- Chinese Drones Now Deployed In Balkans After Serbia Deal – NATO On Edge
Chinese Drones Now Deployed In Balkans After Serbia Deal – NATO On Edge
Tyler Durden
Fri, 08/07/2020 – 02:45China has delivered six military drones to Serbia after the Balkan country moved to purchase them in a controversial deal a year ago which has put NATO on edge.
Though Serbia has an official policy of military neutrality vis-a-vis NATO, there’s been increased cooperation over the past few years. However, both the Chinese drone acquirement and Present’s Aleksandar Vucic recently signaling he’d like to acquire the S-400 anti-air defense system from Russia has caused Washington to threaten sanctions.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic stands near new military drones purchased from China last month. Via
EPA-EFEThe delivery makes Serbia the first European country in history to deploy Chinese combat drones and thus is raising eyebrows in Brussels, as Bloomberg underscores:
China’s actions are prodding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to pivot to Asia, a potential sea change that’s roiling an alliance that was created to protect Europe against the Soviet Union and then Russia. China’s growing influence in the Balkans mirrors its push into other areas previously dominated by Russia. The Belt and Road enterprise already has made it a major player in Central Asian politics.
President Vucic said of the drones during a photo op after Belgrade took delivery: “They have a long range, they can shoot at targets from a distance of nine kilometers and record the terrain, objects of interest to Serbia deep within enemy territory,” according to Bloomberg.
The sale, as one US military magazine previously put it, “marks Beijing’s most significant foray into a continent where armed forces have traditionally relied on US and European weapon-makers.”
Last year the Serbian president signed several agreements with Beijing to expand the Belt and Road in the country. Under the agreement, China is expected to construct new power plants, lay transmission cables, and fiber optics, build new railways, and ports in the country.
As Bloomberg concludes in its reporting, “It’s easy to see why China has NATO leaders rattled. As Belt and Road has expanded across the continent, China has snapped up strategic assets including ports, power utilities and robotics firms from the Mediterranean to the Baltic Sea.“
- China And The EU Vie For Hydrogen Supremacy
China And The EU Vie For Hydrogen Supremacy
Tyler Durden
Fri, 08/07/2020 – 02:00Authored by Venand Meliksetian via OilPrice.com,
Not so long ago the energy transition was primarily an idealistic concept driven by environmentalists and researchers. The most important impediment was the high costs of clean technologies. The drastically reduced price of PVs, for example, has ensured global attention for the solar industry.
A similar situation could enfold concerning emissions-free hydrogen production as China and the EU are getting ready to dominate the market.
Germany’s trauma
The solar industry in Europe’s biggest economy, Germany, experienced a spectacular boom in the mid-2000s. Renewables were high on Berlin’s agenda who supported businesses with generous subsidies. The success of these policies resulted in the strong presence of German companies on the global stage when a fifth of all photovoltaic cells was produced in the European country.
The situation changed, however, when China’s formidable industrial complex adopted Beijing’s strategy concerning the establishment of a domestic PV-sector. Since the mid-2000s, the Asian country has seen a remarkable rise. Several factors underpinned Beijing’s success: public support, a large domestic market, and a major industrial complex. The EU and Germany have learned from their mistakes and from China’s success, which is being emulated towards the hydrogen economy.
The EU’s strategy
Despite the Covid-19 crisis, Europe has seen a flurry of public sector announcements concerning the kick-starting of a hydrogen-based economy both from national and supranational institutions. The guiding principle is Europe’s current technological prowess and the realization that their dominant position could easily be hijacked again if the necessary policies are not enacted on time.
Germany’s government has ensured a prominent spot for its future hydrogen economy in the economic stimulus packages intended to mitigate the financial fallout of the current health crisis. At least €9 billion will go towards stimulating the development of hydrogen-related technologies. Also, as Germany took over the six-month EU Council Presidency on July 1, Economy Minister Peter Altmaier devoted a significant portion of his speech to green hydrogen.
Furthermore, the EU’s ‘Green Deal’ is partly dedicated to kickstarting a continental zero-emissions economy. The strategy contains a three-step plan that…
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…starts with the implementation of green hydrogen production and consumption in industries such as steel, chemicals, and refineries by 2024.
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In the second phase, facilities will be connected to create ‘hydrogen valleys’ by 2030.
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In the last phase, the hotspot will be joined and a large European hydrogen infrastructure created.
The EU hopes to produce 1 million tonnes from 6 GW of electrolysis capacity by 2024. By 2030, this should have grown towards 10 million tonnes from 40 GW capacity. Germany alone would contribute 5 GW by 2030. Other countries, such as the Netherlands, also intend to contribute and profit from the new hydrogen economy. The Dutch are uniquely positioned with access to the North Sea for the installment of wind turbines and an existing gas network that could be reused for export purposes.
China in the rearview mirror
The EU’s strong support for the hydrogen industry is a welcome change from the past. Currently, European companies such as Siemens and Thyssenkrupp deliver a considerable number of electrolysers. Chinese companies, however, are not far behind.
Although the EU is still leading the industry in terms of knowledge and production capacity, it cannot afford to let up. For starters, the Chinese have proven that they can implement industrial policies with ruthless efficiency and dominate the market. A clear disadvantage is that Beijing has not yet set a clear goal for an emissions-free society by 2050 as the EU has.
According to a report by Cleantech Group, China’s electric vehicle strategy could be used as a warning sign to competitors. Two decades ago vehicle electrification became an industrial goal and national priority. Currently, Chinese companies lead in sales and production capacity.
While the EU is warned to implement the right policies this time, the increasing competition is good news for consumers and the environment in general. The current attention for hydrogen remains a hype that needs to be translated into actual results. The situation is highly promising as public support remains strong and the installment of wind and solar power is gathering pace, which is a precondition for green hydrogen production.
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- Meanwhile, In Russia…
Meanwhile, In Russia…
Tyler Durden
Fri, 08/07/2020 – 01:00A naked man standing in the middle of a bustling Russian street received a stiff knuckle sandwich from a driver who was clearly feeling a little impatient that day.
Cell phone video shows the pudgy naked man strolling down the middle of a street as cars drive past. Onlookers gawk. The man waves, and continues to waddle down the street, until a white compact stopped in front of the reckless nudist, and a large man with a muscular build and shaved head got out of the car.
The two exchange words, then suddenly, the clothed man slams his fist into the face of the naked man, who falls to the ground.
Antifa leader goes for a sleep pic.twitter.com/WNVWeheGMj
— Andrew Neill (@AndrewNeill91) August 1, 2020
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The video surfaced last month on Twitter.
- Payrolls Preview: Just How "Big" Will Friday's "Big Number" Be
Payrolls Preview: Just How “Big” Will Friday’s “Big Number” Be
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/06/2020 – 23:30Going into tomorrow’s July nonfarms payroll, the picture is mixed: The rate of jobless claims rose in the survey week, against expectations it would fall; continuing claims also rose in the reference period, even after stripping out the effect of bi-weekly reporting in some states (subsequent claims data however showed a notable decline in new initial claims). The ADP’s private payrolls number missed expectations badly (it has a poor record of forecasting the official data), and there has recently been a number of upward revisions bringing the series in line with the official data. The signals from the ISM reports are mixed, with the manufacturing survey seeing its employment sub-component rise, though remains under 50.0, while the equivalent within the non-manufacturing PMI fell. Challenger job cuts printed the third largest monthly total in history. Still, the indicators appear at odds with some metrics, like rising auto sales in July; some analysts have reasoned that the jobs market is being pressured by renewed infections, but the recovery is still intact for now.
Goldman summarized it best saying that high frequency data suggest that the labor market recovery may have paused or stalled over the last 4-6 weeks. Workplace activity measures have generally declined in the Sun Belt, and they have moved sideways in other states since late June.
Comparing the July to June survey weeks, traditional and Big Data suggest a wide range of plausible outcomes for tomorrow’s report, but as Goldman cautions, on net they are skewed towards a weaker-than-consensus outcome.
Ironically, this comes even as president Trump hinted on Wednesday to expect a “big number”
So to summarize, the US jobs report will be released at 08:30 EDT and here’s what to expect, courtesy of NewsSquawk:
- Nonfarm Payrolls exp. 1.6mln (range -280k to +4mln, prev. +4.8mln);
- Unemployment rate exp. 10.5% (range: 9.5-11.5%, prev. 11.1%);
- U6 unemployment (prev. 18.0%;
- Participation (prev. 61.5%);
- Private payrolls exp. 1.485mln (prev. +4.767mln);
- Manufacturing payrolls exp. 255k (prev. 356k);
- Government payrolls (prev. +33k);
- Average earnings m/m exp. -0.5% (prev. -1.2%);
- Average earnings y/y exp. +4.2% (prev. 5.0%);
- Average workweek hours exp. 34.4hrs (prev. 34.5hrs).
