- The Business Of Dismantling Old Cruise Ships At A Dock In Western Turkey Is Booming
The Business Of Dismantling Old Cruise Ships At A Dock In Western Turkey Is Booming
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/06/2020 – 02:45One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
If you’ve ever asked yourself where cruise ships go to die after they are decommissioned, the answer is Turkey.
At a dock in Western Turkey where they used to handle cargo and container ships, they are now focused on the dismantling of old and unused cruise ships for scrap metal. And business is booming, according to Reuters.
Kamil Onal, chairman of a ship recycling industrialists’ association, said: “But after the pandemic, cruise ships changed course towards Aliaga in a very significant way. There was growth in the sector due to the crisis. When the ships couldn’t find work, they turned to dismantling.”
“We are trying to change the crisis into an opportunity,” Onal commented. No part of the ship goes to waste, he said. Even hotel operators come to the yard to buy useful materials, he told Reuters.
2,500 people will work at the yard dismantling a single ship, which takes about 6 months. Most of the vessels have come from the United States, Britain and Italy. The shipyard is even looking to up its volume of dismantled steel from 700,000 tonnes in January to 1.1 million tonnes by the end of the year.
Cruise ships were the first point of contact for the pandemic to hit the travel industry, as they housed the first clusters of virus outbreaks back in the first quarter of 2020.
In March, the U.S. government all but shut down the industry, issuing a no-sail order for all ships that remained in place.
- Why Is The EU Still Siding With "World's Worst Human Rights Abuser"?
Why Is The EU Still Siding With “World’s Worst Human Rights Abuser”?
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/06/2020 – 02:00Authored by Majid Rafizadeh via The Gatestone Institute,
The European Union is openly siding with the ruling mullahs of Iran and attempting to scuttle US efforts to pressure the rogue regime to stop. Britain, France and Germany, on September 18, told the UN Security Council that the EU is strongly committed to ensuring the continued lifting of sanctions against the Iranian government. The three European powers added that, as far as they were concerned, even if the United States reimposes all sanctions, their UN sanctions relief for Iran would continue beyond September 20.
The EU has also been helping Iranian leaders to evade US sanctions through a payment mechanism labeled as INSTEX (Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges), which is designed to permit European firms and corporations to continue doing business with the Iranian government in spite of US economic sanctions against Tehran.
The EU is, despite all its sanctimonious lecturing about human rights, unapologetically assisting a regime that is publicly committing some of the worst human rights abuses ever. Did the European leaders hear about the latest executions of innocent protesters such as Navid Afkari, who was apparently tortured into a false confession? Did they hear about the four teenagers who will have their fingers amputated as a punishment for stealing, also, according to them, after being tortured until they “confessed”?
Despite an international outcry, the theocratic establishment defiantly went ahead and executed wrestling champion Navid Afkari by hanging him in the southern city of Shiraz, according to Iranian state media. His execution was clearly carried out in a hurried manner and he was even denied a last visit from his family.
After he was given two death sentences by the Sharia court, Afkari declared:
“People! I will fight for my life because it is the logical and right thing to do. There are plenty of documents and evidence that prove my innocence. All the evidence and documents that we have collected and all the things that I am telling you right now, is to let you know that if I get executed, you should know that, in the 21st century, with all these human right organizations and expenses, with the United Nations, with the UN Security Council etc., an innocent human being, who tried his best and fought will all the power he had for his voice to be heard, was hanged.”
The EU must know that Afkari, like many other political prisoners and those who participated in previous peaceful protests, was brutally tortured. The Iranian regime denies that it tortures prisoners, but an eyewitness, Shaahin Naaseri, recounted some of the torture that the wrestler endured while in detention:
“One day, I heard screams, shouting, and pleas for help in the police department. The sergeant accompanying me asked me to wait in the corridor. He went and opened up a door. I followed him to see what was happening out of curiosity. I witnessed two officers who were dressed in unofficial uniforms cursing and hitting Navid with batons and metal pipes without mercy. They would tell him: ‘the truth is whatever we say, will you write what we are saying or not?’ Navid was also begging: ‘please, stop, please don’t hit me, I didn’t do anything.’ He was covering his head with his arms. And one of the officers, whose name I later learned was Abbasi, hit Navid with such strength that Navid let out a gut-wrenching scream and fell unconscious.”
Iran’s leaders most likely wanted to make an example of the highly respected wrestler, to impose fear in society, and send a strong message to the people that anyone who dares to protest can face severe consequences.
Amnesty International has documented some of the torture techniques that the Iranian regime is employing:
“The organization’s research found that victims were frequently hooded or blindfolded; punched, kicked and flogged; beaten with sticks, rubber hosepipes, knives, batons and cables; suspended or forced into holding painful stress positions for prolonged periods; deprived of sufficient food and potable water; placed in prolonged solitary confinement, sometimes for weeks or even months; and denied medical care for injuries sustained during the protests or as a result of torture.”
Navid Afkari’s case is not an isolated one. Last month, the Iranian regime also secretly hanged another protester, Mostafa Salhi. Amnesty International condemned his execution, stating that it “was carried out… despite serious unfair trial concerns incl torture & other ill-treatment & the denial of access to a lawyer during the investigation phase of his case.”
Another high-profile figure that the regime arrested and tortured is 20-year-old Ali Younesi, a student who in 2018 won a gold medal as a member of Iran’s national team during the 12th International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics. He and his friend Amirhossein Moradi have been held without charge since April, accused by the authorities of having connections to the opposition.
The European Union, in empowering a regime that is torturing and executing protesters and political prisoners, is making itself complicit in these crimes against humanity. Instead, the EU needs immediately to join the US in putting pressure on the mullahs and holding them accountable.
- Financialization & The Road To Zero, Part 3: From Financialization To Breakdown
Financialization & The Road To Zero, Part 3: From Financialization To Breakdown
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/05/2020 – 23:40Authored by ‘ICE-9’ via The Burning Platform blog,
This is Part 3 of a 4-part series.
August 15th, 1971. America’s 108 year run with capitalism was over. The Nixon Shock – or was it? The dog that didn’t bark during the late 1960s gold run was the US Treasury, the only piece left in the Federal Reserve System that could claim some independence from the central bank cross ownership nexus. Its lack of action to either raise official gold prices to slow the withdrawals, or close the gold window earlier as foreign dollars washed ashore onto its financial beachhead suggests collusion in the purposeful destruction of capitalism’s pre-eminent precious metal reserve. We are led to believe that America was propelled by surprise and necessity into its new commercial model divorced from physical gold reserves and silver stockpiles, but when one follows the money what was originally billed as an unexpected emergency reveals a decade long ruthless history of preparation.
The US Treasury wasn’t so passive during the early 1960s and had quickly transformed into a serious existential threat to the central bank cross ownership nexus. Silver had become a contentious issue when the US Treasury’s silver stockpiles decline by 80% in a matter of months during a 1961 purchase run – possibly depleted by banking agents in an offensive action to create artificial scarcity and render it perceived unreliable as money. But President Kennedy halted government silver sales in late 1961 and, after rebuilding the stockpile, signed his fateful Executive Order 11110 in June 1963 directing the US Treasury to issue debt free United States Notes based on a non-fractional 1:1 ratio to the silver stockpile. Thus a new form of American money was born – one that did not pay interest to the central bank cross ownership nexus – and did not conform to the working definition of capitalism. This interest free money was placed in direct competition to the heavily fractional and interest paying “gold based” Federal Reserve Notes in circulation and more than $4.3 billion of this new debt free money was issued. But although these notes were only about 1% of the total M2 money supply, they represented a return to sound mercantile banking and put at risk the unlimited spending requirements of the growing special relationship between Congress and the Military and Industrial Complex. Infinite fiat money was needed to expand and maintain the American Fiat Empire, and this new sound money limited by silver stockpiles could not stand in empire’s way – five months after signing Executive Order 11110, President Kennedy was dead.
The Johnson administration got straight to work destroying silver as money starting with the oldest trick in the book – coin debasement. The Coinage Act of 1965 was the nation’s first step towards a pure fiat currency. The act initially removed silver from dimes and quarters, reduced silver content in half dollars from 90% to 40%, and suspended new silver dollar production until 1970. Then in 1970, the Nixon administration eliminated silver from both half and full dollar coins, with the silver-less “silver dollars” minted again and put into circulation primarily for use in slot machines – a perfect metaphor for the coming commercial model. With no silver in coins, their true value was guaranteed at only a fraction of their face “value”, and so the US Treasury quit trying to hide the underlying inflationary pressures created by increased fiat money printing combined with dwindling precious metal reserves and gave up suppressing the silver price which doubled between 1967 and 1968. Thus by the beginning of 1971, the United States had created nearly pure fiat coins comprised of low value nickel and copper, and in November 1970 the US Treasury sold the last of its dwindling silver stockpile and all but removed its self from influencing future monetary policy.
The 1960s was also a busy time printing money to build and protect the American Fiat Empire with wars both covert and declared. These wars became increasingly expensive and the Federal spending trajectory through the 1960s indicated there were serious limits to the Fiat Empire’s expansion under the constraints imposed by a fractional reserve banking system. Heavy funding commitments were made for proxy wars in Indonesia, Congo, Laos, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Iraq, Chile, and Cambodia. These expenses were added to the costly and overt Korean occupation and declared war in Vietnam. These war costs, increased spending on social engineering project, and late 1950s income tax cuts necessitated an increased reliance on US Treasury bill issuance to fund government aspirations. Increased debt issuance, in turn, fueled domestic inflation as the fractional reserve nature of the Federal Reserve System still operated to some degree as it should. The 1950s value added American export boom had acted like a sponge to dampen inflation at home, as the “virtuous cycle” inflated wages faster than the cost of domestic goods. But when the growth of value added exports stalled in the 1960s, the inflation remained so domestic wages and consumer purchasing power stagnated. This inflation in turn reduced both American domestic consumption and foreign consumption of American value added exports abroad, so more foreign held US dollars were available to go shopping for investments. The 1960s “virtuous cycle” was not adsorbing all these foreign held US dollars and all the collective thinking of the learned monetary and political scientists could not foresee this coming run on cheap gold despite the US Treasury’s previous recent experience with the run on silver. Thus any logical assessment can come to only two conclusions – either the monetary and political scientists were incompetent, or the US Treasury was complicit as its gold reserves steadily drained away.
In the middle of all that 1960s war spending and stagflation, Congress got to work printing even more money and launched a plethora of expensive programs under the umbrella of the “Great Society”. These programs laid the groundwork for adsorbing the coming tens of millions of unemployed de-industrialized factory workers and created a pool of docile voters focused on their own dependent and immediate material needs. Large spending bills were enacted like the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, the Food Stamp Act of 1964, the Public Works and Economic Development Act of 1965, the Social Security Act of 1965 authorizing Medicare, the Social Security Act Amendment of 1965 Title XVIII authorizing Medicaid, and the Social Security Amendments of 1967. Other large spending bills established government propaganda arms vested with influencing the coming pool of docile, dependent voters including the National Endowment on the Arts and Humanities Act of 1965 and the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. And although this “Great Society” did everything but create a great society, it got them voting on the welfare plantation for 200 years, and to ensure there was no resurrection of sound monetary policy, or for that matter, any serious economic policy discussion in public debate, in 1965 Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, the Nationality Services Act, and ratified both the XXIV Amendment in 1962 and the XXVI Amendment in 1971. Never before in the history of a modern enfranchised people would a society be so devoid of monetary policy discussions, and thus the Federal Reserve System would dissolve further into invisibility with every carnival-like election cycle.
