- European Union Approves Bugs For Human Consumption
European Union Approves Bugs For Human Consumption
Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,
The European Union’s Food Safety Authority has approved the sale of bugs as “novel food,” meaning that they are likely to be mass produced for human consumption throughout the continent by the end of the year.
Can’t wait.
“These have a good chance of being given the green light in the coming few weeks,” the secretary-general of the International Platform of Insects for Food and Feed, Christophe Derrien, told The Guardian.
Since 1997, the EU has required a “novel food” classification to allow the sale of products that had no history of being consumed by humans, meaning that the sale of bugs has been banned in countries like Spain, France and Italy for over two decades.
However, with the new approval, mass production of bug-based food is set to ramp up later this year. This means that locusts, crickets, grasshoppers, and mealworms may all appear on supermarket shelves by the autumn.
Christophe Derrien is looking forward to the sale of bugs as both a stand alone food and incorporated into existing products, arguing that they are a great source of protein and the production of bug food doesn’t harm the planet.
“The sort of foods ranges from whole insects as an aperitif or as snacks to processed insects in bars or pasta or burgers made out of insects,” he said.
As we have previously highlighted, eating bugs has been heavily promoted by cultural institutions and the media in recent years because people are being readied to accept drastically lower standards of living under disastrous global ‘Green New Deal’ programs.
This will be exacerbated by the expected economic recession, or even depression, caused by the coronavirus outbreak.
This is why globalist publications like the Economist have been promoting the idea of eating bugs despite the fact that the kind of elitists who read it would never consider for a second munching on crickets or mealworms.
* * *
My voice is being silenced by free speech-hating Silicon Valley behemoths who want me disappeared forever. It is CRUCIAL that you support me. Please sign up for the free newsletter here. Donate to me on SubscribeStar here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/07/2020 – 03:00 - "All The Jobs Are Gone" – Africa Facing 'Complete Economic Collapse' As Virus Spreads
“All The Jobs Are Gone” – Africa Facing ‘Complete Economic Collapse’ As Virus Spreads
The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns across the African continent could trigger an economic collapse, according to one United Nations (UN) official, who spoke with Associated Press (AP).
Ahunna Eziakonwa, the UN Development Program regional director for Africa, warned that the pandemic would likely result in job losses for millions of people, many of whom are already low-income, have no savings, and have no access to proper healthcare.
“We’ve been through a lot on the continent. Ebola, yes, African governments took a hit, but we have not seen anything like this before,” Eziakonwa said. “The African labor market is driven by imports and exports and with the lockdown everywhere in the world, it means basically that the economy is frozen in place. And with that, of course, all the jobs are gone.”
We’ve warned over the last month that a virus crisis looms in Africa. A little more than half of the continent’s 54 countries have imposed lockdowns, curfews, and or travel bans to mitigate the spread of the virus.
Places like South Africa, where the military has enforced “unprecedented” Martial law-style lockdowns through mid-April, is an attempt to thwart social uprisings as 370,000 jobs have likely been lost.
South Africa’s military has begun enforcing a #coronavirus lockdown, which includes bans on alcohol sales and even dog-walking.
Over 1,000 #COVID19 cases and 2 deaths have been confirmed pic.twitter.com/lanbMFw2hb
— QuickTake by Bloomberg (@QuickTake) March 27, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
For the 1.3 billion that inhabit the continent, widespread lockdowns are triggering vicious economic downturns, couple that with a public health crisis, and it could be a perfect storm that results in social unrest.
Eziakonwa said unless the virus spread can be controlled – then up to 50% of all estimated growth for Africa’s travel, services, mining, agriculture and the informal sectors could be lost. An extended period of subpar economic growth could be seen across the continent in the quarters ahead.
“We will see a complete collapse of economies and livelihoods. Livelihoods will be wiped out in a way we have never seen before,” she warned.
Top oil-exporting countries, such as Nigeria and Angola, could lose up to $65 billion in revenue with collapsed commodity prices – indicating that those governments will struggle to balance budgets, the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) said.
Many countries in the Sub-Saharan region are heavily indebted and could come into severe financial distress with budget constraints in a downturn. That is why the calls for stimulus among some African leaders have already begun:
“Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has spoken of an “existential threat” to Africa’s economies while seeking up to $150 billion from G20 nations. A meeting of African finance ministers agreed that the continent needs a stimulus package of up to $100 billion, including a waiver of up to $44 billion in interest payments.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa backed the calls for a stimulus package, saying in a recent speech that the pandemic “will reverse the gains that many countries have made in recent years.” Several African nations have been among the fastest-growing in the world,” Ap notes.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said last month that 20 African countries had requested financial assistance, with an expected ten more countries to need some form of aid. The IMF has already cleared credit facilities for Guinea and Senegal.
In the quarters ahead, socio-economic challenges will persist for Africa as the latest lockdowns due to the virus pandemic will contribute to negative economic outlooks for the region.
UNECA has said emergency stimulus programs are needed to protect 30 million jobs at risk of evaporating.
Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo recently said, “We do know what to do to bring the economy back to life. What we don’t know is how to bring back people to life.” He has created a virus fund that will distribute food and salaries to some citizens for three months.
In Kenya, President Uhuru Kenyatta has launched temporary tax relief programs for citizens and created a $94 million fund to protect low-income families.
Benin’s President Patrice Talon said the rich African countries are unleashing stimulus to boost their economies. He said for poor African countries, like his, they don’t have the financial capability to stimulate.
To sum up, Africa is being swallowed whole by a pandemic that has forced many countries to implement lockdowns to mitigate the spread, which has led to vicious economic downturns. Much of the continent will likely remain in financial distress this year as the global economy has ground to a halt.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/07/2020 – 02:30 - China's Fake News : Its "Superior System" Defeats COVID-19
China’s Fake News : Its “Superior System” Defeats COVID-19
Authored by Gordon Chang via The Gatestone Institute,
China has “defeated” the coronavirus and declared “victory,” Communist Party media tells us.
A funny thing happened on the way to victory, however. The virus is hitting China in a second wave. The second wave is claiming victims, including the Party’s propaganda narratives. The most dangerous of these narratives is that ruler Xi Jinping, with heaven’s mandate, has an obligation to dominate the international system.
China, after reporting no new infections on March 19, said the virus had been contained. Since then, Beijing has been reporting dozens of new cases each day but has maintained that virtually all of them were “imported” — in other words, the infected were individuals arriving from other countries.
Of the very few in-country transmissions, most, Beijing maintained, were transmissions from the imported cases.
China’s official numbers of deaths and new infections, however, must be bogus. Chinese officials are taking actions that are, as a practical matter, inconsistent with the no-new-infection reports.
For instance, on March 27 Beijing closed all theaters nationwide, after re-opening them just the previous week.
In Shanghai, tourist attractions that had just resumed operations were shut again. For instance, the municipality re-closed the observation deck of the Shanghai Tower, the tallest building in China, and the nearby Oriental Pearl Tower. The Jin Mao Tower is now shuttered “to further strengthen pandemic prevention and control.” Madame Tussauds, the Shanghai Ocean Aquarium, and the Shanghai Haichang Ocean Park are now dark, along with the indoor portions of another 25 attractions.
Shanghai Disneyland? “Temporarily Closed Until Further Notice.”
Shanghai is not the only metropolis turning out the lights. In Chengdu, karaoke bars and internet cafes were also shut just days after Sichuan province opened up all entertainment venues.
Fuyang in Anhui province ordered the closure of “entertainment spots” and indoor swimming pools. Henan province locked down internet cafes.
Henan even quarantined an entire area, Jia county, as doctors there tested positive for the bug.
On March 31, ESPN reported that the Chinese central government had delayed the resumption of team sports.
The nationwide university-entrance exams, the gaokao, have been postponed a month, to July.
The regime has also not rescheduled its premier political events, the annual meetings of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, both originally scheduled for early March.
Finally, the authorities in Jiangxi province are not allowing people from next-door Hubei to enter, indicating they do not believe the epidemic in that disease-ridden province is over.
Does any of this matter? It does: Xi Jinping thinks he should rule the planet.
“China, the country where the virus first appeared and claimed its first several thousand lives, is now using the global spread of the disease to bolster an increasingly vocal, assertive bid for global leadership that is exacerbating a yearslong conflict with the U.S.,” the Wall Street Journal wrote on April 1.
As the Communist Party’s Global Times on March 30 triumphantly put it, “COVID-19 Blunders Signal End of ‘American Century.'”
To push America aside and seize global leadership, China got Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), to say that China’s response to the coronavirus showed the “superiority of the Chinese system and this experience is worthy of emulation by other countries.” Then Beijing set about making a big show of “donating” medical equipment and diagnostic kits, most notably to stricken Europe.
Finally, Xi Jinping, beginning around the first week of February, forced China back to work to demonstrate that China had ended the epidemic.
None of these showy displays will convince anyone, however, if the virus ravages China again. Unfortunately for Xi, that is what is happening: people in China are re-infecting each other. For instance, in industrial Dongguan in southern Guangdong province, workers returning to their jobsites have been carrying the coronavirus, and this has forced health officials to quarantine other workers. China’s leader can jump-start the economy or throttle the coronavirus, but he cannot do both at the same time.
When the second wave of coronavirus infections hits China hard, Xi Jinping’s boasts about the superiority of Chinese communism will begin to sound hollow, absurd even.
Xi’s initial policies turned a local outbreak into a pandemic, and now they are making even more people sick and forcing China into another pit of disease. China’s inaccurate diagnostic kits and substandard protective gear donated around the world along with the new infections will show the truth: communism is incompetent if not downright malign.
Incompetent and malign communism in turn means Xi’s predicted decline of America will again have to be pushed back to another day.
China can lie with statistics, but the virus gets the last word. “Victory” over both COVID-19 and the United States is still far out of sight.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/07/2020 – 02:00 - Austria Becomes First European State To Start Reopening Its Economy
Austria Becomes First European State To Start Reopening Its Economy
American liberals are having a field day right now bashing President Trump for ‘botching’ the federal response to the coronavirus outbreak. But before they get too excited, we’d like to point out a couple of things to keep in mind: first, the outbreak isn’t over yet, and although 300k cases seems like a lot, the projections for both the US and globally are calling for many millions more, in the US, as well as in Europe and Asia.
