- World Food Program Director: 270 Million People Now "Marching Toward Starvation" In Wake of COVID-19
World Food Program Director: 270 Million People Now “Marching Toward Starvation” In Wake of COVID-19
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/06/2020 – 23:40Submitted by Joseph Jankowski of Planet Free Will,
According to the head of the World Food Program (WFP), the amount of people around the world now on the brink of starvation has doubled due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic effects of government reactions to the virus.
Director of the WFP, David Beasley, who previously warned that the “cure” for the COVID-19 pandemic should not be worse than the disease, told the United Nations General Assembly on Friday that 270 million people are now “marching towards starvation” in wake of the economic effects of the pandemic.
“As I had warned the United Nations Security council back in April, that if we’re not careful the cure could be worse than the disease because of the economic ripple effect – if we don’t handle economic disruptions, supply chain disruptions, ect. …” Beasley told the council.
“As we predicted back in April, the number of people that were going to be marching toward the brink of starvation had already risen from 80 million to 135 million the last four years, primarily because of man made conflict,” the director went on, adding:
“But because of COVID it’s now spiking from 135 million people – not going to bed hungry now, [but] literally marching towards starvation – to 270 million people.”
Beasley expressed a bleak outlook for 2021 as he believes next year is going to be “catastrophic based on what we’re seeing at this stage of the game.”
He said that “because we’ve spent $19 trillion, that money may not, and will not most likely be available for 2021” as economic contractions out pace the need to supply a lifeline to those starving.
In April, Beasley pointed to an already deepening starvation crisis happening in conflict torn nations such as Yemen. He would warn that the world is “facing a perfect storm” with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and that if “funding shortfalls and disruptions to trade” could not be avoided “we could be facing multiple famines of biblical proportions within a short few months.”
The WFP director’s shocking warning was sounded just prior to alarm bells raised by the WHO’s special envoy on COVID-19, Dr. David Nabarro, who cautioned that national lockdowns should be avoided as a primary response to COVID-19 as they have the consequence of “making poor people an awful lot poorer.”
“Lockdowns just have one consequence that you must never, ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer,” Nabarro said in October.
In May, UNICEF predicted that in 118 low and middle-income nations, 1.2 million children under the age of five could die in the following six months because of the surge of declining access to medical care “due to lockdowns, curfews and transport disruptions.”
Starvation as a result of the pandemic and the resulting lockdowns is not unique to nations at the bottom of the economic rung.
Feeding America, a US based non-profit organization that operates a network of food banks, is predicting that one out of every four children in America could suffer from hunger by the end of 2020.
- Canada Warns Conspiracy Theorists Could Burn 5G Towers, Claiming Link To Virus
Canada Warns Conspiracy Theorists Could Burn 5G Towers, Claiming Link To Virus
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/06/2020 – 23:15A conspiracy theory linking 5G to the coronavirus has spread like wildfire this year. In April, numerous 5G towers were set on fire by folks in Britain who believed that radiation from the towers was contributing to the spread of COVID-19.
Now Canada’s intelligence service has warned in a new confidential report, seen by Global News, that violent extremists could be ready to attack 5G wireless communication towers.
“As companies begin 5G infrastructure construction in earnest, extremists from across the IMV extremist landscape could engage in acts of arson and vandalism against that infrastructure,” Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) wrote in the report.
The confidential report comes amid a wave of COVID-19 disinformation swirling around internet forums that suggest 5G technology could spread the virus.
“Given the extraordinary effect the COVID-19 pandemic has created on the lives of individuals across the world, CSIS is mindful that certain threat actors, across multiple threat landscapes, may seek to take advantage to advance their own interests,” CSIS spokesperson John Townsend said.
Global News lists some of the most most popular COVID-19/5G conspiracy theories:
Perhaps the most elaborate asserts that 5G was designed by governments to depopulate the world, and is part of a broader conspiracy theory called Agenda 21 that imagines the United Nations is trying to establish a new world order.
None have any scientific validity, but white supremacists, neo-Nazis and anarchists have all adopted COVID-19 conspiracy theories to varying degrees, while the anti-vaxxer movement has promoted the notion that 5G is responsible for spreading COVID-19.
CSIS said physical opposition to 5G wireless communication towers is significantly less when compared to other countries in Europe.
However, it said “Canadian-based online communities” were pumping 5G conspiracy and far-right extremist groups were attempting to “capitalize on ‘5G hysteria.'”
CSIS noted there had been a handful of incidents in the country of cellphone towers being damaged. The most significant attack was in Laval, Quebec, in April, where one tower was torched and sustained one million dollars in damage. In early May, at least six towers were torched in Montreal.
- Escobar: There's No Escape From Our Techno-Feudal World
Escobar: There’s No Escape From Our Techno-Feudal World
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/06/2020 – 22:50Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,
The political economy of the Digital Age remains virtually terra incognita. In Techno-Feudalism , published three months ago in France (no English translation yet), Cedric Durand, an economist at the Sorbonne, provides a crucial, global public service as he sifts through the new Matrix that controls all our lives.
Durand places the Digital Age in the larger context of the historical evolution of capitalism to show how the Washington consensus ended up metastasized into the Silicon Valley consensus. In a delightful twist, he brands the new grove as the “Californian ideology”.
We’re far away from Jefferson Airplane and the Beach Boys; it’s more like Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” on steroids, complete with IMF-style “structural reforms” emphasizing “flexibilization” of work and outright marketization/financialization of everyday life.
The Digital Age was crucially associated with right-wing ideology from the very start. The incubation was provided by the Progress and Freedom Foundation (PFF), active from 1993 to 2010 and conveniently funded, among others, by Microsoft, At&T, Disney, Sony, Oracle, Google, and Yahoo.
In 1994, PFF held a ground-breaking conference in Atlanta that eventually led to a seminal Magna Carta: literally, Cyberspace and the American Dream: a Magna Carta for the Knowledge Era, published in 1996, during the first Clinton term.
Not by accident the magazine Wired was founded, just like PFF, in 1993, instantly becoming the house organ of the “Californian ideology”.
Among the authors of the Magna Carta we find futurist Alvin “Future Shock” Toffler and Reagan’s former scientific counselor George Keyworth. Before anyone else, they were already conceptualizing how “cyberspace is a bioelectronic environment which is literally universal”. Their Magna Carta was the privileged road map to explore the new frontier.
Those Randian heroes
Also not by accident the intellectual guru of the new frontier was Ayn Rand and her quite primitive dichotomy between “pioneers” and the mob. Rand declared that egotism is good, altruism is evil, and empathy is irrational.
When it comes to the new property rights of the new Eldorado, all power should be exercised by the Silicon Valley “pioneers”, a Narcissus bunch in love with their mirror image as superior Randian heroes. In the name of innovation they should be allowed to destroy any established rules, in a Schumpeterian “creative destruction” rampage.
That has led to our current environment, where Google, Facebook, Uber, and co. can overstep any legal framework, imposing their innovations like a fait accompli.
Durand goes to the heart of the matter when it comes to the true nature of “digital domination”: US leadership was never achieved because of spontaneous market forces.
On the contrary. The history of Silicon Valley is absolutely dependent on state intervention – especially via the industrial-military complex and the aero-spatial complex. The Ames Research Center, one of NASA’s top labs, is in Mountain View. Stanford was always awarded juicy military research contracts. During WWII, Hewlett Packard, for instance, was flourishing thanks to their electronics being used to manufacture radars. Throughout the 1960s, the US military bought the bulk of the still infant semiconductor production.
The Rise of Data Capital, a 2016 MIT Technological Review report produced “in partnership” with Oracle, showed how digital networks open access to a new, virgin underground brimming with resources: “Those that arrive first and take control obtain the resources they’re seeking” – in the form of data.
So everything from video-surveillance images and electronic banking to DNA samples and supermarket tickets implies some form of territorial appropriation. Here we see in all its glory the extractivist logic inbuilt in the development of Big Data.