All that war and welfare deficit spending got rolling while the American Fiat Empire’s “virtuous cycle” was unravelling with the nation both entrapped in its Bretton Woods Venus Flytrap commitment and unable to increase its value added export capacity with its aging industrial infrastructure. Heavy investment by Anglo-American oil companies in the Middle East and North Africa during the early 1960s began to generate large US dollar royalty and profit oil streams to their host countries resulting in a flood of surplus foreign held US dollars looking for investments while US value added export capability flat lined. Oil production from Saudi Arabia increased from 1.35 million barrels of oil per day (MM bopd) in 1960 to nearly 4.0 MM bopd in 1970. Libya came on stream in 1965 at 1.2 MM bopd and by 1970 was producing 3.4 MM bopd. Iran, Venezuela, Kuwait, and Indonesia all experienced similar production increases. Billions of foreign held US dollars were generated from the sale of crude oil into the global US dollar denominated commodity market with no coordination by the US Treasury to head off a potential gold buying rush. And when it was obvious the gold rush was on, America’s European “allies” piled in too – France, Germany, England, and Japan. All this took place without the US Treasury raising the gold price or taking any action whatsoever to stem its rapidly accelerating gold depletion. It was as if “free enterprise” were nearly free when it came to buying subsidized gold with foreign held US dollars.
So on the morning of August 15th 1971, the United States’ “virtuous cycle” was sputtering, its precious metal reserves pilfered, and its value added export capability muddling along with an outmoded and inefficient industrial infrastructure. Add to that rampant domestic inflation, unending foreign wars, civil unrest, high unemployment, and skyrocketing debt across all government levels when suddenly, with “no advanced warning”, the US Treasury went bankrupt – or more precisely, was constrained by a depleted gold reserve with no way to print the country out of its funding morass. The magic formula had ceased to work, and Bretton Woods would have to be abandoned and a more abstract type of fiat money born to save the American “virtuous cycle” and soak up all those foreign held US dollars or the Soviets world gain control of the reserve currency status. The United States faced an existential crisis comparable to its Fort Sumter decision – either continue to prosecute its Fiat Empire wars and ignore domestic economic troubles, or address domestic economic troubles and relinquish the Fiat Empire. Nothing the monetary scientists did after August 1971 to salvage both options conjured up a false domestic prosperity that could also fund preservation of the Fiat Empire and wishful thinking had come to an end. The Nixon Shock may have placated public opinion but did nothing to solve the underlying systemic problems in the “virtuous cycle”, so the US dollar plunged week after week against all major world currencies, stagflation settled in, and the “virtuous cycle” got a little more unraveled with every passing month. And in early 1973 the entire national political apparatus was consumed with the Watergate scandal, so now nothing was going to get fixed. The Powers Behind the Curtain would have to step out of the shadows to revive the American “virtuous cycle” and save its Fiat Empire on behalf of the central bank cross ownership nexus – enter the Globalists.
The new fractional “reserve” would have to revive demand for US dollars on a world changing scale, be price-pliable through political pressure, and under full control of US military “influence”. That influence meant a full and unequivocal commitment to both Fiat Empire and Endless War at a cost of never solving America’s domestic economic and social problems. So the Powers Behind the Curtain got to work, the United States made its third Faustian deal, and signed on with its Globalist savior – crude oil. Oil was the perfect fractional “reserve” substitute –plentiful, cheap to produce, concentrated in defendable geographic regions, everybody needed it, and nearly every barrel traded was denominated in US dollars. So from August 15th forward, with the Treasury’s Gold Window permanently closed and the requirement to hold gold reserves eliminated, the United States could, in theory, immediately get to work printing infinite pure fiat money. And it would have gotten to work right away testing that theory save for one problem – oil was cheap and wouldn’t sufficiently soak up all those European and Japanese held US dollars. Some calamitous event had to be conjured to pull the US dollar out of its malaise, stimulate global demand, and strengthen it against a competing basket of foreign currencies. What the Fiat Empire needed was a global shock to offset the Nixon Shock. The Powers Behind the Curtain had a solution, and it could not wait for the monetary scientists to figure things out.
That solution was war. But not just any old war of attrition – a very unique, surgically placed Yom Kippur War in October 1973 of limited scope but tremendous global ramification. After two years of muddling through stagflation with no solution in sight and Watergate coming to a boil, decisive proxy action was taken and during six months in 1973 oil prices rose from $3.56 per barrel to over $10. The prologue OPEC embargo worked, and the denouement short war permanently established higher oil prices. Now international demand for US dollars soared, and US domestic political confusion gave cover to its fiat money’s reversion to its true value in gold, rising unnoticed by a public stuck in odd-even gasoline lines from $41 per ounce at the Nixon Shock to $187 by the end of 1974. And oil prices stayed high even as inelastic demand fell as the Middle East’s Kabuki Theater of rumors of war, terrorism, and threatened supply cuts culminated in the Powers Behind the Curtain’s pièce de résistance – the 1979 Iranian Revolution and $25 per barrel. Mission accomplished, and the price of success was a decade of stagflation, costly long-term foreign aid payouts to the main actors, Endless Wars wherever there was oil, the rise of the Neo-Conservatives, and nationalization of Anglo-American Middle East oil concessions. But Big Oil was quickly compensated – higher oil prices suddenly rendered frontier discoveries in the North Sea and Alaskan North Slope commercially viable. Thus the Powers Behind the Curtain had achieved by politics what the monetary scientists could not with equations – a new fractional “reserve” that through the magic formula of inflation would soak up most of the European, Middle Eastern, and Japanese held US dollars to preserve the American “virtuous cycle” for the central bank cross ownership nexus and its new partner – The Military and Industrial Complex.
But this flood of new PetroDollars coming into OPEC states had to be soaked up too, and the decrepit and outmoded US value added industrial export capacity would cost too much and take too long to modernize to be of any practical use. So the Powers Behind the Curtain set America on a dual strategy – vastly increased US Treasury bill issuance auctioned to foreign buyers combined with domestic de-industrialization. The US Treasury bill issuance would soak up much of those PetroDollars and deals were struck with the new Middle East national oil companies where in lieu of America “challenging” the expropriation of the Anglo-American oil concessions, these OPEC states would instead purchase large sums of US Treasury bills at regular intervals and pledge to sell every barrel of oil produced in US fiat dollars. Domestic de-industrialization was more complex and relied on a combination of creeping punitive environmental regulations wielded by a weaponized Environmental Protection Agency, together with the Federal Reserve System setting ever skyrocketing interest rates that eventually reaching 22.36%. This combination drove foreign demand for US Treasury bills and practically shut down new capital investments for domestic industrial activity, and by the start of the 1980s much of America’s domestic industrial base shut down and either relocated production overseas or sourced finished product from foreign suppliers. This offshoring was important as it sent US dollars overseas to develop a new contingent of US Treasury bill buyers and soaked up their surplus US dollars back into the “virtuous cycle”, thus not only preserving, but growing the US dollar Fiat Empire at the expense of the domestic workers’ now inescapable decline in living standards. Entire swaths of America’s Rust Belt began to wallow in unemployment and hopelessness, while countries like Japan, Taiwan, and Korea saw record GDP gains and unparalleled growth in domestic consumer demand all while under the all-expenses-paid protection of the US Military and Industrial Complex. Thus Japan’s, Taiwan’s, Korea’s, and eventually China’s industrializations were subsidized by American wages through the purposeful de-industrialization of the United States, as government’s unspoken policy now dictated the United States remain non-competitive to these East Asian countries so long as their financial institutions made large, reliable purchases of US Treasury bills.
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, both Britain and the United States respectively saw coordinated political shifts billed as the rise of “conservatism” but were in reality accelerations into more developed financialization commercial models. Despite the economic hype surrounding Thatcherism and Reaganomics, both platforms continued each country’s de-industrialization project, deficit spending took exponential form, and foreign trade imbalances began their inextricable divergence. And after interest rates peaked in 1981 and regular foreign buyers had been lured in, the Federal Reserve System reversed interest rate policy and began reducing rates combined with widespread media promotion of independent material success. Together, these produced an explosion of US consumer credit and a shift in employment towards service sectors like finance, retail, and information technology. To facilitate the rise in consumer credit, ambitious financial deregulation was enacted and the transportation industry de-regulated to accommodate nationwide distribution of rising foreign imports. With reliable foreign demand for US Treasury bills established from Japan, Western Europe, and OPEC countries, the Powers Behind the Curtain could now crash the oil price to spur even more western consumer demand for imported goods, de-industrialize the American oil sector, and accelerate military spending to challenge the Russian fiat empire to a fiscal duel of attrition to the death. The Globalist financialization plans had fallen into place, and Fiat Empire victory over Russia was just one fiscal quarter of deficit spending away.
And that victory came in November 1989 with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and an end to the Russian fiat empire. With its ever increased military spending requirements to fend off American threats, the Russians were unable to invest in modernizing their industrial infrastructure which had decayed to the point where it could no longer support the Soviet fiat empire’s “virtuous cycle”. With insufficient value added exports coming out of Russia for purchase by its satellites, demand for rubles dried up, the ruble disintegrated, and the Russian fiat empire dissolved as trade vaporized. Had the Russian commercial model transitioned into some form of Soviet financialization where it offshored its industrial value added capability to its satellites, while simultaneously adopting deficit spending with ever widening trade imbalances, backed with ruble denominated debt sales to these satellites, the Soviet “virtuous cycle” may have been salvaged and continued on. Thus what we learn from the American and Russian experience is that financialization is the transition out of capitalism by which technically bankrupt fiat empires outsource the costs to modernize their industrial export capability to satellites with the fiat empire in order to keep the “virtuous cycle” operating. This industrial outsourcing enables the fiat power to commit the maximum amount of spending to maintain its military capability in defense of its fiat empire using its tax base and the expanding money inflows received from Federal debt issuance to foreign holders of fiat money. Thus financialization is in essence a commercial model of securing guns through tax dollars and butter through credit.
With the Russian fiat empire vanquished, the start of the 1990s saw the American Neo-conservatives take over from the Powers Behind the Curtain and assumed full control of US – and therefore global – foreign policy. They quickly filled the entirety of the political void left by the end of the Cold War with hot wars, and unleashed the shock and awe of Freedom across the unaligned no-man’s land throughout the Islamic fringes of the old Soviet fiat empire. Almost overnight the world’s greatest enemies became those counties that the Cold War had kept the central bank cross ownership nexus from devouring. War, chaos, and occupation-without-conquest led to a string of new US military bases across Asia and East Africa, a score of new countries added to the Fiat Empire, billion dollar arms deals with newly built “democracies”, and trillions of newly printed fiat money pouring into the Military and Industrial Complex. Freedom exploded throughout the unipolar world, the red-white-and-blue was planted on nearly every meridian and longitude, and dissent was ground into ashes. But payment for this great expansion of war was hedged on the back of the new “Information Economy”, an economy that produced nothing but more of itself that in turn produced more nothing but was the important receptacle for hundreds of billions of additional fiat dollars that created a simulation of economic growth and prosperity without generating operating profits. And that simulation fueled the inflation that drove “valuations” ever higher that underwrote printing more billions to throw into the next round of the Next Big Thing that produced capital gains that funded the wars and death around the globe and delivered “You’ve Got Mail” on the home front. Everyone partied like it was 1999 when the speculation floodgates were thrown wide open, the money printing presses were dialed up, and that Depression era relic Glass-Steagall finally repealed and that worked for a whole five months until April 2000 – the month that financialization broke. Enter the monetary scientists to Wall Street’s rescue.