Another, is that the Trump Administration and the CDC weren’t the only organizations blinded by “institutional hubris” – as WaPo described the situation at the CDC in its big expose published over the weekend.
Even WaPo conceded that if there was one indisputably great call made by Trump, it was his decision to seal off the US to most flights from China in February. If anything, he should have sealed off slights from all of Europe, too.
But in Brussels, bureaucrats with the EU took the China-influenced advice from the WHO claiming that closing borders wasn’t appropriate at face value, and pushed member states to prioritize other methods of combating the virus instead of border closures and travel bans. Unfortunately, epidemiologists now understand that these are among the most effective tactics for combating the pandemic.
As if to underline that point, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and his government on Monday announced plans to reopen their economy as soon as next week.
Flanked by senior government ministers, Kurz announced on Monday a new timetable to restart the Austrian economy, detailing a series of phased steps to bring life back to normal while minimizing the risk.
This will make Austria the first major European country to reopen its economy, a gamble that the FT pointed out will be heavily scrutinized by its neighbors.
But the reason Austria is even in this situation is because it was one of the first major European economies to eschew the advice from Brussels by ordering businesses to close, imposing a strict nationwide ‘lockdown’ and – most importantly – closing the country’s borders to its plague-ridden southern neighbor, Italy.
The country’s lockdown was in place by March 11.
The country of 8.8 million has still reported a number of cases and deaths, though with lower totals than its neighbors. The number of active COVID-19 cases fell for a third straight day on Monday, as recoveries once again outnumbered new infections. That ‘total active’ – the key figure for an economy considering reopening – stood at just over 12,000 in a country of 8.8 million. Sixteen people died in the last 24 hours, bringing the total to 220. The number of patients requiring intensive care remained stable over the past four days at around 250.
During Monday’s speech, Kurz warned Austrians not to engage in Easter celebrations, or he could cancel or alter the plans. The lockdown must continue to be scrupulously adhered to, he said, or the reopening would not happen. Per Kurz’s plan, some shops would start reopening as soon as next week, with others reopening the following week, with reopenings happening gradually by industry until restaurants and bars (expected to be the last on the list) are allowed to reopen by the end of next month (according to the current timeline).
So far, Kurz’s handling of the pandemic, and the performance of his health minister, the coalition-partner Green party’s Rudolf Anschober, has been incredibly popular at home. Now, if he manages to upstage neighboring Germany by reopening the Austrian economy swiftly and safely, Kurz will likely go down as one of the most celebrated leaders of Austria since WWII.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/07/2020 – 01:00 - As US Consumers Slide Into Depression They Have Never Been More Bullish On Stocks
As US Consumers Slide Into Depression They Have Never Been More Bullish On Stocks
Not even in Khruschev’s wildest dreams did central planners ever conceive of anything so absolutely batshit insane as what is taking place in US “markets” right now.
With the US economy sliding into a depression which will last at least one quarter, and if Evercore’s Ed Hyman is correct well into the second half if not 2021…
Source … it is not a surprise that according to the latest New York Fed survey of consumer expectations, virtually every metric having to do with one’s financial well being – income, wealth, debt sustainability and earnings expectations – is cratering. For example the expected probability of losing one’s job jumped to an all-time high of 18.5%; the probability of missing a minimum debt payment over the next three months surged to 15.1%, and expected earnings growth tumbled to just 2%.
While the above data may not have been surprising, what was shocking is what the Fed reported was the average consumer expectation for stock prices in the future: according to the NY Fed, the mean probability that US stock prices will be higher one year from now surged to 47.7%, the highest on record.
Right… because with his job gone, his $400 dollars of emergency savings just spent on a roll of toilet paper, his bank preparing to foreclose on his home, all while a deadly virus lurks in every corner, all Joe Sixpack can think of is how to get his “money on the sidelines” into the stock market as it is about to soar to all time highs.
And so, thanks to the Fed’s now grotesque interventions in all capital markets, including the purchase of over $1 trillion in securities in the past two weeks, the stock market is now perceived by conventional wisdom as a countercyclical indicator, one which surges the worst the economy gets, and with the economy sliding into a depression it is only “logical” – we use the term loosely – that expectations of higher stock prices have never been higher.
That of course is the absurdist interpretation of the above “data’. There was, naturally, a serious way of looking at this delightfully ridiculous data and lacking a sense of humor, David Rosenberg applied just that, tweeting that “I was so close to turning more bullish (less bearish?) until I see this metric was released by the New York Fed on consumer expectations. Since when do bear markets end on record optimism?”
I was so close to turning more bullish (less bearish?) until I see this metric was released by the New York Fed on consumer expectations. Since when do bear markets end on record optimism? pic.twitter.com/Gddwl5JDbj
— David Rosenberg (@EconguyRosie) April 6, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Oh David, “since when” do you still think that anything you observe in this economy or market, both stuffed to the gills with trillions and trillions in freshly printed fiatscoes, matters or makes sense. And to answer your question: bear markets end when the Fed says so, and proceeds to do to stocks what it did to IG bonds – and start buying directly.
And incidentally David, you may want to reasses your nothing can beat deflation thesis. Albert Edwards already has, and has said farewell to his “great ice age” thesis that defined his work for the past 30 years. We wonder how long it will take you to realize that we now live in a time of helicopter money and that markets – by any definition – no longer exist, and what comes next it a tsunami of debt and money much of which will finally make its way, kicking and screaming into the broader economy.
Don’t believe us? Just take one look at gold, where the beginning of the end is finally starting to be priced in.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/07/2020 – 00:03 - Whitehead: Civil Liberty Attacks In The Age Of COVID-19 Threaten To Expose The American Police State
Whitehead: Civil Liberty Attacks In The Age Of COVID-19 Threaten To Expose The American Police State
In an exclusive for MintPress, constitutional attorney John Whitehead warns that the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to bring the American Police State out into the open on a scale we’ve not seen before.
You can always count on the government to take advantage of a crisis, legitimate or manufactured.
This coronavirus pandemic is no exception.
Not only are the federal and state governments unraveling the constitutional fabric of the nation with lockdown mandates that are sending the economy into a tailspin and wreaking havoc with our liberties, but they are also rendering the citizenry fully dependent on the government for financial handouts, medical intervention, protection and sustenance.
Unless we find some way to rein in the government’s power grabs, the fall-out will be epic.
Everything I have warned about for years—government overreach, invasive surveillance, martial law, abuse of powers, militarized police, weaponized technology used to track and control the citizenry, and so on—has coalesced into this present moment.
The government’s shameless exploitation of past national emergencies for its own nefarious purposes pales in comparison to what is presently unfolding.
Deploying the same strategy it used with 9/11 to acquire greater powers under the USA Patriot Act, the police state—a.k.a. the shadow government, a.k.a. the Deep State—has been anticipating this moment for years, quietly assembling a wish list of lockdown powers that could be trotted out and approved at a moment’s notice.
It should surprise no one, then, that the Trump Administration has asked Congress to allow it to suspend parts of the Constitution whenever it deems it necessary during this coronavirus pandemic and “other” emergencies.
It’s that “other” emergencies part that should particularly give you pause, if not spur you to immediate action (by action, I mean a loud and vocal, apolitical, nonpartisan outcry and sustained, apolitical, nonpartisan resistance).
In fact, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has been quietly trotting out and testing a long laundry list of terrifying powers that override the Constitution.
We’re talking about lockdown powers (at both the federal and state level): the ability to suspend the Constitution, indefinitely detain American citizens, bypass the courts, quarantine whole communities or segments of the population, override the First Amendment by outlawing religious gatherings and assemblies of more than a few people, shut down entire industries and manipulate the economy, muzzle dissidents, “stop and seize any plane, train or automobile to stymie the spread of contagious disease,” reshape financial markets, create a digital currency (and thus further restrict the use of cash), determine who should live or die…
You’re getting the picture now, right?
These are powers the police state would desperately like to make permanent.
Bear in mind, however, that these powers the Trump Administration, acting on orders from the police state, are officially asking Congress to recognize and authorize barely scratch the surface of the far-reaching powers the government has already unilaterally claimed for itself.
Unofficially, the police state has been riding roughshod over the rule of law for years now without any pretense of being reined in or restricted in its power grabs by Congress, the courts or the citizenry.
This current pandemic is a test to see whether the Constitution—and our commitment to the principles enshrined in the Bill of Rights—can survive a national crisis and true state of emergency.
Here’s what we know: whatever the so-called threat to the nation—whether it’s civil unrest, school shootings, alleged acts of terrorism, or the threat of a global pandemic in the case of COVID-19—the government has a tendency to capitalize on the nation’s heightened emotions, confusion and fear as a means of extending the reach of the police state.
This coronavirus epidemic, which has brought China’s Orwellian surveillance out of the shadows and caused Italy to declare a nationwide lockdown threatens to bring the American Police State out into the open on a scale we’ve not seen before.
Every day brings a drastic new set of restrictions by government bodies (most have been delivered by way of executive orders) at the local, state and federal level that are eager to flex their muscles for the so-called “good” of the populace.
This is where we run the risk of this whole fly-by-night operation going completely off the rails.
It’s one thing to attempt an experiment in social distancing in order to flatten the curve of this virus because we can’t afford to risk overwhelming the hospitals and exposing the most vulnerable in the nation to unavoidable loss of life scenarios. However, there’s a fine line between strongly worded suggestions for citizens to voluntarily stay at home and strong-armed house arrest orders with penalties in place for non-compliance.
More than three-quarters of all Americans have now been ordered to stay at home and that number is growing as more states fall in line.
Schools have canceled physical classes, many for the remainder of the academic year.
Many of the states have banned gatherings of more than 10 people.
At least three states (Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania) have ordered non-essential businesses to close.
In Washington, DC, residents face 90 days in jail and a $5,000 fine if they leave their homes during the coronavirus outbreak. Residents of Maryland, Hawaii and Washington state also risk severe penalties of up to a year in prison and a $5,000 fine for violating the stay-at-home orders. Violators in Alaska could face jail time and up to $25,000 in fines.
Kentucky residents are prohibited from traveling outside the state, with a few exceptions.
New York City, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S., is offering its Rikers Island prisoners $6 an hour to help dig mass graves.
In San Francisco, cannabis dispensaries were included among the essential businesses allowed to keep operating during the city-wide lockdown.