Durand gives us the example of Android to illustrate the extractivist logic in action. Google made Android free for all smartphones so it would acquire a strategic market position, beating the Apple ecosystem and thus becoming the default internet entry point for virtually the whole planet. That’s how a de facto, immensely valuable, online real estate empire is built.
The key point is that whatever the original business – Google, Amazon, Uber – strategies of conquering cyberspace all point to the same target: take control of “spaces of observation and capture” of data.
About the Chinese credit system…
Durand offers a finely balanced analysis of the Chinese credit system – a public/private hybrid system launched in 2013 during the 3rd plenum of the 18th Congress of the CCP, under the motto “to value sincerity and punish insincerity”.
For the State Council, the supreme government authority in China, what really mattered was to encourage behavior deemed responsible in the financial, economic and socio-political spheres, and sanction what is not. It’s all about trust. Beijing defines it as “a method of perfecting the socialist market economy system that improves social governance”.
The Chinese term – shehui xinyong – is totally lost in translation in the West. Way more complex than “social credit”, it’s more about “trustworthiness”, in the sense of integrity. Instead of the pedestrian Western accusations of being an Orwellian system, priorities include the fight against fraud and corruption at the national, regional and local levels, violations of environmental rules, disrespect of food security norms.
Cybernetic management of social life is being seriously discussed in China since the 1980s. In fact, since the 1940s, as we see in Mao’s Little Red Book. It could be seen as inspired by the Maoist principle of “mass lines”, as in “start with the masses to come back to the masses: to amass the ideas of the masses (which are dispersed, non-systematic), concentrate them (in general ideas and systematic), then come back to the masses to diffuse and explain them, make sure the masses assimilate them and translate them into action, and verify in the action of the masses the pertinence of these ideas”.
Durand’s analysis goes one step beyond Soshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism when he finally reaches the core of his thesis, showing how digital platforms become “fiefdoms”: they live out of, and profit from, their vast “digital territory” peopled with data even as they lock in power over their services, which are deemed indispensable.
And just as in feudalism, fiefdoms dominate territory by attaching serfs. Masters made their living profiting from the social power derived from the exploitation of their domain, and that implied unlimited power over the serfs.
It all spells out total concentration. Silicon Valley stalwart Peter Thiel has always stressed the target of the digital entrepreneur is exactly to bypass competition. As quoted in Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World, Thiel declared, “Capitalism and competition are antagonistic. Competition is for losers.”
So now we are facing not a mere clash between Silicon Valley capitalism and finance capital, but actually a new mode of production: a turbo-capitalist survival as rentier capitalism, where Silicon giants take the place of estates, and also the State. That is the “techno-feudal” option, as defined by Durand.
Blake meets Burroughs
Durand’s book is extremely relevant to show how the theoretical and political critique of the Digital Age is still rarified. There is no precise cartography of all those dodgy circuits of revenue extraction. No analysis of how do they profit from the financial casino – especially mega investment funds that facilitate hyper-concentration. Or how do they profit from the hardcore exploitation of workers in the gig economy.
The total concentration of the digital globe is leading to a scenario, as Durand recalls, already dreamed up by Stuart Mill, where every land in a country belonged to a single master. Our generalized dependency on the digital masters seems to be “the cannibal future of liberalism in the age of algorithms”.
Is there a possible way out? The temptation is to go radical – a Blake/Burroughs crossover. We have to expand our scope of comprehension – and stop confusing the map (as shown in the Magna Carta) with the territory (our perception).
William Blake, in his proto-psychedelic visions, was all about liberation and subordination – depicting an authoritarian deity imposing conformity via a sort of source code of mass influence. Looks like a proto-analysis of the Digital Age.
William Burroughs conceptualized Control – an array of manipulations including mass media (he would be horrified by social media). To break down Control, we must be able to hack into and disrupt its core programs. Burroughs showed how all forms of Control must be rejected – and defeated: “Authority figures are seen for what they are: dead empty masks manipulated by computers”.
Here’s our future: hackers or slaves.
- Trump Terminates Chinese Cultural Exchange Programs, Decries "Soft Power Propaganda Tools"
Trump Terminates Chinese Cultural Exchange Programs, Decries “Soft Power Propaganda Tools”
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/06/2020 – 22:25It’s but the latest in what has become near daily punitive actions leveled against China by the Trump administration, which as promised looks to continue right up until Trump leaves office next month.
On Friday the State Department announced it has shut down five cultural exchange programs, the origins of which go back a half-century, calling them “soft power propaganda tools,” according to Reuters.
AP file image The programs were set up after the establishment of the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act in 1961, signed into law by President John F. Kennedy which was aimed at boosting cultural educational ties with foreign countries.
The programs which have been “terminated” according to the announcement on the State Department’s website include the Policymakers Educational China Trip Program, the U.S.-China Friendship Program, the U.S.-China Leadership Exchange Program, the U.S.-China Transpacific Exchange Program and the Hong Kong Educational and Cultural Program.
“While other programs funded under the auspices of the [Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act] are mutually beneficial, the five programs in question are fully funded and operated by the PRC government as soft power propaganda tools,” the statement said.
“They provide carefully curated access to Chinese Communist Party officials, not to the Chinese people, who do not enjoy freedoms of speech and assembly,” it added.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US would only maintain those foreign cultural exchange programs that “reciprocal and fair,” however while suggesting the Chinese programs are “one-way programs” that are “not mutually beneficial.”
- Election Day Info Blackout Shows US Media Is No Friend Of The People. Americans Must Demand Better
Election Day Info Blackout Shows US Media Is No Friend Of The People. Americans Must Demand Better
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/06/2020 – 22:00Authored by Robert Bridge via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
While half of the United States is mesmerized by witness testimony describing the ‘irregularities’ that purportedly occurred in the 2020 presidential contest between the incumbent Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the other half has been left deliberately in the dark by an activist media.
Watch Live: @RudyGiuliani appears before Georgia Senate Committee hearing on Election Fraud https://t.co/swGBX9AvKv
— RSBN 🇺🇸 (@RSBNetwork) December 3, 2020
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It has become almost a cliché to say that the United States is now fiercely divided into parallel universes, alternative realities, otherwise known as the Republican and Democratic camps. One of the primary reasons for this great divide, aside from the obvious ideological differences, is that just one side, that is, the left, predominantly controls the flow of news and social media content.
Indeed, the ‘legacy media’ even feels itself bold enough to cast judgment on presidential messages via Twitter in real time. If ever there was a recipe for disaster, as the most consequential election in recent memory remains up for grabs, this is it.
On November 30, Bobby Piton, a mathematician and expert, testified at the Arizona voter fraud hearing where he provided compelling evidence that up to 300,000 “fake people” cast a vote in the contested election of Nov. 3. The data, if correct, was alarming in its implications since it meant the difference between Trump or Biden winning the fiercely contested swing state. Certainly the major media networks, in the interest of safeguarding the voting process and consequentially democracy itself, would be interested in providing its viewers with such news, right? Think again.
THE FRAUD WAS MEANT TO GO UNDETECTED
…but Biden received so few votes legitimately that the perpetrators were forced to flood the polling system after hours, and they overwhelmed it, setting off gongs and whistles.
So now they’re forced to make believe the results were real.
— Zero Tolerance (@GradQuantico) December 3, 2020
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Not only was Piton’s riveting testimony sent to the memory hole by all of the ‘legacy’ media networks, but Twitter actually decided to block his account the very next day. Piton was treated as yet another ‘conspiracy theorist’ nutcase who will probably need to enter some sort of re-indoctrination internment camp before he can join polite society again. He certainly won’t be in need of company if the thought police get their way.
Just days earlier, the social media platform also suspended the account of Pennsylvania state senator Doug Mastriano, who testified at that state’s election hearing. Twitter later said that Mastriano’s suspension was a “glitch,” which begs the question as to why these technological breakdowns almost always, without fail, target Republicans.