It wasn’t supposed to happen. The Fiat Empire was at grave risk as hedged capital gains dried up and war funding became uncertain. But rather than fix anything – and how could anything be fixed at this point – the central bank cross ownership nexus doubled down on its financialization bets. What the United States needed was an even bigger Fiat Empire and a massive monetary stimulus to blow an even greater investment bubble spread across many sectors – bonds, stocks, commodities, property, and much more valueless information technology. Every conceivable thing of any perceivable “value” was called up to duty and commoditized, collateralized, capitalized, hedged covered and naked, hypothecated, leveraged, re-hypothecated, and securitized. Financialization 2.0’s success depended heavily on a distracted populace unaware of its immersion within a simulation of economic “prosperity”, combined with dialing up the money printing presses to 10 and ridding the country of every last evil financial regulation and restraint. Thus 9/11 inaugurated the initiation of Endless-Endless Wars in pursuit of conquering every unclaimed square foot of the planet for the US dollar Fiat Empire. All pretense about fiat issuance and an underlying fractional “reserve” were discarded, and a hyper-financialized period of choreographed DLIA record highs and interest rate record lows was designed to give cover to the immense “wealth” concentration taking place into Wall Street hands during the fog of terror. And to ensure success for Financialization 2.0 and complete the American de-industrialization cycle, China quietly gain full membership into the World Trade Organization just four months after the 9/11 controlled demolition. Subsidizing this rise of China’s industrial economy would not only speed the US economic transition into pure financialization, but also make it a quasi-satellite of the US Fiat Empire’s “virtuous cycle”, replacing long anemic Japan and securing another source of increasing long-term demand for US Treasury bills needed to support years of additional deficit spending. Thus 9/11 initiated the Great Hedge to monetize the national asset base and extract every dollar of future “value” creation from the remaining American simulacra of capitalism, and transfer the bulk of economic endeavors into four new grand domestic sectors – Wars, Waste, Wall Street, and Welfare. And Financialization 2.0 worked for some until September, 2008.
Enter again the monetary scientists to Wall Street’s rescue.
Financialization 3.0 got underway at the onset 2008’s Great Recession and ushered in the age of Hope and Change under the brave new centrally planned world of Modern Monetary Theory – TARP, UBI 1.0, QE1, QE1 Extension, QE2, Operation Twist, and QE3. No one paid attention to the “economy” anymore as all eyes were transfixed on the next FOMC minutes release and that buzz the instantaneous HFT response to the DJIA 30. The simulated American “economy” entered into a new uncharted phase of never ending toxic CDO and CLO backstops to save the mountains of accumulated CDSs that underpinned all manner debt issuance that supported the rising stock “values” that were now totally divorced from any profit generation, and the simulation was MMT goal-seeked towards data-driven macroscopic objectives inferred from biased and skewed statistically manipulated information. The money printing presses were dialed up to 11, the failed and fungible “Information Economy” was rebranded into the “Sharing Economy”, and all national bets were triple-downed on intangibles and goodwill and non-GAAP enterprise values. But again almost nobody created anything of tangible value to drive true recovery as getting onboard the money transfer mechanism was what passed for an “economy”. Those few tangible things left in the real economy took a backseat their financing by the “smart money, as the creation of these tangible necessary and beneficial things was left to the mugs and dupes who had to assume risk and exist in what small element of the commoditized world that had yet to be de-industrialized. The “Sharing Economy” shared no profits other than capital gains with a select few early investors and again produced nothing but more of itself that in turn produced more nothing but was the important receptacle for trillions of additional fiat money that now created a simulation of a simulation of “growth” and the perception of “prosperity” that generated negative operating profits despite ever increasing “valuations”. And the central bank cross ownership nexus shrunk again leaving even fewer parties standing to reap the rewards bestowed by the monetary scientists. This simulation of a simulation fueled even more inflation that drove “valuations” ever higher that underwrote printing more multi-trillions to throw into the next round of the next Next Big Thing that produced capital gains that funded the wars and death around the globe and delivered not only “You’ve Got Spam” on the home front, but now that spam came with a file attachment from a Nigerian Prince. And Financialization 3.0 worked for even fewer until September, 2019. Enter the crisis management professionals, not so much to rescue Wall Street but to put the American “economy” on life support to give the central bank cross ownership nexus just enough time to exit their positions and grab what they could just before the Big Reversion to the Mean.
Financialization 3.0 was not supposed to fail – the monetary scientists had promised the central bank cross ownership nexus it would transition successfully into Globalism. America’s de-industrialization was not complete, there were still some things of real value left that did not yet have liens attached, and there were still vast profits to be hedged and brought forward from future “prosperity”. However, financialization did break via the bond market’s exposure to its weakest links in Germany, so another round of monetary giveaways courtesy of the Federal Reserve System commenced. Just unadorned REPO this time, no Hope and Change, no learned monetary scientists, no glowing Fourth Estate front page editorials, and no partying like it was 1999. Then, by sheer coincidence, the World Military Games were held in Wuhan China where by accident Team USA stayed less that two blocks from a certain wet market and came in 35th like some bunch of biochemistry sissies and six weeks later there were dead Chinese in the streets. No one noticed the bond market’s continuing implosion when the global shutdowns started and the REPO and PPP began, no one noticed it took a trillion in new money to get hundreds of billions in stock market appreciations, no one noticed tech billionaires getting billions more while they were infused with the excitement of a $1,200 UBI 2.0 direct deposit. And how could anyone possibly imagine that one day all the bills would come due while they were sheltering in place and stuck in the middle of a flu virus transformed into a political pandemic scheduled to wipe out humanity?
And that is where financialization stands today – outright unabashed money transfer to Wall Street and the ultra-rich, a window into the Globalism which we were supposed to smoothly transition. There is no excited talk anymore about grand plans of industry, no more predictions about things like flying cars, no one gazes up at the moon in wonderment anymore. Expectations have been managed downward and optimism has been crushed in preparation for the coming events. Nothing remains of the American Exceptionalism except a pantomime of stock buy backs, over-hyped iShit rollouts, diversity and inclusion, LBOs, ETFs, HFT, HFT ETFs, and disrupting the world one Java script code block at a time using H-1B imported labor. But despite the broken and adrift system, the financial surface world screams normality, there is still the perpetual urge and ever present push to “do something” even though everyone can perceive something is seriously different this time. Everyone’s piling in – get in now or you’ll miss the big tech short. Thirty year mortgage refi rates are at historic lows – hurry before you lose your job and can’t qualify. It has never been a better time to buy a house – get out of the city now before the mob burns down your 900 square foot crap shack. Zero commission brokerage accounts click here (fees and restrictions apply) – and…it’s gone. Buy, sell, or hold? What are you waiting for? Another all-time high. Synergies, paradigm shifts, raising the bar, the deal of a lifetime, low hanging fruit, win-win. Get off the fence, get your ducks in a row, step up to the plate, and think outside the box and push the envelope because failure is not an option. The business of America – is still business. But that business now is the business of financialization, the gathering up of the remaining mugs and dupes who still own some disposable assets to be sucked into the giant wealth transfer vacuum that is Wall Street. And when Wall Street has sucked up every last penny, our trip down the Road to Zero will be complete. That is when the salvation of Globalism will be forced upon us.
- Venezuela Orders 71 Tons of Paper To Print New Banknotes Worth 23 Cents Each
Venezuela Orders 71 Tons of Paper To Print New Banknotes Worth 23 Cents Each
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/05/2020 – 23:20One of the core tenets of MMT, or Magic Money Theory, is that a nation which prints its own fiat money can never go broke or be insolvent (unless a political decision to do so is taken). Well, that may be true, but in Venezuela things appears to have taken an unexpected detour into one of the more grotesque circles of economic hell as the hyperinflating country proceeded to print its way out of its endless economic crisis.
So much so that according to Bloomberg, Venezuela is now importing 71 tons of paper from Italian money printer Fedrigioni (majority owned by US Private Equity giant Bain Capital) which it will use to print new bills with the highest, 100,000 new bolivar, denomination yet. In dollar terms: each new banknote is worth about 23 cents, courtesy of the raging hyperinflation that has been sweeping the nation for the past 6 years.
One recurring problem for Venezuela, which as we reported back in 2016 used 36 Boeing 747 cargo planes to deliver a batch of then freshly printed (and shortly thereafter, worthless) currency, is that by the time its currency is printed, it is worth almost nothing.
Sure enough, as Bloomberg notes, the need for ever larger bills and constant devaluations in Venezuela is a direct result of an ever weakening currency and hyperinflation that now runs at over 2,400%, meaning that paying for a cart full of groceries now literally requires a bag of cash. The 100,000 bolivar bill would match the biggest bill ever printed in Venezuela, one made two years ago during the days of the bolivar fuerte (the latest version of the currency is called the sovereign bolivar). The central bank is considering introducing even larger denominations down the line, which will lose their value just as fast.
What is truly absurd is that Venezuela has reached the point where it can’t even afford to pay its money printers: it ceased using De La Rue after racking up massive debts, at which point it turned to a state-owned money printer in Russia to purchase 300 million of new bills. Considering that Venezuela is now using an Italian money printer, leads us to conclude that even Putin turned down the Maduro regime.
It gets worse: due to the total economic collapse in Venezuela, the national mint has to overcome a series of additional hurdles to introduce the new bill. These include reduced staffing due to the pandemic as well as a shortage of ink and technical challenges brought on by missing parts and frequent power outages have delayed attempts to get the printing equipment running.
According to Bloomberg, the shipment of bills will also be the last from the Bain-owned Fedrigoni, as it fulfills a contract signed in 2018, a year before Venezuela’s central bank was sanctioned by the U.S. in efforts to cut off Nicolas Maduro’s regime from the global financial system.
After this shipment it is unclear if Venezuela can even afford to buy new currency as it slowly transitions barter. Many won’t notice: in 2020 the country’s economy will be in its seventh straight year of recession, forecast to shrink another 20% due to the coronavirus lockdown and the collapse of oil revenue. Previous attempts to bring stability to the currency by cutting off zeros and printing new bills have failed. Sadly for the Maduro regime, the can-kicking game is almost over as the socialist regime will soon run out of ink to run its own printing press.
And with the local currency increasingly used only for toilet paper, local have been turning to crypotcurrencies and U.S. dollars, with Ecoanalitica estimating that some 60% of all purchases are now done using greenbacks.
Finally, for the benefit of its advocates, this is what MMT is always reduced to in the end: Venezuela has been suffering from hyperinflation since 2017, crushing the ability of most Venezuelans to purchase even the most essential goods, much less save. The average family requires more than 100 times the official minimum wage to meet its basic needs. And since the locals don’t have the firepower to take on the Venezuelan military which remains in Maduro’s pocket, this particular Latin American socialist paradise will remain a living hell to the local population for years to come.
- CIA Director Haspel And The Anti-Trump Conspirators
CIA Director Haspel And The Anti-Trump Conspirators
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/05/2020 – 23:00Authored by Chris Farrell via The Gatestone Institute,
Gina Haspel is the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Haspel is the first career clandestine service officer to become director, and the first woman. She was the CIA Chief of Station in London — twice, and that repeat assignment is very unusual. What is most interesting is the timing of Haspel’s last tour as London Station Chief — from 2014 to early 2017. That is the same timeframe (specifically, the late summer of 2016) when the FBI approached foreign policy academic and “utility government operative” Stefan Halper to begin the operation targeting Carter Page and George Papadopoulos in an FBI-designed foreign counterintelligence operation, against Team Trump, to be launched in Cambridge, England.
Nothing speculative here — the Justice Department Inspector General pegged the exact date of the FBI/Halper meeting as August 10, 2016. Halper had been on contract (again) with the U.S. government since the Iowa Caucuses began in October 2015. For the sake of brevity, I am not discussing Halper’s role in targeting former Defense Intelligence Agency Director, Lieutenant General Mike Flynn. That is another column for another day — and certainly Haspel knows a great deal about that, as well.