New Jersey’s governor canceled gatherings of any number, including parties, weddings and religious ceremonies, and warned the restrictions could continue for weeks or months. One city actually threatened to prosecute residents who spread false information about the virus.
Oregon banned all nonessential social and recreational gatherings, regardless of size.
Rhode Island has given police the go-ahead to pull over anyone with New York license plates to record their contact information and order them to self-quarantine for 14 days.
Rhode Island National Guard Military Police direct a motorist with New York license plates to a checkpoint, March 28, 2020, David Goldman | AP
South Carolina’s police have been empowered to break up any public gatherings of more than three people.
Of course, there are exceptions to all of these stay-at-home orders (in more than 30 states and counting), the longest of which runs until June 10. Essential workers (doctors, firefighters, police and grocery store workers) can go to work. Everyone else will have to fit themselves into a variety of exceptions in order to leave their homes: for grocery runs, doctor visits, to get exercise, to visit a family member, etc.
Throughout the country, more than 14,000 “Citizen-Soldiers” of the National Guard have been mobilized to support the states and the federal government in their fight against the coronavirus.
Thus far, we have not breached the Constitution’s crisis point: martial law has yet to be overtly imposed (although an argument could be made to the contrary given the militarized nature of the American police state).
It’s just a matter of time before all hell breaks loose.
If this is not the defining point at which we cross over into all-out totalitarianism, then it is at a minimum a test to see how easily we will surrender.
Generally, the government has to show a compelling state interest before it can override certain critical rights such as free speech, assembly, press, search and seizure, etc. Most of the time, it lacks that compelling state interest, but it still manages to violate those rights, setting itself up for legal battles further down the road.
These lockdown measures—on the right of the people to peaceably assemble, to travel, to engage in commerce, etc.—unquestionably restrict fundamental constitutional rights, which might pass muster for a short period of time, but can it be sustained for longer stretches legally?
That’s the challenge before us, of course, if these days and weeks potentially stretch into months-long quarantines.
At the moment, the government believes it has a compelling interest—albeit a temporary one—in restricting gatherings, assemblies and movement in public in order to minimize the spread of this virus.
The key point is this: while we may tolerate these restrictions on our liberties in the short term, we should never fail to be on guard lest these one-time constraints become a slippery slope to a total lockdown mindset.
What we must guard against, more than ever before, is the tendency to become so accustomed to our prison walls—these lockdowns, authoritarian dictates, and police state tactics justified as necessary for national security—that we allow the government to keep having its way in all things, without any civic resistance or objections being raised.
Most of all, don’t be naïve: the government will use this crisis to expand its powers far beyond the reach of the Constitution.
That’s how it starts.
Travel too far down that slippery slope, and there will be no turning back.
As I make clear in my book “Battlefield America: The War on the American People,” if you wait to speak out—stand up—and resist until the government’s lockdowns impact your freedoms personally, it could be too late.
Just because we’re fighting an unseen enemy in the form of a virus doesn’t mean we have to relinquish every shred of our humanity, our common sense, or our freedoms to a nanny state that thinks it can do a better job of keeping us safe.
Whatever we give up willingly now—whether it’s basic human decency, the ability to manage our private affairs, the right to have a say in how the government navigates this crisis, or the few rights still left to us that haven’t been disemboweled in recent years by a power-hungry police state—we won’t get back so easily once this crisis is past.
The government never cedes power willingly.
Neither should we.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 04/06/2020 – 23:55 - Pelosi Tells Democrats Next Stimulus To Be At Least $1 Trillion As Goldman Predicts Explosion In US Debt
Pelosi Tells Democrats Next Stimulus To Be At Least $1 Trillion As Goldman Predicts Explosion In US Debt
The SBA and the Treasury have yet to figure out how to distribute the hundreds of billions in small and medium-business rescue funds from the recently passed $2.2 trillion Phase 3 coronavirus bailout bill, and the US government is already planning its next, Phase 4 fiscal stimulus.
Earlier this morning, Goldman’s chief economist Jan Hatzius wrote that after Congress enacted three fiscal relief measures over the last few weeks – which provide aid to unemployed workers and state governments, payments to individuals, and loans and tax benefits to businesses – “further fiscal support for the economy looks likely to be needed“, and Goldman’s fiscal forecast assumes that Congress “enacts at least one more fiscal package” because the measures enacted to date, “are not yet equal to the lost income due to COVID-19 that we expect.”
In further explaining the need for a new stimulus round, Goldman said that “Congress might need to provide further funding for small business loans (and the related loan forgiveness program to subsidize wage payments), unemployment benefits, and fiscal aid to state and local governments” which face a substantial near-term revenue hit, as well as some additional funding for aid to small businesses. Another round of payments to individuals is also a possibility. That said, in most cases Goldman “would expect that many of the “Phase 3” policies that Congress might renew or expand will not be as large the second time around. For example, while there might be additional funding for small business loans, we doubt that Congress would provide as much in “Phase 4” as the $350bn it enacted in “Phase 3.”
Altogether, Goldman expects this could add another $500bn (2.4% of GDP) to the deficit in the current fiscal year, and as much as $1.5 trillion (7%) more over the next couple of years.”
The total amount of fiscal relief that has been and will be passed, is summarized on the Goldman table below.
Perhaps more importantly, Goldman concludes that a new “Phase 4” fiscal stimulus round “is likely to face greater political friction than the recent legislation. Congress enacted the earlier measures on an emergency basis in a very short amount of time—by congressional standards—and without a full estimate of the likely fiscal costs.” As such the bank believes that future legislation “seems likely to take longer and we expect lawmakers to be somewhat more sensitive to further expanding the budget deficit.” That said, according to Goldman it is nevertheless very likely that Congress will pass additional fiscal measures; it would be politically unsustainable, in our view, for lawmakers to stay on the sidelines while the unemployment rate rises dramatically over the next few months. In terms of timing, since Congress will be on recess through late April, so enactment looks unlikely before May, at earliest.
And while few care about numbers, here is the bottom line: total fiscal stimulus will amount to an unprecedented 18% of GDP in 2020, and another 11% in 2021.
And, after all, why not? Now that the US is officially in helicopter money territory with the Fed monetizing whatever debt the Treasury will issue, trillions will soon become quadrillions.
And as if hearing Goldman, and its modest $500BN forecast for a Phase 4, on Monday House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Democrats on a private conference call that the next stimulus bill will be at least another $1 trillion,
According to people on the call, the next stimulus package – never mind getting the current package in the hands of Americans – would be to replenish funds for programs established in Congress’s $2.2 trillion virus relief bill. And echoing Goldman, Pelosi said there should be additional direct payments to individuals, extended unemployment insurance, more resources for food stamps and more funds for the Payroll Protection Plan that provides loans to small businesses.
As Bloomberg report, Pelosi also said the bill will assist state and local governments, with an emphasis on smaller municipalities with fewer than 500,000 residents, one lawmaker said.
And while Pelosi said she wants the next stimulus bill to be passed this month, this doesn’t seem feasible as the House isn’t scheduled to be back in session until April 20 at the earliest. That said, it is possible to pass legislation with most members out of town, as long as no one objects.
Other sources such as Fox Business News’ Charlie Gasparino, report that the Phase 4 stimulus would be even bigger, “somewhere in the $1.5 trillion neighborhood.”
SCOOP: Wall Street sources briefed by Congressional leaders and @WhiteHouse say expect next round of #virus stimulus by May, and somewhere in the $1.5 trillion neighborhood. PLUS: IPOs have dried up and may not come back this year, exchange officials tell @FoxBusiness more now
— Charles Gasparino (@CGasparino) April 6, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Meanwhile, confirming that bipartisan support is effectively assured, President Trump said Saturday he’ll ask Congress for more money for small business loans if the $349 billion already designated for the program runs out.
So who pays for all this generosity? Why future generations of Americans of course. As Goldman concludes, “the substantial increase in the budget deficit resulting from the economic downturn and enacted and expected policy measures will increase federal debt held by the public from 79% of GDP in FY2019 to 99% by the end of FY2020 and to 108% of GDP by 2023, just above the prior peak level reached in 1946.”
Said otherwise, when it comes to the US debt, the country is now under war footing as the Treasury will now have to borrow an additional $3 trillion for the remainder of 2020…
… amounts that are only conceivable if the US were currently under a state of war.
Finally, for those wondering how to trade the fiscal insanity that is currently being unleashed, well…
Glad to see both parties supporting gold $10k… https://t.co/LbCtc2b7Wb
— Kuppy (@hkuppy) April 6, 2020
Tyler Durden
Mon, 04/06/2020 – 23:45 - Argentina Defaults For Record Ninth Time
Argentina Defaults For Record Ninth Time
There is a saying: three things in life are certain: death, taxes and another Argentina default.
In the annals of sovereign debt there is no country that has defaulted more times on its debt, than the country formerly known as the pearl of South America – Argentina – which had defaulted exactly 8 times in just under 200 years. As of Monday, make that nine.
The first default came in 1827, just 11 years after independence; the most recent one was in 2014. In between, there were six others of varying size and form, according to Carmen Reinhart, a Harvard University economist. Almost all of them were preceded by boom periods as, perhaps most famously, when European migrants transformed Argentina into an agricultural powerhouse and one of the world’s wealthiest countries by the late 19th century. Invariably, however, profligate spending combined with easy access to capital supplied by overzealous foreign creditors, did the nation in.
Courtesy of Bloomberg here is a brief look back at each of Argentina’s eight defaults:
- 1827: After declaring independence from Spain in 1816, Argentina’s economy quickly opened itself to foreign trade. Some historians would later refer to the early 1820s as the nation’s “happy experience,” a period of peace, prosperity and fascination with European aristocracy. That soon changed. Argentina had sold bonds in London to help finance its nationhood. That debt came under pressure when the Bank of England raised interest rates in 1825. Argentina defaulted two years later. It took another 30 years for the nation to resume payments on the debt.
- 1890: In the late 19th century, Argentina went on a borrowing spree to build trains and transform Buenos Aires into the cosmopolitan capital it is today. London’s Barings Bank aggressively invested in the nation’s railroads and other utility projects. The south of Argentina boomed, too, as sheep farming spread across the Patagonian grasslands and gold prospectors rushed to Tierra del Fuego. That euphoria faded when the commodities bubble burst. The nation halted debt payments, spurring a run on Argentine banks and the resignation of President Miguel Juarez Celman. That November, Barings teetered near insolvency. Argentina emerged from default four years later, buoyed by fresh capital from the U.K.