The very same media blackout has hit dozens of other poll watchers, regular citizens with no political ax to grind who had the courage to come forward and relay their stories in the hope of protecting America’s democratic process. Their reward has been crickets from the media industrial complex, which is essentially telling those witnesses that their stories do not matter; only the stories that are peddled to them from the corporate masters are all that count.
Such medieval rationale applies even to the President of the United States, who gave what he said was possibly “the most important speech I’ve ever made.”
“We used to have what was called ‘Election Day,’ but now we have Elections Days, Weeks and Months, and lots of bad things happened during this ridiculous long period of time,” Trump said in his 46-minute statement from the White House.
The American leader then proceeded to provide the various ways that the U.S. election system has come under “coordinated assault and siege,” as he described it. Naturally, Twitter tagged the presidential message by saying “This claim about election fraud is disputed.” Imagine, if you will, what the response would have been had the media titans dared to interrupt one of FDR’s famous fireside chats with a message disputing the veracity of the claims.
Statement by Donald J. Trump, The President of the United States
Full Video: https://t.co/EHqzsLbbJG pic.twitter.com/Eu4IsLNsKD
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2020
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In any case, the media, acting, or not acting, in absolute lockstep (jackboot?) synchronicity, decided that the U.S. leader’s remarks were not important enough for the American people to hear. Chris Cuomo, CNN talking head, explained his network’s decision to blank the president’s “tirade.”
“Here’s the fact,” Cuomo began. “Trump is the least of our problems. He is a simple study at this point. Trump is toxic. Period. Sure, he’s going to go out with a bang as in trying to blow up as much as he can. He is absolutely trying to make nothing better, despite the fact that America is in a time of abject crisis.”
Was Cuomo talking about the election crisis that has left the United States without any idea who will be its next president, and especially more now that new evidence of foul play are emerging every single day? Of course not. CNN (which Project Veritas just demonstrated has a very big dog in the outcome of the ongoing race) has decided for their audiences, who apparently can’t be trusted to make decisions for themselves, that what the U.S. leader has to say is not important because…yes, Covid, the disease that just keeps giving the Democrats excuses to kill any semblance of democratic principles left in the country.
Cue the hysteria.
“He’s not working on the pandemic that is worse than ever,” crazy Cuomo continued.
“He’s not making a deal on relief when more people are struggling to put food on the damn table [cue the violins] than at any time in this country since my parents were babies during the Great Depression.”
In other words, Trump is acting like a monster for considering the integrity of the most consequential election in U.S. history when there is a virus on the loose that leaves 99.8 of its ‘victims’ alive and well.
Judging by CNN and the rest of the mainstream media’s breathtaking arrogance, it is not so hard to imagine a day when the president – whether he or she be Trump or some other nation-loving populist – is outright denied the ability to transmit information over social media, while being deprived of the necessary news coverage, as is already the case with the 45th POTUS. This is the pinnacle of corporate power, or rather the abuse of corporate power.
Such a turn of events in the ‘land of the free’ should be of massive concern for both Democrats and Republicans. Yet partisan politics is winning the day, as the Democrats and their lapdog liberal media believe they have sealed the White House. And perhaps they have. But such a victory will be short-lived as corporate power will not stop at Washington, D.C., but will go on to ravage every last remnant of freedom and democracy in the country. It goes without saying that fake elections supported by fake media will never nurture the conditions for a thriving democracy.
- Iran Says Nuclear Scientist Was Assassinated Using Satellite-Controlled Gun
Iran Says Nuclear Scientist Was Assassinated Using Satellite-Controlled Gun
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/06/2020 – 21:35Iranian nuclear scientist and military researcher Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated using sophisticated electronic equipment controlled via satellite link, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was killed in a gun and car bomb attack on the outskirts of Tehran on Nov. 27, was driving on a highway east of the capital when the weapon “zoomed in” on him “using artificial intelligence,” Mehr said on Sunday, quoting Commodore Ali Fadavi, deputy commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. As General Ramezan Sharif, IRGC spokesman added, “the assassination of a scientist on the street with a satellite device can not undermine our security.”
According to Bloomberg, various accounts of the assassination have emerged since the incident. While early news reports said he was caught in a gunfight between his bodyguards, others said that in a scene seemingly inspired by Breaking Bad, he was fired at by a remote-controlled machine gun mounted on a pick-up truck operated by someone who later fled the country.
Last week the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, said a remotely controlled weapon was used in the ambush that claimed the scientist’s life. The operation was “very complicated” and didn’t require human presence on the site at the time of the attack.
The incident is the second targeted killing of a high-ranking Iranian official since January, when outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump ordered a drone strike on General Qassem Soleimani.
Iranian officials have accused Israel of masterminding Fakhrizadeh’s assassination. Iranian media reported that the remains of the weapon that killed him, which was recovered from the scene, indicated that it originated from the Israeli military. In response, Israeli Intelligence Minister Eli Cohen said his government had no idea who killed Fakhrizadeh, but added that whoever did made the world a safer place because the Iranian physicist took “an active part in creating a nuclear weapon.”
Iran has denied trying to militarize its nuclear research, saying it’s purely civilian in purpose.
- The Hype Surrounding Environmental, Social, And Governance Investing
The Hype Surrounding Environmental, Social, And Governance Investing
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/06/2020 – 21:10Authored by Robert Wright via The American Institute for Economic Research,
ESG (environment, social, and governance) funds are the hottest investments going. The only problem is that they are like free trade coffee — the consumer (investor) pays more for the same product. They might “feel good” in the process but their feelings are irrational because they are paying for a brand label rather than anything substantive. No subset of investors, after all, can permanently change the world through their preferences.
A recent study by Barclays shows that while one in four investment dollars are currently in mutual funds labeled ESG, most investors do not realize that those funds are virtually indistinguishable from non-ESG-labelled funds in terms of portfolio composition or returns. Only fees differ and, unsurprisingly, are considerably higher for ESG-labeled funds — on average almost 0.75 percent vs. less than 0.50 percent for non-ESG-labeled funds.
P.T. Barnum once claimed that there is a sucker born every minute but thanks to population growth and an increasingly complex world, it is closer today to every second. You’ve heard them in the supermarket: “Oh ma Gah, these eggs cost twice as much as those eggs but these ones are la tautly organic, tautly.”
Maybe some organic eggs are different but in an effort to stay at least six meters from others, for their safety of course, I accidentally saw empty crates of dollar per dozen bulk food club eggs suspiciously close to $4 per dozen “organic” eggs for sale at a roadside Jersey farm produce stand over the mild Thanksgiving holiday. “That’s a lot of eggs,” I said after returning to the front of the stand when the old people finally cleared, “Where are all the chickens?”
“Oh, we buy them from the farmer down the road,” the purveyor said.
“Uh-huh,” I responded, “you mean Sam’s … place off Berlin-Cross Keys Road?” a veiled reference to the Sam’s Club there. The icy stare and I assume bared teeth behind her mask meant it was time for this cowboy to mosey along, organic eggless and friendless.
Shouldn’t I have stayed and warned everyone about this egg arbitrage outfit? After all, we learned this summer that many on the Left believe that if you aren’t actively anti-fraud, you are pro-fraud. I agree, so beware those selling organic this and that as it may just be the same old product, made the same old way, but with a new label and at a special P.T. Barnum price.
But organic food fraud is small potatoes compared to ESG-labelled funds. If they charge just 0.25 percent higher fees for essentially nothing extra in return, irrational investors are gifting the fund managers big bucks, billions of extra fees per year in an industry with $18 trillion under management.
No, I do not think we need additional government regulation, I think we need investors (citizens, neighbors) who are rational and informed, who care about actual outcomes and not just feeling good through virtue signalling. It is no virtue, after all, to invest in something merely because it is labelled something that sounds or seems good.
The simple fact of the matter is that governments, not voluntary associations like corporations, cause most of the world’s problems and voluntary associations, not governments, could provide most of the solutions. If people really cared about the environment, for example, they would shrink the size of government and allow voluntary associations to do more.