The timeframe (2014-2017) matters, because Haspel, as London Station Chief would have been briefed on the FBI’s counterintelligence plan before any actions were approved to go forward. The CIA Station Chief is the top intelligence official in any given country. The FBI must inform the Station Chief of what they planned to do and get Station Chief approval. The FBI hates that, but those are the rules.
Because the various intelligence agencies are sensitive, they do not use the word “approved.” Instead, they use the word “coordinated.”
Jargon aside, nothing would have happened without Haspel’s okay.
Think about this for a while: The current CIA director was an active, knowledgeable party to the efforts to target candidate Trump with a contrived foreign counterintelligence investigation. That carried forward to a more sophisticated and aggressive plan to carry out a soft coup against President Trump. People around President Trump were prosecuted and/or had their lives destroyed based on a scheme of U.S. government lies. Who appears to have been “in on it” from day one? Gina Haspel.
So, when we read in an article by Sean Davis, co-founder of The Federalist, that Haspel is personally resisting the declassification and release of records on “Russiagate,” we are not surprised. In fact, we are relieved, because a few of us have been shouting from the mountaintops about Haspel for years, to no avail. The smarmy James Comey is easier to identify and loathe than the elusive Haspel.
For those seeking more information on Haspel, Shane Harris of the Washington Post wrote a nauseating hagiography of Haspel in July 2019. Consistent with WaPo‘s standards there are several factual errors and loads of opinion masquerading as “tough reporting.” Harris (and one assumes Haspel) makes sure readers know that Haspel and company “boils down” presidential intelligence briefings to “a few key points that they think Trump absolutely needs to know.” We are supposed to also believe that “Trump favors pictures and graphics over text.” Of course, the CIA director’s office did not cooperate with Harris. No, not at all.
The FBI is not allowed to penetrate and subvert a presidential campaign. Executive Order 12333, Section 2.9, “Undisclosed Participation in Organizations in the United States,” prohibits it in plain language. Historically, the prohibition is a consequence of U.S. Army Counterintelligence penetrating Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at the behest of the FBI during the 1960s — among other abuses of power and authority. That legal prohibition is the reason the FBI felt the need to manufacture a “foreign counterintelligence threat” in the UK and then “import” the investigation back into the United States.
The FBI plotters needed to establish a foreign counterintelligence “event” to run their operation. The UK was the easiest and operationally safest/friendliest place to pull it off, especially with Stefan Halper’s connections to Cambridge. Haspel was clearly fully informed and had “coordinated” the operation. She also enjoyed cordial relationships with MI6 and GCHQ. Now we (largely, but imperfectly) know what transpired. Halper under oath, in public, would fill in a lot of blanks. Gina Haspel, under the same circumstances and conditions, might just complete the puzzle.
Should President Trump be reelected, it might just happen. A President Biden guarantees we will never hear another syllable of the rest of the story.
- More Melbourne Insanity: Mom Arrested At Beach For Traveling 'Outside Her Permitted 5km Radius'
More Melbourne Insanity: Mom Arrested At Beach For Traveling ‘Outside Her Permitted 5km Radius’
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/05/2020 – 22:40We’ve previously detailed protests that have sprung up in various major cities across the Australian continent over authorities’ ultra-restrictive coronavirus lockdown measures, which are especially stringent and far-reaching in the southeast state of Victoria.
There’s been multiple instances caught on video of police cracking down on elderly people and even pregnant women for merely resting outside on park benches, supposedly in “violation” of coronavirus social distancing measures, even as case numbers have significantly dropped since August. And now here’s the latest incident to go viral as citizens flock to newly reopened beaches, after Victoria slightly relaxed some of its more severe lockdown restrictions:
<p content="Video has emerged of police officers clashing with beachgoers in a dramatic arrest of a woman at a Melbourne beach as hordes of residents headed outdoors to enjoy the good weather over the weekend.” type=”text”>Video has emerged of police officers clashing with beachgoers in a dramatic arrest of a woman at a Melbourne beach as hordes of residents headed outdoors to enjoy the good weather over the weekend.
Officers approached a group of people at Altona Beach, in the city’s southwest, on Saturday evening after noticing they weren’t wearing masks, Victoria Police said.
And here’s a description of how this “mask enforcement” unfolded, in which the police claim the group that included a pregnant woman acted “aggressively”:
“She’s taken her kids for a swim and you f***ing arrest her for what?” one person says.
“You’re f***ing pussies,” a man can be heard shouting.
One of the group then alleges an officer pushed a pregnant woman in the group as they try to control the volatile situation.
It also comes as Aussies are growing sick and tired of essentially being locked indoors and confined to their local areas under tight regulations, even as cases drop and the weather grows better.
Police were out in force this weekend looking for ‘excessive crowds’ and ‘mask rules violators’. And more outrageous is that Victoria is currently enforcing a law that says citizens cannot venture five kilometers from their home.
Police in Melbourne have been accused of pushing a “pregnant” woman while arresting another woman who was allegedly breaching coronavirus rules. https://t.co/mvZRlkIyat
— Sunrise (@sunriseon7) October 4, 2020
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According to Yahoo News Australia:
Victoria Police confirmed the arrested woman was further than five kilometres from her home and was issued with three infringement notices.
Other members of the group also received fines while police will continue investigations into activities to determine whether others had breached current coronavirus restrictions.
The detained woman received multiple citations and fines, according to Australian media.
Local Channel 7 News Australia also confirmed that “Police took the woman into custody at Altona Beach on Saturday after she allegedly failed to wear a mask and travelled outside her permitted 5km radius.”
Aussies flocked to beaches this weekend, via Speed Media/REX The rule in restrictive movement and travel is source of fierce pushback by an increasingly angry public, however, authorities appear to be doubling down after the weekend beach incident, saying it “could be extended” past its Oct.19 expiration date.
- Greenwald Asks "Why Are Democrats Praying For The Speedy Recovery Of A 'Fascist Dictator'?"
Greenwald Asks “Why Are Democrats Praying For The Speedy Recovery Of A ‘Fascist Dictator’?”
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/05/2020 – 22:20Authored by Glenn Greenwald via The Intercept,
The typical reaction to the death of a tyrant – whether by revolutionary violence or natural causes – is not one of grief and sadness but joyous celebration.
It is not hard to understand why: when a nation and its oppressed citizenry are finally liberated from the suffocating, savage grip of fascist dictatorship, they feel joy for themselves, their families and the future of their nation. That is the same reason people have always hoped for, or work toward, the death of despots: they want to rid themselves of those who impose tyranny on them.
When Romanians learned in 1989 of the summary execution of their despised dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, “residents t[ook] to the streets to celebrate the downfall of the dictator.”
In 2006, “many Chileans celebrated the death of dictator Augusto Pinochet,” as “a cacophony of horns sounded as hundreds of thousands took to streets and plazas across the country when it was announced the man who ruled ruthlessly for 17 years had died at age 91, a week after suffering a heart attack.”
“Cuban dictator Fidel Castro is dead, so celebrate we will,” read a 2016 South Florida Sun-Sentinel op-ed by a Cuban-American who appeared to genuinely believe that Castro was a vicious dictator, and thus expressed the natural, normal reaction of someone who believes a country has been freed from the grip of a despot.
So typical is this reaction to the death of a leader perceived as a dictator that history is replete with countless similar examples over many decades and across the world.
Yet in the U.S., a radically different dynamic is playing out. Over the past several years, but particularly in the months heading into the 2020 election, it has become extremely common for prominent Democrats and their media allies to refer to President Trump as a dictator, a fascist, a tyrant hellbent on destroying U.S. democracy, a genocidal racist, and even a Nazi.
And yet, the overwhelming reaction in those mainstream precincts to the news that the fascist dictator has contracted a potentially lethal virus is to hope and pray that he makes a speedy recovery whereby he can resume his democracy-destroying, genocidal, tyrannical, fascist rule.
In March of last year, as CNN put it, “two powerful House Democrats invoked Adolf Hitler’s actions in Germany and the treatment of Jews during World War I and in the 1920s to warn against the direction the US is moving in, with both saying Donald Trump’s presidency presents an unprecedented threat to democracy.” One of the Democratic lawmakers who explicitly invoked Nazism and Hitler as the proper prism to understand Trump’s rule was House Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina. Just two months ago, Clyburn went back on CNN and warned that Trump was preparing to hold despotic power even if he loses, pronouncing: “I feel very strongly that he is Mussolini, Putin is Hitler.”
CNN, March 20, 2019
Yet when Clyburn learned this week that our modern-day Hitler who is on the precipice of ending democracy had contracted a fatal virus, he did not celebrate but instead, for some reason, lamented the news, wishing “the First Family a speedy and complete recovery.”
Why would you possibly wish a speedy recovery — rather than a quick demise — to someone you believe is a Hitler-like perpetrator of genocide whose recovery would enable fascism to continue?
That seems counter-intuitive and counter-productive.
MSNBC star Rachel Maddow began invoking Nazism and Hitler in connection with Trump as early as 2016, when Politico reported that, once Trump secured the GOP nomination, the on-air personality “has been reading up lately on Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, the MSNBC anchor told Rolling Stone, because that’s where she thinks the United States could be headed.” Maddow has notoriously spent the last four years manically obsessed with the claim that Trump has such a corrupt relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin that it is the Kremlin, thanks to Trump, which secretly runs the U.S. and is using that power to plot harm to large numbers of Americans by, for instance, seizing the power to cut off their heat in the dead of winter. Maddow was explicitly linking Trump to classic fascism as early as 2015.
Yet upon learning that the fascist, Kremlin-controlled, Nazi-like dictator had become ill, Maddow launched a one-woman crusade demanding that her fellow liberals pray earnestly for his recovery. She first posted an extremely effusive tweet: “God bless the president and the first lady. If you pray, please pray for their speedy and complete recovery…” Presumably in response to widespread liberal confusion and criticisms — wait, you spent four years telling us he’s a fascist racist Nazi-like despot and now you insist that we pray for his health? — Maddow devoted a segment on her show in which, with great passion and emotion, she urged her viewers to react to Trump’s COVID diagnosis with the same compassion and through the same prism as if a friend who smokes cigarettes learned she had lung cancer:
Rachel Maddow, making the case for sympathy for Trump, compares him contracting covid to your friend getting lung cancer because they didn’t quit smoking despite knowing the risks: “Your instinct might be to blame them. Go right ahead, enjoy that Schadenfreude.” pic.twitter.com/T1pO03QT73
— Ibrahim (@Ibrahimpols) October 3, 2020
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These sentiments were not unique to Maddow. Indeed, that all decent people should hope and pray for Trump’s speedy recovery was the virtually unanimous consensus of leading Democratic Party figures, expressed by Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. “Jane and I wish the President and First Lady a full and speedy recovery,” said the Vermont Senator.
How is this messaging — we hope the racist fascist genocidal Nazi-like dictator gets well soon and returns to work? — not creating extreme cognitive dissonance among those who believed that they actually were sincere in their maximalist denunciations and invocations of fascism and Nazism regarding Trump? Shouldn’t liberals not just be confused but overtly disgusted at their leaders who want Trump to survive and return in full health to imposing fascism and genocide on Americans?
Here, for instance, is the fairly representative reaction of a left-wing political operative — the Democratic Socialist of America’s Jack Califano, who served as the 2020 Sanders Campaign’s Deputy Distributed Organizing Director — to Maddow’s segment urging that all good liberals pray for Trump’s recovery and avoid wishing ill on their fellow human being:
That reaction makes logical sense on its own terms. If one really does believe that Trump is a “genocidal Nazi” — a Hitler-equivalent fascist dictator engaged in the deliberate mass slaughter of a particular ethnic or religious group (genocide) — then it would be not just irrational but madness and moral bankruptcy to hope that the Nazi genocidal fascist makes a speedy recovery and returns to work. But that’s exactly what virtually every prominent Democratic Party leader is doing. Is Califano regretful about having worked for the presidential campaign of someone who sends warm wishes to a genocidal Nazi?