- 1951: An influx of immigrants and foreign capital fueled Argentina’s rise to one of the world’s most prosperous countries by the early 1900s. But World War I hit the nation’s economy hard, as did the Great Depression that followed a decade later. Unemployment and social unrest soared. In 1930, a coup brought the military into power, ushering in a period of political instability — eight presidents in two decades — and a policy of import substitution, which closed off the economy and helped trigger a default.
- 1956: The populist strongman Juan Peron rose to power in 1946 and proceeded to nationalize companies, redistribute wealth and assert greater government control over the economy. The policies he and his wife, Evita, carried out would become Argentina’s dominant governing principle for roughly half of the next seven decades. Initially, they stoked growth and expanded the middle class. But in 1955, Peron was ousted in a coup, plunging the economy into turmoil and leaving the country struggling to keep up with debt payments. The next year, the military junta struck a deal with the Paris Club of creditor nations to avert a larger default.
- 1982: During Argentina’s Dirty War, the military dictatorship borrowed, mainly from U.S. and British banks, to fund infrastructure projects and state industries. The nation’s foreign debt ballooned to $46 billion from $8 billion. Then commodity prices collapsed again when the Federal Reserve, under the leadership of Chairman Paul Volcker, raised U.S. interest rates to as high as 20% to tame inflation, spurring debt crises across Latin America and the rest of the developing world. Argentina became one of 27 nations, including 16 in Latin America, to reschedule its debt.
- 1989: A series of failures in the late 1980s to curb inflation — which climbed over 3,000% — triggered another default in 1989 and brought Peronist leader Carlos Menem into power. His government reduced inflation, privatized state companies and lured foreign direct investment, steering the nation from recession to double-digit growth by Menem’s second full year in office. Still, Argentina’s foreign debt surged to more than $100 billion, the result of Menem’s inability to rein in spending. By the time he left, the nation had fallen into recession once more amid rising unemployment, constrained exports and an overvalued peso.
- 2001: As the brutal recession entered its fourth year, wiping out about two-thirds of the nation’s gross domestic product, Argentines rioted around the rallying cry, “All of them must go!” The country had five presidents in two weeks, all while declaring what was at the time the largest default by a country in history. Payments were halted on $95 billion worth of bonds. That led to restructuring deals with creditors in 2005 and 2010 under Nestor Kirchner and his wife, Cristina Fernandez. Most bondholders agreed to take the 30 cents on the dollar offered, but a contingent led by hedge-fund billionaire Paul Singer held out and demanded full repayment.
- 2014: Haunted by a legal drama with Singer and other holdout creditors, Argentina defaulted once again, albeit on a lesser scale. Fernandez’s administration missed an interest payment after a U.S. judge ruled that Argentina couldn’t distribute the funds unless Singer’s Elliott Management Corp. and other so-called “vulture funds” got paid on their defaulted debt. That dispute was finally resolved in 2016, when the new president, Mauricio Macri, paid the holdouts so Argentina could regain access to international debt markets.
And now, with the credit-friendly regime of “reformist” Mauricio Macri a distant memory, we can add default number 9 because according to a decree late on Sunday, the government announced that Argentina plans to postpone payments on up to $10 billion of dollar debt that was issued under Argentina-law – and is thus not bound to international default arbitration – until the end of the year in a bid to relieve pressure over looming foreign currency payments.
The government’s decree of necessity and urgency (DNU), does not affect the roughly $70 billion in foreign currency debt issued under international law that Argentina is currently in talks to restructure with creditors. Argentina’s government has previously said it is looking to restructure $83 billion in foreign currency debt under both international and local law as it looks to avert a sovereign default that would hit its access to global markets.
The move to delay payments on the local-law debt could give Argentina breathing room and may enable it more easily to make payments on foreign-law bonds. As the debt was issued under local law, any creditors wanting to take legal action would need to do so in local courts. And make no mistake: any change to the payment terns, or rather non-payment, is an instant event of default. The only question is which international creditors, which are better known in the country as “vultures”, are bold enough to sue Argentina in its own court system in demanding payment.
The default will hardly come as a surprise: President Alberto Fernandez and Economy Minister Martin Guzman have repeatedly said Argentina cannot pay its public debts until it is given time to revive an economy that has been mired in recession for the last two years. The current coronavirus crisis only pushed the decision to the fore.
Argentina’s major creditor, the International Monetary Fund, which sunk billions into the biggest failed IMF rescue loan in history that is now terminally impaired, has supported the country’s stance saying its debts are unsustainable. It also means that IMF member states will be forced to make the organization whole on its losses.
And with local-law debt done, next up is the default under foreign law. Guzman is expected to soon make a proposal to private creditors to restructure the country’s foreign law bonds, a process that has been hit by delays amid the global coronavirus pandemic that has led to a nationwide lockdown in Argentina.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 04/06/2020 – 23:35 - COVID-19 Has Lit The Fuse On China's Economic-Debt Time-Bomb
COVID-19 Has Lit The Fuse On China’s Economic-Debt Time-Bomb
Authored by Cary Huang, op-ed via The South China Morning Post,
Beijing has a tough choice to make: tolerate an unprecedented hit to the economy or go for massive stimulus and risk explosive consequences… It should beware, a financial virus can be every bit as toxic as a biological one
The coronavirus outbreak has already taken a great toll on the Chinese economy, with all headline readings pointing towards a record slowdown in growth during the first two months of the year.But there is an even greater danger for what was once the world’s fastest-growing major economy: that Covid-19 will become the catalyst that will bring its many long-simmering problems to the boil. At the centre of these problems is a rising systemic risk in its banking and financial systems caused by a high level of debt accrued over the past decade.
The outbreak could not have occurred at a worse time. The past 10 years have not only seen the economy saddled with this debt, but it has also involved a steady structural slowdown that last year saw the growth rate fall to 6.1 per cent, the lowest in decades. Now, just at the very time the country might consider spending more to prop up that growth rate, a raging pandemic means it will be making much less money than usual.
The latest data from the Chinese Ministry of Finance shows fiscal revenue plunged by 9.9 per cent in the January-February period, the steepest drop since 2009. Overall tax revenue fell 11.2 per cent, driven by a 19 per cent slump in value-added tax (VAT) revenue, the main source of fiscal income. These drops come just as the government has offered a handsome tax cut in response to the pandemic.
Meanwhile, the escalation of the pandemic in the rest of the world will only further weigh on China’s economic growth, corporate profits and personal income. In turn, this will inevitably drag down government revenue in months to come.
Coronavirus: March 2020, the month Covid-19 changed the world
Beijing’s proposed stimulus spending will only exacerbate China’s already-massive debt pile, which had reached 310 per cent of gross domestic product by the end of last year, according to the Institute of International Finance. Many economies that have experienced such levels of debt have gone on to suffer a financial crash or economic crisis. China now accounts for about 60 per cent of the US$72.5 trillion emerging market debt.
A deleveraging campaign had reduced Beijing’s debt mountain in 2018. But it has since returned to credit-driven stimulus to support growth and combat the effects of its trade war with the United States.
About 80 per cent of China’s debt stock was accumulated over the past decade as the country strived to achieve the politically significant milestone of doubling its economic size from 2010 to 2020. The milestone was a key goal in President Xi Jinping’s Chinese dream of “national rejuvenation”.
While the coronavirus threat has receded in China itself, any hope of an early recovery is forlorn as Covid-19 is still ripping through the major developed economies – essentially, China’s customers and trade partners. Plunging demand from abroad will create a second shock wave that will hit China’s export-oriented economy just as it is recovering from the first shock of having to lock down its cities.
China’s balance sheet will be hit by both dwindling revenue and a spiralling demand for spending. Rising corporate debt, surging local government borrowings, and soaring non-performing loans for commercial banks are three areas that could wreck its fragile financial and banking systems. The non-financial corporate debt-to-GDP ratio jumped from 93 per cent in 2009 to 153 per cent last year, one of the highest in the world. The Institute of International Finance warned that China was the major driver of global non-financial corporate debt. China’s bond defaults also hit records in 2018 and 2019.
Coronavirus could cause global food shortages by April as export curbs worsen supply chain problems
Meanwhile, China’s local government debts will jump as a result of more infrastructure-driven stimulus. This will add to a debt pile already worth up to 40 trillion yuan – about 40 per cent of the country’s 100-trillion-yuan GDP last year. S&P Global Ratings has singled out local government financing vehicles as being chiefly responsible for the accumulation of hidden debt. At issue is that while local governments want to spend more, their income from land sales, the main source of local fiscal revenue, is decreasing. The Ministry of Finance said revenue from land sales, which are off-budget, fell by 16.4 per cent in the first two months of the year.
China’s commercial banks also face a severe test as bad debts are likely to rise. Even before the outbreak, China’s banking system was a ticking time bomb, with the state having to step in to rescue a string of embattled medium-sized lenders. A Financial Stability Report released by the People’s Bank of China at the end of last year described 586 of the country’s almost 4,400 lenders as “high risk”. Data from the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission shows there has been a steady rise in the non-performing loan balances of commercial banks since the middle of last year, a result of Beijing scaling back itsdeleveraging campaign.
China’s policymakers face a difficult choice: tolerate an unprecedented slowdown or go for massive stimulus and risk detonating a financial time bomb.
China’s economic planners have a habit of relying on massive levels of debt-financed stimulus whenever growth slows. The closed nature of its financial system affords policymakers the luxury of complacency, as they have a war chest of US$3.1 trillion in foreign exchange reserves.
Some China-made coronavirus test kits and face masks rejected as ‘unreliable’ in European countries
All the signals suggest this is what they will do once more, despite the risk. Leaks suggest Beijing has amended its 2020 budget to raise the deficit to 3.5 per cent of GDP from an original cap of 3 per cent to fund this massive stimulus. Analysts say the actual fiscal deficits could jump much higher than last year’s 4.9 per cent, which included off-budget sheet borrowing and spending. Indeed, a meeting of the politburo, China’s top decision-making body, on March 27 suggested scaling up the stimulus package, with calls to raise the fiscal deficit ratio, increase issuance of Special Treasury bonds, and raise the quota of local government special bond issuance. Policymakers have also directed commercial banks to tolerate a higher threshold for bad loans, hoping to keep thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises from collapsing. The government has already sped up the issuance of bonds. The issuance of special-purpose bonds almost tripled to 950 billion yuan in the first two months of 2020, compared with last year.