INITIAL JOBLESS CLAIMS: Weekly initial jobless claims rose to 1.416mln in the July employment survey reference week, against expectations for another 1.3mln print. Pantheon Macroeconomics says tough seasonals were the reason why claims rose after a run of 15 declines; “Unadjusted claims usually drop sharply in mid-July because of the end of the automakers’ annual shutdowns, but most plants didn’t shut down this year; automakers needed to make up for lost production in spring, when Covid-19 forced production to stop,” the consultancy writes, “that meant unadjusted claims didn’t rise in early June, but it also meant they didn’t fall as much as usual this week.” With that said, Pantheon notes that the underlying trend in claims since mid-June, before these distortions, seems to have been about flat. Continuing claims data for the BLS reference week rose to 17.018mln from 16.151mln; it was first rise since early May. Analysts generally see continuing claims as a better gauge of how nonfarm payrolls might come in, but much of the increase in the July reference week was a result of the four states which require bi-weekly filings of claims (California, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Texas – plus Puerto Rico), resulting in ‘sawtoothing’ data, Pantheon writes. “After stripping these states out it is clear that continuing claims elsewhere rose, by about 225K,” Pantheon observes, “That’s the first increase since early May.” Using the weekly jobs data as a proxy, the consultancy says that, after making adjustments, says the data are consistent with an increase in July payrolls; but August is at real risk if continuing claims continue to rise.
ADP: Private sector employment increased by 167k in July, according to data from ADP, significantly missing the consensus 1.5mln; however, the prior June data saw a chunky upward revision to 4.31mln from 2.37mln. The data means that private sector employment is still around 13mln (or about 10%) below the pre-pandemic peak seen in February. ADP said the labour market recovery slowed in the month of July, and that slowdown has impacted businesses across all sizes and sectors. Within the details, the slowdown was a result of the Leisure & Hospitality sector, which Capital Economics says makes sense given the renewed restrictions on bars and restaurants in many states, but other states sectors also saw a sharp slowdown. While ADP’s data is in sync with some high-frequency metrics which portend a slowdown in economic momentum and employment growth, the link between the ADP data and the official BLS employment situation report is tenuous, Capital Economics notes, especially in recent months; the ADP May and June data were both revised up, matching the more optimistic official data. “The apparent weakness of employment growth is also at odds with the strong 11% m/m rise in auto sales last month,” CapEco notes, adding that it is sticking with its forecast for 1mln payrolls to be added to the economy in July; “That would suggest that while the renewed wave of infections is weighing on the economy, the recovery remains intact.”
MANUFACTURING SECTOR: The ISM manufacturing report’s Employment sub-index rose by 2.2 points in July to 44.3, but remains beneath 50.0. ISM noted it was the twelfth consecutive month of employment contraction, though at slower rate compared to June. It said that only one of the six big industry sectors experienced expansion, as factories were able to achieve significant gains in output with a reduced labour pool. “Long-term labour market growth remains uncertain, but strong new-order levels and an expanding backlog signify potential strength for the rest of the third quarter.” Of the 18 manufacturing industries, the five industries to report employment growth in July were: Apparel, Leather & Allied Products; Printing & Related Support Activities; Furniture & Related Products; Plastics & Rubber Products; and Computer & Electronic Products. One manufacturing business in the transport equipment sector said that “overall business remains down almost 70 percent. We are hanging on to as many employees as possible, but we will have to lay off 30 percent or more for at least two to three months until September or October.”
SERVICES SECTOR: The ISM non-manufacturing report’s Employment sub-index fell 1 point in July to 42.1. It was the fifth consecutive month of contraction. Comments from respondents included: “Current freeze on all open positions” and “lower due to retirements and departures; limited new hiring at this time,” ISM said. Five industries reported an increase in employment: Arts, Entertainment & Recreation; Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing & Hunting; Retail Trade; Health Care & Social Assistance; and Utilities. A service company in the public administration sector said “phased opening of businesses continues at a slow pace. Spending is down. Unemployment is up this year, though down compared to last month. Unemployment last year was 2.9 percent. Last month, it was 19.2 percent. This month, it is 16.2 percent.”
JOB CUTS: Job cuts announced by US-based employers jumped in July to 262,649, the third-largest monthly total ever behind April’s 671,129 and May’s 397,016, data from Challenger showed; July’s total is 54% higher than the 170,219 job cuts announced in June, and 576% higher than the July 2019 total of 38,845. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the highest monthly total of job cuts was 186,350 in February 2009, Challenger said. “The lapse in extended unemployment benefits for millions of Americans will significantly impact the economy, as we see more employers announce they are cutting jobs permanently,” Challenger said, “the downturn is far from over, especially as COVID cases rise around the country.” The consultancy added that consumers were buying fewer goods and services, businesses are closing, and bankruptcies are rising.” The majority of cuts continue to come from Entertainment/Leisure companies, including bars, restaurants, hotels, and amusement parks; retailers announced the second-highest number of job cuts this year; and services sector job cuts are significantly up y/y. Challenger said hiring announcements almost equaled the number of jobs cut in July, as companies announced 246,507 hiring plans; Warehousing led. Challenger concluded that many job losses are now permanent, and it will be challenging for many workers to find new jobs and feel safe taking jobs that are public-facing.
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So what to expect? As Christophe Barraud writes, looking at high frequency indicators, the signals range from slower improvement to a deterioration. The Census Bureau’s weekly Household Pulse Survey showed that the number of employed Americans declined by about 6.7 million from mid-June through mid-July, including a 4.1 million plunge from the first to the second week of July. In addition, real-time labour estimates produced by academics at Arizona State University and Virginia Commonwealth University showed that the proportion who are employed fell again in July.
Meanwhile, Saint Louis Fed economists, that use real-time data from Homebase to track labour market trend, show “that since the week of June 12, the recovery in employment has slowed down and slightly reverted.” However, as you can see below, by comparing the weeks related to the survey periods, the situation improved a bit from June to July.
The Labor Department data also show that employment conditions started deteriorating in mid-July with initial jobless claims snapping a 15-week streak of declines in the week ending July 18. However, latest figures showed an improvement by month-end. Applications for U.S. unemployment benefits fell by 249,000 to 1.19 million in the week ended Aug. 1 (the lowest since the pandemic started).
🇺🇸 U.S. Jobless Claims Fall More Than Forecast to Pandemic Low – Bloomberg
*Link: https://t.co/cKaeR8MFon pic.twitter.com/TGsiMckAyJ— Christophe Barraud🛢 (@C_Barraud) August 6, 2020
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Now looking at monthly surveys, results were somehow disappointing. On the one hand, ADP reported Wednesday that private payrolls increased by just 167,000 well below the Bloomberg consensus of 1.2 million and prior figure of 4.314 million in June. In the meantime, the two ISM surveys (Manufacturing and Services) showed that the employment component remained in contraction territory in July, respectively at 44.3 and 42.1 (well below the expansion threshold of 50).
All in all, most of employment indicators imply that the current consensus for NFP is probably too high at +1.5 million (downwardly revised from +2.0 million), yet, the bright spot is likely to come from State and Local Government (Education) jobs amid positive seasonal adjustment. As Goldman notes, there is a seasonal bias in education categories to boost July job growth by roughly 0.5mn to 0.75mn. Some of the janitors and other school staff who normally finish the school year in June and July stopped working this year in April. Reflecting this, education payrolls will likely decline by less than the BLS seasonal factors anticipate, resulting in a sizeable increase in reported job growth inthe sector
The other contrarian point came from Trump statements. President Trump said Tuesday and reiterated Wednesday that there is “a big number coming out Friday on jobs”. While presidents usually receive a preview of the employment report before its official release, it tends to be the prior evening.
To summarize, high frequency and monthly indicators suggest that employment growth was weaker in July with some deterioration seen around mid-July. Due to the survey period, this phenomenom is unlikely to be fully reflected in the report. In addition, seasonal adjustment issues related to Education will boost artificially the headline by several hundred thousand jobs in July. Trump positive comments also imply that the worst scenario (negative print) is very unlikely.
- Russian S-300 Air Defense System Spotted In Libya?
Russian S-300 Air Defense System Spotted In Libya?
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/06/2020 – 23:05Submitted by SouthFront
Russia has deployed an advanced S-300 air defense system to Libya to support the forces of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar against the Turkish military and its proxies, local media reported on August 5.
According to photos surfacing online, the supposed S-300 system is deployed near the town of Ras Lanuf, a key oil export port controlled by the Libyan National Army (LNA). The town is located more than 200km away from the port city of Sirte, which the LNA is defending against Turkish-led forces.
The circulating photos supposedly show a 96L6E Cheese Board radar and a transporter erector launcher (TEL) similar to those used in S-300 and S-400 air-defense systems. This 3D early-warning and acquisition radar has a range of 300 km and can track up to 100 targets simultaneously.
Last month, several Arab sources already reported that an S-300 system had bee deployed in Libya. Egypt, an ally of the LNA, operates a variant of the system that is different from the one allegedly spotted near Ras Lanuf.