There are a few potential explanations that may account for this extremely unusual and confounding behavior of praying for, rather than against, the well-being of a fascist dictator. Perhaps Democratic leaders are simply pretending to be hoping for Trump’s well-being for political purposes while secretly hoping that he suffers and dies. Or perhaps national Democratic politicians have ascended to a state of spiritual elevation rarely seen in modern political history, in which they are capable of praying for even those they most dislike, including ones they believe are imposing fascism on their nation? Or perhaps, maybe more likely, Democratic leaders do not really believe the things they have spent four years saying about Trump and, like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney before him, are applying such labels of historic evil to him for political advantage but still see him as one of them, whom they intend to rehabilitate and honor once he is out of power.
Whatever else is true, their behavior upon hearing that someone they claim to regard as a genocidal racist fascist tyrant has contracted a fatal virus is extremely unusual when compared to how people throughout history react when learning of similar news. It is worth interrogating what accounts for such a baffling dynamic.
- Investors Agree To Partial 5 Year Lock-Up As They Hand Another $2.5 Billion To Englander's Millennium
Investors Agree To Partial 5 Year Lock-Up As They Hand Another $2.5 Billion To Englander’s Millennium
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/05/2020 – 22:00Back in 2014, we speculated that as the market rose ever higher on ever lower liquidity and ever more central bank intervention, if and when the moment came that price discovery was permitted again, the avalanche of selling would be unstoppable and the entire market would be halted indefinitely, very much as what happened to 2014’s high flying penny stock CYNK. The recent unprecedented all-day trading halt in the Tokyo Stock Exchange was a reminder of just how easy it is to shut down all trading with the flip of a switch.
Yet while a marketwide halt would not surprise us, what we find remarkable, is just how many investors now seem resigned, even if subconsciously, to never getting their money back after the next crash.
Case in point, in mid-February – when stocks were trading at all time highs just ahead of the covid crash – Izzy Englander’s multi-billion “pod-based” fund, Millennium Management, managed to raise $3 billion without batting an eyelid, a remarkable achievement for a hedge fund at a time when its peers suffered nearly $100 billion in outflows in 2019, just shy of the biggest annual outflow since the financial crisis.
Yet while Millennium’s ease at raising money was indeed impressive (the $40+ billion fund returned less than 10% last year, a third of the S&P, but has been consistently profitable for the past decade), what we found fascinating was not only the ease with which investors handed over their money to the 72-year-old former options guru Englander, but their willingness to be constrained by one of the most draconian lock ups in hedge fund history.
According to a Feb 12 letter from the fund to investors, the share class open to new investments would limit the amount clients can pull to 5% of their money each quarter, meaning it would take them five years to fully cash out. The 5% quarterly redemption limit means that in a quarter in which markets tank and investors want to pull their money, they will only be allowed to pull just 5%. In other words, Millennium investors have pre-emptively agreed to be gated to at least 95% of their capital following a “market event.” And all this just to be allowed to invest in the vaunted Englander’s hedge fund. Or is that private equity fund now?
One reason why Millennium pushed such draconian terms on new investors was that it already had a line of people waiting to give it money: the hedge fund raised $4.1 billion in 2019, when it opened to new capital for the first time in two years. Back in February, it expected new capital would reach $7.1 billion by March. The total would push its total AUM to roughly $50 billion, even as its regulatory assets under management surpass $200 billion (MLP is one of “those” hedge funds that rely a lot on bank repo arrangements).
Millennium’s remarkably long lock-up, one which would put many private equity funds to shame, came as most other hedge funds were trying to secure investor capital over longer periods to avoid sudden mass redemptions if markets turn volatile (which they did just weeks after the new lock-up class was announced).
Ironically, this is what we said in February, when the news of the lock-up class first emerged:
Millennium had withdrawals of at least $1 billion in 2008 as investors found themselves in need of capital during the financial crisis. One can argue that by effecting pre-emptive “gates” that allow investors to pull just 5% of their capital, Englander is telegraphing that the party is about to end and that investors will rush for the exits. The only problem: they won’t be able to as the fine print in their contract now says.
Just days later, the party did end, with the S&P crashing as much as 30% before staging a record rebound on the back of the biggest monetary and fiscal intervention in history. Yet all those new investors who would have wanted their funds back were barred from doing so.
* * *
In any case, in the months following the March crash, Millennium’s capital raise was put on hiatus as most investors were more focused on holding on to liquidity than handing it over to hedge funds which have have once again failed to outperform the S&P500.
Until today, that is because as Bloomberg reported earlier, Millennium has successfully resumed its new capital infusion, raising another $2.5 billion for the new longer-term share class, and furthering its plan to create an investor base that is has virtually no chance of withdrawing its funds if another rainy day comes.
And since we are back to peak euphoria and potential LPs are once again lining up around the block to hand over their money to marquee names, Izzy Englander’s firm will cap fundraising through the end of the year at $4.5 billion, according to Bloomberg sources, up from its previous ceiling of $3 billion.
As reported in February, Millennium started a 5%-a-quarter share class in 2018 that didn’t include the three-year window for capital calls. That class now accounts for about $8.5 billion of assets, a little under a fifth of the fund’s total AUM. To force investors to switch, Englander returned profits from Millennium’s older share class, which enables redemptions in full over 12 months. Clients who had money returned could reinvest it in the longer-term structure.
Englander’s firm previously told clients it plans to return at least $5 billion to investors in 2020. That money was to come from its older share class, which represented about $37 billion of Millennium’s total $45.4 billion in assets.
One reason why Millennium can pull this off is that unlike most of its peers, it has had another stellar year, returning 14.7% this year through September, far more than the average hedge fund, which according to the HFR Global Hedge Fund index is up a paltry 1.7% YTD.
Furthermore, Millennium’s steady returns over a three-decade history has made the new structure an easier sell.
In a repeat of the fund’s February capital raise, under the newest share class, the firm has three years to call the pledged money from investors. Once that happens, clients will be able to withdraw only 5% of their holding each quarter, meaning it would take them five years to cash out completely. Effectively, investors limit themselves to having very limited access to their capital for years. And what happens if there is another crash in a few months, and this time the Fed fails to spark another monster rebound? For the sake of Millennium’s new batch of investors, we hope we won’t have to find out.
- Equity Investors Are Betting On Fiscal Stimulus: Few Remember The Clinton U-turn Of 1992
Equity Investors Are Betting On Fiscal Stimulus: Few Remember The Clinton U-turn Of 1992
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/05/2020 – 21:40Submitted by Joseph Carson, former chief economist of Alliance Bernstein
Equity investors think they are in a win-win position, regardless of the outcome of the 2020 election. Most believe that Congress and the Administration will agree to another round of fiscal stimulus before the election on November 3. And in the case that doesn’t pan out, investors believe a bigger stimulus plan waits on the other side of the election if the current polls are correct in showing a victory by former Vice President Joe Biden.
In my view, odds of another fiscal stimulus package before the November 3 election remain relatively high. But odds of another stimulus package after the election are very low.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle, especially those that are up for re-election, have the most to gain by passing legislation that helps people and boosts the economy. The holdup at the moment is on the scale of the stimulus package and not whether to pass something or not. House Democrats are standing firm on a $2.2 trillion package, while the latest offer from the White House and the Republican side is $1.6 trillion.
If current negotiations stall, the risk of no additional stimulus jumps sharply higher. That’s because it is hard to see how a lame-duck Congress would see the urgency to act, as there would be no pay-off for those voted out. And if there were a change in the make-up of Congress with one party holding the majority in the House and the Senate, the new leadership would argue that the election gave them the mandate to draft and pass a stimulus plan.
Contrary to conventional thinking a Biden victory does not offer a guarantee of a stimulus package, let alone a bigger one compared to what is being negotiated. That’s because campaigning is different than governing. The federal deficit and debt, the US credit rating, and the value of the dollar in the world markets are not hot topics during a campaign, but they are hot buttons when you are given the responsibility of running the federal government.
The Biden platform of 2020 is very similar to that of the Clinton platform of 1992. Mr. Biden plan is based on building a stronger and fairer system, and he would accomplish that by reforming the tax code to benefit working families, increase taxes on corporations and close tax loopholes, improve the health care system by lowering costs and increasing coverage while boosting government spending on public infrastructure.
In 1992, Mr. Clinton campaign slogan was “Fighting For the Forgotten Middle Class”. Mr. Clinton campaigned on cutting taxes for the middle class, raising taxes on the rich and corporations, designing a better and fairer health care system, and increasing government spending on infrastructure.
But the economic plan proposed by President Clinton in February 1993 was the exact opposite of his campaign platform. The plan called for raising taxes to reduce the federal deficit rather than cutting taxes for the middle class.
Mr. Biden is unlikely to do a complete flip-flop like that of Mr. Clinton. That’s because the budget deficit is not high on anyone’s radar and long-term interest rates are below 1% today versus near 7% in the early 1990s.
But Mr. Biden and his economic team will still inherit a $3 trillion, or higher, federal budget deficit. And the risk is that a big stimulus package could trigger unwanted changes in the bond market or foreign exchange markets. So it would not be a big surprise if Biden’s fiscal plan were structured to be revenue-neutral. That would involve a re-alignment of taxes, lowering taxes for middle-income workers while raising taxes on higher-wage earners and corporations.
The best bet for equity investors is for a stimulus package passed before the election. But the window for a stimulus package getting passed is less than 20 days as it is unlikely Congress would even be in session a week or so before the election on November 3.
Equity investors need to realize that a Biden victory does not guarantee a bigger or better stimulus package, but it would create more uncertainty over the timeline for any new legislation. A new Administration would not be installed until January 20, and it would take a few months, at least, to design and pass new stimulus legislation. Equity investors don’t like uncertainty, and yet the risk of an uncertain future rises each day Congress fails to act.
- "Browsing Is Dead" – Walmart Redesigns Stores Inspired By Airports And Contactless Environment
“Browsing Is Dead” – Walmart Redesigns Stores Inspired By Airports And Contactless Environment
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/05/2020 – 21:20Walmart has introduced a new store design and layout that will be rolled out in the near term. The new design was mostly inspired by fierce competition from Amazon, airport layouts, and the contactless environment produced by the virus pandemic.
In a recent blog post, Janey Whiteside, the retailer’s chief customer officer, wrote the new layout “spotlights products and end-to-end digital navigation that guides customers throughout their journeys.”
The new design, which will be unveiled in nearly 200 of Walmart’s 4,500 US stores this year, will be seen at another 800 next year, incorporates technology to produce a contactless shopping environment.
There will be a lot of notable changes for customers. The first is the aisles will be labeled by numbers and letters to help customers find products guided by the Walmart app on their smartphone. The move is to produce a habit among customers to use the app rather than Amazon’s. The app will be loaded with helpful technology that will reduce instore frustration in product searches.
Other store changes include electronic information boards that will help guide shoppers to sections, very much like signage at airports.
“We were inspired by airport wayfinding systems as best-in-class examples of how to direct large groups of people,” wrote Whiteside. “We developed simple yet thoughtful designs to replicate these navigation efficiencies, which will help us move customers through the store more quickly. We also optimized product layout, bringing greater visibility to key items throughout the store, including dedicated in-store sections for electronics, toys, baby products, and more.”
For Fast Company, Walmart’s redesign “proves browsing is dead” in stores. The new design allows customers to navigate stores more efficiently.
“We’ve always known customers want to get in and out of a Walmart as quickly as they can. Not in a bad way. You don’t want to waste time,” Whiteside told Fast Company.
