the Iraqi resistance as “terrorists,” despite the fact that the United States had invaded and was occupying their country for no legitimate reason whatsoever. By that time, it was abundantly clear that there were no “weapons of mass destruction,” and that the U.S.A. had invaded a nation that had not attacked it, and posed no threat to it, and so was perpetrating a textbook war of aggression.
These facts did not matter, not in the slightest. By that time, Westerners were totally immersed in the official War on Terror narrative, which had superseded objective reality. Herd mentality had taken over. It’s difficult to describe how this works; it’s a state of functional dissociation. It wasn’t that people didn’t know the facts, or that they didn’t understand the facts. They knew the Iraqis weren’t “terrorists.” At the same time, they knew they were definitely “terrorists,” despite the fact that they knew that they weren’t. They knew there were no WMDs, that there had never been any WMDs, and still they were certain there were WMDs, which would be found, although they clearly did not exist.
The same thing happened in Nazi Germany. The majority of the German people were never fanatical anti-Semites like the hardcore N.S.D.A.P. members. If they had been, there would have been no need for Goebbels and his monstrous propaganda machine. No, the Germans during the Nazi period, like the Americans during the War on Terror, knew that their victims posed no threat to them, and at the same time they believed exactly the opposite, and thus did not protest as their neighbors were hauled out of their homes and sent off to death camps, camps which, in their dissociative state, simultaneously did and did not exist.
What I’m describing probably sounds like psychosis, but, technically speaking, it isn’t … not quite. It is not an absolute break from reality. People functioning in this state know that what they believe is not real. Nonetheless, they are forced to believe it (and do, actually, literally, believe it, as impossible as I know that sounds), because the consequences of not believing it are even more frightening than the cognitive dissonance of believing a narrative they know is a fiction. Disbelieving the official narrative means excommunication from “normality,” the loss of friends, income, status, and in many cases far worse punishments.
Herd animals, in a state of panic, instinctively run towards the center of the herd. Separation from the herd makes them easy prey for pursuing predators. It is the same primal instinct operating here.
It is the goal of every official narrative to generate this type of herd mentality, not in order to deceive or dupe the public, but, rather, to confuse and terrorize them to the point where they revert to their primal instincts, and are being driven purely by existential fear, and facts and truth no longer matter. Once an official narrative reaches this point, it is unassailable by facts and reason. It no longer needs facts to justify it. It justifies itself with its own existence. Reason cannot penetrate it. Arguing with its adherents is pointless. They know it is irrational. They simply do not care.
We are reaching this point with the coronavirus narrative. It is possible that we have already reached it. Despite the fact that what we are dealing with is a virus that, yes, is clearly deadly to the old and those with medical conditions, but that is just as clearly not a deadly threat to the majority of the human species, people are cowering inside their homes as if the Zombie Apocalpyse had finally begun. Many appear to believe that this virus is some sort of Alien-Terrorist Death Flu (or weaponized Virus of Mass Destruction) that will kill you the second you breathe it in.
This is not surprising at all, because, according to the official narrative, its destructive powers are nearly unlimited. Not only will it obliterate your lungs, and liquidate all your other major organs, and kill you with blood clots, and intestinal damage, now it causes “sudden strokes in young adults,” and possibly spontaneous prostate cancer, and God knows what other medical horrors!
According to all the “scientists” and “medical experts” (i.e., those that conform to the official narrative, not all the other scientists and medical experts), it is unlike any other virus that has ever existed in the history of viruses.
It certainly doesn’t follow the typical pattern of spreading extensively for a limited period, and then rapidly dying down on its own, regardless of what measures are taken to thwart it, as this Israeli study would seem to indicate.
Also, “we have no immunity against it,” which is why we all have to remain “locked down” like unruly inmates in a penitentiary until a vaccine can be concocted and forced onto every living person on earth.
Apparently, this mandatory wonder vaccine will magically render us immune to this virus against which we have no immunity (and are totally unable to develop immunity), which immunity will be certified on our mandatory “immunity papers,” which we will need to travel, get a job, send our kids to school, and, you know, to show the police when they stop us on the street because we look like maybe we might be “infected.”
Germany (where I live) is way out in front of this. According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the federal government plans to introduce a coronavirus “immunity card” as part of its “Infection Protection Law,” which will grant the authorities the power to round up anyone “suspected to be contagious” and force them into … uh … “quarantine,” and “forbid them from entering certain public places.” The Malaysian authorities have dispensed with such niceties, and are arresting migrant workers and refugees in so-called “Covid-19 red zones” and marching them off to God knows where.
Oh, yeah, and I almost forgot … the germ and chemical warfare researchers at DARPA (i.e., the U.S. military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) have developed some new type of fancy blood test that will identify “asymptomatic carriers” (i.e., people who display no symptoms whatsoever).