Turkish sources are already crying foul about the cowardly Russians who are aiming to shoot down peaceful Turkish combat drones democratically bombing LNA-controlled cities. At the same time, it should be noted that the photos from the Ras Lanuf area are yet to be verified. In particular, the pictured radar also looks similar to those of the Iranian-made Khordad-15 air defense system, which was used in 2019 to shoot down a RQ-4A Global Hawk BAMS-D surveillance drone of the United States over the Strait of Hormuz. In any case, if any of these versions is confirmed, it will be sad news for the Erdogan sultanate and its proxies.
Despite active preparations for an attack on Sirte, the Turkish Armed Forces, pro-Turkish Syrian militants and Tripoli forces have not yet launched an attack on the port city, likely fearing a direct military response by Egypt to such a move. Sporadic clashes regularly erupt west of Sirte and sides exchange isolated airstrikes, but the general situation on the frontline has stabilized.
This means that the conflict has at least temporarily entered into a positional war stage. In these conditions, the main backers of Field Marshal Khaftar – Egypt and the UAE, partially supported by France and Russia, have every chance to take the upper hand in this standoff even without the direct involvement of Russia or other major powers at their side.
- The Bogus "Recovery", Stress, & Burnout
The Bogus “Recovery”, Stress, & Burnout
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/06/2020 – 22:35Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
We have three basic ways to counter the destructive consequences of stress.
We have all experienced the disorientation and “brain freeze” that stress triggers. The pandemic and the responses to the pandemic have been continuous sources of stress, i.e. chronic stress, which is the pathway to burnout, the collapse of our ability to cope with the burdens pressing on us.
Authorities keep promoting a bogus “recovery” narrative. The disconnect between what the authorities are claiming and what people are actually experiencing is widening, and these unbridgeable contradictions lead to meltdown. No wonder more and more people are “losing it” as their neural circuitry melts down under the strain of synthesizing what they experience (crisis) and what they’re told (the “recovery” is already glorious and getting better every day).
In Survival+ I call this process derealization as our lived experience is derealized (dismissed as not real) by official spin and propaganda.
Research has illuminated how stress disrupts the default hierarchy of the brain. In the absence of stress, the neocortex-rational-mind functions suppress the more primitive subconscious signals of aggression, hunger, etc. in order to concentrate our effort to complete some planned activity.
Everyday Stress Can Shut Down the Brain’s Chief Command Center. Neural circuits responsible for conscious self-control are highly vulnerable to even mild stress. When they shut down, primal impulses go unchecked and mental paralysis sets in. (Scientific American; subscription required)
This helps explain the natural “fight or flight” response we feel when suddenly confronted with danger or potential danger, but more importantly it illuminates how we lose the ability to analyze circumstances rationally when we are “stressed out.” Once our rational analytic abilities are shut down, we are prone to making a series of ill-informed and rash decisions.
This has the potential to set up a destructive positive feedback loop: the more stressed out we become, the lower the quality of our decision-making, which then generates poor results that then stress us out even more, further degrading our already-impaired rational processes. This feedback loop quickly leads to “losing it” and/or burnout.
In pondering human development over the past 20,000 years of the transition from hunter-gatherer groups to modern life, it seems self-evident that stress was likely to be resolved in relatively short order in the hunter-gatherer lifestyle: everyone was known to everyone else, conflicts had to be resolved simply because the group survival depended on it, and most threats could be fended off with vigilance, weapons or left behind by a few hours of fast walking.
Contrast the ancient environment that selected for this stress/conscious self-control feedback with modern life: in the modern urban life and work environment, stress is more or less constant and our ability to resolve stressful situations is limited because we control very little about the macro social-economic waters we’re navigating.
Though this particular article focuses on short-term stress, there is growing body of evidence that chronic stress has a number of subtle and destructive consequences. In addition to the common-sense connection between chronic stress and hypertension, there is evidence that obesity is also related to stress-caused conditions such as inadequate sleep and chronic inflammation. This makes sense as the stress hormones erode the immune system’s responsiveness.
Behaviorally, stress breaks down self-control, so it is no surprise that stress leads to bingeing, addictive behavior, impulse buying, etc.–all “knock-on” effects with negative consequences.
Chronic stress permanently degrades our ability to rationally analyze and plan, and so we act irrationally or erratically, as we are no longer able to stick to a conscious plan of coherent action. With the rational mind and self-control centers permanently suppressed, we are prone to withdrawal and passivity, “sleepwalking” though life. This may help explain Americans’ remarkable passivity as their civil liberties are taken away and their financial insecurity increases.
Many of the features of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are now visible in “everyday Americans,” and an understanding of how stress erodes rational thought and self-control helps explain why.
Even before the pandemic, over half of Americans reported that their stress level was usually high. (see chart below) We can guess that this already high percentage is now considerably higher, given that 32 million people are receiving some form of unemployment and thousands of small businesses have closed.
Medical professionals were already burning out before the pandemic. (see chart below) What the status quo must cover up is the reality that the structure of our winner-take-most socio-economic system makes it unlivable, even for professionals (or especially for professionals, in many cases).
We have three basic ways to counter the destructive consequences of stress:
1) Develop positive physical and mental responses via discipline, habit and practice (for example, regular exercise, gardening, etc.).
2) Turn off the mainstream media and social media (i.e. eliminate deranging, destructive distractions).
3) Stay focused on our plans. The simpler and more positive the plan, the more likely it is we can stay focused on it in stressful circumstances.
I laid out a context for my own planning in May.
Our Inevitable Collapse: We Can’t Save a Fragile Economy With Bailouts That Increase Fragility May 1, 2020
Why Assets Will Crash May 4, 2020
Surviving 2020 #1: Bug-Out Bunkers, Taoism and the Warring States May 5, 2020
Surviving 2020 #2: 16 Suggestions May 6, 2020
Surviving 2020 #3: Plans A, B and C May 7, 2020
The Outlines of a Better World Are Emerging May 8, 2020
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My recent books:
Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World ($13)
(Kindle $6.95, print $11.95) Read the first section for free (PDF).Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($6.95 (Kindle), $12 (print), $13.08 ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).
The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)
Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).
* * *
If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.
- Ohio Governor Mike DeWine Tests Negative For COVID-19 Hours After Testing Positive: Live Updates
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine Tests Negative For COVID-19 Hours After Testing Positive: Live Updates
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/06/2020 – 22:19Summary:
- Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine tests negative for COVID-19 after testing positive earlier in the day
- California, Florida see cases decline
- Goldman’s daily tracker: decline in case totals continues across US
- Illinois reports most cases since May
- France repots 1,600+ new cases for 2 days straight; first time since April
- US lifts global travel advisory; stocks climb
- Ohio Gov tests positive for COVID before greeting Trump
- Latest Florida, NY, Arizona numbers hit
- Global cases near 19 million
- Deaths top 700k
- Germany reports more than 1,000 new cases for first time since May
- Philippines now worst outbreak in Southeast Asia
- Victoria reports another 471 new cases
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Update (1920ET): Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has tested negative for COVID-19, just hours after testing positive before he was set to meet with President Trump in Cleveland.
His wife, Fran DeWine, also tested negative along with several staff members – after they all underwent a more accurate testing method in Columbus, vs. the rapid-result test which showed DeWine to be positive earlier in the day, according to AP.
DeWine, an early advocate among Republicans of wearing masks and other pandemic precautions, said he took a test arranged by the White House in Cleveland as part of standard protocol before he was to meet Trump at an airport. He had planned to join the president on a visit to the Whirlpool Corp. plant in northwest Ohio.
Instead, he received the news he was positive, called his wife, Fran DeWine, and returned to central Ohio where he took the other test that showed him to be negative.
“A big surprise to me and certainly a big surprise to our family,” DeWine said at a late afternoon news conference broadcast from his porch on his farm in Cedarville in southwestern Ohio, where he planned to quarantine for 14 days. –AP
The 73-year-old DeWine said he didn’t know how he could have contracted the virus, as he’s been spending most of his time on his farm.
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Update (1730ET): A developing trend of declining daily case numbers out of the US took a breather on Thursday as BBG and JHU reported a 1.3% preliminary daily increase to 4.85 million, slightly larger than the 1.2% 7-day average.
However, that headline number masked some promising details. California’s new cases stayed below the 14-day average, and Florida’s rate of positive tests fell to the lowest level since June 21. Florida reported 510,389 cases, up 1.5% from a day earlier, compared with an average increase of 1.6% in the previous seven days. Deaths reached 7,747, an increase of 120, or 2.4%.
The most notably daily increase in the US comes out of Illinois, where the state reported its biggest single-day case tally since May 24, with an 11% bump over the previous day, or 1,953 new cases. The seven-day rate of positive tests rose to 4% from 3.9%. Though the state reported 21 deaths, down from 30 a day earlier.
However, California reported 166 new deaths on Thursday, exceeding the 14-day average of 132, and bringing the Golden State’s total to 9,869. Across Cali, there were 5,258 new cases, below the 14-day average of 7,455 and extending a decline that started more than 2 weeks ago when cases peaked north of 12,000.