It is to be expected that China’s debt will rise substantively in coming months, as in all previous crises. However, Beijing should beware that this time its fiscal measures will be limited. They will help only the country’s internal issue of supply and do nothing for external demand. China should exercise extreme caution: a financial virus can be as toxic, contagious and lethal as a biological one if it is allowed to spread.
* * *
Cary Huang is a veteran China affairs columnist, having written on the topic since the early 1990s
Tyler Durden
Mon, 04/06/2020 – 23:15 - New Zealand PM Adds "The Easter Bunny" & "The Tooth Fairy" To List Of 'Essential Workers'
New Zealand PM Adds “The Easter Bunny” & “The Tooth Fairy” To List Of ‘Essential Workers’
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has won global plaudits for her “compassionate” handling of the coronavirus outbreak, the Washington Post reported, and Ardern won even more praise on Monday, when she added two new job categories to the country’s register of “essential” workers.
Ardern tweeted that with the Easter holiday coming up, she was officially adding the Easter Bunny, and his pal, the Tooth Fairy, to the country’s list of “essential” workers so they can make it to the homes of all the country’s children.
“You’ll be pleased to know that we do consider both the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny to be essential workers,” she said. “But as you can imagine, at this time they’re going to be potentially quite busy at home with their family as well and their own bunnies.”
New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern confirms Easter Bunny is classed as an “essential worker” but it might be “difficult for the bunny to get everywhere” in current circumstances.
Tooth fairy also confirmed as an essential worker. pic.twitter.com/Jv6o4t2tkG
— Daniel Rosney (@DanielRosney) April 6, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
And for those families whose financial situation doesn’t offer enough room for Easter egg hunts, gifts and candy, Ardern assured those children that, because of all the restrictions, it might be a bit difficult for the Easter Bunny to make it to every house this year.
“I say to the children of New Zealand, if the Easter Bunny doesn’t make it to your household, we have to understand that it’s a bit difficult at the moment for the bunny to perhaps get everywhere,” she said.
To help accommodate these children, Ardern suggested that neighborhoods set up ‘easter egg hunts’ by placing eggs in their windows, so that children can ‘spot’ them while they stroll through the streets with their parents. We can hear the groans from NZ’s “bad moms” from here.
On March 25, Ardern announced the most significant restriction on New Zealanders’ movements in the country’s history by declaring a four-week nationwide lockdown, instructing all residents to remain at home except for “essential workers” in health care, retail etc.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 04/06/2020 – 22:55 - "Horrifying Global Surge In Domestic Violence" Amid COVID-19 Lockdowns: UN
“Horrifying Global Surge In Domestic Violence” Amid COVID-19 Lockdowns: UN
Authored by Jessica Corbett via CommonDreams.org,
As world leaders continue to impose stay-at-home orders and many businesses, schools, and services across the globe remain shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres is expressing concerns about reports of alarming increases in domestic violence and urging all governments to incorporate protections for abuse survivors into response plans for the public health crisis.
Guterres called for an immediate global ceasefire amid the virus outbreak last month. “I appealed for an end to violence everywhere, now,” the U.N. chief said Sunday. “But violence is not confined to the battlefield. For many women and girls, the threat looms largest where they should be safest: in their own homes.”
Getty Images While domestic violence impacts both males and females, research has shown women and girls are disproportionately victimized. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, executive director of U.N. Women, noted Monday that “in the previous 12 months, 243 million women and girls (aged 15-49) across the world have been subjected to sexual or physical violence by an intimate partner.”
“As the COVID-19 pandemic continues,” Mlambo-Ngcuka warned, “this number is likely to grow with multiple impacts on women’s wellbeing, their sexual and reproductive health, their mental health, and their ability to participate and lead in the recovery of our societies and economy.”
Guterres detailed related developments in a video address Sunday, explaining that “over the past weeks as economic and social pressures and fear have grown, we have seen a horrifying global surge in domestic violence.”
The secretary-general cited increased calls to domestic violence support centers, overwhelmed healthcare and police services, shuttered shelters, and limited funding for local groups that help survivors. He also urged governments worldwide “to make the prevention and redress of violence against women a key part of their national response plans for COVID-19.”
Specifically, Guterres called for:
- Increasing investment in online services and civil society organizations;
- Making sure judicial systems continue to prosecute abusers;
- Setting up emergency warning systems in pharmacies and groceries;
- Declaring shelters as essential services; and
- Creating safe ways for women to seek support, without alerting their abusers.
“Together,” Guterres said, “we can and must prevent violence everywhere, from war zones to people’s homes, as we work to beat COVID-19.”
According to a U.N. News report from Monday, “Lebanon and Malaysia, for example, have seen the number of calls to helplines double, compared with the same month last year; in China they have tripled; and in Australia, search engines such as Google are seeing the highest magnitude of searches for domestic violence help in the past five years.”
The New York Times reported Monday on the experience of 26-year-old Lele, a woman in China who said that her husband beat her with a high chair as she held their 11-month-old daughter. Lele said that “during the epidemic, we were unable to go outside, and our conflicts just grew bigger and bigger and more and more frequent.”
Since the Chinese government began shutting down cities in February, the Beijing-based NGO Equality has seen a spike in calls from abuse survivors seeking support, according to the Times. Some European countries have reported similar surges.
In Spain, the emergency number for domestic violence received 18% more calls in the first two weeks of lockdown than in the same period a month earlier.
“We’ve been getting some very distressing calls, showing us clearly just how intense psychological as well as physical mistreatment can get when people are kept 24 hours a day together within a reduced space,” said Ana Bella, who set up a foundation to help other women after surviving domestic violence herself.
On Thursday, the French police reported a nationwide spike of about 30% in domestic violence. Christophe Castaner, the French interior minister, said he had asked officers to be on the lookout for abuse.
“The risk increases due to confinement,” he said in an interview on French television.
A USA Today analysis of data from police agencies across the United States, published Saturday, found that although crime rates have generally dropped off in recent weeks, calls for domestic disturbances surged by 10% to 30% among many of the communities during the second half of March compared with the previous weeks.
For example, “the Montgomery County Police Department, just outside Washington, D.C., recorded 13% fewer call dispatches and more than a third fewer criminal incidents,” the outlet reported. “But cases of domestic violence there spiked, even as most other crimes declined… Data show Montgomery County police saw a 21% increase in such calls over the past two weeks, an average of 39 a day.”
An NBC News report from Monday contained similar findings, with 18 of 22 law enforcement agencies that responded to the outlet disclosing an increase in domestic violence calls during March. According to NBC:
Houston police received about 300 more domestic violence calls in March than they did in February, a roughly 20% increase. Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, police fielded 517 additional calls about domestic violence in March compared to the same month last year, an 18% jump, while Phoenix police received nearly 200 more calls, an increase of nearly 6%.
“The financial stress alone creates a ticking time bomb for some families with a history of domestic violence,” said Steve Mueller, sheriff of Cherokee County, South Carolina, which saw a 35% increase in cases in March compared to February. “Unfortunately many of these domestic violence cases occur in front of children and often the children become victims of abuse and assault, as well.”
Other cities and regions that told NBC they saw an increase in domestic violence cases during March are Boston; Milwaukee; Seattle; San Antonio; Salt Lake City; Utah County, Utah; Fresno County, California; Montgomery County, Texas; East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana; Buffalo, New York; Sparks, Nevada; Portland, Oregon; Nassau County, New York; Cherokee County, South Carolina; and Charleston, South Carolina.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 04/06/2020 – 22:35 - 'Lives In Danger': Canada Lashes Out After US Blocked Export Of Millions Of N95 Masks
‘Lives In Danger’: Canada Lashes Out After US Blocked Export Of Millions Of N95 Masks
Over the weekend Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada will not retaliate against the US for banning exports of crucial medical protective supplies shipments into Canada, after on Friday a major shipment of masks from Minnesota-based 3M to Canada was halted by US authorities as part of the Defense Production Act.
“We are not looking at retaliatory measures or measures that are punitive,” Trudeau said Saturday at a dire moment the Canadian health care system is feeling the same strain as the US. He did call the move a “mistake” and the Trump administration has since been unmoved.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s words, however, were more aggressive and blunt, explaining in so many words that essentially Washington’s ban on the exports puts lives in danger. This after European leaders likened similar measures and interventions impacting Germany and France to “modern piracy”.
Canadian Premier of Ontario @fordnation starts his statements today noting that the U.S. won’t allow medical supplies into Canada and that it puts lives in danger. Imagine how deadly it is to blockade a country’s access to medicine & supplies for years/decades. #TheBlockadeKills pic.twitter.com/aDjmncRVxn
— Camila (@camilateleSUR) April 6, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
“What I understand is we have 3 million masks that were stopped by U.S. officials,” Ford told a Monday press conference. Ford later indicated that some of the masks — up to 500,000 — have since been released and that should “buy the province a week” before health workers run out.
“Our supplies are strained right at this moment… We’re exhausting every avenue available to us,” the Ontario leader said. “The hard truth is our supplies in Ontario are getting very low.”
Doug Ford is absolutely desperate saying its critical that the U.S. exempt Canada from the Presidential order blocking N95 masks as Ontario has just a week supply remaining. pic.twitter.com/FSBDqM11Fo
— Camila (@camilateleSUR) April 6, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
He continued: “We’re putting pressure on the US government from all sides. It’s absolutely critical that they except Canada from this presidential order.”
He underscored how dire the situation remains by further saying, “We’re reaching out to everyone in the world right now to make sure that we have enough masks.”
Canada’s Globe and Mail further quoted Ford as comparing the decision made Trump to someone telling a relative: “you go starve and we’ll feast on the rest of the meal.”
Surely missed on Canada’s leaders as they scramble to deal with the fallout of the US ban on crucial medical personal protective equipment for hospital workers, is the fact that they themselves previously willingly joined in Trump’s sanctions on so-called ‘rogue states’ like Iran, Syria, and Venezuela.