So that will probably come in handy … especially if the “white supremacists,” “Red-Brown extremists,” and “conspiracy theorists” keep protesting the lockdown with their wives and kids!
And these are just the latest additions to a list of rather dystopian examples of the “brave new normal” official narrative that GloboCap is rolling out, right before our very eyes (which the OffGuardian editors have streamlined here and here, and which continues on Twitter). It’s all right there in black and white. They aren’t hiding the totalitarianism … they don’t have to. Because people are begging for it. They are demanding to be “locked down” inside their homes, forced to wear masks, and stand two meters apart, for reasons that most of them no longer remember.
Plastic barriers are going up everywhere. Arrows on the floor show you which way to walk. Boxes show you where to stand. Paranoid Blockwarts are putting up signs threatening anyone not wearing a mask. Hysterical little fascist creeps are reporting their neighbors to the police for letting their children play with other children. Millions of people are voluntarily downloading “contact tracing applications” so that governments and global corporations can monitor their every movement. In Spain, they bleached an entire beach, killing everything, down to the insects, in order to protect the public from “infection.” The Internet has become an Orwellian chorus of shrieking, sanctimonious voices bullying everyone into conformity with charts, graphs, and desperate guilt-trips, few of which have much connection to reality.
Corporations and governments are censoring dissent. We’re approaching a level of manufactured mass hysteria and herd mentality that not even Goebbels could have imagined.
Meanwhile, they’re striking the mostly empty “field hospitals,” and the theatrical “hospital ship” is now gone, and despite their attempts to inflate the Covid-19 death count as much as humanly possible, the projected hundreds of millions of deaths have not materialized (not even close), and Sweden is fine, as is most of humanity, and … just like there were no WMDs, there is no Virus of Mass Destruction.
What there is, is a new official narrative, the brave new, paranoid, pathologized “normal.” Like the War on Terror, it’s a global narrative. A global, post-ideological narrative. It’s just getting started, so it isn’t yet clear how totalitarian this show will get, but, given the nature of the pilot episode, I am kind of dreading the rest of the series.
* * *
C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing and Broadway Play Publishing, Inc. His dystopian novel, Zone 23, is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. Volume I of his Consent Factory Essays is published by Consent Factory Publishing, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amalgamated Content, Inc. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/05/2020 – 20:25 - Sam Zell: Fallout From Coronavirus Will Be "Worse Than The Great Depression"
Sam Zell: Fallout From Coronavirus Will Be “Worse Than The Great Depression”
Billionaire real-estate investor Sam Zell just became the latest bold-faced name to suggest that maybe – just maybe – the “V-shaped” rebound that investors seem to be anticipating probably isn’t going to pass.
Instead, the real-estate investing legend, who earned his nickname “the Grave Dancer” buying up distressed properties in the 1970s, said he believes the economy has been deeply scarred by this experience, and is in far worse shape than it appears. Instead of a lazy summer boat ride, the US is in for a grueling slog back to growth.
While Zell doesn’t enjoy the same level of name recognition as Warren Buffett, the ‘Oracle of Omaha’ who dumped his airline stocks and declared he was ‘sitting this one out’ for the good of Berkshire’s investors, his opinion still carries a lot of weight.
To be sure, Zell has almost certainly suffered some pretty serious blowback from the pandemic-induced market crash. Late last year, as the virus was first emerging in Wuhan, Zell was telling everybody who would listen about the untapped value in the distressed energy space (one of a handful of distressed bets that didn’t go his way). So he has a reason to be pessimistic.
But without exaggeration, Zell proclaimed that the impact on the impact on the economy from the coronavirus will be worse than the Great Depression 80 years ago, complete with long-lasting changes in human behavior that imperil many business models.
“Too many people are anticipating a kind of V-like recovery,” Zell said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “We’re all going to be permanently scarred by having lived through this.”
And just as the Depression left a generation that seemingly couldn’t shake the experience, leading to a lifetime of thrift and risk aversion, Zell believes this “extraordinary shock” will also be hard to forget. The full scope of the economic damage won’t truly be visible until the economy reopens, and consumers realize that many retailers won’t be coming back. He also said he expects many hotels around the world won’t be capable of reopening.
“Just like we won’t see a lot of retailers reopen,” he said, “I think we’ll see a lot of hotels that basically can’t reopen.”
This might be Zell talking his book here, he doesn’t believe that the virus will the be a death knell or big cities like New York, nor that warehouses are the smartest bet in commercial real-estate right now. But for now, at least, Zell says he’ll be waiting on the sidelines watching other buyers and sellers perform the difficult work of post-dislocation price discovery.
For now, Zell believes the commercial real-estate market will likely be quiet as the market takes a beat to adjust.
“Those sellers that wanted to sell still remember the prices that were available seven or eight weeks ago. The buyers are looking at a very different world and expecting to see significant discounts,” he said. “When you’ve got that big a spread, nothing happens.”