Even outside the US, Thursday afternoon was big for COVID-19-related news. France reported 1,604 new cases, marking the first time since April that the country has reported more than 1,600 cases for 2 days straight.
Another seven deaths were also reported, bringing France’s total to 30,312, according to the French Health Ministry.
Iowa’s Republican Gov Kim Reynolds warned she’d overrule any local officials who impose requirements on mask-wearing outdoors.
“We don’t believe during a public health emergency that the local governments have the authority to supersede what is in place at the statewide level by the governor,” Reynolds said.
Texas reported 306 new deaths statewide, with some of the new deaths dating back as far as June 4. Now, there are 7,803 total. The state also reported 7,598 new cases, bringing Texas’s total to 467,485.
Meanwhile, here’s Goldman’s latest daily COVID-19 tracker, which after the data reported in the US this afternoon, as most states continue to see a decline in new cases.
- Over the past several days, a majority of states have seen new confirmed coronavirus cases decline on a 14-day basis, suggesting cases are now on a sustained downward trajectory in much of the country. Encouragingly, nearly all states also have cases declining on a 7-day basis and the widespread decline in symptom prevalence is continuing, indicating this downward trajectory may continue at least in the near term.
- Despite the downward trajectory, the level of new cases remains high in most states. States representing 90% of the population have daily new case levels above 50 per million population, and states representing 70% of the population have levels above 100 per million. Even with further sustained improvement, states may wait for daily new cases to fall to more acceptable levels before loosening reopening policies.
- However, focusing on the decline in new cases overlooks a few important recent factors. Positive test rates remain very high in some states, and testing volumes have declined over the past two weeks in part due to disruptions from Hurricane Isaias. California also recently announced that a technical issue led to understatement in case counts. Estimates of the effective reproductive number Rt, which account for testing volumes, remain very close to 1.0 nationally.
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Update (1500ET): News that the State Department had lifted a global travel advisory established 4 months ago reportedly helped propel US indexes higher in afternoon trading, according to analysts and media reports.
The department issued the Level 4: Do Not Travel advisory, the highest level of travel advisory, on March 19. The advisory urges US citizens not to travel overseas due to the burgeoning SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.
Instead, the State Department plans to issue individual ratings for different countries. It’s widely seen as the first step toward easing international travel restrictions, with the US leading by example.
Here’s a statement from the State Department via CNN:
However, “(w)ith health and safety conditions improving in some countries and potentially deteriorating in others, the Department is returning to our previous system of country-specific levels of travel advice (with Levels from 1-4 depending on country-specific conditions), in order to give travelers detailed and actionable information to make informed travel decisions,” a Thursday note from the State Department said.
“This will also provide U.S. citizens more detailed information about the current status in each country,” the note said. “We continue to recommend U.S. citizens exercise caution when traveling abroad due to the unpredictable nature of the pandemic.”
The Level 4: Do Not Travel advisory put into effect in March advised “U.S. citizens to avoid all international travel due to the global impact of COVID-19” and urged Americans “in countries where commercial departure options remain available” to “arrange for immediate return to the United States, unless they are prepared to remain abroad for an indefinite period.”
As commercial flight options disappeared and borders were shuttered to combat the spread of the virus, the department undertook an unprecedented repatriation effort to get Americans back home. Between January 27 and June 10, they coordinated the repatriation of 101,386 Americans on 1,140 flights from 136 countries and territories.
Of course, US citizens still face travel restrictions imposed by the EU and the UK. The advisory is being lifted as the Trump Administration reportedly considers a travel ban on Communist Party members, which was reported a few weeks back.
* * *
Update (1240ET): Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has tested positive for COVID-19, according to a statement from his office.
Governor DeWine has tested positive for #COVID19. He has no symptoms at this time. Full statement below. pic.twitter.com/WnkmoGxR2m
— Governor Mike DeWine (@GovMikeDeWine) August 6, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
DeWine, 73, took the test as part of the “standard protocol” for greeting President Trump at the tarmac at Burke Lakefront Airport.
The governor is returning to Columbus, where he and First Lady Fran DeWine will both be tested. DeWine plans to quarantine at his home in Cedarville for the next 14 days. Lt. Governor Jon Husted also took the test, but tested negative.
He’s at least the second governor to test positive, after Okla. Gov. Kevin Stitt
* * *
The number of new coronavirus cases slowed on Thursday, but the global tally of cases neared 19 million, with the outbreak on track to surpass that number by the end of the week.
The biggest news overnight comes out of Europe, where Germany just suffered its largest jump in new cases since May, with more than 1000 new cases reported in a day.
The Robert Koch Institute reported 1,045 new cases on Thursday, bringing Germany’s total to 213,067. Its death toll is 9,175. This comes as the RKI warns that any figure above 1,000 a day would make it much more difficult for local health authorities to carry out effective tracking and tracing, and to keep the virus under control, Reuters reports.
German schools have begun to reopen in some parts of the country, which has been widely blamed for the uptick in new cases.
Surging case numbers are reviving fears of a return to economically damaging lockdown in Germany.
Health Minister Jens Spahn said on Thursday free compulsory testing would be offered beginning Saturday, although a big factor in the increase on Thursday was a surge in tests being run.
In neighboring Poland, officials will introduce new containment measures against the virus in some of the most badly affected counties after fresh infections set new records in the past weeks. The country will impose limits on restaurants, sport events, mass transportation and weddings in 19 of its 380 counties starting Saturday, said Health Minister Lukasz Szumowski.
Typically quiet Southeast Asia is also seeing some alarming new developments as the Philippines surpasses Indonesia for the biggest outbreak in the region, despite imposing the longest, and most strict, lockdown in the entire region earlier this year.The country reported 3,381 new cases on Thursday (these numbers are reported with a 24 hour delay).
coronavirus cases in the Philippines have now surged to almost 120,000 (119,460 according to Worldometer), eclipsing Indonesia to become the region’s biggest outbreak. The country re-imposed this week a second lockdown on its capital and nearby areas to curb infection spread, even as the economy suffered its deepest contraction on record, shrinking 16.5% in the second quarter from a year ago.
This comes as Q2 GDP data shows Philippines economy shrank 16.5% in the quarter, descending into a deep recession.
FInally, Australia’s Victoria state reported 471 new cases as Premier Daniel Andrews dismissed a report by the Australian newspaper that government modeling showed average daily infections would peak at 1,100 by the end of next week. The state reported a record 725 new cases on Wednesday. Additionally, Aussie PM Scott Morrison warned Thursday that the lockdowns in Victoria (including especially restrictive measures in Melbourne) would shave 2.5% off quarterly growth.
- 'Kansas Should Go F*** Itself': Taibbi Opines On Liberal Arrogance In Lieu Of Introspection
‘Kansas Should Go F*** Itself’: Taibbi Opines On Liberal Arrogance In Lieu Of Introspection
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/06/2020 – 22:05“America’s financial and political establishment has always been most terrified of an inclusive underclass movement. So it evangelizes a bizarre transgressive politics that tells white conservatives to fuck themselves and embraces a leftist sub-theology that preaches class as a racist canard.” –Matt Taibbi
Matt Taibbi has written one hell of a book review in advance of a Friday podcast interview with author Thomas Frank, whose new book “The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism” is currently Amazon’s #1 new release in ‘radical political thought.’
Frank, according to Taibbi, not only predicted the current culture war we currently find ourselves in – he’s hit the nail on the head once again when it comes to the left’s inability to learn from their mistakes – after the party abandoned blue-collar America for condescending, coastal intellectuals.
Frank published What’s the Matter with Kansas? in 2004, at the height of the George W. Bush presidency. The Iraq War was already looking like a disaster, but the Democratic Party was helpless to take advantage, a fact the opinion-shaping class on the coasts found puzzling. Blue-staters felt sure they’d conquered the electoral failure problem in the nineties, when a combination of Bill Clinton’s Arkansas twang, policy pandering (a middle-class tax cut!) and a heavy dose of unsubtle race politics (e.g. ending welfare “as we know it”) appeared to cut the heart out of the Republican “Southern strategy.”
Yet Clinton’s chosen successor Al Gore flopped, the party’s latest Kennedy wannabe, John Kerry, did worse, and by the mid-2000s, Bushian conservatism was culturally ascendant, despite obvious failures. Every gathering of self-described liberals back then devolved into the same sad-faced anthropological speculation about Republicans: “Why do they vote against their own interests?” -Matt Taibbi
And instead of trying to actually figure out what motivates voters from poor swaths of America, the left has chalked it up to ‘racial animus and Christian superstition.‘
Taibbi further notes: “The Kansas title alone spoke to one of Frank’s central observations: while red state voters might frame objections in terms of issues like abortion or busing, in a broader sense the Republican voter is recoiling from urban liberal condescension.”
That Democrats needed Thomas Frank to tell them what conservatives fifteen miles outside the cities were thinking was damning in itself. Even worse was the basically unbroken string of insults emanating from pop culture (including from magazines like Rolling Stone: I was very guilty of this) describing life between the cities as a prole horror peopled by obese, Bible-thumping dolts who couldn’t navigate a Thai menu and polished gun lockers instead of reading.