Private ownership of land and animals is the surest way of promoting actual biodiversity. While some tracts may be ravaged for resources, many people care deeply about the environment and are happy to pay for the permanent preservation of habitat and animal species great and small.
Consider, for example, the Pennypack Trust, which for exactly 50 years has been preserving hundreds of acres of meadows and forest floodplains along Pennypack Creek just 15 miles north of Center City Philadelphia. How many more such local endeavors would have arisen if taxes were not so … robust?
“But,” you can almost hear the central planners retort, “some projects are too big for private initiative.” Maybe, but probably not. Consider the American Prairie Reserve, a Montana nonprofit bigger than some New England states dedicated to preserving massive swathes of the northern Great Plains shortgrass prairie ecosystem, from bison to prairie dogs and all the sundry delish types of vegetation they eat.
The APR’s success is due to the tight budget constraints it faces, not massive investments from governments or ESG investors. It buys or leases land strategically to connect islands of state and federal land to preserve or restore wildlife migration corridors and provide large, unbroken patches of habitat. It’s rational, i.e., sustainable, environmentalism at its finest and could be replicated the continent over if investors simply donated those extra ESG fees to market-based environmental groups.
Unfortunately, as comedian George Carlin liked to remind us, most Americans are “stupid.”
When they read “market-based” they think “greedy bastards” instead of “efficient,” even when only well-governed nonprofits are involved.
Of course nonprofits cannot meet all our desires, so for-profit investment has a role to play in the market-based environmental movement as well. Environmentally-conscious investors and fund managers seem not to realize that “profit maximization” is simply another way of saying “waste minimization.” That is a good thing, right? Don’t we all naturally want to invest in waste minimizing/profit maximizing companies anyway?
So what is ESG really about? I doubt anything substantive but, perhaps, someday ESG-labelled funds will actually be ESG funds, or in other words will meaningfully differentiate between ESG and “wicked” companies. But then, as the Financial Times recently pointed out, they will face a conundrum. To the extent ESG successfully diverts investment away from “wicked” companies, their share prices will decline, i.e., they will become inexpensive and hence set up to outperform so long as any subset of investors continues to maximize returns/minimize waste.
Meanwhile, the shares of ESG companies will get wicked expensive as more and more money piles into them. At that point, with the expectation of low returns on ESG and high ones on “wicked” stocks, virtue investors and ESG fund managers will have to eat palpably lower returns or creatively reclassify “wicked” companies to get higher performing stocks into their portfolios, i.e., destroy the meaningful differentiation between ESG and “wicked” companies once again.
Short of a completely command economy, “wicked” companies will always find investors willing to earn excess returns no matter how many ESG investors choose to continue to stew in low returns. After all, even truly wicked, illegal companies engaged in drug, gun, or human trafficking face few financing constraints. Law enforcement can run illegal businesses up the security market line (more risk but more reward) but can’t run them all off because their very success at forcing exit through incarceration creates market conditions conducive to new entrants.
In the end, then, the hip hop group Public Enemy was actually the investing public’s friend; when it comes to ESG, “Don’t Believe the Hype” because investors “Can’t Truss It.”
- US Reports Record COVID Hospitalizations, 20K+ Patients In ICU: Live Updates
US Reports Record COVID Hospitalizations, 20K+ Patients In ICU: Live Updates
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/06/2020 – 20:55Summary:
- US ICU patients top 20K
- Azar says vaccines widely available by Q2
- US cases top 200K for 4th day
- NJ reports record 6K+ new cases
- US deaths highest since springtime peak
- NYC positivity rate tops 5%
- Bavaria orders new lockdown
- Italy outbreak improves
- Indonesia receives first shipment of Sinovac doses
- Polish deaths slow
- Queen Elizabeth to get vaccine
* * *
Update (1800ET): Not only did US hospitalizations reach yet another new record on Sunday, the number of patients across the US in the ICU has topped 20K for the first time.
* * *
DHHS chief Alex Azar took to ABC’s “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday to tell Americans that FDA emergency approval of a vaccine could arrive ‘within days’, while also moving up the timeline, saying any American who wants a COVID vaccine could get one by the start of the second quarter.
Previously, federal public health officials and ‘Operation Warp Speed’ had targeted the beginning of Q3 as the time when the vast majority of Americans would at least have access to a vaccine. Let’s not forget: Pfizer has already sown doubts about these timelines and targets by slashing its 2021 year-end delivery target by 50%.
A video of DoubleLine’s Jeff Gundlach expressing skepticism about the vaccine’s efficacy has been making the rounds on Twitter. But while severel “listen to the science” types took Gundlach to task for warning that the virus’s mutations could ultimately make it more difficult to eradicate, the NFL has just delivered an important reminder that there are different strains of the virus – and some are appreciably deadlier than others.
In the US, the COVID-19 numbers are still rising as temperatures continue to fall; Winter looms in the Western hemisphere, and the US has been confirming new COVID-19 cases at a rate of more than 200k/day for the last four days. Hospitalizations climbed north of 101K, a new record, while the 7-day average for daily fatalities hit a new post-springtime high of 2,123, according to the COVID Tracking Project.
Though the 7-day average remains at its post-springtime highs, deaths have actually been declining for four days now since hitting their latest record…
…as this past week remains unquestionably the most severe since the start of the pandemic.
New Jersey reported another record single-day number for new cases on Sunday, virtually guaranteeing that Garden State residents will be placed on lockdown in the coming days, just as new ‘stay at home’ orders are being imposed across California, with the entire state expected to soon reach the threshold. New Jersey reported a record 6.05K cases, while there were 3,241 hospitalizations, a slight decrease from the previous day. The latest positive-test rate posted on the state COVID-19 website was 11.65%,, a decrease from several days ago. Meanwhile, another 16 people died, for a total of 15,485.
As the rest of California waits to reach the threshold, 27MM are already on lockdown in LA.
NYC’s outbreak also continued to spread, with Mayor Bill de Blasio reporting 2.26K new infections and 165 new hospitalizations, both increases over the previous day. Meanwhile, the city’s positive test rate ticked higher to 5.1%. .
As case numbers reach new highs in the US, Europe’s outbreak is rolling over, though some EU countries – most notably, Germany – are still very much struggling to tamp down cases and protect hospital capacity. In Bavaria, one of Germany’s hardest hit regions, where case numbers have been stubbornly persistent, officials imposed a new lockdown that will start Dec. 9.
Circling back to the US, the northeast is being hit pretty hard as temperatures fall, with deep-blue Connecticut, praised for its early ability to keep numbers low with tight restrictions during the quarantine period, is surging past its neighbors as cases spread.
Across all four regions, the median age of people being diagnosed is falling.
Here’s some more news from overnight and Sunday morning:
Italy’s outbreak continued to slow on Sunday as the government prepares to ramp up restrictions ahead of the Christmas holiday season. The country reported 18.9K new infections compared 20.7K a week ago, and hospital and intensive therapy occupation also declined. The positivity rate rose to 11.6% amid lower-than-usual testing at Sunday. Deaths fell to 564 vs. 662 on Saturday (Source: Bloomberg).
Iran’s daily death toll dropped below 300 for the first time in six weeks, with 294 fatalities overnight. The number of new infections fell for a third straight day to 11.6K. The country now has 50,310 deaths and 1,040,547 confirmed cases (Source: Bloomberg).
Indonesia received its first shipment of coronavirus vaccine from China on Sunday, President Joko Widodo said, as the government prepares to launch its mass inoculation program. Jokowi, as the president is widely known, said in an online briefing that the Southeast Asian country received 1.2 million doses from China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd., a vaccine Indonesia has been testing since August (Source: Nikkei).
Polish Covid-19 deaths dipped to 228 in the last 24 hours from 502 on Saturday, potentially indicating the virus is loosening its grip on central and eastern Europe’s largest economy. New infections fell to a daily average of 11,196 this week from 17,677 last week. The country’s schools remain closed. Shopping centers reopened on Nov. 28 (Source: Bloomberg).