With so much corporate debt, Zell said that a wave of bankruptcies – like the wave already forming in the retail space – is badly needed to clear the decks.
“Bankruptcies are what you need to clear markets and what you need to end recessions and dips,” Zell said. “The fact that there’s a lot more distressed players today will help clear the market, but it also means that there aren’t anywhere near as many opportunities as there were in the past.”
Watch the interview below:
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/05/2020 – 20:05 - Illinois' True Retirement Costs Surge Near 60% Of The Budget
Illinois’ True Retirement Costs Surge Near 60% Of The Budget
Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTlak,
JPMorgan’s latest pension graphic captures so much of what’s wrong with Illinois’ collapsing finances…
Illinois was in an actuarial mess long ago. Covid-19 makes it harder to ignore says Wirepoints.
The chart by Michael Cembalest shows Illinois was paying about 25% of its budget for pension costs.
Before Covid-19, Illinois should have been paying over 50% to be sound on an actuarial basis. Now, the true costs are 58% of the budget.
Illinois has the worst funded pension plans in the nation. That was true before Covid-19 as well.
New Jersey, Hawaii, Connecticut, and Kentucky are next in line. But no other state comes close to having that much of their budgets swallowed by retirement costs.
McConnell Says Let the States Go Bankrupt
In a Hugh Hewitt interview last month, Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell Pushes Bankruptcy.
HH: I think people do not understand how badly mismanaged some states have been, and their unfunded liabilities. And if they were in the private sector, they would have to reorganize under the bankruptcy code. But there is no bankruptcy code chapter. Do you think that we need to invent one for states so that they can discharge some of these liabilities that were put in place by previous governors like, I mean, Jerry Brown ran a giveaway program for public employee unions that was just astonishing, and as did Gray Davis, as did, you know, a lot of Democratic governors, Illinois is probably the worst, and Connecticut.
MM: Yeah, I would certainly be in favor of allowing states to use the bankruptcy route. It saves some cities. And there’s no good reason for it not to be available. My guess is their first choice would be for the federal government to borrow money from future generations to send it down to them now so they don’t have to do that. That’s not something I’m going to be in favor of.
Unfortunate State of Bankruptcy Code
Unfortunately, states do not have the ability to declare bankruptcy under current law.
Cities and municipalities do have the right, but only if the states allow it.
According to Pew, Only 12 states authorize cities to file without conditions, and another 12 permit filing with certain stipulations.
“For 50 years, Detroit’s economy, its physical infrastructure, and its social structure had been on a steady decline. And the political system did nothing whatsoever about it,” says Richard Ravitch, former lieutenant governor of New York, who helped New York City avoid bankruptcy in 1975 and has been advising Detroit officials.
By the time the state got involved in 2011, it was too late. The police chief described the situation as not only a financial crisis but also a “service delivery insolvency,” characterized by high crime rates, broken streetlights, thousands of abandoned and blighted structures and lots, and closed parks, among other problems.
Illinois Cities in Same Situation as Detroit (by Population Rank)
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Rockford (4)
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Peoria (7)
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Danville (61)
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East St. Louis (81)
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Kankakee (86)
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Melrose Park (89)
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Harvey (96)
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Blue Island (109)
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Evergreen Park (124)
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Cairo (461)
All of those are dead or dying cities. All but Rockford and Peoria turn up in a Wirepoints report on Troubled Pension Plans.
Illinois Insolvent Pension Plans
In What’s Next for Illinois, Wirepoints mentions Rockford, Harvey, Palos Heights, East St. Louis, Peoria, Danville and dozens of other cities (see graph below)
Rockford’s is the fourth largest city in Illinois with a population of 147,881, nudged out of third place by Joliet with 147,957.
Illinois is Insolvent: State Requests a Pension Bailout From Congress
On April 17, I commented Illinois is Insolvent: State Requests a Pension Bailout From Congress
No Bailout
Illinois does not deserve a bailout. Its pension woes are of it own making and have nothing to do with the coronavirus.
Three National Priorities
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Bankruptcy legislation that allows municipalities to file when they want to, not when dictators like Illinois’ House Speaker Mike Madigan allow them.
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National right-to-work legislation that supersedes state legislation.
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Scrap Davis-Bacon and all prevailing wage laws
Explaining Dysfunctional Illinois in One Word, One Idea, One Person
I mentioned those priorities on Jan 9, 2017 , in Explaining Dysfunctional Illinois in One Word, One Idea, One Person
McConnell is correct, at least as pertains to municipalities: “There’s no good reason for it [municipal bankruptcy] not to be available,” said McConnell.
There is a Reason, But Not a Good One
Republicans could easily have passed all three of those priorities when they held both houses of Congress.
But they didn’t.
What are McConnell’s and Trump’s excuses for that?
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/05/2020 – 19:45 -
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