Nationwide Canada has seen over 16,500 confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 339 deaths. Ontario province has witnessed the highest number of deaths, at 150, creating alarm within the under-supplied health system there.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 04/06/2020 – 22:15 - How The Left Is Trying To Blame Capitalism For COVID-19 Deaths
How The Left Is Trying To Blame Capitalism For COVID-19 Deaths
Authored by Bradley Thomas via The Mises Institute,
Not hesitating to exploit a health pandemic to advance their ideological agenda, Jacobin magazine on March 26 published an article attempting to proactively blame “millions” of coronavirus deaths on “capitalism.”
Titled “How Capitalism Kills during a Pandemic,” the article advances tired slogans about free markets placing “profits above people,” buttressed by faulty and at times self-contradictory arguments that prove unpersuasive.
To set the most alarmist tone possible, author Nick French begins by warning the reader that the coronavirus “will likely kill millions of people in the United States alone.”
This prediction cherry-picks the most ominous of such projections, irresponsibly relying on the report from London’s Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team, who own authors admitted includes projections that are “worst-case,” combined with the incredibly unrealistic caveat that “there are no interventions or changes in people’s behavior.” The report further admitted that “Epidemic timings are approximate given the limitations of surveillance data in both countries,” in essence cautioning that such predictions will be moot once more sufficient data becomes available. (The Jacobin article was published before a leading author of the report altered his predictions based upon the dramatic responses imposed in countries around the world.)
With the reader sufficiently shocked by the worst-case projection of victims based on partial data and unrealistic assumptions, French quickly assigns the villain:
“Many of these fatalities could have been avoided if we had a social order that placed the needs of people over profit,” he declares.
Helping to shape the readers’ cartoonish image of evil capitalism, the article informs us:
“capitalists prioritize profits over the welfare of their workers and of humanity as a whole,” and adds, “They will pollute the environment with deadly toxins and planet-destroying greenhouse gases before spending money on safe production processes.”
Mass death is but an unconsidered side effect in the heartless system of capitalism. Such is the framing that French establishes.
This leads into his specific critiques:
“First, pharmaceutical companies could have started to develop a vaccine for the virus years ago. The novel coronavirus that is now ravaging the world is actually one of a family of coronaviruses (including SARS and MERS) with which we have long been familiar,” French notes.
“It would have been possible to begin research on vaccines and cures for coronaviruses in general, giving us a head start on treatments for the current outbreak. But pharmaceutical companies did not pursue this research, because the prospect of a cure was not sufficiently profitable.”
Two elephants in the room go unaddressed in this argument.
-
First, if a vaccine for the virus would save millions of lives in the US alone, potentially tens of millions of lives worldwide, why would that product not be profitable? Does the author honestly think that a product that could literally save one’s life would not be in high demand?
-
Secondly, why does the blame for failing to develop a vaccine fall squarely on private pharmaceutical companies? What about all the other developed nations that have some form of single-payer or universal healthcare system that the Jacobin crowd thinks will save us all? Why didn’t any of them develop a vaccine?
Next, the article addresses concerns about the consequences of the economic shutdown being imposed on the American economy. “Losing a job could result in losing your health-care coverage or being unable to pay your student loans,” French writes. This concern is entirely justifiable.
But somehow French doesn’t see the irony in lamenting the close tie between one’s job and health insurance coverage – a result of government policy making insurance coverage tax exempt – as somehow the fault of “capitalism.” Without government interference, far more health insurance coverage would be owned by individuals, not supplied by employers.
Moreover, the student loan debt crisis is largely a government phenomenon as well. Decades of government subsidies and low-interest loans have helped drive up college tuition, and the federal government owns more than 90 percent of all student loan debt.
French blames “capitalism” for putting individuals in precarious situations that are highly exacerbated by the pandemic crisis, but the roots are to be found in government intervention.
Next, he blames greedy capitalist owners for forcing workers to go to work and risk their health because doing otherwise would “hurt bosses’ bottom line.”
In the following paragraph, however, French is forced to concede that the only specific example he cites, Starbucks, despite staying open for a while, “has since shifted to only providing drive-through service because of employee pressure.”
In a competitive market, employers must treat employees reasonably well, or else they will be bid away by more hospitable workplaces.
French then points out the shortages of personal protective equipment such as face masks at hospitals across the country, insisting that this too “is the product of a system that puts profit over people.”
Not so fast. Cumbersome FDA approval processes have been instrumental in slowing the production of much-needed face masks. Moreover, it’s profit-driven private companies such as 3M that are ramping up production of face masks right now in order to bail out the unprepared public health system.
Undaunted, French insists, “If we adequately invested in public hospitals or used state resources to rapidly produce necessary medical equipment, the unfolding pandemic would not hit our health-care system nearly as hard.”
What amount of “investment” would be adequate goes unmentioned. Also unmentioned are the certificate of need (CON) laws still in place in thirty-five states, which require healthcare facilities to get permission from a government commission to expand or otherwise invest in additional medical equipment. These commissions are often stacked with representatives from existing hospitals, who have an incentive to restrict new supply and thus limit competition. Imagine if potential rival retail stores needed to get permission from a committee full of Walmart and Target executives in order to open a new location.
CON laws are one of countless government interventions limiting the supply of medical care in the US. In this the American Medical Association also plays a vital role. As reported by the American Conservative, the AMA “artificially limits the number of doctors, which drives up salaries for doctors and reduces the availability of care.”
For more than a hundred years, the AMA has successfully lobbied governments to enact laws that restrict the number of new doctors in the country. AMA activities have included dramatically decreasing the number of medical schools across the country and turning the process of becoming a doctor into a monumental feat that “requires navigating a maze of accrediting, licensing, and examining bodies.”
The only system putting “profits over people” is that of government interference into the healthcare industry.
French next tries to convince readers that countries with single-payer systems are well equipped to handle the outbreak, unlike the allegedly free market US system.
But on this attempt he also can’t avoid self-contradiction or a downright obfuscation of facts:
“Despite the fact that Italy’s health capacity has been overstressed by the particularly brutal explosion of coronavirus there,” he writes, “its universal single-payer health-care system is ensuring that every person, no matter their job or income level, can receive the best treatment possible.”
Well, not every person.
As Politico reported as early as March 3, weeks before French published his article, “anesthesiologists and doctors are being called on to make increasingly tough calls on who gets access to beds and respirators when there are not enough to go around.”
Instead of every person receiving treatment, as French would have you believe is happening, doctors in Italy are forced into “prioritizing younger, otherwise healthy patients over older patients or those with pre-existing conditions.”
French also insists that “Single-payer systems have allowed Denmark and South Korea to quickly institute coronavirus testing on a large scale, which has been essential to their success in slowing the virus’s spread.”
In the case of South Korea, however, it was a previous decision by the government to get the public sector out of the way and allow private sector companies to come to the rescue in cases of emergency that was responsible.
Learning from the 2015 MERS outbreak, reports ProPublica, “Korean officials enacted a key reform, allowing the government to give near-instantaneous approval to testing systems in an emergency.”
The result? “Within weeks of the current outbreak in Wuhan, China, four Korean companies had manufactured tests from a World Health Organization recipe and, as a result, the country quickly had a system that could assess 10,000 people a day.”
In these unprecedented times, many are scared, mourning, and otherwise looking for a villain to blame. Jacobin wants to convince readers that somehow for-profit capitalism is to blame for an underwhelming preparedness. Their argument, however, amounts to little more than sloganeering and half-truths. If anything, it’s the wealth created by capitalist systems that will save lives during this pandemic.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 04/06/2020 – 21:55 -
- Amid 'Mandatory Lockdown,' Baltimore Officials Approve Spy-Plane To "Collect Images Of City"
Amid ‘Mandatory Lockdown,’ Baltimore Officials Approve Spy-Plane To “Collect Images Of City”
For years, we’ve been documenting how spy planes have been flying over the Baltimore Metropolitan Area, transforming the region into a surveillance state.
To refresh your memory, the federal government used spy planes to monitor the 2015 riots in Baltimore City.
Even before the planes, the military was flying massive spy blimps over the region to “detect cruise missiles.”
What you’re beginning to understand is that Baltimore has been the testing ground over the last decade of how the surveillance state, now being ushered in by the COVID-19 outbreak, will be built across major metro areas.
Aaron Kesel of ActivistPost laid it out beautifully, “coronavirus outbreak is proving to be the Trojan horse that justifies increased digital surveillance.”
Baltimore is dealing with several public health crises at the moment, one is a murder epidemic, and the other is the COVID-19 outbreak. Blend it all together, and the city is on the verge of turmoil. Hence why the National Guard was called in several weeks ago, not just to assist local area hospitals dealing with an influx of virus cases and deaths, but also to maintain public order.
National Guard deploys to Baltimore on humanitarian assistance mission pic.twitter.com/spAORzuF66
— Jack M. Posobiec, IWO (@JackPosobiec) March 21, 2020
Like Rahm Emanuel has said, “never let a crisis go to waste.” And that is why the Baltimore City’s Board of Estimates approved the contract to resurrect the spy plane program this week, reported The Baltimore Sun.
Civil liberties advocates were quick to criticize the spy plane program, that would allow up to three planes circling Baltimore with large optical sensors, capturing images of 32 square miles, monitoring everyone and everything that moves in the city.
David Rocah, an attorney for the ACLU of Maryland, said it was “absurd” for Baltimore to approve the spy plane program, which includes “the most far-reaching surveillance technology in the country, during the viral outbreak.”
Rocah said each spy plane has military technology that was developed for Middle East wars that track objects, such as cars and people around the city. He said the sensors might not be able to identify a face but will be linked up with land-based CCTV networks on the ground that will turn Baltimore into a full-blown surveillance state.
Rocah said for Baltimore to approve the spy plane program during a virus crisis when the public wasn’t able to debate it because of social distancing rules is wrong.
Police Commissioner Michael Harrison has been pushing for the program, argues that it will deter crime in a city that is engulfed in a murder crisis.
We noted last week that Baltimore’s population crashed to a 100-year low in 2019, as residents have been desperately fleeing the region for the suburbs since the riots unfolded in 2015. At the end of December, Baltimore recorded the most homicides ever on record. On a per-capita basis, the area is one of the most dangerous places in the nation.