Queen Elizabeth II, 94, and her husband, Prince Philip, 99, will likely receive the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine within weeks (Source: the Daily Mail).
- Bankers & Traders Deemed "Essential", Will Receive Priority Access For COVID Vaccines
Bankers & Traders Deemed “Essential”, Will Receive Priority Access For COVID Vaccines
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/06/2020 – 20:45Just like they were deemed ‘essential’ during the lockdown, ‘financial services’ employees – a vague, all-encompassing designation that includes everyone from bank tellers to traders and IBD analysts – are expected to be deemed “essential” by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, the agency that will ultimately decide who gets priority access to the COVID vaccines.
Before COVID, the ACIP was a sleepy organization that determined esoteric standards and handled oversight of approving new vaccines. DHS has defined essential workers as ‘those who conduct a range of operations and services that are typically essential to continue critical infrastructure operations.’ But as for what those professions are, exactly – well, that’s entirely up to the ACIP.
The DHS has defined financial services workers as “essential” because they help keep the money flowing, financing trade and investment and everything else. Without them, the Fed might need to resort to direct capital injections.
That includes everyone from bank tellers, to the traders and analysts and even back office workers who keep America’s banks running.
Even if progressives like AOC and her fellows in ‘the Squad’ try to put a stop to this, arguing that bankers and analysts and traders don’t deserve priority over more ‘oppressed’ classes, states and local governments might have final discretion over who actually gets the vaccine, meaning that a major kerfuffle at the federal level might not actually stop Gov. Cuomo from quietly ensuring that his pals on Wall Street get the vaccines they need.
At least then they won’t be tempted to resort to the inevitable black market.
- Saudis Raise Crude Prices To Asia For First Time In 4 Months After OPEC+ Deal
Saudis Raise Crude Prices To Asia For First Time In 4 Months After OPEC+ Deal
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/06/2020 – 20:20Just day after OPEC+ reached an agreement to ease production curbs (in order to keep UAE happy) but assess production levels monthly in order to ensure that oil prices don’t slide after reaching an 8 month high on covid vaccine optimism, Saudi Arabia raised oil pricing for customers on Sunday for its main market of Asia.
The increase, the biggest in five months, indicates the world’s largest oil exporter is confident global – or at least Asian – energy demand is strong enough to absorb the modest increase in output from OPEC+ members next month and that markets will remain tight even with parts of Europe and the U.S. in lockdown.
Saudi state producer Aramco raised pricing for Arab Light crude for Asia by 80 cents a barrel to 30 cents above the benchmark from a 50 cent discount the previous month.
The price increase comes after price cuts from the Saudis in September, October and December as virus cases surged, sending oil demand sliding and depressing Brent prices.
Still, the hike is less than half consensus expectations: Aramco had been expected to increase pricing for the grade by 65 cents, according to a Bloomberg survey of seven traders and refiners.
Aramco also increased pricing for light crude grades to the Mediterranean region but kept them unchanged for northwest Europe. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia lowered pricing for all grades to the U.S. to the lowest since May as Saudi exports to the U.S. have plummeted this year.
The price increase comes as Brent rose 2.2% last week to $49.25 a barrel, its highest level since early March, although the price remains down about down about 25% this year.
- Study Concludes Cuban Diplomats Suffered From Effects Of 'Microwave Radiation'
Study Concludes Cuban Diplomats Suffered From Effects Of ‘Microwave Radiation’
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/06/2020 – 19:55Authored by Rick Moran via PJMedia.com,
A long-awaited study by the National Academy of Sciences has concluded that the illnesses that struck American diplomats and their families in Cuba and China in 2017 were likely caused by directed microwave energy, although it’s not clear if the source was a weapon or not.
U.S. intelligence agencies had believed since 2018 that Russia was behind the attacks, using some kind of “sonic weapon.” The NAS study included examining 40 of the affected diplomats and came to the conclusion that nothing like this had previously been documented in the medical literature.
“The committee felt that many of the distinctive and acute signs, symptoms and observations reported by (government) employees are consistent with the effects of directed, pulsed radio frequency (RF) energy,” the report says. “Studies published in the open literature more than a half-century ago and over the subsequent decades by Western and Soviet sources provide circumstantial support for this possible mechanism.”
While important questions remain, “the mere consideration of such a scenario raises grave concerns about a world with disinhibited malevolent actors and new tools for causing harm to others, as if the U.S. government does not have its hands full already with naturally occurring threats,” says the report, edited by Dr. David Relman, a professor in medicine, microbiolology and immunology at Stanford, and Julie Pavlin, a physician who leads the National Academies of Sciences global health division in Washington.
It still might be the Russians. Recent reports have documented other cases of CIA agents being targeted and showing similar symptoms after an attack. Tracking devices show some Russian agents who had worked on microwave weapons were present in the vicinity.
Saying that the microwave energy was “directed” raises the question: by whom? And if it’s not a weapon, why was it pointed at the U.S. embassy?
As the state department and CIA are saying, there are still plenty of unanswered — and perhaps unanswerable — questions.
The State Department, responding to the report, said that “each possible cause remains speculative” and added that the investigation, now three years old, is still “ongoing.” Although it praised the National Academies of Sciences for undertaking the effort, the State Department offered a long list of “challenges of their study” and limitations in the data the academies were given access to, suggesting that the report should not be viewed as conclusive.
“While the above limit the scope of the report, they do not lessen its value,” the State Department said in an emailed statement. “We are pleased this report is now out and can add to the data and analyses that may help us come to an eventual conclusion as to what transpired.”
Whoever is doing it — and most of the signs apparently point to Russia — they are very careful not to leave any footprints to follow. The weapon has been used sparingly and in several places — perhaps testing the weapon before deploying it.
Until we figure it out, our diplomats will be in danger.
- As Dems Push Loan Forgiveness, Data Show Blue States Have Highest Average Student Debt
As Dems Push Loan Forgiveness, Data Show Blue States Have Highest Average Student Debt
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/06/2020 – 19:30We know it’s hard for millennials to hear – especially considering how badly screwed so many of them are after racking up ridiculous loan balances into the 100s of thousands of dollars – but there isn’t a compelling moral argument for forgiving student loans.
While Democratic politicians like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders like to wax poetic about unleashing an entire generation from the shackles of debt slavery, in reality, Americans with student loans largely include middle-class people – or at least, people who were raised in the middle class.
The argument ‘well they bailed out the banks’ isn’t really an argument: it’s just another example ‘of whataboutism’, a sin that the left is constantly accusing President Trump and his allies of committing.
And as the world waits to see whether Joe Biden will embrace some of the progressive agenda pushed by politicians like AOC and ‘the squad’. Biden has suggested that loan forgiveness of up to 50k per borrower could be on the table as an early-stage priority. But is that just lip service? Sometimes, it’s difficult to tell.
A recent study from Smartest Dollar offers some more insight on the Democratic mindset when it comes to debt-forgiveness. It found that COVID-19 forbearance programs have actually improved the picture in terms of the share of student loans in forbearance. What’s more, the study gets right to the heart of the issue.
Why do Democrats want to forgive student loans? So they can essentially deliver a massive handout to their political base.
The analysis found that borrowers in coastal states tend to have the most student loan debt. While borrowers in California and Oregon have average student loan debts above $35,000, those in the South and East Coast states like Maryland, New York, Georgia, and Virginia have even higher debt burdens.
Though a handful of southern states land among the states with the highest average student debt burden, the top 20 is mostly populated by blue and purple states.
Anybody out there think that’s just a coincidence?
- Second Major California Sheriff Openly Rebels Against Newsom Lockdown
Second Major California Sheriff Openly Rebels Against Newsom Lockdown
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/06/2020 – 19:05Just a day after Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco told California Governor Gavin Newsom that his department won’t be “blackmailed, bullied or used as muscle” against residents during the pandemic, The Epoch Times reports that Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes announced that deputies would not enforce the regional stay-at-home order that was scheduled to go into effect Dec. 6 throughout Southern California.