At the end of the shopping experience, customers will be greeted with self-checkout kiosks and have the option to use Walmart Pay to complete their purchase. Some stores will have Walmart’s Scan & Go technology.
Besides changes within the stores, Walmart is also planning last-mile deliveries with drones.
- 15 Signs That America's Economic Depression Is Accelerating As We Head Toward The Holiday Season
15 Signs That America’s Economic Depression Is Accelerating As We Head Toward The Holiday Season
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/05/2020 – 21:00Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,
Hardly anyone expected that things would get this bad in 2020. Once the pandemic hit and states all over the country started instituting lockdowns, economic activity collapsed dramatically. U.S. GDP was down 31.4 percent during the second quarter of 2020, and that was a drop without parallel in all of U.S. history. In fact, that decline was more than three times as large as the previous record. But eventually states started to “reopen” their economies, and U.S. GDP for the third quarter is expected to show a significant rebound when the numbers are finally released. Of course we still aren’t even close to where we used to be, but at least things weren’t as bad as they were in the second quarter.
But now as the fourth quarter begins, it appears that economic conditions are heading back in the wrong direction again.
The following are 15 signs that America’s economic depression is accelerating as we head toward the holiday season…
#1 All 546 Regal Cinema theaters in the United States are being shut down, and right now there is no timetable for reopening them.
#2 It is being reported that AMC Entertainment (the largest movie theater chain in the U.S.) will “run out of liquidity” in 6 months.
#3 Over the weekend, I was told by someone that works in the industry that he expects most movie theaters in the country to eventually close down permanently because of this pandemic.
#4 The average rent on a one bedroom apartment in San Francisco is 20.3 percent lower than it was one year ago.
#5 During the 3rd quarter, the number of vehicles delivered by General Motors was down about 10 percent from a year ago.
#6 It is being reported that Anheuser-Busch will be laying off 400 employees in Loveland, Denver, Littleton and Colorado Springs.
#7 Allstate has just announced that they will be laying off 3,800 workers.
#8 JCPenney says that it will be cutting approximately 15,000 jobs as we approach the holiday shopping season.
#9 At least one-fourth of the 28,000 layoffs that Disney will be conducting will happen in Florida.
#10 Collectively, American Airlines and United Airlines let 32,000 employees go last week.
#11 On Thursday, we learned that another 787,000 Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits during the previous week.
#12 Overall, more than 60 million Americans have filed new claims for unemployment benefits so far in 2020. That number is far higher than anything we have ever seen before in all of U.S. history.
#13 Retail store closings in the United States continue to surge along at a pace that is absolutely unprecedented.
#14 Bankruptcy filings in New York City have risen 40 percent so far in 2020.
#15 This number is hard to believe, but it is being reported that almost 90 percent of New York City bar and restaurant owners couldn’t pay their full rent for the month of August.
None of this was supposed to happen.
By now, we were supposed to be well into a “V-shaped recovery” that would soon have Americans forgetting all about the dark days in the middle of 2020.
But instead, millions upon millions of Americans have lost their jobs and are facing a deeply uncertain future. One of those Americans is an unemployed cook named Juan Jose Martinez Camacho…
Juan Jose Martinez Camacho, 59, has been a cook for 30 years, since he was asked to fill in one day when he was working as a dishwasher in a restaurant.
He has worked as a cook at the Crowne Plaza in Redondo Beach, California, for 22 years. When he was laid off on March 23, he was thinking it would be only two or three months before things got back to normal. But late last month he was notified he had permanently lost the job, which paid $22 an hour. He has been looking for other cooking jobs without any luck.
Can you imagine doing the same thing for 30 years and suddenly being out of a job?
Like most Americans, he assumed that the pandemic would soon pass and he would be going back to his old routine.
But that hasn’t happened, and so he is among the millions of restaurant workers that are not bringing in any income right now.
With so many Americans out of work, food banks around the country have been dealing with a tsunami of demand. In previous articles, I have written about the absolutely massive lines that we have been seeing in certain portions of the nation. In some cases, people have started lining up at 2 AM in the morning and the lines have gotten up to 2 miles long.
And every week we see more gigantic lines at food banks all over America. The following is how one local news source described the massive lines that have been consistently forming in the state of Texas…
Thousands of cars form tightly packed lines across the state every week now to receive food. From Chihuahuan Desert border towns and cities to the staked plains of the panhandle, across the piney wood of deep East Texas, down to the Rio Grande and back cars stack, growing into steel and fiberglass caterpillars, hungry.
These events have distributed tens of millions of pounds of food over the past six months.
If you still have your job and you haven’t been forced to visit a food bank during this crisis, you should be thankful for your blessings.
Just like in the 1930s, we are witnessing colossal lines for food all over the nation, and this is just the beginning.
If you have been waiting for a “recovery”, you can stop waiting, because what we witnessed during the third quarter was about all the “recovery” that we are going to get.
Now we are less than a month away from a presidential election that promises to be incredibly chaotic, and the extremely deep divisions that already exist in our nation are likely to get even worse. Many believe that this election will produce even more civil unrest, and that will likely depress economic activity even further.
I truly wish that economic conditions would “return to normal” and that all of us could get back to our old patterns.
But there isn’t going to be any “return to normal” any time soon.
Instead, very dark days are ahead, and those very dark days will shake this nation to the core.
- US & Russia Resume Stalled Nuclear Arms Talks In Finland
US & Russia Resume Stalled Nuclear Arms Talks In Finland
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/05/2020 – 20:40Russia and the United States will hold their latest round of nuclear arms control talks in Helsinki, Finland on Monday, following the last round in Austria over the summer.
The two major nuclear powers have yet to agree on the conditions for extending what’s widely considered the most significant nuclear arms reduction treaty, New START, set to expire in February 2021 if the two sides don’t agree to renew it. So far ongoing talks between Moscow and Washington have failed to extend it by up to five years, despite pressure to strike an extension by America’s allies.
Via Yahoo News New START is the last major arms reduction agreement still in place. Over the past year the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty as well as Open Skies – which allows for agreed upon nuclear monitoring flights over the other country’s territory – have effectively collapsed after the Trump administration declared them obsolete.
The office of the Finnish President Sauli Niinisto issued this statement: “The round of discussions on strategic stability and nuclear weapons between the United States and Russia, which began in Vienna in the summer, will continue in Helsinki on Monday,” according to the AP.
“Finland welcomes the negotiators, this time (U.S.) Ambassador (Marshall) Billingslea and (Russian) Deputy Foreign Minister (Sergei) Ryabkov,” the statement added. Niinisto is expected to meet with both sides after the talks.
Washington’s position has been that New START and others remain somewhat obsolete given they fail to account for new leaps in missile technology, but especially because China is not involved.
Pompeo’s State Department has been pushing for a new treaty that accounts for China, something increasingly looking to be unrealizable given US-China relations this summer have fallen off a cliff. Russia has said this is a separate issue that Washington has to resolve on its own.
The Vienna talks resulted in no significant progress, according to multiple accounts, also given there are other “new” issues to be dealt with apart from whether it can include China, namely space security, after both sides have lately charged the other with turning space into “a war-fighting domain”.
- Venezuela's Oil industry May Never Recover
Venezuela’s Oil industry May Never Recover
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/05/2020 – 20:20Authored by Matthew Smith via OilPrice.com,
Despite President Maduro’s claims of a looming recovery for Venezuela’s economically crucial oil industry in early 2020 production keeps declining. Even measures aimed at revitalizing the industry and circumventing U.S. sanctions are failing to trigger any sustainable recovery. According to the latest OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report, August 2020 oil output remained flat compared to a month earlier at 340,000 barrels daily.
This comes on the back of Maduro’s ongoing tussles with opposition leader, and U.S. backed interim president Juan Guaidó, for control of the opposition led National Assembly. Those are intensifying as the elections for the parliamentary body approach, which are scheduled to be held on 6 December 2020. The reasons for this conflict are quite simple; Maduros’ desire to control Venezuela’s last independent legislative institution, the National Assembly, which is the only government body that can legally approve oil-licensing deals. Venezuela’s worsening economic collapse makes it vital for the Maduro regime to revitalize the Latin American country’s oil industry, with petroleum being the only real source of income for the beleaguered government.
The oil industry is responsible for more than a quarter of Venezuela’s GDP and 99% of all exports by value, making it a crucial economic driver. For this reason, the collapse of Venezuela’s oil industry has sounded the death knell for its economy plunging it into a deep crisis. This is highlighted by the IMF predicting Venezuela’s 2020 GDP will shrink 15%, even after contracting by a massive 25% during 2019.
Source: OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report September 2020. IMF World Economic Outlook April 2020. * 2020 production is the daily average from January to August 2020 and the IMF GDP figure is an annual forecast.
The Latin American country’s ever deeper economic crisis is directly correlated to the collapse of its oil industry and declining petroleum production. Venezuela only pumped a daily average of 340,000 barrels during August, less than half of the 712,000 barrels daily produced for the same month a year earlier and lower than a fifth of the 1,711 barrels daily pumped during 2017. For the first eight months of 2020 Venezuela’s oil output has averaged 542,750 barrels daily, which is 32% lower than 2019 and well below the nearly three million barrels daily reported for 2000.
Source: OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report September 2020. U.S. EIA. * 2020 production is the daily average from January to August 2020.
There appears to be little that Maduro can do to revive Venezuela’s oil industry and curtail the country’s complete economic collapse. U.S. sanctions have made it almost impossible for his regime to access global capital and energy markets, forcing Caracas to look elsewhere for the funding and expertise required to restart Venezuela’s oil industry. That saw Moscow become a lender of last resort as Putin seized the opportunity to exert greater influence in Latin America, but it comes at a cost. Moscow has its own national agenda which is focused on reinstating Russia’s recognition as a great global power, partly by extending Moscow’s international influence by gaining control over Venezuela’s vast oil reserves. The financial assistance provided by Russia, with outstanding loans thought to total at least $4 billion, has seen Moscow take control of Venezuelan oil fields and even consider taking a lien over PDVSA’s crown jewel, its Citgo refinery business.
Moscow’s loans in exchange for oil are doing little to revive Venezuela’s economy or crucial oil industry. This is because there is a severe shortage of the capital required to conduct urgent maintenance while rampant corruption and management malfeasance redirects what little funding is available away from development and maintenance activities. Those issues are magnified by the massive outflow of skilled industry workers which was triggered by Venezuela’s economic implosion. In a devastating blow for the Maduro regime India in response to tighter U.S. sanctions, aimed at cutting the flow of Venezuelan oil exports, ceased importing crude from the pariah state. That comes after exports to China slowed because of the same sanctions, although Beijing and Moscow along with assistance from Iran have been assisting Caracas in transporting oil to buyers.
As a result, Caracas is tightening its relationship with Teheran as it works on overcoming a wide range of obstacles and defeating U.S. sanctions. Recently, Venezuela flew gold to Teheran to pay for cargoes of fuel to stem fuel shortages caused by the breakdown of Venezuela’s refining industry. Caracas did the same in April to pay for Iran’s assistance with rebuilding its crumbling refineries to provide a longer-term solution to shortages of refined petroleum products, notably gasoline.
The decline of Venezuela’s petroleum industry appears terminal.
Russian and Iranian assistance has done nothing to lift oil production, as the August 2020 numbers illustrate, while the volume of operational rigs remains low. Baker Hughes data shows only one operational oil rig for August, although national oil company PDVSA consistently claims that data to be incorrect. The data from Baker Hughes only counts operational rotary rigs drilling for oil. It excludes small truck mounted rigs or those not requiring a permit and does not count rotary rigs being used for well workovers and production testing.
Source: Baker Hughes.