Republicans may have controlled government at the time, but when they turned on TV sets or looked up at movie screens, their voters felt accused of something just for living in little towns, raising kids, and visiting church on Sundays. What’s the matter, they were asking, with that? -Matt Taibbi
And since the 2016 US election, instead of introspection over why Trump resonates with blue-collar America, the left has learned nothing.
After 2016 it became axiomatic that the Trump voter, or the Leave voter, was – without exception now – a crazed, racist monster. As detailed here multiple times, ruminations on Republican voter behaviors became not merely uninteresting to pundits after November 2016, but actively taboo. By 2020, the official answer to What’s the Matter with Kansas? was Kansas is a White Supremacist Project and Can Go Fuck Itself. -Matt Taibbi
Read the rest of Taibbi’s piece here, and check out the Useful Idiots podcast with Frank on Friday.
- Russia-China "Dedollarization" Reaches "Breakthrough Moment" As Countries Ditch Greenback For Bilateral Trade
Russia-China “Dedollarization” Reaches “Breakthrough Moment” As Countries Ditch Greenback For Bilateral Trade
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/06/2020 – 21:55Late last year, data released by the PBOC and the Russian Central Bank shone a light on a disturbing – at least, for the US – trend: As the Trump Administration ratcheted up sanctions pressure on Russia and China, both countries and their central banks have substantially “diversified” their foreign-currency reserves, dumping dollars and buying up gold and each other’s currencies.
Back in September, we wrote about the PBOC and RCB building their reserves of gold bullion to levels not seen in years. The Russian Central Bank became one of the world’s largest buyers of bullion last year (at least among the world’s central banks). At the time, we also introduced this chart.
We’ve been writing about the impending demise of the greenback for years now, and of course we’re not alone. Some well-regarded economists have theorized that the fall of the greenback could be a good thing for humanity – it could open the door to a multi-currency basket, or better yet, a global current (bitcoin perhaps?) – by allowing us to transition to a global monetary system with with less endemic instability.
Though, to be sure, the greenback is hardly the first “global currency”.
Falling confidence in the greenback has been masked by the Fed’s aggressive buying, as central bankers in the Eccles Building now fear that the asset bubbles they’ve blown are big enough to harm the real economy, so we must wait for exactly the right time to let the air out of these bubbles so they don’t ruin people’s lives and upset the global economic apple cart. As the coronavirus outbreak has taught us, that time may never come.
But all the while, Russia and China have been quietly weening off of the dollar, and instead using rubles and yuan to settle transnational trade.
Since we live in a world where commerce is directed by the whims of the free market (at least, in theory), the Kremlin can just make Russian and Chinese companies substitute yuan and rubles for dollars with the flip of a switch:as Russian President Vladimir Putin once exclaimed, the US’s aggressive sanctions policy risks destroying the dollar’s reserve status by forcing more companies from Russia and China to search for alternatives to transacting in dollars, if for no other reason than to keep costs down (international economic sanctions can make moving money abroad difficult).
In 2019, Putin gleefully revealed that Russia had reduced the dollar holdings of its central bank by $101 billion, cutting the total in half.
And according to new data from the Russian Central Bank and Federal Customs Service, the dollar’s share of bilateral trade between Russia and China fell below 50% for the first time in modern history.
Businesses only used the greenback for roughly 46% of settlements between the two countries. Over the same period, the euro constituted an all-time high of 30%. While other national currencies accounted for 24%, also a new high.
As one ‘expert’ told the Nikkei Asian Review, it’s just the latest sign that Russia and China are forming a “de-dollarization alliance” to diminish the economic heft of Washington’s sanctions powers, and its de facto control of SWIFT, the primary inter-bank messaging service via which banks move money from country to country.
The shift is happening much more quickly than the US probably expected. As recently as 2015, more than 90% of bilateral trade between China and Russia was conducted in dollars.
Alexey Maslov, director of the Institute of Far Eastern Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences, told the Nikkei Asian Review that the Russia-China “dedollarization” was approaching a “breakthrough moment” that could elevate their relationship to a de facto alliance.
“The collaboration between Russia and China in the financial sphere tells us that they are finally finding the parameters for a new alliance with each other,” he said. “Many expected that this would be a military alliance or a trading alliance, but now the alliance is moving more in the banking and financial direction, and that is what can guarantee independence for both countries.”
Dedollarization has been a priority for Russia and China since 2014, when they began expanding economic cooperation following Moscow’s estrangement from the West over its annexation of Crimea. Replacing the dollar in trade settlements became a necessity to sidestep U.S. sanctions against Russia.
“Any wire transaction that takes place in the world involving U.S. dollars is at some point cleared through a U.S. bank,” explained Dmitry Dolgin, ING Bank’s chief economist for Russia. “That means that the U.S. government can tell that bank to freeze certain transactions.”
The process gained further momentum after the Donald Trump administration imposed tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods. Whereas previously Moscow had taken the initiative on dedollarization, Beijing came to view it as critical, too.“Only very recently did the Chinese state and major economic entities begin to feel that they might end up in a similar situation as our Russian counterparts: being the target of the sanctions and potentially even getting shut out of the SWIFT system,” said Zhang Xin, a research fellow at the Center for Russian Studies at Shanghai’s East China Normal University.
At times, Russia has prioritized use of the yuan over its own currency in the hopes that his would push Beijing to become more “assertive” in establishing the yuan as an internationalized currency. While the yuan was added to a IMF basket of reserve currencies a few years back, Beijing’s unwillingness to take its hand off the wheel when it comes to managing the currency has stymied its internationalization.
Russia’s push to accumulate yuan is not just about diversifying its foreign exchange reserves, Maslov explained. Moscow also wants to encourage Beijing to become more assertive in challenging Washington’s global economic leadership.
“Russia has a considerably more decisive position toward the United States [than China does],” Maslov said. “Russia is used to fighting, it does not hold negotiations. One way for Russia to make China’s position more decisive, more willing to fight is to show that it supports Beijing in the financial sphere.”
Six years have passed between Russia and China opened FX swap lines between their central banks in 2014. That three year deal was expanded in 2017.
While trying to assess the long-term risk, remember: Ray Dalio has apparently assigned a whole team of publicists to help spread his concerns about the potential fallout from a US-China “capital war”. It’s worth remembering that China has far more financial firepower with which to vex the US than many pundits are willing to acknowledge.
- Trump Signs Executive Order Banning TikTok, WeChat In 45 Days
Trump Signs Executive Order Banning TikTok, WeChat In 45 Days
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/06/2020 – 21:50President Trump signed an executive order banning U.S. residents from doing any business with TikTok or the apps’ Chinese owner ByteDance 45 days from now.
Trump said the U.S. “must take aggressive action against the owners of TikTok to protect our national security”.
The EO comes as Trump has demanded the divestment of the popular video app, citing national security risks to the U.S, and threatens penalties on any U.S. resident or company that engages in any transactions with TikTok or ByteDance after the order takes effect.
“This mobile application may also be used for disinformation campaigns that benefit the Chinese Communist Party,” Trump said in the order, released Thursday by the White House and seen by Bloomberg.
The data collection through TikTok “threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”
TikTok has denied accusations it is controlled by or shares data with the Chinese government.
The order released today reads: “I, Donald J Trump President of the United States of America, find that additional steps must be taken to deal with the national emergency with respect to the information and communications technology and services….Specifically, the spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by companies in the People’s Republic of China continues to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy.
“At this time, action must be taken to address the threat posed by one mobile application in particular, Tik Tok.”
He has also banned WeChat.
The President claims the app’s data collection “threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americas’ personal and proprietary information – potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”
And now we wait for China’s response to this latest escalation, even if so far Beijing has indicated it is willing to be a pushover when it comes to Trump’s pre-election campaigning and is unwilling to aggressively pursue any retaliation.
In kneejerk reaction, Tencent shares dropped after signed an executive order “addressing the threat posed by WeChat.” The stock fell as much as 1.5% in opening minutes of Hong Kong trade. It remains up 46% YTD.
- Freddie Mac Warns Apartment Loan Supply May Plunge As Virus Crushes Working-Poor
Freddie Mac Warns Apartment Loan Supply May Plunge As Virus Crushes Working-Poor
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/06/2020 – 21:25Freddie Mac’s multi-year lending outlook for apartment buildings reveals the economic devastation among the working poor due to the virus-induced recession.
Multi-family loan origination volume for apartment buildings could plunge as much as 40% in 2020 compared with 2019.
Freddie said the “magnitude of the decline would be tied to the recovery of the economy and ability to contain the virus.”
We’ve highlighted, in recent weeks, the recovery has already reversed, as per the latest Goldman Sach’s high-frequency data.
The financial well-being of the working poor has been crushed in the downturn. At least 30 million folks are still collecting unemployment benefits. Renters’ hardships were realized one week before the month ended, with a rent moratorium expired, indicating landlords can now start collecting past rents and begin the eviction process for millions of folks.