“Compliance with health orders is a matter of personal responsibility and not a matter of law enforcement,” Barnes said in a Dec. 5 news release.
“Orange County Sheriff’s deputies will not be dispatched to, or respond to, calls for service to enforce compliance with face coverings, social gatherings, or stay-at-home orders only.”
It is not the first time the sheriff has declared deputies would not enforce a state order over coronavirus restrictions. When Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered a curfew in November for all California counties in the purple tier amid climbing coronavirus cases, Barnes said deputies would not be enforcing that order either.
A state-mandated, regional stay-at-home order was scheduled to go into effect at 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 6. The mandate was triggered when intensive care unit (ICU) bed availability remained below 15 percent after the Southern California region’s Dec. 5 daily COVID-19 case-rate update, according to the California Department of Public Health.
In his statement, Barnes said deputies would continue to respond to calls for potential criminal behavior and the protection of life and property, actions he said remain “consistent with the protections of constitutional rights.”
But he said the “ever-changing nature” of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s stay-at-home orders and the increase in COVID-19 case numbers “bring additional uncertainty and stress to California residents.”
“To put the onus on law enforcement to enforce these orders against law-abiding citizens who are already struggling through difficult circumstances, while at the same time criticizing law enforcement and taking away tools to do our jobs, is both contradictory and disingenuous,” he said.
He cautioned that people should remain diligent in preventing the spread of the disease, and should take the recommended public health precautions like wearing face coverings and practicing social distancing.
“Conversely, policy makers must not penalize residents for earning a livelihood, safeguarding their mental health, or enjoying our most cherished freedoms,” Barnes stated.
Citing rising COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths over the past month, Newsom on Dec. 3 announced plans for regional stay-at-home orders that would be triggered when ICU bed availability in select areas fell below 15 percent.
Full Statement below:
- DHS Investigated For Spying On Citizens Using Cell Data From Mobile Advertising
DHS Investigated For Spying On Citizens Using Cell Data From Mobile Advertising
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/06/2020 – 18:40The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is launching an inspector general investigation into whether federal agencies surveilled Americans via their cell phone data without a warrant. While this sounds like nothing new, it involved federal agents buying access to a large commercial database.
According to a letter the DHS sent to Congressional leaders last week and obtained by The Wall Street Journal:
The department’s inspector general told five Democratic senators that his office would initiate an audit “to determine if the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its components have developed, updated, and adhered to policies related to cell-phone surveillance devices,” according to a letter sent last week to Capitol Hill and shared with The Wall Street Journal.
File image via Wright Studio Putting aside the dubiousness of a major federal agency mounting an “objective” probe of one of its own internal departments over violations of Constitutional rights, the episode shows the US government has done little in the way of reform after the Edward Snowden NSA revelations of 2013. Of course, there were few that believed subsequent empty “promises” of politicians to curtail illegal domestic spying in the first place.
In this newest case the investigation will focus on US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and its alleged use of of commercially-available phone tracking data to snoop on the whereabouts of individuals. Congressional inquiries started when it was first revealed the CBP payed up to $500,000 to private company for access to a commercial database which has “location data mined from applications on millions of Americans’ mobile phones.”
The company at the center of the probe is a government contractor named Venntel which sources its data from mobile advertising to create “100 percent commercially available data”.
Last Wednesday a group of Senators led by Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) issued a statement which said the following:
If federal agencies are tracking American citizens without warrants, the public deserves answers and accountability, I won’t accept anything less than a thorough and swift inspector general investigation that sheds light on CBP’s phone location data surveillance program.
“CBP is not above the law and it should not be able to buy its way around the Fourth Amendment,” the senators said in the letter addressed to Inspector General Joseph Cuffari.
🚨DHS is opening an investigation into CBP’s warrantless collection of phone location data that @SenMarkey @SenWarren @SenBrianSchatz and I pushed for. I‘ll accept nothing less than a thorough and swift investigation that sheds light on CBP’s location data surveillance program. pic.twitter.com/pBtiRbdrSl
— Ron Wyden (@RonWyden) December 2, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Simultaneous to the Congressional probe the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) last week filed a lawsuit demanding the release of “records about their purchases of cell phone location data for immigration enforcement and other purposes.”
One crucial detail which remains unclear at this point, however, is the degree to which CBP was obtaining the tracking data of illegal immigrants or foreigners of questionable legal status in the United States. Even if so it’s likely they were accessing tracking data of American citizens in the process.
The CBP defense of their actions may hinge on such an argument, namely, that the methods were necessary and only applied to snooping on non-US citizens seeking to evade border and immigration authorities.
- Morgan Stanley: "The Biggest Debate About 2021 Isn't Where The Market Is Going. It's How It Gets There"
Morgan Stanley: “The Biggest Debate About 2021 Isn’t Where The Market Is Going. It’s How It Gets There”
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/06/2020 – 18:15By Andrew Sheets, chief cross-asset strategist at Morgan Stanley
The biggest debate about 2021 probably isn’t where the market is going. It’s how it gets there.
We, and many others, are optimistic on the next 12 months. But there’s less agreement among investors on how these gains will be achieved. With our economists still in the ‘V-shaped recovery’ camp, we think returns will be powered by strong economic growth, driving an early-cycle, post-recession pattern of returns. Buy what you’re usually supposed to buy following a recession.
Others disagree. They think our forecasts for economic growth are too optimistic and expect COVID-19 to take longer to dissipate, with a more serious, longer-lasting impact on the global economy. They argue that the drawdown and recovery happened so fast that the economic cycle never truly reset, leaving both the corporate and sovereign sectors overleveraged. For these investors, liquidity and low rates will be the principal drivers of market gains. Secular stagnation lives.
In investing, as in life, more than one thing can be true at the same time. Morgan Stanley’s economists forecast both above-consensus global growth and US$3.4 trillion of G4 balance sheet expansion in 2021. We’re positive on the year ahead in part because we think that growth and monetary policy will be rowing in the same direction.
Our argument is simply that weak-but-improving growth and supportive liquidity are a normal post-recession backdrop. Meanwhile, market pricing often remains sceptical that economic ‘normalcy’ will return any time soon. Better growth, supportive liquidity and attractive valuations are all reasons to adopt a ‘pro-cyclical’ stance across key cross-asset pairs: Long US small-caps over large-caps, long AUD/NZD/SEK/NOK versus USD and long high yield over investment grade. We think that US 10-year rates will hit 1.45% by end-2021, and are underweight government bonds.
But what about that missing reset? The economic collapse and recovery were unusually fast, bypassing the large defaults of 2008-10. There hasn’t been a single significant bank failure in the wake of the world’s largest economic drawdown on record and, more strikingly, there hasn’t been a single significant capital raising. The US trailing 12-month speculative-grade default rate sits at 8.0%. In 2009, a milder recession, it peaked at 14.2%.
This failure to reset is often cited as a key reason why this can’t be the start of a new economic cycle: Recessions, while painful, help to clear out weaker, less-productive and undercapitalised businesses, making room for stronger, more dynamic ones to prosper in their place. The historic levels of policy intervention in 2020 prevented this ‘creative destruction’. Without that clearing out, a dynamic recovery is unlikely. With it, a wider run of corporate defaults is inevitable.
Since we do think this is the start of a new economic cycle, do believe it will be ‘dynamic’ (we’re above consensus on growth) and don’t expect a surprisingly high wave of defaults, this would be a good time to explain why we don’t subscribe to the counter-argument.
- First, recessions are about more than just high default rates. They also often mean high unemployment, low inventory levels, high savings rates and low consumer confidence (among other things). Early-cycle environments gain momentum from all these negatives becoming ‘less bad’. In our forecasts, over the next 12 months, all of them do.