That means there could be a greater number of operational rigs in Venezuela, but they are simply not large enough or engaged in the activities to be counted. If the rig count along with petroleum production represent activity in Venezuela’s oil industry, then it appears to be in terminal decline. A major blow for Caracas was Chevron’s decision to pare down activities in Venezuela after pressure from the U.S. State Department. Chevron was the only international energy major to maintain a genuine presence in the Latin American country providing Caracas with access to the capital and technology to revitalize its oil industry. Venezuela cannot hope to rebuild its shattered petroleum sector without a massive injection of investment, technology and skilled labor. For as long as U.S. sanctions remain in place, which have the objective of initiating regime change, those requirements will not be met.
So far, sanctions have done little to cause Maduro’s downfall or foment any major destabilization of his regime’s grasp on power. If anything, they have strengthened his grip on power and forced Caracas to find alternate means of supporting Venezuela’s deteriorating and extremely fragile economy including cozying up with other pariah states such as Iran. It appears that Maduro and his supporters in the government are determined to stay the course regardless of the pain being felt by the Venezuelan people.
That means the country’s hydrocarbon sector will not recover any time soon, which is a positive development for global energy markets which are experiencing a multi-year supply glut that doesn’t appear ready to go away any time soon. This will keep Venezuela’s economy crippled with crude oil believed to be responsible for a quarter of its GDP and almost all desperately needed export earnings. As a result, hyperinflation, a lack of basic services, unemployment and starvation will remain the norm for Venezuela’s population. The sharp economic decline is preventing Caracas from effectively controlling its territory, allowing non-government armed groups from Venezuela and Colombia to fill the void, sparking further instability which is impacting the oil industry and creating additional hardship for Venezuelans.
- After Returning To White House, Trump Implores Americans Not To Let COVID-19 "Dominate Your Life"
After Returning To White House, Trump Implores Americans Not To Let COVID-19 “Dominate Your Life”
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/05/2020 – 20:10Update (2000ET): In a video that was apparently filmed on the residence landing shortly after Trump arrived, the president lauded the world class medical care he received at Walter Reed before imploring Americans – for the second time today – to not let the coronavirus “dominate” or “beat” you.
“Don’t be afraid of it,” Trump added. “Don’t let it dominate your life.”
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2020
The treatment Trump received made him feel better than he has in years. “I feel better than I’ve had in 20 years.”
He closed by saying that the FDA is in the process of approving all of the treatments he received for the virus, before saying that vaccines would be approved ‘momentarily”.
Ironically, the NYT reported Monday evening that Trump Administration officials were trying to “block” a provision in the FDA’s revised vaccine guidelines that would make it almost impossible for a vaccine to receive approval before Nov. 3.
* * *
Update (1950ET): While Trump’s show of (personal) strength earned plaudits from his supporters, MSNBC, CNN seized the moment to once again compare Trump to a despot like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un or Italian fascist progenitor Benito Mussolini.
During its live broadcast, MSNBC described Trump’s display as his “Mussolini Moment”.
CNN called it “something out of North Korea”.
Dozens of other blue-checks are criticizing Trump for removing his mask while looking out at the assembled press (who weren’t even anywhere near the residence).
But when they think nobody’s watching, or the cameras stop rolling…
CNN reporters like Kaitlin Collins obsess over masks when the cameras are on, but when they think they’re off, off comes their masks!pic.twitter.com/IpPSvgDqhc
— Trump War Room – Text TRUMP to 88022 (@TrumpWarRoom) October 5, 2020
…off goes their mask.
Congressman Jim Jordan distilled this sentiment in a tweet from earlier.
Does it seem like the Democrats and the mainstream press are upset that the President is recovering?
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) October 5, 2020
* * *
Update (1920ET): The White House has released the footage of Trump exiting Marine One and returning to the White House Residence.
WATCH: Trump walks up the steps on the White House South Lawn, takes his mask off and salutes Marine One for a photo opportunity. pic.twitter.com/f6sF25KaIw
— Axios (@axios) October 5, 2020
It’s unclear when Trump will make his next public appearance, but as his doctors said earlier, he has a well-stocked medical unit at the White House with nearly 30 full-time doctors, nurses etc.
Trump will receive his last dose of remdesivir on Tuesday. His doctors said he will also continue to take dexamethasone.
* * *
Update (1910ET): NBC and the other cable news stations just aired the official footage of Trump landing and walking up the White House steps.
NBC’s Lester Holt commented that Trump’s decision to remove his mask was either a “show of strenght” or an “act of defiance”.
On social media, Trump’s decision to go mask-less elicited shrieks of indignation from Trump’s critics.
The President returns to the White House, takes his mask off, salutes Marine One as it departs, and then walks into the White House without a mask. He is pretending he is over COVID-19 while continuing to ignore all CDC guidelines. Such arrogance and ignorance is breathtaking. https://t.co/AqfZw4k9N9
— Philip J. Crowley (@PJCrowley) October 5, 2020
We wonder what Trump thinks about the display?
* * *
Update (1900ET): Since news networks have been forced to keep their distance, the White House is expected to distribute footage of Trump leaving Marine One.
After landing on the South Lawn, Trump walked up the steps to the residence, in an unusual rout that was clearly planned for a photo op. After walking up the stairs unassisted, Trump took off his mask and stood in the middle of the landing, waving to the press corp.
Trump saluted the pilot of Marine One as he flew away, before heading inside. Though he walked back out on the balcony shortly after.
* * *
Update (1855ET): Marine One just landed on the White House lawn, and the president is being escorted inside, roughly 72 hours after leaving on Friday afternoon.
* * *
Update (1845ET): As Trump exited Walter Reed toward his motorcade, he flashed a thumbs up to the cameras. Though at times he leaned on the railing while walking down the steps, he was given a wide berth so the nation could see him walk on his own without any support.
Before boarding Marine One, he uttered a quick “thank you, everybody” before sitting down and taking off.
BREAKING: Pres. Trump gives a thumbs up as he leaves Walter Reed Medical Center, where he was admitted Friday after testing positive for COVID-19.
The president did not answer a shouted question about others in his orbit who have tested positive. https://t.co/DWSBofwQdM pic.twitter.com/gZfv8b5BkH
— ABC News (@ABC) October 5, 2020
The flight to the White House, which we discussed below, is only a ten-minute journey, meaning he will be landing at the White House just before sunset.
* * *
Update (1840ET): President Trump is making his grand exit from Walter Reed.
Watch Live:
As Trump headed toward the presidential chopper, journalists noted that he was surrounded mostly by aides, not medical personnel.
During the hour or so before he was discharged, Trump sent out a handful of Tweets quoting a New York Post article slamming Democrats over their reaction to Trump’s illness, before pledging that he would be back on the campaign trail “soon”.
“You see it in enthusiasm for the President outside Walter Reed Hospital. You see it in Registrations, from Florida to Pennsylvania & West Virginia, where Republicans are outstripping Democrats by 2 to 1. If the President bounces back onto the campaign trail, he will be an….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2020
….invincible hero, who not only survived every dirty trick the Democrats threw at him, but the Chinese virus as well. He will show America we no longer have to be afraid.” mdevine@nypost.com Thank you Miranda. Was over until the Plague came in from China. Will win anyway!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2020
Will be back on the Campaign Trail soon!!! The Fake News only shows the Fake Polls.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2020
As Marine One – the president’s chopper – heads back toward the White House from Walter Reed, it will land on the south lawn before Trump heads inside.
Trump is expected to quarantine in the residence, though that could change in the coming days.
* * *
Update (1730ET): President Trump plans to walk out the front door of Walter Reed when he leaves in about an hour, according to Bloomberg’s Jennifer Jacobs.
NEWS: Trump wants to make a dramatic exit from Walter Reed. He plans to walk out the golden front doors on camera, sources tell @SalehaMohsin and me. He’s shooting a video inside the hospital first, and then will walk to car and then to Marine One. No plan to speak to press. pic.twitter.com/DqLY6MvyXZ
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) October 5, 2020
Meanwhile, Trump is tweeting about today’s market gains, perhaps to show that he really is back.
STOCK MARKET UP BIG, 466 Points! 28,149. Great News for America. Jobs, Jobs, Jobs!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2020
Circling back to the White House, VP Pence said he spoke to Trump and he sounded better, before the White House confirmed that Trump will be staying in the residence when he returns (with First Lady Melania Trump).
After the NYT reported earlier that 2 housekeepers from the White House had been sickened, the CDC confirmed that it was detailing a squad of “disease detectives” to assist in the contact tracing efforts for the White House outbreak.
* * *
Update (1540ET): Alex Berenson, the former NYT reporter who has been one of the most vocal critics of masks, noted that Trump’s comment about not allowing fear to “dominate your life” was “one of the smartest things he’s ever said.”
Maybe the smartest comment @realdonaldtrump has ever made. For too long we have let this virus – and the media’s hysteria around it – dominate us. We need to take back our lives, our schools, and our whole world. https://t.co/gg02p3wgiM
— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) October 5, 2020
* * *
Update (1515ET): Dr. Conley has confirmed that although President Trump isn’t out of the woods yet, he has recovered enough to warrant his safe return back to the West Wing, as the president announced via tweet roughly 30 minutes ago.
Doctors said that Trump has maintained a full work schedule at Walter Reed. He will receive his fourth dose of remdesivir Monday evening, before taking the fifth and final dose on Tusday.
When pressed by a reporter about the safety risks to the Secret Service agents during Trump’s ride outside Walter Reed Sunday evening, Dr. Conley said that the agents wore PPE, as they have in recent days, and that the trip took place over a “very short period of time”.
Circling back to Trump’s mental acuity, reporters asked whether there had been any fogginess as a result of the medication, or the virus, Dr. Conley assured reporters that “he’s back” and that Trump has been a “great” patient.
Looking ahead, Dr. Conley said advanced diagnostic techniques will be used to detect when the last traces of ‘live’ virus have left the president. Dr. Conley said that people are most at risk of shedding the live virus during the first 5 days of infection, but usually by ten days the last traces have left.
Headlines are rolling in:
- TRUMP MEDICAL TEAM SAYS TRUMP HAS MET OR EXCEEDED ALL DISCHARGE CRITERIA
- TRUMP MAY NOT BE ENTIRELY OUT OF THE WOODS YET, DOCTOR SAYS
- TRUMP WILL GET ANOTHER DOSE OF REMDESIVIR BEFORE GOING HOME
- TRUMP’S CLINICAL STATUS SUPPORTS HIS GOING HOME, DOCTOR SAYS
- TRUMP CONTINUES TAKING STEROID DEXAMETHASONE, DOCTORS SAY
- TRUMP MEDICAL TEAM SAYS THERE IS NOTHING THAT IS BEING DONE AT WALTER REED THAT CAN’T BE DONE AT HOME FOR TRUMP
- TRUMP MEDICAL TEAM SAYS WE REMAIN CAUTIOUSLY OPTIMISTIC AND ON GUARD
- TRUMP MEDICAL TEAM SAYS TRUMP HAS NO NEUROLOGICAL SYMPTOMS
- TRUMP MEDICAL TEAM SAYS TRUMP RECEIVED SUPPLEMENTAL OXYGEN TWICE
Fortunately, once he returns to the White House, Trump will have a staff of more than 2 dozen nurses, doctors and APRNs to provide “world class medical care 24/7”. Aksed about when Trump last tested negative, Dr. Conely demurred, and also said he didn’t have Trump’s viral load data and earlier blamed HiPPA privacy laws for why he couldn’t go into “too much depth”.
* * *
Update (1455ET): Trump’s doctors, led by Navy Commander Dr. Sean Conley, are expected to deliver a briefing on Trump’s condition at 1500ET.
Watch live below:
* * *
Less than 30 minutes before his medical team is supposed to update the public on the president’s condition, President Trump has just tweeted that he will be leaving Walter Reed at 1830ET.