“Renters are expected to be more impacted than homeowners from this recession given their susceptibility to the industries harder hit from the lockdowns,” Freddie said.
Many renters make low wages and have low skilled jobs, primarily in service sectors like retail, hospitality, and travel. As we’ve highlighted, millions of jobs aren’t coming back, which will leave folks unemployed for an extended period, unable to make rent payments and service debt.
As the recovery reverses, a fiscal cliff underway, and an eviction wave just beginning, the latest jobs report reveals initial and continuing jobless claims are now on the rise, signaling the labor market has been thrown into reverse.
International Financing Review (IFR) said, “falling rent collection, together with any pickup in evictions, may cause banks to pare lending to apartment owners to refinance and developers to build new multi-family properties.”
The ripple effect of renters skipping out on monthly payments has caused apartment building operators to also skip out on mortgage payments, resulting in a surge of multi-family property delinquencies among specific CMBS series.
Rising delinquencies in multi-family properties and hotels are pressuring CMBS series 9.
When the cycle breaks, that is, the renter fails to pay the landlord, well the whole system implodes. The multi-family housing boom has been put on hold this year. Now, the government is working on a bailout for the CMBS industry. Also, the second round of stimulus and a rent moratorium extension could save the working-poor in the short run, but as it becomes increasingly clear, the ability for millions to pay rent has yet to be resolved. The crisis is far from over.
- Voting Fraud Is Real: The Electoral System Is Vulnerable
Voting Fraud Is Real: The Electoral System Is Vulnerable
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/06/2020 – 21:05Authored by Philip Giraldi via The Strategic Cultuire Foundation,
The United States national election is now only three months away and it should be expected that the out-and-out lies emanating from both parties will increase geometrically as the polling date nears. One of the more interesting claims regarding the election itself is the White House assertion that large scale voting by mail will permit fraud, so much so that the result of the voting will be unreliable or challenged. To be sure, it is not as if voter fraud is unknown in the United States. The victory of John F. Kennedy 1960 presidential election has often been credited to all the graveyards in Mayor Richard Daley’s Chicago voting to swing Illinois into the Democratic camp.
The Democrats are insisting that voting by mail is perfectly safe and reliable, witness the use of absentee ballots for many years. The assertions by Democratic Party-affiliated voting officials in several states and also from friends on the federal level have been played in the media to confirm that fraud in elections has been insignificant recently. That may be true, up until now.
The Democrats, of course, have an agenda. For reasons that are not altogether clear, they believe that voting by mail would benefit them primarily, so they are pushing hard for their supporters to register in their respective states and cast their ballots at the local mail box. Nevertheless, there should be some skepticism whenever a major American political party wants something. In this case, the Democrats are likely assuming that people at lower income levels who will most likely vote for them cannot be bothered to register and vote if it requires actually going somewhere to do it. They have spoken of “expansion of voting,” presumably to their benefit. The mail is a much easier option.
A Fox News host has rejected the impelling logic behind the mail option, saying “Can’t we just have this one moment to vote for one candidate every four years, and show up and put a ballot in without licking an envelope or pressing on a stamp? If you can shop for food, if you can buy liquor, you can vote once every four years.”
The fundamental problem with the arguments coming from both sides is that there is no national system in the United States for registering and voting. Elections are run at state level and the individual states have their own procedures. The actual ballots also differ from voting district to voting district. To determine what safeguards are actually built into the system is difficult as how electoral offices actually function is considered sensitive information by many, precisely because it might reveal vulnerabilities in the process.
To determine how one might actually vote illegally, I reviewed the process required for registering and voting by mail in my own state of Virginia. In Virginia one can both register and vote without any human contact at all. The registration process can be accomplished by filling out an online form, which is linked here. Note particularly the following: the form requires one to check the box indicating U.S. citizenship. It then asks for name and address as well as social security number, date of birth and whether one has a criminal record or is otherwise disqualified to vote. You then have to sign and date the document and mail it off. Within ten days, you should receive a voter’s registration card for Virginia which you can present if you vote in person, though even that is not required.
But also note the following: no documents have to presented to support the application, which means that all the information can be false. You can even opt out of providing a social security number by indicating that you have never been issued one, even though the form indicates that you must have one to be registered, and you can also submit a temporary address by claiming you are “homeless.” Even date of birth information is useless as the form does not ask where you were born, which is how birth records are filed by state and local governments. Ultimately, it is only the social security number that validates the document and that is what also appears on the Voter’s ID Card, but even that can be false or completely fabricated, as many illegal immigrant workers in the U.S. have discovered.
In a state like Virginia, the actual mail-in ballot requires your signature and that of a witness, who can be anyone. That is also true in six other states. Thirty-one states only require your own signature while only three states require that the document be notarized, a good safeguard since it requires the voter to actually produce some documentation. Seven states require your additional signature on the ballot envelope and two states require that a photocopy of the voter ID accompany the ballot. In other words, the safeguards in the system vary from state to state but in most cases, fraud would be relatively easy.
And then there is the issue of how the election commissions in the states will be overwhelmed by tens of thousands of mail-in ballots that they might be receiving in November. That overload would minimize whatever manual checking of names, addresses and social security numbers might otherwise take place. Jim Bovard has speculated how:
“The American political system may be on the eve of its worst legitimacy crisis since the Civil War. Early warning signals indicate that many states could suffer catastrophic failures in counting votes in November… Because of the pandemic, many states are switching primarily to mail-in voting even though experiences with recent primaries were a disaster. In New York City, officials are still struggling to count mail-in ballots from the June primary. Up to 20% of ballots ‘were declared invalid before even being opened, based on mistakes with their exterior envelopes,’ the Washington Post noted, thanks largely to missing postmarks or signatures. In Wisconsin, more than 20,000 ‘primary ballots were thrown out because voters missed at least one line on the form, rendering them invalid.’ Some states are mailing ballots to all the names on the voting lists, providing thousands of dead people the chance to vote from the grave.”
Add into the witch’s cauldron the continued use of easily hacked antiquated voting machines as well as confusing ballots in many districts, and the question of whether an election can even be run with expectations of a credible result becomes paramount. President Trump has several times claimed that the expected surge in mail-in voting could result in “the most corrupt vote in our nation’s history.” Trump is often wrong when he speaks or tweets spontaneously, but this time he just might be right.
- NRA Slams "Baseless, Premeditated Attack" As NY AG Seeks To "Dismantle" Guns Rights Organization
NRA Slams “Baseless, Premeditated Attack” As NY AG Seeks To “Dismantle” Guns Rights Organization
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/06/2020 – 20:55Update (1300ET): And the NRA responds…
Lawsuits a “baseless, premeditated attack on our organization” and the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms, responds @NRA.
— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) August 6, 2020
* * *
Update (1235ET): Just as we anticipated…Trump has spoken out to slam the lawsuit as “a terrible thing”.
- Trump: New York Lawsuit Against NRA ‘A Terrible Thing’
- Trump: NRA Should Move to Texas
- Trump: NRA Has Been ‘Decimated’ by Costly Legal Actions
* * *
Update (1140ET): James is starting off the hearing by detailing a state lawsuit against the NRA and seeking the dissolution of the pro-second amendment organization, one of several subjects she was expected to address today.
James alleges the the organization violated non-profit laws by diverting “millions of dollars away from the charitable mission of the organization for personal use by senior leadership,” who awarded contracts that benefited friends and family. That would be a slam-dunk if she were going after politicians. But at a non-profit, things are more blurry.
BBG published an update on the lawsuit almost immediately, suggesting that the financial news organization – owned by a former mayor of NYC – had the story under embargo ahead of time. Here’s a snippet from their reporting, which accuses NRA of “massive fraud”.
New York is seeking to dissolve the National Rifle Associationas the state attorney general accused the gun rights group and four senior officials of engaging in a massive fraud against donors.
A sprawling lawsuit filed Thursday in state court in Manhattan alleges the NRA diverted charitable donations for years to enrich the organization’s top executives in violation of laws governing nonprofits, New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. The state is also demanding millions of dollars in restitution and penalties.
The case may pose one of the biggest legal threats the NRA has faced since its founding in New York in 1871. The turmoil began with a power struggle last year between former NRA president Oliver North and longtime leader Wayne LaPierre, which led to allegations of self dealing. A subsequent state probe found wrongdoing blamed for more than $64 million in losses in the last three years alone, James said.
“The NRA’s influence has been so powerful that the organization went unchecked for decades while top executives funneled millions into their own pockets,” James, a Democrat, said in the statement. “The NRA is fraught with fraud and abuse.”
For those who aren’t familiar, this is the culmination of what Trump once called “an illegal investigation” by Cuomo and the AG, which stems from a power struggle that rocked the NRA last year.
The news sent shares of gun makers lower.
The NRA must “get its act together quickly, stop the internal fighting, & get back to GREATNESS – FAST!” Trump tweeted at the time.
We imagine he’ll be chiming in on Twitter about this new lawsuit any minute now.