- Second, about those default rates. Pruning unproductive businesses from the market is a painful but necessary process. But this argument assumes that the businesses in question are fundamentally broken, not ‘fine were it not for a once-in-a-century global pandemic’. We don’t see how letting scores of otherwise solvent firms default would result in a better long-run result for the economy or investors, especially as these firms would have been forced to reorganise, or liquidate, near the nadir of economic activity.
Indeed, one of the great ironies of 2020 is that for all the hand-wringing around ‘covenant-lite’ lending, it was probably a blessing. ‘Weak’ terms on lending gave borrowers a helpful level of flexibility during the 1H downturn, where strict provisions would have forced more defaults. Neither owner, employee nor lender would have benefited from debt suddenly coming due in the depths of a recession; if you don’t believe me, search ‘recovery rates March 2009’.
Finally, it’s also unfair to say that policy prevented any pain from being endured. If we combine the trailing 12-month default rate (8.0%) with our credit strategists’ forecast for the next 12 months (6.0%), we get a 24-month default rate of ~14.0%. We can compare that two-year default rate to two-year changes in economic activity (i.e., taking a somewhat broader view of this unusual year). Viewed this way, things look more normal.
If you’re constructive on the year ahead, the question of ‘how you get there’ still matters. We remain in the pro-cyclical, early-cycle camp, and don’t believe that the ‘absence’ of a larger corporate default wave nullifies this story. Our corporate and securitized credit strategists are constructive with an early-cycle bias: positive on junior exposure in CLOs and CMBS, and on high yield over investment grade.
- Foot Traffic Still Stumbling In New York's Top Business Districts
Foot Traffic Still Stumbling In New York’s Top Business Districts
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/06/2020 – 17:50In what should come as a surprise to no one, foot traffic in New York’s hottest business districts continues to suffer, though things have improved since the summer according to the Wall Street Journal.
Neighborhoods which were booming before the pandemic, such as Flatiron and Union Square, were crippled by lockdown restrictions, leading to a sharp dropoff in foot traffic.
Prior to the pandemic, approximately 9% of the district’s retail corridor was vacant in 2018.
A follow-up survey conducted by the NYC Department of City Planning in July revealed that the number of inactive storefronts in the district – both closed and vacant – jumped had jumped 36%, which the planning department attributed in part to a lack of both commuters and tourists.
Still, things have improved somewhat since the summer.
“It is moving in the right direction, it’s just been gradual,” said James Mettham, executive director of the Flatiron 23rd Street Partnership, who added that more businesses have reopened since the summer amid improving foot traffic.
Still, the Wall Street Journal conducted an analysis of Foursquare foot-traffic data, and found that pedestrian activity was still down across the Flatiron, Union Square and Chelsea neighborhoods vs. February before the pandemic restrictions went into effect.
While this is an improvement from a 75% drop in foot traffic in the spring, it’s still slower than several outlying areas such as Morris Park in the Bronx and New Drop on Staten Island – which saw pedestrian activity return to pre-pandemic levels by September.
Some local shops are facing less dire, yet still precarious financial situations.
“We’re still bleeding money,” said Chris Calkins, CEO of Gotham Coffee Roasters on West 19th Street. “but unless things get worse, we’re good until June.” Gotham’s sales have improved somewhat since the spring – down 60% vs. 85% earlier in the year. Calkins says he’s remained afloat through his mail-order business, federal grants and loans, and a rent reduction from his landlord of 30%.
That said, with New York governor Andrew Cuomo warning on Modnay of more potential lockdowns, we have to wonder if the slight gains made throughout NYC’s business districts will be wiped out amid what Joe Biden lovingly referred to as an impending “dark winter.”
“The holiday season is going to have a profound effect. It already has,” Cuomo said on Monday. “The holiday season is going to have a profound effect. It already has.“
- Open Letter To Governor Brown: The Data Confirms "It's Time To Re-Open Oregon's Businesses"
Open Letter To Governor Brown: The Data Confirms “It’s Time To Re-Open Oregon’s Businesses”
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/06/2020 – 17:25Authored by Chris Hamilton via Econimica blog,
I’m a proud native Oregonian. I’ve lived in Asia, Europe, and traveled most of the world, but I choose to live in Oregon. It’s that good. Oregon is also great because it is a political and social dichotomy. Ultra liberal Portland, Eugene, Bend vs ultra conservative rural Oregon. There is a little something for everybody…and I love every bit of it.
So, as I’m watching the states recent implosion…I’m heartsick. Like everywhere else, Coronavirus has found it’s way into Oregon. In March, the state chose to shut down and enter into a prolonged lockdown. I disagreed but couldn’t do so with great conviction, because the reliable data to prove the shutdown wasn’t warranted just didn’t exist.
However, as reliable data has been growing…the state has chosen to keep schools closed, cancelling athletic and social clubs, alongside in person learning. And now the state has entered a second partial lockdown; shutting down restaurants, gyms, bars, and other select business’.
At the most critical business time of the year, the state has taken business owners/employees ability to earn a living with no compensation offered. This has been done to slow the spread of Coronavirus and avoid an overwhelming crush of patients in the states hospitals.
Like the Governor, I too want to keep Oregonians from needlessly dying. But I’m also cognizant that the state government is there to serve the people, not dictate to them. The state is there to educate to the risk factors and respect it’s citizens well informed decisions. Unilaterally taking away many Oregonians right to run small and large business’, send their children to school, etc. would have to be done based on some very hard and lethal evidence. It is this evidence I want to review.
First, consider the total number of Coronavirus cases, per age group, and the associated deaths (chart below). It should be obvious that the under 50 year old population makes up the vast majority of positive cases (and actual cases are likely 5x to 10x higher due to asymptomatic &/or mild undiagnosed cases) but under 50 year olds make up so few of the Coronavirus deaths.
Looking at cases and deaths, by age group (chart below), consider…
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Under 30yr/olds = 37% of cases, 9% of hospitalizations, & 0.2% of deaths.
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30 to 60yr/olds = 46% of cases, 34% of hospitalizations, & 9.1% of deaths.
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60+yr/olds = 17% of cases, 57% of hospitalizations, & 91.7% of deaths.
From the above chart, it should be abundantly clear who the “at-risk” population is and where the focus of attention and support should be directed. Not school closures or business closures…but helping the primarily elderly population with at-risk maladies avoid the general public…not have the generally well public avoid contact with the generally well public! These interactions and potential infections lead to few hospitalizations and a statistically minute number of deaths.
To emphasize the point of who is filling Oregon’s hospitals, and who needs greater support and care in avoiding the general public…again, it is the elderly population that is utilizing the hospitals (chart below)…not the young. As for the young and concern of long term impacts from fighting Coronavirus, the numbers of severe cases requiring hospitalization as so rare that the percentage of those with long term issues will be statistically incredibly low.
Further, the CDC has made it plain that Coronavirus alone is very rarely the cause of death.
As per the CDC, “For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death.”
Coronavirus, on it’s own, is statistically so unlikely to cause death among the general public that they can go on with their lives w/out undue fear…and the focus should be safeguarding the at-risk.
The point of this article is not to create greater division or offer more finger pointing…it is to offer clear data that Oregonians who are healthy are at no great risk from Coronavirus. The economy should remain open while those in poor health (they generally know who they are; elderly, fighting cancer, obesity, type 2 diabetes, immunocompromised, COPD, etc.) should be offered support to help them to avoid contact with the general public. Households with at-risk persons should consider avoiding sending their children to school but be offered online schooling options. And it is a shame that solutions to avoid the ongoing high mortality within nursing homes isn’t getting more attention (encompassing nearly 40% of all Coronavirus deaths).
Simply, the tax base should be used (rather than abused) supporting those at risk should to avoid general interaction until a vaccine is ready (why the generally healthy public would take a vaccine for a virus that poses little to no threat is a question for another day). Things like subsidizing Instacart online shopping rather than in person shopping, etc. etc. Let’s get creative, as lives are on the line. This is just common sense that the state would focus the quarantine on the small population of at-risk persons, and offer/focus their support/resources there rather than harm the large, well, not at-risk population. Lastly, small business owners running restaurants, bars, gyms, etc. providing jobs and tax revenue should be hailed rather than bankrupted.