So it makes sense why Harrison wants three spy planes circling the skies – that is because the city has already imploded.
“I fully appreciate that the opponents of this program … have fundamental and philosophical beliefs against this kind of technology,” Harrison said. “These differing viewpoints are not solely isolated to this claim and extend to many other tools BPD uses every day.”
Democratic Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young said that he has full support in the spy plane program:
“I stand behind my commissioner.”
Rocah warned that spy planes and ground-based CCTV networks would allow the government to have even greater control of low-income “black and brown neighborhoods.”
And what is there to say that Baltimore officials won’t surveil the population during mass lockdowns. Or even could potentially track coronavirus patients.
With spy planes circling above and an extensive CCTV network on the ground, it’s only a matter of time before “pandemic drones” start buzzing overhead, detecting if residents are coughing and sneezing.
A full-blown surveillance state, on par to China, is being erected in Baltimore.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 04/06/2020 – 21:35 - Morton's Parent Scrambles To Reopen Frozen Loan Market With Record-Yielding 15% Secured Paper
Morton’s Parent Scrambles To Reopen Frozen Loan Market With Record-Yielding 15% Secured Paper
While investment grade bonds have recouped most of their early March losses thanks to the Fed’s takeover of the IG bond market now that the NY Fed, via Blackrock, is purchasing the LQD ETF as well as bonds in the open market, the junk bond market has yet to rebound although it is the leveraged loan market that is hurting the most, with the S&P/LSTA index trading a 83 cents of par most recently, still a post crisis low.
Worse, for the past month the loan market which despite being secured is even more illiquid than junk, has been frozen without a single issuers coming to market.
That changed today when Texas billionaire Tilman Fertitta, owner of casinos and such restaurants as Mortons, Mastro’s and hundreds of others, tried to become the first to end the near one-month drought in the U.S. leveraged loan market with a deal to boost liquidity for his hospitality empire ravaged by the coronavirus.
Landry’s, which is the parent company of Golden Nugget casinos and hundreds of restaurants including Chart House, Saltgrass Steak House, Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., Claim Jumper, Morton’s The Steakhouse, McCormick & Schmick’s, Mastro’s Restaurants, is hoping to crack the leveraged loan ice by offering investors a record interest rate of 14% over Libor for a $250 million loan, Bloomberg reported citing “people familiar with the matter.”
The deal, which is being underwritten by the B2/B focused, middle-market titan Jefferies, a long-time go to bank for Fertita, is offering a spread which according to Bloomberg would be the highest ever on a leveraged loan excluding companies in bankruptcy.
Which such an unprecedented yield on paper that is secured? Because the paper is secured by assets that may well be bankrupt in months, if not weeks: Landry’s told investors it is seeking the funds to increase liquidity as it navigates the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak on its business. The pandemic has brought the travel and leisure industry to a near standstill, leaving Fertitta’s businesses shuttered and burning cash with thousands of lay-offs.
In effect, the $250MM, 14%, non-call 2 term loan is a quasi-priming DIP loan with the option to take over the company in bankruptcy.
A lender meeting for the paper which matures in October 2023 took place at 2 pm New York time Monday, somewhere close to Jefferies office on 52nd and Madison. Based on initial discussions with investors, the loan will have a 1% Libor floor (just in case the Fed goes NIRP in the next few years) and may be offered at a discount of about 96 cents on the dollar, which would push the already record yield to an all-in total well above 15%!
Leveraged loans have been slower to recover from the recent turmoil than than the high-yield bond market, which reopened last week as we reported at the time. Borrowers have sold debt to replenish credit lines that they’ve been forced to draw during a credit freeze and to shore up liquidity. Some, like Landry’s, are effectively pre-selling a DIP should the company have no choice but to file, which also explains the record yield on what is otherwise secured paper.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 04/06/2020 – 21:08 - China's Tourist Sites Overwhelmed With Crowds After Emerging From Lockdown
China’s Tourist Sites Overwhelmed With Crowds After Emerging From Lockdown
A weekend national Chinese holiday called the Qingming Festival witnessed greatly relaxed restrictions across the country even as health authorities fear the coronavirus outbreak isn’t over, and as the potential for a new wave of ‘asymptomatic’ spreaders has health officials worried.
It comes at a moment Beijing is slowly trying to open the economy back up, especially retail, restaurant and consumer-related businesses — but as citizens especially in previously hard-hit provinces show a reluctance to venture back into markets and streets. The major outdoor and mountain parks, however, appear to be a different story.
Huangshan mountain park scene over the holiday weekend, via CNN. Starting two weeks ago the main tourist destinations, including city zoos, botanical gardens, and wilderness parks and preserves began opening on a large scale.
Over the weekend popular outdoor destinations, including national parks and tourist sites appeared packed with throngs of people grouped together wearing face masks. This triggered national media controversy and even contradictory messages on the degree to which people should congregate at the parks.
Huangshan mountain park in the Anhui province was one such park that reached its daily capacity of 20,000 people, according to state-run Global Times.
【报复式消费？】
清明节期间，4月4日、4月5日连续两天的好天气，安徽黄山风景区快速达到2万人限流量，不得不提前停止售票限制人流。 pic.twitter.com/ATU9Tzobtf— 自由亚洲电台 (@RFA_Chinese) April 5, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Photographs of the crowds went viral given it could be a sign China is successfully over the Covid-19 hump.
The Global Times reported that the park went so far as to waive the usually steep entrance fee (equivalent to $26.70) in order to promote tourism.
Shanghai Zoo late last month, Getty Images. A mere 39 new cases were reported in China Monday, bringing the country total to 82,641 cases including 3,335 deaths. At the peak of the crisis there were thousands of new cases daily.
Interestingly, Beijing officials may be deeply divided on how quickly to open the country back up, given as CNN describes rare contradictory messages were issued to the public over the weekend:
After pictures of the crowds at Huangshan emerged on social media, the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the ruling Communist Party, issued a stern reprimand on social media warning tourists: “Do not gather!”
In a commentary published on the newspaper’s website, one opinion writer said while it was understandable people would want to get out after being shut up in quarantine, now was not the time to stop being “vigilant.”
“If there are asymptomatic carriers present during large-scale gatherings, the consequences would be severe,” the article said.
According to the paper, Huangshan has since announced it will stop receiving tourists.
#Huangshan Mountain, a 5-A tourist attraction in East #China‘s Anhui Province, closed to tourists on Sunday morning due to an overflow of tourists after it exempted its 190 yuan ($26.7) entrance fee to residents of the province to promote tourism amid #COVID19. pic.twitter.com/DAffe2zhI1
— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) April 5, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
But other bustling scenes of people eager to return to ‘normalcy’ were captured across the country, for example in Shanghai, where the Bund waterfront was filled with shoppers and tourists.
View of Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, via Shutterstock/aphotostory. City parks and public spaces in Beijing were also very busy, however, indoor tight-quarter places like theaters have remained closed after a brief attempt in March to open them back up.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 04/06/2020 – 20:55 - 'Stay-At-Home' Orders Have Created A "Perfect Storm" For Grifters, Scammers, & Spoofers
‘Stay-At-Home’ Orders Have Created A “Perfect Storm” For Grifters, Scammers, & Spoofers
Authored by John Wasik via RealClearInvestigations.com,
This tax season, thousands of people may feel the same joy I experienced upon receiving a large and unexpected refund check from Uncle Sam. Unfortunately, they will also experience the dismay and fear when they find out that it was fraudulent refund.
Someone had stolen one of our Social Security numbers – cyber-robbers’ modus operandi of choice these days.
Then they filed a false return claiming huge deductions against modest income in our names.
That resulted in the bogus refund check.
On YouTube, a would-be victim, above, turns the tables on an IRS phone “spoofer.” YouTube/Brandon Cox
Usually, the way this scam works is that grifters mail the big, fake refund to themselves, but somehow it ended up in our mailbox. After immediately checking with my tax planner, I sent the check back to the IRS and filed an identity theft affidavit so that the tax agency would know the refund was fake.
To thwart scammers, the agency has improved the algorithms it uses to flag discrepancies. But while effective, it is not foolproof.
And thieves are not taking a break, especially with the filing deadline moved to July 15 due to the coronavirus crisis. In fact, stay-at-home orders create a perfect storm for scammers. The heightened anxiety surrounding the crisis softens up potential victims. Not only that, the mailing out of federal coronavirus stimulus checks soon is creating new opportunities for fraud.
In many cases, cheap technology allows thieves to make millions of robocalls to housebound individuals for a few hundred dollars. So beware of “spoofing,” where a fake but official-looking name and number will appear on a caller ID. “Scammers often alter caller ID to make it look like the IRS or another agency is calling,” the IRS reports. “The callers use IRS titles and fake badge numbers to appear legitimate. They may use the victim’s name, address and other personal information to make the call sound official.”
In a common scenario, robocallers claim they are with the IRS and threaten to sue or arrest the target over unpaid tax bills. And these scams are now more than seasonal; they are happening year-round, the IRS reports.
Worried that you’ve been scammed? The IRS gives you options to report concerns. You can also file electronically and use a Personal Identification Number. The IRS will send you one for free. After I got mine – they will issue a new one every year – I haven’t had a problem with grifters.
– John F. Wasik
The extension of the filing deadline not only gives taxpayers three extra months, but also provides scammers with an extra 90 days of prime-time flim-flam. In a normal year, some 61% of tax scams are reported between January and April, according to the Better Business Bureau. All told, the IRS has logged more than 736,000 scam “contacts” since 2013, costing taxpayers some $23 million. The number is likely much higher since many cases go unreported.
In addition to robocalls, scam methods include fake IRS letterheads and addresses, emails and outright demands to pay taxes not owed. In each case, the operators are looking for quick cash or vital personal financial information. They employ “phishing” techniques to get victims to reply with Social Security or bank account numbers. Then can use that information to open up credit cards or sell it to other thieves.
How do scamsters acquire personal information and what do they do with it once they get their hands on it? Tyler Carbone, chief strategy officer of Terbium Labs, a digital risk protection firm, says one of the most prevalent ways to steal personal information is through W-2s, the basic tax forms employers use.
“Each consumer W-2 names a business and provides employer information as part of the required documentation,” Carbone notes.