* * *
New York Attorney General Letitia James is delivering a press briefing on Thursday where it’s widely suspected that she will share “bombshell” allegations about President Trump and his finances, after subpoenaing documents from Deutsche Bank.
In recent days, stories about DB scrutinizing Trump’s former banker, and the Manhattan AG subpoenaing the bank over records pertaining to Trump, have stoked suspicions that something “big” might be coming.
Will this briefing live up to the hype? We’re about to find out.
- Walmart Is Turning Its Parking Lots Into Drive-In Movie Theaters For Its Customers
Walmart Is Turning Its Parking Lots Into Drive-In Movie Theaters For Its Customers
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/06/2020 – 20:45In an announcement that will certainly come as welcome news for the homeless and unemployed already living in their cars in Walmart parking lots, the retailer said yesterday that effective August 14, it is going to be kicking off the “Walmart Drive-in movie theater experience”.
The retailer’s “first ever drive-in” movie theater will debut at 160 different Walmart stores across the country starting this month in a partnership with the Tribeca Film Festival. Because showing Disney movies to overweight Walmart customers eating McDonald’s in their Dodge pickup trucks is basically synonymous with the elite crowds that attend the Tribeca Film Festival.
Better yet, you know the drive-ins will attract an elite crowd, because Walmart is offering them as “free to Walmart customers”.
Janey Whiteside, Walmart’s chief customer officer, said: “We recognize the challenges our customers and their families have faced over the last few months, and we wanted to create an experience where they could come together safely to create new memories. The Walmart Drive-in is one small way we’re supporting the communities we serve.”
The drive-ins will feature filmmakers and surprise guests making appearances at “select showings”, the retailer says. The company says the films will include:
- “Inspiring sports stories” like Friday Night Lights, The Karate Kid and Space Jam
- “Blockbuster franchises” including Black Panther, Pokémon Detective Pikachu, The Lego Batman Movie, Spider-ManTM: Into The Spider-Verse, Spy Kids, Teen Titans GO! To the Movies and Wonder Woman
- “Out-of-this-world stories” like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Ghostbusters and Men in BlackTM: International
- “Nostalgic favorites” including Back to the Future, Beetlejuice, The Goonies and The Wizard of Oz
- “Inspiring true stories” from Dolphin Tale to Selena
- “Animated features every member of the family can enjoy” like Cars, The Iron Giant, The Lego Movie and Madagascar
- Ahead of each feature presentation, audiences will screen one of a number of short films, including Bilby, Bird Karma, Brooklyn Breeze, CROW: The Legend, Fire in Cardboard City, INVASION!, Looney Tunes’ Boo! Appetweet and Marooned
“Drew Barrymore will serve as virtual host for all events, welcoming guests to a fun family night experience. She will also make a surprise in-person appearance at one location. Families will be also be treated to surprise virtual or in-person appearances from Peter Berg, Jennifer Garner, LeBron James and Chrissy Metz at select showings,” the company said.
You can go to TheWalmartDriveIn.com for information on showings.
- John Cleese: Woke People Have "Zero Sense Of Humour"; They're Killing Comedy
John Cleese: Woke People Have “Zero Sense Of Humour”; They’re Killing Comedy
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/06/2020 – 20:25Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,
Legendary British comedian John Cleese has hit out at permanently offended woke people, insisting that they have no sense of humour and are contributing to the death of comedy.
In an appearance on the Daily Beast’s The Last Laugh Podcast, Cleese noted that woke people simply do not understand the intricacies of comedy.
“There’s plenty of people who are PC now who have absolutely zero sense of humour. I would love to debate, in a friendly way, a couple of ‘woke’ people in front of an audience. And I think the first thing I would say is, please tell me a good ‘woke’ joke,” Cleese urged.
“What they don’t understand is that there’s two types of teasing,” Cleese continued, noting that “There’s really nasty teasing, which is horrible, and we shouldn’t do it, full stop. But the other type of teasing is affectionate. You can tease people hugely affectionately and it’s a bonding mechanism.”
“All humour is critical. You cannot get laughs out of perfect human beings,” Cleese continued, adding that “If you’ve got someone up on the screen who is perfect, intelligent and kind and flexible and a good person, there’s nothing funny about that. So we only laugh at people’s frailties, but that’s not cruel. You can laugh at people’s frailties in very funny and generous ways.”
Cleese was recently at the centre of a ‘woke’ storm when his Fawlty Towers show, made some 40 years ago was temporarily canceled after complaints that it featured a ‘racist’ character.
Cleese called the BBC “cowardly and gutless” for removing an episode of the show, pointing out that the racist character in question was the target of ridicule in the show.
I would have hoped that someone at the BBC would understand that there are two ways of making fun of
human behaviourOne is to attack it directly.
The other is to have someone who is patently a figure of fun, speak up on behalf of that behaviour
Thank of Alf Garnett…
— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) June 12, 2020
But it’s not just stupidity
The BBC is now run by a mixture of marketing people and petty bureaucrats
It used to have a large sprinkling of people who’d actually made programmes
Not any more
So BBC decisions are made by persons whose main concern is not losing their jobs…
— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) June 12, 2020
The BBC’s website refers to my ‘fury’
I think my comments were quite measured and moderate
So why would the BBC refer to them as my ‘fury’ ?
Because it will get them a few more ‘clicks’
This sort of thing happens when marketing executives and tabloid journalists take charge
— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) June 12, 2020
Cleese has previously warned that political correctness will lead to the death of comedy, noting that “If you start to say we mustn’t, we mustn’t criticize or offend them then humor is gone. With humor goes a sense of proportion. And then as far as I’m concerned you’re living in 1984.”
Cleese has been acutely aware of the threat cancel culture poses for decades:
Hard to tell if I recorded this 30 years or 10 minutes ago… pic.twitter.com/GPDURhYIJL
— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) June 12, 2020
After daring to question the diversity overlords, Cleese also recently found himself being labeled a ‘racist’:
His staunch refusal to deviate from his views has made Cleese the target of harassment.
- Farmageddon Continues As Bankruptcies Rise 8%
Farmageddon Continues As Bankruptcies Rise 8%
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/06/2020 – 20:05The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) released a new report Tuesday (Aug. 4) showing farm bankruptcies continue to increase.
AFBF found bankruptcies rose 8% over the last 12 months (from June 2019 to June 2020), with 580 filings. The Midwest, Northwest, and Southeast recorded the most bankruptcies, representing 80% of all filings across the US. Wisconsin was the epicenter for filings, followed by Nebraska, Georgia, and Minnesota.
Filings slowed in 1H20 partly because of financial assistance provided by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief & Economic Security (CARES) Act, including direct payments to farmers via the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP), along with Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans.
Farmers are on government life-support.
AFBF’s President Zippy Duvall said the new rounds of farm aid helped cushion farmers from the economic impact of the virus-induced recession.
AFBF’s Chief Economist John Newton said CARES Act assistance was only a “bandage,” warning filings could increase if aid programs are not continued.
AFBF said, “approximately 60% of farm bankruptcies have been completed successfully – the highest successful percentage of all the reorganization chapters.”
Even before the virus pandemic, a global farm glut pressured agricultural prices. Farm incomes imploded, and bankruptcies began to increase in 2016. President Trump then unleashed a trade war against China, which in itself forced Chinese buyers to abandon US markets for South American ones.
Even with a phase one trade deal, China continues to abandon US markets. We noted earlier this week that purchases are significantly lagging.
Missouri’s Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute expects the Trump administration to dish out a record $33 billion in aid payments to farmers this year. What this all means is that farmers are on government life-support.
- Water Wars And America's Fate
Water Wars And America’s Fate
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/06/2020 – 19:45Authored by Martin Sieff via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
India versus China, Egypt versus Ethiopia, Israel versus the Palestinians – the Water Wars are already here in the US also, yet American and European policymakers remain disastrously blind to them.
This is certain to have catastrophic consequences for the wealthy, arrogant and ludicrously complacent elites of the West.
The problem is particularly acute in the United States: Indeed, it has been growing for half a century but has reached such enormous dimensions in the 21st century that neocon imperialist Republican, neoliberal imperialist Democratic and Green policymakers are all oblivious to it.
How can this be? It is because all three sets of ideologues and opinion-shapers overwhelmingly live on the East and West Coasts of the United States. In both areas, water has always been plentiful and climate mild.
These regional prejudices go back a very long way: They explain why Theodore Roosevelt practiced arrogant elitist imperialism against not only the unfortunate peoples of Central America and Northeast Asia during his fateful presidency but also against the inhabitants of his own country’s Heartland. For it was Roosevelt who initiated the bizarre practice of cutting off vast quantities of prime land across the nation from human usage and declaring it National Parks, worshipped blindly by all liberals as well Greens to this day.
Theodore Roosevelt’s policies were followed by later presidents, most notably Ronald Reagan.
So today, an amazing 95 percent of the population of the United States remains concentrated on only seven percent of its land area in truly tiny concentrated suburban bubbles around a handful of great cities. Yet more than twice that area is cut off from any productive use by the American population because it is designated as National Parks.