I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 P.M. Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2020
Just minutes earlier, Trump rebutted accusations from the mainstream press that he put secret service members lives ‘at risk’ by greeting his supporters in a presidential motorcade early Sunday evening.
It is reported that the Media is upset because I got into a secure vehicle to say thank you to the many fans and supporters who were standing outside of the hospital for many hours, and even days, to pay their respect to their President. If I didn’t do it, Media would say RUDE!!!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2020
But if Trump leaves Walter Reed tonight and doesn’t return, his urging for Americans “not to fear COVID-19” will be remembered, as he personally has demonstrated that the virus is not a “death sentence”, even for older Americans.
On CNBC, Tyler Mathisen suggested that one of the side effects of dexamethasone is a feeling of euphoria, meaning that Trump might be feeling better than his condition actually reflects. So, we now wait for Trump’s doctors to speak, to see whether they will parrot the narrative.
Trump tweeted as the NYT was publishing a report claiming that at least two White House housekeepers have tested positive.
- Las Vegas Records Alarming Surge In Apartment Tenants Unable To Pay Rent
Las Vegas Records Alarming Surge In Apartment Tenants Unable To Pay Rent
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/05/2020 – 20:00Nevada’s leisure and hospitality sector — which made up around a quarter of the state’s total labor market before lockdowns — has been one of the hardest hit by the virus-induced downturn. The labor market recovery in the state, nevertheless, Las Vegas, could take between 18 and 36 months to recover.
With no quick “V” shaped recovery expected in Vegas, rather one that could resemble a “U” or “L” – households are expected to remain severely pressured as job opportunity remains scarce. And due to months of stimulus checks earlier this year, deleveraging among households could be nearing thanks to a fiscal cliff (read: here). Only another stimulus check can delay the inevitable.
Bloomberg reports tourism on the Las Vegas Strip remains depressed. Now all those workers who were recently laid off can’t afford rent.
RealPage, Inc., who develops multifamily property management software, revealed as of September, an alarming 10.6% of Vegas apartment tenants were unable to pay rent, up from 4.1% a year earlier, the most significant increase of any other metro area in the US.
Los Angeles, New Orleans, Portland, and Seattle were other metro areas where the biggest annual increase in non-paying apartment tenants for the month of September.
Greg Willett, the chief economist at RealPage, said, “there’s more stress in hospitality-focused and expensive markets.”
“The wild card in everything is what happens in the economy, and what happens in the economy is dependent on what happens with the pandemic,” Willett said.
The ongoing rent crisis is a national issue. The CDC announced in early September that it was establishing a temporary ban on evictions across the country. As many as 40 million Americans could be booted from their rentals as the virus-induced downturn continues.
- U.S. Takes Stake In Battery Metals Miner To Counter Chinese Control
U.S. Takes Stake In Battery Metals Miner To Counter Chinese Control
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/05/2020 – 19:56By Mining.com, submitted via OilPrice.com
The US government is taking a $25 million equity stake in Dublin-based battery metals miner TechMet, as part of a push by President Donald Trump to reduce the country’s reliance on supply chains dominated by China.
The backing from the $60 billion US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) will help TechMet develop a nickel and cobalt mine in Brazil. Both metals are key in the production of the batteries that power electric cars and cell phones.
TechMet’s Brazilian Nickel project, in the north-eastern state of Piauí, is estimated to hold as much as 72 million tonnes of nickel and cobalt.
“Investments in critical materials for advanced technology support development and advance US foreign policy,” Adam Boehler, chief executive officer of the government agency, said in a statement.
The move follows last week’s executive order declaring a “state of emergency” in the US mining industry. The directive, which seeks pushing a local battery metals industry forward, also called for a report evaluating possible measures such as tariffs, quotas, or other trade restrictions targeting China and “other non-market foreign adversaries.”
Washington has expressed concern that China’s control of rare earths supply could be used as a tactic against US companies that depend on those elements.
Breaking China’s hold
China produces roughly two thirds of the world’s lithium-ion batteries and has taken steps to secure critical metals for them, particularly in Africa and Latin America.
The US is trying to fight back, with the Pentagon promising to fund domestic mining of the essential materials, while also investing in projects abroad.
Washington has also created the DFC to provide an alternative to Chinese overseas finance in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The backing to TechMet marks the first time the US government has invested directly in a metals and mining company, the company’s chief executive, Brian Menell, said.
TechMet was founded in 2017 by South African mining veteran Brian Menell, a former executive at Anglovaal and De Beers.
The company has a tin and tungsten mine in Rwanda, a rare earths mine in Burundi, and a lithium-ion battery project in Canada. It also produces vanadium, a crucial metal for manufacturing nuclear reactors and military aircraft.
The US is not alone in its quest to reduce reliance on foreign producers. In September, the European Union stepped up its efforts to become less dependent on imported raw materials, including rare earths and, for the first time, lithium.
- Iraq Confirms Trump's Troop Exit 'Achieved' With 2,500 Soldiers Already Gone
Iraq Confirms Trump’s Troop Exit ‘Achieved’ With 2,500 Soldiers Already Gone
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/05/2020 – 19:40Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,
Iraqi PM Mustafa Kadhimi has confirmed over the weekend that at least 2,500 US troops have already withdrawn from Iraq as part of what will ultimately be a three year period of pullout from the country.
This came following the recent announcement of US troop cuts during Kadhimi’s US visit, and the more recent threats to close the embassy and withdraw outright after troops came under rocket attack from militias. PM Kadhimi called the move as part of “a great achievement”.
File image via AP Some Iraqi officials have objected to the US threats, and particularly to the way they were made, cautioning that US threats were liable, in such a public way, to have a spillover effect on other nations working with Iraq.
Still, fear that the US might start a war with the militias probably is not such an immediate threat if the US is continuing to pull troops out. Many Iraqis have wanted the US out of Iraq for awhile now, and if the 3-year plan is in place, Kadhimi really just needs to try to keep things together while that works itself out.
Underscoring that, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s most recent threats were to pull troops out if Iraq can’t protect them, which is giving the militias exactly what they want, and what Iraq has already negotiated, just on a faster time-frame.
The US assumption seems to be that the loss of US troops is something to fear, and therefore something to threaten.
Washington has withdrawn another 2,500 troops from #Iraq as #US assets in the country continue to be targeted in rocket attacks https://t.co/C1lxw6EWaO
— The New Arab (@The_NewArab) October 5, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
That doesn’t make a lot of sense in Iraq, which already asked the US troops to leave and where Kadhimi confirmed securing a 3-year commitment after the US initially tried to sell him on an eight year process.
- Millions Risk Losing Power Over Unpaid Utilities As Most States' Pandemic Grace Period Expires
Millions Risk Losing Power Over Unpaid Utilities As Most States’ Pandemic Grace Period Expires
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/05/2020 – 19:20Millions of Americans are facing a dire situation of being without power or water as their utility bills pile up, and as state and local protections which allowed for deferred payments amid the pandemic come to an end.
After a summer of rising unemployment numbers brought on by the crisis, though seeing a promising potential softening of the trend in September, The Washington Post recently detailed some instances of people going as much as two months in the dark after falling behind on utility payments last spring.
“The worst economic crisis in more than a generation has thrust potentially millions of Americans across the country into a similar, sudden peril: Cash-strapped, and in some cases still unemployed, they have fallen far behind on their electricity, water and gas bills, staring down the prospect of potential utility shut-offs and fast-growing debts they may never be able to repay,” the Post summarized of new National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association (NEADA) analysis.
AFP via Getty Images Soon following the start of the pandemic in the US and resulting state lockdowns, most states moved to ensure residents that they would prevent utility shut-offs for an extended grace period. But still the debts have mounted, and at this point, the NEADA finds, only 21 states along with the District of Columbia still have disconnection bans in place.
That means the majority of states are shutting off utilities over unpaid bills. And further, “Millions more in nine other states are set to lose their protections starting Thursday and throughout the fall, the group found,” WaPo reports.
The study found that 179 million Americans are potentially at risk of shut-offs, though with the big and unlikely assumption that the vast amount of households would fail to pay their bills altogether. But still even a small percentage of this number means many hundreds of thousands of households, or even millions, face being in the dark.
Consider a single state, Indiana:
In some cases, the delinquencies appear to be severe. In Indiana, for example, more than 112,000 households are behind 120 days or more on their power bills, a Washington Post analysis of the largest local energy companies’ records found. The debt, totaling millions of dollars, is four times greater than the arrears accrued during the same period in 2019, the data shows.
The report further underscored that the nation’s electric and gas debts alone are likely to exceed a whopping $24.3 billion by year’s end.
Likely adding to the utilities debt crisis for many families is that fact that lockdowns were in place throughout much of the early summer, keeping families indoors more than they would have been, and at a moment of high temperatures.
- California Professor: "As A White American, I Am, By Definition, Racist"
California Professor: “As A White American, I Am, By Definition, Racist”
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/05/2020 – 19:00Authored by Ophelie Jacobson via Campus Reform,
uring an online lecture focused on “Undoing White Supremacy in the Language Disciplines,” a professor from the University of California-Santa Barbara introduced herself as being “a white American” who is, therefore “by definition racist.”
The professor encouraged audience members not to let anyone tell them they differently.
The September 11 webinar was put on by the University of Wisconsin-Madison doctoral program in second language acquisition. UCSB Professor and Chair of the Department of Linguistics Mary Bucholtz was invited to “discuss the white-supremacist and colonial underpinnings of linguistics, applied linguistics, and the modern languages, both historically and in the present day.”
“I am personally committed to continuing to learn how to be less racist. As a White American, I am by definition racist. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. I know there is this sort of rhetoric of White people in the United States rejecting the label of racism but I think we need to acknowledge that, and do better,” Bucholtz said during the webinar.
Bucholtz started her presentation by describing white supremacy and its implications by saying “when I talk about the idea of white supremacy as a pandemic or as a disease, I don’t mean that as a metaphor.” However, she later says that “white supremacy is not a disease but a choice…”
The UCSB professor also took the time to discuss whether or not she thinks the word “White” should be capitalized. This comes amid the Associated Press updating its style guide to advise journalists to capitalize “Black,” but not “White.”
“I hate seeing when people capitalize ‘White..;’ it’s not the same kind of category. Also, white supremacists love capitalizing ‘White.’ So for me, it’s a political decision not to capitalize it and to recognize it as a construct that has built itself out of the racial system or at the top of the racial system by opting out of being racialized.”
She went on to say that white supremacy “is a system that White people have built in order to oppress everyone else” and that “White people are not experts on white supremacy…We are experts in acting it.”
At the University of Californa-Santa Barbara, Bucholtz is primarily affiliated with the Department of Linguistics, but she also works with the departments of Anthropology, Feminist Studies, Spanish and Portuguese, the Comparative Literature Program, the Latin American and Iberian Studies Program, and the Gervitz Graduate School of Education. She is the author of multiple publications, including a book titled White Kids: Language, Race, and Styles of Youth Identity and a journal titled The Public Life of White Affects.
During the virtual lecture, Bucholtz pointed out that she believes “the notion of non-racism doesn’t exist. You’re either racist or anti-racist. You can’t be neutral about racism.” She continued to talk about the deficiencies that minority students experience within the language classrooms by pointing out that “Black students in the United States are underrepresented in foreign language classrooms and when they are in those classrooms, they may not get the opportunity to learn racialized varieties that are most meaningful to them.”
Toward the end of her presentation, Bucholtz provided some questions for audience members to ask themselves and discuss amongst themselves as well.
Bucholtz shared a link at the end of her lecture to a Google Drive with documents and presentations on how to be “a White ally, apprentice, and accomplice” in the linguistics department.
Campus Reform reached out to Bucholtz but did not receive a response in time for publication.
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