“Once a fraudster finishes executing tax fraud against the consumer, there’s no reason for them to simply stop there. In possession of an employee’s name and employer information (something they can steal from employer system breaches or the dark web), they have a great opportunity to do a little research and develop a phishing campaign or business email compromise scheme to go after the employer as well – or to find ways to exploit other employees and colleagues of the original consumer.”
Like just about anything to do with fraud these days, the Internet is a thieves’ market whose shelves are well stocked with personal information.
From a site that tracks the “dark web.” DarkReading.com
On the dark web, where illicit information is openly peddled, full identity kits, called “fullz,” can be purchased for under $40, notes one site tracking the dark web. “A “fullz” for a U.S. consumer contains a person’s full name, birth date, Social Security number, address, phone number, driver’s license number, and mother’s maiden name,” notes DarkReading.com. “For an extra $10 to $25, sellers will add an individual’s credit card data, bank account data, bank security questions and answers, employer, or other critical information.”
It is, of course, illegal to sell such stolen information, but there is loads of it out there on the black market. Data breaches, unfortunately, are a fact of life these days, according to Identityforce.com, a private company that offers identity theft protection services. Hundreds of millions of records are pilfered, ranging from Dunkin Donuts perks programs to Facebook, which admitted last year it hadn’t secured the passwords for some 600 million users. With all that information out there – i.e. my Social Security number, your credit files – why isn’t the dark web shut down?
Carbone has found that with dark web sites “it is impossible to know from the hosting alone where they are hosted, or who is hosting them, so many are able to successfully operate anonymously until they are unmasked by other means.”
“Other sites are hosted on regular, open web sites,” Carbone adds. “In these cases, they are hosted outside the United States – usually in Eastern Europe, where takedown requests from U.S. entities frequently go without response.”
A W-2 form, even an old one, can be a ticket to tax fraud. IRS.gov
There’s even more to it: Some sites offer guidance on how to employ dark web information to set up income tax scams. Carbone found one site offering an instructional manual on how to file fraudulent tax returns for 2019 using fullz for $30.
“These guides,” Carbone said, “help criminals to monetize the information available on the dark web, turning already low-cost data into high profits.”
Carbone also found a site that was selling two-year-old W-2s, federal statements of income and tax withheld, which can also be used for income-tax fraud:
“This listing shows that while tax fraud may be seasonal, identity data is good all year. As long as they aren’t several years out of date, a year-old W-2 is still useful for filing fraudulent tax returns, on the assumption that an employee is still with their current employer and has roughly the same income level year to year. These tax documents go for $20 and provide a lot of flexibility for criminals to carry out tax fraud and broader identity theft.”
Yes, once your information is out there on the dark web, it can be repurposed for any number of nefarious schemes. That’s why it’s a good idea to freeze your credit files (I did) and to only use encrypted sites when doing online transactions such as banking and purchases (look for third-party certification marques or two-factor authentication). And don’t file your taxes electronically on a public Wi-Fi. These networks are not secure. Secure sites will have some kind of third-party marque indicating that transactions are protected in some way. The larger e-commerce sites now use “two-factor authentication,” where they will send you a code number to your cellphone before greenlighting a purchase. (Whenever I send or receive sensitive financial documents such as tax returns, I or my tax preparer use a third-party encryption tool that can only be opened with a code or specific personal identification number)
Since the online sites are almost always offshore and can disappear in seconds, they are beyond the reach of overburdened federal investigators probing hundreds of thousands of complaints. Justin Lavelle, communications director for BeenVerified.com, a consumer background check information company, said many of the scams are based in India. “But some are coming from Africa,” he said. “Among IRS tax scams, the IRS impersonation scam is most prevalent. They are all time-sensitive — ‘pay by a certain date or something bad will happen’ – and demand immediate payment or Social Security numbers.”
When immediate payment is demanded, though, thieves often tell victims that they need to send them gift cards or single-use debit cards. “Older folks tend to be the biggest targets, especially those on Social Security,” Lavelle said.
“It’s definitely an ongoing game of cat and mouse,” Carbone concludes.
“Law-enforcement, both U.S. and international, are constantly trying to identify the hosts of these sites. That’s why we need to take an automated approach to finding and crawling these sites, as existing markets are shut down by law-enforcement, and new ones emerge.”
Tyler Durden
Mon, 04/06/2020 – 20:35 - "Media Extinction Event": Print Newspapers Face COVID-19 Death-Knell
“Media Extinction Event”: Print Newspapers Face COVID-19 Death-Knell
Traditional print media was already on the ropes long before the crisis, in competition with exploding alternative forms of digital news and independent platforms, but the coronavirus pandemic and accompanying shutdown of the economy could prove the final death blow.
Bloomberg reports at a moment newspaper staff in cities and towns across the US are being furloughed in huge numbers and increasingly being issued pay cuts that “Local papers are slashing staff and publishing less frequently as the already-battered businesses try to weather the Covid-19 storm. Many either won’t survive or will have to drastically reduce their operations.”
File image via AP/Shutterstock In some cases for those newspapers not yet completely shuttered, it’s translating into a rapid transition to digital presence only. Others are going from being daily papers to only delivering print copies twice a week — this also as cash-strapped advertisers and shuttered retail stores are foregoing conventional ads.
“I’m hearing 40% to 60% drops in revenue over the last 30 days,” Dean Ridings, chief executive officer of the national trade association America’s Newspapers, said. “The advertisers are the local mom and pops, the retailers, the restaurants, who are understandably canceling their advertisements.”
Some notable developments strongly suggesting the writing is on the wall:
- Recall that Warren Buffett already abandoned the industry in January, selling all 31 daily papers to Lee Enterprises Inc. for $140 million.
- Largest American newspaper chain Gannet Co., which owns USA Today along with hundreds of local papers like the the important Des Moines Register, announced this past week it’s been forced to slash jobs and furlough workers amid the outbreak carnage.
- A recent Buzzfeed headline dubbed the pandemic a “media extinction event.”
- BuzzFeed itself announced pay cuts employees through May in order to stave off mass layoffs.
- Tampa Bay Times furloughed much of its staff and announced that print production would now only go to Sundays and Wednesdays for the time bing. “These extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures,” Tampa Bay Times chairman Paul Tash said.
- WaPo media columnist Margaret Sullivan has called for urgent stimulus money to be injected into the dying industry: “News-industry experts have been predicting for years that a recession of severe economic downturn would deliver a death blow to these already troubled businesses.”
Additionally, Local papers which in some instances have been around for almost a century have had to close their doors.
The Bismarck Tribune, along with all other newspapers owned by Lee Enterprises, will furlough employees or cut pay in response to a drop in advertising revenue: https://t.co/WxSbHIRL5m
— Amy R. Sisk (@amyrsisk) April 4, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Bloomberg writes of one notable instance: “In Oregon, Smith family sells off newspapers after 87-year run The business grew into a chain of publications — chronicling local events through the Depression, Smith becoming Oregon’s governor, and a gas leak in the ’70s that destroyed one of the company’s printing presses — all under the family’s ownership. Until this week.“
Many residents of smaller to mid-sized towns and cities see the local paper as “irreplaceable” — given it’s often the only source for local news and events, and a crucial longtime vehicle of local culture of sorts.
“Whether it’s the watchdog to cover the city council, or the school board, or even the Little League, the newspaper was the last remaining source for local information,” America’s Newspapers Dean Ridings told Bloomberg further.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 04/06/2020 – 20:15 - Gold Futures Extend Gains To 8 Year Highs After Pelosi's Trillion-Dollar Promise
Gold Futures Extend Gains To 8 Year Highs After Pelosi’s Trillion-Dollar Promise
COVID-19 appears to have impacted the deep fiscally-conservative regions of the brains of politicians more than many suspected possible as left, right, and center seem to be coalescing around the fact that moar spending is better, moar helicopter money is even better-er, and moar zeros in the national debt is better-est!
Live look at Dow futures pic.twitter.com/kLWZySZUu0
— Quoth the Raven (@QTRResearch) April 6, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Tonight’s latest utterance/demands from Speaker Pelosi – that the next, fourth, round of virus-relief stimulus must be at least $1 trillion – appears to have confirmed one thing (as @hkuppy notes so pointedly):
” Glad to see both parties supporting gold $10k…”
And sure enough, gold is soaring after hours following this headline…
Back to Dec 2012 highs…
And once again futures are decoupling from spot as that physical (geographical) shortage rears its ugly head once again…
One thing is for sure, not only is gold signaling systemic risk is soaring, sovereign credit markets are starting to leak information…
Referring to his institutional market research at Global Macro Investor, we give the last word to Raoul Pal and his most recent thoughts (excerpted) on “A Dollar Standard Crisis” are
….
Don’t forget – the $13tn short dollar positions (foreign dollar debt held mainly by foreign corporation and investment vehicles) is the largest position ever taken in the history of global financial markets.
It can only mean a massive, uncontrolled dollar rally.
QE will not fix this. Swap lines will not fix this. A debt jubilee would fix this or multiple trillions of dollars in write-downs and defaults.
It is the dollar strength that brings to world to its nadir (just like the 1930s). It is the dollar system that is the really big problem.
The dollar has eaten all of its competitors and now it is going to eat itself.
This eventually breaks the dollar after a super-spike as global central banks are forced to find alternatives.
Remember, nothing lasts forever…
The world’s elite have long wanted to replace the US dollar with a single global super-currency, as The World Bank’s former chief economist said in 2014, it will create a more stable global financial system.
“The dominance of the greenback is the root cause of global financial and economic crises,” Justin Yifu Lin told Bruegel, a Brussels-based policy-research think tank.
“The solution to this is to replace the national currency with a global currency.”
Tyler Durden
Mon, 04/06/2020 – 20:02
Digest powered by RSS Digest
Saving...![<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>](https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/hyman%20econ%20gdp%20-50%25.jpg?itok=FwgA70Ra){kind=link}
![<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>](https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/domviolfile.jpg?itok=KuM8oUo2){kind=link}
![<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>](https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/huangshan-tourists.jpg?itok=6GfyJWQB){kind=link}
![<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>](https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/shanghai%20zoo.jpg?itok=cFhkjS2u){kind=link}
![<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>](https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Zhangjiajie.jpg?itok=ENcVT5hp){kind=link}
![<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>](https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/newsindustry.jpg?itok=CL-QB71i){kind=link}