However, these empty places are also extremely dangerous ones. They swarm with predators, human as well as animal: Thousands of people, especially young campers disappear in them every year. It is virtually impossible to get reliable statistics on this from the federal government which has a vested interest in hiding its own criminal incompetence and failure to portect its own people.
At the very least, usually unarmed, romantic suburbanites who dream about the nurturing joys of Nature are at a complete loss on how to survive in the wild when they get lost and wander even a few hundred yards away from major roads.
Yet the Republican hegemony across the Heartland United States has been based on the hatred of scores of millions of people cut off from key resources by these romantic and arrogant imperialist policies.
This conflict indeed decided the 2016 U.S. presidential election. It explains why all the Heartland states including many with generations-long “blue” Democratic traditions unexpectedly swung “red” behind Donald Trump. The ineffably and reliably stupid Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton made the conflict far worse with her “war” on coal as a fuel. (U.S. policymakers have a childish and disgusting habit of calling all non violent conflicts “war” making them uniquely inept at the real thing).
Because the population of the United States is so urban and concentrated, the Heartland outside major urban areas is now less densely populated, incredibly than it was 200 years ago when land hungry settlers were spreading across it like human locusts.
This means that the great populations concentrated in Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, San Francisco and Miami have no idea of the true environmental realities that exist behind their romantic Green policy dreams. They have no sense of how much fresh water they consume or how limited its supply always was, even before Global Climate Change started to dramatically shrink the water tables.
This development is long term very good news for Russia and Canada since it is already freeing up enormous areas of land and resources undreamed of in their national histories. But it means that American neo-imperialist dreamers waste their military resources on crazy misadventures from Afghanistan to Ukraine when they should really be deploying them to safeguard the water resources of New York City in the Appalachian Mountains or those of Los Angeles from the water-hungry Western states.
It also means water conflicts around the world are not fashionable enough for the self-imagined geniuses of the Washington think tanks and media platforms to pay any serious attention to. They would far rather lecture Russia (which handles its water resources extremely well) or China (which faces enormous challenges from the changing climate, and whose leaders now fully recognize the problem) then face the problems in their own backyard.
So when it comes to mediating the conflicts between India and China over the rapidly shrinking glaciers and fresh water reserves of the Himalaya watershed, or the remorseless escalating conflict between Ethiopia (not to be underestimated) and Egypt (which has had zero success over the past 200 years in projecting its own military power that far south up the Nile River), Washington policymakers do not have a clue.
The wars of water are already with U.S.: And they are likely to erupt with the most unexpected virulence in the United States first.
The now likely victory of Democrat Joe Biden in this November’s U.S. presidential election will rip civic bonds apart over this and related issues, though as usual Russia and China will be scapegoated for the inept failures of Washington policymakers to anticipate or deal with the crisis.
Fresh water is the ultimate essential resource for the aquatic mammal known as the human race: Loss of it will be fatal for hundreds of millions. For the American people, those Inconvenient Facts are about to impact – hard.
- SEC Enforcement Co-Director Steven Peikin To Abruptly Leave Agency On August 14
SEC Enforcement Co-Director Steven Peikin To Abruptly Leave Agency On August 14
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/06/2020 – 19:25It has been several weeks since Elon Musk blatantly taunted the Securities and Exchange Commission by telling them to “s*** his c***”. As a result, what has happened since then?
A) A just application of the law has held Musk accountable for his previous actions.
B) A stern warning was issued to Tesla’s Board of Directors to get Musk under control.
C) A co-director of the agency’s enforcement division picks up and leaves the agency days after Jay Clayton kisses Musk’s ass live on CNBC by saying he has “no comment” about Musk’s remarks.
If you guessed option “C”, you’re right!
It was announced yesterday that co-director of enforcement at the SEC, Steven Peikin, is leaving the agency in relatively abrupt fashion on August 14. He is leaving after more than 3 years in his role, which co-director Stephanie Avakian will now absolve, according to an SEC statement.
Peikin said: “Serving as Co-Director of the Division of Enforcement has been an incredible honor, and I am immensely grateful to Chairman Clayton for his confidence in me, for giving me the opportunity to again serve the public, and for his unwavering support of vigorous enforcement of the federal securities laws.”
He continued: “I am tremendously proud of the accomplishments of the women and men of the Division of Enforcement, whose knowledge, expertise, and dedication to protecting investors and preserving market integrity inspired and impressed me every day. It has been a privilege to serve among them.”
During his tenure, the agency says over $13.5 billion in disgorgement and penalties was obtained by the agency. Peikin was formerly a managing partner at Sullivan & Cromwell.
SEC Chairman Jay Clayton praised Peikin in a press release: “Their investor-first efforts have resulted in thousands of actions that have righted wrongs and, more importantly, both returned illicit gains to harmed investors and eliminated improper fees, providing lasting savings for years to come.”
We took a stab at writing a more accurate statement, which might sound something like: “Our team has allowed frauds to operate unfettered until such time as either the fraud implodes or it is completely obvious to the public, at which point we try to save our reputation by collecting perfunctory and menial fees to keep our agency’s lights on while expensive lawyers, paid for with money obtained through fraud, impose their will on us for immaterial settlements with their clients.”
The SEC didn’t comment on Peikin’s future plans, nor did Peikin comment beyond his official statement to the SEC. We wonder if he knows there’s a General Counsel position available at Tesla…
- Senate Bill To Curb Invasive Facial Recognition Software After Rite Aid Deployed In 200 Stores
Senate Bill To Curb Invasive Facial Recognition Software After Rite Aid Deployed In 200 Stores
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/06/2020 – 19:05Authored by Julia Conley via CommonDreams.org,
New legislation put forward by Sens. Jeff Merkley and Bernie Sanders on Tuesday would curb the use of facial recognition software by corporations and help to slow the spread of “abusive” surveillance, according to leading privacy advocates.
Similar to Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act, which has been in place since 2008, the Merkley-Sanders legislation would bar corporations from using facial recognition without the knowledge and explicit affirmative consent of customers.
Stock photo, Getty Images “Do we really want to live under constant surveillance by unaccountable corporations? I don’t. We cannot allow Orwellian facial recognition technology to continue to violate the privacy and civil liberties of the American people,” Sanders told Business Insider Tuesday.
The Illinois law has resulted in $650 million in fines for Facebook over its use of facial recognition-enabled tagging in the state, and was cited by the ACLU in May when the group sued Clearview AI over its collection and storing of the data of residents without their knowledge of consent.
The digital rights group Fight for the Future, which launched its nationwide campaign demanding a federal ban on all facial recognition technology last year, expressed support for the National Biometric Information Privacy Act even though it falls short of an outright ban.
“We believe most private and corporate uses of facial recognition should be banned entirely, but this new legislation will play an important role in slowing down the unfettered creep of this technology into our daily lives, giving us time to have a meaningful debate about whether artificial intelligence powered surveillance systems should be used at all all in a free and open society,” Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future, said in a statement.
How Rite Aid deployed facial recognition technology in 200 stores across the U.S., with some in the heart of New York and Los Angeles, in largely lower-income, non-white neighborhoods. For a year, it used a China-linked company to do it https://t.co/ZNwEG9U3u9 pic.twitter.com/6AlnHTD2Az
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 28, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Merkley and Sanders introduced the legislation days after Reuters reported that the Rite-Aid drugstore chain has spied on customers in about 200 stores across the U.S. using facial recognition over the past eight years. Many of the stores equipped with the technology, without the knowledge of consumers, are in low-income, largely-minority neighborhoods.
Facial recognition has been shown to disproportionately misidentify people of color, according to a landmark federal study published last year.
“Right now in most states in the U.S., it would be totally legal for a big box store to set up surveillance cameras, scan the faces of everyone entering the store and compare them to a public mugshot database,” said Greer. “That would be enormously invasive, and exacerbate existing forms of discrimination. If this legislation passes, that sort of creepy corporate surveillance would be impossible, because the store would have to obtain the affirmative consent of every customer before scanning their face.”
Under Merkley and Sanders’ legislation, companies would need consent to gather biometric data including retina or iris scans, voiceprints, faceprints including those derived from a photograph, fingerprints or palm prints, and any “uniquely identifying information based on the characteristics of an individual’s gait or other immutable characteristic of an individual.”
Rite Aid store is shown in downtown Los Angeles, via Reuters. “We can’t let companies scoop up or profit from people’s faces and fingerprints without their consent,” Merkley told Recode. “We have to fight against a ‘big brother’ surveillance state that eradicates our privacy and our control of our own information, be it a threat from the government or from private companies.”
Fight for the Future, which has also fought the use of facial recognition by law enforcement and other government agencies, warned that Americans should be just as concerned about the use of the technology by private companies.
“From targeting people with creepy and discriminatory advertisements based on their face to harvesting and selling our sensitive biometric data, there are so many ways corporations can abuse our rights with facial recognition,” said Greer.
“Unless we organize to stop it, the surveillance dystopia of our nightmares may be offered up by corporations in the name of convenience, rather than imposed by an authoritarian government.”
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