Oregon has long been an innovator and leader, and now it is time for Oregon to learn and lead again. It is time to re-open Oregon’s business’ and focus the state’s resources on protecting the at-risk population rather than harming the large at very low risk population.
The data for this article is taken from the Oregon Health Authority
I also offer the below national data from the CDC, generally mirroring that of Oregon, FYR.
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- Russia Unveils New Drone Killing Tank
Russia Unveils New Drone Killing Tank
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/06/2020 – 17:00The problem with many of the world’s top militaries is that short-range defenses against small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are lacking, well, at least a cost-effective weapon that doesn’t cost thousands, if not hundreds of thousands or in some cases millions of dollars to shoot down a cheap enemy drone.
Russia learned this back in 2018 after its security forces of the Khmeimim airbase and Russian Naval CSS point in Tartus, Syria, combated a series of UAV attacks.
Two years later, Russia has revealed the Derivatsiya-PVO self-propelled anti-aircraft gun that will “create a shield from a hail of projectiles that burst with shrapnel in the air, forming an impenetrable barrier against enemy drones,” according to Russia Beyond.
Russia Beyond said the Derivatsiya is based on the BPM-3 infantry fighting vehicle. It has an AU-220M automatic weapon station that fires up to 120 artillery shells per minute.
“Its ammunition kit includes remotely detonated and guided projectiles, which means that anti-aircraft gunners can fire a shell and detonate it with a single keystroke during the flight, or adjust its path to track the enemy’s movements,” a Russian military-industrial complex source told Russia Beyond.
Derivatsiya was designed to knock out small UAVs that fly several hundred meters above the ground.
“Drones have become the scourge of our army in the Middle East, and not only ours. Militants make remote-controlled ‘helicopters’ from improvised means, attach bombs to them, then dispatch a whole flock of ‘suicide bombers’ to blow up expensive air-defense systems or tanks and helicopters. Basically, any equipment that costs millions of dollars,” said the expert.
He added that Derivatsiya was developed to lower the cost per round in combating these new threats on the modern battlefield.
“It is to save money and equipment on destroying these buzzing bomb-laden irritants that Derivatsiya is being developed,” he said.
The proliferation of small drones on the modern battlefield also led the US Navy to recently “revive” anti-aircraft flak rounds used in World War II for its current warships to combat small drone threats.
- Opposition Builds To Great Reset In Argentina, Who's Next?
Opposition Builds To Great Reset In Argentina, Who’s Next?
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/06/2020 – 16:35Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,
This is not news. But an historical reminder of what happens when the people get fed up with a corrupt government incapable of serving their interests.
Remember this?
The president of Argentina has left the building. According to the Daily Mail 20 years ago:
President Fernando De la Rua resigned and fled the government palace in a helicopter, driven from office by a devastating economic crisis and days of rioting that left 22 people dead and homes and supermarkets across Argentina ransacked.
Fast forward to today:
This is the news: Police faced rioters with stones this week.
Argentina😳😳😳
It’s like mufukin million man dodgeball pic.twitter.com/HEcIKzu8BX
— Wes’ ghost (@wes92i_1) December 4, 2020
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This is what the face of real anger and desperation in the face of a government that is equal parts corrupt and inept looks like.
No one wants to see this kind of abuse of any other human being. It’s anathema to life itself. But everyone makes a choice. The police choose to put on their uniforms and riot shields to enforce immoral orders while the people make the choice to stand up to it.
It is the fundamental problem of rule through force that eventually leads to these regrettable outcomes. No one wants to see policemen, presumably decent men with the right motivations to maintain societal order, stoned in public.
But when people have had their ability to make their grievances heard peacefully taken away from them they will, eventually, make their grievances heard violently.
It’s who we are. It’s human nature.
And the lesson here is for all of these would-be tyrants currently laughing about winning a fraudulent election in the U.S. through changing the rules is that they will face this same moment as these cops did very soon.
Because elections are the opportunity for us to air our grievances with our government peacefully. And what so many in politics fail to understand, but what the people who voted for Donald Trump do, is that these past two elections haven’t been referenda on Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
They have been referenda on the whole political class and culture which has driven people to the edge of insanity, bankruptcy and despair.
So, laugh it up Stacey Abrams, Rahm Emmanuel, Barack Obama, Dan Crenshaw and Mitt Romney. Watch this video carefully. This is your future.
The same goes for Tony Blair, Emmanuel Macron, Bill Gates, Angela Merkel, George Soros and Benjamin Netanyahu.
You may scare people into taking your vaccine and issuing your medical passports but what happens on the day when the cops fail to show up to control the crowd for fear of being stoned?
The same people today screaming “my body, my choice” will line up for their COVID-19 vaccine if it means they can’t continue infecting the minds of students with Critical Race Theory.
Congratulations on turning everyone into a desperate, cognitivally-dissonant response monkey.
That stuff cuts both ways folks.
Obedience is not acquiescence. No one really loves Big Brother no matter how much you torture them. The longer you suppress the anger the worse it gets.
Until it explodes.
And people won’t be turning that anger on the idiots on the streets in Portland.
We’ve seen what it looks like when the would-be tyrants riot — the ideologically possessed race hustlers and commies in Antifa and BLM. We haven’t seen what it looks like when the conscientious ‘right’ who just want to live without abuse looks like.
Well, in fact we do. They vote twice, overwhelmingly for Donald Trump and throw British tea into Boston Harbor. They veto legislation designed to sell their people out to the Politburo in Brussels.
Italians will soon have to make their choice.
#BREAKING: Italian conservatives are calling for PM #Conte to resign, shouting “Liberty! Liberty!” in open protest against #COVID19 restrictions.
Travel restriction will be tightened starting 21December, with many regions even restricting #Christmas Midnight Mass. pic.twitter.com/m8WpN47tht
— Bree A Dail (@breeadail) December 4, 2020
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This isn’t a breakdown of the civil order, this is the beginning of a restoration of civil order that is already gone. The idea that we the people control our elected officials governing us is rapidly being revealed as a lie.
And it leaves people with no other option than violence.
This is why, in my mind, the election fraud is the single issue that we have to come together on, Democrat, Republican and, yes, you too feckless and cowardly libertarians.
Because it’s not about the mechanics of voting. It’s not about its inherent immorality. At certain moments in time the value of your vote and what it represents rises above all of that.
It is still the least violent act one can take in conjunction with others to say, “No more. That’s enough.”
I didn’t vote for Trump because I thought he did a good job while in office. I voted for Trump twice because I wanted to stick my finger in the eye of the people who have materially made my life and the lives of millions of people around the world worse.
I voted for Trump to bitch slap Nancy Pelosi, laugh at Chuck Schumer and put James Comey in jail.
I voted for Trump to blow up the false dyad of Republican v. Democrat, out Lindsey Graham and rein in the military-surveillance state.
I didn’t vote for Trump for a tax cut, though it was a nice bonus. My price is a metric shit-ton higher than that you wretched trolls.
Trump stood up to them for four years and by doing so exposed them to such an extent I never thought possible. And now, he and all the people who voted for him are being laughed at by corrupt state legislators, judges, election officials and party hacks.
The normie Republicans think the Georgia run-off elections matter. Without an overhaul of the voting systems themselves what does it matter if two Democrats win or two RINOs do?
And do you really think the outcome of that run-off hasn’t already been determined?
It’s all a rigged game. And now that that has been fully exposed what comes next?
Because how many people in the U.S. are coming to the same conclusions as those people throwing rocks at cops in Argentina, that their government is terminal, its authority illegitimate and its edicts unworthy?
I’ve been long guillotines and rope-makers for the past eighteen months, I may have to double my position.
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